Board Meeting

001here oh good evening all right i think we're about ready to begin i'd like to welcome everyone to the meeting of the canyons board of education today is august 17th 2021 and we are meeting at the district office located at 9361 south 300 east in sandy utah the first we are now beginning the study session i'd like to welcome all of you that have joined us here in person as well as uh through the live stream the first item in study session is update on strategic planning and we'll turn time over to superintendent rick robbins okay we will all just hit the pause button for a moment i'm sorry he was there and now he's not so superintendent superintendent there he is okay superintendent you're up will you please uh give us an update on

002strategic planning thank you president team i'll make this brief in the essence of time exciting to see it move forward the project lead team met and in this meeting a couple of uh focus areas the first one was to complete the nomination form and letter recruit recruitment letter for parents and students for our focus groups so that has been sent out to principals which is exciting so they'll they'll uh start to gather that information and engage our parents and our students in developing those groups and then we also worked on the community survey that's still in process um and just looked through the themes and and some of the sample questions um that may be used in the survey and then finally we discussed as per the board's direction to look at the steering committee's

003makeup and the recommendation was to go forward with an additional three parents to the committee so we're working on that it was noted too that out of those parents that were invited there were some that were not able to attend and so that did have an impact on the number of parents um that were able to be part of that first steering committee but um i think everybody was in agreement that reaching out and inviting at least three more would be helpful so that's where it stands great thank you and then um board any questions or comments mrs nybaur last meeting we talked about possibly considering that there would be one parent from each of the geographical districts is that something that we could yeah although the tour notes um yeah we could we could

004look at that but and we did talk about that a little bit and the um consultants ed elements folks said that they feel like it might be better to take that approach when we are nominating or looking for people to serve on what's called the planning teams and those are the ones that really get into the details of the various uh focus areas the content of the priority areas yeah so but but when we're looking to add a few more parents we will take that into consideration kind of balance out where those parents you know what geographic areas yeah yes is yeah that'd be great it was not one thing too to that point holly that you reminded me is in the nomination form and the letter that will go out from principles it's asking

005them to look at a full cross section of their their community so we really you know are attempting to target a diverse group of participation and and also just to follow up on the the discussion from last meeting it was brought up about what would it mean if the um if we had more than three board members attending and i did consult with with our attorney and he he did say that it would then put that whole meeting subject to open and public meeting laws which would be a little bit um different than what the purpose of that meeting is so so just to report back on that any other questions or comments oh mr miller just a question for you nancy um if you did subject that to open meeting law rules there would

006not you would not be required to take public comment would you no public comment is if you have subjected to uh open meeting laws what difference would that make um so open meeting would require that the meeting be recorded and an agenda posted and minutes published and stick to the agenda and so the flow of information you know discussion and stuff would be a little bit difficult um but the the other thing that we did talk with the consultants about was that the um following each of those meetings and there's three more meetings that are scheduled is all that they would create a summary report and send that out make that available yeah i i don't know that having it uh having to post an agenda would really make that big of a difference it

007might even keep the meetings on track okay well thank you any other mrs oaks i i was just going to say i would rather not do that i don't think all of us need to show up i think all of us can get the information as we need it and i don't think that it's necessary i mean like we've always been able to work through it together and come back and give each other the information we need so why do all six or seven of us need to be there i don't see a need for that mrs oakes and then mrs nybar um in light of the fact that i think sometimes it is very difficult for parents to make those meetings i'm wondering um what we can do to make sure we communicate with

008them the importance of them like rsvp'ing or committing to being there and also do we have a few extra parents lined up in case we have a few that cannot make it i'm curious what the numbers are right now where we have staff versus we know there are three board members present how many parents do we have lined up for the next meeting or how many spots were we hoping to fill well we were adding we wanted to add three more parents and i don't have numbers in front amanda but it was heavily educator side in this last um there was i well how many parents were your we had maybe two or three parents yeah so it was minimal compared to the number of educators so we we really need to work on that

009um but i one like one thing i learned i i was kind of in the same place i think you were all i was thinking that the steering committee you know maybe carried asthma the other committees and after talking to them yesterday i can see that um the planning committees are probably after that meeting the thrust of where we really you know need our parents to engage probably more so than the steering committee because steering committee ends up only meeting three or four times the whole year but those planning committees you know planning committees really will do the heavy lifting of putting together topics and recommendations for the full board so um i mean yes i think it's important to get more parent representation on steering committee but focus on planning committees i think is

010just as equal or more uh mrs oakes follow-up and then mrs mybauer so and follow up to that question i'm just curious um with the timeline of what we have for the strategic planning i can't remember recall right now where the dates are when they're sending out surveys and and as far as feedback coming back from some of the public meetings is some of that information going to be available for the next strategic planning meeting or i'm just curious about the timing and all of that and how they would be responding to it i think that i mean my thought was is as we go that something that we talked to drew about with is to really work on making that available in summary that would be available to you know all of the board

011to look at so yeah it the timing between superintendent listening tour the focus groups the survey and i think we're kind of looking at um you know end of august probably up to the first of october that those those will occur so and i'm happy you know i said to the group and i want the board to know this too i i don't want people to feel limited if i you know they miss one of my listening tour dates i'm happy to we can schedule those out the rest of the fall you know if need be to make sure everybody you know feels like they had an opportunity to be heard so mrs nybaur i agree with mont's suggestion because i feel like we have an opportunity to uh invite more parents and patrons to

012um be part of the process and i know the steering committee there isn't very many meetings but the purpose of the steering committee is to steer this project in a way to what are some things that we're going to be addressing and i i would assume that um that you know some of the questions with the surveys are going to come out of some of those things i know the planning committee you know we've gone through that powerpoint and how specific their task is and it's a much more vital role but i do like mont's suggestion because in that first steering committee you you did feel very invested and when it's a different school board member there every time but the others are all there consistently there you lose a little bit of um that

013consistent that the way that you participate you know it's a little different if if we're coming and going and i i did feel that there were some things that i wanted to mention there that would represent some of the parents i've heard from and i don't know that it obligates all board members i hear clarion saying that would kind of be difficult there's just a few more steering committee meetings and you know those that couldn't come you know it wouldn't be a bad thing but if if you could be there i just i think one of the reasons why everyone was really enjoying hiring this team is because they were all about the communities putting the bricks up right and this is very community um driven and i've had a lot of constituents asking me

014about the strategic planning and when can they get involved and i feel that my answer is it's coming it's coming and for those that really care and or really want to be involved there would be that opportunity for them to at least uh watch and maybe be able to comment to us as as board members i think i think mont has a great idea there so and i think that they're the way education elements is so organized and fantastic their slides i think it'd be very easy for them to post an agenda as well then then it becomes a board meeting and then i have an obligation and responsibility to that board meeting and yes it becomes difficult sometimes because i do have another job and other obligations and responsibilities the matter does not just

015one's three jobs so i feel like i'm responsible to the board for the board meetings that we have that we've put on our agenda for the year but to create this new board meeting for what we're trying to do when we agreed at the very beginning that we would just be on certain committees and we'd be on certain times and blocks that we would participate and i have those calendared then i don't feel like we need to do more board meetings and have to do all the regulations to the board meetings for those meetings but that's my opinion thank you um let's see let's go with mrs schill mr wrigley and then missus mr millerberg i've already spoken yes okay mrs schill then mr wrigley to mr miller so i just think having it as

016a public meeting it will hamper the discussions i mean then people are not free to speak early if they know it's being recorded if they know there's having minutes i actually think that will hamper the participation not improve it so that's my opinion wait one more thing and also it takes a ton of work by board leadership to set up a meeting by all these district people that have to be here i mean it takes a lot of time and work on their part so i'm just saying it's not just an easy let's call a board meeting and it just happens it doesn't happen it takes a lot of work and time from a lot of people mr wrigley sort of tossed on this but i going back to the original intent on most of

017our meetings three people and less the reason i do that is because i know it's rotating which is actually sort of nice because so i was telling nancy a couple days ago there's certain committees i'd actually like to sit on but i didn't sit on it because i wanted to have other people have that opportunity this year but that being said most reason we have three people on the committees is because we don't want to overwhelm the committees with board members and have so many ceos there basically that and then also we start discussing in that meeting and it may change the whole meeting because people say well it looks like the board's going right so if the board's going right we better go right if we have three people in there it's not they

018don't know how the whole board is they just know about the three people that are there for the day and where they may be so i'm really concerned that if we did have more that it may change the whole structure that and how the discussion is is because if four or five of us come off saying oh no i think we need to do this it may say well okay then we're not going to go that direction because if that's the case we bring it before the board five people that can vote about and is gone so i think it may inhibit but it sort of follows what we've been doing with everything else we limit three people so that there's not so many people on on that committee that it it overpowers it it's

019almost like having more administrators on there than parents or it really disturbs the balance okay thank you mr miller you know just for clarification i'm not advocating that we have seven members at every meeting what i'm advocating is that we have the availability that if people have the time they can come because honest to goodness it's nice to think you are going to have somebody take notes and report to the board and keep them up to date and other than the three of us that were at the last meeting i don't know that anybody here has a clue what took place at the last meeting that reporting hasn't taken place and even when it does take place i will promise you there's a lot that is lost in the translation i think consistency is an

020important thing and with all that said i'm really not looking for one more meeting to go to i'm really not but i think that it is absolutely imperative and amanda you'll know where i'm going with this one real quickly that if you have an assignment to be at a committee meeting that you show up at the committee meeting we've sat i've been on committees before where board members have been assigned and there were several meetings and those assignments were not filled and so you know i just feel like if you're going to leave it at 3 i'll live with that i do see some downside to it but if you have an assignment either a b there or b make it known well in advance you can't be there so somebody else can fill in

021yes and and when we made the original schedule that was what we asked of everyone if they couldn't be there to trade with somebody else we're all living life and life changes right right so thank you for that reminder and i think yeah we can all be responsible to make sure that if we can't be there that someone can be there in our place and so um and i i am kind of mindful of the time and people have had opportunity to speak on this so if you and mrs schill and then mrs nybaur if you could keep it very brief thank you so all i was going to say is that drew sent out a very detailed minutes from the meeting that could be easily forwarded to the rest of the board members it

022was very detailed which is what we we talked to him about that yesterday okay that's i think that's all that needs to happen okay mrs nybar i agree with rick when he said it what the hardest part was is just making sure we're getting parent representation i think the difference between this and other committees is it's the same three board members that serve on the committee for the whole year so you gain some momentum um the largest concern i had is in one of the breakout groups i wrote down pretty much word for word what i've heard from a lot of constituents and then we had an opportunity in the meeting to put comments and the comment was why are we why are we looking at this need we've already heard parents talk about this

023the answer to that is parents have talked about it but it still needs to be addressed so my largest concern is that we have enough parents there really with all of these committee meetings so that their needs are represented in what they're saying because that's what we want to do right is to gather input any good business take surveys right and all of these things to say okay how can we meet your needs better and so my largest concern is just making sure we are meeting the needs of our parents so however that looks like i do feel like my feedback from that meeting is i think that we need to do more with that okay and we have asked them as facilitators to to focus more on the parents and make sure that their

024input is is a larger part of of the discussion of those meetings so anyway um i think we've got some really good feedback here and i just again remind board members now that that you we've had this discussion as when your turn is up make sure you're there and the administration will make sure that those other people assigned to the committee have good reminders and and the opportunity to bring a substitute if they aren't able to be there and i think we'll proceed as as we have outlined so thank you president okay thank you okay next item is item b district-wide constitution day observance plans and we will turn the time over to dr robert dowdle assistant superintendent common defense promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity

025to ordain and establish this constitution for the united states of america do you remember that i loved it i taught it for 10 years although it's been 24 years since since i've taught it it still sticks with me it remains with me i love the constitution i love that we have outstanding teachers who are out there who teach about the five purposes of the constitution as found in the preamble that i just recited i love that we go in depth into the seven articles and the 27 amendments to the constitution we cover the six main ideas that are found in the constitution which are limited government republicanism checks and balances federalism separation of powers popular sovereignty we do cover these things and we find that the training of the constitution happens in all 12 grades

026of public school we also cover some of the landmark cases and we have some attorneys in the room and you probably remember you're learning about the landmark cases which help clarify the constitution and how that applies to our lives and we also speak quite a bit about the duties and responsibilities of citizenship so teachers base their lessons on on core standards that are published and required by the state board of education and i provided a document for you actually ought to recognize constitution day is going to be september 17th of this year and uh we have i asked our isd department to create some materials that we could share with our teachers which would assist them if needed on this constitution day because constitution day is the day that we can recognize and celebrate the

027founding document of our government it's not the only day that we cover teaching the constitution as i've just discussed but it's a day to recognize and celebrate that we have something special and so all of our principals do know that we have a constitution day and the date is coming up they also know the expectation that we will have activities at a large scale and within the classrooms to remind our students of the importance of this great document so the isd department uh put together some of these things i want to thank jody guide scott lambert and ashley lennox and justin anderson who created these resources they established a learning intention so their learning intention is i am learning about the importance of the us constitution so i can identify ways in which it impacts

028my daily life and they also have identified some success criteria which is i will know i am successful when i have participated in a lesson about how the constitution impacts my daily life they've listed some anchor standards and i don't need to read everything to you i think you probably perused these as they were provided to you earlier they also went through and identified some of the standards we find from usbe which shows what ought to be taught at different grade levels i just went through and and highlighted just some of the words out of there uh once again a kindergarten appropriate ways to behave why families and classrooms have rules honesty responsibility patriotism courage and first grade responsibilities in the school and in the neighborhood good citizen in the school respect for others second

029grade civic responsibility and good citizenship third grade rights of individuals and representative government fifth grade it becomes a lot heavier a lot more in depth understanding underlying principles of the united states constitution the u.s constitution has been amended and interpreted over time sixth grade systems of government seventh grade we focus actually on the utah constitution uh eighth grade is another heavy year where students will explain how the ideas events and compromises which led to the development and ratification of the constitution the structure and function of the government rights liberties and responsibilities of citizens and then in our 9th grade and 10th grade classes in high school we also teach in several classes but that includes describe the structure of the united states form a government as a compound constitutional republic the ideas of federalism checks

030and balances separation powers etc so those are a lot of the standards that are involved there so one of the things that we're doing this year isd is doing is preparing a video which can be shown at a whole school level or setting of the whole class and it will highlight the origins and purpose of the constitution it'll have a short summary of the constitution and then it'll have a section in there of what the constitution means to me there's going to be people who are invited to contribute to that video i believe governor herbert will be one of them who was here some of you have been invited to do that some of the administration have been invited to do that so that we kind of sent out the message to our students this

031is a big deal we love it and it means something to us so it could be done in a high school assembly or in a number of settings and then they put together some teacher resources some teachers don't spend a lot of time teaching about the constitution and so these resources can help them quickly identify materials if they want to and all of our teachers have a new zela account and they can go to these a lot of them are primary sources terrific resources to to teach our students about we also have some interactive resources there's a facts quiz i went online and i took the quiz and i'm happy to report to you that i did really well um i'm wondering if perhaps you went on because you were provided with the links and

032maybe try to yourself and you may surprise yourself about how much you remember about our constitution i i recommend you give it a whirl also there's uh interactive resources on the branches of power and nice civics.org games our students really enjoy games so they could incorporate that and then they have some extension resources as you can see up there so the notice is out materials have been provided and we will send out a memo with all of these links assuming that this lands well with you uh tomorrow it's ready to go uh what we can't really do i've mr millerberg you've said a number of times if i walk into a school at any time on constitution day can i see a lesson that you've asked me that before and the answer is probably not

033it will happen during the day if you want to tell me a school or any of you that you would like to visit i could find out times so that i could facilitate your good experience and seeing how this rolls out but i would like to remind you that we also have reading writing math and other kinds of things will be taught that day but we would love to support you if you wanted to go into a school and see this in action so there's just a few ideas of what we're doing do you have any questions that i could answer for you um i believe mrs oakes has something yeah i do have a question thank you for putting this together it looks awesome and i'm excited about the idea of the kids being

034able to have these conversations i'm just curious so it sounds just as a clarifying question every teacher is i don't know how this works they're supposed to be taught something about the constitution every student should receive something on that day is that correct so it is in the in the standards for everybody what we've done is ask schools to at least do the whole activity whole group activity in one way or another and then we'll have many classes that will be teaching this a lot of it just because that's what they had would be doing anyway but others were asking to consider taking some time that day and focusing on the constitution okay and my other question is this i know particularly in the middle school level some of the kids that are in dual

035language immersion receive their social studies instruction in a different language which can be tricky because a lot of those sources here in english i did notice that newsela has spanish resources i'm curious if there's anything that we're doing to support the french and chinese teachers to make sure that that happens effectively we have not prepared those we would hope that that would be kind of interesting to hear them do the preamble in spanish but we haven't prepared those materials because honestly speaking as a dli parent who is cognizant of this difficulty with a different language i would almost say i would hope that my student can receive some even if they don't get it in the target language i would rather have them receive this information rather than not at all and even if that

036means it happens in english i know that that's super taboo and i shouldn't be saying that around amber so but you know there's certain things that i think are really critical in their education and i would be sad to see that some kids don't get that simply because there's a language barrier on those materials so i would not want to assume that they won't do it because a lot of these things are easily translated the the concepts and the conversations although jumping into vocabulary of democracy branches of government and other things is going to be a ginormous sleep for most of those kids right so maybe i don't know if amber has any ideas on that um would it this is just the thought that came into my mind um would it be could they

037do it in the english part of their day have rather than the target language part of the day yes i'm mouthing back there but nobody can see so the standards that bob just kind of briefly reviewed are all connected to ela and social studies standards so the idea that there will be kind of that overview as bob mentioned that all students will get and then they will have another touch point at some point during their day or week whenever the the school sets the schedule where they'll get more in-depth information in those content areas so it won't be every single content area but every student will have access to it through their ela and social studies okay so if you're you're a sixth grader and you're a french dli student you're going to get it

038one take perhaps in your french social studies class and once in your ela class okay thank you other questions comments um mr millerberg and then mr wrigley first of all bob thank you so much for doing it uh i didn't really mean to be a pain in the side you know but you're not uh but i do believe that the constitution is the uh glue that holds this whole thing together and so and i i totally understand that uh teaching us history even specifically the constitution is more than a one day event but i do appreciate you uh having attention brought to the to the importance of the constitution and you did say the 17th of september yes and you can rest easy because the usba is having their uh leadership academy that weekend and

039so i will be there as much of the pain to me i would like to be in the school and at least walk through and see it but uh i'll apologize up front for uh being committed already uh elsewhere i get it but uh yeah thank you so much i just really really appreciate some emphasis being placed on the constitution thank you mr brigley i'd also like to oh yeah i also like to thank you for uh for moving forward this it was really interesting rather eye-opening i went to google to try to see when this was it's not listed on google there's every other holiday and most of them i don't even know about but it's not on google but siri knows which is sort of sad i mean siri knows siri has it

040oh that's interesting but google's my one anyway um i appreciate this because i know there's a lot of our families that want their children to know about the constitution and if there's any time when we're getting all kinds of stuff coming in from all different sides of the political realm it'd be nice that kids at least have one side what it is versus why we need to change it and why it's not working so hopefully they have that opportunity and and i would also encourage the parents during that time and maybe we want to send out something the parents encourage telling them we're doing this and asking the parents then to reinforce it at home you know so i think i think they would appreciate knowing but but we often do that in a church

041setting or whatever is you'll teach thing and then you ask parents to reinforce so i think for those parents that have that and we may even give something simple to tell talk about or something in a topic but if that's a possibility i don't want to add any more but i think i think a lot of parents would you know for that little time they say so what did you learn and they could talk about it have a chance to talk about their kids about the constitution and share their values on that so thank you thank you any other comments i i'll just add my appreciation for what you and the administration have done to put this together for us and to encourage it because it is important and then i'm just going to tell

042people that i'm in public making a commitment that between now and constitution day i'm going to pull out the actual constitution and read the whole thing it's been a lot of years since i've done that and i just so you all can hold me accountable to that thank you thank you dr doddle thank you okay next item is item 1c the jewel lawsuit information and we will turn time over to mr dan harper general legal counsel uh thank you and uh i think this is uh an issue that uh is not divisive i think everybody recognizes uh that vaping has uh clearly been a scourge on our society uh has been sold as somehow benign um and and not as uh personally destructive as cigarettes and tragically the uh uh companies like jewel have targeted

043their uh advertising and products towards teenagers uh so it has had a major impact on our school and school districts across the nation as a result uh there is a mass tort action uh that has been filed and so that uh canyons has been approached to join that unfortunately we have joel wright from curtin mcconkey with us tonight and i'll shortly turn the time over to him to to talk to the board about the litigation um joel is working with the friends law group in california just last week myself and several other attorneys from other school districts in the state were able to meet with william shinoff from the franz law group and joel wright to discuss the terms of the agreement and we have a very productive meeting and i think we're in a

044very good place to move forward i think it's important litigation because it is an important issue for our students one to help educate them i think and i know our school districts have been spending uh a lot of time and resources to do just that and there are other things that we could be doing to try and help with prevention and for uh those students who are vaping to try and help them uh to stop um so i'll go ahead and turn the time over to joel to give a brief presentation and then i'm sure he i think uh mr shinoff will be joining by phone uh and if you have any questions for them and then i'll come up and answer any questions you might have for me uh so i'll just go ahead

045and turn the time over to joel wright from curtin and mcconkie on it thank you so much for for having me here you guys have so much on your plate and so much you're thinking about and this is this is this is a long-term issue i gotta meet with amber like five or six months ago it seems like an eternity ago but but thank you again amber for that meeting um so i have my colleague william shine off from california um on he's actually in florida right now um talking to schools uh in florida so i'm gonna talk for like three or four minutes and william will talk for a few minutes and then we want all your questions your toughest questions you know we're attorneys and we we welcome you know your questions on

046this issue so vaping is still something that's kind of new and a lot of people don't know much about it i didn't know much about it until a few months ago it's usually of heating a liquid to inhale it on a simple level there are lots of different things that can be vaped some of them really aren't so bad for you some of them are nicotine and cannabis or marijuana are the things that are frequently vaped and are not so good and it's kind of like an apple i think you all appreciate when you eat an apple there's only so much sugar you can get but when you um get candy you can refine it and get a lot more sugar and other stuff in it that's the same with vaping they have refined it

047and they can massively increase the nicotine content in it and thus make it much more addictive um jewel and philip morris knew what they're doing nicotine is not a new or unique drug it has been studied enormously and there were some forces within joule when it was founded about 10 12 years ago to really do some good they wanted to make a smoking cessation device they wanted to help people transition away from smoking but they made it so good and they added some salts and they did some tremendous research they made it sort of apple like sexy and tech and cool it was a huge hit with the younger crowd frankly united states and then they even got very clever and added some flavors to it um i have personally smelled the creme brulee uh

048jewel vape and the mango jewel vape and i cannot stand cigarette smoke but i have to admit it just wasn't offensive at all and most people don't even know what it is they think it's like oh that's a nice smell is that some candy or is that a scented candle it's very pleasant and it's a very pleasant sensation and what your principles and vice principles probably know now i mean i've heard mitt romney say that almost half of the flavored vaping products sold in the state of utah are eventually used by underage miners just truly a a tremendous you know crazy data point and if you use nicotine and philip morrison to understand this especially before the age of 25 your brain is changed and you become you know a much more addictive and prone

049to addiction your entire life these people absolutely can still beat a nicotine addiction but they will crave it much more kind of like i have an irrational craving for peanut m ms especially after nine o'clock at night these people will always crave it and they will struggle with that for their entire life so and if you addict someone as a child they can be a customer that will spend one thousand to three thousand dollars a year for the rest of their life vaping products have now gotten so cheap down to ten or fifteen dollars that kids are not so worried if teachers just take them or they lose them you can get like 400 puffs out of one of these devices i i recently came in contact with when i pick up a street with

050my wife and we found one i was thinking about bringing it and showing it to you and then i was like i bet you guys have a no tolerance policy for vaping twice didn't want to test your your limits with that one so i didn't bring it in here but if you want to cut out the no i won't even say if it's in the parking lot in my car um but so what can be done um you guys are actually pioneers on this i talked to leon a while back and i believe and you guys might know more if i remember correctly you were re you know doing a couple of your high schools and decided to put those vape detectors in and then i think you may thought about it more and said

051maybe we need to do this you know in in all our high schools and that's fantastic because really how do we beat vaping it's two things first it's just not normalized i mean if you talk to some kids in some school districts in some places it gets to a 50 tipping point and then it's just normal and then you've kind of lost it's just normalized and it's it's cultural as well but the second thing is education and that's where i think everybody in this room is a strong proponent we believe in public education we believe if we teach kids they will make good decisions and cigarettes for example are are generally viewed as not very cool the sharp survey data if you look at point three b in short kids in salt lake county are

052at least five times more likely to be vaping than smoking cigarettes um so we've talked about this so we have a lawsuit now over 450 school districts have joined nationwide uh here in utah um tuella provo and ogden have formally joined several other school districts are very close to joining into that and um it's it's fun dan dan touched on this in his presentation but if you look into that on the second full page i mean i provide a lot of resources if you really want to do a lot of reading but you know senator romney has really used some political capital to fight underage vaping uh melania trump in september 2019 uh really came out strongly because she was alarmed at the underage vaping she was seeing in barron trump's school and donald trump

053followed along and really used some political capital as well then kind of covet hit and they didn't get to follow up as much as they should have joe biden has come out quite strongly against vaping the fda is looking at and reviewing vaping right now and he's going to wait for that then i think he's going to take some strong stands the cdc has of course come out strongly against youth vaping the kind of more fun is is here at the state level if you turn over that page i have a letter here from utah pta um asking school boards to do exactly what you're doing tonight to to consider and uh evaluate you know whether it makes sense for your school district to join this this school vaping litigation and then we also got

054a letter from the utah school boards association also um asking you to do the same thing and then just i want to show you know bipartisanship i you know i hope it's a scary one but the utah eagle forum even was quite well against youth vaping and made a very strong statement about how the nicotine content should go down from five percent to three percent what's interesting in england when jewel went there they said you can come here jewel you can only have three percent nicotine content not five percent and joel really fought with them and eventually they decided to do it and to some great much greater extent uh uh jewel and vaping is a smoking cessation device when you go down to three percent at five percent it's just not which just shows

055that they understand exactly what they're doing and how they're trying to adapt kids now so jewel has has kind of cooked this and and made this what it is so i'm going to turn the time over to my colleague william and he'll talk for just a few more minutes on this and then we'll take your questions about the lawsuit itself william do we have you yes can you all hear me i think so okay great i thank you all very much for your time i'm sorry i couldn't be there this evening as joel told you i'm presenting school districts out here in florida um so a little bit about my background i'm a former school attorney i represented for 10 years school districts as litigation council and general counsel throughout california throughout southern california that

056experience brought me into this issue of vaping and how it was an issue across the board with all my clients at this time i represent over 460 school districts in 31 states in this case and what i want to make sure there's clarity on is this is not a class action this is what's called a mass action so every school district that joins this case will have their own case on file in that case will be located in the northern district of california in san francisco we currently have a trial date for this case set for march 2022 so the time of this case is not going to be the tobacco litigation that took 10 years we're going to know something whether the case is resolved or whether we're going to trial within the next

057year this case as joel said is focused on the fact that these two main companies joule and altria which you may know as phil morris marketed this product to children and has caused a harm to the community and so what we're looking to get out of this case is be able to provide your district the financial resources to deal with this epidemic and so what we're specifically focused on getting for your district is funding for vape detectors uh which is as you may be aware is extremely expensive uh funding for for further staff for supervision uh funding for counselors with a background in an addiction and then funding for education uh because that's one of the most important things because what kids and parents know about the harms of this product and what the truth

058is there's a big gap and we need to provide that education and of course just due to that the numbers of kids that are using this this is not something we can cure overnight so we're going to be requesting this case five to ten years worth of funding for every one of our district clients and the importance in this case is the fact that it is what's called a mass action is that your you as a as a board in your district will choose what you want to do in this case uh you will decide whether you want to resolve it or you tell me you want me to keep litigating it and that's the importance of why this is a mass action versus a class action your case will be resolved individually and you

059will decide what you want to do in the case um i want to before i open up to answer any question i want to let you know the three main questions i end up getting uh regarding this case number one is the time consumption to be involved obviously your staff and your time is is very very strained right now with everything going on and you don't want to add more to your plate and so this is not like the normal litigation where we'll have court appearances and depositions of your administrators and your staff all that's required for your district to participate is to fill out a questionnaire that should only take about two to three hours of staff time to complete the other question i get from board members is the cost to be involved

060there is no cost to be involved this case is being handled on what's called a contingency fee basis so that means that there is no financial recovery for the district then there is no fees and costs if there is a recovery uh we've reduced our fee and worked that with your with your general counsel that the fee is 20 and that would come from the recovery of the district and we've also capped the costs at 3 percent so at the end of the day if there is a financial recovery uh the fusing costs would come from that at a at 23 but but that's at a reduced rate because normally for plaintiff attorneys working on contingency for litigation it would be 40 and then the final question i i normally get from boards is regarding

061the requirements if there is a recovery is a requirement to use those funds to pay for the things as i laid out and the answer is no it'll be up to you as the boy on how to use those funds but that you recover if there is a recovery and so if you want to use it more towards vape detectors or more on education that will be up to you there will be no one that will be following up with the district on how the money was spent so with that being said i wanted to open it up to answer any questions you only have thank you board any questions uh mr wrigley uh hi there um just a couple questions for you guys state legislature where is our state legislature on this and why

062are they not being involved in it at a at the state attorney general's level versus the districts um in 2020 legislative session this became a hot topic and there were several bills on it depending on you how you ask they passed them to they got watered down significantly tobacco lobby is still fairly strong i talked to susan pulcifer who was a key in that fight and and she feels like it's just not bringing in the revenue that they wanted to um to really take on underage vaping so there's been an effort um we approached uh sean reyes um and asked him if he wanted to get involved and he turned us down and said they just don't have the resources right now to turn down and then after i met with amber and richard stuhl

063utah school board association if you know richard stahl he's very charming and he said joel i might have a bit more influence with sean reyes than you i was like i'm sure of that so he called up john reyes he got a personal meeting and john ray has told him the same thing you know i wish you the best but we just don't have the resources to get involved but the exciting thing about not having the state involved is unlike the tobacco money this would come directly to you and so the resources and the the strings will probably be less than otherwise if it did come through the state okay the other question i had is is will this affect any locations someone locations are pretty close to schools and stuff i know there's certain

064distances and stuff but does the lawsuit in any way ask for locations or anything legislatively they probably do that if they move that drought but this is south there are state laws that that restrict how close you can be to a school but i know a lot of places some are maybe grandfathered and some are really close william do you know if if we're going to ask for any shutdown i don't know because that's not entirely in jewel's control or philip morris yeah so what we're asking for regards to the company is regarding restrictions on their marketing practices and restrictions on them bringing bringing flavored pods back or regarding i couldn't hear your your question specifically but i think you're talking about the vape shops and so that's more of a push we're trying to

065get for legislators to take up regarding their how it's been very clear that they have been starting to place those shops near high schools yeah what's interesting is the if you sell more than if more than 20 of your revenue comes from tobacco over there products you get designated a smoke shop so a lot of convenience stores they're so all around that they can make a substantial portion but they don't get to that 20 mark um so yeah it's it is a big driver of profits at a lot of convenience stores they sell gas at cost and basically get you in to buy those products okay and and you guys didn't talk about the medical effects of vaping on the lungs or anything is there any research or reason that you that you're working on

066that area no one i can handle that so if you think back to tobacco were no one knew when cigarettes came out the true harmful effects it took a long time um and so we're in the early stages of vaping there are lawyers that are handling cases uh for individuals that have been harmed by the product whether it's an addiction or whether it's long uh lung issues but what i have been told by experts that we've been retained is that uh they're already starting to see uh sticky substances on kids and kids that are coming out with popcorn already and you know they haven't been using it that long so we already are seeing a true true terrible health effects to the kids that are using us okay i appreciate that's that's the research i've

067read so this points that direction is not only just a nicotine addiction but there's actual possible health indications on the lungs so there may be more things than just the nicotine thank you um i i have a question and it's kind of the process that that we would go through you mentioned two to three hours to fill out an application and as part of that application would we as a district identify what costs we've already incurred and then project ahead because you said five to ten years worth so then project ahead what some potential costs are so is it up to us to come up with the dollar amount that we're asking for so yeah so part of the questions that you'll answer are to give us that information so we can provide it to

068our experts we've hired on behalf of our district clients who will who will then come up with a dollar figure on those issues uh we would then provide that to you to make sure that we have it uh clearly laid out uh but at the end of the day you'll be providing us the basis uh but we'll we'll be figuring out with our experts the end dollar figure on all those issues okay thank you and then you mentioned that it would be up to the district to actually decide when a you know what the resolution might be when we're ready to accept the resolution so so is the idea that that dollar amount is submitted in our name and then and then the the defendants i guess in this case would then issue a potential

069resolution like a settlement number or something like that and then would there be process going back and forth on that correct we would go through negotiations with the uh if and when they're ready for a resolution um and at that point any decision on a final number would would have to be approved by the board and we'll before we go in we'll get board insight on what our directive is but everything will be only board approval of course thank you other questions mrs nybauer i heard but it didn't come through all the way on the phone i'm wondering if we're if we are able to ask for removing those flavors that are targeting younger kids is that part of that is a hot topic i'll give it to you in just a second and jewel

070has voluntarily because it got so bad and they want to be the last man standing and remove their flavored vaping devices from the market it's not illegal they could have them out there so as you can imagine there's a lot of other companies that rushed in to fill that vacuum if you go to your local convenience store you'll still find lots of flavored vapes so that's a really hot one you just uh got on because yeah kids over i mean like 90 of the stuff they vape are those cotton candy mango you know captain crunch vaping kind of stuff william go ahead on it yeah so as i said part of our case is we're asking to make sure that they don't bring they're not allowed through a court order to bring back flavored pods

071that of course would only apply to joule but what the hope is is that these companies will see what happened to juul in this litigation and they will rethink uh their business strategy of selling these flavor pods because they could end up into the same position juliet but uh but joule owns 80 of the vaping market so they are the big player uh in this issue um so we need to tackle them first uh and then we will move on to the others okay and then two other questions uh a statement about reducing their nicotine levels asking for that that will be a big battle in our legislature this next question that the utah department of health and he taught the several legislators that is they're trying to lower it to three percent right now

072which i totally applaud because that could happen before this lawsuit but william do you have any more insight on that you repeat the question sorry the the fight over the nicotine content in uh vaping devices i think that might be the sva but go ahead william yeah so so right now joule is in front of the fda for approval they've been on the market for the past over five years without fda approval because there was a gray area regarding their product so the fda is going to be making a decision on their product within the next month of whether they're approved to continue selling their product uh in the u.s and part of uh that process is that fba could come back to juul and ask them to lower the nicotine content if they wish

073to continue selling in the u.s so that's more in the control of the fda as well okay and then one last question i understand jewel is the manufacturer and they're not the distributor joel can be in any convenience store correct i think so yeah so another question is i'm just thinking of if this lawsuit we we can get from them any and maybe we can't but just some statements of things that we would like like uh you know when you send out your products to the to the distributors a label right that this is you know like in our state it's 21 you're supposed to be 21 and a reminder label to the distributors to check for id um is that something we can ask for because really you know obviously we do need funds

074we need to really campaign this we need to have you know we need to have digital things in in the school little clips and things for the kids to look at and understand the danger and all of that and prevention and for all of these you know things we're putting into our locations the that detect vaping but what about a label that comes to the distributor just as a reminder um i know in utah it happened in utah and now it's at the federal level you have to be 21 now right just vaping nicotine products so that's that's across the board and i know they're supposed to id you if you look younger than 40 they're supposed to id means i don't get id anymore but um go ahead and also yeah and also that

075is one of the things we are asking about their business practices is exactly that making sure that their distributors are following a code of rules on how making sure that miners are not getting that product and that is part of what are our instructive relief request is great i know both the fda and even local health officials will do sort of sting operations they'll go in with people and ask and see what happens and then they can get fined or disciplined for that so they are afraid of that it's happening i i just love that that's attached to what we're asking for is some of those preventative measures and not just about the funds that we need to help with prevention or recovery for kids yeah no that that is the you know i have

076young children uh and if at the end of the day i could get jewel out of the market that would be great but if but if we can also change their business practices uh that that is a big goal of what we want to do and so that is the major crux of our cases requesting relief from the court uh making prohibition based on a court order on exactly the things you discussed great thank you so much thank you okay i think that's all of the questions we have did you have anything else that you wanted to share with us no thank you very much okay thank you and then dan could we i think we have a couple of questions for you [Music] thank you mr wright yeah i'd also like to thank joel

077and william for taking time i thought that was very informative and and lots of good information there for the board to consider um and i think just moving forward uh i will prepare a little memo for the board um the friends group uh is one there's also other uh law firms involved in this mass tort litigation uh talked to an attorney from a consortium of firms kind of from the midwest and east coast and just we'll review those but but i will say you know it's wonderful to have joel uh someone that we have uh a working relationship with um involved in this here and curtin and mcconkey uh a wonderful law firm and and utah uh working with the friends uh law group in california and uh mr shinoff has has been very good

078to work with so i appreciate uh them meeting with us and reviewing uh the agreement and i think uh we have a really a good agreement if the board decides to move forward with that so um any questions from the board for me uh mrs oakes i have a question i just have a comment um this whole situation has really brought to mind an important memory for me from year 2000 when i went to russia and i was in moscow i came off of a subway stop and i was standing outside of a beautiful russian orthodox cathedral and outside where two young girls they're probably about the age of 14 or 15 um some really cute outfits that had merle burrow written across them and along with um baseball hats then same thing and they

079were passing out free cigarettes and they were targeting kids that were coming out i was so disgusted by what was happening and our friends that we were visiting at the time he actually as part of his profession there was assisting western businessmen to find in roads into russia and doing business there and he said you would not believe what is allowed to happen here and he specifically said that he had one american businessman um he didn't tell me what his name was but he said you know i love doing business in russia because there are no rights here there's no children's rights there's no animal rights it's a free open opportunity for profit made me physically sick and ever since whenever i see the flavored jewels whenever i see some of that going on i

080think it's essentially happening just maybe without the outfits you know so i am in full support of the idea of joining this case i think anything that we can do to try and protect minors was something that is so physically debilitating i think it's a great idea thank you board other comments or questions this is my power i too just wanted to add my full support of this initiative and uh we haven't even discussed tonight but vaping is is oftentimes a gateway for children to get into other drugs and we've seen a major increase since this vaping has become so popular so i'm very grateful that you've brought this to the board and thank you for for the support that came tonight and in advising us and very grateful to to put my hat in

081as in full support for this thank you yeah that's definitely uh another issue is exactly that it really is a gateway to other things that nicotine is highly addictive and but also that it can be used uh you know to vaporize other substances and so as a result you know vaping even more so i think than cigarettes really has been kind of a gateway for a lot of other drug use okay so um mr harper could you maybe just help us with what some possible next steps would be yeah i think we'll just uh probably plan at the next board meeting to to bring this forward uh for board approval uh to join the the litigation um and if there really isn't much we can either put it on consent agenda or we can have

082it as a action item for for additional discussion depending on how the board feels uh the next board meeting okay board um are we do we feel like we have the information we need that we could maybe bring that back on consent with with uh documentation of what that application yeah i'll provide so we can go ahead and we'll just plan to put it on the consent agenda for our next board meeting okay sounds good all right thank you everyone for your time okay thank you and thank you again for being here all right that concludes our items in study session and we have a few minutes before the beginning of business meetings so we will take a short break and plan to reconvene at seven o'clock p.m this meeting [Music] okay good evening i'd

083like to welcome you to the meeting of the canyons board of education today is august 17th 2021 and we're meeting at the district office located at 9361 south 300 east in sandy utah and we will begin our business meeting the first item is to approve the agenda for tonight i will ask for a motion i will make the motion to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting august 17th thank you is there a second okay okay thank you mr wrigley seconds thank you very much any discussion to this motion scene none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion passes thank you next we will be led in the pledge of allegiance by cindy hansen director of middle schools will the audience please rise and join me in reciting

084the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you next we will turn time over to jeff haney and kirsten stewart from the communications department for some recognitions president thank you for this time to recognize the achievements of students faculty and staff in the canyon school district tonight for our recognitions we're celebrating the achievements of canyon students who've been recognized for their skills on the football field and their hard work in the classroom those who are mentioned tonight will receive a letter of recommendat recognition from the board of education as well as the superintendent and they also will be sent a canyons district keychain now when we get

085into the school year we will be once again inviting our honorees to boardman meeting to be recognized for their achievements so that will be in the coming weeks once again we'll return to having our board chambers full with the folks who we will honor for their achievements so our honorees tonight are students from alta and corner canyon high school five corner canyon high students and one alta high student were recently honored for their excellence both academically and athletically the students have earned spots on the prestigious academic all-american list high school america football a national organization for prep football recently released their list of players who are standouts on the field while also earning a high gpa and scoring high on college entrance exams the students were nominated by their coaches and athletic directors and the

086list is created to help students um get the attention of recruiters from colleges and universities hopefully by being named on this list as well as excelling on the football field they will receive their scholarships to colleges and universities congratulations to alta high school's ethan jackson and corner canyons carson compton cody hagan noah carr jet mine and micah wilson so congratulations to the chargers and the hawks who earn spots on the academic all-american list by hsfa so we also uh as a side note i want to note that both alta and corner canyon won their first games out of the gate for the 21 season alta downed layton 34-27 and corner canyon beat farmington 72-21 the chargers are seeking their fourth state title and are just eight wins away from breaking the state record for consecutive

087wins so good luck to the hawks and the chargers and also good luck to the brighton high bengals who won against pleasant grove last week they will play syracuse this week jordan high and hillcrest will play taylorsville and beaumont respectfully so congratulations to our teams that won last week and best wishes to all of our teams who will be playing in the coming week now we also had a lot to celebrate in the district in the past week our back-to-school events were kicked off by the ribbon cuttings at the new brighton alta in hillcrest high schools hundreds turned out to the events on wednesday thursday and friday the projects have been underway for three years with proceeds from the 283 million dollar bond that was graciously approved by voters in 2017. so here you'll see

088the celebration at brighton high school alta high school you'll see the cheer squad was there to celebrate as well as the drum line as were the cheerleaders and and the marching band at brighton high school the night before and at hillcrest i thought that it was in fact mont and i were talking about this it was actually a little bit emotional when we raised the flags for the first time at the new high school you'll see here where mr millerberg and mr levitt cut the ribbon to the school in front of our brand new hillcrest and you'll see there that some of the student body officers were able to snag some of the red ribbon for some of their scrapbooks we offer that up to all of the students who attended the ribbon cuttings at

089alta brighton and hillcrest as well as anybody else boosters supporters faculty administrators who wanted that piece of history we wanted to thank all of the members of the community who came to celebrate the opening of our new high schools with us it's the start of a new era for the hawks the bengals and the huskies so congratulations to those school communities they opened up to great fanfare and we were so thrilled to see them come and celebrate the schools with us now we can't let this opportunity pass without thanking our principals teachers and parents to make the first day as fun as possible it's so nice to return to our tradition of rolling out the red carpets for our students who are truly the stars of the day and what a day it was you'll

090see here dr robbins and vice president oaks handing out pencils and giving fist bumps to the students who are arriving at altera elementary school it was true there and all other parts of the district were feeling the back to school buzz on as everybody knows on monday we opened up our doors for first through twelfth graders and on thursday our kindergartners and preschool students will arrive for their first days as students in canyon school district now per tradition every elementary and middle school received a red carpet for the stoop for the students they also received pencils emblazoned with the canyons district logo on them and they had welcome back banners given to all of the schools high schools middle schools and elementary schools our dli schools also received the welcome back banners in their respective

091global languages this was a way for us to say that it's truly the start of a new year in whatever language they speak at that particular school kutv ksl and fox 13 and ksl news radio and the deseret news as well as univision attended our press event at the newly opened alta high school guests from canyon school district appeared about every 15 minutes on one of those stations from about 4 30 a.m to 10 a.m on the first day i was in alta high school's parking lot at 4 00 a.m i took the 4 30 segment kirsten was the 5 a.m segment so we were up very early on the very first day of school but it was a great way to get the day started a special thanks to alta high principal dr brian

092mcgill altera principal nicole savi mcgann transportation director jeremy wardle nutrition services director sebastian varus custodial coordinator kevin kelson student services director b.j weller and the aldehyde drumline cheer squad dance team and student body officers for agreeing to get up early and talk to press on the first day of school they all did a phenomenal job in the live shots and in the tape segments explaining our protocols for the start of school how we are keeping students safe and how we are focusing on academics and supporting student mental health you'll see here that students weren't just welcomed by their teachers and principals and other staff members they also received some high fives and fifth fist bumps by custodians and secretaries nutrition service service workers you'll see here that some of our principals and assistant principals don

093some very special suits to welcome the students and you'll see that our middle schools the teachers lined the red carpets with noise makers of all kinds to welcome the students back to school you'll also see that some of the mascots from the area joined us in the celebration of the first day we saw the brook wood bear was there and the university of utah swoop dropped in at sandy elementary's red carpet welcome leo the lion and the kitty hawk were at altera's open and you'll see there buzz lightyear that may well be principal jeffrey but we can't really tell for the person who is encouraging the students to go to infinity and beyond so congratulations to all of our community because really at the end of the day students return to school in high spirits

094we are looking forward to a year of achievement innovation customer service and community engagement it may be a continuation of an unprecedented era but our schools are ready to meet the challenges head on thank you president tingey we appreciate the time you grant us during board meeting to recognize the achievements and the events in the canyon school district we turn the time back to you thank you mr haney we appreciate that report and and and enjoy the time that we spend on these recognitions um next on the agenda is patron comments and the board of ed and i will read a little statement first before we begin the board of education encourages public engagement and values input from canyons district students parents employees and residents while not required to do so by law the board

095often designates time in meetings to listen to the patrons of the district here are a few of the guidelines patron comments are part of the public record of the meeting and is limited time is limited to residents and taxpayers of canyons districts students and parents of students and current employees of the district except with prior approval of board leadership um patrons may provide members with written documents pertaining to their comments these documents must be submitted to the board secretary at the meeting over here or emailed to the office of public communications by noon of the day following the board meeting time allotted for public comment is at the discretion of the board president tonight will we will be giving individuals three minutes and those representing a group five minutes the board of education does not

096discuss matters which are not on the meeting's agenda nor engage in public comment on personnel issues of a district employee's character professional competence or mental or physical help if a patron wants to comment on personnel issues the board requests that those comments be submitted to the board in writing however if the patron determines to verbally comment on personnel issues the comments need to be civil and refrain from personal attacks insults defamatory or slanderous comments about an individual and tonight as we begin patron comments portion of the meeting the board of education would like to quickly address some issues that have been raised in the community first last year masks were required in schools by state health order this school year there are no health orders requiring face masks in schools and a new utah law

097restricts school districts from issuing mask mandates also to be clear critical race theory is not part of the curriculum being used in canyon school district there are no plans to incorporate it into the curriculum or instruction in canyon schools we are making these things clear now to answer any questions and make sure patrons receive some immediate feedback as it is the board's practice to listen and take notes during patron comments so so with that i will we have had eight individuals that have signed up to address the board um a couple are here in person and some are will be joining us by telephone so we'll go ahead and open up the phone lines there you are now unmuted thank you so we will begin um and i believe this person is here in the

098room carolyn erickson followed by lisey youngberg who will be joining us telephone is carolyn here yes okay please come forward i had a whole bunch to say and in three minutes i'm going to talk really fast so you guys have to listen really fast i am here because i am so so concerned about our teenagers our children's mental health and well-being and i've come up with a very easy um uncomplicated tool which i call simple six and it is two statements every day of something you're grateful for something you're thankful for and two compliments to somebody else uh acknowledging them thanking them for something they've done and two compliments to yourself that's the hard part it's like it's a silent no-no don't say you're nice um i'm i feel like i'm on a treadmill okay

099so i would love to see this incorporated into the curriculum some way it could be done so easy i'd be just love to to help do this but adopting simple sex into your life moves you from negative thinking to positive thinking you are in charge you are choosing new ways of thinking and feeling and your mind can only hold one thought at a time and if you are grateful and thankful for i don't care what that you got water running water you cannot be grateful and depressed at the same time your mind just can only do one thing at a time and so you have a choice of what that looks like to you and also if you if you know that you're committed to making two compliments a day when you meet someone you're

100looking for something to complement them with and so it changes your whole um attitude your whole ambiance because you're positive you're looking for positive and what we look for we find and um okay i think i'm probably out of time the ripple effect is that you feel better about yourself physically mentally and everybody else loves to be around you because they get compliments and all the happy positive thoughts have a wonderful healing effect on your body thank you so much and i have copies that are written out there longer that i'd just be so tickled to give everybody and thank you yes thank you you can you can turn those copies into the secretary right there thank you lisa youngberg okay she has not joined us yet on the phone um so next we will

101have carlin richards and then i'll check to see if lisey's with us and if not then adam cota is on the phone hi first i want to thank you for being here and providing this opportunity i know your jobs are pretty thankless right now and i want to tell you how much we appreciate you in the positions you're holding in the importance of the positions you're holding i am uh i raised all six of our children in this school district and now i have grandchildren in this district so i'm very invested in what's going on here i'm also my degree is in education and i've taught substitute taught at all levels in this district so i've seen firsthand the challenges that we're facing and they're serious and they're real and there are a lot of

102them i was here a little bit earlier and heard some of the things that you are facing um that i was not even aware of so i i realized that there are serious things going on i in one in one experience i had in a junior high um substituting i was blown away by what the teachers and the students were all facing fifty percent of the kids could not speak english the kids did not come with anything to write with or things to write on the discipline my in my my university experience i was asked to do a video teaching discipline techniques that was my strength so i'm familiar with discipline i say that only because in that experience the classroom was absolutely out of control a little girl wrote me a sweet note saying

103i'm sorry it's like this every day we're facing hard things our kids are already behind due to covet and we're trying to catch them up there's a lot of things that we should be addressing but right now we're addressing a theory that a lot of people call critical race theory there's a lot of names it's evolved into a lot of things so that you might be tricked into thinking it's something different i'm with a large group of parents that are meeting weekly we've looked into it thoroughly we understand what it is we understand what's going on and we are animated and have a lot of energy around this i want you to know there's a large group of us and we're concerned we have parents coming to us telling us what their kids have been

104taught and we want we really want you to i could spend a lot of time explaining what it is but i asked three things from you as a school board first that you educate yourself on it i've looked into it i would hope that you would really look into what critical race theory truly is how divisive it is how hateful it is how it is hurting our kids now and long term second i would ask that you would research it and realize that it is truly infiltrated into our school districts i i understand that you feel that it's not being taught maybe there's not a curriculum that it's that's being used but it is being taught our kids are telling us parents aren't telling are telling us we would not as parents be spending this

105kind of energy and time if we do not see it and we're not concerned it is real and the last thing i ask of you as a school board is that you take action you know we as parents and as grandparents can do so much but we put you in this trusted position for a reason we trust you you've been voted into this position and we expect you to take action and make sure that this critical race theory this divisive this hateful um theory is not taught in our school system we don't have time to be dealing with these kinds of things we have things to get we have so many things that we need to do to catch our students up why are we wasting our energy and time with this i ask you

106and in closing i just i i just want to read a quote that's familiar to all of us i have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but the con but the content of their character martin luther king i hope that each one of you as you look into critical race theory will remember this quote and i thank you again i thank you for your time i know the position you're holding is not glamorous it's not a fun time to be in this position there are a lot of political issues a lot of big voices small groups that big political voices that you're hearing from and i want you to know that we are one of

107those voices that is going to fight back against this and we appreciate all that you're doing thank you thank you adam adam coda and then following adam coda who will be joining us on telephone is dr karen moser also on the telephone hi my name is adam kota i'm the father of two elementary school kids enrolled in canyon school district i'm seeking tonight to encourage the district to step up its covet 19 mitigation efforts i know this is a difficult time and you're in a difficult position however i'm concerned that canyon appears to be doing less this year to keep our kids safe than you did last year despite the presence of the delta variant and uh case rates among our children that are about four times higher than they were this time last year

108i know we all want this pandemic behind us but the disruption to learning and health that are that are occurring in other states show us a preview of what will happen the cases the quarantines the school closures unless we do more than those other school systems to prevent the spread of coving i understand the state legislature has taken away your power to issue a mass requirement but there's more that you can do specifically i'm asking the board to consider the following four things if there's another mass order from our local public health department please lend your voice to support it second please educate families as to why maths and other mitigation efforts matter this is not an individual health issue this is a public health issue the actions of one individual have consequences for those

109around them yes the death and hospitalization rate of kids is lower than average fortunately but we have kids with respiratory problems in our schools cancer and many other ailments that put them at higher risk and this isn't just about protecting our kids they can spread the virus to loved ones at home or in the community many of which have their own health issues or are elderly pregnant women with cobin 19 are at increased risk of pre-term birth and miscarriages waco texas just today reported two fetal deaths attributed to tichovitz and many of our families are hoping and praying that we can add some additional little ones to our you know to our families and um that causes a lot of concern for us my first request if you can't pass the mass mandate please educate

110our children and families about the importance of wearing masks to protect those around us and yes some kids report experiencing health issues from wearing that we need empathy and respect for them as well nobody should be bullied or harassed for not wearing a mask even as we hope to increase the numbers that are my third ask is that you encourage social distancing schools should be encouraged to keep deaths at least three feet apart as recommended by the cdc many parents are finding schools with best pushed together with kids one to two feet apart similarly parents are reporting that social distancing at lunchtime is non-existent finally please cohort our students according to mass preference while many schools are cohorting their students many parents would feel more comfortable if their kids were cohorted together with other math

111students the superintendent has spoken out against this approach believing some kids may pick on each other if we do this a strong education effort to build empathy for those making different decisions can help prevent that and as i said before because public health is public it is a fallacy to believe that individual decisions about wearing a mask affect only the wear this is not an individual health issue students who choose from math do not reap the benefits of doing so if they are cohorted with unmatched students about choice in this discussion please do not render our choices ineffective thank you dr karen moser and then is lisa youngberg on the line okay they are not on the line at this time um so rochelle griffin and then um i'm here okay and then following rochelle

112will be um kirsten capenae thank you i'd personally like to thank the board for the great work you do especially during a difficult time i know you're dealing with so much stress and i just want to thank you so much for all that you guys do i'm here on behalf of my husband and five-year-old son who are both immune compromised due to diseases that affect their lives every day i know you can't require mass to be worn in school and i'm not going to ask you to do this today i'm making a plea that doesn't step on the toes of the people in our community who strongly oppose the wearing of math who have been given the opportunity to choose rather i'm asking that you do what you do best and educate a different sector

113of the community you see from my experience many families who aren't having their kids masked up for the school year are simply not tuned into wyatt matter they are not at risk and they see no need i'm confident that if they understood how universal masking protects vulnerable members of our community many would choose to be community-minded and service oriented something that is utahns we have always made a part of our culture so today i'm asking you to please use your voices as educators to educate i'm asking for a district-wide top-down campaign that simply educates use families like mine to illustrate that every day that i send my fourth and first graders to school i risked them bringing covenant home to my other two family members at high risk yet the more others mascot the more

114this risk is mitigated because of the carriers of cobit who may not even know they are carriers don't spread the virus through droplets the droplets are caught in their mass i honestly think many in our community just aren't aware of how their actions affect the vulnerable within their own classrooms and their own schools my children have just as much right to a safe public education as any other child i know this has become a political issue but i'm not asking you to require anything i only ask that you educate our school communities through newsletters communication from the district and so forth you can even process it by saying to any families who don't oppose math we encourage the use of math because please as educators educate our community so that they can choose to embrace

115the same principles taught in your in your character education programs in your social emotional programs like second step to be considerate of others to cooperate as a team to have grit and make small sacrifices for the common good our school communities will be better for it and our future generations will be more compassionate and understanding i also concur with what has been said about distance being deaths according to cdc guidelines thank you so much for all you do thank you kirsten kaepernick oh okay kirsten if you don't mind waiting for just a minute i will have dr karen moser hello this is karen moser can you hear me yes we can thank you thank you thank you for the opportunity to address the board my name is dr karen moser i'm a practicing physician at

116the university of utah in the department of pathology my comments represent my personal views as a private citizen i am not team on behalf of the university i'm a resident of cottonwood heights and the mother of two canyons elementary school students under the age of 12. my school has started this week i want to urge you to continue providing strong support in favor of masks in schools others in our state are leading the way in requiring mass for k-6 students the grand county school district together with our health department and county government will require masks when school starts for their district this thursday sully city mayor mendenhall is working with the salt lake city school district to require masks for k-6 students why aren't canyon school district students with the same protections the science is

117clear universal masking works to protect our unvaccinated children we have heard this message from the cdc the american academy of pediatrics and many trusted authorities in our community including the salt lake county health department and dr andrew pavia head of the infectious disease division at primary children's hospital we can learn from the negative examples of other states too we do not want to be like arizona where children started school on august 4th the seven day average of statewide 2019 aces in arizona was 1768 on august 1st 2021 and increased to 2802 on august 16 2021 this is directly related to the lack of universal masking in arizona schools we definitely do not want it to be like mississippi where the university of mississippi medical center is opening a second field hospital in our parking garage

118to treat all the patients needing care for covenant team in our community regular testing of asymptomatic unvaccinated children for stars kobe 2 is another important safety measure that we as a community can take the utah department of health and test utah are providing free tasks at multiple sites throughout the salt lake valley canyon school district could work harder to make families aware of these free resources and to encourage routine testing please provide stronger messaging in favor of regular testing and universal masking for k-6 students in our district please follow the example of grand county where a partnership between the school district county government and county health department led to increased protection for their unvaccinated students thank you for your time thank you kirsten kaepernick thank you thank you that's me i'm here to think happening

119i have a um young one he just started fifth grade last year you know we did all the uh pandemic options with distance learning and i'm so sorry for uh my kind of emotional state just shortly before this i got noticed that his father who he's staying with presently tested positive for covet today so here we are first week we're already having our first coven scare my son and i have done everything through this to stay distanced to wear masks and everything and the three people who just spoke before me really did a much more masterful job of speaking to all the points really that i wanted to and hope to get to in my uh three-minute period that i have these are our children and yes even if not high-risk even if he survives

120best case right he survives doesn't have to be intubated at the hospital if they have room we don't know the long-term effects so i would hope that this has been stated that if they could just set an example seen at our local school none of the staff from what i see are wearing masks and i would hope that they would want to set an example for kids yes they cannot mandate it thanks to our legislation but they can set an example and be that positive example to help do it as well as the distancing as mentioned before my concern primarily will be um like at lunch so my son at least could have his little mind put at ease that you know hey an n95 with a double mask on top gets you like you

121know the 90 percentile of being protected even if no one else is wearing a mask but you know he goes what do i do at lunch mom and i did not have an answer for my son and then now since then we're having the uh coven scare and we're waiting to hear his results back so i just hope that these you know we talk about percentages and numbers of kids that have to get it in order to shut things down or to take things more seriously when we took them much more seriously yesterday i just hope uh you remember that everyone is important and i hate for us to hit these maximum numbers to take these precautionary measures and set these positive examples that i think that are well within the rights of canyon board

122still thank you thank you um has lisie youngberg joined us no okay uh jennifer nazaro yes okay great i'm speaking today to express my concern that the coded safety protocols in place at canyon school district are inadequate last year we had very rigid guidelines and enforceable rules that kept everyone safe and kept outbreaks to a minimum canyon school district did an excellent job i understand that local legislature has limited your ability to decide on these rules and implement them but i ask that you stand up for our children and work with the legislature to do everything possible to have a safe school year with minimal interruptions pretending the pandemic is over will not make it go away it just gets more people sick and leads to more interruptions i encourage you to support a school

123mass mandate without this we need to be doing everything possible to enhance our other safety measures when i attended my children's back-to-school night this week i was horrified to see that the desks were not placed out teacher and staff were not masked i have been advised that this board will follow the cdc guidelines so why are the schools not socially distancing and leading by example with staff wearing masks even vaccinated staff can spread covet to my unvaccinated children so why are you not asking them to step up with no masks in place there will be many more respiratory illnesses this year which can create confusion with covid presenting with a range of symptoms it is unacceptable to allow any sick children to attend school and i ask that you enforce that policy i appreciate the

124enhanced cleaning protocols and improved air quality but this is not enough when quarantines are on the honor system this is doomed for failure when schools cannot be closed during an outbreak without improvement of government officials this delays or possibly blocks important action superintendent robbins spoke last week about the difficult situation that schools are in when the health department recommends recommendations do not align with the laws that are in place please advocate for our kids instead of saying your hands are tied fight for us please reach out to the legislature and explain that this plan doesn't work everyone wants to have a more normal year this year but throwing out everything that worked last year is not the way to do it we are counting on you to protect our children please work with the legislature

125to fix the flawed laws enhance enforce stricter safety protocol lead by example by having staff wear masks ask for a school math mandate and do everything in your power to protect our children and have a safe school year thank you very much thank you um one last call for lisa youngberg no okay that concludes our patrons comments for this evening and thank you all for taking the time to address the board those of you both in in the room with us and those that have joined us on the telephone we appreciate the time you've taken and the effort you've made to share your thoughts with us so next on the agenda we will have a report on school opening from superintendent robbins thank you president um first let me just express my appreciation to all

126of our parents and patrons that are here tonight uh to share their their input as well as um all of our parents and patrons that shared their comments uh on the phone i recognize the gravity of the situation i too am a father of a precious nine-year-old daughter that's starting school and i have many of the same concerns um so uh it it definitely weighs heavy on me i think i've mentioned it before the difficulty and it was said the difficulty and challenge of legislation and uh statute and laws versus recommendations by different organizations and the the challenge that that puts the the district in um so i wanted to take a few minutes tonight just to update our plan on opening school and i i want to start with talking a little bit about

127the goals that the board has set that we've maintained from the beginning going back to the start of the pandemic and that is to support in-person instruction for the majority of our students as well as offering online instruction to those students and parents that choose that as their best option for them at the same time the necessary balance of trying to keep everyone including students and employees physically safe balancing that with students needs when it comes to academics social emotional and mental health needs and as we have found you know through the entire pandemic in year 18 months now that that that can be very difficult and we know that there's just as much destruction on the mental health side of things as there is on the physical side of things with our students and

128and we've seen that play out in the district so um thinking about this school year i'd like to go back and remind everybody a little bit about just the thought process and the approach that we've taken and remind all of our parents and staff the the process that i go through in thinking through these decisions first off i try to collaborate closely with county health experts on a weekly basis talking to them at length at the same time on a weekly basis i consult with dr brandon webb who is the covid chair at ihc and also advises stanford on um coveted matters and he also happens to be a parent in canyon school district with children attending our schools along with those groups consulting with our senior leadership team in the district as as well

129as the board so with that we'll go to the next slide i guess i can see if i can do it up here there we go so our plan continues to be comprehensive and thoughtful as we go forward in trying to balance these needs and we try to engage a very strategic layered approach we know through the pandemic that it's not just one strategy and i will say that i do believe that masks are an effective layer to the many different uh strategies that that we've engaged one of the things that we've learned often is that the virus changes things can change and we've been very flexible and adaptable to that as that's occurred and so all of those combined together have been i believe effective and we know that through our through our data

130and i'll share some of that i also think going into this school year being very thoughtful about being as uh precision and surgical as we can in adapting to the needs of individual schools we don't know for sure how this will unfold with delta variant and i'm not diminishing its seriousness by any means we were in a very similar place last year at this time so the difference is is that this year there are strategies and protocols that have occurred that i think strengthen our position in attacking the virus and still meeting those goals that we've that we've set forward um so a couple of things that i want to talk through before i get to everything that's on this slide but but uh factors that we evaluate when i collaborate with these groups um

131taking the mindset that we took last year of number one making prudent decisions for our students number two attempting to disrupt the cycle of the virus we know uh and this is uh based on guidance from dr webb that disruption of the cycle uh through the year uh was very effective last year in in mitigating its uh continued uh path rather that was moving schools to online or hybrid or eventually moving to a test to stay model at the end of the year then suppressing it over the time uh that the incubation period cycle occurs which is uh 14 days and then resetting so we would come back to in-person instruction after a reset when we evaluate uh factors we're looking at number of cases in each school over 14 days as well as seven

132days i think that that's one set of data that that i know i look at closely dr webb often talks about tip of the iceberg when it comes to the number of cases in schools and usually if we see that spike in in 14 days is one thing but if we also see that increase in seven last year that seemed to be between 10 and 15 over seven days that the trend line was heading up fast and required intervention we also look at positivity rates in our zip codes and communities that's an important factor in understanding the overall trends in um spread of the virus it's also important to look at positivity rate by age and i appreciate the county's efforts this year to be much more comprehensive in presenting that data to understand uh

133what the spread is like and transmissibility by age group also hospitalization rate by age we know that that's important the state has used that metric to determine colors and identification for for counties on the state level quarantine rates both by students and employees last year we had situations where we had schools that had increased quarantine rates that made it very difficult obviously if we don't have teachers in the building then you know it doesn't really matter what the student rate is if we don't have employees there that's a challenge this year as we know right because quarantine is based on recommendation and not a requirement but i still believe that that data is important to to look at um in making those decisions um so uh currently just to update the board on where some

134of this data lies and i didn't also mention vaccination rates as well so currently close to very close to 50 percent of our students that are eligible for the vaccine are fully vaccinated we're just under 50 85 percent of our teachers uh are fully vaccinated district-wide i believe we're right around 75 to 78 percent of all of our employees being fully vaccinated also when you look at positivity rates in the communities in our zip codes we're currently as a district at 12.3 or no sorry excuse me we're currently at 11.4 positivity rate in our in our zip codes that are within district boundaries that's up from last year at this same time uh over about a month's uh period at last year we were at 9.9 so there's an increase there and that and that

135same trend follows true just about in each of our zip codes it's about one to two percent higher this year in each of our zip codes than than last year when we break that down by age and this is within canyon school district uh age zero to four uh in in about a month span in july positivity rates and this is person to person with 6.4 percent and is now down uh in the month of august to 5.8 ages 5 to 11 in july was 10.5 it's now down to 8.2 uh ages 12 to 17 was at 13.7 is now down to 8.8 percent and ages 18 to 29 we're at 13.3 or down to 13.1 um hospitalization rates uh this is only county um per uh 100 a thousand zero to four is a

136two five to eleven zero uh twelve to seventeen two and eighteen to twenty nine nine i might add since school got out uh canyons uh has reported positive cases zero hospitalizations eight employees uh during that same time from the time school got out until the first day of school we had eight employees test positive we also ran summer school for over 30 days with 1500 students um and i'm not sure out of that 1500 how many of the 177 are reported positive but zero hospitalizations in those numbers uh high school or 39 represent 39 middle school represent 25 percent and elementary schools represent uh 37 of of those uh cases so um so that's that just is a little bit of of where we're currently uh at um so for this year uh moving forward

137a couple of things to talk about one is um if if you do have symptoms definitely encouraging testing we felt like last year that was a very effective strategy uh was to provide uh testing to not only students but to employees as well and we'll continue to do that you can see there this year starting as soon as possible we'll test we'll offer free testing mondays and thursdays in the mornings and i'm also aware the county is planning to offer testing as well to students i believe five days a week so so that will also be available if you're experiencing symptoms please stay home for another year attendance rules by the state are in moratorium so the message to parents is it and to employees if you're feeling those symptoms please stay home from school

138and and from work and i believe we're doing all that we can to improve our experience on canvas we'll continue to utilize that as an online option when students are out but if you're feeling symptoms please stay home no mask requirement i know this is a very uh controversial topic as we heard tonight uh on exactly uh what the district's position should or shouldn't be um i would encourage parents to look at our data closely last year again in combination and in concert with many different layers of mitigation i believe masks did make a difference we also have a lawn effect that masks are not required we also have recommendations by cdc state health and local health departments on masks i will not back down from the recommendation that we treat each other with kindness

139and respect regardless of what your decision is now more than ever in this time of crisis in my opinion there's no room for disrespect i know it's a health crisis i know we're in a pandemic nothing is solved by treating each other with disrespect or unkindness because we disagree with what a person's choice is we're all in a very hard position it's i don't think any of us have escaped that but but being kind and being respectful to each other ought to be a given um and as mentioned we're following the the current law laid out by the state legislature in this past spring legislative session so moving forward then with what does that actually look like in the current statute regardless of vaccination status if a student or an employee tests positive they are

140required to isolate at home for 10 days uh that that's in the statute um so uh those that have a question about that if there's a positive test then that person must isolate and as we said at that point we would encourage the students and parents to access our online management tool in canvas if there's a close contact exposure uh how is that defined that's uh within six feet more than fifteen minutes as mentioned this is very difficult to physical distance in our schools obviously we encourage physical distancing but balancing the needs of our students when it comes to their learning their social emotional and mental health wellness that's a very difficult task i'm not sure that we could accomplish three to six feet physical distance even if we wanted to in schools our buildings

141are not made that way you know the best that we can do last year or this year is trying to be very directional about that but i also have concerns and i saw this this is anecdotal but just my own observations that students sitting in a row in their chair all day with no movement has detrimental impacts on their mental health so close contact then is within six feet more than 15 minutes uh that notification comes through uh the county health if a student is fully vaccinated or has had covered within or employed within the last 90 days or it's a mask to mask event they are then excluded from those recommendations and at this point that that's only a recommendation but again i would encourage parents to look at the situation uh look at

142what's provided by those departments and make the best a decision uh for them um but if they are uh close contact exposed then you can see the the choices are to either ice or quarantine for 10 days or wear a mask for 10 days at school and if they do they can choose to have a rapid antigen test at 7. there's an update to that this morning with county health if a student is close gets a close contact exposure at home then the county health's recommendation is is that they do not utilize the 10-day mask wearing at school but they use a 10-day quarantine at home so that's new information as of this morning and then you can see there if a student does have a close contact exposure they can get a seven-day rapid

143antigen test to return to school um and you can also see if it's a master mask event then uh they're exempt uh so in the law there is a test to stay protocol and this is a little bit different than last year if you recall last year in january when the test to stay protocol was first initiated canyons participated in this fully and i felt like we had great success in keeping our schools open and again this for me in consultation with dr webb these are stop gap disruptions in the cycle of the virus that can be very effective in keeping our schools open when we ran test the state protocol last year we set the participation rate at 80 percent because we felt like to be able to identify uh positive cases in the

144school and have confidence that we had identified enough capacity to keep the school open and safe dr webb's recommendation was 80 percent the state then later changed that on their own to 60 percent and in this year's legislation there is no there is no participation threshold so because of that then if our school over 1500 enrollment reaches a two percent positive case over 14 days then that will trigger a test estate event meaning that everyone in the school will test and under the current statute must provide a negative test to return to school and that would be by an approved provider and will will provide those um in the link future language if a student is in a school of under 1500 enrollment under the statute if they reach 30 cases within that 14 days

145that also triggers a test to stay event and that would include our elementary schools and our middle schools which did not do test to stay last year and as i mentioned before i do have concern about what that might look like for little kids with the testing protocol i would encourage that our parents are present in the rule or in the law they do have to have parent consent but i would uh i would encourage parents to be present uh especially with our younger kids um for that test high school kids it seemed like last year handled that pretty well there wasn't much issue we were able to get through a test to stay event in our high schools and by the time we got closer to spring those were being conducted in one day

146so there was very little impact on on school part of the law as mentioned is that a negative test is required to return to school the inverse of that is that if a student or parent chooses to not allow their child to be tested they will quarantine for 10 days and and can receive an uh rapid antigen test at 7 but will be required to quarantine for 10 days so um that is uh that's in the protocol for the test to stay event and then you can see there as mentioned no testing will be done without without consent of parents and we'll come back to questions so um what does that look like then as we move forward and we have potentially surges in cases if you remember last year the first letter that comes

147out and notices our parents and the public is a vigilance letter this year we'll set that at either 15 cases for those schools under 1500 or 1 for those schools over over 15 100 students within that if you remember last year we were very flexible in how we dealt with interventions in each school i would recommend to the board that once we hit that 15 mark or that one percent mark that we ramp up uh our strategies to try to avoid a test to stay event if possible so that would include stronger messaging and campaigning around masks around vaccinations that could also include limiting assemblies field trips dances volunteers in schools crowd participation if you remember last year we had limits on on crowds uh and small group instruction uh so all of those would

148be um in play i say that uh also with respect to the my belief that the more restrictive we get in our strategies the more impact it has on our students mental health and so i take that very serious in how we you know how we might balance that but i think it's important to note that every school is different and unique in what that situation may be like for example maybe it's a you know a class or a team in a high school maybe it's one class in a in an elementary so as we go i think it's important to keep again those principles of prudence and disruption and suppression of that top of mind as we look at each individual school and their needs and how we can intervene best to keep school

149open and keep you know achieve the goals that we've set forward by keeping school open for in-person instruction also uh this year that's part of uh state rule is um we've and i appreciate our communications team for setting this up but but we will have uh and i think it's already operational but we have and people we've been getting great feedback from the public already that those that have taken advantage can submit their questions uh and their concerns on on our hotline so we know going forward again this is some unknown territory and there will continue to be questions but we will respond and are on the ready to do so um so with that i'll open up to some questions from the board there's a lot there thank you so much superintendent that is

150a lot of information um i think there are some questions we'll start with mr millerberg causes me a little bit of concern um last week i was invited to a meet and greet at one of our local elementary schools i won't tell you which one but i walked over there [Laughter] and i was a little bit concerned because you know we've got the kids that cannot be vaccinated in the elementary schools and as i walk through the school we see a group of six uh deaf three on each side face to face with two more on the end so i've got eight kids with their desk physically as close together as they can possibly be yesterday you and i walked through one of our high schools together and i don't know if you noticed the

151classrooms were set up with not a lot of physical distancing between the students in the classroom i completely understand and i don't know that there's anybody on the planet that dislikes the wearing of a mask more than i do but it seems to me that we've got a couple of simple protocols that we could follow and have more distancing in our classrooms put some physical distance between them uh and i also think the one thing that i my opinion no scientific basis associated with it at all but it almost to me feels like a year ago the number one idea was to wash your hands yeah and i'm not hearing anybody talking about washing hands on a regular basis i really believe that would do a lot yeah i occur but it's in our language

152and i didn't i should have mentioned in our current strategies the hand sanitizer and washing hands and hygiene that's one other question and maybe this is just too new it's my understanding that president joe biden made recommendations today that people receive booster shots after eight months and i know the way the media talks about him he has to be right that was sarcasm if you didn't catch that so um you want me to comment on that i was just going to ask you if we are going to provide booster shots for those uh employees that it had so in our in our meeting with um county health this morning that that actually came up and right now our understanding is that those that are immuno-compromised do qualify for a third booster the question or the

153topic was that uh once you're eight months out going to your point that there would be a third booster available but dr dunn didn't confirm that that she had heard it too that that report had come out but was not ready to confirm that yes indeed that will happen um i would recommend that we start talking about what that framework might look like that we're coming up we're going to be coming up on eight months obviously from the time that we vaccinated employees last january february so we started in january 14th right so we should start to talk you know talk with steve and hr about what those plans might look like and define immune compromise for me uh she does that mean just like cancer um she didn't say old no and i think

154like um organ transplant or transplant that's right yeah there was there were a few different it's a very limited and specific group that would be uh isolated cases then right yes okay yeah thank you no thank you other questions mrs schill and then mr wrigley okay so i have gotten a couple emails at least two maybe three suggesting that we create massed classrooms and non-math classrooms and so segregating students so i just wanna ask you what you think about that is that even possible to do so a couple of things on on cohorting mask or unmasked students first of all i believe logistically it would be nearly impossible um how our teachers would manage seating charts and contact tracing how they would manage who's in what group especially if students changed from wearing a mask

155one day to the other and how would we determine which teacher is assigned to which group and how how would that how would parents and and schools decide right i also think that would create instructional challenges as we've mentioned you know and this rests with me 100 percent i i have said we want to open school as normal as possible i think that should be the goal for every school district it shouldn't be out of fear it should be out of trying to do what's very best meeting all of those needs and so for me cohorting students in mass or not mass really create challenges there secondly in my opinion it creates a stigma that we've worked in public education far too long to move away from from segregating students the courts have never looked

156kindly on schools segregating students for for any reason and my personal moral fab fabric pushes back on that notion lastly i think it could create a legal issue with faith how we would determine what that looks like for students with ieps and disabilities and how they might access with a mask or without a mask and how they're included in that process with their peers in my opinion i think would be very misguided on our part or any education system so um i you know i think on the surface i get it i mean it it looks like out of the gate that hey maybe that's a that's a fix and and moving kids into different rooms based on wearing a mask or not wearing a mask but i have deep deep reservations about what that

157might turn into and i would not recommend it to the board okay well thank you i do appreciate that because it does sound like an easy fix but then when you really think about it it's a lot more complicated thank you mr wrigley thank you uh just a couple questions here that i've had asked my parents over the last couple weeks first off i was wondering jeff is it possible or would you agree to have this this portion of your your uh talk with us tonight on the internet yeah because it's very difficult to go ahead and try to find this in board docs and specifically i think the questions we have answered and you're telling us now would be very helpful just in general for people to hear might be the easiest way for

158them just to be able to press on and be able to listen to your talk yeah we could last year we did podcasts and you know so i'm open to yeah just someone i think the information you're giving us right now is really you know to do it again just it just needs to be out the other issue is is this i swim with all these regulations it's like this and that this and that are we going to have some kind of a grid or something for parents so i think we have the link actually loaded up cindy can we oh it is okay so um our dashboard uh is active and live well yeah i'm not talking about the dashboard i'm talking about if this i mean you just told me about 30 different

159things and if you have this and don't test it if you do the issue this it would be very helpful it'd be easy to see some kind of a graphic for parents to say okay so we will i mean either tonight or tomorrow we will release a handbook we have a handbook on the ready that we wanted to be inclusive of the of everything that was presented tonight but it has infographics explaining all of that okay yeah it would be very helpful we want parents to be compliant and assist us in this process with all the requirements but they need to know that to begin with it's such a matter that it's easy to understand and i don't know if we have in spanish since a lot of our families are in spanish too i

160know it'd be an extra problem but it would be nice to have uh we've heard several times on uh lunch social distancing uh what is the is there a plan for that or what i mean i've had several parents ask me about that well if you visited our cafeterias last year um it did not look any different than it does this year the one thing that i have encouraged our principals to do is to to encourage our students to eat outside for the most part i believe our schools at least in our elementaries and middle schools are cohorting so students are staying with the same group of students right for most of the day and at lunch and and for the most part i think a lot of their seating is assigned at lunch i

161know our elementaries have all most of them have the tables marked for assigned seating at lunch but having said that um kids at lunch i mean it's like herding cats i mean it's i'm i don't know how else to explain it i mean it's you know that's their time when they socialize their their masks are down um i've you know i was in hundreds of lunchrooms all year last year and um you know the option for grab-and-go is also that's something that we we've utilized um a steady dose of that and kids get sick of eating you know sandwiches every day so it's tough i mean our schools are just not built to to accomplish that goal so um there are you know a few things there that we can do i think that enhance

162that but it's difficult at uh issue of mass k95 mask i think we talked about that the governor's office says he's sending him leon i don't know if those were arrived we had a bunch we had a large inventory already in stock that i think we've distributed in our schools but i don't know if we've received any from the governor's office yet we've got an email there should be coming within the next couple weeks we have put out lots of masks including kn95s to our all our schools this week so they are available the regular cloth mask or the k95 the k9 oh yeah because these things we have both the disposable not very much really in 95. we do not have kn95s or for smaller students so that's that's the problem i've had several

163parents ask if teachers could set example we have that tonight we cannot mandate teachers to wear a mask that's their choice i have had several parents teachers call me some saying yes i want everybody to wear a mouse others saying i can't teach with the mouse so i it's and i've also had parents to ask that uh we could tell them if the teacher has been vaccinated i think that legally we can't even we can't do that or they want a teacher that's only been vaccinated if they're not wearing a mask this gets so cold dan may comment on that i have reservations about hipaa violation when we're talking about a person's health record i'm not sure that that would be appropriate to share that but that that's just my interpretation i think you probably

164couldn't i guess i mean another thing there um so education appearance and then easy sheets probably the one of the best ways um what else did i have on here can we get i tried to get the i think it's important to reply no it's not totally related but i i want the public and the board to see the dashboard but i can't it's not coming up jeff when i get to that slide it's not okay so if if you go to our uh home page there are links there the dashboard is current we're in day two um very very low cases in our first two days so i'll take that as a win but it also has links to all of the county data that's broken down by canyon school district and by zip

165code so all of those metrics that i mentioned uh the public and parents can go on there and look at that we'll try to update that daily as we can just like we did last year so you'll notice one data set that does not appear is quarantine data because that is a recommendation this year we won't know for sure unless it's self-reported by parents that their student is quarantining so we'll try to monitor that data the best that we can but because it you know it's not 100 accurate um based on what we could collect ourselves we won't report it on the dashboard and the last question is we've had several parents ask that we strongly suggest or recommend or a bunch of different terms mask it sounds like the process right now is is

166we're gonna watch what's going on and as if things move more that direction towards one percent or two percent will be stronger in our recommendations to parents that would be my recommendation is that based on the current environment in that school is the that would dictate language and if things uh lessen over 14 days or a month i mean i think that allows for for um lessening those restrictions but i think we need to have all of those tools at the ready um to try and slow it down so unlike last year when we ended up math the entire year what we've been talking about is large recommendations putting it back into based upon what the need is this year correct and it's only going to be required or asked i guess for those times

167that it's needed then okay thank you thank you mrs nybauer yes thank you for the presentation uh and the planning i know it wasn't a easy task my question was if we're looking at schools below 1500 that's elementary schools right and that threshold is 30. the schools that are above that it's that two percent and then if it's at one percent we're sending home vigilance letters having encouraging kids to come in masks and try to socially distance as they can those types of precautions so then for the elementary schools does that happen once there's 15 positive cases so it's just half half okay and then i also really liked your response with what to do in the lunch room could we consider having those grab and go lunches once a school reached that threshold level

168where we're doing vigilance right that's really just to kind of help and that also i think will encourage kids when they don't have a tray we're going to get a lot more social distancing at lunch time if they've just got a sack oh okay so there's the that's the dashboard um as you can see so if you scroll down you can see well on the right side you can see the number of cases and then at 15 under 1500 they that would trigger vigilance letter and potential mitigating strategies and then at one percent for those schools over 1500 right so and then the link there's a separate link to the pdf document that updates all of the county and canyons culver data on those metrics that i mentioned then i had one other question so

169in a case scenario where a school ended up in a test to stay for example and say it was an elementary school and there were parents that felt nervous or you know they're working they're not able to go and attend if say it's a kindergartener for that testing they don't go to the testing then that kindergartner of course has to stay home for the 10 days my question is will the teeth they can go to private provider they they can go to a doctor i mean okay they can get a rapid antigen test i i think it's important that we kind of set the standard for what that is and that's dr webb's recommendation um just to make sure that it that actually is a rapid an antigen test it okay an antibody test would

170not qualify right so okay so that's good to know so so that might be some language we want to include in that slide and then the other thing is are the teachers prepared to pivot if there's a certain number of students out to the digital learning so chromebook yes i i feel like our efforts this year amber and isd have done a great job of really ramping up our training and as you all know canyons online is in full go we had 250 something parents come to parent night for kenyans online our k through 8 classes are either full or are getting full so if we get a run on um quarantine or positive cases then we would our next step would our contingency would be to pull fte and transition them to full-time online

171if necessary okay we are also too i might add that those transitions can occur at grading periods so um we're encouraging parents that would like to do online to register for the full year but we completely understand that we're again we're in this environment where you know there's so much change that can occur and people's level of fear and safety can fluctuate so we will allow for changes at grading periods if parents want to come back to in person or move to online grading periods but we're ready we're on the ready to adjust to those numbers if that changes okay and we have chromebooks available to the uh elementary school never did this year yeah we're staffed i mean we're at one to one across the district so i think you know we're ready great

172thank you so much excuse me mrs oakes yeah and follow up to it and holly brought up the ability to be able to get tested now is a completely different experience compared to what it was last year i had one of the members of my fam family who tested positive in july we ended up getting four tests within about an hour period we were able to just drive in get it done it's free so i don't think it's going to be a hardship for anyone if they can't be there for the open hours of test to stay it's it's definitely available through the county i want to thank you for all of your hard work on this rick you're in a tough position we all feel squeezed from both sides my heart goes out to

173parents who like called in today that have and you know compromised members of their family that are very worried about this i totally get that i lost a beloved family member this summer to covet um who was compromised in other ways and this is a tough this is a tough situation and we hear a lot from families that are concerned about their kids learning being impeded by being in a mask and all of the other social emotional considerations that go into it i want to echo what you had to say with regard to the need for us to be kind and respectful to each other i heard a speaker today who mentioned the fact that um in our day and age conflict is inevitable but contempt is a choice and i think that that's very

174very true and i hope that everyone in our community can remember that that we can choose to be kind and respectful to one another even if we disagree um in response to some of what was was said and requested of us as a school district with regard to us reminding the public of the um efficacy of masks and and all of that i want to just kind of caution against that idea for a couple of different reasons one is that over time public education has been asked to do more and more and more in terms of providing social services to the community we now have schools where we feed the children all three of their meals every day and when we had to go on quarantine at the beginning of um not last year but

175here you know year before towards the end of the year the big question was how are these kids going to eat i am very reticent about us fulfilling the role of the health department um which really their role is to educate the public and to oversee some of those matters it's not to say that we we can't try and exercise some vigilance on our own part but we can't take on one more thing i mean it's we've had so much to carry this year and our our staff has been almost maxed out and so i i just am very very innocent to start that precedence where it's our role to educate i mean yesterday i sat through and listened to a presentation from a sleep expert who talked about what happens to our immune systems

176when we lose even two hours of sleep a night um that we're supposed to get and that even when you get a vaccine whether it's a copa vaccine or another if you are not sleeping in the period directly afterwards consistently as much as you should your ability to build up antibodies is significantly compromised and so there are all sorts of factors that play into this whether it's sleep it's nutrition like how do we build up and our immune systems to be able to withstand any sort of virus that comes our way but again is that the role of a school district and um so that's just some of my thought i i want to commend you for everything you're doing i love seeing the dashboard up again and i think that that's going to be

177helpful for us as we continue to look at what's a moving target and just to caution the public this things like amber says are going to change things are constantly changing and that's what we need to get used to and don't take out your frustration on the change piece on us like that we so did not call this up so i just can you go back i want go back to the maybe the second slide the showing our our current strategies and then there was a couple of issues that i wanted to talk about keep going back back back uh let's see one more okay so um these two slides i think i've accidentally bumped first one is the question around masks on buses cdc has issued a policy statement that masks are required on

178buses because since buses are part of interstate commerce then that puts them under federal regulation we are still waiting for more guidance on this issue we have not received any directly from state health or usbe at this point but currently for an example uta is also under that same regulation there are signs posted that mention cdc's requirement but it's not being enforced um for me as your superintendent i struggle with the concept of of us enforcing masks on buses just in terms of our bus drivers and the need to keep their eyes on the road our bus drivers have a lot going on already we're using assigned seats but we're going to ask our bus drivers to be the mass police when kids get on the bus and off the bus and during their ride

179i i think that puts more people in danger so i'm not sure exactly where that will lie but we're still waiting uh for guidance on that but at this point we're not denying any student transportation on the bus whether they're in a mask or not but i think it's important to just call your attention to that we go to the next slide so uh just real quick this was uh i mentioned it but you can see there these are many of the layered strategies that are in place that were that we're discussing i will take back to our team the discussion about students in rose as i said i ask our principals to open schools as normal as possible because i think that should be the goal but having said that i think to mont's

180point that's something that we can go back and look at i do have some concern that students in straight rows yes we're maybe gaining you know maybe an additional foot of physical distancing but i saw some very detrimental effects of kids facing forward in the same chair all day last year without any group uh interaction so i think we can take a look at that uh but we will we do have a signed seating as i mentioned we're cohorting um we're trying to utilize outdoor spaces where we can we talked about vaccination rates among our students and our employees hand sanitizer is still available in every classroom and we'll continue to encourage good hand hygiene for our students we i didn't mention the touchless water fountains all of our schools have touchless water fountains now

181um and then as mentioned we've moved uh from merv 8 to merv 13 filters in all of our schools which we believe layered in uh have a positive effect and then the electrostatic cleaning and deep cleaning of our buildings that those same regimens will continue um and as mentioned they're using hospital grade cleaning agents to keep our schools clean so mrs arnold so i just wanted to talk about a couple of those things that you just mentioned too so on the buses it's my understanding that we're assigning them by families um so they're still sitting with their family members and we still know who they're sitting by and and so the use of masks may or may not necessarily be a great help because they are with their family members facing their family members and

182not with other people um about the rose ad was in the classroom today for about three hours subbing and they were all in rows and the thing with rose is even though you're here and you know my desk is here his desk is here and we have this little space between us this is this is pretty well our space with the space you can get out of the out of the um classroom right um touman's point if you have two desks facing each other and i have my desk and he has his desk you actually have more space between you and if i want to talk to leon i turn this way and leon are facing each other anyway but you're closer when you have the rose actually than you are when you have your

183chair your desk history i mean his desk and his chair but two months to months point though probably eight would be too many i mean that would be a caution i would think that if you used um either three in a triangle with the desk you get a little more space or you know the the combination of four but not five because then you have one facing destruction but i think that's an easy fix for teachers i think they want them to be in their groups be able to socialize get that you know get that feeling but when we're talking about space and you really start using a ruler to figure out how much space you have where i don't think you're going to get much more out of being in rows than you would

184be getting out of desks or chair in your space from your desk in your chair that you would be slid back because you're not going to be up close like this you're going to be back here like this um so i just was thinking trying to think that through but eight kiddos in one space that's a lot of that's a lot that's a lot of fresh air running back and forth between those kiddos it also too i might i i think you make a really good point um clearing and mont's point the you know one of the things that i saw our principals um do is when you start to become more restricting you know limiting movement altogether right so it's not just the desk but as students line up and as they you know

185go about the building um you know i wonder that i have that same question i mean is it really are we are we the attempt to gain safety um are we really achieving that because students turn and face each other different ways but clearly when they're in a row by themselves in the same chair all day or when they're limited in movement when they go to lunch or recess that clearly impacts their psyche they know hey i i'm restricted in who i interact with i don't interact with the kid at the front of the line or in the front of my death my row i sit right where i'm at so we had kids who didn't even know kids last year that were in the same classroom because that situation between masks and the desks

186and the desks in the row and only being able to line up by number two and only being able to know by number 27 they didn't even have any idea who most of the classmates were that they had and then when you talk about socialization out like on the playground first grade played here but some of the schools i know in our in our canyon school district um made this class only be here and this class only be here and this class only be here so they didn't even get to know anybody in their grade level not only did they only get a known number 22 or 27 but they didn't even get to get get to get together with the others and i i get we're really trying to do the safety thing but

187i also get that we have to um and it'll take time not to learn to socialize but they already spend so much time on their devices at home that they really need that interaction at school to socialize because that's the only place they're going to get it mr millerberg i appreciate what you say about the kids face to face other than as they're speaking and they're breathing they're projecting at each other all day but the big concern to me and you use the example of you turning to speak with leon that's okay if you've got that distance but if my desk is touching my neighbors to the right and i turn we are like nine inches apart as i'm speaking to the person to my immediate right when the desks are touching each other in

188that group setting now i don't claim to be a social emotional expert and how all that impacts kids but i do know that the closer you are the more likely the transmission any other comments or questions i oh is mrs power yeah i just have a quick one i know last year when we did the test to stay protocols we weren't really although we would accommodate if parents needed to take them to the doctor for the rapid test we would accommodate that but obviously we weren't advertising that because we needed to meet that 85 threshold of the school showing up to test and just my recommendation is if we can have somewhere on our website uh actually locations especially i just see that the greatest conflict being with elementary school kids with parents being able

189to be there because they do want to be there and so and it may also save us a lot of time with the test to stay for all those families that have working parents just just to actually have on our website here are the places in your zip code to go if you want to be there present advertise it okay okay thank you and superintendent i just want to thank you for all of the work that you and and the administration have done on this it's a it's kind of amazing that we can look at all of these things and realize we've done this before we can do it again and i feel like there's probably no one in this state that's more in tuned with what needs to happen in our schools than you

190are and i appreciate that and just want to express my appreciation to you and the administration and and um thank you for keeping us surprised of this and i hope that those listening in our community and any future communications will realize what a great job that you and the administration are doing thank you i i wanted to just thank our staff um i you know in it there's so many people involved i think about our teachers and they really you know they really do have uncommon valors they show up every day make a difference and sacrifice our nurses our secretaries our staff our administration um you know they know what they're getting into and and uh you know i've said it before to me the the real testament will be later when our kids that

191are students now are adults i hope they look back with great fondness and gratitude for everybody including their parents their teachers and their schools uh and they reflect with gratitude that great sacrifices were made for them and hopefully they'll they'll pay it forward i mean i i think as a society that that's really you know what we're about and that's hopefully that's our purpose is that we keep that promise to them and that whatever challenges they have as the adults later they'll they'll pay that forward so thank you thank you okay next is the consent agenda item seven a through f um i will ask for a motion and then please in making that motion will you read each of the items on that list i i will make that motion so i move that

192we approve the consent agenda and item a approval of minutes for august 3rd 2021 item b approval of the higher and termination reports item c approval of purchasing bids item d approval of student overnight travel item e approval of july financial reports item f approval of usbe early literacy plan 2021 and 2022. thank you is there a second to this motion i'll second that thank you any discussion to this motion see none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion passes next on the agenda is item 8a under new business update on 2021 2022 volunteers and introduction of region 17 pta board i will turn time over to susan edwards public engagement coordinator thank you president tingey um first i would like to excuse region pta uh their

193director their president had a family matter come up last night and let us know that they would like to postpone to a future meeting to come and meet you all and be introduced and the rest of the region pta board would like her to be with them obviously as their fearless leader so they will join us um soon at another meeting if that's okay with you yes we will invite them back okay thank you president um on the volunteer report as you've been hearing tonight last year was a different year and our volunteer numbers obviously were down some of our schools didn't have volunteers in them often and many didn't until the end of the year some were able to use volunteers in various capacities but as you know it was kind of it's going

194to go down in history for many reasons it's kind of an asterisk year and that this is one of them last year we had a total of about 6 volunteers which is roughly give or take about half of normal which was to be expected i actually thought it was a bit higher than i maybe anticipated it being we had a total of 74 305 hours given in volunteer time last year which again is is lower than usual but still quite uh impressive that we have that many people giving to our schools in a really really tough time this year already we are on a higher trajectory if you will we already approved over 5 000 volunteers so far here in the first week of school and have met with the pta and have listened to

195other volunteers that are excited to to get back if given the opportunity to be in schools and uh to be there as we all know having parents and volunteers in our schools and uh being there to give that little extra push uh helps with what we've heard tonight helps with the the mental health and just the just the feeling of happiness and and that little extra that makes our school special so we look forward to welcoming them back as appropriate this year um we have completed the volunteer system training for all coaches advisors pta and for new principals that has been completed so they are all aware of how our volunteer system works and how approvals work and we are happy with the completion of our um three high schools that um all of our

196schools now will have the online la or the login system when you come in the front door for volunteers in schools and so we are happy to have that check-in system at each of our schools and in the front office um and with that i will answer any questions you might have thank you so much um it is exciting to think of all of those wonderful people that are giving of their time to help in our schools any questions superintendent yeah thank you president i just like to tell susan thank you for all of her work and her engagement with bta and last week i had the opportunity to be one of their keynote speakers at their region 17 opening conference and i i just have to say i've done it two years now and

197even in the midst of the crisis and the pandemic you know what an outstanding group of servant leaders that really care about our kids and and our schools and um you know coming from outside in uh i i just it's really it's a very special relationship that pta has with with their schools and they're so supportive and you know they're really open to looking for solutions and working with their schools and other parents and i i just commend their their positive nature and their support and i know a lot of that is reflective of susan's leadership and relationship with them and i'm looking forward next week where we're having them for lunch their leadership all week and i'll be uh having lunch with them and addressing them each day so i'm excited to to visit

198with them again but just want to say thank you thank you yes thank you any other comments or yeah please express our appreciation one thing i didn't mention is the week after after that we start training the school community council september 1st and so those volunteers will are being elected now and getting seated and and we will start training them so okay thank you so much thank you okay um next is the arp sr3 grant application this is a third reading with action requested so i'll turn time over to dr amber roderick landford and mr leon wilcox good evening we are excited to be in front of you for a third time to talk about this incredible amount of money that we have to really try to help our students in the upcoming years and

199their experience during the pandemic and what has resulted from that so just another quick recap we're looking at about 21 million dollars is our allocation and 20 percent of that at least has to be allocated to addressing accelerated learning to address any unfinished learning that students may have experienced over the last 18 months you received the official grant application yesterday i don't know if you had a chance to read through all of those pieces but we will summarize those today and address any questions so a reminder i shared with you during our last meeting that through our extensive data review we identified four key areas that our students had were impacted the most by in terms of their experience during the pandemic in our schools so that first was looking at our k-12 student achievement

200in both literacy and math supporting the physical and mental health and safety of our students outreach to our students who did not enroll consistently over the last year and then finally increasing opportunities for credit recovery and post-secondary school preparedness what i wanted to bring to tonight's presentation was the stakeholder input results so as you recall we sent an electronic survey out to all of our employees and all of the parents in our district they had about three weeks to respond to that survey and it closed friday at the end of the day so through the analysis of those responses we had a number of of duplicates so when we got rid of all of those we ended up with 1 693 responses and you can see the breakdown right there by our feeder system we

201had only about 40 of the respondents who took the survey in spanish so what i'd like to do is just quickly walk through how our stakeholders responded to the priorities so we asked them specifically for those priorities if they had any specific strategies or feedback or if they wanted to provide any additional feedback so you can see right here of those four strategies how the respondents checked those particular areas and how they wanted to comment so overall you can see where that breakdown was by feeder and by priority and we'll talk about each of those just really briefly here so with the first priority increasing k-12 student achievement and literacy and math you can see by feeder how the respondents selected this in terms of an area that they wanted to address and give comments

202to or that they wanted to prioritize specifically some of the things that they highlighted in their comments were things that we were also brainstorming and that came up as solutions as a result of other data that we were looking at so more integration of science and stem increased intensity in terms of intervention additional assistance for intervention tutoring after school help summer programs and some of those things we also tried to pull some specific voices from our respondents so that you can see some of the things that they were specifically asking for priority two this was by far the priority that most of the respondents highlighted as something that they wanted to support or offer a specific recommendation for in this category and we thought it was important to note specifically the high number of the

203jordan feeder respondents who selected this one above the others as an area of priority and wanting to offer suggestions some of those suggestions again aligned with areas that we also had identified as a priority so really focusing on the mental health and general well-being of our students looking at additional mental health support staff teaching our students and our staff about stress management and how to deal with trauma how to support students with developing coping skills specific social skill development socialization came up a number of times and uh focusing on building those resiliency strategies as well as mindfulness and you can see there one patron comment mentioned that they would hope that any money receiving grants for recovery would be put towards mental health counselors and schools and the need for that mental health support priority

204three the breakdown for outreach to non-attending schools and again just highlighting a a little bit of a bump in one particular area so this was our schools who are specialized schools so respondents who had students going to those schools really checked this area as a priority for making sure that we're reaching out to students and supporting them and getting to school so some of their suggestions were to incorporate more check-ins from our counseling staff better communication across the board additional counseling supports and online teachers which we have done and then continuing to improve our online learning program as well so you can see again another comment there and some suggestions for how we can improve that outreach and then finally the last priority increasing opportunities for credit recovery and post-secondary school preparedness so the breakdown

205across the feeder system there was pretty even and then again their strategies some very similar to ours supporting with college applications scholarship applications act prep looking at additional career counseling after school programs credit recovery and the like we had a number of patrons or stakeholders rather also identify other priorities that they wanted us to consider so a number of folks commenting on their requests similar to what we've heard over the past several board meetings from patron comments around covid safety precautions lots of comments in the other section around mental health supports increased pe more elective options additional supports for students with disabilities supports for parents through the family center and other areas that we continue to address as a system and then again as we've seen in i think a lot of comments across the

206last month more requests for or against masks and and things in between there so increase access to technology or less reliance on technology we had a little bit of of everything and on both sides we had some stakeholders asked to continue with the four day week with online fridays and some to beg that we don't do that again as well as continued for and against critical race theory and anti-racism curriculum and then there were some additional just themes that that popped out as well and you can see those here in the second column so things like increasing teacher salaries later start time anti-bullying additional resources for dual immersion and again just a number of other great strategies that are worth looking at in in general we were pleased to see how many stakeholders did shout

207out to our teachers and so we wanted to highlight and take the opportunity here to let them know that stakeholders are taking opportunities that they are given to be able to say thank you to the teachers and administrators of the district for some of the hardest work in our community in the past 18 months this patron has been continually impressed with the level of engagement of our schools that we were able to maintain and i think we would all echo that sentiment for our schools and then another comment just of appreciation for what the district has done for their children so we wanted to highlight with that and then end with this great comment that i think sums it up that a lot of the stakeholders said similar things that we just want to support

208anything that's going to improve our students experience academically emotionally and physically as we head into this school year so that's the summary of the stakeholder input that we have gathered over the last three weeks are there any questions about that specifically nope keep going okay so we incorporated that information into the overall grant application strategies to make sure that everything was aligned and so what you have here is just to break down again by priority more specifically the strategy and these are what we also shared in the last board meeting and then that estimated cost the difference between this table and what i shared at the last board meeting is because the grant application requires that we look at specific strategies for that 20 percent accelerated learning requirement we i pulled those out specifically so

209that you could see what strategies are considered accelerated learning and and qualify for that particular requirement of the grant so you can see we are far above that 20 requirement which puts us in good shape there and then the breakdown by priority the asterisk that i have on all of the fte there were a couple of questions last time about are we going to be able to find these people because we've relied a lot on hiring folks for some of our strategies with this grant and i just wanted to note that all of those positions that have an asterisk are folks that we actually have already hired through sr2 that we plan to continue with sr-3 funding in the upcoming school years or two two more years after the school year so we're in good

210shape there and then we do have those positions open for the new position so we are hopeful so with that i just open it up for any questions that you have moving forward any questions board mr millerberg just a quick question at the beginning of your presentation you showed 21.7 million and this totals up to 21.4 is that difference uh bonus for the board members is that what it is is that all going to me in bold on the application it says this funding cannot be used to uh pay personnel at the um district administration or or board level so unfortunately mont that is not one of the allowable uses darn it so where's that other 400 000 going so these are these are rough estimates right because again depending on we'll call it rounding

211we are calling it rounding so we're rounding with our both indirect costs and then we don't have exact um costs for some of the curriculum that we are purchasing for the exact salary and benefits for the folks that we're hiring i guess the question more directed is if you don't spend it all do we get to keep it or does it go back to somebody what's that it goes back so i'm sure that leon will make sure we we will spend every dime thank you uh mrs schill okay so i just want to tell you thank you for this report and i really do appreciate you sending out that survey to parents and that was really interesting data um the question i have is i mean i think this is a great plan but we

212are hiring people with the money so what's going to happen when we don't have that money that's my question really good question and and leon and rick can can pipe in here um as well so a number of the fte that will be used are supporting programs for canyons online which we would anticipate over the next couple of years we'll have a better sense of what that consistent enrollment would look like we can incorporate that into our existing fte model some of the assistance we can look at other funding so we've got some intervention mentors some bilingual assistants we've already looked at this kind of being a trial with these funds and if it works out we can look at some of our other funds that we're receiving from the state to transition some of

213what we're spending in other areas there we also have a number of fte being allocated for intervention components that we would look at again phasing out as we continue to close those gaps and as we stabilize with enrollment um through the pandemic would you want to add anything else to that i would add yeah that very good amber i would also add you know we'll have to bring this back to you as part of our budget cycle every year and we're going to need the board's input on some of these programs if you want us to try to keep them going or to look at phasing them out as the essers go out uh so we'll be seeking your input as as move forward as amber said we're starting year one of a three year

214process yeah basically we'll be using esser two most of us are two this year uh and then sr3 the next two so we'll be in input seeking your input and guidance and and see what we want to see if there's anything we want to keep or what we need to keep and then or if there's other things that we're doing right now that we can look at reducing down on as well so yeah well and i think it's really good timing to that point too that we're in the middle of strategic planning and so as we go through that process i think that will help guide some of that decision making as well okay thank you very much mrs nybaur thank you mr stingy i just want to thank you so much for this presentation

215this is great my question actually is kind of a perfect follow-up to what you just said i'm wondering if those priorities that were outlined before and then the additional and the themes if we could have those all compiled and submitted to strategic planning for the steering committee um some of those that are time sensitive like the face mask you know obviously not but all the others i just think these are fantastic places to start i i think that's a really great suggestion i'll add that to our um what do what do we call it what is what do they call it a repository the repository yes repository okay other questions or i'm i i do have one question on the funding do they give it to us all at once or over the course of

216three years it's all on a reimbursement basis so we actually have to spend them so as we spend it then we get reimbursed first yeah yeah that's where all three hazard funds work yeah okay that so so with this application then puts us in the queue to then be able to turn in our reimbursements correct okay great so board um this is an action requested item because i believe the deadline to apply is coming up soon correct as in tomorrow huh it's friday it's friday it actually got pushed back yeah they actually just extended it yeah they understand that which would like to get it in as quickly yes might as well get in that queue a little sooner than than later so okay any any if there are no other questions like i said

217this is a third reading action requested so emotion is in order i will i'll make a motion then to approve uh new business item a b the a r p s or three grant application as presented to us and as uh put in board docs i'd like to second that motion okay thank you we have a motion and a second is there any discussion to this motion seeing none i will ask for a vote all in favor please say i i any opposed [Music] all right that motion passes thank you and thank you for all the work to put that together and all the work that's yet to come with this okay next item is item 8c policy update and there are several policies here that are being updated and then this just board this

218is a second reading with possible action and i'll turn the time over to mr jeff christensen assistant legal counsel thank you president zingi uh at our last board meeting at the beginning of august we proposed two agenda items one for some policy updates as listed on board docs these are minor adjustments to align with state code and also just a few technical adjustments and a few policies as outlined the student attendance policy we recognize during this next school year will be in the truancy enforcement moratorium which will prohibit some of our statutory notices that can be issued but we're aligning one issue with a board approved absence and making it more clear for scheduling approved leave for for students that's the first one the next one is our vision screening again we're just aligning with

219state board rule for vision screening and adding some additional language for screening of tier one and tier two in our school access policy in our our next agenda item we're taking some provisions that have always been in a community policy that deals with use of school property and equipment and just we're taking some of that language and building in it in a more appropriate location in our school access policy so those provisions have been have been added and it's also some minor adjustments to align with our parental rights statutes and then the last one in the community section deals with district and school sponsored information media this was a broader policy that we inherited from the jordan school district and it's being narrowed to just primarily deal with school and district websites and adjustments were

220made in the attached red line to really sort of look at how to better manage our district's sites all of those on in this agenda item are for second reading possible action i can answer any questions regarding these policies okay board any questions on this all right see no questions um uh thank you for that presentation and as this has been listed as possible action a motion would be in order [Music] is there a motion okay i'd like to make a motion to update the policy under item 8c which includes policy 500.35 student attendance policy 500.43 vision screening policy 300.01 school access policy 700.09 district and school information media thank you is there a second to that motion i'll make a second thank you any discussion to this motion scene none i will call for

221a vote all in favor say i any opposed right that motion passes thank you now item eight d policy updates policies deemed obsolete mr jeff christensen again on board docs um i've listed the the policies that through review and looking in both our student and instruction section and the community section identifying policies that again these these issues dealing with homework testing examinations and you know advanced placement or accelerated learning are not going away but the provisions that have been outlined in these policies are inconsistent and are outdated so our recommendation is these be deemed obsolete and then as the strategic planning comes to fruition if there's elements that need to be brought back in we will do so and we have usbe rule governing uh a good number of these issues particularly in terms of

222remediation and testing so the recommendation of the policy committee is these be deemed obsolete i can answer any questions questions okay see no questions again this is also um possible action so a motion would be in order is there a motion i i will move that we um deem the following policies obsolete um number one 500.44 student hearing conversation policy 600.08 homework policy 600.09 tests and examinations policy 600.1 remediation policy 600.12 advanced placement policy 700.06 community use of school property and equipment i think i got them all yes i think so thank you any oh is there a second i'll second that motion thank you any discussion to this motion all right scene none i will ask for a vote all in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion passes thank you mr christensen

223appreciate your great work appreciate it thank you all right board that concludes our new business items and now we will have um we will conclude the meeting with staff comments superintendent and then mr wilcox thank you president i just uh want to say thank you to all of our employees for a great start it was awesome just the positive energy around the district and our our three new high schools was terrific but uh i just want to tell all of our teachers and staff thank you for all their efforts to prepare our district level staff all of our admins here tonight and their their work in getting uh our teachers and our staff ready to open school just uh pretty amazing and humbling to be part of so thank you to all and our parents

224and kids for showing up and and making it a great start so thanks thank you mr wilcox yeah thank you president tingey just uh somewhat echo rick's remarks just been great to start the school year been wonderful absolutely amazing to see kids learning in the new hillcrest and the new brighton i walked with greg levitt and tom sherwood yesterday for some time and it's great to see students in those classes still a few hiccups the fire alarm went off today in the hillcrest because a contractor hit a had a line in the kitchen and but uh and we're still having ac issues up at brighton that we're working on but it's been great to have kids in these new spaces it's just exciting to see their new face how excited they are to see these

225new buildings and just to follow up uh i know earlier in the summer we spent a lot of time on our lease revenue bonds and the billing authority we sold those bonds a week ago and got a really good rate of 1.2 percent as we issued about 37.6 million to move forward with our project so we're excited about that and that's all i have thank you thank you okay um board we have um time now for individual board member reports how about we start with mrs arnold and we'll just work down the row i'd like to start with mont [Music] it's a good thing you're not in charge okay i will listen to our fearless leader um i'm really um excited about today and how the schools were opened and how all the children are

226excited about getting back and all the work that the teachers um did to get ready and the secretaries the custodians especially who had to put all those desks and all those chairs and all those bookcases and all those everything that we put away last year that they had to bring back in this year and put back in the classroom so we could get back to partial normal right and all all the um all the team players that just goes into doing all these things with um the ribbon cuttings for the high schools and then we did open all y3 high schools i know someplace else that um had a little difficulty getting one open this week and so i'm glad that we met our deadlines and that we were able to to do that um

227i really appreciate leon and rick for all the work they do as well as i know there's so many other people that play into just us seeing these documents on the doc board and watching and and being able to read them and and go through them before we have to meet here i i don't know who puts all those slide shows together but i was thinking about that the day when i had to do one and i thought oh my gosh we do this for like 10 different subjects probably every time and there's somebody out there putting them together and i really appreciate that they're clear they're understandable they're easy to read and that we can get through them in one or two nights before we have to come here to to the board meeting

228so i really appreciate whoever is doing all that work and i really appreciate the board they really do sacrifice their families their time their energy to be here and always be prepared and i i thank you too thanks thank you mrs nybauer well first i want to thank clarine for her comments tonight i really appreciate the perspective she brings especially as being a teacher we have that a little in common although i haven't been a teacher for quite some time but i appreciated that i especially appreciated actually what you said about the kids being able to have their desks in groups a little bit now that's one of the first things my fourth grader said is he was so excited to be able to not just be in those rows so so there is that

229social perspective um i want i want to thank boy i i feel like our district has been just running a thousand miles a minute opening three schools responding to so many uh you know suggestions from the community regarding you know nervousness about the opening of the schools for this school year and just have has done just a wonderful job with with everything getting these esser funds ready the surveys i just appreciate it all i too want to congratulate leon uh for getting these schools opened i was able to attend the alta ribbon cutting which was pretty amazing i at work actually i had a lot of parents asking me about the brighton ribbon cutting you know the brighton ribbon cutting and how excited they are about their school and it's just really fun to actually

230hear from the community how energized and jazzed all the families and students are about these beautiful schools it's pretty fun to hear i really wanted to actually tell you i had the opportunity of meeting one of our new hires for this school year she actually happens to be my son's fourth grade teacher miss worthington and the energy and excitement she has i i it was funny we we were trying to figure out where his class was and then realized she was in a portable and it took me back my first year of teaching i was in a portable two she had these little friendship bracelets for all of the kids and talked about how and and there was all the colors on the bracelets and talked about how we have differences and maybe some are

231masked and some are not but how we can all be friends um with anyone and that difference is good and i just really loved that message and excited that we hired her so um thank you to everyone that's all i have thank you mr wrigley thank you um first off i want to express my appreciation to everybody who's worked on our three high schools that was really exciting uh to attend that you just feel the energy of everybody there and the principles and you could just see how this will lift up education and all those schools from going through school this got full of bats to school that actually may someday have air conditioning but no i mean it's so so exciting to sort of see that and and as i as i walked the

232halls uh it reminded me how how uh brave i guess at one point the board was years ago and administration to take on building at a time we've been doing this over the last several years during a time that's sort of economically up and down and back and forth and the same thing happened to the schools as it happened in my house my house was almost doubled in value since i bought it or more than doubled actually and it looks like the high schools if we would have waited three years it would probably be about 35 40 million dollars more per school which would have made it almost impossible as for us to put those schools in and we would have landed up with non-uh reinforced schools so a lot of times i appreciate the

233public's trust in us and that sometimes they understand that they'll say well you're going to do this we're going well based upon every all the things this is what it looks like and so far we've been pretty good at figuring out what the things that happened uh maybe you've just been blessed in the process talking about blessings as i was sitting at home uh sort of pondering tonight when i might have to say it was just sort of profoundly overcome with emotion and you could ask my wife i'm not very emotional and um just of the gratitude i've had at the at this last year whatever working with the administration and working with our board i mean it's really interesting i have i try to take calls from people we answer a lot of emails

234and and um not all of them are very positive um but i don't think i've ever met with a group of administrators and and board members that did not have the best interest of the student in mind though we may get people on either end with their whatever their their concerns are in fear this board really does care about each student and tries to balance out the hundred of factors that we have to deal with because yeah it may be best for this one thing if we do it for this one group of people but it may also affect so many other people you know as i look around the world right now there are so many issues that are happening and there's so many things and there's so much fear going on right now

235and there's so much worry and and i hope the public understands this we're having a real difficult balancing act trying to work with the world that's almost in society is almost crumbling and to keep the school district healthy keep the school district a place of peace uh a place of learning and i think we've been doing a really good job about that i worry in the future as things continue and and i i really hope that as we move forward that we're able to get the public with us on this and not working against each other and stuff because that contention in the public carries into the schools and just adds to the the issues that we're trying to do as far as education uh and and we're trying to raise the bar at the

236same time in many places the bar is sinking um so i just was just just a feeling of gratitude uh look at my wife is that education so she didn't see me get emotional but uh because it didn't surprise her uh but anyway i want to thank everybody and again thank for thankful for our parents i we really do appreciate the comments you give us we really read them we take them into account we wish we could do everything everybody says and the parents i really appreciate is if they go they listen they say well i thank you for listening to me i don't agree with you but at least i don't understand where you're coming from and that is a good civil discussion that we can move forward on and so thank you thank

237you mrs oakes i've already said a lot tonight so i'll try and keep this more brief um i just want to address um something that one of our patrons said miss richards that came and spoke saying that um that she and some of the people in her group have heard reports of things that are inappropriate being taught in schools i'd like to just take a moment to highlight an infographic that our communications department put together on behalf of the district that was mailed out to all of the residents within the canyon school district and is also available on our website and that infographic essentially lays out a process that's appropriate and fair for any patron or any parent any grandparent who has concerns about what's being taught in the classroom and how they should go

238about addressing that namely you first communicate with the teacher and if that doesn't resolve the issue you go to your assistant principal and to the principal it lays all of that out and has a number of different ways that any patron can interact with the district and communicate with us and get provide feedback so that we understand what's going on i i would never say that we have a pulse on what's happening in all of the thousands of classrooms across the district that's impossible but we do appreciate when people say hey there's something i'm concerned about and they go about it in a way that's fair and appropriate it's important that we respect uh our teachers and give them the opportunity to be able to answer for themselves if there may have been a misunderstanding

239or something that occurred and that the process protects them and the teaching profession which is something that's very difficult to recruit teachers right now we have a teacher shortage and so we also need to appropriately respect the role of the teacher and give them the benefit of the doubt and the opportunity to answer for themselves just like anyone would hope for for for themselves um so i i will i'll reach out to that patron individually and have a conversation with her but i i just want to reiterate that to anyone who's actually listening or has the chance to understand that better i also like steve feel very grateful that we live in the place that we do that we have so many good people in our community i feel like we're the lucky ones and

240it's not perfect we have a lot to learn but i do feel like public education is something that needs to be upheld and protected and valued if only for the opportunity for us to come together in a forum where there are differences and diversity of perspectives where we learn from each other and we can walk away without just an echo chamber understanding of what we already think but that we can come and actually really push ourselves and our perspectives outside of that and become more wise as a result and that's all i have to say thank you mrs schill okay i just want to start by saying i just agree with what everyone has said so far i'm not going to repeat everything but i agree with all your points you had some really good

241points um i just want to say thank you to communications and all the people that made those ribbon cuttings happen because that was no small feat and to do like three in a row i mean i was tired just going to him and i didn't even help set up so um but they were great they were so exciting and i mean if like i just i'm sitting here thinking like that really was historic i mean three schools that are gonna last for generations and that we were all part of that is really cool too so anyway thank you and it was really fun um i loved brighton i got to walk around after and it was just really fun there was a little family in front of me with just little kids and i just

242thought that was so great it wasn't just the high school kids it was families that know that one day they're gonna go there and i just thought that was wonderful um and then also i just love i love our tradition of the red carpet and i got to go to three schools i went to brighton and i didn't know but i was the only person with the officers and so i thought there'd be some administrators or teachers but that was me and officers and it was great and they were super cute and they were doing a great job greeting all the kids and then went to butler just caught the end of that and then went to butler butler middle and then butler elementary and that was just really fun like i love it it's

243like one of the best days of the year so if you guys haven't done it you need to do it board members even if you just go to one school it's awesome so thank you thank you mr millerberg it's been a fun week hasn't it it was really really interesting for me to go to the uh ribbon cuttings um it was fun for me to go through brighton high school uh principal sherwood uh i don't know why but he just kind of grabbed chris and me by our hands and said let's go for a walk and he took us on a tour of the school and it is so exciting to me to see a principal take the ownership of a school and be so proud he walked us through the entire school he let

244us know that brighton high school has more state championships than any other school in the state which i was not aware of he let us know that uh josten was really uh good to work with that they've had several of those trophies go missing and they still had the forms and they've been able to replace the missing trophies it was just really fun to go tour with with tom sherwood alda high school oh my gosh absolutely amazing i think the one advantage alda has over the other two new schools is so at least those that have been there before can find their classrooms at least at brighton no longer do you have people just wandering in circles but i thought as i went through hillcrest yesterday for the opening the seniors have no advantage over

245the freshmen because nobody knows where they're going um back at alda i don't know whose idea it was but that was absolutely awesome to walk into a stairwell and see a hawk and painted on the walls and the stairs it was that was very very impressive walking into their common area and being actually able to look out have natural light and see the mountains beautiful what a beautiful job they did and i think everybody knows my partiality towards uh hillcrest what a great addition to the community also last uh before that i'm trying to even remember what day it was i think it was thursday we had an invitation to go for the meet and greet at our neighborhood elementary school and my wife had never been in mid valley before that is an awesome

246floor plan for an elementary and as we walk through there uh we could not have been treated better by the faculty and the staff uh jim shealy who who's been the prince or the principal should be maybe the custodian for 30-plus years uh has taken ownership of the old building and he is absolutely in love with the new building he wanted to make sure we saw all the fine details of what goes on in the school and as we walked from classroom to classroom the teachers were most gracious to welcome us in uh and tell us what they're doing what what what big plans they have chris having been a special ed teacher for a full career as we'd walk into the classrooms she'd take over the conversation i had the feeling of time that

247i was just another pretty face and then i looked in the mirror and decided that wasn't true so um it is just amazing in a little over 12 years what we've been able to accomplish not only with the physical aspect of the buildings and the improvements that have taken place there but i feel like we have as good a group of teachers district-wide as we've ever had you've heard me say it before the classroom is where the rubber meets the road and it was really fun to talk to the teachers and see how excited they are to be there how much they're hoping for to return to normal in the classroom and i do believe that the support to make the magic happen in the classroom starts at the district they appreciate very much that

248the people at the district listen to them and what they what they are thinking that the ideas are coming not talked down but bottom up and talk down to where it's a collaborative effort to make our schools better so i really appreciate the feeling that i got just chatting with the teachers on that so here's to another 12. oh thank you and uh i just had wanted to share a couple of thoughts and thank you all for your thoughts and and it has been a pretty amazing time this last little while but as as i was attending those high school ribbon cutting i i've been thinking a lot about legacy and how what was what was accomplished which i'm sure when those original buildings were built it was just as big of an effort and

249as big of an investment by the community and over time what happened in those the magic that happened in those classrooms built up a legacy and has has strengthened and helped our community over the years and that now is kind of our day that we're making another investment into continuing those legacies and i and it's not just that the high schools the high schools are kind of the the flagships in our communities but there are the middle schools and the elementary schools that feed into them and and by by raising expectations raising support all of those things that kenyan's district is about it truly is increasing and improving opportunity and accomplishment throughout the district and but with that being said and it's it's such a nice thing to think about but you know it's just

250another step on the ladder that we're on and so i i'm excited to be working alongside with each of you here on the board as well as the district administration and to be a part of this the amazing legacy that canyon's district is building and so just to share those thoughts with my appreciation for each of you and all that happens every day throughout the district so if there are no other items or comments i will declare the meeting adjourned i'll give you permission to leave before 10 pm yes