GBAPSD Board of Education Meeting: February 14, 2022

001the views and opinions in this program are not those of cesa 7 or spectrum [Music] all right good evening everyone welcome to our regular board meeting uh on monday february 14th we will start the board meeting with roll call beth if you could help us with that please becker here smith here leighton and warren here mccoy here warren here abandoned hoover here welch here right all seven board members are present uh we will start our meeting tonight looking for a motion to move into closed session i move that the board convenient closed session pursuant to wisconsin statute 19.851 a and f considering financial medical social or personal histories or disciplinary data of specific persons preliminary considerations of specific personnel problems or the investigation of charges against specific persons except where part b applies which if

002discussed in public would probably have a substantial adverse effect upon the reputation of any person referred to in such histories or data are involved in such problems or investigations to wit for the purpose of holding hearings under wisconsin statute 21.13 1 c and e 3 and pursuant to wisconsin statute 19.851 e deliberating or negotiating the purchase of public properties the investing of public funds or conducting other specific public business whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a closed session more specifically to with negotiation a collective bargaining agreements pursuant to wisconsin statute 19.851 c considering employment promotion compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility to wit employee compensation second discussion all right bet smith hi welch hi leighton and warren i becker hi warren hi

003mccoy aye vandenheuvel hi all right good evening everyone uh we're reconvening an open session at that when we met at four o'clock we took roll call all seven board members are present i will point out that we are now joined by our superintendent steve marley along with members of his team we also have two representatives from the inner city student council joining us tonight both from preble high school emily kopp and ian hobby so thank you emily and ian for joining us tonight um next on the agenda is the pledge of allegiance please stand i pledge allegiance all right and next is our mission statement which will be read tonight by mr andrew becker we educate all students to be college career and community ready inspired to succeed in our diverse world thank you andrew

004moving on to item three our open forum and we will start some that off with our inner city student council report emily and ian i'll hand it over to you thank you um for the icsc report uh this meeting we just have a bit of good news so from east we have news that this year's musical will be almost maine and auditions are being held next week east show choir rhapsody in red placed eighth in the homestead show choir classic in fort wayne indiana which is the largest show choir competition in the united states so that's really exciting four students qualified for the state fbla competition from east and that's to be held in march senior ryan sweeney became the all-time leading scorer in east boys basketball history with over one thousand one thousand one

005thousand one hundred seventy nine career points um and broke the previous record that was set in 1969 from preble we have students alex yang brady deal and david torres advancing to the sectional wrestling competition seven student students qualified for state fbla competition to be held in march there was an athletic signing where four students signed to continue their athletic careers at the college level preble center stage show choir made it to finals in their last three show choir competitions and placed second third and fifth in their division and previous hosting a cornhole tournament this friday and we also just had a talent show with 67 students um participating in it and there's a really good turnout from southwest the southwest swimmers sam berg and isaiah neal will be moving on to the state swim competition

006for gbu swimming three students qualified for the state hosa competition after the regional competition just recently and this past friday was the opening night for this year's musical mamma mia and i know that they're going to be performing again uh this upcoming weekend from west they had a snowmobile dance this past saturday affiliate sold treats for valentine's day which featured treats like orange crush soda for your crush and aiden vanus played placed third in public speaking for fbla and will be moving on to the state competition in march so that's all for icsc great thank you so much uh emily ian i want to remind you that uh during any of our discussions tonight to encourage you to participate if you have anything you'd like to add or any specific questions turn your camera on

007uh raise your hand and we'll make sure to integrate you into the conversation so thank you all right moving on to the public forum um we have six people that are registered tonight uh just as a reminder if you're interested in speaking to the board and addressing comments you can register to sign up on our board website when people register to speak we take the calls in the order in which the requests come due to the nature of our agenda tonight and the number of speakers that we have we will ask speakers to keep their comments to five minutes um and i think that's it so uh josh you can be able to pull them up for us uh just as a reminder as well uh when people register to speak and give their comments

008to the board because the items that they're speaking to may not be directly on the agenda we're not able to respond to speakers comments so comments are made any direct questions um we can address after the board so all right we're all set marsha's there all right marcia thanks so much for calling if you could start by giving us your name and address and then you have five minutes okay my name is marsha walls and i live at 3032 joy lane green bay wisconsin five four three one one as a woman with her inalienable rights fully intact at a public meeting i am not subject to the rules and regulations of your board so time limits mean nothing to me although i will try and stay within the five minutes allotted i assure you not

009hearing what i have to say will be extremely detrimental to both your official public position but also to you as an individual capacity what i have in my hands today if filed will negate the immunity your protection carries under many conditions and can lead to a substantial personal financial loss i assure you this will be worth your time to know let me make this lounge clear if you cut me off i will automatically move forward with filing the claim and start the process for criminal charges first and foremost it saddens me that i'm speaking to you tonight i along with many parents have tried to communicate our wishes in regards to the cobit protocols you have implemented and the harm it's done to our children there has been virtually no communication with parents addressing concerns

010we have made phone calls left voice messages and send emails most of which end up unanswered that brings us to where we are tonight the board members should already have received a packet of paper putting them on notice to either make changes immediately or i will file a claim on their surety or e and o bond let's start with the bands as that's the most important part i'm going to give you until friday at 5 00 pm to meet the following demands however i demand that the first one be dealt with tonight all coveted policies and procedures including masking isolation quarantining pcr testing self-screening questionnaire and social distancing to be ended immediately i require a vote on it tonight stop all forms of harassment and coercion related to colbin 19. teachers and other district employees

011and staff need to stop talking about masking and vaccines and killing grandma etc this is a personal decision and it should be up to the parents to choose what is best for their children again friday's deadline there will be no future vaccine clinics on school grounds if that happens to be in the works again friday deadline peace coercion and pushing crt transgender gay rights week or month and demanding children to declare if they are transgender to participate in any school activities friday deadline remove all obscene books and materials from the public school system by the start of the 2023 2022-2023 school year in other words create a committee which includes parents librarians and counselors making the recommendations so they can work on this between now and the start of next school year all board and

012committee meetings must allow for personal public participation no more zoom call participation friday deadline remove all biological boys from girls locker rooms bathrooms and sports and vice versa frame of all biological girls from the boys locker rooms bathrooms and sports friday deadline immediate termination of superintendent stephen murley friday deadline immediate resignation of all school members by friday february 18th if this mandate does not stop tonight the legal process will move forward with myself and the parents who i will assist the line is now drawn either stand down or prepare for the ramifications that will be brought to bear against you i personally assure you i am not an attorney and therefore i am not bound to their procedures and rules i am able to do things they are not they will not they will often

013be powerless against my legal actions as a woman with her inalienable rights intact the wheels of justice will be brought to bear on you in ways you cannot even imagine it must all stop tonight for those listening and don't know what's going on i'll quickly fill you in the board has broken at least two state laws 10 federal laws and six international laws each board member has the documentation in front of them they are public officials who have taken an office office and are bonded and insured they have violated their oath of office to uphold the u.s constitution and the wisconsin state constitution therefore i have decided to file a claim against the bond company for 2 million do i have your attention yet think of a snowball rolling down the hill and growing larger

014at the farther it rolls i might be alone on this one step tonight but i assure you there are many parents listening to this tonight wanting to understand what i'm doing and how i will gladly share all this information with them to move forward with their own claims in addition if this doesn't may in state and federal court i probably only have a few minutes left so in fairness i want you to have the power to correct your mistakes by making the changes i stated up front the same ones listed in your paperwork however a vote on covet policies must be made tonight the other demands must be met by friday with the exception of the ups and books that must be started so that it can be done by 2022 school year start as

015clint eastwood once said are you feeling lucky punk will you do the right thing according to your constitution will you what say you the choice is yours choose wisely thank you all right thanks marsha josh got the next person queued up sean can you hear me yes i can hear you great thanks so much for calling if you could start by introducing yourself and giving us your address and then you'll have five minutes to make your comments thank you uh yeah my name is sean i'm at 614 mather street green bay wisconsin thank you for taking my call today i just want to express the fact that we all know that koben is here to stay with us there's no way around that the decision to decide whether our kids should wear a mask is

016one for the parents to decide not the school board we know what's best for our kids the metrics that were set in place are not achievable i worry about those kids including my own that have significant speech delay and how this would further delay their progress another reason for the math to be optional is that other districts in this county have proven uh mass optional works to sum it up we are the parents we know what's best for our kids and i don't need the school board or anybody else telling us what is best for our kids again i just ask that you guys listen to our requests and really take them to heart i thank you for taking the time to listen to my viewpoints sean thanks a lot for calling tonight we appreciate

017it thank you martin can you hear me perfect thank you so much for calling tonight if you could start by introducing yourself and uh giving us your address you then have five minutes to address the board my name is martin weber and um she doesn't have to go through with what she is uh sad but we'll see but the main reason i want to call is martin we're having a hard time hearing you're breaking up a little bit i'm sorry yeah this is my cell phone uh can you hear me okay yeah it just got a little bit better okay how about now yep that sounds good okay no i was just saying i believe that it is time now for mass to be made optional we are the only district in the county and

018probably one of the few districts in the state that are mass mandatory there's no reason for it i've submitted to you all countless data that have stated that mass do [Music] little to nothing the pandemic is on the downswing and it's ridiculous that kids who are the least at-risk population have to wear mass when everybody else is going around without masks um if you watch the super bowl last night out in la where they have a mask mandate they show nobody was wearing a mask including garcetti the mayor of the the uh city of los angeles i mean it's just it's a joke this is nothing but virtue signaling and and you mentioned you cannot answer any questions during the phone calls i would like you to answer my question here why is it that

019you are still in a mask mandate mode i mean do you not follow the science i i just don't get it and it there this is so unfair to the kids especially kids that are you know in kindergarten through fifth grade where they're missing out on all that developmental um i'm losing my train of thought here but they're they're they're it's hurting them significantly and it's just time that you know you go to optional and let parents decide because it's just it's not right thank you for calling martin we appreciate it hello hi katie can you hear us yeah i can hear you thank you so much for calling if you could start by giving us your name and address and then you have five minutes to make your comments let me just put john

020speaker thank you all right can you hear me okay yep you sound great all right let me know when you'd like me to start go ahead great my name is kathy saherski and i live on warm springs drive 54311 i'm going to start off with a lack of face-to-face engagement with parents starting with your monthly board meetings why do these meetings continue to be virtual why are parents students in the community not allowed to attend these meetings in person yet the district can schedule community engagement sessions coming up for friday excuse me february the 28th and march 2nd and most recently you had a two-hour meeting february 8th at the district office where we as parents community and students aren't allowed to go in for board meetings how is that not an absolute lack of

021common sense we call and email the board and get zero response from you guys for example i'm still waiting for eric vandenheuvel and i quote to get back to me unquote from the july 26 2021 board meeting when i spoke at which he stated he would reach out to me since you have emailed and asked us let's talk about all these esther funds you guys are receiving these funds need to be used for every single student in the in the district i'd recommend you start hiring more mental health professionals and teacher aides with a lucrative bonus as you're going to need them in the coming months and years ahead get your teachers some help your teaching staff is overworked and underpaid for what this district is subject subjecting them to how many students are now

022suffering from mental illness anxiety and have suicidal thoughts regarding the trauma they have endured with school closing masking enforcement quarantining isolation protocols excessive pcr testing for healthy children i have witnessed firsthand being in the schools at many school related events as well and i believe these measures have have created a generation of walking zombies they're afraid to do anything for fear of repercussions this is all in the name of health and safety for a virus that has a 99.96 survival rate overall i may not have a science degree nor medical license and as i've been told that over and over trust the science trust the professionals but i know i will trust my common sense as a parent and a grown adult and the ability to know right from wrong every single surrounding school in

023and around green bay ashwagandha and de pere and many across the state and the country have dropped their mass mandates mandates yet our district continues to operate in fear all in the name of health and safety and our students are suffering green bay area public schools should be a leader as the largest district in the area instead we've been shut out of meetings ignored disregarded when we email and call and literally have been told we have no rights nor the proper education to know what is best for our own kids enough is enough i've spent several days reading about the oath of office that every one of you took our rights according to certain wisconsin statues and federal laws are not being followed i suggest each one of you read up on these statues and

024laws because as elected officials you have failed to uphold your oath we are close to two years from when this virus began and you have left us no no choice as parents to move forward with potential claims against your surety bonds i would like all of you on the board members member to stop and consider for one second what do you expect us parents to do we can't get into the meetings and you don't respond to our calls and emails what are we supposed to do you need to vote to make green bay mass optional and put an end to these covet protocols i also agree with everything marsha said and martin thank you and i appreciate your time thanks for calling kathy good evening heidi can you hear me i can can you hear

025me yep all set if you could start by uh giving us your name and address and then you have five minutes to make your comments okay thank you eric my name is heidi pede and i'm at 1611 royal crown court green bay 54313 good evening first of all i want to express how disappointed i am that someone has had to file a complaint against your shorty bond to get you to listen no one wants to take the time and energy to do that but you've left people with no other option you continue to ignore the very people that elected you and you are supposed to represent you continue to ignore emails and not respond you continue to be inaccessible with these board meetings by only allowing us to call in as elected officials each and

026every one of you should be answering every single email even for the most mundane and simplest responses these board meetings should be in person the hypocrisy and inconsistencies of this district is amazing it does not go unnoticed that you allow a pto networking meeting to be held there at the district office last week but yet we can't come there for board meetings dbas is failing let me repeat that g baps is failing we remain the only district in the county to mandate math behavioral issues are at an all-time high academic performance is behind kids are stressed teachers are stressed job satisfaction is at an all-time low you're losing teachers you're losing students and you're losing good families but yet you continue with the smoke and mirrors you state the reason for the decline in enrollment

027is because of the decreased birth rate if this is the case then why is an enrollment declining across the board in all districts why only gbap in fact enrollment has increased for several districts in and around brown county they are busting at the seams with open enrollment requests are you really that blind to what's going on families are leaving left and right i just heard of a family today that has decided to school choice to denmark and i keep hearing of more and more and to be honest if my kids weren't high school age we'd be out too t-bath is thinking and it's because of this board and mr murley's poor leadership we are no longer in a pandemic covet is here to stay and everyone is moving on except gbap you continue with these

028absurd covet policies without an ounce of current up-to-date scientific evidence you continue to put the burden entirely on our kids for numbers and measures associated with an entire county you arbitrarily pick numbers to determine thresholds again where is the evidence that supports this and says if we get below 100 then it's safe and who are you to determine what is safe who are these vellum doctors that you consult even the medical community doesn't fully agree on agree on some of these issues did you get a second opinion did you try talking to a doctor that thinks math should be optional i'm guessing not your previous consultant dr sherry hoyman has lost a significant a significant amount of credibility with a lot of people she spoke at the december 13th board meeting and went on and

029on about why we should be masking that hospitals and icus were full and overburdened in stress and masking saves lives did you know she was out socializing three days prior without math and it was posted on facebook seems quite the opposite to what she was preaching it is time for all the coded policies to end make masking optional you are starting to have bigger problems than just coven now and these are problems that continue to compound and will take years to solve your actions are now negligent the consequences are becoming greater and you are going to have to answer again we have out of control behaviors declining academics teacher and sub shortages shortages kids complying with the optics of mask wearing even though the masks are down on their chins we even have kids in

030the schools dressing up as cats and dogs with furries and tails meowing and barking because that's what they identify as what is going on in our schools mr murley you keep referring to g bass as being one of the fab fives trust me this isn't an honor of distinction madison public schools are failing as well i absolutely support marsha walls and her action to file a complaint with your bonds and i have no doubt other parents will follow suit time is up we need a change and the only way to do that is for mr murley to be terminated and for every member of this board to resign we need reasonable and sensible people to get us back on track restore trust improve engagement and make students and parents proud to be a part of

031green bay area public schools again thank you all right thanks heidi uh moving on to oh we have one more call i apologize [Music] daniel can you hear me sure good evening daniel can you hear me yes i can hear you perfect if you could start by introducing yourself and giving us your address and then you have five minutes to make your comments okay great thank you i'm dr daniel koster i live at 1266 washington street in wrightstown i'm the president of physicians for freedom a newly formed group of doctors and non-docs with the mission of promoting fact-based rational and respectful debate of issues i'm totally independent i'm not representing any health care system with no ties to government pharmaceutical insurance entities studied the scientific literature on many aspects of covet including masking and i've

032concluded that mandated mass do more harm than good to our children they do virtually nothing to stop the aerosol spread of covet particles we know that's the main way covet is transmitted covet particle is 125 nanometers in size and the very best n95 mask properly worn filters only down to 300 nanometers that's like trying to stop a golf ball with a fence big enough to allow softball to pass through it the cloth or paper masks most people wear are more like hoping your chain link fence keeps out mosquitoes they do offer some benefit at stopping large droplets which is why we cover our cough or try not to sneeze in someone else's face when we have symptoms but most of the coveted spread is not done this way so the masks are not effective as

033far as masks causing harm we've heard of some examples of that here tonight it adversely affects language development increases anxiety depression and other mental health problems i'm confident about this science but the problem for most folks is knowing who to believe some experts say one thing others say the opposite and after an endless back and forth how do you know who's right how do we find the truth when experts disagree this is a much more serious problem than just masked mandates we have a crisis of credibility in this country with people trusting less and less the authorities that politicize all kinds of things not just covet trust in the cdc and anthony fauci and other leaders is slow and falling the usual easy way to find the truth believing in authority doesn't work when we

034don't trust them so we need to restore that trust you don't restore trust and authority by shutting down debate you don't find the truth via mandates in fact if you ever want a good test of who's telling the truth it's not the side doing the censoring or coercion fortunately the way to restore truth is the same way to find truth we need to encourage skepticism and challenging authority we need to encourage respectful debate in this common search for truth scientific discovery only takes place at the unknown it can be very difficult to know what's true which choice to make but when it comes to your own medical decisions each individual should make his or her own determination along with the counsel of a trusted physician that is our sacred right one more thing i hope

035everyone will agree with anyone who imposes a mandate that takes away an individual's freedom should assume the burden of proving beyond any doubt that the mandate brings far more benefit than harm anyone who wants to can wear a mask and anyone who's sick should stay home from school but with no clear scientific consensus on masks you have no right to limit the freedom of others with mandates if there's one thing science has proven conclusively over time it's that limiting freedom causes deep and enduring harm thank you for your attention thank you for calling in daniel we appreciate it all right uh moving on to the consent agenda first are there any items on the consent agenda that anyone would like to remove for discussion andrew um i'd like to remove c and h i have

036no objections i just request so i suppose some questions perfect all right item c and h will be moved to item number five is there a motion to approve the consent agenda minus those items so moved second all in favor hi opposed all right um then let's go to five and andrew i'll hand it over to you to [Music] any questions you have about letter c um no i just i think it's significant enough that it should have a separate roll call vote i'm happy with what our public district instrumentality charter schools are are doing and they're doing a great job i move approval of item c charter schools mid-year report for the 2021-2022 school year second beth do you want to do a voice vote on that okay mccoy hi leighton and warren i

037welch hi brandon hoovel hi becker aye warren i all right motion carries 7-0 and then andrew letter h the zoom phone hardware installation um i'll move approval of item as listed second any further discussion i guess we could just get a brief just a brief summary of the the hardware because where it's a pretty substantial i know the cost is covered but it's um it's a fairly substantial change and involves some new equipment i'm sure it's absolutely josh is with us to do that thanks josh sorry steve um yeah absolutely about well um in the december board meeting the the board approved um licenses for zoom phones um that covers the software this is kind of this is the handset that goes along um with that solution um so we solicited bids um it's a

038little easier buying the physical phones for the zoom solution because it is kind of phone agnostic um the existing phones that we have do only work with the mitel system so we weren't able to repurpose those phones so um at the time the board approved those licenses on that seven year contract in december i said i would be back um with some hardware and and this is that hardware so this is mostly um handsets on desks there's there are a few other little pieces of equipment and then also the labor for placing installing unboxing all of that kind of thing this is not the sort of project we'd be able to undertake on our own we have to contract that out um because the the department that runs phones is only two people so you

039can imagine how long it would take to swap out 3 000 phones across 45 buildings josh can you just give us a brief overview of how these will be used how this will improve our ability to do zoom and we'll be using them sure um number one one thing that we found i'll make two primary points here there are a number of technical details we could go into that i don't think the board is necessarily interested in the first point is that when we when we went to remote work our phone system proved to be inadequate you know i couldn't couldn't answer my phone from my house right it was just ringing on my desk and had to forward it to my cell phone and things like that so this does allow employees to access

040their their work phone anywhere they have access to the internet including on their on their own cell phones so um that is one advantage the second advantage is something we discovered over the course of um of remote learning and that is that our parents and our students are much more likely to respond to a text message communication than they are to respond to an email to answer a phone call to return a voicemail um we we see very high engagement with text messages and that is something that is not possible on our current platform so if our teachers want to send text messages to their parents they have to use their own cell phone numbers and there are a number of reasons why you wouldn't want to give out your personal cell phone number so

041those are the the two main points thank you any other questions all right beth we're set to vote clayton and warren i welch hi smith hi becker hi mccoy hi warren aye mandenhubel hi all right motion carries 7-0 uh moving on then to committee meeting reports we'll start with our education meeting and i'll hand it back to andrew all right thank you our education committee meeting we were talking about uh college career college and career pathways uh we highlighted um we highlighted quite a few things that we're doing with the growing uh growing number of kids able to earn college credit with 88 courses offered with opportunities for college credit more and more industry certifications post-secondary credentials college associates degrees that you can get right within a green bay schools program we had i would

042say quite a bit of our time was talked about talking about the development of a bilingual and world language pathway that we are building towards leading to a dpi seal of bi-literacy which is a certification that is very um very difficult to earn and it shows that a district is doing an excellent job with our with our bi-literacy programs um many this is not the kind of thing that districts just um fill out a form and automatically get there are rigorous requirements but it um it sounds like we're getting relatively close to completing those approvals and that'll be a unique thing that green bay can offer that many of our many of our neighbors do not at this time and going forward um creating setting up a create your own pathways so as if you're

043looking for something that's not on exactly on one of the lists if you're looking for some kind of combination of two things can we help you find the right things that include as appropriate industry or post-secondary credits as part of that members have anything to add yeah i've mentioned this at the committee meeting but um this has been something that i've followed along from start to where we are today as part of being on the board and i just think it's um really exciting the progress that we've made from from the beginning conversations that were have that we were having and i think it's just and the um the uh the way they're communicating that i think with the infographics for each of the departments i think helps students kind of see pathways of why

044this class they're taking now might be pertinent to something they're interested in the future i also think it's a great opportunity for students who think they are interested in an area and they take two or three of these courses and then just after time find out that that's not what they're interested in rather than going to college taking those classes having to pay for them and then starting over and you know taking an extra year of college to finish your major it's um uh you know that that's another advantage i think um and it's also a uh the tracks are the career pathways are not um locked in stone where students are signing up and you know like in college you have to take all the classes in your major they're allowed to sample from

045various ones and things so i really think this provides a great opportunity for for our students and i'm glad to see we're continuing to add more and more areas like the bi-literacy certification that's coming up next you have anything nancy i was going to just talk about the flexibility but brenda really did a nice job with that that you if you decide on something there's still room to move around you're not locked in all right um if there's any other questions for the committee all right that would conclude the education for me report great thank you andrew uh then we'll move on to the policy and governance committee and update will be coming from the chair laura leighton and warren yes so the policy governance committee met after our last special meeting on the 24th

046of january and at that time we discussed that we'll be bringing forward tonight our recommendations from the committee on the adjustments to the student dress code and um we actually made the decision to move the discussion items to the meeting um later this month actually next week um so we just wanted i i wanted it was it was already a very long night and also i wanted to allow a little bit more time for feedback and to be able to read those items over that we're going to discuss for next week so um the update policy will be coming up for a vote shortly for the dress code discussion you have any questions nope i don't think so i obviously will have probably a more discussion of policy comes up later on the agenda so

047all right um moving on then our agenda number seven is a discussion with uh the ability to take potential action uh and that is staff pandemic support just as a quick reminder this stems from a conversation that was actually had in our december board meeting as a way to find ways to provide support to our staff during what has surely been a trying few years public education is certainly not immune to that we sent out a survey to gather some feedback that was then brought to us in january had a pretty lengthy discussion about uh making some adjustments to assessments and also to uh adding some flexibility or reinforcing some flexibility in the school day um in terms of contract and work time um so steve i i think do you want me to hand

048this to you for a just kind of a quick summary or do you yep all right that sounds good all right so when you look at the board docs and you look at the content there there are really four issues that uh came up uh as part of that conversation that eric just talked about back in january at the board meeting uh two of them revolved around the opportunity to pursue waivers from the wisconsin department of public instruction so connected to the board agenda item are both the application process for that with the dpi and then some additional compliance information that they have on their website i know two of the issues that came up as part of that conversation i one focused on educator effectiveness and that is the process the six-part process that

049we follow uh from the dpi uh that has to deal with uh staff by orientation uh introduction uh and the evaluation cycle for them uh and then another one was hours and minutes of instruction uh and so at this point in time i just wanted to i guess let the board know that we have been um following the ee the educator effectiveness processes since the start of the school year those are in place at this point in time uh and we also have blocked out hours and minutes of instruction that would allow us allow us to comply with the regular dpi requirements that are currently in place as they have been in other previous regular uh school years i the uh we had the opportunity to have further conversation with the department of public instruction

050they've indicated that the waiver process is still open actually remains open through the end of the school year uh so there's latitude for boards to determine if and when they would like to apply for those waivers i in addition to that there was conversation about the role of the early release days uh and so we've provided you the three days that are currently scheduled for early release uh one of the questions that came up during that conversation was uh whether we could i use those as on-site workdays for staff uh and delay any professional development that was scheduled uh for that time i and in conversation with members of the team they said yes that's something they can do there was a request we are currently uh working on completing the first year of a

051set of professional development modules on culturally and linguistically responsive teaching i unfortunately we started that in the 1920 school year that was cut short by the pandemic start i we put it on pause last year picked it up this year and their request was to allow 60 minutes on each of those days for the completion of the final three modules uh and then the last one was on assessment i and you'll see connected to this particular agenda item both a memo with an explanation and then a subsequent assessment spreadsheet the memo is designed to provide an overview of the work done to date i and then that assessment spreadsheet is color coded to indicate assessments that have already been completed so that process is done for the school year those are in gray a set

052of assessments that are in yellow which indicate that the team would like to propose pausing those for the remainder of the school year and then in green there's two sets of assessments one are those that are required by the federal or state government and then those that have a discretionary authority that comes from the district you'll note that those may indicate that they are originated at the district level either built or the building level or via the principal and then those that are required by the dpi i have that indication in those final two columns so that's a a relatively quick overview of the information that was requested by the board at the january meeting we have quite a few members of our teaching and learning team that are available to assist in answering questions

053um also in regards to the waivers melissa is available to assist with that so we would certainly welcome a discussion from the board and be available to answer any questions that you might have all right uh we'll hand back to the board uh discussions reactions feedback with regard to the information that steve has provided i don't know if we want to take it topic by topic or just leave it open-ended go ahead andrew okay so if the word in the governance column is state or federal does that mean that like how do we know which ones are if if we we said that if um if certain conditions exist that those aren't suspended if they are state requirements so does that mean if no if no action was taken the assessments are all suspended it

054wasn't it wasn't the postponement of a vote they are suspended tomorrow except for uh if it had uh financial implications i believe so is it all of the ones in green that even if no action was taken would would resume or is it only if it's in green and there's a bold citation of a requirement in there thanks for asking that andrew that's a great question so if you'll recall in january what the board said was that we would continue all federal uh and state uh required uh assessments uh and those that carried with them a a financial issue so for instance if you're looking at kindergarten um you'd see on there that there are two assessments that indicated that they are state and then it says hyphen agr uh and uh that is the

055program that allows us uh to uh lower our class sizes we have approximately a five billion dollar grant connected to that uh from the department of public instruction uh and then underneath that is one that says uh district uh part of curriculum and the monitoring agency is the building principle i so that motion that came forward from the board was that i we would continue with those that are state or federally mandated and or connected to uh programs that have dollars coming to the district i as a result of those assessments are tied to those assessments other assessments that are discretionary uh we were required to come back to the board and seek permission to continue those okay so if it says column if column three says state or federal then it would continue because

056the motion did not cover it correct if it did not say state or federal then it would be suspended because we said we're suspending everything that isn't a state or a federal so therefore there's many things that you're not requesting to take off of the the pause but there are a few of them elementary math end of your assessment for example that is a district requirement yet it's in green because you want to continue it and in my opinion in my individual opinion i think it's a it's a essentially a course work it's a coursework assessment anyways i just wanted to make sure that it was um it was clear about that so there's um not not too many of these then really that are you're asking for a change that's correct and and again

057i appreciate the clarification there on your part um so those for instance that are in yellow uh those would not be done yet but uh those are assessments for which we're not requesting uh that the board considered continuing those or simply placing those on pause for the remainder of the year if it helps eric if you want to walk through them i perhaps maybe in the order that they're presented on there and then if you've got specific questions on those for instance dpi waivers i either myself or maybe vicky or melissa might be able to answer those for you and then uh we can move on from there yeah i mean i would just say that i mean these this were presented to us several days ago i don't know that we need to go

058through one by one as andrews pointed out there are very few that uh wouldn't fit into the motion that either you know the team already said that they they would pause the administration of uh elementary math assessment i believe is one that i saw and then there's a phi ed one physical education fitness testing um so i don't know if there's anything else on the assessments or is every if this is the plan that's in place we certainly don't need to take any specific action here if this is the plan i think we do because the elementary math end of your assessment i think would be suspended and the so would the physical fitness at the schools that don't have play 60 although you're not doing them at the schools that have places that don't

059have play 60 so there's i mean it's a gray area because it's not federal or state money involved so we should probably make a motion to it it means it it means something that we as a board paused the assessments and the administration had to come back that is uh it might not seem like one because they there's generally agreement but it it does mean something that the board said that and so there has to be i think a motion to for the ones that are being put back because otherwise they're suspended tomorrow right i don't know what there is besides yeah besides the um elementary math elementary math end of year and there's some high school ones of course exams starting actually seventh sixth grade oh yeah the science math and social studies interim

060and those were paused fall and winter so this would be the one and only time the sixth through twelfth graders would take that yeah i think i think there's a reasonable case that those are those are pretty close to coursework requirements if they aren't completely they're you know they're coursework related i think what we heard a lot of from teachers you know we hear very little about coursework assessments and it was you have to teach all this curriculum and you have to do this letter number identification thing and it doesn't take you know we heard and it's it may say in a book that it takes two minutes per kid to uh to do and in the real world it just strong teachers take more than two minutes to do them so um i suppose

061we could though if we i think we had a i think a motion to except the spreadsheet as presented i think would cover it once i'm missing something because they all say if they'll be paused or continued and almost all the ones continued have do you want to make that motion andrew um sure i'll move that the that the [Music] um assessment uh the assessment plan is detailed in the assessment attached assessment spreadsheet um be approved as presented second any further discussion um one of the uh there's only one left for the for this year it looks like but um one of the assessments that we heard from a number of teachers that is the most time consuming is the number quarter assessment and i'm just wondering if and i know we lose revenue if

062it's suspended and it doesn't sound like there's a an option to to remove that but i'm just wondering and you probably have already done this and looked at it but if there's a way to relieve some of that burden for teachers whether it's i mean i've i've not seen that assessment be given um but are there um um you know can we have people that are trained that you know they can then do the number corner or is it one of those assessments what really needs to be done by the classroom teacher um i'm just throwing out questions because like i said i i've not watched this assessment um uh get done if you know in a classroom so that was just a thought i had um looking at this list because it looks like

063you know a lot of the the ones in yellow have all been suspended um i thank the team for you know for coming up with the ones they felt could be suspended and honor their request for the other ones that uh um that they're asking us to continue for this year so i'd turn to vicky in the teaching and learning team for a response to brenda's inquiry i see nancy's got her camera on nancy yep thank you steve and actually i'm going to ask angie lacombe who oversees this in our department uh to light up there um and angie would you please uh address the number coroner assessment where it's found in our curriculum and the purpose for administration thank you yeah thanks so much and thanks for the great question i know number corner

064is one of the assessments that um we have heard teachers talking about um and i i just want to explain a little bit about it so as you can see it's given a few times throughout the year this is actually a course assessment this is given during their actual number corner time so each day teachers have 20 minutes during their day where they're teaching something called number corner and this involves different workouts that the students work on during the during the month that the number corner assessment is scheduled it's actually it takes the place of the instruction during that day and and that's actually a really bad way to say it because it doesn't take the place of instruction it's actually an opportunity for students to show what they know and teachers to be able

065to mill around the room and interact with students if anyone is curious in the future we do have a brilliant teacher who has allowed us to record her um her assessment processes that she's used with students during number corner so i know you mentioned you hadn't seen it before um we do have a video of her in action doing that um and so it is actually given during the the school day and allotted for on their monthly calendar so if it was removed um teachers would have two days that would have no lesson plans for them on that day because it is built into their course work additionally we use that to make decisions about how students are progressing throughout the year at all levels throughout our system and so i i find it to

066be a very essential conversation and i see schools using that information as well so probably given you a little more than what you wanted to know but um i could probably talk for ages about the benefits of of these types of assessments thank you go ahead beth i'm done sorry um and i'm just looking so the elementary math end of your assessment it says it replaces the last number corner assessment so if we didn't do the elementary math end of your assessment we would have we'd have two more number corner assessments to do is that correct yeah so if i could just provide a little background on that particular assessment um what happened last year and then the previous year was that teachers had come to the math team that i supervised and they asked

067us to create an assessment that would replace the may number corner because they were finding that the may number corner did not give them the information they needed to be able to show growth for students over the course of the year so what we did was we created an assessment based on what the teachers wanted that showed just the most important skills for um students in math in that grade level so what that means is that at the beginning of the years teachers are able to look at the first number corner assessment that they've given and the second one in october and then be able to report to parents on the report card to show how much growth the student has made throughout the year in the most important skills of that grade level so

068it actually was a replacement but we asked them um to still give it during the allotted time that they would the may number corner so again in the may number corner in may they'll be two months on their two days i'm sorry on their calendar that say administer the number corner assessment part one and then administer the assessment part two and so what they would do during that those two days would be to give the end-of-year assessment which again was um teacher-driven so you're giving the number corner actual number corner three times a year and then the elementary end of your assessment replaces that fourth time uh we give it five times a year because there's a baseline in october january which we just gave and then march so in place of the fifth one

069which would be may we give the end of year one and they have um yeah that's four times so september october oh we've missed september i'm sorry i think i refer to it as baseline but that that's my terminology and september october january march and may right so september actually assesses the previous year's understanding so it gives teachers an understanding of where students are at from the previous year so it assesses if they're a third grade student it actually assesses second grade skills so that teachers can get a jump start on being able to close any gaps if they're there october is the first one that assesses their skills from this the actual year that they're in and again these are all built into their daily coursework so if you would look at their plan

070for um may in number corner it's laid out day one day two day three day four day five and so like days usually days 20 and days 22 or somewhere in that area are designated number corner assessment days that are built into their daily schedule of that 20 minutes can i just ask if any classroom teachers were consulted as you went through and determined what assessments you wanted to move forward with yeah thanks for asking we actually met with several teacher groups nancy facilitated one with we had an existing we still have an existing bilingual task force so we pulled in those teachers and then andrea also has an active assessment elementary assessment work group so we consulted with them all right so we have a motion to accept the assessment spreadsheet as presented we

071have a second any further discussion laura and then yep i see you nancy we'll go to laura and then nancy just more of a comment i really appreciate i know i can imagine this took a lot of time and there's a lot of detail it's really laying everything out so i know this is really helpful to be able to see this and go through it and and understand even better than um before and so i really appreciate the work that went into this go ahead nancy [Music] oh you're on mute sorry i was wondering if there was something about how they have to put the assessment of this math thing into computers or something was there something that was difficult for the teachers um i guess that i would i mean that that's really the

072teacher the teacher preference right um however i can say that i've administered the assessment and i've entered it into teaser myself as well as the five team members that i work with are in schools every day and missionary assessments and putting them into tsar we do not find it to be difficult as a as a former classroom teacher and knowing many of the teachers i work with i used to go through the assessment and then i would on my piece of paper that i created myself i would jot down the score and then i would go through and i would manually highlight the students that i needed to work with in small groups when i entered into tsar now i just click in the numbers and then it automatically highlights for me the students who

073need specific support and specific strategies and so as a teacher i can quickly see the color coding so for me it's more efficient but again i was in the i was in the classroom designing my own things um and so i those of us who are teachers who used to have to make our own spreadsheets i'm very thankful for it um but there is a learning curve of course with any piece of technology i know that my math team is always on hand to support any teachers who need help learning tsar or helping to figure out how to facilitate that in the classroom so we can definitely offer that support we are in all schools and willing and ready to help andrew um could i just hear a little bit more about the the um

074interim assessments and how how those are set up and how they're used i think we because we cut uh we i think it's clear that we took um quite a bit of the assessment load off the hands of of the lower grade levels but um that was one area where you asked us to to leave those sure um thank you for that question uh i'm going to ask steven miller to to light up hearing of judy if you're on um we're going to take these by content areas because at the high school level uh the interim assessments are just in the process of they we've been paused and stopped and started and paused and stopped and started and the teachers are actually working the department chairs are working with the teachers in the content areas

075to develop those three interim assessments and often called the benchmark assessment to measure uh student growth from the beginning of the year to mid-year and then from mid-year to the end of the year that's the main purpose of them our english language arts um interim assessments are actually built into the new resource that you approved and adopted i believe it was in september and so in those assessments are taken in that platform so they're taken right within that new curriculum resource there's not a separate uh entry point into ic we actually take the information from studysync right into ic for our recording and purposes and teachers use for longitudinal data stephen i'm going to in angie because you're leading the science and math components for the high school we we are just now getting to

076where we have interim assessments um that the teachers can use again that they can use in their collaborative learning teams the data is for them if i teach the same course as angie or steven we have a common assessment we use and we can then compare um what worked what it what instructional strategies did you use to get that concept across um it's really helping teachers based around student data student data so i promised steven uh if you have anything else there to add i keep saying jump in here and then i keep talking so if you'll please add any additional and judy if you're around please feel free and angie this has been a team effort um with the assistant principals that oversee those content areas the department chairs and um members of our

077teaching and learning team stephen nancy covered just about everything that i couldn't so uh the only thing i i might add to that is the work at the secondary has been uh stopped and started stopped and started and we we wanted to let the teachers continue to do it with the caveat that we'll get there together or not at all so we will continue to bring the teachers along and journey with us and go as fast as they are able to under the current circumstances you'll notice on some of those secondary interim assessments that we've paused previous administrations because we just simply weren't ready as a team to move forward with the administration and we're going to you know obviously with the board's permission continue on that pathway with the teacher input on those secondary

078ones to try to get them assessments that they can use in their clts but only at a pace that they're ready to go at so i guess my question is if we have um if if there was the value if some are of the ones that are not yet developed if we're still in if we're in the middle of the year and it's not there's some that are still in development does it make sense to mandate them versus just you know finish them up and test test them am i missing something there no i andrew i think you're you're absolutely on track there and i think what we're really just looking for is permission to continue that work with those teams again please understand we're doing it as they're at their pace at the pace

079they're ready to go we've already um as we indicated in that assessment listing we've already eliminated some of those interims based on the fact that the teams weren't ready to move forward at this time um we'll continue to work with those teams that's that is a normal part of any curriculum cycle is to take a look at the assessments you're administering and say is this really assessing what we believe is important to teach in our curriculum and if it's not then you look to redesign these assessments and that's the work that we're going to be doing at the high school level and steven i would just add that um i i agree with everything that you said and i would just say as the team leader for the science interim assessments we have been taking

080at the pace that the the group is able to and and that they are working very hard to be able to select meaningful questions and um and so we found that we just haven't been able to have that have the time to do that i would say that the benefit of potentially still giving the final one at the end of the year is that it would set students up teachers i'm sorry up for success using the tool next year so some teachers do like to have that child period to see how things go before using next year and so i think the opportunity for some teachers to be able to do that would still be very beneficial but again we haven't completed the assessment and so we're moving at the pace of what the teachers

081are able to do as well my hope is that the like fabulous team that i'm working with would be able to um complete that in time to try it out um i guess the the question is about about what's um mandatory we know we never said anything about development or um you know what might be what a teacher might choose to do so i guess i'm i'm confused as to whether these are are mandatory assessments that teachers must give or if they're not for the science in our math and room and social studies interim um andrew that's another excellent question as the team worked on preparing this information there's so many story lines behind each one of those assessments and every department or every uh content area at every level is in a bit of

082a different place so that's a very fair question if i were to say if they're mandatory they're it's tough for me to say that they're going to be mandatory when some of them are not even developed and if we're going at the pace that the teachers are working with us as a team we're going through the process and it's the journey or the process that really uh helps a team to help a meaningful assessment tool and that's more important to us right now um than anything the teachers like angie is referenced typically when they write these assessments they do want to do a dry run or a pilot um prior to the year which would be next year that it would be required as part of their instructional practices and part of the system they

083have in place in each school to actually monitor student growth and what students need next and it's just they're excellent assessments written by teachers that help the teachers to really have really deep discussion on instructional practices that worked so that's a very fair question it was really this was a very difficult task because every every single assessment has a different storyline and we wanted to be extremely transparent as clairvoyant as we could be i hope that helps could you tell me just yes or no if the science interim the math interim and the social stage interim are mandatory to be administered this year no but they are but we we don't want to give up faults we do not want to give a false um the work that we're doing collaboratively with the department chairs

084and so andrew i can't even say the math ones angie i believe are completed the science ones i know are as indicated social studies ones are not as indicated on that document the ela they're part of their curriculum so they should be teaching that that the teaching of the curriculum is required um the science although it's the new it is the new adopted curriculum it'd be unfair to say that um the assessments in the ninth and tenth grade newly adopted curriculum that you're ready to to mandate those correct angie yeah i think the idea was that for math we do have those assessments completed teachers have been giving them we have been using utilizing the data and so i would say that yes those were written into the assessment calendar as mandatory science we had

085written as mandatory into the science assessment calendar however um as we got into the writing of them the discussions that we're having are taking more time than what we anticipated so while yes they are mandatory they have been since the beginning of the year we haven't given the first one and we haven't given the second one because we haven't been able to bring the questions together because of the starts and stops we've had throughout the year so if we finish the third one we would like it to be given as mandatory but again that's where the additional storyline comes i think because we were we needed to make i needed to make decisions on behalf of which assessments i wanted to advocate for that was one that i wanted to advocate for although it does

086have a special storyline did you want eric did you want to speak to social studies sure and social studies is also in a different place where our film will be up for revision in the coming years and the development of these intervention assessments is replacing previous uh common assessments that were in the curriculum that teachers had indicated were very time consuming and so we were trying to make an interim assessment that was aligned to the standards and specific specifically identified standards for the courses but also more efficient to administer to get the same information that we had previously stephen you startled me i was not prepared to talk about social studies i felt like i was geometry class eric yeah that was my geometry homework wasn't ready and was being called upon to show my

087proofs are there any other questions on assessments elementary middle or high school we have a motion in a second all right i think we are set to vote beth i'm just going to read the motion one more time that the assessment plan as detailed in the document titled assessment spreadsheet 214-22 as presented the approved welch you're on mute that's all right two strikes leighton warren i smith hi becker aye warren i mccoy aye bendenhubel hi all right motion carries 7-0 um before we move on well i guess we're not ready to move on there's other things within the staff pandemic support and if there's other specifics uh for discussion we don't necessarily have any motions or anything that we're required to discuss but um does anybody have another specific comment or something that they want

088to present go ahead brenda and then we'll go to andrew um i know one of the requests was um uh to eliminate the half-day professional development but i know that um at least the request from um the teachers and i know that the um the uh cultural um uh what's cultural diversity yeah cultural linguistic diversity training thank you um that it it's been put off and put off and it would be nice to close that loop um i think for this year um and so it sounds like it's an hour out of each of those half days and i think some i know there have been districts that have asked for waivers of minutes and i'm wondering in lieu of not giving the half day off of professional development completely if we could ask for

089some uh those half days and and i'm i know the next one is i don't know this week it's the 18th so it's friday um so we probably can't do it for that one obviously but um for the next two potentially turning those professional development half days into full days of teacher work time and then this professional development time i feel like that that's a way of giving teachers um a little bit of time back um that that we're hearing is desperately needed during this pandemic time and then it also does it in a way that's less disruptive to families i think um than adding you know two or three more half days and then you know families are um i think based on feedback we've had over the years that it's um i think

090in general easier for them to have their kids off for a whole day than to have three more half days added to the school year schedule um and so these would be days that are already slated as half days that we would just turn into potentially could turn into a full day if we got a waiver for that any other uh reactions or feedback to brenda's idea well i like the idea but it requires a a waiver to to do it and i was hoping to [Music] at least considering making a motion tonight to um you know to make it official and i would have supported them being half days uh with one hour where the district could direct one hour and the rest of the half days would be a teacher work day but

091if there's how long would it take to know if we got a minute's waiver to do those extra days and then while you're at also steve and uh what's the potential of actually getting the waiver based on what other districts have experienced so what we've heard from dpi and direct discussions with them about this issue is that while they understand the importance of having kids in school they're also balancing it with the needs of districts and they've indicated that they plan to be flexible with these as they were last year so i would presume that based on that direct feedback from the upper echelon of the folks at dpi that we would have a strong likelihood of receiving the waiver so do we since we don't officially know if we have the waiver yet do

092we have do we have built in could we make those half these full days off would we still meet the the minutes just in the off chance the waiver wasn't granted if you look at the uh on board docs you'll see that those dates are february 18th april 1st and may 20th i and i i don't have the numbers right in front of me i think we're pretty close on meeting it if we i had that on february 18th and i presume that we would know prior to april 1st whether or not we'd been granted that and if there was a problem with that we could certainly come back to you prior to that come on up vicky we do build in two snow days um so we have that flexibility if we didn't have

093any snow days this school year we could turn that we i want you to know that's an option oh sorry laura i wonder i i like where this is going i support that i i just wonder if the 18th 18th is too soon though for families to adjust if they um to have that happen for this week yeah i think it would just apply to the last two and what about making what about making this friday still leaving the the district directed for the one hour but then um being a teacher work day so i'll make a motion that the [Music] the half day on friday the 18th the staff portion be district directed for one hour and the remainder of that time be a teacher work day second just to be clear to anyone

094watching my most has absolutely nothing to do with the time that kids are there this friday can anybody i guess before i vote on this i just i'm curious what was the plan what what was going to happen that is not going to happen anymore i know that's different across the entire district but would supporting emotion like this throw things into to chaos or is i guess what is the plan currently in general it's hard to say that for an entire district for 42 buildings but i just thought yeah there's some district director there's some building directed but we've already talked to them about uh where this is at and what the implications might be i could see vicky's at the table there so she might have some more to add from the uh the

095building level leaders actually you were doing perfectly every school is a little bit different they're working on their school success plans so it will look different at every school all right is there any other discussion about the motion for this friday all right beth when you're ready i'm just going to read that motion that the half day on friday february 18 2022 will be district director for one hour then be teacher work time for the remainder of the day did i get that right i guess that is probably what i said but for maybe for clarification if i could ask consent for it to be remainder of the staff only half day or could you put remainder of the afternoon or to indicate sure remainder of the afternoon mccoy hi becker hi warren i smith

096aye bandon hoovel hi leighton warren hi welch hi and then i mean is it satisfactory enough to direct steve to look into a dpi waiver on changing those other two days perhaps we could do it even if we didn't get the waiver but that would be the direction to see if we can convert those last two half days to full days off is everybody comfortable with that steve are you okay with that certainly okay go ahead nancy you're on mute well i know sorry i i wish we didn't have to do that i i feel that you know when kids are out so much i don't know i just i just wanted to say that i don't feel comfortable with that with changing half days to full days and then yeah i mean from from

097my perspective i agree with that sentiment in general nancy and if we were you know i don't think i'd be supportive of changing full days where kids are supposed to be in school at this point um you know i do know that the feedback that we've gotten as we've talked about schedules and things have been that half days are stressful on families getting them to school and dropping them off and um i know they're you know situations where families just don't send their kids to school because it's by the time you drop them off you're coming back to pick them up and working out that child care so i would be supportive of it for that reason go ahead brenda i also think that it's um maybe less so at elementary because the kids are

098in one classroom but it's very difficult for the secondary teachers to have robust class lessons when they when they're only in class for i don't know what it is 20 or 25 minutes when they have a half day um and so i think that this um i agree nancy i you know i'm concerned about pulling kids but i do think that um the half day instruction is not as is more difficult for teachers to to fit fitted in um then i absolutely agree with that absolutely it's a balance to me you know i mean we're balancing trying to give teachers some some relief um some planning time uh those kinds of things with with trying to make sure kids are in school um so i get the and another question about about like so they

099go for that hour is that hour just basically a presentation or are there things that they have to do as homework for those those classes those co podcast things you know like are we really giving them anything yes you know so they go for that they give go for the hour is will they really be able to do work then or is there assignments and readings to do with the podcast is there more homework yeah with any you know this nancy from being a teacher with any good professional learning the homework is integrating what you've learned into your work your daily work so if you ask if there's homework i would say yes but it's actually using what they've learned and applying it to their profession the the um the pd itself they do collaboratively

100that's part of it so there's watching some video and then stopping and having discussion um but to my memory no homework outside of that i just hope that we are truly doing some service here like i i'm not even really sure if we're we're helping them with the assessments but i'm going to go and think okay positively that they're feeling like they're getting some break there and then that we don't know about the other two days but we kind of know about this one day now so you know all right i just i feel unsettled i believe it's a good word nancy believe the next two half days are in april and may um so we'll have another at least one more board meeting depending on when that second one falls maybe there's two to

101have an update on that and to see where the plan goes and like we mentioned it's possible that we can extend those half days to full days uh even without the waiver but oh andrew sorry i i guess rather than make um i guess i see the advantage of knowing for sure before it's um but the next board meeting is until the 14th and i think part of what you know we wanted to do was to send a by i don't i mean i don't believe that they're sending messages without a motion others may disagree but [Music] i guess if if there was an official statement made presumably by you eric that formally the issue of the april and may um have half days is on the march 14th agenda then i then i think

102that probably works yeah i think i can commit to bringing the uh schedule back the half-day schedule to the march board meeting is something that we will do yes okay so then it's right so that's better because if we can do the i like the idea of the the full if we can do the phone if we can't do the full i'd be back to saying let's make it a teacher workday except for the one hour um i would i would agree with nancy that you know kids have lost a lot of learning time and i would not probably be interested in converting a a full instructional day to a teacher work day even if we have the minutes but the the half day is just um they've never they've never been popular i understand

103why we we do them but i think we're better longer term better served if there's a teacher work day to have i think almost all families would say just have it be off for one day and do your stuff then more more half days i realize that means you have less frequent opportunities of course i also want to point out that if we are going to apply for a dpi waiver that we would need to have a public hearing so the feedback the parents would be able to weigh in and say no by doing this you know i don't like this idea and we'd be able to get that feedback so when does that public hearing get scheduled um well it depends if we have to apply for the waiver so i think both steve

104and his team will look into that process and figure out how that plays out understanding that we would need to do it well in advance of april so i would also think there's a lot of community partners if that was going to happen that we'd need to reach out to that kids would normally go to on a half day that would have to shift their operations so i mean it's a it would be a community decision that i i think again weighing the pros and the cons but impact a lot more than just our operations we'll bring you a summary of our in minutes hours and minutes at that meeting so you can see how that plays out okay all right anything else on staff pandemic support all right then we will move on to

105pandemic mitigation strategies um andrew this was specifically uh requested by you so i i think i'll unless steve did you have i know that uh bellen's physician that was going to it is still here so originally he was only gonna be available so seven but we do have dr bob mead available if we need to call on him but andrew i'm gonna hand it to you first because there's no presentation um and then we'll open it up to discussion okay i think i think that the time has come to talk about masking policy um were the we're the last in the county to still have it and i want to make it clear i'm not i'm not sorry that we're the last in the county to still have it i think that we have aired

106perhaps more on the side of caution than than others and i have no i have no problem with that we're at a point now where the the covid levels are are almost almost the same if you look at uh per 100 race per 100 000 with green bay and with other districts all of which don't have a don't have a mass requirement in brown county um i absolutely take kovitz seriously and everyone everyone knows that who's paid attention over the last two years we are in a fortunate position where with the latest variant as often happens in viral outbreaks and thank goodness it did hear that subsequent waves might become more contagious but less less deadly and it is extraordinarily less deadly for those who take the vaccine and it's much less deadly for unvaccinated

107people so when we looked at where we were at in september where we were quite a bit higher in cases than we are right now and going up uh i think we were and we weren't didn't have a good idea about the dangers of the new um we didn't know where things were going to go with the new variant how deadly it was going to be um and i have to um i will um not that i was mean about it or anything but i will i will specifically apologize to to brenda if if i rolled my eyes or something when you said maybe it'll be mean a total different thing than the numbers um i if if i rolled my hands or something i was like well we are actually at a point when

108something is 10 to 20 times less creating 10 to 20 times less serious illness then i think it's time to look at to look at what those numbers mean from and so yep there's um and i am so over you know threats and people yelling at me and and stuff it's um i've decided all the way through based on the math and i think it's i think it's safe to make mass optional pretty soon and i'm like very soon and i have a motion i'm considering but i guess i'd want to hear more about where people are are at if there were to be some open discussion first um but i i think things have i think things have changed materially and substantially in this equation here andrew i'll jump in um on the heels

109of your comments and just say that i agree with everything that you said um you know one comment that i've heard is well you guys you make a decision and then you change your mind and you move the target and that's been the the one consistent thing in this entire process is that it has been inconsistent um we get new information there's new strains there's new vaccines there's new metrics there's i mean we've been all over the board when board members have come and gone and um the one uh perspective that i believe is the the hardest to work with in terms of individuals is those who aren't flexible who who just have a fixed mindset with how this pandemic works and in my opinion it hasn't gone that way and i've voted all over

110the place for a variety of different motions going back to august of 2020 and all of the different votes that we've taken so i think it's acting responsibly to to re-look at what your metrics are making a decision and standing by it and holding firm i i don't think really applies to a situation that moves this rapidly um you know as i look at the the numbers and specifically in our district you know there's seven active cases uh which is approximately two-tenths of one percent of our staff have active covid cases right now um an incredibly low number uh same thing with students you know 23 of the approximately 19 thousand students one tenth of one percent um so you know we're at a spot where cases are incredibly low uh both in the community

111and within our district we know that you know everything about this new string we've seen this peak not saying that masks are you know good bad or indifferent but i feel like we are there and would be prepared to support a motion that makes them optional as soon as possible go ahead brandon um yeah i agree that things actually are looking very good um not i'm not a mathematician but it you know looking back it's um we've halved the cases the the brown county cases for a hundred thousand residents that seven day rolling average is half what it was a week ago um and i'm expecting that number to continue to go down um i don't know that i mean i don't want to say no mass tomorrow um i think there needs to be

112some time to communicate and and decide what the guidelines are going to be and things like that but um and i i mean we may be down to under 100 by next week um anyway but uh so um i i uh i'm comfortable with with having mass be optional but probably not this week yeah i would probably think something like monday yeah yeah and i also oh sorry and then i also just want to make you know one of my metrics that i've been following and been concerned about is the hospitals the beds available in hospitals um i think that's actually when you look at the big picture and i said this at our last meeting one of the most important metrics to look at because if you don't get vaccinated um that's your choice

113but if you get sick and you're taking up hospital beds and then people all of a sudden your the community hospital can't take care of its community with things other than kovet um you know i think that that was that was part part of the concern um big part of of the concern with with the numbers going up like they did but i think the hospitals i don't know if dr mead has a different opinion but um it seems like last time i looked the you know there were open hospital beds and things like that so that part of it seems to be easing up laura i just want i'm i'm really happy to see the direction we're going i mean compared to where we've been um in terms of of the um amount of

114cases and and the staff out and the students out i think that um i'm glad we're we're having the discussion although the um i think one of the things that stuck out to me was the dr koster i believe was his name that spoke earlier talking about the ability to have calm and good minds and talking about this and that how important that is and and that um you know i've always tried to align with what the medical professionals were advising for us so i think um i'd like to hear what dr means says but i'm i'm feeling optimistic about this change and i hope that we can continue to do that we have an obligation to the the kids in school and and also the teachers to keep them safe which i know that

115we've been when trying to do our our best at that all along so i'm interested to hear the recommendation from the doctor dr mead are you still there i know you had a an end and we appreciate you joining us uh there he is hi good evening good evening um so you've heard a few comments from the board uh kind of the direction that some people are leading i'm wondering if you could just uh maybe weigh in on what you're seeing specifically in your health system and just kind of a general reaction right um yeah thanks for having me and first of all i want to just congratulate you for the policy you've had over this past school year you know i think you should be very proud of that you know you sort of

116went against the grain in some ways and and i think you are able to keep kids in school which i think everybody including the people that were commenting earlier all want to have is our goal is to have kids in school and by having that policy of mass mandate throughout this this pandemic to this point you've been able to to maximize that and i think that's that's key um so i think the risk of eliminating the mass mandate is that very thing that you know another variant may come in and and cause um problems and cause you know classrooms to close down and and and teaching to go to virtual and things like that so nobody knows what's going to be next and and hopefully things will will drop down i mean i was looking

117at the numbers tonight i think the seven day average uh per hundred thousand is actually under 50 now so but um literally two weeks ago it was over two thousand so it's just a incredible change that we've seen over the past um a couple weeks and as far as the hospitals themselves so hospitalizations and deaths will lag uh the cases so by we're looking at you know several weeks uh probably lag between the number of new cases and number of hospitalizations um right now uh melon there's we have 15 to 20 inpatients um and that's a fair amount i mean that was a that was our peak 21 was our peak when we had the first wave um we're still getting about five or six admissions a day we're not nearly as crazy as it

118was um you know when we were a couple weeks ago or last month when people had to share rooms and share bathrooms and things like that in the hospital but uh so things have calmed down and we're we're hoping things will continue to calm down so we do have you know some capacity i think it's limited yet and that may not calm down for a couple weeks i think the um just the question about the masking and that you know we know it's effective and you heard earlier tonight about the maths aren't effective i think real world experience tells us that they are effective and you can just compare your district to other districts in the in the county that didn't have a mass mandate and and that they'll give you your answer right there

119i i think the um the the conventional thought at this point is that it may be a bit too early to get rid of the masks right away and and um you know i think that it's harder to get rid of something and then start it up again uh so it may be uh you know our recommendation would be not to do that uh right away just but maybe wait a bit and to see how things go um with this pandemic and hopefully we'll continue in the direction we're going right now i mean it's everybody hopes that because we're all tired and you know both mentally and physically about from the pandemic so all right laura thank you dr mead um i don't really have any questions i thought you summarized that very nicely but

120i just for myself as an individual board member you know from the beginning of this i've been on this board since the beginning of this pandemic and and from the beginning we've had to balance the safety of our students and staff with a pragmatic need to keep our kids in school and to continue their education that path has been complicated and challenging and emotionally draining for everybody involved and i just wanna i just wanna um say that and and and let people know that we we acknowledge that this has been really hard on families and again i can only speak for myself here but there have been times when our staff has just been def uh decimated by kovid i mean um on all levels of our staff and there are still people in our

121community dying of this virus so and i just want to be really specific here it is my duty as a school board member to care about the safety of approximately 20 000 students and 35 over 500 staff members um that's what i was elected to do and and i need we i need to do that even when it's hard and even when we're all exhausted with it even in a pandemic and i'm you know i'm always going to take that very very seriously so [Music] taking all this into consideration tonight i would like to stay with the plan that we came up with in december we're very very close to that right now we all voted unanimously on that in december and and um it's just a matter of days before that kicks in so

122um that's my position on that thanks steve do you know where we are today what's our exact number i know we've dropped considerably so it's where we were two weeks ago yes uh today's uh rolling seven day average is 211.4 okay we were at 300 last week right that's correct 377 a week ago almost yeah 377 so if we continue on this trajectory and i mean i guess i i looked back at last year and last year um on february 12th is when we were under a hundred thousand cases and we didn't go back over a hundred thousand cases until delta hit in the middle of august and what what i'm thinking about is last year the equivalent board meeting we met and we changed got rid of our metrics for when we were going

123to open schools and we picked an arbitrary date of march 1st and if we had left our metrics the kids would have been back in school a week earlier i feel like we're going to hit that hundred thousand within the next week two weeks and i would i i agree with laura if only because we set a metric and that's what people have been planning on and i think we're gonna have it i i think we're talking just it's not a lot of time that we're talking about especially given dr mead's feedback yeah i guess my uh my comment to that is i believe we had talked about you know it was going to you know we didn't have to then hit that number and then put in the operations to make masks optional that

124we would see that it's coming and we'd be we'd be able to get ready to communicate and roll out that plan so that when we hit it we were ready to go so maybe we're talking about the same thing i mean given the current rate that that cases are declining whether or not we said we're going to wait for 100 or we want to pick an arbitrary date those two things might be exactly the same so let's communicate that let's let's predict what the data is let's not wait until monday the 21st to see if we're there or not and say hey the the data trend line suggests that we're going to be there so let let's be there and we can stick with our original metric and and predict that that's going to happen

125on monday given the current rate of decline andrew i guess i a concern they have about you know the again the hundred that we the hundred that we voted on last time uh legitimately means a different thing than it does now because it's because it's uh between five and twenty times less less uh dangerous and deadly that's taking nothing away from the seriousness of someone um obviously if someone became seriously ill or died but there was there was talk and i was i was the first to say no no that's not correct when people said this is just this is just uh a seasonal flu and it's not just a seasonal flu as far as the danger level as far as the fatality rate uh this far into this variant that's a about where about

126where we are now um we weren't there before it was it was orders of magnitude more dangerous than the seasonal flu before um i i guess my concern is you know i think i would be i would be afraid of us just hovering hovering around that hundred i looked at other i looked at other counties who maybe peaked a little bit before us to see how far that they dropped and it seems like they came you know they've come down about 80 percent off their peak and i don't i don't want to be seeing their teasing or bouncing around a hundred where if if i had known that the virulence would be this much lower i would have voted for i would have voted for 500 then if i knew it was going to be

12710 times less less less feral and less dangerous so i guess i would be i think i think monday i think monday the 21st is reasonable i would be i would be open to a meeting automatically or a special meeting emergency meeting whichever automatically triggered if numbers go back up which i don't think they will but it would ensure that a meeting happens automatically if some future variant spikes this pregnant well i forget exactly the wording but wasn't our original motion less than 100 and then 200 in one day yeah okay i forgot what the criteria i think it's posted yeah it's okay in that lengthy text laura so that would anyway so that i mean i think we already have a motion that addresses if it starts to go back up again without having

128to schedule an emergency board meeting i mean we might want to have one if we're up to 200 and you know it's on the up again but um but anyway i just thought i'd point that out won't that feel that would automatically be triggered instantly if we made the probably i mean we might not have i would i would rather not be that i think we should put a new i think it's put a new number there and i think i think the new number should should be a forced meeting trigger not uh everyone has to put their mass back on automatic trigger because we would have to look at the circumstances if there's you know if if the if the progression continued and i would love for this just to be and when i

129say done i mean done in the same sense that it's the um important but manageable thing of influenza like illnesses but um i i'd like to just see it get there but if there you know if there was another wave that made it you know every everybody get it and also it's 10 more times less deadly that was you know you know so i guess i would like to um my i would like to see us i would like to see us do it for monday with uh with the safety trigger uh to trigger a board meeting if we were went back over saying um 500 which i don't think we probably ever will but if we did we'd have a trigger a meeting trigger yeah i mean laura just to address your comment earlier

130and certainly appreciate uh your approach to safety i think that we all uh have taken that i mean obviously i i believe that our district has led through this pandemic in a positive way over other districts and we have heard that feedback as well thank you for the efforts that your district has taken um so the feedback comes in on both sides um to your point though people you know dying in our community what we know is that people who are vaccinated generally aren't dying right i mean i hate to paint with a broad brush but we know that the vaccine is effective uh and we don't see a high percentage in numbers of people with better vaccinated can't do anything about the people who choose not to get vaccinated at this point we also

131know that children aren't dying we know that that's the case so um yes we're not totally out of the woods and yes this is having an impact on people but again can't force those vaccinations and people are making a choice for themselves and at some point we can't drive our policy based upon that and i agree to the point that we need to do that is when it comes to hospitalizations so if our hospitals are full with people who are unvaccinated yes then that needs to be a factor that that we weigh um but we're moving in that that positive direction so ian yep thanks for raising your hand i'm glad i caught you love to hear your feedback yeah i haven't really spoken all day but i just have a little quick question um

132around the whole brown county school districts they're well i hate to say this but when mask mandates are taken away coveted cases do rise that's usually a pattern that happens so how would you guys maybe have another emergency meeting if cases do rise after mandates appeals to insane numbers for a hundred thousand i i think we should i i would propose that we would have some some trigger i also look at green bay and like the surrounding areas without um that don't have mass mandates are are very close right now in numbers so we're not um yeah i i mean i would i would propose that we do have something that would trigger an automatic meeting to reveal another quick question oh yeah go ahead ian uh greater public schools serves more than 20 000

133kids correct but vaccines really aren't available for kids under the age of 12. so even though the mortality rates were definitely super low on kids i'd have to agree with that especially with newer less deadly variants uh kids can still get it and they can still spread it to their well parents and i know there are quite a few kids that especially even in high school haven't gotten vaccinated so i mean it might cause a little spike but that's why it would be good to have a little emergency meeting just in case that happens and i just want to point out vaccines are available to kids age 5 and older not 12. did that get approved recently uh it's been that way since november yep which is part of why we which is which is

134why we had um open things up a little a little bit quicker for ages that were vaccine eligible at the time which i think that was uh the right thing to do then too because under 12 couldn't get the vaccine but now five and up can get it go ahead brenda um i'm not sure i'm well the the trigger for the emergency meeting um i feel like 500 is too high but i also feel like there should be something in there about the i mean we all saw during omicron how we had to cool schools because we had so many staff that were out either with coveter on um quarantine and i i think that that's got to be part of any kind of metric that we look at is because that's been again like

135you said laura that you know our goal is to make sure we have kids in school as much as we can and aren't out because of because of covid and i don't know what those numbers are i mean i don't have a magic number to pull out but but i do think that that needs to be part of our monitoring not just brown county coveted cases because if we're managing um and we've got you know whatever seven cases and brown county cases are going up but we're still managing um i think that that's where the board should weigh in again and i don't know maybe steve or this i don't kristen's not on i don't see her up there but um and maybe that's just a something we don't actually vote on but something that

136that um you know steve and his team are aware that that um you know we don't want to just blindly wait till we hit 500 when we're you know we're having trouble staffing schools or more and more kids are having to be out of school yeah i mean for me personally to to pick an arbitrary number and to try to come to something that we would all agree on i mean i i think that it's something that we would continue to monitor i mean i look at the dashboard every single day and if cases do start to go up steve alerts us or a board member says hey i want to talk about this and we can request you know between our committee meetings our other you know opportunity to schedule special meetings i mean

137as a board we're meeting usually once a week in some committee former fashion so to schedule a meeting to have a discussion if we start to see a change in the data i think is appropriate rather than try to pick a metric that says oh this triggers that or this you know triggers the other thing i would be you know and again hopefully cases remain low like they did last year for four or five months and you know then we react when we get some new piece of information uh another variant comes out if more deadly less death i mean there's it's going to continue to evolve so to try to set an arbitrary metric that none of us really know if we're in a right spot to just say like what we'll continue to

138monitor situations and talk about this again when it's necessary so i'd be in favor of that yeah i would agree with that laura and then andrew i have another question for dr mead one of the things that we hear often is having masks be optional and i i think even two years into this there seems to not be a clear understanding about how masks protect others versus the one wearing them or how or how it works completely um i'm wondering if you could just um share with us a little bit about how that works even if you know if we were to go masks optional how does that protect or not protect the wearers right i think i think you have to look at what other systems where other places have gone optional and basically

139my view is if you go optional then you're basically saying no masks because very few people will wear a mask if it's an optional situation so i mean i you can even look at like denmark they had they very strongly recommended masks and they had less than five percent uh kids wearing masks so i think it's it's pretty much an all or none you either have a mass mandate or you have no masks is really i think the choice there as far as masks working and effectiveness they work best if everybody's wearing a mask versus a few people here and they're wearing masks so they do you know they are protective if you know somebody wears an n95 mask in a crowd where nobody else is masking that can be somewhat effective um and that's

140why we do that at the hospitals when people are taking care of covet patients they're wearing in masks so that can be effective that way but in practical speaking real world sense if you decide to go mask recommended or mask optional it's basically going no masks thank you andrew um that's right i agree 95 of people won't wear a mask if we go mask optional although i do think i do think saying masked optional honors honors choice and it does prevent uh it it gives us stronger it gives us a stronger way of someone's picking on a kid for for wearing a mask that the a teacher could say not just knock it off that's not that's not nice but also knock it off that's not nice and the district rule is it's your choice

141and i think that it's it's subtle but it gives that little bit of a little bit of something for those who are wearing masks i i'm not pretending half of people will wear a mask when we say mask mask optional but i i do and i i do think there's there's one more thing there is a real component that we've had to weigh all along about what is lost by having to wear a mask what parts of human interaction are are lost right and when when kovid was seriously sickening and killing the numbers of people as that that was a trade-off that i was willing i was willing to make and i think it has swung enough in the other direction that yes i think that people seeing um people being able to see each

142other's faces is is important once the once the danger level has dropped substantially and i think that's where that's where we're at and i think i think monday the 21st would be a good a good time to to do that can i just make one more comment um on the virulence of omicron so it i know the 10 times less of less virulence has been thrown out there but that's not really the case it's only about it's maybe 50 less variant than than delta but the reason we're seeing a lot fewer deaths and a lot fewer hospitalizations is because more people are vaccinated and boosted and so that's what brings the apparent virulence down but it's it's not a the omicron is not a simple uh virulent it's not a mild case of of covet

143it's it's a little less than it is delta but it's not 20 times less but it is isn't it 15 to 20 times less for for vaccinated i guess unvaccinated it's not as much of a difference and i do think virtually everyone probably should be taking the vaccine yeah if you're uh if you're vaccinated that's uh you know you it's 2 to 98 so if you're non-vaccinated you're 98 times higher chance of getting a severe infection hospitalization or death compared to those that are vaccinated yes andrew you have a motion prepared i think we're getting to a spot um sure and i will okay i i move that face coverings become optional in the green bay area school district except we're required by federal or state regulations effective monday and i'll email this to you

144beth effective monday february 21st and that a special board meeting shall be called automatically to review coven 19 protocols if cases in brown county exceed 400 total cases per hundred thousand population for any consecutive seven day period can i offer a i'd like to amend that date be actually on the 28th which should be two two weeks from today second so uh discussion i i would just argue that by moving it to the 28th that's a more restrictive policy than what we have in place right now that we will likely hit 100 before the 28th and we're actually extending the mass mandate longer than what we currently have based upon current rejection and i'm i'm also um in favor of the motion for the 21st only because i don't want to i'm concerned that we

145may cycle around 110 under 10 110 you know and not quite get to 100. um anyway so it's uh because i think we'll hit it i think we'll hit it next week and i agree with andrew the um the impact of mass wearing especially on our youngest students i think is is significant all right um so we would have to take a vote on laura's amendment of changing the date to the 28th to see if there's support to add that so we're just voting right now on laura's amendment to the motion to change the date to february 28th yep welch i'm not sure okay so we're definitely okay i i go with that more than the 21st okay yes yes okay leighton and warren hi smith hi becker no warren no mccoy hi abandon hoover

146no so the motion passes four to three so as it reads now it says masks become optional within the green bay school district beginning on february 28th can i can i share my screen andrew before when you were chatting i started wordsmithing something with melissa and it's really close to what you shared also um based on our conversation about triggering an automatic board meeting i would offer an amendment that we remove that part of the original motion so that it reads uh yeah eliminating the um i uh make a motion to amend this and remove everything after the 28th that says and that a special board of education meetings will be called automatically um i just think that locks us into things we can't predict um so anyway that's my proposed amendment nancy has her

147hand up in case you can't go ahead nancy can you hear me yep okay what about like i really feel we're going to hit under 100 before the 28th so can we put something in there that like next week wonder if it does happen on the 21st you know i mean i really wish we would just stay with our regular motion because i thought it was all set and we were getting there and you know but you know i understand that it's like now no wonder if we do get down there are we able to do that yeah i mean nancy we could shoot this motion down and if we do then it stays with our original plan so if you vote no for this current motion that's on the screen we'll have to vote

148on brenda's amendment here but if that motion fails it goes back to what we had before and and i agree with you i i like our original motion than better than what's on the screen right now um although it does give us a definite date i think we'll get there well before that so this is in my opinion a step backwards yep so i agree like i i never i didn't think we needed to even have this conversation because we had such a solid motion already in place so you know since this has been forced and we don't really know what the next week is going to be you know i liked i liked our original motion and i thought it had good parameters in it already i agree with that um i also think

149although like i said i don't want to be there i don't want to hover around 110 and we sit there for a week um that's my reason for voting for it sooner but um um i forgot also um i forgot what i was gonna say go ahead we should we should probably just vote on the special meeting trigger and just have that be on the table or off the table i don't i don't i'm not understanding though brenda what we gain by not having the trigger when some people may at least be able to look at and say okay there is something that forces a meeting even if the board members don't feel like it it's a little something but it's something yeah but i guess um i mean it triggers it at 400 but

150what if we're shooting through 300 and our schools are shutting down and because people are getting whatever new strain of coving's coming through i mean i assume we would have a meeting then okay i mean it just it forces it if if there's no action it forces it that i mean it's not by far the most important part of my motion but i think we should i think we should deal with that and then afterwards maybe we could talk about what happens if we hit it before the 20s yeah nobody seconded it thank you very good all right so i will uh remove that part of my amendment so how do we we handle the so the agreement that people are generally in favor of our where we started originally although that then creates the

151possibility of next week steve can i ask you to chime in here around the [Music] communication and operations uh of shifting to mask optional given our current metric knowing that the numbers are trending in that direction anyway if we were at 110 on friday or saturday how how soon does that communication go out what kind of plans have you guys discussed around moving to mask optional if in the old trigger so as we approach 200 right now i the process would include us notifying uh and reminding as we did last week the school population students families uh staff that again at seven days of 100 would trigger us to go to mask optional and then we would provide regular updates as we get closer to that so that people know when that's going to happen

152so help me understand so this number that i look at you know 211.4 right now is that one day metric or is that a seven day average no that's a rolling seven day average okay so so when that number hits to below 100 that's the day that masks would be optional that's correct so we would provide that notification as we're approaching that number josh wants to chime in on that what i want what i want to be what i hope doesn't have to have happened is that we have seven of those numbers in a row below 100. that's the way you're you're currently enforced more motion [Music] breeds day rolling positive releases in brown county at or below 100 per 100 000 over the course of seven consecutive days seven consecutive days of the seven

153day rolling average being at 100. no i i never i know certainly was never my my intent to say that if there's a six 97s and a 102 that we've then lost the seven days we got to start over seven consecutive days in my motion seven um seven consecutive days means total cases per hundred thousand you know over those seven days to to trigger a meeting i guess i also think that well i wish it could be the 21st and we might hit it before the 21st since we didn't hit it yet how close are we to when we would have to announce presumably we would want to announce no later than the 17th or 18th and then we won't be there yet so i could i could live with the 28th just to know

154what's gonna it's gonna happen because i do i i hope i if i'm wrong and i'm lower that's great but i think we will i think we'll see continued improvement and we'll hover in the 120 to 150 range for a long time because it's hard to drop more than about 80 below what your peak was because i looked at multiple counties so if it needs the 20 if it needs to be the 28th to have majority support that's how the motion is right now and i i would just like to do that okay i'm i'm not gonna vote yes for the 28th i believe it should be the 21st so that would be my only reason for not supporting it if it passes and i'm glad that we've got a date if it doesn't pass

155then i'm hoping we can go back and take a vote for monday the 21st oh i'm sorry go ahead again this is just a really quick just wrapping things up here question uh the only covered palace that would change for this would be mask wearing all the quarantine policies isolation policies those would stay the same correct because that hadn't been brought up so i was just wondering those are staying the same right yeah all of our mitigation strategies the hand washing yeah all of that would stay the same all right so we've got a motion on the table right now that's uh connected to february 28th um nope it passed we never voted on the meme the team we never voted on the main motion we voted on changing the date from the 21st to

156the 28th so the current do you have the current motion but either read it or put it up on the screen again one more time this bottom portion here is andrew's motion the top one was the one that we had wordsmith i don't know andrew if you'd be comfortable with the top one it just adds a little more clarification on the district provided transportation piece i don't i don't know if that matters yeah i guess i'd like to keep my my existing language about exceeding for the the part about exceed 400 per 100 000 for any seven consecutive day period i think it just avoids the confusion that we would run into it doesn't have to be in a row or something so i would accept the other language um but i would like it

157any seven consecutive day period because that makes it very clear that it's a total is 400 a good number is that appropriate well it's around it's around if if if we get to double what we are today it would trigger the meeting i i think the meeting it's a protection against if people don't feel like calling a meeting it's to make sure the public knows that there's something that forces a meeting i would think probably before then we'd have a meeting okay it's just what force forces a meeting okay all right so um i guess i would just ask if there's unanimous consent to change the motion to what is above um it just adds kind of that consistent language that's been in our other motions but says the same the same information is there

158unanimous consent to move it to the top motion yes okay all right so we will vote on the top motion that makes masks optional beginning february 28th with the exception of uh federal and mandated okay all right any other questions or discussion before we vote go ahead do we want to put something in there so if we do reach a number the number that we had in our first motion that it would kick in then i mean it seems like we're shooting ourselves in the foot here but we the problem is we need time to do it that's the thing so like if we wanted to make it monday right how like we we don't want to do it overnight probably we'd want to look at it every every week so like what what would

159be the look date to decide it's okay for the 21st if we're at 211 right now we're not going to be at 100 tomorrow because there's seven days and i just don't think we could i like the idea i just don't think we could i mean yes maybe we would hit it on the 23rd or the 24th but then are we really going to say tomorrow come back without it i mean well the thing is is you know when you're taking the mask mandate away nobody has to prepare for that they just don't have to bring their mask you know it's not like they have to go buy some or something so okay there's a little something someone who is maybe not sure about boosting or something if they work in the district might boost

160or you know there's it gives a little a little time is good i i wish it could be the 21st but i'm going to vote for the 20th because i don't want to let the the the preference of the 21st cause us to do nothing at all and i i think we're going to be hovering in the low 100s for a very long time i hope i'm wrong but i think we will i it's hard to get lower than that is it possible to add a an or statement that says something like effective february 28th or if any single day hits below 100 whichever comes first so that to nancy's point if you know if cases plummet and on friday it's at 98. now we're sitting here below our original metric i i if we

161hit it on friday would we be then saying putting out announcement right away for monday or would it be for tuesday i mean there's you need a few days that's that's the problem because we're not we're not gonna hit it today or today or tomorrow i mean i would like what would be our what would be it what could we even come up with as a cut date to give it i think i i just don't think it can have if we had say we had three days in a row of zero which which isn't going to happen but if we had three days in a row of zero we'd still be over a hundred and it'd be thursday that's the problem we just you can't i don't think you can mathematically hit it even

162with even with zero unless we were to do it on okay unless we're willing to say it would be a next day notification i mean yeah we could hit it you know we could hit it on friday would we then say it's for wednesday and then we're gaining two more or i'm gonna call the question all right we have to vote do we we need a second is everybody ready to vote all right we're ready to vote nancy are you ready to vote yep she's ready to vote all right welch hi mccoy hi becker hi smith hi warren hi brandon hoovel hi leighton warren hi right motion passes seven zero moving on to school security drills um just as a reminder this is uh i believe an annual uh requirement uh pursuant to the state

163statute that we do written evaluation drills the board is able to see the details of that drill but it is in executive content for safety purposes i would look for a motion to approve our school security drills second any discussion beth we're ready to vote on that smith hi vandenheuvel hi becker hi warren hi mccoy hi leighton and warren i welch hi motion carries 7-0 uh moving on policy 443.1 student address uh we had uh some discussion on that earlier during the policy and governance committee meeting look for someone to make that motion and if there's any discussion we certainly can have that i move that that the revisions to the board of education policy 443.1 student address as presented be approved second any discussion andrew okay so this this does i'm not missing something

164this this does make it pretty difficult to say that you can't you can't wear it right i i was a little like i think i feel better about this one i was a little bit worried about if there was an interpretation you know good you know good principles can have different interpretations the same thing as to you know well i think it's a serious you know i think it's disturbing the the school the school day i think when we say it's i guess the one thing would be inter interruption of classes or flooding of angry calls from parents to me if there's a flooding of angry calls from parents saying we're upset that you allow hats and hoods i don't want to change for that although it says in here that it although it says

165could be it says could be so yes i'm i'm good with it i i think it's in the you know we saw in the survey that the opinion dramatically shifted um i think it's i think more harm than good is done in enforcing it and we heard loud and clear about concealing prohibited items and we revisited we we reaffirmed here that you can't just if you're thinking and for anyone who's any students who are watching thinking oh this is um earbuds good to go it's not it says write in what we're passing that you cannot use it to conceal earbuds so all right receptive welch yes hi leighton warren aye mccoy aye warren hi becker aye smith aye ayandan hubel aye motion carries 7-0 uh moving on to item d revised authorization and appointment of

166independent hearing officer uh this is just a modification to a motion that we made earlier that identified um i believe three uh independent hearing officers and uh taking off one of the people so we're going down to two is there a motion so moved second any other discussion beth i think we're set smith i vanden hoovel hi becker aye warren hi mccoy hi leighton warren i welch hi motion carries 7-0 uh moving on then to the board meeting schedule you can see the attached dates uh we do have a policy and governance operations education meeting remaining in the month of february uh our next regularly scheduled board of education meeting is march 14th any other comments on our schedule all right with that i would look for a motion to adjourn all in favor hi

167meeting is adjourned at 8 35 thanks everyone [Music] you have been watching the green bay area public school district's board of education meeting please visit the school district's website www.gbaps.org to view the program again [Applause] [Music] if you cannot fully access the information on this video please let us know the accessibility issue you are having by calling 920-448-2025 or by email at communications at gbaps.org we will try to provide the information to you in an alternative format and or make the necessary improvements to make the information accessible [Music]