001e e e I'm adding some uh names that just came in and I'll put this one for e e e sh stand okay the the board is back in session we were in closed session we're now back in Open Session and the first thing that's on our agenda here is a presentation and so I'm going to turn it over to Vince who is going to give us a presentation all right thanks everybody for being here tonight uh so as many of you aware we did a strategic plan this past year started with the board working with them in January and February turn it over to a vision element study team which mapped out our community to make sure that we had all representation of our community um at a community event a conversation for a
002future event uh that happened on May 25th and June 2nd here in the gymnasium at the high school um and we came together shared ideas and came up with different uh what priorities we have as a community for our school district um this was adopted in July uh by the Board of Education no it might not reach so this is a strategic plan that was adopted by the board created by the community adopted by the board in in July uh and again so we have five pillars that came out we had a district mission statement the Five Pillars preparing for the future nurturing the whole child Innovative communicated connection District Workforce and operational excellence so we're thrilled by our the out the amount of people that came and the vision element study team went Above
003and Beyond in putting this together and bringing this to the board of education and did a presentation in July which was then adopted so as we look forward one of the things is now how do you put this into action so um would you consider removing your mask while you're speaking sure thank you so the idea is like how are we going to turn this into an active document so tonight we're going to do a presentation on how we're starting to work on three of these different areas uh I'm going to turn over to three of our administrators who are going to walk through preparing for our future nurturing the whole child and operation Excellence just some steps uh that we are taking uh to make sure that as we said we talked in July
004or I'm sorry May and June turn turn this into a strategic plan and now what our next steps to make sure that we are continuing to move forward with the priorities that were set for us by our community um so I am going to turn this over to Dr Nick Carl everybody hi everyone my name is Nick Carl and I'm a director with the school district of l once again a big thank you to the community for their engagement in the strategic planning process um it's wonderful to have this Vision to help guide our future work I'm going to take a brief moment to highlight some activities we are focused on that fall under the preparing for the future section of the Strategic plan um so under this pillar it reads exploring academic and career
005Excellence for diverse Futures through opportunity relevance and Readiness when we take a look at initial activities to focus on under this section we leverage what we heard from the community things like career exploration as well as some of the academic areas of which the Department of Public Instruction has placed extra emphasis primary and Elementary literacy and middle school math so our district has showed some of the higher high school ACT scores in the region over the past few years in addition our Trend data has shown um High attendance rate and High graduation rate uh we have a lot to be proud of when we look closer at our middle school math data and Elementary and Primary School literacy data over the past several years both areas the DPI would categorize as Readiness criteria um we
006note a plateau that we've seen um and a need for additional resources that could be allocated these areas to further support our amazing Educators and our students so in a moment we're going to talk a little bit about conversations that we've had with Educators about next steps for those two areas which are Elementary and primary literacy and middle school math but we also heard from our community stakeholders that career exploration should be a point of emphasis moving forward this includes exploring a variety of career options and the admin team has discussed what they heard from the community and looked at opportunities offered by other districts who also focus on this area as a result we have highlighted a few possible initial activities to consider and you can see these outlined on the screen and I'll
007give a little additional information about that in a moment as well well do you want to hit over if it doesn't thank you there we go thank you so in regards to our initial areas of focus for academic excellence and Readiness and I say initial because this is a multi-year strategic plan and tonight we're just talking about a starting point some more things to come but at the primary Elementary level our Educators completed literacy instructional surveys where they identified a few key areas for updated resources and training and these areas focus on and they cor correlate with the most recent literacy research that's out there and um they correlate with updated state standards as well so our Educators identified a need for continuing to have a focus on comprehensive pheic awareness instruction throughout 4K through
008first grade to help all students have the ability to recognize the Sounds in spoken words this is a key building block in literacy instruction that's something our educators are really focused on as we move forward also um updating our phonic spelling and word study program for kindergarten through fifth grade to help all students blend and segment or segment um components of written words so that's another key component of early Elementary literacy that we want to have comprehensively throughout our system so something our Educators identified we also talked about guided reading and interactive read aloud to differentiate and build comprehension strategies for our Educators and we've already started on some of these things so what you see right here in this picture for example that's uh Dr Jan Richardson who's a leading expert in this area
009and she's uh in this picture doing some modeling with staff and with Loi students this is just from a few weeks ago we had her in and she was doing training with our Educators so already an impact on the start of this school year with some of these things again thank you for the Strategic plan and allowing us to um hit some of these areas for middle school math our Educators have identified the need for updated math program that fits the needs of today's Learners and better aligns with our standards and expectations so this summer the middle school math team developed a vision for middle school math the classroom what it should look like what it should feel like for students they researched a a variety of highly rated math programs and are in the
010process of planning some site visit to observe these programs in action and the whole goal will be to have a new middle school math program to start the 2223 school year now we're going to jump in and talk a little bit about career exploration so for career exploration we are looking to leverage the resources noted on the slide to develop academic and career planning activities for students in grades 6 through 12 we have a proposal for the board tonight to possibly approve um a professional practice goal process or one of the professional practice goals that would allow Educators to devote some of their time to supporting in this area um specifically supporting around helping us to develop an annual Regional career fair but then also allowing Educators to work on building classroom business Community Partnership
011so connecting with businesses in our regions getting them into our classroom so they can talk to our students and be part of the classroom experience so that's something that we're looking at as well we also um are looking at continuing to build opportunities for students to access work-based youth apprenticeship opportunities and then also earn industry recognized certifications while taking Loi High School courses and that's something in conjunction with the Department of Workforce Development a lot of good things happening in this area right now this is just the initial steps and we're excited about it so again we're really looking forward to the future and building on the amazing things that are already exist in Loi School District but just want to highlight a few of these things for you folks so thank you very much
012hi everybody my name is Adria Shader I'm the director of student services and I'm going to talk about pillar two which is nurturing the whole student um so our district team has been functioning for the last three years and we have adopted the vision from the Strategic plan to guide our work which is creating a sense of belonging by growing empathy and compassion inspiring the emotional and physical well-being of each student um we have Representatives on our team from each of our school buildings and Community Representatives as well um we have work groups in the area of assessment intervention and curriculum and this group group has worked to Define social emotional learning and create goals and objectives to guide our work so to start us off what is social and emotional learning um our SE
013team has um defined this as a process to acquire and apply the Knowledge and Skills necessary to do these things understand and manage emotions set and Achieve goals feel and show empathy for others establish and maintain positive relationships and make responsible decisions we feel that social and emotional skills are important because they directly impact students Readiness for learning the learning objectives for social and emotional learning are outlined in the castle model the castle stands for collaborative for academic social and emotional learning and it addresses five Broad and interrelated areas those areas are self-awareness social awareness responsible decision making self-management and relationship skills the Department of Public Instruction also has social emotional learning competencies that are also aligned to the castle model this group has um outlined some goals which began in 2019 and we are
014hoping to reach these goals by June of 2022 so this coming um spring hopefully we will reach our goals we have had some setbacks with um covid and having students not in school but that's one of the reasons why we know that this work is so important it's very important to have our students feel that sense of belonging within our school and within our classrooms so our goals um are to adopt a universal K12 social and emotional learning curriculum implement social and emotional learning and mental health intervention so small group or one-on-one interventions with students Define a mental health referral pathway for our students improve the culture and climate and student belonging within the classroom and educate staff students and the community on Mental Health disorders and how to respond during Mental Health crisis in
015order to reach our goals we are focusing on a couple of strategies for this school year um you can see in the chart that some work in these areas have already been done so we have had small groups of our Educators trained trained sorry in developmental designs at the middle school and high school level and responsive classroom at the primary and Elementary School level um both responsive classroom and developmental designs are an approach to bring everyday strategies and routines into the classroom for relationship building social skills building establishing a safe learning community and developing intrinsic motivation within our students so for the 2021 22 school year we have um all of our teaching staff which is going to be trained in a responsive classroom which is uh kindergarten through fifth grade and developmental designs which
016is sixth grade through 12th grade um like Dr Carl's spoke about earlier we will also have a professional practice goal for our Educators to choose from if they would like to learn more about um social emotional learning and these two approaches here responsive classroom and developmental designs I would like to turn this over to um Mr perzborn our Middle School principal who's going to talk about one more um step in our pillar to nurturing the whole student [Applause] all right thank you so as adri said I'm Derek perzborn I'm the principal of the loai middle school and as a part of this process we're actually adopting a program at the middle school that's called Satchel pulse and Satchel pulse is a tool to use realtime data to Foster positive environments and ensure students develop and
017grow their social emotional skills and I think that's one thing we really want to emphasize with our students these are skills these are things that we can teach students we can teach students to identify their emotions we can teach students to manage their behavior and there's we need to take time out of our schedule and we need a program and tools that help our kids do that um so satcha pulse covers a lot of things that adier had referenced that we need to cover as a district the first thing is it has a universal screener and that are based on the castle competencies so what happens the universal screener is going to be 20 questions that students will fill out um they'll take that three times a year um so as an example of a
018question one of the questions would be I get along with others and students will rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 of how well they feel about that and what we will do with that Universal screener or what satcho pulse will do is it will take that and it will organize this data for us and we can organize this data to help us identify students that struggle with these skills and from there what we can do is we can apply targeted intervention so as soon as we know that students struggle to identify or label their emotion we can have small group interventions that bring those kids in and we can work on those specific skills with students it also includes a curriculum um that we're currently setting up and we're implementing within our
019Middle School at the end of the day we have a 20-minute block of time that is called Home Room and within there twice a week we're going to teach these skills to all of our students and we do have a lesson here that I'm not going to go through but if you go on the website you can uh go on to this link and we've already implemented our first lessons for most of our grades which is on self-motivation and self ation is a set of six lessons uh that we'll go through this first three weeks of school and then we will go on to in their next lesson set of lessons is going to be on identifying emotion and I think at this time I'm going to turn it over to Brent rter for our
020next [Applause] pillar good evening uh my name is Bren RoR I'm the business manager for the school district of fla been here a long time so I know most of you I suppose um I'm going to talk about the fifth pillar operational excellence if you can follow along I'll read that planning for the district incorporating Innovation budget forecasting Building Maintenance and future needs for the district ensuring operational viability and as I work through my few slides just please keep in mind especially budget forecasting and Building Maintenance and future needs for the district's uh operational viability just a little bit of background Loi is a distri District that has needed to utilize a referendum to maintain operations maintain educational operations and so we have at least I've been here since 2005 and we've had to utilize
021that mechanism for three uh three different sets of years you can see in 2009 2010 we began uh with an $850,000 referendum for each of three years and again these are operational referendums so these help us maintain our current operations as in paying our daily bills salaries um turning on the heat in the buildings lights textbooks Etc we are currently under a uh fiveyear $1.7 million for each of five years referendum that will come to an end at the end of this school year so targeting April of 2022 the next election we are looking at um understanding with RW bar they are a company that has a finance specializing Specialist Team they have a a projection model a budget projection model and they will help us develop our projection for the next set of five
022years and so the board will have to engage in that discussion what the next referendum will look like because the state's funding mechanism the state funding formula doesn't work for a school district like Loi and there's many schools like us across the state a very simple schematic about how we prepare for a referendum you can see I have four different areas that help the school district the Board of Education prepare our community for referendum as I just spoke about we Define our operating needs with a model from RW bar uh they are a well-known company they're a third-party nonbiased company and they will help us uh understand what our needs to operate pay our daily bills uh for the next five years we also have engaged companies to support what um that fifth pillar when
023you're thinking about the U maintenance and building needs we've engaged CG Schmidt that was the that company um was the project management team that helped build our new primary school and so they've developed a facility assessment which is a 1 to 10e plan for our buildings to make maintain them and what our future needs to uh maintain the viability of these buildings the envelope the interior P pieces and exterior pieces like our parking lots Etc also point of beginning known as po has developed a long-term master plan for our Green Space they were the Civil Engineer that helped us with the um landscape of the new primary school and they helped us with our turf field so they did the engineering on the turf field and so they put together a long-term master plan for
024all of the green space or I guess all of the athletic space and lastly our enrollment projection applied populations lab uh a group out of W Madison has um provided us with an Outlook of our enrollment for the next 5 years and so it's a very important piece not just for the most obvious obious of how many kids are we educating and what do we need for teachers and staff and building and textbooks Etc but enrollment is a a critical and key piece of the funding formula so we need to know um how many kids we're going to have because Unfortunately they actually account for a dollar amount so the more kids the more Revenue to support our finances this schematic is a um fairly simple what could a question look like what could you
025as community members or taxpayers in Loi if you are um see on a ballot so targeting a referendum in 2022 there's really a couple ways a school district could approach that on the left side you see an operational referendum question that's very simple I just call it operational and on the right side and the I guess the second row is facility in Green Space they could be separate they could be together if they're all together you could look at something on the the left side where operational needs and immediate facility needs are all bundled into one question if they're separate and the board would determine this they'll have to engage in this discussion over the course of the Fall um they could be split into the left side where operational needs and immediate facility needs
026are put together or on the right side long-term facility needs and green space needs are wrapped into a second question so you see my lines kind of if you can follow it they're either separate or I link them together as one question that's what we may see um this spring but the board has to have that discussion first and lastly for me um in my slides this is a very general version of our timelines and so up until September 30th we're collecting data all the company partners that we have are providing us information in the fall that information will be presented to the Board of Education they need a to make a series of of um decisions on what will be put into a referendum or what will be able to be accomplished over the
027course of the year then on January 10th this is really the last regular board meeting where a board can make a decision on the referendum they KN need to approve that that's a formal statutory requirement and then that needs to be um provided to the Department of Public Instruction between January 10th and a targeted election date of for of April 5th or vote date for a referendum information sessions by either the Board of Education and administration or contractors um will present that to you so you know what you're voting on right so that that's my piece again maintaining uh budget and budget forecasting and U maintenance and and building viability that was what I wanted to touch on and Mr bring is is going to wrap it up with with a wrap-up so thanks Nick
028Adria Derek and Brent for your presentation um this is again just a follow-up to the strategic planning process we did this summer um it was adopted in July just kind of give you an update on on the movement that has happened since then uh we will continue to be working on developing a districtwide scorecard to help track how we're doing in those different areas and we'll Cascade that down to the building levels um but you'll continue to hear about these priorities uh that the community has set for us um in the future board meetings and future years um as we again reaffirm uh the priorities that have been set for us by the community so thank you again for the presentation and all the information and all the work that that went into U the
029work behind the presentation uh that we're doing each and every day um and i' invite the board back up on the stage and board has any questions for this group um still do that question board members have uh for the administrators um let us know or we can move on to the next agenda item does anyone have any questions good okay we will move on to the next gen item which is taking positive steps of service award can I ask Connor Anderson and Don Collins to please come up here please just to the we just come to the front come up to the stage we'll get you up here so as they're walking up uh are taking positive uh steps for service award uh is being given to Don Collins who is an elementary special
030education teacher and Connor Anderson who was our high school agricultural teacher um and the reason it's been given to them is we had a recent day at the fair um as you know the loai fair was moved to Labor Day weekend this year and so we were excited and lucky to have the unique opportunity to spend the day typically a day at the fair typically we do a day in the farm we did a day in the fair on Friday September 3rd this was due to the unusual timing of this year's Fair as a result of the pandemic and the hard work dedication and commitment demonstrated by Dawn and Connor while the fair all our Lai Elementary School and osc kids learned about the following types of animal farming process dairy beef sheep poultry rabbits
031swine and baby animals in addition to that they had learned about the grain bin and the old schoolhouse while the fair four to six classrooms at a time rotated through stations mentioned above and with the fair to for 1 hour and 15 minutes learning goals that were accomplished at the fair were showing kids where our food comes from helping kids understand their link to agriculture learning about the economic impact of Agriculture supporting kids in understanding agriculture values and how agriculture impacts our daily life none of this would have been possible without the help of Da colins and Conor Anderson they met in August to work on defining learning targets design the structure for the sessions work through Logistics identified and secured high school students to help teach the information to third through fifth graders all
032while doing their regular jobs at a busy time of year in addition Don Collins also plans a great opportunity for local kids to have different learning needs called stars of the show for this Don works with selected kids to teach them how to show animals and provides an opportunity for them to show in front of a live audience at the fair to prepare for this Dawn meets with kids and their mentors in the summer to help them prepare for the show and sometimes finds animals for the kids to show she also has stars come to her house and practice showing animals in preparation for the show at the fair please join me in recognizing them for their dedication commitment and hard work and supporting our students and Community thanks Don so Connor here is your
033award um usually get 100 Grand with it yeah I was hungry before the board meeting um I will get that to you sorry and here Dawn is yours would either of you like to say anything that's a first that either of you are speechless thank you again so much for everything you do for our kids and doing this extra so we really appreciate thank you so [Applause] much next we'll have public input purpose of the citizen input agenda item for the public is for the public to provide comments on any agenda item or to publicly address the board of education on items that pertain to school business the amount of time alloted to each speaker will generally not exceed 5 minutes per person to allow all people who wish to speak an opportunity to be
034heard however the president May modify the time limits at his or her discretion if the speaker has a questions for the board they will be duly noted and responses will be provided in an appropriate manner but the board cannot respond to individual questions or individual comments as part of a public input agenda item as any sorry as an additional reminder the board cannot take action on any item that is brought forth during the public input session or on any item that is not posted on a meeting agenda citizen input is an important part of the board meeting agenda and the board appreciates hearing from the community on issues concerning them and our school district and I believe there's a timer going to show up on the board we can't see it but y apparently you
035can see it and we have quite a few people who have signed up to speak tonight some by phone most are in person and so we'll go through them one at a time so first up is Scott brette so what we want to try to do is get as much in as possible because there's 30 of you it's going to take some time so I'm going to read two names at once and so as Scott starts to speak the second person can come up to the next mic and then I'll read the next person you can come up to that mic and switch back and forth that way there won't be a time delay getting between seats into into the mic so the next person to get ready would be um I think it's Teddy
036but Ted neffinger Neer neeger thank you so Ted if you could go to that mic and get ready I'm sorry I don't want you don't want to speak okay so Tyler um haralo okay sorry I apologize if you get ready at that mic when Scott's done then you can start okay go ahead Scott uh it's my understanding that under the prior superintendent the LOI School District made the decision to join the Daye County Equity Consortium the DCC is an organization whose mission in their words is to seek to address and disrupt societal and historical inequities and eliminate disparities as a collective it appears to move the primary mission of schools from helping kids develop tools that will provide all the best opportunity to succeed to pushing a political agenda on staff and children earlier in
037summer many parents started to understand how certain tenants of what many consider critical race Theory were going to be introduced in schools through the DC EC based on released open records there is an effort by some to push a political agenda without full community knowledge we have confirmed with Administration a number of middle school classroom exercises that had to be abandoned that went a bit too far staff compensation was based on a professional development opportunity that focused on a politically motivated book whose off Au ties racism and capitalism together staff that spoke out against a political narrative on their own time were harassed well we have not gone as far as other schools in the dcec we are concerned with the direction we are going there's been a lot of confusion of what we're advocating
038for what parents are advocating for um is simply for the board to confirm the ideals I think we all agree with uh we shouldn't teach that an individual solely by virtue of race is inherently racist oppressive Superior or inferior we shouldn't Teach an individual should receive adverse treatment because of the race or bare responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race we should not Teach an individual solely by virtue of race should feel discomfort or guilt we we don't think we should teach that the belief that the United States people can succeed based on their own talents and merits is an inherently racist belief we also don't think we should teach the United States was created by members of a particular race for the purpose of oppressing members of
039another race additionally we were asking the district to commit to eliminate political bias from the school and promote diversity of thought when staff development opportunities are made available even though these principles have been universally accepted for decades by most people of Goodwill we asked the board to publicly acknowledge these ideals I don't think it's too much to ask let's move towards healing the community that started to divide the day we joined a Consortium and publicly entered the political Arena acknowledging these ideals mentioned and leaving the dcec would be a great place to start thank you Tyler before you been begin could Ben bilky come to this microphone get ready okay go ahead Tyler thank you can you hear me yes okay well first off I just want to say uh thank you guys for being
040on the school board you guys have a lot of tough decisions to make and I think as a community overall we do appreciate what you have to do um so I just wanted to say that and uh uh I know you guys are tired we appreciate you coming out staying late letting us uh speak so I do appreciate that um I'm going to mostly talk about uh Co at the moment so I just wantan to I'm going to try to keep this short and sweet because we're going to be here till 10 o'clock otherwise so I just want to read some uh headlines from around the United States so News 4 in San Antonio four-year-old Texas preschooler dies of covid within hours of symptoms Jacksonville two children die of covid in 24 hours at Jacksonville
041hospital one was two weeks old WTOP News from Washington DC a child from Northern Virginia dies of covid-19 19 Kansas City Star eighth grader remembered for unforgettable smile dies of Co NBC 5-year-old Georgia boy dies of covid as cases surge Nationwide wb9 infant dies of covid-19 Louisiana these are a little bit closer to home wgn9 of Chicago 9-year-old Bo Chicago boy dies from covid-19 as Delta variant continues to Surge and BC 5 Chicago 15-year-old girl from Bowling Brook dies two days after testing positive for covid family says so there's this notion out there where this ain't going to happen in our community I've seen this I've heard this it's going to get here I actually just got an email today that my kid was exposed doesn't have it but it's here I want to give
042you a little bit of more information this is right off the CDC website from August 1st to September 11th there's 56,600 and 17 up until today September 13th there have been 168 0 to four year old thus 106 5 to 11 year olds from 12 to 15 years of age 137 16 to 17 years old 112 deaths overall in the past seven days there's been 8,285 deaths in the last seven days so the reason why I'm telling you all this is because there's an age group in our school district that cannot get the covid shot yet you can't even think about getting the covid shot for those students 4K through the sixth graders my recommendation or my thought would be to keep them massed until for first quarter is over and then reassess once the
043first quarter is over again or at least until that age group can have the shots thanks for your time um could Allison row come to this mic and get ready so thanks for giving everybody an opportunity to come and speak I think uh school board meetings across the State and across the country are turning into more of like a Festivus airing of the Grievances lately as opposed to public input so I appreciate you guys giving everybody the chance to come and talk um there's buzzwords right everybody wants to talk about mass that was a great a great update and it shows how close it is to home and how much we need to still focus on that so thank you for sharing that information um there's Buzz buzzwords about critical race Theory right now what
044it is what it isn't more importantly and the fear that it's getting into our schools everybody has a different opinion I'm of the opinion that we have a responsibility to teach our kids that the past history and the things that we've done in this country have led to some of the socioeconomic challenges that we have here some people don't feel the same way another big big buzz word is equity right everyone wants to talk about equity and we should all have recognition that each person comes from different circumstances and they may need different resources to succeed that is equity we need to make sure that we're providing different people different resources to make them their best self that's Equity instead of continuing to go down a path of the buzzwords I also just want to
045say two last things one thank you to the school board thank you for your leadership you guys have been dealt an unwinable hand in the last two years thank you to the teachers The Faculty the administration you guys are are taking these challenges on head on and I just want to say on behalf of a number of people that aren't willing to speak you have support of a lot of people in this community so thank you for all that you do okay thank you Ben uh Allison is on the phone sorry have to do the phone thing hi Allison yes hi this is Adam steer from the LOI School Board yes you're ready to give your public input I am go ahead okay thank you hello I'm sorry that I intended to be there in
046person I'm home with a Sith child um I'm the mother of three students in the district and I just would like to take this opportunity to thank all the school administrators teachers and staff as well as the board members for just an incredible show of dedication and resilience throughout this very long pandemic you are managing unprecedented challenges that no teacher administrator or board member in our lifetime has had to face and this is all new territory and it's constantly changing um I have watched you all as you've had to Pivot and adapt at every turn and I have just seen by and large you've done so with a positive attitude and with our students best interest at heart um it's in kind of attending the recent meetings and watching even uh prior meetings I have
047no doubt that this pandemic and the recent divisiveness has probably taken a toll on your physical and mental health as well as your families I just want to thank you for pushing through it all making tough and thoughtful decisions as well as sacrifices and really showing our kids the way showing them how to navigate this historic challenge um they are watching and they are learning from your example and there I'd like to remind everyone too there are children that do watch these board meetings and are watching how you know we as adults treat each other how we communicate so thank you you and I really encourage teachers administrators board members please take care of yourselves um we need you and I know that you've been through a tremendous amount of stress and lastly I just
048really would like to encourage everyone in our community to address our school administrators and board members with really the highest levels of respect um respect is so important in a community like ours it's important everywhere but particularly in our small community close-nit community and please show appreciation these are public servants um they've given countless hours listening to all of our public comments studying the issues Consulting with experts and really there are no Perfect Solutions right now everyone is doing their best under these circumstances um so let's give each other the benefit of a doubt and assume good intentions I think that we will get through this together our community is very strong um so just want to extend sincere thanks to everyone who's working so very hard to keep our school safe and strong please
049keep up the good work and just want you to know how much you're appreciated okay thank you Alison Heidi Lao can I have Heidi laho come up and Jack tetzel can you go to the other mic so heid's first and then Jack is second good evening thanks for having everybody all 30 of us who are going to speak tonight I'm Heidi Leu I'm fairly newish to Loi I've learned if you haven't lived here 20 or more years you're still the new kid in town um I have three children in the school district we have loved every minute of being here and we are excited to be um ingrained in the community and ingrained in our schools I didn't prepare anything I don't have stats I don't have facts to share with you I'm sure everyone
050else has but I do have a story that I want to share and it's sort of emotional for me but I hope it can shed some light to a different perspective of Co and maybe some impacts that it's having to our kids that we haven't talked about my family moved here from Madison uh in August of 2020 and in the spring of that year just like everyone here our kids were quarantined at home uh school was cancelled and we jumped into the world of virtual learning uh at first it was exciting nobody had to go to school mom didn't have to get up early we enjoyed it and then I noticed my kids starting to become withdrawn they spent more time in their rooms they spent less time talking to Mom and they really just
051hunkered down I was home with them I'm I have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom so I watched this happening and I was able to have daily conversations many parents couldn't do that I was grateful for that time and so every day I asked my kids how are you doing what's bothering you how can I help and they sunk deeper and deeper into a depression and so I took my 7-year-old at the time one night out for ice cream we drove the Country Roads as he was eating his ice cream cone and I said take off your seat Bel and stick your head out the window and so we did and I looked in my mirror and I sof smile so big I hadn't seen that smile for weeks and so we pulled over
052and I said to him what's bothering you what can I do I'm here I thought I've seen it all I thought I've talked to you and he said Mom I'm so sad I can't see my friends I can't go anywhere this isn't living I don't want to live anymore mom my seven-year-old said that to me a mom who is involved every day who pours their heart just like all of you parents do into their kids and he didn't want to live anymore what are you supposed to do our hands are tied I appreciate you guys our teachers our administrators I appreciate you as much as anyone else speaking here does tonight but this Co is not going anywhere it's longterm we have got to come up with better Solutions than wearing a mask the first
053day of school the first day of school my kids came home and I said hey how was school and they were so excited they love their teachers they love being back in class and I said what' you have for breakfast Lucky Charms okay what' you have for lunch corn dogs obesity depression fear and anxiety disorders and our kids are on the rise and ironically those things are peering with people who are dying from covid-19 we've got to come up with different solutions and our strategic plan that was talked about today which is fantastic there was not one mention about the health of our kids what are we feeding them why do their lunches come in a plastic wrapped container that is not providing them with any beneficial nutrient value I feel like there are things
054we can do and we can work together for our kids we don't have to agree on the same things in order to all work for a better solution thank you guys for being here for listening to us and even though we may not agree we are all open books to helping our kids that's why we're all here thanks thank you okay could I have Brad Iverson come to the other mic and go ahead Jack uh Jack Danel uh l i School District resident Jack you could you talk into mic so we could hear you better as long as I don't have to sing there you go uh the the Wisconsin Department of publicans uh instruction has academic report cards for all school districts we pulled up to load ey report cards to see how we're
055doing now if you don't believe the numbers I'm going to present look them up yourself it's a little hard to find them in the DPI website but they're there in 2017 in loai middle school for all students Language Arts students 50% of the students were below uh Proficiency in 2019 54% of all the students were below Proficiency in math 2017 54% were below profic proficiency and in 2019 62% of all loai middle school students were below proficiency Loi High School school 2019 48% were below proficient Proficiency in language arts 46% below Proficiency in math almost half the high school students were below where they should be in their ability to read write and do math 8ighth grade math in 2017 61% were below Proficiency in 2019 77% were below proficiency we appreciate what's going on
056here and all the hard work but we need to look at some of the numbers the come these come from DPI not something a rightwing group made up so then the pandemic hit and schools close their doors to the students for safety reasons I guess DPI doesn't show numbers for 2020 and 2021 but Educators know very well that when you switch from in-classroom to online learning learning drops very significantly and especially for lowincome and disadvantaged students so before the pandemic half the students in the district were below Proficiency in language arts and math and getting worse with classrooms closed the below proficiency numbers would obviously soar now I'd call that almost an educational crisis I think most of us would have expected that our school district school board administrators would really want to focus on
057how to stop the academic decline that was occurring prior to the pandemic and also figure out how you're going to help the kids catch up from the diminished learning during the pandemic but that's not what was done while the C country and while parents were all dealing with a pandemic our district administrator and administration apparently with the blessing from the school board spent the summer of 2020 developing a very significant program that'll take 5 to 10 years to complete the program is concealed in my opinion under the title of equity reviewing the equity program plan the very bias training materials workshops and associations and what some teachers actually did use in the classroom and materials others would would have lik to have used in their classes what we got is is a program that appears
058to be far more for promoting a social justice philosophy than anything else it is a social justice ideology that is closely aligned with critical race Theory now if you doubt what I'm saying Google ibram kendi and critical race Theory just Google he is Mr critical race Theory the LOI middle school has 25 copies of one of his books our district director of instruction wanted to actually use it in a high school class and a sixth grade class fortunately it was stopped I believe critical race theory is a divisive racism it's dividing Us by race and that's our goal I would be shocked I was shocked to see that prior to the pandemic half of our students were below proficiency especially the over 34s of the eighth graders were below Proficiency in math I'm even more
059shocked to see the lack of focus by the school board and administration this last year to address the academic Decline and uh during the pandemic and the need to bring kids Along on what they feel fell behind during the time out of the classroom the board and administrators need to take off their social soci Justice Warrior helmets get out of the de County Equity Consortium and let teachers spend more time with students instead of reading reviewing racist trash books Jack Jack so you're over five minutes all right very good let's see one last thing parent parents expect kids to learn language arts and math they shouldn't be subjected to divisive racist ideologies thank you okay thank you Jack so Brad is not here Brad is by phone so Craig gey could you come up to
060the mic and get ready while I call Brad you're gonna pass Becky card could you get ready yeah I'm getting there I'm getting there it's a juggling Act we're sorry you must Sorry Brad doesn't have a six he does have a 608 we're sorry you must first dial a one or number I still need to dial on eight though right maybe it's not 608 yeah because it's 931 so that's not one of our exchanges is it okay you want to do an internet search on Brad Iverson and see if you can find a phone or something or if Brad is watching you could come down sorry uh Craig you said you wanted to pass Becky Steve is next after Becky Steve card so Steve can you come up to the mic and get ready he's
061leaving Becky go ahead dear school board members thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak tonight I would like to start off with a big thank you I would like to offer thanks for making the decision you made at last month's school board meeting by allowing our children in grades 7 to 12 to return to school mask free I am very strongly opposed to our children wearing masks but I feel like we have finally after a year and a half taken a step in the right direction I feel like a victory was one a victory for our kids a victory that was long overdue unfortunately I can only speak on behalf of the age group of the high schoolers because that is the age of my children that attend Loi I'm sure if I
062had children in the younger grades I might have prepared a different speech for tonight I can only imagine what sorts of challenges wearing a mask presents for younger children and the teachers trying to teach them but I have two high schoolers this year a freshman and a junior I don't know if any of your Schoolboard members have high schoolers in the school here but if there are any of you who do you would certainly understand how I feel when I say how joyous it has been these last few weeks to see our kids returning to school in an almost normal high school setting the joy comes from seeing the excitement that simply radiates from them each day if you don't have high schoolers I encourage you to spend some time with some or better yet
063spend some time Walking The Halls of the high school and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about their Joy is almost palpable it's almost like a physical presence their mental health is finally beginning to return to where it should be they're social They're laughing they're goofing around they're excited and they're optimistic and it's because they can finally just be teenagers living each day like they should be without the unnecessary restrictions of masks without headaches without breathing issues without breathing carbon dioxide all day and without the social barriers that come with wearing masks so thank you very much I understand however that all that is in Jeopardy tonight and that really saddens me I have read your medical advisory report and I see the recommendations to throw those masks right back on the kids doing so
064will eliminate the progress that these kids have made I also see the recommendations to have those who are not vaccinated quarantined if they have been exposed I'm not sure how you will determine who is vaccinated and who is not exactly but that's beside the point it's widely known that vaccinated individuals can spread and contract the virus so it makes no sense to single out individuals who are unvaccinated I would also like to ask you how the beginning of the school year has gone with the current mitigation strategies in place that is having Mass optional and no quarantining without symptoms present we're a few weeks in now have you noticed any massive outbreaks is co circling the school I can tell you the only thing that I've noticed circling the school is teenagers who are acting
065like teenagers laughing being social playing sports living their lives and being excited to do so it's an amazing sight and even a more amazing feeling it's like freedom for our kids and its long overdue I truly appreciate the comment made last time by Vince brinig when he was expressing support for having mask optional for grades 7 through 12 where he stated that the families with children in that age group have decided for themselves whether or not they want the vaccine and they have had ample opportunity to get the vaccine if they wish there's no longer a need to mask those children and staff if they don't want to those that have not vaccinated know the risk of making that decision and have decided that the mental and physical health of their children is worth it
066families are making sound logical decisions about their health and it's about time they've been allowed to do so allowing our children to asend to attend school and play sports mask free is a positive step forward for these kids mentally and physically and masking our children now would be a huge step backwards there's no logical reason to mask them up now in fact as my husband will demonstrate in a little bit and as others in the past have demonstrated it's actually quite detrimental and even dangerous to be wearing a mask all day so it seems strange to me to ignore that so I'm here tonight to encourage you plead with you and implore you to make the best decision for our kids and to keep the current mitigation strategies in place for grades 7 through 12
067although I can't speak for the lower grades I do greatly support those families with children in those grades who want to keep the mass off their kids as well I have seen what can be done without them keep the mass off our kids and let them go to school like they should thank you Steve before you start talking Paula could Paula ton could you come up to this mic and get ready and then go ahead Steve you can go good evening uh school board members um administrator Brian Nick and everyone here um if you haven't noticed I I've been here in front of you guys many times in the last year my uh stance um in support of getting Sports going last fall uh in getting the kids back in school in um removing masks
068from our children has not changed uh I appreciate the time that you've given me um un unlike my wife who's very eloquent eloquent in her writing and and speaking I'm not but tonight I just am here to give a simple presentation about um um what I think is a potential long-term detriment to uh restricting air flow into our children's lungs um there's studies saying that it's not a problem there's studies saying that there is a problem we don't know where to turn uh there's flip-flopping there's any other word you want to use for it to determine um what is the right course of action and I appreciate the diffic or I understand the difficulty in coming with up with this and I appreciate everyone's uh stories and um news headlines and and other things like
069that I'm glad we're here to be able to talk about it what I have here I'm an electrician regularly I go into manholes or confined spaces this is a four gas meter often used to detect hazardous situations detects lower and upper explosive limits anyone that might be familiar with the fire service they have the same thing um it samples the air we go on in the into the manhole we drop this in and just lets it hang if there is any sort of um alarm uh by oosha standards we're required to get out and seek cleaner air for the protection of the workers uh in the meantime we're also harnessed connected to a tripod so that if we need to get out we can get pulled out um my uh demonstration today is just to
070sample the air between my mouth and my mask and this is a cloth mask worn properly tightly fitted which is what is required by the or uh spoken of by the CDC sitting on the ground here they have a long hose I can't hold it all you can see this I have a red piece of tape here to show one inch of the sampling tube and this one inch I'll just go in here and sit against my cheek I'm not putting it in my mouth I'm not doing anything like that put this back in here and I can continue to talk with my mask on hopefully this works because it works at home otherwise I look pretty stupid oh here 1.8 is what the normal is I'm still talking sir could you read that for
071me what does that say 189 18.9 my mask is even hanging off my face but yet I'm still talking now it's 7 18.6 just imagine if someone's running with a mask on or doing anything that might have a mask on this is a indicator that I need to get into some clean air and again I'm breathing air right out of out of my nose my nose is hanging out and it's still alarming 16% now I tried it with both that kind of mask and a medical mask with the same result whether you believe this or not it's a to you it's your choice your opinion we're all Americans we have that right however we don't know what the long-term effects of restricting air flow into our developing children's bodies and brains and that goes for
072children in the lower grades children going through puberty children in the upper grades because as we all know we're still developing brain function and development well past our 18th birthday so I'm afraid that we're going to constantly be doing this and pushing for this type of uh Mitigation Of Co which as someone stated earlier it's going to be here it's going to be here forever but what are we doing to our children in the long term that is a scary thing for me to think about thank thank you on Paula so um Jim schmidlin could you come up to this mic and get ready to talk go ahead Paula hello my name is paaon I have lived in loai for 16 years and I have been an educator for the school district of loai for
073that entire time I have two children in the LOI Elementary School uh I'm a taxpayer in the city of loai and I'm a business owner as well um the first thing I'd like to do is of course thank you for uh all of the work that the board and administration and Educators have done for the school district of Loi this has been uh the most difficult time to be an elected official and an educator and I am so proud to be a part of the staff I am uh so joyful to send my boys to school with Educators uh at the school district of loai each and every day I would just like to take this time not only to uh thank you but also to reassure people that are listening that the doubt that
074is cast on the school district of loai is part of a nationwide initiative to uh discredit what the work of what educators are doing and I can tell you as a mother and as a person who purchases curriculum material as a person who has two master's degrees in children's literature as a person who understands that children learn best when we attend to their social and emotional health which means attending to their identities attending to how if they had breakfast in the morning attending to how much of belonging that they feel in school when we attend into those things then we can do the work that Educators do and Educators do a science and they do an art and an art is the relationship building that we do with students every day and the science is
075looking at learning targets and curriculum and standards and making that happen the people that work in the school district of Loi the people on the board of education Vince brinig our administrators are EXC excellent Educators that are what are doing what is best for children so I would like to reassure students listening I would like to reassure parents who are just like doing the best they can right now to like wash dishes and get the bags packed for tomorrow and don't pay attention to Schoolboard meetings because they're too busy parenting and taking care of their kids that they are attending and the people that are caring and teaching for their children every single day are amazing and I am proud to be a part of it okay thank you so Jim Jim's not here Jim
076schmidlin okay Monica Simpson and then so Monica could come to this mic and then Ann limy could come to that mik and what on on the phone oh hands on the phone thank you so just Monica and you can go ahead and start whenever you're ready short my name is Monica Simpson my husband and I have five kids in the lowai school district I'm here to discuss my concerns with the equity initiatives how they are unbalanced and what they have missed missed you have to forgive me for being late to this issue first half of this year we had a family medical emergency this summer we weathered covid and I'm still catching up through it all your faculty and staff have been so extremely supportive they've offered help meals and even prayers we couldn't have
077come to a better Community than Loi Wisconsin we came here last year after almost 20 years in Madison looking for a smaller High School where everyone was accepted not just those with aggressive politics I've seen Equity initiatives and the harm they do to a school students are talked to about conservative bumper stickers excellent teachers leave for Less pay at a private school that doesn't force them out if they don't go against their politics or their conscience Equity initiatives in schools do not unify they are divisive they cut out people and ideas that are against a very liberal agenda my Madison friends who have been to the very same seminars your teachers have will confirm this all you have to do is look at the sources of your initiatives are drawing from and I'd like to
078refer to the list of initiatives you showed us in May the welcoming schools training your Secondary School teachers attended is an initiative of the Human Rights Campaign which is extremely left leaning and values they why you see some teachers adding pronouns at the bottom of their emails that will be optional this year and required next year when staff has been so trained whether they want to or not it seems Innocent but the end result is to let those who do not follow know they are hateful and unwelcome I've seen teachers pressured to leave over this most of these teachers have welcomed and love students No Matter What by the way they don't need an extra signature line to prove it the Dane County Equity Consortium wants students to understand how deeply rooted racism is in
079society and schools which is the very gist of critical race Theory you say you're not teaching these are just a few examples of liberal agendas every other training listed is directed by extremely leftist leaning groups as a Christian I would be thrilled with prayer in schools and kids learning how much Jesus loves them but this would be inappropriate in a public school and would cut out those who aren't Christian like you say in District Communications all means all but judging by the trainings your board and staff are attending all doesn't mean all all means all who have the correct politics by the way that phrase is boosted from the Human Rights Campaign tagline every everyone means everyone give our kids a break not only are they worried about academic social life activities and prepping for
080their future they're doing so in the middle of a pandemic they are digital natives living through their smartphones and networks on Snapchat Instagram and whatever chatboard was just invented they don't need one more thing to tell them they're not doing something else wrong furthermore these theories and trainings filter down to our kids speaking of technology I didn't see one piece come up with come home with tips helping your kid manage social networks tips on device usage tips on managing sexting or online bullying I didn't have a high schooler last year so maybe I missed that like it or not Tech is here to stay but like it or not the stats on how it is detrimental to a kid's mental health to abuse these Technologies are Stark they get kids thinking they are connected to
081like-minded peers online and when they are confronted with political difference in real life it is too much outrage is hashtagged and it can lead to a lot of unnecessary discontent it's another piece that can prompt suicidal idation and that scares me if you are concerned about mental health we need to see more done to mitigate this it is just as key if not more so than Equity initiatives my neighbor is a retired guidance counselor he didn't leave for age or health it was because his guidance time was overrun with social media disputes when it used to be free for College counseling connecting with students please please do not be led by hashtags of the top news stories of the day I know you're going to go through with these initiatives I'm glad I know where
082your information is coming from so I can tailor how I talk to my children at home I would like the kids from all backgrounds to be comfortable here in loai but these initiatives will shut out students and teachers with the wrong politics finally I would like you to consider adding a piece on mental health and social networks if you are going to be studying discontent thank you for your time thank you while I call an could Teresa Valencia get [Music] ready hello this is an hi Ann this is Adam steinber at pleas School Board it's your time to talk all right sounds good thank you um so as Adam said my name is Ann leny I am a town of loai Resident I'm also a parent of two students at loai middle school and I
083teach special education at loai high school tonight I wanted to thank the Board of Education and administration for the tremendous amount of time and energy you have put in and continue to put in with navigating our district through this Global pandemic it's evident that you have the best interest of the safety of our students including the rights in the safety of students with disabilities the safety of our staff and the safety of our community and so for that I thank you thank you to all of the parents and caregivers that entrust us with your children lastly thank you to my colleagues who have shown us and continue to show us that they are there for our students they show up and they continue to show up as well this is Loi pride and thank you
084that's all I have thank you Ian so Teresa hang on one second Heather Baron could you come to the other mic and get ready okay go ahead Teresa thank you I am Teresa Valencia um I'm going to come with my remarks that I kind of prepared and then I have a few other remarks um I really came to just thank all of the board members and a lot of people have already said it this has been very challenging um for all of you and our teachers um my kids teach have been amazing through all of this um I think it was Mr perzborn that probably called my son if he was a minute late for math class when we were virtual and he would call his cell phone and my cell phone and my work
085phone and our home phone and he would find him he would find him I mean that is dedication I've had children in this district for 27 7even years um my oldest daughter is a a first grade teacher in another school district um and in those 27 years I also went to school here um I can't say anything about the education that any of my children have gotten or are getting other than great accolades they are all well adjusted they're good kids um my older kids are successful adults um I'm a teacher at Madison College and questioning what our teachers are doing in the classroom to me is such an insult and these are the remarks I was not going to say the part about Equity my husband is from Mexico and my three younger children
086who are in the school district are from Mexico and I can't tell you how many times my son said in the lunchroom while children called him a rapist and a murderer and him coming home and wanting to not go back to school because it was hell being in school and maybe some people's children need to learn a little bit more about equity and if they're not learning it somewhere else maybe they can learn it at school my 8-year-old daughter came home and told me she has a new best friend and can we meet her at the park this was last summer this just happened 8 years old and she's swinging on the swing with her friend and my son who's in eighth grade was sitting on the swings with them and they're playing they played
087for an hour and we went home and we sat down for supper and my son said how well do you know my tast new best friend I said I I don't really know her very well at all and she said he said well while they were swinging she said you know what I hate about Mexicans I hate when they go into a fast food restaurant that's for Americans not Mexicans why do Mexicans speak Spanish when they're here as I play it over in my head it was almost like it was a slapstick like she was doing some kind of a comedy thing because my God she's 8 years old but you know what a little bit of equity training in school wouldn't hurt any of us I don't get enough of it I really appreciate
088all of you being here I appreciate the input even of the things that I I don't agree with I try to be very open-minded I try to understand where other people are coming from I try to be very inclusive in things with my children and with other children and I think we all want what is best we just all need to find a way to come together and make that happen we really really need to we need to set an example for our children I told my children they could go home they were here earlier um as I was listening to people talk um there's a lot of white people here I'm just telling you it's like fine I mean I'm used to it but for them to hear the discussion on this was getting
089more and more uncomfortable for me to let them hear it and no one was inappropriate no one said anything bad but when you're talking about we need to learn language arts if you're not feeling welcome if you're not feeling a part of that it's very hard to learn language arts thank you so Heather hang on one second and Grove Lloyds could you come to the other mic and get ready and then Heather you can start when you're ready sorry for the next person has to move this back up but short person problem okay my name is Heather Baron I live in the city of loai my husband and I grew up in Harmony Grove and we graduated from loai we've had two daughters already go through the district and currently have a son in high
090school and a son in middle school I'm here today for not really a specific subject but more of a generalized idea the first the very first time I spoke at a board meeting was last year in August I was pretty much begging you to have in-person school part of it was because I wanted that was what I thought was best for my kids the other part was I just felt like you are opening a can of worms and here we are I wanted my kids in the LOI School District in your District the district that voted all of you on this board to represent the school district a school board is supposed to be making decisions that are best for the education of our children it is time to step back no one could have
091imagined that all of you would have to be dealing with these Health decisions but in reality you shouldn't be dealing with any of this and to be honest you're not qualified to be making these decisions for us and shame on Society for putting it all on you no one voted for you to make medical decisions for our children we all have heard Adam say several times we need to follow the medical experts but Vince has also said in the past that you can find narrative to support any side of the argument that you want and that includes medical experts and I agree with both of you so now the question is is who do you listen to so thankfully you asked us parents what we wanted majority of us wanted our children unmasked you shouldn't
092be making this decision for us this is a parents decision as it should have been from the very beginning the same argument can be used for what is being taught in our schools and you have heard a lot of criticism from parents but are you listening to us are you making decisions that are best for our children are you getting caught up in all the politics of it all just like the board was voted on to make decisions about our children's education teachers are hired to teach our children and not force their opinions on others unfortunately from personal experience actually let me start over sorry I have the highest respect for teachers and I'm absolutely amazed at what they could do I could never do what they do and from personal experience I have not
093witnessed teachers forcing their opinions on my kids too much but three out of four have come home and said so Ando said this about a political thing or something as I saw it in my mind as highly unprofessional to be honest it did spark talks in our house and it made my kids think about things thoroughly when I was in a student in loai I had several teachers that I never knew their political views after I graduated and was an adult I had picked up and learned what their political views were and I was amazed at how how unbiased they were when they were teaching and it just made me respect them even more and that's what needs to be done I know my kids would not be where they are today without the teachers
094of Loi I am extremely impressed with them but the idea that was brought up about teaching kids or te or how people are going to be teaching treating people differently because of the color of their skin just scares me because on both sides that's not right ever any human being teacher human being nobody should be teaching or be judging people on that so I realized Society has a way of making PE people feel guilty for thinking for themselves they label it as selfishness and people not caring about others the problem with that way of thinking is you actually doing the opposite and taking away people's choice again stop at trying to speak for other people stop taking their voice away let's encourage that critical thinking that we all want for our children we want them
095to think for themselves and stop putting them in categories that they may not belong in we are not going to agree on everything that is what is so wonderful about this world that's what we want in this board differing opinions thoughts ideas we also want to think about our district when making decisions not Madison not other districts not other states we want you to do what is right for us we voted you on not the people living in other districts my whole idea tonight is about stepping back stop trying to make decisions for things that you're not supposed to be making in the classroom if we have a Viewpoint that's brought up make sure the other View point is brought up too let the kids debate on this don't put them down for their views
096we are hurting these children by not letting them think for themselves anymore I seriously fear for the future making decisions right and wrong is one of the most important lessons in life and if we continue down this path of trying to speak for people when they are saying the opposite it is so destructive this Board needs to be making decisions for our children's education not parenting decisions again we all have certain jobs and purposes in life so let's all work together and give all people a voice not a one-sided view stop forcing things on people I'm really worried about what is going to happen to Public Schools board members please keep listening to us people are feeling very misrepresented we all want what's best for our children so we need to step back and listen
097to each other and start giving choices and power back to all the people thank you thank you he could Chad Walter come to this mic and get ready and go ahead an hi my name is an Groves Lloyd I'm a city of loai Resident and a very proud 1980 100 years ago alumna of Loi high school I'm here tonight to Simply say thank you to the school board Administration and faculty and staff of the LOI School District the past 18 months have been beyond anything we could have imagined and your courage dedication compassion and commitment to the safety well-being and education of our children is so appreciated You' have had to create ways to deliver the curriculum on a foundation of a constantly shifting and emerging Public Health um pandemic a truly impossible task so
098I thank you for the hours of time spent learning everything you can about a virus most of us had never heard of until March of 2020 I thank you for agonizing over the issues that keep you up at night knowing that whatever decision you make you will still have unhappy people I thank you for being focused enough to tune out the noise and I thank you for continuing to work hard to do your best for our children I would like to conclude with a message to our community no one runs for an elected position for the money or Glory most of us feel a calling to improve our communities through public service and that's all we are trying to do however I've recently had a friend tell me they are not going to run for
099reelection on a local Municipal board because in her words it's not worth it and I even today found myself wondering the same thing I implore everyone to have some empathy for people who have the courage to put themselves out there and run for any elected position please think about the challenges of the information those elected officials have to consume the emails they have to respond to meetings they must attend and the difficult decisions they must make we need G we need good people to be willing to do this work and our democracy requires it for those who are quick to judge and criticize I invite you to register for the next election circulate your nomination papers in December and get on the spring ballot and If You're Not Elected please consider trusting those who are
100questioning Authority is good and healthy but publicly harassing and continually questioning our F questioning our friends and neighbors intentions ethics and trustworthiness is taking us down a very dark path thank you Chad Walter Chad are you here can you can you step up to the mic and then um Susie Wimer could you get ready on this mic over here and then Chad you could start whenever you're ready hello my name is Chad Walter um I've been a taxpayer for the town of loai for the last 12 years I now have two young children one is in 4k and the other will be starting 4K next year um I have a few things but the top one on my list my son that's in 4k last year he was in early childhood he's been through speech
101therapy I worry about the mask hampering his ability to learn um I guess his his teacher I met her on his uh first day of school she seemed like a very great lady and I've got very high hopes that she's going to do a great job I I have full faith in her but I was standing right next to her and I could barely hear her with her mask on every single person that has spoken tonight even the people that want masks have taken them off to be heard with an amplified uh speaker system how is this going to affect our younger children when they're going to have trouble hearing reading lips um the social cues I worked at a local business managing uh young teenagers they have no social skills anymore and I'm not
102saying that's the fault of teachers or the school district or anything like that with all the distractions in the world nowadays it's tough but now we're going to be putting these children in masks it's only going to make things worse I look at uh I look at uh your your guys's uh recommendation or your the decision you made that seven and on up masks are recommended so you can have a seventh grader not vaccinated not wearing a mask but you can have a sixth grader that is vaccinated that has to wear a mask I don't like to see this you know chosen a little from column A a little from column B last year Co was so dangerous and I do think it is dangerous I'm not saying it was so dangerous kids could not
103be in school but you guys let them play sports how is that acceptable you can't pick a little from column a and a little of column B just so it fits your guys's needs so I guess I would ask that you let the parents decide for their children let your staff decide for themselves the people that want vaccines have got them the people that don't want them know the risk they are taking I understand younger kids under 12 do not have the ability but the parents should be able to make that choice for them in their best interest um sorry I lost my train of thought there um if the masks work which you know they do they don't it it doesn't matter if they work and you're concerned about it wear the mask have
104your child wear the mask if you're not concerned about it don't I mean we should have the choice to speak for ourselves and to speak for our children um one other thing I wanted to uh touch on oh sorry one thing I wanted to add to that the World Health Organization recommends children five years and younger should not be required to wear masks in Kids 6 to 11 it depends on the situation what's happening so I just wanted to throw that out there I know the CDC says something different and I think that's part of everybody's issue there's so much information out there what do you believe what do you trust the other thing I wanted to mention you guys are talking about doing another referendum you spent $500,000 to put in a turf football
105field that was not needed I mean I am not against having it but it was not a necessity this building here needs a new roof that will probably cost upwards of $100,000 and now you want to ask for more money I mean I understand you need money for operational cost to keep things current but why are we wasting money for something that wasn't needed when we don't have the tax base for it thank you thank you Susie have a visual learner okay so hang on Susie don't start yet um Heather Schilling could you get ready on the other mic while Susie goes no go presentation okay uh my name is Susie Wimer and I've been a resident of loai for 30 years there are several things that I am passionate about the education of our
106children the elderly and the disabled both of our children were educated in the loai school district and I spent 15 years volunteering in these schools I know every inch of these buildings having a mom who was an educator I made a sincere effort to do what I could to help in the classroom and Beyond after watching the Schoolboard meetings online this summer I was compelled to read one of the books you recommended to the staff so you want to talk about race I also studied the mission statement of and work of the danne county Equity Consortium I was hoping to get a better understanding of exactly what it is you're trying to promote to our students I've brought with me my very own Personal Collection of books that I have read recently and over the
107years these authors have thoughtfully written about their racial experiences and give personal insight for Solutions today to today's fractured Society based on the equity program being offered and promoted by you I believe it is safe to say that none of those voices or Solutions are even considered due to time constraints I would like to finish by reading you a summary of the open letter written by some of those authors auth I've highlighted and other highly educated professionals they're not a fringe group but a voice for millions of people who feel as they do I'd be happy to provide you with the entire letter if anybody would ever be interested it is addressed to the National School Board Association and to the local school boards and I quote thank you for the vital leadership role you
108play in ensuring schools Empower all of our students to acquire the core American virtues and knowledge essential for citizenship in our racially diverse multiethnic and pluralistic democracy a peaceful and prosperous American future must be built on shared understanding of our past that is accurate and truthful but also celebratory and celebratory and aspirational the prevailing Narrative of racial grievance has been corrupting the inst instruction of American history and the humanities for decades but has accelerated dangerous ly over the year the most damaging effect of such infr instruction fall on lower income minority children who are implicitly implicitly told that they are helpless victims with no power or agency to shape their own Futures given these urgent crisises the UND signed of this letter submit in the spirit of offering a resource and hopeful path forward for
109educating our children we represent a nonpartisan and intellectually diverse black black Le Alliance of writers Educators thinkers and activists focus on the solutions to our country's greatest challenges in education culture race relations and upward Mobility the Woodson Center's 1776 unites initiative stands in unqualified opposition of any curricula that depict America as irredeemably racist teaches that the legacies of slavery racial racial segregation and other appalling crimes are insurmountable or fail to provide examples from history of black achievement against the odds we ask that your schools instead adopt a curricula rather than completely reject our founding values instead of embrac the ideas of Family Faith and Entrepreneurship that have enabled all Americans including black Americans throughout history to move from persecution to prosperity and will continue to do so for generations to come we propose including in
110your schools offering the Woodson centers 177 6 unit curricula which maintains a special focus on stories that celebrate Black experience reject victimhood culture and showcase the millions of African-Americans who have prospered by embracing their country's founding ideals it is grounded in essential American values upholding continuity not rupture the curricula confronts the realities of slavery and racism in American history while also recognizing them as betrayals of our Founders highest principles the struggle of Americans to rise and realize our own values is part of our story and always has been dignity not grievance while dealing frankly with the Grim realities of racial segregation it also shows how black Americans have seized their own destiny and flourish despite restrictions resilience not fragility knowing the achievements of the past help students better understand their responsibilities as American citizens which
111celebrate individual responsibilities and strength in the face of of adversity embedded within our achievements of American History are the tools of self- betterment and self-renewal that our country has always deployed on the journey to become a more perfect union our children deserve an authentic vision of that story we ask you as stewards of Public School Systems around the country to lead by example and embrace materials that will inspire the Next Generation like those before them to overcome challenges achieve their goals and live in the spirit of service to the common good Respectfully yours the members of the Woodson centers 1776 unites initiative Robert Woodson senior founder and president thank you heather Schilling not yeah okay okay guess this as tall as it gets um so we're actually GNA present together um Heather and I um
112and so and then Heather's going to speak later uh on her own but we um prepared something together to say tonight um so I'll start um Heather and I are neighbors well let me start I should say who I am I'm Sarah keski I am a a Loi resident um I have six children three right now are in the Middle School um and I'm also a business owner in the area and Heather I have two kids in the school district one in seventh grade and um actually I should say one in the district because the one in 4k I enrolled at bled Trinity so could could both of you speak closer to the yes sorry I thought it was louks I might have to hold it I'm tall um Heather and I are neighbors during
113the last election I proudly posted my Biden sign in my yard and she enthusiastically hung her Trump flag in her window we obviously have very different political ideologies but before the signs and flags we simply knew each other as friendly neighbors our daughters played together and attended each other's birthday parties she took care of our chickens when we were away on vacation and my twins entertained her four-year-old when she was working from home we are normal kind and helpful neighbors and friends when recent issues began causing division within our small tight-knit community Sarah and I decided to have face-to-face conversations to discussed the friction we have always shared a love for Loi so we talked at length and approach approached the discussions with a curious versus a disagreeable attitude and then we talked again and
114through these conversations we learned we questioned we disagreed we compromised and most importantly we recognize that we share many areas of agreement ultimately we hold so many similar core values while there remains some blue and red in the ways we see the world we found more purple more commonality in our beliefs and in the shared vision of the future we want for our kids and in the end that's why we're all here for our children so here are some of our common values here's some of the purple we found we both love our children we both have our children's best interests at heart we believe education is important we appreciate the teachers the administration and the school board we want our children to be safe at school we believe every child has inherent value and
115worth we want our children to have a non-judgmental learning environment we believe no one should be shamed for their differences or should suffer a degrading treatment we believe that everyone has a right to their opinion we we believe Authority can be questioned but should be treated respectfully We Believe parents should know that what their children are being taught we want transparency and consistent frequent communication between our school and the community it serves We Believe personal political views of school staff should not be forced on students we want children to be provided with the supports they individually need to help them Thrive academically we believe that diversity should be represented in the classroom teaching materials we believe in inclusivity the intentional integration of everyone into the classroom we believe there is no place for racism sexism
116homophobia religious discrimination etc etc in our schools we want our children to be taught from an unbiased point of view using factual information not personal opinions we want children to hear opposing views if they are both supported by relatively equal reliable sources data study we believe that some emotional discomfort may be appropriate for learning but shaming students is never acceptable Sarah and I definitely do not have all the answers or the solutions but we start started the conversation and we feel that is something sometimes conversations need to be uncomfortable to be transformative sometimes people have to check their own VI biases to make sure that the thoughts and opinions they have are coming from a place of consistent reasoning and not just emotion and sometimes you have to step outside of your own experience and
117see things from another perspective to truly grow both of us would love to see that happen in Loi we encourage each and every one of you to challenge Yourself by talking with someone that doesn't share your Pol political or ideological view but to focus first on what your common goals and experiences are and build from there we all know that there are some issues that can and have pulled us apart but there are so many more common goals that glue us together our glue is the purple those Collective values and aspirations we strive toward for the betterment of our children and our community this is what unites us and lifts us and gives us our shared story our Loi Pride but we must remember that neither side can achieve big and meaningful goals alone in
118a society in a school board in a school district we must have the active cooperation of both sides to move forward otherwise we are rowing in different directions and we stay stuck or worse yet we split apart a community will languish divided and can only thrive United so during these difficult times let's find our glue let's focus more on the purple while doing so let's allow each other the right to hold different views and to disagree but let's also accept the responsibility we each have to nurture the glue that binds us and us and allows us all to rise together thanks thank you okay thank you um Janelle Anderson and Iris Barrow is Iris here okay thank you so you're on the other mic there go ahead Janelle hi there my name is Janelle Anderson
119I have lived in loai for 21 years and I was Iris Barrow's teacher I'm just saying she was awesome you guys she was really good um so watch out I'm sure she's goingon to say some good stuff I'm also really proud to have been the teacher of several people that have spoken Tyler Ben um and really proud to have been a teacher in Loi for 13 years and I am also I have to shout out to many retired teachers in this room Mark Cole uh Stan Ro Lyle Hendrickson um who's back here oh Larry and Judy Wheeland sorry I almost forgot them these are the people who taught me um these are the people who came before me and I feel a great debt to them that's why I'm here despite the fact that I
120am no longer uh teaching in the school district I live here but I'm also an education policy researcher at the University of Wisconsin Madison and I could bore all of you um with like I do with my students um with many many facts and details about this um critical race Theory movement that I think is obscured even to the people who are engaged in it and um so I'm saying this so that some of you have a sense of where this is coming from because I think there is an impression that all of this anti-ri race Theory anti-e Equity movement is something that was born of genuine concern within our community and I'm not con I'm not suggesting that there are people here who aren't genuinely concerned but what I'm suggesting is that the timeline
121and the evidence shows that that concern is actually born out of a really cynical political movement intended to make you afraid intended to make you doubt this incredible school where Larry Wheeland taught your kids where Mark Cole taught kids how how to stand before mics and do this right this school this place um you are being led to mistrust the teachers who stay after school when you are late from work to pick your kids up right like these teachers are to be trusted this notion and I I appreciate what was said about the Woodson Institute and some of these other organizations but these institutions are suggesting teachers are doing things they are not doing the notion that teachers are going into schools and just telling kids what to believe politically look I had parents when
122I taught accuse me of all kinds of things accuse me of you know changing grades for reasons that weren't based on you know performance for saying things that I didn't say I actually had Parents suggest that I was radically leftwing and I had Parents refreshingly suggest that I was radically right-wing Mark Cole was there for that parent conference that was an interesting night I mean I I just think like this kind of stuff happens to teachers all the time but the problem is teachers don't get up and defend themselves because they are professionals who aren't going to talk about you in a public forum and say terrible things about you the way you are willing to say about them what the heck these teachers are working hard they are training they are listening and they
123are thinking about kids like kindall Woodley who I had as the first African-American student in my classroom and I saw him walk in in a sea of white faces and I knew he was afraid because being a person of color being a trans kid being a person who is gay in this community in many places is hard and so it is the work of teachers to join with those kids and try to create classrooms that are spaces where those kids feel welcome and reading books and studying all kinds of literature is part of that having Librarians who give you that literature to read and review is part of that work I mean teachers work really hard we all know that I know that you guys all love teachers but I would suggest that loving teachers
124is about trusting them talking to them and I promise we won't believe what your kids say about you at home right like the old saying goes if you stop immediately believing the worst things about us when they come home I'm so glad I'm so glad that I got to follow that Beautiful Exchange that just happened May we live that right and get off of these social media posts which are so toxic there are people in this room who are saying really nice things but then going home and posting really n nasty things so get off of it and stop doing it and Trust teachers they are worthy of your trust I promise thank you that's awesome could I have Paul rad spinner come up to that mic and get ready why Iris goes thank you
125Iris hello my name is Iris barro and I'm a resident and former student of the L School District first off I would like to thank the school board Administration and teachers for all you've been doing during these hard and pressing times your dedication passion and hard work has not gone unnoticed secondly I personally believe the school board should follow the CDC guidelines when it comes to deciding to wear masks or not in my mind masks are like wearing a seat belt seat belts are not 100% guarantee that you won't die in a car crash but they greatly increase your odds of surviving some people are right The Masks are not 100% effective but they do increase your odds of not getting and spreading the virus lastly i' would like to voice my support for a
126curriculum that encourages dialogue about equality diversity and racism it is my belief that these are critical conversations that should be integrated into the education of our students as someone who identifies in the lgbtq community I know firsthand how important it is that we continue to build a community where everyone feels welcome supported and their differences are celebrated I trust our Administration and teachers to educate our students to use these topics to break down bias barriers and create a chance for people to see the world through a different set of lenses that they normally wouldn't see which then can create understanding and compassion for one another at the end of the day I believe everyone wants the same thing love acceptance and belonging I hope together we can make a school district and Community wher everyone
127feels where they belong thank you I if Lawrence wood come to the mic and get ready while Paul goes go ahead Paul okay thanks I appreciate that I just want to compliment the two women who uh T talked I mean that was the end of my my uh uh comments was we need more of that and that was just fantastic I mean I almost just want to sit down and say thanks you probably want me to sit down but um uh the other thing is the comment made about where information is coming from we should all challenge ourselves to check that out the Woodson Center I'm not criticizing them but they were uh started in the 1980s and they came from a founder or a main uh consultant at the American Enterprise Institute so they
128are on the right side I'm not saying that's bad good and different but we should all know where this is coming from so I want to thank the members of the school board I know you care about these kids and the staff and you wouldn't be here otherwise most of us realize you do this as a commitment to the community and my wife Kim and I uh both thank you for doing what at times like these must seem like a thankless job when I put together my thoughts for tonight I was thinking of the work I do on a daily basis with some of the world's top furology infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists I had all the facts and figures and scientific data uh that support taking preventative measures to protect our kids from harm
129and again that's why we're all here to do what is probably the most important thing to all of us regardless of what our views are and that is to educate and protect our kids from harm but I gave up on that idea of using facts and figures because unfortunately facts don't seem to matter anymore a Facebook group can be started one day and all of a sudden we have a new crop of biologists and epidemiologists who've become experts overnight cliffnote seemed to be the way to get there should make it great for me to start hiring more people and that's the part I struggle with you see as I said I work with virologists and chemists and biologists and Physicians every day and I'm in awe of difficult it is to understand the complexity of
130the human body let alone its reaction to infectious disease and especially to a virus that's been with us less than two years what I'm most impressed with about these people these scientists is that despite their extensive training and knowledge the vast majority of them are humbled by how little they really know that humility is what makes science to me so valuable and the data I was looking at I was going to use was aimed at the board as well as the community again thank you for all that you do and for being here I compliment you on making tough decisions last year even though at times you may have seemed extremely unpopular but this school year I was going to challenge you to make better decisions and not to fall to political pressures someone else
131earlier said a little bit of column A and A little bit of column B I agree and I assure you that uh that you emulated to me the Judgment of Solomon with the mask decision recently when you required Mas for younger kids but left middle and high schoolers in the wild west why not greeneyed students wearing them and and blue-eyed without you also showed po showed poor judgment in not wearing masks yourself at a meeting that's unacceptable to tell others that they have to wear them and you don't wear them that's not okay that's do as I say not as I do and it creates a lot of dissonance in our community and rightfully so now what wor I'm going to skip that part so tonight I just wanted to say this two Shall Pass
132we'll get passes some kids will get sick some will not some may get hospitalized but most if any will not and it's highly unlikely and God forbid that a child should die from this virus in ours or any Community there have only been three deaths of kids in this state only quotation marks and only 444 in the nation but I say only and cringe because I can't imagine the pain that those parents went through and will go through their entire lives and I know that virtually everyone in this room and in this community feels the exact same way and if I could have done anything to go back in time to prevent those kids from dying to give those grieving parents rest bit I would do so and that's what troubles me the most we're
133arguing over paper or cloth masks did you know about a hundred kids every year die from bicycle accidents only 100 the odds of your kids dying from falling off or getting hit while on a bike are than dying from Co but we all most of us want to put a helmet on our kids to make sure they don't damage their head or die and why because we can't stand the thought of what if so if a mask could say have saved one or more of those 444 kids including the three in Wisconsin would you support it if you could be guaranteed that they would survive would you support the mask and if you could only improve those odds to 50/50 would you support it 20% chance I just have to believe the majority this caring
134community that I've come to love for all of the reasons that I've previously talked about would do that for those parents and those kids so let's think about the kids first and leave the politics for election years it would also be great to bring a little more civility back to the community let's stop yelling and start listening again let's think about one another a little more thanks you Lawrence wood did you want to speak okay test car and and then also on the other mic and I have Ryan Meer go ahead Tess hi my name is Tess Carr and I have three kids in the school district and we've attended all the schools the old primary new Primary Elementary osc Middle School and High School Loi has great teachers our teachers are dedicated to our
135kids education and well-being this came home very early when I was asking Michelle how middle school science teacher about her plan to deal with students who may have attention deficits she replied if I'm not getting the information through then I'm not doing my job she then proceeded to inspire academic success and a love of Science in the two of my children who've been lucky enough to have her class Loi also has professional smart and committed administrators in the very rare cases when I've had concerns our Administration has responded immediately Loi principles and staff listen to parents and put the students needs first their responses have been prompt appropriate face saving to all concerned and always achieved a satisfactory resolution the LOI school board has been no different years ago a gentleman I think it was
136Mr wherer overheard my son and I discussing a minor school bullying incident the man identified himself as being on the school board and made clear that our board takes seriously the safety and positivity of the school environment finally I've been struck by the support for kids in the entire Loi Community Heidi andris was one of the first Loi voices I ever heard our power in Houston had been knocked out by a major storm event right when it was time to sign up for loai summer school classes I missed most of the classes my kids wanted and I called Heidi we saw your flood on the news she exclaimed we want you to have a good first summer in loai and then she bent over backwards to put my kids in classes that they would enjoy
137my kids felt welcomed to Loi before they even arrived soon of course I learned about all the community enrichment and support offered by crew Reach Out Loi the Optimus Club the ice AG Trail Community fundraisers for children who are ill supportive yard signs for kids and on and on as my realtor told me when we were house shopping you're going to like Loi it's a special place our kids are lucky to have these special teachers Administration board and Community with this in mind I have two requests first to Loi citizens let's not take this good luck for granted being a teacher is tough being an administrator and School Board member has also not been a cakewalk lately but not only are these public servants continuing to do their job under the adverse conditions of the
138last year and a half they're good at their jobs not every school district is so lucky let's let these guys know we appreciate them if we're worried about a curriculum let's attend a class or two or at least speak directly and civil with the teacher if we disagree with a mask policy let's email the board members respectfully keeping in mind the bigger picture that they're doing their job as well as they can to protect and educate all our kids I may disagree with our board at times but I appreciate their hard and thoughtful work and I should probably Say More Often thank you second to both Loi citizens and to our board if ever a community embodied the principle of we not me it's Loi Loi is cohesive and caring it startles me to hear
139a few voices say if you want your kids masked then mask them I don't have to mask mine the statement so mask your own kid is like saying so don't pee in the if you don't want to this is at odds with the Lo ey character I have observed which is so plainly Civic community-minded and kid first as we know from the overwhelming consensus of worldwide public and private Health Data not from news commentators opinion pieces internet memes quack doctors or unreplicated and unsubstantiated studies masking works and it's a community solution more than an individual one my kids mask protects other Loi kids as well as Loi teachers as well as Loi teachers as well as atrisk Loi community members not all of us are able to be vaccinated or to avoid high-risk infections even
140if we are please let the board bring our kids back into the buildings in the safest way possible for all community members and currently the leading recommendations for this include un Universal masking for all grade levels on behalf of my atrisk neighbors and specifically of my own family which includes a daughter who has pre-existing health conditions and is too young to be vaccinated please act for we not me and Implement Universal masking throughout the school district pediatric hospitals in some parts of the country have been overflowing with Delta variant patients please require masking for all Loi students until the data change and precautions to keep our kids and Community safe can be reasonably revised following the data is a proven recipe for keeping our kids in person with as few absences and shutdowns as possible
141let's keep what we've got here in Loi let's keep our schools open excellent Educators and Community spirit thank you and and sorry for the shouting but you can make yourself heard through the mask Stephanie well so Ryan Meyer is my husband and I have his speech and so we are both signed up hang on so while you're there Bill beers could you step up and get ready at that mic so I'm hoping in the time that I'll be able to cover both mine and his speech okay you're both on here so oh separately though separ but I'm going to try to do it in one shot thank you so hi everyone my name is Ryan Meyer and my family and I have lived in loai for almost 3 years now we love it here I
142especially love Loi crew boot camp thanks Diana and we're looking forward to our children learning and growing here I just want to take this opportunity to share some thoughts I wrote down for what they're worth I'll start off by saying I am a no expert in viruses or in education I gladly defer to the professionals with the years of experience on both those subjects I have however in my profession had to propose projects to the public that some people may not like it has been my experience in those cases that only a small portion of the people that will be impacted by a project will show up to public meeting usually that small percentage of people are the ones who are most focal and sometimes those people are not in support of what we are
143proposing in cases like that has always been very helpful to have stakeholders at a meeting who are on support it can be very easy to think that since the majority of the people in the room are opposed everyone in the Greater Community is opposed to what you're doing when that is actually not the case and so my purpose so my purpose here is to Simply voice my support and appreciation for the board and the tough decisions they've been making I appreciate they have looked to experts for guidance when making decisions that will impact my children and the community I'm thankful that they have done their be done the best of their ability to make smart decisions based on science data and their experience and education and not political pressure I'm thankful that they are attempting
144to help us help our children learn from the mistakes of others to become kind thoughtful adults I know it's not an easy position to be in but I hope you realize that there are a lot of people in our community who trust in your expertise and appreciate everything you are doing thank you so thank you so much for giving me the time and space to speak today I'm here to express my gratitude to you and to the teachers of Loi School District I'll start with you dear board members thank you for doing this work I want to recognize and acknowledge that in this contentious environment doing your work has become ever more difficult with consequences seeping into your professional and personal lives I know this added layer is not something you expected or should be
145or should be asked of you but I am grateful that you are continuing to tread on in this SP of adversity honestly in the time that my children have attended Loi schools I've not agreed with you on every decision you've made but I won't dwell on this what I do want to do is applaud you specifically in those times when you not only listen to experts who have spent lifetime studying their areas of expertise but specifically to those times when you heed their advice thank you for making the decisions to support best practices and keeping our children and communities safe especially for their Educators thank thank you for listening to the varying opinions and perspectives within our community and making sure our environment is moving towards a truly inclusive and Equitable Direction my children are
146so excited to see their friends represented in curriculum thank you for understanding critical thinking involves multiple perspectives and acknowledging that a single narrative is not representative of our community thank you for your work supporting our district andal initiatives it's that work that makes my children's experiences better and to me this embodies low Pride next to our dear teachers the lifeblood of Loi educational system I have struggled with where to even start and how to express my gratitude because it's just not enough I feel like teachers in society find themselves in this cycle of continual expressions of gratitude with actually nothing being done to address their needs including systems issues Educators face which is one of the many reasons why we have a teacher sub shortage felt here and across the country teacher gratitude is starting
147to feel disingenuous without make without the necessary attempts to do what is needed to make their rules sustainable so I will start with a public acknowledgement Loi teachers that your role is having more added to it every year this is unfair and making it more difficult to do what you want to do teach curriculum to help students understand the world and make a difference in it thank you for not only embracing these added elements but doing it with Grace within this gratitude I would like to make a promise that I will do all that's within my power to bring attention to the sustainability of your position I will continue to reference studies like that of kathern Cohen who back in Pre pandemic 2012 connected the sustainability of a teacher's workload to student educational outcomes noting
148that if a community truly wa Works to make sure teacher needs are met a teacher is better able to meet the emotional and educational needs of their students for example with the Delta variant our teachers are worried about bringing Co home a simple precaution of having students wear a mask has become controversial and this will impact a teacher ability to teach students teachers want to be in the classroom but we as a community need to do the simplest of things to ensure we can stay in that classroom I grateful for the moderate modeling and respect teachers have shown I will continue to attend board meetings to Advocate on your behalf teachers especially by listening to you and highlighting what experts are substantiating Educators need in order to support their students so know this we are
149here we see you we hear you we appreciate you and we want you to have your needs met to do the job you became experts in so with love and respect thank [Applause] you Bill beers Melissa Brooks Stephanie caves and then can I also have uh Laura asander on the other mic get ready go ahead Stephanie thank you so my message is going to be short um I'm towards the end I think hopefully for you guys so yes you are my message is short and simple and it's simply thank you thank you to the loai school board admin Administration teachers and staff for allowing our children a five day per week iners start to this school year thank you to the loai school board Administration teachers staff and coaches for allowing our children and community
150members to participate and compete in their extracurricular activities Community enrichment programs and sporting events thank you to the loai school board Administration teachers and staff for allowing our children the opportunity to participate this summer in up to six weeks of an amazing summer school program thank you to the LOI School Board Administration teachers and staff for all they have done and are continuing to do to try to keep our children safe healthy and most importantly in school and finally thank you to the LOI School Board Administration teachers and staff for showing our children about Rising above even when others try to pull us down so no matter what decisions are made tonight or even in the future or if I agree or disagree my message is still simple thank you to the lo I School
151Board Administration teachers and staff you are appreciated go ahead laa hi there hopefully I'm not too loud I'm loud without a mic I'm Lara Ostrander I am a teacher in another district and I have three children in Loi I'm not here to preach um I've had several conversations with people 20 years ago I entered education and for me it became clear that when we look at data that we're not looking at just the academics of what we're teaching kids with Reading Writing math but we're really looking at the environment those kids are in when we're teaching them every day and so for me I never got into education just solely because I was in it for the academics but it was because I was bringing the very best out in the students um for themselves
152and in the community that they were in one thing that I had to do uh as an educator with a very liberal mind in the last couple months um was come to the re recognition that I have probably for 20 years been in urban schools and have been learning about equity and bringing it forth in my classrooms in positive ways and what I realized is that I have traveled a path and had a story that other people haven't traveled with me and so I had to pause and I had to listen to other people that didn't take that same journey I had to understand what the fears were what were the things that people were worried about coming down the lines and so that took a lot for me to sort of pause myself and
153here's some of the things the agreements I think that I heard was we all care that kids are are in safe environments regardless of their skin color their sexuality their gender Etc this is an agreement and I think one difference in that that I realize as an educator that sits and looks at kids every single day in my classroom is I see that groups of underrepresented students are day and day again called out with biases and stereotypes and I'm not saying that for an effect to put things down I'm saying that as a teacher I see a reality where some students are targeted for those things that's hard I'm a white woman and I'm in a classroom where I have to teach Equity making sure that I'm not not putting down white children but at
154the same time making sure that I'm lifting an awareness that this is truly happening in our schools so how do we bring in Awareness when we as adults are too afraid to have these conversations we're polarized we're divided we're standing here at a public meeting but we're not sitting face to face in conversations around the table here's the truth we need equity in our schools because we need to teach our children to do better than what we are doing right now we need to teach our children to sit across the table to have conflicting information to be able to ask clarifying questions to be able to disagree it's healthy the two people that stood up here phenomenal the woman that brought the books up I want to read them I want to read the other
155perspectives because we do have to bring them to children so it's not do we focus on Equity it's yeah we do how do we do it when do we do it together not you guys all of us because our school districts our boards our teachers are committed every single day I applaud all the parents here from all different sides and community members thank you for speaking up it's time we're having these conversations let's get it off of public input let's get it at a table and let's start making a difference for our kids so that they can have conversations that are better in the future [Applause] uh-huh I'm trying one more try so it's a 608 I don't need a one correct I wondered if you were calling yes we are hi stie so you're
156probably listening at home I am I'm watching live um hi my name is stie um I am can you hear me yes perfectly okay okay perfect I'm I'm I'm going outside so I don't hear myself on the TV um so I'm a mother of a kindergartener and a second grader and I just wanted to start off by saying thank you guys so much for the board for setting up the testing site at the high school it works so slick um and it really came in handy this last week when we unfortunately were like the first family that actually went through it and um unfortunately my two girls ended up testing positive for covid on the second day of school um and the teachers have absolutely been fantastic and I just have to give a shout
157out to Amy because she's such a gem um and I'm just here today to ask for some clarification on quarantines with families with covid positive members so so this is what happened so the situation is our second grader and my 2-year-old tested positive my kindergarten has tested negative twice um my girls got to go back to school and daycare today but my son is still out until Monday the 20th and that's a long time and that's just one um that's just one quarantine this could happen multiple times and him being out of school for 20 days at a time is a really long time um so his 10day did not start I've been told until their 10day was done because he tested negative nowhere in the quarantine guidelines States this 14 days is the longest
158mentioned so my son could technically go back tomorrow if we went by that um so I'm asking for clarification for other parents um and I was asked to talk about this um by someone in the school district um this quarantine is fine for my family because I work from home and for myself however there are many single parents in our district that probably couldn't do a 20-day quarantine or longer with this guideline my fear is that with this policy parents are going to send their kids sick I want us to be successful and keep sick kids home and our community safe um so I would like to make a suggestion with our wonderful access to testing on campus I would like to recommend family members are able to test test on day seven or 8
159and return on day 10 or 11 along with their siblings if a negative test is received a second time um I want to say thank you very much again for the foresight of um having testing on campus um I was told by the nurse that we are the first school district to have this in Wisconsin which is amazing um and let's use this amazing resource to get our kids back into school sooner and to and also keep our community safe I also want to give a shout out to my kids teachers literally on the first day of school they were told that they were going to have to also put together things for two kids to quarantine on their first day of school which had probably been crazy for them already and I just want
160to show my appreciation for that um Mrs Clemens and Miss kelshire are absolutely amazing and I just want to give them a shout out along with um Amy because she's always amazing so thank you guys and I would really hope you could consider um revising this a little bit and using the resources that we have to both keep our community safe and get kids back into school sooner thank you so much thank you [Applause] s okay so yes yeah Heather come on up he hi again yes all right I'm going to bear with me because my it team which is my 12-year-old daughter wasn't able to fix the printer for me so I'm dealing with what I've got um but I was grateful for the opportunity to get together with a neighbor you know people
161that are on completely different ends of the political spectrum and still find common ground and I feel like that same thing can happen between the community and the school board and and the district and I feel like a lot of things can be gained from these conversations that cannot be had from emails or even board meetings where things tend to be a little bit more one-sided um I think that the open Forum meetings that we had were a step in the right direction but they meetings like that small table discussions like you were saying they they need to continue to happen so that everybody is kind of represented represented and heard in the community um and and there's you know less confusion about what people want and people can kind of share where they're coming
162from um Also let's see here I just wanted to talk about a little bit about the equity program and what it is that brought people to kind of question it in the first place it's not out of a place of lack of trust other than the fact that when you look at the training materials that were provided to the teachers they were very one-sided and and extreme in some Natures you know one of the the speakers that was advocated for was ibram kendi and you know one of his biggest things is he said that you can't cure past discrimination without current discrimination and you can't cure current discrimination without future discrimination and to support somebody so strongly like that and not look at other viewpoints it scares me because I feel like it it it
163kind of asks for activism you know in a radical way of our kids um I also made the the very hard decision this year not to enroll my my kid uh my 4K in the loai school district and not because I don't think Loi is a wonderful place but because of the masking decision for her and because you know it was the best decision for us I feel like kids at that age really really need social cues and they they need that to be to strive and to be successful and um I was told that I had a wonderful conversation with Amy where you know we kind of talked about ways that we could accommodate and you know what it came down to is that she would be in a desk six feet away from
164the kids in the learning pods and that she would not be allowed to enter those learning pods and then I had also asked if the teacher could you know wear a clear face shield because I felt like that would be helpful not only for her but for all of the other kids in the classroom and that wasn't something that you know that Loi was able to accommodate so it was it was a very hard decision she was going to have Miss Bickle as a teacher my 12-year-old had Miss prickle as a teacher I think she's amazing I think almost all of adelyn's teachers thus far have been amazing I think the teachers do an amazing job I think that some of the examples that were brought up that the classroom examples that were brought up
165were you know tend to be more isolated but I think we just need to be really careful that we are providing a balanced set of information when we're doing something with Equity because there's a lot of good in equity you know I I love the fact that it's a program that asks people to be inclusive that accepts everything everybody that make sure everybody in the classroom is represented but I feel like you walk kind of a dangerous line when you push All in One Direction without considering you know the plethora of books that you is the example that were placed on the stage so my ask is that we just continue these conversations that we consider feedback and we consider talk together in a more of a way that's dialogue that's back and forth so
166that we can all be represented and heard thank you you thank you so I'd like to thank everyone here for attending tonight's meeting and giving additional thanks to those of you who were Brave and stepped up to the microphone to provide public input it can be very intimidating to do that in a public meeting like this and so thank you for that the board is now going to continue the rest of the public meeting but I'd like to remind everyone that the public input portion of the meeting is now over okay and so we're going to have a public meeting you're welcome to stay you're welcome to leave or do whatever you want to do we're going to take a 10-minute recess is that enough time 10 minute recess yeah we got to do 10
167I'm sorry because these people who are going to stay also need to go to the bathroom and stuff so we'll be back in 10 minutes and we'll continue the rest of the meeting e e e okay it's 9:15 and we're back and we're on to the consent agenda items consent agenda items in this section will be adopted as a group unless the board member request a specific item to be removed from the consent agenda and addressed separately we have approval of minutes from the August 9th meeting we have the vouchers payroll checks um credit card payments we have two fundra fundraiser requests from the wow let me start all over we have two fundraiser requests from the FFA fruit sales and plant sales we have one fund raiser report from the volleyball team we have
168three field trip requests from the FFA for the National Convention under committee recommendations for approval we have the virtual stien for teachers who are teaching virtually and we have approval of special education policy and procedure handbook there's nothing under other under resignation and retirement under retirement we have none under resignation we have Elementary School osc literacy coach K12 language arts chair and high school department coordinator we have the girls basketball coach middle school basketball coach Middle School head wrestling coach Middle School assistant wrestling coach third grade teacher Primary School physical education teacher middle school basketball coach high school counselor and grades three through five social studies Department coordinator under co-curricular we have first year mentors for six teachers we have a volunteer swim coach two of them high school special education department coordinator volunteer tennis
169coach High School assistant volleyball coaches Middle School volleyball coach to head Middle School volleyball coach to high school assistant volleyball coach Middle School volleyball coach middle school high school Vol volunteer volleyball coach wrestling High School head coach assistant and then two assistants at 50% and then two volunteers and then another assistant and three more volunteers and then a middle school volunteer dance team advisor we have one at 60% and one at 40% boys basketball High School two assistants um Middle School head and two more assistants at the middle school then we have girls basketball High School two assistants and then at the middle school we have the head coach and an assistant under the high school English Department we have a coordinator we have grades three through five language arts department coordinator grades three through
170five math department coordinator high school math department coordinator K12 math department coordinator K12 foreign language Department coordinator and a volunteer volleyball coach under Community program crew we have three wage increase and two new lifeguards under regular staff we have a third grade teacher eighth grade language arts teacher uh elementary school special education assistant 4K educational assistant health assistant covid-19 contact Tracer for one year long-term substitute under special education assistant primary school special education assistant there's two of those high school math teacher middle school special education assistant high school counselor Primary School physical education teacher third grade teacher with a one-year contract high school special education assistant middle school special education assistant Elementary literally literalist literacy Elementary literacy specialist at0 58% % FTE and a fifth grade long-term substitute under Personnel other Personnel other we have
171leave without pay requests and a professional Improvement reimbursement I make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented with the um approval of Natalie crota as long-term substitute for fifth grade teacher and the removal um of high school guidance counselor and the removal of the vouchers as requested by Julie McMan second okay so all that stuff was passed except what Angie just sorry was not passed we have a motion by Angie and a second by Bill is there any further discussion on the consent agenda all in favor say I I is anyone opposed so now it's passed 7 to zero except for the vouchers that were pulled so um jul was over there sorry Julie you're usually over here you're over there okay yeah so uh there was uh some public input at our
172last meeting that was um looking at some expenditures of the school district and I had U made a request to look into some of those in more detail um so Brent did you want me to are you ready to list them off y I'm ready um so basically we just wanted to you know most of them were pretty clear what they were I guess to us but as um citizens sometimes it's difficult to understand um what those are and what's behind them and what grants we may have received for those items so uh Brent's just going to go through those so that um it's all clear what those expenditures were yes and at this point I would also would like to invite um board members I'm not sure if you are you know comfortable yet
173or if you know that if you have a question on a voucher you can call or email me and my process with that long-standing process is that I will do the research and I will provide that to you um all of you so whomever makes the question um I know that you've had a long meeting so I'm going to briefly give a u a background on those payments but also understand that this is in the board packet and that Community can review this at their at their time as well so the first question was a $43,000 grant for covid Relief at least it was asked that way um this is a grant that is for um from the DNE County um mental health and wellness um program um it's going to be overseen by the
174director of student services and um we are receiving quarterly payments on this but at the time of the question um there had not been expenses the grant itself lists three uses for the grant and uh those are in that um in that description so I'll just briefly say there for staff training support social emotional needs to middle school and high school age students purchase of sensory materials to assist with calming spaces in classrooms districtwide and provide basic needs creation a fund to support and promote access and remove barriers to mental health supports and treatment potentially including Transportation the next one was $42,000 Center for responsive schools Inc um that was a course focused on skills and practices of building positive Community effective management and engaging academics um participant explored responsive classroom teaching practices morning meetings
175academic Choice rule creation interactive modeling and positive teacher language and responding to misbehavior 40 the next one is $42,000 did I just get louder was $42,000 AJ Vans Incorporated um this a there was two parts to this this van is for the transition program van is purchased with a wheelchair lift that's why it's not a $225,000 van um and it's for our students in the 18 to 21y old uh transition program that's housed at the district office that was paid for by two grants um one of those was a grant that was specifically applied for and we um were able to um as you can see ascertain $2,596 the second one the back filling of this uh van was through the DEA flow flow through Grant we have about $300,000 of that each year of
176that grant that our director of student services allocates to areas of need um number four is $10,000 for social School edu that is a company that manages our social media platform and I included a link for you to access their website in case you want to learn more about them question five is $3,000 for Human Rights Campaign this this is for professional development training to the middle school and high school Educators utilizing creative utilizing creating lgbtq and gender inclusive secondary schools module uh number six was an unknown check forcl program so if anybody in the community or board has more details on that will certainly do the research um eight was $800 to join the equity program and that is the cost that we paid for um or that we paid to the annual cost
177of Dane Equity Dane County Equity Consortium eight $9,000 paid to Brad Cerrone District administrator from Sun Prairie to head off the equity program this was the question this was the same district was sued one month prior for racism this was actually in the amount of 8,167 35 Mr Cerone led the school district of Loi in the Lo Loi strategic planning process this payment was for those services $99,000 for Brain Pop um and one thing I would point to the board is you see that the codes um the 10100 10e 199 1021 if you follow that those are building identification codes those those numbers so what I would suggest with that is um this under letter D animated educational site for kids science social studies English math Arts and Music Health technology for grades K through
17812 so each school has a part of um of that of brain pop and 10 $10,000 made to sockery school district um this is for project search and project search is a program hosted by the sock Prairie School District this is a partnership with other with businesses in the sock Prairie and other communities um spe specifically one company sock Prairie Healthcare where students 18 to 21 um in a transition program are plac on a work site for long-term learning of necessary and valuable employment skills uh the end goal of this program is to prepare students in the transition program for a career and have them work skill ready multiple area schools are utilizing this program you know I was in sock Prairie for two years so I was part of the team that oversaw this
179and there's about five or six or seven schools that have kids participating in this program annually questions no thank you okay thank you I guess we need I would like to make a motion then to approve the uh voucher Section under the consent agenda motion by juliean a second by Terry is there any further disc question all in favor say I I do anyone opposed passes 7 to zero next to the regular agenda covid mitigation discussion in action yeah so uh uh thanks again to everybody who came tonight and shared their thoughts about this um obviously this is an ongoing uh issue that we've had to deal with um as brought up you know uh most of us didn't run or if here be thinking that we'd be dealing with Co but we continually have
180to deal with it um so in this in this document I kind of shared um the board decision that they made in August but one of the first things that we talked about in August when we made this decision that we were going to revisit it in September um I also put together a frequently asked questions document that went out to all parents and was on our website um and uh based on that decision um but one of the other things uh we did is we put together a medical advisory committee um something we tried to do last fall as a district but medical professionals really did did not want to jump into the controversial nature of backlash of online school or not um online school um so the district talked frequently to medical professionals
181and took input behind the scenes um but medical professionals were more willing this time even though some were still hesitant that we that were reached out to and did not participate um the following doctors participated in that group um was Dr Andrea Chow who is our current medical advisor for the school district of laa and has been for a long time uh Dr mararo fukara um who is a current medical adviser for River Valley and our our Capital conference Athletic Conference worked with him a lot last year on Co protocols um for athletics um and he is also as I said the the medical advisor for Valley so very kind of familiar with schools uh Dr Nathan Grunwald who's a Urologic surgeon um he was recommended uh by the other uh Physicians to be a
182part of this group and one of the other things when I reached out to Dr Chow and uh Dr aawa um they really wanted to have somebody from the W uh be a part of this because they don't get to see what's going on at UW in the ICU units and what w is seeing and not just they see what's in this school district or their own School District they don't see more of an area wide so Dr Sabrina budris um was somebody who's also uh willing to participate uh so we met on September 2nd and the district asked them for their medical recommendation when it comes to co um and again they they asked initially what do you think the board will pass what do you and I'm like that's not what the we're
183asking what's being asked is the district wants to know what is your recommendation from a medical perspective because we've heard a couple times today um and in other meetings you know board members aren't qualified to make this decision um and so we reached out and their recommendation and it's it's they have a letter that I added in here but but the recommendation is that anybody who's eligible to get a vaccine get a covid vaccine um Universal face covering for students staff and visitors in all indoor settings uh physical distancing recommend that students are physical distan as much as possible especially during times when students don't have mask on such as cafeterias um snack times things like that all symptomatic students and staff be tested and excluded from school until negative test test results and quarantine
184invol close contact um I know one of the things I've heard again and it wasn't never mind um so they Bas if you look at the letter one of the things they talked about is why are they making these recommendations um they made their recommendations based on the following principles the goal of keeping students and staff in the safest environment possible to promote learning the desire to keep students in an in-person School environment to minimize the risk of requiring the district have to Pivot to online education uh the prevention of transmission of covid-19 virus School the capacity of the district to contact trace and stay ahead of the transmission of the virus to minimize secondary transmission um that schools last year were able to successfully minimize Co transmission within schools by following these mitigation efforts
185um wanting to reduce the amount of time students are out of school on quarantine due to potential close contacts with covid-19 individuals and then the district would be monitoring covid-19 data at the school level District level Community level County and state to make decisions when best to peel back um mitigation efforts um they also shared in their letter that they felt that medicine doesn't have all the answers right now when it comes to covid-19 they learn more about this virus each and every day however this recommendation was based on what they felt they currently know best about covid-19 through their practice and through the medical research um so that is the recommendation from that medical Advisory Group to this board of education um so questions about that or how often are they planning to meet
186or update this or provide us yeah so I I asked if they would meet again in October in early October for your next board meeting right and so they were willing to do that um we met in an evening um this time they want to meet like a a lunchtime so like the week before the next board meeting they would like to meet um because I I also asked them to have enough time to put you know so whatever they talk about they put together and there's some things that they when they talk met like they talked about outside like co-curricular they don't all agree on like co-curricular so that's not in here right it's like what do you guys agree on what do you um move forward did they give anything to allude to
187any kind of metric or anything used to make a change make a change yeah they would we talked about that like I asked as them that question that was one of the things I said like we have a couple neighboring school districts actually everybody who touches us except for D county is using a metric um and they didn't like that um and I'm like why I kind of like a metric right and they're like it really depends on how many people are testing if people are getting tested they're concerned that um that that's not the best measure that they would rather see more what's going on in the district drive that decision making process than a wider metric you get something that's narrowed down yeah it can go down to in our school district I
188me they're talking like in our schools versus like in our district area like they would like their decisions made more on what's Happening what are you seeing in your schools for transmission we'll look at area stuff but also that because that was something I would have thought the other way around I would have been like but a metric's really nice right because I tell you when you can peel back a little bit um um they would not recommend that what was that last thing you said then they they would not recommend going with a metric level like that and I said well I quite ironically I said we as a school district had a really nice metric last year and then we didn't follow it we we didn't never had kids back in school right
189because we followed the metrics based on Harvard and all you know you guys remember all the work we did on yes putting that together and then we would have never got to kids back in school if we' have followed that but this group of do is willing to meet next month and keep track of this stuff and see where it's at yeah and again if there if there's people have somebody who else is interested I mean I um because we hear that like well doctor you you can you can find a doctor that I haven't found any local doctors like who would give me anything different than that right I would be more than happy to have them join like and be a part of this conversation um if there's somebody at the the loai
190clinic or you know um fine savior in Portage or somebody that's close to right um that would be willing to be a part of that conversation I would be more than happy to invite them to be a part of it um I do know that I mean some doctors do not want to be a part of this because it it is it's a well again we had a room full of people tonight right and they have a practice and um so it's a political piece as well so I do appreciate these doctors being willing to especially Dr cha she lives here and um if anybody's going to hear about it it'll be her right and um people don't right she's I just asked her for her medical opinion and that's what she should be giving
191us what her best thought is what are we doing here are we doing rapid testing or PCR PCR so great question and just so people who are watching know so we uh and somebody referenc it that that we were like one of the first I don't think we were the first but we maybe were but um thanks to Jee winter um you know we reached out the Department of Health and Human Services as part of the last stimulus funding that happened at the national level there was money set aside for testing in School DHS set up a system through vendors we were paired with a vendor Noah Labs um West Alice and we pushed Jean really pushed hard like we need you here now like week before school starts so people can get tested because
192we need to make it easy as possible people to get tested and so we do we have somebody here three hours a day 9 through 12 behind the school um there was a line today um you can sign up beforehand though it makes it much easier you have to sign up you have to do that anyhow so sign up beforehand um and that that there's a link in that Weekly email that all the parents get um uh the symptom check uh that that they should get every set Sunday it didn't come out till today but um but there there's a link in there that how you can sign up and it'll it'll just give you your results and our results have been then um between 18 and 36 hours but typically in 24 hours we've
193gotten results back um it just depends on the testing in the state um but it's just a great way that being said that's just for our students our staff or if you're a parent driving a student to get tested back there then you can also be tested um but it's not for community members but uh the pharmacy in town does free testing as well so there's other areas and we ALS o can do testing um we have a couple staff who are working on being like Jee winter Rodney Barrow uh Misha are are are learning how to are being trained to test so then they can test but then we'd have a courrier come pick that up and take it as well so if somebody's if somebody else has symptoms in the afternoon and then
194we could test but that's all free of charge the district doesn't pay anything for any of that you know how many positive cases SCH story yeah so um we have had so before he answers that we have to speak into these mics or people will not here sorry yeah so the question was how many positive tests have we had or positive cases in the district and as of so far we've had three positive at the high school one at the middle school one at the elementary osc and two at the primary school um close contacts we would have 37 close contacts at the high school 25 at the middle school five at the elementary school eight at the primary school and remember when you talk about close contact right close contact is within six feet
195except in an educational environment with both students are masked kids are now not considered close contact unless they're within three feet of each other um so that's why those numbers are smaller at the primary and Elementary level and they're bigger at the high school plus High School Middle School you're traveling so it's a multiple groups of classes um um I know we did have a significant group of KS out today symptomatic in this building um and so a bunch we getting tested so hopefully it's not Co there's some Co looks like so many other things to everybody but it also goes the other way right so we have you know we get calls like rumors of uh we heard that this C you know there was three kids in my child's class who were symptomatic
196who lost their taste or whatever and I'm like well give us their names like if you findun you know and typically what we found is that kid is is out and getting tested it's not that parents aren't following through and kids aren't following through so I didn't understand what were the what were the figures again so it was two confirmed cases or three in high school one in middle school one at the middle school one at the elementary school osc and two at the primary school seven so seven total in two well not quite two weeks so a total of seven cases in in the time we've had school started and those 32 that are close contacts are they all out on quarantine no cuz the board decided not to quarantine close contact unless they
197were symptomatic um and again at the and I would have to double check um so jeene ran these numbers for me at the end of the day I checked my computer a couple times during public comment because I was waiting for those numbers to come because she had a really busy day today um and uh so I don't know if those close contacts count like like students who like the high school who would be vaccinated right if those 37 also include those I don't know that for if they include those or not but it's possible those 32 close contacts are also not wearing masks possibly not vaccinated absolutely so what type of masking compliance are we seeing at the middle school and high school where not you know not required to so just a yeah
198guesstimate yep so we took a day and like last L um I would say I put my old high school hat on like what we do for homecoming for dress up days and just picked the day and had them count like just cuz I knew this question was coming so last Wednesday we picked a day and hour and they counted so on September 8th uh during second period I'm sorry during wi time 37% of the seventh and eighth graders were wearing a mask properly how many 37 37 so 37% at the at the seventh and eighth graders um we're wearing a mask um during Second block that same day at the high school 7% of our high school students were remember in mas and I would say it goes different even at the middle school
199I would say seventh grade is a higher percentage than eighth grade so one of the other questions I had was on um if we are meeting guidelines for special education um there was that memo I can't remember what government Department it was from yeah there's a couple yeah um particularly at the middle and high school level what are we doing to protect those students that have IEPs and a special education yeah so there was a uh there's a office of Education Office of civil rights is looking in the five states um due to um kids not have worried about kids having access where their masked bans in place at some State levels um our DPI put out an issue like saying you need to make sure that you are uh making sure that schools are
200accessible to all of your special education kids because some of your special education kids are have underlying health conditions and so you need to be very careful that if you're not if you're not requiring mask that that could cause you not to be providing um a free appropriate public education um that is what a DPI put out um I would say our Law Firm that we work with would push back against that and say it's kind of looking at an IEP the wrong way like you look at an IEP as an individual education program and we make accommodations for kids based on their indiv idual needs we wouldn't look at it as a whole building right so um there has been some push back from the superintendent organization and I know like legally um from
201that stance that the DPI has taken um so I that I guess that's really only answer I can give you is I I don't think there's any dire situation for the office of civil rights to come investigate Loi because we're optional masking or DPI to do that um but they just wanted they threw that out there okay good job reading your email what good job reading your email detailed email a lot of that stuff I read everyone I know you do our board does a great job of doing that so in this quarantine section they give different options correct am I reading this correctly seven day with the test but 14 day is what they would truly recommend regardless no I think they would they say when talking to them these are the recommendations and
202they would go down these in order like they would say 14 day is by far the best that's the gold standard right we heard that all the time last year and so um but they would say again trying to keep kids in school as much as possible that they would they would recommend seven days out 7 days with a test so your quarantine is 7 days and you return to normal activities on day 8 after PCR based test on day five 6 or 7 and that's a negative test that would be the recommendation if you want to be the gold standard it would be 14 um and or it's 10 days if you because we have some parents who would say I'm not going to get a test then it's 10 days without a test
203um and then fully vaccinated people um again they would recommend you getting tested but they're telling you that you do not have to be quarantined because again we do hear about breakthrough infections um but they are very small compared to the other infections that are going on again is that's what would come from the medical advisory committee um they're the ones that always make the news just like anything else right all the big stories make the news um and so it's or something that's out of the ordinary um so the Breakthrough infections they're not seeing as much so they would still say that they would follow this this is their recommendation through practice and it makes sense so if you're willing to get tested or not willing to get tested said that if you have
204a vaccine or not have a vaccine you fall into different category for each great that I understand the you you wouldn't have you would say seven day with a test or 10 days without a test or 14 days in generally you wouldn't put all three of those necessar yeah I would say what you would say is seven days with a test 10 days without a test if you as a as a family want to choose the safest route it's the 14 day right they've never gone away from 14 CU again they they used it last year as a gold standard which really as a school kind of stuck us the 14 days it's hard to say to anybody you're not doing the gold standard of healthcare um they've now kind of come down there that's
205still the safest option but what they've learned with Co is they feel and there's still there's a a higher a little higher risk but it's an acceptable level of risk of bringing people back um after the seven days with a test so with those you you said there's 37 close contacts right now at the high school Y at the high school um have do we know when they became close contacts and do we have data if they're showing any symptoms right now or we we don't have any data on any secondary Transmissions at this point um so um for any of our students and Vince for sports are we still following the WIA recommendation we are right now right um would tell you I go back I think the wa is like it's outdoors it's
206it's when you're participating no mask um indoor you remember Joe at mask I think there recommendation is mask indoors I can look it up um and our Middle School is under WI a sports right they are not a wi we're not a wi Affiliated for Middle School just high school so again it's a local choice so WIA just makes a recommendation right we have to with a local choice of District we can once they get to the tournament right once we get the regional action or football playoffs or whatever then we need to follow WIA rules yeah then then they will say what you're going to do for quarantines and what you're going to do for um masking and things of that nature but right now it's all up to the local districts what they're
207doing so depending on who you play you may have to if you're playing volleyball right so my daughter plays seventh grade volleyball it depends on who she plays and where they play there's teams she may have to mask to play mask against there's teams she may not have to right now like if teams come to Loi they don't have to mask if she's in seventh grade right cuz we MK right k 4 K through right but she could have to go to barou and I believe she'll have to mask yeah so I again I have to look at that specifically which schools but that's it depends on which school you have to follow whatever the school so and then some schools are also doing I think um you have to mask unless you're actively participating
208in the sport right so that was something we had talked about last year I pring too but I know in when when we met as the medical advisory team met they talked about the M Transmission that happened during Athletics last year were significant compared to anywhere else for for high school kids and the federal mandate is still everybody's wearing masks on public transportation yes yeah yeah that's and that's got that's been extended so all of our kids who go to a athletic event or a field trip or anything have to wear a mask um and there's no exemption there's no you can't have a religious exemption for a bus um because we've done religious exemptions for our 4K through six kids um but that does not carry over to bus because that's the federal mandate
209y there's no there's no accommodation religious accommodation for that can families utilize the schools testing for that second test for that um tested seven days or is that so any of that testing is and again there's other spots in the community as I said the pharmacy offers free testing um they can go to their healthcare provider and get testing so with this quarantining um because right now we're just we're you're quarantined if you're symptomatic if this is the case do we have any virtual options in line in place because that changes just about everything a school that yeah so right now every each of the buildings have been working on Virtual options if a kid gets quarantined um so if every teacher is has a plan or have been working on a plan if a
210student if one student gets quarantined versus three or four students get quarantine versus my whole class get quarantined right they have a it's going to take them a little bit with the switch to it but they've been working on having a plan in place correct well and you might end up with a whole family that has Co say that again I said you might end up with a family different grade level right right and that's what H right so it's one of the things the board did we re quarantined if our last decision we also we said we were going to quarantine people who were in a household because it does you know we see it that it transitions through a household frequently um um so one person in the household gets it it's hard
211to especially when they're younger children they can't separate again when I when my my high school senior was a close contact or my kids when they were home from college were close contact there was times I wouldn't see them right there're in the basement and they can take care of themselves right I we cook them a meal and take it down there and maybe get the dishes otherwise we just didn't have we could when I have a four-year-old or a seven-year-old I can't do that you can't separate that way well if the students are masked we will have fewer quarantines because they would not be quarantined if they are both masked and and More Than 3 feet apart substantially less quarantines then yeah I our close contact numbers would be lower at the high school
212and middle school level if kids were masked again I and I'm speaking in general terms right I was not involved in any of this contract tracing so I can't speak to it specifically but right it's you're a close contact if you are both people are masked and you're not within 3 ft you're not a close contact if you're if both parties one of the parties is not masked you're within six feet of each other you're close contact while sitting in our classrooms especially at the high school level we can get you apart most of the spots are about 3 ft apart in most classrooms um because we have bigger rooms up there we can't have six feet apart it's one of the reasons we couldn't go to you know fully um um in person last
213year right we couldn't get to that six foot distance do you feel that what we have in place right now is not working it makes me really nervous um I think it's too early for us to know if it's working or not um it really makes me nervous with the how Delta seeing what how Delta has gone through like schools down south and hearing some stories from other schools around the area um I think it'll be a matter of time we have a lot of kids with covid I I can't speak that's that's just me conjecturing right I don't know for sure um we haven't had a ton of kids with Co um I'm still holding my breath to see with low fair and Labor Day weekend and what comes because I mean there was
214a lot of again there was outside events thank goodness and the weather was nice um but all those things when you bring people together always makes me nervous because every time we've seen spikes it's been after holidays and we're going to see and our spikes are going up we have always trailed the southern part of the country right because the southern part of the country started school a little earlier plus it's hotter so they come inside but we're kind of still staying outside um so last year we were we were trailing behind as well and then we saw our major spike um the data right now has us continuing to go up uh but that could change right I hope it does we're also only day eight of school and have seven cases already and
215we cases in every building a little concerning um what's the cafeteria situation like in the sorry no that's okay uh I might have to turn some of this over to my principles because what what's the cafeteria situation like do you guys want to speak to that turn that mic on right there I mean I guess I just want to know like spacing wise I know at the high school you're probably not able to do the at the high school they're not I was there today um Library so they they've they've gone to three lunches though um which is very beneficial um again have been the former High School principal that was a much more spaced out plus there was kids outside they picnic they brought some picnic tables um but you still have you know
216kids are the table Yeah so we we have round tables we have long tables we allowed six kids per long table on dots and round tables for kids Vince mentioned we move some picnic tables outside and as long as the weather stays pretty decent we a lot of kids like to go outside so we mitigate that way um and again three lunches so we have about 140 kids per lunch if we would have stayed at two it would have been unmanageable as far as keeping them separated we probably would have put them in different rooms and things like that and then we also have a a snack Break um which kids used to be able to come down and just hang out in the Commons to eat but that have been 4 some students down
217at the Commons in one time so they're just grabbing their stack and go into classrooms and that's working out pretty well how long is your lunch break Joe lunch break is 30 minutes seems like 50 minutes some days no it's minutes so the middle school we have three lunches um and it's separated by grade so there's sixth seventh and eighth grade lunch and the students we have at any time is 113 and what we've done is we've been able to separate them into two different groups so there's five home rooms per grade so for example in six grade three of the home rooms eats first so we have approximately 60 to 70 kids that eat first and and then we send the other two home rooms outside and then after 10 to 15 minutes what
218we do is we start sending the kids that are inside outside and then uh bring the kids outside inside at 15 minutes and so then the second part of lunch we have 40 to 50 students in there um so we're able within our cafeteria we have three- foot distancing between them we have dots down that they're supposed to sit on that I'll be honest with you it took them about two days before some of the kids started picking the dots off and moving them next to their friends but uh we're working on that but it it in general the kids been really good about um you know keeping their distance from each other so we eat as a grade level in our little gym and kids sit at least 3 feet apart in many cases
219closer to I would say probably five depending on the table structure all kids face the same way they have assigned seats um and we are able like I said we're able to do a whole grade level at a time and our largest grade level is 93 at the primary we have um each of the classes has lunch together um there is a class they go to lunch um they have assigned seats they're more about 3 feet apart from each of the um other students thank you and thanks a lot you two for those pictures of the kids outside for the morning Circle Etc I think you know the more they can have their mask on off outside the better we are so thank you so I'd just like to make a comment um I know
220Barbie commented that the the cases and the that we have so far are concerning but what's interesting is that we have cases in the schools that we are masking so does it and I would say a lot of those cases are probably still from summer I mean we're only eight days in it takes you two weeks to get the virus but here we have the middle school with only one confirmed case and but I think too if you look at the most of the data will show you that the transmission I mean in the schools where kids are masked the transmission is very low kids are getting it outside of scho outside of school it's more about bringing it in spreading it on the outside well our and our school nurse would say um I'm
221just looking at her email she sent me her quote is many times people do not know where they came in contact with Co they say no one they know has Co yet we have cases and I think that's the concerning part right we have symp asymptomatic people um or people who aren't also sharing symptom they're they're telling people they're symptomatic as well um so it's it's that part that that I know concerns her a lot um I think our bottom line is we want to keep kids in school yep so based off that I'll make a recommendation or a motion to accept the medical advisory board's recommendations as they put forth here second and and I would like to have those adopted by Monday of next week if possible but I would also like to
222give the board or the administration some discretion in how those are implemented and where they're implemented and when they're implemented well I I do appreciate not saying tomorrow right regardless of what we did you know if you're going to need any changes that there's some time for us to communicate things whatever that communication is and that I have a time to test Bas with the administrative team so is next Monday a long that time I mean again I don't think there's any I mean yeah the changes that we're doing I think Monday would work okay um we just have to craft a message out to families and let them know because I'm many of them are in bed right um so um whatever again whatever does this board whatever decision this board makes I'm going
223to have to get something out tomorrow or the day after so I made a motion and Angie seconded that is there any further discussion on that motion how do you want to handle Athletics no masks outside whatever these recommendations say th this recommendation is silent on outside this recommendation is silent on outside it says okay no mask indoor masking right so it would say outside you are unmasked so then the flip side is volleyball or any athletic contest is would be M inside inside yeah y can we just talk about the quarantine really quick I'm really not I'm really not here to fight I'm not here to my dear I'm not here to fight and I'm not here to be divisive in anyway the quarantining just concerns me it concerns me for our families it
224concerns me for the working parents it concerns me for taking healthy children out of society for this long can we just maybe give it more time for that we just quarantined symptomatic kids and see the data on the close contacts like just just learn the data just just see the data if if we're having close contact kids all of them are wearing masks and if they're coming down with symptoms then I will call the special meeting and I will vote to quarantine kids but I just think it's super important not to take healthy children out of the school interrupt their learning that much when last year most of them were not coming down with the virus just because they were in close contact and if we're compromising with everybody's wearing masks all the time I
225don't I I don't think that it's that risky so if EV if there's Universal masking where are the points where we are going to get close contacts so I'm just asking like the administrators where where are we going to be finding kids closer together than three feet that we're going to be getting those quarantines from and can we do something about those situations I mean you know are are we able to spread kids out more so that we are rarely getting that quarantine from 3 feet or like I I don't know how many places are we going to get quarantines if kids are masked hello um school there's simply just not room to have everybody out you know three feet apart um so what we've done in there is we've tried to Cluster students together
226so they work in groups of from two to four students and those students would then well some of them I guess I would say there there's partners for sure I am sorry I did not hear I would say there in those classrooms there's certainly at least a partner that's going to be considered a close contact within 3 ft um because there's simply just not room for all of our classrooms to be 3 ft apart it's working um at the high school we can pretty much separate everybody three feet in every single classrooms there there's a few pretty large classes where it's pretty difficult to do but for the most part we can separate them um I would say traveling from class to class you we're talking about 5 minutes so we're not within that you
227know 15minute time period most of the kids cluster themselves so they cohort themselves with their friends so it's the same people they're hanging out with outside of school so it's pretty much it's a consistent group that they're moving around the building with and they're they're with outside um I would say at lunch sometimes they get a little bit closer and they can be there for 15 minutes we try to keep them at their lunch lunch tables and they are supposed to sit at dots and we monitor that so we keep them at least 3T apart um so there's just not as much of an opportunity unless they're choosing to during passing times to be a little bit closer but in the classrooms they can be separated by 3 ft for the most part so we're
2283 ft apart most of the time in the classroom but as kids get younger spatial um boundaries aren't always as present kids aren't always as aware kids fall into pre-pandemic habits even with um support and guidance from adults so we would get potential close contacts in classroom um you know depending on what recess looks like there's a possibility like we still have mitigation strategies outside if you were going forward you know with new guidance for outside because kids can get more physical masks are off outside uh so there's a few spots where it could happen for us and I would also say like during volleyball practice it's very difficult to keep them separated when they're working as a team they can be somewhat separated but besides that and swimming is the only Indoor Sports we
229have right now so it might be somewhat difficult to keep them apart depending on what they're doing on the court so I would agree with everything that Mike had said for the primary school as well um you know the students are at their desks or their tables but we also are trying to have them move throughout the space as well um keeping their distance from students but trying to allow them a little bit more movement um especially at the younger grades um we do have breakfast in the classroom and that is um at their table spot so that would be more like 3 feet which is similar to the lunch space so breakfast and lunch and buses U buses they have to wear mask right so um but yeah there would be on buses there
230would be close contact so like my volleyball team you know they're mask the one girl comes down with it a whole team quarantines and their season is shot and they missed last year my eighth graders got I think we were there three and a half weeks and they've never seen this competition level and then they have to go into high school next year and play at that competition level that's just what I'm asking you to consider so what I understand we have a motion I understand we're in the discussion phase so how do you want to adjust it I would love to keep quarantining as is only if they're symptomatic the problem with that is if it's a household can't hear you the problem with that is if it's a household this time you know
231I I get what you're saying between kids in different households but if they live in the same household we we we do have that right now if they're in the same household they quarantine right so we would we would if what Chris is saying is we stay with that so we would stay if you're in the same household um we had a parent called in earlier to ask us to look at the longevity of if you can't be separated because then your your quarantine doesn't start until later but so I hope this doesn't happen but the reality is is volleyball could fall apart either way depending upon how many families ended up with it is what I'm saying not following that I'm not what is there any possibility of doing rapid testing in addition to
232the PCR testing we we could I mean so you could do um you could test or close contact right but you have to wait a while right so you have to like for vaccinated people um so what they suggest is you wait 3 to 5 days and then do a test um the reason we didn't go with rapid testing is if you have symptoms um when you test uh your rapid test comes back negative the recommendation is go get a PCR test right so it's like why why would we do two tests and then trying to explain that to a parent we're getting PCR test back within 24 hours we have been know but there are districts that are probably should mention this but there are districts that are doing rapid testing and doing in-house
233quarantine so if you are close contact you get rapid tested every day MH get your PCR test on day five or six you stay in school with a mask and more distance but you're talking major staff to test all of those kids every day do we know that that that it would be that I mean our goal is to keep the kids in the schools I think we should look at right if there's options for Rapid testing um and you know if there is anything else we can do from a spacing standpoint to prevent them from being close contacts in the first place you know is rapid testing on the table I think it should be well and there's options like we talked about um like talked about in August like as a district you
234can sign up for kids who are um symptomatic right so that's what we're testing is symptomatic kids you can do surveillance testing right we could test everybody um how many times you know a week I I think parents would freak if we did that right um You can do event testing like everybody who participates in sports has to test so many times like once a week or twice a week or prior to a homecoming dance you could do what's called event testing and then the other fourth one is outbreak testing you have an outbreak now you start rapid testing people um to try to get ahead of an outbreak well like Barbara saying is there a way to have a a rapid testing protocol that would prevent these kids from being out you know they
235could be rapid tested daily or whatever so they could stay in school but know they're not infectious at that moment yeah I would have to check with Noah labs and DHS to see if we can do that um I mean obviously that cannot happen at this exact moment but I think again keeping the kids in the classroom is number one well I think that's everybody's goal right everybody's goal is to keep kids in classroom and make sure kids are safe right but we also know by the time they show symptoms they've probably already contagious I said by the time they show symptoms they've already been contagious for right a couple of days too well and like I mean for vaccinated students who would be the older students they're not being quarantined out and they they
236are staying in school wearing mask wearing a mask so that's team no that's high school midd scho 12 7 so not sixth gr some six graders and very few sixth graders at this point the seven and eight Adam yeah would you consider amending your motion to allow the quarantining um that we're currently using to go forward rather than to accept what's in the recommendation the whole problem is that we're not doctors and we're second guessing what these doctors have told us to do and I'm sorry I'm not willing to second guess these experts they're the experts just ask any any question sorry but that's the whole point they're kiding us we ask so no I'm not willing to Jesus is f it's not are you ready to move any further discussion Angie yes Terry yes
237Bill yes Julie no bar yes Christie no Adam yes yeah Julie and Christie 52 5 professional practice goals 02 yeah so in each of the past few years the district has recommended professional practice goal options for staff um it was part of the compensation plan that was put together uh several years ago um and initially staff were asked to put together their own um pract professional practice goals and it we found that staff really like it that when we put together um ones that they can choose it also helps the district move in One Direction in a lot of different areas they still can choose their own if they would like um so we have proposed three different goals You' heard about uh two of the three tonight in our strategic plan where we talk
238about strategic planning one of them is the uh Community Connection Business Partnership PPG uh the other one's the PPG and the third one is a PLC p PG is with professional learning communities which is we we worked on some of that last year when we get to meet real frequently last year on Wednesdays and we really needed to have that um vertical and and horizontal alignment in our curriculum and so we want to really focus on when we do have time for staff to meet but they're really focusing on you know um using that time effectively and that's what the PC of professional Learning Community does so looking at these three three areas and then we also had some um for our um support staff as well we haven't fleshed those out quite as well
239um but looking at uh behavior management techniques academic student supports and supporting academic Independence uh with students with special needs so I shared these with both the curriculum committee and the contract Review Committee both um thought these all looked like a great idea and uh both approved them 30 to or recommend them 30 to the board with the recommendation of approval so I would recommend that we approve these for the 2122 school year I make a motion to approve the proposed professional practice goals for the 2021-22 school year as presented I'll second that motion by bar and a second by Terry is there any further discussion all in favor say I I anyone opposed pass the 7 to zero Community your referendum planning yeah so this agenda ATT ties directly to the fifth pillar of
240our strategic plan which prioritizes operational excellence as you heard Mr rer discussed the current 5-year operation referendum operational referendum comes to an end at the conclusion of this school year so the board has been discussing going to referendum in April 2022 uh the board has already approved an enrollment study on which to build a budget forecast model moving forward the board has also reached out the point of beginning to do greens space study and CJ Smit to do a study of our buildings and Facilities District use this information to create a community survey regarding this referendum we're kind of hoping to be at that point tonight but it's just taking us a while to get that information um so as we get this preliminary information um we're just going to need to take a back
241to facility and finance uh committee to really kind of find you know fine-tune it and put it together in a survey and bring that survey back um to this committee next or bring it back to the board so we're at the end of this meeting I'm going to suggest that we schedule an extra ficil and finance committee meeting to start reviewing some of that data um and at tonight's meeting it's just a a report you heard again Brent's presentation at the beginning kind of covered most of it and that's where we are right now so there's no action required at this point just an update mowing contract renewal yeah again the facility finance committee uh we pulled it we tabled this last morning because meeting because the uh facility finance committee had had a chance
242to look at it uh they had a chance to look at it and they recommended approval I'll make a motion to renew the lawn mowing contract with eanon Mowing and maintenance LLC for the 2022 2023 and 2024 mowing season a second motion by Barb and a second by Julie any further discussion all in favor say I I anyone opposed yes the 7 to zero seclusion and restraint report uh so this is a state required report uh the administration must present to the district's seclusion and restraint report to the Board of Education by October 1st of each year M Shader has provided the board a summary of our District's annual seclusion and restraint report um I would just ask you approve it I'll make a motion to approve this seclusion or straight report second motion by
243Barb and a second by Angie any further discussion in favor say I I anyone opposed 7 to zero substitute education assistant pay yeah so the district reviewed the rate of pay uh for our substitute educational assistance uh with other districts in cesa 5 and found that we were lower than most in our area and trying to we're struggling to find um substitute educational assistants and substitute teachers as well um but we felt that uh we could make a recommendation to increase this rate uh from $150 to $12 and facility Finance said no no you need to raise it to 1250 um so the recommendation is to raise our substitute educational assistant rate uh from 1150 to 1250 retroactive as of September 1st of this school year I'll make a motion that we accept the rate
244increase from 1150 to retroactive to September 1st September 1st didn't hear the sorry second motion by Terry and a second by Bill any further discussion all favor say I I anyone opposed seven to zero weekend monitor pay discussion uh something very similar uh we have weekend monitors if you've ever come and Ed the buildings on the weekend you see that the doors are open for you um we have somebody coming in checking the buildings and just making sure that we can continue to find people um we've been paying um $11 for that uh and we passed this through the facility finance committee they recommended we move it up to $13 um we were supposed to have this this just somehow got left off our last board agenda um so it's this one and um I
245again ask that you increase the pay to $13 and make it retroactive to September 1st 2021 I'll make the motion to increase the weekend monitor pay to $13 retroactive to September 1st 2021 a second motion by Bill and a second by Julie any further discussion all in favor say I anyone opposed passes 7 to zero District administrator evaluation and goal setting this sounds like fun uh so per board policy 225 um and procedure board policy procedure 225 um there are steps required in September uh for the evaluation process of the district administrator um so the board received my self- evaluation and proposed goals and Clos session uh before the meeting as well as a um summary of my goals from last year and uh they also will receive uh evaluation tool um after this meeting
246today so they can schedule a meeting so you will get that tool um and I know you talked about cool session how you're going to proceed with that and then you will meet and put together evaluation and meet with me and and share those your thoughts and feelings yes exactly okay thank you draft annual meeting notice yeah so um with everything else going on we still have to do an annual meeting um that is October 18th right so we'll be back in this space um do that meeting and so it has to be approved at the September board meeting so we can have it on October 18th so I would recommend approval of our uh our hearing notice and agenda item um I will make a motion to approve the annual meeting notice and agenda
247is presented I'll second motion by Barb second by Julie any further discussion all in favor say I I opposed passes 7 to zero building building listening session schedule yeah so um as we looked at the board we spent a lot of time in the policy Committee in the last year looking at the board self- evaluation tool um um that they used uh which is later on the agenda here but one of the things we talked about um in there was having uh listening sessions at the different buildings throughout um the course of the year to get input from staff uh so I put together a schedule um and shared it with the policy committee um and they asked me to tweak the schedule a little bit which I did um and the idea behind this
248is that we would schedule a night in in each of the buildings with one of the Committees and that we would start there start at uh 3:15 or 320 have an hour listening session and then have a committee meeting after that in that building um the one that's a little different is policy committee is on a Tuesday night because they typically meet Wednesday at 6: so we had to move them up um so this is just a a sample um so you can I guess look at it let me know if it works for you um um or let Marine know if it works for you and if it doesn't work um it was just trying to spread it out we hit every building it got every every Committee involved um and and then we
249would set up how that process would work so it was just a tentative calendar so B you would not be able to make these times I would just have to take off work early so you you might be able to make at least your committee meeting one you could make well yeah I mean either one yeah to leave work early for you one so I might well just take so so the option would be people who are on the committee go to that building meet with whoever the staff is and then have their committee meeting afterwards but then other board members could come to that meeting prior to the committee meeting so anyone could show up every board member would be welcome right every board me board member is welcome to stay for the committee
250meeting yes but yeah absolutely but it was just like it was trying to spread it out right it just wasn't uh chrisy going to every board meeting or every having to do this four times or Julie having to it was like trying to spread up but also knowing that you guys are all have full-time jobs and you have other things going on that this may not work and only only two of you may show up for one of these and that's okay right I would think we would the minimum we want is have at least two board members at each of these so that's what I really need from you is a commitment that if you if you look at this look at your calendar that we can come back even at the next board
251meting and say yep we can collect that off and then I can put it on a staff calendar as well can we all look at our calendars and send the dates to Mo and which ones you can make do that and then Mo can coordinate the whole thing the other possibility is we could have this has an agenda item at each of our or each of our committee meetings right right each of these next committee meetings we can like say this work for us because it doesn't start till November start till November and we all have a meeting let's do that we have two coming up this middle of this week ideal perfect so again this came out of the policy committee so thank you policy is a great idea speaking of policy first readings
252on 3.4 sorry 3 41.2 program for students with disabilities yeah so this policy just required some updates uh that were discovered by the district preparing for our self assessment and special education um um the change of policy are noted in the policy document um it also represents the special education policies and procedures um which should reviewed and approved each year so that was in our consent AG item that we already approved the policy committee moved 30 to move this policy to the full board for approval and then policy 153 the board self- evaluation instrument yes so and that as we just got done talking about that uh that is something that the board has um put a lot of time in I know Adam put a lot of time in to to twe that document
253um taking input and so that would change that that document uh for their self- evaluation would you do in January right I'd recommend we were just reading them so there's no recomendation for you did a really nice job by the way thank you that was a lot of work um gifts and donations we've second oh there's no second reading there there's no second reading because we didn't have any policy meeting in July don't mind me keep going y we're on good speed you know you're yeah I will make a motion to accept of great gratitude the donation of AV Equipment from shaa Wyman of Wyman photography second motion by Barb second by Julie further discussion favor say I I passes 7 to zero administrative reports the timer is ticket Loi middle school he's up let
254going check if this is is this work all right um so first of all I just want to thank our staff at the middle school for getting the school year off to a great start um the first few days the school has able to get around to every single classroom and I'm just amazed at the effort that they go through to set our students up for a successful school year the effort they go through to build connections with students I just want to start by thanking them um we do have some new staff members py heightman is joining us as an eighth grade language arts teacher Samantha Dicky is going to join us as an educational assistant Jamie rmer as an educational assistant Beth herd as an educational assistant and Janelle eartham is going to
255or has come over to the Middle School from the elementary school um as mentioned earlier Don Collins ran stars of the fair and that event really was great for a lot of our students at the middle school I was able to attend that event I included some pictures on there one thing I did want to mention about that is give a shout out to Noah Deans for being the MC for that he's a former Loi student as well and he did an amazing job and he had several amazing I will tell you too um and then we continue to implement our social emotional learning as we had talked about earlier we've had a few lessons implemented and um I would say that's an emerging process um we're working together to try to you know figure
256out what's the best way to implement the curriculum for our students and then our fall Sports got kicked off too we have Middle School cross country took first place to Westfield and volleyball is underway and thank you to for all of your work with our young ladies thank you so Derek the board really loves pictures thank thank you for pictures you're welcome and and Mike's video of him doing his introduction in the morning is great yeah Loi High School thanks Adam um so we did pull off our Loi Pride video was a little worried that we weren't going to be able to get that done last year just because of everything was going on so I wanted to thank uh Stephen Ricks and Erica Bardwell the theme was Tik Tock I don't know if you
257guys are familiar with that I was really not familiar with that at all um but it worked out really well and I wanted to thank all the staff members that got involved in sending a video um some of them were great so hopefully you got that link and you could see the Welcome Back video um I did not mention one new staff member in our last board meeting that's Jason Murray who is a former student and one of our new Math teachers and his mom was a former teacher here in the district so it's great to have Jason back um I do want to recognize some of our student athletes um so our golf team made honorable mention as far as academic all state so Haley tany Bailey Clark kogan Baron Brian Mitzner who are
258students right now and then a former student of ours Greg Linds who was a senior last year so congratulations to them and then some of the um beginning of the year activities like freshman um night or freshman or ninth grade parent orientation night went really well uh lots of great feedback from parents where parents had an opportunity to walk through their schedules so that was a good night and then I wanted to recognize um krie kka and Michael radoff who lead our link crew I think it's a great activity where our ninth graders come in and they get an opportunity to get acclimated to the high school walking through their schedule without the pressures of 10th through 12th graders they being on the first day so they did an outstanding job plus a lot of
259our Junior and seniors Juniors and seniors that are link crew leaders um couple other things you can read kind of the data about our AP testing that took place last year so there were still a lot of participants in that but you can just look at that and we are going to be doing Alice training coming up here in September and in October and then the last thing I did want to there was an experience that I think many of you well some of you might have been able to experience at our last football game home football game is the 1971 Football Conference Champs were recognized uh that was the year that I was born uh so that kind of tells you how old I am um but it was it was so refreshing to
260see their faces out on the field uh on a new turf field and I could tell that they were just very excited about being there so recognizing them the first coaches uh for that team or the the first head coaches were Bob Detweiler and Mr Chuck Purcell so he was there and just see familiar faces it was a great uh it was was it was a great opportunity for them to get out there especially during Co outside to be around some people and to be recognized for something that was pretty special the last thing Julie asked me about an update on a student rep for the um school board and the 24th is when all applications have to be into me and then we'll be voting the next day so hopefully we'll be swearing in
261a student rep for October meeting they have to be in bed before we're done say that again do they have to be in bed before we're done well they're high schoolers so probably not yeah be up long after that thank you uh curriculum a lot of this hello a lot of this I was able to highlight within um the presentation at the beginning of the meeting but I just took an opportunity to showcase some of the continued focus on early literacy and foundations of early early literacy that we've been looking at over the past year um some professional development opportunities the staff had the ability to partake in this summer especially those at the primary school um one PD event focused on Phonics instruction we're looking at that really specifically this school year and another
262uh PD event focused on guided reading and so those are two things that we had a number of Staff take advantage of um and we also realized through the professional development opportunity with on Phonics that we really when looking back at our primary school bookroom we really have a need to invest in some um decodable readers to help with the transfer of a phonic skill so let's say I'm teaching short e sound to then having those students have a a book in front of them maybe in a small group that focuses on that same phonic strategy that transfer we learned there's a lot of research that supports that transfer and we noticed in our book room we don't have a lot of books that support that so we need to make that investment so that's
263something that we're looking at right now that's all okay thank you elcat okay the elcat trailer has been used several times this year for block parties and graduation parties thank you to Neil and his staff for cleaning up the trailer after use to keep everyone safe elat and their sister Coalition um Park PCC is teaming up with the Columbia County Sheriff's Office to provide a Naran kit to people who are being released from jail the people who will be receiving a kit have been charged with an opiate drug offense the kit will contain a nylon drawstring bag containing two doors doses of Naran treatment referral forms a card containing local treatment resources and a card containing signs and symptoms of an opiate CR crisis these kits will be distributed to the jail in the near
264near future The loai Pride yard signs have been a huge success we have distributed 107 signs in the community so far a big thank you to crew for putting out signs in front of all four of our schools in order to welcome back the students signs are still available at the elcat office please come and see Paula or Brian to receive your free sign we're excited to offer a virtual town hall meeting in partnership with pack on October 4th at 6 p.m. Van Court the CEO of The Foundry Steamboat Springs brings years of experience to substance use recovery from a recipient to a provider to a spokesperson he is bringing us an excellent presentation on what happens when legalized marijuana comes into a community mark your calendars for this important event evening and more information
265will be coming out soon the next alcat meeting is Wednesday September 22nd at 11:00 a.m. in the district office boardroom all are welcome thank you student services hello yes just three things that I want to highlight here tonight um the first is just talking again about the procedural compliance self assessment that we are going through this school year um Department of Public Instruction has selected our sample pool of 20 evaluations and IEPs that we will need to check our work group is getting back together on September 29th to do that work do that work and um determine if any corrective actions need to be taken um so I will continue to update you as we work through that process um the next thing here is The Crisis Prevention Institute summer trainings we have two in-house
266trainers Gordy berer and Jen fafinski they completed um two CPI training sessions in August on the nonviolent Crisis Intervention techniques we had our new specialed teachers and new educational assistants um get trained also any staff that needed to be recertified and we will be holding another one of these on October 1st for staff who were hired after the summer dates and finally the Title Nine training um staff was provided with access to a training model on the title 9 requirements um it's in a format of a screen castify with a Google form to document the completion of that training and also the title n policy and training materials are now posted on our website um they're in the human resource section um under Federal notices and then Amy at Primary School all right thank you
267um I would just like to thank uh the primary staff we had some new staff members that are joining us this year and I've just noticed just a great feel and vibe to the school as we welcomed our students and families back it was nice to be able to get a feel for the building now that I've seen even more parents so now in my second year I finally feel a little more like uh normal with that um a big celebration our personal goal is to get to know more of the students and families because that was something that I wasn't able to do last year and so I've implemented the student of the day and so teachers helped me select um different students and then they come down to the office we take a
268picture we call home and we celebrate um something academic that they're are doing things socially with um peers and just um building that connection with the families and the students uh the other big um exciting thing is is the schedule we changed and so now teachers every day too have an hour of collaboration time where they can focus in on our school goals um and so we've had a couple of those or two now um and it's just been outstanding as the teachers have been collaborating and working together during that time thank you and then Mike Elementary OS I'll be relatively quick the pictures uh include the highlights so far G said great start to the year awesome Vibe great to have staff back great to have kids back enjoying themselves and having fun uh
269you got to see some morning meetings you got to see music class you got to see day at the fair that was an interesting experience to have a field trip on the third day of school um we had never done a field trip for the whole school on the third day of school and had never gone to the fair what could possibly go wrong so um it worked great though Connor and Don were awesome and it was a really fun experience that our kids got like normally don't get that kind of access to where we get to take them and we can ensure that everybody gets there so if you have any questions I'll answer them if not thank you for your hard work and long [Music] night and District administrator report yeah few things
270I want to thank first I want to thank Jason Marshall for all his work and Tyler Potter and Marine for getting this all set up today um the man behind the curtain yeah right literally so I appreciate that uh we've had a great start to the school year so we just want to thank all of our staff our bus drivers our substitute teachers our food service our cleaning company everybody for all the great start that we've had our administrative team for all the planning that they've done to make our year start off the way it is and deal with all the unforeseen things that pop up that we don't think about um and all our coaches uh for all the the the season that they've started and and the difference they're making the lives of
271our kids um and then just thank the board for all their hard work I mean you've sat here all night long and listen to a lot and I know You' you've had a really difficult job um well since I've taken this position I know that for sure and you have done a phenomenal job in just trying to be steady asking questions pushing each other um so I appreciate that um that being said we are a desperate need of people to substitute right so if we want to keep our schools open we need to have uh EA substitutes and teacher substitutes um and we also have openings in food service if people are interested in part-time position when your kids are at work for a little bit um so if you're interested please look at our
272website please reach out to us uh secondly uh I have some notifications from the Wisconsin Association School Board first just a certificate of our membership of this year but I also received two letters one uh identifying uh Julie mckernin as achieving her level one WB membership recognition program great job Julie and Angie leam achieving her level one WP program um so J that just notifies us on you know people as our board members you know take classes or you know participate in different activities um they're recognized and just a reminder that the region 10 meeting is Thursday October 21st um it's at Trappers Turn in Wisconsin Dell um our cesa I'm sorry our WSB rep is up for election and that spot is currently held by our own Mr Bill whiper um so just again
273something to put on your calendar as well and finally um just to notice that we have received another open records request um I know I emailed the board about this today that is asking for over 24,000 emails um so just want to make sure that the people are aware um and I sent this person an email today just to let them know that um this will take a while right it's going to take us 55 to 100 days to fill this request because that it's a priority for us to fill those requests but it's not a bigger priority than making sure our technology runs and technology is working for students in sack so that has to be our number one priority um so if we spend an hour to two hours a day on this
274request it will take that long because it Google has not set us for us to just dump emails we got to pull them out one by one and then um we we have to and that and that is paid for by the person who makes open records request but then we have to read each one of those emails by law make sure we're dcing information and that is covered by our taxpayers um so just so people are aware that that's out there um and that will start whenever we get the the money or the the check that pays for that portion did we get a check for the 18,000 email one no that one did not go through no that one didn't happen so we have a new one now one here is kind of
275replacing that one bigger it added it added more like through August 26th you know and we've gotten a lot of emails about this from the people who are here today and so it pulls all those emails right um so okay that's all I thank sure so yeah so thank you board members for going through tonight's meeting and listening to all that public input and administrators for hanging on for this long meeting I think that the input that we got today was amazing I think the input we got last month was amazing and I love that people are engaged with the school district and telling us how they feel I hope they continue to do that reports cesa five five the last meeting um was really good uh we kind of talked about about issues going
276on in our districts we're all facing a lot of the same issues getting public input um in similar ways it's kind of nice to have to remember that it's not just our district where a lot of things are happening um also kind of uh just talked about C's services and how they're they're kind of like that place where like you can pick up the phone and ask them for help and they will do it which you know Bill but like I'm always impressed with the things that they said they've done they're like oh you know bunch of districts needed to get a whole bunch of substitute teachers really like up and running and they they put together a thing for them so that those districts could have this sub disase right away so anyway I
277mean I'm sure you know the administrators know this but I'm always impressed with all the strange variety of things they do and that when you have a problem you need a you know Spanish teacher they they can help place and do all kinds of things so so they're they're great curricular the C country team is often running the boys won the Westfield Invitational play second at the loai Invitational and place third at the pointet Invitational the JV boys won both the Westfield and Loi invitationals the girls play second at Westfield and fourth in Loi and fifth at poet the tennis team is having a great season varsity plays second at bothy ederton and Loi Invitational the JV won this year's Loi JV invitation The Varsity is currently tied for first place in the conference with
278a 20 record this Saturday Lo hosted a quad against an Alaska Lutheran won and ripet the LOI football team is undefeated after a 38-6 win this past Friday at Bigfoot the Blue Devils have also defeated McFarland Delan d an and Horan hburg Co-op they return this Friday night to take on Beloit Turner the varsity boys soccer team is one win four losses and one draw draw Spirits are still high with all four losses coming against very strong opponents this year's team is very young with one freshman that starts and two that get significant minutes there are 30 young ladies participating the volleyball program this season in the conference the varsity team is currently 0 and3 and overall they are six and nine this past weekend they played in the sock Invitational tomorrow night they play
279at Columbus and Thursday at poinet the swim team has participated in two invitationals so far they Place third out of nine teams at the Milton invite and fifth at the home Loi invitation ational they compete tomorrow night at McFarland High School thank you osc we didn't meet OC did not meet contract review oh um I think we pretty much covered most of what we talked about the stiens for virtual um supervisor teacher supervising virtual um sections um professional practice goals that's pretty much all we cover curriculum we covered everything except for Middle School schedule adjustments where we're going to focus more on math more time going to math which actually was covered a little bit facility Finance facility Finance we met on September 1st uh we reviewed the lawn contract The Substitute educational assistant pay
280referendum we actually had point of beginning there they gave us an upate um on the Green Space and I think we reviewed we didn't review financial planning that's about it referendum talked about the referendum and also the survey spent a lot of time on the referendum survey and then bill with the policy uh policy will we approved the policies that we worked on last round and we will meet you know if we just stay here a little bit while longer we can say that we're going to meet tomorrow but well okay it's Wednesday we we also had two presentations from policy Services uh WB and from niola presented to the the policy committee last time um about their services and about possibly of us looking at one or the other of them okay um um
281if it's possible I'd like to get the on the policy agenda um um a discussion about the length of time that we allow Citizen inut and if you can't do it this month I certainly would like to do it next so public input is on the policy agenda item could it be thanks part of that other policy some somebody it is somebody asked us to put policy somebody asked me to put that on there it's already on their bill I didn't get a chance no that's okay we had this agenda that's not those Wednesday and the other magic policy we need to get um not looked at but advertised is the magic one about uh we do not discriminate discrim we do not discriminate against race color creed sex or religion so we also have
282example controversial issues policies on the next policy agenda as well like how do we teach controversial issues in classes thank you okay we are not going back into closed session do we need a motion I have one question though for sorry for our um oh yeah facility finance committee meeting would you be available to meet next Monday the 20th and what time yes anytime like with 6:00 work or is that too late that' be good that better yeah yeah it's better than 4:30 okay let's try 6 to 6:30 I'll put together agenda for that 6 to 6:30 30 I'm sorry 6 to 7:30 6 to 6:30 sounds awesome 6 to 7:30 we're really going to be efficient well maybe I'll be happy we're done by 7:30 all right thank you I make a motion to
283the meeting a second motion by Barb second by Angie I still remember your names any further discussion all in favor say I 10:52 P.M to discuss