Board of Education Meeting

001america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice strong okay will this episode yeah here thank you okay everyone receive a copy of the minutes i need a motion and a second foreclosure all right communications have any board members received any communications would like to share um i received uh several communications do you uh decide one time read or um what is it that you're exactly asking for if you receive i mean we all receive emails from time to time from the public you know if there were any in particular that you want to share or if you responded to those individually yourself that's fine um i did receive one in particular um that i'd like to read uh public school district order uh please find

002below my recommendations questions for the boards to answer and key points regarding the school of mass management also please find include detachments including the addendum providing additional explanation for key forms the recommendation each parent the student is allowed to make a decision appropriate for their family regarding the use of a mask options would include defending person without a mask attending person with a mask utilize virtual learning models questions for the board to answer the manifold public school district board has been making decisions for the months impacting my child's health therefore the questions below should be easily answered during the meeting on tuesday night any studies and other reference material should be readily available and posted on the manhattan public school district page by wednesday may 11 2014. school needs to show me science and studies

003masks do not present short or long-term health issues for my child peer-reviewed repeated studies study from schools without mask mandates and infection rates and outcomes masks are effective at preventing spread of disease even though many manufacturers state their masks are not effective to prevent the spread of viruses in their literature if masks are affected why have they not been used in the past 50 to 100 years to prevent transmission of the flu no these include studies reviewed which both support the mass band aid and those dude that do not favor the mass penalty a thorough analysis should have included a review of both viewpoints key points supporting recommendation that parents select the best option for their child's health number one mass mandates are in violation of 21 us code 36306 bbb dash iii bachobit is

004severe this year has for specific issues younger people remain largely safe statistics reporting guidelines and modifications to testing protocols have been used to make golden appear worse than it really is we should be consistent with previous flu seasons in our reaction and not require masks teachers students administer number three teachers students and administration one thing that government vaccine have had adequate opportunity to receive it they should consider themselves safe from colvit now number four the cdc has been consistently wrong on the recommendations regarding covid the cdc is not a reliable source for coping advice news media are purposely hyping open to create fear and from a common sense standpoint that the mass band aid should be renewed if this is not enough we have legal concerns with 21 us code 306 bbb dash 3. even

005if the manitowoc public school district agrees the master candidate should be wrong i request the questions about the answer i want to understand the diligence the board is taking in making important decisions i want to know specifically which board members are going to keep past family as a parent i have the right to know who is making medical decisions impacting the health of my child please post the video of the meeting so all parents can see your response to the questions above please let me know when this video has been posted please contact me with the questions for clarification i am disappointed that the board does not only allow 13 nation president this does not reflect meeting with transparency in regards uh tim t rice and then it gives the phone number i felt that

006this one was very well put together i received several others but that one i wanted to iterate because there was a lot of time and work that went into that thank you for sharing that okay next topic will be public input and i do have three requests for public input so we will open this up the rules of public input will be five minutes per person a chance to speak and the input will last for 30 minutes total and then we will close it okay so when i call your name would you please come up mark are we having them in the corner okay uh gene wire where would you like them to there and one other comment i'd like to make um the board does not respond to you nor or we'll be asking

007you any questions so we're just listening all right so thank you for coming well thank you for listening um i called dr uh olson office and i am for some information relative to um what was being taught relative to critical race theory project 1619 um white privilege of call of duty and i didn't get a call back and uh i i didn't leave a message with you i left benny a message today at 12 o'clock um no sir i uh you're fine okay i'm not going to um you're not going to respond i won't respond however okay i didn't call and i'm looking for some information that's what i'm looking for and and this is this is just a request for information that's what it's looking um in the community there's all sorts of discussion

008about what is being taught in the national school district and what is not and i can appreciate that okay i mean it's a little uh fuzzy okay it really is so what i'm looking for is some clarification i think this is the very first place that we that i need to stop i need to know um to what extent those topics are taught maybe they're talking some people think that their thought is like flash i don't know if that's the case they're probably not the case um some people may say that it's um it's mixed in all of the curriculum that could be this i don't know and i don't think anybody here really knows that it's not a medicare so what i'm composing is is the school board be very proactive here i think

009for the good of the community i think what you need to do is you need to be very public with what you are teaching and i think the best way for you to do that is to maybe provide the curriculum and the lesson plans for a specific age group maybe the junior making the ninth grade i don't care okay but you need to do something so that people know what is happening in the in the schools because if you don't do that you're gonna have lots of trouble i'm gonna guarantee you're gonna want some trouble you don't want it we don't want it nobody wants it people just want to know what is being taught so that there's proper direction for the teacher is it really see that granted i didn't give very much time

010i was saying that okay monday morning there's a little difference okay talk to your secretary okay uh it's a little different okay but uh it's a very simple simple uh question and if you can provide that i think it'll go a long ways to keeping things on a level fine for the future so please start with that or at least consider it and thank you very much thank you very much uh next one up will be tim rice good evening i'd like to talk about the mask mandate uh i think muslim receivement letter i don't know how many people have an opportunity to read it uh i'll cover some of the key points as i go through this one kind of recommendations talk about credibility of information sources and i guess i was hoping to

011get some rationalization on how you've made decisions in the past uh you know i guess a little disappointing the fact that you don't respond but you guys work for us not the other way around so i have put together that's a policy change that needs to certainly quite frankly you've been making these medical decisions for my daughter for months you should have these interests at the different points but we'll go back to recommendation recommendations to immediately remove the mass mandate uh replace it with a opportunity for choice i even [Music] right and in the document i provided you uh one of the some of the information i provided was from the national institute of health i won't go to the entire list but i'll give a couple of key ones on there for under physique

012there's physiological psychological consequences under physiological effects shortness of breath acidosis toxicity inflammation muscle tension and immune suppression so exactly the thing you're trying to protect them from and making worse psychological chronic stress as if you entertaining is not bad enough remove disturbances fatigue and compromise cognitive performance in a learning environment health consequences increase pre-position or viral infection and help prevent repeating which is making the situation worse headaches anxiety depression hypertension cardiovascular disease right so those are some of the things that the national health place gives us um i think another key point as to why masks are not needed are anybody wanting to be vaccinated by now is vaccinated right they're safe so what's the purpose of the mask all right uh third one is there's a potential network violation of 21 us code 360

013dvd-3 i've seen everybody's little chance to dig further into that i haven't had a chance to further that but they also reference potential aba violations um the last one is just that school-aged children's survival rate is somewhere between 99.96 and 91.91 depending on their sex all right just in terms of credibility of information moving on the next part uh in order of credibility you only have recommendations you have studies you have observed results so under recommendations i think one of the things my guess is that this group was leaning heavily on the cdc so let's talk about the credibility of the cdc for a moment so let's start at the very top is the pcr test probably the most basic thing most importantly they've been advertising they admit they've been wrong on it this whole

014time right they've been they've been they changed the tests first like they used the test that the guy designed it said it's not designed for it then they modified it to between 35 and 45 cycles which basically just how much you can amplify the test sample right so uh they've admitted that you got less than anything more than twenty-eight what basically what the stages have come out now is they've over inflated the numbers by anywhere between 77 and 97 right um the other thing goodness is how long does latin occur how long the virus is contagious on the surface which is about something the second or third of your biology student figured out uh risk of super spreader events uh ultraviolet light impact on the virus five minutes is up next please ramsey meyer that

015once said while we're going first and this film over here covered my class quite well that's about critical race theory um i'm uh i'm very critical of a critical race there and i'm critical because i believe you're sending kids to school to be educated not indoctrinated and i think critical race theory is a theory that's just what it is it's a theory it's like a social experiment and so kids are being indoctrinated and you know martin luther king said the person should be judged on the basis of the character not the color of their skin and yet we hear constantly are hearing about how white people are being uh the moral life calm down just because the fact that they're white and they have no way of redeeming themselves well i just don't believe that

016i i think that's totally on the um from what i could see one woman would wrote a book and then how to put it for breakfast everybody jumped on the board and said okay now we gotta have all this pain with all these people and you either do it or what the castle lose your job all sorts of things you know this is the very type of thing that happened in nazi germany when they came out and started in humanizing people for their beliefs what they wanted to say basically they were canceling the books that they could read they went on and on on their own financially i think critical race theory is divisive i think it's demeaning i think it's confusing bottom line i think it's racist it takes a lot of time in

017school our school day dealing with this type of stuff when it could be teaching more subjects which i did so that's what they have this critical processes have been put in our school it has given rise to this notion of self-esteem we're fostering a generation soft and thin spin children smallest microaggression they have their own counselor i'm not getting a good education and constantly thinking about say something said i'll show you the field what i said how should i feel about that am i going to face repercussions i mean you're walking around all this stuff on the brake release focusing on the education the inability to speak the truth is don't be honest we just can't do it anymore i think we've been working on four subjects and taking the burden off of what kids

018holders who are thinking somehow are guilty for something that they're not even sure what it is take it easy on the fields that's kind of the storyline is better instead of putting stuff on your shoulders if you don't deal with it you get the cows okay fine if you're in high school pray school is first of all thank god this board for all the work that you guys do on behalf of the city of antiqua and uh the challenges that you guys have to deal with on a regular basis you do get a little bit of plaque and hopefully me in this room can be there to support you decisions that you made i can say that clown is made into made related to the mask issue that are i think out there and you

019have to face a decision as to whether or not masks are going to be required or not as i look around this room if i were to ask for a show of hands that how many of you have an n95 mask when you raise your hand is that a 1095 mask i'm not learning this oh okay so look at the question is how effective are these things and the reality is if you look at the box of a mask you'll find that intended as colin said for medical purposes and not to be tested to reduce the transmission of that's diseases it says on most of these masks so why are we wearing them well wear a mask that's going to protect you gotta wear a n95 mask you know what it says on their packages

020not for children which one says i didn't bring it up that's what it says so what are the what's this what are we trying to accomplish the ideas of basically resolving a problem like we're dealing with involves i think three things and they're fairly simple social distancing you get sick stable okay wash your hands you know what that information comes from us over 3 000 years ago on how to deal with issues take a look at leviticus and deuteronomy they tell you how to deal with disease those are the things that work those are the things that will protect us god by the name of dr mcmillan wrote a book called none of these diseases and in that book he talked about the impact that doing these things will have even in our society today

021let me conclude now with this comment um martin koboth a professor of harvard medical student and a leader in disease surveillance methods and infectious diseases outbreaks describe the current colgan scientific environment in this way after 300 years the age of enlightenment has come to an end in the end it will be a loss of credibility in our scientific institutions and the unnecessary division that they have sold among us for which mass will be that concludes public input at this time thank you to all those that spoke our next topic will be the school showcase and that will be franklin elementary so take it away franklin hello everyone can you all hear me yes yes okay all right i will present my screen could someone tell me if you can see my screen okay thank you

022so hello everyone my name is c lee vang and i am the proud principal at franklin elementary school thank you so much for having us here i've brought along jody stammer our franklin math coach and we are excited to share with all of you our journey this year i am finishing up my first year as principal at franklin and it has been quite a year so we are excited to share with you what we have for you today so um last august into early september our leadership team met a couple of times and to look and examine our trends and patterns for student learning data in in both ela and math and after some thoughtful conversations and reflections with our staff we have identified that we have some critical pieces of information that has led

023us to teacher clarity so on john hattie's um list of influences teacher clarity is fairly high on the list of influences with an effect size of 0.75 which is well above the average influence of 0.40 so in other words it should accelerate student learning teacher clarity has a number of parts each of which are important the latest definition of teacher clarity is that clarity then is the teacher's ability to present knowledge in a way that students can understand so basically first does the teacher know what students need to learn next teachers communicate learning expectations to students and finally teachers and students should know what success looks like our team determined the following root causes there is a lack of clarity of learning targets and success criteria and inconsistencies on learning targets with success criteria in

024all content areas there is a lack of a collaborative culture towards an instructional common goal and another possible root cause was having unhelpful data and assessments so we discovered that little changes make a big impact and here are some of the little changes we've made at franklin grade level teams focus on clear learning targets with success criteria for math power standards and other content areas structured professional learning community or what we call plc having a process that is developed with cohesion and consistency among grade level teams and specialists and data analysis of student work daring plcs with all the information that we have gathered and being consistent with the district's focus on math this year we have determined that our focus would also be math our smart goal is to help all learners make growth

025towards proficiency in math and knowing the importance of clear learning targets with success criteria to inform instruction all students will demonstrate on target proficiency in math power standards so by narrowing it down to teacher clarity we help all learners make growth towards proficiency in math and we are committed to making this happen even though the main focus for our building is math that does not mean we are not measuring student academic growth and engagement in other content areas for reading our focus in kindergarten is that our kindergarten students will be proficient in letter sound recognition our focus in grades 1-3 is that all students will make a year's growth in in reading and in grades 3-5 we are utilizing the assessments associated with the reading and writing units of study so for math our focus

026in all grade is the proficiency and the grade level power standards and we are tracking this data through our end of unit post assessments we have identified for teachers which standards should be mastered by the end of each unit so that we can track student progress and the needs for additional support or arrangement at the 100-day benchmark we found that our teachers are writing implementing monitoring and assessing student learning outcomes based on success criteria we are implementing our action steps not only are we impacting our teachers learning and therefore students learning we are also impacting families we are connecting with families through a variety of ways as you can see here on this powerpoint slide for example we eliminated the barriers of technology by ensuring all families have equitable access to technology here's what some

027of our teachers are saying about how focusing on the learning has affected their clarity with students and staff i find this i find that this year with our learning plc discussions focused on picking out his learning targets for the grade level absolutely we are really able to focus in when we do our lesson planning and then that helps our students to be able to really focus in their learning to the key target areas and then they also have a better understanding of what they are expected to do what they should be able to do after they complete the lesson which helps enhance our discussions and it also helps kids to ask for support knowing exactly which skills they're focusing on on a given day hi hi my name is victoria walsh i'm a student teacher

028in the kindergarten classroom i have noticed that the learning targets have been really helpful for myself because this is my first year or first time teaching my classroom for like an extended period of time so it's been really cool to see the students focus on those targets and really have a great discussion because of it i've seen them grow as the only individuals but as a community it's also been very helpful for myself because during plc times i am able to plan lessons around one specific topic in really hard and growth about myself helping those students learn common plan common planning of learning targets has brought both consistency and cohesion to our teaching because because of common learning targets specialists are able to plan ahead and they know what to focus on when they enter

029a writing clear concise goals helps break down big standards into something that is doable and developmentally appropriate as plc conversations are better than ever and of course good conversation leads to more learning which in the end leads to better teaching hi hi i'm lindsay dietrich and i'm renee mccarla and we are the english language teachers here at franklin we have found that the importance of learning targets helps us focus our students learning in the classroom when we receive the learning targets ahead of time we are able to prepare materials to support academic language that connects with the classroom learning target this collaborative action results in greater student success the knowledge that we gain before we come to the classroom helps to get prepared to help our students with their learning is an important part of

030our students being successful in the classroom even our students are noticing that when their attention is focused on the learning they can learn more so you can see what i know our parents are also noticing that when their children's focus is on the learning it provides clarity for them to support their children and then as needed you know we see our kids struggling that we can't focus on that particular area because that's something that's parents we're concerned we're concerned about everything so we're going to try to help everything about the learning target it gives us a focus on not what to watch for and how to help our kids in that particular area yes yes as well as the learning targets it helps us as parents to jump right in with a child is having

031difficulty of understanding the assignments or that is needed so for us to also be aligned with the teachers in their teaching um it makes a better team for us to have a better success rate with our children and their education thank you thank you thank you for listening to our school showcase i'm going to stop presenting and if there are any questions that you may have for jody and me today see i just want to say thank you i know um coming into the school for a first year um during the topic had to be extremely challenging thank you so much i appreciate the comment any other comments or questions okay thank you very much franklin excellent presentation thank you all right our next item on the agenda is the court of the superintendent so

032i will hand that off to mark okay the first line of our agenda uh will be um angela talking about our payment prevented financial reports so angela yes thank you uh for approval this evening we have uh accounts payable expenditures for approval the amount of four million seven hundred ninety 000 uh 258 and 41 cents and then payroll in the amount of uh 1 million 966 and 640 649.42 so i'm happy to answer any questions in regards to ap and payroll if you have them questions nope okay thank you very much angelo hopefully you need a motivation okay uh uh monthly financial report angela i guess you will have that one yes continuing on to that we have the financials for the month uh highlights this last month they're recorded on your statements would be

033the debt service payment uh would show coming out of fund 30 aids this month that came out or that came into the district common school funds which is a huge support for our library program was received from the state um otherwise uh you know nothing too atypical from the normal point in the year uh overall we're working on closing budgets uh and in working towards finalizing uh purchases for the school year a lot happens at the end of the school year with claiming for uh federal grants uh we're you know ongoing work continues with cares uh esther and gears uh so we're just continuing our work there and um you know just everything's pretty straightforward so if you have any questions uh i'm happy to answer them any questions great thank you everyone um let's

034see all of you should have had a should have a personnel report that would have been included in board book so hopefully you've had a chance to look at that are there any questions that you have anyone have any questions okay this will require a motion and a second to accept the report all those in favor say aye okay thank you joyce thank you okay next item is a staff engagement survey so mark i will let you explain that um share my stream here and we should be able to take a look at this you know that um from perspective i shared this information and uh trying to give you a brief uh overview so that didn't necessarily have to spend um the entire time together together going over the specific details a couple things

035that i'll tell you and tell the public is that after the board meeting uh this is online but we'll share this as well so the public will have access to this but uh just to give everybody let's give you a brief overview um we've done a staff engagement survey for the last six years he sent it to everybody who has a desperate email this year we had 539 responses which was participation which is degree participation we see generally that the majority of our folks are coming from lincoln high school that's obviously the largest number of staff members the smallest number of functional energy and that's the smallest number of staff members representative i apologize for the skip spot the first one 37 percent is teachers and then it's like those are particularly people who identify

036as classroom teachers the second one says counselor and special education librarian that's 25 percent professional 16 percent including her service data talks about where are our people um 20 are in their first or second year of the district um again if you just use 20 percent of that 539 you're seeing a significant number of people who are new to the difference another 19 or 20 that are three to five years we still have a significant number of people almost half of our people are more than 40 or more than 10 years and we appreciate the dedication we have but that number um continues to be significant i think the pieces that are important to say uh specifically is one of the options as employees have is to talk about their five ideas about what we

037should be focusing on in our highest priorities and these priorities haven't changed significantly over the years and you can see the comparison between 2020 which was december of 2020 when we took it in 2019 but just kind of giving you some ideas specifically on how to see that again provide additional intervention and support services continues to be the highest priority for our staff preparing students for college and career ready additional counseling and psychology services social work services developing innovation programs and receiving training development professional development to enhance their skills so that's the second piece um the second section here talks specifically about questions so there are 72 questions that staff can have an opportunity to answer and then they uh answer from one to five five is strongly agree with the question one is strongly

038disagreed so uh for this example on the first one it says there's a process for evaluating the effectiveness of new initiatives and if you said i strongly agree with that i would if you would get five if i strongly disagree with that i would get um a one what we do now is because we've done this year after year we compare ourselves to ourselves as opposed to compare ourselves to somebody out there so data out there that allow you to compare yourself to other school districts i don't know who those school districts are but i do know who manifold is and what our people have said now the research company that we use says 0.2 is significant so anytime you have a point um it's significant if it's point two or higher we have a

039green if it's point two and lower we have a red so that would increase increases or decreases from the previous year so i'm not going to go through each one of these ideas i guess what i would share with you is a couple of things the first thing i would tell you is that we had a staff engaged with survey in december amidst the pandemic and we saw significant changes in their beliefs and feelings about the school district from the previous year so you recall the previous year we had just changed into our great alignment and we definitely felt the stress of some of our staff because they change places maybe they have different roles and so we're seeing that throughout this there's a few key places in here that i always kind of align

040to and say you know where our staff and again there are 72 different questions that they ask i'm not going to go through all 72. they're aligned under 13 readiness areas don't say change readiness this one talks about student achievement and this one is engagement in the district this is the area that as a superintendent i like to focus a lot on because i think there is some significant keys to this when we're talking about what we're looking for on our employees example would be the first one that says it would take a lot to get me to leave this district so we've grown uh significantly from the year before people were concerned about their job and where they're at i would recommend this this district with other seeking employment uh i am proud of

041our district my job is personally satisfying 90 have strongly agreed my work contributes to the success of the district 97 so we're seeing some very positive things among our employees about how we're doing things and again amidst the pandemic is pretty um we only can look at the data and make um observations of that um this talks about communication and although we grew in these communications we didn't grow quite as high because we didn't see the green on there but we talked about feelings and sharing ideas and communicated communication we spent a lot of time talking about different options and learning modes so we could talk about that this one is culture so it talks specifically about for example my co-workers are willing to help you when i have a heavy workload 94 of our

042folks said yesterday we saw significant growth here in our team as a team we've been talking about this professional learning community model how we work together as a so again anything that has a plus um we're interested in this one talks about our academic expectations and again it's their opinion so when we talk about engagement serving it's their engagement what do they believe at that time and so we look about just right too high or too low again it's just a point in time but we grew from the previous year um talk about our work environment and we can and again uh in a pandemic when you're teaching either in a blended or virtual model we talk about the 94 we're feeling safe but our classrooms building and ground are well maintained right a shout

043out to our custodians and builders and grounds folks 90 of the people said that um based on my interactions at work i felt i feel sick so we're seeing some positives here and again areas that we can grow um we talked about technology and that was a big change within our employees and so not that we didn't do well if you use the data point 3.68 is actually higher maybe than some of the other points we had 3.64 and had the materials but we just didn't grow from the previous year and again we're looking at our own growth and our own self so something that we can continue um we always talk about health and wellness and we do know that we value our employees and their how they feel about what's going on is

044we ask them about the phase of implementing and get enough sleep and i manage my stress health we saw all of those go up but we see that that average is still low right and that's something that we have to continue to talk about i'm able to sustain that healthy work-life balance development recognition is significant they want to receive credit when they do a good job and talk about professional when i started in this group the professional learning days were well organized and planned was at about 2.3 and we worked really hard in our curriculum and instruction department to improve those um and now we're seeing significant growth so just again for the folks that are doing that jason and pam and the student learning team along with joyce and joanna do a lot of

045work on our professional development days and uh they have a great job compensation and benefits again um just something to talk about i'm identified with are administered consistently and benefits are competitive with jobs i see so those are all areas that you know we can get feedback from um this one i always think is really really important when i'm looking at our district and it's as principled effective leaders now remember we saw those sports before 0.11 plus 41. our principals did an outstanding job and continue to do managing this uh school year and our teachers saw that and um in our staff as well all people saw that so again something that's really significant when we look at that this talks about our district administration and we look at what our growth is and where

046we have to continue to look at areas talk about the trust talk about uh what we're doing to make it successful we saw some growth and when we see areas for growth uh specifically in that area so again um they give us uh some feedback on the school board and again uh balance is admission with the district's fiscal responsibility 90 so we're seeing some things that um our employees value and we're misreporting on that detail um again all things considered this district is a good place to work i'm not a fan of our employees believe that and i think that's significant we've improved from the last year uh we're plus 0.39 important um they give us grades so each people has the opportunity to give yourself a grade and it's 12 percent they think we're

047doing great and maybe another 45 that we're doing really well and some others that need some growth so again just where we are in a snapshot of what's going on this is really in the end a couple of places right so we say what are our highest scoring questions and where do we need the most and um again 5.0 is perfect so they feel safe they're willing to help when i have a workload my work pursuits and success based on early access i feel safe principal's effective leader department works hard those are all positive things that we're really looking for when we look at the lowest scoring questions you talk about strives to achieve consensus on areas that need improvement face of implementing new initiatives student discipline social emotional needs those aren't new but those

048are things that we continue to look at and how we can help support our teachers and our students based on the feedback this is the greatest improvement again we're talking about a pandemic but one of the things that i would tell you is that when we see this thought process a principal defective leader i definitely want to share that um that is really really important we know that um we talked about effects i can see talk a little bit about that today number one is a classroom instructor and likely the second piece to that is the effective leadership so people are saying there's another great job this is again the 13 indexes that talk about 200 breakdowns and you can see where we scored from 2019 to 2020 we have significant dreams and we grew

049of every single area um and i think that's important um to consider so just a real quick ideas uh overview again we'll have this available it's currently available on board book for the public we put it on our website so that people can take a look at that it's been shared with our buildings our building principles this is the district they have one specifically for their own building that has data on their building and they've been shared and uh they will be presenting that to their buildings i gave them uh until the end of the month to be able to do that uh and each building will have a report um i did send a powerpoint presentation with my uh video to all of the staff um so that they have seen this presentation from

050the district perspective in typical years i'll go out to every building and do that and in light of the time and trying to be safe uh we back up on [Music] thank you for the information here um two things popped out of me that i'm curious about and i know you touched on them on the uh uh the areas of the lowest score um two that popped out at me were 41 41 uh strongly agree and slash ugly and 43 of the same thing for discipline the student discipline is handled in consistent manner by all staff and the social and cultural needs of the students are being met both of those were under 50 uh they did increase discipline was up 0.64 that's good um and then the social emotional needs was up 0.22 um

051the question i have though is um they're still under the 50 threshold and they're also um i'm curious is there what is the what is the plan to make sure that those are uh improved upon even further uh they are they are getting better but according to the survey but is there a plan that is going to be a quick place to tackle those yeah so thank you for for that question just trying to sneak through here if i can find this but um a couple of things um one thing that i would tell you is that that is a has been the hotline or we say in the other way the whole life of our engagement survey for the past six years we continue to see staff saying that um the discipline is handled

052consistent among staff in a uh or is not handled consistent amongst that so we've had some definitely some conversations uh last year in january we had a group of uh staff together we talked a little bit about school culture and climate and uh student behavior and some of those pieces and then uh the pandemic hitting me stop uh and and i think that the uh obviously the culture and climate and behavior is different when you're behind the screen as opposed to facebook i think the challenge that i would tell you is when we look at staff engagement survey it's their interpretation of what it is so when you ask them do they believe that student discipline is handled consistent among all staff it likely means everybody but right so you're not handling behavior consistent i

053am you're not handling behavior consistent i am you're not getting behavior consistently so i think what we need to do is probably delve into that question and say are you asked who if who is not handling it uh specifically you're talking about administration meaning when they send someone to the principal they're not handling consistent is it my colleague or i don't allow something and they do a lot of something so we've had some initial conversations but we paused that last year in i guess march when we went and we haven't been back to it um i think we had a meeting a couple weeks ago and there was some conversation with our teachers group to talk about how we might uh reorganize and have some more accomplishments so he definitely will bring that back to

054the focus and ask some more specific questions about that uh what was the second of the social emotional needs of the uh yeah students so a couple of things we've heard that for a number of years and so we've done a few things in order to address that so in 2018 we added a mental wellness coordinator and also mental wellness coordinator supported um six different organizations or six organizations in our building to help provide mental health in our schools um we added counselors so we had some part-time counselors at two buildings we have a full-time counselor to help support mental health and well-being within our school we've added some assistance at our elementary and union middle schools to help support student mental health and behavior so that we can talk them about things that are

055going on so we continue to see things that we've done in order to help support that um but again i think uh in this in the world we're in uh we absolutely know that um mental health can just absolutely challenge and we continue to work harder i would i would say that there's two categories that are during the pandemic with all the uncertainties and all the stresses especially on the students you would think that that would come in a much lower i would i would i was surprised by the last thing yeah where you were concerned and i thought that you know of disciplines when when so many students are doing doing their education work being consistent i'm not sure you know i'm not sure why you know the score went up but it did

056and in fact the whole the whole the whole survey seemed just counterintuitive to me i thought during during a time of you know real uncertainty and real stress and and and rearranging the whole educational system that that that the mood of people taking this survey would be much more negative than that and i'd like to you know these people are you know are given high scores and principles they're giving higher scores but you know the program um it just seemed like okay you know nothing nothing was really happening but i don't know maybe maybe tough times okay so if we just look at the data fronts um last year in march or april when i shared this with the board we saw a lot of that like it was our some of our most we

057have seen in the year three years so i would tell you that i'm pleased that we grew i don't know exactly why other than i can only theorize that when we started teaching in september we were appreciative of what we had and we realized that when we went 100 virtual basically in three days in march and then stayed 100 virtual stayed in our homes didn't go anywhere and all of a sudden now i have that's only a theory now i have some opportunity to really appreciate where i'm at and the opportunity to be with kids that i so much wanted to do and i didn't have that opportunity so it's a theory it's also it's also factual that the 2019 data was some of our lowest data in the last five years so i'm i'm

058glad we went up we went up from what was down but we went up greater like these scores are some of the highest scores we've seen in six years other than at that particular time people were feeling about where they were and this is right 529 books so it's not you know skewed at all this is a larger than we had the previous year so i just said the data is the data and we'll celebrate that data where we're at we'll look at the places we have to grow and we'll try to make some improvements continually and when we hop back in february or march for next year and talk about what it looks like um we'll be arise again on what it is but we areas of need so each school has their own

059like data set this is the district payment set so each school and within that each school has the ability if they have more than i think five or six depending on each category um as we looked at the beginning there was teachers there was a support paraprofessional custodian so each one is broken down into that and then they those principles have the data to kind of look at what that is so as building leaders we are having conversations with the principals about you know what their data is saying we're asking them some questions they're sharing the data with their colleagues and and uh you know staff as well i would say that this is district data so what we're seeing is a repeat generally as you look at schools there's a few nuances that we're

060working on some of them might be a little bit higher some of them might be a little lower but in general student discipline is the lowest at everybody in general um my work contributes to the overall success of the district is the highest in every bill because it's representative of the district so this data is pretty representative we saw we're eating across the board from our buildings as well and the lowest parts were generally low but we we delve into that and look at it internally and talk to our readers about that ask them to create some plans for success and improvements and then they share that with their teams and they have some conversations internally about that and so is there are their surveys done as anonymously as this was is this so this

061survey is done by a third-party group okay some perceptions so we send school perceptions basically an excel spreadsheet of all of the district emails and then they send it out to all of our employees our employees part of survey is to click on where you spend the most time at and so when you say for example lincoln high school then the survey data is separated could be separated by lincoln high school when you say i'm a 10-year veteran then that survey can be skewed by all the people who are in here so it's it's not sent out from the building it's sent out from the district and then the surveys can be like the the third party vendor correlates the data for us from the district standpoint and then from the building okay so it's

062the same you know the number here is 529 at the building it might be you know 40 but that's how that so they also use school perceptions yes there's only one survey it's just um the survey is is the survey you see here is 529 right lincoln high school or franklin tonight they'll get only the people that indicated i work at frankfurt and then they'll ask the same they fill out the same 72 questions it's just based on where you've attended and so you does that make sense yeah yeah it's only one search okay ask the same questions so these questions are what the school any other questions or feedback comments it's nice yeah absolutely i was just wondering is there um how do you then how will you use the data so i guess

063one of my things would be you know in a year from now i'll see another survey um but what i want to see is what are the initiatives that we're taking in order to improve the numbers i think that's so when when the principals get together and they look at that information do they are they going to come up with a performance improvement plan type of situation so i would say that this is a data point that we use for district improvements but not the only point right because this is this isn't i don't think it's fact but it's my perception right now how it is which is valuable but it's not the only tool we're going to use to determine what our roles are but we generally use this and we've done this regularly

064as we look at where our employees are saying is the highest and the lowest and we focus on one or two of those and what we've seen i think and when i look at providing additional intervention support service for struggling so we have continued we have provided a lot of additional supports and that number grew during the pandemic now i know i'm not sure i mean we could theorize again on the data that because students weren't face-to-face or they were 100 virtual time and not face-to-face that people felt like there's more need for that or must be for that and next year if we come back in at numbers 47 does that mean that we improve and there are there isn't a need so we're going to focus on trying to provide additional intervention services

065that's some of our strategies internal but i would say that that's based on also student data that we're getting back like our test scores or our industry so it becomes a piece of it but not the only piece because again it's our employment perception and we value that but it's not what we the only tool we'll use to determine what's all right any other questions okay so then we will move on to the calendar for the next two years mark well a lot of talking from you [Music] so one of the things that is i've done is i've shared with you ahead of time and i try to do that as much as you can information specifically regarding our school calendar and um we put in just some information and um here's what i was

066doing the uh district what our proposal is is to start school on august 30th which is two days prior to the beginning so if you remember last meeting we got the board permission to ask the state if we can start before september first uh the strategy on that was well september first is on wednesday because we start on monday the state gave us that authority it gave rent enough right away based on the fact that it was um something to do with the pandemic we want to get started what we wanted to do then was create a calendar that increased opportunities for professional development and student instruction days so our typical school calendar is 185.5 days the district has the right to set the calendar and then decide how many days our employees work we

067don't typically want to be in a business where we just add days and not pay people that's not good practice so what we proposed was to add up to 2.5 and i say up to because if in fact we have a snow day one of those days that we would have we're in service would be a school day so it would not only be 1.5 if that makes sense so we've got to have that in there i think originally our plan was to not have a snowman we were going to go virtual 100 and what i what i've heard from our elementary folks was that our kindergarten first second and third graders do not have devices they take home every night they do have the ability to take it home but they just don't take

068it home every night so on an impromptu snow day we could have school for fourth through 12th grade but not really through third grade so we felt like we've got to have that snow day in there so we can have a better gear i mean we could make up something like you should have to take home but i don't know if that's really quality so what this calendar does is it has typical um end time so we still graduate on the second friday in june there's a spring break at a typical time we have a christmas break at a typical time there are six in-service days this year there are four before school in this one there's three before school so we shorten that up a little bit and one of those days in our

069school what we will do is we will pay teachers uh for their extra 2.5 days out of the federal year's money that were allocated so one of the proposals that we would have um if we're moving forward is we'll use that money to be able to pay our teachers for the extra either up usa so that's either going to be 1.5 or 2.5 additional days it gives us a little bit more face-to-face instruction a little bit more opportunities for professional available we're talking about collaboration and working with peers on how we're going to do things and do it well and it still sticks with the traditional with the exception of we're starting two days early and standing on about the same thing so um i'll pause there and say any questions yes so my understanding

070of this and correct me if i'm wrong is that the increase is going to be 0.5 days of student instruction and two and a half days feature in service and that is that accurate i guess it depends on what what year you're using so that's why we gave you three previous years so this year it would have been a 0.5 increase but this year is not a good example because we asked the state for an exemption because we didn't meet the needs like we didn't need 177 days not even full so if you look at the previous year we're 175 is that i don't have that right in front of you and then 100 so i guess it depends on what year you say but it's about one or you know one and a half

071one half depending on where you are yeah all right so the additional question is to the reason that we have a and i agree with seeking additional days i do because we are we need to i feel catch up to what uh the change took that took place and i think and i'm wondering as though the rationale behind teacher in-service versus student days why that took why that was the choice instead of having it be with students absolutely so great question so the philosophy behind that is that um a well-prepared staff member working in a school probably and again about theory will increase student learning greater than one extra day so if we have 177 days or 178 days i'm telling you that you will likely not see a significant increase increase in student achievement

072based on one day one day whether that's in march or whether that's at the end of the year beginning where you will see some opportunities is where staff members have the opportunity to engage in their data and how our students learning and making adjustments to how our students learning so that next week or tomorrow or the next day they can support the growth of the students in their class so is there a balance between how many in-service days you add and how many student days you have absolutely but i would tell you that one additional day or two additional days probably is not equal to one additional staff when you start getting how many days and where does that look i guess that's probably the biggest but that's where that that's where the thought comes

073from is that our staff continue to tell us about the opportunities of growth and collaboration and so we're providing them with some time without reducing the number of days that we're having what's the minimum number so yes so the state doesn't doesn't require paid anymore they require hours and so our hours of instruction generally exceed the speed so this i don't know if you focus on this i'll just say in general i think 1070 um for and i could look it up quickly 1070 hours yep over the course of the year and then uh say thousand one hundred seventeen or something elementary and seven years ago what i would tell you is that we far exceed the minimum requirement for me for minutes when i say privacy to give me a minute i can probably

074look through where we're at but i would say we exceed the number of minutes if we add them together by probably a few days in each level so it's not we're not most different to try to do that in case you have like a late start or an early dismissal he can you know the way the state requires you to count minutes is you can't help out before reflect all those things and so you put on this into a formula and then the state says have you met the state requirement in units so we exceed minutes every week is that taking it no is there still going to be those half days on wednesday is that kind of what the thinking is that you know no so this point that's going to be yeah so

075this would go back to a traditional like our elementary is 8 15 3 15 or 8 45 3 45 our middle schools are 45 and 2 3 10 basically those kinds of will go back to the norm uh of what we're seeing there's a few exceptions like when we have teacher conferences and those you know this calendar has lots of highlights in there and like what they might be in conference or if you had an early dismissal because of the last day of school or something but in general our days would be back to how we went to school or the typical school days as we started the school i don't have any uh direct questions i just a couple concerns i have um one is that we made a letter uh that went out

076to the state saying that it was going to be due to coven 19 um and i guess the response in having it's a it's a stretch for me to say that professional development meets that criteria that we ask the state for so that's one thing and then another thing is is that you mean i like the creativity of how we're going to pay the teachers um but the esser dollars there are a lot of things that we could spend dollars on and you know when we look at kids being behind and not having uh the you know it would seem to me there would be a better use for 360 thousand dollars um and don't get me wrong i think professional development's very important but i think right now in this time more instructional days

077would be something that i would support um and then also using the hair's dollars the esser dollars i think this falls out of the scope i realize there's an indirect um benefit but i i just think it's i just don't think that that's the way that we should okay uh do we need a motion to move forward with this one i would policy if there's any other questions but i mean again i understand where you're coming from and there's a balance between um how we uh create the calendar so let me just uh speak to how we've done this in the past so we do not have to uh the board would not have to approve the camera historically the calendar was a negotiated item under our teacher agreement and it's no longer a negotiator

078we bring it to the board basically because we want to make sure that the board supports the changes or what we have for spokane even if it was exactly the same we bring it to the board for that so in our in this um conversation i put down information possible action so um i don't want to move forward with the calendar if the general board doesn't prove that but i i need some kind of uh either we're going to take a motion in a second we're going to vote on it or um you're going to live with what the proposal is and then i'm going to move forward with it unless you know there's a remote there isn't any there's a motion in no second and then i'll know that it's not for direction so

079it's kind of up to you how you want to handle that ask for a motion in a second and then we'll vote on it all those in favor say aye so is there any amendments to the calendar which is dangerous right but we don't have a small calendar um and i really don't think professional development it it enhances what the teachers don't come back right so we're either going to wait and for someone to make a amendment to what's proposed or we'll come back in two weeks and we won't have a calendar filming in the middle let's open it up for discussion if you don't have a channel it doesn't um so our contracts say that you start on july 4th and you ended on whatever the best school day is um so you know

080we can we can go without a calendar typically our calendar is approved in like october so parents you know and staff are trying to figure out like are we going to start on what they do that's not you know two days isn't going to be significant um but yeah i mean at some point in the near future you know we're behind it a little bit on when we publish our account i'm happy to make a motion that we start on the day that was originally proposed which was wednesday is you know my concern is that pretty much like colin collins remarked about it in in that it was really a kind of in that loss of instructional time and and and in many cases you know the the means of delivering instruction may not have

081been may not have been the best consistently you know i just worry about i worry about the and um you know having thought myself i think that professional development is absolutely essential to the profession but it seems to me that that that this time around we ought to be we ought to be we ought to be putting more into the classroom but the problem is that we're dealing with a very a very small amount of days and um i guess i could i could i could go for a couple a couple days yes my concern would be or my comment would be would you tell them how we're using those professional development days and i think of all years right now it's key that our teachers come together and have time to discuss and plan

082for what they're teaching um so i i see it as a positive that they have more of that time just as nervous so i don't see a loss in in the um instruction time by adding those two more days onto my school calendar i want to see it as a plus and as far as the other dollars are concerned there are guidelines that have to be used for that so we're not allowed to step outside those boundaries that is something uh that is directed out of the state and i'm currently saying that one yes yeah so we we do follow donald's boundaries and first date has already approved those two days we didn't have to tell them though what we were going to use it for uh did we well in the in the um

083in the proclamation that we made right we said that we wanted to do it and again the gist of it the only reason the state will give us an opportunity to start furthering is to um support or mitigate culture the idea is that we are providing our staff with additional professional development and additional based markets again i can come back in two weeks um and i will tell you that our team worked extremely hard on trying to balance what is best for our district and it's challenging if you know without built with as an individual board member without knowing all the pieces to what we're trying to accomplish in this district to make a count like this calendar is not something that hasn't been worked on over the last you know two months so we

084can go back and you know i can make an amendment to it based on what i've heard tonight um and i guess i would just reiterate that on any given day some student is going to be absent i do not see that that you know if we add two days that does not mean that our learning loss is going to be avoided based on what happened here before so we're trying to work within this cultural parameter that says we can't start on september 4th september 1st unless we get authority and our tradition is we're going to graduate the second week in duty we could have days and not start on september 1st and not have spring break right and start doing things that we haven't done before school on the 23rd of december we could

085not have fridays off at all during spring those are things we can do but again our culture and the traditions of the calendar this supports pretty similar to what we've done before with the exception of two days earlier so we can come back and make all kinds of changes but again i'll take a pause here bring it back if the board again says that's not what i want then know that we have at some point we got to tell our public our staff and our parents this is what the calendar is and i would recommend that um if you don't have a plan again this is why i say you gotta let us do what we do if you don't have a plan that's better you got to tell us what it is because then

086the board's going to make an amendment and hold on so i'll pause there but well i i made it investment it wasn't second so and again it's not it's not so much the calendar as it is that it was under false pretenses that we asked the state in my opinion and and then we're also spending 360 000 on things that you know we talk all the time about not having enough resources and not having enough money for this and not having enough money for that um computer equipment and so on and so forth and i just think that um 360 000 is better spent um in a different way that's going to promote the gaps or get rid of the gaps that we've had and and i just don't think right now getting two more

087professional development days is fun to do that i'd be interested in knowing how to other than you know just eliminating things so i'm not saying that you know you could even uh wherever the professional development days are if you want to give if you want to give those two days is another day off do that i mean but i just think that's how well it thinks that solves anything does it i mean it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't invent but we're not giving our teachers opportunities to learn how to solve those we know we have the skin of construction but how do they learn how to express those if we're not allowing them just speaking to what stacy uh addressed um the you know i do i do agree that after the two and a

088half days i do not feel is what we told the state you were planning to do um and then thinking about the we do have the the question as to how you know we're always we are always asking for resources we are always asking for money and are we spending appropriately by using that towards professional development base i do agree her professional development dates are essential but i don't think that this is the time for training i think this is the time for either construction or you know putting those resources in making sure those kids are going to be succeeding i think it should be going towards the children right now not the training of the of those that are instructing each person i i want to make a clarification because both of you are

089alluding right now to the fact that you've been deceptive and going through my other traditional days that is not at all true our calendar was supposed to start september 1st on wednesday and we approved that that before the two of you included to start on that monday that is what we went to this day for and that is what they approved we were told about a calendar we were told at that meeting last time that we were not going to discuss any of how we were going to pay for it or anything it was just completely it had to be done in order to go to the state that was it it had to be yes it had to be approved in order to change the conference first right but that we were going to

090have time to deliberate and come back and talk about it and whether or not it was really going to happen i specifically remember superintendent holtzman saying this is not the time to talk about specifics agree with you but what we asked the state forum was to start on august 3rd we didn't tell the state what we were going to do or how we were going to count even when we say how many days we were going to go we asked for permission to start two days early that's all we did that's what that's what we in my situation i thought it was because we thought because of covid there were um students that are behind and they need to be back in here doing this and so i feel like that that if it was

091because of covid and that's what we said in our letter and that's where i feel like that i didn't have all the information and i would actually add to that that uh the dpi uh it says in the letter that the dpi may grant a request to the medical products that come first for shorter reasons including school clothes followed by foreign essentially being coping so it was due to the program but i don't think that the uh of you know i don't think i really agree that i don't think that that was the intention of adding instructional dates for us additional if you're you're mixing up the meeting's purpose was to get permission from the state to start two days for a period the state granted those because of the pandemic prior to this they

092never granted those we are now talking about the school calendar the state does not approve the school calendar whether we have 170 days or 190 days is the school district's price in order for me to bring the calendar forward and say we want to start on april on august 30th i'm happy to get the state's approval prior to doing that i had to get the boards approval so it is a step that i'm required to do we don't have to approve starting on august 3rd we could say we're not going to and we're going to start on september 1st but what i'm saying is that our team worked on a calendar to bring forward to the board for your approval the board did not vote to approve that i have to provide we have to

093have a school calendar because i can go ahead and do it right but again if you have some ideas on how to change it okay give me those ideas over the next couple of weeks but again my my opinion would be my job is to provide you with a calendar if there are some things in there that you didn't like or don't like you can talk about that you saw this you know a while ago so just say that i'll come back but our parents won't know what our school calendar is until the board approves them and if i'm turning you right i'm saying that the two of you are hearing that the two of you are crushing the value of adding those days on and being partially for professional development versus actually in school

094days or that part of the issue yes i would like if there's i don't have a problem with starting on that monday what i don't want to happen is for a for us to have two extra days that aren't going to be student instruction days i'd rather than be student instruction days and i'd rather um if we're going to use that money then i think that it should be for school construction days but i will tell you having worked in education and here in new york city for about 14 years that professional development is it's needed and i don't think you're valuing that as much of that that instructions i don't i know that sounds like that but um you know i have to do professional development for my job and i think there may

095be other ways to be able to do that but i think right now with kids being so far behind which we don't even know this money could be used to do an assessment to find out really how far kids are behind and i just think that if we're going to extend the school year it should be directly for the children to have instructional funds i will tell you my thoughts though is that right now we have an opportunity to to keep that calendar as it is that was stated and if there are tweets in the future that needs to be made perhaps it can be done but by talking about like doing evaluations of students we're already in mid-may and time you start putting all of that together evaluating them like there's a there's a

096time it's a time sensitive issue right now so um i just see it as benefiting our students no matter how you look at it whether it's professional time or time in the classroom i still think that the calendar can just be moving forward so i will make a motion and we keep the calendar as is but the extra two days of uh staff development would change into instructional days session moving for your discussion any calls in yes okay so that fails so i'll open it up again for any other motions which might be a good idea you know i mean that motion that motion fail even if you use the ester money with student instruction so you know you'd still be using that that's your money for the same thing you can still be using

097it for those of the teachers so either way it's being spent for the same purpose so i don't i don't i don't i don't see any i mean i don't see any alternatives i mean we tried we tried to skin the cat what about a cough coconut so it was two days teacher development versus two days of student development they wanted to go one day for students one day there's a compromise yeah the waters have been getting my question my question would be what is the recommendation i mean i have two questions here like what does that do and what is all right um it just means that i have to take one of the days that were identified as professional development foreign my recommendation um would be that we would start on august 30th

098and use the propose that i i brought but you know again i'm here to provide you with information and then ordering students to make some amendments or more change to that so my recommendation is august 30th 1868 days which would be 2.5 additional days 177.5 student days and 188 um teacher days based on the calendar but i support anything else well the compromise would be one day that's the last performance so i had uh that before clarification you're going one day student instruction one day of insurance correct yes so it's not exactly i mean we can do things but so we have 2.5 days in a calendar and so does that mean we're at like every time i add a student day i add a teacher day unless i get rid of a professional development

099day if that makes sense so if we're i think what we're actually doing is removing one professional development day and and making it a full student and teacher because it's the most so maybe as long as we're on clarity if that's the motion it really means we're taking one of the pd days making a student date and we're keeping the 188.5 days to make it 178.5 i just want to make sure any yeah discussion so mark where were the uh moved it throughout the year so originally our plan was to have a few fridays what not in september third friday in october not in december january february march not marching in april the idea was it aligned with some of our um our teaching and learning practices that were going on with cost of positive

100rates and then it aligned with some of those alignment for example conference etc so um you know we can go back and i can flip-flop wherever those days happen to be but there's a strategy behind every pd day we have and the increase of media based so again we're talking one day i can figure out what that looks like and make a change um and if that's the case i probably would just if the board proved that i just asked for your authority to move forward with making the change and not worry about if it's march 17th or april speakers um yeah but we haven't signed anything because so you know we'll make those changes um [Music] um wait a second um on the original calendar that was proposed so can you raise your hand

101of the eyes we have a calendar okay next item superintendent and director's report just pause see if there's questions or um qualifications for the directors our students are doing a great job working with the team and uh um yes let's keep moving uh district activity update information uh just a couple clarifications on uh things that are going on obviously forward um we have uh our cross country basically our fall alternative ended last week saturday uh there's some cross country kids at uh lincoln high school that's been a great job fifth and stage an outstanding um fall alternative but i would also tell you that um baseball going on what's going on uh soccer's going on going on we got a lot of good stuff going on as well and uh our kids really should be

102commended because they are all following uh either the district or the wiu protocols we continue to practice our art and music and we're doing some unique things with the families and stuff look forward okay thank you okay uh next item on the agenda for new business district covet 19 protocols we'll have a discussion on that um mark do you want to give some background on it or do you want me to yeah i mean either later i think you know i can start and you can kind of add that i think it's been brought up forward um that the board reconsider our current mass requirement um it's going to give folks a general overview that we require all students staff and visitors to wear masks while they're in the buildings uh the board who's deaf

103uh previous board meeting we do allow times when students are outside and distancing or eating uh do not wear their masks we've seen success up until this point we do know that we still have bookcases where we're seeing positive cases in our buildings and groups of foreign because of positive cases um and you know this week is not an exception to that we've had positive cases in our district so um you know it's been brought up to the board to consider whether we should make a change um to the current um face covering requirements i don't think there's any other questions that has been brought up about our protocols for you know washing down cables or hand sanitizers or you know those type of things i think really the only question really at the table

104right now is uh to continue to require students and staff i believe in visitors indoors uh unanimously voted on february 9th to have the mass mandate goal until june 11th and which time it will be students and staff came back into the building on march 8th so everybody came back knowing that and now there's talk that some are very satisfied they want to overturn it we've only got like 20 days to go on actual school days so what's the point of overturning health sure and everyone knew that they were required for a mass until the end of the school i'd like to say that none of the children are vaccinated won't be vaccinated before the end of the school year and although children don't often experience symptoms they are they are super spread so um

105wearing mass properly lowers risk up to 95 of all types of airborne airborne viruses so you know what's what's you know what what sense does it make to um they're going to take on the epidemic again they did that in texas they did that in florida successfully the current policy will be [Music] i'd like to make a motion that we modify the copic 19 protocol and remove the mask mandate and have it be optional discussion um stacy what are you doing with them immediately all right so no other changes from the protocol uh the only other one that was brought up was uh quarantine when it's like twice removed so that if you come into contact with somebody that came into contact with somebody that you have to be out of school for x number

106of days i mean you could make that a separate culture this one is just but that would be yeah that was another thing that brought to my attention like we saw over the first week um doing the we um well i think there's two questions the first is that we have to follow wia guidelines if in fact we want to participate in co-curricular and feminine guidelines and we'll have uh students in coaches and other folks who are close contacts wearing masks there are times when they can take them off or et cetera so we'll have to follow their protocols and if we don't then likely um there was a recent 7 survey that was done so we get on the thesis seven i think they're at 60 something school uh there was only one at

107the time that was left with casper that had revealed um their mass mandate so um since then it looks like they've changed the second question would be you know we try and work with our local our county folks and you know again i'm just let them know that well we broke our deal one of the promises was just like an agreement context again we try to stay strong as a group trying to support each other in all kinds of pieces so uh i would reach out to those folks [Music] i'm not aware of anything besides luxembourg capsule and they change their policy online well it's possible but again i don't i mean i'm not a spokesperson for all of them i know that in our um athletic conferences includes like mississippi voted they're going to

108continue there you know i haven't heard all of them but i think i feel still have their this would not stop um sports teams from very much if they choose to do that and participate in sports i'd like to speak to it but you know i know that was stated that there was 20 days left of the mandate uh in many parents opinion that's relatively you know public home slate you know i don't really know i i feel that the the decision to mask was not necessarily for the children in my personal opinion i i feel that there were um that it it affects primarily in adults as we've seen uh so do masks protect children i don't think so um i don't think that with kids not being highly affected and folded uh where

109is the where's the concern being appropriated and then to that parents should have a right in choosing for their children uh you know i'm a parent i don't i don't appreciate when other parents decide for my children i take my role as a parent very seriously and i feel that i should be given that courtesy and it isn't removing masks from children it's giving their parents those choices to decide for the health and safety of their children there there is other drawbacks from here in the mask and that would be the conveyance of emotion you don't need to you don't get to convey as much emotion with the mass you know there's there's other problems trying to hold it 19 out there you know there is you know in in high school you have to

110worry about tons of things other than holding and are we attending to those things equally as open 19. you know it the in the world today that it seems that all this thing to talk about is colby 1919 well there's been increases in uh depression that have resulted as defense you know from this thing in where's the discussion on that so as a parent you should be given those choices to address what the specific needs of your child are not just a blanket so i appreciate what you're saying about giving parents a choice it's like this isn't a thing that rides or feel or i don't i don't understand the rights argue i mean it's like you can't yell fire so you can't deal fire and cry so in in many ways you know the

111collective things like this i mean you can't go to you can't go to menards without a mask you can't you can't go to the public library without a mask you can't and why is that well because they're trying to try to prevent a flashback from this on this epidemic and and when you have people who are crowded into you know you know for seven days seven hours a day in you know the masculine as well as we can combat that well i think the record on that is pretty pretty obvious because if you i mean when i was a security officer here at a nuclear facility we did respirator training on on masks and my training i failed so many fit tests to the point where i had pulled back and i had to get

112re-certified and the reason was because i couldn't get a seal if i look at my mask right now there's no seal here this is all going in and out just just free there's nothing that is being stopped in this little gap right here and if i look around and you know the kids that are wearing masks this you know there's on the chin all that takes place kids are not worried about the seals on their masks so what is the what is actually taking place here is it is it a feel good or is it actually doing with what is supposed to according to what we're being told should take place i'm going to move to amend the motion to take a step well the uh original protocols are eleven i'm gonna demand the motion

113to take effect i'd ask for a second on that i'm not interested in changing what we're doing right now um we have numerous disruptions throughout the year i think that changing that mandate right now we've caused some disruption for families and i don't think that's healthy for us to do that to find ways to do that i think we can make it through the school year you know as it is whenever it's 20 days left and then look at making that change once throughout the school and into for example summer school and then the next level here so at the point of clarification you're you're proposing a sun setting of the current mandate effective chemical the mass band again when rather than um as stacy motion stated taking it back immediately that changed and mandate

114for stanford okay other business we are going to have a discussion regarding and it was some talk of yes uh i'll just speak to my request for that he added to the uh uh agenda uh i found it peculiar uh to have new meetings um and it didn't seem that anybody was able to um tradition uh i think that the majority of the parents and public uh confined themselves to the meeting uh during uh the evening versus and it seems to be more having you know it seems to be better suited for the public to have these meetings back in the evening versus so that's my russian talent for just as a you know for transparency and you know i'll speak to that problem because i sent you the our current policy doesn't set the

115time for the date for the meetings required to have one of them we've had multiple ones in the last couple of years due to the changes we've had to realign with the issue um so i also i always put on the agenda future meeting news and it's at that time that we can make the changes so my feeling would be why change policy which is somewhat ambiguous to begin with and fix ourselves into a situation that we might want to change later where right now we can set them the meeting dates every week so when we get to the future meeting days we can decide on our next meeting and it might be it might be um may whatever 26th or whatever it is but we might decide that's not a good time and we've

116done that you haven't always met with those six times um it is traditional i agree i mentioned that yeah i think that's why we do a lot of stuff doesn't make it i mean it works well um and now's a good time to have a discussion that's why i wanted to have this on there but i don't think it's something we should change policy i think we can work with our current policy and and that's why i always put that on the future meeting days it's just that we always get to that and we just go to the next meeting and and we don't really have a discussion because we're kind of done with all our discussion that's that's that's how it works and i think that's a that's a good process but we just

117need to maybe be a little more alert to what we're going to do you know how we're going to uh listen to that um because uh it seems peculiar that we have two meetings a month as well um we've had more than two meetings all right you know what i mean uh yeah two generals um i i found that that one was a little bit uh peculiar to have you know two general meetings like that um it wouldn't be i think in my opinion what a meeting a month one general meeting would be ideal just because i think you've been if you can't most of the time um you know things can be hammered up and you know we all have the ability to do it you know to attend and we can get those

118those agendas for committee and play in at just the same and when we have those things being brought forth on a committee it could be you know discussed in general yes or no and i think that i don't know is there actually a need for that for a special meeting every other you know maybe you can allude to that yeah i don't i don't know that we need it right on a regular basis and it's been more regular in the last three years but a lot of that's related to the issues that we needed to address more frequently you know for example realignment we were getting a lot of information every two weeks he felt the need to meet more frequently but um i'm hoping i mean i would agree with you i hope that

119we don't have those kinds of issues that we need to deal with more frequently the challenge we have as a board is i mean obviously we have to agree with everything you know um we leave our directors to the details right but there are a lot of issues that they need our guidance as well whether we're going to open for example the school government or something like that those types of issues uh that's maybe not a good example because that doesn't come up all the time but when they come up the board does come to me the committee can only forward into the board so yeah but but again i go back to you know future meeting games let's decide we really need to meet on may on let's say be the twenty-two certainly would

120normally mean doing if we don't then that's not me i mean i'm okay with that i don't need more meetings right i mean according to i don't think any of us does and i agree that the new meeting probably isn't as well intended by the public whether it's online or not when i was reading the bylaws and it talked about in general meeting versus a special meeting it just seems like the special meeting has kind of turned into a general meeting with a showcase and things like that so um you know i i would support as well um having those meetings really be special when you really need them um and you know having a longer meeting on a pro general i would even suggest starting at 6 30 instead of seven um can i

121ask mark a question um mark how will that affect i'm sure you have agendas and items that you want to bring forth to the board so how would that affect what you're presenting to the board there's there are definitely pieces of our meetings that are required by step for example our personal report so at this time of the year the personnel report is often very full and we're hiring certain people if we wait and we only can do that once a month that prohibits us from actually offering contracts to people and a lot of people who in many cases resign from their previous districts and you're not going to resign into the other contract so at this time both pieces become critical i think you can talk as a general more about in the past

122the board wanted to hear from all of our schools well if we have six elementary schools two middle schools a high school and an alternative school we either gonna have two of those on one you know a month or we're going to separate those out so we try to separate those out um in addition to that there are going to be things that we need the board to need to you know take notice on or take action on so in my five almost six years there's been a handful of times in which this board did not meet twice per month generally december and july and when you start thinking about what we have become so this is the budget we don't know what the state budget is we're going to want to get some of

123that information i mean again we can't wait a month but then you know here we are right now at 9 14 and we've still a full agenda so you also have to think about like what can i consume in one scale i mean again just like all of you i have lots of other things that the places that we can all be going i'm not promoting that and i was definitely safe i didn't feel like it was important i would send you the information and then make the decision but what i will tell you is that the process for having meetings allows me to get deca and move forward and less meeting teams i'm going to get less feedback i mean it's just because there are times where i have to make decisions about what

124we're going to do and i can't wait 30 days for the next quarter right so again as they said you kind of empower your superintendent administration to make decisions i'd like to get feedback to make sure the board's on on traffic goes and i'll try to do that in the first meeting and again i think maybe in the end of june or july we would back off but we've got to prove a contract with a charter school that has to come up next that ford has to take action on that um so there are things that we have to take action i mean you can do it once but there would be our meetings would have significant amounts of information you know i've only been on the board have less time than you guys but

125i i was i was not exactly stunned but i was i was enlightened i suppose by how much business there is and how long these things are and how i for one you know can't go to midnight i think the quality of the thought and the discussion um getting the work that you've done since i've been on the run yeah i think i mean one of the things that i think might help is that we have a consent agenda for our reports and then also um you know i think the presentations are nice but i mean we get those ahead of time um and can uh you know review those as well rather than having to be um in person uh so those would just be just two ways i think that we could um

126maximize our time although you know everything that we knew is for the public as well it's not just for the board but um i yeah you know i'm not disagreeing with colin or stacey if we can find a way to reduce the meanings we have and make them more effective that's a good that's a good step um you have had a lot of meetings i mean not you know i've had quite a few more meetings than the rest of you in there you know i i don't i don't want to encourage us to have more i think we should set our meetings when we need to have one if there are issues that we need to address we should do that but i don't think we should just have a meeting because we always have

127a meeting at that time if we don't need to have it let's not have it again it can be addressed under the topic let's just always let's be more diligent and say we need to meet on may 25th right which would be our normal normally we'd say yeah let's meet and then i meet with the superintendent and we come up with an agenda and if anybody's in the input well maybe put that stuff in there but if there's no items to put on there and we're just making up for being you know are we really being useful are we really doing what we should be doing with that yeah as long as we could actually just you know in those special meetings you know preferably primarily for the fact that transparency could have book i

128think that most people can't like that and that's yeah yeah you know and i mentioned the uh i think at the last meeting about how you know another elected group that i'm on we used to have nine o'clock meetings yeah well nobody ever came and spoke because they're working for the most part um and then we changed them we changed them to later in the day and i think that was helpful so yeah i agree with you and i uh i'm willing to accept that and uh so you want to change it you want to have different times i'm okay with that 6 30 whatever but it has to work best for all of us and it has to be fun there will be times there may be times where something does and it tells

129me you know we gotta meet and i'll try to get us together it's always a challenge to do that we don't have a big schedule so would we be better off having our meetings in place and then calling them off if that's not necessary that way the schedule is there and people have planned for that rather than trying to also come together you can easily say there's not enough on the agenda for x day let's add it to our second clock meeting and then that way it gets called off i think for consistency's sake it would be easier to have something for our schedule wise like you just know that you have to plan for and i don't know when you call it all well as president you meet with with our superintendent so if

130the two of you confirm you decide that there are not enough details or crossing them you have to deal with it that particular tuesday at noon i'll let you know i think that's better that's better at least that's from my standpoint i don't know so in saying that would we want to because i am one of those people that either needs to know if it's at noon meetings to six o'clock when i signed up to become a board member when i ran for office it was knowing that there was one two figure meeting and one at you me as though you know that coming into it if you didn't i understand on you um but i am not in favor of going to two tuesday nights i already gave up something that's very important to

131me on my tuesday night meetings and i will not do it twice a month i would be really close to that you know again i think we're adding discussion here that we don't mean we already have the means to do what what is being asked and i'm i'm an agreement with it i already have the means to do that we don't need and this way we can make the changes that you're asking for um so it's not that i'm trying it's not that i'm unaware because of you know i actually have a very flexible worksheet it's primarily my my intention of request is solely for uh allowing the probability that you know for the people that want to attend i do see as we just i saw embarrassing and maybe it's not a great comparison

132but my first meeting there's one person here this meeting there's much more i feel that there's much more public input much more public engagement i've seen it in many other meetings that i've been a part of in other organizations as well that you know even meetings do work for multiple so i do that is the intention of my request um and i i understand that yes that is um if we were to put forward uh maybe losses in but i feel that that is better suited for the public so that's okay um we're going to move it along yeah let's move it along the future meeting dates okay here we go did you make an official move nobody knows i just wanted to make sure um june and july as looking at not professionals controversial

133um [Music] um i mean it's kind of coming in am i right i mean it's kind of rooting all right we've got a personnel thing here and something like that i mean we said to myself two controversial issues um tonight and you know we have pretty good turnout from public and and yes and we're on um yeah so i don't know i mean if if if if in the second meeting something that really is of great interest in the public i mean actually but um you know i think wow you know it's it's it's it's it's not it's not sexy stuff those parents are at work so this making the fact of it being about school it allows those parents that are done with their day and they're considered at home to either you know

134tune in during doing zoom instead of watching jeopardy or whatever it is you know this allows them to participate in another avenue of their childhood patient but i i will respond to it but when they're on zoom they actually can't participate in the shop two ways so they can watch it any time i actually responded to mr rice not long ago like all of our meetings are wise and they are put on our youtube channel which is mpsg board of education a lot of people may not be aware of that but they can watch it and then the thing is you can go back and watch it at your convenience which is really a nice thing where when it used to be on table you either watched it when it was happening but there was

135not the ability to go back and watch it again so we're actually in some ways more transparent with our meetings than having the ability to see that know what's going on before things one thing thank you you know that that technology changes something else so you know it really is about convenience for parents that they can watch it at any time plus there's no public input at them for meeting them right so there isn't there is no public employees so i i guess with all the technology that's available i'd have to agree with kathy they can watch it this is okay so what are we i don't know i guess we're having um it's just because we've always done it that way doesn't mean it's the best we'll stick with our first truth i mean

136i can make it can we have can we have the agenda then be focused on specialness rather than be upon the general meeting well you mean like you mean you mean this our second meeting if we have a secretary yeah now together can there be some things that are not on them i mean somebody mentioned this school showcase we really didn't do that for a long time on that second okay if the board says hey let's not do that anymore we'll get some feedback on that but some of them we have this i think that's what you can do tonight um and just so all board members know you're all welcome to attend those meetings and you also are allowed input although only the committee members are allowable you're allowed input on anytime there's discussion

137you're allowed to be part of that and just as a point of clarification you will be receiving agendas for every single one of those from the chairs and you can you can ask that share something on the agenda just like you can ask me what stuff on the agenda yeah i usually will do that you know i like to have okay uh personnel committee joyce you have something planned thanks lisa i do not have anything planned but i absolutely will be reaching out to the three new uh committee members to get a meeting a personnel committee meeting scheduled before the next board meeting okay thank you chris building and grounds do you have anything fun not at this time thank you okay oh financial yes is angelo with us yes yes i'll reach out to

138the committee members as well instead of needing time okay thank you very much anything else if not i'll take a motion and a second to adjourn okay thank you thank you you