McFarland School Board Meeting 11/15/2021

001our first order of business this evening is a public hearing mcfarland high school pursuant to wisconsin statute 118.381b regarding submission of a flexibility waiver request to the wisconsin department of public instruction to waive the educator effectiveness requirement set forth in wisconsin statute 120.122 m for the 21 2021 2022 school year due to the ongoing covet 19 public health emergency as part of the public hearing the board will review written or recorded comments from members of the public regarding the request for the waiver before discussing and taking action regarding the request for a waiver and just to let the public and everyone know that's listening what we are requesting is that we're not doing with the evaluation system but we are looking to do away with this section that's called slos and those are specific learning

002objectives that basically are an increase of paperwork that go along with the educator effectiveness program and we're going to be asking the department of public instruction to grant us a waiver so that our staff doesn't have to do the written paperwork associated with the slo portion of the educator effectiveness we'll still do those two evaluations you'll still be working with staff members but we're asking for a waiver of that component to dpi so depending on how the turning of the public hearing and depending on the motion board if the board does make that motion we will apply the proper paperwork and the department of public construction is still one who decides what we are asking for is the board's permission to complete the waiver process okay uh any discussion here in the room i think

003anything coming written comments so no one has submitted anything from the public part of this okay is there anybody out there wants any comment angie no okay in that case then me see um you just close the public hearing once you think there's no more discussion yes okay uh hearing no discussion the public hearing will be closed and at this point that you can take action yep i moved to authorize the administration to request a waiver of the educator effectiveness requirement set forth in wisconsin statute 120.122m for the 2021-2022 school year due to the ongoing coveted 19th public health emergency i'll second that thank you bruce discussion hearing none all in favor of uh please signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously all right so moving on we have consent agenda items we've

004got uh minutes of the november 1st 2021 school board meeting um some general fund vouchers and purchasing card transactions request approval of general fund vouchers number one seven six six two nine through one seven six seven six two and two nine one four one one through two nine one four four five and purchasing card transactions dated 9 21 21 through 10 to 20 we have some professional staffing recommendations uh some co-curricular staffing recommendations and some personality some personnel items unnecessary for vote do i have a motion to approve the uh co-curricular staffing and professional staffing recommendations i still do a second second kate discussion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously 5-0 and again we have some personnel items no vote necessary we'll move on to

005public comments we have multiple public comments tonight so we will start with uh bruce we should give it a start sure i'm going to start with amy babila and clyde drake address is main street subject is keep the mask masking mandate in all schools please take the health and safety of all our district students staff families into consideration and continue requiring mass of everyone in our schools the cdc cdc's guidance which was updated on november 5th states that due to the circulating and highly contagious delta variant cdc recommends universal indoor masking by all students age 2 and older staff teachers and visitors the k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status it is wonderful that vaccines are now available for our students down to age five however that does not change the fact that cases are still

006spreading among the vaccinated and unvaccinated population in dane county in dane county according to the public health madison dane county dashboard in the cdc dashboard coven 19 cases have increased by 30 percent over the last week after a brief dip in october cases have been trending upwards again as we head into winter where we'll all be spending more time indoors and more time gathering with family over the holidays we all agree that masks are an inconvenience and students don't like to wear them children also don't like to wear shoes jackets and hats they don't like to slow down to wash their hands and learning to take turns is a skill we have to teach them but we teach them to do these things for their health and safety and for the health of others as

007part of living in a community wearing mass while our community is in high transmission of a severe respiratory disease is also something we need to do for everyone's safety the success of universal masking has proved has been proved proven in statistics from communities where masking was not required and schools were sent into virtual learning this fall along with classrooms of students being required to quarantine and large numbers of six students and large numbers of sick students and staff according to a national public radio story studies show that even in situation where other measure measures aren't being used masking makes a big difference in keeping the virus from spreading that one conclusion of the abc that was one conclusion of the abc science collaborative a major research initiative involving nearly 1 million students from 100 school

008districts and 14 charter schools in north carolina it found that universal masking policies helped keep transmission rates of the coronavirus within schools to under one percent last fall and spring monona grove school district announced to families on friday that their request are requiring mass in the school in the school buildings through the end of the year and we will reassess around january 10th i urge you to adopt a similar policy and continue the mass mandate for everyone in our school buildings our students have had enough disruptions to their learning over this pandemic let's keep them all safe those who are vulnerable and those who are strong and healthy and keep them in school by keeping mask on everyone until the level of community transmission has dropped to low according to public health madison dane county

009and the threat has passed thank you all for thank you for all you do for our children our schools amy of avila and clyde drake the next one is from melissa carr 4614 bellinggrass street to whom it may concern i am ready to urge you to keep universal masking for students and staff in the mcfarland school district k-12 universal masking is recommended by all health major health organizations including the cdc aap public health madison dane county and wisconsin dhs coveted mitigation requires a layered approach no single mitigation method it will be 100 this has been readily apparent mcfarland's k-5 classes were a lack of classroom spaces while masked and no space involved on mass at lunch has led to in-school covert spread and over 100 kids in quarantine over this span of a few weeks

010this has caused entire families in mcfarland to get sick with covet and has caused major disruptions in learning for dozens of children while it's absolutely wonderful that kids are getting vaccinated now children ages 5 through 11 will not be fully protected at the end of november when the phmdc mass mandate expires the earliest that these kids will have full protection would be in mid to late december some parents are unable to get kids in for their vaccination right away due to schedules or current positive tests or quarantines other parents i've spoken to are preferring low vaccination rates mhs we cannot expect high rates of vaccination at ceps and wis while any number of vaccinations is welcome a percentage of vaccinated kids that is similar to imms and mhs will not be enough to stop spread

011as is now happening in the connor delvin in the webisode intermediate school especially with physical addictions not being employed for students in these schools in addition it's highly likely that these outbreaks will continue to occur or possibly increase as mcfarland is still holding indoor team sports and other activities field trips meetings etc holiday gatherings are coming soon more people are just are just generally moving indoors as the weather changes my children are currently learning home with weva but we have hoped we had hoped to send them back to mcfarland schools once they are fully vaccinated if students and staff aren't masking this would likely be not be possible for our family removing universal masking would undoubtedly to a continued large number of student and staff illnesses and quarantines especially for k-5 students this will be

012detrimental to the health of our kids and our community and will cause even more disruption to their learning please continue universe masking throughout the district sincerely melissa carr the next one is from angela straub 60 80 shooting star court no it's not oh okay sorry forgive me i'm looking at the top sorry angela who oh okay yes all right i'm sorry eyelash okay forgive me about that angela i think that would be a huge disservice to all staff and students to lift the mass mandate at this point being a staff member i have seen how much the mass have helped students families and staff feel comfortable going about school without distancing it is keeping kids healthy we are about to come into the virus heavy winter months in which mass can help alleviate some of

013the illnesses that can keep kids out of school at the younger level they're used to the they are used to the expectation that everyone wears a mask as mass optional does not work for the youngest school-aged children this in turn makes all the children at connor delvium primary school at risk for getting more sick than they need to be need to because even unvaccinated adults and children will have a mass optional mentality it just seems very careless to lift the mass at this point in that pandemic i think this should be something that is considered in march when winter is nearing an end and more people have opportunities to get vaccinated and get over the peak of respiratory illnesses please consider how lifting the mass would change the morale in our schools i know we

014are all tired of this and wish for life without mass and without fear of exposure but it has gotten us this far and it has little more that it needs to take us as a community looking for out for our children the next one is from mary jo froden uh 6214 wildflower court mcfarland first let me express my gratitude to the board for all they have done during extremely difficult times i know that decisions are not made lightly and that you have to balance the wants and needs of many different people i'm writing to express my deep concerns about eliminating the mass requirements for all students and staff at conor delvin primary school cases are going up all over our state including in dane county people will be traveling gathering for the holidays which could

015potentially create a spike in cases in january without mass we are all considered close contacts so one positive case will result in entire classrooms having to quarantine and teachers will have to teach virtually which is less than ideal with older students and a complete disaster for our youngest learners and their families mass and other protocols have prevented spread within our school why would we put this to risk now kids are in school full time they are largely remaining healthy they are with their friends learning playing socialize etc removing the mass mandate too soon puts all of that at risk universal masking should remain in place until the cold flu season is over and covid cases are going drastically down at a minimum we should wait until the start of the third quarter but in my

016opinion the start of the fourth quarter would be an even better time consider removing mass but only if conditions in the state and or county warranted and regardless of when mass become optional for the fully vaccinated those who are unvaccinated should continue the wear mask thanks for your time and for all you do all right the next public comment is from jenny goodland i am extremely disappointed that the school district is considering removing the masking requirements for the district it makes no sense to lift the masking requirements on the days children return to school after the thanksgiving and winter breaks from school after the surge of cases that were seen last year during the same time frame i think it is irresponsible for the district to lift the masking requirements i think the earliest the

017district should consider changing the masking policy should be the beginning of the second semester several weeks after winter break i would also like to know what the current vaccination rate among students is at all of the schools thank you for your time jenny goodland mhs parents the next one comes from aaron lompato thanks for your time today i'm writing to share my position on math we should be requiring mass for the remainder of the 21-22 school year or until the level of community transmission is in the low range whichever comes first currently we are still at a high level of community transmission according to the public health of madison and dane county department we also have a sub shortage so we cannot afford to have more teachers out sick with no subs to cover their

018classrooms please continue to require masks in our school it is less intrusive to normalcy to wear mass compared to increased teacher and student absences due to increased cases and exposure in our schools the next comment is from amy lawrence as the parent of a high school student i believe november 27th is too soon to make fast face masks optional in the high school i've been wearing a face mask nearly full time at work since april 2020 so i fully understand the inconvenience they present and the desire to get back to normal unfortunately the transmission level in mcfarland dane county and wisconsin are all currently higher than when we began the school year the public health and medical experts at the cdc and american academy of pediatrics both continue to recommend universal masking in k-12 schools

019regardless of vaccination status many high school students also have siblings in the 5 to 11 age group who would not be fully vaccinated until at least mid mid-december studies continue to show the effectiveness of masks in a limiting in limiting spread in schools especially when everyone is wearing them it seems logical to continue to follow expert guidance and at least wait until the transmission rate in mcfarland and ordained county is consistently below the high designation our current universal mass policy has likely helped us keep students learning in the classroom as much as possible this should continue to be our top priority until transmission rates fall and the next comment comes from molly nafe i am very concerned with the possibility of lifting mandatory mass in our school before we have an idea of how many

020children will be vaccinated this is fresh off of my son being identified as a close contact and requiring quarantine while amassed only two months into the school year this feels premature as we are seeing that the vaccination rates for kids who have been eligible hasn't been stellar to date please do not put our kids at risk until more is known about the numbers of kids in the buildings who are vaccinated and until we see a reduction in the cases and need to quarantine with our current mitigation efforts okay the next one is from rachel nelson 5403 amy road hello i wanted to write a quick email in response to dr anderson's recommendation regarding masks when making the decision about if and when to stop requiring masks in the schools please follow the cdc guidelines rather

021than the county mask mandates thank you rachel nelson the next one is from rebecca piazza 6110 spring pond court hello i wanted to speak to the board about continuing to advocate for our children teachers and staff during this pandemic i am grateful for the mcfarland school district's current safety measures which include mask wearing indoors i strongly encourage continued use of masks during this pandemic i have two children who attend ceps i work for uw health as a physical therapist i've worked directly with patients during this pandemic i provide a safe environment for myself my co-workers and my patients by wearing a mask ceps teaches the students to be safe kind safe kind responsible wearing a mask meets the standard safe due to the highly contagious delta variant the cdc recommends universal indoor masking by all

022students ages 2 and older staff teachers and visitors to k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status kind i feel very strongly that all students staff and families should be safe at school and encourage the ongoing use of masks six in ten adults in the us has a chronic disease having a mask optional choice is not providing a safe environment for individuals who may be more susceptible to illness responsible i am very proud of our children who have showed resilience and ease with mask wearing we have worked so hard to keep our students faculty and staff safe during this pandemic we need to stay strong and united an easy way to do this is by wearing masks the pandemic is not over we have a responsibility to continue to use safety measures that are effective please continue

023your high standards at the mcfarland schools respectfully rebecca piazza the next one is by elizabeth reiser lover 5060 frost astor court good evening it would appear that the thought to continue masks was completely ignored within the decision-making process of the administration the only two options are no mask or optional masks within the survey why is that the honor system does not work the cdc's little experiment proved that already why do this with our community's children the rate of transmission the number numbers within the community are already higher than they were last year at this time plenty of families are choosing not to vaccinate their children yet children are the carriers of covid yet even more are dying one should think all the cases within the schools especially in florida have proved this point the schools

024must believe there are special circumstances time and time again if there is no spread within the school system as the story continues to go how miraculous either way masks decrease the community spread it's called a multi-layered approach for a reason masks vaccinations distancing hand washing etc the more layers there are the better the protection the schools will soon have little to no mitigation strategy why not take a common sense approach and do this once the numbers go down why not wait until the community spread is in the green again it is sure as heck isn't going to be right after the holidays right now there's what 58 kids in quarantine 10 staff members sick 19 cases in one week there was a need for 63 substitute staff members wow how many additional kids and staff

025are out sick or not feeling well those numbers do not even indicate the sick kids do you assume we don't talk to one another there are classes where there are six kids in the classroom why would i send my kid back to that environment that is horrible there is no consistency and no set schedule if there are constant sick days an inevitable quarantine we already know you're going to route going to go the route of least resistance clearly the anti-mass crowd is the loudest apparently you're all scared of them or something since you bow down to their demands how do teachers feel about this bus drivers staff parents of kids that are immunocompromised your job is to protect all kids within public education not just the majority if parents want something else they have the

026option to go elsewhere we never thought the side of scientific reason would be the side where we must go elsewhere how disappointing dr reiser the next one is from lisa 6675 highland drive windsor dear mcfarland school board i am writing this letter in support of keeping the current mask policy the american academy of pediatrics website currently states that fully vaccinated individuals can become infected and transmit the virus to others therefore universal masking is needed to protect unvaccinated and otherwise vulnerable community members we know that vaccinated individuals are able to catch and transmit the delta variant of copin they are immunocompromised students and staff that benefit from the extra protection of masks as well as any families that have children under the age of five that have not yet been able to be vaccinated thank you

027for your time the next one is from aileen swan 1418 delaware boulevard madison my family and i strongly object to the recommendation for a mask optional policy i teach in the district and my child children attend here as well with the numbers on the rise in dane county as well as the fact that people will be spending more time indoors over the next few months now is not the time to abandon the mask mandate policy the cdc recommends universal indoor masking by all students ages 2 and older staff teachers and visitors to k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status let science and common sense prevail and reinstate the masked mandate policy until the cdc recommends otherwise we all want our students and teachers to be in school as that is what is best for the kids

028and for their learning thank you eileen swann the next one is corey vander kleff aqui sorry 5409 normal road dear mcfarland school board administrations i am writing today in response to the survey sent out about the upcoming discussion about mass in our schools i did not respond to the survey as i didn't feel that the wording was clear i am strongly opposed to mass being optional i feel that making mass optional after many families have been traveling for thanksgiving and christmas does not make sense at all and is not in the best interest of students in school staff science continues to show that a layered approach is best if mass are made optional what layers are being used to keep our students and staff safe vaccinations and mass have much greater chance of reducing outbreaks

029within our schools i do not feel that adding vaccinations and not everyone being vaccinated and and not everyone will be vaccinated and taking away the mass requirements is the safest option health agencies are continuing to strongly recommend masking in schools why is this not being considered and listened to it is real it really feels like making mass optional is taking a big risk with our students and staff at this point there are still significant number in our school community who are not vaccinated mass need to continue to be required in our schools for the safety of every single person please think of the high risk staff members or think of the high-risk staff members or students it is the school board and administration's job to do everything possible to keep every staff member and students

030safe making mass optional is optional does not do that please make the choice that will allow all students to be safe at school thank you for your time consideration corey van der krev keith parent of a child at mms next one is lee ann waraczek dear mcfarland school district board members i'm writing to you to voice my strong opposition to dr anderson's recommendation for moving to a mass optional policy starting november 28th 2021 for staff and students at the high school and on january 3rd 2022 for staff and students attending c-e-p-s county elvium and primary school the obese intermediate school in the indiana middle school the center for disease control and prevention provides very clear guidelines and recommendations for k-12 schools to help mitigate the spread of covit 19. one of the recommendation is the

031following due to the circulating highly contagious delta variant cdc recommends universal indoor masking by all students ages 2 and older staff teachers and visitors the k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status this quote was taken from the cd website updated on november 5th 2021 which is one day after the cdc recommended coven 19 vaccinations for five through 11 year olds i'm a health care provider and i've been working during this entire pandemic i was providing care to patients before we had the coven 19 vaccine and the only way we had to protect ourselves and our patients was through personal protective equipment which was face masks and face shields i received the coven 19 vaccine and booster in fact the health care organization where i provide patient care has a covet 19 vaccine requirement for all employees

032and contract staff giving exemption for medical and religious reasons despite the vaccine requirement all employees and contract staff are required to mask and those providing direct patient care must wear eye protection as well the organization requires all patients family members and visitors to mass regardless of vaccination status this is the health safety and well-being of all who enter the facility and the community at large if this is required for a health care facility which does not nearly have the large number of staff teachers and students why would we not require this for our schools i feel we have had a successful school year thus far mcfarland school district has effective coven 19 policies in place which has done a great job mitigating the spread of this virus allowing our schools to remain open a huge

033driving factor for this has been universal masking let's continue our successful school year allowing students to continue in-person learning which means universal masses needs to remain for all staff teachers and students and my last one is leah zanna 6031 sledding parkway she writes i strongly believe we need to continue with the mass mandate i feel to keep our kids in school we need to keep them mass this is prove this has proven to be working kids are sneezing and coughing each other especially during the winter months there could be lots of kids missing school okay moving on the next comment is from amy crowell 5927 ocala drive please read this aloud at the next school board meeting i wanted to express my support for the recommendation that masks be optional for our students and staff

034after the dane county mandate is lifted my suggestion is that all grades would be mask optional following november 29th the whole point of masks optional is that if you still would like to wear a mask you can if you would not like to wear a mask you can choose not to wear a mask the majority of the students and staff are vaccinated so a mask's mask's optional option makes complete sense we need to start putting our kids first and not the people who remain scared about this violence if you are scared of covent wear a mask you don't have the right to tell other people what to do i feel that certain members of the school board would rather dig their heels in and be right about covid instead of looking out for the well-being

035of our students we are sending our kids very mixed messages they don't have to wear masks for away games but must wear them at home games they can play in the state tournament in green bay without a mask but must wear one walking in our halls they can sit down at a restaurant and not have to wear a mask but they have to wear a mask in class there's no logic to this there was not a coveted outbreak after the state tournament just like there hasn't been a coveted outbreak after every away game waunakee and belleville have already voted that masks are optional in their schools after the dane county mandate is lifted we have the choice in mcfarland to decide that masks are optional we get to decide i would suggest that as we

036move into the winter sports season that students do not have to wear masks while they play sports i would also suggest that the board members run for 45 minutes to an hour with a mask on and see how they feel during and after i'm sorry i i'm sorry wearing masks has been proven to not be good for our students health and mental health and it needs to stop enough is enough our students have complied with everything you have asked of them it's time we start standing up for them and putting them first again if you want to wear a mask wear a mask no one is saying you can't wear a mask anymore i also find it ironic that we have switched the student population that we are the most scared of getting coveted from

037last year we were the most afraid of the high school population having them return to school after the younger kids now we are putting the most restrictions on the young school population this goes to show the illogical decision making that is going on concerning our kids in coleman i applaud our superintendent for taking the initiative and sending out a survey of the families of he is asking our opinion i would hope the school board members would take this survey into consideration even if the results don't coincide with your position thank you amy crow [Applause] next is jeff crawl same address once the dane county mask mandate is lifted on november 27th masking should be optional for all kids in mcfarland school it is ridiculous that we are even debating this you have already taken way

038too much from our kids and you should be begging them to forgive you and do everything in your power to try to make it right this would be a good way to start that healing process once the mask mandate is lifted on november 27th do the right thing and make masks optional for all kids as many of us advocate for in the pro-choice movement keep your laws off my body similar can be said in this case keep your laws off our kids bodies america is about choice quit teaching our kids that they are dangerous to be around by making them wear masks when they've done everything you've asked and been nothing but cooperative instead let them know that you're in their corner you understand how difficult this has been for them and you are now

039making decisions that will only help the healing process begin but you are committed to making up for lost time and giving them every opportunity to feel good about themselves and succeed in our school next comment comes from chris fortune 5987 prairie wood drive my name is trish fortune and i am a physical education and health teacher at the high school i am also on the coaching staff and am a parent of a senior and a sixth grader i am writing to the board today to request that our school district or at least imms and mhs have optional masking not mandated when our current order expires at the end of the month our vaccination rate is at least 82 percent and by all means if teachers and students want to wear masks that is completely acceptable

040and respected but we should not be mandated to wear masks especially if we are vaccinated it is hard to communicate and breathe in the masks amongst many other things we have the ability to distance and be safe without masking in our school areas i believe we should go along with the rest of dane county at the end of the month when the mass mandate order expires and not be mandated to wear masks it is time thank you respectfully trish ford next we have candace pettican at 6110 pattison court hello in my opinion the survey sent out does not accurately capture my response regarding masking so i'll give it here i support optional masking for all students effective november 27th in addition the district's contact tracing and close contact quarantine policy should also be removed the

041time and effort for staff and the disruption in learning is too great to continue this i also firmly believe that school board meetings are a community event and not allowing in-person conversation and listening is a disservice to all of us thank you candace penican next is casey ray 1671 bonner trail to whom it may concern i ask that you put aside your personal feelings in regards to the debate over mask utilization in schools the county is lifting the mandate and the recommendation put forward by dr anderson is mask optional this should be allowed for all students regardless of vaccination status or age give us the option to make choices for our families let your employees and students have the option to continue to wear a mask or not [Applause] next is from tom and james

042sandeen 2248 county road a b mcfarland school board we are ready to urge you to remove the mass requirement at all schools make masks optional for all be a leader among area school districts like waunakee and belleville in eliminating this mandate pictures of our volleyball team at state and green bay highlight our board's mask policies which are not rooted in science our policy states that we follow the masking requirements of schools we visit our many parents fans and volleyball athletes were able to attend this very large event indoors without masks and then return a few days later to mcfarland school by having this conflict the board is essentially admitting that the mask requirements here are is based on politics and not science i hope you also realize that your mask survey results for teachers and

043parents will likely be flawed the survey allows manipulation with allowing multiple votes mcfarland's faulty survey was highlighted for all 1400 members on the open dane county public and private schools facebook page two days ago thank you jane and tom sandeen [Applause] okay moving along we've got i think i have one more here the name is kristen jakubowski 5201 falling leaves lane hi i am writing to express our family's views and covet protocols post-vaccination for our kindergartner and second grader we are grateful that vaccines have been approved for the 5 to 11 year old age group and intend to vaccinate our children who are eligible we believe that the vaccines are safe and effective against covert 19 and that this is the way for us to both keep our children safe and move closer to normal

044in our world my husband and i would like to know if there is a plan to change the current covet protocols related to quarantining testing and contact tracing once our children have completed their vaccination series we would like to be able to handle things the way they are currently handled with the older age group as well as adults in dane county who are fully vaccinated meaning we monitor for symptoms if our children are close contact but do not have to quarantine them of course if a child develops symptoms or test positive we would keep them home one of our biggest motivators for vaccinating them is that is that so they can attend school normally with their peers and not have their social lives and education interrupted multiple times we would be fully comfortable with changing

045the protocols to reflect this thank you for your time we feel it is important for the board to have an accurate picture of what our opinions as parents are in this matter and now i believe we have a recorded comment yes if you do not mind i would like to invite we do have two individuals who have registered through the q a feature currently and then i would like to uh put out an offer to anyone anyone any other attendees if you'd like to make a public appearance by speaking to the board please utilize the q and a portion found at the bottom of your zoom window in the q a we would ask that you type your name address subject of interest and whether you have discussed this item prior to the meeting with

046either a district with the district administrator or president towery after submitting the information i would transfer each individual over to speak to the board okay and then now i will share my screen and present a video comment from john gaser at 6413 exchange street just one moment yes um i'm going to pause this we are having some issues with the internal volume give me one moment i'm going to stop the share and see if i increase the volume of my computer if that will work better yes definitely okay um discussions that he and other dave county superintendents engaged administration from public schools to provide notes to those friday meetings it was initially told that his records did not exist however we knew they did we provided a website link detailing a electronic google document through

047the notes from that meeting we shot in screenshots detailing superintendent burdell had been active editing that document um providing that superintendent anderson was able to locate the notes and then a week later went out and i had asked for the status of that public market's request informed that the results were printed and put into the mail last wednesday so today we get to receive those notes i'm not sure what they might contain are just a couple of examples of lack of trust perhaps or i guess for somebody to help me understand how an experience like this would help build a trust with myself with other stakeholders in the community so i'll comment that i care a lot as a parent of a couple of children and the stakeholder community my taxpayer and my program as

048well i wanted to see if our public schools succeed and excel it's with that in mind that i make my comments today and i hope that we are able to improve upon some of the relationships again speaking for myself today however i anticipate there are others of sharing some of my thoughts some of my feelings i'm a proud graduate of many different public schools including four degrees through the university of wisconsin madison a couple master's degrees and a phd so i want to be part of a community in public schools that excel and succeed however um that the questions have been told and not been answered some of those issues we trust and personal stronghold our kids out of the school district this year so that's not to say that we want to come back

049on future caliber experiences eye opening uh the engaging with our children at the new school has been fantastic and so i hope and again we're able to build back some of the trust but i wanted to make these comments highlighting the opportunities we have hopefully for future engagement within the community and also making my thoughts known so that others can hopefully pick up on some of this discussion and perhaps post some questions within the district as well thank you for your time okay i believe that concludes the public presentation no we actually have two individuals excuse me only turn the speaker back down in my computer all right we have two individuals who have registered thank you okay we have at this point i will move we have sandra shane who would like to make

050a public comment on masking at 2806 union street i will be moving sandra over into as a panelist all right sandra has now been should now be joining shortly there we go school districts should maintain masks in school um first i would like to thank you for having me and listening and school board members please know that i shared this presentation with you because there are links to the science um that if you wanted to spend some time looking at you're welcome to um so first we were given five options for masking the first three really have to do with uh a mask recommended setting or an optional mask setting and it really the dates are changed um oh first off i am a teacher at um i am mms i'm an art teacher there

051and have been for um some time now so the master recommendation setting either for november not 29th which would be right after uh fall break or um right after uh january third right after winter break um or the third one which would be at the beginning of second semester uh we would go to masks optional for fully vaccinated people um the fourth option was to that we were given was to uh recommend a mass recommendation setting for fully vaccinated facts once um dane county public health recommended and finally the last one was to continue a mandate for all students regardless of vaccination until the end of the school year um and my recommendation is actually that we reassess sometime at the start of maybe first second second term maybe even third term i don't think

052we have enough data yet um and i've got some information i'd like to share with you so um is mask wearing important um so the cdc says when you wear a mask you protect um you protect others as well of yourself as yourself masks work best when everyone wears one um and i have a link to the site and to the science of that particularly important is that it's um it's more important for people who have covid to not to wear a mask so they don't spread so you're wearing a mask protects you less than others wearing masks and it works better if everyone wears one so um i'm sorry my uh presentation here is uh oh i went to a link i'm really sorry hold on a second um bear with me here all

053these things are in the wrong spot here we go sorry about that um so is mask wearing important uh we just discussed that so the next thing that i'd like to say so what are the current cdc recommendations um they're basically that anyone who is not fully vaccinated should wear a public mask indoors um or if you're fully vaccinated you need to max maximize protection from the delta variant to prevent possibly spreading to others who wear a mask indoors in public if you're an area of high substantial or high transmission so what about dane county dane county is an area of high transmission and this is directly from the cdc website and it says everyone should wear a mask in indoor public settings regardless of vaccination status so and the cdc is also recommending a

054universal indoor masking by all students staff teachers and visitors in a k2 squad setting regardless of vaccination status so the science is saying the science behind this is saying that masking is very important for for schools right now so who's most at risk um the unvas vaccinated in those with compromised immune systems this includes some students and staff and family members of students and staff on a personal note i'm the sole caregiver to a family member with stage four cancer i'm really concerned about how nap masking could impact my role although i am vaccinated we've had breakthrough cases in the district so how is mask wearing going at mcfarland school district great um my experience is that almost students all students are doing a great job although they need a few reminders to pull up

055their mask after it slips down my classes are fully masked and compliant to masking roles i mean obviously they are an inconvenience and people will refer prefer not to wear them but they're doing great with them they know how to do this they're capable of hard things sometimes i have to ask the students to speak up during class discussion but otherwise they've had little impact on actual classroom learning my most significant educational concerns right now are re-teaching students how to be in the classroom again as well as supporting students who lost a great deal of social-emotional learning as well away from school masks are actually a minimal concern for me so i'm also concerned about the timing particularly of the first three uh options um over the course of the pandemic we've really seen increase

056in positive cases close break friends and families are getting together more often during these times quite simply we're around a lot of people who aren't in our everyday circle taking our masks off right after these breaks doesn't seem safe it would be uh it would be advisable to wait until they have some post-break data why make this decision right now um will optional masking affect the relationship between those who mask and those who don't at school i think it will for some people wearing masks has become a political issue rather than one of public health i have concerns that those debates might spill over into the school right now those discussions are minimal because everyone has to wear one um who will wear a mask if any any of these five proposals besides five are

057approved um really only the unvaccinated students and staff would be required to wear a mask um how will staff enforce a mandate that unvaccinated students be masked to be honest i really don't know identification and tracking of unvaccinated students in the hallway or classroom seems like an impossible task and one that would be pretty difficult for me to take on at this point what about the sub shortage this is a big concern of mine if we're missing school right now the sub shortage is is a real issue if we're unmasked the chances of missing a day of teaching due to covet or simply a cold are increased um or maybe a cold that we need to get tested for cobit we're already short of subs classroom coverage could be increasingly difficult and um returning to

058in-person learning has been great but um we're going to have some really big concerns with lost classroom minutes if we on if we're on mass chances of missing a day of education due to covet or a cold are increased for students and in larger uh larger population so in conclusion i think that wearing a mask can't hurt you it can only protect you uh it's a mild inconvenience but worth it for in-person learning my experience that maths themselves have done little impact learning in my classroom furthermore the cdc recommends that schools continue to require maps for students and staff i see no reason to change the policy at mcfarland school district for any grade level at this time i believe it would be a mistake for the board to do otherwise i do hope that

059there will be days soon where we can all take them off for good but this is not that time i'd like to thank you and the board for listening to my comments and thank you for your time okay thank you it will now be moving sandra out and moving another person in give me one moment okay all right at this time we've received one additional comment we have samantha zylenga 3615 rankin road i will be now promoting samantha to a panelist all right so now this should be joining us momentarily yes we can thank you okay perfect um i know the main conversation about tonight has been about masks which i'm going to reach at in another moment but i'd like to bring something else to the poor's attention um about a week and a

060half ago i was sent a legal notice about my son's vaccination rate my son has remained home since march of 2020 because he has medical and neurological concerns regarding coven so i've decided to home school as in like homeschool homeschool file with dpi mcfarland sent me a legal notice saying that they did not have his vaccination records on file i emailed uh greg nelson lauren and dr anderson greg responded and he's absolutely amazing and i'm very thankful for him and actually i'm really sad my child is missing out on so much of cps because of him um it was discovered that i was sent this notice because how mcfarland is informing parents like myself who chose to keep their children home because of cobit is to have us partially enrolled so i was sent a

061notice being threatened with legal action and being threatened to take to court and being threatened fines we have figured this out but i would like to stress that it is highly inappropriate and highly unprofessional to be sending a homeschool parent a threat of legal repercussions so i would request that someone figure out how to figure out how to inform all of us that have kept our children home to not be receiving legal notices to not be receiving notices that we owe fees for field trips even though our children are not attending but i shouldn't be threatened with being taken to port for no reason when i'm following my legal obligation for educating my child so moving on as far as mass i'm not going to dive into everything as you heard other parents say like

062our vaccination rate among students isn't very high the layered approach is the best um the survey that you sent out about masks was not well worded at all a lot of parents in the community were very confused about it we did receive some clarification from dr anderson about it but that again had to be relayed from parent to parent as opposed to being relayed from in so those survey results should be taken with a grain of salt because it was it just wasn't clear at all so i'd like to delve into some more things um is someone else mentioned about anti-masters having a very strong voice a lot of us are aware of the national movement that the alt-right is making against school boards the u.s attorney general is investigating these organizations but we are

063all well aware that there are movements against school boards for mass mandates and what they claim to be crt i would like to remind you all you are a district in dane county we are one of the most liberal and educated counties in the entire country so please please do not give in or do not worry about anti-massacres and any threats that they might send you because the parents in this community are primarily pro-mass the parents in this county are primarily pro-mask and you have nothing to worry about like these other counties in other school board members in red counties do okay so just please like do not take that into consideration at all we got you you're fine i'd also like to address mcfarland's inherent need to feel different and superior to other districts

064i graduated from mcfarland in 2004 and this attitude has always existed this attitude is spoken widely by members of the administration including like jeff mahoney has said at school board meetings we've always tried to remain as normal as possible trying to remain as normal as possible and trying to be special is not worth the physical or mental well-being of our children then moving that into mental health i hear a lot about the physical health of children my son is autistic he has adhd and he has ocd as well as medical concerns he had a meeting with his psychiatrist on friday and i discussed with him the dr anderson's proposal of making mass optional his psychiatrist said why would they do that that is only going to make school more inconsistent for children so i wanted

065to send my son back when he was vaccinated and he's not coming back anymore he might come back next year because taking away masks trying to create more quarantines is going to create teachers being out like i heard at ceps they couldn't find a sub so they sprinkled the students among other other classrooms how does that work for children who have anxiety and neurological concerns and they get to school and they say you're going to another classroom that day that doesn't work that doesn't work for for children like mine so when we talk about mental health and how it's best for the mental health of children to be in school full-time that has to do with masks and in order to keep schools open time we need mass for that layer approach i'd also like

066to address something else that kind of concerns me and that is trusting public health so phmdc the cdc aaap wisconsin hs all recommends masks so phmdc is taking away the requirement but they're still recommending it so when your doctor says that they recommend something does that mean that you just ignore it because they're not saying you have to or do you think you should take your doctor's recommendation because for me i'm not a science person i'm a legal person never been science math not my thing so what i do is i refer to the science and medical people because i believe that they know more about that subject than i do this has been a problem across our entire country of people questioning doctors and epidemiologists and public health officials and saying oh they don't

067know what they're talking about talking about these people who have spent like 10 plus years getting advanced degrees in these fields why do any of us that don't have this experience and this education think that we know more than them we should be following recommendations of public health officials and we should teach our children to follow the recommendations of well-educated and well-experienced people in that specific field but we don't need to be taking medical advice from joe rogan we need to be taking medical advice from public health madison dane county and so by ignoring their recommendations we're just solidifying that in our children that they should not follow the recommendations of people who are well educated and well worked in that field so i would ask the board to think very critically about this that

068it's not just a surface level issue and that there's a lot more details when it comes down to this and there is long lasting impacts for our children that includes their mental health and their trust in professionals that's it thank you thank you very much thank you very much uh one and all i believe that concludes our public comment section of the meeting and we will move to superintendents report i believe yep and the first thing i want to bring your attention is that we did have a lockdown drill and one of the requirements is that every time we have a lockdown drill that we send a report to the board so what you have in your packet is the report from the lockdown drill that was conducted at indian mounds middle school this is

069conducted on november 10th and it goes through the timeline of events so we did it in the morning we talked about these things prior so that the students would know what what the what the reason for the lockdown wall and what the procedures were with the drill so this is the written report that complies so every time we do a lockdown drill you'll receive one of these probably at the next board meeting and other than that everything should have been covered in mcfarland minutes and our next board readings are coming up sooner than later all right discussion items uh first we are going to review results of the strategic planning and superintendent search survey all right i just finished it today so i sent you these the um now remember this is an overview draft

070so this is trying to compile we had 66 staff members and i think 146 parents community members that responded so i tried to go through all the responses and categorize them to come up with what i thought were the general themes so what you see is under each of the questions uh the responses the most the responses that appeared the most often under the staff and the ones that appeared most often under the parent and community for each of the questions there was one question that we asked staff members we didn't ask community members and that under the strategic planning one and that was basically you know what could we do right away um are there any new or what are some specific things that you feel could be done right now that would improve

071the educational outcomes of our district that was on the staff response we should ask that we didn't ask that in the parent so that's why there's no responses under that one of the things that i think came through loud and clear is that people were grateful that you asked for their opinion so there's a variety of opinions underneath and i don't want to read each one because you can do that but basically what i'd asked you to do is under the superintendent search that's probably one of the things that we're going to be discussing you know soon is to take a look at what staff and parents had to say about what type of qualities they would like you to look for the next superintendent some of the challenges that the new superintendent will probably

072encounter and what they believe should be the responses of that individual and of course the strategic is one of the things that we'll be working on a little bit now and then more once the new superintendent is hired but this should give us at least a basis for discussion on what we think should be maybe some of the major goals so it should be interesting reading was interesting reading for me and remember you do have access to all of the comments so that you know you can read through all of them to determine um you know in case i didn't characterize something exactly the right way but this should give you at least a general outline about the survey i will give these results also to the public i believe if you ask for people's

073views you should give them i think this next week will be for the results of superintendent search because i hadn't completed for the strategic survey i'll do that in the future blog so if there's any questions i'd be happy to answer them or else i would just ask you to read them carefully if you have any questions please let me know sounds good um review draft 20 22 2023 calendar option okay well there's two things one is you get to see the staff survey so we put out a survey to the staff we had i think 259 responses to the calendar survey basically this is one of those surveys that it was pretty clear 96 percent of the staff wanted us to create a calendar that was either similar to the traditional calendar we already

074have or the traditional calendar with some additional vacation days so that was 96 percent so the other four percent had you know different other options available but i think it was a pretty clear um you know survey results on what they were looking for that's a mandate so 96 so you have a list of what the survey was and all the various comments that went with it so then what i did is i have created several drafts but the latest one went out to you this morning that taking everybody's comments so far basically has us starting with our in-services on august 24th 25th 26th then having several days off before students start on september 1st and then we would end students and then then june 8th staff would end then june 9th so it's basically

075a traditional calendar that has just a few more vacation days than the past i will send this out we're going to talk about this at the berserk meeting on wednesday and i will send this draft out to all staff tomorrow so they have a chance to take a look at it and give comments so that they can give it to their reps and hopefully um is after everybody's had their chance to comment some way if there's any other modifications or changes i'll be able to bring it to the board in december for approval now with the with the additional vacation days how how close are we in terms of meeting our required days in school or minutes of instruction we've met them all and we still have some flex so if we have some inclement

076weather days and have to cancel okay we don't so we've got two or three extra abilities yeah i think we have three okay all right the preserve meeting is at four o'clock i believe 4 30. i wanted it at four o'clock but they say we can't have the room in at well beast until 4 30. so 4 30 and we will this is one of our discussion topics hopefully staff members have a chance to take a look at it and to give some input to their representatives or send it directly to myself or one of us but it does have the survey uh all the results and then the latest draft like i said hopefully we'll have this as an action item for you the first meeting in december okay review superintendent job posting all

077right there's not a there's not a piece of paper for you to look at on this basically what it is is that we have two things that you will be talking about a little bit later that go into the posting one is the job description so that's later on part of the job posting will have the job description posted so that all applicants can see what the latest job description is so if you approve it or if you make changes so that it will be approved with any modifications we'll put that on the and then the questions we took all the questions i sent you the ones that appeared to have the most consensus for ones to ask there's a lot of other questions that are good questions they can be asked during the interviews

078so it's not that you won't get answers we wanted to limit it to basically five questions that and i think everybody could basically weighed in so i took those five essay questions if you're still good with that what i'll do is i'll put those within the application blank attach the job description to it post it on we can in the career leadership that sends it out not only throughout the state but it actually has national coverage so people throughout the united states will be able to see our opening they'll then send their application materials to weekend which is basically an education educator's job site you will all have access to that so as an application comes in you'll be able to see the application materials what we always ask for is we ask for the

079credentials transcripts we just ask for three letters of reference a cover letter the answers to the questions so the basic materials in this and as you read through those then what we will do is later on when the f cases are all in and we've closed the deadline what my guess is right now i'm thinking it's probably best to close it the last day of winter break so that people that you know may be busy and not have time until that time will be able to finish it and then we would schedule meetings sometime after winter break probably saturday to sit down have a special meeting to basically discuss each one of those and determine which ones you feel would deserve interviews and then we would you know call those for first round in the

080meantime would talk about the interview committees who you want to be on there so they can come up with their questions so but first we need to get posted there's already superintendent postings out there and if you read the little clips more and more superintendents have turned letters into their boards saying that they are retiring and so they are looking for superintendents so basically is if you approve the job description and if the questions are ones that are acceptable to you then i'll start working on posting tomorrow all right anything else on that if not we'll move along to [Music] discussion and possible action on covet 19 protocols uh wayne you want to lead us through this one yep the first i want to bring it to your attention is as i brought forward right

081away is that dane county will be dropping their mass mandate on november 27th from that point on then each district will be able to determine what he feels should be its mass requirements now one of the things that i send with you in every board package because we've told the public that we will review the covet protocols at least every month so but if you have them in your packet which i'm sure you do these are the current ones that we passed in august before the mandate went in place it dealt with our metrics it dealt with our contract tracing it dealt with our co-curricular activities so if you wanted once the mass mandate was over you could simply revert back to the basically to the protocols that you had set forth at the very

082beginning of this school year that did require masking the difference would be is that in co-curricular activities we did have whether or not um and i'll just read those so everybody can hear it under co-curriculars the school district in mcfarland will follow the coven 19 protocols of the schools that we are participating against we're at their school facilities because many of our competitors are outside of dane county and many of those do not have any mastery requirements b competitors and spectators from other school districts will follow the school district mcfarland's cobia 19 protocols when they're using our district facilities for home events which they are which we've been following participants and spectators from outside co-curricular will not need to wear masks which should be a little different than what we have currently when the mask

083mandy was in fact when the mass mandate went everybody had to wear a mask on their facilities there will not be a limited number of spectators other than limit imposed by space capacity that are able to observe an indoor event spectators attending co-curricular events will need to wear a mask if a spectator chooses not to wear a mask they'll be given the option of putting on a mask or staying or leaving the co-curricular event and participants of inside co-curricular events will not need to wear a mask when competing participants who are on the bench around deck will be required to wear masks and coaches will need to wear a mask while coaching inside so the big change would be is to be reverted back is that when our athletes are competing they would not need

084to wear a mask when they're at home already when they're away as it was alluded into state tournaments they weren't required to wear masks they were at home under the current mass mandate when the mass mandy goes away if you went back to the original protocols then at least when they're competing at home when i would say when they're doing their practice their physical practice they wouldn't have to wear the masks but during if they're sitting on the bench if they're just having team meetings then they would be as it's been brought up is that we have basically the option of determining what we think is best for the school district of farland after the mass mandate is over now i surveyed the staff and i gave them two surveys the first survey was very

085short if i would have thought deeper about it i would have asked more questions what i did in the second survey you have the results of those so i tried to be pretty specific in that survey to lay out the various options for if if we were to go and i think the wording that basically is the best is encouraged and strongly recommended to wear masks but it would not be mandated would be as i put in the options one is to do that once the mass mandate is over the second option was to do that after winter break was over the third was at the end of semester the fourth was one public health madison or dane county issued basically an announcement that they felt was safe to be indoors without mass or until

086the end of this school year i asked that for each of the various buildings and you have the results of those surveys with you i did also put we had 259 responses so we had a very good participation rate in that survey the one i put out to parents received slightly over a thousand responses as you did hear from some parents they thought it was confusing i apologize for that if the board would like i could put out a survey to the board or put it to the families tomorrow that is similar in structure to the one i sent to the staff members uh i did not have any staff members say that that was confusing but we could send that out so that you could get that data so that people said they didn't

087exactly know how to fill out the first survey so that the responses might be a little corrupted if you'd like i can resend it i think that survey is pretty clear to give out the options so that each family had the opportunity to send that and then you could look at what parents had to say before you made your decision if you decided to go that route then you would not want to make a decision tonight then you'd probably want to have a special meeting the only time i can assume you'd have that special meeting would be next monday because that would be still before you went on thanksgiving breaking before the mass mandate was over if you want to make a decision prior to that mean you have to make a decision prior to

088that but i think people are looking to determine once the mass mandate is over what would the board like to do so i guess that's part of the question at hand is we can gather more information before the decision making process and i'd be happy to answer any questions you might have the recommendation i did put out was at least for the high school is to go to in the wording i would call now is that mass will be strongly encouraged and recommended but not mandated for those individuals who are vaccinated and then we would take a look we could put forth i had put after winter break but we could delay that until there's more information available but i thought the high school with athletics and with the i thought that might be a

089place at least to start and then you could use that as a you know a little bit of an example to find out if you want to expand that to other schools you may want to keep the mass mandate for all schools but i thought this was at least a place to start why don't we get some discussion rolling here i i personally would like to hear maybe briefly what the principal at each one of the schools is thinking in terms of this recommendation and how it impacts their particular building so if that would be all right we could just go around the horn here and and hear all four of the principles uh it doesn't have to be a big thing just uh a brief synopsis of where you're where your thinking is at

090on this jeff you want to start can ask a procedural question yes there's an emotion on the floor though no just discussion he said basically it's up to you the community is divided yeah falls into your laps yep all right that was paraphrasing corey thanks jeff can you can you hear me snow let me let me try this trail all right now now can you hear me yes yes better okay perfect um well i think right now our students are are just entering into the vaccination phase so really not really having a whole lot of strong feeling on it in terms of again as jeff said you know we know that um community and staff everyone's pretty divided on it but i would say currently my focus is on you know getting some data back

091and seeing what uh what you know our students are going to what the numbers are in terms of their vaccination rate just like we have over time seeing what that looks like for our high school students and in the meantime we're focused on on following protocols and um you know quarantining contact tracing as as normal and educating kids okay thank you and greg isn't here but brooke is i think brooke yep brooke thank you hi can you give me yes if we are changing what the mass mandate looks like without changing manpower contact tracing books so we would recommend at our level wearing mats as long as we can to make sure that as many students continue to one of the challenges is with not being able to know at first glance who's vaccinated who's

092not taking a look at how that looks and feels to um um [Music] um and paul's available you might want to ask paul for his input as far as co-curriculars mr thank you brooke mr hackley give us give us your your your wisdom on the uh masked mandate options yes um you know i think it's obviously i have concerns has been very successful excellent thanks very much paul ah maybe lauren and melissa lauren would you like to go first oh i can't hear lauren at all not very well um [Music] okay we'll make it work no i i understand that that's that's what you guys do that's how you function [Music] this yes it is you know in your hands and there's guidance from our medical advisor and from early health and it is it

093is in your hands all right thank you thanks very much melissa and and i don't know if we if we aren't going to take the opportunity at some time later on in the meeting but just in case we don't i just wanted to congratulate everyone involved in the vaccination clinic held here over the weekend i heard nothing but positive comments from virtually everyone who went through people went out of their way to complement the organization the compassion and empathy that was shown we got a bunch of a bunch of you know five to 11 year old kids and there's most five-year-old kids don't like needles a whole lot and and the staff was wonderful with them from what i understand so uh please accept my personal thanks uh and appreciation for all the hard work

094that you guys are doing to make uh make this district the special district that it is and i couldn't be more proud of the efforts of the mcfarland school district over this last weekend so thanks very much to everyone who was involved in this um okay moving on why don't we kind of go around the room here i'd like to hear from each of the board members on what their thoughts are at this point in time and if we if we are in position to make a decision of some sort this evening or if we feel like we need to gather more information and talk about how much of the initial survey we should use and how much we shouldn't if that's the case and if we do want indeed to send this additional survey

095out it will necessitate a meeting next monday a special meeting to to try to make a decision so if we go around the room i would appreciate it bruce yeah i'll start um i just kind of jotted down a whole bunch of thoughts as i was going through it um i'm not sure this is going to be appreciated by people but i want you to know i didn't bring it i should have i should have brought my mask that i ran all winter whenever it's 15 degrees or lower and i ran up to 100 miles a week i ran with a mask and so that was just common i did that at syracuse i did it in madison a lot of people think that we're running that all indoors we rarely ran indoors we ran

096most of our stuff outside so i know i was i guess an elite athlete but the truth of the matter is a lot of kids on my team and whatnot who are not only lead athletes who i train with um they get by fine i think the whole key here is it's a balance and we've got to try to find a balance so if i have one thing that i'm really proud of so far being on this board is that we've been able to work together and i'm wearing a shirt that says think team help each other it was my favorite shirt that i used to try to get across that point with my my my athletes and i i have feelings of what i'd like to do and i'll mention them but i think

097in the end i'm going to try as much as i can to try to build a consensus and that we work together because i think that's what's best for our community and i think our community is special i actually was there on saturday morning at that clinic and it was amazing there were nurses there there was one from middleton she she devoted i was there for four or four hours she was there on the morning afternoon on saturday and sunday and i just i was just so amazed and i was so proud of the number of people who brought their children i it just to me it was it was amazing and i know there's people in this community who kind of look at you know dane county and they kind of roll their eyes

098because and this is a very good point and the people have to realize this there are a lot of schools all around the state who are they've been going without without mass and uh i can't say they're doing as well as we are but i want people to realize particularly people who would like to you know just open everything up they roll their eyes when they think about dane county but the truth the matter is we're in the fastest growing region of wisconsin we are in the number one area for business growth in wisconsin there's a reason why a lot of people come to dane county so i feel like sometimes you can't have it both ways you came here because this is a great place to raise your kids and just looking again at

099that clinic that morning these were people who were very serious about making sure that their kids were taken care of and i again for you two guys in particular you know kathy mccluskey she just would look at me with that one eye and she would say this is a special place and i remember as a 25 year old teacher going like okay i guess it scared the heck out of me but the truth the matter is she was absolutely right this is an amazing place um i'm i i think people have to realize that koben's going to be around for a while it's not going anywhere this is what the experts are telling us so the idea that we're going to go to some level where it's never going to be we're not going to

100ever need mass again uh or we can do away with them all together excuse me is is that's probably pretty far off and i i i think we've got to try to find that balance and what's what's going to be good um i think uh that uh protocols it scares me because i mean if the layered approach and that's what the science seems to tell us is the best way if we take away mass all of a sudden you start looking at the connor elvium you start looking at what beast intermediate school and they don't have as much room as you really would like so the kids could space out so you kind of the idea is well if you take away one of the layers then you got to make sure that you have

101the others my fear is that then you start rolling back all the layers and then i get concerned about that um if i had my approach i would like to wait even in high school for a little bit of time after thanksgiving i'd like to see has there been a spike i talked with dr anderson he feels that you probably won't even have that information until probably january so again i'm trying to weigh in my head how do we handle this thing and as i said i'm going to try to work in the consensus with my with all of you but there's a part of me goes it would be nice to know if there has been a spike um not knowing that i guess i would kind of go along with i think it

102should start high school i think uh it's a shame we couldn't hear aaron he was busy tonight but the middle school is the one that i'm i'm not quite sure how you handle that i think that's the one that's difficult i think the obese intermediate school and the conor delvium should probably be handled the same way i think their their whatever it is and there i do tend to agree with what dr anderson suggested is that we wait um i'm not sure january 2nd part of me feels like i would wait a little bit longer maybe the end of the term and see if there's been a spike and then you go that way so sorry i haven't answered anything on and on but i am going to try to teach all or tell all

103of us that i think it's important we try to stick together as much as we can and i think i think one one thing that may help us a bit at least and this is just strictly a coincidence is that last weekend with we had two athletic teams that were playing in state tournament type settings so at least in green bay i know there was probably three four hundred you know spectators that were in there were no spacing it was just everybody was sitting pretty much on top of each other uh all the athletes and staff working staff officials there were no masks i mean that i even in in my wife and i did the packer hall of fame tour and the title town and all of those things i i don't think we

104saw 10 masks all weekend so being that that was last weekend i suspect that i don't know if it could happen you know this week yet or maybe in the next week we could see if there was any sort of i don't know do they call it super spreader or whatever the events are where it's likely that the transmission could happen i would think that we might know if anything out of the ordinary happened up in green bay before too long just a question john yields i just i'm visiting you know as far as that goes within the student population for mcfarland certainly you can track that because if they've been exposed last weekend commonly you know it's usually a five to fourteen day incubation period so if it doesn't happen within that time right

105probably a good chances are i can see it how many cases i'm sorry we do but it's not public comments anymore so it's just a discussion yeah you know this is like law it's not our choice [Laughter] we have to follow the law we would love to chat with you believe me thank you though but if you call me tomorrow i can give you that number okay thanks there's a way yeah and i'll actually mention it yeah i know it's really yeah all right i'm done pretty much christine well yeah um so i'll just i'll just respond because i do have it up i was gonna have it be part of my my my thinking as well um so i keep thinking about um and i feel like the extracurriculars are separate from school so

106i'm just going to speak about school right now because i think they really should be separate motions perhaps if we're going to do those my my thinking is what you know my i feel like our goal as a district and a board should should be a couple of things one is to you know maintain the basic layer of safety like that's the maslow's hierarchy if you're not safe you can't learn so safety is first and keeping kids in school and not being online that's that's my other that would be my goal and i'm speaking for myself for both of those i guess so what what do we do to make sure that we keep kids and teachers in school and we keep them well and how does any changes affect our protocols especially contract tracing

107and quarantining so we've had 296 students in quarantine and 60 positive student cases since september 1st so that actually it's a little bit higher today because we had eight more come in today um so when i think about that i also think about you know like you're giving the example of the green bay well they're not going to pass it along because they're wearing masks so we're not going to have those breakthrough cases right right so you know what i mean so i mean that's the layer of protection that then we have when everyone comes back here and it's important right we know and and people keep saying i i am these aren't opinions and also i'm representing a whole bunch of people this isn't my personal opinion people keep asking us to use the

108science and we know that people are vaccinated have breakthrough cases and we know the people of vaccinated can carry coven and pass it along so vaccinated people without masks can spread it so we are short subs we don't have enough subs we don't have we're having we've had three classrooms moved to virtual that's not great for anybody i feel i know from the data science once again the transmission rate right now is still high and it's starting to go up again we've got holidays coming up and people are being vaccinated i know last year we did not gather as a family and this year we might i'm not sure all of us have boosters now because a number of my family work in health care so maybe that's going to be the case i'm with

109bruce and thinking that a little bit more time is necessary before we make any more changes um my goal once again is just to keep students in school and i know that coven may be around but we're not going to even with the 5 to 11 year olds by the end of this month they're not going to be all vaccinated and we also know that there could be breakthrough places so i feel like it's our job safety first learning the best way possible first so what is the way that we do that those are my thoughts okay arlen well i i believe in the masks and uh and i've been following all the rules i've had lots of conversations with lots of people that have different opinions i i also question the you know or

110the people question the information that's out there how bad it is is there's different people talking about different uh opinions about things and i i've come to a point that i don't have this thing i can't put it nail it write down what's right and what's wrong and i and i i've come down to where i you know i think um i think it's just going to have to come to to be a choice i mean people got to walk their walk i'm responsible for my family i'm responsible for what you know when our kids whatever they did i i you know we gave him my wife and i gave him direction and that's the way we went with it i i understand the elementary and and when we have and the biggest question has

111been lunches and have everybody together and stuff like that you know we're trying we're trying to do our best we can down there i i guess personally i'd like to see that go a little longer with masks especially them but i think on the middle school in high school i think you know i think we should make it optional and and can go and work it through i i uh i scratch my head i i work with people from uh that that don't live in this the county that are there all over the place and talk to everybody that i run into and i i tell you it's just going to have to come down to a personal choice we all take responsibility for our families we take responsibility for a district yes we do

112but as a parent i think we have to start giving people some latitude that they can they can make their own call and we are going to have to go forward and so that's where i am so i'm and that's taken on that's been a hard for me to get there uh but i see some validity in that how people have different opinions on this and it's not just uh saying that you know the government's not not saying this right or where we gotta just follow this i think there's actually i think this is a it's up in the air i don't i don't know if it's i just don't know and so i'm there that's where i told you i'm kind of feeling that with the older kids and the younger ones i think

113i'm still more personally concerned about and i think and i can understand that and because we've all been watching that very tightly but i think it's going to be optional that's where i would be on this okay thank you very much kate so i think it's important to look at what we're trying to achieve here and what our goal is with masking so is covid gonna go away no i mean a year ago i sat and listened to a board meeting talking about the exact same things a year later you know unfortunately we had really high hopes that we wouldn't be in this position and we are and i think that's a reality of the future at least in the short term is that covet's still going to exist and let's say we get rid

114of masks in the high school as soon as the mask mandate ends i mean you're gonna see more covert cases probably but we need to expect that if if that's what we decide to do now the goal of the vaccine isn't we've seen that people who get the vaccine can still get copied i'm not disagreeing with that the goal of the vaccine is to prevent that serious illness yes um i think it's i agree that with the younger kids i think we we probably need to see what the vaccination rates are and you know they're closer together there's been a lot more spread now i think covid protocols are going to change obviously and quarantine guidelines because some of these kids will be fully vaccinated so you're not going to see as many that are

115out because of close contact exposure once they're vaccinated if they're fully vaccinated with the older kids i'm at the point where especially in the high school now i think the middle school is very difficult because you've got two grades of kids who have had access to the vaccine since may since that's the 7th and 8th graders so anyone 12 and older has had access to that vaccine for quite some time but you've also got a grade in that school who's had access to that vaccine for a week and that's the sixth graders so how you determine when the right time is if there's a right time for those kids to not wear masks it's a little more difficult um so i just want to point that out with the high school i'm at the point

116where i feel like we should be recommending masks but i the vaccine has been available for a long time i totally understand what bruce you and christine have said and i agree with you to some extent but i will tell you that even talking about athletics in green bay you know those kids they are together they're together without masks so although we might not see the same spike we'd see if they were all in school without masks on those kids are all together and they're spending time together maskless and and i i think that we just need to understand that you know that that some of those spread some of that spread that we're seeing or that would potentially be seen i mean we should actually already be seeing if you think about it right

117because they're going to athletic events outside of the county or they're going to do things and they don't go to each other's houses and wear a mask you know when they spend time together so i'm at the point where i'm i'm personally okay with a mask recommended option for the high school for the rest i think we need we probably need more data probably need to send out a second survey but as as everyone's obviously aware this is this is a difficult decision but i think one that that we need to make sooner rather than later i am i personally am of the opinion that that we probably need to send that other survey out because i think i think once we see the results of that we know that people are clear on on

118what we were looking for we're not going to have the confusion that we had with that first one i think it's important to gather the the uh together the information from the community uh even outside like you know like we've talked about before 80 of our community has no no real connection to the school district they don't have kids in school currently some maybe never did so i i think we certainly need need to gather community information and and review it so i think i would personally be in favor of not making a decision this evening based on on the surveys that we've got thus far i would prefer i think to get get a survey out that we that we know isn't going to create the confusion that apparently this other one did i'm

119all right with you know once those results are in to sit down and talk about what what they are and if they change in any significant way from what we're seeing now but in terms of in terms of the masking itself i've struggled mightily with this i am finding that i fall on the side of going along with the recommendation to go ahead and make masking strongly recommended as opposed to mandated in the high school i think we need to wait on the middle school the intermediate school and the elementary school until we get more vaccination data and get more of the kids fully vaccinated and see where our cases are at that point now doing the high school on the 27th or the 29th i've i've in my own mind i've i've justified that

120i think we need to wait until a week or two after winter break to consider the other three schools i that's just my personal opinion i'd like to to take whatever time is available to us and and make sure that we're doing the things that as a board we've always said that we're going to do and that's to do what's best for the kids and if if keeping masks on if it can be proven to me that that's gonna that's gonna gonna make a a big difference in the educational outcome that's gonna happen the rest of the year i don't know we'll see but i i i fall on letting the high school go strongly recommended and studying data as it comes becomes available to us on the other three schools can i ask a

121question of the group absolutely what's the so we know that there's going to be negative consequences without me or if we go mass optional recommended however we want to say it what are we lots of negative outcomes for that why not then just do the positive and mask like what's what's the negative outcome of that for a little while longer well but what's your i guess the question i would ask is at what point do you stop there will always be a reason to keep masking even in the public comments which i don't disagree with colds influenza those things you know yeah those were not as high um in the past year and part of it was kids weren't in school but i mean masks do help i don't disagree with that it's just a

122question of when do you stop because well i think because we know kids of you know probably on average three you know two we're probably at 2.4 in the district honestly right so you've got if you're high schoolers not they're possibly coming home and there's those kfk whatever are not masking if they're at home so now you're bringing it to your cave whatevers because they're going to bring it back so i i just i i'm confused with doing it part way i mean that's a confusing thing to me because these are families that you know there there are definitely families with single kids but so what's what's what's the problem with just doing it longer until all the vaccinations done we get through the holidays and so on i'm just it just feels a little

123rushed to me and i don't see the negative i mean what's worse i think is for us to go back and say oh nope you guys have to wear them now um so i just i'm trying to figure out what's the pros and cons of this there's a lot of cons there's a lot of pros to masking i don't know what the con is besides personal choice but the personal choice affects others so it's not like wearing a seat belt where if you're in an accident you're going to get hurt if you get covered you can give it to other people so there's that personal choices it's not really it's a community choice it's a community affected choice that's another discussion for sure i'm just curious kind of the pros and cons devil's advocate i

124think what a lot of people would be saying is that it's been shown throughout the state that we're not having these enormous outbreaks and so if there seem to be getting getting by with it then why aren't our kids doing the same and i think that's what they're saying i'm not sure i totally agree with it because i think in some ways what you're saying makes a lot of sense i just think you know and i said it i think kate said it really well it was just that kobe's going to be around and i i think you could make the argument each year we should have bass again particularly to get into this the winter months and i'm not sure i just don't know if you're going to be able to sell that to

125the public and that's that's almost and you know i'm sorry no and and i and i appreciate public opinion i appreciate public perception but we're accountable we're the ones who have to make the choice and live with it so people can give opinions but we have to live with that those you know whatever choice we make can't be well the community thought we should do that necessarily i think we also have to consider teachers and others who maybe have not had as much voice so one other thing that i thought about tonight is you know people were talking about like the recommendations of the cdc and the recommendations of the phmdc and individually i can't say that i disagree with any of that but i also think their recommendations and so we have to balance

126mandating versus recommending and that's another decision i think we have to make is are we we're still going to be recommending that and i understand that not everyone is going to mask and i think that policing that's going to be very difficult i mean i'm not not even thinking that you're not going to know who's vaccinated and who's not necessarily but but it's also just thinking about recommended versus mandating and i do i hate the word mandate but you know it's something to think about i think perhaps i'm sorry christine if you want to go yeah i just i think i'm just i think i'm going to be kind of like lean towards the conservative side on this um and i think once again the there's not just the consequences to students of course but

127the consequences to um the teachers i'm sorry i kind of lost my train of thought something you would say that that triggered a thought for me um about oh like you know for example subs not you know not being able to have enough teachers this is going to change the the way that that lauren and all the health people do there i mean do we have enough even to do all of the the tracing and so on without significantly changing all those protocols um so so it's not our decision has these ramifications for adding on work to an already stressed burned out staff who are overworked and i appreciate lauren saying we'll make it work and all the teachers will make it work but we know we're where they're at right now and and they're

128tired and exhausted and their immune systems are low and and so on so sorry i forget my no that's a really valid point in and of itself and i i feel bad in a way that dr anderson kind of threw that survey out but i think he felt like you and like myself and i think all of us feel we got to find out how are the teachers doing and i i think in a way in hindsight you say well we should have just probably spent more time and i think each of us could have probably helped a little bit there but i think the point was good and and i am very concerned about that it's interesting what you said kate um and maybe it's with the history teacher me and coming out this

129reminds me of prohibition and it's what what you were saying you know i don't think there could be too many people who would argue that it's really good to drink i don't think there's a whole lot i mean you can sit there and say well maybe one or two drinks you know a week or whatever a couple drinks uh you know every couple days might be quote-unquote beneficial for you but there's not too many really positive things about it what happened with prohibition was it was well intentioned but in the end it got people to not even respect the law in fact we made heroes out of al capone and others like that who were breaking it and in a way that's what kind of concerns me right now we're in a way doing that

130i think everything you said makes total sense but at some point i know we're accountable the truth is if we get too far out of that mainstream that's why it's all a balance to me it's all politics we've got to find as best we can we're threading a needle here and it's so difficult i mean samantha said uh zalinga there in her last statement was you know you're gonna have mandates if i'm going to my doctor my doctor says i recommend you you know you start losing some weight or you change your diet i would probably say you know not what do you know i would probably say you're probably right that doesn't mean i'll do it but i mean i at least try to do it in a sense that is what cdc is

131doing i i just hope if there's one bit of good news you guys mcfarland there's all these schools in this this area that we're doing that clinic we came out with the most that's mcfarland is special i'm telling you it's really awesome and i'm really proud of this community and i just want to try to keep that and for the people who are down on the district we're we're trying to find that that edge that edge and trying to stay on it as best we can and at times we're going to slip off but if we can stay close enough we can get back on it i think we can get through this and i think that's what we have to do and what makes it especially difficult i think is if we if we

132look at these survey results and there wasn't there was a consensus of any kind out there you know even if it was 65 35 but what we're finding is that we're getting pretty close to uh to a half and half in terms of opinions and it would be easy if 80 percent of these respondents said that they prefer that we do it this way or that way but it feels very much the same as it felt a year or so ago when we were debating whether or not to bring kids back into school and how to do it and when to do it it was a 50 50 proposition every time we walked out of a meeting and made a decision all we had to do was open our emails the next day and and

133we'll find out that we pleased about half the people and we displeased about half the people and that's what makes this stuff so hard now i would love to be able to just think of dane county in a vacuum just just not know anything about what the other surrounding counties and the counties throughout the state how they're how they're handling this and i can't help but come back to the overwhelming number of counties who were significantly less cautious to to varying degrees than dane county was there's there's districts very close within 30 miles of madison that never did have a mask mandate and they don't do any contact tracing and they don't do any quarantines and they haven't had significant issues which district is that craig the uh uh evansville district it was about 30

13430 or so miles away very close to bangkok it just they don't happen to be in dan county and uh i all the evidence i have about other counties and how they're doing this in terms of protocols and such is anecdotal it's it's from talking to people within other districts i know ford atkinson had several difficulties early on where they had to switch back and forth a couple two three different times and now that's obviously a worst case scenario that's exactly what we don't want but what makes this so hard is is you know we all sit here and talk about this we talk to all the building leadership and i don't disagree with anything anybody said i agree i agree you know that that's what makes this so difficult and you know you're told

135follow the science well okay you know i'm good with that i'm not smart enough to you know know this stuff on my own so i'll i'll follow the science but it seems to me that that cdc's sending a mixed message when they say they're going to go to go away from a mandate and make it mascoptional but they're going to strongly recommend that all k-12 schools remain masked it they're it's a mixed message and as far as i'm concerned and i think it's kind of a cover year behind kind of message as well because they're they're they've just been getting nothing but beat up you know for two years now i mean one thing you can do with it is and you're not the only board that's struggling with this tonight i mean two boards

136i mean some boards have already made their decisions so i mean waunakee and belleville as some of them they already have made their decisions to go mass strongly encouraged and recommended but not mandated right for what grades level dr anderson oh middleton cross plains has there's tonight they have three options in front of their board which they'll take i don't know but basically all their options went to strongly encouraged or strongly recommended for all grade levels starting second semester so that's when the semester mid-january mid-january about the third week of january so i mean they had other emotions or won the high school or in various schools um sun praying verona probably voting i mean it's not madison has already come out that they think they'll keep mass on for the remainder of the year

137yeah i mean there isn't going to be a one size fits all for any of us we're all going to be different menu growth is already winona grove the winona grove did what i'm glad you're not doing because i want i don't want it because the board abdicated theirs and said the superintendent gets to decide oh wait oh that's a great [Music] well i mean another option for you because i do think you know either one is like put another survey you can find what the parents would say you know because like i said with the staff survey but that you know that's kind of what i my guess is i think it would come out that way with fairness if you put it out 50 50. pretty close yes i think that's what's going

138to come out yeah i do think that the high school has had a long opportunity to be vaccinated i think that could be a trial for you in other words i mean is anything as safe as having all the vaccine i'm asking the answer is no i mean if you're strictly what is the very safest course that you can take for every student then that would have to be i think the very safest course get already vaccinated keep your keep everybody masked inside the buildings i mean that probably by far can be your you know your save the strategy i'm not going to argue that one bit i do think it's going to come down eventually everybody made a choice make a choice whether or not you want to be vaccinated or whether or not

139you know you chose for whatever reason you had not to be vaccinated and that there could be a multitude of reasons for that but eventually you make a choice for that so i mean one of so i mean a recommendation would be just a little different than the one that i put out you can at least consider would be i think that to go for the mass strongly encouraged and recommended for high school once the mass mandate is over to postpone any decisions on your other buildings until the second beginning of the second semester which would be the third week of january by that time the holiday seasons have passed by that time you have had given plenty of opportunity for people to get the vaccines and to have them fully vaccinated yellow if we

140come super sweaters or whatever from the holidays we'll have that time and you'll be able to see from the high school whether or not there was a significant impact or not before you made it with the other schools lauren um i don't recall and excuse me for this but did we see any significant increase or spike in the colby cases last year post thanksgiving and post winter break i i don't recall if we had any significant changes her body language looked positive but it wasn't a delta it wasn't the delta fight right and national and nationally it didn't happen so we were pretty much entrenched with what with the okay yeah all right um are we you know obviously we could sit and discuss well i'll support what he said i i'd go along with

141that and i don't see any point in waiting a week i think it i don't think there's a lot going to change we've got the information that we need i have a couple questions i'm sorry yeah i'm not sure what that is so when we say like let's say we were to make a motion and we say it's a mask highly recommended policy for individuals who have been vaccinated how are you enforcing that is it uh it's an on your honor thing yes if somebody gets positive we can go into the register and check to see to see who is vaccine who's not otherwise we can't well we could ask but we already have access we can already go and input every individual that's been vaccinated there's already record on that we can access all

142the records but we would have to go on the honor system in our school so we are not going to go from i mean we're not going to have teachers go and check and ask you know no whichever accident they expect so that's expected vaccinated people are not going to more mass answers yes yeah i mean the answer is yes i think to try to ask people to police you know if you see somebody you're not going to know you have to now one of the things that was brought is that i think there's a fair percentage of our students that are vaccinated but there's a large percentage of their not there will be a percentage of vaccine students that decide to wear mass there'll be a percentage of unvaccinated students who choose not to

143wear a mask so we're not going to know if it came down to someone developed the case and through contact tracing we can know but just going through each classroom and determining i would not expect my staff to you know to try to determine who's yeah no they're not no i don't know can i make a point i want to just make very clear i i don't want i i think it's got to be in this that if teachers feel they should be wearing a mess they should be wearing a mask because i can see there'll be parents who would say you know my son my daughter really can't hear what they're saying so i i'm gonna request that that they don't i don't think that should be allowed i think if a teacher feels

144this is something i want to wear then they should be i'll do that and i i i just perceive that so you're saying that teachers will teachers want to wear a mask if anybody emotionally never deteriorates okay well yeah my fear is just simply the fact that you know there's going to be a group of people who are happy they've gotten this far and now they're going to want to go to the next step it's like a two-year-old no it's going to be difficult yeah so this is just students what we haven't even talked about no staff will it will it applied for you know the three elementary schools everything would wait until you know beginning a second semester to make determination yeah and we would never forbid a teacher from wearing a mask regardless

145okay you know that the the there's many asian countries in fact that are massive societies we're encouraging and strongly recommending that you do wherever we're just saying that if you're fully vaccinated that it's not abandoned you wear it just as a side note um i talked to kristen strong a couple months ago when school started just about how this process was working you know as because we had sent out a survey asking people to say like yes my child's vaccinated or no my child's not but a lot of people didn't respond to that survey which is fine and so i'd asked how it was going um with like the quarantine the contact tracing and she said she was actually very surprised at the time with how many people were vaccinated that they were unaware of

146were vaccinated until they were close contact and then the parents would say oh yes they're vaccinated you know here's proof of vaccination so i think in the younger schools i know we were kind of just talking about the high school but it's going to be a process there too right so as as kids are close contacts whether they're masked or unmasked it's going to be a process of kind of determining oh wait you are vaccinated if they weren't vaccinated through our school if they weren't if it wasn't updated in the immunization registry which is sometimes what happens it doesn't get updated in that public record that the school nurse has access to so just on a side note i think as we're talking about work for the staff and things it's i mean we have

147to be realistic that in these schools where the vaccinations are just starting it's going to be a process because now the contact racing is going to be different once these kids are fully vaccinated and i think really if you ask the elementary principles they would you know speak for them but they would probably say leave the mask mandate but get rid of the contact tracing you know because that way that's what takes up all of their time you know and if people are vaccinated if they wear masks it's a contact tracing and then when you're quarantined as if you're if you show symptoms of your pestis or symptoms i know that it's the contact tracing it takes all of their time it makes it difficult isn't that one of the blocks that builds you know

148our protective the layer we can't remove we can't remove contact tracing so you can you don't you're i mean yeah you can but i mean is that is that a road you want to go down in terms of controlling you know outbreaks and things like that i don't know i know i'm just saying that if you talk with them since i talk with them all the time that if you left the mass mandates the vaccines you know then they would say that if we only really had to deal with the ones that tested positive or showed symptoms their life would be much easier and more kids would be in school because i think the kids that have to leave as a close contact and nothing ever comes of it yeah they're the ones that you

149know oh without a doubt yeah only if they're not vaccinated though so my point is that soon that'll change yeah right once they're fully vaccinated then they won't have to leave school anymore right but if we move this is from lauren thank you for i'm sharing this if we moved to masking as being recommended we would no longer be able to use the exception right because it's right so students who are within six feet instead of three which is our issue with space right now they're considered close contacts and would be required to quarantine if they're not vaccinated right so there would be an increase identified as close contacts because of the distance issue and no mask right that's why i said they would rather at least at this point keep going with the vaccination

150and then only have to if you only tested positive or you showed symptoms but that's this whole discussion for yeah okay down the road well who who here is ready to make a decision tonight and who feels like they need additional information or data from this alternative survey that we're thinking about sending out go ahead bruce i'm just going to go with the consensus if i can because i don't want i don't want to force someone to be voting they feel better they wait a week i want i think we got to stick together i think it's really important nobody wants to make a decision well no it's hard but unfortunately i don't want to sit there and leave someone dangling out there because i think that's the worst thing we can do well i

151having been the person dangling out there a lot [Laughter] i'm it's okay i mean we have to vote for in a way that reflects what we're hearing and so and the in the comments and the calls that is our responsibility that's our job it's not to vote in a pack so i you know when i vote i represent a number of people like not my maybe myself if i feel that way but not necessarily so i think that that's important that we're i was told always built vote from ireland my conscience or my and and not go away from that so yeah um so i just want to say that that don't consensus is nice but it's not always possible no um i'm a little concerned on the date so i guess a little bit

152more clarity on when this would happen would help me a lot and i probably i mean i think that i think i agree with all we do have a lot of consensus on a number of things but for me that when it happens it's critical okay are you talking about so are we are we talking about just the high school right now where are we talking about all the schools because like when i look at his meeting minutes and the motion that he suggested it was just on the high school or are we are we discussing are we discussing making a motion on all of these goals i i thought you said that the other schools we could wait until mid-january and then i'm good with that also yeah i just want to be clear

153on what we're yeah when i originally wrote it it did but what i'm telling you tonight is that i think one thing to give more time for some is i think high schools had plenty of time if you if you want to get vaccinated you've had plenty of time to be vaccinated for all kids 9 through 12 so that now the mass mandate is over if you're going to let a group go to mass strongly encouraged and recommended that would be a group you could start with the rest of them not all of them have had the opportunity to be fully vaccinated then i think if you waited until mid january beginning of second semester then everybody in those schools would have the opportunity to have been vaccinated you will have then got through the

154two holiday periods and then you can make a decision from what you've seen in the high school on what on what you would like to do with those schools and we can decide that at that time they don't have to be decided no okay so if you're asking my opinion on that craig yeah i can support that but i'm going to say again in 1954 when brown versus board of education the supreme court chief justice wanted to have that a unanimous case and he was thinking if i leave that room eight to one you're going to tell people in this society there's all reasons why we don't have to support integration so as much as i i represent everyone in districts i'm representing i want to do what's best for this district and so that's

155that's why i feel the way i do i'm ready to support that but i certainly don't want to make my colleagues feel like oh gosh i got to vote for something i don't feel comfortable with well as long as we feel good honestly you don't control it yeah i think so that's good and you don't control our feelings we if if we vote on our conscience we we live with that so i appreciate your um sensitivity to that but it's it's yeah we might not get to a consensus and that's okay should um i'm just trying to think out of how to make this motion so that maybe in addition to what's there we could put uh indian mountain middle school visa intermediate and conrad alvium will remain masked until at the beginning of the

156second semester well remember you're going to look at it every month you can it stays what right now it stays mass you have mass yes in what your original the only change would be to the high school you can make a motion that's just for the high school and then at the appropriate time the rest will remain unchanged that's correct at the appropriate time okay then you can bring up the other schools i'm suggesting that an appropriate time might be then at the beginning of second semester what is the date on that january 24th 2022. 24th you say yeah january 24th 2022 is the first day of second semester thank you so whatever the board meet is closest that's january 17th is the closest board meeting to that and that would give us we'd be

157able to kind of see how the high school did we'd be able to see what happened after the holidays so that that would be the closest meeting to second semester okay well i'm going to go ahead i will move to go to a mass optional policy mass strongly encouraged strongly encouraged and recommended policy at mcfarland high school on monday november 29th 2021 so that the high school staff and students who have been vaccinated can determine whether or not they would like to wear a mask unvaccinated individuals would still be required to wear a mask while inside the buildings is that how you want to say it still be required or strongly encouraged well they are required it's just that we are not going to okay okay okay that's fine i'll second that okay further discussion

158okay hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye opposed wait and vote i didn't vote hold on that's all right you move really quickly you did greg thank you i was gonna even discuss the date for a minute and then you know all right um we can back up i i didn't go too fast you go ahead christine no i'm just doing the date in my head and the math in my head um once again my goal is to keep everyone in school every once well um and what's throwing me off our gatherings holiday gatherings honestly um i would probably be more comfortable with early january but early january for the high school like the first day we get back the second then you're gonna have a whole holiday break

159in there like winter break but again you would know what happened with thanksgiving that was my original thought about waiting a little bit too but i can go with either one of these so so we're in the middle of a vote yeah at this point and we're discussing no oh oh right yeah right yeah so we're we're at i still well you could do a roll call vote so that there's no well we all know who did it clear okay so you're prepared to vote now i am all those opposed please signify by saying that name ocean carries 4-1 you tricked me no i didn't i was very clear that i'm concerned about the date i would prefer that we get through the holidays and i've made that clear but i i also respect when

160a vote is made and the board makes a decision that is what we live with and so that has served us well in the past and i think it will continue to serve us well moving forward so moving on next is job description action on second reading and adoption of policy 12 30. responsibilities of the district administrative so that would be the job description right we talked about if this now reads the way you want it and you prove it then i'll put it on if you think it needs to change then i need to make a change what are we thinking are we discussing now yeah yeah um so first of all i know that i read all the survey results thank you so much for doing this this was a ton of work

161and i realized that it was really great to hear yeah um so i'd like to bring up um the responsibilities in that you know there are a number of different areas that the person the superintendent will be doing but there's none that is specifically focused on diversity equity and inclusion yet it is one that was mentioned by the community a lot and staff as well and the reason why i think it's important for it to be in there is that one i don't think it's fair to i mean if we're going to have this person we've already talked about it being a pillar and we've talked about the potential of adding a budget item to have a dei coordinator or something like that if this person is supervising that work along with the work of

162others like you know director of teaching and learning and and other roles like that i feel like it's only fair to be very clear about that as a job responsibility and it's not in here and i also think that it's something that we will be evaluating them against so i'm just wondering if we could add that well and and i think just based on on my feel for the staff in the community reaction to the survey is that i think it's important because all the deaf staff and community are concerned about the equity initiative i think it would be a disservice to the information that we've that we've gleaned from these surveys to not include the equity piece in a in a more i don't know singular way to make it separate kind of from

163the rest of it yet have it in the job description right because there's it's not in there at all i know i i guess i i couldn't agree with what you're saying more but i think it is there under operations letter h ensures the policies and procedures are established for students rights responsibilities and discipline i think we could add something to that but i think in a way that speaks to it pretty strongly i don't know i mean and this is where i think in some ways your expertise is is really important christine well i think yeah because i mean it's broader than students because the district is a working environment for staff sure and a learning environment for students so there's nothing about for example i'd done a couple of bullets which once again

164i was not wed to and all of you could have ripped them apart but the ideas that i felt like were important was hiring a staff that a representative we hear this repeatedly we hear from staff um providing a district that's free from climate that's safe for learning and working ongoing professional development um making sure the curriculum we we actually put we actually passed that in our resolution last year but there's nothing in the job description that says they have to do it well just i mean being a person who's had to abide by all of these things for a number of my years there actually are when you look the purpose of the job the first first of all the administration of the schools in all aspects should be delegated district administrator means the

165individuals in charge of everything that goes on in the school irregardless of what it is the individual is the person in charge it's where the buck stops and then i then that person answers to you so you know it sounds like other duties as a sign kind of it is i mean the super the superintendent district administrators is in charge of all and that's the purpose of the job if you go down two more the district administrator is responsible for executing all policies decisions and orders i mean there are enough things that irregardless i mean i'm not saying you can't put in something specific to equity but i mean anyone who takes the job as a superintendent is going to realize that you're going to pass even when you pass your strategic plan that's the

166policy that's what they're going to do when the equity pillar is part of it that person knows that there's their responsibility so but it's implied and i think if we want people to apply and to make sure that it's something that they are skilled at and are willing to do i think we need to be clear about it i don't think implying is good enough anymore for us with our data we have enough evidence to show that we need to do things differently and i think it's unclear and i would just once again i don't think it's fair to anybody applying or hired when we say oh yeah by the way there's this whole other area that you really need to work on everything else that the the the survey uncovered are things that you

167can clearly see in here but not that piece so i just it's just to me kind of a gaping hole then what i would suggest if we want to put something in equity and so we don't delay it for you know the next meeting that you pass the job description with the inclusion of an equity section that basically i will write in some way and i will send it out and massage it and then when it says yep that they look like you hit it then i'll put that one in um i don't know how i'll write that yet but i will when i start coming back tomorrow right and i think just making it consistent with the other ones the format will be the same yeah i have no problem with that i have

168a problem only if we start boxed it in too much i mean i i have your proposals written down and then number five seek to hire staff that are representative of our students community state country and world i in all my years we did everything we could i don't think it's because we were discriminating against people in fact we still tend to lose people of color and i've asked myself is that because of us or is it because of in some ways the nature of if i was a a a a teacher of color and i would ask myself where could i do the most good because i think that's what teachers are doing i would ask myself would it be in mcfarland or would it be in madison and i and and i don't

169think it's it's something that that we we need to be kind of being ourselves i think we all would like to do that now i think there have been things that have been said and statements i think you could work that rather than getting it i just don't want to get too boxed in we got to make clear that we are interested in a diverse curriculum or interested in diverse staff you know and it's this school has changed so dramatically i've seen in the seven years since i've retired it's something we've got to work on this has got to be part of it but i don't want to get us boxed in too much i kind of like the constitution i kind of like the the you know the elastic clause let it kind of

170stretch and whatever i know you're thinking that word implied and i well i would write this section to be general enough so that people knew that equity was a focus of the district yes but not so stringent that it you know that it would box you in like i said i don't know what that will look like yet but i will try to make it so it looks similar to these in you know laying out the expectation but not saying you know not being so detail-oriented then yeah well i'm happy to make a motion to approve um to go with this particular um i'm sorry i make a motion to adopt policy 1230 responsibilities of the district administrator with the inclusion of an equity equity centered area that's written consistent with the rest of the

171job so it's not too boxed in that that people are aware of it that's my motion one second any other discussion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye opposed motion passes unanimously and i'll send that out as i when i do have it constructed i will send it out to intel and i won't include it in this until it has consensus okay thank you all right moving on action on recommended weava destination career academy and insight wisconsin wisconsin statute 118.408 g student transfer to resident districts right this is an easy one this is if they don't basically come to school they're not doing it if we send them back yep yeah this is kind of an annual or even biannual thing and i do have a recommended motion at

172the end of mcfarland minutes i move to recommend the presented students return to their home districts from weva dca iswi as allowed under the wisconsin statute 118.408 g a second any other discussion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously 5-0 i would uh accept in a motion for adjournment a second all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed motion passes 5-0 great job tonight everyone thank you everyone thank you very much you