Board of Education Monthly Meeting 9/20/2021

001but it's still people still get burned out sure you know over time sure yeah sure but ultimately we're doing pretty well [Music] oh nice to meet you i haven't met you guys okay [Music] it's quiet i know absolutely um first and foremost good evening everyone and welcome i called to order the monday september 20th meaning of the river falls board of education thank you for coming and being with us so late in the evening at this point do we have any and i will also say that this meeting has been properly notified at this point do we have any visitors or delegations who would like to address the board this evening if if anybody in the community would like to address the board this is the opportunity so if you are going to speak to

002the board please tell us your name and limit your your comments to just a few minutes please no brian could you check the sound oh i think that sounds good all right can you hear me yes super thank you todd and thanks for uh hearing hearing this my name is mike thompson my children are grown in through the district and i was on i was in your seat for three years and tonight i want to talk about a narrative that has made its way to the board even before i left and that promotes the idea that we should not talk about individual implicit biases and in particular race in in our education system i'm here to represent and support a different narrative one that respects the rights and humanity and integrity of all individuals one

003that respectfully acknowledges and talks about an accurate accounting of our individual and collective histories and recognizes the impact of those histories on how we relate to one another and how we function as a society let me put this into context with the with three questions that i'd ask you to ponder i don't expect you to answer me have you ever been followed by an employee in a target store for no apparent reason have you ever been verbally abused and told to go back to your own country in a grocery store have you ever been shoved and spit on at your workplace you may think i'm citing situations that are extreme and unusual and maybe don't happen very often unfortunately i'm not all of these things are happening right here right now two of these situations

004happened to two black men in my family one happened to a close friend who is a pers a person of color right here in river falls now we all know that character education is important certainly here and broadly in education across the country and i ask you to consider what kind of character education system would foster a student to grow up be an adult who thinks these kinds of actions are okay the answer is one that doesn't actually address this issue or for fear of someone feeling uncomfortable dilutes it to the point that it doesn't really address it imagine trying to teach math without actually discussing the principles of math because you're afraid of how some students might feel if they don't get it i know we don't do that i'm not insinuating we do

005that in our schools or our district i know our teachers know that for many people including me by the way learning can be hard but it's worth the effort my hope is that our education system produces people with the courage the knowledge and the integrity to stand up and call out wrongdoing and be change agents to correct it and prevent it from being propagated lastly i think there's a very basic practical driver here and that is one that is one's ability to get a job and be successful in the workplace we are very proud and we heard about it earlier in the in the meeting earlier to talk about raising and educating students to be global citizens let me tell you what that the practical meaning of that to me in my career i've hired

006many many people probably over a hundred people across the world in the us in europe in asia and south america it's my experience that there is no shortage of very smart people all over the place but what tipped the scale in every hiring decision that i was involved with were two key attributes uh one is self-awareness and the num the second one is the ability to have and leverage empathy those are attributes that are not developed in a vacuum so i encourage you not to fall victim to the narrative that says we shouldn't be talking about race in school and support the integrity of all individuals by intentionally acknowledging and supporting education that includes learning about and discussing an accurate accounting of our individual and collective histories and discussing how the impact of those histories

007has influenced how we relate to one another and how we operate in society that's how we graduate global citizens with high integrity who will be the change agents who will continue to build on what makes our city our state our country and our world a better place for everybody thanks hi my name is rebecca ferguson and i have two excuse me two grandchildren at greenwood we moved here about seven years ago their parents moved here my son and his wife moved there it moved here eight years ago precisely because of the educational system in river falls so thank you thank you for having built it and continuing to keep it going we've been very pleased and proud of the school system over these last few years even the last year or two that's been hard

008for everybody you made decisions that's what you need to do just put on our big girl pants the one reservation that we had when we moved here both my son and my husband and i because we lived in milwaukee was the lack of different kinds of diversity in the city in the city of river falls and our concern was how are how's the school system going to educate our students to move into to live into to be successful in the world that's happening i mean it's happening right now and it's going to continue to happen that way in the united states one of the things that i think maybe people that know me might be surprised but i love the ideas that our founding fathers and mothers brought up i get really goose bumps with

009all of us are created equal and and the constitution says we're about justice and we're about the general welfare that everyone we're going to take care of everyone and watch out for everyone and i still believe though somebody called it it's it was a huge leap of the imagination for the founders to come up with that idea those ideas and it was revolutionary and that's why we had the war that we did because it was revolutionary and they haven't always succeeded maybe they failed as often as they succeeded character education at greenwood teaches kids that two things can be true you're a good person and you did a bad thing and i think that teaching american history american literature psychology civics social studies with both of those realities is crucial for our kids to be

010able to grow up in what is a fairly monocultural town not totally but mostly but they'll be able to move out into the world if they've got that kind of an educational background and i know that the teachers can do this i don't think it's going to be easy and i i may be able to teach adults but i don't know how to teach a five-year-old i don't know how to teach an eight-year-old i learned that last year when we've had some yeah okay it's not the same stuff at all but i i know that this school system can do that and i trust and hope that you will choose to do that to teach our students the complexities of the united states including the glories of the preamble to the constitution and the declaration

011of independence i know it's corny but it's true and real and so i really appreciate the character that you all have shown thank you hi my name is alyssa miller i am a parent to three children at greenwood and i'm also a citizen member of the eid committee here for the district and i just wanted to come and talk a little bit about my own experience working through learning more about race racism bias personal bias was done through my workplace and about 10 years ago we started doing work on unintentional and intentional bias and privilege and i grew up in a small town in northwest iowa that doesn't look that much different from river falls and it was something that we didn't really talk about i was um i'm a child of the 80s and

01290s and so colorblindness was something that we really strived for we don't see color and so i didn't really have the tools as a 30-something year old to talk about this with my colleagues who are from every walk of life and different countries um different nationalities and um i didn't i felt really illiquid and the journey over the last 10 years has been really uncomfortable it's been really difficult there's been a lot of tears but it's been one of the most rewarding things that i have ever experienced and so the good part about that for both my husband and i is that we have some tools to talk to our kids about this but we're still learning as parents how to talk about race and racism and privilege with our children and they're they're so

013far ahead of where i was at their age they're six and eight um but it still is that they are white they are from a middle class family who has the means to provide them with what they need and how to talk to them about that can sometimes just be really really uncomfortable but i think it's important and so i would really encourage the school district to make sure that we provide those tools to kids now so that when they're 30 they're not either in their mid-30s with three children they're not so uncomfortable with that conversation and how to talk about it in a way that doesn't make them feel defensive that we are talking about history in a perspective from the fact that america wasn't always perfect the united states wasn't always perfect we

014didn't always do the right thing but we're learning and we're trying to do better having that context in a global way i think is really important for kids to understand it doesn't mean like rebecca said good people can do bad things and so it's really important for kids to understand that and so for me i would just really um implore you to make sure that we do really focus on the eid work that the committee is doing they're doing really great work i've been really excited to join them and i hope we can continue that in the district and make sure that our kids have the language have the tools have the skills to go out in the world and interact with people who don't look like them who didn't grow up the way that

015they did i think that's really important so thank you hello um my name is mike mitro and i am a parent of three children in the district i've got two with the montessori and one at meyer middle and we moved here six years ago because of the experience that our oldest had at the montessori and we wanted to make sure that the two younger ones had an opportunity to have the same experience and we fell in love like we moved here we lived in hudson for a year and drove back and forth and then when it was time for our middle guy to get in we moved here because they didn't have an open enrollment policy at the time and so there was an energetic difference in the air here that you didn't experience we

016lived in hudson for 10 years and we didn't experience that that same kind of energy that there is here and i think you can count that as part of the influence of the university and the diversity that's brought to this community through its faculty and its students and the experiences that they bring to the community when they are here and i was pleasantly surprised i didn't really actually know what to expect um and so i'm continually surprised and pleased with the choice that we made to this day that said the experiences that i've had as a person of color living in a predominantly white community have not always been amazing um and interestingly enough the reactions that i get when i share those experiences with other folks is usually surprise and disappointment and it's the

017first one i think that is the one that troubles me the most the surprise and for lack of a better word i find that surprising it speaks to the idea that if you don't see and experience something yourself then it must not be happening or it's not happening i'm somewhat accustomed to some of the examples that mike thompson spoke about earlier the following view at a grocery store the purse clutching when you walk down the aisle or the person the click of the door lock as you walk past somebody in their car and the assumption even of like lower intelligence based on an informal first encounter those are those are some of those unconscious reactionary responses that are bolstered by a system that has placed a higher premium on a lighter fair skinned individual it's

018even to the point where you know i've had people swerve at me while i'm running in their cars it's got another point now where my wife makes me share my location with her on my phone so in case i don't come home and that sounds extreme but i mean stranger things have happened um funniest story i shared it with her for an hour once and i got home and she's like you idiot like after an hour it turns off so you got to do it until you turn it off so i become accustomed to what i use the term bracing when i leave my home and as a person of color you develop a situational awareness at a young age to be aware of your where you are in the circumstances that you're walking into

019and you take the measure of the room when you walk into a room um and while i can only speak from my own experiences i would also like to remind folks that when we talk about diversity and equity issues um there are about more than race it relates to gender ability sexual orientation socioeconomic circumstances gender identity are you know just a few and so this issue while we seem to be really focused on race right now impacts us all and lastly just the idea um of the surprise and the the cons the possibility that those things don't happen here is naive at best and willful ignorance at worst to be unwilling to look at the root cause of systemic inequities through a historical context and have honest conversations is to negate the very existence of

020where we are today one of the many arguments that i've heard is that we live in a post-racial society because of the civil rights movement or the election of barack obama but i'd be really loved for someone to tell that the person who drove past our house last summer like five times a day with the confederate flag flapping off the back of their truck um and while you can't legislate morality you can paint a more accurate picture of history and telling the truth is actually one of the most patriotic things we can do if the truth makes you uncomfortable then we must do our best to learn from our past and as parents and educators we have a responsibility to prepare our children for the world they will enter when they leave here and if

021you send them out into the world with gaps in their knowledge we're doing them a great disservice so to kind of piggyback on what the other speaker said i think it's incumbent upon the board and the community and parents and educators to ensure that we send out children out into the world with an accurate honest truthful representation of what the world is actually consists of and hopefully that'll help move us forward in this dialogue and have them be contributing members to society in a meaningful way thank you if we have others who would like to address the board please keep your comments to two minutes anyone my name is lisa fagerwick i didn't have any intention of speaking here tonight um this was my agenda but i don't think there's really any point in addressing

022that several of us have sent emails and things and it doesn't it seems like you're very fixed on science but only the science that gives you this data and we've tried sending you other bits of data that you're not interested so i really had no intention of speaking tonight but i do want to at this point i i can't not say something about what is real truth so i grew up in the 70s 60s 70s i'm not going to go too far into that um i grew up my father was a card-carrying member of the naacp as a young man in the air force he was reprimanded by his commander for drinking out of the black fountain the black water fountain i grew up i can remember being in tears in third grade learning about

023the trail of tears and chief joseph and i remember as a young child reading about harriet tubman and just being so that was just a thriller to me and i would get so excited reading those books and we used to play the initial game at home at dinner time and mine was always ht and of course my family knew right away who it was but um these are things that were just so important to me um i grew up my very best friend in high school whose maid of honor my wedding is black and so when a lot of things happened a couple of years ago and i was getting a lot of um negativity about privilege and that kind of stuff um i called her and i said sheila i said did i miss

024something was all of this stuff happening to you in high school and i just didn't see it am i really that blind did i really not know what was going on with you and she said honestly lisa no i never experienced any of that she was a cheerleader she was very she's more popular than i was i wasn't popular at all um she she said no i never experienced that i was always treated well you know i was always just like everybody else and so being told now that my color blindness is a bad thing i'm sorry but no everyone to me was we were all in it together and if you are going to start teaching our children to see each other differently that is so wrong teach them to love teach them the

025truth yes what happened during slavery was it just brings tears to my eyes and it it's it was so wrong what we did to to our the native americans was so wrong teach the truth yes but for god sake don't start teaching more division that's what you're talking about doing and it's so wrong our children need to grow up and just love each other don't teach another generation to see each other differently and to see each other for what you have and what they have no we don't have a race i'm going to get in trouble for this but i'm going to say it we do not have a race problem in this country the problem that we have is a culture problem there are cultures in this in in our society in our communities

026all over the place that are emulating drugs and violence and gang rape and their music their clothes their everything about them that's what they're about it doesn't matter to me what color you are but if that's what you emulate and if that's what you are supporting and buying that music and and that's what you're all about you are the problem that culture is the problem when my son who drives an ambulance has to stop with someone in the bus to ask people to get out of the damn freeway so that he can do his job there's a problem with that and if you are not teaching that that is wrong shame on you you teach good and you teach bad you tell our students what's good behavior and what's bad behavior [Applause] hi my name

027is pam sauder i'm a citizen and like on the scale right here i had no intention to um come up here so please excuse me if i'm not very articulate um you know i'm listening to can you step up to the microphone a little closer it's hard to hear you yes i'm i'm listening to this conversation and i'm sitting back there and i'm getting a little bit upset too because as you can tell i don't i don't make a big deal that i'm a different color and as the gal said before i grew up in southern california where it's very multicultural my dad was very dark skinned he's indian he's not he was not black but a lot of people thought he was black my mom was full japanese and i did not experience a

028lot of these things myself and i'm thinking how did i make it 60 years you know without it and i agree with her i think that there is a lot being said about race when we should be bringing students together so and to the gentleman i the gentleman that spoke um in the audience from the audience i feel really bad that that is happening to you but i will tell you i've locked a door i've held my purse closer when i was in a car or walking by myself and there was a male and it had nothing to do with the color of their skin so please be aware it's not necessarily always about race sometimes it's just about that you're a female okay but anyhow what i'm asking you guys to do as a

029board is please just be balanced i've done a lot of reading i'm an educator by um you know by i was going to say by trade but um i was a teacher for many years and i do a lot of reading um about a lot of different things and a lot of if you have not read a lot of the as a board member a lot of the books that are being put out right now even in teacher training um x-kin or well's last name's candy ibrahimovic's kitty um i can't say her name properly i'm sorry um iwo jima oola a lot of them they are they are promoting a lot a lot of division and they are being used in school districts across wisconsin so i would encourage you if you're a board member

030or if you are in the community and you're concerned read the books and see what they're saying for yourself because um we all need to be educated um so i'm just asking you to be balanced be fair and and um you know be open to both both sides because not everybody's story is some of the stories that are being promoted and we don't need to paint with a broad paintbrush everybody's um story so i just ask you to you know be fair about things and listen to both sides please don't see it as a political thing see it please ask something that we are all as this lady said so passionately please just um help our kids be able to get along with each other help them to get a good education that's what a

031school board is about thank you [Applause] thank you for the time tonight my name is matt handrahan i have a son at westside elementary this is my first school board meeting i've been to i'm just going to comment super quick really just want to thank the school district because i do think they do a great job with the character building that they do and i think that is quickly thrown under the bus as not enough and i think that is the most important thing to focus on with my son is how you treat people that's how i was raised and i've never had a problem with who i interact with throughout my life and i've known how to handle it because i've learned how to treat people so thank you to the school district for

032continuing character-based education that's where i believe the solution lies and unfortunately bad things happen and i can't get into the weeds on all of that but what i can say is when things do happen i don't think we need to try to redo all of our school systems i don't think we need to try to fix issues that may be a bigger problem in other districts or states but i'm proud of this district and i think everyone that i've heard from and have heard from in the past are still proud of that character-based education so i feel like we're mostly on the same page with where our focus should be unfortunately other areas of the country take focus and then we think we need to make some sort of correction i'm proud of the direction

033you guys have taken up to this point and i hope it remains character based my second and final thought i'll wrap up in the final minute i don't this is my first meeting so i don't know if we get to comment on masks but i just want to make sure a few points are being considered and the matrix that is provided gives us just a number and while i don't agree with masks at this point in time if we're going to go about continuing the matrix weekly i think we need more transparency on the severity of cases just telling me there was 17 in the district doesn't tell me that's a huge issue people are unfortunately infected with all sorts of things so i want to know of those 17 how many were in the

034icu how many died how many had severe reactions and how many were just they stayed at home and rested for two days and they're back on their feet again we need more information about the 17 people if we're just going to throw the number out i personally think it goes a little too far with medical history and that sort of thing and trying to get to know everyone's info but telling me 17 people and we need to keep wearing a mask because there's 30 000 of us in the district seems confusing um to me and i get the number doubled from two weeks ago when it was nine but it just doesn't feel like we're a hot spot and also again if we're going to do the matrix severity i want to know those 17

035people were severely ill and this is going to infect our households and put us in the icu because this is the plague i want to know that information if we're healing quickly and it's normal we need to report that that's going to help me understand those numbers better because it's just 17 people got sick and they're back in school in a couple days that's how i read it um and i do want to know the goal is covet like no covet is that the goal i feel like if we are scientific then we need a percentage what are we going after i think there's too many variables and that it says it in the board meeting it says there's all these variables for the matrix why isn't there just one number it should be a

036percentage of when we hit this percent masks go on when we're below this percent masks come off if there's all these variables then i feel like it's just going off of feelings and thoughts and it's not scientific anymore so i want to know specific goals are we trying to just wait till covet is gone because 17 cases i don't know how much closer to no infection you can get so i really feel like on the matrix you need to lay out what is the goal zero spread or what's the percentage give us a number um so at least i can understand why you want to mask my son just because there is covert i don't think is a reason to put a mask on um what's the severity what's happening to the people that you're

037reporting on and what is your goal is it to wait for zero because that's never going to happen um unfortunately influenza a b pneumonia have been way more fatal for children and my son's gone through that two weeks in children's hospital with pneumonia and influenza a so that's scary and no one cared when it was normal flu season and that's fine i get it's part of life um but this one isn't affecting kids like the normal one is so if kovet's gone we take masks off does that mean we don't care about the other ones anymore that truly put kids in the hospital it's confusing so i just need more clarity on why we're doing this for covid what is the number and what's happening to the people being infected now thank you i i

038know that two minutes goes fast everybody but please limit your comments to two minutes [Applause] hi my name is anna white i have two daughters at greenwood here um i have want to talk about something instead of a specific topic i want to talk about stress when everybody's stressed out we treat people poorly it doesn't matter if it's a racial thing a sexist thing we just have bad behavior when we're stressed out when we are being fed headlines that make everything sound worse than they are it is we get stressed out and we say oh no it's on us it's not on our kids it is on our kids and they can tell and masking and distancing and all those things that when you look at the science they're starting to admit yeah the science

039wasn't sure we didn't know so we had to do something and now we're still doing the something even though the science doesn't back it up and the cdc is starting to push back against the white house and say hey yeah no we don't need to jump into another round of vaccines right away we need to stop and actually breathe and so if we could all just slow down and breathe and realize our kids are safe we care about them we've improved ventilation which is huge in our buildings the teachers are available they can get vaccinated which is huge for them so we can all just stop and breathe and let the stress levels come down and then we can handle all the other issues we need to handle from a much better mindset [Applause] hi

040my name is amanda celegran i have two kids in the district one is in middle school one is in west side i just wanted to shine a light on something that probably isn't thought of a lot with severity i actually had a mild really mild case a year ago i was back at it after two days guess what i have now i have long covered and i can't smell or taste anything and i still have it i have probably a year two to go of that and that's one in ten kids or one of ten people and if kids are getting the this uh variant now i have i had a hard time mentally handling that as an adult as a grown woman and i can't imagine a high schooler or a middle schooler or

041god forbid an elementary kid who already is picky eating having to deal with that and i realize that it sounds silly but it does really affect you so i just kind of wanted to shine a light on that um and yeah one in ten so one of you up there if you if you lost your taste and smell you could be me in two years not having your taste and smell and it's not that you don't have it it's that it just distorted and everything smells like decaying flesh actually so it's hard to explain it but i just wanted to bring that up because i think a lot of times the focus is on the severity and are they in the hospital actually my husband was almost in the hospital he was fearing for his

042life he had a really really bad case of covet i just don't want my children to have to deal with that one other note that i'll make is that my one of my children does have autism and anxiety and he's fine he i just asked him tonight i said how how are you with the mass oh i'm fine so it is possible i realize that there's a broad spectrum of abilities and all that but i just wanted to bring my perspective to it that's it hello my name is christa cleary i'm a resident of river falls i have two children at the middle school river falls um i am a nurse and a certified nurse midwife i've been dealing with covid for a year and a half and i'm sick of it um but i'll

043bring up some facts i work with healthy pregnant women that's what i do and when i'm looking at the numbers for covid you know there's nothing killing pregnant women more than covet is um the state of mississippi had eight coved deaths in since july from the delta variant in a normal year 10 women in a state will die due to pregnancy related causes so i am not ever going to minimize the risk of covid because it's real and i'm not ever going to pretend that it's something that we could minimize so i appreciate what the school district is doing i appreciate the matrix that helps you make adjustments to what we're doing to keep our kids safe you also work with a normal healthy population of children [Music] 516 children under the age of 18

044have died of covid since this started in this country this is not something to pretend isn't real or to pretend isn't severe and none of those numbers are just numbers to me because this is a job i do face to face with people every day and i also want to acknowledge that i have people tell me eyeball to eyeball that they don't believe this is real and that they don't believe it is severe and so i understand that that push back i'm dealing with it every day and i appreciate all you do to keep our children safe thank you [Music] good evening um thank you for can you hear me there you go thank you all right um first i want to thank you for hearing us all and um could you tell us your

045name first sorry yes my name is laura carlson i'm a local community member my daughters actually graduated from high school now and going to river falls university so i'm a local community member i've go to church here in river falls and i've actually been a soccer mom here in river falls um so but i grew up locally in ellsworth went to college at river falls majored in accounting in econ graduated with this little university experience and small local high school and went to work in the big company of 3m which was rather eye-opening a lot of new cultures a lot of new people a lot of new experiences i can't say that my education really adequately prepared me for this level of diversity but i think my background um in my my upgrading upbringing prepared

046me at least to treat everybody with respect and dignity and so i think that that served me well so when i went to work at 3m i did that for nine years and i spun off to a i work with accounting systems and so i ended up going from there to be a consultant from there worked with companies such as carlson companies us postal target corporation and then returned back to 3m and have now moved to work with the wisconsin company phillips medisize which has a lot of local plants through all this business experience i know the importance of treating all you work with and all customers that you have with dignity and respect in all the workplaces that your school is preparing students to work in they will need to know the full and

047true history of the united states and not any whitewash version that where you may want to leave out or not touch uncomfortable parts of our history but the full and true narrative i'd be interested in understanding just what the curriculum is that is concerning people as far as any critical race theory because as far as i know this is a college level course it's pre-law in law school classes and it's not really within the u.s history curriculum that is commonly taught in high schools so to a big degree any concern about it um is kind of media driven and social media driven so i'd like to understand just what uh the concern is if there is a concern because i understand that that there is so it'd be good to understand a curriculum and examples

048that students can bring forward that they have felt uncomfortable with or that parents have but a school's job is to prepare children for the future to be contributors to society be employees and businesses big and small locally and globally i encourage you and your role to encourage the full and truthful history of america warts and all it all wasn't perfect we're not all perfect but i think it all needs to be out there we also we're a great country i think that needs to be out there too but we need to understand what did and didn't work right and where we need to go as a company as a country so we need to acknowledge that everyone's experience in in history is different and we may not all have experienced racism personally and may not

049in this community but you are preparing students for an increasingly diverse world and workplace and so you may need to teach beyond what they see in the classroom and what they see in the community so i encourage you to teach the full complete narrative of history and prepare students for the future thank you hello my name is theresa cohen and i have two boys who are new students at westside this year after doing virtual school last year i would like to thank you for your vote to require mass going into the school year i know it was an anomaly in our area of the state at the time my boys have had a wonderful first few weeks at their new school and despite wearing masks all day and knowing very few kids at the school

050they have been able to make many meaningful connections with both classmates and teachers though no one wants to wear a mask and i look forward to the day they can attend school and even more normal environment i've heard very few negative comments from my boys about it they understand that wearing a mask helps to protect themselves their younger siblings as well as all the students and staff around them our family is so thankful they have been provided as safe and in-person learning environment as possible at this time i urge you to approve a cautious and conservative matrix for the consideration of removing mask requirement to continue to keep everyone at school safe especially given that none of our elementary age children have the opportunity to be vaccinated at the time switching topics i would like

051to share a recent incident our family experienced and why i support a policy to update policy update to allow for what have been deemed as controversial topics to be addressed in the classroom we have a black lives matter sign in our front yard as well as a sign that we believe in equality for all those living around us i'm sure you would all recognize the sign that i'm talking about last week our house was egged my boys discovered it as they went outside to get ready to bite to school nearly all the eggs thrown were directed at our signs so i made an assumption i was heartbreak broken that someone would do this and that my boys were the ones to discover it and that even they realized why our house was probably targeted before

052i even said anything to them because we are trying to show support for those in our society and community who face inequality and discrimination two days later a young man and his father stopped by our house and apologized to me for the incident stated that it was because the young man did not like our signs and offered to help clean it up if needed in that instant i was not angry i was thankful that this young man's anger and disagreement was directed towards us and not more pointedly to a member of a more vulnerable group and that i could be part of what hopefully is a learning experience for a young man who made an unfortunate choice so i intentionally modeled for him compassion and forgiveness i told him i hoped he would be able

053to move on from this incident and most importantly that he would know and do better to others in the future i am in full support of the additional measures to allow for equality and inclusivity discussions within our schools when students are able to have these discussions with peers some of whom may be different from them i believe we'll see an increase in acceptance to all of our of all of our community members and a decrease in hurtful sentiments and actions such as those smeared across the front of our home last week thank you [Applause] hello um as many have said before i was not planning to even be here tonight or to speak or anything but hearing what i've heard tonight i just felt compelled that i i need to share the thoughts that i've

054had over the past year my son is going to a college near milwaukee they have a mask mandate in place and i recently wrote a letter to the school asking them to reconsider and i'd like to kind of paraphrase some of that letter to you now i'm here as a concerned parent a lifelong christian and a citizen of this state i'm asking and pleading with you to please remove the mask mandate for students attending your schools your students have invested several years of their lives and their parents have invested thousands of dollars into this institution i ask you to please respect their human dignity as children of god along with their individual and civil liberties as citizens protected by the constitution of this state and this nation and allow each one to make their own

055personal health care decisions we've heard from our politicians and government health authorities since 2020 to follow the science as it relates to covid19 we now have over a year of data to examine and according to the scientific evidence it is clear that masks do not reduce the transmission of the covet 19 virus or any other airborne respiratory viruses instead scientific evidence shows that wearing masks is harmful causing a number of adverse health effects both physically and psychologically prior to 2020 the scientific community and health authorities including the cdc and who held this position but now due to political pressures not scientific they promote the opposite position here are a few of the countless studies and expert opinions contradicting publicly the publicly promoted positions masks are neither effective or safe in preventing respiratory pathogens mask wearing

056can actually increase the transmission of respiratory viruses masks alter the proper ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood leading to physiological problems masks can harbor bacteria viruses and other harmful pathogens increasing the risk of sickness masks can shed harmful synthetic fibers into the lungs creating similar health risks as asbestos fibers masks inhibit essential human social interactions resulting in increased levels of anxiety feelings of isolation depression and suicide mass mandates have no effect on kovid cause or on covet cases in groups states or countries with mass mandates versus those without college age and high school age individuals have a 99.999 percent survival rate when exposed to covid19 according to cdc data i did not make that up in light of overwhelming scientific evidence that masks are both harmful and ineffective forcing anyone to wear

057a mask is both physically and physiological abusive how can this institution in good conscience knowingly subjected students to physical and emotional abuse regardless of any public health authority recommendation it is the right of each individual to breathe life-sustaining oxygen expel harmful carbon dioxide as god designed us and smile at each other reflecting god's love as he intended the plain truth which has been known by the scientific and medical communities for many decades is that mass cannot prevent the transmission of airborne respiratory viruses the idea that they can is known to be an outright lie those in authorities know this yet they still demand this abusive immoral and dehumanizing practice this is wrong and we should not allow it much less promoted in galileo's time those in positions of public authority demanded we believe that the

058earth was the center of our solar system against scientific evidence and or they persecuted those who presented scientific evidence that the sun was the center of the universe in our time today those in positions of public authority demand we believe mass prevent viral spread and persecute those who show evidence that masks are ineffective and harmful if our leaders and trusted institutions including the school district of river falls continue to fear and follow and promote and perpetuate unscientific superstitious belief that masks will keep us safe from viruses they will be complicit in any harm that results whether physical physiological or spiritual some leaders and institutions in our state have shown the courage to stand firm and do what is right in the face of political pressure the wisconsin state legislature in february passed a joint resolution

059resolution sjr-3 terminating and revoking all coveted 19 executive orders including mass mandates and the wisconsin state supreme court in march agreed and ruled that extension of mass mandates was unconstitutional they have done their moral duty to uphold the law and the constitution defending the civil liberties of their citizens as administrators and leaders here i ask you in light of science and state law to please reverse your mass policy and allow your staff students and visitors to make their own personal health care decisions i ask you to please acknowledge the scientific truth that masks are at best ineffective and at worst harmful i ask you to acknowledge the civil liberties guaranteed to the people of this state by our constitution as confirmed by the actions of our state legislature and supreme court and finally i ask

060you to please respect the god-given dignity of each individual in the school district to allow their smiling faces to breathe freely and interact with each other face to face as god created us thank you for your prompt attention to this urgent land please tell us your name [Applause] please tell us your name uh matthew rust math what is your last name matthew what matthew rust thank you [Applause] hello my name is christopher gagna i've got a daughter second grade at rocky branch elementary i want to commend the principal and the educators at rocky branch my daughter has received a um excellent education and i commend you board members for the hard work that you guys do i was at the first board meeting and spoke on that you guys addressed the coved and the masking

061and all that getting back into our curriculum i want to ask you um or thank you for doing in person education i think that's phenomenal and allowing our kids to interact with each other be in person that's great i think the way you guys have restructured that matrix since last year i'm generally in favor of it of course i spoke that i'm not in favor of the mask mandate i think the mass do need to come off um not just for the covid portion of it but also the mental health of our children um if my kid's not seeing the interactions with the educator um her teacher or their fellow students they're losing a lot a lot of their interactive abilities and knowing when people are happy when they're sad when i wear a mask

062all day and i'm interacting with people and i'm in a high level sales position out talking to people it's really hard to interact with people and know where they're coming from and kind of read through some of those interactive things that we miss every day imagine what a little second grader is missing i'm very smart i'm an educated man seems like we got a lot of educated people in this room how much do we miss every day as an adult and had all these experiences without masks think about our kids and what they're missing out on and what they're gaining as far as the masks on critical race theory i think it is appalling that we even have to talk about this situation and these issues what's even more appalling is that i see statues

063and i see our history being removed from this country are there things that we need to address in those things and need to educate our kids on absolutely but we don't need to be removing our history i think some someone got up here and we need to speak about the full history of this nation i think that's phenomenal and i don't think it just stops in this nation it goes to world studies as far as as progressing in your studies but we need to do it in a professional and ethical manner for our children i personally um filed complaints in my workplace because somebody called somebody else um and gay they weren't but they were using those words i don't think that's appropriate and that's the type of manner as each individual in this place

064and in our communities we need to be calling those things out for what they are they are wrong and if we see it we need to call it that said i'm white my daughter's white my wife's white she lived eight years in south africa her great grandparents started ministry in south africa went through apartheid so a lot of that kind of slavery and a lot of that kind of stuff is is in the family history i didn't personally go through that now i've seen it i've called it out i don't want my daughter to be taught any differently that she's any less because she's white right and if i if she comes home and cries because she thinks that she's being treated differently or a little less than someone else because of a race or

065social economic status i think that's wrong as well i think we need to call out each and individual wrong whether it's a race issue someone got beat up or punched somebody on the playground it doesn't matter we need to call those things out for what they are but we don't need to be teaching people that they're any lesser anymore right if we see these things and somebody's being treated differently or getting a less treatment in their education or they're not getting hired because of that we need to full on as a community call that out for wrong but please don't teach my kid that they're any less or someone's a little bit better or should have a better standing than them because she's white now let's build up everybody let's come around these people when

066they have a problem [Applause] let's build up these people i mean if somebody's being treated wrong in the playground as somebody said a gentleman came up here and another lady came up and had an egg thrown i don't have a sign in my yard i don't necessarily agree with that whole stigma but if i saw somebody throw that egg i'd be the first one to call the police and take that video and turn that in because i think that's absolutely appalling i think you get my just here [Applause] good evening my name is michael van handle i have four kids that all go to rocky branch elementary school and i think we'd all be at miss to not point out the whole national lack of trust in leadership and i actually am going to go

067as bold enough to say that this board is no different boards are elected to represent their constituents and by doing that they should seek feedback and i encourage you to seek the feedback and listen to those who agree and both disagree with you those are the people who voted for you and put you in this position i've been waiting for the matrix to come out and i saw it and it seems like it came out with a not a whole lot of notice i could be wrong on that but my opinion is i'm here to tell you and be that voice of that feedback that this matrix is way too tight it is too small of a window and there have been numerous reasons pointed out on previous meetings about why everyone feels that way

068both at previous meetings and again tonight but to get real context i feel as though we should be shown a comparison this isn't the first disease that is spread to other people what happens with the other communicable diseases do we have matrixes on those how does that compare to this or is this getting blown out of proportion if this i mean we've had other instances where schools have been closed because of let's even say the flu what is that matrix how does that compare to what we're going to see tonight give us that basis of comparison in all of the public the basis of comparison furthermore as a board you are elected to be in an in an honorable role one to be respected as representatives of the community you serve personal bias has no

069place i can only hope that as you continue to represent this community that the dishonorable and at times bullying behavior exhibited at the last meeting will have made its last appearance remember you serve in a role of honor and you need to maintain that integrity thank you [Applause] my name is darlene mcbride and thank you for what you do i appreciate that and um i appreciate everyone who has spoken tonight there are things that everyone said that i agree with i want to touch on both issues crt and mask wearing and i was born and raised in this community i lived out east for five years and i decided like rebecca's family did to come back to river falls uh because of the education um in this district and the reputation of of how good

070it is here i was dismayed last year that i didn't learn some all the history and it took me 65 years i never learned about the black wall street massacre so you do like lisa said tell the real truth these are all issues that i would hope our children are learning how to discuss and as they can learn that process of of talking about controversial issues maybe they will heal the division that we have in this country right now mask wearing i i wear my mask because i had covet i had a very bad case of it early on before it was even known about and i finally you know learned about all the symptoms of it and i had that i had that i had that and i did have long-term effects from it

071and it was the worst illness that i've ever had i don't want anybody to have that experience and that is why i wear my mask and that is why i hope you continue to require masks thank you hey i wasn't going to speak either tonight it's a theme last month i talked about how we've seen other schools not do masks we've seen other states not do masks and we've seen other countries not do masks everyone turned out exactly the same yet here we are so let's pretend these macs actually do something for a second anybody else here treat an active covered patient or care for an active covenant patient in a hospital all right baby doctor okay other one so when you go into a covenant patient's room covered patient not wearing a mask the

072nurse the nursing assistant the doctor only has to wear that little paper tissue thing half of you are wearing so if that patient who's theoretically spewing virus everywhere is not wearing a mask and the other person is protected that seems like we can make the masks optional for parents to make medical choices for their own children [Applause] we have physiological emotional and developmental abuse here okay it is it's going to come out eventually and you're the board some of you are voting to make these medical decisions for parents medical decisions okay only doctors are allowed to do that and if they do it wrong they have insurance the people making the medical decisions are you prepared to take the repercussions for this we have no idea the long-term effects of this we've seen studies that

073it changes ph we've seen studies that it changes the microbiome of the lungs if we wear masks for two years three years what's going to happen to those tissues in 10 years are you ready to make those decisions you are mandating those decisions are you prepared for that let these be parent decisions parents make medical decisions for their children not people sitting up there that don't have any medical experience tell us your name please ma'am cassie i have two kids in the district and your last name cassie howard thank you [Applause] all right also wasn't going to talk chad howard to a montessori sitting back up here seeing a few people shake their heads i decided i needed to talk a lot of colvin trade going on right now these people need to wake up

074these masks do not work the numbers are inflated if you want to wear a mask for yourself you think it makes you feel better by all means go for it i have no problem with that but trying to force my child to wear a face diaper all day is abuse and it's going to come out you want to be on the wrong side of history harming our children could you tell us your name please [Music] hi my name is bridget labon and i have a daughter who's a freshman this year never been to a board meeting so here i am and i don't have anything or no agenda uh i just want to say that obviously no one's going to agree on this math subject either you wear them or you don't wear them i

075think it should be that up to the parent but i do think it's awful that we're sitting here shaming each other we're fighting and we're talking about character based school and how much we like all the character stuff that you guys have taught us and you're raising the kids and we're not showing very good character by shaking our heads and yelling and screaming and getting shamed at i was in the wrong i took my kid to school the other day and i didn't realize when you drop your kid off for high school you can't go left i accidentally got in the left lane hand lane because i didn't know any better because i'd never done it before and i had someone shaming me and pointing at me and it's like gosh we're all people we're

076all here and if we're gonna wear masks i think we need to change our dress code at school because girls need to wear more than just masks we want to be all inclusive and we want to let them be free and express themselves these girls are coming to school with hardly any clothes on and i don't know is there a dress code was that taken away because if we want to teach our daughters and our kids to express themselves they can do it with clothes on it's re my daughter had someone say to her the other day i mean it's i mean it was over closed and what she was wearing and she didn't have hardly anything on her top and if we're going to set these kids up to be professionals and get a

077job there's a dress code when you go to work and also i know we're fighting over mass and we're fighting over the education but we're forgetting about our kids and their mental health what they're doing they're skipping classes they're in the bathrooms they're vaping and they're young kids there's freshmen that are doing this that we have problems with drugs and we're focusing on the wrong things like let's focus on our kids let the parents do the teach them the politics that's not for the teachers to persuade them in the classroom it's not i should be able to choose if my child wears a mask and i'm going to teach her my values at home and i want her to be good to everybody and i just think we're not doing that i don't think i

078think if we're going to include everyone and we want everyone to come to school and feel like they're welcome we're not welcoming each other so we could be better at that and respect each other's opinions and values sorry that's all i got to say all right we are going to proceed with the agenda and at this point i'm going to move on to reports and the first report it's my pleasure that we have our new student reps with us this evening and so we have jocelyn marachos and isabella medina welcome to the board we're very pleased that you're here my understanding is that you have prepared a few things to talk to us about so the floor is yours good night everyone um my name is josiah i'm from a beautiful country uh the name

079of the microphone up just a little closer got really close yeah just there you go grab it almost touching your face you can hear me then okay so i'm going to start again uh good night everyone my name is jason morocco i'm from a beautiful country named ecuador i'm thankful to him to be here tonight as a student voice representative i'm a senior at river falls uh high school where i have been a student for three years i'm a usl student which is a program for kids who are learning english as a second language and i want to share my experience of being part of esl community my first day of school was a little different than i expected it wasn't like movie i used to watch about a high school like the boy and

080girl will move to usa and go and a high school and everything is great yes and don't believe that i don't you so helped me to fit into this new and fun environment i helped me to control my fear and improve my english of course it wasn't just esl but also the staff of our building members of the girls soccer team who welcomed me on the team teachers who accompanied me during this time really really hard time um i'm appreciative of the kind of care of caring staff at school after school i plan to go to a college and started to become a dentist i want to share with you a code before i hand the microphone off to my partner the beauty of this world is that the advisory of its people my hope

081is that we have as a student body and community stick together to get through this year safely thank you so good evening everyone my name is isabella medina and i am a senior at river falls high school first of all i want to say thank you to all for having us both here tonight i am here to share a little bit about my story and my experience at river falls high school i had to leave my country venezuela in october of 2019 when the situation became too complicated to live in i moved to river falls with my family as a summer so two years ago i'm not gonna lie i was scared i knew nothing about american schools and i was used to the way schools in my country worked which was nothing compared to

082the way they work here against all of my fears i found myself with a loving community that opened their arms to me and held me through the difficult times amazing teachers who helped me find myself reach my best potential taking my fears away to become the person i am today my hopes for the future is to start my studies in college in science and medicine and for this school year to be first of all safe and welcoming for everyone in the community thank you well welcome and we look very look forward to having you with us and we will turn to the superintendent for his report make sure we got our slides set up thank you my task at hand this evening is to present the board with the matrix i'll walk through a couple

083of the the two primary indicators for that matrix however before doing so i wanted to share a little historical perspective on a few things and so next slide please this slide you see on the top right corner dated the 9th of august was presented to the school board and at that time we had indicated we we listed for you a number of these indicators that we would continue to follow and look at and listen to in our decision-making process with all things cobit related not the least of which of course is the great mask debate next slide please one thing that was reported back uh on the ninth this slide also has that date in the bottom right corner i put it here because the medical experts the scientific research that was out there at

084that time in early august were warning us and telling us and we were hearing the initial states that were being impacted by this new delta variant where places like florida and new york and texas and at that time frankly um it was a growing variant that it was in several states but it really wasn't fully fully here yet we noted that where things are at now with colbit is it's kind of like when you offer your children what they would like for supper tonight they're going to eat your vegetables you're either going to have peas or carrots you're either going to get the the cova virus or you're going to get the vaccine and of course now we are hearing of some more cases related to even those with a vaccine there's these breakthrough cases

085again this is a kind of a recap of things that we talked about in this room early in august so some would ask is the delta variant really as nasty as advertised so what do we know now nearly at least a good month and a half pushing two months later is the delta variant showing us that there's more severe symptoms in some children and in some adults is the delta variant far more contagious that's what we're being told next slide please we shared this slide back on that august board meeting as well we noted that on may 27 that's when the school board made a decision to say masks will be optional starting june 7. and we were all doing cartwheels and backflips in the month of june and july because it appeared as though

086the vaccine had really made an impact in our nation and the numbers were extremely low the numbers started to climb slowly by august 6 there on august 9 they started to tick their way up a little bit next slide please this slide shows again i'm referring to the past seven days it's the seven days how many coveted cases have there been so i showed the august seventh date there i show on the first day of the school year we were at 56 and that last friday when i made this slide we were at 58 you can see a little ebb and a flow there but certainly the numbers speak for themselves that they're much higher than they were in the months of june and july next slide please in june um there's a website you

087can go to it's just this is this off of a state website and in june we were shrinking in numbers again obviously these numbers on this slide relate to the number of hospitalizations specific to the northwest region where we live the state is divided for the the state data that is collected here there's different regions different hospital regions and we're in that northwest corner good news in june we were we were shrinking you can see the numbers were down significantly next slide please the first two weeks of this year of this month excuse me um you can see since august really the the number has been climbing in the hospitalizations specific hospitalizations related to covid next slide here's from a minnesota website that talks about in july 15th there were 16 icu patients in the

088metro region that's i believe 28 different hospitals in minnesota i thought the metro region being relative to where we live in wisconsin was worthy of looking into so this was july 15 16 patients with covet next slide please september 9th there was 117. it went from 16 to 117. next slide please i have been conversing with our local hospital and clinics here in town and this basically tells what i think most people know that there's certainly increase in respiratory respiratory illnesses across all age groups truth be told it's not necessarily all coveted 19. they're experiencing right here i'm talking locally in experiencing increase in patients being admitted as well as those that are coming to the emergency room they're telling me that they're challenged with optimal staffing they're telling me the ability to transfer patients

089to the metro region for hospital care continues to be challenging it's not so much they don't have beds they don't have staff they need to have more rns that are serving the ill patients in our hospitals and right now it's um stressing their systems to say the least next slide please so yeah with our district assessment yep we we say we're looking at a lot of things a lot of different influences some of it is our own experiences with covid i think you even those that absolutely despise the mask policy would agree that we've changed some some things significantly most notably not forcing the quarantine and having so many kids leave our schools for extended period of time under the close contact quarantine process that was in place a year ago but is very different

090today so we use our own learning experiences yes we also listen to what we believe to be some of the medical and science community in their direct knowledge of kovid's impact we and and most notably we we consider all people of our community as well as those hospitalization capacity rates and so on all people means not just our children but all people of all ages so moving forward we're going to continue to consider these variables in a decision-making process which in turn will lead to further adjustments to our plans and i will go on record tonight although i don't have it written on that slide is possible it could change the matrix it's possible but right now there's some things that we need to again keep our eye on and until um the pace at

091which in the trajectory at which this particular variant is spreading that we need to make sure that we're very mindful of all those things and so for now we believe that this matrix is both responsible and reasonable we're all anxious believe me for the day that the masks can just be left up to individual choice next slide please this is just how we're tracking i shared a slide like this in a friday email that went home to parents so this shows seven days worth of data from in-house in district students and staff positive cases there happens to be seven days listed on here for a reason the first day of the school year in the following six days next slide please and it's just a repeat it's a different set of seven days next slide

092please this is an example this this is important i wanted to show this because it's the site it's the location it's where we are going to look for the data that we are using for the other half of our matrix the previous two slides i showed you half of what we're using it's our in-house in school district students and staff that we know are positive and this is the other half it's a seven day rolling seven day total cases and as of today there's been 69 cases and that is in our school district boundary and so that is not pierce county that is not saint croix county that is our school district boundary and this website allows you to look at that region that region contains 24 040 people our school district boundary all ages

093next slide please that's a summary there you'll notice there's gaps in the date it's just because of when i started capturing the dates and storing and collecting them it's why there's some inconsistency with every single day up there but we're doing a better job now and trying to remember to collect it daily so again we were we were at 58 last week but i just shared with you the previous slide i didn't update this it's even higher than that today next slide please here's some regional school districts now these numbers are going to look a little different and that's because there's another way you can look at the covet cases they take the there's an equalization process where they compare your region in our case our district boundary of 24 000 residents to if you

094had a hundred thousand residents and it's a way to equalize and show how you would compare to a district that might be much bigger or a district that might be much smaller this formula shows where we line up this was as of last friday in comparison to other districts we all can try to draw our own conclusions from what that data might be telling us it is an apples-to-apples comparison though because of that equalizer based on the hundred thousand population next slide so our matrix uh here it is it's the seven day school district boundary those twenty four thousand people it's a seven day rolling number that we can look at every single day and comparing that in the matrix to our internal positive cases students and staff next slide please so i i don't

095think that i'm going to go through all of these but we have a matrix separate for the high school a separate one for the middle school and then the elementaries all line up and on this particular slide i put the red colored required with a boxed in a dotted boxed in to say well that's where we would be at based on those numbers i showed you on the previous slide we far exceed the 49 plus on the top and on the left side we're less than eight cases in this building in the high school but where the numbers are so high within our 24 or excuse me our 24 000 resident region we we think we need to remain in the required mass zone for now next slide is a middle school kind of um

096next slide please i'm sorry you're ahead of me you're doing fine middle school elementary and so on we're all still in accordance with this matrix as it is presented that we continue to be in the uh matrix at the required state at this time and so that's the quick and dirty overview i probably was remiss i didn't mention that to avoid a bit of the yo-yo effect that we aren't going to monitor this like on one day and we're we see a change and we're going to daily be looking at the matrix and pivoting it one way or the other we'll look at this every friday and we will need to sustain levels for two weeks in a row before we would make a pivot or a change we aren't going to do this on

097a day-to-day basis back and forth one one thing i was going to mention jamie when i look at the elementaries i think the numbers on the left-hand side just to point out i think those got copied from yeah it would be a differential yeah yep so just to read that off um that's the high school on the left hand side for the middle school here it says less than five five to ten eleven plus and then for the elementaries it would be less than three three to five six plus and then for public montessori which has a slightly lower it would be less than two two to three and four plus so if you could only know how many times that this entire presentation was looked at and revised and for me not to put

098that appropriately on there i apologize for my ignorance no i didn't say it for that reason no i know you didn't i'm glad you're pointing it out thank you for that's a good catch we will obviously have this published we'll have it on our website it'll have the corrected numbers on it but board members had the corrected numbers in our i mean i got it from clicking on the link the hyperlink that's buried three sides above it too i just wanted to make sure if somebody's looking at it that that there's a differentiation and it might be worth just mentioning those numbers are different at each of the school sites based on the population number of students at that school site right so we are going to leave this at this point we're going to

099come back to have discussion but we will continue with informational items and the next one is an eid committee update with mr wells dave if you want to come too you can you're welcome up so just a little bit of background um we're here tonight to do two things the first thing is to kind of update you from the work of last year and then just talk about what's gone on the last probably about month and kind of where where we're headed so if you go to the next slide last year our we had three subcommittees one focused on lgbtq awareness another on dress code and another on holidays and celebrations and um just kind of the the wrap up part of those things are that we've scheduled lgbtq training for staff coming up in

100october and in november at our in-services we're working on a culturally relevant practices approach to holidays so we one thing that came up with the holidays conversations and celebrations is you know what does this mean for holidays and celebrations and so from a culturally relevant uh approach is talking about how to have conversations about things not to cancel things but you know how do we engage our students and being critical thinkers around celebrations and holidays and the dress code piece is currently still being considered and there's more work to be done on that so if you go to the next slide maybe amanda could you change the slides first please we should be one more one more thank you so the the work for this year that um we started on is in order to

101create more focus and better define the work of the eid committee is to develop a mission a vision and value statements so what we did is we worked with someone out of the cities named jonathan brown who came and i've seen several faces of people who participated in that here tonight which is good but essentially he just asked us questions about what we wanted the the eid committee to be what we wanted our work to look like and helped us craft these statements and so what you see up here is the the the mission statement and that really was came from the district perspective we looked at what are our priority areas what are uh what is our mission and those sorts of things and so this mission was handed to the eid committee from

102the district all right for the next slide so the next two slides are are the vision and the values and these are the two pieces that we had jonathan brown help us with and so like i said his process was an affinity process he just took literally our words and our thoughts um and there were hundreds of phrases and words that kind of brought and then took it back and synthesized and found themes and those sorts of things and brought them back to us so what you see is the vision for the eid committee we've taken this and reworked it with eid committee members and at our next eid committee meeting we're going to look to finalize those those vision statements the next one is going to be our value statements a little bit more

103and so i think the the four big points to focus on are the highlighted um the bold and underlined statements so that's what we're striving for that's what we value the values will guide how we do our work so the first one being student and community focused our work is focused on the experiences of students in the district and how to support the community we value civil discourse so when we when we have these conversations talking about how how do we do it in a way that all voices are heard that we're respecting each other and those sorts of things because at our eid meetings um [Music] views differ and we need to be we need to know how to handle those as a group in order to best serve our students we talk about

104being a welcoming host so this committee is open to anyone in the community that wishes to come and so how do we welcome people in with divergent views of each other in a way that creates a welcoming space and then the last one is keeping the focus on equity inclusion and diversity and i think for that piece it's not the focus of it is there's a lot of side conversations that can be had around equity inclusion and diversity and we want to do our best to make sure that we don't hold down too many rabbit trails at the cost of supporting our students one thing i'll mention uh mention that in the the val in the vision part of if you go back what we've landed on is being a uh a committee a convening

105body and so what that means is that the role of this committee is not to write policies it is not to develop curriculum is to engage students community members and others and i'll go through a slide moment and others that might have some more knowledge about these things in order to make recommendations to the administration or and or to the school board so if you go to the last slide what you see is an example of a of a workflow that that we might go through which starts with us analyzing um some people make comments about what's going on in river falls so analyzing data from river falls we've got all sorts of good academic data we've got engagement data from school perceptions we have qualitative and quantitative data about experiences and achievement and engagement

106of our students in this district so we start with that and we start with looking at that as a committee so once again the committee is comprised of staff members community members board members so that group looks at the data to tease out um inequities that may be there an example of inequity might be why is it that certain demographics are achieving less than other groups or if we ask questions like do you feel connected to your school or do you have an adult that you can trust in the school if we look at statements like that and we see that certain groups whether it's ableism or gender or sex or race or socioeconomic why would those people feel less connected so we go through we look at the data we identify the stakeholders so

107if we have data that says students with disabilities feel less connected in our school district which we have data that says that you know who do we need to talk to because one thing you don't want to do is just look at hard data and then start making guesses about what the problem is or what where the issue lies because you don't want to fix a problem that doesn't exist and so you identify stakeholders you look at do we need to do surveys do we need to do do we need to engage specific students and parents and community members around abilities and get information from them once that is kind of drilled down to the root cause then the question you ask is okay who do we need to bring together to solve this problem

108okay it might be a transportation problem it might be um the fact that you know to the idea of systemic problems it might be that the way that we are putting information out to these families and engaging them is a problem so we identify those we figure out how to solve it um eventually there's some brainstorming within the within the committee and we come back to you or the or the school board with a final recommendation on how to address that so that's kind of the flow that that we're envisioning that the committee uh would go through and are looking forward to the work this year so we meet with jonathan brown it was supposed to be tomorrow night he had to be scheduled for thursday so thursday he'll come back in next thursday he'll

109come back in on september 30th he'll come in and do some norming with us which will further help the group work together to support students anything you want to add dave thank you any questions thank you nate you've done a lot of work to lead this committee and to guide it and it's not done so thank you do any other administrators have anything i don't believe so all right we're going to move on to action items and at this point before the board we have meetings of the regular board of education meeting from august 16th we have bills that have been submitted for payment we also have employment recommendations that are listed on page 12. at this point do we have a motion to approve minutes bills and employment as presented i'll move to approve

110thank you todd is there a second second thank you amy any discussion lindsay i seconded it she said it first sorry i don't know at least that's the one i heard she's closer to me any discussion all those in favor i oppose the motion is carried and so at this point we are going to move on to discussion and action regarding the school district matrix regarding future mass decisions the guidance for the decisions that mr benson presented this would be a good time to ask questions of clarification to have some discussion i think we have the numbers right now again i apologize for that that's embarrassing on my part but i think we have it straight now the numbers are consistent with what the board has seen so we're familiar so so i just want

111to make the clarification that if this passes the decision-making goes back into the hands of administration because that's a day-to-day running of the school district correct yeah i don't my understanding is that quite frankly the board doesn't have a strong interest in coming back either week by week or every other week or every month and having a vote on the debate over the masks and therefore assigned administration to create such a matrix and that we would use this matrix it's our guidance and as i alluded to earlier when some other indicators like the hospitalization references that i shared a few slides on uh get on the downward side of where where they're at right now it's possible the matrix could change but the matrix isn't going to change anytime soon i can tell you that

112based on the trajectory of of the coveted numbers but just to leave to answer your question more directly yes that's my understanding is the matrix is to be used and it's not coming before the board for continued votes week after week i believe that was the reason that the board assigned administration to create a matrix yeah and to help everyone kind of understand you know there was someone who asked some questions about you know what is it zero is it you know what what are percentages or numbers i mean to me that that's part of the other thing that it's just in front of everyone at that point to interpret and it's it's not just uh what does somebody feel like today kind of a kind of a thing are there other questions or comments

113i i guess i would at this point just to get discussion going even i would make a motion to approve the the matrix as it's presented is there a second no second thank you bob discussion jamie it's two weeks under two weeks in a row change right can you talk a little bit about that 14 days consecutive days so the we'd need to see that again this is a it's always a rolling so every day you can look at it and it's just got the last seven days and so we're saying our touch point is going to be friday we're looking on fridays what is it what does it tell us there and if the matrix says hey on this friday we're going to switch we're going to say no no no we're not switching

114yet we're going to wait and look at it it's got got to show that cycle two times before we're going to make that pivot kind of a prove it type of thing right i i like that feature of it i've i've tried to review every one that i can there's a lot of them that are just tied to either a county spread at the cdc levels which is is more restrictive than what's proposed here and and i've seen some that are less restrictive but have more of a yo-yo effect i think one of the biggest things for me that i like is that two-week you know kind of a smoothing just to make sure that that you know i would say it's a more cautious approach but that feels like a better way for me

115in in terms of managing it so i like that piece of it um you know i'm not going to nitpick any numbers i i'm comfortable with what's there that's a that's a very subjective thing and our our range is you know just to to quantify for people the columns going across from left to right are essentially following cdc levels but we go past that a little bit in terms of what they would allow under their substantial um definition versus what ours goes to and they don't have a very high definition where we add one and so um you know we're we're kind of in line with that but there's a little bit of liberty taken and and i guess i'm comfortable with the idea that at this point todd i think that you make a

116really important point about the potential for this to be able to vote avoid too much yo-yo too much back and forth that we want to be able to see some sustained measurements that suggest that it's wise the other thing for myself too that that i've always got my eye on is i'd like to see things be on the downward side of the trend but i'm also looking at our district compared to other districts and how they've chosen to handle things you know it's probably too early to try to compare that but in in a month you might have a better comparison or or two months you know whatever whatever time frame after school has started you'll have a better comparison to say here's the experience this place had last year we had almost a pretty

117similar experience for all i think almost all districts had the same experience in regard to math some were different in terms of their learning environment but you were trying to use what other people what other people's experience versus yours showed to say what lines can i draw with some of these things even though there are variables outside the school walls that factor in i'm still looking for those things myself even with a matrix to say you know a month into school two months into school what are we seeing as trends and and are there things that we can you know continually reevaluate too so that factors into it for me as part of the whole decision but i'm comfortable with what we've got but i think it is is a continual reassessment you know based

118on what experience tells us too yeah i i agree with you todd i i like that it has the two weeks that smooth it out a little bit i like that it's by school um so it's considering the immediate environment that that student's in but also considers the broader environment so i like it thank you for putting all the time uh that you all put into this conversation last month stacy again i agree with todd todd's done a good summary of what you've done here and i think speaking for the board this isn't new tonight um i mean the specific plan is but as a board at all of our meetings here the last weeks we've been talking providing feedback etc so jamie i appreciate you putting this together i think and todd mentioned this

119going forward we're going to want to continue to compare data what's going on with what we're doing in other districts and amanda if you go back to slide 16 or erin to me this it's too early to tell right now but to me slide 16 my 16 is the regional school district seven day coveted yeah there it is right there it's probably too early to to draw a conclusion from this but this is generally good news for us i think right now if this is still this trend like this a month from now two months from now three months from now that's a good sign for us i think it's not the only data piece but we keep talking about well what's different with river falls and in other districts and and as jamie said

120these are apples to apples this is relative so even though hudson is substantially larger than us this accounts for that and prescott is smaller than us and it's this accounts for that so those numbers really put us in place so um it's too early in a year to say that boy everything's working for us but in my mind this is one of the pieces of data that will be important to me because i need to know going forward is what we're doing helping or not i don't know if you have the answer to this jamie but on the news today they indicated that there's going to be a vaccination that's going to come available for the five to 11 year olds is there ever a time when a vaccination when the vaccination rate would reach

121a certain point that this whole matrix would just go away have you thought about it yeah personal opinion would be personal opinion would be that would be nice but my personal opinion also is that i'm not sure that's going to happen real fast i think there will be some hesitancy that will take some time but time will tell the way i would say it for myself amy um if if we're asking that question as a board is a lot of the feedback from people in support of mass especially at the younger levels are are this wasn't universal but a lot of that feedback was my my child doesn't have the choice to to protect to the level that we feel comfortable without masking and and the vaccine would in my mind take a pretty big

122step for a lot of those people um i'm not saying it would be the automatic drop point but to me it's a different conversation if that perceived protection for for some people exists and they have the ability to to do it for all school-age kids again that that's a to me that's a change big time change in the conversation that we are having up to this point and and um would be considering at that time but in terms of timing i think the earliest i've heard on that timing is like winter yeah halloween i think i heard today but it could help us with our 14 days yeah yeah bob i guess you come to try to chime in with most everything everything everybody else is sad but the beauty of the matrix is to

123give some transparent transparency to the whole situation something that parents and faculty and the community can actually look at on a day-to-day or a weekly basis the yoyo effect would be insane i think we are far ahead of other uh districts in having this type of level uh performance to to make a change anyway um like allen this data right here is very important to me as well it is nice that all these districts are aiming at the same thing we are in terms of five-day in-person learning as opposed to last year some of us were hybrid some of us were distant all that type of thing this really is getting as close to apples to apples comparison as you possibly can with this particular pandemic anyway and so i i'm very much in support

124of this matrix as a way to help lead us through this i think i will just echo and say that i would agree with everything that was shared tonight regarding the math matrix i know i particularly appreciate the nimbleness in breaking it down by a school site so that once our community numbers do come back down then we can start looking at individual school sites this isn't a blanket matrix for the entire district we're able to really isolate it and get down at an even more local level so i do appreciate that and i recognize the time that this took to put together and i really do appreciate this i think like bob said for the sake of transparency i think it is important we've obviously got people in our community that land on all

125places on the spectrum as far as masking is concerned and code mitigation is concerned i think this is really important to put out there to say these masks are not going to last forever we have a target we have a goal this is going to hopefully alleviate some undue stress for those families that are really really eager to get rid of the masking and so hopefully we can see those community numbers drop and we can get to optional masking sooner rather than later but i appreciate this a lot there were there were others that were involved in helping to put all of this together and i would say if you're frustrated over the numbers on the matrix i'll tell you who those other people were and if you like the matrix you can talk to

126me yeah i think we're all in this together so yeah that's a good one all right one one more thing i was going to say i just for the sake of um you know going back and taking a look at what this would have meant if this something like this were in place last year i didn't have the exact dates written down but it would have it you know they're leading up to the fall and through the christmas there wouldn't have been any point in time where the community numbers would have allowed for a pivot we would have pivoted sometime in late february mid to late february and then um we would have gone to optional at that point shortly after spring break we would have been back into mandatory for most of the month

127of april and then basically by may 1st it would have been optional all the way through up until even when we voted on on august 16th i think the community number was 20 at that point for our seven day average so we by the start of school this year we basically would have tripped what this matrix is just for historical reference in case anyone wonders well todd i think that you make a really important point that i hope that everybody recognizes while we are trying to make sure that we are avoiding the yo-yo effect what we're calling that there is also the potential to say that we could end masks and then something could happen that would trigger it again that would be a very great disappointment but i think we have to recognize that

128there is the potential for that any other comments all right no i just want to say that the most important thing for me right now is that the kids are all in school activities are running and things are seem to be going fairly well so i guess in the end i'm just happy that that's going on in the community right now and that we hopefully can all support that yep in person school is what our goal was from the beginning at least that option for every student okay i'm going to take a roll call vote on this and i am voting yes cindy yes lindsay yes todd yes amy yes alan yes bob yes the motion is carried seven to zero thank you jamie and team for not only the time but the research and

129the wisdom that went into creating this as guidance for us thank you you're welcome all right alan i'm going to turn to you for an update and um about educational program okay we um we had a really good meeting um last week and we met at rocky branch kind of keeping with our theme of trying to get out into the buildings more with these committee meetings and had some very good discussion um chuck gave us a very good the principal gave us a very good tour and we got to sort of see some of the building and the work from the last referendum and those kinds of things so thank you mr eaton for doing that for us um there are several things we took up one was we had another conversation and this has

130been ongoing for several months this summer about the academic and career planning initiative that's going on in the high school we are one of the few high schools in wisconsin to be doing this and i think almost all of you were there and had had that conversation it was very good to hear from melissa hansen and what's going on here this is really exciting and my only concern is that this is this is one of the coolest initiatives we've rolled out in a long time and it's getting lost a little bit in the noise that's been going on this year but this will affect every kid and help every student in our district help plan what they're going to do after high school because we know everybody's not going to go into college not everybody's

131going to go on to work directly into the workforce and even if they do what will it be in so this is a very structured plan and i think we'll be a model for across the state so anyway great presentation we're looking forward to more updates on that and appreciated that um that is not an action item for us though tonight right stacy yes the acp is the action item that's coming out of here the first word here says approved yes okay so um i will move that because the other item we're going to take up separately here so i will move the approval of moving forward with the academic and career planning portfolio requirement for all river falls high school students beginning with grades 9 and 10 in the 21-22 school year is there

132a second second thank you discussion it was a very helpful presentation that we had at ed program it was exciting to see it it's not going to be an easy process it's going to be a lot of work for our teachers and we recognize their commitment to this all those in favor aye opposed the motion is carried um as far as d which is related to a field trip application we are not going to consider that tonight because we need to wait on more details regarding covid mitigation but jamie and i have also talked about the need to have a a revision a potential revision to our field trip policy that would be looking at which field trips should come to the board which one should be approved by the superintendent do we need to

133make an addendum um for the foreseeable future related to covered mitigation and how it relates to fundraising and so jamie and his administrative team will work on that and bring it back to us when they're ready which means we will now move on to e which is related to the first reading of revised policy 381 related to controversial issues alan we did talk about this in in the committee that you chair i'll ask you if you have anything to say but i want to make sure everybody realizes on your update the bold the words in bold are the new portions and the strike throughs are the things that are gone once we have passed the first reading the next time it will come and look quote unquote clean i don't have any others other than

134okay this is the latest version we talked a lot at the committee meeting and we provided some edits and some suggestions to come back to the full board so there it is for you and just to get the conversation going i will move its acceptance is there a second thank you cindy we did have a pretty thorough conversation about this last monday um you'll be able to see that there are some headings that have been added to help organize what the policy is discussing we took out a few words or at least one after our discussion last time so would there be any further discussion questions or comments stacey i think the thing you know that based on a lot of the comments that we've had um you know there's there's people who i don't

135know if they're specifically addressing you know what that this topic is on the agenda but um i guess you know from from somebody who's a been a board member for a couple years the question i've asked along the way is you know we're we're not really introducing something that that is new or when we're refining it there's some wording that's that's been beefed up in the policy and things like that but it you know i think there's maybe some impression that some of these things are like just all of a sudden coming out and the way i took it from from asking the questions of staff and the administration is just that you know we're recognizing the need to put a little bit more behind the policy but it's not like there's there's all of

136a sudden something just being thrown in there that that didn't exist before or any of those things i i just hope that message gets relayed because a lot of the the discussion has happened over a couple months and not everybody gets to see that piece of it i just felt like it might be important to see indeed the board has had the policies a policy on the topic of controversial studies that this document says since 1973 it was updated in 1991 and 2010. again in 2010 and now some 11 years later we're revisiting it truth be told the reason we're revisiting it has to do with the fact that there's been a number of uh conversations in our society we heard some comments tonight about critical race theory how are we teaching and talking about

137that in our classrooms we've experienced a movement around social justice diversity inclusivity those kind of topics that bring angst to many people in the public over so how are you wrestling with these conversations in your school system and so this is a policy that is intended to give guidance to teachers this is a teacher policy and it says in this policy it provides some guidelines on how to best go about having those conversations referencing things like age-appropriateness matters the way that you have a conversation with a high school group of seniors in a civics class might be a little different than the way in which you engage in conversation with kindergartners over a given topic and there's some other there's other pieces in here that you know don't instill your own personal beliefs if you

138feel this way about today's president versus who's running for president the next go-around or if you feel this way about black lives matter and what that means to you don't instill your beliefs on students it's okay if in appropriate context of a curriculum that is a part of the class in which you're teaching that we have some conversations but this is a policy that helps build a framework and set about some expectations including at times we might even need to notify parents if we're talking about certain topics in classes that they should be told about in advance there's other things in the policy but those are four kind of quick standout issues in my mind related to this policy and why it's being talked about today is for a reason for many reasons any further

139discussion we have a motion that's been moved and seconded all those in favor aye aye aye opposed the motion is carried all right so uh the next order of business is that region four that we is our region for the wisconsin association of school board members there is an open seat for the the board of delegates and alan tuchenhagen our own ellen is running for that seat as a board we have one vote we can all participate in the meeting but we have one vote so we should appoint we should direct somebody to vote on our behalf before that one vote and i'm going to go out in a live and say i'm assuming all of us want alan because he's going to be the best person on there so at this point we need

140to decide who is going to cast that and then we would direct them how their vote would be the meeting is at noon on october 12th and it is a zoom meeting so ellen will be there but he can't vote for himself probably what i'm sorry what day of the week is tuesday but i can do it if somebody else wants to do it i'm certainly i'll nominate stacey okay all right all right i moved to nominate do we need a motion this is where you use that cast a unanimous ballot type thing sure yeah okay i'm sure anybody else okay that sounds good stacy all right and everybody it's the appoint on behalf of the entire board we're just saying for alan so that's what i will do the other part of that is

141if you notice the thing i sent out to you today the business meeting is going to take place at noon this is the primary piece i guess but that evening in menomonie as a face-to-face thing and we've typically done these annually they used to be in menomonie which was easy for us to get to after work then they shifted and there was a new person district four and he was holding all the meetings on the other side of eau claire and we haven't gone for a few years because of long distance this year it's back in menomonie and there's some good stuff that that happens at these meetings so i'll be there be nice if we had a car load or a van load up we're going to have to divide and conquer that evening

142though because it's also the night of the school forest yeah that's the biggest big idea so um i'll go to that for you we need to be in two places at once okay do we have any proposed or future items for upcoming agendas the field trip issue will come back when administration is ready let's schedule our upcoming meetings there will be a board and administrative retreat on september 27th at five o'clock at the meyer middle school educational program will meet monday october 4th at 6 o'clock and just maybe not october 4th i'm not available october 4th okay so the committee can still meet but i won't be there if if i need to be there it'll have to be a different date it will temporarily meet on october 4th and that stay tuned there might

143be an adjustment on that finance and facilities will meet monday october 11th at six o'clock personnel will meet the same monday october 11th at seven o'clock or immediately following uh finance and facilities the question is we for a while have been having our regular board meetings start at six o'clock rather than seven tonight was an anomaly what do people is there a preference six o'clock that would be my preference six o'clock cindy are you good with six everybody all right we're going to go with six o'clock on monday october 18th and at this point um i have a request for an executive session pursuant to wisconsin statute 1985 1 e f g for the discussion of confidential legal matters related to district lease agreement and liability is there a motion please thank you amy is

144there a second thanks cindy i need a roll call cindy yes lindsay yes todd yes i'm saying yes amy allen bob yes yes thank you we are going to reconvene in just a moment in the in the media center oh man i'm crashing fast [Music] i didn't notice no i knew this was on here i didn't notice it wasn't checked you