5/17/2021 Board of Education Meeting

001you oh microphones can go on brian thank you good evening everyone i called to order the regular meeting of the river falls board of education this meeting has been properly notified do we have any visitors or delegations who would like to address the board this evening about an agenda item that is not on the agenda please come forward for anybody who would like to address the board please state your name and tell us the name of your children's school or schools um thank you for this opportunity my name is stefanie weinzerold my son harm bentz is a sophomore here at river falls high school my daughter rayna bentz just graduated a year ago the class of 2020. that was a lot of fun and i'm not here tonight to express any opinion about a mask

002or not a mask i am simply here tonight to say thank you i want to thank our school board i want to thank our administration and i want to thank our teachers the you guys were charged with something that seemed pretty impossible at the beginning of the school year and yet you managed to find a way to get students face to face while still mitigating the risks to our students and our staff i'm thoroughly thankful to live in river falls and to have my children here and that is all i wanted to say this evening is thank you well you're welcome and thank you for taking the time to tell us that my name is jill ewald shane and my daughter is going to be going to the montessori in the fall dear sworn public

003officials of the river falls school board i'd like to address the covet shot propaganda on the school facebook page everyone knows now that kids ages 12 and up can get the shot isn't the facebook page supposed to be about actual school information stop shoving this experimental gene therapy down our throats and yes it's currently in experimental trials and not fda approved if you've been back faxed i remind you and everyone listening you are the experiments again you are pushing a shot that uses our children as human guinea pigs think about that for a second since when did our schools become my child's doctor's office i can't even get you to give my child a tylenol at school yet it's okay for them to be an actual live experiment please leave the propaganda to the county

004health department we need our leaders to use common sense and stop following the irrational fear propaganda please don't misconstrue my words here i'm for medical freedom and believe everyone should have the rights to manage their own health currently the survival rate of kids 0 to is 99.99 percent does this seem like a reason to push an experimental shot this world has truly gone mad not sick please remove the covet shot propaganda from the river falls school internet platforms and from within the schools our children deserve to be traded better than this [Applause] of a point of order and clarification the school board has never taken a position of making decisions for families about a vaccine do we have anybody else who would like to address the board about an issue that is not already on

005the agenda yes please go forward hi my name is jackie nickim i currently do not have children in school here but i have a granddaughter that went to school i went i graduated from uwrf so i just like to comment a little bit on things that are happening we'd like to think that our schools are focusing on math science history teaching our children to think for themselves i would ask that parents be involved in your children's education ask questions check assignments know what is being taught to your children do you understand the critical race theory and its effects on your child's future your child is either the oppressor or the oppressed what is the curriculum taught in human sexuality and relationships that title of the title of that class may have changed over the years

006because that's a number of years ago that i had any privy to it um but several years ago anal sex oral sex and views on homosexuality were discussed what is being taught today rule 411-3 regarding transgender students this policy was adopted on october of 2015 and may have an effect on your female student athlete are you aware of this policy a recent survey given to teachers included this statement i am comfortable acknowledging i may have implicit biases when it comes to the marginalization of the lgbtq plus community so then you were you had a choice of disagree slightly disagree slightly agree or agree if you are a teacher how do you answer that question what effect does your answer have on your employment today i am here to ask you why the focus on race

007and sexuality in our schools what is your focus indoctrination or quality education our school district is very concerned with quality education that is the answer do we have anybody else who would like to address the board i'm going to ask you to keep your comments to two minutes please hi my name is sarah bachman this is my school district i no longer have kids here thank god and it's for reasons i took all my kids out of all public schools for exactly what the last speaker said on critical race theory it's anti-american and very very harmful to our children and i'd love to see each one of you evaluate that and remove it from the curriculum i'm speaking on behalf of the parents who couldn't be here to address the experimental medical protocol you have

008implemented in your school yes i'm serious the idea that you took our tax dollar funded school and turned it into a vaccination site while sidestepping the legalities of parental informed consent is appalling there is there is a reason why kids aren't allowed to smoke drink drive and vote at an early age it is because the law says that these kids lack the ability to understand those decisions and this applies here today more than ever um hi i just want to make sure thank you this vaccine killed every animal in the last study every single one and not upon receiving the vaccine but upon coming into contact with that live virus in nature they didn't they didn't even do a study this time because guess what we are the study and now you do now you

009want to experiment on our kids everyone is passing the book your district says that we are just following the county recommendations we call the county and they say we follow the dhs and the cdc guidelines it's time some someone grew a pair and made some common sense decisions for yourselves i implore you to use your own minds stop this experimental eugenics program voluntary consent is essential i ask you are you prepared to take on the responsibility of the health and well-being of these children that you were elected and charged to care for when when they are shown to be sterile years from now this board all of your names individually you will all be remembered please think about that the other topic i was hoping to touch on was the masking of our kids we

010the parents have had enough kids do not get ill even when testing positive for cover 19. please stop the contact treason and close contact quarantine on massacre kids let them breathe the god-given fresh air we are heirs to freedom people fought for our freedoms we all get to choose let them be free to quote a friend in closing you may have the power to make illegitimate rules but you do not have the right or the authority to issue demands to massacre children when you exercise element illegitimate authority and we choose not to recognize that abuse of authority it is you not i not us who are breaking the rules inviti in and violating principles of natural constitutional and even statutory laws remove the masks now not later thank you [Applause] at this point we are

011going to move on in the agenda and we are going to begin with the superintendent's report good evening i want to introduce someone to you tonight but before doing so i'm going to recognize that we have someone leaving our district by the name of monique squire and she has done an amazing job we certainly had mixed emotions when she decided to leave our district because of her family situation and some employment opportunities in utah we're happy for her on one hand but sorry to see her leave on the other hand she really grew our community education program from the ground up and helped to advance communication efforts for the district but tonight we are pleased and proud to introduce to you our new director of community education and district communications jennifer ames she'll start in

012the district july 1st she's currently employed as a community partnership manager in the shakopee school district has a wealth of experience in building partnerships in the community creating new programs and opportunities for students and adults alike coordinating volunteer programs tech experience website and overall communication strategies we had a strong pool of candidates and uh she did a very nice job an impressive job in the interview and then we followed up with some reference checks and i just want to share with you a couple things that when we did our reference checking things that we heard about jennifer creativity and innovation in all of her work very organized and passionate in her work very committed she's a relationship builder excellent communicator and collaborator and so tonight we welcome jenny and we know that she's going to

013bring new ideas and not only continue the wonderful program that we have in community education but also build and improve on that as well as help us with our district communication initiatives and so with that brief intro please help me welcome jennifer ames [Applause] please i'm very excited to join your school district um it was a very when i when i interviewed i walked in and i felt like it was just the warmest environment and it was um a really good fit with my my experience and where you want to go and i i hope that the words that you heard about me i'm excited to get started thank you welcome again thank you for your willingness to come and what i like to say is we know that we aren't a perfect school district

014but we have some really excellent things in our community and in our school district and we're really anxious to have you come so thank you and thank you to amy halverson who represented the board on that search so thank you okay is it about it could is it about an issue that's already that we haven't that we won't be discussing um it is about the mask situation we're gonna get to that in just a moment all right so you are not late all right so at this point we anticipated that there would be a number of people who would like to address the board about masking and so this is the plan our superintendent is going to be giving a presentation after his presentation there will be an opportunity for people to address the board

015again please tell us your name for the record and tell us the schools that your school or schools that your children attend and please keep your comments to two minutes so at this point i'll call on our superintendent for the next part of our meeting i just put together a couple of slides there's seven or eight slides i just wanted to help to provide a little uh background so forgive me for no microphone ability to really move around per se and so i'm going to sit here and do my clicking my abled assistant will pull that up for us here and primarily again as stacy mentioned we wanted to talk about masks and close contact tracing the quarantine approach where we are currently at we want to convey to our community that we recognize the

016need to really have a forum like this where we're welcoming voices to be heard not everybody's on the same page and we hold some different opinions and for us to set the example for kids that are in this room or at home listening to how we'd go about doing that in an appropriate manner i think it's important that we also recognize that we're at a different place today than we were when we started school in september 1. so just a quick outline number one i want to through this presentation create the opportunity as i said for respectful civil thoughtful discussion uh explain the district's current position related to mask and close quarantine explain some legal matters and liability insurance considerations for the board and then convey a public message about hope and our desire for

017the future i think it's important that we as a district don't send a message that doesn't indicate some shared desire that things need to change will change the question of timing comes into play so on the two topics of close contact quarantine and masks were all anxious to see some changes with that believe me we are yep we understand again some disagreement sorry so if i can get back are you are you uh working against me here a little bit okay that sounds good i'm clicking back and she's clicking forward we understand some disagreement even strong feelings exist with many facets of the pandemic pandemic and responses to it including face masks and our close contact quarantine requirements we are also aware in our community there was some electronic survey if you will or a

018petition i guess circulating to be honest i thought probably we were going to receive that this evening i don't know if anybody's going to present that to the board it was emailed i got an email when like right before i came to the meeting oh okay so somebody sent it apparently before the meeting and uh obviously the board i'm sure will be curious to to look at the ability to know the number of people and the the local um approach that was taken with that petition or whether it's can be signed by someone in brazil i don't know but we're also aware that um we know there is a need for us to continue to have the dialogue and to see what we can do to continue to all of us that have the best

019interest of our kids in mind to make sure we're doing that right thing next slide please so for months the district followed the science and the health expert guidance associated with mask wearing and quarantine now with vaccines lower coveted case numbers the fatigue the social emotional health considerations and so on many people are conflicted with uh where we're at with uh within our society it's not just us here in this district the the same kind of guidance that we're following exists as you know in in many districts across our state and others next slide so again the district instituted a mask for all policy at the beginning of this year and that stays in place today currently there's a mask advisory order issued by pierce county you do not need to open the link i

020just pulled out one little excerpt in there to illustrate that what that what that county advisory order states is that masks are required next slide point is with that you know the cdc recently came out with with an announcement related to masks in our state we had a governor at one point it imposed masking requirements that goes to the supreme court that gets shut down they're still in place remains this county order which is important and i'll get to some of the why of that here so why don't we just ignore the public health advisory if not for leaving the disagreement or the argument over whether the science says it's the right thing to do or not just just leaving that out of it for a second a there are we as a district have

021liability insurance coverage contract language specifies that you have that in that coverage up until you intentionally violate an order an ordinance a rule etc and so if it would be it had it has the potential to to be indefensible uh if and when the board were to have a lawsuit you may not have liability insurance coverage a student a faculty member gets ill they get hospitalized or worse we have liability insurance secondarily to that there's a state coveted immunity law that was passed i believe in march to give some immunity to schools for decisions moving forward but as a part of that it does not give the district's carte blanche to ignore governmental orders regulations rules and so on advisories whatever and then precedence i think is a third consideration for the board precedence and

022implications of school boards knowing more than public health should school boards override a public health decision and so on line up wherever your opinion is on that that's fine i'm illustrating points that i believe a school board should ponder with these kind of decisions next slide please so we've got 14 days left of this school year 14 days right now we will continue the mass policy that we have in place this summer between now and this summer really we will continue to work with public health that's what ph is public health and we certainly hope to make changes to our coveted mitigation plans to include the two things i'm talking about the mass policy and the close contact policy one or both same time different times whatever but i also feel like that's important messaging

023to say to the community so that the perception is not that we are here in this position to stay forever that we will forever moving forward into eternity be wearing masks and following the close contact quarantine rules as i mentioned at the beginning i myself i'm speaking for me my myself right now as i said earlier i'm anxious to see that some changes with with those things as well we have to balance the decision making this board has to balance their decision making with lots of those other factors that i mentioned on earlier slides next slide please no i did not say we were keeping mass for the summer thank you no i'm glad that you asked to clarify we'll get to that a little bit here but i'll just address that i was saying

024i think it's important to message for the here and now for today the mass policy stays in place for 14 days might it be extended into the summer maybe i'll finish i'll finish this up i'll finish this up right now jamie you're talking to the board and we're going to have the discussion and presentation after this right i'll finish the presentation as i mentioned on the first slide we intend for this to have some civil dialogue and that that that time will come so the good news is with frequent communication we do know that the state and the county are discussing these two issues as well the question is how long will that discussion go along what's go go along what's the timeline if and when there might be changes i honestly i can't get

025that information i don't i've tried and that information at this time is not available next slide that's the last one so again a point of clarification i think that it's important for the school district to convey the message that for the here and now our policies remain in place but for us to adjourn a meeting tonight and not have some dialogue around the possible changes that could come in the future and to not give any indication whatsoever to the community that we are we have our head in the sand we are not interested in having any conversation about any changes would be wrong so sorry to disappoint some who would like to hear this evening that at the snap of the finger things are different tomorrow that's not what you're gonna going to hear but

026again i think it's important for you to at least hear that the head is not in the sand that we're listening we're paying attention to science frankly our covet numbers are down vaccinations are up and we're hopeful that the science and the public health advisories moving forward will help to guide this board in making some of those changes thank you does the board have do you have any questions or clarifications of jamie we'll have time to discuss but i'd like to get community feedback first but before we go okay all right the mic is open so if anybody would like to address this as i said please tell us your name the schools and limit your comments to two minutes that would be helpful i know i already made a comment but i have a

027question about the presentation you just made you said you know put everything aside and just focus on the liability you're just putting our kids aside and focusing on like i'm more than willing to and i'm sure a lot of people are to sign a waiver that says i don't hold the school liable for any injury you know sickness whatever having to do with coven i would be more than happy to do that to not have my kid wear a mask yeah if i made just to clarify maybe i wasn't speaking loudly or clearly enough i or i could have even misspoke i i didn't intend to say push everything aside i thought what i intended to say was leaving personal opinions aside on some issues i pointed out a b and c a was a

028liability issue b was a public health advisory order and c was my memory short whether or not abort whether or not a board wanted to you know proclaim that they had a greater sense of knowledge and expertise in the area of these decisions than public health so i wasn't just to be clear i didn't mean to if i did say push everything aside and only focus on liability i misspoke if that's what i said the first time thank you for giving me the opportunity to clear up any of that misunderstanding yes please go ahead thank you and first of all i want to say thank you for being open to um listening to comments from us um my name is roxanne ross and i'm a resident a taxpayer and a parent within the school district

029obviously the cdc and the nearby school districts have all changed some policies in the past days and as you've mentioned we are literally just weeks i'm not sure i think we said 14 days away from the end of the school year my background is in medical sciences and math science and numbers tell the true story i stand here today to voice my concerns about contact tracing i do not know any of you on the school board nor do i know are your parental backgrounds so i come here unprejudiced and open-minded and i ask the same of you during the past six months our high school student has been contact traced three times two of them being within the last five to six weeks each of those three times he has tested negative for covet and

030it is my understanding the others in his contact trace group have tested negative as well not only was he out of the classroom but away from important opportunities in his and our family's lives content tracing goes far beyond the classroom for starters he's an athlete right now he's a dual sport athlete it's not just the emotional burden and anxiety of remaining out of the classroom and learning on his own but it's the field the court and his circle of support he is missing his friends and his family not only has his emotional self suffered his position on his team has but his quality of education and grades have suffered the most in my opinion the older the child the more consequences they suffer from contact tracing in speaking with other high school parents of our

031district i have learned several high schoolers have been in the same position in fact some have been contact traced five times and even seven let's think about that seven times that's approximately a whole term out of school our children are educated and groomed for the next chapter of life whether that be college technical college military or the working world many high school students are in advanced classes that are difficult to teach themselves or somewhat learn asynchronous asynchronously so if i could ask you to take a moment and imagine yourself sitting at the kitchen table with your child trying to help him grasp a deep understanding of advanced math a scientific equation a speech class a foreign language such as spanish or a hands-on course such as mechanics or welding yes there are children who have

032fallen significantly behind and are not passing and that is very important however i ask you to remain open-minded and remember there are kids with big dreams and aspirations you see for some of you who do not have children perhaps or perhaps yet of a high school age their time in the classroom and the quality of the education matters immensely to be competent confident and remain competitive they need to have the highest quality of education they need a deeper level of understanding of advanced concepts they are or will be faced in demonstrating this understanding on upcoming act tests and tests of like kind many have goals and needs to accelerate and sustain their gpa and for a few they need to stay competitive in their sports and extracurricular activities these next few weeks these next 14

033days for many and even the upcoming years for others have a significant effect on the college that they're accepted into the job requirements they can fulfill and ultimately their next step in life past river falls high school and for those of you without a child entering the college arena at this time all of this has a huge effect on offsetting the cost of rising tuition through merit scholarships based on the courses and the gpa averages they receive therefore i again remind you what you already know the remaining weeks of school here are tremendously important there is no more time for the children or the teachers to get caught up to make up and redo tests to teach themselves concepts or finish their missed labs in fact today i received a message from my son this

034afternoon he's literally only four days back into school from a contact tracing and he said mom they made me take the test i did miserable he's very upset so i stand here for my child other parents in our district for the students and the athletes please please terminate the contact tracing at the very least immediately last week the hudson high school board meeting a board member commented that they are unaware of any any positive coveted test as a result of contact tracing so my question to you as the board what percentage of river falls school district contact trace students have tested positive i'm gonna guess this is less than a quarter percent if not zero so please again i beg you to stop at least stop the contact tracing let's see their hidden smiles let's

035send them off finishing strong leaving the school year with a positive attitude let's continue to provide hand sanitizer and optional masking and let's encourage them to make smart decisions practice good hedging and let's arm them with the knowledge to keep their immune system strong thank you for your time and consideration go wildcats so i i just i want to [Music] ma'am i'd like to ma'am i'd like to respond and say that what you have just done is given some concrete examples of concerns that this school board has and that i have heard among other administrators which is why on one it's not that slide but it said specifically on there that in the future we are looking to re-examine what we are doing not only with mass but also with quarantine and i can also

036tell you that there is a concerted effort for advocacy at the county level to be able to have some changes so that we would be supported by the county so we understand and it it's pretty tough i i wish you well and i hope that your son can come you can go to the cdc website and look up a research report that they themselves submitted on one of your questions the number of people that get dinged out on a close contact that actually end up testing positive we i would say the answer directly would be no but i would also agree with your point i personally agree with your point that whatever that number is we believe it's very small arguments that we hear from state health department have to do with well you know

037you're not um you're only testing kids once they might have gotten positive seven eight nine days later and you you tested them on day seven and they might be tested positive on day 12. um if you get two or more people pretty soon before you know it we're going to have an outbreak yada yada and my you know frankly my response to that is if we think we get a sniff of an outbreak we have a proven track record as a district that we respond to that not everybody likes that either but we shut down classrooms we shut down a school building if it gets to be that dire of a situation then those would be the measures that we would have to take and so you know there's there's room for some changes i

038believe according to ironically the cdc's own research their policies are not directly lining up with their research yes ma'am hello my name is stacey wagner i am the mother of two children within the river falls school district at rocky branch and here at the high school so first board members i want to start by thanking you for the opportunity to speak tonight i appreciate the transparency that you've had as we've moved into the school year last year and i appreciate the slide that you put together however i would be remiss as a parent if i didn't approach the board with my concerns so i think you the members of the board have been put in a very difficult situation and hindsight definitely allows you and the community around you to agree that this may be

039far more than you ever signed up for so i'd like to begin with a question of the board if you are allowed to answer well those of you with students that physically attended school in a river falls school building this year either daily in the elementary schools or twice a week earlier this year and now consistently daily for their education to please raise their hands thank you i believe it is vitally important for the community to understand the representatives on this board and how you can or cannot relate to our children's situation and now to the reason i'm speaking tonight which i'm sure is not a surprise i am here for the same request as so many others have to make masks optional or at least parent consent you see as a parent it is

040my duty to make informed decisions about what i believe is best for the physical mental emotional and spiritual health of my children so i am using science and faith for my informed decisions countless scientific studies show that the rate of infection in school-aged children is dramatically lower and the cdc states i looked it up this afternoon to confirm their survival rate of 0 to 19 year olds is 99.99815 scientific evidence also points to the risks associated with wearing a mask and there have been extensive randomized controlled trial studies and analysis reviews of the studies which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles have you read the caution label on the most recent fabric mask you purchased most state not for

041medical use yet that is what is being advised medical use according to a university of oxford center for evidence-based medicine study there is no evidence that cloth masks are at all effective against virus infections or transmission so you the board the community and others are being misinformed by guilt and fear marketing messages that's right it's marketing messages there is little to no scientific evidence that i wear my mask for you and you wear your mask for me is anything other than marketing spin and decades of high-level science would agree with that statement if masks work as you and health advisors say then why has my son been close contacted for five weeks this school year while everyone is wearing a face covering in school many will ask why now with 14 days of school left

042and i say why not now the risks of wearing a mask far outweigh the perceived benefit masks inhibit airflow a mask traps those exhaled viral and pathogens in the mouth area increasing the load and severity of any disease that may be captured mass cause exhaustion and headache mass cause increased dermatology issues and i'm going to camp out on my last two risks for a moment because they are actually very critical face covering compromises communication the social and emotional well-being of our students our children the quality and volume of speech between two people wearing masks is considerably compromised are teachers and staff able to fully see the emotions ranging through our children with a mask no they are most definitely not you cannot tell what a child feels behind a piece of cloth and maybe the

043district is concerned about the county health advisory currently in place and if the district can be liable it's a valid concern but i present to you this question with a potential risk what if you are liable for the inappropriate management of face masks and all of these scenarios i'm about to list are very real i have heard them and i have seen them masks worn and cared for inappropriately are dangerous are you ensuring that every student wears a new mask every day are you ensuring that they are washed properly with all sterility management considered are you ensuring students aren't touching their mask or face area which contaminates it and potentially the surfaces they touch next are you ensuring proper wear and then perhaps a kindergartner didn't just accidentally pee on their mask drop it on

044the ground or have it covered in food for the most of the day and i leave you with a final study a recent german study found that masks worn by children for six to eight hours in school were alarmingly contaminated with 82 bacterial colonies and four mold colonies that's just after six to eight hours so i have faith that god has a plan and faith that you will all stop outsourcing your decisions to the unelected individuals at the county level state level and federal levels please please participate in the research and the independent thinking that goes along with all of the studies on both sides and allow us the parents of the community those who elected you to your positions in the first place the dignity to make our own informed decisions about what is

045best for our children thank you hi my name is jamie freeze i've got two children in the online classes um i'm a i'm a business owner here in this community so i do have i do have a lot of conversations with people that um work in the school district um so i know that the teachers have been vaccinated to those who have wanted to be vaccinated from my understanding correct me if i'm wrong have been vaccinated correct um i'm sorry what they had an opportunity okay thank you so that just further kind of proves my point and kind of helps with my questions i'm kind of wondering um with the schools around us uh in pierce county baldwin norrishman um hudson now everybody seems to be going mass optional as of june 7th june 8th

046and i'm just kind of wondering why we aren't leaving today with a decision on that at least to be optional when like i said everybody that's wanted to be vaccinated in the school board system has been vaccinated if they want to and as you've heard everybody else's um statistics on the zero to 19 year old uh survival rate with this covet i mean i'm just kind of wondering why we can't have a decision today to be at least mass optional for summer program school etc etc let me just briefly respond to the question and that's to say that we haven't said that we're not going to be making a change it said that we are going to be re-examining it we also need to await guidance from pierce county so yeah that's why i'm saying

047because i just i listened to the pierce county meeting last wednesday and they are all going uh mass optional with the school districts in pierce county so i'm just wondering why we aren't i guess is my question did you say other did you say pierce county school district county school districts yes um i know ellsworth um i have family in ellsworth so i know that they are mass optional as of june 7th i did not i did not uh watch a pierce county meeting no well our superintendent has regular personal contact with the pierce county department of health officer so we he's quite well informed that's why i'm kind of wondering like why we haven't if you have been talking with pierce county and with them especially being centrally located in ellsworth and their school

048district is obviously mask-free that's between 7th i'm just that's i guess that's my question if you guys are in contact why are we not mass optional as of right now come you know come june 7th after the school year we haven't we have said that we are going to that's what the slide said that we are we are not in a position to make the decision right now we have not yeah i would i would say i would try to i'll take a stab at the why of it fair question um i i think one is that the board together hasn't had enough conversation and needed to have this meeting and listen to some community comments gather more information from az at pierce county if that leaves you with the perception that we're late to

049the game or late to the table with that uh because you're hearing other districts have already made that decision i i don't know how to refute that necessarily or that perception at least but i'm trying to be honest to say that i think the board wasn't comfortable to be making that decision this evening and needed some needed to have this meeting in part as they move forward to make whatever decision they will make as we talked about earlier we all have a desire to see some changes all right thank you and uh thank you for being respectful and hearing people because um people that did listen to the piers county health board meeting it was kind of a mess people very condescending and i really appreciate your guys hoping this and letting us talk i

050guess so thank you you're welcome so let me um if i can stay follow up to that um so i think as a board we need to talk about so what would the next step be because if our next regular board meeting is the middle of june right if we were to make a decision to to to change any of this before that that would be a special board meeting correct and what's our process what would trigger a special board meeting and how would we go about that if we have an item that needs to be taken care of we have new information from pierce county we can call our regular board meeting we will have some conversation but i just want to finish with public comment is there anybody else who would like to

051address the board yes pardon me we will this is four days a week lifting five days a week in the gym and in the white zones it's getting caught up and as you've seen about wearing the mask and the bacteria and things like that and if at all possible like give them the light of day that they can go out and do this well what i'll tell you is this school board has a tradition of meeting every single monday night if we need to and so we are not hesitant to call a new meeting if there's an issue before us or there's new information you can rest assured that we will be here so ma'am over on this side yeah okay oh wow okay my name is heather carrell and i'm in the township of

052river falls i have a seven and a fourteen-year-old um they are virtually learning this year um so um what i've prepared is it's been 431 days since we were told two weeks to slow the spread that's 431 days my 7 and 14 year old have been at home distance or virtually learning 430 days 31 days away from their peers their friends teachers coaches and others critical to their educational career and let me assure you our children's struggle is real i'll be honest for a moment and i thought this mask thing was absurd from day one which is why i decided to do virtual learning for my children but i complied i followed the rules i made my kids follow the rules two weeks turned into 30 days 30 days turned into months and now months

053have turned into over a year and more honestly here i am tired my kids are tired tired of being told to comply in order to be a good person tired of the contradictions no doubt my fellow parents here tonight have presented you with a lot of information a lot of statistics science-based articles which i don't know if they'll make a difference to you tonight but i'm going to let you in on some facts that that i've come to see children are not now or ever have been super spreaders the cdc and dr fauci the who and everyone else have been caught on a multitude of occasions contradicting themselves on mass guidelines and nearly over 70 school districts in wisconsin are now mass optional or absolutely no restriction this includes surrounding districts in hudson new richmond

054and ellsworth i think it's time that we get back to supporting all of our children don't you we want our children in school my children want to go to school we aren't asking to eliminate masks we're asking for a choice just like it's a choice to keep my kids enrolled in the riverfall school district people are talking parents are talking i hear my children's peers and friends talking we've been patient we've stood by and we've stood silent and we've complied but i wouldn't expect that to continue for very much longer thank you my name is martin kretzman and i live in the township of river falls as well got three kids in the district one in rocky branch one at uh mayor meyer sorry and one here at the high school um two of the

055kids have diagnosed issues that don't allow them to wear masks they were strong enough to still come to school with these exemptions it's important for you to know that i've we've seen our children shamed and bullied for not wearing a mask when they're unable to not talking about a choice not talking about a protest unable to it's important for you to know that as a school board whom i voted for some of you it's important for you to know that that's happened with little to no consequence when it was brought up to teachers and administrators that there was shaming and bullying allowed in front of school staff on buses that's important for you to know that i appreciate what some of the folks here said about saying thank you for allowing us to talk i

056will not it's your job i've witnessed some pretty ridiculous circuses happened over the past 12 months with city council meetings board of health meetings county supervisor meetings that are shameful closed doors shutting down microphones i'm not going to say thank you for doing your job i will say i'm refreshed at what i'm seeing tonight i think it's important to listen to what your community is saying about our schools we live here we're not going anywhere we got kids small kids larger kids they're going to be going to the school district for a long time so no thank you i'm not going to say that i will say keep up the good work keep the dialogue going thanks [Applause] so where do i start angie krause falls i started a petition on april 28th to make

057masks optional angie can you just talk a little closer to the mic please thanks i um we received about 317 signatures good email up to you tonight i did i wasn't able to email the signatures so i do have that i just have one copy but um i do have that to give to you um i did request an actionable item for this meeting tonight to make masks optional he did about two weeks ago so just wanted to make you all aware of that um i had a preschooler at jacob's ladder this year and i would have had a second grader at west side but i pulled her from school this year to the mitigation and asking that i had agreed um i'm here tonight to ask sorry the board for support and these mass

058requirements in our school district to force our young people to wear these masks seven hours a day breathing in their own exhaust is despicable it's inhumane and it's child abuse how does a school mandate a policy without knowing every child's underlying conditions who's liable for the civil damages and the harm that these masks may be doing to these children the most scientific articles and guidelines in the context of the coven 19 pandemic highlight two potential side effects of wearing surgical face masks in public a false sense of security and the inappropriate use of face masks arms of prolonged masks are increasingly being documented in many studies especially in areas of health care workers and school children some of these harms include hypoxia which is a deficiency in the amount of oxygen reaching the tissues shortness

059of breath activation of fear and stress response rise in stress hormones fatigue headaches chronic stress anxiety and depression if masks are not exchanged regularly or washed when made of cloth pathogens can accumulate in the mask when improperly used the risk of spreading the pathogen including sars co2 may be increased i also am in support of ending all mitigation efforts including six feet distancing cohort groups close contact quarantine and the face masks i would like to see the lifting of these restrictions as aggressively as they were put in place you want to earn public credibility and preserve the credibility of public health officials you would demonstrate that you are willing to relax these provisions when the situation has improved pierce county has four cases on average per day as of may 15 2021. our population and

060pierce is around 48 000. some districts and schools around the state are giving choice and this district is not even talking about it of when it's going to happen our numbers are low i believe there was five cases in the superintendent's update this week and i don't know how many kiddos are in the school district about two thousand i'm just guessing um act with leadership not based on fear let us learn to live with coven instead of reacting to coven because this virus is not going anywhere one thing i wanted to touch upon i came across the wisconsin department of health services cova 19 testing in schools on their website i'm not sure if any of you have seen this i did email it to you tonight um it the participation in the program is

061voluntary if and when this is proposed i'm asking you to please not adopt this in our school district testing these kids based on the inaccuracy of these tests and violation of privacy issues i am totally against this and i believe parents should have a say in this new mitigation effort if the district wants to implement this for fall it is my understanding that pressure from public health regarding legal requirements and insurance liability add additional reasons for continued compliance from the district the advisory order is not a law so i'm a bit confused as to how the public health could turn around and sue the district and if that is true would it be fair to assume that you could face legal or civil action from a parent or parents regarding harm from mitigation efforts that

062are forced on our children i won't speak a lot about the propaganda on the school district's website because i believe i emailed you all about it i was very disappointed it wasn't just an informational post it was had a clear message of getting the shot ending the pandemic i just don't think it has any place on our district's page i am also concerned with the vaccine clinics being held on our school grounds taking the shot as a personal medical decision and it should not take place in the walls of the district after nine months of fearful social conditioning any teacher who sees an unmasked child as a threat should reconsider their career choice or at least the setting they choose and any adult who requires a child to do something against their will to make

063them safe should re-evaluate their morals any adult that says children have adjusted well are seeking to manipulate children without any consequence on their part those that serve our community have a responsibility to protect our rights they do not grant them to us therefore they cannot take them away decisions have been made in the absence of evidence which may be detrimental to a child's physical and mental health again i ask for your support today let the individual choose what is best for them thank you sir would you like to address the board no i don't think so anybody else okay at this point it would be oh one more just what real quick see about landing it um looking at your slide that you had up there of why not now i believe it was titled

064any three points listed the answers point your liability insurance coverage statement is a first there is no order ordinance law or rule so you are in violation of nothing so that reasoning is invalid i've never heard of the state covid immunity law i ask that you post that link on the agenda for the record um you say you can't make decisions yet without the science what science are you waiting for you should have the science today right now making being able to make a decision how come you don't know your numbers you should know your numbers you were elected to make just difficult calls um there should have been to angie's point again she requested that this agenda have an actionable item so you could vote on this today and you ignored that that's a

065problem you should have been voting tonight your policies okay your job is to educate our kids and kids correct and the policies that you're having in place are inhibiting their education that's what you're doing you keep mentioning the future we'll reevaluate masking in the future we'll reevaluate contact tracing in the future when when why are you not you say you want to hear from us are you going to actually hear us we've all spoken these are the people we the people are speaking to you asking you to make this these masks optional in the schools you need to have a special meeting please in june and make this decision so that come next school year this is not still going on this needs to end and lastly i have this on my other note but

066um we are not the cdc okay this is this is river falls and you guys get to cdc doesn't get to make decisions for our kids you do we put you in place elected you to make these decisions i suggest you do that take care of our kids take care of their well-being unmask excuse me unmask their face let it be an option so that you can properly care for them thank you i think it's important for people yep i think it's important for people to know too that when school school board members take the oath of office we commit to following and abiding by the law that's an important responsibility that we have as well but public health has the ability to establish the order so it's an advisory order and that order means

067that if we don't abide by it they do have the jurisdiction to be able to make decisions about for example closing school and those are things that we do have to be responsible to as school board members it's not the only thing but it's an important thing so sir pardon me are you asking if the board is scared of pierce county health i know the superintendent is not but i can't speak for the board that's all right i chose to give you a comment whether you asked for it or not you are certainly welcome to give this health officer i mean it was very controversial and a lot of people opposed it and here we are listening to their advisory i don't yeah i i recall there was a hearing like that held i believe

068in this facility here and there were lots of people there with lots of opinions i am i am aware of that what did did you say how many people live in pierce county 48 000 you said and you said there was 400 people here for that hearing i think it was closer so i i believe at this point i'm going to stop the dialogue between the board and the community because we're really here to listen so sir i'm going to turn over to you oh okay thank you um mark white check eleven prescott but i've got four grandchildren going to school here in the river falls school district welcome thank you one of them is seven years old and she has a severe breathing problem so it goes without saying that a mask is not

069good for her i haven't heard anybody say some of the things that i think a lot of us are starting to find out i'm going to be that guy lady that i go to a bible study with is a nurse and her friend who works at st john's had a uh her husband die in a motorcycle accident killed by a drunk driver cause of death covet 19. um the numbers aren't matching up to what's really going on there's no flu this year isn't that something back in 2019 have you heard of event 201 event 201 had bill gates the john hopkins the rockefeller institute globalist who won a one world government had a scenario what would happen in the event of a covet outbreak they had four different scenarios one of them was operation lockstep

070the things they were going to do to the people to take away their rights and bring on this one world government that's where this is heading this whole thing our small businesses are gone we lost over half the small businesses right now people aren't going to church you can go to a strip club and you can go to walmart you can do some of that but you can't go to the small businesses so there's agenda going on here the cdc that's funded by private people bill gates he's got like 20 billion dollars in vaccines right now he's eugenics so what's going on right now is far beyond us wearing the mask the masks are a symptom of our compliance to this one-world government this evil satanic one-world government that's coming and what you're doing to

071our children is just terrible um it's really time people wake up start looking for yourself look into event 201 look into some of the things that have been going down this is far beyond anything we're doing right now so that's all i got to say but i think there's there's an agenda behind the agenda and do your own research don't be afraid of being sued or anything like that you can't be sued that's first thing they did was say nobody can be sued for anything that happens with this so just do what's right you know what's right you know what's right in your heart i'm not going to give any science but just think about it once you put on that mask you give a warm moist environment for bacteria which should be expelled from

072you to incubate they incubate inside that all day long you rebreathe them in we're supposed to push out carbon dioxide and bring in oxygen it's not happening it's not happening at all and the blue mask that our people are wearing they've got morgellon fibers in them they're like asbestos they've got a mind of their own they get into your lungs and they're never coming out so think about what you're doing and think about it on an individual basis and don't be afraid of anything because our children's children will wake up on the country that they once conquered as slaves if we don't stop this and stop it right now so that's all i've got to say thank you [Applause] hello i'm amy griffin i have to high school i want to thank everyone for coming

073tonight and speaking i am with you and i just wanted to share something i learned a few weeks ago about children germany did do a study they let parents physicians record in some kind of document it was 20 000 parents responding for 25 000 children and they've told the side effects that their children are experiencing this was done last october 2020 so this is what the side effects of their children experience from spring summer and the fall going back to school it was a lot of headaches 60 irritability around 60 um the lack of desire to go to school over 30 percent this is 25 000 children in germany but we're all humans how can that be much different than what we're experiencing here and i've seen those masks they're filthy i wash mine every

074night i'm after my kids to give me their mask so i can wash it so they don't have to wear the disposable ones because i hate the disposable ones i also write about the fibers getting into your lungs and they accumulate so please be brave and listen to your community this is a few of the many who who know this is a wrong know what's going on and are fearful for the future thank you [Applause] good evening i just drove to town about 10 months watching this um because i was upset i'm upset that the lack of support for the school board and i want to speak for the silent people that respect the decisions that you've made so far my cousin right now is 40 years old in the hospital getting weaned off ventilator

075my sister-in-law spent 42 days almost died from coven this is very personal to me very personal my loved ones have been and my aunt still cannot see her son he spent his birthday in the icu um i think what we've been doing is the best we can based on what we know and i just want to say i support you i support that you're going to make good decisions based on the information that's before you and i trust you as our elected officials to do the right thing my son played basketball the whole year no issues ran in a mask back and forth back and forth no problem no lung issues we've had no illnesses in our house all year the masks have not hurt our household at all and it's brought peace of mind

076to our family so i know people have all sorts of data my data is the people that i love have been devastated by this illness and you know it's it's it's very personal so i appreciate you guys opening the floor to everyone but i want you to know that not everybody is coming up to speak in support of you right now because they have other commitments but please know that that is very strong in the community as well thank you for your perspective okay i think this is the chance for the school board to have some conversation to respond to the powerpoint presentation i actually have a question about clarification what pull your microphone up so i have a question a clarification question so of the school districts that have made masks optional at what

077date did they is that changing is that are they all waiting until the end of the school year or did any of the school districts make that decision where it was immediate so those are all kind of typically they are going through the end of the school [Music] by the ones year are making them optional for summer the rest are right now so you will find that in your email to all school districts and schools there's a handful there's a handful that are optional as of today or have been out of this statewide i don't have the number but but but the majority of them have made the decision to make masks optional as of the last day of or after the last day of school for this year yeah so there's like 423 districts

078angie said the number's about 70 that's on this spreadsheet that you sent 70 districts that have made some decision todd is saying some of them are optional effective immediately i think everybody in this room would agree that locally to county area three county area polk saint croix pierce i don't think anybody in this room is aware of one district that has made masks optional today but the reference that was made by other people earlier is that you're aware of some districts in our region that have made masks optional at the end of this school year leading into summer person made a comment about ellsworth going masks optional maybe in the summer i think other somebody else said something about prescott as well or the other school districts in pierce county which would be prescott ellsworth

079baldwin hudson yeah spring valley those are of course river falls as well but i don't see i don't see prescott on the list that you distributed nor do i see ellsworth on there i guess i didn't check with spring valley so they haven't decided what you're saying right okay but they haven't decided then haven't voted yeah ellsworth's not on your list nor is prescott okay so none of the schools in pierce county are on the optional list yet so just just a minute point of order stacy at this point are we having a conversation at the board or is the board having a conversation with the 20 people who are here tonight no disrespect to those of you who are here tonight but i think the board needs to have a conversation with itself right

080this is what you've been asking us for so you're you're you've done your present public presentation okay please okay now we need to talk as a board right so let's talk to each other all right there are 20 people here um parents here who are representing a point of view and we've they've been very articulate some of them have made some very good points tonight we need to talk as a board so let's talk as a board okay do you have anything that you'd like to say at right at this point or should we should i call him somebody else do you have a point to make well i think i'd come back to my other comments so what's our next step and how are we going to do it okay and i think each

081board member needs to say something here tonight this is this is an important topic i'll give a little if if i may add to the board conversation is that yeah okay so i would i would assume to your question alan some of what you as a board may want to hear would be what does the public health advisor have to say about all of this and i can either convey some of the messaging or i can ask her to be present but at this time what i want to do is i want to share with you the most recent conversations that i did have with her in my preparation for this meeting conveying personal concerns that i have with the social emotional well-being of our students who are continually being identified as close contacts and

082missing out not just on more academic face-to-face we we we're doing our best to keep the education line open even when they're at home but it's not in my opinion the same as being here but more importantly are the the opportunities that uh sorry roxanne maybe had mentioned related to other after-school intramural extracurricular involvements that are so very important it's a part of what we're so proud of in this district is not just the academic rigor that we provide to our kids but it's the other things that we consider to be educational and when we're contact tracing out so many students a z snyder i've got a concern with this i personally am confused at the research study that i see with the cdc that identifies a low number of close contacts who eventually test

083positive that doesn't seem to align with our practice can we a shorten it down to six feet go to three feet b can we eliminate if all parties present have masks on can we not get into that people are clamoring over let's see it's mandatory i wear a mask but even when i'm wearing a mask you contract trace me out of here the number of incidences that we've had in this district admittedly it's difficult for us to identify in all cases sometimes parents if if a student is home as a close contact sometimes we may not know did they go get a test did they test positive they may have had they may have been positive never got tested because they were asymptomatic and on and on those those lists go my personal belief is

084that the cdc health department agencies and so on took what they felt at the time and we also most many of us including this board supported this very stringent layered approach to mitigation layering is where a mask physical distancing close contact slash quarantine isolate those that become tested positive i'm missing a fip pardon me yep hygiene sanitize your buildings wash your hands this layering approach admittedly don't be fooled we as a district have never been perfect in any one of those five areas we are flawed in every area we're doing the best that we can but our numbers are so far down now we're averaging four a week asked me in september if i thought four a week was an impressive number i'd have told you i was scared based on what we've all endured

085and experienced now for the last 14 15 months what we've learned anecdotally as well as through the research as well as what we see and witness with our own eyes of the impact that this has on kids social emotional well-being continues to grow heavy on all of our minds i know balancing that now with what is a z what has a z told me in the last two weeks versus you as a board might want to hear from her soon things like the potential for outbreak and we have to stay the course on these mitigation efforts and this layering approach of those five areas the concerns that we we could go backwards and see increased numbers and so on and to that i'm also saying then we'll shut down a classroom and we'll shut down

086a building and we'll do what we have to do if that happens but but i think jamie again i want to hear from the board i want to have a board discussion about this okay unless we don't have anything to say let's there's seven of us here let's the seven of us yeah sorry i went on a little bit of a bunny trail there i i i got into that because i thought one thing the board would want to do is to know what is the personal opinion as of the last week regarding our county health advisor i will be quiet now no i i did want to know that so i appreciate you saying that jamie say it again i did want to know that i did want to hear that all right so

087i appreciate jamie speaking up about that i think that was pertinent my i'll start my position is that i think it's appropriate for us to continue to wear masks through the last 14 days of school i think that we have come through this far i'm also not anxious to be on the wrong side of the pierce county advisory order i think that it is our responsibility to be aligned with them i am anxious to see the results of our advocacy with pierce county in particular related to the the close contact and quarantine i'm hopeful that we would be able to have an adjustment on that so that not so many kids are getting are outside of school that's a that's a big concern and as far as the summer i think that we need to

088pay attention to what pierce county tells us they are able to provide relevant scientific information for us to be able to make an informed decision about summer school hopefully there would be enough evidence to suggest that we can loosen up and the last thing i'll say is there's a big part of me that tends to be fairly competitive and i often like to be first i don't necessarily care about being first on this i want to be able to get it right so just because some districts have made a decision right now about the summer and their first that doesn't bother me i want us to get the decision right for our school district based on information that's relevant from pierce county that's where i'm that's where i am right now stacey i'll share my

089feelings um i'm i'm mostly in agreement uh i i don't think i think now we're down to 13 days after today in terms of school and so i i don't see a need for us to make a change in regard to the mass i have said this before but i think the close contact uh is a far bigger problem for the students the families and the teachers and i i i would love to see something be able to change there um and i think that's that's a much bigger issue for me than than keeping the mass for the next 13 days um i i would support making an assumption i guess about what i think might happen at the pierce county level i've read the order and some of the references in there dating back

090to march 31st for vaccine availability and some of the numbers for the county that that they're relying on for for vaccines and things that they're basing some of their decisions on those have certainly changed over the last couple months and so i would be very hopeful that we would see either that order not extended or or something change hopefully before that but um if it were june 4th i would i would fully support um adopting both of those changes by that time and i know we're not quite prepared to vote on that but that's at least where i stand with it [Applause] so so todd just just so i know and so you know the acoustics on this stage down here are horrible go closer to your mic out there closer go closer yeah you

091got to be right next to the mic so the acoustics on this stage are horrible even for us to hear each other so so you're saying that you're okay with the mask the rest of the year yes the contact tracing thing that i would like to see the contact tracing change um i i i am i i tend to side with jamie's point that i i don't that's a personal feeling more so than anything i think if i'm making the decision i would continue that through the school year as as tough as that would be unless we got a different direction from pierce county because i'm i'm not feeling compelled to start picking and choosing um you know the the next county order that um i may or may not agree with um so i

092i would like to see that change i think i would feel more comfortable about that if we had a different a different tone from pierce county but i would advocate a lot more strongly for for the contact tracing than i would making a change to masks between now and the end of the year i don't i don't personally see a need to mess with that for 13 days my hope would be both of those go away when we start summer so i agree well i'll chime in my um my view is i i support staying the course for the rest of this the school year the next 13 days the context of how i think about this i don't think we've come through this unscathed but i think the the measures that we've taken throughout

093the last 14 15 months have helped us come through this far better than a lot of places in the world um and so i and i'm i'm a scientist so it's hard for me to not think about this from a scientific perspective i mean that's that's where i come from i have a doctorate in molecular biology i ran a dna testing lab for years i isolated rna and dna and i know how to do the pcr tests that they do for these it's just it's just what i did in my career for a long time so virtually all of the science that i read not all of it but virtually all of it supports the medical and the public health approaches to the to the way we've dealt with the pandemic i've tried to read

094some of the things i've been sent that are um sort of suggesting that there's a balance of data that says otherwise and that data that's just doesn't look like data to me it's more commentary so i try to i try to be balanced in what i look at and i and i look at all sides um but boy for me my personal perspective and how i'm going to make a decision in this is going to be from a scientific perspective and it's and it's because of the potential as as one person said here of the lethality and the and the the harm that this disease can cause um if this was something else that didn't cause such harm might be you know we still look at it from a scientific perspective but the measures would

095be very different and there's a lot of people that i get feedback from there's a very large constituency that is very happy with how we have the approach we've taken that we they feel have allowed them to protect their children and their families from harm so they may not be here tonight speaking out and i appreciate everybody who's here tonight speaking out i know that can be a difficult thing to do um and i and i absolutely think it's great that we get all sides of the of the all perspectives in this matter but there's a lot of people who who really are very very feel very strongly as well that we need to stay safe until we really get through this as a as a in the world as a world so i also

096having said all that i also would support changing for the summer but that for me that would have to be based on some some guidance from the experts even though i'm a i'm a scientist in one respect i'm not an epidemiologist i'm not a medical doctor i don't claim to make those claims so i but i do look to those experts for guidance in the in these situations and i don't think we should pretend to be epidemiologists and medical experts in this situation so i would i would definitely support changing for the summer if that was supported by our public health and by the cdc and so on so we're getting support for that yeah other board members bob um like everyone else i'm frustrated with what's going on um i uh i don't see

097a reason why we need to change course for the beginning of the balance of the year balance of this particular school year like todd i think the close contact tracing has been real disruptive probably much more so than i think wearing the masks themselves that i would love to see that end right now but if we're not supported by pierce county public health and the author and the other medical experts i don't see that happening however i think we need to take and continue to take i shouldn't say that we've not done this already but continue to talk with az snyder in terms of where we're going to be at by the end of the school year i i ideally for summer school i'd like to see the masks optional and contact tracing gone the

098other the reason i um would like to see that and what i would reason with az is that we're much better able to socially distance for summer school i mean we have a classroom now that has 27 students in it might be down to 10. number two is these kids aren't eating at summer school i mean that's another area of risk for them outdoor activities many of them can actually participate in the outdoor um there's definitely a reduced concentration with busing and that type of thing so that kind of reasoning to me would lead me to believe that she would be very favorable and others would be fair favorable but lifting some of those restrictions for the summer activities i uh i appreciate people coming out tonight it's very difficult to sometimes get up in

099front of others and talk about these things like mike i've had many different parents say thank you for what you've done that's why my kids can attend school this year and i've i i'm happy to see that i think as a district we've been tremendously transparent about what we're doing what we're trying to do what we'd like to do and i think jamie and the staff has has been very good about keeping the parents up to date so for my vote anyway or from my opinion i think we need to stick with it right now at least through the end of the school year but obviously be looking to our public health officials for further guidance thank you i ask i'm sorry i don't mean to jump in can i when jamie when you talk

100to daisy did did she reference the the end date for the the order that's currently in there june 4th or talk i don't know that you've made a comment about what her what her feeling or indication is one way or the other like i said some of the a lot of the language in there references vaccines and availability and those kind of things i'd just be curious what her statement yeah i'll be a be just a little guarded out of respect for her so that i'm not putting words in her mouth but my memory from conversations i've had with her very recently are that she continues to advocate at the state health department for this kind of dialogue to really be part of the conversation that's taking place with those that have more authority over

101her and so i i know that has taken a few bad raps over the last 15 months or whatever but she too um you know the best interest of our kids balanced with the best interest of our community you know things like 99.9 of children survive if they contract covid her interest goes beyond that age group she has to also look out for all age groups in all facilities and how that the spread can affect the spread of covet even asymptomatic children could contribute to a larger community spread but but she's she's advocating for this dialogue around masks and the close contact quarantine piece to have further conversation at the state level and within the counties and so on as well you go i just had another question as well about the liability um i

102when that part of the conversation came up i i don't think of the liability issue being that we might be sued by pierce county i think it's more we might be sued by a parent who whose child gets deathly ill or dies or gets hospitalized or something and then and then the fact that we went directly against the the vast majority of the expert advice puts us in a liability situation that's that's what exactly puts us there the question is did you cons did you um consult with our district attorney yes stacey as the president stacey and i had a conversation last week with legal counsel on all of all of these matters as well yeah okay so your comments were kind of coming from that perspective completely informed by that so it wasn't just

103it wasn't i got kind of going back to the comment about the the um the advisory whether that has any legal standing what you're saying is it the our district attorney that person's guidance was there is some liability that we need to take seriously here yeah okay exactly i'm sorry yeah yes our attorney talked about in fact he said there are two words next to it advisory and order and some people would like to be able to focus on advisory but as your attorney i am focusing on order that this is something that so you look at look at saint craig county website you'll find that they have what is called an advisory doesn't have that other word order attached to it it's an advisory and just to cut the chase i mean again people

104can have opinions about whether an advisory order or an advisory could cause further liability concerns for a district the fact of the matter is they could period drop the mic they could possibly but even beyond that we want to do the right thing we might get sued we want to do the right thing as i think about our conversation tonight in fact each time we've talked about this and we've met and we've talked a lot about this in the last 14 15 months i'm taking back to that conversation we had in july and when we had the options what are we going to do we're going to do totally online we're going to be totally face-to-face we're going to kind of have a hybrid remember a conversation around it at that point was none of

105these are good options and none of these options are going to get universal support in the district and with parents what's the most what's the best course and the most responsible course for us to take and that's the decision we made to go with the hybrid and um the face to face with the lower grades um masks and and the distancing and the kinds of things that we did this year and it's worked well for us it's worked well um i made the comment to somebody the other day that you know for the last 30 years i've put my seatbelt on every day and there's not been one time in that 30 years where that seatbelt has saved me okay but that doesn't mean i shouldn't have worn my seatbelt for the last 30 years

106okay so the things we've done this last year have helped us in what we've done this is a public health issue as much as it is an individual issue so it's it's um so i think as we as we've moved through this we've had we haven't had a lot of infections we haven't had a lot of people in the hospital etc so from that standpoint my feeling is the decision we made a year ago was the right one now going forward i don't want to see us doing this in the fall in fact we're going to have hard time with community support i'm not sure that it's the direction we've learned an awful lot in the last 14 months so we need some direction and i know jamie you've pushed hard on pierce county public

107health about the contact racing thing because we've all been concerned about it we talked about it at our last meeting and that's the issue that i'm most concerned about and i think one of the parents roxanne probably made the best case of any of the parents here tonight talking about some of the effects and i think that context thing has had the most impact from what i hear from most parents the masks are are kind of a secondary thing it's the distancing it's the being out of the building it's all those kinds of things the masks for the most part from what i'm hearing overwhelmingly it's a it's a minor issue that doesn't mean it's not a significant issue for the people here today but it's important for us as board members to also keep

108in context what our role here is and our role is the question was asked earlier are we intimidated are we afraid of the pierce county public health no i'm not absolutely not and i'm not afraid of 20 people who show up at a board meeting tonight either it's it's we have to do what we need to do there are thousands of people in pierce county there are thousands of people here in this district there are 20 people here tonight there are 300 and some names on the petition that's not to minimize those and i've heard some good things here tonight i want to do that but a small number of people we all we all talk and act in our our circles of of information so it begins to sound like there's a whole bunch

109of people out here but i think we've made the right decision so far what do we do the last couple of weeks i think the masks i'm i'm fine going with the masks the last couple weeks the sooner we can do something about the contract tracing the better and if we can remove the mask thing for this summer everything is beginning to open up and businesses are opening up target just announced today at noon they're not going to require masks although i was struck today being in hudson a number running some errands today the number of people who are still voluntarily wearing masks so i know there's still a lot of mask support out there so right i think we're moving in this direction but from a liability standpoint and because we're or our obligation

110i think a responsible obligation as a school board is to work with our public health office that's what their role is for advice not pull stuff off randomly to get guidance from them and to see how quickly we can move on this so i don't know what that means for action tonight and maybe some of you can suggest what action we do tonight or don't take tonight we're not taking any action tonight when we get to the future agendas we can ask to have something put on there but there will be no action tonight so so far this is the board's time so i we i'm also kind of the appointed time keeper here is it from aj quick from that board why rebecca's not watching your monthly meetings i know you're taking advice straight

111from her but you also need to be watching your meetings they meet once a month like please if you're taking so at this point we have the from the board the board members who have spoken up i'm hearing i am hearing there please you don't get to demand that you hear from the board okay you can ask them in an email but you don't get in a public meeting to do this ma'am i recognize that and if you're listening what i said is i was summarizing where we are so so far so that the other board members who haven't spoken will have a chance so please let me keep my process going so at this point based upon the comments that we've had so far i'm hearing widespread support for continuing masks for the last

11213 days of school that everybody so far has had concerns about close contact quarantine lengths that were anxious to be able to get adjustments made there we're really pleased with our superintendent continuing to do advocacy on that issue as well as the fact that we are anxious for a change for summer school and we are going to be waiting for more guidance from aza and pierce county that's what we've had so far but we have other board members and i'm just wondering if you'd like to weigh in cindy yeah so um stacy i think i think you need to be a little cool just pull it in stacy i think to your point earlier this board has proven all year long that we're more than happy to meet right every monday that we need to

113meet so uh having a delay of a month is not really we've shown throughout the whole year that that's not an issue right when when guidance changes we can definitely meet on a monday that's really easy to do my perspective is that the um there's a continuum of beliefs right on the subject there's there's folks at both ends my my belief is as a board is our responsibility to be to land in a place that's best for our community so i tend to land on better safe than sorry um and tend to land on we've we follow the experts with public health guidance so i think the question for me too is that it bothers me a little bit the question about are we afraid of public health i think really the question for me

114is how can we make sure that we're working together with public health to make sure that we're doing what's best for our community and i think we've done that i think jamie's relationship with a.z snyder has been really beneficial for our district but i definitely support continuing with mass through the end of the year i do hope that guidance changes and we can change going into summer it would be really disappointing to continue into summer with masks the quarantining drives me crazy the two weeks having kids out of school two weeks four weeks you know three months some of them is painful but again i think we have to do what's best for the sometimes you got to do what's best for the greater good of the community and and i think that we've made

115those decisions this year thank you um stacy i'm sorry i don't mean to jump it but the other thing that i as i look ahead on the calendar i know we're not afraid to meet on mondays but um after next monday then it becomes memorial day and then it becomes uh june 7th i think and so um that's the only other thing i've mentioned too is that we're not up against it as far as as far as the deadline for june 4th but there's not five mondays between now and then either absolutely and and there is nothing sacred about only meeting on mondays sure it's just i would not want to put the school board in the position of taking action tonight based upon information that we don't have and guidance that hasn't come out

116yet about that yeah that's fair i just wanted to remind people too of what's coming up in terms of that's what i mean by it we don't need to be the first ones to make the decision about summer we'll make it when we have the information so correct anybody else want to add anything well i'll just say um just because i'm the last one i'm all for making masks optional or not required on the last day of june 4th and i agree with everybody else that the quarantine that's the biggest problem and you know we've kind of gone against some advisories from pierce county health before so if i think about it over the year the kids they've gone to play sports and we've talked to worked with the band and the music and got

117them back going and kids are starting to go on trips and all that kind of stuff so i kind of feel like this board it's not um if we were going to do things that's how we were going to do them and how we were going to do them safely so i just i i'm ready to move on i think by the time summer school comes we can move to masks optional and really we need to look at the quarantining and i know i do want to say this out loud that jamie i've asked jamie to talk to az numerous times about the data about how many kids have tested positive in the close contact and we haven't really gotten firm numbers from her am i am i misspeaking on that janie has she ever

118given you a firm number on that she gave me that cdc report that i've mentioned and that's where but my point is is that we have enough data within pierce county and within the school district and um we can make a pretty we can make a pretty easy uh determination on that if we could get the numbers so yeah can i just comment on that i just one thing i i want to talk about this relationship that we have with az because i think that that is really important and i say a z and pierce county interchangeably but she has interacted with us on a variety of levels we have this advisory order that however is different from the advice that she has given us when she'll listen to a plan and say well i'll

119tell you this is safe this is safer this is the safest we have not always chosen what is her safest position and in those times she's helped us to be able to come up with a compromise to work that is different however from her advisory order so and we've had good conversation with her and i think i hope that she would say that that we have been receptive and that even when we have not taken her safest route that she understands why and has helped us to be able to do it as well as we can i also do want to say one other thing too um i do appreciate the fantastic work that the administrators have done because you know they're in the schools every day and they see what's going on and i

120just do have to say that you guys have done you guys have done a great job because our kids have been safe and they have had plenty of opportunities because we have followed a lot of the guidance masks being one of them i i don't know i'm not so i i just want to give kudos to you guys too because you guys have worked awfully hard and we all listen we listen to a z we listen to administration we listen to teachers we listen to parents and you know we had a lot of split votes we had a lot of split votes all year long because we didn't always agree on everything either but we have to look and we have to listen and we have to weigh both sides how are we going to

121keep how are we going to keep everybody as safe as possible with giving them as many opportunities as possible the the the decisions that we've made haven't always been popular on either side but we do have to recognize that there's been a lot of information coming our way and a lot of opinions coming our way and we are just trying to figure out the safest best possible way to move forward in educating our kids and giving them opportunities so i am in favor of keeping the mass mandate until the last day of school and then moving forward because we have to look at the data too and so um the quarantining that that yeah that's it but so i just wanted to say thank you to you seven of them and but i'm going to

122go over to you mike just i want to comment come back to the data issue because i think this topic came up before this idea of how many close contacts end up resulting in something and i and i think the answer wasn't that we don't have data from a z it's the data isn't really knowable because we don't do routine testing so there's a lot of things that can happen that is never really knowable um so you know you could get data on what is noble but it's just a slice of the reality we don't know including asymptomatic yeah exactly and then whether it's passed to another student or somebody in the community or a family member or something and then that's not tracked back to the school but it's still an event and that's

123the part that's not knowable but it absolutely there are absolutely examples of that happening but it's not routinely you know tested so i want to do justice this to this conversation i'm also recognizing that it's eight o'clock and the school board still has some important business ahead of us is there anything more from the school board on this this is an information item so we are ready to move on we are going to go on now to administrative reports and uh the presentation will be about our plan or the beginning of a plan for learning recovery and jennifer peterson please all right well thank you and aaron's going to be pulling up the powerpoint presentation which was added to your board books today but part of the federal government allocation to states and trickle down

124to school district has been with the esser funding so looking at that elementary and secondary recovery act and how we're supporting school districts across the nation in different places to address initially it was called learning loss and i like the spin that we've taken here in river falls to really look at that learning recovery process and how do we want to utilize some of our funds to really impact student learning and to support them in not just academic achievement but also those other things that have been minimized or students really haven't had the opportunity to participate in over the past 14 15 months so one of the things that jamie asked me to do is to not just get feedback from our administrative team but to to take it and drill down to a step

125further where we could really look at getting teacher input getting other stakeholders throughout the district and bringing them together to collect more input to guide the district and how we utilize some of our esr funds and yes those ester funds can go for ionization machines and processes in our buildings they can go for ppe they can go for a lot of things but one of the things that the federal and state government has asked for us to do and the department of public instruction is to really look at spending a certain percent percentage of all of those fundings that are given to districts to address this learning recovery option so as we go on we kind of set on the next slide we kind of set a mission by saying we wanted to be able

126to provide recommendations to the administrative team and to the school board for how we're going to really be looking at spending the funds that we have focused on academics focused on instruction and looking at how we can support positive learning experiences for our students and for your information i did include the link in the powerpoint slide if you want to even drill down further but we started looking at some high yield impact areas so on the next slide i'm just going to kind of take you through the process that we had we actually skipped just doing google meets and zoom meetings and we actually determined that we wanted to meet in person so we had over 32 participants participate in this process we collected input from district-wide building representatives and grade level representatives we had

127teachers from different content areas math science social studies english participating in our task force we had student services team members we had administrators we had other components that we were trying to look at every different way we could look at addressing learning recovery for our students we really focused and prioritized our work based on our three district priorities and what really came out loud and clear was we wanted to be able to provide additional support for social emotional learning for literacy and for mathematics we had two different task force meetings we met on both may the 4th and may the 11th we used the media center over at meyer middle school we met for about an hour each time we practiced social distancing we had the entire room set up teams were set into groups

128where they were able to collaborate with their colleagues the discussion was great we got some wonderful ideas the first time we kind of looked at some of the key areas that i'm going to share with you and then we came back on the 11th and we really dived deeper and we prioritized what we felt would be the the best kind of like what we were talking about before here's a good practice a better practice than the best practice so we tried to prioritize suggestions for how we might want to spend this money in where we would get the best impact for really impacting student learning as we continue moving forward so on the next slide you will see kind of a description of this meeting one like i went through we reviewed all of the

129allowable expenses as well as i said we focused on our priorities here were some of the key areas that really rose to the top where we are able to spend monies using our esser funds we wanted to really focus on our early learners on providing their literacy support and making sure that they could read early on in their education to impact future educational opportunities we looked at expanded learning time including summer school sessions high quality instructional materials either tools and resources that our teachers need to better impact student learning moving forward mental health services providing for those social emotional needs of both our students and our staff as we move forward in this learning recovery process looking at ways we can close the gap for all students including our multilingual learners our el students our

130gifted and talented students our students that might need student services and additional supports in the classroom wanting to make sure that we are focused on providing a well-rounded education for absolutely all students within the river falls school district so once we identified and collected some of those recommendations we adjourned for the day staff had the opportunity to go back and talk to other colleagues grade level team members department members people within their buildings and they were provided with a google form where they could actually add additional ideas between um our first meeting and our second meeting so that we could come back and consider all of those ideas some other considerations that dpi has said are allowable expenses and this list is in no particular order we can spend monies on transportations to provide more

131supports for our students a perfect example of that is this summer for summer school we are providing for transportation outside of our in town students right now we're looking at two to three different transportation routes to go out and pick up students that truly need to come and participate in our summer school program and we want to make sure that they have that access and opportunity compensatory services family and community engagement how can we better serve our families and the needs that they have for our students here in river falls food and nutrition services i mentioned some of these before also developing formative assessments interim formative assessments to make sure that we can focus and narrow in on where we want to focus on closing that achievement gap reducing the digital gap do we have

132enough devices for our students do we have enough hot spots to support those that was a big investment this past year making sure that when students were in distance learning they had the opportunity and access to learn and school safeties and even libraries are other areas of consideration our second meeting we really came in and we honed in on some of the items that staff had brought up and suggested for some of these esser funding expenses and then we prioritized them we got together we talked in our groups and we kind of went around and we in no better way of saying it we voted on what our top ones were staff had stickers where they were able to select their top sticks out of all of the items that we had listed and so

133once we collected that we were able to come back we kind of debriefed and talked about it and since then what we've been able to do is um some of us have been able to sit down i've met with jamie i've met with other people other administrators we brought it to our admin team we started looking at some of the items that were identified and maybe where some of those themes and priorities really were among some of the top recommendations i have this on the next slide and again they're in no specific order but i've given you a link where you can actually see a list of all the items that our staff members came up with some of the recommendations were focusing on getting that additional literacy coach so we can focus on early

134literacy for those early learners math intervention support transportation again for summer school mental health services tutoring after school or before school off offerings opportunities for our students to engage in getting the support that they need additional el support bilingual translators literacy training professional development came out loud and clear things that we needed whether it was for strategies for some of our primary teachers to professional learning community training for staff within buildings and again as i said that link is there and it's provided for you so you can drill down deeper i'm happy to answer any more questions that you might have but where are we at currently in the process other than the fact that we're really looking at these sharing them with our administrative team we're looking at best practices where are we going

135to get longevity in our investment also recognizing that as a good fiscal agent we want to make sure that we're not creating items and selecting items for from our esser funds that will impact the future budget so having some of those conversations about where those priorities should be and we really want to make sure that we're making good use of our funds based on the alignment to our district priorities that's something that the board is charged with us that's something that we want to honor and we want to do our due diligence in the use of these esser funds so really kind of where we at our final recommendations will be made based on the available funding our list was quite exhaustive and i think all of us went into it with our eyes wide

136open knowing that we were going to create a list that far exceeded available funds but i think that this task and the input that we've received from all of our stakeholders will also help us in future budgeting priorities and really making us think long and hard about what we already do with our budget to be good fiscal agents here in river falls oh any questions thank you jennifer yes bob jennifer i appreciate the work you and your team have done on this particular topic the recovery is real i mean we need to work on this um the question i have is uh it's well first off it's going to take more than a year to get out of this to get back to where we need to be how long do we have to use

137the esser funds i mean how is it one academic year two academic years well actually we have sr one two and three at this point and partial allocations but right now we have funding available through september of 2024. so we have good three years out that we can look at what this investment might be and no doubt your group has enough activities to carry you well through there thank you anything else yeah just again i joined um bob thanks for your work on this jennifer this is what the board has really wanted is um are we digging out of this i think that's this is something we've been talking about for months now we we know that there was always going to be a light at the end of the tunnel and how were we

138going to address the learning gaps and all those kinds of things that had happened during this pandemic so i like the steps that you've moved into my and maybe i missed this in in what you were talking about but it appears to me that these are all academic we're addressing academic gaps and one of the things i've been really interested in is how do we use extracurricular activities as a vehicle to help us address some of these gaps but also maybe more importantly to re-engage students so everything not just sports but everything theater and mock trial and ffa and shooting club and and all of those kinds of things have you had any conversations about how to engage extracurricular activities to support the kind of work you're doing here i think some of those topics

139did come up i know we've had some conversations around summer school with those conversations but we also have with just looking at some before and after school activity options as well as the summer session so that's all part of the conversation and while this year may be tougher to get some of those things going again because it's for three years this is potentially something that we can also utilize for the summer of 22 and 23 as well and beyond i i really think that getting kids excited about school and there's a whole variety of ways to do that but extracurricular activities is one way that we do that and one of the fortunate things is there's traditionally been a good connection between our extracurricular activities and our academic pursuits especially in in in auxiliary themes

140that we use like character education and some other kinds of things so i would encourage this group and the administration generally to think about ways of engaging our new activities director david crale and how we maybe think about trying to use some of this funding to support how we address those learning gaps so jennifer can you tell me just the brief version what's the fast revival that is one of the family engagement opportunities as well and that was something that was actually here in river falls prior to even when i came so but really looking at bringing families in and kind of plugging them into some more community engagement acronym fast is families and schools together well jennifer it sounds to me like you and your team have done an awful lot of foundational work

141on this and we are going to look forward at the next ed program meeting to hearing some of the specifics and the priorities so thank you and we will talk more about it later thank you okay it appears to me that our student is not able to be here and today is her actually her last meeting so i'm going to ask if mr lucky if you could take her label give her our thanks and tell her it's a really good thing for a college dorm to put her name on there yeah but she needs her little her name plate all right thank you um and so now we're going to go to the district equity inclusivity and diversity committee update i believe that this is going to be short so david and the inmate come

142on up is that a suggestion it's both a suggestion and a reflection of the rumor that i've heard that it is not going to be very long it's it's actually scripted so all right it's just a really short message received no the eid committee we're going to hold our last meeting on the 27th of may we're going to be evaluating our progress this year recognizing our successes identifying areas and issues to focus on for the upcoming year and we'll continue to update the board throughout the summer over the course of the year one thing that we're real proud of is our membership increase in march 2020 we had 22 members and it was made up exclusively employees and school board members had two two board members and the rest were employees this year we had

14347 individuals attend at least one meeting and that includes 18 community members and parents as well as two student representatives we worked really hard to reorganize and diversify the voices on the eid committee through this reorganization we included a lot larger community voice and elevated the community to the level where we have district updates like other other board committees we formed three subcommittees that focused on the topics of lgbtq plus awareness holidays and celebrations and dress codes and we've made progress towards updating district policies and relating these topics as well as as well as also looking at staff professional development and trainings the committee has differing viewpoints and perspectives and we see that as a strength we don't we want to make sure that all voices are heard and create a form to allow that

144to happen and we've definitely seen that grow this year as opposed to last year when it was just employees we look forward to improving our structure and effectiveness we've had a lot of good conversation but we see ourselves as an advisory steering committee and we need to stay committed to improving access and engagement good thank you can i just add i i for me it's a personal leadership commentary and i i want to interject this because there's been so much talk about critical race theory in the news media on social media i've been hearing more conversation locally as well as on the national scene crt critical race theory and i think tonight it might have been i believe jackie even made reference to this and i'm going to just take a minute and a half

145to give you an editorial critical race theory some are viewing that in in a pretty concerning level and i guess i want to say it publicly that our district is it has no interest to promote the endocrine indoctrination of our students and to shape their minds into thinking that all people fall into one of two groups you're either an oppressor or you are the oppressed we don't have an interest in developing more hot topics that further the divide of our community in all of our work around equity and inclusivity and diversity we will remain committed to representing community values as you know those values are diverse but most importantly our main focus is to help students think critically to be problem solvers to grow in their own knowledge and understanding we don't have an interest

146in indoctrinating students in some controversial issues and we're mindful in our process to do all that we can to take a balanced approach to how we as a district train our staff provide professional learning opportunities conversations we have with students and to do so in a manner that represents our values thank you that's important context thank you for your continued leadership as the group gets bigger it becomes a bigger deal to manage so thank you very much okay we are going to move on to action items at this point we have minutes of the april 19th regular board of education meeting we have minutes of the april 26 board reorganizational meeting we have bills that have been submitted for payment we also have employment recommendations so at this point do we have a motion to

147approve minutes bills and employment as presented second um so mike moved and todd seconded any discussion all those in favor aye opposed the motion is carried the educational program committee met and i'll turn that over to the chair to give a summary of the committee's proceedings yes um we had a really good meeting on monday may 3rd at westside and this is the we're kind of on a circuit here stay close to your mic sorry allen we had a really good meeting on the third of may and this is this was a continuation of the circuit of site visits for this committee so we've done the um west side and we did the um the renaissance camp we did the montessori and um hopefully we'll maybe do greenwood or the middle school next month yeah

148mark we're going to surprise you we're going to show up in march apparently we're going to do greenwood in in june but anyway it helps us to get a sense of what's going on in the buildings the construction that's happened in the buildings um the activities it's just nice to be in there and especially if they haven't been our building either the one we're representing or that our kids are in or have gone to or those kinds of things so anyways a good meeting appreciated the fact that the chris the principal had hosted us we invited the pto um the president was going to be there and then they got called away at the last minute but they were aware that we were there and it was good we had a number of items that

149we talked about and it was really it was an extended meeting but we had some very productive conversation um i won't look at kit when i say productive conversation because kit was part of a good share of it but several things um first off we took up the river falls 4c provider contract for next year and there are some adjustments in that part of which is the pay for the teachers that's an issue that's been real important for the board is making sure that those preschool teachers and those providers that because they're all outside the district are we're trying to get them up to a better wage it's still not enough but we need to continue to push that up so we've changed the change the contract and we improved some of the changes in

150that we talked quite a while with kit from the high school about the physical education credit substitution policy it wasn't so much about that although that was important it was a general more broad conversation that kit led us through and just credits in the high school how do they work how do we substitute them how does the state require them what's the philosophy behind this what staff are doing what all of those kinds of things so it was it was a productive conversation and we took action on the physical education credit substitution where now students will be able to in some instances if they it substitute an extracurricular activity like a sport for one of their physical education credits before they graduate quite frankly most students won't won't need it and most students want to

151take a physical take the physical education credits but that that opportunity is there we then approved preliminary field trip applications for ffa state convention and leadership retreat um we talked for quite a while about programming updates and where we're going with the virtual school for next year and jennifer led us through a good conversation there had quite a bit of conversation about budget the number of students who were in it what this will mean to the districts to move ahead with a ongoing virtual school for those families who want to take option of that so anyway um stacy how would you like to do this can we do all four of them at a time one and two separately and then three and four together please one and one in one and two individually okay

152and then three and four together so i will move that we approve the rf4c provider contract for the 2021-22 school year thank you is there a second second any discussion i think that what we've done on this contract is really important those the 4k teachers do a really important job for us and they need to be paid well so this is at least a step in the right direction all those in favor aye aye oppose the motion miscarried i'll also then move that we approve the new policy and physical education credit substitution that we passed in the committee second that and i'm going to suggest a friendly amendment to that that we ask that we have an annual update so that we can look at the concerns that were brought up when we first discussed

153it yes with an annual update okay so we have a motion that's been moved in seconds second it doesn't matter all those in favor oh i'm sorry i have i have two two concerns with two concerns and i shared this with the with the committee two concerns one is the i think we have already cut back on physical education right as much as we possibly can in this country and state and it's it's hard to uh for me to with a background in physical education to agree that this is a good thing for our kids overall right to continue to cut it and two there's an equity piece of it for me so and we talked at length about that at our com at our committee meeting and so i just want to make sure

154that that's on the table that i have two really big concerns with it and i think that those are valid concerns i'm particularly concerned i think that the athletic issue is important my suspicion is that not very many kids will do this and i'm willing to support it because i think the administrators are telling us that this is a an important way to serve our kids but i like the idea of an annual update so that we can really see and check out what the data is we might not be able to tell after one year but we'll just see stacey um i've thought i was part of the discussion i believe shortly after um in regard to this issue but um i have thought about it quite a bit since then cindy in regard

155to the equity piece of it and and i i don't necessarily disagree um but i i think i the way i maybe look at it or i don't rationalize it in the right word but the way it works for me in is i don't think that that it's creating in um the issue is not allowing for the people who would qualify for this to take advantage of it to me it's more how do we open up open up a broader base of kids what is preventing those other kids from from participating in some of the activities that would qualify for this and work on it from that lens in terms of the equity piece as opposed to restricting this group that for qualifying you know for that pe exemption i'm looking at it as what

156do we have to do to reach out to more kids to get them involved in these type of activities in the first place um from from the equity side of it so i have it certainly got me thinking in the discussion but i i guess that's more where my mind ended up is is i'd like to see the opportunity offered and then find ways to make that a broader group as we go too hopefully through more opportunity whether there are barriers to those kids participating or they just choose not to i don't want to limit that opportunity but i'd like to see us focus on it from from the barriers that exist to kids participating in those select activities too i think that that's an important that that we talked about that that's a really

157important point todd i i don't want david crale to get nervous about coming and taking this job that he's accepted but we do have some pretty important things that we're anxious for him to do and that's one of them yeah i'm not wanting to cut and make it so that we don't have good discussion i'm just trying to keep us moving anybody else okay we have a motion that's been moved and seconded all those in favor aye opposed the motion passes at six to one thank you everybody alan do you want to make the motion about the next i'll approve that i move that we approve the preliminary field trip for the uh excuse me the application for the ffa state convention field trip and the preliminary application for the ffa leadership retreat both of

158which are going to happen in july and great opportunities for our kids is there a second thank you bob any discussion those in favor aye aye aye opposed the motion carries all rights uh actually there's another one from your committee so this is the final application yeah so i'll move the final this is the preliminary for the football isn't it no you're still on that final ffa oh did i make a mis did i mix this up no the next one for d preliminary field trip application for the varsity football six c i think i thought that we just did that one didn't we that was preliminary oh i i didn't hear that in the motion i thought that we had already done that excuse me so at this point we have the motion to

159approve the final field trip application for the ffa leadership retreat in trego is there somebody wants to make that a second all right so bob's made the motion amy seconded any discussion all those in favor i suppose the motions carried excuse me i thought we had that done already so now do we have a motion about the varsity football summer field trip it's a move this is the preliminary trip is there a second second thank you amy any discussion where is this going they are iowa that's first i would love to see a whole bunch of activities going on like this this summer so yeah i mean i'm in favor of it but i would hope this isn't the only one we're able to encourage this summer one more question do the individual athletes pay

160for the trip i didn't hear the what did the individual athletes pay for the whole pace for the trip it says it's participant funded it's it says participant funded 50 to 100 and the estimated cost will be between 50 and 100 okay and as in everything if there would be a student who is simply not able to manage that financially we figure that out right mr libke so it's not a barrier thank you all is in favor i propose the motion is carried all right fnf great so we met may 10th uh no no action items but we had an update on our budget and we're going through on a periodic regular basis the the budget with respect to the cares money that we're getting cares just in case people don't remember it's called is

161coronavirus aid relief and economic security act this is federal money that flows down to schools throughout the country and the the final numbers or amounts that we're going to get in each it comes in three phases i should say first the final numbers of each phase are not are not quite finalized yet but we're sort of navigating and planning based on our best estimates of what we're going to get the bottom line is we're we're just really managing this budget to maintain the amount the biggest flexibility we can to make decisions going through the year keep our capital projects on track keep our fund balances funded and just because we talked a little bit about it earlier jennifer did the third phase we're going to prioritize this learning loss recovery to use the money for

162for that area particularly so it was a good meeting it was a good meeting thank you stacey if i could just add one thing because i think you know that that's a good summary but i i think that earlier we talked about neighboring districts and our previous conversation here tonight and i think it just raises once again that a lot of our neighboring school districts are not in the same financial position we are right now and jamie i got to hand it to you and your staff and our board policy that's just maintained a strong fiscal sense here that keeps the this district stable so we aren't making cuts to our budget next year like some of our neighboring districts are we've managed our money better than that and we're moving ahead in really good

163shape so appreciate that very good points alan and those things don't happen accidentally they only happen with strong leadership all right amy personnel committee update please all right um the personnel committee met on monday may 10th and we're going to have four action items tonight but before we do that we talked about sending letters of intent to support staff and hearing a staffing update we approved the 2021-2022 support staff salary schedule we also discussed two new job or one new job description and updating of another which is the grounds worker trainer and the grounds worker job description and then also to approve the 2021-2022 bus driver collective bargaining agreement and then we went into executive session um the first uh action item would be to approve the letters of atten of appointment to support staff

164thank you is there a second second i'm going to go with cindy any discussion all those in favor i oppose the motion is carried i would also make a motion to approve the 2021-2022 support staff salary schedule is there a second check thank you cindy any discussion all those in favor aye opposed the motion is carried i would also make the motion to approve the grounds worker trainer and the grounds worker job descriptions is there a second second thank you mike any discussion all those in favor i propose the motion is carried and finally i would make the motion to approve the 2021-2022 bus driver collective bargaining agreement second thank you todd is any discussion all those in favor aye opposed the motion is carried those items that we just approved very quickly represent a

165lot of work in terms of board time but even more to the point our administrators time and we thank you okay gee do we have any suggested items for future board meeting agendas i have a list let me go through this and we'll see if there are other things to add one of our responsibilities annually is that we need to be doing a superintendent evaluation so that is going to be coming up on the next agenda and i'm asking aaron to send out the tool that we will use not a perfect tool the tool is used to get us starting in conversation so watch for that um it seems to me that at some point not for a while but when we have time we need to look at our policy about field trips is

166it what we want it to be do we need to be approving all of these which ones should we which ones shouldn't we it it could be that we need to direct administration to get in touch with us about scheduling a special meeting related to masks for when school is over for summer school and i don't want to set that date now because we don't know but we will ask our superintendent to keep us posted on that um stacey that could be a virtual meeting if it's if that's our only agenda item it could be i'm just i'm just i i don't know getting here and getting all set up and getting everything going it's that if that's the only agenda item you might want to consider except the rest of you maybe that just

167be a zoom meeting we can consider that jimmy and i can discuss reset the agendas i am wondering if there's and i'm asking this question if there should be a change in the close contact quarantine policy from pierce county is that something that is really an administrative implementation issue so that you can manage that or do you want a special meeting we don't have to decide now you can think about it if we need a meeting we've never shied away from meetings right yeah and i would suggest we do that the way we've done it throughout the year which is we essentially have given our administration the authority to do that right then at each of our meetings we generally affirm it or not exactly so maybe we don't need to put a time frame

168or you know restriction on it if we just continue that mode that's why i don't want to set a date right now i think that you need the flexibility are there other things for future agendas yeah an update um from jennifer's ongoing group about the um what are we calling it the recovery the recovery recovery that will come up at the next ed program meeting first so i think that that jennifer isn't that right that that the next okay so we'll have that anything else from board members um a year from now or whatever that might be as far as the substitution the fiat substitution credit program i mean i know it's not going to be this summer it's not going to be this fall but if you're keeping a record of a year from

169now that would be something to put out there in june of 2022. jennifer is great at remembering those things she'll keep it she'll chat for us so we'll have that anything else super quick question okay at this point hold on stay still when does summer school start jennifer okay so we have time that's good to know so at this point do we have a motion to move into executive session pursuant to wisconsin statute 1985 1 c and e to discuss administrator evaluations and negotiations second i'm going to take a roll call yes either discontinue extend or modify is what pierce county had indicated that they will make an announcement related to their june 4th deadline of their mask advisory order so stay tuned on whether they change it modify it or discontinue it correct so

170what i said is that when it is the appropriate time for the school board to come to meet to address the dress code policy we will schedule a meeting i am not going to determine that meeting right now we need to pull the board and we need to find out with our administrators when the recommendation would come that's how we do business okay i need to have a roll call vote bob hi ellen hi amy yes i'm saying yes yes yes all right the meeting is well so we'll enter into closed session and we will go into the media center please sit in the library a you