001All right we're good. All right has everybody been let in that is going to be let in? Hi Kathy. All right okay I'm going to call the meeting to order then. Good evening everybody. Today is Thursday September 24th 2020 and this is our regularly scheduled board meeting of the San Carlos School District Board of Trustees. I'm going to ask if there are any changes to the agenda tonight. All right if there's no changes I'm going to call for a motion. Move to approve the agenda as is. Thank you Irene. All those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? All right the motion carries four to zero. Just as a no we are four trustees for this meeting because of the resignation of trustee Farley. Okay we're going to move on to our special
002recognition. Item three a our spotlight on excellence we have two retiring teachers we want to recognize. Yes good evening trustees and our community. It's another night where we're honoring our teachers for their service in our district and as you know we normally have retirement celebrations in June but we had a couple of people who retired right after our last celebration so we didn't want to miss out on celebrating them. So our community is here to celebrate them tonight. So I'm going to introduce Jennifer Gabary principal for Rundle who was the principal of both teachers so she'll say a few words and then I know there's some technology communication we need to work out because there's a couple of cute videos that we're going to enjoy and then after that I believe we have some public
003comment for some additional input so we'll start with Jennifer Gabary next. Thank you thank you very much for allowing us to spend time tonight honoring two Rundle teachers that have contributed a combined over 60 years of service to our school district. We are fortunate as a learning community to have experienced the nurturing kindness and expansive teaching expertise that Mrs. Janice Moyer and Mrs. Kathy Wolf both provided to our students. Mrs. Moyer began her teaching career as an instructional aide at a Rundle before joining the Britton Acres staff as a teacher. She returned to a Rundle to end where she began 25 years ago and shared these words with us in June. Working with children is so rewarding and teaching has been one of the highlights of my life. After returning from one of her fabulous
004field trips to the city Mrs. Moyer beamed with the joy of sharing enriching learning experiences with children. She cared deeply for her students and will be fondly remembered by our Rundle Knights for a lifetime. Please enjoy this video tribute to Mrs. Moyer. And Veronica and Alejandro I'm just checking in with you who's in charge of this piece next. Perhaps technology is not cooperating with us tonight. Yeah Alejandro's working on it. Stand by. Okay thank you for the update. Your patience everyone. Is the audio coming through Alejandro? It's not coming through on my end. No I'm not I'm not hearing it either. We'll start it over again and make sure you get that. Thank you so much. Thank you. My goodness. Thank you so much. That was so sweet. When you when you have no time
005to be out there doing that so much appreciate it. I have a real quick um see if I could get through it. Thank you Dr. Haremeyer, Mrs. Gabri, San Carlos Board School District and Inger O'Connell for this recognition. I worked in this community for the past 25 plus years. It has been an outstanding experience that has passed much too quickly. It's been an honor to work beside so many dedicated teachers staff and caring parents and the heart of this career is of course the children. I will long remember and cherish all the children I've had the opportunity and pleasure to know and teach. Working with these little people brought me untold moments of happiness and kept me smiling from one day to the next. It's not easy to leave this career and I will be
006forever grateful for the opportunity to teach which was my lifelong career goal. Again thank you teachers, staff, parents, and our children the future. Thank you all. Thank you Janice. Thank you Inger videographer and all the staff. I want this video on my desktop so every day I can watch it and have fun and smile. That was beautiful and thank you for all you've done and all you've done for our district. So thank you Janice. Thank you for the opportunity. Jennifer Gabbaree do you want to come back now and transition to our next one? Yes of course thank you. So Mrs. Wolf. Mrs. Wolf has completely embraced the role of a teacher for 50 consecutive years and welcomed students into her wolf pack with an open mind and heart. In the 34 years that she spent
007at Arundel she developed lasting relationships with her students and families creating a strong tight-knit wolf pack that still stands the test of time. Mrs. Wolf's expertise in the art of teaching was only outshined by her enthusiasm for the profession. She began every single day with a smile that was contagious to us all. Mrs. Wolf we wish you all the best in this next chapter of your amazing story. Please enjoy this video tribute to Mrs. Wolf. Is it started yet? Yes it's half an hour into it. This is they're doing a thing for Janice Moyer and Kathy Wolf right now. They haven't got to visit yet. No. Michelle Harmeyer messaged us. Look at them. She was our Wolfie and when she retired we tried hard not to lose our minds. Oh my goodness. Now I'm not
008sure if I'm supposed to respond now or am I on or can you actually hear me? Kathy you're on if you want to say something. All right I can see the logo. First of all I want to say thank you for the wonderful tribute. I'm not sure if I'm crying because I'm sad or because I'm overwhelmed at the musical talents of the Arundel staff but I'm so happy to have a song. As I was cleaning out my room I found the Dulcey song, I found the Dick Rapetti song, I found of course Rocking Chair Ryan so now I can honestly say that I have a song beautifully sung. I will like to also thank you for number one my corsage and my flowers and for your wonderful acknowledgement of me. I do have a little
009bit to say and I promise it won't be as long as it took me to get out of my room. So every year I tell my parents back to school night that and this is a lot more overwhelming than back to school night. I tell them that one invigorating aspect of each school year is the chance to meet my new best friends and that's the children and their parents that I have and together we look forward to all of the exciting experiences that we share and each new school year is really a fresh start for all of us and a chance for me to build relationships and these relationships luckily have continued long after the students have moved on from the classroom. I've watched them become teenagers and then adults and then parents of the
010children I've even had now and it's really amazing to think that it is true that my earliest students are in their 60s and probably have second grade grandchildren and I still remember so many things about them and this has been the key for long fulfilling teaching career and that feeling is every year I have a chance to both reset and add to my experiences with both pack. However none of this would be possible without the wonderful people in San Carlos and the wonderful people I work with and the San Carlos community. While the relationships from my students and their parents have helped sustain my excitement my interest in teaching for a very long time if it's you the co-workers through your teamwork and your support especially this last part of last year they helped me
011build an effective teaching environment and have fun doing it. As I cleaned out my room which was a huge massive undertaking by some incredibly extraordinary helpers and I do owe you a big thanks personally I want to thank you so much to everybody who helped me evacuate my treasures. I was flooded with a sea of memories by everything I saw around me and nearly everything reminded me of a particular student, a family, joyful memories, intense interests, curiosity, things we've done in class, things that I've done with other teachers and sometimes I dig out a surprise like a whale vertebrae or a mounted pheasant that was about been taken or an antique auto harp and each treasure reminded me of a particular student or a family or school activity and the experiences that I shared with
012students and the parents with my fellow teachers and the support that you've given me and the administrative staff I want to say thank you thank you thank you for everybody who helped me gracefully depart from my classroom and for every parent and every child and every co-worker the members the janitorial staff that worked so hard this summer as I watched them cleaning everything to be ready for the year to the tech support to the district support to the administrative support and a special thank you I'm sending out to Inger O'Connell who got me here tonight and Robbie Flowers so thank you so much to all of you thank you thank you so much Katherine I'll let the board say a few words but thank you again Inger and all the staff that participate in these
013beautiful videos and thank you for all you have done for our community you are a legend in the community and you've impacted thousands of lives through all all the the students and families you've touched so thank you and wish you the best in your retirement too thank you so much Janice and and Kathy I mean it's just really evident from the love and appreciation shown here really the impact that you are leaving on our district and you will both be dearly dearly missed by the Rundle community and by all of us so I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart and I wish you a really really joyful retirement do any of the other trustees have anything that would like to add this is Wendy I would just like to
014say as a former teacher who didn't actually stay in a classroom that long I just admire you both for your amazing long life commitment to this amazing career as a teacher and what makes I think then Carlos school district so special is that we have teachers like you who have who have dedicated yourself to this to this path and to our community so thank you so much you have you are leaving a legacy behind thank you thank you Wendy Neil would you like to read the public comment I would and I just like to say this morning this is both you know you are I think embodiment of San Carlos and our school districts and you know even then you're the two names that come up first when it's talked about running for school board
015or getting involved in schools and who to talk to you about the legacy of this district and what we stand for so but don't let me I think your friends who have written public comment will do more justice to it probably than I so I do apologize to everyone because I know I will not be doing justice to the enthusiasm behind these comments but I will try my best the first one is from Ann Higginbotham what two amazing educators I taught with Mrs. Wolf the entire 22 years as at Rundle school our classes were buddies and it all started with our mutual love of the I did her at that thought thank you I did her on sled dog race she had infectious enthusiasm for learning and the kids who had her were very lucky
016even they had her to endure the arctic temperature of a room Mrs. Moyer was my instructional aide when I started at a Rundle and then was my first grade team member when I left she was always still wanting to share ideas and materials with me she gave me boxes and materials when I moved to first grade the children loved being in her class and I always loved seeing the globes hanging from her ceiling I wish I was there in person to wish them happy retirement big big hugs from Spokane Karen Dempsey writes for Mrs. Moyer all three of my children had the privilege of being Mrs. Moyer's first grade class she's dedicated loving teacher and a wonderful human while famous for epic field trips Ms. Moyer is always legendary for her patience and calm demeanor
017the attention she gave to each child means they have the support and space they need to learn especially with reading skills they're so good to have had her for the very important first grade year the Dempsey family for Mrs. Wolf every day in room eight is an adventure Mrs. Wolf makes learning fun project based style means the kids are always learning but in a sly memorable way she will come parents into her classroom to share in the learning and feel part of a journey I enjoyed volunteering on a regular basis Mrs. Wolf for my three kids I feel I learned as much as my children did from her warmth her art lessons and her amazing science project Mrs. Wolf you are a treasure thank you for your enthusiastic devotion to the kids the Dempsey family
018Amy Nguyen writes our family was fortunate enough to experience the joy and magic of Mrs. Wolf's second grade we'd like to express her deep love and appreciation for her lessons learned and special memories made during that time she has taught her whole heart for about 50 years with over three decades of which were spent at a rundle hundreds of students still name her as their favorite teacher even decades later and they have adult children of their own the love of learning that she fostered within the walls of her classroom and the back patio settling over weekly messy art sessions is nothing short of magic if you teach you have a constant stream well nine families come back to visit year after year practically every day every week I don't think I've been in her classroom
019after school about at least one past student or parent who stopped by for a quick hello what's even more impressive is that she remembers every one of her students can easily recount stories of them even citing what they had drawn or written about years later Mrs. Wolf your love beyond measure we're so grateful to have been a part of your classroom from the bottom of our hearts thank you this is from Arjan Morshuri I remember the day I was in Mrs. Ryan's class and we came into class to do a Chinese New Year celebration and the first thing I thought was wow I want to be in this class I was looking up to get my wish the next year when I think back my time at a rundle you were among my top three
020memories you made me feel so loved and smart and always encouraged me I don't know anyone who doesn't think back fondly of you even if you weren't in your class you've helped so many students throughout your time at a rundle I love you and I miss you so much and I wouldn't be where I am today without you Julie Schneider we're a former rundle family whose three children attended from 1994 to 2004 with the very fond memories of her classroom experiences with Cassie and Janice please relay that Warren Jonathan and Neil Schneider are always as well as their parents Julie and Jeff wish them both the most relaxing and wonderful time in their retirement bravo ladies and thank you for all that you did for so many children who said Trey and Mrs. Wolf was
021all three of my girl's favorite teacher at a rundle from Kaia she made learning fun was never me from Alyssa she always looked for the best in every student from Sarah I still remember the art projects the diorama was iconic the owl pellet dissection learning how to spell the word because with the song as a college graduate this was the best grade ever no other teacher I've had has ever lived up to Mrs. Wolf as a parent I witnessed Mrs. Wolf's selfless unending devotion toward and support for students all children wonderful and capable of learning the eyes of Mrs. Wolf I saw the first hand once when I was volunteering the classroom and a student struggled to understand the concept Mrs. Wolf worked directly with the student offering one calm explanation after another to the
022right one click that is the mark of a master teacher thank you Cathy for being such an important and positive part of my children's lives happy retirement Sarah Murphy the Murphy family would like to extend our thanks and congratulations to Cathy Wolf on her many years of service at a rundle elementary school we wanted to share our fondest memories to a glimpse of what an outstanding teacher she is what impression she has left on our lives this is Wolf thank you so much for all the good times back in second grade I never forget the time you saved me the red Pokemon shirt the giant prize box because you know I love Pokemon it was an adult large but I didn't care I wore it as a night shirt until I grew into it and
023still wear it today like this shirt you were so special Dylan Murphy in the Wolf secondary class of 2012 Mrs. Wolf my favorite memories around the middle of the year I believe when we started to create Oublick I remember being really excited about it seeing that my brother had done it two years ago it's so sad that your 30 plus years of teaching had to end in a pandemic I'm so glad I was able to be in a class for one of those years I wish I could have played cello for your class one more time you have been my favorite teacher thank you for the best year of school ever Sean Murphy Wolf secondary class of 2014 Cathy words can begin to words can even begin how much Joe and I admire you your
024pure joy and love of teaching has overflowed on every student and parent that you have met I had the amazing opportunity of being a weekly volunteer in the classroom and the rundle music each year so I firsthand and saw firsthand why you are a legend you always give the children whether they were quiet or crazy a voice to express themselves they always felt uniquely heard no idea was too grand but help the children learn Joe would laugh at how much glitter paint and water I would have on myself after our weekly messy art sessions you're always the most enthusiastic fan my music class time you would sit in a circle and sing along with the kids instead of catching a few minutes of quiet time for yourself we hope now with retirement you can get
025your well-deserved break I know that we will see you around because you continue to show up at our concert shows and sporting events supporting us many years after our time with you in second grade unlike unlike the two-minute thank you song you taught the kids at the end of each year it would take a full length symphony to list all the things we thank you for Mrs. Wolf be well and God bless Sarah and Joe Murphy this is from Sonia dear Mrs. Moore we want to say a very big thank you for being such a wonderful first grade teacher to Catherine your patience positivity and kindness are what we remember the most about you thank you for always opening your classroom to us parents so you could volunteer at time in particular your support of
026the prolific vegetable garden and the students learn from and enjoy this saying hi to you as you walk past your classroom before and after school we hope you're enjoying retirement years wishing you happiness good health and lots of yoga please keep in touch dear Mrs. Wolf although Catherine was not in your class you welcome her with open arms whenever she came for a visit to your classroom your kindness and nurturing personality will always be remembered may you experience all there is to enjoy in your retirement years with love mark sonia and Catherine Sharon welts dear Cathy we don't even know where to begin we met you 23 years ago when we moved in next door to a london school you were so welcoming and so kind it was always so nice to see and talk
027with you whether you're arriving to school or heading home after a long day became fast friends you became part of our family when nick and caitlyn were born you could not wait for them to come your way for second grade we're so lucky that both were able to be in their class and they became second graders they were so happy in the class and learned so much from you we only wish every child in the world could experience the famous mrs wolf the precious memories you created for nick and caitlyn are unlike any others the big book is something very special that the kids will have for the rest of their lives we always enjoyed being parent volunteers in a classroom it was always a lot of fun and so high energy it was so
028great to have caitlyn be able to circle around have an internship in her classroom while she was in high school we'll always be grateful for you for giving her this experience happy you're truly a star in our eyes and one of a kind teacher the level of dedication empathy and caring can never be matched you're so special to us and so happy that we're able to watch nick and caitlyn grow up you'll always be part of our lives happy please enjoy your time and take time to care for yourself be selfish and kind to you with love so much see you soon scott sharon nicolas and caitlyn uh hazel stavinsky uh and i had the honor of having mrs wolf teach my two children there at a wonderwall this is now our last year in
029the school district i can now reflect back on all the things that have made our experience in san carlos school district so memorable kathy wolf is literally the first thing that comes to mind her teaching style is one of that hearkens back to time when you not only found comfort at home but you also found comfort but you also found it in the classroom her ability to make each and every child feel like they have an important place in this world is what truly makes her special children who enter her class with anxiety below self-confidence leave her class selfisher knowing that they matter she always was immersed in project-based learning before it was cool for kathy was a natural way to teach kids make it fun and they'll not only learn but they will engage
030i have no doubt that my children will have fond memories of her as they were in high school college and beyond our lives will forever be enriched by having her in it thank you mrs wolf uh julie in burden uh both um both my children have the privilege of having mrs wolf as a teacher what a lasting impact she has made on them and a lasting impact made on numerous other students who always return to her classroom as alumni to say hello get a chance at the prize box or see what messy art projects were happening she always offered so many opportunities for learning in and outside the classroom her field trip the aquarium of the bay in san francisco during fleet week stands out she had unyielding dedication to her students and brought joy
031and excitement to learning i hear from other past students of mrs wolf that even when they go off to high school and college their fondest memories of elementary school always include mrs wolf thank you for your dedication inspiration and genuine care for our school community uh erin this is from erin higbee colu we're lucky to have mrs moir as our daughter's first grade teacher first grade is such a special year in transition between childhood and formal school mrs moir had the perfect approach connect fun and learning she started each morning with children singing songs together in the carpet about the many classic american folk songs every week she also single-handedly directed the class in play and musical performance and the american symbols complete with wonderful costumes she championed learning outside of the classroom took the
032students on numerous field trips taking advantage of the incredible educational opportunities available to us in the bay area clean trips to the museums botanical gardens the san francisco symphony and the most memorable exploratory on bark which she embraced as a teachable moment in public transportation as we navigated excuse me under and through the streets of san francisco most teachers have been daunted by the prospect of leading 21 first graders on bark she was like the pied piper and we're all joyfully followed along thank you mrs moir for ironing the magic of childhood in your teaching you'll be greatly uh winona oh hey thank you the rondo elementary school for giving me two sons a wonderful transition in the san carlos community joss and nathan are now juniors in college and high school for the development
033of students and good people they are from guidance and foundation they acquired from their faithful dedicated inspiring teachers teachers have a big impact on students families because they're part of their everyday life and often privy to personal achievement and challenges that often can affect their academic performance they're educators but so much more they help your children see in themselves their strength and foster this while also improving weakness they will need to focus on and overcome our family wants to applaud james moir and his casting kathy wolf for their incredible success and wish them the best as they enter into a new chapter in their lives congratulations on your retirement for over 60 years of contribution and hard work to the children thank you from the students utah and also the parents and siblings your positive
034role model and influence we appreciate it and witnessed our kids our family had mrs wolf for second grade twice 2007 and 2008 for joss in 2009 and 2010 for nathan thank you for all the fun messy art projects field trips surprise box and volunteering you allowed all this activity and movement in the classroom yet you were always able to focus on each student individually and foster self-esteem confidence and hard work one example i remember my son joss gave money to another student that didn't have it so she could buy a book at the book fair i remember josh came home with a beanie baby that day from the prize box certainly a positive way of to foster generosity sharing and kindness to others thank you for instilling these values erin ackman i can't like to
035thank mrs wolf for educating their tree and entertaining two generations of ackman's at a rundle school enjoy retirement i hope to see you around san carlos sorry classical pillow and that's it thank you neil for sharing that and wow what a testimony what a legacy are you feeling the love because that was that was really something else that was really really a tribute and a nice note to end on i hope for both of you thank you so much and i'm usually an emotional person i'm surprised at myself but it was nice to hear those are some of those are very grown up children and adults so it was nice to hear from all of them thank you all so very much thank you thank you to the both of you and congratulations on your
036retirement and a really really amazing career thank you thank you all right yeah i'm going to move us along to item 4a communications this is public comment on items that are not on the agenda neil is there any public comment for items that are not on the agenda i believe there's one this is from jamie bailey i'm a parent whose child attends white elementary several parents of the school have come together to lead the charge for anti-racism at white oaks we've also been working with a larger group of folks made up of parents from all schools in the san carlos school district on anti-racism i think that's related to our diversity equity and inclusion agenda item i can read it then yeah yeah let's read it then perfect okay let's move on to 4a sorry
0374b employee group comments i think i saw dan here among the hundreds hi dan hi all right uh on behalf of the san carlos teachers association uh i'd like to thank janice moyer and kathy wolf for their many years of service uh and their contributions to students their parents and staff uh they've enriched all of us and we're going to miss them and um but they did pick a great time to get out of education i must say that for them so we wish them all the best um i'd like to commend our teachers again for their patience perseverance resilience uh in adapting to full distance teaching and last year we did distance learning and this year it's really we've all raised the bar for ourselves and um and i know that there are many
038stresses uh for our teachers and staff and administrators as we do this so um our teachers have gone above and beyond to serve san carlos kids many of my members have expressed um concern over the difference between the parent survey that went out and the teacher staff survey and that the parent survey had many questions and that the teacher survey had three and so it's been kind of hurt morale in some ways for teachers so in the future um i think it would be helpful to make those kinds of surveys equitable and i have no doubt that the majority of parents in our district are happy with distance learning what we are delivering as teachers because we are all working very hard to meet the needs of our students um the scta stands firm in
039our position that we want safety first we do not want to return in person until there is regular testing available for staff and students contact tracing and a vaccine i've said this before if it's not safe to hold a school board meeting in person it's not safe for staff any staff to be working with students in person and i also want to say that we appreciate your service as school board members i know from being at all these meetings that uh it's a incredibly important job or position and i know that you're going to put the safety of staff at the height of your priorities and that you will protect our health as much as the health of our students and their families and so thank you uh to the school board and to our
040administrators for always keeping that up here thank you thank you dan all right do we have a csa here for any comments all right number moving on to our consent agenda items 5a through f the consent agenda are items that are routine in nature and we approve them en masse do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda 5a through f moved to approve the consent agenda 5a through 5f thank you wendy second thank you neil all those in favor please signify by saying aye opposed all right the motion carries four to zero item 6a our distance learning update michelle and hans all right thank you carol uh we have a few different topics tonight that are kind of interrelated as we go along hans barber is going to start with how are we
041doing right now with distance learning and we have a few data points that we collected to to guide our evaluation so he will he will share some of that with you and give you a an overview of that information then after that i will talk about some of the return to school factors and and see how those two kind of together so i'll go ahead and turn this over to hans and and he will get us set up all right good evening everybody take a minute here to get my screen shared and we'll go to present all right as i was saying good evening thanks for joining us tonight we have a nice big group and i have the task and pleasure actually of reporting out the results of both surveys and i have no
042doubt that the data is it kind of speaks for itself but i'll add a little bit of analysis to it and i have no doubt that you'll have some great questions at the end as well so here again we start with our our pillars we've seen this you know since last spring in many presentations where we we our pillars are health and safety first and foremost academics and social emotional health of all those considered and all done with the lens of equity this this is a repeat of a slide that we had when we talked about the local the plan the learning continuity plan from last time and tonight we're going to focus in on these three distance learning pupil learning loss and mental health social emotional well-being i'm going to start with just an
043overview of what the parent survey looked like so those of you that took it know there was it was open for about three or four days we had 890 responses which is about 40 percent of our families 699 specific to elementary 314 to middle school there was a an open-ended question about you know what was going well or what was better a ratings question and then four general questions and we'll go over all of that and then there was a specific section for elementary middle school although the questions were the same for those two sections except for one all right so here's the the first question was a ratings question about how are we doing as far as their schedule as far as the amount of time on zoom or on synchronous instruction the balance
044of teaching versus independent work and the ease of of online applications and systems these are amazing numbers 73 percent of our folks said that they they're very pleased with the schedule that we're we're providing for students the amount of time on zoom was about 60 now it's you know what we don't know is how many were think it should be more and how many think it should be less we did have one question that might allude to that a little bit the balance of life teaching 62 percent said they're satisfied or very satisfied and then the ease of online applications and systems 69 the reason i said that these numbers are great is that if you told people about their regular teaching schedule i don't know that the numbers would be that much better they
045would probably be better because we're in person and they would know they might have a better feel for their teacher a little bit but overall these are these are really good numbers to share with folks and so we just felt really compelled to point this out the three questions that parents had to talk about after that were really relating to them being teachers i mean that's the bottom line is in the absence of being in in-person instruction these are the three most difficult pieces these are things that teachers do all the time or they have a support to help with that so how much time are you spending with technology 30 a little over 30 percent said they're spending significant time with their students doing technology issue either helping with support or helping them navigate
046or whatever it might be a little over 50 percent of respondents said that they're helping with time management this is exactly what teachers do every day in the classroom right they manage the time of the kids they move things around and it's really difficult to do when you're not in person and then how much are you spending with learning content about 43 percent of folks are saying they're having to help with learning content which is not surprising either because they are the primary tutor at this point in time i have these same i grapple with these same issues in my own household i you know i'm fortunate to have my wife who's pretty techie and is really great with that but we both help out with these things when i'm home i'm i'm helping and
047so it's very very indicative of i think of most households at this point in time under our current model of learning and very empathetic to both the teacher side and the parent side as far as what this means for for learning at this point in time some other highlights of the parent survey the these are the questions in bold so providing appropriate structure and routine again you know the elementary 63 percent or so strongly agree or agree 66 strongly agree or agree in middle school student engagement during synchronous teaching 60 about 70 almost in elementary you know mid-60s and middle and and then you can read the rest yourself i'm not going to read these out to you the percentages go down a little bit for independent work or where students aren't directly engaged with
048a teacher which again i mean that's not necessarily that much different than when students have homework at home and parents have to really you know be on them about hey have you done your homework have you done this again i have a lot of experience with that myself and then the workload was you know right about 55 56 percent for both this is really these slides are really compelling okay they tell a lot about what's going on nobody's going to tell you that distance learning is easy nobody's going to tell you that it's easy for teachers that it's easy for parents that it's easy for anyone then it's easy for principals but these these speak really highly of what we're doing you can see you know almost 70 percent of tk to five feel like
049their students are accessing learning which is the number one priority right are students accessing learning and then in middle school almost about a little more than almost close to 75 percent and if we add in you know the the challenge always with the survey like this is when we have this middle rating of the threes what you know the neutrals we like to call those what exactly do those mean and if you added those in you've got astronomical numbers we're looking at here and even if we added in half of those eight percent more would get us to the mid 70s and nine percent more would get us into the mid 80s with the middle school survey so i did a little wordle here didn't get you know super complicated but you can see these
050these are the answers to the question overall compared to distance learning last spring or before what's going well you know just things that stuck out obviously number one is teachers right teachers are doing a fantastic job there's or the organization there's solid instruction kids are learning okay and things are better as compared to they were before so that's always fun to do that and take a look at those kinds of things so you know an overall analysis of the parent survey there were you know these strengths um again i've talked about the overall uh you know really the overall results are quite positive um folks are feeling as though things have improved um and that they're more able to access their learning now that's not to say that i mean personally that's not to say
051that i don't believe our teachers were doing a really great job last spring it is to say that there was more time to prepare it is to say that there was you know significant time spent by all of our teachers by all of our staff really getting ready to do distance learning and being much more prepared to and and in that mindset instead of being thrown in we had time to think about what it should look like so that's evident um students are engaging at high levels right during live instruction time that was obvious that came out um and then really really our teachers are working hard to provide appropriate structure and routines and that is what they do in class every day and that is probably the number one thing that is stronger as
052we've moved into this because they've been they've had time to formulate and think um challenges obviously you know students need support with all those areas these are the same things that we support them with when they come to school and so i've talked about that already and then um you know there is direct there's direct assistance and that direct assistance is basically provided by parents because that's who they have access to at that moment in time um and particularly as i said earlier during asynchronous time and then you know really some of the questions that we have is how do we strike more balance between independent and live instruction time in this model um and then is it possible to provide more structured asynchronous time and if it is what does that look like so
053those are kind of questions that we're grappling with right now we'll move into the teacher survey um we had oh i forgot to add the percentage here i apologize for that in 102 responses about 65 percent of our teaching staff um the survey was open the same amount of time a little bit later on monday um and then it had it had one open-ended question and then several questions about distance learning technology and educational technology so here's some highlights from the teacher survey just for a little fun um again what's at the center right what was that center of the parent one teachers what's at the center of this of the teacher one students and what nothing says it better than that um you know students kids they're working they're learning um you know i
054feel like it's going well uh a schedule sticks out over here right so again just a fun way to take a look at what the feedback said um here was the first question about you know to teachers it was about how much time are you spending on whole group small group and then asynchronous learning and you know the patterns are pretty obvious when you just look at these graphs um that there's significant time being spent on live instruction for whole group and then basically almost all of our teachers are doing 50 or more live instruction all the time um and then they're supplementing with these other two areas whether that's a small group or some asynchronous assignments or both um this is a compelling right 99 basically almost everyone said they were spending less than
05550 of their time doing having students engage in individual assignments so we just wanted to to have this data to kind of get a sense for what folks are really doing uh during that the instructional time um 77 and a half percent of the responding teachers um reported that folks are using their office hours either occasionally or often and the question that i would have about that is well what about the other 22 percent right and what's happening with that and how do we make it more alluring or have folks really begin to use those um and then about two-thirds exactly two-thirds in fact of the teachers that responded agreed or strongly agreed that they have access to the proper um technology and then we asked for further elaboration for things that if they didn't
056feel that way what it what was what's what's happening and you know there were many responses um about you know about 35 or so responses on that and but these are the ones that stuck out right like we you could use an extra monitor um document cameras would be helpful um some folks said you know i i've had training on seesaw in google classroom i feel like i could always have more just to kind of get better with that platform um and then an overwhelming request for increased tech support at the district level just because it's been difficult to try to get everything rolled out um you know we're in week five now and i can say that pretty much everything is running but in week three i couldn't say that and that's evident for
057teachers as well um the the next question was about um whether they had access to the proper academic tools and you know basically educational technology about 72 percent said yes and those that that were scored three or lower were asked to elaborate again and um you know what they had many good great points um the first of which is it's just really difficult to assess kids from a distance um and it also we it affects the validity on some level um and that you know time is an issue and you know guys no matter what i mean we could be in person and we would say time is an issue um but i think that right now you know the amount of prep that's required to do these this learning model um really really puts
058us in a press for time um and then you know there was an expression for a need for more familiarity these are new right lexia and iReady are new to most of our teachers and while they seem like really effective tools we're not quite sure how to use them yet which is natural um and we're going to be providing you know any assistance they need and then gauging the level of learning loss continues to be a focus okay and what i would say is you know the folks that responded it was interesting because there was probably an equal number of people that said i'm noticing learning loss to those that said really i'm not noticing any learning loss my kids are doing great or my early assessments look great so you know again it's it's
059a matter of again gauging the level of learning loss is what i think where we are at this point um you know just a quick analysis of the teacher survey that things that i haven't already mentioned um you know teachers are asking for patience and understanding and i think you know that that's clear we need to give patience and understanding to the teachers and they need you know it's hard to give time right but what we said was dedicated time to adapt their lessons and provide ongoing feedback so you know there have been there were mentions of you know that some of our time has been used for these new trainings on these other pieces that you know that they may be valuable but right now it's really difficult for us to move forward so
060and then strategies that they can use for teachers that for kids that are not engaging and then you know as far as technology they had a lot lot of suggestions around technology and you know prioritizing device upgrades obviously they all have new machines at this point but a lot of the students don't and you know granted we've ordered those we just haven't received them and i wish i could control that but it's a worldwide shortage at this point um and then you know edtech as far as edtech options we have a lot but lot is not you know more is not necessarily better and suggesting maybe slowing down going deeper than with what we have okay and then support always support for students and staff um and and whatever support that you know that could
061be tech support that could be emotional support that could come in a variety of different ways all right so uh along with this obviously this is the um attendance is one of is the a in this plan so we wanted to bring up our attendance and see where that was these oh i'm sorry about that these figures are amazing um you know we really are having kids attend they're coming to distance learning that doesn't mean we don't have some that are not but you know if we had a 99 attendance rate during our regular school year we'd be quite pleased it's generally around 97 percent right and so you see all of these numbers are higher than 97 except k which hovering which is hovering right there and k is always the most challenging k
062and k and eighth are generally our lowest numbers and then tonight look at eighth is like the highest 99.4 uh just segueing into our emotional um well-being and mental health um you know we've talked a lot about this in our previous meetings and this is really just kind of an update in current language so to give you some updated data um one of the tools that we're rolling out is called cylinder grow and we've talked a little bit about that teachers are now getting to dabble in that a little bit um the middle school is using it now and fourth and fifth grade um elementary was phasing it in this week and next week um elementary still teaching second step um and one of the things i did not get on here because i didn't
063know about it by the time we submitted this is that middle school is going to be starting a new program and they're going to be um you know the principals are going to be talking about that beginning next week so i know that's been a hot topic of conversation in the last couple years um interventions mental health interventions uh this is you know up to date uh as far as we could be by the time we had to post so there's been 94 um you know different counseling sessions for a total of 43 hours so far through this year and there are still a couple counselors that were working on updating their logs at that time um you know the kinds of services we're we're um doing uh you know our personal development um a
064lot of emotional regulation just handling our emotions in this current format can be very difficult for all of us um stress reduction i know that's an issue for certainly in my household and i know for all of us at this point in time and anxiety um we also have our associates from one life and from some of the universities um and you know what we want to know what we want to say right now is there's ample opportunity there's availability so if a family is struggling you know and and either a teacher knows about it or a family is listening tonight and says hey i could use some help reach out to your principal okay it's available we have help available our associates are at the ready to serve you with the needs that you
065have um and you know this is something that our our lead counselor kirsten daniel baka um actually shared with mindy hill and myself said it's been interesting calling in this in a distance learning format because some parents are saying no it's actually okay you know without the actual school happening um things that are more under control for my child than maybe they were before and so they're actually turning down some so again we have plenty of availability reach out if you need it and i always look at it as a real positive of our school district that we're so passionate about the whole child can you just double check that you didn't skip a slide oh i i did yep sometimes it goes quick yeah my well my computer is kind of glitchy on that
066level so we'll go back to this um assessing learning loss um and you know sort of where we are with that uh using multi-tiered systems of support you've heard about that a lot during our meetings um and we alluded to that that was supposed to segue me into the next um slide where we talk about tier one and tier two uh interventions for students for mental health um you know again we have our middle school starting each day with pack and advisory time which is specific to really just checking in with kids and seeing how they're doing it's not a curriculum-based time um teachers have been using our vetted assignments and newer ones to monitor progress it's well underway and they're going to start looking at those results uh here shortly um there there i
067already mentioned lexia and iReady and that you know teachers are grappling now with that data and what it means and triangulating it with the data that they've gotten in other ways um then you know they're collaborating they're collaborating constantly actually is what we're hearing um and that collaborating more than ever and and of course it's around designing effective instruction for students um and then you know we are in process as far as um really pairing our struggling or urgent learners with the extra adult we talked about that a couple of times in the last couple meetings and that's underway at a couple of our sites and we're excited to get that underway at others and then obviously we're monitoring the progress and growth you know myself sarah you know obviously dr harmer our principals along
068with teachers to really look at what we're finding out we saw this slide then we'll move into a little bit more about sown to grow this this is the example of a a seven-day example for 330 students and this is what a principal gets for the whole site so um you know you see the basic average was 3.7 overall they would say that children are are quote unquote happy with that rating um and it's just a real quick check-in to find out how everyone is doing teachers get this for their class and then they can drill down and see it for individual students so students that are struggling you know it's color-coded and it's easy to read um the uh counselor also has the ability to see the dashboard so this overall overarching um whole
069school um an important piece that you know we talked about especially with you know in regard to to our five c's you know this really helps with the ownership piece um which is the fifth c i believe um and you know we really want to foster that in our students and it's also a way to look at growth and we've talked about that it's a way to set for students to set goals and then go back and look at their goals and then ask them every two weeks hey you set that goal how are you feeling and you know i know that four fives at the early stages of that and then others will come along as we get more familiar with the platform and then we're also looking at it's customizable it's one of
070the nice parts about it so teachers are sorry principals are looking at how to customize it and add uh certain mental health questions that we might want to know about um and that are vetted that are from other sources so our next step you know again the mtss model continues to be our guide um and really whether that's academic or social emotional behavioral you know how do we support students and and having the three tiers of support um you know data analysis is happening constantly but you know our principals will have some time to work with our staffs coming up here in the next few weeks um we know that site councils will engage with this data they always do this is the type of data you know from surveys and from things like sone
071to grow that generally you really want to have to share with your site council because it kind of gives that global view um and then you know we're going to begin our sooner than later which is coming up much more quickly than we think um our engagement process around the actual the actual l cap if you will starts in january so those are just some of the few next steps we have going on so time for your discussion or questions thank you so much hans that was a lot of really really great information i realized this is the first time we've um had an update like this and i was really hoping um to really understand what is the distance learning experience um for our students and for our teachers and how is it um
072working or not and i think you really nailed it with um with the presentation i really really appreciate it i want to open up to my trustees for questions first uh so neil wendy and irene do you have any comments or questions for hans i got a comment hans i or not i guess a question i have for you is kind of on that last slide you had about the next steps right so i guess those were kind of very broad strokes i took them and what you do next but you know you taking the data and looking at it what do you think do you think that survey that you're able to grasp the challenges of distance learning first and then second what are you going to do or how do you fill in
073the gaps or address those challenges i mean there's always more you can learn and one of the things i want to point out is you know we did not have an open-ended question for parents on the survey um you know didn't say so you know what other suggestions or what other information did you want to share i will say that i sent the survey out personally and i got probably 40 to 50 emails back that you know where folks said well you didn't leave me a place to do this so i went ahead and commented anyway and so i took those comments and i added them to the survey and i read all of them and so in developing the you know this presentation i tried to take those into account as well you know
074i think by far the number one comment was you know this is hard so many people that was their comment whether that was teachers or parents this is really hard and i think you know that that i was trying to capture that and also you know that as hard as it is it is working on some level for kids and so you know i i think those were the kinds of things and obviously we had some people that were really unhappy i mean you're going to have that there's no question that you know the only thing that that's going to satisfy them is going back um i got some of those comments um so yeah neil i do feel like i was able to capture you know the feelings of most folks um and you
075know i didn't turn anybody away obviously like i said if somebody emailed me back i absolutely took their feedback and said thank you and then added it to the format so um and that's important and then sorry neil i forgot the second question can you re-ask uh i guess one i'll ask one question off of that we just said based off of those extra emails you got and comments on open ended did you see there was a pattern that broke down by like grade level like the younger learners seemed to be the ones that were struggling the most compared to not as many parents talking about you know six through eight or was it all across the board even that's my first question well the open ended was hard like those personal responses because they
076didn't necessarily say i have a blank blank and a blank right some of them did um and probably about half of them said i have a kindergarten or a second grader an eighth grader for example and the experience is quite different for the three of them that was said in many of the comments that i received back um and i you know i think overall you are correct that the most difficult um and as we sort this one of the things that you know for follow-up that we're going to that principals are doing now is sorting it sorting the data by grade level so they can kind of get a sense for what this looks like what's this look like in kindergarten what's this look like in third grade for example for a p3 principle
077right it's quite different just in having a real quick look and i didn't really have a chance to get down to that granular level um because i needed to do this global view um but when i took a quick look at a sort you know you're kind of dead on in that there are certainly there's more concern around the younger grades than there is around the higher grades that's not to say that there isn't concern at all grades okay um but you know probably you know we look at it um if we we get into that level of of disaggregation you're going to find a pattern that of course those first three questions in particular for parents that k and one that they're doing a lot of those things okay they're having to help their
078kid with technology they're having to help their kid you know with with structure and they're having to help them learn all the time and so you know it goes with it stands to reason even without having the results that that's what they would say um so you know can i can i just pick up on what hans just said because that was my question was about disaggregating the data is that okay okay um i just wanted to ask hans then is that something so because the slide on access to learning it had it was broken tk through five and then six through eight and i couldn't remember how the survey was designed you know i'm sure you had separate questions and it probably even said yes skip you know skip this section so but because
079you grouped tk through five it's hard to know there is um when i look at the percentages um i don't know it's like 14% you know are in the strongly disagree or or disagree and then you've got 16% in the neutral so it would just be nice to know who are those that are on that side right that are the ones that are dissatisfied and this isn't just concerning doesn't seem to be working you're referring to this slide right wendy yeah okay by grade we might be able to know who that is we can we can disaggregate it by grade that's something we can do at this point so that was a question that was after we asked what grade level there was so right great so like you said if the principals are doing
080follow-up and you know and work with this data um and and i also recognize that you know parents and and obviously their teachers are in dialogue if some you know i'm sure there's already been communication where people are struggling you know that this survey doesn't you know satisfy you know that this is just one snapshot for us um but i don't know at some point if we could get that disaggregated data i would appreciate seeing it that would be yeah okay thanks sorry neil on that point hans my question to all that was then since you being the person that got all the data back and everything else back what then is your take um it could be more specific or granular in terms of addressing those challenges that you saw well i mean i
081do think i think our as usual i mean you know the operational side of things happens on the site and you know the principals are key to that and so you know they've they've begun looking at the data though they will disaggregate it you know and then they will take it to their teachers for what's actionable and you know i think that that's the key right i mean i can help anyone with disaggregating and if necessary but they also are our principals are quite versed um and you know i have the utmost confidence in them that that's exactly what their next step will be um and so you know i think that's the answer to your question right i mean i can provide data i can't i'm not necessarily going to be the one that
082works directly with staffs to do that so i guess my last thing would just be a comment and i think regards to what so i filled out the survey for my family um and then you know i think a lot of what happens is when you fill out the survey compared to maybe what's going on is it's can be much more individualized um by child right and i think something to think about or address going forward is like look you know there are certain aspects to it that work great for every one of my children there are certain aspects to it that don't work at all for either one of my children that i don't think has anything that i don't know if you can ever address that as a whole um for uh you
083know distance learning but i do expect us as a district to be able to address it in other ways and find it prime example would be is like like for my youngest is like writing this is like it's a struggle um and it's not that it can't be done but it's just something that like it's a just absolute struggle having you know mom or dad try to engage this work compared to math which she's completely engaged so you know i don't know if the survey reflects those type of things is more along my lines so i'd like to see us as a district be able to identify with parents or at the site level of what it is that those gaps i like to call them for lack of having any educational you know terminology
084whatsoever to address um when staff is able to see them or connect with teachers or connect with parents to find those gaps thanks niel irene that's how you had it yeah i do have a couple couple comments um one is one kind as a meta comment it's i think we take survey data as kind of like one really valuable piece of input but it's not the sole input we obviously have all of our lived experiences we have conversations as a governing team with neighbors with colleagues etc that's a really important so thanks hans um i had a couple kind of like just like key some key takeaways one is i think we can see in the fall that distance learning is not the crisis learning that was in the spring it is just so vastly
085different and superior because the incredible hard work that our teachers are putting in as well as the support that kids are getting kind of from their parents at home um it was interesting i mean i actually thought that the some of the responses to like my kids able to kind of access learning and be engaged was actually maybe higher than i would have expected so that's the first observation my second observation is that the engagement was higher when um there was like teacher engagement synchronously whether it was like whole group or small group but more so than when um it was async and i just bring this up because i think this is kind of a lead-in for some of my thinking when we go into our next um topic on you know potentially hybrid
086but that is just like something in my mind um i think third while like wendy while that data isn't disaggregated yet and but that data will be coming soon i think we know that it is much harder at the young at the younger years um my one other comment to the point that dan linear made at the very beginning i i hope if teachers were feeling not quite as heard or made that that was inadvertent um i want you teachers to know that i think this governing board in almost all of our conversations are wondering how are the teachers doing it's constantly what we're asking dr harmer and hans and and our principals and um i hope people feel very cared for and if the number of questions didn't reflect that i'm sure that's probably
087something we can attend to in in future surveys uh we know that there are other methods by which we kind of try to get teachers points of view across like um the weekly leadership meetings that dr harmer has with principals and so forth to check in on how staff is doing thank you irin for for that comment and actually my my um my comment i think really piggybacks on that i think the the trustees did a great job kind of filling down on on where we go with understanding where students are and so hans my question would be what's your takeaway from the teacher data on the surveys about what's actionable for what teachers need right now and how we can how and where we might want to think about making investments to support what
088we're hearing from teachers out of this survey and what we're hearing from other what you're hearing from the channels well i mean you know that tried to capture that on the one slide just saying you know that and and certainly by no means were we not trying to to hear and i hope that the analysis that i've given kind of says hey you know yeah we we heard we hear and we you know there was significant input and that that you know i really tried um and i didn't just do this alone i mean principals helped too and we really tried to look at it as globally um and and take the highlights and i think you know carol actionable things that really you know that that like i said the most common pieces that
089came out were you know it's hard to give time right like like i said we're always behind on time um and everybody feels that way but i think it's dedicated time to do some of these things that they talked about so dedicated time to work with my team dedicated time to you know dig deeper into things like lexier i ready dedicated time to triangulate assessments um instead of you know because we've done a lot of training and there's been a lot of newness and so whenever you do newness you want to support um and you know i think what teachers are saying is yeah okay that's great and we need time to do these other things right um i also think you know um they you know with conferences coming up next week that was
090something that came out too here and there just you know there's a lot happening um and the normal see of things we're not in a normal time right and what does that mean and what does that look like when we're here so in trying to support that non-normalcy you know thinking of creative ways to use the time we have um that time because we can't come up with new time but creative ways to to use that time to give teachers the time they need to do the things we're asking um and you know that was made really clear i in every comment i read in for every principal that i've talked to it's like yep i know and it's always a struggle no matter what it's a struggle but we have a pretty good structure
091and how do we figure out within that structure what we like you know steal some time really you know protect and dedicate um you know that that rang true i think you know there's there's a few you know things like tech support like we we know how hard it is right now um and you know Alejandro you know there's only one of them and that came out overwhelmingly in the teachers you know just man you know so much support for Alejandro and and kind of it's not fair that there's only one Alejandro right that came true true that came out as well so you know and and that would help all of us um and and i think that that's not just a distance learning piece because you know it's just exacerbated that is what
092it's done because we're so reliant now in this model on the things that you know Tom and Alejandro and Inger can do um that the rest of us may not be able to and it's just exacerbated to what we've already experiencing now that we're in a full distance learning model and super dependent on technology it makes it even more obvious that we need more tech support so you know um so we need to look at how to make more investments in that clearly for sure regardless of whether we go back you know in hybrid or full time or whatever technology is now really i mean this is just solidified its piece in in any district let alone our district moving forward so thank you that's yeah that's coming through loud and clear um i know
093we're going to be talking about the budget at the at the october eighth meeting just a little bit of a a temperature check before we hit first and around in december so those are opportunities to look at um if if we can increase support in in that area or other areas that that our staff needs carol um can i i didn't really i i just asked that one question but could i ask a couple more make a comment absolutely i'm also trying to keep conscious of time i'm glad you put times on these blocks and so i'll only like take one or two more minutes i think um i mean what i wanted well one of my initial reactions was i was really happy to see the attendance data and it's it's amazing right to
094see how high it is knowing that um you know in person it's 97 on average so that's great and i also know that we have our mtss you know system and whatnot things in place for those students who are needing you know um supports um that because you know there's maybe a one percent that aren't showing up or you know we want to make sure that no one has fallen off our radar right but i'm so glad to see the attendance rate it's great we already talked about the segregating the data i think one thing i just wanted to say about this type of a survey and how we're using this in our process of you know continuous improvement we've talked about we wanted to take these pulse checks along the way to see how
095we're doing so this is our first one and this is really positive and it's great and i guess i just want us to think about you know we'll be having this conversation on the eighth looking forward six weeks looking towards the end of the year um but as we look at distance learning overall one thing i would like to say is that i think hans maybe we could think about building in some survey questions for students especially uh six three right i sat with my child and went through the questionnaire because i wanted to know exactly her input and sort of we you know maybe we disagreed on a few or whatever we kind of figured out what was she how should we answer these questions for you for her so i think student voice
096is important i know we've said this before in other conversations because as neil said learning is differentiated it has to be differentiated and there are certain things that just aren't going to work for certain kids in a distance learning format so let's figure out what that is and maybe we could we could try having some some students you know in the sixth grade or wherever we decide or figure out how to get some of that input or again ask the parents again and this should be an iterative process so i just want to leave that just for forward thinking about how we use this to help us improve strengthen our distance learning muscle we're going to continue to want to strengthen that muscle because we know that our on our future is uncertain with the
097pandemic we just don't know and we want to be good at distance learning so thanks yeah just wendy one comment on that some of those comments i received back um from parents that said there wasn't an open-ended question about five of them did exactly what you did they said this is the input that my my child wants to give and those were you know it's fascinating to see what kids have to say and and you know it is certainly something that we want to consider and as you said especially in the middle school even fourth grade and up kids can give some really actionable and valuable feedback so that could certainly be one of our next steps as well yeah and i'm i'm sensing that um people want to feel heard right now they want
098to this is a new experience for everybody and people want to share how how it's uh working not working how it's affecting them and what their ideas are and i'm just seeing the level of engagement of both the staff and the family survey that that was really fantastic engagement so i would just encourage us to keep doing maybe a series of short ones so that it's not taxing on folks um and try to find out you know what is it that folks want to share that they think will help us continue to improve and do better and meet their needs so and and then i just want to end this piece by saying wow congratulations to our staff i mean you should be really really really proud for how engaged what you know for that
099data that was phenomenal i just speaks volumes to the work that you're doing um to how the students are responding to how it's supporting families and i just want to say thank you so that's that's really what it says loudest to me so i want to recognize all of you for that so thanks there's one public comment on this carol oh thank you neil uh it's from erica ireland uh respectfully i disagree that distance learning is going well for youngest learners having a board meeting virtually is no comparison to five-year-olds trying to develop social emotional skills over zoom which is just impossible i strongly urged a phased approach to attempt to bring urgent and young learners back as a child thank you neil okay well and that segues right into our next agenda item 6b
100the return to school factors uh dr harmeier all right thank you trustees and thank you hans for the presentation and to our principals and everyone who was involved in completing the survey creating the survey and really analyzing that and there's a commitment on our part to really use the data not just ask for it but use it and that's going to be the focus over the next week as we disaggregate and really look deeply and then the question is what do you do with it you know there's a great protocol of here's what so what now what you know there's those kind of protocols and and our principals will be looking at those things that really apply to their sites and say and ask that question with teams you know what do we do next
101how can we improve our practice you know how can we focus on areas that are working well and and start to invest a little more time or effort into those things and that's through that collaborative planning and sharing so thank you hans for facilitating that process and and sarah orton as well as our our curriculum coordinator are you able to see my screen okay all right next i want to give the board an update about where we are with our return to school factors the three things i really want to focus on i'm going to provide some information and then allow the board to have some discussion where where are with our current health status in in the county it's changed where are with our campus readiness you know just some nuts and bolts and
102logistics about being able to to return to campus with some in-person learning and where are we in our efforts and where are some of the gaps still and and some challenges that we're encountering as we start to look at the the reality of having some in-person learning soon and then covid testing options and so those are the three focus areas for tonight i've shared this slide before this is a standard from the blueprint for a safer economy or opening economy from the the state and these are this is the the color coded system we have been in the purple the most restrictive tier called widespread transmission of covid and we were in that for three weeks and that was the initial stage we just converted over to the next tier tier two which is substantial
103transmission and for the county similar to the some of our surrounding counties there's only a couple of counties in the bay area that are still in that purple right now but we're making progress so that's good news for our community and that's really in thanks to everybody doing what they need to do you know following the the pillars that are recommended now what we have learned about being in red what does red mean for us let me let me just that i just took a snapshot for those of you want to see the county and the the details of each county you can go to the blueprint for california type in san matteo and you'll see the two data data points the the case rate and the positivity rate and that's what drives this data
104so you can learn more just going on the website there so what is what's really impacting us now about what next steps because as we learned is once you're in red you can go back to some in-person learning without a waiver so that's that's what we're going to focus on today now that the pending changes have happened remember this was posted last monday before the changes happened so some important factors the the number one thing we're are doing focusing on is really collaborating and negotiating with our teachers union and our classified union and when i say negotiating it's about communication we meet frequently we have discussions about small items and large items and we're constantly adjusting new things pop up we talk those through and then we come up with the solution and then we
105can move through so i think that's an important piece because we want our teachers and staff to feel safe protected supported understood and heard and so we will continue to to have those conversations we are right now having conversations around bringing some small groups of urgent learners back we're very excited about this we didn't need a waiver for this the california department of public health gave us permission even while in the purple and the red to bring back a small groups of urgent learners and has they can be defined as homeless youth foster youth english learners who receive services or special education students who receive services this is meant to be targeted services for specific students so we're really looking at that right now and as we kind of phase in our process of getting
106some kids back on campus for some supports we're going to be starting with that that group there's still a couple weeks out we have some logistics to work out with our nurses and our health protocols and making sure our sites are ready to go but it will be very small groups and those that have specific services that cannot be met through distance learning so likely it'll be just our some of our more intensive special education students who provide get some provided services so that will drive the who will come back is those services the next the next step is we explored the waiver and as you know the waiver allows essentially some students no more than 25 percent of your population to come back to the campus you know with a waiver with a testing
107plan with a lot of protocols in place and what I learned today is that three districts in our county received a waiver to start bringing some people back on campus and and it's just elementary students that are able to do that and what we're learning is different districts have different capacity to do this in different space different staffing levels and budgets that allow them to do this so the districts that I'm aware of are smaller than us they're all basic aid districts and they're not coming back today they're just getting some approvals to really have a head start on on their hybrid or their on-campus learning so for us well as you know we did not apply for a waiver we really did not feel we had capacity to to use the waiver system to
108support our in-person transition so we held off on applying for a waiver a big part of that were the costs associated with testing for staff the county has not at up to this point had not had any testing processes in place at an affordable cost for all of our employees unlike other counties you know and that that was a real barrier for us so that's something that was really a challenge as we look toward next steps though what we need to do now that we're in the red and we don't have to have a waiver to come back the next steps are we need to start engaging our staff around what does it look like now to start a phase-in approach with our with some kind of our hard our hard work model and we
109started that conversation this week with our with our leadership group and also a little bit with our our union in our initial conversation just to make them aware of what what that would look like so we have some some planning and some more detailed work to do and what i want to reinforce is kind of go back and remind the board when we passed our initial plan in june to get the year started our hybrid model included an ampm approach for kinders and first grades that means a couple hours in the morning for an am group then a break to clean the rooms and then a couple hours in the afternoon for a pm group and that was the approach that our teams preferred so that our kids would have time on campus four out
110of five days a week that was part of that initial plan what we have to realize is right now all of our kinders in first grades are getting five days a week from about 8 30 to 130 engaged in some learning there's a lunch break there's a recess break there's little breaks during that time but our kids are engaged from about 8 30 to 130 with their teacher overseeing either live instruction or some independent work back and forth small groups one-on-one so i think what we have to be aware of is that trade-off that when we come back into an ampm model we have to remember now the teachers will be with about half their class in front of that class teaching that group in front of them and the students who are not with
111them will be doing independent work and then when they go home during the midday and the new group comes in the teachers are going to be with them full time so it really discontinues the distance learning approach so the teacher is not going to be engaged with synchronous learning with those kids that are at home for that half of the day so that's just something to keep in mind because when we look at transitioning to hybrids there will be trade-offs and we just have to to weigh those trade-offs we still are working out the details about can we accommodate lunchtime on campus some schools i noticed in their waiver that was approved they're not doing any lunch on campus they're calling it grab and go because they're cleaning rooms all the custodian efforts are transitioning
112kids in and out of school ingress and egress and they are not having lunch on campus lunch is at home so that what that's a management factor that we have to grapple with and our elementary principals are thinking about and wondering can we do we have the capacity to have lunch on campus or do we not and so we're that's a specific planning project that we're going to have to work on we know that's an important time for kids to engage and socialize and play on the playground and those kinds of things so we have to figure that piece out okay so that's that's one of those factors that we're still working on remember that in order for us to have lunch on campus we need campus supervision and that's our smarty employees typically who
113would help with lunchtime so can the staffing levels in the smarty program free up and accommodate our smarty staff to help with lunchtime that's an analysis we need to do and where are we with our staffing levels with smarty because that's our lunch supervision program it was also in the past lagarza lagarza also pe served us for pe and they provided lunch supervision and right now they're not on campus so we can look at that as a factor that we have to consider the next piece when we look at the hybrid model is our second through eighth graders then we're going to be on an ab schedule which was very typical in that this spring summer when we were adopting our plan that's how most people were handling the six foot distancing of just having
114that small group on campus group a might go to school monday and thursday group b might go to school tuesday and friday and wednesday may be the professional day that's an example of the model that we were looking at which means students then in second through whatever grade eighth grade whenever we phase this in it could be that say our second and third graders then if i just kind of think about our logical phase in maybe that's our next group to come back that means they might be on campus for two days a week with their teacher and engaged with their their classes and their teacher they're at home for three days a week independent learning so not engaged with the teacher doing distance learning synchronously on zoom because the teacher's time is now focused
115with the students in front of them so that's one of those trade-offs that we have to really think about and as we talk about that think i i've been thinking about with our principals the investment we made on training our teachers to be really good distance learning teachers because that's a completely different way of teaching well we're going to have to do some investment and some planning to help our teachers transition to yet another way of teaching and then is how do you teach your students in front of you and then how do you use that professional collaboration and planning time to engage you know prepare school at home more like an independent learning time at home so that the students at home are meaningfully engaged the best we can even though they don't have
116a person to guide their learning all day that would be on the parents to to to really take that over so that's something to consider when we look at hybrid when we look at our middle schools when i talk to the principals today the the biggest challenge that we have as far as capacity to move into a hybrid is looking at the complexity of a middle school schedule and how middle school kids move from class to class to class right now elementary kids one teacher one class they're stable cohorts they're stable because the teacher meets with one group one day or in the morning and another group but they're stable cohorts one adult two groups of kids in middle school one middle school teacher will have four different groups of kids and in those four
117groups of kids then get divided in half you know so you're looking at eight groups of kids over the course of a week that's a lot of contacts and that's a lot more engagement with kids and our middle school principals design schedules with that in mind but they're still very challenged with what will that look like how are we going to supervise the transition between classes how are we going to clean in between and how are we going to get all of our kids on campus and on campus off campus particularly at Tierra Linda where there's one way in one way out without having some backlog you know so that means you know how will how will we stagger some of that start and end so there's some logistical work to really work on still
118with middle school and particularly with supervision of students on campus because we don't have that same level of support with supervision without our La Garza staff and you know with just general supervision at lunchtime and transitions and bathrooms and things like that and bathroom cleaning is a real concern for our principals right now especially in the middle schools just because of the number of students on campus and the number of restrooms and the levels of custodian support that we have so we have work to do when we consider that that I would say that phase in of our middle school students so I what next steps do we have when we're talking about what work do we have to do we have some work to do with putting together the more detailed plan of a
119very measured sequential approach to having a specific plan to bring back students in a way that makes sense and we talked about our urgent learners first we I agree our k's and ones are really urgent learners we considered them urgent learners when we developed this plan because an ampm program demands more resources and time and cleaning and we want to make that a priority so that would be another priority as phasing in and then when we look at second through eighth what do we prioritize what are those high impact activities that could be on campus that makes sense so that we can still maintain good strong core instruction but maybe provide different kinds of opportunities on campus with the resources that we have so I would say that our my goal is to work with
120our leaders engage our teachers and really work out these nuts and bolts what we have to do is have a plan I just had an opportunity to talk to Nancy McGee this afternoon and I talked to Nancy about kind of where we were with our planning and one of our challenges was around testing so I'll just briefly go over the next couple slides and then I'll I'm going to come back to that because that's a real challenge for us that might be resolved. Michelle you skipped the last bullet which was the opening up schools committee do you want to just comment on that? Yes so I think that our opening of schools committee for us has provided a lot of initial information and input and feedback as we as we were really looking at models
121and that's where we came up with our our initial plan we presented to you I see now kind of our next step is really having our our work groups put together this next step of the plan kind of the nuts and bolts I don't know exactly how this opening up schools committee will be engaged in the next couple of weeks but what I'm envisioning is engaging them giving them updates have a chance to have them preview our plan to provide some valuable feedback to us with that plan that we want to bring to you next and really listen to any additional things that we haven't thought about but I really again want to engage that group and use them as a reflection group and that's what this has been for us it can be a
122very large group so it really is an opportunity to have more perspectives kind of vet things and really challenge our thinking as we're putting together this next step of the plan so I want to kind of jump back to campus readiness and where we are again we feel that the this the campuses are pretty ready so we still have a little bit of work to do we're making sure every window is operable every door has a doorstop we can increase ventilation we're looking at how we're changing the filters in our hvac system more frequently and what other kinds of air filtration we can bring in where necessary so though I think we're ready to go in that area our our nurse has been really a huge help she has provided a 20 minute online training
123for all staff that's been sent out everyone is taking that training particularly if they're going to come on campus and many of our staff are working on campus now they also have an opportunity for a one-on-one consultation with the nurse that takes 20 or 30 minutes and that's been really valuable it's a one-on-one it's private people can ask all the questions they need to ask and have some reassurance from someone they can be confidential with so our goal is to have everyone have that opportunity but right now it's volunteers and we're asking those who are going to be working with kids to do that before they start working with kids so that that we can reassure nursing changes though right now you know we have three nurses two part-time they were all different portions of
124part-time but one has taken a leave of absence she's going to be a new mom so we wish her well we said goodbye to katie last week another one is going to be resigning so we are in the process of hiring and bringing in new nursing staff this is going to be a key to our return to school plan our nurse right now is very engaged with families that are connected to our enterprise programs as you know we've had kids on campus since may june july august and september both in our preschool program and our smarty care program and they've given us an opportunity to learn how to use the protocols in place when someone has sniffles or someone throws up you know we are engaged right away and following our action plan and there's
125a lot of communication involved from on the nurse to really engage and follow the county protocols on possible covid cases and how to respond how to clean how to communicate and it's it's really a taxing job and that's just with the groups that are on campus right now so the opportunity for us to shore up our systems have been wonderful because what i've learned from my peers other districts haven't had this opportunity like we have had so i think we have a little head start on understanding our practices on how to keep people safe how to communicate if we feel there might be a concern and the next piece is you know the protective equipment is on campus we we have purchased study carols for all of our elementary kids that are plastic with a
126clear front so they can all sit on their desk and have a little bit more of a barrier it's not required but it was in addition all the teachers will have another barrier on their small group table they have a clear plastic barrier between them and kids when they're a little bit closer so all those things that we purchased are in and delivered so we're feeling good about that we also know that mindy hill has been working closely with our principals on developing and supporting outdoor classroom spaces what mindy hill is telling us and she's our wellness director is the most important thing we can do to stay healthy as we know is to be outside versus inside a room so as much as possible if our teachers can take our kiddos outside for learning
127that's going to be really beneficial so our principals are going to work with ptas and their own budgets and say do we need a few more umbrellas do we need some easy ups some shade structures what else do we need to make it comfortable and doable to have more as much outdoor learning as we can so we're enhancing spaces and again i talked about custodian schedules before as as you know and remind you we reduced a couple of custodian positions 2.75 in our budget in june due to our budget crisis and we knew that was a hard decision to make knowing we would have to have more custodian help in times like this the state told us we could not reduce they made us rescind our layoff we brought back that 2.75 custodian so we
128have a solid group of custodians we're looking at how we can adjust their daily schedules to get more concentrated help during the day but our our principals are a little worried right now that we still don't have enough help and so that's something we have to really concentrate on over the next couple of weeks to make sure and look at schedules and again i talked about on-site lunch management can be challenging and that's that's one of those things that we'll be studying as well so what what needs to be in place and i think i might have may have most spoken before my understanding was when you went into red then you didn't need a waiver which meant you didn't have to have a testing plan well i learned today from nancy miggy we do
129have to have a testing plan even when we're in red that changed in august when they put the new guidelines out from the california department of health and it says you have to test your employees once at least once every 60 days so i really thought that was just connected to the waiver i didn't know it was also connected to being in red so i'm glad we've done all this research our nurses have done a great job of looking at at possible testing and i asked terry our nurse to quickly review this so you can understand the work that we've gone through and and what's available to us and then after she's finished i'll talk about some possible developments that are happening at the county level that we're learning about right now too so i'll
130ask i i don't know terry are you available to chime in here and convert yes i can take is it okay for you to keep sharing your screen though i will just tell me when to advance okay thank you hi everyone i'm terry i'm the district nurse and our covet 19 point of contact so you'll be hearing lots from me i'm sure um i want to talk a little bit about how we're dealing with student symptom screening for students who are on site because really screening and testing are kind of two pieces of the same puzzle so i just wanted to talk a little bit about what that looks like so um we right now we have a google form that we use in our enterprise we very quickly found out that that's not sophisticated
131enough to do the things that we needed to do we know that screening students is important for staff feeling safe students feeling safe families feeling safe sending their students in the current recommendations for screening or that they take place at home we want to avoid having sick kids on campus in the first place we don't want to be catching a temp when they come in we want you know to know that information before they come in so they can stay home and we also want to avoid large gatherings of students lining up for temperature checks or you know large groups that otherwise wouldn't gather so um we are super fortunate and that a member of our parent community i know what you guys were talking about this at the last board meeting um how important
132it is to engage with our parent community and a wonderful parent reached out to us who is the ceo of a company called hazel which is a school-based health care program and they are offering to create they saw our google form and they said you know we are developing this other product we'd like to offer it to the district free of charge um in exchange for us giving some input on what works what doesn't and kind of helping them to fine tune it so we're really excited about this because they're a school-based company they're firpa and hippa compliant it's super family friendly and i say that as a mom of three kids one in our district i have a first grader at a rundle so i was looking at it from my parent hat as
133well and it also comes in english and spanish so those are important considerations for us so the next slide this is just a super quick example of what it looks like so a parent it is web-based or an app on your phone and once you register your student you can just kind of click there um it remembers all of your students information you next go on to like a symptom screen or form we can customize those questions we're not going to be using a badge system or anything like that don't worry about the smiley face but it is cute um the next part is something that i'm very excited about as the district nurse and our covid point of contact it allows me to see at the district level what's happening so how many students
134have completed it how many haven't but also how many are homesick so i can at a glance tell um oh my gosh there's a bunch of kids out at a rundle what's going on at a rundle today so it's really helpful the other thing that is not shown here is that they're able to customize it by classroom level which i think will be hugely helpful to teachers they'll be able to see um in real time who's completed the screen or who hasn't this may you know we'll see what the protocols look like but it may cut down having to take every kid's temperature to taking only the five that didn't do the screener so it gives us a lot of options there um so we're excited about that and then now we'll move into talking
135a little bit about testing for staff so i want to echo what the board said at the last meeting and what you all have been saying and that currently it's been a huge hardship for districts to have to figure this out by ourselves i won't spend too much time explaining how we whittled down the list but know that we spoke with and interviewed six different vendors and listened to their pitches and tried to understand the services that they offer and they're listed here and if you advance to the next slide the one that we felt was the most robust is a company called kyla um it's the most comprehensive so they have an employee education module they include a symptom screener which is better than our google form for staff members and it integrates with
136employee covid testing so it's just kind of a one-stop shop they're based in the bay area they're very familiar with local and california regulations it's a mobile van service we actually really like the idea of vans showing up on site and the reassurance that gives families and to staff to know that people are coming and testing it's nurses that come out and do their testing they have their own lab they do the less invasive nasal swab you get results in less than 24 hours another huge piece that we like to say you can downgrade or cancel your contract with 30 days notice so we don't want to be locked into like a six-month contract if the county does devise a more sophisticated plan so um we really like the flexibility of that um i'll go
137into how it's billed in a minute here but um we want also a big consideration for us is that um the way that the insurance laws have changed recently means that insurance companies no longer have to fully cover tests even for essential employees they have to cover them but they can charge co-pays and deductibles which is a big liability for our um our staff that may be on high deductible health care plans another piece that's missing from this slide that's huge and i know dan had mentioned this earlier is that the app also supports contact tracing so employees can go in and select the people they were close to and then that employee will get an anonymous notification if they end up having a positive covid test so um all in all we felt like
138this was the best value and we got a lot for it but it's not cheap to be very clear um the fees for this app or for this system it's a 9.99 um nine dollars and 99 cents per employee per month technology fee um in addition to that you have to pay the testing costs so the tech fee really covers their app and their daily symptom screener um and then the testing costs there are multiple plans that you can choose from um there's weekly testing which is the most frequent plan that they offer and that is 260 dollars per employee per month or bi-weekly testing which is 150 dollars per employee per month there are plans that test less but they don't cover what um this outbreak testing um option and so if you're in
139if you choose either one of these two tests if there's an outbreak of covid at your school they'll come out and they'll test everybody for free so we felt like that was a really good value and they said in a school system and somewhere this large or with this large of a population that that usually pays for itself getting the more frequent testing um the way that billing works is that the district would pay for all tests one month in advance um could you uh go to the next slide dr harmer thank you um the billing is quite complicated uh i don't i know we're probably short on time i don't know how much you want me to get into all of this but i'll just really quickly say that there is a different billing
140procedure for employees who have kaiser and those who have other health insurance providers um so you can move to the next slide dr harmer thank you um so i already explained about this um change in july we feel very strongly that employees should not have to shoulder the burden of paying for their own covid tests as part of their job responsibilities um but the way that this works is that um apparently kaiser they know what an icu bill costs they're very good about paying their bills on time and they have agreed to cover in full the test of surveillance the cost of surveillance testing for asymptomatic individuals that is not always the case with other private insurance companies and so this actually works out in our benefit because about 66 of our staff members have
141kaiser insurance so this could if as long as they continue to do that this could really help make it more affordable though again i still think it's a very high cost um so we feel strongly that the district should pay the full cost for people that don't have kaiser and then the people that do have kaiser will be free so on to the next slide um the way that it works very briefly is that the um we pay for everybody for that very first month and then if kaiser stops paying they're going to know pretty early on and they'll just tell us and then um you know we would have to figure that out when the time comes but if kaiser continues to pay for these this testing in full for the duration of the
142school year then we would get that first month's money back as a refund so it's just sort of a deposit in case um on the next slide so how it works is when employees sign up through the app they put their health insurance information in there and that's true whether they're a kaiser um patient or whether they are they have another insurance plan and this is because if there is that outbreak testing insurance does have to cover that in full without co-pays and so that's how they're able to bill individual insurance only for outbreak testing and they have not had any issues with employees getting extra bills for that sorry i know this is kind of complicated um so what we wanted to sort of suggest at this point in time is you know right
143now we do have smarty staff and preschool staff we have our custodians we have our secretaries these people have been working since may and they really need access to testing and we want to support that and so we're recommending or at least our nursing team is recommending that we kind of do a pilot with this program i don't know dr harmar what the county is suggesting so that may change things but um i just ran some numbers and wanted to give you guys a budget so a projected cost rather so there is um these are the numbers of the different groups of staff members and how many of them have kaiser insurance so right now if we count all of our smarty preschool custodians and secretaries there are 60 employees and 27 of them have
144kaiser insurance and this is the the breakdown so if we only test these 60 employees per month it's going to be nine thousand five hundred and ninety nine dollars and 40 cents and that is to cover the cost of everyone even kaiser employees and then those subsequent months it's a little bit cheaper it's five thousand five hundred and forty nine if we continued in the distance this is just a projection if we were to continue in distance learning for the whole year with only those groups staying on campus the total cost to our district if kaiser continues to pay like they are now is about fifty four thousand dollars and if kaiser stops covering for any reason i think we do have to kind of plan for that worst case scenario because it's never you
145know you never really know what insurance companies that they're going to do but it's eighty six thousand dollars for the whole year just for staff in distance learning and then we wanted to branch that out and say what if and i know there's a lot of space in between these two plans but what if everyone was back on site what would that cost and so on the right hand column you have bi-weekly testing i should clarify all of these projections are for testing two times a month so every other week and another option that we have for doing this testing is it doesn't have to be a hundred percent of people every other week we could do fifty percent every other week so that every week somebody's getting tested and that also kind of helps
146us have a better sense of what's happening in our community so there are kind of other ways to structure it so for bi-weekly testing during a hybrid mode when everybody's back 315 staff that first month is going to be fifty thousand dollars a little over fifty thousand dollars and then if we did that for the entire year and this is projected starting next month i don't i you know it's hard to make projections for this so i wasn't totally sure which month to use but for the whole year we're looking at over four hundred thousand dollars if kaiser does not pay if kaiser continues to pay it's still you know nearly a quarter of a million dollars so two hundred and twenty six thousand so that's all the information i have for you i think
147you know i'm in an interesting position because i'm our nurse i'm also a member of scta so i feel really strongly that you know the staff who are working on site have a right to routine surveillance testing and i hope that the county does their job and starts offering it but thank you so much for the opportunity to present to you this evening thank you terry and now i can share literally not till this afternoon i don't know if some of you saw that in the daily journal today the county announced that they would start additional testing in their in the county capacity and that's really good news and so that was kind of a a hint and and we knew in our superintendent meeting tomorrow on our agenda was something around testing so what
148i'm able to share right now let me read what i said i could share is there's a real strong possibility that the county of san batale county will have a low that's the county office of education will have a low cost solution for employees so i know there's some work to do and they're still working on some negotiations just like we've done our research terry the county office has been doing the same thing and they're looking at how to scale this for for all employees all you know education employees in the county so i'm really excited because we're going to learn more tomorrow about this and maybe more next week but i know that as we've been meeting as superintendents this has been a high priority every time we meet in our request with the
149county office is to please provide this because there are some more affluent districts that have budgets to take care of this testing and then there are people like us that we are in a financial crisis still and we just have we don't have the resources you know that other districts do and we would have to do some real trade-offs about how to how to support this so i just want to first say thank you to terry she's done an enormous amount of research and work to bring this together with her nursing team so thank you for that and let's now that because of what terry has done i feel like i'm prepared and better prepared in a position to kind of share with our the rest of the superintendents you know where where we are
150and what and then understand what the county might be able to offer so that kind of wraps up our our presentation so the next part is discussion thank you so much michelle thank you for the update and thank you terry for that was a lot of work that was pretty much exactly what i wanted to understand about what how much is it going to cost us to do the the level of testing that we would need and expect if we were to bring students and staff back to campus so that is extremely helpful in the planning process and i still hope that the county shows some leadership and create and does their job when it comes to public health and establishes a robust testing program for all public employees um that's one question sorry just
151because we're on the testing topic with terry um so terry i'm a santa clara county employee but um we don't have like i don't have any sort of surveillance testing whatsoever despite that still having to like go to court and be around on stable cohorts and things like that so but the trade-off to that is that the county in santa clara as an employee i can get tested right at any point in time um san matteo announced the other day on the county that separate from what dr harmar is talking about though is that um they have partnered or working the partner with one more testing site to increase testing on san matteo county so any san matteo county resident or anyone who works in san matteo county can take advantage of free testing no
152questions asked whatsoever and just go to i think currently still it's at the fairgrounds but i don't know where the next site is i think i'm trying to do it further north as in daly city so the question i have is in terms of like cost is if you know and i don't know if you do know or if it's something you can look into is is there ways to reduce costs if we take advantage of those programs right so if a staff member lives in santa clara county and they fall into that category of teacher or you know they can then go get tested there and then you know what their test results would be or they could do on their own schedule if san matteo county is doing for free then they can
153maybe do it um you know what i don't necessarily want to say is if someone feels they need to get a test sometimes then you can just go and get one um but then that maybe can kind of factor into our schedule is that a possibility have you learned anything about that at all yeah great question so we um one of the things that we're also like i said this whole screening the app like all of this stuff really feeds into each other and so um one of the logistical considerations is if we have people get tested separately who kind of manages getting all of those records in and how do we update it i mean the logistics of that are complicated i know that kyla in my my conversation with him i would want
154to confirm this but they did say that because i asked the same question like if a staff member doesn't want to get tested on site if they want to go to their own doctor maybe they're symptomatic i mean you're going to your to your own provider has a lot of value and they said that their app supports employees being able to upload their own test result and so i was also wondering the same thing if an employee is able to take advantage of that but we still pay the 9.99 technology fee that still has a huge value i think in terms of contact tracing in terms of our time and our staffing and the app has a lot of value in terms of our symptom screener and it also gives us sort of this hr
155view of who's out and how long they're out so i don't think i i'd be curious to hear more about it my my gut reaction is that i think um the private companies still offer a lot of utility and i hope that there are ways that we can cut costs within that does that answer your question it did it should be something if maybe as you go through the process i mean anything to reduce the 150 is obviously where the big chunk of change is so if there's advantages for us to be able to do it or offer more options i would like to know that in my decision making and another point that i'm not clear on is we have our numbers on how many of our employees are have kaiser insurance through the
156district i don't know that that number accounts for how many employees may be on their spouses or partners kaiser insurance and so that number may be lower than that as well maybe significantly lower um can i just ask one question it wasn't covered but you just mentioned that terry what is our capacity for contact tracing because that is kind of the partner of testing and identification yeah so um we have received kind of mixed guidance i would say from the from the county about who's doing it at first it was the county was taking care of it and then it was now the schools have to take care of it um i just went to a meeting this afternoon with the other county nurses and i'm really pleased to say that the the county of
157san matteo they have a specific team that's just doing school contact tracing and so there is this sort of chain of command where if i become aware of a case i have to report to that we kind of work together there are these line lists we have to report to the county every day they do take a significant amount of time that's also a big part of why i'm so excited about partnering with hazel because that actually having that data and i keep using the word sophisticated in a more sophisticated way really helps my job in terms of running that report getting the list out i'm not calling 100 families to see why their kids are out across the district you know so um i i would say i'm a little nervous being the only
158nurse right now but we did interviews and we have a lot of promising candidates like i think um it would be it's hard to say until we're back but i'm less concerned about the capacity for contact tracing maybe a little bit more concerned about the capacity for and this is probably a separate conversation but um the county guidance is very complex and it tells us to exclude students from school very easily and so um that is a huge piece like the amount of time i'm spending even now calling families asking about symptoms asking what's happening in their household making determinations about whether we think it could be covid and it couldn't and the county does have clear guidance on that but covid just the nature of it it looks like so many different things that
159it's really really difficult um for a student that has even two symptoms they have to go home and get a test or i mean it's very very strict and so that is a concern that i have is the capacity for us to interview every sick child who's out and follow up on all the protocols thank you that's really helpful to understand what our capacity limitations are and what where some of those um those bottlenecks in the process might be um michelle i kind of wanted to start out just with the kind of the the to set the make sure we're aligned on the goals is um just to really i think it would be helpful to really restate what our goals are around returning to school what are those priorities i mean i'm assuming that
160the first one is safety for staff and students right and then i would imagine um a consistent sustainable educational experience that's meeting the academic and social emotional needs of our students um would be probably the second one am i you know i think it's really important as we as we evaluate you know whether to stay in distance learning who to bring back to school when if you know that we are really clear about what those goals are because i think that's that's how we evaluate um what our options are you know i i think you stated it you know we've been using these three pillars you know health and safety academics and social emotional and i think our goals um are balanced right now when we looked at our survey you know we really concentrated
161on learning teaching and learning things that we can control really at school and that's why that data was really concentrated and narrow um we have to decide um i think as a team you know what are our priorities uh i think our highest priority is health and safety as we move back then look you know learning is is a high high priority that's our our role you can't you can't go back and get that you know and then that's something that we have control over and we're charged to do you know the social and emotional um well-being of kids is integrated in all of this and we're doing a quite a big lift in making sure our kids are connected and seeing friends on you know lunchtime zooms or you know just during group work
162and and individual work and we're trying as much as we can to connect but that real life you know engagement is just not there and i think that is a high priority you know for kids to have an opportunity to engage face to face and learn those social skills and working you know in a way so i i think our our three pillars are still balanced you know health and safety is critical and then our academic learning has got to be that next piece and then that social emotional uh you know opportunity to to kind of fill out that whole child experience there's some things that are have are really have to be on pause this year you know whether you look at field trips for example or you know music live person to person
163is going to be very different you know so i think our goals are the same i think they shift depending on the changing conditions and our capacity okay thank you that's that is helpful just to kind of you know align for the conversation you know that we're that we're kind of having right now my a question that i also are wondering that i have is what have we learned from operating preschools now for like four months and our smarty child care with regards to cases that crop up the suspected cases a disruption that you know i think that terry kind of touched on you know are the symptoms just excluding children from coming is that disruptive for the experience or you know so what has that what has that looked like and what have we
164learned about about how that affects bring when kids are on campus together yeah i you know first of all i'll say we've learned a lot and when we talk about a preschool classroom something to keep in mind is we have 12 to 15 children in there with usually three adults and so the adults there's a lot of adult support you know whether there's you know how the combination of adults sometimes it's two sometimes it's three so there's a lot of ability to guide kids really focus on the hand washing and following the protocols and the little preschoolers are still social distance and it's amazing they're capable of wearing their face coverings and their masks the whole time they're there if i visited all of the classes last friday you know i got to see some
165napping and i got to see some kids playing you know it's just amazing how they've adapted so the success in kids learning routines and following routines and the parents are being so good about those symptom checks that's so that's really preschool is our our most school like setting right when we look at our and i would say we've had no cases in preschool okay so when we look at our smarty program it's a it's a little different there's two adults never three adults there's always two older kids and they're really focused on distance learning which is just sit down do your work they're sitting you know spaced out in their desks and they're working they're really working it's a really interesting dynamic it feels like walking into a room like a classroom right and they're
166working in there there are two adults in the room again managing 12 kids and it's all all of them are less than 12 by the way all of our smarty classes are small so and it's still a lot to manage for those two adults in that room you know who are not used to managing a classroom like environment i'll have terry jump back on and just kind of give you a snapshot of what it looks like and what we deal with you know we're being confidential here but i'll just say that terry and i text together with our covid response team all day we meet every every week for a long period but there are many cases of our incidents where we're like on alert and so terry can just kind of give you a
167summary of what surfaces and then what happens when something surfaces because i mean there are so many factors there's a chain of things that happen and so terry give an example of what that looks like yeah i also want to just say that the county pandemic recovery framework was just updated on september 15th and so the county also released their guidance from k through 12 schools around that time so this was the first chance that we really had clear direction on when do we have to exclude a child for suspected covid and i think having that information really changed things for us so i would say summer felt pretty calm this guidance hits we disseminate it to the staff and then i'm getting phone calls from six in the morning till midnight like it's very
168very dynamic and so for example you know we had a student i won't name the school site or anything we had a student vomit last week well some of this the the covid criteria to suspect covid from the county you have to have either one symptom in column a or two or more symptoms in column b well column b is nausea it's vomiting it's abdominal pain usually if a kid is going to vomit they have all three of those things right so it's just it's very easy for a kid that's not feeling well to have to go home it's not like a fever and a cough as it would have been before so for example when we had a student who vomited on site and also had some abdominal pain beforehand that student was immediately
169sent home and then we have a protocol i believe it's about 21 steps that we follow anytime that happens which is so different than what it used to be i'm happy to share that with you at a later time i won't go through all the detail but it involves you know the the staff need to email me with all the details of what happened then i have to reach out to the family and do an interview with them to say is anyone else in your household sick tell me what's going on do you have any pre-existing conditions that could explain this you know we had this come up quite a bit with the wildfires and kids with asthma we need to make sure we're not excluding students from educational opportunities based on pre-existing conditions so
170we you know do thorough conversations with them about that then i have to link in and call the custodial staff and tell them what level of clean to do and what level of clean to do depends on what the symptoms are presenting as then we have to notify the principals we've been going a step further even and actually notifying any anytime a student is sent home sick from smarty or preschool we're telling families about that and that's because we know that testing can take time to come back we're not we're not identifying the student we're not saying you know anything like that but we just want the families to know if anything unusual is happening in that situation or in that classroom parents should be aware ahead of time and there's a risk you create
171panic if you don't do that there's a risk you create panic if you do but we just want to be fully transparent i feel like i'm probably missing a whole bunch of different things but then you know i have to talk to the family and then i kind of loop back with the staff and say this is when the student can return then whenever the family's doing do go and get a test you know there's some communication they are about where do they where do they get tested how do they get tested should it be their doctor we help them sort of navigate that process some of our families don't have insurance access and things like that so that's been a challenge and then i'm communicating the plan back to the staff okay i met
172with the family they can return on this day if their symptoms resolve or if we get a negative test result and then once i get the negative test result it's communicating back to to the staff and to the family when they're cleared to return so that's just an example for one student but you know when you have five or six of those a day as we as we sometimes do it adds up i can't imagine i'll add on to that that you know since summer you know we've we've also had to help support employees and so there's a whole other level on employees so jennifer smith our director of hr works in partnership with terry and we replicate that same process with employees and you know we're we're really confidential we're very supportive but you
173know we're all managing this and that it's it's going to be challenging i mean once we start to have a higher volume of people on campus and working at it will tax our system and we need to be prepared for that another consideration that i will say as well and something that i i've mentioned when i've spoken with the county is that these free testing sites are often only for adults and older so it does present a challenge to our families to try to get into a doctor try to get into an urgent care especially sometimes the family's like my kid has a tummy ache like i don't want to expose them to covid by going into a pediatrician's office for example so you know sometimes you do get some pushback and as a mom
174myself like i i can hear some of that too it's just the way that the guidance is written and the things we have to do to try to keep everybody safe but um so then you have families that might wait a couple days to get tested and there just aren't as many free sites available for kids um that give fast easy results so that's another barrier i would say thank you this is all really really helpful context just to understand the environment and all the factors that are involved and really kind of get a flavor for that complexity um i want to open it up to trustees for questions and discussion on um your thoughts and where we go with next steps in this process i'll jump in i guess um i just want to
175say thank you terry i haven't met you before and appreciate all of this um legwork this is exactly the information we need to start digesting understanding to be able to make decisions so thank you so much and as we said before i'm sorry that it's us having to figure it out by ourselves um but hopefully the county has some possibly some good news um that will reduce the financial burden on districts to do the testing because you know carol i think it was great that you said you know what are our goals let's restate those and obviously we can't have safety without capacity to do these things so i think i'm on the same page that you know we all are in terms of we have to have the testing capacity and contact tracing and
176also nurses are key so thank you terry you are our warrior right now because you've lost your um your other your fellow colleagues and i i mean that was one question i was going to ask but then terry mentioned that you've been interviewing potential candidates so it sounds like that's going to happen pretty soon that we'll be able to staff up so that's great news because that was one thing i wanted to understand just going back to um the slides when we talked about um transition to in-person learning and sort of reassessing the hybrid model uh dr heimer you talked about it a bit and i just wanted to say that you know when we come together again in october and we're looking you know the past six weeks and then looking ahead i think
177what i'd like to ask about reassessing the hybrid model is the way it was presented previously it sort of lumped k1 together and then it lumped two through eight together i think what i've heard from parents in our community is that you know our schools are designed k through three four to five six to eight so as far as a hybrid model is there a way to think about that hybrid model that applies to k through three um so that that school site will have the same opportunities for all those kids on that school site um given that we have patios we have outdoor space so i'm just asking for us to not be wedded to something we started back in june can we rethink this a bit um we understand that we've already been
178talking about let's think about how we prioritize for our youngest learners k1 but i'd also argue strongly for two and three um and they're on the same site together so and i i would just like to throw out that if you know we're gonna do do the opening up schools committee um that was a question that was posed to the to the committee to think think about these different hybrid model options so maybe we could get some more input and maybe we can revisit that and and throw that question to that group um and also you said one of the challenges was about around the lunch management you know and how so those i think could be potential good questions that the committee could help us think about um i also just wanted to ask
179um you know at one point we talked about when we're phasing things back in you know how do we look at volunteers or anyone besides um staff and students like what's their access to the campus and i'm saying that because we know that we have a very active parent community that wants to help find the right you know solutions and whatnot and and all i'm saying is um you know i don't know if through pta and and our parents if there are ways that volunteers who can sign up for you know commit to something and can get regular screening they could help potentially you know with some of these challenges that you've been saying because i don't want us to just list obviously you know you have to be realistic what are the logistical challenges
180but they don't have to be barriers um so let's try and think creatively let's try and um you know see what capacity we have and if it's possible to use volunteers um i think anyway i'll stop there on that um i don't want to conjecture or assume what what parents might be able or willing to do um but we know we have that strong um support from pta in the past um i think that was it around the you know reassessing sort of our hybrid model that's what i wanted to to ask about and throw out thank you hey carol and team um i think overall dr heimer i i like your proposal that you and the principals and staff go back to kind of develop this like measured plan that's like sequential in nature
181i think many of us have said that we recognize that are the youngest ones the k1s but like and to wendy's point the two threes to me the big question mark because i think the um you know the distance learning model is is is harder for those littlest ones my i just want to be clear my own thinking has really shifted a lot in the last few months as as we've gotten kind of all this like new data um way back in june i was wondering how could we go to the hybrid model as quickly as possible and i really kind of started to change my thinking on that because the hybrid model back in june was two days in person and three days independent learning and i am really seeing how our kids especially
182the older ones fifth you know um the six eight i i'm really concerned i'm not in any rush to go back to that model for the middle schoolers um because i think the three days of asynchronous like independent learning they miss the teacher contact and the instruction i think they miss out socially emotionally on having that teacher engagement and engagement with their kids i think it's stressful to make a change you know in the middle of the semester um i think just hearing about the complexities that terry just described about how like a cold or flu means that the kids would like miss instruction and if you miss instruction so for a whole bunch of reasons i do think that i am not in any rush uh to kind of go back to that to
183the old the hybrid model proposed in june i would rather have our principals and teachers have the time to do distance learning well for the middle school and also take some time to because we can't stay there forever could we ever get to a hybrid model situation where there is more like four or five days of instruction and with appropriate support that somehow you can um teach to the kids in the classroom but then the kids who are at home are also getting a little bit of um interaction thinking ahead to the january through may situation right or or i maybe more generally how can our principals and educators identify those kind of just like high impact ways that don't interfere with core curriculum instructional plans like is it electives is it a friday afternoon
184just to kind of like begin take baby steps right i think carol your baby steps theme has been what's really working for this district um of just kind of getting some of that social emotional learning um that is that's kind of like my i have other things but i mean i'll just kind of like i want it to be kind of more of a natural type of conversation um i think i think one of my insights is like in my head back in june i was thinking oh in the classroom means where you you can have like that social emotional connection and what i'm seeing for middle schools is like especially with advisory like the routine the consistency we're still early in this whole like distance learning mode we need to develop our muscle we
185need to figure out how do we do like assessments um and i would just love our incredibly hard-working staff who no doubtably are quite stressed to just have some predictability of what they should do between now and like december thank you i got a couple comments i guess um let me see if i can kind of word these uh articulately i guess what i would like to know from the board is so we committed to six weeks uh distance learning at the next board meeting would be the time that we would have to make decisions on um whatever the next steps all right we also have uh we will be adding a board member on that day so welcome to the party on your first time of being a board member so i'd like to
186know from our fellow board members of you know my proposal to us tonight is look we committed to the public um to this six weeks i would like to see the district uh within these next two weeks really focus heavy within the leadership team on what the plan is what i've heard tonight from uh the rest of the trustees is we are open to um what a hybrid bottle means if a hybrid bottle is like i've always said from the beginning isn't necessarily going to be a i don't want it to be a switch right nothing anyone has done in covid recovery has gone overnight from closed to open um everything has been phased in we are open to a phase in to making hybrid the goal um with phasing in a plan if that's
187the case but we need to know what that is and to be perfectly honest with you i don't believe our you know parents and community will allow us more time to figure this out organically we need to dive into it we need to get deep so that we all know exactly for staff down what that time frame is and a target right is that target date for early learners um october is that target date you know end of first trimester is it december what is that target date we need to know that um by when we come back for our six weeks i think we owe that to the people when we committed to the six weeks i think we owe it to staff um so they're not constantly up in the air feeling that
188every two weeks at a board meeting the light switch can go on and off um you know anyone else can jump in and feel free if they want they think there's something different or that's too hard but that would be what i'd like to see this board commit to the night within the next two weeks and have them have the staff focus i get there are eight million things going on um but you know there's always going to be eight million things going on for everyone everyone at home is working 15 jobs um as well between you know everything going on and balancing so i mean that would kind of be my first general thought i like to i'd like to know thanks neil i appreciate you kind of centering us back to um you
189know what we had originally you know promised community in terms of our timeline um my thinking has has evolved on this and while i you know there's nothing i want more than a plan i mean that's the type of person i am i'd love to get a plan and let's do this and here we go right like that sounds great like that's give me the plan and we'll follow it you know um like parenting i'm learning what i don't know as as as we go through this and the analogy that i use is moving through this is like trying to get from one side of a forest at night to the other side we know we want to get to the other side we have to take really small steps and feel our way around
190because we can't see all the way through the forest yet and to say that we need a plan to get through the forest um is great like i'd love to have that plan to get through the forest but i don't know what logs are over my trail i don't know what's behind the bush i don't know you know how long the path is and so i think i i don't want to be unrealistic about or or try to over promise what a plan could deliver i'm more interested at this point that we as a joystick think what is that next baby step we can take and then we'll feel our way around and make sure that that path is stable and that path is strong and that that path feels right and we don't need
191to turn back and go down another path because this one wasn't quite the right one to go down um so i'm a little bit more interested in in exploring you know i would say with some urgency and with some time-bound um you know targets what that next step that we can commit to taking is um and i think that for me that's those small groups of urgent learners that's maybe how to bring back our k's and our ones um or maybe it's how to bring back you know there's multiple grades that are coming for an opportunity for a socially distanced pe on campus what i don't know what that looks like i don't want to presuppose because i think we've got a really creative um community and we can think about that and parents can
192think about that and staff and think about that so that's you know i just want to kind of throw that out there as a different analogy of how to move through this this conversation i think we're saying the same thing to be perfectly honest with you i don't i think we're saying it just a little bit differently i think it's just more of a if that's i think it's more just providing staff direction we need the next steps and we need them soon and we need to um you know it's like all for a circle with what we talked about with hans right the survey data is seems to be explaining where the needs are urgently um the public comment seems to be saying where the needs are urgently um but you know sometimes i
193think we forget that there are a lot of people listening to this that still don't feel like they have a plan or know how we're going to address it and you know we've committed and i think it's that time where we need to know how we're going to address it whether that's a baby step whether that's the larger um situation i think we're saying the same thing overall i just want to be absolutely clear with staff like what i would like to see is always moved to is like something has to come back on the eighth with the plan of what that first baby step is call it whatever you want but something has to come back with how we're going to get on campus because you know what has been clear from all of
194our meetings we've attended carol everything else is this board has what i call the nuclear option right you can always just pick a plan and say hey look district figure it out that has never been the spirit of san carlos that has never been the spirit of our current community that has never been what we wanted to do as a staff we've always wanted to collaborate to do exactly what you're saying take baby steps in um as a group because that's what makes people come here is that for a small community that does it together um and that's just what we need to do uh you know and i don't want to get to that point but you know like it said i think sometimes the feedback i get is a lot of things is
195it feels like we're dragging our feet and i don't want people to feel that way so i think then just to summarize it i i think that if the staff comes to the next meeting on the eighth with kind of like what are the next steps for kind of our most urgent learners which kind of includes the k1s and maybe provide some thinking on two threes that would be like um that would be a good way that we're holding ourselves accountable to that plan and it is kind of baby steps as we feel our way through the path my one other point is that i think that our principals and our teachers and our leadership team have like a ton of skill and insights as to kind of what makes it work so just from
196a process perspective i mean godspeed go i think you've gotten a ton of community input um already i think you're clearing our values and our goals um and you know if you need to use i just don't feel i just don't need feel like you guys need to be bogged down but like a very like process where there are like 80 people co-designing it when you all are professionals but by all means use the committee for just like reflection and and just some quick feedback if if that's useful to you i just want to pick up on what neil said and what whatever and said i think we are for the most part on the same page we're kind of saying the same things i think i've used language around you know we've all used
197language around incremental phased in approach baby steps but i but to neil's point i think what would be really helpful is if we do have a timeline through the end of this school year sorry the end of the calendar year with decision points so if we feel that we're ready to take a baby step on phasing in you know groups a b and c you know urgent learners we've talked about these groups tonight but we're going to remain in distance learning for this other set of students you know let's let the parents like make it like make a decision on through what point you know is it another six weeks is it through the end of the calendar year so that you know parents and teachers can focus in on distance learning if that's what
198the staff is going to recommend for say six or eight and i'm just saying have those decision points like we said we made one and we're holding ourselves accountable to that and we're asking that we have solid a solid plan for this next next phase um i do want to say as well that we said this at the beginning we are all going to have to live and get comfortable with uncertainty in terms of like carol said about the forest and and i am not comfortable with making a decision that's going to commit ourselves to something for the school year we don't know what it's going to look like in january and i have been hearing people say that just do x just let you know just commit to this we don't know what it's
199going to look like then we might we don't yeah we we might have to all go back to remote learning we don't know so i agree i think we are taking a measured approach um and we're and we're doing what we can with the information we have to continue to analyze the the information we're getting so um i feel pretty good about where we're at i mean with tonight with the information that's been presented in terms of you know knowing what has been put into place dr harmer was able to expand on you know the carols the learning carols like the ppe that's been purchased like the safety aspect i think you know we're trying to get that right and i think and and we're learning from the preschool what dr harmer just shared how
200facemasks are working kids are adapting kids are learning to adapt so i think our district is on the right path so it's great news so michelle i just want to i just want to check for my understanding when when you say um when you say you're going to be engaging with staff to kind of think about this are you talking about your your leadership staff and teachers and class and classified we're talking you're talking about engaging okay broad engagement everybody needs to be involved in is what you heard earlier with hans is teachers are so engrossed right now in assessing their kids knowing where they are they want to be ready for meaningful conferences so there's this push and pull with time but i want to find ways to provide opportunities and i've talked to
201the principals today about how can we invite those staff who feel like they do have some capacity and you know do some extra hours with them and provide that that way to have some representation and and so i think that's going to be really important and again working closely with csea you know corey has been a great partner and our secretaries are like on on the ground managing our sites and they really have a good sense of what's working and i got to visit all of them last friday in person and really got to talk to them personally so i think they have a lot to offer and they've been a great great focus group for us so yes i want to involve all all staff in this as you remember when we brought our
202plan in june in june we had a lot of engagement with our big opening up schools group and then we narrowed it down to working groups by primary upper elementary and middle those working groups worked and then it all came back to leadership and then we put that whole plan back out to opening up schools and said here's our plan give us more feedback reflect then we brought it back we made changes then we brought it to you so that's a lot of steps and i think i have two weeks now but i think but there's not as much volume of work and i think what we're doing is being a little bit more precise now and like what are those steps that need to happen and that are very clear and like you said
203measured sequential careful approaches that are reasonable that we have capacity for and that's that's going to take some collaboration and you know with scta as as partners and we're continuing to have good conversations together so we'll i really look to them for that feedback as well and the one other thing i would say when you when you bring back kind of what these this next step what this next mode would look like i i think what would be really helpful for the board to understand also is how we're looking at that through the lens of equity and how we're how we're really making sure that we are that we're meeting the needs that are the most urgent and yeah all right thank you for that trustees is there any other input that you want to
204provide i got some public comment if no one has any other input you we need one before neil my one last comment is just want to appreciate send a lot of appreciation to kind of our staff teachers and labor partners because there's no way we could get through to the other forest step by step without you um so i i do think of us as all being part of team kid and i just wanted to echo carol's point about equity because as we talk about we are going to be talking about dei tonight but i was thinking in particular around reopening schools you know prioritizing the knees of our most disadvantaged learners and so while we might think of a phased approach you know we've talked about k1s but if there are those kids in
205the sixth through eight that are really struggling we saw attendance rate looks great but if you have a small cohort of kids we now know that you know there's this guidance right for small small cohorts so i would just encourage us again not to think one size fits all not to think you know two through eight are going to do this no we have to think about equity at every step so thank you very much for that careful consideration all right neil would you do public comment yep uh first public comments from jamie bailey uh thank you board members for all that you do i'm so grateful for your service i have a child in elementary school and i'm interested in the details of when and how scsd is preparing to get kids back into
206the classroom i see in the detailed agenda it states scsd school staff have been preparing for the hybrid model and have the necessary personal protective equipment and plans in place that are required by the san patel county pandemic recovery framework since we're now in the red tier i like to know how scsd is going to ensure kids get back in the classroom in a hybrid model specifically i like to know the teachers are asking for in order for them to feel safe to be back in class and what if anything the district hasn't yet procured or put in place for example desks desk shields also now that we are in the red tier we started to plan around specific dates to be back in class back in class can you please give a date we
207expect kids will be in a hybrid model assuming you stay in the red tier and assuming scsd has met the teacher's wishes teresa mcdermott distance learning is not working for my daughter her self-confidence is being dismantled not because she can't learn to grade little materials because she's not a zoom expert or networking engineer we need to get back in person learning we're now in the red zone which allows us to return to in-person instruction and we have been negotiating with teachers and staff since the 15th can you please say when we will see a plan for returning the school for in-person instruction if you're not providing date for detail in the plan please tell us what additional information is needed in order to get to a plan uh rorya baga uh dear dr harbiron members
208of the scsd school board our family chose not to enroll in connection assistance learning the hope of a safe return to school plan however there have been many examples of failed school reopenings that promoted the spread of COVID-19 to teachers students and families we're now highly uncomfortable sending our children back to school especially during flu season what options do families who do not register for connections distance learning program have in the event that classes start to go back in person learning besides registering for connections which is full and being on a wait list until the spot opens leaving the school district all together you can provide additional options as part of the county in-person school plan i'm a parent of students at scsd i understand that teachers are fearful of returning school over their students
209who are not only not learning during distance learning they're losing education they had in prior years many of these students don't have parents who can speak up for them at board meetings they don't have unions to protect their interest but these children need to be thought of first when it comes to discussions about returning to school most of the families in san carlos can afford to hire tutors teachers additional classes or have a parent home to oversee their classes to get through distance learning however there are families who cannot do any of these and there are children who cannot learn electronically who are falling who are failing these students many of these students are already dealing with learning gap due to finances home situations or ethnicity we cannot keep allowing these children to suffer while
210those who have means are pulling further ahead sarah kenna hi i'm a parent of a fourth and second grader of oregon white oaks our family supports students returning to school in the hybrid model kristin kell i'm in support particularly for grades k through five returning to campus following the hybrid model initially mothers in fourth grade and sixth grader jane howie hello thank you for all the information i feel that iep population does not have a voice tonight it might be helpful for families with ieps have a survey of their own my daughter is a dedicated special is in a dedicated special ed classroom the teacher is doing a very lovely job trying to engage my daughter and coax her however it is not working the best day my daughter has had since system learning has
211started she accomplished writing two sentences and seven math problems this is not an education if you could witness the curriculum efforts on my parts as her mother and as her new one-on-one aid her teacher and her educators focusing and encouraging to accomplish these small feats you would understand that not all children are thriving in this distance learning model which is especially painful because she is already so far behind are you putting into action giving those populations back on campus as soon as possible so they can have in-person learning structure and social emotional support thank you for all of your time and effort in sorting through a very complex situation we appreciate your efforts and support karen lynn cassiotti for several months our society has prioritized the return to work of essential employees to do work
212that cannot be done remotely while encouraging or requiring work that can be done remotely to continue to be done remotely this helps to maximize safety for those whose work can can't be done remotely could not view the return to school through the same lens keep home the kids that are doing well remotely in the age groups for whom this is working and return the kids with special needs for whom distance learning is not working or whose age groups not match well with distance learning doesn't seem like it should be an all-or-nothing proposition likewise i would assert that the holding of school board meetings in person is not an appropriate measure by which to gauge the imperative to return to schools as these meetings can just as effectively be held remotely and i think last one
213to think of miss jane howey says i've been impressed by the amazing work and effort undertaken by all teachers admin support staff additionally i've opted for the hybrid mode for my children first and fourth grade to return to in-person learning the comment made this evening by scta appears that there's reluctance to return to learning until we return to in-person board meetings that have a vaccine i urge the school board to instead consider the guidelines provided by the department the california department of public health in san Mateo county and weighing in on this issue blows the list of over 30 san Mateo county schools with approved waivers to return to in-person learning and that was the last one thank you niel okay we are going to move on to item 6c this is our discussion item
214on diversity equity and inclusion i want to set the table for this discussion by starting out with a little bit context um along with my own values around this topic and then um i'd like to hear from the rest of the board so back in june many of us were reeling from the murders of george floyd and bianna taylor and amad aubrey uh through through black lives matter um and that movement we saw the collective consciousness of a real critical mass of people across the country begin to and give voice to um the systemic racism and structural inequities that are present in our society in which many black and brown americans have been trying to make the rest of us actively aware of for decades frankly i have great regret that it's taken us as
215a country this long to come to this point in our consciousness and i also have a deep sadness that not everyone is there yet in my role as an elected official i cannot abide by being part of a system that does not attempt to seek to understand how systemic racism is manifested in public education or move towards addressing it in june the board unanimous unanimously agreed to agendize this topic for the fall recognizing that the depth and breadth of the work it entailed deserved a time that allowed our fuller attention so here we are in the fall nearly as overwhelmed as we were in june uh but we're keeping our commitment to embarking on this discussion because it's just that important and we just cannot we can't wait any longer i invite my colleagues on
216the board to really seize this opportunity to support our district's commitment to anti-racism and to direct the district as a whole including the board to begin the work of listening and learning and reflecting reconciling and ultimately making long-lasting changes to our policies and practices because it's not only the moral thing to do but more specifically because we know that if student and staff we know that they won't reach their full potential unless they feel fully welcomed and valued and included in our schools it is absolutely central to our strategic plan goals i come to this conversation acknowledging my implicit role in these systems as a white person and as a person who has benefited from the privilege that comes with being a white person in our society while i can't change our country's past i
217can't acknowledge it which is an important place to start um and i and i do have agency for what happens in the future for the things that are within my authority so i am committed to using this seat as board president to give visibility to this issue and to commit to doing better so in that vein dr harmeyer and i have had conversations with experts in this field one of whom is a san carlo school district parent and is with us here tonight to learn how to build an authentic process focused on improving our practices around anti-racism and diversity equity and inclusion so what i'd like to do with the consent of the board is to share what we have learned but before we do that i'd like to hear from each of the trustees
218where your values and priorities lie on this issue so i can understand if we're in alignment about the direction for this item so i'm going to open it up for my trustees thank you carol i um i'm definitely not going to strive to be as eloquent um as you have put it but you asked about our kind of values and priorities and are we aligned and i will just say um 100 aligned that this is something that's important that we need to kind of tackle um i come to this kind of i think in a really humble place feeling like there is just a lot i need to kind of learn and um i do think i'm really glad that we're going to kind of maybe enlist some expertise um to kind of help as
219as we can and this is kind of deep work so i i just want to put it out that i think when we start this process i'm envisioning that we're willing to commit to the deep work um it is not about are we doing some training and checking off the boxes and like once and done it that's why i'm not even thinking i can't even spit out like what's the framework and where are all the pieces looking like i i know like i need to just start by listening and learning especially from others who've probably helped organizations go through this like change management process and we're talking about some big systemic things so you know our education organization is in a bigger system and we're impacted by things around us but that doesn't mean that
220we shouldn't try to do what is within our responsibilities and capabilities and and policies and um the way we shape and lead our school culture thank you iran for sharing that i agree with everything you said i mean i look at it also in the sense of you know we always should be we're district focused on equity and making sure we're always looking at our practices to make sure that we are focused and aligned and i believe this is a tool that we should always be working on and always evaluating our practices to see what they are so i fully embrace the conversation and you know like i said i think this started is the listening part of it and then we go from there thanks now thanks carol thanks for framing this and for
221doing some legwork initially it sounds like to help us get some you know professional guidance on you know how to how to work with our staff how to work with our community on this really you know topic that is going to involve deep deep reflection deep discussion i guess i just want to say i come to this um from a place where i've personally in my career i um equity has been a theme for me in in my career and i recognize i mean as you you know very kind of vulnerably said you know as a white person i recognize my privilege but i will say i don't feel like i've taken that for granted that i've actually tried to focus on this issue how it impacts learners i was a teacher in an inner
222city school in compton with teacher america serving um hispanic youth teaching in i was a bilingual elementary educator so i just want to give that context that i come from a place recognizing that equity is um you know it it's obviously we've come so far like in terms of our education system in california and how we our local control funding formula i mean it's built on this notion of equity right but when you talk about diversity equity inclusion i guess what i want to say too is that we're at a place where you can't talk about these things without focusing on race and right now talking about those who have been most discriminated against you know in african americans in our culture and looking at the education system looking at the policies um you know
223there's lots of examples of of this institutional racism through disciplinary measures you know all kinds of things and so we have to be able to look at where we where's our starting point as as a community um and be able to reflect you know because this is a continuum right like everyone starts at a different place and so i just want to say that and we all start at a different place personally and so i'm committed to learn to hear you know from our parent community our staff those who have been most impacted right personally and sort of you know historically so i wanted to say that i think this work it's really important for us to have um sort of the definitions the the you know do the work around what this means to
224us and and and sort of translate that into policy right um but it's also about what i want to say is that you know it is personal um and it's about the heart the head and you know putting this into action so thank you for leading this um and working with dr harmeyer to just figure out what's the right first step for us right and sort of assessing where we're at um i i'd like to to know that we're gonna you know have put into place a process to do to do all this work thanks wendy um thanks for those comments um so i'm hearing that we're in radical alignment on embracing this topic which i am very grateful for and i'm also really grateful that each trustee really named listening as a as a
225value in this because that really is one of the first pieces um i just want to um i just want to introduce really quickly eugene witlock um who's here tonight on the zoom i eugene i think you got on here eugene's um assistant vice chancellor of human resources and chief people and culture officer at uc berkeley um and he's a parent in our district hi eugene background there so eugene was really generous to spend time with dr harmeyer and me this week um this is his work at um at cal and so he's made himself available tonight for questions and wonderings and so forth so we're not putting any pressure on him to make a presentation we're going to be sharing what what he shared with us when we met with him earlier in the
226week and eugene i i invite you to jump in at any point if you'd like to um if you'd like to add anything to the conversation so just really quickly so we talked a little bit i heard you talking a little bit about definitions i think it's important to understand what is equity people throw that word around all the time and most don't know what it means so equity isn't about giving everybody the same thing that's equality equity is figuring out what each learner needs and make to be successful and making sure those learners have it and our system of education in california is actually not built on equity at all control is distributed locally now but that's not how the finances work you need to look no further than per pupil funding in san
227mateo county and to see the wide disparities to understand that it has nothing to do with equity it makes no sense that in ravenswood they get one third per pupil as compared to las lamitas elementary and i'm speaking from experience from having worked with all of these districts so that is completely inequitable because we know the students in epa have a higher need than the students in atherton and west menlo in general so we have to accept that the system is not designed to be equitable and so it really will take something disruptive on a large scale if we're talking about the california system but here locally as we design curriculum and think about how we deliver education to students we can't we do have within our control to be equitable to our students thank
228you so much that was a really great way to kind of frame that macro down to our micro and really help us start out with that definition of equity what we learned from eugene and other experts that we spoke with is kind of the a broad a broad process or the elements of a process that we might want to embark on and the first element is a listening campaign which is why i'm really really i'm grateful that the trustees really had that as a value just from the outset this is hearing the personal experiences of people of color and other marginalized groups in our district this would include hearing from staff from students from parents leaders other stakeholders and the purpose of this phase and eugene correct me if i'm not expressing this accurately is
229to really give voice in a safe way to the kinds of things that people of color and other marginalized groups have really had to suppress out of societal pressure and fear and that has been minimized and have not been raised to the general consciousness level so this would help educate all of us as to the ways in which we are not aware that racism and discrimination and structural inequities are really manifesting in our system and would help us identify areas for growth did i did i represent that okay eugene yeah and i'd say in the bottom line is to help the board and the leadership learn what the community wants like ultimately that's you're serving the community so i think that's where it's most helpful great absolutely another element of this process would be forming
230some type of a steering committee or a task force to really prioritize and shape that work of the district as eugene said it once we hear what community wants that's what the task force would run with and that might look at things like policies and data engagement it might break into smaller subcommittees but ultimately recommendations from this committee would be brought to the board and the district for action things like policy changes development of a district statement on anti-racism and other recommendations so that's another element eugene are there ways that that you've seen this work in other other areas that you can add to so i think you know as we discussed this first listening right for the administration to listen we formed the group that should i think consist of you know faculty staff
231administrators and parents right who are interested in getting involved in the conversation and along the way we continue to learn about what's right for our district what's right for our learners what's right for our staff where the needs as you said then the recommendations sort of create a menu of options to go for we can't do everything all at once we also set the expectation that we're not going to wake up on june 30th and say it's perfect here no it is a long process and i think we need to set that expectation now that we should expect to make some progress this year at a minimum to have recommendations let's say and then you know three to five years is what we're talking about really saying okay we're where we want to be and
232i say this also because we're doing this work now at berkeley so i'm not coming to saying we haven't mastered we're having the same conversations there and it's a you know people are impatient i'm impatient but we also know that if you want to do it correctly and it's going to take time you can't do a two-hour training for pretty much anything and expect it to have a lasting impact so it's really structural things that we're talking about absolutely i'm so glad you brought up kind of that time frame and horizon this is because i think when we commit to embarking on this work we're committing to a multi-year process because of the nature of of this work and also the nature of changing institutions it just doesn't happen overnight and then i think that
233the third element that i heard in terms of these processes is to really engage a consultant who's both an expert and also a neutral third party to support this work and provide guidance and resources and training and tools and so that's something that we would be asking the board to commit resources towards we might be able to access funding for this and in outside funding streams we don't know yet but as a board we would need to commit to directing resources towards this because this is a very very important part of the process to make sure that it's done with integrity and in a safe way and this work is very mixed is i think one is more vulnerable and we want people to feel safe in this environment so having that that expert guide
234this work is really important so those are the those are kind of the big rocks in the in the in the jar of the elements eugene am i missing anything is there anything you would add to this i would just say a little bit more specific but ultimately you probably are going to have a program that's going to involve looking at the curriculum and looking at pedagogy how do we teach our children you're going to have a program program you know training that works with staff as well then you're going to have some element of the program that you know for students directly working with students and this isn't just you know bringing in a bunch of trainers from the outside to sort of tell you this is how you do it again it's a
235cooperative process and it's also something that we should understand involves feedback and students participating on the task force and saying what do we think we need and you know i had the opportunity before to work actually at las limitas on entry after i just sort of threw them under the bus but there's you know their student council for their middle school students you know was very involved in their development of their diversity statement and they had very strong and valuable opinions to contribute to that so i think that's something to look forward to as well the students always surprised us with what they know and think they always do they always do thank you that was yeah that i appreciate the the details around that and i the one one thing that i also forgot
236was as part of the listening work and the forming the steering committee we also could have the opportunity to kind of do an assessment to see where we are at this point in time to know where what our starting off point is and to identify some areas so that's that's another element that we could engage in the process so i think in terms of board discussion i'm interested in hearing from the trustees what your wonderings are about about this process about what might come you know next how you feel about investing resources into this process and in terms of prioritizing our very scarce resources that's a really important check-in as well i have a question i'm wondering a lot about how to structure the listening process and what advice jean has like my first thought
237was okay the the board needs to go through some listening and then i was thinking well of course i'm going to want you know our district leadership and our principals to listen and then about i was like but then i but we need to create a safe environment but then i don't want to exhaust people by having people like recount their stories like two or three times so what does uh uh how how can how can one listen well what does like good listening look like that involves a lot of people and yet is not so taxing on the people sharing stories so there is no one way that's going to be perfect so you identified some of the challenges and so what i typically recommend is that you know board members administrators they're the
238listeners right because you know and so you want to have a session where you're listening to your teachers maybe just a group with your teachers or your teachers together with your staff a separate session where you're listening to parents and a separate session where you're listening to students and you know the age of the students who you listen to that that might depend so separating it like that because so that the group of people talking kind of feels more comfortable that they're among their peers right to talk and the subject matter where they focus on it might be a little different that's one approach to do it and by separating it like that you'd also avoid the people having to repeat themselves and usually when we do these things it really is just listening where
239the leadership management is listening and not exchanging and you know oh we'll do this or no here's why it's just to listen and that tends to be the most effective i've done it sometimes with different ages and stuff and it tends to be the most effective way to do it but it's not necessarily not the only way thanks great great question iran um i wanted to ask maybe eugene can help us think from you know from the board perspective we're trying to look at you know be systems thinkers and think about um our policies and um you know some of that has to do with the funding some of these are structural funding issues you mentioned that about equity how you know doesn't always transpire um because the funding is an equitable to start out
240with one one thing that someone brought up um some parents have there's sort of i don't know if you're aware that there's already sort of a committee of parents that have formed you know that are have been writing to us and um and voicing their you know desire to get going on this right away and have you know provided some great strategies one area that i know is a challenge um systemically in our state is you know the pipeline of teachers and that um it's you know we need to recruit more teachers of color um and to represent the students we have in our classroom to be able to you know engage them in and and relate to them and anyway so that is a great strategy but that is a very systems level you
241know issue that i guess i'm just raising this now because i appreciate what you said about a time frame and kind of being realistic about what we can hope to achieve in you know in a year in two years and three years so i just want to throw that out and see you know where you've seen maybe schools be um you know very intentional about some of those systemic level issues or how do we get at that you know um so it is a challenge that a lot of schools face so one of the things particularly with teacher hiring so the pipeline is actually pretty robust when you look at who's graduating from teacher prep programs in california i think a third or 40 percent some very high number are people of color and so
242it's not that people aren't there so now if i'm a you know i'm a new teacher and san carlos is trying to hire me i'm going to look around and say why would i go work there right are there other people who look like me no are there many students who look like me no so why right so it's you have to position yourselves in a way and it's a bit of marketing as well as well what are your values around equity so that okay i can read that when i when you interview me when i read the job description you talk about your equity values when i look at your strategic strategic plan it's there when i interview you're actually asking me about it and when i ask you about it you can talk
243about it so that okay it this is a place that is full of equity-minded people even though they might not look like me and that that's the piece that will take time and so then at a certain point you develop a reputation and a critical mass and then it then it sort of feeds itself but that getting over that hump to say no we really are serious about it that's going to be the biggest challenge and what will just take time thanks for your honest and insightful response that's great it's it's just great to know that there are strategies that are out there that we can we can employ we can learn about we can leverage we can educate ourselves on so that we become a more welcoming district for for people of diverse backgrounds
244and that's what my hope embarking on this work does is that it makes san carlos a more welcoming school district for students for parents for our staff any other questions or wonderings for eugene while we while we have the benefit of all of his knowledge here with us i i'm gonna live here for a while longer so if you have questions in the future that's fine too we are so fortunate to have him as a parent in our community i just have one question i guess and may have been already answered um where do you go from tonight what's step if this is step one what's step two yeah that's the that would be setting up the listening sessions pretty clearly and especially sorry i was gonna say is that in terms like when you
245say listening sessions is it small groups is it big groups is it you know surveys what is it that you've seen success no so i think it can be big groups i would zoom actually works pretty well for that and so i did it most recently at st francis high school down in mountain view and so we split up with these groups and we did it all by zoom and so just to be really detailed about it so we would we did um questions of people in advance to say describe a word that you know how you're feeling about you know the situation in america so we did a word cloud and then we surveyed people at the start of the session um how do you feel like you belong as part of the school
246community we respect your identity have you experienced bias or discrimination or witnessed it in the school community and do you think you're the school community is doing up around racial equity to sort of get a temperature of the people in the room and so that other people could see how their their fellow community members were feeling and then you know we just started the first question was if you were running the district what would you do differently and you know it starts out slow and then people start getting going and talking and part of why it works well is because through the chat people can direct message they direct messaged me as the facilitator when they weren't comfortable speaking up or didn't want their name revealed and that was the most popular way for people
247to make comments or ask questions and you know really i think the largest we was a hundred something students i mean parents or teachers and you know the number of people really doesn't matter because by the end of the hour and a half or whatever time you set aside the ground has more or less been covered if you need to meet again you say we're going to meet again right you you sort of play it a little bit by ear until you feel like you have some efficient information from the various stakeholders to say okay we have some stuff here now we're going to put together this steering committee or working group whatever you call it and here's the information we learned in these listening sessions this is let's start tackling this plus with the
248facilitation of an expert and i'm not and i already told carol michelle that's not me but with somebody who does this more than the structural stuff then they can use that and then help guide the committee with the expertise from having done this before in figuring out what to address the needs of the community that's so helpful eg is so helpful to share that that kind of process and what that looks like because that it just feels concrete it feels tangible that feels really doable and i just think it gives at least it gives me that that thought of okay this is this is something that i can see really unfolding in a timely manner in our district so for the trustees in terms of like that next step and that process i guess my
249question to you is do you want to form a board subcommittee of two of us to work with dr harmeyer to identify a facilitator an expert are you okay with dr harmeyer and i just taking the lead on this we've done a little bit of research we've interviewed we've connected with some experts already and we have we do have options for moving forward so i guess i'm wondering how closely involved you want to be in that process or what are you what are you feeling i would just say you know i appreciate that that you've done some of that leg work already and i i mean i don't necessarily feel the need to have a subcommittee right now to research that but as we go through these stages we're talking about you know if we
250feel like there's a need to have a subcommittee to work with a maybe a facilitator that we hire or something like that to work with dr harmeyer anyways however you want to structure it but no i i appreciate you and dr harmeyer kind of determining that next step and who's the right person to work same same okay thank you i appreciate that i think i think we can work pretty quickly on this and also identify maybe when we can bring to the board next meeting when we are talking about budget we can also look at what budget might be for this as well maybe some potential funding opportunities or kind of understanding where the board wants to slot this in from a budget prioritization standpoint what type of investment we want to make and i
251also want to thank which i failed to do at the beginning when i'm glad you mentioned the committee of parents that has you know really formed and been active over the summer in san carlos there is a very large committee of parents that is very engaged on this topic very passionate and really sees importance and i just really want to give a shout out to them for for being informed aware engaged for pressing on the board to keep this on the on the radar screen i really want to also thank you for your patience because i did keep telling you all summer we will talk about this i promise you we will talk about this and we were trying to get schools going again in a pandemic and so i just really appreciate the patience
252and and the constructive mindset that everybody is coming to the table with so thanks to all of you folks on the committee out there and everybody who's emailed us about this i also want to thank you jean um you were really the jumping off point for this in terms of um helping me understand what that process would look like so i will be forever indebted to the time that you spent educating me about this so thank you there's some public comment carol would you like me to read it yeah okay uh selena zilmer uh i was happy to see diversity equity inclusion included tonight's agenda and that the board has been entirely focused on the reopening of schools understandably as a parent of a biracial children growing up in san carlos i hope the topic
253of anti-racism will continue to be high on your priority list as a first step i'd like for the school board to consider community with anti-racism in public statement we haven't already urged each of you to look at the actions of the colleagues your colleagues in the mental park school district in the recent resolution of anti-racism and the few in the sds board strategic plan each point can be tied to the need for anti-racism if you ever truly committed to producing 21st century learners it will be a deeper experience by looking to a social justice lens this type of education can only bring about a more empathetic and stronger community here in san carlos and beyond although we'd love to believe that our school community is welcoming and equitable for all students know that yours does
254not necessarily align with that hope as part of the newly formed san carlos parents of racial equity we are seeing a growing number of voices who want our schools to be active in teaching our children history with an anti-racism approach exploring the origins of inequity in our society want them to be taught to be actors and making this a better and more equitable country this is not enough to simply include more books with diverse characters or educators our educators should understand systemic racism in which they are operating under we as parents are asking for deeper anti-racism implicit bias training anti-racist curriculum the active recruitment of pf b i p o c teachers and staff with murders and george floyd brown taylor and countless other black people our children are being more and more exposed to
255the systemic racism that exists in this country they're asking questions and questioning their own safety especially our children who identify excuse me as b i p o c to adore excuse me again this reality is divisive to our students and educators look forward to more discussions around this topic and encourage to see this first step thanks niel said the only comment two more two more uh karen casado i'm pleased to see this scsd is prioritizing the discussion about diversity equity inclusion for tonight's board meeting it's important for uh to me to our school district examines its role in addressing systemic racism white privilege and takes the time to reimagine how to create learning environments lessons and teaching practices that center around diversity equity and inclusion i also think it's important that the district develops a
256long-term plan for this partnership with teachers students parents and community members uh debbie future thank you st carter school board thank you so much for your work and support helping to facilitate social justice programming to our st carter schools the parent of three students at our three schools in st croix white oaks or about central little school have been uplifting to the work that has been done since the spring around helping to bring anti-racism awareness to our teachers and students i can lend the principals and teachers in the district who have made social justice a priority in the time they have invested in we're thankful that our included social justice as an agenda item for tonight's meeting we'd like the board to develop an actionable plan with short and long-term goals for uncertainty education discussion
257about confronting racism as an important part of the curriculum we've come up with some top priorities i would like the district and board to consider implementing this year these are provide anti-racism training for teachers and administrators include implicit bias training adopt a curriculum that holistically and accurately reflects experiences and histories of black indigenous and people of color increase hiring uh people of color as scsd teachers engage with pipoc regarding their experiences and scsd in conjunction with expert help hire expert consultants provide thought leadership on ways to develop new anti-racist policies and procedures looking forward to working with the school board principal teachers and staff and helping them to bring social justice education awareness to our students thank you for attention it's very important matter that's all i have thank you well dr harmeyer did you
258want to weigh in here on anything no i i really thank our parents and also our principals and teachers who really brought this to our attention especially may and june and really shared us that they see a need and our principals and teachers have been embarking on their own learning and i i think what's really important for me in my learning is that there's a lot of adult learning that has to happen before we can work on the kid learning and i think eugene said it well just having some common understanding and vocabulary and then doing that personal work because there there are big shifts in thinking and behavior that will happen in our adult realm you know so that we can be even better educators for our students so i want to thank our
259parents who have raised the issue and encouraged us to do this deep work and thank you to our principals who have already taken a leadership role in their own learning and and our teachers you know for for being open and wanting to build those better relationships with their kids every day just on the day-to-day basis so thank you thank you eugene for being here and i look forward to seeing you at rotary tomorrow tomorrow afternoon as our guest speaker tomorrow so thanks for joining us there too and thank you carol for taking the lead on this i really appreciate it yes no it's my it's my pleasure it's my pleasure to do so we'll bring this back next week and next next week next board meeting so on the eighth we'll give an update to
260the board about where we are so that we can keep momentum on this and and stay tuned folks wonderful okay thanks everybody let's get back to our agenda okay item seven our action items our first is 7a approval of the healthy cities tutoring agreement i always want to make a comment about our action many of our action items today i asked dr harmeier that we have these on as action items as opposed to consent because many of them are items that in the spring the board had made the decision the very difficult decision to not fund because of our budget challenges at that time so this is for full transparency with our community about the how we're able to access funding streams that weren't available to us and why this is why we're able to
261do this now so dr and dr harmeier i think has a brief presentation on that which will cover kind of a bunch of these items yes and what i did i tried to do a little bit of a summary table and i will upload this under the healthy cities item in the future so people can always refer back to this but i literally just made this this afternoon because it's hard to talk through so many budget details without killing people with with this details but what i what i want to demonstrate here is that we have several contracts i would like the board to approve most of these are contracts that are typical kinds of programming like but like you said in the spring we made some real hard decisions to not fund certain programs
262because of our budget crisis and we as we started this year some things have changed one the state budget cuts were not as as extreme that as we thought they were going to be that was a relief but that still didn't put us in in the black i would say you know within it with a with a clear budget we also had skef come up with a couple hundred thousand dollars more after we passed our budget so we had a little bit extra to work with from skef from their summer fundraising efforts we also received over a million dollars in covid relief funds to use specifically for targeted needs for this year and so with the kind of a combination of of items i want to show that we're adding in some contracts and how
263it impacts our budget overall and this is brief tonight and we've committed to coming back on october 8th with a more detailed budget update where we can really get into the weeds about differences but these things are items that i'm feeling are essential to move forward with so so that we can continue the programming that we committed to and also add back an item or two that we thought we were going to lose this year so i'll first start with help with our academic and mental health support healthy cities tutoring has been a strong partner for several years we canceled our our program for this year thinking we would not be able to fund that we took that out of our budget but with our learning loss mitigation fund and that's that figure on the
264right llmf learning loss mitigation fund grant for co it's essentially from the cares act so it's our covid grant sometimes you hear me call it the covid grant we would like to use those funds to support this program it's going to be very important for us to support our students academically without especially some of the other things that we did cut from our budget and we're not bringing back we had two reading teachers that we laid off and we didn't really lay off we reassigned them to classrooms because we we needed to reduce budget in that area we also reduced our our literacy associates and we're not bringing them back so i think this is a critical service right now one life counseling we've had an mo you or memorandum of understanding for several years
265with them they provide mental health services they supplement our multi-tiered system of support for mental health through their associates so we already had budgeted them to be in our adopted budget that's where you see the 60 000 now we're activating the contract but what we did is we added some additional services because of some additional grant funding that we just talked about so we're adding a little bit more support with our learning loss mitigation funds and we had our skef donor who typically donates a particular restricted grant one amount actually gave us more this year which is restricted for mental health and counseling services so we were able to enhance what we were going to do because of those two grants when you look at electives and enrichment typically we use our our fourth and
266fifth grade students now that we have a fully developed upper elementary program they the fourth graders get an elective and the fifth graders get an elective class so keeping that in mind we had budgeting in place it was included in our budget through personnel to provide the those elective offerings usually it's an arts class for a trimester or a makerspace or it might be computers or it might be spanish it changes each year depending on our staffing well this year with our staffing changes we had resignations in the summer we had to move people around for different roles due to staffing we really didn't have the the right people in place to provide an elective for fourth grade however we budgeted for that so on the bottom you'll see personnel savings we did not fill
267two vacancies at the middle school they people left they resigned things happened and we held off because we didn't know what our numbers were going to be with such volatility with with covid so we are capturing some savings by not filling those vacancies due to uncertainty so what we're doing here is using those that staffing budget to to help us still provide an elective for fourth grade at mariposa and also fourth grade music at a royal so there was a little need at that spot too so that's included in our budget it's not anything in addition it's actually a little less than we would normally spend on staffing then next you look at pe typically uh well no i'm going to do music for minors next so the next line is music for minors k3
268that program we did cut and it was not in the adopted budget you see the zero there however for 85 000 we're going to run a more abbreviated program for our k3 students so they have this enrichment and fun and excitement in their their distance learning program through this year and also it can shift to be in person possibly at some point too so we set it up so it'll work no matter what model we're in so we are using the additional funds that came in over the summer from those additional donations that parents essentially came through in the end for us and then legars of pe you know that's typically what we use for our k3 program it used to be a k4 program when all the elementary kids were on elementary site we've
269been doing this pe for a long time we cut it from our program it was not included in i guess i should say was not included that's a little bit of a mistake on there it wasn't included k3 in our budget we had cut that from our budget but four or five pe was included in the budget because of pe staff at the middle school that normally would teach four or five pe if you see on the bottom again we had a we had actually a couple of pe vacancies in one position we did fill the other we just held off because we just didn't know if we would need it or not with the changes of enrollment we decided not to fill the vacancy but realized we didn't quite have enough pe teachers to
270help with the fourth and fifth pe so we're using legars for fourth and fifth pe so overall we had a we had that vacancy and it actually pays for the entire for just this year so that we can provide it so the budget was included in the in the you know the amount was included in the june budget but we didn't plan on doing legarza so it's not an impact it's not a negative impact to the general fund budget so that's kind of a big picture and again i'll upload this you know when we're we're done with the presentation what i'm going to do now though to see if i can stop sharing and i'm going to go to the i'm gonna have to refer to my my agenda now but before i do that
271um do any brief questions before i i just want to say first of all thank you that was super clear i really appreciate how i don't know if it was you or christine or combination how you laid that out that really showed where things are coming from before you upload it to the agenda item maybe just make that the change the correction about what was not included and i would also recommend for the acronyms we either spell them out or we just have a little asterisk at the bottom so folks that that aren't inside baseball know what does mean great i'll do that so veronica will help me take a couple notes on that and it was christine okay she really she is amazing and i said i need help communicating can you help me
272figure this out so she's she's been just a phenomenal addition to our team so with that can i ask a quick question sorry just a clarifying question i am just wondering music for minors i mean you know these have been integral to our you know k3 programs and they're amazing and this is what you know we always feel like you know sets our district apart right and like anyways my concern though is why are we seeing mariposa mariposa what about arroyo so i'm not clear on was that already budgeted for what is and i hate i don't mean to open up a can of worms but what is i was gonna ask that to you yeah i just wondered like music for minors do we have funding already committed somewhere elsewhere that we're just not
273having to vote on right now is this like just additional to something else that arroyo gets i could you know what i think it'd be best let's go through one contract at a time because i wrote some more details in each description and i think we do have to vote one at a time so i'll go into depth for each group if that's okay and i'll be able to answer that question i mean i don't know if that's necessary but you've labeled it as mariposa so i'm just trying to understand what is that contract getting us so for four what we're doing is fourth grade music for arroyo okay so that's a standalone they just need a little a little help okay so but i didn't write arroyo on the chart but it's in it's
274embedded in the board doc so arroyo is getting fourth grade music that's part of their three-part wheel so arroyo fourth graders get art music and one other thing and i believe it's more technology computer-based so that's their elective wheel it's more like an exploratory wheel and then in mariposa they have a four spoke wheel music dance and movement performing arts and visual arts so they're handled a little differently each school kind of does their own elective things so they're all getting a little something different but they're all getting an elective experience wendy does that answer your question so even though michelle if i'm understanding correctly even though these particular budget items are only for mariposa that's because we had we are using other funds for things that are funding the um arroyo um elective wheel
275pieces and those didn't need to be separate contracts to approve which is why they're not on the agenda they were provided by our existing staff thank you maybe that's the question i didn't even get carol so that it's right so the art teacher from cms is able to do art for the arroyo and the computer teacher is able to do computer but we were missing a section of music we just didn't have enough music teachers to go around so that's why we used and so arroyo music is embedded in here for that reason but normally we wouldn't need these contracts because we would have our own personnel in our own budget doing these electives okay thank you just want to make sure it's equitable yes that was really good i'm glad you brought that up
276because it looks it looks a little um it was really inequitable um ask alex on august 3rd when we had no electives all of a sudden for fourth grade it's like what are we going to do and alex uh friel principal very creative and you know work with me together to to create a really neat opportunity so i think the kids i've already had the chance to see the kids doing their music in fourth grade arroyo and they're playing the recorders and learning things so it's really exciting and so fun to see all right so i think you can stop sharing your screen now because we'll just move through the action items one by one and trustees can ask individual questions as we approve that as we move to each one so um item 7a
277approval of the healthy cities tutoring agreement are there any questions um from trustees about this one okay seeing none can i call for a motion for 7a move to approve 7a thank you neil second thank you irene all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed okay the motion carries four zero the next one is 7b the approval of the agreement for with music for minors for the k3 2021 year are there any questions for dr harmeier about this contract okay i'll call for motion move to approve 70 thank you neil second thank you wendy all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed okay the motion carries four to zero action item 7c approval of agreement with music for minors for grade four for 2020 2021 any questions about this
278item okay i will ask for motion please move to approve 7c thank you wendy second thank you irene all those in favor please signify signify by saying aye aye opposed okay the motion carries four to zero uh action item 7e approval of agreement with daniel jure 2020 2021 any questions about this item i think you skipped d oh thank you sorry thank you so much approval so 7d approval of the agreement with san carlos children's theater 2020 2021 i move to approve 7d thank you wendy second thank you neil all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed okay the motion carries four to zero now 7e the approval of agreement with daniel jure 2020 2021 uh call for motion move to approve 70 thank you neil second thank you irene all those
279in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed okay the motion carries action item 7f approval of the one life counseling center amendment 2020 2021 i think this should be agreement yeah it actually we have an ongoing mou it was a multi year and each year what we do is amend it with the actual hours that we're going to use that year okay so this is an amendment to the approval of 7f irene second thank you all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed okay the motion carries four to zero um now 7g it which is not one of our budget items it is the approval of the san carlos school district 2020 2021 learning continuity and attendance plan you'll remember that hans brought this to us as a discussion item last
280meeting and he did a great presentation on it which is attached here if anybody wishes to review that hans is there anything special we need to know although i guess before i start i do want to say thank you i saw all the detail that you put in there around the survey data i just thought that added so much context to um to what was in there so thank you for taking the time to do that is there anything else that you want to share with the board about this final uh draft no uh you're certainly welcome and i did think it it did um add some much needed kind of depth to the you know to the to the narrative and um that's really the only place was in that one particular area um
281one other place that there was an amendment was with healthy cities um that you just approved and we had we had that at 25 000 and we amended that to 50 000 those are the really the only two amendments that we made in the documents since the last time thank you trustees do you have any questions for hans about this before i call for motion i have one question just to understand um because when i looked at the different there's the different sections that outline all these different things related to ppe distance learning and there's costs associated with those different items and i'm wondering does this plan essentially does it represent um for our district sort of how we're spending the learning loss mitigation funds or does it not necessarily have to tie or is
282this pretty much a full representation of what we're doing with those learning loss mitigation funds because it's pretty much full representation monday yeah you know i'm thinking of it like the l cap you know i'm like so how does that you know you have to document sort of how you're spending those funds and i i just wasn't sure if there's that you know relationship or requirement yeah that is that is exactly what the documents for now i have i mean i went to a lot of training to learn this document in a very short amount of time and you'll hear conflicting opinions believe it or not on the question that you're asking um but you know our county was pretty clear that they wanted to see all of the learning loss mitigation funds you know
283maybe there might be a couple things that were not in there but literally 90 of your money should be in this document that was the guidance that we received um and so christine and i worked pretty hard on getting everything in there and um you know like i said uh you know we really didn't make too many changes between the first draft and this one and you know the other thing to remember is always that you know we have to spend the money in these pockets right um but you know it's not nearly as specific as it would be like in an l cap where you know you wouldn't just list oh ppe right i mean we kind of just have a thing that says ppe it's not very specific about what that may or
284may not be as opposed to an l cap where you would have a goal and an action tied to that that you would then measure it and then you might be able to say well we did some measuring we decided that we didn't need that much money there we shifted some of the money over here right so it's not nearly that same level of detail but it's done in that same you know that same vein i would say that's great i mean i just think it helps for transparency right so that people know you know we got money targeted you know for learning loss mitigation and and this is um you've spelled it out very clearly you know and and the money does pretty much add up so anyways that was helpful to know your
285process thanks great question and thanks for the explanation hans any other questions from trustees all right i'll call for a motion to approve 7g the san carlos school district 2020 2021 learning continuity and attendance plan i'll move the plan is there a second second all right thanks neil uh all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed okay the motion carries four to zero action item seven h approval of a variable term credential waiver for the 2020-21 school year i'll take this one again um kirsten daniel baka is the person who is the subject of this waiver um you might recall she worked for us during the 1819 school year and then began the 1920 school year with us uh and then was able to um you know she she found another position
286that she kind of said to me i i don't love it and if there was the option of coming back that i would love to be able to be a part of the district again so we we conducted interviews she was just an outstanding candidate again amongst the pool that we had um and we hired her and you know the thing that that um was sort of out of place in 1819 was she didn't have her pps her pupil services credential okay and she took last year to do that and the c best was cancelled which is an important part of obtaining that credential so she was not able to finish that test because it was cancelled due to covid twice in fact so um she does have a scheduled date to take the test
287um and we but we need this waiver um for this school year until she can take that and be approved at the at the university level we're also changing the job title to include school social worker um at i think you know we've been back and forth with ctc a lot on this and that was a suggestion that our county person has made to us that this is really you know based more on on what she's actually doing it's probably more aligned and it also might make the um this process a little simpler for her to get the needed credential um so all of that being said um you know probably we wouldn't be having this conversation if we weren't in covid i think is what i would say so okay so bureaucratic covid intersection
288and do i have a motion very good i move approval of 7h thank you irene second thank you neil all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed okay the motion carries four to zero thank you for getting through all those action items trustees okay uh item 8a our discussion action item is about the board vacancy appointment process we intended for this item to be a chance for the um trustees if we so choose to do so to narrow down the um the number of candidates not knowing how many we were going to do how many applications we were going to receive so at this time even though there are seven applications posted we have five active applicants is that correct dr harmeyer yes we had uh we've had two applicants withdraw their
289applications that is um jean daner and scott jeffries so there are five applicants left so we can um the board can discuss um whether or not we want to further narrow that down i think i would make the recommendation that we interview all five i think it's my opinion that all five are qualified um and out of respect and transparency i think it is would absolutely be worthwhile to have a process by which we interview all five but that's a matter for the full board to determine at this meeting so where is everybody else on this uh i would go with interviewing everybody same for reasons stated wholeheartedly agree okay and i just want to really also express my appreciation to all seven who applied um because that just takes a lot to kind of
290put yourself out there and to offer yourself up for public service so um really and obvious always so impressed with the quality of candidates that we um that we do get here for for this so really really appreciate that um neil and irene do you have anything that you would like to update us on about the process or can you share that what the app the interview will look like for the um the applicants so that they can prepare obviously not questions in advance but um what that process looks like is that ready to share yet no and that's my fault not irines no fault no fault we're in it together not yet it's the not yet okay um do you imagine that we will have an opening statement a closing statement and some number
291of questions i imagine it'll be very similar i think irene and i discussed it initially that would be very similar to the process about one of these um as well irin correct me if i'm wrong no i it is as carol said i think i think and you and i were envisioning opening statement questions closing statements so i think we were just taking one last pass at the questions okay um and the the other thing that i would um wondering that i would have is just in terms of i guess this process being different because it's going to be conducted in zoom versus in person where in person we had the ability to ask all of our candidates to um to wait in the oval office while um while they were each being interviewed in
292turn and asked questions so that nobody had any advantage over another um i think maybe what i would a suggestion that i would make for the committee to um to consider is since we can't really control that virtually we don't have a virtual waiting room where we can have um you know certainty that the candidates aren't able to um access an audio to understand what the questions are being asked is we have five candidates maybe we asked five questions or some multiple of that and each one gets the question gets one question first and it's sequential so that everybody gets is the first answer for one question the second answer for one question the third and the fourth and the fifth just a suggestion for the committee to consider wendy did you have any input
293that you wanted to provide to the committee on questions that you would like them to consider for candidates um i think um well and sorry and i like what you just said carol i would just kind of second that because that was my thinking too is that that's um the process was different last time and and we're forced into this situation where i mean i think that situation in person the way it was structured was more ideal so anyways i like your your suggested solution for that um uh i guess i would just pose to you neil and irin if you think this is a good question to ask about um i guess commitment level this is also kind of a unique appointment in that it's filling out the rest of someone's term so it's
294not for the full term and i'm wondering you know if it's fair to ask um you know if someone would want to consider you know reelection like their idea is to to fill this role and then um consider you know serving um longer um and you know i don't i don't think that there's a right or wrong answer to that i just think it would it would be good to know um because we are in a pandemic i get it you know this is we are very grateful that we have very you know qualified people that have stepped forward um so honestly i think any level of service you know like we appreciate this i don't know i just i guess i'm just saying it you know um because some people someone might have an
295you know frank or a really good reason for saying no i i really honestly only you know envision filling out you know this this term so just one suggestion i think that would be a helpful one for me too as kind of an i would say an extra question that isn't one with that would go on that sequential this is kind of a um a general one to ask everybody so and then i think we are scheduled for five o'clock next thursday for this if i'm correct yeah carol i think we kind of estimated we didn't know how many people we would have so if you would like to determine the start time now i mean we can make it whatever time you want and we thought we might post tomorrow afternoon or we can
296post on monday just give us your guidance um what works for trustees it is five very difficult to make sorry what day are we remind me this is october 1st right thursday five o'clock is difficult but how long do we anticipate takes a while i would say 5 30 is probably the latest we should go so if we start at 5 30 that may be the best i can do 5 30 i can do 5 30 good okay let's do that and then also um i guess i i would recommend anil and arlene to um to consider the questions that were asked in the last application process as well you know i don't think there's any harm in repeating those um so i think those would be good good options and thank you for taking
297on um that work appreciate that anything else that the trustees want to discuss or michelle you need any decisions that you would like us to come to well i i think what we will do is uh veronica and i will work with neil and irene and make sure that we have information that the candidates need to make them feel prepared so we'll send them all an email just with logistics and start time and zoom link and so the candidates need will know that they will hear more from veronica prior so probably no later than tomorrow afternoon for a first contact and then any additional information that the subcommittee needs to tell them she'll stay in contact so those five people if you have a question talk to veronica irene can we commit to the i
298mean maybe veronica will send out email um confirming date and time for their interview but then you and i can commit to getting to have veronica send something out by monday evening of you know how long opening statement closing statement and then process of the five questions in between or six questions or whatever yes i think we can uh we can i can work we can commit to that timeline okay great so they should expect something by monday night as well for how it'll work just to um not to rush your process at all but i'm just wondering if maybe the candidates would appreciate having the weekend to work on their statements and it might be just a useful piece of information for them to know the length of time for those two pieces um
299on friday if that's not a big um if that's not a big decision to make i don't think so no okay that so let's commit to that to getting that information to candidates so they have over the weekend to prepare um and thanks to those candidates i imagine you're all listening in right now if not on zoom then on um on the youtube uh live stream um welcome to a long and late process i think this is we're being very transparent about what board service is like so uh this is what it is all right um agenda setting 9a future agenda items identified we know we have the budget um pulse at the next meeting we are bringing back our dei and anti-racism work for an update there um and as well an update from
300dr harmeier on um the return to school planning and that next phase and hearing um where that work is yeah and carol i just want to clarify we're going to we're going to kind of pace out some reports to you so budget is on the eighth and then we're going to look at personnel like more of a staffing report on the 22nd and they're going to we're going to wait for january to do an in-depth enrollment report we'll have a small portion of enrollment on the eighth that's related to budget but these are things that we're going to spread out a little bit and i had talked about it earlier i just wanted to clarify in case you wondered where's that staffing report so um we're going to paste them out that sounds like a
301wise idea trustees is there anything else that you'd like to add for future agenda items all right excellent in that case we're going to move on to item 10a board member comments do trustees have any comments they'd like to share tonight all right happy can i just say one thing i just wanted to um thank uh dr harmeier um an email went out today which i really didn't have a chance to look at um about this pandemic care and support for parents so we had talked a lot about you know health and wellness for our families our staff you know and and um and obviously for our kids but anyways i was so pleased to see this today i know a lot of work went into this over the summer and um and that there
302were you know quite a few parents um i'm going to name a friend debbie butcher who is actively helping mindy uh hill on this so i i just wanted to highlight it because i i hope that we can go there and um you know there's counseling and mental health meals and groceries i'm just kind of looking at it right now parent education and knowing that there's a calendar with you know we already talked about the budget for this i think and um and you know how scuff and others are are helping out with this so thank you i think this is um i just wanted to highlight um you know our uh our our need and attention on health and wellness this year so thank you thank you wendy neo or iran do you have
303any comments you'd like to make no comment thank you all right and i'm assuming none from iran and then for me dr harmeyer superintendent comment comments i don't have anything special today except to thank our all our staff our teachers our principals um who are all doing such a fantastic job so and uh acknowledge mindy hill for that website work uh that we need just talked about because mindy is doing a tremendous job with many different hats on and she's just coordinating and pulling so much together with the help of her whole team so thank you wonderful okay i'm going to announce um that the trustees will be adjourning into closed session neil is there any public comment on our closed session items there isn't uh there is some public comment that came in later
304on other items but kind of i guess this suggests i'd be given our hour and usually we've had one of these things about 20 minutes um i would just have bronica attach them to the board agenda later on afterwards thank you i think that's i think that's the proper course all right i'm going to adjourn us to closed session trustees you have the link in your email and then i will come back out to report out after closed session thank you everybody for your time good night and we'll see you in the session thank you everyone thank you okay okay um i'm coming back into open session to report out from our closed session the board took action to approve a settlement of twenty one thousand three hundred and eighty dollars to resolve all issues
305arising out of invoice number one five four five with sage renewables i have nothing else the vote was four to zero i have nothing else to report out and i am adjourning the meeting at 11 31 p.m.