Board of Education Meeting: August 10, 2021

001okay good there's all right good evening welcome everybody it's uh good seeing a crowd in our boardroom thanks for joining us today is august 10 2021 it is 6 30 p.m and i will call this meeting to order um this is our first board meeting with our new superintendent so i'd like to welcome to the board brian kingsley thank you [Applause] it's been a it's been a big year and a big process bringing you here and we're really excited to have you join us and uh sharing what we're doing tonight but uh having you leave the the district so thank you very very much thank you yeah okay with that i'm moving into the agenda which is item 2.0 and that would be the pledge of allegiance if you please join me thank you for

002joining me okay next on the agile agenda is the approval of agenda would any board members like to make changes to the agenda this evening okay seeing none will proceed and that brings us straight away to our first superintendent report i turn it over to you superintendent kingston thank you president members of the board i just want to thank you on behalf of my entire family we're incredibly excited for this opportunity and to join the fort collins community and it's an honor to serve this community here today i'm incredibly excited about the school year ahead and i know as i have an opportunity to engage with many of the people who are here tonight both inside and outside that we're struggling as a community living working and leading in a global pandemic i know many

003of you if not all of us feel some sense of enough already we're tired we're exhausted and we're looking for hope and we're looking for optimism despite some of the things that are in front of us whether we agree or disagree my last five and a half weeks of being here in this incredible position still fills my heart and mind with hope with optimism and i'm excited for our students to return to our buildings next week they are the bloodline that breeds oxygen into what makes this system go as the new superintendent i want to be clear i know that trust is lost and gained every day in this organization uh our employees and our board know that as well i believe how i show up and what i ask this community to hold me

004accountable to is that trust is really built not on agreement but it's built on core values such as reliability sincerity competence and care i believe what we say matters meaning what we say and saying what we mean is significant i believe making sure that we uphold the commitments that we have to each other and to our children are of the utmost importance i believe that we have to make sure that we as a system and as an organization as employees as servant leaders that we follow through and what we say we will do and i believe that has to be centered in a culture of care that's focused not just on our individual needs which are incredibly important and not insignificant but it's important that when we're making decisions and we're thinking about our actions

005that we're ensuring that people's interests other people's interests all people's interests are in mind even when we disagree how we show up matters and i've learned a lot and i'm going to learn for a while i'm really excited to be here but some of the highlights that i've found to be a part of this system that i have nothing to do with that i just want to celebrate and be a key champion in this room and in this community for is that while we have all been dealing and living and trying to react and teach and learn in a global pandemic there's been a lot of things that this system has learned that we should be very proud of when you look at the last 12 months asking our students by survey how they feel

006in terms of their level of connectedness with other human beings students being connected to other students students being connected to adults not just their teachers but all of the various adults in this community last year it was at an all-time high in this system and this most significant increase in terms of connectedness was achieved by our students who need the most additional supports now i've worked and lived in various states there's not many school systems in this country that have achieved that level of connectedness while navigating the complexities of a pandemic and i believe it deserves to be celebrated here there's a lot of great work and a lot of great talent already here my job is to build off of that i also though not just here to talk about our strengths that we

007have work to do uh some of the things that we are maintaining this system is a proud school system there's no doubt about that it's one of the reasons why my family not i don't only want to work here but my children are going to go to school here that's that level of trust and commitment that i'm talking about we're national leader we surpass our peer districts across the nation in performance in english language arts and mathematics but what i would share with you with humility and not as an indictment is that other districts are catching us i also share that not as a means of creating competition between us and other systems because there are human beings at the other end of this data but we have the right talent and the right leadership

008in the right community support and are poised to see increases in our academic achievement like not before i believe in that i also believe that there are opportunities in some steep hills that we have to climb and acknowledge that are very real and i want to name a few of those too that are not just about maintaining a high level of performance but figuring out how do we go from where we are to a level of greatness i shared with you earlier this level of connectedness between children and people and human beings and that we are in the people business and it's messy but it's what matters most but we also know that in order for our children to achieve they need to be connected to their personal interests and that got lost over the

009last year in this community i don't believe that's a result of the talent and or our families not working in partnership with our children i believe it's just the realities of the pandemic and forcing children to learn from home and we had to figure out technology and we lost extracurriculars we lost athletics we lost clubs and things that bring the joy and the heartbeat of our children to life into fruition and we're going to get that back this year but we need to figure out ways to ensure that connectedness to children's personal interests is at the utmost of importance we also know that when we look at our data when we think about how our children learn to read literacy is a fundamental social right i know many of you are here tonight to talk

010about social rights and i look forward to listening to you but i believe in order for us to interrogate each other's ideas and thoughts and processes the way of the world and the make meaning of things children need to possess key foundational literacy skills that are mission critical and early to their development in ages birth through north most notably grade three and our system has been trending not in the positive direction over the last three years around those key foundational skills and that regression accelerated as a result of the pandemic i shared that with you with humility as a result of knowing that we need to be in person learning to address that i also share with you that we have intrep incredibly proud graduation rates in this system most of the children in this

011school district most students do incredibly well but we also know that there are a lot of children that are vulnerable that are underserved and we haven't yet figured out ways for them not just to walk across the stage with a diploma but to graduate with options that's the goal and the vision that we have as a team not me singularly as the superintendent of the school district but to ensure that our children can graduate with options now having an opportunity to listen and to learn requires me to help craft in partnership with the people that i'm flanked by both on this board as well as in our cabinet to figure out how do we prioritize what matters most and what i've heard from many community members not all but many is that remote learning didn't

012work for most children there are some families that thrived in it and they have that option like many of you to continue in that modality of learning this year with our pd uh pooter global academy in our virtual school and i'm really excited about that but the majority of our children not only don't need to just show up they need to be in school in person learning every single day in person and they can't be being sent home 10 days at a clip because they potentially sat next to somebody that tested positive for coving quarantines created an impact not just on children and their learning it created a human impact on many of you as adults on your work environment out of your pocket to be able to pay for child care and in essence

013it also hurt our economy i've heard loud and clear that i have to figure out ways to work with all of you and that's what i'm here to do to prioritize that we don't just open our schools on monday but we keep them open for all children every day that requires us to figure out once they're there what do we do with them some of our high school students if you are a junior this year you have not had a typical traditional high school experience and you're a junior think about that i have a child a son who graduated two years ago and didn't get a chance to have a traditional graduation didn't have a prom i think it's built some resilience in him but it also came at a cost we have to make

014sure that we prioritize developing a deep sense of belonging of not just our students but also each other as adults regardless of how we see the world there's a lot for us to listen to each other about to show compassion to show love to show empathy but we also know that there are many families that are in crisis and we have to prioritize the mental health supports that are necessary to not just meet people where they're at but to ensure that they thrive in their prosper because our children want us to listen to them that will be a priority in this school system but that is not enough love does not ensure that we can graduate children with options we must teach with precision we have to accelerate learning and possess a mindset that our

015children there's no such thing as learning loss i want us to strike that from our vernacular we hear it in the news we hear it on what we read in the newspaper our children you and i probably have learned more about ourselves our community our families in the last 18 months than we probably did in the last five years prior our children are coming in with brilliance with strengths and we're going to honor that but we're going to teach them with grade level content we're going to provide them strong extra instruction every day and we're going to ensure that you as families have the resources that you need to ensure that all students in this system thrive belonging and acceleration matters but it's messy it's like loving each other like a family but also making

016sure that we're teaching each other with precision and we're only way that we're going to do that is if we do it together our children right now and have always been watching us our children right now and have always been counting on us so as your new new superintendent i am here to serve them first but i know that i need to do that as with you as a partner and as a vehicle to give them what they need there is so much talent and there's so much leadership in this system that i am grateful to be here i have a few individual highlights that i want to launch just to the community and celebration prior to turning it back over to the board agenda if that's okay i'm very excited that on this friday

017excuse me this friday we will have a marquee celebration at bamford elementary school our brand new elementary school i'm very excited to share with you board that we have received and passed all the necessary inspections today have the keys and officially have our 53rd school in the school system so i'm super excited about that i would also share with you that our transportation department in various departments across the system have worked overnight on the weekends over the last two and a half weeks to figure out creative ways to solve for our shortage that we are experiencing with our bus drivers we haven't fully solved the problem if you're listening and you're interested having a really flashy company car i want to talk to you but our team has figured out ways to imagineer to solve

018the problem for children who are eligible to ride a bus in this system there were 1300 students two and a half weeks ago who we didn't have a solution for and we figured it out so on day one they have access to a great school a great education and a great school district and a great community i want to thank our executive director of operations matt bryant jake bell the various routers and bus drivers the partnership with the various cabinet members who worked around the clock to figure that out because equity and access matters it's not just about theories what does it look like in practice and they lived by that and i'm excited about it we also know that new people are moving to our community every single day and so there may be

019children in our community that we didn't capture that we need to figure out another creative solution for so you probably have seen and heard information that went out to the community today trying to identify are there other eligible bus riders that we haven't figured out how to get them access to transportation yet we may not be able to deliver on that promise on monday i just want to be honest about that but we're going to work around the clock to figure it out and so that's important the last thing i will share with you is i'm looking forward to riding a bus myself on monday that's how i'm going to start my day honoring the people who start the culture of our day who check in with your children first and foremost to make sure

020that they not only arrive safely but they arrive with joy and smiles and then we're going to attend a bunch of elementary schools and middle schools and high schools i'm going to have a chance to breathe life into this system with our children so they can breed life back into me because that's what makes this thing go and i am really grateful not just for the people who are in this room leading this system in partnership with the people that we serve but i am incredibly great i'm incredibly grateful for our various associations the support that they have provided us our teachers who are in the field our classified staff who make sure that this system functions on a daily basis that if they weren't there doing what they do this system shuts down overnight

021our school leaders and district leaders who are committed to not just a new vision and a change in leadership but navigating the complexities of this pandemic knowing that many of us are frustrated but they're holding the line in partnership with their teachers to make sure regardless of our feelings about how we're dealing with this pandemic that your children receive a smile and a first class education not just on monday but every day and so again i'm just really grateful for this opportunity and i appreciate the opportunity to address the community as well as you it's a significant moment in my career and i won't forget it so thank you thank you for that really nice uh first superintendent report ryan um i am thrilled to show you that uh we have incredible attendance for our

022board meetings uh i'd like to tell you that's the case every time but i'm going to use this as an opportunity to actually tell you it's not always the case tonight is really about an opportunity to listen to hear there's a lot going on and i really think the board views it as democracy at work for those of you who are wondering uh while we normally give three minutes to talk everybody got a an email indicating that we went to 90 seconds and i want everybody to understand that was because we wanted to get as many as many of your voices in the room as we could tonight so i understand it's quick it's short but we do want to see each of you we want to hear what you have to say and you

023know give an opportunity for all of this to work um so with that i one small reminder we really do ask that everybody wears their masks uh to accommodate the the way we're running the district today and we'd like you to wear it properly throughout the evening and as long as you stay in the boardroom so short of that i'm just going to read quickly this is an opportunity for public comment it's for members of the community who registered to speak by the designated deadline so that's how we're working things uh these days uh some people may be giving remarks by voice only due to some accommodations they ask for so some of these will either be on the screens or on the audio as we see so i will be calling uh something like

02440 people up one at a time you'll have a number i'll call your number up we'll give people some time we're you'll be in the back of the room you'll have green yellow red when that light turns you know yellow is a warning you have i think 30 seconds left and it read i will start cutting you off and i'll ask you to to accommodate the rest of the people in the room so with that no further ado let's start right off and i have number one miss vanessa morton welcome to the board hi thank you i have two kids in the pooter school district um i want to start off with tom gonzalez comments at the city council meeting on august 4th he said our top priorities going back to school this fall are

025mental health and normalcy for our students i'm not sure how this can be accomplished as we can see by forcing our kids to have something on their face for six hours a day tom gonzalez also said that classroom transmission is rare science supports this i'm sure he was trying to tie this low transmission to mask use but anyone with young kids knows that they are not consistently able to wear masks correctly not to mention they've been playing together all day all summer unmasked and they're virtually unaffected low transmission is not because of mass but in spite of it as adults we are the voice for our children affected by these mandates you the elected officials of the school board not the health department according to the colorado constitution have the power to make decisions for

026our kids so make sure it's helping you and not the health department will also be assuming any harm and held responsible for any actions and adverse outcomes as a result of mass mandates our children's speech language social development mental health and as mr king kingsley mentioned the ability to learn normally are all affected by removing parental choice for masking it's not harmless even fauci isn't confident and he hopes masking won't have lasting effects this isn't good enough do you know our kids are safe for wearing masks they account for less than one percent of covet cases all right thank you i appreciate your comments and i'm gonna i'm sticking to the 90 seconds i really appreciate your coming okay [Applause] okay and to be clear when you're done with your comments if you do want

027to stay in the seats available please do uh if not eventually some people will fill it up so number two will be griffin cole my name is griffin cole and i am a dentist and having worked inside patients mouths for the past 28 years i certainly have to rely on my mask for protection from splatter blood and saliva that's what they do they are not designed to protect me from tiny viruses everyone likes to spout their science let's just talk math because numbers don't lie the n95 masks the best ones that protect us from the coronavirus block anything that is 0.3 microns or larger 0.3 the coronavirus and all its variants are at or near 0.125 microns in size you're throwing sand at a chain-link fence you aren't protecting yourself from the virus period what

028you are doing however is creating a disgusting bacterial soup laden with pathogens and candida overgrowth not to mention acne gum inflammation bad breath and sometimes tooth decay add to this a hypoxic environment a sense of isolation and depression and you have this past year do you know how many healthy school-aged children have died from covid using the cdc's own numbers which are pretty exaggerated it's point zero zero zero six percent point zero zero zero six more children died from the flu last year why in god's name would we ever ask our children the least at risk for dying from this virus to cover their faces do not force our children to wear mass or test or vaccinate does psd understand that both mass and tests are only approved under emergency use authorization emergency use applications

029may not be legally mandated decisions made last year harmed our children please don't make this mistake again all right thank you for your comments and number three is natalie niemeyer oh okay all right i have okay i'm jumping to number six is miss daniel lawrence and i know she's here so yeah welcome okay my name is danny lawrence i have two children here in the district i'm also an alumni um i came to say thank you for considering my son when you made the difficult but science driven decision to wear masks my son is disabled and has to be kept surgically ready at all times which is super difficult and a viral pandemic he's much safer when his peers are in masks and there are lots of families in the district like mine kids with

030cancer g-tubes and wheelchairs and they deserve a chance to be educated too and thank you for not forgetting us and finally i've seen a lot of hostility and name calling and threats toward all of you from parents in the community and i was hoping that you're placing those families on the same string parent communication plan that you placed me and my husband on for perceived sarcasm that took place in an email if not it's just punishment for special education parents who speak the truth and that's called discrimination so um on my end i just wanted to say thank you again for masks it makes it so my kid can go back this year he sat out all last year thank you thank you for your comments okay and number seven is katie valline i'm going

031to hope that's said correctly if not i'm embarrassed okay all right well we'll move quickly and don't think i'm up in time but number eight is jessica krauss welcome to the boardroom so i first want to say we do not consent to any of your anti-science guidelines you have not been able to provide any solid evidence that supports your decisions to anyone that has asked for them parents decide what medical interventions are best for our children not a school board or the government let our kids do their job and get an education and you do your job and provide the resources for them to do so you have 15.5 million dollars on the line for you to do what you're told we parents have our children's mental and physical well-being to fight for these shots

032are dangerous even our kids know it on tick tock they call it the clot shot lack of access to the jab is not why we don't have a hundred percent injection rate it's because they choose not to get it according to the veers website over 545 000 severe adverse reactions including 12 000 deaths 18 of those for 12 to 17 year olds how will you be notifying parents of any programs or injection sites that are brought into the schools will you allow parents to opt out as psd decision makers how are you going to take accountability for any and all damages mentally and physically endured from masking contact tracing quarantining testing social distancing and injecting our children you say your top priority is keeping our kids in school then leave them alone and let them

033go back to school as normal just like other districts across colorado and the country in the country thank you [Applause] thank you for your comments okay number nine is miss jennifer george please welcome to the boardroom thank you i appreciate the chance to speak here today i first want to say that i don't think any of us parents most of us i can't speak for everybody but we are not under the illusion that the cdc or the government or fouchy has our children's education in mind they don't care about our kids education experience but you are supposed to and we elected you to sit in those seats and represent us be our voice and our voice is not being heard at all i've got three kids actually i've only got two now that are still

034left in the system but i had one that had to graduate you know on a on a hot field out everybody six feet apart it was ridiculous and it was sad i've got two kids that are still in the district and there were tears but they've suffered socially so much in the past year and a half that they're willing to just wear the mask and i think we all know that this is not just about the mask i think that our kids are being used as pawns and something that is way bigger than this i know that for my kids and what i've seen it affects their ability to empathize and sympathize with their peers it also hides the smiles that could change a day from a bad day to a good day and i

035just ask that you give us the choice you guys are here to represent us not co-parent with us i appreciate and and thank you for your comments and next number 10 is emily schwab or schwab i'm sorry for getting that wrong welcome eventually i'll remember how to say your last name i'm sorry schwab yeah schwab okay thanks um so i understand that you guys may view us parents as a bunch of non-experts parading around here speaking on topics that we don't know anything about but intelligence doesn't only come after you get the degrees and there are great many things that we know with or without those for example i know that my kids and their friends are beyond miserable wearing masks in school i know that my youngest who has special needs is increasingly fearful

036of people wearing masks around her i know that masks do not prevent the spread of this virus i know that masks do contribute to emotional mental distress for our kids in many ways i know that most families have gone without masks this whole summer stores vacations crowded cities for holidays parties fairs tell me where are the mass outbreaks from these places i know that prove we still need masks i know that fear false information and virtue signaling are some of the main reasons that people still think we need masks i know that sometimes we as humans end up fighting so hard for what we think is right that we end up over correcting and doing harm instead despite well intentions i know that history is never kind to those in power who do harm to

037children in these situations again despite meaning well-meaning intentions i know that history is never i know that kids will not run around telling strangers how miserable they are that is why it's my job as a parent to take what i know and do all i can to help and protect my children i know that i am an extremely competent parent and can make sound and informed decisions for my own kids and i do every day i know that giving us the choice is what's always best thank you all decisions regarding the health of our own children thank you [Applause] thank you for your comments and number 11 is alex smith heisler yes excellent hello i'm alex smith heisler i am a sophomore in the fossil ridge high school here's my face it'll be the last

038time you see it first off i'm going to tell you how i'm here today to tell you how the psd school district is not following science by making students wear masks and according to our local health board oh we do not need to wear masks unvaccinated and vaccinated vaccinated are not even recommended unvaccinated are highly recommended but are not forced to if you really depended on the science you would follow that instead of the fda's and cdc's guidance um and that you've asked vaccinate people that um we vaccinate people who um cannot be vaccinated sometimes and that causes problems with their immune systems and um not one study has shown how the delta variant can be any more harmful to the students and or elders it is more contractible but in no way more harmful

039uh it is much more compactible and there is almost zero percent chance to give someone corona and have them uh killed you have a higher chance of getting struck by lightning that is proven elders and people at risk can be vaccinated and that further reduces the uh the chance they're going to die from it but they're having that choice why are we being forced to vaccinate them with our stupid masks like this isn't going to do very much for anyone thank you very much thank you for your comments okay and next and i'm just going to be challenged all night long and i can't complain given my own last name so number 12 is jeff hafterheider welcome thank you my name is jeff after heidi from wellington colorado as i'm in opposition to your current

040mask and covet testing policy it's my understanding that psd leadership engaged local health officials in early 2012 i'm going to request that you put your mask on for assistance to obtain over 10 million dollars for federal grants some of the officials also contributed to governor police's decision to end the health emergency declaration last month however despite the end of the emergency to the end of the emergency order it appears psd leadership is on the path to convert our educational institutions into health clinics based on financial incentives and coercion this is not acceptable my questions to you are the following does psd or the psd foundation have memorandums of understanding business contracts performance agreements or interest-bearing financial instruments with organizations owned and operated by current or former members of state or county health departments two the

041psd board perform any due diligence to guarantee no such conflicts of interest exist three are psd board members or psd foundation members coordinating with lammer county board of health or for the allocation of federal state monies and if so who are they how much and for what purpose i appreciate your continued commitment to transparency thank you [Applause] thank you for your comments number 13 is michael edgerly excellent welcome before you start me so this is sorry i have to read my glasses this is the university of minnesota center for infectious disease research and policy director michael ostrohome who was also biden's covid advisor today that many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out either you're breathing out or you're breathing

042in and in fact if you're in the upper midwest right now so if you listen to him and he sits there and says that we know they're not effective why are we doing it why would we continue to do it why are we putting our children in this in this place so there was two gentlemen one's from john hopkins school of medicine professor dr martin mccary and tufts children's hospital chief of pediatric infectious disease dr meisner did an analysis of an analysis of the science behind masking children and found not only is it inconclusive but that masking has detrimental effects on child's well-being well-being social development and their ability to learn this gentleman laid out some of the things that you they can have actually the myopia acne learning um it distracts from social learning

043they're playing at the mall day i would argue that this is the dirtiest thing you could possibly put on a child there there is no way that we should continue this john hopkins also did a study and i'm happy to provide this for all of you where they looked at the mortality rate in children they couldn't find one natural death from covet in a child unless they had underlying conditions like leukemia it's in the study i have a child who's going through cancer this is his second time i don't make anybody mask up in front of them they haven't asked him to get jabbed and we're not following the science for these children we're not so follow the science it's there in front of you do not listen thank you for your comments [Applause] okay

044and number 14 is miss melissa crouch welcome just in case it says on the box they don't work i mean that's just to begin but you mentioned trust and i just want to say real simply if you want to earn ultra our trust our parent your parents trust the ones that pay for public school public school we should be able to go to without this on then if you want to earn our trust then you would open up your school like every other northern colorado district has to give the parents that pay for the public school that even buy the school supplies you don't even private we don't even get those provided for our money you would open up the school to all parents the choice is ours open up like every other northern colorado

045district my son would have be more likely to be get into school identifying as a cat or a giraffe or any four of my kids rather than coming to school without a mass the first day so i would like you to allow my son identifying himself as a human to show up to your first day of school without the mask so we don't have to move to weld county like the people i just saw at what dc oaks did um one other thing c.s lewis said this he said um they may break our bodies a microbe can do that covid can break your body but they need not dominate our minds eight hours in a mask dominates your minds mask up you johnny mascot it's not about education it's about how high the mascot so

046please listen to every other district open pruder school to remain the most trusted school district there is [Applause] okay thank you and next number 15 is ryan fitzpatrick welcome you um my name is ryan fitzpatrick i have children enrolled in psd and i appreciate the opportunity to speak here um to avoid redundancy a lot of the other statistics that i plan to cite have already been cited so far this evening and so i wanted to kind of pivot and thank mr kingsley for the for the discussion about literacy and how literacy rates are falling and how important it is between birth and third grade to be able to promote literacy and during that time how important it is to be able to see the mouth and the tongue and learn how to read and how

047that helps promote literacy and improve literacy rates i'm sure you know a lot about that and i think that that should really be considered because we're taking that away by having children wear masks and i think that you know this is this is honestly a dereliction of duty this isn't just a mask to these children you're hindering education and disallowing kids to form connections during a mental health crisis you're hoping that kids are resilient that the kids are going to be okay thank goodness we don't have to hope that the kids are okay because covet isn't actually a risk to children and so with we're talking about protecting adults or the community at large every adult has an opportunity to get vaccinated many adults in this room are i'm vaccinated many adults in the community

048are vaccinated we're adults and we can make that decision kids aren't at risk from this and so you know for those afraid that the vaccine doesn't protect you you can have that opinion all that you want i don't think the science actually says that but you're requiring our children to sacrifice for neurotic tendencies of people that don't think that vaccine works and and i think that that's a terrible society that we're living in where adults are projecting their fears on children and requiring children to suffer for neurotic fears thank you thank you [Applause] okay number 16 is ella mccarthy is she here tonight okay number 17 is miss nikki galbraith all right welcome first of all i want to say i know it's been kind of hard but i i'm trying to teach my kids

049how to be in this world and i'm going to take off my mask because i'm afraid you may not well then you're going to have to kick me out uh we will be i want to know have you accepted any of the americans ma'am you are trespassing if you don't put your mask on you're going to okay arrest me for sure unfortunately we're going to require you to put your mask on okay i'm considering you in trespass unfortunately [Applause] all i'm i'm really sorry to do that so next up will be mr arthur strong that's number 18. welcome like many before me i've come here tonight to express my disdain for the children for the decision to force children masks onto our children this is allegedly about their safety but in reality this is about

050control this is about teaching our youth to just comply with authority so let's talk numbers the number of covet deaths for children ages 5 to 14 in this country according to the cdc in 2020 is 67 67. 67 children dying is tragic don't get me wrong but here's the data for the 2017-2018 flu season for the from the cdc's website for children ages 5 to 14 why were we not wearing masks in the 2017-2018 flu season when 188 children died from the flu because it didn't fit the narrative that's why what about motor vehicle deaths according to the cdc in 2018 636 children 12 years old and younger died in motor vehicle crashes maybe what we need to do is mandate that parents walk their children to school it seems as though that would reduce

051the risk of dying in a car wreck which based on my previously quoted data from the cdc a car is approximately 10 times more likely to kill our children than this virus but life is about choices and decisions and taking calculated risk if you want your child to wear a mask by all means let your child wear a mask but your fear of a virus so deadly that advertising campaigns need to tell you it actually exists does not trump the freedom my child deserves finally i would like to remind you all that you are all elected officials and you are supposed to represent we the people we the people can decide that you are insufficient at doing your job and replace you in the next election so if you value your position then tread lightly

052and listen to we the people don't forget who you work for thank you for your time thank you mr strong number 19 is duke berry welcome we've been told that this mask mandate is necessary to protect our children that health decisions are no longer the role of the parent but of the role of the school board but our children don't need to be protected from this virus and they don't need to be protected by you the virus poses virtually no threat to those under 18. the data cannot be any clear on that issue out of let's see during this entire pandemic there have been zero total deaths in larimer county under the age of 18. out of 75 million u.s citizens under 18 there have been only 349 deaths england recently concluded a study that

053showed out of its 12 million citizens under 18 there were six recorded deaths with those with no previously diagnosed conditions putting the chances of a healthy child dying from covid at one in two million to put that into perspective our children are four times more likely to be struck by lightning in a single year during a much shorter 2018-2019 influenza season there were 477 deaths under the age of 18 in the u.s making influenza nearly twice as deadly for school-aged children lastly the swine flu h1n1 resulted in over one thousand deaths under 18. nearly three times that of covid did you all require masks for these viruses you are terrifying our children your abuse of power and selfish use of fear is nothing more than a mechanism to control our children it is child abuse

054and it needs to end now [Applause] all right thank you uh mr berry and number 20 is jessica o'brien welcome hi i'm here to voice my opposition to mandatory mass for children of any age and psd per the superintendent delta is the reason for mandate in the mass because it is more contagious and that masking is necessary in order to keep everyone in person for school he says when masks are worn appropriately they're extremely effective at protecting both you and me since when does a kindergartner really wear a mask correctly he cited an article from the cdc that was published on may 7 2021 and in its conclusion reported that data supported masking to reduce spread but that further research is needed to expand the evidence base for the protective effect of cloth mask this

055doesn't sound extremely effective to me the current vaccines available are effective at reducing illness for the cdc even delta and furthermore any adult or student of age has had the liberty to get it at this point if kids are sick they should stay home it doesn't stop the spread last year kids still had to quarantine how can you say that we avoid further quarantines with mask what is the end goal here the cdc acknowledges that children have lower incidents and fewer severe covet outcomes the superintendent informed us that mask that this mass mandate is dependent on all of us to do better to improve community health conditions shame on you since when was covid our fault my point is that nobody has the right answer for everyone currently the cdc recommends wearing masks not mandate

056mask this is why parents should decide for their kids how are other districts in northern colorado able to allow this choice to their students but peter school district cannot thank you thank you miss o'brien and number 21 is uh carrie park okay are we gonna hear her tessa okay give me a thumbs up tessa how about we come back to her okay so i'm going to leave her on the list oh here we go excellent welcome we can hear you can you hear me i hope you can indeed go right away before you as a leopard placed in solitary confinement by psd because i take an exemption psd is discriminating against me a healthy vibrant person treating me as a vector of disease and i guarantee this is what they will do to our children

057where is the science supporting this discrimination does psd have any plans for serial koga testing of students this year is cdphe organizing and paying for this testing program who are the testing vendors how will the vendors prove test accuracy if cdphg is funding testing to what is a 15.5 million dollars of arp going is psd engaging in any testing pilot or reward programs to encourage testing students will unvaccinated students be singled out for testing where is the equity in singling out these children true equity is all or no students get tested will testing be offered to unvaccinated students under the guise of an option so they can avoid solitary confinement how will psd educate students who refuse testing will they be forced to use remote learning as a punishment how will psd protect a student's

058medical privacy who does not opt for an experimental medical procedure remember flu is more deadly for children than coving your choices for psd students during the pandemic harmed them far more than kobud ever could do not damage our children any further and do not hold our children hostage over federal dollars i want you all to know that pfd could not even get me on camera today they had days to set up my remote testimony and they couldn't even get me on camera thank you thank you [Applause] okay and number 22 we have uh miss heather laden pera hopefully i think very good welcome great thanks my name is heather laden pera i'm the mother of an honor student and athlete at psd the disrespect that you have shown the psd parent community by limiting our

059testimony to 90 seconds and closing testimony to prevent countless others from voicing their concerns to you our elected officials is well noted you have made it very clear that you don't care about our children but that you know please wear your mask thank you that you do care about the profits that psd and psd partners will be making off of our children implementing the mask mandate days five days before this meeting when you knew parents were gathering in opposition was a dubious move based on the cd-phe guidance rubric my prediction is that we will be receiving another communication from kingsley to tell us you heard us and you have a solution the solution will be a choice of a weekly serial testing program or a mask do not make parents make a choice between two

060evils parents should be allowed to make these and all their medical decisions for their child without repercussions these mandates are not specific to each child and you are not medical professionals medical intervention should always be personalized and legally require informed consent it is a parent that knows their child best and should be trusted to make the right decisions for their children brian kingsley stated in his july 27 email about this topic that everyone feels differently about what's best for them and that's okay so let parents do what is best for their children you've sold our children once for the american rescue plan dollars do not sell our children again to testing companies serial testing will only ensure that this coveted narrative never ends and the profits off of our children continue ad infinitum thank you

061[Applause] [Music] thank you for joining us and number 23 is miss bree mccormick welcome tasks for all students does not align with best educational practices as a psd teacher i can tell you firsthand that the masking of students has led to disengaged terrified anonymous kids whose learning has become secondary to solving the pandemic when masked my students are not present in their learning a mask takes away your sense of self impacts creativity and social connection and puts kids in a state of fight or flight we are being kept in a perpetual lockdown drill where instead of fostering positive social interaction we are demanding social distancing instead of encouraging students to think critically we are advocating for policies which ignore data and defy common sense and instead of encouraging independent creative thinkers we are demanding compliance

062without room for questioning the mission statement of educate every child every day is a powerful statement the one we have not been living up to instead our primary goal has shifted to keep every child overly protected no matter the cost as a result we are making decisions that are exacerbating a mental health crisis i've had dozens of students contract covid but the only students i know who've been hospitalized this past year were students who are considering committing suicide the greatest damage done to students hasn't been the virus it has been the overprotective measures we have been so fearful of the infantinely small chance of them dying from covid that we have deprived them of nearly two full years of their adolescence when public schools insultingly and arrogantly assume they know and care more about the

063health of students than their own parents we deservedly lose the trust we have earned from our community to take care of the children let us recommit to the mission statement of psd and let the decision to mask lie with the parents [Applause] thank you for your comments and number 24 is arlene samuelson i am concerned and alleged that your decisions made in creating policies surrounding coping 19 and variance thereof are discriminatory and thus harmful to students two questions which school board policy supports administrative action against staff and students engaged in discriminatory acts based on medical status number two will the 2122 school year board policies include protocols that require masking or testing based on medical vaccination steps ccrd.colorado.gov states it would be a discriminatory action for a place of public accommodation which includes educational institutions

064directly or indirectly to refuse withhold from or deny to an individual or group the full and equal enjoyment of the good services facilities privileges advantages of the public accommodation based on that person's protected class the very first protected class in ccrb's listing is disability when your policy mandate requires a student to wear a mask and they cannot you have created a disability for that student which is described as a mental or physical impairment which substantially limits a major life activity and i would describe attending school and related activities a major life activity for students it is a parental prerogative to assess the risk and have the choice to mask not mass vaccinate or not vaccinate from coba 19 or any other disease or even get tested for coca or any other disease again i reiterate

065the decisions you have made last year and this year harmed and will harm the health of children educationally socially mentally physically thank you miss samuel we appreciate [Music] you're welcome okay um number 25 is diana majors welcome my name is dianna majors and i'm the parent of a middle school student who is formerly in the psd for the 2021 school year i chose to homeschool my child due to the overreaching unscientific and harmful coded policies of the psd for the 21 22 school year i've chosen to enroll my child on a charter school due to your decision to continue harmful coveted policies i would place my child back in psd if you would reject federal funding to continue your overreaching code policies and if you would not require any masking tracing tracking social distancing cova

066testing and any requirements of or pressures for your staff teachers and students to receive any covered vaccines i have the following questions for you i will email these to you as well after this meeting and will expect a timely response many other parents also require answers to these questions does psd plan on vaccine cleanses schools during school hours if so how will parents be notified and how far in advance what protocols are in place for tracking and reporting adverse reactions to a vaccine does psd support vaccinating students without parental consent what is the official statement or policy of pst on this issue are there any plans or efforts underway to circumvent parental consent for medical decisions please make better decisions for our children's well-being and leave our children's medical decisions to us the parents thank

067you for joining us and number 26 is miss caitlyn austin welcome board members i come to you today as a psd parent and teacher i am proud to say that i teach four and my children attend in the best school district in the state psd is always striving to do better and be the best however the decision to mandate best is not better it's not best we are not able to educate every child every day when we mandate master everyone when we remove the choice of math squaring for all families and staff you are detracting the trust and faith you have in families and employees of your district to act responsively you are also making general assumptions about all students health and staff's health rather than specifically addressing the needs of individuals master of personal

068health choice my body my choice master detrimental to students academic growth and literacy and speech math squaring limits lit movement necessary for correcting forming certain consonant and vowel speech sounds the negative long-term impacts this has on students establishing profession speech development especially younger students with those social needs in ieps are not being prioritized mass inhibit teachers for being able to instruct and model the correct placements of lips and tongue while articulating sounds of letters to developing readers the mental health is negatively impacted when the maths are not a choice no more than ever schools now need to become a conductor for forming connections with our students our families and each other mass interfere with a person's ability to connect emotionally and socially as there is little to be expressed through eyes and forehead alone for

069the third year in a row mentally thank you for joining us miss austin much appreciated number 27 is miss michelle yarbery multitude of licensed medical experts excuse me welcome to the boardroom thank you a multitude of licensed medical experts have confirmed that there has been no medical evidence of an isolated coca-19 virus that has been harvested from any person and shown to infect another person causing them to become ill and it's july 21 2021 in in vitro diagnostics report regarding the real-time pcr diagnostic panel for profit 19 on page 40 in confirming the limitations of testing methods the cdc stated that no quantified isolates of the cova-19 virus were available for cdc use at the time of the test was developed and the study was conducted the continuation of these coca-19 or variant related activities

070such as lockdowns masking social distancing vaccinations and or testing more children is contrary federal law is 45 cfr part 46 at all and includes but is not limited to ethical oversight by the u.s office of research protections of activities conducted by u.s department of health and human services which also includes the cdc and nih as a licensed professional mental health person here treating children in larimer county it is alarming that day by day children are developing anxiety over returning to school sleeplessness depression suicide rate has skyrocketed the children's health children's hospital in denver is seeing more emergencies for suicide ideation suicide attempts than they are physical injuries thank you for joining us okay and unfortunately we had mr smith heister twice so i'll go to number 29 mr eric day welcome so i have a

071few questions i'll follow up via email for your answers board thank you for having us on what date did psd come into the knowledge that the american rescue plan dollars would require the district to develop the funding plan is the receipt of the american rescue plan money to psd in any way tied to the percentage of vaccinated students staff or teachers against covet 19 at psd schools the website states that input from the survey given to parents about the usage of the american rescue plan money will be used to develop a funding plan that psd will submit for review in august if the plan is approved psd will receive the funding who exactly will approve or deny the plan at the local and federal level has the plan already been approved when was it approved

072and do you have the money now where is the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund plan posted on the psd website that's a requirement if you look at the rules does anyone at the larimer county department of public health and environment have involvement in the planned development or is it just you and the psd board here why are you choosing 15.5 million dollars over the health of our children face masks do not prevent infection or transmission it says this on the side of the box face mask on children cause headaches dizziness and hypoxia that's the short list face masks make teaching children more difficult and cause more harm than covet 19 ask teachers ask kids i implore you on the board to be brave to dig deep take a stand and say no and

073do what you know is best reject the money think about this you comply because you want it to end but it's because of your compliance that it will never end [Applause] thank you mr day number 30 is miss lisa mclean welcome hello my name is lisa mclean i'm a fort collin residence and my daughter is a senior this year and she has asthma understandably her greatest fear is of suffocation mask mandates means she would have to battle anxiety during the school day when instead she should be focusing on her classes whether it's anxiety and asthma health issues mental health issues equity or something else your decision to acquire masks harm our kids some parents will want their kids to wear a mask and that's the whole point our children our choice thank you thank you

074for your comments and number 31 is jennifer miller welcome thank you for taking the time to listen to our concerns i have two students in psd the first school board meeting i attended was in the fall of 2020 when the board discussed enrollment numbers at that time approximately 800 more students had left psd than in the previous year that represents a 54 increase in students leaving the district the board acknowledged that that was a significant increase yet no one ever acknowledged that the reason parents were taking their kids out of psd might have been a result of the decisions the school board was making and here we are again i'm sure you know that many parents are currently scrambling to get their kids into other schools because of the decision psd has made to mandate

075masks in school parents have are and will continue to pull their kids from psd because of the decisions this school board is making we are losing great students and families because parents do not believe that psd is looking out for the best interests of their children almost all the schools surrounding psd are making masks optional thompson res liberty ridgeview ascent these schools are in larimer county so they have the same community concerns and risk that psd has yet they have chosen to trust parents to make the right decision for their children why can't psd do the same i respect and support every parent who wants their children to wear a mask to school and i would advocate for them to have the right to do so i just ask that we who believe mass are

076no longer necessary and are actually doing more harm than good also be given that choice our request is for psd to go back to their original plan to make masks optional trust parents to make the right decisions for their children thank you thank you miss miller number 32 is miss kelly fuchs welcome thank you for allowing me to speak this evening on behalf of my children when i had my children i was given the authority to make the best choices for them but by forcing my children to wear masks you have taken that authority away from me you think you have chosen what's best for my children and you don't even know them my son who is autistic already struggles with social interaction and cues when masking him up he's unable to have any kind

077of healthy interactions with others because he's unable to recognize simple things like the tone of voice and eye contact my middle daughter already suffers from severe anxiety and getting her to attend school day is a daily struggle and now that she can't see the smiles of others she cannot see the welcoming glances because of mass covering faces which in turn adds stress to an already stressful situation and on top of that she's a 13 year old going through puberty wearing a mask causes extreme acne and adds further stress to her already struggling opinion of herself my youngest daughter who is already shy and quiet sits off to the side and doesn't say a peep because she feels like she has to yell just to have someone to talk to she doesn't ask questions and struggles

078with understanding her assignments because she doesn't want to draw attention to herself these are some of the reasons that we as a family film masks are unnecessary for our kiddos your reasons to require a thin piece of material that wouldn't stop a fly from kissing you is protecting them from a virus that is no deadlier than the flu you talk about protecting them from being quarantined and having the possibility of disruption which was proven last year that will still happen but you never talk about the detrimental psychological damage it's causing the death rates among our children due to suicide far away the deaths among our children due to coven thank you miss fryer thank you very much [Applause] number oh i'm sorry miss fuchs and number 33 is uh miss brittany fryer i apologize welcome

079um i just want to say um susan gutowski our city counselor is here and she's probably not going to like what i'm going to say but i am tired of our school board of education being a stepping stone for another body of office we have multiple candidates coming coming up through the system u.s house representative kathy kipp she was also on the school board of education i want a moderate board who's here for our education not as a resume builder i also have another theory of what's going on and i believe that your end goal is not masks i believe that your goal is testing and you have created a space by drawing parents in for a citizen engagement um i think that they're here to voice their opinions and in the end that you'll

080tell us that our voices have been heard resulting in a testing compromise and no masks you're going to make us think that we have won through compromise if you test the kids in school you'll get your asymptomatic test results you'll get positive cases and enough to force lockdowns again i believe that our elected officials can only continue this fear-based narrative of control if they get the positive results that they are combing for you're using our children and i'm here to tell you that we're not for force masking and we will be right back here because we are not for force testing thank you mrs miss fryer we won't compromise anymore uh all right and number 34 is miss angela segren welcome you're all familiar with national public radio they have a report which states covet

081is no more dangerous to children than influenza don't allow the government to frighten you into believing otherwise let's go to your february 10th equity update our vision is to build dignifying and affirming environments how can you say that masked mandates and forced cova testing is dignifying and affirming your equity update also says hate and intolerance are not acceptable in psd unvaccinated students students are already being bullied in their neighborhoods if you single them out for kova testing they will be bullied even more intensely the equity update also says we will only succeed with your perspectives and input if you're truly sincere about what you've said in the equity update let's see the action behind your words your current decisions are causing great emotional and physical harm to our children i hope and pray that your

082heart is open to what your policies are really doing to the children and that you begin making decisions that are best for the children instead of decisions that further your political career [Applause] thank you very much for your comments number 35 is tommy thompson welcome i love my daughter these parents love their kids i think psd school district the board needs to start respecting that a lot more than you obviously do we're here voicing our concerns and they're legit if this were flipped around and i were in charge of making this decision and i banned masks and i said masks weren't allowed how unreasonable would that be i wouldn't want to take the ability for parents to make that decision away from them and it's wrong when you do it the other way around as

083well so let's look at the risk versus the reward for what you're doing the reward as you perceive it is that you're going to reduce coveted transmissions and that's only if masks only work the way that you believe they do and not the way that the rest of us believe that they do that's open for interpretation but all of us are going to leave school grounds we're going to go to fossil creek park to in silo park when you go to each other's birthdays we're going to go everywhere and live fearlessly as a community your role in reducing coveted transmissions is going to be insignificant so let's look at the cost that you're paying to get that reward you're alienating all of us parents you are making it so that the parents that donate to

084the fundraisers the parents that volunteer that create great relationships with the teachers and principals are in conflict with you and the kids have a chance to come back to an exciting school year after having the worst school year of any of our lives and you're injecting controversy and conflict into them coming back into school they have a chance to come back and be engaged and willing and and loving and excited to learn thank you mr thompson all right that's not enough time thank you very much all right number 36 is mr robert roberson mr robert robertson roberson okay all right number 37 is miss gina fulcado welcome thank you um i have a few questions just three of them and i will follow up with an email but as i was coming in i'm sitting

085here thinking when i was a high school teacher years ago foreign language i think i would have just canceled all my classes and said this is joke there is no way for any teacher that is teaching a language to be able to show how you form language how you form the letters and the pronunciation of everything so i think last year and if this continues foreign language teachers in general should just say class dismissed because it's pointless it's a waste of a year that being said i've got three questions number one what is the strategy for psd to ensure this year does not become an environment of medical coercion and discrimination i'd like to see what you have in place for that number two what is your strategy to protect the anonymity of medical choices

086among students doctors give it how are you going to protect our children and their anonymity and the next one is how will medical records be handled and protected from unauthorized access does it matter with masks and with testing teachers should not be given medical information unless given by the parent other people at the schools that's none of their business unless parental consent has been given so i want to know what you are planning to do to protect the anonymity and the medical records and discrimination and coercion and i will follow up with an email thank you for your comments okay and next up number 38 is mr willie grover welcome there's nothing new under the sun only what's been forgotten let's talk about what's been forgotten we had back in 1932 the tuskegee syphilis experiment

087that lasted four decades under the exact entity that has been spoken of a few times here the cdc which is a branch of the oligarch that went on for 40 years testing or people believing that they were getting treated but they were just being experimented on to see how they react to the disease let's fast forward to 19 1954 to 61 with the polio vaccine and how sd-40 which is a monkey virus was injected and was put in there to hundreds of millions of americans and even more people worldwide and even two years after the fact that they were caught doing that they continue uh mk or project mk ultra mk ultra looking at lsd being given to our people our citizens worldwide and just many other sensory laws deprivation isolation all of these tactics

088could be employed today now this is my question is it possible that this is another experiment psychological experiment or physical experiment from that oligarchy entity is it possible thank you amen [Applause] thank you mr grover number 39 is miss aaron lee welcome hello firstly i support all these brave parents here to speak for the parents right to choose what's best for their child parental rights matter especially a parent's right to know when their child what their children are being exposed to i spoke in may about how my vulnerable young daughter was traumatized when a stranger came into her classroom and discussed her sexuality and gender identity with her without any communication to parents because i'm now painfully aware of how parents are being left in the dark i want everyone to know the organization that

089got to my daughter is called splash the director who spoke to my child is not a licensed health professional or teacher she focuses on kids as young as 5 and believes that 50 percent of children in larimer county are lgbtq yes half i've not been reassured that she won't be allowed in psd schools in the future so though she isn't yet approved curriculum she will still be operating under the radar as a substitute teacher and by psd staff invite into classrooms and clubs i still don't understand how this woman was allowed to come into my child's school steal her innocence and all of it be intentionally kept a secret from us the parents i'm here asking you all at the very least to ensure parents have the right to receive a heads up that their

090children are being exposed to splash and its director or any programs like it ideally sensitive social sexual issues should be handled by parents or at least internally at schools fully involving counselors and parents without assistance from unvetted programs like splash children as young as five shouldn't have a stranger discussing their sexuality in their public school without their parents knowing they deserve better and parents deserve better too we deserve transparency please ensure this woman won't sneak back into our classrooms and please please stop leaving parents in the dark about what our kids are being exposed to we have every right to know everything that's happening in our children's classrooms thank you mr lee okay number 40 is miss casey lindsey welcome good evening board and thank you for allowing us to speak with you this evening

091the last 18 months have been a roller coaster for everyone and the hope at this junction at the start of yet another school year is to do what is best for our children education is not a one-size-fits-all solution which is why we have a varied approach to each individual student's needs the same is true with health care a blanket approach will not be successful because there is such a variety of needs which accounts for the varied physical and mental health crises experienced over the last year most notably the five-fold increase in child suicide rates due to masking and isolation my son struggled immensely with depression anxiety and hopelessness bursting into tears uncontrollably physically manifesting his anxiety by chewing through his mask every day having a consistent cough and regular headaches i feared for his life

092and then we were blessed to find a charter school dedicated to in-person mask-less learning and he was able to overcome all of those challenges in a very short period of time by being allowed to be a child in a pre-pandemic setting where only two cases two were experienced all year i was and i'm beyond thankful for his rebound and the school's dedication to students their learning and safety with parental choice at the forefront i understand for some the mass offer great a greater sense of security and if that is the case that should also be a parental decision that said this is not a one-size-fits-all approach thanks for your time in front of the board [Applause] number 41 will be miss scarlett colino please miss scarlett colina welcome these years in school are critical and

093only the beginning to the path of the rest of each of our lives the education we receive it sets our skills our passions and should be the most preparational period but when my 11 year old brother dimitri thought that maine was a separate country apparently there's no time to learn about the country that we all here live in and my eldest brother had such a horrendous senior year and no support from the school to get through it i began and still continue to worry a lot i left the porter school district in the winter of this year and have found myself flourishing in ways that i have that i could never have dreamed of trapped within the walls of fossil and my house i would have loved to stay with my friends and all the

094people i grew up with but i was done existing in a place that had no interest in helping me my parents have tried advocating for my brothers and i non-stop but nothing changes in fact some of you probably know my father thomas colino who left the district advisory board after 10 years of service because edging educating the kids was not close enough to the top priority of this after the spring shutdown maybe if things did change and improve i would be content where i was but an environment that hurts us is not one that can we can heal in especially unchanged my name is scarlett colino and i am a junior at resurrection christian school and i'm here today to ask the board members to change their mindset and put the kids first for once

095thank you [Applause] you for your comments miss palino and number 42 is miss mallory model mug thank you for joining us thank you good evening thanks for having me my name is mallory modelmog and i am a parent of a junior at fossil ridge high school and i'm here tonight to advocate for our student athletes right now at this very moment my child is in a hot unair conditioned gym at fossil ridge high school trying out for volleyball sweating disgusting masks stuck to her face can't breathe jumping running trying to hit a ball trying to make a team for the sake of complying to your rules she got vaccinated why so she wouldn't have to wear this her second shot is due on thursday do i take her to get it done what's the point

096i had her vaccinated so she would not have to do this play another season of volleyball in a mask we can't sit out a year and go to windsor and follow the chasser rules and sit out go to loveland where those kids have the opportunity to play without a mask csu right now you could walk into their practice at moby arena no mask no mask why are our kids here having to suffer and windsor loveland csu they don't have to deal with it thank you miss muttelmug and really thank you to everybody who showed up this evening to speak it is appreciated um well done so how's everybody feeling on the board we still good moving forward okay number six on the agenda are board committee reports uh board members as you know this is

097an opportunity to report on any of the activities you've been doing or bring up any items are there any this evening that board members would like to report on dj yeah i'll just let you know and actually why don't we why don't we wait just two minutes and let the room clear all right dj sorry about that i think that's good yep let's go um had our meeting foundation meeting uh today and we are moving forward and trying to hopefully have an event in september to kind of re-introduce ourselves a little bit and the foundation and then also include brian in that and hopefully be able to get out into the community a little bit more the delta variant has of course put a little bit of trying to figure out exactly how we're doing

098this a little bit but uh we are still looking forward to moving forward on that which is great and then we've had some uh conversations with some pilot schools about how we can help give them tools to be able to help fundraise on different events or stuff that they need so to be kind of a tool box to help other schools out there and then also have what we're raising funds for on a district-wide basis uh that we still want to do so we're hoping to get that to come together and be able to present very well here in september uh we're looking at the end of september right now but uh that's kind of the goal and we'll hopefully know more here soon thank you so tell me a little bit more about the

099pilot schools i didn't quite catch that so uh we're working with a elementary middle school and a high school to try to figure out what kind of tools that they would need what kind of support that they might need to be able to help raise funds one of the schools we talked to they have a great grant writer but not necessarily every school has that opportunity to have a grant writer there in the building to help them and how can we coordinate that with the district or the foundation to help or you know a website maybe be needed on that so that we can give an opportunity to these schools not have to all become 501 3cs and be able to raise money and be able to maybe be an umbrella and so we're working

100with those schools to try to get feedback right back and be able to bring something out larger next year understood thank you and i'm sorry i have one more question yep uh i think i probably asked the last time but how's it going getting the board pulled together the for the foundation uh it's it's good uh today was a little bit chaotic because uh communication about that we we actually went virtual again today and so uh at that time some people didn't realize that but overall we've we've had great turnout and uh enthusiasm and brian was able to come to our last month's meeting and pop in which was fantastic and uh introduce himself to them and be able to uh get get them pumped up a little bit and so it was fantastic excellent

101thanks for the report any other board member reports this evening rob yeah so i have two things i want to say well three things actually uh the first thing is that um i i want to acknowledge what we heard here tonight that there was uh overwhelming comments in the room uh in opposition to the mask mandate i disagreed with quite a lot of what was said in terms of interpretation of things but i respect the fact that folks came to give those opinions i do want to ensure that those watching understand that while we do not make decisions on the basis of the number of comments that we get either pro or ante any decision that there are substantial numbers of folks who have also sent us emails thanking us for making this decision so

102the only point of saying that is to say that it's that there are differing opinions among the parent population and among the staff population relative to this mass decision um i will leave it at that with respect to the mass comments i do want however to uh add my welcome to superintendent kingsley thank you very much for for joining us [Music] and i will say that i think you've shown terrific leadership and communication in a quite a challenging time we appreciate that you've reached out to many of the folks in the community and you're going to continue to do so and listen as you say with humility so i appreciate that very much and i definitely also appreciate your creativity in the service of teaching and learning uh the bus example is only one such

103example and i'm sure only one of many to come in the future and i i for one want to see as much as possible that we can focus our attention in the district uh in the schools and at the board room on teaching and learning for our schools going forward teaching living for our students going forward in classrooms and i'm going to be all in favor of trying to bias the agendas if you want to call it that in favor of that core mission that we have so thank you again for joining us yeah thanks and rob uh i think we made an interesting important point in indicating that the board is working behind the scenes in these decisions uh but as we watch you proceed with this you you have board support so it's

104important for the public to understand how this is working there has been a great deal of communication and thought and we really appreciate all of that and i appreciate rob that you you kind of tried to explain that there's no vo vote coming up this evening at this point so all right any other board reports this evening okay excellent uh moving right along that brings us to item 7.0 which is the consent agenda board members would anybody like to pull an item from consent okay seeing none i would take a motion for the consent agenda go right ahead nate yes i move that the board approve and adopt the recommended actions for the items on the consent agenda thank you and i have a second from kristin draper and with that joe i'd take a

105roll call vote please aye nate donovan aye kristen draper aye christophe aye rob pedersen aye carolyn reed aye motion passes 6-0 okay and i'm gonna ask one more time should we keep going right through the agenda here okay excellent that brings us to the informational items this evening 8.0 on the agenda and the first one is a report from the larimer county department of health and environmental environment and it's a covid19 update and i will turn that over to you brian thank you members of the board we are honored this evening to be joined by larimer county public health director tom gonzalez and dr jared olson who will provide an update on the covet 19 uh scenario in our community mr gonzalez and dr olson if you wouldn't mind please approach the podium and give

106your update we're really grateful that you're here thank you yeah welcome we appreciate you joining us all right good evening members of the board uh superintendent kingsley uh tom gonzalez public health director apologize for my height here i'm gonna have to bend over to get the sound to you uh yeah um i myself and then dr olson are wonderful pep population epidemiologist we'll give an update on the current trends and metrics we're seeing here uh in the state and larimer county when it comes to covet 19. let's talk about three key messages we have one unfortunately the delta variant has changed the situation in the us colorado larimer and the world back in may was a different situation the delta variant arrived we're going to talk a lot about that it is a disappointing issue

107and we're going to have to work together to beat this another wave again we do know that vaccines are highly effective and safe and the single most important step we can take to beat this pandemic is for those that are eligible to get vaccinated so that's something we'll be talking about we are concerned about the increasing case rate we'll talk a little bit more about that but the questions are around policies from the health department and right now we're looking at the metrics around hospitalizations and icu utilization versus those case rates to determine if we need to make policy recommendations i've said this before this is now a preventable disease with the vaccine we're in a different position than we were with the alpha and wild strands back in december so there is some difference

108even dealing with this delta variant so let's talk about our case our metrics the four that we look at uh often on our dashboard that's the seven day case rate per 100 000 the seven day test positivity percentage our hospitalizations these are the individuals being treated in our four primary hospitals here in larimer county now we do share a hospital system both uc health and banner health with weld county so we are meeting with our our two major hospital systems at least weekly sometimes twice a week and well county public health to make sure we're all on the same page and then our icu utilization first our seven day case rate is going up it's going up rather significant like we've seen with the other waves early late june early july we were down below

10930 for the case rate delta variant has arrived it is more contagious we are seeing more cases percent positivity has gone up significant since the june time frame where we were enjoying a case rate well below 2 today it's jumped up to nearly seven so that is concerning uh trend that we're seeing now hospitalizations always lag we've seen this throughout the pandemic but we've gone up quite significant with our hospitalizations from covet 19 since last wednesday where we're around 23 to 24. we're now 41 we were yesterday at 44 so we're seeing it hopefully a trend right there around that 40 percent now the icu utilization one thing i learned in the last 20 months that goes up and down it varies and when we're talking about icu utilization we're talking about any health situation

110that gets a person into the icu trauma respiratory from the smoke covid19 influenza you name it but we are seeing a big surge on our icu as a matter of fact i was on the phone with our hospital systems limited beds there this is not directly related to covet it's just what we're seeing in our community but it's tied if we see a surge in covet patients that are utilizing the icu so it is a metric that we certainly follow on our dashboard you all probably heard a couple weeks ago the centers for disease control put out their new risk level and that risk level recently we are considered high risk because we're over the 100 per 100 thousand so that changed things from the cdc's perspective with mask wearing as well due to the

111delta variant now this slide put together by office of communications really shows that we were balancing out our 50 percent fully vaccinated back in june we really had no social distancing very minimal little masking at the time we were enjoying our crowds and enjoying the festivals and so forth businesses with no limitations for the most part our long-term care facilities are still dealing with some of the challenges but what happened when delta arrived it literally tipped the scale and that is frustrating for everyone i cannot guarantee it's it is frustrating for us all so how do we tip the scale back we can't wear masks forever i'm with you i can't we can't vaccinations and natural immunity are two keys to get this scale back and dr olsen he's an expert on that he'll talk

112quite a bit about that but before we do that here's from the centers for disease control here's the difference between the delta strand and the wild or alpha strand it's your reproductive value has significantly gone up correct we're not right now seeing significant more symptoms from the virus but as you can see this is a much more contagious virus than what we were dealing with even two months ago i'll turn it over to dr olson thank you director gonzalez thank you board thank you superintendent kingsley as you can see here we have our counties in colorado that are over 300 000 people and a clear relationship between the level of full vaccination fully immunized individuals and the level of hospitalizations in there in their particular counties this is a trend we've seen really over the

113course of the pandemic as we've we've expanded vaccination okay so just to zoom out for a minute and give you a bit of a national picture here for our children 0 to 17 years nationally we're back at a rate of hospitalization in the united states that we last saw in our winter wave conditions here are somewhat different in the mountain west on our hhs region 8 and in colorado we have not returned to the same levels we saw at that time however what we are seeing is under locations and under-vaccinated populations particularly children obviously you know under-12 is not eligible for vaccination yet are particularly susceptible while severe cases hospitalizations and deaths among children are rare they do occur right and as they occur as we increase the number of transmissions or the number of

114cases among children they become more frequent even rare events okay so let's take a comparison between what we looked at last year as we entered into the end of the summer and the beginning of the school year and what we're looking at this year so the purple line and the blue line that are dashed are from our 2020 school year across the summer and then the solid lines are from this current 2021 year you can see among uh zero to ten and zero and eleven to seventeen we had some elevation in cage rates later in the summer late july post july fourth i'm heading into august and we're seeing a similar trend here except our base rate of where we were starting was much higher and we're seeing a faster acceleration kind of in line

115with what we would expect with delta especially among a less immunized population okay so um what what's happening since then um we're seeing an increase in vaccination so we've dropped to a low of 150 first doses right in the beginning of july and have since seen an uptick pushing towards 260. that's been a positive and a positive move as we're trying to vaccinate the community as director gonzalez mentioned we really are we we know that masking is a is a temporary solution and that we're ultimately looking towards vaccination as well as those who have immunity from prior infection to build that level of um immunity so that we have containment of the virus and can get back to many of the things we've been missing so one of the things we're doing here among many

116of the recent and upcoming clinics including the irish elementary school wellington middle school that was last week weber middle school in loveland next week and estes park at the end of the month trying to reach as many families as are interested in vaccination okay so while it's increasing locally we know that the goal posts have shifted on what we need to do because of the delta variant right we can no longer look towards those 70 or 80 percent population levels of immunity to reach the levels of containment that we were seeking so we're going to have to increase those doses so so far among our teens we're about 50 of the county overall the eligible group 12 to 17 years of age that have received at least one dose and are on the course towards

117full vaccination we're also looking that if we want to reach 70 or 80 percent of that particular population adding around 5000 doses or 7 500 doses to get to those levels and we can also improve our vaccination rates among adults right moving a couple 28 000 or 42 000 move to 80 or 85 percent in the county which would certainly go a long way for us we also know that while we look at the first doses to evaluate who's entering the immunization process or the vaccination process we're also seeking to have everybody complete the doses because we know that there's a significant drop off excuse me there's a significant drop-off for a single dose of an mrina vaccine compared to two full doses and full immunization for the level of protection that it provides okay

118so let's talk a little bit about vaccine effectiveness so what we've seen is some erosion in vaccine effectiveness at preventing specifically symptomatic infections we've seen maintenance of the vaccines and doing a very good job of preventing severe disease hospitalizations and deaths but we have seen some loss there we're also seeing as we increase the percentage of a population that's vaccinated we're now over 60 of the total population that is has at least one dose that we are increasing the number of uh breakthrough cases there's simply more folks who are vaccinated who are eligible or not eligible but who are possible or plausible breakthrough cases so we can see the blue column here from may to july increasing the number of fully vaccinated cases that we're testing at a time i should also point out that

119the vast majority of those cases are mild and have reduced severity compared to those unvaccinated cases okay so for our younger our younger groups for our kids obviously anyone under 12 has not yet been eligible for the vaccination but even among the vaccinated group of very young of older children we're seeing very few breakthrough cases it's a very small proportion obviously that has to do with the number of children who are vaccinated and how long they have been vaccinated that's a feature there but generally speaking we're not seeing anywhere near the number of breakthroughs or the percentage of breakthroughs among younger adults and children that we see among older adults which may be an effective either waiting immunity or less robust immune response initially from that particular vaccine and we're seeing internationally some consideration for

120booster doses for those who are particularly vulnerable immunocompromised and similarly okay i'll leave your sheets thank you dr olson i want to talk a couple categories of risk within schools um one is there is risk to children of severe cova now you heard from dr olsen it is a lot less compared to the older population but there is some for those auto immune compromised youth that uh we're going to talk about now when we're wearing masks in here mass i'm not protecting myself with this mask data shows from colorado state university and many others that are on cdc's website if i right now have the virus and am asymptomatic it helps stop the spread of the respiratory droplets out to someone else lessening the chances of me impacting those individuals you now we know that

121vaccinated people unfortunately now with the delta variant can be contagious before with alpha they did not believe a fully vaccinated person that was a breakthrough again it's rare could then be contagious there is that now possibility so what we're talking about here is that risks children it is small how though that can be there is the risk risk of long covet is one that we really need more information on but we're hearing information about neurological disease symptoms dizziness loss of sense the smell and taste even more fatigue brain fog five weeks after post covert so we need more information on that we need to know the long-term effects of this virus on all of our population and the key here is the risk to vulnerable family members in the households this virus has figured out

122a way to get about 40 of the asymptomatic or very low symptoms making them the spreaders we've talked about this before so it spreads it and then it impacts a group you know through three four days you might have long covid and then it hits another group which puts them in the hospital intubating icu so what the problem here is we have many people that don't even know they have the virus and that can be our children that are unvaccinated or a teacher that's a breakthrough and now we have the ability to spread the virus to others taking it home to maybe someone that's vulnerable maybe someone that can't get the vaccine because of their health status so there is that concern not as much on the children there still is a concern but this

123third bucket is the spread of the virus within our community and the more viral load we see in our community i.e december january the higher the cases the higher the hospitalizations i will tell you back when i visited the hospitals in december i saw hospitals stretched then people doubled up in rooms in the icu health care workers working tirelessly to save lives we don't want to get back to 122 people in our icus with coven 19 our hospitals aren't built for this so that's what we've got to do is keep our vaccination rate up use these preventive measures as jared said that are we know are short-term hopefully and prevent more hospitalizations and loss of life you've heard superintendent kingsley say it very well in person learning is our number one priority i'm the father

124of two that are in this school district they want to be in school they want to be meeting and mingling with their peers and their teachers and learning we know through the children's hospital information that social emotional mental health impacts linked to being out of school are real isolation we're trying to do everything from the state health departments operationalizing the cdc guidelines to keep kids in school that's the key here we need them in school and i hope soon that with this variant the delta variant goes down we can get natural immunity and vaccine and we can get rid of all this absolutely but if we don't have layered mitigation what i'm afraid of is we're going to have outbreaks in schools and by state statute local public health is mandated to intervene on outbreaks

125whether it's pertussis whether it's influenza cova 19 measles that's what i'm afraid of if we get to outbreak level situations then we have to deal with it and that disrupts our in-person learning that we don't want for our children and our educators we do expect cases in this during the school year but we want to keep them low and we want to keep it not in an outbreak status and we want to protect those most vulnerable we believe the more eligible people vaccinated the less disruption we'll see in school and activities we're hearing within the next couple months that are even our younger littles from 5 to 11 will become eligible hopefully for the vaccine so those that are wanting to get the vaccine can get that we are removing most quarantine to keep students

126in school we learned a lot last year quarantine's tough the loss of days in school it's hard on the teachers it's hard on the kids so we really want to minimize that quarantine and keep our kids in school with minimum disruption while we balance the safety of our of all of our people in our community so i think that's why we need some safety layers to keep our our kids in person and and colorado's guide gives ventilation hand washing testing masking other avenues for all of us to consider to keep our kids in in person in school lastly i i get it you want to know what's in the vaccine you want to understand what's there i've got a team of outreach specialists i have dr olson i have dr mayor medical director call us

127let's sit down and talk we want to have a conversation about what is an mrna vaccine vaccine or the johnson and johnson i get it you want i want to make sure i know what's going on in my body or my children's body let's have those conversations we want to have those conversations and we want you to be an informed person when you make that decision so here's our call text email and as dr olson said we're going to have vaccine clinics throughout the school district throughout the community for those that are eligible that they have access to the equitable capacity of the vaccine with that i'll take any questions thank you first for uh joining us i really appreciate the two of you taking the time to join us and for the time you

128spent with staff and some board members throughout these past months that's been hugely appreciated and helped all of us be informed and try to be communicative to the to the constituents so uh i do believe nate you had a first question yeah i'd like to echo those thanks as well i'd like to go back to the slide the delta variant 14 day case cases rates among children this one and yes i just wanted to clarify is that in larimer county yes so that's specific to our county so we look at our total population rate but we also monitor different subgroups especially children you know we've seen a decline especially with vaccination among our older adults we are now seeing an increasing uptick kind of in parallel with this our unvaccinated groups are some of the

129the fastest rising or the the fastest growing groups and it's kind of hard to read can you tell us what those approximate dates are when sure apologies for that my lines start to go this is this is june 1st okay here um with the 2020 increase is july 11th the graph ends on august 5th and uh this increase here is july 21st so the the bottom uh you know before the sustained increase for 11 17 11 to 17 year olds in 2021 is uh july 21st or 22nd okay thanks and i had a more general question with respect to the discipline of epidemiology we kind of hear that a lot but can you explain what an epidemiologist does and why it's important sure so so an epidemiologist is is really charged with surveilling the the

130prevalence and the burden of disease on a population and evaluating ways to address health and well-being by mitigating or reducing that burden of disease on a population okay thank you all right carolyn and so um so we can see here on the on the chart for 11 and 17 year olds the um the increase over the past two weeks so can you tell me um of the total population 11 to 17 year olds how many cases does that account for as a percentage of all cases um i don't i don't have that number on my hand i typically look at case rates per 100 000 because we can normalize it within the population so different size groups or age groups that we look at some of our older adult groups that we look at are

131a little bit smaller the 11 to 17 year olds are around 24 000 if my recollection serves okay so i guess what i'm trying to figure out is it's like so in the past two weeks do we almost see a doubling of cases is that right it's like is that yeah that's that's the case rate is is increasing at that pace yeah okay so if it keeps going like this in two weeks what will that look like so if if we continued at the current pace it would be over 300 cases per 100 000 in two weeks okay so i i will say we don't always see consistent case growth but we we often see kind of stop and start trends particularly right now because much of the pandemic is focused among unvaccinated groups we

132see big spikes if we see a large outbreak right so that kind of display of the the type of transmission that we're likely to see is that a single individual might infect 6 10 12 individuals or there might be a mass infection event or a serial a couple of days where we identify a large number of cases that's that's something we've seen internationally and nationally as well within schools or within camps or within other areas where we have predominantly unvaccinated individuals this particular strain this particular variant can can move very quickly rob yeah i want to thank the two of you for coming and giving a clear presentation of where we stand in the county and some of the reasoning around how decisions that we might make around masking and whatever and vaccination which is

133not our decision uh affect the situation that we're that we're working with i think i think your presentation has been clear it's been it's been it's been very helpful to me frankly so i i look forward to continuing to hear from you if not in the public board meetings in in other ways to help us inform our decisions about what we're going to do in the school district thank you thank you may i ask dr olson whether you're aware of any research around masking or types of masks that puts in doubt certain masks or anything like that is there that type of research that may have may have uh inconclusive data or data that would suggest certain masks aren't as good or not working sure there are certainly different types of masks right we see

134we see in healthcare settings we see n95 masks designed both to ensure that the individual who's wearing the mask does not produce aerosols that then are potentially carrying the virus and infect other individuals but then also to more securely protect that other individual from an infection right so protecting our healthcare workers who may be working with covert positive patients you may see surgical masks which are like a non-woven material same as 1995 which may stop more of the aerosols that come out of your mouth but because they do not form a tight seal they cannot keep everything from coming in right so this is why universal masking for surgical masks or double layer cloth masks makes a lot of sense because it's reducing the aerosolized particles from everybody who's speaking talking singing doing things that

135produce those aerosolized particles that may carry the virus in those circumstances we have seen effectiveness for face coverings in reducing spread policy level we have studies that look at schools and the effectiveness of mass mandates or excuse me universal masking in those schools versus schools that did not choose you to universally mask and those certainly some resources we can share with the board okay are there any simple uh quant facts quantifiable numbers you could uh i i don't have nothing okay i just i just wanted to know if there was anything you could share of that type okay but there is there are certainly a hierarchy of masks and their effectiveness at protecting individuals very good brian i i just want to say thank you to tom and to dr olson and the entire larimer

136county public health department educating our community on the ongoing effects of a global pandemic has real human impact and you're continuing to push forward knowing that there's a lot of complex scenarios they were having to navigate and staying true to the facts and the information that you're providing is really really important i just want to say i've only been here a short period of time but i just am really grateful for your partnership i can't thank you enough thank you and i appreciate the partnership with pooter's school district our other two school districts are private and charters these are very very difficult times and challenging times that we live in and i think we stay together we're compassionate we work together understand and try to do the best that's all we can do fantastic are

137there any final questions from the board nate and kristen i don't know if i can phrase this as a question but it was more of a comment allow it okay thanks um while the decisions that the superintendent makes and i support the superintendent's decision on this may or may not be popular i think it's part of our job to promote the public health of our students and staff while they're in our care and that has impacts on their families in the community as we've seen in this presentation and so it's hard to know what the right thing to do is but we try to make the best decisions we can and i support this decision on masking thank you nate kristen i just i also want to say thank you i know we've been in

138several meetings early in the morning and um it just your clear concise um way of showing us the data is is fabulous i really appreciate that i just want to re reiterate or make sure i'm understanding correctly what what you're very generally saying is the vaccine will protect you this protects other people it am i am i correct in that assessment i i i would argue that the vaccine helps protect other people as well and quite strongly so when we first saw vaccines we saw 95 efficacy as the first number to come through with the pfizer vaccine and 94 in clinical trials for the moderna vaccine and those are exceptional levels of efficacy in preventing symptomatic disease we have seen some erosion with that as the virus has changed so those numbers have dropped are

139they 85 percent they 75 are they as low as some of the estimates in israel that drop into the 60s and 50s for preventing symptomatic disease i don't think that's yet clear and it may change on context with that being said they still are effective at preventing asymptomatic and symptomatic disease in addition to the high level of efficacy they have for severe disease hospitalizations and deaths additionally even if an individual who is a breakthrough case who's been vaccinated may have a high viral load at one point in the breakthrough their decline is much steeper than an unvaccinated person meaning they are likely infectious for a much shorter period of time so combining the relatively unlikely scenario of a breakthrough case with the relatively unlikely scenario of further transmission from that breakthrough case means that vaccines

140are very protective at preventing transmission especially once we get to a high level of vaccination or immunity in our community in addition to the benefits of preventing hospitalizations and deaths but a a vaccine cannot keep a virus from entering your body right so all the vaccine can do is train your immune system to recognize it and to fight that virus off sometimes you can do it very efficiently and quickly before it becomes an infection or before you show symptoms of disease and sometimes it happens after you're symptomatic and after you have the disease thank you and just but just to reiterate with the mask though it it that's for the protection of of others i'm sorry i got very excited about vaccines that's quite all right um no yes the mask is particularly with masks

141that do not create a neat seal around your mouth and nose right so not covering your mucosal linings effectively that is mostly reducing the aerosolization of particles from you it does provide some level of protection it's unclear exactly what that level of personal protection is but really it's a it is it is a community benefit especially in indoor spaces where those aerosolized particles may persist over an extended time period thank you dj i just wanted to make sure that my understanding there we haven't seen enough data on the long-term effects of having the infection yet have we if we have especially in younger kids who might not get very sick but could they build something up or what's our thoughts on that you want to hit that i'll put them um we we have um

142good documented evidence of the existence of long covets so symptoms persisting more than five weeks in both adults and children i don't think it's at all clear how prevalent long covet is especially for children it does seem to occur in some groups and it does seem to diminish over time the the range of symptoms is is pretty extraordinary hitting other multiple organ systems right your cardiovascular system your pulmonary system your neurological system so that's uh i think an open question and for me a little bit concerning right i don't i have two children i would really prefer that they not be exposed to covid um just for for risk aversion and that particular purpose uh we also have seen even in in pregnant women right that that exposure to covid may have some effects even

143on the placenta so there there's a lot we don't know about this novel virus and i think it's just a note of caution as we continue to employ whatever strategies we can to reduce transmission at the population level thank you very much okay if i see no further questions um again we thank you both very much for joining us this evening and be willing to provide information to the public as always thank you all right okay and the second informational topic this evening is item 8.2 in the agenda and that's the psd covid response update and that i will turn over to you again brian thank you members of the board now that we've just listened to the larimer county department of health uh regarding the community and county context of covet 19 i think

144it's important for us to inform the public and our community around what are the specific protocols above and beyond masking that our students our families should anticipate as we begin to start the school year uh just next week here with us this evening are cory henry our pst covid coordinator and madeline noblet our executive director of communications cory madeline will provide the board with an update on psd's current covet 19 response and i'm grateful for both of you for being here this evening thank you perfect good evening board members superintendent kingsley members of cabinet and those from the community who are either here with us or watching as superintendent kingsley said corey and i will provide an update about covid19 here in the district looking specifically about where we have been in terms of our

145response during this pandemic some of the decisions that have been made around the protocols that will be in effect starting the first day of school and then looking ahead at some of the different strategies that we're looking to employ in the days and weeks ahead so we'll start by orienting ourselves around a few key terms and these are likely ones that you have heard day to day but just to make sure that we're all on the same page knowing we live in a world of acronyms so the first that you'll hear us talk through at one point are our department and school-based covid19 response teams so these are those groups of individual staff members who have been helping with the work of contact tracing through the past roughly year and a half we also have

146as as we heard earlier our distinguished partners from the department of county health and then we have our colorado department of public health and environment cdphe you'll hear referenced throughout as we have layered guidance that we follow return to learn are cdphe's guidelines for when both staff and students may return to work in school after experiencing symptoms and then cdc of course i think we're familiar centers for disease control and prevention so those will flow throughout our presentation so with that i'll go ahead and turn it over to corey for just some brief introductions and then we'll move through hi everyone thank you for having us here this evening i'm cory henry i've been a nurse at pnpsd for the last six years and and excited or happy to be serving as the covid coordinator

147this year um i think that we had a great introduction and fully covered the state of the county so i'm going to go ahead and move on past this slide one thing i do want to point out cdphe in their guidelines talk about talks about areas of lower risk versus higher risk when giving guidelines to schools we as you can see do fall in that higher risk area at this time with our vaccination rate and seven day case rate and when in that area then they're recommending that higher precautionary measures those layers that mr gonzalez was talking about are really important for mitigation all right so one of the things we wanted to do is talk about how it is that guidance comes to the district and then helps to inform the decisions that we

148make and that our community can see and reflect upon so what we have here is more of a linear map of what it looked like previously in terms of guidance so this is more of a generality there have been certain fluctuations over time but what typically occurred was that there would be guidance from cdc filter down cdphe then to larimer county department of health and environment to psd now we have more of a i would say mixed approach and so you see there in the funnel that there are guidelines coming out from different organizations and so what we are doing is we we're working as a district to go ahead and synthesize those and try to make the best decisions that we can based on guidance from our partners the recommendations that are coming forth

149from public health officials rooted in both local data that's specific here to psd as well as our county and our state and so we've seen a little bit of a shift so sometimes we have folks who say hey why aren't you following cdc specifically or how did this come about and so we want folks to understand that we are tracking day by day hour-by-hour guidelines and recommendations that are coming out from multiple entities and trying to make the best decisions for our kids and our staff that we can based on that information one of the things that we know is really important in our communications with you all with our families our staff our community members is how it is that we are making decisions right i think one of the things we heard loud

150and clear in the past school year was a frustration around not having very specific metrics at which things would change or decisions would be made that was a challenge that was a challenge for i think public health for school districts for states politicians no matter who you were it was difficult and it was challenging both to have to make those decisions and then respond as a human being as a parent and a person in the communities what i mean by that is everything changes all the time right we've we've heard that tonight the frustration over day-to-day changes that either append our lives or make us make difficult decisions for those around us and ourselves and so we wanted to make sure that we came into this year as a collective team being transparent in the

151drivers that are behind the decisions that we will make and those are really our values so as you've heard superintendent kingsley say tonight and in the messages that have gone out in the past couple of weeks really what is at the at the forefront of everything is the safety of our staff and students and keeping kids in school right we want to create a dynamic learning environment for kids where they are connected to people and to their passions so that they can have opportunities throughout their academic careers here in psd we want them to have that sense of belonging and acceleration as you heard in superintendent kingsley's report at the start of this meeting we want to limit quarantines we're going to talk about that a little bit more in depth as we get into

152what the definition of close contact is this year and how it's changed from the previous school year i think we heard in some of the public comment how can you tell us that we're going to have fewer quarantines wearing masks well the the short of it is that the state guidance around who is a close contact has changed and so we believe that we will see a fewer number of quarantines when both parties are massed in exposures we want to prioritize in-person learning as i think we've all heard us prioritize and talk about this evening we also want to be data responsive and so we just want to assure our community that we are continuing to look at multiple data sets and information that's coming out again we keep a data dashboard it existed throughout

153the entirety of last school year and showed folks where our cases were occurring how they broke down between students and staff where they were at schools and departments case rate relative to the county's case rate percent positivity relative to the county so that we can use that information coupled with county data state and national to be informing our decisions to ensure that they are timely and that we are considering information as it changes every single day and finally we want to make sure that our strategy is rooted in providing resources flowing those out to where we see the need and that means being able to support our schools first and foremost so that they can focus on instruction and that we can provide a responsive science-based response to this pandemic and make sure that we

154are keeping people as safe as possible so this isn't an is not an exhaustive list of all the protocols we'll have in place this year but just to give you an update of the protocols that we will just some highlighted protocols for starting this fall last year we were focused on six feet of distance this year we're able to do three feet of distance in classrooms and at lunch where possible for overnight dorm style trips we're not going to have any of those the first quarter like eco week trips have been postponed we did see a number of overnight camps recently that have had high cases back to school night we'll have some staggered times we will be having assemblies we're going to have masks seating charts three feet of distance for those assemblies visitors

155and volunteers will wear masks in psd buildings and we ask them not to enter if they're having symptoms with outbreaks if we see those we know that there will be some enhanced measures then we'll be working closely with the health department sometimes those enhanced measures might be cohorting or increased physical distance but that's where we would work work with the health department in an outbreak situation hand washing of course will continue to be a priority for all with multiple opportunities during the day we will continue with consistent cleaning and disinfecting of high touch areas and then lastly the return to learn illness guidelines that's what you know how we know when it's safer for students to come back to school that have had symptoms or been ill we're going to follow that closely madeline mentioned

156close contact and how that definition has changed last year a close contact was defined as someone who was six feet for 15 minutes or more in 24 hours the new guidelines from cdphe define a close contact as being within three feet for 15 minutes or more in a 24 hour period if you are a close contact to someone but you have the four following bullets you would not be required to quarantine and that is you're considered immune if you've been fully immunized if you've been positive for covid in the last 90 days if both parties are wearing a mask they would not be considered a close contact or if participating in a weekly testing all right so as we've heard tonight of course everyone here is focused upon the mass decision and as we said

157it's challenging we wanted to provide some of the rationale behind the mass decision and then talk about some of the other things we grappled with as we arrived here so as we know these are required for all people in psd buildings regardless of vaccination status our parents our visitors volunteers students staff we want to make sure that folks know that the masts are not required outdoors teachers and students will take breaks throughout mask breaks throughout the day similar to what they experienced last school year and so we'll have some some break time where that's not going to you know be occurring the decision is really rooted in our drivers again to keep staff and students safe and keep kids in school one of the pieces we want to emphasize is that because we are in

158that high the current high situation as larimer county because of our vaccination rate our transmission rate and case rates those additional layers of protection are recommended as corey and tom and dr olsen indicated i think the other important thing is as corey said and i said before whereas state guidance had not allowed for someone to be exempt from quarantine if they were only wearing a mask we now anticipate that we'll see fewer quarantines because everyone is masked with our students we know that we have students who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated and so it's a really difficult situation when you consider that we would maybe be able to offer exemption from quarantine due to older students being vaccinated but not have that same option to preserve in-person learning for our younger students who

159are not eligible and so we really saw this as an opportunity to be able to make sure that as many of our students as possible could stay in school as long as possible we do want to add the caveat though that there could be quarantines that would result as an exposure during lunch say because that's when we're taking off our masks we're eating we're drinking and so both parties would not be masked at that time but in general we hope to see the number of quarantines greatly reduced for staff and students throughout the school year due to this decision i think the other thing we want to make sure we add is that as we promised to our community in the recent updates we do plan to re-evaluate this decision right folks have asked us

160does this mean that we are wearing masks for the entire school year and the answer is we will reevaluate we have recommitted to that and we want to make sure that we're looking at things like our county's current vaccination rate and as dr olsen indicated we're seeing the the percent that we need to hit increase we're going to look at what hospitalizations in icu capacity and all of those different pieces look like coupled with our psd specific data so that we can see a holistic story and make the decision that's best for this system we also wanted to share what it was that we grappled with so one of the alternate options that our teams talked through was what some of the folks here tonight mentioned what some of our counterparts are doing up and

161down the front range where masks are required but strongly recommended for unvaccinate mass are not required excuse me but strongly recommended for unvaccinated people again we came back to that idea of we really want to maximize in-person learning for all students so that they can have those wonderful experiences that everyone alluded to today but if we are not all in masks that opportunity in our minds did not exist because the same [Music] opportunities aren't afforded through the state guidance and so by having everyone a mass we can keep people in school so that was when we talked through so contact tracing in psd currently and and how it how it went last year we had site-based coveted response teams that was typically principal nurse assistant principal front office staff who conducted the contact tracing from

162start to finish we'd communicate with families staff the health department we also in terms of the return to learn following up with students who had been ill to see when they would be able to come back to school and this really took a tremendous tremendous amount of time and energy and quite frankly it was time and energy away from school leaders and educators being able to focus on what we're all here for what we're looking at is building a district contact racing team that would support the school the schools and would be taking that job over getting seating charts getting information communicating with the health department staff feedback on this has been that it is a definite needed support and again just the excitement around getting back focusing on kids this will greatly reduce the

163workload for psd departments and so we are looking into getting that we've started uh hiring we've posted the job positions so hopefully we'll be on boarding people shortly covet testing and psd so we are committed to exploring weekly testing again adding that additional layer of protection when people are participating when we have students or staff participating in weekly testing they would be exempt from quarantine it allows us to monitor for asymptomatic spread and of asymptomatic people and help reduce spread one thing i want to clarify very clearly is that this is an opt-in process this is would not be a requirement or tied to anything it is something that we are offering our community um as a an additional support and it would be open to vaccinated or under unvaccinated staff or students ms henry

164would you mind if i add a few uh important pieces of context there so a couple things i just want to build off of some of the important questions that our community raised earlier today first and foremost we are an exploratory phase with the colorado health and public health department on what this might look like they are intending on releasing information to all public school districts in the state this week it gives us an opportunity to analyze that whether it is an appropriate fit as a mitigating factor to reduce spread and reduce outbreaks in the community but at this point in time we are still in an exploratory phase i wanted to name that number two just want to speak directly to the public in the event that we do bring testing into our schools

165and or our district it would be completely voluntary it would be completely voluntary and at parents discretion and whether their children opted into that or not we are exploring one exception to that which is our student athletes trying to figure out as we had opportunities to explore student athletes keeping them on the field on the court we had experienced spreading outbreaks in those particular instances over the last year so we are still having thoughtful conversation with no firm commitment but i just want to make sure that you're seeing the differentiating factor there but it is uh completely it would be completely voluntary for our students to opt in lastly what i would say is that this program in no way shape or form is tied directly to our federal stimulus dollars that our system already

166has in the event that we were to opt into participating in this program with the colorado public health department it would be paid for by them and so i just wanted to name that as well again there's going to need to be more specific information brought before this board and shared with our community but i wanted to just dispel any rumors around that particular topic because we do believe this is an important opportunity to mitigate spread but there's still a lot to be learned and understood before we say that we're moving forward thank you all right lastly we've believed from the beginning that we want to be transparent and provide timely information for our families this has been really hard information has changed minute by minute hour by hour day by day and it's hard

167to track we know that everyone has lots of questions and we want to try to do our best to make sure that you have the information to make decisions for your family and be aware of what's happening here in our school district we have kept a suite of covid19 related web pages um on our psd website um so i just wanted to show the imagery here up in the left hand corner there there is a yellow button that says covid and if you were to click on that it'll open up that suite of pages take you to those that show the data dashboards our health and safety page which has all of our current protocols that we're operating under mental health resources information about optional vaccine clinics that are being offered in our schools and

168additional information things like faqs from all of the great questions that we're hearing from our community we also are here and posting information in our newsletters across social across our different video platforms and are here to answer questions so please let us know if you either have clarifying questions or trying to find something we want to help you access the information because we know that's important and that's something that we've been committed to since the start so we just wanted to make sure that we have a reminder out there or bring this to the attention of folks who are new to our system so with that what questions do we have from our board members thank you very much and i'll start with rob and then dj so first of all i want to thank

169you very much both very much for for sharing a clear presentation of where we're at and what we're doing and why we're doing it so thank you um if you could go back to the slide on i think it was on close contacts the thing that had like the four things that yeah that one okay so the thing that says considered immune if there are four bullets under there uh is that an ore or an and it's an ore that's what i okay yeah all right all right so if both parties are wearing a mask we don't even need to ask anybody about their immunization status or anything they're already they're already considered not a close contact under these rules is that correct that's correct thank you very much dj uh again thank you for

170this i i did have a question uh and you brought it up a little bit about uh reevaluating this and um i think one of the things that has constantly frustrated uh the public and many people is not understanding uh someone in the emails used goal posts what we're aiming for a little bit and so if is there a scenario in you know four weeks after school starts what would it take for us to be able to back you know back off the mask is is there areas that we could aim for that we have understanding of and i caveat that with i understand that it's constantly changing uh our understanding of different things in there but as of right now do we have something that would say oh okay we feel comfortable taking that

171step back or not so i think um if i may one of the things i would share because we did talk about what we grappled with right and we talk about vaccination rates and the moving goal post as you alluded to and i think one of the things that's been a challenge of this pandemic is that the goal posts it's felt have moved but in many cases for legitimate reasons as the pandemic has shifted and so as dr olsen alluded to when we talk about that 75 percent or 80 percent rate that we now need to hit we used to think it was 70. but now it's 80 based on evidence and and things that we're seeing come out of countries where they you know we have seen an effect based on the vaccination rate

172and so i i say that not to i recognize that i'm not answering your question directly and giving you a number or a benchmark but trying to provide context for why that is such a challenge to tie these types of decisions to one or two particular numbers because they change so frequently but what we really want to pay attention to is that vaccination rate and getting it up higher than where we're at today and then being able to watch our transmission rate our case rate our hospitalization in icu as you've heard here tonight those are four big pieces that affect not just what happens here in psd but the greater community and i know that our community would crave when x happens why happens as a result i've wanted that through the pandemic as we've

173tried to make decisions and lead and do this day-to-day but it is so challenging and i recognize that it is for everyone that we serve and yet it is that difficult and so that's not a direct answer to your question but i hope that provides some context can i build off of that would it be okay i also think it's important as we break down vaccination rates across our county that it's also you know we have the ability of thinking about what that looks like by school right by feeder pattern and so we're curious about that you know we think about the majority if not all of our high school students are eligible to be vaccinated right so thinking about what that looks like and obviously we've taken the stance i've taken a stance around

174encouraging the vaccine but also respect the fact that that is a family decision and getting to do what's in the best interest of them but taking a look at that by school i think could be an interesting factor also continuing to take a look at you know right now we you know just in my five weeks here the the amount of spread has significantly amplified exponentially um and so where we were five weeks ago is not where we are today you know in the event that we were able to see regression in that space around community spread based upon and look at the vaccination rates i think those are options that we don't neces necessarily need to set a specific benchmark i mean i at a minimum believe that we owe it to our community

175to re-evaluate this quarterly if not sooner right depending upon the changing metrics knowing this is a dynamic uh scenario that we are in and we also think that you know in partnership with with tom and look in the local health department is that i think when the vaccine potentially becomes available for younger age children that's a game changer as well again you know we're going to need to understand that in approach that thoughtfully knowing many families have complex decisions to make in that space but we do believe that that will be a game changer that can change the dynamics of how we uh what we spoke about tonight and what we heard and what we're listening to i think we all share emotion uh but the common takeaway is that you know we're here to

176serve not some children but all children and this this virus is impacting certain people in different ways and we have to be mindful of that so those are some of the other things contextually that we're taking a look at so time is a factor but it's not the only factor in and we're looking at this day-to-day to be honest with you go ahead rob yeah and i think one thing that hasn't i mean obviously was mentioned when our health department folks were given their presentation but i think is also relevant to this question the things we'll be looking at is the case rate among the you know the the school-aged kids right that graph that shows the the growth in larimer county of cases for those kids is uh very concerning right and if that

177starts to go significantly the other way that'll be a factor in our considerations as well i would think okay okay thank you other comments questions go ahead christian just a quick thank you for you know getting all this information out there for corey for taking the job because that's a thankless task i'm sure so thank you so much we'll make sure that i don't have this job next year yeah no offense but that sounds great so we'll find something else um but no just thank you for all the hard work that has been done on this and i understand and i feel you know that when you are grappling with all of that information and all of those concerns and i i just applaud you for your ability to put that out there and um

178it's such a great way for people to understand so thank you as nate would say ditto so thank you very much for presenting in front of the board the information was very clear and brian thanks for jumping in with your additions i think that was really important so okay um that concludes the informational items for this evening and brings us to the long list of action items that we have this evening uh so that's item 9.0 9.1 is the internal monitoring and policy review it is el 2.5 the emergency emergency superintendent and executive session uh excuse me an executive succession plan um is there a board member who would like to make a motion for this one go ahead crystal i move that the board determined that the superintendent has reasonably interpreted board of education

179policy el 2.5 in his internal monitoring report dated august 10 2021 and that the evidence presented supports the superintendent's conclusion stated in the internal monitoring report thank you and i have a second from dj okay with that i'll open it up to questions or discussion go ahead and ate i noticed that it was intentionally vague on who the succession uh what the succession plan is other than the positions that need to be covered but i think it's sufficient so i'll vote in favor okay i think that's maybe uh for protection or some i don't know so okay any other questions or comments okay and i noticed that you uh changed what you're presenting uh which i thought was something maybe board members are happy to see um it opens the door to new ways of

180looking and thinking so for me personally i appreciate that you're welcome i just want to say i know that the policy calls for at least two i believe that we have an army of those people that are were building their capacity and their eagerness to to lead in this community in the system and i'm grateful to be working with our cabinet just wanted to make sure that i named that excellent any other comments okay seeing none i'll take a roll call vote please jill cj anderson aye nate donovan aye kristin draper aye christophe aye rob henderson aye carolyn reed aye motion passes 6-0 okay excellent that uh concludes the action items the long list and brings us to item 10.0 which is an executive session and i just want to be clear for the public

181that should we go into this executive session uh that will be the last uh adjourning the meeting will be the last thing we will do in public so after this we'll be behind closed doors so uh i'd take a motion for the executive session go ahead rob the move that the board of education enter executive session for the purposes of discussing specialized details of the district's cyber security arrangements as authorized by crs 24-6-402 individuals invited to join the board and superintendent in executive session our executive director dustin reinsma legal and policy counsel autumn aspen and board assistant secretary jill brunner thank you very much to have a second for that motion i have a second from dj anderson jill could you please do a roll call vote dj anderson aye nate donovan hi kristin draper

182hi christopher hi rob henderson hi carolyn reed aye motion passes six zero okay fantastic so uh we will convene in the conference room okay and uh why don't we take a 10-minute break and we'll meet at that time in the conference room thank you for joining us you