School Board Briefing Meeting: September 21, 2021

001good afternoon everyone it is 1:01 p.m. and it is Tuesday September 21st and this is Schoolboard briefing and first on our agenda we have some policies that are going to be brought forward for discussion by our board board attorney Mrs Kathy dpri Bruno Madam chair may I ENT up please can I can I through the chair ask for an explanation from board member Fischer an explanation yes of of what years of H years it's going to be really hard to sit through the whole meeting and look at her and not know why we just want to know why the importance of being a good listener okay okay thank you I appreciate that thank you I honestly didn't see anything unusual I saw nothing unusual I thought she was preparing for a trip to the North

002Pole anyway so Mrs depri Bruno if if you would turning it over to you thank you nope your mic's not on Jason okay I'm on now thank you so this is our first reading as part of the rul making process regarding board policy 2.18 this one is pretty simple the only change that was made was adding section 7 given the new language from the statute there any question comments with regards to 2.18 okay board members anybody so everybody body's good and at this time may I have consensus to move this forward to the public hearing all right yes yes yes yes yes Miss fiser yes okay M Miss janelli we're talking about the first policy 2.18 there's just one change it's an addition to put this policy in line with statute all right so we

003have unanimous thank you the next policy is 2.62 not a lot of changes to this policy it's basically been some of the legal leaves was taken out of it otherwise it's the same policy that the board looked at and at this time I would like to demonstrate to the board how some of this will be implemented and this is a great credit to Dr Spyro and his team and as well as Laura Howard who made this come to fruition a really really good web page on parents rights so what we did is create a web page that has the board policy 2.06 to as well as the actual statute for those who want to view that thereafter it goes through the parental rights as indicated in the statute and then certain things you'll see that

004there are links for the parents to get additional information for example one of the things that the statute requires is that parents understand how to apply and enroll their students in school in alternative education Etc so if they click here they'll get all of the information on student enrollment this I'm sorry madam chair is this up and live that we can look at it or no it's not up live yet so we can only see it on your screen yes can you see it on your screens right now yes okay so this is we're still in the process of getting all of the finalization on this particular web page once the board moves forward with the policy through the public hearing and it actually becomes effective this will also go live okay that answer your

005question well it does so basically we can only see it here we can't even go through it or anything not yet okay anybody else since we paused have something to ask okay if you continue please for example information on charter schools and the different charter schools so all of that information will be right there for the parents to be able to navigate if they want to know what's the board's policy on Student Records they click and here's the policy and I'm going to go down a little bit more to where it talks about the school district notifications on parental rights this is a very important area and it provides all kinds of information for parents right there at their fingertip there will be one location one web page that they can find all of the

006information that they need for example how do I get involved so we have our board policies on community involvement our board policy on family involvement Title One schools family engagement and then of of course the parental Bill of Rights how do I know what the policies with regards to attendance all of the information that you need with regards to attendance and what is the actual policy on attendance right there everything will be right there at the click of a of a link the student code of conduct right there and parents can view this very easy can I can I ask a question while you're on that page may please can you go back there please to the student Cod yes please at the bottom that Health op out form is that available anywhere else it's

007it's going to be linked in this section as well and I believe is it also on Focus it's on the parent portal it's on the parent portal as well so in focus on theage okay so I've brought this up several times and I don't know if there's board appetite to ask for it to please be placed in Focus as one of those back to school forms because then it puts it in front of every parent and they have to decide at the beginning of the school year whether they want to opt their child out I know there's no opt in but I think putting that opt out form in front of parents is important but if I'm the only board member that wants that then I will drop it I think some discussion about having

008m patri i believe that the group and Mr Spyro's team we did have some discussion about having certain documents as part of what we call the back to school forms or back to school documents and I believe that was one of the documents excellent okay very good thank you since we've paused I have a comment before I make my comment on that are there other board members that have a comment about placing this in a back to school form anybody okay I have a comment on that because to put that out in front of of parents right away that's typically before the child has now it'll be a little different in elementary but let's say in middle school and in high school that's before the parent has even knows the permanent teacher because there are

009lots and lots of changes on schedules and I think a lot of that depends on the just the Comfort level of the child and this isn't something that parent needs to do immediately I think the parent needs to get a feeling for the climate of the school for the climate of the class I personally feel that if this were my child I might talk to my child and see how comfortable he or she is in this so I really think that to place it there is a problem I think a more appropriate place instead of with all of the forms is when that child starts the health unit now again I'm looking more at middle school and high school where they're taking actual whole classes for I believe a semester on on on health and

010I've mentioned this before that I believe that it works very very well when every teacher and I think probably most teachers do this they send home their own these are some of the class rules these are things that are really important to me reminding parents like my Google classroom or here's my email or here's another way that you can reach me and this is when this is when we are going to be having a particular unit and at that time the student would already have his or her either text or workbook or whatever materials and that would give the parent an opportunity to actually look at those materials can even call the teacher and say I'm really uncomfortable with this could you please personally go over some things about it I what I do not

011want to see is some parents perhaps jumping to conclusions that what is going to be presented to their child is going to be inappropriate in any way and so I feel very strongly that this should not be one of a bunch of forms like contact information for the clinic and those things that go home I think it's much more personal to have it from the health teacher or the elementary teacher who's going to teach a unit that might be something that the parent would object to I'm in no way shape or form saying the parent doesn't have the right to this I'm only saying that I want parents to be as informed as possible and be able to get personalized answer and that's why I think it should not be with those documents but should

012be with the teacher where the parent can actually talk to that teacher through texting emails or a personal phone call so that's my opinion on it and I'm like to actually know if any other board members is this something mpri Bruno and maybe Dr Spyro that we as a board weigh in on or is this already a done deal and this is what good afternoon certainly was not not ready to talk about health out out forms today but I'll let you know where we are that conversation you just had is literally the conversation we're having as a team weighing both ends of the health optout forms which is right now where we don't permanently have it in any place yet other than the parent folk inside of the web page under the parent portal the

013form is there under the Curriculum maps as the teachers go through the units those health outop forms are there we will also have it on this web page under the parent Bill of Rights also but the conversations are happening happening now regarding the back to school paperwork for next year would this be one included or not so I think hearing the board's opinion on how everyone feels about that will be an important part of that discussion okay because I guess I Mis understood when Miss patri was asking about that I thought you said yes it was going to be yes it's part of the conversation our team is having and what could be available in Focus I me I understood that you said yes it will be there so is this something that the board

014can weigh in on or is this something that a decision is going to made be made within the academic Services it's certainly a conversation we're having now with which what can be in Focus but I feel your input would be important for our team to consider as we're looking at the back to school paperwork yes okay so then I'm going to mrun Bruno if you don't mind me just since we're on it asking for that so I think think I think that what I'm hearing is two things one was having the form included in the back to school documents which is something that we had talked about and I think we were going in that direction the other one is with regards to having the form given at a later time once the student is

015actually involved a little bit more into that particular class so I think you need to pull the board and see which direction they want to go okay I'm going to start with Mrs Morgan what is your opinion on when this should happen I don't have an opinion this is the first I'm thinking about it and I don't know what I think so may I may I weigh in please as a parent I'm I'm coming down the row here Mrs Gittens what do you feel about this well actually I agree with Miss Morgan I have not really thought about it considering the the tone of things and the climate this year of course it would have been good to have it in the in the beginning so parents would have it however we don't know in

016the future if it's going to be I mean is this just opting out for any type of opt outs academic as well or just this is particularly to the health education class and I would tell you one of the discussion that we were having is to try to be as transparent as possible and give as much ease of access to parents as much as possible okay if it's just with the health education class I think it needs to be in the very beginning because you don't know what your child schedule is going to be and if they have been inadvertently scheduled for this class and you don't want them to be in it as a parent then you should know that at the beginning rather than once they start the class and have to move

017them out of it so I would say give all the options in the beginning it's less work for everybody as you go along okay mat clar point of clarification attorney we're not talking about opting out of the whole class are we not talking about the sexuality education part the sexuality education part as well as anything relating to AIDS okay but it would be spelled out because is not health education a state requirement yes there's a comprehensive health education yes comprehensive that is a state requirement and you can't opt out it's you're opting out of that portion of the class only a portion I just wanted to say that for clarity because we just mentioned opting out of the class and that's impossible well okay wrong terminology it is it is a state requirement so since

018it's State requirement as I'm thinking back when classes are being scheduled then the APC is going to schedule everybody that needs this class and it's going to be on their schedule so the parents need to be aware is it in a specific grade Dr SP yeah six is it is it a range middle and high school okay so then parents need to know when the class starts that their child is registered for that class and be aware at the very beginning that they need to opt out a certain parts of it and then do we H what do we what is the process if I have a student and I want to Pro opt them out of these particular sections where do they go what do they do while the other students are doing that

019and I would want to know that too as a parent I don't want my child to go to this or to this where you going to put them so I think that needs to be done up front and let them know exactly what's going on okay Miss Jordan well having children and grandchildren in the district I believe that this is a great place to put it is in the beginning to the back to school when everybody is taking the time to fill out all the information and have that and then of course as the year progresses and if they get it in the half of the year have that back out again as Dr Spyro had said or maybe Mr pre Bruno so that there's two options for that and I believe that this has

020been happening if this is not the first that we're doing this so parents have been opting their children out of this process for some time now and the kids are going somewhere so I don't think that's a new thing that we have to create for them but as long as the understanding is where you know what they're opting out of I have to agree it needs to it needs to be there for parents in the beginning okay Mrs Patria so to do it at some point later in the year I think it gets lost in all of the other emails and text messages and all of the other emails that are in my inbox I mean I can't I cannot keep up with the communication that comes from the school I don't know what's important

021I don't know what's not important the back to school forms are significantly more manageable now that they are online I mean I did four kids in probably 7 minutes this year whereas it used to take me an hour when I had to write it all out if I am an abstinence only parent I believe in abstinence only education I know at the beginning of the school year that I don't want my children learning this in addition I think all of those back to school forms are a good opportunity to sit down and talk to the kids about expectations about their behavior in school expectations what they expect from their teachers from their admin and it's an opportunity for me to have a discussion with them about sex so all of it makes sense to me

022at the beginning of the school year okay Mrs jeny I'm at the beginning of I'm at the beginning of the school year as well I mean I just it makes sense I can keep it simp okay Miss Fisher yes so at the beginning with the back to school forms is an appropriate place for it but keeping in mind that individual teachers will probably notify parents when it comes to the section on any anything involving sexuality or any of those issues that parents have issues with and it's in our own policy 3.07 section six that students will be exempt from those activities on human production immun deficiency sexually transmitted diseases and sexuality based on the parents legal rights and filing a written request so they wouldn't have to miss the whole class they'd probably miss it

023might even just be a one class issue out of the whole year so yes okay Mrs Moran okay so having heard my colleagues address this matter I'm prepared to say I think it belongs at the beginning okay so thank you've heard the input I did have one question that I kind of heard which is what is the provision right now do we have a standardized provision for the children and young adults who are opting out what would be their alternate alternative in lessons so very similar to any type anytime a student and a parent have an issue with a curriculum piece the teacher always provides an alternative assignment and in this particular case they would find an alternative location for the student to participate in that assignment but the learning for that student would continue

024as well just because they may be lacking read a word abstaining from that particular lesson does not mean that the learning stops for that child okay but we don't have anything standardized so will vary among our schools that is that is the standard procedure at all of our schools be able to provide an alternative assignment for we don't have to standardize this is what you need to do or suggest it shared documents lessons that could be substituted you mean from other teachers across the district which kind of goes back to yesterday's conversation about access which teachers do have access to like teachers documents so yes they would have an opportunity to learn from other teachers about various assignments that they're they're obtaining okay and I think Miss gens you had a question it had to

025do with what they were learning and making sure that the parents understand that the students will have assignments yes and keep their grades that is just not sending them into a study hall and just making that clear to all parents absolutely and I believe Miss Fischer as well had a question yes yes so the other thing I would say is I hope hope that we make every effort to make sure that parents are fully informed about the content of those chapters because I think some people may have a an impression that it's it's more than it is so I think it's important for parents to know exactly what it is they're opting out of I think what what I'm hearing from the board certainly is from everybody up here they would like to have that

026form in the beginning of the year I'm also hearing that as we get closer to those the specific lesson and whatever unit or chapter excuse me is being discussed that some communication is sent home to a parents letting them know reminding them that there's the opt out forms that are available as well so we could have that be part of our standard procedure and look at back at my team so they know as well believe yes can we kind of proactively put something on the website or of that lesson or maybe with parent University to show them exactly what that lesson looks like yes so our curriculum our Curriculum maps which are already public already face forward to our public so they could see that they have that in there but I think what I'm

027hearing earlier was a little bit more of an overt opportunity for us to share that with the community simpler than a curriculum correct because everybody's not up to Curriculum maps but just a simplistic way this is what's in this chapter and this is what is covered and this is not so the commitment I'll make certainly I'll get with Miss Lancaster we'll look at doing a parent University as well in addition to the other pieces that we talked about so we could also educate our community or with the parents what their rights are but also at the same time what does that content look like in the classroom okay thank you great thank you other any other comments or questions on this issue okay Mrs dpri Bruno if you would thank you and so the other

028notifications that the parents may be interested in in terms of our curriculum standard and instructional materials and then of course the objection to any of those materials here's the easy form that they can complete here's the health optout form and then we have a section because the statute requires us to provide information to parents about the nature and purpose of the extracurricular activities so again Miss Howard has listed all of our schools and if you click on a school you will find the information on their extracurricular activities or Athletics by school and then of course we continue on in terms of all of the different things that the statute requires and all of these links are abilities for parents to gather more information if for example if they would like to exempt their students with

029regards to immunization it'll take you right to the Florida Department of Health and the requirements for the exemptions and how to proceed with that if they want to take a look at the review of the Statewide standardized assessment results at least for the next year there's a link here to the parent portal portal all of the instructions and information with regards to the Statewide Assessment program as well as the accountability web page from the Department of Education that talks about the assessments and gives additional information so this is a very thorough quick easy access to everything that the parent could possibly want to get information on if you go to number 10 talks about parental involvement again links to every school and their school advisory councils ptas and PTO you want to know about the

030data collection tells you specifically page 15 and 16 on the student code of conduct and you can click on it and find it as well as the for six grade 6 to 12 as well so all of the information that parents could want will be on this one page one central location even though there are other parts on the website that has this information as well and you can also find it on Focus but this web page when it goes l the parents Bill of Rights will have every single thing just at a click of a button and again to Dr spirals team for putting all of this information together as well as Miss Howard who created this page which I know was a labor of love for her certainly appreciate all of the work

031she did on it oh and Laura here's what I don't know I would like to show them how to translate it into Spanish yes so we can translate oh go back again translate this into Spanish let's try another one so we did see this in our team meeting it does translate the entire page into Spanish and other languages just by clicking on that language tab for the parent Mrs Morgan well first of all I just have to say that is an awesome aggregation of information and a fantastic presentation so kudos to all of you for the work that you did the only question I have is the activities and clubs that you list by schools where is that on the school website is it on the school websites should yeah th those are all links

032to the actual page from the school webs now some schools will have more information than other schools so all what we did was just link it directly from that school's page okay fantastic love it thank you other comments questions bu yes Jordan I would just say thank you very much you did a great job Miss Howard and all of you together but this is good easy to easy to read yeah yeah you have go ahead I just want to mention too that as far as getting this information out through the Sachs and DAC and all of that as well especially maybe with the sacks since a lot of them are meeting digitally now perhaps a u a staff member could be on to kind of show them you know take over screen and show because

033that's just another aspect of our parents and community that may not just scroll through the website so I think that would be a good thing to have that as an exercise for the Sachs so this is also going to go to all of the board advisory committee so they can look at it as well as the policy in addition Dr Spyro came up with an excellent suggestion that we're also going to have a tab or a link there as well for parents to be able to provide comments so that we can get those comments and filter those comments as well and then it will continuously be I know discussed at the different advisory committee so that everybody's aware and they can share that with their their individuals anything you want to add newsletter as oh

034in the newsletter everywhere that we can reach parents it's going to go out that way so being the newsletters and everything else okay Miss Mrs Fisher yes thank you so I just want to confirm that this is going to include the student advisory committee yes thank you now I did have some questions from some community members that I wanted to take the opportunity to explain one thing that we keep getting questioned on is with regards to opt in versus opt out and what everybody needs to understand is that the statute the way that it is written requires an opt out not an op in for example the Health opt out form in the actual statute the parents Bill of Rights it does talk about the exemption and opting out and then it relates back to

035the actual statute that requires the Comprehensive Health and the ability for parents to be Exempted from that particular section of the of that class so these are all very statutory in nature it's not our decision to opt in or op out this is based on what the statute and what is required of us any other questions yeah I wanted to make make a comment it's going to Echo what most of my colleagues have said this is One-Stop shopping it's like super Target when Target went to Super Target and you can go here and get almost almost everything but you know me I always have to think of one more thing despite how wonderful this is two comments through one of my volunteer activities I often have to go through some of the school websites and

036I I think sometimes and I know how busy everybody is at the school but some schools do a better job of keeping up with current information and I mean I've I've looked at things that are obviously outdated so I think that's that's important I know it's a Herculean task to do that but that's one thing the other thing and I'm going to ask academic Services again is and I don't know it needs to go here but somewhere we need to have scholarships we don't have that as a district and the few that we have is not cut cut out kept up to date because I'm for the past five years I've been a scholarship chairperson for a local organization and I will L Brooks has for years been the person and she sends it out

037to all of our schools the information application all of that and and the charter schools as well and I'll wait a couple weeks and then I'll kind of fish around and I see it front and center on some school websites and not on others then a year ago I looked at the district website and there it was on only it was last year and it was our application from 2017 so and the application had changed a little bit so I think this would be a huge huge benefit because now I see how just spectacularly wonderful all of you are and gathering information a huge benefit to our parents to be and I realize that there are some that may be just for a particular school and there are a lot of very narrow ones but

038to put it in one place and a place where you know and I'm I'm talking mostly about local scholarships and you know we keep up with Bright Futures and all of the big ones but I'm talking about more the local and I know there's a lot of money that goes on you used and also a lot of students that miss out because they haven't gotten the information so one more question for academic Services do we have any plans to update our area where we list our scholarships so yes we do have plans for that there actually plans that have already been in work with Miss Brooks so I know that we're looking to create a portal as well we can have all of those at every level I know internally we have we do have

039that available but to make it external for Community certainly be beneficial and that was part of the work that she's doing so I would put something in a board update a weekly update just to let you see where we are at this point yeah because she's great about pushing it out but then there's there's that little glitch it can be pushed out to the schools but unless the schools and the district post it on a website we have people missing out on it so I think that's just really important for every dollar out there for our kids to be aware we agree so thank you thank you so much all right anything anything else ladies okay Mr thank you so the goal is to be as transparent and be statutorily compliant and we believe that

040we are accomplishing that with this website so at this time I would like consensus from the board to move forward with board policy 2.62 to bring it to a public hearing the parents Bill of Rights okay yes yes yes yes yes please yes yes don't unanimous thank you okay thank you so much that was a great presentation and can't wait till it's live and the I love the fact that it can be translated into other languages so we're going to move now to Capital project updates and it's Mr rickenbacher there he comes here is there any you the sole presenter she C it is Mr rickenbacher so thank you must be my deodorant well I don't know if you brought some reinforcements look like kath's coming up not update in or or or an internet

041person Jen keep got it's not what's the window how was Sabotage by my predecessor good afternoon board members Dr Savage Esquire dpre Bruno this is your September 2021 Capital project updates construction will start first quadruple a otherwise known as prek and Estero many big things happening in there we have a meeting tomorrow night we don't personally but it is the council for Dar will be talking about the potential shared use facilities the actual dpz zoning committee is on October 12th and that's when they give us the thumbs up to move forward right now miss Sil Cox a project manager on that job is sitting opening all the bids for that school so hopefully in the next two weeks I'll be able to give you guys a flavor of what the market is doing to the

042GMP and what that looks like it'll be coming forward so anticipating that shortly Springs Elementary we still are looking for some direction I know that the superintendent's office has been communicating with B Springs Elementary Principal to come up with the concept and plans moving forward for that campus all the Portables are 100% complete on that project Coral Elementary School hbac is completed we reached substantial completion on no September 15th Fort Myers High School hbac is also complete as of September 15th we've taken a couple of Maintenance projects into the Construction Division this is a plumbing renovation at Fort Meers high school so we've reached out to our continuing contracts and we're requesting design and construction management costing for that work Fort Myers Technical College campus remodeling we have issued that this when we submit these

043in for your review the information I provide today is more update all notices to proceed have been issued to the architect the construction manager and the building official so on 89 all the contracts were engaged 8921 for all three and were underway they actually went at risk and started their design we have a 30% design set of documents that they've created right now we're about a million dollars over what we projected for the budget for that school but we're looking into some grant funding so we're going to take it to the next level usually the gmps tighten up as we move into 60% drawings in 90 so now we're just kind of riding the wave to see where where it goes and what kind of funding we will need or we can get from granting

044to help support that cause so you'll see the numbers on the right of the screen change in your next month's presentation as the dates start to come in G Weaver hips we're in the design phase our phase one right now for the addition building out there for the pre K function so that has begun and all those notices proceeding contracts were issued on the 27th of August vpaa again current information we have the Architects construction manager contracts have been issued as of 9821 we just got the final paperwork we need for the building official and that'll be all three parts of that triangle the and I believe that's coming in October for our phase one project asks for the seed money to get going on vpaa Lee County public education roof renovation as you can

045see in the parking lot all the installation is stacked up we're waiting to go there are metal roof pan plates for the drain unfortunately there's only two companies in the United States that make these they're inundated so we have half of our order which is due in any day now we're trying to get a tracking number with the trucking company and as soon as they arrive on site we'll begin this building here so hopefully in the next week I can report and oh I won't need to report because you should be here in the banging J Elementary and mm Edition we have weekly meetings we're well underway our steel and shell package is out for building official review what that means is once we get code review for that we will then put it out

046as an advertisement for Shell package bids and I'll be coming with a station marker I think I told you that in the beginning of the job we're going to break this package up so that I can get the steel and the foundation work going so hopefully in the next week or two that should be in the press and the media for bidding purposes and we can start compiling that first phase of that project Orange Wood Elementary this week myself and Miss Sil Cox will be the project manager of this HVAC renovation we put together our phase one costing and we'll bring that will be the next one up for negotiation we'll bring that to the board in the coming months Riverdale High School campus remodel well we've had some some real meetings we offered up

047about four different scenarios for that campus all of them I think benefit the district in one shape or another benefit the school in one shape or another we're over five anywhere from 5 million to 15 million depending on which scenario we well hang on depending on which scenario we choose we haven't gone through a trimming process yet and remember these are estimates based on current market as the design gets closer to 60% which we're in design development now we can start looking at the numbers and see if it comes in but we prepared five options that was a site master plan that we said we would bring to you got some lesser model versions and some higher model versions and at the end of the day the entire project team which includes academic Services the

048school construction maintenance all divisions will be part and partial in the capital committee looking at this and deciding what's the best way for the district to go as time moves on transportation and dis dispatch we're getting ready to bring that to the capital committee the dollars we were at $1.5 million the county would made us do a limited development order with a traffic impact study pleased to say that they only required us to study was about $5,000 with an engineer and the actual striping is all they're requiring us to do is about $3,000 so we should be coming forward with that to for that project with that's a work authorization project to get that moving forward and get that started for the East Transportation building well well needed too Villa Elementary this is a maintenance

049project that's being turned over to construction and manage by one of my project managers and this is a renovation for the in systems at Villas Elementary so we're we're Gathering our designers and our construction managers via work authorization as we speak this next sheet is a compilation of single point entries and I told you're going to see blocks get filled in and more schools get added on to this list right now we've been inundated the superintendent's office with work authorizations and notice the proceeds for all of these so I'm sure his hands tired from signing but we're starting to get these through I have about 22 projects in my state stable that my folks will be managing between now and hopefully get most of them done before the end of the year there's a few

050that are a little more technical but a big bulk of them should be hopefully done by the start of the year and the next is a maintenance update and I don't see anyone for maintenance so I'm going to continue reading K Coral high school sewer reclaim water connection that's where we're tying in with the reclaim water for the City of Cape Coral it used to be off of one of the canals so now they're tying into the official reclaim water system Challenger Middle School is just a gutter repairs looks like everything's going they're waiting on materials in aluminum right now is through the roof and long delays anything metal is extremely difficult to get now in a timely fashion or what we you we are used to getting at it Edgewood another gutter School they

051look waiting on estimates for that potential School site Hancock Creek Elementary School gutter repair waiting on materials to arrive Lexington Middle School gutter repair waiting on materials to arrive Littleton Elementary gutter waiting on materials orangew Wood Elementary cabinet upgrade notice to proceed is in the signature process so what that means is all the estimates are in and we're just getting all the paperwork put together to bring the work authorizations forward to the superintendent Pelican Elementary playground waiting on ordered materials Tanglewood Elementary cover play area architect is preparing the drawings for that particular school and then we can start sending it out for bids and estimates Three Oaks roof repair waiting on proposals materials about 12 12 to 16 weeks out Heist Elementary elevator upgrade that was postponed till next summer due to water conditions and

052where we need a full summer to physically go out there and pump it down and get the materials in place traval g midle go to repair waiting on materials I'm sorry it's sounds like a Repeat Performance but I think you can see where metal is going in our industry right now VAR City Lake strongs are being prepared for that traffic Improvement which is a sidewalk and the Bus Loop that maintenance had mentioned last update and that's that's it for my Capital update we also have Miss eal would like to speak to you about some of her planning issues the capital report was also attached were there any questions on the capital report board members okay Mrs gettens good afternoon and thank you for your report I do have a couple of questions on quadruple a

053I asked this before but the cost that we were given was 84 million is that plus or minus the 9 million for the steel that was purchased that's all part of the estimate but remember when you were told that 85 million it's based on an assumption I have not brought my Phase 2 GMP which is the total product cost to you just like everything a year to two years out we give you a rough estimate based upon current marking conditions when we speak to those numbers so I can't tell you if 85 is a good number for for that particular site it could be under it could be less we're we're going to know very in the next two weeks I will know exactly where we're going to be so for my next report I'm

054going to be able to tell you exactly where we're heading with that school and of course that would be the board's option as to which direction you all think we should go in but at the time that you told us the 9 million for the steel it was assumed then that would come from that 84 it if will be part of the total project cost so you can assume that the 85 less 9 million and the rest is what would come from the GMP hopefully but it's Market driven I can't control the market no I understand that but what you just said answered my question okay I have another question what is on the old Lambs which I'm I'm still a little concerned about that because I feel as though it's going to anyway I

055think we need to go ahead and figure out what we're going to call it and it seems as though it's going to be Veterans Park Academy of the Arts and a mea school anyway but my question is what is the date you're saying 2 7 of 22 is there a PL plan of work for that because in that shorter period of time I mean they haven't started anything yet so I think will what can be and will be done I know we talked about the painting and you know basic things like that so where and you had mentioned that when you went over there that there were some additional things you update us on that is correct there's actually two phases the intent right now is we have the drawings bid package split into into

056two packages one is the renovation of what we call the old Lambs building you might call it the annex the other is going to be the Arts building which be the Performing Art Center that was going to come in for 23 so August of 22 will be the opening of the old Lambs building for whatever you decide to call it that'll be refreshed bathrooms locker rooms fully sprinkling the building casework paints colors everything that you spoke about the project manager and the design team is meeting with the principles they're taking some of the space and better utilizing it and creating some of the academy space and things that he would like so again it's no different than any other job the only difference is I have to get you those 800 to 1,000 seats so

057kids can sit in them next August so we broke up there'll be two GMP sections for this job I have a budget that I have to work in with I've already told you and I've told the team that we are over the 8 million which was an originally projected for the red ramping of the old Lambs building and that will come from the money that would have been projected for the Arts building for the performance center so I had that projected at 16 so if I've got to take $2 or $3 million out of the performance center that's what's going to happen to get the old building the way it needs to be for students to occupy it and the I think it was 300,000 for Portables update 500 ,000 that should have been in

058the project budget estimate it was one of the line items in the backup that was sent and that's a part of the 24 that is correct well originally it was 245 that I had budgeted but I came to you for 24 million and there's a line item for 500,000 for portable refreshing okay so the ultimate question is if you're spending 500k to update those Portables are you looking to still use them because I thought the idea was to get rid of them right now the kids are in the school building proper it made sense we have areas of in there that they can learn there's nothing wrong with the classrooms they have bathrooms they're in a regular school setting and I understand that part that the Portables the Portables out there were in a very

059bad condition I couldn't put kids in there so the principal is fully aware sometime around the first of the year I'm going to ask him to evacuate the building and moved into the refresh Portables so we should start refreshing the Portables hopefully in the next month or two so that they'll be ready to transition the kids from the har building into the Portables and I spend the rest of 22 from January till August refreshing the old Lamb's building and then depending on where the need is for Portables they will be taken away from that site and remobilized on the future capital projects that we have to build do you know how many of those are owned or leak I think we own all of them except for two which are on the basketball courts two

060or three I believe okay and I understand too that there was some some updates done on them not long ago sometime back in the summer no we had to do a connection canopy so we did a canopy from the Veterans Park Academy of the Arts building to the old Lamb's building and there is a handicapped child there so I'm creating a aluminum ramp system so that they'll be able to get into the Portables once I shift everyone in so yes there was canopy work and there was a sidewalk and cover canopy between the two campus buildings okay and my final question has to do with and this may be Miss EA but when the decision was made to do the new Lamb's construction and we were told the doe approved 1250 student stations at the

061new site the fact that we moved students from one site to the next and we did not actually use that 1250 that they approved how is that going to affect us going forward if we do eventually build another Middle School which we should have been doing anyway we applied that we are over by this amount and we need 12 50 seats we did not use those seats although we built a new building so how how are we rectifying that with doe so when we asked for the renaming of the Portables we or the renaming of the school and the new student stations it just it reallocated them it didn't create new ones or take away old ones it just reallocated them so it doesn't affect our student capacity issue the only student capacity the only

062change in student capacity are the student stations that we added at MM the new lambs and the 400 student station that we're going to be adding as part of the rebuild but it doesn't no nothing is out of the plan and we still have two schools that we are planning to build in the East Zone in the 5-year plan for the for middle schools so we have two middle schools planned in the East Zone and that does not change B on the work that's being done at the old Lamb's Veterans Park area does that answer your question it does I'm still very disappointed that we have a brand new school and no new seats so that would have been 1,250 kids that would have gotten out of Portables and we have actually maybe two 300

063that were in the Portables at at lamb so it's disappointing that we didn't get a brand new school to move seats and to move students but it's it's already done and that's all I have thank you okay Mrs Mor I just have a sort of a quirky question why are there only two vendors in the United States for our roofing material here for this building is it a monopoly it's very specific they're Roofing pans so it's a custom Fab fabrication and in a of of a material can you repeat your question can you sorry the question is about the materials for the roof of this building there are only two vendors and I'm saying is it a monopoly you know what's what's the story here so I think there's probably enough not enough work on

064a year-to-year basis to support more major vendors to fabricate this metal we can get insulation all day long in those materials these are customized roof deck plates and every project is site specific so every so this was a former shopping mall right correct yeah so when it was built they put in a custom roof that could only be fabricated by no these are standard metal deck plates they're just it's just not something major steel manufacturers would carry kind of like aluminum canopy for our walkways you know we've got about three or four vendors that actually make it but suppliers of that is there probably only two or three of the manufacturers of raw metal corrugated metal that make the metal I'm just surprised that for commercial properties it's it's it's that let we've never had

065this issue with these pans before we're just realizing it and what we're realizing everything made out of metal all the way from ceiling grid over your office bait even that is getting tougher and tougher and more and more expensive to get thank you okay any other questions comments change of reports good everybody okay and I'll give you miss eball so I just have one small addition to today's Capital update the at the committee that is working on the naming for quadruple a and for J would like to give a quick update as to where we are with those projects first we are the process the J and quadruple a will not go simultaneously we're going to start quadruple a 1 and then it'll be followed by the naming for Jay we are in the process

066of identifying committee members for the ad hoc committee for quadruple a we would ask that if you have specific names that you would like to include on that or organizations that you would like to include on it please contact myself or Lauren Stillwell with those organizations Andor names that you want included we will in the next couple of weeks in a board update we will submit to you which names are being worked on we have already identified a number of names and we're reaching out to those but if you have specific people that you would like to be included on the krupal A1 which is the Estero school please let us know and then we will compile the list of submissions we'll send it to you as Port board policy and then the criteria will

067be once we've once once we've done our survey work and we've done the evaluation of the names we'll bring it to you for confirmation and are our it is our goal to have quadruple a named by January so it is our goal that in January we will bring you the name of quadruple a the same process will then be used for J so if you have names of or organizations that you would like to be considered for the commit ad hoc committee for J again please let Lauren or myself know who those will be that committee will start in about another month so we're going to we're we purposely don't want them to run exactly simultaneously together because we don't want confusion between the two of them and the groundbreaking for J will be slightly

068later so we picked quadruple a first okay questions Mrs kittens and when will the process begin for the name for the old Lambs we will we can begin that along at around the same time we start J okay other questions comments okay thank you so much missa yeah okay next on excuse me next on our agenda we're going to be talking about mitigation measures have quite a few presenters listed here are you all coming up front or okay I have Dr Savage Miss Tammy Scott coordinator of teaching and learning Miss Lauren Stillwell Chief strategic engagement officer Dr Jeff Spyro Chief academic officer and Dave nulan executive director of safety security and Emergency Management me so I'm not sure who is kicking this off but I will be happy to kick us off U hand it

069out to the superintendent thank you to allowing our staff to have a minute to get set up and just for having us back here today we know that the Delta pandemic you know version of this pandemic has been pretty unprecedented for us here in our community and so it's a privilege to kind of bring us back together again today to kind of talk about specifically where we are and also what our current data is telling us and as far as where we are headed in terms of our recommendations then to entertain a discussion from this board so without that further Ado it looks like the PowerPoint is up and ready to go so we can advance to the agenda today we're going to start with a legal view this is pretty pertinent here as not

070only are we in the midst of a pandemic but an evolving legal landscape that we have to be responsive to secondly we're going to be going over the data Trends which is all of the local data that we have available to us relative to our school system as well as our local Health provider and our department of health locally as well as then our comprehensive mitigation so what are we doing in response to that data what are the things that we've done to try to mitigate the and mute the impact in our school system and how does that continue to evolve as well as review of the choice options for families and the last thing we'll talk about as a recommendation U moving forward so with that said we're going to turn things over to

071I believe attorney dep Bruno for the legal review and response so this all began with the governor's executive order of July 30th 2021 in which he indicated that he did not want to see a ask mandate in any schools because of the parental Bill of Rights and he felt that parents should be able to choose for their children any type of Medical Health Care decisions he then directed in that same executive order to the Department of Health as well as to the Department of Education to enact rules that would move that agenda forward so on August 6 2021 the Department of Health issued an emergency rule 64d 21-12 which basically stated that students May wear mask but parents needed to opt out the rule did not give any specifications in terms of what that opt

072out would look like the Department of Education has interpreted that op out to indicate that there cannot be any type of restriction on the parents ability to opt out on August 10th the Lee County School District implemented the mask requirement with parental opt out pursuant to board policy 1.81 meanwhile there are a lot of different cases legal actions that are going through the system that basically challenge the both the Florida Department of Health Emergency rule as well as some of them challenging the executive order one such case was in Le County brought forth by various parents regarding the executive order on August 27th the lean County judge judge Cooper made a verbal ruling in which he found in essence that the governor had overstepped his bounds and his authority with the executive order and issued

073some other related rulings based on that on September 1st the Lee County School District moved forward with its mask requir reement but requiring a medical opt out on September 2nd judge Cooper adopted his verbal ruling of August 27th as well as issued his written final judgment and that triggered an automatic stay which means that everything stops in terms of the judge's order because of the fact that it was something with regards to the governor on September 8th judge Cooper heard a motion to lift that stay and granted that motion to lift that stay which then meant that judge Cooper's ruling was inforced and the Department of Education was enjoined from enforcing the their interpretation of the parental opt out on September immediately following that the governor appealed judge Cooper's ruling prior to the automatic the

074lifting of the state but they had appealed and they also filed a motion with the first DCA asking them to reinstitute the stay on September 10th the First District Court of Appeals reinstituted the stay again at this point basically saying that judge Cooper's order is in abeyance and then the Department of Education can move forward with its enforcement based on their interpretation of the rule on September 14th the Lee County School District went back to a mask requirement with with a parental opt out dropping dropping off the medical opt out requirement and then on September 15th we had another ruling in another case which was a federal case hay Hayes versus the governor DeSantis and the doe Etc basically in that case there were numerous families they had brought forth a complaint stating that they

075were not able to get their free and appropriate public education because their children were not safe in the school environment because the governor's executive order and the do trule was preventing them from being safe in terms of the Mask opt out with the medical requirement so in that particular case the federal judge judge Moore denied the original request for an injunction basically what the parents were asking is that there is such an urgency at this point that we need you to join the Department of Education from enforcing the their interpretation of the parental opt out and the judge denied that particular injunction this case is still ongoing we don't know where this is going to land there is a motion to dismiss that is out there as well that the judge will be reviewing at

076this point the judge has indicated some concerns about the plaintiff's case but we have to let it go through the process in addition there are three rule cases that are also out there these are administrative challenges to the governor's executive order as well as the Department of Health emergency rule one was filed by Miami Dade another one was filed by alacha Orange County and Broward County and there's also one filed by the NAACP and the premise of those cases is that they believe that the do rule is in violation of the rul making process and that it's different different things but that it's not specific in terms of what the parental opt out is that it's not it's arbitrary and capricious and some other things that they are challenging so those three cases are also

077making their way through the system there's also another circuit court case that is out there that was filed by the Poverty Law Center as well as the IND ACP so that's another one that we're watching okay who's hey now it's me I was waiting on a queue but I'm going to take it from here okay so good after board members Dr Savage and Miss dupy Bruno thank you for having us this afternoon I'm here to share the data portion of this presentation from Lee County lee Health which is our largest hospital system and of course our own School District so we'll get started this is a slide that is familiar to all of you I think by now but it is the most recent data for Lee County from the Florida Department of Health for

078the week ending September 16th you'll see there at the end of the slide that the new case positivity was 14.2% and you're going to see that number reflected on the bottom right of your screen on this graphic this shows the new case positivity starting approximately 3 weeks before school began the highest percentage thus far has been during the second week of school and as you'll see on this graph it has been declining the number of people also being tested is decreasing as well per of the phone call that I have every week that is information that they provided with our HealthCare Partners last Thursday moving now to our largest hospital system this is Lee Health's staffed bed capacity dating back to the first day of school you will see gaps in the data on the

079horizontal access access these are weekend days the staffed bed capacity is the number of available beds plus the number of occupied beds that are licensed and physically available for which staff is on hand to attend to a patient so basically when the percentage is in the high 90s or the low 100s it basically means the number of patients is very high compared to the number of staff at the hospital and then we have the isolation statistics this is the number of covid-19 patients isolated in the hospital system since August 10th again with gaps for weekend days the orange bars represent the total number of patients which is measured based on the vertical access on the left side of your screen and then the green lines represent children under 18 with covid who are isolated at

080galano Children's Hospital and those numbers are measured using the axis on the right side of your screen we did not start receiving data about the number of children until August 18th and so that's why you don't see any green prior to that date then we have the school district of Lee County confirmed positive cases those are there from the beginning of school the total number of student the total number excuse me is in Gray students is in blue and staff is in the yellow or the orange color at the bottom and another big thing that we look at is attendance rates that has a huge impact on ours I'm going to turn that over to Tammy Scott so that she's going to talk a little bit about these slides and can you hear me fine

081okay no you want to use this one maybe the red light on yep okay how about now all right perfect well thank you for the opportunity to talk about the impact that this is having on our student attendance okay so this graph although it has a lot of information let me just quickly walk through it what it shows is last year Year from the very first day of school on August 31st up through the 15th of September last week so every day a student could receive an attendance code of a q that is this year and I'll talk a little bit more about what Q stands for and the purpose of it but in essence it's about the direction of being quarantined or isolated and not in our buildings however last year before school started

082we created a GC code which is equivalent to the Q code and the purpose last year of the creation was to have some way to monitor who our students were that could not come to school so we know who they were but also how are we going to keep them connected with learning because we realized last year we had other options the leh home connect but that wasn't necessarily enough so we had the Google Classroom as well so the development of that theory of the Q code really happened long before the emergency rule was put forth by our governor at the start of this school year so last year we gave present codes that's the GC code or the Q code it is a present code students are Mark not marked absent if they have

083that code okay so we wanted to make sure that again we knew who those students were we could count the number of days that they were supposed to be in isolation or quarantined at home and that we knew that once that time period was over they should be returning to us and if they weren't what were we doing about it okay so you can see from this chart here that it is separated into sections to show the first line the first blue line that was our first quarter Mark last year then the second line is our second quarter Mark last year so within those two sections we had that peak time of December 17th of 2020 with 2,414 students that were on a GC code last year that's equivalent to a q code and then

084you can see the remainder of the school year with the last blue line on the far right showing the end of fourth quarter and then to the right of that is this school year so this so last year our highest number was 2675 students quarantined in one day that received that code this year the highest number was 7,778 so a very drastic difference so this data is pulled daily and it is provided to Executives and our Chiefs so they are aware of this information on a daily basis and then you also receive that in your weekly update so when the governor or the state sent out the stay-at-home order or stay-at-home rule that really did not change the process in which we took attendance for students okay we already were following that framework we were

085kind of ahead of the game so pretty proud about that piece but the whole purpose of the code is to keep kids connected we have to find ways and we have to be very creative and thinking outside the box of how when students are required to not be in school which that is horrible to say but when they are not able to come to school what are we doing to ensure that we have some connection with them we've never faced this before so it definitely required everybody to think outside the box for that okay so moving to the next slide this depicts information in regards to where we were prior to pandemic and it is really important to note that historically in Lee County prior to the 1920 school year our students that were chronically

086absent were a little bit over 20% every single year every single year that was our historical Trend in Lee County and our district has made a very concertive effort in regards to attendance it is very purposeful intentional plc's talk about it a lot of really great work so prior to the pandemic on 1920 school year 1920 at the very end of third quarter our schools were making so much progress and at that time our chronically absent students were only 16.4% and our district Target is 15% that's our 2030 goal so we were almost there it's important to note that when we look at students that are chronically absent we are considering all absences it does not matter whether they are excused or unexcused because we have to ensure that we are targeting our students who

087are missing learning learning for whatever reason okay so that is a struggle for us now that we have been going through the pandemic so from 16.4% right on March 12th when we were sent home you can see from our chart here what a difference the pandemic has made the impact this does not account for the students who are receiving a q code that are not sit sitting in the classroom this accounts for only those students who are marked absent unexcused or excused so when we started our school year I know yesterday our executive leaders spoke to you about how we were resetting our systems at the beginning of the year and we actually sat in this room and talked to all schools in regards to their attendance systems going on in their own buildings and

088we shared best practices and we had lots of really great interactive activities for them to do and everybody was really gearing towards a new start and a reset so the next two slides are information that you have seen before in your board updates I believe a week or two ago but it was important to note the differences here so this first one is excused absences and last year we did have leh home connect so many students were able to opt into that form of instructional model so that could account for a wide difference in our excused and unexcused over the 2-year time this year we don't have that option of home connect so we have to take all of that into consideration in the next slide this shows unexcused and the sheer volume of the

089number of students who are increasingly being marked absent unexcused so I want to take a just a few moments to talk to you about the lens through the school and then the lens through the family when we talk about unexcused absences so as you can imagine Mr Simmons spoke yesterday about how strained our systems are so when we have the number of students like depicted here that are unexcused we realize that our office staff within all of our schools everybody it's a all Hands-On deck anybody and anybody who can pick up the phone and call a family to find out what's going on is doing that so there is a definite strain on an already strained process we are investigating more we're making more phone calls and different people are addressing those needs but I

090want to talk to you a little bit about the family lens and what we're seeing now is for families that would typically have a 3-day unexcused absence for an illness because we didn't know it was unexcused is turning into 10 to 15 days and that's happening with our most at risk students so think about our homeless students our ly students our students who are living in poverty and our migrants students as a normal 3-day absence turns into much longer what we're finding out is that our families have a lack of access to personal transportation and health care and that absolutely impacts every aspect of our schools okay now for interventions and for attendance we know that data is nothing without an action plan to go with it so I want talk to you briefly about

091some of the things that we're trying to do thinking outside the box I'm going to save number one for last but number two connect with Lee that is during the day so we have all of our amazing certified staff down here at the district office that are signing up and engaging students during the day so that's a great opportunity that Dr Spyro brought forward number three is daily School Messengers so we are trying trying to help our schools in regards to keeping that conversation open so if you unfortunately are app parent that receive all those automated phone calls from school messenger in regards to attendance I apologize however it's very important that we are communicating with you on a daily basis so you could receive an attendance message because your child's unexcused but you will

092also see a different message if your child has been marked with the que and the purpose of that message is to inform families that guess what your child should be working in Google classroom they should not just be sitting home for those number of days and we had a lot of positive reactions from parents once we implemented that message last year flexible scheduling talks more in relation to The Lost learning and academic Services talks to you a lot about that piece they did yesterday as well but we have to to think our teachers are dealing with not only the achievement gaps but now compounding that with additional absences so it's that flexible scheduling rotating those intervention times throughout the day and a lot of thinking outside the box we also notice that our schools sometimes

093need information right away in the morning so we've opened up a zoom link for our administrators in the building our student services admin team man that Zoom every day and we sit in the covid command center and we are there to answer our principal or assistant principal's questions in regards to Can this particular student return can this staff member be there so they ask us about the flowcharts they ask us about all the mitigation measures and all of those things so at least there is an opportunity for our schools to reach out out and grab us face to face if you would in our Zoom every single morning for them and then last but not least I want to talk about our social workers and some of the work that they have been trying to

094do so in the summer we had project engage and that was ident we had identified 6,789 students last year that missed 20% or more of school 20% or more and they targeted our homeless students and they targeted our students that were in the transition years so 5ifth to 6th and 8th to 9th and what they did was they reached out to those families and engaged them in the work of identifying what their barriers were connecting those resources notifying them when school starts and notifying them of open houses so that happened in the summer and then when school preschool week happened we were reaching out to all the rest of the students and doing the same thing so project engage was a big initiative for this year on a daily basis we are supporting families in

095filling out the cir forms we're supporting families in connecting them with the right resources it's a very different level this time very incredibly different incredibly different I can't explain that enough to you it's on a whole other level because there are deeper barriers far deeper than what we would ever imagine housing resources ensuring that they know about connect with Lee I think that's my Mantra now every time I get off the phone with a parent oh don't forget connect with lee oh what is that my child didn't say anything well guess what we'll get them connected helping in the school Co room when needed obviously about the Google Classroom housing resources and goal setting for families our and our students the one thing that's really important is our students have been impacted significantly because there

096has been a lot of sickness and a lot of death in our community and so there have been deaths in their families when speaking with our social workers and talking to them on a weekly basis in regards to what their challenges are I cannot sit up here and not mention the fact that many of our older students are having a very tough time seeing past the present a very difficult time understanding that in 5 years their life could be totally different than it is right now and it could be absolutely amazing and we're struggling with getting them to really understand that value of the high school diploma because if you really sit back and think about all the time that they have spent at home and I can continue to show you lots of data

097but I think the data that you saw today really supports that understanding I'm not sure if we really understood the level in which our students were staying at home than what they are they are continuously being disengaged from school because of it so I'm happy to answer any other questions but I hope that gives you at least a glimpse of the impact that it has on our attendance okay board board members what questions do you have Mrs Patria so how are we doing in terms of Staffing connect with Lee do we have enough staff yes we do have enough staff during the day we do have enough staff in the evening and certainly during the day where we're asking our district Personnel to do is look at your schedules see if how you can balance

098working a couple hours with connect with Lee and then still making sure that you can service our schools as well so they're they're making that sacrifice to do that because we know it's good for our students because it's another way we can help serve schools as well but as of right now yes we are we are good with coverage so I'm wondering whether it would be a volunteer opportunity for some of our higher achieving students Andor those who are pursuing education as a field I know just throwing it out there as an idea thank you okay other qu questions Mrs Fisher then Miss Jordan then miss gettens oh so I just wonder then what percentage of the students who are absent are actually connecting with Lee do we have any information regarding that on that

099the numbers sorry I don't have those in front of me but I will certainly get for the board weekly update I'll give you the evening numbers and I'll also do during the daytime numbers as well since we've begun so you can have all of that yeah I think it would be interesting to know like what what part of the population who's impacted would be likely to take advantage of that so far for example at the secondary level no surprise math is the high highest area of concern so anybody's certified in math we would certainly welcome any help in that area but math has been really big and then Elementary also has been another area where students have been po on during the day primarily thank you okay M Jordan and my question is thank you

100Tammy for this the you were speaking on Google classroom do the students do all the students that we have missing have the ability to get onto Google classroom number one do they have the means do they have a computer how are we making sure that they even have that to get on that so we still work through some of those challenges in individually for students who do not have internet access at home so we still work through those continuously and then we do have the computers for them as well yes so when they if they were to leave school we are making sure if they are leaving school when they leave that school they're taking that with them because a lot of times they don't have as we spoke about Transportation have a means to

101come back to get everything that they need so if they were to to leave they need to make sure that they have that with them yes and that I can tell you the executive directors worked directly with the principles on that because we wanted to make sure that as students were transitioning back and forth that they reminded families of that especially in elementary because you know the one to one in elementary is new so making sure that parents are aware that here's the computer it's available make sure you keep it at home keep it charged so yes I know that has been communicated but certainly there are there are instances where perhaps they are not taking advantage of that well and because I'm okay because they don't bring their computers home they're not allowed and

102the reason I'm asking is because I know they had an assignment to of my grandkids had an assignment for to go on Google Classroom so I said okay great get your computers out let's do this and they looked at me we're not allowed to bring them home so how are you supposed to do this assignment when you don't have I mean we have a computer at the house but we have one but if they were not my grandchildren maybe they would not have that so that assignment would not have been able to be done because they didn't have that ability that's why I'm making sure and well let me say they are supposed to have the computers at home okay that's good to know and I'm not saying because I know how hard everybody is

103working trust me I've been out there I see it and I really appreciate everybody and then my other question would be the unexcused absence with that is that could that be because of the fact that they're so under staff and I know that sometimes when I've called the school to say that they're not going to come in because of whatever there's no one to answer that phone because they're just so busy so and then you forget about it during the during the day so can that account for some of this those numbers I mean there's all kinds yes we do believe that many of the unexcused could turn into the queue definitely a couple of things to note about that the Q code if the student is not working in the Google Classroom we should

104be reaching out to them within the second or third day to find out if everything is okay do they need additional support those kinds of things so that is written within the process that we follow the other thing is in talking to Dr Savage what he had suggested and I am taking him up on it is trying to do a random sample on a daily basis in regards to calling about 100 families and find finding out the unexcused and finding out exactly why they are unexcused seeing if we can number one reach somebody you know those types of things perfect thank you're welcome Miss get okay couple of questions last year when we went through all of the co and the digital divide and the computers and all of that I thought I remember technology

105speaking about you know one computer for every student are we still is that still our objective it is yes that not only is the objective but that is where we are right now so every student should have the ability to have their own computer okay kind of I guess piggybacking on what Miss Jordan was saying are they required to take it home every night for elementary middle which level cuz middle and high school Tak it home every nighte scho yeah middle and high school every night Elementary normally it's teacher directed when they take when they take those home and that way when the student is being quarantined or asked to stay home that's why they have that communication with that parent that make sure you take this home with you make sure your child is

106accessing their Google Classroom right because that could be a glitch in that you don't know if tomorrow you're called and say stay home and you don't have it so I just wanted to make sure of that the second question had to do with last year when we were going through Co there were food distribution sites and all of that because the students weren't there and you did mention and thank you for your report that many of the students involved in this process are homeless and needy and and in need of support and all of that so how are we doing that because you did also mention that transportation is an issue so how are we managing the food if we send a kid home for 10 days on quarantine how do we make sure they

107e personal Transportation that's fine I think the last that I believe was updated in the board update was is that food and nutrition services was working on a plan to be able to feed those students who are quarantine so I can go back to them and I can ask them where that plan stands and we can update you this week on that yeah that's that's convergent to get us going with that on your number one you talk about social workers we have always had a lack of how are we with the numbers of social workers are we hiring still are we anywhere close to being having one per school what what is happening with them we have hired several additional social workers this year we actually have vacancies and we have interviewed probably 40 to

10845 different individuals so yes we have increased we have a few tier three schools that have an additional social worker working we have a tier3 process in regards they have a targeted selection or targeted group of students and amilies that they work with and go through all of those barriers and things of that nature so yes we have increased our level of capacity greatly for this year have we and that brings up a question to me that if you're hired as a social worker in 2019 you're you have a job description you're hired for as a social worker in 2021 and 22 your job description is very very different have we addressed that as far as during the interview process of how this has changed and what their job really will entail absolutely but I

109can share with you that they are well versed in in these types of things right to begin with so the stretch hasn't been too difficult I think it's more of the sheer volume of of it and then they there's really heartbreaking cases going on trust me I understand okay and then on the connect Lee last year we had a group of volunteers actually from Santa Belle that did reading for students in the East Zone and I'm wondering if we had a community volunteers that would be willing to help with connect with Lee is that a possibility because we could you know come contact them and see if they would be interested in helping in that R yeah so all all of our connect with it's a great idea but all of our connect with Lee

110individuals are certified teachers who are working or working with students one onone okay so I would certainly have to talk with Miss Bruno about the legality of doing all that in an individual setting but more importantly you know are they certified and able to work directly with students okay well I mean this they did it by Zoom MH so it was not that right I remember was reading I believe it was reading to individual students in the in the classroom okay all right thank you and I just want to say for several times I did request a an update or just a meeting so this is very good this is what I think I know that I was looking for it's what the community wanted to hear what are we doing and I you know

111thank our superintendent for making sure that this happened as well and all of you that have worked so hard on making sure that everyone has all the information and just keep it out okay Mrs Patria so on the elementary chomebook thing it's become like a PTSD response for parents when they see their kids walk out of the classroom with the Chromebook they know that they're being quarantined and I know you know I'm being sarcastic and using words that are stronger than the reality of what they're experiencing but I know that these kids are being sent home these guys bring up a good point though about if a kid like I've gotten calls at 6:30 in the morning telling me not to send my kid but my kid's in high school so he already has his

112Chromebook so I guess weighing and measuring I would assume we don't send the elementaries home with them because they're heavy and the damage is more likely to occur with the littles carrying the computers and that kind of thing I guess just weighing and measuring I also know that you know last year for Lee home connect I did a lot of driving around my community dropping off materials to kids who whose parents couldn't drive to the school so is there a way can we put something together like that even if it's calling me and asking me to run to the cape with a Chromebook or whatever that's the first thing and then my final comment is Miss still I have to tell you that you have been the one constant I believe through all of these

113pandemic updates and there is some comfort in that for me knowing that this Common Thread runs through all of it and you're there pulling it all together all day every day for all of us so I wanted to say thank you for that CU I know this isn't technically you know your area of expertise pandemic response and management but you have certainly done a bang up job so thank you we're not done yet no oh no I thought you I know Miss Patria have a question or is that it what I was thinking about no just on the chome just on the Chromebook thing okay Miss janelli mine's a comment too so I'll hold it till the end thank you okay other people with qu with questions okay please continue thank you good afternoon board

114and superintendent for the record Dave nulan executive director Safety and Security we're going to go into mitigation strategies into our health and safety protocol again as you know we've worked with the school district has worked with our Health Care Partners to research and Implement health and safety measures for our students and employees and with that we put together the following protocols in place at our schools again social distancing to the greatest extent possible a mass requirement with an opt out desk facing forward with a flexibility for grouping of students for for learning at the sence seating and seaing charts in order to be able to contact Trace availability of hand sanitizer in key places in the school and students are also encouraged to bring their own teaching and reinforcement of of handwashing and respiratory etiquet

115also The Limited water fountain use instead we are using bottle filling stations and students are encouraged to bring their own water bottle and not allowing visitors on campus during school hours also the isolation rooms at every school for students with covid like symptoms as well we've continued with high frequency clean of common surfaces our positive case triggered cleaning protocols which are followed with when an individual has been diagnosed positive has been our in our vehicles or buildings within 24 hours our regular cleaning of areas where food is prepared stored and served our quarterly air filtration replacement our disinfection of playgrounds at the end of each day and having students wash hands or use hand tizers before and after play and the cleaning and disinfection of school buses after each run in both the morning and

116afternoon session we have the grab and go breakfast and lunch we have the flexibility to to spread students into our other areas of the school to eat the staggered seating in cafeteras to avoid students sitting face to face the wiping down of secondary classroom desks after each class change we are holding our large on large Gatherings like carnivals festivals and dances and there will be no locker room or use during half time time we have the oneway hallways and stairwells and again volunteers will not be allowed on campus during school hours all righty and so all those mitigation strategies remain in place in the schools and two other very important strategies that we are using obviously are testing and vaccine both of these are offered but optional through the district through our partnership with the

117Florida Department of Health we are offering testing to symptomatic students and staff on a daily basis if a parent wishes to have their child tested or a staff member would like to be tested the clinic assistant notifies the do and the do sends a team to the school rapid tests are given and if a student or staff member is negative then a PCR test is done immediately on site and the student or staff member are sent home to await the results of the PCR test just so we can ensure that test was actually negative the hours of testing currently are Monday through Thursday at the schools from 8:00 a.m. until 4 p.m. and on Friday from 8:00 a.m. until noon and the reason for the abbreviated hours on Friday is so we can get those

118PCR tests to the lab so that there isn't a delay in getting the results back as for the mobile vaccine clinic we are hosting that at our schools this week the bus is at North Fort Meers high school and also Bonita Springs Elementary School and in case you didn't hear Yesterday fizer did announce that it plans to submit to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency youth authorization in kiddos 5 ages 5 and through 11 and that means the vaccine may have eua approval sometime around November and as we continue to monitor that we will work with galiso to schedule the mobile clinic at more of our elementary schools as well as the do so families who wish to receive the vaccine would be able to do so right at our school sites and again

119as a reminder the testing and vaccine opportunities are optional and in every situation a parent must be present with their child in order to receive a test or the vaccine question and then before turning it over back over to Dr Savage to find to wrap up the presentation just a reminder no we've shared this with you and we've shared this with our community as much as possible but it Bears sharing one more time for everybody again currently our options for families in addition to face to face we still have available homeschool options a homeschool Flex options which means a student can enroll and home school but then also at the same time take a course or two with Florida Virtual School as well there's always our Charter Schools or with which are still part of

120the Lee County School District system those are always options as well and then we talked enough about connect with Lee but providing that supplemental service during the students during the day and then deep into the hours at night and I put on here as well that there will be an opportunity in November for families to start registering for second semester for Lee virtual school so as we continue to look look at our numbers and we saw today that our numbers have come down from two weeks ago when two weeks ago all of you know we the number of emails we were all receiving from families asking for options because of where we were was a lot obviously that slowed down a little bit because our numbers have come down a little bit so we'll have

121a window of time where families will be able to make a decision about second semester about Le virtual school full-time enrollment that'll be coming up in the beginning of November certainly there'll be a large communication that'll go out through Irma Lancaster and her team to making sure that our community is aware of that opportunity to do that at the semester but I want to share that with you now so you have that information so as you were talking with your individual communities you can make sure that they also understand another opportunity will be coming forth Dr Savage thank you Dr Spyro and thank you to this the team bringing all the information together so to try to kind of pull it all together on this particular slide we're just picking one of the metrics that

122is very specific to our school district the utilization of the Q code for those students who are impacted by the by the co specifically and what you have in front of you is essentially a tiered mitigation recommendation so essentially you'll see the same over the same graph that you had that essentially just charts out all the specific day-by-day number of students with the Q code but then what you have is an overlay with these dotted lines above the dot the red dotted line which is at a 3,000 student level of Q code this would be a recommendation for the highest risk as measured by our school district Q code attendance and essentially in the highest risk strata for this all of our mitigation measures would be deployed I think it's really important to just remind

123that our mitigation measures as as Chief nulan went through it's it you know while masks have gotten the of the attention in reality they are just one of many mitigation efforts and so in this particular recommendation what we'd look is to identify the highest for this highest risk all of the available mitigation measures because what that would demonstrate to us is a massive impact on our school system now what I didn't include in this particular graphic because we but but fully intend to do is to bring back some of the health care data that we also had earlier in the slideshow so one of the things you saw was the hospitalization I think it's really important to reiterate because we've mentioned this many times for the public we have been well aware for the entirety

124of the pandemic that covid has impacted children in a far less pronounced way in terms of the most adverse health impact now while there are many things to to come in terms of what the lifetime impact is on anyone who's contracted covid it is very clear from the evidence that children are impacted far less than say 65 and older demographic population however just the fact that Community transmission occurs just the fact that families can can be spread within their family it's not so much that children being hospitalized is the only Factor U or children being out for attendance it's the impact on the entirety of the community that's why we also showed the Le Health statistics because it's very important to understand that any impact we have on family members particularly families who are in

125high poverty backgrounds in some cases they have an increased number of family members within Close Quarters in in their homes and so they may not be able to protect each other within the home environment where TP where often times the guard comes down so it's really important that we see ourselves as part of a larger Community apparatus that's why it's very important to not just look at the school-based data but also look at the larger context of our Health Care system as if as we know that once like for example the 101 staff bed capacity that diminishes the type of service that our health providers can offer so it's just very important to keep that data at the Forefront but back to where we are on slide 21 with the current mitigation measures over 3,000

126we never crossed that threshold prior to this Delta variant and so you can see very graphically that this is the impact of Delta on our system furthermore this shape also lines up very closely with the he with the Lee Health Data showing their hospitalization numbers as well well so the numbers dramatically climbed during this Delta variant as well so these two Graphics do line up very closely in the middle band between 3,000 and 1,000 you see the moderate risk and on this tiered mitigation recommendation that would allow for the relaxing of particular measures that have such a difficult logistical implementation and possibly a low return on investment U so this is really it's a constant balancing of risk that while we can do many different mitigation measures such as oneway hallways and some of these

127other measures that we have in some cases they are very difficult to implement and may provide very little value all the more reason to engage experts to ensure that whatever we are doing is the best complement of strategies to address the data driven aspect of where we are as a system then the lowest level below the Thousand as you can see we would have the substantially diminished mitigation measures this would be a case where we could significantly relax mitigation measures because while Co may be here at that time it would be having a far less noteworthy impact as measured by our Q absenteeism and so this is something that we have to be thinking about is that while the Delta variant has really made a pretty pronounced impact we may be dealing with covid for

128years that's a possibility and from most of the folks that we've talked to that definitely seems like it is it is in the realm of possibility now hopefully it will become less virulent less damaging in terms of its impact on us but if it's still here there is always that ability especially with seasonally predictable surges that we have to have a more fluid Dynamic method to respond so I also have an example from Indian River where they have taken a similar type of concept and they've only focused on their their in school data as well and they've actually applied this tier-based methodology at the individual School level it's expressed as a percentage so in our particular case if we chose to implement a school-based model it would be as a proportionate shares of the thresholds

129that would be validated by our panel of experts but this gives you a visual that you can see that they are in different schools who are impacted in different ways even in the same Community have the ability to implement a more a more demanding set of expectations of what they must do because it's impacting that individual School community in a more pronounced way with a with a county as big as Lee County and as diverse as Lee County and commitments to safety may be varying in some levels from schools and even potential variance between elementary schools middle schools and high schools and different schools that are bigger have larger classrooms and some that may be more older historic buildings and so forth this is certainly one potential opportunity and so I would say that this

130is something something that you know they are currently implementing in Indian River and that could very easily line up with this piece the difference from our standpoint I'll go ahead and proceed to the next slide on our on our recommendations sorry you can't see it on yep there it is that essentially we want to make our recommendation is to make this not only based on our district absenteeism data but really that local Health provider data as well as such as what you've seen put in there but we really want to make sure that a panel of experts scientific experts and academic experts to really validate those thresholds they should not be arbitrary they should not be you know derived strictly from observation of of these U charts but to really ensure that these thresholds are

131really empirically sound as well as expert driven U driven by that expertise and secondly the associated mitigation while we have a bevy of strategies and they all work in concert it can be very difficult for us as practitioners and non-experts in the health science to be able to say well this one is the one that really did the trick or this is the one that's the most pronounced that's why it's so important for actual scientific Health experts to drive that piece and then for academic experts and folks who have to actually Implement these strategies to understand what the cost is in terms of implementation for us logistically to balance that effect and so the idea would be to quarterly then review these standards and see how our mitigation me measures are performing because this could

132be an ongoing piece and so we'd want to bring this back to the board on a quarterly basis to look at how the schools are performing relative to these mitigation measures to try to learn and ensure that if this is something that we have for years to come that we are adapt we can adapt as needed on that piece as well as have those panels of experts continue to review this the last thing I'll just say is we continue to learn all the time about this if you recall when the pandemic first began you know masks were not even needed in fact they were discouraged that we shouldn't go out and get masks that's not a part of it and then surely within months of that piece all of a sudden that guidance changed initially

133they thought it was all about surface transmission and cleaning of surfaces and that was a predominant way they were concerned about food preparation and things that along those lines then only months later that guidance changed again and stated that in fact the food preparation wasn't nearly as at risk and the and the surface transmission wasn't nearly as high it was much more respiratory born so I think it's just kind of understanding that it's a fluid picture it's always kind of in our mindset having it be data driven and objective that way it's never viewed politically it's always viewed objectively based on this data science data and then a combination of that science as well kind of driving those pieces so with that said we're ready to take questions okay I believe I know Miss gens

134had a question and then miss what go ahead Miss Jordan first all right thank you I had a question regarding the protocols page 16 and 18 how are we ensuring I think Mr nulan had spoke on this the healthy and safety how are we ensuring that the deaths are facing forward and that the kids are facing in One Direction versus sitting across from each other how are we making sure that the schools are doing that actually I like to go ahead and address that one so the expectation certainly is desks are Face Forward unless in a classroom where temporary removal of the desks are needed for Cooperative learning or something of that nature so depending upon the individual teachers teaching teaching strategy that day those desks can be manipulated in the classroom with as social

135distancing as much as possible so we have this written here but we're not expecting everybody to adhere to it when we talk to principles one of the things we said to them was the expectation their desks faced forward but we still wanted to allow teachers because one of the things we heard very loud from our teachers last year where we really missed those opportunities for interventions and enrichments by doing small groups and manipulating the desk so only when only when needed will that furniture be changed in the classroom and then we're back face to face but the normal expectation is face to face forward so when they are in these little quadrum or whatever you want to call them pods do they have the shields then there to where they're protecting each other some some

136teachers some teachers yes do use the shields but one of the things we did learn last year and I'll let Lauren talk a little bit about that when we worked with the Department of Health was the mitigation or lack of mitigation with the shields Lauren the I mean basically what what the suggestion was from the healthcare providers is that they well they may protect to a bit they're not going to prevent quarantining it's more along the lines of what you're doing with the social distancing and making sure that kids are have a seating chart so that we can contact race if they're in those groups that those were more and effective mitigation strategies more effective strategies than having dividers in between all of the kiddos but the dividers are in fact right so the dividers

137are in fact you know available and If schools would them then we would you know we would be able to order them for them if that's what they wanted to do per procurement and operations thank you Mr and then as far as the cafeterias or lunch areas that they're not learning there so that would be something that I would assume that is across the board that we are asking everyone to adhere to the same policy or procedures that we are stating that we're doing and I think that if we're putting it out here we need to make sure that that is being adhered to and then my last question is how many students do we have for Dr Spyro how many students do we have openings for for Lee virtual because I know we had

138to close that off so what is that what does that number look like thank you oh well you don't have to tell me now if you don't know you can yeah that would be great thank you that's it thank you very much just as a response real quick what the cafeteria is you know it does it does a little bit depend on the school and the population and how they can divide out but the whole point of those grab and go breakfast and lunch was to be able to have kids be able to go different places so that we were not packing the cafeteria that they were other alternatives for kids perfect thank you Miss okay Miss gens one of my questions was on slide 18 about the cleaning supplies will be provided to secondary

139students can wipe down the desk I've heard from several teachers at like middle school and Elementary level that being able to wipe down the desk is a challenge and so I don't know how that's done normally in elementary you've got the same group of kids all day so you just do it at the end of the day is that when that's done and how is it going for secondary students are they like given the supplies and required to do it on their way out of the room or or what the way that I know that the way that they did it last year was is that they would clean the desks before they left in secondary and high school and I believe that's the same yes it's the same procedure so they're giv the cleaning

140materials and secondary wipe down the desks and everything before they leave the class prior to the next class coming in okay and then for elementary my understanding is what you said is that they're in there if they need them during the day but they're thoroughly wiped down at the end of the day since those are in cohorts and you don't have a lot of movement around between Elementary classrooms and I know several secondary teachers are saying it's very difficult to do that and a lot of times it's not done because they just you know having time to finish the class and get everybody to wipe it down and blah blah blah so I know that is an issue I want to say for one thing too to DRC Savage about sharing this best practice I'm

141glad to see that we are looking to be more collaborative and look for Best Practices from other districts and other areas we have a lot of good ideas we don't always have all of them or the best and we're only as good as as the improvements and changes so when we collaborate with others we can take those ideas tweak them and make them our own and I really appreciate seeing that is occurring so thank you m Madam chair if I may just I just want to clarify through this piece and just thank you for mentioning that you know one of the things I'll say is just all the districts we're all grappling with this and so there's I'm looking forward to speaking with some of the other superintendant it's the number one item for everyone

142this week is just talking through the various different iterations of how folks are approaching this one thing I do want to clarify on the handout is that their specific tier mitigation addressed masks what we're responding is not really focusing on masks but more about all the mitigation efforts the most you know basically the most restrictive situation of what we need in order to ensure the maximum level of mitigation versus a graduated kind of more surgical mitigation in the Middle where the vast majority of the pandemic we were so really kind of tailoring those strategies down to the lowest level worth diminish mitigation would be you know some of the best practices we've done for years and years is just washing hands we last year during the mitig during the regular pandemic we had basically no

143incidents of flu in terms of the significant issues with flu and that's one of the consequences of more you know just more focus on that particular area so there's a lot of things that we're going to do to help us from a health science standpoint moving forward but what I just want to make sure no one took this specifically anyone who might be listening and kind of sees this and says we're going to copy this method that's all about masks this one looks like it's all about masks but in reality for what we're proposing it's more about being very surgical with our mitigation measures and the complimentary mitigation measures and thank you for that explanation and you know I actually didn't look at the face covering piece I looked at it as matching our medication

144slide but thank you for explaining that and in it's another like I said example of taking something that they had for one purpose and we tweak it and make it something that we can use for our purposes so that's what collaboration is all about thank you okay Miss jelli did you have a question I did just a just a couple things this is actually for regarding the safety so the ventilation how are we changing the AC filters and you know who's doing that in the schools and is there a protocol with that I'll check with the operations I believe each school at individual custodians that are in charge of the filtration systems that get changed out but I will get that answer for you to verify it and get that back to you great thank

145you and then then actually this is through through the chair I I'm curious about now Proms and outdoor events are we allowed to have Proms and are they going to be outdoors and it's kind of a little bit off the topic of this but it's still kind of not sorry I we haven't addressed anything for the spring semesters yet right now we are holding on the large Gatherings and the dances at this moment but we haven't gotten that far to talk that far ahead I don't know Dr Spyro if you no okay so we can add that to our list of things to look at now yeah that I would be I would be curious about that and then I just want to thank you all for this information because it is actually a different

146level absolutely I have to agree with you completely compared to last year so I really appreciate the staff's work on this and it's a better understanding but we also I know we are we're understanding it better this year I think a little bit even though it still caught us off guard with the Delta so I just want to thank staff for out all of this and Dr Savage for putting this forward for us thank you okay this morning so first of all Miss Scot I don't think I've heard you present before you did a terrific job today and I really appreciated the information you brought forward and I think it's really interesting that with Delta even though we pretty much figured out what our situation how to deal with our situation last year it didn't

147help us at all when it came to the situation this year in part because we don't have the same homeschooling options that we had before I'm glad we're doing the data the small sample because one of my questions was do we know by level what the barriers are because we may need we may need to tackle Elementary barriers differently than High School barriers and I think for high school kids part of it might be I would think is access to Le virtual at this point because I know when I was in a high school last year the high performing kids really liked the leh home connect option and I think there would be some migration to lee virtual if we knew what the opportunity was I think the other thing standing in our way is

148that you know last year it was all hands on deck families and schools this year it's just schools on Deck families have gone back to the way it was before because they have to they have no choice they go back to work and if the they can't deal with the kid situation they don't it's you know it's you know to me a lot more complicated for them I do have a question vaccines for kids when you offer the vaccines for kids are you offering to the them to the families as well yes we're actually offering to any they community events so while we're hosting them at the schools galano Children's Hospital is putting the information out there I create a flyer for the schools to send out they send them to all their families and

149so they can do siblings they can do students they can do parents grandparents anyone and then a lot of the schools then are also sharing them with their Community Partners and so they're trying to get the word out in that respect as well so it's anybody that would want to come to be vaccinated could come to the school site to do that yeah I wonder if we ought to be sharing it with City councils and Chambers also but that's great I didn't know that and frankly I'm looking at the chart and essentially what we're saying is in those three levels we're going to use the level two mitigations to tackle the problem with the level three Pro tackle the level three problem I'm really wondering why we're not going back to masks why masks are

150not part of the solution when that is the one difference between that intermediate group and that High group okay other questions clients Miss fer yes so I was reading something the other day regarding a mitigation strategy being keeping your immune system high and they mentioned especially esally for the younger children enough exercise and movement in addition to and I see that we're doing some handwashing and respiratory etiquette that's going to be taught and reinforced so teaching kids how to breathe properly and everything and then I was wondering how are we doing with keeping kids hydrated because that's a very important piece and I know that they're asked to bring their own water bottles and so I was just wondering do we have some idea of how is it really going in schools because I had

151a young boy tell me the other day I wasn't allowed to get fill up my bottle and he had a bottle but I don't know how many kids don't so I'm wondering how we're making sure that these kids are hydrated especially at at the primary and Elementary level I could share with you my firsthand experiences in schools during this year I know the schools that I've been at not only do we see a plethora of students with water bottles but there also have cups available at designated water fountains as well so the schools I were I was in it was part of the norm to make sure students were not were getting water so that they can be hydrated I would be concerned if schools were not allowing students that opportunity and I certainly would

152want to know that because we want to make sure we educate the importance of hydration and actually how it's connected to learning as well absolutely okay thank you very much Miss fiser if I may add to that response also I just want kind of validate something we have not discussed here quite a bit and that is the importance of building up the immune system and wellness one of the things that we have not really spoken enough about is when students are rested when they are hydrated when they're getting plenty of exercise one of the things that we know is that a lot of the comorbidities and some of those things can't be that dramatically increases risk really for any of the age populations relative this impact we've had folks come to our polyes talk about

153vitamins and things along those lines when in a health with a healthy immune system even though it doesn't make it impervious to to this pie all those things help and certainly anything we can do to assist that and I think just part of our campaign whether it's through social media whether it's through pushing out School wellness events especially in light of the fact that right now the mental health situation that's impacting our community is really having such a pronounced effect as well so thank you for bringing that up and giving us a chance to dial because I know we did not bring that up as a specific targeted mitigation right and that's why I'm continuing to advocate for the Comprehensive Health education which includes nutrition exercise all of that so that we do mitigate people

154having those C morbidities we have far too many kids who have asthma diabetes obesity and if we can do anything to impact that I think we're in the future we'll be having kids who are more likely to be able to handle the exposure to different viruses thank you Miss skitt I had a question one of the reasons I think we all had been asking for updates like this was to see the data and I know you mentioned on some of the slides that for example the doe had increased staff and things like that are we keeping data enough to be able to give us some I know we can't be crystal clear but some idea of how each mitigation is helping or increasing because I know we had talked about for one the backlog of

155the reports and the backlog of reporting from doe to our system or whatever as that increased and we added more staff and they added more staff is there a data that kind of can give us some idea that this mitigation is helping or is it just all one big I can try to take a stab at this and then some of our other data folks over here on the other side can try to help as well so the one of the challenges we had and why it was difficult for us initially was because we our system was essentially overwhelmed we were encountering the peak of that mountain as you were seeing right as school was starting so we really saw a rapid escalation far far beyond any numbers that we had experienced at any point

156prior during the pandemic so it completely overwhelmed our systems in the sense that and it diminished our ability to get valid data right out of the gate and so while we had the access to the Health Care System data that really demonstrated to us the impact that it was having during the seasonal surge so that's something that's really important to distinguish here is that while we saw the increase in our school system it really mirrored the seasonal Surge and so it isn't necessarily been attributed to anything we are doing or not doing in the schools it's very difficult to discern and separate from that seasonal surge that you see within your community and it has different impacts within different age bands as well so for us it's looking at all of it looking for what

157those patterns can tell us unfortunately as it as it pertains to the complement of strategies that we deployed it would be very difficult with the existing data that we have to be able to discern what specific strategy had what impact we sometimes depend on studying other systems that have chosen very specific strategies to implement and kind of looking at them longitudinally and that's something that we have to do and continue to do through the pandemic is there anything I'm missing on that for the team on the other side the only other thing I was going to mention to your point miss gettens about just collecting data is maybe a clearance rate for the cirs that are coming in that we may be able to start looking at that in order to help I do know

158in talking with the do yesterday they have put in a budget our local do to add 42 additional people to help with contact tracing and testing in schools and so they're looking at hiring 15 epidemiologists 16 support staff two RNs four LPN and five CNAs and all those would be designated to the school district to help clear more quickly and then last week when I was on the call with them it appears that we are doing a good job of catching up because when I talked to them and Dr Savage was on that call about 12:15 and we were on that call they had already assigned all of the cir cases that had come into us to their investigators for that day so everybody's definitely we've made some good strides in in that but we

159certainly can look at some of those clearance rates maybe and get some data surrounding that even what you just said those numbers they're hiring this number and that number is an excellent point to put out for the public to see because it says that we were way behind they see the do HCS that we needed to add this number of people and it's it's a Concrete number I mean we have said it up up and down all the time that you know they're behind they're behind but to actually see they're hiring this number and this number and this number says yes there was a need and it is being taken care of yep and those funds were just there they're waiting on the funds to come they're waiting on the check is in the mail

160as they say to be able to get those folks so we've known for a while and they've been working on it data numbers and saying they're hiring this many I think would put some people at ease that we are doing andly working with them and they're doing more and my understanding from our part is that we have hired our first clerk typist to help staff the covid room and I believe in the next Tam correct me if wrong week or two weeks we'll have the other three so that we'll also have those four positions that we were going to look at hired as extra support staff on our end as well okay and it's getting it's just a reminder to wait till you're recognized thank you oh just a reminder anybody else Miss Patria so

161thank you Miss scottt I learned new things about the breakdown of our absences for students today perhaps in the future we could have some kind of a breakdown now that we're collecting staff absent information along with what staff from the district is being pushed out to schools that might be helpful for us to figure out from a staffing level where we are I do have to say beyond that I didn't learn a whole bunch new today I mean I knew what mitigation measures we have in place on slide 21 how did we determine where to draw those lines this is just an example of how we would do this we want to have it vetted by experts what it does it charted longitud the Peaks and The Valleys essentially through the life of our Q

162transmission and so it's based on standard deviation medium range then it's just shifted to the numbers that you see there in front of you okay so we kind of randomly Drew lines on a on a graph and that's not informative to me I've got some some questions in terms of the ranking of the mitigation measures I expected to receive some of that information today what are the most effective mitigation measures what are the ones we can do away with right now because they're ineffective and too difficult to to implement for example the oneway hallways I've heard they're useless but I don't know that I'm not in a position to to know whether they're remotely effective at all so I expected to to hear some kind of a ranking of mitigation measures today and doing away

163with the ones that just don't work in terms of buses I've heard a lot of criticism of not opening the windows on buses we can all hear the rain right now and we all know the reason why we can't open bus windows at this time a year is because of a lot of rain in addition short turnaround time between routes I think makes it difficult for a bus driver to both clean the bus and open and close windows based on weather is there any other reason why school bus couldn't have an open windows or have I covered the challenges there I believe you're correct I think the other piece is just say from a safety standpoint of things moving in and out of those windows whether out of the vehicle or into the vehicle as

164well but certainly the oxygen standpoint just getting more fresh air is a positive measure and that's where folks are doing it down here it's it you know that's there are also though issues with asmatic issues where students having it introduced just from my recollection from as Mr Lloyd explained to me that that it introduces other issues too as well as having those those those windows open okay so vaccination encouragement for staff I am hearing R more and more often that the staff that is in schools and that is assuming more and more students in their classrooms because unvaccinated staff are being quarantined are really being taxed and the burnout rate is really really high yet we are paying unvaccinated employees for at least one quarantine and that doesn't make a lot of sense to me

165it seems to me that we should be encouraging vaccination through through incentive pay and by not providing quarantine or sick pay for unvaccinated people who have to be out of the school for a period of time frequently repeatedly so I have concerns about that as we work with our bargaining units I can't approve anou that doesn't include some kind of incentive pay for a vaccine and only provides sick or quarantine covid pay for vaccinated individuals why can't a parent remove a kid a student from Lee home I'm sorry from the home school put them in in Lee virtual and maintain that tie to their home school is that a state law is that a district thing can why can't I for example if I if I look at my school and I'm I'm concerned about

166high covid spread in my school and I decide I want to homeschool and use connect with Lee until numbers go down why do I have to remove my child from pinewoods elementary school for example why can't I stay tied to that school and then return to that school when when spread is less and I feel more comfortable sending my child back to school my understanding is that you can remain that you don't have that option removed if you can but Dr Spyro do you know if top your head on this one this one I I thought we discussed that they actually don't lose the ability if they choose to go home school that they are able to preserve that Association of the school but Dr Spyro thank you I want to be clear we cannot

167leave just use connect with Lee connect with Lee is supplemental learning it's not synchronous It's homework help however our current student enrollment plan does allow for a student if they leave a school and then they come back they allowed to go back to that school in which they were last assigned at so even through our own student enrollment plan it is possible for student to enroll enroll in home school and then when they come back they are permitted to enroll back into their last assigned school all right so that's an area of big misinformation out there for parents parents want to you know pull their kid out and homeschool them and I know connect with Lee is not is not schooling but homeschool with home connect as a supplement to that but they're afraid they're

168going to lose their seat in their Beloved School and that's not being clearly communicated to parents cuz a lot of parents are continuing to do that because of the fear of of losing their spot if I'm making sense and you are making clear sense yes understood okay and we're going to need to to keep on schedule wind this down in okay I only had one turn to talk and others had multiple exuse me talking over me what I'm going to say is in the next five five minutes so Miss Patria go ahead and finish out thank you whatever you have to ask have we thought about mobile vaccination units at some of our bigger football games like I know that there are some schools when they play each other they sell out and there's massive

169tons of people and we could be advertising that in those communities and working with Lee Health to get that done I'm a little concerned with quarterly updates on this Dr Savage especially in the beginning I don't know that we have first of all I didn't I didn't really learn anything new today so when we have new information in terms of you know ranking of mitigation measures and having those lines on slide 21 be actual lines Based on data and expert feedback and decisions like that I'd like an update on that as soon as possible and then you know during times of high spread I think that committee should be meeting more frequently and the board should be updated and the community should be updated more frequently quarterly sounds kind of random and certainly at this

170point not frequent enough and finally there is definitely a lack of consistency I think I heard Ms Jordan sort of allude to this with the deaths all facing the same way I suspect that you've probably been somewhere where you've seen that's not occurring I've been to a lot of places is where I've seen that a lot of these measures are not taking place and I'm not going to throw any specific School under the bus but there is there is a signif a significant lack of consistency in terms of the implementation of these measures which is why I think it's important to rank them as soon as possible so that we're not making them do things that are really ineffective those are my comments for now I will finish my comments during my board member comments

171okay and I have a couple things that I want to say first of all I want to say what Miss Morgan said U Miss Scott I thought you did an excellent excellent job secondly one of the things you know I congratulate Mrs Patria on being so well informed on everything that she didn't learn anything I did learn some things and I feel like one of the functions that we have here the board is for the public to have these presentations for their benefit as well and I hopefully we don't have a huge audience today but we tend to have some pretty good numbers that watch these presentations and in including School staff and so many people so I think that you know we it's it's like when I learned today and it's kind of like

172sometimes when I hear an academic presentation because of my background in academics for so long I don't learn a lot but that doesn't mean that I don't learn something I think also this has been an excellent excellent day for presentations from the earlier presentation with as I call it the One-Stop shopping with as we're as we're building that into into our website I think we've actually had some excellent suggestions food for thought that was put out by board members that's always important to gather our Insight and on this particular the health and safety protocols everybody who's ever listened to me at a board meeting you know where I sit on this but this has been this year staff including everybody at District our support staff our teachers our principes and a superintendent who's been on

173the job for only a few months brand new superintendent you've had much heavier lifting to do what you're doing this year than the previous administration because with the previous administration we had the full cooperation we had that mandate from Governor DeSantis it's to me somewhat ironic that this year when we actually had a huge spread of much deadlier or more virulent I will say the Delta variant that we didn't have anywhere close to the options and that whole option last year when we were allowed to have the home connect not only did it connect the students whose parents wanted them to remain home but it enabled at the beginning of the school year for us to have much fewer many fewer students in the classrooms and I want to add one more comment about inconsistency

174this isn't new this isn't new that there's an inconsistency among schools in following things on covid ever since I've been on the board and I'm going to look right at Dr Spyro because he and I have had conversations about academics and what's done in one school or the next ever since I've been on this board through the previous administration and this one as well there has been a lot lack of consistency and it is my personal feeling that we need to get a better handle on that but that's for another day so we are exactly oh exactly on time we still have public comment and we have board member comment but I'm going to call for a just five minute break and as soon as we come back we're going to jump into the public

175comment and then finally the board member comment so thank you five minutes e e e okay if everyone will take his or her seat please we are after minute break we are reconvening this board briefing and we are at the point now of public comment Mrs depri Bruno will you please read the information on public comment thank you School Board policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter from this meeting's agenda if you completed a card please make sure you put it in the basket if you need one please advise the rules concerning public comment are posted and the comments will be made in the back where the central microphone is please be advised that the board does not respond during public comment speakers and those

176attending to speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of public comment is to provide feedback on today's agenda personal attacks on individuals or abusive of language are prohibited in addition clapping hissing and booing unreasonably loud and or offensive language swearing cursing or display of temper are prohibited speakers who fail to follow proper Decor in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone the time per speaker is 3 minutes you will find the countdown on the big screens in the front of the room once your time has elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off we encourage you to address the board as a whole versus individual board members as they act as a collective

177body please state your name prior to making your comment Madame Vice chair we have three individuals who would like to make a comment okay is there anyone else in the auditorium who has not had the opportunity to fill out a card who would like to speak okay so let's proceed with those three will the following individuals please line up Denise Nystrom Christine delli and Tara Jenner nice I minut it's not on h we having technical issues okay thanks for your patience I have to hello hello Denise nrom with regard to the parents Bill of Rights I think in a nutshell this is what I am saying the parents have not adequately been made aware of what the parents right bill says there is no opt in nor an opt out which takes into account everything

178that is in that law this is not just about sex education within the framework of the health education curriculum at the very least have teachers sign an oath that they will not teach morality that they will not discuss things that pertain to Medical freedoms because it is a fact that they are kids are being mask shamed every day kids are being shown videos that they should be vaccinated critical race theory is being taught another subject so what I'm saying is I understand that you need to pass that policy but that policy in and of itself is inadequate will you please put on the web link that was so nicely created an opt out or an opt-in form that encompasses all of the parents right to Bill and since we are talking about masks The District

1793 board member who pleaded please please please make the kids wear masks then when on beach radio stood 2 feet from other people maskless showed up at a football game maskless when it was rumored that all of her sons had covid and played in the football game I did not call any names I know but you're talking about excuse me hold on stop the clock stop the clock pause Miss NE I understand you didn't pull anybody's name but we're not going to talk about anybody's children either stop I'm talking about anybody's children I'm not talking about anybody's children in fact what I'm talking about is a lose lose for a superintendent that has tried to bring more ethics and integrity to this District in 10 weeks than it has seen in 5 years and is

180continued to be thrown under the bus by a particular District 3 board member so I am asking the board please please please stop addressing the superintendent in public like this and I want to thank Dr Savage even though I don't always agree with him thank you Dr Savage for the hard work that you are doing it is truly appreciated and I am tired of the games that go on this board and the few people on this board that have the Integrity to stand up to the other people that will not stop playing these games enough can everybody hear that's listening enough District three board member enough Christy Dil what I have to say is going to be a walk in the park compared to that so I'd like to start by saying I think it's

181counterproductive when you guys take consensus before hearing from the public how can you possibly make sound decisions without first hearing from your constituents if you're care if you cared at all about what parents and community members think consensus would only ever occur after public comment is heard in regards to policy 2.62 we shouldn't even be discussing opt out forms because everything outside the realm of Scholastic education should be opt in in my interpretation of the statute I would argue that the board has more Authority than they'd like to admit in changing that option for parents however seeing as that right has never been afforded to us parents every opt out form should be available in the beginning of every year and there should be more than just health related opt out forms available in regards

182to lines 65 through 67 it says any school district employee who encourages or courses or attempts to encourage or course A minor child into withholding information from his or her parent may be subject to disciplinary action why on Earth is the language May included in this item without stronger language what is really stopping Rogue employees from encouraging my child to withhold information from me please replace the word may with the word will immediately lines 93 through 94 parents shall have the opportunity to learn about the nature and purpose of clubs and activities offered at his or her minor child's school let me rephrase that for you parents shall have the opportunity to learn about the nature and purpose of clubs and activities offered at his or her minor child School written parental consent must be

183obtained prior to his or her minor child's participation in any club or activity lines 107 and 120 the district will inform parents how to inspect instructional materials what is the Practical process for parents to exercise this right and where is it made available to parents just last week I spoke with Dr Spyro and his team I asked them how I as the parent am able to express or exercise my right to inspect the instructional materials being taught to my daughter in a specific class at her school I had a very simple request which should have been easy to accommodate yet it has been a week and I have I have heard nothing from him or anyone else in his office what good is this policy if it's missing the practical application for parents to exercise

184their rights I don't even know where to begin with mitigation measures the attendance tracking method was extremely inaccurate which makes the data in the whole presentation off and it is extremely misleading and the slide with the proposed mitigation measure regarding face coverings every color in including red needs to include parent opt out nothing changes the rights of parents nothing they are our rights and we will defend them legally if necessary car Jenner I looked at the statute on the parents's Bill of Rights and I know that uses the language opt out but there's nothing in there that says that you can't also have an optin in order to make it clear and make sure that the parents are actively involved in the education of their children which you should be doing because if not you're

185taking on that role you need to push that role back where it belongs even to those that are not that interested in being involved you need to offer both an optin and an opt out clause in order to make sure that you get information from each and every parent to ensure that they've actually read through it one of the things that I was concerned with also was the bit about access to information the statute actually talks about this 10day time period and so does your policy and it talks about how you have to go to a particular Forum in order to get Remediation in the event that it's not complied with that's in the event there's a failure on the part of the school to give that information in the first place so I highly

186encourage you to make what Miss Vil said make that information accessible up front so that there's no need for that mitigation language at all the other thing that I wanted to talk about specifically just real quickly anybody who does those slides please stop using yellow orange and green those of us that are color blind it really screws us over we can't tell the difference between them the other thing that I would like to talk about is the issue that's mentioned with home education I spoke briefly with Mr Spyro Dr Spyro during the break home education is not the default please stop turfing everybody over there it's it's it's just not acceptable it's sort of bantered about very flippantly just in the past 14 days the number of people who've signed up for home education has

187jumped 575 students just by way of information when I started home educating 17 years ago there were only 650 students and we have the same number of Staff members in that department as we did then I have sent a letter through to you Dr Savage and this time I've resubmitted it because the last time one of your staff members sent it back to homeed to decide that wasn't terribly helpful so this time I also copied it to U Mr doic because it's an HR issue there are some serious concerns there also attorney Bruno dealing with privacy concerns having open Bay cubicles when people are discussing intimate details regarding their children children we used to have a private office and that's not there anymore and we have compliance issues you're looking at liability concerns for the

188district it's currently untenable the only good thing I can say is with the children facing forward in the classrooms you're actually giving them an opportunity to have binocular vision and stereo hearing which from a cognitive standpoint is a bonus and should probably stay even after Co is gone thank you okay thank you to three ladies who who spoke we do listen to your comments as as a former teacher I do want to make one comment about the optin and this is separate from the idea of opt out which is part of the statute it's really a very impractical thing to have an opt in so for instance and it becomes that much more difficult if you're teaching in secondary school and have 100 150 students and so let's say there's something an issue where it's

189been deemed that if parents do not want their child to be a part of it they opt out think about the amount of paperwork if you do an op in for everything there's going to be a lot of teachers that you know a lot a lot of parents that for whatever reason don't sign it or don't see it I think many times that the parents that come here to speak do it through the lens of their own personal experience as as parents but I want all of you to keep in mind that we serve students that are in foster care homeless students students that maybe just have one parent at home that's working two or three jobs and maybe the level of care that you would give to your own child doesn't mean they love

190the child less but wouldn't be there so there's there's just the way I see it and this is my personal view on it and I think this is a good reason why it's impractical the amount of paperwork that would be involved and the things that would fall through the cracks if you were doing an opt in for everything instead of an opt out and I'm sure if any of you want to email me about that's certainly an option okay so we're going to move to board member comments and did you have a question Miss okay I just are you volunteering to go first yes ma'am all right will you go first then thank you very much it has been brought to my attention through phone calls and messages and texts and conversations that all over

191the district that some board members are going to be asking the superintendent to resign because of insubordination so I just want to get it out there and I want to read from you can follow me on okay Schoolboard power the authority of the school board policy 1.03 you can follow along starting on line 23 the school board of Lee County should not be bound in any way to any action on the part of an individual board member or an employee except when such statement or action is in compliance with the collective public action of the board the superintendent school board attorney Schoolboard internal auditor shall take Direction only from the School Board not an individual member neither the board nor individual board members shall give direction to District staff the reason I'm reading that is

192I think that this is we are wasting so much time and energy because some people do not like the person that we collectively as a board put in charge and I have to go along with some of the comments that were made I think it's time to stop we have children to educate we have communities to to nurture and to get involved we have to you know look for the permanent superintendent there's a lot of work that we have to do and taking time to just I don't know constantly be looking for reasons why it's becoming very nitpicky and it's interesting I have on my book that I keep my notes in and there are scriptures on it and what was interesting I turned to today and it said kind words are like honey sweet

193to the soul and healthy to the body Proverbs 1624 I think we need to all think about that try to look at how we can work together again we are looking to hire a superintendent in the midst of a pandemic in the midst of possibly having them run for office in two years there's a lot of stuff going on that we don't need to create more issues now I've brought this up before and I wrote an email I think it's about a week or so ago because one of the board members Miss Patria had again given a directive to the board attorney to do something and no one else was asked about it no one else discussed it when I was the chair in 201819 I was constantly told you do nothing without permission of

194all the board okay remember that Miss fiser reminded me consistently of that and we all must be treated the same way if it was good enough to tell me then it's good enough to tell everyone else that's in this position we've got to stop the divisiveness and the gotas and all that trust me I've gone through it for three years we got to stop it and when people are saying well you know we're all one board and we're not we are not period it is very clear it is very open and here is the policy we're always told follow the rules policy 1.03 says we have to all decide on this and my concern I was glad to see actually the email from U Miss vaugh because obviously there's all kind of undertones going on

195and groups getting together and deciding do we have the votes and can we do that stop it's illegal it's against sunshine to make a decision of what's going to happen we have a superintendent for however long that is the rights and responsibilities and the respect and that not only goes for the board but staff that are doing the same thing he is here until someone else sits in that seat and I don't have this on my notes I don't know I just prayed and this is what came out but guys we really we need to move on we are not making ourselves look good at all if I were someone looking to come to this District seriously if I were looking to work as a staff member here and all of this is going on

196I've been on the board for three going on a little over three years but I've also been in this district for a long time and I know how it works and it's got to stop somewhere sometime somehow someone and I'll give you one quick thing when I was talking I had my one-on-one with Mr Collins this morning and he said what is something that you're looking for in a superintendent I said someone who has strong enough backbone to deal and say this is what we're doing you may like it you may not like it but this is what we're doing today and if there's no policy that says we can't this is what we're doing we need a leader and right now we have a leader and we need to listen to what the leader

197is saying if that was the case then we shouldn't have put him in but he's there what are we teaching children that if you don't like something you stomp your feet and you gather people behind you we've got to stop I'll stop preaching that's my sermon at but I really believe we need to look at policies there is no policy that says and I've heard Miss Patria several times I want to see this report I want to see that in 2019 when I asked for stuff like that I was told clearly you have to get the board's approval to get that report so I think we need to do that for for everyone thank you thank you okay Miss and please a reminder no please do not call out from the Auditorium okay Miss Jordan

198okay let's see well I wanted to let on the later note I've contacted Mr Lee regarding the coaching and I asked them to send us forward some information that we could bring back and have a vote on it that was for them to council the board so and that was asking me to do so I wanted to let you know that RSM I'm still waiting to hear back from them so that's those two things that I have been asked to do so I'm following up on that and I know Miss janelli hasn't been here and I know you were wanted to talk about committee assignments so I don't know if this is an appropriate time or to to speak on that yeah go go ahead if you have information to share so and I know

199Miss McClung is here as well because I asked her if she could be here so that way if you wanted to get on one of these other committees that we could have that conversation and because I'm willing to give you a curriculum I have I have enough to do so that would be I would love to let you have that if that's something that you would like to do I'll take it easy done you're done okay thank you Miss mclan so then I'll keep the insurance task force and curriculum yes thank you perfect thank you and you'll just bring back the information the first meeting is coming up oh yeah I need the dates okay we'll let you know thank you okay so and then that was easy okay so then the next one is

200I brought this up yesterday about the associate associate principle and I wanted to bring it back again we I was just a little bit concerned because I'm not sure if we if the process has been followed I was told that it had been followed but going when I looked at the ltad manual I just want to make sure that in the process of the associate principle that all of this had been U done as far as all the people that are supposed to be engaging in this process have had a meeting prior to the associate principal being named and I'm not sure who can answer that question because it can ask it we can yeah we can make sure to get a full answer to that you said from the specifically from a manual talking

201from HR the HR manual the process yes okay so we'll we'll we can certainly get a response back on that of what what was followed in that piece I haven't been directly I've only kind of peripherally involved so to my knowledge there has been some I was on awareness that was asked yesterday so we make sure we can get you an inw written response to that thank you and Dr Savage you would have been involved in it based on the criteria of who supposed to be engaged you are one of those people that should have been engaged in this process there is multiple people that should have been a part of this so that's why I want to make sure that all of that had taken place prior to and this is coming up tomorrow

202or actually it's coming up tonight peripherally that's why I mean there's definitely some awareness of it but I could definitely I just wouldn't want to capture and speak for every step that's happened in reporting it to you but definitely there's been some involvement of myself just the awareness of when the timeline and some of those pieces but I just wouldn't I wouldn't be able to speak to every detail of that piece but we can get you a comprehensive answer to that okay because as I said and everybody's talking about the process we need to make sure that we're adherent to processing policies and this is a whole process of what is supposed to be taking place for that Madam chair can I just make one quick comment on what she saying let please go go

203ahead and finish M Jordan and then just hold on and then okay thank you and then my next item would be to if I may through the chair regarding the letter that we received and the Matrix system I would have loved for Miss Harold to have been here to explain that metric system to us on how we come up with the pay but when I looked at what we sign as a board and this is February 2021 and the market rate schedule it clearly states on here funding is not available to support moving positions to the market rate for fy21 and then parentheses 2020 through 2021 school year and that is signed by us and approved by the board so I'm trying to figure out how are we looking at and then I looked at

204the rates as well the market rate for executive position is I'm sorry the 128 is the maximum rate it's not the minimum rate it's the maximum rate for executive position and then it says the medium rate is 153 where the medium rate is 136 not 156 and that you will be hiring people at 162 for those rates so if I could clarify on that absolutely so I think there's a bunch of things kind of being kind of jumbled up here so I'm going to try to clean that piece up so we have kind of administrative salary schedule specifically related to our executive we had an executive pay study back in 2018 that gave us kind of our current iteration of our current system that system is what we've used all of the jobs that we

205have kind of fall within that piece and it kind of predetermines the specific memo the reason why it was issued was had actually to do with actually assigning a pay value to a newly hired staff So what had occurred was I was reviewing the executive pay and how it was essentially applied and then I was expected to authorize and sign a document that would have essentially placed a person on the pay scale but the nature of how it was being implemented by the executive director at the time which was Miss Harold who who attempted to kind of implement this process what it uncovered was some significant issues so and to me it was a just a total lack of transparency in the way that the system was being applied and so I did a thorough

206review of the entire executive pay I also went through and what miss her was able to find was a blank Matrix the blank Matrix did not have an Associated rubric and what I asked about recently applied where they had allegedly taken the Matrix and applied to then create an output that would have a person and their actual salary level they could not find examples of that form being actually applied to any of the recent hires the concern there is that when digging upon that piece in inquiring it was understood that a single individual would essentially place a person's pay so essentially a single individual would attempt to take purportedly a form then again there wasn't evidence that this form had actually been completed and then the output would be a person and the rate of

207pay so the reason why I had to get involved in this and the whole reason for commissioning the memo was because I couldn't defend a process that lacked that type of transparency so while we say we have a range and so forth and all those ranges were observed so just to clarify the median was that midpoint what you saw what you referenc in the discrepancy between those numbers is the the bottom level of that scale the challenge with the way it was presented in the executive manual is that it portrayed as if a chief could be anywhere from that minimum level that you mentioned all the way up to the maximum but when pulling those actual data nearly every Chief was very close to the maximum value so if if it had been applied the

208way it was meth the methodology that was being portrayed and there was no corresponding process document to actually explain in detail specifically how that Matrix was to be used and so the methods were being used were certainly not empirical and they weren't at all rooted in the same methodology that was even applied in the executive study so in in rather than me arbitrarily and capriciously picking someone's value and then being stuck having to defend something that I simply could not defend I had to instead make it transparent so that there'd be a clear awareness that until at which point it can be deeply and thoroughly reviewed and a more defensible methodology applied utilizing the same information I could not because essentially I was going to have to just pick a number and say this is

209how much we're going to pay you and on what basis could I do that and so I wanted to use based on past applications of how this was done so prior ones were done what this also necessitated was I pulled the payroll report so I could see the full gamut of how this was done what I found was that there were executive directors who inexplicably were being paid less than directors even and this type of vast discrepancy in spite of the fact of the vast purview of what they had to do just did not reconcile with any kind of basic judgment relative to this piece and so for me I had to memor Alize this in a memo that I wanted to share with the board because otherwise people could not have received their pay

210because there wasn't a clear transparent process by which this could be applied and I just felt that if I were making that judgment on my own people would call into question how did you determine how to pay this so I shared the method and all that piece with everyone transparently and not just with you but the entire cabinet the entire Chief's an awareness of the pay Equity issues that we experienced all of this is being done within the budgeted positions so this isn't asking for additional money or anything along those lines it's simply acknowledging where within the ranges and the associated piece to that now that said I did take all of the information from the executive pay that was done in 2018 I took all of those values and put and put them into

211a spreadsheet so I could do additional quantitative analysis of these aspects as well just to gain deeper understanding into some of this work and so I did uncover again additional concerns with the way that it that these values were derived and that includes both the analysis of all the other the districts how they had had their senior staff memorialized into how these were picked as well as through the ER as well so I'm I look forward to more conversation on that but what I really wanted to do was have an independent third party with expertise in this particular area unpack this a little bit deeper in the meantime I needed a way to be able to compensate people otherwise could not hire anyone for any of those positions because there would be no defensible mechanism

212by which to apply it so I hope that answers the immediacy of why I needed to have a memo in place to so that people could actually be paid for the work they're doing but I was very careful in the memo to also not imply that people would be overpaid or underpaid that after a more thorough review by folks who could could make sure that it is doesn't lack transparency that this could be done fairly for all people involved but does that not constitute like are we violating labor laws because when you're bringing in this executive at the maximum where are they to go what happens in a year from now there's nowhere for them to go because now you've just brought them in at the same level that you're bringing somebody that has been

213here two three years and now we're bringing you in and you're going to make the same amount because that's what you're starting them off at the maximum yeah I can answer that so essentially there were three Executives that weren't being paid at the maximum that was that was one of the first things that caught my attention Miss Jordan was that all of the executives were paid at the maximum with the exception of three and I could not find any discernable criteria based on how those scores were derived that those three individuals who are already existing staff why they were not paid also at that maximum level or any record of how they derived where they were placed in terms of that salary range so that's part of the concern was that ensuring that we didn't

214have an indefensible model so it's not as if there was this vast range and folks were here and here it was everyone was at the ceiling effect of it and the folks who weren't there wasn't a record of how that was derived to that I could defend so placing anyone at that level by placing everyone at that level that ensured that there was equity in the sense that all of them were placed consistent with where the vast majority of those positions were already why that wasn't done in the chief situation was similarly had we applied the model then inevitably we would have priced a person far below what the other chiefs were making so instead we went to the minimum value as the lowest paid Chief and that's where we landed from that piece so

215that there wasn't anyone who would be brought in at a lower value with a with a methodology that I could not defend just lack total transparency so can and this is probably much longer than this meeting could be so the medium is again for the Chiefs is 153 but on here the minimum is 136 and that's this is what again this is our administrative salary schedule that we as the board this decided that we were going to go by and that you're starting them at 162 yes which is the minimum so the range what you're seeing is a is those are those are statistical measures of the range in terms of How It's actually applied so that where people are actually being paid that 162 is the minimum Chief level that's currently been applied so

216essentially what this will do is create pay Equity that any person hired at that level will be hired at that minimum value which is consistent the idea of not placing them lower than that with an indefensible methodology does that make do you does that make sense okay so this is new hires and this takes this is supposed to take in effect now but you just said that you've looked and there were three who were not making it so the new hires are coming in and making more than the ones no who have been here in terms of the chief level there are none lower all of them were set at the minimum value in the executive level we did is create the equity where all of the levels of executive are paid at the same

217level of compensation because all of the executives other than three were already placed at that maximum value and again there wasn't a clear defensible record of how those were derived the whole point of this was that when a person's hired there's a there's a sheet that corresponds to it and essentially says here's what this person's supposed to pay so that when the payroll setup they understand how much they're going to pay that individual essentially there's the HR Director signs it the HR Chief signs it and then the superintendent signs it and so for me to rely on that value I had this presented to me and that was part of you know what was evident was that there was a there was a there was a major discrepancy in how this was being applied that

218caused Great concern to me well I don't think that Miss Harold had anything because she was not in that position to do that but I guess my big concern is the fact that we sign this agreement my name's on there right that says funding is not available to support moving positions to the market rate for fy21 2020 to 20 21 but yet you're saying we just did that no that's not what this is so the additional market rate analysis to try to bring more positions into market rate accounts for a fact if you're adjusting positions that are potentially of of a unknown cost differential may come down may come up that we didn't engage in that work and I think it was referring specifically like School leaders and so forth this is all within already

219approved this isn't shifting anyone to a different rate this is to to un to to unknown rates as the market analysis does this is existing rates it's simply acknowledging that the range that is approved and it's still within that range this is just clarifying how those numbers were placed okay well I just I have an issue when we're so concerned with just schedule M and then we have all these other people that I feel like we're back when we first started here years ago and I just want to make sure that my name is on this document that it's it's understood what we're what we're doing okay and and if I may I know Miss Morgan brought up yes yesterday at at the workshop this issue and we said well we'll wait till Dr Savage

220comes and he can but I think we have a lot of things here that are unresolved and he does a great job of explaining but there's there's a lot for us to take in and we're not all looking at the same data and all of that so Miss Jordan were you able to or have you did you intend to see about putting this topic ASAP on on an agenda that we can I think that we all need to understand because when I saw that my signature was on this that was a concern to me that we're saying that one thing and then all these numbers that I've looking at so I do have concerns about I think I think probably all of us have concerns but what I'm saying here is that instead of Peace

221meal well my concerns this I think we all do have concerns and I think it's very legitimate what you're bringing up that we actually need to get on an agenda where I know Dr Savage has sent the memo out but a PowerPoint something we can be looking at in front of us and you know in instead of people's names you know Miss Jones Mr Smith Mr millotti whatever and to me that's the only way we're really going to be able to understand it and all of us having that it's the what did you say it's the manual the executive pay manual in front of us and so that we can all once consider this but it's it's such an important that's fine I mean everybody's willing to if they if people want to have a

222it com it's important my comment about it is I recall all of this very clearly back in 2018 when the executive pay scale was done and I sat in a one-on-one meeting with the superintendent and Dr puit and they had what they told me was this matri tricks that was to be used I asked in that meeting can I please have a copy of that I was told no it's still in the formation phase and they both told me that and when we finish it then you'll get a copy I asked repeatedly several times and I never received it I don't know if anyone else did but I never saw it and I asked you can go back and watch meetings where is the plan where is the Matrix well we're still working on it

223was not transparent and then two weeks later there were executive pay raises that we were not aware of at least I wasn't and I was the chair so my point is it was not transparent if if Dr Savage has you know Unearthed all of this information and still hasn't found it we never got it so and I the other thing I want to say on the other comment you were making about the associate principal we were told and I remember because I fought it I didn't think we needed another level but we were told that there were only going to be two as a trial situation to see how it works neither of those two have lasted through through their time period to go in to give us any type of information or data as

224to whether this is something necessary or unnecessary and the situation with the one on the agenda tonight is tricky because my understanding is you had APS at that school and you're bringing in someone else from outside is just I I really don't know understand that I don't understand why one of the ones that have been there which is the whole purpose of preparing someone to know those schools and know the building I don't understand bringing in someone else okay so I'm going to call a halt to this discussion because this is a very important discussion that we need to as I as I mentioned we need to have the manual in front of us need to see the Matrix which apparently doesn't exist the Phantom Matrix sounds like a movie doesn't it Miss Jordan Will

225she's she's going to set it up so let's table this discussion for now and say that we are absolutely going to be taking this in in in in detail did you have anything else yes I do have one more thing to add the other the other thing that I wanted to find out is what is going on with Early Childhood who is overseeing that and I had heard that the people there who are already existing there had no knowledge that their person was leaving so can that's something that trying to find out why that happened I can attempt to respond to that the Early Childhood the person who is holding down the fort administratively at the top level until a person is permanently hired there is a Lynn Herold in addition to her duties she

226is helping to just steady the ship and be with the people there just to ensure that they are at least they have that top level leadership her expertise is not in the area of early learning but she is a leader of many different levels and is also able to provide some level of just continuity and onboarding and support for the leaders that are already there until a permanent person is hired it's already been advertised it was in the second was already advertised last week and the week before they do believe they have some quality applicants in there as well and so she is not only going to help with that piece of it but also ensuring that the person who joins is onboarded I would have to check on Dr Burr because Dr Burr was

227there prior why it wouldn't have been communicated that she was leaving I'm not sure typically the outgoing leaders do handle that piece but I can verify that and get back to you on that and I think that shows a lot for a leader especially if we have them as that person because when you're hearing that staff is finding up from reading the board agenda that's pretty that to me that's unfortunate that should never happen they should already know because they should be happy for that person you know not going I'm I'm reading this so and then my other question would be then if if Miss Harold is doing this how is she doing her executive because she is as well an executive in HR how is she managing both of her these now she's got

228two jobs yes I would say she does have extra duties similar to what she had been doing prior to Mr doic joining us she was really helping to meet and lead with all the directors and so she was able to manage that while she was essentially holding down the HR area in that time period so she no longer is doing any of that instead she is administratively assisting that the peace over early childhood and so and she and I are checking in on a regular basis to hear what that's what how that's going so far until a permanent person is in place so they have already been advertising that piece so you've taken her from her job here when at the last at one of our meetings you said that it was they were working

229together I'm sorry they are she still in her job she is still in charge of professional development she's not in charge of the HR area I asked Miss Harold temporarily to step in and hold down the HR including supporting Al those strictly until we had someone permanent in place she did an admirable job an excellent excellent job supporting the leaders that were there but as you're seeing with examples such as the executive pay and some of these other issues there were significant issues that really needed that expertise as well to to address them there's just a whole HR is one of the more important divisions within our area so it's pretty significant and so she's no longer doing those additional duties that she was because Rob is now doing them so that is what's occurring

230now okay I just went for a clarification we spoke about this a couple weeks ago that there would be the two of them will be working hand inand there that they were staying there and that's what you said when I asked that of you a couple weeks ago I think it was the 20 six maybe I can't remember the exact date that there would be two Executives working hand inand in that departments just to clarify they are still working hand in hand but they are not working hand inand for the same responsibilities correct Miss herold's responsibility is not to supervise HR or administer over those directors that's not her job her job is over the leadership professional development side but very specifically so while they do work hand inand I would say that's Mr do

231Works hand inand with all the leaders in that particular area that does not mean they are joint I just want to clarify so that there's no Contin misunderstanding on this that it's not as if the two of them are jointly in charge of HR J Mr dodig has a specific job description that outlines what his area of responsibilities are in that HR function they are both executive positions but one has a responsibility for that HR apparatus in an administrative level and one has a very specific job description for professional development so should make sure that's clear like they certainly work hand inand hand but that doesn't mean that they have the same job duties their job duties are fundamentally different just want to make sure that's clear I could go on forever so I'm just

232going to stop right now and yeah because it would be nice to try to finish by five since we have the art walk the gallery walk that we'd like to do but is that yep I'm fine okay Mrs Patria so just to update the board on some of the things I've been doing I had the fsba legislative platform meeting up in CMI where we put together a tentative legislative platform for fsba that I believe will come in front of the board of directors in October for approval I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of Desire by anyone in the room to discuss or take a position on more controversial issues it was all very education focused it was all very budget focused it was all very early childhood focused it was all what we at

233this table would support so it like every one of the seven of us I believe would support so was really really good they also have two new employees they have a new lobbyist and they have a new engagement person I don't know her title but so far my understanding is that they've really hit the ground running and done a fantastic job so when you call up there you'll be talking to new people I have my first meeting with Ry and Associates today and I thought it was very very productive I was impressed by the depth of questions they asked and sort of their knowledge of the process I you know I said a few things and they they knew they knew what the pitfalls were and what the p could be in a superintendent search

234and that was very encouraging I did have an EAC meeting Dr SPO do you have any idea what we talked about in that meeting I'm brain far farting on it executive District advisory council do you have any idea what the executive SCH accountability School accountability that's right that's going to be our next our next topic thank you dress code I received an email from a young lady asking us to look at the potentially sexist nature of how we Institute our dress code and I would like to take the temperature of the board to see whether we want to direct the superintendent to do that I and I don't know how to do it I don't know if we get groups together in each school and have them come forward I think it needs to go

235beyond our student advisory Council I know that's not what it's called anymore but I think it needs to go beyond that I think we really need to engage more people in each school and I think the kids really should have a say in this one of the examples that I saw was girls are not allowed to wear tank tops and boys are and while I personally think it's just personally don't like to show my arms in a professional setting I know that it's acceptable today so we need to update our dress code and we need to make sure that it's being enforced equally instead of it so may I ask Madam chair for a consensus on whether we want to direct the superintendent to evaluate the dress code and involve students in that process yes

236yes what I was going to to add would this not be more appropriate for a workshop in which we take a look at this issue I was thinking that a lot of these topics are when we have our workshops and we're at well what additional topics do we need to take a look at let's all right so direct you want to ask direct the superintendent to investigate can you be a little to involve students in potential changes to the dress code you have a question here okay I'm I'm a little we do the dress code I believe that every year we look at the code of conduct and the address code right every year we go through that so that will be coming up again when and they'll start that process probably and then I

237don't know they it seems like they're doing it constantly so that could be something that could be added to that is to to get more information from students at schools versus where they're already receiving that because in the middle of the year I don't know if you can change the whole book no no I'm not suggesting that change in the middle of the year I'm suggesting that we get student involvement in the process so that when we when we make our decisions for next year those those changes are included yeah I totally agree but I'm I'm not sure because you said direct the superintendent and I'm I'm thinking it might be more appropriate to as Miss Jordan suggested as a precursor to our code of conduct for next year we can you know pretty far

238out instead of not you know the last minute but start Gathering that information because I think what you're saying is very important Mr janelli has a comment so I just like to add I would suggest that we task the student advisory to do a survey they can they can make the survey at student advisory and they send it out and then they can go into the code of conduct at the time that you know go back to who does the code of conduct Brian Mangan and they he gets that survey and implements that into May the new code of conduct so I that's getting the students involved I mean I don't that's a good idea I don't I don't know any other and that and that touches all the schools they send the survey out

239that way okay just really okay because Miss Patria brought it up and she wanted I can tell you that the student advisory council is not going to engage every group of students in a school and so what I'm looking for is I'm looking for involvement by groups of students in each school for them to have per perhaps a spokesperson who comes forward and makes recommendations we had a young lady I'm sorry go ahead we had a young lady who who put forth effort to petition the school board for Change and she got thousands of signatures and she was very spoken and she was very appropriate and I think that if we don't act specifically on her request we are not doing our job for students I don't think student advisory council is sufficient I think

240we need to do more and if we wait too long and we're coming up on the new student code of conduct it's it's going to there needs to be a process here to get students involved at every school real real quick so we can we have a lot more that we need to I make a comment on it everyone else has okay so here's the thing I agree with Miss Patria that the young lady that started it should be involved if she's not a part of that organization then of the group we already have if she has over a thousand people signing then why not ask her to give us the list from each school and let her you know work with whomever to come up with their thoughts and ideas I do agree with

241you that everything cannot go through the student advisory committee because they you know there are different things that they feel are important and others don't so I agree that somehow or another we get staff to maybe meet with her and with the superintendent decide how that would work but to involve her cuz the worst thing you want to do is to exclude her from something that she's that passionate about I believe via Dr Spyro that Brian Mangan is already in communication with the young lady and that there is some engagement already on that so I think that part at least we can say is occurring but the idea of getting more students involved work it's it's helpful to hear kind of the dialogue up here at the board level as well and maybe you can

242just report back to okay so yeah how about Dr Savage since you know that Mr Mangan is already dealing with that could you maybe send us an email and maybe he has some suggestions and during during this board member comment portion I know there's so many times when we don't have time to say all that we want to do and make all the suggestions but let's keep in mind that when we have our workshops is the time that nearly every time we are asked to prioritize and also to add other other topics so Miss Patria would that work if the superintendent gets a report from Mr Mangan and gets back to us on on what the situation is whatever if I may direct a question through the chair to Dr Savage has Chief nulan reviewed

243our cessor processes has given the recent issues surrounding that please yes not just Chief Nan but really an entire team of involved folks Mr Mangan his expertise Chief Newan I just we actually met as a team I believe it was earlier today to kind of hear some updates on some of the recent reporting some of the recent incidents and all that piece so it's it's being handled very professionally and thoroughly as we speak so if we could add to the parking lot please an update on ceser Safety and Security for approval by thank you I am I want point of order do we not ask for the group to decide if something goes on the list I'm just checking if I may yeah once once we have that then we bring it back to all

244of us at that particular time and then we decide whether we want to have that conversation anybody can put anything on there thank you miss one I have gone back back to school I am a student in parent University so challenge me people make me learn stuff Dr Savage if I may suggest I did ask at the table if we could have a one of those videos done and I said parent University Style videos on how a parent can access Google classroom and that was in parent University but if I'm not a parent who's watching parent University videos it's buried in there and I don't know it's there so if we could extract that and put together something out you know throw it out on social media throw it out on throw it out on

245the website that would be great I now have access to my kids classrooms I'm getting emails each week it's really a wonderful tool now that I know how to use it Dr chrisenberry did a fantastic job of teaching me what to do step by step I ran into specific problems because I'm a district person with a district account and whatever it got all screwed up cuz my kids have District accounts but that's not the typical experience of parent so it was really good I appreciate that and if we could get it out in like a shorter video that would be awesome finally or two more issues I would like the board another Park parking lot issue would be policy 1.81 if we could add that to the list of poti discussions for the board I

246do believe we have a problem through the chair to Dr Savage The Mask decision being made without calling the leadership team together for feedback from us and for a community discussion was unprecedented every time we have had a discussion or a change or a decision made regarding those guidelines we have always had a public meeting surrounding it and denying us that opportunity was very very Troublesome to me and I was very very disappointed so I'd like the board to look at potentially amending policy 1.1 181 to require a public discussion when major changes are going to be made to PPE in a non-emergency situation which is essentially what happened last week major changes were made we were not in an emergency situation and the leadership team was not part of that decision so I would

247like that added to the parking lot and finally I don't know that now is the time because we are running low but superintendent evaluation I don't know whether we're going to be sticking to our regular timeline there this is a an unusual situation so I think the chair usually works with somebody in the audience to there you go if you can update that us on that the next time you're sitting over there helping us do other stuff if I may ask permission to have that brief update from a staff member on that I would really appreciate it those are my comments for today thank you very much Mr janelli I've got a couple things and I'm gonna I'm think I'm gon to have to piggy back off of some things that Miss Patria just said

248that I the evaluation is done based on six months and annual he's not been doing the job for six months so I don't know how that would work exactly and why it matters now because it's barely three months and I think we all keep forgetting that he's only been doing this for three months if that amount is that even that amount of time but I think we need to make sure that the the parental rights and the parental opt out is better communicated throughout the district so I don't and it needs to be in E almost everything that we do because I think parents don't know their rights or they're excluded or teachers don't know parents rights because it's not conveyed properly throughout the district and I think that's a really important thing so maybe

249we need to put that on the parking lot list regarding the market rate I I was so glad to to watch Miss Morgan bring that up yesterday because I've had since 2018 I've that's been questionable since then we've had issues with that and how that transpired and even those that received the big bonuses and the big rate increases were surprised at the time it happened so I think that needs to come back around and definitely be discussed at at a briefing and workshop I would like to know where the part market rate even comes from where is where does that even come from and we have nothing to compare it to it just kind of dropped out of the sky as far as I was concerned literally and so that's just mostly to be transparent

250and to hear that three employees were not receiving the market rate equitably just disturbs me and only further only further confirms my HR feelings that with things that were going on during in HR that needs to be rectified and so I think that it's vital that this market rate discussion needs to continue regarding early childhood and Lambs I've been receiving this is there's been an issue going on there for over a year this is I don't know why this is being a big surprise to people because no offense and no respect to miss Burr but she was never even at that building she was there I I think she was there once only because I was there helping a teacher that was being removed from there be regarding hr's mistreatment so I think we have

251an issue at Lambs I've also been told that you've got teachers sitting over there with empty classrooms and I've to the superintendent is well aware of that recently CU I recently told them cuz students don't show up and the teachers don't have to do anything if there's no students there's no one to teach there's apparently 35 students at attend and 11 teachers so I think we need to look at that whole that whole situation over there and what is actually needed in administration so that's a whole another issue regarding student advisory and the dress code they're always complaining about the dress code I mean every year that is something that comes up every stinking year so to not involve them would be a crime because they're they're the student Representatives why would we lessen what

252we've what we've treated as a value so why would we not value their opinion second I have a big problem with having vaccin having vaccinations going on during football games I think that's out of our lane completely and I think that needs to be given to the health officials what I would see that might be an option for someone is and that would be working with the county is maybe having more testing and the ability if someone wants to get tested that they could have some testing going on in football games if you want but I mean if someone gets a vaccine and they're not feeling well and they something happens to them at that football game where that liability is not even anything that I want to even come across but I mean I

253just increased testing is going to is going to really help our whole Comm our whole Community I feel like that's how our numbers Rose so fast because the ability to get tested people didn't know they were sick and they were going to work they were going to school they were sending the kids to school sick and that went red so I'm trying to see if I got all my notes because I wrote down all kinds of stuff I still think that the PowerPoint presentation that we had today was still very good because we have to stay on top of this we cannot sit back and think everything's the same as last year because it's not and we have to bee of the game we have to be re proactive instead of reactive and unfortunately we

254became reactive because of the transition period from one superintendent that left in the middle and for another superintendent takeover that was very that communication didn't the did not happen so that's a reflection on us as a board and so until we as a board take responsibility I don't know how we can we can blame anybody else so I just appreciate everything that's happening in our schools and happening through the superintendent with his limited capacity that he's been afforded and hopefully that he'll get people in that will be that will get on the bus and work with him instead of against him thank you okay M Fisher thank you I'm going to reserve my comments for later this evening based on the fact that it's 4:56 and designs and dreams is at 5: and some issues

255have been brought up at this table this afternoon that to me indicate a lack of honest communication collaboration and confidence so I will reserve my comments for later thank you okay Mrs Morgan so a couple brief ones first of all I was disappointed that we had the workshop not in the pit yesterday you know I feel sorry for Mrs fiser Miss fiser because every time I talk she's one of the few people who's looking at me and so I it's like we you know we're the only people who communicate and I would really like to be sitting in a situation where I'm looking at somebody El Miss fiser so just saying you know we don't with your mask and her with her ears you should be enjoying the meeting just saying that I just I

256miss the opportunity to interact anyway secondly I did have a call from a constituent wanting to know they told me that Colorado and Florida the only two states that have not filed plans for the Federal money with the federal government I would like to know if that's the case and does anybody know anything about it with respect to this conversation about Personnel I'm very concerned I have spoken with the superintendent about our process and I have suggested to him that if he doesn't like our process or the process that's in place that a new you know his process needs to be brought forward to the board so we all understand and so the staff and Community understand what the process is I have asked for the process and not received it so I'm I'm asking

257through the chair to ask the board whether they're willing to direct the superintendent for every position that is brought to us for transfer appointment reassignment whatever we got a job description we get the salary with an industry and with industry and District comps we get the date posted we get where it was posted we get when the search was finished we get who process the applications we learn who interviewed the candidates and what the recommendation was I would like to know the process and until there is some effort made to clarify for all of us exactly how these various changes are taking place and I also want to mention I want to take the opportunity to mention cuz it's it's very concerning to me and I've I've talked to people in the community about it

258but sort of hesitated to bring it up to the board but it's because of the conversations we've been having I'm going to do it and that is that I believe the superintendent made it very clear to me because we did have a discussion about process I asked him what the process was he says there are a process but he has absolute authority to make the final decision I said we need to know what the process is so that staff has confidence in the process and he said yes you're right but I get the final decision and I brought it up a third time and I said if we don't have a process appointments appear to be arbitrary and capricious if you don't like our process then let's have a process that we all understand and

259he said yes I agree but I have final decision so I think you know that's absolutely true that he has final decision but I think if that's the way it's going to be that we need to understand and I am not a micromanager and I don't believe in micromanagement but right now I don't have confidence in the process so oh dress code I just think we should direct the superintendent to ask whoever's working on the code of conduct for next year to make certain that the dress code is addressed somehow by students there you go okay and I'm going to Reserve most of my comments for this evening but I do feel that I need to respond to what Miss Morgan just suggest it I would like any board member to you don't have to

260repeat it now but maybe write it down what was the process in in the past with the prior ad Administration how many times did we ever get all the information that Miss Morgan just asked for I would say zero times as a matter of fact there were times in the previous administration that I questioned some decisions during the oneon-one and I was just given an answer quick answer because that superintendent had made the final decision or actually maybe it was the former Chief of HR that told him what decision to make you guys regardless and I feel that occurred I I think what I'm hearing here are asking Dr Savage to drum jump through hoops that the prior Administration didn't have to do and I think that the two you know we are as Miss

261gettens read from policy 1.03 and we are we make our decisions as a group and the last time I checked as a group and I believe it was 5 to2 we decided to put this superintendent in charge and again typically a superintendent is evaluated every 6 months not after less than three months I'm I'm tired quite tired of the additional charges that go from the people that are feeling that their power from prior individuals in charge in our staff and the prior superintendent that their their their power and influence perhaps is waning a little bit and are they're trying to put their individual pressure on the current superintendant and when we have more time probably I will bring this up this evening I'm going to and I already mailed this out emailed it out I'm

262I'm going to call for censoring on Sunshine violations because there have been Sunshine violations and it's all over the community I've gotten information everyone from staff upper level staff members through people in the community that never even agree with me that have sent this out and how certain members have put pressure on other people so that they achieve the votes and I don't care if it's direct or if it's the daisy chaining it is still happening and it must stop I will continue this later attorney depri Bruno do you have comments no I don't okay Dr Savage just one comment just to clarify I know when we have conversations sometimes one person hears one thing and someone else hears another and so I just want to from my perspective you I just want to clarify

263I have been following the processes the established processes I have followed them that's what I continue to follow in inside of the process there are exemptions those are parts of the process so in following an exemption it's not that I just get final decision over everything and I can wave whatever process I'm following a process which says that with executive positions I have I can exempt from certain phases of that process that is literally written into the process itself so when I am doing those things I am doing so while following the process so I have not replaced it with my own process I'm not inventing a new new process even in the executive pay piece again I'm working within the existing parameters of what I have I simply need it to be transparent objective

264and so I just want to clarify from my perspective what I said was yes I am following the process when I do an exemption when I take advantage of one of the exemptions that is written memorialized within that process there's a very specific reason such as in the HR so that I can have a person who knows the law of HR and understands how to implement so that I'm not having to personally administer the pay and things along those lines because there isn't a knowledge base to be able to do that's the type of thing that necessitates me utilizing an exemption whereas for all the other executive positions those things are following the established process going through the normal mechanisms all of the pieces that you requested those are all pieces that already occur we

265have that and we have that information in fact one of the things we're bringing forward for your Ono ones next week are specifically some of those things where they're at within the existing process so those processes are followed they certainly are I just wanted to verify and set the record straight that I'm not coming up with my own I'm literally following the ones that exist including the pay within the existing parameters of what I have and that's that's that's my comments okay it is 5:07 p.m. this meeting is adjourned C please e