2020 August 10 Lawrence Board of Education Meeting

001melissa and gr will join are they on now melissa's on now you are on joe that's it okay um i want to make sure we have time to share with the board in the community and update on our together again reopening of 2020 school year 2021 school year as you recall the our last board meeting included a hybrid option update in addition the board approved the calendar to start the school year september 8th so this will be another update that will include information as a result of the board's decision and to delay the start in person so what that remote learning option will look like for our scholars and our families in addition we will share some information regarding acacia and sports fall sports and safety precautions and so we have a good number of

002people that are on with us tonight and we'll start with patrick kelly we have our high school principals on i think he's going to introduce everyone that's on so i'll just be quiet and turn it over to patrick kelly kelly this is shannon i can only hear about every word of what dr lewis just said um i don't know if that means that the mics have to be pulled up very close to your face but no need to repeat i just wanted to make sure you knew that okay thank you [Music] good evening or late afternoon i guess i'm patrick kelly executive director of curriculum and instruction we're going to be walking you through another update this is our third episode of this series so um we'll jump right into it each time we've given

003you an uh uh let me see if i can move shannon here just a little bit we've given you a bit of an update sort of a timeline of what's happened since we last visited with you one thing we talked about last time was unified command that was announced on the same day as your meeting the following day kansas state high school activities association confirmed that fall sports were permitted to begin as scheduled that first meeting of education unified command was just two days later on august 3rd new teacher orientation began that was monday last week and all professional development activities are online august 6th certified staff received communication regarding return to work expectations and we'll go over some of those this evening and then on august 7th families and staff received communication title the

004path to together again and we've also posted our hybrid learning plan on the website tonight we're going to give you an update on that reopening plan we're going to talk about communications to families and staff talk about the staff survey and instructional expectations student enrollment and review the safety measures for kansas state high school activities association athletics and activities we'll start with reopening plans this was a large team of people and one of the point people on this was julie boyle she's our executive director of communications and julie's going to walk through both the reopening plan and communications to parents julie [Music] good evening it's julie boyle executive director of communications i'm going to attempt to share my screen here it's not letting me now it is here we go can everyone see the website

005yes great so on friday as patrick said we released our district remote learning guides to both staff and families they are essentially the same guide the staff guide includes safety information since some of our staff members may be returning to buildings they would need that health and safety information in their guide the parent guide did not include that because as you know students will be learning remotely to start school for six weeks this is our family guide on our together again website and i think the most important pages are the last two so i'm going to flip there really quickly because these teachers and classified staff and administrators have been working all summer and there are quite a number of them two pages worth um on their working groups to come up with all of

006the information you will see in the guide as well as on the website and even more so as a communication team our job was to take their excellent work and i want to thank them for their work and present it in a reader friendly manner an attractive matter a format that we thought that would be easy for people to read and understand and um our goal was not to overwhelm our families and our staff um i know that you all have seen the uh navigating change document from ksde it's over a thousand pages it is an excellent resource for us but it is very overwhelming in terms of the size of it i was pretty adamant that we were going to try to keep this as clear and concise as possible we had information on

007distance learning and the hybrid model and in person learning but i wanted this to be the back to school guide with only the information that they would need to know and getting ready to go back to school on september 8th and that allowed us to keep it a little more condensed the family guide is 21 pages and the staff guide is 27 with the health and safety information added to it so it's need to knows for back to school basically we will continue to build out the website and a switch over to the website here this is our together again website that we've been using to track the work of the task force and they can click on our draft together again hybrid model or the draft of the together again in person model and

008see more information first it comes up to a table of contents and we can click on healthy environments and operations to see what that working group came up with this is a working document and because it's on the website it will enable us to easily update it and change it as necessary as you know things are changing if not hourly definitely by day with um covid and the pandemic and the evolution of decision making so this will enable us to keep this up to date and change it as necessary putting it into a guide and sending it out would it would just not be a good idea because it would probably be um outdated as soon as we sent it out so we didn't include all of the hybrid or the in-person model information in

009the guide that we sent on friday to families and staff i want to thank rachel thomas she is an amazing partner in our communications team and she did all the formatting and graphic design of our remote learning guide for back to school we will now be using all of the communication tools at our disposal as we normally do to share little pieces and parts of the guide through social media and with families on our website and all of those places just to remind them remind them of important things definitely when school starts that it's remote also information like that the learning logs that's very important and and other important information in smaller doses so they'll get second and third doses of of little chunks of the of the remote learning guide over the next month

010as we get ready to go back to school so i think that um is it for me unless there are any questions about the guides we're writing the board about more details wanting to see additional information and what's already in the guide i think you all have done a really great job is there a place where families can go to get additional information if they have questions beyond what is shown so in the in the effort to condense it some families maybe this is reflective of our community some families want to dig a little bit deeper into the details if they wanted that additional information how would you advise them absolutely and that would be on our website usd497.org together again i was just showing you the other plans on the website we will put

011uh patrick kelly has done a great job of giving everyone a consistent format on all of the working groups and the task forces so they have completed those for their area of expertise and we will just post all of that in draft form to our website we were really focused on getting this remote learning guide out first and then building out the website so that was our primary focus for um getting that out on friday and then working we'll be working more on the website as as time goes on as as we have time kelly this is shannon i had a ques a follow-up question to that um so just i understand because i you know as kelly said we're getting questions about that the um the operational and um guidance that's going to be

012given around safety and health practices once we are back in a grid or in-person learning model right now if parents are trying to make the decision about whether they want to choose to do virtual for an entire tri-semester versus choosing to go back when we're ready to go back where specifically which document do they need to look in to get the specific information about things like um i don't want to give you some examples of some of the things people asked about uh kids moving between classrooms what are the procedures going to be lunch how will people be going in and out of buildings um all of all of those kind of operational details that really will make a big difference to some people in terms of their comfort level joe can you give me

013permission to share my screen again it's only letting me have a choice of file oh here we go [Music] so like i mentioned earlier our together again website here is the draft guide if you will the draft plan for the hybrid model which is 50 in person 50 at home on those a b alternating days so they can go to that hybrid model plan and they can choose promoting behaviors that reduce spread that safety information they can choose use their back button there to go back they can choose maintaining healthy environments and operations to get to all of that information about communal spaces transitions physical barriers survival dismissal restroom use playground use food service modified layouts empty drills transportation water systems all of that information will be there for the hybrid and as well as

014the in-person model which in person of course is what we're used to so someday we hope to get back there to what we do so all of that information is there now we will continue to add to it as we continue to get guidance um especially from unified command they are looking at our plans and giving us more health and safety guidance every day so we will update these as we get that information okay that's very helpful thank you for that clarification you betcha any more questions so as julie said there's 64 different topics in there that can help give parents some some some understanding of what those procedures are and those have been informed as we told you last time by national state local health and safety guidelines and unified command so now we're

015going to talk about student enrollment and i'm going to invite zach conrad to share with you a little bit about that thank you patrick i'm zach conrad executive director of data and technology we sent out a survey to all families in the district friday evening in this enrollment form that we sent out has a list of questions that you can see up here student name the school that they attend grade level any of the services that are provided to the student and then we give a brief description of what hybrid would look like and this comes straight from the definitions that you see across the guide so we've kept this very consistent when the school board determines it is safe to do so the district will transition to a hybrid of on-site and remote learning

016you can read the remainder of that statement but that is put in there for them to read so that they if they haven't seen it anywhere else they can see it there before they answer the following question and so with distance learning families who are not comfortable with their children returning to the classroom in person as part of the hybrid or in person models may enroll in distance learning for a trimester and that's for early childhood and elementary who are on the trimester schedule or semester and that's for the secondary at a time with these expectations in mind please answer the following questions regarding your preference and comfortability related to returning to partial or full in-person instruction so we wanted to make sure that they did understand you have that option to continue remote even

017if the board decides that it is safe enough to return to a hybrid model they then are given three options in the hybrid or distance model so that question contains i will return in the hybrid model i will remain remote for distance learning for a trimester for elementary or a semester for secondary or i will remain remote for the school year so far up to well 4 30 is the last time i checked the data we've had over 1 200 families respond which is about 2 000 plus students so just over that 2000 student mark and then we put on there do you have another child attending lawrence public schools this way families are able to make individual choices per child and not just a blanket statement across their family there are some situations where

018families would like one child to be hybrid and another child to be remote so we gave that option so they fill it out individually for each child are there any questions over the enrollment that we're doing right now for students this enrollment will close on friday although we have some flexibility on the end we really for planning purposes would like all families to complete this by friday so that we can make the appropriate adjustments and and plan if you don't hear from a family what kind of outreach do you have to do i mean what's that look like because i can imagine in the summer time it's hard to reach everyone does someone automatically get enrolled in a particular if they don't answer the survey yes so right now we're building it out in powerschool

019to flag each individual student because they will still be enrolled within lawrence public schools and so we're creating a flag in there and the default flag for planning purposes is going to be hybrid we are going to plan that you're going to return and then we'll continue outreach during the first six weeks for those students that we didn't hear from to try to verify that that will be their choice we also um are having principles to be aware so um as as we look at it if they notice their families we'll try some outreach this week and next week as well so that we can make the adjustments because it does impact um how we're trying to align staff preference with student enrollment so as we get information we may ask building principals and staff

020there to make contact this week if it's possible if we see we haven't heard anything as well hi kelly this is shannon i have another comment on this particular issue um so um i'm gonna ask the question again um why are we asking families to commit to one or the other when we don't yet have the gating criteria from unified command i i find it really frustrating i'm not prepared as a parent to make that decision until i see what that gating criteria is um and we're asking families to make some sort of commitment um without providing them without being able to provide them with that information so why do we have to have the timeline be this friday so shannon in order for us to make staffing decisions we have lots of staff who

021are experiencing a lot of anxiety because they have um either for ada or indicated their preferences and we and they're just in limbo right now because um one of two things that we can do um is to make student enrollment based off staff preference or we can actually get the student information to make it so that's where we are right now we can't really give staff um some staff we've been able to address just because it kind of matched up with openings in our virtual school but we have um several staff members that um have contacted hr and they're just in limbo and they've been in limbo because we don't know um you know if we have enough fifth graders to make a fifth grade distance learning if we'll have to figure out what that

022will look like if that staff has to be remote what school so as more information we can get from families more concrete information we can give to staff and um so that's why we're asking families to do that we don't have control over unified command and hopefully they'll have something out by the end of this week or early next week but we are um really putting our staff in not a great position because we can't provide information to them as far as where they'll be or what their schedules will look like or if we can honor their preference um if we don't know where our students what our families are choosing so it's um this is melissa it's my also my understanding and maybe i'm wrong that from our last board meeting that this will

023not be the only um kind of feel that we're trying to get and like julie said that even even knowing on friday how parents are feeling it's still subject to change so that's so we're getting this initial my understand is that we're getting this initial feel and with the understanding that we may have to make changes as we go along am i correct yes i want to point out really quick that we're working off of an assumption so we're giving the parents the assumption that the school board has determined it was safe to return so given that assumption what is your preference now there they are responding with that assumption that you guys have determined it is safe to return whatever that the gating is that you guys have determined it's safe to return so

024given that how do i feel about returning and some families are saying it doesn't matter i'm going to go ahead and remain remote for the duration of the semester or school year and some are saying you know what if the school board says it's safe to return we are going hybrid so is that that assumption is first and so they're they're basing that that decision on that i mean so this is shannon again um i guess this this conversation really frustrates me because the the criteria that we are going to be using as a board to decide whether it is safe to return to in-person instruction are i think absolutely essential for many people in making this decision and so as a parent and as a board member i'm getting a lot of mixed messages

025about what my timelines are when i have to make decisions what my opportunities will be to change my mind um you know the survey was sent out it's called a survey but then zack you just talked about it as being an enrollment process um and then and then you said that we are going to be picking a default in powerschool for people who don't express a preference um which was which also has not been communicated to parents so if they don't feel comfortable filling out that survey before friday because they like me want to know what these criteria are that are going to guide this decision um you're assuming you know a placement for them without telling them that that's what you're going to do like i and i know we don't have control over

026unified command but we agreed to participate in unified command to help us make this decision and so either i feel like either we need to extend the time for parents to make this decision until unified command has provided us with the information that is needed or we need to say okay we're not waiting on unified command and we're coming up with our own um decision criteria and like i know that this as well as anybody i know that this is a fluid situation things keep changing um but i you know our our message on this and what what these decision points mean and what we're asking people to do i i don't feel like it's clear i can't imagine that parents feel like it's clear to them exactly what they're supposed to be doing so

027this this is melissa and i don't um i'm just gonna speak personal um i think maybe maybe my mindset is a little bit different um i think of it two different ways of being in the military and knowing that sometimes there are situations that you you have and you know there's going to be a set way but then the situation arises and you have to make a change so we used to kind of jokingly say hurry up and change um from a teacher's perspective i can't understand like even knowing that this is not the solid um this may not be this may um not be the end-all be-all it does give you a sense of this is how i can potentially plan um so kind of like what dr stubblefield was saying it kind of

028gives them um a little more guidance in knowing how to to um prepare because right now i'm i'm i don't even think we're this far um in my district and i'm like i have a student teacher and i'm trying to figure out how what guidance am i going to be able to give them right now but we don't know what's going to happen after after our nine weeks or during our nine weeks yet alone so i feel like this is um a good starting point um but emphasizing that there there may be a change like zach said this is if if the board um decides that it is safe to return to school will you do hybrid hybrid or are you still going to do distance learning but knowing that um the board may not

029feel like it's safe so we may have to just continue with the distance the distance learning and we won't knowing that we won't make that decision um without sound data um regarding the the current the current circumstances as the pandemic so if if we're seeing that numbers are going up in the pen um with covid and it's not safe then we will have to continue with the distance learning but if everything is just like we did be just like we just kind of did with the extending it for six weeks doing a distant learning for six weeks based on the information that was provided and i'm not just i'm not disputing that our state needs that we need some information to start making some decisions i'm just frustrated with how the community the decision points

030are being communicated to parents and and the assumption that um that this skating criteria is is i don't know i guess i see that grading criteria is absolutely essential to the decision that i have to make personally about what i'm doing with my children so we don't have that information yet i don't understand why we are telling parents they have to make a decision we can make decisions based on the data we have at the time we have it when we need to make the decisions but i feel like the communication that's going out to parents needs to be working out we're gonna we're gonna make some some you know we would like for you to respond but you're gonna have until after this criteria comes out to give us an answer um okay that's

031that's one way to approach it but that's not what we're doing right now and shannon i think if that is what the board decision is we can extend the survey i'm the uh trade-off for that is teachers have asked to know where their placement will be and that will delay that so if we're clear on that that we we will if unified command technically can come out with the gating criteria tomorrow thursday friday and if we need to extend the survey if that's what the board would like us to do we can but we also need to be clear with our teachers that all of the at the end you'll see next steps we'll push that back and they won't know if they are in a distant with a group of remote learners who will

032be transitioning back to hybrid or if they're with a group of distance learning um and our master schedules will be built out a little later but i think that that we just need to be clear on that to our teachers if we're going to um wait on unified command my understanding is unified command is hoping to have something out by the end of this week um if uh and dr lewis you may be able to weigh in on that but if we if we extend the survey until let's say let's say if they have something out by friday if we extend the survey until sunday or monday we just have to push back some of the other stuff um and it'll just be a delay in that if that is what the board would like

033um we really were trying um as we work with lea on the coveted subcommittee is to alleviate some of that stress um and anxiety from teachers who have either um ada accommodations that um we need to adhere to and also those who just have a personal preference that they would rather be 100 distance for the year knowing and recognizing that the two they it will be ideal if they align perfectly but realistically they probably are not so that's just a decision we if we're going to make that decision we can definitely do um that we have a lot of cover protocols i don't want to deliver this and i definitely would not break me and extend the survey for a number of reasons for professional development the only thing that the gating criteria will tell

034us is what mode we're in hybrid online or remote once parents know that they're going to look back at the school district now what does your hybrid look like which is what we're sharing tonight i think that's the most important part for me as a parent is what does that look like for this district and i want to i just want to sum up that i don't think the board is saying i don't i just want to be clear that i don't we don't have um a board saying that you need to extend the survey at least that's not where we're at yet so i want to make sure we slow that down a minute and i also want to just point out that one the framing that zach gave us is maybe one that

035we need to consider communicating that parents can look at that gating criteria but i could look at that gating criteria i am not an expert in how that gating criteria is developed what i have determined as a board is that i do want the experts at the table at the health department who are and have you know are part of a division that has specific expertise in education making those decisions and as a board member i will base my decision off of those informed positions and and um metrics that they have developed so i don't think we're asking families to make a decision about whether their child is hybrid or in person without any flexibility at all that's not the way the district has responded and i don't believe that that's the way that they

036will respond moving forward that they'll force a family into a particular path but for many many families they know that they will go hybrid when that becomes an opportunity in my house i know without seeing that information that we will go hybrid for my kid that's the best option so i think there are people that are ready to make that decision and then the district can respond with that data and i'll just say at the meeting today they shared with us a draft of the grading criteria they're going to send it to us we're setting ali should be sending out a meeting invite for executive leadership team to give feedback on wednesday morning to get it back to the county by 12 noon on wednesday so we're hopeful to have this gating criteria at the

037earliest wednesday evening i hope folks at the health department are not watching or brushing them wednesday evening or or thursday um but just based on the draft that i looked at today um like as of today based on our data we will be in a harvard model i just want to say i took the survey this afternoon and there was no confusion on my end and i was operating under the assumption that it was safe for my son to return and that's how i filled it out knowing that this is a very fluid situation and it could change then i would trust the district would change accordingly so my assumption was if everything was safe would your kid return or would they not so thank you so i had some trouble hearing some of that

038dr lewis were you saying that the you anticipate having the criteria released when well this embargo now they after our meeting today they sent it to me i sent it to elise to send to uh executive leadership team we're going to review it on wednesday morning they have asked us as a superintendents and school districts to provide feedback to them by wednesday at noon and i'm hopeful that they will turn that around pretty quickly it may not be end of day wednesday but maybe thursday or friday did you hear it okay thank you all right our our next section will be uh covered by anna so i'll turn the time over to anna hello everyone this is anna stubblefield deputy superintendent in addition to the student survey slash enrollment form we also sent out instructional

039expectations and staff survey i just want to share a couple of things we did work collaboratively with culvert subcommittee members which it's lindsey buck jeff grinsky and megan epperson before we finalized both surveys they were able to look at it give feedback and we made adjustments accordingly we do know that there were a couple of questions around some of the surveys and on the back side we are working to clarify that and i'll talk a little bit more about that um but um with when we outline the ex uh instructional expectations we are following the guidance um under the guidance of ksce because um unlike the continuous learning plan this spring we will be held accountable for the 1116 minutes as well as i mean hours as well as um an average of 360 daily

040minutes for each student therefore that informed what our schedules would look like so when students are not fully in person there are two options to keep track of those minutes um parents could have a daily log or in circumstances where you can um and you can see one and two there one when you have remote learning and you are streaming and kids are logging in and they're watching you in the classroom or vice versa when a school building is closed for on-site learning and remote learning serve services are provided and teachers can take attendance so i'll start backwards at our um high school and our middle schools at the secondary level their schedules uh lend themselves for teachers to have live check-ins during the clock for the classes that the students are enrolled in so

041it provides multiple check-in points and also an opportunity for the teachers and students to make connections and for students to get quality instruction via online at the elementary level that schedule it's a little different so we wanted to provide multiple opportunities for families to receive live instruction recognizing that all families will not be able to necessarily be a part of the five logins we strongly encourage that but we are asking families to do a minimum of two one in the morning and one in the afternoon because this will allow the teachers to complete attendance as well as it will take the burden off the family of logging 360 minutes when we have multiple checkpoints in a day to demonstrate that the students were engaged um five at the elementary level um appears to be a

042lot but we also recognize during the continuous learning plan our specials teachers didn't have carved out on specific time with the students so one of those five will be with the specials teachers on the rotation around that the other ones we are given the elementary teachers flexibility they may combine it and do a longer one but we are just trying to have multiple checkpoints um for the students we're asking all of our staff to um even when they're not providing live instruction to be to whatever learning platform we're on to be live so if a parent is doing if a student is working independently or a parent and care or caregiver may be supervising them they will be able to access the teacher during the duty day the day that the student would typically be

043in attendance to receive assistance ask questions or other components we also will leverage our support staff during this time so that students have access to the different supports that they typically have and what is needed based off their iep will be able to for students who have an iep will be able to leverage those um special ed teachers both gifted and resource and our specialized classroom teachers to provide the support that is needed during the regular school day we also recognize that this will allow families to have some consistency and to be able to plan and for those families who plan to transition back when it's safe to a hybrid the students will already be um in a um schedule or structured schedule where it's not um the transitioning back will already be a change

044but that schedule will already be in place so our intentions um the task force and those who weighed in on those decisions it was not to uh not that we didn't view um staff as professional not that we are babysitting staff we are trying to make sure that we meet the minutes so that it doesn't impact our funding negatively and also trying to provide structure and consistency for our families and we are working so that when our teachers are providing those live instruction opportunities to have them recorded and play somewhere um because we know there are families that have different circumstances and they may have to uh do the log because um of child care um barriers and those kind of things um so that was the uh essence behind the duty day expectations and

045outlining those check-in points so i will pause and see if there's any questions around that before we start to talk about the staff survey um so i'll talk about the staff survey and then i could pause again in case there are more questions or if something comes up as far as the instructional expectations in the staff survey the questions that we asked we wanted to be clear with staff we needed them to identify themselves not for any other purpose other than to make sure that we can align their preference as much as possible if we can honor it based off student enrollment we'll know what their preference is and try to honor that when we can we ask them the employee number in their name their grade level in school and then during the first

046six weeks of remo remote learning if you're not allowed to bring your child or children to the work site um will you will uh child care i mean be a a barrier and the purpose of that was for not for not it's not for us to gather percentages there was some questions around like if i don't have um kids is going to skew the data we actually are just looking at the raw data so that we can go back to unified command because we're asking all of the from an equity perspective um through unified command we're asking all um educators school systems university and essential workers as much as possible we're asking them to collect that data so collectively as a county the child care obstacle as much as possible can be problem solved so

047it if we have 50 500 staff that says it's a barrier we'll say lawrence public schools have 500 staff members that this is a barrier for we won't necessarily get we won't give percentages because that will not be um helpful data in in that sense um and then we just ask their uh preference if when we shift back to hybrid what would you be your preference and also in a hybrid model if child care will be a barrier initially we have said since the schools are all of our students are in remote learning and staff has the option of teaching in person or coming in to the work site that in order for safety reasons and precautions we're saying we're not allowing staff to bring their children to the work site um at this time

048that it was just that's just for safety reasons because we don't necessarily know how many staff or how many students can end up in the building and we don't have the necessary if they're teaching what is happening with that so we are still we'll look at that data and continue to problem solve as much as possible um in regards to that hey anna's gr yes um so if it was done and i missed it i apologize but was this same set of data also collected from classified staff and if not why not zach did this survey go to classified staff no this did not go to classified staff this was for certified staff so it will go we will have a version of the class those questions will go to classified staff and this initial

049one really was to align the preference and to get that information but we'll have a similar one i know i just asked because i couldn't remember if we sent them at the same time but we will send one to classify staff as well um thank you teaching preference that's a little different so it was we were doing two things at once it was not intentional um information will be gathered from classified staff around child care um as well if there are no questions for me regarding that because i know we're running out of time and we want to get to keisha a couple of things a question a couple of questions that have come to me and i don't think the board has to answer it now um as far and i think along the

050lines would shannon was saying what data or information will the board use to make his decision to transition back to hybrid at some point i think the board may want to commute that communicate that out um when will the board make the decision and um will the board make this decision bait uh as far as teaching preface preference based on student enrollment or um teacher preference will they weigh in on that those are a couple of questions that have come up consistently from both parents and um teachers so i don't know if you've got them directly but i thought i would share those with you um that individuals are asking so the way that we would inform you where we're at on those decisions would be based on the information that you've given us and

051when we have emotion in front of us just in terms of educating the community about how those decisions get answered so for example the criteria for which we would make a decision on whether or not to come back to a hybrid model which we've talked about this evening would be based on the information that we got from the unified command so just to anna's questions about timeline that will be dependent on several of those things on the information that the administration is able to give us on a timeline that cannot precede the information right correct i mean it's a rather basic thing to say but just to be clear there are still decisions that still have to be made and that if we needed to we reserved the right to call a special meeting so

052that you did not need to wait if there was something very pressing thank you okay next is rick henry and rick's going to walk through high school athletics and activities before you start we have five minutes left of people that have contacted me about this particular issue so how do we what do we do to extend the time for this so we're going to have a hard stop at six but for the community that may be watching we can come back to this conversation after um after we hear on the budget so okay hi rick thanks um joe if you could allow me to share my screen that would be great um good evening i'm rick henry director of secondary schools and i also work with district athletics i want to share some information with

053you this evening regarding lawrence public schools work regarding fall athletics lhs and free state principals and ads have worked to provide this guidance for mitigating exposure to covet 19 and they're also available tonight to answer questions you may have while this report is where we are right now we're not locked into a plan that that we know could involve based on additional guidance from unified command the kansas state high school activities association the sunflower league as well as usd 497 um i'm planning to share a document with you right now joe i'm still not able to share while he's trying to share i just want to say we did send it to classify as well from them around sorry care needs yes okay patrick you may be able to share those links from the document

054that you the presentation document if you could if you could share that first document i would have joe's on his way to see you to see if we can figure it out now okay thanks hey joe good morning let me run back and do that patrick joe's coming back he's going to give you uh the rights to share again and you you can do that greatly great because it's almost six o'clock three minutes based on the clock so we have to just for folks to know when we open the budget hearing we have to open it exactly 6 p.m okay i'm going to share those links joe because it's got me as the presenter are we okay to go ahead nope we're going to wait yes no the budget has to occur at six right

055so we'll come back okay sounds good [Music] okay um we need a motion to open the budget hearing do i have a motion i move the board of education opened the august 10 2020 budget hearing this is carol i second is there anybody on joe all those in favor aye kathy is on with us if board members have questioned we do not have anyone waiting for public comment right now so we will leave this open for five minutes and say hey to kathy okay um we are not having anyone present to make comment or provide feedback on the budget so i'm looking for a motion to close the budget hearing return to the discussion we were previously having all those opposed motion passes i'm going to recommend that we delay the regular meeting do i

056have to procedurally assign it an amount of time no okay so because the discussion together again is so important to the community i want to make sure that we give it enough time is there any opposition to extending the discussion from board members there's no opposition to people that are in person anyone remote shannon gr melissa no opposition no opposition position okay so we were talking about we're with rick henry and activities directors so the first document that that i appreciate patrick's sharing is is in regard to the global guidelines that will be followed the first seven statements on the document refer to daily screening and temperature requirements as well as masking guidelines also in the in those statements we also say as as i mentioned before that these guidelines may change due to additional

057guidance or restrictions from the kansas state high school activities association sunflower league unified command and the usd 497 board of education the chart the chart under those statements provides a more in-depth look that at the general guidelines including hygiene education and communication screening and exposure protocols illness protocols activity considerations and finally facility and equipment management i can pause there or i can i can move on to the second document so rick this is gr i just have a couple questions um they're they're simple questions i don't know that i have simple answers but they might so we'll see um so if you scroll back up on that document um so one one of the questions that i have so in the currently right now during summer conditioning summer activities because this is not sports this

058is activity so i have to keep reminding myself of that so summer activities most all groups are doing that check-in process with the qr code and and things like that i i i don't know that a lot of them are doing the temperature checks but i know a lot of them are doing the qr code um who is responsible right now to verify that those check-in processes are happening and and that that's being done and then my second question is more along the lines of probably a broader discussion but um especially in this current state um one of the things under your education and communication one of the things that i thought was missing from there is a more of a district level communication process right now the way that we communicate sports seems to

059vary down to the specific team that you're on um a c team can communicate different from a jv team to a varsity team in a sport at a high school and and i think especially now as we look at it i think now is the time that we need to to do away with that and and we need to consolidate how we communicate and it needs to be the same so that as a parent if i have a kid playing soccer and a kid playing volleyball and a kid doing swimming my communication comes via one method and those those are the two things that i had gr can i ask a clarifying question you're saying a method around how like either phone or email or are you saying it all comes from the same i

060i'm just trying to get clarity around that your first your first interpretation okay the method in which is delivered okay yes because because currently right now you can find email you can find group me you can find twitter you can find you can find all sorts of different ways that sometimes are easily accessible to people sometimes not and usually the story is incoming freshman parents find out how the communication method is done for a particular sport because a parent who has been through that sport tells them how to do it because it's not consistent kelly this is shannon i have a comment um related to gr's question [Music] repeat that can we have a response to your observation about how we can uniform or better communication i have i wanted to provide some further context

061and examples on that point before um before jeff responds if that's okay go ahead so um i i had a very concern or question actually rick that gr is asked and um just to provide some examples so um parents have shared me things like um certain programs are only announcing important information about practices and and other things over twitter for example so if you're a parent in that sport you're expected to be on twitter to find out what's going on um coaches are encouraging students to be in group me um text chats with coaches parents are running group me text chats for parent groups um and you know you have to find a person to get into the group me to know what's going on and get announcements as a parent for a sport um

062just a lot of the things that i've heard around issues recently that have kind of come to the floor because of communication that needs to happen around covid um you know i have some i have concerns that it's not equitable for parents and families particularly families that don't want to use social media don't don't want to have their social media with coaches for example um parents who maybe aren't tied into the system already parents who maybe english is not their first language for example um and and having it be different for every team um you know there's not one place that you can go and get unified information about all of the activities and programs and and it's in the communication that's going out it sounds like it's not going out through the actual district

063channels and so there's not accountability or transparency around that thank you for watching because that this morning we got our athletic directors on as well and they're on the call today and i think that's coming up or if they want to go and respond to that now rick are we there in the presentation can they go and respond to that now i hear that at lawrence free state the information this summer as related to covid that information has all been published on our free athletics website first which then creates an automatic post onto our twitter account that oftentimes i've asked coaches to go on twitter and retweet those stories because we found that we have more traffic on twitter than we do on the free state athletics website um but all of our first the

064first push of information goes through the free state athletics website first and then i do i ask coaches to follow up with that on twitter in retweeting the story so that then parents will go and actually read the full post and that that's the same at lawrence high school our first ever movies i'm sorry um sure i'm sorry that was amanda fonts at free state high school hi i'm nick wood director at lawrence high school we have the same system in place as as free state the for the information is coming out through our website and then it automatically generates it shoots it out on twitter as well as facebook so when you hear the feedback that that's not families are aren't getting that because we i get a lot of feedback saying my coach

065just tweets that's the only way we get information so when you hear that feedback is there a way that you can address that under the context of covid19 to make sure that families are getting is there another way to layer that communication and you have to answer that right now but i think that's what the board is asking is there additional communication that you might think through and that's something that you can work out not right now on the spot but i think that's the feedback does that represent the where you were going gr and shannon this is shannon i think yeah i think for me um it would be helpful to have a better understanding of what um what that communication plan looks like and and to be able to communicate to parents whether

066like for example the group me app thing um that raises a lot of concerns for me in terms of liability uh for things that happen on there it's not an official district communication channel so i'm i'm you know i just i'm wondering how can we how can we push our communications about our athletics programs and our activities through a fiscal district communication channels um that are easily accessible by all families and students um and i think you don't have to answer this right now but i would also like to understand why we have separate websites for the athletic programs at the high schools um just another in you know that may be a longer conversation but i'd like to understand why we do that and what what benefit we get from that disadvantages that might

067create okay we we will put we will put the communication questions on the agenda for uh an ad meeting in the very near future is that that sounds good and then and then we'll share information back great thank you okay um i believe gr you had another question about the temperature checks yeah you did just the i was i just unmuted to say after all that do you actually remember my first question which was um the the check-in the check-in process and the and the qr code that they fill out the form um who who is ultimately responsible that to check that that is getting done or is that or is the current process that we're assuming is getting done and will be more reactive if we need the information or are we being more

068proactive that it's actually getting done by actually going and checking that the data is being filled out we we have checks and balances on that um i'll certainly let the ads explain the processes at each school cheryl nick wood from lawrence high school uh gr the way we do it at lawrence high school for for our summer program we had a qr set up where the student athletes they would check in when they arrived at their conditioning and workout the coaches had access to that student log as well as myself and the principal dr johnson and that the data that we are getting that we're the the spreadsheet that's created for us is an in an attendance log so then we are able to go back and verify what student athlete was on our property

069at the conditioning on a specific date and time as we go into the season uh we are going to specifically break down those qr codes for each individual sport so upon check-in when the student-athletes show up to a practice um or games they are going to be checking in with the qr code as well as the um the coaches that are that are there in attendance as well and the qr code will ask them the the questions uh about their if they've had a fever if they've had a cough some throat shortness of breath if they've been in close contact with anybody with covid and that's the questions that that's generating but the data that we get are that they were present at the the activity and so again that that's our process at lawrence

070high school and this is a man that free state mars is very similar we have an attendance log that has been set up that was set up at the beginning of the summer i'm a little bit different we have one program that utilizes the qr code but for the rest of our programs our coaches are having face-to-face conversations every time kids show up on campus um they're going through the screener questions um and ask them verbally and then they respond to those questions and as long as their answer is no to everything um then they're allowed access into the activity for that day um those attendance logs i can tell you i looked at them every single day to make sure that coaches were updating them um at the end of each continuing workout and

071it's just myself and the head coach that has access to that information yes thank you very much for that information both of you i appreciate it rick not to prolong it dr johnson i i know that the principals also have been out at various times just spot checking um actually to see it live and in person as well they're not at every conditioning nor will they plan a bit every practice but i know the administrators in both buildings um just through my conversations with them have done spot checks on random mornings as well right um dr stevenfield you are exactly right um and that you know has um was originally started at the very beginning of conditioning um and has been carried out my last spot check was this morning thank you dr johnson the

072second document uh that yes thank you patrick um the second document we're sharing with you is is sport by sport it outlines more specific guidelines for each sport including ppe screening practice equipment competition sportsmanship spectators and transportation we've also linked the acacia cobot 19 resources to this document which provides further details about each fall sport please know that we're awaiting unified command guidance regarding event management specifically spectator guidelines as well as transportation unified command has created a subcommittee that deals with these aspects specifically we understand that these two areas may look very different for example spectator numbers we know spectator numbers will be limited um and we also know in the area of transportation that we we won't be able to transport full buses of participants we understand those things but we'd still await further

073guidance in those areas from unified command we also know that unified command will provide gating criteria that will direct us as well as impact whether or not specific sports can be played at specific times we will continue to revise these documents based on input we received from from the kansas state high school activities association sunflower league unified command and the usd 497 board we we are able to answer any specific questions at this time kelly this is i have i think three questions that are pretty quick um one on uh the documents that you shared rick um i think it's a really helpful are these available publicly to parents at this point they aren't yet but we will make them available soon we we wanted to share with the board tonight first okay and when

074they are made available where will they be made available um we haven't fully discussed that but i presume that they would be made available in the together again information as well as um linked to the high schools um and perhaps a a separate version at the middle schools okay and then the other two quick questions i have so i noticed that on the other column some of the um there's some considerations about locker rooms are you also waiting on unified command guidance around um how and when students have access to those facilities well i'll answer that and then and then allow the aeds or principals to to provide more information we are we are attempting to limit restrict locker room use we know that football for sure will need some access to locker room just

075because of equipment but the the other the other sports were were trying to um request that that student athletes uh refrain from using locker rooms and instead um bring their equipment back and forth with them so that we can uh try to try to prevent exposure that way um ads do you have more to add to that sure nick wood from lawrence high the just like i echo what uh what rick has mentioned about about the athletic programs what we're looking at from from a football standpoint is that the the upperclassmen in my communication with coach rampi and the plan that we're getting ready to put in we're putting in place is very limited use of locker room whatsoever upperclassmen would would handle their equipment and be in charge of it if the underclassmen meaning

076freshman sophomore need to store their equipment somewhere or maybe potentially in special circumstances we'll look at that as a place to help store it but our as of now we're looking at not really not using the locker room during games during practice time we're really trying to keep people out of there for to mitigate the risk this is amanda free state we're a little bit different as far as football is concerned our equipment will stay on campus um our coaching staff will be responsible for disinfecting the helmets and shoulder pads every single day and then they will be locked up at free state to where they're not being transported back and forth from home and i so this is nick wood again here from lawrence high and if i didn't make that clear we're doing

077the same as far as the disinfectant and the sanitizing that's that's the same process we'll be doing there at lawrence high as well the equipment will be sanitized every single day i was more so touching based on being in the locker room are there additional board questions i had two more good things okay shannon transportation are we talking about potentially last week i'll make room for your last two questions so thank you oh that's okay shannon it's kind of hard to hear i'm sure um so first of all thank you all for sharing this guidance and information so a couple questions um well one question two-part question for the 80s um so are you confident that you'll be able to work within the guidelines that you shared this evening and then the second part of

078the question is what challenges do you anticipate with the guidelines that you've shared [Music] the first question was i i don't i struggled to understand the first question can you please um say that one again please yes so are you confident that you'll be able to work within the guidelines that you've shared this evening and then the second part is what challenges do you anticipate so this and is been very open and transparent with my coaching staff i do have some concerns with the guidelines um i'm concerned about having the proper ppe and equipment available to all of our student athletes and coaches i'm very concerned about putting them in situations where they're going to be exposed um just for practices with the uncertainty of what our game schedule will actually look like based on

079our simpler league counterparts because they have a different gating criteria that they are using um we've had great success this summer it's going to take a lot of hard work and diligence by our head coaches and our assistant coaches to make sure that our student athletes are following the proper protocol um i think at the end of the day my biggest concern is the risk exposure and the uncertainty of whether or not um our kiddos will even get to participate in a game just based on the gating criteria that those who are surrounding us have implemented and are going to follow for their fall sports programs nick wood from lawrence high school to answer the the first part sorry about that uh the first part of the question is i feel our coaching staff has

080done an amazing job all summer long of working within the standards and the protocols that have set in place for uh this the summer conditioning workout program now when we move into the actual season starting on august 17th that's a whole different level and a whole different ball game and um they will have to continue to raise their level of awareness and have diligence of where they're at with with in regards to being you know meeting the standard meeting the compliance that we're at but i i feel they've shown me that they're ready and they will be very um very prepared to follow these these guidelines and we were every we'll break down every single sport individually to make sure we're putting coaches and students in situations to to mitigate their risk and then the

081challenges i think the challenges are that kind of like amanda said this is this is new for everybody you know i think it's the understanding that there's no perfect answer out there and there's no perfect solution what we're trying to do is we're mitigating the risk for our staff and for our student athletes and and so every day we're learning something new every day we got to be flexible every day we have to you know face adversity and modify things and and get constant feedback and communicate and so the challenges are you just always have to be ready um to you know to but you know to be understand that this is a very fluid situation and so the challenges are that this is just our reality where it's at [Music] compliance and staying within

082guidelines but have what efforts have been made to reach out to the medical staff here in the district like our local nurses that are serving our students and i would assume that would help address some of the kind of challenges that you may foresee especially due to ppe and any risks um risk exposure was that loud enough okay it was that paula yeah yeah paul i don't think i i i i don't think we could hear you clearly on the first part as reaching out to whom were you able to reaching out to the medical school as far as what for ppe and risk exposure as that [Music] oh a couple of things i'm not sure specifically which pppe um amanda has concerns about so we'll wrap back around because we've been able to acquire

083um the necessary things thus far for staff so we can follow up with amanda to see where there may be gaps and then as far as the risk exposure i think that was your other question unified command um has there is a subcommittee which rick is a part of that they're looking at all of those risk mitigation uh factors and they'll provide gating criteria and um things that need to be in place for these sports um our unified command is just a little behind like unlike johnson county and sedgwick county as far as them um releasing what their gating criteria is for the various sports but honestly i don't imagine that it will be very different some of most of them are very similar and some are a little more restrictive to others but i

084don't imagine ours would be way off because i have not seen that with the variety of plans that i've looked at so there are doctors from lmh ku and um that are weighing in and looking at part of those things as well but i think on the ppe i just i think we'll just right back around to amanda and nick because we have been able to um acquire or get um the things that we need for our staff to start shannon you had two questions yes thank you and i'm sorry again eric i didn't mean to interrupt you um i just wanted to wrap back around the transportation typically in our district we require athletes to participate in transportation when we provide it are we talking about altering that this year so that parents could

085support kids potentially we we don't know exactly what that looks like yet that has that is a topic a a solution that has been mentioned um we don't we don't know if that's the the path that we'll follow or not but that's in the mix i'm i'm just i'm wondering about that one if that would actually require a teaching board policy and if so um i would definitely encourage you all to involve the policy committee soon so we can work on something to that effect if we need to um i'm sorry i was going to say other districts um county skating um gating criterias have included recommendations around that so that may come out i mean a recommendation may come from unified command regarding that and then we will make sure that we loop in

086the board policy around that okay um in regard to if parents you know we've had obviously board members have had lots of contact from parents on um various aspects of the athletics and activities plans if you have a concern about state safety criteria or if safety criteria are or not followed um where do we send them in the first instance could be directing them to the ads at the high schools or at the middle schools or should we be directing them to individual coaches what's what's the best practice for board members to help you with that i would say it would go to abd's at the high schools ads or principals um and then then they could follow up with the coaches okay and then rick are you planning to touch on middle school sports

087yes that's the next slide all right thank you i'm done thank you okay okay um i have one related question i'm listening to you all i hear um one one thing that we've been communicating as a board to the community is that typically the board does not take action on whether or not sports will proceed and that it is likely that we will follow the guidelines that you are all following and not interfere with those directions what i'm wondering about along those lines um because i'm hearing you say there's this possibility that some of the sports would not go forward based on the on the guidelines that's the underlying piece like we all want to see kids be able to be involved in band kids be able to be involved in football this this fall

088in the event that those sports could not happen we did hear a lot of feedback from parents about the the impact that has on students as they progress through collegial opportunities so some districts are creating portfolios for students they're doing things to support their mental health if the if the activity they're involved in is is disrupted how will we support students if their sport cannot go forward based on the guidelines that you've provided us that's a great topic for us to discuss and i think we will we will need to discuss that further we've been we've been putting together this plan to start on august 17th um and and we we will focus on that we we do know that our students will need support all of our students will need support and and in

089the event that we're not able to move forward with all sports or activities or or some sports and activities we will we will have a plan in place i'll work with we will work with our mental health teams we'll work with our our coaches to provide some sort of of support other activities something along those lines we we have not had specific conversations about that yet okay thank you in addition to mental health i'm looking for ways that students can promote their success to colleges if they're not able to demonstrate it because that's coming up quite a bit so in addition to thinking about how we'll support their mental health but also thinking through how they can still um uh show their successes throughout their high school career just something to think about thank you

090thanks so so with our middle school athletics the recommendation is a is a bit different the recommendation came from the middle school athletic directors and principals that we we start practice september 8th to correspond with when school starts that competition would be among lawrence public school middle schools only we have four schools and we could we could create a schedule that that would allow for uh competition in district only and also that we would follow the the kansas state high school activities association usd 497 and unified command guidelines um there's a link there that was sent out to all board members earlier today so you have access to it that way um but i'm i'm open to to more discussion about this rick this is shannon i would just ask that um middle school start

091communicating that to middle school parents um so that they know what the timelines are for getting all the paperwork physicals completed um since it's going to be different than the guidance that they have seen for the high schools thanks that's that's our plan after um after uh presenting this to you tonight uh that's our plan thanks give you a little bit of an outline of our next steps professional development begins august 12th for all staff and all activities have the ability to be taken online we have heard very clearly from teachers that they need lots of time to prepare for online learning and we're really pleased that the schedule provides uh 16 or more hours to to do that online learning the deadline as you talked about tonight was for enrollment and staffing surveys comes

092up on august 14th on august 24th that's our target date for staffing assignments you talked a little bit about that we are doing virtual parent teacher conferences and that will be the first through the third and then um september 8th classes begin we will be back again for episode four of our board of education updates on together again um for that if there's any questions otherwise that ends our update other questions the the one thing i wanted to circle back to that i i think we kind of got lost in in debate um to just kind of honor the families that shannon's questions were speaking to around the survey so the deadline for the survey is friday but just for clarity can you say if a family wanted to make a change to whatever they

093answer on the survey some districts are saying there's a definitive date in which you have to enroll in the online program do we have can you clarify that we have one last question around that yeah it's an email second comment there's an email at the end of the survey that parents can reach out uh if they decide to change their answer but again this we're trying to get these numbers for staffing purposes okay great i just want to clarify so there is opportunity if you are a family that's really struggling with this without seeing the guidelines to provide um feed to come back to circle back and and with their principles and have a conversation but for the most part we're asking families to please get this information in if you can by friday yes

094and we'll send out reminders okay constantly and we can continue to emphasize that okay thank you and i will share with you the moment we get the final uh gating criteria from unified command and health department rather we will um send that out probably via email or post it to our website and let families know that it's available okay so we can expect to see those guidelines certainly by next week sometime yes probably sooner okay thank you thanks for staying longer for this everyone being patient okay um so we're gonna uh take a ten minute break and then come back and start the regular meeting well five minute break erica said five minutes um so we'll be back at 6 50. thank you that's so awesome you are going to make it down faster just

095wait till she's sitting here i do want to thank all of our high school administrators for being on with us tonight we appreciate you you're more than welcome to hang out with us for the regular board meeting but if not you can feel free to log off thank you all so much okay oh boy i hope i wasn't sitting on this the wrong way so do you think we will be remote going forward maybe what do you think going forward here let's talk about it because it would be easier i think for everybody to be on the same format maybe i mean i'm not opposed to it i'm not opposed to it either how much is on the patron commentary today um because we had the removal it's very few comparative oh thank you yeah

096okay and these are all they don't fall under a particular yep and before you approve the agenda can i get a second uh oh yeah this is carol ii carol sutkind all in favor aye aye anyone opposed okay motion passes uh kelly um well uh we'll get that right when we get to content yeah okay we have a meeting full of slight changes to the agenda here and there so bear with us okay so we'll move on to uh special recognition and we don't have everyone we okay we don't have any special recognitions this evening so it's a report of the board president i just wanted to really briefly say that the board continues to take very seriously every decision that we're making related to how we move forward into the next year we hear

097lots of varying opinions about how we should do that from staff and families and i haven't read very many points that i thought well that's terribly wrong you've brought valid points from all different angles i've learned a lot about circumstances that lawrence families are in and our staff have to consider i've had read some of the most impassioned pleas to have our students in person and those that asked for us not to there really isn't another time that i can think of in the board's history since i've been following it for the last 18 years or so where i think we've had these types of challenges in front of us so bear with us as we pivot as dr stubblefield's favorite word i think lately and try also to adjust as we respond to your

098feedback and take it all very seriously so that that's all i'm going to say for um the comments tonight just given the time so i'm going to turn it over to dr lewis all right [Music] i began my comments tonight similar to what i bought president jones uh stated that we are approaching this unprecedented unprecedented time with a huge sense of compassion and understanding we are also making sure that every decision although will not please everyone you know we're all taught in leadership when we make any decision there's typically five to ten percent of individuals that will not um stand up and give you an ovation after that uh decision this is one of those situations that are uncharted orders and you're bound to get about 50 percent and that you know are probably not

099in agreement that's not to state that those individuals [Music] opinions their ballot concerns i remind you i'm a parent of four in this district so i am impacted as well but the quote that i wanted to start with is a quote that i'll share during convocation um so i'll need everyone that that listens at convocation to act like this was the first time you heard it at convocation but it says the fundamental key to addressing a crisis is for leaders to not only be honest about the situation and what you're about and what you're going to do about it but that you do it with clarity humility and heart so as to remind people that we're in this together and i truly believe that have you heard me stated before that through every uh unfortunate

100circumstance there's great opportunity and i'm considering myself the eternal optimist i just do believe i still say that we may not see it now because i don't see it in my house i'll tell you that but we will be better on on the other side of this so thank you for your patience uh continue to email us continue to call continue to drop messages in our dms or address was that that correct um but we want to hear from you because new information comes out as julie said it seems like every hour um we enjoyed working with 81 new teachers last week doing induction of this group five are new to the profession eight are classified staff transitioning to certified teaching roles and five are teachers returning to us we have paused our learning virtual

101school registration to get caught up on the processing of the influx of new enrollment in addition we have to make sure that we're evaluating our staffing needs as a result of the increased registration if sprites space permits we will reopen registration while lvs is a good option for some families it is not the only option for those not wanting to return to the classroom as you know distance learning will continue to be an option for our brick and mortar families even when we are able to shift to a hybrid or in-person model that distance learning option will still be there families receive that enrollment as you heard earlier survey on friday the douglas county commission is set to discuss and determine this week how cares act funding will be spent for economic development health and

102medical housing and human services as well as educational needs across the community lawrence public schools submitted a proposal for around three million dollars in funding and we understand that the county staff is recommending around one million dollars for our district needs related to covet so we are grateful that we will offer an opportunity to submit proposals to the county online benefits enrollment for staff and early retirees continues through friday staff is assisting individuals with benefit enrollment in person and remotely as needed staff return either remotely or in person for professional development on wednesday one positive result of the later school start time is that we now will use august for staff planning and preparation i don't think there ever was a time in the history of schooling i don't think that we've had this time

103with our teachers and staff we will web stream and record our fall staff convocation on tuesday august the 18th we have heard boys and girls club has announced its plans to limit enrollment programs starting in september at courtley hillcrest sunflower and the teen center at the lawrence college and career center we will continue to work with the boys and girls clubs in these four schools to accommodate the health and safety needs of staff our community partners as well as the children that we serve that's all i have thank you dr lewis okay um patron commentary and we have a few folks here so i'm going to read the audience participation form to you our request to you the usd 497 board of education welcomes patron comments and thanks you for taking time to talk to

104us about the policies and procedures we set aside this time during our regular meeting to hear from the public this is your time to share your opinions however complaints about specific staff or students will be heard by the board in executive session in order to protect the privacy of the individuals to be discussed while you're not required to share your contact information we ask that we ask for that information so district staff or board can follow up with any specific concerns you may have the board president will invite comments on topics not included on the agenda at the beginning of each meeting comments relating to agenda items are welcomed after the board has had the opportunity to discuss the topic so please limit your comments to five minutes and i've asked elise to help me

105keep time so right now i'd like to welcome melissa vineyard if you're on can you hear me can you see me hear you can you see me uh we can now hey yeah hey all right um we we're ready okay um so it's great to be here with you all this evening my name is melissa vineyard and i am going to my fourth year as a special education pair at kennedy elementary um i'm going to read the pal cwa a reopening request letter and share a bit about my own experience we're so excited that you all voted to recognize our union first of all pal and cwa and per dr lewis request we're working on how to organize fellow classified staff after discussions with our membership many of whom are also parents of young people

106in our schools we've developed a plan for we are opening safely with the best interests of our young people their parents and caregivers our classified staff our teachers and our wholes our whole school community in mind we ask that we do not return to buildings until it's actually safe to do so instead we want to work with you to develop an online learning and family support plan that centers the needs of black students our indigenous students our students of color our working class our poor students our lgbtqia students and our students with disabilities and exceptionalities this plan should include modified slash curbside meal service and other service social services like mental health teams typically provided during the school year as chairs and instructor and instructional staff we know our insights and experience are crucial in

107determining what will actually work in the day to day for our students we ask that with the delay of school until after labor day para educators and all classified staff be paid full time on the regular schedule beginning no later than august 18th that our benefits continue we ask that all policies related to the start dates and professional development and be district-wide as there have been some confusion and inequity between staff at different buildings we ask that you work directly with parents and caregivers especially parents and caregivers who are poor and working class to reimagine the daily log process to make it easier and all of our parents and young people to learn and thrive during this time we ask that all pairs and instructional staff be allowed to participate remotely and professional development before

108the official start of school for our young people and during the six weeks of online learning in regular building-wide meetings and professional development we asked there'd be two pools of sick leave one for coven 19 related absences up to 21 days and one for regular sick leave that we accrued during the school year as per usual we asked that our high-risk classified staff or classified staff of high-risk household or family members asked to find by cdc be allowed to the opportunity to work remotely even if that means a change in their job duties we ask that all pairs and instructional staff are paid at our instructional duty rate for all hours worked this is currently not the case in some buildings we are paid at a lower rate during lunch or other non-instructional time once

109we return to buildings we ask that we receive hazard pay for any coven 19 related tasks like temperature taking cleaning sanitizing we asked no facial recognition technology be used in our schools even for temperature taking or health monitoring because of the risk it poses particularly for undocumented students bipoca students victims of interpersonal violence and for the privacy of our students and our families and finally we ask that our whole school community come together to fight for the full federal funding for public education and to reimagine our schools using the practices and principles of transformative justice anti-racism and disability justice students look up to us and what kind of message are we sending when paraeducators are not included in remote instruction especially because for many students we are the adult we trust the most school my

110students teach me just as much as i teach them and that and of itself is such a gift and i'm asking you from the bottom of my heart not to take that from me or or from them thank you so much for your time and all the work you do for our school and our families i know you're doing your best and thank you for listening thank you appreciate your time okay we have um nexa emily are you here honey hear me i hear you all right sorry all right good evening uh my name is emily bodeker my pronouns are she's hers i'm a teacher at the pinkney and woodlawn elementary schools i'm also a parent of a soon-to-be fourth grader at sunset hill i share this so that you understand that i typically get

111communication from three school principals throughout the school year as well as from district administration as an employee of the district now knowing this i come before you today with one simple ask and that is to improve district communication to both teachers and parents i'd like to start my commentary by saying that this isn't the first time i've asked the district for this every survey i've filled out in the past four years whether district or on the building level has said that this is an area we need to be working on on thursday the 6th at 6 pm i received an email from the district that said teachers were to return to the buildings during remote learning this was the first i had heard that this was even a possibility i was to inform my supervisor

112if i had any barriers returning to work immediately i thought well okay my barrier is child care i have a school-aged child but surely they met health concerns more pressing reasons for not working in the building this email sent myself and other certified staff into a tailspin thursday as evidenced by the hundreds of text messages i received it was not until my union reached out to dr stubblefield that certified staff received clarification on the first bullet point on the return to work email my question is why couldn't that clarification have been included in the first place why the need for the extra stress and anxiety surely the district had considered that many teachers also have school-aged children the communication wasn't effective it wasn't clear and the communication following that snafu including the staff child care

113survey felt honestly kind of like an afterthought now i feel fortunate that my supervisors are able to let me teach from home i just wish we could have been clear in the communication especially in the stressful time on this note i gleaned the most information this summer from my union representatives and while i'm happy to have such a strong union advocating for me i can only feel that it is a little ridiculous that my boss or my employers have not provided much information at all so i'd like to at this point to say thank you lea for being tireless advocates for all of us as stated earlier i mentioned i'm the parent of a school-aged student like many parents in our district i was waiting to see what type of plan our schools would be

114implementing before i made any decisions regarding my daughter's education what we received on august 7th was a very general overview i read it once i read it again i read it one more time just to make sure i wasn't missing anything and then i started looking at it through the lens of maybe a parent who struggles to read or maybe english isn't their first language or a parent who is tired and working multiple job a parent who doesn't have reliable internet a parent who has multiple children maybe some with ieps at home i was very troubled the verbose document that was sent out actually doesn't give much information to parents i echo everything that shannon said earlier tonight and comments about how communication was kind of inequitable now i'll be working from home teaching online

115most of the day because i'm a music teacher and i know that my daughter will be expected to get online five times a day for spurts of 15 minutes for face-to-face instruction i know i'll have to log minutes for the state my concern is how this plan negatively affects those students of working parents which now includes me i haven't taught our young we sorry we haven't taught our younger students how to adhere to this type of schedule and i personally haven't been told to create online only resources for students to access in their own time will attendance be something we're taking into account while assessing students during remote teaching are we offering families any type of flexibility in their child's schooling what's the realistic expectation of my child attending class meetings during the day what

116does a sample schedule look like nothing is clear and in short parents need answers to this note i wish i would have known that that hybrid model survey was actually means for enrollment i learned that tonight at the board meeting again the communication was not clear teachers need answers and those of us who happen to be both a teacher and a parent shouldn't have to choose between these two roles in the ever-changing landscape of education in a coveted world i understand the need to not release information until you know it is pertinent but we've had weeks where we knew online was a possibility surely during a coveted committee meeting the expectations were discussed by giving parents information with time to make decisions not only would anxiety hopefully be reduced but you would be sending the

117message that you respect parents and the hard decisions they are having to make that we are all in this together as you know teachers are assessed by the danielson evaluation model we have to submit artifacts to support our effectiveness as an educator one of the artifacts i've submitted in the past are examples of parent communications if you are being evaluated on the communication you have been sending out to your parents and your teachers what would your category be unsatisfactory basic proficient distinguished i would assume based on all of the things i am hearing tonight that maybe not distinguished would be the category we are in for communication i only ask that you strive to be as communicative as you expect your teachers to be thank you for your time and work during this unconventional start

118of the school year thank you for the feedback emily um dr pittman there we go my hero there we go all right um i find it quite appropriate actually that i'm following miss beaudecker because we're going to talk about communication and as a again my name is dr kj pittman and my pronouns are she her and hers and i'm speaking today not only for myself but for a group of over 90 parents of children receiving special education services in our school district we have gathered on the internet as a local educational pod to support each other as we navigate this school year as a distance learning with ieps for transparency i also sit on the lawrence special education advisory committee but today i'm speaking as a private citizen representing sped parents in our pod and

119not as a representative of the committee though many of the parents in our pod sit on the advisor committee as well this pandemic has had many downsides but the one benefit is that it's had let all of the sped parents find each other and we have found ourselves empowered by our numbers we will no longer hide in the shadows by ourselves feeling powerless against the american education system that has continued to fail our children we have joined together and are ready to work with the school district to find the best and most creative solutions providing services for our children with ieps but you the district have to communicate with us you have to stop ignoring us and you have to have these conversations in public our children's education isn't and shouldn't be a secret to

120taxpayers parents have sent numerous emails and phone calls that have gone unanswered and we can't move onward as dr lewis suggests we do without acknowledging past failures so we can make sure they don't happen again we need you to acknowledge the mistakes that were made in the spring how badly they harmed our children with disabilities and how you intend to do better while we understand that the situation the district was handed in the spring was absolutely unprecedented and that there was no playbook on how to implement ieps and meet fair and appropriate public education statutes and the individuals with disabilities education act while in completely a distance learning format it was unacceptable that the district never communicated its spend distance learning plan to parents via email and relied on a game of telephone to pass

121it down the line from administrator to administrator to sped teachers case managers and school psychologists to relay the very little information that existed we were never told to wait until the week of april 14th when sped teachers could finally be available to assist our children this led to an absolute nightmare as parents jumped into the district's distance learning plan with absolutely no supports or accommodations the first day it was rolled out on march 30th these two weeks absolutely crushed the self-esteem of sped kids and frustrated some spirit sped parents so badly that they abandoned the district's platform completely the district should have reached out to us as a group via email with this plan while each student has individualized needs the district had a process on how sped teachers and case managers were to interact

122to spend students it should have not been a secret from parents you failed our students in the spring and we all told you this on our parents surveys we expected better this fall we hoped you were listening but here we are finding ourselves struggling with numerous concerns which time doesn't allow me to list they will be mailed to you according to your most recent email dr lewis you are choosing to focus on building relationships supporting and serving families connecting with and comforting scholars so we are here to hold you accountable to those words there's been no communication connection or comforting of our community we have received one single paragraph as to what special education will look like in the fall one paragraph and it answers not a single question nor does it bring us any

123comfort we want communication from the district administration regarding special education and not only on an individual basis i'm here today because spirit sped parents want to work with you though not against you we don't want the district bogged down in due process claims and spending money on lawsuits we want those resources to go to our children on september 8th we ask you to start communicating with fed families via email this week we also asked the district offer a virtual symposium similar to what is being offered by the pennsylvania bureau of special education that explains how a sped will function this year and explains the decisions that led to the particular setup the symposium in pennsylvania is also offering parents and sped teachers and staff the opportunity to submit their questions and concerns to be addressed

124during the forum and we think this is a great model for you to follow to meet our communication needs and the timing couldn't be better their symposium is tomorrow so you could attend and get some great ideas i'll be sending the link via email to all school board members dr lewis and the sped administration team we sped parents know that is extremely challenging to meet the iep expectations during 100 distance learning and we don't expect you to perform magic we know there's been little federal and state guidance on how to meet iep goals and provide accommodations there will be limitations to what can and can't be offered we get that we just want to seat at the table to know why and how the decisions are being made and we also have some great ideas

125if you're willing to listen to them at this point in time there's been absolutely no transparency but we know and believe you can do better we offer grace and kindness as you work to do your best but it can't be behind closed doors our children already face enough barriers to education as it is please don't be another barrier and please join us at the table thank you for your time i'm going to circle back to that commentary from dr pittman i just want you to know we heard you and we're going to come back to it so i'm going to move on in the agenda but i'll have a follow-up question related to your commentary um so board i think that's it board commentary i can go okay this is erica so i've had several

126conversations and meetings with community members following our last board meeting discussing current issues i've also previously reported that i serve as an equity impact advisor for the douglas county covet 19 recovery team for the education function and i've attended several of these meetings within the last couple of weeks a couple of weeks ago um dena johnston executive director of the lawrence schools foundation rebecca smith lmh health executive director and vp of strategic communications dr lewis and i um met to see if there's an opportunity to collaborate to reopen schools safely and so i'm happy to announce that the lawrence schools foundation is teaming up with lmh health to ask the public to help in providing mask and sanitation supplies for the district students they can return safely and more information will come from the hosting

127organizations on august the 3rd i attended a kansas leadership center leadership class on managing self which i found incredibly beneficial given the current time that we're in um that was great with navigating um school reopening and on july 31st i had the honor of participating in the graduation of our lmh health leadership academy executive scholars two were from free state graduates from this year and then two are going into their senior year thank you do other board members have commentary oh okay great uh i wanted to say a quick thank you again to all the community members who've contacted me since our july 27 meeting i don't like erica i've had conversations with a number of people and received lots of emails please be assured that i've read every one of your emails and i'm

128working to respond to them as i as i can i will get you a response i wanted to share with the board a couple of things i've been involved in on july 29th i spoke to the lawrence central rotary meeting to give them an update on our back to school plans and also recent actions at that point in time by the state board of education and i want to thank the members of the lawrence central rotary for that invitation to share what our district is doing with your membership that same day i attended my first meeting as a new director on the national school board action center board of directors i'm excited to start that work with that group and expand advocacy work to help support our schools both locally and in kansas and across

129the country through efforts on things like their work on getting pandemic relief for public schools and also funding to help school districts across the country close the homework gap last monday we had a board policy meeting we discussed the proposed policy for first read that's on our agenda tonight regarding site councils and we also had an extensive discussion on the mandated title ix updates that are on our regular agenda this evening so we'll hear more about that shortly um and then finally uh attended the kasb board leadership forum on wednesday i think they've gone back to offering those weekly if board members are interested um this one we heard an update from ashley goss who is at the kansas at ksde um or no she's at kdhe i'm sorry and she was giving some guidance

130to school board members on how to use and access the kdhd data to help us with our back to school planning so and then we also had a facilities committee meeting gr and i did on thursday but i'm going to leave that to gr to address thank you very much thank you shannon hi yes um i am going to speak as a board member and parent teacher as well i know last board meeting we we knew that the governor's executive order was not affirmed by the department of kansas department of education and um per our agenda it was originally set for us to continue to go ahead and start if i'm not mistaken i'm trying to review to look at starting school nonetheless after labor day um and the original proposal was the hybrid we

131as a board um because of the emails and um concerns of staff decided um our you know we made the call to do the six weeks of distance learning now with that said it's been i don't know i don't how many about a week a week and a half to make this this this transition transition and one of the reasons why um dr lewis and the district leaders originally went to the hybrid model um correct me if i'm wrong was because of the the consultation with the health department and um um the unified uh i can think of the words um the team so based on the data that they had right wrong or indifferent that change was was just made and um not to mention the together again task force have been in the

132works of um making a plan so i say that to say um as a parent looking in uh as much as as nerve-racking as it can be i have a childhood who's neurodivergent and as much as i thought that they would do well on virtual learning i still have i have those concerns but i also know that um and i'm not saying because i'm a board member the district we are making the the best decisions that we can at the time so to say that to say that there's um not transparency as far as um as far as the goals or the plan to do the the online learning i'm i feel like that's um unfortunate because basically i feel like we as a district just um we as a board just turned the whole

133turn there the whole plan that they originally had around which brings me to that point of um the conversation that we had earlier about the together again and having that question that goes out about the hybrid model so that even if that's not the route that we take at least they are prepared to do that so as much as i um [Music] those are just things things to just really take into consideration what to think about before i feel like before questioning the integrity of of the district that's just my my take on it thank you melissa with other board members yes um so just a couple things so shannon and i did a facility security meeting um and so just a quick update from that we got an update on bond construction that is

134we're going remarkably well um at our various sites uh we get uh some of the projects are actually gonna that we thought would be delayed specifically at central um the uh um what am i thinking of shannon um because i didn't take notes it's the work in the auditorium the work of the auditorium the the materials for were going to be back ordered and now they're actually going to arrive more more close on time to what than what we expected correct so the the work on the auditorium is is going to finish much much faster than we thought the work in lhs is continuing uh very well and then and then we actually had a pretty good conversation about um various safety measures that that fnow is looking at in in terms of being prepared

135and ready to go back and and and the one thing that that i wanted to to to mention specifically was that the the uh fno hvac technicians and contracted engineers are brainstorming different ideas to help um with our air handling and so in in our new construction places lhs the new construction where we've added the new air handlers that are in room specific they turn over air if i remember correctly and tony will will probably throw something virtually at me if i get this wrong but i believe that they turn over air about two and a half times an hour and they're about 90 outside air but we have other older buildings that that can't meet those statistics and so the hvac technicians and contracted engineers are brainstorming different ideas such as using ultraviolet germicide

136eradication and bipolar ionization um ideas and different things to try and add an extra level of protection and and um things to do to to to help in those situations as as as well so all in all it's good meeting a good update um a couple of other things i wanted to say um i wanted to thank uh emily bodecker for her comments on communication i i i have to admit that when i got elected to the board um one of the things that i had heard from people was that the communication between the district and staff was really bad and i didn't really believe it i just thought it was hyperbole because there tends to be a lot of hyperbole sometimes when you have two different groups trying to communicate and and i have

137to admit that this week i was incredibly frustrated with um communication and fully understand how staff feels because i felt like as a board member this week specifically i was broadsided more than once by communication that went out to staff that then staff reacted by coming to me as a board member to find out why a decision was being made or to get my opinion on a decision that i had no idea what they were talking about and i had to tell them as much which in the least most simplistic way makes me look incompetent which is not a position i choose to take on purpose it happens a lot but i usually don't like it or do it on purpose and and and so it was a really frustrating place to be um and

138so i can i can appreciate the the the need to continue to work on better communication from the district level um and there was one other thing that i was going to say you know i can't remember what it is but if i think of it i'll come back oh now i remember um uh i was also going to share and and thank all the emails and the comments that we've gotten um i have also read them all i do appreciate them um kind of along the lines of what melissa said the one the one thing that i will say uh the for those um members of the public who are uh frustrated and upset based on our decision for six weeks of virtual coming from this standpoint of um you want the option to

139send your child to school because you if you feel it's safe for your kid then you want that option to send your kid um the only the only thing that i would say to you is please please remember that your child or students are not the only people in the buildings we also have staff in the buildings and we have to take them into a account we don't just take students into account and so when we get accused or i personally get accused of not using data to make a decision or not understanding data or not in one case not knowing how to read a medical journal which was kind of ironic um my only answer is just because we use different data than what you feel was significant we still use data we used

140our staff survey and we use parent surveys and we used we used data to make our decision so just understand that that we as melissa said we made the best decision that we felt that we could for all the stakeholders that we represent thank you uh the other commentary i do make mine quick uh thank you gr for that i appreciate that um i would like to thank um melissa vineyard and dr pittman for bringing their concerns to us i i'm also interested in your solutions about the communication issues and i am anxious to hear your solutions about what that would look like i think dr pittman had brought that up so i hope to hear from you soon again if not have a conversation with the both of you um also um as a

141i guess part of the board um i joined the mentor the national mentor partnership affiliate leaders of color um and that work is focused around youth mentoring across the across the u.s so this last week on august 5th i joined the mentor leaders of colorado on panel's discussion about the work we're doing around racial equity i gave credit to the work that started before my time but it was worth sharing how our district is showing up for our students families and staff so that was work that is just beginning to start with our national mentoring partnerships at ksde and the kansas volunteer commission thank you paula i'm sorry what did everybody get a chance that one i didn't mean for it to sound like that right um did everyone get a chance to speak i

142think one more take care of you well i was just gonna share that i spent the the past two weeks going to the 2020 douglas county behavioral health prevention summit it was held virtually every day at noon so i took part in that and i also was able to get into the the kansas association school board conference it was an all-day conference last thursday over title nine so that was it was really important informational for me i learned a lot and let's see and then last week dr lewis along with several members of the the the school district attended the restorative justice summit and that's it okay a lot of good work uh past president johnson do you have something no i just um [Music] gr made me think of something you know as far

143as the email and the correspondence and um it may be unpopular opinion um initially but i would have to say um as as we we hire sometimes fire i don't think i never known um the the superintendent right we need to we you know we need to one of the things we focus on was communication and i would say that dr lewis has done a a good job a really great job of communicating anything that we anticipate as being uh for like a better term a hot topic or um and relaying that that that information now with that said sometimes we do you know we don't anticipate something being uh um um a hot issue um and but but as it stands now um the district does not have to send us every piece of

144correspondent or communication that goes out this happened to be a hot issue that wasn't um anticipated that it would be um i do agree one of the things that i think someone sent an email about the first um first sentence or two being somewhat misleading or just like it just wasn't clear when the letters went out and so i would have to say um that um just like we don't we don't just like the t the um your administration the administration does not require every every um teacher to send them a copy of the correspondence that they send out to parents i mean dude is is it fair like yes we're going back to that doing the best that we can with what we have if we were to send out every email that um

145if we were to have dr lewis dave david cunningham dr stuberfield send out every single correspondence that they send to the community to the teachers and receive patron commentary it would be an insurmountable amount of emails that we received on top of our jobs on top of being a parent so i feel like we hired him we hired dr lewis um with the intent in trusting that um you know he's going to do it do his best and i feel like he has in running the the district sometimes there are things that we don't anticipate that's going to be um more than what it what it is and i understand the sentiments about working in your classroom um i i will have to work in my classroom periodically as well my district is not paying

146for internet services for me um so i think i just felt like i had to say that yeah i'm done i'm sorry i think you uh are something i think it's important for the community to know that dr lewis um has our support as a board um and that this is really challenging and we know that there'll be missteps and he he's the guy that will pick it back up yes so i wanted to move on i did want to hit one thing to dr pittman and paula brought it up if we could include in the next um report on if you could include a special education in the next just a summary in terms of your next update from the task force that would be helpful just to make sure we're doing due diligence

147in that arena and thank you dr pittman for bringing that to our attention and making sure that we are um counting every student and in particular our students with ieps and that's another area we're lucky to have dr lewis uh has expertise in that area so look we will gather more information and hear about that at our next meeting okay share some thoughts please sure uh it's kind of hard for me to sit here and just kind of listen to some of this um we have an amazing team here um and i will tell you i have probably one of the best communication directors this side of the mississippi and to here and i think if you look at any organization if your staff any staff will take a survey about communication it can always

148be improved that's something that we're always working on but to hear communication is bad i just can't sit here and and just listen to that with regard to the email last week email went out teachers to report to their buildings if there are barriers consult with your building administrators second clarification email went out almost at the same thing i'm just having a hard time with comments that are being made um about my team that that's i that's just how i operate um they're busting their butts um just like everybody is you know but to hear that is um disheartening and i know you say i have the support um sometimes it doesn't feel like it yeah i would just say that yeah i um i want to interesting just to clarify dr lewis you have

149my support you always have and you will just to clarify i'm specifically referring to the food service email that went out that referred to a vote that we were going to take on monday prior to the agenda being released and i then i was getting contacted and asked about and questioned about a vote that i knew nothing about and i had and i had to respond as such that that's not exactly how that communication went out just for the public to know that there was a communication that was and actually to dr lewis's point how communication happens he and his team wanted field uh food service workers to know what uh what they were considering and engage them in that conversation paula had conversation with her managers and then we did hear it after that

150and i'm actually as a board member okay with that um because it the first people that they went to were the food service workers and i also want to say the other thing i have had a window to is when the window the email went out and the reaction was not we got feedback that the email was not strong related to the communication to staff i had an email exchange with julie boyle and she was in her office here and it was dark immediately trying to address any concerns so i don't know when she got here but i'm guessing it was real early in the morning so one thing that i've always said on this sitting on this board is that communications need more staff they're doing excellent work and they could use more more

151staff so we have an administration that runs very thin um that does really fine work and i hear your feedback dr lewis and we we can do better as a board too to support administrators so i recognize and i have a little different kind of lens because i'm in the on the executive team so eric and i have got to see a few extra pieces in our role and i'm seeing people put in more hours than uh makes sense um for a human being just to response to the pandemic so let's all stay together and um and stay the course of doing the right thing for the kids doing the right things for our teachers and we'll we'll get through this um and find the space to have these conversations in a way that preserves

152uh and elevates our district okay can i is all right okay um everybody ready to go on gr all right okay all right um so we're going to move to consent agenda um oh actually let's do some honoring uh out of humility erica can you take the mic i'm happy too the board of education recognizes the following staff members with sincere appreciation for their years of service and devotion to this community and its schools deanna paget from free state para interrelated resource um for her six years of service and peggy schmallberg from prairie park para interrelated resource for her 23 years of service thank you both okay consent agenda so um we're gonna have a motion here two amen i'm gonna request that we pull it july 27 meeting minutes and consent agenda please okay

153we have another um you make it in one motion and i move that actually you tell us what the before we move can you say what item it is what number it's 410. and shannon what did you say um item 4.2 the meeting minutes for july 27. okay and just uh for the listeners at home 410 is the thermal imaging scanners okay so we need to make a motion to amend the agenda um so that's fine i have a question written oh great that it encompasses carol's item okay great thank you okay um i move the board of education adopt the items listed on the consent agenda with the exception of 4.2 meeting minutes and 4.10 thermal imaging scanners which will be discussed under new business shannon's motion i second this is carol we have

154a second it's carol jones yes hill yes hadoo blackwood yes gordon ross yes johnson yes campbell yes smith yes motion passes 7-0 all right um now we need a motion to approve the consent no we have that right everything we just move on okay okay all right so we'll move on to the do we move on at least to the budget yeah okay to the budget approval and [Music] um the motion is really just to approve um what's been published and the code 99 is attached to the agenda so unless there's more that you want to chat about or need any additional information um you can proceed with the motion is there to make the oh sorry listen ready are there any questions all right melissa um i should approve the 2020 2021 budget and

155mill levy for usd 497 as noted on the state of kansas budget form code99 this is carol yes carol seconds jones yes hill yes kadu blackwood yes gordon ross johnson yes kimble yes smith yes motion passes 7-0 thank you okay so now we move on to new business and we can start okay okay so uh shannon i'm gonna start with um the meeting minutes okay i'm requesting two corrections to the meeting minutes from july 27 um one uh is uh just more of a technical clarification um for some reason um in the 1.1 section on work session um it notes that i participated virtually which is true but it does not note the same thing for all of the um other participants who participated virtually in the meeting um it's noted at the beginning when

156it lists board members participation that i was participating virtually so i would like to request that that notation and the work session section be stricken and secondly in the discussion of the pal um business item on the board's vote for um uh whether we wanted to opt in to pirate um i know that melissa did not vote and that vote needs to be noted as a no vote in the minutes um under state law a board member cannot um if if a board member abstains from a vote it has to be recorded as a no vote and not an abstention so i want to request those two um those two edits and i have a motion ready but i'm happy to ask answer questions if anybody has any uh those are pretty minor changes about

157that or disagreement okay shannon we're i think we're ready all right so i move that the minutes of the july 27 2020 board meeting be amended to reflect the following changes that the words except shannon kimball who attended virtually be removed under the section information 1.1 pal work session and that the board vote under section 4.0 state that melissa johnson voted no on the motion this is grl second kill yeah yes sorry yes gimbal yes smith yes jones yes thank you okay uh and now we'll move to thermal imaging scanners yes hi this is carol and i i would just would like my fellow board members to consider not purchasing the thermal imaging face uh face recognition scanners just just because they're they're not that reliable and i think that we could use that money

158that like i don't think we should use cares act money to infringe upon other civil rights so i just kelly this is shannon is tony barron available to speak to this um agenda item yeah and myself okay yes i am here shannon i'm sorry um those who have been trafficked it's not just worrying about the the fault a lot of the tools that we're going to use but these are not always reliable but they're only taking the surface of the skin surface yeah i would starting zach and tony can join in i would agree with you i wouldn't bring it to the board if we were doing that we're not doing that we're not collecting any data temperature or facial recognition that was a concern that i know i had and we tony and zach

159have been working with the group out of um topeka yeah um so they had some demos here um same time i didn't know that they were working i was having some conversations with another district that had already purchased them and so tony myself and zach drove over to the district to see it in action and had those same conversations about how they're using the devices we had no intent and still has no have no intent of storing any data whatsoever on the data it's a similar conversation we had with hall pass we know how the board feels about that and we would not put our staff families or students in harm's way of collecting data in the district we visited had probably maybe 30 or 40 percent of their student population or on um native

160america not native americans um we americans i would say this is shannon we did talk about this item briefly at our facilities meeting um and tony if you would want to speak to some of the things that you had shared with the facilities committee about selection of this particular um temperature taking device um first of all i i would not be supportive of this if we were planning to use the facial recognition software capabilities so i just want to state that up front and that was the discussion we had the facilities committee meeting but it's my understanding that the part of the reason for choosing this equipment is that it's freestanding and so it allows us to have a less need to pay staff to stand there with thermometers and take temperatures um and that

161seemed to be a good um solution to the to the need that we are going to have to take temperatures for all staff and students at all of our buildings when they return um tony were there other items that that this particular setup provided that i missed uh shannon that's a good summary one of the things we liked about it it was a standalone device and uh we had it demoed at one of our building admin or excuse me our district admin meetings we got response from some of the principals who said they like the way you you walk up to it and it kind of shows an outline that you stick your forehead on and it does read your temperature it also will recognize whether the individual has a mask on or not and

162asks you to put your mask on the other thing that was nice is we it's a it's mobile as shannon said it is on a stand you can get it on a table stand or um probably about a i think it's about a 42 inch stand for other events for instance if you had them in the buildings i'm going to take the high schools for example coming into the space to uh just for school at eight o'clock in the morning you could also take that same device for outside events if you're coming in for a basketball game or a football game and move that device out to the field to also take temps as we have outside activities if we get to that phase where we are accepting outside activities if uh it does have

163the facial recognition capabilities and in order to do that it would take quite a setup to uh download pictures and other things and get them in the system and as dr lewis had said we at this time we have no intent of doing that it sure felt like a very usable tool for us to get kids in the building in a fairly quick manner we're estimating that we could probably get approximately 15 kids per minute through the door with this particular system and we have multiple ones on order as you saw they are excuse me suggested to be on order per the enclosure so as the other based on what we have other options as far as other tools this felt like the best tool we could utilize to for minimal manpower to to watch

164the doors and be in close contact with students as they come in the door thank you tony um carol um would it allay your concerns if we added a provision to the board motion to say that we would not be allowed to use any of the facial recognition capabilities without future board approval i would appreciate that i mean that just kind of jars in my mind so the the issue is around the facial recognition comp piece and shannon has proposed a language that would allow you all to purchase it and use it in the way that you were going to use it really and just add some parameters do we see any issues with that no i don't i don't and this may be a topic of future discussion you know as we are um

165looking to do school differently and as new technologies are coming out it may be beneficial for the board to put a policy in place that would preclude um us from collecting any type of that any data like that on anything you know whether it's the hall pass this temperature maybe something else that comes out next year yeah so if that policy is in place already we cannot um obviously violate that policy yeah and i actually like that approach i read a little bit about it when it was raised as an issue we've gotten emails about it and read a little bit about it and i do think that addresses some of the issues and allows for um the district to have the facilitation of making sure that we're getting enough temperatures taken at the same

166time we can take it up in policy to get that we can definitely add that to our agenda within the policy committee i'm looking at paula but shannon is that agreeable to you as well yes i think i think that would be a great discussion and it fits very well with our um ongoing work on our equity policy i think that's an important component to to think about um as we're working on that policy and other policies related to it okay so we could look at we could look at that we've included information for folks at home for whom i know this is an important issue that we're limiting the scope of which the technology can be used and dr lewis had already um done the work around how the data would be collected so

167it sounds like we're in an okay space um so we need another amended motion uh shannon do you have another one okay are you ready for this one you if you'd like me to um and see if it captures everybody's considerations so i moved the board of education approved the purchase of district-wide thermal imaging and face recognition scanners from scitec and the amount of 100 to be paid from the cares act fund with the proviso that the board directs district staff not to use the facial recognition capabilities of these devices without future board approval yes johnson yes kimble um i mean i know i know the answer to this question but just to clarify for those who are watching um as to why um like maybe you can add more detail that we're using the

168cares act fund for this um technology and not um employees is because it cannot be used for something that is um what is it cyclical right correct it has to be used for one time so melissa's making the point to make sure that folks at home know um that the cares act is for one time expenditures you can't use it for ongoing expenses is that right melissa that's correct all right okay um all right so we have i think are we ready for a motion to for policies oh yeah i'm eager to wrap this one up so um let's let's move to uh 6.1 which is the adaption of the new board policies pertaining to title ix um and i um i've asked shannon to help us discuss that and i think that dave cunningham

169is here to join us as well um i think i see you down there dave are you here i am here yes all right so um the board policy uh committee decided to make sure that this wasn't on consent for a couple of reasons and i'm going to let shannon and dave provide some feedback or context china would you like to go first ready and then i'll fill in we have the department of uh education us department of education has implemented passed and implemented a number of regulations related to procedures for reviewing investigating and deciding uh sexual harassment cases the effective date of those regulations is august 14. so as we've been looking at those uh a little bit uh all of a sudden we began to i began to fully understand the import of

170this particular policy and uh realized that that we really did not have a lot of flexibility in how we address those regulations so policy committee has taken a look at the kasb recommended policies for implementing these federal regulations effective august 14th and we brought them to the board a little bit out of sequence normally we would bring a policy adoption for review and then have two weeks and bring it back in final form uh given the time frame and the need to have this in place prior to august 14th we're asking that the board suspend the review provision and go straight to adoption of this board policy to meet the regulation requirements we can still go back and look at this policy and make sure that it doesn't conflict or do something uh you know

171that we would not uh want to have happen with respect to invalidating any of our other policies and so since what we're doing is creating a set of procedures for uh investigating sexual harassment complaints separate from the policies and procedures related to investigating other types of complaints regarding other types of harassment or complaints about general complaints uh under uh under a provision so uh it's it's simply creating a new policy for both staff and for students related to compliance with the title ix regulations thank you that was uh for that summary um so i'm going to speak just a little bit specifically for the board to help you understand why we are recommending that we adopt these these two policies as new policies rather than amending our existing policies and just to give you some

172context and background so the department of education issued these new regulations for comment and consideration um back in may um they've been con they've been very controversial um because what they do um are make really sweeping changes actually to how districts and school districts and colleges and universities are required to address and and process complaints of sexual harassment under title ix um the uh the new um guidance um has the the as they've said the the comment period has been closed the guidance has now been officially issued um the implementation date is august 14th and so we really haven't had a lot of time with the draft policies that are required to implement these new regulations to really get a good understanding of how much they might impact our existing um policy structure these uh

173these regulations as i said they they're quite controversial because of the substantial changes that they make to title ix compliance um they affect all kinds of areas including notice of sexual harassment requirements um they change the definition of sexual harassment as a as it applies to um k through 12 students in universities um it um they require that a formal complaint must be filed rather than um then in the past we would be able to investigate um claims of sexual harassment without the filing of a formal complaint there's a very structured and scripted um set of responses that we have to make in terms of the investigation hearing panels resolution appeals and timelines these regulations have have now been um challenged in court as of mid-july there are at least four separate lawsuits that have

174been filed against the department of education regarding these new regulations uh questioning both the merits of the regulations and also um the procedural aspects of adoption and asking to block their implementation so we on the policy committee we feel like there is some question as to whether these regulations and the policies that we're being required to adopt under them um will be long-standing um so there there's a lawsuit that's been filed by um 18 attorney generals that are asking um these to be overturned there's also a lawsuit by the aclu claiming that these new regulations violate the constitutional rights of survivors of sexual assault and also impinge upon constitutional principles around gender equity there's a lawsuit that's been filed by the national women's law center and other advocacy groups on the also on behalf of

175sexual assault victims and there's another lawsuit that's been filed by the aclu so all of these lawsuits are asking for injunctive relief against the implementation of these regulations those lawsuits that injunctive relief has not yet been granted even though we are almost up against the implementation date um so all of that to say that the reason that the policy committee is recommending this unusual approach to these has to do with all of that background there's uncertainty as to whether these new regulations will stand it's unclear that the new regulations provide adequate protection for students and staff so our committee wants more time to evaluate the procedures that are in them and identify whether there are any areas where we may have discretion as a district to implement further protections um we have to approve these

176by august 14th because of the federal funding implications that not approving them would have but that being said um you know we didn't feel comfortable adopting them as anything except for stand-alone new policies i also wanted to point out for the board members who are newer to our board that in late 2016 and early 2017 the policy committee spent a considerable amount of time reworking our discrimination harassment and complaint policies those revisions were adopted by the board in late april 2017 and they have um as far as as i know at this time they've been working fairly well um we did not want to supersede our existing complaint um and harassment discrimination policy structure with these new regulations for all of the reasons that i've stated so um the g the new policy the new

177proposed policy we're being asked to adopt the g policy that applies to personnel the j the j section policy applies to students they're substantially similar in terms of their language but we have two separate sections of our policy manual one that applies to staff one that applies to students so um that's what i had to share i'm happy to try to answer questions about any of that or punch them to dave i can't summarize it wait we have to pass tonight we're hoping to um get rid of it in a in a few months should we get a new um new leadership so hopefully or if the court's in great yes yeah yeah so i will have to federal funding but i am doing it in a temporary way um so uh are there any

178questions about this particular policy okay we need a motion to adopt this as a final policy okay hi this is girl i'm move the board of education suspend its regular practice of reviewing proposed policy changes and adopt the following new policies gaaba sexual harassment and j-g-e-c-a-a sexual harassment in order to comply with the federal department of education regulations regarding title ix procedures for handling sexual harassment complaints i further move the board adopt these new policies effective august 10th 2020 in order to meet the federally mandated august 14 2020 compliance date do we have a second okay melissa seconds yes johnson yes yes yes yes thank you thank you thank you dave okay uh do you have any announcements dr lewis um no um not only tonight i know we had we do have some directions

179for our next august 24th board meeting we'll go provide some more information on special education if there is any additional information that the board will request for our next together again update on august 24th just going to share that with us we have we've had a few parents ask us if they could get and maybe by this time we'll be able to do it um like they would like to have like a a summary of what it might look like for their kid walking into the building yeah we talked about that at our executive leadership team maybe two or three weeks ago a goal is to eventually produce a video from the time a student may get on the bus to the time they go into the building uh some of the things we needed

180to get approved tonight to put in the video but that's the goal is to have a video like a day in the life of a student in lawrence public schools okay great so we can look forward to that um all right so now i think we can uh we just need a motion to adjourn okay she's ready a second shannon move paul is second all those in favor aye aye anyone opposed okay then do i do this you