[6:17] good evening tonight is monday january 10th and we do have a quorum so we'll call this meeting to order [6:23] i wanted to note for the community that we have three changes to our agenda tonight and we're adding three action [6:29] items the first is adding a vaccination and or testing or sorry or testing as an [6:36] action item we're adding the 2022 legislative platform and legislative action [6:42] committee bylaws as action items and we are adding an action item to remove our january 18th work session [6:49] from the board calendar do i have a motion to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting with the above [6:55] changes so moved is there a second second that was lenny and then janie or [7:01] julie i'm sorry um we will now vote to approve tonight's agenda all in favor say aye aye [7:09] anyone opposed tonight's agenda is approved um dr stanley would you please review [7:14] tonight's agenda for us absolutely good evening everyone [7:19] this evening we have um just a full agenda but really excited to [7:26] have an excellence in action have the opportunity to really showcase some great things that are happening at one [7:31] of our schools of course we will move into a discussion we have a covid 19 [7:37] update we are going to loop back around with some [7:43] information around new course proposal around science pathway budget update and then we will end with [7:50] our leadership committee updates and superintendents update [7:56] thank you dr stanley um in tonight's excellence in action we're going to learn about southview middle school's [8:01] unit guides teachers use this platform for students to access engage with and reflect upon [8:08] course content which helps students build independent learning skills tonight we welcome principal tim [8:13] anderson who's here to tell us more about the unit guides welcome principal anderson thank you for joining us [8:19] tonight members of the board newly seated [8:25] members and uh members returning community members guests [8:31] viewers nice to see you tonight it is um my distinct uh pleasure to [8:38] share some of the good work at south view middle school certainly of staff and students this evening [8:45] just a few words of context first about four years ago we started professional development [8:51] and instructional coaching around this notion of unit guides our goal then at the beginning was to [8:59] accelerate our work to create independent learners that would be gone under the last strategic plan but i'm [9:04] delighted to point out that this new strategic plan reformed in the last couple of years [9:12] and around this notion of each and every learner discovering their possibilities and thriving [9:19] really points to this notion of creating an environment so students can reach their full potential and that's what [9:25] unit guides are designed to do so it's really exciting to have a chance to share with you tonight [9:33] that work after our first experience with learners learning remotely you may have heard of [9:39] that concept in this pandemic we surveyed learners we asked them [9:44] what is it that's helping you track your learning and what is it that's helping you keep track of your learning and unit [9:51] guides were one of the top findings from our survey of kids and their voices [9:57] our analysis of that was probably because of three things we thought well unit guides [10:02] help assessments be clearly laid out for learners unit guides help kids see what pacing they need to [10:09] do and help them more clearly see the course content and how there's to access it and [10:14] thirdly helps learners track and reflect on their learning [10:20] and in the fall of 2020 we consequently decided to require all teachers to at south view sponsor [10:28] unit guides so that we could increase the consistency of the child experience as a learner at [10:35] school so it's school-wide at southview grades six through eight unit guides in every [10:40] class and uh we're gonna just have the chance this evening with the [10:45] help of zack horn to see a little video snippet and in the snippet i'd invite you [10:52] to pay attention particularly to the voice of students and the voice of staff and i'd like to [11:00] offer kudos to those students and those staff you know students for the growth and ownership of [11:06] their learning that they're undertaking and the teachers for creating pathways for kids [11:12] to give them access whether they're quarantining whether they're at school whether they're pacing ahead or they [11:18] need extra support so kudos to teachers for providing those pathways all of that's represented in this unit guide [11:24] work and i'm delighted to share the good work of students and staff [11:31] [Music] one of the tools we use to develop independent learners is the use of a [11:38] unit guide unit guides are used consistently across all content areas teachers use them in [11:44] in-person learning but they also became essential during distance learning to [11:49] communicate with learners and help them track their learning the different elements of a uni-guide [11:54] build independent learners because they develop executive functioning skills they connect all learning back to [12:00] standards and proficiencies they give learners ownership in the learning process by giving them access [12:06] to different pathways and also learners are continually [12:12] goal-setting self-regulating and reflecting on their learning [12:18] [Music] unit guides may vary from different content but there are three consistent [12:24] components in the unit guide the first is an outline of the different assessments this includes which of the [12:30] activities and content will be part of the learning process what will be part of the feedback loop or formatives [12:37] and what will be an evidence of learning or count as a summative unit guides also contain a pacing guide [12:44] this gives all learners access to all the content and also gives them opportunities to engage in different [12:51] learning pathways learners can review previous content and also see what's coming ahead [12:58] finally there is a portion for learners to track their feedback and reflect on [13:04] their learning the reflection can take many different forms including processing the information a check for [13:11] understanding a review of important information or learners thinking about the progress they're making towards [13:17] their learning goals also anytime they get that valuable feedback from a teacher from a peer or [13:24] even themselves this is a place where they track that feedback so they can revisit it when thinking about their [13:29] next learning moves now we'll hear from teachers and learners to share some examples of their [13:35] unit guides [13:40] my name is caser and i'm in eighth grade and i find that unit guides are really helpful for me to [13:46] see when i can like i have an assignment coming up or a test or anything that's due [13:51] i can also see like summative things that are due beforehand so i can know like when we have an [13:57] activity so i can prepare for it beforehand like right here it says rainforest group description formative [14:02] so i can submit that like before i know like it's late okay my name is arya and [14:08] i'm in sixth grade this is my unit guide from art class and from the pictures i took notes and i [14:16] drew a picture of what my painting is going to be like and i felt like i could do more because [14:22] the extension i know i'm really good at art and i really like to write and do extensions so i decided to do that and [14:30] extend the standards by writing a story about my painting and [14:36] what was in it and what made me what the idea was about hi my name is milo i am in seventh grade [14:42] and this is my math unit guide and i like it because i can check off the boxes and make sure i'm on pace and on the [14:49] notes to myself i can refer back to them on a test if i need like a little something to like remind [14:56] myself and yeah it keeps me on pace my name is karina i'm in sixth grade and [15:03] this is my social studies unit guide i like it because you can pace faster and there's check boxes so you can check off [15:10] what you did and you can pace faster [15:16] hi this is elon i'm in seventh grade and this is my coding unit guide [15:21] one thing i like about it is that there's some links on there that in projects and coding they don't have [15:28] hello i'm malika and i'm in 8th grade um so this is my unit guide for geometry [15:33] and it's a great like center place where you can show you what to get done so for instance if we start a day off [15:39] we usually do screencasts and then a test and here it shows you what um kind of pathways you can do so [15:44] teacher seminar collaborative independence so you choose one then from there you do the notes and you learn a bunch of stuff [15:51] and from there you get the form you do the formative test and you get your score back and you can see the feedback from there and that [15:57] better shows you what you need to work on and how well you understand it my name is estea and i'm in seventh grade [16:03] and i like this unit guide because you're able to color code how you did in that class and how much you understood [16:10] of it and if you're below a green like in yellow or a red color then you would do the i excel codes that are linked [16:16] there and there's other practices that you can do too to extend your learning into that subject so you'd be able to understand [16:22] it a little bit better and hopefully push it up to a green [16:28] hello i am sarah majorco and i am here coming to you from southview middle [16:34] school and i am here to share about unit guides i have been teaching for a number of years and i have worked primarily on [16:42] making sure that students know the feedback that i've provided them with make sure that they know their [16:47] understanding of the standards and know what it is that they still need to work on so we have our online calculator [16:54] which is the same calculator that students get to use on the mca in fact they're able to find [16:59] it that way and then every day students know how are we igniting what chunks are we going to [17:05] be working on to learn we can share these with co-teachers and that sort of thing and [17:10] then students are able to work through this and give themselves feedback checking on feedback from others they're [17:17] able to write notes here on what it is they're understanding from class they can go through and make sure that they're finishing parts of assignments [17:25] also students have their assignments right here in the chew part or there different [17:31] pathways they can choose and then we have our ixl codes for what if this wasn't quite something that you were [17:36] understanding here are some codes you can go practice and then extension let's say you do understand this and you want [17:42] to be able to extend your learning that's also linked here so really everything that we need is right here in [17:47] a way for students to review reflect and then for us to provide feedback for students to just [17:53] grab their final thoughts for their future forgetful selves and make sure that they understand what it is that [17:58] they need finally should a student not make it to class for any reason we do [18:03] have these screencasts and this is a way for students to just go on and listen to a teacher walk through notes [18:10] so that really they're understanding or get a glimpse into the classroom even if they didn't have an opportunity to [18:16] really discuss with classmates and build that understanding at the same time as other [18:22] hi my name is samantha jacobson and i am one of the art teachers here at selfview [18:28] myself and my teaching partner rachel hd really wanted to focus on using the unit [18:34] guides this year for students to be able to self-regulate and track their own progress [18:39] so i just wanted to go through what that looks like and how we're using these unit guides here at south view [18:45] so the learning targets are listed first then the tasks for class period and then [18:51] lastly they reflect each class period in the student unit guide then they're supposed to we always do [18:57] this for the first unit students are supposed to think about to the previous unit and really [19:02] reflect on how that unit went for them and what they could improve so one of the things we always have them do is [19:08] copy and paste the feedback from the previous unit so you can see that arya went to the gradebook [19:14] looked over the unit grade for the previous unit and then copy and pasted the actual feedback that i gave her and [19:20] then based on that feedback she was supposed to reflect on what she wanted to do differently [19:26] and then at the very end of these unit guides we reiterate the learning targets for the students they insert a picture [19:33] of their final artwork have reflection questions and then they actually self-assess in a rubric we also [19:39] have an extending standards option so students can kind of stretch their knowledge or their learning for the unit [19:46] go a little bit above and beyond and apply that to their artwork i hope that's just a brief overview of [19:51] how we use the unit guides here at selfview and specifically in art class and again how students are really [19:57] self-regulating and tracking the progress of their work [20:11] thank you for the opportunity to share a little snapshot of unit guides at southview [20:18] chair ellenberg are we able to make any comments you are able i was just going to ask if anyone had any comments or questions so [20:26] dr anderson i was thrilled to see you here presenting unit guides because i have two middle schoolers at south view [20:32] and i cannot say enough good things as a parent seeing these unit guides in action [20:38] last year during covid having an incoming sixth grader it helped immensely from a parent standpoint being [20:44] able to help him scaffold because i could understand at night or on a weekend what was supposed to be [20:50] done and help him kind of build that independence so i i have been thrilled with the work that [20:57] your staff has done to build that and the consistency across classrooms i cannot say enough good things about that [21:04] i don't know if this is possible but to send for those that do not have students at south view to send them an example so [21:10] they can kind of play around and see the links and how some teachers have just put so much work into those their unit [21:16] guides would be great and the only feedback i would have is just you know the more parents that [21:21] partnership in our strategic plan that we talk about parents as partners i think the more parents know that that's [21:26] out there and that it's a tool i think they'll feel like i can't imagine that other parents won't be like [21:32] wow this is really to see into the classroom and to see the work their students are doing so thank you much appreciate those comments and that [21:38] feedback and kudos to the teachers of course and to the kids who are making it come come to [21:44] reality so thank you for that director green yeah i just have i [21:49] actually have a quick question i agree with what um karen said having a student at south view and seeing them live in [21:55] action have been awesome are you seeing it seems like you're there has to be an increase in time [22:01] management skills with this yeah i think so it's more than content right so go ahead no i think the [22:09] part of what we're trying for again in alignment with the the strategic plan are those four c's future ready skills [22:15] and so i think time management has interwoven into those those skills those future [22:21] ready skills we're trying to build and some some of the state standards have future ready skills embedded but many [22:27] don't many many of the standards are absent those four seasons so when the superintendent comes to south you and [22:32] says hey future ready skills are important that's been a huge boost to our implementation so we appreciate that [22:39] support uh and that alignment to the strategic plan so yeah we're definitely seeing an increase in those skills yeah [22:44] it was really it was the other thing i noted and you told us to listen to those students and the consistency in the language [22:50] that they're all coming from the same place that i know that is not done accidentally so kudos to yours to you [22:55] and your friends been a growth process of course like anything else but hard work from lots of people yeah well i [23:01] mean it was seamless right thank you so thank you thank you uh director shaw [23:07] yep obviously i'm i'm gonna echo what um julie and karen said i've got a kiddo at [23:13] south view so i've seen these in action and they're amazing the comment that i have is that [23:19] like you said it's been a lot of hard work on the teacher's part to kind of create these systems which i think are [23:24] important it's really a piece of teaching students how to learn and so i guess my question slash ask is [23:31] we're giving them we've invested a lot in this proceed in this process and it's really their expectation of how they're [23:37] going to learn within our schools and so my question would be how can we make sure as they progress [23:43] through middle school and into high school that we're kind of supporting that learning style that they've created and so i'm guessing that there's [23:49] conversations being had but i really wanted to kind of highlight that because i think it's important because like [23:55] karen said it's their expectation right like it has taken away so much [24:01] ambiguity in their learning and opened up that time in that mental space to actually do learning and [24:08] i just want to make sure that we're supporting them as they grow in our in our schools well thank you yeah i [24:13] appreciate that and and we'll be having more dialogue about those very things so thank you so much [24:19] any other questions for dr anderson great thank you for coming and presenting thanks everyone great [24:27] we had no request from members of the community to come and speak tonight and so we're going to move on to our consent agenda [24:34] is there anything that anyone would like to remove from the consent agenda and i see director wallin friedman [24:40] oh you're ready you're oh your trigger you're going to um [24:45] motion okay do you have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved is there a second [24:50] second so i was walling julie again [24:56] i'm sorry [Laughter] [25:03] i apologize it was karen that did the second director gabler [25:08] um we will now vote to approve the consent agenda all those in favor say aye [25:13] anyone opposed the consent agenda has been approved [25:19] moving on to our discussion we have one item for discussion tonight that has lots of sub items to it so it is our [25:26] covet 19 discussion and report from dr stanley so i'll turn it over to dr stanley [25:33] thank you i'm wondering if it's okay if we can begin with the action items specifically [25:38] related to testing vaccinations or testing [25:44] um maybe start with that [25:50] i believe it's on page 84 in your packet [25:56] so it's the resolution for vaccination and testing and uh it's on 80 [26:03] page 84 in the board packet that's posted on the website right now [26:12] do you want us to approve the action item before doing the discussion [26:17] um so the discussion around covet is not necessarily this is not necessarily [26:22] included in that i can certainly i could certainly move [26:28] to go through the entire discussion and then have this yeah i think we better start with a discussion do that briefly [26:35] and then just hit the action items as they come up absolutely all right so um i am going to [26:42] invite up um assistant superintendent smazel and director jurgensen to join me [26:49] as we get prepared to share some information then [26:59] all right so board of directors uh over the past few [27:06] weeks there has been a rise in covid positivity in the city of edina due to [27:12] the omicron variant with the most recent report of 851 cases [27:18] per one hundred thousand this place is the city [27:24] at the highest level of transmission and we know that our school district uh represents the city and so we have [27:32] concerns about this while the omicron variant appears to be less lethal it [27:38] it has caused severe influenza like illness for individuals who are both [27:43] vaccinated and unvaccinated as a result local and state public [27:48] health officials have warned school districts that we must prepare for a significant [27:54] operational impact as we may have a significant shortage of teachers [27:59] support staff and bus drivers this coupled with the ongoing shortage [28:05] in substitutes causes grave concern at the same time and in alignment with [28:12] our safe schools plan national and local health experts strongly encourage districts to continue [28:18] to provide in-person learning when possible citing the adverse non-covet outcomes on [28:24] student mental health and learning disruptions as key reasons [28:31] also several metro area superintendent meetings that i've attended [28:36] including presentations from local and state public health leaders i held an incident command team meeting [28:44] last week and the information that we garnered from that along with meeting with principals [28:51] we used that to develop a plan to put in place during this time of the omicron surge [28:58] we believe that this plan honors our commitment to in-person learning while also allowing for the agility that is [29:05] going to be needed during this time so i outlined the key elements [29:12] uh in the in the variant surge plan below that [29:18] will run from for the month of january through the month of february and assistant superintendent smazel [29:25] director jorgensen are here to provide greater detail on some key elements of that plan [29:33] and so at this point i will turn it over to assistant superintendent smallson [29:38] thank you superintendent stanley chair ellenberg board members community members and staff i'm excited to be here [29:45] this evening to have this conversation with you about just being prepared being prepared for [29:51] what may come we don't know for sure what's going to come but we want to be prepared right now if we looked at [29:59] some of our our challenges they really fall in that category of operational so by that we mean as as staff absences [30:07] increase we have to think about the impact that that's going to have on our operations last week tuesday and wednesday we [30:13] averaged about 80 staff absent on those days and on thursday friday and monday [30:19] today we averaged about 111 staff absent so that was quite an increase about a 38 [30:25] increase over those early two days last week not all of those are coveted related but it's just pointing out that [30:31] we've had a lot of staff absences so our goal is to keep our buildings open and keep our students in school and [30:38] learning may look different may be impacted by those by those absences operationally and so [30:45] we've tried to develop some graphics to articulate how as we proceed in absences of both [30:51] teachers and bus drivers how that might impact programming or how it might impact operations internally [30:57] so again the main operational issues are classroom teachers and bus drivers we're [31:02] using other staff we'll continue to use other staff to fill in as substitutes [31:09] so that we can still have quality learning happening but at some point that may be challenging to do and we [31:14] won't be ready for that so in general the levels start with just [31:19] using our on-site level substitute teachers depending upon absences that might [31:25] graduate into using specialist teachers or other non-classroom staff to help complete [31:32] substitute teaching roles in some cases we may have to share students across teachers or use [31:38] technology and then finally the last level would be to move to a distance learning model if [31:45] need be operationally we have three different graphics organized one for the early [31:51] learning center one for uh elementary and then one for the secondary level our last level at the at the early [31:59] learning center would be to cancel classes we think there are quite a few options before we have to go to that level [32:05] uh the the last level for elementary and for secondary would be to be in a [32:10] virtual learning model of course as long as students are healthy they're [32:15] also welcome to continue to come to school in that last level that would we would [32:21] be able to provide child care the focus at elementary will be on [32:26] reading and math if we operationally proceed up to those levels we'll continue to narrow that but we'll stay [32:32] focused on those foundational literacies our on-site learners then would continue to have as many routines as possible [32:40] including lunch and snack and breaks and recess site-based special education programming [32:45] would continue to be in person at each of our sites in each of our levels [32:51] even if we had to move to a distance learning model at the elementary level there isn't a [32:57] clear threshold at which we would have to transition many of our elementaries are quite a bit different in their [33:02] funding whether it is title or compensatory education and they have a [33:09] variety number of adults that are available that are variable from one [33:14] school to the other so our goal is to make sure that operationally we can run [33:20] those classes and when the principals feel like they are getting to the point where they are not able to run either a classroom a [33:28] grade level a grade band or that school that they would make the recommendation to [33:33] dr stanley myself that they need to move to distance learning for either a classroom a grade level a grade band or [33:39] that site at the secondary level the staffing model is quite a bit [33:44] different as you know kids are in mixed grades or mixed cohorts or mixed classes throughout the day we believe that a 20 [33:51] threshold at this secondary level is is what would push us to distance [33:57] learning as the last level currently we've been at about 10 percent [34:03] or less i think one of our schools one of our middle schools was at about 10 staff absences today [34:09] but we've generally been under the 10 percent currently off-site learners have virtual [34:16] lessons with check-ins with staff and then if we had to pivot to distance [34:21] learning then all of our learners would be participating in virtual learning it'd be a combination of live and [34:26] independent activities uh with daily check-ins and site-based special education at the secondary level would [34:31] still be offered on site and that would be something we continue to do [34:37] we would have a for the students who come to the site they would be in designated spaces and [34:45] then they would be receiving online education from their teachers if we needed to pivot to distance [34:51] learning that plan would be for five days so it'd be a five-day proposal and then we would be re-examining [34:57] re-examining it after that part of the thinking or the logic around that is the new recommendation that we believe will [35:04] be coming from minnesota department of health uh around a a five-day absence for those [35:10] who are covered positive and there's some other details that jeff will describe there but even if we were to apply that [35:17] five-day plan right now we would have been able to bring about 25 staff back today [35:24] we would be able to bring 30-plus staff back throughout this week with that five-day [35:31] model in place that will be coming from minnesota department of health for bus drivers when we get over [35:38] nine bus drivers being absent and we hit that 10 range that's going to impact [35:43] some routes mary david and myself have been working on communication plans with families if [35:49] that situation arises last thursday we had eight drivers out so we were getting close on that day [35:57] parents and guardians will ask you to please think about you know what might be your plan [36:03] if we don't have a driver for you we might need you to bring that child to [36:09] school or maybe you can carpool to bring that child to school if you're not able to do that we will [36:15] have virtual learning lessons available for your child at home and of course that would be an exempt absence they [36:22] wouldn't be that wouldn't be counted as an absence of course because that'd be a transportation issue but we would ask [36:27] parents to notify the schools if their child is going to be at school or at home so we can continue to track that [36:37] we will ask our staff to continue to report to the sites we will need our staff for obviously for teaching for [36:44] supervision in some cases for reassignment for substitute teaching again our priority will be the classroom [36:51] and the core classrooms and other non-classroom staff licensed staff will [36:56] be there as a support structure again this is an operational challenge [37:02] our goal is to keep schools going and in order to support [37:09] the learning and those daily routines we will be working to organize our staff around those needs on a daily basis [37:15] some of our next steps will be to pending our conversation this evening will be to create some communications [37:21] for family and for staff we're working with mary whitey around that and to create some of these updates [37:26] on our website with that i'm going to pause and see what questions or comments you have [37:31] about just some of the operational steps or impacts [37:37] so from a question slash discussion perspective with board members i'm guessing there's quite a few questions [37:43] that board members have so um if you hear a question that's similar to [37:48] one that you're asking you don't necessarily have to ask it again [37:54] but if you do hear a topic that if someone asks questions about masking maybe we can stay on that topic to get all the [38:01] masking questions out or or something like that and try to go topic by topic as opposed [38:07] to circling around multiple times so um but i want to make sure every board [38:13] member gets a chance to ask whatever questions they have so i don't know if someone just wants to start and then we can stay on whatever topic they bring up [38:20] and get all the questions that we have on that out so whoever wants to be the [38:26] the guinea pig and go first they are more than welcome to or i have a list of like 20 questions i [38:31] can go but i'm going to wait lenny i'm going to pick you [38:41] i actually don't have questions there we go [38:47] no questions we're going to move on to the next topic no i'm just kidding um julie or janie do you guys have any questions [38:52] julie sure um so i just want to make so in this presentation we got up to [38:58] the place where it's the school return protocol are we supposed to be asking questions about [39:05] anything in here or just where we've gotten to right now because that's i mean that's a question but i think just [39:11] through what uh director schmazel okay i'm sorry assistant superintendent president uh presented his pieces yet [39:17] but um he'll go through all the covenant okay 19 testing and the timeline great i [39:23] actually i only have one question i one just want to say um thank you this is extremely helpful [39:30] it is um it's just extremely helpful to see this and i would think that [39:35] this was a lot of work to put together too um but it really helped show the situation and you know the teetering of [39:42] different numbers and how what that looks like so the granule level is actually super helpful for us um at [39:48] least for me so i just want to thank you for all the work that went into it um my question is about the transportation so [39:56] can you just talk a little bit more about that you said so if we hit a certain level of [40:02] bus drivers absent then it impacts transportation to get the students to school even though we [40:07] could have staff at school so the school could be open but transportation can just talk a little bit more about that [40:13] like are we moving bus drivers along routes or or i guess and the bottom line is what's [40:18] our ass from our school community and parents if we were to have a direct ask like what do we need [40:25] our community to do and that's in what and at what point so [40:31] david has indicated he has enough subs to take care of nine absences but after we get past nine absences of bus drivers [40:39] then it will start impacting routes because we're going to run out of our substitute drivers [40:44] so that an ask for parent at at that point will be able to articulate that to families will be to [40:50] help us as a partner in transportation if you're able to get your child or your [40:57] neighbor's child to school and you've worked that out in that agreement and are able to do the carpools fantastic [41:03] it means to and from school so i think our partnership with families to be able [41:09] to provide transportation will have to increase if families are not able to provide [41:15] transportation then we just want to we want to work with that family and know that and see if there's anything [41:20] internally that we can do otherwise that student would be doing distance learning at that time [41:26] and excuse me but what length of lead time would we be giving to those affected parents and children [41:32] once we know because obviously you don't always know who's going to be absent but in order to work out the opportunity to [41:38] figure out how to get other kids to school if transportation's not available do we have a sense or what can we offer [41:43] to the community great question uh the lead time will be um right now knowing that [41:50] this may be an issue and to be prepared for what will i do if this happens with my child's bus [41:58] but on the uh in terms of the specific absences we won't know until that [42:04] morning by about 6 a.m the calls come in from the drivers by 6 a.m whether or not we have an absence [42:11] and then by 6 15 to 6 30 families will be notified via a phone message [42:17] that their driver is not available so it'll be it'll be very last minute in [42:23] the sense that that's how some of the absences happen if that if we know about the absence [42:29] prior to that we can send it out prior to that that would be the latest but we want to work with families ahead of time [42:35] to really know and understand that this is a possibility that could emerge again we were very close to that impact last [42:42] thursday so we'll work on that through the communications with mary and the message we send to families [42:49] that's great thank you and i know that i mean at the at the middle the secondary level there has been [42:55] bus shortage for activities so parents have are kind of at least those that [43:01] have activities like we'll get a call like there's buses there there's no buses so it's not a new concept for many [43:07] families not all families so that at least kind of lays the groundwork okay thank you thank you director [43:13] was there any consideration or is there any consideration about um changing the routes or any of the timing with that or [43:19] is it only just no go or go yeah it's it's really challenging to [43:24] change the routes at the last minute we'll deal with any changes in the student [43:31] populations and then we re-run all of the routes again and then you have to notify families that pick up times are [43:37] going to change drop off times are going to change it's really it really is a [43:42] complicated set of processes so being able to rerun those routes on the fly is a major challenge [43:51] quick question is there um you mentioned i'm telling parents if they can take [43:56] their kid take their kid and then mention something about carpooling is there any sort of liability on the [44:02] district's part if we proactively ask parents to take another child to school [44:08] in case god forbid there's some sort of accident because i know i know it's a different situation but i know that [44:15] in sports programs there have been some cases about [44:20] carpooling going to sporting events and things like that so it's just something that we might want to check into before [44:27] any communications go out lenny so a follow-up on this [44:33] there was a discussion about alternate drop-off spots so for example [44:39] uh south view is we talked about potentially telling parents that if they're going to [44:45] drop kids off maybe use the concord parking lot or use the normandale has not been discussed about what messaging [44:52] is available for alternate drop-off because obviously if we have a 10 or 20 percent increase in [44:59] cars going to a particular area that's going to exacerbate what is already difficult drop off [45:08] yeah i think that's a great question i haven't talked to david about that specifically but that'll be a great follow-up for us to do prior to our [45:14] communications going out are there any other transportation [45:20] related questions before you i think it's more of a comment um i would just say that along the lines of everything that you're talking about in preparation [45:26] for the potential of covid impacting whether it's the staffing for buses or whether it's the staffing for something [45:32] else the whole point of this conversation is to make sure everyone who's listening understands these are [45:37] the limitations that we are faced with and we need people to be proactively paying attention and being aware of that [45:44] so there could be a plan when in if this does happen we can execute right [45:49] right so thank you thank you have we ever gotten close to the nine drivers being out [45:54] uh last thursday we had eight out so we were close last thursday all right thank you [46:00] um i just said oh good night so my only thing i was going to say is i don't know what i think there's a plc [46:07] meeting coming up soon but i would think that would be a great opportunity i was gonna say i know i saw it somewhere but that would be a great opportunity those [46:14] school parent leaders could really help get the word out and i think to your point erica i think we don't have to say [46:20] you have to set up a carpool we just have to say you have a plan right and and getting them to help us spread the [46:25] word on that would be really good and then my other question was and you were discussing things off of the green [46:33] sheet right the one that you have okay i just want to make sure i was trying to follow along but i was looking at it sideways um [46:39] in the let me i want to make sure i understand this so at the elementary level if they get to that level four [46:47] they parents do have an opportunity if there is not child care in their home [46:52] for students to be on site right i just want to kind of call that out that that was so i know we have a lot of parents who are in the medical profession or [46:58] aren't going to have access right away to in-home daycare or something so okay i just wanted to verify that that was [47:05] can i just um add so there is minnesota statute legislation now that states that [47:12] if you are offering uh an online option you need to offer [47:17] an in person okay and so um families will have that option okay [47:22] perfect right so to clarify it's not elementary only it's correct it's okay [47:27] right okay okay and then my last comment was i just wanted to really applaud everybody for [47:34] putting in-person learning uh the priority for all of this so i greatly appreciate that and i want to [47:39] acknowledge all the work to get there so thank you [47:46] are there other questions or comments director gabler do you want me to move on to a different [47:51] topic on this uh do you say that transportation coming it's not a transfer oh come on go for it [47:57] yeah okay um you shared that different buildings are at different levels um overall would [48:03] you say um we have where are we at elementary wise [48:09] what level what i was saying is that they have [48:15] different thresholds for how to proceed through these levels because of the available staff that they have [48:21] we've been teetering between level one and two currently [48:28] on certain days the absences have been higher like last friday we had quite a few staff out that were last friday it's [48:34] a little bit better today some of the schools had a lot of staff out on thursday and then they were [48:39] better on friday but we've generally been around levels one and two at this point okay for both elementary and [48:45] secondary for elementary and then level one for second secondary okay um [48:51] are you seeing when you talk to the principals are some districts or some [48:56] buildings utilizing their staff a little differently like i'm thinking about you know one of [49:01] our priorities is the core classroom is the first priority so are we some some buildings utilizing their [49:08] deans and their principles and utilizing them to kind of go into the classroom and [49:13] whereas others might not be are they sharing best practice across yeah all of all of the principals came [49:19] together and worked on this plan i actually want to publicly thank our principals for their collaboration and their work on it so this is the work of [49:26] all six of the principals kind of thinking through and processing how are we consistent and how we approach this [49:33] from a staffing operational standpoint the reality is that some of the [49:39] buildings have some more adults in them than others and so they're preceding their [49:45] procession through these different levels might look different than some of the other elementary buildings so we're [49:50] trying to honor that and that's where that threshold at elementary gets a little squishy because of that difference [49:57] uh and i just want to clarify that you that with this plan it won't be [50:04] all or nothing that there could be pockets right where we say we're going to be able to triage as needed on an as [50:10] need basis versus uh everybody goes remote i think that's really an important piece of this that the hard [50:15] work that's gone into this to make sure that that nuance is there yeah that's a really important point um [50:20] karen thank you um in particular at the elementary level i think there's there's a lot of [50:26] flexibility in how we have to address the needs whether it's at the classroom level at a grade level at a grade band [50:33] and going through all those steps before we were trying to move a whole school to distance learning at the secondary level [50:39] it's it's a little bit of a different animal because it really is about the threshold of the staff [50:45] and being able to run a secondary schedule where kids are going to classes and what it means once we are missing so [50:54] many teachers from those classes that's a different kind of challenge at the secondary though [50:59] and one more question is there a threshold of students out that would cause a shift to virtual [51:04] we had a really good conversation about that we started the conversation around 30 percent [51:11] we are nowhere near 30 percent we've been a a little over 10 percent [51:17] over the last few days but the other side of that is well if 70 [51:23] can come to school should we continue to function and so we really moved away from the [51:29] student absence and moved more to the what's the operational barrier which is whether or [51:35] not we have teachers present [51:42] i'm just thinking about elementary classrooms if you would have a large number of students out where they're in [51:47] that base group all day long if it is better to offer some okay if we have you [51:55] know 15 kids out of 25 out at least some kind of virtual hybrid [52:01] option a little bit more than we're offering well that's that's where we have the option to really look at it down at the [52:07] classroom level and so when we see we have a lot of absences at the classroom level then that would be a conversation [52:13] with that principal uh dr stanley and myself about what's the best plan to do at that particular classroom or at that [52:20] particular grade level so i think there's flexibility to address those types of issues in this plan [52:26] thank you for all your work and the principles too director green [52:32] oh sorry that was you our phones are off so you guys are switched [52:38] on my screen so i apologize no worries see now it says director gabler wants to [52:45] speak so my apologize my apologies are there any questions more questions or comments on this [52:51] um the one question i had or my one concern is about [52:58] teacher workload and um i'm hoping this is a short term [53:04] problem that we have um however if this sustains if we ended up in a level two [53:11] or a level three for a longer period of time and teachers not only have students out [53:18] but they're losing prep time to prep for students in different [53:25] modes and kids being out i'm concerned about how our teacher is going to get that [53:30] work done and so i think that there needs to be some conversation around [53:37] what do we do if this lasts longer than a [53:42] a week or two for 14 i could for teachers um [53:48] if we're going into six weeks or eight weeks and teachers are in a level two or three or four and [53:55] like i said and there's no prep time for them i i think that's [54:01] problematic and how do we address that issue as a district and what resources [54:07] do we have given that there's a labor shortage and [54:13] so i just wanted to ask that question or present that to you guys but other than that i wanted to echo [54:20] what everyone said about putting this together in a short period of time is very thoughtful [54:26] i think it gives the ultimate flexibility to try to keep kids in school but also [54:31] being sensitive to the safety concerns of individuals and i [54:37] appreciate all the work that's gotten into it from not only dr stanley our administrative team our [54:43] principals and i really appreciate it so thank you i just have one more question [54:48] absolutely um from a communication to the to the popular to the community [54:53] are we going to be sort of giving indication of where we stand because you've already heard the questions right well how many bus drivers are out how [54:59] many staff are out at what building or what what location and what class or whatever are we going to be able to congeal [55:05] whether online or in some messaging to where people get us and so we can start to see a trend that says well we're really starting to get close [55:12] to a potential 20 threshold of staff at a particular location that that kind of gives the [55:18] indicator to the community that this might be coming because we don't want to pull the trigger on this too prematurely [55:25] but we need to try to get people geared up towards oh hey start paying attention we're not yellow or it's a blinking red [55:30] light but it's not red yet how do we get there so i just was curious as to what the goal if there's any to communicate or provide some [55:37] dashboard if you will to people about that yeah uh mary and i talked today about putting some of these materials on [55:44] the website and then having that be the go-to place we are tracking absences of staff every day we're tracking absences [55:51] of student every day and looking at those patterns and trends we certainly can put a communication in [55:57] there about where we're at currently and then just continue to update that on a regular basis [56:03] i would definitely recommend that thank you director gabler it's me [56:09] oh he fixed the phones okay director green sure um i just wanted i wanted to um [56:16] what um director birdman just said about the communication i think um and i shared this with dr [56:22] stanley earlier i think we have to be really careful about the level of anxiety and panic about [56:30] closing schools is off the charts so i know from a communication standpoint i [56:36] think that we have done a really remarkable job but we got to be really careful that we're not saying this might [56:42] happen this might happen this might happen because all that does is create this like well we don't know we don't [56:48] know when are we gonna know when are we gonna know it and so whatever we can do to be very clear when we hit here [56:55] this will happen but we i i don't necessarily i agree with people [57:00] wanting to know if we're close i don't know if that delivers what we need to do we are close [57:07] we're close we have the highest transmission in our community we're already there so everyone has already heightened and so i [57:14] just want to make sure that we're communicating that really clearly that we're not creating [57:19] more panic and that we're going to get through this we're going to be okay but [57:25] i i just cautioned that so i just wanted to add that two cents i know dr stanley and i talked about that earlier and um [57:32] and it's very easy to guess to try and guess what's gonna happen we're gonna be closed friday we're gonna be close whatever and it just creates a lot [57:39] especially i mostly worry about our students it creates for finals next week at the high school [57:45] they are already really stressed about the thought of possibly closing the schools for any [57:50] reason at all so i just want to make sure that we're communicating that clearly so [57:56] and i i appreciate that director green if i could just add something you know um [58:03] randy gave the example that on thursday we had [58:08] a school where we thought okay we better get prepared for this it is all hands on deck [58:15] all of the cabinet team all of the district office team was about to go out and serve as substitutes right but then [58:23] that morning that didn't happen at that school and so um i too [58:31] want our community to be well prepared and i do want to also minimize that [58:37] anxiety because the other thing that's important to note is that we have some really strong mitigation [58:43] efforts in place in our schools we have a multi-tiered substitute system [58:50] that no other district has and so we're starting to use that or we've been using that as well and so [58:57] it is it is working to thread that needle to minimize the anxiety our students are [59:05] i have received email from our students and they are very nervous about schools going into distance [59:11] learning so we appreciate that we have to communicate and the how that we do that [59:18] will be really important so that we don't create undo [59:23] worry if you will thank you everyone for the questions um [59:29] do you guys want to move on to director jorgensen [59:35] i know you're upgraded to a doctor at the work session however it's honorary honorary doctor thank you [59:45] uh so dr green thank you very much for uh elevating me to dr jorgensen uh thank [59:52] you dr stanley board chair ellenberg steam board members i appreciate the fact that i get a chance to come and [59:57] share some updates with you as you know in preparation for tonight we were [1:00:03] rearranging a lot of our protocols and so forth to see what it would look like to bring our practices in compliance [1:00:08] with the cdc recommendations that recently changed and we're expecting that the minnesota department of health [1:00:15] will will largely mirror in an upcoming meeting on wednesday this week [1:00:20] i did want to just say that this is a massive change in an overall practice in [1:00:25] terms of the isolation and quarantine protocols that we have done in the past and so this comes with a little bit of [1:00:32] trepidation from a certain percentage of the population and outright rejoicing by other portions of the population [1:00:39] and to be clear a five day uh return timeline for isolation and quarantine as defined [1:00:45] by cdc is is actually more of a seven-day return process and i want to start off [1:00:51] with that right away so as we break this down we take a look at the way that the [1:00:56] the rigs are actually spelled out and the guidance is spelled out um that for and i'm gonna go over [1:01:01] isolation first and then i will go over quarantine first of all on the isolation side [1:01:07] isolation begins on the day that a student that a person's sample is [1:01:12] collected not the day that they're necessarily identified as positive but then the positivity is confirmation that [1:01:19] that isolation needs to begin so day zero is actually the day the sample is collected for the for the [1:01:26] student or the staff person that is being tested for covent 19. day one is the day right after that and then you [1:01:32] march five days down the line so at day six is when you can contemplate [1:01:40] preparing for return on day seven so i wanna be clear on that we actually have [1:01:45] a timeline that i put up on put up on the board here for you because i think it just really spells it out very nicely [1:01:52] because when people hear five days they're thinking five days and i'm back and that's not necessarily the story in [1:01:58] isolation or in quarantine so again on day zero [1:02:03] for isolation this is the day that the individual was tested on day one for isolation this is the first day of [1:02:11] the isolation day five then marching on down there was the last day [1:02:17] of that isolation if the individual is asymptomatic [1:02:23] has been without a fever for 24 hours without a fever-reducing medication [1:02:29] and if we can encourage testing we would do testing at that point in time but [1:02:35] really we're not requiring testing at this point in time in our proposed protocol so testing is strongly [1:02:42] encouraged but not a requirement in the testing process and the protocol for return [1:02:48] for quarantine now i want to emphasize that quarantine is becoming less and [1:02:54] less and less of a concern for our population because we are a highly [1:02:59] vaccinated population and individuals that have all required shots in their available [1:03:06] series are considered to be fully vaccinated that means a large percentage of our 5 [1:03:12] through 18 year olds are fully vaccinated even though they haven't been boosted they have taken the available [1:03:18] series of shots and so they're not required to quarantine upon close contact for adults [1:03:25] over the age of 18 they need to have their series of shots plus a booster in [1:03:30] order to be in that same area of fully vaccinated [1:03:35] and not be required to quarantine as you know our vaccination rates here within edina public schools are very high and [1:03:42] so this next area that i'm talking about with quarantine there's not as many students that would really or staff persons that would fall under this [1:03:49] category for quarantine but even with that it's a very shortened quarantine period [1:03:54] so for quarantine the first day of their day 0 of quarantine that's the day [1:04:00] that the individual is exposed to someone with covet so if i find out on monday that i an [1:04:07] unvaccinated person have been exposed to covid the very next day tuesday is day one of [1:04:14] my quarantine and then i march out to day five and at the day five of quarantine if i [1:04:21] still expressing no symptoms whatsoever i may consider a return [1:04:26] this is where we encourage strongly encourage testing at day five before [1:04:32] return if a person is starting to exhibit symptoms or they test positive for covet [1:04:37] i'm sorry you get to go back it's kind of like getting the plumpy card in candy land you have to go all the way back to the beginning and start at day zero [1:04:46] and so then that five day process begins again until symptoms improve and a person is without fever for 24 hour [1:04:53] period without fever reducing medications so this could extend out today 10 or 11 [1:04:59] for some individuals that are unfortunate enough to be unvaccinated walk through that period of quarantine [1:05:06] and then are identified as as being positive for covid so this could be a [1:05:11] lengthy process for some so this is not a magic pill by any means we want to make sure that everyone understands that [1:05:17] but we do also want to make sure that this is in a way a celebration it [1:05:22] doesn't come without concerns uh in terms of what the additional requirements are associated with [1:05:28] students and staff that return after isolation or quarantine so if they are to come back after that five days [1:05:35] of quarantine or isolation they are required to mask and avoid certain activities [1:05:41] that they would otherwise be having access to during the school day things like gym class where we take the [1:05:47] mass off or during lunch when we'd normally take the mass off so these individuals are to [1:05:55] separate themselves during those time periods so they're either wearing the mask full time or they're separating [1:06:00] themselves so that they can have lunch so this is a quandary that the building principles are going to be working through to determine how we can best do [1:06:07] that with elementary age students especially how can that get done so that's just a [1:06:12] consideration that we will have to make as we move forward with implementing a process like this [1:06:19] our protocols around the school return protocol and our testing protocols have [1:06:24] all been revised in response to this change in our overall practice [1:06:31] the the when we implement these is going to be something to know that dr stanley will be discussing here in just a little bit [1:06:38] but one of the things that i really wanted to point to is is the is this next visual and dr stanley if you would [1:06:45] put that one up on the board um is the covid testing and so one of the things that we're again strongly [1:06:51] encouraging covid testing but we're now talking about four different opportunities for testing that we're [1:06:59] really going to try to encourage our public to participate in [1:07:04] the first is in that area of symptomatic testing and that that's where our symptomatic testing protocol has not [1:07:09] changed dramatically and that is that if you have a symptomatic student we're encouraging you once again keep your [1:07:16] student at home if the student shows up symptomatic at school we're going to call the parents up and we're going to [1:07:22] have them pick up their symptomatic student but we're also going to ensure that that family has access to testing [1:07:27] materials so that when that student goes home they can be tested immediately for covin 19. [1:07:34] so one of the things that we have available to us and we have been pushing out to our community over the past several months has been the binex now [1:07:41] test kit we will be receiving additional allocations of a new test that's more of [1:07:48] a pcr test called veritor and that's a very important test to take because the bindings now is that rapid [1:07:55] viral type of test that doesn't always pick up on the amicron virus and so [1:08:01] this the the addition of the veritor test would definitely help us to identify more students should they be [1:08:08] more subtle in their demonstration of symptoms and again that rapid test doesn't always pick up on the omicron [1:08:16] our second level is what i entitled fifth day testing options and so why fifth day well fifth [1:08:22] day because we're looking at a five-day potential return process and we're strongly encouraging testing to take [1:08:29] place on that fifth day and we know the lines out there are fairly long already for [1:08:34] these testing for testing for parents to be able to access and so we again want to be able to try to facilitate parents [1:08:41] testing their students at home prior to return to school and so once [1:08:46] again uh utilizing that binix now on the veritor test allows us to send those [1:08:52] kits out or have parents pick them up so that they're able to get their students tested on that fifth day prior to [1:08:58] beginning the return process this will just reduce the likelihood that people that are still symptomatic enough to to [1:09:05] tip off a test or not returning to school too early so some students will [1:09:10] come back after that five day period because symptoms have improved because they're not shedding as much virus [1:09:17] and they're going to maintain that masking protocol when they come if they test however and they still come [1:09:23] up as positive we want to make sure they're still exhibiting symptoms we want to make sure that they're staying out of school for that full 10 days [1:09:30] prior to returning even then we look for symptoms improvement so we're still waiting for that fever to go down we're [1:09:36] still waiting for a student to to improve symptomatically so that's that fifth day testing option [1:09:41] and we fully expect that that's going to be probably the second largest population that we'll be testing [1:09:47] if parents to choose to access that that testing and we really do encourage it for public [1:09:53] health purposes the the next level up is the asymptomatic testing which we've already talked about a little bit again [1:09:58] this is this is more of a reduced population because the number of fully vaccinated students that we have [1:10:05] available to us so having a test protocol where we do start taking a look at are there [1:10:11] situations where students were without mass for a period of time and we're just curious and we we [1:10:18] want to know if this if you know because it was an outbreak of four or five students that were breakthrough [1:10:24] types of situations do we want to test the remainder of that classroom to to just make sure that our [1:10:31] students are healthy and that they're able to be in attendance so that asymptomatic testing again students are [1:10:37] not exhibiting symptoms as many omicron patients are identifying as this would help us in the identification [1:10:43] but it'd be on a case-by-case basis as determined by the school district the final area is a new area that we've [1:10:49] identified which is a test to stay model now i want to really emphasize that this [1:10:55] is for a very small portion of our population a minuscule portion of our [1:11:00] population this is the portion of our population that is mass exempt and unvaccinated we [1:11:07] do have some students within our system that fall into that category for one reason or another they are not able to [1:11:14] mask and for one reason or another they're not currently vaccinated and for those students the actual greater risk [1:11:20] is for they themselves and so what we want to do is instead of exposing them to continued [1:11:28] quarantines based on exposure within the classroom we wanted to have a way in which we [1:11:33] could do more of a screening protocol with these students to ensure that they are healthy that they are getting the [1:11:39] services that they need but they're also getting the service or support they need if they should show up as covid positive [1:11:46] even asymptomatically and so even though i put this on the chart we said two times weekly is what [1:11:52] they would be tested with existing q testing that we have available within the school which is another rapid pcr [1:11:58] test and discussions with our epidemiologist here within the serves our district here in bloomington [1:12:05] he we actually recommended late today three times a week so it'd be actually be a monday wednesday [1:12:11] friday kind of a testing protocol just so we close that gap because that's how rapid the omicron virus is actually [1:12:17] incubating within the system so that being said the addition of those testing [1:12:22] parameters and really just expanding on the testing parameters that we already have established should help us to again [1:12:30] screen our population and to make sure that this five-day return process that [1:12:36] we're proposing be implemented is done so in the safest way possible [1:12:44] thank you director jorgensen we'll just follow the same process we did before if someone wants to start [1:12:49] with questions and then we can continue on the same subject so we're not um going around on different [1:12:55] subjects so i'll open it up to whoever wants to start with questions [1:13:03] i'm happy to go great director green sure um thank you both so much um [1:13:11] i just want to say first of all i really appreciate the work that went into looking at the [1:13:16] cdc guidelines i know we're still waiting from mdh's adaption of it but i just found this [1:13:22] very helpful um and aligned with it with what i was hoping to see tonight so that's that's [1:13:29] great um when i want to talk and i'm in support of the [1:13:35] move to the five-day quarantine and to align with the cdc guidelines i wanted to say that too one of the questions i have is about [1:13:41] testing has bloomington public health have they or the state have they talked about doing some testing events i know [1:13:48] that this has been talked about for the past year and a half where if there was going to be a surge they would be a event that would happen [1:13:55] within the city or school where you would get as many people as you can to test to kind of identify that has there been talk with [1:14:02] bloomington about anything like that i think for the question dr yes there has been [1:14:07] a lot of discussion uh about this and so i think that many of us would would say [1:14:13] that we've we've been in several conversations where the idea of doing that type of pop-up clinic in terms of [1:14:19] testing has has been something that has been discussed it's just not been realized [1:14:24] i think that many of the agencies out there including moving to public health has has struggled with its own staffing [1:14:30] concerns and trying to get people in on a kind of pop-up type of a [1:14:35] situation where hey can i get enough people to show up at one point to be able to do this testing [1:14:41] and so really they pushed back to the schools and said you're the primary point [1:14:47] at which this can take place and so schools they've been really pushing out [1:14:52] a lot of the testing materials out to schools and so the and testing materials [1:14:57] are becoming more and more scarce as the as the crisis has increased over the past several weeks [1:15:04] so schools actually are the are the bearers of a lot of the test kits that are out there and available within the [1:15:09] market right now and how do you think we are doing i know you mentioned that there's more coming [1:15:14] and that we have the other tests that's like a pcr test how do you what's your [1:15:19] assessment of where we're at with supply with supply so we're still waiting on the veritor test that i that i talked [1:15:26] about was the rapid pcr test that can be done at home that's the one we're really actually really uh highly encouraged by [1:15:33] because that rapid pcr is not something that is currently in the take-home kit that's that rapid viral [1:15:39] and so the the pcr test is just much more sensitive and so if we can get that in the hands of our parents we're going [1:15:45] to be very happy about that we did just receive another shipment of the q tests which is what [1:15:50] we've been utilizing within the school which is also a rapid pcr test although it does take about 20 minutes per [1:15:57] students and it takes a while to get students struggle shifted through and we can't do a mass [1:16:02] number of students all at once so it's we can maybe do four students at a time to five students at a time just due to [1:16:08] the number of readers that we have available at any one time so it's a little bit laborious process [1:16:15] but we've been getting people through and staff have been utilizing that in some some extents to make sure that [1:16:21] we've got staff that may be a little bit symptomatic or they might have been exposed so we were able to identify some [1:16:27] st we were able to identify just even last week some staff with the q test who had been close contacts and we were [1:16:34] able to identify them right away and get them sent home to be on isolation for a period of time great and then my last um [1:16:41] my last question is i think is just um this is just a lot to communicate to [1:16:47] families to staff um but i do think the visuals that you created here are extremely helpful and [1:16:54] so i just wanted to say kudos for that because i think that's um that's more than half the battle so i [1:17:00] appreciate that thank you do we have other questions about testing specifically before we move on [1:17:06] i have a couple um you know knowing that school funding is [1:17:12] always an issue you could probably sell those tests on the black market and raise some money for [1:17:17] that's not on that's not my question though um so when we talk about testing i [1:17:25] um has there been any talk about this increased federal funding for school is there any information that you have [1:17:30] on that that came out last week so increased funding for [1:17:35] test materials yes so currently test materials have not cost us anything [1:17:41] right so all the q testing all the veritor all the binex now kits everything has been absolutely free to [1:17:48] us i've not been made aware of any additional funding that would be a mr tope question if he has anything to say [1:17:55] on that have not heard of the uh [1:18:01] stuff that came out last week that you're referencing i do know that we have a grant of 457 000 currently for testing contact [1:18:10] tracing and those kinds of things that we're going to struggle probably to spend out and we have to spend it out by [1:18:16] june 30th of this current year okay [1:18:22] my other question about testing kind of that chart that you showed it wasn't in our packet [1:18:29] that's excellent i think i agree with julie i think the more we can put those in front of [1:18:34] parents i will tell you as you know as a family who's hearing from you know it's spreading pretty rapidly [1:18:40] and all of a sudden you realize you've been seeing this information for two years but when it hits your family you're like wait what am i supposed to [1:18:46] do right so i think the more we can move some of those visuals front and center so that there's been a number of times [1:18:51] where i've had to kind of direct people to to that site um and that one that you showed up there [1:18:57] with the five days i think that's really easy to identify um because you get that [1:19:02] positive and all of a sudden you're like whoa what what am i supposed to do again so i really like that that was that was [1:19:08] actually the first thing i did when i started reviewing the cbc guidelines i really had to map that out on a timeline [1:19:14] because it doesn't make sense to call it five days when it can actually be more of a seven day [1:19:22] uh anything else on testing no okay i'll just open it up to other questions then from other board members [1:19:31] stacy are you gonna address it's in i know it's in your materials but address when this would potentially go into [1:19:38] effect because i know we have families that currently are within a certain day and they're they're [1:19:44] wondering what's going on but i assume you were going to talk about that next yeah and i can do that right now if you'd like [1:19:50] if that's a good time so again generally overall we are moving forward with adopting the cdc protocols [1:19:58] as director jurgensen outlined i am proposing that we would move [1:20:04] forward to begin that with staff tomorrow so beginning [1:20:11] on actually wednesday beginning on the 12th [1:20:16] of january with staff and then we'll proposing that we would [1:20:21] move forward to begin to implement with students on the 14th [1:20:27] you might imagine as randy shared you know we have staff [1:20:32] who are out right now we don't know the staff who are [1:20:37] asymptomatic that is key and so we need to be able to communicate with staff determine if they're [1:20:43] asymptomatic before we say come back we don't just want to say come you know come one come [1:20:49] all and so we want to be able to have some communication protocols in place for that and that is the same with our [1:20:56] students as well we want to have some uh private you know [1:21:01] communications with them to be able to reach out and uh john had mentioned that um [1:21:08] monies that we have related to testing and contact tracing and we are [1:21:14] able to use some of those monies to hire individuals through temporary agency [1:21:21] in order to begin that process to help support this and making certain support the nurses and then also [1:21:29] make certain that we're having a high level of customer service as [1:21:34] we're reaching out to teachers as we're reaching out to our families to make certain that our students are [1:21:39] asymptomatic and ready to move back into the school and that transition time [1:21:46] we need those extra hours in order to do that so i am proposing wednesday january 12th [1:21:52] for staffing and then friday uh january 14th for [1:21:57] students so can i sorry can i ask a clarifying question then um [1:22:04] is the date so 112 would that be if anyone [1:22:10] um like for staff as an example if someone finds out they are covered [1:22:16] positive as of the date of 112 and beyond their eligible [1:22:22] or the five five-day quarantine or as of 112 we will look back [1:22:29] to see if they can come in early [1:22:34] yeah and actually um jeff and i just talked about this this afternoon so jeff do you want to go ahead and talk about [1:22:40] what we where we landed yeah first for staffing that would prob that would be the case [1:22:46] we we would actually be able to track backwards we think that that would be the best case scenario and tracking [1:22:51] backwards four students that 14th date may be an establishment date [1:22:58] and we've talked about that on both sides this is that if we go backwards and allow students to come back that [1:23:03] that may be that may be understandable in some cases in some situations because that would [1:23:09] mean monday would be the first day actually back for some students i think there's a great deal of energy to say [1:23:14] where when would we start this practice um and so if we started the practice on [1:23:20] friday the 14th that means that students that were identified for isolation [1:23:27] or for quarantine on the date of the 14th would then do the five days which would put us at a wednesday the [1:23:34] following week and so most students would be returning to school by that date anyway [1:23:41] if if it was previously done so um so the so there's been conversation on this differ [1:23:49] to the board to to make that that decision in the end but planning that [1:23:55] foot in the ground and saying our practices will change going forward for our students may make more sense in this [1:24:01] case because it gives us the time to develop the types of strategies [1:24:06] necessary within the elementary schools for figuring out how to do [1:24:12] lunches how to do recess how to do phi end when there might be non-masking [1:24:17] periods so it gives us a little additional time okay so let me just repeat what you said to make sure it's [1:24:24] drilled into my brain so for employees and staff the 12th but that's looking [1:24:30] backwards for students the 14th but that would be looking forward so you if you're [1:24:38] found positive and or are exposed on the 14th or [1:24:45] the 15th and beyond you are now eligible for a defined new five-day guideline yes [1:24:50] is that correct okay thank you i think my only question slash caveat with that would be [1:24:59] is there an opportunity to have some leeway with that for our students who are best supported in the [1:25:06] school right so do we have some special education students or students who are receiving support that they would not [1:25:12] get being home if if a case-by-case basis for some of our highest needs students [1:25:19] could be kind of evaluated and i don't know if that's something that principles could [1:25:24] help identify if that's something you know school nurses could really help us with i i'm [1:25:30] worried about that population in general with long quarantines especially with [1:25:36] this variant so i think if we're going to do that then i think it has to be [1:25:43] very clear it's only open for special education and there's no delineation beyond that because if if [1:25:50] if there's any sort of gray area i don't think it's i'm not comfortable i don't think it's fair to leave it to the [1:25:56] principals and the nurses to try to decide who is like the highest needs student within the school system [1:26:02] that just opens up a can of worms and i think puts them in a really difficult position [1:26:08] i see that but i also i just think every day counts right like every day [1:26:13] matters um and so i just worry that whether it be [1:26:18] students who don't have care at home who don't have support at home i just [1:26:23] i i just like us to think about it and i think as you guys talk about it and you look at how you can support that [1:26:30] within the schools like you said there's going to be modifications within the school that need to be created i'm just kind of putting that out there as [1:26:36] something to think about and we're only talking about a very few number of days anyway because of the time lapse right [1:26:42] so i would just i would i would reinforce common sense prevail um in [1:26:48] that few days that we're talking about there's a little overlap here making sure that the emphasis is trying to get [1:26:53] the kid back into school as fast as possible where it's appropriate without violating the general principles of the [1:26:58] pro of the protocol [1:27:05] oh sorry julie no that's okay um i was just waiting to get called on so um [1:27:12] on that point i agree that [1:27:18] we have to have it has to be clear so that the guidelines are clear so it's not a you're making exceptions by i [1:27:24] agree with that i am a little concerned of [1:27:29] not allowing tracking back for some students especially at the secondary high school level they have finals next [1:27:36] week so if you have a student who's on day seven and can't come back that i'm not sure is the best decision [1:27:43] for that student and so i would really encourage us that if we are going to a five-day quarantine [1:27:50] and or you know how it works if we are able to do that on friday when we say [1:27:55] this is going to work that we look back i don't know what those number of students are and there might be some [1:28:00] families that say we don't want to send our kid in i mean we have that too right there they're going to be a lot that are saying you know what that's great five [1:28:07] days we're gonna be more conservative and we're gonna do it this way but i really i i would encourage us to really [1:28:13] look at that and i know it's a lot i know it's a lot of changes at the school i that has to trump that support has to [1:28:19] be there but i i'm i would push to have us look back if we [1:28:25] are able to if some of those quarantines can be cut by a couple days especially with the timing of the end of the semester [1:28:32] so i don't know what other board members think about that or if that's even a possibility so i guess the question is [1:28:38] how complex is it to look back i mean i would prefer to know the answer to that question before i would to weigh [1:28:45] in on directing well and that's part of the [1:28:50] part of the rationale and talking with the with the lsn group it's the the complexity really lies in having [1:28:57] that many students come back all at once and then trying to make accommodation for that many students all at once where [1:29:03] right now it's relatively metered out due to the way the isolations and the quarantines [1:29:09] actually took place and so as an example bloomington had 300 [1:29:14] students show up the very next day when they implemented the five-day quarantine process and whether or not they had [1:29:20] worked through the logistics of being able to separate out 300 students the [1:29:25] very next day after they implemented that practice became very complex now [1:29:31] in saying that we're going to implement on friday this week so that monday would [1:29:36] be the first day potentially so tuesday being the first potential date back actually even reduces that [1:29:43] number more significantly because students are going to be coming back during this time period [1:29:50] the question becomes whether or not we can work through the logistics quickly enough [1:29:55] from a site-based standpoint in order to get those accommodations put back in place [1:30:01] we will have students coming back after a 10-day quarantine that do not require masking [1:30:07] so those students coming back after 10 days do not i'm sorry i'm sorry let me create [1:30:12] a sled let me so they do require masking but they are able to attend those activities that [1:30:20] they can be without mask and in proximity to others wow i am so sorry i [1:30:25] said that out loud so once again everyone's masking and but [1:30:31] people returning after 10 days would still be able to have lunch with their peers would still be able to participate [1:30:36] in fayette and in recess without a mask on so [1:30:42] they're not a logistical issue to deal with whereas individuals coming back [1:30:48] after a five day will be a logistical issue to deal with for building principles [1:30:54] well i and perhaps you i would be in support of grade bands so if the high [1:31:00] school was able to figure it out and the high school was ready to go on friday i would be in support of that to be able [1:31:06] to track back the middle schools were ready great if they weren't okay then i would be okay doing that and i know then [1:31:13] you have the elementary which is six buildings right so it's a very logistically a lot more challenging to [1:31:18] get those buildings aligned but i would be supportive of doing great bands if we [1:31:23] were able to do that so yeah and i think you know either it's a lot of work right [1:31:29] like it's going to be a lot of work when we do that but if you think about the timing of this is just it's horrible [1:31:35] right we're having a surge right before finals especially of our high school students the timing of it couldn't be worse [1:31:41] but if we have more students that are out of school at finals that's also going to be a huge [1:31:47] strain on our staff because that's a lot of makeup work right so i agree with julie that we [1:31:54] asked the question is there is there one versus the other that is easier to manage [1:32:00] and it's a question that i think that we don't have the answer to tonight but that i think is important when you go to [1:32:05] implement this so it may be more complicated because there may be students who don't [1:32:11] want to come back because they're not ready for their finals and so [1:32:17] it gets extremely complicated to start to create one offs when you've got one student who goes [1:32:22] you know i'm five days out i want to go back and take my final another one who's like i'm five days out but i don't want [1:32:28] to because i you know for whatever reason but we we're not saying students [1:32:33] have to come back at day five right so if a student has covet and [1:32:38] technically they're symptom-free by day five but they're not in a place where they're up to being in school which is [1:32:43] something i hope all parents take into account you know when a kid is sick and not ready to learn they're not ready to [1:32:48] learn but but they don't have to come back at day five right there's they're not or is [1:32:55] is that still an excused absence or how does that work because that's also another question so my thought process [1:33:00] is the recommendation brought to us by this team was based on what the [1:33:06] principal said they thought they could implement which was day 14 and moving forward so [1:33:12] unless i hear from the principals the principal of the high school that he can [1:33:17] put together a plan to implement what you guys recommend i don't feel like i can support [1:33:23] what i think is a great idea and concept but we're pushing on [1:33:30] every single part of our system right now to try to keep kids in school period [1:33:35] and to add another layer of complexity on top of that to do something that [1:33:40] i think is a great idea but i'm not comfortable just saying i would like to do that without hearing from andy beaton [1:33:47] if it's something that we can do and what stress does it add to a system that is already stressed [1:33:54] to the max with every single thing that we've put on here so i don't personally support it [1:34:01] but if there are other important if we have more than if we have a majority of board members that support doing a 14 [1:34:08] well can i just ask what's the answer to that question i know but i had asked a question that didn't get answered so [1:34:15] so are you talking about the cdc's guidelines right yeah i mean that that kind of is the way [1:34:21] it's actually written is is that it states they may return and that [1:34:27] that and then there's the the counter that says students that cannot mask [1:34:32] during that time period should not return so in isolation so that's a that's [1:34:40] definitely a line but it says may return not must return [1:34:46] but i think it's a way to get our our society going again as well so [1:34:52] i you know the reality is if a child has been home with covet and they were sick with covet [1:34:58] uh especially omicron it is like serious influenza and we do [1:35:03] not want students to have to come back to school until they feel up to coming back to school so they the specific answer to [1:35:10] your question is is that going to be an unexcused absence no there would not be an unexcused absence um what i am [1:35:17] hearing is um you know we need to go back we need to look at data find out how many kids were students were talking [1:35:23] about um we will look and in the event that we see that there are some shifts [1:35:29] that we can make we will do that we will let you know there are significant processes though in order to [1:35:36] get the students back and so we will do it is our goal it is my goal to get our students back in school as soon as [1:35:43] possible and so we will do our very best to get them in as soon as possible [1:35:48] thank you for saying that and i want to just say i would not want to override operational strain and i didn't [1:35:56] mean to imply that i that was my position at all or the direction that i was trying to give it was just to [1:36:01] consider different ways to look at it so i just wanted to be clear and if the [1:36:07] dr stanley and the principals and you say you know what it's too much stress i'm 100 in support of that so [1:36:16] can i back up just one quick thing and just um i want to talk a little bit about our staff [1:36:21] i am wondering if you know one of the things that i saw in dr stanley's recommend your [1:36:26] recommendation was that our staff will be provided with an additional mitigation measure with us with the mass which i was thrilled to see [1:36:33] as we talk about this testing and we talk about maybe funds that are there that we won't use all can [1:36:40] what has been the thought process or the discussion around providing testing for our staff [1:36:46] that is with they are with our kids all day long especially those elementary teachers is that a possibility can they go to the [1:36:52] nurse's office and say i'd like i'd like a rapid test anytime they want [1:36:58] any time they want i think is is a stretch uh but a but i think that we have made testing available to staff [1:37:05] individuals upon request if there's a concern about being a close contact or because they [1:37:11] might be feeling that sore throat that is kind of that tickling of the the omicron and and so forth that they talk [1:37:17] about as far as the broader testing once we get the verita the veritour that we [1:37:22] ordered for the school district is not just for students that is that is for staff testing as well so those are [1:37:29] take-home kits the staff can access as well as their families that's again a rapid pcr test [1:37:36] the q testing is just something that because they can't do it independently it's something that they need to go down [1:37:42] to the nurse's office in order to get access to that testing and again we've been testing staff periodically within [1:37:48] our system okay i would love to see if we could have a discussion around [1:37:53] making that well known for our staff if we have these tests you know i think that goes a long way in [1:37:59] us just sharing how they're an important part of this piece and if you are in a workplace where you're exposed all day [1:38:05] long we're going to provide you with a test so thanks [1:38:15] um any other questions about this portion [1:38:21] um the only other comment i had was i think would be great and i actually sent something to stacey but i think that it [1:38:28] would be great to have a more clear chart that lays out [1:38:33] who has to quarantine one because i think it's really confusing to try to [1:38:40] figure out my kids age have they been exposed have they and who [1:38:46] has the quarantine and i think if we could just lay it on black and white that says almost like this is my kids in [1:38:52] kindergarten and they're this they can come back on day whatever [1:38:58] and just like you had i mean like your chart with the number of days i just think it'd be super helpful for [1:39:04] parents to be able to look that up absolutely um so i just wanted to suggest that and [1:39:09] then i also wanted to highlight and make sure i have the appropriate information so please [1:39:14] correct me if i'm wrong but for quarantining purposes if you're age 18 right now which affects [1:39:21] some of our seniors that you have to have a booster shot to be considered [1:39:26] fully vaccinated and that affects quarantines is that correct and so [1:39:32] prior to this if you had two shots you were considered fully vaccinated and so you would not [1:39:40] have to quarantine if you had a coveted exposure now you have to have a booster shot so [1:39:47] if you have two shots you will now have to quarantine you have to have that third shot to not [1:39:54] have to quarantine so i want to make sure that that's if i have the correct information if i don't i don't want to [1:39:59] highlight it but i want to make sure because it affects some of our students that that is a guidance change that will [1:40:06] affect some of our students that i don't think is very well known and i just wanted to highlight that [1:40:11] um and just you can add on to that if i'm not giving out the right information so that is the information that the cdc shared [1:40:19] was 18 and above there that the full series of shots includes the booster [1:40:26] now that being said mdh may clarify that on wednesday when they meet because cdc [1:40:32] didn't intentionally write all of these guidelines specifically for school-aged children [1:40:37] and probably did not consider as they oftentimes do overlook that we have 18 year olds as high schools [1:40:43] in our high schools so i fully expect that mdh will clarify that for us or we can at least ask the [1:40:50] question of mdh when that question is posed but currently the 18 and above [1:40:55] requires the booster to be considered fully vaccinated so at this point in time are we layering that into our [1:41:01] requirements for quarantine i think we would have to is if we adopt [1:41:07] the cdc guidelines as written which we are aren't we yes okay we talked about that um the other [1:41:14] day that right now it is 18 or older we do it's important at this point to note [1:41:19] that we are offering a vaccination clinic and so um [1:41:24] opportunities for the booster and so do you want to talk a little bit about that yes on uh on january 20th we will once [1:41:31] again be offering a site-based clinic at both valley view middle school in the morning and then south view middle [1:41:37] school in the afternoon again this is uh more or less a booster clinic but also a vaccination clinic so [1:41:43] we anyone that is not vaccinated yet or has not received their series can come in to receive that shot during that time [1:41:50] period our hope is to offer more vaccination clinics in the future as we want to make [1:41:56] sure that we can get as close to 100 of our population here in edina and surrounding communities vaccinated as [1:42:02] soon as possible great thank you i appreciate it [1:42:07] can i add just one clarifying piece that was said about physical education [1:42:13] at the elementary level only time students aren't earn mass is when they're eating [1:42:19] but even during physical education they're they are massed up at the elementary level at all parts throughout the day [1:42:25] but the only time again they're not mass is when they're eating so i just wanted to make that clarification that elementary [1:42:32] my last quick question is do we know when the new masks are coming in for our teaching staff so we yeah [1:42:38] thank you we did receive a shipment of masks uh [1:42:43] there there was a bit of a difficulty with the mask that we received and we're checking on that right now to see [1:42:50] whether or not the mass that we received or actually the mast that we ordered so we're doing a little bit of follow-up [1:42:56] on that right now but we did receive 20 000 mass this morning [1:43:02] thank you anything else dr stanley or questions or comments from anyone the other thing that i will add is we are [1:43:09] looking into ordering the k f 94 masks for youth [1:43:14] and um i've worked with one of my superintendent colleagues and [1:43:20] we are going to be able to get 10 000 of those masks from superintendent colleague and then when our masks come [1:43:27] in we will be able to return those to them so that families who are not able to get their [1:43:34] hands on a kf on 94 and who want their children to wear one of those we will be [1:43:39] able to get those out to be handed out now they're not just [1:43:44] going to be handed to every child but if if a student wants one we'll be able to get that to them [1:43:50] thank you for creatively helping us get those sooner appreciate that work [1:43:56] well thank you everyone i appreciate all the work i know the whole board appreciates the flexibility and the work and [1:44:03] the workarounds and everything so yeah thank you [1:44:09] um we're moving on to our action items and i'm going to flip flop the order of some of these we do have an um [1:44:15] our district auditor here and so i am actually going to have that go first um [1:44:20] since we've already do you want a motion to modify the agenda to move the audit first oh do i need to do that so i moved [1:44:26] oh second okay sorry i motioned silently to move it first and lenny did [1:44:33] the first and then um michael did the first michael's second or vice versa um so [1:44:39] we have our district auditor here so thank you for coming um you want to vote on moving modifying the agency i've [1:44:47] totally messed this entire portion up i apologize can we everyone in favor of moving the district audit to the first [1:44:54] action item say aye aye anyone opposed okay great and do you want do you want [1:45:00] now a motion to approve the audit oh we have a question [1:45:06] do we have do i have a motion to approve the district audit so moved is there a second second [1:45:13] um all those in no we have to do that later i am i apologize i am not [1:45:19] um doing so well today welcome to discuss the district audit [1:45:26] we have director of business services john topher and bill lauer from mmkr to [1:45:32] discuss our district audit good evening chair alan berg superintendent stanley members of the [1:45:38] board tonight we'll have bill lauer from mmkr present our fiscal 2021 audit [1:45:44] he has a presentation which i did include in your packets so hopefully he'll be [1:45:49] quick and brief we have good results to share with you tonight so [1:45:55] yeah no pressure so i will turn it over to him [1:46:00] thank you there we go all right i will do my best [1:46:05] too quickly and briefly first of all going to share [1:46:10] make sure you understand what our responsibility is what the audit process is uh go through the results of that [1:46:16] audit and then just very briefly touch on a few of the financial highlights for the year under [1:46:22] auto which was the year ended june 30 2021 the first thing as i mentioned that i [1:46:28] need to do is make sure that it's clear to you as the body charged with governance of the [1:46:33] district what our responsibility is with regards to the district's financial statements [1:46:39] all of the data and disclosures that are included in those statements is compiled and provided by districts [1:46:46] management that's the responsibility of john and ron and their team we come out and perform our audit to [1:46:52] provide an opinion as to whether that fairly presents the district's financial position and results for the year under [1:46:58] audit in addition because the district annually earns more than 750 000 in [1:47:04] federal grant awards you're subject to what's referred to as a single audit of those federal award [1:47:10] expenditures it's a separate compliance audit of your federal grant expenditures [1:47:17] as part of both that audit of your financial statements and [1:47:22] the audit of your federal awards programs we test controls and compliance you will [1:47:28] find in your packet report letters as far as the [1:47:33] tests that we performed and the results of those tests and finally you're subject to an audit of your compliance [1:47:39] with minnesota laws and regulations we audit to a a guide that is put out annually and updated by the office of [1:47:46] the state auditor for all various local governments [1:47:51] as far as the audit results this year as john mentioned i think it's very positive audit results for the district [1:47:59] with regard to your financial statements we did refer we did issue what we refer to as a clean opinion or [1:48:06] an unmodified opinion on the district's financial statements it's the highest opinion that we can give we had [1:48:12] no issues on your financial reporting from either an internal control standpoint or a compliance standpoint [1:48:19] with that financial statement audit the only finding that we reported this year [1:48:25] is in the minnesota legal compliance audit the district had not [1:48:31] filed an unclaimed property report in a timely manner any checks that you're holding that have [1:48:37] been outstanding for more than three years or any payroll disbursements or over a year old are required to be [1:48:43] submitted to the state along with a a report of unclaimed property and that was not done timely [1:48:52] as far as the federal single audit this is an area as we've been discussing a little bit [1:48:59] here that greatly expanded in fiscal 2021. as i mentioned every year you've [1:49:05] earned we bought a do you earned over 750 000 [1:49:11] threshold at which a single audit is required but just to give you some context [1:49:16] for what all these additional uh federal covet relief type grants are are doing [1:49:22] to this particular area for the 2020 fiscal year the district earned about two and a half million [1:49:29] dollars in federal awards uh over all of your funds in fiscal 2021 [1:49:36] you actually earned about six and a half million so roughly two and a half times as much in federal awards [1:49:42] as you did in the previous year and there were a number of new programs and two of those were the programs that we [1:49:48] had to select and audit as major federal programs and that's the coronavirus relief fund and the [1:49:55] education stabilization fund which is probably more commonly referred to by you as the gear or lesser dollars that [1:50:02] you're spending i'm happy to report you had very good results in your single audit as well we [1:50:08] had a clean opinion that your schedule of expenditures of federal awards is fairly stated in relation to [1:50:14] your overall financial statements and we had no internal control or compliance findings to report with your [1:50:20] federal single audit and that's an area where we did see quite an uptick in the number of findings that we [1:50:27] reported across our our client basis here particularly um in regards to some [1:50:32] of these new grants there were a lot of changes a lot of kind of rules that came out [1:50:38] i don't want to say after the dollars but simultaneously so there's a lot of changes that had to be made in the [1:50:43] district did a very nice job making sure you had all your compliance bases covered there and that was [1:50:49] reflected in single audit results one of the things we also do is to [1:50:55] follow up year to year on any findings that we do issue with regard to your 2020 audit there [1:51:02] were some findings we reported that were cleaned up and corrected in fiscal 21 [1:51:08] in fiscal 20 due to not being fully staffed in the [1:51:14] district's business office you had fallen behind on the [1:51:20] completion of some year-end and periodic reconciliations particularly concerning [1:51:26] presses is reconciliations of cash and investments that are done monthly this is kind of one of the real building [1:51:32] blocks of your internal control process happy to report when we came out for the 2021 audit that process was again being [1:51:39] performed on a timely basis we did have a federal finding in our [1:51:46] fiscal 20 audit your internal controls in your [1:51:51] we audited the child nutrition programs that year there was a suspension and debarment [1:51:57] verification requirement that wasn't being documented appropriately basically [1:52:02] anytime you're spending more than twenty five thousand dollars with a particular vendor over the course of a year you're [1:52:08] required to go out and and go on a federal website and verify that that vendor and the owner of that company are [1:52:16] not on kind of the federal naughty list that they're eligible to do business with contracts that involve federal [1:52:22] dollars and that wasn't being documented for some of the testing we did in 2020 [1:52:28] we not only tested that for the programs we audited as major this year but we also went back and tested the child [1:52:34] nutrition program where the finding originated the prior year and again i'm happy to report [1:52:39] that we found in all cases the proper testing was being done and documented [1:52:45] and finally we did have a legal compliance finding in fiscal 20. [1:52:51] this was just one contract out of i believe five that we tested where um you were kind of required to be the [1:52:57] gatekeeper for the state with regard to withholding when you're hiring and contracting for [1:53:04] labor before you make a final payment you're required to make sure the primary contractor [1:53:11] gets an affidavit that they have complied with all of the state's withholding requirements there's a forum [1:53:18] called an ic134 that they're supposed to be submitting to the district before you release that final payment [1:53:24] there's one contract that that wasn't the case before you released the payment before you received that documentation [1:53:30] in 2020. we picked a sample of contracts that were completed in fiscal 21 and [1:53:35] again i'm happy to report that in all cases you had received that documentation and cleared that [1:53:42] that threshold before you issued the final payment [1:53:48] that's everything i was going to talk about from kind of a compliance audit results standpoint before i move on to [1:53:55] just a very brief recap of some of the financial information questions on anything i've covered so far [1:54:02] okay excellent then i'll just take a look at a few of the trends with [1:54:08] you that kind of impacted your funding year to year the first one that we [1:54:14] always track is the number of students that the district serves that generate [1:54:20] general education aid for you so these are this is a graph over the last five years [1:54:26] of the number of students who served in terms of average daily membership which is kind of the raw numbers [1:54:32] uh thinking one kid in their seat every day for a year generates one adm for the district and then the pupil units is [1:54:39] when you apply the weighting factors for the different grades how do those adms [1:54:45] then generate the pupil unit numbers and that goes into your aid calculations so [1:54:52] for the 2021 fiscal year you served an average daily membership of about 8 242 [1:54:58] students that converted to about 9034 pupil units [1:55:04] that was down about 126 from the year before so a decrease of roughly 1.4 [1:55:10] percent um and again that's the trend we're seeing in a lot of our districts for fiscal 2021 [1:55:16] a lot of it driven by coved changes in learning models things of that nature [1:55:22] impacted a lot of our districts one thing that does do you got about a two percent increase in [1:55:28] your general education basic formula aid for 2021 obviously some of that's going to be [1:55:34] negated by serving less kids as mentioned as about a 1.4 decrease in students served the [1:55:40] generated that went into that aid formula [1:55:46] this graph then maybe one more gem trying oh [1:55:53] there we go um this graph just shows some history of your general fund financial per [1:55:59] financial position at the end of the last 10 fiscal years in terms of your year and cash balance and your year-end [1:56:06] total fund balance that green line is your annual expenditures just to kind of give you some context of the district's operation [1:56:14] and how that has changed over this period as well your general fund at the end of 2021 [1:56:21] had cash in investments of just over 38 million dollars and had a total fund balance at the end [1:56:28] of the year of about 17.6 million dollars that fund balance represented an [1:56:33] increase of about 2.7 million from the previous year and you'd actually budgeted to spend fund balance [1:56:40] down by close to 2 million so you're about 4.7 million dollars better off in [1:56:45] fund balance at the end of the year than has been projected in your final budget [1:56:50] um taking a look at what makes up that fund balance [1:56:56] this table shows the various components of how your fund balance is broken down [1:57:03] the restricted fund balance as you see there of about 1.3 million at the end of 2021 these relate to the statewide you [1:57:11] fires restrictions where a number of the revenue streams that you get are subject [1:57:17] to certain state spending mandates and tracking of that 1.3 million dollars the majority [1:57:23] of that about 1.1 million was for operating capital purposes he also had about two hundred thousand [1:57:30] dollars for staff development and a small amount about twenty six thousand [1:57:36] dollars related to your extracurricular student activity accounts that committed [1:57:42] assigned and unassigned fund balance uh group of three you see there at the bottom [1:57:47] are basically things that you control locally they're broken out by kind of the different levels at which you [1:57:54] control them committed fund balances are things that you as the school board can set those [1:58:00] commitments you have a policy where you commit one percent of your unassigned [1:58:08] expenditures for cash flow purposes um that calculated to be about one [1:58:13] million seventy four thousand dollars at the end of 2021 you can see it's pretty [1:58:18] consistent year to year as your budget grows that grows with it assigned fund balances are things that [1:58:25] you earmark either at the board level or you do have [1:58:30] you know people in management designated to make assignments there so that's more of an internal earmark [1:58:36] of that 6.1 million dollars at the end of 2021 about three and a half million uh [1:58:42] represents funds set aside for separation and severance benefits you also had about six hundred thousand [1:58:50] dollars in specific building carryovers or unspent budget uh [1:58:55] appropriations from 2021 you also had a new category for literacy [1:59:02] and virtual programming that was new in 2021 and that [1:59:08] was about 1.7 million dollars and you had roughly 300 000 set aside for [1:59:14] alternative compensation or q com as it's known then that final category of unassigned [1:59:20] fund balance you see about 9.1 million dollars this thing that you're is available to spend for any purpose [1:59:28] we kind of track two things that um unassigned fund balances the percent of [1:59:34] annual expenditures and then the sum of those last three numbers those unrestricted fund balances the percent [1:59:40] of your annual expenditures you can see the trend there you've been [1:59:45] slowly growing your fund balance year to year you had about 14 percent [1:59:51] of your annual expenditures and that unrestricted fund balance those last three categories [1:59:56] and roughly 7.6 and just that unassigned fund balance and i should point out here just to [2:00:03] avoid any confusion i think when you present this internally you usually [2:00:09] look at that as a ratio of only the unrestricted expenditures which i believe was about 8.6 [2:00:17] so we we use total expenditures so that we can compare to state trends and that [2:00:23] things of that nature but i don't want you to get confused by what i'm telling you versus what you're hearing internally [2:00:34] the next graph here then shows your general fund revenues compared to budget in the prior year the general [2:00:41] fund being the district's primary operating fund you took in just under 127 million dollars in total [2:00:49] revenues in the general fund in 2021 you're very close to budget [2:00:54] about thirty seven thousand dollars over the final budget in total in the general funds level variance of about a tenth of [2:01:00] one percent um just to focus a little bit on the growth you saw there your revenues were [2:01:06] about seven percent higher than the year before uh the majority of that about five [2:01:11] million dollars was an increase in your approved property tax levy mainly your [2:01:16] voter approved referendum levies there you also as i [2:01:22] mentioned did see growth in your federal revenues they were about 2.8 million dollars higher than the year before [2:01:28] going the other way that other category which includes things [2:01:33] like investment income as well as activity fees attendance fees [2:01:39] there you are seeing the covet impact of some of the restrictions you had those revenues were about 1.9 million [2:01:46] dollars less than 2020 due to some of the restrictions that you were operating under [2:01:53] on the expenditure side you spent about 119 million dollars in the general fund [2:02:00] in 2021 and this is where that budget variance really came from your expenditures in total [2:02:06] uh we're about 8.8 million dollars under budget or roughly 7 [2:02:12] some of that is just shifting where you spent the dollars about 4.8 million of that 8.8 million variants [2:02:21] is directly related to your long-term facilities maintenance dollars all of that revenue comes in the general fund [2:02:28] and then depending on the size of the projects that you're you're doing with those dollars [2:02:33] any project over two million dollars is required to be accounted for in your building construction fund so you did [2:02:39] transfer out about four point uh 4.5 million dollars to your other [2:02:44] fund there where the expenditures are just being accounted for in a different bucket basically [2:02:51] you did see some budget variances in both regular instruction [2:02:57] which is about two and a half million dollars under budget and special education instruction which was about a [2:03:02] million dollars under budget a lot of that had to do with that decrease in the number of students that [2:03:07] the district served as compared to what you had been projecting [2:03:14] and briefly i'll just talk about a few of the other operating funds the district maintains [2:03:19] these graph this graph shows the uh there we go there we go [2:03:27] it shows a five-year history of your ending fund balance in your food service and community service special revenue [2:03:32] funds on your food service fund end of the year with a fund balance of about nine [2:03:37] hundred and twenty thousand dollars um basically right right about where you [2:03:42] ended the prior year is down about five thousand dollars from the year before a much smaller fund your total revenue and [2:03:49] expenditures uh in this fund were both right around 1.4 million dollars [2:03:54] kind of the thing of note in this fund was you did see a change in where the revenues were [2:04:00] coming from you as as most of our clients did opted to operate under the summer food [2:04:07] service program for children where meals for [2:04:12] kids 18 and under were provided free and totally federal federally funded so you did see an increase again in their [2:04:19] federal funding there decreases in state funding and also decreases in the [2:04:25] amount of of actual lunch sales you had where kids were paying for that directly [2:04:30] in previous years that 922 thousand dollar fund balance [2:04:35] represents about 64 percent of what you spent uh over the years so you're in a very strong fund balanced position in [2:04:42] that fund your community service fund ended the year with a total fund balance of about 690 [2:04:49] 000 that was an increase of 161 000 from the year before [2:04:56] revenues were about 5.4 million in that fund and expenditure is about 5.2 [2:05:01] million you did see a decrease in both revenues and expenditures obviously this is another [2:05:08] area where you're seeing the impact of cobit because a lot of your community service programs are [2:05:13] activities that were either scaled back or some eliminated altogether due to covid [2:05:21] um you did have an increase in fund balance of about 161 000 and that [2:05:27] ending fund balance represents about 13 and a half percent of your annual expenditures in that fund i don't have [2:05:34] graphs of them but just a couple things i'll point out two other funds that i don't have pictured here as i mentioned [2:05:40] your capital projects fund that's where you account for funding from [2:05:46] bonds funding from capital levies or in the case of your long-term facilities maintenance [2:05:53] transfers from the general fund you did about 27 and a half million [2:05:58] dollars in capital improvements out of that fund during the 2021 fiscal year [2:06:04] and you ended the year with total fund balance of about seven and a half million dollars in that fund [2:06:10] um your debt service fund is another one that kind of runs itself once you sell the bonds the levies and everything are [2:06:16] controlled by the bond documents but one thing i just did want to point out there you did a refunding [2:06:24] in the debt service fund where you replaced an outstanding debt issue with a new issue at a more favorable [2:06:30] rate that saved the district about 750 000 in future debt service payments [2:06:39] and then the final table i wanted to share with you is actually a very [2:06:46] abbreviated version of the very first financial statement that's in [2:06:51] your basic statements and that's the statement of net position what this does is take all the fund [2:06:57] information that we just talked about put it all in a single presentation [2:07:02] and then it brings into play all the long-term assets and liabilities that aren't reported in the funds [2:07:09] so the top half of this kind of walk you through how we get from the roughly 30 million dollars in [2:07:15] total fund balance all the funds that we just talked about to a net position which is shown as a [2:07:22] deficit of about 45 million dollars you're bringing in your capital assets [2:07:28] another depreciation of about 277 million outstanding debt that you issued to [2:07:35] finance those capital assets is about 203 million and then pension op [2:07:42] liabilities and deferrals is kind of the big driver here that's that's making that [2:07:48] bottom line be negative and those are basically the long-term portions of employee benefits the big numbers there [2:07:55] are coming from two statewide pension plans p-e-r-a and t-r-a [2:08:00] the district participates in these but really the only thing that you control with related with in relationship to [2:08:06] those plans is the number of employees that you have that qualify to participate in each of [2:08:12] those plans everything else benefit levels contribution levels [2:08:18] investment decisions is made by the legislature at a statewide level so what happens there is each year those [2:08:25] two plans have an actuarial study and every entity like yourself that has [2:08:32] employees participating in those plans gets allocated a portion of any underfunding of those plans and that has [2:08:39] to be reported in your entity-wide statements it doesn't change your general fund it [2:08:45] doesn't change how much you're paying in each year although the indirectly a tra has been increasing the [2:08:51] employer contribution rate over a five year period here so you are seeing some impact of that but um just such a big [2:08:58] number i want to make sure you kind of understand that that's kind of just a notice that part of that [2:09:05] statewide underfunding is related to your employee participation in that plan but that's [2:09:11] not something you're going to be asked to write a check for or anything of that nature so um your net position did change uh by [2:09:20] about a million dollars positively from the end of 2020 to 2021. [2:09:26] um most of the increase you'll see there is that net investment in capital assets [2:09:31] of about five and a half million dollars usually that that stays fairly [2:09:37] consistent as you paid that down versus depreciating your assets but for your [2:09:42] district that's been going up for several years because you have been financing some capital improvements [2:09:48] through levies so you're not issuing new debt to finance those new assets [2:09:57] the unrestricted portion of net position then is basically that [2:10:02] general fund those unrestricted pieces of your general fund fund balance [2:10:07] offset by what's going on in those pension and opev liabilities so [2:10:13] um you see up above there that about six million dollar increase in those liabilities [2:10:19] um offset by the by the positive operating results in your general fund are resulting in that [2:10:25] like 3.3 million dollar increase in that deficit you're reporting there [2:10:32] so that is typically everything i go over from a number standpoint questions on anything [2:10:39] uh the second part of my presentation i just have one quick question i know i wasn't available to come to the meeting [2:10:44] for the original detailed presentation were there any significant changes in how the district [2:10:51] programs policies how we how we handle our finances did that change at all in the last year [2:10:57] in any significant way uh to answer your question director birdman i don't believe so [2:11:03] as bill lauer had mentioned before the impetus of the federal stimulus funds [2:11:09] caused us a lot of work to get those regulations looked at make sure that we [2:11:15] were following them but nothing really changed as far as our protocols and our in the business are [2:11:22] right so that would gain a clean audit then also it indicates that how we operated pretty much met all requirements and [2:11:27] even though he had to do work to for those things it includes all those elements i think the [2:11:32] biggest change year to year was the fact that number one you were fully staffed again in 2021 and also number two [2:11:41] um fiscal 2020 was the year coveted hit there was a lot of change and a lot of [2:11:48] you know people working remotely for the first time things like that so we did see not as i mentioned some of the findings [2:11:54] that your district had that was also fairly common for that year and now you're kind of back to operating more [2:12:01] any more normal anyway let's say method and you're seeing the results of that coming back more in line with what [2:12:07] you'd expect excellent thank you for reinforcing that any other questions from anyone [2:12:14] thank you both very much so i just want to note john and your department you've done it [2:12:20] continue to do great work and as a board we appreciate it i think this audit reflects the work that you put in and [2:12:28] the excellence that you bring to our district so i just want to thank you for your work and the work of your department [2:12:34] thank you director welcome and i would like to close by thanking bill and his staff they have worked with us very [2:12:40] closely over the last two years especially when we were short staffed and done lots of things that have helped [2:12:47] my new staff get better at what we're doing and i think we're getting there [2:12:53] we're not quite there i would say i think bill would probably agree but we're going to have the auditors come in [2:12:59] and give us some more consulting here in march i'll talk to bill about that i'm just [2:13:04] some final pieces to close the gap on having understanding [2:13:10] for all my staff so i'm very excited about that i think we have a good team in place i [2:13:15] think i mentioned that last year they've continued to grow in the business office and look forward [2:13:22] to continued good work from them and again thanks to mmkr [2:13:28] just one final comment share allenberg if new board members especially if you [2:13:33] look at page 124 of 293 in your board documents that lays out all of our fund [2:13:40] balance results in all of our funds for the year so it's a really good document [2:13:45] for you to to look at as a new board member for the results that bill just reported on and we've got it color coded [2:13:52] so on the far left the peaches where we have our beginning balances from the previous year then you'll see the [2:13:57] original budget in gray for both revenue expenditures and and [2:14:03] transfers and then in blue the revised budget for 2021 and then in green the [2:14:08] actual results for 2021. so i think it's a good document for you to track that through if you have the [2:14:14] time you can also see a couple of things that i mentioned tonight where i said we subsidize gifted and [2:14:20] talented where we subsidize ell that shows in column i [2:14:27] in this document so if if new board members have any questions on that this is the document to refer to as opposed [2:14:34] to the audit report not to say that the audit report isn't important we know it is but it's just a it's a collapse [2:14:40] condensed version for you to kind of a shorthand for you [2:14:46] you know john i know you said that you wanted your statement to be the last but i really wanted to really echo [2:14:52] the work that you have done because you do have new staff members in your office and you've done an amazing job [2:14:59] even working with them really preparing them they all of the new type of grants [2:15:05] that they had to learn how to do i've just been continuously impressed and i just want to publicly say [2:15:10] thank you for your work you're doing an amazing job thank you thank you both very much [2:15:17] we'll now vote on to approve the district audit all those in favor say aye [2:15:23] anyone opposed the district audit is approved thank you both [2:15:29] we are now going to go back up to the top of our action items um do i have a motion to approve the vaccine and [2:15:35] testing resolution so moved is there a second second [2:15:42] uh dr stanley okay so you'll remember that we have [2:15:47] been actually working on this uh since since the fall and just really glad that [2:15:53] we are in a in a really good place um considering where the new osha ets is at [2:16:00] sorry about that um so there is one change related to the new [2:16:05] cdc updates that i wanted to bring to the resolution and [2:16:11] that is uh moving to the requirement of having received the booster if [2:16:18] a staff member is eligible for that after six months and so [2:16:24] i would like to add that in that is the only change it is looking at what the definition of fully vaccinated means and [2:16:31] that would mean that they would have the booster as well if they're eligible for it [2:16:39] do board members have questions about this [2:16:45] my only question is um we have the date of january 17th [2:16:51] 2020 there um are we defining fully vaccinated [2:16:58] so we say you have six months to do the booster but then we also say you have [2:17:05] until january 17th to be fully vaccinated and so i'm just wondering [2:17:11] are we saying are we defining fully vaccinated with the january 17th date to mean two [2:17:17] shots and then six months from january 17th is [2:17:23] it includes if you're eligible for the booster and so there will be people um [2:17:29] who just became fully vaccinated with the first two with the first series of [2:17:34] vaccinations and they will not need a booster for another [2:17:39] six months right but there are individuals who receive their first series of [2:17:45] vaccinations in say june and now they need a booster and so it's only when [2:17:50] you're eligible for that so whatever fully vaccinated means based on your [2:17:56] status at the time correct okay correct thank you [2:18:02] anything else yeah just a follow-up question that so to clarify [2:18:08] if we pass this resolution tonight that gives people who [2:18:14] had received their second shot more than six months ago that only gives them one week to get the [2:18:19] booster [2:18:28] it's a valid point i may have to go back and change that [2:18:35] but i make a suggestion given that the vaccination clinic is going to be held on the 20th is that is that not open to [2:18:41] all staff members as well that is open to staff members too [2:18:48] jeff vaccination clinic open to staff members as well but you just at least considered [2:18:53] minimally to change it to either the 20th or sometime after the 20th so it gives them the most readily [2:19:00] available opportunity to get that booster if they're in line to get so [2:19:06] however you only are we're only having the clinics at two middle schools so you'd have to have [2:19:11] hours where they're released if you're not at those schools to i think we should move the date to [2:19:17] january 31st and there's quite a few booster clinics and booster appointments [2:19:24] available and that gives people three one two three weeks [2:19:31] which seems like ample time to get unless you guys think [2:19:37] i'd concur with that [2:19:45] yeah no no i was just thinking through that i i think that january 34th timing is fine i just [2:19:51] think that we could also be bumping up against let's say [2:19:58] let's say you're in a position you didn't get the booster but you got covered then that [2:20:03] also then pushes you out so then you wouldn't be fully vaccinated but you can't get the booster until 30 days [2:20:10] after you have covered i think there's just a lot of nuances so i'm not the expert on this but i do know [2:20:17] that if you have had covid they recommend that you don't get the booster shot for another 30 days [2:20:24] from that original die from that diagnosis so there could be some staff in that category [2:20:30] so i think giving i think we need to give them we need to give them more [2:20:36] a little bit i would give more flexibility than less flexibility but i i'm not the expert on that i think [2:20:42] we have to so would they the way this is written wouldn't they [2:20:47] fall into the vaccine eligibility [2:20:53] then because they have coven so they would fall into that six month window [2:20:59] or to the point of if they got kovid they hadn't yet had a chance to be boosted eligibility [2:21:05] wouldn't be defined you're not eligible for the booster until 30 days after your covid designation it still falls in the [2:21:11] definition of eligible so we're covered i just want to make sure from a liability standpoint that [2:21:17] we're covered yeah no that's a good point that's a good point or it might make sense to say [2:21:24] um uh dr stanley like before january 31st and maybe do like an asterisk and [2:21:32] say like unless something like to your point julie unless [2:21:38] for some reason they're not eligible to get them obviously but something that makes more sense the definition requires two doses [2:21:45] and receiving a booster if eligible yeah so it's already in there [2:21:53] i mean we could create all sorts of potential scenarios i think that at some point we have to have a common sense [2:21:58] reading of it i think we just should add the phrase if eligible to the first sentence [2:22:03] that's all i'm saying where it says all current staff to be vaccinated before january 17th if [2:22:11] eligible that's it [2:22:17] under a 1a [2:22:24] and the date that's all i'm saying i agree with that just as i think i have [2:22:31] it in there so it's more clear and then also the date yeah i'd be in support of that [2:22:36] just logistical questions who i mean it says human resources but if we're with this booster [2:22:45] our staff required to report that that as well obviously according to this document [2:22:51] yeah and actually um human resources dali bina our assistant director [2:22:57] her staff have already been working with the staff about that about posters because then if we change the [2:23:03] if eligible logistically i'm just wondering are they going to have to show up [2:23:09] positive coveted case results um no they [2:23:14] what they do they there are a couple of ways that they choose to show that they receive the [2:23:20] the um booster they are either sending in information where they scan it and they [2:23:25] send it in or that we get permission to go into the mic files and we're able to [2:23:31] get that information there as well right i i'll ask i'll i'll ask a different [2:23:37] karen's question is if they're not eligible because they have covet [2:23:43] then they have to disclose that they have coveted in order to establish that they're not eligible [2:23:51] but we wouldn't have that same issue with the vaccines to begin with we did and then and then staff could [2:23:58] give permission for us to have access to their files yeah let me go back [2:24:04] and work on it with human resources i mean we were set to start launching the [2:24:10] expectation that staff needed to be fully vaccinated or [2:24:15] start their testing and we still have enough time because even with osha um it needs to be fully implemented the i [2:24:22] believe it's the first week in february so we have some time let me go back [2:24:27] however we will not be back now until february 14th so i'm comfortable [2:24:33] moving forward with this i think if you discover that there's something that is awry because we [2:24:41] pattern this off all sorts of things and trevor has approved it so [2:24:48] i i i personally would like you to extend it to january 31st and add if eligible [2:24:56] if after looking at this you discover that we need to add something [2:25:01] i think you bring it back to us but i don't want to delay implementing this at this point personally but i don't know if other [2:25:08] board members have i would be comfortable with that i think to um [2:25:14] director gabler's question about when the screening process that the state has [2:25:20] for scheduling a booster actually goes through if you've had covet and [2:25:25] then it makes you it marks you ineligible and gives you a date on when you are eligible i just went through [2:25:30] this with my daughter so there actually it will there is proof that you are not eligible that you could [2:25:36] provide is what i'm i guess i'm saying so i think the answer is that i think it'll be actually pretty clear [2:25:43] um the state has done a good job and actually even saying when you're booster eligible [2:25:48] mm-hmm great thank you for that [2:25:54] any other questions or concerns before we vote do we know how many [2:26:00] staff this affects [2:26:06] as yes staff this affects that they will be they're choosing to submit a weekly test [2:26:14] yes um we have just over 225 staff members [2:26:21] oh my gosh 1603. yeah you bet [2:26:27] anything else [2:26:33] we will now vote to approve the um vaccine and testing resolution all those in favor say aye [2:26:39] aye anyone opposed the vaccine and testing resolution has passed with the added language or [2:26:45] verbiage of january 31st and if eligible we are now going to move on to new [2:26:51] course proposals finally teaching and learning you're up do i have a motion to approve the new course proposals [2:26:58] is there a second second great that was um lenny and julie [2:27:06] we have director of teaching and learning uh dc and hubert here welcome [2:27:13] you thought we were going to get to you didn't you we knew you were going to get to us and [2:27:19] it's all good good things well thank you good evening chair allenberg dr stanley board members community members [2:27:26] our secondary new course and course change proposals action for tonight [2:27:31] is almost the same as for a discussion in our december meeting the only section [2:27:37] i wanted to highlight is a small edition at the end where we took a little bit more time to outline in writing the [2:27:44] intention of making sure that we're maintaining as many steam or coding classes as possible [2:27:51] and our intention to move forward with a deep review of that in in our movement [2:27:57] forward with steam k through 12. [2:28:02] thank you i'll open it up to questions or comments from board members [2:28:12] director gabler i have a quick question here i think [2:28:18] about first of all these classes look really interesting i kind of wish i was the middle schooler in high school again [2:28:23] i know um my question was about fact six um in particular um i [2:28:31] see that it's offered at valley view already um so obviously the con continuity across across the middle [2:28:37] schools is great um one of the things that i know we've personally our families personally [2:28:44] experienced is that when we start to offer all of these choices it limits [2:28:50] the things so like the pipeline towards things like band and orchestra and all of a sudden you have to start choosing [2:28:57] at a fairly early age because the kids are like i i want to take it all [2:29:02] has there been discussion around or with some of those teachers around how do we create options for our kids and really [2:29:10] tap into their passions and with not limiting the pipeline so all of a sudden they find themselves in eighth [2:29:15] grade and they're like oh man i gave up band too early or i gave up this too early [2:29:21] um i would not say informal ways we haven't had um but there has been discussion in a lot of different places [2:29:26] about how we can move forward a more formal conversation around that um both when we talk about new course proposals [2:29:33] and we do curriculum reviews definitely as we move into steam conversations in a more official format [2:29:40] we can deepen those conversations in a more formal way so [2:29:45] there is definitely the acknowledgement of that and trying to find the opportunity to dig [2:29:51] into it more deeply and thoroughly [2:29:57] anything else nope oh [2:30:03] we'll now move to approve the um new course proposals all those in favor say aye [2:30:09] aye aye anyone opposed other new course proposals are approved um do i have a motion to approve the [2:30:15] science pathways so moved second second [2:30:22] you were too late on the second michael sorry [2:30:27] there does seem to be a pattern here um dan i think we need to hear more from you at the other end please [2:30:34] thank you uh great so we will now [2:30:39] discuss the science pathways good evening chair allen berg [2:30:45] superintendent stanley and uh rest of the board thanks for having us here this [2:30:50] evening we were here in december to have discussions about pathways and kind of the the general [2:30:57] overall review of science and where we were at kind of in the middle of the process but [2:31:03] we're looking for approval around our pathways towards meeting state standards that was [2:31:10] included in the board report both in december and basically the same report in in january here as well so if you [2:31:18] have any additional questions i'd be happy to answer them [2:31:23] questions or comments from board members i don't have any questions i just wanted [2:31:29] to um thank you for all the incredible work this has been a journey to get us here and um [2:31:34] it's just um it was really exciting to read through it again and how excited i am for the [2:31:39] students and you guys have just done a really remarkable job of bringing in the new standards and being really intentional and smart about it so i just [2:31:46] wanted to say thank you for your work that's it thank you the teachers have done a great [2:31:54] job anything else okay we will move to vote on the news uh [2:32:01] science pathways all those in favor say aye aye anyone opposed [2:32:07] the new pathways are approved thank you both and thank you for all the work on these it's great thank you [2:32:15] we've already done the audit so do i have a motion to approve the 2022-2023 [2:32:20] budget development plan so moved second oh great so michael moved and dan dan [2:32:28] aaron seconded [2:32:33] director tope [2:32:42] [Music] good evening again chair ellenberg superintendent stanley [2:32:47] and members of the board tonight in our board workshop we had a discussion on the board budget [2:32:53] parameters to begin the budgeting process for the fiscal year 2223 [2:32:59] we did talk extensively about the enrollment projection that we will [2:33:04] use for next year and settled at least to start with on a five year average would which would [2:33:10] increase our adm from the current number of 8393 to about 49 students more for next [2:33:19] year we already know that we will have a plus one in the dual immersion spanish [2:33:25] so that will be about 22 to 24 students so really would only be an another increase of about 25 or so [2:33:33] above that number did have some questions on some of the uh [2:33:38] expenditure and revenue assumptions that we're making and i believe those were answered i did highlight [2:33:44] also the fuel costs for natural gas for this year which will impact next year as [2:33:49] well and also went over the other post-employment benefit costs and the estimate that i'm using [2:33:56] due to an updated actuarial valuation report so with that if there's other questions [2:34:02] or comments board members have [2:34:08] no questions or comments okay we will now vote on the budget development plan for 2023 all those in [2:34:16] favor say aye aye anyone opposed the budget development plan is approved [2:34:25] now we have the two new action items um that i mentioned at the beginning of the meeting do i have a motion to approve [2:34:30] the 2022 legislative platform and legislative action committee bylaws [2:34:35] so moved second that was karen [2:34:40] and lenny of director greene [2:34:49] thank you director ellenberg um just i will give it just a brief overview we [2:34:55] the legislative action committee gave an update during the work session and had discussion among the board [2:35:01] to adopt bylaws that reflect changes of the board discussion [2:35:07] that took place last november and then also a legislative platform [2:35:12] that aligns with our goals for for the lac [2:35:17] so we're asking for board approval on those two items so we can move forward with advocacy for the district [2:35:25] thank you director green are there any comments about either of these documents [2:35:33] okay we will now move forward to approve these two documents [2:35:39] all those in favor say aye aye aye anyone opposed [2:35:45] the um 2020 2022 legislative platform and [2:35:50] legislative action committee by laws are approved do i have a motion to approve removing the january 18th board meeting [2:35:57] from the board calendar is there a second second [2:36:02] so we have two board members that can't make the january 18th board meeting and so we will be rescheduling it but due to [2:36:10] open meeting law statute we have to vote to remove this and so i just wanted to let the public know that is why we're [2:36:16] actually voting on it but we will have a work session probably the following week and we will [2:36:21] post that um so the public knows when that date will be we will now vote to [2:36:28] approve removing the january 18th board meeting from the calendar all those in favor say aye [2:36:34] hi anyone opposed the january 18th board meeting removal is [2:36:40] approved thank you we're done with our action items we will now move on to any board [2:36:45] leadership or committee updates anything [2:36:50] nope uh superintendent updates dr stanley [2:36:56] so january is um healthcare appreciation month and i just think that [2:37:02] we need to thank all of our healthcare [2:37:09] practitioners professionals our nurses because they've just done an amazing job [2:37:16] over the past two years they've they always did an amazing job but we know how difficult this has been for them so [2:37:22] i really just want to take time to really thank them for all the work that they're doing to continue to help to [2:37:28] keep um our students and and honestly i know that our staff stopped down and so to help to keep them safe as well so we [2:37:36] just uh truly appreciate you and thank you for that i want to give an update on the high [2:37:41] school we know that we had some water in our high school our custodian team was absolutely [2:37:47] phenomenal they were coming through they checked that you know there are there are systems that we look at um [2:37:54] and signals that we get to know that something is the matter but they came through they caught that right away [2:37:59] they had uh the clean cleanup company come out right away and was really excited to be able [2:38:06] to get our kids back into school in just a couple of days so i also want to give a shout out to our custodial team at the [2:38:13] high school as well thank you so much dr stanley [2:38:19] with that we will adjourn the meeting and please look for the board calendar for a reschedule of our [2:38:26] january 18th board meeting great