Call the September 28th regular board meeting to order. If everyone would please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Where's the flag? Oh, okay. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands, the nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Need a motion to approve the agenda. The discussion questions. Say aye. Aye. All find this all present. I have five I need a motion to approve. The minutes of the regular board meeting of August 24th, the special session minutes of August 31st, and the closed session minutes of September 14th. Any questions or corrections to those minutes? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Sixth is community input. I'll read the community input guidelines and then we'll open it up for community input. We'll start with folks in the room and then we'll turn it over to the folks who are online. Welcome to this meeting of the Shabuigan Area School District Board of Education. We're pleased that you're interested in educational issues. We're interested in your comments and concerns about the school district. In order for the meeting to flow smoothly, please follow the guidelines. These are the guidelines to be followed by anyone wishing to address the board this evening. Please limit comments or suggestions, three minutes or less because we do have a full agenda to follow. Comments and suggestions on the school district are welcome. Personal criticism and our derogatory remarks directed at members of the board or employees of the district will be called out of order. I believe we have two podiums. I'll try to yell louder. If you wish to provide input and would like to recognize, like to be recognized, please come forward to the podium. There'll be a clipboard there where you can write down your name and address for the record. Before you get started with your comments, please state and spell your name if needed and share your address for the record. The board normally receives citizen input and does not respond or debate. There's a need for an answer or a response to a concern or issue. The superintendent or one of our administrative staff will get back to you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So let's start with the folks in the room. Is there anyone here tonight would like to give community input? Come up to one of the podiums, please. Your name and address for the record and then you'll have three minutes. Hello, my name is Mary Lynn Donahue. I live at 418 St. Clair in Sheboygan. And again, I appreciate the opportunity to just share some thoughts. I did review the mitigation plan put forward by the administration. It is the recommended action is in my view better than nothing, but it at least is a path forward. One thing you will need really adequate, thorough documentation. The plan does not work unless there's adequate information that comes from the administration. To allow it to make decisions regarding masking, virtual schooling and so forth. And I just wanted to comment very briefly. I was here for the committee of the whole meeting. And what I saw, I thought was pretty encouraging. One of your members said at some point during the deliberations, you know, this has been a pretty good meeting. And I think it was. A couple of pieces on that one. Whether it's with respect to masks or whatever. The superintendent is the CEO of this organization. And you are the board of directors. You have every right to ask for information. And for policy suggestions. That is not something you need to worry about. That is your job. The administration. In turn, as I reviewed, as I was listening at the committee of the whole meeting, really pressed all of you hard to really clarify what it was that you wanted of him. And that's his job. And when you do those two things together. The administration moves forward. Not only with this immensely complicated. COVID issue, which is really one of the great challenges. I think of the school district since the time that I have lived here and paid attention to it, but to anything. You have the right. You have the responsibility. The administrator has the right and has the responsibility. And when that goes back and forth, I think as, as one of your members said it, they will be good meeting. Meanwhile, be of good cheer. Be strong. Be brave. These are hard times. They're for just a wide variety of reasons. You are serving the public. You are. You are in the literal hot seat. And I know that no matter what our thoughts are back and forth, we all thank you for your energy, your intelligence. And I know that you have the right to ask for information. We all thank you for your energy, your intelligence, and your courage because that's what it takes. And, and so I thank you and stay strong. You just wanted to clarify too, I was going to say this earlier. I just wanted to clarify that the item regarding COVID and the mitigation efforts is the first item on the agenda. We do have a really lengthy agenda tonight. And I know that we're not going to stay for the whole meeting. So we front loaded it with the item that was of the most interest to you. And it is listed for information and discussion. So there won't be any motions by board members. And there won't be any action taken by the board tonight. But I just wanted to make that clear to everyone. So that we're on the same page. So. Anyone else in the room, I would care to address the board and we've got the other podium there you can use as well and use either one. Please state your name and record. Thank you. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the board of education for Sheboygan. My name is Reverend Stephen Welch. I'm a resident of Sheboygan. The city of Sheboygan and I'm a pastor of reformation, Presbyterian church in the town of Wilson. Wilson. I come here this evening not to address the issue of. The. The issue of reformation. The issue of reformation. But to address a different issue altogether that has created a lot of concern across this nation. And particularly in our schools. And that is the concern of the critical race theory curriculum. I understand that that's a curriculum that has been implemented in the Sheboygan school district. But it's being adopted in schools all across the country. The issue with the critical race theory is it's created a lot of issues within our culture. The critical race theory or what is known as CRT. Is being promoted across our nation as a solution to the issue of racism. And has been popularized by number of groups like black lives matter. It's major ideology. Is that racism is inherent in all of our laws. Institutions. And every fabric of society. And that it creates social, economic and political issues. And that is the issue of the critical race theory. The issue of racial inequalities. Between rights. Between whites who are often seen as the oppressors. And blacks who are seen as the oppressed. One particular. Critical race theory writer. I brim kindy. Who's the author of a book entitled how to be anti racist. Says that the only remedy to racial discrimination. Is discrimination against those. Oppressing race. And this by and large is racism. The issue in our culture is that we have. Made this whole issue of race. As a thing that divides people. Racism by definition. And historically has always been. To make one race superior. To other races. And that is racism. We can call it whatever we want. But when we promote one race above another race. Or one race is superior to another. That's racism. And I think most of us in this room and at least. Those that I know and I. Know a number of people that I. Involved with. Who would deny racism in any form. There's no one in this culture that wants to see. That sort of thing promoted. But when you look at the agenda of the whole. Critical race theory. And you see it in the. Curriculum that's being promoted. Is that our culture is racist. And everybody's racist. I think that's. That's not even a fair accurate thing to say. Because not everybody's racist. Not everybody. Is opposed. To one particular race. So I would encourage you as a. Board to look at this further. And to think about this issue. And I appreciate the time you've allowed me tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anyone else who would care to address the board. Yep. Come on up to either one of the podiums. Hi, my name is Laura Donnelly. My address is 4517 pheasant lane in Sheboygan. I have the unique opportunity to address you tonight. As a parent of four children. Two of whom are. Students in the district. I have a middle schooler and I also have a kindergartner. And then I also work in the school district. So my day today in the last three weeks has been greatly impacted by COVID and everything going on within our school. So I just wanted to address you regarding mitigation strategies moving forward. I know there are multiple schools within the district that have gotten. Virtual work within a classroom or two. And it's frustrating. And it feels like we're failing our kids. The COVID levels at our school are out of control in classrooms. We have more than one class that within the district that has gone virtual. And I'm wondering why we're not doing more to prevent this. I know for my kids last year, I was fortunate. I had a little one who was out at Maywood. So he never went virtual. It was the best program we could have ever asked for. COVID or not. But I did have a sixth grader last year who went virtual and struggled greatly. And I'm afraid that the same thing is, is going to be happening this year. I know I'm not really interested in discussing face masks. I know that's been a hot topic issue. And the board has voted multiple times to not mask the kids. So let's move on from that and talk testing. Where I work, we've had symptomatic students from a classroom with known COVID positives. Allowed to return to school without first COVID testing. We've had symptomatic siblings of students who are in a room known to have a COVID outbreak allowed to return to class without testing. We've had students who have been sent home repeatedly for multiple COVID symptoms that have rendered them unable to learn that given day, who have been returning to school day after day after day with no testing requirement, whose room has now had to go virtual. I can say with 100% certainty that classrooms would not be closed had there been a testing related COVID mitigation strategy put in place by the school board. It's frustrating to me because at this point I feel like we need to do better. We need to do better. Our kids deserve better. And they should be in school. They should not be forced to learn virtually because of lack of testing requirements within the district. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else in the room here to address the board this evening. Oh, I'm sorry. Is this on? Yep. Yep. I see you. Thank you. You ready? Yeah. My name is Lorraine Green. My address is 2308 North 35th street. In Sheboygan. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. After the last meeting at South High School, I found out and informed all of you by email of the total funds that Sheboygan area school district will receive from gear and ESSER funds, which totals in case everybody else in the room hasn't heard. 21 million, $606,049. This is ton. These are funds that are promised or already received. But there's a catch. You have to follow CDC guidelines. And that was stated in the DPI documents that was sent to all of you. So I know these funds are federal and state and probably come out of all of our pockets. You are being influenced by money from us to follow guidelines that most of us are objecting to. This past Thursday after reading the beacon, I found an interesting article that alerted me to the fact that there's an organization I was totally unaware of. It's called the Wisconsin Association of School Board. And 100% of the school districts in Wisconsin belong to that. This organization openly advocates for equity, which Reverend Welch addressed. And I wholeheartedly concur with him. Masking and vaccinations. It relies on funding from dues. Well, I'd like to know who's paying those dues. I can certainly guess it's probably us is coming out of our pockets. So again, we are paying for something and promoting something that we stand before you objecting to. This by the way, this, this website is not very forthcoming. You, I cannot access the newsletters that you receive. I cannot access a lot of information. So the transparency there is, is turned off. I did find out there's a Donovan group connected to the Wisconsin Association for School Boards. And legal advice is given. Again, all of this money. All this power. All of this money. Through money that is advocating for the very things that we concern citizens and parents are totally against. We also know that the NEA, the DPI, the CDC, the health department, medical groups and hospitals, the county board of supervisors, and there are various affiliations among other, many others have all the same interconnections and goals. I have only about 30 seconds left. So I'm going to have to paraphrase the end. So you're going to listen to it comes down to the point. Are you going to listen to all these organizations where we're funding it through our pockets to encourage you to do things that are unhealthy, unconstitutional? Or are you going to stand up for the kids? As PT Barnum said, no one ever made a difference by being like everybody else.  We'll look over. Yes. Thanks. Carol. Carol DeSalt. 2736 North 30th street. Sheboygan. Thank you. I have talked for almost 40 years. I'm retired now. Most of those years were in Sheboygan area school district. We were working with elementary kids. I think we all can agree on a few things. The first one is we're all here because our children are our most precious treasure in society. Our biggest job is to keep them safe. Keeping them safe at school has to be the priority of this board. I hope that you will take that seriously. Children are really very flexible and very adaptable. I've always been amazed at how they can bounce back, how they can adjust and how they can adapt. There's so much better that that than adults are. And they will take our cues from us as adults. If we ask them to wear a mask, most of the time the kids will readily agree to that unless they see the adults around them fussing about it. COVID won't harm all of our kids, but who among us wants to take a chance that it will harm any of our kids? Please don't allow yourselves to be influenced by the loudest or harshest voices or the angriest voices. Think about what we need to do to keep our kids safe. Please institute a mask mandate. I can guarantee you that the kids will adjust much better than the staff and the adults around them. And please heed the warnings of the teacher who is just at this podium about testing and tracing. Let's just do that first job so that teachers and kids can get back to in-person schooling and stay there. Thank you. Good evening. John Paul 5332. So one thing I just want to remind all of the board members is that yes, you are public officials. You are paid by us.  And I just want everybody to remember that. Majority rules. And that's usually the way it is in our republic. And it'll hopefully stay that way. Second of all, I think one thing that gets missed at some of these meetings is a lot of people say institute XYZ, get rid of XYZ. But nobody tends to give information on, okay, I think you have a decent policy, but here's what I'd like to see it. So this is speaking for me personally. The agenda that was put on for tonight to be talked about. I think it's a decent agenda. It's a good starting point. However, the one thing that I don't like is. That it looks to me that we are discriminating against younger kids because quote unquote, they can't get the vaccine. And that's why the percentage that's allowed is 2%, as opposed to 4% for others. So for those that are on the board that haven't thought of it this way for every 100 kids, that's only two people. So if you got 100 kids in an area, if two people get COVID, you're going to a mask mandate. That's a pretty small amount considering the city of Milwaukee considers themselves in a very serious stage. And you have to look at the percentages, not the words that are used by the CDC and other health officials. You can call it whatever you want, but it's two kids out of 100 that you're going to put a mask on. And for me, that's a little low. You know, unfortunately, the mask thing has become political. Anybody that says any different is living under a rock. In my opinion. And can something be done so the board can move on? Sure. I think this is a good starting point. But for me, two kids out of 100 is. That's awfully low. And especially discriminate against them for not getting the vaccine. I'm not particular of we give no credit to the people that have had COVID either. If you've had COVID, you're discarded as someone who's never had it. Doesn't know what it's like. Your body's never built up in immunity.  And these kids are going to go and kill all these people. I think that's irresponsible and wrong. So when you're, when you're talking about this tonight and you consider maybe changes to it, just think two kids out of 100. That's a, that's the number you need to be focused on, not 2%. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Allison warm for 3221 morning view court. Sheboygan with parent of a local elementary school. Science is not political. Science does not care about policy. Science will be what science will be. And I say this as a scientist. It doesn't change because we find it inconvenient. And the virus doesn't go away because we are tired of it. Most of us in this room are not experts on epidemiology. Disney's transmission or public health. So I will defer to the people who unquestionably are. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control have all said that masks are necessary in schools regardless of vaccination status. A CDC study out of Arizona has found that counties without school mask mandates are 3.5 times more likely to have COVID outbreaks than counties with mask mandates. The Sheboygan County division of public health has recommended masks and the county has mandated masks in their buildings. We cannot pretend that we don't know. As of last week, there have been 89 cases of COVID in our local schools. We cannot pretend that we don't know. The Americans with disabilities act guarantees every child a free and public education in the least restricted environment. This means that ADA and IDEA federally mandate us to make in-person education as safe as possible for every child, including diabetic kids, including, you know, compromised kids, including kids with congenital heart defects. Every child. This is an accessibility issue. And when we say, but they had preexisting conditions, what we really mean is, but they don't matter. They do. Every child. My grandfather had an autoimmune disorder. His immune system was completely gone. He ultimately died of septicemia from a common sinus infection that I almost certainly gave him. I was 13 and I can tell you that I most certainly blamed myself. We can talk all we want about how kids get mild COVID over 500 kids dead says that isn't always true. And we don't know yet what the long-term effect will be, but we can talk about it. But I can promise you that if a young child recovers from COVID, but their parent or grandparent does not, they will absolutely blame themselves. And I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. We owe it to our kids to keep them safe. We owe it to our kids to keep their families safe. And we owe it to our kids to keep their community safe. That is our responsibility as adults. And rights without responsibility are meaningless. Thank you. Next. Go ahead. Hello. I'm Randy Livermore at 527 North 25th street. And I keep hearing about the science behind the mask. Sorry. I keep hearing about the science behind the mask. Just as past summer, we lifted our mask mandate and our numbers dropped so low. You were more likely to die in a car accident. Then the vaccine was released. And all of a sudden our numbers are going up. What's going on with the history? Why are we not paying attention to this? Why is it all about the science? Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else in the room? Ruth Villarreal 1406 Pennsylvania Avenue. I just want to point out. I think many in our community already know that I have a pending lawsuit against the county for being fired last year. And I'm going to present to you. The same thing that I presented to you. And God willing each and every person that's here and listening to the live feed will have the opportunity to follow my case. The virus that is being spoken about that you guys want to test our children on. Has never been isolated in and of itself. How are we testing it? How are we testing it? Has never been isolated in and of itself. How are we testing for this virus? How are we vaccinating for this virus? Until this school board is able to present the parents with this information. We are going to kindly not accept anything. It does not exist then. There is something going on. And you guys need to ask those questions too. Just as I have. I put my foot in the door. I took out my retirement to fund my litigation. And there is many parents that will be ready and prepared to do the same thing based on that one question. How are we testing? How are we implementing these things? If it has not been isolated in and of itself. How are we implementing these things? How are we implementing these things? Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. My name is Jessica Schlafke. I have a question. I want to know what percentage or what numbers you guys have that you are going to help base your decision on the mask or not. I am here for that reason only. I am not for the mask. I am not for the mask. I am here for the mask. I am here for the mask. I understand that you guys have come to me. A gentleman stood up and said nobody could hear him. He had a mask on. And I believe the gentleman in the middle up there said it is his choice to wear a mask. That is it. It is a choice. We are parents and we have that choice. masks. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Mae Quinn. I live at 310 St. Clair Avenue. Thank you for this opportunity tonight. The COVID plan shared in July was based on the community COVID levels that were quite low. It was a decent plan for when our community was at a low yellow COVID level level instead of a high level or red. At the time we were all relieved and thankful that the focus and goal was to have in-person instruction five days a week. Students, teachers and families all want in-person instruction. Unfortunately at the start of the school year our community had a high red positivity rate of COVID and our numbers have continued to decline. As someone already shared since school started we've had 89 students testing positive and we've had 17 teachers who have tested positive. This updated plan tonight attempts to address the concerns of what the school district should do when there is a COVID spike in individual schools. The overriding goal is to support the district-wide efforts to continue to safely provide in-person instruction five days a week. I am thankful that this updated plan now has included more mitigation strategies that the superintendent can employ if there is a COVID spike in the school. These strategies are preferred to only having the option of virtual school. At the school board meeting two weeks ago it was a bit alarming for me to listen to the superintendent share that he did not feel he had the authority to require face masks if there was indeed a spike of COVID cases at an individual school. This was due to the variety of motion taken by the board since May. It is my hope that your discussion tonight can provide more clarity for our superintendent so that he is fully aware that he can utilize the mitigation strategy of wearing the face mask when there is a COVID spike in a classroom of school. The scientific studies strongly support the efficacy of mask wearing and during this period of high positivity rates our county and city buildings are now requiring face masks. Even the Ryder Cup required face masks in their buildings. It makes sense to me that the school district should follow their example and require face masks when there is a high positivity rate in our community and or building. And then finally I really applaud the addition of the free COVID test at staff kiosks at each school. Having these free tests available for students their families and teachers will really help our schools to contain the spread of this deadly virus. This was part of the plan shared two weeks ago but I wasn't really able to locate this strategy in tonight's plan that was attached. I am hopeful they're still included in the district plan. Thank you. Thank you. Yep, go ahead. Hello, Bill Moss, 1329 North 47th Street, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. COVID mania, 561 days into slowing the spread. This time we question everything. First congratulations to administration for creating the daily COVID dashboard. It's very useful. Been looking at it every day, Seth. I disagree on a comment tonight that a school board exists to ensure student safety. I believe a school board exists to ensure quality education. As an example, do our school buses have seat belts? It isn't in my day. I don't think they do now. Administration as directed will make recommendations for triggers to enact mandatory masking. For those unfamiliar with percentages, 2% is one in 50 students. 4% is one in 25. Figures that hardly resemble an outbreak. Those levels are way too low in my opinion. Remember, the 2% remain home while the 98% will be required to wear masks for at least 14 days. Why 14 days? I repeat why 14 days. It is almost as if we recognize the ragtag mix of masks types that have zero effect. Why doesn't a 100% COVID free building receive a 14 day mask for your reward? Do we want our students happy and engaged in learning or frustrated and distracted behind a wet, dirty mask? Why do unvaccinated children need to protect vaccinated adults in this United States of America? As the my mask protects you and your mask protects me slogan, now become my vaccine protects you and your vaccine protects me? How has Sweden managed to keep schools open this entire time while not mandating masks? Why has Sweden's neighbor Denmark removed all COVID restrictions? When will COVID mania finally end in the USA? Perhaps never. We better be prepared for that. A new Harris poll conducted this month's rate 1457 vaccinated people and 598 unvaccinated people. 58% of vaccinated people were concerned about getting a breakthrough case. 44% of unvaccinated people were concerned about contracting COVID-19. Finally, perhaps also in the never category, when will my Aurora doctors advise all their patients regarding what type of mask to wear, when to wear it and when to clean for disposal? This COVID mania will only end when we say it ends. The time is now until we meet again. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else in the room? Yep. Are you going to? Yep. Come on up. I'm playing on waiting a little longer. Eric Anderson, 1910 North 23rd Street. Before you start that, can you stop it real quick? What's the plan if kids show up tomorrow? We can ask questions right real quick. What's the plan tomorrow? Can I ask your question before you start then? That's your public comment. Okay. What's the plan for if kids come to school with no mask tomorrow? Is there a plan of enforcement?  Nothing is changing. So law enforcement is going to stand with the Constitution, right? And they're not going to be, you know, my brother's in law. I'm a former veteran. So when we talked about the Constitution, I lived it. I was overseas. I have friends that died over there fighting for this country. So no kids will face any repercussions as far as I'm understanding if they come to school tomorrow without a mask. Is that to be understood? There's nothing that's going to change tonight for tomorrow. Oh, you're not voting tonight? Correct. That's what I thought I made clear earlier. Okay. Okay. If I didn't, I'm sorry. There are no votes being taken tonight. Okay. Well, then I guess I just get to say some stuff. When people are talking about high positivity rate, they always say that 100 out of 100,000, drop the zeros. That's one in 1000 people. That's considered a high transmission rate. So for the city of Sheboygan, you get 50 people before they start taking away your rights. 50 positive tests in Sheboygan before these people think they have the right to take away your rights. Now, the woman that came up earlier, basically what I kind of paraphrased is we need to legally take away people's constitutional rights. We need to basically make sure we navigate that system correctly in order to take away people's rights. That's the way I heard it. How do you get herd immunity from something that doesn't give yourself immunity, individual immunity? How do you get to herd immunity when you don't even get immunity yourself? I don't want to personally attack people, but I've never seen something so pitiful as a man wearing a mask because he's afraid of getting the flu. If I was a woman, why would you go after a man like that? I said, she. You think he's going to protect you from anything? It's just a real question. I talked to kids out of school last week here and I asked them how many teachers are wearing masks. You know what the answer was? One. Not one. In this class, at least one in all of North was wearing a mask, 10 to 20% of the kids. You've done a good job scaring the kids. But why aren't the teachers wearing the mask? If they believe all this stuff, why aren't they wearing this? This is a place of a public accommodation. You're all protected. You all have rights.  Don't give them your rights. Don't wear a mask tomorrow. Nobody send your kid to school with a mask. They just said they're not going to do it. And if they vote on it, say you vote next week and you do vote for masks. What's the plan then for enforcement? Or two weeks from now when you do vote? That's a question. I can't speak to something that doesn't exist right now.  Thank you. Anyone else? To make sure I'm close enough here. Can you hear me? Yeah, perfect. Okay. Thank you. Hi, I'm Missy Schoenenberger, 1532 North Lane. And I just want to say we're not here to discuss if we're going to be in person or not. We're going to stay in person. I mean, that's where we've already decided that we're going to be in person. I want to say that I was at a volleyball game last week or the week before. I also went to a North High School football game. And I kind of want to thank Seth and the board. I saw kids laughing. Kids were cheering. They were smiling. They were playing in the band. You guys, it was awesome. It was awesome. Those kids were having the time of their lives. They're seniors in high school, juniors, sophomores, freshmen. It was wonderful. I was a little upset last week when, I'm sorry, two weeks ago when a board member stated that she was visiting schools. And she was upset that kids weren't social distancing. They were going to the cafeteria to eat together. And she was upset by that. Desks were facing each other. Come on. Come on. Really? It's just disappointing. These are kids that we're talking about. I used to teach in the district too. I taught a long time in the district. And if I were teaching now, I would not be wearing a mask with my kids. I'd be setting a good example. We're all going to be okay. These kids need to laugh and smile and have fun and not be muzzled. So many people say, and I said this four weeks ago, a lot of people will say, it's not a big deal for kids to wear masks. Oh, they're resilient. They can wear masks. It is a big deal to them. How many of you have to wear the masks for eight hours a day and can take it off just to eat for a few minutes at lunch? And you're policed at school. And then you have to stay after school to play a sport. Well, you don't have to, but this is what these kids do. It's, it's what they do in high school. They have activities. They're in plays. They're in masks, eight to 14 hours a day. None of you are. None of you are. You're at home sitting in your, with your mask off at home, or if you are out in public with your mask on, it's not eight to 14 hours a day. Please let these kids laugh and smile and have fun homecoming week this week for North and South well for North. Let them have fun and be kids. They're okay. We're at point 37% in our district. I think that's great. I think we're doing great. Please let them keep up having fun and smiling. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Stephanie O'Connell. I live at 704 Highland Terrace. I have four children, two of them in the Sheboygan area school district. I would like masks to remain optional. Nobody is trying to take away anybody's right to wear a mask. I truly believe that the kids will not be bullied if they do wear a mask. If you wear crocs, you might get bullied though. You can tell the kids that we can address that at a different board meeting. People keep saying there are so many positive cases within the school district. 89 positive cases. What is the metrics for cases versus hospitalizations? How many of these cases are ending up in the hospital? We do have a vaccine available for this virus. The fatality rate has dropped significantly. If you're going to talk about the fatality rate, let's talk about kids. 25 and under, it's like a one in a million chance that you're going to die. Just over 400 children have died of COVID. I'm not going to say, oh, because they had pre-existing conditions because, yes, they all matter. That's a very low number. Currently, the flu is more dangerous to children than coronavirus. We have never done this for the flu. Imagine if we had. We can't continue living like this forever. It's ridiculous. I would see this coming to a point where this next month, they're going to be approving the vaccine for children five to 12. Are we going to have to be attending these meetings because you're going to try to vaccinate our children so that they can come to your school? Because the vaccine hasn't eased any of these issues that we're dealing with apparently. It can drop the case fatality rate, but we're all still sitting here discussing whether or not we're going to put a stupid, ineffective piece of cloth over our kids' faces. It's ridiculous. There are no studies that show the efficacy of cloth mask wearing for viruses. They do not work. Even paper and surgical masks, they're not used properly. So they don't work. Please keep choice in our schools for our children. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Yep, coming up. Hi, my name is Martha Barr. I live at 2122 South 7th Street in Sheboygan. I want to thank you all for your hard work. And as others have said, the difficult task that you have in front of you tonight and not just tonight, but any other times, I'm sure. As far as the mask go, I am married to the nurse at St. Nick's who does the mask testing and mask fitting for the employees at St. Nicholas Hospital. That is the N95 mask. Now, the N95 mask is only 95% effective.  So when you look at a cloth mask, as opposed to an N95 mask, what are you really doing? Nothing, nothing. I think that masks should be man should be optional. Anybody who feels that if that makes them feel better that they should have that choice, but all of us should have a choice whether we want to wear one or not. Also, I want to remind you that all of the statistics and all the numbers and the percentages that people bring up are not necessarily accurate. I don't think that we can have trust and belief in our government and what they're telling us. I think that we need to use common sense and look at everything from all angles before we make a decision on something. This has been becoming an incredibly political, polarized situation. And I'm so sorry that all of you have to be put in the middle of all of this. But I hope that you come to a decision that, you know, everyone can, you know, be happy with and I have a feeling that that would be masks are optional. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Yep. Afternoon. I'm Blake Bennett. Can you get closer to the mic, please? My name is Blake Bennett. Thank you. 1205 Mead Avenue, Sheboygan. I've been to a couple of these school board meetings and all we hear is mask mask. I want to hear education. My kid is so far behind that it's just sickens me. How am I supposed to send my child to school? And he's not getting educated.  Get over it, period.  Seth, he knows I've called him numerous times, showed him pictures, showed him pictures of staff, not wearing their mask, but it's mandated. But yet my child gets in trouble. My child gets bullied by the people that are on this board and the people that are in those schools bullying my child and there goes the education, right on the flipping tubes. So keep that in mind. Education. Remember that's what you guys are here for? Education? I have yet to hear how we're going to get these kids back up the park because right now we're well below that. Well below it. I see it every day.  We personally don't care what you believe in because it's not up to you. It's up to us.   I'm done with it. I want to see education. I want to see my kid continuing his education. I'm sitting down doing his math. I'm like, geez, come on bud. This is easy.  Thank you. Anyone else? This, can you hear me? Yep. Okay. Hi everybody. I'm Tracy Alley. My address is 4627 West Rhine King Drive in Sheboygan. I have two students in the district. I was just looking at the slide number five.  Kind of taking it back to what someone else brought up about the two and four percent for the younger kids. I don't know. If we don't go with Ruth's idea, which I think is great, being presented with an isolated virus, then we can solve all the problems. That'd be wonderful. But until then, I'm thinking maybe to come to a compromise, which would appease everybody, setting that percentage higher so we don't, so everybody can be, it'd be a good compromise, I feel like. I don't know. Way more than four percent though. I don't know. 25, 30, 50, 75? I don't know. A higher percentage to look at, I think would be a little more well-rounded, I guess. And I would say per class. Not, I think it would be better per class. Keep it per class. So we can get back to our focus of cleansing and cleaning up our curriculum, which needs very much attention. And I would like to kind of circle back to the testing, which is actually still under emergency use authorization, which actually hasn't even been proven to, it shouldn't even be used for what they're using it for. So I just think this virus isn't going anywhere and we cannot do this forever. This needs to come to a halt. And we need to refocus on educating our students and keeping them smart. I think that's all I need to say. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, then I'm going to switch over to, are there some folks online? Those people that wish to speak online will have to raise their hand and I will unmute them so that they can speak and address the board. If you're online, just use the raise hand feature and then stuff will unmute you and we'll let you address the board. Anyone online? I don't have anyone online. All right, we will move on. Room seven, separate attendance report. Yeah, good evening again, everyone. Thank you, audience members for being here as well. The obviously at this time in September, we've spent a lot of time getting school underway. And so as I report out tonight, just excited to see as some mentioned in a public comment, kids engaged in a variety of activities, the clubs, the after school activities, sports and the like, but also engaged more importantly are focused on the classroom and engaged in lessons, engaged in activities. We've had an opportunity as an executive management team and our central office staff to be able to be out in our classrooms, in our building, supporting our teachers, supporting our students and have seen wonderful things going on in those classrooms. So very pleased with the start of the year, especially for some of our students who were not in school, who are not in school last year, as they were elected the virtual only option for them to be in a building, in face to face in a classroom. So very excited about that. September 14, we broke ground for the north and south construction, house construction, the ground breaking took place, like I said, on the 14th. We are building a house, actually the second house now that the foundation actually was poured today, lot 78 in the Stonebrook crossing on the south side of Sheboygan. This will be the 24th house to be constructed with the house construction, the sixth one being built under the direction of head sure, the teacher. So very excited about that. And as you drive past the Stonebrook crossing and see the house is starting to go up and the SASD house would be very impressive. Look forward to the opening, open house around time of graduation. So very excited about that. In terms of some internal and external relationships, you're going to hear a little bit when we talk about our long range plan, really trying to increase the amount of posts on our social media and be able to get the positive messages out to celebrate one of the things that we've done over the past several years and did it again this year was to feature our new school leaders who are new to the SASD and feature them across the district in multiple posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. The remaining of the posts that were done will be done this week. One of the posts recently we welcomed Tru Vang as our elementary principal at Jefferson. Tru's post achieved the highest reach of any non-COVID related posts we've done with 25,000 reaches and more than 1600 comments, likes and shares. So just again, they've been well received and a good way to get to know some of our administrators across the district. So with that, I'll be getting any other questions you might have. Okay, move on to miscellaneous item A. This is the update on the district's COVID mitigation and response stuff. Just want to make sure they're, I'll move it up just a little bit, see if that helps. What I have before you in your packet, I'll briefly go through the introductory slides, that's just an update again on where our current metrics are across the district. So again, I'll provide an update tonight on the metrics, both internally and across the community, just for that perspective piece. Talk about some additional mitigation and response measures that have been implemented and talk through where we're at in terms of those cases or absences when they're at a consistent high level within a classroom or building. And then share the recommendations that you've asked as a board for the administration to come back with tonight around the facial coverings and when would they shift if levels were high at an individual school versus a district-wide approach. So in terms of some current data on slide four, we'll really walk through the cases in the Sheboygan County. That was in this last week, the seven days when we publicized this, there was 279 per 100,000, which equates to today's numbers would be 271 cases or 286 per 100,000. When we look at cases in the Sheboygan area school district, again there's about 60,000 residents that live or reside in the Sheboygan area school district boundary. With that, that would make about 240. Today's numbers were about 210, so slightly down. That was 127 cases out of those 271, 127 out of 271. We're here in the Sheboygan area school district boundary. Testing positivity rate, although it was over 10%, has now decreased to 9.4 in the last day or two. Slide five is one you've seen multiple times, that's just the CDC's guidance. Slides number six and seven, just kind of talk about the seven-day average. The first one, how many new cases per, per over the seven days. So new case average each day over the seven days. So there's 44 is what we were averaging on 922. That was 38 as of this morning. In terms of the boundary, we were at 21.29 on 923 and 18.14 as of today, the 28th. Slide eight, again, goes through just case rates. This was from the 21st of September, that's the latest data the county provides. So I don't have any updated data that would be coming out typically on a Wednesday afternoon and sometimes Thursday morning to get the updated. So these are from the 21st, again, as you can see in the footnote. Vaccination report, again, just broken down by county residents. You can see the age breakdowns that are there as well. Slide 10 talks about vaccination rates by age group in the county. Again, these are the data as of September 21st. Slide 11 talks about comparatives, looking at the comparison, excuse me, between districts that are with vaccination status by district boundary. That information is there at 56.6% in the Sheboygan area school district boundary compared to some of the other districts at 40 or as high as 65 in some of the other districts. Slide 12 indicated where our current cases are. And you can see it was 89 and 17 when we reported out made this available on Thursday. Today that number is 117. Staff number is 23. So we have seen an uptick in staff and student cases that was up from what we reported 67 additional cases in the last two weeks of students and 12 of staff members. Again, those breakdown what we're seeing is a split really between elementary of the student side. In looking at the cumulative data, 45 of those cases were at the elementary level, 46 were at the high school, 19 at middle school, and our 4K, 3K population was seven. In terms of staff, elementary wise, 12 staff who work in elementary buildings, two at the middle school, six at the high school, and two at our 4K level. COVID dashboard is on slide 13. Slide 13 again just shows a snapshot of the dashboard. The link is there in the presentation. It goes live to our page. The cases that are there, we have that daily running total of students. Again, just for clarity, we've got some questions and I just want to make sure everybody's clear. Those cases are on as active cases meaning they've incurred within if a case was positive today. That information is coming from the state web system. Those people that have received a positive test or have received a positive home test and have worked with the county health on that. So those are the two ways that those get put into that system. Both of those numbers are sources of what's being used to drive the dashboard. It's the cases stay active for 14 days. That's the common definition that groups are using in terms of active status. So that's they're on there for 14. Some are saying, well, I know that maybe we had one or two new cases at our school, but the numbers the same. Well, each day that's updated, there may be cases dropping off as new cases are coming on. So not necessarily that you're going to see this constant or again, it's not a cumulative really talking about an average. There is a link you can look at in terms of cumulative numbers on that dashboard as well. Today, which is different from what you say in your packet, 29 active student cases, seven active staff cases for a total of 37 total active cases. I'm sorry, 36. We do have students at a variety of schools. You can see that that are active and their percents are there. One of the questions that we've also fielded, which relates to the COVID dashboard is the notion of the county health department and what they list as facility-wide investigations. The county health department has listed 14 different schools of the Shmuginary School District that are on their list of what's called facility-wide investigations. Those investigations are classified. I should say our schools are classified as having an open investigation. If there's been two or more cases reported in a school that is regardless, however, if it has a direct link to our school, it could be a case where a parent who has tested positive and maybe the child tested positive, they may not have been in school, but it still gets linked to our school because they are asked, what school do you attend? Those cases stay on there and an open facility-wide investigation remains in effect for a minimum of 28 days and that there's been no new cases within those 28 days reported. This is nothing new. This was done last year in terms of communication with the public of where there's been cases in schools. Quite honestly, we had every school listed at one point or the other last year because we had cases in all of our schools within a 28-day period. The 14 were not surprising. If you've been following the chart, our dashboard, anytime there's been two cases in active status that automatically would trigger that would be placed in a facility-wide investigation. What that really means is the county is monitoring our numbers. If they see some higher numbers than the two, they may reach out to us. They've done that a few times already this year to reach out and say, you know, what's going on? Are you aware of what's happening in the classroom or in the school? Is there any additional supports, et cetera? So it's really a conversation. The county could, however, as we've talked about before, those targeted directives, they could issue a targeted directive. But I just wanted to clarify that facility-wide investigation piece because that is a question. Slide 14 then has that historical data. Slide 15 talks about that daily absentee reports. Both of the COVID dashboard and the absentee reports are updated every day prior to noon. With the most up to date, the attendance would be updated from the previous day. The COVID cases would be those cases which we know of at that time of posting at noon. And that's updated the next day at noon. As of today, our overall district absenteeism rate was 5.7% up slightly over what was reported on the 22nd. That would have been yesterday's 9.27 data. We did have a few schools that were over the 10% that we've been monitoring. Two of those schools, both Cleveland and Jackson, had higher rates. Those were schools that we've had transition a classroom to virtual instruction for 10 days due to high case levels or high absenteeism at those schools. So we have made that both of those schools decision that does impact as well then that absentee. So those are just the background again information. In terms of additional mitigation response measures, one of the things that you'd asked is in addition what other things would we implement or have we implemented? And so the listing there is things that we can certainly implement. Some we've already had to at schools. Others were considering or may consider. Again, this is not an exhaustive list, but it really shows you the things to do in terms of enhanced social distancing through limiting some group work, limiting some labs, some of those things through cohorting. If we needed to looking at quarantining students, increasing the link, shifting activities to virtual. We saw that there was an issue with a club or an activity, staff meetings, those kinds of things. We can also look at some reductions on buses and other things. So those are there. Certainly understand that people will disagree with some of these measures may disagree with the face covering recommendation and ultimately what the board decides. But I think as reasonable people, I think we can all agree and I heard some people talk about that tonight as well. You know, what can we do to keep kids in school and keep that in person learning going. So obviously these are things taken when we've got a concern about what's going on from absence. The testing sites was was asked and brought up. I mentioned that in my last presentation, but we're going to have 19 different testing sites that would be optional for families that would like to have their children or themselves or a family member tested. Our hope is to be able to open one this week. We're working with that vendor called COVID clinic. And we hope to have the others online soon. I do not have firm dates on the others, but we are continuing to work through that process as testing availability for those that are seeking it. It's hard to come by with our community based on the fact that there's limited outside of a doctor's visit. There's limited locations to go to get tested for those that are seeking that. So again, that that's there. In addition, we've increased communications surrounding areas of concern, trying to trying to make sure that our parents and staff are understanding that we're seeing some things occur in terms of upticking cases or absences at a building. So when we're seeing those two or more cases within a specific grade level that we're sending out a communication to the families at that grade level, indicating that talking about what symptoms it could be looking for, recommending if they'd like to seek testing that there's a link to those. Again, as I mentioned, the sites are limited and our ability to offer some will certainly help that. We've also sent those same letters if there is a student's instructed in a self-contained classroom, if there's one or more cases within that 14 day period. We have a variety of classrooms to support. Some of our most medically fragile, some of our special education students where it's a small classroom and that's why the difference between the two versus the one. Typically those class sizes are 12 or fewer. And then if we see the absenteeism rate at a building or within a classroom, staying extremely high above, you know, relative obviously, but above the 10% when we usually hover well below that. We start to see 10% or more and we see that climbing over a number of days. We are sending a letter indicating that we're seeing that some of the absences we've seen have been related to stomach flu or stomach issues. We're seeing that trend go through some of our schools now. So we're like we've gone in the past, we're sending communications that we're seeing there's a bug going around. We want parents to know what to look for, keep your kid home if they're not, but just be aware that we're seeing an increase of illness within a particular classroom grade level or school depending on the situation there. So we've sent letters out to a variety of schools. Some additional ones went out today based on the absentee rate and the case rates at school. Then starting on slide 20 really talks about what we've made your point of why we're here tonight for this agenda item was to talk about a recommendation or to ask on the 14th for the administration to come back and present a recommendation of when and at what point under what circumstances we'll be looking at recommending a shift to required facial coverings for a period of time within a specific building. So with that you ask for both metrics and a timeframe. On slide 21 and 22 looks at a variety of options that we as an administrative team worked through and had to narrow it down to a recommendation. Obviously you had looked at wanting a recommendation around a specific time and location of when. So that really took option one the universal facial coverings for all students off the table requiring facing facial coverings for student staff members and looking at a 4k through 6 and maintaining optional higher at the higher grades. Option three we looked at was maintaining just our current and not coming forward with a recommendation. Slide 22 has three additional options. Number four was looking at a district-wide implementation at a predetermined level. Level five was looking at it when cases got 19 of COVID-19 cases for a selected period of time and that would again be for all students if the district as a whole numbers got there. And number six was requiring facial coverings when a building's active COVID-19 cases got to a predetermined level for a selected period of time and looking at other factors in this case one around vaccine availability. So based on that discussion based on that work settled on number six which is to look at that building base approach. So on slide 24 in order to come to some determination of what's that predetermined level look at two factors one try to look at where's a percentage if you will of kids and at what level in terms of number of cases and then also the fact that that method had a vaccine availability. Obviously try to put data in the next slides we have some data in there try to make this more of a database decision but you know with vaccinations and differences with vaccinations with other mitigation efforts a number of students who selected a variety of options last year and limiting some cohorting two day a week face-to-face versus two day or three day virtual like we did last year at the high school it really makes comparisons from year to year more challenging. It's more like apples and oranges it's still fruit but it makes those comparisons more difficult so I just want to throw that up front that this is a little bit more challenging to get to a data point. There is no magic number and I think we've heard that as our discussions all last year and throughout there's not a magic number so it's really along that continuum as I said before between risk and reward so where do people feel comfortable with that number based on upticks of situations so what I what I did and I just want to clarify slide 25 is we looked at the months of October and November from 2020 and the reason we looked at that data is that was the time in our district when we had the highest number of student cases throughout the year it was October last year and November last year because I was looking at the number of times that we had at least a positive case it's really meant there was at least one active case so when you see that there's numbers there the number of occurrences it's not the number of days within that month obviously those numbers don't total up to the number of calendar days in that month what I really looked at was each individual building by level and saying in the month of October at North High School they had these dates where there was new cases so on this date in October 1st they had X number of cases that day which would then look at the past 14 days and includes that October 1st date whatever that ratio was or percent in this case I should say percent was at that building using their building population at the time came up with a percent that ran somewhere between zero well it would have been above zero in that case because they had at least one active case to five plus percent and so I just kind of banded those percents so when you look at the high schools when there were active cases going on within and I took every 14 day window because that's how we're looking at that now in a 14 day window so if there's a case on the first of October that case and every case for the next 14 days got included when you got to the 15th day that first case in October 1st would drop off so that number would be adjusted so you saw this numbers would go up or down each day depending on the number of new cases that day when I looked at all of that information at the high schools you saw that during that time there were 24 different times in October and November when there were positive cases to school where the positivity rate was below 0.99 and there were 41 times when the positivity rate of students was between one to 1.99 percent there were 10 times at the two six four one so I did that the high school level did the same thing at the elementary level in the middle schools so those numbers there are just the number of times during those period of time and the number of times that a that a building at a positivity at least one case that would give them a positivity calculation during those during those eight weeks if you will so that helped kind of look at that two percent four percent fees when you look at vaccination availability and obviously you know there is and I just again will say here and for everybody online in the audience the ability for a district in the state of Wisconsin to require vaccinations is not within a preview of any district that is a legislative action only so a district cannot require vaccination when we look at vaccination ability the reason we look at that as one of the factors put in this this discussion was the fact that we do know that there are people who are choosing to get vaccinated who feel that there's a lower risk than because they are vaccinated right now our staff have the availability to get vaccinated children ages 12 to 21 which we have students in our district between those ages have the availability if they choose to look at vaccination if they so choose but students 11 and under and we've heard from a number of parents over the past since the summer and and ongoing we're saying I'm waiting for that time I feel it should be additional mitigation but I'm waiting for that time and then we can reevaluate so again it's unavailable at this time you might have heard in the news about this notion of boosters and booster shots and obviously that that's out there educators are included for our staff who had the Pfizer that's the one that they're recommending a booster for availability because we are classified as essential workers so I just thought I'd throw that in there as well but not from a Dernard Johnson and Johnson so on page 27 then is the recommendation and looking at both factors of look trying to come up with a with a percent number that threshold but also looking at that vaccine availability there's really three things here number one would be looking at the 4k to 6th grade and I'll dress the split the middle school a little bit but at 4 to 4k to 6th grade if we would reach 2% within a building we would look at a 14 calendar day so it doesn't mean 14 school days for 14 calendar days minimum and then look at if the percentage on day 15 drops is below 2% then we're back to mask optional we chose the 6th grade 6th grade out of the middle school you know the 678th graders although coming and going they interact there's not that interaction between other classes 6th graders at this point are not all 12 so they don't have yet the ability to vaccination if they so choose so that was where that split came in looking at the 7th grade to 12th grade then looked at a 4% measure same thing looking at calendar days looking at when that building positivity would drop below after those 14 days again as an increased measure to try to reduce some of what's going on within that obviously we had exemptions last year we've maintained that same exemptions accommodations and physical mental developmental needs that are documented or are documented to the IP process or medical provider we had that going on all last year and many there were people that chose to to look at that exemption and so that exemption would would still exist that would be the end then of my presentation the last page is questions so obviously I'll turn it back to you David for your feedback questions discussion etc Brian I don't know if my mic is on yet it is okay um what happens on day 15 say you say an elementary school is at 3% would that restart that 14 day clock or or is it a fort or would that or would be that that you still would wear a mask until that until the positive rate drops below the the 2% look to do ryan would be to implement uh 14 days we would keep that going then until that grade came down okay so so it would not so it wouldn't start all over again 14 wouldn't become 28 wouldn't become 42 the questions from board members so when there are positive cases in a classroom whether it's a staff member or the student are we currently doing has there been contact tracing done by the health department are kids being quarantined or is that not currently being done and if so what would motivate that to happen the contact tracing is being done by by the county in terms of if there is somebody who is um as they work through that process in that case there are kids in quarantine we go up uh kids in quarantine currently do you know how many we have yeah okay if i can just i've got a note here in one of my slides we have 400 and we have 413 kids that are out on illness we have 140 that are officially in quarantine so we're not we're not quarantining very many compared to how many kids are are ill that's correct and is that different than last year is that the same that's different from what we were doing last year in terms of the rate at which people are being quarantined is different from last year and can you explain that difference please yeah so one of the things that we looked at in terms of quarantining was that the county is taking on that responsibility as they started to last year and then they shifted that to the district the other pieces with the variety of mitigation efforts that are being done or not being done we really went with the route of talking about the notifications and understanding where they're at and if there was direct physical contact where there was for long contact we are but we're not quarantining an entire classroom based on a case within the classroom so when we have the two classrooms that are currently in virtual i'm just looking at the dashboard and i'm seeing cleveland for example where we had 19 kids nine of whom had covid-like symptoms and it says 24 percent of the school is absent but there are zero cases i still don't understand that yeah so at cleveland for an example the and this is where we talk about illness versus related to covid currently when we moved that class to virtual only 47 percent of the kids in that classroom were out ill and on the single student had tested positive but 47 of the kids were out ill some were seeking testing some had tested and were negative but they were half the class if you will was out ill clearly and we looked at as a team other numbers of illness in the rest of the building and it was really for the most part contained in that classroom so clearly something was going on in that classroom which we felt a 10 day shift to virtual a 50 percent of the kids weren't up to learning at that time to the degree they normally are and we really didn't want to put the other kids in that illness so we did a 10 day pause they're back this friday but so that's why no cases showed up so it's it the absenteeism you know we had a absentee for an example at central high school we had at 1.14 percent of the kids were absent we had one case but we had the stomach issue going around it was kids with stomach flu symptoms that were absent so it we're in what you're seeing and you're and if you've been following some of the knows RSV the stomach flu some of the other things make this a very complicated process because you know some are you know displaying those types of symptoms and not specifically you know or testing it from some cases and not coming positive so it's just it makes that much more challenging that's why we're looking at both the absenteeism rate as well as the COVID positive. Can you hear me okay I want to say that I really appreciate this recommendation I I think it's very very good I can fully get behind it I it answered my questions about I wanted to start the stop point if we were going to mask what what triggers it because I don't want to be having this conversations every six months or something and then when does it stop so that everybody knows also for our kiddos with special needs who can't wear masks with special accommodations IEP's medical whatever reasons I'm glad to see that that's in here as well that was another concern of mine I do want to go on record saying that I can get behind this as I will not be at the October 12th meeting I don't know if there's going to be any sort of action taken at that meeting or a recommendation but this this I can certainly get behind and I don't want to look like I just skip town or something because I didn't want to vote on this so let's let that be public knowledge so the other thing I just wanted to say is to the gentlemen who thinks we're talking about masks all the time and not worrying about our learning gap at the end of last school year just a reminder we did our administration put together an amazing gap proposal for us which started with our summer enrichment classes and into the school year and so we are focused on education as well as a mask we're just doing a lot right now thank you that's all the question hard to hear yourself and I've been heard yeah just looking for some clarification on the why why are we increasing the quarantine length to 14 days and I guess exactly who is that reference to only COVID positive cases as far as quarantining people yeah and mark a good question those are things we could do we're doing a 10 day right now there's with the ability to once obviously we can have a broader access to testing the test out on day to return on day seven if you had a test on a negative test on day six or seven the 14 day quarantine period is still what's recommended by the the health department and and others so that's where I'm saying in that case we could go back instead of doing a six or seven day in return or a 10 day in return we could extend it to 14 which people were referred to as the standard that's some saying that that could be an option we could choose to implement if we felt that there was people returning and then displaying sickness after their return if we saw that occurring we could select that as one of those additional modifications but we're not saying that that's universal being implemented at this time it's just one of those additional things we could do I guess and kind of follow up on that I assume it's going to be the same type of answer for symptomatic students remain at home for 10 days but you're talking that the stomach flu is going around are we just at this point once the 24 or 48 hours has passed these kids are coming back to school from if that's the symptom because obviously there's a lot across correct that these symptoms are under a whole you know not only COVID but flu or cold and all this stuff and I just hate to see some kid out with a cold you know a science infection head cold for one day or two days and have to sit home for 10 days just because it's the same it's a COVID symptom correct so one of the things mark that we had talked about at the last meeting was right now the the plan that we put forward and discussed last week would would would be to change it to the year if you have those symptoms that would be falling to the COVID that you would need to be out for 10 days or have a negative test and return with your negative test right now that would be a huge inconvenience for our families due to the fact that they're not readily available and not always free we're trying to get those 19 testing sites up and running at that time we would communicate that we would shift to that if we at that point in time but right now we're not operating that way because we don't have that availability for those that want to choose to return sooner than 10 days and I guess kind of following up on mr bird's question if we hit that mark and you implement the masks the very next day it drops below the percentage acceptable and it goes for 13 days under that and then day 14 it spikes again for some reason we're doing another 14 days is that correct that would be correct under that scenario mark yes okay and I guess I want to have a better understanding of how we're going to implement this at the with the different percentages at the middle schools because there's a lot of staff that are there for all of the kids are all are those staff like in the office and food service then going to be required because the sixth graders have to be masked the staff would fall under both yes and so we'd have six graders in the school mask but seventh and eighth graders not right it'd be optional at that point I see if you turn your mic on second it's on okay um at that point it would be again it would remain optional for those kids if they didn't fall to that level vision because you said next week that one testing would be open that we would include that in that because I agree with mark as far as if there's a cohort but my child doesn't have the symptoms and I get tested I have them get tested then they can go back to school the next day and they wouldn't have to wear a mask um and also I think a provision for our staff especially the ones that are vaccinated that if they're vaccinated and they don't test positive uh that they would not have to wear a mask that the mask would remain optional and I think that provision should also be included in that along with our students in the high schools that I heard a mother say that her daughter was vaccinated and um you know we give them that option especially if they can show they have no positive findings they've been vaccinated that we still put that in there that they you know attend school and remain optional with the mask when you're talking about the testing to return to school you're saying you can test the next day return to school and you're exposed to the virus it takes like five to seven days for you to pick so you could test the next day it's going to be negative and then like where would you be with that if you're symptomatic you're symptomatic and you have on day six or seven you could test the return so it would be day six or seven so you would still be oh so it wouldn't be like one person in the school test or a classroom test positive I can get tested tomorrow and then we're gonna go if you're asymptomatic in that case if you were in there and you were concerned about the fact that there was COVID cases within your classroom and you wanted to do to check you can also do that preventative testing through social are there going to be any guidelines I just I just foresee this being excessive amounts of testing yep and again two factors with the guidelines yes we would have clearer direction on what that looks like and and two it still remains as an optional choice but yes first off I want to thank the board for asking the questions a lot of those questions are where all my sheets I appreciate you guys for asking those questions I have it on your heart can the county information garden 18 year olds to 24 can that be separated to show just the 18 year olds I know it shows on page 10 it goes 18 to 24 for cases excuse me for the completion rate of 45 percent is it a way that the county can break that down to show 18 year olds versus 18 to 24 to give us a good number yeah I asked that question of the county's new epidemiologist Andrew a few weeks back and he at that time was not able to but I certainly can follow up with them again to see if I can get that number broken down okay and one more question I had so to go back to the middle schoolers and the elementary schoolers for your the masking when he gets to a certain percentage on page 27 do we have sixth grade classes in any of our elementary I know that some of the charters do yeah so at sixth grade except at LCA and SLA the sixth grade is at the middle school not at the elementary level thank you yeah so again we looked at that that data from last year as one of the guiding pieces and also looked at the that ability of the vaccination availability is where we centered on the two percent four percent again there's no there's nobody out there it's telling you years x percent to x so we looked at the data from last year and vaccine availability yeah so on that chart is what we looked at in terms of the number of times and currencies that we had and that's when we that's when we noticed last year of when we felt there was concerns when we got at the elementary level that's when we saw additional illness and at the high school level middle school level that was that was there were more cases in those schools before we got to that degree so talking about the vaccine vaccination access availability and the two and the four I'm looking at the numbers and they're saying that 36 percent of the middle school kids are vaccinated and 43 percent of the high school kids so less than half in both cases have actually been vaccinated are we gonna bring back the vaccine clinics to give those kids a better chance of having another opportunity to be easily vaccinated if they so choose not during school after school at school after school we had vaccination clinics are we going to do that again at this point we would be looking to to partner again with one of the medical providers if it was going to be a the announcement for the younger students obviously those who fall in that same range could take advantage of those as well so they could go they could go to that as well okay thank you again we would have to work with a provider that would do that questions questions comments whatever you want sure board wants to discuss this more or wait until if there's actually a proposal as far as because I mean I think the numbers the suggestion I appreciate the work and I appreciate the difficulty in pinpointing what that bar is at the two and the four percent but I think that is extremely low as pointed out before two out of a hundred kids could each come from the same family and had nothing to do with getting that from school or at school or transmitting at school and now the school is impacted by these two kids that got it because they want a vacation and so I guess one of the things that I looked at is the Sheboygan County Health Department in assessing transmission they don't assess it as being moderate until 10% and so I kind of would I think the bar should be closer to that in a line in a line with what they say is a transmission rate that we then need to kick in additional implementation of mitigation strategies and I guess that's kind of where I would suggest people start to contemplate if we're going to do an implementation and taking something like that into consideration you know and just kind of digest that a little bit and consider that but I think the bar needs to be a little bit higher than two and four percent but I do have a little bit of a concern about two different percentages at a middle school I understand the vaccination thing but I think that it's going to I just don't know that it makes a lot of sense to implement two different mitigation strategies in the same building like that it just it doesn't make a lot of sense that way but I understand where you're coming from. Kyle go ahead. Well at the last meeting one of the things that came up and I think it's a really valid point is that there's a fairly good number of people on the board and I think we can discuss that tonight who feel that we kind of got off base when we as a board started dealing with this rather than having it be on the plate of the administration and the EMT so and there were comments made including by you Mark that you were comfortable having the administration make those decisions moving forward so can we I mean to me if I as I look forward to how we're going to eventually try to deal with this I see two things one is setting it very simply we want Seth and the EMT to be making these decisions because they can pivot they can move quickly we are a very restricted body as far as how we can move what we can do putting out agendas giving notice having to have special meaning none of that works well in in this kind of situation and I think we're finding that out so how did the rest of you feel about that would you be comfortable with doing it in like two parts which is one we let the administrator we agree that the administration should be making these moves and then the other is we agree with the plan we think it's it's a good solid plan and we encourage them to move forward with it or do you not like that idea I mean what are you thinking administration direction and the ability to make those moves that that's what this whole recommendation is about and so it'd be nice to get you know consensus here of whether or not we agree with these set marks and I guess that was my input was I think they're a little bit low I mean you look at the transmission rates and everything and it's amazing you know and I understand the concerns and there's been some spikes but at the same time we've had school open for a month and it doesn't seem to have made some crazy spike that everybody was worried about just like back at Christmas and Thanksgiving of last year also that those times didn't create a major additional spike there might be more cases but it's not this huge spike that everybody was anticipating and so I think that we've got time to be able to formulate a plan that we can get consensus on so that they can have that ability to make those decisions on a moment's notice as opposed to having board input on every every everything similar to what they've done to transitioning this week with Jackson and Cleveland I don't think anybody on this board has taken issue with the administration's ability to to make those types of decisions but I think it's best if we give them direction on what we agree with so that we're not calling them out on the table saying what the heck are you doing here you know and I and I think that we're getting very close to that point to be able to have that and move on so one I echo Marsha's comments that I believe this is reasoned it's thought out there's data behind it and I support the administration's recommendation there's a couple of things I just want to address one it the data is in front of us it's false to say that there's no increased activity that 70 case average has doubled right whether you consider that a spike or not it's not flat the next part as well as it's easy to pick numbers and say well two out of a hundred there's actual data and mathematics behind it communicable diseases are measured by are not values and are not value is the mathematical formula for the average number of persons someone who is infected with the disease can expect to an effect the low end the common influenza or cold has an are not value of one to one and a half or two so you can expect that if I have the influenza on average I will infect one to two people covid when it started had a three to four measles the most infectious disease in human history measured has a are not value of 12 to 18 the delta variant which has hit us and is spreading right now has an are not value of six to nine has six to nine so if we take a low number there and assume that two positive out of a hundred it's basic math below number six to nine right there will infect 12 that 12 then becomes just under a here I'm doing math about my head 72 right so now we have 72 in a spread there just based on simple mathematics and geometric progression this is math this is not politics it's numbers we're in confined space it's a communicable disease the reason why we start when it's small is because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure if we don't prevent early on that's where issue runs in and I understand that there are folks in the audience who like to make snide comments but we listen to you is our time to speak as a board and if you'd like to speak please go out into the hall while we have a discussion we respected you I would ask that you respect us I thank you Seth and the team for what you've done and I appreciate that you look back at the data because here's the thing when you look at the numbers right in front of us November when it was the worst period in our county a hundred and forty one seven day case average not once in that period most of the time we were virtual right not once or not once excuse me on average we only had four days where we crossed the two percent threshold for elementary schools or five excuse me and we only had one day where we crossed the five percent threshold at the high school and four at the four percent mark so the likelihood right now for folks in the room who are concerned about this mitigation measure being in place is honestly fairly low that that again this is not your time to speak you do not have the four you are not a member of this board the public comment is over to my fellow board members we have a very reason to measure data-driven plan and I appreciate that thank you to the EMT I yield I wanted to point out to I appreciate the daily attendance and I but I think some people look at that and when it gets to 10 percent get a little bit bent out of shape and I guess I'm going to throw out there the you know the whole idea later on tonight we're going to hear about some updates in the career readiness data and our criteria for that is 90 percent attendance for those high school graduates which that in itself that's our that's our bar that gets us at 10 percent absentee rate rate as being acceptable for career readiness so you look at some of the high schools and some of those absentee rates you got to take it with a grain of salt it's not every kid that's sick or that has covid so don't rely too much on some of those numbers when they actually are a little bit higher especially at the high school level they'll just want to keep that in mind too when we're considering some of these data points that we're looking at one clarification on that is the attendance data that you're seeing that chart that's in your packet that's just the tenants based on kids who are out ill that doesn't count other forms of attendance whether you know parent may have called them in for a funeral or college visit or workplace or kids who just didn't show up to school so that's just those who are coded as being ill or under quarantine yeah so is I asked the question that I don't think we really got to an answer moving forward what is our plan because I really think we need to at least have a plan moving forward or we're just stagnating here are we moving forward thinking that we are going to turn this over to the administration yes or no how many of you are comfortable with that I'm come so here is my thought and I guess I want board reaction to this my thought was that in two weeks at committee the whole that these recommendations would be posted for possible action because then that would allow the board to vote on them but it would also allow board members to tweak those numbers if they wanted to so for example if someone wanted to take the two and the four and increase them you know make a motion proposing that they be well whatever you could change anything right Seth pointed out how they got to the numbers but you know there's there's no handbook there's no guidebook for this so if a board member wanted to make a motion at a future meeting not tonight that the percentages would be whatever 10 the minimum would be a different number of calendar days whatever you could tweak any part of this so I think now it's come down to this kind of bargaining amongst board members right which has to happen in the open which is where it belongs it starts tonight probably continues in two weeks but then my hope is at that meeting we close the door on this and we have a plan in place and we go back to the boardroom at Virginia Avenue they have our meetings and we do our you know we spend we're starting to see that tonight and I've this agenda tonight is loaded after this item with our regular stuff because we can't postpone those things anymore as we know we got to get back to business I I would think we would I would personally recommend that we go with with what the EMT has come up with with this because in the same sense that some members of the board think that this number should be higher there are other people in the board who think that we are under tested in this community and so when we look at our current numbers those numbers don't really reflect how much potential COVID is you know what the situation really is because people are not necessarily testing their children so I think we could go with the recommendation done by the people downtown who run the numbers and have looked at a lot of things because we're never going to make everybody feel comfortable with any given number and then we're back in the situation of back and forth and back and forth I think they I think they put a lot of thought in this I don't necessarily agree with all of but I personally think and I know that I'm pretty far on one side of this equation I I don't necessarily think that having the number be doubled for high school is necessarily appropriate when we have less than half of the kids vaccinated I could say that you know so at a certain point I think we need to just trust that they did the very best they could and move forward and see what happens but that's my recommendation anyone else comments questions not we're going to move on okay moving on this is the quarterly review of our long-range plan let's be Seth jake mark and Andrea as we move forward that's correct David and Andrea is online so she'll be speaking to us online this evening just a couple things before we begin the report of the district goals number one is just you know we've been as David alluded to out of the sync of some of our normal month-to-month activities so in September we come forward always to give you an update of where we're at in December we come for that update in December the same thing March again and then in June report out in the whole year so we've got that September December March June just to know if this item is listed for possible action as we get to goal two objective four you're going to see some changes that we're recommending around the administrative services building and the Warner aspire slash sale program that to bring those spaces in so we're recommending a modification to the long-range plan we historically don't do that during the year but because that's a big part of our operation right now really feel that we want to make sure that those objectives are captured or activities excuse me are captured so we will ask for approval of those as we go through and mark is prepared to talk about that and give some updates where we're at I want to highlight that before I turn over to Jake and he'll be the first one to talk tonight and go through goal one I really want to thank our EMT members and other administrators who work through and overseeing the goal work and also want to thank Nicole and Sarah from the communications aspect and I'll talk through their under goal two objective five so with that I'll turn over to Jake for goal one objective one and and subsequent objectives good evening I I guess I want to start too by just thanking the entire SNI team for all the work that they've done so far in this plan and to support our schools coming back this year it really has been fun to see all the kids in the classroom and the focus on the the learning so the first objective really two things I want to share out is one we talked in our June planning about those restorative practice training so if you remember back then our principals went through training with she was a former police officer from Detroit in the restorative practices and that training continues so really we have right just kind of our traditional rules and policies within our buildings our PBIS and then restorative practices for kind of high end behavior needs so that works continues and then the second piece is a addition from June and I think it was Mark that mentioned kind of the relationship that we have with DHHS so really there's a three prong approach there with Judge Tory also playing a role in that so the three groups sat down to begin those discussions and and really the focus there is to make sure that we are not duplicating services so that across those three entities there's kind of continuum of interventions that we use with students mainly around the area of truancy as we work kids through that process so that's the the work to highlight related to objective one objective two I'm just going to hit on a couple of things here obviously there's there's a lot there but the online piece at Warner we have about 120 kids online at the elementary level and that that kind of changes every day is as more people opt for that but that's about where those numbers are right now again they're remaining coded at their home schools but being educated through Warner and and Warner's access to the Wisconsin e-school network so that's been a pretty seamless transition and a nice job by the Warner staff and Jason Duff overseeing that program and activity two is it's just kind of a neat thing we want to share with you Chromebooks 200 300 bucks a pop obviously not a very powerful machine but what we're able to do with these servers and with these licenses is essentially it can be in a CAD class sitting on a desktop computer with thousands of dollars worth the software and they can go home and access that computer through those servers so kids have access to all that high-part software on their Chromebook at home we started out thinking we need a couple hundred licenses and it's being accessed like wildfire so we're continuing to add server space and licenses to that so that's been a great success for us full plan co-serve is a training through CESA 7 that we do with it's all staff but it's to really help our special ed students that can that training has happened at our middle schools and Kelly can tell you all about the the EL standards and DPI changing those but long story short there's a lot of PD that's going to happen with our EL staff to get where the state requires us to be for that 2023 2024 assessment and full implementation so they're working hard on that and then the biggest thing that we continue to push is our dual college credit options at at our high schools and really working with Lakeland trying to get our teachers certified so that they can teach those CAD classes and kids take in those classes we look back at some reports we're talking 380 enrollments in college classes at North High in 2019-20 just a lot of kids getting a lot of college credits HLC changing those standards and we want to continue to help our teachers get those credentials 18 credits in a content area that they have to get I think every single math teacher at North High did it or is doing it it's a ton of work so we're really appreciative of our teachers that are doing that good for our staff good for our students really kind of a neat neat thing for for our district and something that sets us apart objective three is mental health Jason Letterman is probably the the guru for the county and and even getting to be at the state level where he works with all these different organizations to make sure we're doing what's what's best for our kids we just spent some time out at the New Rogers building last week Friday Thursday Friday great facility we're excited for them to come on board as well and Lakeshore Community Health continues to allow us to add therapists for our in-house mental health obviously we have Rogers now if we need to layer on top of that and then we continue to look at kind of screeners and how we want to bring kids back in after a mental health crisis exists so lots of good work going on there and then that final goal is is probably the one that is most important to me all over all and that's our kind of continuous improvement plan for the accountability within our schools and you're you're going to see in our next presentation some early data you'll get to see the college and career readiness data for last year which is always great to look at in the high schools of becoming in front of you yet this year working on the elementary and middle school reports with Wayne to get all that information to pull from from Skyward and we just continue to to work through those processes any questions for SNI thank you all right then for goal two objective one mark we'll handle the first few and then turn over to Andrea and then I'll pick up at the end okay thank you so just a couple updates on objective one of goal two around health benefits the benefits committee met this month and decided that starting in February of this next February that we'll start to hold those informational sessions for our staff on a optional what an optional high deductible health plan would look like for people so we're continuing with that the benefits committee also agreed to survey staff if there's any interest on a voluntary group legal service that members could sign up for and then the third activity was the rfp process for our in health clinic that we share with the county in the city an rfp was sent out we've received the results of that we've met with the county in the city and just this last week we had agreed to stay with entera health for one year to remain with them for the next year that'd be 2022 for the in health clinics even with uh with staying with that clinic there's still the contract was a savings for us from this current contract so we're happy with that objective two um district has met with the county in the city to discuss options and potential vendors to to have a second lateral connection to our fiber ring out to the whisk net network which runs along eye 43 again that lateral is just for redundancy so right now if if the lateral that's connected to our ring gets cut that would affect our service so we're looking for a redundant connection so we're working with with the city and county and working on how to move forward to meet that goal and then we've also been in conversations with skyward to talk about the ability for that they would host our data through their services and again that's just an effort to lessen our risk of of being hacked having data stolen or hacked into from the district so we'll continue to look at those options and start to get costing and and make some recommendations upon that objective three uh providing quality nutrition for students so um meredith had applied for and she did receive a waiver from dpi that would allow for bagged breakfast and lunches to be distributed uh from a school or picked up from a school so we wanted to do that just in case there is a school closure or classroom closures where parents would still like to continue to pick up the meal for their child so again that waiver was accepted by the state and we're prepared to do that if needed one thing to mention is that we are now seeing a lot of supply issues around food service so food items supply items are increasingly becoming harder to get i know meredith has made several runs to local grocery stores just to be able to complete meals in a day and again this is like the bus driver shortage this is now a national crisis too that food service departments around the country are seeing so i just want to make you aware of that in case you hear anything out in the community you're aware that this is a problem and it's a it's a supply chain problem that they're dealing with objective four so under objective four i'll go through uh the the existing ones and then circle back to the change we would like to make um activity one around athletic field upgrades uh the bleacher pads and bleachers have been installed at field of dreams there's two new batting cages that have been installed out there and then the other item that was done was the north high football field that was top dressed over seated they decreased some of the slopes that were found at the sidelines that led to some drainage areas there so that was a successful and so now that the football season is going and we'll take a look when that's over and just see how the field uh you know got through that and what type of condition and if there's more uh overseeding or top dressing that needs to be done after the season the good news and is that football season will now be in the fall remember last year it was in the spring and then had to get ready for fall we'll have a whole year to prepare that field this time around um the committee for um farnsworth and urban middle schools the citizens advisory committee met in august they toured urban middle school and then this month they met and toured farnsworth middle school and they're continuing to meet once a month and then the west side maintenance shed the new shed that's being built at urban middle school the foundation is poured the walls are starting to go up the salt shed is completed again with some of the supply chain issues it's going a little slower than than what we normally would see but they still do expect to be completed by the end of december the next step there is they're going to be pouring the concrete floor in the shed that uh horse man middle school oh did i say urban urban i didn't want to alarm the people at urban yeah i'll make sure nobody there's no maintenance shed building going up on their very limited space at urban um and number four was uh was that the long-term facilities committee was going to make a recommendation on the long-term plan for the central administration building as you all know since that time an opportunity had came up and the board had approved a purchase of the former wilson mutual building to become administrative services building and then to do some remodeling in the current central building to allow the sale special education program to move into their uh they currently lease space in garden apartments and it would also allow warner middle and high school to move into that building they currently lease space on the riverfront so we would be out of the lease business for those schools and i think that's been a long-term goal for both of those programs and schools so with that happening we're recommending that we create activity a new activity for an activity five activity four is moving to the new administrative services building so when we look at outcome measures the first one there's a new building purchase completed that we have done we closed on the property on august 18th we're in the process of building modifications and preparations to complete the office fixtures configure them to the needs of the departments that are moving in there that's currently happening now and then we're also running a fiber optic connection to our ring right now that there's a connection from the ring to jackson school that's the nearest connection and we've extended that to the new administrative services building the conduit's been put in the fiber has been pulled that we're just waiting now to wait on some panels that have been ordered so that they can make the connection and then our it department is working within the building to set up networks and wireless access points so that internet connectivity has to be in there before we can start to move people our hope is that we can start moving people in november activity five would be moving the warner middle and high school and the sale program into the new remodeled spaces in the central services building so right now we have met with bray they have met with mourner schools they have met with our special ed department to go over their needs for those spaces and bray is currently working on draft plans that they will come back with and share those and and will continue to tweak those to a point where we think they're ready to be bid out so are there any questions on the the two new activities especially or any other questions then i'll have andrea just provide an update where she's at with the tracking and retaining staff thank you i'm sorry that i'm not with you tonight but i appreciate the ability to meet with you virtually so our first goal as far as conducting a teacher and administrator salary study we just are in the beginning stages of that and will be it's not a good idea to send out surveys at the beginning of the year to other districts so we plan on sending that out in october for both of those employee groups we'll be working on our employee recognition rollout i'll be working with nicole sandali as far as we don't have our internal workplace that we were using so we'll look at other alternatives of ways that we can recognize each other within the workplace and give each other kudos internally and the education career pathways group will be meeting in october and continuing to work on on filling our pipeline we've done a great job as far as our special education teachers and using the right program and building our own pipeline there but certainly we'd like to increase our um bipoc teachers and the rest of our staff so we'll continue to work on that and then we'll be looking at leadership development opportunities for our staff as the year goes along and ria i appreciate your updates i know you've got a lot of activities coming up fast and furious now in this next quarter yes objective six then it providing the updates for our communications team nicole sandali and sarin byron under activity one the external brand you taught heard me talk a little bit about really increasing the amount of social media posts and gaining traction there we have been hashtagging those uh really around two different ways the sast difference and celebrate sast uh really trying to highlight again all the the celebration aspect of what we do as a district but under the difference to really trying to specifically target and highlight areas where we are different from other districts or our competitors if you will so those are encouraged uh continuing um andria mentioned the new internal communications platform we had to discontinue uh workplace that we were using due to cost and so we're working through right now some additional options internally we will be trying to bring something online in the next few months to really again focus on our internal staff um as you go so um then the other thing i want to highlight is under bullet point three under the third bullet point excuse me there are evidences that we're hearing up to launch uh the first um monthly newsletter that will go to all of our families um and specifically highlighting things that have occurred during the month of in this case september so some welcome back messaging um highlighting a few key areas really what we learned from our brand strategy uh research and report back was that parents knew a lot about what was happening at their individual students or child's school but knew less about the overall district and so we're really trying to work on how do we get pieces out there for all parents so they understand the the breadth of what we do and understand if they're in elementary what are some things potentially that child's going to be exposed at the middle school or high school if they're middle school or just getting a sense of the district as a whole as opposed to just their slice at the schools that their children attend so we're excited about that so we'll make sure that you get an opportunity to look at that digital newsletter that's coming as well so with that happy to take any questions um at all or feedback that you have and then i would ask for a for a motion to approve the uh the changes under that goal um to objective four before we do that any questions or comments about the report seeing then uh hearing none all those in favor say aye thank you all for keeping that moving forward and appreciate the report from selenius c is the 2021 academic and social emotional learning updates jake kelly erick and jim split mics here if we can um we're kind of intermixed here so this isn't the best format uh but we'll certainly make it work um so really the intention of tonight's survey is just to update you where we are on that um kind of covet gaps planning presentation that we did back in may of last year um and what we didn't want to do is just wait until every piece of data was in to to present this um and kind of leave you in the lurch with with knowing where we currently are so this isn't perfect we'll be back to to update you again when um we have more data in but this is what we can share with you right now and i think it's it's beneficial for people to see so um as we look to slide to just the agenda of implementation at the elementary middle and high school and then how we're using our covet funds within within s and i really um planning goals the biggest thing here um being that we continue to stress we're bringing kids in from from all different places right whether they were uh online for the whole year some kindergartners who never did 4k etc so we can't teach down uh to the students that weren't in that position right so our teachers are having a probably a difficult time is is fair to say a challenging time to make sure that they're hitting up the broad range of skills that kids are coming in at based upon um what their engagement has looked like over the last year so that piece is there and then the data piece i i always struggle i i hope you guys feel that we're transparent with you and that uh we don't try to to put lipstick on a pig or anything like that so uh these are not excuses or anything like this but this data is really hard to look at right now um we're testing earlier in the year than we've ever tested before because we wanted that information right away for our teachers um but as a result you're not comparing apples to apples when you talk about fall testing because normally we'd have a couple more weeks of instruction before we test um and anything when we're talking about national norms or state comparisons uh districts that were mostly virtual or all virtual last year are not getting included in that and those are your large urban districts right so um at the state level milwaukee's not accounted for and a lot of these at the national level uh los angeles unified school district is a big one right so you're just running into a lot of different issues there but um we're going to try to paint the best picture that we can for you so if we skip down to uh slide six i'm going to let kelly talk a little bit about the elementary assessment okay so thank you everybody um circling back to the plan we presented in march um to support our students as they return to the classroom this fall and we really do feel that sense of urgency so as jake said we moved that window for all of our assessments in fall up a little bit so we could get as much information about our students as possible so on slide six you'll see that we have teachers using the many tools that we have available at elementary school fontis and panel is one you've heard of before it is essentially an assessment where we are sitting down one-on-one with students to learn about their reading um proficiency and what skills we need to support in a small guided reading um type of setting we'll have data on that after the window closes october 8th um we also have two tools to look at social emotional learning um panorama is a tool that we use last school year you might remember um we have that available to our schools grades three through five as an option in fall but required in spring um for schools who wish to get more information about their students recall that that's a student survey that they the students themselves take and then we take that information and look at that new to us this fall is our best universal screener um that's a new tool like i said to us classroom teachers are using that to identify internalizing and externalizing behaviors for all students um and then getting recommendations of supports for those students that um essentially rise to the top for that need um just just recall that all of that kind of testing takes some time to do because it is individualized so we do use our other tools such as star so on page seven um as jake said we as myself as the DAC for our district the assessment coordinator um i keep hearing from all the different groups that i am a part of that we should use caution with this data because of that participation variation and because of that instructional model variation but this data is used in schools to identify students who qualify for basically another layer of support through our our ti tiered levels of support so we tested um with star the first two weeks of school earlier than we usually do um and we're able to identify students quickly that would qualify for that type of um intervention you hear me all right the second piece that's on there is a lexia data if you remember in march we came to you with one of our plans for accelerating learning was to use a software program called lexia um we had some of our schools used it last year and this data is really only representing three of the comparison schools who used it all year but last year at the beginning of the year 23 percent of our students took a placement test and were put into at or above grade level um this year those same three schools had about 17 percent so another example of one we started testing a little earlier last year we started a little bit later with those placement tests as things got going and two um some of our virtual students didn't use lexia and those students who chose to be all virtual last year are now in the classroom so a little difference in data um the big piece last year I think that shows on there is by the end of the year 57 percent of those students at those three schools were in were at or above grade level material that they were working with um so that'll be something we'll really analyze and look at this year's how students progress um throughout the year on on slide eight I'll give you a little bit more background on lexia and some of the implementations that we're doing at elementary really our goals kind of go back to what Jake said our we want to be able to have students have access to grade level material get individualized support and then finally have some small group targeted instruction so those implementations reflect that lexia um we purchased a four-year license so we have a district-wide license to be able to support um student work in lexia elementary uses a program called core five where they work on five core literacy skills and that really is a blended model where it's involved with 15 to 20 minutes of individualized student work on the computer that adapts to how the students are performing and then flags a lesson where the students may need more um one-on-one support from that teacher or it also shows like a wider lesson that the teacher could do in a small group or the whole group if they needed to really solidify that skill and reinforce the skill that the nice piece with lexia is they have district and building support for each of our buildings so um we will meet on a regular basis I think now we started off in August in September all of our buildings had an implementation support with representatives from lexia to get started to look at some fidelity measures and then we'll be meeting again October November where they'll start looking at some of the usage data and some of the the units that students are gaining. Kelly mentioned a lot about Fontespanel um we'll be using that data to target those guided reading groups to know where students instructional reading levels are at but then also um really looking at what are some of the levels we can support with we call them reading mini lessons which would be that grade level access for students and then finally we purchase also we in March one of the things we came to you was looking for some level reading materials for our schools for their book rooms so a students as Jake mentioned might be reading at an instructional level at various levels teachers can pull a group of students and have six books with a structured lesson that they can sit down and really target some of the students um skills to help them move forward in their reading levels so really those are some of the big things we were trying to implement to target some of the the gaps we may see in reading. All right thank you I'm really excited to share a couple things that we've got going forward with math this year and really resources and opportunities we have available for both our students and our teachers so it was prior to last year we went through the adoption process and decided to move forward with bridges math curriculum 4k through 5. Last year we decided that might not be the best year to introduce a new math curriculum district wide and kind of put it on hold for a year with the exception of some volunteer classrooms so we had 10 schools within our district that had a grade level within their school kind of pilot bridges going forward and that was a blessing in disguise for us really because it put us in a much better spot to support our teachers and really have a successful implementation this year. I want to share a few things about it and then a success story with you so I think the part that really to me is most exciting is it's truly a comprehensive curriculum that really I think is accessible to to all students and really offers supports within the curriculum rather than having to pull resources from different places to meet the variety of needs we have within our classroom so there's really three components within bridges I'll give you a real quick 10 second snapshot. The first one's number corners which really has taken our calendar time in the morning and turned it into a math routine with some preview and review so again a nice opportunity to one kind of catch students up on some things they may have missed but also kind of give them some support for future learnings. The problems and investigations are really the core on-level grade instruction to ensure all of our students are having access to on-level curriculum and I really think the the engagement within that part has been phenomenal just seeing kids in the classroom the discussions that are going on and really just their interactiveness with math from visual models to so some of the games I'll talk about in a second and not just so repeat of what maybe traditional math may have looked like and then the last component of it is the workplace environment so after our problems and investigation there's a workplace component that really takes a number of games so really students would have access to six different games to participate in that related to that core instruction and this is a great opportunity for our teachers to have time to differentiate so within those six games teachers can have various skills that they're working on particularly some might be related to a skill that a student needs to get caught up on others may be specifically for a skill that someone needs to accelerate within but again we're able to do that within the course of our curriculum and our our instruction rather than having to pull in a lot of different directions and pull outside resources in. The one piece I really wanted to share that probably excites me the most about where we're going from an elementary math curriculum I reference at the beginning that we had 10 schools that had a pilot grade level last year that piloted bridges when we went through our star growth data last year of those 10 schools and I looked for the highest grade level of growth seven of those tens was the grade level strand that piloted bridges last year so that makes me excited about the opportunity to have that access to all of our students going forward and I'm excited where where our math is headed in that direction I think the one last piece I had in there you may remember over the last few years we've been going through the process of training our staff in AVMR advantage math recovery currently our k1 teachers are trained and we'll be continuing to move forward with that going forward but really that component is another piece where teachers can work more individually with students they can include that within that workplace setting and really it's a it's a way of training our teachers to really get a better grasp on where students are at so a quick example on that is if we're trying to help a student say three plus four right some students might go one two three and then keep going four five six seven some might start at three and then go four five six seven some might know three plus four is seven and our ability as teachers to more correctly identify where students are in their learning helps us determine next steps in terms of our instructional needs and again I think that's a tool that will continue to be used going forward. So just looking at basically slide 10 here a summary of what we have seen we have been out visiting our schools talking with teachers talking with principals what we see right now as you can imagine bringing students especially our lower grades kindergarten first grade students back into the building we are working really hard with building a sense of routine and building up stamina for those students who have not had that same opportunity just a reminder last school year we had 30 percent of our elementary age learners choosing a virtual option I believe a current number is about 120 of our total elementary population so many students returning back to the building some for the first time and also recall that our kindergartners may not have had a 4k experience as some families chose to keep their students home what I sense when I'm in those buildings is an overall excitement just to be back in school by our students by our families by our teachers of course our teachers are adapting very well but adapting nonetheless to a transition back to a normal-sized classroom and of course our specialist teachers are very happy to return to their role as a music teacher art teacher or fiat teacher okay we are going right on on slide 12 similar to elementary our social emotional learning data from panorama our sixth to eighth graders will take that assessment or have taken it by September 24th that data isn't posted live yet by panoramas so they're still working through that but we'll be looking at that when that comes through it was it was optional but our middle schools chose to do it on slide 13 Kelly are you going to do the star sure absolutely so again looking at slide 13 looking at that data we do see some concerning trends interestingly however this is representative across our nation renaissance is seeing this throughout the data that our sixth graders are a bit further behind than those earlier grades and our seventh and eighth graders are the furthest behind pre-pandemic expectations so again we're going to dig into why that might be but in the meantime we're using this data to intervene with the students that that are in that 25th percentile or below and let me just jump in real quick on the on that reading and star math so 40th percentile didn't necessarily change right so that 40th percentile is the same it was pre-covid the math scared me when I first saw it we the the forward exam is embargoed we can't give you those scores yet we're not seeing the triangulation of data there we're certainly everyone saw drops but we didn't see our drops being as out of whack with with math and and reading so it's just going to take a little time I think for these assessments to to get honed in you're not Mike Kyle I can't hear you am I on guys thank you across cohort data we're seeing not just in the chivalry school district you're saying that that eighth grade group and that sixth grade group are lower generationally right now yeah exactly across the board yeah right yeah did we notice that in years prior in the in the data assessment on this group or did it seem to be as a result or around this period of time I'm just curious I mean obviously correlation is not causation and there's a lot to be sliced here I'm just curious if this was considered a low group when they were first or second grade yeah I mean you can right it's not apples to apples from grade level right so that's a piece of it it's it's not the answer to it so we didn't we didn't want to kill you with data but it's a it's a really good question that that group was a little lower than the the preceder the groups that preceded them but that that piece is where it is I I think the hard the really hard piece that we're having here is we're we're seeing drops at the state level we're trying to determine if we're dropping more than what's happened at the state level and the state comes back and says well our data really doesn't include all kids right because so many didn't test so we're going to talk about forward data but 30 percent 20 percent of our kids didn't even test right the star data we had kids doing it at home which we knew posed validity and reliability issues but it was data that our teachers needed at that moment to help kids so we weren't worried about what it was going to look like a year from now and we were given a report to you guys so that's that piece of it if the math scores are low a year from now then we're talking issues and a major intervention that's going to have to take place okay so we're going to get a feel for that this year thank you on the bottom of slide 13 is the lexia data note the lexia data looks a little different because the middle school version is called power up instead of core five and power up focuses on word study grammar and comprehension as you can see but last year we're pretty similar to where we were last year at the start when students took placement exams the I think the value here is that our teachers can really target certain skills that students are having and we can really drill down so you can see a word study grammar and comprehension are all pretty much similar to where we were last year so we can really start to use that more individually now with students and that that kind of leads us into slide 14 the implementation at middle school brought to in March one of their big areas of focus was altering that schedule to really find that targeted time so all three all three schools have altered their schedule and built in an intervention time in the middle of the day where anywhere between 30 to 60 minutes students can have a focus time for lexia or for the math program alex where they can have specific opportunities to be individualized so again it's a similar program in that lexia is in that it's a 15 to 20 minutes about per day depending on where students are at and the gaps that they need to find but then lessons flag and teachers can help in those small groups deliver those lessons or teams can look and see we have this a gap or a need to solidify some things around informational reading so we can really pull that in and our science our social studies our ELA classes I'd also did the schedule changes last year at the middle school right so that wind time used to be 30 minutes and essentially the kids would get the intervention in the subject area where they were lowest right so if and reading kind of took precedence this year they have the 60 minutes the 230 minute box so kids can get reading and math every single day so that opportunity is is there for them as well which I think is nice coming off of the COVID issues and then that that other piece is the alex that's on there is that that's the math program where there's specific areas where students work on and their math component