social distancing. So social distancing suggests that you have less than 50 people in the room and that you try to maintain an arms away from people. And so you can imagine that any school site with children that recess or cafeteria in the multi-purpose room, you're not able to do that. Even if you stop having symptoms, you still have to have a weight loss or something like that. Ensure that we are prepared. One of the positives is that we saw the need was coming and so we always try and so we did have the food services team, the tech and services team who were all working on different apps. So part of the request of the 10 Superintendents, so the 10 Superintendents asked Dr. Aylbool to come in on Thursday. We had been working with her extensively. The reason why that is important is because without her concurrence, we could not receive a waiver from the state of California. CVE is very specific that what we needed from her was a letter of concurrence. And so after approximately three hours of discussion, she did concur with us that we would be able to close all the schools for a week. Most of her reservation for doing so was in terms of the essential services that our school sites provide our students. And so we assured her as Superintendents mainly myself because we have the largest group of vulnerable students that we would ensure that our students had essential services. So that ranges from food services, which I'm going to speak about in one minute, food services all the way to having access to referrals or contacts for social emotional needs and apply that information. So for the last several, so because of that, the dismissal was done in order to be able to follow the social distancing guidelines. One of the important things is that to try to break the curve and break the growth is that you can implement social distancing. That is not possible when you have 600 to 2200 students. The point is not that we believe that the schools are unsafe. We believe the schools are safe, which is why Dr. Gaylenmoul was read to take those units and how to deliver. But rather, it's because we can't implement social distancing. Mostly at recesses, at arrival, at dispensals. So all that being said, we are closed only for a week, but there is a very high chance of like, that's why some of the decisions have been made in that I'm not saying that we're going there nor do I have the authority to do it for the rest of the year, but some universities are already saying that I'm to medical professionals and to the Department of Health. This is not going to go away in just a few weeks. And so we need to make sure that we have continuity of learning. We need to make sure that we have that. And that is the most important. And the more vulnerable our students, the more important that is because we will be their only conduit. And so we did, we just want to notice on the website there is, and it has been up there for I believe a week or so, we have a special tab for the coronavirus information. I did want to highlight that we have had nine communications in 13 days, going out to our staff community. So we have been extremely communicative. And I encourage people if they want to read them, then they can do that. We have it sending out the communications in three ways. So we have been doing it by email. We now are doing it by text, where people are receiving the text with the link. And then we are receiving, we are also doing it by voice messages while so we're doing all three. For other purposes, we had started the testing of the texting we now can do with Synergy and School Messenger. And so we do have that. One thing that I want to highlight in terms of the food services is we are required to provide food services for our students. So there will be 16 locations where students will be able to get free bag breakfast and lunch. It is available to any child in the community. They don't have to be a student. So this is very similar to the summer program that we do. Legally, it should be from one year to 18. And so we are not going to be carding people. But if someone obviously looks older than 18, we are not technically allowed to provide them with that. In order to implement social distancing for this as well, we have two different ways in which we are going to do it. We are using the drive-through process which El Grove is using. We recognize that some families have only one car, some have none. But some only have one car and that may be used for a plan. So because of that, we also do have a walk-up manner as well that they can do. We will be implementing the same protocols for social distancing there that Second Harvest Food Bank is doing currently. So they have a process that they are implementing that the health department helped them with. There is the times and dates on the flyer and that is everywhere for you. In terms of the MOU and the information, I just want to highlight two areas and then I will stop. So one is in terms of the sick leave and the quarantining. So we are asking people who are sick to stay home. They have protections not only under the regular contract. So this is an extension of the current contract. And then there is some amplification of it. But they have protections so we are asking staff to stay home. When we do have an active case in the case of Rio de Monta, they have been home and they have not been on site as we did with the site that staff will continue to do so as well. This upcoming year, I'm sorry, upcoming week. In addition, we do have one additional staff member at another site who is currently being tested. And so that staff as well will not be at the site because the safety of it is extremely important to me and I know it is extremely important to you. I think the challenge that we have is the fact that we must, we must together create weeks worth of curriculum and instruction that we will not have an additional time for preparation. So this will be our time for preparation. And so whether it is being in the classrooms to gather all the materials and figure out what is going to happen, if we thought that this was just for a week, there would not be this level of concern because it would be, well, for a week, a child can do whatever a child needs to do. But we're talking about multiple weeks, which when we talk frequently, when we're talking about curriculum development, there's a big push and a big focus on collaboration and really working together as a team. And so in terms of this, this would allow the three days, would allow the PD to, they can practice social distancing so they could do similar to what we're doing here, but still work off of each other and work smartly because we're not talking about generating one week of support. We're talking about multiple weeks, which means you have to really think through what does this unit need to learn for the rest of second grade. What does this unit need to? We had made an agreement in the MOU that certificated staff, so I want you to note that this is happening everywhere. So long distance learning, if you look at every single school district that has gone on dismissal or on closure, is doing long distance learning. So this isn't Dr. Rodriguez thinking of shelving or a PDU. In all cases, they're banding together. We, so all the superintendents in the 10 districts agree because of the need to make sure that there's a good sequence that we would have staff present on for this first week. When I met with CSEA and PVFP in an effort to support staff and to support the fact that many art teachers are very much ahead because they already use global classroom. They already use a lot of online materials and we determined that they would only have to be on site for the first three days and then they could begin remotely March 19th in preparation. We are not asking people security in that. We ask them to stay. Following social isolation protocol by only accepting comments as you stated by email on your website and on the letters we received. Why are you only accepting emails for this meeting? Why are you denying teachers and staff the same right to social isolation? I want you to explain to me how come this meeting it was. Yet teachers are being between at school. If it's no big deal for us as teachers allowing us teachers and staff here but apparently they are. I was also emailed a question about whether the district staff in the towers here are bringing their children to school too. If that hasn't been announced to you. The district is not putting our health and safety first. We found out that they can make money if we provide a non-disruption education or extended learning lessons at home. Visual learning is possible with FaceTime every day. Technology at home. Putting the health of our entire community at risk. If we have children we may bring them to work next Monday through Friday. How generous to allow our children to attend different schools to intermingle to share bathrooms and exchange germs. Thoughtful. The schools have not been cleaned and we are being told to take our family with my school has not been cleaned. Yet I watched the news and there are buildings being disinfected by people in full hazmat suits. This makes no sense to what children will be explained. You can't go to school because of germs but you can come to mommy's closed school and help me plan lessons. All is done. My personal doctor has not returned my email. I've been out sick the last two days the last two sick days I have for the year. This past week I have hugged two people multiple times who are now... I have a chest cough and no fever so do not qualify for testing. This for an ER nurse friends exam. So I hope everyone is alright with me using the bathroom and the cough at Rowland Hills Middle School and at the towers. Thank you. So first of all I do want to thank Dr. Rodriguez for being willing to negotiate. So the issue that comes up from that is that teachers who are being tested in other sites. And one of the challenges is that some of those sites that are now closed for teachers. So we have teachers we don't want to have them. And it is the fear right now that it's the social care teachers who are able to plan you know we do zoom meetings we do more conferences so you can still it doesn't have to be... and so the probability that the school is not safe enough for our students is that our students are still received. The school is not safe enough for our students but it is safe enough for our own children what is the difference this doesn't make a ton of sense. If the whole point of us being on campus is to develop methods to long-distance testing is to develop methods to long-distance teach perhaps we should practice what we hope to teach in long distance lesson plan. Many of us have Google classroom and can use this as a tool to continue to instruct as we go. We are happy to work during the closure but are not sure the suggested way to do so is the best way. Thank you for your time and attention. Please let us know if you want some of us to help you just because 135 comments are a lot of comments. Yeah, so we're open to helping you. Thank you. If I start getting scratchy I will do so or if you get tired of hearing me say them just flag that. Okay. From Michelle Myers I would like to add to all of the other ideas and suggestions that the other schools private charter public and colleges are sending their staff home with pay to remove infection being in the school environment and reducing person to person spread it has been noted by many medical and scientific professionals that children though not getting man sick cases themselves are the highest carriers. Bringing our children on school site would defeat the point of cleansing the school environment and reducing the spread of the virus. Working in groups during the shutdown also defeats the distancing necessary that is the point of the shutdown. If we are truly to keep our students and staff free of illness and continue in the future to open the schools and educate our children we all need to be safe now together. If our staff gets exposed and sick over the closure during the being in groups and meetings then who will do the remote teaching or be back when the schools do open. From Greg Tucker As a teacher I am aware that in times of crisis I must rise up to meet the problem. Once the children have safely left the dangerous situation or been transferred back to their parents' care the teacher that should come off so that I can care for the safety and well-being of myself and my family. The district's current directive conflates these two. It says that I must return to a place that the county office of health has determined should be closed for cleaning and to prevent community spread. This seems to ask me as a condition of my employment to violate common sense as well as county directive. Please rethink this and get it right. The short-sighted nature of this just amplifies the message from this district that teachers do not matter. From Abel Mahia Will there be buses running to bring students to school? Will cafeteria staff be present to feed students if they arrive at our school? When parents see staff on campus they believe school to be open. If it is dark then they know there is no school. Will there be recreational and academic activities for students? For teachers are we expected to be on campus? Why not allow us to work from home? If we were to have our classrooms cleaned what is the point of us being there? Thank you for having the patience for allowing speakers to go beyond the one-minute allotment. We delayed going our home so that we could have our voices heard. From Deborah Mallard Our current plan to have employees attend school 316 despite the county health department's decision for closure of schools and the CDC's recommendation of working remotely when possible seems to defy what is safe and prudent. If remote learning is an option for students it should also be also for employees. A large percentage of employees who will now be home due to closures making it a hardship. Any plans to set up remote learning should be done in a remote learning situation. Additionally, the socio-economic issues of remote learning are great. About 40 to 50% of students in my class lack internet service or only have it via a smartphone. This does not make access available equally. For our some of our families, helping children especially in primary grades is not possible with language and educational barriers. I urge you to develop a plan that keeps teachers and their families safe and provides equality to all students. The current plan needs to be revised. From John Sims After reading the superintendent's letter this morning I wanted to let you know what is going through my mind. I don't mind working to prepare for electronic lesson delivery. The question what can I do for students if we are required to close school has been in the back of my mind all week. But I don't understand why I am not being given the opportunity to telecommute. Other large organizations seem to trust their employees to do their job even when they are not on site. The message this sense to me is that I cannot be trusted to do my job unless somebody watches me do it. We are expecting our students to stay home and access learning materials. Why aren't we asking teaching staff to do the same? Why is working from the expectation for students but not even an option for staff? Sincerely John Sims I want to know why students are being quarantined and staff are being subjected to being around others. Why is the safety of all not being respected equally? I feel as if this is not safe and I am worried for myself and my children. I don't think I said the person's name. I have her document open so I'm going to read that and then I will say her name. So now with COVID-19 shaping our lives is this ADA campaign forcing you cognitive dissonance as it is for me. In what universe is it acceptable to pressure families to send kiddos to school while hanging teacher pay in the balance? Now more than ever before with our current health crisis you must not need me to urge you to check yourself and reevaluate your campaign. Junior colleges are closing in California. You have canceled all out of county field trips including Valencia's beloved fourth grade Sacramento overnight for which I have put countless hours into the last few months. Why then do you continue this 97% ADA campaign with teacher pay contingent something that is outside of our sphere of influence? You have sat and listened to a paxity hall for the past three board meetings and I have spoken at all three. When will you truly hear and then change your plan? I hope it's tonight. Thank you. That was from Sarah Leonard from Ryan Jones. Dear board members it is hard for me to believe the superintendent when she emails us saying that my health and safety is her top concern when every health expert is telling me to work from home and practice social distancing and yet my superintendent is telling me I'm still required to show up to work every day. If there is no reason for me to leave my home and expose myself I would rather stay at home and support my students through online instruction. I have heard that we are supposed to be gathering together for PD which is against the advice of health care workers and is not social distancing. Please address this at tonight's meeting because my health and well-being is not being considered or protected. I am emailing you three specifically because you have at some point demonstrated you care about teachers and understanding that supporting teachers is the best way a district can support students. I am giving you a chance to demonstrate that this is still true. From Colleen Hilker actions speak louder than words. Thank you PVSD and Santa Cruz County Office of Education for showing us that you do not care about teachers' lives. You do not care about the lives of our family many of whom are students in your schools and their grandparents. Maybe you need a teacher to teach you this. There are some things that are more important than money. From Gala Haskins. Please address the following statement by Michelle Rodriguez regarding staff working at their work sites during the mandatory school closure. As a parent and PVSD teacher I see this as dangerous to our public safety. We will only prolong the process of disinfecting the schools and work sites therefore increasing exposure on the COVID-19 virus. Please consider other possibilities that do not put our teachers and students at risk of spreading the virus. Thank you for understanding. From Brandon Dinnis. From Lakeview Middle School I would like to extend a virtual greeting to the school board. I recognize these times are unprecedented and that the safety of our students is of the utmost importance. I do not have an easy answer and I do not have a hard time trying to understand the difficulties of a public health official. Sometimes circumstances in life require us to transcend our job titles and we need to focus on the basics such as health safety and supporting our loved ones. This is definitely one of those times. The response of this district at this time is deeply troubling to me. I feel that the district is taking incremental steps so you can say as you have the best of interest at heart but to me that does not seem to be the case. If you truly have the best interest of our students at risk of spreading the virus we need to be clear and clear. To have the attitude that only sites with confirmation of coronavirus need to be cleaned is nonsensical and does not reassure our community. To rely on custodians to ensure our sites are sanitized is not going far enough especially when our custodians may be out ill or lacking cleaning supplies. The fact that we all keep hearing as teachers, oh you guys will be giving cleaning supplies, oh your custodians are being trained but in reality they're teaching staff that they need to report to a school site and even bring their own children with us so we can receive remote educational training if we do not have the confidence that our school site is sanitized and free from exposure to COVID-19. I call on the board to have the intestinal fortitude to take extreme steps to ensure that every school site is deep cleaned before any certificated staff are asked to return. I call on this board to do everything necessary to ensure the safety and wellness of our students is the top of these steps. Our community is depending on you to be bold and do everything necessary to ensure our schools are safe. From Melissa Eskew. Hello members of the board and all present. The messaging sent to teachers has been consistent at best and alarming at worst. We got an email that schools were closing our principal confirmed that an hour or two later the superintendent said an email that staff must come in. This disregard for teachers that have children is short-sighted. The county schools for student safety but the superintendent's directive to have teachers come in disregards the safety of the teachers children. If teachers can't find or afford child care in 72 hours they will bring their children to school spreading germs playing in classrooms and destroying the purpose of closing the schools to begin with. From Ryan Jones. Dear board members it is hard for me to believe the superintendent when she emails us saying that my health I think yes I did. I did receive a couple of duplicates from the school. Thank you. But please be my backup. From Lauren McFarlane. I am sad to hear our district does not care about our health as teachers. At a MST elementary where I work a teacher here has a child that goes to Real Del Mar and was probably exposed to the virus. She'll be bringing her child here next week if you force us to come here while the students are not in school. This is putting all the teachers here at MST at risk. Please make the right comments home work packets etc. Allow us to socially distance ourselves as well. In most other professions they have shut down all aspects of people coming into contact with each other not just one group, IER students plus the older you are the more deadly this virus has proven to be especially if you have a compromised immune systems system or other known diseases. Please show us that you care about your teachers at PVSD and closet schools down to teachers too. Allow us to work from home I beg I am given to understand that PVSD school board meetings are following social distancing guidelines but school staff are expected to report to work. This is unacceptable. Any communications necessary can be held by email or Zoom meetings. From Dawn Krentz. As a teacher at WHS I am concerned about my health and that of my family by unnecessarily coming to work at an empty school. I believe teachers should work remotely as it is advised that we limit exposure to others including other staff members. I am aware of how to implement online learning and communicating with my students. Thank you for supporting the health and wellness of our community. Igor Fedotov. I am a history at Watsonville High School and I am reaching out to you to formally request that our staff members stay home next week and work remotely rather than reporting to the school site. I understand the seriousness of the situation and think that it is in everyone's best interest to stay home for their own health and the health of their families. I am concerned about my own health and the health of my partner and hope that this is taken into consideration. In order to minimize the risks of infection in our community it is better for teachers to stay home next week. Thank you so much for your understanding. From Jesse Banwell. We were assured that hard surfaces in common areas would be disinfected daily. We were told the names of the chemicals even the color of the labels. Yet as I write this on Friday afternoon no surfaces at my site have been disinfected not even once. Now the schools are closing for safety reasons. We teachers who are the most susceptible to the infection are still being told that we must report to our disinfected classrooms all week. I am ostensibly to provide distance learning content for our students. If the district and administration truly cared about its teacher safety why won't they allow us to work remotely. Providing online communication for our students does not require us to come to a building that has a fairly high chance of being contaminated with the coronavirus. From Alejandra Magana. I am a teacher at WHS and concerned about my health and that of my family for coming to work at school. I believe teachers should be allowed to work remotely as it is advised that we limit exposure to others. I don't feel like our time is served appropriately by getting a training on how to implement online information or cleaning desks. From Kim Cunningham. Many tech companies schools Starbucks etc. Government officials are social distancing. The decision by our school district to work all week does not make me feel valued. Is this coming from a health mandate with COE or our district only? Apple has cubbies and offices and they have been off for two weeks. A school is on the front lines. I would like to share my voice and concerns. From Ashley Strickland. Thank you for taking your time to read my email and it's very much appreciated. My concern is that we as teachers and classified staff are getting a mixed message from Dr. Rodriguez. Explain below. Last night at approximately 8.26 p.m. and just note that some of these actually came in yesterday. We received an email stating that we were not coming to work and we are to stay home for the week with PVFT support and that we would be compensated for the week because it came from county from the county education superintendent and that our children should be home as well. Now today we received an email stating that we are to come to work and bring our children to work with us. This is counterproductive to the original email that the county of education superintendent has set out. I know that my colleagues and I would appreciate any clarification that you can give us. Your support again is greatly appreciated. Hope you and your family stay healthy during this time of uncertainty. From Julie Rodenberg. I am concerned that PVST is ignoring the science and advice that the county health department places PVST employees and their families in jeopardy. It is a fact that carriers can be contagious and have the symptoms of the virus. A letter from the county said that all schools in Santa Cruz county will be closed. It made no exceptions for staff. There is very strong evidence that social distancing is the only thing slowing this virus down. We learned this 100 years ago during the Spanish flu. We are educators. Why would we ignore this science? Coming to school and being around others even if it is in smaller groups means continued exposure. If it is deemed unsafe for our students to be here then I will not bring my own children here either. We are being put in an impossible situation. Teachers are feeling that their health and well-being and the health and well-being of our families is being ignored with this mandate. Please bring up these issues at the meeting. My name is Guillermo Marmalejo Aguajalo. I am a teacher at WHS and the department chair for the social studies department. I am writing to you to formally request that teachers work remotely from home this coming week as opposed to working on site. I request this in the interest of public safety as well as the safety of my family. If closing down the school and sending students home is a matter of public safety then surely teachers are within the parameters of the safety plan based on prevention. Thank you for your time and consideration. From Teri Rodriguez. I just want to address the following. We who make up the classified also have the same concerns as the teachers as we too are on the front lines and work closely with both teachers and students. Every day we are exposed to the same environment as the teachers and the fact that that is was mentioned that it was a surprise the teachers were expected to show up and no mention of the other staff meaning classified work knowledge concerns me. This crisis involves everyone on site that all work closely together. Social distancing should be a concern for everyone. We are exposed to every student or staff member that is ill due to the fact that we are the checkpoint checkout point. I am hoping that all school personnel is a priority when it comes to making important decisions during this very difficult time. From Heidi's story. We all have extreme concerns for being asked to return to our sites and bring our children next week. Nearly every school and many many businesses are closed to help contain the spread of the virus. This is the wisest thing to do. I don't think we should be asked to risk ourselves and our families. This doesn't make any sense. Please express our concerns to the board. From Marla Chapa. Please address the following statement by Michelle Rodriguez regarding staff working at their work sites during the mandatory school closure. As a parent and PVSD teacher I see this as dangerous to our public safety. By staff still entering their work site we will only prolong the process of disinfecting the schools and work sites there for increasing exposure to the COVID-19 virus. Please consider other possibilities that do not put our teachers and students at risk of spreading the virus. From Adam Didier. I am a teacher at Watsonville High School and I am writing to formally request that staff work remotely from home next week rather than reporting to the school site. I am concerned not only with my own health and the health of my family but also with minimizing the risk of spreading this virus within the community. I believe that by taking extra precautions such as not gathering at the school site we can all contribute to minimizing the risks in our community. Thank you very much for your understanding. From Eli Reynolds. Board members thank you for getting together to see how to proceed with the current health concerns surrounding our society as whole. I am disappointed but in the lack of concern the district management is showing its employees. This is an uneasy time and yes we want to do its best for our students but we have an obligation to do it as safe for us and our family. Being in a place that has so many people at it recently without deep cleanings is concerning. If COVID-19 is a major health concern I would think the district would facilitate cleaning before putting us back in such an environment. Another major concern of mine is what to do with my child during my work day. Daycares are also closed due to COVID-19 concerns. Although I was told I am able to I do not want to bring my child who is under two into an unclean environment because of risk of touching something that has germs. That is not just COVID-19 but all germs that are present when you get a group of kids together.  Now I am in the predicament of either losing pay or bringing my child to an unclean environment. I urge the board to think of how they would feel in the situation. How would your family react to such a situation? Please do it as best for your employees and take the precautions that scientists and governments are advising to keep people safe. This is uncharted water for everyone and we recognize that. This has to be a hard decision for everyone involved but please use precaution. I will do what the board decides and I hope that the right decision for teachers as well as students. From Carla Villalobos. I am saddened by the disrespect the district has towards staff. I don't see why staff should have to come in and expose ourselves more than we already have. Then we have to bring our children and expose them too. I understand coming in one day to set up an online class. The whole isn't necessary. Other counties have completely shut down. I don't understand why can't we. From Maya Murphy. There is very strong evidence that showing social distancing is the only thing that's slowing the coronavirus down. Mandating that teachers continue to come to school forcing us to be around others even if this is a small group means continued exposure. Meeting is small groups passing in hallways and lunch rooms touching common use doorknobs and copy machines etc. Continuing to use public restrooms which are not regularly sanitized and spending time in rooms which are either unsafe for us to be in because of the process of being clean with strong disinfectants or have not yet been sanitized even once is not social distancing. Furthermore offering us the option to bring our children with us to school is both unwise and unsafe. If it is deemed unsafe for our students to be here then I will not bring my own child here either. We are being put in an impossible situation. The need to stay home is very important to limit the spread of this pandemic care for our families and ensure that we are not bringing further exposure home and many of us don't have enough sick days built up to weather this storm. Teachers are feeling that their health and well-being and the health and well-being of our families is being ignored with this mandate. I spent many hours last night today putting together work for my students to complete at home during the school closure. I spent hours between last night and right after the school closure. I also spent hours during the school closure to prepare information handouts, notes and instructions for Google Classroom and a research project that could be conducted remotely so that my students would have work to complete in the event that the shutdown lasts longer. My TA spent an entire period finding students that I don't have today in their other classes and handing out this important this information to them. I have done my due diligence to prepare a backup plan for my students education. I have made new online teaching programs that might come up. I am committed to my students and their success but not to furthering the spread of this pandemic. Please don't force me to put myself, my child and my entire family at risk in order to check a box that teachers are working. I ask you to respect this. I ask you this in respect and fear. From Kristi Judd. Dear respected board members, were you aware that our assistant superintendent of HR, Ms. Glean, just signed an MOU I am equally disappointed that my union didn't ask its members opinions in any way but I will take that up with them. And we can bring our kids to work? If we closed our district down entirely as we can for at least two weeks or with a plan to return when the governor and county health officer approve the contamination will have died down with no need for any personnel to be on site to sanitize disinfect at the site level hence lessening potential exposure and taking care of our staff not to mention saving so much time, energy and resources. Sadly we don't have an emergency distance learning plan in place and hopefully we will after this. Just sending out links or videos without all proper channels in place may do more harm than good. The reaction to a poorly planned roll out of distance learning could determine support for such efforts in the future. I would be happy to be part of a team that explored best practices of how to fit together a well developed plan that includes how to properly audit training teachers for virtual learning days, a process for implementing district wide communication, how to mitigate risk when things go wrong, how to inform trained parents and teachers. Trying to inform and even get parents to show up to pick up a packet and gather all the classroom materials needed or access something online for secondary well sadly we can try but having nothing in place to ensure participation will be a challenge at this point. The county information sent out to families made no mention of any such expectation of parents or teachers, no training to try and do this with fidelity would be a poor choice in my instructional technology expertise. As our government has declared a state of emergency as well as local county health officer please have the district complete forum J13-13A our funding will remain in place in instructional minutes penalties will be waived no need to continue to have a staff on campus during the state of emergency and that's the time for that. From Ryan Alitas I'm a teacher at PV High and I would like to share my thoughts on the letter I received from Dr. Rodriguez regarding next week while I agree that closing the school to students next week I disagree with the directive to have staff reporting to campus social distancing is critical to slowing the spread of the virus and closing for an extended period will it allow for deep cleaning and provide a window for any lingering spores to expire. Staff on campus would prolong the potential exposure or would eventually lead to another need to close the school. We need to act boldly right now to halt the spread using all available tools having staff on campus during a shutdown is misguided and dangerous. From Joseph Maneldi I appreciate the opportunity to be heard and also recognize the forward thinking and closing schools at this point in time. I am asking you to consider the possibility of allowing teachers to work from home rather than come to school next week. We can still prepare for distance learning communicate with each other and build quality lessons for our students while working from home. As a parent of three kids in local schools I find the idea of bringing my children to work with me to be irresponsible. I can and will work from home however I don't want to be punished by losing sick leave for working from home. I'm hearing the same message from many teachers and certificated employees at our site. At the very least please consider making an exception for people who have children at home and for high-risk employees so that they can work from home and prepare for distance learning. There is no reason not to keep schools open or available for those who need to come into school and make copies or do whatever is needed to prepare for distance learning. However there is no reason to require that we work in the classroom. Classified staff should be given the same consideration and we should plan for things to take longer to get done and we should take care of our highest community by allowing them to stay home as well. It is all of our responsibility to take care of each other and as a school board member it is your responsibility to look at all of the students and staff alike. From Maria Alcantar to I want to voice my concerns which I am sure are the concerns of many other colleagues regarding recent information that was shared with us. We received an email from our superintendent yesterday night stating that the school's superintendents and the Santa Cruz county of office education have decided in concurrence with the Santa Cruz county health services agency to close all public Santa Cruz schools in California. This morning we received another one stating that we had to be at work next week and we could bring our children with us. I am really confused as to how we could follow the social distancing protocols that have been recommended by our health departments and CDC. Furthermore I am having a hard time understanding why the situation changed from schools closed to only with no students on campus. From my understanding a big percentage of infections have resulted from adult to adult contact so the question is regarding the sanitizing of our schools. Is there a plan to deep sanitize the schools? Will this be able to happen while we are in our classrooms and offices next week? We recently received an email from one of our staff members stating that a family member of hers was exposed to a possible COVID-19 case and therefore she would also self isolate for the day. What is going to be the follow-up on that? What about the people like myself who are exposed to the staff member? Who will give us information about the people around me daily? Again will there be a deep sanitizing protocol for our school? Lastly I have been hearing a lot of different information regarding if we will be able to hold parent student teacher meetings next week or not. What will be the protocol on that? I heard from different colleagues that no students are allowed on campus yet our children who are also students can come to work with us. I know that the situation is fluid and things might change from day to day and protocols that need to be reflected upon at a deeper level as decisions concerning this virus are made in our district and county. We want to offer the best for our students or in order for that to happen we also need to take care of ourselves and well-being. From Sharon Paul, I have a major concern about coming to work next week. We were told that all the students are to stay home in their homes only going out when necessary. We were told that there was going to be a deep cleaning of staff and kids running around. We were told that the virus can live on a surface for a week. Shouldn't the buildings be empty to allow the cleaning and wait time? How can that happen if the buildings are occupied? Also I myself am in the over 60 population and this is very worrisome to me. If most of the population is being told to go home and stay inside, don't go out unless it's necessary.  It just doesn't make any sense to me. This comment is from Kristen Prestridge at Lakeview Middle School and I am writing to ask you to grant permission to work remotely from home to PVSD Certificate employees. At Lakeview we've had extensive training in Google Classroom and so we are all prepared to deliver our curriculum online. All of our students are issued a Chromebook to bring to and from school every day. Any additional training as required by Greater Bay Area have been mandated to work from home. Please extend the same option to us educated professionals who already work from home most evenings and weekends. I ask that you give this option serious consideration because our health and the health of our community is at grave risk. We have been told that there would be an extra cleaning and disinfectants made available. While I did see a custodian wiping down students desks on Wednesday, I have yet to see any additional disinfectant hand sanitizer or extra cleaning. Based on that I have the capacity to clean our schools quickly or efficiently enough at this time to ensure our safety. I am very concerned and confused that staff is expected to be at their work site while our schools are closed next week. This seems contradictory keeping our staff healthy. If we are able to properly plan for distance learning from our homes shouldn't we just do that. It seems like an unnecessary risk to the health of our staff and their families. Did I read the name correctly? I believe it was Denise Alba. From Amy Fitzgerald. I am able to do my work that could be done in the classroom from home and collaborate with my colleagues online. I would prefer to work from home Monday through Wednesday of next week rather than work on site. From Phyllis Nagamine. On Wednesday, March 11th, 2020 at H.A. Hyde Elementary School in room CC2 SELPA staff was involved in mandatory staff training with fellow SELPA members from Rio de Mar at H.A. Hyde Elementary School. There are about 25 people that we sat next to and engaged with in group exercise as we shared papers, learning tools and had a close one-on-one discussions. Then we found out later that same day via PVSD email that a person for Rio de Mar tested positive for COVID-19 and has been placed in quarantine. How can we be reassured that no other person that was at that meeting was carrying the virus? From Maria Gutierrez. I want to express my concerns over having to come to work. I feel like I am putting myself at risk and the risk lives of my family members. I believe that I can be just as productive working from home without having to expose myself and putting the lives of others at risk to the coronavirus. I hope you take my concerns into serious consideration. Thank you for your time. From Luisa Arias. I am an education specialist at PV High School. Currently I am concerned with the district's intention of having staff serve certificated and classified come to work the week of March 16th through 20th. I feel that by coming to work I am putting myself as well as other at risk by exposing further contact interaction. Working from home would be the most efficient. Thank you for your time and I hope you take my concern into serious consideration. From Brenda Amador. In regards to the proceedings of the school closures for students but not for the school district personnel except Rio de Mar. I believe it would be a great idea to keep the school sites and district closed to the public. I understand we want to keep students and personnel safe and I believe that limiting human contact could help us all. If parents should have any concerns or questions the staff will be available by phone. We want parents and their students to stay safe and most importantly healthy. Much like the county's public health officers directive is to stay home and minimize social contact to the extent possible. PV should also limit social contact. This will help bring more ease to the personnel who like myself have to meet with parents and children on a daily basis. Thank you and hope that we all remain safe and healthy. From Jason Cordova. For those of us with breathing issues such as asthma is it still recommended to go to work? Will our spring break from the 30th to the 3rd be canceled if this coronavirus situation continues or will we be asked to come to work? From Alfonso Madrano. My name is Alfonso. I am a site technician for the PV SD. Frankly I feel uneasy about putting ourselves at risk by coming into work next week. I work with a staff member who is at Rio de Mardin last week doing some activities with students making him and everyone he interacts with a possible carrier. Next week I am supposed to disinfect all of the Chromebooks we have here to distribute them to families to take home. So as far as I know I have already been at risk for exposure and will be exposing myself further this up and coming week. My mother has an autoimmune deficiency that makes her a high risk carrier for this virus. Her and my father are elderly and live in the same town as I so I see them frequently. Coincidentally my mother's family is also going through a tough time with my grandfather's declining health. He is basically on this deathbed. I would love to go see him but I am scared to expose my grandmother and other family members by doing so. I hope you can understand why are we what we are going through on our level and I hope the board can sympathize with me and many more that share my feelings. Thank you for your time and I hope you take this into consideration. From Hilary Reid I am writing to express my concerns that PVSD teachers are expected to attend school next week when students are not here. We are diligent professionals who are very tech savvy and capable of working from home. I know that I and most of my colleagues are planning to assign and grade work remotely through Google Classroom as we have been doing for years. Making us come into our school is something we are told by all scientific studies that the best thing for us to do is stay home and limit our exposure to other people. Why put us in our families at risk so that we can document we attended work. Admin can easily check up on our Google Classrooms and our grade books to see that we are in fact working if that is a concern. Otherwise we should be following the advice of all the professionals and taking care of ourselves so we will limit the spread of the virus. Hopefully you and the public will be able to understand how we are doing to keep the community safe and secure. From Bill Beecher. Both Vietnam and Cambodia closed their schools early on in order to minimize the spread of COVID-19. Children may not be affected as much as adults but they can be transmitters to adults. I agree with shutting down of the PVSD schools. You could have done Rio Del Mar as an isolated case and that would have been short-sighted. This virus has a 12-14 day undetected period so you cannot be prepared for a long shutdown. The U.S. government has been very late to respond to this world crisis. UCF medical people are predicting that 1.6 million Americans may die. Acting now is prudent but be prepared for a long school shutdown. Can we provide internet teaching if this is necessary? If you are prepared for the worst it rarely happens. Our government may be failing at this but you do not have to. My prayers are with all members of the community. Thank you. Next we have Eric Seales. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the cases that have appeared in Santa Cruz County today's letter from superintendent Rodriguez is very concerning. The purpose of school closures to prevent the spread and reduce the rate of transmission of the COVID-19 cases that are anticipated to follow the decision to have staff report to work will undermine school closures. It is important to pay all staff without something in return and prioritizes fiscal issues over health. Santa Cruz County claims to hold the safety and well-being of all students, families, and school personnel as its highest priority. It chooses to risk the health of all staff by requiring them to be at work. You put staff, families, and the community at risk because of continued exposure. Your strategic use of prioritizing continued learning is important. Last night's letter from Dr. Rodriguez made no mention of having staff return to work. And today's update during working hours limited the response from school staff will be directly impacted by our return to work on the 16th. While we understand a lot of discussion and thinking must go into making district countywide decisions, we urge you to prioritize the health of all staff and have them work from home if their jobs allow and excuse staff from duties if remote work is assigned by Eric Seales, Marcel Zamora, Lee Klein, Alexander Wilson, Marisa Janssen, Jessica Corona, and Esther Ramos. From Jamie Bloom. So in between my principal's e-mail to staff this morning do not come to work next week. And Michelle Rodriguez is 20 minutes later, staff will be on site next week. My emotions have run the gammon. How does having us here on campus along with each other and their children fulfill the social distance criteria recommended to lessen the spread of the virus? When will that deep cleaning happen? While I'm here in my classroom and by the way, though I missed the custodians deep cleaning training I witnessed one aspect of it yesterday when my custodian walked through my room with student presence, squirting each desk with a fluid and then departing. The fluid was streamed under the desk and so covered only approximately 5% of the total surface. These district mandates and minimal cleaning protocols do not make me feel respected or valued by my district. These district mandates and minimal cleaning protocols do not make me feel safe. Would you please bring my comments to the attention of the participants at the emergency meeting from Lizette Rodriguez. It's my understanding that PVSD schools would be closed starting Monday 16th 2020 due to the COVID-19 concerns. As a sister of a student at PVSD and a community member I would like to suggest for the district to follow the home school curriculum where students should be given homework packets and or assignments that can be submitted online. Some students already have their own books that are used to complete assignments. Therefore asking students to do this would not be a burden. We need to ensure that we continue helping students advance academically even during a public health outbreak since the PVSD students are performing below average both in English language arts and mathematics compared to the state. ELA 46.11 points below standard the state 3 points below standard and math 77.7 points below standard 33.5 points below standard. Also the homework packets can help decrease stress for parents and keep the students busy for a couple of hours a day. My name is Cara Matus Matias and I am a teacher at Lakeview Middle School. Coming from the places both a PVSD teacher and a parent of a young child I'm reaching out to you in concern and disappointed that our district leaders are asking teachers to attend their school sites next week. To require teachers to attend school when students in the department of health have chosen to close them is socially irresponsible and unsafe. A national emergency was declared which has stressed the importance of social distancing yet the district is calling upon teachers to do the opposite and congregate. Already teachers have been so vulnerable to the virus since we exposed hundreds of students and visitors a day. There is no ability to know who has been exposed. Teachers need to practice social distancing as well and see if they are exhibiting symptoms. To come together at our school sites next week truly defeats the purpose of providing closure and could potentially lead to more cases occurring. The invitation to bring children to work also defeats the purpose of asking our children to stay home. We are trying to limit social interactions as much as possible. A solution is that the teachers should be able to set up their distance learning curriculum at home similar to what much of the population has been doing to limit social interactions. Also before teachers are asked to return to their school sites all schools should be deep cleaned. We have not seen any demonstration of this happening at our site. I haven't even received cleaning supplies in my classroom. I don't even have a sink with soap. Right now many teachers are feeling as if they aren't worth being protected and supported. Please respect our health and safety. Our short term protection will yield a long term positive resolution. Thank you for your time. From Ashley Scully. Thank you so much for closing the schools. I was wondering what you have to say to teachers who have people in their homes who are in the demographic most vulnerable to COVID-19. We are very scared about being around students while this virus is circulating for fear that we catch it from children who show no symptoms and bring it home and pass it on to our loved ones. Will we be asked to come back to work with students while the virus is still circulating around our community? Thank you again once again for the steps you have taken to protect our community. From Mermiro Madrano. My name is Mermiro Madrano and I am a school counselor at PVHS. I feel like district employees and our families are most at risk for this exposure to COVID-19. What is the logic behind us coming onsite to work next week? What can we do onsite that we cannot do from home? Is this a trust issue? Is it district employees who are getting sick? Symptoms can be visible until days or weeks from getting exposed. I have family members who have a weak or compromised immune system. How can I be guaranteed that myself or they will not get sick? This can potentially become a big legal matter for the district due to not taking the necessary precautions to protect their staff and their families. Reinstate the decision for our staff to not be at work next week. Deep clean the schools, analyze what staff are essential to come back to work and require them to be physically present while the rest continue to not be present. Learn from places like China, Italy and New York. They did not take the necessary steps and now it is rapidly spreading. If Watsonville comes to that point the district will be a central player in creating that reality. From Kenna Gallagher. I am emailing to voice my serious concerns for teachers and families that may be impacted by the decision to have school staff return to campus for the week of the 16th to the 20th. Would it not be more pertinent to have teachers and their kids stay at home to keep their health in peak condition so when students return staff will be healthy enough to reach them. It seems risky to have school staff and their children on campus potentially being exposed to and or spreading the virus around campus. If all staff stay home for 10 days to let the virus die naturally then sanitize the 11th. So by day 12 we can all return to work school happy and healthy. I appreciate your time and hope you make the decision to keep teachers and school staff at home to keep this pandemic minimized. From Margaret Rosa. I value and respect the scientists and researchers who say that the best way to slow down transmission is social isolation. Coming to work with over 70 colleagues and their dependent children isn't social isolation. This virus can remain on surfaces for a week. Speaking on behalf of tenured and non-tenured staff I say we are being asked to risk the health of our children and ourselves because the district lacks the trust that we will work effectively from home. We have report cards distant learning preparations and planning that can all occur from the safety of our homes. I've been ill for a few weeks now. I took off three days of work due to a cough sore throat and laryngitis over a week ago and I've been experiencing malaise. For all I know I had a mild case of this virus. Asking for a doctor's note to excuse an absence when the healthcare system is being overwhelmed is fool worthy. Unless someone has pneumonia or worse all ill individuals should remain self quarantined and shouldn't go to a physician is the responsible thing to do. Please consider that when asking for a teacher excuse for absence. Lastly the 1918 flu Spanish flu epidemic pandemic serves as a model for what to do and what not to do during these times. Please respect the lessons of history and show that you respect us as professionals to know what is best for us, our families may you and your loved ones remain healthy during these difficult times. Thank you. From Graciela Diaz Lorenco I am a teacher at HA Hyde I completely agree with the statement it was a statement we read earlier from Connor O'Brien I am a teacher at Aptos High School and I'm writing to formally submit for your consideration a request that you allow staff to work from home next week. The requirement that we work on campus Monday through Wednesday stands in contrast to the county health department suggesting that we practice social distancing and therefore puts our most vulnerable staff in harm's way. Many of our students at Aptos High School are over age 60 and have pre-existing conditions. We need to take action to protect our teachers and by proxy our students in our community. Thank you for taking the time to read my email I hope the trustees will reconsider the decision and minimize the impact of this growing threat to our community. My name is Carrie Gill. I am a teacher at AJHS and my children attend Mar Vista. I also live with 70 year old parents. My mother has just been diagnosed with a heart condition. They are in the at risk population. I am extremely uncomfortable with being asked to go to my school site next week to prepare for online learning especially with my children. Sites have not been cleaned or disinfected. I refuse to put my family in that situation. We are choosing isolation so that we can protect our family. However it feels that ADA funds have taken a priority over my family's health by having students attend school at all this week. Please respect our personal choices about how we choose to handle this for our families. We should be able to work remotely the entire weekend into the future. There is nothing I need from my site that I can't get from my home except toilet paper. I am so pleased to hear that there is a plan to feed our neediest students. I do question our plan for online learning and how this will affect our students who do not have access. It's a difficult and unprecedented situation. Please let teachers work remotely starting Monday so we can stop the spread of this quickly and get back to our classrooms. From Jennifer Doty during the district office mandatory staff meeting regarding coronavirus on Friday at 11.30 a.m. one of the staff asked the county superintendent about having to work and bringing their children to school with them with no child care during the closure. He gave a response that was consistent and as confusing as the original messaging that it will be handled on a case by case basis. He also added that he would not be bringing his daughters to work next week. I felt the lack of compassion from him with this statement.  His resources and salary and life far outweigh the majority of employees standing in that room. These employees are trying to figure out how to keep their families safe, still be paid and required to work without any child care. I feel this was not properly thought out before closing schools and requiring staff to work. It's a tragedy to hear the county superintendent be so unaware of the message that he is sending to the hardworking employees of the district. From Aliyah Tru I am a teacher at Aptos High School and I am writing to formally submit for your consideration a request that you allow staff to work from home next week. The requirement that we work on campus Monday through Wednesday stands in contrast to the County Health Department's suggestion that we practice social distancing and therefore puts our most vulnerable staff in harm's way. Many of our employees at Aptos High School are over the age of 60 and have preexisting conditions. We need to take action to protect our teachers and by proxy our students and our community. Thank you for taking the time to read my report. I hope the trustees will reconsider the decision and minimize the impact of this growing threat to our community. From Chantelle Emanuel I am writing to ask you to consider allowing teachers to work from home. In the past two days the World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 a health pandemic. The president has declared a national emergency and Santa Cruz County has closed down all schools. The County Public Officer issued a directive for students and families to stay home and minimize social contact to the extent possible. In Santa Cruz County are left without options. I have two young children that I would have to bring to my work with me. Not only is that irresponsible in light of the County Public Health Officer's directive it would be impossible. Anyone who has raised children may have experienced. My children will not stand by idly while I work on my laptop. If a business or organization has the ability to allow its employees to stay home they should. Please reconsider this decision. From Stacey Aronovici I have been a teacher in the PVUSD at Aptos High School for 23 years. Those of us who have been around for a long time know that we have had our share of crises that we have had to help our students and colleagues navigate through. With the COVID-19 virus we are in uncharted territory. Preparing to go to work early this morning and saying goodbye to my students for at least a week I pondered what I could do to reassure them. What activities could I send them home with to help them stay calm and have a sense of purpose and also move the curriculum forward. I believe my students generally appreciated the effort I put in today and they seemed reassured. As the day wore on however the teachers and staff at Aptos High did not feel so reassured. Questions began to form about the district's decision to mandate the teachers and support staff remain on campus next week. I urge the board to reconsider the decision to ask staff to work on site and allow us to instead work at home. Some of us have school aged children that we need to take care of and bringing them with us to work is not a viable solution. Others lived with loved ones as our caregivers for or themselves in the first category for this virus. I asked the board to follow the county public health officer issued directive for students and families to stay at home and minimize social contact to the extent possible. This should include all families including your teachers and support staff from Dr. Ricardo Huerta keep all staff and faculty at home to care for their families and protect themselves from the virus from Joanne Tabaz to quote the joint statement of the LA Unified School District California has now entered a critical new phase in the fight to stop the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is evidence the virus is already present in the communities we serve and our efforts now must be aimed at preventing it spread. These school districts like our own are closing schools in their district effective Monday in order to contribute to this effort. It was with great relief that I read the email sent last night Thursday from our board of supervisors announcing the closing of our schools. As students and I'm devoted to their education I felt uneasy with the possibility of sacrificing my own health for them. In fact under the circumstances I felt very uncomfortable even coming to school one more day Friday before we close. I teach first graders at Maravista school and they like first graders everywhere are like a pile of puppy dogs and always touching each other and touching their mouths and efficient at washing their hands even under the best of circumstances. My classroom is contaminated everywhere despite my mitigation efforts I appreciate the proactive stance our district has taken to protect our students and their families from contact with the COVID-19 virus but I am flabbergasted at the lack of respect for teaching staff. In order to slow the rate of contamination the best experts in the nation indeed in the world are all recommending that we practice social distancing. The most effective actions we can take to slow the spread of this disease are self quarantine at home. Studies are showing that the virus lives on surfaces from two to five days. Why should we be testing it with our own lives? While I appreciate the desire of the district to initiate plans for the distance in online education with our students I object to the requirement that we put our own safety and jeopardy by going into the school sites on Monday. There are too many among us who are in the vulnerable population due to age or other health issues. This is something that can be accomplished just as easily on a later date in the week or via distance learning for ourselves. Please consider requiring teachers to come to our school sites on Monday and come up with a different plan to initiate distance education for our students. Thank you. From Edward Rico. I want to acknowledge that this is a difficult time for everyone including decision makers. However, a number of concerns about the current plan. A shutdown of one week makes no sense. Are we expecting things to be better in one week? I don't think so. In 14 days it's the amount of time that public health officials suggest for quarantine. How is one week even possible? At a minimum the shutdown should be extended until the beginning of spring break so that we have three weeks to determine the progress of the pandemic and develop a more comprehensive, carefully constructed and appropriate local response. If we are being told that social distancing is the goal to slow the spread of the virus, why are we being forced to do the opposite and go to our job sites? While I understand the need for preparing ongoing learning for opportunities for our students, the required to be on site is inconsistent with a policy that reflects a concern for our health. While I applaud in concept the invitation for staff to bring their kids with them, this only increases the health risk to everyone and further strays from the social distancing imperative. Suggesting that being forced to show up at our job sites is somehow a benefit to us in terms of continuing to be paid and protecting retirement, health benefits, etc., is nonsensical. There are alternatives to ensure that these things continue in health and health. But the challenges that we face in this area, if we get into the business and if we do get into the salary, are meaningless if I am dead. I strongly urge you to immediately extend the school closures until the start of spring break and allow us to work from home rather than forcing us to put our lives at further risk. Thank you for consideration of this request. Did I read his name? Okay. Thank you. I am still okay if you are okay continuing me to read filter a couple out. From Vicky Sanchez, I was very surprised to learn that staff are expected to be at school on Monday. The custodians need to have access to rooms and time to deep clean. It will interfere with their work to have staff on site. Also if schools are unsafe for kids, what makes them safe for adults? Staff are being told they can bring their kids to school, but that does not seem like a safe or productive situation for the adults or the children. As a teacher implementing a new language arts program for two grade levels four through five, and two languages English and Spanish, I have been planning work to do at home for quite some time before I run out of things to do. Plus report cards are due soon and that alone can eat up a chunk of time. Normally I would spend most of my weekend doing them so it would be nice to have some time to work on them during school hours. If all of my students can take home their Chromebooks and if we get free Wi-Fi for my students who do not have internet access, I would love to continue classes online. I enjoy being with my students and would love to get to collaborate with them online. We all have laptops, access to curriculum online and access to Google Suite for collaboration. We can conference on Google as well. I don't mind working during work hours. I would just feel safer doing it from home. I think most of our staff at HA Hyde already does a lot with technology and learning about distance learning should not be something we should have to come together to learn. Hello, video, screencast, etc. Teach us to use distance learning tools as a distance learning platform. I realize these are hard times and we don't have strong leadership at the federal level so states, counties, school districts, and municipalities are scrambling to figure out what to do to keep people healthy. But working from home seems like a no brainer to me. Thank you for considering my input and for your leadership and service, Vicky Sanchez. All right, I'm going to forward a couple to Kim and then a couple to Maria. You'll be forwarded as an attachment. We just a few minutes to do that. Kim, are you able to, did you get them? No? I'm gonna keep reading them. All right, I got my 10 second break there. Okay, from Kiva Silver. Dear esteemed trustees, thank you for responding so quickly to the current coronavirus threat in our school district. I am, however, writing express my serious concern regarding your district's policy requiring teachers to deliver online education to their students from their classrooms work site during this exceptionally difficult situation. As a faculty member at UCSC who is currently adjusting to the shift to online education, I understand how difficult it is to enact consistent work policy while ensuring continuing education in the midst of such a fast-changing situation. Nevertheless, your mandate requiring teachers to work on site next week is misguided for the following reasons. First, many teachers have their own children at home as their schools are similarly shifting to online education. Your suggestion that children can simply come to work with their teacher or parents is deeply concerning. You are in effect asking teachers not only to risk their own health through potential contamination. Coronavirus can live on hard surfaces for several days, but also risk their children's health. The CDC recommendation is to stay at home, not bring your children to work. Second, your policy is intrinsically degrading. Teachers spend countless hours at home grading papers, designing lesson plans, emailing students, writing letters of recommendation and planning curricula. Your policy assumes that teachers will only work if confined to their work site, which also disregards all the work they already do at home, but also disrespects their commitments to serving their students. As a professor who is effectively shifting by necessity to an online education model, I assure you that online instruction is the most effective in the comfort of ones on home, especially when facing a life-threatening viral infection. Thirdly, third, your policy is not consistent with that implemented by my employer, UCSC, which has not resorted to the unhealthful degrading and dehumanizing policy of requiring their teachers to work on site. Given this policy discrepancy, are we parents to assume that UCSC respects and trusts their instructors more than PVSD? If this is the case, I will certainly recommend that my graduate students, many of whom are considering a professional career and teaching is a profession as teachers, not considered teaching in PVSD. You're sincerely from a very concerned educator and parent, Giva Silver. So from Edward Rico. Okay. All right. Like I said, I did get a couple of duplicates. From Alejandra Viva. I urge the board to reconsider the decision of requiring teachers to work for three days during this coronavirus pandemic. Mostly adults are being affected by this deadly virus. However, teachers, adults are being obliged to go to work exposing us to greater risk. We can develop remote learning from home. Thank you. From Burr. It seems contradictory to tell staff that they can bring their kids to work. Why close schools than tell staff that they have to come in and can bring their kids? What are you thinking, PVSD? I appreciate the work in the hustle going on right now. So no disrespect intended. But it's a great, crazy suggestion that defeats the purpose. From Deborah Matlow. Dear board members, my name is Deborah Matlow, and I'm a dedicated second grade teacher at Valencia Elementary. It is my understanding that Dr. Rodriguez has worked hard to represent our district in the meetings of superintendents that have occurred. Thank you for that, Dr. Rodriguez. As this week progressed and the absences with independent study requests arrived, my second grade colleagues and I took it upon ourselves without direction to develop a comprehensive differentiated offline and online curriculum to present our families through spring break. We prepared, printed, and distributed the offline portion of curriculum to our families today so that we could immediately support those kids without internet access. Individually labeled packets are waiting in the office for those kids who were absent Friday. We have already communicated with our families about our commitment to continually provide them via email and Google classrooms with all the information for various online learning opportunities, including specific targeted assignments on Google classroom, benchmark advance and Khan Academy. Now we are being given a directive to work on site through a joint MOU with our Union Monday through Wednesday in order to prepare long term learning for our students. I am told I can bring my own kids along so I don't have to get childcare. Why are you requiring teachers and perhaps our children to return to an environment that will not yet have been deep cleaned and disinfected? It is naive to think our classrooms are not exposed by now. I am absolutely disappointed that our individual well-being and the health of the greater community through potential exposure is being pushed aside. The CDC is instructing people to stay at home and avoid unnecessary interactions. That is exactly what I would like to do, especially when the required work needed to be completed requires nothing more than my focus, a laptop and an internet connection. We are passionate, dedicated people who can absolutely be trusted to diligently work on our required tasks from home all week. I ask you to please consider this reconsider this mandate and show us classroom teachers that you trust us and care us about us too. Did I already read a message from Deborah Mallard from Karina Gomez. To whom it may concern, I am an instructional assistant at one of our middle schools. What the school district is doing is simply outrageous. Most of the cases of COVID-19 who have tested positive have been adults. Three of those adults have been from our district PVSD. The district claims that the most important thing for them is keeping children and families in the community safe. PVSD staff is also part of the community. It makes no sense to keep children at home but staff at work. If this happens, we will eventually expose each other with the virus and in turn expose our families at home. Please keep in mind that we have young children or family members with compromised immune systems. This could all be life threatening. The district has the power to put a stop to it and help. From Jenny Rena. Dear PVSD School Board, thank you for taking the preventative measure of closing the schools in order to limit the spread of COVID-19 virus. I am asking, I'm writing to ask you to please allow staff to work from home next week. Many of us have began shifting our courses to online learning modalities and I do not feel it is all responsible or necessary for us to physically be on campus. The whole point of social distancing is to separate people from one another in order to limit possible exposure and decrease the chances of spreading the virus. By asking us to come to work, we are exposing ourselves once more to this potentially lethal virus. There are many teachers and staff in the district who are in the high-risk category and this decision puts them especially at risk. In addition, many of us were told not to bring, we're told to bring our children to work if unable to find that childcare which most of us will not do, which although extremely generous adds to the number of people on campus and decreases our ability to socially distance ourselves. Please put the help of the community and teachers first by allowing us to work from home next week. Thank you for your time and consideration. From Lillia Dennevin. Hello, everyone. I am an English teacher at Watsonville High. I would like to argue that the district's directive of moving to distance learning including requiring teachers to collaborate on site for three days to plan, it is not feasible or equitable for high schools. My five key points are as follows. Ensuring that every PVSD household has consistent Wi-Fi is simply not feasible in exigent circumstances. Students will not have tech support for faulty Chromebooks and keyboard issues have run rampant this year. Many teams will be assuming childcare responsibilities for siblings. In addition, each point one through three has potential to add stress to an already stressful time. Motivated students facing these barriers will despair about falling behind. Assignments completed off-site are essentially invalid for grading purposes. The first reason is plagiarism. The second half is there are no way to determine who completed the work. The second is that SPED students and English learners will not have access to support and accommodations for totally independent work and yet will be accountable for it. Finally, classroom teachers are not specially trained in the delivery of online instruction. Recent shifts to emphasize student centered activities, collaboration and personalized learning have transformed many classrooms and students and teachers alike are not trained in practice in online equivalents. Though we often assume our digital native students are tech savvy, I can say from experience that they are not so with ed tech and less explicitly taught. Without that explicit teaching, the returns on the investment of our time and energy will be highly variable. Some teachers may be able to deliver distance learning and some students may be able to access it. Some will complete it and some will learn. Is our goal equitable opportunity to learn? Holding students and teachers accountable for work completed and inherently inequitable not to mention chaotic and stressful situations seems counter to our mission here in PBSD. Teachers should be remote to comply, work remotely to comply with best practices for slowing viral spread. We can provide a set of optimal enrichment opportunities via Google Classroom. Students should be encouraged to access them. Neither should be an entangled web of unreasonable expectations and inconsistent communication during a time of uncertainty and chaos. From Abel Fernandez. Having some time to disinfect our own homes, cars, clothes and preparing for a scenario that is not best case and then coming to work and helping disinfect the school would be in my would be my opinion of helping keep the district safe. From Samuel Stoddard. Dear partners in education, we are writing to communicate some concerns that we have about the plans for our current health emergency. We understand this is unfamiliar territory for everyone and want to make sure that you are aware of the issues on our site that our site know those are concerned about. We wanted to let you know that even with such short notice landmark staff worked very hard today to make sure that all students went home with both internet and traditional forms of work to keep them learning in the upcoming weeks. The students there is an equity issue as many of our students do not have access to devices and or reliable internet that would be necessary for distance learning. While some of our students have access to devices and classroom surveys we have found that a significant number of these devices are only cell phones are these adequate for distance learning. We are concerned that hotspots will not provide adequate social distancing. Environmental issues the schools will not be able to adequately cleaned and disinfected over the weekend to ensure a germ free environment for teachers working on site. We still do not have the needed supplies to inspect our classrooms.  How is this going to be addressed. How can we work together to ensure that our students are still learning while we honor social distancing. We feel that this would be best accomplished by teachers working from home. Teachers with underlying health concerns as defined by the CDC and those who live with family members that are at risk are very concerned that working on site for even a few days will compromise their health or that of their families. The point of closure is to limit interaction in order to slow the down the spreading of this virus. We feel that the responsible solution to this situation would be to allow teachers to work from home starting on Monday March 16th 2020 from RSLA Lopez. With the rise is positive COVID COVID 19 cases in the county. The purpose of the Santa Cruz County school closures to avoid crowds due to the possible exposure to the virus. If staff having to bring their children to an unsanitized site where they will have contact with other children and staff does this not defeat the purpose of avoiding contact for safety. As a staff member and single mother I have no one to help care for my daughter during the school closure. My daughter has asthma and as we are well aware the COVID 19 has severe and many time fatal outcomes for individuals with underlying conditions. As a mother I am not willing to risk taking my daughter with me to my work site and exposing her to other children and staff during this pandemic. From Gwen Berliner Dear board members when I read Dr. Rodriguez letter last night I was relieved to hear that the decision was made to close schools next week. I figured this meant that all people who work in the schools would also get to benefit from social distancing. I was shocked to read this morning that it was just students who are staying home next week and staff members are expected to go to work. This does not seem to coincide with what scientists world health officials and doctors and nurses who are two weeks ahead of us facing this pandemic are recommending. For example in a conference yesterday at the UCSF Medical Center the doctor being interviewed stated that all people 60 years or older should stay at home. I am 59 years old but I live with my husband who is nine years older than me and has asthma.  All of your letters start by stating that you are concerned about the safety and wellness of all students families in school personnel. This is yet this does not jive with your decision to keep schools open for personnel next week. This disease is spread from person to person and it seems that one person who has a confirmed positive diagnosis with coronavirus as a teacher. This is evident that more and more teachers will spread the disease to each other if they are in contact with each other. Teachers spend 77% of their waking day at school working. If they do not have to be in contact with each other that could reduce our daily exposure by 77%. The coronavirus is starting to decline in China. They are taking much more drastic social distancing steps. Doctors and nurses from Italy are sending dispatches begging us to reconsider what our positive case rate will look like two weeks from now. We need to make decisions that will slow the spread of this illness to give health officials time to react. Please rethink your decision today. Thank you. From Neurisa Graydon. Dear school board. I am baffled by the decision to require teachers to report to the classrooms on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. This is grossly irresponsible in the face of a pandemic. We are closed for the purpose of student health but it is compulsory for staff to report to potentially contaminated classrooms. My husband is a teacher in the Campbell Union High School District and his school is closed for one month and he is not required to step foot on campus. Frankly this is disrespectful. This is a disrespectful petty move that will potentially add to the already climbing number of cases in Santa Cruz County. As teachers we are able and willing to provide online assignments for students. Our students will not benefit from their teachers being on campus when they are not there. So what exactly is being gained by putting all PVSD teachers in harm's way. Please do the responsible thing but health health first and reconsider this decision. From Holly Ota. Thank you for having complied so prudently with the Santa Cruz County Public Health Officers director regarding preventive practices to quell the spread of coronavirus. I am certain that PVSD families are very relieved. I would like to encourage you to afford teachers an equal opportunity to demonstrate best practices regarding public health safety so as to not further spread infection. Please allow us to remain at home and continue to give our students the excellent attention and instruction that we provide every other day of the year. At such an unpredictable time we are all facing many challenges. Flexibility from all sides will help us be successful in both meeting curricular demands and in keeping public health in mind. My personal situation is such that my husband will not be reporting to work at Cisco systems till at least March 23rd because two employees were diagnosed with COVID-19. He is voluntarily remaining in our house as much as possible and is 62 years old. Our younger daughter was informed last evening that her LA area college suddenly halted classroom instruction for the remainder of the semester. We are driving down and back up on Sunday to move our home. As things stand I am expected to be in a mandatory staff meeting at 7.30 on Monday morning. I am concerned about how I will maintain my general health. I am nearing exhaustion because I continue to prioritize delivering comprehensive and compassionate instruction to my students. I have always worked this way, worked many hours from home and on the sidelines of volleyball tournaments far and wide because I am a passionate about my work and meeting my students' needs. Please support me and the many dedicated professionals throughout our district in doing our best work in the most safe environments possible. Respectfully Hale Oda. From Juana Martinez.  We get told that schools will be closed for the safety of public and children. I was thinking that would mean employees too. The people who have tested positive for COVID-19 are adults. How does it make sense to send kids home but keep the adults physically in close contact with one another in schools? With the scarcity of tests for this virus and some individuals not showing symptoms until days sometimes even weeks later, how can we know for certain that going to work is safe for us employees? From Janice Jimenez. We hope this finds you well. We were recently informed that we might be able to submit a question and are hoping that this need to be the case. So the questions are how many cases of COVID-19 have tested positive that are directly related to Rio del Mar Elementary? Can you share the nature of the relation with the school, the positive cases held, what grades, ages, students did they associate with? We are asking this as we work directly with 80 students from Rio del Mar at our two after-school enrichment programs, Magic Apple After School grades two through six and Apple After School grades K through one. We would be devastated if we were unknowingly contributing to the spread of the virus. Will there be testing available for any Rio staff and community programs such as ours that work directly with Rio del Mar PVST students if it becomes needed? What steps would we take? Thank you board members for all you are doing for our students and their faculties at this difficult time. From Margarita Reventos. My name is Margarita Reventos from Lakeview Middle School. Thank you for the opportunity to share my concerns regarding this unprecedented and unpredictable pandemic. I am in complete agreement with closing schools to slow the spread of COVID-19. It is the right thing to do for our students in the community as a whole. However, asking teachers and staff to return to a potentially contaminated environment is senseless. Even if you were to deep clean, if one teacher is a carrier for COVID-19, the risk of contamination is still present. Additionally, suggesting the teachers bring their own children to school can potentially spread COVID-19 which is what you're attempting to slow down. I urge the board to allow teachers and staff to work from home. We are responsible, dedicated professionals. Please treat us as such. Your support for teachers is support for students. From Zulema Perez. As a district employee, I am very concerned with the outcomes of the COVID-19 virus. Many of us have family members at home. We are wanting to keep safe, and I feel that we are all exposing ourselves by maintaining contact among each other. Within the school sites this coming week. How are we keeping this very contagious virus from spreading if we are expected to come to work and have contact with other staff members, as well as possibly exposing our children by having to bring them to work with us? At this point, we don't even know for certain if more of us have been exposed to this virus, and it worries me that we may be putting ourselves at risk of infection by going to our school sites and being in contact with other staff members. Thank you for listening. Elida Guerrero. My name is Elida Guerrero, and I have worked for the district for more than 15 years. Currently, I am teaching second grade at Freedom Elementary. I really care for my students and community. I also have a child who attends the school district. I want you to know that I am really upset with the current choices that have been decided in the school district. The school district claims the safety and wellness of our students' families and school personnel are the highest priorities of all Santa Cruz County schools and districts. And yet, and well, it doesn't feel that way. Why are they making certified and classified even after school personnel go to work next week when the school is closed down? The district claims that they received the first confirmed case of COVID-19 at Rio de Mar elementary school in their letters and post, and now there are seven confirmed cases in Santa Cruz. This virus is extremely close. The district mentioned that the most effective way to slow down and disrupt the transmission of the pandemic is by implementing social distancing practices. Then why are they making us leave our home and go to work where there are about 60 employees at our school sites and say that we could bring our children to work if necessary? I thought we were implementing distance practices. The district mentioned that during the time of closure, we are asking students and families to follow county public officers director to stay home and minimize social contact to the extent possible. But what about our families? I am frustrated and disgusted at the point I will have to keep my children at home and I will have to report to work leaving my family at home when there is imminent danger around us and I could pick up the virus on the way to work or at work and take it back to my family. I thought we were supposed to stay at home and distance ourselves from people and stop the transmission of this deadly virus and keep families united. But this is exactly the opposite of what the district is asking us to do. Please consider our families as well and help the teachers and staff stay united with their families at home and stop the transmission of this pandemic. Why would we have to expose ourselves? Why can't our staff just distance ourselves be united with our families and keep our families safe at the same as everyone else? I am very concerned with the welfare and safety of our school staff. Thank you for your time and consideration. From Kim Saldavia. Dear Board of Trustee members, the COVID-19 is a crisis of enormous scale and human impact, the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetimes. This is of a difficult time and there are many opinions on how we should proceed within Pahoa Valley, USD. Our district leadership decision-making should have the health and safety of our students, families and community as the highest priority. Given the recommendations from the CDC, CDE and DPH, five of the largest districts, Los Angeles, Fresno, Long Beach and San Diego have closed. Our first week of closure should be for our staff and families to make plans for their health and safety, not for district employees to continue to work without students. We must also learn and share information with and from other districts. I have attached an informative sheet for parents from San Guido's USD where my niece is in attend school. Now is not the time for teachers to make classroom packets, create online curriculum or provide services or support to our special education students. These are unprecedented times. Please look at the facts of this virus. There are, there is one simple thing we can do that works, social distancing. There is one way to truly reduce social distancing, keep people home as much as possible until this recedes. Our efforts now must be aimed at preventing it spread through our district community. This will not work if PVSD's employees are required to return to work next week with their children in tow from Jessica Chavez. As a member of the public and a school employee here in Santa Cruz County, I feel that COVID-19 has caused a great deal of anxiety for us all this past week. There is no denying that this virus was contagious. Just last weekend we had our first confirmed case here in Santa Cruz County and we have had seven confirmed COVID-19 cases since then. Working in a SELPA classroom with many other adults present, I am worried that if we are to report to our sites and have to come in contact with other staff members who we have no history of knowing who they may have been in contact with prior, we are putting ourselves at risk of infection. It is easy to isolate ourselves in our homes and have personal control over who we may choose to come in contact with outside of work. However, as of right now, I personally do not feel safe and I would like to know how we can be guaranteed our health safety while we attend our work sites. From Stephanie Hedgepeth Lopez, please reconsider having staff report to sites. The message you are sending to staff by asking students and parents to stay home before staff to continue to attend is that their health and well-being are not important. If there is enough reason to close the schools, they should be closed to allow, closed to all, to allow the health benefits of closure to reach the full potential to contain this virus. Staff have already considered continuing students' education options for those lucky enough to have devices and internet. These can be implemented remotely just as easily from home. This is a stressful time for all of us. Don't add to it. From Myra Bernabe. My name is Myra Bernabe, a resident and an aunt to students at Landmark McQuitty Lakeview in Watsonville High and I'm a friend of many teachers and staff throughout Poovee USD. First, I'd like to say that I truly appreciate your leadership to take action in preventative measures by closing the schools. I applaud you for providing food distribution school sites throughout the county for our children, as many of them greatly depend on these meals. It is in moments like these that we all need to be creative and support each other, so thank you. With the school closures comes other concerns. One of those was food access which is handled. The other concern is technology access for our children who will need to continue their studies to complete homeworks but don't have internet or technology access at home. What will you do about this? And what will parents who still have to work but now need childcare? Are there any partnerships being discussed about helping in this matter? Additionally, I am concerned with the requirement that teachers and staff will still physically remain working in schools, further increasing the risk to potentially be exposed to the virus. I understand these are difficult times and moments of uncertainty, but we must be smart and take all of the precautionary measures necessary to contain and not further leak the virus. As you may already know, adults and older age children are much more vulnerable to catch the virus. Older age people are much more vulnerable to catch the virus than children. It makes no sense to move children from schools but not the adults. Please make the right decision and be part of the solution of full on COVID 19 containment by not requiring staff and teachers to physically remain working at schools. Thank you. From Path Star, there is so much fear and so little known about this pandemic. It is urgent that we do what we can to stop the spread of the disease. All know that we, all that we know from China and South Korea's social distancing works. Please do not ask your staff to endanger themselves in our community by showing up at school next week. We all need to be able to stay at home to keep ourselves and our community safe. If there are urgent matters that need to be addressed, perhaps they could be handled by volunteers from a broad community outreach. Thank you for considering my risk request. From Veronica Marx. I have been a teacher at PVSD for over 20 years. I want to thank you for your forward thinking and proactiveness in closing schools to try and slow down and get ahead of the COVID-19 virus. These are definitely uncharted territories and I know we are all doing the best we can given the scenario. I am asking that you allow the staff the option to work from home rather than coming to school next week. We are fortunate to live in an age where we can prepare for distance learning, communicate with each other and build quality lessons for our students while working from home. Many teachers, myself included our parents of kids in the school system. The idea of bringing kids to school despite the school closures is irresponsible and defeats the purpose of social distancing. Districts are asking parents and students to stay home and avoid public areas yet our school district is telling us it's okay to bring our kids to work. I feel discriminated against just because I am a parent.  I do not have family in town and have no possible way to find childcare coverage. Please consider allowing staff to work from home next week especially those that are our parents or at high risk. Thank you for your consideration in this matter. From Diane Block. I just finished reading an article titled Social Distancing. This is now, this is not a snow day. This article explains the points about social distancing I raised. Did I read a letter from Diane Block already? But I think I think I'm only reading this one. Okay. I think this is the revised one. Diane I apologize if I'm I'm going to read the one that I had starred for you. The author says we were only 11 days behind Italy and generally on track to repeat what is unfortunately happening there and throughout the semester rest of the Europe very soon. Here just that we must move through pandemic mitigation through widespread and comfortable and comprehensive social distancing. That means not only shutting down schools work as much as possible group gatherings and public events but also making daily choices to stay away from each other as much as possible to flatten the curve so that new cases are within the capacity of healthcare system. He's talking about aggressive early and extreme social distancing not going to a staff meeting at 9 AM Monday morning with 30 colleagues then work in your classroom until you meet again for lunch social distancing. He adds that we are trying to create distance between family units and between individuals even as even if you choose only one friend to have over you are creating links and possibilities for the type of transmission that all our school work but public events closures are trying to prevent. Symptoms of coronavirus take four to five days to manifest themselves. Someone who is who comes over looking well can transmit the virus. I urge each of you to read this article in particular study of the graph showing a model of cumulative cases of coronavirus with social distancing measures taken one day apart illustrating a predicted 40% increase in cumulative cases. BVSD is asking staff to work on site three days next week. We have been told we are required to attend work unless we are already showing symptoms of the virus. Despite the union's direction that there's not a time for staff meetings we're already receiving emails telling staff to meet Monday morning for a staff meeting. There are at least 30 staff members at my site and our staff room is not big enough for us to all allow to sit 60 to part. This is not aggressive early and extreme social distancing and it jeopardizes our entire community and beyond. I appeal to you to change the directive we received today and shift to remote work guidelines. I have an in-person public comment from Richard Martinez. Okay there we go. CSEAs requesting the trust from the trustees and the districts is shut down for at least two weeks. For no one to be on campus at all. To keep all employees clear from work and furthermore how can we have a higher day hazmat company to come in and do the cleaning for us. For unskilled and untrained people for this. Our custodians are doing this work. It isn't right. Second of all the president did release funds for things like this. And also to cover wages. So let's look furthermore into it. And let's do the right thing for our people our community. Thank you. From Gina Desheris. Dear trustees it makes no sense whatsoever to oblige teachers to work from potentially contaminated work sites to create virtual lessons. It defies logic. I know the custodians are shorthanded and do not work on Saturdays and Sundays. Why sit in a poshably dangerous contaminated environment to create virtual lessons and risk prolonging disclosure. All of the teachers at my school like film middle school already use Google classroom to post lessons. All of the students have Chromebooks. We can be monitored by our site administrators for posting lessons materials virtually. It is dangerous and unsound to require us to return to the work sites before they have been thoroughly sanitized. The zoological demand demonstrates once again how little respect, confidence and trust the PVSD administration has for our teachers. Moreno Valley Unified has the same insight and idea to require teachers to work from school sites but luckily their county office overturned this poor decision. I hope you can do the same. I am truly disappointed in our leadership and it closed and hope that you adjust. This letter is from Karen Richmond, a teacher at Valencia. My name is Karen Richmond and I am a committed and dedicated kindergarten teacher at Valencia Elementary. I understand we are in uncharted waters but all the more reason for making astute decisions based on fact, scientific guidance and simple common sense. The memorandum of understanding that was signed today baffles me. While I always appreciate an effort to compromise the issue of the health always appreciate an effort to compromise, the issue of the health and safety of our staff members was sorely overlooked. Superintendent Colleen noted in her email today that school closures will allow us to implement social distancing protocols not possible with students present. The union emphasized the importance of students having the opportunity for off-site learning yes, important. But neither of these declarations take into account that this virus didn't leave campus with our students. It has been documented by federally funded research that this particular virus can live for a minimum of two to three days on hard surfaces. Monday morning would be two days because we all know it is extremely unlikely that the virus has infiltrated all our school environments and janitors will not have had the time to at the very least spray down the surfaces in all classrooms and common rooms for Monday morning. Why are we not taking the extra precaution to stay away for at least three more days? Dr. Rodriguez in a response letter to me today said that the action being taken at Rio won't be taken at another site until a confirmed case is documented. I am shocked to hear of this complacent reactive response policy. I have been told that the child of the person who tested positive at Rio attends for NCSTK class. How can you and or the health department justify waiting for another positive case to appear at a particular site before taking the health and safety precautions for staff members? I for one am just over 60 and was out for a week with a debilitating case of pneumonia just last month. We have other staff members in the same category. The only reason given for teachers mandated to return on work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday is to grade level prep offsite learning materials for students. What if we already took the initiative to provide our students with more than two weeks of offsite learning? I am asking for a serious reconsideration of the MOU signed today to reflect the actual realities on the ground. Thank you in address for addressing my concerns by answering my questions. From Aniele Diaz Soto, in light of the recent events, the school closure is good to keep our students safe. With that being said, I am wondering why PVSD staff members need to report to their school site. At my site, various departments are to report to the cafeteria for trainings. This is an opposite of what CDC is recommending us to do. We will be within three feet of each other. Is there a way we can work from home? If so, can you let me know? From Cameron Cowan. Hello, my name is Cameron. My girlfriend works for PVSD at Calabasas Elementary. She's been worried sick about the health of our students in the face of COVID-19 and was happy to hear that the schools had closed next week to protect them. However, I am now outraged that you, the board, and concerned for her safety that she's been required to come to work at a school that still has yet to be cleaned. You, the board members, are making it very obvious to others that you don't care about teachers and their family's safety at all. Please do not require teachers to come into school and risk getting not only her sick, but in turn myself and our whole household. Please do the right thing and let teachers work from home. From Lisa Kellert. Please allow all PVSD employees to work remotely starting Monday, March 16th. By all employees, I mean every single employee, classified, certificated, admin, district level, et cetera. Teachers, school counselors, admin, and other employees are all professional working adults who can safely work remotely during this closure. Thank you. From Christy Hadland. It has come to my attention that you're having teaching staff come into work. While I understand the possible reasons, I don't think you're thinking clearly on this. We need a total shutdown in order to slow the spread of COVID-19 disease. I don't care if it's hype or not. Safety is better than attending mass funerals. Who cares about money? We can freaking make more, but we can't replace the humans that in reality could get very ill and possibly die. So I ask you this. What will it take for you, the system, to take this seriously? No one should be in public places for at least this next week. Reassess every week. Tell your staff they can't leave the area in case you need to bring them back to work ASAP. Lastly, many of your staff have children now at home and possibly unsupervised. Do you really think that's what's in the best interest of your staff? Or are children who are possibly frightened by all of this? I know my 12-year-old quite worried now every time I step out of the house. Use some common sense. Give staff at least 316 to 20 off. Sanitize the schools and re-evaluate after 320. Thank you. I can only know as a mom and worker myself that this is all a huge burden, and I too am losing income and time. But I have my health and so does my family. And that's priceless. From Saira Hirji. Hello, members of the School Board. My name is Saira, and I am a teacher at WHS. I realize this is a confusing time for all of us, and that includes you and your own families. We are in uncharted territory. I would like to start by saying that I appreciate the assurance that teachers and staff will continue to be paid to receive insurance benefits during the school closure. It was weighing heavily on me as I have a baby and am currently barely making ends meet even with my full pay. Next, I would like to share some of my concerns. My concern is in being asked to come into work next week on Monday through Wednesday. I realize that the school was closed in order to prevent the spread of the virus, and thus we do not have any confirmed cases at our school. However, most people who are sick are not being tested.  We will also be in our classrooms with materials that have been touched by hundreds of potentially sick students. I do understand the need to create distance learning plans for our students, but it seems like this could be more safely done from our homes. I and the colleagues I have spoken with are happy to work from home, where we can practice social distancing, and it seems like there is not an actual purpose to having us all attend campus in person. It makes all of us feel very undervalued when you are willing to unnecessarily put our health at risk. We have been there at school for the students every day, but now students are working from home, and we should be there, too, starting Monday, not Thursday. Lastly, I would like you to consider the same for the classified staff. What is the purpose of having an instructional assistant or behavior tech come to work when they have no students to work with? Please show us you value your educators and make our health a priority. We can educate the students while remaining safe. Thank you for your time. For Mark Drury. With a recently declared national emergency and countywide school closures, it is short-sighted and reckless to expect teachers and staff to show up at their sites on Monday. There is no logical reason to further risk the health of PVSD employees, our families, and the community at large. I expect the vast majority of teachers can prep from remote learning off-site and coordinate via email, text, and phone. Over the past 48 hours, literally every local group and community organization I am part of has shut down completely. At this point, it is quite clear that avoiding non-essential travel and interaction with the public is key to fighting the spread of COVID-19. To my knowledge, not a single staff member at my site has been tested. And we have staff who are highly at risk due to age, compromised immune systems, et cetera. We have several staff members who live out of the county and or have children to care for. Why on earth would we further risk our health by meeting in person? We need to honor the severity of this crisis and do our part minimizing the effects. No one aside from cleaning crews should be at school sites unless it is until it's safe for everyone to return. Keep the teachers and staff home and safe. It's just not worth the risk. Thank you. From Alexandria Wilson, I would like to just I would like at least to just point out the sheer hypocrisy of the fact that you are all practicing social distance and currently for this board meeting, but not allowing the public to attend. Yet you expect teachers and other employees to risk their own health and safety by all returning to their sites to do planning that could easily bend from home. We are expected to plan for distance learning within the following week. What you don't understand is that most teachers have already done this in a mad dash during school hours on Friday in order to send students home with some work. What is the plan for students without access to technology? How will paper copies provided by the district be delivered to students now that they already have left? How are we ensuring this work gets done and enforced by parents? How thoughtful of you to allow us to bring our own children into our work sites that have not yet been properly sanitized cleaned yet. I will not be bringing my one year old into my germy classroom. I will not get any useful work done with her there anyways. At least from home I can work and keep my daughter safe in a familiar environment. I really hope you reconsider some of these ideas and policies you are putting into place. Look at what is happening in the world around us. Be flexible and this is beyond our control and what we need to be doing is putting the health and safety of all, including staff members first like you said you would. Thank you. I am a teacher at Calabasas from Rebecca Berryman. My name is Becca and I am a teacher at Calabasas. I am writing to you today for two reasons. First I would like to thank you for closing the schools to protect our students and their families. I am also writing to urge you to think about how the teachers now and their families. Day in and day out I sacrifice my sanity free time and help because I truly love my students. However there becomes a point when I must think about the health of myself and my family. My time is unbelievable. I have spoken to multiple janitors at my school and they have confirmed that my school is yet to be cleaned at all and yet here we are being required to be there. You yourselves are practicing social distancing by not allowing people to come to the meeting day for public comment. Teachers and staff have to be thrown into the germs classrooms this week. Please make the right decision and keep all of us safe in the middle of this deadly pandemic by letting us work from home. Thank you. My name is Stephanie Bishop and this pandemic has struck not just too close to home but in a school in our little community. You too are part of this community and I am sure you are concerned about your loved ones and the impact this will have on our families. I am writing with high hopes that our previous community can face this unprecedented event with unity, equity and trust. First it is a directive to be on-site Monday through Wednesday also include all employees who work at the district office and county offices. Are they to bring their children at work with them as well? If so this does not seem like a prudent measure of social responsibility but it only brings more people into an enclosed area. If district and county office staff are not required to be on-site then this is not equitable. Second you can you be sure that the staff with close proximity to the Rio de Marques do not pose a risk to others. Are there staff members who are currently in self-quarantine waiting for symptoms or testing? I am aware of at least one. It was upsetting to be required to work yesterday under the premise that students were coming to gather materials. Half of my students were absent and I sub during my prep this notion that teachers could be able to quickly throw something together as ridiculous and insulting and not only puts us and our students at risk. Furthermore there seems to be an unfortunate mistrust of teachers working from home. This is utterly ironic because we teachers work from home every evening and weekend and no one seems to question that. In fact before the closure I had plans to bring home work this weekend as I usually do despite our PVST decision to work to rule. PVST teachers do not work to rule even when we say we are already perform remote planning and learning from home 100 percent 110 percent of the time we are all in every day even after we leave our sites and even during a pandemic. Our other districts that have closed require their teachers to be on site. We can work from home until we know for certain that there will be not there will not be a community spread from the Rio case. It is too soon to know. Please trust us and ultimately unite us by putting our health and safety first. Thank you. And Helica Flores My name is and Helica Flores and I'm a school counselor at Cesar Jales. Thank you for working hard during this rapidly evolving pandemic. I would like to share as to why coming in next week puts us all at risk especially those with family members who have weak immune systems. I have a daughter who recently had liver surgery and her immune system is weak. For me to be exposed to any virus and bring it home to her is not safe at all. I also can't bring her to work with me because an exposure to this virus. I can't call theAcas and Public Health desperately save our staff for their recovery. The sick days I do have left are saved for appointments to Stanford. If the wellbeing of your staff and is your number one priority please consider keeping all staff home. No one should be risking their health and health when we work remotely from home. Please consider keeping us all home tech, hotspots, meals and materials for distance learning for up to a month. We need to empower our teachers to be flexible and innovate innovative in organizing curriculum for our students. Please allow staff to work remote if possible limit their time on sites and allow support staff to do assignments other assignments or trainings remotely. Governor Newsom secured funding for all our public schools at this time and let's be flexible and innovative and how we continue to educate and support our students and there is a link to Governor Newsom's executive order from Edith Ruiz. Do you read from Edith Ruiz? No, okay. Dear partners in education, we are writing to communicate some concerns we have about the plans for our current health emergency. We understand that this, I think I read this letter though. Yeah, yeah it talks about the risk to the students and the environmental issues. Yes, okay. From Karen Primavera, Dear Board members, I am writing to you in hopes that you will listen to the fear and outrage that many fellow teachers are experiencing at this time. Although we appreciate the fact that schools have been closed for a week to monitor the safety and well-being of the staff and students, having teachers come to work on Monday is a complete hypocrisy to that notion. Our school has still not implemented any of the correct cleaning or sanitizing protocols that were supposed to begin a week ago. This not only puts teachers in direct danger, it then puts their immediate family in danger. There are many of us who are caring for our elderly parents at home or nearby and we do not want to put them at greater risk than they already are. The majority of us also have our own spouse, partners and children at home due to other school closures who are terrified that we are asked to return to a non-sanitized environment. Lastly, the government has repeatedly asked us to practice the guidelines of social distancing and by requiring all staff to return on Monday, you're going against that protocol. I urge you to allow teachers and staff to work from home during this time of uncertainty and I implore you to make all schools and janitorial crews have been properly trained and performed the necessary cleaning before permitting anyone back on campus. Thank you for your consideration. From Kathy Keenan, I'm deeply concerned that PVSD is requiring its teachers to work in schools next week. The adults are at greatest risk from COVID-19 not the children and the schools have not been sanitized. They are allowed to bring their children to unsanitized facilities. Given the nature of teaching, there is absolutely no reason they have to physically be in the school building. To do so expresses them, exposes them to unnecessary risk. Further, a one-week closure of the schools is not going to be adequate to staunch the contagion. Countries such as Singapore and Japan which have done exemplary jobs of containing the spread of the disease close schools instantly for 30 days. I am very disappointed that PVSD isn't doing everything in its power to protect students and teachers. I am very happy about the meals program however. That is very well done. Thank you. Regards, excuse me. From Simone C. Gerios, I work at Hall District Elementary in Los Lomas North Monterey County. My conflict is my mother is 89 years old which puts her in the highest risk group for the disease COVID-19 and I am the closest family member who cares for her. I cannot risk exposing her to the coronavirus. I am not trying to get out of work as those of you who know me know how hard I work for the students in my community. I am only asking for alternative to going into work. Can distance planning be set up so that the teachers in my situation may protect our loved elders who are in the highest risk group for death from the COVID-19 disease? Thank you for your time and understanding. From Jillian Reeves, why are we getting so many contradictory messages from you all? You want social distancing but then ask us to have staff meetings. A staff member at landmark is being tested and a staff member for Rio de Mar is infected. How many people did they infect before getting tested? I really hate pointless things like coming to a dirty campus to work on distance learning. We are teachers in the 21st century. Literally everything we could possibly need is online. The only reason for coming to campus is to be babysat which is absolutely insulting us, insulting us as a professional adult. If you want to control and babysit us so bad, use an online tool to monitor our work. You have all shown how selfish and uncaring you all are. Oh and did I mention I am pregnant so I have much more time, I have much more to think about than just me. After this year I am done. I will be looking elsewhere for a job. As a classified person, I'm allowed to use my sick leave days for next week. I feel strongly about my safety and also I feel the days I accumulated our mind to use in this time of need. Did I say her name? Ava Klein. To the board. I am extremely concerned about teachers needing to be at work sites on Monday, March 16th. The children are less susceptible to becoming gravely ill from this virus whereas teachers and staff are more susceptible to becoming dangerously ill. There are teachers in sensitive groups with greater risk of becoming. Teachers who has immune issues or a history of asthma or a history of pneumonia should not be forced to use sick leave in order to protect themselves at this time. We need to work together to prioritize the health and wellness of every individual within our schools and our community. Please take the teachers' well-being into greater consideration. We teachers take care of the children and I do your part to take care of us. Thank you. From Jessica Corona. I am Mrs. Corona in this public health situation. At first it was a funny unfortunate coincidence to be a teacher with that name. Mentioning my name is just the hook. The same thing I teach my fifth graders to do to get the reader's attention. You've heard the multitude of pleas and I want to add that you apply your own advice to protect our valuable staff. Another important writing skills providing and citing text evidence. As stated in the Santa Cruz COE's March 12th letter which was sent to all PVSD staff, it states that the most effective way to slow and disrupt the transmission of this pandemic is by implementing social distancing practices. Requiring PVSD staff to be on site the week of March 16th and 20th does not follow this guideline. Lastly, a valuable writing skills to be able to associate the writer to the main idea using a personal connection. My husband is a San Jose fire captain and two days ago on March 12th a member of his crew tested positive for COVID-19. All of the crew members and all shift members in the San Jose fire station are self monitoring as recommended by the Santa Clara County Office of Public Health Officer. All family members including me are doing the same. We provide care and live with my 89 year old father who has congestive heart failure. No, I am not queuing the violins for sympathy, but appealing to your sense of duty. Ultimately, Mrs Corona will do what is best for her family and I ask that you do the same but with your added power and responsibility. Your first priority is to keep our PVSD family safe. From Laura Zucker, the US News and World Report reported this last night at 1140 p.m. The California Teachers Association, the largest teachers union, the state's largest teachers union late Friday called for the closure of all public schools. Why is our sister union stating this? We know that Monterey schools are closing until March 31st. This makes real sense as 14 days is the number we keep hearing from medical sources about incubation and quarantine times.