{"date":"2020-09-30","type":"Special Meeting","videoId":"P2jNwKuvS4E","audioDuration":13751,"speakers":{"A":{"name":"Janet Lawson","role":"Board President"},"B":{"name":"Eliana (staff)","role":"Staff/Roll Call Caller"},"C":{"name":"Dennis McBride","role":"Trustee"},"D":{"name":"Alisa MacAvoy","role":"Vice President"},"E":{"name":"María Díaz-Slocum","role":"Trustee"},"F":{"name":"John Baker","role":"Superintendent / Dr. Baker"},"G":{"name":"Priscilla Aquino-Ochoso","role":"Chief Business Official"},"H":{"name":"Anna Lague","role":"Child Nutrition Services Director"}},"utterances":[{"start":240,"end":3200,"speaker":"A","text":"So we'll go ahead and get started. If we can have a roll call, please. Eliana."},{"start":3680,"end":4720,"speaker":"B","text":"Trustee McBride."},{"start":5680,"end":6080,"speaker":"C","text":"Here."},{"start":6480,"end":7600,"speaker":"B","text":"Trustee Marquez."},{"start":8000,"end":12720,"speaker":"A","text":"Here. Trustee Diasoca. Here. Vice President McAvoy."},{"start":13680,"end":14080,"speaker":"D","text":"Present."},{"start":14960,"end":76030,"speaker":"A","text":"President Lawson. I'm here. Thank you. Welcome, Everybody, to the September 30th special board meeting for the Road City School District. I've pasted the links in the chat for our agenda and the speaker's card, and I'll go ahead and post those again for you. For those who are still rolling in, if you would like to speak to the board, please fill out the Google Doc and make sure that you include your name so that we know who to unmute when the time comes in. And just for the audience, you are muted when you join and your video is off, we can't see you. So if the item that you wish to speak to on the agenda is on the agenda, we'll call you during that time. Otherwise, you'll be called during oral communication. And public comments are limited to three minutes per person. And just a reminder that because we're meeting via teleconference, all votes are going to be by roll call. Do we have any changes to the agenda? If there are none, is there a motion to approve?"},{"start":77790,"end":78910,"speaker":"E","text":"So moved."},{"start":79360,"end":79600,"speaker":"F","text":"Second."},{"start":80000,"end":85280,"speaker":"A","text":"Maria and Dennis. Can we have a roll call vote, please, Mr. McBride?"},{"start":86080,"end":86560,"speaker":"C","text":"Aye."},{"start":87120,"end":88240,"speaker":"A","text":"Trustee Marquez."},{"start":88640,"end":89120,"speaker":"G","text":"Aye."},{"start":89600,"end":90880,"speaker":"A","text":"Trustee D.S. locum."},{"start":90960,"end":91440,"speaker":"E","text":"Aye."},{"start":91920,"end":117220,"speaker":"A","text":"Vice President McEvoy. Aye. President Lawson. Aye. So that brings us to oral communication, item five. We did have one comment card for that, and I'm going to double check. It's Douglas Alsop, and I don't see his name on the list. And, Dennis, I think you may have addressed his questions earlier in the week or over the weekend."},{"start":117780,"end":138380,"speaker":"C","text":"Yes. Yeah. So his questions were. Well, let me back up. He and I had numerous conversations, and he was concerned that the four portables would be there forever. And I assured him that according to dsa, they couldn't be there longer than two years and they were there a little less than a year. So he was thrilled with that."},{"start":139580,"end":145100,"speaker":"A","text":"I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt you real quick, Dennis, because it's oral communication, we can't actually have a discussion about it."},{"start":145100,"end":145660,"speaker":"F","text":"All right."},{"start":146780,"end":171190,"speaker":"A","text":"But, yeah, those were his concerns that were listed on the. On the comment card. But I just want to double check. Douglas, if you are here, can you raise your hand so that we can unmute you? It looks like not. So I think, Dennis, you took care of that earlier forum, so thank you. So we can move on to 6.1 Child Nutrition Service report. We have Anna Lague Here with us."},{"start":175590,"end":711520,"speaker":"H","text":"Good evening, everyone. So I should start sharing my screen. Thank you for letting me present this update tonight on child nutrition. This is going to be about meal service during distance learning. So on August 31, the USDA finally extended the waiver all school districts are waiting for, which would allow districts to offer meals at no cost to any child 18 years of age or younger. Now, this is retroactive to the start of the school year. Another really good bit of news for us. And child nutrition will receive the free reimbursement rate for all meals claimed. About a week or so ago, there was an announcement that this waiver had been extended all the way to September 2020. Well, that was kind of a rumor or a mistake of the news or something because what really happened was Congress authorized, the USDA gave them the authority to extend the waiver through to the end of, well, actually in the next school year if the USDA thought it was appropriate. So as of now, this waiver has not been extended for the whole school year. But I can tell you every food service director in the country is hopeful that it will be. The other waivers we're working under now are non congregate feeding waivers. This means that meals can be sent home during the normal school year and even during seamless summer option. During the summer, students or children have to eat the meal on site. We have a mealtime flexibility waiver. This allows us to give multiple meals for multiple days in a single distribution day. They call this stacking of meals. And the other really good waiver that came through was that parents or guardians can pick up the meals. The children do not have to be present to pick up the meals. Now, these three waivers do extend through the end of this school year. Now I want to just give a real big vote of appreciation or shout of appreciation to our dedicated child Nutrition staff. Since March 16, we've been able to distribute meals at all our distribution sites with absolutely no disruption in service. This is Laura and Allison. This is Selby Adelante Spanish immersion. They're getting ready for meal distribution. And just remember that they're out there during all those hot days, during those days when the air quality was really poor. And pretty soon I think with the rainy weather, we'll be out there again. So the other part, other than serving these nutritious meals for children, we are in the midst of still trying to recruit the completion of free and reduced meal applications. We did pretty good considering the circumstance that there is no incentive for households to complete the meal application at this time. But we have Dropped down in our percent free and reduced. We are still doing outreach efforts. We've done many phone made many phone calls to the home in person and through the computer. And right now I need to check in with Jorge again. But right now Jorge is developing a communication piece that will probably go on the website just to let households know that we really, really need their help completing the meal application. Not so much so their student can receive a free meal, but so that the school district continue can continue to receive the funding that they need to educate the children of Redwood City School District. Because as many of you know, a lot of the funding is tied to the percentage of free and reduced. So a little bit about meal distributions. Right now we are distributing on Mondays and Thursdays. We have two pickup windows, Adelante, Selby, Spanish Immersion, Garfield, Hoover and Fair oaks Campus distribute 11:30 to 1:30 and Henry Ford, Taft and Roosevelt distribute 2:30 to 4:30. We also distribute weekend and holiday meals. These are included in the Thursday pickup. They do get breakfast, lunch, supper and snack. So they definitely get enough food for the entire day every day if they can come pick them up. Now fortunately, transportation has been helping us and they've been doing a super, super job because we are now delivering all these meals on these snacks home to children who couldn't come pick them up or their caregivers couldn't come pick them up. And we're able to service 250 children this way. There are five routes, five buses go out and each bus has one of our dedicated child nutrition staff and one of our dedicated transportation drivers on board. We did recently do a survey, actually Jorge did that for us where the we tapped onto the TK first grade survey. There was a couple questions asked and one question we did want to find out was about the meal pickup because looking at our average meals served per day and I'm sorry, I did change this just because it was confusing, it says something about weekly. So this is a snapshot of average meals served per day. So during the school year we serve over 4,000 meal lunches a day. Right now we're down to. It's crept up a little bit in the last two weeks. Right now we're down to about 800 lunches per day. And now since we bundle all the meals together, breakfast, supper and after school snack eventually will all become pretty even. So during the school year last year we weren't able to serve supper. We can this school year. So basically again, the children that do receive these meals receive meals and snacks for the entire day. These Meal counts are very, very disappointing. As you know, our labor is labor and benefit costs this school year are stable. We're doing everything we can to try to encourage households to take advantage of this free meal program. We are not the only district that is having this huge difference between school year and distance learning. Most districts are serving maybe 25% of what they usually do during the school year. So what are we trying to do? Well, we are always trying to make our program better. We're always trying to find out, you know, what, what can we do with the menu, if anything. We've done a lot of outreach, all the outreach you can think of that we do normally by social media, and we even went out and put flyers on card windshields to try to get the word out. And I do also want to thank Jorge very, very much. I just learned recently, like in the last couple days of all his outreach efforts, and he does an amazing amount of outreach for child nutrition also. So that's a little bit of an update. And any questions you might have, I can stop sharing my screen. Answer questions."},{"start":712800,"end":716960,"speaker":"A","text":"Does the board have any comments or questions, Dennis?"},{"start":717760,"end":724240,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah, just one simple one. Can you describe what a typical breakfast, lunch and supper is?"},{"start":725680,"end":805490,"speaker":"H","text":"So a typical breakfast. A typical breakfast is just like a breakfast entree, which a lot of times is breakfast bread, like banana bread or pan dulce. We have cereal and that sort of thing also. And it also comes with milk if they want it, it comes with juice if they want it, and it comes with fruit if they want it. So it's a big entree, Fruit, milk and juice. Lunch is typically a lunch entree. It could be a burrito, it could be pizza, it could be corn dog. We are not able to do the scratch foods right now. They're more grab and go, heat and serve items. And again at lunchtime, there's juice and fruit if they want it, and there's at least two different vegetables each day if they want it. And there's a choice of milk if they want it. And supper is about the same as lunch, just a little bit smaller portion sizes. Then snack is snack. It follows the United States Department of Agriculture guidelines. They have to fall under certain nutritional guidelines for sugar and fat and calories."},{"start":806610,"end":815010,"speaker":"C","text":"Thank you. And then did the feds change the requirements? Because it used to be every student had to take a milk, had to take a piece of fruit."},{"start":816420,"end":848560,"speaker":"H","text":"So what we have to have them take is they have to take. Right now. We do offer versus serve. They don't have to take milk. They haven't had to take milk for years and years and years, but they have to take a serving of fruit or vegetable. That's the one thing they have to take. So in every bag that goes out, we always put the entree because pretty much they all want the entree. And we always put a fruit and juice."},{"start":849680,"end":865440,"speaker":"C","text":"Thank you. And also, if you could thank your team. I know they've been working really hard since March, and I've seen them out there on really hot days. And I've driven through. Wendy and I drove through, and they all have just a great attitude, huge smile. So please thank them."},{"start":865440,"end":865920,"speaker":"G","text":"Thank you."},{"start":866000,"end":867200,"speaker":"H","text":"Yes, I will. Thank you."},{"start":871600,"end":875120,"speaker":"A","text":"Anybody else? Okay, Alisa."},{"start":875520,"end":876080,"speaker":"H","text":"Yeah."},{"start":876320,"end":925530,"speaker":"D","text":"Well, first of all, thank you very much. It's really good to get the report, and it's heartwarming to see the numbers of kids that we are able to feed. As I said to you in an email today, I am disappointed that the numbers are low. And I do understand that that's kind of across the county. So I would encourage us to continue doing whatever we're doing. It sounds like we're doing a lot, making phone calls and texting and doing things like that to encourage families to sign up. And maybe as more of them find out about the delivery program, maybe that'll help a little bit. Because I do know it's hard for some families who have to walk a distance to the school site to pick up bags of things to bring home. Right. So anyway, whatever we can do, I just want to encourage us to do it because it is such a great program. Yeah, go ahead."},{"start":926010,"end":999270,"speaker":"H","text":"There are two things I forgot to tell you. I'm sorry. So based on the survey, some of the surveys results on October 15, I think it is, we are going to start morning distributions at three of our sites. So we just decided that today, changing some things up. And also, I also forgot to tell you, there is other entities within Redwood City School District that do provide free meals and free food. The Boys and Girls Club have supper every night. Sequoia High School has the same distribution that we do. We have Second Harvest Food bank that partners with us at our schools for food distribution. And there are other smaller programs throughout the city, including a program where restaurants deliver their food to needy households. So I'm hopeful that as things settle down a little bit and people feel more comfortable coming out, I'm hopeful that more people will come and take advantage of this program because it's an amazing amount of food and it's nutritious."},{"start":999510,"end":999990,"speaker":"F","text":"It's."},{"start":1001920,"end":1007840,"speaker":"H","text":"It's pretty easy for the families if they don't have a lot of time to cook and stuff like that. Thank you."},{"start":1011120,"end":1012600,"speaker":"A","text":"Go ahead, go ahead. Yeah."},{"start":1012600,"end":1016160,"speaker":"D","text":"And just I know there. Are you going to go through the chat questions?"},{"start":1016160,"end":1016400,"speaker":"G","text":"Yeah."},{"start":1016400,"end":1078850,"speaker":"D","text":"Good, you can do that. But just one other one I did want to mention is, and I mentioned this in the email today and I know, I've talked to Dr. Baker about it, is the need to really get our families to fill out the free and reduced lunch form. I am really concerned that if we don't get them to fill it out, we are going to lose a lot of money. This next go around when state starts to look at our LCAP funding and Title 1 funding with the Fed. So in addition to having kids pick up the meals, we also do need to get them to fill that out. And then I know there was a question in the chat and I kind of had a similar question is do we have a sense yet of those families that have left us? You know, well, we already know that some of those were free and reduced lunch. Some of those students were receiving free and reduced lunch. So how many students are we still missing? It still looks to me like we're missing at least a couple of thousand. Right. But I don't know the numbers, so maybe that's something to look into and if, you know, whatever we can do to support those efforts to get those forms filled out and meals picked up, that would be great."},{"start":1079490,"end":1126130,"speaker":"H","text":"Actually, I, I, you probably didn't see my email because I answered it too late. We're not doing as bad as I thought we were doing. But yes, there's some students that we still need to capture. I just reached out to the principals again this week. I think it was this week. Yeah, I think it was Monday. I reached out to them again with a plea for help because child nutrition has pretty much done everything they can to try to get them to help. And I know, like I say, Jorge is working on that piece of like that information, the communication piece that hopefully will spark more parents to fill out the meal application."},{"start":1129490,"end":1131410,"speaker":"D","text":"When do we have to have the forms in?"},{"start":1131410,"end":1175010,"speaker":"H","text":"Okay, so the really, really good thing this school year, it used to be the first Wednesday in October, was what they called Census Day when the free and reduced numbers were reported to the state. But that has been extended to December 31st, which, that's really good because we'll be able to capture not just students that complete the meal application, we'll also be able to capture some directly certified students. Those would be the students that go, go on public assistance and we update, we get A file update every month for those students from the state of California. So they'll automatically roll into those free and reduced numbers."},{"start":1175410,"end":1192980,"speaker":"D","text":"That's great. And then I also just wanted to mention for the benefit of the audience that Kyle also reminded us that the free and reduced numbers also help with the E rate, which is helping us update a lot of our technology at the school site. So that's really important as well."},{"start":1192980,"end":1203900,"speaker":"H","text":"Yeah, they also help like households can get a reduced cost on Comcast, very reduced. So there's a lot of benefits for the households also."},{"start":1204620,"end":1211900,"speaker":"D","text":"Okay, thank you very much. And Janet, I'll let you help with the chat questions if you want because I thought some of those are worth making sure everybody knows."},{"start":1213500,"end":1245590,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah. So, Anna, I think one of the reasons we might have seen a drop off in meals is the number of families who don't qualify for free and reduced lunch but have been buying at the school site are no longer picking up meals. Because I think a lot of families feel like that's taking advantage of the system when there's just free meals being offered. So Priscilla, I know you commented, but can you just speak to that item and how that might help the district if families who don't qualify for free and reduced are still picking up meals?"},{"start":1246060,"end":1285080,"speaker":"G","text":"Yeah. And Anna can chime in. Yes, through December 31, all students 18 and below you don't have to attend Redwood City School District can pick up meals. And then we can claim those meals for reimbursement with the state and the district will get some funding for that. So that's really very advantageous because the parents don't have to qualify. They don't have to have an application for free and reduced price meal. They just pick up meals. And those meals that are served already count for reimbursement with the state."},{"start":1285720,"end":1312840,"speaker":"H","text":"Yes, anybody can pick up meals. They're not taking away from any other needy child. They're not taking anything. It's better for child nutrition. The more meals we serve. It's better for the district because there is a cost to running a child nutrition program. There is a big labor cost and we cannot cut labor this year. We have to keep it. Not that we want to, but"},{"start":1316760,"end":1317040,"speaker":"A","text":"we"},{"start":1317040,"end":1327560,"speaker":"G","text":"really need help in this program. As you can see in my report later on with the financial information, we really need to help the child nutrition program for the school district."},{"start":1330930,"end":1346850,"speaker":"D","text":"So it sounds like if there's families who their kids really enjoy our meals and even if they don't meet the guidelines of free and reduced lunch, they could come and pick up meals. If I'm hearing you correctly. And that would actually help the district because we're getting reimbursed for those meals, right?"},{"start":1346930,"end":1347810,"speaker":"A","text":"Absolutely."},{"start":1347970,"end":1368860,"speaker":"H","text":"Would help the households and it would help the district. Absolutely. I think people must be really busy with, you know, having distance learning and parents are working. It's an easy way to provide your children with lunch."},{"start":1369580,"end":1385190,"speaker":"A","text":"Well, and I think adding the morning hours is going to really help too, for the working parents because I know it's been hard for a lot of them to get to the school site to pick up during The, I think 10 to 11 o' clock hours. Dr. Baker, I know you had wanted to say something. Did you?"},{"start":1385990,"end":1389590,"speaker":"F","text":"My question. My question was answered. But thank you, Anna. Thank you so much."},{"start":1390470,"end":1392550,"speaker":"A","text":"Were there more questions, Maria? Cecilia?"},{"start":1392550,"end":1392910,"speaker":"H","text":"Yeah."},{"start":1392910,"end":1458450,"speaker":"E","text":"So I just wanted to say thank you to Ana and her team. And I do want to remind everyone that because of the pandemic and stuff, the meals are for everybody, whether you're filling out the forms or not. And I really want to commend Anna and her staff for being so flexible and trying different things, you know, that we had the issue where they couldn't come pick them up. They're the parents that work. So I'm glad that they're doing that, delivering them to the homes. Jorge and his staff has also done a tremendous job really letting people know. So I hope that more people who can and want to can come and take the meals because they're not taking away from anyone. They're actually, as others have mentioned, helping the school district and helping their families. I mean, it's easy, it's fast and it's nutritious. So thank you very much, Anna, for your report."},{"start":1459180,"end":1459660,"speaker":"F","text":"Thank you."},{"start":1461580,"end":1474780,"speaker":"D","text":"One other comment I saw from one of our teachers in the chat was if they know of families who would benefit from the program of having meals dropped off, how does one go about applying for that service?"},{"start":1475980,"end":1524730,"speaker":"H","text":"Well, we have a phone number for them to call. We just pulled that down because we have a waiting list now. And so we're maxed out. We just don't have enough drivers right now. But we are also looking at. Because there is a huge need, we are working with transportation to see if we can add some other delivery days because right now we are only delivering Mondays and Thursdays. So the phone number for households to call is 650-. 2,279. Or they can just call the district office and they can patch them through to child nutrition and we have a running list going."},{"start":1530330,"end":1532730,"speaker":"C","text":"I have a question for Priscilla. I'm sorry."},{"start":1532730,"end":1532930,"speaker":"A","text":"Go ahead."},{"start":1532930,"end":1533330,"speaker":"C","text":"Priscilla."},{"start":1533330,"end":1534410,"speaker":"B","text":"Priscilla, did you have a question?"},{"start":1535690,"end":1568950,"speaker":"G","text":"I just wanted to add if the concern. Because it's COVID 19. If the concern is about food handling, you know, we can assure you this is a highly regulated program. There's a lot of, you know, compliance requirements in terms of providing meals. And so parents should feel comfortable that the food serves are safe and, you know, you know, everything is being watched and up to the standards that the state and federal requires. What was your question? Dennis,"},{"start":1571000,"end":1572360,"speaker":"C","text":"let Cecilia go first."},{"start":1574600,"end":1609610,"speaker":"A","text":"So I just want to thank everyone from the food service department for their tirelessly work throughout the school year. And the only thing, it's more of a comment regarding the food distribution. Would it be okay to put it out? Even like on Facebook, where we only say right now that kids under 18 are able to pick up food, but we don't actually clarify that even if they don't apply, I mean, qualify for free and reduce that they can pick up meals, perhaps that would help the number of meals to be picked up."},{"start":1610410,"end":1630030,"speaker":"H","text":"Yeah, we could change the language. Some districts are just. Are using the word complementary meals for all. But maybe I can work with Jorge on how to change that language. That's a good point, because it's the way people perceive the message isn't always what we intend the message to say."},{"start":1630430,"end":1634190,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah, okay. That was my only comment. Thank you very much. Again."},{"start":1636110,"end":1669910,"speaker":"C","text":"So I'm concerned because I think we can oversell this. And so I have a question for Priscilla. We're currently at OR. Last year we were at 4,000 lunches with a staff. We have the same staff. And let's say we've done such a great job tonight, we get 7,000 people. So we're trying to get it up to cover fixed costs. But if we got to 7,000 people, we'd have to add people and then we'd be losing even more money because we're not getting reimbursed 100%, correct?"},{"start":1670629,"end":1676470,"speaker":"H","text":"Yes, we're getting reimbursed 100% at the free rate for every program for breakfast, lunch."},{"start":1677030,"end":1679110,"speaker":"C","text":"But does that cover every cost?"},{"start":1681120,"end":1695760,"speaker":"H","text":"Well, not right now because we're not serving enough meals. But the more meals we serve, then the more we are in better financial shape as long as we control other costs."},{"start":1696480,"end":1704240,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah, but let me ask a different way. If you got to 8,000 meals, I'm guessing you'd have to add people."},{"start":1704880,"end":1706110,"speaker":"H","text":"Yes, we would add people."},{"start":1707060,"end":1714300,"speaker":"C","text":"And you wouldn't care because the state's fully reimbursing you. So we're totally okay."},{"start":1714300,"end":1729700,"speaker":"H","text":"The federal government fully reimburses Us, we would care. We would do a cost analysis at that point because there is a lot of costs associated with running a child nutrition program. Besides labor and benefits, there's equipment issues."},{"start":1732620,"end":1753660,"speaker":"G","text":"And also, to answer your question, Dennis, Anna has also been applying for every available grant with COVID 19. So we're also hoping that all of this will be approved and some of these expenditures that we are incurring could be submitted for funding."},{"start":1754460,"end":1754780,"speaker":"F","text":"Great."},{"start":1754780,"end":1760940,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you. Can we just get a clarification on the phone number? Is it 482 or 423?"},{"start":1761830,"end":1763510,"speaker":"H","text":"Oh, it could be four two, three also."},{"start":1764230,"end":1764790,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay."},{"start":1764790,"end":1767830,"speaker":"H","text":"504-232-279."},{"start":1767830,"end":1790850,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah, I'll repost that in the chat. Also, they both work. Are there any other questions or comments on the meal program? Thank you, Anna. It was really great to have that update. Appreciate that all that you and the kitchen staff and everybody is doing to get food out to the families. Really appreciate it."},{"start":1791730,"end":1793730,"speaker":"H","text":"They're very dedicated. Thank you."},{"start":1794130,"end":1799970,"speaker":"A","text":"Thanks. Okay, we'll move on to 7.1 discussion on COVID 19 and distance learning."},{"start":1800770,"end":1876410,"speaker":"F","text":"Great. Thank you so much, Janet. And thank you, board members. So this evening, what you're going to be presented with is data in regard to the survey that was sent out to our group of parents that were TK no preschool, TK K1 and SDC classes. I know that we have all received many, many emails from not only parents, teachers and other staff members. But I believe the information that you're going to learn this evening will do us justice in determining what are we going to do when that November 13th day approaches. That is the day that the district Board of Education approved us to go through distance learning through November 13th. So as I said previously, there have been a lot of emails that we've all received. Many of us have spoken with individuals. And so tonight, Wendy Kelly is going to do a presentation where the questions and the responses, the data that you will learn this evening is data that we will learn to make future decisions. So, Wendy, if you want to start now, that would be great."},{"start":1877530,"end":1882810,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you, Dr. Baker. I will share my screen right now and"},{"start":1884730,"end":1885290,"speaker":"A","text":"begin."},{"start":1889370,"end":2399720,"speaker":"B","text":"Up here. All right, here we go. Well, welcome everyone. Nice to see everyone on this Wednesday evening. I'm Wendy Kelly, deputy superintendent, and I assisted John last week, seems like a long time ago, with some of our preliminary information regarding the opportunity to return to distance or to in person learning. So tonight, as John mentioned, I'm going to review the survey data from all of our stakeholders. But recognizing its preliminary data, I did capture all of the survey data from as of Monday evening. And office staff are continuing to call families and asking them to or helping them complete the survey as we progress along, just to make sure we have a large percentage. I'm actually very pleased with the percentage thus far, but that continued work is happening. So just to give those that might be joining the call for the first time and learning more about what our process is and the purpose of it was the reason that we wanted to get survey information and with classified certificate in parents is we really wanted to know now that we are past the first few weeks of school and into the school year. We wanted to gather a like a dipstick, a moment in time on how people are feeling about their preferences on returning what the needs are of families, what the needs are of staff and recognizing that normally things that happened over the course of the spring or into the summer when we typically plan a year has to happen now, which would cause disruption. And at the last board meeting I mentioned a few strong statements about my concern from a human resources perspective and how this happens. Now my team in HR does a lot of this work behind the scenes in a typical year. And so I'm actually pleased tonight to explain the process and how it works. Should we be making changes in classroom placement or staffing changes, whether it's October, November, January, March or what have you, this is what would need to happen. So I wanted to just review that point and to have parents weigh in on it. Now I know some parents thought that from the feedback we received that some questions should have been altered or concerns about leaving their classroom or their teacher, which is huge nod and compliment to our staff. I appreciate that. But at the same time we're also looking at instructional program. So I just wanted to make that clear. And then we want to just make sure parents had an input on whether to return in person or full distance learning now that they've experienced it, their children have experienced it, and staff as well. And then the complexity of our special programs. So we have teachers that have specific credentials called VCLAD or bilingual credentials, special ed credentials for these particular grade levels in which we were seeking information which was preschool through first grade only at this time. And first of all, these credentials are hard to find credentials to begin with. And to do this mid year is even more difficult and that could potentially alter the program. And I'll explain more about that a little bit later in the presentation. So we needed to find out whether or not that was a real problem or was was actually going to be okay. We need to understand if staff will need leaves of absence, or engage in the interactive process. And the interactive process is a very common HR function. Every year we have people that engage in the interactive process process, which is an opportunity for employees to let HR know whether or not they are concerned about a medical issue that affects their essential job duties. And so, as you know, on the CDC guidelines for underlying conditions, there are a list that employees, you know, and people in general may be concerned with. And so we need to know if our employees fall in that category because in order to accommodate them, distance learning, an option may be possible. And then those on leave, if we have teachers go on leave, whether that be unpaid leave for the year, family leave, utilizing the family first coronavirus new leave, that's through December 30th, that is in place now, that affects staffing and classroom configurations and potentially hiring new people at this time of year. So there's concerns about that that we needed to know information on. And in hr, what happens is enrollment drives staffing. And I mentioned that last week because we hire teachers based on full classrooms. And so if classrooms become disheveled or changed or half the kids want distance learning and the other half want in person, there needs to be a change in that classroom if that's the direction the board takes. So we needed to learn a lot more about the interests of our stakeholders. And then we also wanted to know from parents how the quality of distance learning has evolved for their child. Now that we're many weeks in, maybe some of the kinks and the worries have worked themselves out, maybe not. And that feedback and contribution is important. Okay, so we'll jump into the parent survey first because, you know, as I mentioned, enrollment drives staffing. So the student data in our district is as such at this time of year. So I pulled this from PowerSchool. These are the numbers of students district wide that are enrolled in these various programs and within the first grade. And TK kinder student numbers. That also includes our RSP students and our SDC students, our special ed students. So right now we have about an 80% return rate from parent surveys, which is wonderful. But to make some of these staffing decisions, we really want everyone's input. So that's why office staff is continuing. But in general, that's a high percentage. So some of the questions about how distance learning has been going was rated 1 through 5 on the survey, with 1 being my child is not enthusiastic about school this year and five being very enthusiastic. And we sent out the survey in English and in Spanish. So I put these side by side. So you can note the percentages. We clearly have about 50% from the English survey with parents that were very enthusiastic. And you can see in the Spanish survey we have approximately 50 as well. And then you can denote the 1 to 5 ranking for this particular question. How connected does your child feel about his or her peers? Now we expected this to be low because children are interacting, which is a big part of being in school. But that being said, sometimes families are able to have connections or learning hubs or childcare opportunities or what have you, and they're getting the connection. Or we want to also know how they're feeling about being in Zoom or Google Meet environments with peers where they can at least see them on the screen. So you can see here, it's about 18% in our English survey and about 34% in our Spanish survey. In terms of children feeling very connected, how well is the child able to follow the daily schedule? And so this one once again is one needs a lot of support. So you can see that in the English survey in which it appears as if children are needing more support. And then the Spanish survey it's approximately 34%. So 54 and 34%. So that's concerning because we want to make sure kids are getting the support they need so we can look at different avenues on how to assist with that in this particular question. And then we were really interested from parents perspective how well our children, our students are attending class meetings. And so in this particular one, five is every day and one is rarely. So you can see 63% on the English survey and 55% on the Spanish survey."},{"start":2400760,"end":2401400,"speaker":"F","text":"Okay,"},{"start":2403320,"end":3455510,"speaker":"B","text":"now the question about dual immersion bilingual programs were put in here for very good reason because of the issue I mentioned earlier about credentialing and the need to have a very specific specialized credential in order to teach, in this case, Spanish or Mandarin with academic proficiency. So the state has specialized credentials, which is different than a teacher that doesn't have this credential. They would not be allowed to teach in a dual immersion or bilingual program. And as you know, at Adelante Selby and at, we have Spanish dual immersion. At Hoover, Garfield and Taft we have bilingual programs. Then over at Orion we have the Mandarin program. So my concern is that if teachers in those programs go on leave or need to take a leave due to a medical concern, that we would not be able to offer these programs in person because it would be very difficult to hire teachers with these credentials. We already struggle a bit as the year progresses. The best time to hire Teachers with these credentials are in February for the next school year, so people can plan ahead. In fact, for many years we've actually had a relationship with Spain in which we bring teachers from Spain over to fill the vacancies that we have. And districts up and down California are doing the same thing. So there's a dire need for the BCLAD credential and special ed as well. But in this case, regarding this question, if we were to, for example, keep the dual immersion bilingual program as a distance learning option, then based on teacher survey data, we would be able to keep the programs intact. But if we were to consider an in person learning environment and teachers went on leave, and I'm going to go over the leave data in just a bit, then that could be very problematic. So that's why this question was very important. And so this particular statement is asking families, you know, are you enrolled in these programs or do you want to be enrolled in distance learning or in person learning? And you can see for distance learning, with the assumption that we can continue in this same fashion, is 58% for English and 45% for Spanish. All right, considerations of schedules. So this is the question in which we were asking families the different types of models that might be preferred. So for option one, the idea would be that children come in the morning for a set amount of time, 150 minutes or what have you, and then a different group, the other half the class, come in the afternoon with the same teacher, and in between would be a cleaning schedule and lunch for the teacher and, you know, possibly prep time or other tasks and things so forth. Option two was a hybrid model, and we discussed this in July, the two full days in person and three full days at home learning for students. And then option three, of course, is full distance learning. So when I pulled this data on Monday evening, it was at 43%, and it's hovered around the same percentage since then. So about 43% the English survey and 40% on the Spanish survey wanting full distance learning, which means conversely, 57% for English responses wanting some sort of in person learning. And then of course, for the Spanish survey as well, we have the 59% would prefer in person of some kind. So we also asked for parents, they had the option to write down their thoughts or comments or questions. And so we essentially categorized them. There were many, and I appreciate all of that, but we took sort of the main, the main points that we read multiple times. And so these were the concerns that were brought up from parents, really, the help for students and staff Just because of the worries about COVID 19 the changing of the teachers or sites midway. And as difficult as that was to put in that survey, I really needed families to know that that could be very much of a reality. And it's hard to hear that up front, but it would have been even worse to inform people later. That was the intent. Desire to have after school program access, concerned about only being there half day or two days a week in person would not allow the teachers to actually teach all curriculum and materials in a proper fashion. Because this also assumes that for half time or in a hybrid model, three days out of five, the students are at home with assignments and things to complete, but in asynchronous setting or independent learning. Concerns about mental health and just receiving all possible educational opportunities for students, concerns about when flu season hits and we have to revert back potentially to full distance learning. Do we have the structures and capacity to do that? You know, the concerns about distance learning just not working for some kids. And how do we handle connections? And that sort of leads into somewhat of the mental health but personal connections for students and staff, whether that be student to student or student to staff. And then how are staff actually going to just manage the whole mask wearing and physical distance reminders? Do they need to lead the police people of the campus and will students adhere to that? Now in the survey we did put down the criteria to return in person, one of them being the ability for students to wear masks and physical distancing as a criteria, because we need that to happen. But you know, kids are little, they, they don't always follow those rules or they get too excited and want to be around their friends and so forth. So even though we would have systems, routines and procedures in place, kids may not abide by that. So what happens? And then we heard feedback about being unhappy that parents may be forced to pause on the dual immersion and bilingual programs because of the staffing issue, as I mentioned earlier. And why do we need to make this decision about the full year now? The reason why that was important I just wanted to address is because when we go through the reshuffling of staffing, if we go in that direction then it doesn't matter whether it's now or January or March or whenever it happens. Reshuffling to some degree will need to happen in order to accommodate parents wishes for continued full distance learning. There will be a dishevelment. We can't get around that 100%. So I want to make sure that was clear. And so if parents don't make the commitment to full distance learning. When we make these final decisions, then we're going to have a problem with balancing classes in terms of numbers and contacts. We work in a union environment and in our union contract with the teachers there are class size caps and so forth. So we can't have people, students I should say, going in and out on a mass level. So here and there might be okay depending on space. So that's the rationale behind that. So I'm going to continue on with teacher survey results. I know I'm giving a lot of information, so if you could write your questions down, that would be great to the board and then I can go back to slides as needed. So moving ahead with the teacher survey. So in the teacher survey we are looking at approximately 72% or so that want full distance learning and then the remainder who are interested in coming back in some sort of fashion. Now, in regards to choosing schedules, the preschool, child development center or state preschool needs to be in a full day situation or an AM PM depending on the the program. Special ed would be in full day and then gen ed teachers, non special ed or non, you know, non special ed classrooms I should say do have some flexibility in choosing. But anyway, regardless, it looks like we have about 29% or so of staff that are willing to come back. And that's out of 134 responses. Remember, we only asked these questions of preschool through first grade classroom teachers and itinerant staff and so forth. Are teachers concerned? Yes, 72% are concerned about returning to an in person model with some on the fence here and then 9.7 that are not concerned about returning at 134 teachers who may want to start the interactive process to determine work accommodations. And so as I mentioned earlier, we have a process that is a very typical HR process. It's usually five to 10 people that we're working with each year in HR where it could be someone that has a back problem and they can't lift, you know, books or their work or they can't twist or, you know, something happens and we need to step in and say how can the district support you and accommodate your health condition? So the same is in effect for COVID 19. We work with the employee. Erin Cacos in HR specifically is overseeing this process this year and what she does is works with the employee and she started the outreach this week already to find out and to work with the employee and their doctor on what restrictions could be in effect that would affect the job duties of the teacher and we look at the underlying conditions on the CDC in regards to COVID 19. And so once information is provided by the doctor, Erin can start discussing what possibilities might be in place. Now the good news about this is that if we have a strand of full distance learning, then teachers and staff that fall within this category of interactive process with the approval from the doctor to approve, accommodate a reasonable accommodation. One of those reasonable accommodations may very well be being a full distance learning teacher. So that would be a way to, you know, keep our staff in place that are, that have these, these medical conditions that are concerning with COVID 19. So teachers may need to take unpaid leave. Now, unpaid leave is a common function each year. This year we have 10 teachers who are on unpaid leave. We have two that are traveling, we have two that are trying a different career. There's lots of different reasons why people take unpaid leave of absence. But in COVID 19, the assumption is that if we return back in person, that unpaid leave might be of consideration. You can see here that 83.9% of teachers noted that they were not considering an unpaid leave of absence. But we do have some that are considering it. Then I have a chart later that will show you this. Exactly. You can see there are some people that are considering this unpaid leave of absence. Now the reason why it needs to be for the year is because we will need to replace the person temporarily in the classroom if they will be absent from the classroom by taking unpaid leave. And the credentials that we need to get need to be match or will be sufficient enough through the California Teaching Commission to still have students be teaching by being taught from a credentialed teacher or a long term sub or multiple long term subs. So the point is here is that this piece of data from an HR perspective worries me the most. The interactive process, the unpaid leaves and then my next slide about childcare. Because if we aren't able to find replacement employees for this period of time, while people take their right to take leave, then the option is that we have to move students because we won't have a teacher and that's disheveling and disruptive, or we have to find teachers to fill that position. And that's the concern in whether it's October, November, January, what have you, or really anytime during the year. It's difficult. We already manage people that take regular leaves, like maternity leaves or family leaves or what have you. And those things are planned well in advance. And usually the teacher is involved in helping to find the substitute that will assist. And it's a Much shorter period of time, five days, two weeks, even six months for maternity leave. And that's a typical function that we deal with every year. But adding at this time of year this additional layer of finding employees would be difficult. And this new type of leave, the Family First Coronavirus Relief act is a option that is new because of COVID 19. It lasts through December 30th. And these gives, this leave gives employees the ability to leave their employment due to child care concerns, whether their children are home, distance learning, whether we have school closures, and noting that there is not another person at home to take care of children. And at this point we have seven employees or 5.2% of our credentialed teaching staff that has noted that they are concerned about their own child care needs. And then you can see we have 11% that stated maybe. So this is another leave that's concerning. Now granted this particular leave is only at this point lasts till December 30, but that's still a long time between now and December for us to cover that classroom. So this is a nutshell chart about the items I just mentioned because I think when you, when we lay it out side by side, this is something of concern. The first chart notes the certificated staff. In the bottom chart notes classified staff. And I'm going to talk about classified in just a bit. But this really shows the number of people that we could be facing that could potentially be out of the classroom or out of their position. So whether they're speech language, itinerant person, a special ed teacher, a bilingual teacher, or a general education English only classroom teacher, at this point these numbers are concerning. So some of these maybes might turn into yeses or to no's. There are, you know, there are considerations. Each, each employee has to make this determination if we move in this direction of returning on what's best for their family. But at the same time, from an HR lens, this is very worrisome about what could happen one for the teachers and the staff, but also how it will disrupt the classroom. Whether it's because it will be a substitute teacher there or a new employee, or if children have to be moved around, which is our worst case scenario. We never really want to do any of this. The perfect scenario is that kids can stay with their teacher because all of these relationships have been built so far. I absolutely recognize that, which is why we do all this work normally. February to August before a school opens. And then for classified staff, there's also concerns. We have 14 people, primarily instructional assistants that noted they would be concerned about starting the interactive process. But 19 maybe. And then you'll see the unpaid leave of four and childcare leave, which looks concerning once we receive this data of 13. But even so, the compilation of the yes and the maybes make me very nervous. Okay, I do want to talk about the staffing concerns, and I think this would help everyone understand a little bit. In my world, this is very obvious, but I know people don't walk in the shoes of hr. And so I wanted to show how this is an example of the concerns that I'm having. So this is an example school, and you can see the teachers on the left side, their grade levels, what the teacher preference was, whether they're concerned about returning, and then those that are noting whether they want interactive process, unpaid leave or child care leave. And so, you know, these folks fall within the data that I just showed you. Then on the bottom in red is the correlation to this particular site. So as a district, we tend to look district wide and that's how we staff. And then at each site, the principal oversees the staffing schedule and works with the teachers and, you know, sets all that up before August starts and places"},{"start":3455510,"end":3456590,"speaker":"A","text":"students and so forth."},{"start":3456670,"end":3982750,"speaker":"B","text":"But what I did was I just took a snapshot of what it could look like at a site level because I know that most families are concerned about that and the board wants to know. So in this particular case, we have parents that are looking to be in person, you know, for approximately 63 children at this site in kindergarten would like an in person setting, and 31 would prefer full distance learning. But as you can see from the teacher chart, all teachers want full distance learning, but some of them may want unpaid leave or go through the interactive process and perhaps as an alternative can move into the full distance learning spot. But there would only be one spot for three teachers for full distance learning. For example, in the first grade, same thing. It looks like we could almost have an option one class, an option two class in person, and then we would still have a class and a half for full distance learning. Now, the teacher contract at this grade level says 30 students in a class. So we'd have to address that somehow. In most cases, we would be looking at student movement or looking at how students are enrolled at the school or what have you. If we had this information well in advance. But these are the numbers we have right now in terms of how the parents answered the survey. So in this particular case, we have essentially two potential classrooms of in person, but no teacher available, or the worry that a Teacher in these grade levels might go on leave. And then the class doesn't have that teacher anyway, it has a different substitute or what have you. So this is just a quick snapshot. I just want to describe it. I tried to eloquently talk about this last week, but I think the chart is more helpful to understand what the potential ramifications are. And then of course, when we are in a dual immersion or a bilingual setting, it's a whole other layer because the concern about once again having credentialed teachers or even special ed teachers is something that we need to really think through in terms of the ability to still offer the program. And then from the teacher survey and John and I hosted a teacher meeting last night week and these are some of the highlights from the chat. So we combine them for major categories. But the we heard about the timing and wanting to push back the return date to later. That was clear. And then concerns, of course, about health or the teacher's family health. Wanting to understand a little bit more about student tracking and tracing. And that will be an update next week. Concerns about mask wearing, health protocols, especially in these early grades and special ed and the children's ability to keep masks on and so forth. We do have sites under construction. Wanting to make sure that there's proper protocols in space, giving the unique natures of construction sites. Concerned about reconfiguration of classrooms and starting school over again in terms of building relationships and things you normally do in your first week or so of school or two weeks. Students and teachers are more comfortable with distant learning routines and are now settled in. So on September 16, we heard a lot about workload and concerns about distance learning from teachers. But it looks like now, the following week, that teacher said that things are that, you know, kids are more settled in, that they're really appreciating higher attendance and things like that. And then wondering if the PPE supply that we have in place meet CDC guidelines. And we've mentioned this many times, Martin, our director, Martin Cervantes, our director of facilities only orders things in accordance to CDC guidelines. So appropriate for the work we're doing or not, of course, ordering things that are for medical personnel, although those that are working closer with students or our nurses do have upgraded ppe. But in general, we are meeting all of the guidelines for from the CDC in this regard. Okay, switching gears. Classified survey. So classified staff returning. We have about 48% that noted on the survey, with 21% being maybe. But 48% at this point, 49% classified. You may want to start the interactive process. So at this point we have about 8%. And I mentioned, I'll show you again on the chart just to refresh. But once again, when employees work accommodations warrant a distance learning environment or possibly not working, then once again we have a vacancy that we need to fill. And those that want to take unpaid leave, here we are with 83.9% saying no. But we have a considerable number, 13% in the maybe category. So once again filling basic vacancies. And these are positions that we still have vacancies to this day on. So we're not seeing people apply at a rate that we normally do during our typical hiring period which is February through August. And then classified staff who may need to take the specialized FFCRA leave due to child care. And this is of concern as well because that means that the person, the employee would not be available to assist. And you don't have many people applying for various classified positions. So just since you saw that information once again going back to this chart where we're more comparing classified and certificated, but highlighting the classified responses right now so you can get a sense of what we would be potentially grappling with between the yes and the maybe figures. So that's of concern to me. And then we also met with classified staff Last Thursday evening at 5:30. Our CSCA President held hosted us at the meeting which was great. We were able to discuss this information, you know, information from the board meeting last week and encouraging people to fill out the survey. But the information that we heard from the meeting itself and the survey really came down to concerns that other classified staff will go to work and not report symptoms as they do not want to miss work even though there are leaves properly available. So we want to make sure we're doing another round of training. So I'll be reaching out to classified staff again just to make sure they realize that is available to them. Site construction projects again will that allow us to open? And the concerns about working in a construction area? And we've had construction happen for many, many years. But now that we have these new routines and procedures with temperature taking and wellness checks and so forth, we what would that actually look like and unfold to be the mask wearing physical distancing. Many of our classified staff, especially our instructional assistants, our campus supervisors, even our custodian are always around children and managing children and the supervision of children to some degree. And so how will that unfold? Concerns about being indoors, specifically with students with COVID 19 concerns. So not students that have COVID 19. But in regards to concern and potential symptoms for those that are asymptomatic, the concern about return, timing to return and upcoming holidays, similar to what we've heard already, this idea that we have Halloween and then we have Thanksgiving and then we have winter break, where families might rely on each other for childcare purposes, which makes perfect sense. So the timing and how do we leverage that properly. And then concerns about transportation, specifically special ed and adult supervisors on buses. And exactly how would that unfold? Do the windows have to be open fully? How many students can be on the bus? Who's supervising the students? Normally we have a whole system in place. So would that even be altered or how would that work? So those were some of the comments and concerns that were from classified staff. So that concludes the presentation. I am going to end there, but I would like to turn it over to Janet. Thank you for any discussion."},{"start":3984910,"end":4000990,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, thanks, Wendy. We do have a number of speaker cards, but I'd like to give the board a chance to make comments or ask questions before we move over there. So I can't see the board at this point. So if you guys would like to speak, just type in."},{"start":4004270,"end":4010990,"speaker":"D","text":"Wendy, there was question in the chat. Who are classified staff? Could you define that for the audience?"},{"start":4011710,"end":4056700,"speaker":"B","text":"I apologize. So our classified staff are phenomenal employees that we. Have you heard about some of them just earlier, our food service employees. But they, they span multiple classifications and they are our support staff at the sites. Office managers, office assistants, custodians, instructional assistants, librarians. We have whole variety of classified staff working at the district office in various roles. At our IMC that takes care of our warehouse needs. So all of our facilities and transportation. So they are non certificated, non teachers. They're groups that are not teachers and they're not management. So it's a whole support group that we have supporting the education of students."},{"start":4063990,"end":4087600,"speaker":"D","text":"So I guess I would just say that you've given us a lot to think about. I would actually like to hear from the speakers. So I don't really have any specific questions right now. I mean, I have a lot of questions. But I know we're also going to have a study session next week where we'll have more information and have time to think about all this. But I personally would like to hear from the speakers we have tonight. And I just want to say, Wendy, thank you very much for the presentation and collecting all the data."},{"start":4088240,"end":4100640,"speaker":"A","text":"You're welcome. So Dr. Baker, I don't know if you've talked yet about the meeting next week. Do you want to clarify this meeting versus next week before we go to speakers?"},{"start":4101200,"end":4105160,"speaker":"F","text":"Sure, I can do that if you'd like, Janet, at this point in time?"},{"start":4105160,"end":4111640,"speaker":"A","text":"Well, because I think that there are a number of speakers that have questions that might, that you might be planning to address next week and not this week."},{"start":4112040,"end":4179350,"speaker":"F","text":"Right. So after listening to the data tonight, the data that you have tonight, what we wanted to do was continue next week is going to speak. It's not going to be a regular meeting again. It's going to be a special meeting. It's a study session. And we've had study sessions in the past. And so with the study session, what we wanted to do was to give you information in regard to the safety protocols that the PPE that we already have, what would be in place, what a classroom would look like, the COVID testing that will be in place, and the entities that we'll be working with so that our staff members can be tested. Also, there'll be information on what the educational service piece would look like in a classroom when we return to in person learning. We did learn quite a bit tonight regarding the HR process and what would need to take place prior to coming back. And then the special education piece will also be addressed on what that would look like for our students who are returning back to in person learning that are our special needs children who are in SDC classes especially. So that would take place next week."},{"start":4181510,"end":4187750,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, thanks. So question to the board. Do we want to go with the speakers or did you have any clarifying questions at this point?"},{"start":4187980,"end":4188220,"speaker":"G","text":"Point?"},{"start":4191340,"end":4234400,"speaker":"A","text":"None. Okay, so we'll go ahead and take speaker cards. Just a reminder, speakers are limited to three minutes and I'll share my screen with the countdown timer. Please be mindful of that. And yes, that's correct. There's no decision being made tonight. This was an information that we were receiving the data from the survey that went out to Pre K, TK kinder and first teachers, staff and families. So our first speaker is Jackie Moore, followed by Maureen McPeek. Jackie, do we have you?"},{"start":4243850,"end":4245130,"speaker":"F","text":"She needs to unmute herself."},{"start":4253770,"end":4255130,"speaker":"A","text":"Jackie, can you unmute?"},{"start":4257050,"end":4257690,"speaker":"F","text":"There you go."},{"start":4258650,"end":4260170,"speaker":"C","text":"She should be able to talk now."},{"start":4261690,"end":4281619,"speaker":"A","text":"Hi, Jackie, are you there? So Bord, I can't see the chat. So if somebody's chatting in there about not being able to unmute or something, let me know. Maybe we can do Maureen McPeek and then come back to Jackie."},{"start":4290100,"end":4290660,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay."},{"start":4292430,"end":4294910,"speaker":"A","text":"Hi, Maureen, are you there? I am, yes."},{"start":4294910,"end":4295550,"speaker":"B","text":"Can you hear me?"},{"start":4296110,"end":4489390,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, so Hi, I'm Maureen McPeak and I'm a second grade teacher. This is my 10th year teaching at Roosevelt and my 25th year teaching. So I wanted to let you know that my dream right now would be to be in person in flexible seating with my students. But due to the pandemic this is not possible. So I want to talk about Our original agreement was to remain in full distance learning to at least November 13th. Suddenly we were notified about a rush plan to open Pre K first SDC and Newcomer students. The rush plans to reopen have sparked anxiety among the RCSD teachers and staff. Our safety plan is haphazard at best. Specifically, I question how prepared the district can be for in person learning when our temperature checkers aren't working or reliable. Each classroom is given only three desks with plexiglass. I have not seen any personal protective equipment available. Ventilation in classrooms is an issue. Social distancing will be difficult. Kids will be indoors for five to six hours a day. Hand washing with clothes, cold water and inaccurate temperature checks is not enough. I know many teachers have vocalized this, but the actual teaching effectiveness should also be considered. If the district is already concerned about learning loss, social emotional relationship building, I think they should be thinking about how a large majority of our days in person will be focused on behavior management and not academic instruction. I'm concerned that reopening will disrupt the progress that's been made in providing daily quality online instruction. I know from years of experience that starting that staying apart and whole group teaching isn't good for our students. Imagine coming to class at age 4 to 7 seeing your teacher dressed in scrubs, in a mask behind plexiglass, telling you not to come close to him or her or your friends. Sit at your desk all day and have a lesson taught to you that is not at your level, that's not safe or friendly and it's not good teaching many family members who are immune compromised, for example cancer survivors or senior grandparents in the home. Many students have asthma, compromised lungs and they can't risk this exposure. Sorry, I'm trying to find the rest of my screen. I worry about the safety of our staff, students and families. We need detailed information about the day to day logistics, safety measures, testing and contact tracing. I am asking you to wait to reopen our classrooms until January 2021. This will be after the holidays when family gatherings may occur. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you Maureen. So we either have Jackie Moore or the next speaker is Mushin Caviani who I don't see in the attendees. Jackie's got her hand up."},{"start":4489550,"end":4490910,"speaker":"F","text":"Yep. So."},{"start":4502680,"end":4513960,"speaker":"A","text":"Can you Hear me now? Yeah. Go ahead, Jackie. Thank you. Good evening, Board of trustees. Our community has entrusted you with making the difficult decisions regarding health, safety and education."},{"start":4514760,"end":4517800,"speaker":"B","text":"We should continue distance learning through trimester"},{"start":4517800,"end":4571880,"speaker":"A","text":"two because in person learning poses threats to safety and the health of our community. Flu season is fast approaching and is anticipated to be brutal. Flu symptoms and Covid have similarities. Great. We have temperature checks, but by the time you have a fever, you could have had Covid for up to 14 days. Great things are happening during distance learning. My special day class. Students with once unintelligible speech are speaking more clearly. Students are consistently going to mainstreaming classes and actively participating. My students are following their individualized skills schedules and completing asynchronous learning tasks. Paraprofessionals are embracing new instructional responsibilities. The parents are involved and invested in their child's education. In my almost 17 years with RCSD, we have lost some Hoover students due to other health issues like cancer and traumatic brain injury."},{"start":4573000,"end":4575560,"speaker":"B","text":"The Hoover community rallied together to support"},{"start":4575560,"end":4599050,"speaker":"A","text":"these families and grief counseling was available. These are hard losses that we couldn't prevent. But we can prevent more losses during COVID We can prevent it being spread to school and continue distance learning because if we don't, our losses could be astronomical. I hear comments about the social emotional well being of students. What's going to happen to the social emotional well being of these little TK1"},{"start":4601050,"end":4603410,"speaker":"B","text":"students that will be the test subjects"},{"start":4603410,"end":4604900,"speaker":"A","text":"for the gradual reopening."},{"start":4605610,"end":4607890,"speaker":"B","text":"They may observe peers and teachers suddenly"},{"start":4607890,"end":4632840,"speaker":"A","text":"not coming to school. We aren't going to need strategically set up classrooms at that point. We're going to need grief counselors. On a personal note, I'm a single mom of 17 month old twins. I don't have the option to take leave. I have a mortgage and medical to consider. Without the paycheck I receive, I would be homeless. And without medical care for my little ones, I'm not worried for myself if we return in person."},{"start":4633000,"end":4634760,"speaker":"B","text":"I'm worried about what I may bring"},{"start":4634760,"end":4641000,"speaker":"A","text":"home to my elderly family members or my young twins. Continuing distance learning until there's a vaccine"},{"start":4641240,"end":4642960,"speaker":"B","text":"means I don't have to worry about"},{"start":4642960,"end":4659390,"speaker":"A","text":"having a roof or possibly celebrating the next holiday or the twins next birthday at Skylon Memorial Park. I'm entrusting you with the health and safety of not only my students and colleagues, but also my family and your decision to continue distance learning."},{"start":4659710,"end":4662670,"speaker":"B","text":"Because your decision could be the decision"},{"start":4662750,"end":4693380,"speaker":"A","text":"between life and death for some of us. Thank you. Thank you, Jackie. Let's see. We have Nusheen Kavyani. I saw a hand go up when I said that name Tabrizi. But I just want to double check because we have Mohamed Tabrizi later on. So we're looking for New Sheen followed by Mercedes Kwiatkowski."},{"start":4693700,"end":4696820,"speaker":"G","text":"So I looked for Nusheen and did not see anything in the."},{"start":4697300,"end":4708600,"speaker":"A","text":"Let's double check the hand that's up because they put their hand up when I said the name President Lawson. Yes. So Nishin is under Mason,"},{"start":4711480,"end":4712360,"speaker":"B","text":"a different name."},{"start":4712600,"end":4715240,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, so I didn't get the name, but Kyle."},{"start":4715480,"end":4716600,"speaker":"G","text":"Yep, I got it."},{"start":4717000,"end":4717640,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you."},{"start":4720280,"end":4720760,"speaker":"G","text":"Oh,"},{"start":4723000,"end":4724200,"speaker":"F","text":"there we go. False start."},{"start":4728920,"end":4731360,"speaker":"A","text":"Hi, are you there? Good evening."},{"start":4731360,"end":4732280,"speaker":"G","text":"Can you hear me?"},{"start":4732440,"end":4791420,"speaker":"A","text":"Yes, go ahead. Hi. So I would like to say two things. First, I think with the current reopening plans we have seen so far from the district, especially the survey that has been sent to K2.1 parents, it looks like we are getting all the risks of COVID 19, but no benefit of in person learning. The other thing I would like to mention is that although we are in a pandemic and conducting these meetings remotely, there are still community meetings. So I think it's important to closely simulate a public meeting and have the chat open so everyone can see the comments. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's see. We have Mercedes, followed by Sarah Henderson Martinez. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead."},{"start":4791900,"end":4792460,"speaker":"H","text":"Okay."},{"start":4793020,"end":5124800,"speaker":"A","text":"Good evening, everyone. As a parent in this district, I first want to express my support for our teachers. We all recognize how they have been going above and beyond during a very challenging time. I've been asked by Dr. Baker to share my professional perspective on distance learning. As a child psychiatrist in my clinical practice over the past several months, I've been seeing kids who are not showering. They're disheveled, with poor hygiene. They lie in bed all day, often unsupervised. They're not logging in. And apparently, according to the results tonight, 60% have not been attending daily, which is, in my opinion, unacceptable. They're frequently absent. They're not participating. They have their cameras off. They're withdrawn. My patients with ADHD and learning disabilities are straight up not learning right now. They're not participating. They don't have the help or support they need to stay on task or retain information. Their parents are at wit's end. There's documented evidence of increased rates of abuse and neglect at home, as well as domestic violence. My department alone has had so many referrals for depression and anxiety the past few months that we can't keep up. A recent NAMI study showed that 8 out of 10 students are struggling with focus in school. 74% can't maintain a much needed routine. 30% in June were already experiencing harm. That was months ago. And over half have started reaching the end of their rope. NPR just released a study that one in 10 teenagers have contemplated suicide in the past 30 days. This week the CDC showed results that one in five teenagers have seriously contemplated contemplated suicide. One in six have made a plan and one in 10 have made an attempt. There are no studies on suicide in kinder through second grades because that's not how that age group demonstrates their mental illness. We won't know and appreciate the full spectrum of the negative impact of distance learning to our children's mental health or academic success for years. But I can tell you I am seeing concerning signs every single day in my practice. Last week we heard from a parent in our own district whose 8 year old repeatedly talks about wanting to die. Going back to school is clearly not in everyone's best interest. But there are 60% of parents and 30% of teachers who want to give this a try and students who desperately need more structure and assistance in their lives. Let's take advantage of this small, willing cohort and run a pilot using the four P pillars that Dr. Baker and his team have worked very hard to put in place. Let's see how that goes. What works? And especially in our community, which is so wonderfully diverse and has different needs than other surrounding districts, let's figure out what works for us. We should be approaching this process as a dial, not a switch. Let's start with this willing cohort and turn the dial forward a notch. Thank you. Thank you, Mercedes. Sarah Henderson Martinez, followed by Kathryn Stewart. Hi, Sarah. Hi. Can you hear me? Yeah, go ahead. All right, so first I wanted to start and say thank you so much for the hard work putting together all the data for tonight and thank you so much for thoughtfully considering every single one of our comments. It really means a lot for me. I'm a teacher in the preschool and my biggest concern is with contact tracing and how it's been handled. So far, we've had a few cases, both among staff and also among some of my families. And in all of the cases, there's four of them. I haven't known about them until later. So there have been times when I've been on campus after an exposure has happened. And the only way that I found out was through a call to a colleague saying, why are you on campus? You shouldn't be there. So if we do reopen, I hope that, and I think next week you said that you'll be addressing this, but I'm hoping that there will be better contact tracing in place. I live with my elderly parents and again, to reiterate what other teachers have said, I really don't want to bring it home to them. There have been cases within families that have only come up through conversation with parents in passing that I'm wondering when we come back what, what that's going to look like for parents reporting cases in their families. Yes, younger children are infected less often, but that number is not zero. So the probability is not zero that we will get infected or our families will. And also the CDC that I work at right now, we're in the process of moving to a new classroom and we're supposed to have everything out by the end of October. And on top of having to move to a new classroom and set everything up, I'm worried that we're going to have to have students during this interim period where we have a brand new classroom and we don't have the luxury of having plexiglass like the elementary students. And I'm a little bit worried that I won't have enough time to properly set up my classroom to be safe. I also am concerned because I feel like we can't correlate necessarily the reduced outcomes with distance learning to it being distance learning. Since we're all going through a global traumatic event right now, I feel like there would be reduced learning outcomes anyway. So I think that we need to look really carefully about the research and maybe correlate it to something that's a little bit more similar like the 1918 pandemic or floods or fires and how children dealt with that. So. So I just, I really want to be sure we're examining this from all sides because our lives literally depend on it. Thank you,"},{"start":5126560,"end":5127200,"speaker":"D","text":"Sarah."},{"start":5127760,"end":5134720,"speaker":"A","text":"Let's see, we have Kathryn Stewart followed by Eric Sutton. Am I on? Yes, go ahead."},{"start":5134960,"end":5241520,"speaker":"G","text":"Hi. Well, you know what my answer to the child psychiatrist is or psychologist or whatever she is, is my kid loves school now. He loved school before. He has fun learning. Sometimes he doesn't want to do stuff and he whines and it grates on my nerves because I'm a mommy. Guess what? That's life. Get over it. As parents, we need to stop being so powder puffy and snowflakey about everything and say, you know what? Last year and the year before and the year before, we trusted our kids lives to these teachers. Every day we left our kids with these teachers and they took care of our kid for us. We Ought to be thankful for that. Teachers should not have to choose between returning to work, risking death from COVID or losing their house with unpaid leave, or begging the doctors for a note, which is really humiliating in order for them to be able to have a safe way to teach. Having distance learning is not perfect. We'd love to have in person learning, but the point is it's safer for the teachers, it's safer for the children, it's safer for the, safer for the families, and we can wait a little bit longer. I think as parents we need to keep our little pants on and wait until there's a vaccine that's safer for everyone. And it really bugs me that we feel like the social, emotional well being of our little snowflakes is more important than the safety of the people who have to take care of them. And I think it would be really nice if we could show the teacher some support and respect by saying, yes, your life is important to me enough to be inconvenienced on my part with my own child for a little while longer until it's really safe for you to come back. So I will be waiting for a vaccine so that the teachers can be safe, the families can be safe, and my kid can be safe. And I'll yield the rest of my time to whoever else wants it. Thank you."},{"start":5241920,"end":5245600,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you, Katherine. Eric Sutton, followed by Christy Herrera."},{"start":5254970,"end":5255290,"speaker":"F","text":"Hi."},{"start":5255930,"end":5256970,"speaker":"A","text":"Hi, Eric. Go ahead."},{"start":5258170,"end":5450900,"speaker":"F","text":"Okay. Yeah, So I, I sent a poll from the Orion kindergarten and first grade to the district and I trust that you're all looking at that. And, and I won't spend too much time on it. But it did say that 65% of the Orion first grade was in favor of distance learning. And it did say that 100%. It's very hard to get 100% of anything in a poll, but it said that 100% of the Orion parent participation first grade families stated that they had at least a preference to keep the same teachers. 75% said it was very important to keep the same teachers and 25% said it was preferred. So we have a scenario where a bulk of the families are happy with distance learning and they want to keep the teachers in the program. That's because Orion is doing things a little bit differently and the parents are really happy with it. We have two teachers in the first grade. One of them is teaching language arts, the other one is teaching math. And instead of being stuck with the same adult every day for all day, the kids get to move between adults on their calls, which is very important for a first grader, and they really like the interaction and the relationships that they have with their two different teachers. And the teachers are very closely tracking the subject that they're teaching. The district's proposal will rip those two teachers away from their subjects that they've specialized and focused on, and it would likely force one of them to teach both subjects in person, and then it will force the other one to teach both subjects by herself in distance learning. And then the distance learning will suck. I'm sorry for the language, but there's a reason why the school has organized the distance learning program in this way, and it's been really great for the kids. So what I don't understand is when there's so much agreement among the parents, why do we have to rip that apart? And with the last 20 seconds, I just want to say I think it's a mistake to blame mental illnesses on distance learning. There's no scientific evidence that distance learning learning is to blame. The more likely culprits are COVID 19 and the unbreathable air that we had for an entire month and the new realities that COVID 19 and unbreathable air posed throughout our lives for the past six months. So I think that. Yeah. Well, anyway, thank you. I see that I'm out of time,"},{"start":5450900,"end":5451780,"speaker":"A","text":"but thank you, Eric."},{"start":5451780,"end":5452220,"speaker":"F","text":"Thanks."},{"start":5453420,"end":5487380,"speaker":"A","text":"Let's see, we have Christy Herrera followed by Indra Hernandez, and I have not seen Indra on the attendees list. So if you're here, could you raise your hand? So we're ready to unmute you. So, Christy? Christy, are you here? It looks like your mic. Oh, now you're muted."},{"start":5489300,"end":5489780,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay."},{"start":5489780,"end":5491300,"speaker":"A","text":"Can you hear me now? Yeah, go ahead."},{"start":5491620,"end":5492580,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay, thanks."},{"start":5493220,"end":5501540,"speaker":"A","text":"So I'm a kindergarten teacher and this is my 20th year teaching and I've spoken a lot. So all I really want to say is that when we start to entertain the thought of returning back to school"},{"start":5501540,"end":5503220,"speaker":"G","text":"in person, I'm not gonna lie."},{"start":5503220,"end":5528480,"speaker":"A","text":"I can't wait to see my students in person. To hold their hands as we walk in the line to the cafeteria. To hug and comfort them when they stumble and fall or when they get their feelings hurt. To sing and be silly together. To be the kindergarten teacher that they deserve and to show them how much they matter in this world. The reality is that won't happen. Not if we come back too early. I'll have to stay six feet away from them. Not hold their hand, not comfort them if they need it. It's also a fantasy, because if you know what it's like to work with"},{"start":5528480,"end":5529640,"speaker":"G","text":"5 year olds, you would know that"},{"start":5529640,"end":5534540,"speaker":"A","text":"many of them need hand over hand assistance for writing and cutting. They need help adjusting their masks."},{"start":5534690,"end":5537730,"speaker":"G","text":"They need someone to be right next to them to show them how to do a task."},{"start":5538050,"end":5541290,"speaker":"A","text":"We shouldn't even be discussing the return to in person learning until the county"},{"start":5541290,"end":5545170,"speaker":"G","text":"is in the yellow as Redwood City has the highest number of cases in the county."},{"start":5545570,"end":5557370,"speaker":"A","text":"Yes, there are students struggling with online learning, but what about the students who are in the learning pods of 10 kids who can't handle being in school? The kids with ADHD are struggling with remote learning, but they will not be better served in the classroom as that"},{"start":5557370,"end":5559690,"speaker":"G","text":"psychiatrist said, because teachers won't be able"},{"start":5559690,"end":5564890,"speaker":"A","text":"to deal with them and to teach them in the manner that they really need. The four pillars cannot be enforced or"},{"start":5564890,"end":5566690,"speaker":"G","text":"upheld because five year olds are not"},{"start":5566690,"end":5572610,"speaker":"A","text":"developmentally able to handle what it means to be 6ft apart from everyone else and to properly use their PPE."},{"start":5572850,"end":5575250,"speaker":"G","text":"Now I want you all to listen and consider this."},{"start":5575330,"end":5603010,"speaker":"A","text":"We will not allow any of our students to be in school without their vaccinations. What about this vaccination? The one everyone's waiting for? How can we let our students return in person when they aren't vaccinated for Covid? This is more deadly than any of the other diseases and that we routinely vaccinate for. The board meetings are also being held remotely. If it's so safe to go back in the classroom, will the board meetings then be changed to in person as well? The stress has adversely affected all of our teachers, especially after this last week with emails that caused great concern."},{"start":5603250,"end":5604610,"speaker":"G","text":"I want to address that here because"},{"start":5604610,"end":5606370,"speaker":"A","text":"the board knows how we all felt about that."},{"start":5606610,"end":5607890,"speaker":"G","text":"Many teachers have had to go back"},{"start":5607890,"end":5615530,"speaker":"A","text":"to see their doctors, including myself, because of severe exhaustion, panic attacks, heart palpitations and much more. I know at least one of us"},{"start":5615530,"end":5616610,"speaker":"B","text":"teachers had to spend the night in"},{"start":5616610,"end":5626540,"speaker":"A","text":"the ER over the the weekend. So when we say that this plan looks good on paper, it is exactly the opposite in real life. Is this how you want to treat our educators that we're entrusting to teach our youth?"},{"start":5626540,"end":5627900,"speaker":"G","text":"By adding to our stress."},{"start":5628220,"end":5637180,"speaker":"A","text":"Stress that could easily be avoided by teachers being treated with honesty, transparency and compassion. I don't want to lose any of my colleagues, my family, or my own life by rushing to return."},{"start":5637420,"end":5638060,"speaker":"G","text":"Thank you."},{"start":5640540,"end":5649960,"speaker":"A","text":"Thanks Christy. Indra Hernandez, followed by. I think it's Ramin Kaivan who I have not seen in the attendees. Also, please raise your hand."},{"start":5652520,"end":5653040,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay."},{"start":5653040,"end":5653560,"speaker":"A","text":"There you are."},{"start":5654520,"end":5656280,"speaker":"G","text":"Hi Indra."},{"start":5656600,"end":5657400,"speaker":"A","text":"Yep, go ahead."},{"start":5657800,"end":5725090,"speaker":"G","text":"Oh, hi. I'm so happy to be here at the board right now. Thank you so much for the opportunity that you guys give us. Thank you for all the board members and Mr. Baker and Wendy. We really appreciate all the job about all the data collection because it was in a short period of time. We really want to be sure to go back and be safe. It's not just not wanting to come back. Of course we want to come back when we are safe and we want the best for the kids. We have been working very hard with the children and they have been engaging in every single class that we have. For those of you, preschoolers are doing great. Some of them, of course they have difficulties as everybody else, as I have myself, with the technology. But I think we have to give an opportunity to continue what has been working and what we have worked so hard for."},{"start":5725090,"end":5725370,"speaker":"A","text":"That."},{"start":5725850,"end":5803120,"speaker":"G","text":"And honestly, I want to be safe as everybody else. And I want the protocols of the COVID to be the same as the regular school, not treated as preschool different because administrator always said that we are on our own. And I believe that when I'm in Hoover, Mr. Carranza is the one in charge of all of us, even though that we have our director of the cdc. So all the protocols should be the same. The cleaning should be the same for preschool as well, because the little ones are as much as important as everybody else in the whole school, not just TK to up preschools. We are there and we are human beings as well. And we want to be safe and we don't want to bring any disease to our home. So I really, really want you guys to consider that our safety is first so we can serve the children when this thing pass. And we want this thing to pass very soon because we want to come back to a regular life or kind of adjusting new life that we're going to get. And thank you very much."},{"start":5804480,"end":5809390,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you, Ramin. Followed by Laura Atherton."},{"start":5825230,"end":5825950,"speaker":"G","text":"Good evening."},{"start":5828830,"end":5838200,"speaker":"A","text":"Good evening. My name is Ramin Kaiban. I am the husband of a. A preschool teacher here in the Redwood City School District."},{"start":5838280,"end":5839880,"speaker":"F","text":"I've been a business owner in Redwood"},{"start":5839880,"end":5841080,"speaker":"A","text":"City for the past 18 years."},{"start":5841560,"end":5843320,"speaker":"B","text":"I was also a member of and"},{"start":5843320,"end":5846200,"speaker":"A","text":"a chairman of the San Mateo County Workforce Investment Board."},{"start":5847160,"end":5853640,"speaker":"F","text":"And I watched the district get thrown"},{"start":5853640,"end":5859800,"speaker":"A","text":"into disarray when we first started this distance learning stuff. And then I watched administrators and teachers"},{"start":5860550,"end":5863670,"speaker":"F","text":"mount a valiant effort to recreate their"},{"start":5863670,"end":5865670,"speaker":"B","text":"worlds in a distance way."},{"start":5866790,"end":5885310,"speaker":"A","text":"And I have watched, because this stuff is occurring, frankly, in my living room. I have watched these students flourish via distance learning. So I'm not sure I buy any of this nonsense about People having trouble. The reality is that if you have"},{"start":5885310,"end":5888590,"speaker":"F","text":"a child that needs education then you"},{"start":5888590,"end":5898830,"speaker":"A","text":"need to be participating in that, in that effort. And I'm not also buying any of the statistics that frankly, what 10% of"},{"start":5898830,"end":5903070,"speaker":"F","text":"all teenagers are trying to kill themselves, that there comes a point where we"},{"start":5903070,"end":5904510,"speaker":"B","text":"have to stop looking at statistics and"},{"start":5904510,"end":5905750,"speaker":"A","text":"look at real human beings."},{"start":5906710,"end":5912510,"speaker":"F","text":"The facts are distance learning is working. Sending these people back to school with"},{"start":5912510,"end":5914510,"speaker":"A","text":"a bunch of kids who can't sit"},{"start":5914510,"end":5917550,"speaker":"F","text":"still, won't sit still, won't wear ppe,"},{"start":5917950,"end":5926910,"speaker":"A","text":"won't have their mask, will not socially distance and require constant physical attention from their instructors and their instructional aides is,"},{"start":5927550,"end":5936430,"speaker":"B","text":"you know, I used to tutor biology. This is a disaster waiting to happen. So yeah, let's, let's send them back. Why are we using these kids as guinea pigs?"},{"start":5937470,"end":5941390,"speaker":"A","text":"I just don't understand the approach because what we have, what federal guidelines we"},{"start":5941390,"end":5944230,"speaker":"F","text":"have to meet really honestly, there comes"},{"start":5944230,"end":5945350,"speaker":"A","text":"a point where we have to think"},{"start":5945350,"end":5947630,"speaker":"F","text":"about the humanity that's involved here."},{"start":5948670,"end":5951310,"speaker":"G","text":"You can't sacrifice the weakest."},{"start":5951950,"end":5954110,"speaker":"A","text":"If we do, then we are no"},{"start":5954110,"end":5955670,"speaker":"F","text":"better than the people that we seem"},{"start":5955670,"end":5967270,"speaker":"A","text":"to talk about on social media. We need to take care of these people. We need to take care of these kids and make sure they're safe. We need to make sure these teachers"},{"start":5967270,"end":5969750,"speaker":"B","text":"are safe, that these administrators are safe"},{"start":5969990,"end":5971430,"speaker":"A","text":"and that if you're going to give"},{"start":5971430,"end":5983430,"speaker":"F","text":"them eventually PPE that it doesn't look like it came look like somebody cut it out of the bottom of a bathing suit. It needs to be real medical grade stuff. Otherwise you're courting disaster."},{"start":5984150,"end":6194380,"speaker":"A","text":"And you know what that means from a legal perspective. I don't have to tell you. I yield back the rest of my time. Thank you. Thank you. We have Laura Atherton followed by Mohammad Tabrizi. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. I just wanted to talk about special day class, preschool special day class. It is not like the normal preschool programs. Our kids have special needs and I'm going to talk to you about it as with part of the four pillars. So like under health and hygiene our kids wear diapers. We have to change them. We also have to feed them. They need hand over hand feeding support and it actually even during like circle time or sharing tools, they need hand over hand support. As far as wearing face covers are concerned several. Our students just plain out can't and they are special needs. They have sensory needs. They have. They're not used to something like that. Parents haven't even. And I've talked to my parents. Parents haven't even started Them wearing masks because they thought that they would be exempt from face covers. So that does put us at risk if that is true physical distancing. I don't want to be scared of my kids. I love my kids. I absolutely love my kids. And I want to go back when it's safe. I want to be able to, to. To have that new preschool kid coming in because we've got new kids coming in every day. I had two, I have five actually coming up that will be joining my class soon. They are going to be scared, as all preschoolers are. They are going to be crying, they are going to need support. And I am going to be scared, quite frankly, to pick them up. And I want that. I don't want to be scared for myself or for my family. Physical distancing isn't gonna happen. And then limiting gathering. How is the board gonna help special day class kids and teachers when we know, I know that our kids go to public daycare or another daycare, a private daycare, before they come to the class or they leave and they go there after the class? So I also wanted to let the board know that we've had contact with a child that had Covid but was never tested because they don't test children under five. They test the parents only after the parents have gotten COVID 19. And then San Mateo just opened up testing on September 19th for kids that are 5 through 18. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Laura Mohammad Tabrizi followed by Christina Kim."},{"start":6212790,"end":6213670,"speaker":"G","text":"Can you hear me now?"},{"start":6213750,"end":6214630,"speaker":"A","text":"Yes, go ahead."},{"start":6214870,"end":6215990,"speaker":"F","text":"Great. Thank you."},{"start":6216870,"end":6223830,"speaker":"A","text":"First, I want to thank all of our teachers and staff for everything they've been doing in the remote learning"},{"start":6226000,"end":6226240,"speaker":"F","text":"place."},{"start":6226240,"end":6234440,"speaker":"A","text":"And it's been a lot of work for everybody. But at the last board meeting, I"},{"start":6234440,"end":6236520,"speaker":"F","text":"think it was a board member who"},{"start":6236520,"end":6249400,"speaker":"A","text":"said that we really shouldn't look at the neighboring school districts reopening plans because it's irrelevant to or doesn't have as much to do with our Redwood City community. But I actually think it would be"},{"start":6249400,"end":6252540,"speaker":"F","text":"malpractice not to do such comparison."},{"start":6253420,"end":6268260,"speaker":"A","text":"For example, our neighboring Menlo Park City school district has been working on their reopening plan with parents and teachers nonstop since last year. They in fact, opened special needs a few weeks ago. And as of this week, K through"},{"start":6268260,"end":6270700,"speaker":"F","text":"1 is open every day."},{"start":6272460,"end":6286570,"speaker":"A","text":"It seems that Redwood City simply shelved its reopening plans when we talked about it late last year and is now just dusting it off as almost an afterthought. I have looked at the reopening plan"},{"start":6286890,"end":6292370,"speaker":"F","text":"for our neighboring school Districts, as I'm sure a lot of you have, they"},{"start":6292370,"end":6306810,"speaker":"A","text":"have thought through every possible scenario and come up with solutions. As of our last board meeting, we still had not figured out our daytime custodial staff needs for cleaning. It's very disheartening to see our lack"},{"start":6306810,"end":6309130,"speaker":"F","text":"of practice preparedness and it shakes the"},{"start":6309130,"end":6322690,"speaker":"A","text":"trust that teachers and parents must have in any eventual reopening. It's not that the Menlo park school teachers are magically immune to Covid or have a death wish, but without a"},{"start":6322690,"end":6325570,"speaker":"G","text":"rigorous safety plan in place, can anyone"},{"start":6325570,"end":6328250,"speaker":"F","text":"blame our teachers and staff for their"},{"start":6328250,"end":6330290,"speaker":"A","text":"reluctance to come back to the classroom?"},{"start":6331170,"end":6333290,"speaker":"G","text":"Our neighbors have worked closely with their"},{"start":6333290,"end":6346600,"speaker":"A","text":"unions and reassured them with putting in place robust safety and on site testing protocols. That is why they have a high percentage of their teachers coming back and their community is at ease with sending"},{"start":6346600,"end":6347720,"speaker":"F","text":"children back to school."},{"start":6348520,"end":6365310,"speaker":"A","text":"I don't want to take away from all of the work that has been done here, but I urge every community member to review the plans that Menlo park, for example has implemented and then I think you will understand how ill prepared we are to open to reopen"},{"start":6365470,"end":6367230,"speaker":"F","text":"our school safety safely."},{"start":6368830,"end":6372270,"speaker":"A","text":"Just one last comment about the parent"},{"start":6372270,"end":6374270,"speaker":"G","text":"who made a comment about snowflakes."},{"start":6374430,"end":6378190,"speaker":"F","text":"I thought that was very disrespectful and thoughtless. Thank you."},{"start":6379310,"end":6408520,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you, Christina Kim, followed by Christina Xu. Hey, can you guys hear me okay now? Yes, go ahead."},{"start":6409160,"end":6409560,"speaker":"H","text":"Great."},{"start":6410200,"end":6410840,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay,"},{"start":6412600,"end":6501100,"speaker":"A","text":"thank you all for listening to our concerns. This past week, the parent leads from the TK K and first grade classes at the MI program on the Orion campus where my son is currently a student sent out our own version of the survey without force choices to better assess the options they were comfortable with and if they had strong preferences for one versus others. We actually had an 89% overall participation rate. Several of us in our community foundation, the district's reopening survey, quite confusing and to be honest, forced choice in nature. In fact, none of us even got the survey from the district had not our wonderful PTO leads forwarded it to us. There are a lot of great insights and a lot of different needs across a variety of parents. But the one that stood out the most is that while all parents had different levels of comfort pertaining to reopening versus virtual, there was a high degree of flexibility when it came to keeping the Mandarin component of their children's education. Therefore, we would like to request the board to support our efforts to keep the MI program intact and just as importantly, collaborate with parents and teachers getting rid of the silos in between us so that we can work together to create better solutions. Instead of a black and white, one size fits all type model. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see. Christina, where are we? Christina Hsu, followed by Devin or Michelle Mulaney."},{"start":6502860,"end":6503900,"speaker":"G","text":"Hi, can you hear me?"},{"start":6504060,"end":6515260,"speaker":"A","text":"Yes, go ahead. Thank you very much for, you know, doing the survey and asking for parent input and providing the results tonight. And also I do want to. First off, thank you."},{"start":6515260,"end":6515740,"speaker":"G","text":"Thanks."},{"start":6515740,"end":6520180,"speaker":"A","text":"Our teachers during this very difficult time. We know how much that they've been working and how dedicated they are to"},{"start":6520180,"end":6521420,"speaker":"H","text":"our students, to our children."},{"start":6522850,"end":6539730,"speaker":"A","text":"I am also part of the MI program at Orion, and I just wanted to, you know, pile on to what Christina Kim already said, which is, you know, the survey was really challenging for our community. I think it caused. When it was."},{"start":6539730,"end":6540930,"speaker":"H","text":"When it came out, it was quite"},{"start":6540930,"end":6562310,"speaker":"A","text":"a surprise that this topic was even discussed. And it caused a lot of confusion and anxiety for the parents because of the wording. And we recognize that surveys are challenging, which is why we wanted to take it upon ourselves to, you know, do a pulse check for our specific community. And further to what Christina said, I think that the flexibility of our community isn't such that, oh, we all want"},{"start":6562310,"end":6564430,"speaker":"H","text":"to do distance or we all want to do in person."},{"start":6564590,"end":6595590,"speaker":"A","text":"It was. There's a lot of nuances there, right? And I think that, that those nuances can be shared across our entire district where it's not just our program that wants a certain thing or a certain class that wants to certain thing. I think that you'll find at every single school and every single program, you know, it's going to vary based on what the teachers want and what the community wants. And I wonder if what I would ask is not just being able to be understanding and flexible to the bulk"},{"start":6595590,"end":6607440,"speaker":"H","text":"of the district, right. Where you see all of the districts results in one survey and one presentation. But you look site specific and sort of are able to allow each of the sites and each of the programs"},{"start":6607440,"end":6631780,"speaker":"A","text":"to work individually with their administrators and their teachers to come up with a model that works for them and works for the community at that specific site. So I just think that we just have to, you know, try to be flexible in this environment and, you know, recognize that even teachers have differences in how they want to pursue the next step of this learning environment."},{"start":6632100,"end":6633980,"speaker":"G","text":"So thank you."},{"start":6633980,"end":6635620,"speaker":"H","text":"I'll yield the rest of my time back."},{"start":6636100,"end":6646500,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you, Deborah. Michelle Mullaney, who I have not seen in the attendees list, followed by Cameron Hoffman. Oh, there we go. Thank."},{"start":6652100,"end":6652280,"speaker":"G","text":"You."},{"start":6658990,"end":6661230,"speaker":"A","text":"Hi, Devin or Michelle, are you there?"},{"start":6662350,"end":6662950,"speaker":"G","text":"Hi there."},{"start":6662950,"end":6665750,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah, you know what it's all kind"},{"start":6665750,"end":6667070,"speaker":"F","text":"of been said and"},{"start":6670030,"end":6670790,"speaker":"G","text":"that's all right."},{"start":6670790,"end":6672350,"speaker":"A","text":"I'm gonna yield the rest of my time."},{"start":6672590,"end":6673190,"speaker":"D","text":"Okay, thank you."},{"start":6673190,"end":6673790,"speaker":"F","text":"Have a good evening."},{"start":6674750,"end":6873070,"speaker":"A","text":"Cameron Hoffman, followed by Megan O'Reilly Green. Hi, Cameron. Hi. Can you hear me? Vaguely. Can you speak up a little bit? Yeah. Can you hear me now? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, thank you everyone. So I'm a parent and a caring human being and I'm pleased to hear thoughtful and respectful voices tonight. And I'm disappointed to hear rhetoric and personal attacks. I'm also hearing the results of an absence of trusted leadership with the district and of good communication. So what I'd like tonight is to just invite everyone to take a collective deep breath together and remember that we all want the same things. We all have two main priorities. We want teacher safety for the teachers and their families. And we want the littlest learners and the most vulnerable students to not fall behind and to get the social, emotional and instruction and nutritional support they need. We need to work together and communicate with each other to get there as a community. We need to start actually listening, not just talking at each other, considering other viewpoints and expert viewpoints and being open to facts without assuming worst intentions. I just, I hope everybody understands that districts around the country and in our own backyard are on the same journey. We can learn from them as we've heard tonight, and we should be learning from them. Them we're going to be on this journey. Covid is going to be here a long while. The first vaccines won't be perfect and kids can't take years off from school and socializing and the support that schools. So I would ask that we all speak thoughtfully and listen to the experts with an open mind and remember that we're all experts on a part of this conversation and we all need to participate with that. Teachers should tell us what they need to return to the classroom, even if they personally would rather not to. They should be giving us their expert advice on what they actually still need. We should be listening to the medical experts in terms of what's safe or not, not trying to silence them or attack them. Let's arm ourselves with facts and have thoughtful conversations. Parents should be telling us what's working for the kids and what's not. And the district should be telling us what the most vulnerable students need, specifically those students whose parents aren't able to manage to participate, couldn't manage survey responses, or equally unable to support remote learning consistently. I heard there are 350 kids with no response and 156 not attending even half of their classes. The district should be the expert speaking up for the best interest of those kids. I'll tell you, from my perspective, I can tell you what's working as a parent. PCC is working. The kids are wearing their masks all day. They're staying in their pods and they're doing just fine. We're all being respectful and safe and they're getting socialized, remote learning, not working. My kids not actually progressing academically notwithstanding. Great effort of wonderful dedicated teachers who we really appreciate. That's just my perspective and I'd like to hear from the experts. So I just wanted to remind us all to bring our best selves to this process and keep in mind that we all have shared goals here. This is coming, opening is coming. Covid is not going away. So let's work together, be open minded and focus on facts. Thank you. Thank you. Megan O'Reilly, green, followed by Linda Elkins."},{"start":6873950,"end":6875630,"speaker":"F","text":"I do not see her in the list."},{"start":6876510,"end":6900360,"speaker":"A","text":"Don't see Megan. Megan, if you're here, my hand went up. Let me see if that's Megan with the hand up. Hi, Megan, are you there? I don't know who this is. Okay, Linda Elkins followed by Melanie Haskell."},{"start":6903480,"end":6904040,"speaker":"F","text":"Okay."},{"start":6905880,"end":6909400,"speaker":"G","text":"Hello, My name is Linda Elkins. I have three kids in the district,"},{"start":6910040,"end":6913080,"speaker":"A","text":"first and second at Henry Ford and a fourth grader at Northstar."},{"start":6913720,"end":6925880,"speaker":"G","text":"So thanks for the opportunity to speak here. My first comment is around the survey. I just wanted to provide some feedback on that. I felt that it was compounded by"},{"start":6925880,"end":6927760,"speaker":"A","text":"a number of variables that were hard"},{"start":6927760,"end":7046230,"speaker":"G","text":"for me to parse out. For example, teacher staying with our teacher is very important to us. And that's come across, I think, from both the parent and the teacher side. And that's compounded in the choice with the assumption that I was okay with switching teachers. So I think another one is am, PM and hybrid understanding that it would be only one of these two models. So if parents are okay with any return to school or no return to school. So just some feedback on the survey that as a parent, these nuances are very important to me in making my decision for what to do with our kids and want to make sure, and I don't have a doubt that they're not factored in, but I don't feel like they were factored into that survey, acknowledging that it was preliminary. So moving forward, just wanted to share that feedback and see how that can be adopted going forward with future surveys or parent input before we have to make a final decision. I also wanted to advocate for the return to school, whether in the AMPM or hybrid. I would be supportive of either. I am supportive of Muhammad's comments about looking into the neighboring schools, districts and and really thinking outside the box and opportunities on how we could do it. You know, are there ways to have cameras in the classroom where you could take a current teacher and divide them in two and have two kids learn via that system and that camera system and looking at all the different opportunities that enables the cohesiveness with the current community that both the parents, the kids and the teachers have already established. So I'm also was really enjoying someone made a comment about collaborating between the parents and the teachers earlier today. I thought that was great. If there's ways for parents to get involved in the brainstorming and provide feedback. Remote learning has been very hard for the kids, especially for two working parent households trying to be able to manage things. Certainly acknowledge the challenge to the teachers as well. So I don't want to discount that, but just wanted to speak from my personal perspective. So those are all my comments. Thank you for the opportunity."},{"start":7046630,"end":7395430,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you. Melanie Haskell followed by Kerry Schmidt. Hi Melanie, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Thanks so much for the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm the parent of a first grader. While our preference given in the survey was to remain 100% distance and I sincerely hope that that is what you will decide, that's not really the subject of my comment tonight. My comment is in regard to independent study. I realize that this is not the highest priority topic tonight given the complexity and importance of the decision of when and how to return in person. But I just wanted to quickly say that I hope that regardless of the in person decision that you will continue to make independent study as an available option, especially if we reopen in person. Students who are already doing independent study and finding it is the best option for them and their family and especially working parents should be able to continue with it and ideally with the same same teacher. But understand that may not be possible. Additional students may also benefit from this choice. If we reopen, there's moving of teachers and other things. So I think parents would really appreciate the continuation of that choice. I know it was originally limited to a maximum of a single semester, but Wendy had said that it may be extended to a maximum of as long as distance learning is in place or the full school year. So I'm curious as to whether any decision or change has been made there. And then just to react to a comment from earlier in reference to the previous comment about the Menlo park reopening plan. I wanted to make a comment about that. Their reopening committees included parents, and I felt that was really important and smart of them. They not only use the parents to get their input, like you guys are doing with surveys and these public comments, but they really engage the parents in a meaningful way to shoulder the workload and bring in expertise, skills, bandwidth, real, you know, meaningful things that I think you can see in the outcome of the breadth and the depth and the detail and the quality of their plans. So I hope you will consider leveraging your parents in the community who would be invested in doing so. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see, we have Kerry Schmidt, followed by Kamli Nannini. This is Kerry Schmidt. Hi. Yeah, thanks for allowing me to make some comments. I don't want to go into too much depth because I did send a letter to the board members, but I'm a bilingual kindergarten teacher at Taft Elementary School, and I've been a teacher in the district for 25 years. And obviously, you know, a person doesn't stick with a district for as long as I have if they don't truly believe and enjoy what they're doing. I want to say that it's been extremely difficult for me as a teacher to not be able to be working with my kindergarten students in a classroom. In fact, I found it to be almost like depressing to think, how could I face only teaching, you know, at a distance level? But, you know, when you know those are your options and those are the most safe options, you do what's necessary and you try to become an expert, the best expert that you can, to be able to address the needs of your students. I want to remind everybody that, you know, schools and teachers priorities are to provide a safe learning environment for children. And if we are to bring children back into a the classroom at this time, when we don't have safety measures put in place, then we aren't really providing a safety, a safe environment for learning, are we? And also I wanted to make a comment that it's true that we would be constantly monitoring the behaviors in terms of are the children remaining safe? Are they staying six feet apart, Are they washing their hands and all these things? And that would really distract and take away from the teaching experience and the learning experience of the children, even though I'd love to see their faces. And I have to say that I ran into a student of mine who was picking up some materials the other day, and of course we were at distance. But just to see that child in person and for her to see me was a very, very touching moment. And we realized she knew herself. She couldn't come close to me and I couldn't come close to her. It was almost if it was very sad, it was very depressing to see that, that we. And I said to her, I hope someday that I can teach with you in a classroom. I hope that I can see you and we can be together. And so what am I trying to say here? I'm trying to say that I feel like regardless of the distance learning, I've tried my best to make connections with my students and their parents and to have confidence in the parents ability to take on what they're experiencing. Because a lot of the parents that I work with aren't used to that. They're not used to having to be the teacher of their child. But you know what I say to them? Believe in yourself, believe in your abilities. Believe that you were, you've always been the first teacher and that we can work together to make the best experience for your child. At this time, I wanted to make a comment about the Menlo park issue and those schools reopening. I have a friend who is also teaching in kindergarten in the Menlo park district. And I was shocked that she was going back to the classroom because I know that in her family she has. Okay, sorry, Carrie, your time's up. We have Kamleen and Nene. And then I want to go back to Megan O'Reilly Green. I just heard, Megan, you're here under a different name, so if you can put your hand up. Go back to you after this next speaker."},{"start":7399430,"end":7400870,"speaker":"G","text":"Hi, this is Kamily."},{"start":7401350,"end":7401750,"speaker":"A","text":"Hi."},{"start":7401750,"end":7402230,"speaker":"G","text":"Go ahead."},{"start":7402470,"end":7405190,"speaker":"A","text":"Hi. I am the parent of a student"},{"start":7405190,"end":7584390,"speaker":"G","text":"in kindergarten and I am also a practicing physician and I have a master's in clinical epidemiology from Stanford. I was very pleased to hear that the district had started to have a plan about possible reopening. And I would really like to address some of the teacher concerns and their unwillingness to return to in person learning. Personally, I believe that teachers are essential workers. Other essential workers are being asked to go to work and have been working this entire time. And so I do believe it's fair for the district to consider this for its teachers. I think it is unacceptable for them to state that they wouldn't return to work until there is a vaccine when realistically, many of us in medicine believe that is potentially years off and children will be last. In terms of their risk of getting Covid and their risk of transmitting. To receive such a vaccine, I think it is Unfortunate that they then say things like, oh, we won't go back for flu season or Christmas or other things. I really think that they should focus on it, but I want them to feel comfortable going back. And I know we're all talking about menlo, but their school district had physicians, parents who are not involved in their school district, pediatricians and infectious disease specialists talk with the board and all of the teachers. And that doubled the number of teachers who stated they were willing and eager to go back to work. So I really think it's important that the teachers hear data about actual transmission risk, what they could actually expect from a classroom. If a child is wearing a mask, if they are wearing their appropriate mask before they make kind of decisions about if they feel comfortable going back to school or not. I want the teachers to feel comfortable. We know how to minimize the spread of this virus with masks. Hand washing, sanitizer. Truly, the risk of receiving Covid from an asymptomatic child wearing a mask when you are also wearing your protective PPE is likely to be negligible. And so I think that they should really hear this from the experts before they make decisions. And I think the board should hear this as well. If the concern is that kids won't wear masks, they will. I mean, children all around the world are doing it, and children all around our country are being asked to do it. And now as the pandemic has stretched out in the Bay Area, kids are going to zoo, kids are going to target. They're wearing masks for, you know, two, three hours at a time. And I certainly believe that children will be able to wear a mask. And finally, on a personal note, I did. I don't think we should make this decision based on anecdotes about some students loving school substitutes hating school. But I too found some of the comments very offensive, saying that we just need to kind of man up to teach our children. My child went from someone who was thrilled to do in person, learning and TK to week by week now getting worse, to the point where she cries. We've discussed with her teacher turning off her camera, she kind of ends up hyperventilating, having diarrhea, all from just tremendous anxiety. So it's not just about a parent manning up. It really is about us having the best interest of our child at heart."},{"start":7584960,"end":7585360,"speaker":"F","text":"Thank you."},{"start":7586800,"end":7625060,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you. So, Kyle, the hand that's raised is Megan. We'll take Megan, followed by Michelle Smith and then Michelle Butler. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Hey, my name is Megan O'Reilly Greene so I second what both of the Christina said, especially about facilitating site specific solutions in collaboration with the teachers. Every community is going to be different and you want different things. And right now I just, I really want to speak candidly from the heart. And before I say anything, I just want to say, you know, I have tremendous respect for all of you guys and I know this is a hard job and thank you so much for"},{"start":7625060,"end":7626020,"speaker":"G","text":"all that you do."},{"start":7626020,"end":7636380,"speaker":"A","text":"You know, I have a lot of respect for you. You know, I was concerned when Wendy stated that our program was at risk. These types of public comments about our program lead to a great deal of upset and instability."},{"start":7637120,"end":7638120,"speaker":"G","text":"And it feels to me and also"},{"start":7638120,"end":7650600,"speaker":"A","text":"to the parent participation program at Orion that we're really experiencing death by a thousand cuts. And I feel the tragedy in that is that it is not necessary. You know, if people have to leave our program, we don't want it to be because of feeling disrespected or devalued."},{"start":7650600,"end":7651680,"speaker":"G","text":"We want people to leave the program"},{"start":7651680,"end":7654160,"speaker":"A","text":"with only good things to say about our program and the district."},{"start":7655440,"end":7656760,"speaker":"G","text":"You know, for our program we need"},{"start":7656760,"end":7662440,"speaker":"A","text":"to grow in order to be stable. And can you see how when a district employee says publicly that our program"},{"start":7662440,"end":7664120,"speaker":"G","text":"is at risk because we're so small"},{"start":7664430,"end":7668590,"speaker":"A","text":"that this could be very problematic and hurtful to the general perception of our program?"},{"start":7670270,"end":7674590,"speaker":"G","text":"You know, I've been in conversations with several of you where you say things about our school like, oh, you guys"},{"start":7674590,"end":7681710,"speaker":"A","text":"will be fine, you know, because you're all so well resourced and you know that I find that problematic because you know, I want to tell you first,"},{"start":7681710,"end":7686910,"speaker":"G","text":"that's not true at all. You know, for me, you know, I'm an essential worker exposing myself to risk every day."},{"start":7686910,"end":7688750,"speaker":"A","text":"I'm a laborer who does physical work"},{"start":7688750,"end":7691810,"speaker":"G","text":"12 hours straight each day. I live in a two bedroom home"},{"start":7691810,"end":7698170,"speaker":"A","text":"with five people in a thousand square feet. And I'm a representative, I'm representative of the families in this program. I joined the program because I care"},{"start":7698170,"end":7699170,"speaker":"G","text":"about high quality education."},{"start":7699170,"end":7705650,"speaker":"A","text":"I'm proud to be part of the program that accepts and supports everyone, whatever resources they have. We take care of all of our families."},{"start":7706130,"end":7707770,"speaker":"G","text":"You know, I ask you, please do"},{"start":7707770,"end":7711090,"speaker":"A","text":"not continue to write us off as well resourced, nice white parents who will"},{"start":7711090,"end":7712450,"speaker":"G","text":"do fine no matter what you throw"},{"start":7712450,"end":7751130,"speaker":"A","text":"at us because we're not doing fine. You know, these hardships and these communication challenges can be improved. We need to work together to do better. We need to partner better in order to create a strong and compelling program and school that does not always feel like it's on the brink of folding. We need a partnership and a plan for stability and investment. Otherwise, what is the point of having us as a school of choice in your district? Please give us autonomy and decisions and creating solutions. Invest in our stability and growth so that we can be a high quality school and program for everyone here in the district. Please meet with us. When you say you're going to meet with us, meet with me and Lily, my Orion co PTO president and the rest of the parent leaders who have really arisen out of necessity to get"},{"start":7751130,"end":7752610,"speaker":"G","text":"on the same page with us about the future."},{"start":7753170,"end":7754370,"speaker":"B","text":"And I just also want to say,"},{"start":7754370,"end":7757490,"speaker":"G","text":"you know, thank you so much to all of the teachers who've been making this work."},{"start":7757490,"end":7759730,"speaker":"A","text":"I know these decisions are difficult, but"},{"start":7759730,"end":7764290,"speaker":"G","text":"you know, if we have autonomy, we can, and we can work together and collaborate. We'll be able to figure out solutions"},{"start":7764290,"end":7765410,"speaker":"A","text":"that work for everybody."},{"start":7765570,"end":7766970,"speaker":"G","text":"And thank you guys so much for"},{"start":7766970,"end":7773660,"speaker":"A","text":"listening to me tonight. Thank you, Megan. We have Michelle Smith followed by Michelle Butler."},{"start":7779820,"end":7781220,"speaker":"G","text":"Hi, good afternoon. Good evening."},{"start":7781220,"end":7784140,"speaker":"A","text":"Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Hi."},{"start":7784460,"end":7785940,"speaker":"B","text":"So I am coming in a little"},{"start":7785940,"end":7788260,"speaker":"A","text":"bit unprepared tonight, but I have been"},{"start":7788260,"end":7789780,"speaker":"G","text":"hearing most of the comments have had"},{"start":7789780,"end":7792620,"speaker":"A","text":"to step in and out, but my"},{"start":7793260,"end":7796010,"speaker":"G","text":"child is, my younger child is at"},{"start":7796090,"end":7799450,"speaker":"A","text":"Adelantes Elbi and much like other parents"},{"start":7799450,"end":7804890,"speaker":"G","text":"at choice schools, it really disappoints me to hear that any portion of our"},{"start":7804890,"end":7817410,"speaker":"A","text":"program would be at risk, you know, due to the mismatch in returning to school for any number of our children. And the teachers, I support our teachers wholeheartedly."},{"start":7817410,"end":7819130,"speaker":"G","text":"I understand that there are families who"},{"start":7819130,"end":7827050,"speaker":"A","text":"are struggling right now during this time. I think that as others have said, you know, there is definitely, you know,"},{"start":7827050,"end":7832330,"speaker":"G","text":"not a one size fits all. Not just to this, to dealing with"},{"start":7832330,"end":7834210,"speaker":"A","text":"distance learning or in person learning, but"},{"start":7834210,"end":7838770,"speaker":"G","text":"also to what is the causes of what's going on with our kids."},{"start":7839330,"end":7841010,"speaker":"A","text":"Both of my children are, you know,"},{"start":7841010,"end":7843090,"speaker":"G","text":"very, I'm very grateful that they're doing"},{"start":7843090,"end":7845410,"speaker":"A","text":"very well in distance learning."},{"start":7845980,"end":7847460,"speaker":"G","text":"And my son, you know, and I"},{"start":7847460,"end":7850740,"speaker":"A","text":"think about my son who is, you know, in the Spanish immersion."},{"start":7850740,"end":7855660,"speaker":"G","text":"My daughter's at Kennedy in the continuation, the Spanish immersion. And he is able to see his"},{"start":7855660,"end":7861819,"speaker":"A","text":"teacher move her mouth and be able to say these words and be able to enunciate and they won't be able"},{"start":7861819,"end":7862700,"speaker":"G","text":"to do that in person."},{"start":7862700,"end":7864460,"speaker":"A","text":"They won't be able to see their teachers."},{"start":7865020,"end":7869020,"speaker":"G","text":"The other is, I'm gonna, you know, as much as I love our community"},{"start":7869260,"end":7871340,"speaker":"A","text":"and in Redwood City and the parents"},{"start":7871340,"end":7874460,"speaker":"G","text":"that are at our school, school, you know, there was a recent article from"},{"start":7874460,"end":7876540,"speaker":"A","text":"Wisconsin that showed that parents will lie"},{"start":7876540,"end":7887900,"speaker":"G","text":"even to contact tracers about where they've been or who they've been in contact with in order to get their kids to school, to go to school. They won't get their kids tested because then they only have to quarantine for"},{"start":7888220,"end":7897620,"speaker":"A","text":"three days, you know, if they're symptom free versus 10 or 14 days if they're asymptomatic positive. Those types of reports really concern me"},{"start":7897620,"end":7900700,"speaker":"G","text":"in sending my kids back to school and sending any."},{"start":7901020,"end":7904380,"speaker":"A","text":"Any of our families and teachers back to school."},{"start":7904700,"end":7906740,"speaker":"G","text":"Additionally, if we don't have the right"},{"start":7906740,"end":7919100,"speaker":"A","text":"PPE for our or in the right safety plan for our families and for our teachers, I don't know how we can expect to go back to school. Especially in consideration that we are currently still sort of in fire season where"},{"start":7919740,"end":7924540,"speaker":"G","text":"our, you know, we just bought air purifiers for the few classes that are"},{"start":7926330,"end":7926970,"speaker":"A","text":"on campus."},{"start":7927050,"end":7931210,"speaker":"G","text":"How can we expect to keep our children safe when our buildings are not safe?"},{"start":7931210,"end":7931850,"speaker":"A","text":"They're not."},{"start":7931850,"end":7933770,"speaker":"G","text":"They're not purifying air, even."},{"start":7933850,"end":7935570,"speaker":"A","text":"So forget about COVID We can't even"},{"start":7935570,"end":7959500,"speaker":"G","text":"keep them safe from the smoke from the fires because our buildings are so drafty. There's no circulation of air. And then they wouldn't even be able to go outside. And so now we're in sort of like this stuffy air and inside the classrooms. So I really would like for you to take those things into consideration and really keep to at least the. The fall deadline that you set for"},{"start":7959500,"end":7961500,"speaker":"A","text":"yourselves, if not through the winter."},{"start":7961500,"end":7962100,"speaker":"G","text":"Thank you."},{"start":7962500,"end":7965700,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you. Michelle Butler, followed by Jeanette Serrano."},{"start":7977390,"end":7980910,"speaker":"F","text":"Need to move Michelle Buetler up to a panelist to allow her to speak."},{"start":7981230,"end":7981790,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay."},{"start":8001800,"end":8005560,"speaker":"A","text":"I don't. I think that's a different Michelle. Do we have Michelle Butler here?"},{"start":8005640,"end":8007800,"speaker":"D","text":"Michelle, you need to unmute yourself."},{"start":8008040,"end":8008520,"speaker":"F","text":"Yeah."},{"start":8011240,"end":8011800,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay."},{"start":8012280,"end":8012720,"speaker":"G","text":"Hi."},{"start":8012720,"end":8026600,"speaker":"A","text":"I'm an essential worker. I completely agree with the parent. It's a hard job to have. As an essential worker, though, my number one thing is to teach your children"},{"start":8026600,"end":8028020,"speaker":"G","text":"and keep them safe."},{"start":8028820,"end":8048420,"speaker":"A","text":"So if someone comes in and shoots at our campus, I had a little corner set up for the last seven years that looked like a comfy little bit corner. Do you know what the real reason is? Because I'm in a wheelchair. So it was a hideout corner, but they never knew that. And I would throw books at the intruder if they came, and I might die."},{"start":8048580,"end":8049540,"speaker":"G","text":"And that's okay."},{"start":8052340,"end":8069760,"speaker":"A","text":"But if we go back and I have to keep them safe from COVID I will be a police woman. They will still put Their sticky fingers everywhere and cough everywhere and be the beautiful things that they are. But I won't be able to teach them as much."},{"start":8069920,"end":8070360,"speaker":"G","text":"Right now."},{"start":8070360,"end":8072320,"speaker":"B","text":"My meats are my mouth."},{"start":8072560,"end":8079360,"speaker":"A","text":"I have 17 out of my 23 students that can't read. So it's a says what"},{"start":8081680,"end":8082040,"speaker":"D","text":"I mean,"},{"start":8082040,"end":8103520,"speaker":"A","text":"they are watching my mouth. I am watching their mouth. I am doing everything in my power to get them to read. I love our students. I want to go back when it's safe. I won't be going back if we go back now. I'm in the process of doing what Wendy talked about, and that's why I wanted to speak. It's hard. I didn't want to start this process"},{"start":8103600,"end":8105760,"speaker":"G","text":"last time I did it because I'm in a wheelchair."},{"start":8107570,"end":8110770,"speaker":"A","text":"It had strange results, and I felt like I wasn't gonna have a job."},{"start":8111970,"end":8120730,"speaker":"G","text":"And I love my job, and I want to keep doing it, and I think I'm good at it. And I have a B clad and"},{"start":8120730,"end":8126570,"speaker":"A","text":"I have 20 years of experience. And I know even when kids don't look like they're paying attention, they could still be learning because I'm an expert"},{"start":8126570,"end":8133970,"speaker":"G","text":"in adhd and I want to be able to teach the children, and I"},{"start":8133970,"end":8135090,"speaker":"A","text":"want to do it safely."},{"start":8135170,"end":8140090,"speaker":"G","text":"And I guess that makes me selfish, but I don't think I've been selfish"},{"start":8140090,"end":8150250,"speaker":"A","text":"in the last 20 years. So, please, if these teachers are sending out 1400 seesaw assignments asynchronously in six"},{"start":8150250,"end":8156770,"speaker":"G","text":"weeks and 350 every week. These teachers are working hard, and they"},{"start":8156770,"end":8166550,"speaker":"A","text":"love your students, too. And your students may be learning even though you can't see it. And so I hope we look at"},{"start":8166550,"end":8168310,"speaker":"G","text":"what's going on right now like the"},{"start":8168310,"end":8194480,"speaker":"A","text":"pods and go from there. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Michelle. Jeanette Serrano, followed by Maria Stockton. So, Michelle, you can mute yourself, and then Kyle's gonna put you back as an attendee when he has a chance. Hi, Jeanette."},{"start":8195200,"end":8232620,"speaker":"G","text":"Hello. So teaching kinder for 37 years. Everyone I talk to, teachers you know, they recognize, especially if they've taught kinder and lawn to other grades. It's one of the most exhausting positions because it is so physical. And the beginning of the year is even more exhausting. We always talk about. And this goes across the board. I don't see a timer, so I hope I don't go over."},{"start":8234380,"end":8236700,"speaker":"A","text":"I'll let you know. You have 2:20 right now."},{"start":8236860,"end":8250610,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay. So. So anyway. But it isn't until about January that things start to settle down. So this year was extremely exhausting because of the new format and everything that we've had to do and"},{"start":8252530,"end":8253010,"speaker":"A","text":"we were"},{"start":8253010,"end":8380070,"speaker":"G","text":"finally starting to settle into things and feeling good about getting, you know, improving but because a reconfiguration which would be required as Wendy Kelly mentioned would bring new students into our classroom. We all know what even one new student will bring some most of the time. It's an enormous amount of work to integrate that child. We're going to be starting over and that's going to increase our stress and our workload again. And I think there's going to be a lot of learning loss there. These children. The same thing happens to children when they're going having to learn a new style and getting to know that teacher. I agree that site specific considerations and concerns should be a significant factor in reopening. It just. It frightens me that we'll be losing some of our specialized programs possibly such as bilingual and immersion. My contact, if we were, if we were to return in person would be 100% Latinx. And there is no way to assure that the families of the children that I would work with were also being true to the four pillars and that the people that they associate with are being true to the four pillars. And we know that this is a disease that only one exposure will affect the many people like in Sonoma just a couple weeks ago, 30 cases were traced to one child. There was a speaker who commented on seeing. Seeing really being really positive. Actually a few teachers, not teachers, but speakers about children keeping their masks on. But my experience is otherwise. I've seen online the students that I'm aware of that are in, in pods, they're not wearing their masks. I have to remind them. A colleague and I have commented on that and even taking pictures. But then we realized we can't share these pictures because of privacy issues."},{"start":8380390,"end":8381630,"speaker":"A","text":"But if you want to see them,"},{"start":8381630,"end":8382470,"speaker":"G","text":"we can have those."},{"start":8383670,"end":8384630,"speaker":"A","text":"That's three minutes."},{"start":8384630,"end":8385430,"speaker":"G","text":"Oh shoot."},{"start":8385750,"end":8639440,"speaker":"A","text":"It's okay, just you can finish up. Oh, she's muted. Okay. Maria Stockton followed by Keely Vega. Hi Maria. Good evening board members and audience. Just a few comments. I heard a child psychologist talk tonight on the depression and suicide we all should be concerned with. But I did not hear of what ages she was referring to. I did hear about an eight year old which would be second or third grade. So looking at that, why are we not looking at bringing back our second through fifth grade students to return those grades can care for themselves and their needs. They can wear their masks for great lengths of time where the youngers can't or won't wear a mask for that long. Older students can keep their distance from each other where the younger ones yearn to touch each other, hug and watch and wanting comfort from their adults. Older children can go watching their teachers teach with masks on, while the younger ones need to see those smiles and approval from their adults as well as seeing a concerned face. Those facial cues are life lessons. I've spent most of my time yesterday and today calling parents personally to help them do their parent surveys and getting their opinions and choices of returning to the school sites. Many were concerned of the real possibility of having to go to other school sites or worse, losing the teachers their children have already built positive relationships with. I have heard from parents and I call just kinder parents of how their child had difficult times starting up with distance learning, but now just yearn for every day getting ready for school and seeing their loving teacher on the computer and learning. So kudos to all those kindergarten teachers. Yes, some want their children to return to school for certain reasons. But please, let's take a little longer and not send any child of any age back until Redwood City has had more time to heal, grow stronger and remain at least until. And please, let's keep what you said before until the end of the first trimester to where we can hopefully come back at a healthier county, city and school district. Thank you. Thank you, Maria. And our final speaker card tonight is Keely. Yes, good evening. My name is Keeley. I'm the mother of a kindergarten student in the district. Two quick thoughts. Number one, I would love to hear the board's reaction either tonight or next week to Dr. Kwiatkowski's suggestion that we consider launching a pilot group based on the survey data. If there is a class or even a site with teachers and families that are willing and requesting to return, can we start there? Perhaps that would be a way to address some of the concerns that we're hearing tonight. I'd also be interested in in hearing Wendy Kelly's thoughts on the feasibility and the legality of that possible option. Number two, I want to just build on the comments from Mr. Tabrizi, Ms. Haskell and Dr. Nannini and ask for a response on how we might be leveraging the experiences of the schools and the districts such as Menlo park, that have opened already. It seems like a great source of information for us. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing my screen and open up to the board for comments. Are there any comments or questions? I'm seeing nothing. Go first. So can you guys hear me?"},{"start":8640320,"end":8640640,"speaker":"G","text":"Yeah."},{"start":8640640,"end":8831260,"speaker":"A","text":"If you could speak up a little bit. Okay. Can you hear me? I might have bad connection. Can you hear me? Yeah, I think your, your connection is a little bit shaky, but I can hear you, so I'll try it and see. I don't know if everybody else can hear me. So definitely it's a really hard. Times for everyone. Do hear what the psychiatrist or psychologist has to say. Referencing the facts with again, perhaps older kids. My. What I would like to know is if in fact younger kids are getting depressed, how many of our kids in the Redwood City School District are going through it? I do understand that the little kids are having a really hard time perhaps connecting. You know, maybe they do have working parents or essential worker parents that are not around them. So that makes it even a lot harder. My biggest thing is, yes, safety is a number one priority. I do understand that the district has the PPE for the teachers. And I guess my other thing is some of the teachers obviously seem to have more anxiety about returning to school with the possibility of reopening sooner than we said we were. But then there's also some other teachers that mentioned why don't we wait until after the holidays? And I understand that Sequoia High School has made the decision to do that. I'm just wondering too if the teachers would feel safer if we did that. I mean, I understand after the holidays it would give maybe most people a little bit more of a peace of mind that the holidays are over and perhaps the flu season had season stopped. I. Again, it's. It's very difficult to. I know we're not making a decision. It's just a discussion. I feel for everyone. I understand, again, working parents are having a really hard time, just as well as essential workers that are having to leave their home and perhaps having their kids on a POD or at school, having them, I don't know, being watched by someone else. So I totally understand and hear everyone's concern. And so I guess I would just have those questions whether, you know, maybe next week or today one of the teachers can actually give us a little bit more feedback as to would they feel safer if we do decide to return after the holiday. That's my only input. Alisa, you had unmuted yourself before. Did you want to speak?"},{"start":8831820,"end":8999810,"speaker":"D","text":"Yeah, I just wanted to say, you know, thank you to all the speakers tonight. You've given us even more to think about. We've been getting a lot of emails, so most of this we've been hearing through emails the last couple of weeks. And actually we could even go back, I suppose, to March and certainly in the summer and June and July. So here we are again with lots of big decisions to make. And I just want to clarify because I think some of the speakers are, you know, they don't know everything that's going on behind the scenes. So I think it's important for them to know that your school board members are. Are in regular conversation with neighboring school board members. We're well aware of what's going on. We have regular meetings with them and have been throughout. We have really good working relationships with our school board members in San Mateo County. In fact, it's something that I'm very proud of. We're all very involved with the San Mateo County School Boards association and regular meetings. And in fact, just a couple of weeks ago, I had a lengthy conversation with one of the school board members in Menlo Park. So I'm well aware of what's going on there. And in fact, some parents have sent me information and I have actually attended a board meeting of theirs. So. And I also want to mention that Dr. Baker is in regular conversation with the neighboring superintendents, regular meetings with Nancy McGee, our county superintendent, as well as neighboring superintendents. He's had long conversations with Menlo park superintendent. So rest assured that we are using best practices and certainly appreciate what our neighboring school districts are doing and all of that. So what we need to do is make a decision for our own school district, given our unique conditions, and I think that's really important. So I certainly appreciate hearing from everybody, and I think we have a lot to think about. And I know that next week our study session is where we'll delve in a little deeper into where we're at and timing and all of that. And I look forward to that conversation. And I don't know if we'll be making a decision next week, Dr. Baker, but I know that we're not making one tonight. So, again, I have still a lot of questions and additional comments I could make, but I'd like to wait and get the full report next week before I go into too much detail. So, anyway, thank you very. Oh, and I also wanted to mention that we are getting. I think I did, but we are getting a lot, a lot of emails from teachers, staff, parents, community members. I certainly appreciate hearing the perspectives. I'm reading everything that you're sending me. I've been trying to respond to many of the emails, but it's a little overwhelming, the numbers. So you may not hear back directly from me. But please know that we are reading them. So thank you very much."},{"start":8999810,"end":9000570,"speaker":"F","text":"Appreciate it."},{"start":9003450,"end":9112780,"speaker":"E","text":"And I would like to follow up on that. Lisa, I think many of the attendees are not aware of some of the stuff that goes on, and we would like to communicate all that. But unfortunately, when you go to those meetings, you know, they're not part of the school district meetings. And we do report it out during our meetings, you know, during board member reports. I think one of the speakers mentioned that one of the board members had talked about not being other districts or not listening to other districts. What I meant is not that we're not looking at other places. We have been doing research behind the scenes and sharing it since this thing started. We have the ppe. We've been continuing to research new ways of doing things. What I meant is not that we don't look at those best practices and examples, but that we look at our health data for Redwood City, which is different than Palo Alto or some other place. I wanted us to look at our data for San Mateo County. Now, I understand the fears from the teachers. I understand the fears from the parents. And I also understand that we have children with needs that are hard to"},{"start":9114620,"end":9115020,"speaker":"G","text":"meet"},{"start":9116940,"end":9131210,"speaker":"E","text":"with distance learning, the special ed children. But I understand the fear. So I think one of the things that I would like to explore a little bit more is maybe that pilot"},{"start":9131210,"end":9131530,"speaker":"H","text":"project"},{"start":9134650,"end":9166020,"speaker":"E","text":"and see how that works. There are many other examples in our community, the pods. So far there has been none. No infections that I'm aware of. But again, I do appreciate hearing from all the parents, all the teachers and community members. And as you said, There is just so much that's going on that for"},{"start":9166020,"end":9167500,"speaker":"G","text":"me is safety first."},{"start":9168460,"end":9255300,"speaker":"E","text":"And I really would like us to do our due diligence and try and communicate some of what we've been doing behind the scenes to the larger community because the teachers are aware that they've gone to training, but maybe the parents are not. So, anyway, I look forward to hearing more next week. And again, I'd like to thank everybody who spoke. And the other thing I would like us all to remember is that this is an emotional issue. We're talking about life and death. We're talking about our children. Those are precious to everyone. We're not talking about, you know, trash cans or books or whatever. So, you know, our emotions can run amok sometimes. So please try and remember that. But do know that as Elisa mentioned, there are so many emails that we're getting. I'm getting texts, phone calls, people outside my house waving, hey, so thank you to the staff for collecting the data. And I look forward to hearing more next week."},{"start":9259710,"end":9260510,"speaker":"A","text":"Go ahead, Dennis."},{"start":9260990,"end":9366660,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah, first let me thank the speakers and thank Dr. Baker and the cabinet for all their work on this. So what I'm going to say is fairly obvious and some may not be, but if you look at it, if we stay with distance learning, the physical risk to students, teachers and staff is small. If we stay with distance learning, we may be causing harm to students because they need the social, emotional learning and there's learning loss, et cetera. And so the question is, how do we balance all that? And I know everyone cares deeply. Everybody that's spoken, everybody that sent hundreds of emails cares deeply about teachers, staff and students. That's not a question. But I do believe we will not make progress until we shift the conversation. We have to shift the conversation to what would it take for teachers, staff and parents to be comfortable to come back to school? And I think we need to almost suspend the date because as soon as we start talking about a date, everybody just freaks out. And so I think we need to forget the date and get back and focus on what it will take. And then Dr. Baker and his team of done a lot of work where, you know, they've, they've done work on testing, they've, they've been talking to physicians and we really need to get all that put together. But I, but I almost feel like if we could forget the date and have a discussion, otherwise we're going to be in this loop. We're just going to be talking about this for month after month. And I think we need to reverse engineer and ask everybody, what, what do you need? And then figure out is there any commonality between the teachers and the parents and then work backwards on what we need to do. Thank you,"},{"start":9370660,"end":9487420,"speaker":"A","text":"Dennis. I think you make a really good point. It's something that I've been thinking about a lot too, is not being able to put our finger on a specific date at this point because frankly, I don't know. We know more about the virus than we did back in March, April, May. But we're still learning how children are actually carriers and do get infected. And we still don't know the long term effects on both children or adults who have recovered. You know, I have a friend whose husband is 30 years old, very healthy, works out six days a week and he has been sick with COVID for three months and they don't even know yet if he's going to survive. And if he does, what are the long term effects of his health? The Health and safety of our staff and our families remains number one for me. That is my top priority. And I'm very concerned about the stress and anxiety that has been put on our staff, our teachers, in the last week, thinking that we are sending them back into the class. The tone of the emails that we've gotten is very concerning to me, and I think that we need to really make sure that our staff, our teachers, understand that we're not just throwing people back, that that can't happen. And as far as I'm concerned, disrupting classrooms and pulling kids away from the teachers they've finally established a relationship with is not acceptable in my book. I look forward to having more conversation about this next week. I know we're not making a decision tonight or next week. Dr. Baker, what's the date that you have for us? Making an actual decision about something."},{"start":9488540,"end":9492310,"speaker":"F","text":"So thank you. And to begin with, I know there was."},{"start":9494630,"end":9496550,"speaker":"A","text":"If you could speak up a little bit. It's hard to hear you."},{"start":9496630,"end":9828210,"speaker":"F","text":"Okay, let me get closer to the. I know there was talk in regard to having the medical professionals come and speak to all of us. So I was hoping that that could occur at our next meeting at the study session. But I received an email from the physicians that they're unable to come in to, like, a board meeting because they would have to check with their institutions to get permission because they're going to actually come and answer questions and so forth. So I need to give that physician a call tomorrow or send an email to see what else I could do. What else we could do that it would not be a board, a scheduled board meeting, a scheduled study session where we can determine, you know, a period of time for questions and responses. I've been in constant communication with the superintendent at Menlo park since this past summer. And as Eric reminds me, he goes, john, Redwood City is not Menlo Park. So he says, number one, I have less amount of students than you do. My classroom class size for students is a lot less than what yours is. So please remember that going into this, what I did gain from him was definitely his maneuvering of making sure that he had conversations with the medical profession professionals and making sure that parents and teachers, board members, were comfortable with, you know, asking questions and getting responses. And these are not medical professionals that work in either of our communities that he had come to his district. And so I have been in communication with them also. So with that being said, I will set something up, but it will not be a formal board meeting. It cannot be for them because. Because they'd have to go get permission. And to get permission takes a long time, so we'll have to schedule it differently. It'll probably be something similar to what Eric did. That being said, and then going back to your question about a date, we came up with the date that it was going to be that you approved back in July through the first trimester that ends the 13th of November, November. We've all gotten many emails, phone calls, letters in regard to what we should be doing. What I recommend to you at this point in time is that next week it is a study session of everything that we have in place. What the testing looks like, what a classroom is going to look like, what is the education piece going to look like? Because remember, whenever we do return, one of the four pillars is social distancing. We are not getting away from that. And as Eric pointed out to me, social distancing is really big. He has smaller class sizes than we do. Las Lamitas and Woodside, it's even smaller than his. So it's a lot easier for them to bring everyone back in those districts at one time as opposed to phasing it in. So with all of that being said, we will give you information regarding the tested, what the testing will look like. We'll give you information on what all the safety pieces look like, the safety protocols, what the classroom will look like, what the educational piece will look like for our students. Wendy went through a lot of information regarding hr. So whatever we determine what that date is going to be, there still may be some teachers who are not comfortable in returning. So that's where HR really comes into play. And hr, what she is talking about is educational code. So we need to, we definitely need to follow that. And then there will be a whole piece of on special education. And when I'm speaking special education, it's based in turn our it's in reference to our special day classes. Our RSP students are in the mainstream, but at the same time do have time with the specialists during the day. But what we're going to really look at is those SDC classes which operate differently for those students. So that will be another piece at the end of that presentation next week. Listening to everyone tonight gathering all the information from many, many emails that we've all received. Some I've been copied on that you receive board members, and some they were just sent to me alone. And in taking the information from this chat, I will come back with several dates for you to think about if you already are thinking of something that I know nothing about. At this point in time and won't hear about it till next week. I meet with you all individually each week. I need to have that in information. Any questions?"},{"start":9831010,"end":9879270,"speaker":"E","text":"John, I really like what Dennis said because for several reasons. But if I, you know, thinking of myself as the teacher, what would it take for me to feel safe? So is there a way for us to gather some of that data before the study session so that we can have answers for them? It's not like we're trying to hide anything that we're doing. It's just that we haven't, you know, because we were doing distance learning, we didn't share some of the things that you guys have been working on. So, so would that be something that you guys could do?"},{"start":9880790,"end":9904040,"speaker":"F","text":"So, Maria, are you asking us to put out a survey district wide to teachers and staff members in some format which would indicate what would it take for you to feel safe coming back to work and just have that information? Is that, is that what I hear"},{"start":9904040,"end":9908240,"speaker":"E","text":"you saying something like that. But I know that's a lot of work."},{"start":9910320,"end":9959860,"speaker":"F","text":"If that's the case. I need to bring someone in and I saw there was someone in on one of our parents whose spouses is definitely, this is their, their arena of work is surveys. And if. I'll look on that chat again and get a copy of it, if that's the direction you want us to go to bring you that type of information. I need someone other than ourselves putting this survey together. And it wouldn't be like a quick turnaround time in one week from tonight. We'd have to give it at least couple weeks. There's no way we're going to get that information and be able to go through it, look at it, analyze it, have the charts ready and so forth for you."},{"start":9961700,"end":9969300,"speaker":"E","text":"Okay, well, let me give it some more thought then. We'll talk later on that."},{"start":9969700,"end":9988270,"speaker":"F","text":"Because if that's the case, you know, we also have, I have access to the Gardener center, you know, which I use all the time. I could give Amy a call and see if she can put that together for us. But again, it's not going to be within. She's going to want probably two to three weeks."},{"start":9992990,"end":10052130,"speaker":"C","text":"So, John, my, my instinct is whether we pick November 13, we pick December 31, we pick January 31. If we don't know what it's going to take, we're going to be right back like we are tonight with everybody upset and having a problem. So I don't know if it, maybe we do need to take the three weeks, but I Feel like we really need to get the parents to say if you do this, I will come back if you don't do this, I want distance learning. And I think it's the same with the teachers and the classified because and I think we also have to, you know, I appreciate you now have an issue with the physicians that we didn't have when we talked last. But we're spending so much time on emotion and we're not having any discussion about science and we've got to have have some science discussion to help put people at ease and they can still ignore it. I mean that's fine, but I don't feel like we've had that piece of it."},{"start":10057420,"end":10081190,"speaker":"F","text":"So then I hear that and this is I've only heard from two board members so far. So what I'm hearing is to move forward and look at another survey indicating and what it would take to make people feel safe coming in back to in person learning."},{"start":10083110,"end":10169500,"speaker":"E","text":"Or maybe it's not a serving survey. Maybe it's just, you know, thinking of science and data. Maybe it's just an expert having them answer their questions and then, you know, because they've had the training on the PPE and all the other stuff and I heard tonight that some of our thermometers don't work. Some of those issues we will look at again. Some of the classrooms don't have more than three plastic barriers. But I'm sure there are reasons for all of that as well as I think you forgot to mention one thing, that our classrooms are not as big as Menlo park. So we can't fit us more students than we wanted. But maybe that's the way to go to have some experts come in and talk to the teachers, talk to the staff, answer some of this questions and then we can gather data from that and see what are we missing, what haven't we communicated to our staff. And maybe after next week when you present the plan like this is what it's going to look like because right now I don't think everybody has a, we don't have an idea of what"},{"start":10169500,"end":10170340,"speaker":"A","text":"it would look like."},{"start":10170340,"end":10180420,"speaker":"E","text":"I think everyone has their own idea. But after next week maybe we will have a much better idea of what it's going to look like across the district."},{"start":10182110,"end":10204350,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah, so kind of piggybacking on that, you know, there we've gotten emails from teachers and we've heard teachers and staff say we don't have PPE equipment and yet we've had all that equipment since July. So I just think there's A lot of misinformation out there. And so I think we've just got to lay it out in written forms so everybody can see it and then react to it."},{"start":10208840,"end":10210280,"speaker":"F","text":"Elisa, what are you thinking?"},{"start":10216440,"end":10467950,"speaker":"D","text":"Well, I, you know, I agree with Dennis, Maria. I think that, you know, we have some work to do in terms of, and I've said this all along, is we need to bring people along right on whatever we decide we want to do for our school district. And we need to look at our data and, you know, our population of students and teachers and be respectful of all of that. Because what's interesting is we've heard strongly from some people, you know, parents who want to come back in person learning. We've gotten a lot of emails this past week of parents saying that they want to stay in distant learning. And one of the big issues we have to grapple with is if in fact we come back in person this school year, the way we've structured it, that means that we will be disrupting classrooms and connections that teachers have made with their students and all of that. So that's a whole other piece we need to deal with unless everybody comes back or everybody stays home. Right. And I know the other thing that we've heard this past week is the desire that some parents have that they may have a preference for in person or a preference for distance learning. But what I heard loud and clear in the emails is what they really have a preference for is whatever the teacher wants to do. And so because they want to stay with the teacher and they want to stay with their class. And I think some of the Orion parents also express that this, that, you know, we may, it's a little more complicated than just, you know, who's going to be doing distant learning and who's going to be doing in person and how does it all work? I mean, more information there is needed. And then the other thing is, you know, I have concerns that if we, so we need to bring teachers along and find out exactly what Dennis and Maria are saying. You know, what is it that we as a district need to be doing in order to make them comfortable coming back into the classroom for in person. And that may be, you know, the other thing that we've heard is that would be in January. So we get through the holiday season and we know many of our families, I mean, we've seen it for years where people do go vacation, they have family gatherings. You know, many colleges basically have not opened yet, or those that have opened have actually closed down or sent kids home and Those that stay closed, they already said that they wanted to stay closed through this Thanksgiving, Christmas holidays because of all the vacationing stuff. So one of the things that we need to be careful about as a community is if we do open in person, what happens when we start to have the holidays and people are then going and traveling and all that kind of stuff. So there is just a lot to think about in terms of timing, potential disruption to our classrooms, what it's going to take to get people comfortable with whatever we decide to do. And I am not interested in forcing anybody. I think we need to bring people along. And so, you know, some of the conversations we've had about making sure everybody knows what kind of, you know, what are the four pillars, what are the protocols that we've set up, hearing from medical experts and all of that is the sort of thing we need to do. So some of that may need to happen before we even have this study session or after the study session. Right. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know that we need to do another survey right now. I'm wondering. We have heard from different teachers through emails. I know you've had conversations. Maybe there's an opportunity to have meeting with RCTA leadership to get some of that input that might be more meaningful in terms of verbally. I don't know. There's a little bit of a chicken and egg thing here is sort of what I'm trying to say, I think, because I think some of it is education in terms of what we have available as a district with our resources. What is the data saying? And then also what we want to do. Right. Mm."},{"start":10468590,"end":10492390,"speaker":"F","text":"And then there's also the piece of the pilot, you know, of holding our own pilot, which I know in San Mateo Foster City, what they have done, of course, they have more hubs than what we have right. At this point in time. And they're for their most vulnerable kids. And I know San Mateo Foster City, and I know there's a comment on here regarding them. They are looking at coming back in"},{"start":10492390,"end":10492610,"speaker":"H","text":"person"},{"start":10494360,"end":10696900,"speaker":"F","text":"after the holidays. That's what the superintendent was thinking at this point in time. I don't know where she is with the staff at this point, but that's what she was thinking because she had parents that were definitely his email, all these texts coming in. She was getting emails from her staff and also her parents. You know, when is it going to. When are you going to start again? Because I think they had the first six, seven weeks, if I'm not mistaken. I'd have to go back and look at my notes. But there's the pilot piece where we could get gathered data from that. There's where we can gather data from the hubs that are in existence right now through Redwood City because you know, we do have Reach, which is through the Parks and Rec Department that has hubs with our students in them. Matter of fact, Adelante Selby, there's children there with the Reach program. And then we have some of our students from Roosevelt and I believe Henry Ford at the Red Morton. I think it's Red Morton where they're at if I'm not mistaken, where the children are in those hubs. And there's a hub that's to going, going to start hopefully next week at Garfield with the Boys and Girls Club because you know, we're working closely with them. And then PCC again has hubs there, I believe on their location. And at one time there they were even speaking of using Clifford because we had some additional classroom space there, but I don't know what happened to that. And then we also have Kids Corner which is providing service for parents and also for some of our teachers where they're located at Cloud and Clifford. So again, I'll tell you what we're going to do. Let me get the presentation ready for next week of where we are and what we have and what it will look like. Let me call the medical professionals and see what their time frame is and when they can come and meet. Like I say, it cannot be a board meeting or a study session. Just needs to be like a meeting where they're coming to attend. From my understanding, that's two items. Number three, let me talk to Amy Gernstein at the Gardener Center. She is at the Gardener Center. There's scientists that are there. They all know how to create the best survey. That's what you need. But it's going to take us time try and get more information from I guess from teachers. And then let me also bring to you what a pilot would look like from the information that we have at this point in time. That would be next week. As far as know what it would need for. As far as what what we would to answer Dennis's question, there's going to be more time, gonna need more time than that than one week turnaround."},{"start":10699470,"end":10702350,"speaker":"D","text":"So Dr. Go ahead, Janet."},{"start":10702350,"end":10727980,"speaker":"A","text":"That's what I was going to suggest too because tonight we were supposed to receive the information from the survey and I think I wouldn't want to give you direction tonight to go forward with anything other than we need to come Back with our study session next week as you had planned. And I think we can get more information that way and give better direction after next week's presentation."},{"start":10729660,"end":10731260,"speaker":"D","text":"Yeah, I would agree with that."},{"start":10732300,"end":10782710,"speaker":"E","text":"I think I was thinking more like when you meet with the unions and the climate meeting, if they can help with some of that. But I think first the staff and the community need to see what it would look like. So next week I'm hoping that you guys could show us what that would look like. I know you guys have been working extremely hard and I want to say thank you to all of you for doing that. But I think we all have a different mental picture of what that looks like. And after next week, I'm hoping that we will have our pictures will come a little bit closer together and that we will have more data. But I do want you to think about that pilot as well."},{"start":10784870,"end":10808390,"speaker":"F","text":"And I will probably ask someone from. I think what I'll ask also is from someone from the Gardner center at Stanford to probably come and talk in regard to how do we find out the information that we want to get that Dennis pointed out to you. So I just, so I'll see if Amy, if it's not Amy, one of her colleagues,"},{"start":10815830,"end":10872980,"speaker":"E","text":"The other I would say is that this is a district of choice. So, you know, a lot of people are all thinking that we're all going to go back. And I just want to remind is that there is the distance learning, then there's the pilot project that may go forward of in person learning and then there's the independent study. That would be the other thing that someone asked about tonight. So people will have a choice. Those that want, want to can choose one or the other. I don't think we're saying we're forcing anybody because I think that's kind of what I understood. Some people were feeling that we were going to force them to go back in person or I don't think that was the case, but maybe I'm wrong."},{"start":10875300,"end":10911590,"speaker":"F","text":"An independent study exists. It does exist and that's not going to change. So that is, that is just a given. And we did a presentation for families who wanted either independent study. They were also looking at homeschooling. So that presentation was given and then they contacted first of all Wendy Kelly's office and some spoke to Wendy and then they started speaking with individual principals when it came to independent study. And when it came to homeschooling, there was a whole different process that took for those parents too."},{"start":10913590,"end":10913990,"speaker":"H","text":"Right."},{"start":10913990,"end":10923670,"speaker":"E","text":"So I guess people have choices. So I think one of the things we have to remind them is that we're not forcing people. People will have choices."},{"start":10926230,"end":10926630,"speaker":"G","text":"Right."},{"start":10929750,"end":10937480,"speaker":"F","text":"We're a district of choice. It's up. It's been that way for many, many years. Yeah. Anything else?"},{"start":10937480,"end":10939240,"speaker":"A","text":"Is there any other? Well, I think."},{"start":10939240,"end":10954880,"speaker":"D","text":"I think the only other comment I want to make is that I think all of us board members and Dr. Baker and district staff who've been working hard on the plans, you know, we've all repeated that health and safety is our top priority, right?"},{"start":10955120,"end":10955800,"speaker":"A","text":"Top. Top."},{"start":10955800,"end":11101050,"speaker":"D","text":"Top priority is health and safety, and that's of our students, our precious students, our staff, our teachers, our families, our community. And so that's why we really do need to think about what's best for our community and how do we keep our community health and health and safe and healthy given, you know, the resources we have, the facilities that we have, you know, and all of that. And one thing I was thinking about is if in fact we have, like, ultimately, if the board gets to a place where we feel like, okay, we can open with health and safety in mind, and we still have teachers who are not comfortable and they choose some of the options that Wendy Kelly talked about earlier, we could be in a place where we don't have enough teaching staff to actually teach our students, and we could be in a worse place than we're in now. Because we all know that teachers are a rare commodity, right? And they're a valued commodity, and we need to have them at their best and to feel comfortable and to be here for our kids. And so we could actually be in a worse situation by moving too quickly than if we take the time to really make sure that we have everything we need, people are comfortable and feel safe, and then we can move forward together. Right? And it is like a puzzle because no matter what we do, given looking at the numbers, unless some of those shift, there is a mismatch in terms of where we are now with classrooms and students and teachers and where we would be if we start to bring back some distant in person learning. And some are still doing distant learning. So there is a lot to work out still. But I do think next week's study session at least talking about what we have in mind for testing, what we have in mind for four pillars, you know, all of that basic stuff, I still think the other stuff is pretty complicated to figure out and to do well. And, you know, one of the things we had talked about is that we were in distant learning through the first trimester for a lot of good reasons. And so we have some time to figure this all out. You know what I mean? So anyway, I think next week, you know, sharing what we know with everybody and then. I agree. Let's not, you know, set some dates until we actually have the data that we need to help us set dates."},{"start":11105450,"end":11106089,"speaker":"F","text":"Okay."},{"start":11106650,"end":11137370,"speaker":"A","text":"Are there any other final comments? Okay, thank you for that, Wendy, and Dr. Baker, for the presentation and all that information. So it's now 9:06. We've been here for three hours. I'd like to take a break if that's okay. Great. So we will continue with 9.1, the approval of the Learning Continuity attendance plan. Doctor Baker, is there any."},{"start":11138250,"end":11144730,"speaker":"F","text":"Just. Do you have any questions. Does anyone have any questions in regard to this? And I think you said there was a."},{"start":11145130,"end":11169800,"speaker":"A","text":"We do have a comment card on this, and this was presented to us last time. So forward to see if we have any comments or questions. None. Okay, so the one speaker's card we have on this is Eric Sutton. Let's see if Eric is still here. Looks like Eric may have dropped off. Kyle, do you see him?"},{"start":11171640,"end":11173080,"speaker":"F","text":"No, I don't see him."},{"start":11175320,"end":11188440,"speaker":"A","text":"Yep, I don't either. Okay, so we just need an approval of this. Is there a motion to approve? Is that Elisa?"},{"start":11188600,"end":11191320,"speaker":"D","text":"Yep, and it looks great. I love the plan."},{"start":11193800,"end":11203790,"speaker":"A","text":"Second. Sorry, was that Celia? Okay, can we have a roll call vote, please? Trustee McBride."},{"start":11204030,"end":11204590,"speaker":"F","text":"Aye."},{"start":11204830,"end":11205950,"speaker":"A","text":"Trustee Marquez."},{"start":11206190,"end":11206750,"speaker":"G","text":"Aye."},{"start":11207470,"end":11210750,"speaker":"A","text":"Trustee Diazilco. Aye. Vice President."},{"start":11212590,"end":11213070,"speaker":"D","text":"Aye."},{"start":11213870,"end":11229880,"speaker":"A","text":"President Lawson. Aye. Thank you, Liz. Thank you again for all of your work on that and everyone, your team that worked on that with you. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. 9.2. The unaudited actuals for 2019-20."},{"start":11231960,"end":13335880,"speaker":"G","text":"Yes. Good evening, everyone. My name is Priscilla Aquino di Choso and the District Chief Business official. And this evening I would like to present to you the result of the closing of the 20191920 books for all of our district accounts. And I would like to share with you some slides in my PowerPoint presentation to go over some of the significant items that are considered in closing the book. So let me open the PowerPoint. Can everyone see this? Thank you. So the unaudited actuals is a requirement for the Education Code that on or before September 15th of each year, the governing board will be approving the annual statement of receipts and expenditures of the preceding year, and it needs to be submitted to the County Support Superintendent of Schools. As you will see, we are 15 days delay in the submission of this report, and that's because of COVID 19 and other unforeseen circumstances, including staffing challenges that we've experienced in the business office. So we're happy that all of the vacancies that we have now is filled and thank you to HR for helping us in that process, for expediting that process. But we have difficulty in closing the 201920 books this year. So the county Office of Education was notified of the delay and we will be submitting the reports as soon as the board approve tonight's financial statements. So for those who are new, the unaudited actuals are year end financial documents that needs to be submitted in a form format that is approved by the State Board of Education. So this is the time we're not talking about budget anymore, but the actual revenues earned and expenditures for the 2019 fiscal year. So the ending balances in each fund are going to be forwarded to the 2021 fiscal year and this will be the basis of an audit by our independent external auditor. So what are the things that happen? What are the most significant events that happen in 2019-20? So first of all, this is the first year that we're implementing the planning for the future that we've done. The board resolution number 13 that was approved by the board on November 2018 and that's the consolidation of closure of school sites. This is also the first year that Redwood City School District become basic aid. And based on our multi year projection, the district will remain basic aid in the future years. This is also the year where we issue the final series of the board approved Measure T general obligation bonds. And towards the last quarter of the fiscal year we get hit with a COVID 19 pandemic and it involves additional expenditures for the district district which I will be talking about later. So before we go to the financial statements, I just wanted to point out the number of students served in 2019-20 based on the official CALPADS information that was submitted to the state. So this is by population, by school sites. So for 201920 we have 7,169 students. So one thing to remember about Redwood City School District that we also have the highest number of students in need. So 60% of our pupils are unduplicated pupils. So those are the students that are low income English language learner foster youth. So we have the highest in San Mateo County. So by ethnicity we're 60% Hispanic and 23% white, not Hispanic. So those two ethnicity comprises 90% and the rest are about 10% in our total population. So this one shows the historical enrollment Trends. So since 2011-12, Redwood City School District enrollment has Been declining. So as we close the books in 2019, 20, we are at 7,169. So the ones in green are actual numbers. The one in blue are projections. 7,169. So that's 2,100 students less from 2011-12 data. So we're projecting a continuing decline in student enrollment for the current year, this year and the next two years based on the study done by our consultant and helping us with the projections. So this information shows the ratio of average daily attendance, or ADA to our student enrolled. So ADA is the number of days the student is present in a regular school year, not the COVID 19 school year. So one. If the student is present all days, then that's one ADA. So historically we are at 96% attendance. So going now to the financial statements, I just wanted to point out that the Redwood City School District has seven accounts fund accounts. So general fund is our main operating fund. And then we have our child development program in Fund 12. Food Services and cafeteria fund, Deferred maintenance fund. And we have our building fund where we accumulate, where we book the proceeds from general obligation bonds. We have the developer fees account in Fund 25 and Special Reserve Fund 40. This one, the Fund 51. If you look at our SACS reports that are included in our agenda item the book, you will See also Fund 51, but this information is not in the district books. This is county control. But we have to disclose the amounts that are accumulated in that fund to repay the outstanding general obligation bonds. So you will see eight instead of seven in the report. But one is not in the district books. So I would like to start with our main operating fund, which is the general fund. So, so in SACS or the standardized account code structure, that is, that is, which is the format required by the state Board of Education. There are only two main categories of the general fund. One is unrestricted and unrestricted. This, this breakdown that I'm showing to you is more of a district requirement for transparency and planning purposes. So we split it with unrestricted with the routine restricted maintenance and then a special ed and categoricals. But if we follow the sacs, these two plus the routine restricted maintenance are restricted account in sacs. So with this split we can under, we can review, you know, what are the total revenues in each of these categories. But in total for 1920, the total revenues, 107 million here. And then our total expenditure is 102.9 million. So our revenues exceed our expenditures by 4.1 in 1920. And then in 1920 this is the first time that we have transferred $500,000 from our RDA funds to the general fund. And this was the board decision to help address the COVID 19. At that time we have no known financial assistance from the state and federal. But we have to immediately mobilize and do whatever is needed to address the students needs and the staffing needs. When we were hit with COVID 19 way back in March. So this amount was transferred for that purpose when we closed the books. Knowing now that we're getting some assistance from the federal government. This is still intact. It's not touched. Some of the expenditures that we've used this for are now going to be credited to those additional federal funding that we're getting from the CARES Act. So this 500,000 is still intact and it falls into the ending balance here for the categorical programs. So the next item on the general fund is a contribution to the restricted programs. So you will see that each year we are contributing about 15.5 million million to the special education program. And as you know, this is not fully funded program. If you look at the revenues which is mostly coming from the federal, from the state, a very little amount from the federal government, it's not enough to cover its expenditure. So we're contributing that money from the unrestricted general fund. So in closing the the 1920 fiscal year, our ending balance in the General Fund is 16.2 million. This is 3.5 million higher than when we presented the estimated actuals to you sometime in June when we're developing the budget. And I'm going to explain to you in the next few slides what makes up the difference from estimated actuals to the actual year. In closing, as I mentioned, our total general fund budget is 107.1 million. So as you can see here, since we became basic aid, about 73% of our funding is coming from that basic LCFF calculation. Then we're getting some money for special ed. We have the measure U parcel taxes. We're getting some money from the state like lottery and the donations, local donations and only 4% from federal government. So these are the amounts for that. For the total revenue 107.1 million. So about 78.4 is from the LCFF. So this is the property taxes that we're getting. And as you can see, not a lot of districts getting this much in supplemental which is not really enough to just to address all the needs of our students. But we are getting supplemental and concentration grant because of our 60% unduplicated percentage we're also getting 200 per ADA for education protection account. All districts gets this. It's a fixed $200 per ADA and then the minimum state aid. This is guaranteed by the state when we transition to LCFF from the old revenue limit which actually just funds the state aid stated guarantee of 120 per ADA plus all the categorical programs that the district have prior to the LCFF implementation. So in total that's 78.4. Then as I mentioned we're getting some other revenue sources outside of LCFF which is about 27%. So this next slide I just wanted to to show you what is the difference if we remain LCFF district compared to now that we're basic A. So as you can see if we were if our property taxes did not exceed our calculation this would have been what we will we have received in 2019. So it's 72.4. But now because our property taxes exceeded the calculation we are now basic aid but not a lot of money compared to our neighboring districts. Yes we're basic aid but the equivalent of that excess taxes is only about 5% of our budget compared to our neighboring districts that are really high getting a lot more money as a basic aid district because of their their wealthy area. So what I wanted to show in this chart is the fact that property taxes are calculated or estimated three times a year. So you will not know if you're truly basic aid until after you get the P annual report which is on August 15th. So as you can see when we first know the date for P1 is actually November 15. But we did not get the information. We did not know we have a higher taxes because this information was given to us late. It was like towards the end of December that we have known about the property tax status. So as you can see it changes for each reporting period. For some districts this is turning point. Some district could flip in and out of basic A during this period depending on what's happening with the property taxes. That's why if you recall we I have recommended during adoption that we will try to keep that extra money that we're getting until after the end of the year because it was only at that point that we can confirm that we're truly basic A. So as you can see we are getting 74 million in property taxes. But because we have charter schools, we're sharing that money to our three charter schools, the district authorized charter school. So the net profit taxes is only about 64 million. So the next is the general fund expenditures. So our Total expenditures for the 1920 years, 102.9 million. So certificated, classified and employee benefits or people or salaries and benefits portion is 80% of our total budget. So in dollars. In dollars that's 81, almost 82 million in salaries and benefits, roughly 80%. And, and then books and supplies, services contracts comprise the rest of the expenditures. So now I wanted to talk to you about the details of what makes that 16.2 million in ending balance that we have for 1920. What is the components of that 16.2 million. So this year we were able to meet the 3% minimum reserve requirement and also meet the state mandated the board reserve. The board mandated reserve. So we in total we have a 6% reserve. And also we were able to assign a design 6.2 million for the basic aid excess taxes. The other amounts here legally restricted are the ending balances in all the restricted programs. Because the restricted programs are given to us with strict spending requirements, we can only use it for those purposes. Anything unspent is called is considered legally restricted. We have about 1.5 million in carryover for unspent funds. So there were other programs that we have that have ending balance when we close the books. For example, there are unspent amount in supplemental and concentration grants. So that's part of these carryover that will be forwarded to the 2021 fiscal year. So these are the components of that 16.2 million ending balance in the general fund. So these charts for the next two slides I just wanted to show to you how did we fare compared to the information that was provided to you in June? And then how do we compare with 2018-19 fiscal year? So this on the first comparison I am just looking at the unrestricted general fund and the routine restricted maintenance account, not including special ed, not including the categorical programs, because like I mentioned, those have their own specific spending plans. The unrestricted general fund is the indicator of the true financial solvency or stability of a district. So I wanted to just focus on this category of the general fund. So as you can see in June when we the estimated actuals, by the way is a budget data. So then audited actuals is the true final revenues and expenditures. So as you can see, there is a reduction in revenues and then there's also a reduction in exposure expenditures. And so for unrestricted general fund only, we close with 2.7 million higher than what we have estimated in June. So the next slide will show the details of what makes up that 2.7 million. So in the revenue Part the largest item here is the decrease in LCFF funding and that's because of the P annual or the third reporting period of property taxes where there's a reduction in the final property tax numbers. So the number is lower than what you've seen in the previous slide. And that's because this one now is the net of what we shared with the charter schools. So the rest are like budget, year end adjustment, not that material. So the next item is on. So there's a decrease in revenue, but there's also a decrease in total expenditures by 1.8 million. So if you look at the three items here, these are certificated salaries, classified salaries and then the the statutory benefits including health and welfare benefits. So on the salaries part, the big part of this amount is our budget for substitute teachers. So we have to keep that money. It's not something that we can eliminate mid year or anytime because we don't know when we need them. So there's also some adjustment during the year where a position is not filled or partly filled and all of that. So that's the total savings in certificated salaries. The second is also on classified like do we have budget for clerical substitute, you know, ground specialists and all of that and some again adjustment in the vacancies or whether it's field or not field or partly filled. And then the statutory benefits. This as I said, is not just the FICA or unemployment or all those statute benefits, but it includes the health and welfare which we usually make sure that we have enough money there to pay for all the health and welfare benefits for employees. That's the largest chunk. So the next big item is the routine restricted maintenance account. So it seems like there's a savings here because we are required by law to put in 3% of our total expenditure towards routine restricted maintenance account. We know at the beginning we cannot fully spend that 3% on custodians for only. So but we are required to put in 3% contribution. That's why you'll see some savings here. And whatever that unspent amount in routine restricted maintenance, we can't use it as a free money but we're still required to carry over that amount in the future year. So this is about the expenditures. The next one is the decrease in the contribution. There was a decrease in the contribution to the special education program because in Special Ed for 1920 There's a slight, very slight, about 300,000 increase in total funding for the program. But there's also the program also made an effort to really contain expenditure without of course, and still meet the maintenance of effort requirements. So we're still in compliance with the maintenance of effort requirement with these, with the lower expenditure and special ed program. So on the unrestricted general fund alone, there's a 2.7 million from estimated actuals to the actual closing of the books. So 2.7 plus the categorical, that's the 3.5 million in total general fund. So the next slide I wanted to show you is how do we compare with 1819? So this is the total beginning balance in 1819. This is 1920. So there's a difference there. In terms of general revenues, there's also 4.8 million increase between two years. And that's as I mentioned, we became basic eight here. Expenditures. There's a slight increase here. If you look at it, it's very reasonable increase. If you just factor in inflation, that's a very reasonable increase in expenditure. So comparing these two years, the increase in total restricted, unrestricted is for 4.6 million. And unrestricted only is 4.5 million. So my next slide is all of the district accounts. So we've talked about general funds. So the next one we have the child development program. All of our district funds have positive ending balance. The one that I wanted to point out, which Anna did a presentation about the child nutrition program, you can see that this program has a large deficit with a very small ending balance. So if we continue to operate this way, including, you know, negotiation, settlement, inflation costs and all of that, this is going to be negative. So we need to really look at how we continue to operate the cafeteria program. So deferred maintenance, this is just a transfer. It's no longer funded. But we have some expenditures for repairs, major repairs. So there's always that expenditure that is being transferred here. And then the building fund, these are the expenditures incurred when we closed the books. And then this is the last series of general obligation bonds that were issued in October. So the ending balance in the building fund is in the building fund only is 135.7 million. The next item, the next fund is capital facilities. This is a combination of RDA and the development fees. And part of the money that we collected for developer fees is also contributed to the bond program. So we ended the fiscal year with 20 million, 20.8 million. This fund has been carried over several years. It's earning interest. There's a very small amount of expenditure this year. So that's a 2.1 million. And like I said, the Fund 51 is the repayment of GO bonds. And this is county control. So in total without the fund 51 our ending balance for all funds is 1 76.3 million. The next few slides are just for your information where we are on the budget for the for the bond construction and then the COVID 19 later on the federal CARES act later on but for the bond projects as you they just recently did an update of the total budget for the bond construction and modernization program and it was about 212 million. So as we close the 18901920 books there's 141.5 million remaining. However this amount includes the board reserve and program contingencies. So that's the component of that. So there are three funding sources for the bond construction and modernization program. We got money from Prop 39 that's already fully spent in 1920 so there's zero carry over there. The total contribution from the developer funds is about 10 million and now there's 5.7 million remaining and then the fund 21 only from the bond there's 135.8 million. So that's the total fund balance for the bond construction and modernization projects. The next is just an information on the measure T. So the voter approved 193 million for Measure T General obligation bonds. All of these are now issued the last one being in October 2019. All of the bond issue ones were sold at a premium. So net of the underwriters discount all of this money for the one it was sold at premium did not go to the district. This was deposited back to the San Mateo county account to help with the debt service repayment. So the only thing that was deposited to the district account is the is the principal amount net of the cost of issuance. 192.2 million 192.3 approximately went to the district 14 million back to the county. So for the for the developer fees fund. So there are three components. So we're continue to be receiving RDAs from the trust fund and based on the study done at the San Mateo county we anticipate receiving additional allocations through 202930 fiscal year so another 10 more years unless there's a new study. But so far that's what we have and we are projecting that we may still be receiving some allocation from RDA for the next 10 years. So this portion is the revenue that we continue to receive from developer fees. There's no specific project yet that has been determined for these but we continue to accumulate funds for the developer fees collection that we share with the Sequoia Union High School District. So the this portion is that contribution that we made from the developer fees to the bond project. So the amount remaining is 5.7 million. So in total for fund 25 including the bond, the bond projects is 20.8 million. So that My next item here is how much do we get from the CARES Act? So we're getting two types of funding from the CARES Act. It's called the elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief or the ESSER Funds. And then we get Learning Loss Mitigation funds. But Learning Loss has three components. We get the Governor's Emergency Education Relief or people call this gear funds 534. And then the Coronavirus Relief or CRF is 4.6. And then the LLM General Fund is 616 for a total of almost 7 million. So as you can see here, the basis for the ESSER Fund is our title one alof from 2019 fiscal year. The GIRA funds is based on students in need. And the highest amount of allocation here is based on the Supplemental Concentration Grant. So although we know that as of this time, we know these are one time sources but hopefully, you know, if, if we're still struggling with COVID 19 we're hoping that it will continue next year. That's why we really need to make sure that our applications for free and reduced price meals that will not drop because that's a big chunk of money that the district is also receiving based on that free and reduced price meals applications. So there's a spending timeline for all of these. So the ESSER fund we can use it through September 30, 2022. The GEAR funds about the same timeline. This amount has to be fully spent by December 30, 2020. So that's why we have to prioritize what qualifies for the Coronavirus Relief Fund. So we want to make sure that this is put and that we can really utilize it for all for our needs. And this, the GF or general fund portion also was originally has a December 30th spending timeline. But with SBA 20 was extended through the end of this school year. So this is just information on what we're getting from the CARES Act. So from then oh before I forget, you know for on the CARES act for they allowed us to already identify expenditures from March 1 through June 30. So we have identified 635,000 in actual expenditures from 1920 fiscal year. And we've already submitted will report to the state about that. And that would be allowable expenditures for the CRF funds. So the next reporting period for the CRF funds would be the July through September 30th expenditures. And that's due October 7th. So that those are the things that we need to be working on after the close. And we also have auditors coming in and to review. The unaudited actuals report is due December 15 for the audit report. And we also have to be preparing for first interim, which is due also December 15, and make adjustments in our budget. We need to update our cash flow projections, multi year projections and all of that and be ready for first interim. And then we have another report that's due December 15, which is the budget overview for parents, which we're required to report on the financial data on our the three year llcap. So we need to also work on that. So this is the end of my presentation. I'll be happy to answer questions and if you want me to go back to any of the slides, I'll be happy to do that."},{"start":13337960,"end":13341960,"speaker":"A","text":"Are there any questions? I can't see everybody, so just speak up."},{"start":13342120,"end":13366530,"speaker":"G","text":"I'll just close this one. Then. Do I stop sharing?"},{"start":13368610,"end":13370930,"speaker":"A","text":"I think at the top of your screen there should be a red."},{"start":13374050,"end":13374850,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay, thank you."},{"start":13374930,"end":13381010,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, now I can see any questions or comments? Dennis, go ahead."},{"start":13381410,"end":13406300,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah, I just, I first, just for the audience, we have a budget committee and that's Maria and myself. And we met with Priscilla and Dr. Baker to go over all this before. So I had one question, Priscilla and I apologize, I didn't think of it when we met and that's if we didn't use the 500,000 for Covid, why didn't you reverse that entry at your end?"},{"start":13407980,"end":13450260,"speaker":"G","text":"Because we, we are not sure yet what is the impact of all of these that we might need it in the 2021 year. But as we go to 2021 and know if there are more, because right now we have not identified all of the COVID related expenditures. We're not certain that all the CARES act mandate that we're getting would be enough or sufficient to fully pay for what we need to do for our students and teachers. But if we end the fiscal year 2021 not using that money, then it will be reversed back to the fund. 25."},{"start":13450900,"end":13451460,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay."},{"start":13451460,"end":13502560,"speaker":"C","text":"And then I just wanted to make a clarification on the 14 million of the bond surplus. You said it goes to the county, which is correct. But it ultimately will work its way back to the property owners. So that's a big deal. 14 million out of 193 million. So we just should make sure that people understand. That's a really good deal. And then last, I'd like to thank you and your team. I think a normal year end close is pretty horrific because you're not staffed with extra people. And then we added to it that Steve Chanel, the county manager left. And by the way, he was nice enough to work his day job and then work with us at night. So big props to him. And then add to that the complication of COVID your staff being on even an odd day. So I think it was a real Herculean effort. I just want to acknowledge you and your staff for all the hard work and that's all I had."},{"start":13502560,"end":13503080,"speaker":"G","text":"Thank you."},{"start":13507160,"end":13508040,"speaker":"A","text":"Anybody else?"},{"start":13510200,"end":13515090,"speaker":"D","text":"Thank you very much, Priscilla, and to your team. Really appreciate all the hard work and putting this together."},{"start":13515650,"end":13516290,"speaker":"G","text":"Thank you."},{"start":13517330,"end":13537330,"speaker":"E","text":"And I would like to echo my thanks as well. As Dennis mentioned, they've had shortage of staff and all of these unknowns and they made it work. I know that they work long hours. So thank you for all your efforts and for keeping us balanced. Thanks."},{"start":13541500,"end":13555180,"speaker":"A","text":"And then of course, thank you for you and your team. I know firsthand how much you guys really work, especially with COVID So I do thank you for all your hard work and keeping our book straight. So thank you."},{"start":13555580,"end":13556380,"speaker":"G","text":"You're welcome."},{"start":13561740,"end":13583440,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah. I would just add we absolutely could not do it without you and your team. So thank you for all your work and to Maria and Dennis too, for sitting on the audit committee and going through all of this ahead of time. And Dennis, really appreciate all of your attention to the financial details too. I know that's your thing."},{"start":13583440,"end":13583840,"speaker":"F","text":"So"},{"start":13587040,"end":13594240,"speaker":"A","text":"if there are not any other comments or questions, this is an action item. Dennis."},{"start":13594960,"end":13595360,"speaker":"H","text":"Second."},{"start":13596320,"end":13600160,"speaker":"A","text":"Maria, can we have a roll call vote? Ms. McBride."},{"start":13600400,"end":13600960,"speaker":"C","text":"Aye."},{"start":13601520,"end":13603040,"speaker":"B","text":"Christy Marquez."},{"start":13603680,"end":13605760,"speaker":"A","text":"Aye. Christy Dia Silkum."},{"start":13606000,"end":13606560,"speaker":"E","text":"Aye."},{"start":13607120,"end":13610880,"speaker":"A","text":"Vice President McEvoy. Aye. President Lawson."},{"start":13611280,"end":13611840,"speaker":"H","text":"Aye."},{"start":13613040,"end":13617860,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay. 9.3. Adoption of Resolution 10, the GAN limit."},{"start":13619930,"end":13652320,"speaker":"G","text":"So, yes, so the GAN limit is a part of the SACS software and it's automatically calculated in the SACS software. So. But this time in 1920, because we turned basic A, it is showing an excess in the gan limit for 27, approximately 27 point million. So this one does not have any fiscal impact on us. We just need to disclose this and report it to the State Controller's office."},{"start":13656080,"end":13657040,"speaker":"A","text":"Any questions?"},{"start":13661120,"end":13666320,"speaker":"D","text":"I'll move the approval. And I think there's also a resolution attached to it, is that right?"},{"start":13666720,"end":13668160,"speaker":"A","text":"Correct. There's a resolution."},{"start":13669290,"end":13670250,"speaker":"D","text":"So, so moved."},{"start":13671610,"end":13676810,"speaker":"A","text":"That's Alisa. Second. Cecilia, can we have a roll call vote, please? Justin McBride."},{"start":13677210,"end":13677690,"speaker":"C","text":"Aye."},{"start":13678250,"end":13679370,"speaker":"B","text":"Christy Marquez?"},{"start":13679770,"end":13682170,"speaker":"A","text":"Aye. Christy D. Silkum."},{"start":13682330,"end":13682810,"speaker":"H","text":"Aye."},{"start":13683610,"end":13688330,"speaker":"A","text":"Vice President Macabre. Aye. President Lawson?"},{"start":13688730,"end":13689210,"speaker":"G","text":"Aye."},{"start":13690730,"end":13716230,"speaker":"A","text":"All right. Item 10.1. San Mateo County Office of ED Review of RC CSD COVID 19 Operations, written report and adopted budget. This is an information item. Are there any questions or comments? Dennis, you're unmuted, so I'm not sure if you're wanting to."},{"start":13716230,"end":13718150,"speaker":"C","text":"Okay, Ned, I was getting ready to do my a."},{"start":13720150,"end":13729610,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, so that brings us to the end of our agenda. It is 9:56pm do we have a motion to."},{"start":13730170,"end":13731290,"speaker":"C","text":"Could I make a motion?"},{"start":13731370,"end":13731850,"speaker":"D","text":"Yes."},{"start":13731930,"end":13736890,"speaker":"C","text":"I'd like to close the meeting in honor of Dr. Baker and the Cabinet for all their hard work."},{"start":13738410,"end":13740250,"speaker":"E","text":"I would love to second that."},{"start":13740730,"end":13741290,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay."},{"start":13741450,"end":13742650,"speaker":"A","text":"All those in favor?"},{"start":13743050,"end":13743530,"speaker":"C","text":"Aye."},{"start":13744730,"end":13749930,"speaker":"A","text":"Great. Thank you, everyone. We'll see you back for our study session next week on 27th."}]}