Thread by @CognitaVagabond

Anyone know whether the @RoundRockISD BoT meeting still starts at 5:30 p.m. or 7:00 p.m.? There appear to be conflicting notices on this. #rrisd1family

https://twitter.com/RoundRockISD/status/1329409692939001862

The meeting has now started. The board members are saying the pledge. They will be taking public comments next. There's a strange echo on the feed that will make this meeting difficult to listen to virtually if it isn't corrected.

First speaker is Snehal the President of the Counsel of PTAs. She's hear to welcome the new trustees.

Dawn Watson is next, thanking the trustees who are transitioning off the board and encouraging new trustees to find someone as super awesome as Dr. Flores to replace him as @RoundRockISD Superintendent.

Pausing on public speakers and will hear more after item J1. Jenny Caputo talks about all the awesome things the outgoing trustees have done.

@NikkiGtrustee speaks about what a privilege it's been to serve as trustee over a "destination district". She has good things to say about Trustee Cox, Law, Feller, Moses, Hanna, etc. by name. @masonamoses specifically names Trustee @NikkiGtrustee as well.

@masonamoses wants the oncoming BoT to be successful. 1) This goes fast; 2) make trust the first priority (seems like this one would be first); 3) ok not to know everything that goes on in the district; 4) best resource is not board but child's teacher and parent; ...

5) your audition for superintendent begins now; 6) don't let this position define you. He thanks his wife for being supportive.

@smath3333 talks about whether they've accomplished what they set out to do. Westwood is now represented on the board. Passed a bond so that he could help give the community what it needed; but there's still work to be done. Student ranking went away at Westwood.

Equity is still an issue in the district and the . He encourages new board to continue focusing on narrowing the achievement gap. His biggest accomplishment has been passing the baton to @YungTiffanie at Trustee. Wants teachers to be taken care of. Thanks everyone.

Chad Chadwell thanks everyone and congratulates the incoming trustees (super short and sweet). The board of trustees take a 15 minute break to take photos with everyone.

Board members are coming back now and @YungTiffanie is being sworn in as trustee (I may or may not be crying right now, y'all)

Place 1; Dr. Jun Xiao is sworn in next. Everyone claps! Place 2 is next and Dr. Mary Bone is sworn in as trustee. (YAY!) Place 7 with Danielle Weston is last (such a long time coming😃) Congrats new Trustees!

With the four new trustees on the board, they go into close session to discuss purchase/sale of property; interim Superintendent; and other stuff with lawyer Doug (which means it's my dinner time)

The Board is back. Motion to approve AW Grimes future HS site easement. Motion passes 7-0. Amy Weir nominated President, Motion seconded; passes by acclimation. Trustee Amy Weir is President.

@vessacory is nominated Vice President; Motion is seconded; passes by acclimation. Trustee @vessacory is VP.

@YungTiffanie is nominated Secretary; Motion is seconded; Motion passes by acclamation! 🎉

The Board takes a brief recess to rearrange places on the dais....

The Board appears to be back in session but the sound isn't working correctly.

The Board was muted. None of the guest speakers could hear the board members. Tammy Conrad is the first public commenter that could be heard. She's a teacher. She wants everyone focused on the health of stdts and staff. Doesn't want D to reopen buildings until end of 2020.

To be blunt she says that teachers can't teach dead kids. Next speaker doesn't want class to resume after Thanksgiving. Wants district to accept rapid testing.

Next speaker is SPED mom, Sherry Ashford. Her 4 children cannot function in a virtual environment. The teachers are doing a fantastic job in person. Ginny Guston next: she welcomes new board members. Says that Covid can cause brain damage. Asks to stay home until 2021.

Benjamin Sterling is former teacher. Says that students are unsafe and therefore unable to learn. Lorie Wright is next and wants board to focus on data and substantive info. Alejandro, a teacher, is next and currently under quarantine from COVID. Wants to at least return to pods.

Elizabeth Pruitt-Sanchez her student needs on campus learning. Parents and students should be able to choose between on-campus and virtual. Next speaker will miss @sfloresRRISD and that virtual learning is great. Wants students kept safe. Says it's ok if students fall behind.

Deanna Dawson, educator, concerned about reopening phases. She's been diagnosed with COVID. She wants to wait until vaccine before resuming on-campus

Claire Decks moved her from Florida for great schools. Disappointed that @RoundRockISD waited way too long to reopen.

@txwinedivaamy is next, she's a parent of 4 and was teacher for many years. Thinks parents AND teachers should be able to choose between on-campus and or at-home. Her SPED kids were not doing well and her neurotypical kids are also failing.

Glenda Black, former educator & husband still teaching and has asthma and she begs board to stay open so she can keep her business. Annie Vaughn has an autistic son who's learning was horribly impaired due to on-line learning. Can't go back to virtual w/o overwhelming regression

Elizabeth Yocum is next wants board to consider mental health of kids says depression & anxiety rates are going up. Wants to preserve choice for families. Wants board to consider socioeconomic status. Angela Chambers wants Stoney Point HS reopened; says they've been shut down 4X.

Chris Smith wants to keep schools open for on campus learning. Virtual learning is not the best option for most children and thinks its detrimental to students. (quick break ...)

Back for District Covid Update: Covid numbers are up. The transmission isn't happening in the classroom where masks are in place but where social gatherings are occurring. Sharon Wilkes to discuss what would require a campus to close.

Local health department makes the final decision on whether schools close. This isn't in alignment with guidance from the TEA. Ultimately the superintendent makes final determination for closing a campus.

Significant increases in cases, high level of exposure, etc. will make contact tracing limited or more difficult. They consider a multitude of data when deciding to close a campus. The length of time a campus remains closed is limited to 5 days, or long enough to clean the campus

They can only close for a prolonged time (14 days) if the number of staff is limited due to high level of exposures during an outbreak. Athletics and fine arts may still be suspended if needed. The district has posted cleaning procedures on the district website.

Covid dashboard is updated at 5PM Friday. Per @DrPresley_RRISD, they are looking into updating the dashboard daily, but quite a chore. Questions from the board: @vessacory wants to know what events led to the closure of Stoney Point HS.

Stoney Point is currently a cluster site with a high level of exposure and the health department recommended it's closure. They had 10 case increase last weekend. This campus has the highest number of cases anyway but this wasn't related to athletics.

There were five related cases. This cluster site also involved one student who was in a high need vulnerable SPED classroom. This was creeping into other areas of the school and was very concerning to the health department. Different than other case increases in the past.

@YungTiffanie wants to know whether Stoney Point is also being tracked for feeder schools in terms of close contacts. Yes they are. @yesthatamyweir asks if there's anyway to warn people campus closure is coming. On elementary campus if we aren't letting parents know until 6pm

This puts families in a bind. @DrPresley_RRISD wants to remind parents to continue checking dashboard but district will do their best. Often the info comes on fast and so does the decision. @vessacory says the more info we give families that the more comfortable they will feel.

Dr. Bone requests that the data be more uniform than local health authorities can provide given different methodologies etc. They're not educators.

@YungTiffanie asks if TEA's new guidance is factored into the presentation. Just today extended to 14 days but only if you don't have enough staff. But if you close a campus based on health department recommendation you can only close for 5.

Mandy Estes describes these situation depending on what educator in which subject is out and how it effects the classroom is a jig saw puzzle. Tiffany Harrison wants there to be adequate consideration of educators. Doesn't think this is sustainable. Especially the hybrid model.

Mandy Estes mentions that it's most challenging at the HS level due to master schedules. Interactive flat panels will be game changers for hybrid learning. This has been seen at ES level. @vessacory wants to know if they can get outside help to install faster than spring.

Mark Gebhardt says that they're working on the order and that installation would begin in January. They will work with the contractor to move up the timeline.

Amber Feller wants to know how the campus closure at Stoney Point is affecting black and brown students disproportionately than white students because they're parents aren't able to stay at home with them.

Danielle Weston asks if the health authorities from Travis and Williamson Counties were invited to the Board meeting. Yes, but they declined the invitation. Reluctant to turn over the reigns to the health authority.

Asks how many parents were included on the reopening committee. None. Asks that the voice of parents and teachers be considered. Mary Bone mentions that there are vulnerable SPED students that cannot receive their services when schools close.

@vessacory wants more two way communication, but thinks that we can't just bring certain parents into committees and expect changes, because there's so much diversity of opinion. She favors more 2 way communication so parents and teachers feel heard so lots of ppl can give input

Dr. Xiao thinks having a baseline communication about protocol for closing a campus to point people to would help facilitate communication. Import to remember that the challenges for closing an elementary campus is diff than high school campus.

Asks if there's data on where transmission is occurring. The reason he asks is because he's concerned for teachers. Wants to be able to see if teachers getting exposed in classrooms. Most transmissions are still happen through athletics & outside of school. Most not in classroom.

Nurse Brandi says that they are looking into the rapid testing plan. Their watching to see how it's going in other districts like AISD. Different there because they contract with Asension Seton which makes implementation different.

@vessacory mentions the challenges of having more indoor sport seasons are beginning right now that makes exposure widespread and close contact more frequent, etc. Nurse Brandi says nurses are also struggling with getting forthcoming information from families.

Amber Feller asks Nurse Brandi to talk about parent consent and confidentiality. Very difficult because there are moving pieces to it. A district can't force a medical procedure on anyone's child and they can't require students to stay home if they aren't sick.

The district can't force a student to be tested before returning to campus. Dr. Bone asks how the district is doing with safety protocols and asks if analysis has been done on that. They've done a lot to try to mitigate spread. But sometime teachers leave campus to go to lunch.

That can cause probs with quarantining and increased close contacts. There are many teachers who have done their due diligence. Much like little kids wearing masks. Most folks adjusted to new reality. Some of these situations can't be avoided. Heartfelt thanks goes out to staff.

Dr. Xiao asks abt a limited portion of the campus closing instead of whole campus. They have things in place and they always take a conservative approach. Dr. Pressley says that just because teacher is quarantined doesn't mean they aren't still teach'g just takes recalibrating.

@YungTiffanie acknowledges the weight on principles right now. Asks if there's a reason the letter home re positive cases can't say the number of people affected. They have to be careful due to FERPA. Could make people identifiable.

Tiff says communication eases frustration and that what she's hearing is that we're exercising the limits of our trust right now bc district is telling everyone that we rely on health authority and they're not here to question. The more info we can give community the better.

@yesthatamyweir asks if there's a chance that the district could do a robocall reminding families that if there's some kind of issue in their family or if they're experiencing any symptoms that they need to not come in the Monday after the break. They will likely be doing that.

Tiff asks if they're concerned about the transmission will increase over the break. It seems like we have to go into the fire to find out if there is a fire. Nurse Brandi says yes but her team needs a break. Tiff says that she hears her.

@vessacory is excited by the discussion. Loves the open honest discussion & thanks district 4 being transparent abt challenges. She agrees that this has to be a community effort. This is hard and the whole community appreciates the hard work the district is doing.

Her plea to the community is that we be responsible so SPED students can have services; so schools can stay open; so teachers can be safe. The community can step up & help with this effort. Dr. Bone asks that the district staff comes to the board to come to them and ask for help

Dr. Xiao asks if the district does hazard pay. Dr. Pressley says that they don't currently do that. Tiffany asks if that's something that they can consider like Leander. Cory points out LISD didn't give a raise but there's stuff that the BoT can look at at next m budget mtg.

They will not be going over enrollment data due to the late hour. Amber Feller moves to approve L1-7 by consent. No discussion. Motion passes 7-0. No action items. Need to schedule meeting for November 30th the Monday back.

There are a number of ES classes that are exceeding 24 students per class due to covid. They will need to approve TEA waiver for class sizes. Amber Feller brings up adding BoT self-evaluation to the agenda.

Danielle Weston takes the opportunity to thank teachers. Asks that teachers and staff forego trustee appreciation month and not shower them with gifts in January. Meeting adjourns at 10:09PM.