Thread by @emwest22

Golden: As of yesterday afternoon, we were told we don't have the authority to shift to remote, but later in the evening from Comm. Scwinn we received that comment. We are asking from you to continue that ask.

Golden: Right now we have no instructions from the state that we have that power. We have verbal communication from news sources, and that's what we are checking on. Superintendents are asking the same question you are asking.

Ausbrooks: For this school year, the governor would have to extend TEMA or an emergency order for remote. We are asking not to wait for a state emergency. There are other conditions of the rule, and only one county has been activated by Gov. Lee, and that's Humphreys.

Golden: I will refer you back to last year. From time to time you were involved in convos about schools. We don't want to do this. We talked about this a lot last year. I am convinced we succeeded last year. Not every district went through that struggle last year.

Eric Welch: One of the big triggers for this was FMS being out and 30% staff sick that day. We were unable to staff classrooms. You said previously with 10% out we could consider closing the school. I even heard some of our bus drivers are now being subs then driving them home.

Welch: You and Snowden (FSSD) issued a letter to the WC delegation to give us the same abilities as last year. Saw in the paper that Ogles and Johnson support this and sent emails of support to the commissioner.

Golden: I haven't seen the emails from Ogles or Johnson, but it was to the legislators. Also, 10% absence is a trigger point historically and to your point we dropped below that. We have one school today at 18% absent.

Welch: W/o this authority, we have to cancel school and we have to use 10 wx days which we have to use for actual wx.

Welch: If we use all those days, we have to then extend the school year, but the way it is currently we have to add that additional day.

Golden: We don't have the money budgeted to pay staff for additional days.

Welch: We will have to ask the county commissioner for more funds which the tax payers will have to pay for.

Welch: Some instruction is better than no instruction.

Golden: If something happened and we needed additional days, the likelihood we would use fund balance. On the instructional side, having a remote instructional day is more valuable than having a day at the tail end of the summer.

Eliot Mitchell: Mr. Golden, I think I heard this earlier. Last year we went remote based on absence in the school correct?

Golden: Early on we had convos with the health department. But that didn't happen much in the second semester.

Mitchell: Last year, we had absences based on quarantines and contact tracing. So far this year, we have had only had to close one school for illness and that was staff but we don't know if they were illness or self quarantine. Is that something we are trying to track?

Golden: We do know staff and isolation on our website. As of Aug. 24 it showed 17 faculty and staff out. They tested positive.

Mitchell: Would we have been able to execute given the amount of staff?

Golden: Friday was a tipping point where we couldn't do it anymore. But yes, we could have done it.

Mitchell: The challenge with shutting it down is no instruction going on. It's better to do remote learning in that case is my thought. We are talking about mitigation and that's what I am thinking.

Galbreath is now comparing snow days. Said he would like to go into more detail and wait for clarity and talk about it in policy so it wasn't a carte blanche.

Galbreath: I would like to do it after the quarantine policy. I hate making a resolution like this flying blind. We could make this resolution and they could say no.

Galbreath said he is a no vote for the resolution.

Wimberly called the question. Mitchell seconded it.

The vote is 9-3 to ask for remote days from the state.

Staff says only to let those who are positive cases have the COVID-19 leave. Not those who were close cases.

Golden: The essence of the WCEA is will you consider finding a way to bump up benefits and this is where we landed.

Golden: This is my rec. Vote on the resolution as is. We don't know what the future holds.

Staff says the health department guidance comes from text messages. Which leaves this up to teachers, who if they have symptoms can't come to work. Vaccinated folks don't have to quarantine.

School board members are conflicted on whether giving teachers quarantine days as part of the COVID-19 sick leave.

Did someone say sidetracked? I believe we are.

Wimberly is asking for the amendment for quarantining to be taken off the table for the evening and discussing it at the next meeting.

There's a move to defer the amended motions until September.

And they voted 10 yes, 2 no to defer the amendment motion. Now we are back on the original motion.

Y'all I just want them to vote so I can eat my dinner. Selfish. I know. But these are my current feels.

Back to the OG motion and voting.

12 yes. Unanimous.

Well there goes eating dinner anytime soon. We have motion on the floor for all grades through K-12 wearing masks. Motion from Jen Aprea.

Aprea: We have a majority of them wearing masks and protecting one another. If two people with positive contact wear masks, that allows more people to stay on campus. In sixth grade, there are plenty of 11 year olds without access to the vaccine.

Cleveland: I am going to stick to what we agreed. I am not sure universal masking is what we need to do at this point. Personally, it's apparent to me we can't mandate 100%.

Cleveland: It's not an issue right now. I would rather us go school by school. I think that's why we should push remote learning and this gives us the option. I understand your concern but I want to be on what we originally agreed on.

Golden: One - we know the discussion we had before the governor's order. We made the belief at that time we could largely mask. The governor's orders create an overlay. We have about three and half weeks until the elementary requirement ends.

Golden: To Ms. Aprea's point, the elementary levels are 75 to 25 percent. I would like to ask our health professionals for a recommendation.

Gary Anderson: When the opt outs are allowed, it takes away from mitigation. It doesn't have the same level with opt outs. We can't prove now it has the impact and what the impact will be.

Golden: Vote your conscience. Those in elementary who made that choice were respected. Given what you have worked through, my recommendation is you vote your thoughts.

Golden: We haven't recommended up to this point. I recommend you take all the info we have given and vote as you deem appropriate. You're smiling at that. We didn't come to you with this rec, but there's value in it.

Galbreath: I am not in favor of mandating the masks. These older kids will exercise their own ability to make up their own minds because they have the option to opt out.

KC Haugh: What we are talking about is a mandate that isn't a mandate. There are a lot of people who aren't here who are looking for leadership from us. That guidance is they should wear masks. Masks are not the silver bullet for this.

Haugh: Just as aside, we are in the school year and the state hasn't given us guidance on the rules to follow. Maybe we should pass a resolution to remind them that school starts in August. We are at the culdesac of making these decisions here. It's frustrating.

Haugh: Do we want to listen to politicians or medical professionals? I say medical professionals.

Cash: How long are we going to beat this dead horse to death. I was wondering when it would come up and Wimberly is right. There's so much mitigation to talk about. We talk about people emailing. Data data data. Anything you want to hear. Who do we listen to? Parents.

Cash: Why do we have to continue this? Why? There's a gentleman came up that said that an N-95 mask is possibly the only one that's safe. If we do it let's do it right. Let's order an N-95 masks and let the school system pay for it.

Cash: If you stop this madness and worrying. If this variant doesn't go away, there will be another one. It's just like the common cold. I get angry about listening constantly. These are kids are happy going to school. Jason, if we could, let's look at the online.

Cash: We are never going to satisfy these people.

Welch: I would hope that after the clown show last week we could ratchet it down. No one is talking about putting a rag on a child's face. We should be able to disagree without screaming and hollering about dead horses.

Cash: I don't condone what happened. I don't want to be blamed for that.

Welch: We see the community disagrees. The statement that listen to parents usually means listen to parents with my point of view. There are people who have argued against it and talked about that impact on their children. That's valid. Children have one opp to go to school.

Welch: We have parents talking about their immunocomprised children and make them go learn online is disrespectful to them. The opinion of anyone who comes here should act like an adult. They deserve to have it listened to and considered.

Welch is talking about running a marathon and when you hit the wall you have to change your strategy. Whatever got you to that point won't work moving forward and that's the same for us here.

Welch: We have to look at what the current information is. Yes, you can find whatever you want. I can find the earth is flat if I want. But it ain't flat. We need to get our data from real experts.

Welch: We can take educated hypothesis but we still don't know. It goes both ways. We don't know. That's a valid question. We have gotten so dug in as a community. I am going back to our resolution. There wasn't a pause to learn about this and ask. We are seeing the same w/ masks

Welch: There are segments making this about themselves. We had the two idiots in the parking lot last week who didn't have kids in the system. But look we are all tired. The reopening this summer makes it more difficult.

Welch: Now we have to go back. It's like being a Tennessee football fan. Boy it sucks right now. But there's a lesson we need to figure out. I look at a week ago. And it makes me think we have learned our lesson. It's all of us.

Welch: Vote for the kids not the adults so your conscience is clear. And please everyone consider this question: what if I am wrong? Think about if you were wrong in your position.

Aprea: I wanted to address the point and open up about that. When we had to open up this year, we told them we would follow CDC guidelines. This is adding a swiss cheese layer of mitigation to say to those families we want to keep your kids on campus.

Cleveland: In another couple of weeks, if this is voted no, we would still require mask for elementary and stay with the plan? The vote is extending it to middle to high school?

Golden: We are extending it by grade level and not by time.

Wimberly calls the question.