The Board of Education met 01/11/2021. The biggest news from the meeting was that Ed Ruffolo, the person they had chosen to fill the Board vacancy called them and declined to accept the position. After the extended closed session in which they discussed the Ed Ruffolo situation, they emerged and held an entire regular board meeting. It picked up slightly over 3 hours into the video.
They started out by reviewing all the resolutions that the Wisconsin Association of School Boards will be considering at their annual meeting, and then moved on to other board business.
Board President Kay Eggert opened the meeting by summarizing the emails they’d received intended for public comment. Two thirds of the emails expressed concern regarding Ed Ruffolo’s appointment to the Board. Several letters voiced appreciation for moving to more in-person instruction but also wanted it to go further by providing 5 day a week instruction to all grade levels. Severa letters also voiced concern over resuming in-person instruction given the current burden rate in the city of Appleton and expressed disappointment that the district appears to be deviating from the matrix to move between learning models. Several questions and concerns were also brought up including how many high school students would be receiving hybrid instruction vs remaining virtual and how bussing would work particularly for high school students and whether the schedules would be convenient for families.
Superintendent Judy Baseman then gave her report. She handed it over to Greg Hartjes to review the data surrounding returning to in person learning.
Their matrix for moving between models contains 3 primary numbers.
(1) The Burden/14 day case rate for the city of Appleton. The CDC puts any region with a burden of over 200 in the “highest” category, and Appleton’s continues to be in that highest level. That indicator would have them be fully virtual.
(2) The Burden/14 day case rate for the Tri-County region. Based on the CDC’s number of 200, the Tri-County region is also in the highest category and should be fully virtual.
(3) The District’s ability to implement 5 key mitigation strategies. AASD did safety audits the week before the Board meeting, and their mitigation strategies would allow them to be fully in person.
They also have secondary indicators.
(4) The DHS trajectory and burden composite for the city of Appleton and the DHS composite for the Tri-County region. These numbers are both in the second highest category of “very high” instead of the highest of “critically high” and would indicate that instruction should be fully virtual.
(5) Staffing Levels. Their staffing levels are high enough to resume fully in-person instruction.
Greg reviewed the city of Appleton’s burden. It had been down to 591 the week of 12/21, but has now increased to 905. (Those numbers were based on both confirmed and probable cases–not just confirmed cases. Back in November, Superintendent Baseman had indicated that the district would only be using confirmed cases to estimate burden rates. An AASD parent and All Things Appleton reader reached out to Greg Hartjes and asked him why they were using a burden rate that included probable cases and he indicated he was unaware the Appleton rate as reported by the health department included probable cases.)
At the tri-county level, the burden was down to 366 as of the week before the Board meeting. They are assuming that number may go up a bit.
10 weeks ago, Appleton’s burden was at 1,049, so it’s come down considerably.
Greg created a chart that visually illustrated the decreasing trajectory over time.
The Blue number at the bottom is 100, the DHS’s lowest risk category
The Orange number is 200 which is the CDC’s lowest risk category.
The Teal number is 350 which comes from the Harvard Global Health Institute and is a target used by a lot of districts in the state of Wisconsin. AASD is not using it and are instead continuing to use the CDC’s number of 200.
They started keeping data on September 30. At the end of October Appleton hit a high burden of 1,141. It then steadily decreased until it hit 591 (note: actually 467 when calculated to only include confirmed cases). Then it increased the week before the Board meeting. The Tri-County burden numbers reached a high of 1,343 on Oct 15 and has steadily declined all the way down to just under 400 in the last two weeks. He received some questions about how they could have a declining burden and trajectory when the week before the number went up, and that was because the trajectory is just one week to the next, but the burden had been declining for multiple weeks.
He stated that they were often asked why are they even look at the Tri-County numbers and the reason is that the city of Appleton may be the location of all but two of their schools, but only about 55% of their students live in Appleton. 45% of their students live in Grand Chute or the Town of Harrison have open enrolled from a district outside the Appleton School District’s boundaries. However, 99% of the kids live in the Tri-County region. They same dynamic is in play with their staff. Only about 50% of staff members live in the city of Appleton, but 99% of them are within the Tri-County region.
He then opened things up for question.
Jim Bowman liked the new line chart better than the graphical indicators they’ve been provided in the past.
Greg stated that they’re looking to update the look of their maxtrix. They would not change the indicators but they want to try to make it easier for people to understand.
Barry O’Connor wanted to know what the burden rate would be for AASD to decide they could not continue in-person. He did not think they had met their criteria to move to in-person and hybrid instruction, but they are still going back. What would be the point at which they would reconsider and move to virtual instruction again?
Per Greg, they never said that there was an actual burden number that determines when students are in school or not. That decision has got to be based on a combination of all of the factors listed in their matrix including the academic, social, and emotional needs of the students. They have to put all those pieces together, and they haven’t said there’s a number. [From a purely procedural standpoint, I’m not sure what by what authority Greg included the academic/social/emotional needs of the students as a factor in moving between educational models. In my opinion, it certainly ought to have been a factor, but the matrix doesn’t actually include it.]
Greg stated that they felt it was important for them to add information that they don’t currently use in their matrix. More than the external factors of the community burden, AASD wants to look at what’s happening in their schools once all the staff and students are there in either a hybrid or full-time model. They’ll be looking at the number of students and staff per week who test positive for Covid as well as the number who are quarantined. Those numbers, along with community burden, would help them decide if they needed to move to a less in-person model.
Barry pressed him saying that Greg is a number’s guy. Is it not possible to quantify things somehow?
Greg responded that he’s not a health guy, so he couldn’t do that. He could tell the Board what the numbers say, but he was not comfortable saying what the health experts were going to tell them.
Barry countered that the health experts have already weighed in on some of the standards. Our area burden is higher than their recommended numbers, but AASD is not paying attention to that in Barry’s opinion.
Greg answered that the CDC and the DHS have not told school districts “this number is when you should not be in person” nor have the local city or county government entities made that determination. It has been left up to individual districts to make these decisions based on all of these factors. The CDC and DHS have said, “here’s high risk or highest risk” but they haven’t said, “that means you should not be in school”.
Barry continued to press, wanting to know where the threshold of sickness in the community or schools would be for the administration to reconsider being in-person. He believed that safety is the issue in addition to education, and he believed we need schools to be safe.
Per Greg, they have looked at the information that is being used by Waukesha School District. They’ve broken it down and determined that if a certain number of students in a classroom are sick then the classroom needs to be quarantined, if a certain number of classrooms in a school are quarantined then the school needs to be quarantined, and if a certain number of schools are quarantined then the district needs to go back to virtual. The administration does have those numbers but they haven’t verified them and haven’t shared them with the Board yet.
Barry did not think that Waukesha’s matrix is recognized by any reputable medical research organization. He did not understand why AASD was doing what Waukesha is doing. He was quite concerned about it and had brought that concern up before. He stated, “I know I’m not the most popular guy in the, you know, in some quarters because of it. But at the same time you know, the health is important, and with the new virus strains coming–possibly coming. Vaccine coming. I’d hate to be the people responsible for some serious health setbacks for some of our students and for some of our faculty and some of our parents and grandparents. So I’m gonna just–you know, I, we, we, we’ve shifted the needle or the metrics as we’ve moved forward here, and I’m very uncomfortable with that.”
Kris Sauter stated that she’s been asked out they measure the academic, social, and emotional needs and then balance those with the number that are on graphs Greg presented.
Judy Baseman said that came through Polly Vanden Boogaart’s department. AASD completed the Panorama survey process which gives some indication of social/emotional learning needs.
Polly then jumped in. They don’t have the academic piece but she could speak to the social/emotional piece. The factors that go into that are the level of engagement, attendance, and wellness screen data, as well as the Student Services Teams–what they’re feeling, how many students they’re reaching out to, and how many students are being responsive in return. They’re also trying to balance bringing students back by also increasing and enhancing their mitigation strategies so they can continue to remain safe and in-person during this time.
Steve Harrison spoke about the academic part of the equation. With the end of the semester rapidly approaching, they are looking at two areas, one being the number of credits students have. Those are generally in increments of 6. By the end of Freshman year, students should have 6 credits, then 12 at the end of sophomore year, etc. The Board has a work session coming up on the 25th where they will be looking at, amongst other things, student credits, disaggregating that information, and looking for gaps that have either widened or gaps that have only recently become noticeably measurable. They’ll also look at letter grades and the percentage of failures. [As an aside, I imagine parents will be particularly interested in that worksession.]
Jim Bowman stated that he has struggled with the safety vs. student learning issue throughout this whole thing as have the other Board members. He thought the January 19 plan is sound, and he’s ready to go to that. He understood there were risks and he hated those. He’d love to see safety fully preserved, but he also thought AASD needed to get their kids back in school. Even though he was still struggling, he was ready to support that plan.
Barry wanted to know how many students would be moving to hybrid instruction at the high school level. He also wanted to know how many students would be returning to full time in person instruction at the elementary level. He was worried about class sizes being too large.
Judy said that they have purposefully hired additional staff to get class sizes down.
Per Nan Bunnow, at the elementary level the class sizes for grades 5k-4 will be capped at 20 students. They were able to do that by hiring additional teachers. Grades 5-6 are hybrid with the AA/BB schedule and those classes are capped at 30 students which would be 15 on Monday/Tuesday and 15 on a Thursday/Friday. Depending on the building, some classes will be less than that. There are currently 6 students on the waitlist for in-person learning, but other than that they’ve been able to meet all of their students’ needs.
Barry said the Board received a letter from one parent who said they chose to be in-person assuming the district would do it safely and that parent feels a bit betrayed that AASD is not using the guidelines they set out. Can that student go back to the fully virtual if they want without losing their school placement?
Nan stated that at the elementary level, students never lose their seat at their home school. Their primary enrollment remains at their home school or the school that they were in-person, and their secondary enrollment is with Elementary Virtual School. The same holds true for the charter schools.
Barry also wanted to know about testing protocols. Does AASD have the capability to quickly test students who come in with symptoms? Or some way they can mitigate upfront front of the possible infections?
Per Judy, they are actively exploring some of those possibilities.
Polly explained that at this point their protocols are for families to screen their students at home. However, they have worked with several folks to try to get access to free testing to not only test staff but also potentially also test students that are symptomatic. They’re working with vendors as well as Federal mobile sites that could potentially provide free PCR testing and access for district staff. It’s also important to note the availability of the vaccine. AASD wants to continue to lobby the public health system to give teaching staff the opportunity to have access to that vaccine. She mentioned that the vaccine is an additional support that wasn’t around when they created their original matrix. The added PCR testings and the potential for 15 minute rapid antigen testing for symptomatic students are also new factors.
Barry asked if antigen testing was available.
Per Polly, it is secured and available.
Barry said they received a letter questioning the safety of specialty teachers going from room to room and seeing 300-400 kids a week. He wanted to know if teachers were being asked to do that.
Nan responded that 5-6 grade is in a hybrid model so art will be virtual. They will have one in-person session of the specials and one virtual. K5-4, however, will be coming back 5 days a week in person, and those students will be reporting to the gym for physical education, and for music and art the teachers will be coming into their home base classrooms. Some of the school nurses met with the teachers and talked about mitigation strategies to keep them safe and additional PPE has been made available.
Polly added that they are receiving more feedback on safety and continue to enhance it. They have some school nurses working with specific groups to make sure it’s as safe as possible, and, for certain areas, they’ve added additional layers of PPE.
And thus ended the Superintendent’s Report and the Question and Answer session. You can view the entire meeting and the reports that followed here: https://youtu.be/0sI5lUgVdzo
Be the first to reply