Minutes 09-23-21 Virtual BOCC-Schools Joint Meeting

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5 Dr. Monique Felder reviewed the various safety measures in place for preventing the transmission of COVID-19 in the schools, as noted on the presentation. She said there are more car riders, and OCS has implemented new systems to manage the flow of traffic. She said the district is encouraging more bus riders. She said Central Services staff are assisting with managing the protocols for keeping children safe, as the workload is immense, especially for the school nurses and teachers. Commissioner McKee asked if OCS schools have one nurse per school, or if nurses are shared between schools. Dr. Monique Felder said currently there is one nurse out on leave and one vacancy. She said in order to cover those positions, there are nurses who serve more than one school. Commissioner McKee asked if OCS has been successful at recruiting more nurses. Dr. Monique Felder said there is a nursing shortage, and OCS is working with a recruitment agency and are offering bonuses. Commissioner McKee asked if bonuses are creating salary compression, or if it creates a problem between nurses who have been employed and nurses who are new. He said he wants to treat everyone fairly. He said this may be a problem at both school systems. He said it is important to have one nurse per school. Patrick Abele said when nurses are first hired, they typically do not have the school nurse certification, and thus do not earn as much. He said this is a barrier to recruitment, and the signing bonus helps increase the initial salary while the nurse works on the certification. He said veteran nurses already have the certification and earn a higher salary. Dr. Monique Felder said the number one concern of the school nurses themselves is the strain of the workload. She said OCS is focused on relieving this workload. Commissioner McKee asked if contact tracing requires a nursing degree, and said his main concern is having enough nurses for each school to have one. Commissioner Richards asked if the school system is following the science for athletics. Dr. Monique Felder said in a place of high transmission, the Strong Schools Toolkit advises pausing sports. She said OCS is not doing so, but does require students to be vaccinated or get tested weekly. She said OCS also requires spectators to be masked and for everyone to remain socially distanced. Patrick Abele said OCS evaluated athletics based on risk using the Strong Schools Toolkit. He said in the following weeks, OCS will evaluate sports based on the transmission rates and case counts in the last 2-4 few weeks. He said this will prevent all sports from being treated the same way. He said positive cases on teams may not be related to each other and looking at each sport individually will prevent athletes from being penalized unneccesarily. Commissioner Hamilton asked how the school system is managing clusters. Dr. Monique Felder said OCS has had 1 cluster, and have had to quarantine approximately 500 students, with 2-5% were positive. She said with the new quarantine rules, they likely will not have to quarantine as many students, if students are wearing masks properly. 2. Capital Needs Task Force a. Orange County Manager, Bonnie Hammersley Chair Price discussed the history for the idea of creating a capital needs task force. Bonnie Hammersley presented the following information for review by the elected boards. She asked if all boards would formally approve its appointed representatives.