 Good evening everyone. Although we don't feel it, we are being streamed currently right now. Welcome to our second virtual Tri-lingual Town Hall. Although we don't feel it, we are being streamed currently right now. Thanks for muting that. At the bottom of your screen, you're gonna want to pick your language. There's a little globe and you're gonna want to pick Spanish, English, or Arabic, and we're just waiting a few more minutes to kick, you know, to kick off. Again, good evening everyone, just a reminder that you need to pick your language and the little globe is at the bottom. It's either English, Spanish, or Arabic, and you do need to pick a language even if you're a multilingual. I see Chair Howerton, I see Mayor Schuyl, I see Rod Jenkins, and I think we're just waiting on Vice Chair Mike Lee and I'll kick us off. I'm gonna go ahead and kick us off for the evening. Welcome everyone. This is our second virtual Tri-lingual Town Hall. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been many months in the making. We are now capable of streaming this event in three different languages. So right now we are streaming in Spanish, Arabic, and English to the Durham community so that they can watch at home. I'm just gonna let people, one last time, just know that they need to choose their language at the bottom of their screen. And you need to choose either the little globe. You do have to choose one, even if you are multilingual. And with that, I'm going to welcome Mayor Schuyl, Board of County Commissioners Brenda Howerton, and I think Board of Education Vice Chair Mike Lee to give some opening remarks. Thank you very much, Council Member Caballero, my wonderful colleague. It's great to be with everybody today. I see so many fantastic leaders on this call from our immigrant and refugee communities. I see staff and it's just fantastic to be here with everybody and I'm so grateful. I want to welcome everyone here tonight to this Town Hall discussion for our immigrant and refugee families. My family immigrated to the United States in 1896. They were refugees, a Jewish family, fleeing religious persecution in the Russian Empire. Coming to America to seek a better life and to be able to worship freely and openly and without fear. As refugees, they had no money. They did not speak English and they struggled to make their way in this country. I know that's a story that's familiar to many of you. But they found friends here, Americans who welcomed them and helped them and gave them work. And that is what we must do for all of our immigrant and refugee families. I am so happy that President Biden will be welcoming so many more refugees into the United States. That's such an important change that there's a real movement towards immigration reform that we haven't even been able to think about for the last four years. We must make sure that the path to citizenship for our undocumented immigrants is a clear path. One that they can achieve without barriers to become citizens of this country. We must end the wait in Mexico policy for our asylum seekers. We must make sure that every broken migrant family is reunited and we can never accept the separation of families again. I want everyone in Durham who is a migrant or a refugee to know this. In Durham, we welcome you. Whatever country you come from, whatever language you speak, whether you're Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or whatever religion you are, or no religion at all, we welcome you. Whatever your race, whether you have documents or you don't have documents. In Durham, we love you and we want you here. We will support you and we will fight for you and we will help you create a good life for yourself and for your family here in Durham. In Durham, haremos todo que lo posible para haremos todo que lo posible para mantener a su familia segura. Son bienvenidos en nuestras escuelas, en nuestros lugares de trabajo, en todos los lugares públicos. Queremos que usted y su familia para vivir y prosperar aquí en condiciones de seguridad. In Durham, le acogemos con los brazos abiertos y con corazones abiertos. In Durham, whoever you are, wherever you're from, we welcome you with open arms and open hearts. Thank you Mayor Schull. Chair Howerton. Thank you so much. It is absolutely my pleasure to be here this evening with you. And Steve's got one on me. But when we talk about history, all of you know that my history was not one in which I came here voluntarily. My forefathers were forced to be here. And when we talk, when we welcome immigrants today, everyone is welcome in Durham. We're welcome and I'm so happy that we have a president that welcome you as well. So I am just pleased to be here tonight along with all of you. And that we begin to have conversations that people understand that they're welcome, that they hear you say the words, that they don't have to assume it, that we say that they're welcome and that we show that you're welcome. So I say this is too long a conversation. It has been needing to happen for a long time. And I just want to thank you for engaging in this conversation that we are all sisters and brothers and whatever faith that you believe in. And I'm just excited to be with you along with my colleagues. I see several of my colleagues here tonight. So thank you for making sure that we're here. Thank you so much. Vice Chair Lee. Hello everyone. And on behalf of our chair, Bettina Amstad, I'm so excited about being here along with my fellow board members, Fred Raven, Natalie Byer, and Giovanni Lewis from the Durham Public Schools Board of Education. If you just take a moment to step back and look at all the people that are on this call, all the elected officials, all the community leaders, all the citizens, that just goes to show you how important the immigrant community is here in Durham. I think in Durham, in North Carolina, this is a Durham is a shining star for the immigrant community. And we show that all the time and the way the policies we try to advocate for. And in Durham Public Schools, the welcoming that we have for all of our students, no matter where you're from, no matter where you're starting, no matter what level you come into our schools, we're here for you. We're here to support you. And we accept you wherever you're from. That is what we are here in Durham Public Schools. We care about every child. We care about the education and the growth of every child in Durham, no matter who you are. And so it is our honor. I know I can speak for the board members who are here. It is absolutely our honor to be here tonight with you, to speak to you, to answer questions, to help in any way we can to support Durham and to support Durham Public Schools as we move forward. I look forward to this conversation and thank you again for allowing us to be here. Thanks so much. I'm going to just do a brief run through of what we will be doing this evening. I'm very happy that Rod Jenkins, our Director of Public Health, will be able to do a little mini presentation on where we are with COVID vaccines. And throughout the program, while we have folks who have helped what was co-designed, so we did this one a little differently. There were focus groups with Durham Tech residents, with health ambassadors from El Centro, and they have prepared questions that they'll ask you all. And we also will be allowing folks who are watching to share ask questions as well. Before we start our question and answer portion, we will hear from Mr. Jenkins. Good evening. It is indeed a pleasure to be here this evening. I see so, I too see so many faces that I have been fortunate to work with from my commissioners, my chair, my vice chair, to the mayor, to members of the school board. I think I've heard the chair say so many times I did not have a honeymoon when I first came aboard. It was literally get in the chair and get to work. So it's a privilege for me to see so many beautiful faces, see so many beautiful languages. And this is what public health is all about. Public health knows no color. We know no religion. We know no political affiliation. The only thing we want to do is make you well, keep you healthy, and fulfill our mantra in public health, what is, which is promote health, prevent disease, and protect the public's health. It is something I've taken very seriously. It is an oath that I've taken for Durham County Government and it's a pleasure to serve. I greet you ladies and gentlemen in the with the distinct honor to lead 200 plus men and women who are dedicated to fighting COVID-19 and also dedicated to protecting your health. I also greet you on behalf of the Board of Health of Durham County. It's a fantastic board who sincerely cares about the community and they work hard to make sure that I do well that I can and have the resources that I have in order to do my job very well. Special, special thank you to Counseling Habi-Ara for inviting me. And although I won't have too, too much time as I could go on for days talking about COVID-19, but it's a pleasure for me to just say to you and to present to you just a snippet of what we have going on. And I would just in my comment opening comments by just saying thank you so much for all that you do. I tend to ask you all to become public health champions and by that I mean we can't do it all by ourselves. One thing I can say about the Durham community is that you all are like no other community that I've been a part of. I mean the way we come together, the way communities stick with one another, look out for one another and when trouble comes you definitely use definitely band together and ensure that everyone is protected. So again I thank you for allowing me to be here. Didn't know whether or not you wanted me to go into my presentation but I'll just start off by saying thank you again for the invitation to be able to serve. I'll take that as it's time, my time to go. I can go to the next slide please. This was as of yesterday ladies and gentlemen. I would not be your health director if I did not remind you that cocaine is still here. We do have new variants that are wreaking havoc and getting stronger. That's the reason why I'm here which is to strongly encourage you to consider getting the vaccine. When you hear about these variants just know that the variant is nothing more than a mutation of a virus. Viruses they mutate all the time but the one thing that you need to understand is that viruses and variants need a host. They need some place to live so they can wreak havoc and that's why we are pushing for communities of color to consider taking the vaccine. As of yesterday this deadly respiratory pathogen has represented 908 active cases. Nevertheless 20,675 individuals have beat COVID. They've had it. They've gone through COVID care, isolation and quarantine and they are now COVID free. Conversely we have had a number of individuals 206 to be quite honest 207. We did have a death today. Have succumbed to COVID-19 which again expels the fact that it's still a clear and present danger. COVID-19 is real and our hearts minds and meditations are with those people who have lost loved ones due to COVID-19. It's real ladies and gentlemen when you look around the kitchen table and you see empty chairs because someone has died to COVID that's tough because that person is not coming back. So again our thoughts are present with those who've lost loved ones to COVID-19. Total since the pandemic began 21,794 total cases. Next slide please. Here you have yours truly. When I don't wear a bow tie and a white oxford shirt I roll up my sleeve and I got vaccinated. I got vaccinated on December the 23rd and I was proud to take this picture and I was proud to be able to get vaccinated as a man of color to really show my community that you can do this to really lead from the front and most importantly I just wanted to really dispel those rumors and as you can see ladies and gentlemen I'm still here. Nothing has changed. I believe in the science. I did listen and carefully made that personal decision to get the vaccine. So I wanted to talk a little bit about vaccine management. Next slide please. We are fortunate to have both Moderna and Pfizer vaccines available at 414 East Main Street. We've had Moderna since about December 21st. We were able to get a ultra cold storage freezer through a partnership with NC Central's Coord program which allowed us to get Pfizer about three weeks later. We do have an online booking app and so far there have been well over 10,000 people who have scheduled appointments since last evening. We do have a whole page for the booking app. I will say we have paused it due to the anemic allocation of vaccine that we've received from the state so far and no bad reflection on the state of North Carolina. It is a global slowdown in vaccine allocation but rest assured we know that things will get better and vaccines will flow in short order. We do have a call centered as active 919-560-HELP. 560-HELP very easy. Calls are both being handled both in English and Spanish but we do have the capabilities of having calls being taken in all languages. We are working to identify dance solutions that will allow for easier appointment scheduling through quality improvement efforts. We're constantly trying to improve in order to make sure that our service to our community is second to none. Next slide please. Again this is sort of a snapshot of our vaccine appointments. We are currently in group 1 and group 2. We will boldly go to group 3 effective on Thursday. I know it goes live on tomorrow but we did need another day due to the vaccine slowdown due to the inclement weather but we are prepared and we're ready to vaccinate our educators effective on Thursday and we do have a solid plan in place. We do have the booking app. Again you can see that it is in Spanish both English and Spanish and we're delighted to present that to our community. Next slide please. Again Durham did receive some additional resources through state emergency management. This also included vaccinators and answering staff with data processing and administrative support. So we have the manpower to take care of our community. We did receive an additional five personnel from the state. That's through a partnership with CCNC and again since the vaccine has been made available in our county we at Durham Public Health has vaccinated well over 10,000 residents and individuals. We have a lot of people from other counties. This is a vaccine without borders and if you can't get an appointment you can go just about anywhere in North Carolina I should say. You can go anywhere in North Carolina to get your vaccine. They are trying to hamper down on other people from other states coming in to rob us of our vaccine. But again nevertheless we believe in our partnerships and we have transferred approximately 9,000 doses to our community partners and I'm proud to say ladies and gentlemen that we have 23 official individuals who are eligible vaccine providers in Durham County to include 11 Walgreen sites that are vaccinating 100 people per week. That's only going to increase as vaccine supplies become more robust but we're thankful for our partnership with Duke Regional at our Southern High School site. Of course we maintain a great relationship with Lincoln Community Health Center and many many others. Next slide please. I wanted to really give you a small snapshot of our newly unveiled COVID-19 vaccine data dashboard. This is embedded within our data hub. When you go here you will find a wealth of information. One of the things that we prided ourselves on at Durham Public Health is being very open, honest and transparent and doing everything through an equity lens. That's one of the central tenets of Durham Public Health. We want to make sure that we are providing the adequate information to all demographics in Durham in an effort to keep yourselves safe and to know everything that can't, there is to know about COVID-19. If you go to this data dashboard for COVID-19 you're going to find information about the different genders, how much vaccine has been transferred, how much vaccine has been administered in Durham County. One of the things that we want to do is make sure that we represent Durham County well. We don't want our information to be convoluted so again this is a vaccine without borders. However the information that we present is specific to Durham County. As indicated we have Moderna and Pfizer. Moderna was specifically distributed to local health departments because of the ease of handling so we have administered 91% of our doses. Pfizer has really been originally for healthcare systems, large hospitals, and since receiving Pfizer we've administered about 70% of that. Next slide please. As far as our future allocations one of the things I do as public health director is get under the skin of the state because I really want what's best for Durham County so I think it's not robbery to really petition the state for more and more vaccine as much as we can get. So again we do acknowledge that increased vaccine demand occurred at the same time that the federal government and manufacturers finally came clean that their current inventory and production capacity was not sufficient as far as providing first dose supplies. Nevertheless we understand and we know that it's going to get fixed. We do have a president. Major accolades were given by our leaders to the current president of the United States and we know unequivocally that turning the corner in this COVID-19 pandemic is his number one priority for his administration and we laud him for that. Current supply is not sufficient however we have definitely moved mountains to create all that we have and we will continue to do what we can to get more vaccine. The future vaccine allocations like many other counties in Durham is uncertain. I will say that we have been able to receive a guaranteed amount of doses for three week iterations. We're currently inside the second three week iteration where we receive 1170 guaranteed doses and we definitely petition for equity doses. We petition for event doses. We just do all that we can to get more vaccine in Durham County and we will continue to work with our partners to ensure vaccines are available to our residents. Next slide please. That concludes just a little snippet of vaccine information. Of course there's tons and tons of information I can throw your way but just know that you know while we wait on vaccines to increase we're not sitting on our hands at Durham County Department of Public Health again one of the main things we do is health education and providing forums like this and man I can't tell you how many different events I have attended just really promoting the vaccine and doing all we can to help our residents to make an informed decision but I certainly will stick around in case there are questions and Madam Hulse I turn it back over to you. Thank you so much and I really appreciate you sharing that information out because it was shared out in a trilingual format which I think is a big benefit for our community. I'm going to open it up and one thing I one announcement I did want to make that I neglected to make earlier so apologies is that this is also being between a joint effort between World Relief and Church World Service there is a watch party happening in Swahili. We do not have the technological capabilities of streaming in four languages but so that was how we handled that. Swahili is another high-use language in Durham County so it's English Spanish Arabic and Swahili. I want to thank those organizations for having that watch party for our community members. Also really quickly and we'll be putting these up on social media we have been able to get handbills vaccine handbills that we will be sharing out on social media in English Spanish and Arabic including some folks who are on this call who we have their vaccine you know their photos of them getting vaccinated and so we'll be sharing those out and the fourth language will also be Swahili so we're excited to put those out on social media and eventually start printing them so organizations can hand them out as two drives or other vaccine drives for family members. With that I'm going to open it up I know some of our residents who are on this call who helped design this town hall had questions so I'm going to give them an opportunity to ask questions and then we will be opening it up to the public and we will be sharing how to do that. I see Humberto has a question. Departamento de Salud para tener información en español por experiencia experiencia propia mi primer dosis de la vacuna no tenían información en español en la segunda toma de la vacuna tampoco tenían información en español incluso yo hablé con el señor Jenches personalmente para ver qué estaba pasando porque creo que no debe de pasar esto creo que es muy importante también que tengamos información en español no sé si esté trabajando en eso I hope it's okay for me to call you Humberto I thank you for that question I thank you for bringing it to our attention I have personally made it my point to put the information out in Spanish myself I had my staff to present you know we normally have stacks of paper that are in English I made sure that there were stacks of paper in Spanish I regret that you came for two two times and we didn't have it out there but of course we did we did show you that we did have it in Spanish and again you know I just say charge it to the level of activity that we've had over the past couple of weeks but nevertheless as I've as I did show you personally we do have the documentation in Spanish and we do have technological capabilities to present information in many different languages through our language line in our language apparatus muchas gracias thank you Humberto does anyone else make my screen big again does anyone else have a question señor otrojas Cindy hola soy Sandra ah bueno mi pregunta es qué tanto personal tienen en español para atender a las personas más que nada las de la tercera edad que pues a veces cuando uno sale y les ofrece ayuda registrándolos porque ellos no tienen idea cómo hacerlo a donde acudir pues ese es el trabajo que estamos haciendo nosotros en el centro hispano ayudando a comida pero ellos dicen si la quiero pero yo no hablo nada ingles yo tengo miedo presentarme porque no sé ni qué voy a contestar entonces yo aún no me la he puesto porque ah acabo de pasar por el cobi estoy esperando estoy esperando que pasen unos tres meses pero qué tanta qué tanto personal bilingüe tienen ustedes para atender a la comunidad thank you for that question sandy we have a full staff of foreign language interpreters we have about five we have Spanish speaking staff embedded throughout every division at Durham public health as mentioned previously we do have technology to assist us with Spanish speaking individuals should they come in and need that service but to address your direct question as it relates to Spanish speaking seniors and coven nineteen we do realize that we can't do it ourselves we're so fortunate to have a great partnership with the latin nineteen coalition that advocates passionately for health care for the latino population it is my desire sandy and others for us to have special covid events that are heavily influenced and heavily staffed by all latin latin individuals and we're currently working on that right now with viviana martinez bianchi and we're trying to do utilize lasamilla given the fact that vaccine is in short supply we're still going to do everything we can to reach out to our latinx community we've already had an event to where we vaccinated 50 community health workers about a couple of weeks ago and then of course through partnerships with Duke regional there was a an event at the latino credit union that was very successful so again we want to make sure that we meet folks where they are we want to make sure we get our seniors vaccinated particularly our latinx seniors and we're going to continue to do all that we can we're going to continue to do all we can to make sure that this population is served thank you um when you're done asking your question if you could put your hand down otherwise i might call on you again nio uh thank you uh thank you mr jaykins uh you mentioned something right now that really really um tickles my mind uh you said that you'd like to uh go under the skin of those who can get things done and i think this is exactly what we are trying to do over here and i really appreciate that uh actually my name is nio i work for church world service as a community organizer and uh covid 19 the vaccine it's uh very important in the the refugee community and you can see that uh like the app you showed it's hard for uh the refugee community to get on uh all these up and set up appointment that is uh uh the first uh part of uh my uh worries and uh the second one is also how can we get uh let me backtrack a little bit uh during the uh the height of the covid uh uh we worked with the the uh the Durham city the mayor and everyone uh miss javier is here to take the covid test to the population and that had worked a lot and you can see that even though the uh the number is not really good uh but we have worked hard to tame that down so the vaccine is here and now we've been asking uh our population to go to that site or sign up before getting that vaccination you can see that there's some kind of uh hard done by and also pushing on some kind of privileges for those who are uh computer savvy so how can you promise uh the population we serve uh that they're gonna have access to the vaccine or the vaccine is going to come to them and how this is going to be working thank you naio thank you so much for your question and i will say um it was it was uh it was delightful to kind of go down memory lane uh we we have a we have a very nice problem right now in that uh we're we're we're fixated and we're we're really focused on the vaccine but um every so often i have to remind myself that there's just two months ago that we didn't have any vaccine at all and we were really focusing on uh continued testing and testing should be continued to be focused on but but the memory that you provided was the fact that we had to find ways to get COVID-19 testing to the masses and that's exactly what's going to happen again when it comes to COVID vaccinations at present um it's hard to do with such limited supply but i do know that hopefully this weekend when you know there's emergency use authorization for the johnson and johnson product which is a one-shot application that may present some additional resources we do know that the modern vaccine is a little bit more mobile and we can handle it a little bit better so again once the vaccine gets in strong demand and strong supply we should be able to take it more out into the community as it stands right now um we've been able to do very little primarily because we've had such um we've had such large phases uh group one with uh healthcare providers was overwhelming and then we then we kind of slammed into group two which was the seniors and that's a huge population and now we're staring at group three which is your essential workers which is a huge huge group of people nevertheless i am most confident that through our partnerships again we have 23 eligible vaccine providers that are able to be as mobile as we want them to be be it local pharmacists be it doctor's offices they're going to offer more opportunities but as your health director i truly do believe that it's not going to be until we are able to get more physician practices that are able to vaccinate that we're going to be able to see a significant difference in the demographics additionally you know again we want to work with churches we want to work with ministerial alliances in order to meet folks at their places of worship because that's where you're going to that's where you're really going to get a huge dent and let's not let's not kid ourselves throughout history the church has been the cornerstone of the community be it politics be it healthcare be it everywhere so we want to really get those things and we we certainly have an exhaustive list of local ministers who have said my place of worship can be a vaccination site and we certainly appreciate that naio it's just the fact that we don't have enough vaccine to go around right now i hope that answers your question thank you um umberto had a very quick follow-up question and then javelina i see your hand raised okay nada más quiero quiero dar las gracias al señor yankee por la por el programa que hubo por el evento que hubo en la cooperativa latina de las vacunas para los latinos yo estuve y colaborando con la doctora viviana también pertenezco a latin nighting y fue un éxito estuvo algo muy bonito muy emocionante mucha gente se va a conocer ya como 150 parece que fueron total abertal as much as i'd like to take credit for that i take no credit that was uh that was truly a katie gall breft and duke regional who had the excess vaccine and able to make it happen but i heard that there was a dj i heard it was uh the spirit was very high and people were very comfortable and i hope to i hope to replicate that same experience at las amelia um once everything comes together but we hope to get that kicked off next week sometime but that's in the plans and um again working with viviana and pablo and everybody else from the latin nineteen i'm sure there's going to be a successful event thank you all jackalina did you want to ask a question your hand is raised to those families mr jenkins your luck will be not on the hook for that one i think that question probably goes to a couple other folks who are elected leaders on this call um but i will say i will say uh if i if i if i if i can madam uh madam hostess um during public health recognizes that um there is a need for nontraditional hours for people who work um different schedules we are proud to present uh to provide extended hours on thursday's where we're open until seven p.m and we're also proud to uh provide saturdays to where people can come and get vaccinated as well uh we were very intentional in our in our schedule making because again we want people to be able to uh to to work and i do know that uh in some situations if you don't work you don't get paid but nevertheless we certainly want people to have options to be able to get vaccinated um i've seen the clinic come you know babies come and and and and uh parents come and and they trade off to where they get vaccinated and you know one person got the baby and you know vice versa so we uh we have a very um caring and nurturing environment to where we want you to be able to come and feel comfortable getting your vaccine i just i just had to i just had to kind of address that uh madam hostess thank you i appreciate that um if other folks feel free if anyone else would also like to take that question from jackalina okay so i'll start um and any of my other during public schools board members can chime in there um miss urbano serrano uh we feel as a parent i feel fully understand how you're feeling and that is the challenge that we've on the school board have had to deal with or or work with since uh march 15th of last year almost a year now the challenge of keeping the kids staff and family safe during the rise of of covid and even now what we did was we had our learning centers to allow parents who had to go in we had scholarships who had to work we could you can send your kids to learn as centers but recently our board voted to start the process of opening schools back up and part of the reason was for the challenges our students were having and our parents as well as those faculty and staff who are very interested in getting back as well we're facing some challenges with safety you know we we're working to make sure that all of the buildings are safe as safe as we could get them we have the ppe available we're going to be following all the protocols provided by the cdc and as well as we negotiated as mr jinkens uh alluded to earlier we're going to we've been able to move the teachers up in the vaccination line so that we can have our teachers vaccinated and safe as they go into the buildings themselves chairwoman uh vatina umstead and myself we visited we toured some schools today just to see the protections the signage the uh the monitors uh all of those types of things that are now provided in the schools to keep our children safe so that we can open up the schools in a safe manner and uh i was very impressed by what i saw there are there are a lot of things still in the works you know with filtering for the systems we have air filtration and purification systems in some of our classrooms you know the ec classrooms so we're preparing to provide a little bit more support here for our students to come into the building for school and in a learning environment and which will allow some of our some of our parents to go back into go back to work a little a little easier now i will say to anyone listening if you have the abilities to keep your child at home we're encouraging those to keep their keep your children at home if you can we're opening up the schools if you can't and we fully understand that but if you can keep your children at home to help with social distancing in the classrooms and in the buildings we're asking that you do keep your children at home if you can you're very welcome to come come back to school starting March 15th you know if you can't and we're opening up the doors and we are we're going to be welcoming the smiling faces back into our buildings mask on of course we'll have to assume that they're smiling but that's what we're doing we're trying to support as much as we can support your family my family and other and the other families in Durham thank you do any other board of education members want to say anything else i would just say that i have two questions one of my questions is what are you doing in the city or the school department to guarantee that the students receive support in a equitable way for the family without resources with the challenges raised by the learning of that house another of my questions is what are you doing in the city to support the newly graduated who cannot find opportunities for employment and do not qualify for any kind of benefit i can take that or i know several of my colleagues there was a couple of questions there some for city some for schools um maybe some county officials may want to chime in as well around um support for for jobs council woman jb buxton from Durham tech i'd love to chime in on this if i could absolutely thank you for joining us this evening thank you and thank you for providing the forum and i want to note that my colleague Connie Gomez joins is with us as well and if i get any tough questions that's who they get directed to i want to talk for a moment about helping students who have graduated move into jobs and note that we do have at Durham tech which is your community college here in Durham and Orange counties we do have some back to work courses that are short courses about six to eight weeks in areas of the economy that are still growing and have job availability they are about 190 to 300 dollars about 250 dollars on average but we have significant scholarship resources available to make them even more affordable or free depending on your situation and so these are in areas like healthcare logistics or light manufacturing life sciences information technology construction so if there is an area of interest where a young person is having difficulty and needs a little bit more education we have some short courses but we also have some affordable degree programs that we'd obviously want to welcome folks into so it's it's a tough time for a lot of people in a tough time to move to break into the industry and we've got some opportunities for people who need a little bit more education to get into certain jobs a way to do that very affordable way thank you for that answer does anyone else want to there was you know it was a i think a three-part question that amanda asked so if anyone else would like to provide any other responses and then i do want to give an opportunity to um board of ed member natalie who was trying to answer the previous question well i just jump in i know commissioner um jacob's also had a hand up um so i don't want to steal too much thunder but i do want to echo some of the sentiments of our president buxton i know that he is working very hard one of the issues that we have you know sometimes is that we do have empty seats in some of those classrooms the opportunity in the scholarship money is there so if you know somebody who is you know willing to take up one of those places in one of those classrooms i see him smiling because we talked about this by all means you know allow us to be a connector um i can't take credit for all of the great jobs that have been brought in a lot of work was done before we got here commissioner alarm myself commissioner carter commissioner jacob's as well as chair howerton have been working very hard to bring in some really great opportunities um you know we scrutinize uh each job each each company that comes in because we want to make sure that we're offering jobs at multiple educational levels uh and at the end of the day you know it is rtp so there are certain companies that we seek out so i'd not seek out there are certain companies that are attracted here but we're open to bringing in large employees as well as small ones and also working to help to work towards making sure that people are getting re skilled uh today uh alone i know uh one of the things that i wanted to point out that commissioner jacob's also brought up was you know how do we get to a position where we can support people when they actually are trying to go back to school so what i would ask um of you all is if you know that that need is represented in your community uh many of you all see me out beating the pavement you know let's try to figure out a way that we can actually get you down there and think about some of the things that you want to do uh right now i think when we got our presentation today with dr walden statewide we're looking at about 11.1 percent of unemployment uh this time last year which is about march we were looking at about 6.3 so i'm just i'm going to use pre-covid numbers uh before covid open in Durham we had about 21,800 dogs open uh between trayburn uh south point rdu in downtown and we had 6,000 people who were actively looking for employment so that's not our seniors or some of our young people but those are folks who are actually going down uh to the unemployment office and seeking unemployment so we had a problem that a lot of other counties didn't have we had three times as many jobs as we had people so what we realized is that there's a skills gap um and we're dedicated to making sure that we get people reskilled and also dedicated to making sure that we can get people to the various campuses because we do have multiple rdu campuses uh i will end there because i want uh others to have the opportunity to talk but i just want you all to know that is it isn't our marrow to get folks back to work and please reach out to us if there's somebody just in the chat right now you say you know what commissioner burns i'm looking for a job email me tonight so we find you a job or at least start to work on that path um because that's something that we all care about and i'm out in there and i just wanted to quickly add to um great comments that commissioner burn shared and president buxton that um uh to the woman who asked the question about um the child who just graduated and was looking for work durham county funds something called the durham tech college promise program and we provide funding for what should really uh cover a full two years of tuition at durham tech so if your child has just graduated from durham public schools is for every single student who has graduated from durham public schools and unfortunately a lot of people don't know about it but please um look contact folks maybe jv can let you know who to get in touch with to find out about that funding and also i want to mention if you are a parent who is not comfortable um sending your child back to school and you do need to work um durham county along with the city and um durham public schools we are funding virtual learning centers at student u at the downtown y also kates corner and now we're expanding that to three different other locations one that's going to be at durham tech uh because we understand that some some families uh need the support uh they're going to work and so we are supporting that as a resource uh as well thank you aviera i'd also like to mention our workforce development program that we have specifically for english language learners and we've developed this through our continuing education program and it's a low-cost program of only 185 it's eight modules with five units each each and it develops soft skills and alongside developing the english language skills too and many employers have also funded their um employees to take our workforce development english language program and so just to continue what president budston said about the um workforce initiative this one is also an initiative designed just for our english language learners and really if i could just chime in it doesn't matter what level of english language proficiency you have or your children have you can come to durham tech and we will assess your english language skills figure out where you are where you are and get you to where you want to be and this is for parents and recently arrived immigrants as well as for high school students that may not have the academic english language proficiency proficiency skills need it to enter curriculum programs and um durham tech's center for the global learner is in charge of that so please call me connie go miss join send us anybody or you come those of you who are listening and you need english language skills come to us we have free esl classes and many more advanced english language classes that can really help you advance um your academic skills your career skills etc thank you all i really appreciate that um and i'm glad that we got that information out into the community uh veronica i think your hand um was a good afternoon personally i'm very grateful because the schools are going to open the truth is that many children are not having a great time with this school closure so i thank you very much that is that it is starting with the idea of opening the schools and this is because we know that our children are full of energy and some children are a little atrasados in the school that we want to know if something is being done to increase the learning and resources for example after school for children who need regularization and we also want to know if there will be summer camps and if there will be enough space personally i have had problems in finding spaces for example the children have the illusion of learning to swim and many times those spaces are very very small this i would like to know if if you can have some plan to to help the children because they get out a little bit and enjoy this summer thank you thank you natalie i see your hand up to answer that thank you so much javier and thank you for such a great question let me just say that we hear you we know this year has been very very very hard on children it's also been very very hard on women especially and we hear the struggle that you guys are living the women are living every day we are trying to make a safe reopening plan that will get our teachers vaccinated so that they can come into the space safely and lead our teachers are amazing and we've always been planning to have english as a second language supports very quickly for students because we know that the students are struggling we plan and we have almost 45 million dollars in federal cares money that will be coming to the school district so that we can plan summer camps for children that will be fun that will be engaging that will be incredible opportunities for children to continue their learning so as we look towards the summer and fall please know that we're planning for your children to be in person and that we're planning for that to be safe and i also wanted to make sure you're all aware of our multilingual resource center there are amazing staff there you can reach them at 919-560-2510 and they are there to help you if your child is struggling don't hesitate to call them they can help you connect with the teacher with the principal with the counselor with the social worker so we can get help immediately don't wait please call thank you thank you so much i'm going to see i know umberto you've had a chance to ask a couple questions and veronica i'm going to see if there's anyone else that i may be missing and then i think we're going to let folks we're going to try this out and see if we can get some comments from the public so i don't see any hands if i oh elia sar go ahead yeah uh first uh when i'm not sure it's good afternoon uh sorry i only know two languages i am not i would say good afternoon everyone um so my question goes a little bit as i'm sitting here and as i've we've been hearing from community members across not just Durham but the county we keep hearing from parents uh kind of along the lines of what veronica just asked but more specific to to grade students who are right now are behind right so folks who had issues with technology folks who had issues with with uh you know being able to really properly learn the material uh we were hearing a lot of parents um oh and by we i mean el so i'm the acting presidency in central sorry about that uh we keep hearing parents who are saying you know my kid is behind right now what are the resources that are going to be available so that my kid doesn't lose a year or we also know that some folks um uh there's their students haven't been able to get onto online courses all that easily uh and we might be looking at matters of truancy so uh i kind of wanted i think that's the right term right when students don't go to school um so i wanted to see what kind of plans or or support is there for students who have fallen behind due to uh some of these you know issues with coven and learning from home so i'll try to answer a few of these questions i think one of the first things that we should point out is even before the vote to reopen schools took place there was already consideration and there was a charge from the board to ask the district to see how we get safely um to the best of our ability be able to reopen um in person instruction for students who receive um ec exceptional children services and english um you know ell services so that that was always something that we recognize um just by looking at the grading proficiency of how well some of our students were doing within schools now with the ability or the option to open up schools to in person learning for students i think one of the biggest things that's going to go on is going to be the assessments of where those actual needs exist and being able to hopefully be able to leverage the summer school program to make sure that we're addressing the most immediate needs first and and because i know that obviously we don't know what the summer is going to look like we can't openly commit of whether every single student that's currently in dps right now that will be able to you know provide in person learning for all 30 plus thousand students but the goal is again to to be able to look at where the most immediate need is and to reallocate the resources um for the for those priority students and and just kind of make sure that we can take a bird's eye view of everything thank you did anyone else want to chime in um i'm going to open it up to javanya lewis has her thank you if i miss your hand it's because i just don't see you on my screen so i apologize no problem thank you and that's a really good question um thank you so much for that question about our students and how we're going to work towards accelerated learning as mr raven said there has been um work towards getting um special needs that services for those with special needs and those english language learners as well program that will continue even in the current plan that we're in you had mentioned a point about truancy and what's happening there we have dedicated social workers and staff that's been boots on the ground in the community knocking on doors and trying to reclaim re-energize our students we know that when students come back there will have been issues of trauma um all the things they've dealt with mental health and and um those supports we're looking at increasing our counselor to student ratio making sure those supports are in place for students and we want to accelerate the learning that's happened um as mr raven said where those gaps have been um teachers will be hands-on able to move children along a lot better there will be a lot of grace in this time and miss byer she gave some resources a phone number to the multilingual resource center there are resources in place to help get our kids back on track and i've heard conversations about some mentoring and tutoring that's going to be happening as well so we'll continue to make sure that information is out and connect the community thank you thanks so much for that response we're going to try we have one question coming in from youtube and and now what we're going to try and do for the folks who are watching meaning they're just streaming we're going to put a slide up you can so the way that the tech infrastructure works is the the spanish and the arabic is just it's a one there's no way somebody can comment but they can go to the youtube channel that is also streaming in english and we're going to put the slide up here so if you have a question and you are watching you can go to this link and there's a comment box because it's the city's youtube channel and you can ask your question in spanish arabic or english and we will do our very best to answer it this evening uh again you need to open up a second window so maybe you're watching an arabic you need to open up a second window and go to this link at the bottom of this slide and you can you'll see the youtube stream you'll see a comment box and it's okay to put your question in the language you feel comfortable in as long as it's english spanish or arabic we unfortunately cannot um provide language language support beyond those i know the swahili room the watch party they will be putting any questions that they have uh i think in english so we are able to take that those folks questions as well i saw earlier in the chat that they uh were thanking everyone for the information that they are also getting so technically this is a not just a trilingual it's i guess it's a four language town hall i saw that somebody had a question from the youtube chat earlier that was talking about summer camps i know that some of our school board members have answered to the best of their ability some of the programming that dps Durham public schools is hoping to do i know that the city of Durham we have i have not gotten anything as far from parks and rec yet but last summer we were able to have some programming i think this summer we will be able to expand that i think everyone's waiting to see what happens with the vaccine rollout this spring if any of my other colleagues want to jump in on that i would appreciate it but that was one question that we had coming in from the youtube channel again if you're watching at home in whatever language whether it's spanish or arabic or english you can go to the link that's on the slide and you can ask your question in the youtube comment box on the english stream we're taking questions from the public feel free to ask that question in spanish english or arabic we're getting a response to the question that somebody asked from youtube asking about summer camp opportunities for children world relief is also eager and will be hopefully offering youth camps for refugee and immigrant youth this summer we have a question coming in from facebook i'm going to read it in english so that our interpreters can interpret it into both spanish and arabic what is the city doing to support small business owners especially those of undocumented residents would you like me to comment on that yes i'm sorry i'm monitoring the chat and then something else so i would appreciate that okay and i'll start and you and you and i think that uh councilmember rice is also and maybe councilmember freeman are still with us and maybe want to add but i'll start um the uh the city has along with duke university we've had about three and a half million dollars total to provide to small businesses in either loans or grants and i would say that somewhere close to about not all of that money but the the great majority of that money is already in the hands of those businesses in the form of mostly in the form of grants uh and uh some in the form of loans and there has been uh our emphasis has been on historically marginalized businesses so that means our black and brown communities our african-american community and our latinx community and so we've most of those loans and most of those grants have gone to those businesses and that's been really at the top of our list um i don't have the number and i would love to have that number that i can we if you we can provide that in an email carmen if the if the person wants to let us know who they are we can provide the exact number of businesses latinx businesses that have been supported but that has been our our target with those funds is latinx and african-american businesses and my colleagues may want to add some things i guess i'll well add one other thing which is yeah commissioner jake was mentioned that germ county has also contributed that's right germ county and i should have said that germ county the city and duke university together have provided these funds um we have had a significant outreach to our latinx businesses through our back on the bull campaign so you see the back on the bull pledge there on the screen our back on the bull campaign part of that has been health ambassadors that the city and the county have funded and those health ambassadors who've been going around to they've been going to businesses all around our city they have now gone to many hundreds of businesses we have 10 health ambassadors five of them are spanish-speaking and they have gone to many businesses to help them with their health protocols to try to keep their business safe their their work is safe and their customer's safe and so that's also been a big effort that we've made for our small businesses i should add one final thing and i see all this is not nearly enough i mean i think that's the thing we know we heard earlier the question i believe from veronica about about people who don't have work we have so many people unemployed um commissioner burns mentioned that earlier we have unemployment in durham at the level we haven't seen in a long long time it's hard to get work we have many businesses that have gone out of business and we are just in a time of tremendous struggle for our city and we know that that has been disproportionately affecting our black and brown communities and so that means for you all on this broadcast who are latinx your community has been hit harder than our community at large and this has been just a very very very difficult time and there's no way to sugarcoat that it has been we there's been a lot of suffering in durham in this last year and the suffering has been disproportionate we've got a long way to go in order to change that and we our recovery is going to be it's not going to be instant we're all going to be doing a lot of work to make recovery happen but it's going to be hard thank you steve um there's some folks who are also just chiming in in the chat that i just want to highlight um world relief is providing information about some of the supports that they are providing to immigrant youth along with dps and that they're hoping that that work can continue to expand um and just another mention that the county has also helped with the small business fund and i think that's it i'm not seeing any other questions coming in councilwoman gavira just one more on durham tech our small business center is available to assist folks so i've put a link in the chat to that small business there's translations available on the website different languages but uh individuals should know and this is for anybody who's looking to start or keep their small business going that we offer counseling sessions their services programs i think a lot of important supports that the small business center offers and it would be a good a good resource for people to look at and see at little to no cost and mostly no cost thank you for sharing that information i'm not seeing anyone else asking anyone or asking any questions so i'm going to see if any of our participants have any further questions so yeah go ahead i may miss you because i don't have everyone on my screen hi um i don't have a specific question but i do want to highlight some of the great non-profits we have in durham who have been doing a lot of the work along with a lot of the leaders here right so of course uh there's world belief there's um of course el centro la semilla uh there's been a lot of folks working in this in collaboration with the city the town uh so as folks have i i would invite people who have any questions comments or they or uh they they need some help with whether it's uh you know helping tutoring for their kids or uh need any support and some of the direct services that exist i would say go to to trust a nonprofit in the area because i do want to highlight a lot of the great work that nonprofits have been doing at this time i'd like to also add how just looking at the faces here and listening to these voices i see so many people have been doing this work for so long so so much before there was ever a pandemic i mean i see sashi khani ellisar and carmen nio and and and to have the the you know adam um you know i could go on and on every so many amazing people on this call who have been there and have been doing this work and to have this kind of leadership in place in durham did i say katushka already uh you know these are people who have just dedicated their lives to this work and then to have the pandemic hit and to be this added burden to all the organizations that ellisar mentioned to have this tremendous burden but also to have this leadership in place it's been such a gift and our nonprofits and our you know our our school professionals you know have really risen to the occasion and i feel a tremendous sense of gratitude about that hi can i can i say something i want to take the questions in the chat go ahead katushka first of all i just want to thank everybody for being here tonight it was it is really amazing that we can bring together a such powerful message to the whole community in the two levels health education that the main things for our communities i have three questions and i will and i will do very shortly one is about durham take thank you so much about that but i would like to see how you can reach directly to the students many of the students they don't know about these programs and not only for the immigrants in general are you can you send messages directly to the students so they know and they can enroll in durham take second the health and can we do some work together mr jenkins with the community with the fake communities you just say something very important that's the first place for many people they trusted a lot and that's the place that we can help calculate you know the faster that not faster faster but faster we do the better will be and the third for education schools it's wonderful that we're reopening and right now we have a lot of students that there are special needs that they're not being reaching that they are not receiving but they need to do now what are the plans for that thank you my three cents i can answer number one we work directly with the school systems in our service area and the center for the global learner all of us go do presentations and we talk about the educational opportunities at the community college and beyond for parents first generation second generation third generation immigrants what all the opportunities are and we also work with the mexican consulate and we are out in the community talking about not just to protect the community college in general if you're not from germ raleigh you may go to a different community college but the community college is a great place to start your education and finish it even so we i think others in this call can attest the fact that germ tech is present in a lot of different community organizations talking about what we can do for immigrants and refugees and that we're there for them we're there to help them in the center for the global learner at germ tech that's what we do so anytime you have somebody that wants an education no matter where they're at immigrant refugees send them our way center for the global learner 919-536-7264 um our assistants speak spanish and she will triage you can call me directly but that's what we're there for kb i'd add to my colleague's points connie that we have college liaisons who work directly in Durham high schools and while we're not present in those high schools now we're still working virtually and we'll be there as soon as we can but i want to take a cue from our county commissioners who mentioned that germ tech promise and the need to get that out to more students we can't tell students enough the the significant opportunity that provides to make college affordable and to create opportunities for them to move into the workforce so we are looking for any and all opportunities and avenues to tell that story of the incredible support that this county and community provides the students who want to continue their education and to the degree that you have suggestions about other organizations or communities or churches that we ought to work with we are more than ready to do that so i really appreciate that question and thanks connie i'll take question number two katushka very nice to meet you and thank you so much for that question um we're fortunate to have health education professionals who have been um added for well over two decades and they know Durham county inside and out one i'd like to lift up willa robinson who is phenomenal she's been very very instrumental in our faith community uh she knows all the pastors she knows just about everything that goes on in Durham uh she has um i have specifically appointed her uh to be a part of the faith roundtable that is a part of the great recovering renewal task force that's been established by the chair of the county commissioners and may assure for the most part they've been doing fantastic work they've been meeting regularly discussing um covid items in in addition to others and i certainly hope that that continues after the recovery renewal task force has subsided because covid has gone away but i will also say that um you know again public health has always been intimately involved with the faith community and that's not going to stop after covid is gone but i do believe um you know katushka that there's always room for improvement and there's always more work to be done but i just wanted to lift up um you know my my um health education supervisor who does a fantastic job and i'll speak on number three you're exactly right with the needs of our of our families within derm in which their students and and their children have received special needs services i personally work with uh the snack which the derm special needs advisory council and they have they really keep their their ear to the ground they're actually in contact with the families so we've we've been hearing this throughout the entire year that there were a lot of needs they weren't able to be met because when we're speaking about children who received special services we're talking about it whether they have an iap or a 504 plan so you you have situations in which a zoom call is not necessarily going to be conducive to some if you are if you have hearing a hearing disability or maybe if your eyesight is diminished to a to a certain capacity so we recognize those challenges we've definitely been doing our best to work around them but there are some things that that do have to be done in person and we do recognize that which is why that was on our radar so that is something that is being addressed at a higher level as we continue throughout the school year thank you i'm going to move us on um there is a question in the chat uh that was in past originally in Spanish and then thank you for the translation tony what would somebody do if they know someone who is tested positive on a covid test but who is still going out without any precautions against infecting someone else or who is out in public events what is the city doing to make sure people don't infect others i can take that one have a error um if anyone knows someone who is that you know is um violating any of the covid rules um that sort of thing or businesses that are not uh you know who's people are not masking up and that kind of thing you can be in touch uh with me or with any of our city council members our city attorney's office will very uh gently uh but firmly uh ask people to comply with the covid uh with covid regulations and i'm not sure if rod wants to add to that but uh we we consider that our duty in the city our city attorney's office to do that enforcement we have an attorney who has done a wonderful job of that uh we we we're not we try very hard not to be in any way punitive but to get compliance through persuasion and so far we've done been able to do that pretty well mr mayor the only thing i would add is that um you know again Durham has been fantastic with their compliance particularly with uh mask wearing and just adhering to the mandates of not only the governor's order but a local order and um we take that very seriously um this is a pandemic and as public health director certain powers that have um in terms of isolation and quarantine however i've not had to do that you doubt throughout the entire pandemic and again that's reflective of Durham and uh the people who uh who live here however we do take it seriously we do have a staff a surveillance staff that is more than happy to call and uh have a conversation as the mayor said on the business side we do a nice little gentle reminder we do the same thing on the personal side just reminding them that you know you have the abilities to infect others um and again you know we're not going to violate anybody's privacy and anything but if we do hear that there is something like this going on we take it very seriously and we act swiftly thank you for those responses i'm going to keep going because we've had a couple more questions in the chat and while they've been answered i do want to broadcast them out to folks who are watching there was a question asking about the um if the Durham Tech scholarships are also available to undocumented youth and what was clarified by um county commissioner Wendy Jacobs is that the Durham Tech college promise is open to all Durham high school graduates regardless of documentation status uh and then for some follow-up information um president buxton also shared that there's different scholarships available and that the um the Durham Tech website which is www.durumtech.edu has a lot of information there about the different kind of financial aid and scholarship supports okay i'm going to keep us moving uh i think we had a question from the swahili watch party room and i think naio is going to share that with us uh yes absolutely um so the uh question from the swahili watch party is as followed uh given the choice between in person our homebound instruction many parents keep the kids at home because they are not confident in the school preparedness or student safety please emphasize to the immigrant community that the schools are prepared and our kids are safe at school uh yeah this is uh mostly from the swahili watch party uh and this will uh relieve the parents and help them manage the stressors of the pandemic thank you for that question i will try to tell you what we're thinking about at school so that we can reassure parents that we are following all the north carolina health guidelines and working with the Durham health department yes just quickly there was a reminder over there to ask you all to speak a little bit slower for them to get that to the swahili speaking community thank you appreciate that thank you so much naio i'm sorry about that so Durham public schools is working with scientists from duke and UNC following all health guidelines all students will wear masks to come to school be socially distant from each other and teachers will be making sure that they are following health protocols we will also take temperatures every day and make sure that nurses check and call parents if needed we will also have information on our website about any covid cases in schools and have contact tracers and work with them to make sure parents get information about any covid cases that might happen at school so thank you for asking a question we take it very very seriously um i'm going to follow up on that because it's a question that's also in the chat from the swahili watch party room which is it seems that the communication there's there's not a lot of information coming in swahili to these families and so that's where part of the barriers are as well and i know that that is a challenge sometimes to find enough interpreters but i just wanted to highlight that because it was in the first question and the second question i'm going to keep us going because we've got some more questions in the chat it seems like we've got one from youtube around financial help to pay bills and rent and there is a from from county commissioner wendy jacob saying that durham county department of social services can help with information about possible assistance for help with rent utility payments and other emergency needs and that phone number is 919560800 and i do want to follow up because this is something that we know is happening both the city and the county although the money that the city will be getting is larger or will be receiving or have received a substantial amount of money from the federal government the department of treasury the city received about 8.4 million dollars and i think the county received a little over a million right now we are in the process of trying to figure out the city does not want to administer those funds because we do not do rent assistance so it it would be a big lift for us to start doing that type of service the plan at the moment is to have the department of social services which is a durham county office handle that rent assistance more information will be coming we're hoping to get that money out to the out into the community between mid march and late march and as of now one thing that has been very uh that has been clarified is that documentation status will not apply it does not matter what your immigration or documentation status is there will maybe other rules but that will not be one of them um we have another question about how are we going to guarantee social distancing if we move forward with plan a and the schools don't have enough resources oh never mind that was a disregard okay apologies for that i'm seeing if there's anything else in the chat that i may have missed i think i've got us caught up i'm going to open it up for any other participants umberto you've had your hand up for a little bit um do you want to ask a question uh we do not have any formal participation but you should go ahead and ask a question and we'll see if we can answer okay my question is I'm going to answer that and so my understanding well i do not know the number of operators we have definitely spanish speaking operators what we may not have at least you know staffed here are other you know still high use languages like arabic or swahili which then they have to use other interpretation and translation services but as far as the 911 staffing we absolutely have 911 and also Durham one call which is the non-emergency number that you can use we also have spanish speaking staff in that department as well okay gracias and for those who have asked this because i know it's a question um we have a we've had latino liaisons in the police department we have a liaison who's a little newer i think maybe has been there three to four months and so within the immigrant and refugee round table that may be a conversation that we should plan for is to have that liaison come and the question earlier that was asked um i'm being asked to not disregard so apologies for that um this is the question of um how can the school system guarantee distancing if they move forward with plan a and do schools have enough resources to do that and i'll uh natalie i see your hand i don't know i see if i'm missing somebody else i'm going to let you go ahead and answer it i think um it's confusing the way we talked about the plan for elementary schools we are surveying families right now and we'll have information tomorrow and we think half of elementary families will choose to keep their children home and then half may send them into schools and so that's the way we will do social distancing if we have too many families that want to come we may need to have children come on in different rotations or cohorts to make sure it's safe but it will be a socially distant plan with it with children attending as many days as possible but still keeping it socially distant is that frederick did that cover everything thank you for that i think um from the swahili watch party they just wanted to say thank you for addressing some of their concerns i wanted to highlight that um thanks and i think i'm not seeing any other questions in the chat and i'm not seeing any hands raised i think frederick had his hand raised oh go ahead thank you yeah i do just want to add one thing i we do acknowledge that when we first rolled out so many information it could have been seen as a little bit confusing because a lot of times when people would hear about the plan a and plan b schedules originally we always presented plan b would have generally would have two cohorts uh where you would have half the students on one day half from the other where based upon what we were able to do and based upon the feedback from the community um there we recognized that there was a challenge of not being able to provide a full week of education um for most of our families you know being two days on and two days off it really is difficult for working families uh so that was the reason why you saw what could have been seen by some as a plan a week um but the goal was within that plan a week to still have that same group of students in the classroom but you are making sure that you have it less than 50 percent of the capacity so one of the reasons why the surveys that are sent out to the families are are so important is this helps us be able to figure out on a school by school basis what each of those schools are looking like and one of the things that we heard from a lot of parents since the beginning was they wanted to keep their same teacher so you're you're confronted with a situation in in which you may have some schools where the majority of the school does want to come back that that's that is a reality that we could face maybe it can be 60 or 70 percent whereas we have other schools in which the majority of that population actually want to stay stay virtual so we're going to be making decisions based upon that data and seeing what changes or what reallocations we have to make in order to ensure that we keep everything balanced and ensure that we keep the safety protocols of the spacing between students in the class size level. Thank you and I think if anyone sees someone's hand I'll just please let me know I don't want to miss anyone uh Deidreana. Thank you I appreciate the opportunity to just speak this evening I am so sorry I was not able to be on the call the entire evening we had an event at Durham Children's Initiative for Black History Month and um I got on kind of late but I did want to just pour in just a little bit of what came out of that panel discussion and the conversation that sounds similar to to the tail end that I was able to catch and that the the resources or the resource shortage that um that our schools and our students might be facing is something that we're going to have to pull together to push on statewide and acknowledging that our that as much as possible um that this this legislation coming from the state should also come with dollars and so I'm not sure that that's happening I'm not sure how that happens but I do think it's important that we all get together and push to make sure that it does occur acknowledging that uh I think one of the one of the principles shared that the the the mental health counselors being on site at each school you know like making sure that that the things that we as adults all know um our children will need is in place along with um making sure that our teachers are safe is all important and um we're in this together and we're going to make it we're going to figure this out so thank you I appreciate you Javier for pulling this together thank you thank you um I'm going to see I don't see any other questions in the chat and I don't see any hand so I'm going to phase this into just thanking everyone I have a log list of folks I'd like to thank first of all if folks who helped design so and there's lots of folks who are here who ask questions who joined planning meetings so if the electeds could turn off their cameras so that we could see the folks city staff community members who helped plan this I really want to highlight the folks who helped plan this evening thank you so much you serve on the city's immigrant and refugee round table you came to meetings to plan this event you dug in with us as we tried to figure out uh exactly how this thing was going to go this evening so thank you colleagues until if everyone could turn if you are a city council member if you could turn your camera on just our city council members so that the community can see who we are thank you and I know um Julian Johnson was on earlier I think Charlie's still on Charlie Reese thank you if you are a county commissioner uh for Durham County your county commissioner you could turn your camera everyone else turn your camera off and leave yours on if you're a county commissioner so that our residents can see who their county commissioners are and if you are a if county commissioners could turn off their cameras and school board members if you could turn yours on and I know earlier we had several um I know we had Vice Chair Mike Lee and I know we had um board member Javaniah Lewis and then I think I'm not sure if we have any representatives still or state senators from our delegation to the General Assembly I saw some of you all earlier but if you represent us in the General Assembly I know Senator Murdoch was here and Representative Morey was here I apologize if I missed anyone else everyone can um turn their cameras back on now thank you I just wanted to give um an opportunity for um our residents you know when you're new or you're learning a system even we know this folks who've lived here their whole lives and were raised here and have been here for several generations still don't know who funds what or who's responsible for what so this is um this is also an educational uh experience for our residents to know who represents them who they should be asking questions to and asking you know for the things that they need finally I want to thank um Tyra Francis Joyce Williams Jeff Fawcett Ronnie Dunbar and John Stinson which are the city's technology solutions folks who help purchase all the equipment help test it for several months uh this was not an easy thing I also want to thank um Carmen Ortiz and Neighborhood Improvement Services Ryan Smith and Budget and Management Services Amber Wade and Rachel Ruda-Boris in the city's mayor the city's office of the mayor and all the folks who helped interpret this event uh from Tilde uh we have Arabic Spanish uh interpreters this was a hard thing to pull together so again thank you this ran a lot smoother than the first one so we learned some things we appreciate you all there is funding for one more and we will be planning not sure when we will be doing it yet thanks so much everyone buenas noches thank you everybody buenas noches thank you thank you everyone thank you everyone everybody thanks for doing this thank you all thank you everybody