Jennifer Clark: Welcome everybody to our Campus Update September 20, 2021.
I get to be your MC today. Lucky me. Mary is on vacation so you get to hear me talk a lot today.
We'll just pause for just a few minutes or a couple of minutes, as people come into our session today.
Looks like we've got many people still joining.
We'll pause for just a little bit longer while we we're nearly at 100.
Alright, well, we just passed 100. So I will go ahead and just let you all know, or remind everybody that today's update, of course, like all of our others, are going to be closed captioned.
Click on the CC button at the bottom, if you want to enable the closed captioning. The Q&A is enabled so you can type in and ask us any questions you might have.
And also just as a reminder, this campus update, like all others, will be recorded and it is posted and available on the president's website.
This is today's agenda. Unfortunately you guys are going to be listening to me a lot today. I have many slides to cover but,
we're also are going to have Julius and Allison, and Monica has some items for us on the vaccine and on the student complaint process. And we also have Tammy Coleman speaking to us about Latinx Heritage Month. And then of course, there will be time for Q&A.
So I believe first up is none other than our president, Dr. Sokenu.
Julius Sokenu: Thank you Jennifer. Thank you everyone.
It's nice to have us gather again this week and I hope everybody had a good weekend. The last one of the summer. Already, fall is on Wednesday.
So much is going on, on campus. So much is going on in our district. This is an opportunity to give you some context and provide some more detail.
As some of you may have noticed and some of you know, Dr. Amanuel Gebru is on medical leave and so he is not on campus and hasn't been
for the past month or so. The workload for the Vice President of Student Support is being shared by both Vice President Rees and Vice President Clark. And I thank them both for taking on that responsibility. The instructional components of Dr. Gebru's portfolio goes to
Vice President Rees and the student service component of his portfolio goes to Dr. Clark, and the outreach and international student component of his portfolio comes to me. And we'll be working on that until Dr. Gebru rejoins us back. We hope shortly.
If there's any questions, all those individuals who were impacted have been informed already, but if there's any questions, please feel free to direct those questions to me.
In terms of our update today. Thank you so much for those of you who joined us on August 30 to participate in our remote work
focus group forum. And it was a great opportunity for us to tackle this issue that is clearly on what means to us and speaks to the future of our college and our district. Remote work is good to say and is how we manage it and how we
schedule it and how we build it into the fabric of our campus culture and our district culture. That will make a very big difference as we move forward.
For our campus at Moorpark, we are very explicit looking at the various work group ideas that came out of that meeting on the
30th of August. I had mentioned at that meeting that we had until early October to get our groups together and do the deliberation and report back out and
the Chancellor has extended it through the end of October for us to gather together, which is good because business has slowed down.
Those folks who volunteered for participation on particular work groups, either the work group that's looking at work areas or the one that's looking at policy and practice, or the one that's looking at high impact practices,
all of those work groups will convene in the coming week or so and the leads of those groups will be reached out to so they can
bring the group together. The Consultation Council, which is the college president, and vice presidents, and Academic Senate president, as well as
the Classified Senate president looked at the various recommendations and crafted a rough draft to try to help the first meeting of those groups to
convene and work towards. The idea of figuring out exactly what remote work would look like on this campus as the recommendations were making it the district on remote work,
we looked very clearly on how we reach out to the Academic Senate, to the Classified Senate, and to our managers. They're going to be active voices in how we make this work.
You probably also know and you received an email from Dr. Gillespie last week, identifying that there's a district wide work group, remote work, work group that will be convened and that
Laura Barroso, the Vice Chancellor HR and I will be co-chairing that committee. The goal is to have leaders from each of the campuses be part of that district wide committee.
If you remember when we were talking on the 30th, we said that we will be making recommendations to our district wide committee, that will then review and give that
recommendation to the Chancellor. This VCCCD remote what a group will be that group. We need four individuals from our campus. One representing the Academic Senate and then one representing managers, and another one representing Classified
Senate, and then another one representing classified managers. So that we have a robust group. So I'll be reaching out to Eric and to Linda to give us recommendations of individuals who will serve on that district wide work group.
AFT and SEIU will also be part of that district wide work group. So Chancellor Gillespie, has Laura and I to reach out to AFT and
SEIU to see who they would like to have represent them. We're giving through November to work with the campuses so that we can have a recommendation, a preliminary recommendation to the Chancellor and then from there
the Chancellor can make a deliberation. And what is most likely going to happen is there will be
actions that can be taken immediately and others that might require negotiation or bargaining and so those will probably take longer.
But again, the idea is to really focus on making sure that remote work is not only concrete part of the work that we do, but that in doing it, that we
reflect the ethic and the culture of our campus and our campus district. And that we do it effectively to serve and meet students' needs.
In terms of the second agenda item over here, the VCCCD innovation initiative funding. For those of you who were following our board meeting last Tuesday, and in the previous board meeting you'll note that
two of the trustees made a proposal to support Oxnard College
to increase their offerings of classes by 100, 100 sections and they were proposing to take the $1.5 million there. They always needed to do that from reserves. And there's good conversation at both meetings and the main
outcome of those conversations, is that the proposal generated and need to examine and explore
if we should have a line item in our VCCCD budget for major initiatives. And, if so, how do we fund it? Will it be general funds? Will it be taken off the top before the colleges then get the allocation? Or will it reserves? And if it's going to be reserves will it be a one time
expenditure and a one time allocation and certain outcomes associated with it? And so those are the questions that
need to be answered, as well as what processes will be put in place for colleges to apply for these funds. And so
Chancellor Gillespie has asked that both DCAS, which is the District Community of Administrative Services, as well as the District Enrollment Management Committee places where this conversation is had.
DCAS, to be where the position is had as to, how do we do the funding, is it general funds, is it reserves, is it one time funding, is it standard practice and then
the process for establishing that criteria and the enrollment management committee will be the place where since the competition is how do we have
student access, student success in closing equity gaps. That may be the place where we look at all of those
in light of our enrollment challenges as a district. We've lost 4,000 FTES over the past year or two years now. And it is looking like we will continue to struggle with enrollment, and enrollment in capacity. So the
Chancellor has asked that both those groups look at this notion of having a major initiative funding.
There will still be OC proposal that was presented
by Trustees Torres and Perez. And Chancellor Gillespie has asked that
President Sanchez and his team go to DCAS and articulate why the district funds need to be used to support the initiative proposal.
And that DCAS give a funding proposal, yes or no. So they recommend yes or no. And that President Sanchez and his team also go to the enrollment management
committee to make a case for how the initiative will address the district strategic directions that, particularly in terms of the access and success and closing the equity gap. With that group again recommendation again, will be a yes or no on this Oxnard specific
initiative. What this does if is there is a
consensus that major initiative funding needs to be part of our budget, then conversation is how each of the colleges can access that and, ultimately, it is, then we talk about what does Moorpark College want to
request funding for as a major initiative and how do we go about making that decision, as a group. But we're still at the very beginning of this conversation. So
just to keep you updated, that's what's happening at the district level, around that topic. In terms of our own DEI work on our campus. We continue to work of addressing racial and social justice. We have a coordinator who's with us today.
Professor Tammy Coleman who is our campus wide DEI Coordinator. And we've invested in that position as a full release time for faculty member this time around, to work on accomplishing and aligning the outcomes from the various social justice work groups to our governance
processes and committees. It is important to know that this position will also be
responsible for helping to accomplish the implementation of the PRT Plan. Once that's gone through our governance processes, and it has been approved
and supported by our senates, as well as our student
ASMC. I have to thank both the senates and the ASMC for asking very good questions and engaging the PRT Plan as it is written. It is due to the State Chancellor's Office once it is gotten the sign off from our senate and they will then distribute the
$200,000 or a portion of the $200,000 that we get from our from our IEPI for participating in this project. So what are the next steps for our Moorpark College social justice work groups?
We have a DEI coordinator, who is reaching out to the leads of those groups and next Tuesday, they will be joining us at Consultation Council for us to discuss that,
further some projects are continuing and there's a lot of passion around them, and some are not, and so we figure out how we streamline so that we can make sure that we employ resources effectively and also deploy your energies as effective as possible.
You'll also notice that Chancellor Gillespie's his email last week referenced a district wide DEI work group. And the intention of this district wide DEI work group is to
address and provided addendum for review and sharing of ideas and information among three colleges and other sources to support implementation of DEI initiatives across the district.
Evaluation, a recommendation include integrating diversity and inclusiveness into our curriculum. Identifying system barriers and college and district processes. And providing
recommendations on how to eliminate those barriers in hiring and other contexts. And how we sort of eliminate barriers that [indiscernible] racism, inequity and social injustice.
There is very clear board policies and resolutions around DEI. And so this word group will be working with
Vice Chancellor Laura Barroso on making sure that we address those
items. For Moorpark College, I want to thank Tammy Coleman, Linda Resendiz, Patty Colman and Amanuel Gebru, and our student representative, which I believe will be Mary Poitier, our ASMC President, who will be representing Moorpark College on the
district wide DEI work group.
Next slide please?
Jennifer: Actually Julius, if you will, there was just a quick question
on the VCCCD
Initiative,
whether classified would have a voice in that process.
Julius: Yes definitely.
And classified as a voice in that process through DCAS.
DCAS has classified representation, and I believe actually classified has representation in the enrollment management committee as well. There are
classified professionals, I believe, on that as well. So classified certainly will have voice in this.
Jennifer: Thank you, Sir.
Julius: Sure.
So the conversation that we are all addressing, and that is paramount and central in life right now is
COVID, right? And there was a board policy that was approved by our trustees on August 10 and it requires employees and students to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus by October 15, 2021.
And it requires that for folks to come on campus that they be vaccinated post that date. There are medical and religious exemptions that have been written into the
the board policy, and it is a process for medical and religious exemptions have been developed both faculty and staff and administrators, as well as for students. You will hear from
Allison
and from Dean Monica Garcia on those exemptions later on this afternoon.
And, but what is important for you to note is that we have upcoming on campus vaccine clinics, one is tomorrow from 10:00 to 2:00 and the other is Wednesday the 29th from 10:00 to 2:00.
Our goal, our commitment is to make sure that Moorpark College, anybody who can get vaccinated and
we will continue to be safe in our practice, that we're masking, we're washing our hands and using hand sanitizer, that we are using our QR codes when going into a building, so that we can get
efficient and effective at contact tracing. I have to say I'm very proud of this campus, in terms of vaccinations and I will have to share with you the slide from district.
And we have the highest number of increasing vaccinations over the past month. 75% of our campus population is vaccinated.
Which to me is just a great source of pride, when Ventura and Oxnard have 55% and 50% respectively.
And we're doing good work. And I want to thank you, as our college community, as you look out for the health and well being of your colleagues,
and you do that through vaccination, and you do that through getting tested, you do that you're wearing masks, and obviously, you do that through observing distance when need be, and not coming to work when you're sick, and making sure that are being safe. So, our
vaccination clinics are aimed at providing opportunity for
cost free vaccinations on campus. And so we look forward to you continuing to participate in that. Do you have any questions regarding this?
Jennifer: Yes, thank you Julius. There are a few questions. Question about the vaccine and the vaccine mandate. "Does it apply to faculty teaching fully online courses?"
Julius: It applies to faculty and staff and managers of the district. So whether you're teaching fully online, is really not the issue. It's
making sure that folks who might have to come on campus or folks might have to come to a campus facility, even if they're not doing so now, get vaccinated. So it does apply to folks who are teaching fully online.
Jennifer: Okay, thank you. And someone's making reference that there's hearing talk of the mandate
being changed or delayed. Is that not being talked about?
Julius: There is multiple conversations going around along around the vaccine. And those conversations end up making sure that we keep our campus be a safe as I safe as can be. That we're aware of
impact on students and impact on faculty and staff and administrators, and that we do our best. There is no plan as of speaking this afternoon of changing the vaccine mandate. There is no plan to do that.
There is plans around how it might be implemented, but there is no changing. October 15 is sort of set in stone. As the date of which we expect that folks are vaccinated.
Jennifer: Okay. Thank you. And this is a question about student workers. So how what's the best way to find out if student workers have been verified and what their vaccination status
is whether or whether they have an approved exemption? Something about is there going to be a list sent to supervisors.
Julius: Once, all of this is sort of catalogged, supervisors on a need to know basis will have
access to who's on an exemption list, who's been vaccinated and verified, and so that they can deduct from that. But at this point,
my hope is that supervisors can
encourage their students workers to get vaccinated, and if they can't to follow the medical and religious exemptions route, prior to October 15, and that is an option that's available to students as well.
Jennifer: And there's a question about prospective students, like high school students, whose vaccination is unknown, will they be permitted to visit campus?
Julius: Yes. So a couple of instances where there are
I guess the exemptions of some sort. So, for example, folks who come and deliver packages on campus, from UPS or whatever,
we assume that they will be safe on our campus by wearing their masks.
Their employer would have a process in place to validate that they're not sick when they come on our campus. Whether that be through test or through vaccination. So we're not responsible for that. We leave that to those managers,
to those vendors. When students come on campus and they come for a tour,
just if they're coming just for a small period of time, our understanding is that they come on campus and they're wearing their masks and they are
being safe. And if that is the case then that's fine. We don't expect that for students who come on campus to do campus tour that they must be vaccinated.
We also defer to the practice of the school district, from which the student is coming. So,
for example, if they're coming from a school district, where they do weekly testing then whatever the result of that weekly test is, we would ask that. And so, for example, if that persons tested positive, then clearly they can't come on campus if they haven't and they can't.
Jennifer: So the vaccine mandate really doesn't apply to guests on campus?
Julius: It doesn't apply for guests who come on campus, depending on the duration of their guest status. So if someone is our guest on campus and they're coming onto campus every day for the semester, even if they're an
employee. That's different from somebody who is on campus this afternoon and is not coming back ever again or is here and will not come back again until the spring, when they will be full time student and they'll be held accountable.
Jennifer: Okay. So one time thing. No mandate is required?
Julius: Just making sure that they
use the app, that they're masked when they're on campus, that they use QR codes.
Jennifer: What will happen to classes where the instructor is not vaccinated?
Julius: Our hope is that as we do this work, that if the instructor is not vaccinated, and right at this point, we're actually having good vaccination rates amongst our faculty.
And so we are not expecting that we will be cancelling classes. We might have to, and again, until we have the final figures, we won't know. We might have to find substitutes to cover that class.
We're looking at our offering additional "late start classes," that will begin in October and November, so that students can get into those. That's the plan right now.
Jennifer: Okay. And there's a comment about, "How come weekly testing isn't available for students and faculty who don't wish to be vaccinated." Concerned about DEI and it's a big topic on campus.
Yeah.
And then questions about the percent, do we know like what percent of our campus vaccinated, like what the gap is. I think we're over 50% but I'm not sure.
Julius: Oh for sure. When another group is talking about I will look at the data, because I just got the fresh data this morning.
And I see it says 75% increase. So I want to see is that's an increase on the 50% from last time or if we're actually at 75%. I have to look at that data. But before we're done I'll put it in the chat.
Jennifer: Okay, and there's a question. The county mask requirement expires next month, asking about whether that's going to change our masking requirement on campus.
Julius: Very, very good question. Thank you for asking that. If you remember, we actually implemented masking before the county did.
I think about a month or so before the county did, and so we will always look at what is best for our campus
district community, any decisions based on that. And of course, in consultation with the county.
When the county was encouraging or strongly encouraging we were mandating. So I think that we will continue to sort of look at what's best for our campus and our district and make decisions based on that. Even when that expires.
Jennifer: And then question about asking whether this is,
actually just trying to think this, attaching proof of vaccination status with new hiring requests, for those who will work on campus.
Julius: HR has not required that as of yet, but we're probably will be going there.
Jennifer: Yeah that's a really good point.
Well in the interest of time, I think we need to move on to the next thing.
Julius: So Allison please take it away.
Allison Barton: Well, good afternoon
everyone.
So, as you can see, we have a little blip up of active positive cases. This actually represents two new cases over last week.
We have 12 people currently in quarantine. You can see that. You can see our cases have risen, bit by bit. So it's still a time to be concerned. It's not as many zeros as we would like to see.
But I am delighted to see how many verified vaccinations we have. We're doing really well there. I want us to continue to improve that as we go along, because what we know is that vaccination prevents the spread of COVID. So next slide please?
And so
I continue to get questions about this, so I just want to make sure everybody knows how to upload your vaccination self report form. So you're a little card or whatever. You just slide over to the
report vaccinations tile on your phone. You have to
slide left to get to it. And it's just going to ask you the simple questions and then you can either take a photo or upload a photo from your phone.
And it's very easy. It takes way less than a minute. I think Michael
you have a link that you can put in the chat about how to get to this. So you don't need a cell phone, you don't need a smartphone to do this, you can go directly online on your laptop or your desktop computer and use that link
to get to this very same, we call it a form in the app. So you can you can get there that way too.
Next slide?
And then this is how, if you get COVID, or you're worried that you get COVID, or we ask you to go get tested for COVID because you have symptoms or you've been exposed or whatever,
you just slide over to the left again, till you get to report test results and it's a very similar process.
The key element here is to make sure that you give us a phone number, where you can be reached, because one of us from the Student Health Center will call you to
see how you're doing and to kind of get a little more information from you, and then we can
encourage you to get tested or not, or whatever the situation is. But that phone number is really a key element. Alright, next slide please?
So the next topic is medical vaccine exemption process and it's different for employees and students. Next slide please?
So what are the reasons for a medical exemption? There are three. One is allergy to COVID-19 vaccine components, the second one is current COVID-19 infection.
You can get vaccinated after 10 days. So if you have a positive COVID test,
you can wait 10 days and then get vaccinated. I know that the waiver says 90 days and you get 90 days from the date of your diagnosis
to be completely vaccinated. And that's kind of a little, a lot of people are a little confused about that. It's not 90 days from when you tell us about it or whatever, it's 90 days from the date
that you were diagnosed. So we had a waiver that was for August 2 and you only get a few extra weeks for that, and you
get it granted, but it's still not much of a delay. And anaphylactic reaction to a prior COVID-19 vaccine. So that's another reason why you would be able to get
an exemption. So you complete waiver form. So the Moorpark College Student Health Center website has a link to the district ones, but you could go straight to the district website too.
Student. If it's a student, they complete one form and then there's a two page form that their doctor or physician's assistant or a nurse practitioner would complete. Please make sure that they are stamped. They have the doctor's stamp or the practice's stamp on there.
They must be complete. Again, the physician's stamp has to be on there. So for students, the medical waiver goes to the Student Health Center.
For employees, those waiver forms actually go to the district. And I believe they go to Gloria Banuelos. I think they go to her. And we can put her email in the chat as well. It's just gbanuelos
@vcccd. So it's important to know that with medical waivers for students, that all three Student Health Center personnel
work together. We work together to create a rubric to judge these. There's a lot of years of
really good expertise amongst us to determine, you know, what's appropriate and what's not. And then a letter would be sent of either denial or approval, along with other instructions.
What is important to understand is whether you're an employee or a student and you have a waiver either a medical or religious waiver,
that means that you still have to do all this stuff. You still have to mask. You'll have to test weekly.
And then you'll also have to quarantine if you're exposed. We have a lot of parents calling here very upset to find out that their students will have to test and quarantine. It's not
a get out of that free card. It's definitely, we have to really be concerned about that person's health and well being. So they have to do some extra stuff if they have a waiver. I don't know any questions. Let me check that.
Jennifer: Yes, you do.
If there's a medical exemption approved,
what are the next steps?
Allison: So that's it. So if it's approved, then the student would get their letter
emailed to them.
And it would have instructions. So if it's a temporary waiver, so because they had COVID illness, that's a temporary waiver. And
in that waiver it tells you exactly by when you would need to get fully vaccinated. And it really lays out exactly the dates, based on the type of
vaccine you would get. If somebody were granted a permanent waiver,
and again, that would be a very rare instance, when that would be given, because there aren't very many situations where that would be the case,
but my understanding is that that student would be offered an online course that's equivalent to the one that they're in. And I know of circumstances
where they have requested waivers and have worked with their instructors to come up with a solution, online solution or some other solution,
if that's the case. Oh wait, wait, wait sorry, I'm saying the wrong thing. That's for people that decide not to get
a waiver and decide not to get vaccinated, they can work with their professors.
And actually same with people with waivers, if they can't come to school, like if they get quarantined or something. And Jennifer and Julius, please jump in if I said that in a confusing way. There is
it just kind of depends on the situation, but I know that people are working really hard to help students complete their academic program this semester.
Jennifer: And then there's a question about 100% online student, do they have to be fully vaccinated? Well it says to come onto campus.
Allison: If they want to come on to campus, yes. But if they're a 100% online and they're never coming to campus, then there's no need. And on
October 15,
the passes will change. If you're vaccinated, you get a blue pass. If you have a waiver, you get a green pass and if you don't have either one of those, you have a red pass. And that's true of students and of faculty and staff.
Jennifer: And real quick, there's also a comment about NIH stating people have COVID immunity for eight months after an infection.
I don't know if you have information about that.
Allison: So the CDC says that they can count on immunity for 90 days.
That doesn't preclude them from getting the vaccine early.
And understand that the graph of that is not a block, right? It's strong at first and then it wanes. So we don't know where the kind of the sweet spot of that is.
So you can get it 10 days after your diagnosis of COVID, with rare exception. That's completely okay to do.
Our district has said that in 90 days after your diagnosis,
you need to be fully vaccinated. That's what our policy is and that's very much in line with a very prudent policy in accordance with CDC.
Some people may have immunity longer. Some people may not have much immunity at all. That's the problem we can't really count on the immunity from COVID-19 disease. It's better to add the vaccine to make yourself safer and healthier
as is concerned by COVID-19.
Jennifer: And then one last thing. The last question, it looks like we need to just clarify about employees.
I think we're talking about if they get a religious or medical exemption, I think it's, what are the next steps. Will the employee be tested instead or would they be required to work from home?
Allison: So if employees have a religious or medical exemption, they will be able to continue to come on campus or to teach online, whatever their thing is, but they will have to test weekly and
they will have to quarantine if they're exposed.
The difference is that students are are given the opportunity to take their classes online, if they're already on a on campus class. There's a little less
leeway given to professors for that and other employees. And I think that's...
Yeah I am so glad that you asked that question about the criteria for a religious exemptions, because
Dean Garcia is going to talk about that next. And I think that's the very next slide. So that's a perfect segue into her part of this. Do you want to maybe do the next slide?
Perfect. Thank you.
Perfect.
Monica Garcia: Hello everyone.
So I am here to give you some information regarding the religious exemptions.
So the religious exemption request is a request to allow a student to come to campus without having to take the vaccine, if getting the vaccine is against their religion.
There is a misconception that we are obligating students to get the vaccine. What we're doing is we're mandating students to get the vaccine if they want to come onto campus.
If students want to come to campus, they must be verified, fully vaccinated by October 15. If they're not verified, fully vaccinated they must utilize our online courses and services, unless, of course, they have a medical or religious exemption.
In order to adjudicate these religious exemption request, I have assembled an ad hoc team that recommends whether to
deny or approve the request. The team includes the administrator which is myself, a faculty member, a classified employee, and a student. And we meet once a week to confer
and adjudicate these requests. Our team meets every Thursday at 4:00. So let me go over our actual process right now.
So if the student would like to apply for and request for a religious exemption, the student completes the forms that are provided by our district.
The forms must be fully completed in order for us to take it into consideration. All forms, there's three pages, all three pages must be completed and information must be submitted.
Once they are completed, they are submitted to my division, MC Division 128, and the forms are then prepared by omitting the students names before passing them on to the ad hoc team.
That ad hoc team every Monday receives a batch of requests. They look at the request and they use a rubric that was created for this purpose.
And they'll give it a numerical point system that will tell them whether they either deny it, approve it, or
have some discussion about the request. On Thursday the team meets. We confer. We share the rubric. And then we come to consensus, whether we recommend to approve or deny the request.
Whatever decisions we make, and that recommendation then goes to our VP and that person then sends the student the official letter of the decision.
Each student will receive a next steps directive once they receive their decisions. Of course, if they've been approved,
they'll have those specific next steps, and if they're denied, they'll have those specific next steps. All three campuses are using the same rubric and they're using the same process.
So that is the extent of really our religious exemptions.
Is there any questions? Jennifer, do you see?
If there aren't any questions...
Jennifer: Yeah hang on. Sorry.
So, how does someone with a religious exemption prove that religion is a reason?
Monica: The forms itself have all the pertinent information that you need to submit an order to show that it is against the religion to receive the vaccine.
Jennifer: And can you talk about what does the numerical rubric consist of?
Monica: The numerical rubric consists of the actual forms themselves. If you look at the form it has different questions and the rubric is
fashioned on those questions on whether they have given enough information, whether the information is connected to the reasons of why
they aren't to take the vaccine because of their religious convictions, and also, it has a section and that is how the rubric is drafted.
Jennifer: Okay.
Thank you, and I think.
There's another.
"Have previously submitted religious exemption requests been processed and then the requesting student notifies such as two to three weeks ago?"
Monica: Yes, they have been recommendations already made and they've been sent to our VP. And I don't have the answer, whether they've been notified, but some students have been notified.
Or should have been notified by now.
Jennifer: Let's see. "Any information on how many students approved or denied?"
Monica: At the moment, we have not approved any.
Jennifer: Oh okay. And then, let's see, "How many people on the committee make the decision as an equal agreement or given a number for the results?"
Monica: It is a consensus between the group. The reason why we look at the requests
individually, using the rubric, so that when we come together we look at the point system that we've given them and if we are all around the same point system that we've all provided, then we go ahead and either deny or approve or have more discussion.
And if we haven't had a case yet where someone says, "Yes absolutely deny," and someone has said, "No, I want to approve this request," and then we'll have discussion. That hasn't happened yet. For the most part we've all been individually
putting an assessment of the actual request, a numerical number, according to that rubric, and then we've come together. We haven't had that situation yet. At this point it's been pretty clear to deny the requests so far.
Jennifer: And then you have a question, thank you, about an appeal process.
Monica: There's no appeal process and it's in the paperwork. It says on our forms that
there's no appeal process. And if the forms are not completed properly, if they have not been completed to the extent that is required by the forms and then also that will be a denial as well.
So please pay attention to the form, make sure that it's completed as stated, as required, so when it comes to us, we're able to look at it.
Jennifer: Okay I'm not seeing any other questions.
I'm not seeing.
"Can as a campus we offer students a hyflex opportunity to continue their classes?
I'm concerned about students who have put in a lot of class time and work, who will not be able to continue their semester." I don't know if that's a you question or maybe Julius or I'm not sure who can best answer that question.
Monica: Well Julius, would you like to answer?
Julius: Yeah. That's a question that we are grappling with right now.
How do we work with students who have been in the course this long and for many of them they have like five or six weeks left, right,
in the semester after October 15. So we are working towards that and figuring out what the option might be
for the rest of the semester, for those particular students, because we don't really want to be punitive, but we also want to make sure that it's clear that we are mandating vaccination. So the answer to that is still being discussed.
Jennifer: And then I think there's just one other question for you probably best to answer, Julius is, "Who's keeping track of the students who need to take the class online, because they haven't got the vaccine? Who will be scheduling and teaching those classes?"
Julius: So what we've done so far is make very clear to students that if they are not intended to get vaccinated, that they're ready to drop the class. We said that right when the semester started.
And I'm hoping that our faculty members were sharing that information with students as well. And I know many are doing that. What we've also done is refer students to online instruction, when the semester begun. So
students can be transitioned in a way, which they can complete this semester. In terms of keeping track of students who need to take the class online because they haven't gotten their vaccine,
we will have a better sense of that as the week progresses, because right now, we still have people who've gotten one vaccination dose and they're waiting for the second one,
and some of those may be completed before the October the 15th, and others might not and might have to get a temporary waiver until that's completed. And we'll certainly work with those students who are in that situation,
and find ways in which to support them.
So right now that's the context. We are trying to identify how many students were talking about and we'll need
the support of our faculty and staff to get a
cleaner count of that.
Jennifer: Okay. Thank you. We're running short on time.
So
thank you, Monica.
Monica: You're welcome. Do I have the next slide? I'm not sure.
[Jennifer]: Let's see. Next slide? Oh, this is a opportunity for Julius to comment if he needs to. [Julius]: We can move on
the Latinx Heritage Month.
Jennifer: Thank you.
So next slide please?
So I'm going to go through my stuff really super quick, so we can get to the Latinx Heritage Month.
I did want to just highlight for everybody,
a reminder of the Cal/OSHA guidelines. So there are the requirements there, on the ventilation Cal/OSHA for COVID-19 prevention standards. That was a letter issued November 20, 2020. And you'll notice it does
reference indoor locations that we need to evaluate how to maximize the quantity of outdoor air, and whether or not, and whether it's possible, to increase our filtration efficiency to the highest level compatible with the existing system. So those are the requirements.
And then it goes into how we might we might obtain those. So MERV 13 filtration should be the target, which we have in all of our buildings in Moorpark, either MERV 13 or MERV
15. So we can check that one off. And then it also recommends that for an HVAC system, that
in order to operate, or an HVAC system that does operate on pre-programmed cycles like ours does,
that it be kicked on an hour or two before the building opens. And we have been doing that for years. We've been doing that for a very long time.
Basically, having our systems kick on two hours before the buildings are occupied. Next slide please? And then circulating every
10 minutes or six exchanges an hour, there's a complete exchange of the air.
So you have the requirements on the left and the safety measures on the right. So these two things we have done and, in fact, if you look at the right, we've exceeded.
Where even we did duct cleaning in every building, cleaned and sealed. That job has been completed, and we are in progress of installing UV-C lighting
in all of our HVAC systems campus wide, and that is in progress. And those two things are well above standard, and those are things that we have either done or are continuing to do. So next slide please?
Just as a reminder on the incentives, we're running incentives for students to be
vaccinated, which is actually number three, the $100 bookstore voucher. And we have a couple of number one and number two, are to either re-engage students or get students to take six or more units on campus.
So potentially for any student there is up to $1805. There's an incentive for students that were once with us
over the last three semesters, but hadn't enrolled prior to, there was a date in September.
Again,
monetary incentives for those students. Next slide please? And this is just a reminder for the bookstore voucher.
$100. Students have until October 15 to show their blue pass at the bookstore and they have until January 31 to spend their voucher. So this program has been extended. Next slide please?
And this was the Latin Heritage Month and I hope...
I hope. I know Tammy had another.
Julius: Okay, next slide please?
So Tammy had to go to another appointment. So I'll just walk through this for you and with you. Thank you so much for the Multicultural
Committee, who is putting this event together, particularly the subset of that group that is working on Latinx Heritage Month.
A wonderful group of programming, available. We started out last week with the opening kickoff event and Professor Zepeda and
Jorge Herrera, both gave really insightful and dynamic presentations on Chicano Studies at Moorpark College. And we thank them for their work and their continued work with our students. And this is a larger part of our Ethnic Studies program. So kudos to
Patty Colman and folks in the program who are building experiences that align with our diversity. September 22 which is on Wednesday,
from 1:00 to 2:00 pm there is Our Voices Matter! Latinx Students Speak. And we will have current and former students who are discussing their experience here at Moorpark College and they share their stories
as to illustrate for us, illuminate for us their experiences as Latinx students on our campus. I hope you will join the Zoom event for that. And if you have a class, use this as an opportunity for robust dialogue.
Also on the 27th, we have the acting State Chancellor, Dr. Daisy Gonzales, Vice Chancellor, Marty Alvarado, and
Vice Chancellor Lizette Navarette, Vice Chancellor of Finance and Facility Planning, who will be here on campus talking about how Latinos are leading the way, in terms of California Community Colleges
governance process. It's great to have these three individuals, it's a very unique contest and moment for us at California Community Colleges and we're very proud to be hosting
Dr. Gonzales and her team to talk about their own personal issues as well as the way in which the DEI work informs their
system wide priorities and initiatives. On September 30 we have author, Alice Baumgartner, who is a history professor at USC, who will be discussing her book,
South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and The Road to Civil War. This will be a moderated discussion. And we look forward to folks joining us as part of that event.
On October 4, we have Women in Higher Education Breaking Through the Adobe Ceiling. We have Dr. Cynthia Olivo, who is the Vice President of Student Services at Pasadena College, and she's a co-founder of Collegas,
a Latin
organization for California Community College professionals. And Dr. Margaret Quinonez-Perez of the Board of Trustee of Santa Monica College.
It is important for us again, to keep engaging in these dialogues, because it helps us to better understand ourselves and our
colleagues, and then the finale, which is I'm very proud of this work, that this committee has done, and thank you to Cynthia Osuna for her work, as well as others in that group,
in bringing the Grammy award winning musician, Arturo Sandoval to our campus. He will be in person. That event will be in person on campus.
He will be working with our students in our music program as well as giving a presentation performance lecture discussion
on the 15th. Stay tuned for more details around that. So that is the Latinx Heritage Month. You can access this information online. You see the link there.
But also the Multicultural Community is currently working on the Native American Heritage Month and so that will be the next heritage month that we will be celebrating. Please do
join that group if you're interested in helping to do that work. l am going to pass it on back to Jennifer.
Jennifer: I think that's it. I had some HEERF items that I was going to cover, but we can cover those next time. We just had so many questions and a lot of good questions today. So wanted to just thank everybody. Have an awesome day.
And see you next time. [Julius]: Bye everyone.