WSSD Board Meeting 03/28/2022

001good evening i now call the march 28th meeting of the wallingford swarthmore school board to order in opening as you're willing and able please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation with liberty and justice for all okay i would like to start by asking ms fabor to please take the roll call vote i'm sorry the roll call i added a mr henry miss holbert here mr cutis here miss lentz miss vote miss whitsett here miss lakowsky smith here miss walkman here mr berman here dr marseille all right mr darson here swagman you have eight voting members present thank you uh we'll begin our evening uh miss suderson uh with your student

002representatives report with 23 school days march is by far the longest month of the school year there are no breaks no days off but somehow i managed to power through each week i was lucky enough to find something to look forward to the month started off with read across america night at npe teachers administrators and other special guests spread to students who then got to do activities and find new books that they might enjoy the other elementary schools also celebrated by dressing up as their favorite characters and read throughout the day npe is ending march with steam night which is actually happening right now the kids are able to go to different stations to learn about everything from trusses to the function of our brains the high school instrumentalists had a very successful winter concert

003earlier this month and then half of them left to go to orlando i would tell you about how orlando was but sadly i was stuck at school besides i'm sure the band kids have already told you how much fun they had i mean that's pretty much all they talked about at school anyway so these aren't the only artists that have been showcased this month tomorrow is the reception for senior gabe lawson the recipient of the george slick fellowship he has been working hard for the past few years and is super excited to be able to share his pieces this showcase will be at the community arts center from five to seven tomorrow you'll also be able to see the art of wssd exhibition on display at the art center until april 29th the unified bocce

004team not only qualified for the state tournament but also got fourth place the wrestling team also did extremely well at their state tournament the strathaven speech and debate team recently went to multiple district tournaments and they even championed one of them these district tournaments acted as qualifiers for various national tournaments that are going to be in person this year 13 people qualified to the ncfl national tournament in dc and 10 people qualified to the nsda tournament in louisville kentucky this is the biggest group that has gone to an in-person national tournament in the history of our team hopefully we'll do just as well at nationals last but certainly not least the high school hosted the first ever international day seniors joyce huang and zak zwieko planned the entire event and put together an amazing assembly

005that celebrated all cultures students dressed in traditional clothing and performed dances sang and gave speeches in front of the entire school seeing the reactions to this assembly made me realize how important it is for the student body to see performances from our peers learning from and talking to each other is so much easier than being talked at by adults i strongly believe that international day should become a district-wide event students from each school could perform or we could get high school students to go over and perform at the other schools we need to make sure that success doesn't come at the expense of students kindness and cultural competency and expanding the scale of this event will be the perfect next step mr jarson thank you so much for the report for all the awesome things

006that are going on and even though the uh the band trip might have been the talk of the town all i've heard about is international night um and i was able to watch about half of it so far on on the youtube video and it was really truly amazing so for anyone that hasn't seen it yet i still recommend that you do um the students were amazing um and i just it was really inspiring uh uh with that uh dr marseille we'll turn to you for the superintendent's report oh yes thank you i want to piggyback on that um with though i have a short update uh for you um so pleasure you made reference to how long the month is but it needed to be that long for all the accolades that you spoke

007about a few a few minutes ago and i'll say this um with and i'm going to put my um my board members on the spot we did not talk about this um but i absolutely will do everything in my power to make sure that international day is spread across the district and it becomes a staple for all of us to celebrate i think it is something that we should do during the day i think we give an opportunity for parents who are unable to make it to come out in the evening as as well all of our students should have the opportunity to represent i want to tell you that i was excited to see traditional dance to traditional poetry um and the sharing of identity i kept i went to jump on stage i

008challenged some of my um my colleagues that some of the teachers were walking out of the auditorium and i was like we can do a dance routine like that right can we do something like that so can we start practicing now and they're like all you gotta do is ask so i think many of them are really excited and ready uh to do that so i'm hoping that when the time comes um my teammates will will honor that and allow us to make official recognition that it's we give the opportunity for every school to represent that and give the opportunity for our community members to come out and watch that because i think it's a phenomenal experience um but we also want to share that though wasn't at the high school um we um and

009i know it's march but miss cobbs and her team um did celebrate black history month assembly right i know you like thinking wait a minute february march right but you know we had to move that and it was absolutely as spectacular as well i think that is another opportunity for us to showcase um the multiple identities within this district and celebrate that so i'm hoping that um moving forward we can make that a district-wide event make that an evening event so everyone can come and uh and celebrate that as well but um yes it was a long month but it was needed with all the accomplishments um and wonderful stories that are happening in this district and we'll talk a little bit about those stories and how they are being recognized um in a second

010so um there's a number of items i'm going to be really quick because tonight um we have three uh focused topics that we're going to talk about i want to thank um uh dr hindley for bringing his team of teachers here who are going to share with us the wonderful things happening at an mpe um so fragile you're correct when you made a reference to that steam night um is uh is tonight so we're gonna get you going first um so you can get out there and watch uh and and support the students the families who uh who are there we're going to have hanover um come in and share um really high level our report that we presented last last month it would not be the same amount of slides because that information is

011available on our website but we want to take the opportunity uh to share that and then we're going to briefly talk about uh our health and safety plans some of the things we've been discussing thinking about and miss miss sweeney's going to come and share some of that information with you uh as as well and as we continue to move forward with the end of the school year um we still continue to have very different perspectives from community members about where we are some extremely concerned with mask optional and saying hey we need to be more mindful others who are saying um enough is enough um everything's fine can we just please take off all the masks and eliminate social distancing and all that other stuff and um come back to a sense of normalcy

012so even as we are trying to move a little further further away from the pandemic there still seems to be very different perspectives on the way in which we think about not only obviously students physical safety but also a lot of questions about social emotional safety uh as as as well but we'll share a little bit about what we've been thinking and what we have been uh what we have been seeing um but i wanna um talk about um the communications audit as many of you know we are on a sequence of of audits that will help inform our thinking that will lead to development of a strategic plan uh this board uh had approved a contract with expert national school public relations association to come and help the district think about the way in

013which we communicate and its effectiveness and as part of that very similar to previous audits we're going to have a number of opportunities for our community members to uh to have a voice our faculty and staff to have a voice in uh that process uh relatively soon there will be a survey that will be going out and we're going to encourage everyone to please take no more than 10 minutes does not take more than 10 to 12 minutes to complete that likert survey just to get your um perspectives on the way in which the district communicates how you like to receive that communication what things we need to improve um so we look forward to that then on april 18th we're going to begin focus groups now the focus groups are limited number of individuals

014there are 10 focus groups no more than 12 per focus group and we're going to try to get a cross sample of our community as part of that focus group we have a focus group for elementary staff a focus group for secondary staff we have a focus group for parents and other groups as well uh to give their perspective and uh and their voice in that conversation so we're really excited about um about the audit and connecting that with our equity audit that we're still unpacking the data um and talk a little about that later and obviously our curriculum audit that's coming out later at the end of the school year that will inform our conversation as well but as we are talking about um communications what's really exciting is the fact that um the

015district has been recognized for its communication uh communication efforts so uh uh uh we want to give credit where credit is due and thank uh deirdre uh abramson for um for promoting uh the district we entered into a contest where the district was recognized in three categories award for excellence for the stories in which we share on social media some of you are looking and thinking about some of those powerful stories they're wonderful stories across this district but um the pennsylvania school pr association recognized those stories as awards of excellence awards of honor and awards of merit and the communication that's happening within our social media threads uh specifically facebook and uh and instagram so yes as we are looking to improve our communication there are those who are acknowledging uh the great communications and

016the uh promoting of our of the stories happening in the in the district i wanted to bring attention to the digital safety seminar that is taking place and um i think all of our parents through our principals e blast received something about that um there's so much that uh information that's shared in that particular e-blast my whole superintendent's report can just be pulling out some of that information but i did want to bring attention to this our middle school hsa parents who are facilitating this extremely important in terms of better understanding or giving you more toolkits with the impact of obviously technology the impact of social media and what that is doing continues to do to our students and maybe as much as they're enjoying it some of the pros and cons and i think

017that this is going to be an extremely important conversation as we know as adults i know a superintendent our students are still learning exactly what is appropriate when it comes to communicating via social media uh and um if you recall the days when that didn't exist um it took a long time for a story to catch when um a disagreement between two people tend to be a disagreement between two individuals um in a nanosecond a picture is taken a statement is written and hundreds if not thousands are reading that at the same time um so it's wonderful tools in terms of parents to think about what additional strategies do they have when it comes to engaging in conversation there's also one that's being held for our students obviously more importantly um but maybe as important

018in terms of we need both our parents and guardians to see what role they can play at home and then our students understanding what role they play and the impact of that of that process and we've seen too many times where unfortunately um stories where a 2011 social media post now is coming back for the individual who didn't mean that or it's not what they interpret is not who they are now and we want to make sure our students don't fall um into some of those and other traps as as well so i hope you have the opportunity to uh attend that for the parents on three on 331. i also want to share a little bit about our community of explorers if you recall last um last calendar year the school district did provide

019an opportunity as we were transitioning back um to provide a summer experience for our current kindergarten or grade four students this is going to work a little bit different uh as a result we're in different situation and we are going to um really prioritize based on data some of our current students who maintain additional supports and we're only obviously limited to capacity and the number of staff that we can have but it is not compared to last calendar year i believe dr masikowski that it was anyone who can attend uh now we're trying to target um specific group of students in terms of of need that information is going to be coming out relatively uh relatively soon so um through um i think conferences um and through parent-teacher conferences as well so you hear a

020little bit more about that but i wanted to bring that up uh actually i think um one of my board members said can you please say a few words about that so i wanted to make sure that um that i shared that and give it a heads up for those particular uh for those particular families um and then um i want to mention uh obviously unfortunately we do have to take the pssas um they are a snapshot we'll share more about that in our next ed affairs meeting but want to let everyone know that um unfortunately a significant amount of time is taken up for uh for testing um and though we want our students to perform well it's not the only measure we wish there were more opportunities for that but um individuals look

021at those scores uh and oftentimes make decisions about which community maybe too heavily but they make decisions about that knowing that because we have new families who are moving in every day and registering and when they say what is the reputation of your institution and they tend to go to that area where we try to say well it gives a holistic picture of who we are as a as an institution but um we want to share those dates that are that are coming up uh in uh in april and also um our next educational affairs meeting we invite you to that meeting uh it is going to be a robust conversation around data if you love data and i mean if you love data you need to come to this meeting and i'll tell you

022why because we have three to four we have four areas in which we're going to share information in one of those areas for example for the map data we have over 67 slides for the equity data we have 150 slides for the pa future ready we have around 30 or 40 um for pssas current historical that's another 50. obviously we can't show 422 slides now we will give the board all of that for their wonderful leisure in reading as they make decisions right it's going to be a big packet but um the ed team uh dr jones and dr masakowski and i have been and others who are working in the background to put all this data uh together as well uh for us um and help us interpret it um we're trying to condense

023that into a manageable hour and 20 minute presentation with questions to follow after that so we really would love for you to come back we'll make the entire data deck available for those individuals but we're not presenting the 300 slides but we will make that available for individuals for their review um and then our facilities in finance on the 20th and then what many have been waiting for uh probably a little too late is some r r some real r r with the arrival of uh a spring break uh in there as well and uh if you have a chance to to go away please uh do so um we are going away cheyenne said enough is enough she picked a spot in jamaica and that is where we're going i remember my vacation was

024in the backyard um kicking rocks so congratulations to her in terms of that uh in terms of process but nonetheless uh it is time to um to exhale it is an opportunity to rejuvenate as we come back from uh from that break with really somewhat of a really quick um end of the school year once you come back from spring break and that concludes my uh superintendent's report i think i'm exhausted just listening to all the things that are coming up everyone is going to need a break um thank you very much for for uh all the information dr marcy um with that i think uh we want to move right into our our focus topic with um with uh mr heinlein and the team uh so we can get you back to back to

025school unfortunately yes sir [Music] good evening everybody um i'm really excited to be here uh tonight i've had a few presentations in the last two years but it's been three or four since we've been here to celebrate our students and our kids so really excited to go back to uh the reasons why we all chose education very quickly i do want to go back to saprasia on her comments about march it has been a long month i had a staff meeting i said there's two times in the year where you get about five or six weeks great instructional time but at the end of it you're exhausted so the teacher's done a great job the students are coming in every day uh mostly smiling and we're doing everything we can to provide them a warm

026and safe environment but going back to cypressia she's a former npe grad so seeing her tonight we are immensely proud of her and seeing her school board reports i remember her when she was about this big so seeing her now really brings a smile to our faces those who remember suppression so i'm going to jump right in thank you dr marseille good evening board of school directors members of the community and fellow members of the administration as i said it's my pleasure to be back here tonight for the first time in quite some time to celebrate the staff and the students of nether providence elementary as i said it's truly exciting to talk about accomplishments and tonight uh celebrating the voices of our students once again uh the school update tonight is focused on community

027and how individual voices can create and inspire by working together we continue at npe to work together to create an inclusive environment with a sense of belonging for all students staff and community members so with me tonight i am proud to have leslie wagner fourth grade teacher with me mary kahanawitz a reading specialist and mary kate peterson a fifth grade teacher at npe uh dave mendel would be here as well but he is busy presenting at steam night so i'll be getting to see him in a in a few moments back at npe so after a brief spring update on events from may our staff will highlight a new tradition that we are hoping to continue this year and well into the future at npe an activity which will continue to bring many voices together

028to create a work of art through written expression [Music] got it there we go uh brief spring update so as you know we are in uh closer to what i would call normalcy at school we're not quite there uh but we've had quite a few events in um the last few months that are bringing us ever closer and i'm going to highlight just a quick couple so you have an idea of some of the events we've had we had an author visit in february kelly starling lions and she did whole whole school um assemblies i should say k to two and three to five but all students had the opportunity to hear about her book and her book is called sing a song how lift every voice and sing inspire generations and basically the book

029details and describes how a song has provided inspiration and solace for generations of black families the song has been sung during major moments of the civil rights movement and at family gatherings and college traditions so we'd like to thank kelly's starling alliance for sharing her gift and story with our stu with our students um and again going with the theme of bringing that voice and that's what tonight's presentation is going to be and also uh read across america breed across american night has been one of our most looked forward to events in the past uh five six seven years uh we did have students come in and pick up books and they raced home to go online and choose which read-aloud they would like to see which did give students an ability to see more

030uh guest readers this year usually you'll be able to see two um i did hear that dr marseille did okay you can see right there on the second row you had a few viewers i think i still had you maybe two to one but you had a few you had a few that's an unofficial count um but it's a wonderful opportunity um for our students to see you know superintendent principal teachers parents community members so just another wonderful event that we had at npe many thanks to our parent volunteers who really uh put that together for us and just upcoming obviously steam night we have about 17 tables set up community members sharing their expertise with our students so another wonderful night originally was to be outside i think we made out very well by

031being able to distance ourselves but have it inside for tonight so we're excited about that parent teacher conferences are coming up next week so we're excited to have the opportunity to share all of our data points as well as our social emotional um experiences with our students with parents uh at the end of next week so with that i'm going to turn it over to mrs wagner who is going to talk about the origins of tonight's real focus topic which is npe's creation of a homegrown poem hi i'm leslie wagner i teach fourth grade at npe and i have never used a clicker before so let's see what happens no that's the red button play this little arrow all right um so the inspiration behind this activity that um as mr heinle said we hope

032to become a tradition at npe is this amazing person named kwame alexander who many of you may have heard of he is a poet an educator an author a thinker a speaker he's an amazing person um and i'm going to read a quote to you um that's on this slide because it speaks to his passion for poetry the power of poetry is that you can take these emotionally heavy moments in our lives and you can distill them into these palatable these digestible words and lines and phrases that allow us to be able to deal and cope with the world he says i think it's one of the reasons why young people love reading novels in verse it's because on a very concrete level it's not that many words so it's not that intimidating to me

033there's so much white space and one of the things that kwame alexander that i have come to learn about that he does is something is a way that he shares his passion for poetry by producing what is referred to as community source poetry so you might hear him on national public radio he reaches out to listeners on public radio i don't know if it's monthly or every two months or something and he um it could be talking about a real life event and you know he does write about heavy moments in our lives but poetry can be written about any moments in our lives he has sometimes used a prompt a quote he sometimes used a prompt a season he has sometimes used picture prompts and he reaches out to listeners on public radio and

034they write in so all over the country he receives these submissions these people's written expression they can be poems they can be lines they can be paragraphs really whatever a person wants to submit and he takes them all and from those that collection of writing he chooses lines or words or phrases and he creates this poetry so he's not the author of all of these words but he puts them together and arranges these words into poetry and it's pretty amazing um in 2021 in july the civil rights memorial center in montgomery alabama reopened and they reached out to mr alexandra and they said we want you to create a community source poem for the opening the reopening um of the civil rights memorial center so from across the country students he i believe it was

035really open to k to 12 students i'm not entirely positive of the grade levels in which he reached out to but he promoted it to students teachers parents and children across the country and received nearly a thousand poems for the project and from those he took lines and he created a poem called a civil community and it was hanging i believe in the entrance of i have not been to this place the civil rights memorial center in montgomery um as an exhibit and you can google it and go online and it's pretty moving and awesome and his prompt for that was to ask people to um respond to the prompt of something like share your vision of america the beautiful and it's really compelling a quote by mr alexander talks about how this poem is

036speaks in voices from people of all walks of life so it's pretty cool it's pretty inspiring um and i've thought about it for the last couple years i've talked to mr heinlein about it like what do you think can we do something that's like this at mpe and then i talk to some teachers and so that's where all of this came from and i just feel like we have to give credit to where credit is due so we transformed the idea of community source poetry into school source poetry and our homegrown poems are invitations their invitations to students they will be soon invitations to students faculty and staff and who knows maybe soon to beyond that but right now our first homegrown poem was an invitation to for the students k to five as of

037optional activity for teachers during a very busy time of the school year invitations to think to write to share to help these kids see themselves as thinkers writers and artists with something valuable to contribute i think the um the experience of teaching and learning through covid our writing skills um have suffered and any way we can inspire these kids to get excited about writing and put words to page we're constantly looking for those opportunities um it's an invitation to offer their words their artistic expression and to join the school community in a shared experience so um our npe homegrown poetry team mr heinlein let you know who we are and so we are going to um continue to try to grow this tradition at npe so our first homegrown poem was written in february um

038again we offered it as an optional you know kicking this off as a new thing let's try this for people who are interested and um students responded to what uh prompt about reading and you'll hear more about that in a little bit from the voluntary submissions we receive submissions from 114 students in grades two through five our poem's title is npe reads was created using words from 33 different students and then we opened it up to also include more students through their artwork one of our fifth grade students created an amazing logo that we'll be using for our homegrown poetry in the future and i'll turn it over to mary kate peterson [Music] thank you leslie is it the top button that i use to click i'm also unfamiliar with flickr okay hi everybody i'm

039mary kate peterson i'm a 5th grade teacher at npe and i'm here um to talk to you a little bit about um how we implemented this activity in the classrooms um so classroom teachers provided open-ended prompts to our students to get them to think about their own experiences as readers and i'll show you some of those prompts right here we encourage them to jot down their own ideas on the physical aspect of holding a new book in their hands the anticipation of not knowing what's on the unread pages ahead of you and the desire for your teacher to read just one more page so after we had the kids reflect on their experience as readers we encouraged them to choose their favorite again lines words paragraphs to submit into either a google classroom form that

040we had or for the younger kids we had them just write them right on chart paper and we could kind of put those together and of course as always we uh differentiated according to grade level so that uh fifth graders could could write their ideas at a much higher level and the younger kids could just write their excitement about learning to read um and their excitement about having the books in their hands and mary when you're ready hi i'm mary kahanawitz i'm a reading specialist at mpe when leslie first brought up this concept of a homegrown poem at our faculty meeting i was thinking oh read across america so we decided on the topic of reading when the whole poem was complete we also thought we wanted to implement different artistic works that could possibly

041frame our poem which we were hoping to display for our read across america evening so leslie did find these little mini books and i gave them to teachers who gave them to students who were interested in decorating those and then they became the border for our poem um it was displayed during our read across america evening and we also had these bookmarks which i handed out to you available to the parents that were there and the children there and then of course the teachers in our school had access to them during the week for read across america we had some of our poem contributors students read the poem during morning announcements originally we did want those students to read to you this evening but um scheduling conflict we decided to record those students reading the

042poem so you'll be watching that but we also wanted to highlight the artist who created the npe homegrown logo so there's going to be a brief interview with evelyn smith the artist and paul if you want to okay hello and welcome to a reading of npe's first homegrown poem we wanted to read in person at this meeting but our steam night is the same night and we didn't want to miss any of those activities my name is tyler and myself and fellow readers have contributed our thoughts and feelings to this poem on our feelings about reading readers please introduce yourself huck fife domini fifth grade i may leave fifth grade i love sandlin fourth grade sophie berger second grade clara west third grade gisela have fourth grade enjoy open a book what might be waiting

043a breath of fresh air dragons swordfight action perilous pots an amazing twist answers go ahead take hold be bold a favorite book is like a piece of pure gold imagine wonder what will happen next float away be curious explore a majestic world wrap up in a warm blanket of words let the words settle and surround you like living in the clouds feel calm warm with anticipation crawl between the pages and get absorbed sink deeper and deeper into your chair feel safe relax without worries just listen except when the chapter ends at the best part in the book is closed i just can't wait it's a timeout called at the end of a football game on the edge of my seat read more read more what exciting thing happens next please just one extra page open

044a book what might be waiting a portal a tunnel to another life a surprise winding roads of dark and light fairies witches wizards and slobs anvils falling from the sky rumbling oceans tea parties secrets a box of joy a treasure chest filled with candy for my brain a story i might hold on to forever go ahead take hold be bold a favorite book is like a piece of pure gold hi my name is jordan barry i'm a fifth grade student at mt today i would like to ask a few questions to the artist who made the whole poem logo a fifth grade student evelyn smith evelyn how did you get the idea from the logo i didn't just want to do a pop with a flower growing out of it i had to incorporate the

045poem in homegrown poems so i decided to make the pot into a bookshelf with a flower bearing how long have you considered yourself an artist um probably since i could fit a crayon or a pencil in my hand what do you see yourself doing in the future i would like to be a biologist because i love nature and plants and then i could draw the animals and plants i see thank you so much for your creative logo okay and finally um next steps um we're obviously planning to continue this we're looking to add another prompt later in the spring um in which we'll plan to invite students and staff to participate and we believe that this activity clearly encourages and highlights the individual voices of our community which which merge together can become a piece

046of art that expresses the creativity of the nether providence community i'd like to thank the staff for their creativity their vision their dedication and enthusiasm for our students and also to thank our parent community and our students for um well the students for their hard work their creativity and the parents who um have supported us through through some good times and some difficult times some challenges the last few years but at the end of the day the students the staff [Music] everyone involved at npe has continued to look at the individual voices and npe is the place to be and uh i couldn't be prouder of being part of the community and look forward look forward to giving you an update and to see how our individual voices are creating one uh inclusive community so

047thank you if you have any any questions for the staff thank you you so much for coming and for sharing all of this i i this has been kind of a particularly good end to what wasn't the world's greatest day so i really really appreciate it and i love the poem i i i'm looking at some of the words in like the treasure chest filled with candy for my brain i love it absolutely love it so i i just want to thank you so much for the leadership and pulling this together is awesome does anyone have any other comments or questions they'd like to ask yeah i'll just say um i really loved the process that you put together and the the poem itself i mean it's funny because i'm reading a book right now

048that i don't really read it until the very end of the day but it happens to be a book that every chapter has a twist and i'm like oh i just want to go on to the next chapter but i'm exhausted you know i have this feeling like like the kids do you know what might be waiting and i love the idea of the fairies which is wizards and swap and sloths you know so thank you so much yes i just want to say thank you again too this is incredibly inspiring yeah i um thank you for sharing that and providing that opportunity i have to apologize i'm not familiar with kame's work but because you brought that to my attention i definitely will seek it out um this idea around community social uh poetry

049is awesome and what you did um i love when we have an opportunity to interview children and they say how long have you been an artist as long as i can hold the crayon i'm like that's a long time right so uh thank you very much for what you're doing and the unique opportunities that you bring to our students and and to our families it is a place to be okay dr marcy would you like to uh introduce our hanover research then sure presentation well you know it's hard to i know to pivot from that right you should ended it at that um but we wanted to give an opportunity um at this session because last month members of the hanover team provided an extensive analysis of our our equity findings and we wanted to

050give the opportunity for those who were unable to make that meeting and though the presentation is available for review we felt it was important to take um the next 20 minutes or so and just give really an abridged version of that uh and i know the uh the hanover team uh thank you for waiting for us as we had our our students uh go first so we appreciate the your flexibility and allowing us to switch that uh that order um so with that without due let me pass it on to hanover team and i'll let you guys get started and provide us an overview of some of the findings great thank you dr merced am i coming clearly through can you all hear me great all right i'll share my screen in a minute i'd

051like to introduce you all to julie shannon field my colleague here at hanover my name is dr matt ragone i am a senior advisor here at hanover and uh i worked intimately with the data audit with a few of my colleagues here at hanover and i'll show my screen here make sure you guys can see this how does that look looks good great okay as dr marseille said this is a uh somewhat abbreviated version of uh the uh more extensive report that we gave a few weeks ago and where we are talking um really about uh the summarizing the equity audit that was conducted end of last year up till now the three parts of this audit will go over very quickly i think you all have the presentation that i'm sharing with you tonight

052you also have a the previous previous presentation so we'll go through this a little bit and i'll save some time at the end for for questions and answers um basically my job here at hanover is to lead the research in in whatever methodology we're doing my expertise are in qualitative research but i work with quantitative and survey teams to help put this analysis together my background's in in education i've spent 28 years in a in a high school in a high school setting here in one district in northern virginia uh and started working at hanover not too long ago and just briefly about hanover we we work all over the country we're a research firm based in arlington virginia um we do both higher ed and k12 [Music] research for over currently right now for

053about 300 different school school districts and have in the past worked with over 700 school districts across the nation we do a lot of different methodologies and most recently forgive me for speeding through this part because you probably don't want to see this but the a lot of the work right now is in uh dei you know trying to discover the district's equity conditions and that's what we tried to do here in three different studies and so this presentation is as i said a summary of those three those three research projects so basically we conducted a an equity audit um that included a data analysis uh and resulting dashboard uh diversity and equity and inclusion survey and focus groups these were conducted between december 20 and 21 and january 2022 and for the last couple

054of months we've been reporting out on on those on those topics the triangular triangu triangulation of the data in the mixed method study is vital to understanding the current equity condition of your district that's what we're really going for to understand the current equity condition the audit we conducted is based on four research questions that you see here what is the equitable access to academic programs equitable and welcoming learning environments for students and concurrently welcoming work environment for teachers and staff and finally any key practices and district leaderships that might consider that district leadership might consider to improve the equity climate so what we have here uh at the end are recommendations and i'm happy to answer questions about any of these studies if you feel i'm going too fast so basically the dashboard includes

055several ways this is the equity scorecard we collected student outcome data from 2015 to 2021. um you can see notable blips in data because of kovid well we see that in all over the all over the country when uh folks are collecting a student outcome data the dashboard that reports the data includes several different ways to visualize the data and i'll share some of those examples tonight some of the data points that we collected here enrollment data demographic data academic and behavioral outcome data and participation in enrollment data and you'll see some of some examples in a minute the diagnostic survey that we call the dei diagnostic was conducted in january with over over 2 000 students parents and staff participating that is an incredibly robust turnout for a survey like this we do these

056things all over the country and i can tell you that's pretty robust participation rate the results are displayed also in a separate dashboard where users can segment and filter the data to find out more clearly what different groups think about different ideas of diversity equity and inclusion and finally we conducted five focus groups that include students staff and parents to get more deeply at what people are thinking and feeling on on these important issues and that triangulation of data is really how we come to a lot of our key key findings and major themes that we're pulling out here um so what does all this research tell us a few slides ago i shared the four research questions so let's take a look at the first one so academic tracking so the what themes emerge

057when we examine equitable access to programs so there's three things academic tracking locks students in tracking is kind of a taboo word in education and has formally been eliminated from practice but it still exists as a concept in most district cultures so in most districts it exists as part of the the culture and and it makes it kind of hard to get rid of um it's that idea of a kid is where he is and he's going to stay there until you know he catches up but it's hard for him to catch up is kind of the idea that we're kind of fighting against almost you know so we also see the access to advanced course work as a major theme also a common theme across the country and uh barriers to to uh parent

058involvement is a is another major theme and how to increase parent involvement and give all parents opportunities to advocate for their students when they're so busy is certainly a difficult challenge for any community but those are the three that sort of bubble to the top sorry so let's look at these key findings about tracking grade three is when state standardized measures begin measuring or assessing academic proficiency and we see gaps between traditionally marginalized student groups and other groups just at that you know immediately at grade three reading proficiency is measured earlier in students lives through a variety of metrics mostly local metrics and as early as kindergarten we see gaps in reading and the data shows these gaps persist into later grades so reading according to the research is fundamental just like that old commercial

059and therefore it impacts other other subjects including math so very very important to try and get a hold of those gaps as early as you can get them now i want to show you what the data analysis portion of the audit looks like but i don't expect you to see everything on the screen i just want to give you a glimpse of how it's organized so when you do get to see it you'll you'll be oriented so this is what the dashboard looks like and what we see here are student groups along the top so different student groups by race by program participation and student outcomes on the left so the color-coded boxes represent over or under representation in student outcomes for each student group and i'll explain that a little bit later with uh

060some more specific examples and you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly but that's basically how it's laid out student groups across the top student outcomes across the uh the rows the the left axis the dashboard other the other tool in the dashboard this is what we call the side-by-side tool one of my favorite tools because you can really dig in to data and i get lost in the data a little bit in a good way this allows you to compare student groups or student outcomes and the user can use filters along each side to come up with a with a group or an outcome of interest so for example in this screen i selected math proficiency and i filtered it by black students and white students so i filtered white students on the right

061and black students on the left and got those outcomes again right now we're not interested in the actual outcomes i'm just orienting you to the to the slide and we'll get to some of these outcomes in a minute similarly here's another gap that i looked at so i filtered i cleared all the filters and then i filtered economically disadvantaged and compared to economic to not economically disadvantaged you can also compare economically disadvantaged to the entire group and get a different setting a different result rather so these are just sort of the tools that we have at our disposal to figure out which kids need which services so some of the key findings regarding regarding advanced coursework which is another theme that emerged our study finds that black hispanic economically disadvantaged and lep students are underrepresented

062in accessing the highest level of learning in other words we would expect black students for example because of their population the percentage of population of black students in the district to equal that that population in advanced levels of learning instead uh survey the the uh we see not enough enrollment in those advanced courses for black students in that example also survey participants mostly agree that teachers encourage students to take challenging courses it's a pretty high number 64 the question is is that enough and another question is is teacher encouragement the only factor in opening up these opportunities certainly teachers encouraging students to take classes is a huge opportunity gate but research also has a lot of theories on why gaps exist in creating opportunities so there's a lot more to learn about this phenomenon barriers

063to parent involvement are the third theme that emerged about access to academics basically we found that a good percentage of parents think the school works with parents to reduce barriers the focus groups pour this out as well the mixed method study here is important because the survey shows you one thing for example about one half or nearly half of parents perceive the schools as supporting students so about half see them as not supporting students but the focus groups tell us a little bit more about why they feel this way so it seems based on focus groups that simply accommodating working parents when scheduling events or just thinking about the time that you schedule event might have a really big impact on school support perceptions so that will make it to one of our recommendations that

064i'll share with you in a little bit so the second research question what are the major key findings that come out regarding efforts to provide equitable and welcoming learning environments for students three themes emerge here discipline how the district addresses cultural diversity and when bigoted behaviors appear what do we do so we see the status of equitable and welcoming environments most clearly in the scorecard the example i showed you earlier so i'm going to go into a little bit more detail so you can understand um the scorecard in a little bit uh deeper level so in in this part of the scorecard we show the early warning indicator um outcomes things like uh behavior you know did students have a disciplinary incident did they have a suspension did they fail a course those are by

065early warning indicators we're looking at things that we want to know about students at very early ages so they can have access to opportunities later in their academic career the green boxes you see here show student groups that are underrepresented in certain outcomes these outcomes are about behaviors mostly the orange boxes show student groups that are over represented in certain outcomes so just a little bit more detail about this representation index with any quality equity audit we want to understand the extent to which student groups are represented equitably in all the categories and student outcomes so a represent representation index compares the share of students who achieve an outcome say passing the state math assessment for example with that group's share of the student population in other words we expect those numbers to match just

066very very basically so for example if the black student population for any district is and their gifted classes are comprised of only 33 percent black students then we say that black students are underrepresented in that in that group you would expect them to be 60 so the example of underrepresentation is on the left side of your screen here the example of over representation is if black student population is only 33 and gifted classes are comprised of 60 black students then we say black students are overrepresented which isn't necessarily a bad thing um but it just shows you that there's a um there's they're exceeding the expectation so one example here so our data analysis team creates this index and it measures outcomes and compares that to the population of the student group so in this

067example hispanics students are four percent of your student population we would expect for that group student outcome uh for any uh of that student's uh group's outcome to be about four percent for everything our analysis however shows that hispanics um hispanic students make up eight percent of students who receive a suspension so in on this screen we're showing them as over represented in having a suspension sorry in another example sorry about that in another example students who are economically disadvantaged are over-represented in students who received a disciplinary incident so what do we say about this the the key findings regarding discipline really are about [Music] uh the the uh the coming together of these three research studies so for example 45 of students who received suspension were economically disadvantaged 34 were black these are over

068representations in our index in other words you don't have economically disadvantaged in your community and your black population is well below 34 because of the of the national trend it's important to look at other pieces of the mixed methods audit to fully understand the specific contextual factors within your district in other words the numbers that you're seeing here are not out of the norm you're like many other districts in in the nation and that's why it's important to use those other studies to kind of triangulate the information so for example the survey tells us that there's a discrepancy and perceptions on discipline between high schoolers and middle school and elementary school parents and students so in other words high schoolers and and their parents believe that discipline is in more inequitable at that level a

069middle school and high school middle school and elementary school students tend to tend to perceive discipline as equitable conversely and focus groups reveal the community thinks inconsistency in disciplinary action and consequences can be overcome by understanding cultural differences more deeply that's one thing that comes out in their comments and focus groups so let's look a little bit more closely about what people think about cultural diversity so participants share stories and focus groups of their experiences with cultural events and and have some criticisms of the way the district has handled events however it's really important to note here that the perception data requires uh a further study we hear stories but we want to look more deeply into um you know how how district has reacted to it uh what other other stories are out there

070there's lots of uh people have a lot of stories and you want to hear more about um about what's happening on on a real personal level um on this on this slide we show some examples cited with the focus groups again there it's not everything that's been happening in the district just a few examples that came up in the groups of of the challenges schools and districts face in promoting diversity and creating a welcoming environment also the the dei survey says that a majority of respondents say students are often or very often talk with students from different backgrounds which isn't great but there's evidence here that there's uh a feeling of tolerance or um really lack of fear about getting to know students that don't look like you which is encouraging because we don't always

071see that across the nation uh focus groups participants uh excuse me focus group participants stress also the importance of district leadership in promoting and celebrating diversity they can't do it without them they say they really want them to take the lead additionally we also find from focus groups that there's a perception that some behaviors go unchecked so specific examples here on the screen and focus groups note things like teacher and student behaviors and and how districts and schools can react or should react to incidents we also cite here a recommendation which is pretty common to establish consistent and unambiguous policies and consistently enforce them so the third research question what are major themes that exist or that emerge regarding the district's effort to provide equitable and welcoming work environments for staff staff issues that emerge

072are about preparation hesitancy and diversity promoting um the dei work is is also a national challenge in wallingford swath more focus groups tell us they want to see more consistent work in this in these areas they want to see professional learning opportunities uh and they have um they they also note that they have colleagues who have expertise in dei that should be called upon to help support this work they really want to see this internal and grassroots movement accessing the the internal resources that you have so approaches like professional learning opportunities are really mid-range and long-range solutions that have um really an important role in promoting dei changes in innovations vital to to make long term change more acutely however more immediately participants want to see teachers and leaders address the i issues as they

073arise firmly unambiguous unambiguously immediately the perception is rightly or wrongly it's still a perception is that we let things slide and letting things slide gives passive approval that we accept those behaviors that we're all trying to fight against and finally what what key practices should the district adopt to address the things that we found in the audit so the audit is designed to show the current equity condition right so what do we do about it um and and the condition is by no means um uh much different than than we see around the country but how do you address it certainly through professional learning certainly through strong leadership and and real structural change and we get these ideas from both the research and suggestions from focus groups as well so our recommendations include professional learning

074uh some of the high priority topics here that you see on your screen are common to professional learning um across the district across the nation that we see as really having meaningful and necessary action for promoting dei and kind of resetting the culture things like implicit bias training anti-racism training just knowing a little bit more about gender and sexual identity uh cultural responsive teaching things like that you see on your screen behavior management you know knowing the culture of students before you take action with behaviors and just kind of understanding where they're coming from and why they might be acting out is is really important scl and life skills are absolutely um vital and being used throughout the nation to address um because they kind of have spillover into equity and diversity and inclusion quite

075a bit if you're addressing students social and emotional leads and their life skills you also addressing equity conditions in some certain cases so nothing happens without district leadership support um and getting out in front of these issues is vital for district leaders uh but district leaders can't do it alone right so um there's uh there is not um uh that you know it's not a question of uh pointing fingers or blaming things it's just that community wants to see district uh leaders out in front um reacting against incidences leading and participating in training so not just mandating training but actually participating in training that's what staff want to see supporting staff who stand up courageously against incidents for example using internal human resources as as we had noted before you have some expert dei uh

076among your staff use them um and responding to this audit with actionable programs and and policies is is uh what people want to see and that again is based on uh focus group responses and it's also something in the in the research um you know research says that uh giving a survey or collecting the data is not is just one part of it reacting uh to the data that you get is vital to to seeing real change and then the final recommendation is uh there needs to be structural change so by this we're referring to creating teams maintaining the teams that you've already created hiring hiring specialists or training up specialists updating and expanding curriculum re-establish reset recommit to equitable equitable discipline policies and the enforcement of these policies there are um and this is

077the last recommendation i don't want to leave the presentation without really kind of noting this really important point there are a lot of positives in this audit it's probably very natural to focus on the negative because nobody's ever satisfied and we all want to improve in everything that we do so for one thing the community it's noted on this slide roundly applause applauds the equity audit everybody seems to be really excited about it in a good way they understand that district leaders are committed to improving the climate culture for all students that's really clear it's also really clear that this community is extremely passionate about this work i mean the survey numbers were incredible what people said in the focus focus groups um were really passionate um emotional and all that comes really really uh

078comes through very loud and clear in the focus groups and in the survey so there's a lot of huge positives that we don't normally see in the districts and we do this a lot around the nation so the passion is there so keep up the good work keep taking the pulse of your community keep engaging the research not just not just a description of what you're doing but engage the research in in how best to improve uh the equity conditions and you'll see these numbers go up and you'll feel it all over and in your halls so i'll end there and turn it over to questions or reactions i'm happy to [Music] go to any part of the presentation that you might want to go to and i'll stop sharing until um matt thank you

079so much um i'll open it up uh to to questions from board members but if i could i think what i'd like to just start with is um first of all there's there's obviously an enormous amount of information for us to be able to unpack as a district and as a board and as a community and that was obviously just a just a highlight of key points so we thank you for that but there's so much more work to do and to that point you know it it's it's a starting point on a journey and i just interested in your your feedback and what you've seen across the country in terms of i mean my personal perception is this is a journey that actually doesn't ever end um but you know what kinds of expectations

080should we be setting for ourselves and our community about the time frames in which one should um imagine to see actual results and evidence of what we do in in response to the findings yeah that's a really good question um and i would say it's it's it's based on a lot of different things i wish i could just give you a number like you want to increase you want to decrease the disciplinary gap that you're seeing by 10 next year 20 next year but really that's going to be based on a lot of different things first of all and probably most importantly based on your size and and the demographics of your of your district you have pretty low populations of certain groups so the expectation to move that needle is going to be different

081based on the size of the population so a strategic look at your current condition [Music] and setting goals is really going to be or should be in the districts i don't want to lecture to you or preach to you i'll just say what we see in districts that have been successful in this are those that take a strategic look at at their current condition and set midterm goals and long-term goals for each student group and each outcome and that takes a lot of pre-work you have to know what your staff is capable of you have to know what data you have and what data you don't have so that's one piece the other piece is really about mood passion culture of your district how prepared is your community for addressing this work are they really

082really energized in it and then if they are they can go quicker if you have convincing to do um like a lot of our districts do they have large and sometimes even larger populations like whole state you know where it's 50 50 that don't even want to talk about this then you then you have to approach it a different way and be a little bit more patient if your community is is universally um engaged in it and passionate about making a change then you can go a little bit faster i hope that helps i feel like i i feel like i dodged that question a little bit is there it was a little bit of a setup question probably um but no i i think it's it's really important for us to recognize like the

083last thing i wanted i want us clearly to to move and and to do important work with the information but i also want us to be thoughtful about how we do it and not um to the point actually one of the the comments in there was about not being reactive all the time um we we have been reactive uh that's you know thus far so um it's an opportunity to really sit back unpack that data and do this really thoughtfully and do it right um as opposed to just rushing in which is not to say that we won't rush in and look at all the data but um thoughtful and and measured and um strategic i think is really important um and we're lucky in some respects to have the education audit um coming up

084and we'll have we'll be able to triangulate results across a couple different really important audits that we're doing um help us to to see those hot spots if you will across the three different audits that we're undertaking so um i'll stop talking and turn it on to other board members who might want to ask some questions kevin hey scotty i had a man i just have a comment and a question my comment was regarding the focus groups you mentioned um how enthusiastic they were i i concur i i found i attended one as well and it was really uh engaging i thought was to use your word so that i thought they were really good those focus groups well they were very well done my question is um how big in your opinion i guess

085how big a factor is is it about staff teachers administration being worried about addressing the sensitive subjects and getting it wrong and so so to avoid that let's not do it at all right let's not say anything because i'm afraid if i i want to do the right thing i say it incentive insensitively or incorrectly and then i'm in trouble right can is that can you measure that you get the feeling we that we have that issue yeah can you measure that's a really good question and we didn't come across any of that we don't have any data on that um we didn't necessarily ask that specific question and it didn't come up naturally or organically in the focus groups but you know from experience you know having been a teacher for over 13 years

086that is absolutely what i was thinking about when when when i put myself in in the place of what teachers have to deal with now i mean absolutely i mean because you're afraid of doing more harm than good because you don't know what to say or how to do it not realizing that you do a lot of harm by not reacting so you know training teachers up and we we talked about this with the district this is this morning and it really kind of caught me by surprise that this is the one of the first times i'm realizing this when when teachers say that um i i don't want to set that kid up for failure um i don't want to challenge him because i don't want to set my kids up for failure i

087think really what teachers mean and i speak for myself what i was afraid of when i was teaching was i i was afraid of failing i wasn't afraid of the kid failing i was afraid of failing i didn't have the expertise to get that kid from point a to point z so that's a huge thing um that that we see all the time and and you know teachers god bless them i mean they they have a lot going on they're afraid of what might come out them if they don't react like they're supposed to react so that's what i based on my experience and and from talking with other districts i do think that's absolutely something that needs to be explored how do you measure that that's a really good question i think i think

088further focus groups or targeted focus groups with teachers and at different ability levels and teachers at different experience levels and at different levels and we really could get at uh those experiences and so i i would think a qualitative thing is the best way to do that because i i couldn't think of a of a data point to pull out to measure that i hope that helps other questions anyone else uh i i did i'll i'll ask one other question and this might be awfully specific but there was a uh finding about recognition i think of a lindis linguistic differences in ieps and i can't remember exactly which slide that was on is that i'm ringing a bell to any i was just curious about what that would even mean in the context of an

089iep and how how are linguistic differences factored into an iep and maybe that's it for the administration slide 3 30. let me pull it up here i'm not recalling that specific data point so let me put it up yeah it might be my my slide order might be a little bit different than the one that you printed but um this is what i am yeah it's um mad it's under cultural diversity summary key findings regarding cultural diversity all right is it this one um yes it's that one okay yeah that exact that example of ignoring linguistic differences in ieps and i was wondering what that might mean i wasn't sure look yeah that would be fine do we want him to go up to the mic doctor yes so we need you to go to

090the microphone it's very long distance from the table to the microphone the awkward so at first glance what i would say to that is that um for students um and their families whose primary language is not english we have an obligation to translate documents these documents are extensive we it it is a significant investment but it's also very very important that we translate them to the primary language we also have iep meetings where we have translation services at the table all right them now i understand thank you other questions from board members okay i think we're done dr marcy yeah i'd like to make a comment if i may um and thank you um matt and your team for helping put this together but more importantly helping us think through some possible next uh next

091steps um but i do want to say a couple of things about this preliminary reporting the full report that we will get very soon um and i'll piggyback a little bit with um [Music] miss walkman your statement with regards to um what are the expectations for moving the needle how prepared are we as a community i've been in multiple districts who have championed this work um individuals who believe they're champions of this work i've said this several times in multiple communications i've said it here and i continue to say everyone wants change until they're asked to change and the reality is um this district as well intended as it is with the wonderful individuals that are here with the wonderful staff and wonderful administrators wonderful students is this data um only confirmed what many have

092been sharing and though hanover is extremely reputable national international organization and um this team was very specific and making sure that we had one of the best to come in and do the work because we wanted to be unequivocally undeniably that this was not um some mom-pop shop who came in and just started throwing numbers together for individuals not ready to face the realities um we didn't get here from two years of data we did not get here from four years of data we didn't get here from eight years of that so um [Music] it is going to take some time but the concern is for those who continue to be marginalized and underserved how long shall we wait um well i'll share with what i shared with a community member um i have five

093years on my contract but tomorrow is not promised um [Music] i want to leave much better than i found it so the question that all of us need to ask is the pace of change what do you believe are non-negotiables is it acceptable that single-digit students are performing on a basic level assessment on uh first state standards we just showed the pssa uh results we have pssas coming up what's acceptable and what is a non-negotiable when you delineate non-negotiables you act very swiftly when you say it is unacceptable that half of your population who earn a grade of a dear f represent a significant number of underrepresented students meaning black or iep then you say that there are practices that have to stop if it's a non-negotiable then you don't have seven months to have

094a conversation about it and what i've said and i'll say this into this community which i reside not only work in but i reside in my daughters here is that there are some things is equivalent to if a house is on fire i don't want to have a meeting for the next 45 minutes to discuss what the 20 individuals are going to do about that fire while there are individuals possibly inside if not definitely items that you cherish and all as we discussed what we think what we should be doing what we want to do there's are certain non-negotiables that we need to determine that this as much as we thought was a good practice hurts a lot of children and those children historically are black iep and economically disadvantaged and the report shows unequivocally

095that those particular subgroups are over represented and all the factors that are bad and underrepresented and all the things that this district espouses that they want to be the best at so is it a non-negotiable for those in positions of authority those with the expertise to allow certain practices to continue as we try to galvanize individuals who may not see it the same way as a parent and i appreciate the social capital that i have but i didn't always have that because i didn't have parents who would have that level of advocacy so um i'm not necessarily concerned about mine i'm concerned about the others who don't have the same level of social capital the wherewithal the ability to engage in conversations in a room of educators that are well intended but sometimes when you

096walk in as a parent you feel extremely intimidated so parents have said i don't know what to say i don't know what to how to approach it i don't know if they're blaming me i'm trying my best i need some support so for me it is about um are you ready to do this work a lot of districts say they're ready to do this work they give it a lot of lip service until they realize i'm sorry what do you mean that we're going to have to detract all of our courses in order to give equity we mean we're going to remove some of these extremely bias prerequisites that continue to exist what do you mean we're gonna have to think differently about that fourth grade math placement that fifth grade class uh math placement

097right we're in course elections right now we're in placements right now and guess what the data is doing it's replicating the same thing for the next calendar school year so for me that's a non-negotiable but yeah but i don't believe in having to have 65 min meetings to discuss a non-negotiable that is an inequitable unfair practice that has been allowed to happen in this district for a dozen plus years enough is enough or it's not doing anymore for me those are the stance in which one push comes to shove as the superintendent as a board of school directors when are we going to draw a line in the sand this collective group and say there are some non-negotiables and this can continue and that's where we start but the reality is this for those who

098want the change now and i appreciate that it didn't happen yesterday and the type of shifts that are needed we're going to have to build structures for that but there are some things that we need to eradicate immediately and certain practices we need to say enough is enough because it's because all the data shows is inequitable and the other day i was talking to a colleague and i say why do we use the term historically underperforming children the state uses it i'm getting a lot of negative emails after i say this one i've been accustomed to them in my nine months so they don't do the same thing emotionally to me as they did before so when is it when we say historically underperforming adults right me included after years and years and years of

099gaps at some point you have different cohorts of children and you're still producing the same outcome when does it shift and as a classroom teacher and i apologize for those who who have shared the fact that they're afraid to have courageous conversations um i was never too afraid to have a courageous conversation with my students because i needed to meet them where they were and um i didn't take aside because i knew that's not my place inside the classroom what i did was help students navigate what they were feeling what they were expressing and that i feel your pain i see you i understand you the world's extremely difficult but in here in this moment in time we all love you and appreciate you and this is how we're going to show you that and

100we're going to try to make ways in which others see you outside of this particular classroom so no one should be afraid of loving and supporting their children and helping navigate through those conversations or you allowing your students to see their own identity inside your classroom regardless of nobody else is doing it regardless if some superintendent or some board is not acknowledging it in a meaningful way right i didn't know who my board of directors were when i was a classroom teacher in all due respect i really didn't care but i knew the needs of my children inside my classroom um but it also was balanced in the way in which they came in with their own identity and how i can support that and how my five sections of 22 children fully understood who

101i was and where i was and we have wonderful teachers who do that every single day right but the reality is it shouldn't be a luck of the draw and we need to be more consistent in the way that happens and that we remind ourselves that we're in the customer service business so this to me is par for the course from my last district the district i was before that the only difference about this is your willingness and your commitment in terms of what are non-negotiables i have them but that means absolutely nothing is as a collective group that we have them um so i am excited about the potential to shift this and if there is a silver lining and um and though i appreciate hanover's statement that there are some good things in

102here uh i've unpacked the data every which way till sunday with members of my team the story however we spin it is the same thing you have particular subgroups year after year after year after year after year after year after year who are performing the same way at some point it is about the system in the organization and the silver lining is that uh and i'm not doing this to get brownie points because i've given up on trying to get brownie points right when you're a superintendent just be who you are is that i firmly believe unequivocally that we have an outstanding in the nine months i've been here nothing has shifted the way in which at large we have an extraordinary staff who's ready to do this work and the number of children proportions

103of the population that we have to shift compared to other communities is extremely small and when we look at the data and we'll share it to you but if we if we share with you let me tell you how many students that represent not only in the entire district but if that's too large for you let me take it to the building level and if that's too large for you let me take it inside the classroom and then you're going to say that's extremely manageable and that's what we do one student at a time but it is going to require um if you want to move what are the non-negotiables and move those barriers out of the way many of the things we've talked about in terms of those um recommendations we're moving in that

104uh in that particular area so i challenge us as we continue this journey next month we're gonna on april uh six we're gonna have another conversation and we're gonna splice the data every which way till uh until sunday to share with you where we are as a district where we need to be and the support that it's everyone's responsibility in order for us to get there so at this point is really if it hasn't been about keeping your eye on the prize rolling up your sleeves and focusing on these particular recommendations and other recommendations that will be coming in late in the late spring uh with regards to that because we do have to triangulate the data so um as as much as it hurts my eyes to in my team's eyes look at some

105of these data points it is refreshing in terms of the potential to pivot to pivot that [Music] all right i think we know what our next steps are coming out of that we need to clearly identify those non-negotiables and as you said dr marseille figure out how we make that manageable i think your point is very well taken it is something that that student by student we can't address and i i do want to emphasize a few words that you used in in your comments around um student that it's not on how did you say that under historically underperforming students or our students can all perform at at an exceptional level they everyone can it's about giving them the opportunity to be able to do so and supporting them in that and one of the

106things that worried me um frankly when we first saw some of this data was how would i feel if i were the that student or i was that family member of that student looking at this data and aside from being pretty darn angry um you know am i now that that picture and it's not a picture of of under performance it's a picture of not a feeling to serve um and meet the needs and that's not i mean that in a in a collective way in a community way not just a not just the school but as a community because we as you said um very clearly this is going to take a full community effort to be able to to change so thank you for your remarks any further comments all right i think

107we can uh thank our our colleagues here from hanover research very much thank you for being with us this evening thanks for having us thanks for doing the work thank you thank you have a great night all right moving to our health and safety plan update yeah um thank you we um wanted to provide the board and give you an opportunity to speak to some of the conversations we continue to have with regards our health and safety plan [Music] as i said earlier uh though we are uh march 28th moving towards the end of the year there continues to be um different perspective with respects to that it looks like we may not have the health and safety plan uploaded onto the system so someone on that end of the table needs to send that

108to as soon as possible as i'm reading the room at least from my lens it seems like that may not be the case um if not then we will go off of uh the raw uh presentation uh which is only a number of slides uh do you have that in front of you miss uh sweeney or do you like i do not know i'm okay can you give miss sweeney a copy of the report so she can go and use that as a um as a reference um so what we wanted to share with you briefly in terms of where uh where we are as you know we've come a long way um there's still some roads to travel still receiving concerns about a going mass optional still receiving concerns about physical distancing however we're

109still receiving emails from parents who are saying okay enough is enough with respects to where we are um when are we going to remove the mask when are we going to remove other mitigation factors um not only in lunch rooms but in classrooms and almost every other setting well february 7th um the district the high school began um mass option since then uh subsequently uh two days later we had uh npe and then after that wes after that the middle uh the middle school and the last school which i have to tell you based on the numbers and we were looking at i was thinking well srs ever moved below uh two percent over a 14-day period uh they did that um and since then and it's only been what 10-12 days since that last

110since march 3rd um and we have some numbers to show you um where we've been as a district and we're happy to see that um but there are some conversations we've been having um you know we use the word off-ramping a lot um dr grande i'm looking at you as i'll do that because i remember a while back we were talking about are there other transitions and when do we begin thinking about that and members of the pandemic team which are made up once again um with uh mrs galepsy from the middle school nurse we have uh miss sweeney who is our lead covert nurse we have mary fegora who is our pandemic coordinator the district identified that we have our two directors of education who sit uh on that we have our two directors

111of student services who sit on that committee we have our hr director who sits on that committee we have our athletic director who sits on that committee and we have our director of operations who sits on that committee um every thursday we meet uh and we talk about um what we are learning from uh our neighbors what we're learning from health experts and we extrapolate that to what does that mean for the the district um so with that what i want to do is pass it over to uh mrs sweeney who is going to share a little bit about where we are and what we've been uh what we've been thinking okay so obviously um we just wanted to take a minute to look at our vision statement to go up a little bit and

112our mission statement and then we want to talk to you about the covet update and the health and safety plan areas that we are looking at for review but before we get started as dr marseille said um we wanted to look at the current district building incident rates if you want to tap up it's right there keep going up the wrong way go down right there you can see that we still remain below one percent um throughout the buildings and that is true as of today as well um we're holding very steady and very well um through the transition to mask optional and the district level incident rates since the beginning of the school year if we're looking at that is 10.22 but over the last two weeks we've only had 14 cases which seems

113like a lot but it's actually very low if you go back to the times when we had 14 a day so we're doing very very well and that is across all buildings if you look at the covet county check you can see that delaware county is still saying that we are in low transmission levels um and if you aren't aware of what each of that says the slide is here as well as the reference to the cdc site that cites where the community level um the next slide goes to us noting that again change is very difficult and that is where we are trying to decide how we want to make changes to what was the pre-pandemic lifestyle so we need to decide how we're going to move forward what is the safest way to

114move forward and that is what we've been looking at and discussing through the pandemic team also just as a side note the health department is still not open they are saying that they should be fully operational as of april 2nd so we look forward for any guidance they might provide but as of the current time frame we still are under the department of health the areas that we looked at for review were non-essential visitors assurance testing physical distancing and contact tracing non-essential visitors it's been brought to our attention that um several outside organizations and groups have requested use of our facilities and we've been putting them off through the pandemic as well as teachers requesting guest speakers and with the low incident rates throughout the community as well as our building incident rates we thought

115maybe this is a good time to look into those areas so we are in discussion about that assurance testing chop policy lab indicated that assurance testing is no longer necessary um during this time so what we're looking at with insurance testing is if if staff still wants to do it we wanted to make it available to them it is no longer mandatory but they do have the opportunity to come to the spencer house for the test to stay program and um we would provide an assurance testing at that location we are also looking at physical distancing physical distancing we want to see if that has any impact on the learning environment and if so is that a negative impact if we take it away is it a positive impact if we take it away so

116we're still in discussions with that before we make any decisions as well as contact tracing other of our surrounding districts have removed both the physical distancing aspect and the contact tracing to either no physical distancing or contact tracing just in the large group settings which would include the cafeteria and busing so we're trying to see if we want to look or move in that direction timelines for moving in that area would minimally be two weeks after spring break we want to look to see if any of the social gatherings or traveling or whatnot over spring break allows for any transmission spikes before we decide if we want to move as a community in a different direction [Music] do we have any questions kevin thanks mr sweeney quick question for you in your discussions um two

117areas i was just curious to know if you were talking about one uh field trips and i'm curious to know what your ideas are around field trips especially the elementary school level and also seating plans also at the elementary school level have they come up for discussion as well um first seating charts at this time as long as there's contact tracing you can't eliminate a seating chart i would have no way to contact trace sorry my my question was not phrased correctly uh seating in the cafeterias in elementary schools have you discussed that seating at the the elementary levels of the cafeteria has not changed either at this point but we will look into discussion but as they move towards the outside that would remain the same as during cove offering that option to outside

118seating is my understanding we're getting warmer we'll talk about different options as we move forward um but we are looking at maintaining the outdoor activity if the building principles would be interested in that to continue so the question has come up um by several community members with respects to [Music] why do we continue to have physical distancing um in our lunch space our physical distancing has not changed since we came back we have provided three feet to the greatest extent possible uh in our seating area many parents have shared most recently the last couple of days which i responded to that [Music] it is time to begin shifting in a different direction we do have the same way we have physical distancing as our classrooms that we've had since school started so there is a

119question about when are we going to pivot away from that and allow larger settings students to sit together there was conversation about the discrepancy between particular schools the reality is all the elementary schools follow the same you took a picture of a seating chart specific the cafeteria is identical to that all elementary schools the question is the high school it does look a little bit different it does implementation of anything looks a little bit different at the high school when it comes to that so when individuals speak to the social gatherings we've tried to say make sure you're physically distanced maybe we've given up on that fight to some extent trying to mitigate that but we've always tried to stick with that we are going to work to get three feet or to the greatest

120extent possible i remember in the fall there were questions about wanting to spread students out and many parents were not comfortable with just three feet and they wanted six feet um and moving everyone to six feet did not have the square footage that was needed so what did we do as a board um we authorized spending via esser dollars to buy tents to put outside and we spread that out um and when um mother nature um graces us we use that um obviously the winter season was a very different um and that was challenging for many families who wanted um much larger spacing um and now that we're in the not today though because today is totally different tomorrow maybe two um but when the opportunity presents we do that but the conversation um has

121been over the last couple weeks um um are is there room to begin thinking about shifting when would that be um uh having conversations with our colleagues who are right down the street who have decided to move away from those mitigation factors and we've asked you know how are things going what does that look like for you are you seeing any differences in that enough process and that's why we wanted to bring um this to your attention which was already scheduled four weeks ago we said we were going to bring the health and safety plan as a pandemic team to that so that's behind you then see there might be some other questions i'm sorry but what i understood though from the um the emails it wasn't just the distancing i think that people were

122getting concerned about at the elementary level it was that students were facing walls and not being allowed to even crane back and talk to somebody so it wasn't the distance it was the lack of being able to interact and actually who wants to sit there staring at a wall i don't know unable to move their head i don't know who's i think that was i don't know two emails i understand that but i think those are specific questions that need to be addressed by the principals um if that is actually happening then those parents can speak to the principles all of the tables if you've been to our lunchroom those eight foot tables um per um information we've been receiving from the beginning about facing in the same uh facing in the same direction as

123a mitigation uh strategy we've kept that um throughout that uh process um now the extent in which someone is sitting directly in front of a wall um i i can't speak to that if you look at the spacing if that is happening then we have our parents contact that particular principal but you've seen the square footage and the layout of each of our particular particular cafeterias and as far as field trips and as far as field trips we have um re-looked at the way that they are being addressed by the pandemic team we're looking for those trips that are overnight as well as those trips that have coveted restrictions on the opposite side for the venue that the individual will be going to so um those trips that do not need to come before the

124pandemic team have reverted to pre-pandemic approval process um most of all of the field trips that have been presented spring from the elementary levels have gone directly back to the principles there have not been any that have been turned down once we switched this procedure the only one that i'm aware of was one that was previously presented in the fall that did not have kovid covered um capability of what would happen once they were there should they return how that would be done safely they didn't have a plan for how to handle that and that was where they were having some dynamic issues there that is the only one that i'm aware of that was not able to be processed um so any variability among element elementary schools related to field trips is due to

125you know what each school is deciding to do that is very great my understanding is some of the um teachers at this point are looking into what is available and what is comfortable to take the children to so that's where they're still in the deciding factors or in the planning stages i think that perhaps they might have earlier rescinded the idea and now are we looking at those trips to see whether or not they're feasible and i did want to just take a moment to thank you and the entire team for um for truly threading the needle on this i mean we had districts that went ahead of us and districts that you know are came behind us but i thought that the team did this in a very thoughtful way and i think i

126expressed it to you uh you know a couple months ago that um i was worried about kind of a bumpy landing where we might have to go back and forth and who wants that and you know uh but but we didn't and um thankfully that just hasn't been the case um so i am i'm very happy about that i'm crossing my fingers that we can all make it through this next variant that is quickly encroaching um without having to go back to you know additional measures but i'm i'm hopeful the numbers look good still thanks so thank you very much thank you um one question i think if i'm not mistaken if in that the cdc just recently dropped their recommendation for contact tracing except in high-risk settings they mentioned um nursing facilities or i

127forget what the other they call it close congregate settings yes which would be where there are other districts surrounding us have looked taken that information and said okay that is your cafeterias and your busing but they're no longer doing classrooms got it okay thank you anything else i just also wanted to to thank you all um i know you take your lumps through all of this um many lumps um but you know i think that all in all um you know the changes that you've helped shepherd through uh we had a pretty pretty rocky omicron wave where i know many people were working overtime to to get us through that uh but we never had to close and kids got to come to school and uh i think uh you know we did a great

128job with trying to create continuity of education through what was a very challenging time period for all districts so we're at a different place now and i'm you know hopeful that we're able to continue to normalize things for kids i think we're really far in that process i think that um for a lot of kids school feels a lot like it used to um you know not a hundred percent of the way there but we will get there but again i want to thank you in particular but the entire administration for helping shepherd us through all of this [Music] thank you all right thank you very much all right um we will now move on into our agenda and so in board announcements i do not have any uh board announcements this evening and so

129that takes us to audience recognition and we'll begin with response to items for action on the agenda so this is the time where we give an opportunity for public comment for items that are on the agenda uh we will have time later for topics not on the agenda and as a reminder public comment is a time for district district residents and taxpayers to speak to the board about an issue that is before the board or may come before the board uh it's a time for us to listen and hear perspectives and experiences from our community and while we can't necessarily answer questions uh during the meeting there's always an opportunity for follow-up after meetings if there are specific questions is there anyone who would like to speak this evening on a topic that is on

130the agenda okay seeing none i'd also like to move um uh that we move up the time on the agenda for public comment for items that are not for action this evening uh given that we only have uh one community member here uh so uh is there another person oh i'm sorry i didn't see you over there um so i i think it would make sense for us to move move that up um so i'd like to make a motion to to adjust the agenda to move the um to move public comment on items not for action to now so i iso move yes second any yes any comments or questions okay uh all in favor aye any opposed okay all right um so at this time we have uh the opportunity for comments for

131items that are not on the agenda for action tonight is there anyone we'd like to speak okay and we'll um we will still recognize uh the three minute limit so we'll give you the the heads up if you could just stay here um and their street foods yes of course everyone hear me yes yes okay uh good evening school board and dr marseille i'm robert crystal of putnam boulevard in wallingford thanks for thank you mrs bachman for moving up the public comment uh dr marseille i know you have a lot of homework to do yes well i have had many reservations uh on the equity audit i want to thank dr marseille i think he made some really good points i've been listening i am going to take a look at the data later on

132i was originally opposed to the idea back in i think in september uh my while my time in my in the district is closing it'll be over in less than three months um i think i can provide some valuable data even though this valuable info even though the policies will not affect me i spent two years at mpe i spent three years at srs and i spent three years at the middle school and then i spent three and a half years at the high school last 12 years has been full of love and learning and i've received a lot of support please keep in mind it isn't all bleak as the hanover research team said i think we're ignoring some of the positives our district has that weren't mentioned i want to state that while

133yes we do need to quickly move on the non-negotiables we must not move too quickly because we could destabilize a system that has stood for decades that i think is worth for the most part pretty well uh i'm concerned that we'll we're going to end up adopting an affirmative action style system where we push certain students through just to check off a box or two and that wouldn't be right that wouldn't be fair to them it wouldn't be fair to everyone else according to hanover these problems in some students have exist from kindergarten that means they come to the district with these problems and that's not our fault failure to read on grade level especially in kindergarten in the first few years is not a failure of our district for the most part and i

134hate to say it's a failure of our parents i ask you to keep that in mind ultim if we want to discuss equity i'm deeply concerned about the lack of speed with the removal of restrictions we've been finally beginning to move faster with that every year every month and every day is critical in elementary school i remember being in the elementary school that was 10 years ago physical distancing contract tracing has to go the kids need to be able to interact once again i'm glad the form is fine the board's finally beginning to move faster on this uh seemingly now that would be equitable in the end i'll support this equity this equity audit has been great uh to quote president bush when he signed the ada i'm glad that the final that finally the

135shameful wall of exclusion will finally come tumbling down thank you and good night thank you mr christody and i i know we're coming to the uh nearing the end of your your uh career here in the district i don't know if we'll see you in the coming meetings but i wanted to simply um thank you for being a regular presence at our meetings and for having the courage to talk to us i know we don't always agree but i really respect that you have been here and a frequent voice um for students thank you uh any other comments this evening okay dr marcy yeah i'd like to make um a comment if i can follow in your footsteps and i think that um our students who are watching those who may not um can learn

136from mr cristolde as i have shared and you just shared and we've had not only public conversations but private conversations uh there are things where we find commonality right and things where we're like um water and oil right um but in that spirit of communication we've gotten to know each other and what i respect is his ability to be passionate about particular subjects and leveraging um his knowledge and his expertise and his courage to come to these particular meetings and i think that um not only can students learn from that but adults can learn from that right so there's this thing about advocacy um and i appreciate the advocacy here like when people come out not that i don't mind the more emails that i could possibly read all right and i keep telling this

137board you shouldn't pay a superintendent that much money to respond to emails it flies in the face in terms of what i began as a classroom teacher was be deeply connected instruction and teaching and learning right but i appreciate the ability to come to the meeting and i know it's difficult for a lot of individuals we heard that in the hanover report in terms of how do we make it more accessible how do we make it easier um i know that lilia and silvio marseille would not be coming jaini meetings uh two n two jobs right and even if they could they wouldn't understand the english anyway so they're not native english speakers but i go back to to mr cristaldi in terms of um the lesson that we can learn that our students can

138value uh from that experience and um and to come out here and share his perspectives and share with those who are leadership positions making decisions to have us think differently and agree or disagree no one walks out of here without thinking about the statements that were made and what does that mean for me so i want to echo what you said uh ms walkman and and and thank him for um his leadership and his advocacy uh and hoping that um we give that forum just like we did with gsa and others to come um but to come not just though i know um all the students have a lot of things to do at night but i i i love his resolve in terms of um quite honestly i've seen him hear more to some

139let me look in the camera to some of the parents who email me and express concern right i hear your voice via the ticket but i don't see you here i welcome that i want to put a name and a face to some of the communications i think that's okay to do that so thank you very much for being an example in terms of your advocacy right we will continue and so we're back to our next action for item on the agenda this evening which is the approval of the february 28 2022 regular business meeting can't talk tonight regular business meeting do i have a motion for approval of the meeting minutes so moved to grundy uh do i have a second second uh ms holbert thank you any uh any discussion okay um okay

140mr figure will you please take the wrong call from mr henry aye ms holbert hi mr cutis hi miss vote miss whitsett hi miss mikowski smith hi dr grandy aye ms walkman hi the minutes past eight to zero thank you all right we're going to move into board committee reports and i'm going to uh remind my colleagues that we're aiming for a little more brevity this evening than uh in some of our prior meetings while we appreciate the uh the completeness of the reports um there are opportunities of course for uh district uh families who might be watching to uh both look at our minutes that are published online and also we always invite you to attend our our robust conversation in our meetings uh but we'll begin with um education affairs and uh mr

141henry yes yes thank you yeah so you'll uh madam president you'll be happy that'll be very brief because uh the educational affairs committee that we held on march 2nd we discussed the findings of the equity audit that everyone just saw so i will not repeat all of that um but they they presented a very similar little bit longer presentation we had a very robust discussion amongst the committee members and the board members and the public that were there um which i thought was very good um and finally which i particularly appreciated was dr marseille dr jones dr martinkowski concluded with the presentation with uh next steps which was good for us to hear and i will echo dr marseille's plea in fact that's the right word for people to come to the next educational affairs

142meeting because it is important information we do have we do have a nice it's a more informal atmosphere and we can chat and we can talk about and answer questions in that kind of kind of thing so i uh encourage that so thank you mr henry uh facilities and finance is that uh mr putis thank you evening uh on march 16th uh we met in the middle school uh there's a combined uh committee that performs both for the facilities committee and the finance committee mr claude led the fund facilities commit committee committee meetings were committee meeting minutes were approved items discussed included operation accomplishments since the last meeting an update on implementation of security recommendations mr kombundi then briefed on the capital projects currently underway the high school secure entrances the swimming pool tool scoreboard

143replacement the wes partial roof replacement solar panel project you then discuss the proposed projects to include the trinity window and roof replacements the srs exterior structural crack repairs the srs electrical lighting controls integration the srs playground turn style installation the high school asphalt maintenance the high school auditorium light and sound controls the middle school um repair of auditorium sound controls the middle school access controls and the high school and middle school marquee signs mr cabandi also gave us an update on grants and rebates that he's been researching for various school improvement projects ms martin led the finance committee items discussed included a five-year budget and fund balance projections under two different scenarios act one index remaining at three point four percent and then with a 3.9 percent increase in personnel cost both projections were showing

144deficits a 10-year projection was also presented to show the restoration of the fund balance after the debt service winds down beginning in 2028. there was a discussion of potential areas that could be trimmed to help reduce the projected deficits including restructuring of debt the district currently has an aaa rating in the importance of maintaining a health healthy fund balance with stress ms martin then discussed the projected 2022-2023 budget noting that updates have narrowed the deficit by another 60 000 ms martin went over the remaining calendar dates for the budget planning process noting the board will receive detailed budget binders by april 1st lastly uh miss martin discuss items that would be on the march 28th board meeting agenda for approval including the spencer house lease bus lease and dciu budget items thank you mr cutis

145uh now an update on policy and uh miss whitkowski smith i think you're taking on yes okay yes uh on february 23rd uh 2022 the policy committee and members of the community were invited to meet in room b 226 in the middle school at 7 p.m in attendance of the committee where ms winkowski smith mrs walkman ms lentz uh administrative chairs for president where dr egg little dr sandberg our superintendent of schools dr marseille was there as well as their solicitor mr berman uh the minutes were approved three to nothing first for consideration was policy 239 concerning international students which had previously been approved to be submitted for consideration by the full board at a legislative meeting was revisited and revised to reflect minor changes in languages following these changes it was again approved to

146be submitted for a vote by the full board of directors at the next legislative meeting policy 239.1 was brought to the policy committee for a second time with a recommendation to be repealed mr berman and dr citarelli jones who was also president for the meeting to discuss relevant policies discussed why policy 239.1 was obsolete and no longer applies to current district practices it was recommended to advance it for a vote to repeal the next full legislative meeting policy 104 concerning equitable equal opportunity and non-discrimination in employment practice was brought to the policy committee for a second reading the committee agreed following its previous revisions made in the policy committee meeting in january to advance policy 104 to the full board of directors for approval at the next legislative meeting presentation of policies 108 concerning the

147adoption of textbooks and 109 concerning resource materials followed as a followed as the first reading and review of those policies by the committee significant revisions to both policies and discussion took place specific to the definition of textbooks and resource materials the criteria that ought to be used to select them and finally the procedure for complaints regarding their adoption following these suggested revisions the policy committee agreed to advance policies 108 and 109 to the next policy committee meeting for second readings finally the preparation for future consideration of a cell phone policy took place took place board chair mrs lentz discussed a rationale for such a policy as well as suggested a beginning point for consideration which included research of recent policies adopted in other districts as well as recommended guidance on behalf of the pennsylvania school

148board association regarding the school-based cell phone policy was agreed that mrs lentz would bring further resource materials for consideration to the next policy meeting the meeting adjourned and uh we are hoping for everyone to attend the next meeting which will be held on april 27th thank you would you like to continue then with a pennsylvania school board association um just a few highlights from pennsylvania school boards and the first one is really um in relationship to our state standardized testing and uh there is a they made a statement that pandemic related inconsistencies make comparison of the results between schools across districts or across school years improper and inaccurate so they made that statement psba acknowledges this month's release by the pa department of education of the 2021 statewide assessments results emphasizing that the impact of

149extensive pandemic-related disruptions makes use of the data to draw conclusions about the performance of school districts during the pandemic invalid and inappropriate pde secret deputy secretary for elementary and secondary education sherry smith said that given these circumstances the results should not be viewed as complete representative sample of all students in the commonwealth nor should a single assessment during an atypical school year be considered as true metric of student performance the assessment results appear in the future ready pa index while 2021 state assessment results may have some usefulness for evaluating academic impacts within a given school or school entity they should not be used to make generalized statements or determinations about the performance of public school students a more accurate picture of the pandemic's impact on learning is through diagnostic assessments administered locally by each child's

150school their second impact was on teacher and personnel shortage and uh the concern is that according to the u.s bureau of labor statistics there were 575 000 fewer local and state education employees in the u.s in october of 2021 than in february of 2020 so we're looking at a very short time that included a net loss of 65 000 public education workers between september and october of 2021 that's one month's time in the uh 2010 to 2011 academic year pennsylvania granted 21 045 new education certificates basically a state license that says the graduates qualified to teach by the 2019-2020 academic year that figure had dropped to just below 7 000. so teachers in the pipeline are scarce that drop wasn't fueled by the pandemic in the three years before covent arrived pennsylvania granted an average

151of 7 350 education certificates per year so we we have we're pretty low so the most uh difficult positions to staff are special education substitute teachers secondary math secondary science and speech therapists it's rather sobering yeah uh all right well continue uh do we have any wellness um advisory updates tonight april 26th is the next meeting okay at four o'clock okay thank you uh delaware county community college liaison i'm looking the wrong way miss oliver yeah i have a quick update last week as the dccc liaison i had the opportunity with four others to interview candidates for the dccc board of trustees which will soon have two openings we interviewed four candidates and chose two who are highly qualified and will bring their strengths to major decisions as dccc continues to move forward each individual

152sponsoring school board needs to affirm our choices so next month they will be bringing forward a resolution for the board to vote on thank you ms holbert uh delaware county intermediate unit update mr acutes at the board meeting on march 2nd the board members approved the dciu operations budget their special ed budget and service agreements and the dcts operations budget i'm happy to say that the uh the contribution from wildlife swarthmore school district has made has been fairly static for the past couple years so there's no there's generally no uh changes again for the coming school year all right thank you mr cudas and uh finally delaware county school board legislative uh council ms whitsett no update this evening okay thank you very much all right moving on then uh in personnel we have nine

153items for action and personnel are there any items on the list that anyone on the board would like to separate from the rest okay seeing none here we go in uh administrative uh positions we have the resignation of mary fagora assistant to the superintendent in certified staff we have the retirement of mr henry pearlberg music director and teacher at strathaven middle school whoops sorry we have uh miss the retirement of miss christine kimball-kelly world language teacher strathaven high school the retirement of jeffrey shaw instrumental music teacher at srs and retirement of cheryl hendershot in the art department at npe retirement of colette sabatina school psychologist at strathaven middle school the retirement of maria clump school psychologist at npe and the resignation of andrew carney special education teacher at the middle school in non-certified staff we

154have the retirement of carol pike nurse at npe the resignation of erica tyson administrative assistant at the high school the retirement of michael meyer bus driver in the transportation department the resignation of hanatoma instructional support at the high school part of me and the retirement of jacqueline dewitt dewitt instructional support at npe in appointments we have uh the the appointment of kelly caulfield part-time instructional support lunch time monitor at the middle school we have leave the approval of two leaves of absence as listed on the agenda we have the approval of the resignation of mary febora as board secretary effective april 28 2022 we have the approval of the payment of unused sick days for three retirees as stipulated we have the ratification of the contract for christopher high school high school uh chemistry teacher

155at the high school who is eligible for tenure has stipulated we have the approval of the 2021-22 spring athletic supplemental appointments is stipulated we have the approval of the 2021-2022 activity supplemental appointments as stipulated we have the approval of additions to the 2021-2022 requests as stipulated uh and all items in this section are as attached or described in the agenda do i have a motion uh do i have a second second uh miss this vote any discussion all right mrs burrow could you please take the real call miss holbert aye mr cutis bye miss vote hi miss whitsett miss mikowski smith aye dr crandy aye mr henry aye miss walkman personnel items pass eight to zero thank you uh moving to policies we have three policies uh for this evening paul we have two policies

156presented for adoption those are policy 104 equal opportunity and done non-discrimination in employment practices uh policy 108 textbooks and policy 109 curricular materials we also have for repeal we have one policy policy zero one one board governance standards uh code of conduct presented for repeal do i have in motion thank you miss wikowski smith and do i have a second second miss vote miss whitsett miss wakowski smith hi dr grandy aye mr henry hi miss holbert aye ms walkman hi policies pass eight to zero thank you uh in curriculum we have three items for action are there any items on the list anyone on the board would like to separate from the rest seeing none we have the approval of a recommended change to the 2021-2022 uh school calendar to observe the federal juneteenth holiday

157our mark monday june 20th the previously approved 2021-2022 calendar had monday june 20th as an in-service day for teachers we have the approval of the community of explorer summer program for elementary students currently in kindergarten through fourth grade as described in the agenda and as discussed here this evening funding for which will come from srarp grants and we have one category one overnight field trip for the 2021-22 school year as stipulated all items in the section are as attached as described in the agenda do i have a motion thank you mr judas uh and uh that was mr henry thank you uh uh in discussion um uh dr marcy i just would like to confirm in terms of the um 20 21 22 calendar no impact on on students at all um and to the

158extent there's an impact on uh on teachers it's simply that we're observing that day is rather an instead of an in-service day we're observing the 20th as a holiday yes it wasn't recognized on the on the calendar as published uh so as a result i i believe that the teachers normally would have a flex those last two days the 21st and the 22nd were flex days um but as a result of the recognition of the federal holiday we had to move that down so our staff were recognized 21st and 22nd as their flex days thank you any other discussion if not uh can you please miss vote hi chris what's up miss wikowski smith dr crandy hi mr henry aye ms holbert aye mr cutis aye ms walkman aye curriculum items pass eight to zero

159in student services we have four items for approval are there any items on the list anyone on the board would like to separate from the rest seeing none first we have 2021 2022 related service provider contracts the approval of the related service provider contracts for five students for the 2021-2022 school year we have the approval of a contract with effective school solutions for the 2022-2023 school year to provide district-wide tier 3 supports we have the approval of a 2021 extended school year contract for one student as stipulated and we have the approval of an education service agreement for one student as stipulated all items in this section are as attached or described in the agenda do i have a motion so move thank you ms wilkowski smith uh do i have a second second what

160is that mrs holbert thank you any discussion hey miss vagora can you take it please miss what's up miss mikowski smith hi dr grandy hi mr henry hi miss holbert hi mr cutis hi miss vote hi miss walkman student services items pass eight to zero thank you uh in finance we have 11 items for approval are there any items on the list anyone would like to separate okay uh first we have approval payments to vendors from february 19th 2022 through march 18th 2022 as stipulated we have acknowledgement of receipt of the february 2022 financial statements for funds 10 32 51 and 81 as stipulated we have the acknowledgment of receipt of the treasurer's report for february 2022 we have the approval of budget transfers as stipulated we have the approval of the delaware county intermediate

161unit general operating budget for the 2022-2023 school year as stipulated we have the approval of the delaware county intermediate unit special education funding and service agreement for the 2022-2023 school year as stipulated we have the approval of the delaware county area technical schools budget resolution for the 2022-2023 school year as stipulated we have the approval of the lease with dr strain and dr christie beginning june 1st 2022 as stipulated we have the approval of the lease of 11 buses from wolfington santonder as stipulated subject to review by the district solicitor we have approval of the contract with winstream to replace phone services for three years as stipulated we have the approval of the sale of two used copiers to ttr shipping for twenty three hundred dollars each all items in this section are as attached

162or as described in the agenda do i have a motion so move thank you mr dr grande uh a second uh miss what's up thank you uh any discussion oh mr gore can you please take the world cup miss walkowski smith hi dr crandy aye mr henry aye ms holbert hi mr cutis hi dr grant grande i'm sorry i crossed something slice and i crossed off doctor dr grandi i thought i voted you did i'm sorry i apologize and miss welcome hi it's late and uh our strange round robin way we do that yes dr grandi's in there twice sorry all right um takes us to old business do we have any old business this evening none do we have any new business this evening okay thank you then this meeting is adjourned