WSSD Board Meeting 10/12/20

001good evening i now call the october 12th meeting of the wallingford swarthmore school board to order in opening as you're willing enable 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 under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right thank you uh given that we have some board members uh participating remotely and some in person i would like to start by asking ms fagora to take the roll call mr board president as a housekeeping matter i note that i have received the executed oath of office properly administered and subscribed to by matthew sullivan on september 30th 2020. i will attach the executed oath form to the minutes of the meeting

002pursuant to sections 315 321 and 322 of the pennsylvania public school code mr sullivan has now fulfilled the requirements to be seated on the board thank you miss figura and welcome mr sullivan we're excited to to have you join the board and certainly thank you for stepping forward and serving the district uh welcome thank you i will do the roll call mr ballas here miss amino here dr downey here dr huff here mr cutis here mrs lentz here mr sullivan here mrs walkman here dr grandy here mr berman present dr palmer here miss patel here dr grandy you have nine voting members present thank you miss figura so just to mention the public in case in case you aren't aware from watching this some of us are in person again some of us are remote

003so you will see our meeting room here is as one tile here on the zoom presentation and then individuals participating remotely will show up as well in a separate tile moving on to board announcements for this evening i have no board announcements to make so that takes us to our student representatives report ms patel thank you srs received a 2 000 grant for the 2021 school year from the pennsylvania council on on the arts the award will help fund the african dance program at srs the srs pumpkin fest will be taking place on a friday october 16th from 3 p.m to 6 30 p.m ordered pumpkins will be available for pick up at the school here you'll be treated to pumpkin decorating handouts see special guests and participate in socially distant guessing games costumes are

004welcome and masks are required there will also be a food collection that same evening so start getting your non-perishable items ready to drop off the srs pumpkin fest is open to all srs families and we hope to see everyone there npe welcomed back students in grades three to five last week we would like to thank the npe pto for contributing a large welcome back students banner which was affixed to the side of our library all students have now arrived back at npe in their respective cohort assignments while there are many adjustments to make due to the social distancing guidelines the students are thrilled to see their teachers and classmates in person and regain the experience of learning in the physical building teachers at west were also excited to welcome back their k through 5 students

005in both cohort a and b this past week teachers took time to teach expectations on being safe responsible and respectable focusing on wearing masks and keeping six feet distance there though there were many adjustments teachers and students showed that they are resilient we look forward to staying safe and settling into the new learning model at the middle the middle school thanks the entire community at the school as the school has continued to transition pivot prepare and now offer in-person instruction the support of the parent community the willingness of students and the hard work of all of our teachers specialists instructional support staff lunch and consult lunch and custodial staff cleaning service and administrative support staff have truly helped accomplish a miraculous feat students should be also be sure to check out the reopening video on

006the school website at stratheven high school today marks the second first day of school for many cohort a students teachers and students alike were refreshed to have class in the classroom with cohort b and online students joining via zoom this week is spirit week and teachers and students should be sure to check out the strathaven student council instagram account or the school website to know what to wear each day today was jersey day but wednesday ditch day appears to be the st the day students are most excited about although this year is different and we may not all be in the same room together everyone can and should still participate college visits are continuing through throughout the next two weeks and juniors and seniors can register through naviance on wednesday october 14th is the psat

007for juniors parents and students can find more information on the haven website also on the 14th national honor society will have its induction ceremony via zoom to honor inducted students that's it thank you all right thank you miss patel and now we move on to the superintendent's report dr palmer thank you dr grandi it is so exciting to see our students back in school again today marks the return of our middle schoolers and our high schoolers and i don't know who was more excited our kids the parents or us and tonight's focus topic is our opening of school highlights part two where we'll be joined by four of our principals on friday i wrote to our community about our masking requirements and i mentioned masking before one of our prior meetings but i'd like to

008share details again as it's critically important that we all wear our masks properly our masks must meet the following criteria and you can look at the mass that i'm wearing now because it does meet the criteria it should fit snugly but comfortably and should not have any gaps around the side of the mask it should cover the nose and mouth and go under the chin it should be made of more than one layer of fabric it cannot have vents or openings and it cannot be a neck gaitor or a bandana and if individuals who meet the exemption criteria as identified by the pennsylvania department of health they're not required to wear masks but our teachers will work with our students to teach them about masking and to build up uh tolerance to wearing a mask

009if it's appropriate we'll also provide additional ppe for students that cannot wear a mask or for students that are near students who cannot wear a mask and i will point out that masks will be worn to and from lunch and they will only be removed when a student or a staff member is eating i also wrote you in that same message about mask breaks our students will be provided with opportunities for brief structured and safe mask breaks this is in accordance with pennsylvania department of education the cdc and the chester county health department the mask breaks will occur when students are not talking they are seated and they are at least six feet apart outside or inside teachers will develop clear expectations for how when and where students will be allowed to take their mask

010breaks at the elementary level the mask break will be between five and seven minutes and at the high school in the middle school five minutes though they can be a shorter time period if it is possible philosophically the reason we decided to allow the mask breaks was that we believed that if we didn't design a break that outlined specifically when where and for how long our students could take off their masks we thought students would be more likely to take off their masks in unsafe ways if you are a parent and you are uncomfortable with your child taking off their mask they don't have to take off their mask but for those who do need that break they can take off their mask in a structured way as i have just outlined on a third

011topic for tonight to share with you martha q our business administrator and i have spoken with you numerous times about our food service program the last time i spoke with you i shared that pennsylvania was granted a waiver to be able to offer free breakfasts and lunch to all kids 18 years of age and under and that waiver was granted until december 31st 2020 on this past friday we learned that the usda has now extended that program all the way through june 30th 2021 this means that all kids 18 years old and under can receive seven breakfasts seven lunches per week for free for the entire school year through june 30th this is a fantastic program if you'd like to learn more information about it you'll find it prominently featured on our website and finally

012a thank you to all who participated in our drive through flu shot clinic on saturday thank you to our community organizers my administrative and nurse colleagues and our partners cvs cvs sent us three pharmacists and at the end of the day our final flu shot count was 498 people the largest flu shot clinic cvs has done so far this year and to the members of our community thank you so much for joining us on saturday it was amazing to see the turnout for such an important community event thank you again and dr grandy that concludes my report tonight thank you dr palmer and um you know i'll just echo um a few things one is that um you know the district and uh extraordinary volunteers from within the district staff as well as the community

013really make that flu shot drive amazingly successful at the same time i want to personally thank dr palmer who was there all day long on saturday not directly vaccinating but but very much helping make that day as successful and to get 500 people vaccinated uh in just one day is a remarkable feat and hopefully will make a big difference over the winter months ahead and so just as a reminder to our community if you haven't been vaccinated please do so you know it's an important thing for everyone to do during this upcoming flu season to try to avert more public health challenges so that takes us to our focused topic of which we have won this evening related to school reopening and so i'll turn things back over to dr palmer as i'm getting ready

014to make my remarks for the focused topic it reminds me of how unusual this return to school really is for those watching at home and if you're used to seeing what our board meetings look like we are structured very differently in the room with our physical distancing and as i'm looking for my administrative colleagues everyone is spread out in the hallway we have four of our principals who are joining me tonight and it is unusual for us too and i will start with a story that i was questioning my ability to tell time today i wanted to run down into the middle school to see the cafeteria and i knew what time lunch was going to be so i ran down the back staircase and i wanted to catch the lunch before the kids left

015and i thought i don't hear anybody i must have the wrong time and then i remembered they're eating their lunch and it was quiet there was no sound because the masks were off everybody was eating lunch and it was almost surreal it was a very very unusual experience so i didn't know how to tell time i just didn't fully comprehend how quiet it would be when i went down to the lunchroom so without any further ado on my part i'd like to introduce angela tuck srs principal to start us off tonight good evening everyone good evening dr palmer good evening wallingford's baltimore school directors i appreciate this opportunity just to share with you some of the opening highlights from wes npe as well as srs this evening i'm going to share a few thoughts from

016srs and from mr gabe sabrich the principal of wallingford elementary school it was very exciting just seeing all of our students return to school for the past three weeks seeing the children's faces light up although they had their mask on we knew that there was a smile behind every mask they were happy to be back with us and we were happy to have them it is amazing how the date of march 12th has been etched into our memories that was the last day that we had school as usual so therefore when we opened up this year we missed our students and we were glad to see them return to school on october the 5th it's amazing how our students quickly adapted to our new normal they were high-fiving each other with it in the air

017they were hugging themselves because they could not reach out to their classmates but they were excited just to see one another and to realize that yes they are real and they saw their classmates on zoom however but seeing them in person really really uh the arab excitement was just unbelievable i can't even describe how that feeling that i felt as well as my teachers felt when we saw our students for the first time and we are using hand sanitizers that's something that all of our buildings have and i have props every classroom has a hand sanitizing pump just like this our students are instructed to use this hand side and sanitizer when they enter their classrooms and also when they exit the classrooms and also on the playgrounds we want to keep everyone safe and

018we realize that keeping everyone safe means keeping our hands washed we have lots of signs that tell us about washing the hands for 20 seconds or more and they these posters are all over the building as well as in the restroom so we want to keep this in front of our students and our staff so that we're safe and we also have our distancing signs we have our signs that remind everyone to stand six feet apart and our students especially at the elementary levels they stand on each one of the steps in order to keep themselves safe and also their classmates safe so social distancing is definitely something that our elementary students have definitely mastered at this time keeping their distance and they understand the importance of also wearing the mask and wearing the mask

019over the nose as well as over the mouth and to make sure that it is a tight fit but get a comfortable fit as well so we are learning how to adapt to our new unfortunately our new normal and this is something that our students desire to do each and every day and they have been very helpful they've been reminding their classmates reminding each and every one of the people that they come in contact with that we need to stay six feet apart our teachers are doing such a wonderful job they are learning how to they feel like new teachers as someone indicated because they have been teaching for many years but this is a new normal for them as far as trying to engage our students in the classrooms as well as on zoom

020so our teachers are really really putting a lot of pressure on themselves to be perfect and we're telling them all the principles are telling them you're doing a fabulous fabulous job and to please you we thank you just for your diligence and your excitement and your willingness to get better each and every day and we thank also our technology department just for helping our staff members just to become comfortable with zooming in the classroom as well as teaching and engaging students in front of them so i said that i would not speak very long but i also have lots of props so i'm going to share the speaker with or the podium with my next individual which is mr al heinlein principal of nether providence good evening everyone um first of all it's great to

021see all of you um after having so many board meetings uh virtually um it really is nice to see everyone um uh tonight so uh i'd like to start i have a few items just like doctor talk about what a day looks like and some of the things we've experienced in our now third week of cohort k-2 is in their third week already which is hard to believe so i just have a few items but before i get into them i just want to piggyback on some of the things that dr tuck said um the first is a heartfelt thank you to uh the communities they have been so supportive and that is not lost on the the principals the administrators across the district and our teachers i've had so many positive conversations um with

022the community just thanking the teachers for their hard work in the classroom the support of the board and the administration so i just want to say thank you to the community they really really have been very helpful and supportive of the work that we're doing which is very difficult work um we still have challenges and we still make mistakes but we're learning from them every day so we really appreciate the support um secondly i'd like to acknowledge and thank the teachers for their continued dedication to the students and their tireless efforts that they've displayed in this current reality if you had the opportunity if you could see the elementary teacher zooming with kids at home working with kids in front of them um it they are they are working at full capacity and giving everything

023they can to our kids so i'm very proud to see the work that the teachers are doing um i'd also like to thank some of the people that uh have really gone above and beyond as well which are which are the support staff including our bus drivers who have really made this transition very smooth for everybody um our support staff have jumped right in and they're responsible for many of the procedural areas arrival dismissal the cafeteria and without them it's a much more difficult task to keep kids safe so i'd like to acknowledge them as well tonight but getting into some of the specifics at least for npe um and also from mr savage um the most difficult um that i've seen so far i'll start with the biggest challenge which if you've ever been

024to an elementary cafeteria that is the hub of activity in the building that's where you really truly get a sense of the building and the different grade levels unfortunately in this reality we want students to be social we want them to to have that opportunity but it is difficult because they have to be safe and the kids have done a wonderful job students are oftentimes very resilient um in our cafeterias we all have eight foot tables with two students at each end um facing the same direction um the one thing is we're trying to get them up and out to recess as quickly as possible but uh the first lunch i went to was first grade and i had forgotten that that's the first lunch that they would ever have in the elementary school and

025it was very difficult i'm not going to lie it was difficult to see students just thinking this is what lunch is at the elementary school and it's so not but the students understand and keeping everyone safe is our is our priority so but that has been the biggest challenge from my vantage point um is the cafeteria um at recess uh some of the students we get a couple complaints um from students especially in the upper grades who have been able to kind of just have free reign for years but unfortunately right now we have to section off the playground into zones um and rotate so each student has an opportunity to go to all the different areas but um it's a new challenge it's a new challenge but um i saw some of the pictures

026on facebook of the mp kids at recess and they still look like they were having a great time out there so that was good to see uh drop off in the morning we've had great weather the last couple of weeks and a drop-off at npe we had a large percentage of walkers which was not unexpected it was great opportunity to talk to the parents get to see the kids as dr tuck said i don't think words can do it justice just how exciting it's been to get our kids back and to see the parents walking up from the community um afternoon pickup i know at least at west and npe uh when we had k to two two weeks ago it was actually fairly quiet and i think i got a little overconfident because the

027first day back for k to five and dr palmer was there that was probably the largest car line that i've ever seen at npe and we've had some long car lines before but we've changed some of the routines to adjust um so and it's been much smoother since i think we've carved off shaved off about eight minutes from that first day so we're doing pretty well but it is one of those new challenges less students are taking the bus we have more walkers which i think is great uh more bike riders which is great um and you know cars with with the bad weather today i anticipated a lot but it actually never materialized but that's been a challenge is adjusting to the various logistical parts of the school day um last thing i'd like

028to mention is is going back to the teachers uh today i just to give an example of what we're seeing when you go into a room they literally look like a dj booth i'm sorry it's what they look like you've got monitors you've got different setups but i went into a class today and i was just blown away as a second grade classroom and the teacher had on the document camera different sets of manipulatives and the one problem was for the students who were zooming in at home and the other was for the students in the classroom and i was only able to kind of duck in so i didn't see the whole thing which i wish i had the time to but it seemed like they were comparing their answers but to see the

029faces at home the use of the document camera and manipulatives um just kudos to the teachers it's it's been impressive uh to see their creativity um and their tireless efforts so as dr tuck said my last thing i'm going to mention i think we have about 180 of these 180 of these at least in the building so when the students arrive we do have enough we're not putting students in the gym in the cafeteria like we would used to we actually have room in the cohort model outside all the classrooms so so far everything has been going well not perfect you know this is still a work in progress and we look forward to receiving ongoing feedback and making changes but uh it's it's just been fantastic to see our students it really has so

030thank you to all of you for your ongoing support as well and i'm going to pass it off to mr king okay dr hilton and i didn't bring ours but yeah we had the same as the elementary school so you'll see them throughout the hallways but good evening everyone and thank you um i'm glad this is made of wood because i'm going to knock on it today um we just had a marvelous start to hybrid learning but i guess i shouldn't be real surprised by that because when you work with amazing people you tend to get amazing results and that was certainly evident today as it was when we started virtual learning as well um finally seeing the kids today that was a joy that um we've been waiting for for seven months it was

031a real boost to the collective energy of for my staff teachers although they were somewhat apprehensive at first um i know they left today feeling like we can do this and we're going to do it really well so that was that was really their final thoughts um a couple of things surprised me today in the middle school 7th and 8th graders who have been here i gave more directions to classrooms to 7th and 8th graders at the start of any school year and i'm thinking they haven't been here for seven months so they really have truly forgotten it was like they were in sixth grade again where their classrooms were so but it was cool to help the older kids because i am also the sixth grade administrator this year so i spent most of

032my day with the sixth graders and um it was just great to see them come in and see the middle school summer for the very first time and walk and get a tour of the building finally get a few orientation activities under their belt and um and to eat in a cafeteria which as al and angela mentioned was somewhat surreal because it's very different but we have a really you know we have a modified selection because of the situation we're in and they still love the food so you gotta love sixth graders right so wait till they see the real cafeteria where we have all the offerings they're gonna be on cloud nine um it's um although mostly everything went well um as you've heard tonight we're still struggling we're going to struggle with staffing

033it's going to be something that we have to keep a very close eye on we're very thin and as you know there's there aren't replacements out there for when our teachers if someone were to get sick um for any reason it's uh it's very thin so i have to thank my staff because when someone's out they're stepping up the cover classes above and beyond their their regular duty so it's um but they never disappoint me like that so it's just amazing what they're doing um again it was um i couldn't be more pleased i look so forward to meeting the cohort b students on thursday and our online students we have to remember i have to give them props because through all this they tend to feel a little left out because they're not in

034here and they're not hearing about all the stories but they will be so we have to make sure that we're making sure that they're seeing all the videos from school they're hearing all the news and that when the time is right for those families they come back in and um we can't wait for them to come back as well so um i know that um we mentioned a cafeteria in some of the classrooms the cafeteria is very quiet and i know dr palmer walked down today for seventh grade lunch which is typically very vibrant and she didn't know there was anyone in the cafeteria when she first walked in and we probably had 70 kids in there just leaving to go out to reset so it is very different i do anticipate that it will

035the noise level will pick up as they get a little more comfortable but inside the classrooms today the ones that i visited was nice to see that face-to-face interaction again you really we we got very caught up in the virtual world which was great because of the interactions that were going on very positive but when you do see it face to face it really it brings it all back home so that was a that was a great moment in my my day to see that those conversations happening in classrooms again that were sitting quiet for so long so so that's it from the middle school for now um i guess i'm gonna knock on wood tomorrow brings on another challenge but i know we'll we'll face it you know before we're talking about day by

036day we'll take each challenge i now call it moment by moment because it really does change that quickly and so we're looking forward to tomorrow and we'll have further updates for you as we go along thank you good evening this is always the most challenging part right here all right here we go um thank you it's a pleasure to be here um i was given a prop to bring in too i'm not sure which direction it goes this way you know we can use it lots of different ways they do come in handy on steps though students did a great job today following the directions on the steps so i just want to take a moment to echo what the other principles share with you we're really really excited that our students are back in

037the building um super appreciative of the community support that the teachers support your support i i think today went very very quickly um from you know from the first moment i got the school this morning i think around 6 30 it was 2 30 before i knew anything had happened our students were respectful i'd like to thank the student council representatives that were there today they came early they were posted in places in the building to try to help the freshmen the hardest thing to find was the gym because as you know if you've been in the high schools on the other side of the building so in the morning our freshmen and sophomores report to the gym we have socially distanced seating there to to house them and we have the juniors and seniors

038in the cafeteria because let's face it they usually come a little bit closer to the starting bell than the freshmen and sophomores that worked out real nicely this morning one small hurdle was all the chairs we set up on friday were disassembled and we had to put them back up but that was short work with a lot of great staff so um again it was great to have the students in no major traffic issues although george told me that it did back up on providence road i told him i didn't see a thing it looked great to me but but but honestly really not not an issue with traffic we were worried about whether or not we had to change the patterns and we didn't have to change any of the patterns which was nice

039so we'll see what the next cohort or the next day looks like because as you know tomorrow our students come in the afternoon so it'll be a different time of day and different traffic patterns we'll have to watch that we had great engagement with our kids today as i walked the halls during class there were very few students if any in the hallway they stayed in the classroom we've implemented a paperless hall pass system where they can use their phone to scan a qr reader and that'll log the student traffic in the building and where they're going during the day a few minor roadblocks a couple minor tech issues in some places thanks to aj and his team they were in the building most of the day troubleshooting where we needed to have adjustments made

040as of 7 45 this morning we only had about 196 196 families report on the symptom tracker we had 426 students expected to be in the building today um so that you know we're asking parents and families to do a little bit better job of getting that symptom tractor completed before they come to school and then the last piece i have here um this is as george mentioned staffing is going to be an issue for us eventually only a couple only three staff out today um we filled those from within the building but if we see an increase there we're going to have um to make some adjustments but over overall really good we're excited for tomorrow we have fifth block tomorrow so the students come in the afternoon they're going to stay we're asking

041students to stay for academic and music purposes um there won't be any basketball club unfortunately in the gym um i'm not sure i play center so they may not want to come in there anyway but um we're looking forward to keeping students past the you know the two periods of the day to get them in for fifth block it's a longer period of time i know it's not what everyone wants and there's a lot of people who want to just have half day there's a lot of people who want full day so hopefully the fifth block will be a nice uh compromise for most people so that's it from the high school and i'm sure there may be some some questions so they're still there don't forget about them great thank you all right uh

042is that everyone okay thank you uh i'm sure there's some questions so don't don't run off um and uh just to let our board members know who are participating remotely if you have a question feel free to put your your zoom hand up um i do want to actually start with um one question about um the kids who are at home and i guess this would be relevant um i guess at all of our buildings the kids who are at home that are in the at home on in their at-home day so their remote day how has that experience been of trying to teach kids both face to face and remotely at the same time and i realized like for the middle school in high school one day is probably not enough time to assess

043that but maybe at the elementary schools in particular like are we running into issues there is it i know it's a challenging thing to do for teachers and so just eager to hear how we think it's going and what kind of improvements we may need our teachers as mr heinlei indicated they have a multiple monitors and multiple computers that they're looking at so it's like a central command system that they're utilizing and they have from day one is a little shaky and then from where they are now they are definitely they have acquired that skill of being able to teach utilizing the technology as well as to ensure that the students at home are engaged so and that's something that our teachers are definitely working on each and every day because they're striving for perfection

044and they are they want the students at home to have the same meaningful experiences as the students that are in front of them so that's a challenge for them because they feel like they want to give 100 percent to both the children in the classroom as well as the children on the zoo so that's a struggle because they just want to do well and to make sure that all of our students are learning so they are mr hinley and i and mr savage we definitely give them uh lots of praise because they are doing it it is a challenge but they're doing it and they're doing it because they're dedicated educators and they're not going to settle until they do it right i'd like to add one item on to what dr tuck just said

045when i had the opportunity to go through the elementary schools and i was looking at the k2 teachers i saw some very masterful teaching looking at some very unusual computer setup configuration where everybody was and i had the opportunity to go in and say hello to the children in the classroom but also to say hello to the children who are on zoom the teachers were marvelous i've not had the opportunity to go in today my day was too wild and i hope to get into the secondary level and i can only anticipate even more creative um setups because they will have had a chance to talk to their elementary colleagues but what i saw was very masterful loved it and and just to piggyback this is just related to being remote and dr palmer maybe

046this is easiest for you to answer i'm not sure because if maybe it applies to all of our buildings i just want to be reminded getting back to this issue of um symptoms so if any um if any child has any symptoms whatsoever and needs to stay home no matter what day it is can if they're supposed to be face to face that day can they participate remotely as if they were in the at-home group it's very easy to answer you relative to the middle school and the high school for the elementary school there are pieces where they can come in remotely but in terms of some of the items that they might be missing because they are not feeling well then i believe our teachers at the elementary level but will be working individually

047with the parents in terms of what we're calling a toolkit that they will be able to provide supplemental instruction for those children not quite as seamless at the elementary level as it is at the secondary but we want the kids to participate we don't want them to be home because they're say on quarantine we want to bring them into the classrooms remotely so it's not an absent day like if uh if a child is sick one morning but um like they're able to participate in education that day they just it's best for them to stay home because they have symptoms yes absolutely at school absolutely we want you to stay home and if you're not sure we want you to contact the school nurse and stay home but yes we it i don't remember the

048code we are using i don't remember if it's like a quarantine absence but it is a different type of excused absence okay all right thank you um i see marilyn has her hand up uh in zoom so marilyn let's see if we can hear you can you hear me yes okay so um i wanted to piggyback on something that uh principal hilden mentioned about the symptom tracker and what happens when students get to the building if they have not completed the symptom tracker what happens then sure it's actually quite a little bit of a process so we have to pull the people off a symptom tracker that have completed it we have to justify that against the students who are in in the building um utilizing the teacher attendance and then we have to call

049the students down to the nurse's office and ask them the questions that are in symptom tracker and take their temperature and then return them to class it takes quite a bit of time and today we weren't even able to get through all the children there were that many children that had not completed it so we really need to encourage our families to be diligent with the symptom tracker in order to give our teachers and staff the time to focus on the educational mission of the schools um okay and and for the symptom tracker are are the students supposed to do that every day or just the days they're going to be in the building uh for us at the high school the days they're in the building okay um all right and i had one

050other question this is for this is not specifically for the high school but it's a more general question on um what how many students at each level are in the online academy and has that changed so at the high school it has changed we've seen a flurry of people jumping in and out of the cohort and the online up until today currently we have 386 students scheduled for the online academy that is up from what it was when we did the original survey back in august it was about 326. um so it's it's up quite a bit okay and at the middle school we've had more students go online back into cohort but it hasn't been that significant we're still running it generally about 100 students per grade level in the online academy and like

051i said that has just changed um just a little bit from the cohort online as before so okay thank you and mr sapp mr savage would know the exact number but i think we're coming in um somewhere around 520 students i believe in the elementary online academy and and what's what's the total number just in the elementary the total the total for the online academy is around 520. give or take i'm just the total number of students overall oh um i'm estimating about 1600 okay okay all right thank you a couple follow-up questions yeah absolutely so um dr hilton you mentioned that you want the symptom tractor done for days that the students will be in the building what about days where the cohort a students are coming for band or other activities after school

052shouldn't they be doing it those days as well right so any day a student would be in our building they should do the symptom tracker but because of the cohort model and fit block the students who are not assigned the cohort that day they're attending fifth block virtually right yeah and i'm just thinking of like the optional band practices on friday so those would follow the the approved safety protocol that was implemented through the summer through the sports program in the extracurricular program okay and on the checklist it has on campus for any reason so if they're going to be able to be even if it's for an hour okay and then the other concern i had is just you know your your comment that half the kids today hadn't done it is obviously gives

053me great pause in the traditional model if you forgot to submit that your kid was going to be absent that day you got a follow-up phone call can't we implement that for this does anybody want to take that or would you like me to take it we do send out the first notification to the parents and i believe it goes out shortly after midnight if we have not heard from the parent we do send a reminder in the morning before school starts so we try to get you two times before your child comes on campus oh via email though via email and we are actually looking at would it improve our compliance or participation if we do it via text that's one of the things we're looking at gina ross is not here this evening

054but she leads that piece with the nurses and we're trying to see will our compliance go up because we are reminding people or will it make sense to have us do a text what we can't do is email first and then send a reminder text it has to be all email or all text but we're we're on the cusp of would it make more sense if we text i will add as of when we started pulling children out you know as they do they text home and and and what not to let their parents know so at 11 o'clock which was after dismissal 300 students who were in today had completed the symptom tractor so you know that you know i do think the message will get out for sure thank you i mean yeah

055i'm on let me go to kelly and then we'll go just just to stay with the symptom tracker of conversation for a minute um one thing it may be easiest and i put this out here for consideration if regardless of whether you're going to come into the building for the day fill the thing out so you don't forget day to day as long as that doesn't cause problems because i know when i go into it it's asking me are they coming in today or not and if i say no i'm done and it just says done um and i i'm a big you know believer in the the routine and maybe that's easier as a parent to do it that way um the other oh shoot i forgot what the other thing was oh um

056i have heard folks saying they didn't think they're getting the emails and so would encourage anybody that thinks they're not getting the emails to either check right now check your spam folder and if you're not getting them you need to contact the district because it means the uh email we have for you in our system is not the one you're apparently using and we would have to change that in the uh in our whatever we call that system powerschool in powerschool so uh yeah it'll get better i'm sure but thank you jen thank you dr grandy so um also staying on the same subject when they get the first notification at around midnight i think you said what's the thought behind that one i'm curious because how far in advance of their child coming to

057school are they able to fill that symptom checker out we actually started around eight o'clock the night before because we thought that made sense when parents were putting children to bed for the little ones we would try to give them that opportunity it turned out to be a problem for us to cross over days so we could have it as early as like 1201 we have to have it on the day the child's coming to school but our preference would have been eight o'clock the night before okay so pretty much if there's a parent up they can fill it out but we need to catch her before the child comes in and dr comrades really helped our families um because many of them wake up at three or four to go to work so they

058fill it out then so the midnight email goes out and if they don't respond you get one at six and if you don't respond to that you get one at seven then it ends there but we had we've had good feedback about that midnight one because i thought about that too like why midnight but it's for those folks who get up before six and have to fill it out okay thank you that that helps to understand and um for for dr i guess the first question would be for um uh george king are these qr readers that also used with the kids phones in the middle school when they're in the hallways okay so then if a child doesn't have a smartphone what is their recourse microphone my apologies mr training the same code the

059google form where the data goes the code for that google form has been sent to the teachers and it's on their all of their teachers google classroom pages so in theory if they have their chromebook with them they could also access it that way okay so no one who doesn't have a child with a smartphone or wants to send their child to school without a smartphone should feel persuaded to do otherwise okay and i know that um analyzing lunch has been a big thing for how and when and what duration we can get the high schoolers back into school is that something that's still being examined whether i know that you were examining it pretty closely over the past couple of weeks and i'm just wondering if that's still a live wire so so today

060our focus was on the first day of school right but but yes so um we still have some traditional roadblocks that we have not been able to figure out um at one point we thought it may hinge on the number of students in the online academy my concern continues to be the ability to provide available seating for everyone if they chose to come back to school i fully anticipate based on the fluctuation of numbers that we've seen in the last couple weeks that if we were were to have a full day of school people would change their choice about whether or not they would be in or not in that case we would be pushed into a position where we couldn't physically accommodate the other issue with transportation issue so in order to get our

061elementary students out the door and our teachers done at the end of their contractual day at the elementary we have to back our schedule up because not in addition to the traditional bus runs there's now sanitate sanitation or sanitization how am i saying that correctly on the bus in between each run so that pushes our day back well if you're going to do lunch at the high school there's a minimum amount of time that you need because of the teacher's contractual lunch which is 45 minutes so if you do that you have to take that instructional time off the other three classes now you have a disparity in instructional links between block one two and four versus block three and you may have a student in block one with the same class that i haven't

062bought three and have two completely different instructional experiences so this those are some of the hurdles that we're we're trying to figure out but we're still working on okay all right thank you that's that's that's helpful [Music] thank you i don't have any other questions thanks so i just wanted to piggyback a little bit there and ask the question let me let me preface this by saying i'm a big believer in um taking steps here right so today was first day in our for our secondary students for many of our elementary s students it's like week two some it's week three um and and i know implementing all these things is an enormous challenge um but i do wanna ask the question you know at some point do we need to re-look at wednesday across

063all three levels about how we're using that time and is that a is that another piece of the puzzle that we will keep iterating over again my question is not like do you do you have a solution or a new idea about wednesdays but is that in the same way i think jen was asking is that sort of on the table for discussion and i can only speak for the high school but i i can tell you um watching people anticipate the beginning of the year and not knowing what mood we would be in i saw one wave of emotion students parents staff then as we made the decision to go virtual and everyone settled into that i felt like we got into a nice rhythm where we could really start to evaluate that virtual

064system i feel like now that we're in hybrid if we have a few weeks in the hybrid and we get things moving in a respectable manner i do think we would have the opportunity to take a step back and see where what how we're utilizing our time do we still need the same amount of professional development or the clubs that we have at least at the high school running on wednesdays operating at full capacity is there other opportunities to put them in different times of the day you know you really looking at when people are accessing the things that they need to access would certainly help us make a decision about lysis yeah how about the other levels um yes at the middle school we um we're constantly studying wednesdays because we had we received

065some concerns initially about either too much work or not enough so we've worked real hard to find that sweet spot to give the kids meaningful work and and yet get away from some screen time it is as it is a day for students to have that opportunity to do that as well our clubs our ieps gips all our meetings are scheduled on those days so they are vibrant in that respect um but with anything i think really the silver lining is that we do have to continue to study every day of the week and wednesdays certainly being one of them and um i feel the way that dr hillen does right now for equity in our clubs wednesdays work because i can't run the same clubs monday tuesday as i could thursday friday for the

066other cohorts so that's that's been a nice feature of that day um so yeah but everything is always up for review so yeah and i think from the elementary perspective because we're only one week in i think we're learning as we go having the first wednesday though i can say that um one of the structural changes at the elementary level was a shortening of specials so the elementary teachers actually have less time without students on the other four days um as i said everything is always up to be reevaluated but i will tell you for being in meetings on wednesday the elementary teachers are doing a lot on that wednesday currently um they are without students 40 minutes a day on those other four days and the teachers have brought forth the solution of the

067zoom in the classroom so they're certainly looking for ways to engage students but um only one week in my my and i'm just speaking for me at the moment but um my first impression is we have to get our legs underneath us before any kind of conversation at least from my opinion because the teachers are packing um all types of different meetings department meetings into that one day and that's not to mention the cleaning of the facility as well so as i said obviously as we go on things will evolve but one weekend it was definitely needed for the teachers i will say that i agree with mr heinley that the wednesdays are very beneficial to our students and to because they have an opportunity to be released from a zoom they have that break

068from the screens but most importantly for their teachers to prepare adequately for the in-school in-person lessons as well as lessons on zoom they collaborate i must admit this past wednesday we had meetings from eight o'clock until four o'clock they're utilizing that time just to prepare themselves to teach and they want to do an excellent job and to give our children the best that they can do or have every day great thank you um and then i promise i think this is my last question um this is for dr hilden i understand there was at least one of our sports teams that was impacted by by covet case and i want to understand what happens in that case when we find out and what our interactions are with the with the chester county health department sure

069um thank you for asking that question i know it's on a lot of people's minds um there's really one of two ways that we can be made aware of a situation one would be for the chester county health department to contact us and one would be for a family to reach out and contact us what's making this situation difficult is there's a lag time between when a student or staff or whomever may be tested get the result it gets to the chosen county health department and then they would notify us so more often than not it's actually the the person who has tested positive or has been around someone who has tested positive that has reached out to us first that has been very helpful and and i appreciate our community being that communicative with

070us when they certainly don't have to be in that case in those cases when we're made aware by someone other than the health department the first thing we do is call the health department to let them know that we've been made aware they often will check their records they'll verify the the veracity of the report to us and then we'll take guidance from them about what the next step is in in the most recent situation their guidance was to deliver a pre-formatted letter that they made that has my signature on it to these families we felt as though that wasn't sufficient enough for communication especially when it was hitting a weekend this happened friday afternoon so i instructed we had a scripted message that we called all the members of that team to let them

071know to expect contact from the health department unfortunately the health department is backlogged at the moment and speaking with them this morning they had hundreds of calls backlogged over the weekend so they did not actually reach out to to our students and parents this weekend another issue is we ran into a few cases where voicemails were full or there were no answers and despite repeated attempts we weren't able to get through to everyone but we were able to send a letter all right along with the message to all of the members of that team so i do believe the health department today has been in contact with all those members of the team but it does make it tricky to to your question because it's over a weekend um had that person or people not

072come forward then we might not have known until today from the health department after everyone was in school yeah and you know i guess i would um say a couple of things one is um a first a an enormous thank you to the family who contacted the district um because i think uh a common scenario that will play out is that somebody goes to get tested by by their personal health care provider and those lab results will come to the family before they go to the health department and certainly before we would then be made aware of it so um speeding up that process i think is incredibly important to keeping our our students and families safe and so you know i would just express my my gratitude to the family who contacted us and

073asked that all families who ever have any concern whatsoever back to our our symptom discussion about sick children but certainly in the case of a confirmed covet case either of a student directly or someone in their household or someone who they have a high degree of contact with i think is going to be very important for keeping our buildings open and keeping our schools safe and i think certainly our nurses are an extraordinary resource that i i want to encourage all of our parents to feel comfortable contacting and communicating with about any kind of health related questions it's the kind of thing i think that if anyone's unsure if they should be calling then they should be calling um i think is a good way to to think about that and then certainly you know

074keeping kids home um when instructed or keeping kids home when there's any concern whatsoever i think is going to be critically important so you know again i would just echo that message to our community um i don't see any other questions but i just want to to end by expressing an enormous thank you um to all of all of you our administrators uh to dr palmer and certainly to all the staff in the district oh jen you're gonna have another question okay well we'll come back to that um but i know um the the number of things that have had to be stood up for the first time uh and be implemented in in a very brief period of time like outside of a pandemic we would never imagine implementing so many changes for anything

075uh in such a short amount of time and i know for our teachers all of our staff it's an it's a very heavy lift but it's something that i think uh our our kids need uh and it's really important to to educating in our community so i'm going to flip it over to jen it sounds like you have another question sorry about that thanks dr grandin um just just echoing what you're saying the symptom tracker is important obviously really we've all fought really hard to get these kids back into even the hybrid mode and everyone's fought really hard in their own way and the teachers continue to fight hard the administration and um keeping the kids safe is important the ripples of also not keeping your kid home is something that parents should and families

076need to think about as well because shutting down the school is one thing but the ripples of other people's health implications if you're not keeping those children that you suspect to be sick at home we cannot foresee them so all of these do take a very communal effort which i think is what you're hammering home not only to stay in school but also to keep everyone functioning well as they should my question actually goes back a little bit it's a bit of a fish out of water question but it's going to be that here it's going to be that in new business so i think it's more appropriate that i bring it up here a couple meetings ago we talked about trying to return the youngest students to school at some point for a i'm

077going to say five days maybe it was actually a four-day goal because right now we still have the feeling that we need those wednesdays at the elementary level but i'm wondering if that is also still being examined again i know that it's been just the beginning so i don't mean to overlook that or poo poo that in any way but is that something that's still being looked at across the board at the elementary schools getting the youngest learners back in because you know if we can keep examining these lunch and transportation challenges if we can keep examining the kindergartners coming in every hour i think that we can keep these young kids and when i say young kids i mean up to 18 19 off of screens is a win it's a real win um

078so i'm wondering what is happening um for for the youngest learners if something's happening for them i think dr palmer will take that mrs lance i can mention that because that came up during one of my meetings with the chester county department of health and i believe dr brennan was also on the call that day and for all of us it is so hard to not just get caught in the moment with everything that we're doing but we're already there where you're what will it take for us to look at five days four days bring them all in and not be looking at cohort a or cohort b and it really is going to be what our community numbers are where we're in the three percent we're going to have to be in the low

079ones and that was a oh it was definitely a sigh with all of us talking about that with our numbers while they are lower than what they would have been when we were looking you know early on or in the summer and they're better they're not where they need to be where they can relax the six foot distancing and that's the critical component for us if it can get less than six foot then we can definitely talk about bringing in more than one cohort but as long as everyone is holding to that six foot distancing we can't do it that's the sticking point for us it's not the kids wearing the masks we could bring them all in with the mask but we can't handle the six foot distancing the best we can do is

080four to four and a half feet okay so we need we know that number has to come down based on that conversation so i guess that um that type of percentage that one percent seems a bit unrealistic to me i'm not in the medical profession or public health profession but i don't foresee that being something that occurs this year so i guess knowing that that is possibly unrealistic is there a way i guess when i think of examining it again for like kindergarteners or first graders i think of repurposing spaces not community spaces but spaces that are also ours within our schools hallways i don't know how much use the auditorium is getting right now and things like that again i'm not asking for the answers today but i'm wondering if outside of hoping to

081see a one percent which i think is probably just a hope is that still on the table because the youngest learners it's hard i don't disagree with you if there are options that we can do at any of our levels not just at kindergarten if there are options that we can make our program better or we can move it forward we certainly will i'm still meeting with the county group the county planning group as well as the superintendents once a week so we all share the same thing it's not unique to us we'd all really like our youngest learners in more and if we could have found a way to do it now we would have but i think we're constantly looking for ways to can we improve it we also made the comment and

082that collective sigh at the one percent as well yeah it was like oh really oh that seemed like so far away from where we are today that it was i mean it was really a an audible pause when she said it but i understood where she was coming from but then we did focus on at what point would it move beyond that six foot and i think a lot has to do with what will be the progress of a vaccine what will be the connection of coronavirus and the flu will that be an issue there's also a rapid antigen test might that be something else that we're looking at and it really is moment to moment so if there are opportunities for us to change we certainly will look at it i'm not looking forward

083to say well we're not going to do anything until a particular point in time okay mine is as soon as i'm getting more information i'm sharing in fact i think it's information overload for all of us there is so much back and forth on the information and i'm going to mention one piece relative to that rapid antigen test i was literally on a call i want to say i think it was thursday on a call and by monday when we got on the call the information had already changed so it is really the change of thinking based on information that comes out new studies new um like in that case new tests so i don't know what i don't know yet right okay thank you all right well thank you for joining us all right

084um i guess jen i would just also mention that i think one other piece of the puzzle that could change how we think about things is if we start to get good evidence emerging from other schools around the country because certainly there's a lot of variation in how kids are being brought back to school in different states around the country and you know sadly there hasn't been a lot of um national effort to study um you know what's what mitigation measures are uh highest value and so there was this you know big debate early on about three for three feet versus six feet and you know i think that there's a lot of concern with indoor transmission that six feet is for now at least the you know based on the best evidence like what

085we have to go on but you know cova 19 is a new a new disease and so you know it's my hope that we start to see some solid scientific evidence from states that have frankly been you know more lacks and and how they brought students back and find out maybe you know it could be the case that the youngest kids you know have a lower risk of transmission and it could be the case that you know they could be brought back at something closer than six feet and get them back in the buildings uh unfortunately i think we don't have that evidence yet but i hope i hope the science catches up and and helps us make that decision and even not even having to go across the country but i know that there

086are two schools you know within i'm going to put a guess on 20 miles of us right now that are moving with that six foot standard i'm not sitting here necessarily today and saying that we should move with that but what i am wondering if there's a way again in keeping those six feet and keeping the socially distant um markings exactly where they are on the floors to get uh more of the younger kids in again taking spaces that we wouldn't normally think would hold kids and rethinking them just like we've had to rethink everything again it feels exhausting on everything that's happened i completely understand that but i want to make sure it's still on the table i guess that's that's my main concern is that i think it's great where we've gone to

087but um i hope that it's it's a constant re-examination i hope it's a constant evolution assuming things stay in a good place yeah i agree thank you all right all right um so that takes us to uh the place on the agenda for audience recognition for response to items for action on the agenda um this is the time when we take comments from the audience for items on the agenda for now we have two methods for comment uh one is in person and one is by phone message for members of the public wishing to address the board in person we have created overflow space for this meeting if needed to maintain adequate social distancing as we will with future in-person meetings and when it's time to speak audience members will be guided into this meeting

088room to speak keeping in mind that everyone must wear a mask at all times in making a comment and then as also has been the case members of the public wishing to address the board can also call 610-892-3470 extension one zero two to leave a recorded comment for the board subject to a three minute time limit any comment left prior to five o'clock today has been transcribed and made available to the board any comment left after five o'clock but prior to the end of this meeting will still be transcribed distributed to the board and made a part of the record but will not be acknowledged uh during the meeting this evening and so we'll start with uh any in-person comments is there anyone who would like to speak tonight related to topics on the agenda

089i don't think i see anyone okay um and then i'll turn to kelly i don't think we have any call-in comments for items on the agenda that is correct okay all right so we will we do have a called in comment correct for something not on the agenda so we'll come back to that all right um so that takes us to our first items for action which is the approval of the september 29th regular business meeting minutes and iso move do i have a second a second thank you kelly any discussion i'll just remind board members at any point during the meeting i'll try to glance at the participant list so if i see a hand go up during discussion i will call on you and if for some reason i miss you feel free

090to just speak up okay i was just going to comment dr granby that you're almost as good as a teacher in the school district at managing you online and the in person i'm trying i'm trying um okay so uh miss figora can you please take a roll call vote mr ballas yay yes miss amino hi dr downey aye dr huff aye mr cutis aye mrs lentz aye mr sullivan i wasn't a member of the board's all-abstine mrs walkman aye dr grandy hi the motion passes eight with one abstention all right thank you ms fabora all right that takes us to personnel we have nine items for action and personnel are there any items on the list anyone on the board would like to separate from the rest okay uh so let me read those first

091we have the approval of a retirement as listed in the agenda next we have the approval of five leaves of absence of certified staff and four leads of absence of non-certified staff as listed in the agenda with the approval of eight appointments with dates as described in the agenda andreas sawicki science teacher at the middle school keith henning a social studies teacher at the middle school ellen yates an elementary teacher at npe margarita palomino an online academy media specialist jocelyn smith school counselor at the middle school sarah benami our teacher at npe skyler wartman instructional support at npe and michael chestnut an electrician for the district next we have approval of an additional assignment effective august 31st 2020 is stipulated we have the approval of two changes of assignments as listed in the agenda we

092have the approval of the appointment of staff members as mentors during the 2020-22 year as stipulated with the approval of the addition to the 2020 summer hours for the education committee for distance and hybrid learning development work at the rate of 37 per hour not to exceed 53 total hours as stipulated for suzanne stead nick stadniki we have the approval of the additions and changes to the 2020 2021 activity supplemental appointments list as stipulated and we have the approval of additions and changes to the 2020-2021 fall athletic supplementals as stipulated and as mentioned all items in this section are attached or described in the agenda uh do i have a motion some moved jerry balls thank you jerry uh do we have a second second jennifer lens thank you jen any discussion all right miss

093figueroa can you please take a roll call vote miss amino hi dr downey i dr huff i mr cutis aye mrs lentz aye mr sullivan aye mrs walkman hi mr ballas why dr grandy hi the motion passes nine to zero all right thank you miss figura that takes us to uh curriculum um where we have two items for action um are there any on the list anyone would like to separate so i have questions on each but i don't plan to vote against them so i don't know if that means we need to separate it out or if we can just discuss questions at the end of uh if you don't think it you'll it'll change your vote we can talk about it in discussion okay okay um so first up we have approval of

094related services provider contracts as stipulated and then second we have approval of the wssc health and safety plan for voluntary athletic workouts as stipulated all items in this section is attached or described in the agenda do i have a motion so moved thank you kelly uh do i have a second second thank you jen uh and now we can move on to discussion uh matt thank you so just a couple of questions in in 9a i see two different entries under district for the school year slp services in the same amount for the same vendor and i was just looking for clarification i see the other ones are tied to specific student ids and these are just district wide i'm wondering why there's a duplicate entry there mr sullivan i'm going to actually ask martha

095q if she has the answer to that i don't know that one off the top of my head sometimes they will put them in there because it may be at the district level and they're going to split the speech language provider across these two schools versus those two schools and it may have been a matter of convenience for the way that they put the item on the agenda but i'm not 100 sure in this instance miss q might you know the answer to that what i know about the situation is a these are coveted related um it is for speech language services and the speech language clinicians will be working across all five buildings miss q can you tell if that by any chance is a duplicate entry like might they have put the line

096in there twice or does it appear to be two separate it is two separate items i asked about that specifically is replacing two items that were previously approved mr sullivan i'm sorry i can't give you more on that but i can ask gina and megan to provide you with more information after the meeting yeah that'd be great i'm just wondering why it's showing up as two separate entries instead of one okay larger entry uh maryland uh so my question is um related to the uh item b so the health and safety plan for volunteering voluntary athletic workouts but it also kind of goes back to all of the athletic programs and the masking because there has been some confusion in the community about when athletes should be wearing masks and when it's permissible for them

097not to wear masks and i was wondering if we could just make a statement to kind of clear up that confusion surely dr huff it really does come down to all of our athletes should be wearing their masks almost all of the time the time that they don't have to wear their mask is if they are involved in competition and they are a team other than volleyball and football said differently if you're in volleyball and football you're wearing your mask all of the time even when you're in competition but for our other sports that are not as high risk or high contact you would not be wearing your mask when you're in the heart of that competition or very active practice like when you're in the heart of it not when you're standing out on

098the line or you're ready to go in when you're actively practicing you don't have to wear your mask if you are not football or volleyball but otherwise if you're on campus you should be in your mask dr huff regarding this item that is on here this is really for the voluntary workouts and in this particular case anytime you're doing a voluntary workout you are in your mask so it's a little different when we're talking about the plan that the board had approved before where it was the full return to competition plan there was the exception of wearing the mask not wearing the mask when you were in active play or practice this plan for voluntary workouts you're in your mask all the time and you are outside and you are distant thank you i had

099a question on that policy as well and i'm looking for where it was in the policy but when i read through it over the weekend i remember reading somewhere that students are supposed to be maintaining or athletes are supposed to be maintaining a six foot buffer different distance even during the activity i i'm not following how that works in the context of football and some of these other sports how they can maintain a six-foot buffer so different than it is in football the plan that was approved before was our fall return to competition plan that covered football covered soccer these are for the activities that will be coming up not the fall sports the winter and the spring sports so if we're coming back for basketball they're able to practice but they're not playing competitions

100this is not their return to competition play this is just their voluntary workouts prior to us coming forward with a winter plan we've not done the winter return to play because if we were to go to basketball we would be inside and we would certainly be closer so that would be in the next formal plan this just allows our out of season athletes to practice voluntary practice thank you any other discussion okay miss figueroa can you please take a roll call vote dr downey i dr huff aye mr cutis aye mrs lentz aye mr sullivan aye mrs walkman hi mr ballas hi miss cimino hi dr grandy hi dr grandy the motion passes nine to zero thank you mr gora so that takes us to finance where we have three items for approval are there

101any on the list anyone would like to separate from the rest okay uh first we have the approval of the facilities management agreement with docusell at a rate not to exceed 4865 dollars per month second we have the approval of the transfinder proposal for an additional user and third we have the approval of a contract to anc wholesale distributors for the strathaven high school foods room renovation project for a total contract amount of 66 718 dollars to be paid from capital reserve funds all items in the section are attached or described in the agenda uh do i have a motion so move larry kudis thank you larry do we have a second second jury balance thank you jerry uh any discussion matt a couple of questions on the doc you sell facilities management i saw

102that it's to run the copy center through an outside vendor through december of 2021 that seems like a long runway for me to you know figure out what we're going to do is there an ability to terminate that earlier if we decide what we're going to do before december of 2021 dr palmer miss q can can you take that one please what we were looking at the the copy center actually the person who's running who was running the copy center has already retired and the copy center lease is run through at least april of this year and we need to do an analysis of whether or not we want to continue with a centralized copy center or distributed copy basis and do analysis relative to the various school districts county as well as what our

103needs are here and what copy needs we would have going forward in the buildings so what we did is we did a contract with this location we extended all the way out through december to give them as much flexibility as possible given the current environment we didn't want to have a situation where we're going to run up against uh-oh this agreement is going to run out and we have we're now scrambling to try to do something without having all the planning done it right now we just don't have time or space in essence to add one more stressor into this mix so we just literally just extended out through the end of the year just to make it a more functional analysis period did i hear you right that our copy release runs through april

1042021 though yes but but the uh they have agreed to extend the lease as far as december so the they would extend the lease for the copiers through december as well as entering this contract which covers operating the copy center correct okay and then in fact part of my original question was is there an ability to terminate this early if we make a decision before december um i do not ha i do not have a clause in that in that particular agreement that would give us the ability to terminate it before december of 2021 is that something we should think about doing miss q could you comment on the sort of i guess the net financial impact of this approach compared to what we've been doing um obviously the cost of the copy center itself

105doesn't change from the standpoint of the machines what does change is the cost of the actual person running the sender this forty eight hundred dollars is is about twenty seven hundred dollars less per month than the salary and benefits of the person who retire so there is a reduction in cost by processing through this process so i guess a related question do you think it would alter the the cost if there was a termination clause in there i wouldn't without cause the dr excel people actually wanted a three-year agreement which obviously i couldn't agree to because we certainly will have made a decision long before that um so what we did was we negotiated out for that slightly more than a year period because we're sitting here in october having this discussion so that they're

106high they're they're hiring people obviously to fill this position or actually replace this person in another location so that he that the person is going to come to us who has experience can be released to us so that they can cover the position thank you so i i guess if if we think we need that long to make that decision that makes perfect sense to me if we think we're going to come to a decision before that and a decision that could save even more money than that then we might want to think about including a termination clause any other discussion yeah and then the other question i have sorry on the on the anc wholesale um i saw that we only got one response to our rfp is there an ability to rebid that

107fart can you take that one sure there is a an ability to re-bid it but um with the specifications as as as they are for the quality of cabinet not being a super high quality but being of certain standards anc is really the one distributor that was qualified to bid it it was the it was a distributor we were anticipating that would bid on it uh we can do it i don't i wouldn't expect the exact same result unless we brought in the specifications to the point which it would allow a another manufacturer to submit a product where the variability in the quality and um specifications is such that we would have to do significant analysis to determine if it's if it's quality cabinetry okay i'm always in favor of more than one bed but

108yeah definitely it is it is something that um if this weren't a materials only bid um it would be very difficult to to accept i would say um because we're dealing with the labor this is materials only it is it is the product that we are very comfortable with um moving forward there a number of our individuals or i shouldn't say a number a couple of our individuals one staff no anc and know the equality that comes from the company any other discussion okay miss vaquer can you please take a roll call vote dr huff hi mr cutis aye mrs lentz mr sullivan aye mrs walkman hi mr ballas ari miss mino hi dr downey aye dr grandy aye dr granty the motion passes nine to zero thank you ms fagora um so that takes

109us to the section on the agenda for audience recognition for response to topics not on the agenda um as i stated earlier we now have two methods for comment during this time period where we're meeting in person but obviously under significant precautions um are there is there anyone from the public who wishes to address the board in person now i don't believe anyone okay uh and then kelly i know we have one called in comment do you want to go ahead and read that now sure um this is from elizabeth corritor on sherwood lane in wallingford good afternoon my name is elizabeth corator you guys have heard a lot from me so you are probably used to seeing my name my message is this good evening members of the board thank you for all of

110your work during this pandemic most of you did not sign up for this when you ran for school board and the community appreciates your dedication to our students at a recent board meeting i believe dr palmer indicated the high school could move to two full days of in-person instruction if the number of students participating in the online academy stated its current enrollment which i believe is over 300 students now that the high school students have moved from 100 virtual to either a cohort or the online academy please let the community know if the number of online academy students is still over 300 and if so when the high school will amend its schedule to allow for two full days of in-school learning thank you all right thank you kelly uh and thank you uh to

111the individual who called in that comment uh and as we mentioned earlier i think it's something that dr hilden is certainly still trying to work through the options um that takes us to school board reports um reports from board members serving on district subcommittees or out of district roles do we have any reports thank you dr grande i am the representative to psba which stands for the pennsylvania school board association tomorrow is the equity summit it's an all-day summit and then following on wednesday and thursday are the psba all-day conferences which i will attend those and i'll brief the board afterwards thank you all right thank you uh michelle thanks dave um i have a brief update on the diversity equity and inclusion board subcommittee since our last board meeting on september 21st the subcommittee

112has been engaged in a couple of different activities first we had a meeting with the wss big idea leadership so we met with the new leaders and for those who might not be familiar with this organization it's the wallingford swarthmore schools big idea which is a community organization that's dedicated to promoting the values of inclusion diversity equity and access within the wallingford swarthmore community we were able to listen to their concerns and concerns expressed by their members we shared various initiatives that the district and the dei action committee have embarked upon and we explored ways that the district can communicate more clearly and efficiently about issues related to bias inclusion and equity the other big thing that we did in the last few weeks is that we had our uh we had another um community-wide

113dei action committee meeting and what we did was we brought in a guest speaker and so we the committee as a whole including the board subcommittee participated in a phenomenal workshop by dr heather bennett who is the psba director of equity services she's in charge of tomorrow's summit actually that jen just referenced and i will also be attending that summit and so we had dr bennett come and talk to the committee to set the foundation for understanding and incorporating equity in district practice the workshop was grounded in defining equity and understanding how equity fundamentally differs from equality dr bennett's presentation provided a framework for understanding the historic and systemic inequities that exist in national state and local school practices and ways in which these inequities have determined many students educational outcomes the workshop challenged us

114to always consider the question of whose voices are not in the room and to begin to examine each and every district decision through an equity lens thanks thank you michelle any other school board reports okay do we have any old business do we have any new business jen thank you dr grand i have one item for new business since we met as a board last time there has been new or different guidance i should say given by governor wolf about attendees at sporting events whereas before he had numbers and i know that everyone in this room is familiar with the new guidelines and now it is boiled down to mostly percentages with some numbers so i'm wondering if we have figured out what our trajectory is going to be with the spectators at sporting events

115and i'm guessing that will vary by sporting event and um if we have how we will communicate that not only to the parents of people that may be be in those events but to our community for people that may want to attend them that may not have kids competing and if we haven't figured that out do you have a timeline for about when we will and how we can then convey that information to our community members thank you mrs spence uh mr clancy and i and dr hilden have been talking about that we are not at 100 closure we are pretty darn close and i will tell you the sport that causes us to really we've got to firm up the last pieces is football because for football we have football cheer and band so

116that one's a little bit it puts us out of the one-size-fits-all approach so i'm anticipating within a matter of days that we'll know the answer to that because parents want to know i know everybody does want to know but i want to make sure that we are equitable with the way we are looking at it for our community our parent guardian population for our athletes and also for the other team coming in what can they expect but with the numbers with football band and cheer it really throws us into another dimension so that's the one that we're trying to wrap up now we just haven't had the meeting with nick and henry and football and cheer that's the only thing holding it up it should be relatively quick and i would anticipate the communication mechanism

117coming directly from pat clancy okay and is there a place where like a community member like myself who doesn't have any uh children on these high school sporting event teams um is there a place where i could get that information once we have it i my thought is we should put it on the website as well and probably on facebook because parents will want to know community members will want to know can they come on friday night okay i know that's going to be the question and that's the sport i think more than anything that we get the most questions on okay thank you to any other new business all right thank you this meeting is adjourned you