001good evening i now call the august 17th meeting of the wallingford swarthmore school board to order pursuant to policy 006.1 we are holding this meeting remotely given the current public health crisis in opening i'll start with 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 thank you i'd like to start by asking our board secretary ms fergura for a roll call vote mr ballas here miss amino you're dr here dr huff here mr cutis president mrs lentz here mr orsetti present mrs walkman here dr grandy present mr berman i am present dr palmer [Music] present okay we have completed all right thank you miss ferguero nine voting members present
002this evening so i'll start with board announcements uh the board did meet prior to this meeting and executive session to discuss special education and litigation next step we have the superintendent's report dr palmer thank you thank you dr grandi this is our last regular school board meeting before the start of the 2021 school year which will begin on monday august 31st our administrative team is feverishly working on all of the final details for our students safe return to school our teachers will be returning next week for a full week of professional development and planning and our parents we know you still have questions about our reopening so to help you understand what is forthcoming i'd like to share with you what our principles communication plans are so at strathaven high school dr hilton reports that
003he started his back to school communication on friday august 14th with a focus for our ninth grade parents where he shared what the freshman orientation is going to look like talking about live virtual tours for our students and also mentioning about the chromebook pickups for anybody who had not already picked up their chromebook today there was also an additional communication going out focusing um for our 11th and 12th grade parents that there is going to be sat school day test information and registration particularly for the 8th and 12th graders and then there was also a general logistical email for all of our parents talking about our bell schedule general scheduling information chromebooks material distribution and outstanding material collection he'll be following up again on friday i'm sorry he'll be following up again on monday a
004week from now talking specifically about the most important information that our high school parents and our high schoolers want to know is what is their student schedule for the next school year so he'll be releasing that information and then doing a follow up with all of our parents on friday the 28th going over those logistical items one more time before we start school the next week at the middle school the first part of the communications plan went out today with a message for all of our parents that covered the daily student schedule generally what the student schedule is information about alternate chromebook pickups drop-off times for students who may still have some outstanding items such as their textbooks and reminders about how do you log on what are your passwords how do you hook into
005your emails this week we'll also bring additional communications that will be video messages from george king who is the sixth grade principal this year joe buechler who is the seventh grade principal and steve krall who is the eighth grade principal the goal of the messages will go beyond a simple welcome the messages will include information regarding their students schedules and their teachers and when they'll be visible for everyone within powerschool how they'll receive their initial contacts from their new teachers a message from their counselors and what to expect in the few weeks before school starts and the communications will go through the week of the 24th next week until we get closer to the start of school our elementary principals dr tuck mr heinle and mr savage have been communicating with you throughout the summer
006and have now reinstituted their weekly e-blasts they've already communicated general information with you but i'd like to reiterate a few items on their behalf the first item concerns the elementary chromebook and the ipad pickup that's occurring this week srs started today and will continue through tomorrow and npe and wes will have their pickup on wednesday and thursday of this week regarding material pickup our teachers and our staff are currently creating a list and beginning to bundle materials for students for the upcoming school year the bundle will include items such as math workbooks math manipulatives and handwriting books we're trying to ready the materials so they can be picked up next week and we'll send you more specific information on that the next item is new student walkthroughs we're in the process of designing what a
007new student walk through can be for our kindergarten students as well as our new students and families and we'll share those details once we have a date or dates finalized to do that the last item that i wanted to talk about is teacher assignment and i can tell you i spent the entire afternoon today with the three principles as they worked on the intricacies of elementary scheduling elementary scheduling during a typical year is no small task but this year has proven to be incredibly difficult we can assure you that we will have teachers assignments completed and we'll share them with you next week but we can't tell you exactly what day we will share them with you but rest assured we are working on them and as quickly as we have them finished we will
008share them with all of our parents and be on the lookout by the end of this week for the this week's weekly update from all three of the elementary principals i'd also like to comment on our return to school and i'd like to focus on some materials from the chester county health department last friday we received updated guidelines from the chester county health department specifically gene kassner who heads the books or the chester county health department shared with us that she was updating the guidance that we had received from the pennsylvania department of ed and the pennsylvania department of health that the chester county health department would be leveraging the state's guidance to us and provide additional guidance to us as they related to instructional models in summary in her email to us she said
009the additional guidance for instructional models includes three items one is a recommendation for all schools private and public to begin school virtually through october 9th to 2020 the second item is it provides more specific thresholds for instructional models as it relates to community transmission and the third item is that it has guidelines for transitioning between instructional models and i would like to just take a moment and share with you what those three key highlights are so under the instructional model and i'm reading part of this and i will summarize part of it the chester county health department supports the metrics selected by the state and provides more detailed thresholds representing community transmission and the corresponding instructional models as outlined in the table below with corresponding guidelines for transitioning between instructional models so when we received
010information from the department of health they were broad bands for low moderate and high levels of community transmission she's broken them down into four different levels she's got a low a moderate a high and a very high and she gives us the metrics for looking at incident rate per hundred thousand and the pcr test positivity and she has a correlation between those two metrics and whether we are in low moderate high or the very high community transition so i'm just going to go through them and i will tell you at this point i do believe this document is posted on our reopening 2020 page on our website specifically under the tab health and safety and if it's not posted at this moment it will be posted momentarily so under the community transmission for low the
011incident rate would be less than 10 percent and a less than 5 percent pcr test positivity if those two metrics are in place they would they've said that that would correlate to the in-person instructional model the next band would be the moderate community transmission with an incident rate of greater than or equal to 10 and less than 40 and a positivity rate of greater than or equal to 5 and less than 7 the instructional model for that would be hybrid the third category or of community transmission would be high greater than or equal to 40 and less than 80 for the incident rate and then at this point we change from an and to an or so if we are at that level of incident rate greater than or equal to 40 and less than
01280 or the positivity rate is greater than 7 and less than 10 and there are two instructional models that would be either virtual and or hybrid and the way she did explain this to us is it depends on where we are within that band are we lower or at the lower end of those numbers or at the higher end of those numbers and then looking at all of the other factors would that mean virtual or hybrid and then the very high category with an incident rate of greater than or equal to 80 or a positivity rate of greater than or equal to 10 would require virtual instructional model and then if you'll indulge me for another moment i'll read just a couple other pieces that i think are significant to the conversations that we've been
013having the health department recommends that public and private k-12 schools in chester county and delaware county begin their academic year virtually and assess their ability to transition to more in-person instructional model after october 9th such a start will mitigate any impact anticipated by increased cases due to the end of the summer holiday as seen during july 4th and ensures school districts have the necessary time to implement the guidance set forth in this document then she goes on and talks about transitioning between the instructional models consideration for transitioning between instructional models will be based upon a review of the thresholds transitioning to more in-person instructional model can only be considered when thresholds are met three consecutive weeks and at least a 0.5 percent cumulative decrease in positivity over the three weeks is reached so that would
014be three consecutive weeks of at least 0.5 cumulative decrease in positivity over those three weeks the flip side transitioning to a more virtual instructional model can only be done when thresholds are meet for two consecutive weeks it is recommended that a review of the threshold occurs at regular intervals to minimize frequent transitions between instructional models when transitioning to a more in-person based instructional model it is recommended that the transition be a phased transition beginning with younger grades with an assessment of progress throughout the phasing when i was on the call this morning with the delaware county planning group and the chester county health department was there i had to ask a specific question more of a math question because i wasn't sure what i was reading in the guidelines that i just read to you
015so if we are looking at the positivity rate going down and we know that we are looking for a point five percent decrease over three weeks i gave the example of if we are at a 6.5 rate one week we go up to a 6.7 and then we come down to a six percent over three weeks it dropped 0.5 percent would that be something that we are looking for and her response to me was we're looking for a downward trend not going up and then coming down we're looking for something that is stable or declining not something that went up during a three-week trend i didn't understand that so that's why i had asked the question and i wanted to make sure that when i was looking at the document that i really wanted to
016know the type of metrics that we were looking for and we also talked about that is one way of looking at it but you still have to look at what's going on in our community as well as surrounding communities so i know i'm going to have continued discussions with the chester county department of health so as we move forward for the next few weeks i will have more information that i'll be able to rely on but this is the information that i have at this moment and dr granty that concludes my report for tonight all right thank you dr palmer and i do want to before we get to our first focus topic uh just also comment on that because i think you know certainly there's been many questions about metrics around reopening in our
017community and i guess one important point i want to make is that there is no single number um that we need to see in order to make a decision um and i know my own commitment here to this entire district is that we are always using the most up-to-date public health evidence to make these decisions so what does all this mean in the context of what dr palmer just described you know again i think this guidance from the chester county health department is much more specific than what was provided by the pa department of education and i think the emphasis on sustained improvements and not one week improvements is what really would suggest that we are in a lower level of community transmission and they recommend three weeks which i think is reasonable they also
018recommend caution during the month of september and recommend waiting until early october as we are currently planning if there are substantial improvements then perhaps that timeline may be revisited but that would be our plan as it is now we need to look at data in our own district and i know this came up last week but we also need to look at data and districts around us and we do have to look at the county as well none of these measures can really be interpreted in isolation we don't live in a bubble in the wallingford swarthmore school district so it does matter what the rates are around us right now the rates of covet and the communities immediately around us are substantially higher in some cases at a very high rate of community transmission in
019some adjacent areas and so it's both the rate of new cases and the testing positivity rate which are important indicators of the rates of community transmission and it does matter again what's going on right here in the district as well as immediately around us and if we saw something where conditions were were really good right in our district and around us and maybe a little worse further around the county then maybe that is a different uh set of considerations um than a situation where the data is reflective in our own district or conditions right around it we of course also need to consider if we're seeing a significant number significant number of cases in students in our district as well so that would be a very different situation than a nursing home outbreak as an
020example driving up cases and lastly you know there are schools that are reopening in other parts of the country right now and we would be foolish if we did not consider the new evidence that emerges from other parts of the country when we make these decisions because i think with the reopenings that are happening in many other states and other parts of the country there is a lot to learn about covet and transmission among children and in schools and certainly there has been recent evidence of increasing cases uh particularly among teenage uh children and so we've seen some some substantial increases in our uh area uh with respect to that so you know all of this is to say again i know everybody really wants you know a single number to look at but it's
021really impossible to to focus on one number we really have to take into account a number of considerations when it comes time to reopen my own belief is that we should do so in a phased manner and i think you know what cheshire county health department is suggesting which is focusing on the youngest students being the highest priority to bring back makes sense um they do have the greatest need for face-to-face education or likely the lowest risk in school settings however my my commitment and what i will stick to over and over and over again is that we use the best science to make these decisions and that science will naturally evolve over time and so i apologize right now if some of these considerations change because if they do change it's because it's based
022on evidence and science it's not just based on opinion so i appreciate you listening to that again i know there's tremendous desire for people to get one number and say it's the incidence rate in our district or it's the positivity rate in the county or something like that but it does have to be a complete picture of what these numbers look like and again i think that the the general parameters that the chester county health department has put forward are incredibly helpful in bringing clarity uh to the situation so we want to move on to our focus topic this evening dr palmer will you introduce our topic in our speakers yes i will our topic this evening is our student and staff wellness committee so when we left our schools on march 13th i don't
023think we could have ever imagined that we would not return for the balance of the school year or start the next school year in a virtual manner these times have been unprecedented and the times have had profound impact on our students and our staff we've all experienced the last five months in very different ways because of these experiences august 31st will not mark the start of a back to school year like any other because of these experiences we thought it was vitally important to focus on student and staff well-being tonight my colleagues dr megan mccullough director of student service for behavioral health dr greg hilden strathaven high school principal and dr angela tuck swarthmore rutledge school principal will highlight the work being done by the student and staff wellness committee dr mccullough i believe you
024are the one starting us off tonight yes first of all thank you so much for having us here tonight uh please know that this committee is still up and running so we're a work in progress but we're also really looking forward to sharing where we are again i am megan mccullough and i am the director for student services for behavioral health you can go ahead and advance the slide mary so as lisa said you know since our doors were last open in mid-march our students and our staff have experienced so many challenges some of which i don't think we even know yet and i also don't think we know the long-term consequences of some of these challenges so as a district we recognize the importance of being proactive in helping our students reacclimate to school
025in the many forms that it's going to take this year we have to acknowledge that our students and staff have had some adversity and some challenges over this past five and a half months and we really cannot underestimate the social and emotional impact of this pandemic so the rationale for forming the student and staff wellness committee is as you see on the screen it's just to look at some of the challenges that our folks have experienced and try to be proactive in terms of providing supports so you can see we're talking about the isolation and separation the illness or loss of loved ones financial or employment concerns just the disruption to the daily routines that help people feel safe help them feel cared for the concerns about systemic racial inequalities and fears around hate-based incidents
026that have happened you can advance the slide man thank you so the bottom line is that the overall wellness of our staff and students demands our careful attention and so there's been a lot of very technical guidance around the health and safety of reopening our schools but the point of this committee was to sort of change gears a little bit and really give careful attention to the overall wellness of both our staff and our students you can advance this slide mary so i put out a email requesting committee members using that rationale that i just talked about and there was an overwhelming response from gracious volunteers and these are people that are volunteering to do work over the summer after the spring that we just had so it was uh you know we got many
027emails with interest in this committee and so the dates that are on the screen are the dates that we have met and also the dates that we'll be meeting into the future you can advance so what was so wonderful about our volunteers is we got such a nice diversity of staff parents administrators that were willing to not only be on the committee but willing to really roll up their sleeves and do some work anybody on this committee knows that it's not a sit and listen committee it is roll up your sleeves and get to work so we've listed who our committee members are it's a really nice combination of of teachers of school counselors of behavioral health counselors both from local agencies and national agencies parents and of course we want to of course recognize
028michelle downey who is both a parent and a board member and i see her on these um board meetings late into the night and then i see her you know an additional two nights a week working tirelessly on this committee so i have to lift her up for recognition um it's so important for our staff to see a parent and a board member participating so actively so the whole idea around having these variety of committee members was really just proactively partnering in a way that we really haven't done so much before and when i say proactively i mean not necessarily waiting until someone has identified a concern because i think as a district we do an excellent job of that but we're talking about proactively checking in on students and staff to see where they
029are to take the temperature of their emotional well-being and not just the temperature as it relates to the health and safety you can advance and so this just our our formatting i think when i sent it got a little askew so i apologize for that um and so we have team members on uh team resilience which is our elementary team and team empathy which is our secondary team you can advance it mary thank you so the committee was really tasked to build on work that has already been done around behavioral health as some folks will remember there was an independent audit done by the cciu in the 2018-2019 school year and then there was an increase of supports and a restructuring of student services in the 2019-2020 school year so we were really beginning the
030tiered level of supports tier one being services and supports for all students tier two being students with some more individual needs and tier three sort of our most complex learners with the most complex needs so we had really started a lot of that work in the 20 19 2019-2020 school year and it's important to note that all of these initiatives remain in place and it is our commitment that they remain firmly in place so the idea for the practices that come out of this committee really just re just focus on reopening they focus on the circumstances around this pandemic but they in no way are meant to replace some of the initiatives that are already in place so the idea is to support the initiatives not supplant them it's to complement them and not compete
031with them so i'm gonna have um dr chuck talk a little bit about what some of the things that have been happening around behavioral health and social emotional learning at the elementary level good evening everyone thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to share some of the work that the student and staff health and wellness committee have worked on and i've been fortunate to work on both teams team empathy as well as team resilience so i'm going to just share with you as dr mccullough has indicated these are some of the items that we have implemented this year well this past school year and one is the pbis which is the positive behavioral interventions and supports each elementary building launched a kickoff in the fall of 2019 and we have the opportunity to
032work with the dciu as well as with all of the elementary schools just to develop some common courtesies or some guiding principles so this tier one which is the it's for all of our students it's for all of our children to participate in and we've developed some just common courtesies or some expectations for the building such as classroom hallway playground restrooms and this is uh this goes with our guiding principles which we all have in all three buildings which is uh which are be safe be respectful and be responsible and if you go into any of the elementary buildings you will definitely see posters flyers and information that contains information about our be safe be respectful and be responsible and our classroom teachers and our students have also added some personal items to it such
033as classroom rules classroom expectations and this also guides our which i'm going to talk about next which is the responsive classroom the responsive classroom is the student center emotional approach to teaching discipline and we have the guiding principles of teaching social and emotional skills in addition to academic content we have the morning meeting which are special times for our students and our staff members to communicate and to share different ideas and also to communicate if there are any concerns or anything that would be necessary in order to create a positive and social and emotional classroom as well as building we work together to create energizers and a lot of the students really enjoy the morning activities because it gives them the opportunity just to share what's on their hearts and minds especially as we go
034back or as we turn as we return to somewhat of a new normal for us i think it's going to definitely be important for our students to have an opportunity to share and to express their feelings and to have that circle time we also have at the elementary level and at the secondary level also the coping skills group this is a group that's run by our counselor and if there are any changes in the families such as separation divorce or just feelings or emotions and as megan indicated we may have children that may have lost loved ones or families and friends so this is an opportunity for them to be able to communicate and to share what's on their minds we have our lunch bunches and that's also run by our counselor and this is
035a opportunity for our children to work out peer relationships in a lighthearted manner with our guidance counselors so they work out peer relationships and also how to make friends and to maintain friendships with our social skills this is an opportunity to help students handle challenging situations and to learn to practice and maintain healthy relationships with their peers and this is also this may be performed by this is a second this is a tier two which may be performed by our guidance counselor as well as learning support teachers and then we have our individual counseling which is performed by our elementary counselors and this is an opportunity if teachers are able if they see a need and they fill out a referral this is an opportunity for us to help the children and families obtain information
036uh regarding uh personal counseling this is when we start counseling on at school this is basically a stepping stone for families if they desire to seek additional counseling so with the referral system this is an opportunity for us to support our students if they're having an immediate need and then if it continues then we can also refer or to give resources to families that may pursue additional counseling so those are the items that we have for the elementary level thanks angela mary you can advance the slide good evening everyone so you've already heard a lot of background information about the tiered support at the secondary level it's very similar so both at the middle school and the high school what you will see in addition to the daily work of our school counselors is in
037our tier one we have orientation programs we have orientation program for those transition years sixth grade and ninth grade in addition we have lunch bunches or groups both at the middle school and at the high school targeting specific issues in the tier two which is a more specific group of students but in the tier one it targets all students and then we have at the high school level career and college readiness orientations where we expose our students to our naviance program which is how we help orient them to the college admissions and the the surveys that they complete for job shadowing and for application to schools and programs and careers last year or i'm sorry this year at the beginning of this year we've actually added in tier two a drug and alcohol counselor so
038while that's not specifically part of this wellness group we thought it was important to mention because it is in addition to something that we previously had so if you're looking at the tier 2 we also have the individual counseling as dr tuck mentioned and we have a behavioral health counselor both at the middle school and the high school in addition to the new drug and alcohol counsel what's unique to the middle school and the high school is our sap program our student assistance program this is where we send teachers and staff members to be trained in order to go through a program where we look to remove barriers to student success in school we're going to talk a little bit more about how that program is going to evolve a little bit later in the
039presentation thanks greg so that's uh dr hilton and dr tuck just reviewed some of the supports and services that have already been in place and the work of the committee was really threefold to look at ways of providing proactive tiered behavioral health supports from a trauma-invested lens also embedding social and emotional learning across the instructional areas and then identifying supports for staff so within our larger committee we broke into team empathy team resilience for secondary and elementary and then we further broke it down to a work group that focused on one of these three components you can advance it for our student check-in we discussed having a survey created that would focus on parents and kids and to we refer to it as a coveted care group so this will give us an opportunity to
040follow up with families and how to support and to give them possible resources also and we realize that some families may have difficulty checking in or attending the session so this will give us an opportunity to create check-ins or to build supports around families that will have difficulty checking in and accessing the resources that we may have available and we have our counselors that have discussed the opportunity to visit classrooms especially during the morning meeting times to talk about the social and emotional peace the social emotional learning and we discuss having our counselors visit the classrooms popping pop into zoom and to have our school psychologists also to visit the classrooms and to just have little small discussions with the classroom teachers as well as with the students just to find out what's happening in
041their world and to help them as we deal with our new normal and with our counselors we also um well this will be an opportunity for them to check in with students that are having difficulty and that may need an additional check-in time period or perhaps some small group counseling during this time period we also thought about creating a google form so that teachers will be able to have input and we're going to have input from multiple staff members regarding our students to make sure that we are addressing their needs or if they see or if someone sees a need that we're able to ensure that everyone is addressing the particular concern of the student we also talked about the fact that we're going to be wearing masks and to have our students talk to
042us about that and to give us ideas and suggestions also because we are doing a lot of things to support them but it's good to hear from them and to hear their suggestions and ideas regarding a weary mask and just keeping everyone safe and social distancing practice social distancing so these are all new areas that our students are going to or new challenges that our students will face when they return to the school setting so with the counselor visits we they will also have the opportunity to really focus on the social emotional learning piece and that is to develop the self-awareness uh to recognize emotions and self-confidence of our students and self-management which is to help students with impulse control self-discipline self-motivation and goal setting the next one is self-awareness to help our students on
043perspective taking empathy as well as to respect others and the last piece will be for the counselors and the sel will be to help them develop relationships and to help students be able to communicate and engage with their peers and as far as with the face behind the mask this came from team resilience and we are talking about we're gonna the face behind the mask we are all wearing masks now and so we really don't know if students are smiling if they're frowning so we thought about creating a button for each student so having a picture of the students on a button and they could wear this button and it could show how they would normally smile under normal circumstances so this will bring some opportunity for our staff and our students to get to
044know one another especially the new students and to also to have more of a personal effect rather than just to wear a mask but to have a button and to wear a mask to ensure our safety so at the the secondary level as mentioned previously where these items are works in progress so our goal here with the student check-in survey is to be a starting point for us to initially check in with each student in order to determine their present status and identify areas of immediate need so it's a four question survey that we'll administer during the first week of school we're going to take those results and share them with our behavioral health team that will then disseminate them to the appropriate resource and they're really short questions that survey can be completed in
045probably less than a minute and then based on those results we'll determine if we need to administer it again at later points in the year each one reach one is a tool to help assess foster and maintain connections between students and teachers willingford swarthmore recognizes the importance of every student in the building having a strong connection to at least one adult in the school both the middle school and the high school will use each one reach one process to help identify students who have not created meaningful and trusting relationships with adults research indicates that students who don't form these meaningful connections at school may be at risk for behavioral problems dropping out of school and even self-harm or suicide this program compiles information from teachers after the reflections about students to student-to-teacher interactions and relationships
046the teachers then review each grade level class lesson note for the administrators where strong relationships are present when this process is complete the information is used to determine which students do not have a strong connection with the trusted adult in the building and support and processes will be put in place to foster these relationships thirdly we would like to embed the five sel competencies into our instruction it will involve the creation and delivery of lessons by the behavioral health team during various times of the day both in the middle school and the high so in september late august early september we looked just to introduce the concept of sel to the middle school high school in september we'll focus on self-awareness in october we'll we'll focus on self-management in november we'll focus on responsible decision
047making in december we'll look at social awareness and in january we'll look at relationship skills and as i mentioned before during this extraordinary time challenge our student assistance team or our staff teams will increase the frequency with which they meet this will include a trauma coach on the sat teams and will be using a red flag checklist to identify and report early warning signs through the sat referral process if three or more of the red flags are present staff members should submit a referral middle school in addition will move from meeting two times a month to three times a month at the high school we'll move for meeting one time a month to two times a month and angela you can pick up a staff support since that's a subgroup you've been working with yes
048collaboration with counselors we are discussing having our counselors collaborate with teachers to support them if they need assistance with students who are having or exhibiting social and emotional concerns and this will also give our teachers support as they work with students on the whether we're online or if we're in the hybrid model it'll give our teachers the opportunities to have someone to collaborate with and to let them know that you're not alone in this process that they're all of our students and that we're we take responsibility for all of our children and together we stand and for our wellness wednesday we talked about with team empathy empathy and team resilience um developing a platform for teachers to communicate with one another and to present different topics for our teachers on a daily basis or either
049on a weekly basis where students will teachers will be able to return and to communicate with one another especially after we've been isolated for so many months and we realize that there have been so many changes and that we're trying to adjust to our new normal that this will give teachers the opportunity to communicate with their colleagues that they may have lost contact with because of ending so quickly in march and then now having to restart again on a virtual platform which we're hoping to go into a hybrid model soon but we wanted to reach out to our staff members and to let them know that this could serve as a check-in for you for if you are feeling or if you have if you're struggling with your feelings or emotions this is a way
050for you to also check in with us and we can have different topics generated by our staff members generated by their needs and then we also indicated that um that the eap program which is the employee assistance program to assist our staff members because we realize that they're trying to balance um school as well as home life and that if they may have suffered a loss they may not have been able to grieve like they would have normally had the opportunity to agree because of the covet 19 so we wanted to give staff members that opportunity and to remind them that this is a program that we have available you can check in with our counselors and our clinicians in-house but if you need additional assistance just to help balance your work life and balance
051your personal life this is a program that can be accessed for all of our employees and also the check and connect this is like a buddy system for our teachers and our staff members just to give them the opportunity just to check in on their colleagues and to make sure that they're doing well and this is on a voluntary basis um and it will also create a space a safe space for our staff members so if they are struggling with different issues that they'll know that someone is looking out for them and that if need be they can just suggest to them that we do have an eap program that they can access in order to meet their social and emotional needs because we talked a lot about meeting the social emotional needs of our
052students but we also need to make sure that our that we're checking in with our teachers and with our staff members to make sure that they're okay because when they're okay we then will know that they'll be able to have the energy and the strength to support our students also and i look at our teachers and our staff members not only as teachers and assistants but as caregivers also because they're going to be um they're definitely essential frontline workers because our students have been away from the school setting for many months and they may have so many questions and not only do we need to teach them academically but we also need to support them their social and emotional development we can advance to the last slide so again thank you so much for giving
053us the time to talk about this committee's work and we're just going to end it with the thoughts of the holiness the dalai lama the time for social emotional and ethical learning has come and because of that our staff and student wellness committee has worked very hard to put supports in place for both staff and students so if there are any questions we'd be happy to answer them at this time all right if board members have questions uh please put your hand up in zoom and i will call you out uh kelly uh so i i don't have a question i simply want to thank everyone who is on the the health and wellness committee this this is um this is so energizing i'm not sure what the right word is that i want to
054use but i'm just so so pleased to see what you've put together and especially the focus um not just on our students who are we're here to serve but on our teachers and our staff i know this has been very very difficult on everyone and i think dr tuck your comments about how in order to support our students our teachers our administrators our staff have to be supported as well so i'm really really pleased to see that i just again i know that you guys have put a lot of time into this work not just in the meetings but the work that's happening outside the meetings um so again my thanks to all of you for this this is wonderful thank you kelly thank you for the acknowledgement thank you very much a labor of
055love any other questions from board members or comments okay well i want to thank you all as well again it's easy to overlook these really important aspects of educational experience and so um you know i know there's been so much work having to take place to essentially re-engineer how we do everything um during this time period and um i'm very happy to see the amount of work that's going into making sure that we're supporting uh students in this way and our staff so thank you thank you all right um so that takes us uh to the part of the agenda where uh we have audience recognition time for response to items for action on the agenda and as i've mentioned before uh members of the public wishing to address the board have been and continue
056to be encouraged to call 610-892-3470 extension one one zero two fully recorded comments for the board subject to a three minute time limit any comments left prior to five o'clock today have been transcribed and made available to the board uh anything called after five o'clock but prior to the end of the meeting will still be transcribed distributed to the board and made a part of the record but will not be acknowledged during the meeting i believe we have some comments that were called in for items on the agenda kelly would you mind reading those sure and i just want to confirm before we start i've received one two three four five six seven um total comments um uh mary are you able to confirm that's the correct number okay and i see three for items
057that are on the agenda so uh bear with me i did not get a chance to print these out so i'm going to be opening them up individually and it will take just a moment to do that okay the first comment from daniel de castro on ash road in wallingford and uh mr de castro writes or he commented i'm calling to express my vote for continuing the off-season workouts for athletes in the fall and also vote to install handrails at kingfield thank you and and please bear with me i'm going between three screens to be able to do this the second comment is uh coming up right now and this is from derek ryder of bd road in media section 8 curriculum item f i ask my my ask is that you vote yay to
058continue the voluntary athletic workouts until the central league decides on the revised practice and competition for fall sports currently this voluntary option is the only outlet for many of our students to engage in physical and social activities while under the supervision of our approved coaching staff and administration they are following the successful guidelines that are in place by many agencies that we rely on for safety in limiting the spread of coven 19. our student athletes have had great success in recent years and consistently compete for late district and state championships many in our district may not be aware the daily times has created a database tracking the old delco awards by school and sports strathaven currently leads the county with 76 players of the year awards the next closest is cardinal o'hara which recruits athletes
059with 61 have referred the next closest public school has 46. we have had 599 student athletes named all delco second to o'hara with 636 radner is third at 505. the data was calculated back to the year 1932 but the majority of all delco teams became an award in the mid 80s so if you add another providence's 43 selections strathaven is the all-time leader in all delco awards i bet many of you did not know this we are strong with our academics in the arts but we are the best when it comes to athletics in this county let's continue our success while doing it safely let them play section 9 finance item b i ask you to vote yay to approve the funding to add handrails to king field on the home side bleachers this change
060has been long overdue from a safety standpoint financial decisions are always tough to make but this is clear when there will be a positive enhancement to our community and beyond please allow our fans to enter and exit our stadium safely so they can join our cheer teams and support our all delco athletes and the award-winning marching band thank you and have a great evening okay and the third comment for items on the agenda is coming up right now and this is from william shaw of west wiltshire drive in wallingford i would like to comment on two items today the first one is about the upgrades to king field especially the handrails on the home side bleachers i fully support that measure while again spending money is always a difficult decision and doing this puts out
061a significant amount of money the liability for not doing that i believe would outweigh not making those upgrades also i'd like to comment on the support of continuing voluntary workouts until the central league and pia make their final decision i support the kids should continue to do their workouts in the fall first of all we don't want to double down on the decision last week to further isolate these kids by not having to go to school having them go to their workouts or one of the few outlets we do we do actually have where these kids can socially congregate in a controlled environment that is supervised again athletics and socially gathering will help their mental health i'm seeing a recent study by the cdc report that's saying that a quarter of 18 to 24 year
062olds when surveyed in late june said they considered suicide in the past 30 days a similar study in 2018 only found 11 percent of 18 to 25 year olds saying they would seriously consider suicide mental health is extremely important and i think that's being discounted in this debate finally i would say that if you do decide to not allow participation athletic workouts it does not mitigate the risk kids will find ways to go out there they will find ways to gather with each other in this case they will be doing it in unsupervised and non-controlled environment so again these are two things i strongly support kingfield renovations as well as continuing children continuing to allow children to participate in athletics thank you and that concludes the comments for items on tonight's agenda thank you kelly
063um i should warn everyone i'm getting a little nervous because my internet connection was freezing up there a little bit we've made it through into august without that happening so hopefully you don't lose me um so that does take us to our first items for action on the agenda this evening which is the approval of the july 20th regular business and the august 10th special meeting minutes and i so move uh do we have a second second damon or city thank you damon uh any discussion okay miss figueroa can you please take a roll call vote yes mr ballas hi miss mino hi dr downey dr huff aye mr cutis mr cutis hi mrs lentz hi georgetti i mrs walkman aye dr grandy hi the motion passes nine to zero all right thank you ms
064fabera that takes us to personnel we have seven items for action this evening are there any items on the list anyone on the board would like to separate from the rest okay we have the approval of two retirements as indicated in the agenda we have the approval of six appointments with dates as described in the agenda uh those six are katherine gray a kindergarten teacher at npe jacqueline bowden a special education teacher at srs daniel mchenry a science teacher at the middle school michael bonner a health and physical education teacher at the middle school daniel massey an art teacher at the high school and patricia brown administrative assistant at wes now we have a change in salary status for shelby harper as described in the agenda with the approval of the compensation of staff for
065the student uh wellness committee earned during the 2020 summer at the rate of 37 per hour as stipulated the approval of the 2020 2021 conference request as stipulated with the approval of the change in assignment for daiquan johnson as described in the agenda and lastly we have the approval of the compensation of staff members as noted for participation in an academic integrity panel at the rate of 37 dollars per hour as stipulated again all the items in this section are as attached or described in the agenda do i have a motion so move damon or seti thank you damon uh do we have a second second jerry ballas thank you jerry any discussion mrs figure can you please take a roll call vote miss amino i dr downey hi dr huff aye mr cudiff aye
066mrs lentz aye mr orsadi aye mrs walkman i mr ballas aye dr grandy hi the motion pass is nine to zero all right thank you miss fagora and i apologize my um screen is slow it's moving very slowly okay uh that takes us to curriculum where we have eight items for action this evening are there any on the list that anyone on the board would like to separate from the rest okay with the approval of the 2020 extended school year and the 2020 2021 school year tuition contracts as stipulated the approval of the 2019-2020 school year 2020 extended school year in 2020 2021 school year related service provider contracts has stipulated with the approval of the educational services agreement for the students noted in item c d and e we have the approval to extend
067the wsst health and safety plan for voluntary athletic workouts until such time as the school board approves athletic practices scrimmages and or competition to occur with the approval of the flexible instruction day resolution as noted in the agenda with the approval of educational research in the wallingford swarthmore school district by liz corson per the attached proposal and again all of these items in the section are as attached or described in the agenda do i have a motion so moved kelly walkman thank you kelly uh do we have a second second marilyn half thank you marilyn any discussion okay miss figora can you please take a roll call vote dr downey i dr huff i mr cutis aye mrs lentz aye mr orsetti aye mrs walkman hi mr ballas hi miss amino hi dr grandy hi
068dr grandy the motion passes nine to zero all right thank you mr bro that takes us to finance where we have three items for approval are there any on the list that anyone would like to separate from the rest okay we have the approval of payments of payment of invoices to vendors dated july 15 2020 through august 11 2020 is attached with the approval of the award for the scope of work to declare whiting incorporated for a total of forty three thousand dollars uh forty three thousand four hundred ninety five dollars to be paid from capital reserve funds for modifications to the kingfield bleachers and with the approval of the ricoh copier lease proposal as stipulated uh all the items in the sectioners attached are described in the agenda do i have a motion so
069move damon or seti thank you damon uh do we have a second second larry cutis thank you larry any discussion all right ms fagor can you take a roll call vote please dr huff aye mr cutis aye mrs lentz aye mr orcetti aye mrs walkman aye mr balas aye ms dimino hi dr downey hi dr grandy hi the motion passes 9-0 all right thank you ms fabora so that takes us to audience recognition for response to topics not on the agenda uh i believe kelly you mentioned that there were uh three or four four that category four okay yes yes uh go ahead okay okay uh first comment um from jacqueline rowe of benjamin west avenue in swarthmore i have two children in the district one is a rising sixth grader and one is a
070rising second grader i'd voted in favor of the hybrid model for the kids i'm calling just to reiterate my support that we get the kids back in the classroom as soon as possible i have a number of concerns about online learning and even with the best efforts i think it's going to be extremely extremely challenging to do that well i'm hoping that the board sets defined parameters for when the kids can come back into school and what they're looking for from a public health perspective i'm also hoping that the board thinks carefully about our numbers within our catchment as opposed to how it affects me globally it appears to me from what i've read the infections are worse in the parts of the county closest to the city and of course we are not geographically
071that close i hope there's more consideration given to our community spread as opposed to the entirety of delaware county thank you so much okay all right next comment is from ben crone of rutgers avenue and swarthmore i would like this to be right at the board meeting tonight hello my name is ben carone i'm a parent with two children in elementary school at srs i want to thank you for your hard work during such a difficult time i want to ask for your courage to make the difficult good choices that lie ahead for some families in the community the switch to completely online education is very frustrating yet for others it is a huge relief never before did we think that if that a divide in our opinion on the what the right thing to
072do would be personally this coming fall i'm disappointed that i'm not able to send my two children to srs to learn in person with their wonderful teachers in the end when my partner and i will both be at work our children will be at home receiving what we felt will be a far from adequate education in the end our kids will be fine we'll find an expensive qualified tutor and pay them thousands of dollars to walk them through this online education even while i personally go to work teach classes in person with reduced salaries from furloughs make no mistake this comment is not about my kids most of our kids will be fine this statement is for the families which had no option low to middle-income families who didn't get lucky enough to find or
073pay for a tutor single parents that have to go back to work and essential employees that can't work from home while many in our community are divided on sending our kids back to school this fall if you ask you will find everyone agrees that we can't leave these vulnerable families behind it's time for the wssd community to stop talking about social inequality and actually do something to help our most vulnerable population i advocate the district reopen one or two classrooms per grade for in-person instruction and allow parents to petition the school board for hardship and allow their children to attend we have all the resources we need to make this happen and are teachers willing to teach in person if you ask they will use the classrooms that are open and unused cases have declined
074steadily in the 20 days since the peak on july 27th with a few days of reaching the recommended level for in-person instruction for both the pa department of health as well as the chester county health department in short it will cost wssd almost nothing to provide for those in need and to help these families it will cost them everything it is a moral obligation to help these families please do whatever you can without hesitation you will be the heroes to those who really care for the ones who need you the most thank you next comment is from melissa zesserson of university place in wellingford i would like to know more about the plan for reopening school the chester county department of health and the pennsylvania state have released guidelines for opening schools the board decided
075to start the year virtually even though our incidence rate and test positivity would suggest that it's safe to go back to a hybrid model according to both of these guidelines i understand that there is a concern about a spike after labor day weekend in my mind labor day is more similar to memorial day than july 4th i'm curious why the board didn't consider the fact that there was no spike after memorial day i'm also curious as to why they switched to a virtual only model based upon one change in the numbers from july as opposed to a consecutive two weeks is proposed by the guidelines if we decided to close school based upon a theory rather than what the actual numbers would suggest what method are we using for reopening schools going forward i also
076want to thank jennifer lentz for her vote to keep the schools open she clearly balanced all the risks involved with the virtual only model thank you and one more comment this is from uh kelly garson of avinbrook road in wallingford prior to the board's emergency meeting held on august 10th the metrics for moving from a hybrid model to a fully online educational model for students were stated by the board as being tied to governor wolf moving delaware county from a green face to a red phase for the governor's pre-phase matrix to determine the county reopening at the august 10th meeting the board heard from doctors reuben and brennan and voted to approve revisions to the previously board approved wssd health and safety plan so that all wallingford swarthmore schools would begin the 2020 2021 school
077year in a virtual format until at least october 2nd at which time the district oh sorry i which i'm i'm sure the dog is audible in the background are you guys able to hear me oh boy uh okay i think she left i'm so sorry everyone uh let's see uh so that so that all wallingford swarthmore schools would begin the 2020 2021 school year in a virtual format until at least october 2nd at which time the district would evaluate current circumstances legal requirements and guidance from applicable health agencies and professionals to determine whether virtual instruction will continue or whether students will physically return to school the board did not indicate on the record the new metrics on which the board based its august 10th decision to move the district to the all virtual format is
078the board requiring a particular percent positive rate for the county is the board requiring a particular number of new positive cases for a certain time period what are the actual metrics on which the board rests their decision i understand that the board is required to abide by legal requirements however at the time of the board's decision on august 10th neither the state of pennsylvania nor delaware county required wssd to begin the year in an all-virtual format it is still unclear what metrics in the board the board will look to in deciding when to return to offering a hybrid or cohort model and when to return to offering a five-day per week in-person instruction model parents are trying to make educational choices for their children while speculating on what the board will do next without any
079well-defined information on the data and metrics upon which the board has based its august 10th decision and upon which the board will base future decisions on the possibility of returning to in-person education in this district in this school year i ask that the board advise parents of the metrics that the board will require to return the district to a hybrid or cohort model into a five day per week in-person instruction model thank you that concludes the comments okay thank you kelly uh and i want to thank everyone who called in comments uh and certainly we consider all of them in in all of our discussions and and deliberations um that takes us to school board reports which is a time for reports from board members serving on district subcommittees or out of district roles do
080we have any reports this evening dr grandi um it's it's kelly i can speak briefly and i'll ask any of my colleagues to jump in here the the the board diversity equity and inclusion uh committee has continued uh to meet as a board committee and also with the community-wide diversity equity and inclusion action committee that's a mouthful um we're we're excited um to be aligning with the broader group on a set of shared priorities and working towards narrowing those down into a few broader areas of opportunity and focus i think it will continue to have more updates as we move forward we have another meeting coming up this week i'll open it to any of my other colleagues that are on the committee anything that you would like to add okay okay thank you all
081right uh thank you for reporting out on on those activities um i think um jen you had your hand up for a report is that correct yes i am the representative the liaison to the psba which for those of you out there listening that stands for the pennsylvania school board association and what the psba has been doing in recent times is having two meetings per week at least two meetings but two meetings where the liaisons can attend um with another liaison with all of the liaisons from across the entire state of pennsylvania so in attending those which um in the past couple of weeks uh the more recent information is that the conference that would be normally in person in i think it's normally in hershey pennsylvania in the month of october will now be
082held uh virtually that will not be an in-person conference i believe it is a two-day conference typically so um that will be uh held virtually but it will still be held uh in addition some reports are that title ix which addresses discrimination has been updated substantially this year um there are several several updates and they went into effect on august 14th of 2020. the sba encouraged uh us to make sure that we had the proper liaison trained the title nine coordinator in our school trained and that the titan title ix coordinator be different from our athletic director which in our district is the case i believe mary figuera is our title ix coordinator and tonight we voted to approve uh the training costs which i believe she already attended those those training sessions and pspa
083suggested that while those be two different roles that they also work together to collaboratively those two individuals the twice weekly sessions with pspa will be running until december mid-december as it stands right now again they're virtual and i'll be providing updates to this board whenever i can whenever i can attend those meetings which i plan to attend both of them every week another update from pspa is that their they are revising school policy regarding telework and several other uh policies such as face coverings in the school calendar um there is an email that i will send to this board that they can contact anyone with questions there's also new guidance from psba about school attendance in light of coven and doctor's notes and absences and absences so um the sba will also be pointing forth
084guidelines that we all receive about those updates september is suicide prevention month um i know that that has is a loss that has rocked our own community and specifically one of our own less than a year ago so um it's important that we uh know that governor wolf is going to be coming out with resources and reports related to this initiative uh for the month of september lastly there was discussion on the pspa meetings that there was a study recently done with duke university which has received some criticism for its uh fairness some people have criticized it for its lack thereof but it has evaluated the different kinds of masks and their effectiveness um again there were limits on this study um and there is a very preliminary report that later masks may be not
085on effective face coverings but the least effective of face coverings that you see people wearing and that they tested there's a link to the duke study that i can provide to our district if we want to make that available and that's all i have thank you all right any other board members with any reports to make okay um so that takes us to old business do we have any old business this evening do we have any new business all right thank you this meeting is adjourned did we have i think a comment from jen oh sorry i didn't see that jen um you're on mute thanks uh just new business sorry to prolong this by moments but um uh something i wanted to put out there from some parents that are from from all parents
086that are going to be essentially schooling their kids in conjunction with our district this uh at least for the first month or so of this year is that um some parents have just there are there are several discussions going on about what could help them be good partners with our teachers in the upcoming uh weeks and um i know that something that is at least done at the kindergarten level or has been done at the kindergarten level is that um whether it wasn't done with the intention what regardless of the intention with with which it was done excuse me is that there were benchmarks provided to uh parents each month uh where their students should be where their kindergartners should be and what they can expect from their kidnap kindergartners they also gave some reach
087the reaches within those um benchmarks and what your kindergartners should be expecting to do month to month it has been discussed that that may also be helpful for parents that are trying to understand what the road map is for each one of their children's grades um that maybe if there is also some sort of more than a syllabus but somewhat of a road map of what each student is expected to learn from that month's lessons it may help parents build some uh mental blocks in their mind about what they can help their children really focus on and what they can help their children um pay attention to because i think that as a parent who's going to basically be partnering with with teachers in this year parents are concerned um about how they can do
088that and if we know kind of step by step what we can exp what we can do what we can be expected to do for our kids in a particular month it may be helpful rather than sort of venturing into the world of a specific grade and not really knowing where the lessons are going to go and not really knowing what we should be seeing from our kids um from their learning process along the way so i i'm a little tongue-tied tonight i hope that that came out clearer than than i felt it did the second thing i wanted to say is that um i'm the newest member i think to the school board and um i am happy to be a member of this school board in the sense that i think that last
089week and in other weeks when we have disagreed um we have done it respectfully and i think that's really important because as a member of this community we all know how high anxieties are right now for good reason and i am really um grateful that this whole entire school board can have different opinions and we're going to continue to have different opinions um which i see as a valuable piece um because i think that once we collate those opinions we may be able to come out um eventually with the best outcome for our district so i just want to say that while we did disagree last week and while we may disagree i would think that we will disagree going forward about a lot of issues i'm very grateful that we could do it with
090the cur with courtesy and with thoughtfulness because that puts us uh leaps and bounds ahead uh of a lot of other school boards that i have been seeing on youtube and um on the internet all along so i hope that we can continue to do that and i think that we can so thank you to all my members with me for uh disagreeing with respect because i think that together we can get to a really good outcome if we continue to do that thanks steve all right thank you joan and sorry i didn't mean to to cut you off there i think i couldn't see your face trying to trying to chime in at that moment um was there anyone else who wanted to make any comments or bring up any new business okay um
091thank you this meeting is adjourned you