West Chester Area School District Board Meeting 03/28/2022

001good evening i hear my quality to order the march 28 2022 meeting of the westchester area school board meeting let's start with a salute to our flag led by zaria reyes and lucy anderson at beauty middle school women come forward and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible thank you stay there ladies saria and lucy and welcome to the school board meeting welcome also to your parents and to your principal miss spears right there thank you for your report tonight on what is happening at beautiful middle school with those cougars and i will say that i know that miss herman and i were in dr herman and i were in the audience on saturday afternoon watching the singing and dancing in aladdin on his magic carpet thank you just this

002past weekend had three of our four performances for our musical this year which was aladdin jr and finished out strong everyone in the cast and crew had been working hard for nearly three months i was in the cast and sorry i was in the makeup group we had a great time practicing and performing and all three of our shows were sold out our science olympiad team had just recently won a competition at ruston high school for regionals and are qualified for states in pennsylvania which will take place at penn state ultimate our gsa is also currently holding a fundraiser to raise money for the non-profit organization the trevor project which is an operation of course lgbtq plus skewed and helps to flatten the curve and use suicide we're selling crafts during homeroom and care periods

003to raise money and we are currently at 941 dollars which will be 59 away from our goal of a thousand it ends next week on friday april 8th our advocacy society has also been very active just last month they sponsored a worldwide event to educate students about rare diseases there are many fun activities and special guest visitors in the skater basketball tournament the equity societies also attended an extremely interesting educational zoom seminar with dr rennis king who is martin luther king's daughter she had told us a lot about her life and her father and was a very eye-opening experience the 8th graders are looking forward to our final eye history check to washington dc we're going to tour capitol hill on the american history specifically as well as the walking tours around forest theater to

004the white house and the memorials and monuments on the on the wall and arlington national cemeteries vegan low down club started in early november at the lowdown students are able to write articles newspapers and comics people are also able to post pictures in the photo gallery on the lowdown site students are able to join this group at any time of the year earlier this year jrpga's great-grandson russell feuken came to visit our school and was toured against a small update on current events by three eighth grade students he talked to all the grades about the history of his family which was an amazing and interesting learning experience for all the students he also talked a lot about his great grandfather is the babysitter for our school since it's almost april a lot of spring sports

005have already started in the past few weeks a few of the sports that have already started include softball lacrosse baseball and track our film society is going to be screening the crucible next friday they've had a lot of new members joined to share their love of film this school year they've previously screened the halloween special the tv show monk the romantic comedy movie while you were sleeping pocahontas to kill monkey bird and casablanca they meet almost every friday after school so the kids can adjourn movies and shows together we are all looking forward to the remainder of the school year and of course summer break thank you for the opportunity to share all the amazing happenings that you get have a great night we thank you both for coming i know they chose you wisely

006and well are you both going into ninth grade uh i'm going into 9th grade sorry well i've got to say quite impressive ace um we i i'm not denigrating a smaller children but it was quite a delightful treat to have you because uh you both sound as though you're ready for high school right now and then when we hear our college students over here who are still in 12th grade but they're ready too it is a real eye-opener for us to see how well you're doing how much you're doing and how well you're speaking so thank you both for coming if you'll hold on a minute dr sokolowski and i are running around we'll be right there okay now turn around so your backs are to the artists all right [Laughter] and hold it like

007that this one's for you congratulations we're just practicing for graduation it'll be coming soon all right look at thank me [Applause] all right ladies one more round of applause next on the agenda is roll call for the board mr luca vice president here director chester here director dietrich here director darnell here director plumbing here director herman here director shawn here sergeant here all right here elena all right thank you that leads us to public comments on agenda items if you have filled out a card at the table in the back when you came in mr jennings will call you to the microphone and you will have mr jennings three minutes excellent to address the board president were there any executive sessions since the last week that needed reporting yes on 321 2022 we met for

008personnel and legal and tonight we met for personnel very good thank you president tiernan uh as indicated this is the time for public comment on agenda items only persons wishing to make public comment were required to properly register prior to the designated start time of tonight's meeting when public commenters names are called i ask that they please approach the podium and begin by stating their first name last name and municipality public comments will be limited to three minutes per person per current board policy the three-minute time clock will be projected on the screens throughout the room at the end of the three minutes the next public commenter will be called upon the board asks that all commentary be directed to the board as a whole public comments may be interrupted or terminated if the commentary

009exceeds three minutes where if they are obscene and or threatening in nature we will now call the first speaker diane mazer and wesley easter on deck good evening my name is dianne masar i live in the borough and i was a member of the committee that met in order to review the graphic novel gender queer so among many other tasks public education creates spaces in which young people can discover and develop their voices that process requires that they bounce the known internal world against an immense diverse ever-changing and increasingly complicated world and in this way they develop further their identities much of that larger world young people engage through reading all kinds of texts and our schools make available many that allow our students to consider themselves and their world through varying lenses but for

010those struggling with gender identity we do not provide the same opportunity the silencing of these stories in classrooms and libraries whether through institutional censorship or self-censorship driven by fear of reprisal deprives these young people of voices necessary to developing their own the silencing of these stories denies young people the opportunity to develop empathy for those engaged in the struggle and the silencing of these stories through labeling them as pornographic and obscene when neither term applies denigrates and erases actual lives in our care so we should do everything we can to write this ongoing wrong starting with the decision to keep gender queer on the shelves in our high school libraries because as a memoir this graphic novel provides a necessary but too often absent story an authoritative portrayal of the author's own struggle with gender

011identity told in their own voice because the placement of genderqueer in the library demonstrates that these stories belong in the public spaces and among the multitude of voices of that school and i would argue because to decide otherwise is an act of violence thank you [Applause] hello my name is wesley and i live in west whiteland township i'm a female to male transgender teen i'm a freshman at east as well as the co-president of east gsa i'll be speaking about the book genderqueer to start off the trevor project estimates that at least one lgbtq teen attempts suicide every 45 seconds in the u.s every 45 seconds in less than a minute our life is gone while we sit here multiple lives are taken let that sink in let the fact that you want to ban

012a book that could save those lives sink in lives of teens that have a whole life ahead of them teens that think they should end their life because of who they are teens like me that only have a list of reasons to stay hey list if it wasn't for the tremendous support for my parents this book a school name change and most importantly the opportunity to play on the boys tennis team i may not be speaking here today this book can be a reason why a teen like me stays the book that so many of you are trying to remove i am proof that this book already saved one life if that's not enough then i don't know what is thank you [Applause] christopher manos ted towel on deck my guide hands to you this

013is for uh dr sophomowsky joining us tiernan thank you christopher manos east bradford township reading aloud a letter a condensed version written by jennifer mcfarland who attended the book review committee meetings on my behalf on february 22nd and march 3rd after introductions the february meeting was set committing norms the usual norms were transcribed on the whiteboard but one norm was missing so i asked for it to be added some on the committee objected but i insisted that data be considered as well the norms were set and the meeting was ended i sent a follow-up email to dr reynolds requesting data critical to the discussion i also advised that i would be happy to provide an overview of brain and human development for the committee to ensure a deeper understanding of the issues at hand there

014was no response until february 28th which was an invitation to discuss the issue in person but the scheduling did not work the request for the data was ignored at the march meeting a meeting agenda was provided on powerpoint we quickly reviewed the norms and went to slide four allegedly webster's definition of the word pornography by which by the way is completely different from the one copied here from websterdictionary.net while the pornography definition slide was shown it was not discussed also not shown or discussed was the next slide of labeled obscenity factors as we move directly to a quick write on padlet the next slide on what our initial thoughts and rationale were after the quit right dr reynolds began to move on to small groups but i objected saying that a full discussion of the

015issue could not be held until the group had some understanding of child and brain development after the small group discussion students presented data and then i proceeded to share the information i had when i was done dr reynolds went directly to voting on the recommendation to the board there was no large group discussion of anything as stated in the slides there would be why not how is the group to make an informed educated decision on something without any discussion of district policy webster's definition of pornography or a discussion of the book itself and how it relates to both this was a very poorly run meeting with a clear agenda to rush this book through the committee and recommend it to the board for approval indeed the last item on the circulated agenda was confirmed recommendation

016and this was before the committee met and that my friends was the intentional alarm wasn't it in addition let me state for the public record that at no time have i asked for the names of any students lgbtq or otherwise any statements by all others is a complete falsehood and one need only to view the video of last month's board meeting to verify that fact thank you [Applause] good evening my name is ted howe my pronouns are he and him and i'm a resident of west ocean township i'd like to thank the members of the review committee for their work in evaluating the book genderqueer and memoir i was not familiar with this book until it was mentioned during the november school board meeting after seeing the concerns being raised by other parents i purchased

017a copy for myself to read so i could make my own evaluation what i found was a personal story of self-discovery and growth the images and descriptions that were explicit or sexual in nature serve to illuminate the author's experience they highlight the struggle and pain often involved for lgbtq individuals who are trying to understand their sexual and gender identities the book also spends a great deal of time relating the author's struggle to claim their own gender identity within their family and in public i firmly believe that it's important for stories such as this to be present and available in our high school libraries for students who are interested enough to seek them out most people are aware that transgender teens and young adults are impacted by suicide much more than the general population having books

018that show others have who have similar thoughts feelings and experiences helps kids to understand they are not alone i'm the parent of two wonderful kids one a 2020 graduate of henderson high school the other a current junior there both of my kids are trans non-binary people they both have been willing and able to advocate not only for their own needs but for those of their classmates and friends they've been open and honest with my wife and i about their truth and we have both done our best to support the kids while trying to understand and learn along the way what i found in genderqueer memoir was not just a book that provides representation for trans kids but also a book that shows some of the challenges of daily life of family life of relating to

019themselves and their friends and family i've seen my kids and our families struggle with some of the same issues even after six years of being as supportive as i can and seeking to learn and understand maya kobe's story taught me some new things and improved my understanding of the challenges my kids and so many other trans kids face it's not just important for kids to be able to read books like this it's important for this book and others like it to be available so the larger community can understand their experience and relate to them better i ask that the board accept the recommendations of the review committee and vote to retain genderqueer memoir in our school library thank you jaden howe and amy picara on deck uh jaden howe uh west ocean township my name

020is jaden howe my pronouns are they them and i am a junior at henderson high school i am an openly queer and non-binary student and an officer of henderson's gender sexuality alliance there are three things i have noticed a distinct lack of in the debate surrounding genderqueer a memoir commentary from high school-aged students commentary from those who have read the book in full and commentary from actual transgender and genderqueer people i'm here today to provide all three most common criticism i see leveled against genderqueer involved in sexually explicit visuals having read the book in its entirety i would like to point out that such scenes are few and far between and are very short when present the thing i take most umbridge with when it comes to this criticism is the glaringly apparent double standard

021that exists in criticism of sexually explicit literature in my experience books involving queer and transgender themes are dish before disproportionately contested in comparison with books involving cisgender and heterosexual beings regardless of the level of heterosexually explicit content secondly i'd like to address the implication by those contesting the book that high school-aged students do not possess a level of maturity such that they could handle a book like genderqueer i have personally led this book to several friends and peers all of which agreed that the outrage over the sexually explicit imagery was being blown out of proportion i think people my age or at least those who would be interested enough to seek out this book are by and large more comfort much more comfortable and in touch with sexuality than parents and teachers know or want

022to acknowledge i recently wrote a research paper on harvey milk for a school assignment and i'd like to share a few lines from it that i feel are especially pertinent to this discussion because the societal expectations of heteronormativity are so deeply ingrained in most modern societies the queer identity is intrinsically connected to its societal influences a queer person's sense of self is often shaped by the innate challenge towards societal norms that being queer presents this in effect makes queerness inherently political the root of this debate is not sexually explicit content it is whether or not queer kids are deserving of accurate and realistic representation in our media if we deny that to queer kids we risk becoming a detriment to their sense of self and mental health this book could prove so helpful to so

023many who are struggling with their identity but it must be accessible to them to make any meaningful difference as someone who personally identified with much of the themes and experiences outlined in genderqueer i would ask the board not to remove it so that others like me may continue to benefit from the positive queer representation it provides thank you [Applause] hi my name is amy fakara i live in west ocean i am a parent of an elementary child in this district and have been a middle school teacher in another district for over 20 years i am concerned that the book genderqueer is being recommended for approval to keep in the high school libraries part of the committee review feedback includes one this is an optional optional book in our high school libraries and should remain for

024students that need to see themselves in a book i refuse to believe that this book is the only option available to students who need to see themselves in a book is it serious believe that better more appropriate reading material is not available to meet this need as a district we need to consider what we deem appropriate for our high school students while some may disagree it's not as a district but as parents we need to consider what we deem appropriate for our children i know that um this book is an appropriate reading material for high school students this book number three this book supports queer students and their allies again better more appropriate material exists four the brain development and level student maturity should be considered this is absolutely true children of high school age

025which could be as young as 14 years old are not do not have maturity and brain development and should not be exposed to sexually explicit material five lgbtq plus should have books that reflect their experiences absolutely true but justice i would not want a child in the street community to read a book with explicit and graduate sexual acts described in picture the same consideration should be applied to those in the lgbtq plus community with the plethora of reading material available i am sure the district's highly qualified professionals can find more appropriate books that reflect the experience of the students in the lgbtq community why provide questionable material in school setting when it is not necessary there are better ways to support young minds that are not even fully developed to handle such mature content the

026district went to extreme measures to protect students physical health from covet shouldn't we take more caution with the books provides to help them grow intellectually please reconsider your approval discord thank you [Applause] joanne your chuck and donna bounce on deck my name is joanne yurchak and i live in the east ocean i recently emailed the school board and dr sokolowski explaining my objections to the book genderqueer which is in at least two of our high school libraries i hope that you all viewed the indisputably pornographic images from genderqueers that were attached to that email after forwarding this same email to dozens of westchester residents i received the following response from one recipient i have no reason to doubt its veracity quote joanne i got flagged for sending pornography in the email i forwarded to a

027friend so while i am extremely concerned it screwed up my computer next time call me but do not email this stuff i received an email saying saying none of this was true has anyone checked the library shelves need to get to the bottom of this it's disgusting unquote needless to say all facts noted in that email were unfortunately true the email flagging of the genderqueer images speaks for itself although some have claimed otherwise opponents are not suggesting that genderqueer be banned it is available in public libraries and can be purchased at various bookstores we simply object to some sexually explicit and pornographic books being made available to minors in our taxpayer-funded schools as a retired teacher i was a staunch supporter of public schools and indeed had praised this district over many years for their

028fine educational programs then dei wrapped its pernicious tentacles of racial divisiveness and sexual indoctrinations around our soul children before many of us realized what was happening academics has regrettably taken a back seat to social engineering and my former unequivocal support has shifted 180 degrees i now would adamantly advise parents to remove their children from these woke indoctrination centers until agenda-driven school districts such as westchester stop promoting these objectionable ideologies if you think that most community members would approve of genderqueer perhaps you might consider posting the images on your homepage to determine if this is the case [Applause] there you go my name is donna fonts from east goshen township i'm a mother of three a grandmother of eight and i'm blessed but i'm here today to tell you that i am immensely disturbed recently i

029was presented with excerpts from the book genderqueer which i understand is in your westchester school libraries and about to be voted on my life changed dramatically once my eyes fell on just two pages of this comic book style publication and it's really nothing comical about it there is no legitimate reason for this hardcore pornographic material to fall into the hands of our minor children totally inappropriate downright dangerous and as i will explain totally illegal being a grandmother i'm not that computer savvy but i decided immediately i was going to do some research on my own and i did i learned that children are members of a specifically protected class when it comes to sexual exploitation of any kind the law of our land has determined that adults may not may not sexualize our young period

030the abuse of children does not become legal even when a book is in a classroom as a handout or is used in other ways to influence the children gender queer is an abuse of the worst kind perverted images remain and do much harm to our children i viewed those pages for 10 seconds and i was disturbed for weeks waking up in the middle of the night with tears running down my cheeks it affected me that severely our esteemed supreme court has highlighted the vulnerability of our elementary and high school students to this process cessation and you know what they strongly disavowed it teachers librarians and administrators once you are put on notice of this violation to our children and the strong pornographic materials they you must remove them or risk civil rights violations and parents

031under section 1983 of our civil rights code can bring legal action against you look it up i'm a grandmother i found it section 1470 of title 18 u.s code prohibits anyone from knowingly transferring obscene manner to minors under age 16. thank you mayor your time is up thank you [Applause] rachel langan and bethany rachel langenberg westchester i'm going to be mostly talking about gender career but what i'm saying also applies to the other book so i have a master's degree in librarian information science and i hold a k-12 school library teaching certificate i spent 13 years in public education as a school librarian in both unionville chad's ford school district as well as a church for east township district i have been a part of book challenges not as a parent but as an employee

032defending my school district's purchase of a book after looking at the documents there are a few procedural issues that need to be addressed one where is the collection development policy for each of the school libraries it's not online was a collection development policy given to the committee to review two who paid for this book as a former librarian i know there are many different budget categories that fund school libraries some categories have requirements that govern which books may or may not be purchased does anyone know how this book was paid for three i also know that special interest groups can pay for or donate books to a library these types of donations need to be scrutinized because there's usually an agenda behind this type of gift was this book paid for or donated by a

033special interest group a book commute a book review committee should be given at least two professionally written reviews from different sources of the book in question along with an assessment of the added value to the curriculum the lifestyle reading score the intended age range for the book as well as the interest range was the committee provided with this information five it looks like the book committee was given an alternate definition of the word pornography because it truly does not match the definition that is here in my actual real dictionary if we are in the business of education shouldn't we be teaching our children to go to the source the law or a dictionary and not google and speaking of the law why wasn't the pa state law definition of pornography used like it's four pages

034long was this shared with and reviewed by the committee because if it wasn't it should have been six according to the district's policy the book review committee was to consist of nine people the superintendent or his designee a parent community member student principal student student comma principal supervisor teacher librarian board member if the committee is supposed to consist of nine people then why were there 17 people on the committee surely you can do the math and see that stacking the committee with six administrators and three librarians was going to result in an imbalanced vote this alone should invalidate the committee's recommendation to keep the book does anyone remember when our former board president ranted about this book making national news claiming that this book was not in our schools why did he so vehemently deny

035the existence of this book when in fact it is in our schools and was most likely paid for by taxpayer dollars but we're not sure if you paid for it you need to find that out here's why this book should not be approved tonight the day after the rant our very own superintendent removed the book from the library shelves and agreed that the content was inappropriate two the education committee meeting to review the book was cancelled and thus proper procedure was not followed three it appears the book committee was most likely not provided with the documentation listed above and for the committee was not formed in accordance with district policy so please dissolve the current committee form a new one and visit this again another time thank [Applause] you westchester borough i have a degree

036in english literature from westchester and a phd in education i view myself as a moderate i have no religious affiliation i've worked with underserved children for my entire 30-year plus career i believe that these facts are important as i share my comments about the book genderqueer i have read the entire book and i am concerned about its presence in our libraries as a former english teacher i believe that we need a variety of books and genres in our libraries my concern over this book is related to disturbing images both in graphics and in words the main character in this book is struggling and suffering it was heartbreaking to read maya's words page 36 hiding my period became extremely important to me for two entire school years i successfully avoided ever using a school bathroom i

037would often wear the same pad for so long that the dried blood turned to dark crumbles resembling coffee grounds to this day a huge number of my nightmares involve menstrual blood blood page 127 i felt as if i had been stabbed through my entire body and with this came a wave of psychological horror at the realization that things can go inside my body gender dysphoria is a clinical diagnosis in the dsm-5 psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one sex assigned at birth and one's gender identity there is a picture of the character with a metal rod going through their entire body in addition to a drawing of a sanitary pad with crumbles of dried blood the character may be suffering from gender dysphoria however i am not a licensed mental health professional and

038i am not able to make such a diagnosis our librarians and teachers are not mental health professionals either and for those students who are suffering at this level they need support and help from a licensed professional a book alone is not going to prevent them from hurting themselves additionally this book could be harmful to a number of students and may not ultimately support the audience it is intended for once an image is seen it cannot be unseen for our students whose cognitive development is not yet complete what will some of these images do to them we have a responsibility to protect their innocence i know that others will be critical and tell me that these materials can be accessed in other places yes they can but if they're in our school then we are saying

039that they are okay that these images are okay by keeping this book in the library the district is sending a message that using strap-on penises and engaging in oral sex regardless of sexual identity is acceptable and normal behavior for adolescents under the age of 18. was a mental health professional on the committee has the committee explored other lgbtq books that do not contain sexual references or disturbing images well i believe that the committee's intentions were good i think they are misguided for children suffering from gender dysphoria and who may be suicidal this book will not solve their problems we have a moral and ethical responsibility to get them the help and support they need thank you [Applause] deck guys shiraki megan reichoff good evening my name is megan ryankov i live in east ocean i

040stand before the board tonight asking that genderqueer a memoir retain its place on our high school library shelves maya kobe is an author who uses m air pronouns air book is a story of self-identity maya kobe is asexual and non-binary two aspects of the lgbtq rainbow that aren't often discussed and offer a window or mirror depending on the reader and you don't have to be lgbtq plus to find this book meaningful even in some pages that some have taken out of context i gained something for instance one image circulated is often misrepresented as two underage boys engaging in a sexual act in fact the author was 25 years old and heir partner was also an adult in this passage i see a depiction of how consent can change even in the middle of a sexual

041act regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation learning you can say no at any time is an important lesson for teens and adults maya kobe said this about air book challenge nationwide what i'm learning is that a book challenge is like a community attacking itself the people who are hurt in a challenge are the marginalized traders in the community where the challenge takes place when discussing proposed legislation in our neighboring state of delaware senator sarah mcbride raised a salient point the way we talk about trans people and to be clear non-binary non-binary people like maya kobe fit under the trans umbrella it reduces trans people to abstract concepts trans kids exist in our elementary middle and high schools they exist out in the wide world when our children become adults and go to college or

042get a job this thursday march 31st is transgender visibility day let's take the opportunity to remember that transgender students are not an abstract concept keep them visible in your mind as you vote the book challenge policy outlines the formation of a review committee the consensus of this committee was to keep the book please keep that guidance additionally i would like to reiterate my appreciation and support for the comprehensive plan specific details i would like to highlight are considering an activity bus and other methods to remove barriers to student involvement i want to see every student have a chance to be involved and in the past i've carpooled students i didn't even know when coaches asked for help so a student could participate and also sel being rooted in classroom culture my children are now in

043ninth and 7th grades they've been exposed to social emotional learning since second step lessons in elementary school and i believe it's provided the individualized support they need thank you nancy wood and dante deandre on deck hi nancy wood he's frankford township i can't begin to imagine what it feels like to be a student and feel the need to show up at a school board meeting and defend my worth these kids should be out living their lives not here teaching a lesson to their community a lesson that should have been learned years ago when homophobia nearly prevented western high school from being named after an openly gay man to the students here tonight we see you you belong in our community you are loved and cherished for who you are and we have your backs the

044potential ban on genderqueer in tonight's agenda is about more than just a book context matters board members your vote tonight comes in the midst of an attack on the lgbtq students in our schools by individuals who for political reasons want parents to be afraid that their children might be indoctrinated and groomed in public schools a politician claiming our student-led gsas are about indoctrination a national figure tweeting out our teachers email addresses and calling them groomers retweeted by white nationalists who openly mocked our students a local forum hosting the author of a book that suggests suicidal ideation in trans youth may be a form of manipulation the challenge to genderqueer is just one more part of these attacks i was aghast in our last school board meeting when a community member demanded a count of the

045number of lgbtq students in our schools to justify quote whether or not there's a need for this type of genre in our schools shocking as it was we should be grateful she said the quiet part out loud because the premise of her request exposes the broader educational issue and the reason why tonight's vote matters to everyone think about it a request to count the number of a certain type of students to justify the need for a certain genre implies that books and other materials should be only a mirror of the majority of students that's not how education works students need exposure to a wide range of perspectives to develop critical thinking students need mirrors and windows diverse texts are not just for diverse students the argument that genderqueer's presence could be justified if enough of

046a certain type of student exists in our schools plays bear the true motive it's not about pornography it's about excluding students who fall into a minority the basis to keep the book is clear genderqueer is not pornography it's no more explicit than many other books in our schools and it has been broadly rated as appropriate for older teens while this vote should be an easy one on the basis of fact the broader context in our community heightens it to a level of moral consequence we need to see every school board member vote to approve this recommendation the message you send to our students matters and they are listening thank you hmm uh dante d'andrea westchester borough uh i'm here to encourage the district to vote to approve both book committee recommendations uh i don't need

047to necessarily restate the evaluations i think they were very thorough very excellent nothing more that needs to be said on that matter i would like to speak as a openly queer man with a non-binary partner and speaking of three-year plans part of my three-year plan is the idea of possibly settling down in westchester and having a family so i'm looking towards this meeting and towards this whole affair in general as an opportunity to see westchester not just as a safe and tolerant community but a inclusive and truly welcoming community and so i urge you all all nine of you to vote to keep this book it's doing the right thing i know it's not easy actually a couple of my esteemed neighbors here might not want to make it easy for you but it is

048very important queer kids need resources we need to be visible i graduated downingtown class of 2020 i didn't have a fraction of what these kids today have and it is just awesome seeing them that they are doing so much better than i did and they need to feel seen they need to feel seen and not feel obscene uh i thought this was two minutes because i'm from downingtown so on that note i will say downingtown beat you guys to this they've already approved the book uh not bragging but you know uh so yeah i i'm very happy to be here i'm very happy to hear from a lot of um people around here i'm very happy to hear from the students the parents uh this is i urge you to vote to keep the book

049thank you matt mckenzie and gilbert on deck matt mckenzie west goshen how's everybody's bracket doing uh and thanks for the extra minute i could really use it here i'm up here to talk about the glen acres renovation program which is on the financial consent agenda tonight the board is expected to approve a 19.8 million dollar construction project for that school and remember renovations are never completely never completely cover everything there are always some things not included and oftentimes follow-up projects are needed as we've seen in the past and as most homeowners know there are always uncertainties with the renovations and costly overruns are likely and remember something we consistently see in all of our westchester school district projects is the intentional misrepresentation of actual costs to the taxpayers the bond sold to finance this mistake

050will cost will make the total financing expense around 29 million dollars as best as i can tell through online research glenn acres is 55 years old its dedication was presided over by a school board president named spelman there was a renovation with some additions at the 30-year point around 1997. there's a general rule in construction concerning what a new product when a new building should be considered instead of just pursuing planned renovations all construction projects are unique of course but it's called the 60 rule if a renovation project is going to to total approximately 60 of what it would cost to replace the building with a new one a new building should be considered should be studied in my view a 55 year old building should be replaced it would add more value for the

051local residents in that community the 23.5 million revised project budget would actually more than pay for a new school building a 600 student capacity and a benchmark 325 per square foot of new construction costs at 120 square feet per student it's just math has new building even been studied has an operations plan been developed to house the students while new construction is taking place renovations incurring during occurring during use is also very inefficient and can be unsafe for the occupants are there any long-term long-range replacement plans for all of our buildings if so what are they all of our elementary students can fit in just nine elementary schools easily we're actually right on the cusp of just eating eight buildings and and there are no enrollment projections that show a need for more than more

052than nine of these buildings right now so awarding these contracts tonight is an extraordinarily bad idea but the biggest reason why actually why actually isn't due to the construction cost we are actually in the midst of declining enrollment district-wide the net new housing construction is more than offset by declining birth rates in fact some big news that just came out today i don't know if any of you guys heard this the statewide in the state pennsylvania statewide there's a decline in the 2020 birth rate that is among the lowest ever i don't think a new school has ever looked into here the board should demand a thorough study before they approve this construction in my opinion dedicating 29 million to this now is very wasteful [Applause] hi my name is deb gelber of east bradford

053sorry my handwriting wasn't so great on that one um first of all i want to thank the board for listening to everybody's statements and taking it all into consideration what i'm asking the board to do my second sheet i have three minutes but only one award i would like to hold the board accountable to the equity mission statement i'm going to read that just as a reminder to every single board member why we're here the equity mission statement of the westchester area school district reads supports students and families of every race color creed identity ability and orientation as they engage in purposeful learning without bias without bias or judgment let's hear that again without bias or judgment um and it stands in solidarity to ensure diverse and inclusive curriculum and instruction for all students all

054students every single one of our students matter regardless of all of this that is what public education is right access equal access to education regardless of your all of this and how much money we have right this public school is a place for all of our kids to come and learn regardless of what the parents think and i'm sorry we don't all want to hear that but i don't agree with everything that goes on it doesn't mean i have to i don't understand it all but i don't have to what i do know is our kids are killing themselves we are sitting here we just heard from a community member about how this book saved his life and then we had a community member come up and say i've never heard of a child's life

055being saved by reading this book that we're not listening to each other we have to listen we we're not all going to win and it's not about that it's about our kids let's just get back to educating our kids and talk about the items that we had before covent because i'm sure there's a lot of programs that we're talking about because we're constantly debating the same toxic conversation sorry that's it alexis cooper hi alexis cooper musk ocean township um i'm up here tonight because um i'm requesting that the vote for escaping the sinking ship be postponed to the education committee meeting can compete in april since they were unable to discuss and vote on the book this month as was originally planned i sent a letter to everyone on this board requesting the vote be

056postponed and i included dr sukholasi in the email i had the opportunity to consult with various holocaust experts in the community and the feedback i received about chapter four wilhelm guslav is a lack of historical context surrounding the sinking of this nazi ship rhonda vic whitman is a holocaust educator advocate and author who mentioned the following the way the story reads it is as if the russian aggression towards this boy's village was completely unprovoked and happened in a vacuum there is no mention of the holocaust nor germany's attempt to conquer europe which preceded the boy's need to flee if this is an introduction to world war ii for a young child the child might wonder why are the russians destroying this little german boy's village there is no historical context as to why the boy's

057role was turned upside down and that he has become collateral damage in a war which was started by his own country it's deliberately misleading from the first paragraph germany and its allies you mean the group of countries which started world war ii and was held event on world domination known as the axis of evil enemy soviet forces brought ruthless destruction you mean the soviets who liberated concentration camps across europe and pushed back the invading germany german army so they wouldn't take their land oh yeah those guys the author would the author should have added a sentence or two clarifying how the boy found himself in this dire situation you can have empathy for the german boy who got caught up in the aftermath of war and still explain what caused the boy's predicament in the

058first place what brought the russians to his front door what about the nazis who boarded the boat with a boy in an attempt to escape justice and avoid being held responsible for their war crimes against humanity no mention of that it's written as if the boy and his mother were jewish refugees fleeing the nazis by boarding the saint louis only they were not honest historical context is crucial in chapter four the welcome goosebumps 1945. i'm sorry from the book escaping sinking ship severely lacks that given that this chapter isn't a book found in two elementary school libraries geared towards an age group that has yet to learn about world war ii and the holocaust in school which dr misit concurred with during one of the book review committee meetings perhaps a responsible thing to do

059if the board votes to keep the book in the elementary libraries would be to add a note giving more background and attach additional resources such as the book hidden a child's story of the holocaust this would ensure that impressionable young minds are given contacts and the opportunity to further explore the horrors of world war ii and the holocaust thank you [Applause] there's a picture of hitler it says adolf hitler was president when the wilhelm goose law first launched on may 5th 1937. so young kids elementary school library this is what they get to see last call for guys sriracha that concludes public comment on agenda items all right thank you thank you all for coming for contributing for having the courage to stand up and speak to us we see you and we can hear

060you and i appreciate your coming that will move us to the approval of the february 28 2022 board board meeting minutes the motion to approve may i have a first dr herman that's the suggester any questions or comments from the board no could we call the vote please director herman yes director yes director now yes director yes all right next we seek approval for the march 28 2022 school board meeting agenda may i have a first please mr viva laqua mr grinnell ii um any questions or comments no we'll call please vice president by the way yes director turnout yes director yes director chester yes director shaw yes director do you think yes director herman yes director fleming yes president yes all right thank you that leads us to the superintendent's report dr sachalowski president

061thank you very much and thank you everybody for coming out tonight and sharing your comments they are greatly appreciated i do want to share some good news about some upcoming events that we have happening in our schools but tonight as you see before you we are displaying some artwork and specifically this is artwork from our very own east high school and actually our school board rep elena rudaro is our president of the national art honor society at east and as you can see from the display here elena what a wonderful cadre of artists that that we have at east and what we will be doing in the month of april in may we'll also be recognizing the art programs at our other two high schools but elena thank you very much for bringing this forward

062literally bringing all these pieces of art to our meeting tonight some upcoming events to keep in mind for our family students and staff this spring on thursday evening we'll have our third installment of our community conversations that will take place at ruston high school a very exciting concert one of i think one of the most amazing performances will be at east high school on friday evening and that is the house of hope charity concert our students at east high school for the previous two years were able to do that virtually for our community and raise a lot of money for home of the sparrow that will take place this friday night april fool's day seven o'clock at uh at east high school also taking place at east high school will be the spelman awards and

063those will occur on wednesday april 6th uh the award is named after dr elwood spellman a former school board president uh and also as we know the father of our uh our board president this is suter there are some exciting concerts and events coming up and i would encourage everyone to check out our webpage and particularly look at the link let us entertain you for a lot of the upcoming programs that we have to offer this past friday night for the first time in three years our westchester area education foundation were able to host the harlem wizards event i can tell you it was probably the most joyous event thus far this school year yes i i got picked on by some of the wizards i got picked up and dropped on the ground and

064then they performed some world wrestling moves on me but it was a lot of fun and i would just like to thank our foundation members for making that happen on friday april 29th the foundation our education foundation will host a breakfast at ruston high school and this breakfast will recognize bentley systems as one of our community partners for over the past number of years some sports recognitions and i want to be careful because i think i've been doing this a little bit too much the past few months i want to make sure that our student reps uh have the honor of recognizing uh some specific things happening sports wise but they'll be real quick henderson high school unified bocce team won the state championship the henderson girls hockey team won the flyers cup the westchester

065boy boys ice hockey team also won the flyers cup and congratulations to all of our student athletes for great performances and great successes this past winter a couple of additional items to note exton elementary will be honoring their 80th year this thursday the school opened in 1941 so it's the longest continuously operating school same location in the entire school district and let's see what else could i also add ow very important uh dr misson kindergarten registration is currently ongoing and we really want to encourage families to do your very best to complete the registration by april 15th and we're not saying that because it's tax day but what we're doing is we're saying that that will put you and your family and your future kindergartner in the best position possible for that transition to kindergarten

066tonight as well in a few moments we will be voting on our comprehensive plan there are a lot of exciting elements to that a few of our community members concentrated that on their public comments but goal area one access to district programming goal area two and i think there's much that we've learned over the past couple of years but innovative teaching and learning the third area that i really call the heart of our comprehensive plan and to be quite honest we are hearing it tonight and that is called student involvement and lastly that foundation that makes everything happen in our comprehensive plan with the fiscal and capital planning and hopefully i know right now it's probably only about 22 degrees outside and i think the winds are up around 20 miles an hour but as

067of right now it does look like that we are past the snow past dr sokolowski having to wake up at 3 45 in the morning and we are looking for the last student day to be june 10th for staff would be june 14th and our graduation dates will be rusted on june 7th henderson on the 8th and east on june 9th and enrollment numbers we are actually up since the start of the school year current enrollment numbers that we pulled at the end of february were 12 108 students so we are still seeing rising enrollment here in the westchester area school district mrs tier that is my report tonight thank you thank you dr sokolowski now i hope he didn't give too much stuff away elena that art coffee house was delightful the singing the

068art the performances by students and getting to meet well your whole family and a whole lot of other families we're looking forward to attending the ones at henderson and rustin as well that are coming up soon so thanks that was a nice uh relaxed evening it's it's of course a whole different atmosphere than coming to a wizards basketball game where they're carrying the superintendent around by his head but it was a delightful evening so thank you and thanks for doing this work tonight i was surprised saturday morning that i woke up without any back pain it was amazing i'll have to go follow them get on the bus with them maybe they can do that to you again okay elena rodero from east the bus is actually very nice if you wanted to do it

069hi everyone i hope you all had great weekends i personally had the cold i can hear will has it now well the month of march was kick-started with the student council's acknowledgement of women's history month we played various women artists music and that encouraged women's empowerment everyone seemed to enjoy the music by the mere fact that everyone was singing and dancing in the hallways on march 8th east hosted the annual viking slam volleyball tournament we had about 12 teams and all were very excited to watch i was so finally excited to play in my last viking slam this year uh my team and i thought we didn't win at all um we did get runner-ups for costumes so i would say that's a pretty good win um that frat that following friday march was my

070national art honors society coffeehouse after almost three months of planning our club finally hosted our amazing night of live music henna food and of course artwork we had over 300 people come out to support us thank you again to president tiernan and dr herman for coming um it was great to see your support to our art program and i'm so happy that we successfully raised over a thousand and fifty dollars uh the week of march 14th um through the 18th east decided to have a spirit week um on monday it was pj day i'd be lying if i said i didn't just roll out of that that day tuesday was my favorite adam sandler day i did bring my own personal golf club to finish off the look um wednesday was swap day where students

071were able to dress like teachers and teachers dressed like students i dressed like my bestie dr brown and then he was truly uncanny with the untucked shirt and undead tie no one really saw the difference between us thursday was st patrick's theme to celebrate the day and finally friday was march madness jersey theme friday also was our sel day where teachers hosted different events that students were able to sign up and do students watch basketball games analyze movies learned how to do calligraphy card games and so much more it was a really relaxing day the harlem wizards like dr sokolowski said we're back at east for the first time since november of 2019. the gym was packed and everyone had an amazing time east and russian student council members helped out with merchandise and clean

072the gym afterwards the class of 2022 were also there selling food and raising money for the class i know i had a great time so i can't even imagine how great of a time the little kids had with this such an amazing show um continuing with the topic of sports junior max parnus qualified for the pia state wrestling tournament east's sixth qualification over the past five years uh max won 32 matches his junior season including a win at the state tournament switching over to swimming taylor techler heated in the 100 breast stroke with her 9th place finish at the piaa state championship meet samantha highland taylor tagler smith sarah zaminski and olivia vonn earned all district 1 honors in the 200 medley relay and qualified for state championships olivia bond also won the fred pullen

073award um with her improvement determination and dedication to the team and last but not least congratulations to our amazingly talented boys hockey team with that mercy rule and their win for the state championship twice in a row everyone knows this past weekend oh and our spring sports are starting fresh i don't think any games have started yet but i just know that they're having having a good time uh looking ahead though the american red cross drive will be hosted this year uh by student council on april 8th 2022. um there is a major shortage of blood donors this year so we're all really hoping that there's a big turnout um joining blood can save up to three lives each student blood drive actually helped [Music] all the victims of the boston bombing back in 2013

074so i thought that was a pretty cool fact i personally cannot handle needles so i will be helping all the students um prom season is very fast approaching and east girl up is here to help they have been collecting donations for prom dresses for anyone and everyone who is in need all dresses are free and can be found in the library students may try them on and browse as they please they're looking for so many more donations so if you have any laying around the house please consider them giving them to donations for the gorilla that's my final report but i also am here to talk about the art which i have on my phone um so i'm also here tonight to represent my amazing ap art class here i've brought with me 16 works

075of art by my peers in this class we focus on our selected sis which stands for sustained investigation which is pretty much a fancy way of saying themes my personal si is luck and i like to focus on small yet perfect moments where we put our lives in the hands of fate and while i may not completely believe in all these habits i do them anyways all the time i just like to see all these beautiful moments in action so i'd like to capture those my peers sis range from mental health issues money appearance personas childhood innocence climate change home decor memories and so much work all these works were featured in our coffee house this year so they may be familiar to anyone who attended um though this class may cause me stress and

076to use my brain more than that is comfortable um mrs billy has done a fabulous job in guiding us and helping us grow as artists and people so if your student is interested in any way in art i advise you all to encourage them to take this class it's truly my best decision i've ever made in high school that's mine that's kind of hard work [Applause] will from henderson it is your turn and the cold oh no mask i think we all got it uh i had the cold on friday i thought i was good i wasn't walking outside this morning kind of came back but we're struggling though we'll be okay um dr scholkowski stein stole my thunder here with the henderson unified bocce team uh brought home his second straight uh state championship

077um they left the school uh to the sound of rocky playing to the pa system and all the students lining the hallway so it was a great moment um and i think they are by far the most dominant team in henderson history henderson swimming had six swimmers qualified for states bringing home a total of nine medals including six silvers and a gold krista marlin won the girls 200 freestyle she started the final lap uh i would say at least a full stroke behind the girl in front of her and finished a body length ahead so it was quite impressive to watch the girls 400 meter relay also won silver the girls ice hockey team won both the flyers cup and the icshl championship in the month of march led by junior cassidy young the girls

078got hot at the right time finishing the season on an unprecedented win streak baseball started their season off the right way this past saturday defeating mountain prep nine nothing after a first inning lead off single for malvern pitchers jackson snyder eddie smith and eric glenman retire the next 25 batters without giving up a single hit and striking out 13. the wrestling team finished their season this month they have not lost a single league meet since 2018 and sent six wrestlers to hershey to beat in the state wrestling matches none of them won but we sent him so that's interesting this week is kindness week here at henderson uh some of the festivities include music in the hallways uh kindness cards pajama day and donation drives for the home of the sparrow the home of the

079sparrow provides shelter to single mothers and children who face both homelessness or an abusive situations i had never heard of them before but i did do some research and i think the work they did was very important so if any of your kids go to anderson please do donate to that the android hugs foundation warrior guides program had its first event in over two years saturday and it was the first time they've had an event since trophy cove had shut the program down henderson and great valley students bowled ate pizza and hung out with fourth to sixth graders from chester and they are hoping to bring back the program full time but i am personally a member and it is very important and impressive to see the work that is done with these kids and

080just watching them grow up was a great experience for me uh last week marked the beginning of the equity workshops at henderson uh students participated in three hours of discussions and activities to explore our school culture and help build a vibrant and successful community where all students feel safe valued respect and have a sense of belonging we are having a second session this wednesday that i will be taking a part of last wednesday was the henderson prom showcase 54 students i believe uh were able to uh try on clothes and dresses uh provided from multiple vendors and put on a little fashion show and uh dance recital for our friends parents and anyone else who attended um i was personally um i'm gonna say elected but more forced to see the event so it's quite

081stressful but uh the public speaking from this kind of helped and uh yeah that uh concludes my report uh president tiernon you had said i believe in january um that if we did select where we wanted to go to school uh to let you know um and i'm going to louisiana state university you're going to be a southern man it's probably not 25 years here right now no not at all my check today was 71 and they just turned on the lazy river so you have a lazy river is that the college they put it in it's in the shape of lsu too it's really all cool um thank you both student reps for continuing to keep us up to date did you mention bocce that's what i started off with yes oh sorry the

082state champions state uh state championship the second consecutive state championship bocce team yes did you have a parade for them um it wasn't exactly a parade it was more impromptu we all heard rocky music and i think we are remembering last year oh okay okay okay i'm going to get like they had a police escort they did all the way they uh they're pretty good so we treat them like that but and and so we want to thank you as you're going into now the fourth quarter of your senior year i mean to i give you a lot of credit for just coming and saying i'm still playing this game i'm going to hang in there until the very end until we get those diplomas into your hands we practice tonight there with lucy shake

083the right hand diploma in the left hand it will all be good so as i said last month and we'll continue to say the momentum just keeps speeding up the number of activities in march april may and of course june it's almost all over um just get to be almost something almost every night dr sokolowski will not be eating dinner at home until after graduations are over i guarantee that so we appreciate you're taking this journey with us you're showing us what high school seniors look like you have more yeah i missed uh the henderson um drummond club put on mama mia uh yes four sold out shows really good i went i i missed it because i wrote mamma mia good because i was in a rush and didn't write a full description but

084it was it was a really good show it was double cast it was awesome i haven't heard that much music it was like being at a broadway production they didn't try and do an orchestra so they had the music already but everybody in the audience knew all the songs so the amount of movement in the audience and clapping and moving around was just a healthy a healthy performance and um excellent i think the thing that interests me the most if you are over 60 or 70 or so like that there were three different um programs for the well for all of the musicals that i've been to so far the henderson one was a two-pager well it was four you know it and i thought well that was kind of cheesy they didn't have any

085of the bios of the kids and what grade they're in and what they've done until i went home and looked and there was one of those little blocks that you take your camera you know what i mean and there it all was right there on my phone and actually my granddaughter showed to me when we went out to breakfast and she said well there it is so each school did this differently some saved a lot of paper henderson saved a lot of paper but they all reported out who was important to that cast in a different way which i thought was great the productions were all very different and all wonderful uh i don't think we've seen them all yet dr herron but let me get there but i say something president thank you um

086elena i wanted to thank you very much for the coffee house um your leadership was incredible it was great meeting your family meeting students but the one thing that i wanted to point out the artwork was wonderful i mean it just speaks for itself there is a really nice sense of happiness among the students and the sense of community so it was it was a good night thank you thank you so thank you both see you again next month i don't know at some point we're probably going to give you some t-shirts or something you know thank you for all this your pay for these your stellar uh performances and that leads us to personnel recommendations from dr ulmer good evening mrs tierney mr vettel aqua and directors of the board our personnel report for

087the month of march is as follows with the removals from payroll we have six resignations this month four teachers one secretary and one network engineer we have 17 retirements for approval first mrs elizabeth bender school counselor at henderson high school with 28 years of service you have janet bose latin teacher at henderson high school and cyber program with 19 years of service this is sheryl schaborn librarian at mary c house elementary school with 31 years of service karen cook school counselor at east bradford elementary school with 18 years of service mr dean donnelly health and physical education teacher at anderson high school with 18 years of service janet doyle certified school nurse at stark weather elementary school with 20 years of service christine hunt attendant secretary at fern hill elementary school with 24 years of

088service greg jewett special education teacher at stetson middle school with 22 years of service sue kleinert reading teacher at pierce middle school with 16 years of service christina mccormick math teacher at henderson high school with 32 years of service rosemary mckeon instructional coach at mary seahouse elementary school with 28 years of service stuart o'connor english teacher at henderson high school with 20 years of service pat perdue accounts payable clerk here at spelman education center with 34 years of service joanne stollness attendant secretary at fugitt middle school with 23 years of service pat thornton kindergarten paraprofessional at starkweather elementary school with 13 years of service georgene whidham paraprofessional at fugit middle school with 16 years of service and susan sakuru instructional coach at pennwood elementary school with 24 years of service the above retirees equal 386

089years of service and commitment to westchester area school district we of course wish all of our retired retirees the best and happy healthy new chapter in their lives we'll miss everyone and we thank you for your service with additions to payroll we are recommending the hiring three long-term substitute teachers one library assistant three paraprofessionals two custodians and two substitute custodians in personnel events i communicated one status change in the administrative staff we would like to welcome mr mark robes as our assistant director of facilities and operations mark was our capital projects manager went through an intensive interview process and we were thrilled to have such a talented and dedicated professional in this extremely important role in our organization congratulations mark congratulations are you here [Applause] in additional information we are recommending an addendum to post

090employment benefits one start date update one resentment of employment and the name of nine drivers and aides from on-the-go kids buses in tutoring we are recommending the approval of 14 new tutors in supplemental contracts we are asking for approval for one annual contract and four spring contracts we're also recommending one spring contract removal we also recommend two adjustments of annual contracts along with four adjustments of spring supplementals i'm respectfully requesting board approval for all the personnel matters listed above thank you thanks dr elmer all right uh dr herman would you make the motion to approve um yes i'd like to seek approval for everything that dr olmer said from personnel and a second dr shaw thank you any questions or comments from the board on the personnel report except for the loss of 385 years

091of experience which can never be brought back a christmas can't be reproduced can't be brought in next year and just put on the job these people are are not replaceable and we have they have given us their professional lives most of them some look like they've just decided to leave a little early but these people who have lasted 28 and 34 years in the classroom thank you um any other comments questions all right let's vote for the personnel report director herman yes director shaw yes director fleming yes director turned out yes director yes director chester yes director yes direct president yes thank you um next is the consent approval of the consent agenda now you know the consent agenda is the things that we worked on and have moved forward to the a large section

092of the agenda which is now going to be approved tonight and that includes two very very big things would you mention those very big things quickly non-consent sorry in our education committee we will be talking to them correct the comprehensive plan which i mentioned earlier we will be voting on uh this evening as part of it it's not consent no it's not consent right so we will be voting on that as part of our education committee uh we'll also be voting tonight on our special education plan uh that will be also linked to our uh education committee portion of the meeting in just a moment okay so many small things on the consent agenda um do we have a motion to approve mr dr dietry any questions comments anybody want to pull anything off the

093consent agenda i was supposed to ask first nope nobody has said they wanted to do that so we have approved it we don't want to discuss it call for the vote vice president yes director yes director sean yes director fleming yes yes director here now yes director herman yes director yes president tiernon yes thank you we move now to school board committee reports the first is education with dr shaw thank you president tiernan the education committee did not meet in march but i invite everyone to our next meeting on monday april 11 at 6 30. as we just sort of discussed there are two items on the education committee agenda tonight that need to be voted on and the first one is approval of the westchester area school district 22 to 25 comprehensive plan so

094approval is requested of the 2225 comprehensive plan iso thank you second mr durnell um questions comments about wegman here and tammy correct um so for goal area number two around the innovative teaching and learning we've learned a lot these last two years around technology and its place in the classroom and there have been significant gains in our understanding of the impacts on children development on student learning we heard a lot from the committee are from the administration the cabinet um this year already about student preference for physical learning materials for preferences for that over like electronic parties i have some questions um specifically in the technology space um including what it how are we acknowledging the deficits that we know have occurred during the dynamic this isn't a westchester specific issue right but one that

095we have seen across the state and across the nation um so that is my first question for goal number two my second one is with the increased emphasis on interweaving technology into the curriculum at all levels how are we being mindful the fact that as kids are using more of their devices with their hands we are seeing an ever-growing gap in their development of fine motor skills this is also having impact on things such as the visual development the their visual development i've experienced this myself with my own children and a specific example i'd like to offer with respect to this is at the elementary level i understand that as part of our full-day kindergarten curriculum one of the free time activity options for kindergarteners is potentially ipad time so i would just like to

096better understand like as we continue to broaden and go down this path of increased technology presence in the education space how are we measuring and monitoring its impact on education educational outcomes on children development and any possible causation or correlation between things development issues around like motor skills visual development other developmental milestones specifically at the k through five level what do we need to do well you've started on add there were many very good questions there and i will tell you remember them all that i'll try to answer as many as i can and rely on dr florio as well we when we went into covid and students went home we like many districts ended up extending a one-to-one program down into kindergarten which i swore as an educator i would never do under my

097watch of course kovic comes along and you know so much for what i think there are a number of um you know a number of cannibals that will never get back you know the is back under the tent and a number of genies will never get back in the bottle one of the things we were able to stuff back into the bottle was our kindergarten through fifth grade all have individually assigned ipads and the third graders have keyboards on their ipads because that's a developmentally appropriate thing to do with that that stage we do not allow except under very limited circumstances students to take the ipads home that's a very intentional decision i can't speak specifically to kindergarten options for ipad time honestly not close enough to that on a daily basis i will say

098that in the lower grades we do tend to use the technology in in stations but our focus our emphasis is on the human contact the teacher and student and student to student relationships i never and i've said this over and over again that i have a team of really talented instructional technology coordinators who agree i never want to see a whole bunch of eyeballs on the screen because if i do we need to do some serious professional development in those classrooms and i don't consider that a success what we do want to see is we want to see devices used judiciously and we want to see them used ethically so you'll look in that in that in the comprehensive plan and we talk about the implementation of the iste standards which talks which speaks directly

099to appropriate use ethical use use as a learning and research tool um conducting ethical research being critical consumers of information and we don't want kids to simply consume information we want to be very selective in in providing students a number of ways to show what they know multiple assessments which means that we want them to use the devices to reduce things as well as you know as well as consume content so um i don't disagree with any with the premise of any of your questions in fact i agree wholeheartedly with the premise of all of your questions we are we are very carefully monitoring what's going on in the classrooms i have two instructional technology coordinators in the elementary buildings and two in the secondary buildings do we do everything well no did we pick

100up some bad habits over the course of the last two years yes we also picked up a lot of very good habits um and that's now we're at a point where we need to assess you know what's good what genies need to stay out of the bottle and what genies we need to get back in the bottle one of the ways we're going to do that is through a comprehensive bright lights clarity 3.0 survey which i'm happy to to share with any member of the board and i think pre-covered i reported on on them that looks at learning uh it actually looks at our whole entire technology landscape from the student and the and the teacher perspective and it looks at um essentially how we communicate how we collaborate how we how we create and

101how we encourage critical thinking the four c's and how we're using technology to do that and sometimes you don't need technology to do that there's nothing better than a good socratic dialogue and it does not require a computer um so we do that it also takes a look at our professional development we get feedback from the teachers on professional development i will say interestingly atlanta last time we gave the survey it was 2019 2020 we obviously couldn't give the survey we normally deliver it in the spring our students assess their classroom experience in a much more positive way than our teachers self-reflect which i think is really i think is really interesting again i'm happy to share that data um you know the areas we excel in the areas that we need to work on

102but we use their uh teacher feedback on professional development to set goals and benchmarks uh well establishes benchmarks and sets goals going forward and we're unfortunately still working off a lot of the 2019 data so i'm looking forward to getting 2022 data please let me know what didn't i answer no you're doing great so far okay hang in there with me all right thank you clarify the point of my questions are it's not criticism of the use of technology i myself work in the industry of technology so i understand its application its need and not implying that it has been used in any improper way but i do want to ensure that this is the comprehensive plan to give it as a business plan and operating plan for the district so for a matter of

103awareness for the community um and for ourselves as the stewards of this educational experience for the for all 12 000 students i want to make sure we have the right monitors in place right that there are measurable metrics um for us to understand when things do go out of range if you will right so it's good to know when it's working well it's good to know when it's not um and how this plan helps inform our continued advancement of technology in our district as it's tied to both educational outcomes and student development you know the impacts of technology on children kind of spectrum right when we look at screen time guidelines there's not a one size fits all ages three to five it's about one hour a day is what's recommended that increases with age

104right so there's a different level of appropriateness depending on the grade level when i look at the comprehensive plan um one of the steps in strategy two talks about two things one creating a technology skills matrix um and that and it talks about the creation of a digital curriculum is selected and implemented can you tell us a little bit more about that yes gladly the the skills matrix looks at what skills what habits of mind around the use of technology we expect to see at the areas at the end of various grade levels and then we back map from there with our instructional technology coordinators our instructional coaches work with teachers to develop those lesson plans units of instruction that intelligently incorporate technology in either the the process of instruction or the product because you

105can only you can only impact three things in the classroom your content which is mostly prescribed your process how you're going to deliver that content and your product how are you going to assess whether your students master that that content and you can use it and apply it in different situations so we look at what the international society for technology and education which is an internationally recognized professional organization that develops standards of quality for technology integration in education we look at what they believe the critical skills are at specific levels of development and then we try to revise our units of instruction to incorporate that either in the process or the product or both in ways that are engaging that are engaging to students so we look at those outcomes we're not looking specifically at

106keyboarding skills we're not looking specifically at mastering word processing we aren't looking at how um students leverage the technology leverage uh the internet leverage our our subscription databases which which is where we want our kids to go first because we pay good money for those under vetted embedded and you know how they use those tools to show mastery of content and so that's how that matrix works that's how we sort of assess um in addition to the feedback we get from bright bites in addition to the walk throughs that we do in classrooms where we focus on specific kinds of interactivity we want to see among our among our students and we don't we want to get away from that and i hate this because it's become very trite but it applies here that sage

107on the stage we don't want to see everything teacher-centered we want to see students actively involved and sometimes with technology sometimes without technology there's no reason why the laptop or the ipad needs to be on in fact we do help teachers with classroom management around you know different ways of you know indicating when the laptop screen needs to be down um yeah without having to engage in a you know in a struggle all the time and yes you're also right we do need to have protections in place and we are evaluating those on a regular basis in terms of you know we monitor our kids for safety security wellness and you know we respond to kids that we see struggling because of some of the things that trip our our filters that look for signs

108of student distress um as you're talking it sort of occurs to me that we kind of have a perfect opportunity right to compare the experience of our own cyber academy right against our traditional brick-and-mortar classrooms right and so um you know we got a pretty good dress rehearsal right with remote and remote 2.0 learning one topic that came up back during remote learning and this is something we experienced down in household is at the elementary level with the ipads they are originally designed set up security standards set with the intended use of being used on property right on property on a district network um i would be curious though as we look ahead as we have launched a cyber academy as we prepare for potential need for remote learning should that time overcome i'd like

109to know that there are additional safeguards in place for internet security and the safety of our of our elementary age audience in particular and the example i'd like to offer is an innocent search in my case it was a fifth grader studying nuclear events the short word being nukes a miss keystroke had a very different search result yep yes and i thank you for raising that go ahead please and i just want to be very clear i'm not trying to be controversial i i offer this truly as it is my own personal experience um we are very we have youtube that we use and it is the nature of technology to learn from our behaviors on our devices so it is a natural consequence an unintended one of these other technology platforms to learn from

110the destinations our children go to it was quite a few days before i learned of the experience in my house we were able to remediate it but i share this for an awareness for the community and for the parents in particular when those devices are in your home especially the ipads especially k-5 you should be doing anything and everything to also be the stewards of those devices and not just presume that everything sent home from the district is necessarily the same way that you have set it up in your own about him again not a criticism just something that i want people to be aware of that it can be a very innocent mistake that unintentionally presents a child with access to technology to content that is not intended for them correct thank you thank

111you for this opportunity because um i couldn't agree with you more i know the i know very well what occurred at the beginning of the remote instruction when we had to move 6 000 ipads into people's homes where i never wanted them to be we at that point were relying on some built-in filters because when the ipad is on network it's behind our filter we've since have the ipads basically vpn into the district the same way we do with our 6 through 12 laptops so basically our network is humming 24 7 and so any ipad that goes home now our content filter provider now has an app that can't be uninstalled that um acts as a vpn so everything goes through our filter one of the challenges that we have is when you rely on

112on google safe search and you rely on youtube built-in filters it's only as as good as the metadata that is connected to that particular source and if the metadata is you know inaccurate and the filters are not watching the youtube video and making a judgment they're just simply going by the metadata so we often get tripped up we now block youtube completely for elementary school because our filter is now capable of bypassing that block when a teacher embeds the url in schoology so now elementary only gets what the teachers provide so does that eliminate the autoplay on youtube yes that's where we go yes yeah and it should clean up all the you know right the previews to the other videos that they think you might like because you're watching this one the other thing

113is we have a lot of very very smart secondary students who seem to have a lot more time on their hands for whatever reason i know they're really busy but they have always have a lot more time on their hands than my staff does in terms of trying to figure out how to get around our filter so yes we know it's true exactly so um you know obviously we're all it's it's a shell game it's a lack of mole uh when we see you know you know we spring a leak one place we plug it and then the leak comes up somewhere else you know just doing a quick google search because i was looking for something in particular i had to go through two pages on how to how to defeat your school's filter

114before i got to actually what i was what i was looking for so they're obviously searching more you know for those things and i was searching for what i was looking for um but we do i mean we do have a pretty you know we have a very good you know state-of-the-art filtering system uh you know there were we discovered that students were putting up their own vpns and trying to bypass our filters so we have defender now that keeps those vpns you know we basically knock them off the network after we see the vpn go up um so it's it's a game uh it's a serious game but you know that's actually a poor choice of words it's not a game it's very serious but i guess for the students it's a game but

115we are you know we're doing everything you know that we can and we spend a lot of time a tremendous amount of time on on just these these issues and yes we screw up once in a while because the internet is a huge place it gets you know bigger every second and we're always going to be one step behind what's going on because our filters have to be updated and somebody's going to find out the reason why the filter has to be updated before the filter is updated so yes those are excellent questions excellent concerns i share them i'm glad that the latter part of my career and not the beginning thank you very much for entertaining the question um this is definitely an area where um i know in like in section three talk

116about student involvement it does talk about parent involvement also right but this is a really important area where we should look to expand our partnership as parents and guardians with the district right we we should worry about this and work on this together right we should measure and monitor it together it should be something we do as partners as we all have a great responsibility to all of these children so i would encourage the team to think about how these things can have transparency in the community as we execute this comprehensive plan and as you know the role of technology continues to expand not just in education but in society as a whole um i think we need to be very mindful of it um there's just a profound amount of data about the impacts

117on brain development in particular this was something i studied pretty extensively towards the beginning of the pandemic spoke with child experts had actually the type vector skin and participate in a panel conversation with the chester county health department because this is a very specific concern of mine and many other parents um the impact on screen time and brain development you get one shot at it once it changes brain development there's no reversing force on that and so this is going to create new challenges for us as parents for us as educators going forward and i just i want to make sure we have a plan that allows us to to monitor and be responsive to those trends as they continue to develop so exactly thank you we watched those trends i'm extremely extremely concerned about

118them as as well so we complete agreement any other questions did you get your questions answered just me yes yes i think so thank you okay anybody else all right are we moving to uh yes director herman yes director plumbing yes director no director dietrich yes director chester yes vice president yes president tiernon yesterday the next item on the agenda is the approval of the westchester area school district special education plan approval is requested of the western area school district special education plan iso now any other comments from you dr shaw or anybody else have questions or comments about the special education plan which has been discussed at prior education and people services meetings it's been in it's been online and it was in the agenda report that lengthy lengthy report anybody else all right

119call for the vote please director shaw yes director yes director chester yes vice president yes director yes thank you anything else all right so we're coming back in april for another meeting second is pupil services with ms chester thank you uh mrs turner we had no meeting um in march but we do have uh new approval for a special education settlement agreement i don't know if you have anything to add dr ranieri before we have it so i ask for approval for the special education settlement agreement also moves fine second all right herman okay questions comments i don't think so call for the vote director chester yes director yes our next meeting will be on april 11th we hope to see you there thank you thank you all right third report is personnel with dr

120herman previously dr owner shared personnel recommendations thank you very much that concludes my very short report all right thank you nothing to vote on and fourth property and finance mr viva thank you good evening the last property finance meeting was held last monday on march 21st the first item on the agenda that we spoke in detail we had some visitors from the cciu the chester county intermediate unit and they consisted of dr fury and uh mr lubitsky the business manager and they reviewed with the property finance committee information on the preliminary 2022-23 cciu core occupational education categorial and marketplace service budgets for information but very very informative session from the ccau for all the board members the next item uh dr mesut presented to the committee a contract addendum for a child's place the addendum

121extended the contract for school-age child care services for one additional year through the 22-23 school year a child's place will make rental payments to the district based on an annual rental fee of 240 k the committee recommended approval of the second addendum to the contract with a child's place and that's on consent tonight on the agenda the next item mr scully reviewed the budget forecast model as we do monthly the net projections and the changes for the 21-22 school year resulted in an increase of a fund balance of 1.4 million which will be utilized to increase the fund balance designations for future millage increases the model shows no gap currently in the 22-23 school year budget assuming a tax increase of 2.2 percent in chester county which is under the current act one living oh

122mr scotland all right the next day mr scully provided an update on the easter funds and other covid related grants applied and received by the district we went through that in detail a very informative session by mr scully the next item on the agenda mr wagman provided the committee with psba recommended revisions to the district's 2017 policy governing use of electronic signatures mr whitman next reviewed a resolution requiring board approval to authorize the district superintendent to utilize an e-signature to approve and submit specific online grant funding applications reports and associated contractual agreements with pde the committee recommended approval of the required policy 815 which is electronic signatures that was the first reading and we also recommended approval of the e-signature resolution policies mr burster director of facilities uh presented the committee with information on the

123lowest responsible bidder for the renovations and additions for the project at glenn acres elementary school the following uh contractors were listed as follows the general contractor the gc is shenik incorporated for six million fifty thousand mechanical contractor five star mechanical for a total bid price of three point three million nine hundred and twenty thousand the plumbing construction micro mechanical for a bid price of one million ninety six thousand the electrical construction westcott electrical company with a big total of 3 192 000 sprinkler construction via accelerated fire protection for a total price of 349 0980 and site where construction deracco brothers incorporated for total bid price of one million fifty nine thousand three twenty seven the total cost bids of the construction contract is nineteen million eight hundred thirty nine 000 their advised project budget is

124now at 23.5 million which is approximately 6 million higher than our original budget mr scully discussed a couple funding options to offset some of the glen acres project costs mr scully will provide additional information at the next subsequent property finance meeting in april and may as we work through the those decisions on how to fund the rest of the project the committee recommended approval the contract awards for the renovations and additions of glen acres elementary school as stated the contractors i mentioned earlier the next item mr burster review bid awards for projects listed on our 2223 capital reserve project list and they consisted of just quickly mds classrooms and bathroom reconfiguration at rustin high school furnishing replacing two heater boilers at pierce middle school furnishing replacing emergency generators at pierce middle school furnishing replacing emergency

125generators at west town elementary school replacing flory in the library and the adjacent lab room at henderson high school the committee recommended approve these 2223 capital reserve projects as the within budget the last item on our agenda at the property finance meeting was dr sokolowski reviewed the newly revised board policy 903 which is public participation and board meetings the changes in the in the policy stated as follows the main change was the board asked that all commentary be directed to the board as a whole the committee recommended approval of board policy 903 public participation in board meetings which was a first reading i do have one motion on the glenn acres elementary school for tonight this is approval of the lease agreement for office and storage space for glen acres elementary school additions and renovations

126approval is requested for leasing with 7th properties llc not to exceed 375k for office office and storage space at 1154 westchester pike to be used as construction offices and storage material during the glen acres elementary school additions and renovations projects is this fleming okay yes that's the second comments or questions all right call from the vote vice president yes director fleming yes character chester yes director shaw yes director yes director yes director herman yes director yes president tiernon yes thank you that takes us just to finish just to finish up real quick soon sorry just the last thing just an advertisement the next property finance meeting will be held on tuesday april 19th all welcome to attend and that ends my report this evening monday is spring break day yes is that all okay thank

127you other reports i'm delighted to call on mr darnell to give the report from the chester county intermediate unit thank you president in fact i would like to begin my first official chester county intermediate unit report with a couple of thank yous thank you president tiernon for recommending me as your replacement at the cciu board of directors they truly enjoy and respect you over at the iu you will be a tough act to follow but i will try my best to do you proud thank you and thank you to all my fellow board members for voting for my approval to represent our district alongside the other 11 participating school districts my introduction to the chester county intermediate unit has been like trying to take a sip out of a fire hose the cciu has a

128true wealth of opportunities and supports for students and adults throughout chester county and across the commonwealth i've been getting getting a sampling of the character and quality of the cciu over the last few weeks on march 14th the iu hosted a school board appreciation dinner at their brand white campus in downingtown mrs tyrion mr shaw miss chester dr herman and i attended and i was and it was quite a treat the amazing dinner and dessert was prepared by the by current and former students of the technical college high school culinary arts program but the real treat was hearing from the tchs students described how the tchs is allowing them to achieve their academic and professional dreams last monday i toured the bradywine campus i saw students pursuing training in arts and communication engineering and industrial

129technologies health care and human services animal and veterinary science carpentry hvac refrigeration technology commercial art and design media barbering cosmetology and automotive technology as you previously heard also on monday march 21st dr fiore and mr lubinski of the chester county iu reviewed with the property finance committee information on preliminary 20 2022-23 cciu core as mr bevlock would mention today earlier today i toured the cciu learning center in coatesville and met students who have a wide variety of skills challenges and needs the learning center encompasses two separate and distinct strands of service delivery that include an alternative education program options serving students who experience emotional and behavioral difficulties as well as a vocational training program the career academy serving students with a variety of disabilities that range from developmental to emotional and behavioral concerns i look

130forward to getting to know the services and supports the chester county intermediate unit offers even better and i look forward to passing my findings almost each month so is my report just just one thing we ate dinner with a mother and a daughter and another student and the parent made a comment about her daughter who was chattering on about the two programs she's involved in and how she's going off to college and when she told her parents that she wanted to try tchs they said oh honey we really hoped you would go to college and she said but i am and she is and that is a thing that sometimes we misperceive about kids who go to tchs well they're just going to go they're just going to go have a trade and earn twice

131as much as a beginning teacher they're just going to have trade we don't need too many new people in the trades but they are doing a whole lot more than that and they're going out to work in hospitals and they're learning how to be very good professional label hackers great stuff going on over there okay white hat thank you yep they don't call the major that i don't think but it's that's what the kids know they have animal assignments they have all kinds of things happening oh daryl stop me i'll be back there next month if you don't stop all right thank you very much like i said trying to take a sip out of pirates i know i'm impressed with they go from preschool all the way through adult again regular and special ed

132just a wide wide range of services and supports for student children and adults they don't like to say birth to death but they call it birth to way beyond until for a long time thank you they gave a wonderful presentation to us it was really lovely it was so nice to hear about their program well next year when we go to the board appreciation dinner we will you get there uh psba dr herman uh president tyrion i don't have anything this month because i'll be back next i understand okay so but you want to tell people go to psba.org and look it up yourself right right absolutely every month yes good things are happening thank you that concludes my short report legislative liaison report dr shaw yes i'm going to try to keep this short

133because we've got a big audience waiting for some agenda items coming up um just two things to report one is that the independent regulatory review commission recently voted to change charter school regulations which is a very long-fought battle in this state um and for people who don't are not familiar with charter schools and how they're funded charter schools are funded wholly by public dollars but they are held only to a fraction of the accountability metrics and measures that traditional public schools are and the majority of charter schools don't abuse those that freedom but there have been lots of instances of charter schools um really getting themselves into trouble so the new charter school regulations touch on application requirements admissions policies accountability liability coverage fiscal and auditing standards and academic accountability so this is really good

134news for the students in our state that attend charter schools the second thing i just want to note is that the house education committee held a public hearing tuesday march 15 focused specifically on teacher shortages so many of you may know that in the state of pennsylvania and in fact across the country we are experiencing a substantial decline in the number of newly certified teachers that are coming out of our colleges of education and we're also experiencing high levels of early retirement and resignations and so this is a concern for us in the state of pennsylvania and so the house that committee invited testimony from a variety of organizations and you know teachers etc and they discussed things like increasing pay and benefits for teachers lowering college expenses and for giving loans for college students

135who decide to become teachers improving the high school to college pipeline towards teacher certification and simplifying certification processes so hopefully this committee is going to result in some new and innovative policies that's going to open up the teacher pipeline for us because we sorely need that in the state of pennsylvania and with that i will conclude my report thank you very much and you just said amen i knew you did miss dr omar uh equity reports mr dernell this report is shorter but that's okay that's still quality in case you missed it last month or want to watch it again as a refresher the first strengthening community symposium featured dr bernice king daughter dr martin luther king and coretta scott king is now available to view on the district website dr king spoke about ways

136in which we can strengthen our community and the importance of equity work in k-12 education and how it reflects her father's work our very own sandra bradley's presentation will never work with padres latinos was featured in the symposium and is available to view on the district district website as well also save the date for the final installment of part three of our community conversation series which will take place march 31st at 6 30 at fired reston high school event registration was emailed was emailed and is posted on the district website special guests through the community conversations event include police chiefs from all four police departments that serve the westchester area school district thank you to all of the area police departments for supporting their community connections and strengthening community efforts that ends my report thank

137you now you're to report man thank you all for keeping us up to date with our board's connections to the community and our other responsibilities elsewhere in other business we have two motions to approve this evening because these items would have come through an education committee meeting and we did not meet we are having education committee meeting to to uh look at those two items dr shaw i'm turning the meeting over to you at this point okay there's two action items as we all know that are scheduled to be voted on and these are two votes with regard to books that have been reviewed by the school district at the request of community members and so just to be clear about what this process looks like for each book what will happen first is that

138i will make a motion um for approval i will ask for a second or president tiernan will then president tiernon is going to ask the member of the cabinet that led the book review process and that would be dr misit for the sinking ship book and dr reynolds for genderqueer and then dr sokolovsky will say a few words we will then open up the floor for board comments and after board comments conclude the board will vote so we will begin with escaping a sinking ship and then move to gender career so approval is requested of the committee recommendation formed in accordance with 906 ag2 guidelines for complaints about instructional materials to retain the elementary school library book escaping a sinking ship iso ms chester all right uh dr visit if you would give us clarity

139about the process of your meetings and your discussions thank you mrs cameron i was charged with the task of chairing the book review committee escaping a safety ship by emily rose ouches the committee the initial committee meeting was met on november the 2nd of and then on february 15 and march 2nd with committee members the westchester area school district students read the book of the week of february 28 2022. the committee completed the following tasks we reviewed policy 906 review policy 906 ag-2 reviewed policy 906 ag-3 we read the book we considered the book with the expectations of the policy given the presented points of challenge and then we shared feedback with the committee the committee was a diverse stakeholder group that consisted of anything that the policy required to be on we did have

140three students on the committee we had an elementary student we had a middle school student and a high school student who read escaping a sinking ship a fifth grader an eighth grader and a tenth grader the points of challenge for the book was that in chapter four the william gustoff uh the the person who submitted the complaint said that that chapter sympathized with nazi germany the committee reviewed and the feedback was from the adult voice of the committee after and i'm not going to read every single comment i'm only going to read a few and after reading the book i cannot figure out what the complaint was the book the book was not sympathetic to nazi germany agreed about the students having a choice in the library and nothing inappropriate for our students the student

141voices of all three students summarizing the theme students look at the book before checkout and if they don't want to check it out they don't check it out i will say that the cover of the book has the titanic it's about sinking ships and the titanic is very appealing to an elementary student and the concern from the parent why this ship why did they pick the william gustaf to explain a sinking ship it disliked the pictures in chapter four as it was pointed out earlier in the meeting that there's a picture of adolf hitler in uh in the chapter four i did ask each student that was on the committee if they knew who that person was and the tenth grader knew who adolf hitler was by looking at him um and then the last

142one chapter four is written to promote sympathy for german nazis the committee as a whole would like to recommend to dr sokolowski the majority of the book review committee believed and voted that the book entitled escaping a sinking ship is appropriate and should remain on our school book library shouts thank you dr misson and thank you also for the committee organization that you put together following the process allowing for a great level of participation from not only our parents and our teachers but as well as our students and i think that's very very significant to share tonight so i just wanted to share with the board that in accordance to policy in accordance to the recommendation of this committee for escaping a sinking ship i do concur with that recommendation to maintain the book on

143our library shelves thank you now we want to just go around miss fleming we'll start with you and work our way around if you have a comment or question at this time about the approval of the recommendation i do plan to vote to approve the book although i do understand the concern about the photo of adolf hitler and the lack of historical perspective surrounding that photo and why the and the lack of perspective of why the germans were being evacuated from east prussia and the russians were advancing on them so i do understand the concerns but i don't think they rise to the level of removing the book from the library and i would hope that a teacher or a parent who sees their child reading the book and sees the photo of hitler would

144discuss the history a little bit more with them thank you dr herman i was on the committee i read the book several times seeing if i saw something else that wasn't positive um i appreciated dr missett you bringing the students into it because i think that's a very important piece i sat and i listened to what they had said and they were very supportive of the book and the elementary the younger students had no idea who adolf hitler was i really believe that books are on a library shelf for a reason we may not all agree with you know our perceptions but i think that's something that's very good that happens in our public schools i approve the book okay thank you i have two questions one more with respect to procedure and the other

145specific to the book um so to the question raised um by a community member with respect to a collection development policy is that is it the intention of the district that is fulfilled by the three policies cited in the procedure here do we have a collection a collection development policy that we could reference with respect to this decision in future ones we do have a library policy and a lot of that mrs wensley actually ties to the american library association bill of rights and one of the pieces that i can share with you that's actually reflected in the guidelines for complaints about instructional materials and simply stated that no parent or group of parent guardians has the right to determine the reading matter of students other than their own children however i would also share

146that going through the book review process with these two committees i do see that there is an opportunity and i believe that we have received some recommendations from our librarians as to how we can in terms of attain our collection and consider our collection in our libraries and do that better and using this opportunity as a means by which that we could improve those procedures thank you my other question is both specific to the book but also a comparison of the two book reviews um for the seeking ship it you know the committee review and feedback is specifically framed in three perspectives adult voice student voice concerned parent voice is that an official part like it was done very differently between the two so i understand they're very different books very different audiences but i'm

147a little bit i'm trying to sort of reconcile the approach and the differences in the approach um and then also just the framing of adult work of adult voice versus concerned parent voice so that was my categorization that's how i formed my committee uh dr reynolds and i work very closely with making sure that we follow the same procedures the same policies and as you mentioned mrs only very different books um and that's how i wanted to report out to dr tsokolowski how i took my notes during my committee meeting it had nothing to do with policy it's just the way how i formed my themes to report back to dr sokolowski thank you yeah in my opinion the the uh the process was very clear the book review committee run and coordinated by dr

148mr followed all the board policies in the review their evaluation and recommendation or approval so i'm fine with everything that transpired i think the approval policy offered the opportunity for a number of different lenses to see the book and listen to the book and reread the book because the the offending chapter was only in chapter four it was a couple of pages long so you could read it and and go back and read it again and say i just don't see that but anyway respecting the person who expressed the concern about it i agree with ms fleming that the ideal situation would be if a teacher or a parent has the book at home and sees a picture that gives them pause and says you know who that guy was do you know what that

149man did that would be the best of the best two worlds that that the parents are looking at the books that children are bringing home and talking about it together with them and giving them more background but i don't think that book warrants i don't think any book warrants just being taken out of the library so the kids could not access it so that's how i felt about that review ms chester thank you i also read the book and i appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion from various lenses my lens did not um i was not captivated in that way where i saw i mean i i am history i'm old enough to be history so i mean i i saw the picture and i knew but i was actually more interested in sinking

150ships so i appreciate the opportunity i appreciate the conversation because it opens up my mind to understand a perspective of someone that saw the book in a different way what i do appreciate is that it causes discussion and that's what learning is about so for our children that's the perfect opportunity to say let me give you the backdrop on that story so um i think we should be encouraged to have books that cause our children to think think productively and for that reason i'm in support of the committee and their work so thank you i'm in support of what the committee is has recommended as well i've read the book of course as well and i understand the concern for sure um but i think that there's ways for us to address that concern without

151removing the book from the liberation i'd like to say two things as a historian who teaches the holocaust at the college one is that i as an instructor made a conscious decision not to include pictures of high-ranking nazi officials in my presentation because i don't feel that they're informative or helpful in the classroom having said that i don't find that including a single image is invalidating of an entire narrative also i would strongly agree that when we're teaching the holocaust we should focus on victims narratives rather than telling the story of the holocaust from a perpetrator perspective but this wasn't a book about holocaust this is a book about sinking ships and so in that context i have no problem with discussing something that actually did happen to people who were living in nazi controlled

152territory and who were not victims of love so i have no problem with retaining this book in our library i've read the book also i'll be recommending that we retain the book in the library thank you i believe we're ready to call for the vote and this is to determine whether we accept the recommendation from the committee and dr somkolowski director yes director chester yes vice president yes director herman yes director deitre yes director plumbing yes director here now yes director now and for the record i'd like to state that i'm not objecting necessarily to the content of the book nor the recommendation of the committee my objection is to the fact that i feel we should have postponed this discussion for the april education committee and then for a vote at the end of

153april thank you president yes thank you and now dr shaw on to the next book um approval is requested of the committee recommendation formed in accordance with 906 ag2 guidelines for complaints about instructional materials to retain the high school library both genderqueer and memoir iso and do we have a second mr girl thank you then we will turn to dr reynolds for your presentation of the committee work good evening president tiernan and also vice president of block one members of the board i'm here to present the committee's recommendation for the book genderqueer the initial internal committee met on december 13th in response to the book complaint that was received earlier that month in december and this meeting resulted in forming a book review committee the book review committee went on february 22nd as well as

154march 3rd to discuss the high school library book educated memoir by maya kobe in light of the board policies and points of challenge and submitted complaint the purpose of the committee was to review policy 90682 guidelines for complaints about construction materials also review the long line would it be okay if you address everybody from the podium i think something is off with the microphone i apologize also for the purpose of the committee is that better we wanted to review or consider the book with the expectations of policies given the presented points of challenge and share feedback with the committee in presentation and to present a final recommendation to dr sokolowski for our february 22nd meeting the purpose was to review those two policies mentioned to also to set collective commitments as a committee and to

155distribute the text at our march 3rd meeting we were also able to review the policies as well as view the challenge for complaint and to have both individual comments posted and committee discussion the committee is a representative group of diverse stakeholders that are part of the westchester area school district and to the point of highlight that dr miss may we also want to celebrate the voices that we heard from all of our stakeholder groups but particularly from our students we had two high school students to serve on this book review committee the number of point of note particularly for policy 109.1 for school libraries is that school libraries shall be established for the purpose of promoting a cultural social ethical and education development of students and providing suitable and appropriate materials we also wanted to

156note that books and other reading materials have chosen for the values of interest and enlightenment for all students in the community and that will make every effort to provide materials that present all points of view concerning the problems and issues of the times so forth and so on the concern or the consideration that we also discussed as a committee with censorship of books should be challenged in order to maintain the school's responsibility to provide enter information and also enlightenment and in particular for policy 906 ag-2 guidelines for complaints about instructional materials the board though its final finally is responsible for book purchases we want to recognize that students have free access to many different types of books we also discussed that no parent guardian or group of guardians has the right to determine the reading

157matter of students other than their own children and in point for the challenges of the book there were two noted complaints one was regarding sexual sexually explicit content and so in committee review we were able to note the three guidelines for statute as far as the average person applying contemporary community standards would find the subject matter taken as a whole who appeals to pure pure interest we also want to make sure that the subject matter depicts and describes in patently offensive way sexual conduct of a type described in the section and the subject matter taken as a whole lacks serious literary artistic political education or scientific value those are the points of note and we also discussed a challenge or excuse me a definition that's used for a case log i know that came up

158in some of our public comment earlier as far as what's currently in webster's dictionary versus what was the dictionary definition that was reviewed for the committee reviews a dictionary definitely definition that's reviewed in case law and that was for discussing pornographic material committee review and feedback was such and these are just a few points of note and highlight that there are images that could be viewed as explicit but in context of the memoir they are not pornographic and it was also noted that nude images and art books are also considered appropriate and that was something to be discussed this is an optional book in our high school libraries and should remain for students that need to see themselves or their stories reflected in the book it was also known as the committee that as a

159district we should consider what we deem appropriate for high school students and whether images points of note are appropriate we also discussed that this book supports queer students and their ielts allies and the importance of representation in our library shells we also discussed censorship considerations and we also discussed as far as that this book is an awarded book and it's recommended as a read for or from rather the school library journal it was also noted in committee feedback the brain development and the level of student maturity that that should be considered in review and also for our lg btq plus students we should have books that reflect their experiences all should students should have access and should not be limited to opinion and there is choice and selection it was also noted that there is

160a high rate of suicide for transgender students and having opportunities for students to have connection in relation was important in our library collections overall there is activities recommendation to keep the high school book genderqueer and then we're on our library shelves thank you thanks dr reynolds dr scott pulaski uh president tyrion um would you mind actually elena and will if i came over and sat next to you as i shared my thoughts is that right yeah does that mic work fantastic [Music] i wanted to share with everybody i'm a father i'm a brother i'm your superintendent but most importantly i'm a teacher and what i value most as i've shared before in many meetings are your your children our students that are here tonight so i have some comments that i would like to share

161that kind of reflect the teacher that i used to be a teacher that i still think i am to this day dr reynolds i would like to thank you and i'd like to thank the committee who worked extensively hard in order to make this recommendation that's driven by policy it's also driven by the principle of protecting freedom of speech as well as the rights and regard for lgbtq plus students okay when i also say freedom of speech and i'm also escaping a sinking ship my family for over a hundred years has had somebody who has served the united states navy reserve and my daughter will be a naval officer next year she will be stationed on the uss william p lawrence her dad however i was a classicist i studied latin and greek and i

162had the good fortune of being a latin teacher for 11 years before i came to henderson high school so i have a great appreciation for ancient literature and how it's guided my understanding of modern literature and now graphic novels prior to gender queer i had never read a graphic novel when i grew up i was not a fan of comic books i was the kid outside climbing the trees i was the football player i was the kid running around the woods just having fun comic books weren't my thing so in many ways i view genderqueer as a mosaic of an individual life and struggle coming into understanding one's sexuality and one's orientation and so mosaics and with the art elena that we have here tonight those illustrations in genderqueer that are of concern are just

163a piece of the larger mosaic that supports the tail and the message of this memoir the memoir may not resonate with some but for those few for whom this makes a connection it can be incredibly supportive it can be incredibly empathetic and it can develop understanding so for this reason well as i sit next to you and as i sit next to you and i sit before our parents and our students and so many of our students that came out tonight i want to share with our board that i do concur with this recommendation thank you [Applause] yes thanks thank you dr zakulewski now let's start with you mr dunnell and work our way around this way with comments i had a feeling you were gonna go the other way uh i will be voting

164to to approve the recommendation uh i see i and i did read the entire book from cover to cover i see the book as one person's story and it's a story that might not resonate with everybody but for the few that do resonate it could be life-saving and life-changing life affirming and supportive when i grew up as a young young person as a christian who is gay i didn't immediately find books where there were people that i could identify with but when i did it made a huge difference it made me feel that i was not alone and that i was not so different that i did not deserve value and support my brother is a transgender man so growing up with crystal who later who currently identifies as chris was eye-opening for me and

165for chris to find other people whether in literature or in media or in politics or in whatever role that chris can identify with is life-affirming life-saving for chris [Music] this uh i think there's a big difference between a library book and a book that's part of the curriculum that's everyone's required to read genderqueer is not we don't require everybody to read genderqueer but for the student who seeks it out they'll look at it and say no this isn't for me or wow i didn't know this was here i'm so glad i found it and so because of the positive support that it offers to people who are seeking out such a book i will be voting to approve the book [Applause] daryl and i aren't too far apart mid-age and i grew up in a

166small community in ohio and i in high school thought i didn't know any lgbtq people what i realized as an adult is i knew lots of lgbtq people they just didn't feel safe being out a few months ago very dear friend of mine from high school who as an adult came out who had struggled throughout her adult life with addiction and with the criminal charges that can come from a life of addiction felt that she didn't have any recourse anymore and that her life was very painful and she ended her life i think about candy all the time i think about the difference that we could have all made in her life if we had known who she was as a teenager and supported her and if i can keep that from happening to another

167person i will move mountains to keep other people from feeling that way and other families from experiencing the pain the candies family has experienced i will be voting to approve this book [Applause] i too will be voting to approve this book um i think i sat on this committee i participated in the conversations on this committee and i want to make it very clear that this committee was not monolithic there were many opinions expressed in this committee both in full conversation and in small groups so i don't want anybody to think that this committee was rigged or stacked with people who were going to automatically vote to approve this book that is not true so i want to make that clear i was impressed by the students and the parents and the librarians that were

168on this committee and the thoughtfulness that they brought to this task i take it seriously when parents raise concerns about books and i understand the concerns about this book i under i read it many times actually i understand but in every instance at least in my life i will err on the side of supporting people who need support and who need to be affirmed and that is our lgbtq plus community so i will be going to the firm [Applause] i read the book and there were so many things that i learned my my pronouns are she and her i believe i'm cisgender i think by the from what i've read i um weston when you spoke i so admired your courage for standing up to speak in front of your fellow students and the adults

169i when you mentioned that this book saved your life if you were the only person whose life gets saved then it is worth us having the book i have committed to follow the mission and inspiring our children to be their personal best that doesn't mean some of the children it doesn't mean the children that are doing the best it means all of our children we know that there's an lgbt community in the district we can't pretend that doesn't exist i see all those long signs when i'm traveling to my office every day that say we hear you don't you know we love you for the children that have committed suicide let me just say i hear you i see you and it's you that i want to hear from i want to know your story

170because otherwise i can't learn so i appreciate those that were able to share tonight that felt free enough to share tonight um as we work to improve the equity and diversity in our school equity is hard work it's hard to acknowledge diversity but that's the hard work that we are committed to doing that at least i am committed to doing so thank you to those that did share tonight i will be voting to approve this book [Applause] as our first speaker tonight said when we silence gender identity stories when we silence when we silence the real history that happened in this country it is a violence and i cannot thank you enough for coming forward and saying this is who i am this is who i am tonight this is who my parents know that

171i am and for uh will to say that henderson had a kindness week where everybody could feel good about who they were that is a concept that we have got to embrace feeling good about who we are whatever that is so i appreciate with all my heart your courage incoming your generosity of time and your bravery but we have to be brave too and we have to keep these books available to kids to people who can learn from them and as everybody else said i learned from that book i learned the struggle of air to figure out who air was and um i'm it wasn't a happy journey but i that was the window that i got to look through to become a better sue and that is a great gift to me so i'll

172be voting to support this recommendation [Applause] first off i appreciate the opposing views and viewpoints of all the residents tonight so thank you for everybody coming out and feeling free to speak up to the school board of the administration i also like to personally commend the high school students who spoke tonight for their courage and candid personal thoughts on the book thank you you're invited any time to come to the meeting so thank you very much for your thoughts i thank dr reynolds and the book committee for the review their evaluation their thoughtfulness and recommendation of the approval of the book for these reasons i just stated i'll be voting for maintaining the book in the high school libraries so obviously i had some questions around uh the process and the procedure of this it's

173not something book reviews book challenges are not something we do on a regular basis i think 2012 might have been the last time one was done for something that was used in the curriculum i think this is a process with no purely right or wrong answers we're all just trying to represent in our best possible way for those who have spoken this evening every single one of you i appreciate your courage in standing up and speaking your truth every single but every single person who spoke through truth is important and i applaud you for doing so we've heard from a lot of board directors tonight and their personal experiences with this subject matter i personally you know in my vote on even on the sinking ship you know it comes down to um process and

174procedure and not necessarily a moral judgment so i will not be agreeing with a recommendation but again this is with respect to process i want each and every one of you to know that this is not an area that i am ignorant to i hold in my life in my family and my friends people very much touched by the subject matter on a daily basis i have watched their pain i have watched their struggle i have also been witness to their desire for privacy and for and i want to make sure that in this process that we give an opportunity for all voices to be heard again i believe we should have postponed or education committee discussion and then for the april board to give those individuals our community who are not sure the pathway

175for how to represent themselves not everyone has the courage that you all do not everybody wants to be in the spotlight some people are uncomfortable with that and we need to afford them the opportunity the time and the respect to also represent their point of view so with respect to that i will not be agreeing with the recommendation and would ask that we consider postponing for education and the april board meeting i wanted to uh thank dr reynolds and the committee that worked on this um to me this was an awareness the author told her story it was a life story it was difficult and i'm sure that many of us in this room have our own story in our life to tell i read the book entirely i read it several times um i'm

176not used to the comic type of the book but it was different for me but the one thing it made me do was to appreciate and see how other people who are very diverse for me might be feeling choice is very important to me and the book is an optional book in the library it's not in the classroom and i think that is pretty significant no one is forced to read this book the one thing that i thought before i read the book and then after i read the book was sometimes a book on the library shelf may be the only way that a person who is struggling to talk to friends to parents to anyone about something that's bothering them or maybe not bothering them i want to commend all of the people that

177spoke tonight i appreciate the differences of opinions it's not easy sometimes to tell part of your story um i understand that and i just keep thinking there are many challenges in life there are many struggles in life and i i do believe this book may help if it helps one student or one person that is a very very good thing um i vote to support the recommendation of the committee i do like to thank everyone who came out uh to speak tonight i think we really do as a board listen to everybody's uh views and opinions i especially thank the young people who came out to speak tonight and i i do and i did take this vote very seriously because i do understand that taken out of context a couple of the graphics in

178the graphic novel can be shocking at first when you see them i did purchase the book i read it several times um the parent of three i you know raised three young adults i shared it with my three young adult children at some point when they were at home maybe over the holidays i got their opinion and i do take this decision very seriously because i understand some of the concerns and i think partly many of us of a certain age did not grow up with graphic novels so my son who's a literature major in college spoke about the content of many of the books that are in the library but it's different when it's in writing compared to when you're seeing a drawing not a photo but a drawing and that to me was

179a little bit of a sticking point it's one thing to read something and something else to see it but i have after a lot of thought and i i learned a lot from the book i feel it's an important book for many many students for our our queer and our non-non-binary and our asexual and our trans students and all students to have the opportunity to read the book and they will be voting to keep the book i thank you all i thank you all for sharing with your comments and we can have the vote director sean yes director janelle yes director now director herman yes vice president lachlan yes director yes director chester yes director dietrich yes president yes merchant carries wow would you help reflect the artwork thank you all right no we're not

180leaving right here thank you um [Music] yes oh is [Music] oh [Music] i just couldn't wait [Music] is all right i know you've been waiting all this time because you would still like to speak so mr jennings it's your turn again thank you president uh this is the time for public comment on non-agenda items i'll repeat the instructions from earlier persons wishing to make public comment were required to properly register prior to the designated start time of tonight's meeting when public commenters names are called i ask that they please approach the podium and begin by stating their first name last name and municipality public comments will be limited to three minutes per person per current board policy the three minute time clock will be projected on the screens throughout the room the board asks that

181all commentary be directed to the board as a whole public comments may be interrupted or terminated if the commentary exceeds three minutes or if they are obscene and or threatening in nature we will now call the first speaker christopher and kathy burkhow on deck christopher manos east bradford township this is a supplemental piece written by jennifer mcfarland that i'm adding to the previous comments and i do want to say thank you to everybody i've learned a lot tonight the science on child and brain development overwhelmingly agrees that children's brains are not able to process complex problems fully until the age of 25 and yet the westchester area school district is providing information to students on sexual diversity a very complex social construct that most adults have trouble comprehending for what purpose secondary students especially middle

182school and high school students are in a developmental stage that is fraught with impulsive behaviors confusion about relationships that openly questions authority and pushes boundaries and now you want them to question their sexual identity as well no wonder children today are anxious depressed and committing suicide at an alarming rate today over 1.8 percent of children identify as transgender a four to five thousand percent increase over 2017 only five years ago in addition the majority of patients with gender dysphoria have comorbidities with psychiatric axis 1 diagnoses don't take it from me take it from the trevor project an lgbtq support organization for a study from the national institutes of health psychiatric axis one comorbidities among patients with gender dysphoria by maybody at owl it's also important to note that 70 to 90 of teenagers who identify

183as transgender do not when they reach adulthood what does that tell you about making those kinds of decisions at a developmentally inappropriate age the question is why why are all these children so confused depressed anxious and suicidal what is the root cause why this generation why now what is different never before has a generation of kids been told that they can choose their gender never before has a generation of kids been taught to believe that biology is a social construct never before has sex education meant the proffering of highly sexually inappropriate pornographic books in school libraries and never before have school officials admittingly hidden a child's questioning or mental health issues and proclaimed sexual preferences from parents so i ask you all of the board members all of the administrators all of the teachers all

184of us are you part of the solution or are you part of the problem thank you good evening my name is kathy burkhau i'm a resident of west goshen township is that right and i'm that i'm the third leg of the triangle that you've heard from the other two legs tonight um i just wanted to i requested to be on the public comment part of the agenda because i didn't prepare a statement to try to influence the board tonight i felt entirely confident in in the work of the committee and in the due diligence that all of you on the board have have lent to this process i wanted to thank you i wanted to come up tonight and just thank you for the work that you do thank all of the professionals that we've

185seen in evidence tonight i think we're extraordinarily fortunate in west chester area school district to be served by such a dedicated group of professionals and a dedicated board and [Music] we don't all have to agree about things to agree that um we are fortunate in that way and so i do thank you um this morning this evening when we started the meeting with the pledge of allegiance i found myself um shaking my head a little bit when we got to the part about being indivisible and i wondered whether we would end the night feeling that way and i am heartened by the evidence that i've seen this evening um the the most important thing that i'm taking from this evening is that um in the case of both folks really but you know i was

186here with an interesting genderqueer memoir raising concern about this particular piece of literature um not only resulted in a lot of people who might not have ever looked at it looking at it it resulted in i believe if i'm not mistaken all of the board members said they had read the whole book i may be mistaken but um i know the vast majority of you did and um several we read it several times and um and many of you noted that you came out of it understanding things you didn't understand going in and that is the point uh so i'm i'm glad that we've shared this journey together i'm glad um to be a taxpaying member of the west chester area school district i'm glad to be a parent of two fabulous and absolutely astonishingly

187great lgbtq kids and i thank you for the part that you all play in their upbringing thank you [Applause] hi my name is maxwell benner uh westchester borough my pronouns are he him and i am the sophomore gsa officer at ruston i'd like to thank you guys for being in support of the book that really means the world to me really thank you so much um anyway in eighth grade we had a very lengthy unit in health on body image they went through body dysmorphia and how it affects teens along with ways to cope but a large topic was ignored gender dysphoria an issue that many many many people are affected by their whole lives including me yet it was neglected the whole unit it makes students feel invisible trans youth have to deal with

188feelings of internalized transphobia bullying discrimination harassment and many more issues while also having to deal with our education system ignoring their existence if if we can discuss body dysmorphia gender dysphoria needs to be discussed too as we've seen today bigotry comes from fear a lack of education and a lack of empathy people fear what they don't know with a better understanding of trans issues i sincerely believe that bullying would lessen it's debatable whether or not empathy can be taught but i believe it can be guided if oh it would make students more empathetic and understanding it would validate students that don't understand how to put their feelings into words like i was in middle school while normalizing tran trans as a whole i know that if we work together we can be better thank you

189[Applause] katie carter hello um i'm katie carter i'm a junior officer of henderson's gsa and i'd like to start out with thanking all the people who've come out here today to speak about their truth and to support to support those that are speaking now i've worked with a lot of people in the past few months in many different settings from all backgrounds but all in order to better achieve equity in both henderson and in the district as a whole that includes help setting up the district help setting up and proctoring the equity workshops which i thank the director of activity dawn meter for speaking at and one thing that i've learned from these events is that students know what we need most not the parents who have never spoken to students outside of their own

190and now i would like to address last month's meeting last month's meeting was very disappointing the board led a man stand up here for three minutes to spew pure hate specifically transphobia and as many times we've seen been taught in school being a bystander is just as bad as being the perpetrator he never said her name but he was talking about penn state swimmer who competed in the highest level of college swimming in both the men's league and women's league leah thomas you let him misgender her call trans women men and directly talk bad about our trans students and as i've seen hate speech is a big gives a big punishment within the schools so why is it acceptable at the school board meetings for as much support as we get at our schools at

191our admins and our teachers it goes to waste the board doesn't listen to those who's any restrictions that may be applied to as in the students so please for the student state take our words with more weight than a person who is never going to actually be affected by the rules that are set in place i speak for everyone or i speak for everyone that i am so proud to represent we are overjoyed that the book genderqueer has passed its questioning and we recognize all of you and and all of your decisions thank you [Applause] foreign forum shaw henderson high school one of my earliest memories is back from kindergarten i was a small quiet child and every day all the girls in my class would play tag on the playground and every day i'd

192ask to play with them and every day they say no i was the only person of color every other girl in the class was white and i was never allowed to play with that so i would sit on the curb and read good evening regarding the anti-lgbtq plus and anti-transgender sentiments rising recently i want to make it clear that these are harming the students of the westchester area school district as students we need a safe environment to perform our best when adults came up to discuss how the book genderqueer should be banned it became so painfully evident that the prejudiced attitudes of these adults are having a real life impact on students this was a display of blatant transphobia as a person of south asian origin i can maybe name three books at most that

193have representation of my race books like genderqueer provide representation which is so unbelievably important it took me a very long time to embrace my identity and i know that path acceptance would have been so much easier if i had representation the sentiments regarding the book genderqueer shed light on a much bigger issue at hand the lgbtq plus community is facing so much hate many people discuss their opinions regarding gsa and lgbtq plus organizations let me be clear these opinions are not opinions at all they are attacks the moment anyone begins to express any idea that dehumanizes members of the lgbtq plus community because of their sexual orientation or gender it is not an opinion it is hate speech at henderson high school we recently had an equity conference i was able to advocate for myself

194and speak up about the depression i faced moreover i learned how to be an ally for fellow students and discussions like these are crucial i can tell you with certainty that every single person in that room understood its importance using henderson's equity conference as a model the board should initiate equity programs like this district-wide to help fight internalize deeply deeply rooted prejudices in our society we as students cannot learn an environment where our identities are constantly threatened we need to have more discussions about these topics and the students are where the change will start give us the opportunity to explore the stereotypes and prejudices that we have grown up with and let us challenge them let us learn not only school subjects but also how to be an upsetting citizen of the world education is

195not only knowledge it is also wisdom and wisdom is the application of knowledge and for that we need awareness which i simply do not believe there's enough we need awareness of the issues that hold back certain groups of people in our society today so we can all do our part to change that thank you hi everyone i'm naisha and i'm a student at henderson and today i'm here to talk about issues that are happening every day that we don't see from looking through old board meetings and talking to many adults i've gathered that there are numerous people in our community who are damaging the everyday lives of our lgbtq plus individuals especially our transgender students i am here to emphasize the authentic struggles that these students face and educate others on how to help in

196law school board meeting there were references brought up about transgender women the people speaking about them misgender them by using he him pronouns misgendering may seem like one word that wouldn't have a major effect on someone but when someone spends their entire life trying to figure out where they belong and have been told that they cannot be the person that they feel that they are this one world this one word is crucial for them the pronouns are vital in making them feel like themselves before you discourse on others identities think to yourself how would i feel my mere existence was being threatened by my instructors how would i feel my gender was up for debate another real experience that i've witnessed is the amount of backhanded anti-lgbtq plus comments that i hear daily our school

197may advocate for equality but it is never truly gone from our society the lack of education that many students are met with isn't always their fault but the society we live in on the back of each of your key cards the front of the building on the wcasd website is a mission statement it reads educating and inspiring students to achieve their personal best it is our duty as members of this school and this community to help the students around us grow and be their best not push them down this is why inclusivity programs are so crucial in this school these programs have the power to educate the people around us and provide resources to improve our understanding of all groups of people there's something to be ashamed of if these things are unfamiliar or scary

198but i invite my school community to put themselves in other issues the lack of equity in this school isn't helpless helpless in fact the ability is inside all of us we call our teachers mr and mrs and we were refrained from comments that could harm others this isn't an agree or disagree situation at all there is a student in the school whose mind is constantly echoing with the blatant discrimination that they face we can't continue to have debates about someone's life anymore simply respecting others is your part of being in a civil society these issues won't be sold in a day a month or even a year but we can make progress happen if we truly care about this cause and until we do reach equity for all our work isn't done thank you anderson

199on deck good evening my name is marina and i'm a student attending henderson high school i'm here today to speak about the policies at my school relating to the lgbtq plus education and the treatment of minorities after hearing some points of view of people in this community i'm shocked and sickened more than a few times in school board meetings including this one disheartening remarks are made about these topics from former administrators and parents in the district i asked the school board through the backlash from these close minded individuals who wish to separate us and discriminate think of your students think of your students who only have school as their glimmering hope of equal treatment in society as an lgbtq plus individual and who do not receive the support they deserve at home think of your

200minority students who for so long have learned about majority groups in their history classes and only about minority rights when it comes to genocide and abuse think of the children of this school district and refuse the injustices that are so prevalent in our society as an lgbtq plus student i am grateful for the acknowledgement of lgbtq plus rights in the curriculum after being surrounded by solely heteronormative content for the majority of my life both in school and at home and i deserve that education please continue to expand on these equity projects because we still have such a long way to go there's absolutely no reason why any lgbtq plus student or student of color should learn in an environment where they feel unsafe unheard and underrepresented and with the decision made about the book genderqueer

201tonight i think we're making a step in the right direction and finally to some school board meeting speakers it is time that we as members of the community stop the misgendering of transgender students no matter our beliefs transgender students are students who just like their cisgender peers deserve the respect of being referred to as a preferred pronouns beliefs do not give anybody the right to knowingly hurt innocent students and viewing the acknowledgement of an education about white privilege as a radical marxist belief must come to an end this refusal to accept the curriculum and facts for what they are regarding racism in america and suggesting to homeschool children in order to prevent them from learning the realities of minority injustice is bordering on white supremacy and it is not a safe suitable environment for my

202new minority students to learn in it is so easy to focus on the feelings of discomfort that make that that white students such as myself may face and the difficult conversations that these efforts will spark but education is all we have to inspire change and the positive impact such a curriculum has on minority students would much overrule the negative impact negative impact on our majority students who have had the privilege of living in comfort every single day of their lives nobody is blaming innocent white students for the discrimination that minority groups have faced but every student in this district deserves a fair and equal opportunity to understand their background and culture and for a fair acknowledgement of the nuanced struggles that they are forced to face daily and absolutely nobody should be verbally attacking children

203thank you [Applause] stephanie anderson west ocean we know that there is a mental health crisis in our country it has been mentioned at many board meetings over the last year including tonight and we've seen the increase in mental health issues and suicidal ideation both nationally and locally we know many of our own westchester students are struggling we live in a community these are our kids and while some will oversimplify the matter by wrongly attributing these struggles to circumstances surrounding the pandemic it is incredibly apparent that there is a larger overarching issue at work our kids are under attack according to the national alliance for mental health historically disadvantaged communities who experience discrimination social environmental stress stressors and limited access to care and support resources also experience higher rates of suicide for example rates of suicide

204among black american youth has increased drastically over the last 10 years lgbtq plus teens are at higher risk than the general population as well and it's no wonder that these populations of youth are struggling because look at what they're made to endure we say we are concerned about our students and their mental health but we fight tooth and nail to have their histories diminished because it makes us uncomfortable we tell them their culture and religion has no business being in our schools or on our school calendars we mock the clubs that serve as safe spaces for them we block attempts to uphold equity and diversity and a special thank you to don mater for her work in this area and find fault with programs like social emotional learning that serve to address issues affecting them

205we ridicule books that represent them calling them perverse and pornographic we pull these books off our shelves leaving one less opportunity for kids who are already facing an uphill battle battle to be seen and understood do you know what the most common protective factors are that help these kids strong social family connections and support from their social communities so i'm imploring you our community our board and our district leadership hold the line stand up to these to those who are attacking our kids make sure our students are represented in our libraries make sure their histories and cultures are not diminished but shared proudly and accurately in our classrooms protect their clubs and safe spaces and put their holidays on our district calendar we need you to hold the line because these are our kids they're

206the ones who suffer from these disingenuous battles we need to remember this is not my community or your community it is our community and every kid in this community has the right to be represented protected and loved and to those students here tonight courageously showing up and speaking up don't be diminished minimized remember that you belong so take up space [Applause] surrogates and rachel lange i hope in the future westchester area school district takes a stronger stand to let the students know that they are protected and loved in this school simply hoping that the next wayne post about the gsa would blow over is not enough students are looking to their principals superintendents and school districts to say that this is not okay but of course gsa clubs can meet and should meet and if

207the best time to accommodate those clubs is during a free period soviet meeting during the day allows accessibility and transportation equality not everyone can stay after for clubs this allows all students to partake i also want to remind everyone here that the students privacy is legally protected by law so stop asking how many of them are in the school a person at the last school board meeting filed an rtk for information that is legally protected by law this is wasting our school's time and resources on unnecessary attacks and is nothing more than a power grab an attack on public education not long ago we as a nation came together in support of the lgbtv lgbtq community and federal rights finally being awarded to many and now we're here questioning whether these these books should be

208about them it's not your decision without my child reads it is not your choice to remove a novel that might help another person feel seen if you don't want to read it don't as besides we really need to figure out a new time plan for these meetings well the time and night doesn't work for everybody i've had 12 friends that i've been trying to get to come to these meetings and they can't because of child care issues if there is any way that we can figure out a way to have a sunday afternoon meeting where people could possibly be available to come that would be awesome speaking on the screen time issue that was from earlier and fine motor question i did want to say that i asked this when my kindergartner was going into

209school it was a concern that i had we have the best kindergarten teacher at hillsdale and she said she has seen an improvement in the handwriting because of the ipads they are able to erase and fix their letter shapes at a quicker pace with less mess no eraser dust no holes in the paper this was something that she was surprised about another piece is that she uses them she created many tasks last year and the year before and she uses those tasks as check-ins now and as a parent i am able to see what the kids are doing she also posts posts pictures and sight word activities that we get to follow along with i understand at higher grades screen time can become an issue but i do feel that our teachers have a good

210handle on what is developmentally appropriate for their age groups thank you [Applause] hello rachel langan her flesh chester i have something prepared to say that i think i'm gonna actually speak extemporaneously um like you guys don't even answer emails right and like that's not okay like we elected you we expect to hear from you and expecting the superintendent to answer on the behalf of everybody it just really does not like just doesn't cut it like we spent like how many hours here like i don't know it's gonna be four part three i don't know by the time we go to sleep it'll be one in the morning but what we're not talking about is pssa sports you guys 63 of kids at pierce are below basic or basic in english they can't even rewrite or

211speak our native language and we're worrying about freaking books like this is ridiculous there should be a public forum on what we're going to do to address this issue like we need to give people school choice because people need to get their kids the hell out of this district because they're not learning who cares like we're giving them cartoon books because they have been right like this is crazy this is crazy and this is what happens when you put in the right to know request literally lack of transparency you get nothing back and then the district complains about the cause for rich no request i don't know how much has cost you but you're overpaid then the other thing i want to talk about is one i'm going to go on topic for this one

212um the esser funds we spent 1.3 million dollars on cleaning but 964 000 on learning loss are you kidding me spending more money on maths and cleaning supplies and learning mods this is a travesty we used to be a great district now we are not you guys are responsible for students who are wondering why people can get up and say anything that they want to at a school board meeting i want you to look up the decision of judge prater p-r-a-t-t-e-r a united states district judge for eastern district of pennsylvania on a pennsbury case that took place in the fall we used to say to some people no that's not an acceptable that's not a nice thing to say we used to say you could leave we cannot say that anymore we we have an

213attorney sitting right here because everybody gets three minutes used to be two three minutes to say whatever is in their minds and hearts it can be profane it can be racist it can be sexist that is a fact to me it's a sad fact but that is a fact so if you come to a school or meeting and hear hurtful things and you say school board why are you just sitting there you know that taxpayers pay have to pay the attorney's fees to redact the rt uh the right to know requests that we get thousands of and we have to pay for attorney time and for the superintendent's time to look at those we've talked about this before it's quite a bit of money so we are not getting paid too much we get paid

214nothing for this job and for dr scott pulaski or any administrator or any attorney to spend time redacting right to know is seems to me to be not a really good use of time this has been the best school board meeting that we have had in probably five months it is because we heard from voices from all sides of the concerns we understand it's not a it's it's not an easy time to be an educator or a parent or a student but we do sit here month after month week after week and we listen and i do believe that probably our motto is hold that line stephanie i i do think that that's what exact exactly what we are trying to do but we are listening to all people's concerns because that is what we

215have to do it's not a bad thing we have a very very diverse community so we we do listen um we do mind most of all i think when people come and just spout stuff off like you people people are dirt you people are stupid you please now i've said this before we can have this conversation but i think that the three-minute time limit that people come and they say i'm going to get my three minutes in i'm going to tell these people off and then you go or sometimes i watch people they say their piece and they walk out the back door i've done it now that is not a productive conversation the only place i've seen really productive conversations sitting down in this in this community lately have been with the community conversation

216meetings that we've had at ruston where people everybody can come and sit down together in a classroom and in an instructive constructed way share their ideas that is the only thing that will change what's happening here the only thing that will help us understand each other better we need to hear from students we need to hear from parents all kinds we need to hear from teachers it can't be a three-minute attack it's got to be a constructive constructed conversation so i hope to encourage the rest of you to be interested enough to take the time yes we know nighttime is not good for everybody but an awful lot of these board members in fact most of them have full-time jobs in the daytime so they can't come to meetings i guess they could come on

217sunday but i don't know so as has happened in the past how many do we have email response protocol is um honestly if i get emails every single day saying you write to me chime in sue what are you doing sue if people write to me and speak to me like that no i'm not going to take time and a number of you will have responded to dr sokolowski clearly takes the the burden it in in school boards uh it is the policy around most of the country that the president responds if the president is written to you do not want nine board members oh i think some of you do want nine board members answering because then you can say well she said this and she said that and he said that no we

218we speak as a group so nine of us are not going to answer you don't wait for that if we have a respect respectful conversation happening i will respond to you dr sokolowski always responds so when you come up and blanket wave papers and say see see this is what i got you don't answer me really yes i have i have emails to say that i do okay let's have the rest of the people's beat [Applause] megan white cobb and shannon bruno on back good evening my name is ocean earlier this month a gubernatorial candidate was in a convention held at puget middle school while there he took a picture of a choir advertising fugitive gsa he misattributed the club to east and blasted it as indoctrination promising gsa's end when he becomes governor another

219political figure also shared the flyer and called our educators the grooming gang his tweet was re-circulated by white nationalists he did not edit out the teacher advisor's names tantrum took seeking a mom to fill their inboxes this is not okay our students and teachers were attacked over their involvement in an optional extracurricular activity i discussed this with equally concerned people i would like to share with you how this affected parents and students a club isn't going to make your child gay or trans [Applause] lives are okay dragged through the dirt to get a couple votes when i saw this i cried the fugit gsa kids felt attacked and not safe by the things this guy said i am also incredibly worried about the backlash gsa and lgbtq plus kids are going to face because of

220this what the candidate failed to recognize and i want to make sure you know if gsas are protected by federal law and court victories at the state level across the nation allow gsas to prevail curricular and non-curricular clubs have an important place in our schools some of my most potent memories of my time as a student at henderson are ones involving my friends and the activities we were involved in attacking gsas robs these students the chance to build memories with their friends and leave them on the defensive to justify their existence lesbian gay bisexual trans queer intersex and asexual kids are in our schools and our communities and people want to be friends with them gsas are a place where they and allies can be among people who support and respect lgbtq plus years we

221have non-discrimination policies that protect our educators and students but when outside forces seek to intimidate and discriminate we must speak out you've heard tonight you've heard by the examples that i gave how families and students were left reeling students deserve an educational space free from intimidation and harassment i'm asking that the district make a clear declaration in support of gsa's and all our students i am so proud of the students who have had the bravery to speak tonight you have given voice to the fact that lgbtq plus people are not abstract concepts and the words of our community have heard thank you for rising up for yourself [Applause] hi everyone i'm shannon bruno east bradford uh some of my comments are going to be a little bit of an echo but nonetheless here we are

222uh it's been a long evening um i don't have any props so you can feel good about that um i want to thank you for your efforts tonight i also would like to acknowledge that the district has certainly had a trying few years i do not envy you serving in your positions as school board director or superintendent you have had to live through respond to and react to an unprecedented pandemic along with increased pressure surrounding issues that have long been accepted as a part of the public school system i acknowledge that you did not ask for this and you could not foresee it i appreciate and give you credit for all you have done to make the best and most informed decisions possible that you believe could serve the greater whole but tonight i am

223here to implore you to make a plan for the future we need to hear from you more especially parents who may not be as attuned to the happenings of our school board meetings the recent silence surrounding attacks by local political candidates their supporters and parents of the district on gsa clubs and lgbtq plus norms and rights within the district is frankly unacceptable at last month's board meeting a private citizen named their request for a right to know request regarding data the district keeps on numbers of lgbtq plus students afterward we heard nothing shortly after the meeting local gubernatorial candidate bill mcswing posted a photo from outside one of our middle school bathrooms advertising a gsa club within that school in his post mr mcswain threatened to rid our state of clubs like these and quote

224leftist political indoctrination end quote when he is elected afterward we heard nothing were you aware that these tweets and posts were shared amongst foreign conservatives on twitter including matt brainard who is attributed with planning the insurrection at the capitol on january 6th in matt brainard's photo teacher email addresses were in plain sight were you aware that mr brainard's tweets were then circulated amongst white nationalist groups on twitter dr dr sakulowski members of the board these are attacks on our students and on our teachers as the spouse of a former district teacher and a long history of bureaus in the district i would be outraged if my husband's email address had been one of those circulating far and wide as a parent of children in the district and an ally who cares for the students who

225have chosen to show up today i implore you to take these attacks seriously your hopefulness that the issues that have already been raised and any future ones yet to be will simply dissipate if they are not given air is no longer working these issues are breathing and they are breeding after gsa clubs and lgbtq fans there will be another and another we look to you to inform the district of what our rights and protections are right now your silence is putting students at risk and you need to put a plan of action in place for what you plan to do i look forward to hearing how you choose to respond to this request and what you plan to do thank you [Applause] leanne smith and david hi my name is liam smith and i live

226in existence um west whiteland touching so i just wanted to follow up with my talking points from last week regarding the events at exton elementary dr sokolowski i appreciate you reaching out to me a phone call last week thank you i'll be on the lookout for the fence installation you said a couple weeks we'll see how it goes all right i also want to discuss the renovations at glenn acres with a budget of almost two point i mean excuse me 23.5 million dollars one would think that offense around the playground for the children's safety would be the number one priority however when i asked mr burster at the end of the meeting last week he told me that in fact the fence was not considered within the 23.5 million dollar budget um i was also

227told that typically the pto pays for playground equipment which i find appalling considering the budgets are worth millions of dollars i'm interested to know if the teachers and or staff members are being asked or considered when making these renovations don't we think it's important to get the points of view from teachers and staff that are in those buildings every single day taking care of our children look at how many people showed up for a book discussion but no one showed up for a financial meeting last night i was the only parent or last week excuse me i'm the only parent there it's kind of sad guys let's bring that energy when we're talking about millions of dollars that our district is spending for children's physical safety okay we're worried about the emotional safety how about

228actual physical safety when fences need to be placed around elementary school playgrounds can we please bring this energy parents when it comes to these budget meetings and financial meetings i really hope we do okay thank you high school that's a west town township uh so i know i'm gonna sound like a broken record here but um today me and my friends come not representing each other or political views but our fellow students matter their identity because their identities and basic human rights are under attack by select few recently these same few have been intriguing threatening the freedom of minority students particularly queer students because of this we have to come and face these people head on to the safety of the 12 000 students currently residing in our district i know that some of these

229attackers are ignoring me like right now do everyone else who has an iota criticism towards the group's actions so i'm going to pose a couple of questions that i hope to have answers to if you're truly trying to make the school's education system better why do you attempt to ban books and board school kid school kids projects truly for free speech why take voices away from hundreds parents teachers and kids because they're a different gender or sexuality than you know if you truly want to give people choices why are you actively pushing to limit those same freedoms if you aren't racist then why are you afraid of people who want to teach racism and ethnic diversity because you're because the minor the majority of you are afraid if you're truly into intellect why you constantly

230cite political studies for years if you have dexterity just to fit your own sick agenda if you want to make this community stronger why do you consistently pull apart every single syllable that you utter if you truly follow the constitution the mind who's taking away the freedom to assembly which is the first amendment right away from lgbtq plus students and finally if you truly care about you and everyone else's kids the wedding majority of those same kids strongly disagree with your actions if you truly think that what you're doing will not benefit you with the community you should be able to answer these simple questions about resorting to lives i'll be here ready to hear the answers with open arms and ears and to the board members while i still appreciate your effort adding equality

231to schools i still think there are a lot of steps you guys should take many pertaining to the current year essentials and the law of history classes face in homophobia and transphobia as with the ableism a lot of nerd version queer students face thank you for your time [Applause] dante deandre and amanda greenberg dante deandre uh westchester uro he him i feel kind of like a clown right now because i had a bunch of prepared remarks but they're all kind of outdated in the same way i felt that i had to come here to speak up for the kids because i was worried no one was going to and it turns out they can do a really good job speaking of themselves and in general i also want to congratulate the board every single one

232of you this was not an easy vote to make but for standing up for your convictions what you believe in your principles that's really hard to do in situations like these when there's so many eyes on you and that takes a lot of courage and you deserve the kudos for that uh a little bit of background i came from downingtown and we had an incident with the principal of stem that i mean i was graduating class of 2012. he was a major influence on me when i was in downtown east high school and i was really happy that not only could he be principal but be openly gay but there was an incident where he was removed and that had kind of put me off of school board and educational politics so i'm really glad

233to see and this is admittedly it's kind of an almost orange situation but i'm glad to see how far we've come from that and i'm really glad that i can be here in west chester and this community is accepting open welcoming to everyone uh i mean i actually had a trans friend here who previously lived in down in town she moved to seattle she's back here uh for a little while and she said you know she was just really blown away by how comfortable she felt with westchester she said you know it's not like seattle and for the sake of rent i hope it doesn't become seattle uh but no this is this is great and i just want to keep that praise on you and say i think you've all all of you no

234matter what you voted you made the right choice and you did the right thing and again give it up for these kids i'm so happy [Applause] thank you [Applause] hi i'm sorry i'll keep this as short as i can amanda greenberg um east ocean um so i'd like to start with complimenting the board first on having a very open dialogue environment for these meetings it's much better than several of the surrounding districts i don't know if you remember from last month but my family is new here so this is light years ahead of where our old district was our old district was far less respectful far less inviting for parents to get up and speak being able to stand here and speak to you all with your chairs actually facing me and having a microphone

235to speak into is really refreshing um we came from a district that board members literally had their backs to people as they spoke and they were on their phones and typing on their ipads and it was a pretty terrible feeling so i just even if we don't all agree on the things that we say or the things that we feel or you know parenting styles or whatever it is i at least appreciate the fact that you guys are respectful you're giving everybody their time so i wanted to throw that out there and dr sokolowski you know how much i appreciate the fact that you called me last week to check in on how my kids are doing with the transition to a new district in the middle of the school year and to follow up

236if i had any other questions or concerns so i apologize i didn't have any at the time i was so thrown off by the fact that you actually called um it's not something i'm used to from our old districts any questions are fine so in order to follow up now um to my prior questions from last month i know we're all without masks and stuff like that um but i just wanted to follow up that the current health and safety policy still says that we're going to be following the community metrics and not the individual school metrics with such a large districts i mean 16 schools the metrics of the other areas of the community don't necessarily reflect what's going on in each school so for example kids at east ocean could be penalized for

237the outbreak at ruston or at a nursing home when none of the kids at east ocean even have siblings at ruston or any connection to said nursing homes now with the pandemic in the rear view mirror hopefully there to stay why do we even have a health and safety plan anymore is it relevant to even have it i mean at this point i feel like the community the county the country pretty much as a whole is doing a really good job of taking personal responsibility for their health we as parents are doing i think a really good job of making sure that if our kids don't feel well they stay home i'm an educator i could from the beginning of my career nine years ago i couldn't stand it when people sent sick kids to

238school so i think that's much much better now um so at this point i really do think it should be continuing to be up to each family as to how they handle the health of their own children so i want to thank you for your time i know you've been here super late we have jobs to go to tomorrow so that was my only follow-up question have a good night [Applause] jody naraki west town i'm here tonight to speak in support of two great assets that we have in westchester area schools gsas and social emotional learning i had my first taste of sel last year when my son was a kindergartner in cyber school i was so impressed that in addition to math and reading he was learning how to build relationships and social skills

239which is really hard to develop during a pandemic looking at maslow's hierarchy of needs children need to have basic needs met before they can learn well this has already been stated by many students here tonight more eloquently than me but it it seems that the people who built the kindergarten curriculum really understood that children needed safety security and belonging to be successful now i know that sel curriculum was not due to covenants that we have it we've already had it and that we will have it and i'm very happy about that as children get older they need to they need more to feel safe and secure and as part of the community and gsas provide these basic things for students all students i'm all for these things that teach students empathy and to love and

240to support each other i yield the rest of my time matt mckenzie judy defonzo hi uh judy diponzo and i still live in east ocean uh i wanted to take you down and trip down memory lane a little bit 2001 nclb or as dr scanlan used to call it no child left untested um i wanted to talk about pssa scores they recently came out a lot later than usual because the testing window had shifted and i was concentrating on third grade because in fourth grade you're expected to read to learn which means that if you're not reading at the end of third grade you might not be able to really learn in fourth grade and uh third graders actually some of them did really well um there were some schools where uh were either advanced

241or proficient in reading and then there are other schools where it's more like uh 66 percent were fully one-third of students were not reading now the year before nclb we had the national reading panel and they kind of outlined a curriculum of sorts more of a philosophy of structured literacy on how to teach children how to read its best practices and our school has adopted that in k-3 with foundations and the special ed program that we use i believe is wilson uh reading program both programs are by wilson so we have continuity there now between general ed tier one which is foundations and special education there's tier two and tier three and i thought there's a bit of a gap in those two areas because i was told that we're using words their way in

242fourth and fifth grade and that's not based on the science of reading that's based on balanced literacy which has less emphasis on phonics and given the gap in learning because of the pandemic and also the fact that we do read to learn i mean we we heard so many people talk about how they read books from the library which is great i'd like every child to have that skill and i just feel that that we might have a gap with those kids who are not proficient at the end of third grade and getting them up to speed so that they can be readers and read agendas and know to come to spelman and not view it for meetings because they could read the agenda and i was also reading up there was a psychologist out

243in canada who says that who did some studies and found that it was traumatic being illiterate so i just kind of want us to look and see what we can do to bring the fourth grade teachers on deck with what the kids learn in k-3 so that as they move through there's a continuity of learning and that we're following best practices thank you [Applause] that concludes public comment on non-agenda items uh before we depart i would like to invite you all to come back if you genuinely have questions about the curriculum or why kids can't read after third grade we have experts in this district who can answer those questions probably a whole lot better than the school board and a couple of them are sitting right over there against the window and know a

244whole lot about the gaps between third and fourth grade and what we're doing to close them and why for heaven's sake that don't go on pssa scores we're down this year oh my goodness what a shock so um our next business meeting will be march 28th at 7 00 p.m and the other people told you inviting you april 25th at 7. yes of course we finish march 28th now thank you bob do i hear a motion to adjourn yes [Laughter]