May 30, 2023 - Work Session Public Board Meeting

001we're live and now recording thanks Katie can we do a roll call please yes Mr Antonio here Mr Badger here Mr bluefeld I'm here miss kiavaci here Mr Frank Mrs Heyman here miss Karen I guess Dr Morris here Mrs Ginsburg here and Blake Zimmerman here eight present one absent and one student board wrap this evening thanks Katie are we all please join me now we're setting our project Allegiance of the United States of America and to the Republic for which has been one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all good evening everyone and welcome to this May 30th meeting of the school board you can take a look at our agenda you'll see first listed out our prior meetings on April 24th you had a work session public board meeting on May

0021st a regular public board meeting May 8th with a finance committee budget workshop May 15th was aboard racial Equity overstay committee meeting and May 22nd was our Communications committee and our new health wellness and safety committee meeting with enlisted our upcoming meetings June 5th will be our next regular public board meeting on June 12th we'll be our board retreat July 17th will be a special special public board meeting and August 21st will be our next regular public board meeting now we will move to our presentations all right good evening everyone I'm very excited for this part of the evening uh we are going to honor those that have retired or will be retiring um from July of 2022 uh through this July um I'd like to officially welcome all our in-person uh retirees and their

003guests thank you for being with us tonight thank you for the guests for cheering them on I know they really appreciate having you here um we'll be hearing from their supervisors in just a few minutes um but we are celebrating 17 retirees in total this year and they represent all all across the organization so we have administrators uh custodians special education classroom assistants teachers counselors clerical support staff um collect collectively all these individuals make up our school programs and make them successful every day we couldn't do that without each and every one of these people represented each retiree will receive a special gift that they were able to choose and of course they'll receive our gratitude for their dedicated years of service here with wazankin school Community we have a few retirees in person uh

004seven tonight and we'll introduce all of them in a moment but first we'll run this short presentation with all 17. foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Laughter] [Music] foreign s and Rachelle halderman for putting that together I'm taking the pictures and putting that nice little presentation together we appreciate it um so I'm going to we invited all our retirees tonight we have seven who are here in person and their supervisors are going to honor them so I'd first like to have miss kanapka and miss Kroner please come up to the podium um so after you're finished we will take a picture um of you two and then I will present you with your gift as well yes it's my honor tonight to recognize Maureen croner gifted teacher at lower Gwynedd and

005Bluebell currently I'm a firm believer that in order to move forward looking back and taking some time to reflect is necessary so I'll do that tonight as we recognize Maureen for the dedicated educator that she is I also believe that a masterful educator is someone who knows the big three in teaching as you can imagine Maureen is one of those Educators someone who knows the science of teaching the art of teaching and who teaches from the heart first teaching is a science a masterful educator knows how students learn why they learn and the best teaching strategies and practices to help them achieve it's no shock that Maureen knows the science of teaching aside from her teaching certificate she holds a master's degree in curriculum and instruction a master's in educational leadership and aside a principal's

006certificate too she spent her career teaching gifted students which is no easy feat enriching and stretching Learners to think deeply and critically is something Maureen does with strategic planning dedication and care next teaching is an art a masterful teacher is someone who can take the science of learning and make it accessible for students to learn understand and to achieve Maureen has a style like no other she provides windows for students to think deeply and critically to learn and apply and to reflect Marine lives above the canopy and provides opportunities for students to have voice choice and ownership in their learning the best motivation is success and Maureen is a Maverick at motivating students to be independent successful thinkers this is a continuous loop for her teaching and it what in it's what makes her a

007master at the art of teaching finally is the heart of teaching this above all else might be the most important ingredient for a masterful educator I know from my time working with Maureen that teaching has her heart it's her passion and her purpose thank goodness because Maureen shared with me recently that there was a time after her undergraduate school in at Westchester that she didn't know if teaching was for her she pursued a career in publishing for toy companies only to find that educated education was waiting for her in her own words she said I fell in love with what I always knew I should do feel over the course of her career Maureen has worked at Gwen and mercy teaching fifth and sixth grades worked at a private tutoring and testing center work dates

008worked at Saint Helena's teaching grades five six seven and eight and worked at hepro Horsham teaching gifted in four buildings lucky for us she came back to Wissahickon 23 years ago and accepted a position here the place she and her husband graduated from and her children too during her time here she always puts others first Maureen would give you her last dollar without thinking twice in her role it's easy to close the door and just work except Maureen knows the power in learning is through collaboration and teamwork as a staff member she's accessible to her colleagues often as a mentor often as a friend and always with wissahicken in her heart to say she's an accomplished educator is an understatement I know we're here to honor Maureen's accomplishments and congratulate her on her retirement but

009I'm sure that for Maureen this is just a new beginning I hope you wake up each day knowing that you are one of the most masterful Educators to walk our Halls on behalf of Lower Granite and Blue Bell I wish you all the joy here today hopefully so next we have Dr Bianca and Miss Wilbert good evening I'm proud to be able to say a few words about Shady Grove School counselor Donna Wolford I say Shady Grove but that's not entirely accurate I think Donna May hold the unofficial record for the number of school buildings worked at in the wissick and School District five five we're going with five um Bluebell Madison Ave wissick and Middle School wistic in high school and Shady Grove Elementary School it would have been honestly easier for me to

010just name the ones that she hasn't worked at um well we've been here in her time in the district um but in addition to that Donna's name has to be in the conversation for the number of students families and faculty members whose lives one faculty member has touched I want to focus my words on the past four years that I spent with Donna at Shady Grove well Donna has many different traits there are those that you cannot help but to notice first Donna is and it's always been warm and welcoming even though we cross paths very briefly in 2008 at Waseca Middle School I got to know Don over the course of my first year in the district it was a great comfort to me eight years later when I moved to Shady Grove to

011know that Donna was there her first impression stayed with me in terms of being welcoming even tonight Donna asked me to come to dinner with her family before this presentation even when I was 20 minutes late he handled it with compassion and understanding she's what my father would describe as good people her warmth and Care is an evident in every interaction that she has second Donna is a champion of our students I use the word Champion as she demonstrated consistent willingness and drive to do whatever it takes to support students and families at shitty Grove and this extends beyond the classroom and into the community well we obviously prioritize the education of our students Donna's eye for the social emotional well-being of our students and their families is always foremost with her finally Donna is

012and has always been an inspiration to our students faculty and to me a few months ago Donna gave me a wonderful card and gift the gift's a large sign in my office with the word inspire on it Donna handcrafted each letter of the word and it was obvious that effort and Care went into the gift that I will cherish forever to receive such a gift and compliment for Donna means the world the word inspired though is somewhat ironic Donna you're the one who's been an inspiration each day you carry with your cheerful disposition and smile breeding adults and students alike even on the days that I know it could be difficult for you to do so each day you look to celebrate and recognize others in our Shady Grove Community often the ones you are

013recognizing and celebrating might be those that are overlooked each day you've been an example for the rest of us I want to thank you for the gift of you as it means everything congratulations Miss Venezia and Miss Karchner please come up foreign I'm excited to talk about Kathy Karchner this evening Kathy has spent the past 30 years educating some of our youngest students she started at Bluebell 30 years ago and has spent the past 24 years at Stoney Creek Kathy is Stoney Creek's third ray of sunshine which makes sense because she heads up our Sunshine committee she brings happiness to our school and her classroom every single day no matter what Kathy always puts her kids first for teachers she is an inspiration and a true example of what an elementary school teacher should be

014over the years she has mentored many young teachers both formally and informally one of her former mentees recently shared that when she was a new teacher she aspired to be Kathy one day you may not know this but Kathy volunteered to be a virtual teacher during covid and did an amazing job with that ever since then she has been the go-to tech person on her team Kathy we will be sad to no longer see your lone car in the parking lot late at night but we know you will be living your best life and catching up on lots of missed sleep as you head into retirement with big plans of relaxing we wish you all the very best at life as well for babies hey Polly you can stay where you are and Mister so

015at this time I get to recognize Virginia's staff Virginia Jenny as we all know her has been with the district over 20 years at Stoney Creek we are the lucky ones because we were able to spend Ginny's last year with her Jenny has been a huge asset to many of our special needs students across the district also to teachers and service providers she's well respected by her peers she is amazing with the students she works with she always provides a calm presence even in the most stressful situations she is also crafty and helps to plan many of the activities that take place in the classrooms where she works and you will always see her getting into the craft students are working on Jenny we wish you all the peace and happiness in the world as

016you enter this new chapter enjoy this time relaxing and spending time with your husband and your kids and even though you were with you were only with us at Stony Creek for your last year we will completely missed all right next is Ms Walsh thank you Janice Walsh our school counselor Janice has spent most of her life connected to Stoney Creek starting when she entered kindergarten when she was only four years and eight months old when she was ready to be a school counselor she spent a short time at Madison Avenue and then returned to Stoney Creek since she returned to her first school as the school counselor she has touched the lives of over 19 000 children she has taught more than 7 600 guidance lessons she has supported worked with and brief befriended

017hundreds of colleagues at Stoney Creek and across the district and supported a couple handfuls of principles she also touched multi-generations of families what an impact you have had on our community Janice we are sad to see you go and we hope you enjoy your time in the spotlight you so deserve over the next couple of weeks we are also happy though to see you have the opportunity to travel enjoy your family and take care of yourself enjoy your dream trip to Italy as we are all welcoming our students back in September Janice Walsh the legend the goat the child Center loving gentle kind and thoughtful school counselor cheers to you and your amazing fear thank you and last but not least certainly we have Miss Bauer and Miss England Gordon please okay I told Joy

018she's not allowed to cry because then I'll cry all right it is my distinct pleasure to recognize the accomplishments of Mrs Joyce England Gordon Joyce has been a staple in the West hicken School District since September of 1988 when she was hired as a science teacher 17 years later Joyce made a change to be a reading specialist and remained in that position for seven years then in 2012 Joyce went back into the classroom as an Ela teacher and she's remained in that position until now coming off of the role as a reading specialist Joyce was constantly mindful of the student population that needs greater academic support Joyce was able to find creative approaches to differentiate instruction and meet students at their level of need while also maintaining realistic and high standards co-workers have learned so

019much from Joyce about the importance of kindness and generosity when working with multiple students Joyce always had a calming presence in the ELA department when it comes to her colleagues Joyce never hesitates to provide support or just a friendly chat to brighten someone else's day with her sharp wit Joyce was able to relieve tension when colleagues were stressed out and helped keep the department unified on key goals in addition to Joyce's work as a classroom teacher and reading specialist Joyce also fulfilled other roles in the building district and community as a wa building rep for many years Joyce confidently advocated for her peers and helped coach staff members on what it meant to be a professional in the West hicken School District Joyce has served as a homebound instructor she's mentored student teachers and she

020regularly volunteered her time at the WMS homework club and stars tutoring program in Ambler Joy says lots of travel plans especially going to Ireland to visit her daughter she will also have time to spend gardening cooking and going to the theater we wish Joyce all the best in the most well-deserved retirement the WMS Community will surely miss you and before everyone leaves the board would like to get a picture with all the retirees so does she did that oh I didn't think you were here oh I'm so sorry Miss Sherry Tech come on up please it is my pleasure to recognize Sherry deck this evening Cherry B and her time at wissahicken as a student at West sick in high school Sherry and her husband Tyler deck met at wissick in high school when Sherry

021graduated from the high school in 1979 she and Tyler soon married and after graduation raised a family together in the borough of Ambler while Sherry stayed home to raise her three children she was a long time volunteer at the former Madison Avenue Elementary School Sherry began working in the district as a substitute support staff member and accepted a permanent position as a classroom assistant in 1997. throughout her career Sherry supported five different special education teachers throughout many of the elementary schools and the Middle School Sherry's longest tenure was working live alongside Pat summers in the direct instruction program for our eighth grade students at wassaken Middle School throughout the years Sherry provided support to students both inside and outside of special education classroom in addition to the care and attention she provided to students in

022the classroom Sherry also mentored many many students Sherry was always quietly behind the scenes advocating for them after 26 years working as a classroom assistant Sherry retired this year during retirement Sherry will love spending time with her acre and grandchildren and Sherry is also working for her son Jonathan at Dex landscaping business Sherry thank you for all the contributions you've made at the West Second School District we wish you all the best during your retirement we'll try this again so now all the retirees if you could go to the Whiteboard and the board members will come over and get a picture so while you're all gathering over there we do have Refreshments out in the hallway so after the picture is taken um we welcome you in the hallway um to mingle and enjoy some

023refreshments yeah so you're all welcome to go um or you could stay for the board meeting it's a lot of fun uh but there's Refreshments in the hallway so enjoy and thank you to all of you for your many years of service to with the hicken we wish you the best in retirement anybody else all right well that's really tough to follow Blake sorry so our monthly highlights yeah that is that is pretty tough to beat after that meaningful presentation but first before I get into the highlights I guess this is a highlight um but congratulations to the wissaken ultimate frisbee team um they are the 2023 state champions so let's just give it up for that an incredible feat I believe their top five in the nation which is crazy so oh yep top

024two yeah I didn't want to get that number wrong but which is very impressive so congratulations to them they're an amazing team still a club at the high school but potentially in the future we'll see sport maybe um they had a 43 to zero undefeated season again so they were they they went off the season so congratulations to them again um but actually stuff academically happening at the high school in early May um the high school had its AP testing for College Board college level uh courses and then in mid-may we had uh Pennsylvania's Keystone testing um something else that happened at the high school we had our spring concerts on May 9th um with performances from the strings from the band in the symphony orchestra um and I also just want to say that

025we all the students appreciate having Friday off or Memorial Day weekend we all love that um but also we had the art show which was open to classes from May 23rd to May 25th and it was open to the public on May 25th at night along with the National Art Honor Society induction and a shout out to all the artists who contributed to their um amazing work at the art show is all very impressive and unfortunately uh time flies I hate talking about this but the seniors are taking their senior field trip to Six Flags this Friday um and Thursday will be their last day of school scholarship night will be Thursday June 1st in the High School auditorium and Senior Awards night will be Monday June 5th in the high school audience they will

026all take their Victory Laps on June 7th around their elementary school and the middle school and unfortunately we have to uh say goodbye to our seniors on June 8th at 6 PM for the graduation ceremony also there's new information on the parking situation at the high school seniors will have the opportunity to purchase a student parking pass in the beginning of August through the end of the first marking period after the first marking period an inventory of the remaining student spots in the parking lot will be taken and juniors will have the opportunity to submit their names for a student parking pass Lottery if a junior submits their name to the lottery they must first have a current driving a driver's license a registered vehicle and proof of car insurance and then once the Junior's

027name is drawn from the lottery they will need to submit all the usual paperwork so that situation I remember I talked about that last time but I hope that got uh sorted out with this this uh resolution from the high school administration that's that's all we have great thank you so much for that update questions or comments no all right well thank you again and now our next presentation James okay uh thank you this uh next presentation is the quarterly um uh achievement Gap update we're going to call it an equity act Gap update and what it does is it actually is an opportunity to roll out for the first time this page on their website is not yet public everybody here tonight all of the audience members uh get the first look at this

028before um it goes live tomorrow morning and you will recall that the equity dashboard uh was a major board goal over the course of this whole school year the board decided and very I think wisely to to put lots of time and effort into becoming as transparent as possible and as real time as possible with information about a number of areas in both equity and also achievement where we perceive gaps uh in in terms of the students either either their state being if it's Equity or their achievement and we'll go over that in a second but anyway we're now ready to roll this out uh this is the result of culmination of an incredible amount of work on the part of the leadership team uh Katie won't like it when I call her out for

029uh putting all this together in a way that makes sense and the concept here is to have this be dynamic over the course of or of 12 months whenever new data an update on one of the indicators is available we'll post it on here and everyone and be available the public and they sit here in its raw form whether you know the results are encouraging or not we hope to see progress over time but the first point of this is to set a Baseline on a number of things so the presentations I simply me walking everyone around the website and this again this will be available and we'll we'll publicize it um tomorrow um so the first is and the front here is a description of what the dashboard is and you see what our

030driving force is why are we doing this and be it Equity indicators or achieve indicators it's that we want to have the whole tide rise have every student every focus on every single student's achievement of course as well as a focus on any gaps that as the whole Tide Rises the gaps close up as well and you'll see that in these graphs that we have gaps we have a way to go and a number of fronts so then moving down a little bit you see there's this part here which is an archive of all of our previous reports on this we've been sharing this data out on an annual basis for a number of years now all the old reports are available still but remember one of the thoughts was that we want this to

031be available anytime anyone wants it and also more up to date so that's what this dashboard this dashboard is now going to replace those annual reports but we just want to make sure that they don't it's not thought that they're going away and then here there's each of the indicators we're tracking and if you click on this very easy drop down for example you see some more information about each one this is just to to Define key terms and Concepts the data is not here okay so and as I said these are all the indicators so if anyone watch a little bit more background on each indicators is here this part here the main menu is where all these buttons are for each of the indicators the equity indicators are on the left side uh

032achievement indicators on the right and you can see there are eight of each and last update we discussed the which they are we actually added a couple uh and we made mention we're going to do this uh of equity in regards of uh before the students get to us even did they attend preschool this one uh how ready they were for kindergarten when they did get to us so we're tracking those things as well and then these standard uh achievement ones which are might be a little more familiar uh reading on grade level grade three match rate math facts and so on we're not going to go over all these tonight but what we are going to do is it is a example dive into one Equity indicator and one achievement one the equity one

033will go to uh let's see here now this topic uh is an equity one because what we're looking at in this indicator is who takes our advanced placement courses at the high school so these indicators are are scattered throughout K-12 and in fact Pre-K all the way up to 12 and this one is on the the higher end of the scale where we take a look at um who's enrolled in in the courses and successfully complete one and the reason we take a look at AP and it's and there's some words there I won't go over is that AP is a rigorous academic experience it provides an opportunity for students to possibly earn some credit for college or possibly place out of entry level courses in college but I think the most important thing about

034AP is it gives students an opportunity to to realize that they can do rigorous work which is the next step to realizing that maybe college is for them and then next step on whatever career path they want so enrollment in AP is key the level below AP everybody might likely know this is honors that's also key and as you see in the action plan uh each of these buttons have an uh an introduction to the indicator which we just went over an action plan what we are doing what the leadership team has come up with in terms of steps to fix the gaps which you'll see shortly and to summarize these action points what we're what we're realizing is we need to do a better job in earlier in the student's career to get them

035to realize that they can do rigorous academic work so let's say in Middle School there's no AP courses in middle school and they're they're rarely if any honors courses but that's not the point point is to identify all students who might have the opportunity to to accept the rigor and get them believing in themselves they can do it and giving them opportunities while a middle school to do rigorous work so then when I get to ninth grade and they start thinking about AP or honors in intent and maybe by 11th or 12th they're in at least one on AP so here each of these I'm not going yet to the graphs hold on getting there this is this is the chart that shows the data in raw form which is is not going to be

036very Illuminating but we'll have one of these and every year whenever the date is ready in this case in the case of AP enrollment it will be towards the end of every school year once we know somebody's successful complete the course and then then those charts go to these graphs which will be very the color scheme will be consistent amongst all indicators most indicators have a hole in the sense that we we lost data during the pandemic uh but we'll just we we have a rolling five-year look and we'll continue to look at this but this is a good example of a visual uh representation of gaps we have and as you can see we need to do better at making it clear to to either our black students or Hispanic students in the case

037of this indicator that they can do rigorous work that we believe they can and here's how to get to that point that's all that talk about uh starting a little bit more in middle school and and this is as much a matter of self-confidence as it is knowing your ABCs or your math facts so this is the this is the real facts we have these gaps and as years go by and we continue to share out these graphs the graphs are probably the easiest place to see progress in closing the gap and again this is we we do not ever look at closing the Gap by lowering the top Achievers and then have everybody else catch up that way that is completely unacceptable and is never tolerated rather what we do is we always look

038at things so this plan has things littered in it that is good for everybody so that all students can continue to take AP courses and all students will will continue to master their great their math facts they're great for ETC it's just that the action plan also and I'm challenging the team because the easier thing is to find something that will work to raise everybody hide an entire tie down and we're going to take a look at that in grade three uh reading in a second the harder thing is to do to do is to find things that will that actions that can Target the gaps and and some of the action plans and by the way as we continue to add to the data and the charts and the graphs we'll continue to add

039through the action plan statements to refine them so that when we try things and they work great we'll keep doing them when we try things they don't work we'll jettison them and try something different that's that's the only way we're going to get at this there's no by the way in this data this this shape of this if any District in the country did this they'd have the same shape that doesn't mean it's acceptable still very unacceptable but I believe we're going to be one of the first districts to actually put it out here that this is what it looks like and these are things we're doing about it okay so that's an example of an equity indicator the next look at my assistant come over here wait are you bring me my pen oh

040thank you this is a special pen for all people well thank you now I can write um so reading on grade level has the same format we've got introduction that's that talks about now this is reading on grade level for grade three so now we're going back to the other Spectrum not kindergarten and Pre-K but in the achievement ones grade three that's where we start measuring or assessing our achievement situation and reading on grade level in grade three if we just intuitively forgot about all these words and just thought about like why does that matter like the head librarian the whole Township was reading me like yeah reading matters okay um it's because if you if you think about it if you can't read on grade level in grade three then you're setting yourself up

041for a number of problems and not just reading you're not going to get the math problems word problems you're gonna have a hard time understanding the biology text and so forth so this one is really so critical and the introduction talks about how we decide if this is just a yes or no is Johnny reading at what we what he should be in grade three yes or no and that's determined by two different assessments and we'll go into details um and then we we measure that and then we report it out the action plan is here and this is an example of an action plan and we've we're always doing things to try to get better at teaching and reading and I I would say like the the perfect example is that is our recent

042addition to the toolbox of Foundations that's another way or another thing that helps students learn how to read how to recognize word decodes that sort of thing so our action plan here I think talks a lot about Rising the whole tide getting all students up to grade level which I think is fabulous we should be doing that exactly why we adopted foundations among other things this is an example of an action plan however I'm going to go back and challenge the team though to find specific things to add to this action plan that specifically get at the groups who are behind the gap which you're going to see in a second because I'm here here's a little spoiler alert these pictures are going to be the same as the other ones there's going to be

043gaps and they're not encouraging so the encouraging thing is now we're being we're being uh transparent about it and we're sharing out our plan for what we're gonna do about it the same construct all these have the same exact design really intelligent put together I think we have the chart again we have years missing because of the pandemic and the hitter results for this particular indicator that's not what we want them to be and in the course of thinking about what we can do to have all students get up to that reading on grade level which is of course what we want as well as these gaps because if you think about it all students read on grade level and the gaps almost by definition go away that's what we're that's what we're aiming for

044and in the course of um thinking about or brainstorming for plans for how to do that we're going to be talking to all sorts of different people not just Highly Educated Educators and not just uh newbies or recent articles uh we'll talk to teachers talk to students parents recently on one of the indicators that talked about the kindergarten readiness yeah I can see it but this is off the script this was another one of the equity indicators like how when we have a little screening test to say how are you ready for kindergarten you know your ABC's uh you know some shapes and stuff and okay guess what gaps but as an example on this one whereas the plan for this one is still under construction you see that here and that's because we have

045we're still trying to get some ideas together I spoke to students about this and not kindergarten students and not first grade students but I spoke to a handful of six great students who happened to go to the Boys and Girls Club and I showed them this graph and I challenged them to come up with some ideas for how we could fix the gap and I made them go home and I made them write it down they couldn't use their phone maybe they use chat GPT I don't know and they came up with some great ideas that we are going to roll into that plan send some things home before it uh to send send things in the mail or deliver them to families before they hit the ground in August well what do you mean

046by that well they would tell me like shapes or they would tell me like uh things to help with with drawing books we kind of had the book idea already in play but these other ideas are great because maybe they don't have those things at home and what does that do that targets A specific group because the students I were talking to happen to be all Hispanic uh girls who reported hypothesized that there could be a language barrier in their house and they had the students the young students haven't been around all that many people yet because being in English so maybe they hit the ground a little behind in August well let's yes great idea we can do something about that we're Worcester hey can we have the resources and the wherewithal and the

047desire to do something about that let's do it that's just an example and we'll talk to parents we'll talk to everyone and as these as the uh dashboard evolves we will um in this like here action plan is still in construction we'll craft that and we'll implement it we'll assess whether how it did and then we'll refine it so that is the uh introduction of our dashboard like I say it's going live um tomorrow and this is actually this page is he clicks a special button all of a sudden it's now uh accessible by everyone and what will happen is then we'll we'll continue to update it and we'll continue to um learn from so what questions might anybody have on the dashboard itself or or for that matter Equity Gap opportunity I don't necessarily

048have a question Jim but I do want to thank you and your team like this is incredible um the work and it took a lot of time to put all this data together and to create this page so thank you I really appreciate us being thank you Katie um I appreciate that we're being transparent and um yeah I look forward to digging into this tomorrow and looking over some of that data it's uh it's rich in things to view it's it will be a little discouraging at times um I think one of the keys key takeaways for anyone who's looking at this is that none of this is going to change overnight and every district has the same problem we're just going to deal with it openly here and try as best we can to

049fix it but whatever we do whatever these plans are are good the plans and things it's going to take time so we there's no magical overnight fixes and I don't want expectation to be like next time this time next year when we do this update all those bars will be equal no the start our goal is to start equalizing those bars not get them overnight okay I have a question so you mentioned the students that you talked to at the Boys and Girls Club getting some ideas from them have we thought about putting up their like uh suggestion box or something like even just hearing what you said like I'm thinking about like you know my kids were fortunate they went to preschool so they're the teachers knew the information there was likely going to

050be on that kindergarten kind of the museum necessarily but that interview they have for the test but that interview they go through so my my children were fortunate that they had that information but not everybody goes to preschool so even if you're not like don't have that language barrier you still may have a barrier because you don't have access to that information no question uh that's a good idea matter of fact we had for a number of years now uh had rate had regular meetings Dr bouan has regular meetings with local preschool directors and teachers to to share that kind of thing so the preschools Know It uh I like your point about well actually we can show what an interesting now that we're talking about it an interesting um other indicator this is preschool

051attendance look at that we're not that matter of fact you can make the arguments last year with no game so um I think one of the keys there is in the preschool this indicator we might in the future start to dig in a little close more deeply to okay so you went to preschool X and Jimmy went to preschool why what's the difference between X and Y is X this rigorous thing and not the preschools would be rigorous but does X talk about ABCs and all y does is play in the sandbox sandbox is really really important for preschool like 90 of the day should be sandbox but there needs to be like some percents maybe just read or how about this just listening to a story being read that would be really powerful tool

052to get them more apt to be uh get a student more apt to be ready so there are these things that we can communicate either with well both with families and with preschools to your point to to share tricks of the trade if you will yeah I think that's a great idea and again just like having a no suggestion box sometimes opens the door to who knows what but some things you might find out like again listening to your students you took away some valuable things that you're going to try to incorporate into this plan maybe opening it up and you know allowing people to share some ideas some may be great you know many may not be but at least then having the community share some thoughts and insights into what they think no

053doubt I like the idea we could we could even have uh some targeted um uh say focus groups so that if one of these that somebody might have some uh let's go with say s if I could always page them I have nothing to say at the next quarterly update so but you can see this this math bat Gap is troubling but also and frankly the reason this became on the radar is I actually personally noticed that that the whole tie was down and this one as I worked with the students at the boys and girls club to go through their Master they were they were trying to do stuff on their fingers and and you know these are pretty sophisticated maybe like free algebra things and they didn't remember six times eight well you're

054putting yourself way behind the eight ball trying to figure out pre-algebra Concepts if you can't recall like that six times eight so the whole tide was down and we're gonna this is an example of the whole time needing to come up and we have some ideas and we'll we can maybe have a focus group on what would it what would be best and I know what the parents are going to say I don't understand how math is taught these days I can't help myself well maybe we can do some things to help parents maybe we can I don't know but that's a good idea though to get input and suggestions from any any all sources really yeah and like teachers would be great like if they would take advantage of that opportunity to share their

055feedback well they're not going to have a suggested box they're going to be put to work on these words if they have suggestions for overall yes how to improve in the area they could also you know make suggestions for sure other comments or questions thank you so much um I think it's really important that we are sort of taking a lead on this uh kind of transparency and information that's offered to the public um I think I hope that other districts follow suit but I I really applaud you all for taking the step because I really do think it's important to first acknowledge the problem um I couldn't help but think about when I looked at that math graph right there about the suggestion a few weeks ago of one of the speakers about having

056some extra math health in the fourth and fifth grade in elementary school because it looks like that's where you know we're starting to fall behind a little bit there um now math facts are math facts are still math facts I think from when I went to school they do yes they have not changed they're the same so maybe we could have um uh you know specialist I don't know if there's math Specialists or even parent volunteers with some sort of program to help some of the kids with with those basic things that they need to be successful in the later stages of math not a bad idea at all one of our challenges in any subject um is finding the time it's not even so much the resource though that we have had some resource

057issues in terms of adult time but um certainly time into school day because it's a zero-sum game and you add something here you might necessarily have to take away something there and that's always difficult and then if you if we're trying to extend the school day make it longer which I know you're not suggesting but uh if uh if we were to do that on a voluntary basis then the kids who come to that aren't or often aren't the kids who need it so it's it's so there's a lot of balls in the air but point being Mass Specialists or least targeted specialized math assistance but slightly differently uh is a good idea that it can absolutely be let's say sport maybe Lower Gwinnett could use some high school kids during Pi time and we

058do have some we have some good what we we find typically the high school or even middle school kids come to to either lower winter or those sometimes in Social lab to other schools um they do work with the students there's a lot of reading to students and there's also just a lot of role modeling for students and the value of that is immense and maybe we could uh have to do their math back practice as well other comments Jeff um Jim thanks to thank you to you and the team and Katie and others for putting together this information um I think we as a district have known for a long time that well first off let me say the wistaken school district overall is a fantastic School District um but it's not until you

059disaggregate some of the numbers and break them down where you see the gaps that we have um and because it is a great District overall it's very easy to um not lose sight of or not even be aware of the consistent and regular pattern of uh performance that we're seeing our educational system produce um over time and it's been doing this for like years for decades right I think the first step for us to try and address the problems with the system and trying to fine-tune it and and fix it is understanding the problem acknowledging it seeing what it actually is as you said every District around us Upper Dublin happy or Horsham North Penn anywhere around us they have all the same issues and the same gaps um but I'm I'm excited and proud

060that we as a district are taking the lead in explicitly acknowledging uh what it is in our district um because being able to see it understand the nature of it the size of it the the magnitude of it is sort of the first step for us focusing our attention on trying to do something about it and changing it um so to me this is this is uh just the start with what's going to be a long-term effort for us as the district to improve for everyone um but it's an important First Step uh on a long journey so thank you for all the effort so far and look forward looking forward for more to come thank you other comments or questions all right seeing none thank you so much Jim thank you all right so

061we will now move on to our first public comment period I'll be allowed maximum of five speakers on any particular topic um first public comment period is though for agenda items only we ask and speakers limit their comments to three minutes and note that it's not our practice to engage with speakers when appropriate we will follow up with responses on our website I don't have any blue sheets anybody online there's no raised hands on Zoom all right well then we will move on next is the board president report first under informational items this is superintendent contract update um and some of you know we are planning to have a special meeting in July uh to discuss Jim's contract um we're celebrating retirees next year we'll have another one to add to that list as uh

062Wade Pullman leaves us um so it's important that we look at extending Jim's contract so that we have someone here especially with his experience as a business manager of the past to help guide our new business manager uh when we hire that individual next year uh so just to keep that on your radar that we will be having that special meeting in July are there any comments on that or questions all right hopefully moving on to action items um Wade I'm going to ask for your assistance with these thank you very much so um each year we have these uh almost identical um resolutions 1 through 13 and they do various things including um they're required by law to set the budget to set the tax increase and to enact various taxes uh to set

063the tax increase for the library to authorize me to do certain things during the summer and during the school year to keep items progressing while they need to progress and then also um the final one is to allow me for approval up to ten thousand dollars for change orders because we do have construction projects going on and there are times when I need to give approval so that things can continue on a day-to-day basis keep on track I'll inform the board and depending on the dollar threshold we'll come back and get upward authorization uh at a later time most of these items were reviewed at our last Financial committee meeting knowing that we were going to have them presented tonight and we would be seeking approval of these items at the next meeting the tax

064increase is uh noted at 3.3 percent for the school district 3.5 percent for the public library and uh um that's where we are you wait is there any comments comments or questions all right oh yes thank you Jim a number 15 is the appointment of our student board Reps for July 1st 2023 through June 30th 2025 that will actually be decided next week we have one more interview yet to conduct and we'll be notifying our new reps next Tuesday and then we'll run on July 17th at that special meeting right any comments questions all right sing then we'll move on to our superintendent report Jim okay thank you uh I'm happy report that for once Blake uh turned the tables on me and stole my thunder before I could steal his and so yes thank

065you for the call out to woof it's uh important and the 43 now let's just think about that 43-0 there's no one in the state that could beat them I have to go outside the state and unfortunately they're not going to be able to go to the Nationals this year but it's too far away but that's an incredible accomplishment so that's my off the Record uh informational item and now the informational item that I do is on the agenda which also happens to be a action item for the next meeting on Monday is our annual or sorry semi-annual six-month review of The District health and safety plan and as you recall this was initially put in place by the requirement for this of all schools as it was linked to additional funding for schools for

066things during the pandemic be it um cleaning supplies or additional staff or virtual uh teaching and learning materials whatever anyway the Esser rules are still in place though we still have to do this and so we're doing this again tonight and we'll approve uh the changes to the health and safety plan Monday and the changes are pretty simple it's the changes are really three in a sense they reflect the new CDC approach to um the pandemic of post pandemic depending on your viewpoint but we the our health and safety plan will no longer have the recommendation to test at home um will no longer have the recommendation to notify us if uh you do for some reason test positive and also um the the notifications home notice the sent home will will cease I think

067a really important point that I want to emphasize in this is that um as we communicate these changes we will put in big bold red letters that the key to any of this and this is not new this is something that's been in place for perhaps that schools existed is to please stay home if you don't feel well that's the key and and that doesn't mean a few Tylenols so that all of a sudden you don't feel so bad all of a sudden you go to school that doesn't work that way it's you're still contagious so we'll return to a focus on whatever the reason you're not feeling well um please please do yourself your body so a favor so it gets better faster and others a favor and stay home but that that has

068always been our case uh and our emphasis and we will continue to emphasize that great thank you Jim questions or comments go ahead yeah so I know I'm not going to change the world because I'm just a school board member I'm not going to change Public Health policy but um this to me is really sad because this is not any sort of plan at all this is the dismantling of a plan they were just recommendations not requirements just recommendations and now we're even taking those away we talk a lot about safety and belonging in with hicken I just question if kids who have parents or grandparents who are immunocompromised or fighting cancer feel safe or they themselves have immune or autoimmune issues do they really feel like they belong when we are doing absolutely nothing

069and I think that is something just to just worth thinking about um stay home when you're sick is a great policy but we live in a country with no mandatory paid sick leave and that's often impossible for parents to swing and so I guess personally as a person who has autoimmune diseases and is still considered high risk 100 to 250 000 people every year in a vulnerable in the vulnerable community of high risk and elderly are going to die in this country of covid-19 as we enter in demacy you know can we do something for our fellow neighbor and maybe wear a mask when we're sick if we can't stay home can we do something and take a test anyway just to make sure we're not getting our neighbors sick you know again I know

070I can't do anything at this point but it's just really sad to me and I had to say that thanks for listening thank you Dan other comments or questions all right same done thank you again Jim we'll move on now to our assistant superintendent report yes good evening thank you um I don't have any action items this evening but I do have one informational item which is to share the um uh presentation from our schools honoring Asian American Pacific Islander heritage month which we know is in May um and what I want to start by saying and helping us all to ensure that we have that shared awareness that when we talk about um aapi we're talking about a very group a very diverse group of people who represent more than 50 different countries and

071more than 100 different languages and dialects and we also recognize the need for ensuring that the history and Heritage of the aapi community is something that's represented in our curriculum and is acknowledged and honored all through the year so I want to start by saying that in may we do ask for input and resources information from our school so that we can honor here is as a part of our board presentation but it's also important for me to start by saying that this is not it may is not it um that it's something that we are continuing to work on ensuring representation throughout our curricula and all through the year um so this this presentation is really going to highlight just a few examples from each of our schools we'll start with Bluebell where our

072kindergartners learned about learned about um Israel I'm looking at his name and I'm throwing myself off um um he's saying What a Wonderful World so I don't want to say you know anybody know no no no no no no not that version um and um third graders are books and completed class activities um they read one of the books was a name jar and they didn't they then had an activity they completed that focused on the importance of understanding the history of our names and they created the secretive bulletin with jars um and represented their names our fifth graders at Blue Ball completed biography projects on influential aapi people in in U.S history they learned some of them learned how to create biography posters in canva which is a tool that we use in our

073district at lower Gwynedd many classes featured in display literature for students to read and some of the classes created crafts in the pictures we see here students were participating in an aapi book swap and they created fly fish kites in honor of children's day which is a holiday celebrated in Japan on May 5th at Shady Grove several classrooms enjoyed live read-alouds from several different Asian American Authors one of them is here in the image you see there were too many books examples of books and authors to name but I'll share that one book was used to examine the cherry blossom tree and its significance in Japanese culture students and created their own cherry blossoms artwork to display in the hallways which you see in one of the pictures here at Stoney Creek a common thing

074you'll notice throughout all of our schools is the use of literature because we know how powerful books can be to help our students learn about various different cultures at Sony Creek students engaged and again activities with read-alouds and various activities and games students in the Upper Elementary grades research influential aapi people in history in you in U.S history and completed projects to show their new learning one group of fourth graders will assemble their research notes to create a class book our Asian Student Association Club at the middle school sketched and painted a hallway mural of influential Asians and Asian Americans with many biographies that's what you see in the upper left corner image there um in addition to the mural students created PowerPoint slides for morning announcements at the middle school which highlighted their biographies

075and instrumental music the strings classes primarily use the teaching methods created by a Japanese violinist which focuses on intonation tone quality and other Basics they Incorporated songs by API composers every year an art class 8th graders completed a print making unit creating their own prints inspired by aapi print making artists which you see in the the right hand pictures there and seventh grade math students created bio poems celebrating the lives of mathematicians you won't you can't see all the details here but um they're interesting to watch it to read through some of the poems that the students created highlighting influential Asian American and Pacific Islander people in our in our history um classrooms all throughout the high school engage in various lessons to focus on influential aapi people and cultures one example comes from our

07612th grade women's studies course where students learned about women at War and the Japanese internment camp experience as well as Asian American Collective action feminist groups as part of the women's Liberation in the 1970s students also learned about women in the 1980s and the concept of intersectionality which is a term that was coined in 1989 they learned through various examples of forms of activism throughout that course and the image you see here is from the Asian cultural committee which hosted the Asian culture Fair um on May 6 on Saturday May 6 the Asian cultural committee is a subgroup of the Asian Student Association this was the second annual Asian cultural fair at the high school it was held at the high school and it was an honor of aapi Heritage Month um if you were

077in attendance you and I mean I was there it was it was incredible they um had various activities for children for adults representing different countries um that you could actually participate in going around to various tables and playing games and engaging with some of the student Representatives who were there there were performances throughout the event ranging from Taekwondo performance from Sky martial arts to jiu jitsu demonstration with Mr Shoemaker as one of our middle schools teachers um there's a fashion show um there were dance performances it was incredible and of course lots of delicious Cuisines from various parts around the world and lastly today May 30th students from the middle school and high schools Asian Student Association and the high school's Indian Cultural Association participated in an aapi read-aloud connection events with with all four

078of our elementary schools so the students from the middle school and high school they went to our elementary schools as student readers they shared stories featuring characters and authors from the aapi community and this was a wonderful way for our secondary students to connect with our elementary students during this aapi Heritage Month again we remain steadfast in our goal to ensure that there's adverse representation of aapi cultures perspectives and histories all throughout the year and all across our curriculum but we appreciate our schools sharing some of these wonderful updates for the month of May so that concludes my report wonderful thank you so much I really enjoyed that presentation I always like seeing what our students are doing to celebrate um so thank you so much um other comments or questions um so uh oh

079sorry Deon um so Marshall and I looked up that singer you were thinking of it's Israel I won't say the last name because it's like 15 letters long but he's uh he was a hawaiian-born ukulele singer that's the one you're thinking of can't even I I'm not even attempt to pronounce this last it looks like kamaku we go pretty close yeah it sounds good yeah um but but the point is that um people may or may not know that um the Asian Pacific Islander community in Wissahickon is the largest racial group after white in our district at 15 so it's a significant portion of um our uh our school district um but in addition it's it's a very Broad and diverse community so when we talk about Asian and Pacific Islanders there's like 30 plus

080countries that fall within the category from Israel the singer from Hawaii who's Polynesian to myself from the Philippines my family Korean Japanese and even those who are from uh whose parents come from India so it's a very varied and Broad group of folks um and it's great to see that our district is you know spending a lot of time and energy um trying to recognize all the different cultures and the contributions that they've all made to our country so uh thank you for all that I was just going to say my family and I went to DC over spring break and we were there during the Cherry Blossom Festival and what we learned I didn't know this was that the cherry blossoms were originally a gift from the ambassador of Japan to President Taft's wife

081several thousand trees and that's how that whole thing started and so that was really interesting upload a thing about it I would love to hear more I guess thanks again any other comments or questions all right well thank you again for the presentation I will move on now to our board solicitor report Jack action is requested for the approval of the settlement agreement between family H student number h-23 and the district uh as presented uh pursuant to document 9-1 thank you Jeff any comments or questions all right see no move on to our board secretary report please thank you um there's no informational item and at the next meeting we'll be requesting action on uh various minutes including the April 17th board racial Equity oversight committee the April 18th finance committee April 24th work session

082public meeting minutes May 1st regular public board meeting minutes May 8th finance committee May 15th paid board racial Equity oversight committee and the May 22nd Communications committee and health and wellness safety committee meeting minutes uh they are all going to be presented as documents 10 1-10 7 and thank you very much thanks Wade any comments or questions I don't think none will move on to our board treasure report thank you there is no informational item and at the next meeting we'll be requesting acceptance and minuteing of the treasures report for April 30th 2023 uh production 11-1 thank you thanks Ray the comments or questions Danielle the resources report good evening again uh tonight there are no informational items for your review are 10 action items under 12b of the human resources report this evening the

083first two actions include resignations appointments guidance summer days changes of status a leave of absence extracurricular changes and volunteer additions action item three is for the approval of the PowerSchool applicant tracking and employee records agreement HR software used in our department item four is for the approval of the Summer esy Staff item five is for the use of substitute nurses under contract with delta T the subcontracting group items six through eight are the yearly amendments to the contracts for Dr Dewan Mr Coleman and myself item nine is the approval of the administrator's salaries for the 23-24 school year and finally item 10 is for the approval of the confidential employee salaries for also the 23-24 school year that thank you for your consideration and that concludes my report thank you thank you so much Danielle

084any comments or questions again thank you earlier for your presentation that was so nice for the teachers that came in and said thank you all right we'll move on now to our Communications committee report oh who's handled okay perfect all right so we're going to go to Health why should we do that now or no just in turn Okay curriculum technology committee report Ronnie there are no informational items and all the action items will be voted on upon next week I will read them all thank you uh yes this evening we have um 12 items that we'll review which will seek a motion to approve on June 5th items one through five are annual items for review and approval including tuition rates tuition waives students and according with our in accordance with our board policy

085um um there's also the esy outplace services you'll see an agreement with the mciu for coordinating our access program you'll see the estimated cost for the mciu shared service agreement for 23.24 and approval to run low enrollment courses at the high school item six is a request for an extended field trip for the high school yearbook Club from July 30th through August 1st item seven eight and nine include requests for our annual software agreements student replacement laptops and laptops to replace our secretarial staff's desktop computers item 10 is a request to replace some of our projectors that are outdated and need to be replaced item 11 is a request for payment to the bciu for nursing services for a student the board received a memo from me last week about that item and item 12

086is to award behavioral Support Services to ghr which is General Health Resources for next year following the request for proposals process that concludes our report thank you so much any comments or questions right seeing none we'll move on now to our facilities and transportation committee report Joe um thank you uh sorry I was on the wrong document um sorry having a computer issue do you want to come back to you know I'm just going to hand it off to Wade because that's all the details so Wade can you please uh take over thank you um so the informational item is on May 22nd there was a Blue Bell construction update for the community uh it was a zoom or teams and it was available to anybody who is interested in an update um things are

087continuing to go well uh there is actually um a bid meeting later this week but what we wanted to do is to try to provide to the community and Blue Bell and the surrounding neighbors we also um um Angela Farlow the principal of the building uh put little envelopes into the various Neighbors in the Sith and Elaine area as well so that we're trying to make sure that they are as well uh aware as to what's going on but the the general gist was trying to uh let the community know that you know um we're on our way we need to receive bids but after bids uh the general first uh phase 1A is the construction of additional parking lot in the um bus garage area uh phase 1B is going to be the construction

088of the building which is in the back of the building that time frame is uh starting pretty much in October and ending December 24 2024 so it is a tight and quick construction time frame but there is definitely going to be some uh Growing Pains as we build the building phase two is the front parking circulation area area that's next summer from June uh to through August of 2024 and that is probably when we're first going to see something that is going to sort of forever be better at uh Blue Bell so starting in August of 2024 front circulation area will be completed and will be better for a long period of time and then phase three is the conversion of at that point phase three is the back of the building is now completed

089we're able to use the back of the building and then like we did at Stoney Creek at that point we would then uh convert at a minimum uh the existing cafeteria into the emotional support and some faculty and office spacing and that occurs from January 2025 to June of 2025. so that is the general phasing we um Dr chrisfield and myself both accented that this is going to be a challenge it is going to be more challenging than Stoney Creek because if you think about Sedonia Creek it's land and there's less neighbors and less um challenges to the site Bluebell is tighter with a lot more going on and we're going to need patients from a lot of folk I also accented to the community that Ford has been very very uh supportive and kind

090to allow us to have a construction manager on site at the entire time so as problems for two neighbors and to Angela and running the building there'll be a construction manager there to hopefully oversee whatever problems there are and to solve as many of those problems as we can they can't obviously they those problems will be brought forward to Dr Chris field into myself but that's generally what we went through with that meeting and just tried to highlight to people what some of the pressure and pain points were going to be as we go through it thanks Wade for the update um in addition we have seven action items that are up for review and for vote next week and wait can you uh give us a quick summary of each of the action items

091please quick I heard the word quick I was too long on the last time I guess I get it um zero eyes is um security software there's going to be additional presentation to the board uh next week uh middle gear middle switch gear Transformer replacement it's very expensive it's 789 000 but it has been a project that we've been discussing uh in the facilities meetings and Five-Year Plan for a period of time and the reason we are appreciative of getting for moving forward with that is some of the switch gear is extremely long lead item so we need to award it we're going to get the orders in and then frankly nothing's going to happen for a long period of time while that hopefully arrives um item three is Johnson Controls standard Contract Services Schiller

092and hearse is going to develop Engineering Services for the generator Replacements at lower Gwynedd and Shady Grove so that's the beginning of the development of those projects um document 15-5 I presented to the board it's very very positive but it's the primary closeout of Sunny Creek Elementary School addition and renovation project we had sort of an interim update this is sort of me trying to kill it close it we still have a couple of items including motion we approved at the last meeting which was playground equipment and we have some traffic safety stuff that we're still working through but we're again we're trying to put that project behind us at this point number six is an additional payment for authorized Services of 80 000 for civil and architectural services for Bluebell and there's a document

093explaining why those Services were needed in document 15-6 and item seven is the Home in school has been kind enough to donate to us or is planning to donate to us a swing set Gaga pit and related items not to exceed thirty four thousand dollars thank you thanks Wade um wait I I have a question about the zero eyes contract can you explain to me how that technology works and what it is I can I can take this one a little bit yeah it's um the concept here is to use our existing Hardware which would be the security cameras and have installed uh or I should say really in a remote location have software available to that is able to detect items coming into the building that that either our weapons or have a very

094high chance of being a weapon um particularly guns but they could be other things and if the software detects such an item it was it would it would initiate a uh over the course of about seven seconds uh notices to uh local law enforcement and to the building and would then track the person who has that item on our cameras from camera to camera until says Thomas decided it was determined as a real threat which is likely because they're they're uh reliability is good not perfect or um not spread and it's um in in my opinion and uh agrees that this is a good addition to our various things that we do that none of which are foolproof but all of which are designed to together as a batch just do that much more frankly

095it's really about getting us the the precious seconds if if uh you know everybody they were needed for some reason so Jim but all of our buildings now have secure vestibules um or any visitors have to go through and with that there's a video camera at the front door before they're let into the secure Festival vestibule and then um usually a school secretary or some kind of receptionist puts eyes on them before they let them into the main building um so it would seem that there are like already human systems in place to visually detect any weapons coming into the building yeah it can actually detect hidden things and it would detect somebody breaking in through the gym door where there's no human observing so is it like is it like X in like an

096x-ray machine or something a little bit yeah it's a little bit like that I mean it can't go through it can't go through all items but it can it can detect it it uses it has ways that I don't want to call it uh AI because it's not but it's it's taking advantage of very sophisticated video uh hip technology to detect shapes and it would actually in that case you if somebody has something out of view of the camera then okay now we don't get it as soon as that thing comes in a view the camera alerts go out all over the place and within seconds everyone's aware of it um and Jim given that it's a software solution it's that's using a ready or existing installed cameras um I guess it's surprising to me

097that it cost sixty thousand dollars a year I mean yeah the the um the trick to this is the monitor we our people don't do any monitoring we we do not have a a employee uh dedicated to staring at cameras um rather there's a control Hub where uh all of zeroy's monitoring takes place and they have teams of people who if a red light flashes up for Colonial I know Colonials one of the districts are doing this um five sets of eyes are on that they determine and they go and um and that just takes a good bit of money to to staff plus I think we're paying for the technology okay thanks Jim we did that camera at the front door when it first detected already before that person even enters our building um

098the I the the approach would be yes to that um it would be more it depends if the person is you know intentionally hiding it in a briefcase or something then the answer is no it wouldn't have that kind it would just sort of depend on how it get it actually the item actually gets into the building um it could be the case that it does beforehand or more likely as soon as it's actually displayed in a way that the camera can see any other comments or questions is this at all schools or just the high school awful is there are there canvas throughout the building or just in the front of the building uh throughout um more so in the secondary um but the in all schools there are cameras throughout so would this

099also detect like if a student had brought something in not anywhere anybody yes yeah now it doesn't you know like so it won't help us in our constant battle against say vaping um but it does help if any however the item gets into the building it will lock onto it the camera will lock onto it and then the person has it and and one of the key things I think to this is it's very hard to watch somebody move from camera A to B to C because it's not necessarily logical and then you have to kind of like know the software will naturally track that person uh and so it'll highlight this camera and this one this one as it goes as the person goes through the building it's really now again it's not foolproof

100it's pretty darn good and I think an excellent addition to to the the suite of things we have to protect our staff and students so whatever I don't I guess I don't understand what kind of Technology they're exactly using to to be able to see through some items but like what's that a danger to any human or no especially child no and what I would suggest is we as you all know we have our annual required security briefing uh for board members next week and executive sessions and things we'll talk about are sensitive and I'll make a point of of uh getting that answer I might understand the terms that are used to describe the science but I think you can in some of us nobody else can understand it for me yeah Tom I

101mean uh Jim that's a good point um I guess in the security briefing next week if Tom is there and you can be prepared to answer like you know if we have more detailed questions about the zero eyes technology Works that'd be great no doubt thank you and I think that's it for the report thanks thanks Joe all right we'll move on now to our finance committee report David thank you I mean um for informational items from the finance committee um we had a a final budget workshop May the 8th uh the outcome and the the topic of discussions were mostly covered in the president's report and all the Motions that will be considered next week uh and also Below in the action items um a couple of the the items that we're going to

102have so those action items include the approval of the financial reports approval of insurance premiums uh in the amount of 373 000 498 dollars for next year's uh school year insurance needs brokered by Willis towers and Watson um one of the topics we discussed at the meeting was the approval of the proposed 2324 uh budget for North Montco technical Career Center item four is approval to extend the agreement of the athletic Training Services with moss rehab and the amount of forty six thousand five hundred for next school year item five we discussed in the budget Workshop which is approval of acceptance of The Proposal from the nutrition Group which was responsible bitter uh whose proposal was the most advantageous to the district with price and other factors considered so as to manage the Food Service

103program for the whittaken school district with the combined administrative costs and management fee of 69 829 20. and nine cents um for the next school year item six uh is approval of the Pennsylvania School Board Association yearly membership for next year the amount for that is sixteen thousand five hundred dollars that includes policy maintenance and administrative regulations presumably meeting fees and educational items for board members happy let's see item seven is approval to transfer three million nine hundred thousand dollars from the general fund of the capital reserve fund um item eight is approval of the commitment of fund balance for the following components compensated absences capital projects and special education uh and there's more detail in the packet and then finally item nine is approval of the list of payments for the month ending April

10430th if there are any questions I would direct those to Mr Coleman are there any questions comments no all right well thank you so much David all right we'll move on to our policy committee report Marshall thank you Amy I have no informational items and no action items thank you thanks Marshall Equity oversight committee oh thank you Amy uh on May 15th we had our final uh racial Equity oversight committee meeting for the year um at that meeting we discussed two primary topics uh one was a belonging survey results recap that the administration provided um as we as was mentioned earlier tonight most of our students at Wissahickon uh School District we are fortunate to that they assimilate very well they feel a great sense of belonging and feel very connected to the school however

105we know that there are different groups and segments and individuals who unfortunately don't feel that way and so this belonging survey was geared to get to the root of where the concerns are where the challenges are and then the second phase of that is obviously to continue on an ongoing basis to put efforts in place to correct that uh part of what we saw tonight with Dr Chris Fields uh presentation on the district Equity dashboard is one of the tools in the toolbox that I think will be fantastic moving forward and will help us to one allow the public to be informed on where the challenges are but also help us track our Improvement as we move forward and there are other tools as well that are in place and a lot of interesting results

106that came about from this blogging survey um that I don't know if you want to add anything more to that no I think you did a great job um just a reminder that on June 5th Ms little will be here with us and I know she intends to share out a presentation around sell updates as well as the belonging climate survey tool so great thank you um the second part of the meeting covered um our schedule for next year and one of the things we want to do is to advance the um the committee uh to move forward rather than the same format that we've been using part of what we'll be doing is getting more involved with the community so this year we had a community event in which people were able to come

107out and contribute um to the issues that we put forth we got some great feedback from that a lot of people found Great Value so we'll be doing more of that next year as well as some other changes that'll be good towards moving the group forward and continuing to do the the hard and very good work that the committee was able to do this year um so Joe or David I don't know if you have anything you wanted to add to that um Paul my recollection is also weird uh circled back on a on a regular topic for the committee which was about representation um of students in our gifted program and uh a year ago um well first off there was a and under a significant underrepresentation of black and brown students in our

108gifted programs one of the things that we talked about last year was uh there could be a hurdles um with with how we I guess watch the gate and who The Gatekeepers are for entering to the gifted program so in response that we implemented Universal screening for all uh students at the end of first grade for a gifted evaluation and that was administered last May for the first time and at the last meeting we also took a look at how that Administration went and um unfortunately well fortunate fortunately first is that every single student in first grade last May was uh went through initial gifted screen from that about 10 of the population was identified as uh requiring more in-depth gifted evaluation which is about what you would expect for a gifted population from a

109general population group um but the demographic makeup of that group essentially mirrored the representation of students we have and gifted now so um about representative numbers of white students then a like double representation of Asian students and a pretty severe underrepresentation of black and brown students um and that played out when we did the final I guess the valuation for entry into the gifted program which was um about half of that 10 so about five percent of the students um ended up being eligible for the gifted program but again still just reinforcing the demographics that are present at the program now so one of the things we talked about was like we have re-examining the screening tool that's being used so it's a great step that everyone's being screened but we want to make sure

110that the screening that we are using doesn't already have some biases already embedded in it and so um that's something that the administration is considering As you move forward with universal screening and I believe Dr Dewan it's this this may or sometime this month I think um we're again screening all first graders for a gifted is that correct yeah yeah and then again I think like um taking a closer look at the screening tool that we're using is is going to be important going forward um as Dr Christopher said earlier uh addressing these gaps and these challenges that we have in the district um it's the accumulation of how our system has been working for the last several decades and it's going to take a little bit of time for us to kind of really

111unpack what's going on and then changing it and seeing numbers actually change over time so consistency over time and continued focused on on it over time is what's I think most important Hey Joe I have a question has language been taken into consideration like there could be a gifted student who primarily spoke Spanish until kindergarten and now in first grade they're still a little behind in English let's say yeah I mean that's that's one thing I actually brought up because I know um with the committee I brought up the example in Miami-Dade County School Systems a large school system in Florida about 350 000 kids about 50 of them of the students are English language Learners and even higher percentages in the earlier grades and um about 15 20 years ago um they had some

112funding from the Feds that allowed them to do Universal screening and they used a tool um that was not dependent on knowledge of the English language specifically because so many students uh did not uh or were not fully proficient in English especially at those early grades so to me that's an example of a test that by its design like has a lot of the sort of built-in biases and some other tests might have already in place because it's consciously trying to like screen it out because I think like if it's not Reliant and can recognize gifting this even if you don't speak English that seems like a pretty um like unbiased uh tool so yeah great idea thank you any other comments or questions all right well thank you so much for your report all

113right we'll move on now to health wellness and safety as well as reset if you can touch on Communications as well um and yeah uh I'm sorry I wasn't prepared to give a report on the communications no problem apologize for that um first of all I just wanted to say I do agree with Deanne about the health and safety uh action plan although I don't work for the CDC I think they're making a big mistake by getting rid of their recommendations um the health wellness and Safety Committee had their first meeting on May 22nd um we uh discussed the Cadence and type of meetings that we'll have we'll have zoom meetings with um monthly sessions with every month meeting and possibly open forums on the on the opposite month um the relationship to the school

114health and wellness committee was decided that I would report back to each committee when I would go to the meetings I would go to each of the meetings and then report back um on each one um priorities for we just thought Gus priorities and the top priority are school start times nutrition mental health issues safety to and from and during school hours and we added anti-bullying strategies to our top priorities I um redid the mission statement and included diversity equity and inclusion into the mission statement so that it actually supports all of the work that we will do in the committee thank you any questions all right well thank you so much Rosetta for the report thanks it was a great first meeting oh and yeah and one other thing that I wanted to talk

115about is that we had a discussion about when to have the our next meeting in um we thought that since there were some issues going on that we might want to have it before um school starts in the fall and have it towards the end of the summer so we'll need to discuss that thank you thank you all right um you know the only committee I would send here employee Relations Committee and did you want to speak I know we had a meeting recently I don't know if you want to comment on that yeah so we we started uh employee Relations Committee which uh which I thought was fantastic Amy and I were there along with um for Teacher representatives and Danielle of course uh was there and um we just had uh laid down

116some ground rules for what we could and couldn't talk about um we obviously we don't discuss any contract issues um but um we did have a few discussions about how the board could better support um our teachers and students on a daily basis and what um I think just uh yeah just how we can support the teachers as a board that's something that's really important to me I know Amy I think I think I speak for all of us here and so um it was just an important first step in trying to open lines of communication and um yeah just build a better relationship so that's kind of the goal with that great thank you any comments or questions all right then we'll move on to our reported board Representatives extracurricular Marshall thank you Amy

117um we have not had a meeting since our last update we are having a meeting later this week so I'm sure I'll have some things to talk about the following meet again thanks Marshall enough actually because of the time hold off on my mciu report until next week North Macau at the May 15th meeting it was just approving Personnel promotions nothing the report other than that all right thanks Ronnie psba liaison nothing today all right thank you all right well that brings us now to our second public comment period where we're allow comments on any topic we allow maximum five speakers on the same topic please limit comments to three minutes and know that it's not our practice to engage in dialogue with speakers when appropriate we will follow up with responses on our website

118knowing a person Katie anyone online there's no speakers on Zoom all right then we will move on to board comments do we have any board comments this evening Dan yeah so I need Jeff's help on this what I would like to do um is make a motion to put a vote in for next week about uh raising the pride flag at the district office members of our lgbtqia plus Community have asked that we do this and I personally feel it's the right thing to support this community by by doing that in our district office so Jeff how can we make that occur in a correct way yeah technically if this is going to get on the agenda it would require a majority vote of the board or does the board president and the superintendent through

119practice have the right to place an item on the agenda have we done it that way that may be that may be the easiest way to do that without having a formal motion this evening because if we had a formal motion this evening this was not on the agenda for this evening so we would need a majority vote of the board Statewide this is an exigent circumstance and uh why we want to get it on the agenda uh why we didn't have it on the agenda for tonight uh which will ultimately be on the agenda for our upcoming what is that yeah June 5th meeting or yes so if uh if there are objections let's put it this way to the inclusion of that on the agenda assuming that superintendent and the board president want

120to go in that direction then this is the opportunity for the board to express itself to at least inform your leadership as to whether it should be included or Not Included does anyone have any objection to the dog and also just for a matter of uh procedure there will be opportunity for public comment before the motion so we're compliant with that piece yes we would I know we could take action like tonight unless we because they but this is it will advertise the agenda and it'll be a motion on there um when we craft the motion and I understand that Co central office only yeah I thought that would be the best place to do it thanks Deanne um I also know just there's a couple other events uh where other other Ceremonies for pride

121flag um tomorrow evening at six at lower Gwynedd uh excuse me no upper dublins tomorrow night 6 30 6-1 at six is Lower Gwinnett and six six at 6 30 is in with pain and Ambler is Thursday okay so there are some other events in our community but we are looking to do it here as well yeah and I think the motion uh Jim if this is okay with the board as well include that it would be like a year a year-to-year thing where it would be the month of June which and that's what other municipalities do as well raise it near the beginning of June and then take it down at the end of June uh for a pride month thanks Ian other comments from the board all right seeing that we have a

122motion to adjourn all right all those in favor guys adjourned