March 28, 2022 - Work Session Public Board Meeting

001[Music] we're live and we're now recording thanks kitty can we go ahead and have a roll call please yes mr antonio here mr badger mr bliefeld i'm here miss kiavaci here mr frank here this is heyman here miss carrie and i guess dr morris here mrs ginsberg here charlie meltzer here and sachimeta here we have eight president one absent and two student board reps this evening thanks katie uh will everybody please join me now in reciting the pledge of allegiance i'd like to start off by welcoming everybody to the march 28th work session of the westside school district board of school directors in section two of our agenda you'll see our prior meetings uh we had a meeting on march 7th which was a regular public board meeting on march 14th we had both a

002budget workshop and a facilities committee meeting and on the 21st the north monco joint operation uh committee met as well as the racial equity oversight committee and on the 23rd we had the mciu board of directors meeting in section 3 you'll see a list of our upcoming meetings we have a meeting next week april 4th on april 18th we have both a policy committee meeting as well as a racial equity oversight committee meeting on the 19th we have another budget workshop on the 20th we have the north monco joint operation meeting on the 25th is another work session public meeting and on the 27th is the mciu board of directors meeting and section 4 we have a list of our presentations for this evening uh letter b the special education overview will be actually next

003week not this week but we'll go forward with uh the first one was the hicken high school monthly highlights harley and sochi so firstly at the high school there's been an effort to support ukraine so we raise money to help the refugees and help the money to buy needed items and another big event was the school musical sondheim on sondheim they performed really well for three nights and brought many stories and songs to life we also had the semi-formal dance a couple weeks ago which was really nice to have after two whole years i know everyone was really excited to attend that and the junior class community did an amazing job with the planning and decorations and then lastly some of our whisking high school teachers acknowledged women's history month by recognizing their achievements so

004spring sports are off to a great start girls lacrosse just recently won their first game which is very exciting robotics stayed phenomenal as they placed 13 out of 35 in their first competition and also received a number of very honorable rewards our wissa higgins summer academy is now open for registration and the summer academy gives students an opportunity to learn new concepts before school relearn those concepts and also do sat prep and a report on our mask update plan um so obviously as we know music and just recently lifted the mass mandate and i wanted to report that that's going very well it is so nice to see everyone's faces and see my teachers expressions when they teach it's been very helpful and lastly whistling is now recruiting for the 2022 to 2023 school year

005and it is a great club so all sophomores and juniors who got a slip to interview should definitely take that opportunity thank you so much ladies and by the way welcome back it's so exciting to have you both here in person with us um i did have a question so for board members that don't know can you tell us a little bit about whistling yes wishlink is a program for upperclassmen to help guide the freshmen into their uh high school years it i remember as a freshman it was really helpful for me because there were all these faces in the hallway that i could go to to ask questions and a lot of the whistling members helped me get involved in many of our school's clubs so it's a great leadership opportunity for upperclassmen my

006friends who are part of it love it they love working with freshman homerooms and it's just great for all people involved i know it's run by incredible teachers so it's just a great way to really again be a leader and also be people of all grades that's great thank you so much for telling us more about that do any of my other fellow board members have any questions or comments for student reps rosetta yeah i have a comment about the robotics club i actually went to their presentation to their demonstration it was amazing and i just think that it's like what a talented group and they were really exceptional so kudos to like if you know people on the robotics team or whatever they're amazing i suck at what i said i also had the

007opportunity to go meet them and um and their uh leader their coach uh christine john richardson who's also a law of wissing and the robotics team and they're going to compete at world championships in houston in april so good luck to them and then the other thing i wanted to say was um the girls swim team did send a relay to states which is a huge accomplishment so they were in louisburg competing at bucknell two weeks ago now and so congrats to them any other comments or questions for our student reps uh just just one comment amy decker your point i think it's fantastic to see the student reps um here at the meeting with us in person um it's been i guess this is the first time since the pandemic that we've had the

008student board reps here in person as well as you know pretty much the whole board at this point so it's fantastic to see this like a little bit of normalcy returning to our board meeting setting and looking forward to your in-person participation going forward thanks anyone else no all right well again ladies thank you so much for that report all right so we'll move now to our first public comment period which is on agenda items only um as a reminder you have three minutes to speak when you approach the podium please state your name and the municipality of residence and the topic on which you will be speaking and we have one registered speaker in person this evening and that is amy hughes um amy used 40 school street angler proud i just have one

009quick question on the agenda item um 15 i guess that's b4 i feel like we did this already the middle school and auditorium conversion project as we know the middle school pool has been a gaping hole um over there in the middle of the building for i don't know since what 15 16 ish i feel like we did a presentation i don't know if we had breslin do something but didn't we do that talk about a conversion project i know the numbers are going to be way different but can we leverage any of that work at all it just seems super high i know it's up to 30 000. but it just seems super high if we're if we can leverage maybe something that we did for that in the past because i feel like

010we were did that pretty extensively that was all i had on agenda stuff thank you thanks amy katie do we have anyone online no okay well then we will move on from our first public comment and we'll go next to the board president report and this evening i have no informational items and no action items we'll move next to jim's superintendent report thank you just one informational item it's about this time every year where we take a look at the school calendar and we see if there needs to be any adjustments to the final day based on the number of weather days we've used to date and the good news is we've used just one to date it's we're not out of march yet so we're not going to commit to anything as ms haymon

011pointed out there's reasons not to for the time being but i just wanted to put it on everybody's radar that it's very likely that we'll have one snow day left over we call them weather days now because of course our weather day this year was a tornado day um anyway if we have that one left over it will be uh lopped off the end of school and the end of school will just be one day earlier and everything just moves back a day we're not going to commit to that now i'm just putting it out there for potential preliminary planning maybe next meeting we'll take a look but i think i'd be a little more comfortable wait till the end of april to finalize it but for people's planning purposes that last day might be

012a day earlier and when and also that that means is the three final days of school everybody remembers our earliest missile days so those would just be bumped early as well great thank you for that report jim does anyone have any questions or comments do you mean that the three days at the end would be half days meaning friday monday tuesday instead of monday tuesday wednesday that's correct if if it happens i don't want to plan on anything just now but if we if we do end up having that weather day left over and if at the end of april we are able to officially change the calendar then yes that friday before and monday and tuesday would be earliest missile days and tuesday would end up being the last day of school not once

013but currently friday's a full day why won't we just lap off the last day that's not how it works i don't know well it is but we still do need three rose missile days okay any other questions or comments for jim okay then we'll go on to our assistant superintendent report dr juan thank you good evening uh we have an upcoming community conversations workshop series which will include topics that have been the focus of staff and administrator trainings this year all parents and caregivers are invited to attend these sessions via zoom which will be recorded and posted on our district's webpage our director of equity and cultural responsiveness ms kazaya latour will facilitate the sessions and the workshop series is designed to help increase transparency with the community regarding what the staff are learning as

014we focus on equity and cultural responsiveness in our district the sessions are scheduled for the next five wednesdays from 6 to 7 p.m excluding spring break and the topics will include cultural responsive teaching practices that will be our first session this wednesday march 30th so be sure to tune in the remaining sessions include a focus on social and emotional learning a sense of belonging the importance of language and mindset and restorative practices families can visit our district's webpage under district news for more information and to access the zoom links there are no action items so that concludes my report great thank you so much i look forward to those sessions does anyone else have any questions or comments for dr doan this evening yeah i have a question about uh the sessions are these intended

015to be um like presentations or also is there opportunity for q a with any of the participants as well thank you um it will be a presentation and there will be an opportunity for questions the focus of the session as i mentioned will focus on the topics that we've had for trainings for staff and administrators but the audience we know and recognizes parents and caregivers and so the sessions will be tailored to address parents and caregivers and help them to understand not only the concepts but also how they can apply some of the learning in the home yeah i think this is um this i'm looking forward to this to this series of conversations to address these topics and i'm also interested and hopeful that it's it's a meaningful chance for the community to engage

016in some discussion um and answer questions about these topics as well um i think as we know in our district as well as others there's a lot of let's say buzz around some of these topics and some of it uh less than positive but i think part of it is based on maybe a misunderstanding or just i guess yeah misunderstanding on what the concepts are and what our actual intent is around some of these things so being able to have a dialogue with the community directly about this i think will be a great first step to a greater understanding thanks joe anyone else have any questions or comments no all right well thank you so much again dr chuan all right we'll next move to our board solicitor report and i think i saw jeff

017is with us this evening jeff is with you this evening and i have no report all right thank you jeff thank you we'll next move to our board secretary report wait uh thank you there's no informational items and at the next meeting we'll be requesting approval of the february 4th 14th racial equity oversight committee meeting minutes the race february 15th budget workshop meeting minutes february 28th work session public meeting minutes and the march 7th regular public meeting minutes um so we'll be presenting them at the next meeting great thank you wade any questions or comments no all right then we'll move on to your board treasurer report wade thank you there's uh no informational item and at the next meeting we'll be presenting for acceptance minuting the treasurer's report for february 28th for document 11-1

018thank you so much any questions or comments no all right again thank you so much wade uh now we move on to the director of human resources report jim is not able to be with us tonight so um there is no informational item um the um document 12-1 lists the retirement resignations terminations appointments leaves of absences and extracurricular resignations and as appointments as is normal uh number two is the ghr addendum agreement effective april fourth through april third of uh next year and that is being presented in order to attract additional aids as substitutes based on the fact that we're having difficulty right now item number three is the approval of new extracurricular job descriptions and that's listed under document 12-3 item 4 is the approval of additions for the volunteer list and that's document

01912-4 and the item like item number 5 is the approval of teaching assistant on special assignment um and that is document 12.5 great thank you so much are there any questions or comments what is ghr for the addendum agreement yeah i don't actually general healthcare resources is their title and we use that to um get substitutes for classroom assistance one needs those types of folk any other questions or comments okay seeing none we'll move on to our communications community report oh and thank you for covering that this evening all right zephy one informational item um and that's regarding our investigation into changing our school start times for the secondary level schools of yeah schools as you know in october of 2021 we did adopt a goal for us to look into this it is a

020two-year goal to assess um you know whether or not this is something we should consider for the 23-24 school year um we started uh conversations this january of 22 and we have formulary formulated an advisory committee it's a cross-stakeholder committee across school board members faculty community students and teachers and we had our first meeting march 9th and during that session some of us were there but we kind of looked at our current website sorry i'm confusing our website and this agenda item which i'm overseeing both i apologize i'm very tired um we uh we assessed all the different schools that are that have changed their uh start times and kind of put together a whole list of sessions uh we we had a breakout sessions and each breakout sessions kind of uh drilled into like

021what we would like to know more of where are some of the gaps where some of the things that we were thinking and as a result of that we will have some additional conversations in april and may we're going to have a couple of those conversations one will be looking at example districts student life after school activities and how that impacts everything and then transportation matters because it matters and um labor union and how that might impact how we think about staffing so that's happening in april and may um 4 26 and 525 this is opened for zoom for everybody or just for the advisor oh just for the committee members yeah these initial ones will just be for the committee later ones will be for everybody yes thank you for that reminder um after

022those meetings i will hopefully had a little bit better sleep and i can give better summary of what we've talked about and then we will continue to do this um every month to kind of look into these kind of details um there's focus group schedule there's community outreach scheduled so this is not going to go on lightly it will kind of take a lot of data and a lot of input from various stakeholders as i mentioned so that we have all the information prior to making any changes so we're in the beginning stages but i feel like we've made a lot of great i felt like the last session was really great my workshop was really productive so looking forward to see where we land and i'll continue to provide updates in this forum for

023us and for the community at large yes yes i think that's an excellent thank you we have no idea yet what the possible solutions for west hicken could be i mean that's what we're kind of going through this process i would just want to make it clear that the solutions very well will involve changes to k to 12. um secondary is is where we're focusing for the sleep piece but in order to accomplish that most districts do have an accompanying change for all the grades it doesn't have to be and that's what we're going to be looking at yeah fair point thanks for that reminder yeah because transportation is probably the biggest kind of uh variable in this whole p in this whole assessment so fair thank you for that any questions yes the larger

024community sessions that we'll be having when do we foresee having those we're going to have those starting in what it looks like probably fall yes once we have some some more some concrete options to present right now it's a bit of a free-fall so that the input will come from the advisory committee first and then community wide second and nothing and the the outcome as zephy mentioned is a change for the 23-24 school year there won't be any decisions made until say late winter early spring to give us say six months of of this forum discussing actual options rather than just brainstorming thank you does anyone else have any questions or comments no all right well thank you so much steffi all right well next move on to our curriculum and technology committee report ronnie

025thank you we have an informational items recommendation for revised plan courses for students resulting in the completion of stage two of the curriculum review process for social studies i feel like i'm reading a foreign language and the adoption of instructional resources to support the instructional programs in social studies english language development and mathematics document 14-1 the rest dr duan thank you [Music] yes thank you and those curriculum items will be available for public review for 30 days in the office of teaching and learning beginning tomorrow march 29th we'll seek board approval at the public board meeting on may 2nd and anyone interested in viewing those curriculum resources can contact our office of teaching and learning to schedule an appointment regarding our action items we have five action items for review this evening for which we'll

026seek board approval on april 4th for item one we will seek approval for the anticipated schedule of summer programs the list of programs is outlined in document 14-1 and it's the same as which we provided last year for students so that same series of expanded summer opportunities with each of these programs students are identified and invited to participate at the school level for item number two we'll seek approval of our special education estate plan which was an informational item presented at the board meeting on february 28th for item number three we will be seeking approval of the adoption of foundations as an instructional resource for grades kindergarten first and second grade this program was presented at the board meeting on february 28th and details including the cost of 218 five hundred dollars is included in

027document 14-3 for item number four we will be seeking ratification of tuition for three students to receive their education in an outplay setting uh in document 14-4 you can see details this is a ratification because the students have started their placements prior to april 4th which is when we'll have the public voting meeting and finally for item number five we will be seeking approval for two extended field trips for the high school's ultimate frisbee team outlined in document 14-5 the first of which is going to take place on may 28th and 29th which is a weekend and the second will be uh june 10th and 11th so the students will miss one school day which is friday june 10th and that concludes our report thank you dr juan uh does anyone have any questions stuffy

028go ahead hi two questions um can you elaborate a little bit more about the informational item like what grades that um kind of includes and then my second item probably not something we can solve for now before 14b1 for the summer program i often think about this because you know we've been invited into the summer program at times and you get that invitation february march and that's really too late especially in k-5 because if you're a dual working parent you're usually making your plans unfortunately january february so if there's any way for us to think about kind of setting that up a little bit earlier so that we're informing families i know it's probably a very complicated process i realize that you need more data points but nonetheless i'm just throwing that out there because

029i'm sure there would be more families who would want to tap into this if they could thank you for that um and i appreciate you acknowledging the the constraints around seeking that fresh data which is a part of the process um but we appreciate that feedback and we have heard that feedback and we will certainly take that into consideration to see what if anything we can do differently moving forward so thank you for that um regarding the informational item the social studies curriculum review cycle was in stage two this year and that's the stage where they focus on developing and writing the revised curriculum they explore resources and they determine of those resources that they explore which will best support the written curriculum and so in that document 14-1 a you'll see the revised planned

030courses for social studies as well as the recommended list of instructional resources and materials for social studies english language development and mathematics i'm so sorry excuse me social studies and the curriculum review process which was for grades k through 12. the english language development resources are for grades k-12 and mathematics is specific to i believe algebra 2 i'll have to take a double check here but that's not k12 that's a specific course for the mathematics resources that were updated yes thank you dr juan i just want to follow up on one of zephy's questions regarding the summer program i'd also like to see if we could look into partnering perhaps with another organization to provide afternoon child care i think that would also make it more available to more families if they have that option

031of having afternoon care having something in the morning without something in the afternoon is difficult for families have two working parents i think that's something i realized too except it's probably too late at this point to do something for this summer but if we could look into it for next year thank you for that we we have that on our list to explore as well thank you um and just to know the math resources are for ap calculus one and two any other questions or comments i have a quick i want to read it but jeffy and amy i agree with that i think part of it too for me is like the issue of equity and like who who is able to have a parent maybe pick them up midday so i think that's

032just an important consideration so thank you for looking into that the other question i had is who exactly would i contact to look if i'm a parent to look at the social studies curriculum how would i go about that exactly please thank you for your question i can um read off the phone number for the office of teaching and learning um 215-619-8000 and it would be extension one five one zero so we have missed fields in that department we have dr schmidt in that department and uh mrs moss in that department but contacting that phone number or emailing any of those team members would um would be able to get you set up and then you just would come here at an appointment point of time and and review the materials yes that is correct

033perfect thank you thank you any other questions or comments no all right well thank you so much again and now we'll move on to our facilities and transportation committee report joe thank you um at the march 14th uh facilities committee meeting we spent the majority of the time taking a look at blue bell elementary and some sketch drawings for a potential construction solutions for providing them more capacity as you guys recall based on enrollment projections and current enrollments looks like we're going to be having approximately 100 or so students over capacity at blue belt over the next few years and so we've started a process to look at construction things to provide more capacity and then a whole nother branch is potentially considering redistributing but we focused at the last facilities meeting on some sketch

034approaches to uh doing construction at blue bell um there are several challenges associated with the site it's very very packed there's certain restrictions we have to adhere to but a few options were presented and discussed and no final decisions were made and i think there's some more discussion that'll be occurring we also spent time taking a look at several of the action items that are on the list for voting next week and we'll run through some of those in a little bit but first off i wanted to maybe ask jim to give us also a recap of the blue bell community conversation that happened a couple days after the facilities committee meeting sure it actually was was pretty much a repeat of the presentation with an opportunity for blue belt community members to ask questions

035and give us some feedback we didn't have being that we didn't have anything concrete to share with them only those draft schematics i don't think we had quite the level of interest that we will once we have something more concrete okay that's fair um and then 15b has a list of action items for review uh eight in total i'll ask way to do a run-through of these but first i wanted to just touch on 15b4 which which amy hughes and her comments upfront raised some questions about and this is the one with for breslin to in essence put together some plans for the middle school and auditorium as you guys know that several years ago we sort of put the pool out of commission and uh had been considering different options for making that space

036usable a few years back i think maybe it was maybe 2018 finding correct way around that time frame we did have um and i believe i believe was breslin as well put together um some sketches and a plan for turning that space essentially into performing a performing arts space for the middle school and um at the time we had estimated i think the project and we had sort of budget or earmarked i think in the neighborhood of about six million dollars to do that conversion project when the plans came in and then some of the i guess estimates that we got back from some of the vendors the project was looking in the neighborhood of i think 9.5 to 10 million dollars so significantly higher than we had earmarked for our capital program so at

037that time we decided to hold off on doing that project fast forward to where we are now we're in a situation where we wanted to re-examine again trying to make that space usable again and this is just another approach at doing it i think the design goals this time are different uh we rather than creating an auditorium space or performing arts space as we did a few years back i think the emphasis now is creating more classroom and instructional spaces for the building um sort of advanced planning because of the enrollment growth that we've seen especially at the earlier grades those kids will eventually start migrating up our continuum into middle school and high school so although the middle school high school right now don't look like they have a capacity issue this is sort

038of like advanced planning um and again trying to make that space usable um and people felt that more instructional spaces would be a of higher value longer term than adding a performance on performing arts space so uh yes we do have the plans from a few years back but again the design intent this go around is different and so wait with that can you maybe do a quick run through of items b1 through b8 sure thank you um so b1 is uh normal it's the discarding and selling of obsolete equipment uh two is we had a vct bid it was uh all of these are included as documents so it's 15 2 as the document and we have very positive bids for the continuation of the middle school vct project fitch electronics for the replacement

039of the high school paging system and the document also explains why we're replacing that and we are very uh comfortable with the pricing item before we discussed um mr antonio walk through the uh project the only thing i would add in addition you discussed the leveraging of it um the actual cost is listed as 19.5 i um i'm requesting 30 000 just in the event that there is additional work but at this point the actual work is 19.5 and i do think we're able to leverage uh the work that was previously done but a lot of a lot of the paperwork still is just brand new meaning the applications the submissions the meetings and the approval process all just has to be completely redone since it's a new project um we're rejecting the bids for

040the transportation department the estimates the budget was approximately a hundred thousand and the bids were approximately 150 thousand dollars uh so we're rejecting those at this point in time um tnm associates is requested to help us with certain um construction bid documents for the high school stadium parking lot uh not to exceed 10 350. so that will be a project that will be brought forward to the board um as that is being developed um item seven is the increase excuse me item seven is the increase of a purchase order to make services for additional snow removal um and salt truthfully we just had a lot of snow events and item eight is a change where uh at stoney creek for uh two pen builders and the amount of forty six thousands is associated with installing

041aluminum uh insulated panels and um that is all listed and discussed in item of document 15-7 wait i misspoke there's actually a ninth item as well so with page break good do you mention it because i i um did not bring that up forward so authorization for a contract for mcmahon um so as as part of truthfully what we had discussed at the um both the facilities meeting and at the community meeting we are going to have uh traffic um goals and in order to make bluebell better and mcmahon has worked with us before their traffic engineers and we will utilize their services to hopefully develop very very positive traffic options at blue belt thank you thanks wade any questions about any of the action items so not so not necessarily um this item but

042it triggered a question so i thought we had um commission a traffic study for here for when when does that do to come back to us i don't remember so i have a draft of it and i'll put it on the agenda for the next facilities meeting so it's good timing thank you that'd be great thank you and then um do we have estimated timetables for some of these projects yes we have we have timetables for all of the projects um is there one specifically that you were um like so the vct is supposed to be this summer i didn't realize my mic's on it's the the flooring final tile right and and that isn't a bad question at all because frankly it's one of a thousand acronyms that jerry puts like on my wall

043and says wait vct is this it's all good um but many of these projects are going to be accomplished during the summer some of these are longer lead items and they're the larger projects um so blue bell obviously the time frame is much further down the road if there's a decision on that um but but most of these are really sort of summary projects cool the two specific ones i'm assuming the parking lot will be for the summer because that makes sense but how about the middle school conversion like when will we start kind of seeing that rolling out because i'm assuming we'll go through multiple stages for that yeah that's really not going to start until not this summer but next summer june of 2020 whatever three that is thank you i have a

044question um so obviously before we thought there was a need for a performing arts center do we and i apologize i haven't had a chance to tour the middle school yet do we have an adequate performing arts center there or is it just more of a pressing need for classroom space it it is exactly that it's b it's um we discussed at the facilities meeting frankly we would love to have a performing arts center and there was a very very nice design option for creating you know reconverting the pool to uh sort of a multi-purse purpose performing arts center wouldn't have been a full auditorium wouldn't have truthfully even been a full audion but at the end of the day uh in discussion with the principal uh and the board the decision was that we

045needed six classrooms more than uh we would have loved to have had the other but we need the classrooms and and we we now use the middle schoolers can use the high school audion and auditorium so it was a great discussion we we really kind of i remember this very distinctly so i think it i think it was very well discussed and then the other question i had was just about the traffic study for blue belt do you envision them having other like traffic flow options than what was presented in the original um like plans by the architect so they're very very smart um and they know the area and they know the district so it's possible they come up with something clever that we haven't and we would love that it's so that's possible

046it's also possible that many of the options that we've discussed are you know the ones that are really going to stick and they might assess the need for like a traffic light or something like that as well that that would be one of the um absolutely things that would come if they believe there'd be a traffic light need there'd be a discussion about it or if they don't then you know that would come forward too okay thank you thank you any other questions or comments no okay well thank you so much joe and wade for that report thank you we'll now move on to our finance committee report david thanks amy i guess we have one informational item from the finance committee which would be a recap of the march 14 budget workshop meeting in

047that meeting uh the agenda included this discussion of the west highland valley public library budget which whenever they need an increase they come to the school board uh for uh the approval that's required to to obtain that um they're requesting a three and a half percent increase to help pay off their loans that they've taken out for the new construction at the ambler library and i guess you should point out that the library does get most of their funding from property taxes that was the first point of discussion we looked at the technology budget and pretty good detail and john mcgowan pointed out that we'd be looking for about a 10 increase in that budget largely due to security enhancements um we will have touched briefly on numerous additional new programs and item requests that

048are being considered as part of an addition addition to the budget we will be revisiting those in the next meeting at april 19th in more detail and considering unfortunately some of those probably won't make it into the final budget they all seem to be valuable additions but we'll get into that more next time we also touch briefly on the north montco technical career center budget [Music] that amount uh is increasing about ten percent for west sahib's contribution um and that's based on uh sending schools contributions that that are uh based on their portion of the total enrollment on a five-year rolling average wesleyan has about seven or eight percent of the student body there that changes from year to year we also looked at summer school and other educational as a category and i think

049that's pretty much it that we talked about wade is there anything else we need nope there's no summary thing we've reviewed at the board level once already and with that i have no other action items this week thank you so much marshall any questions or comments no okay well thank you again thank you next we'll move on to our racial equity oversight committee report paul amy amy i'm actually going to cover this tonight because paul was unable to attend oh thank you so on march 21st we had another meeting of the racial equity oversight committee and at that meeting there were two main things that were discussed the first was a discussion of the curriculum review process as you've heard earlier we went through a curriculum review process for social studies and that's what's uh

050under review right now um but the the in the committee we heard an update from the administration about our current process that we've used for many years to review curriculum and how um in the most recent cycle and going forward we are incorporating an equity lens into that process so it's not so much that we're changing the the steps of the process but we're we're integrating um equity issues and concerns in uh reviewing the curriculum itself and so when yahweh and kazaa gave us you know kind of a breakdown of of what that entailed um and i think the the basic gist of it is that when we're looking at curriculum issues of you know whether or not are the curriculum the materials that we use are inclusive and allow all students to to feel

051like they are seen and heard and have a part in the materials that are being presented was was one of the factors as well as others um above and beyond just purely like an academic curriculum review so uh there was a lot of good discussion about that from the committee members again the committee uh for this committee is composed not just of board members but also parents uh students and alums as well as um some general community members as well after a pretty robust discussion on the curriculum review process then we uh highlighted and previewed a little bit of the parent and guardian community conversation workshop series which we've touched on earlier and which kicks off on wednesday but um i'm going to ask money anyway maybe if she wants to add any additional commentary

052regarding the curriculum review process and what was covered with the committee last week thank you that was a pretty good summation the only thing i would add is the issue around the curriculum equity audit tool that we discussed um that was something that we have uh rolled out with staff to help um identify any inequities that exist in the curriculum and help free staff awareness and that's especially important because the curriculum review cycle is so robust and takes multiple years before it comes back around for each subject area so the curriculum equity audit tool allows us to work with staff to look at all curriculum areas on an ongoing basis to identify where there might be gaps where there might be voices that are invisible that perspectives that are missing um resources that need to

053be reviewed and enhanced um so that we don't have to wait three years or so before that curriculum area comes back up through the review process um so that would be the only thing i'd add but you did a really nice job summing summarizing thank you thank you um questions for parents that can't attend the live conversations um will it be available on youtube then for the link to watch at a later time the correct excuse me the community conversations workshop series will be recorded and links will be on our website for families to access yes any other questions or comments no all right well thank you so much joe sure thank you we'll now move on to our board representative reports extracurricular marshall thank you amy um as luck would have it we had

054a an extracurricular committee meeting today that was the first one i've attended since we shuffled around the committee assignments it was very interesting actually and i can report on uh several things first there will be a new boys volleyball club called spike it up um nice i know you've been waiting for that and we have 22 boys who are currently interested the thought is if there were 30 or so or depending on um their level of uh uh a quality of the of the players it could move toward uh a um a varsity level sport depending on how it goes so at this point it was approved uh as a as a club level sport so get ready for that and everybody uh tune in the girls volleyball team is already in place so this

055is a brand new team for the boys um there was some interest obviously we have a bunch of kids ready to go and uh and so that was approved um we also tentatively approved an esports gaming club and this is for kids who don't necessarily play on an athletic field but are into gaming it is a competitive sport and um as i said it was tentatively approved once it is determined uh one how it will be conducted in terms of uh gaming systems where that will take place and so forth as well as the games that are going to be implemented uh obviously there's a concern for any violence related games so we want to make sure that we do it properly but that was tentatively approved as well uh it was also approved as

056an ie2 establish an astronomy club which could include some astrophysics as well and that will be dependent upon uh qualified personnel who want to take that on but that is something to look forward to as an ie we discussed simon's heart if any of you are aware of this particular initiative it is awareness for sudden cardiac arrest raises money to help buy aeds as well as free heart screenings these are things that we i think do already and and budget for and really it was thought that this might fall under the health careers club so they're going to be checking on that to see where proper placement would be and finally um it was discussed uh and approved at the committee level for the addition of an additional girls track coach at the middle school

057there are currently two boys and two girls coaches but the girls program is much larger and so there is a need for an additional coach and we'll be moving that up the chain for ultimate approval so that was uh the extracurricular committee and if anybody has any questions fire away marshall i have a friend who's very excited about the boys volleyball club so uh thank you for that news well i just just make i'm not the coach um and while i may be a fan um there are other people i can probably put you in contact with so thank you for your interest just have a quick question so the aeds are there currently aed's around the um buildings and all the buildings and people are trying to use them yeah well you may know

058better how many there are or i'm not the expert by any stretch but yes and yes and we can get you account and i think it's based on the distance and how long it takes to get to somewhere uh we actually have a count of aeds we're in 11th grade health sachin and i we have six in the high school if that's of any help awesome thank you and aed stands for automated extra oh i'm sorry i thought it was being quizzed that's awesome that's a legit automated external defibrillator yes we will not be having any demonstrations in the boardroom but take our word for it they work i thought it stood for that yeah marshall i have one one question regarding the gaming club yeah was there any thought to uh introducing some level

059of uh knowledge information overview to the kids i know that's kind of separate from actually physically playing the game but it would be great if they could actually get some sort of introduction to the programming side of it that will show them kind of what happens behind the scenes how these games are made and hopefully raise the level of interest for them they might want to explore that yeah i don't know specifically for this particular club but i do know that there are programming courses that are taken at the high school level and i do believe they include uh programming for kids who are interested in learning how to do uh gaming code but this i think is strictly limited to actual actually playing uh like any other club or team um but it's i

060can put you in that direction of the classes but if there's something addition you want additional let me know i could also add that we we do have um coding clubs at the middle school level and it's not going to be nearly as sophisticated as what's needed for these games but they do have sort of like i would say missions or challenges to meet and they come up with really inventive ways to design code and write code to do those um so maybe we can have some of the gaming if you will infiltrate down into those clubs if that's possible i think it's great it's a enormous and growing business as you all know and uh will be a large part of our economy moving forward so i think wherever we can have touch points

061where we're introducing these things i think is great so thanks jim thanks any other questions or comments for marshall no all right well thank you so much for that report next we'll move on to the mciu board of directors report we just had our meeting last week and a couple of things of interest that came out of that meeting of the nutrition waivers which gave our students free lunch and i think that also include the breakfast as well it's coming to an end on june 30th so they were encouraging us to reach out to our senators to seek to have that extended by another year less at least rather than having it abruptly cut off this coming june and i asked wade just to have some numbers about how it's impacted us here in our

062district and just looking at february alone uh this year we had 43 168 lunches that we provided to our students that's just in february compared to february 2020 that was the 30 000 number correct 30 134 which comes to 13 000 more lunches divided over the 18 school days means we provided 722 more meals per day to our students under this program so it's certainly something i think we should reach out and see if we can have that extended at least by another year to make sure we provide food security for our students that need that another thing that we talked about was the nationwide teacher shortage on march 15th the house education committee held a public hearing on teacher shortages since 2010 pennsylvania has seen a 66 decline in instructional one teaching certificates which

063is the state's most baking basic teaching accreditation awarded to graduates that's a huge huge reduction in teachers entering the profession um they talked about a house bill 2206 um it's something that's called grow our own educators program and the bill would provide financial assistance including pathways for educators to help support high-need schools in geographic areas that have hard to staff teaching positions um we also talked about patan which is the pennsylvania training and technical assistance network and they actually offer grant programs to help students who are thinking of teaching in special education as profession and i actually went to their website and the grant program is open right now i think through like april 22nd or something so if you know people interested in the teaching profession you should definitely i guess encourage them to

064seek out that profession we should also talk i guess to our state reps especially about this bill to see if we can help find ways to encourage more people to enter the teaching profession um and they also talked about the early intervention funding i think i may have mentioned this last time and it seems like there may have been a possible mix-up in the budget process and the funding for birth through age three which is through health and human services received an increase but there was no increase in the budget for early intervention in ages three through five which is in the education budget so this is something also we should be reaching out to our state reps about seeking an increase in this particular area in the education bill um we just got some

065other things but those were really the highlights any questions is the free lunch program through the state or was that federally funded so am i reaching out to my to uh toomey and casey or maria collette do we know yeah we um i i think we're gonna both have to get back to you but the the director answer is it's both um we receive for free to lunches both federal and state money um so i'm not sure which of the programs cuts off on june 30th or i shouldn't say cuts off we're going to continue to have a free and reduced program but for this period of time it was sort of super funded and that is what is uh falling off unless the bill is changed so we'll find out if it's more the

066fed or more the state my understanding is the federal um that it was hr 2471 the consolidated appropriations act of 2022 provided for this funding to end on june 30th i can provide you more information on the stand from what they provided to us maybe we can have some sort of uh information on our website too about it i just feel this is a really important issue um you know federally i think we feed prisoners three meals a day i don't understand why we can't feed our children when they're required to be at school you know let's give them the same consideration right so this is an important issue i think we should all be involved in frankly we shouldn't even have to be writing about it but here we are agreed any other questions

067or comments no all right well thank you um for your question dan all right then we will move now to oh actually north monco technical career center report ronnie or david it's me tonight um the last meeting of the technical career center uh joint operating committee was last monday evening we approved the budget for the coming school year which stays within the act one limit we approved the school calendar for the coming school year and approved the advisory board which is something that doesn't get a lot of attention but it's composed of over 300 volunteers in various uh walks of life various trades and and skills and expertise and they advise uh i guess roughly equally 21 different uh categories of education that the career center offers they meet i believe once a year and

068as volunteers they offer their expertise to keep the school up to date with current practices and technologies and techniques in each of the different trades that are taught there so anyway that group was approved once again um and aside from that we covered several routine uh business uh considerations several personnel decisions were approved and that's pretty much it thanks david any questions or comments no okay well thank you so much we'll now move on to our psba liaison report stuffy nothing i'll just note just for the psba um under the psb report that day of advocacy is coming up on april 25th so that might be a great opportunity if anybody can go to harrisburg to lobby on any of these issues i was thinking about going is anyone else going maybe i'll go with

069you it's monday april 25th and i think i think it starts at eight and then they said after lunch it might be done i don't know i don't know but i would go okay let's chat after the meeting about that all right um next we have our second public comment period all right we have two speakers this evening uh the first one that register was amy hughes if you want to come up to the podium please state your name and municipality of residence again for us and the topic on which you'll be speaking thank you i really need it thank you uh amy hughes ambler i have a really long list so i'm gonna start with number one carmina brought it up last week um for people like carmina and i who come to you

070guys with about a dozen topics trying to fit a dozen in three minutes i feel like i'm the micro machines guy up here and i don't even know what i'm saying if there's any way that we might want to consider um looking at that policy again and maybe it is you can talk to you know five topics in three minutes or something but i got a lot of really i think there are important things um [Music] coding i'm so glad we're talking about coding i can't tell you how many emails i have sent and how many years i've been begging is we talk about the language program at the middle school guys coding is a language just like any other language we speak and if we don't get these kids engaged and learning that it's

071a language now we're gonna have we're gonna find ourselves pretty far behind and nobody wants that so i'm loving the talk about coding i'd love to see more again the language program great let's get coding in that rotation it is that big of a deal i'm in software um high school middle school traffic i know that we had talked about um maybe doing like a drone survey or something like that it feels like the high school is getting worse and worse and worse by the day we call it bus hell because trying to get through that area is a nightmare we did it a few years ago moving the drop off to dager it was a disaster then and we're going right back to it you got student drivers in there you've got buses there's

072not there's no stop signs there's no one down there directing traffic um it's it's it's just come down there just do me a favor and stand any of you you sit in dagger just one day at like 7 20 7 30. um the middle school pool glad we're going back to that i love the idea of classroom space over you know maybe just something that's specific like last time that was a ton of money for like a performing i agree any thoughts or anything they can do to make it a multi-purpose space i don't know just a thought so that it could serve more than that um and i'm out of time but i have two more things um cyber security thank you for hearing me i loved that right away there was action you

073guys changed the passwords kids were i mean that was awesome thank you thank you thank you for that bike to school i love the idea i've heard about it happening at lower gwen it but we have two other schools at that campus can we engage our middle schoolers our high schoolers that are going up there too if we're already doing it let's talk to them about it um and then i do want to ask about books i know that you know with the whole book thing we had talked about removing books but then maybe adding books about topics that were maybe a little bit more um comfortable for people um so i'd love to get an update on that at some point and next week we'll talk about the achievement gap because that's like 10

074minutes thank you for your comments evening katie is there anyone registered online no okay the one with our next speaker so i have two subjects i'm not russian um i just want to say please don't put this on because i think that you know um the comment about getting the free lunch are getting the funding you need parents to help you with that so i think that you should ask parents to work with you to get that i remember when dr uh pressfield um wanted parent support for something that was but everybody reached out to the parents when you ask for you know speaking to the senators i honestly think that you should be doing it um reaching out to the parents to support you for funding to your legislators just a quick survey how

075many of you school board members know how much money the district has gotten for esser funds federal funds does anybody know okay huh okay so do you roughly know how much it is so let me just break it down so so two funds which directly goes to title one is roughly 983 000 and as for three funds are roughly two million dollars so i have a question to be answered later on can the district provide the date where the community stakeholders were informed how the money was supposed to be sent when you get those federal dollars you're supposed to have frequent community stakeholder meetings and they're supposed to work with you to determine how that money is spent okay title one funds i called the state and it turns out that the district gets 263

076dollars shady grove is your title one school found out because i actually worked in other larger school districts wait so i do know about title one when i i found out that if you may if your district gets over five hundred thousand dollars you have to have a parent advisory council once they can gets less than that so even though you get less than 500 000 you're still supposed to be asking those parents in that title one school how you want them to spend the 263 000 so there's a common thread here that there's a lack of outreach communication and inclusionary discussion with parents and community stakeholders i believe i spoke another time when i saw initially that the title the esser funds ninety percent went to salaries for teachers [Music] yes or two specifically

077goes to title one and answer three at least twenty percent of that money has to go to social emotional mental wellness health so when you talk about mental health um needs for the students that esser fund was supposed to directly help kids struggling getting back into covet so i want my answer um my question answered because this all falls in line with all the things that i've been trying to do and expressed to you i came tonight because somebody actually told me that something was going to happen to me when i came to this meeting today so i came to see who had the nerve to try to do something to me i want you all to know that so i i have more topics because i had two topics on there you have to

078address the fact that people have more than one topic and to get it into three minutes is not genuine especially when you're not meeting with people and talking to them [Music] thank you carmina katie is there anyone registered online mary ferreira carrie you can go ahead and update yourself you have three minutes uh hi i was calling it's carrie i'm from lower gwinnett my daughter's at um uh sixth grade at the middle school uh i was calling about the um just to touch on one aspect of the achievement gap the uh the keystone exam i'm not sure if any of you are on facebook i posted some graphs from 2017 to the current date i will go to um just i don't think i have time for all of it but i'll start with algebra

079in the historically underperforming student had 22.2 percent at we're below basic uh the same number was for 2018 on 2019 it jumped up to 34.6 and then in 2021 it was 43 43.2 uh the gap increased in those years from uh 21.8 21.2 uh then jumped up in 2019 to 31.6 and then 36.5 uh our overall scores are actually steadily declining for algebra rather than increasing and it's pretty much similar for literature except we don't have data for 2021 because that wasn't part of the keystone exams um biology's improved somehow uh into 2021 those scores actually were good last year uh compared to the previous years but it's not like a i know that it's been a draft and you're working on it but we're going the wrong direction um for since 2017 on so

080that needs to be looked at and i know you're working on it but i'm not sure different tactics have to be tried i guess to try to improve those scores thanks thank you so much for your comments all right we have one more person registered in person colleen samparillo [Music] so i have a few things but one of them was also the keystone results on the 2021 results on the pennsylvania department of education website um and i'm wondering if i can get this answered i'm not sure what the historically underperforming students what that encompasses and if it's something that's defined by each district and if so how who who's included in that group um and then i also wanted to address i had mentioned um i think it was about a month ago a presentation

081at the high school um that involved uh the concept of intersectionality and i know a few of the board members had indicated they wanted to follow up on that i also followed up with all of the board members with an email so i'm wondering if any of that has been addressed and then the third thing was the free breakfast and lunch program um i think this is the program where all of the students in the district were being provided with free breakfast and lunch and i don't know why that needs to be extended for another year or at all i understand during the pandemic it was a special program um i think there are already breakfast and lunch programs based on income level for kids with food and security and um i think i know

082just personally some of the free breakfasts and lunch were there was a lot of waste that was involved with the program so i'm not sure why we can't focus on the kids that have food and security and get them the free breakfast and lunches thanks thank you colleen is there anyone else registered online katie okay all right well thank you so much everyone for your comments now we'll move on to board comments do any of my fellow board members have any comments this evening i have a comment i wanted to briefly touch on um the bike to school bike to school thing that amy talked about so i am trying to organize that day through a national coalition of like it's the national bike walk and roll to school day and um just based on

083a brief conversation with wade shutting down traffic or redirecting traffic around high school middle school time would be a lot and because right now i don't have like a ton of support in doing this i'm just trying to do it at work for the first year and then i'm hoping to get the ball rolling and have a bigger program and encourage people to or have the infrastructure or ability to bike to school or walk to school more safely that is a long-term goal i have but right now i'm trying just to start with like one thing so that's that's any other board members have any comments just quickly amy we have been um talking a lot about the achievement gap we've been talking a lot about inequity we've been talking a lot about how we

084fix this um and when we do see scores i think we do have to make a concerted effort to figure out what the basis of it is and how we start the process of trying to narrow that gap i know we've been doing it for a long time or we've talked about it for a long time but if we're going to come out of the pandemic and say we're trying to get back to normal i think we really need to make a concerted effort as a school district to figure out how we can not only reduce that gap but also increase the scores for everybody because when you hear things like these school these scores are or these percentages are going up it may not necessarily be good for all of us certainly our kids

085and so let's make a concerted effort to talk about that and figure out ways that maybe we can help our students through that um because again we're trying to get them to the point where either they learn coding and learn a trade in that regard or they go to the technical school to find their profession or they're going to go on to college whether it's two years four years or another type of program we want to make sure that the best equipped to do that and if we're having trouble getting these numbers up um in standardized tests well that's not helping them so let's figure out a way that's our job um and and i think that you know it's not just the fact that parents are coming in we've seen these numbers for a

086while and i think i think we can do something about it so i think it's just we need to not only keep it in mind but we need to come up with ways to figure it out so i i i asked for that um i i really agree with marshall on that and you know jim one of the things we talked about like maybe a couple of months ago is having a one-year touch point on the achievement gap is not enough and how do we integrate more touch points um do we have like leading indicators that we look at like is there something more because i do feel that there's probably more data points that we should be looking at and more consistently because it feels that you know kovic gave us more challenges but

087maybe we need to rethink how we're assessing those challenges and how do we kind of course draft from here those are both excellent points marshall and zacky jim is it possible that we could increase those reports and do them perhaps quarterly rather than an annual report so that we hear more often throughout the year on how we're how we're doing the answer is yes we will need to first identify those maybe in the leading indicator touch points i mean for example the keystones they're administered once a year so there isn't really a touch point for that what we can do is those things that we use that are remember we've identified nine indicators so which are test scores which aren't for example like a grades we could do those because those are um reported quarterly

088um but yeah we could work on that and perhaps that's something we can talk about our upcoming retreat this spring is some target areas that we can discuss each quarter to keep on track perfect okay thank you so much again for those comments amy i have a quick comment about um we did this belonging survey and i was just wondering because i think you know obviously the equity gap is a very complex problem with no easy answers if we had easy answers and solutions or if we could talk about this or implement that we would just do it right it's not easy is the bottom line and so um i know we were trying to shift our focus a little bit to the belongingness aspect of feeling safe before we can learn do we have

089results on that or when can we respect expect us thank you for your question we have a plan for when that will be pushed out in terms of communication to various groups one of one of which is at the community conversations workshop series the date that will focus on belonging will include the results of the belonging survey so i know that miss latour is intending for that to be a part of that conversation will the board have access to that prior to okay so i'll get that okay thank you for that question uh wait i actually had a question uh amy when she was up at the podium spoke about the traffic at dagger and houston i know this has been like an ongoing issue i feel like for years i've been hearing complaints and

090we have the traffic study do anybody from the traffic study like go there in the morning yeah so what did they find [Laughter] lots of trash and they went on saturday so um no not not surprisingly i don't think um i don't think any of us are going to be able to come up with easy answers to these things frankly i received the draft report and it is not easy and they are complex um you know answers to these uh to potentially make it better so what we're going to look at is whether we can pick off some of the lower hanging fruit and implement those items but i'll be honest with you i am not particularly hopeful and the other item is uh in the background we've got the um discussion about starting time

091for high school and middle school students and frankly i think making radical changes for one year might not make a lot of sense either so i think we're going to look for some easier solutions um to implement and some things that would help no matter what's implemented into the future it would have some of the easier solutions that they came up with so so one of the solutions that i think has submerit is the um entrance into the parking lot in the student lot and creating an additional um sort of additional mcadam for easy in and easy out and uh frankly i think that there's a lot of merit to that and i think that uh regardless of the situation going forward i didn't say it was going to be inexpensive but it's probably easier

092um some of the other solutions are probably going to be more difficult but we'll get that on the next facilities agenda um you know we can we can talk about it and the answer of course i i didn't really answer the first part of the question but uh yes they had drones out there on i think it was two different days and they did counts of all the traffic and they recorded the patterns and they had physical bodies out there as well so okay thank you wade is the clearing of trees that occurred like right on day or near the student lot like by the bike trail is that part of that yes probably okay for like for better visual or they're planning on expanding that potential so i personally uh requested that for the

093from the standpoint of visual um even currently what we're doing right now i have concerns about people pulling in and pulling out uh based on as you're probably familiar since you're bringing it up there's a walkway not far from there and i wanted to make sure that there was good visual for everyone people seeing cars car seeing people but frankly again that would be expanded and discussed if that project goes forward thank you any other questions or comments okay can i have a motion to adjourn so moved second all those in favor