001[Music] mr zebly roll call please um this is denny here mrs mrs essler miss hilferty here this is jones this is powell here mr season here mr tinsley yeah mr armor here thank you mr zebly um 2.01 is approval of minutes motion is to approve the minutes of the regular board meeting from june 24th of this motion second questions or comments all those in favor opposed motion passes 2.02 is the invoice listing motion is to approve the invoice listing from june through july 2020. do i have this motion second questions or comments all those in favor aye aye opposed motion passes 2.03 is the treasurer's report mr zebly as of april 30 2020 pandoco's balance was 33 million 778 625 during may 2020 local state and federal revenues totaled one million seven hundred twelve thousand
002three hundred ninety eight dollars disbursements were issued in the amount of two million nine hundred ninety two thousand seventy six dollars as of may thirty first twenty twenty endoco's current balance is thirty two million four hundred ninety eight thousand nine hundred and forty seven dollars the motion is to approve the treasurer's report for may 2020 so moved second questions or comments on the treasurer's report all those in favor post motion passes 2.04 is a budget transfer report motion is to approve the budget transfer report from june through july of 2020. about this motion so moved second questions or comments all those in favor all right opposed motion passes uh number three is the superintendent's report but by dr steinhoff uh this is uh the time where dr stonov is going to present a portion of
003his reopening plan as well as other things going on in the school district so maybe lengthy if i can uh ask for everyone's patience just to hang in there and get through it and see what dr steinolf has to say thank you mr armor uh i'm pulling up a powerpoint presentation i'll be sharing a screen in just a moment and and you're correct it is a lengthy presentation tonight as it should be as we are presenting the administrative background for the school board to make a decision on our pathway to reopening for the fall so in just one moment i'll pull that powerpoint up and i will be happy to go through it and answer questions at the end with regards to this presentation thumbs up if you can see my screen not quite yet
004try it again got it now thank you yes sir there it is we will move over so thank you again uh tonight is the first time that our school board has had an opportunity i'm going to speak off the cuff and stay away from some scripted comments as well so i can go through the powerpoint and really share with you quite a bit of information that we've accrued over the last few weeks in preparing to get our students back to school in the most safe format that we possibly could do as many people who have followed us closely know school districts are tasked with creating a health and safety reopening plan that's going to enable schools to possibly open up under a number of different options that school boards have to decide throughout the county
005i believe we have two school districts that have already approved the reopening plan most school districts are continuing to look at different options uh evaluate circumstances you know as we know the situation with coven 19 is changing my gosh it feels like by the hour at times even tonight you know the effects of coba 19 affected our decision on moving our school board meeting over to a zoom virtual meeting tonight we had intended to have an in-person meeting at northland middle school late this afternoon the governor put out an order with some changes what that had to do with uh the ability to have large gatherings and we recognize in the spirit of that even though it's not beginning till 12 o'clock tonight that we really shouldn't spirit of but not hold a large gathering
006tonight out of respect to that order so we wanted to quickly move over to a zoom option tonight and we also will i should note limit the agenda items that the board's going to vote on and spirit of complete transparency and push those items back to our june or to our july 29th meeting which it appears will also be done uh by a zoom as well but tonight i'm going to share with you kind of our process for coming up with a proposal or recommendation a number of options for the school board to consider with respect to this issue of how do we get kids back to school you know how do we get back to the place that we were prior to march 13th and if we can't get back to that place what
007is the best option that we can create for our kids so that they have an experience that was better than most of the experience between march and june as i mentioned this is extremely fluid uh you know we just a week ago most districts really felt that we were in a very good place to be able to reopen our doors and come back to school on a day-to-day basis and meet all of our students needs but things have changed as school administrators continue to dig a little deeper into the weeds and really examine what this means to get students back in and have the students and staff attend to school in a health and safety safety manner uh it is much more challenging than i think a lot of districts expected and which is added
008to the challenge is the fact that we're all trained educators none of us are trained epidemiologists you know we're not trained medical personnel so states have been kind of begging for guidance from the federal government and school districts have been begging for guidance from the state and school administrators are begging for guidance from school districts and teachers will come back begging for guidance from school administrators and parents will ask for guidance and it kind of just goes starts at the top and works its way down we're at a place really where we really have to stop creating questions and start generating solutions and tonight is an effort to start generating solutions so we're going to talk about our you know current recommendation and a rationale for reopening which as i said has shifted uh considerably
009just in the last few days review some key elements of our reopening plan discuss some of the unresolved challenges and possible solutions and then also discuss the next steps and the expectation for a final proposal which gets approved by the board on july 29th so i should really point out we have a large number of attendees in our meeting tonight that none of the details you know the specific details for you know how might a certain classroom operate or what will the impact be to a certain extracurricular program none of those will be officially approved tonight we are just bringing information to the board so that on july 29th they can make the best informed decision that they can make and it's quite a challenge for them i start with a caveat though right the
010circumstances regarding coronavirus and school's ability to reopen is changing weekly just a week ago right i sent a message out to the community indicating that it was our intention to open to school for every student every day five days a week but conditions have changed a little bit right and we don't have that high level of confidence in that intention as we did just a week ago and i liken it very much to you know the morning snow calls that superintendents have to make at four in the morning you might say we're good to go we can open but then two hours later if you get the call from transportation they say the conditions have changed i'm on the front lines i've looked at it a little more closely and that regard then you realize
011you know what maybe we can't move forward and you don't like to make a change but you have to do what's right for safety of students and staff so although you know regional conditions you know are more favorable than last spring i'm it's still serious right trends can redirect quickly and the country continues to set national records for total cases of coven and also i the caveat is that our experts continue to learn more about this virus it almost seems like by the day so guidance can change information we're presenting tonight is based on conditions today but we will build a plan that will be prepared for potential changes so the first question that you know our task force began with you know can we safely reopen schools and the answer to that was yes
012we could but significant modifications are going to have to be in place significant meaning it's going to substantial changes to the classroom experience that our students typically were accustomed to it would involve changes to schedules procedures in the classroom environment yes we can open but health and safety would have to be the priority at all times there's things that we just couldn't take for granted patience and understanding is going to have to absolutely be key we understand that in a lot of places surveys done in any district show that there is absolutely a split in interest in terms of should our students go back to virtual instruction should our students go back to in-person instruction should our students go back to a hybrid model should our students wear masks you know should our students stay
013home so there are all sorts of splits and opinion and it's important that we are patiently understand that we're all in this together schools still even if we open though has to be nurturing it has to be caring and welcoming and when we build this plan my mind keeps going back to our kindergarteners our first graders even sixth graders ninth graders who are going to go back to school to a brand new building for the first time and it's nerve-wracking to begin with now they're coming back in a different completely alien type environment where we have to operate with an instructional program during a pandemic so we have to be nurturing caring and welcoming and remember that that's our job care for kids how can we reopen so on the left-hand side you know you'll
014see what or we aim for our goal was to open up five days a week in person and have students come in and we would teach and provide them a instructional experience to the best degree that we can initially that's the intent of by far most of the districts but i will tell you that it's becoming more challenging to implement and many districts are starting to consider other alternatives just today the city of philadelphia decided and or at least approved their plan and indicated they could not do five days per week in person it just could not happen and they are doing a blended or in-person virtual option which is the other option that we are looking at which we think about in terms of blended a b or in person it's increasingly becoming recommended
015it blends the best of in-person instruction with improved virtual instruction so when we say a b what do we mean by that it means that school districts would set their students up into cohorts and typically that's decided upon on the basis of the first letter your last name so it could be a and l if your last name because if a to l you come to school on mondays and all the other students come on to school on tuesdays and the other group come back on wednesdays the other group come back on thursdays and when you're not there and when you're home you're attending to virtual instruction or you're tending to work that was assigned to you how that schedule plays out is up to school districts to figure out some school districts are considering
016an a b blended option where uh students come every other day some are considering where students will come in monday tuesday others will come in thursday friday some are considering options where wednesday school is closed other ones are considered options where fridays students do virtual but the important piece with an ap in-person virtual just means that essentially your classrooms are cut at least in half and the school size of course the population would be a half of size at any given time um also put here you know we've been receiving some feedback we have a dedicated website feedback on reopening at ptsd.org stakeholders are welcome to email you know the comments to that it's not a question and answer site but it's a place for you to send your comments i would continue to direct
017you know parents to principals but we want comments in there and we certainly read each and every one of them we have a task force uh broke that up into different groups um in fact that group has been working extremely busy this last few weeks but particularly this week um we've had a lot of cross-collaboration discussions where our teaching and learning group which includes our principals our talking with food service and facilities to make sure that we're coordinated and this task force has a guided principles health and well-being of our students and staff have to be prioritized i'm looking above my computer our five keys to excellence posters up there it says safe and supportive school is the second key that needs to be our goal we know we have to provide options for families
018because the needs and the circumstances of every family is different so we're going to do that we're going to empower parents to make the best decision that they possibly can make we have to acknowledge a high degree of flexibility understanding and aim for in person if that's not ideal for students and staff look at a blended model if that's not ideal for students and staff look at a virtual model where does this information come from right so it's it's not driven by opinion uh in fact the school board is seeing this recommendation for the first time it's not driven by preferences it's driven by experts centers for disease control chester county health department which serves delaware county the american academy of pediatricians the bucks county department of health a world health organization school guidance from
019the pennsylvania department of education this plan that will ultimately be approved on july 29th will be linked to some expert opinion or expert guidance that won't be just kind of based on the feelings or opinions of an administrator or school board members all going to be linked to expert suggestions recommendations and advice these are our primary sources right there philosophical foundations of what we do hey there's converging evidence that the converana virus doesn't transmit among children like the flu and it's a lower risk we have to be aware of that right we have to be aware can't all be doom and gloom the direction of transmission is adult children kids getting sick is on the order of rare but we also advocate that all policy considerations should start with a goal of having students back
020present in school and we should have coordinated interventions that intend to mitigate but not eliminate risk because we will never be able to fully admit to eliminate risk adult activities and experiences like ptl meetings you know maybe assemblies you know back to school nights these things will have to be minimized so that we can maximize the opportunity for students to come into school every day or every other day and enjoy a learning experience this is the first page of the plan uh that's been sent to our school board it's a draft plan uh it's 46 pages actually talks about uh what we'll commit to doing if we open totally reopen every single day or if we do a blended or hybrid operation that plan again will be pushed on our website and parents will certainly
021will be welcome to provide feedback on that plan it's about 46 additional pages it addresses custodial issues it addresses issues about masking it addresses health and safety how will we communicate our information that's the plan that in two weeks will be finalized and given to the board for adoption based upon feedback from the board and the community here's you know our principles and rationale that are embedded throughout this plan uh first of all again as we talked about our principles up top guiding principles we can move on screening you know so in other words where do the ideas of screening hygiene mask and distancing come from well gene kassler chester county department of health no students of symptoms or temperature are allowed at a bus or at school no staff of symptoms or temperature are
022allowed at school onsite temperature taking is not recommended because fever is not a consistent symptom in children and would result in lines and delayed school entry we strongly recommend parents and caregivers be empowered to do the screening of their students other children hygiene will be disinfecting at different intervals throughout the day with an emphasis on student staff hand hygiene talk about american academy of pediatrics advice we talk about centers for disease control masking people should wear cloth face coverings in public settings especially when school distancing measures are difficult to maintain chester county department of health and dr david damsker from bucks county buses can operate with a maximum of two students per seat with the understanding that masks are required while riding the bus governor's order of course everyone above the age of two must
023wear a mask distancing refrain from scheduling large group activities such as field trips intergroup activities extracurricular activities target a minimum of three feet up to six feet of social distancing between students where feasible and the world health organization has always said maintain three feet distance between yourself and others during this pandemic the screening will no matter what plan we have staff and parents will be told what the list of look fors are to deduct those before students and staff come to school in the morning if you're symptomatic you're not permitted in our schools you have to stay home staff will report suspected concerns to a school nurse school nurses will coordinate their contact county department of health when they learn of positive or potential cases of cover 19 and we will follow the directions and
024advice of the health department we won't make those calls ourselves just the county department of health has given us guidelines to follow right if you have one of these items in group a you need to stay home right if you have some of the items of group two of the items in group b you need to stay home if you have a temperature oil temperature 100 or higher you need to stay home if you have a temporal take in temperature at 99.5 you need to stay home high g so we've looked at our schedules we have opportunities for more frequent hand washing and sanitizing sharing of volumes are going to be avoided or cleaned and disinfected hand sanitizing stations have been purchased they will be placed throughout our schools so you'll see more hand sanitizing
025stations throughout our school locations we had already decided and thank you school board for taking funds to purchase additional chromebooks for the middle school so grades six seven and eight we have chromebooks on order for those students that will definitely limit the technology sharing and also help for those students who will be at home and doing virtual learning it's one less computer that you know siblings will have to fight over when they're home and of course we'll reduce the usage of common high touch items whenever possible hand sanitizing stations you know we're encouraging all students of course to have you know their own personal water bottles with them we have refilling stations in most of our schools they're very difficult to get at the moment we're continuing to try to swap out some of our
026water fountains uh to try to minimize that activity but we want students to come in with you know a filled water bottle and we'll have water bottle refilling stations an opportunity for kids to stay hydrated throughout the day distancing so currently we can say that all the classrooms can meet the world health organization for physical distancing and the cchd center chester county health department requirement we can do that large concrete areas such as the lunchroom and cafeteria we're continuing to look at that we have concerns particularly at the secondary level because it requires six foot of distance between students when they're not wearing masks of course can't wear a mask if you're eating your lunch we have been told buses can run with a maximum of two percent masks required and siblings should be seated
027together and then small group and one-to-one lessons should be minimized to the maximum extent however for those students who have specially designed instruction and must work specifically maybe one-on-one with a speech therapist for instance we have some mitigation measures in place and some barriers to help with the staff and the students who would be dealing with those distancing needs and still need direct instruction we need to keep visitors out of school uh large group activities that place kids together have to be eliminated you know so some of those kind of fun assemblies unfortunately would be postponed or canceled we are guided to have students seated in the same direction directional transitions in the hallway and then reminders all over the place for our kids because this is just not a normal practice you bring kids
028back together they see their friends for the first time they want to run up and give each other a high five and a hug and they're excited to see one another and that really shouldn't be happening during a pandemic give you an example of you know what this looks like in our classrooms right so here here's a northly classroom and remember it's a summer time so it's not all dressed out the way it normally would the left hand side is a classroom that actually meets the requirements for reopening that meets the requirements we need you to imagine all those middle school students sitting there meeting the requirement with a mask on but not really moving around too much right you don't really see a lot of collaborative learning you don't see sharing it's it's a
029it's it's a tight situation there's no question about it on the right hand side would be what the classroom would look like in a hybrid model where half of the class would come in and then we can obviously spread people out further if they're beyond a six feet students will be able to get a mass breather the teachers will be able to roam the room uh more easily so that's the reality of this decision that we're looking at here here's another elementary classroom right and again i would tell you that most of our classrooms don't typically look like that right a lot of desks are put together you have a lot of group work again there's a lot of problem based learning it's not really a traditional all the desks lined up in rose kind
030of scenario but that's a scenario districts have to set up for now because all students have to go in the same direction they can't be close so you have a traditional look but even with a traditional look imagine that elementary class and the teacher comes in and those students are at those desks all day with a mask we could do it that's my point we can do it a hybrid model provides a little more flexibility and you'll see on the right hand side if those students are there we have a little more social distancing permissible in that classroom cafeteria distancing is an issue we're working through that and it's six feet for all students not just for a secondary and our administrators realize some students in order to accommodate it may have to take lunch
031back into their classrooms activities means meetings gatherings they're cancelled or postponed iep meetings should be held virtually so that parents won't have to come into the school like what we're doing now and some cherished annual school events may not occur that's a reality that we have to get our heads around you know some things just are not going to occur this year like they typically would have you know we homecoming's not that far off it's possible we won't have a homecoming this year masking is the next piece right the centers for disease control director uh was unequivocal on this to me face coverings are the key if you really look at it the data is really clear they work cdc director dr robert redfield says we're not defenseless against coven cloth faith coverings are one
032of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus particularly when used universally within a community setting all americans have a responsibility to protect themselves to families and their communities so regardless of what model we open in and students will be asked to wear a mask so on the right hand side is uh you know some child friendly masks and we had an administrator who said you know we're talking about the problems of wearing masks with young kids but maybe we can gamify it you know let's make it fun let's make it you know part of life where kids can say this is fun this i got a cool star wars mask so parents were encouraged to think about getting those kind of cloth masks that would be comfortable
033on the left hand side is our business manager who didn't have a choice but saying yes to my request to take this picture you'll see a face shield that will be purchased for all district employees all district employees will be given a mask and will be given a face shield for their protection and for the protection of the students and as you can see teaching and operating with the face shield is much easier right you can actually see the face you can see that they're happy you can read the lips easier it's it's it's a better product we've made that purchase for every employee whether you're a power educator a custodian or a teacher we're going to give that to you for your protection and for the protection of students you can also wear their
034own personal cloth or not n95 mask you know when they're not working in closer contact with students we know that you know teachers the secondary level if they're at the front of the room and students are in the back of the room they can have a mass breather because you have the necessary distance principals are looking at opportunities and scheduled to get students in places where they could take a mass break with necessary distancing and we are very very understanding of the challenge that masks present for certain special needs students or very young children we are not forgetting the issues that this can propose transportation so some of you may have seen this on social media this is the latest school bus that's being shopped around the school districts this is a socially distant school
035bus as you see this enables us to bust all of our kids but they certainly wouldn't fit in our bus depot but aside from the joke we looked very carefully at our buses and what would that look like if we followed the guidelines from the department of health and you would look at this on the left-hand side and you'll see the blue spots where you can sit and the red spots where you can't sit and what they're doing is essentially not forgetting that the people right in front of you would be more likely exposed by any respiratory airborne uh materials so we're following the guidance we're not making it up as we go we also will be providing an opportunity for parents in the coming weeks to tell us if they will not be utilizing
036transportation and by doing so we will be able to get our bus numbers of 81 students back down to likely below 50 and be able to provide transportation in line with the guidance so we're going to give you the opportunity to opt out uh wearing a mask is a condition for transportation on the bus vehicle and kids don't want to wear a mask they would have to find another way to get to school you have to wear a mask if you want our bus transportation we know that we may need additional time for arrival on dismissal period so we'll be more flexible about that issue and currently we do not expect that we would need additional buses to provide transportation there's some districts out there talking about not providing transportation because they can't comply with
037the requirements we can do it and we think once we learn what students are being driven to score anyway it's going to reduce our bus count particularly at the secondary level food service uh if we ever had to slip back to virtual we'll continue to offer lunch supports for qualifying families just like we did during the pandemic uh the lunch experience i've been talking a lot about we have to think about that you know for those students who are enduring lunch every day with that six feet of separation that can be a challenge right secondary students they want to hang out with their friends they want to have fun they want to crack jokes they want to laugh they want to breathe or this takes that away administrators are working up plans that inc could
038include lunch in the classroom or to modified schedules so a number of districts are also considering a grab-and-go option for lunch in which secondary students would be dismissed prior to lunch with the option to purchase a lunch or receive a lunch to go that they could eat at home and that's again because of this kind of solitary nature of lunch that could have to be held in cafeterias or gymnasiums if we were to pursue that approach we would consider an opportunity for late morning healthy snack or kind of a refueling break certainly for students who would kind of need some some type of nutrition in the late morning hours to get them to that later lunch that is currently not in the plan but it's being considered and i'm bringing it to the board as
039an option for us to provide lunch in a socially distant environment school district guidance recommends that facility use by external groups be limited to outdoor areas and fields right so why do we say parents can't come into school but we can have guests and visitors and groups and booster groups and clubs and athletic groups coming into our building as soon as kids leave guidance recommends that that be limited to outdoor areas and also required to submit a health and safety plan to utilize those facilities we're looking at all of our cleaning and hvac protocols against the cdc recommendations won't make it up cleaning and disinfecting supplies will be based on the approved list that we can use against cover 19. but i i'm going to stop for a moment and i'm going to just show
040you this picture which was i think in the new york times this past weekend now we're talking a lot about logistics and i increasingly need us to think about kids students first so this apparently is an image from a school in california that is having summer school those kids don't look real happy to me i have to tell you and um it's very limited in the kind of instruction that any school district can provide in this model so some school was better than no school but let's keep in mind as we make a decision what our decision is going to have on an impact on kids who are going to have to be in our rooms for six hours a day six plus a day and the staff and what can we do you know
041you don't see the kind of things we want to see in there you don't see collaboration you don't see communication you don't see critical thinking not too much you certainly you know maybe character maybe you see character because the discipline of having to stay in your seats all day but that's you know what american classrooms are going to have to tackle with in the next you know uh upcoming months so we can't forget the impact of this on kids whatever decision is made parent survey results from about a month ago uh 60 of the parents indicated that they were somewhat or extremely uncomfortable sending their children back if there was only minor restrictions 31 31 said you know what pandelco cyber virtual learning that might be what my kid needs um large large majority parents
042indicated no problem i could send my my kid to school with them their own mask that's not a problem we will have backup masks but you know kids might want their own personalized one i have 51 pages of additional open-ended feedback that the board will be uh provided uh it says you know there's mixed results some people thought the virtual learning was terrific their kids thrived in it others no it really didn't go well for their kids and parents are concerned about the quality of the school experience our staff survey results about half are concerned you know about the fact they're going to be teaching and living in districts that might have different schedules while advancing kind of legitimate questions they're not just saying we can't do it forget it you know how are we
043going to do this you know they're trying to come up with solutions that are good for the pendleto community so we're going to have pandelco cyber available for certain and penn delta cyber school is different than the experience that your child may have had last spring remember last spring we had a week or two of notice to all of a sudden shift from it from brick and mortar to cyber learning that's not a lot of time that wasn't like the 12 years cyber schools had to try to put a program in place we have a cyber program in place and we're going to offer that for parents because we want parents to stay with pandelca because we know we can do virtual learning better than the cyber charters are doing where the results are nothing
044short of horrific the graduation rates are down in the 20 30 percentile our school performance profile scores are not good we have parents who come back from cyber charter schools the kids are behind they were not pleased with it there was not enough interaction we know we we can do this you know and we want the pentalco family to remain the same we're offering penn delco cyber for parents who want that option and our students deserve better and they're going to get better you get a sun valley diploma if you do penn delta cyber you do pandel cyber you want to be on a sports team you can be on our sports team you want to be in our course well if there was course maybe this year is not a great great the best
045year for an example but you want to be involved in extracurriculars in pen delco and you still want to do those things with the friends in your neighborhood you don't want to be in cyber charter that that's run out of pittsburgh and don't go cyber and we'll be there for you so what might be different no matter what virtual back-to-school night presentation for parents uh that's almost a near certainty iep meetings virtually we talked about everything else being postponed or canceled uh secondary late bus runs will be cancelled because we have no way to guarantee that we're going to have you know the right seating they were not utilized very often to begin with in person group shows the performance is restricted there will be limitations on attendance at athletic competitions that may occur we'll
046have drop-off stations outside of our schools parents have to drop off a lunch for a student perhaps or they forgot you know a book bag able to put into the drop-off station outside want to come into the office and get into the building we want to cohort students when possible so the students stay the same so if we ever had to do contact tracing it's easier to do our student school supply lists will change they'll be designed to limit the sharing of items and some extracurricular activities will also be cancelled or postponed what's uncertain is lunch the number of students who might request virtual instruction number students who may not utilize pandelico transportation you know this cycle and any implication of the governor's order on masking what is certain experience is going to be different
047whatever plan or approach we select will be criticized and unpopular because we are not going to be able to satisfy such a wide range of opinions and interests and circumstances what's certain is the social emotional health the mental health of our students has to be closely monitored to make sure that this is good for them and what's certain is that the best thing we can do is normalize life for them right to the greatest extent possible you know can't have them looking back at this period of time and that being a bleak time we have to try to normalize it so i've been telling my administrators start where you are use what you have and do what you can do and that's our approach we're starting where we are we're using what we have and
048we're going to do what we can do we're going to do it to the best of our ability we will continue to engage with the task force staff parents via surveys last night i had a zoom with ptl officers it was extremely helpful this afternoon and monday afternoon i had a zoom with about 40 staff members and teachers for feedback extremely helpful we'll continue to work on alternate schedules and plan possibilities for the school board we are looking to procure additional substitute staff for all of our departments knowing that we can expect a likelihood that there will be an increased absentee rate uh we will maintain this regular series of updates to the community most particularly to the board over the next two weeks on our reopening plan and then ultimately i will offer zoom
049meetings or stakeholder groups in mid to late august to really talk through some of these things and answer some of the more specific questions that people will have at that time here's the options for the board everyday in-person instruction and the option for parents to enroll their children at pendleco cyber or proceed with a hybrid option which would reduce group size and the stress possibly of complying with required accommodations we will post the initial planned draft uh it's in draft form right now as i said it's about 50 pages uh for the website and if anyone wants to offer public feedback they can from the 16th to the 20th we're going to continue to work with administrators to talk about the implications and the proposals of these alternate plans a big week next week right
050we're going to have a survey for parents regarding their transportation plans survey regarding their preference in school every day under those circumstances or at home every other day under those circumstances we'll refine the plan we'll bring it back to the board with justifications additional interventions july 29th school board approves the tree opening plan and then we start our community notification so that we can get information out to parents so they have a month to plan for our september 8th start whether that is in person whether that's virtual whether that is a blend of book won't go through all this it's running late but it's a great important point it's not really about how the schools safely reopen in the end this is going to come down to what happens in our community it all comes
051down to community transmission if community transmission stays low enough we can get back to normal but if community transmission doesn't stay low and if people don't follow the guidelines and recommendations this cycle is never gonna end so we need community transmission to stay low so we can get back to normal no matter what there are screening protocols that we will follow i mentioned some of those already so our hygiene protocols that we're following we're purchasing electrostatic cleaners for instance uh disinfecting of buses right the high-touch areas we'll have a clean crew that's going to run through we're going to ask the staff the board for additional staff that we can have some temporary part-time workers to come in and actually help us have another wave of cleaning in our buildings we'll be telling kids you
052know got to stop the handshakes the fist bumps all those kind of things so our masking precautions that we're going to follow there's no question about it the distancing is a really big issue it's a really big issue and it's hard because we are a social creature and that's what we do in schools right we serve kids and we're we're not distant beings when we teach you know kids collaborate they learn how to work together classroom configurations are being altered as we speak or maybe not as we speak but certainly this week so that we can look at that physical distancing and we'll have that set up for staff when they come back um you know our expressive arts specialists and teachers they may have to travel to the classroom rather than having students head
053out and that'll help us with contact tracing if we need to get to that point it'll also help us mitigate potentially any spread that could happen we're telling all of our staff they have to enter using their scan card so that we know who was in and who was out um folks have said you know if someone has cobit you know would we get to know who it is um well no we we have to maintain confidentiality while still ensuring that parents and staff are informed if they may have been exposed to cover 19. the use of outdoor space spaces absolutely that's something that we're going to try to use as often as we can we should be prepared for this to run into the winter or rainy days and recognize it's not always option
054that's on a reopening plan but while i have everybody's attention just quickly a couple other matters uh the sun valley uh entrance and nurses suite project is uh going along pretty well uh you'll see on the left uh what the new entrance will look like much more aesthetically pleasing it'll be much brighter that was always a very kind of dark area it was difficult to clean there were some structural challenges to it as well because of the age you'll see on the right hand side progress that we're making there it's going to have you know really a nice statement that we need to have for sun valley high school we're working out the color scheme as well so that that will attempt to match the browns and the tans that are in that building so
055we wanted to look like it was always part of that building and you'll see the rendering that really gives you that feeling it also matches the other work that we did at norfolk middle school with parkside you know some of the other improvements that we've done and then below that is um the new nursery suite which is desperately needed to high school i'm told that's ahead of schedule doesn't look like it is but i'm told that's ahead of schedule remember we were talking about an early winter opening there but you'll see the foundation set and folks say where is that that's where there used to be a little grass grassy patch right off of the courtyard in front of the high school and that grassy patch is there but the student courtyard still remains i
056also want to share that you know the planning for a startup of the pendleco diversity equity and inclusion committee you know that continues that wasn't something we just put on the agenda last month and nothing's going to happen but right now that has taken backseat to the work that we're doing to reopen schools but we are targeting an initial meeting date after the school begins and it will likely be done virtually as well um and a few appendices so i appreciate the time i'm sure there's a lot of questions uh and you know i i will yield my time to the school board and see if i can answer anything or my team can answer any questions at a minimum let us know what other information you will need let me stop the sharing thank
057you dr steinhoff um there are several questions in the chat we will get to them when we get to the public comments section of the meeting um we will address them the agenda is very short um so that we should be getting to them very uh soon if anyone else would like to ask a question in reference to um the agenda maybe please raise your hand and you will be given time to speak uh we'll address the questions that have come in already uh to the best of our knowledge um things are ever changing throughout uh every day um so we're taking the voice of the the professionals of the world and uh we'll be moving forward with that so with that announcements for the public tonight the board met an executive session to discuss
058personnel and litigation matters um comments by members of the board do any board members have comments yeah uh mr armor had a couple questions this is a good time to so a couple questions on the reopening plan thanks george for that's a lot of detail and i'm sure there'll be a ton more questions but um just one of the things on on top of mine is if we do go with a cyber and hybrid approach can students move in and out of those depending on their success at each of those do you envision that to be the option so what i would tell you is uh the cohorting piece is really important right so once we say you're in the a a team so to speak or you're in a b team so to speak
059you know we'll certainly want students if they go every other day you know to stay with that group right so if someone heaven forbid was uh positive it wouldn't be impacting the whole school would only be half of the cohort for people who though choose you know pandelco cyber again which is different than every other day virtual right this is pandelico cyber means every day i'm doing virtual at the moment if parents say you know a month into that this isn't working well for my child i want to go back you know into the into a program um then that option you know would be available we we have to evaluate the impact of a student in cyber versus in person right and the impact of that change you know on the environment um but
060i i don't want to be in a spot you know where a parent says i'm afraid to pick pandelco cyber if my kid can't come back to school until you know second semester we want to try to be very flexible with people but what we can't uh permit would be someone to say every two weeks you know i've changed my mind i don't want to do cyber anymore i changed my mind that's not fair to teachers or to the students got it george and when we talk about the cohorts i read a little bit a bit about the philadelphia plan that they came out this morning i know they really heavily focused on uh you know those students with with complex needs that really virtual learning is not going to be an option are we
061going to heavily have them more in a face-to-face environment and have them less minimalized than a virtual environment you see that being being the plan yes so i i would say the more complex the needs of a child the greater the flexibility and support we're going to provide so in a lot of way a lot in many of those cases their program is governed by an iep that we have to meet those requirements anyway but we're sensitive to the fact that we could potentially open our buildings every day for students in low incident populations or multi disabilities knowing that they're in a room of maybe three or four others so we we can you know say with confidence that there's a lot of social distancing going on and we have a staff to be able
062to provide a kind of environment that they need and we also know that some of those students just do not learn well in a purely virtual model and i think everybody understands that so i would say for you know any parents who are concerned about their students who might have significant academic or emotional needs we would work with them individually to come up with the best option for them some have already said you know what i don't think my child will operate well in this environment i want to stay home i want virtual learning for my child and again that's where our flexibility comes in uh we're going to honor you know to the best degree we can you know family family choice and uh and try to assist in that in that process yeah
063thanks jordan one last for me i'll i'll let everyone else jump in but any word on uh delaware county technical uh technical school and the vo tech program for the fall any word on that yet yes thanks for asking so i just received an email uh from mr butts who is the new director of dcts uh he contacted mr sassy as well today and sent an update i will tell you that i haven't been able to read his complete plan but in the email it said you know we intend to open we understand we have to provide in-person instruction we understand that you know auto body repair is something that you can't do virtually right so their plan they've spent the time you know trying to figure out how they can open up their programs
064every day for students okay any other questions about the board if it's okay can i uh can i go as well so one appreciate this george i wrote i'm a visual learner so i have all these posted notes i appreciate the plan um [Music] again you know we have probably one of the largest attendees for the um at a school board meeting so related to that exactly what i said not many people might have been on the first time i said this to you what happened in march did not did not ever happen before meaning you were never at a a workshop or a conference for superintendents none of the teachers went to any teachers conference related to this so what we're doing is just not winging it just using for what we know today
065what you knew friday march 13th is heck of a lot different than what you know july 15th um so we have three meetings we have july 29th august 8 august 19th and then august 26th what you saw what you saw dr steinhoff published tonight or communicate tonight could be totally different what we see in in six weeks you saw what pennsylvania i'm sorry what philadelphia said yesterday and you saw what pennsylvania said today so at least we have a plan in place so i i guess just we're we're going to ask many questions and i'm sure there's going to be even some other additional questions that maybe we never thought of one that came to mind is i didn't see that george so i don't know if the cdc is the temperature limit is there
066a temperature limit that for when students come into the schools is it 100.3 100.4 i can i can answer that from uh from my perspective i believe it is 100.4 is the cutoff limit um dr steinov can you chime in there is that is that what we're so if a child if you check your child's temperature in the morning and it's above 100.3 that uh you should not send your child to school and if you were a um an employee the district that would uh be as well yeah i believe it's actually a little lower than that and that's the kind of documentation that we'll put out for parents so there's no question about you what do you need to do for a symptom check and it'll be very clear if your child's temperature is
067this high your child has to stay home and that's again the number that comes out chester county department of health has given to all the school districts thank you yeah sure it also depends on the type of temperature that uh check that you take i saw that and i don't know if mr rafferty is on so i saw even today from the pia so i know football has been practicing at least from that for the heat acclimation that's still as of right now august 10th and as of today all other fall sports on the 17th of august yes correct we still have the summer program programming going on you know there's rumors about fall sports nothing has been available so our school district like every other school district of pennsylvania is permitted to let students
068do athletic summer activities following the athletics health and safety plan that the board approved last month i you know i have some parents who ask that question how can we be talking six feet distancing um but yet you've got kids out there doing athletics um you know we have our students out doing athletics because they're permitted to do so and you know what the fall season looks like that has not yet been determined uh but we're not going to inhibit the kids from doing something if they're permitted to do it and they can do it safely mr rafferty has been going out to practices to make sure that people are distancing that there's no kind of small group tight group work i saw a group the other morning i was very impressed with what they
069were doing on the field everybody was separated everyone's doing their calisthenics so they're doing what we expect them to do we'll have to wait and see what the fall brings yeah because as a 5 pm tonight pi double a communicated their exact words are moving forward with the start of the fall sports season obviously that could change in the next week or two but i believe that's as of right now that's the direction from that um another one is then is that a technology so we kind of we started talking about this so we know that there was not pendulu's fault but it was issues week one week two sometime in march related to schoology whether it was a server they weren't used to the the heavy traffic as well as our traffic that we
070have so what are you gonna what are some of the steps we are taking moving forward on that sure yes the first couple weeks of virtual was really there were a lot of hiccups and that was primarily due to schoology so some parents may have even gotten the emails from schoology that said we're working on it or they would get error messages and that was because of the uh extreme overload that schoology was experiencing so once school would you manage that and i give them credit for doing it in pretty short order at least the continuity of it was better um in terms of its availability was higher what has happened since then is continued training in that in that platform um as you know mr gorniak is now the manager of blended in virtual
071learning so he's continuing to work to refine that our curriculum department is continuing to work to make sure that our virtual offerings are better um you know we've looked at other options you know it's interesting um i know people who use canvas they say canvas is horrible i wish we had score g we use schoology some people say schools is horrible i wish we had canvas i think there's limitations to every platform that's out there um we will get better with schoology as parents see it more and our kids use it more and our staff use it more so just using the program itself is gonna i think create some enhancements and some improvements our staff is also uh being given the opportunity to write digital curriculum this summer so that the curriculum itself will
072be more robust in terms of technology access you know as i said we're mentioning we are purchasing more chromebooks that will inventory and we'll see how many we have our hope would be to work our way down from fifth down to first in terms of assignment of devices because we know for parents that was difficult you know parents who had two or three kids in a three or four even you know children in the family and then uh only one computer you know that that was a real hardship and they all would be home on the same day under a hybrid model so we're aware of that as well um the challenge and i'll tell the board this you know straight up is you know it always comes back to finances so penn delco has
073the second lowest amount of revenue per pupil in delaware county so we we have to be very efficient with what we do there's only one district that spends less per pupil and than us so we we just can't go out and say let's just let's just buy 3 400 chromebooks we really have to be judicious about how we spend the re spend the funds that we have but it's clear that getting a device in every child's hand is absolutely not the distance future but the near future sorry and it might open up more questions why do they want another comment sorry mr einer is you made a comment for the presentation we talked about um the time from the bus tell it's going to take longer we know getting on the bus is going to
074be longer come potentially coming off going into all the classrooms so this might be yourself or if mr kamenka as well how is that going to change the duration of the day sake of arguing i know it's eight some eight fifty something each particular schools and high schools does it look like you're going to chip away at each classroom time if you were going to go full time in the classroom yeah if we were going full time uh would i mean it would just it would mean that there's less instructional time and the state has given school districts the ability to apply uh for that exemption because they know we're all going to need it so in other words it might mean that first period doesn't begin as promptly as it did in previous years
075it might mean that the end of the day starts comes sooner than it did in previous years like we know we can't say all right well this time we're letting all of our kids out and now you've got you know several hundred elementary kids all dismissing at the same time so the process of dismissal itself is going to take longer so that will mean that the amount of time that we have attending to instruction is going to be squeezed a little bit but that's going to have to take a second step to you know the priority of getting kids in school and dismissing them safely yeah and that goes to one of their girls in two comments one is the the new normal meaning let's be honest i think everyone you know with give or
076take one was that close to 500 going to the grocery store for a case of seltzer water is heck of a lot longer now than it was six months ago um so it's going to be you would assume that okay well what you need at five minutes is going to take you 15-20 minutes so that's the exactly what you said your presentation with the new normal so we got to take that in the fact and then i also just want to make that little sniper i remember dr mcgloin when she was even we were starting to do the virtual at one point um so years ago it makes me feel how old i am um i just want to make that little comment as far as for the cyber we do have a uh pendelto
077cyber and we've worked extremely hard exactly what you said to keep them people in in our school district um so i just wanted to make that extra plush thank you that's all i have yeah thank you mr tinsley you know the issue of cyber is difficult because there's so much misinformation out there you drive up 95 and you see a giant billboard and it says tuition free virtual education well it's not tuition free right so if a special needs student from pandelco goes to cyber charter we need 31 000 of taxpayer money to pay for that child to go to a cyber charter so that means 10 homes pick any 10 homes their average tax bill 10 of them go to pay for one child who would go to a virtual cyber charter school that
078isn't even located anywhere near us and the fact that the public the taxpayers have to pay for that choice that somebody has is something i can't get my head around if a parent chooses to send their children to private school o'hara or a catholic school that's their choice they don't turn around and say i want the pendleco taxpayers to pay for my kid to go to a private school they understand that's a choice so it's difficult for me to understand how our taxpayers are being asked to pay fifteen thousand dollars for a child to enroll in a cyber charter school with horrific results and i can tell you that because i was on a board of a cyber charter i could tell you all about it or even 31 000 that should go to support
079the schools of our hometown and there's no question there has to be cyber charter reform we cannot have uh cyber charters out there advertising that's tuition free it's not tuition-free our taxpayers our senior citizens are paying for those programs and we offer the same thing we offer the same thing so it just shouldn't be it shouldn't be happening and i know mr armour's been talking to some of the local legislators about that uh who who understand the challenges that we're facing so thank you for bringing up the issues of cyber thank you for bringing that up mr tinsley uh as dr steinhoff said um you know we do have a very um adequate online learning platform in the uh virtual learning academy through padelco um that was started a few years back just uh last
080month at the board meeting we approved um uh chrisgorniak to take on that and uh spearhead it so we have a lot more attention to it um depending upon the amount of uh enrollment we have for this year will depend upon how many teachers we need to move from possibly from the classroom to virtual learning or possibly even uh pick up some more teachers if needed but what dr seinhoff was saying is you know it costs us anywhere from 20 to 30 000 to outsource a um cyber charter when we have it in house and can do it ourselves and that's something that the taxpayers would have to uh take on so for those who are interested in the virtual learning platform of cyber charter uh we do ask to give that you give our
081uh our cyber platform a try um it is adequate it is uh just as good if not better than uh than those uh cyber charter programs out there and i might be a little bit biased on that but uh i would feel completely comfortable having my child go through it if that was my choice to uh the platform to use any other comments all right items for board information six point zero one leon sorry um i just had a couple um questions here so um sorry so if a page no sorry down to work patient a student or and or a teacher or facility somebody who's working in there in the school if they become coveted positive what is the protocol like are they quarantined for two weeks do they have to get have to
082get tested and provide a negative test before they come back or is it just a two week um no symptoms to coming back and and is there going to be some type of notification for those that maybe were at a potential risk is there going to be notification going out to other staff and students that may have been around that positive yeah i'll let miss tyre address it a little bit as well because she is intimately involved in this as our hr director but in any of those situations you know where someone may have been in contact or we find out somebody does have covet what is the process we have flow charts that we follow that decease uh chester county provided to the school district take out that flow chart you follow the steps
083and it almost immediately takes us to notifying chester county department of health for guidance on next steps and then they will initiate the efforts in coordination with the district on contact tracing and notification to individuals who who may have been in contact with that person but i think those kind of they're the kind of questions that we also want to ultimately give to parents so they go into the school year not wondering well what will happen if there's a kid in the class who has covet we'll have frequently asked question sheet to kind of walk them through that so they get an understanding of what can i expect if that actually happens i'll turn it over to miss tyre who's really been involved in this with other hr directors this if i could say one
084thing real fast just so uh the attendees in the meeting some may be asking why we keep referencing the chester county uh department of health uh they do serve as the liaisons for uh delaware county as we do not have that here in delaware county so that's why we keep reference in chester county department of health um and their guidelines just to clarify that for you just to follow up with what dr steinhoff shared if a student is become sick or is ill is suspected to have coveted or has coveted that will be processed through the nurse's office and the nurse will be in contact with the chester county department of health if an employee is suspected of having coveter has covid they will come through the hr department and i would then be in
085contact with the chester county department of health and they will really be leading the district on what next steps have to be taken and what information they may need for contact tracing um and and they'll be guiding guiding that process thank you um and then another thought um that came through so for backpacks you know i know this is at middle school at one point you know we said that there was no backpacks but during the school you know because that could be another point of transmission um have we thought about the backpack policy throughout all schools and not just you know northly yes we have um so it's not as much of an issue for the uh elementary where the backpacks are coming in and they have cubbies we do know the elementary principles
086are always working at making sure that there's not contact in particular in the wintertime those areas a lot of kids bring their coats in and it get it gets pretty compact in there so they're already thinking through the logistics of what they have to do um it's more of an issue at the middle school right where there's always this backpack issue and how much you know things kids have to carry around so mr lucius this is not a final plan but he is looking at an option of providing kind of like a drawstring bag for the students uh to have so they'll be able to come in the morning they'll be able to put their stuff in the locker and they won't have to continue to go in and out of the lockers all day
087long in other high-touch areas he's looking at working with the staff in terms of reducing the amount of things that kids have to take around and certainly if they have chromebooks and if they arrive prior to the start of school year more of that content will be digital and they want to carry around as many textbooks so i great question i just talked to mr lucius about that two days ago and he's trying to think that think through that because we know for middle school kids i mean you know sometimes they walk around the whole locker in their hand all day long and we want to minimize that it also gives them a place for them to put their antibacterial sanitizer that they might have or an extra mask or something like that they might
088have that gives them a place to put that for the day thank you i think that's it for me sure you're welcome i apologies is that it uh for questions from the board all right so items for board information 6.01 was the first reading for adoption of the revised policy 1.03 nondiscrimination slash discriminatory harassment for school and classroom practices just the first reading tonight um i see we have a lot of public comments in the chat as well as a few hands raised would there be any public comments in reference to any agenda items for tonight probably best to put it in the chat box it'll come at the bottom and we can pay attention to that to make sure we can we can address those first this is not the public comment section that
089we have for um all questions that comes at the end later in the meeting probably about three minutes all right so we see as none for public comments in the beginning number nine is 9.01 personnel starts on page two carries on to page three uh references the penducal budget 2019 2020 act 93 plans pdea agreement pde spa agreement pdsspa agreement the pa school code section 1108b it is administration recommendation to approve all personnel items as presented do i have this motion so moved second questions or comments all those in favor aye aye opposed motion passes so this is the section of the meeting where we will go with public comments i will ask that anyone who has not already posted a comment in the chat please raise your hand we will go through the uh
090the chat i'll read the i'll read it um and we will answer to the best of our knowledge through either uh dr steinhoff hr or anyone of that so kelly holcomb did ask how will students with 504s and ieps transferred to virtual learning i believe that'll probably be something for mr kamenka so we would do that through the iep process or 504 process we'd be able to have a meeting team meeting just like we would for in a brick and mortar format and any of the accommodations and um uh i guess adjustments that would have to be made or support that the student would need would transfer into the virtual environment as well so that would be based on a team meeting and it would be done with the parents obviously virtually as we would
091try to maintain virtual meetings but that would be done with the building principle teachers involved as well as the family all right thank you very much mr sorry um has had an epiphany i don't know if it's for now but whether it's somebody with administration or so on can we collect potentially faqs i i get it whatever is what happened now might not have to be not be worth published like dr steinov it might be even worth it to have something prior to beginning of school year a list of all these faqs and i i get it that whatever we put on will change but that might be that question of those days might not be the only person who has it who has that question so i don't know if we were if you
092were even thinking of having an faq section on the website eventually yeah we uh we absolutely are already starting to build that and we have dedicated sex on the website all these resources will be on the presentation will be on faq uh when we have the material and how to enroll in cyber that'll be on there as well so yes dr steinolf thank you dr stun so stephanie fitzgerald asked how will water bottle refill stations be cleaned after each child because their bottles will be unsanitary due to oral secretions being present without being seen to the naked eye yeah any questions with respect to you know the cleaning process so we we have the cdc guidelines that we're going to follow the training that is provided for all of our facilities so you know there
093is you know any number of questions that well what if this happens or how does this happen because again it's all unknown and it's all new all those items we're going to work on we're just going to follow the guidelines from the facilities department and from the cdc school cleaning guidelines to address those and not make them up as we go thank you dr stonewolf uh amanda asked will face shields be acceptable in place of cloth masks for students i assume she is referring to yeah the the guidance for schools is that students should have a face covering on so if they felt that a face shield was better you know it it provides the same protection something that we'll keep an eye on but up to this point the guidance has been you should
094have a face covering and a mask is a covering a shield as a covering cloth covering all those things you've got a face covering that will stop the respiratory spread thank you um how will the the current attendance policy be enforced will still be same limits on days out some of that is to be determined that you know i think the state is grappling with the reality uh that this is going to be a different year right now there are truancy laws that we have to follow and we're going to implement but there's also a level of reasonability that we that all school districts are going to have to follow you know the one thing we have to make sure is that students are accountable for the work this year a lot of districts they
095understood that last spring was a challenging time and you know in a lot of places their students particularly secondary level they went too long you know attenuating with the school district and our teachers and our administrators spent time just trying to track kids down uh so you have to log on i mean and when we reopen whether it's hybrid virtual or every day it's every day it's every day you go to school it's not well i go to school on monday and then i'm off for a couple days i don't do any work now we expect you to be logged in and be working every day and if you're not we will record it as an absence thank you dr steinhall um brittany asked will they have to wear masks under the shields i do
096not believe that would be required if a shale was on that would be sufficient is that correct dr sauno that's what we understand you know we'll continue to look at that and um you know we'll have that guidance for parents before the start of the school year but up to this point face covering is sufficient doesn't have to be both a lot of people want both they want that extra layer so that could happen as well so not possibly not required but definitely could be um we have a question will this powerpoint be made available so we can show it to our kids also for the adults is a 64-page proposal going to be made available that was from chuck mckenna uh yes the powerpoint will be up and yes the uh i would say
097most of that draft plan will be up as it develops we'll put it online so that you know the public is a is aware of what the board will be voting on on july 29th thank you very much uh nicole harris says why is three foot distance in a classroom environment deemed acceptable but six foot for cafeteria i think i can give a little insight to that cafeteria they're not able to wear a face mask or shield they have to eat um can't eat through a face mask so uh the six foot in a classroom is acceptable without a face mask if they're within six feet they have to wear face coverings and should be three foot so uh hopefully that answered your question nicole so or nicholas i apologize um but that's the reason
098for the cafeteria they have to be able to have access to their face another question about the face shields we already answered that um kate bigelow have you considered keeping elementary class lists the same instead of regrouping it would cut down on the kids getting to know each other if that happened to have to start in a virtual environment uh we have not you know i mean our principals built the upcoming classes uh based on the fact that everybody would come back so they might be different um we'll share that option with them so i understand that those those students if we were to stay on virtual they all know each other from the previous year you know zooming with one another so we'll share that with the principals but at this at the moment
099we haven't built our classes around that concept thank you very much dr steinhall uh brittany asked what if someone tests positive will subs be allowed in different buildings um i think we already addressed that we have a protocol that we have to follow through the chester county health department um christy shelley asked can children wear face shields we already covered that uh jamie reeves if the student returns to school and his student other teacher comes infected with kova 19 uh once again we have just uh addressed that we have a a flow chart that we have to follow um we do need to any positive cases have to be immediately reported and uh and then we have to follow the guidelines they could be ever changing what they are today could not be what they
100are when we do open school uh let's see jamie reeves also asks if schools reopen how would it work with those kids who are special needs and have major health issues yeah our school our school nurse our special education supervisors potentially special education teachers already have a relationship with those families that will continue and we recognize it's going to be very unique accommodations for some of our students and there will be wide ranges of flexibility wide ranges of understanding and we'll do our very best to meet the required accommodations that are specified in the iep it's been a challenge you know for for some of our students i will continue to work with them in that regard of the drama lisa can you uh mute your got it thank you all right uh meg greeway
101said will there be a count of students that do not want to move to online learning before the decision on hybrid models the account may make five days a week possible for the parents that do want to go back to school full person uh we did speak about this a little bit uh i'll let dr steinov chime in it's a little too early to but if could be a possibility i guess is is my answer um and i'll let dr steiner speak on that but we did speak about it yeah i'm sorry and i didn't hear the question mr armour so the question is uh are we going to keep a count on the students that want to move the online totally um therefore if that count is high enough we still may be able
102to do five day a week in person and socially distance to kids depending upon how many kids we have i under now i understand the question yes there are some districts i know at least of one district in delaware county that is waiting to find out how many parents choose virtual learning because if they choose virtual learning and the possibility is that everybody else would be able to come in every day however the challenge that they're finding with that is your staff though would be asked to do two things simultaneously virtual teaching and also teach the kids that are in front of them um so could it change based on the numbers of students that elect virtual it could my sense from talking to parents is that we wouldn't have that many you know the
103initial survey talked about a third being interested i think as we get closer school districts are finding it's really kind of closer to 10 to 15 and even if we had that number that's 300 students so we would be more inclined to stick with the hybrid model because of the cohorting and because of the experience for kids that are there but we would have to really see a substantial drop in classroom sizes right now so and even you know if we look at some of the high school classes like an ap section you could have an ap psych section of 28 students because we have one ap psych teacher so imagine you know trying to teach that class and physically distance that's where the hybrid model comes in starts to make a little more sense
104thank you ben asked to minimize the risk during lunch can students be sent home to have their lunch then return to school as we stated earlier dr steinhoff was looking at a lot of different options possibly even sending students home right before lunch obviously you know maybe maybe running school through one o'clock having a snack time sending the kids home with their lunch or to eat lunch to stay home for the rest of the day um i don't necessarily think we will be transitioning kids home for lunch and then back to school i'm not saying that that's ruled out but what your thoughts on that dr steiner yeah well some of those uh kind of common sense solutions start to potentially run afoul of the requirements that we have as a provider of the national
105uh lunch program so in that regards we could potentially have to run two things let some kids go home and then run a lunch and that would probably be difficult to do both um we haven't really given that option as an option of going home for lunch and coming back because the experience is that sometimes a lot of kids don't come back particularly secondary uh and it might also mean another impact for parents in terms of convenience having to get a child from school get them home and get them back for what would that only be maybe another couple hours but you're right mr armor everything is on the table right now and we appreciate input from everyone and we'll continue to look at that all right denise is asking a student to delaware county
106technical school and pandelco cyber uh we've already addressed that delaware county technical school has has given us the uh idea that they will be open and operational being as dr stone said you can't learn how to do plumbing or baking or or auto repair from home um can you start off in cyber and go back in person uh we did speak about this we have to come up with a plan we will have the option that if you start in cyber you would be able to re-enroll in school i believe um but that is something that still needs to be figured out is that correct dr steinov it is and when we have the uh open registration for cyber that there won't be any question about that so parents are going to want a straightforward
107answer on that i can tell you that there's two schools of thought and they're both very legitimate and the one score thought says that if virtual is not working well for a student and a student has to return to school we shouldn't prevent that from happening there's another school of thought that is equally valid which is that our staffing has been decided and predicated based on the number of students who start in virtual and you know have them kind of switch and go back and forth has an impact potentially on that cohort size that we have students are in there but that's the decision will be made for certain over the next two weeks it will be included thanks dr song nicole harris asked if parents of kindergarten students will be included in the surveys
108um she had a couple i'll let you ask answer that a couple other questions that are i think i can answer again yeah there was there were some issues with uh incoming kindergarten uh parents not getting surveys or information because it hadn't been put through the registration process yet i believe that's been addressed i'm making the note mr kamig and i will look into that with technology tomorrow once that registration is processed then that the name one record should be there when we do a batch survey send you should get that but we will look into that thank you doc uh what about requirements for restrooms once again there will be a reopening plan sent out to parents that would address restrooms and sanitation and stuff of that nature uh we'll be will we re
109requirements for vaccines if and when available uh we're gonna leave that to the experts uh there will be i'm sure um guidance from the cdc and the world health organization and stuff and such um and we will follow whatever guidance we are given through the uh the professionals i would say is that correct dr sano yeah absolutely i mean you know the issue of vaccinations isn't one that you know we would make locally i'm certain that that will be driven by uh statewide requirements correct um before are before and after care allowed to operate they are allowed to operate uh we mr kameka been in contact with today's child how that operation goes for them is still to be determined we know that the before and after care centers in any school district are uniquely
110challenged by this right they have to be able to pay the bills they can't open and lose money and yet they need to have a legitimate number of students in the program to be able to justify its operation we've been told they intend to operate they intend to provide service but certainly they're still waiting for our decisions and then we're waiting for their recommendations on how they're going to be able to run the program and still make sure that kids remain socially distant thank you amanda scott asked if at any point in person education resumes we become concerned for the safety of our children can we switch to cyber we've already addressed that you can at any point uh if you do not feel safe sending your child to school we do have our cyber
111platform available for virtual learning what what happens if a teacher or student tests positive we've already addressed that if the virtual school's still an option if the district implements the hybrid model that would be correct we will still have our uh pendleco online academy also will the parents have the opportunity to change from virtual to in person and vice versa if their choice is not working out if so is there any cutoff date for the change um as we discussed before we would uh allow the change uh we have talked about limiting the amount of times we don't want some what we would like to prevent is one week virtual and then one week back to classroom and that that switch doesn't give any child any kind of uh routine or any way to actually
112get settled into what they're actually doing so is that the answer you would have given there dr steinov that yes you can but we would like to limit the amount of times if possible yeah we again this is an issue that i still want to flush out a little more deeply um you know race is different issues so some parents will feel that well this students who are in cyber weren't in the cohort you know again so again there's about three competing issues all uh that are legitimate with respect to the ability of a student to go in and out but i absolutely agree that what we can have is someone saying well you know just my son's driving me crazy he's got to go back to school and then after a couple of weeks
113he says you know what i miss virtual mom i want to stay home or i'll put him in virtual like we just can't operate that way but at the same time we want to be realistic and understand that some parents might say we've tried virtual it's been going on for three months it's not working out for us do we have options and we want to provide options for people and the july 29th plan will be very clear about that thank you um ed mongalizio his first part of his question is pertaining to someone testing positive we've already addressed that um the second part of his question uh let me see here if we choose to do cyber school in september we'll wish to transition in person school or vice versa how would that work we've
114already addressed that i did say thank um he does appreciate how difficult the whole situation is just trying to figure out the simplest way to ensure my kids don't get sick um kathy holcomb will virtual students be able to participate in school sports absolutely kelly um as always any anyone attending our cyber charter and or a charter school within the district is still able to partake in all of the class activities and sports david gornstein how does pandelco cyber differ from what was done in the spring um i'll let i think that's a question for the dr steinhoff or mr kaminka i know what we wound up with in the spring was a mad rush of um overwhelming stature for for schoology so it is much different but i will let uh the professionals answer
115that question i think people are tired people are probably tired of hearing from me so let's turn it over to our very superintendent and give him an opportunity yeah sure um we have we have the resources as we spoke about with apex learning um we also have for elementary we have educare another program platform that we could be utilizing but it's all contingent on how many students may not return uh to brick and mortar because that may be able to free up our teachers to provide virtual learning to our students and then then it will look similar but more enhanced than we experienced in the spring so it would be our teachers providing the instruction there would be much more live instruction more more live student interaction more live student-to-student interaction and collaboration much more
116interaction between uh when it comes to uh assessments a different look at assessments maybe more project based learning versus multiple choice even exams so a lot of professional development will be done is planned and it's going to be happening in the coming weeks actually reaching out to teachers in the next couple days to enhance that virtual learning experience so in that in that respect we have a lot of different avenues we can go down but we feel our teachers can provide that virtual instruction uh even better than the apex and educare platforms that we have so we'll be looking to utilize them thank you mr kaminka also part of his question was asking well students who start to school from home have the option to move into the classroom we've already addressed that vice versa
117one of the important parts of his question was does pendelco cyber plan have the capacity to support 100 of the students from home i feel uh and i think the administration would would uh side with me on this that we are in a much better situation today than we were in the spring um we had about three days to prepare to get all of our kids on a virtual platform and we are working diligently to make sure that we uh we have that available if it comes to that um diane connolly calhoun is a virtual cyber learning program the apex program is that correct uh go ahead yeah that's one of our programs for six to twelve that we've utilized for students have who have signed up in our cyber program over the past uh
118about two years now um but as i said actually we would use educare for elementary because apex does not do k5 so edu edges here is an option however if we are able to utilize our teachers and we're able to free them up to teach virtually we will utilize that first because that that will bring more of the student to teacher interaction that we're looking for um says i understand this is from pat twizzler i understand the split a b approach for the safety of the students but ultimately the staff will be there every day possibly spreading the virus the ab platform is designed to be able to social distance the children um at students for that matter because some of them are not children um the the teachers will still be social distancing from
119the students whether they're there five days a week three days a week two days a week whatever it may be unfortunately some of our teachers are a little bit more up close and personal in their teaching method that's going to have to change but that would be the answer uh from me for that is that correct george yeah i mean that's correct i mean in the end teachers coming in every day they're working with half of the students so theoretically if we were informed in the afternoon that a staff member had the virus then theoretically at least half the students didn't work with that teacher that day um right so if they if everybody comes in every day the teacher ordinarily would have potentially communicated that to an entire class where now it's cut down
120in half but even with that being cut down in half you know we still have physical distancing in place we still have masks we still have face shield so there's other mitigation methods that we would hope uh will have worked you know just because just because the teacher has it of course we know doesn't mean that the people that they work with will also get it thank you um will there be easement on truancy issues if parents need to keep kids home more often or longer uh we've addressed that earlier um this the federal government and state gives us mandates for truancy um until they change that we have to adhere to their regulations can dr steinhoff this is from janelle abnett can dr steinel speak about high school sports as of right now we
121did address that earlier as of right now um piaa has said that they are planning to go forward with uh fall sports um we don't know that that may change tonight and may change in the morning as of right now that it was their comment at five o'clock tonight so we will take their take their uh recommendation and follow their guidance um kelly manson what about kids with high risk conditions like asthma um we will leave that to uh if you'd like to i don't know if dr steinov can answer that but it's obviously the virtual platform is available um and we don't necessarily want to address any specific issues but oh my you know mr armor my guess is it might be with respect to you know the use of masks and asthma and
122you know there are we understand that there are medical conditions that some people have that we have to accommodate so in some of the large city plans that have already been shopped around they've acknowledged that you know with a medical note from a doctor indicating that there's certified medical condition that does not permit the use of a mask that some school district should be obligated to work through again that's the advantage of having students being uh more than six feet apart right where the person who might asthma maybe wears the mask during transitions when they're around then at least has that opportunity to be able to breathe more clearly so there's a lot of students these conditions those issues are going to be resolved before the start of school a lot of schools are opening
123up in august late august before labor day um not necessarily so much in this region but certainly nationally and we're following how those issues are resolved so that you know it could be child friendly thank you dr stein um t testa asked if high school students will receive more efficient tech devices for potential virtual learning at this time we have chosen to go the direction of chromebooks that is what we are sticking with for us to re issue a say per se laptop or something of that nature to every student in the high school before the beginning of the school year would not be feasible or financially or physically so i think that's where we're at with that april asked if we purchased face shields for our children would they be allowed to wear them
124or does it have to be a mask we've already addressed that it should be allowed unless we get any other guidance from the professionals if parents are not comfortable sending their kids back to school in full or hybrid mode is there an option for virtual learning we've addressed that we do have a virtual academy through pendleco and we are it is ramped up to be very sufficient at the time is the cyber school synchronized with the in-school classes will cyber school include the electives chosen uh i would say cyber does not have electives for some sort is that correct dr steinov yeah what you know i'm going to continue to let eric answer this yeah we do okay yeah yeah we do um and actually um our intent if we're utilizing our staff if we
125have the ability to use our staff for virtual learning which we anticipate we will we'll be able to run most of our high school electives as we as we think right now a backup option would be to utilize apex they do offer electives uh very similar to what is offered at the high school in fact some of our students have already taken advantage of this resource when scheduling did not align and they wanted to take maybe an advanced placement course or a more targeted um course that just didn't fit in their already robust schedule that they already had at the high school we put them in apex for maybe one course at the high school so a lot of options there for and uh to be flexible for our students thank you um it also
126asks if they have to wait to go back to in person until the end of the market period that is not a requirement uh julie asked has anyone reached out to olc to utilize their facility to help elementary schools deal with coven and work from home with one computer how can i get an extra chromebook if needed um we did have not reached out to olc uh that would require if we were able to do it that would require closely you know doubling our staff for whatever classrooms we have over there it was an option when you know during construction for coburn but i don't see how we could put kids in that school and have adequate staff to uh to staff the building would you agree with that dr stano yeah i mean we
127would have to staff up a lunch operation potentially another school administrator or another school nurse so you know if we needed another location we certainly would go back and look at olc but we but we don't you know at this point in time we don't need another location um at this point in time correct thank you um also how do i get an extra chromebook uh you would contact the it department and they could help you out there beth davis says if cyber school and virtual the same curriculum or two separate learning programs um the cyber school is not the same as a blended virtual learning would be cyber school is is strictly a online learning platform where the virtual would be working at home back to class the next day teacher would be reviewing
128what you were doing yesterday on your own and then moving forward with the curriculum for the day so hopefully that uh that answers that question um ian i'm not quite sure what that says it's just i think maybe a kid was typing julie thank you for all your efforts um david gorenstein told you you were on mute dr steinhoff at 843. gene michaels what about the bathrooms whether it be able to be cleaned after each use that is that is in the plan i don't necessarily know that each ch after each child or student use the restroom we could go in and that's just not feasible but they will be adequately adequately cleaned and sanitized yeah i haven't seen any guidance that requires you to clean after every time the bathroom is utilized by a
129person i haven't found that guidance yet it's probably because uh the most effective thing you could do is wash your hands so you know they're washing their hands after their use but but there will be more opportunities in our cleaning protocol to go in and clean all those areas especially bathrooms um beth mcclury says we know fevers and symptoms are not guaranteed that someone is carrying the virus what's the protocol for that as we stated before we will have a protocol that is given to us that we need to follow gene michaels if a child tests positive in a classroom same thing we've answered that one already um subserviced asked if your child doesn't have a fever is it still 24 hour rule or they have to wait longer once again that'll all be portrayed
130in the in that plan um it could be longer we will leave that up to uh our guidance from chester county gene michaels also answers a number of cases would close the school is there a plan that indicates that it that isn't safe that guys would come from the health department if they saw a number of cases and they said it's time to close the school we would follow that guys as we did in march um christy shelley what's the a b approach with students need to be home schooled on the days that are not in the classroom and yes that the answer to that would be they would be on schoology as they were in the spring um they would have a certain amount of work that needs to be done um and then
131that would as as of now if i'm not mistaken dr sonoff that would be the the start of the next day going over that and answering any questions that the student may have yeah so you know that's the next phase once we decide if uh we're going to do a hybrid option if that's the board wants to do then the next piece is the decision that can implement it and some school districts are looking at uh one day a week where everybody is on virtual so that our staff spends that time and teaches everybody virtually and uses that time to develop the digital coursework that the kids will do when they're at home but certainly you know that every other day the teachers still teaching every day have half the kids in front of them
132so they would absolutely you know they definitely would have a challenge to be able to provide that at-home instruction every day so there would no question about it you know be some work the kids would have to do on their own and we understand the younger age that that requires you know a commitment by an older sibling or a parent to help them with that thank you um it's a cyber program run through schoology um that is not run through schoology schoology runs our virtual platform it is an apex program i think we addressed that earlier but it is not so renee cape any news about fifth grade parties end of the year celebrations or graduates or those going on the new schools um i do not believe so with the ever changing uh just
133as you know um governor wolf said today as of midnight tonight we can't have more than 25 people in a room that's one reason we are virtual right now um so that's where we will move with that uh will elementary school be getting a chromebook um they do they are not we will be ish our intention is to issue all of our middle school chromebooks this year uh that was one of our initiatives and we are on track for that but elementary will not how will hybrid a b model work well some students at home another school given the day i assume teachers won't be expected to pay attention their in-class students and home students need the same time what's according to we've already answered most of them about the quarantine policy of test positive
134um edward said ask devos i'm not sure what that means okay big low asked i wrote this question down beforehand what are we doing to get ahead of the cyber charters marketing campaigns how are we educating our district's families about the cost when it says free tuition 10 to 15 families with two to three kids each could cost the district 1.25 million uh personally and pleading with families in the township facebook groups to not believe the marketing campaigns and explore the pendleco school district cyber option i think we touched on that quite a bit earlier um we would uh we did talk in in extensively about this a cyber charter program could bankrupt a school district i don't mean that to scare anyone or anything but if we can offer the same type of learning
135at a much um cheaper cost for just as good of learning we would hope that our district residents would understand that that's something that uh we would hopefully they would take advantage of what we have to offer that not quite sure how we would market it we've put it out there um we would like to hope to think that um our residents would like to keep our budget in mind as well as uh their taxes um renee asked about the quarantine we've addressed that derbano is our virtual learning days going to be the same as it was in the spring is there a way to have a camera in the classrooms we did talk about uh possibly having a live feed classroom for the kids when they are on their off day that's something that
136we need a lot more discussion about a lot more um digging into by our i.t department how is it um you know how is it secure how is it possible definitely an option i pretty certain we're not going to be able to get that off the ground by the start of school but hey maybe maybe for the second trimester if this is still lurking around we can uh we can work on that um jeff asked what's the idea for recess in elementary schools will the class stay finished earlier if we forego them and launch it might be easier on the children to go home sooner um we did address that there may be a say you know about one o'clock the kids would be going home i can let dr steinhoff chime in there yeah
137uh right now we are trying to build even a hybrid option that certainly at the elementary level presumes that they'll be there for the day for consistency and purposes uh you know for parent planning and those type of things so at the moment you know on july 15th uh we're trying to build a schedule that does not require us to the elementary kids at least to go home early uh we have a couple principals who are looking at that uh sense that you know maybe they would have their expressive arts virtually at home maybe they would get home earlier having to deal with the mask but we're not there yet and part of that reason is because the kids are already only there every other day in a hybrid model anyway or less you know
138it may be that students are only at school as few as two days a week so you know you'd like that to be full days if it can be if it can be done we do want to get them outside uh we do want to get them out for recess that you know we're not taking that away uh but we also recognize in the wintertime you know recess might mean that you know the kids are in a large common area spread out and maybe watching you know an inappropriate kind of kids show or a disney type of event for that break where they could just sit down relax and just be a kid but there's challenges recess then all the principals are working with their colleagues and peers across the area to figure out how
139do you do that to make it fun for kids and you know imagine elementary recess where you can't go near one another that that's a whole different kind of elementary recess than anybody's anybody is you certainly won't be fifth grade guys you know fighting over a basketball you know that's not gonna happen um diane asked she's aware of the apex learning it seems as if you cannot attend the program until a certain grade she has a second grader in kindergarten has that changed and will her children be able to attend let me talk about that one yeah if you could just give her you know available for second grade in kindergarten apex is not apex always goes from grade 6 through 12 and edges here is k through 5. so we would utilize edges here
140for k actually k through 12 i'm sorry edges here goes beyond but we'll be using edges here if we need to but again i would say that if we're in that situation where teachers are available to teach virtually we're going to select them first because they'll have more that direct alignment with our curriculum as well as the student teacher interaction we know will be uh even better than what edge is here what happened thank you um haley street asks at the blended plan where the classrooms are split into two separate groups or both groups still taught by the same teacher we did uh address that saying that you know splitting the classes will give us the opportunity to have the teachers as well as the students social distance and keep their six foot area if
141we do not split we would only be able to do the three foot the dr steinhoff say northland middle school will have chromebooks genie yes we did say that and that is the case natalie asks will a nurse contact cchd before contacting parents if a child shows symptoms uh i believe if i'm not mistaken that all parents are contact they are the first line of contact is that correct doctor signal i have to look through the protocols but you know we we tend to try to do everything with parents as well as the health department you know um i'm not sure we're going not sure what the nature of that is i mean certainly we're we're going to tell parents if their kid is symptomatic we're going to let parents know that's for sure correct
142um so penny o'donald asked please define the remote learning method in a hybrid or remote learning well secondary schools be zoomed setting classes in lieu of just assignments on schoology that is all still part of the plan we are trying to work through that the best we can and take all possibilities into account um i don't know that we necessarily have a definitive answer for that how will interventions be addressed outside of special ed please know i understand that the core curriculum needs to be addressed first that was also from kate bigelow um did you want to address that uh eric sure yes um interventions will continue we're already talking about in the virtual in a virtual world that we have more small group instruction more differentiated instruction our reading specials will be accessible our
143el teachers will be accessible special education teachers will be be providing that live instruction as well so reading specialists el teachers all our intervention uh teachers will be having that live interaction um on a daily basis with our with our students so the interventions will be there and we're going to do some training around how to even do guided reading virtually and some of our teachers start to do it towards the end of the spring semester so that's another pd area that we're going to further develop for the fall thank you mr kamega you're welcome shannon boyd says you say the kids with a fever of 99.5 or 100.3 needs to be kept home if it exceeds the 10 days will truancy letters be sent out um so i think we've addressed that earlier with
144situation that would be um on a case-by-case basis i guess is that correct dr sano yeah you know i anticipate that department of education will probably work with some legislation i guess my guess is that there's going to have to be some flexibility to the attendance requirements for this coming school year without a doubt so now we're going to try to approach that with common sense but at the same time we're going to follow the guidance that comes out from the state on how we have to record keep uh with regards to those students we're going to be out so it's going to be let's hope it's not a common issue but it could potentially be a common issue we understand that so we may have to mark people as being absent but excused and
145again you know we're going to go into this year recognizing that we're here to support and help but at the same time you know we want to make sure that you know kids are accountable for the work nikki stanley i work in transportation held with us as bus drivers and bus aides what would it look like when we come back to the bus depot um yeah so it's possible uh that you know the bus orientation may have to be done in smaller groups because of the size and we typically have you know all 50 of our drivers come back for one meeting um so that that may have to be held uh separately there may have to be five orientations of ten that type of thing uh but our bus drivers are also gonna you
146know receive the same kind of consideration for ppe and for their protection as well particularly given the fact that you know they're going to be interacting with so many students on a daily basis thank you uh will students be able to wear face shields as we addressed that earlier yes um nadine's mommy i think it says hello to all thank you for the info tonight i'm wondering whether or not mass will be worn all day i'm in the elementary school library and need to see their fit their smiling faces smirks and their emotions also will be hard for them who are not seeing their faces um when they are able to social distance with a six foot parameter they will not be required to wear their mask in transition on the bus and less than
147six feet they will be required to be have a mask or shield correct yeah i mean i i would tell kids particularly younger kids that they're going to be expected to wear masks a lot you know a lot and they and i would say the parents of younger kids want to start to practice that having that mask going at home for 15 minutes when they're watching a tv program you know how to tell them to put the mask on so that they just get comfortable to having it on for longer periods of time and maybe try out different masks as well you know another piece to that issue in terms of the library and those kind of things a lot of transition will be eliminated so resources will be coming to kids rather than kids
148going to resources thank you um is there going to be a sample of the cyber learning prior to the start of it uh we'll have promotional materials you know it'll go out um and you know hopefully that'll answer the questions the parents have about that again mr gorniak's work and all that he's been managing that program now for about you know week and a half and uh he's working with lisa marini on promotional materials that'll try to answer as many questions as possible about the program thank you mike asked how before and after care will be handled since two schools are on location we're still working on that program that's going to be up to them to provide us with information that shows that they can provide that service at a social distancing level um
149stephen peterson is there if there's a suspected case i think we uh already addressed that kate wiggins if kids will be doing virtual learning will teachers be doing more live live lessons along with pre-recorded videos so the kids if it's blended they will be seeing their teacher every other day if they're on the virtual platform uh through the cyber um chart or through our cyber academy they would have the interaction as needed with their teacher correct dr steinel yeah and i think that question was about virtual only so if the whole district had to go back to virtual uh will there be asynchronous learning where there's material for students to to to get to them themselves maybe with at-home assistance or parent assistants or if they're going to be more synchronous learning where the teacher
150is actually leading it with zoom or other one-to-one type work digitally and you know that's feedback that every superintendent is hearing from parents you know across the country which is that they understand the need for virtual and they felt that for those students that didn't work well it didn't work because there wasn't enough direct instruction from teachers and that's probably speaking about so the goal is to try to provide virtual support that involves more direct instruction and more interaction with teachers rather than just posting something online and saying you know do the choice board and do the work and you know i'll check in with you from time to time you know we're very well aware of the feedback uh on that aspect of virtual learning thank you april asked if i heard if for
151the time frame for chromebooks would the middle schoolers get them before school starts i the plan was to get them rolled out with the start of school um and that would still be the plan if i'm not mistaken yeah you know the f probably referred to will they be here you know before the start of school so you know the the plans to purchase that was made a long time ago um the issue is that around the country just about every district is buying more devices right now so you know that's my pause is that you know we don't have them yet right but those six moves to go before the start of the school year soon as we get them we'll distribute them okay um if we go to the hybrid model what would
152the plan be for kindergarten two half days or two full days yeah great question uh we haven't determined that yet that'll be something for the next two weeks because there's a discussion about you know maybe it's one full day instead of two half days uh we really have to look a little closely into that we want to look as well at the uh number of students who are coming back for kindergarten some parents some kind of students in kindergarten particularly with late late birthdays are saying you know i might i might keep my kid out of kindergarten this year you know i might want to withdraw that uh that registration that will change certainly the whole experience you know if a class of 18 suddenly goes down to a class of 11 or 10. um
153how will bus drivers handle if a student's picked up without a mask will drivers have masks available to provide the students yes they will we will make sure there are adequate mass throughout the operation williams family asks what about recess with the elementary classes and jim um we're still working through how recess is going to work hopefully we can hold jim outside when weather permitting if not they will be held inside and social distance uh colleen smith if the school goes to a b schedule will siblings be put on the same schedule uh yes we addressed that earlier it would be a through say l monday wednesday friday this week tuesday thursday next week and then the other half of the alphabet the other two which we keep the the kids all on the same
154schedule js once a plan is approved could it be changed closer to the school year absolutely um it changed uh dr steinhoff over the past week probably three times a week ago all superintendents thought that we were getting back to school in person five days a week over the past week that's changed three times so it could change tomorrow it could change three times ten times over the next six weeks but uh we will try and do our best to keep everyone informed as to how we uh have to do it um ashley asked how many how many masks will they need to bring with them if they touch the mask will it be considered dirty uh i will they have to change them i would say if your child has a mask for school
155it would be sufficient um they're not gonna stay sparkling clean but as long as it's their mask and they hold on to it it's only their uh germs on it maybe a spare in the book bag that's still part of the playing that we have to figure out but if a child obviously masks became dirty we would have a replacement for them lisa mcgrath if a parent needs to be at work and a hybrid model is used can the children work with their parents in the evening that is something we're still working on lisa we totally understand that it's going to be a work in progress to figure that out um i would think as long as the effort is there and the work is getting done uh we would have to you know address
156that when we can i could jump in on that one too if you don't mind sure um one of the things if we did a live instruction we have capabilities of recording that as well live in that situation in that scenario um the the um the parent and student can access at a later time so that is something that we are looking at and exploring as well thank god thank you ed since most of the questions were already answered will kick could kids slide into cyber in the event they needed to quarantine to not fall behind um i would think we could move we could figure that out and get them the virtual platform you know instead of coming to school every other day they would get their stuff done online that's a pretty directed
157question i would i would hope that we could be able to make that work out frank abbott asked what will be done with the students who refuse to wear masks or wear them properly to ensure the safety of other children and staff i'm sorry mr armor read that one more time please what will be done with a student who refuses to wear a mask or wear them properly to ensure the safety of other students yeah so you know we're educators and our job is to educate kids on the clear need to keep themselves safe and to keep others safe so that's that's the environment that we're going to open we're going to open an environment that says we're school district that honors state and government orders right there's a there's an order for you to
158wear a mask under certain conditions and we're going to honor that because if that's what you do you know if it says you can't drive more than 65 miles per hour that's what you do you don't drive 165 miles per hour for your safety and for the safety of others so we'll take that approach in terms of you know when you come into our building there's an expectation that you behave a certain way in your house you don't want to wear a mask you don't have to wear a mask in your house because they're the rules in your house but the rules in the school mean we want people to take care of themselves most importantly take care of others as well um if we continue to have that kind of obstacles and battle over
159it you know administrators will talk with the with the parents and we'll explain the issue that this could become a very divisive matter uh perhaps they would be encouraged to do virtual as an option you know if this is something like nope i'm not going to do it don't care about everybody else i just i'm not doing it too bad you know that's where administrators have to have that discussion with them but i'm also not going to make a commitment that you know that flies in the face of the reality and the reality is that um currently you know we can't put mask wearing into a uh code of conduct for discipline because we have obviously all these different issues with medical needs and things like that so i'm hope i'm optimistic we're going to
160be able to avoid that and i'm optimistic that when kids come in and they see that my gosh 99 of the school's wearing mask i probably smart thing to do isn't it i think i need to do it too that's the approach i think we should take stephanie fitzgerald asks a question that we already addressed about keeping class lists the same so they would wouldn't have that problem emily asked or the district's liability liability and workers compensation policy is going to cover proven exposure either through staff or student would increase insurance rates will you be requiring liability waivers of parents for on-campus education i think that's more of a legality question yeah i don't know if um we would have exposure to liability you know in the same sense if somebody you know went to
161wawa and they they believed that they got covered at wawa i don't know why i would be liable you know because a person may have transmitted it so i'm not hearing about districts having liability issues and concerns over that um we you know we have we've got great counsel and great advisors for insurances and if we feel that the circumstances change then we have to get uh increased coverage for potentially workers compensation you know is an issue there that we're aware that we're following that that that could be the case not really too concerned about you know liability because of uh someone might pick up the transmission i'm more concerned about the health and safety issues that will thank you um if if a student sees a reading specialist or any other small groups pull
162out will this still be an option in school yes you know it could look differently uh you know we're working on putting in um you know what they're calling like desktops these guards that has to happen um you know but it could look differently and it may also be that we may have to take some of those specialists and repurpose them so uh it'll begin with you know the iep needs then the support needs than the regular education needs so a lot less driven by what you need to have i don't want to make a guarantee but our hope is to continue reading support if a student needs it all right how much in person teaching will be conducted in the cyber learning it depends it's going to depend on the amount of interest and
163the amount of teachers that we dedicate to cyber learning mr armor if you don't mind i mean i could try to read through some of these just quickly you know i don't want to take over for you no no i i i don't want to i was trying to um make sure that we tried to address everyone everyone's questions comments it is getting rather late let me take a look at a couple if you like then fire drill shelter in place uh school districts are aware of that superintendents have been having conversations with the department of health leaders on that regard so we understand there's issues with that safety will always come first so i think in a true emergency we have to evacuate a billion people are going to evacuate a building and they're
164not going to worry you know about the six feet distancing the safety issue will come first uh if someone's making transition is there an overview yes we'll have more information on uh the platform um why don't we utilize the new facility again you know we don't need charity we can utilize our own facility issue would be we would have to almost duplicate our staffing certainly for supports that you need another nurse you would need another uh cafeteria there's also a lot of supports that we pulled out of there it took us about six months to get that building ready to be able to utilize it for our standards so um at the moment we don't we don't need charity but we're always looking at it as a backup option um last month the comment was
165made we can skip let's skip that one okay um can you do penn delta cyber school uh while going to delaware county tech school yes we're looking at that because it's a half day program uh we'll have to again you know we'll see if that matches up um we would hope so by going into kindergarten with asthma uh is there an opportunity to take a mask off gonna depend on the amount of kids in class we also know we're trying to build in mass breaks you know we get we get this that this is gonna be a challenge for kids so it'll be a kid-friendly opportunity to the best extent that we can uh yes we'll have recess um are you gonna be able to socialize yes with the limitations that we're talking about so
166for whatever that is i guess they're gonna have to yell and scream a little further because they're not going to be on top of one another we'll offer a cyber program at all grade levels um people want to thank everybody for the work they're doing yes you know our teachers have been giving us great ideas our administrators have been working 16 hour days every district you know every district is trying to figure this out and particularly small districts like ours where you know we can't go out and you know hire a consultant to put together the plan for us and a glitzy package and all this and spend millions on that got to do it ourselves and we gotta do right by my families but thank you for that acknowledgement um yes if you get
167registered you'll be added to the distribution list um if that hasn't happened it should be happening soon we try to put everything that we send out also on the web page uh transitions in the upper grades uh we're working through that with mr lucius and mr sassy less kids means more room in the hallway uh we're also looking at opportunities for kids to stay in place and not have to move as often so that's still being worked out um transportation department coordinate with private schools that transportation department you know does talk to them um all the time you know particularly the ones where we have to drive students out of state um you know as they tell us what their plan is some of the delaware schools for instance you know we'll respond as we
168can thank you to the board uh tough season that's right you know it'll get better we're here to help um canvas uh used for college classes we canvas is very popular in college there's some local districts that use canvas readily uses canvas um it comes down to how well people utilize the program and we're aware of canvas we're not ready to jump from schoology because we just got used to schoology but i am aware canvas you know thanks for the ability to tell us about that we will keep that in mind you know um i like vertical virtual learning rather apex learning i can understand that because teachers were providing you know probably more guidance uh how will band work uh you know the band and course is looking less and less likely in the
169traditional sense uh there's some guidance that the national federation of marching bands put out we're looking at that but certainly there's going to be significant significant uh limitations to the ability to do band of course in any way that was done in the past you know we're not going to try to lead kids on and suggest something that they can't but there's also online learnings you know smart music program and you know our kids did do some instrumental work at home uh last spring and we hope that that would be able to continue uh you know again issues on attendance and how all that works out a lot of that to be determined will follow state guidelines whether excuse or not is there a cap on a number of students of cyber learning um you
170know there's not going to be a cap but you know we cyber isn't for everybody and i think it's important remember that you know we think there's value in kids coming to school we think there's value in being there with our teachers and if we can do that safely you know we would prefer that versus a cyber option but if families feel differently we're going to try to meet their needs social distancing while kids are constantly hugging it's going to be a lot of education a lot of posters uh district's only working on some informational videos that are child friendly you know it's going to have to be a lot of reminders but as parents know you know you go out to a store and your daughter sees a friend that she hasn't seen since
171last march first thing they do is run up and give each other a hug right so um it's just a lot of education that we're gonna have to try to do and our teachers do it really really well um if there's band occurring and you have cyber learning can you do band yes uh credit recovery is through cyber that is an option that we have uh as you see here at kindergarten i have we didn't offer educare in kindergarten yeah we uh they do they do thank you um and i'm having uh mr gorniak he'll be researching the content it's hard to find their content online but uh he'll be researching that and uh but they do say uh promote that they are a k-12 platform gotcha wasn't aware of that see i'm learning something
172every day uh cyber learning uh for specific times to have zoom meetings uh with classmates so that there isn't as much of an isolation feeling definitely a big issue we heard a lot of feedback on that the parents loved it when the teachers hosted zoom meetings for the classes the more of that that can happen the better so that did come through in the parent feedback that we're sharing have you considered holding a class to see how students wear with masks you know we haven't yet um that would mean that we got to bring everybody together um you know we'll see how that looks um we'll see you know start a year looks if we have to make a quick adjustment after day one that's fine um dr stanoff's statement doesn't make sense if we
173go with a b model and we find out in the afternoon the teacher has a virus they might have only given it to half the student that's patently not true if a teacher tests positive they have a virus for at least three days and they could spread it to all students yeah i mean we we have no way of knowing uh when a teacher may have gotten the virus but what my indication is that we at least have the ability in a hybrid model to inform that group of students that they shouldn't come back to a teacher that has told us they have the virus and we'll be able to at least uh be able to address half of students that aren't there with that person that day um when people get it how long
174they've had it that that's the challenge of the virus there's no question that's the great mystery here you can be asymptomatic and you could be a carrier and that's i think what's creating the problem while we can't solve this nationally right uh parents who have children and a little more advanced to volunteer for cyber program um to make room for children that do better in the classroom um i would you know i wouldn't want to put people in that predicament of having to make that choice because of other kids you know i'd like rather hopefully they'll you know they'll make the decision based on what they think is right for their kid um have we investigated a hybrid model featuring a weekly stagger versus daily we haven't looked at a week we understand whether that
175may be better in terms of convenience you know for families and also the possibility if somebody has the virus then you have five days out but we're trying to weigh that against the educational experience for kids of not being in a classroom for five days and then you know you have a kid who might be a reluctant learner and now every five days you got to go through that battle you got to go to school you got to go to school it's kind of like coming home from vacation nobody wants to go back to work the first day so we're trying to balance that issue you know of how much should you be going how regular should you go to the feel of school remains fresh but if the board tells us pursue that hybrid
176model we'll start to look at all the different options including how many days that is and whether it is every other day it could be monday thursday tuesday friday kind of option it could be all those things we talked about what happens if someone doesn't wear a mask um how do we support teachers and staff to enforce safely guidelines i witness penndot go out of compliance i don't want to call them out but i'm worried um yeah you know i hope people aren't out of compliance and i hope you know certainly employees who don't follow our directives you know would could face uh you know potentially disciplinary action because of that so i know they'll follow the rules uh but i think it's still kind of a gray area some habits are happening you know
177i i will walk down the hallway sometimes a central office and forget put my mask on and i got to run back to my office and put it back on you know so i we're just going to continue to work with people and enforce the expectations that we have in mind cdc doesn't recommend face shields um you know the recommendations are all over uh we think it helps we'll look at that i hadn't heard that before you know they probably say that masks are better than shields i understand that we have to balance that between the need of a teacher to be able to be seen when they're talking thank you for being transparent yet we're trying uh air filters will follow the hvac guidelines the cdc puts out in some buildings we're doing special
178work on terms of summertime cleaning of our air ducts and our filters um has there been an update for new york field trip for sophomores getting a refund yep um there has not an official update but that september 12th trip for sophomores certainly does not look good and the issue with air was that the organization would not issue a refund without the issue of credit i believe mr sasse is trying to at least get the credit if we can postpone it on for a later date so thank you for the patience on that to be determined um where can we find out more about penndot go online that'll be uh available i think in about two weeks uh keep looking online we'll push that out when we have more promotional materials available that'll really help
179people answer people's questions uh will it be like the spring when children can complete an assignment by a certain day uh could be a little bit of both i think if it's an a b approach the expectation would be you come back ready to work after a day off it won't be like you get a week to complete the work my my belief would be the teachers would expect it you do that work at home during the day that you're home in between do elementary students get a chromebook from the school if they're doing cyber you know we have to look at the inventory again and how many do we have on hand at the moment i can't promise something that we don't have to give you uh but if it's penn delco cyber ultimately
180down the line yes giving you a device would be part of that enrollment outside of the pandemic circumstances um there's a discussion about elementary band yet we are having that discussion what that might look like uh there won't be winter concerts you know is there an alternative it's possible it won't happen in school it's possibly more like an extracurricular activity for a child to play an instrument and practice an instrument at home um we'll skip this one george what's being done to determine the educational level students after the last set of online learning yeah you know there's some concern by parents that you know there's been regression what i'll tell you is that you know if there's regression it's likely in some specific academic skills but students actually learned a whole different set of skills
181through this process right first who would have ever thought we could have first graders learning how to collaborate via zoom and that's what we did you know we have sixth graders who now know how to cooperate and collaborate digitally and not speak over one another and not have to use the mute button we have people who are learning how to do work on their own and digitize that work and send that into the teacher so you know i'm certainly aware that they missed time and it wasn't as ideal but i also want to recognize that in terms of getting kids ready for life some of our kids learn some skills in this process much sooner than they than they would have pssas that's a decision that the state will have to make it's problem they're
182probably waiting on guidance from betsy devos if the federal governments expect the state to do the test the state will probably have to give the test i hope that they realize this will be a terrible year to get the pssas we didn't have them this year and what happened nothing right the kids are fine you know we didn't have state tests and and you know the world didn't blow up and we've said it all along these tests were absolutely unnecessary and uh yeah we'll see but at the moment pssas are scheduled for next year skip uh when can we see the protocol for covert positive students uh the answers are vague that'll be available online and that will not be made up by us that'll be the protocol that we are given from the health
183department can the bus drivers turn away students when they're not wearing a mask on board we don't think we want kids left alone at a bus stop so we were going to have backup masks for them the drivers will have a supply of mass if a kid forgets their mask issue about missing a transfer bus i'm not sure we have to work that one out cyber learning information that's coming sharing transportation with private schools we we always look to try to do that when we can oftentimes it doesn't add up so we you know there have been times the past where we have shared transportation with chichester if we're going in the same direction very often we find out that the matchup just it doesn't coordinate as well as you think that it would um
184will the insurance payment amount be for the chromebooks you know right now we're you know you have chromebooks for students in the same way you will be giving a book chromebooks are the new books getting very close to the end here uh how will virtual learning work if not all students have a chromebook would be same just like we just did last spring you know there's a lot of computer devices at home some people use the phone some people use the apple laptops that their families have some people use a desktop so we try to provide devices for people that have absolutely no device whatsoever in their home but we found that most families do have some device have we considered an am pm split instead of a b upper derby's doing that we did
185feedback from some parents is that if they're getting their child out of bed and to school they'd rather not have to turn right around and go back and get them two and a half hours later you know that they would rather you know have them there long enough to actually learn something um yeah the am pm split also cuts it in half again another hybrid day so it does make classes smaller there's some value in that upper darby model obviously they looked at that you know and their community recommended that or their board chose that model the initial feedback we're getting is that every other day would work as long as parents know what the schedule is and that's what we'll keep in mind will there be barriers placed around the child's desk right now
186we're not providing bearish behind around every single child's desk and we've seen some pictures out of some other countries that have opened up that have had that um you know we want to also be sensitive the fact that you know a kid coming in and being stuck behind a barrel for six and a half hours every day is a difficult experience so we think we can keep them safe you know without the plastic dividers at every single desk that's where we are right now that guidance could change how will technology perform in the elementary setting we're still talking about that students might not be going to the computer lab the teacher who might be coming to them uh will i please be redone yes there is a process to work individually with every student to
187update ieps after this long gap and special ed director will reach out with people on that issue how will middle and high school teachers handle staying in with one classroom we haven't made the decision that they will have to stay in one classroom the teachers themselves typically do stay in the same classroom in terms of teachers you know going to kids rather than staying in the classroom still working that piece out uh can you put a list of our questions and answers on the website yes we are building a frequently asked questions section to the website uh support your million percent if you need ptl help uh don't hesitate to ask thank you for that couple thank yous um uh no this evening i'm keeping my comments focused on reopening which is my role a
188frequently asked question on a website that can be updated yep we will have that again some of that we didn't have answers to until we briefed the board tonight on where we are this is the first time the board has gotten together in july what about the school field trip uh money we paid to that um refer to the school board um refer to your principal uh any cases that we had where we could refund money we would refund in some cases the agencies would not refund the money to us so i would refer you back to mr lucius for middle school issues um other plans implement more black culture learning um also how can we go about adding asl learning into k-12 um in terms of you know general review of our cultural curriculum
189that's happening you know nationally districts are all coming to terms with that as people have come out and said you know i've received a number of emails from from students a lot of them were look like they copied the same email but it looked like there was an issue that they wanted us to think about they said dr stonoff you know would you have the teachers take a look at the curriculum to make sure that it's culturally balanced and i think all school districts are doing that and that's something that our diversity equity and inclusion committee would do you know they would be asked you know take a look at our curriculum you know are we missing some critical aspect of teaching some critical concept that doesn't get taught maybe because of our perspective and
190the bias that we have so um yes that hasn't been forgotten if they bought a chromebook would that be the one they use this year uh to be determined we might not be collecting back those chromebooks that we gave out about 350 of them certainly if we do we'll have to disinfect them and it may be easier to just keep them with those families so we'll be looking at that can cyber deliver a personal one-on-one experience for most children it depends on the model it depends on the resources that we have that is the goal um there's you know again some chat comments you know about topics and the board meetings in previous board meetings i can't address those uh why was your comment skipped earlier it violates the school board's bylaws i'll let them
191come back to that one can you do half days for elementary students at home learning is not independent and parent requires parents to work with them okay so can you do half days for elementary students so yeah again um half days for elementary is not currently something that we're proposing to the school board but as we get more information the next two weeks if that makes sense and that's the right thing for kids that could be part of our proposal uh and that's all the comments that i would be able to address thank you mr armor we we do have a few people that i see have been hanging on with their hand raised is that something there's only a few of them sure i'll just i'll control it so i'll take it i'll jump
192in for you mr sadly chris carros i am um allowing you to talk go ahead chris chris we can hear you go ahead you have to unmute uh your button and go right ahead um dutch sonoff if we don't get it maybe uh they we answered their question something of that nature um so let me just say next i have natalie deljono yes natalie yeah click any mute audio and it's just not happening so it might mean that they're not on the call maybe they can chat in if they want uh sherry sharp talking permitted sharon hi can you hear me yes okay um i'm sherry sharp live here in aston i'm a pandelco resident voter and taxpayer but i wanted to speak this evening in my capacity as a 27-year veteran teacher in the
193district i wanted to express how deeply i feel about our kids my pandelco children and the pandelco staff are my extended family i know that children need to go back to school to socialize and to build community it's true but if we're honest the input in person experience we're going to offer this fall may not look like that nurturing hands-on joyful experience of school that we all remember i imagine a scared kindergartner approaching approaching their teacher and her mask advisor and she can't reach out to comfort the crying child i imagine a sixth grader seeing her best friend for the first time in six months being reminded watch your distancing instead of hugging i imagine a high school student eating their box lunch and science in silence in a safe but socially distanced classroom instead
194of recounting their weekend at the table with all the guys i imagine teachers who can no longer teach in groups with circle time no playground games no finger paints no songs teachers trying to keep kids on task while every part of what they love about school is stripped down i wonder if this will inspire that lifelong love of learning that we want for them does this meet their emotional needs for safety and if isolation is dangerous for children so is this bleak version of school beyond that we can't forget that there's a greater hierarchical need there's a physiological one we do have a deadly virus whose nature we don't completely understand children may fare better but they may transmit it unknowingly to relatives and friends some children may not fare well at all some might
195get sick some may die there's nothing more horrific to a teacher than to bury a child nothing this spring so many of you expressed gratitude for the things that we do for children and we all appreciated that this fall for teachers though the very act of doing our jobs is going to go from challenging and rewarding to potentially deadly we do still have a choice this spring we hurriedly launched an online learning program it wasn't ideal but given the state situation we think it was a pretty good start i'm proposing that while there's still time that we build on that start and we create a rigorous and robust online program for our students this fall it's the only way we can assure our collective safety and the fastest course back to the rich school experiences
196that we all know and love any in-person school comes with far more risk than i think we should be taking with these young lives left in our charge and for those of us who have devoted our lives to their care thank you for listening thank you next up um i have mr dave bear go ahead mr bear was just furious if you guys thought about asking parents that i have children that um little faster learners a little more advanced if they were in the case that you have to maybe move to the hybrid that would want to volunteer uh children you know because they might learn a little quicker or whatever yeah children need to be yeah i think we you know we don't uh want to get into a place where uh you know
197parents might feel you if my kid is a bright learner uh that you know maybe one option is out for them uh so that other kids could be in you know we we really want to try to keep it flexible for everybody whatever the board directs us to do and whatever plan they approve we want to make sure that regardless of your skill level that you have the same opportunity that everybody else has and that might mean hybrid that might mean penndot go cyber if we regress it as a region it could be virtual for all all right and last but not least we have natalie i think we tried to let her uh speak earlier it looks like she has re-raised her hand so it might be there now yeah natalie uh if you
198are on and you want to speak you are on unmute so you can go ahead okay i guess not all right so that concludes the uh section of our tonight for public comments i do um thank everyone who has attended hung in there through the end with us to try and get uh some answers hopefully we've given some light to our reopening plan and what the future holds and how how we'll be addressing it here in the next couple weeks um unfortunately we're trying to navigate something that nobody has the exact answer what may work for for some families for some students for some learning platform may not work for the other um and we're trying to navigate what's best for everyone the best that we can moving forward from that i would like to
199thank our task force that has spent endless hours trying to fix it trying to find a plan trying to find something that that works for everyone we most definitely will be we'll be uh talking daily weekly as much as we can we do have uh another board meeting scheduled that which we'll talk about here as soon as i do for future meetings but do i have any comments by members of the board all right so he has none um future meetings our next meeting is july 29th uh will be our board meeting depending upon our possibilities of having it in person i would assume that that will probably be virtual again given today's governor's restrictions if it is not going to be virtual and it will be at northly we will put out that information
200on our district website further than that wednesday august 19th will be the study session from the service center hopefully at 7 30 and then the uh voting meeting will be august 26th also at the service center if possible motion for journal motion thank you everyone thanks guys thank you everybody you