February 16 2021 ETSD School Board Voting Meeting

001welcome to the february 16 2021 voting meeting of the exeter township board of school directors if everybody could please rise for the pledge of allegiance and pledge allegiance with liberty and justice for all mr fight if we could do a vocal wilson president hunter aaron's present john fiddler dr ann herring president dr david hemberger here michael japina physically present dr sharon mcclendon here hurry miller president michelle stratton here all present thank you we're going to start with our superintendent's report dr miner thank you mrs wilson as you know the cdc just came out with new guidance for reopening schools and that guidance has triggered the school district to have a pandemic task force meeting you may recall that we assembled a pandemic task force over the summer um as a per pde um and doh

002guidelines and that org that group that the task force has continued to meet throughout the school year so we're going to review the new guidance from the cdc compare it against our existing plans as well as look at the new um data that we're getting daily from the county which has shown a decreasing viral load in our community and prepare a recommendation to the school board to be shared at the march 2nd school board meeting in terms of how we should best proceed with our instructional models for the remainder of the school year so i know that there's been a lot of interest in our community since that cdc report has come out i do want to say very clearly regardless of what the instructional model recommendation is we have been clear i hope we've

003been clear that we will continue to offer a virtual option to to students throughout the entirety of the 2020 2021 school year so i know there's been some concern um if there would be an increase in in-person time with would virtual option um you know cease to be in existence and we have as a district made a commitment to maintaining a virtual option regardless of whether or not we increase instructional time so again that will be uh reported to the board at the education committee meeting as part of the committee of the whole on march the 2nd and between now and then the pandemic task force will meet to make a recommendation as far as planning going forward thank you okay um we now have time for a public comment and i do not believe

004that any members of the public are present or oh we do have somebody are you interested in making public comment tonight no okay um and i don't believe that we have anybody virtually either is that correct okay all right then we will move on to our board minutes if there is no objection we will adopt a motion to approve meeting minutes from last month's school board meetings january 5th and january 19th 2021 hearing no objections these minutes are approved moving on to the treasurer's report and payment requests if there is no objection we will adopt a motion to approve the january 2020 treasurer's report and payment requests dated january 20th 2021 through february 16th 2021. um mrs wilson um i didn't want to make a comment on this although i think technically i'm supposed to

005say reserving the right to object but i'm not going to so um one thing i just wanted to point out to the community and to the board as well was in the treasures report if you look at the total funded ratio on a percentage basis 100 percent uh the general fund currently reads that we have over a hundred percent revenues received for the year and over i believe um we're significantly over budget as well on expenditures if i remember correctly part of that is due to the way that our accounting system is set up to include our bond refunding so we just want to be attentive to that that is going to be included in the general fund calculation and that kind of distorts the picture right now so you just want to look outside

006of that total funded ratio for the year so i just wanted to make mention of that okay hearing no objections we will approve the treasurer's report and payment requests moving forward education committee dr mclendon dr mcclendon you're muted thank you i always forget to do that okay so the education committee met on um february 2nd before the board workshop and we have uh five items for voting i'm going to uh read the motion on and leave number two out so it's recommended that the board of school directors approves the following education committee items item one three four and five and we'll do two separately second okay there's a motion and a second any discussion motion carries okay so it's recommended the board of school directors approves the following education committee items number two and this

007is a change from the uh way that it was written on the agenda at our workshop meeting two weeks ago and so i'll read what that is so community service requirement for the class of 2021 in response to a reduction in access to traditional community service opportunities the high school administration proposes following changes to the community service graduation requirement for the class of 2021. the time required will be adjusted to 15 hours administrators may override on an individual basis the requirement that the community service is completed for a registered 501c non-profit organization and students who met the standard 30-hour requirement will be recognized with a community service designation in the graduation program so the lat two weeks ago we were going to not we were going to waive the um the total hours so this

008is a kind of a compromise between that okay so there's a motion is there a second okay any discussion i have a question oh go ahead dude i just wanted to note that i mean it's technically a 501c3 so just so we're aware i've got a question for the administration how long has this been a requirement for our seniors dr winters i don't know the answer to how long the graduation requirement's been in place in the district do you i know sorry i know it's been in place at least during the three years that i've been here i believe longer mr campbell is on the call via zoom i i'd like to ask perhaps he might know the exact time frame i'm not certain i think he's been here less than your time than you

009but yeah i don't know the exact duration of that requirement could mr flame i'm just curious long time yeah i'm not sure but it's been quite a while i i don't know the exact number of years the adoption of the policy is listed in the policy as well and i'm trying to look that up but i'm sure that that isn't the answer to john's question well that that's okay uh that was really just a lead in i've been following this um issue nationally and there seem to be the debate seems to center on two points one is that it's a good idea to have it as a requirement because it might introduce students to do good if they otherwise wouldn't have have had the opportunity the other is that by making it a requirement you

010take out the whole notion of volunteerism i just wonder if that's ever been discussed here well i think that principle applies in the same way to us forcing students to take history if they really don't want to you know if they take a fourth year of history and they really don't want to are they really learning for the sake of learning and that's really what we want to encourage well it's a little different i mean you wouldn't volunteer to take history if you don't want to take history but my point is later in life a student or a student might not be ready to do volunteer work as a senior but later in life might end up doing literacy volunteer work cooking at the soup kitchen on and on and on so i just wondered

011if that had ever come up when it was first introduced if this board had ever engaged in that debate mr fiddler i you know obviously none of us here seem to know when it was first introduced but since uh it's part of policy you know that this is a great you know a graduation requirement should the board wish to examine it as part of policy review at some later date for uh future requirements we can certainly do so i think the purpose of this item is is directly to serve the class of 2021 and you know if there's a desire on the part of the board to have a more expanded discussion um in terms of the merits generally we could certainly do that either through the policy committee or through the education committee at

012some committee of the whole meeting in the future well i think that'd be a good idea because i'd like to hear from the students what do they think um if i can say i made a couple of phone calls the other day and i talked to the berks animal rescue league and they said they do have options for those students that cannot be in person such as doing an animal food drive um which you can do amongst your family even if you're donating five bags is still something they can make cat toys and donate them i also spoke to helping harvest food bank and they are allowing students to do time there and they're very cautious about about making sure there's the health is the priority also hunter had mentioned the churches so that there

013are options out there um i i do prefer what has been brought to the board and i do appreciate that it has been rethought and i like the idea of giving students the option to even go to their next-door neighbor who's going to need their your the driveway uh shoveled thursday um those kinds of things definitely should be considered so that's it actually i just want to echo what ian said yes thank you for researching that a little bit and i agree as well i think that um even in general when we look at our families and our students a lot of them are volunteering their time and they're sacrificing you know some of our high school kids are staying at home to babysit younger brothers and sisters who are getting off and on the

014buses at different times so you know that is a you know right now in a pandemic that's important to a family so families can work so i also think that is you know important service um so i'm glad that we have other options but i'm glad we're also still keeping it as a requirement uh so we have a motion oh anybody i'm sorry mrs wilson i had a question for mr campbell um i this is i mean one of the things that was a concern of ours and i think one of the reasons why this was being reconsidered at least for this this school year was that we were um a little concerned about graduation for a large portion of our person of our students and i just asked him i just want to ask

015mr campbell do you do you have any sense that um that we that with this new revision of the policy that students might be uh not be able to graduate based on on the community service standard and if so how many might that be i think that exact number is difficult to predict i think part of the concern had to do with scalability and although there are um opportunities out there the the scale and frequency of those are a little more difficult i think we build in some of the flexibility that will make that more manageable for kids we had already begun working on some options for them at school but there too some of that is still in access so although those are all answers they're not really getting to your exact question so

016it's hard to say but i think we're getting closer and we we certainly are going to be pushing the information and um out to optic students so that we can really start to assess that as soon as we can and help those individuals who are having those troubles as soon as we can i think in a lot of cases students and families will be able to support themselves but we want to really identify those who are going to need more direct intervention from us as soon as we can well i'm assuming you're going to be tracking you know this information as the school year progresses would you be able to get back to the board at some point and kind of give us an update in terms of where things stand and maybe the status

017of the number of students who might not uh be quite ready you know for graduation i'd be happy to okay okay i know i'm gonna mention that dr hamburger and i really i hope we don't have i hope we have zero students that don't graduate because of that and that was one of the concerns that was brought up when we talked about this a couple weeks ago we aren't still in the middle pandemic and uh there's you know some places but it is difficult for students to get to volunteer and they have to be able to feel safe wherever they go so i hope that whatever number you come back with next month mr campbell i hope that we have zero students who do not graduate because of of not getting enough hours you know

018we want our students graduating on their academics and i'm not saying you know volunteering is definitely important but you know in this pandemic we just i think we can't let any students not graduate so i hope we're doing everything we can to doesn't happen um i just want to say oh mr supina mentioned a correction about i think on the uh non-profit so does that have to be corrected then in the motion because it does say 501c about this i think that's just a reference to the policy itself so i i don't think it neces i think it's more of a typographical error than an error of substance so let's just talk about the non-profit organization right so basically the the intent of the bullet is simply that the the administration can uh approve hours

019that aren't 4 501 c 3 as is required in you know in policy so we can just make a note and correct that in the in the minutes okay okay so there is a motion on the table um to change the community service requirement for the class of 2021. all in favor of this motion are there any opposed any abstentions okay motion carries nine zero do you have anything else dr mcclendon you're on mute okay that the uh enrollment for february uh for january is also attached okay thank you all right moving forward personnel committee uh mr depina thank you it's recommended the board of school directors approves the following personnel items resignations of support staff retirements of certificated staff and support staff appointments support staff extracurricular staff and change of status support staff and

020leaves of absence as well as the attached list of course requests and the collective bargaining agreement between the exeter township school district and the exeter township education support professionals for the period of july 1st 2020 to june 30th 2025. is there a second any discussion i'd just like to say thank you to our staff that are retiring you've had a last year to remember so thank you for your commitment to the exeter school district i'd also like to point out that six of our spring coaches have over 20 years of coaching our students justin freese and varsity baseball carl solarik in varsity baseball brian sanritter junior varsity baseball kevin schaefer senior high track ellen uh elaine elliston and senior high track and sean gantner volleyball so i just wanted to sort of acknowledge that's a

021long time to be coaching and appreciate their support of our kids in our athletics program um i like to echo the same thing mr g pina the those four people that are retiring are really good positive people i think one of them this highlight on here is uh mr deibert he actually taught both of my kids german and he did a very good job and they really liked him when i told him that he was retiring i got that notice they were both kind of saddened by it so he was a good he's a very good teacher he spoke german through the whole class from beginning to end so that's what the kids liked about it and i think he was he's a very good teacher and he can be highly missed uh i want

022to echo what curie said uh especially about hair dye bert um i i had the fortune of uh good fortune of being able to see him a couple of times he's a brecknock township resident while i was working there i got to see him come in every once in a while and we'd talk and he would tell me about all the places to visit in switzerland and in germany um and it's uh it's gonna be different not having um him around i think and uh you know hopefully we can have a big party at the leader crons for him um whether he wants to come out to that or not i'm not sure but uh i would hope uh that we could and um you know i just want to wish him all the best

023and i wish i would have said that all in german but alas uh college wasn't as good as he was so yeah i would also i'd also like to reiterate some of those accolades for those folks who are retiring and i know we always have i believe it's in the spring the board gets together with the administration and the retire and the retiring employees uh for uh you know a little um a dinner and a and a way to commend them and i'm i'm hoping maybe in some ways we'll be able to do that this year i'm not sure if we are or not um one thing i was just thinking about though as i looked at the agenda i wonder in the future whether we might be able to kind of add the years

024of service for the retirees uh years of service in the school district i think that would be that would help us understand um the commitment that these folks have made uh the years that they put into their work here at exeter okay thank you and then i can't i can't i would be remiss not to not mention mrs jersey pack who two out of my three children had and loved so um wishing her well on her retirement as well okay so we do have a motion on the table for all those personnel um items all in favor say hi any opposed any abstentions motion carries nine to zero okay um moving forward to finance facilities and audit committee mr ahrens it is recommended the board of school directors approves the following finance facilities and audit

025items uh number two number three number four number five number six on number seven is there a second there's any discussion and uh we're coming back to one okay and hearing no discussion um all in favor say aye aye any any opposed any abstentions motion carries 9-0 it is recommended that the board of school directors approves the following finance facilities and audit items number one the 2021-2022 berks county intermediate unit mandated services budget with exeter districts portion being forty six thousand eight hundred thirty seven dollars and sixty nine cents mr fight could we please have a roll call vote yes on our errands aye michael japina hi hurry miller aye dr david hemberg aye john fiddler hi dr ann herring hi allison wilson aye dr sharon mcclendon aye michelle stratton aye all nine yes motion

026carries 9-0 i just wanted to give everybody an update quickly um i was able to sit down with brian yesterday and we got to talk a little bit about the budget and i just wanted to share um some of my uh some of my takeaways from that which was just encouraging um it appears that our revenues are exceeding what we had budgeted to a significant degree um and maybe even coming close to where we were last year if not exceeding that in some areas so i i'm i was very pleased to see that so it appears uh that that coupled with our expenses and the support that we are getting from the federal government and the state government that we're probably going to have a much smaller deficit than we anticipated so i just thought

027that that was great news that i wanted to share with everybody and there will be more to come on that so thank you thank you mr ahrens moving on to policy committee dr hamburger thanks mrs wilson um it's recommended that the board of school directors approves the following policies for first reading and second reading as outlined in the agenda is there a second second there's a motion any discussion so i'll just ask uh dr miner as it relates to the lesson plans is that something that we review with our teachers or our building staff just to you know i mean most people don't read policies so i'm just curious like when we're we're reviewing this if we push it out um that's a great question mr depina and i think you're right a lot of

028people don't read policy um however dr winters and i had discussed this one in particular because this is one of the few policies that directly has to do with work products so i don't know if dr winters wants to say a few words about the history of discussing lesson plans uh here again i i haven't been here really long enough to know what policies have been shared with teachers and in what format you know that directly impacted them in the past i know that with regard to lesson plans there is an expectation that all principals have that teachers are doing them and making them accessible if needed in terms of a very formal process that is followed in terms of reviewing the policy to the letter i don't believe that that that has not happened

029directly out of my office in my time that i've been here um lesson plans is is kind of tricky because you you know we all trust our teachers that that's just one of the professional responsibilities that teachers do they develop quality lesson plans this revision of the policy basically enables um the the opportunity for teachers to be submitting them electronically and or in paper depending on what version folks use since we're using schoology with such dedication most of our teachers have things up on schoology and housed there and i think it's really one of those cases where if a principal has concerns as to whether or not you know a teacher is doing lesson plans or they feel the need to check them with any kind of regularity then individual principals are going to make

030that determination based on their walkthroughs and observations and and if needed have an individual you know conversation with that particular teacher but by and large the expectation is that they're doing them and principals have their own internal checks and balances at the building to manage that okay there is a motion on the table and a second all in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstention motion carries 9-0 moving forward to the athletics and extracurricular activities committee dr herring thank you it is recommended that the board of school directors approve the following athletics and extracurricular activities item the maintenance program for district athletic fields attached is the maintenance pdf and a view of the field any discussion okay there's a motion on the table all in favor say aye aye aye any any opposed no

031any abstentions okay motion carries eight one okay i have a few items i'd like to share um in this committee i'd like to highlight a few things that go on in our school there's so many things that go on that are tremendous i can only pick a few that i can do every time so what i have here is i'd like to say exit i would like to congratulate so sophia stankowitz i'm being selected as a soprano in the all eastern chorus after a rigorous audition process sophie is an aspiring performer who will be majoring in vocal performance with her top choices being baldwin wallace and shenandoah for opera performance during her student career exodus sophia has pleased in burke's junior county forest burke senior county course pmea district 10 chorus pmea regional chorus pmea

032states and now in her senior year she's been accepted to all eastern chorus exeter swimming had an impressive performance at the central penn league championship meet this weekend almost every swimmer had lifetime best swims four school records were broken 200 individual medley by megan unruh with a time of two hours eight minutes and 34 seconds 100 breaststroke by megan unruh with a time of 1 hour 5 minutes and 38 seconds 200 freestyle relay hannah herman lauren ramsey taylor stitch and megan unruh with a time of one hour 38 and 50 seconds 200 medley relay anderson anderson chemi william fanning james creamer and jack saheda with a time of 1 hour 41 minutes and 50 seconds the boys and girls bowling teams are in the bci double a playoffs on saturday february 20th and the wrestling

033team is in the district 3 sectional tournament on saturday february 20th as well this past saturday 29 members of exeter's technology student association club competed in their regional competition which was held virtually and once again our students made exeter very proud there should be some pictures coming up on our zoom by joe in team events exeter placed first in the webmaster event and took second in both the engineering design and scientific realization visualization events exeter's bio technology design digital video production music production and video game design teams all placed third in their respective events in total nine teams from expert qualified for the state level competition etcetera also had a number of individual standouts at this year's regional competition senior michael hummel took second place for transportation modeling in addition members sophia jones hansika kunduro

034and jada smith each qualified for the state level competition in their individual events lastly i'd like to share that march 8th through april 4th if you visit the exeter community library you'll be able to enjoy a collection of window art created by our expert school district students called window into art and that's it thank you thank you very much dr herring moving forward to our committee reports equity and excellence at exeter dr mcclendon okay the equity committee met on monday february 1st we had two special guests that are meeting and they were two of mrs sparks students who asked to come on and share some things with us and i i know mr fiddler you always talk about wanting to hear from the students and that is the thing that is just means the most

035to me when i hear from the students we're do we're doing things to try to help students we need to hear from them so yeah so you know so anyway i was excited we had uh anna clare olson and emma mckearns and they came on and they shared with the group you know first of all why they were interested in doing some work in diversity and equity they shared a lot about their personal experiences and and friends of what some of the friends had experienced and they also uh came up with some suggestions of some work that we can do in in our equity committee you know you know just one thing that comes the top of my mind is um like maybe having some sort of assembly or bringing some people in and they

036were ideas for you know the uh students and teachers so we were so pleased to have them they also we have a student representative carly patton and so mr campbell actually uh connected the two of them carly's very involved in burke's youth advocacy group and so she got those two students also you know they they uh communicated and they wanted to do some things you know the schools so please have them we also have mrs deana burkhardt presented some excellent ideas um again for teachers for students for parents some of them are going to be worked on outside of the group such as designing a logo um doing some improvements to the uh link that's for our equity committee the link on the website make it more accessible and um let's see she's they're gonna

037work on a different type of newsletter like maybe some ideas for parents or featuring some things with students but uh the other thing is we have as you can see we have miss miss jessica sutherland and miss jordan sharp and i asked them if they could come on and and share this newsletter that they presented at our meeting i think it was two meetings ago and i think they might have a few things are tweaking on that but it is so great and awesome and everybody really liked it and i want them to actually show that to you and it's on the website now right uh is it's posted now right i think i think it was down temporarily while we made some adjustments okay so if it's not there we'll get back up there

038we're going to be a few things that have to be tweaked with that but it's just it's great and i want i just there's so much good work going on in this with this committee and people are doing work outside of the meetings and they're coming up with these great ideas and i'm just so pleased with that so i'll turn it over to miss sutherland and mr chart all right thank you hi everybody my name is jessie sutherland and i'm an art teacher at awaton creek and i also teach some of the art classes at the other two elementary schools and i serve on that equity and excellence committee so um thank you very much for having us here tonight thank you dr mcclendon for inviting us i know jordan and i are both excited

039to share what we've been working on with you so the idea for the newsletter was to create a resource for teachers on the topic of diversity equity and inclusion so i want to pull that up and share it with you but first i'll let miss sharp introduce herself and i'll get that thank you hi um i am jordan sharpe i teach high school or i teach english sorry at the high school and i also teach english as a second language at the high school so i primarily teach 9th and 10th grade um and then english as a second language is 9th through 12th grade for the high school so we are very excited to present this to you so i think jessie is going to share her screen to show you yeah so i'm going

040to pull this up here and someone can give me a thumbs up actually i can see the boardroom so i can see you guys can see it um awesome so uh i just wanted to start off by saying that i am not an expert on equity diversity and inclusion but it's something that i'm really passionate about and i'm always trying to learn more and unfortunately there's a lot of great resources out there created by people who are experts so what jordan and i tried to do is to sort of sift through some of that content and to pull out things that we thought would be useful to teachers um so we picked things that would cover a variety of different topics and could be applicable to different grade levels and different subject areas and so

041hopefully any teacher could look through and find something of value so you're looking at here the first page of the newsletter um [Music] and maybe i'll zoom in a little bit here so you can see it a little bigger so it starts off with the mission statement of the committee and then there is a table of contents so you can see that the first category is classroom resources and strategies so most of the resources fall under that there's also a short section on professional development and a featured teacher and also a featured student and then a calendar section with some upcoming heritage months and things of that nature so the first resource on this page is um it's called how to audit your classroom library for diversity so this speaks to having representation in the

042books that we read to students and there's a specific resource there for teachers that they could use to audit their classroom library or the books that are in their curriculum to make sure that um you know a variety of different people and voices are represented and then the second page here is um i like to zoom out so you can see the overview first so this is more focused on people with different abilities so the first article is about a teacher who created an accessibility curriculum and so there's some resources around that topic and then a book at the bottom called just ask by sonia sotomayor and that's about again people with different abilities and it's just a really nice way to kind of have that discussion with younger kids and really celebrate the differences

043that people have this page is a little more focused on race and there's an artist here featured named angelica das and she takes photographs of people in order to show that we don't all really fit into the categories of black and white or as she says red and yellow and that we're all kind of somewhere in between and there's more similarities between us than there are differences so there's some other resources as well here that would be good ways to extend a discussion around her work for example a pbs website that goes into the genetics of race or i guess rather how it's not genetic um so those uh those are again kind of extensions of of her work or connections and then there's an article here called teaching young children about race so this

044um i i found to be a really nice resource with some approachable strategies for talking about race with elementary school kids and then i'm gonna turn it over to jordan in a second here to do the rest but i first wanted to um point out that she is our t our featured teacher um since this was our first edition i asked her if she would be willing to be featured in the newsletter because i know that she does a lot of equity work in her classroom and she graciously accepted so the lesson that is featured here uh by jordan is around the book to kill a mockingbird which she reads with her freshman class i believe and you can correct anything yeah i can i can continue so okay um yeah i read to kill

045a mockingbird with my freshman and we just really got into um deep conversations this year about um because i was thinking about okay we're reading this book that is written by a white author that is in the literary canon told from the perspective of a young white child and how can we bring in different perspectives there that are missing and kind of fill in the gaps and so i found this skill it's from teaching tolerance which is now called learning for justice but this skill called reading against the text or reading against the grain which really involves students challenging their dominant readings and their prominent beliefs in order to bring less represented individuals into the textual discourse so i had a lot of success um with that i'm still working through to kill a mockingbird

046because we had a lot of snow days so we're working on that now and then right above um there's a section for professional development i listened to a lot of podcasts on my way to school and on the way back and these were just two that really stuck out for me um relating to what we're going through right now so the first one is from well actually they're both from npr's code switch podcast um but the first one is titled the kids are all right and really like dr mcclendon talked about it gives kids the perspective to share their thoughts about um what teachers should be doing in the classroom what conversations we should be having and the second one is about teaching during the coronavirus and a lot of responses as to how do

047we discuss issues of race diversity and equity in this time where so many people are being blamed for so many things and there's almost this hostile environment going on so those were just two podcast recommendations and of course when we would give new issues we would update those and then this page is almost like a mark your calendar page so at the top we have a bunch of dates that we thought were representative of a variety of abilities and identities so we put those on there and then we also had a student spotlight we did mention carly patton is a member of our committee which is really cool she's in 12th grade and she has done a lot of work serving on the youth advisory board of berks county and she created this project that

048the acronym is star but it's stand together against racism and she works with other volunteers from across berks county and she's had so much success with this you can see on the right hand side there's a qr code to her website she designed that logo herself and she is just a huge advocate for talking about race talking about social injustice in the classroom and having student voices lead those changes helping students see themselves as change agents in the classroom and so she even connected with two of the students two of my ninth grade students who attended the meeting last um last month so that was really cool and of course we would rotate the student spotlight as well with new issues and i already have a whole list of students who would love to be

049featured michelle before we leave from talking about carly patton i was going to mention this but i'll mention it now i mean you said a lot she's really she is really awesome and that's her logo that she created there and uh one of the things that happened this month was in conjunction with artist robert pepper he turned that into a huge eight foot by 16 foot 3d structure and the students put their words like sentences uh with their feelings their experiences their hopes about racism and they put those on along with artwork and you can see this display it's let me see it's at the uh burst community burst county community foundation uh in honor of black history month and it's going to be there for the entire month she said she's real that's something

050she's really proud of and we are really proud of carly you know for the work that she's doing and so if you get a chance i'm not really sure on um you know how you get access to be in the building but you know try to get a chance to see that be before the end of the month if you can because i think that's just an awesome honor that they took her logo and made a big 3d structure so and i actually want to bring carly on i didn't ask her first but i'm hoping to bring her on to share some things at our next meeting too okay thank you sorry mr short oh no you're fine yeah so that um that's what we had we are so thankful that you gave us the

051opportunity to share this with you and we're definitely open to any comments and feedback because as dr mcclendon mentioned we're still um working on editing this we also are in the midst of getting an email for the equity committee so that is another thing that will be added to that as well right and when we talk about this is this is a working committee you know we have we have goals um uh we're going to be you know working on ways to try to do that but we have we we we're like a working you're gonna work in progress we're gonna keep working on things as we get new ideas and you know it's just i'm i cannot be happier about this group the other thing uh is um we i know we're allowed to

052have up to four uh board members without having a quorum and mr aaron's uh is not going he was on our committee but he's not going to be able to continue so i would like to invite you know um if you a board member if you'd like to just maybe come on at one of the meetings see what we're doing see if you think it's something you'd like to do but we'd like to have phil uh mr aaron's uh spot on the committee if we have someone who's interested and i don't and i don't mind if you just say um you know come on for one meeting and see what you think so our next meeting is actually monday uh march 1st okay i just had a quick question um one of the things that

053jumped out in my mind when i was kind of listening about this how impactful to kill a mockingbird and um i think it's knight by ellie wiesel as well in 10th grade um are for myself as well as many of the kids that i graduated with as well as those under and above and i would just encourage um we'll just encourage the administration and the faculty to uh continue utilizing that because they have had great success i think for even a generation of students um and i can you know personally point to um both of those books being formative in that experience for myself and i know just getting feedback from some of my peers at the time that it definitely was for them as i've got well question or two if i may um

054to uh jordan i'm curious to know if you also screen the robert mulligan film version of to kill a mockingbird in your class um i used the the gregory pack version is is there is that the name mulligan's the director yeah oh oh okay yeah yeah so yeah i do use that in conjunction but i show certain parts so i kind of break it up especially this year so we might read chapter one watch that for chapter two things like that but we do use that in conjunction i think that watching that gives them such a great idea of setting and it helps to paint a picture in their mind of characters absolutely thank you i also wasn't curious i don't know who would answer this but you you have equity and diversity in your

055class do we know how many different classes throughout the district are incorporating the theme of equity and diversity right now yeah so that's really something that we've been talking about as a committee is and that was almost the idea for the newsletter right was here are some great things that we're seeing that we're doing um how can we encourage others to do this as well i mean i know that we as an english department have like common assessments and we have some shared activities and lessons like for instance we all um teach the same lesson about jim crow laws and we do this jim crow web quest and so there are some um commonalities but yeah like what um what hunter was saying about the teaching to kill a mockingbird at night they are texts

056that are so important but it is interesting how they it changes how we teach them now as opposed to how we used to teach them it is changing and we start to think about okay well what are those perspectives now that um really have been pushed to the margins that we weren't really looking at before and we should be and we should be analyzing them in this way so i guess our main purpose with this newsletter is yeah hey look what's going on in this classroom how can we kind of spotlight that into other teachers in other classrooms right and one final question if i may have you considered the work teaching the work of tony morrison in your class yeah yeah i mean i personally have read beloved and that's also another conversation that

057i would like to have on our committee is what room do we have to swap out texts i know that we have a lot of texts that are very traditional and have been monumental in forming students and their beliefs and their personalities but i do always wonder like what would happen if we switched out to kill a mockingbird or added in um beloved or a text by tony morrison bringing in a black perspective like how could that support our white perspective and kind of give us the full picture and like adding that in throughout even just excerpts i think would be beneficial to help fill in those gaps right because i'm trying to fill in the gaps as a white teacher so that would be good to use those perspectives from a black person to

058be able to speak to that absolutely absolutely good thank you very much yeah thank you so uh you know mr sutherland mrs sharpton sharp thank you so much for coming on and sharing that awesome wonderful newsletter i and i want to thank you for all the work that you're doing for the equity committee because much of that or all of it really was done outside of the meeting on their own time you know so and they these two uh young ladies are so passionate about about this work you know so i thank you uh you know sincerely thank you for that um thank you yeah you're welcome um so that that concludes uh the equity report and then just tell me oh send me an like an email or something if you think you might

059want the board members want to come we can only have one at a time because we can't have more than four oh oh that's not the end of the report but uh dr miner um are we can we get i know uh mr fiddler you asked for this last year i believe like can we know what's going on in the buildings how people are honoring black history month i know mr isselman um uh the kindergarten teachers were doing some really nice things i know that because my grandson's in kindergarten so i saw what what they were doing and teaching even these like five and six-year-olds so i'm i'd be interested to to know if any teachers you know want to share you know some things that they're doing in their buildings through through your committee

060group dr mcclendon or at the board meeting in general well i don't know i guess either way or both yeah i think i think that um mr flam and dr winners you know as we move through that transition of the two of them can um you know certainly bring forward things to the the committee and work with teachers just like the two teachers that you have on tonight hopefully as the newsletter grows and you know just um information about the group grows that more teachers will share uh the resources and and through the teaching and learning department that can be you know a place to to gather that and share best practice and either report it you know through the equity and excellence committee and then back out to the board i'm sure they would

061be happy to do that and i think that's part of um you know what you're trying to achieve with this newsletter and with the committee as a whole is just sharing best practices as we all continue to improve uh in teaching and learning especially in this regard of equity and excellence right and i mentioned black history month because that would it is right now but you know it's all inclusive so we're not just looking at racial equity but we're looking at equity all across the board so um okay well thank you erin i'd love to be the next board member to come to your meeting okay i'm gonna put you on okay thank you thank you thank you dr mcclendon okay uh moving forward uh mr miller to exeter community education foundation so uh we

062did have a meeting on uh february the third uh for the ecef uh they really didn't have much to say this particular meeting they were talking about the budgets and things like that one of the things uh that they are definitely gonna have the golf tournament this year because i had to cancel last year and it's going to be on august the 6th of uh 2021 at reading country club hopefully i'll get to play we'll see yeah we'll do it so this should be fun um i think another subject that came up and i think dr dr you know minor you brought it up is that the i guess there is a program at the giant where they are able to give some money and contribute so whenever you go to giant and say do

063you would you like to give your extra 10 cents or whatever to it that does go to the school district so just let you know please say yes next time they do that that money does go to them and they you know this this foundation they do some really excellent work they've been helping a lot of people in the community so it's definitely important for them to get as much help as they can because you know people are really suffering right now that's it thank you mr miller uh mr fiddler uh burke's career and technology center yes well i was all set to give a report but i see that all board members received the joc briefs from the bctc so i did attend my first meeting i don't have anything to add to those

064i'll try and pick something out for next time beyond the uh the briefs that are published but um i'm delighted to be a part of that group and we're off to a good start okay thank you mr fiddler um bciu board of directors dr hemberger uh thanks mrs wilson as part of our acknowledgement of the celebration of school director recognition month in january the iu hosted their fourth annual student artwork showcase and that was highlighted at our last meeting in january this year's theme was keeping connected in extraordinary times so one piece of art was taken was selected from each of the 18 berks county school districts and they'll be on display in the bciu boardroom through the end of um and will be uh it's also going to be highlighted in a virtual gallery

065on their uh bciu website it's interesting to note that the um the uh the piece of artwork that was selected for exeter was done by carly patton uh the 12th grader who was uh um just profiled in her work with uh you know equity diversity and inclusion uh so she appears to be a very uh uh a very a very busy young lady and and very talented uh uh what she submitted uh looked like it was a tapestry of some form maybe mixed media so our congratulations go out to carly for her efforts um in recognizing um you know exeter the board also at that meeting authorized uh the officers of the iu board to execute a collective bargaining agreement with the bciu education association uh for a three-year period subject to review by their

066solicitor and their administration uh the details aren't yet publicly available but you know when they are i'll be able to share maybe some of the um the highlights of that and as pointed out this evening as well another item that we just passed um the iu board of directors um approved their mandated services proposed budget which was uh one million seven hundred sixty three thousand dollars because of of the economic situation uh the con the district's uh uh proposed district contribution to that budget uh remains stable the total throughout all the 18 districts is uh 739 uh 1 874 so that's an incr zero increase uh to school districts and for exeter as we saw this evening as we approve this evening um the exeter share of that will be 46 837 uh dollars so

067that's all for my report i will say we do have a board meeting um uh this thursday evening our february board meeting thank you um thank you but we will come right back at you for our legislative liaison okay um one thing i'd like to uh to point out to the board is that uh there was a cola meeting uh which is the committee on legislative action uh cola meeting it was held um in on february 9th these meetings are held about four times a year um the most recent meeting was held virtually and part of the of the meeting as you uh may recall in a community communication i sent to the board featured governor wolf's budget and and then the other part of the meeting really had to do with the iu's plan

068for targeted advocacy so they have a targeted advocacy campaign it's uh um it's they call it a 10 by 10 campaign it's going to go on i think for 10 weeks uh this is an effort to reach out to our legislators to emphasize the need for regulatory changes in three important areas special education funding uh charter school funding reform and and relief from the costly mandates associated with mandatory trainings which takes up about 13 percent of the professional development time for school districts so there'll be advocacy work including letters to legislators they put together a one-page summary which i shared with board members today uh that you know districts can use also in their discussions you know with legit legislators um so that's a interesting fact sheet i think it's it provides all the information

069that we need to know about some of the big issues that have to do with the impacts of special ed underfunding cyber charter you know being a big part of our concern as a school district in terms of the impact of the unfair uh funding formula that's in place and then of course the um relief from training mandates i think the first two though are priorities for the i do so i'll keep i'll keep the board you know posted as we get more information in regard to that advocacy campaign that's all i have for my report thank you thank you dr hamburger and i appreciate those um fact sheets for great resources so thank you for sending those our way sure okay um mr ahrens township borough liaison i have been in communication with joe

070staub on a number of issues he's the township's um liaison from the board of supervisors one thing i just wanted to share with the board is that we are getting ready to share our sketch plan for the kerr road facility for the bus garage and the tachip is going to review that as expeditiously as possible this is just in the process of being sketched out formally for their review by their engineers because of the scale and importance of the project they're going to require probably something more than just a hand drawing so that's why we're going through this process to make sure we have all our our t's crossed and eyes dotted so the sketch plan would be sent to the township zoning officer but that would be reviewed internally with the engineer in the

071zoning department okay um that concludes our meeting are there any board members who would like to be heard at this time mrs wilson i'd like to make a couple comments if i could sure uh so last month you know the board voted um against the recommendation to keep a second transportation facility option uh on the table by voting against any any further consideration of the oaten site so we're now essentially down to one uh option which is uh the demolition and reconstruction of the current facility uh on kerr road so i want to share my thoughts as to why i believe this is an unfortunate and short-sighted choice and why it fails in so many ways to meet both our current and future needs primarily because of its small size and its its unfortunate location

072a few weeks ago mr fike provided the board with a decision matrix from 2015 and you know when you examine that document you contrast the current ker road location to the other potential sites the kerr road location fails in a number of areas including severe size restrictions being like the smallest parcel at 2.4 acres the inefficient layout the inadequate parking for employees and a very congested and precarious pull out for our drivers it also fails to provide any the district any future options should we decide decide to expand for any reason like accommodating for cleaner or more efficient fueling such as propane or expanding in ways that we may find become more affordable and preferable in the future such as electric or solar uh there's simply no room at our current location for any option

073uh other than diesel and there's no room for expansion in the event the district should grow in any ways that we can't predict within the next 30 to 50 years but i wanted to talk really about cost because with the proposed demolition and construction of the ko ker road facility although we don't have any really firm estimates at this time it looks like it'll probably cost somewhere between i'm gonna ballpark one and a half to two million dollars to demolish and rebuild these costs don't really take into consideration anything for propane fueling uh which will need to be constructed on an alternate site within the district um and and you know much has been made over about the cost of a four million dollar project at the iwatan creek site where we have over 80

074acres available 80 acres of unused property so we often ask and we've heard this this question come up before what's the impact on our taxpayers of this kind of a capital project what will the average homeowner have to pay in annual property taxes you need to remember this is a this is like a this is a capital project and the cost of construction is paid out over several years presumably eight to ten years based upon by what i've learned um so the average homeowner in this scenario would pay about one to two dollars per year for the construction demolition and construction of the property on on the kerr road location the current location um and and for the oahutan construction the average cost for the or the the estimated cost for the per year for

075the uh your average homeowner would be three to four dollars per year so either option is about a penny or less a day for that average homeowner in our school district and the difference between the two projects when we're considering one over the other is about one or two dollars a year if you look at how much one would cost versus the other if we're looking at trying to you compare apples apples and apples so by sticking with the inferior option we would save the average taxpayer less than a penny a day or a fraction of a penny of a day and i don't really see this as saving taxpayers dollars i mean we should we choose a clearly inadequate option for less than a than a penny a day so from my perspective the

076current course we're moving on is impractical and it's financially responsible we're selecting a site that's clearly inadequate for our current needs let alone our future needs and we're essentially i think throwing away two million dollars because at some point the district will realize that this location is not it's just not adequate either it'll be due to further congestion on shelbourne the inefficiencies of operating at different locations throughout the district or the need to expand to accommodate a new energy infrastructure and that's when we'll be stuck with a two million dollar facility that's no longer of use to us so the decisions we make now and and the burdens and inefficiencies that we allow will impact on our transportation system for the next 30 to 50 years and the limitations of this site will force us

077to scatter our operations across across the district which is a hardship that will continue again into the future and be felt most by our transportation staff our our drivers mechanics and program supervisors so consolidating our operations to us a single safe and expandable location is without question and more efficient and i think in the long term a more cost effective and more fiscally responsible decision selling off the current kerr road site that 2.4 acres putting it back on the tax rolls giving relief to the residents of that area who've had to live with this facility tightly packed between their residential homes and then investing in a facility that reflects what i think should be the vision and the quality of our district that's what i think we need to do that this this is an

078investment and whether at a watton or laosh or an other adequately sized and safe location anything i believe but the kerr road site i believe that's an expensive mistake so i asked the board as we go forward with our plans to please um consider these arguments as we determine our course of action going forward so thank you that's all for my comments mrs wilson so i'd like to just hop in here for a second um and i want to hop in mr japina or me i want to hop in after you okay yeah i mean you know i appreciate your comments dave and we don't have any numbers yet but prior we've been talking about a potential 1.5 million dollar spend versus a 4 million it's not going to be 4 million it was 4

079million dollars several years ago i can just tell you that i cast my first vote on this issue um eight years ago and i hope to actually cast a vote and get this thing done before i leave the board in 2023 at that point well we'll have been dealing with this issue for 10 years and in that time we've talked about this thing falling apart and if we continue to delay this this thing absolutely will fall apart till we ever get a chance to take a vote on this thing and um you know i hope to to make it to the day where we don't see that and we can make a decision i support what will definitely be a much cheaper fix kerr road um i think that we all realize that this needs

080to be done and that we need to do it soon i think the community understands the declining nature of the current location i think they're willing to support a fix but they're not necessarily willing to support a brand new facility we talk about 80 acres at oaton but technically we have 80 acres but they're not 80 developable acres i don't know what percentage of those acres are developable but it's not like we're sitting on 80 acres of land that we can actually develop so i think we have to uh sort of understand that issue um i i think that in my sense we need to get something done and i think that spending you know a penny or two it's one way to look at it but the reality is we're talking about something that's

081going to be about a million and a half dollars versus something that's going to be over five million dollars and somebody has to pay that bill these uh clearly this facility needs some work um we've been talking about it for eight years we've been talking about it for longer than that and yet this facility and the people who run it and the people who work there continue to perform amazing work despite the fact that this facility needs some work and i think if we put a million and a half in to get it fixed up and address some of those issues we will have we will get 30 to 50 years out of a new location it won't be brand new um but it also won't cost us five million dollars let's just let me

082just say a few things in to kind of uh uh maybe address some of the points that you made mr uh miss uh mr gapina uh you know i really i really don't think that we're gonna get our money's worth that 1.5 million dollars first of all i don't know whether we're going to be able to do it for 1.5 million dollars we're building a completely brand new facility uh essentially on the kerr road site where we're having to raise virtually the entire structure because of of of how decayed and deteriorated it is and we're putting it in a location that continues to have all of the problems that we had even before it's reconstructed with the exception of you know a new building a newer building it totally lacks adequate parking it it totally

083lacks the opportunity for us to kind of provide that in a safe location it doesn't give us anything in regard to expansion for the kind of energy production that we need energy energy fueling systems that we need and it and it it is there's no question that the shelbourne road area if anybody from this community rides along that road which we do especially during rush hour times that is a very congested and very challenging road to even pull out on even during the middle of the day if i'm a driver and if i'm pulling out in my vehicle it's my hope in my own personal vehicle it's very much of a challenge to get off of there um so i'm not necessarily trying to delay things i think the board decision last month has delayed

084things because we were moving forward with with an option to to with two options that we were we're going to try to allow the board to to kind of uh uh request the township to seek a variance you know on that on that property and that was that was one of the options that that would go through that would continue to remain an option and then the kerr road site certainly we we accommodated i think it was important for us to accommodate that as an alternative but i i see the cur the curve roadside as having no future and i think if we're going to invest our money we should be investing it you know for the next 30 or 50 years as we had previously you know where the current location is sell it

085off get the tax revenue from the location there you know take it out of a residential area where it is right now totally unsuitable for where it is right now totally unsuitable uh just my thoughts on that now well i know dr mcclendon may have some thoughts too so i just like to say it may be from your perspective totally unsuitable but it has been entirely workable and um the community knows that it's there we understand uh the the hours and and the traffic associated with that and again you know i'm just going to look at a million and a half or two million whatever it is i can promise you that building a brand new facility will not come with to us under five million dollars and i will also promise you that penndot

086will make us do road work that will add to the cost of that project from from what i know mr japina the the costs are about four million dollars and not five million dollars at this point that's that's taking all those factors into consideration in addition to you know propane fueling stations and and security and fencing around the perimeter of the property property which will not be available in the current or what the current corrode site the only thing that that i wanted to say was i remember when i almost four years ago when i was running for the board and hearing the term the garage mahal and you know uh i think i i was probably at that time thinking no that's not a good idea but having been on the board and learned

087so much about it visited the current facility and talking to you know bus drivers and learning a lot more about it that's why you know i i changed my mind and voted you know that we should be look you know looking at a wide creek that's that's one thing um the other thing is that we oh oh i was gonna say that the um we were presented a while back with a modified plan for that building other than what they originally had where they scaled back some things and to reduce the cost i know that there was some additional cost because as you know longer you put it off then there's there's a you know cost of living types of increases but they did scale it back from what the original one was in size

088and i don't remember all the other ways but they look to see how can they streamline that to say say save cost the other thing is that we've had at least two studies bus studies one i think was back in 2010 11 and one less than two years ago and they came back to show that our bus drive our bus drivers our bus uh department can do it at a big savings so we we made a commitment to uh keep our own buses in-house and and i agree with everything you said dr hamburger you know we that this would maybe um to me i see it like putting a band-aid on something for now but we need to look at years from now if it's already inadequate and we're just going to get by with

089this now what will happen in 10 30 50 years from now i think we need to be looking at that also so i just want to say i do agree with all of the points that that you made and it's not like we're sense we're not sensitive to uh taxpayers and what you know people you know to taxes we're not we are sensitive that but we also have a responsibility to make decisions that are going to be um you know good for the district long term too not just now so when we talk about the productivity or the efficiency of the facility both the studies that were done neither of them factored in the millions of dollars associated with the construction of a new bus facility so so that doesn't diminish from their efficacy but

090we also can tell from these studies that were done that the building doesn't seem to hinder their efficacy or their productivity or their capability i mean they have knocked it out of the park into independent studies so the question really becomes if you put four million dollars into a facility or five million dollars into a facility can they get five million dollars better um in terms of their productivity the other thing i will say is when i first dealt with this issue in part of the reason that i was livid is i saw the need to invest money into the school buildings where the kids are spending the majority of their day and when i walked into my daughter's science class biology class and saw this contraption coming out of the ceiling and thought geez

091i went home and said that was kind of cool what was that and she goes what are you talking about i said the thing from the ceiling that came down and captured the water she goes oh that's where the ceiling collapsed in on the class so if we have money to spend i'm going to put it into the classrooms i'm going to support our folks but i'm going to put it into the classrooms where the money is better spent we'll put it into these facilities to support our folks but they have been knocking out of the park driving these buses in the facility they've figured out how to do it and i just don't see that spending five million dollars is going to give us a five million dollar return i agree i think that

092we have to do three things we have to provide transportation for our students and we've been doing a wonderful job with that and we need a safe building for our employees which is what we need to accomplish here and we also need an affordable cost for our taxpayers and that's why i feel again we should move forward with car road another thing that's mentioned that facility has been there since the 70s neighborhoods have grown up around it people have moved there because of it i've actually heard neighbors say it's a it's a nice neighbor to have it's quiet on the weekends they know what to expect from it um so we also have to remember that um is there anybody else that would like to be heard yes mr aaron i i just want to

093um suggest that a lot of this discussion is you know still fruitful because we're going to be moving forward with whatever we do in the future um the most inexpensive place to build a building is on paper we still got a lot of that process left and we can test some of those concerns both with renewable energy infrastructure such as propane fueling or even the possibility of exchanging that out at some point for electric uh so there's still a lot of that process and i i don't know if there's enough evidence to really say that the kerr road facility wouldn't fulfill all those needs which is why i supported it last week you know i i'm i find a number of the things that dr hamburger said persuasive but on the same token you know

094there's still a lot of process left to play out and a lot of the needs that we've identified especially additional wasp bays and maintenance bays are added with the kero facility reconstruction that we're looking at so i think it's probably just too early to tell that that is not a suitable option for some of the reasons that you've laid out dr hamburger did somebody else want to say something from yes um i'd like to uh return to the reason we're all here um education i was on a conference call today with the uh the psba um it's a weekly uh kind of a coffee clutch with different programs and then there was some q a afterwards and a representative of the board from salkin valley spoke up and the the topic had shifted to the

095covet 19 situation and she said that they looked at the course failure rate in the district mostly in the high school and found that it had increased 50 percent as a result of the kovid starting with the covid slide last spring the slide over the summer and the ongoing slide in the fall and so i wanted to bring that up and see if the administration had any thoughts on that as we look at what the effects will be of covid on the exeter township school district and i was wondering if if in looking at that you are looking at the failure rate in in the high school that is the course failure rate uh yes mr vidler that is i think not unique to stockholm valley but is something that school districts throughout the entire

096country i don't know maybe even the entire world are seeing students um particularly at the secondary level because there's more propensity to fail at secondary level than the elementary level having more failures i know mr campbell had spoken to the principles group in the county and i think to the school they're experiencing more failures than they have in a typical year so it is something that we track one of the things that we have done is ask the high school and the junior high school to take a look at students who were struggling academically meet with those families and provide additional support opportunities including additional time in the building to help those students kind of write their academic ship so i know uh dr flam is in the audience i don't know if he wants

097to say a few words about what that's look like at the junior high and at the high school in terms of really trying to connect with families where students have struggled academically throughout the pandemic dr slam certainly dr minor recognizing that we have had students falling behind we did reach out to a number of families and encourage students to come into the building students who had been in the building for two days per week were invited to come in for additional days students who hadn't been in the building at all were invited to come in a number of our students are in the building now five days per week of course we started with two groups each coming in two days per week we added a third day every other week to both of those

098groups so we've made efforts to try to get more students into the building to try to provide supports of course early on students that we recognized who had special needs were invited to come in five days per week to receive services so we have increased our efforts to get more students into the building while maintaining social distancing and a safe environment and we'll continue to do so we'll make every effort to make sure that we're providing the supports that are necessary for students in a safe in a safe and secure environment so every time every week we look at our reports and evaluate how students are doing and if we see students who are falling behind we're reaching out our counselors are reaching out mr alcaro and i are reaching out and i know the

099same is happening at the high school so we're making every effort to include students as much as we possibly can great thank you can it be said that the majority of the kids that were struggling were struggling because they were having difficulty with the virtual model i i don't know that that can be said exactly for all students um but uh i i certainly think that um this situation that we're dealing with this year has provided a unique challenge for students and and so when we see students coming into the building sometimes they're more successful sometimes they're not but we're certainly giving them the opportunity to work with their teachers and and to access the supports that we feel would be beneficial i don't know if you can answer this but did was there did

100you notice that after the first quarter once the students went back to uh some students went to hybrid that after the second quarter that grades improved overall for those students i think it's student dependent to be honest with you because we had a significant number of students who in the first quarter in the virtual environment were very successful and they continued to be successful in the second in the second quarter we had some students who weren't and when they returned to the building became more successful certainly but we've had students in the building who despite the fact that we're providing the supports you know haven't been successful and we're continuing to work with them so i think it's student specific you're welcome do we have back to my original question do we have a sense

101of what our fail how much our failure rate uh has increased i mean saucon valley the board member was actually able to identify 50 do we have a number here at exeter and how much our failure rates have increased we haven't we haven't generated a specific number mr fiddler we've been you know noticing like as i said students who struggle and then trying to work with them on an individual basis but you know to my knowledge there hasn't been a year-over-year comparison um in terms of the broad stroke of how many students versus years in the past uh if that's something that the education committee or or the board as a whole wants the school to to produce we could look into that um but it's going through a lot of data because i'm not

102sure we kept track of failures overall in the past so i don't know dr winters is that something that in previous years we had numbers on the failure rates that were aggregated i'm not sure i'd have to look into that i know it's not something that i specifically have tracked i don't know how much would be involved to determine that i believe on hand schools warehouses some of that data so i'd be able to go in and probably do a preliminary and see i'm just curious what the utility of that is or maybe the better question would be um what what uh metrics or data are we relying on to help us understand how how significant the the problem is or is it more of a subjective and classroom approach that teachers are kind of

103responding to when they do some of the i guess it's the math facts or the i think dibbles might be iep stuff so i i might be getting that wrong um i think it's the reading fluency tests that they do quarterly or they do every year dibbles okay yeah i'm not sure that i completely understood the question um mr ahrens is it just in terms of individual student success and the the differences around grades versus a more standardized assessment like the dibbles well i i guess my question is um when we're moving into let's say 2021 2022 um how are we kind of saying you know this is our starting point where now you know 25 of students are actually behind because we have you know the statistics that we print in the newspaper and

104all that jazz um but localized to exeter how are individual teachers going to be um responding to either data or just some subjective information um so i'm curious what what those metrics or subjective information are well it's it it's a good question and i think it's um you know what mr fiddler's talking about is is a failure rate so a failure rate you know especially the secondary level could be indicative of a student's not turning in their work you know something along those lines um but in terms of measuring student progress against set grade level expectations or benchmarks for instance using the finance and panel benchmark assessment system to determine what level students reading at you know what the grade level standard is set by founders and pinell and then where our students are relative

105to that or using the star computer adaptive assessment which we've talked spoken about several times that looks at again a set benchmark a scaled score that's indicative of meeting a grade level standard so we have those types of assessments i actually think those types of assessments particularly k to 6 are extremely important because they are set they're pegged to a moment in time and an expectation that we know builds in the future failures are obviously really important we don't want a student to not have mastered the content or we don't want a student certainly not to have acquired credits to graduate but failures are more subjective in terms of are they a result of again not producing work or not understanding the content uh versus you know standardized assessment so we'll mostly be looking at

106those kind of standardized assessments and we have the ability to look at star all the way up through high school at this point it looks as though the pssa and the keystone would be administered again this year so those kinds of things that measure against a particular standard we can say well this child is falling behind that standard or this child has you know met that particular standard so with the failure again we're you know at the secondary level primarily concerned about credit attainment because we don't necessarily know the definition of that failure did the child truly not understand the standard or you know didn't try on the test or didn't you know it's it's more difficult to ascertain what that means so we will at in september have all those benchmark assessments administered to

107students and then we'll obviously start instruction from there and then at the education committee meeting on the second we'll also be talking about our plans for summer and how we're going to be using the star and other data this year to invite students to participate in an intensive summer program to help make up for those gains prior or excuse me those losses prior to the start of the school year so we're kind of attacking it from from both fronts thank you i i have a question if it's okay um i was looking through the enrollment reports that we get every month and i noticed in looking at the non-public school numbers that at the end of the last school year we were at 153 students that were non-public school students and then as of january

10831st it's now 282. um that number increased severely or is that typical i guess my question is is that something that's typically expected or is this because of where we're at with the pandemic and so do we do exit interviews of these students to find out what their reasoning is for leaving so there are a couple different questions there so again the same thing um as mr fiddler said with stock on valley and the increase in failures i think all schools to some extent saw an exodus of students up to a large extent to cyber charter schools when the pandemic broke out they didn't want to wait and see how schools did a lot of schools last spring really didn't do well at all with with cyber education and so i think a lot of

109families thought let's go to people who have more experience so we lost students to the to those schools and then a lot of the parochial schools and private schools um because they're smaller a lot of different reasons were able to offer you know in-person instruction and for some families that was you know the of critical import or they just felt more comfortable in the circumstance in terms of an exit interview i don't think that that was done at the time and you know and that certainly happens even some families chose to home school this year who hadn't homeschooled previously again you know concerns of the pandemic what we are doing now is actually reaching out to families so mrs harris has been reaching out to homeschool families dr winters uh and now mr wilcheck have

110been reaching out to families who are in cyber charters and looking and saying you know do you intend to come back what would it be the barriers for you to come back we do really want you to come back to exeter um by next school year if not sooner and really solicit and find out what would it take to get you back here you know what what are your concerns and you know again as dr flam said it's individualized to the family depending on what their rationale was in the first place for deciding that an option was safer or was more conducive to child care or they felt would you know uh offer a more um consistent education over time you know that we obviously had a lot of changes in our instructional model so

111our primary goal and focus right now isn't uh so much you know why they left initially because there is so many different reasons but how can we how can we get you back to exeter we want our students to be here um we think this is the best place for our students to be obviously you know families pay taxes we don't want them to then pay private school tuition um part of the reason that we're having mr wilczak and and he talked about the last meeting really work on making a more robust cyber program than our eva has historically been so families who want to continue with cyber can do it here at exeter next year that's the focus of our leadership team is really trying to connect with families and find out what what

112do you need to see at the school what are your concerns so that you know you you come back to us in the fall welcome okay if there are no objections i will adjourn this meeting hearing no objections this meeting is adjourned ellis i just had to say that i really am loving the beard thank you