July 21 2020 Exeter Twp School District School Board Meeting

001okay thanks um we're going to say good evening everyone and welcome this is the july voting meeting for the exeter township school district board of school directors and we're joining lu joining you live on zoom some folks are participating by zoom and others i'm hopeful are joining us live on youtube streaming so this evening we do have some presentations that we're going to be making i'm sure there'll be a lot of interest this evening in regard to our uh opening of schools and that will be a topic of uh not only of our presentation but also an opportunity for folks who are among the public to uh comment uh to the board and i'll explain that process briefly um in a minute uh also this is our first uh official board meeting with dr minor

002at the helm dr miner is our new superintendent uh who has uh recently joined us as of the beginning of july and um while she's been officially with us since then we have seen a lot of her prior to that she's been extremely active in interacting with the board the community the staff the administration um for at least a month to a month and a half so officially dr meiner i want to welcome you to the july board meeting thank you uh also before we get started i do want to make an announcement that our board had an executive session this past friday july 17th and that was for the purpose of personnel matters um um so getting on to public comments this evening um there may be interest in making comments to the board

003we welcome that uh we hope this is your opportunity to participate in our board meetings i mean sadly we can't meet face to face um but we have a process for folks to be able to make comments and i'm going to turn that over to mr way our rit supervisor to to maybe talk a little bit about how people can uh submit comments uh if they're interested joe thank you this evening we are listening um we are gathering questions that come into our questions at myexetter.org address so if you have a question you'd like to submit please send it to that address again questions at myexeter.org and we will add it to a list that we're compiling and we will address it during public comment thank you i will say that if if it gets

004lengthy and we're going to try to limit the section associated with public comments to an hour if it gets over over that or beyond that or um you know we feel certainly that there are repetitive questions or comments we may limit the number of comments that we cover however anything that's submitted will be uh recorded will be maintained by the school district will be posted in our meeting minutes and um and if necessary there'll be responses to those to any questions that may come through um so with that i think we'll get started and um i'm going to ask our board secretary uh ann guydish to uh start us off with the roll call for attendance purposes hunter aaron's present john fiddler here ann herring here dave hamburger here mike gapina here sharon mcclendon here

005harry miller here michelle stratton allison wilson here eight board members president thanks mrs okay we will start off uh officially start off our meeting with um dr miner and uh the superintendent's report uh dr miner thank you dr hemberger um first of all i just like to say hello and uh thank you it's exciting for me to have this be my very official uh school board voting meeting and i'm very proud to be representing the district as their superintendent tonight i would also like to extend a sincere thanks to the community to teachers to the staff to the parents who have all welcomed me so warmly as well as to the board members um who've also been uh very kind and welcoming to me to the district as you know we have uh immediately been

006facing what is you know i think the biggest crisis in uh education in any of our lifetimes in terms of how do we manage teaching and learning during a pandemic tonight i will be reviewing with the board our health and safety plan i'll certainly mention this during that presentation but i would like to just mention it again up front i'm incredibly grateful to the administrative team to the teachers the nurses the support staff the community members the parents who helped write that plan you'll see when we present tonight it was a very long list of participants and they all um were extremely thoughtful and extremely dedicated so i'm very grateful to them i also want to mention tonight that we are having a presentation uh about the formation of the district's equity committee this committee

007has been uh led by mr miller and dr mcclendon for some period of time i had the opportunity to join it even before i came on as superintendent they are doing outstanding work on the committee i'm proud to be a part of it and i'm excited for their presentation this evening as well as the uh formal recognition of that group as an important part of moving our district forward it's a lengthy agenda tonight um but a lot of important topics not typical of a july meeting but a lot a lot of good things happening so thank you thanks dr miner we'll move on to item three in our agenda um and this is an equity and diversity presentation and i'm going to turn um the floor over to dr sharon mcclendon who's been sharing this

008committee so dr mclennan is all yours we can't hear you okay okay so let's forget to take that off from you okay so last month um i talked to you a little bit about our committee uh and i said that i'd come back next this to this meeting and talk to you about a little bit more um is it joe i on my screen i s it's like a i don't see the whole uh screen whole slide no it's blocked no it's blocked dr mcclendon i was asking joe why like if we can fix that joe's working on it josie's working on that okay so all right anyway um i said i'd come back and talk to you a little bit more about our equity group and i uh chandelle wise was gracious enough to

009co-present with me i asked chandelle because first of all she's a community member and second of all chandelle and her husband earl were the very first people to join the group we actually were meeting informally the year before last and we started having regular meetings this past year so she uh she and her husband were the first ones and so she's going to help too with this presentation what we want to do is give you more information about how we got started with the group uh what are we trying to do and most importantly we want to talk to you about why the group is so important why equity is so important okay so i'm going to start off with the on the first slide oh we still got that that bar there so you

010see part of the i can try and share it i don't know if it was like a computer issue i don't know joe where's joe yeah i'm i'm sharing it uh i don't know why it's putting that bar there that's new um if you want to go ahead and try to share go go ahead okay um i think you have to put me as a co-host for me to share anything yeah all right okay so anyway uh while she's doing that um as dr miner mentioned uh we want to give you some information about our group we also want to become a a form be recognized as a formal group by the board when they get okay so on this here slide you will see we had a lot of different names when we started

011not a lot we had a few different names when we started out we were in the diversity committee the equity and diversity equity inclusion and so we are now we also besides becoming a formal committee we have a formal name equity and excellence at exeter and dr miner is the one that record that came up with that and other other um committee members also liked it so we that's our official name now dr miner and the other board members um okay so are you doing that shindo yes did you want me to go to the next slide uh yes you can go to the next slide okay okay so what you see here is pspa started uh an equity department they have an equity department uh back in 2017. dr heather miller is the executive

012director of that and we are using them as a resource uh for many of our our things and i wanted to use their equity statement and i don't usually read slides but i want to read this one because it's just really sums up what we're trying to do as a group and why equity is so important so equity is the just and fair distribution of resources based upon each individual students needs equitable resources include funding programs policies initiatives and supports that target each student's unique background and school context to guarantee that all students have equal access to a high quality education and that does come from the pennsylvania school board association and one of the well a key thing is the individual students needs that we are meeting you know the needs that it's not

013just uh doing the same thing for every student and uh shenandoah's going to talk to you a little more about the difference between equity and equality okay go ahead hello go ahead dr mcclendon sorry oh yeah you want to say something go ahead no i just didn't want you forget the call for action from the pennsylvania department of education okay so yeah and on this previous slide um both these organizations the psba had they have call to action for equity and this slide here is i pulled this quote from uh pedro rivera pennsylvania secretary of education because i think that might have been back in 2017 too where they have a a big initiative for all the 500 school districts in pennsylvania just as same as uh psba does as well and they have uh

014many resources on the websites both of their pspa's website website plus department of education's website lots of resources and initiatives and programs i i know that uh pedro rivera has something with high school students trying to encourage them to go into education so i just want to put this up here so that you are aware and you can go to these websites and learn many many things and some of them are webinars and different things to learn you know more about why equity is so important in our school district and besides the states these this is state initiatives but it has become a national initiative and when you go out there to the website you will see a lot of school districts have information out there um about what they're doing and there's toolkits and

015and a lot of things to uh you know help us understand and to know what to do in our own districts okay okay in this picture you see a picture of equality and equity a lot of people don't realize they are two different things as alan blankenstein says equity means that every child gets what he or she needs to succeed as opposed to everyone gets the same thing you know a lot of times you know we want to be fair and make everything equal but an equal playing field is not equity so just wanted to point this out to you all this evening dr mcclendon would you okay all right so this is uh we start like you said we start out really small it was dr phillips actually he's the one that initiated this

016and we had just we had um chandelle we had earl we had ramosa and hearing miller came on as a community member and that's all we had and we were like that for a while and then the committee started to grow we wanted to make sure that we are including all of the stakeholders we want community members we want administrators teachers um school board and also we're going to be adding students but we didn't add everybody right away because we were you know kind of growing the group um we have four school board members and that's all that we can have so that we don't have a quorum on the meetings um we we want to start to get some students also to be um on our committee but we don't have any as of

017yet so i hope i didn't miss anybody's name but um uh that's our committee members at this point so also i mentioned dr heather bennett she has been extremely helpful i've had many phone conversations with her i've attended um leadership task force on equity actually um last year in 2019 october i had attended a full day equity uh conference that was given by dr heather bennett and i came back to the board at that time i don't know if you recall and i wanted us to start writing an equity policy i was really excited about the things i learned and how important this is for our students for our school district and you know i mentioned this in a board meeting i don't know if you recall and i'm like we need to write an

018equity policy so what i learned by working with dr bennett is you don't just start out writing a policy you have to do a lot of work because otherwise the policy is going to be words on a piece of paper and that's not what we want and we want like i mentioned before we want all the stakeholders to be a part of this and so the uh equity policy we still want to do that but that's going to be down the road a little bit after we do some other things but um heather bennett is she's been she's actually attended several of her meetings she's always available to help and i have shared some of the resources that she shared with me with our with our group um but we we were meeting for a

019while and then um dr phillips brought chickley and denise lee and rita fredericks on uh to help us to you know with give us some direction and also d sable she's the executive director of the minnesota diversity council she actually presented at one of our meetings they have their council has been in existence for 30 years and they again if you go you can go to their website a lot of things are available just to anyone who goes there but she presented at one of our meetings and she's also a resource to us um so okay um all right so when we first started out like i said we're trying to figure out what do we want to do what are our needs which direction we want to go but one of the things that

020came to our attention i believe it was chandelle that actually brought this to our attention that maybe we need to find out do we the the committee members have any biases or anything that we need to work on within ourselves so we one of the things we did was this implicit bias assessment and the link is down there if you haven't ever done any of those um there's i listed some of them but there's some others as well but you can use this go to this here link and take these uh you'll really be i was surprised at the results because i like to pride myself that i have no biases but there's these things that are implicit or unconscious biases we don't even realize it and when i did some of these tests it

021made me want to understand why why i might have that bias or what can i do about it and so the members did that and then we had a meeting where denise um lee who's a diversity trainer she came on and did one of our meetings and talked to us about like okay now you know that you have these vices what do you do about it because you can't just say i'm i'm not gonna have any biases it doesn't work like that so that was one of the things that we did to help us because we felt that we're leaders we're leading this group and we need to make sure you know that we have an understanding of our own feelings and then the other thing that we did that was very important was the

022psba equity system continuum audit and all of the members uh completed the survey had dr bennett analyzed it and put it together into a report for us from that report is where we looked at we identified our goals and we just listed all of our goals and then we worked on what were the top six excuse me six goals that we want to work on initially but those goals that you're going to see later uh chandel's going to talk to you about those they came from this equity system uh audit and what we're doing with the goals is working we're going to we're breaking out into subgroups to look at the goals to get more um research more data and to develop an action plan for each one of these goals okay okay so we

023want to know where does our district or school entity exist on the continuum our goal is that everything we do as a district will be looked at through an equity lens we want to do this by conducting an equity audit so that we know how exeter is as a district the goal is to move exeter school district through the continuum to have equity as the foundation that is the end goal and i just want to say about the the equity audit is going we are looking at uh i think dr minor you're heading up that uh goal and uh the equity audit is going to be given out it's a survey a questionnaire and survey that is given out to all teachers administrators uh you know we give that out to everybody and it takes

024a look at the whole with the whole district how the whole district perceives what we're doing and we're looking for gaps uh the one that we did uh the committee did just was the committee but this is going to be district-wide when we do that okay and some of the priority goals that this committee has is to obviously again conduct a district-wide equity audit to see where we fall where we stand also to have an endeavor to recruit and hire diverse candidates not just on low-level positions but all positions within the district to also disaggregate data and develop a plan to address opportunity gaps in education and also to continuously review current curriculums i know dr mcclendon is on like a subgroup within the school board to review curriculum and i'm giving you i'm going

025to give you an example of this there is an english class within exeter school district and there was a unit on frederick douglass and the teacher had asked a question regarding prior knowledge she was seeking prior knowledge but the question that she asked was how would you feel being enslaved and this question was not very sensitive to the people of color whose families may have experienced slavery and you know it's just something to look at within our district also to provide ongoing educational programs for students staff administrators in our community engage diverse communities in all aspects of the school and of course to support the board in the adoption of an equity policy and then that's it did you have anything else to add dr mcclendon well i just want to say like um i

026know that last year the teachers uh they were i actually attended and i know dr hamburger you were there at the opening session with the teachers and it was they had a presenter on diversity and they had a number of uh professional developments for teachers throughout the year and so we want to continue with those but also we want to know you know we want to see like um when you are doing these programs or trainings uh what is different because of that like you know does does a teacher teach differently then you know once you've had that because you could have maybe attend a diversity training and then that's where that stays so we want it to really impact our students whatever programs and trainings that that our staff does and and and uh

027chandelle's on the commit shindel is on the uh community committee because i mean on the subcommittee because we really want to get our community involved before the pandemic we actually had some plans one of the things we were going to do was go to may day have a table set up so we want we're she's going to be working along with some others on how we can get our community engaged okay dr mcclendon i have a i have a question um will your meetings be open to the public um if you know when you do meet will there be a sort of a notice to the public and folks would be able to come to um yeah we have we had we didn't do that yet just because we were kind of fumbling around trying

028to figure out you know what we want to do growing the group but i'm certainly open to having the community uh attend we're doing it by zoom so you mean like have like we're doing now for the board meeting they would be yeah i mean presumably if it's zoom then it would have to be something like this but i mean going down the line and my my understanding is that you know this is a this is a committee that will meet over you know a lengthy period of time indefinitely um so there will be a point of time when when you'll be meeting in person i'm sure and i just wanted to get a sense and i think that i'm perfectly fine with that i you know i welcome that because we do want community

029involved and so yes that's that's fine we just didn't do it yet like i said because working a lot of the kinks and you know those kinds of things but yeah sure when we we meet on a mondays uh uh the first monday of the month from 6 30 to 8 30. so community and you know others are always welcome and i mean i think um you know this is yuri so um i think one of the things that we will definitely do is we'll probably even try to invite some people to come in and maybe do some training for not only some of the teachers but also the community make sure that they're involved in this this whole process of of doing uh and learning some things about equity learning about diversity um and

030and you know and make sure that everybody's kind of involved in this this whole committee it's not going to be something that we're going to have you know closed out to everybody it's going to be something that's open would you agree dr mcclendon oh absolutely absolutely like i said we just didn't do it because we were kind of figuring out what we want to do how we're going to do it and it was only a few people for for like a while we only had a couple of people attending the meetings and so i think we are ready to uh you know invite other people and we encourage that as well absolutely and i heard here i was just getting ready to say you know if you have anything you want to add or any

031ice there's we have several of our members are actually a part of the school you know the school board meeting tonight so anybody that has anything to add or uh you know offer just please feel free yeah um so the one thing i will say is that you know our community is becoming a lot more and more diverse and i think we need to learn how to embrace uh what the community has to offer you know to to out the whole community i mean so um this is a very important and integral part of growth within our our community in our school district um we're kind of somewhat of the pioneers in this whole thing but i think that's a good thing don't be surprised if you see other school districts probably mimic some of

032what what we're doing uh but i think it's definitely necessary and we have the uh you know the definitely the bandwidth to be able to handle this and and do a lot more things to to make sure that um that all of our kids are feeling like they're they're comfortable in their own skin uh and and on every aspect and i think we definitely need to make sure even our curriculum and everything fits to where kids feel like they are part of this community and there's there's no uh areas where they they feel like they're not accepted and that's our main goal uh dr mcclendon i'd also add um that as superintendent i i feel very uh privileged and excited that this group has already been formed that you found such outstanding consultants and you

033know such a nice spectrum of our our community members uh to be a part of it i think it's going to be in incredibly helpful as we move the district forward along this path that this has already been um established has taken root and i'm really looking forward to see the work that gets done through this committee and with its guidance and leadership for the district as a whole right and we were we really were uh one of the school districts that was on the forefront of this before all of the things that you know are going on now in our in our uh you know society uh the movements and um we actually had you know working on this and saw a need for it but uh i noticed when i was in one

034of the uh trainings with dr uh bennett there were a number of representatives from other school districts who were just trying to get this started so yeah we are kind of you know way ahead of it um so this next slide um i talked to our group about it but i also want the board to be aware of there are a number of training trainings and educational programs that are offered by psba we as school board members use utilize psva's resources quite a bit and so i just wanted to list those up there um that some of these uh heather bennett is one of the main ones that teaches but she does have it presents rather she does have a team and they are willing to uh you know do these trainings for us that

035we could get the board if the board is interested in any of them and uh also our committee and she could do both she could do the board and the committee uh at the same you know with the same uh training there are like as mentioned before on the website um i believe a lot of those things you might have to be a member of which all the school board directors are members and uh superintendent and i'm not sure who who else is are members of that but when you're a member you can access so many of these things but there's also a lot of resources are just out there available but they're up there you see the list and um if you if the board thinks that you're interested in uh having any of

036these then let me know and we can get you know we can get that set up it it can be one hour it could be two hours and i realized that there's a lot going on a lot of meetings a lot of things that school board members are doing but this is really important and our committee is going to be doing a lot of work but we we need to be doing it with the school board because if we want to adopt a policy that's the school board that's going to adopt that so we really are encouraging school board members we have four but we're encouraging the other school board members to also um you know to learn some things and come along with us with this okay okay and we just want to leave

037you with this quote um you know our name is equity and excellence and we just felt that this was appropriate to end this way to push for excellence today without continuing to push for access for less privileged students is to undermine the crucial but incomplete gains that have been made equity and excellence cannot be divided and our hope is that you know we do have equity and excellence within exeter school district this quote is by ernest l boyer he's an american educator thank you so much for listening to our presentation today any questions i would just like to thank you um for the presentation ms wise and i really appreciate you as a community member stepping forward to support us um you know by presenting this this evening thank you thank you so much for

038having me all right thank you sean appreciate it thank you thank you yes thank you shando and and uh dr miner uh actually joined our group you've been maybe three months ago so she joined the group long before she actually came on officially as superintendent um so no any questions so hey now i have a question so um dr hamburg you asked about the public if the public you know if community could attend so we can only have four board members there but could you have other board members in attendance that aren't participating in the meeting would that be okay i mean it's like a from my perspective dr mclean it's kind of like a committee meeting that we have you know the board you know we invite the public um so anybody in the

039public can participate um and we invite board members to be part of that but the official representation on the committee would be limited i think probably to for to honor the the whole concept of limiting a board representation to less than a quorum um that's probably just the safest way to conduct these kind of meetings but yeah i'm sure this is these are topics of interest to all board members and you know there'll be minutes taken there may even be recordings of your your meetings too so if they can't participate you know and be there in person we can certainly you know watch afterwards and um you know i would i would just uh reiterate what you've said about psba and other sources of information that have to do with anti-racism um uh education you

040know for not only our board for members of the public uh you know i think there's so many great resources out there out there you know right now that are real valuable in helping most of us are are in need of really trying to understand this better what's happening in our society today um and all of us are on sort of a continuum of understanding and development in this continuum as long as you have a desire to learn and grow and become part of i think what we consider to be inherent to the resolution that we're going to pass later on today which is really kind of supporting all aspects of anti-racism i mean i think there's just so many ways that we can continue to grow as a as a school community and uh

041that means not only board members but the staff and um students and and the public so well thank you for introducing this us this evening so i know it's a brief introduction there's a lot more here and i i would say that you know as our board meetings continue i would suggest that you know you you feel free to to provide reports to the board you know periodically and at our board meetings to be able to let us know what's happening you know with the committee yeah and chandelle and i would be happy to do that right now we will we will i just i want to give uh some credit to uh mr esselman because he volunteered i asked would someone do the minutes and he volunteered to do it so we do have

042minutes from of some of our meetings and he's really good at it too like he types them up and has them all up and like by time we finish the meeting he's emailing these wonderful minutes to us so we do have um you know we have minutes of what what has been happening with with our meetings that we didn't in the beginning but we do now and i just want everybody to keep in mind like you know uh we uh what we're doing is for everyone but really what we're doing is for our students they're at the center of this and uh it's not listed up there as a goal because those were the priority goals we came up with but we also listed a couple other things that we want to do and one

043of those is uh and uh and i i don't you know you're on that committee to get student voice so we want to work on we want students on our committee but we also want to do some things we're hearing because i i know that students want to talk about what's going on and another thing that we did not mention but listed uh not on that goal side but we also are going to start posting things on the district's website so yuri is the chair of our um technology and so he agreed to be the lead on that and we're going to post things like we'll post well i'm not sure if that was going to get posted just on another location but we want to post the anti-racism resolution we can post you know

044other things there too as well so we're looking to really i'm so what i'm so excited about is that we were just kind of creeping along crawling along and then the more uh members that we got and got these consultants and people and then this the committee is really taking off and i'm so excited about you know what we're what we're going to be doing we're a little bit limited like i said we were planning some things to do out in the community you know but but because of you know the pandemic you know we were limited but just like you got creative with teaching we're going to get creative with what we can do with our group too i'm just thankful that all the people who are doing joining they're very passionate about what

045we're doing and everybody's working really hard so okay well thank you thank you guys thank you very much for that presentation thanks sharon thank you so um we have another presentation this evening and it's uh dr dr miner will be presenting on on opening uh uh health and safety plan for opening schools dr miner thank you dr hemberger uh looks like we're trying to get the powerpoint up and going so just pause for a second while i get that up on the screen well while the tech department's working on getting that up on the screen i'll just say a few words about uh the presentation this evening as i'm sure many of you are aware the school district um has to submit a phased reopening plan to the pennsylvania department of education like so many

046department of education there are uh assurances that have to be um given to them and i think we're maybe having the same experience that we had with the previous presentation with the portion of the screen blocked off so um joe are we able to correct that uh i don't know not sure what the issue is here uh joe way i think you also have the presentation if uh mr calamita can't get it up and running is it possible that you could share it your speech absolutely as i was saying uh there's always uh you know many assurances with the department of education and so this plan allows for the district to make assurances that we will abide by directives and guidance from the department of education from the department of health and from the governor's

047office the plan requires board approval and then ultimately uh submission to the department of education in order to open any kind of educational programming in the school and then a summary of it has to be posted on our website any luck with the presentation i will be there just a moment so i don't want to get too far ahead of my slide do you have a show or a game let me let me just try one more thing okay i'm ready to go if you're not all right there we go thank you that did it all right we go ahead to the next slide please as i mentioned the department of education uh all school districts are required to submit a faith school reopening health and safety plan the plan has to incorporate enough flexibility

048to adapt to changing conditions the plans must be approved by the school board prior to august 3rd each plan must be posted on the district's publicly available website prior to reopening school and each plan has to be monitored throughout the year and updated as needed which of course we will be doing next slide please in order to develop the plan we first established a pandemic planning task force as superintendent i am serving as the pandemic coordinator but i'm very pleased to have this task force uh supporting me and all of the efforts of the district in regards to how we're responding as a school to the pandemic as you can see we have a broad cross section of our school stakeholders building administrators teachers school board members food services and we were privileged to have

049dr raymond hubbard from writing pediatrics uh be a consultant um as well on the plan next slide please all right on this slide uh this is our subcommittee committee so as you can see between the members of the task force and the subcommittee structure we were able to engage even more stakeholders both internal to the school district as employees and external as parents and community members uh each of the six areas represents a portion of the plan you can see each was assigned a lead and then uh members were initially selected from people from the task force and then people from the task force were asked to suggest other people in the community uh parents etc who may be of value in terms of bringing their thoughts to this process so as you can see

050a large number of people um gave their input and again i want to extend my sincere thanks to everyone who participated in the development of the plan next slide please one of the things that we recognize is critically important is communication and so we are looking to push out information to our community about what's happening and what we're doing but also to solicit uh communication back from our community and our staff in terms of uh their thinking their thoughts their concerns their questions so that as we continue to develop our plans we're doing that in response to uh feedback from all those stakeholders recently i put out an update video talking about our pandemic plans and that video to date has over 4 000 views we sent out a staff survey that has um garnered

051355 responses and a parent survey that as of this morning had parent responses you can see that uh from that survey 70.9 of parents indicated that if schools were open for in-person instruction it was their intention to send the children their children to school and 16.9 percent would prefer to send students to an exeter virtual school uh if one was available which it will be the remaining parents were either uncertain or uh had private school or other types of plans uh from the vast majority were uncertain at the time of the survey uh next slide please there were a lot of common themes uh there were over 900 individual open-ended responses uh and we tried to group those open-ended responses into broad categories there are many people who are urging us to reopen fully there

052are many people who are urging us to consider a virtual or hybrid option there were a number of people who expressed concerns over safety and had very specific questions regarding safety protocols there were a number of people who had wanted to express that they were anxious or their children were anxious about the potential of either virtual school or in person school both were anxiety inducing to different people and then there was a certain number that were just thanks um appreciating that we were soliciting feedback appreciating the hard work that went into it appreciating uh our teachers our support staff our administrators who all work so hard to bring cool to us in pandemic non-pandemic times next slide please the biggest um i think uh back and forth in all of the comments were parents who

053felt strongly that masks should be worn by everyone at all times and parents felt strongly that max masks should never be worn or worn uh you know infrequently and that issue was settled for us prior to us coming forth with our plan by the pennsylvania department of health that um made it clear that everyone would wear a mask unless they were able to sustain more than six feet of distance from another person or they had a specific ada and so although we did receive a lot of comments on that it's no longer something that the district can take any action on other than following the department of health directives next slide please uh some of the other comments that were just miscellaneous you know people talked about you know appreciating the district's dedication uh some

054people said you know that they hoped it would be online school it's been a difficult year uh you know and then a lot of people said things like you know above all i just want my kids to be safe whatever that means and certainly as a parent myself um you know i i certainly understand that and feel that from children next slide please thank you uh and as part of the planning process we had four types of reopening that we were uh able to select from i've color coded them option one uh was the option that was most in line with a green phase which berks county is in right now and that's a total reopen with a virtual option for families or students who heard distance learning uh because of safety or health concerns

055and we'll be talking about more about why we selected that one in just a moment option two was a scaffolded reopening that's more of a yellow phase option for most people and that's where some students are engaged in in-person learning while others are distance learning so some grade levels are in person while other grade levels are remote option three was a blended reopening again more of a yellow phase opportunity uh that balances in-person learning and remote learning for all students so for instance uh some students will come on mondays and wednesdays and other students come on tuesdays and thursdays and then the final option was uh red phase option primarily which is total remote learning and if a school selected that a big portion of their plan had to be explaining how they were going

056to open for in-person instruction and when next slide please so i'm going to go through the ones that we didn't select first and and talk a little bit about why we didn't select those so as i mentioned option 4 total remote learning uh was designed for districts who are in the red phase and it focuses ultimately on reopening in the green or yellow phase so that's not applicable to us at this point in time as berks county uh is currently still in the green phase next slide please uh option three was a blended reopening uh some of our neighboring school districts um entertained this um and i got a lot of questions about it as superintendent some people are referring to it as a a hybrid um opportunity again it would be where some students

057came on monday and wednesday other students came on tuesday and thursday and nobody came on friday and it was a virtual uh experience this wasn't selected either so why did we not choose this one well first of all the safety benefits for this type of reopening rely largely on the assumption that when students aren't in school they are isolating on those off days while students are in school we are able to control a lot of the environment in terms of what the seating looks like whether or not students are wearing masks what spacing looks like etc when students are home by themselves we have no control over what they do and so um you know in in conversations with you know fellow superintendents around the county the idea that you know on those off days

058students could be gathering in homes not wearing masks not social distancing uh without parent supervision because parents were at work and potentially actually increasing the viral load in our community as a result another reason and we heard this from a number of parents in the survey was that child care will be extremely difficult if not impossible if parents had to seek out child care on only two days a week or three days a week versus a more typical child care schedule that would either be a full-time child care or an after-before care scenario and then finally if our own staff was in that position where they needed child care we may find ourselves with a very limited uh staff pool and we would have to consolidate classrooms which would ultimately eliminate the potential benefit of

059reduced student numbers and classrooms if we were functionally short staffed so those are the primary reasons that we determined that this wouldn't be a beneficial option for exeter next slide please option two is a scaffolded reopening this i believe is what was proposed in boyertown uh this option would have um allowed some students to come in certain grade levels and other students not to come this option would have limited benefit in exeter presumably uh in this model you would bring in young students while older students would stay home again we would have those viral load uh concerns in the community what were students doing um outside of school and then potentially giving to their siblings in terms of infection that would ultimately come to school as younger siblings and unless we then move the younger

060students into the vacated buildings that were designated for older students and designed for older students there wouldn't be a benefit in terms of distancing and our buildings are you know from from toilets to desks and chairs not designed at the high school or junior high level to support elementary students so that didn't seem to be an option that had a particular benefit to exeter next slide so the final option and the option that the majority of the districts in berks county have selected as well as exeter is option one which is a total reopen with a virtual option this option provides maximum flexibility to our families families who wish to have their students attend in person may do so five days a week and those who feel unsafe or unable to return will have a

061full exeter township school district virtual option later on this evening we will be asking the board to approve a memorandum of understanding with our teachers association etea i'm pleased to say that we've had wonderful discussions with them and we'll be partnering with them so that our virtual option will be primarily composed of exeter teachers delivering exeter curriculum making it far superior to what a number of our neighboring districts are able to provide as well as certainly far superior to a cyber charter option next slide please in terms of the contents of the plan itself i'm not going to be going through every item of the plan the plan is available now as an attachment to the board agenda this evening it will also as i mentioned be posted on our website uh following approval of

062the plan but just to give you an overview as i mentioned previously the plan has six primary areas the first one involves cleaning and disinfecting buildings ensuring buildings supplies buses are cleaned and disinfected so anything that was shared between students in terms of any classroom items disinfected um and ms guidis uh led up that committee as she heads up our facilities staff who typically do that work and has has already been acquiring large amounts of cleaner disinfectant those sorts of things that will be required to keep our schools clean and disinfected the next group was social distancing how do we organize spaces to promote social distance how do we create protocols and procedures around distancing practices the third portion of the plan is monitoring how do we develop protocols for monitoring student and staff wellness

063and how do we create procedures and protocols around quarantine and safe return the next portion of the plan is other considerations this deal specifically with policies procedures and protocols that will be needed to implement the plan this talks about students who may be at increase or staff who may be at an increased risk due to physical impairments or disabilities uh high-risk health categories those sorts of things that may need special plans outside of the broad plan as well as ensuring staff are deployed effectively and considering mental health and social emotional well-being both for staff and students in the community during this time communication how do we have timely and effective communication with family and staff what does ongoing communication look like with the state and local authorities and then finally professional development how do we

064ensure that all stakeholders are prepared with the knowledge and the skills necessary to implement the plan next slide please so what what does the future hold i have no idea um you know this is something that you know on march 12th if you had told me that i would be sitting here on july 21st talking about pandemic planning still i wouldn't have believed you and so i think we've all learned that um this has been unpredictable uh changes have come quickly information has come quickly and so you know as superintendents as school leaders we've all learned that we have to be uh flexible but planful so as we stand today um you know we are technically in the green phase but we are bordering on yellow in terms of the data and statistics that are

065in berks county so while we're in the green phase it's our intention to move forward with the plan as presented if approved this evening if conditions deteriorate this evening the board will uh being be asked to approve an emergency resolution that would allow the superintendent to close schools if conditions in our community deteriorate and it no longer would seem to be safe uh within reason to have students report for in-person instruction and that would be if the state hadn't made that decision on their own that we could do it unilaterally and then finally if the state determines that schools are ordered to shut down um then you know we'll plan accordingly i think that this is a very real possibility that schools will be shut down by the department of health or by the governor

066for those of you who listen to the governor's address last thursday he made it clear that cases were pouring in into western pennsylvania into pittsburgh over the ohio border and pouring into southeastern pennsylvania up through the i-95 corridor through uh florida the carolinas georgia and he expressed that um you know the bars were going to be closed that could you go back to that slide please thank you the bars were going to be closed that restaurants were going to be at 25 capacity uh and that uh masks were required as well as um you know additional guidance around uh keeping you know the public safe and this uh disease at bay and he specifically called out that if over the course of the next several weeks pennsylvania's numbers did not improve that the consequence would

067be um closing of schools so we are preparing for that possibility as well both that schools will never open in august in the first place due to a government ordered shutdown or that at some later point schools will be closed um if there's a resurgence for instance during the flu season so we're we'll be prepared for that if if it would happen all right last slide please i think that you know the most important thing that we can do right now is to come together as a community one of the things in the course of my entry plan as dr hemberger mentioned i spent many many weeks speaking to stakeholders former administrators parents business owners teachers support staff members board members and uh to the person when i asked you know what is the greatest

068strength of exeter people said it's our community our community is amazing you know of course they said our teachers are amazing but really what what really was outstanding to me was how many people referenced the strength of the exeter community and you know as superintendent i really hope that we see this as an opportunity to stay exeter strong to come together to not let um you know political divisiveness or other topics divide us you know this little graphic is you know growing in different directions that ultimately has uh no beneficial effect and so i you know from what i have seen so far i believe that exeter is exactly the kind of community that can do that that can stay strong that can stay unified uh kind of community that believes in our schools that

069supports our schools that care about our children um and want truly the best for them and i think the best way that we can get to that point um is to stay together as a community we're not going to agree on every point certainly um that's healthy that's encouraged we need dialogue um but respectful dialogue and dialogue that's intended to move us forward not not divide us and and have us not be able to make the progress we need to educate our students safely so that concludes my presentation about the plan are there questions from award i i have a i guess a question in the comments uh kim i spoke with some students over the weekend and they were very saddened and dejected and disappointed to learn that this whole process went on with

070apparently without any input from students and i'm just wondering why well initially the task force um you know was assembled at you know at a high level but i think the student portion and the student input um is extremely important and i'm glad that you brought that up one of the things that i didn't mention in the slides but that we're moving forward with are several additional subgroups inclusive of a special education parent subgroup virtual learning for parents subgroup student subgroup i'm sure there's a number that i am not thinking of right now so our initial priority was to get a plan that was pde compliant uh moving forward and as we developed the details of those plans get in the weeds so to speak we'll be looking to expand all of those subgroups to

071get input and certainly students would be a valuable um valuable contributor to that that being said i did hear from some students some graduates um who talked about their experience with virtual learning in college those sorts of things and so i really do appreciate those who reached out and did provide their feedback they found a way to do it but we will have a formal uh student sub group well great thank you i'll be able to get back to them and let them know that thanks absolutely thank you so not that they had a technically had a choice as to whether or not to go back into the classroom um where do our teachers stand on this issue have we surveyed them yes so we uh did we did a staff survey um the questions

072uh dealt uh to some extent about their uh ability to come back in terms of um whether or not they had medical conditions that would require accommodations or leaves and then they also had an open-ended question uh as i mentioned we had over 300 responses to that a number of their questions pertain to um the specifics of what virtue will look like the specifics of what um cleaning protocols those sorts of things would look like i've been in regular communication with dta leadership um and both uh the president and vice president served on our task force and support uh the plan that we're putting forward this evening thank you dr minor my my assumption is that the the plan that we're sending in the pde is you know the questions and the content is pretty

073well prescribed by by the department and there are lots of other details that are not included in the plan that obviously have to be pushed out um if if a person is interested in really kind of following this and kind of seeing where we're going with it and really learning more about the specifics of you know wearing masks and and monitoring your child's you know temperature and riding on a school bus and all those sorts of things what what sort of resources are going to be available for them as we're going forward what could peri people could expect to see and how can they how can they access that information well that's that's an excellent point and again i want to you know go back to what i said to mr fiddler you know at

074this point we had a very short turnaround time um i know that you're all aware that i started on july 1st and so to get this plan uh written and submitted and hopefully approved by the board so that we could open schools on august 3rd um was the initial priority in terms of the broadcast but a lot of things have been working in parallel to that so for instance planning for virtual construction has really been going on continuously since the spring as the potential for that may arise we are now fully committed along with our teachers association to the virtual option and prepared in the event of a full shutdown to go full virtual so in terms of that plan in particular a plan which i know a lot of people have a lot of

075questions about they specifically want to know how is it going to be different than the spraying how is it going to be superior to a side starter option how is it going to work teachers are interested in that information as well um we will be presenting that at the education committee on august 4th that meeting will be devoted to that particular topic what will virtual look like uh real clarity around that plan what would that look like if it's optional what will it look like if there's a shutdown and it's for all students so um the details of that will be fleshed out there as far as other specific questions there are a lot of details in the plan regarding math squaring regarding temperature taking those sorts of things if if parents or community member

076students teachers anyone who really has a as a genuine interest in the well-being of exeter our educational process and and student learning in the health and safety community you're welcome to reach out to me directly uh my email is k-i-m-i-n-o-r my exeter dot org you can find me on the website superintendents page and let me know if you would like to serve on one of those subgroups or if not what your specific questions or concerns are and i can direct you to the appropriate member of our task force or answer them directly so we'll continue to have formal communication not on our website they'll come out on a facebook page um you know we will you know send them through parent link those formal opportunities for kind of one-way communication but we really value and

077want to continue to have two-way community so if you're interested uh please reach out let me know um there's there's bound to be a sub-committee that fits your particular interest and we would welcome you joining us as we work through the details of the process so i have another question don't go ahead mike yeah just uh you know i've sort of been immersed in covet since it started through the hospital and um you know one of the questions that i have or one of the one of the experiences i had has to do around enforcement um you know we can put a policy on paper but as the famous philosopher mike tyson once said that everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face and um you know in order for this to

078work a hundred percent of the people have to follow a hundred percent of the plan a hundred percent of the time and i'm just wondering you know that whole enforcement component is going to be a challenge do you do you feel that way and what are your thoughts on that well i i think it i think it's a fair question mr fupina but the reality of schools is that we enforce things all the time right that that's what schools do we say that you have to come on time we say that you can't be late for class we say that you have to dress appropriately we say that you have to do your homework um you know we say that you have to change for gym class you know schools to a large extent are

079about compliant behavior and you know we talk about classroom management we talk about um administrative consequences so if there's one area where schools do have some expertise it's certainly not infectious disease mitigation but it is how do you get uh students and staff for that matter to comply with the rules and regulations and as school systems we have you know tons of rules and regulations we have rules and regulations that govern govern special education we have rules and regulations that govern uh certification so i i would say of all institutions in terms of um having a great familiarity with um how to enforce compliance we're probably best prepared for that is it going to be a challenge yes do we need parents to be partners and not adversaries yes um but do i believe that

080our administrative staff our teachers and our community as a whole want the schools to be successful and will support us i absolutely do there's always going to be somebody who tries to punch you in the nose as the great philosopher mike tyson said but you have to stand right back up and you know finish the round and i think we are more than capable of doing that thank you i have a question that i've not i've done the research but i can't find anything on it and runs a little bit off course of the health and safety plan per se but i don't know if i'll have another opportunity to ask it uh what what is the district's or any school district's liability if a student or staff member or administrator or anybody in the

081district comes down with the coronavirus disease are we liable in any way well i'm going to throw that to our council mr ellis well um i generally don't like to give legal advice publicly but i'll do so on this instance it's our view that uh generally speaking there should not be any liability uh to the extent that the school complies with the directives from the department of education department of health governor's office cdc etc and somebody does come down with the with the illness our view is that there shouldn't be any liability that should arise as a result of that scenario there are certain very very limited circumstances where extreme misconduct as in all cases could result in in litigation but if uh if there's a good faith effort to comply and under substantial compliance

082i'm comfortable that you should be okay however tell us that that doesn't mean that you wouldn't be sued it just means that you're not successfully sued right yeah oh yeah there's going to be litigation there's there's there's litigation occurring all over the country already um mainly in the employment area uh but i suspect we're gonna we're gonna see some litigation flowing out of uh out of the opening of schools as well but i feel i feel comfortable that you won't be able to be successfully sued thank you any other questions or comments for dr miner at this time thank you for the presentation very welcome thank you okay thanks folks uh we will move on in our agenda and uh this is our opportunity to uh hear public comment um we're gonna need some help

083here from uh mr joe way our it supervisor uh i'm gonna ask joe to go into the um the cue of those who have submitted um comments this is going to be a little bit like the comment section or portion we have during our board meetings uh we try to limit it to three minutes um you know and and one person has an opportunity to speak generally on a topic uh and we'll move through you know the questions or comments as we go we may or may not be answering questions uh depends on the complexity and uh you know how how involved you know some of these questions if there are questions you know maybe um and we're going to try to it's about 10 after eight we're going to try to limit this uh

084to about uh 9 10 and no later than that and anything beyond that um we'll uh we'll make efforts to make sure that uh all the all the comments are posted on our on in our minutes so with that mr way uh do you want to start us off with the first uh first comment uh when it would be good to know who the person is who made the comment and if they provided their um address you know so we would know if they live in the district or not absolutely thank you very much question one comes from chandelle wise at 33 hayden circle and it's multi-part if a teacher tests positive for kova 19 are they required to quarantine for two to three weeks is their sick leave covered paid if a teacher has

085five classes a day with 30 students each do all 150 of those students need to stay home and quarantine for 14 days do all 150 of those students now have to be tested who pays for those tests are they happening at school how are the parents being notified does everyone in each of those kids families need to get tested who pays for that what if someone who lives in the same house as a teacher test positive does that teacher now need to take 14 days off to work to quarantine is that time off covered paid where is the district going to find substitute teachers who will work in a classroom full of exposed possibly infected students for substitute pay substitutes teach are multiple teaching multiple schools what if they are diagnosed with covenant 19 do

086all of the kids in each school now have to quarantine and get tested who's going to pay for that what if a student in your kids class test positive what if your kids if your kid tests positive does every other student and teacher they have been around have to quarantine do all get notified do we all get notified who's infected and when or because of hippa regulations our parents and teachers just going to get mysterious may have been in contact emails all year long what is the stress level going to be about due to our teachers how does it affect the health and well-being how does it affect their ability to teach how does it affect their ability the the quality of education they're able to provide what is this going to do to our

087kids what are the lifelong life long-term effects of consistently being stressed out how will it affect students and faculty when the first teacher in their school dies from this the first parent of a student who brought it home the first kid thanks for your questions chandelle wise and i'm not a and and i'm i'm certainly not in a position to answer those questions but dr miner i wondered if there was i mean there was an awful lot of questions there and obviously time does not permit to answer every one of those questions was there anything that really kind of came out in your mind in terms of you know you're hearing all those and what was your would your thought be absolutely so um all of the questions that pertain to quarantine who would be

088responsible for quarantining how that notification process would happen there were many that were related to that topic that would actually be uh determined by the department of health not by the school district so um when anyone tests positive that's reported to the department of health immediately as a result of the positive test uh that goes all the way up through the chain of the department of health and then back down to the school system and the school's given specific uh directives in terms of who needs to quarantine for how long what notifications need to be sent out etc so in all of those scenarios that were referenced the school district as we do with any infectious disease whether it be chickenpox or whooping cough uh we rely on the department of health to tell us

089what to do when to do it and how to do it and that's exactly what we do in this circumstance as it stated in our plan in terms of leaves and the ability of teachers to take leaves um that you know has been considered in the cares act in terms of people needing to quarantine and being able to take paid leave around that time we also of course have sick leave other types of leave our human resources department would obviously work with any teacher who was in that circumstance to make sure that all of the leaves available to them uh were in fact made available to them as far as you know what's the social emotional impact of teachers being in this environment as well as you know if in the event that someone would

090pass away in this environment i would say that we don't know we haven't lived in this environment before we haven't seen what the social emotional impact is we can predict that people will need social emotional support and we have predicted that we've considered that on our committee we have a subcommittee that is specifically planning for social emotional well-being both for staff and for students um you know in the in the horrible situation that we all shudder to even consider that someone would pass away um you know we would do the same thing we would consult experts on on how to best support our students our staff and our community around that as we do anytime we have a tragic loss in our school community thanks dr miner um mr wake could we move on to

091the next comment yes question two is from alexis evans 250 aldridge court will the proposed plan for the 2021 school year include information about virtual learning for students with an iep who require additional academic support so that parents can make an informed decision as to what is the best option for their child as far as in person or virtual learning will this plan be released after it is approved or will it be discussed in length this evening thank you alexis evans may i take that question as well mr hamburger dr member please do yeah i know we have i know we have mrs harris on the line too so you know maybe some special ed questions might be appropriate for her to respond to as well um so again the virtual plan will be discussed

092at length at the education committee meeting on august 4th in terms of an iep and a student's need regarding their iep whether it's in person or in virtual for those of you who may be watching tonight who aren't familiar with those documents they are individualized education plans and so what is always uh the case and what is always appropriate is that those decisions are made for that individual student in fact that's what the law demands so we won't be broadly discussing ieps because they are individualized but we will and we have in this document assured that we will comply with the free and appropriate education and the um you know all of the legalities around an individualized education plan so uh those will be certainly discussed at iep meetings with iep teams with iep supervisors

093special education supervisors and as dr hamburger mentioned mrs harris is on the call tonight i don't know if she would want to add a word about that but she certainly might i would just like to add a reiterate everything that she said but also add in there for students who might have chapter 15 504 agreements who require special accommodations those as well are individualized and so it would be the same approaches we're taking to individualized education plans in that those individual teams will work out details for those students to ensure that they have appropriate access to education great thanks very much um mr way how about question or item three question three from deanne snelling 380 north view road birdsboro my question is about agenda item 12. the athletic committee report specifically the senior high

094school marching band plan i noticed a significant change in the plan that was posted today the change is that even outside the band is limited to 25 people why is this restriction now in place can you explain the thinking behind it will the athletic teams be following the same restriction of 25 people even outside if not why is the ban following a different plan thank you sure i'm happy to address that that's actually a typographical error we apologize for that it should have said 250 uh so outside just as the state requires it's 250 um it has not been reduced to 25 25 is applicable to indoor spaces so our apologies for having that typographical error but we will have that corrected and when item 12 is discussed we'll reiterate that okay mr mr uh

095mr where next comment question six comes from rebecca lapic a french teacher hi one of my own children in a different district are asked to quarantine because someone in their class tests positive am i also expected to quarantine and vice versa i would i would respond the same way as i did to the previous question and i think uh mr way any questions that come up regarding quarantine the answer will be that we will uh comply fully with the department of health guidelines in terms of reporting protocols and notifications very good thanks dr minor question seven comes from mallory hoffman the executive director of the exeter community library hello will the entire school close down if a single student or teacher tests positive for covid what will happen to that teacher's class i i guess

096that's the same question we just answered sorry about that question eight comes from beth cassis 217 poplar drive reading pa and it's it's multi-part so i will start reading it and we'll see how far we get so while the plan states that there will be a virtual option for students who prefer not to be in school buildings there's absolutely no information about the virtual option what will the virtual option entail and how will it be implemented how will the virtual option be offered in the fall be better than what was offered in the spring when will this information about the virtual option be made available so that parents can make a decision of in-person versus virtual if a student chooses in in person that gets into school and realizes they can't handle their restrictions will

097they be able to switch to virtual immediately the plan mentions collaboration between transportation department schools and parents what exactly is this supposed to look like and what is the intention the plan indicates seating on the buses to two students per seat how is this any different than what is already in place especially for the older and likely larger students why is social distancing made out to be so critical in the school buildings but not on the school bus masks are being required for the entire bus ride some students are on the bus for a long time my own children have been known to spend up to an hour on the bus i believe this is far too long for a child to be wearing a mask what accommodations are going to be made for children

098who cannot wear a mask for an hour what transportation accommodations will be made for students that are exempt from wearing a mask at all the plan indicates that cafeterias will be positioned for limited seating and new seating plans are being developed what specifically will this look like how are the various lunch periods going to be accommodated the plan indicates alternate serving methods will be utilized meaning what specifically the plan indicates alternate scheduling for lunch periods or staggering meal times i'm unclear how this can be achieved last year my kids were already eating lunch at 10 20 in the morning because so many kids in the high school they need to spread lunch periods out how is an alternate lunch schedule going to work according to the plan students would be allowed to wash hands before

099and after a meal is extra time going to be allocated to the schedule to allow each student to do this keeping in mind the required social distancing the plan states classroom seating will be three to six feet apart to ensure social distancing my understanding was the appropriate distance is six feet why is three feet even being considered what will the new classroom set look like will how will it affect class size are students allowed to remove their mask at their desks if no why the plans indicate that spaces and procedures for movement throughout the school will be evaluated and structurally adjusted to promote social distancing how is this going to be done shouldn't this be in place before the year starts what will the typical student day look like for both the in-person and virtual

100options why eliminate the use of playgrounds for the younger students all summer we've been on playgrounds in our neighborhoods and even gatherings at community pools keeping the children off playground equipment during the much anticipated recess periods does not make sense and equates to punishment the plan says to limit the number of people in the hallways how exactly the plan mentions classroom sign sign outs but isn't this already in place how are class sign outs going to be coordinated for classrooms in the same wing of a building the plan indicates the limitation of restrictions of locker use how exactly are students required to carry all of their materials around with them all day arrival and departure times are indicated to be staggered please be more specific classroom transitions will be staggered how the plan stipulates social

101distancing in classrooms meaning in a meaning what in addition to the seating arrangements excuse me um this question is going on for a significant amount of time and it looks like it's maybe a couple more pages is that correct that is correct um you know i think it's exceeding our our generally accepted limit for public comment uh i mean i'm sure these are excellent questions that need to be given some consideration certainly need to be reviewed by our administration our team but i think for the purposes of our board meeting i think we should accept you know the uh the document and um and move on does anyone have an objection to that okay dave i would say that we would accept the document but that we would also be a response i mean i

102i don't think those questions are inappropriate i think that uh the majority of people um may have those questions and i'll just refer back to something that dr miner said earlier is that we are going to rely on the department of health to assist us in a number of these issues particularly related to the virus but again my personal experience with the doh is they're not going to answer the phone on the first ring so i think they're legitimate questions i don't think that you're asking i don't think you're dismissing them at all by doing this but i do think that it's appropriate that we do respond to those questions because they're legit now i think like any other public comment you know if a person has a real lengthy comment they they they preface

103it you know at a board meeting and they hand the document over to the school board and essentially that's what we're we're doing we're accepting the document as it was portrayed and we're and we're going to move on next question may i address um just a couple of the points because i think they may come up in future questions okay please and in terms of uh mr japina's comment about the the department of health i did want to make the board aware that there's actually a berks county tracker lead um regarding um you know the specifics around quarantining and notifications and those sorts of things actually i called her today regarding our football player uh she did pick up immediately we had a lengthy conversation so while you know i i don't disagree with mr

104drupina that at the state level doh can be difficult to get in touch with um there is a local berks county person who's been extremely receptive to superintendent so i'm hopeful that we'll see um better responses regarding those things in terms of um the health and safety plan versus the virtual option i just wanted to reiterate because i think it's a question a lot of people have tonight is about the health and safety plan specifically and the virtual option will be described in detail at august the question about flexibility between the two um that's a paramount importance to us and we will allow flexibility between the two environments i do want to also address the transportation question because this is one that the department of education has come out and i think a lot of

105people have questions about they have um put forth the guidance that two students to a seat uh siblings seated together wherever possible um and front rows left open wherever possible and miss skydish is working with the transportation team to reevaluate bus routes where two to a seat isn't possible um and as far as um you know whether or not students will have to wear masks again we i think this is an important question it's come up a lot in the comments that we've received we will adhere to all the department of health guidelines which say that everyone has to wear a mask if they can't distance for at least six feet unless they have an ada compliant disability in which case um they'll have an individualized plan um regarding that and then the other topic

106i just wanted to make sure that i addressed was the three feet versus six feet the the state has been clear that six feet is uh whenever feasible and at that distance uh people can remove their masks but the american academy of pe of pediatrics the world health organizations and others have indicated that three feet of distance is um a safe distance for students in classrooms when masks are being worn so i think those were questions that i've heard from others and i just wanted to address and certainly um if the entire list is submitted i'd be more than happy to include them as part of an faq dr miner do you anticipate maybe at some point like an uh frequently asked questions um area on our website that might be helpful for folks okay

107um mr way next question please or comment uh question nine some of the questions have been addressed the first the first comment was if you cannot meet in person for school board meetings then why are we opening schools for face-to-face i i can also address that uh question as well um right now the governor has indicated that you know you can't have more than 25 people in closed space for this period of time and so a school board meeting i think this evening we have um you know somewhere in the realm of 200 or more participants and so we would be unable to um to have this meeting in that environment under the current directives the the last part of that question and this question comes from jen dixon of 29 hearthstone drive was how

108will you guarantee the safety of my children and teachers yeah well i would i would say to that that we as uh school entities are never able to guarantee the safety of anyone and i don't think anyone can guarantee the safety of anyone in any circumstance what we can guarantee is that uh i as the superintendent our administrative staff our teachers our support staff everyone who works in the exeter township school district is committed to student staff and community health safety and well-being and that's the guarantee that we can make that will continue that level of commitment but beyond that there are no guarantees question 10 comes from yesenia rivera 1802 butter lane what will it look like for buses and drop off for school and social distance for high school it's a great question

109it's one of the questions that i'm working with mr campbell miss harris is working with mr campbell the skydish is working with mr campbell um we are looking and all of our schools what drop off and pick up looks like we're considering whether or not we need to have additional drop off times earlier in the morning staggered drop off times working with the police department on traffic flow issues those sorts of things so we recognize that one of the challenges is going to be drop off and pick up that's always a challenge uh it's a particular challenge in this environment but we're considering the redeployment of staff as well as staggered schedules and community partnerships in terms of addressing that question 11 comes from jocelyn gearick 54 warwick court how do you expect to safely

110manage several thousand students in your buildings some of which are rather small and already crammed when we're still having meetings online and by our own admission at the start of this meeting we're not able to publicly me i don't know if there was an end part of that uh mr way but again i would i would just reiterate that the governor came out with new guidance regarding uh in-person meetings over the summer a large part of the intention as stated by the governor and i would encourage everyone to go back if they haven't watched it and watch his address from last thursday was that by you know adhering to social distancing guidance uh at this point in the summer mass squaring not convening large meetings in indoor spaces the hope is that we'll be able

111to get the virus under control to the extent that schools can open safely so we're participating as part of the goal-oriented solution that the governor asked all groups to adhere to question 12 comes from nicole warren 56 sycamore drive could you please explain why paraprofessional hours are being cut during a pandemic you'd think that you would increase the hours of your paraprofessionals i've heard the rife and paraprofessionals are losing one hour for math support these children will need additional support after losing quarter of a year last year and facing a challenge again at the beginning of the school year my children will not be going to in-person school as i will protect them and the staff at the school why aren't you providing a hybrid model like other school districts in berks county or montgomery

112county i'm currently researching different options for my children and i'd like to know more information in regards to the online learning program who will be overseeing this program how will they get support if the teacher is supporting a live class my children should not struggle because i'm keeping them safe at home during a pandemic so again i you know i'm going to keep reiterating because i think it's an important community question the complexities of the virtual option will be laid out in detail at the august 4th education committee meeting um i think there was a beginning part to that question mr way and i apologize it escapes me at the moment uh it was about paraprofessional hours being cut so again paraprofessional hours were cut as part of the budget process um i think the

113further point of the question was how are we going to ensure that students uh continue to learn throughout the pandemic and that we make up for any uh instructional gaps that may have been or be created by the pandemic that is the fundamental responsibility and duty of schools is to make sure that all students learn uh and make make appropriate progress towards proficiency and attain proficiency so we have a variety of methodologies to do that a variety of staff members and specialists to do that and we're confident that with the cutting hours we're able to maintain our level of instructional excellence and support all students who might have deficits as a result of the closure or for any other reason question 13 comes from emily noel 4506 del mar drive will students of all ages

114be required to wear a mask and will students be required to prove that they have a physical or mental disability that prevents them from wearing a mask yes all students will be required to wear a mask and all students who do not wear a mask will be required to provide ada compliant documentation that they're unable to do so as for uh secretary levine's directive question 14 comes from jocelyn garrick i heard that from another parent and at the beginning of the serve that in the beginning of this meeting that a survey was sent out today i'm a parent of two exeter school-aged children but did not receive the survey so the survey went out via parent link if uh you're watching this site and you didn't get that survey uh please send an email to

115patrick winters the assistant superintendent you can find his uh address on our website and he'll make sure that you get a survey sent to your email directly question 15 comes from jennifer harvey as we discuss equity will there be any ability to donate masks for families children that might need them the ability to have a multiple to have multiple quality mass for each child so that fresh masks are available daily is an important safety issue uh thank you for that question so one of the uh things that we're able to do through our cares grant funding is to purchase additional ppe um as we do in the cases of uh gym sneakers those sorts of things students who aren't able to have adequate supplies or clothes for school we are able to work with those

116families and provide that i would encourage miss harvey and anyone else who's interested in donating to families in need to visit the exeter cares website and or excuse me facebook page the exeter cares group um has rallied around our community to provide a variety of supports and that would be an appropriate venue to um offer additional masks for families who may be in need question 16 comes from evan hartman we will be choosing the virtual option for our child we are thankful that you are having exeter teachers run this program and will most likely steer us away from choosing a different cyber charter option however we'd like to know if there will be a social piece incorporated into this instruction will the students be able to interact with same age peers to continue to encourage

117friendships and social and emotional development also is it possible to take the parent survey if so is it still possible to take the parent survey if so where can i find it we did not find it in emails from etsc and could not find it on the website what precautions will you put in place to protect teachers our teachers are not medical professionals and will not have the same protective gear they'll be exposed to a large number of children of students in crowded classrooms they'll be working with young children who will have different will have a very difficult time with these mandates how are you planning on protecting teachers uh mr way i think there was four parts to that question and um they were they were kind of broad and different so i think

118i might miss one in this um in terms of the virtual option again we'll go into the details of that on august 4th uh in terms of social interaction with students who participate in virtual be largely dependent on the conditions on the ground at that time um although any student who you know is in any of exeter schools are eligible for any extracurricular opportunities or socialization opportunities that the school sponsors and again that will be um condition dependent um can you can you read me the other parts there was a question about the survey which we we will make sure we um get their name on the list and get them the survey all right the survey is still open so um you can you know mr way is uh able to get your email

119right now so we can get that out to you and then in terms of protecting teachers um the school district uh has purchased uh face shields that that teachers may utilize if they wish in addition to their own masks or instead of their own masks uh in high risk uh situations for instance students and special populations who may not be able to mask or may need assistance with other bodily functions mrs harris will be coordinating with mrs geidis to ensure that higher levels of ppe are provided to those teachers as we're organizing classroom space we are making sure that we have a distance between the teacher and the students in terms of instructional space so protecting our teaching staff is of paramount importance both because they're our employees and our family to a large extent

120as well as um we obviously need teachers to do the very important that work that we have to do with with students so just as protecting student health is is a as a priority it's an absolutely equal priority to protect staff health and we're planning accordingly question 17 comes from john and amy foreign 1010 hartman road could you please clarify the 3-foot minimum isn't the recommendation six feet will there be specific instructions presented to parents and children about entering the school going to lockers going to the bathroom changing classes what date will this information be available we will we know which teachers will be wearing masks so that we can make decisions for our children when we when will we have to make our decision for in-school virtual or virtual learning okay there's again several

121questions there in terms of the three feet versus six feet again as i mentioned previously um the state's been very clear that it's six feet when feasible um but uh distance less than three feet as long as uh everyone involved is wearing a mask is um uh appropriate and again three feet is the guidance from the american academy of pediatrics in the world health organization um and so that will be our minimum that we will um maintain in terms of um whether or not there'll be specific instruction regarding all the procedures and protocols there will be that's part of our planning process we will have instructional videos we'll have a specific professional development trainings handbooks written guidance will communicate in a variety of ways that are age appropriate to make sure that all students understand

122how to keep themselves and others safe in terms of a teacher who's not wearing a mask a teacher who's not wearing a mask will not be providing direct instruction to students unless there is a barrier between that teacher and students the last part of that was when will we have to make a decision for in school or virtual learning thank you mr way um that decision we anticipate sending out uh and asking parents to make that determination will be uh in mid-august so it will be well after the virtual presentation at the education committee meeting question 18 comes from joseph hep 4727 allison road the reasoning that students the reasoning that students on isolated days would gather with one another and increase exposure seems very presumptive and you are only concerned with hours with with

123school hours what about after school what about athletics or community sports students are just as exposed in these settings was this one was this the only reason the a b or alternate day schedule was dismissed the district received high praise for the virtual learning in the spring why not continue that model while we also while also getting our students back in classrooms what are the districts distancing guidelines how many feet can each classroom distance student distance students and teachers six feet for the governor's strong recommendation it seems a good idea a good deal of credibility was given to the governor's anticipation of those of things getting worse is the same consideration being given to social distancing recommendations uh okay so in terms of you know the presumption around people gathering so i just wanted to

124add clarity around that point when uh the mathematica group came out that was the the independent uh research council that the department of education hired to consider virtual models uh in-person models and hybrid models their modeling was dependent on students self-isolating on those off days in order to infer a safety benefit and so um because we recognize that we can't um in any way shape or form ensure that that would happen we don't see a particular safety benefit uh being gained in terms of that hybrid model so that was one of many reasons but another primary reason for not moving forward with the hybrid model was the inability of parents to access child care as well as the inability for our own teachers and staff to access care for their own children who reside in

125the district if they're not being in schools on those days and then the potential of being understaffed as a consequence in terms of um the question about six feet and you know referencing the governor again the department of health the secretary of health has indicated that six feet is the distance at which you need to be separated in order to not wear a mask and masking is required and so again six feet is ideal whenever feasible it would allow students and staff to remove their masks it is exactly that whenever feasible and so that's how we're moving forward and i think maybe there was another question there that i might have missed mr wayne uh i believe you addressed them yes oh i guess the a b question but that was in the hybrid yeah

126all right question 19 is from rochelle mouse 1051 butter lane i'd like to see examples of changes that will be made to classrooms a before and after so to say since i know what my kids kindergarten classroom look like tables not separate desks smaller room in size class size it's too bad they got rid of all those desks last year curious about busing how will how will that be since it was three seats three kids to a seat before are there enough buses and drivers or fewer students in each seat will we have lunch recess specials in classroom or going in to other rooms cleaning regimens and frequency what will the virtual option look like youtube videos similar to last year what about ieps of apparent ops for virtual august 6th august 4th will that

127give parents the opportunity to pick one or the other in enough time before school starts regarding compliancy being late not raising a hand etc isn't generally going to be going to affect students other than non-compliant students this definitely is definitely a whole other ballgame what happens if a student or teacher in the classroom is impelled as self-quarantined how does it look how does it work for that class so many questions thanks yeah there are definitely are so many questions in terms of what classrooms will look like um one of the things that we'll seek to do in our communication is provide you know photographs or you know virtual tours of what those would look like prior to the opening of school in terms of busing as i stated previously the the pennsylvania department of education

128department of health have indicated that it should be two students to a seat on school buses and mrs geidisch is working with her transportation department on adjusting routes in order to be able to make those routes compliant with that guidance in terms of lunch and recess where those will be held and how they will be held its largest school dependent based on the availability for instance for instance of nearby gymnasium space classrooms those sorts of things so that would you know there's not a blanket answer i can give for the whole district because each building is um designed differently we absolutely want to maximize uh recess time we recognize that for students to get out to get fresh air to get exercise to have an opportunity to be distant and and have mass breaks those

129sorts of things is critically important i know there's a question previously about why we are closing uh playground equipment when it's been open um in the communities again you know we don't have any um you know uh jurisdiction over what happens in communities and whether or not playgrounds are open but in a very short period of time in a school hundreds of children can touch the exact same playground equipment versus what you would expect in an open playground environment where there's much uh it's much more likely to have fewer children and longer distance between children using it um and in terms of specials and the location of specials at this point you know we're working with our principals uh and talking with our teachers but we're anticipating that um a lot of specials will take

130place in classrooms versus in the uh special room uh due to the uh the structure of those rooms in terms of table seedings etc again the virtual option will be discussed at length ieps for virtual was addressed previously but they will continue to be individualized uh parents will not be asked to choose between the options until after the august 4th presentation about virtual um i'm sorry i'm i can't read my my writing on this next particular one and then again the question was about quarantine and again i'm going to say that we are going to refer to doh so i think there's one that i can't read my writing joe that i might have missed was it the cleaning regiment um the cleaning regimen again are are addressed uh in the plan in terms of

131you know what cleaners we will use and the frequency of cleanings and then i think oh i think the comment was it's a whole other ball game and i wanted to agree completely it's exactly that question 21 comes from joan vicio hello i'm sitting here listening to all of the great questions being asked and i have the same questions and i don't feel we're being informed with very specific information about how the district is going to handle this very real and scary situation we're placing our children in your hands and feel there should be a very specific answer to each and every one and not just the general response that has been given throughout this board meeting how are we supposed to make the decision about sending our kids back to the building or keep

132them home when we're not being informed appropriately if you won't be answering all each and every question in live video that's a terrible shame because i can tell even your teachers and librarians are concerned with with your plans and don't know what's going on this is a shame i don't i don't know if there's a question there was there was that a comment mr way yes uh 22 is from john and amy foreign the doh has a question that says if i'm inside a public place and i can maintain social distancing do i need to wear a mask yes unless you fit one of the exemptions included in section 3 of the order does not apply to school yes this order applies to all students staff and visitors age 2 and older why did you

133say that masks can be off at six feet because that is the guidance that schools have been given that students can take mask breaks and can remove their mask for instance in order to eat their lunch obviously you can't eat with a mask on or to drink water but that needs to be at a six foot distance so we've been given that specific guidance as schools question 23 comes from josh hoyt 4511 edgewood drive what will be the process to determine gaps in learning instruction for students in the district from the spring of 2020 especially students in the primary grades and how will those gaps be addressed in addition to new grade level content for 2021. thank you for all you're doing these are uncharted challenging times and there are no right answers i hope

134you all remain safe and well well thank you i certainly appreciate mr hoyt's well wishes and the recognition that these are indeed very challenging times in terms of assessing student gaps we will do that through the utilization of standards-based assessments we have invested in expanding the use of the um star computer adaptive assessment system which uh targets uh specific standards for students and will be utilizing that information comparing it to last year and designing instructional programs well also in terms of just moving everybody forward once we have that review of standards and the potential gaps look at addressing power standards and refining and streamlining our curriculum so that we can ensure that gaps are made up for and we continue to move students um ahead in terms of proficiency so in short it will be

135a careful combination of uh individual student assessment system assessment and then individual student plans as well system plans regarding curriculum revisions question 24 comes from jocelyn garrick do you have any concerns that ppe will not be able to be obtained for the school year due to increasing needs and shortages of ppes in hospital settings as an icu nurse working directly with cova during this pandemic i can tell you that i have been deprived of proper ppe and needed to ensure my own safety how can you guarantee our staff an underprivileged population proper ppe throughout this entire pandemic thank you that's a very very important question mrs geidis has been working on already obtaining and storing ppe as well as cleaners and disinfectants etc so we are stockpiling them uh in advance in terms of opening

136and the needs around opening we'll continue to purchase them throughout the year in the event that at some point we would find ourselves unable to secure appropriate ppe or disinfectant that would be a situation in which i would utilize the resolution and order schools closed until we were able to ensure that we had adequate ppe and disinfecting materials question 25 comes from joan vicio in addition to all the great questions everyone has asked so far that i hope are truly answered with very specific information i have this question you've talked about all you've talked at all about you haven't talked at all about the schools how the schools will be clean throughout the day and each night to prepare for the next day what are your specific plans to keep everything clean and everything safe

137thank you yeah it's an extremely important question there's certainly details of it in our plan uh mrs gaidish would you like to make any comment about your plans uh in terms of increasing um cleaning protocols that sort of thing i'll just say make a few comments [Music] facility department will strive to comply with all cdc recommendations uh regarding cleaning disinfectant you know in regard to covid19 obviously we'll continue our routine cleaning and disinfecting but the emphasis will be placed on cleaning frequently touched services and objects which would include but are not limited to door knobs and handles stair rails classroom desks and chairs lunchroom tables and chairs countertops handrails light switches handles on equipment push buttons on vending machines shared equipment computer equipment and other high contact surfaces i mean there will be a more

138rigorous cleaning in staff and student bathrooms and again we will remain flexible and we'll work with building administrators to focus on the resources we have and trying to you know keep those high touch and high traffic areas clean thank you mrs coach question 20 26 comes from raina bolick and it addresses the question of will students in the virtual option be able to have in-person extracurricular activities if they're comfortable spending smaller amounts of time in school with a smaller group of students our extracurricular activities being curtailed or redesigned in any way due to current health guidelines thank you so much for addressing these questions during a very challenging time absolutely it's an excellent question and i think it's one of the important um things that that our community needs to understand and know when students

139are in our exeter township virtual school they are exeter students and so they are available to access all things exeter including our extracurricular uh activities and our athletics um in terms of what what curtailments may be required those will be specific to the activity whether or not that activity can be conducted under doh guidelines such as our athletics plan we'll hear later tonight about our band reopening plan and so those will be individually dependent on the nature of the activity but absolutely one of the things that's incredibly important to us again why we're so pleased to be working with our teachers association while we're while we're so pleased to be offering our own virtual option is to really keep our kids connected not only to our curriculum but to our school as a whole which

140of course is very importantly inclusive of our extracurricular activities question 27 comes from bill kaufman 32 longview drive since there are restrictions on shared surfaces will students be allowed to bring water bottles if they are attending in school can't wait for the kids to be back in school well thank you mr kaufman you and me both um you know whenever that occurs i i am very much looking forward to and excited to meet the students in exeter that is one group that i have not gotten to interact at all yet with and i am i'm extremely eager to do so uh in terms of water bottles and and water in general that's very important consideration and it's one that again dr hubbard our consultant for writing pediatrics really wanted the school to focus on and

141we have schools are required to provide potable water free of charge to students and yet uh bubbling water fountains like the kind we have in most school settings are considered to be uh health hazards in the pandemic and so we will be uh turning off or closing access to our school water fountains when possible we are going to be using grant funds to replace those water fountains with water dispensing systems that allow students to use refilling water bottles and and we will absolutely encourage families to send water bottles in with their students either full or empty that can be filled using those filling stations for families who can't afford the bottles or who forget or don't bring in water will also be providing access to bottled water as needed to ensure student safety regarding access

142to water and the safety around water fountains so thank you that's an important question and consideration question 28 comes from nikki warren 56 sycamore drive teachers have used many of the best practices in the classroom such as but not limited to guided reading guided math small group cooperation collaboration manipulatives hands-on learning experiments etc how do you expect your teachers to participate in the best practices that are backed with studies if your teachers need to keep a six foot distance or three foot distance from students it's it's a terrific question and there isn't a good answer to it um you know as an educational leader i place very high value on small group instructional practices particularly guided reading and guided math cooperative instruction cooperative work among students and it is one of those sacrifices that is

143being made um everywhere in education right now in the interest of public health uh on either the virtual um school setting or in the in-person setting there is definitely a loss in terms of not being able to you know be in in close proximity to students um it is it's it's something that i that brings me uh particular sadness because i've spent a good portion of my career focusing on and working with teachers around guided reading and so we're going to be working hard with our reading specialists our instructional specialists uh to think about what are ways that we can solve the same problems in terms of student learning needs in different environments and in different settings and we will all look forward to the day when we can return to the guided reading table

144and recruit more turn to cooperative learning it is fundamental to what schools do and it is um it's one of the you know many uh disappointments that have come along with this pandemic is that we won't be able to engage in that in the way we have in the past question 29 comes from patients foresight 115 rugby road providing that students do resume to in full to full-time in-person status will upcoming seventh grade students be given the opportunity to tour the junior high prior to start to school starting yeah it's a great question and that question actually pertains to the transition at every level of our school district our principles have been very much aware of those transition activities and what they've done in the past they are working as a collaborative group to talk

145about in-person and virtual options in terms of planning for transition so uh in our principal subgroup uh transition at every level is is a priority and you'll be hearing more from the building principles regarding that thank you dr hamburger i believe that was the last question thank you and that's just about we just got in just under an hour so thank a great job dr miner i mean you mentioned to me that you have been laser focused on these issues and the development of this plan and it it is very clear to me that you and your team have thought about this as thoroughly as you can i mean it there are so many obvious situations that are just going to be very difficult to really kind of understand the impact until we actually go

146through it but i think you you've done is a phenomenal job and i want to thank you for your comments your response uh excellent and and the work of your your team um thank you dr hemberger i i greatly appreciate that and i do want to um really say um you know there there's no possible way that i could have answered the questions this evening or written this plan without the tremendous help and support of all of those people listed in those groups and subgroups i i couldn't be more proud more pleased by the dedication the thoughtfulness um of all of the people who have been involved and all those people who have expressed interest in being involved so um they made me all uh make me be able to to present the way i

147was tonight because of their hard work their dedication so yeah thank you i also want to thank all those folks who took the time to submit questions i mean um i i thought uh virtually all those questions were relevant important and i think will serve as a good foundation for us to kind of build from when we start to refine the plan dave i'd like to ask one question uh of dr uh minor um you know the healthcare's the backbone of the healthcare system are nurses and um i'd be curious to know um what actions we've under taken to either educate and or prepare our nurses and what are we looking in terms of uh potential additional resources because everybody in every school is going to be looking to that clinical professional for guidance and

148support emotional support and all kinds of stuff and i'm just wondering what we've done on that end thank you mr giupina again an extremely important question and i'm very pleased to share that our nurses were abundantly helpful throughout this process extremely willing to share have spent a good portion of the time since the pandemic educating themselves attending conferences uh we have nurses who actually have worked in hospital settings with covid patients who are very familiar with the pandemic in other clinical settings um and we're committed to continuing to support our nurses educate our nurses um you know and and listen to their feedback uh as we move through this process i've been extremely pleased i'm all i'm going to give mrs harris as the um the director who directly oversees uh nurses an opportunity to

149say a few words about what she's seen on the ground so far and the plans moving forward with the nurses so the nurses participated in the initial planning pieces of developing the plan but now they're also continuing on as a sub sub group of this plan and meeting with me and meeting with building administrators to continue working on the details of our plans moving forward i will say i agree with you i think um you know a lot of folks feel the burden of this responsibility and certainly nurses are at the core of feeling that burden of responsibility but i will say we are not expecting our nurses to be covet experts they're not expected to diagnose or test or anything like that for covid19 they are simply responsible for being educated on the symptoms

150and the cdc guidance as it relates to health practitioners within the school setting and that's the work that we're doing with them and relying on their expertise in terms of helping us develop procedures and protocols that are consistent throughout the district in terms of developing isolation areas and responding to issues as they arise folks it's uh about ten after nine i'm going to suggest we take a five minute break um and just leave everything in place um maybe uh mute your your mics and future video and we'll return at precisely 9 15 for the remainder of our meeting thank you so foreign okay i've got 9 15 um hoping that we have our board members back um i don't see everyone's face yet but i see people coming on board do we have mr fiddler

151oh there's mr fiddler okay so we're back um let's get back on track with our agenda thanks everybody um just want to um move back into our board agenda and we are in section five and um this is a school board resolution um and i'll just i'm not going to read through it but i will preface my statements by just saying that the resolution is an anti-racist school climate resolution it's a resolution supporting the development of an anti-racist school climate that would be adopted by the uh the board of school directors and i think it had been referenced in the presentation um by dr mcclendon can i when you're done can i say a couple things about it oh sure sure um i do and and um i'm gonna make a i'm gonna make a

152recommendation uh i'm gonna make a motion and then at the conclusion or during that discussion period of time dr mcclendon feel free to to make your comments as well as anyone else so um let me just um reiterate by saying that the uh it's the recommendation of the board of school directors to approve the resolution the resolution supporting the development of an anti-racist school climate which includes the development of an equity committee i'll second that is there any discussion yes um i just i know it's long and we're not reading it but i just pulled a couple of things from it that i i think were important to mention okay that it it's basically overall goal is to support an anti-racism climate and a few things from there is is the statement that racism ha

153racism and hate have no place in our school in society and that we want to build partnerships in the community focus on overcoming racism and other barriers and we as a board must look at our own school policies and practices through an anti-racist and anti-i mean anti-racist and equity lens and part of this this resolution includes uh letting listing the things the action steps and so the things that were mentioned earlier in our presentation for our equity group with those goals they were attached to the bottom of this to let uh you know inform psba of what our district plans plans to do um so okay that's what i wanted to you know there's other things that people can read but those were some things that i thought were really important thanks dr mclennan oh

154and one other thing i just want to say um a number a lot of districts this is went out to all 500 school districts of course and there are a lot of a lot of uh huge number of school districts that have already adopted it so we are joining that you know the other districts and doing this and i and i think the one thing that we've uh that has been um a part of this of this resolution incorporate some of the goals that have been established locally by our um our own equity um and diversity uh committee so um i i think those are included in the last paragraph of uh of the document and i just want to say one more thing i forgot i had pulled this out as you know rep

155congressman john lewis passed away a few days ago he was a giant in the civil rights movement and um i i like this quote because it actually speaks to the anti-racism um resolution but he said if you see something that is not right not fair not just you have a moral obligation to do something about it and so i think by us adopting this resolution we're taking that mindset you know of what what can we do um with is there any further discussion i i just want to thank the folks that have been working on this uh hunter and ann and curie and sharon i mean the whole board is interested but those guys clearly have been carrying the water in terms of organizing this work and i am thankful for your efforts any further

156discussion all in favor say aye aye aye aye opposed any abstentions no motion motion character characters now i want to i want to turn to hurry and jerry i know that uh you know we were discussing the um designation of our committee and giving it a formal uh status associated with this operation um do you want to walk us through a motion that would clarify the status of the this committee sure so um we you know based on all we've already had a presentation about it already the new the name of the new committee uh is going to be the equity and excellence at exeter uh committee and this is going to be a basically set up as a citizens action group uh for the for this school district under policy 905 so um i

157would like to uh make a motion to make the equity and excellence at exeter a a citizen's action group for the exeter school district under policy 9.05 we have a motion and a second any discussion uh jerry just uh just out of curiosity i mean how are you defining that group um what's the what's the role what is what's the yeah yeah i i assume it doesn't have any necessarily it has moral authority um more than anything else correct it's moral is this a whole pile of things i mean we went over the whole presentation there's a lot of things involved and even trying to make sure there's equity in in terms of uh the the employees um understanding of even the teachers having an understanding of equity even some of the areas of curriculum

158uh we're trying to get into detail about that so every kid and every you know you know lgbtq uh all types of areas for which our school district uh you know has you know kids involved in these areas they will all be uh represented in in some sort of way so it's a full it's a very large scope but we're feeling that it's going to definitely make a very big difference in our school district and how we look at our even how our teachers interact with our kids so that's a very very large type of scope but it's going to be focused in in certain areas all right can i just say that i know last month when i had mentioned this and it was suggested that we do a citizens advisory group and i

159i was under the impression that that was just going to be like a communication and talking group and so uh yes is this going to be like a moral you know authority or is what you said and really it you know it's all those things that he mentioned but we we are an action group and those goals that were listed there and the goals that we came up with are things that we plan to look at know get a plan need some kind of action so i'm i was against the citizens advisory but you know now i understand that that doesn't limit you know what we can do as as a district and because of the people that we have on our committee you know we have we're going to be doing some some work

160so i'm excited about this i appreciate uh you know i guess hopefully you guys will vote for it and get this thing going uh but there's a lot of things that we have planned for the school district and i think it's going to work very well for for everybody and i'd like to thank everybody that's involved thanks jerry any further discussion okay all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed any abstentions motion carries okay we're going to move on to the item six and our board agenda and this is uh two sets of um word minutes one is the board workshop minutes of june 16th in the board voting minutes of uh june 23rd it's recommended the school uh board of school directors approve uh those two sets of minutes second any discussion all

161in favor say aye aye aye any opposed any abstentions the motion carries the treasurer's report item 7 um 7a treasurer's report it's recommended that the board of school directors approve the treasurer's report for june of 2020. second any discussion all in favor say aye hi hi hi aye the opposed any abstentions motion carries item 7b payment requests it's recommended the board of school directors approved payment requests for a period of time uh june 24 2020 to july 21st 2020. second any discussion all in favor say aye any opposed any abstentions motion carries school board policy um we have two sections here um the first section policies listed a through g are policies that have been subject to our initial first reading um they sat for 30 days and now they are up for final approval

162uh they include policy 103 and non-discrimination uh discriminatory harassment school and classroom practices another policy 103.1 non-discrimination qualified students with disabilities 104 non-discrimination discriminatory harassment for employment practices 105 curriculum 108 textbooks and and 138 language and instruction educational programs for english learners um as well as uh admission of students policy 201. um so i move that the board approve policies listed a through g in the agenda exactly we have a motion in a second any discussion about any of these policies dave i have a question on policy 103 and this is probably more for ellis but not too long ago he had shared with us a court uh ruling regarding uh mahanoi city high school and it had to do with the behavior of the student outside of the classroom and so um when i

163looked at uh believe it was policy 103 um there were you know some uh there was some information in there that we would be monitoring a you know a behavior student outside of the classroom you know if they said things you know outside of school or in some sort of a setting that was not school oriented that that would be a factor in the execution of the elements of this policy and i'm wondering if ellis has an opinion on that mike i'm not i'm looking at uh policy and i guess i'm not seeing specifically what it is you're referencing so okay hang on i'll i'll see if i can uh come up with it but i believe that um see uh hey mike can i just jump in for a second yep you know i

164i kind of think one of the things you're referencing is a recent court um decision whereby that what was formerly viewed as a nexus between what happened outside of school and in school particularly with harassment that might be related to the use of the internet uh we used to have some control school just had some control if we could if we could identify it it represented a significant disruption to the school um operation and i think and ellis i think you're probably familiar with this that that was over overturned or at least there was a ruling on that and sort of took away the district's control over that um that element where districts could actually sanction or discipline students for maybe some behavior that rose to that level it might am i yeah no no

165that's that's exactly what i'm referring to if you go to paragraph four under authority in that document uh that we're looking at it says that they would report such incidences to designated employees even if some elements of the related incident took place or originated away from school grounds school activity or school conveyance conveyances so if i recall and again i'm not i could be wrong on this but if i recall the opinion that ellis shared with us that was a student who made a statement in social media while not involved in a school activity or event and the court found on her behalf is that correct so the the um the rulings still required some nexus between some substantial disruption to the school setting before the school could even consider taking any action against an

166individual for off school misconduct and i have the case in front of us in front of me right now and i still believe that the fundamentals of that uh ruling are still viable but essentially um the court made it clear that the disruption's got to be substantial uh before anything that occurs school premises can be uh considered uh as a basis for student discipline so what i'm saying is that this says that that um so that any what would occur some discriminatory discriminatory activity that would occur outside of school the district could still act on provided that there was that substantial disruption so the real issue is how do we define substantial disruption that's right so the policy has to be interpreted in a way that's consistent with the uh the first amendment protections that

167the student have it doesn't preclude consideration but it's got to be consistent with the first amendment protections thank you i mean mike i think we you know some of our internet policies you know and and student use of technology policies might be more applicable um you know this one isn't but this is another policy too that um i i will say i heard something recently from our administration that this may be um this may be further refined this is one of the policies that we were trying to catch up on and have been revised um you know since the 2017 series of policies that we got so this was a this came from psba from 2018 there may be a 2020 revision that we see so we're going to pass it um we're going to

168move to the next um um and then and then and then when the new policy comes into them we'll we'll kind of incorporate that one and revise that one again okay yeah uh where were we are we still in the discussion phase here i think we may have been or we did we vote on this already i apologize okay so any further discussion all in favor say aye any opposed any abstentions motion carries okay we're going to move down to um policies h i j k l m in the agenda and these are for first reading and because we didn't have our um our workshop meeting i'm going to spend a little bit of time you know with each one of these and i'll just describe a little bit about what each one of these

169policies entails at least the modifications to these policies so bear with me here and stop me anywhere along the way if you have any questions policy 150 is title 1 comparability of services this is a new policy um and um it's been um it's necessary to kind of well you know it basically includes a statement that articulates the method of determination for school entities to to demonstrate compliance you know with this uh with comparability of title one services um so according to pde school entities can use a staff to student ratio or a previous year per pupil expenditures to determine title 1 comparability whichever works in their favor so this sort of clarifies the standard whereby we establish comparability of services in title 1 and dr winters is i think if i'm not mistaken dr

170winters you're responsible for um overseeing you know title one in general the title programs i don't know if you had any other thoughts about this or whether this is something that um you've dealt with previously um yes so thank you dr hamburger yes my department uh does oversee title services uh there's a comparability report that needs to be submitted um each year to the state um which we submit and we use the student-to-staff ratio method um in exeter to determine comparability and um every year i've been here and my understanding is even prior to we've never had um issues meeting comparability in the district great thank you um policy 204 evidence folks might recall that the compulsory school age definition was changed compulsory school age was previously defined as ages 8 through 17. the change

171was made to ages 6 to 18. so school attendance is mandatory starting at 8 up to 18 years old and so the policy has also been modified for that reason and to update uh to make some updates in terms of uh some consistency and terminology um the policy will also include some optional sign-off statements um and then some information about you know excusal from school um and some some rationale for that circumstances related to homelessness and foster care there's one section in this policy that was modified we're going to have to go back and include it the administration had eliminated some language from section 9.9 a and b um and that language is actually embedded in school code so we're going to have to go back you'll see that in red in the policy we're

172going to go back and and and put that back in um during this after the first reading here so you'll see that change in in the first reading policy 208 withdrawal from school again updated to reflect new compulsory school age definition 209 the health examinations and screening and has to do with you know special examinations for students where it appears that a student has been identified as deviating from the normal growth and development by our school health staff so um you know the uh there's some language that addresses that also some language added that uh makes it required that when there's a reasonable suspicion of of any type of uh child abuse that there's a um there's a requirement to to report um there's also a component of this that has to do with disclosing

173information from health records to appropriate parties in connection with an emergency uh if the knowledge of the information is necessary to protect the health and safety of the student so that's a kind of a ferpa modification that's essential in in only cases of extreme emergency where exposing that kind of information is really necessary for this safety of the student or others policy 210.1 is an update on the possession and administration of asthma inhalers and epinephrine auto injectors it includes a definition of some definition updates and also some clarification for the possession and administration of asthma inhalers and epinephrine auto injectors um it also uh includes statements uh from the school nurse i that the student can demonstrate the capacity for self-administration of an of an inhaler or an injector and also a written acknowledgement from

174the student that they've received instructions for that administration uh finally the 2000 or 239 policy foreign exchange students um you know this has been modified to comply to information in terms of complying with the district's enrollment process which includes the administration of a home language survey um and you know this uh also requires assessment uh identification of of english language english learners which are called now and used to refer to these programs as esl um english language instruction now it's referred to differently as language instruction education program which is liep so those were some modifications made to this existing you know foreign exchange policy that um were necessary to kind of bring them up to um to speed with the the codes so i'm recommending that um we um the board uh approve um you

175know policies listed in the agenda um h through m for first reading i'll accept a second second click it thank you sorry to put you guys to sleep any of this any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed trancarries that was hunter's fault he's like the youngest guy here you should be right now they should have been on top of that for sure i'm trying to share with everybody well so hunter it's uh your opportunity now burst business functions mr ahrens yeah thank you dr hamburger um so the first agenda item is going to be a recommendation to extend the acceptance the acceptance of expla i can't even talk of x flex receipts through the 17th of july this is a retroactive approval and the reason for that was delays and appointments and

176other such issues due to the statewide closure from the coronavirus so i'll just read it formally it is recommended that the board of school directors will ask the submission of x flex receipts through july 17 2020 through reimbursement due to the delay in medical dental and eye appointments caused by statewide closure second during discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions motion carries the next one uh it is recommended the board school directors approves the submission of plan con part k to the pennsylvania department of education for general obligation bonds series 2020 issued for the current refunding of the general obligation bonds series 2013 2015 a and 2015 b uh and correct me if i'm wrong here but basically this is reporting the bonds that we just issued as a refinance for

177the previous series that was just approved i believe it was at the the may meeting um and that we executed on in june is that correct that's correct second any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye when you oppose motion carries okay board docs pro as many of us received in our report from dr minor there is a desire for the administration to begin using the board docs pro program i reviewed it myself and i believe that there are some future ready things that are going to be of benefit to our administration and preparing not only the agendas but also board policies for the board and beyond that having a better cataloging of many of the documents and i i can say personally that i will really take advantage of that myself rather than

178having to search through and remember which agenda certain things were approved on you know i do want to make one comment which is just that i just want to stress to our administration and i'm not questioning uh whether um they're going to be using this one because i think and believe that they will be but we just want to be cognizant that we are investing money into many of these software programs this being a good example and we want to be sure that we're using them to the full capacity because there are cheaper options available so dr miner has demonstrated to my satisfaction that this will be used in a productive way to better support the board and the district so i will recommend that the board of school directors approves an amendment to the

179board docs end user agreement to utilize board docs pro at an annual fee of ten thousand five hundred dollars second any discussion i would also say that since we've had board docs i've been on the board about seven years i think it really has at least made information available to the public in a much more timely manner in a much more comprehensive manner and i think that that really reinforces the point that we are as transparent as we can be with information sometimes you just have to know where to look and board docs makes it relatively easy to look for that information any further discussion all in favor say aye any opposed any abstentions motion carries is recommended the board of school directors approves budget transfers in the amount of eighty nine thousand six hundred

180thirty dollars second any discussion all in favor say aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries so before i go further into this next one we all know that i can talk for a long time and i know that we are here uh later than we usually like to be this morning so i'm gonna try and be as brief as possible with this basically what this question and conversation is is about whether or not to issue new money as a part of our next bond refinancing so setting aside the new money issue for a quick second the next bond refinancing poses an opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of dollars for the district similar to what we just did in may and it's going to be important that we in my opinion carry that out as soon

181as possible and i think our current timeline has that decision being made at the august voting meeting a part of that conversation is also this being a good time to discuss and potentially issue new monies for the capital projects that we anticipate in the next three years and then also how that affects projects until we really see a drop off of our debt in 2029 2030 school year so there are really a couple of different issues here but i'm going to narrow them to two really um the first one is whether or not we should issue new money just generally speaking uh and what i want to say about that really quick is that we have a number of projects that we know we need to meet the commitment for these have to do with

182hvac uh different safety issues um roof replacements so these these are not in in what i would say optional uh maintenance issues we know that based on our current funds and the estimates that kcba has done for us and that they've redone for us several times that these projects will not be afforded without additional funding that comes from three places the general fund the capital fund or new monies from bond issues and if we are not going to create large budget deficits year over year just due to increasing our capital commitments in the general fund then we need to find somewhere else to get this money thereby the best place being as we currently see it is the option to borrow new monies in this next bond pre-issue so that that's the first point the

183second point is how much should we borrow what the administration has been able to report back is that our bond council is advising us that we need to have general um use of about 85 percent of those funds within the three years after the bond is is issued and the money received we have a list here that's attached in the agenda of projects that amount to i think about 3.6 million with some change um that would be able to fit within that within those parameters um the i think and and and or can correct me if i'm wrong uh the recommendation of the administration at this point is to borrow for those projects that can be accomplished in the next three years so about 3.6 million dollars there is also in that decision should we

184borrow less um you know i will make a case for the fact that i think we should borrow less um it'll enable us it'll force us to better prioritize our projects and then also try and be as competitive in our bidding processes as possible i would suggest 2.5 million dollars but i will vote for the issuance of new money up to 3.6 if that's the way the rest of the board would like to move um i can certainly try and answer any questions i know ann and kim are are far more capable than i am of answering any questions that you may have but the discussion tonight should really be oriented to two questions that each board member should probably want to try and answer our weigh-in on the first being should we borrow new

185money and the second one being how much should that be so i will leave it my comments at that there will be further opportunity to discuss this at the august meetings and i think we're just looking for a general indication of where the board's feeling is right now so hunter i would say that in a discussion that we had a business function and thank you for coordinating that and getting uh jamie from pfm to uh present to us one of the things that he had mentioned is that um you know you would typically short term picks that have uh um so when i look at the 11 projects here and i'm going to use it instead of you know short-term long-term i'm going to use a a capital figure so i'm going to say anything

186over 100 000 9 of those 11 projects are over a hundred thousand dollars and all of them are things that you know in effect we have to do and we've already done the turf redo but um so um hey mike i'm i'm having a lot of breakup with you right now [Music] we're losing you mike yeah i should probably turn off his background [Music] okay so while mike's getting itself together um are there any other comments um relative to the topic of of uh adding adding to our debt i'd just like to say that i participated in that business functions committee as well and we had a lively discussion and again thanks hunter for helping to facilitate that uh you know we do have some uh you know important decisions to make um and there

187are some things that that need to happen before we get there obviously but we've we've been um delaying the the development of a transportation center and and and that is that's certainly going to be an expense that i anticipate within the next two years i hope um you know there are there are plans that are contingent upon approvals at the township level level that uh will help you know decide the ultimate outcome and fate of this but um clearly this is going to be a a you know a project that will prob represent probably one of the the biggest cost of those of that list um probably somewhere in the range of between three and four million dollars somewhere in that in that ballpark there's also been conversations about our our administration building and um

188in the fact that right now we're using a uh you know an old elementary school that has been um you know basically converted um you know for the purposes of offices but hasn't really been touched or changed with any substantial in any substantial way since it's since it was built um and it and it it is um and it's it's really not an appropriate environment for an administration not only that but it clearly is inefficient when it comes to energy use um we're heating up and cooling a building that is designed for at least 500 students and uh right now we have about 25 to 30 staff members that occupy that building so you know clearly we're not using that building appropriately and it really it would make so much sense to um to make

189some modifications in that building and also try to use whatever available space would be after consolidating some of the office space and trying to put it in a smaller section of the building trying to use that building creatively maybe to be used by the community or maybe even profitably by the school district to offer some space to to companies and corporations that might need you know small office space in our area so um those are some major projects that i see that are in addition to this that would suggest to me that while money is as inexpensive as we know that it is right now in terms of borrowing uh probably one among the lowest you know rates that we've seen in years that uh as mike will probably say when he gets back on

190you know that a lot of smart smart companies are really taking advantage of of um this economic climate to be able to kind of um find ways to to start tomorrow and build recognizing that this is a a really kind of a fantastic opportunity for us to save money in the long run so my my opinion on that and hunter's question really is i mean how much are you comfortable with you know i'm comfortable uh with you know the 3.6 or 4.6 whatever's necessary uh to incorporate the additions to uh those two additional projects that i think are so important tonight ask a question sorry sure i just wanted to confirm that us proving this right now is not improving those projects it's just approving uh us barring the money correct this is just a

191discussion uh there's no action oh okay i thought we're going to turn on something no and this is just as an opportunity to kind of explore with the board some of the ideas that we had with the business functions committee you know sharing those and and kind of getting a sense from the rest of the board in terms of where you want to go and maybe it would be important for you to see more information more more more data and hopefully it may be our workshop meeting we can we can dig down a little bit deeper into this and kind of show you more examples of you know how this would play out you know with the economics of the district uh costs going forward what does this mean for instance um to our budget

192on an annual basis going forward if we were to incur debt at a certain level and what are some of the some of the projects that we that we agree that we we need to uh to move forward on i have two two questions i'd like to know the impact on the taxpayer if we were to borrow the 3.6 and i'd also like to know what what is the likelihood that we will spend that 3.6 in the allotted time i guess the flip side of that question is what is the penalty if we don't spend it in the allotted time um i can comment but first i if you didn't have the opportunity to read the email i sent out around 3 30. again as hunter said bond council has advised us that make a

193list of those projects that you anticipate completing or 85 of it in three years and that you have an estimated cost for it and that's what you issue tax exempt bonds for that that's your amount do not put in additional funds for things that have a level of uncertainty or have you don't have estimates at this point uh peter did mention you know there are taxable bonds but jamie schlesinger weighed in on that and and recommended you know at this juncture he expects that uh and the interest rates will remain low for a period of time and that as we move forward with the transportation center possibly administration or other projects that there will be another leg of borrowing if needed to address those as in terms of penalty for not spending things happen and

194you know that we just basically document uh you know what will transpire but the list that we have compiled and i share and it's attached to the agenda uh you know clearly in the lion's share of that 3.6 is 2 million towards the junior high unit ventilators and the rafting roof 20 years old needs to be restored current cost of that is 740 000. so they're definitely uh speaking with rob prezui um you know we definitely you know have projects that we will utilize those funds okay that's that's that's good i'd still at some point and maybe for the august meeting i'd like to know if we borrow the 3.6 what what is that going to look like to the taxpayer well sorry go ahead dan this will be part of the refinancing of the

1952012 issue and i do have a spreadsheet and i can send that out to everyone we shared it at business functions where the additional debt service uh for example on 3.6 million in 2021 would be about 51 000 but the savings that we are going to achieve in the first year of the refinancing estimated at 255 000. so really will be two hundred four thousand to the good in the year one but in the following years it is pause it it's more level almost break even uh so i can share that again uh the next meeting but so in other words it won't cost the taxpayer additional funds in terms of knowledge well i i was just going to say quick too that if you know and and i don't i don't mean to suggest

196that anybody should shorten what they're going to say this evening but there is a tremendous level of detail that we explored and different nuances about this discussion at the business functions meeting and if you're if you're really not understanding this i just encourage you to go watch that on youtube and any member of the public to watch that on youtube and review it uh you know there's just a there's a lot of different components to this and a lot of different options um that i can just recall even listening to some of the questions that people are asking that there was other parts of those questions that we had discussed and and different things that people may not consider right now so i just encourage everybody to go do that and so the other thing

197will there be a list of these projects at the august meeting so we have it in front of us a list was provided to all the board members via email um and i'm guessing anne that that can be put on the agenda again yes okay good [Music] i don't know is there any other are there any other comments either from committee members or any questions from members of the board i've got plenty but i'm just going to defer them until august because i don't want to prolong this conversation but i think for for everybody to have a really good understanding you know it would be a prudent decision to go review um the business function things i think there are a lot of different perspectives represented and it also i think puts in perspective a

198how consequential this decision is um because this will really have a domino effect on the funding that we appropriate out for all of our capital projects probably for the next uh i guess nine years um so this is a really critical decision that i think everybody really needs to be invested in and i would just like to um ask you when you think about the calculations of debt service that we also sort of think about the impact if we were to try to fund the project through operations and we didn't have capital that let's assume that the junior high unit unit ventilator replacement needed to occur and we didn't have capital we needed to levy a 1.9 million dollar expense just to our taxpayers to fix that because we didn't have the capital i believe

199you told me uh that what is a mill raise in exeter 1.375 million so if we were to just say to do the junior high roof we were going to try and do that and we didn't have the capital to go to but had to raise the funds in the market our market being taxpayers we'd probably look at a 1.5 mil increase just to do that project outside of anything else that we would have to be working on correct that's what it would equate to thank you any other comments mr aarons thanks very much we're going to move on to personnel committee uh mrs wilston if you're available i'm here oh good i just wanted to remind you that we are going to table um 10d change of status if everybody's okay with that so

200that the administration can review it um that that decision okay all right first one it is recommended that the board of school directors approves or ratifies the following retirements of support staff second any discussion all in favor say aye aye on the opposed any abstentions the motion carries it is recommended that the board of school directors approves or ratifies the following resignations extracurricular staff sorry exactly discussion all in favor say aye aye opposed any abstentions the motion carries it is recommended that the board of school directors approves or ratifies the following appointments certificated substitutes and extracurricular staff second any discussion any abstentions motion carries it is recommended that the board of school directors approves or ratifies the following leave of absence any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions motion carries

201it is recommended that the board of school directors approve extended contracts for summer 2020 for the following employee second any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye opposed any abstentions motion cars it is recommended that the board of school directors appoint don e harris director of pupil services as act 44 coordinator of the exeter township school district effective july 22nd any discussion i i just want to say i want to thank mr dean for filling in after uh dr miller's resignation or retirement until uh mrs harris you know could come here and did a really nice job um and we asked him to submit the annual end of year report i thought he did a really great job with that so um i just wanted to recognize him for his contribution there you want

202to echo that all in favor say aye aye the opposed any abstentions the motion carries it is recommended that the board of school directors approves the attached list of course requests second any discussion any opposed any abstentions the motion carries it is recommended that the board of school directors approves the following list of staff conferences any discussion the motion carries i don't know who's watching tv but can you mute that please um thanks mrs wilson yep that's it that's the end of your section um mrs stratton's not available but dr hearing is on the committee and i've asked dr hearing to um to present this portion of the agenda thank you thank you dave item 11a is recommended that the board of school directors approves the following resolution resolution number 2020-03 resolution declaring covet 19

203pandemic an emergency within the meaning of section 520.1 of the pennsylvania school code by the board of directors of the exeter township school district whereas the world health organization has declared the current outbreak of covet 19 a global pandemic and whereas the pennsylvania department of education has determined that the covid19 pandemic constitutes an emergency within the meaning of section 520.1 of the public school code and whereas the board of school directors has determined that the risks covet 19 presents to our students faculty and community requires an extraordinary response now therefore the board finds and declares that the covet 19 pandemic is an emergency within the meaning of section 520.1 of the pennsylvania school code for the duration of said pandemic but in no event for any period exceeding four years the superintendent shall have the

204duty and the authority to develop a health and safety plan in a form and manner prescribed by the pennsylvania department of education that ensures a minimum of 180 days of instruction allowing for a minimum of 900 hours of instruction at the elementary level and 990 hours of instruction at the secondary level employing any combination of in-person virtual and distance learning as the superintendent deems appropriate to address the health and safety of students faculty and community and the learning needs of students such instruction shall comply in full with the requirement of chapter four of the regulations of the state board of education and with the curriculum standards published in accordance there with second any discussion so dave this is the this is the one where it doesn't explicitly state it but this is the one that

205gives the superintendent the authority based on unique circumstances in the district to make a decision to shut down the school yeah i was going to i was going to suggest mike that we allow dr miner to just maybe kind of say a few things about why this is an important uh resolution for us to take uh sure i'd be happy to say a few words so i did reference this i'm sorry my air conditioner is not blowing on me um i did reference this in my presentation uh previously that this would allow um the district and and i as superintendent to determine that if conditions in our community um uh became in such a state or as you know referenced in a previous question if we were to run out of appropriate ppe supplies to

206keep our district sanitized that we would close for in-person instruction or go to some other model basically it's an assurance however that whatever model um you know i deemed appropriate in the emergency situation it would fully comply with requirements 180 days of instruction and continue to meet all of the requirements around standards and so forth i think an important distinguish to distinguish that it's not shutting down learning um it's closing school buildings if necessary or modifying the school schedules if necessary but ensuring that learning continues through some methodology which may be exclusively virtual or a combination of some virtual or in person as is necessary given the circumstances i think it's very important a resolution for the board to approve uh in that you know the conditions around cover 19 are changing rapidly and you

207know we may have to make some some decisions in a very short amount of time so it gives flexibility but it also gives assurance that we'll continue to comply with the chapter four requirements and the standards relative to 180 days and the number of hours of instruction in elementary and secondary yeah any any further disquiet this discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions motion carries item 11b it is recommended that the board of school directors approves the phased school opening health and safety plan for submission to the pennsylvania department of education second any discussion on favor say aye any opposed no any abstention we have one opposed motion carries item 11 c it is recommended that the board of school directors approve the emergency instructional time schedule for submission to the

208pennsylvania department of education as required by section 520.1 of the pennsylvania school code second any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed no one opposed any abstentions motion carries item 11 excuse me one second can i just clarify that there was a second on 11a i didn't hear it i just wanted to make sure that it happened i'm not sure who who recorded thank you i just missed it my apologies item 11d it is recommended that the board of school directors approves a memorandum of understanding with the exeter township education association second any discussion i i just want to say quickly um that this i think means a lot to the district and you know without getting into too much detail i i just want to say thank you to the association for

209their willingness to work with the district um through this extremely challenging subject i know that there was some disagreement uh but ultimately they were able to work with us and you know this is i don't know why i'm getting emotional about this but this is a big deal so i just want to say thank you to our association and our teachers for their commitment uh to making sure that this year happens i'd like to just uh follow up on that and say that it's it's truly been a pleasure to work with the leadership of the association uh on this mou and uh in all aspects of the pandemic planning um i i'm just so impressed by their commitment to our students and our school and their willingness to work collaboratively and we've had to do

210a lot of things in a very short period of time and again my sincerest appreciation to the association as a whole and the leadership i think their support is also a foreshadowing which we pretty much believe is going to happen anyway any further discussion any abstentions the motion carries item 11e it is recommended that the board of school directors approves the legal services consultation agreement between sweet stevens katz and williams and the exeter township school district for the 2021 school year at a cost of 12 500 dollars second any discussion so i did have a question on that um we had approved the motion earlier this year to agree to a dollar per hour figure is this uh is this around the particular issue or is is this is this related to covet or yeah

211so what i'm not sure what was approved earlier this year but i'll take a guess at it um not having been here uh typically when you're working with your solicitor for uh particularly special education uh agreements and consultation you'll you'll receive two different things one of them is what you probably received earlier in the year which is a dollar amount for specific billing for specific cases that we would discuss with our solicitor and any specific case related work that they do this agreement is a broader agreement that covers a more proactive approach to handling issues related to special education regulations and law chapter 15 agreements pupil services um questions and issues and really this agreement gives administrators in the district the opportunity to ask questions at no dollar per hour cost it's a bulk cost

212and in addition to that it provides the district with a certain number of training days and i believe the option for exeter if i'm correct is six training days um most of the districts in berks county have a legal agreement like this in place um in order to be a little bit more proactive in terms of education of staff working with administrators and that collaborative piece of um working on special education issues and uh chapter 15 issues yeah i think too i'm sorry mike just to go back i mean if i recall what we approved previously was just a dollar an hour rate not specific to any particular project or issue is that does anybody recall that i thought that there were two hourly rates one was for regular matters and then one was for

213special matters that needed additional research and time um i think that was my recollection yeah i know i think i think you i think you are right but they were non-specific they weren't they were just sort of an ad hoc pricing yeah well i know i know the township that i work for has a similar agreement to this where if a question can be answered within 15 minutes as a part of our association with a state organization that the attorneys will stay on the phone with us for up to 15 minutes for that annual fee um and then pass that you know there's a billable hour so i i don't know don if you can speak to if there's any type of time constraint um along with that um yeah there's no time constraint um

214and uh you know if we're efficient about it we use it liberally uh in a proactive way to ask questions um to you know enhance our programming and um you know uh sort of address issues before they become bigger issues so other than thomas warner and andrew fouster or such other members so this doesn't apply to anybody in uh sweet stevens it just applies to those two or other such such other members um dave can i comment yeah please do else so uh my what my suspicion is uh though i i recall precisely i suspect what you approved last month or whenever you were mentioning was our um appointment at solicitor for the upcoming year and that that fee letter typically has two hourly rates in it one for um adversarial type of situations and

215a lower hourly rate for the usual um solicitor type general questions attendance of the board meetings things of that nature in addition we have what's identified in this agreement as our pool council and what the pool council and this pool council creates the special education matters and what the pool council does is it um sets a flat fee for a variety of uh of activities during the course of the year for the fee you get six full day-to-day consultations with typically in this instance it would be with andy faust or tom warner both of whom were within our special ed department and it also allows you access to um some general questions responded to um and also access to our library our pool council library and what these folks do is when they get um

216uh information or or uh questions they ask that are of a general nature not of a specific nature to a school district they will post their general responses in the library that we have and if you're a subscriber to the pool council the district will have access to all of those opinion letters as they get published so that's what this is this is in addition to our normal solicitor work for you um is the pool council for special education matters thank you and i can say too i mean just in responding to the necessity of something like this i've i've worked with these with these agreements and used pool council for probably 15 years as a director of pupil services and i have to say you know it's invaluable i mean it's kind of hard

217to calculate the number of hours in the course of a year where you can pick up the phone and contact an attorney and get some direction and save the district literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential litigation you know just by making sure you have the right answer in right direction relative to a particular legal issue usually it's special education but there are tons of people services matters that go well beyond that issues with nursing and school health student registration um you know all the extraordinary programs alternative education esl it it just goes on and on so it's just not limited to special education there's a whole broad range of people services where um the law is complicated um and it's just so it's so valuable to have that that opportunity to pick up

218the phone and also take advantage of as what else mentioned you know some of their you know already established opinions that you know exist where they give you a very comprehensive document that really lays out in in in its entirety a rationale for a particular action that this one needs to take so i i would support this um 100 i think it's it's a way to save the district money actually are there any further discussion all in favor say aye aye opposed any abstentions the motion carries item 11 f it is recommended that the board of school directors approves an extended school year tuition agreement between devereaux and the exeter township school district for one student for a period july 6 2020 through july 29 2020 at a total cost of 7654.50 second any discussion

219all in favor say aye aye opposed abstentions the motion carriers item 11g it is recommended that the board of school directors approves extended school year tuition agreements between hogan learning academy and exeter township school district for two students for a period july 6 2020 through august 7 2020 for a total of 21 000 seconds any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye the opposed any abstentions motion carries item 11 h 1 it is recommended that the board of school directors approved tuition agreement between new story perkieum and avenue and the exeter township school district to provide special education services for two students for the 2021 school year at a total cost of and 108 dollars i'm sorry one hundred and eight thousand dollars eight hundred and thirty six dollars item number two it is

220recommended that board of school directors approved commission agreements between new story new holland road and exeter township school district to provide special education services for one student 2021 school year at a total course of 68 400 dollars welcome any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye the opposed any abstentions 11i it is recommended that the board of school directors approves the following settlement agreement for student number seven two zero two one to pay thirty thousand five hundred dollars and for student six eight eight two zero two one to pay nineteen thousand dollars assigned to an educational fund for legitimate educational expenses as defined by the agreement in a form acceptable to the solicitor and to settle all claims raised by the student and parent and authorized the board president and secretary to execute that

221settlement agreement and release on behalf of the district any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed any abstentions the motion carries item 11j it is recommended that the board of school directors approve early graduation january 2021 for four students per district policy number 217 ar-2 promotion and a second any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye opposed any abstentions motion carries uh thanks dr herring nice job um we're going to move into the athletic committee and committee reports and we'll start off with mr drapina yeah so dave i see uh mrs selke here so i'm going to let her talk through that plan but before i do i just want to mention that i've got a kind of a disturbing email from somebody while we've been on this phone call who

222claims that um their name and address were misappropriated by somebody uh to ask a question um so she is quite upset um at that occurring um and i'm not going to you know mention this again but um we we need to look into it because it was a fairly negative question it was actually wrong um in its content and um you know we have now sort of you know in effect uh put somebody in a very awkward position uh as raising an issue that they had nothing to do with so perhaps we could have some discussion at that at some point but i felt like i needed to mention that since the email just came to me thanks mike yeah that's doesn't seem quite right so um we need to get to the bottom of

223that one yeah thanks for bringing that up yep um mrs selke i know that you have patiently sat for three hours and 35 minutes um now you know what it feels like to be a school board member um so um i i know that you guys have been working diligently um and hard and have a great desire to get back on uh the field and you have a great group of parents that you're working with and great uh members of the uh of you know who work with you to to um you know raise one of the shining stars of exeter or marching band so i'm going to let you talk about this and i'll support you anywhere i can as will anybody else i apologize uh thank you for having me here tonight um

224i wasn't exactly sure what i was supposed to do tonight i didn't know if i was gonna be answering questions or if i need to present this in whole um if you had a chance to review it um i i think i mean it was brought to our attention earlier that there was one typo or two typos in here about the number of permitted um gathering numbers from 25 to 250 so i just want to point that out um but basically kind of following up with the guidance that has been provided by um you know the athletic plan i've been i used mr lagasse plan i used um a plan from the national federation of state high school association guidelines i've been following the cavalcade of bands which is a local chapter of directors in

225this area to come up with the the best possible scenarios for student musicians to come back to safely perform we will be practicing all the social distancing guidelines that um dr minor has presented in her um reopening plan and um oh i can't scroll through that i'm trying to screw um and we have specific procedures in place for instrument cleaning for um student drop-off for uh zoning students in in specific rehearsal locations to minimize uh social contact with one another until we are prepared to go on to the field and um with all of this uh these are all voluntary rehearsals so students have the option if they do not feel safe and do not want to attend they do not have to do so and um i have provided um like a video an

226educational video they have to sign the waiver we'll be doing the health screenings um it's all very similar to what athletics has been doing already and um we just have a couple more things in place just because we have obviously wind instruments in our hands if we have flags but at no time we are saying that students are going to be in contact like physical contact with each other we will be doing our social distancing um on the field because that's what marching bands do we like to keep formations nice and tight and uh like we're gonna be spread out on the field to present ourselves that way uh face coverings will be um mandatory as as as as we've said in terms of um students that are at six feet apart they should be

227wearing face coverings and we're also looking into using bell coverings to add added protection onto the instruments themselves we had a study done by the national federation of state high schools they did an aerosol study of the aerosols coming from the mouth and outside the bell a lot of that moisture is actually trapped in the instrument but any moisture that would come through the bell very minimal we would have a um we are looking into purchasing barriers for those bells and we're also looking into purchasing uniform face masks for the band and they are also recommending that face mask with little slits in them can be used for performance purposes so there are a lot of unique ways that when musicians can safely perform outside and still be able to do so um going into

228the school year um i've outlined that um we are not having any volunteers working with us so we are not asking for parents or for outside clinicians to work with us this year unfortunately but that is for the safety and health of our students and no meals will be served on campus as we've done in the past so students will be in charge of bringing their own meals their own water for the duration of the rehearsals under rehearsal considerations again i've mapped out i surveyed all the parking lots the fields that we have we have a lot of space for rehearsal um and we've we're getting all these tents um donated to us to use during these practices so that students can perform outside in all weather conditions in the event of inclement weather we

229do have a plan to go indoors but to um to follow the guidelines that have been provided so if we are having to go inside because of thunder and lightning um we will have no more than 25 students and staff in the band room or in the choir room or in the orchestra room and we will um designate exit points and entry points and everything will be mapped out for students and parents to view um and students we're asking them to transport their instruments to and from practice so that we don't have so that they are taking them home and cleaning them we are asking them to clean them according to the the nfhs guidelines the nafme guidelines on instrument cleaning i've detailed that in an educational video to the students already on how to

230do that and where to find that information and um i don't know exactly how much you want me to say about this but we we take this very seriously and we are looking forward to having the students return and i'd be more than happy to answer any specific questions if there are any mrs silke this is ann hearing um i wanted to thank you for the informational video that you gave to the kids it was great and it was thorough um one quick question regarding the uniforms have you put much thought yet into the freshman meeting uniforms for this year that's a great question um some of the guidance that i've had from other band directors speaking to other band directors in the area is that we will we are going to probably stick to

231an alternate uniform um be just because we don't have the capabilities to size and measure students um because as i said we're not allowed to use volunteers at this point in time um so in my handbook i've we've been using an alternate uniform where we've had a polo and um uniform pants in the past and i believe that moving forward we could go with that where the student would be providing that for themselves and we would order the shirts for the students but that is only until we're able to have uniform sizing available which i i'm told i've been advised that we will just wait and hold off on that until it's safe to do so thank you does anybody have any other questions no well thanks miss selki i i'm i'm assuming um mr

232japina you have a motion then that we need to consider yep it's recommended the board of school directors approves the marching band restarting guide to start rehearsals for the 2021 school year second okay and give it to john any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye aye aye opposed the abstentions for the motion carries thank you miss okay thank you for your time have a nice night um so we'll move on to uh business functions committee mr ahrens uh in the interest of brevity i'll send out notices to the board members um and they will also be shared publicly uh in preparation for our next business functions meeting which will occur in august thanks mr ahrens uh curriculum committee uh dr mcclendon it is recommended that the board of school directors approves the donation

233of 250 from the women's club of exeter township for the purchase of books for incoming kindergarten students second any discussion all in favor say aye aye the opposed any abstentions the motion carries thank you oh there's no report on the curriculum uh committee meeting because we did not meet for the month of july thanks mrs dr mclennan um mr fiddler facilities committee uh we did not have a meeting so no report tonight thank you uh personal committee mrs wilson i do not have anything to report tonight thank you policy committee dr hamburger no report student functions committee um i'll turn that over to dr hearing if you have there's nothing there's nothing to report thanks dr harry technology committee mr miller nothing to report thank you sir uh exeter community education foundation dr herring ecef

234just received notification that we were awarded four thousand four hundred and thirty dollars from axa xl a global insurance and compliance organization for the green initiative of water bottle fillers for k through six this grant will cover three water bottle bottle fillers and portion of a fourth or for plumbing costs towards three stations one of each of exeter's elementary schools we thank the extra parent that notified us of this grant and are proud to invest in our buildings and students the next meeting will be wednesday august 5th at 6 30. thank you thanks dr herring um bctc joint operating committee dr mcclendon um the the board approved the we met on june 24th it was a hybrid in person and zoom and the board approved the thing anti-racism resolution that we also approved uh this

235evening and their action plan is to provide professional development for staff to form a racism equity and diversity committee to post signage in their buildings and they're going to use their programs like the printing and the graphics for the students to design and to make these signs and to post messages on social media the the welding building that they they were working on this year is going to be available for students at the start of the school year they decided to use the former welding building they have adult uh continuing ed students who are in the welding program and they're gonna now have some daytime adult students and they're gonna use the old welding building and uh just to remind you that that is one of their programs that um generates revenue they apply to

236the state for apprenticeship program um that would come with a lot of advantages for the school the seniors who graduated but did not complete their certifications are going to be permitted to do that in the evening or in daytime to complete the certifications at a total of 217 students who were missing i had some incomplete certifications and they spent a lot of time in the meeting talking about some of the same things we talked about with the health and safety plan however because they need to uh coordinate this with all the 16 spending schools they um are not able to make a decision to get a finalizer plan for pda until that happens so we normally meet um the fourth wednesday of every month and the meeting was moved up to august 5th so that

237they can get the information from the 16 sending schools about their plan and try to um you know collaborate their plan with the 16 sending schools so that's that's at the end of my report thanks dr mcclendon bciu board of directors um no report there was no meeting held by bciu in july uh legislative uh liaison mr fiddler nothing to report thank you uh township bro liaison mr trepina just a quick update i'd like to thank uh mr ahrens and you dave for uh some of the interactions that you've had with uh the township leadership in the new township borough our new township manager and also hunter's suggestion that we look to get dr minor in the new township manager together just to you know uh meet each other and figure out that there's going

238to be some links between us in the ensuing years that's it great thank you thanks mike um before we adjourn are there any board members who would um request to be heard at this time um yeah i dave i just like to come back to this issue because i've gotten another email from this person and you know they're pretty upset um so so question number four that was originally asked um during that questioning period that was um attributed to a person named t nerney um they've communicated to me through several emails right now that that question was not submitted by them um and you know they don't want to be identified with that question and or the content of the question which was not only you know somewhat hostile but actually was incorrect um so

239i think we should probably get to the bottom of this but um you know the the question regarding a football player playing baseball that was completely wrong there were five players not allowed to play because they were at football there was one football player who did play but he wasn't at practice because he had been previously quarantined so you know i'd like us to at some point go back look at question four and see if there's any way that forensically from an i.t perspective we could find out how that question was submitted and how it was attributed to a person who uh did not submit that question uh command may ask something else um ellis is that can we redact that or retract that from our minutes because it was done under false pretense alice

240well frozen i think that's a good idea actually everyone was frozen so i didn't hear the question i i alice i asked if we could retract that or redact it from our minutes if it was done under false pretense sure yes and i'd like to ask that please be done i i would agree with that i don't know whether we need to take a vote on that but i think everybody would pretty much agree that that's is there any disagreement maybe i'll freeze it that way does anyone disagree with the idea of removing that which is clearly uh the alleged author is uh uh claiming that this this did not come from that source and and we'll and i agree we i think we need to have a conversation at some point maybe at a

241later date with with our i.t i'll work with uh mr way on getting to the bottom of what happened okay great thank you and and and maybe if there's any way that we can in the future kind of um authenticate communications uh because that it wouldn't be the first time that school districts were you know kind of um the victim of um you know somebody who was using the internet and the anonymity it affords to to to promote false information i'll come back to the board with a you know with a proposal about how to improve in that area prior to the august 5th meeting okay just just a thought from someone who is not an expert in i.t but i've been doing two-way authentication with different things that i do bank transactions credit cards

242i'm just wondering if there's a way to have a two-way authentication so when somebody submits something uh there's a way to back that up i for example get a code sent to my tech and i enter that code and then i can proceed with the it might be cumbersome but it might also prevent something like this from happening again yeah hey john the other thing that i would um consider and you did this as a as an editorial writer for the reading eagle is that they have a fairly stringent process in confirming people who submit letters to the editor so it might be that something like this in effect requires people to submit questions ahead of time where their identification is confirmed through a phone call or some way to connect back with them now

243that takes away some of the spontaneity of what we um like to have with give and take with people but if that's what it takes i'd rather lose some of the spontaneity and maintain the integrity of our questions absolutely i'd like to work with uh mr way and um our council on you know making sure that we're maintaining uh you know provisions around sunshine and the ability of the public to comment without restricting that and still tightening up um and making sure that when people are attributed to a comment that it is in fact that so again we'll work with both mr way and council and come up with a proposal for the book and i would just ask that the school board make a formal apology to this family through a written letter we

244can do that any other comments uh from board members uh who may want to hear this time i i really quickly just want to say thank you to our administration and our faculty and staff um there's been a tremendous amount of work that's been happening on many different issues chief among them the pandemic and it's done amidst the backdrop of you know a world-changing event that has no near historical precedent so i think it's just noteworthy and and i'm important to say thank you for the work that you guys are doing uh on behalf of the administrative team i thank you for the acknowledgement thank you hunter any other comments okay this time i'll accept a motion to adjourn i'll move second all in favor say aye hi hi bye all right i think we're

245i think we're i think we're i think we're wrapped up for the evening so thanks everybody um have a nice night and uh we'll see you soon i'm sure thank you good night everyone hunter thanks for the comments