001thank you for joining us tonight for the Mount Lebanon School District's Dei committee meeting since it is now 6 47 Monday April 17 2023 we will begin in attendance our Dr Justin Hackett Mrs Valerie Fleischer Dr Mary Beth Irvin Dr Tim steinhauer Dr Ron Davis and myself on our agenda this evening is the district Dei goals talking about the dashboard policies and RFP update on Dei initiatives for professional development and the district action plan future planning and I will turn this over to Dr Irvin thank you Mrs Johnson so um we'll start with talking about the dashboard and if you recall a couple of months ago we had Kristen she's done a mock-up of the dashboard it is actually the the things that we have shown you which include the demographic data on the students
002as well as the information for the academic achievements that can be broken down by the categories that are available to us that's all ready to go one of the things that we continue to have questions and concerns about are is the discipline data so I shared with you folks um at the last meeting where we talked about this about the discipline data and um I followed up with our technology department we ran some reports and I met with them as we reviewed them and I asked them questions and so I'm going to talk to you a little bit about what this means and what this looks like in terms of publishing of data so um and I only prepared this for members of the committee if you want to pass these down um at the
003moment so this is this is the overall secondary discipline data for the district to date when we did this which was probably about six weeks ago now so you can see on the left hand side is the list of the different types of infractions and then they're put into a pie graph because this is just right out of Google Sheets um and if you scroll down like almost you know less than halfway down you'll see the harassment bullying and you see that it makes up four percent of our um yeah of of the discipline of of all the discipline that gets put into our system bullying and harassment makes up four percent of those you can also see that um our number one discipline problem is excessive tardiness at about 61.5 of all of of
004um all uh behaviors violations there's also some other things that may or may not cross into that including something like unacceptable language there is there is a special subcategory called racial and ethnic intimidation and there's zero there um and then physical aggression is six percent um but you know that should still be tagged with some of us you know I mean that again that should be um that descriptor is able to be added to that category but it's not been so um and and I don't want to get into disparities between the three schools but since we figured that this is the richest amount of data for this is going to be at the secondary schools we did look specifically at those incidences of harassment and bullying and out of two of the schools they
005had what I would describe as a handful like literally of of um of uh incidents reported so single digits very small numbers um one of the schools had a larger number um you know especially you know in terms of anybody that looks at data would consider that to be an outlier so I asked um I asked our tech department to dig into that a little bit more deeply and what we realized is is the way that our discipline management system is set up is it's set up to be student focused right because we use that administrators use that to look up a particular student to see what past behaviors they may have exhibited because we use a progressive discipline uh strategy so you know the first time you do something you might get a warning
006you might have a counseling session the second time it might be more you know parent conference phone call home you know all the way up to detention in school suspension out of school suspension um so so the incidents are tied so what we had found out is that there was at least two occasions of bullying and harassment that involved multiple students sort of a group of students picking on one student and so that makes the number look higher so I'm looking at this number and I mean let's just say it's 20. you know um I'm thinking wow that's not really in proportion to the other ones but it actually may be less because um you know it's it counts each one of those students and the reason why we have to attach it to students
007and not incidents is that's how we pull the demographics right so if we don't put the perpetrators in and and the and the students who are victims or the students who are uh you know receivers of the misbehavior or the bullying then we're not able to to determine if they are you know if they meet any of those requirements that we that were able to collect data on which includes special education English language learner um students who uh qualify economically disadvantaged um or students by different racial groups so it's like a catch-22 right and I'm very concerned about the idea of putting something out there that makes one of our schools like wow you know on a dashboard in a simple graph it is going to be really hard to contextualize this so you know
008we're looking for guidance from the committee to say what do you you know what data do you think that the community wants to see on this because we're going to have to collect it a different way this is just in this situ this system and is not designed to collect it in that way and um I mean if every if every incident was done singularly and put in there singularly you know obviously it would look different but we want it to be an accurate reflection of what happened so that a principal even you know all throughout the year can go back and say oh that's what happened here that was this right so um if there is another way that would be more useful to collect this information it'll have to be created if we
009want to you know um keep it uh quantifiable and and in a place where we can do it and we're going to have to talk about that otherwise we put up data that is that can possibly mislead the community and the students and their families and not necessarily accurately portray the the climate in the organ culture of the schools right because I mean if you would look at that raw data you'd be like oh well this one schools has all kinds of incidents you know this doesn't need not even proportional to the size of it so um you guys have any questions about that or so many so I yeah go ahead I'm sorry so is this I'm sorry is this collected this is collected out of PowerSchool okay PowerSchool is our student information system
010right so it is the system that runs in the background that keeps all of our data on students it's called an SIS student Information System Program so it's very student-centered I mean we you know it has their schedules it has their grades it has their discipline record it has their activities um all their demographic information their families contact information and is this tied to the new um behavior management system that we talked about last month well so what coding so yes so I mean this is where that lives this is where that lives and where we collect that data and I'm just not seeing a lot of the categories that we saw like racial and ethnic intimidation is one thing yeah those are subcat those SRS because they can be attached to anything so they're
011so like it could be attached to unacceptable language it could be attacked to physical aggression it could come under the harassment and bullying so those are like additional codes yeah so there's nothing just for example since we've heard there's nothing like a sub code for um anti-lgbtq harassment or bullying or language I thought that there was I thought that there was too I'll have I can I can check with check and white and see this is my understanding is that this is everything so and that these ones that are marked as are no that's not exactly right either you're not you're right about like identity-based harassment well there's racial ethnic intimidation I thought we got like a whole anyway yeah a whole list well so why they're not on this report I can't tell you
012because some of these are I mean obviously some of these are zeros right right so then the other question several things come to mind is number one um I think that it is important to have Baseline data that is our understanding of how things are even if it shows that we are drastically Under reporting or drastically might be the wrong word but we're clearly Under reporting the amount of even let's say racial and ethnic intimidation if we're hearing from students and families that they're hearing the n-word in school and it says zero percent then there's a disconnect between what's happening in students lived experience and what is ending up in our system and I think that's even important information to have right because if families see zero percent like I email my principal about this
013and that then they can dig into that I also think I understood exactly what you just said and I think an asterisk that said this information is pulled out of our student information system and is tied to individual students so larger numbers in a particular School may be tied to an incident involving multiple students is not that hard to conceptualize for folks um I would get that and not be like oh I'll use how because that's where I am that how Elementary is a problem tool um because they had a larger number of incidents they may have had one incident like you said involving multiple students um but I do think it's instructive even if the data is telling us as a district we need to do a better job making sure that our teachers
014administrators guidance families know the importance of reporting of giving all the details so that we can capture it accurately and of like coding the data correctly because we want to know these things that are going on in our schools um I mean so to me even having the data go up with a zero gives a baseline to us and the community and if it's a head scratcher then we know we have work to do whether it's um better professional development on how to use it better education to families on students on how to make reports and make sure they're using the reporting systems or talking to the adults in the building and I don't know I just I think we wanted this year to gather our Baseline knowing it's not going to be right okay
015I I that's just mine five cents and so Dr Urban I'm correct in saying that this is the middle school and high school data only do we have anything sure sure we do but because those schools are so small um and we just I just asked Corey to do secondary for now so I could see what the reports look like I mean he can run these reports and you know in a minute once I give him the parameters but we wanted to take a look at and see you know what what what are we going to find out what are we going to see I mean and I I agree about the end of reporting I mean I think it comes from two because again we have to go back I think I said this
016last time if the perpetrator is not identified it's not put in there so if somebody says I heard somebody yell a name at me down the hall but I couldn't tell who it was by the time I turned around or whatever you know when we don't have a student to attach that to so we're not capturing that right and the system will never be designed to have to capture that so we're always going to be at a disadvantage for things like that or if you know it's one kid's word against another and depending on how that ends up um yeah and I think there's also like for us to know and for the community to know there's there's this data which we can contextualize like I think with like a paragraph like what it is
017and what it isn't and then we also know we have stuff like School climate data and past survey data that might capture more of the qualitative experience that students and families are reporting that they're having in the buildings with various issues and incidents too um you know that might capture more of like the ephemeral like School culture question then this can because like you said this doesn't capture like a micro aggression or overhearing something in like a hallway or those things that cut so deeply but are not our system isn't designed to capture it I'm trying to think of how to distinguish incidents versus disciplinary data point right right and um that's why I'm suggesting is it does it make more sense to look at it through a different lens and determine that this system
018is not the correct system to correct collect this data at this point you know because I don't interact with the system on a daily basis like principles do so you know it's been a it's been a while it's been a minute since I was you know I used to spend lots of time inputting all this data I know what it looks like um from uh from a version before PowerSchool a million years ago but um that's what I one of the things that I that I had talked about when I talked to the tech department about it is should we look because again we need this this the discipline and the way that it played out at one of those secondary schools is critical for certain reports that we submit to the state so for
019example because that is student-based like we would need to know that from um from that perspective or um you know if it was anything like fighting you know I mean again we're very fortunate that we don't have these kinds of things here but if you have like a massive fight where there's maybe 10 or 15 kids involved it's one incident it's one fight but you know if it involves 20 students then those students you know we that's what the state is interesting and collecting so that's another individual disciplinary well they want to know how many students were in a fight so for example even if like we only had one fight all year if there were 20 kids involved in it again these things typically do not happen in our district but you know that
020it sadly it does happen other places and so that's the count that they want they want the number of students and and and PowerSchool and all other assistants are designed and have alignment to the reports that are needed to be submitted to the state so that's like especially around things like any kind of violence weapons violate terrorist threats those things all are reportable so well one of the things that comes to mind too is part of our like work plan for the year was developing this response right this protocol from responding to identity-based harassment and bullying um and communication responses um around that and some staff training and I'm wondering then if that includes looking at what Dr Hackett was suggesting some sort of like incident response tracking rather than um and the other the
021other thing that I think makes sense about that as we've talked about like when you're using student data and there's like such a small handful of reported incidents even if that's not capturing anything you're starting to lose student confidentiality that was my concern with those with the low numbers if you're just like tagging instance and you're not including like any specific student I don't I don't know I think that that deserves a little bit of thought um and might capture more of like what we're trying to reflect is like how often are these things happening in our building um thank you no experience right well I was going to say the girls to have none but yeah right well right and that's why I'm saying so to your point I was going to speak about
022that later about the training yes particularly for administration and that could definitely be a component of it I mean we could make a simple Google form which would then um be very easily to convert that into some sort of a graph um versus this which I feel like is you you know and again like these are uh how do I want to say this you know that we're collecting so much data that it's overwhelming like I have pages and pages and pages of this data broken down by secondary school and then by ethnicity by economic status by special education and so to get that all together as well is right well and I mean but that was part of what we were looking what we have looked at in the past is like are certain
023groups of students because of maybe some implicit bias being disciplined more often than afterwards um or you know for for certain category of like I see like disruptive uncooperative behavior and we talked in the Dei task force have that may or may not be subjective 100 and so I mean I think a lot of that is good to dive into but um we certainly need to do that in a way that respects student confidentiality and right and that's what I'm meaning about the small numbers across the board really I mean we can certainly you know this is something these larger scale reports I don't know how frequently um principals actually have an opportunity to dig into this data and look for those kinds of patterns um it's probably more qualitative like they would maybe notice
024it with a particular teacher or something always sends a certain kind of student to the office or a certain student to the office but um from the bigger picture I you know there certainly is data that's right there's Rich data in this spreadsheet that should be reviewed but how you put that on the dashboard and maintain the um anonymity of students um and not when your numbers of incidences are so low I think one of the things Anna Maria you were saying and you may say it was I think we have some more work to do in terms of how we reflect both accurately and disaggregated from like the discipline data on the dashboard but maybe like progress not like we should show what we have which is like academic data right and demographic data
025knowing that we're like going to be working on continuing to work on yeah we'll be continuously we can absolutely launch Kristen am I correct we have we are in a good we can launch those pages we might want to do a sort of an email piece or a news article about that to let folks know that that is kind of you know that it's been available so that folks are aware and that will continue so I I mean I think we need to flesh this out more is what I'm saying um but we you know if if you're in agreement that we do some other kind of or in addition to the data that we normally collect if there is also a if it's this fill out this form yes if you think that that
026would happen you guys know better than we do if we were like adding another Google form on yeah that's the thing that may or may not be happening all the time well and that's why we were hoping we were going to be able to get workable data out of the system by doing what we did but it just really is actually it's like it's too large um yeah I don't I don't know if the community needs to know how tardy our students are that might be to class too I'm not sure class and the day like all combined so all right any other questions about the dashboard yep we will just keep working on it yep thank you okay so the second bullet under goals are the policies um and if you recall um because
027there were a lot of questions about how um particularly jic j-i-c-j-i-d -i-c um which is the student code of conduct and then jicd which is the bullying policy we're implemented we did have that presentation um by uh some of our principals and then that was followed by last um months meeting or was it Mondays was it that oh my god um where the the policy uh the policies were discussed and um a decision was made to ask us to look at gbaa as well which is the harassment policy so you know we've tried to incorporate some of the feedback that we've heard from students and families in terms of being more specific uh about um enumerating uh who when we say all students um are you know are entitled to a safe welcoming environment and
028so we made a couple of those changes you know I think from my recollection um both Mr Peterson and then Mr volts who was there that night reminded us that jic's primary purpose in terms of the student code of conduct is to give the district the legal right to withhold privileges from students for um violating the code of conduct um and it seems like that one was pretty much done and then we looked at um some other suggested changes that came out of what was brought up by the whole you know the committee of the whole that talked about uh the other policy and then we will certainly send the anti-harassment policy over to the solicitors to look at again and then revisit that on Mondays um at Monday's policy meeting you so was there
029anything else on the topic of policies that you wanted to discuss uh no I think I just wanted to add because we have a group of folks here who I assume or hope are interested in the policy changes um so just because I think the public meeting that we had really was a review of the existing policies and admin and procedures and then last Tuesday yes it was policy meeting really started to get into the meat of how we would change it um that the bullying policy is up for revision every 10 years I think so it was three years anyway so it was already up uh this year but um we had been asking particularly in light of the de I work to like look at the suite of policies so we looked at
030Dr Urban mentioned making all um the the code of conduct bullying and harassment policies all aligned with our non-discrimination policy which does include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes um we talked about restorative practices response to victims um sort of separating out and more clearly defining bullying prevention and education um we're looking at the definition of bullying and what's in there by like state code so that we have to have that language in um and then what if any wiggle room there is to more clearly divide Define like acts of bullying for an audience um that may not get all the jargon or want to Wade through it um and then we're also looking at strengthening the administrative responsibility so a lot of that work was already underway but I think does address
031some of the um especially like the safety and um welcoming portion of some of the policy that the youth advocacy group brought and talked about ways in which you know the what we currently had on the books wasn't working um so I think it's taking what I think was a fairly strong mind discrimination policy we off the end making sure that that's no matter what the incident is if you're the administrator looking at the policy it's a reminder right there of all of all of those classes and then adding some more about the work we're doing on restorative justice and um proactive response I don't know if there were I was there so I wasn't I was a taxpayer yes I'm glad that that was the message that was received so yeah and um like
032I said we will you know now we'll be adding probably that's I'm sure that there's going to be a place for that same language in um gbaa and then if there's other opportunities to add that restorative component um and or you know response to victims piece you know they'll go in there as well and mirror that so that those are all aligned right anything else on policies doctor I know that um I'm asking you a lot of questions because I know we only have a few more months I know you had a whole list of policies that the community was working through um two of the others that I think came up in particular when we we did a review of the um proposed youth advocacy Group Policy were jrc Student Records and then uh
033go away it's the facilities one fa facilities Planning and Development goals and I think um that there was maybe a sense that we can look at that and ways that things that are maybe implied in those policies might be able to be made more explicit either in the policy or through the administrative regulation is that something you can talk on this old book about sure absolutely absolutely and I see Mr Marciniak making a note since you moved through this area of responsibility um and I think when we say into um some of the other things that I know you guys sent on the list to talk about today we can talk a little bit about Student Records um as well so is that it ready for the next one yeah when I want to run
034out of time so I want to for updates on Dei initiatives which is agenda item number two the only thing I have listed there was professional development um and I have a couple things I'd like to share with folks um first we are running the fourth section no fifth section fifth section of race and we have about 16 or 17 people participating in that and we are also um working on our plans for the May 16th in service which is going to be Dei focused um what we are going to do is we're going to run four sessions um there'll be a keynote welcome to everybody and then there'll be four sessions where teachers will be able to select from a menu of options around Dei topics um we've been in contact with a number
035of different groups and are continuing to finalize our plans on that and um in addition we're looking for ways to include students so I'm glad that we have some students in the audience here and families because I know um so the light initiative which is um well I think you guys have been kept abrised of the light initiative which is led by Mrs Davenport and um Mrs logic uh they asked to meet with me because one of the goals of the light initiative is to provide some professional development learning for teachers on identity by harassment and I was like well that is so perfect because I have a venue and we're looking for slots so um then we've also uh the planning team that I'm working with um so it's not just me alone obviously
036but are a lot of the people um that have either served on the de task force and or served in the capacity of um the race workshop and some of the other things that we've done so um the the idea about getting students to kind of be a part of it I think even for the keynote to maybe have some students speak to set the stage about how important this work is for them and their school experiences and then have some listening sessions where students can talk to staff um we've got uh like I said we have got a number of outside speakers representing a myriad of different identity groups that are going to come in and present um we also will have some time for teachers to work on lessons so do do some
037planning and can we view you know maybe different departments different grade levels whatever working together to view something through a Dei lens I mean that might be a time to take a look at for example our human development units in health from K through 12 or whatever I mean there's like all you know right now we're we're really trying to explore we want to make sure that folks have a lot of different opportunities um maybe to do some rolling up their sleeves and working but also do some personal learning for themselves in their own gain and also that they'll have choice so that's coming along nicely um I'm not going to be here after uh January uh or June June 30th but um we will leave behind instructions and I've been talking to the to
038the administration about us you know in the summer working on the response to identity-based harassment plan with communication um moving towards more of the response to um to victims and to restorative practices and kind of creating a protocol with that and then well I had added in their additional training and you know digging more into the student uh information system to see if we can glean better data out of that or I mean the other thing would have been possibly looking at an alternative way to capture um data on identity-based harassment um and track it in the schools so um that is something that is great A great task for our administrators to work on during the summer so in terms of PD there's a lot on the on the table and if there's anybody
039out there in the audience or anyone that's listening that has thoughts or ideas about presentations and especially uh folks who would be interested in participating or hooking us up with folks uh to speak because it can't always be us because we're profits in our own land which doesn't always work out we would welcome that we would welcome our continued Partnerships like I said we have already talked to a number of folks but please let me know you can find my email online mirin at mtlsd.org.net so um that's it for the well then I guess the any questions on professional development so then the last thing is is future planning is there an update on the RFP sorry oh sorry blah blah blah blah blah sorry yes the RFP let's go back so um I was
040contacted by one person and we haven't received anything officially but I was contacted by one it's actually two people who are working on a proposal they're local um and I want to say too much more about that um to claim what their Affiliates are are with but um they needed some additional time from the deadline and I said hey we've got all you know we'll wait for the right person um but in addition I had um you know when I was doing some research to do the RFP I had found a district in southeast Pennsylvania as well as a district in New Jersey who have had put out rfps for similar um actually one was for climate and culture survey and the other one was for curriculum audit so um I spoke to the man
041who from New Jersey it's Ventura New Jersey school district and he talked me through what they did and put me in touch with the organization so I've already reached out and heard back from them we're going to set up a virtual meeting to see if that would be something they would do but that's really their area now I'll follow up and see if they are doing curriculum or processes and procedures but the audit that they did for the school district was a culture one they took about a week the researcher came in and met with groups of students families teachers administrators and then they did a survey all Anonymous all hands off by the administration and then created a report which they made public so like nobody you know if there was no way you
042could say anybody had any hand in it so you know that's that's one option um we'll see what we get from this other group and then I am still playing back and forth with the woman from Southeast PA who had the curriculum on it she's changed districts since then but I was able to track her Downs um Ms ardinger mentioned to me that she knew a firm and then I think she was traveling so I don't know yes had ever bubbled up was that one of the ones that just look okay nevermind good um and then now we can go to Future planning um so as you know I'm you know Dr Steiner and I are with we leaving the district um and so I think you know in in terms of what the board
043would like to see moving forward is you know how you know I certainly will leave all of my notes I'm already figuring out how to put things into shared Google Drive so that they don't belong to me they don't belong to anybody anymore and folks have access I'm pretty good with keeping documents and records so um hopefully whoever comes in whether they've already been around for the for the ride or you know anybody else that's new that's coming along would be able to access that and continue the work and I think if you know if we can agree as an admin team you know obviously a new superintendent is going to have their thoughts about what kinds of things they want to work on in the summer but I think the board also has a
044role in determining that so um like I said I think we you know we continue this work on identity-based harassment and um in the data collection around that and that's something that we can put a team of Administrators together to find analyze in the summer and hopefully we can have a really great rollout with that next year and we can talk about what that looks like there will still need to be continued training um for teachers as well and I want to I probably should have said this before when one of the reasons why we went for a self-selected for May 16th is we know that we have differentiated needs among our teachers in terms of professional development we have some folks that are very comfortable um touching on these topics very very knowledgeable about
045how to respond and support students appropriately and then we have some folks that still have some learning to do so we wanted to be able to give them an opportunity to pick where they thought they needed to be so that's one of the other reasons why we need a balance of um types of presentations like they're my teachers don't want to sit down and start looking at lesson plans there are other people that are going to say like I need to talk about what is the difference between gender identity and gender or you know uh whatever like what does lgbtq stand for like we we have all all uh ranges of folks so so letting folks feel safe and be able to self-select what they want to go to I think is super important but
046we also do have uh the serve we did a professional development and a staff needs survey from our HR Direct director through the HR offices at the beginning of the year and we still have that data so um you know the next step after this uh in service is to create those more specific strands um for folks who you know to determine what their needs are going to be because everybody has to be at that there has to be like a minimum level of understanding in particular in responding to um and their responsibility to respond to harassment like there has to be a this everybody has to be able to do this you know some people might be great and already doing that or even better and like going above and beyond in terms of
047connecting to the victim or whatever but like there has to be a minimum standard and everybody has to be there and so that's what would you know like to be able to say that at the beginning of the school year um after our any opening and services that we have this Baseline of understanding of what teachers responsibilities are um and Community how they communicate that to students and then how the administration communicates that to students in terms of reporting you know those kinds of consistent things so I think with that work over the summer with the administrators will be key also to getting that off the ground successfully oh and there was one other thing this isn't on the agenda either but for future planning and I know we've got a lot of people here
048this we really feel like this is in a draft form so I feel like we're being very trusting to send this out to you because I even printed it for you three with the comments on it so this is the gender support plan thank you oh sorry this is the gender support plan um and you can see like if you're familiar with Google Docs so we had folks putting in there as uh edits as suggestions and asking questions and then if you get to the final page um there are some just some general questions that folks put at the very end there's like a whole thoughts questions concerns um you know where does it does this go into the student information system you know is this K to 12 yes it is going to be
049K to 12. so um they're just kind of uh this is in draft form but I think it looks like it's very close um and then once we finalize this we would want to have a a meeting this summer for everybody to go through it and talk through how you know the process is for filling that out and how that would look differently at different ages and for the benefit of the audience this is a gender support plan so um this is particularly designed to help students um who might have a different gender identity than is reflected in their Student Records um and who uh you know what what kinds of supports that they need to be successful in school um how do they you know who are their go-to's on campus um who can
050they you know who can they call if they have uh if they need help what are their names and pronouns and how are they being handled in the Student Records because most people know that I think that it's different depending on the legal status or able to do certain things in PowerSchool um so that the student-facing pieces show their preferred names and pronouns um legally we can't make changes until after so this sort of like tracks all that and can be really helpful I think particularly like in grade five grade eight when kids are getting ready to trans transition to another building and you know we can sit down and say like well they're safe people have changed um you know they're going into a different and they're going into a different environment so how
051can we you know here's this document to send along with them so that folks are prepared to meet their needs um this is thank you for all right thank you for the vulnerability of sharing um I would love to hear about any plans to do also some if it hasn't already happened just some like student workshopping with this and I see a lot of things in here that are related specifically to like some of the I think it was 34 point plan that we were provided by the youth advocacy group and I would love to know either Guided by by that specific request or by conversations with those or additional students that we are taking into consideration and with um caregivers um roadblocks that people have met because I think a lot of them what
052we're seeing or maybe things that are in place but it's just they're here or they're here or they're here and people don't know how to accomplish it or get the support that they need so it would be good to know that students and parents maybe had a voice and shaping like what are some of the barriers in Roblox and are they once yes and now I I'm not sure yeah I mean secondary has taken the lead on this Dr Thompson here at the high school is really the lead it's funny because when I moved it from Google Docs in order to print it so you can see the comments I had to put it into word and then it made the comments Anonymous which is well that's okay like maybe nobody wants to know that
053somebody asked the question you know there's no dumb questions only dumb people who don't ask questions but um but in this case it prints it out anonymously but Joel has been very much instrumental in leading this um but I certainly I know that my elementary principles have looked at it as well because I shared it with them and then like to see if there was anything special so once this is in a truer draft form then I think that's a great idea to maybe sit down with some families if we have any volunteers to say like yes I'll go through that like I'm filling it out like I'm a completely new student to Mount Lebanon and I can go through this and then say this was great or I'm not comfortable with you asking this
054um or would like more you know this is not included on here and this is a question that you should ask so that'd be awesome so what's your report that's the end that's all I have that's because we skipped last month we did but we're always busy there were a Time thank you yeah that's fine okay thank you okay so we have 10 minutes since we ran out of time to take any questions or concerns or comments from the audience if anyone wants to stop up at the podium thank you cool hi members of the Dei committee my name is Lexi Byron I'm sure you know by now I'm a senior at the high school and I'm here with this incredible group of students and community members to establish just how important this policy is
055not just to us but to all future generations of queer Mount Lebanon students since last school board meeting I've experienced several instances of transphobia from from fellow students and have had to take on the responsibility of educating them myself because very few members of the staff are equipped to handle these situations effectively I am absolutely not alone in this I say this not to Garner sympathy or pity but to show you how necessary and Urgent this policy is after hearing some feedback from school board members about the legality of portions of the policy I was very worried that the district will pass a watered Downs version of what we asked for in an attempt to save face without making the necessary changes for example the concept of student confidentiality seemed to be a sticking point
056for the administration well I understand that you want to avoid more lawsuits your job as a school district is to protect the students with the increasing amount of transphobic and homophobic legislation being deliberated and passed at both state and National levels you're responsible as a public institution to provide at a minimum the protections will keep your students safe from harm I sent an email to Dr steinhauer Dr Irvin and Dr Davis a month ago that outlined the legality of student confidentiality according to the ACLU which determined that student privacy regarding sexual orientation and gender identity is a constitutional right as asserted in Weyland Vero Sterling V borough of Minersville block Eastwood V Department of core Roberts V Clark City cnv Wolfe and FERPA I never received this response to this email it is irresponsible to
057continue to strip down policy changes out of fear of unfounded lawsuits the queer students in your District need this policy and they need it in its entirety with a slew of anti-lgbtq plus legislation the upcoming election and the end of the school year less than two months away it is incredibly important that this process is done quickly and efficiently to ensure that every student in this district is safe thank you thank you do we have any more commenters good evening I'm Shanti and I'm a queer freshman at the high school I uh I spoke before and before I begin I'd like to thank you for your time and your attention here tonight um as you are aware our group introduced a policy that we drafted in a previous meeting I spoke at that meeting to
058urge you to pass the policy tonight I speak to make it clear that we are not going anywhere when I spoke a few months ago I recounted just some of the disgusting terms tossed around by students who have never been forced to consider what those words might possibly mean I told you then I told you then that if it was only a matter of time until I too had a story to share of a time that I was discriminating discriminated against for my queerness well in those few months I've had a story I don't have time to tonight to tell you all the things that he said and done but I do have time to tell you that under our current policy his actions are allowed his discriminatory behaviors do not meet the qualifications of
059harassment according to your Zero Tolerance policy because it's not severe enough my teacher's hands are tied this is why we need to update our guidelines just in a few months between meetings I have been targeted countless times you need to pass our policy and you need to pass it now we are tired we are tired of hearing that there's nothing our teachers can do to stop other students from acting against us for things we cannot control we are tired of knowing our bullies have more protection than us and most of all we are tired of hearing that we need to wait for change we have waited we have listened we will not stop because our backs have Targets on them and we want those gone thank you for your time thank you any other commenters
060foreign who I have spoken at I believe two meetings at this point prior and I am with the other students here I care about the school and the education we receive here I know that it has been extremely difficult for many of my peers to be able to learn and complete assignments mental health is an extremely large issue especially with teenagers and pre-teens on top of this being a part of the lgbtq plus Community brings a multitude of issues for a good portion of them as well there is a great deal of rampant misinformation and hate speech both in online spaces and in schools I cannot count the amount of times I've heard about the blatant discrimination here I myself have been lucky to not witness as much firsthand but that is because I pass
061is straight and rarely talk about my sexuality people can report these but they never go anywhere does this mean that there is no discrimination because staff are not taking it seriously this trickles down to the middle school and the elementary schools as well there are not just harmful words but blatant accounts of assault people are scared these kids then struggle with school and are punished for this last year a girl in my class chose to do online school to get away from kids constantly harassing her for the color of her skin these kids never learned their lessons they are going to leave this school with the mindset that their behavior is acceptable minorities exist no one gets to dictate that no matter how offended they are and I know a lot of teachers are kind
062of split in the middle because they kind of want to appeal to both sides but taking this Middle Ground stance is inadvertently harming the youth here thank you we have time for one more commenter [Music] listing okay um uh good evening and thank you from uh your time uh my name is Leo you uh word three and I am a 10th grader at the high school um the last time I spoke here it was to introduce an lgbtqia plus friendly policy change which has yet to be implemented um I believe this policy is essential I've experienced several comments and microaggressions even since we suggested this policy most of them are stemming from ignorance or other aspects that could be alleviated by Early Education or other factors addressed by the policy um as well regarding privacy
063and protection for students uh family educational rights and Privacy Act FERPA gives parents the right to view their children's school records does not however require schools to contact parents about changes to student records including pronouns and chosen names nor just require a school to document a student's use of a new name or pronoun in the official School record parents have the right to know that all children in a district are safe however I would also like to say that lawsuits should not be a concern the students and their safety should be though Matt Lebanon is a top quality School District however we will need we will we will only be a top District if we protect every student from discrimination I urge you to put these policies in place before the end of the year
064thank you thank you [Applause] Mr Stengel just checking was there anyone online no okay it's 7 39 we're going to end our Dei committee meeting for tonight and we'll regroup next month thank you