Boyertown School Board Education and Student Services Committee Meeting: 11-10-22

001[Music] foreign [Music] first thing I think is uh yeah court order we got that called order and then we go to the Roll Call Please Mr panarello here Mr up the Grove here Mr zawada here Mrs Scott here Miss deroth president Mr Hemingway Mrs Hogan present Miss nyman here Mr Brophy here all present you could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance okay and also I'd like everybody to keep keeping their minds hearts and prayers today for all our veterans over the decades centuries years that they've given their lives and their time to allow us to do what we do here in this country thank you under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay with that I want to bring forward the highlight of the night and this would be the presentation from

002the from the the the Terence teachers and all of Earl Elementary it's a this is what we're really here for tonight guys so you better better be good about this all right well good evening and welcome to Earl Elementary School my name is Dulce rotherhamel and I am the dean that supports Boyertown Elementary School Gilbertsville Elementary School and Earl Elementary School I work very closely with Mrs Franco Earl Elementary's principal our goal has been to make sure that Earl Elementary goes from being basd's best kept secret to being Earl strong we have exceptional staff members and community members who go above and beyond every day to meet the needs of our students most importantly we have a wonderful group of students here on Earl you will have the opportunity to meet some of our fifth

003grade students tonight thank you good evening my name is Anastasia uh Earl we pride ourselves in having a positive School climate striving to make students and Staff feel safe welcome and important members of our school Community our trimester themes be kind be helpful and be respectful are embedded in everything that we do here please enjoy the video that Mr Joe vendetti former fifth grade Earl teacher of 47 years created to share what being kind helpful and respectful looks like according to the students that are [Music] yes [Music] and the kindness that you show information [Music] we will support all members of our school community and classroom during lunch and recess and on the school bus everyone at Earl is important we will not tease fully or engage in unsafe Behavior papers for them to an

004adult adults are here to keep us safe when we we are Earl strong behind me to me that like um here are always nice to someone and you're always helping that person can't like helping them when they're down even if they are like not the same as everyone else you still need to be like going to them I was helpful because like inside this video Clan okay I made time for everybody in my classroom um you share your toys to everyone and you don't steal them with what I fell and I hurt my arm and I broke it someone helped me up and took me to the teachers famous tracker is being respectful of people who are sitting next to you so you'll bother their mother learning and respecting your teacher while they're talking when

005you're um when they're talking don't talk and respecting like belongings to each other and like the classroom and always put things where they're supposed to go so there's like a little lift and then I hit it and it really hurts my brother had picked me up and brought me inside be helpful means like when someone trips someone in the hallways you always help them up or if their food Falls all over the cafeteria help their food or they're trying to help them up my sister was trying to get her lunch box from the um the fridge she couldn't get it because it was all the way up on the top and then I had to help her well I wish someone had his head on the playground um but I told the teacher I something

006and it goes like very good day and everyone just came in football and everyone always tries to help me you can be helpful uh by holding the door or if us if someone got hurt outside of school can you call another adult to help them I mean respectfully means like not interrupting anybody when they're talking or like not just screaming out when they ask him a question they're just like say it instead of just like raising your hand you should just always raise your hands I I am fulfilled because she was saying that it looks like she's doing okay if someone needs help on their computer you can help them with that what I've been struggling on like math or something you could do that too A lot of people have been helpful to me

007by helping me put myself in life and I've been helpful to a lot of people by helping them put them put their stuff away multiple times but um if someone drops their clams you could help him pick them up or maybe another material to me be respectful is like to respect others and make sure you are you like don't make someone like not feel okay and you make sure that everyone feels like they are allowed to be there and don't feel like that they're not supposed to be there [Music] please and I can say thank you to him foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you foreign good evening my name is Griffin I hope you enjoyed the video and have a better understanding of what being kind helpful and respectful looks like it

008Earl we are committed to these values both within the school and in the community led by the student council or students have already collected 1 665 food items which I've been donated to the Boyertown Area multi-service to benefit Preston's food pantry earlier this year in memory of Preston and a selfless contribution to helping others Earl has collected and donated to president's Pantry since it was founded in 2019. good evening my name is Maeve in addition to supporting Preston's Pantry erlang Elementary partners with blue star mothers of America a non-profit organization that supports active duty service Personnel promotes patriotism assists veteran organization and assist in Homeland volunteer efforts Earl students collected 267 pounds of Halloween candy and 579 additional food items to be donated to our deployed troops throughout the holiday season we've truly embraced our

009trimester themes and are dedicated to our community service we have not yet sealed all of the boxes contribute contributions from school board members at this time will complete our collection s foreign thank you oh boy okay thank you very much we're not done yet I just one second perfect thank you for visiting Earl Elementary School and contributing to our community service efforts we hope you had a great evening [Applause] okay we get we get to see that the fruits of our labors here when we get to watch things like that plus the fact of the the time they're putting it put the donations and help others I think it's a great thing it's wise that's why part reason why we're here uh with this I'd like to turn over the meeting to Mr zawad and

010Mr panarella to go in with the curriculum portion of it and with that it's all yours thanks for everyone to be here tonight um it is an important night tonight we'd like to discuss the curriculum at Bordertown Area School District first let me state that Tony and I believe the board the administration and the teachers have the same goal which is to make sure our students receive the best education possible to prepare them for what lies ahead whether that be secondary education the military or the workforce are there other ways we can prepare our children for the future yes board and administration are looking into ways outside of the norm to educate if you remember last year we had a student graduate with an associate's degree from monco as well as receiving their high school

011diploma we have programs with Harrisburg and monco and as you heard at our last meeting we also have set up a partnership with Albright College for Esports we're moving in the right direction as a school district Mr Stout shortly we'll start by giving an in-depth presentation on the curriculum which is State mandated which is not a state mandate and what you will see is materials used to teach the classes whether it be handouts videos or suggested readings those materials are left to the discretion of the teachers that is why it is so important for our parents and Guardians to be in for involved with their children's homework you are the first line of defense against any questionable materials now what is a questionable to some may be not questionable at all that's why you as

012a parent has to decide this year we've received a handful of complaints with regard to teachers lesson plans this in part is why we are having this public meeting when the questionable assignments we brought to the proper Authority they were removed immediately if issues arise we have a process in place that will allow to make the administration aware and said questionable materials first Contact the principal at your child's school to present the information that is questioned and schedule a meeting email or phone call the best way to handle this and keep the record of all Communications second if you're still not satisfied please contact the superintendent and schedule a meeting with her and the principal if all else fails and you contact us for this to happen properly everyone involved needs to provide real data

013not hearsay finally tonight this is strictly about curriculum any other subjects will be forced that are being will be if they're brought up will be forced to stop please consider your fellow speakers I'm sure this is going to be a lot of passion and spirited discussions again this is about our children's future thank you um I would like to thank everyone for attending tonight I was talking to Mrs dearoff before the meeting started and I think it was possibly back in 2009 that I interviewed with the school board in the library at Earl elementary school and I think Mrs derov I'm I'm going to say this is a positive I believe you might have been the only person on the board at that time who um actually was part of the hiring process for me

014and I'm proud to say that starting my 13th or 14th year that I'm I'm happy that Boyertown has entrusted in my leadership to help support the district and and do great things for kids I've had multiple opportunities in the Bordertown Area School District to be a principal for approximately nine years and then as as Administration has transitioned I am now blessed with the opportunity to work hand in hand side by side by Mrs torsha and the rest of our administrative team to support our kids and I'd also would be absolutely remiss if I'm not uh saying out there to the public that I am very proud to say that I am thankful for all of our 500 plus teachers within our district who work on a daily basis to meet the needs of our kids

015it's not an easy task when I visit schools and I think back to my classroom days it's not it's not an easy scenario and I also need to say that over a thousand employees within the district uh from the time that kids get on that school bus to the time they get off that school bus cafeteria staff everyone that helps to support making this family of Boyer Tannery School District as successful as it possibly can be so I wanted to make sure I put that out there first so that being said uh let's let's cut to the presentation I wanted to also kick off the presentation by uh going to PA school code and uh just putting it out there and I'm only going to read a portion of it which I think is really

016important but it's part of a PA school code 4.11 and that is the purpose of public education so I wanted to start off by saying that this section 4.11 described the purpose of public education and its relationship with the academic standards public education prepares students for adult life by attending to their intellectual and developmental and challenging them to achieved at their highest level possible in conjunction with families and other community institutions public education prepares students to become self-directed lifelong Learners responsible and involved citizens together with parents families and Community institutions public education provides opportunities for students too these are seven bullets first one acquire Knowledge and Skills secondly develop integrity three process information for think critically five work independently six collaborate with others and seven adapt to change so I thought it's important that I

017just put out there that our PA school code which by the way was established in 1949 set those parameters to help move us forward as a district foreign we are blessed tonight to go through a very detailed curriculum presentation uh this presentation could probably last a week uh based upon all the information that's in here the office of teaching and learning I would also very much like to highlight and their collaborative efforts to bring all of this compilation of information together we purposefully created this presentation to present to you tonight but as we move forward this presentation is going to present itself as a resource for not only school board members but also community members to access if they have any particular question about curriculum where it comes from from the state level resources that

018we have within the Boyertown Area School District and also links to resources that we have on our website so it is um for a lack of a better term an interactive presentation that we hope will be a nice resource so when someone asks a question to Mr zawada's point a little earlier this might be a resource that you could go to First here's our agenda for tonight and as good instruction does we start off with our icann statements so we have four very specific goals to go through for tonight the first one is truly to review the chronicle logic of chronological series of curriculum related sessions presented to the school board over the past 14 months I know that we inundate you with a lot of information but we also created the first few slides

019of this presentation to give you the background of what we've presented to the board already the second goal is to develop an understanding of Standards curriculum instruction and assessment within Boyertown Area School District the third one and this is exciting because uh it's hard to think about the 23 make sure I say this correctly 23 24 school year but as uh Mr or Dr Foley and his uh staff will present to you we are at the cusp of already scheduling for next year's courses so we're only pushing a third of the way through this school year but we're already thinking about next year so you will get an overview of our programs of academic studies of both the middle and high school level and finally and this is such an exciting opportunity for the Boyer

020Tannery School District but we're blessed as you learned about the special education plan that happens maybe about three five years I forget every every five years it's every three years the comprehensive plan which is another plan that encompasses the special ed plan it encompasses basically everything within a school district we are coming up on the due date for that in the spring of next year of 23. so you're going to learn about the timeline of events that are going to take place over the next so many months to plan for that process so quick reminder of all of the presentations that have taken place for the school board over the past 14 months at our curricular related so back in uh September 28th of 2021 we had our SEL and pay survey information that was

021shared and I'm I'm not gonna it'll take a lot of time again this is a resource that'll be pushed out to our website so that people have access to it but the actual blue font is a hyperlink that takes you directly to board docs to show you the point in time at which these presentations took place uh October 12th of 2021 we presented our portrait of our graduate and you can see the information that was shared at that particular uh presentation in November of 21 we presented an overview of our Virtual Academy for both the elementary and secondary level right around this time last year this is typical for us to present the academic programs of study for the middle level and high school levels in that they talk about new course our program studies

022approval and also some recognition components the office of teaching learning in April 5th of 2022 gave an overview of the Future Ready index I will remind all the board members as well as the community members that is truly an excellent One-Stop shop to go and look at many factors that are a part of any school district within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania there are three components of that dashboard that they look at State assessment scores the office of teaching learning and myself were working on some comprehensive planning today which I just tell you is thrilling we were working on that today and we looked at the Future Ready index for this year the state assessment scores are not posted in there yet but you can go back to previous years to look at what our state

023assessment scores are you can draw comparisons to the neighboring school districts across the Commonwealth they also track on track measures as far as attendance demographic data and then also College and Career Readiness because as you will learn and we've presented to you as a board the College and Career Readiness standards are critical because we are working very hard to plan and program to provide students the opportunity to be successful as they move forward as we stayed in a portrait of a graduate where do we want our kids to be by the time they graduate we're at tennery school district and how do we provide them the opportunities for success more information I believe again Mr zawada made reference to this but our dual enrollment opportunities I believe the senior high staff created a presentation back

024in August which seems like it was just yesterday we're in November August 9th that was presented uh it gave you a program of study overview a brief overview of the previous program of study and then outlined the scheduling timeline that secondary does during the course of a year also highlighted honors AP dual enrollment courses and also AP and dual enrollment in itself about within the Boyer Tannery School District as I made mention the special education plan is another very comprehensive document that is part of the special education process with any school district within the Commonwealth the special education department created a presentation back in October and gave all of the information that is highlighted there everything from staff statistics and types of services that we prevent provide and again at the bottom the special education

025plan is there as I stated before the board the community will eventually have access to this they can click on that hyperlink and it takes you right to that point in in board Docs uh here is our internship presentation if you remember we had some students from the high school come and present through the school board about the unbelievable opportunities that kids are given today with respect to the uh the internships that they have available we in the Boyertown Area School District actually provide internship opportunities in our I.T Department we have interns within the administration building it's exciting to get our students involved and give them a taste of what it's like to be out in that Workforce and hopefully be able to help support and guide their thinking process and the final reminder that

026we have here is that just back in October a couple weeks ago we had our SRI cohort come and present how we are working on a relationship with Albright College and the components that go along with that with the science research institute and also moving down which you uh will hear a little bit about when uh Mr or Dr Foley talks about the program of study and how we're looking to present an Esports program for the upcoming school year that being said I think I am off for a minute I'm going to introduce Dr Sarah o'barrow who is our director of teaching and learning and she's going to start talking a little bit about curriculum good evening thanks for joining us tonight um so I'm going to start off uh Mr Stout and I are

027going to kind of tag team uh the rest of this presentation and then we have some support from the secondary level Administration as well around the programs of study so when we say the word curriculum we want to make sure that we have a common understanding of what we mean when we say that word so if we look at board policy board policy tells us that curriculum is a series of planned instruction that is aligned to the academic standards in each subject area and coordinated and and articulated and implemented in a manner designed to result in what student achievement and growth that's why we do what we do because we want to support our students and continue to move them forward in general when we think about general terms of curriculum it's what we teach

028it's the plan for student learning we often say it's what students need to know and be able to do so it's not just about skills it's about how do we take those skills build them into broader Concepts and then how do we apply them and transfer them into the real world we are required to align them to State mandated standards and we need to make sure that students have a level of proficiency when they start in kindergarten first grade second grade all of those skills and Concepts build upon each other we call that vertical alignment from kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade if you're missing some skills that you should have learned in first grade you're going to have a little bit more trouble grasping those skills in second grade because your foundation's

029a little bit cheeky so we make sure we looked at that vertical alignment and we make sure in curriculum we also look at learning targets those are those goals that like Mr style introduced the icann statements for this evening we articulate those in developmentally appropriate ways for students to understand them I taught kindergarten for a little while and we had learning Targets in our classroom so kindergarten students could articulate in math today what are we going to do we're going to add single digit numbers and then we work through what that meant and they could help track their progress throughout as well we of course have assessments and then we have suggested curricular materials all of that in a nutshell is curriculum it's a mouthful isn't it and then we think about instructions so instruction

030is how you take all of those pieces that I just went over and you put it into play that's how it comes across in the implementation within our classrooms so it's what is taught and but when we think about how do we teach that we have to think about our students and the needs of our students I have four children of my own their needs have vary greatly same mom same dad but let me tell you they're different creatures um each one of them so I noticed in my house my student my own children's strengths vary their needs vary think about a classroom of 25 students you can imagine the needs that are um presented within that classroom so teachers have a job um a difficult job to consider what does each child in that

031classroom need and how can they adjust their instruction to best meet that student within that learning environment so they may adjust the instructional practices sometimes it's whole group sometimes it's small groups sometimes it's Partners sometimes it's individuals we group flexibly based on the needs of our students teachers plan what we call backwards now it doesn't mean that it's upside down but it's factored because they have to know their goal first so when you know the goal when you know what the standard is then you can backward plan from that I know the goal is here I know from my assessment my students are here so how am I going to fill that Gap and I might have students who are here and I may have students who are here so how do I differentiate to

032move this child here to reach this Benchmark and how to differentiate to move this child here to reach this Benchmark and then hey I have kids that are already past that so how do I continue to help them grow and move them forward as well so that's just some of the ways that teachers are going to structure that learning environment in those instructional practices to meet the students who come to them each and every day during each and every period of that day foreign materials are in reference to the process that Dr obero made reference to the curricular materials refer to the instructional content that is provided to a student regardless of its format we can certainly all relate to what has transpired over the past few years how a few years ago our curricular

033model kind of turned on its ear overnight and we had to adapt and modify and try to stay whole to our standards but also provide resources to our students that were more virtual in nature so when you think about our curricular materials in general we talk about our materials can include printed representational materials audio visual materials and materials electronic or in digital format such as materials that are accessible through the internet so again as we have progress forward we have learned about more resources and materials that are available to us and I also like to point out to this we always think about a textbook um many of us that when we went to school we had a textbook in front of us and we learned through that textbook well what we have learned uh

034through the uh the textbooks themselves not holding up each textbook can cost a hundred two hundred dollars but when you start thinking about students needing to access a textbook it can be very costly to constantly renew our textbooks uh based upon changes based upon processes that are no longer in in the the correct format of what might have been from just five to ten years ago so we are looking for not only materials that meet our students need but we're looking for materials that are as cost effective as we possibly can because we certainly don't want to be putting money out in materials that uh just almost overnight become irrelevant or become obsolete based upon what they have so we also created a visual for uh what Dr obero and I just made reference to

035I talked about in the early part about PA school code everything that we do within the school district follows PA school code we are mandated to follow PA school code and then we have policies based upon PA school code which allow us the opportunity to implement whatever that code might be so as we talked about the curriculum instruction and curricular materials the visual in front of you was created to help give you just kind of a flow chart of what it looks like it's hard to see up there but those are are black arrows between each of those those bubbles so we start off in the curriculum like Dr Barrow made reference Dr obero made reference to with our PA our pde Pennsylvania Department of Education standards we go to our learning targets like we

036did for you tonight we gave you an example of what our learning targets were for tonight and then we moved to our assessments what kinds of Assessments do we put in place to support validate or say hey we need to do something a little bit different this time because our kids did not achieve what they needed to achieve at that particular time our assessments we have both our state and local assessments as we've also learned through the process our state assessments have kind of gone a little bit different than what we would have predicted in the past because of what has taken place over the past few years it's not just a Boyertown Trend it's a trend across the Commonwealth where our state assessment scores have been depressed compared to where they may have been

037in the past but I'm I'm I'm I'm not happy to say that our scores are lower but what I am supportive to say is the fact that our scores are commiserant with local school districts and comparable to local school districts just like they were before the pandemic so um point of that being I think there might be I don't know Mr sultanic's 500 school districts in the district I forget what the last number is 500 exactly used to be 502 of the 500 districts everybody is feeling the The Angst with respect to the state assessment scores uh importantly as well our local assessments what we do in each one of our course courses uh whether that's a formative assessment or a summative assessment that we create within our Boyer Tannery School District gives us that

038opportunity to have an understanding of what our children learned or what they did not learn at a particular level and be able to have them move forward again referencing what Dr obero made reference to our instruction the um oh and let me talk about the locks that we put here just to kind of give you a visual uh if you see a closed lock that means the Boyertown Area School District has very little control over what this component of the uh this visual is so for instance let me go back again the pde standards they're given to us they are given to us the learning targets that we create based upon those standards and you're going to see an example of how detailed a pde standard is in an upcoming slide we have the ability

039to create learning targets based upon the standards so you'll see an open lock and you'll actually see a close lock so that's what the example of the of the locks are assessment the state assessments the keystones the pssas we don't have control over what's given in those assessments but for our local assessments we certainly do control what is given at those times so back to the second uh line in our visual is the curriculum it's what is taught the students is the who it's taught to the practices is how it's taught and finally the environment is where it's taught in our classrooms and you can see that at various levels there the curriculum has the closed lock and the open lock students again our students come to us every day the students that are in

040our classrooms are the students that we have coming to us with various backgrounds they this is a public school institution entity and we educate all students so we we have um you know little control over who comes to our classrooms our practices and how we teach our kids is an open lock and our environment is also an open lock as well curricular materials how we go through the best way to facilitate that instructional process to our students you will see open locks down there because our materials like I made reference to in the last Slide the print materials the digital resources the Hands-On materials and the visuals are all how we as an office of teaching and learning as a district work collaboratively to create resources for our teachers to access resources for our teachers

041to provide resources for our teachers and with their many years I believe there's a statistic out there that we have 90 percent of our teachers have a master's degree they have that instructional flexibility to make instructional decisions if I'm teaching the school board today about curriculum and I go home tonight and I say oh my gosh I missed out on the opportunity to teach the board about some sort of particular piece of that topic I might come back tomorrow to the school board if I was blessed to meet with all of you tomorrow again and adapt something thing that I said today to say you know what I appreciate that Mr zawada asked that question Mr zawada here's another resource to help support you to maybe facilitate your understanding of a particular topic okay so

042Mr Stout mentioned the complexity of the standards at the top of the left side of this slide you're going to actually see a first grade standard in the area of ela which is the acronym for English language arts um so this standard uh is retail stories including key details and demonstrate understanding of their Central message or lesson so that's a standard in first grade so we think about what do we need first graders to do as we unpack that standard just looking at that standard globally we have to think about what are the skills what's the knowledge what are the concepts students need we need to extrapolate from that as teachers to ensure that students meet the proficiency levels related to that standard so what do they have to do they have to identify a

043fiction text they have to know what's the difference between fiction and non-fiction they need to be able to explain the main parts of a story the beginning the middle and that sets the stage for plot as your students goes up through third grade fourth grade fifth grade even into High School of course plot gets a little bit more sophisticated but in first grade it's really important that they understand beginning middle end and that sequence they have to know who is in The Story characters where does the story take place the setting they have to be able to identify important events in the story that's directly tied to that sequence piece um and then it's that message or a lesson so what did the character learn and then can they retell the important parts of the

044story all of those I can learning targets extrapolated from that one standard so as you can imagine they're going to be working on that for a little while in first grade in fact most of the standards are recursive meaning that we come back to them throughout the year and we touch upon them and as students need more work in in each of these areas that's where our small group instruction really is differentiated to support students in those areas sometimes we find students really jump jump on and connect with with fiction text and then non-fiction text is a little bit more challenging for them we might find the reverse we might find some students who are really strong in Ila and need a little bit more support in math again that's going to be different each

045year based on the needs of the students that are in your class or in your courses but now let's jump to the right side of the screen and you see a high school standard and this is math for all the people who love math this is a math standard it is apply and extend the properties of exponents to solve problems with rational exponents we thought about bringing you one to two but um but if you take a look at these standard uh these I can statements there's a lot here that we really need to work through it's a bit more um a bit more pieces in here that are going to build than as compared to that left side not necessarily more important but very um critical to success as students are advancing in their

046math skills so in order to be able to apply and extend properties of exponents to solve problems students need to be able to add subtract multiply and divide if they can't do those basic practices they're not going to be able to apply and extend those properties positive and negative numbers a lot of Concepts there they need to be able to simplify a power that's connected to exponents add and subtract of course rational numbers multiply and divide rational numbers are you seeing lots of different lessons Happening Here in the classroom related to all these icann statements um I'm not going to read the rest of them but you get the idea there's lots of different components within each standard that help us know what are we teaching and how do we best make sure that all

047students are on that path to continuous growth growth and Improvement now the standards are pretty comprehensive if you look on this slide you will see at the top there is a link to the pde SAS system that's the standards aligned system and when you click on that link I'll click on it it will take you into the standard line system where you can download and you can take a look at all of the things that we have hyperlinked on this site on this link so you don't have to actually go there you can just click on it here here is a link to the ELA standards if you click on that right there they are over here are the grades 6 to 12 Ela standards again that's English language arts math is a Pre-K to

04812 document I'm not going to open all these links but again this will be a reference it will be posted on our website so you can go to it at any time science isn't here just so you know Pennsylvania has adopted new science standards they're working on um revising those and they must be implemented by the fall of 2025 so we are working to support our teachers with understanding the key components of that the instructional um components of that and then also of course the assessment related pieces social studies are linked there as well as that's broken down by Civics and government economics geography and history across K-12 related arts would be things like arts and Humanity World Language health and phys Ed Career Education family consumer science business computer and information technology and then

049of course we have other course guidelines that NCAA approved courses for our athletes and then also AP courses connected to college board there is a great little video up here that Jen Joyce one of our curriculum supervisors created I'm not going to play it for you but before you dig into this site if you watch this two and a half minute video it's going to help you be able to navigate this slide to be able to really help you understand and dig into the Pennsylvania standards a little bit more foreign s that the office of teaching learning as well as our departments have been working on are our course curriculum summaries I can imagine all of you at the school board level right now and in the audience is probably like this is just a

050lot of information to process how can we ever go through all of this information and feel like we have an understanding of what that looks like well um I don't know if if any of you back in school read The Cliff Notes sometimes if you didn't really have the time to read the entire book well the office of teaching learning as well departments have created kind of a cliff node version of each of our courses which we are working diligently behind the scenes to get these completed our goal is to have them completed by spring so if you look at and this is kind of hard to see on the on the screen up there but it is just a very brief overview of the course itself I'm going to just click on a hyperlink

051here which takes us to the Google Doc which shows us the information that might be a little more easy to see but what it does it gives the course name this is for instance grade one language arts it gives you a course description about what you will learn in first grade in language arts it also will give you the prerequisite courses or required State assessments that go along with that and thank goodness at the first grade level we don't really have an awful lot of prerequisites coming in for English and language arts or state assessment components at that particular time but it also gives you an Ela English language arts year at a glance overview about where our teachers are targeting to be during the course of that Academic Year in this summary we also

052this is the same link that would take you on our previous slide to the ELA education standards if I click on that it would take us there and it also talks about key resources that are utilized in first grade to help support our kids now I need to find to get back to where I was go into quickly here we went to Algebra 2 for a course curriculum summary this gives a little more depth with respect to a higher level course but it talks about our course districts description it gives the length of the course it actually gives the course number which is going to I believe Dr mayori in a short time here is going to give a quick overview of our programs of study but it gives the course number it also gives

053the prerequisite courses and the recommendations of what you should potentially have to be able to be recommended for this course for instance in Algebra 2 it might make sense that you passed Algebra 1 with the c or higher it also has here required State assessments and if it is something that is connected to one of our state assessments we would put that information in the information here it gives you the overview year at a glance it also connects to the pre the PA state standards so if you want to see okay well what are the the required components that go along with the standards that are aligned with this course they are linkable here and it also gives the key components of resources that would be utilized in that course and our goal is to

054have this summary for each one of our courses at each one of our levels in the elementary middle and high school level in the very near future secondary program of study I'm going to introduce Dr Andrew mayori he is one of our assistant principals at the high school at bash and he is going to talk about both the middle level program of academic study as well as the high school program academic study thank you Mr Stout good evening everybody appreciate the opportunity to come here and talk about our program of studies it is a very important document probably when you think about what represents a school to potential new families moving in potential employees that want to work into a district and apply to work at Boyertown we refer to these two documents probably first

055and foremost the program of studies as well as the handbook the yearly handbook that gets updated we're focusing on the program of studies tonight and as Mr Stout referenced it outlines the general information of our curricular offerings within the buildings now every school a district in well I think across the nation has um their established curriculum but it gets put into this program studies document that is easy to access and easy to understand to see what makes up the school which is why it's important that every year we come to you and we share with you the information the changes the additions and deletions that we tend to every year in the program of studies both the high schools and the middle schools have an alignment with our program of studies to support one another

056so our whole secondary offering makes sense to our students and our community um the components of the program of studies first and foremost has the description of courses so to build on Mr Stout's uh comparison of the cliff notes version of those one-page summaries think of the descriptions in our program of studies as like the USA Today version of The Cliff Notes version of our curriculum because in our program studies it's just a couple of sentences describing what the class is enough to pique a student's interest but also to let him or her know what they should expect what's going to happen what that course is about and as these one-page summaries are finalized we're going to hyperlink them within our program of studies to make it even easier for our students family and communities

057to be able to click and really get down to some details about the learning objectives and the information that you saw in those one-page summaries that's the bulk of these program of studies in addition to that both in the high school and secondary or excuse me the middle school program of studies we have an overview of the counseling services our school counselors are very important in the academic growth and matriculation of our students up to the diploma so we give an overview of what uh the counseling services can provide along with explaining our graduation requirements because again from District to District graduation requirements do vary within the state in our high school document we focus a lot on our post-graduation preparation and services that we provide our students in moving to the next steps that

058Mr zwada and Mr Stout pointed out we expect our students to be ready to tackle as they graduate from our district as well as some other information pertaining to the academic opportunities the honors classes the AP program the Dual enrollments what it means to be prepared if you're going to be an athlete in college as well the NCAA requirements along with our CT see opportunities as well so that information you'll be able to identify and find accessible within our program studies and we direct our students to that every January once it's finalized and it kicks off our scheduling season for our students this year in the program of studies uh some highlighted some significant changes that are worthy for for you to note and and to support first off as maybe referenced in the August

059meeting when we focused on the dual enrollment classes the state has changed for all schools that the waiting bumps that schools give to their de classes the dual enrollment college classes they want to make it Equitable with AP classes so our de classes are required now to have a 0.2 bump GPA which is what we have for our AP classes and we're gonna see more and more within our program of studies that students can pursue both the de guaranteed college credits as well as prepare for the AP exam I can't guarantee every course but a lot of these are going to be synonymous that they can prepare for the AP uh exam should a student choose to go to college guaranteed College route and or take the test for the college credits that way because

060our de curriculum aligns so well with most of the AP classes that are out there in addition to that we have two courses we're excited excited to offer at the high school one is a de microeconomics course that's going to be uh sponsored by Montco and students to take this course must satisfy the prereq of the E macroeconomics additionally as was mentioned earlier our Esports initiative and development which is of great interest to our student body we're putting out a first entry-level course of Esports which will focus on the gaming Concepts and Equipment you'll also see both in the high school and middle school program of studies the math alignment and changes that we have under worked on and are putting into play that are going to better support our students for the algebra Keystone

061preparation and the higher level math courses they will take through their high school years uh there was a change in Harrisburg University and they are no longer allowing high schools to be all for their to offer the ocean world studies course as a de credit we still like the curriculum there is still student interest in this course so that will stay part of our program of studies but will no longer be a de opportunity and lastly what you'll see in our program of studies the high school is a clear more detailed graphic and explanation excuse me of the ACT 158 the Keystone requirements because starting with this graduating class of 2023 those Keystone exams are a requirement or some alternative pathway that aligns with the Keystone exams so that is going to be clear and

062that is more up to date in the new document to show you what the documents look like once these they are approved in the December board meeting there will be a hyperlinked active hyperlink to this presentation as well as reflected in various places on our um high school or excuse me on the websites are the actual documents so here's just a quick overview of what the middle school program of studies looks like and it encompasses both east and west and like I mentioned before it does provide background information of the schools and their offerings and gives Graphics to highlight and overlay what the course of study and the matriculation of the three years in Middle School will look like similarly similarly in the high school program of studies we had that same information you are

063going to see in the finished product a more colorful as well as more hyperlinked document so what I mean by that is what I'm showing you right now this pdf version is approximately 80 95 pages of our information that's cumbersome for everybody to go through and we know that our students who we refer to this document when they go and start their course selection we want to have more hyperlinks and start hey here's our English section click here it's going to take you right to those English classes here's our technology education section and so forth so you can see a lot more hyperlinks a lot more easier and accessibility and usability for our students and our families and our community when this is approved and published okay our comprehensive planning component is the last part

064of our formal presentation this evening as Mr stat alluded to earlier comprehensive planning takes place every three years it's a mandate um that every school entity must submit to the Secretary of Education in Pennsylvania a professional education plan and within that plan there are some key components there's actually six sections that are outlined at the bottom of this slide those are a profile of the district core foundations that's our alignment to our portrait of a graduate our district of admission Vision goals those kinds of pieces assurances our needs assessment our action planning work around our data and then of course the submission of the plan comprehensive planning is a continuous process and again what is our goal our goal is to make sure that all of our students are on the path to continuous achievement

065and growth throughout their time with us from kindergarten or pre-kindergarten I should say all the way up through 12th grade so that continuous planning of an Lea or a local educational agency is essential to make sure that we are monitoring and that we are adjusting and we are looking at the results that we are getting through those key assessments and ensuring that we are using research-based best programs best practices of instruction supporting our our teachers in professional learning and then focusing and aligning resources that will support our students through that this process we have public participation we display the um plan for 28 days and offer so the public can provide some feedback on that and um we there is an analysis of the critical factors that the districts will use over the next three

066years to ensure that we are supporting all of our students in that continuous growth process oops last couple slides I promise the comprehensive planning steering committee this is a snapshot of the group of people that will be working collaboratively but as Dr obero shared there will be an opportunity for public comment on our comprehensive plan process so that we can get input from all stakeholders or stakeholders within our district and outside of our district as well and just thinking about the timeline of what this is going to look like uh from November of where we are today through March of 2023 because our deadline for the comprehensive plan is March 30th of 2023. I know in my mind that seems like it might be a little bit far away but we are literally going to

067Blink it's going to be Thanksgiving it's going to be the winter break and the next thing you know it's going to be January and March is right around the corner so we created this pretty aggressive plan to move forward to complete the requirements and again as we stated this is a state required document that helps to provide guidance to to meet the needs of all of our students across the district there's a lot of specific things there but in for the but for the most part we complete A needs assessment within the portal we as we talked about earlier have a steering committee that has a conversation about analyzing the strengths and the challenges that we post within our portal we're going to have a steering in committee meeting to update the information there and

068by that particular time we then put the draft version of the comprehensive plan out to the community to get feedback on the information that's in there I'm going to say the comprehensive plan itself is well over 100 pages long I predict Mrs torcher that we will probably be doing some sort of board presentation between now and then when we get to a good point so that we can do an overview of where we are in that comprehensive plan and then our ultimate goal is in February that the board will be get the comprehensive plan will be given to the board to review they will approve and It ultimately gets submitted and finalized within the portal by March 30th of 2023 and at that particular time they will either accept it or kick it back to

069us with recommended adjustments to the plan so that is our uh pretty much the work behind the scenes of the office of teaching learning and many teams within the district to provide the required elements of the comprehensive plan to meet the deadline of of really I say March 30th but technically it really needs to be done uh by the end of February so that we're ready to roll for that that timeline questions be a question on any one of our I can statements so and I'll pull people up here to have various feedback now this is just quick um being this is my first year on the board compared to pre previous academic submissions where is it it seems like it's pretty in-depth especially for the math end of it is it more challenging than

070it was previously more more challenging with respect to meeting the needs of our students or meeting the requirements of what for graduation um and I could I mean if somebody from maybe Dr mayori or somebody wants to come up we as you see one of the recommended alignment things that we are doing this year is really about math and to answer your question over the years we have had a few variations of our math alignment from middle level to high school and we have Keystone requirements that are kind of trigger courses and we haven't hit those triggers quite as efficiently as we would have liked to so that new math alignment that you'll see and I think guys the official start was this year with the the what is yes going to be a three-year

071process right so we're on track of where we need to be but there's there's been an overlap and there's been redundancy and redundancy is needed in certain places and times with our math sequencing but we've gotten the right people together following the right uh plan for the for the standards and we've put that into place to better Pro to answer the call that we've needed based on our math results and we're responding to the data and what it's telling us and as you see with that Mr zawada one of the things you can't just put it in place tomorrow you have to start with a cohort of kids so you have to also finish where some kids are and then start that process and that's where we are at that starting point so that's why

072it's a critical element but it's a great question um and it really hopefully will yield a higher math level scores because our our trigger courses will be more closely aligned where they need to be from a timeline perspective good it's not buzzing all right good um so I think um in representing the parents and I hope I get all their questions right um and and myself too as well when you show the the portrait of a graduate um you know what I'm talking about yeah the little graph thing you have a quarter there for scl okay social emotional learning okay so nothing's mentioned here this is all the academic part of that graph and that's fine um and I think that's great I don't have any questions on the academics at Boyertown okay I think

073Boyertown has a lot of opportunity here for our kids the social emotional curriculum or learning whatever you want to call it what are the goals of that what is the curriculum I mean you've given a lot with the academics but we haven't seen anything there um so I have questions because I'm not familiar with it and so I would want to know what what is your goal with that what how is it presented in the classroom because I didn't see it on their schedules like I don't see a spot for it so how does that play in is it in every subject is it random I mean what do we do with that okay so my my response to you is as you and I have a uh a conversation back and forth and we

074treat each other with respect and I listen to your question and I uh I could I could agree with your your question I could disagree with your question but the unwritten curriculum that's part of that process is how we might treat one another in making people feel making people be comfortable with what's happening our students today that come to our classrooms come with a multitude of needs uh and if I think about just in general I was blessed to be coal brookdale's principal for almost nine years the kids in at colbertdale Elementary School uh from a a socioeconomic perspective they are now over 50 percent free and reduced lunch where other schools in our district are much lower than that and the needs of our kids in all of our buildings are at a different

075level so I go back to my initial point about how we treat one another and come some of those pieces about classroom management classroom culture how we as you saw in the Earl presentation today it was all about how students treat one another and treat one another with respect and treat each other with dignity so we do have counseling components that are part of our of our courses that counselors come in and provide different types of resources for our kids but it really comes back to how we are working with one another in that process and meeting those those needs of our kids from the perspective that aren't necessarily just those core academic issues but how we work collaboratively to be together in a classroom so it's it's classroom management you do have some instructional

076AIDS though so if parents wanted to see something that would you're coming in and you're presenting it to the class they're now you're saying she's shaking her head now okay I don't want to get it wrong I want to understand give me an example of what an instructional Aid might be I just wanted something that you that the counselor gives for you said they come into a class at times and might give the kids some helps did you say it use the word help they might come in and help students or teach some some core components that might be from a counseling perspective with within a classroom because our our counselors provide a multi multiple types of supports they provide that in a classroom they provide it individually at the senior high level they provide

077career or Readiness type skills to help support kids to be give them opportunities the best that they can and have them be able to access resources that they're able to access okay um all right make sure I'm getting everything that I need um so I I get it I mean you want to teach kids to be respectful that's all part of the classroom management um but you're set are yeah it's just it's not just about um teaching students to be respectful to one another the social emotional component of um a school day is meeting students at the door who are coming with anxiety um who need coping skills who don't have a soft comfortable bed to sleep in at night didn't have a good meal to eat the the previous evening um may go many

078you know evenings without meals it may be part of our backpack Pro program um maybe living with grandparents maybe doubled up in homes so those are the types of things that we are trying to address through social emotional learning it's not that we are um you know putting them in a pipeline to you know go through the same things it's really about what is the student coming to school with and what are those needs and how can we go about supporting them and helping them to access their education and that's the most important part of what we do is making sure that students who are coming into school that they're not hungry that they're they're they feel safe that they are comfortable in being able to share with a trusted adult that there might be

079something going on wrong at home I mean the amounts of um phone calls that we make to Children and Youth Services in a weeks months time is far more than what I you know would like to even be able to recite the amount of children that come home into school and share different things with us so that's part of of the social emotional learning and what we're you know trying to do to support students so that they can access their academics and be able to grow and become successful of all competent individuals as they leave us so that is also a component of what we do and I see Dr obero is also getting up the other part that I would say is very much so tied to the social emotional learning component it's not

080a programmatic piece as much as when you think about the habits the strengths the needs of our students and as you're looking ahead to careers what do you need as far as self-management to be able to meet a deadline to be able to follow through on a plan to be able to establish work steps you know from the beginning to the end helping them think about teamwork and how do I work collaboratively with somebody that I might like but then somebody that I might not connect as well with so how do we respectfully work together but then also thinking about myself what strengths do I have that might be different than Mr cell that ultimately are going to help make us a strong team but and when we're thinking about that goal of when they

081leave High School what might my career be based on my strengths and what I know about myself and what my interests are and how is that going to help support me as I move forward into college or career or the workplace so all of those pieces are things that we are framing um within you know it's great it's really important that our students within math understand how that's connected to careers how science connected to careers how if you're really good in ela and writing what is you know what does journalism possibly look like what are some careers that in Communications that might connect with you go ahead so I'm sorry this is done okay just I just got it I'm sorry so it's not curriculum no there's not it's just what a teacher does it's

082how you frame it it's not curriculum you don't design anything special you see kids that have needs and you meet those needs or you help or you call in help so one elsewhere the curricular pieces that we might have would be like the prevention piece like with the the drug and alcohol awareness like when when um officer French and officer Perez had mentioned that they come in there are some prevention pieces that that would be fall under that Wellness mental health umbrella though there would be some curricular resources that we would use for that but from the more broader social emotional learning and how that classroom environment is structured is not programmatic like that we also have and along with um esap training so that we are prepared to you know give those other supports

083to students as they are are you know entering our schools um just to give you a few statistic statistics um through the date of uh October 25th and I'm I'm sorry I don't have um even more current data we have done the following amount of threat assessments within our district at Bordertown area high school there were four threat assessments done Boyertown there's Elementary two Colbert Dale Elementary two Earl for Gilbertsville seven middle school esport middle school I'm sorry I have two Middle School between the two middle schools we have had 19 threat assessments and then the other two elementaries we didn't have any so that is also a part of what we're we're dealing with every day um with respects to students who are hurting themselves cutting themselves um having suicide ideation you know every

084day yeah I went on the CDC website somehow linking through this I got I and it was good and I did see that our kids are struggling emotionally and not our kids but Nationwide okay but that was in 2019. there's no other information after that and I am concerned so we'll we'll flip away from there for a minute that we don't have our school our scores are not going up so is that because our kids have not recovered emotionally from what happened in 2020 or what you know and I know this is Statewide probably Nationwide but I don't want to sit on that and say well we're you know everybody's struggling so that's okay because we don't want to think that way right I mean you want to you want to get the scores up

085so why do you think here in Boyertown you recognize we recognize it as teachers so what's what's keeping those scores down with our kids what what's what do you think of it well and I I mean I'll speak to that uh I'm hypothesizing because it would really be hard to give you actual information about that but I think you I think you almost answered your own question by all the questions you asked it's all of those components that are causing us inconsistency within those scores and I remind you that those scores as we went back to that assessment slide are based upon State assessment scores it's based upon where kids were expected to be at the tail end of a school year based upon a summative assessment I do assure you that across our district

086we would call a formative assessment an assessment that informs Us and how we move forward to help support kids our formative assessments are showing that our kids are making progress but to your point which is an incredibly valid point is our kids are lower than they've been our teachers have struggled because first graders coming into second grade were lower than they had been the previous year 8th graders moving to ninth grade were lower and teachers had to make modifications which they might not have been in accustomed to doing in previous years for many years they came in with kind of a prerequisite of where they were but they they missed out on some of those opportunities and you asked that question and the answer to that question is because of what has transpired over the

087past couple years but we are picking ourselves up and looking at trying to meet the needs of our kids in all levels because you can't ignore all of those uh data points that Mrs torsha made reference to if a student comes to our class and and all of these things are going on it's hard to ignore those things and say hey we're going to teach you algebra one today we need to make sure that we find a common ground meet their uh their mental health needs the best that we can based upon the resources we have and move forward but our formative assessment scores are absolutely moving forward and our kids are progressing in fact we've had some incredible growth over the past year because our kids are back because we're able to go back

088to instructional practices that are yielding excellent results but we have some space to make up and we all know that and everybody's working diligently to do that okay one more question well maybe not um with behavioral Behavior behavior problems okay or issues or kids you know with anxiety or whatever um are you talking to the parents is there a conversation going on do you usually recommend that they see well I mean we're not we're an educational facility we're not a medical so when do you do you immediately say hey I think Johnny's having a problem here or how how do you do that what is your guideline that's a great question and we um we have a certain level of educational resources available within the Boyertown Area School District but we also have connections to

089outside agencies that support us the Student Assistance Program the sap program especially at the secondary level I get to have the opportunity to sit in many um discipline type situations at the secondary level and if they are related to drugs and alcohol if they're related to fights if they're related to significant getting along with one and other kinds of issues it could very well be that the recommendation is that a parent is given a sap referral form Student Assistance Program referral form it's voluntary it's not something that they're required to do although we hire highly recommend it and then what happens is a an assessment is done by an outside institution and they get evaluated on determining if from the outside from a mental health perspective they qualify for whatever that support is completely confidential

090from the school district it has nothing to do we don't get the results from that but we make those recommendations quite honestly uh all the time based upon some of the things we see because kids have a lot of needs right now and we're trying to support them so there's a good collaboration with parents teachers there's a good there is to your point about resources available you know you I was going to say something but I'm not going to say you know lead the horse to water but you can't make a drink we we provide the opportunity for parents to have access to those resources we can't twist their arm and say you have to do that um so there are many times that yes it is an excellent scenario honestly there's many times when

091we make a sap referral and we learn through the process that Johnny or Susie is already in some kind of counseling program already and then we have sometimes a release because it's it's it's a good thing that schools and counselors sometimes can talk to one another so that we have people on the same page because if they're working on the same goals the same kind of strategy sometimes we can help to support that here in the school as well so that portal is kind of a two-way street as much as parents are willing to allow that opportunity so one more question then okay so when we went to the student surveys that are administrated through it's called pays the Pennsylvania youth surveys there is just for parents to know there's a document if you click

092on one of the links this is going to be available to them right okay you can see a document where it looks like this is where a teacher would go if they're going to do a survey is that right because it was like a it's like a question survey it's called the it was conducted last year with respect to a series of questions and it was on a voluntary basis and based upon that pay survey you also can see Trends within the district that um change over time uh related to drugs and alcohol related to all kinds of issues that are out there and that information is used to help just give us a snapshot of what kids are kind of going through right now so yes that information is available so so when do

093you decide you're gonna issue a survey to a class is every two well and and do you you don't give this this is like a 10 page prior to the pay survey ever being um provided to any of our students number one it's put before the school board and the school board um elects to participate or not upon participation if we have the support then parents particip parents give permission for their child to either opt-in or opt out of taking that service okay yeah so it is it is collaborative 100 it's done once every other year and the data is you know brought together to really help us manage the the problems within our community and to be able to address them do we need to budget for more um Karen Foundation people to be

094within our buildings should we have somebody three days a week five days a week do we need somebody at the elementary do we need somebody at you know every level of the building so it all it has a lot to do with how we are putting our supports in place for students you know that are coming into our doors every day okay thank you okay I had wanted to piggyback off of Mrs Scott's uh part about the SEL and it really when Mrs torsha made a comment um who is training for this to help our our students I mean is it the teacher is it a nurse is it who who's the answer is yes all we we the all of the people you made mention to are Provide support as as they're able our

095counselors specifically in a building are some of that very specialized support that are in our buildings on a daily basis to provide support but the practices that go along with some of those strategies and things like that are are what our teachers might Implement if there is some kind of medical issue that goes along with that about you know Mrs torsion made the point about Hunger different things that go along with that certainly our nursing staff that is available within our buildings help to support uh kids in that element as well how much training do does everybody have I mean because a teacher just can't go in there and offer all of this I mean there has to be a significant amount of training involved in that well I would just say it's really a

096team approach it is so when I when I was a classroom teacher I I had a little one that I was very concerned about coming hungry to my classroom and I I immediately went to the counselor went to the principal we put together a plan we were able to get some extra food from lunch um and set it aside it happened to be a kindergartner who came in the afternoon and and we've just put together a plan of how do we best support this talked with the family and and you know brought all those supports together to ensure that this kiddo came to school really ready to learn as much as possible but if it's an emotional need so so the social emotional learning is on Mental Health prevention so if a teacher is seeing

097that a student is struggling maybe they're the first one to see that a child is cutting or that there's um ongoing absenteeism the teacher is not going to be the person who's going to be providing any type of um counseling they're going to refer them to the counseling office if they're seeing something pretty significant and that from that point the counseling offices is going to be in contact with the parent this is what we're seeing have a conversation and let them know that there's a multitude of avenues that we can go in which we can support their child in our school we could provide school-based counseling which is a more therapeutic counseling level that we have we have used our mental health Monies to make sure that we have on people in place you know

098throughout the district to be able to provide this layer of supports um you know depending on what their issues are will determine the Avenue that we would be making recommendation you know for maybe it's something that needs to be taken care of outside of the school but we know that as students have access to counselors and those supports within the school setting they're more likely to access them um whereas a parent doesn't have to then come home from work take them there um and you know add on to their day so that's part of of the the SEL it's mental health awareness and you know being able to identify and being able to then follow the supports it's it's like a ladder you know the different rungs the teacher isn't necessarily going to be the

099person that's going to be providing the supports but they're going to be the person who may see it same as the bus driver the bus driver might see that Johnny's getting on the bus every single day you know sad won't be talking you know their disposition has changed they're going to get off the bus go in say something to the principal they're going to get you know Johnny say is everything okay so you know we keep continuing to go up those ladder you know wrong so that we can help to put those on prevention uh strategies in place so that we don't have someone harming themselves or making an attempt or or setting up a plan um so it's it's a lot of people and we all have uh training in different aspects of it

100um I would tell you that I would be able to see but I would also then be looking for who do I need to tell to help to make sure okay my concern was that a teacher was trying to get the emotional no and support this is not another piece too that we as employees within the the boy Tannery School District as Public School Employees are are mandated reporters and we go through mandated reporter training to really look at some of these characteristics and things like that and we report and help to support in that process and to piggyback on Mrs torch's Point each of our buildings have teams of people that if there is sometimes particular issues academic emotional kinds of issues that we have teams that we recommend to help support to provide

101a plan to help guide what that next step is but I'm sorry I misunderstood that the teacher isn't necessarily that direct although there's strategies that a teacher uses to understand that you know some of our our students need a little more support in different areas than others but my concern was that the teacher was trying to do the social emotional part of it in the classroom and that's and I think I think to just to maybe provide a little more clarity on that it's social emotional is not this it's it's it's it's it encompasses the classroom and it's not like okay we're gonna do social like it's a social emotional lesson now it's time to do this boys and girls that's not really how it works it's just the basic the how the culture and

102how uh students are treated and how we support of all of our students it's embedded within the practice so it's not like it's time um it really is embedded and if you see like and you've you know you with your grandchildren and your own kids in in each of our and having the opportunity to be in multiple buildings you know there are themes in the buildings and how they handle like at Cobra deal we were expected and that whole process was about uh treating each other with respect and you know having expected behaviors well that whole culture was you could say was part of that emotional theme to our building to help support our students so each building kind of has their own practice but it's not this isolated thing now my concern was that

103the teacher was trying to do it it's a great question I heard the classroom so okay uh under the curriculum materials and instruction materials how is this controlled or supervised with like um audio visual material in that I mean that they're not getting into things that they shouldn't be into the nation yeah the technology we have filters within if you're talking about accessing something that they they should not be um there are always workarounds to get to places where we probably don't want kids to be but we try to put as many parameters in place to stop that um so I I I can't say to you that there's not a time that things like that may happen but from the educational process and how a teacher provides some sort of um internet-based resource I

104think is probably what you're referring to there are filters in place to our technology department we're increasing those filters on a daily basis because every day there's something new out there that kind of needs to go through and be be blocked but kids will only be given the resources that our teachers will provide to them if they try to go a different direction hopefully we have the strategies and the supports in place to help block that scenario okay then um either like Elementary Schools elementary school or even middle school high school how are our students all getting the same Direction the same material the same teaching the same education that we're supposed to be giving them how can we do that with with all of how can we not knowing that okay teacher a gives

105this out teacher B gives this out how or School a gives this school B gives that well how are they getting the same information the same syndication so as you know we have uh early dismissals we have professional learning days teachers don't just kind of hang out on those days we work very hard on those days to have collaboration uh in the uh one presentation we had presented to all of you Dr obero myself talked about professional learning communities a professional Learning Community from an educational perspective provides us the opportunity to bring light grade level Partners across buildings because within buildings there are teams if you're a fourth grade team at Boyertown Elementary you have the opportunity to work collaboratively but there are points in the year that we provide opportunities to work district-wide so

106that they have access to the same materials they provide feedback to one another about what worked well what maybe didn't work so well at the High School level there are departments the high school has built into their faculty meetings into their their Cycles they have planning components where teachers can work collaboratively to provide the most efficient opportunities to meet the needs of our kids but I'm going to say to you that the needs of our kids are very diverse because kids are you know up here and down there we call that differentiation and how do we differentiate to meet the needs of our kids and to the point that Mrs Scott made earlier our kids are are probably lower I won't say lower than they've ever been because I think coming into last year kids

107were at an academic low compared to where they may have been but they're catching up and how do we provide you know what this student needs versus that student needs but look at the standard and we're still focusing on that same spot but as Dr obero talked about the learning targets sometimes there's different road maps to get to that end product and our teachers have to work very diligently to meet the the the different needs of our students and we do have core instructional resources that like for instance Eureka Math is a math resource we use in first grade through fifth grade so everyone has that resource that resource is going to help support your meaning lesson or your focus lesson for that whole class the teachers are going to across fifth grade let's say

108are going to use that lesson but with within that differentiation so this group of kiddos needs something more this group of kids needs a little bit of extra mediation that's where that flexibility comes in with the additional resources that might be used and to the point of of special education that's a whole nother uh element of this Mrs Neiman so if a child has an IEP how do we support that child to try to get them as close to those standards as they possibly can with adaptations accommodations specially does that design instruction along the way to help support them get to that uh that end goal okay uh at the beginning you said something about you uh removed immediately from just that class uh if somebody has a concern like say I have a concern

109about my child getting this material you're removing it from that class what about the other classes that have the same teacher that are getting that material if we would that course it wasn't just that class yeah it wasn't just that class so we would say that if there was anything um that would be thought about as questionable and and the team of people felt like you know what we should reevaluate this as if it's an effective strategy or an effective resource available if it was in one class and we knew it was in multiple classes we would look to remove that just the same thing if we found some sort of resource that was very successful in one class because a teacher tried this particular Mass strategy or whatever that might be we might at

110the next professional learning day say hey let's let's bring this in let's have you know a quick presentation on what this might look like because it was really effective in this particular area so it kind of goes both ways okay another thing you had said was thinking critically um which I I want this the children or the students to think critically but I don't want that I want them to think not be told how to think and I've been told for like two years now that they're only allowed to have like certain news networks where they take their social studies from I think the one gentleman told me it was like CNN why are we doing that why aren't they allowed to pick whatever Source they want many of our our social studies uh classes

111within the middle level use CNN um it was determined to be a resource that provides information to students uh not necessarily they preview it to make sure that it's not providing a biased even though it's titled CNN it's it's providing a resource to of kids gives students information they preview it to determine that it's not a biased uh presentation if they determine it's a biased presentation for whatever it would be or misinterpreted they don't show it um we could you know very easily use a discovery Learning Resource to provide a very similar kind of opportunity for kids to have access to information but if we're teaching the kids to do their own thinking why don't we leave them just pick whatever Source they want and go from there well we try to provide consistency for

112our kids so that's a resource like at this particular time they might watch that and then they might do yeah and have dialogue or whatever that would be about that whatever the topic may be on that particular day that that's a big concern of mine I want them to be the The Thinker not being told this is the network yeah we want to teach kids how to think and not what to think I I don't just I don't disagree with that mindset in any capacity I I would I would offer the opportunity to take for you to take time watch CNN 10 um watch a few previews of it and and if you feel that it is something that is not uh educationally sound or provides too much of a biased opinion based upon some

113sort of thing let's have a conversation okay Chris real quick I had the same concern you did because of the first three letters um going into it it's pretty much middle of the road gives opinions on both sides well I'm just working the polls and Neighbors in my community uh the one gentleman was very upset because it was CNN 10 and he did not appreciate his daughter having to take from that so um and and like I'm not I'm sorry to cut you off but I think Mr zawada one of your statements in the beginning something about like unbiased I I do I I what is said in the community versus what is actually uh happening within that I I ask I challenge I suggest uh view it yourself and and make your own informed

114decision and we can gladly have a conversation about it um and um you know you can give me an opinion on how you feel about it okay I will do that I noticed on your one you went into that pre-k through five Ela and when you opened it it was dated 2014 that's when the standards were published that's the last they were published and nothing's changed since then the science standards are they are they're under revisions that they've been they've been approved we're now starting to look at how do we bring that into the classroom that's where that 20 because that's eight years old and now it's like I thought maybe it was just an old slide and nope okay thank you good detail to notice hmm I I am so I just wanted to

115ask some a clarifying and then I had more of a statement than a question um so CNN 10 is a resource that is um created specifically for students yeah so it's a student resource and you use it um or it is used to um help like if you like you said if you were having a discussion about something the kids all read a similar article and then you have a classroom discussion okay and we have a whole policy on current events um oh my gosh I'm going to draw a blank on what number it is um but there's a policy that has about four or five bullets on it and it outlines our a practice for current events and it meets it meets the criteria of what that policy is and I I would assume

116that it would make sure that it's um appropriately leveled so right okay yeah because I was actually on it with my daughter the other day reading about daylight savings time for for a project we were doing so and extend that it is not used across right the the middle and honey particular class is just a resource that some teachers choose to use it's something that is every classroom yeah I did notice that just in this particular project we were actually given I don't know probably six or seven resources to pick from and we went into them and that just so happened to have an article that she was interested in but it wasn't like oh just go here we did there was a wide variety of places she could go um and then I just

117wanted to say I I thought it was an excellent presentation so thank you I really appreciate it it was really in-depth um and I think I it was very very well done I'm sure it was a ton of work so thank you um and then lastly I just wanted to to touch on uh resilience which I think is a piece like of that SEL um and when we're talking about mental health prevention just even even for children who aren't uh struggling with mental health you know teaching and building resilience is really important and I think that you guys really did a great job of showing how you know how you're building that in there um and I think the the one of the great examples is the test scores you know and that we are

118a little lower right now but we're teaching kids hey that's okay you can catch up you can be resilient um so I just wanted to say kudos to all of you and all of our teachers and other the staff thank you I appreciate it just taking off of that how are we making sure our seniors are caught up for their graduation this year I mean because this is their last year we can't take another year to get them caught up so what do we think Mrs um Neumann they have to follow their program of study and they have to accrue x amount of credits every year so if they have not mastered the courses that they've taken then they would have to either have participated in summer school credit recruitment or retake the class within

119their you know senior year so students are on par as long as they're attending school completing their coursework um and you know following their their level so it's it's not a matter of getting anyone caught up it's a matter of making sure that they are you know taking the correct amount of courses that they're passing and that they have the graduation credits that they need in order to graduate and I understand that part of it but a d to me is not acceptable when they were A or B students before that so how are we making sure that they're up to what they were prior to this yeah I don't know the high school wants to chime in on this like Flex and the different pieces that yeah different types of for media Port like

120Russia mentioned uh regarding credit recovery and the support but the overall performance I think comes down to an individual student's uh choice and dedication Mr Stout reference taking the horse to water making them drink as well we're constantly looking for different ways and challenging questioning ourselves well we can provide the students to get them at that high level of Excellence we want to see from all of them and some students over the years rise to the occasions some change and there's everything in between now when we talk about kind of a rebound if we're talking about the covid uh uh the covid years um that that's been that's been uh it'll be a continuation I think it'll be a continuation in our society for multiple years but when we look at our students preparedness for

121graduation we're on par we're ready with what we've seen in previous years from our graduating classes or exciting we're excited for what we're going to present to you in June for our graduates what they're going to bring it's a good group thank you yep follow up and say that anyone that participated at the board level with the students presentations at the beginning of the year would see where the students are and that they have really been prepared and are ready to graduate I think Mr zawada Mr Brophy were both present um at those student presentation senior presentations and um you know really showed uh that they are um you know excited and and ready to to move on and um you know believe that they're there and as as Dr Murray said you know it

122is an individual um who needs to continue to work on um where they're at and we have plenty of resources in place to support them okay thank you [Music] I'm laughing at Board of school directors I'd like to welcome you to this education student service committee meeting we welcome your attendance and input from stakeholders to assist us with making recommendations and decisions related to the Bordertown Area School District procedures and rules for public participation are detailed in basd board policy 903 this document is available in the bast website participants properly registered with the board secretary will be recognized by the presiding officer of a common period is limited to the topics on tonight's agenda participants must preface their comments by an announcement of their name participants are encouraged to direct all statements and queries and

123questions to the presiding committee liaison and where the board as a whole note that we value and will not compromise the privacy of our students and staff please see us outside the realm of public meetings if you have concern about the individual staff members or student if Republic comment includes a question Mrs torcher or a member of our staff will be in contact with you to confirm your question and provide you with information comments are limited to three minutes in advance of this meeting 12 members of the community have registered their intent to speak and we will be calling upon each other finally note that we do record our board and committee meetings and we post them on YouTube with a link on our website we request that if you do wish to take pictures

124or record a meeting yourself you do so in a non-disruptive and discreet Manner and use those materials respectfully and responsibly thank you first up Joseph is Young hit it with my uh thing here um so I took some notes so I'm gonna jump around I was trying to put it together I didn't know it would be the first one here so um so first I want to say thank you to the the people that gave the presentation Mr Stout Mr Barrow Mr mayori I think I got your name right um I think it was really important to establish a baseline so that everyone here is on the same page with what's going on uh with curriculum a lot of times when I hear people talk about curriculum it sounds like they think it's a detailed

125plan and a book that we give to teachers about what to teach what resources to use how to have discussions and that it's basically just a script for them to execute in their classroom but that's not what curriculum is a curriculum is a rough sketch of the objectives of a course and how they're tied to those state level standards of what students should know and be able to do for their subject matter and grade level curriculum is not way or Google Maps telling someone how to go where to turn it's more akin to a map that you would use for orienteering through the woods giving simple instructions and leaving it to the Educators to make their way to that end goal it's important to remember that because a good curriculum gives decision-making power to those

126experts and boots on the ground the teachers in the classroom it's important to acknowledge that no one is an expert on all of the subject matter and skills and knowledge that our students need to be able to master and understand the only way to get there is to put that decision in those hands of the experts that know the math and how to teach it that know the ins and outs of teaching reading how to analyze the text the know the history and can teach it from many perspectives or physics I'll skip that part sorry um that said schools should never never have and never should be a place where the only thing happening where the only priority is those basic academics and nothing else their schools are a place to prepare students for life

127all of life and that is where SEO comes in and SEL is exactly what we saw at the start of this meeting it is being kind it is being respectful it's treating everyone nicely it is learning how to deal with others and that is what teaching is really about nobody really I don't say nobody cares about educational skills and academic skills they're important but what will matter a lot more to students is being able to interact with other people being able to work as a team being able to work independently when necessary and treating others well will take them a lot further than if they remember how to use exponents even though that is again quite important so my sincere Hope was this meeting uh and further discussions do not become a litany on what

128books we should be looking at removing or lessons on identity we should eliminate or how we can keep things like critical race Theory or gender Theory uh out of our classrooms and is instead about how we Empower those experts in our classrooms how we equip them with resources they need to do their job to reach the district's goal of cultivating an exceptional Innovative learning community that enables all students to succeed in a changing world we cannot do that if we are refusing to acknowledge changes withholding information and knowledge from students because we're scared of the world changing thanks John Amy John Amy New Hanover Township I also want to extend my thanks to Ms dorsche and her staff um I was just out Mr mayori Miss ovaro again hope I got your names right um

129it's very informative I'm looking forward to having some time to look over it again on video and then I'm also looking forward as you said to um um being able to see that product you know being to see the comprehensive plan put out uh to public comment really interested in seeing how that um how that looks and would like to add comments um want to express one concern comes from right at the start of the meeting and some of the questioning during the meeting as well a little bit concerned I told you last time we met parents should definitely be involved in their kids education definitely should be involved know what's going know what's being taught be there in conference with teachers whenever they can a little bit concerned that the committee co-chair framed the

130parent teacher and maybe he didn't mean to do this but he essentially framed the Parent-Teacher relationship as an adversarial one calling parents the last line of defense in keeping questionable materials out of the school um and also when he talked about the chain of command and how you would actually address any concerns you might have he skipped the very important the most most important first person that the parent should probably go talk to and that's the teacher of their student didn't even mention that a little bit concerned framing uh framing the relationship that way because it automatically puts our teachers that we say we care so much about and we know have worked really hard and have probably been overstressed immediately puts them on the defensive immediately sets the expectation that they're doing something that

131parents need to make sure that they're not doing something bad I don't think that's conducive to a good educational experience I think the best educational experience is parents and teachers and students working collaboratively together and making sure that all students have the resources they need and that all parents are informed and all parents are working to make sure that the educational experience for all students is the best that they've been so I'd really ask the board to reconsider when they say things like that kind like I said kind of sets this up for contention as opposed to collaboration finally I would also encourage board members who have questions about how certain materials are used in the schools I would I would encourage them to do what I apparently was done earlier in the year and

132see if you can sit in a classroom find out how materials are being used it's my understanding that CNN 10 for example is really mostly used by you know by some teachers as a as sort of like just a quick catch up on the on the events of the day they don't go into any opinionated stuff they just say here's what happened today I could be wrong about that because I haven't gone into the schools in a while but I would encourage board members to do that as opposed to potentially coming in with a preconceived opinion of how materials are being used thanks very much looking forward again like I said to more discussion on this Lindsay watolich Lindsay tulik from Boyertown I'm a licensed professional counselor that has worked with children and teens since

1332006 and I've seen the toll that this current culture and social media has taken on our kids and led to depression anxiety confusion self-harm and suicide as a parent of young children I'm always focused on keeping my children safe from harm and that includes things that they may watch or read so if I sent them to school I would have the same expectations for my kids teachers that they would make sure that my kids are reading and watching age-appropriate things if my elementary school student came home and said that they were watching R-rated movies in school I'm pretty sure every parent or teacher would be outraged so why is it okay for books in the library to contain the same language and sexual scenes as an R-rated movie I looked at books that are in

134Pennsylvania School libraries and in just four books there were 109 F words and 38 n-words do we really really believe that any parent would be okay with these books just those few books included sexually obscene activities sadomaschism incest rape of a minor child prostitution profanity alcohol abuse sexual abuse drug use self-harm controversial racial commentary if one of my kids came home talking about those words or situations I cannot tell you how upset I would be that their innocence was stolen from them by a teacher that has no right to show that to my child if a parent wants to show those books to their children they are free to do that at home or in a public library but my teachers and Librarians have no right to show this to my child especially if they're

135not asking me first on the Boyertown School website the goal of the school board is to Foster communication and active involvement with parents so I hope that parents would be more involved in what books are there and given the time to speak and listen to thank you Krista Collins good evening and thank you all for having this meeting tonight um it's kind of funny I actually went to this elementary school so it's kind of cool to be back many years later and I still remember this gym um and I also wanted to um thank you for the presentation it was very um there's a lot to unpack there and there's a lot of research to go back and do and I of course am notorious for changing what I have to say as I'm sitting

136here listening to things so I might be a little scatterbrained um I also wanted to thank the teachers in the district who take the time to teach our kids right it's generally seems like a thankless job I think we can all agree that our job seem thankless these days I know sometimes I feel the same myself um I have a lot of friends and family close friends and family who are teachers and they've been through it over their careers right teaching has really changed um it's a difficult job it's generally not always the best paying job so you know but the problem is most teachers are awesome and probably 99 of them do a great job and would never kind of bridge that gap between what we want our kids to learn when they go

137to public school and things that we don't really want them exposed to or learn or to learn so I come bringing the experience of moving out of a district that was about 20 minutes from here because I can tell you the things that they were starting to bring into that District in the name of SEL and CRT and don't get me wrong when you look at SEL it looks great you're talking about how to meet kids how to make sure that kids aren't starving when they're sitting there learning you know when you talk about those things and you keep it on a real surface level it sounds like it's a really great thing and it can be if that's where it's left and on the surface to me it looks like that's pretty much where

138Boyertown is which is really good to see however there are things that come into the district that are bad and when districts go down that road of critical race Theory and social emotional learning and start looking at everything through an equity lens that's all that the district talks about that's all that the board talks about that's all that they focus on and I can tell you that that's when books like a book about whiteness and other Terrible Things gets into an elementary school when other books come in and don't I totally support gay rights I totally support all of that so I'm not saying that those are bad things but age-appropriate comes into play right we need to make sure that we have age-appropriate lessons for the kids so what I'm here to ask the

139board and to ask that we can participate in is some sort of better transparency around our policies with curriculum with transparency to teaching AIDS things like that um you had talked about the curricular materials better transparency around those so let's work on that let's have upcoming work sessions let's have Town Halls let's get people that probably don't all have the same viewpoints to get together and work about better transparency with those things if there's nothing to hide we should be fine with having more transparency so if the policies are we've been done in just a second some of those policy numbers are 105 105.1 and 119. okay thank you very much Cassandra Rooney our children need us right now more than ever or they risk getting swept away by some who may not who may

140not have the best intentions be concerned and aware of our government school system and the money Trail I had a curriculum review for ELA this week and called out a document to have questionable words being used like gender norms and considering intersectionality two days later it was removed they are hiding behind policy and teachers teachers are open to creating a resource list without scrutiny unless reported they're hoping we don't ask which is really sad they hide behind policy but do you have morals where is the decency in the 57 bus we believe it was recommended by a teacher at him for a middle school student it has 58 plus mentions of gender identity topics 13 plus questionable terms like rape communism the n-word 10 plus drug mentions 14 plus profanity words which the school would

141write a student up for if they used in the classroom um the district cannot pretend to care about children's mental health and damage it at the same time if anyone needs help getting a curriculum review for a class in their child's grade please reach out we have knowledge to share our school needs to pay closer attention to what becomes recommended and suggested board policy 119 current events needs to be referenced and checked with the Scholastics materials National Geographic news Ela and again CNN 10 in sixth grade our children need academics and life skills useful material not to be influenced towards confusion and instabilities I believe you're already subjected them to enough leaving them home alone or masked while in school or should I say while indoctrinating them I hope you follow your PA school code

1424.11 and have your teachers read it often the slide with the curricular materials has all unlocks and that's where we need to take control Lindsay Mason good evening my name is Lindsay Mason and I am a Boyertown graduate Boyertown School District residence uh Douglas Burks taxpayer and I have a son in the high school we have also had three others come up through the Boyertown School District and full disclosure I am also a librarian a middle school librarian I was previously the Boyertown Community Library director and I am now a middle school librarian in a different District I'm here today to talk about intellectual freedom and the selection of curriculum and instructional materials as we know there are people who are threatening this very Freedom intellectual freedom is defined as students having the right to

143any and all information access to a wide variety of reading materials is imperative for student development and well-being to help them understand themselves and the world around them limiting young people's access to books does not protect them from life's complex and challenging issues however books are wonderful tools that can be used to understand these complex situations as they create bridges for the parents to talk with their children within the safety of their home books also help communities to learn and build Mutual understanding parents should not be making decisions for other parents children just because my values are different from another family's values doesn't mean that one is right and one is wrong parents are encouraged to have conversations about what they deem appropriate in their own home but your rights and where mine begin however

144the issue is even larger than that as an educator I strive to create an environment that makes every student feel loved and accepted let me reiterate that every single student feels loved and accepted not just the ones that have Viewpoint points exactly like mine for this reason Educators choose curriculum materials and library books to represent all cultures and opinions so that every child feels they are being represented to take a particular resource or book out of a library or curriculum because a minority doesn't agree with it means you are not only denying other students their right to learn about other cultures and ideals but you are implying that a student who identifies with that book isn't important enough to have literature that represents them in our schools that their lives don't mean enough to have

145books that represent them and we wonder why our students have mental health issues remember that little initiative Boyertown started in 2006 entitled no place for hate it goes beyond wearing t-shirts and holding Unity walks if we are truly a no place for hate Town everyone's culture and ideals need to be recognized no one person has the right to say that one culture or ideals are more important than another as our nation continues to diversify our children need access to materials that help them to understand all cultures so that they can become better citizens who are accepting of everyone I implore you to leave curriculum and material decisions to the Educators who are the experts if anyone is interested in continuing the conversation I would be happy to meet with the board at any time and

146I just want to say that the 57 bus is optional reading it is also a Middle School reading Olympics book which was chosen by a Consortium of counties for reading Olympics so it's optional thank you Thomas rappella Douglas Township I think this current government schools curriculum is brainwashing our kids I think this current government schools curriculum is brainwashing our kids a question from an assignment that was given to my daughter and the whole seventh grade ELA class roughly four weeks ago and what was in what ways does this identity give your PA give you power and privilege in your school your community and your Society identity so board members superintendent and the curriculum team and the curriculum team can you please explain to me why are you people asking my daughter's identity powers and the

147relationship to English class what are your guys's identity powers and does the community accept your identity board members superintendent and the curriculum team it is not okay to give my daughter a social identity Matrix paper in 7th grade ELA class or to any of the kids I repeat it is not okay to give my daughter a social identity Matrix paper in 7th grade ELA class or to any of the kids foreign from a book that was suggested to my daughter for a classroom assignment in the seventh grade ELA class the paragraph that was in the book ah they got him messed up that's f'd up that's hella effed up real stupid mother effers man page 116. this is from the 57 book the 57 bus book board members superintendent and the curriculum team can you

148please explain to me why are you allowing this horrible book to be suggested to my daughter in the middle school and to all the other kids parents we need to dig down deep and come together to get the stuff out of the hands of our children request visits to your kids classrooms and request curriculum reviews a majority of teachers and the current curriculum does not care about the kids and if you don't know where to start or need a helping hand to get the process started just reach out to someone you are not alone thank you they need a church she's not here Donnie Savage hi Donna you Savage from a preferred Direct this is a comment from someone with experience of 10 years sitting in your seat please focus on your job of governance

149and oversight ensure that you have a vision a mission and strategic goals that are aligned and current ensure the policies are aligned with your strategic goals ask for verification that they're followed and establish a budget that supports that Mission Vision I know I'm kidding I'm getting there and goals then then let the education experts starting with the superintendent you hire do their job you will hear many differing points of view from the public parents represent and advocate for their own children as they should but remember that you have a process for parents to exempt their children from specific instruction public schools are required to educate every student administrators teachers Librarians and the entire staff have spent their careers learning how to do this and as you saw from The Fabulous presentation today that just supports

150that claim right and a suggestion for that presentation keep that and that's a great resource for new board member orientation so you don't have to recreate materials um so remember that they are the experts you are not the experts I am not the ex expert the parents are not the experts on what's good for every child they're the expert for their own child so get out of the way of the experts thank you Jennifer Thompson thanks good evening Jennifer Thompson New Hanover Township um first I just want to say thank you to the office of teaching and learning miss torsha Mr mayori I think you guys did a great job I feel like I got three college level credits in that time period um I have three kids in The District Two at the elementary

151level one at the high school I have been a teacher for 15 years myself I'm here tonight because a school board member encouraged parents to attend since the topic had to do with curriculum and materials were recommended to bring so I just wanted to share some from some of my students my kids um pumpkin counting to ten this is kindergarten October writing journal most of it's just pictures that's another kindergarten that's an exit slip um fifth grader suffixes and also a poem about himself all appropriate not questionable um based on these materials I don't understand the purpose for this meeting it sounds like we're creating problems and contaminating our schools with politics and based on the questions that were asked by some school board members I'm guessing no school board member has a degree in

152curriculum instruction or education and if not that's fine but you're not qualified to make decisions related to curriculum if parents are concerned about materials they should contact the teacher The Professional principals and the office of teaching and learning have better things to do the protocol you have in place is an intimidation factor and it's political if there is an increase in teacher resignations this year we will know why do you know what our district needs we need you to get creative and figure out how to recruit highly qualified teachers and retain them figure out how to get subs every day go to Harrisburg and fight to reduce standardized tests figure out how to get Boyertown more funding and keep our schools safe we need every board member to become more educated on social emotional awareness

153because knowledge is power stay in your lane keep your politics at home Doreen Harold hi my name is durian Harold from upper Frederick thank you so much for the presentation it was very helpful and educational provided a lot of insight into the hard work that goes into planning our children's education I'm also grateful that at the end of the last board meeting it was pointed out I was reminded at least to me for about the portrait of a graduate I took a look at the website and I really appreciated taking the second look at that I haven't looked at it as a while what I have to say I hope is very short and I'll follow up with an email I would just want to say that I'm grateful for the education that my children

154get at Boyertown School District I hope you'll turn to the solution that when a family does not want their children exposed to particular information or concepts that they can be excused from that information or assignment or what have you rather than denying all children that information and learning opportunities I asked Librarians at my children's schools and was told that notes can be put in the library's management system when a family requests that their children not have access to any Library resources taking that approach enables that family to do what they prefer to do and then allows other families to do what they prefer to do but they're comfortable with with their families I've had notes at home that a particular topic or film was being discussed in class looking for my approval to say whether

155or not I want my child exposed to that and I appreciate that because it lets me take my children's learning into my hands without impinging upon other people's Children and Families this approach allows me to set restrictions when I feel appropriate and doesn't deny other families the opportunity to participate when they are comfortable with the information and I prefer you to take that approach so I can make decisions for what's best for my family and not be denied access when someone else wants to set restrictions for their family when they feel it's appropriate what's appropriate for their family might not be appropriate for my family and instead becomes a restriction to education Kohl's Elks Nicole's Elks um I really didn't have anything planned tonight um but I wanted to sign up to give myself the

156opportunity to speak um if something was discussed that I felt that I would be able to contribute to so I'm just gonna say I know there's some talk about social emotional learning um it's not really a New Concept it might have a name that people haven't heard before or changed I don't really know how long it's been around but my own personal story with it is that when my son was in grade school um I got a call that I had to come in for a meeting he was having a hard time concentrating looking out the window just really you know unable to focus so I had the meeting at the school they suggested I take him to the doctor and have them evaluated I did I took him up to our family doctor we

157talked about what happened um he told me he thought it was 80d um and I should have them evaluated by a specialist so I scheduled an appointment and I had him evaluated by a step specialist turns out his primary care doctor was wrong it was an add he suffered from severe anxiety where he worried all day long about something bad happening to him um he was unable to concentrate before it I never picked up on it because I wasn't with him all day at school when it really would get bad um but I learned tools from this along with him once we started getting him treated for it and he learned tools to cope with it and I learned tools to help him cope with it and if it wasn't for that teacher recognizing that

158something was wrong I would have never known or I maybe I would at some point but I don't know so the importance of something like that in our schools is never something that should be attacked because it helps kids it helped my son and I know it's helped a lot of others thank you foreign first of all thank everybody tonight for bringing their feelings and emotions um again we are trying to look at it we're not trying to pull books but the only way we can find out about something and again is starting with our parents and at that point there is a system in place the board is not it will not make it to our position because of our good teacher our great teachers our good administer great Administration and the understanding that

159there are problems with some books so again like I said um at this point nobody's pulling any books nobody's claiming the sky's falling uh we still believe Tony and I that waretown's one of the best school districts in the state um I believe we have a very good Administration that listens to us as board members and we're always trying to make positive changes tonight Mr Stout gave an excellent presentation Tony and I have saw it prior even tonight with the additional people helping Mr Stout explaining it better it is something interesting I will tell you when you go into it there's probably about 800 Pages exactly like Mr Stout said but again I want to thank them for the presentation I appreciate the board comments tonight and at this point Tony has anything to say

160yeah so people questioned the motive behind the meeting the motor behind the meeting was to let the public know that this is the curriculum simple as that this is the curriculum it is State mandated this is where it comes from the only thing you can even question on it is the material used everything else is State mandated so we wanted everyone to understand that Mr style did a great job and I know you can't do anything because it's not available yet but when you go to there all those little things that are underlined are going to send you somewhere hyperlinked okay like Jeff said it's like 800 pages of stuff not once did a board member and Mrs torsha could attest this did anyone ever ask you to remove a book did someone say remove

161this book so I don't know why people keep coming here and trying to throw shade at the we're saying we're trying to remove folks no one once ever asked to have a book removed we did ask that if you have issues because people have and it was brought to our attention and emails were sent and everyone saw those emails right certain things weren't appropriate and that was removed immediately that's where we're at right now I guess at this time Mr torso all right Roger you have anything no no the steer off I got a chance tonight to thank everybody I want to thank the whole team that gave us a presentation tonight it was as you can see everybody thought it was very good and uh we we should probably think about how we some

162more on different other topics not this one over and over again it's quite lengthy but I want to thank everybody that participated in that I know there was there was many of you here and and you're waiting patiently to leave um so I wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving Scott um yeah I I never questioned the academics at Boyertown I always feel like that that we have the resources here to be one of the best schools in the state and and I believe that I have however delved into the library and this does have to do with curriculum and looked at some of the very very very questionable books if anyone wants the name of those I don't have them here with me I apologize I should have them I don't but they're in there and

163they're in the Middle School library let me remind you that pornography is not a culture that we're not studying Middle Eastern culture or Asian culture or whatever pornography is against the law that children that are under 18 should not even be subject to it and as adults and as a board we are overseeing the education of these kids the the what I read in some I could I had to put it down it was like and these are in the library whether they're on a reading list or not what are they even doing in a middle school library and the Librarians let these kids check them out these they shouldn't even be in their hands I recognize that school gets probably boxes of books that come in but they have to be reviewed you can't

164let this material get past them if parents want their kids to read that they can go to Boyertown downtown community and they a library they can get those books there because they're there but in our school we need to have a level of professionalism pornography has nothing to do with being professional women are degraded any woman in this room who feels like pornography is okay you are allowing your own people to be degraded and minimalized and and and it becomes an addiction for so many that is so hard for them to break later on in life so this isn't political this is just common sense to confuse a child's mind with pornographic images and words and everything else that was in in those books is is just not what they need they're here to be

165educated with math and science and language arts and have their fun and music and art and and just excel in whatever they do but when you put this stuff in their hands it's not who does it benefit and what does it benefit and what's the goal to do that so I just it and it's against the law so I don't know how we cover that and I guess maybe the maybe Mr we don't have to get into that but it is if you read federal law it is against the law to if I sent Mr panarella pornographic pictures I could be arrested for that but yet it's okay for us to be in the library again I appreciate what you guys put together all the information it's a place where we can go and I

166love that I love those links um but uh the the other question on that on the books we need to really take a good look at our libraries and our policy for our libraries thank you Miss Hogan thank you Mr zwada um yeah so I just wanted to thank the team again for an excellent presentation um and I was thinking as we were kind of talking about the SEL and I know that Mr Stout likes to talk about impact skills and how important they are to employment um I think that that's that was one of the things you were saying is that a lot of that is included in that um I don't want to say curriculum because you said it's not but in in the in those teachings or whatever you want to call

167it um and then I just wanted to say oh Mr mayori you were talking about the hyperlinks in the program of studies that's awesome I'm really um happy to hear that that's going to be happening I think that's going to be super useful because that is quite a document so that's really great news um I Heard 90 of our teachers have master's degrees that's super impressive and I think that um we really should be allowing experts to drive education when I go to my doctor I don't say to him no no you're wrong um listen to me I looked it up on what on you know WebMD um I I allow the experts to to really help me navigate things that maybe I don't have a full understanding of um and I think that we

168really need to respect our teachers and the many many years of education the many hours of continuing education that they get um and then just thinking about you know the it takes a village um that was something that was always said to me when I was young it takes a village to raise the kids that's why when The Neighbor comes and says you were doing something you get in trouble um and I think that BISD is doing a great job of of helping be part of that village community so um thank you for everything I just wanted to also thank the district and our leaders for working towards inclusivity so that all students can see themselves reflected in our Learning Community I think that's really important and then just in closing it I know this

169isn't about curriculum but I just wanted to give Earl a big shout out um for the work they're doing with Preston's Pantry the Blue Star Mothers awesome work the Earl strong it's really great to be here so that's all I have to say and I appreciate it thank you this diamond first of all this is my grandchildren's my younger grandchildren I only have my grandson here anymore this is his school so it's it was great to come in here again tonight I want to thank the school for collecting the food the candy for the kids great idea great show of the kids to respect their vets so that was very thankful thank you um yes it is vets day and I know we're supposed to talk about what is this but I had a concern

170about the invite for the Vets to the schools are we still doing that Mrs torsha I believe that there are individual schools that are doing different things um is there anyone sitting in the audience that has something special going on tomorrow for Veterans Day that would like to share Dr Foley a series of emails to our entire community and if you would like to come in and see our walls when you walk through it we have all of them honored with sheets of paper and basically their part in what they did in making this a great place and the whole hallways is full of those so kids spend all afternoon this afternoon putting those up and hopefully we will return to having some live speakers coming in we still do on a special occasion but

171right now with the multi-serve and stuff they actually have a bigger dinner there so they were able to accommodate more people there than we could so we kind of shared that activity with them that's what I was kind of looking for because I had some people that were concerned they weren't invited this year and they thought maybe we were still on lockdown because of covid yeah because there were some that were really really enjoyed coming into the schools and doing that so okay Mrs Landis I know that you had something going on um that's actually the reason why I was late this evening we had a community veterans event this evening I'm at The Rotary Club put on in Boyertown and it involves students from many of our buildings the East-West Middle School show choir

172performed tonight for the veterans at that ceremony The Bash njrotc Color Guard did the presenting and retiring of the colors at that and then we also had thank you cards for all the veterans and attendance that were made by the sixth graders at Middle School West as part of their team building Day this year and we had a sixth grader who got up and spoke at the program this evening as well so opportunity for middle school and high school students to participate in that veterans program this evening foreign thank you very much on that I know the some of the people the uh he's didn't really enjoy coming into school that's why it's concerned about that um it was the microphones passed away passed out sorry I'll still walk out um I guess it was

173a good presentation and I'll probably after I look over again I have more questions that I won't be sending Mrs Porsha on because I'm still trying to process all of this and I'll probably look at the video several times um one of my questions I guess is commission volcanic if one of the students gets into I guess there's a visual library or something that they can go into and they go in there and there's porn in there and they send it to somebody what is the liability all right yeah are they using our computers are they using their own device are they working are they doing this from home in school in school um a child under the age of majority who is circulating inappropriate materials um may not have uh any direct liability under

174federal law or state law but maybe uh may be subject to juvenile prosecution I'd have to look at that issue if they are circulating inappropriate materials I thought you were going to ask the question I thought you were going to ask the question of about District liability under the circumstances the district would not be liable because we're immune from liability under state law under the child internet protection act we probably owe some uh obligations to have filters in our system to the extent possible to prevent inappropriate materials from being accessed electronically but we would not generally have liability under state law okay now if it was a teacher's request to have them go in for homework assignment or something what would be the liability then I don't think it changes okay thank you very much

175and I would appreciate if you would just look on that for the child just to be sure thank you so um thank you know I I hear everybody but it's about protecting our children and what's right and what's wrong and I can't believe the public education would uh want us to be into porn so maybe that's maybe we need to look into the 4-1-1 the public education and see what it says in there about things like that for pornographic items thank you Mr Brophy Mr Hemingway any comments I don't know can you guys hear me yep this was the first meeting that I had missed in person and I tell you what it gives you a different perspective when you actually watch it online and it's interesting it it's a completely different bird's eye view

176of actually what our meetings are about so I apologize for not being there in person but this has been probably one of the most beneficial issues I've had to actually visualize what our meetings are like and I'm sorry I'm disappointed in our board um I know I I don't know I don't want to come off as a negative Billy here so I'm just going to make my comments the first speaker spot on um I agree with the speaker that we are creating more of a problem than what what it really is we we got a lot of comments about all we need to have extra time for all the comments and all this other nonsense that's going on everybody's so concerned well I tell you what it's still pretty early was it nine something and

177I didn't really see this big Outreach from the community so that that's an indicator to me that maybe we are doing this pretty much okay we need to trust the people that we have in the positions to make the decisions that we're not capable of doing we apologize to those who had to be submitted to our soap some of the board members so bought moments and and and all these trying to be political about it and all this and that Boyertown is a great District our administrators know what the direction of the board is and they would address this I know for a fact that Mr Stout has gone through to every uh a school district or School building and it has addressed to our our principals with the direction of this board is looking

178towards and also what isn't appropriate in our eye um I'm sorry if I'm rambling but you know like I said when you get a different perspective when you're actually going to view this and and now I finally get a good idea of what our community is seeing during our our school board meetings and we need to step it up because this is ridiculous we need to start trusting the people that are in our Authority that we entrust to educate our kids and stop this nonsense I haven't heard one thing tonight that really was beneficial except the the the presentation that our experts have presented to us and shame on us we better start stepping it up and stop the soapbox political excuse me BS and start being a school board that's looking forward to enhancing

179the original of our kids so I'm sorry if I pissed off anybody but you know this has been an enlightening experience here watching it from what our constituents are seeing from the outside so School Board this is a warning you better step it up I'll take the blame as a uh in the leadership position this has to be fixed this has to be changed we got to start having some confidence in those that we have elected those that we have have uh put in the employment to make these decisions I always go by this I dig holes for a living who am I to tell these people what to do with educating our kids so that being said thank you for letting me be a part of this meeting the technology thank you whoever a

180tech team is I was able to hear everything clearly on tight on time and those of you who spoke during a public comment period I always appreciate your comments and thank you very much and please let us know this is a team effort um so sorry sorry to come off angry but I am so with that being said that's my comments for the night thank you Mr Brophy okay Mr Stout first let me let me thank you and and I'm not gonna try I'm not gonna try and go through all the names because I never get them right uh but your your colleagues and your team you guys did a great job I think you've put together a tool that demystified the word curriculum and curriculum isn't books it's a it's a much bigger thing

181that you're going forward with and I also believe that you've also laid the groundwork for a tool that you can build on and keep the community engaged and involved in what's going on in the school district so they know what what's going on so I think you've done a great job there with that I thank you for it and keep up that good work it's it's just you know pretty much all I have to say on that uh I heard a lot of things about pornography tonight um unless I see specific first thing I'm going to ask is that the definition of pornography for all the people that say there's pornography in our libraries the other thing I'd say is you don't have specific specific examples of it you shouldn't come in here and slander

182the school district by stating something that's there that you don't have anything in your hand to show that it is uh the the I guess the book 57 I didn't read 57 whatever it is uh so I don't know exactly what's this so I I won't comment on it since I don't know it but the one thing to remember is different things mean something to different people where there are some things I'm sure that are disgusting to all of us we can probably come to a conclusion on those pretty quick but there is a process in place whereas if you get something that you believe is it's totally inappropriate in the school district you bring it forward to the school and there's a resource committee that looks at it and he'll make the determination what's

183this to what it is now the other part of that is is you might not get the answer you want because what is objectional to you is objectional to you and maybe not everybody else so be mindful of that when you're bringing things forward but you know don't don't go away from bringing things forward let's let us all know but I'm hearing General comments of stuff that and I've heard I've heard this school district slandered tonight absolutely slandered with no backing on on specifics to to back it up so if you want to bring the stuff forward don't bring it forward in a school board meeting bring it forward to the administration who can handle that who will look into that and we'll address it we you're not going to address it here so I

184think the curriculum I'm going to say I don't think this is making a mountain out of a molehill here I think curriculum is a big issue Nationwide it's it's an issue that has to be addressed in all the schools and it has to be more of making sure that the parents have some overall uh I guess the right the right word is you know they're they believe that the curriculum their kids are teaching is the right when it's going to get them going forward and that's what we need to do and I think it was a great step forward in doing that tonight to show what it takes to get a good curriculum and get people going and also what it takes to continue making a good curriculum getting forward by partnering with other groups

185and outside interests to do that the there's three things I I Look to through school to educational system it's that three-legged stool one is the structures and the things provided by the administration and the board because we're part of that we're all a team on us that's one leg the second leg is what's provided by the instructions of the teachers and the staff that's the second leg the third leg is the parents you provide as the parents the basis for what your kids are going to be when they get to school how they're going to react how they're going to move forward you take any one of those three legs away and it fails but the one most important is is what the kids bring to school with them we we and I'm just gonna

186I'm gonna speak for the teachers and everybody are announces the teachers want to educate your kids they don't want to raise them plain simple they want you to raise them this thing about different different school districts who want the parents to stay out of the way no we don't want you to stay out of the way we want but we want to be collaborative we don't want to be argumentative we need you to to you know to provide the basics to your kids so that the teachers can then do their job because it's a very important job that's how the kids are going to we want to see our kids do better now than than we do I know I do I want to see all my kids do much better than I did and

187I I think that's we all want the same thing we're all just saying it a different way so with that I think I'm done thank you can I can I just oh I'm sorry I'm sorry I didn't see you I I'd like to be able to uh uh I I I've checked and I'd like to be able to answer Ms nyman's question the primary area of liability Pennsylvania has a teen sexting law and penalties uh that was adopted in 2012 and the law prohibits the sexting of sexually explicit images by minors younger than age 18 and miners whose actions uh fall under the teens sexting law face unlike adults a lesser misdemeanor charge and misdemeanor penalties uh which um actually uh could carry with it a 90-day incarceration and a 300 dollar fine no I'm

188sorry that's uh a summary offense but if it's a misdemeanor offense carries up to uh a one-year incarceration and a twenty five hundred dollar fine and second degree misdemeanors can carry with it a two-year incarceration and five thousand dollar fine but I think the biggest penalty under the legislation for most students would be the forfeiture of the device the police have the authority to have the device taken and confiscated without compensation to the student or the family if they're engaged in that process there are other uh uh you know details in question but in terms of actual prosecution I think the forfeiture of the device will cause the most reaction I think for for the student foreign I just want to respond to Mr Brophy I did not slander the school district I apologize immediately

189that I didn't have what I needed but you will get that information not me well the administration and the board will get the information that I saw I would never read it here I'll give it to someone else to read but I and I wouldn't want to do it that way anyway I will give it to Administration and the board as soon as I get it all together but I'm it's not slander years had to agree to disagree on that I know but that's not the first time you have anything to say real quick and then I'll turn it over I do I want to thank Earl for their Hospitality tonight uh they should be proud of their fundraisers um I also nobody really talked because it was as uh basically about curriculum but we

190should be congratulations to all our fall Sports and as well as the music programs we had a great gavel gate and I know a lot of the sports went pretty far uh real quick remember to thank a veteran tomorrow and keep them in your prayers at this point it's for you miss torcher our upcoming meetings will be nov BR Board of school directors voting me December 6 will be a board of your organization meeting only and December 13th will be our final voting meeting which will be held at the BC at the first career and Technology Center this will be a virtual only but the public will be offered an opportunity to sign up in advance to be able to make public comment and we'll be given a zoom link for that meeting so those

191are our three meetings um before the end of the calendar year which I can't believe we're saying so that's all [Music] you don't have to take them off okay [Music] foreign [Music]