001good evening i'd like to call the february 4th 2021 north hills board of education committee meeting with action to order we will begin with attendance this evening ms kozara here mr little here ms philpot here and i'd just like to note that ms philpart philpott is participating by phone um mrs poniotowski here mrs renebach here mrs spade yeah and i am also present please rise for a moment of silence and flute to the flag indivisible with liberty and justice for all good evening again everybody i would like to announce that the board met an executive session on january 27 and february 3rd to discuss personnel and legal matters i'd also like to share the sad news that earl check passed away on january 11th he was our head football coach from 1974 to 1977 and
002he was also athletic director from 1977 to 1990 so we extend our deepest condolences to his family do we have any other board comm four member comments this evening no okay we will next move on to the superintendent's report then thank you wait till heather puts that up okay i'd like to begin tonight by talking about our social media guidelines as a public school district we must abide by certain standards to serve all constituents in a civil and unbiased manner our social media sites were created to disseminate important district news and information while engaging and connecting with our families and those in our community we have a strong following and are proud of the communication tool that these sites have become for us especially over the last year with covid we have been able to
003effectively communicate important information to our families in an instant they also give our families and community members an inside look at what's happening in our district and in our schools giving us an avenue to show off the incredible things our students and staff members are doing and accomplishing every day and it's proven that these sites are vital in today's world and in large our followers are respectful and we know we know most see social media for its value and appreciate the transparency that it provides but recently some posts and comments have taken a disappointing turn and as such we are implementing the following social media guidelines on all north hill school districts social media sites including but not limited to facebook instagram twitter effective immediately comments that are not related to the original post that
004are profane lewd vulgar obscene violent or pornographic in nature or that are harassing discriminatory defamatory or personal attacks or threats on any person or organization will not be tolerated comments in support or in opposition to any political campaign are not permissible nor is solicitation of commerce conduct and violation of any federal state local law enforcement of illegal activity encouragement of illegal activity that include information that compromises the safety and security of the public in our public systems this includes but is not limited to symbols memes and emojis we have never had to implement such guidelines but it has become clear that now we do you can review the entire guidelines on our website any and all comments that violate these guidelines are subject to removal or restriction we all have the rights granted to us
005under the first amendment to freedom of speech but those rights are not absolute and not all speech is protected we need to act as adults and as examples for our children and the children of this district to utilize these rights in a responsible manner that encourages civil discourse among the members of our community and you can again find those guidelines on our website i'd like to talk about where we are with the vaccine at this point educators are in group 1b we've always been in 1b there's a lot of folks in 1a and i think if you've paid attention to the news and you've seen the things that are coming down from the federal government and the state government pennsylvania is lagging behind as far as supply is concerned as far as distribution is concerned
006and it's taking them quite some time to get through group 1a but the good news is that the major health networks in allegheny county which are upmc allegheny county health network saint claire hospital heritage valley health systems are all working together to make sure that the educators can be vaccinated the good news is very shortly each district will have a health care liaison assigned to us and then we will coordinate through that liaison about getting the vaccin the vaccines for our employees they will be holding closed vaccine clinics which would be for our employees only so we won't have to be in line clicking on the rite aid site over and over and over again in order to get an appointment which is all good news so there's a coordinated effort from the hospital systems
007in allegheny county to help us to become a group that gets vaccinated now the timeline is the unknown part right now as i said they're in group one a teachers are in group one b um and until they either expand teachers into one a or complete one a uh we won't be vaccinated and that's been pretty clear from the meetings that i've gone to and the health department information that i've been provided with so scheduling process will begin whenever educators qualify but the good news again is those that are in high risk groups are in 1a and 1a folks are eligible to be vaccinated so i'm hopeful that you know the number of vaccines in allegheny county is the most in the state of pennsylvania which again is good news so we live in an
008area that has a lot of hospitals which means there's a lot of hospital employees there's about 50 percent of allegheny county is in group 1a so it's going to take some time but again the good news is is they're starting to have a coordinated effort in order to be prepared for the 20 000 teachers in allegheny county that uh need to be vaccinated so with that said i wanted to talk about our instructional models hybrid will continue uh we're working on additional in-person learning opportunities and we'll continue to add more students to those hybrid days as the case counts allow and that our health and safety guidelines can be followed i just wanted to kind of clear this up which is why i put this on the slide board action is not needed at this
009point because we're in hybrid the next time this board would have to take action would be if the district chose to go five full days in person with no virtual option all other models that we're operating under are a hybrid as long as they contain a virtual day or a virtual option so although it's hybrid now we have begun to add more students to that hybrid model as we were able to see fit with some different things and following our health and safety guidelines and we're going to continue to do that all the way to the point where we can offer full in-person instruction to students more and i know i said in january i was hopeful for march and i still am you know we're still working really hard to make sure that we
010can meet the guidelines that we set forth in our health and safety plan we might not be vaccinated by march like we had once hoped but i'm not sure if that's going to be the deciding factor as to whether we can or cannot include more students in our in-person learning so stay tuned every day we're working hard to try to find a solution to get more and more and more and more students who want in-person instruction to have in-person instruction more days right now allegheny county is still in substantial which means we must operate in a reduced capacity and we are in our hybrid model but the numbers are trending down which is a good thing i'm hopeful if they continue to go in that direction that we're out of substantial tomorrow if not next
011week so that's again some good news which is also the reason you have not seen a march calendar because i'm hopeful that that march calendar has many more in-person days for students rather than just group a and group b with a virtual wednesday as we've published in the past so as soon as we know what we're doing in march we're going to get that information out we're also going to ask parents to notify us as to what their decision would be if we create more in-person opportunities for students do you want to send your child to school four days a week do you want to keep them virtual so as we're working on those things those will come out i'm certain we will do a video so we can explain where we are and the
012details behind that and just stay tuned i mean as i said three or four times we're working really hard to get the students back in school we know this is where they learn best and so we're fighting everything we can to get us there the numbers are going in the right direction and there's a few pieces of the puzzle for us to put back together for that health and safety guideline in order to offer that to our students so stay tuned we're working hard and just as i know more we'll communicate that through a video and and get that out to everybody that's all i have thank you dr mannarino does anybody from the board have any questions no okay we'll move on to public comments on agenda items only um has anybody who is
013here in person would you like to make any public comments on agenda items no uh if there's anybody who is participating virtually on zoom right now and you have a public comment on an agenda item only please raise your hand and we will bring you up to speak still nobody okay move on to education excuse me education items next then um first up under education i'd just like to give a brief update that the education liaisons met on january 12th we discussed updates including curriculum and kindergarten scheduling and additional items which are going to be included in dr williams presentation which is up next [Music] some different operational laws whether that was virtual or whether it was sponsored so i was able to take first semester data and review our first semester of first and
014second round weekday for student achievement the north hills student achievement data falls in line with the local state and national terms unfortunately that data across the entire united states and quite frankly from everything i've researched in most places around the globe where it is basically saying that students are underperformed they're not performing at the same levels that they have in the past and again our north hills student data aligns with this threat we are seeing that we are having some students who are continuing to have great success despite the fact that we will get in different operational models this year we're also seeing that some students are continuing to struggle with some challenges with this as they're trying to learn virtually going back and forth between the hybrids as dr danarino said we all know
015that our students learn best when they are in person and they are with our teachers unfortunately as we continue to build the challenges of this pandemic we have made some of the things that we are doing to be proactive knowing that again this has been challenged the students in japan and for our teachers what are we doing what have we been doing to ensure student achievement and give them the best opportunities that we can for learning and work we have made modifications meaning we're very much looking at the students in front of us we're trying to determine what we need to do to ensure that we are teaching them very specific items that are wrong the most important value and it is [Music] our buildings are running data review those meetings occur throughout the month
016where administrators counselors teachers sit down and they look at the students whether it's in the classroom on their team in their department and they're talking about less what times are we seeing what can we do to help this student what does this need to look like another measure was we changed student attendance particularly at the secondary where we changed that to talk about a lot of participation if you remember we began at the beginning of the year saying look if students didn't feel comfortable logging in live they didn't have to do that we were recording lessons and they didn't have to we think we realized that we needed to make sure we were providing a lot of structure and engagement for for the students so they could have as normal and as such a day
017as possible to make sure that they are engaged in that learning process is nice as well we have also been relentless in our attempts to contact those students and parents if they need to discuss something with them again if we see that a student or a child is struggling if there is something we can do to help we have been using email gmail regular and more we've been inviting them to meetings whether it be a zoom or in person we've also quite finally had teachers our social workers and our school counselors are going to parent houses to knock on the door to say what can we do and help your students how can we create even more of a partnership to find a pathway itself in order to better support your students thank you we
018are also continuing to use benchmark assessments i'm already start testing the cdt as a secondary to drive instructional decisions those are the tasks that are aligned to the standards that will allow us to make those instructional decisions if we know our kids our students are struggling in an area teachers then can make the choice to re-teach to remediate to reintroduce that topic and reinforce it as a high school specifically i know the school administrators and school counselors were diligently beginning in december to look at second semester schedules for students particularly for our seniors to talk about hey what do we need to do for the second semester if the students were struggling in a semester course if we were concerned that they weren't going to have that of course did we need to make changes
019to the second semester in order to accommodate them to ensure that they were getting the best opportunities and be able to successfully constant board and have those friends we've also done the phase return of students to in-person instruction as dr ann arundel alluded to we started to bring students back we're continuing to plan to do that more and more to allow students to come back to be able to provide that in-person support dr williams i'm going to stop you for one minute do you think maybe we can pull this microphone a little closer to you sure this one is not working i think maybe could you stand in the middle of the room or can we bring would that be okay i think that might be better for our folks joining via facebook can everybody
020hear me this isn't one either none of these are on i can stand here is that a little bit easier probably a little bit louder yeah if you if you sorry i apologize no it's not your fault we apologize i'll go ahead and advance the next slide thank you ma'am absolutely so having said all of those different proposals we're now beginning to shift and starting to look at what we can do in the summer as we always do to support student achievement at the elementary they have very successfully for many many years now run both a summer literacy and a summer math program which are lessons created by our north host school district teachers to address student needs in both ela and math that will again continue this summer as it has in the past
021we're going to offer two different sessions this summer which is something new typically we offer one session we want to make sure we offer two sessions this year to and make sure that kids have those opportunities it will be an in-person program and it will be three hours a day students will be eligible on that based upon recommendation and determination of student performance data teachers principals will then be contacting those parents to invite them to participate in that and this is free there's no cost for this and again it is well received every single summer at the elementary level at the secondary level two programs which we've run for many years as well for summer learning credit recovery in our core subjects math science social studies and ela this is for students who did not
022pass a course and they're able to retake that course in order to increase a failing grade we will be running that from june 14th to july 1st giving you off the week of july 4th and sometime around that and then from july 12 to july 29th and again our credit recovery classes are for grades seven through 12. that instructional model we wanted to be very very mindful of that so we're planning on giving parents and students the choice of selecting whether they want to come in person and learn because they've been online for quite a bit this year or if they want to do it asynchronous i want to caution you though depending on the amount of students that want to come in and do in person that will determine if we run in-person classes
023but if you do sign up for credit recovery we will ask do you want to come in person or do you want to do this asynchronously summer enrichment is something else we offer every summer as well these are for our semester courses only and basically these are courses taken for credit we have students who take advantage of this basically because they don't want to have to they want that freedom to have schedule a different course the following year so if they want to take let's say for instance health sociology psychology phys ed in the summer they will get that half credit for successfully passing that course and that leaves them an open slot next year in their schedule so we will offer summer enrichment as we have done in in the past as well some
024new summer learning opportunities we're really excited about our summer tutorials summer tutorials are available for grade levels 7 through 12 and again available in our key courses or core courses math science social studies and english and this is for students who have successfully passed a course this year for beth williams it would be math math will be of course pandemic or not pandemic that i would struggle in that was always my challenge so let's say i took algebra 2 this year and let's say i end up passing the class but i only passed the class with let's say a d plus or a c minus i just didn't feel comfortable that a solid grasp of the material and i know i was moving to the next level of math the following year and i'm a
025little concerned i don't want to come in i want to make sure i understand it so i could sign up to participate in this in-person summer tutorial and if i successfully meet the requirements which is attending 10 out of 12 live sessions because we understand families go on vacations and i complete the coursework not only does that allow me to brush up on my skills but it'll allow me to bump my final grade in that course that i passed 10 percent so if i had that 70 percent on my report card or my transcript i go to the summer tutorial i pass that class and math i can bump that grade up to an 80 percent so we're really excited to offer that again for the learning experience for our students to feel as though
026they feel like they're up to speed and feel confident with what they've learned and then last but not least at the middle school we are going to offer summer literacy and math programming very similar to what we do obviously at the elementary and we're going to offer that for our sixth graders it's just going to be held at the middle school it is that refresher course it will be based on addressing student needs and that will be for sixth graders and that's in person three hours a day so we're very excited to do that again our students are doing the very best that we can our teachers are doing the very best we can we just want to continue to do everything we can to support our students and as i said across the globe
027state local national global data is saying students are underperforming north hills students are doing the same thing in some areas so we want to make sure we're doing our due diligence and offering them the very best we can okay any questions on that portion because i have two more presentations yes where students are underperforming more than others i think there are certain subjects if you look at the national data the national data is saying reading and math are the two areas reading is actually much less being influenced or affected and i think that's because once kids learn how to read you can kind of continue to grow the subject area that we seem to be struggling the most is nationally state and local is not that's a skill set that spirals through the curriculum it
028builds upon itself so that is the area that we seem to be struggling with the most with regard to okay we're seeing some gaps here how do we now work to close those gaps thank you yeah um so we have um in the spring we have a number of there's going to be a lot of standardized testing coming up um and if you know things proceed the way that um there's sort of the plan um that was discussed earlier i mean it sounds like our kids are going to be going back to school you know possibly more days right around the time that the pssas start if i'm if i'm right or some other exams too um i mean i'm concerned and i know that there's been some um you know lobbying efforts to to
029contact you know our legislature and that sort of thing because those are still requirements um which you know i think is ridiculous in this kind of year because i don't know what they're testing and i mean i think what you've just you know presented shows that it's these tests are not going to be relevant you can't i mean like we're going to spend all this time and energy and effort to test our students who are already like and it's a stressful time right like going through those tests is stressful everybody's already stressed out i mean what um what there's is there anything we can do you know to kind of um alleviate that as a school district as parents you know that kind of thing because that's um that's coming up and it's it's a
030concern first and foremost obviously here in the state of pennsylvania the pssas and the keystones are still at this time as you said on track to occur right there has been lobbying by the state to the federal government basically saying that for a variety of reasons you know out of the 500 school districts in the state of pa everybody's kind of holding their own operational models based upon what's going on in their communities we don't feel as though it would be valid testing because of everything that we've gone through since last march the point of that is um there's the stress and anxiety that it does for students and for teachers as well as the difficulty of bringing everyone into tests right these are not tests that we can give remotely right so if a
031student does choose to stay virtually they still have to take the test correct you have to make arrangements for them to come in and what does that look like and what does that need to look like right so again yes there is very intense lobbying efforts right now um to say look this is not what we should do we need to hold on this this is not the right year to have these tests having said that i know the teachers this has been in the back of their mind all year long this is what we're assessed on this is reported out the state of pssa and keystone data this is very important so when we're making those curricular modifications as i've discussed we're really making sure we're looking at the alignment between what our curriculum
032is in the state standards and obviously making sure that we're doing our due diligence and preparing kids for that right are we doing it the way we normally would no because i would say in the sense that we're not in person so it makes it more stressful with regard to that i think if this test or these tests do move forward i think we do have to put them in context yeah um that the data that we're going to get is not going to be uh in my personal opinion valid or reliable data as to where our students are i think much more reliable data that we can use our diagnostic tests our i-ready testing our star testing our cdt testing which is saying we can give those as many times a year as we
033want it's aligned to the schools the state standards so we can say okay i just taught all this for a month let me give this test to the kids and let me see where they're at that i think is a much more accurate picture than those so again we just continue to move forward um and do what we need to do quickly and instructionally to hopefully prepare our kids to the best of our ability i'll be honest with you my personal hope is that this they're eradicated right right time's kind of running out though but that's up to the federal government and i know the state government has said look we certainly understand this and we support this they can't release us from that accountability only or federal government okay yeah it's just such a
034shame that you know that's like when we're we're struggling with this the stuff that we've already you know the curriculum has already had to introduce and now rather than say okay let's take some more time on that we have to press forward and then take time out of the school to do the testing i mean it's just it's awful i mean it's so stressful it is yeah i mean every other state is having this thing yeah yeah they don't obviously have pssas or keystones they have what their statements are the tests are to meet the requirements from essa they're having the same struggles and everybody across the nation saying that this is not the time right for high stakes standardized testing that we're using you know as a data checkpoint because it isn't reliable right
035so any other question on anything i've presented i mean i'd just like to piggyback off what mrs harris said that anyone can hear my voice right now call your congress person that's their job and tell them that this needs to stop call your senator your united states senator tell them to back this this is lunacy i don't know how else to say it and voice your opinion you're their constituents they're the ones that control this call them make your voice heard that's all i can say thank you i just want to make sure miss phil miss philpott did you have any questions on the phone no i'm good thanks okay okay the next thing that i wanted to present on is scheduling for this year as we begin to turn the corner and schedule for
036next year scheduling is going to look a little bit different simply because of covid typically if you are moving over to high school we have a curriculum night where we invite parents and students over to the high school auditorium and to the gymnasium and you get to go to booths by department and you get to talk through here's the curriculum meet the teachers and those things because of covid we can't do that but it is critical that we still provide opportunities for parents and students to understand the scheduling process particularly our rising freshmen that's our current eighth grade getting ready to go into ninth grade we wanna make sure that we're providing that opportunity so we've come up with a creative way to do this um and we've backed scheduling back into the month of
037february typically scheduling has already started it typically is in january so what we're going to do and this is a summary please know that both mr mckiernan at the high school and mr lieberman at the middle school are going to do a video for students and parents and we're going to send that out posted on the web about the scheduling process so we'll give you a lot more details i just wanted to kind of give you an overview so tonight we have the program of studies they're the draft of the program of studies that we're going to ask the board to take a look on and then obviously they'll vote on that on our february 18th board meeting but the draft of the program studies will be available online i believe tomorrow during the week
038of february 8th to the 12th there's high school classroom area counseling which means i'm a teacher i'm a social studies teacher i will talk to my students in my class and say let's talk about what social studies courses you can take next year talk to me about what you're interested in this is why we think this would be a good thing to take there also our high school counselors are going to go over and they're going to start presenting to our 8th graders it's a great transition piece we want our 8th graders to start to meet their counselors for next year and get to know them and show them what the scheduling process looks like the middle school there's very limited amount of choice as to what you can take for courses and for electives
039it's a very standardized curriculum they have some choice in sixth grade i believe it's music a little more choices in seventh grade and a couple of elective choices in eighth grade whereas you get the program price uh studies for the high school it's 300 plus courses it can be very intimidating very quickly as you go through that particularly as an incoming freshman so our counselors do a great job of going over meeting with the kids in class doing a zoom they will do all those things to reach out to students to explain to them here's what it looks like as a ninth grader here's the courses you have to take here's what electives look like here are electives that are available to you so they will do those presentations again to this for the students
040and they will do it for the students at home we're also going to do a video program of studies since we cannot do an in-person curriculum night where you get to come in and you get to meet the teachers we're going to ask each department to give an overview of the courses that they offer and again just talk about hey we're the social studies department here's some great courses here's our core courses what our 9th grade social studies course our 10th grade 11th and 12th grade here's them in the electives please make sure you look in the program of studies and check these out these are great courses so they're going to do a video program of study for all our departments which i think is fantastic that's a great idea i'm excited to see
041that the weeks of february 22nd through march 10th is the online scheduling window that's when students and or parents are able to go ahead and go on and schedule students typically do that on their own parents particularly at the middle school we want you to be a part of that process so you're aware of what your student is scheduling for march 2nd through the 4th we are going to do an in-person curriculum night but we're dividing it down to make sure it is safe so march 2nd is going to be for all of our rising 9th graders which means it's our current 8th graders and their parents one parent will be allowed to go in and meet with some teachers in the gymnasium march 3rd we want to make sure we're doing that for our
042rising 10th graders that's our current 9th graders same thing and then again march 4th for a rising 11th and 12th graders mr mckiernan will let you know what teachers are going to be available they'll be representatives from every department so if i have a child that would be entering into ninth grade i could go on march 2nd with my daughter and we could go ask questions that night at curriculum night okay and again the goal of this scheduling timeline as always is to make sure that our high school students are receiving their schedule in may that way they have time to make scheduling changes while we're still in session and they can leave at the end of may with pretty much the schedule complete and ready to go for the next year okay heather middle
043school thank you so the scheduling overview for the middle school same thing it's just as important that we do a great job with our incoming sixth graders and what that means to look like so it's very similar to the high school program of studies a draft of that will be available online tomorrow february 8th through the 19th our middle school counselors will make presentations to our current 5th and seventh grade students and talk to them about what courses are available what they should take what the program of studies looks like and things are such there will be teacher course recommendations and subject area counseling it's very course specific with that those recommendations parents you will get a letter at home that will tell you what courses your child has been recommended for so if i'm
044a sixth grade i'm a fifth grade parent my child's going into sixth grade i'm going to get a letter from the middle school that's going to say your child's been recommended for these courses and then if you have questions about those recommendations or you wish to discuss them there will be a number for the school counselor for you to go ahead and call it's just guidance when you go to schedule with your child february 17th is when you're going to go ahead and see those letters coming home the middle school is also doing a video program of studies with the departments and the teams talking about those courses the online scheduling window and again it's february 22nd to march 10th middle school curriculum nights for parents again it's the same thing the 23rd is going
045to be for our incoming sixth grade the 24th is going to be for incoming 7th grade and the 25th is going to be for incoming 8th grade we will divide that up and all of this will be communicated again i can't stress this enough on the website for the middle school and the high school and through a scheduling video from both building principals may 14th um you're going to go ahead at the middle school and you're going to get a tentative scheduled course verification letter and then they do things a little bit different at the middle school they work on teaming over the summer and then you'll get team assignments and what that needs to look like over the summer so that's the scheduling overview so we are moving forward with that it's a lot
046to take in so this will be available again on the website and look for those videos to come out they should be coming out very soon from both the high school and the middle school and explain all of that any questions on this i have um two questions well a question and a comment the first is that i think that communication piece as we've talked about is so important in the middle school particularly when you're choosing you know leveled classes for your kids especially in math because that vertical articulation really matters so i'm glad to see that we've been working on that and improving that process the second is just going back to curriculum night at the high school is that going to be in the gym or is it going to be spread out
047jim there will be some in the auditorium and we will use the cafeteria both sides of the cafeteria okay so we will spread that out there'll be a representative from beatty tech we always want to make sure our baby tech reps can come because that's an important part of that so we will spread that out quite nicely we're actually talking about asking parents to sign up in advance so we kind of have an idea of how many people are coming and whether we want to say okay students with the last names a through k you're going to come during this hour time slot and then students with l through z are going to come through this time slot so they're working through finalizing those logistical pieces to make sure it's very very safe thank you
048mm-hmm any other questions did you say that if someone didn't feel comfortable coming there would be an opportunity afterward or not we could certainly do that that's why we felt the video program of studies was so important but certainly if there's additional questions we didn't feel comfortable coming to one of those evenings yes we will make it available to reach out whether it's through a school counselor or principal or if we need to make it with the curriculum from our department and say hey could you answer the questions for them we will absolutely okay any other question okay and last but not least and this is the time of the year where i typically give my curriculum counsel update and again just for an overview for those of you who might be unfamiliar with curriculum
049counsel creation council is a committee that i lead which is teacher administrative um committee and insists in providing centralized oversight of our curriculum it's really looking at as ms malthus said the article the articulation of our curriculum vertical and horizontal and we want to make sure what we're offering supports the district's vision and mission it has a tremendous number of functions i'm just going to summarize a few of them i think the biggest piece is it is system-wide coordinating agency we want to make sure that that curriculum is again aligned horizontally and vertically another big piece of that is communication among all staff in order for that to be aligned we have to know what we're doing at the elementary level the middle school level in the high school level and allow an opportunity for
050us to sit down and discuss that prioritizes approved projects which require financial support we're a large district with a lot of departments with a lot of different classes and a lot of needs so we need to make sure we have a systematic approach for that so we can establish that financial support appropriately it again provides school district staff with the ability to collaborate to look at different instructional media to determine what we want to assess select and adopt assesses the educational needs in terms of goals and again looks at planning professional development programs and suggests necessary finite financial report support curriculum council meets at least three times a year it can meet more than that if we need to we always meet november and our meeting in november is simply to talk about any course
051needs or changes that will be needed for the following year that could be something as simple as we need to add a course or we want to change the name of this course we also meet in december december is our largest meeting of the year and that's where we have presentations from our curriculum leaders um under the umbrella of the needs assessment and curriculum proposals and then in march i will hold another curriculum meter meeting with the curriculum leaders or curriculum council to talk about what we have purchased what we have added to our curricular arsenal for lack it's a better term for the upcoming year we have a six year curriculum cycle and our curriculum cycle basically is just that systematic schedule that we use to address the design delivery and review of the
052curriculum and again it's six years it's multi-step it's ongoing and it's cyclical the best part about curriculum is you can always change it as the standards are changing so if these standards change we can amend them as we need to the first phase that we fall into is the needs assessment phase and that's where teachers are gathering research they're trying to identify what do they need are there gaps in the curriculum have the standards change what do we need to do to ensure that we can offer the best curriculum possible over the next five years this year we had three departments on needs assessment seven through twelve english k through six science on our 7 through 12 business and computer literacy we present proposals in right curricular phase um what does that mean to look
053like and what are we doing with regard to that and again there's health and pe there's language arts we do different things with that that proposal is very specific it is this is what we need to do and do we need to write curriculum in the summer curriculum development and implementation teachers implement the new curriculum we've adopted it we've implemented it we go ahead and we're using the news resources we're teaching to the new standards what does this look like curriculum implementation two the fourth year of that is approved modification that they've observed look we've done this for a year we found some things that we still need to tweak and we need to do a little bit differently we sit down as a department we talk about that we evaluate that and we move
054that forward monitor and evaluate again departments are again looking at different areas that are hindering this is now our second year we've taught this curriculum is there anything else that we need to change are the newer resources are there new apps that we can be using that would help them or they're different textbooks is there something out there that we can do a little bit different particularly software-wise and then last but not least is monitor and evaluate that's again looking at what the data's showing we've now done this for several years what is the longitudinal data showing how successful are our students with this new curriculum are we doing well are we promoting student achievement student growth and what does this look like so we have moved forward with that and again our next phase
055now is to sit down they presented their budget proposals to us obviously we i will meet with the superintendent and the school board will talk through that budget and they'll meet with the curriculum leaders and talk to them about what purchases they want to make they're the experts um they represent their departments and they guide those decisions for me so that's not beth williams making those decisions it's certainly relying upon that any questions with regards to curriculum yes ma'am um i think in the past we've had the curriculum leaders present to us and i can't remember what phase they present in um is that happening this year or is that if you would like that to happen you can have that the needs assessment and um the curriculum proposals do that we created a google
056pro classroom so all those proposals are available inside that google classroom so certainly if you feel that you would like them to come in and give you an overview we can certainly do that um because they do their proposals a little bit differently than they have in the past in the past they would come in and do it live and not that that's not important we found through the curriculum council process that we enjoy having the proposals videotaped it gives us time to digest them write down questions so then the discussion on the day of the actual proposal we'll give an overview then we have a discussion about what they propose as opposed to listening for 45 minutes and maybe forgetting something that they said earlier on but we can do that if that's something
057you're interested in mean i guess we can discuss sure yeah sure either way um it's not a problem at all okay thank you any other question and you may have said this and forgive me for asking if so um when you were giving the whole data review and as you said across the board you know we're not alone everyone is sort of dealing with it whether we like that or not um are we up to par are we sort of a twofold do we have tas or some kind of support at each level for help for that extra specifically when they are at home and if so yes and if so is are we are we at average with everybody else as well we are offering office hours so for our students that are home
058virtually again if they're logging in and they have um their time with their teacher where they can log in and do that we are also using different personality levels because tas at the elementary i believe we don't obviously have as many as what we would have at the secondary but we are offering office hours school counselors office offer office hours or tas do um we even have a pair of professions professionals doing that for extra homework help so we are doing that i will tell you talking to local or neighboring districts we seem to have a lot more support staff than a lot of neighboring districts they wish they could offer the level of support that we are offering them we're even offering office hours for students who are online through our north hills online
059environment they can also come in and we're offering office hours for them with with our staff in case they want to talk about things so i think what we're doing we've exhausted everything that we possibly can do um and i think they're doing a great job with it there's just such a difference between in-person health and that structure and what that looks like in that relationship um that you build with your teacher or a teaching assistant or a parent professional than there is online is it being utilized though i mean do you mix that i would say there are some subjects more so than others i think math would probably be or how a share where people are taking advantage of that there's other times that people are offering office hours and they don't have
060anyone vlogging or taking advantage of that is that being communicated to parents as well as students because sometimes things don't make it to parents as a parent should be on the website so i can double check that i know it is on the elementary school because we specifically did some of those times and it was on the middle school more than the high school but i can double check to make sure they're still out there because there is time for them again throughout the day that we're trying to offer those things virtually for parents that might earn sorry for students who might not be coming into the building because we think that's a really really important job so let [Music] it lessens a little bit because those teachers those paraprofessionals and tas are pushing in
061obviously would be in person being in person schedule versus normal so i know that might be slightly but i can double check that and certainly make sure that that is pushed up yeah and with the office hours are kids assigned to these office hours or the homework help or is it up to them absolutely because you know there's been teachers who have had parent-teacher conferences where they've reached out to parents and said hey look this is we really think your child should do excellent and they know that's happening whether or not they're logging in and whether or not they're doing that obviously some are taking more advantage of that than others do we do i mean i don't know if we have this data but do we see what grade level is it the elementary
062secondary middle school grade level who are utilizing this more than others i can look at that data i don't know that i have that on my fingertips and again i think it looks a lot different when we're in virtual because the schedule looks different than when we're in hybrid but i can certainly check into that and see what that looks like okay it's not a problem miss philpott did you have a question yes um i have a question and a comment um i guess my question first um about the curriculum cycle if you could just refresh my memory so with pe for example being on step two i know one of the things that it was in their um in their parents survey about how um just i know they're thinking about trying to hear
063a way to offer more pe either in eighth grade or additional credits at the high school with them but i didn't see that in the program of studies for this year so with that being in step two does that make sense that if that happens that would be in next year's program of studies or are we just are we not doing that they're a needs assessment i'm sorry i didn't mean to cut you off they're a needs assessment so basically they are saying this is what we need and then next year they're going to go ahead and propose what they want with regard to that so again that would be something that we would talk about obviously again the kids particularly at the high school have the opportunity to take as much pe as they
064want so even though we're only requiring x number of credits of physical education they can take as much pe as they want as the elective which is something they need to do for their um graduation requirements anyway but that conversation as well as personnel and things such as that that's going to be the domain of the superintendent in the school board that is not going to be curriculum council we don't get to make those decisions or choices and not that certainly that department can't say hey it would be great to do this we are not authorized to make any of those decisions okay yeah i was just trying to understand at one point we would see like if english wanted to offer a new course what level of or what what part of the cycle
065would that come to us right that would be and again that is a scheduling concern so typically if someone wants to offer a brand new course their first stop is with their curriculum leader and then they would talk to the building principal to make sure that it is something feasible that they're able to do with the staff and the personnel that they have then if they did not have the staff and personnel then we would have to make the decision obviously from a different standpoint from personnel um budgetary standpoint is this something that we're able to do okay and then um i think it was ms kuzera who asked about presenting to us i i would i would like that too i think and i think for for me i would be more interested in
066seeing i guess i'm looking at the curriculum cycle stage i think it would be interesting to see it in the needs assessment phase where we're getting presented the research and how the how the department is currently doing to know that going into any proposals that they might make i i would just think that was interesting i don't know if all um all departments all subjects kind of have evaluations that they that they can you know fill out you know national evaluations to show how they're doing um but any sort of evaluation on how a subject is doing in our district i would find interesting to read or to be presented to thank you so much dr williams okay next under education we have a request for the board to approve the north hills high school
067program of studies for the 2021-2022 school year per the attached i have a couple of notes and questions on this one for you dr williams if that's okay um i looked at the attached memo um and i noticed that there's no pre-ap english um going forward but i just want to verify for everybody that that is just a name change correct because we are no longer allowed to say pre-ap english so honors english is the same thing we're not cutting that they said out we simply changed it back to honors okay thank you uh my second question is about um honors chemistry which used to be a course that was offered in 10th grade and that doesn't look like it's going to be offered next year so could you explain that please sure we have
068an author we have an honors chemistry class we use chs chemistry at the hospital what we found is those curriculums are very nearly identical so what we decided was instead of running both those courses we're going to go ahead and offer the chs level of that course with the understanding that those curriculums are very very similar and the reason we want to do this is because it gives students an opportunity to get college credit hit university if they would choose to do so the nice part about doing that is if i still want to take that level of course i want that honors or chs designation i can take it but i do not have to pay the money for the credits for pick and the only difference in the curriculum will be i won't
069go to pick to participate and i believe three labs that they do that year so there's no academic punishment with regard to that it is much more aligned with the career and industry standards that we're asking students to fulfill through chapters three three one and again it's an opportunity to earn college credits and we don't have two redundant courses that are actually very very similar okay um and then my next question is about uh the proposed six day cycle at the high school could you explain what changes that would um entail sure we're looking at that specifically for lab classes and let me explain why we're looking at that so let's say you have physics physics is a daily course you need every single day but you have wrap two days a week the way
070it runs right now is we use a five day cycle what is during the week so if i'm a physics student and we're gonna close i might have live either monday and tuesday or that week i might have lab thursday or friday as we go into thanksgiving break for example you're off thursday and friday so from that physics kid i miss two rabbits if i'm the monday kid i miss background date there's no way to replicate that time so if you go to a six day cycle and you're able to say you know we're gonna run through six days all students in that lab class will have the exact same number of labs it's a way to maximize that instruction and make sure that those labs are being offered with fidelity for all students so
071it honestly will increase instruction because we're not missing it on activity days or on parent-teacher conference days and all those calendar blips that happen those labs no longer just lost into the abyss of lost life are there other classes besides um science labs that would be affected i think that's going to be there's probably going to be a couple science funds that that's going to happen but we're still going to have double black classes as well so it's going to be predominantly live classes they will be designated in the program of studies but i'm going to say i would be surprised if there's anything outside of physics how do you know if there's anything else offered than that i don't know okay so it's not going to affect every student gotcha that helps make sense
072only if you have that okay thank you um the next item is the a request for the board to approve the north hills middle school program of studies for the 2021-2022 school year which is also attached um the next item is a request for the board to approve the summer 2021 differentiated learning opportunities that you presented earlier that will be offered for students that have completed grades k through 12. these opportunities include summer math and literacy credit recovery summer enrichment and summer tutorials and the last item is a request for the board to approve the proposed 2021-2022 allegheny intermediate unit program of services budget in the amount of two million one hundred sixty one thousand fifty seven dollars um and details are also attached about attached to the agenda with further information about that so
073i will move that items three through six under education be added to the legislative meeting agenda d spade i'll check with that thank you mrs spade any other discussion or questions about those items and mr little all right thank you madam president so uh under our community enter government relations liaison report i have two things i was contacted and i've been in touch with this is more of a public service announcement but in touch with the ross township commissioners at their meeting on monday they mentioned that they have been in talk with the county in hopes of a march first date of creating the second public vaccination site here in allegheny county there's one right now in monroeville they're hoping to use the municipal building's gym as this vaccination site now it's not final uh
074they're working on it right now at their next meeting i believe they said is the 16th is when they'll come down to this decision with that target date being uh of opening uh march 1st so just more of a public service announcement that's that's huge while the vaccine's not here yet again we have a public site hopefully that can help us in the community uh secondly i've been in talk with a organization named education voters pa and their executive director susan spekka about specifically holding programs here in the community about which i often talk about is educating the public on the issues of cyber charter school funding and the the realities of it i think it's one point that if it's me just talking here in a meeting it's one thing but if we have
075someone coming in and really breaking this down and educating our constituents because the more informed our public is about this the better so i've been in talk with her and hopefully i'll have something more next meeting or later on down the road but i just wanted to bring that to the board let them know let everyone know about that so moving on for item number two is the establishment of the community service award if you all remember in october i believe we discussed this and tabled this for a later date so not much has changed just a refresher the purpose of this is is to uh the establishment of the community service award which is outlined below as can be attached it's to award those in our community are making significant contributions to our community
076and the district of their times talents and dedication so that's pretty much it nothing much has changed as you can see the attached is on there so that is it for community and government relations so iso move that item 2 under community intergovernment relations be added to the legislative meeting agenda these are 327 management team 338 438 and 538 which indeed which deal with health insurance spousal benefits for the various groups of employees 339 is uncompensated leave for administrative employees and 439 is unpaid leave for professional employees again those are policies that that we have reviewed and determined no changes are needed the rest are policies that are up for first reading tonight um they are 106 library program collection i'll read them out actually i'll read them out and say a little bit about
077each one as i'm reading them 106 library program collection development revisions this doesn't really change much other than that the policy previously had some like a library code of conduct i can't i don't think i'm using the right terms there but it had changed because the the language was a little bit outdated so um the changes that are proposed here are in line with what we are currently doing and just kind of update the language and take out some repetitive language that had been included policy 113.1 discipline of students with disabilities this these changes and the changes under i believe the next two which are 228 behavior management policy for eligible students and 236 non-discrimination anti-harassment policy procedures these changes were all made pursuant to some changes in the law and the changes to the
078policy comply with the um legal changes that we would need to comply with anyway so now our policies are consistent with the um with the law 621 student activity funds these make some changes with respect to purchase orders i believe that um that they need to be approved ahead of time and that's consistent with requirements that you know again that we're subject to and then 903 public participation in board meetings the revisions in this policy are that we are requesting not requiring that if somebody wishes to participate in a board meeting that they advise us ahead of time and the reason that we're making this change is um so that if we have a large number of people who wish to participate and we need to move out of this room and into a larger
079room to accommodate them we would you know we'd be able to do that um that again it's a request and we would ask that it's provided prior to 4 pm on the day of the meeting so that we can make any necessary um changes to the location um so i will uh move and then we can discuss if there are any questions or discussion points i move that policy items three through eight be added to the legislative meeting agenda dispaid our second vet um thank you mrs spade is there any discussion or questions no i just want to say i checked out with a elementary librarian or a librarian policy and she read it over and said looks good so if you've got to go to a pro great thank you yeah any other discussion
080or questions on these policy items i i have a question um about one um but the so under the section is referral to law enforcement the psda template had a whole bunch of wording there um that we we don't have in ours we basically just say that there's nothing that would hold us from treating these students any differently than anybody else um which i think which i think is good um but there was a section in the psba template in in that section that jumped out at me and it said that beyond that beyond the treating everybody equally if we had to report an incident that was committed by a student with a disability if we had to report that to law enforcement the district would commit to to providing law enforcement with any sort
081of copies of special ed records um and i and i like that i like i like that and i don't know if that's something that we do already any sort of records and that's why it's summed up in that statement um i mean i don't know offhand and we can certainly find out i wonder if there might be confidentiality concerns with that that provision do you think that that might be the issue yeah um now that's interesting that they had that in the in the um in the recommendation i wonder how they um addressed that um or how psba would propose that we addressed that because i i would be concerned about um disclosing that information but i also understand that you know why that might be a good idea so that people have the
082whole picture um but yeah we can let's let's i'll check with dr bazzilla and um and just confirm that and and see what what any additional thoughts are on that point does that make sense yeah definitely thank you cool thanks any other discussion okay we'll move on to a vote ms kozara hi mr little aye ms philpot aye mrs ponietowski aye mrs reinebeck aye mrs spade yes i also vote i motion carries um we do not have a legislative report this evening ms kozair and i discussed uh doing a monthly report so we'll be doing that at the next meeting in february uh and since dr nolish is not president this evening i will take the finance items under the liaison report i wanted to announce that we have some dates set for the public
083budget committee meetings they will be on february 24th which will be the preliminary revenue budget review march 10th preliminary non-personnel budget review march 24th preliminary personnel budget review may 5th proposed final budget review all meetings will be held in the auditorium at ross elementary school at 7 p.m and i'm assuming that the district will be publicizing um information on how to attend and sign up for these meetings and i would encourage any taxpayers that are interested in learning more about the budgeting process to to sign up and try to attend these meetings because they're very very informative we next have two action items the first is a request for the board to reject all 31 bids received for portable protective shields and sneeze guards as advertised the bids were opened on january 26 2021 31
084bids were received the bids ranged from thirty five thousand dollars to four hundred and sixty nine thousand dollars and change um and uh it was determined that uh there was not a cost protective shield that addressed the variety of potential district-wide user needs in the bids received the next action item this evening is a request for the board to set the real estate tax collection fees for 2022 to 2025 which are displayed in the attached table prior to the elections for the ross township treasurer and the westview borough tax collector every four years the board must set the compensation rates for the term of office uh these positions are both up for election in 2021 and the annual compensation rate must be established prior to february 15 2021. the proposed rates are equal to the
085yearly rates approved for the previous four year period the ross township tax collector subcontracted these collections to jordan tax service for a fee of one dollar and uh 72 cents per parcel retaining the difference of approximately five thousand dollars a request for a two percent increase had been proposed by the west view borough tax collector but and however if the elect if elected the west view tax collectors subcontracted to jordan tax their cost would be approximately five thousand seven hundred dollars the budget impact is uh forty three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars annually for the next four years the superintendent recommends an iso move that the board approved finance items two and three d spade i'll second that thank you mrs spade is there any discussion on those items okay we'll move on to
086a vote ms kozara aye mr little aye ms philpot aye mrs ponietowski aye mrs renebach aye mrs spade yes i will also vote i motion carries we have another action item which is a confidential taxpayer request which was discussed as a legal item under executive session i move that the board approve the taxpayers request is there second okay we'll take a roll call vote now ms kozara aye mr little aye ms philpot aye mrs ponietowski aye mrs reed mrs renebach hi mrs spade yes i will also vote i motion carries okay the next several items are sort of our standard bills so we have a request for the board to ratify the general fund bills per the attached a request for the board to ratify capital fund project bills per the attached a request for
087the board to ratify food food service fund bills per the attached and then a request for the board to approve budget transfers per the attached and uh we also have a request for the board to approve payroll for the month of january 2021 and the amount of 3 million two hundred twenty six thousand uh eight hundred forty six dollars and forty three cents last step we have an informational item uh which d uh if you remember last year we approved we approved turn we approved a relationship with turnkey collections to help us uh in collection of business privilege and mercantile taxes and so we asked the board asked for an update on how those collections were going and those are attached to the board agenda and we can see here that we've been collecting more
088than our our fee so that's good but um i do think that the collections have been a little bit on the slow side um but we're hoping that they will pick up is that correct mr ruth i will move that finance item 7 through 11 be added to the legislative meeting agenda is there a second yes i have a question should we ask that now uh we can do that after okay okay d spade or secondary thank you mr spade any uh discussion or questions yes i have a question on budget transfers um let me get there um i'm not sure who could answer this for me but um middle school yeah middle middle school has quite a few of transfers um i would like to know what what they basically are and what they're
089for so there was a misinterpretation of some contract language which created a scheduling issue and so that became overages for teachers and so there was not an account that we had in order to pay those over just for the teachers so we transferred money out of a curriculum account into a payroll account in order to make those payments to middle school teachers okay um i have one other question there's a lot on hair transfers on here for custodial maintenance is that for the covet or yes it's primarily for code really just um between within the same budget okay it's just dependent on the building so it's not coming from other departments it was within theirs okay thank you any other discussion or questions on the finance items okay uh we'll move to a role called
090vote then ms kozera aye mr little aye ms philpott aye mrs ponietowski aye mrs rennebeck aye mrs spade yes i will also vote i motion carries next we have support services and ms philpot i have a facilities update that goes along with dr mannario's update that we are moving forward as quickly as we can to get all the kids back safely so prior to us going hybrid we installed what are called i wave bipolar ionization units in our health offices and several classrooms that were below grade so we did that prior to starting hybrids this week the invitations were sent out for the purchase of more of those units for the rest of our classrooms um they have a life cycle of 10 to 12 years and will help to also control the flu and
091cold viruses in the future so these seem like a really good good idea um the results of the sid invitations will be shared with the board in march and if anybody is interested in reading more about the units either i can send you some documents or or instruments can that's it for now thank you thank you very much okay moving on to public comments on non-agenda items do we have any of our in-person attendees with public comments yes mrs reed please step forward and or you could speak from your chair i guess let me just quickly agree no no let me just read the public participation policy very quickly you would like to invite any resident taxpayer or employee of the north hills school district who wishes to address the board to come forward at
092this time the board does reserve the right to limit the amount of time allotted for public discussion of on any particular speaker or issue some of your concerns can be quickly addressed following your comments while others may require more research and discussion when appropriate you are welcome to further discuss your concerns with us following this meeting we appreciate your interest and please begin with your name and address tony reid 208 oakwood avenue i'm really for dr williams regarding the presentation for the change to the science curriculum so i have a 9th grader who took honors bio a little nervous about jumping to a chs chemistry in the 10th grade um so you said the curriculums are somewhat were very similar very very similar our honors course and our chs sports so that is why at
093that point in time ahead you don't want to have two courses that are out of the government being curriculum so you want to have a chs course so your child can go ahead and take your chf level course it will be very very similar to ours and then you will need to make that decision with your child as to whether or not you want to pay for the take place if you do and then you successfully sleep course your child will leave at least [Music] so the honors chem that's offered currently is only one semester though right so to go to a chs this year around i'm like confused how the curriculum is so similar it seems like it would be so much more intense it actually is not because you're having it again in
094one semester so again it is very similar science teachers took a lot of time to measure the honors of the breakup and the phrase on i can assure you that we would not andrew's recommendation saying hey look this is redundant so is the chs a double block it is not it's a single block okay okay all right thank you and [Music] doctoral yeah if you want to ask me any questions please do that please feel free to contact this return um do not hesitate to be any concern about that at all so the six day rotation with it being a single block then part of the days will be lecture and part of the days will be loud corrections okay thank you you're welcome thank you thank you any other questions from our in-person audience
095no uh and then i will ask if we have any questions from our audience that is on zoom miss pellet um if anybody would who is registered on zoom would like to make a public comment please raise your hand virtually and we will bring you up to speak and address the board we do have one right now okay can you buy that one are you there hi my name is my name is amy byleg i live 106 lansing avenue and 150 i'm also an employee of the district i wanted to start by thanking each and every member of the school board you volunteer your time to help our staff and students this has not been an easy season for anyone and your efforts have not gone unnoticed you are so appreciated our district has made
096tremendous strides in focusing on safety we've taken steps to ensure the physical safety of all staff and students as our world continues to change we have noticed that safety goes beyond physical aspects we're teaching our students how to be respectful and responsible citizens both in the human world and the digital world i appreciate all the ways that we can share our news our celebrations accomplish and accomplishments on various platforms i love seeing everything that we are doing it's exciting to see and hear about the amazing things that our students staff and community members are doing i was so discouraged this past month about the comments that transpired on our district's page thank you dr mannarino for addressing these comments and our policies going forward our page serves as both a window and a mirror a
097window into what we are doing as well as who we project to our community we see our district reaching out sharing joy sharing news sharing information i'm so happy to see the safety continue and to be stronger moving forward thank you thank you very much for your comments we appreciate them do we have any other participants on zoom miss pellet sure i think we're probably good okay all right we'll move on to closing announcements um i did want to announce a couple of changes to the format of the board meeting going forward the next board meeting which is scheduled for thursday february 18th 2021 at 7 00 pm will be held in person at the lgi room virtual participation options will remain available for board members who cannot attend in person and for members of
098the public who wish to make comments but cannot attend in person you may also attend the meeting in person to make comments social distancing measures will be in place and face masks are required at all times for all attendees those planning to attend either in person or who would like to speak virtually are strongly encouraged to pre-register using an rsvp form link which will be shared by the district prior to each meeting going forward however the board meetings will be live streamed on the district's youtube channel and will no longer be live streamed on the district's facebook page so you'll just have to hop over to youtube to watch the meeting live and as you know the ability to comment doesn't exist through the youtube live stream and the feed is there solely to watch
099the meeting live after the meeting concludes the video will remain on our youtube channel for playback at any time and as a reminder school board members can be reached for questions or comments at any time via email by emailing our board secretary or the forum which is linked on our website so if you are unable to attend a meeting in person and you would like to contact the board we always encourage you to please use email and uh can i say one thing yes of course sorry the video cut out um and i know there were a lot of parents that had questions about activities for spring and the video came out the sound cut out when i said that miss zimmerman was going to be presenting that at the next board meeting so i
100just want to make sure everybody was aware that that was going to be happening because i know a lot of people have questions about what's coming up sure yeah i'm sorry about it no don't be sorry i'm looking forward to that presentation thanks for pointing that out i know we had um some technical issues this evening so thank you for everybody um for bearing with us and we will continue to improve the hybrid meetings so uh that being said i am going to go ahead and move to adjourn the meeting this evening thank you everybody