UDSD School Board Committee Meetings: December 2021 (LIVE STREAM)

001good evening welcome to the education and pupil services committee in person and virtual meeting in the finance and operations in person and virtual meeting for december 21st 2021 our last meeting of 2021. please rise for the pledge of allegiance is before we call tonight's meeting to order dr mcgarry will you please outline the public's participation procedures thank you yes board president brown um the school district has learned during the pandemic that public engagement uh now more so than ever is so important so we are running both a virtual meeting this evening and an in-person meeting tonight is a committee meeting which allows uh members that are viewing online or those who are in person to ask questions uh directed to either board and then the board will direct the administration to answer those questions where

002we can they will also become part of the record moving forward tonight if you're in person you have the opportunity to comment or question before our virtual participants this evening we ask that you provide your name your address and the specific agenda item that you're referring to when you comment or question uh and then the board again will take that into consideration and if the board members want to answer answer the question obviously on their own they will if they want to direct it to an administrator to answer the question an administrator will answer the question those who are participating live this evening you can participate one of two ways you can phone in a comment to and the specific 610-789-7200 item you'd like to comment on i do want to say to the viewers

003that are at home there are two meetings tonight education pupil services and then there's a meeting finance and operations you can send in your question to either one of those meetings hopefully before the close of the evening and before we move forward with any of those agenda items you can also send your uh questions or comments into committee meeting questions at upperdarbysd.org please provide your name address and the specific agenda item you'd like to comment on and we will definitely take those comments and questions into consideration uh both virtually and in person but as a reminder those who are in person uh go first if you need me to update anybody i'm certainly happy to do so thank you dr mcgarry please feel free to revisit that at your discretion throughout the evening the meeting

004of the education and people services committee will please come to order roll call board secretary mr rogers please dr haig present mr des moiers president mr war savage president mr neil present miss williams present mr fields president mrs mitchell present mr brown present thank you sir the district posted this evening's agenda to board docs at least 24 hours prior to the commencement of this meeting is there a motion to approve that previously posted agenda so moved second thank you the agenda has been moved and seconded are there any amendments to offer there are no amendments thank you the agenda has been moved and seconded all those in favor please say aye aye aye aye those opposed please signify by saying i oppose and state your name for the record those abstaining please signify by saying

005i abstain and state your name for the record the motion carries i will now turn over the education pupil services committee agenda to co-chair mrs mitchell thank you president brown how is everyone tonight mrs kelly if you could please review the agenda and then just roll into the first agenda item thank you good evening everyone tonight on the education and people services committee meeting we have three items the first item is the 2223 district one page calendar which will need board action in january the second item is the keystone exams winner administration window which is an informational piece this will not require board action and the third item is an update on the district's health and safety plan which would require board um action this year or for sorry in january at the board meeting

006so as we get started on the very first item like i said is the 2223 district calendar an overview of the one page calendar a copy of the entire calendar with the coding and the keys and everything like that is available on board docs as well as a summary of events both are available on board docs for the public and for the board as we're going through this but throughout this presentation i highlighted the important district dates as well as the important state testing dates and dates for teachers and parents as they're planning the for the 22-23 school year this is also in accordance to our policy 803 which talks about planning and preparation for the next school year and adhering to all the guidelines that we have for the number of days students attend

007school as well as as well as the hours that students have to attend school so beginning um in august 23 the 23rd through the 26th of 2022 the teachers would return and begin their professional development the highlight here would be that first day of school for the students um k through 12 would be returning back to our buildings on monday august 29th we would have a four day week there and it would lead up to labor day and everything that's outlined on the calendar here like i said is available on board docs as a calendar so you can review and follow along but this calendar mirrors the 21-22 school year it's almost identical to what we saw this school year we have three professional development days for teachers one in november one in february and

008one in may there are full day professional development days for our students or for our teachers excuse me and no school for our students would be on those days the next big one would be june 8th which is upper darby high school's graduation ceremony and that would be a thursday followed by a last day of school for students in grades k-11 on that friday and then the last day for teachers being on monday june 12th so we have reviewed this calendar with principals and the union and um we've received feedback i made adjustments to that calendar and this is what the days that are very important for district entire district days as we move forward on state testing days these are the days that um are given to us by pde they are the windows

009in which we can state test so we would be state testing or for our keystone exams during winter wave 2 beginning in january as soon as we return back from us from a winter break similar to this school year which you'll see in the next presentation and then we would follow in at the end of april for our pssas for students in grades three through eight and then following in may we would be talking about again another exam another keystone exam spring wave for any students in grades 7 through 12 that are eligible to take those exams they are end of course exams and then the last piece are just some additional important days um that help with planning um as a parent you need to know when um early dismissals would happen so we

010have early dismissals happening on monthly except for the month of january and april um january the the exception there is for the high school because they have final exams there and april because of state testing it makes it a little bit harder to have an early dismissal there and we have spring break which would also affect that so we don't have an an early dismissal scheduled there we have we have parent conferences again in november so similar to this school year for grades one through eight and also for kindergarten we also have of course winter break scheduled and spring break based on those days winter break's a little bit different because of where the holiday falls this year so the first day off would be the 26th because saturday is the 24th and the 25th

011would be on a sunday so it makes for a different type of a start to the break would be on that monday the 26th would be the first day off um and then spring break would be following that april date um to april 10th of 2023 okay so that's the conclusion of that presentation are there any questions on the district one page calendar board members have a question mr neil uh thank you miss kelly um for teachers at the end of the marking period so like june 7th is the end of the fourth marking period are students still able to complete assignments after that date and teachers are able to get that in so it's not due in the system for the teacher until afterwards correct teachers have a window that they can still enter

012grades and accept work and everything like that thank you absolutely any other questions or concerns from board members all right i think we can move on to the keystone exam presentation so the next presentation is for the keystone exams um the keystone exam is just to refresh everybody's memory um serves for two reasons now beginning with the class of 2023 it is a graduation requirement per the act 158. this this act came to be and we did many presentations on it i think three to date so if we need to look back you um it happened may of 2019 it happened june of 2020 and then there was also a presentation in december of 2020 that all um spoke about how act 158 was going to be met at our high school this act also

013um not only is one pathway to demonstrate proficiency on these end of course exams algebra one bio or literature there are also alternative paths that paths pathways sorry that can be met through um graduation requirements or composite keystone exam scores but there's also up three other pathways but like i said we've already looked at all of those we've already presented those to the public and to the board and they can be revisited through board docs if need be the other piece the keystone exam serves is the grade 11 accountability and there are the pieces that get reported out through the future ready pa index and pieces like that again something that we review each year um but remember the keystone exams do serve two purposes now one being that graduation requirement and the one that

014we are used to seeing is that grade 11 accountability so as i move forward similar to our assessment window that you just saw for the 22-23 school year this is our first assessment window for the 21-22 school year so as soon as we return back from winter break students are going to be starting to test in on tuesday and wednesday for algebra 1. it's an end of the course exam so if students are enrolled in algebra 1 they would be required to take this exam literature would follow on that thursday and friday and then biology would fall on that monday and tuesday this information has been posted to the website mrs simone has been doing has been reaching out to parents with multiple communication through her wednesday folder and schoology just to remind students that

015testing will begin as soon as we return from break also during these days the adjustment to the schedule would happen as well students would be starting to test at 7 30 in the morning other students will return back on campus if they are not in one of these three courses at 11 a.m to begin their schedules that's to allow for the allotted time that pde requires for testing in those three subject areas just some general testing information again everything is available on our website and like i said mrs simone has been on pushing out information on this as well students are not permitted to have electronic devices they do have to turn those into their teachers they cannot have their cell phone on smart watches ipods their chromebooks will have to be left in their

016bag they cannot have electronic devices um at all they are prohibited by pde um if there is a violation then there are steps that we have to take in doing so we have to report it to the state as they hold all the rights to those materials we would have to we could have to do school discipline if necessary depending on what how pde reacts as well as we would have to say that the test might not be able to be scored and they may students may have to retake the test they are pieces that pde sets for us as guidelines as we are administering this assessment the next piece is just if students um and or sorry if parents would like to exempt their child these are the guidelines that would have to be

017followed for exemption they do have the right um for religious purposes to exempt their child we do have policy policy 127 that allows for this to occur also and there is a confidentiality agreement um that parents would have to sign per pde as well permission is then granted after i'm writing a letter to the superintendent for exemption here so these guidelines like i said have been posted they have not changed from the previous years and the pssas follow the same um guidelines so as we're getting students are now getting used to testing um from third grade on these these rules follow us along with pssas as well as keystone exams so at this point that's the end of this presentation as well are there any questions here my board members have a question i think

018i saw mr neal for mr des moyers first thank you um uh so i wasn't sure whether to ask my question that during this presentation or the last one has to do with testing and the fact that with the pandemic there was a change to the testing you know schedule uh that that you know the pssa exams if i'm correct moved from which ordinarily would have been last spring were moved to this fall have there been any other pandemic related changes to testing schedules no not at this point but you are correct so during the 20 the 2021 school year they did extend the window and you could have tested well into this fall um that has not there has not been an extension on this window so the window that you are seeing is

019window number two where we usually test anyway for algebra one literature and biology they this is the window that we have to adhere to and it's a short they've shortened the window so you have two days to test algebra you have two days to test literature you have two days to test biology followed by three makeup windows and they have to be shipped out of your building by a particular date and then they're done so um they've gone back to adhering to the shortened window that they've established a few years ago thank you you're welcome dr haag so this question is only somewhat related to the actual scheduling but um i don't actually know the answer so let's say i'm a 10th grade student now and last year i took algebra one and i did

020not pass the keystone exam but now it's a graduation requirement what happens to that student you you still you have the ability to retake the assessment if you choose that pathway so if a student is below basic or basic and chooses to take the algebra 1 exam because they were not proficient they can take it and use that as their pathway they could also graduate on that act 158 as a composite so your scores can be bulked or piled together and you can pass um or you can graduate on that pathway so there's multiple different pathways to allow that but you are able to retake the exam if necessary thank you you're welcome president brown do you have a question i see your microphone is on no okay anyone else have a question all right

021mrs kelly i think mr marshallek is doing the next agenda item exactly so third item is um the health and safety plan and update and mr marshallak will be presenting sure okay good evening everyone so tonight we're gonna take a few minutes to go through our proposed updates to the health and safety plan with respect to masking um you know recently there was uh the pennsylvania supreme court decision that upheld uh the masking the masking order by the acting secretary of health was not was not allowed and we could not you know have to follow that that order and vacate that order um on december 10th what that did was that put the masking back into the hands of school districts so we'll kind of go through tonight in terms of what we're looking at

022current positivity rates looking at the data we have that we currently you know review we make these decisions and then what our recommendation will be for either the january board meeting or potentially for the january committee meeting depending upon how the board would like to go just a brief overview again december 10th the pennsylvania supreme court did affirm the commonwealth court's decision to vacate the acting secretary's order which again was the masking was required in all public school buildings and on transportation as well which was a federal order but did maintain that order as well districts are now in charge of making that determination based upon what they believe is the best course of action for their school districts and how that works is that will be approved through a board approved health and safety

023plan which we currently have in place our current health and safety plan right now still requires masking k-12 settings for all students and staff while we're in the high or substantial range of community transmission which i'll talk about in a minute as well now what's important for the public to know for the board to know too the supreme court's decision does not change the requirements for school districts or how they respond to covet in schools and i'll explain why that's important as well to talk about masking and what could happen when students do remove their masks when there is a high level community transmission so first and foremost you know we're still required to report all positive cases on our school property each week in addition to the number of closed contacts i'll describe what

024that is also to the pa department of health for current aggregate numbers but also for case investigation if there is what they call a link between two positive cases or more than two positive cases in a classroom setting or a school building a close contact is determined in the k-12 school setting with students when they're correctly wearing a mask and they're less than three feet they're considered a close contact if students or staff remove their mask that spacing jumps up to six feet so anything less than six feet without a mask will be determined in close contact if they came into contact for more than 15 minutes cumulatively over the course of 24 hour period of time with a positive case where we see that happen the most in our schools is during the lunchroom

025in the lunchroom when students do have their masks removed while they're eating but in the classroom setting it applies to students only when they're within three to six feet and correctly wearing a mask at all times they're not considered a close contact if they're in that space between a positive case does not apply to adults however adults are still have to maintain a six feet spacing from positive uh cases even with with or without a mask contact tracing which is taking a lot of time with our school nurses and our principals when there is a positive case to school we're seeing a lot of this this week in particular but this would be where the nurse or the principal or whoever they have assigned in their buildings would be going through and asking the infected

026student or the teacher in terms of who was within that spacing around them throughout the day and that's how they identify close contacts depending upon your vaccination status will depend upon the course of action that you have within our school district if you're unvaccinated is how complicated it can get for for our principals and our nurses if you're unvaccinated you either have to quarantine or participate in our test to stay program which i'll explain as well test to stay is where the sorry the close contact unvaccinated closed contact would test on a periodic you know rotation over the course of ten days every two days and as long as they have a negative test they can remain in school and are required to wear a mask at all times throughout the course of the school

027day the other option is if they do not again it's voluntary the other option would be that they have to quarantine for a period of 10 days without a test or a period of seven days with a negative test they may return on day eight and again you can see these numbers and how complicated this can get with students and staff who are unvaccinated if you're a vaccinated student or staff member you must wear a mask at all times in indoor settings you do not need the quarantine but you must get a negative test result within five day between days five and day seven as long as you meet that requirement you can return to school and remove your mask if we had a masking optional policy currently we do not so we still are

028requiring masks in our school settings but again these are the requirements of a school principal a nurse or staff member when a positive case occurs in our school settings it only gets more complicated when masks are not required or are optional or not being worn during the course of the day and it gets especially difficult when there's a high level community transmission which we're experiencing right now which we'll go through three to six feet is a key element of spacing that's required by or recommended by the cdc to pa department of health and again it mirrors the spacing that students will need to have between one another if they're correctly wearing a mask in the school setting six feet if you remember it's always been that that number that people use since the start of

029the pandemic for social distancing but again it's a recommended mitigation strategy when possible and we know in our school buildings that's not always possible in some of our school school buildings even getting three feet is not possible in some of our classrooms some of our hallways some of our facilities that we have here in upper darby school district district vaccination status i'm going to caution you know when you look at the data you know for on the student data but our current percentage of our of our that fully vaccinated staff and students right now we have about 97 of the almost 800 staff members who responded to our voluntary survey we have about sixteen hundred uh staff members in total so about half of our staff who responded are pretty much 100 fully vaccinated our

030students are about ten percent at this at this point and again i say the word caution look at that data point because the pediatric or the ph 511 vaccine just became available not too long ago and to become fully vaccinated you must have two doses within three week period of time and then two weeks after your second dose when you're considered fully vaccinated so for our young ones who were the first you know people or students to get the vaccine when the first was approved they're just becoming fully vaccinated right now so we expect this number to increase once more students do get that or choose to get vaccinated and that time period passes you know for our students our high school numbers and our middle school numbers are roughly about just under 20 at

031this point in time so we do want to encourage our older students to go out and get vaccinated as well um but again we monitor this every week and we'll have you know current numbers uh week by week to see how uh how vaccinate our schools are against voluntary for our our students and our staff to to to submit that information just to put out there too you know we have a lot with a lot of sponsored vaccine clinics we did here in the district you know with the county memorial hospital with the county with springfield pharmacy and most recently with the children's hospital pennsylvania so we are you know putting as much effort as we can in getting our community and our staff and our students vaccinated but i also want to plug into

032i did this before our last presentation a lot of the local pharmacies are looking for individuals to come in and get vaccinated springfield pharmacy long lane pharmacy rite aid they all have readily available appointments for any one of our community students or adults to come in and get their vaccine or get their booster shot as well so if you can't did make it to one of our clinics you can go to one of the local pharmacies and get the vaccine as well so communication with schools we want to make sure our parents and guardians continue to use the symptom screener each school day and communicate with their school nurse and principal if there are any types of symptoms you're seeing at home any test results any close contacts anything you think is relevant for our

033school do we need to know please contact your school nurse and your principal i linked up there is a to our site with the symptom screener for parents to use um each day if they would like to choose to go through a checklist to monitor the child before they come to school but again you know please notify your school nurse and principal if your child is you know in need of any any type of support during that time um especially if you're a close contact with someone in your immediate family because that plays a key role in identifying you know you for the test to stay program would not be eligible for that program if you are a close contact of someone in your household but also important for our school nurse and principal to

034know to monitor your symptoms over the course of the period of time and also if you choose if families choose to have their children vaccinated please notify your school nurse with the dates of your first and second dose so we can keep track of that for our record-keeping and our our data um our data review for for how how vaccinated our school district is okay so the data points i mentioned earlier before about the community transmission rates so there are two data points that many school districts use to make that help with their decision making one is the incidence rates per 100 000 and what that means over the course of the most previous the previous seven day period of time how often positive cova cases occurred within per 100 000 individuals within that population

035so right now in delaware county we're 244.7 instances of positive cova cases per 100 uh individuals in delaware county that is extremely high and if you noticed with the community transmission table that is noted as a high level of community transmission it's the highest highest level you can go with in cdc and paid apartments health transmission table the percent positivity rate is another metric that we look at when making determinations for our qualcomm our course of action in schools and what that is that's the percentage of tests that came back positive in that most recent seven day period and again 9.6 or i'm sorry 11.1 yeah these okay yeah yeah so right the numbers up there are from december 17th um and again the numbers i'm reporting you now are much higher than that on

036december 17th 9.6 was uh was the the percent positivity rate which was a substantial level however it has adjusted to 11.1 percent which was the uh now again it's high so both of our metrics are in the highest level of community transmission so when considering a possible adjustment to our health and safety plan we would like to look at targeting our incidence rates and or our percent positivity rate to be one under 50 per 100 000 for two consecutive weeks and or less than five percent positivity rate for two consecutive weeks again these two metrics do go hand in hand so once we do hit one of the metrics we will likely hit the other this also aligns with the transmission table from cdc and the pea department of health to bring us down to

037the moderate level of community transmission if we hit those numbers moderate to low we feel like that might be the best time if we do hit those metrics for a period of two two weeks in a row which again will demonstrate over 14 day period of time which again is important for how we measure tests how we measure quarantine time the way that the um the virus can potentially be transmitted over that period of time we believe that that 14-day mark if we're safe and hit two weeks in a row that might be an opportunity for us to make masking optional in our k-12 settings and again we expect by that time too that our vaccination rates will likely improve as well to have more students and our staff vaccinated but again when we talk

038about masking optional at that point in time that excludes the test to stay program so if you still are participating in test estate program you must wear a mask during the duration that program and also if you are a close contact and you're vaccinated you still are required to wear a mask during the course of your close contact period until you have a posit or a negative test between day five and day seven so those are the two little the two nuances to the masking optional uh potential recommendation next slide so the next steps we have again board meeting coming up early january we can prepare the adjustment in the language in the health and safety plan to reflect what we just described for the masking optional based on those two data points or we

039can continue to watch the data and the levels of community transmission and potentially make a switch to how what type of data we want to use to measure our decision making but again you know we have to make a decision at some point in time through our health and safety plan you know my recommendation would be to go with the earlier with the early january board meeting to put in the language we just described the presentation but if the world would like us to continue to monitor data we're happy to do that as well bring it back to the january committee meeting and vote on it that night if uh if we choose and that's it thank you mr marshallack are there any questions from board members all right dr haig um thank you mr

040marshall and i know you've mentioned that this is taking up so much of our nurses time and our staff time and i know for sure that's true and we so appreciate the work that they're doing and that you're doing um i first wanted to ask a clarifying question you said you've got the the incidence rate and the positivity rate you've got this and or and i'm not totally sure it sounds like you're are you saying you're still working on that whether it should be and or or or what's where are we on that so give us the flexibility to look at either one typically like i said most cases one does not drop without the other but if there is example where if we have let's say 5.5 positivity rate and we have 48 uh

041individuals per 100 000 we may want to make that recommendation to then monitor that for two weeks we stayed there for two weeks make the recommendation to go masking optional at that time if i could just add to that as well mr martial like right now we're relying on the dashboard that's provided prior to the opening of the school year everybody knows we were partnering with chester county health department school districts had more intimate data localized to your communities and your school districts we don't have that access to that data any longer but we we could be moving in a direction that when the local health department and the county gets up and running there is consideration that they be able to get access to that kind of data and provide us that data more

042localized so right now we're looking at a county much larger scale if there's an opportunity to look more closely at our own data this would provide us that flexible flexibility too to look at actual community transmission and positivity rates within our upper lary school district okay so so so i see you so you're saying we have two two options as of right now to to make this decision by the january voting meeting or to discuss it more at the january committee meeting um i guess i'm just not quite sure what am i hearing you say that you want us to vote on on whether to allow whether to to switch to i'm not i guess i'm not totally clear which what the decision is at either of those two meetings so so the health and

043safety plan has to be board approved right and this is going to be a major shift in our health and safety plan what's what's the shift because this is this not more or less what we have right now which i know so it it is and what i mean by that is because we've been on our mask whatever so long and i think uh and it's also a hot button topic right now that we want to make sure we're clear and we're open and transparent about what we're doing and we have the data to back our decision making as well okay so sort of like a reinforcement if you will is that it's a reinforcement but it's also a conversation um you know earlier there were conversations about you know the secretary of education secretary

044making this um and the court ruling wasn't that they didn't have the authority to do it was the avenue and how improper it was by going about it so it really comes down to you know school districts are now left in muddling through these decisions and by muddling through these decisions we're talking about with the board and the public hey the administration feels that we should keep masking and i know that's a controversial conversation but as ed really pointed out earlier social distancing staffing contact tracing they are still very much a part of what we're dealing with every day so for the public to remind everybody of the the data points and the values that are out there we're saying look our recommendation is if the board wants us to consider to move out of

045masking here are those data points again that we would like to consider to be clear we we don't want to make the vaccination process the number one priority given the percentages of where we are we would hope that by going down below five percent and deposit and the number of incidents below 100 that would speak to less spread hopefully higher vaccination rates all working in tandem and the focus on vaccine a vaccination of of our students in our community is just happening by the by the very nature of of naturally occurring versus making that data point the number one priority so we're actually to your point we do have in our current health plan that ed had put together the opportunity to kind of use these data points to come out of masking anyway but

046we feel like to be very specific about the number of cases under 100 000 where earlier i think we simply had being in low for a two week period of time we're really trying to articulate the specific data points so if anybody asks well what is it document gary is it one or the other what number is it what percentage it is we're trying to be clear and if it requires more conversation to your other question we're willing to have other questions about this coming out of winter break because our current health plan already says we can keep masking we're simply having this conversation so that the public and the school board know that we're aware of it we're aware of the the masking order and the conversations that have had we know that we've

047been having these conversations throughout october and november with all of our home and school associations so it's just another opportunity to engage but very good questions it's kind of in our health plan now yeah right okay so i just wanted to say a little bit more just to um sort of comment on on the sort of sensitivity of this topic and um remark on the fact that that you know i have two first graders at westbrook park and um you know any parent of twins will tell you twins are really no more alike than any other siblings that you have but i'm incredibly lucky that they're both they could care less about masks i mean most of the time they come home and i sort of have to remind them hey you're home you can

048take your mask off um but i get as parents parents know kids are all different and um i've had those battles with kids about brushing teeth and cleaning up toys and going to bed so i just want to make clear that that we certainly i think i and but i think i also speak for a lot of members of the board certainly sympathize with any parent that's having a kind of a battle with their kids about masks i these battles are are incredibly frustrating and draining and and so i i really have a lot of sympathy for for any parent going through that um but i also see how um you know and i see how we're all very exhausted and frustrated with sort of shifting guidance and new variants and new data and it's

049just it's all so exhausting but it makes me think so much of of like my grandparents generation right the greatest generation that that fought world war ii and had meatless mondays and weetless wednesdays and and victory gardens and my grandmother was um my grandmother was not rosie the riveter she was irene the inspector she was actually a school teacher but during the war she was an inspector for boeing which is something i'm certainly i'm certain she never expected to do but my point is you know when we had this sort of very visible enemy you know everyone came together and there was so much sacrifice and i just think we we still are those people right we're still just people are still capable of so much sacrifice and i think the fact that we don't

050have that that the enemy is this invisible thing makes it harder but i just want to i i really want to thank everyone who is cooperating thank all the parents and the community members and the staff and everyone who's who's who's really pulling together through all this and and just ask you know uh to just keep it going exactly that that we are in this together we are making these sacrifices it stinks but we've got to keep doing it um because we're saving lives and and as annoying as it is right now to wear a mask it feels like a very small price to pay and and i'm willing to pay it and i hope i hope all the other parents will jump in and keep fighting those battles and and um i i yeah

051again i can't say enough about how how much i appreciate all the effort that community members but and also especially that our staff our nurses our teachers and our administrators are putting into all this so thank you thank you dr hagg mr war savage yes thank you and uh just to comment on meredith's remarks that they were breathtaking um it took the word i'm normally very very eloquent but that just took the words right out of my mouth and it spoke for so many of us so thank you for that um the only two super quick questions that i had were in terms of those data points and those goals that we want to reach so that masking can be optional in your review of historical data has there ever been a past point of

052reference where we have been able to attain those goals looking back on that for that kind of period of time in consideration of different uh variances of the disease i guess i'll stop there with that question i think coming out of last excuse me last school year when vaccine vaccinations became more you know available for everyone to to achieve right about that april may june right before the delta variant came out we were hitting way below this in fact we were way below this i want to say roughly if i remember correctly about one percent positivity rate in our pcr tests and then less than i think 10 for 100 000 for a period of time um and again that was right around the same time when we did relax the masking across the state

053but then quickly it came back you know because of the delta variant and we kept seeing rising cases the month of july then august then september you know here we are again um but it was quite quite low at that time so it's definitely an attainable goal in other words that we can work towards awesome and the second question that i had was you mentioned all the different contact tracing that has to be done and how time-consuming that is again looking at that data historically most recently are you able to tell us in the community where a lot of that transmission tends to happen so that we can be a little bit more cognizant of staying away from or may at least be making considerations of certain things as we engage this holiday season that's

054that's a tough question i mean a lot a lot of the transmission is not really happening within our schools and we're finding a lot of students are becoming positive over the weekend or on a thursday and they're notifying us you know on let's say a monday we come to school we can't say for certain that it's not happening in our schools we know that for sure there are linked cases within some of our classrooms that has occurred a number of different times and some of our elementary buildings in particular and are one of our middle schools in particular when there is less than three feet when students are identified as closed contacts we also know that our students and as far as students who are watching tonight are parents you have to wear your mask

055correctly so just having it around your mouth you know i get made fun of a lot for wearing my mask wrong which i don't but if but they think i do but if it's not covering your nose in your mouth it's not being worn correctly um and by the the rule of the quarantine or close contact if you don't wear it correctly and you are within three to six feet you should quarantine because you're not you're considered close contact that you're not wearing your mask the right way so it is those are important pieces to have it over your nose over your mouth you know when you're in our schools um but we know for sure it's happening and right this week it's happening seems like everywhere it seems like it's been a tough week

056this week thank you mr neil uh thank you director mitchell um i just want to get some clarification and it's more going to be me providing it but uh the december 10th decision that came down from the supreme court affirming the commonwealth court's decision to vacate the acting secretary's masking order came down to not that masking was illegal but the order itself that came from the acting secretary of health um so kyle if you could is masking illegal in schools no masking is does this work no masking is not illegal in schools as a matter of fact you're correct that what the courts ended up saying was simply that the process that was used by the secretary was improper but in fact even the secretary could have exerted that authority if she had used the

057authority if she had used the processes that are actually built into the law to be able to do so all right thank you yes i just wanted to get that clarification out there for the public the second point i just wanted to mention was the um the infection rate so as of right now what the infection rate is is uh basically how many people you would transmit it to if you were infected and there are 67 counties in pennsylvania uh one two and three philadelphia delaware county chester county uh followed right up with six and uh seven and eight i believe uh buxon and montgomery county so we see that most of the population in pennsylvania is in the southeast corner and obviously we're going to be infecting more people because we have a lot

058more close contacts we live closer together so i think it's really important that uh i think we stay tied to community data i know dan you had mentioned or dr mcgarry i apologize dr mcgarrett you mentioned more community-based data once a department of health goes forward and is providing that information i think you know many of our staff come from out of the community and i think having that sense of where the community is at the county level uh can help guide us uh in in a better way than just the community data or itself because we could have someone coming in from a community that's a high transmission rate you know there's an outbreak there but they're coming into our schools now and affecting our children so i i want to get more of

059a globe not a global but a larger picture than just our school district and our school district's pretty compact compared to some school districts in in pennsylvania so yeah that's a fair conversation but it's also important you know that there are local decisions that are made in local review of information especially during the school year as far as you know if the community transmission rates in upper derby are low and and it's in our community whereas other communities during certain holidays or certain times are traveling and going different places but ours remain low as upper darby's actually in some periods of time in 2020 we were lower than surrounding areas that would provide us some different freedoms with our kids and our community as well so if we can get our hands on that data

060it might allow us to have different social emotional opportunities different learning activities so it's a combination of working with localized data and data beyond our schools because we're going to get questioned without a doubt by families and by communities about why one community is doing something why you're not doing something and we're ready to have those conversations we have obviously a lot of data to review we just want to make sure that we're looking at our community the social and emotional needs of our community and our staff and talking about that we also know that in meeting with the medical professionals whose name i'm not going to put out there because it's unfair to them they volunteer to meet with superintendents they've made it clear to us too as just as recently as as today

061do not close schools right now keep going keep your mitigation strategies in play keep pushing through you're doing a great job schools are doing a better job than just about everybody and the focus is on keeping kids in school and that really is why we're trying to use this data localized and to your point david on on a state and and county level we'll certainly do all those things thank you vice president fields thank you director mitchell um thank you guys for the presentation i have a question about communication with schools please notify your school nurse once your child is received et cetera um is this the only way the parents no is this the only way the school knows whether a child is vaccinated or not and is that where we're getting our 10

062number from is that how we're determining 10 percent of the kids being vaccinated so right right now we are relying on families to voluntarily you know give that information to us we can also get it when a student is identified as a close contact and the parent does say they're vaccinated we can ask that at that point in time too we wouldn't we didn't know at that point we would know then um there is something the nurses do have access to called the pa sys which is the database for all the immunizations across the commonwealth but again it's you're looking for a specific student um so again that also relies based on how quickly the vaccinator enters that data as well um but we want to encourage our families to you know grassroots effort kind

063of let us know and then we can track it um at this point obviously it's not required um by any you know authority um but we're asking families to cooperate with that okay so i mean is it possible that there's more people there's more kids vaccines it's possible that number's higher we just don't know because we haven't been notified it's certainly possible and if we keep keep in mind too we just started really pushing for this information over the past week okay so once we continue to do that as well pushing it out with the principles pushing out with our nurses um and we've gotten a pretty pretty decent um then that first day after that apparently that went out a number of emails came flooding in with dates and so we expect it to

064continue to to increase okay but we certainly think there is more a higher percentage of students who are fully vaccinated at this time okay i'm trying to remember if i can't remember filled out a form for my work or for the school as to vaccination status i know how to do it for my work yeah i think we had one for the district so don you're right i mean i think right now we're focused on five-year-olds and older going into the school year and we we did put out in our communication updating the nurses forms coming in remember at that time coming into the school year it was only secondary age students so this data right now is taking into consideration population where the five and older is so new and we just held a

065vaccination clinic yesterday where over 300 students were vaccinated thanks to ed marshallack and children's hospital and the team that worked with ed to pull that off but um i think this percentage is also based on compliance with giving us the information and really those cards that were coming in we did ask for that information this summer correct going into the school year yes we added part of our student information cards that came in but again we're relying on parent input family data putting it on there willing to put it on you know being willing to put on there and um but yeah so again we're gonna keep pushing our families too and put out there again we want them to let us know when when and if when and if we you know they do

066choose to get vaccinated yeah parents please please let us know yep right yep um on the data points is this a the the bottom two points is this a if then uh uh target incident so on the data point slide it i just want to know if those is that if then like so if we're at five percent then we're going to uh um optional masking optional right so it'd be exactly if we hit that data point or the data points two consecutive weeks then we would have masking optional in our school district k-12 with the exceptions of test to stay and quarantine for vaccinated folks okay the last time we did that was the end of the school year last year right before the summer started before the development for a very short period

067of time masking option yeah and our esy program in summer programming okay okay uh i want to say um so thanks for answering my questions uh thank you for going above and beyond uh with this and and like irene the inspector um you've all had to do a lot of work really outside of your scope of practice um uh really uh you know probably not what you signed up for and a lot of people are saying that so i really appreciate that like vaccine clinics that dr mcgarry just mentioned um like the and it's really it hasn't been just the kids like from the beginning we've been this this district this this administ these upper darby school district employees have been trying to get this community um vaccinated as best they can so it's your

068efforts as everybody hears efforts and it's really appreciated so i'm done thank you vice president fields anyone else have any comments or questions on this agenda item i just wanted to just make one um concern you know i have one concern and that is really on our staff our nursing staff and our principals who are doing these the test to stay and the the contact racing and everything if things do not go down over the holidays do we have any plans to help support the staff in the beginning of the year when we could be seeing a lot more kids in the test to stay program on top of all the other medical issues that nurses deal with every day and collecting the data on if kids got vaccinated and all those things is there

069any plans i know everyone needs a break over over the break but are we thinking ahead at all about what we would do if positivity rates increased over winter break so right now we currently do have extra support in all of our buildings um through some agency nursing nurses who do come help and this was put in place last school year and we continued this school year as well but again we're pushing to have more people come and help our nurses we're trying to schedule them as best they can they also have schedules the nurses who might conflict with their ability to come into work or if they're close contact so we're working through with our agencies to do that um but we were thinking of that we knew this was going to be difficult

070with kids back in full time and how the delta variant was kind of taking over the incidence rate we did expect this to happen that's why we put in those those extra supports but we do need more you know we do need more for sure so we're looking at filling those those spots as fast as we can thank you thank you to everyone who is going through these challenging times on the ground any other comments or questions from board members about this agenda item okay so i think at this time we'll move into public comment are there any public comments in the in the board room on the any one of these agenda items okay if you could come to the microphone and state your name and address for the record and um let us

071know what your comments or questions are thank you savanjalozian 1144 mortalwood avenue i am here this evening to bring attention to the fact that the same cdc guideline data guidance monitoring system dashboard that the school board and administration are using is the same data used by neighboring delaware county school districts where current masking is masking optional slash recommended and is not required and enforced specifically these school districts are ridley springfield marple newtown wallingford swarthmore and pendelco the same cdc weekly data that is found on the dashboard that mr marshlik presented today's data was 244 per 100 000 is deemed high the percentage of positivity of 11 is considered high as well this data is made available to all of my previously mentioned school districts they are using the same data the data is not being

072manipulated they are in the same county as us but yet these school districts are mass optional and upper darby school district is not to the best of my knowledge these school districts have not implemented target incident rates for masking requirements and this is why i'm here today to voice my concerns and my requests to make upper darby school district masking optional and to make it now not at the next school board meeting not on january 17th but today masking is not a one policy fit all masking a healthy child is inhumane masking a healthy child is cruel and it makes them suffer our children have suffered too much for too long masking a healthy child goes against every basic right it goes against every right of the parents right appearance that this school board and

073that this administration has taken away from me you have failed to give me the option you have failed to give me the choice you have failed to allow me to make decisions for my child masking should be should not be dependent on vaccination rates and it should not be dependent on targets incident rates in addition to this and equally most equally important is that masking is disruptive and highly detrimental to child's learning we can't even say that our children are developing minimal linguistic linguistic skills they're not developing these skills our children are visual learners they are in a monkey sea monkey do environment they can't see the mouths of their teachers they can't see how to pronounce words to increase their vocabulary how can the school board and this administration approve social media posts showing

074our precious children being masked learning their alphabets and their vocabulary so again i hope you take my comments into consideration and i thank you for your time thank you miss mitchell if i i just would like to respond to part of that comment because uh i work for wallingford swarthmore school district i know the solicitor um of wallingford swarthmore school district is our solicitor um welling for swarthmore school district does have um targeted instance rates so it on december 7th january 7th 14th sometime in january of february february um it will become mass optional based on the number of cases that are going on so on those those targeted incidence rates if it does not match up masking would still be required in that district according to their health and safety plan that was passed

075in december i've read optional yes if it that meets the requirements of the incidence rate i read masking recommended no okay do i misread then dr mcgarry yeah sure look i mean this is going to be another conversation um and i appreciate your comments and and certainly as a parent you're concerned dr haig had mentioned earlier for for everybody there's social emotional concerns that are there we stand behind our our social media commentary and our posts that go out there we're getting information from some pretty well-trained professionals medical professionals who are giving us this advice um look i mean for whatever it's worth it's become a political politicized conversation you know our job is to put the information that we have in front of us with people that we trust to make decisions for kids

076our number one priority has always been and will continue to be keep kids in school the safest way possible it's not really a debate over whether we think the masks work or forcing a vaccination on anybody it's really these are the rules of engagement that provide us the best opportunity to keep teachers in front of children in our schools every single day i would like to reiterate that there are a lot more school districts in delaware county who are remaining not masking just like upper darby school district is just across route 1 up the pike toward glen mills uh an intermediate unit that's local there are a lot of other school districts that are taking the medical advice that we receive the facts that are in front of us and making those decisions could be

077that in some of those other surrounding school districts they have 80 to 90 vaccination status among their kids and they feel like they can move in that direction we're a much larger school district we are far more complicated and we have spacing issues that that add to this we're not being left without contact tracing our nurses overwhelmed staffing of our schools we have a high number of parents that are going out that have children that are becoming coveted positive in other school communities there's a lot that goes into this i don't want to discredit your personal beliefs about that but these are the rules of engagement and we are going to put our best foot forward to support you to support our kids but also to keep our schools open for in-person instruction and i

078think sooner than later we are going to see ourselves in a different place we've had conversations that hopefully we can get through january and probably into february that's why other school districts looking at that time frame because we're hearing from the projections from these medical experts that it could be a better place once we get through winter break so that is our our process we agree there's a social and emotional aspect to some of these for some of our kids that's not lost on us when we make these decisions believe me we many of us have our own kids we understand where that is but we've got to continue to move forward as doctor reiterated today together and and and keep moving in that direction and that's that's our game plan and we're going to

079keep doing that i'm sorry am i allowed to comment sure go ahead thank you the committee meetings are a two-way um conversation obviously we can't go on about it all night long but go ahead my emphasis was masking a healthy child specifically that is my area of concern you know that's why i'm asking for massing optional and the same rules apply if i was sick at work i should stay home if a child is sick they they can stay home if they would like to mask i respect the decision of that parent of that guardian they can mask but my emphasis was on masking a healthy child thank you thank you thank you thank you are there any other comments or questions um in the board room on on any of the agenda items on

080the education and people services agenda this is buford are there any online there are please give me just one second to get to this somehow i delete i uh closed out my document i can read the one if you'd like go go ahead please it's alona chobani 290 childs avenue drexel hill pa it was received on 12 20 december 20th item number three the supreme court's decision on ruling out the mask main date does not affect upper darby school district udsd question mark in uds the upper derby school district above the pa is is upper darby school district above the pa supreme court udsd is an entity under the commonwealth of pa you get federal and state funding you do not lose any funding if you make masking optional marple newtown school districts springfield ridley

081are all masked optional did the virus stop working at these areas you're opening yourselves up for lawsuits because you're enforcing something illegal masks do not work it has been proven that mass cause more harm than good it started with two weeks to slow the spread now it's about to be two years let the kids breathe please thank you thank you for reading that comment miss beaford are there any other comments online that is the only comment i just want to put on for the record that miss alona shabani lives at 290 charles avenue in drexel hill and we received that uh via email on the 20th regarding item number three and that is the final comment for this evening thank you okay at this point um i think we should review the agenda and see

082what the consensus is from the board on the two action items the first item on the agenda for this evening was the 2223 us district one page calendar which would require board action at the january 11th um 2022 board meeting is everyone okay with moving that forward to the january meeting yes yes yes all right great and the second item was informational about the keystone exams and then the third item is the district's health and safety plan which would requ require board action at the january 11 2022 on board meeting as well okay is the board comfortable with moving forward a targeted instance incense rate at the january meeting to try um to see where we can go mask optional yeah yes yes yes all right it looks like we have consensus for that um

083and that uh at this time i'm going to turn the agenda back over to president brown okay thank you a motion is an order for the adjournment of the education and people services committee meeting second thank you meeting adjourned we'll take five minutes before we do financing operations thanks foreign welcome back and thank you for your patience we'll now have the finance and operations committee in person and virtual meeting for december 21st the meeting will come to order the district posted this evening's agenda to board docs at least 24 hours prior to the commencement of this meeting is there a motion to approve the previously posted agenda thank you the agenda has been moved and seconded are there any amendments to offer there are no amendments for the agenda thank you the agenda has been

084moved and seconded all those in favor please say aye aye those opposed please signify by saying i oppose and state your name for the record those abstaining please signify by saying i abstain and state your name for the record the motion carried i will now turn over the finance and operations committee meeting to my co-chair vice president fields thank you board president brown mr rogers please begin with an overview of your agenda items for this evening and then roll right into the presentation thank you tonight we have three agenda items the first up is the vendor fair update which was informati is informational the district administ administration more specifically mr marvin lee will provide an update on the upcoming vendor fair tentatively scheduled for january 17th the intent of the vendor fair is to inform

085new and existing vendors of the upcoming capital projects and to encourage mwbe vendors to participate in the district procurement process the second item is a presentation on a fiscally responsible fact-finding initiative which is inform informational district administration will discuss procedures to evaluate potential financial savings associated with non-instructional district services more specifically district administration will discuss their future plans to issue a request for proposal or otherwise known as an rfp for transportation and daycare services the intent of the rfp is to explore the potential financial savings associated with each service the district will bring the results of the fact finding back to the board and the public prior to making any decisions the third item is policy which will require board action for policy zero zero six meetings so this time mr lee can you start

086off with your vendor fair update thank you mr rogers uh good evening everybody my name is morgan lee from divisions office this evening i will discuss the third annual vendor fair that we are planning to hold in january 2022. the district started the first ever vendor fair in january 2019 and we will be hosting the third annual vendor fair on january 17 2022 january 17 2022 will be the martin luther king day holiday the event will be held right here at the high school between nine and eleven a.m we are working with the blue book network again the blue network has been a great partner of the after opportunity school district and the blue book team helped the school district with the event organization promotion registration and participant communication here's a quick recap about past

087performances the first ever meeting was in person and we had more than 100 people came to the meeting we talked about how to work with abu dhabi school district how to become pa costa vendor and we also introduced a major project that was coming up last year's meeting was virtually held because of kobe 19. the broader outreach was one of the major goals of last year's event we reached out to 23 mwbe certifying agencies mwbe stands for minority and women-owned business enterprise we also reached out to three lgbtq business associations lgbtq stands for lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer we also reached out to four local business associations and the blue book network vendors i felt the last year event was a little bit more personable because every vendor had an opportunity to tell their

088personal stories to all participants last year 80 vendors are registered and 60 people 66 vendors actually showed up and of the 66 vendors 20 were mwbe we also circulated a satisfaction survey of the event and the participating vendors rated us 9.2 out of 10. there will be a minus and all the and all the credit goes to jail in procurement services on the right hand side of the slide i'm showing some of the mwb participation partnership that we established over the last couple years and it is just a snapshot of what we who we work with but our procurement office often reaches out to vendor for participants and other minority vendors to introduce opportunities so it's always on the call and the email what's new this year we're continuously building on what we have done

089in the past obviously we will reach out to the same 30 plus certifying agencies and business associations additionally joe has identified a few more agencies to reach out and melissa figueroa douglas from the equity team will also reach out to distribute the information to her contacts as well but we will explain the benefits of getting certified and we will also walk the vendors through on how to become certified vendor almost all government agencies and even some corporate entities have a language about the minority participation in the procurement process so it makes a lot of sense for the vendors to become certified if they are eligible and the district received millions of dollars in federal essay fund and one of the spending guidelines is about inclusion of small minority and women owned business in procurement processes

090we'll discuss what it will look like and how the vendors can participate with our offer derby school district finally we will introduce the maintenance and repair vendor request request for qualification there will be maintenance and repair vendor requests for qualification process i'm sorry about the busy slide but the concept is pretty actually simple it's all about handling work orders that we assigned to vendors the intent of this request for qualification is to introduce all work opportunities to those companies who want to work with opportunity school district as of today when a work order is created by a school we always try to assign the work order to internal staff members internal mechanic first and if we do not have internal capacity we call or email vendors to get quote we also call or email vendors

091to assign the work order to a vendor if the job is completed by a vendor the main staff has to enter into slitron and enter information in the system to close out the work order in the new process though we will create a large pool of pre-qualified vendors by gathering all necessary information to work with them we'll document what trades they're in obtain background check information insurance information we'll also provide first electron work order management system login information so when a work order has to be handled by outside vendor in the future the maintenance team will be able to send the workload directly in the system to all pre-qualified vendors and we're going to receive all proposals electronically we'll also assign actual work orders to actual vendors as well in facilitron and the work the

092work is actually done the vendor will be able to submit the picture of the final product they will be able to also submit invoices through facilitron to seamlessly close out the work order we will pre-qualify vendors on a rolling basis not only one time building basis to have a large diversified diversity offenders going forward this project will streamline the work order the district will be able to get the best value through competition and all pre-quality qualified vendors will have the equal shot at the job going forward so also higher vendor capacity will mean that we will be able to address our building issues a little bit faster that is actually all that i have for this evening again the vendor fair will be held right here at the high school on january 17 2022 we

093will start the meeting at nine o'clock and at this time i'll take any questions thank you very much mr lee board president brown has a question so i'm kind of familiar with this uh process through my you know previous job i had many years ago with peppa and things like that so does uh and i say you have some different terminology does best value mean a little bit doesn't mean a little bit ah okay it does not does not okay thanks anybody from that uh stupid a very thorough presentation requiring no questions or only one thank you mr lee thank you that's right you're an a plus in our book uh okay we go to the next presentation all right so next up is the fiscally responsible fact-finding presentation so we actually don't have a

094visual presentation this is more of a discussion for the board and the public to understand what the district administration is actually moving forward with so every year as we start to roll into our budget season we are always looking at opportunities to improve revenues and expenses there's always external factors as well that we have to pay attention to there are definitely times where the external factors end up in a situation where from a revenue perspective we may be in a situation where it's level funding from the state increase decreases or other areas that are external that could potentially cause decreases to our revenue streams on the other end with expenditures that you're typically seeing the majority of your expenditures increase because about 70 to 75 percent of your budget is always employees personnel and benefits

095which are dictated by union negotiated contracts so you typically have an increase in your expenditures and you hope that the increase your revenue either matches or exceeds your expenditures so every year we're always looking how can we be fiscally responsible so at this time we are we started looking at two services that are non-instructional services because at the end of the day we are our number one goal is the instruction and education of our students so the two two areas that we would like to explore that we are going to explore are transportation and daycare services so what's actually what we're actually discussing is putting out an rfp and we're just using this presentation to inform the public and the board that this will be out uh publicly that we are pretty much doing the

096fact finding is somewhat of a research project if you were to equate it to a school homework assign assignment so what we're doing is we're going to go out for an rfp we're going to seek out proposals for from contracted transportation services and day care services in order to evaluate whether or not the district could experience a significant financial savings as a result of it one of the things we're keeping an eye on on both fronts on the transportation side we want to make sure that you know our union workers stay as union workers they potentially benefit from maybe more competitive wages and and health care through these uh potential contracted services uh on the daycare side we are keeping a keen eye on the impact to our parents as well as just not the

097employees to make sure that our fees that are associated with utilizing the daycare service are in line or at least closely follow what we're currently charging our families so really what we're coming out to say is this this is a process that we're going to go through put the rfp out what we'll do is we'll come back to the board and the public at a later date to discuss what the results are i will tell you that as of today the administration has met with all unions and employees that are associated with these two services we've met with the union leadership on both ends whether it be for transportation drivers the bus aides and or for daycare services we've discussed this with the employees that that leave those services we've also held meetings with the

098actual drivers assistants and employees of the daycare just to let them know that this is truly informational we are only going out to gather data uh this does not by any way shape or form mean that we are outsourcing either service uh but we feel it's our due to do our proper due diligence that we really need to make sure we can find out what the actual market value for these services are compared to what the district is expending each year for the services but that is the basic uh concept behind what we're doing here it's very informational and i'm not sure if dr mcgarry or mr lee want to add anything if not we can field some questions from the board well the only thing would add is that there are other considerations you

099had alluded to earlier but at the board's aware of and we've talked about there is this conversation of lost revenue and increased costs and as a school district you know without going into conversations tonight directly but there are lost revenue streams that we've we are aware of and increased cost that we're aware of over the last year or so adding to that also with a day of care conversation in particular there are certain charter school implications that come into the cost of day care and by running the daycare as a school district it does in some ways increased our costs for special education costs as well as charter school costs and i just want to make sure that we're aware of that thank you dr gary thank you mr rogers any i just want to

100see if anybody from the board go ahead doctor head so mr rogers you talked about reaching out to union leadership and i just wanna and i think um it's important to me certainly that that we're not um sort of that this isn't part of a sort of a de-unionizing or union-busting sort of effort um sort of i'd like to hear a little bit more about the union leadership's response and also what kind of how exactly we go about looking out for union interests while well while doing this fact-finding in particular if there are sort of provisions we can put into the proposal or something like that yeah so that's absolutely considered and has been communicated you know i don't want to speak i don't want to put words into anyone's mouth my we have sat

101down with all the union leadership they were very understanding of why we're looking into this it i don't think it necessarily came as a surprise this is a conversation that's come up in the past uh there are many districts surrounding districts statewide who you know have these services contracted out i have been up front and very clear that this is not a union busting activity if this were to be a successful you know if we go through the process and and we find out that there's a significant savings on either side and it is mutually beneficial we would the plan is to work into the rfps that they're required to carry on the unions and the union would you know twu is the transportation workers union that represents the drivers they would have to be

102recognized by a successful contractor in the rfp process so we want to keep them intact we absolutely want to honor that for them the other piece of this and and you know many scenarios a district goes out uh this public conversation we're having right now would not be happening you would actually go out do the rfp get your results come back and it would most cases it's purely a cost savings mechanism i think upper darby's unique and and very different in the sense that you know we are a family and we want to make sure that if we are to go down this path we want to build into the rfp that there is it becomes mutually beneficial and this is a team effort and what i mean by that is when you outsource any

103kind of service the number one loss immediately is the is pissers you no longer have a right to participate in in peacers so that's you know that's that's not a positive um so the flip side of that is we want to make sure that you know on a wage and a healthcare perspective that when we put out the rfp we put floors so that the responders have to go to a certain point to make sure that it's actually slightly better than what we're offering to help offset the loss of psors there's a lot of different nuances where you know on our projections for transportation specifically they have there's an opportunity for their net pay to increase pretty substantially one of the main factors there is unemployment opportunities transportation contractors typically cover all all of the

104summer so you can they advise you and support you going on unemployment through the summer and you could potentially make anywhere from you know four to six thousand dollars a summer just from the unemployment wages that's something that's not offered through districts it's not something we so we are able to do um so we are taking all of that into consideration and that's what i mean by hoping that if it comes back positive we're not just looking from a financial perspective of the district we we want to make sure that our employees come out and it's a win-win and when i reference coming back with the rfp results i have also promised union leadership and the union members that we will come back and hold the similar meetings that we've held over the past week

105with them to make sure that they know what the results are and there's a collaborative conversation prior to anything coming back to the public thanks mr rogers thank you uh mr des lawyers yes um i would just like to check um if in fact the result of the fact-finding demonstrates that some savings are possible if the district goes in this direction the the board is under no obligation to um contract out the services if uh say the board decides that non-financial considerations outweigh um any uh financial savings is that correct yes in order to award the contract the board would have to vote on it so if the administration brought forward the recommendation and pushed for a vote by the board yes the board could vote against it i would hope that you know we

106would as i stated you know we're gonna we would bring this back for a public conversation another committee meeting presentation you know i would imagine that through that conversation we would we would get that answer uh mr des noirs so that it wouldn't even make it to an official vote if that's the board's you know evaluation of the process thank you director mitchell all right thank you um i just um wanted to say that i know that these are really challenging times um especially for our bus drivers um they've experienced shortages and overcrowded buses and um you know just a multitude of problems putting their life at risk to transport our kids back and forth to school and um this is not necessarily a conversation that i um wanted to have tonight um and you

107know going forward i know that we are underfunded by 20 million dollars and we talk about it all the time and we really need the community support there's a fair funding lawsuit right now people have been going up to harrisburg almost daily to fight for for what is right for kids and we want to do what's right for it well i want to do what's right for our employees and our our children as as we transport them back and forth to school and you know i'm not especially comfortable with um outsourcing transportation especially um so anyway i just wanted to make sure that everyone knew where i um stood and i i did want to especially appreciate our drivers for what they've been going through director neil thank you uh vice president fields yeah i

108echo that uh director mitchell um you know our our district is a family and during the pandemic when we were virtual obviously we were not transporting uh students back and forth between the schools and the administration our district found creative ways to utilize those employees and still pay these employees and and if we sort of outsource that to another agency probably wouldn't have happened and that actually uh would have hurt us because you know they helped with so many different projects around the district um so i i there's a lot to consider and now i'm one hundred percent for fact finding getting more information so i i want to make sure that's clear i am 100 fine with that um but there are a lot of reservations i have regarding the outsourcing of employees from

109our district um as as you know uh you know i i don't like the fact that we outsource our um our lunch services um now that happened prior to me being on the board um so but i'll leave it there but i i echo your sentiments regarding the transportation department director mitchell i don't i don't see any other comments from the board about this we will have public comment at the end so if we can move on to the policy presentation yeah so the final item is zero zero policy which is board action policy zero zero six meetings and i'll hand it off to mr des noirs thank you mr rogers um yeah there's just uh one minor update to policy 006 meetings and this is up for consideration tonight because when policy 006 was

110recently updated the update introduced some conflicting language so this new update is simply correcting that conflicting language specifically by specifying that board members are notified at least three days in advance of the preliminary agenda and at least one day in advance of the final agenda for all meetings that's the sole update to this policy thank you very much thank you director disneyers uh and any comments from the board about the policy update no okay great um at this time are there any public comments about anything from the presentation please come with the microphone uh state your name and address thank you very much i'm a lifelong resident and a 37 year homeowner and taxpayer it is common to hear the term upper darby family tossed around this district and tonight we heard it a few

111times as a 25-year family member i have to tell you that right now i'm feeling a little bit like fredo corleone from the godfather i'm watching all the family members because i'm not feeling love i am the president of udespa i represent close to 200 support staff members most of whom live shop and pay taxes in this community let me be clear i do not represent any of the bus drivers they are represented by twu i am a psea union leader i do represent the transportation assistance and the secretaries in the transportation department and the secretaries in the daycare operations area it's in my capacity as a union leader that i'm speaking tonight outsourcing transportation will not impact me personally but unlike some i don't just think about myself it's the way i was raised

112and i wouldn't change it for anything i rise to ask the community and the board to be critical thinkers that's something we try to instill in our students if we are truly family and if the administration is truly trying to be transparent and if they truly have not only what is best for the district but also the family members or the workers at heart then ask yourself these questions if they are only at the point where they are seeking board permission to do a fact finding and investigate the possibility of outsourcing how is it then that they had a detailed powerpoint to show all of the workers which they aren't showing tonight probably because i gave them a lot of bad feedback how would they have that information when they haven't received any rfp information

113back are they just surmising it blowing smoke or are they doing a sales bets or were these facts already obtained in talking with bus companies because you know they are currently outsourcing some runs already also ask yourself why would you represent not one time but in two separate meetings even after it was brought to your attention in the first meeting that part of the powerpoint and what they were saying was deceptive to the workers they still presented in the second meeting and what they said was that peacers would give the workers a boost in pay why would they use terms like workers could double dip and suggest that certain workers could collect their pension because they would terminate service with the district by now working for the outsource company and then still work for the

114outsourced company probably because the people in cwu that are negotiating with the district will be able to do that but not the common worker not the common bus driver and again i don't even represent bus drivers why would they give us an answer about whether they are using inclusion of the bus assistance as a criteria in rfp tonight mr rogers said twu union he doesn't mention psda people almost 30 people that won't be included in that rfp and historically bus assistants don't go with the bus companies when they're outsourced sure they can interview and maybe get the job but they're not guaranteed and he refuses to tell us if he's putting that language in the rfp and i've asked him three times they know that that the bus assistants historically know them they're being deceptive

115and they also suggest how in their powerpoint which you guys should all get a copy of because they didn't show your tonight how the drivers and the assistants will be able to make more money because they can collect unemployment in the summer what they failed to mention is because that's basically because essentially they're going to be laid off for the summer and they have no guarantee that they'll be called back in the fall but they don't mention that when i ask these questions i am told this is just a courtesy meeting we don't have to even discuss this with you at this point and i said yes you're correct but you also can't have it both ways you can't say i'm being transparent and i want you to hear it from us and not from

116other people and we want to give you the opportunity to ask questions and then not answer the questions and tell us we're part of the family and blue smoke we're smarter than this and we deserve better and regarding daycare i will be impacted by that i'm a supervisor but i'm at the point where i'm old enough that if they outsource it i'm just not going to work it anymore but what you should consider as board members is that the majority of people that work daycare work it because they don't make enough in their regular job those are people i represent people who make twelve thousand dollars a year okay and and this is helping them to add a little to their pieces and make ends meet and i know daycare is a money losing business

117i know it is i can see it from an accounting standpoint why would you you would want to do that but think about those workers who now aren't going to have anything at the end of the rainbow to maybe live on the probably half my people are probably going to wind up on welfare anyway because of what they make their peace and their security isn't going to give them enough to live okay so we'll be paying for them that way all right and and they're going to be more people leaving the district because they'll say i can't even make a little extra work in daycare and don't tell me the why is going to pay them a higher wage because i work there for 14 years and i can tell you they don't pay their

118child care workers enough so that's all i have to say thank you miss kennedy um before would you like you to respond yeah one second i'll let you respond i i do want to speak so there's there's two things that we're looking at transportation and and day care and so there's there are two separate things um to have two separate decisions i think it does speak to the intent of transparency because from my understanding typically this this part of this process is typically not something that at this point the board is notified about at this point the unions are notified about this it's already started and so it it was it was a bored decision to put this on the agenda so that so the public and and the people affected by this but everybody

119understood that we were looking at this and so what you take from the meetings you've had that i wasn't a part of that that's what you take but the intent is to be transparent that is that is the intent is to bring people along is to make sure people are informed every step of the way well look at the powerpoint that they gave us asking for that and if you think that that was being transparent okay i'm gonna get let mr roger speak to that i'm gonna let mr rogers speak to that but that that is our takeaway um and mr rogers go ahead with uh uh well board president okay mr rogers go ahead with your response so first i just want to make it very clear again this does not mean we are

120outsourcing any of the services but to be clear what will be put into an rfp is daycare services separate from that will be transportation which would include the two unions i referenced udespa and twu and the two positions that i referenced bus drivers and bus aides two different positions two different unions they will be included into the rfp the purpose of that is to make sure we're gathering all the facts that we would possibly need to make a decision there are scenarios multiple that could result in nothing being outsourced a scenario where it's fiscally responsible and mutually beneficial of the bus drivers to be outsourced and not the aids and the aid stay as district employees there's also a scenario where all of it is outsourced and udespa keeps their employees as union members but

121are hired by the transportation company the twu union members stay as twu union members employed by a contracted service so i'm sorry if it was not made clear earlier or in my previous meetings i have talked multiple times with the twu leadership who have been part of these meetings and they have not had the same experience that ms kennedy has i will say that the presentation she's referencing was about two or three slides long the bigger piece that she's pointing at was we we presented numbers associated with the change in working for a district versus a transportation company there was no need or information that would have been required to obtain what was on the screen what was simply there were two things that really make a big net impact to the net pay of

122an employee when you remove seven and a half to ten point three percent of a contribution to peasers which is what the deductions are for an employee depending on which classification they are in peacers when you remove that deduction you are not contributing that dollar amount out of your pay and thus increasing your net pay the secondary piece that was another direct impact is the unemployment that you would receive or that a transportation driver could potentially receive through through working for a private company luckily for the district and i'm sure that everybody in the room would share my sediment we're lucky to have mr marvin lee who has a vast knowledge and experience in transportation he's worked in the school district of philadelphia that has outsourced many many runs very and they do it in

123a hybrid approach where they have some of their own runs and they've outsourced them over his career he's gone through this process many times so we have internal knowledge in mr marvin lee that was able to conclude how much projection we could put on an unemployment amount so there was nothing misleading in those presentations so respectfully i disagree unfortunately maybe we should have explained more specifically in those meetings that removing peasers in itself which is a fact when you go through outsourcing and the unemployment which is a fact when you go through outsourcing did not mean that we were not being transparent as for the double dip conversation it is absolutely accurate that if you are an employee of the school district of retirement age and you are vested in psares you can pull your

124pension and retire through psr's and work for a private entity in turn you would be paid your pension on a monthly basis as well as wages for a private company that is no longer eligible for peasers when you look at and this is way more information that would be provided in the future if we you know when we go through this process but we do know the demographic of our drivers there's 110 drivers of the 110 drivers have less than 10 years of years of service with impeasers which means they have not reached the vesting stage based on the data they're higher so there are less that are impacted by that conversation of a potential quote unquote double dip than the vast majority of 85 of 110 that are not vested at this point but

125i don't want to go into the minutia of that that's just us doing our own due diligence internally of where our democrat our demographics exist with our own employees thank you mr rogers i do want to remind everybody this is we're going to have a presentation a detailed presentation on this down the road this is just an informational letting us know that the administration is going out to look at some numbers and it's going to come back with details the board doesn't have any of those details yet and we can't have them until people go look and come back with them okay board president brown has a statement um ms kennedy i just wanted to say i i appreciate your concerns and obviously you're an excellent advocate for your the people you represent i do

126want to say that um i think um in this case or in many cases um you know our administrators are guilty of being too transparent so i think you know he provided a level of detail and he's you know he's being held up to scrutiny as a result of it by trying to be open and share a lot of information so he's you know he's he's um you know being held to that and answering questions to that so i give him a lot of credit i think dr mcgarry has set a precedent for transparency and i think all the administrators try to provide a lot of information and you know we have board meetings sometimes that are probably uh tougher than they than they should be or they have to be i should say because

127of the amount of transparency and we try to over communicate and provide a lot of information this is no different than that but i want to make something clear because based on one of your statements nothing's been decided yet i know you said he provided a lot of information and you're like this is a done deal based on how much information he provided but i think he's they're thorough they try to provide as much information as possible and the fact that we we're not as well versed in the in the details of it it's not time for us to be uh well-versed in it because it's still in the research phase they're still doing the fact-finding uh and and i'm just speaking you know for the board and just assuring you that nothing at all

128has been this is not a done deal we're not going through the motions to uh and we already have it all figured out that is not the case i just wanted to say that just just a reminder for our commenters you must use the mic sure and then we can go you can comment back on this if you would like to i i appreciate board president brown uh you know craig and marvin's in a in a tough spot you know when you take on the position of of being our cfo that craig rogers is and you're in marvin lee's position you know you're in a very tough position we're constantly trying to find the best solutions to um revenue streams and and the adversity that we face that we're not going to go into tonight

129because i think it takes away from your concerns i do want to go back to an earlier comment that i think is really important board member neil david neal commented on the relationship in the family and i think we have to be very careful when we go back and forth when we talk about family and not family and that this school district and i think it's really important did get very creative i know you actually talked about that in an article uh previously that we did things that other school districts and communities did not do right and we as a family wanted to make it a priority with this school board with this administration to keep people employed for throughout that duration we came up with administratively ideas to keep people employed we did not

130put that on our workers the administration wanted to do that i also want to make sure that we're clear tonight that craig rogers and marvin lee worked with the union leadership that you pointed out for the transportation department and part of the feedback at least and i wasn't a part of these meetings but i was i was i was told that there were some folks who lost sleep that some of those union leaders lost sleep in one of the original conversations got back to marvin lee and got back to craig and said are there some examples of hypotheticals and i think the fault in us is what board president brown is talking about they probably shouldn't have done any presentation they should probably just had a question and answering process but they wanted to try

131to talk to people about what what are all the what is because everybody feels like when you talk about these things they're a done deal and you know what does that look like and i don't think that that is really the intention what this was they were responding to union leadership that was talking to them hey we talked the other day i was struggling last night here are some things that i think will come up can we talk about some of these conversations and that is a different union as you as you pointed out now to your comment about the folks that you represent i hope we can agree to this conversation this superintendent that cfo that's at home dealing with you know some sick family members that's on this call didn't want to make

132sure he was here for this and this school board i think is demonstrated the last thing we want to do is lose employees terminate employees furlough employees or cut cut staff we need positions so no matter what the fact finding f is we're not looking to have any of our upper garbage school district people lose out in this conversation we're struggling to fill certain jobs as it is to your other comment about wages we are working and we'll continue to work to try to give our employees better salaries and adjustments if we can just simply continue to work on that trust in that relationship at times i think emotions run high because it's complicated information too that we are going to work together to solve these problems and i agree with board president brown i

133think everybody would denise who knows you you care about kids you care about the school district and you care about your employees and and that's why you love me i do i do love you yes and i love cause you know i have heart right and i can relate to passion and and those things i think what we have to work on to continue to do is we can't be glib about the use of the term family on one hand and then just humor me for a second and then on the other side of it say well it's not working to our advantage i think we've clearly demonstrated that we do care and we're going to continue to care right we want to just process through the some of the lost revenue that we're facing

134and what could happen the last thing we're going to do is have in an environment right now where we know that our communities and across the country covet has exposed uh the fact that child care is an issue so we've talked about what can that look like that it's a benefit for our families and for our workers not that we're simply going to say hey we're going to do this and just get rid of it it's a it's a conversation and i think what our mistake was is that we should not have shown any slides the worst because well i don't know it was the worst i think it was an attempt i think was an attempt to clarify questions that you were not a part of because you're not in that leadership position and

135you're there representing another group and i think we'll take responsibility in clarifying those comments but that was a conversation that was had by another leadership asking for some more information for individuals and so you know i appreciate the back and forth with that and i want to let you go okay because i do love you dennis i know just it's a hard burden to carry when he loves me but i gotta tell you and we know you love him no she does like i have cards to prove it i told dr campbell the other night that he's behind you point at him he loves me too craig rogers really makes you look warm and fuzzy okay can i tell you something that is awesome all right listen listen that that statement tonight what he said

136to me about he's including you desperate in the rfe that's the first time i heard it i asked it three times okay marvin hi marvin he doesn't really love me that much but you love marvin too right each other right marvin marvin will tell you that i spoke to him after the daycare meeting about how he should make it clear about the piecers did i not tell you that marvin number one my recollection about the assistance being included was pretty very very clear by uh bike rack i don't know why you didn't get that information but it was very clear and we wouldn't meet with you if that was not the case wait i don't i didn't follow the assistance will be part of the rfp absolutely what we met with well i asked it

137i asked it today too you were there right all right i'll give you that one okay what the heck it's christmas all right now did i ask you that about the piecers at the daycare meeting yes you did and did i help you clear it up for everybody i clarified what it means right the peter's in the net so then why today when we went to the other meeting did you not clarify that you did the same sales pitch and i had to correct you again we did talk about it after i corrected you okay throw that powerpoint away okay let's just have the last back and forth okay that's fine i think i think look i i think terminology blowing smoke and and not knowing who we're working with i think is we have

138to be careful i think well that's how i feel no i don't i'm not no i'm not i'm saying we have to be careful we're we're not trying to move in a direction where that's the approach we're trying to take so i think when we go into conversations with our mind made up about what we think is going on or what the what the conversations are sometimes some of the information doesn't come across clearly as administrators we have to recognize and own as we have learned many many many times my friends that are at home and here um emotions when the day and fact sometimes don't come through in those conversations so we take some responsibility in trying to have that conversation with those slides all we can say to you is the proof will

139come out through the fact-finding and the further conversations that we're going to have so let's let's have that back and forth continue as we always do and we'll see where how it plays out and i want to have a conversation with you later about some respect not with you oh got it got it you got it yeah i i know how do you follow that right go ahead yeah the shirt is great this was appropriate for that meeting um julie julie laurie 2418 david drive um i am a bus driver i've been with the district since 2006. now i don't fall in the age group where i can collect unemployment i mean um teasers and double dip so to speak and i don't fall in the category where i feel like i can go somewhere

140else and start all over again i'm somewhere in between i have like nine ten more years to go so that's nine or ten more years if i stay where i'm not going to be collecting or putting into my piecers where does that leave people like me yes we're a small group because he said 85 percent haven't been there long enough to to collect into the piecers vested in but where does that leave people like me people who are single parents still people who still need to make a living people who will be retiring in a few years but now i feel like i'm standing on a rug the rug hasn't been jerked out from underneath me but the rug's being shaken and i feel like you asked me to get off the bus today so

141i can step onto the side so you all can possibly run the bus over me that's all i have to say first i appreciate you speaking and sharing your perspective with us i think i think as craig shared tonight and as marvin has discussed we're processing through this whatever the fact finding comes forward we're going to have a conversation with the board and the public and we certainly don't want to hurt someone like you i've known you for years we've had conversations this isn't your first time coming to a board meeting so i'm proud of you for coming back and stay engaged and we don't want to see you get hurt right that's not the objective here so we're gonna work through this together and we're gonna have conversations with you and and that's why

142i like denise so much i love her she's not afraid to call me and give it to me and that's an important part of the conversation right sometimes we have some real good fights we do so i think i think that's important now i mean healthy conversation so i appreciate you speaking to that and we'll have conversations we have to revisit with the folks down in transportation prior to the break as well we'll do that all right just just so you know that there are a lot of people who are upset there are a lot of people who are very angry there are a lot of people who don't understand or don't know down there just the atmosphere itself was so much different um i was going to say something else now i think i

143will do that but just just that there are a lot of people also who are of the age of retirement who are not going to stay they're not going to stay for this next group i feel like that they're going to just go at their retirement age they're just going to go they're not going to stay um that's something that some of them have you know reiterated in conversation today mr rogers will you review the agenda items presented this evening yes so again tonight we had three agenda items the first was an informational presentation regarding the vendor fair and the upcoming vendor fair on january 17th the second was fiscally responsible fact finding which was informational that we've discussed here at length and the third was policy for board action zero zero six for meetings

144would require the board to make a decision on moving that forward or not mr fields and for president brown i just want to reiterate i know that um we had called to for a summary there were no other public comments on the public comments that were in the room for this particular uh committee meeting so i think you have one item that you were discussing to move forward which is the policy so does the board agree to move the policy item forward yes yes thank you and i think it's the only item that needs to be moved forward so we're president brown favorite part of meeting emotion is in order for the adjournment of the finance and operations committee meeting all right meeting adjourned have a good night and a fantastic holiday everyone yes be

145safe enjoy the holidays