001testing one two three testing testing one two three evening welcome to the july 14 2020 combined work session regular virtual meeting the first item on a work session agenda is the reciting of the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all during this unprecedented time while schools are closed and social distancing requirements are in place the abu dhabi school district needs to continue certain aspects of his business which includes decisions concerning pandemic planning for this reason the upper army school district will continue regularly scheduled school board meetings while governor wolf's emergency declaration is in place it is the plan of the board to hold these meetings with the minimum
002required departures from normal operating procedures the upper diabetes school district school board covet 19 special operating procedures document outlines expected departures from these normal operating procedures and the policy justification for such departures at the start of each board meeting held during the emergency declaration the board will review the departures from normal operating procedures as well as their justifications while schools are closed and social distancing requirements are in place the upper darby school district school board finds it necessary to hold virtual school board and school board committee meetings to complete required business these virtual meetings will allow for public viewings and participation following practices already in place for regular meetings all virtual school board meetings in addition to allowing near real-time public viewing and participation will be recorded and the recordings made available after the meeting
003in order to hold virtual school board meetings adjustments need to be made following existing school board policy these adjustments have been outlined in the upper darby school district school board covet 19 special operating procedures dr mcgarry can you provide some other information on how the public can participate in tonight's meeting thank you yes board president brown and thank you for those who are able to log on and join this event this evening first i want to start off with that there are several items under new business that the board will have to take action on so if anybody would like to have a comment or question for items under new business please when you do send an email to committee questions at upperdarbysd.org please note that it's under new business whether it's the athletic plan
004or the phase reopening plan that you indicate that along with your name and your address and then you can please send us your comment regard regarding the phase reopening or the athletic plan i want to i'll have this update throughout this evening we're making every effort throughout the the closure of our schools as well as operating in the green phase here in delaware county to adhere to as much of the social distancing guidelines as we can however we still would like our public to participate as much as possible in our forums and in our meetings and we've put a plan in place to make that happen if you'd like to participate tonight and send any comments or questions you may do so by sending email to committee questions at upperdarbysd.org please make sure that you
005give your name your address and please tell us which report you'd like to comment on and we'll certainly make that a part of the record you can also leave your uh a message at 610-789-7200 extension 2000 we will make sure that a voicemail that is left for us will also become part of the record those who would like to have had public comment for just the general comment portion of this evening had to do so by 7 30 as we normally would at a normal board meeting the board will read comments prior to taking action on each individual board report this evening again as a reminder we do have several items under new business they will not be under the regular reports they will be under new business and if you'd like to have a
006comment or a question under the items for new business please send us the email at committeequestionsrbsd.org or you can call us at 610-789-7 extension 2000 again please remember to leave your name your address as well as the agenda item you'd like to comment on this evening for president brown i would like to throughout the evening remind people of how to participate please do thank you dr gary we are really excited about the second item on the work session the second item on the work session is chloe thompson a sixth grade student at beverly hills middle school who will read a letter that she wrote me in support of the superintendent's suggestion that juneteenth be included in the curriculum chloe are you there yes please read your wonderful letter good evening school board members juneteenth not
007only marched and displaced in america but it also emphasizes that the government said they would do something about slavery and then they did it however it was unevenly important even though slavery officially ended in 1865 our country is still facing inequality i think that makes this holiday even more important i think that everyone should learn about june teens because it honors the day i think that if people learned about gmt like to celebrate it and it's important in school i did not learn we do not learn about routines and i think that's fine first i was upset when i realized i was upset when i realized that the announcement in the emancipation proclamation wasn't shared with everyone at the same speed we also learned about president douglas and i felt sad to realize that he
008went to as a child i was inspired by him standing against slavery up against slavery and for the right for homeless i believe umt should be a national holiday and i agree with dr mcgary's decision on to suggest curriculum changes to include this in our discussion thank you chloe thank you so much for that excellent letter we agree with all of the points you raise dr mcgarry with your permission i'd like to invite chloe to a school board meeting in person when we uh when this covet stuff is over so we can actually see her in person and i believe we'll have a certificate with her name on it that i'm gonna actually personally create so is it okay we invite her to a future meeting when we resume in person absolutely and chloe i'd
009like to say that um the decision to to put out the message that we put out i hope you know chloe the most important thing that we all do especially during this period of time as we come together to make really good collective decisions and your when your mom reached out to us and and shared your information actually aboard president brown you know we were moved we we you're the you're the future you know you're you're the change agent that that's why we do here in education but i also want to make it known that the public has asked for this too chloe so i don't want you to think that you have a fake leader in the upper harbor school district who thinks it's just about me there are a lot of people who've
010been pushing for this as well it's a team effort there's a lot of decisions that come into this and we're working hard as a school district to get it right we don't get it right every time but when we don't get it right our job is to make sure we make the right decisions moving forward and i appreciate you reaching out to us and as board president brown said no doubt about it that we will recognize you normally in a circumstance like this we would have handed you a recognition from the from the board and we will certainly either mail you one or and definitely in person make sure you get a photo opportunity to have that happen i do want to take an opportunity to let chloe you know i don't know if mrs
011kelly is unmuted or able to talk tonight but i know that she wanted to talk about not just that we say we're going to do it chloe chloe but i believe um christine kelly our director of curriculum instruction is going to comment where these changes are going to take place in our curriculum chloe so you know we're for real miss kelly hi chloe my name is christine kelly i'm the director of curriculum and instruction and ms kenya and i have worked to implement a change in curriculum which we will be presenting at a july committee meeting the changes will occur in grades 5 8 and 11 and we're going to be writing this into the curriculum so thank you for all that you're doing and we are going to be making those changes and you'll
012see it in our july committee thank you chloe we look forward to seeing you in person and thank you for reading your amazing letter gaming thank you good evening okay the final item on the work session agenda is comments by the udea president melanie massey antonio i always say that wrong i'm trying really hard melanie you did a very good job thank you mr brown for giving me this opportunity to speak tonight i hope everyone is staying safe and healthy and i wanted to speak tonight about the plans for reopening schools and i would like to thank dr mcgarry for providing many opportunities for our members and uda officers to take part in the conversations regarding the opening of schools and for keeping us updated on county health department and department of ed recommendations as
013well as sharing plans from local school districts my members truly appreciate the information but some of the recommendations and plans coming out of these institutions are concerning and not conducive to our school districts the pandemic launched us into an unwitting experiment in online learning and even though we will be better prepared come august if online learning is still required our impromptu experiment has proven that the best way for a great majority of our students to learn is by being in school and interacting with their teachers and classmates online learning leaves a void in the social and emotional elements that are necessary for human development and can only be best provided in a brick and mortar environment face to face we as educators know this and want nothing more than to be in front of our
014students in august we miss them we want to be in our classrooms we want to build relationships with our students and that is best done in person but we also want to be safe and healthy we want our families students and their families to be safe and healthy we want to be in front of our students but with covid19 and the lack of true understanding about this virus there are some serious concerns about how safe we will be if we go back to the classroom some recommendations by chester county health department and the pennsylvania department of education do not go far enough to provide for a safe school environment for example the cdc has been consistent with recommending a minimum of six feet for social distancing but these organizations say uh you can go as
015little as three feet breezy is not safe and it's never been considered safe and is not accessible i would even go so far as to say it's not equitable udea leadership took a survey of our members this weekend we asked them who fell into one of the cdc identified at-risk categories as of this morning 40 percent of our respondents said that they fall in an at-risk category based on current cdc data and over 66 percent of them responded that they are at risk or live with someone at risk if strict adherence to social distancing wearing masks or face shields washing hands and proper cleaning are not followed nor enforced we put all staff and students at risk especially those who have compromised health conditions not only they are they at risk but we are at
016risk and we are at risk of bringing it home to our family members that may have serious health conditions dr mcgarry his team and the board have been working very hard to provide the safest environment possible but we don't want the safest environment possible we need the safest environment the safest and nothing less but regrettably you dea officers and our members do not think upper darby school district can adequately provide this due to years of underfunding by our state and national governments with insufficient funding how will upper darby school district be able to financially provide and continue to sustain the necessary ppe staffing and cleaning supplies needed to protect the health of our staff and students when our state does not even provide schools like ours with the adequate funding needed to properly support our
017students and their individual needs these are serious concerns that udea has with opening school buildings for face-to-face instruction in august we know this is a fluid situation and continues to evolve but my members need assurances that if we go back to our classrooms and teach face-to-face that the most stringent health protocols are followed and maintained and that staff and students will be safe and protected from covid19 there are a number of unknowns in this situation creates a quagmire of uncertainty we upper darby education association are respectfully requesting that the upper darby school districts reflect on the current national and local trends involving this virus coven 19 has already claimed the lives of educators and children it has infected students and staff at summer camps and summer schools make no mistake this virus is serious uncontrolled
018and life-threatening in closing i implore our entire community to write to your representatives in harrisburg and washington tell your neighbors to write to their legislators we need to demand the funding upper darby school district requires to provide the support and resources we need to maintain a safe healthy educational environment for our unique and diverse community our staff students and community deserve nothing less mr brown thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak and i hope everyone listening stays safe and healthy thank you thank you it was my pleasure mrs massey antonio thank you very much for your passionate comments the regular meeting of the upper darby school district board of school directors will please come to order there was a closed session this evening from 5 30 pm until 7 26 pm for matters
019to be discussed within the limitations for closed liberations as prescribed by pennsylvania act 93 of 1998 for this evening's meeting there were personnel and litigation matters policy 003 allows the board to suspend policies or parts of policies when appropriate therefore due to the current ongoing crisis and the governor's closure order i make the following motions to suspend language in two of the board's policies until the next regularly scheduled meeting policy 06.1 which regulates attendance at meetings via electronic communications i move to suspend the language requiring board members to be present specifically the language would be a majority of board members shall be physically present at a board meeting when a board member attends through electronic communications and policy 006 which governs other requirements of board meetings i moved the suspension of language requiring that those
020members of the public wishing to participate be present specifically the language in this section titled public participation would remove the words that read present at a board meeting do i have a second this is mrs mitchell i second that all those in favor aye aye all those opposed anyone opposed please state your name for the record anyone abstaining please state your name for the record roll call please mr rogers i'm sorry i think i jumped the gun so as i state your name please state your present and you can hear the proceeding dr haig i am present and i can hear the proceeding mr des neuers i am present and i can hear the proceedings mr war savage i am present and can hear the proceedings mr neil i am present and can hear the
021proceedings miss dawes i am present and i can hear the proceedings mr fields i am president and i can hear the proceedings mrs curry i am present and i can hear the proceedings mrs mitchell i am present and i can hear the proceedings mr brown i am present okay let's see if i can scroll properly this time the minutes of the combined work session slash regular meeting of june 2nd 2020 in the special meeting of june 16 2020 are in the hands of each board member and have been made available to the public i move for their adoption thank you are there any comments from the board are there any comments from the public there are no comments from the public thank you very much all those in favor please signify by saying i i
022those 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 motion carried the report of the secretary mrs curry sorry about that i was on mute one second thank you um the report of the secretary is in hands of each board member and has been made available to the public i move for its adoption this is leah dawg ii thank you are there any comments from the board mrs buford are there any comments from the public there are no comments from the public thank you all those in favor please signify by saying hi hi those opposed please signify by saying i oppose and state your name for the record those abstaining please signify by saying i
023abstain and state your name for the record motion carried mr neal the report of the treasurer please thank you president brown uh the reporter the treasurer is in the hands of each board member and has been made available to the public i move for its adoption i second it thank you are there any comments from the board mrs buford are there any comments from the public there are no comments from the public thank you all those in favor please signify by saying i i 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 motion carry the budgeted personnel and enrollment reports have been made available to the board and the public and are recorded as
024part of the record no vote is required the report of the superintendent dr mcgarry chloe i just want to say hopefully you uh are getting some rest tonight and have done other things but i want to say thank you again as i typed to you i think it's refreshing you're the reason why we do the work that we do here in our schools and as i am about to give this report to to the board and to the public our focus is on you and i appreciate mrs mastentonio's comments as well i mean it goes without saying that our students and our staff are while we're here and they're important to the school district so chloe and mel thank you for your thoughts and your comments good evening board president uh brown upper darby family
025members of the upper dory board of school directors other administrators staff and students i will be keeping my report as short as possible at this time because we have a decision to make this evening regarding the reopening of our schools since march 13th as a district and community we have all had to come together to navigate and understand the pandemic that is covid 19 as well as the national crisis of social injustice there is no question that the pandemic and realities of social injustice have furthered the value and need of our public schools our desire to return to normal stands to serve many needs academic needs social and emotional needs and the economic needs of our community and the nation as a superintendent of this richly diverse school district however i've been working with the
026district administration on a plan to provide the best educational opportunities we can while meeting the ever-changing parameters for reopening schools and for our staff to engage in meaningful conversations regarding equity and social injustice make no mistake about it as you heard mrs macentonio say it has been a collective effort where we've been communicating with our staff and hopefully you the public as much as we can and i'm grateful for the feedback and i'm grateful for your level of engagement for my report this evening i will be recommending a plan to reopen our schools as well as our plan to address the call for our school district to act as a support and resource to end social injustice first the plan to reopen our schools has involved numerous hours of planning and preparation district wide with
027as much staff as we can involve i know that the board of school directors administrators and staff had read a number of reports and recommendations from the center of disease control and prevention the cdc the bucks county department of health chester county department of health american academy of pediatrics world health organization the pennsylvania department of education and a summary of reopening models by country these are just a few of the many examples i know no one wants excuses so i'm not going to give you any our plans are imperfect and will require your support and the support of our staff as complicated as this may seem it is very clear to me that the safety for our community our students and our staff is the highest priority i'm not going to get caught up in
028the recommended social distancing of six feet or three feet who should wear a mask and who should not wear a mask because all the ever-changing rules and parameters and uncertainty have actually provided me with clarity a return to full in-person instruction while important and perhaps easiest to implement and a quick return to normal does not protect all of our students you the parents and guardians of our students our staff and on our entire community i've heard many experts touting reopening models used from other countries so i researched what i could find on how these other countries have been able to return to school with success here's what the information provided i read that on average class sizes in these countries who have already reopened were reduced to between 11 and 15 students in a class
029at a time so what i've learned is reduced class size is important models focused on a return with younger students as a priority and social distancing implemented to the maximum extent possible not necessarily the minimum extent here in the upper aubry school district the recent guidelines from governor wolf the pennsylvania department of education the chester county department of health who has oversight over delaware county have really provided our district with two options for reopening schools and we will go through this later on this evening as well board president brown and those are in public when we talk about new business but i think it's important that everybody hears from the superintendent as well we will provide a flexible instructional model emphasizing proper hygiene wearing of masks ender shields and maintaining between five and six feet
030of social distancing for a return to in-person instruction and asynchronous instruction while not in school basically the option would be for our elementary schools to return my recommendation for that to happen would be for students to return half day in cohorts four days a week a.m and p.m with wednesdays providing opportunity for teachers to have office hours professional development time and improve their lesson planning if we have to go into the red phase at the middle school level right my recommendation will be to have students come in cohorts on teams four days per week rotating three classes in the am three in the pm that would be a recommendation for the middle schools again at the middle school teachers will have an opportunity to have virtual meetings in the morning with students students will learn
031asynchronous in each one of these models on wednesday and teachers will have an opportunity to lessen and plan and get themselves called up on the work that they're doing the high school model and i know this is complicated for everybody would be four days per per day four periods per um two per four periods per day four days per week basically eight meetings per three week rotating wednesday would be an opportunity where students will be learning asynchronously teachers be able to check in with students and families who need support improve lesson planning and have an opportunity to fine-tune their lessons for the upcoming week and the next day this is the flexible instructional model that i like to see consistently across the school district with that wednesday opportunity for teachers to lesson plan and have
032virtual meetings with with t students and families in need what does this mean this requires our schools to reduce the number of students in a building in a class at one time for families who are not comfortable returning for any in-person instruction we will provide an asynchronous learning model with teachers checking in with students and commenting and providing guidance on their work and this is important because i don't know that this has been made clear everywhere throughout pennsylvania we will only be able to provide direct instruction from a teacher in a virtual model known as synchronous instruction if enough families select this option thus freeing up staff so there are families who feel this option is best for their students and can provide at home instruction and support this program we would also probably be
033supporting the other students and the staff that are here that would be a community effort your acknowledgement that you could work with your student at home because it would not conflict with your work engagement and that would free up even more of the social distancing and may provide us with more opportunities to get students in person and could free up teachers to provide synchronous instruction again this this is the model we would hope to provide you a model that is a synchronous model but that will come down to the number of families who select that why am i recommending this plan for the upper harbor school district i agree that returning students to school is important but at this time we are not able to provide the same level of safety and support if we
034open our schools for full in-person person instruction as we can by implementing a cohort model we will not be able to meet all of the recommended guidance for students for you our parents and our guardians or our staff with a full return to in-person instruction we simply do not have enough space and capacity to meet the recommendations and again this is not up for debate as the superintendent of the school district the three feet and six feet as mrs macentonio said we want to get to six feet mass will be something that we want to have our students have and we'd like our teachers to be as safe as possible providing this instruction i recognize that this may create obstacles for our families but i feel this is the best solution at this time based
035on the information i have our plans regardless of what option our board of school directors approves this evening will allow us to move from one option to another option from semester to semester we will work with families who request a virtual option following board action this evening the reason why beverly hills middle school we're asking to shift some of the students over there is so that we can provide an equitable opportunity for those students to have as much in-person instruction as any other middle school student in the district no one plan is perfect and we should expect to make adjustments as we learn more information there may be times we must shift from some in-person learning to fully virtual learning and back again is our hope to return to full in-person instruction when social distancing
036guidelines are relaxed we are looking to go one to one with our technology in this school district to start the school year so that in the event that we have to move out of one model to another we can guarantee that at least our students all have a device at home to access the curriculum please know that this recommendation does not come lightly and i'm asking for the support of our families and our staff to provide the best learning environment we can given the circumstances as i move on from the focus on reopening our schools as i'm sure there'll be many questions later i wanted to take an opportunity this evening to report on our district's efforts to promote unity for the students we serve in the community we serve i hope everyone understands and
037recognizes that the upper harbor school district will not tolerate hateful bigoted and racist comments unfortunately we have had to address staff who have made distasteful comments or actions that do not represent who we are as a district moving forward we will investigate and inform the public evidence incidents where such insensitive and hurtful and hateful incidents take place i would also like to add that we have conducted investigations recently where accusations about some staff ignoring or condoning racist actions by students or other staff were unfounded and not accurate it is important that we are honest with you in order to keep and earn your trust regardless of the outcomes of any of our investigations it is clear that there is real trauma and real trauma has occurred whether it's with our staff or our community and
038our students what i know is real however is that people are hurting and our schools play a vital role in helping our community staff and students heal a year ago i referenced the plan to form a community advisory committee i am happy to report that i provided the board with a proposal from the catalyst community conversations at the penn graduate school of education phase one of the proposal will include designing and conducting a series of productive conversations about race and equity during phase one of this work we will be looking to develop an advisory group of 12 to 15 individuals from various age groups and people who represent as much as possible in the racial age ethnic socio and economic diversity in this district and township we're also committed to our work with corwin and
039our work on deep equity with our staff and students over the last two years the district has committed to professional development in the area of equity trauma-informed instruction restorative justice continued our positive behavior and intervention support systems increased our pupil services department implemented youth courts in our schools and shared plans to improve our learning facilities and i add that as part of social injustice because as mrs macedonio said it's a social injustice that our facilities are not provided with the same level of financing or state support as others have been it's unfair that students don't have the same access to quality educational learning environments case in point is that our older outdated buildings don't meet with the requirements that we're now being asked to meet with opening our schools i believe the end result of
040the work with the catalyst community conversations at the penn graduate school of education and with their help and the development of a community advisory committee it will aid in our discussions about improving our schools in order to support the community again as we look to reopen our schools for the 2020-21 school year i'm asking for your patience and your support and i'm asking for your flexibility for president brown thank you for listening to my report this evening it concludes my comments thank you dr mcgarry i really appreciate your comments we will now have an update on the june 16th 2020 education and pupil services committee report mrs mitchell thank you president brown this is mrs mitchell we had a education and people services committee meeting on june 16th the agenda was as follows one the
041wellness committee annual update which was an informational item dr pablisi presented the board with an update on the work accomplished over the course of the past school year to improve wellness across our district he provided an overview of the pde tool and template that was used to evaluate effectiveness of our wellness policy 246. this item was informational and correlated to goal 1 and 4 listed in the udsc comprehensive plan i just want to make sure everyone can hear me yes can everyone hear me yes yes okay good item number two 2020 2021 professional development calendar that is for board action mrs kelly presented the 2020 2021 professional development calendar in accordance with district policy 333 the professional development calendar is used as a guide to provide teachers students services staff and new district employees the
042instructional tools to support effective practices in the area in their area of expertise this item is required board action and correlated to all six goals listed in the udsc comprehensive plan item number three was the adjusted keystone exam requirements board action is required you'll see that tonight dr manfrey and mrs kelly presented the pde recommendations for the 2020-2021 keystone exam administration the recommended adjustments are a result of the recent school closure this item required board action and correlated to goal four and five of the udsc comprehensive plan number four was instructional online resources it's also for board action mrs kelly presented a variety of online instructional resources and tools necessary to deliver online instruction these resources were selected as a result of teacher input and free access during the school closure all appropriate district paperwork
043was completed and is available on board docs this item requires board auction as then correlated to goal two three and six of our udsd comprehensive plan number five is the upper darby high school course catalog revisions considerations also up for board action this evening dr mcgarry presented proposed changes to the high school course selection guide this item required board action and correlated to goals four five six in the udsc comprehensive plan there were two um public comments which you can read on board docs as well as this full summary thank you for allowing me to present this tonight president brown thank you very much mrs mitchell we will now have the uh update on the june 16 2020 finance and operations committee meeting dr haig thank you president brown the finance and operations committee met
044on tuesday june 16th at 7 pm the i the agenda had three items all of which which required board action the first was an updated use of facilities operating procedures the district administration shared its plan to implement an online use of facilities management system administration asked the board to approve facilitron as the district of facilities software this item correlated to goal one of the udsc comprehensive plan the second agenda item was the 2020 2021 final budget presentation in compliance with the act one timeline the district administration presented the final general fund budget the budget has taken all available and relevant information into consideration and is presented with a two point six percent tax increase uh just for clarification that agenda item was covered during a special voting meeting immediately after the uh committee meeting again
045to remain in compliance with the act one timeline so we are not voting on that item tonight and then finally item three the policies policy 707 use of school facilities there was one public comment regarding agenda items two and three um that comment can be read on board docs and i would also encourage anyone who wants to hear the follow-up because the comment is long and included many questions if anyone wants to hear the follow-up on those questions to please go to the school board tab on the website and find the link to the video for that meeting because we did respond to all of those questions and so if you read the summary you'll really want to hear the answers in the video thank you president brown thank you very much dr hague next
046we'll have the instruction and curriculum report mrs curry the instruction and curriculum report is in the hands of each board member and has been made available to the public i move for its adoption this is leah ii thank you are there any comments from the board mrs buford are there any comments from the public there are no comments from the public thank you all those in favor please signify by saying i i 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 motion carried now we'll have the personnel report but before we do that we're going to have um we're going to take a moment of silence for mrs bailey a vital member and parent
047and grandparent who was a member of the highland park family so can we please have a moment of silence for her please thank you very much debbie bailey okay that was her full name mrs curry did you want to have did you have any comments for mrs bailey i think you met her personally on several occasions yes um thank you president brown um i just wanted to just make a comment about the loss of mrs bailey back in june and i just want to quickly read what mr vito sent out to the fourth grade family she was actually honored back in the october board meeting and mrs debito principal at highland park sent out to the dear dear fourth grade family it is with a heavy heart that i am writing this to tell you
048that our foster grandparent mrs bailey passed away she was a very kind and compassionate person who loved our highland park students we will miss her very much and she was she worked very closely with the fourth graders and she was in my daughter's classroom i'm a lovely person and it was it's with a heavy heart that we had to say goodbye to her in june and so i just wanted to let everyone know how special she was to us thank you thank you very much mrs carey the personnel report mrs mitchell uh sure second the personnel report is in the hands of each board member and has been made available to the public i move for its adoption this is liability second are there any comments from the board well before i okay who said
049yes uh rachel okay thank you mr brown i just wanted to acknowledge our retirees tonight on a safe and healthy retirement i also want to acknowledge mr phillip bush who has had many hats in our transportation department over the years and he will be missed i also would like to welcome our new professional appointment um welcome to the udsd family thank you president brown thank you mrs mitchell president brown out to have a comment please please mrs carey this is gina curry i just wanted to make a comment and thank all of the summer school teachers who are working very hard virtually um this summer to provide the summer school experience for our children thank you very much thank you are there any other comments from the board mr ward savage sorry about that technical
050difficulty um just wanted to also offer a moment of silence for another district family member that we lost amy corona i believe she passed away on july 3rd just lift up the family in your hearts and minds and moment of silence at all thank you we'll have a moment of silence thank you very much mr ward savage for bringing that to our attention any other comments from the board i actually have one this is ed brown school board president and i want to address an item found on the current personnel report recently the board completed its annual assessment of superintendent dr dan mcgarry the consensus was that dan had an excellent year and his overall rating was distinguished the current terms of the superintendent's contract calls for an annual 2 percent cost of living increase
051and a 2 increase if he achieves a rating of proficient or distinguished based on duane's performance the board worked with our solicitor kyle berman to amend the contract to give the board the ability to grant the superintendent up to a five percent increase based on performance for the 2019-2020 school year the board agreed to grant dan an additional 2 percent his new salary as per his contract is retroactive back to july first while we agree that dan had a great year he and the board also agree that there is always areas for improvement and more work is needed to engage the community he is committed to strengthen these areas and continue to position the district to achieve its comprehensive board and strategic goals thank you are there any comments any other comments from the board
052mrs buford are there any comments from the public there are no comments from the public all those in favor please signify by saying i 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 motion carried the supplies report mr war savage thank you president brown the supplies report is in the hands of each board member and has been made available to the public before i move forward with this adoption i did want to draw attention to one part of it in particular that i am very happy about it looks as though we are investing in a brand new trailer for the band and i'm so glad that the taxpayers of upper garden school district have
053helped make this possible and i know that it's been a long time in coming and it's very well deserved so i'm glad to see that but i do move forward with this adoption thank you very much for bringing that to our attention is there a second this is leah dawg ii thank you very much ms dawes are there any comments from the board mrs buford are there any comments from the public there are no comments from the public thank you all those in favor please signify by saying aye hi hi hi those opposed please signify by saying i oppose and state your name for the record those abstaining please signify by saying i have stain and state your name for the record motion carried the facilities report and the use of facilities report are uh
054mr fields mr brown i apologize can we jump back i know that there isn't necessarily any new policy i apologize okay but i do believe mr desnoire has an update for the public on policy and i'm sorry i was supposed to up uh check in on you on that no problem no problem mr desnoires thank you dr mcgarry uh yes there is a policy update item on the agenda and this was added shortly before the meeting there there are no policies up for first reading or second reading this evening but there is an important policy update about um uh a future policy change and that update concerns uh the the title ix um policy governed by title ix which title ix is a u.s department of education regulation that provides for equal access to educational
055opportunities and therefore prohibits discrimination based on sex in educational settings so in mid-may this spring the u.s department of education uh issued extensive updates to title ix and uh as part of those updates decreed that the appropriate policies must be changed that that this school board and all school boards in pennsylvania and across the country have to implement changes to policies by august 14th so normally to meet this timeline such changes would be would appear in a first reading at tonight's board meeting and then be discussed at the july 28 committee meeting before having a second reading and being adopted at the august 11th board meeting because the changes are so extensive the pennsylvania school board association from which we get our policy our recommended policy changes has not had a chance to prepare the
056model uh policy that the school district will be adopting and for that reason what will happen is uh the uh policy changes related to uh this this title nine ix regulation change will be discussed at the august 28 sorry at the july 28th committee meeting and then at the august 11th board meeting i am going to recommend that the board waive the first reading of these changes and approve at that meeting the august 11th board meeting the policy changes that are required by the u.s department of education to be implemented by august 14th and so the we are doing this as a one-time exception to our normal policy adoption process and this we're only doing this because the u.s department of education has dictated that we have specific changes to policy language implemented by august
05714th and the fact that [Music] these new regulations were issued by the u.s department of education not long ago in the middle of may and are extensive the the changes take up 2 000 pages we have not had the time to prepare policy changes for first reading tonight so you will you will hear more about this both at the july 28th committee meeting and uh at the august 11th board meeting thank you dr mcgary mr brown that concludes my policy update thank you mr snowys thank you dr mcgarry for bringing it to my attention uh i apologize mr fields the facilities report please and the use of facilities report the facilities report thank you president brown the facilities report and the use facilities report are in the hands of each board member and have been
058made available to the public i move for their adoption this is leah does on our second thank you are there any confidence yes i would like to make a motion okay um i would like to make a motion that item number four the fee be waived um this is a government entity asking to use the performing arts center on july 27th the district attorney's office um so in the past we have waived fees for government entities so i would like to make a motion that we waive this fee on number four on the use of facilities report this is don fields i second that promotion thank you all those in favor oh sorry process wise you vote on the amendment and then if that passes you'll vote on the underlying motion okay so we'll thank
059you kyle we'll come back to that part on your motion uh mrs mitchell we'll vote on the uh facilities report that uh don already proposed and i think leah already seconded it so are there any other comments from the board president brown this is don fields i have just one reminder that i'd like to go over about the use facilities all all requests to the district for the use of district facilities whether inside or outside shall be subject to any cdc and pennsylvania department of health recommended steps and precautions related to preventing the spread of covert 19 of the code 19 virus current at the time of the scheduled event groups that are discovered during their scheduled events to be non-compliant with these precautions may have their event pre-prematurely terminated and jeopardize their future requests
060and that's it thank you very much are there any other comments from the board mrs buford are there any comments from the public there are no comments from the public okay all those in favor please signify by saying i i those opposed please signify by saying i oppose and state your name for the record president brown um this is david neal i just want to make sure are we voting on the use of facilities report or the amendment i believe the amendment needs to be voted on first and then the use of facilities if i heard kyle berman correct and right now we just voted on the the report not the amendment we're voting i'm not sure i'm not sure what we voted on but i i understood that to be a vote on the
061amendment because that was the motion that was then pending so your guidance was that we needed to vote on the use of facilities first and then the amendment call is that backwards now which is it no no i if that's what i said i didn't mean to what i meant to say what i thought i did say was that you vote on the amendment and then after that either passed or fails you vote on the underlying motion okay we was about to vote on the amendment and you stopped us so we will vote on the amendment the amendment that rachel pose is that what you're advising us to do that is correct we vote on the amendment and then we vote on the underlying motion okay dr gary in between that i want to make
062sure it is public comment because this is coming up right now public comment as well kyle we should wait a minute for public comment in between some of this you don't need public comment on the motion for the agenda for the amendment okay okay so we are now about to vote on the amendment that rachel neal you have another comment before we vote on the amendment well yeah um my comment is regarding the the fee i believe that we should be charging um the fee because the high school performing arts center is in disrepair with certain regards to seating and all and i believe um waiving any fee would be in hindsight a poor decision any other comments from the board okay uh we already had a motion by mrs mitchell it's been seconded and
063we had comments from the board and now we're about to vote on the amendment to waive the fee for the government entity that would like to use the performing arts center all those in favor of waiving the fee please signify by saying aye hi those opposed please signify by saying i oppose and state your name for the record i oppose david neal uh those abstaining please signify by saying i abstain and state your name for the record i abstain this is edward brown i am part of the committee um appointed by d.a jack stolsteimer to be a part of the 21st century policing working group so i do abstain and based on the votes uh mr rogers motion carried yes okay motion carry now we will return to the facilities and use of facilities report
064the don fields made a motion and it was seconded are there any comments from the board on the facilities report any use of facilities report are there any comments from the public i have a comment mr brown yes yes mrs mitchell um i just wanted to um say thank you to the administration for um being creative and coming up with a new plan for where the administration could move as we move forward with the aeronamic project to help us provide equity to all students in the upper darby school district so thank you thank you very much for that comment dr mcgarry did you want to mention anything about that or yes and i believe if there is a public comment on this around if you have a chance to check in on it for a
065second i'll go first and you guys can get to that because it's coming in now yes i want to say that we've hired some unbelievably new folks here in the school district craig harnicek marvin lee tim lambert craig rogers in his role but i think this move to the administration out of veronimic provides us with a great opportunity and i think using our own facilities obviously there was pushback when the school district was looking to lease uh property outside of the school district you know the gulf building which is on lansdowne avenue really wasn't much of a consideration until we brought in some new fresh perspective and i just want to complement the the new folks that are working here in the school district and they put together an unbelievable plan where we can now
066move out of the aeronamic building and into an already existing building in the school district and improve that and make that a much more attractive feature for the community so compliments of that team to pull that off and for the board having the vision to support that and the patience and also for the public pushback on leasing the building so i appreciate it thank you dr mcgarry were there any other comments from the board okay mrs buford were there any comments from the public i don't see a comment specific to this can you bring that to my attention dr mccary i believe that there was a a general comment coming in from a mrs smith when an amendment is made live during the meeting how is the public supposed to give comment on that vote
067and according to what i believe mr burma just said that there is not a need for public comment at that point in time okay that that comment was not in line with the board procedures outlined for public comment but i'm glad that we addressed it mr berman did you have any other um explanation for that since that was brought up in light of the guidance you provided the yeah the amendment was and the reason why there was no requirement for public comment at that point was because the amendment was simply on what was the item that the board is ultimately going to vote on the word has the option to change what the thing is that it's voting on and it is not subject to the same comment period uh there has to be an
068opportunity for comment however once the the motion is then prepared for the board to to then vote so in other words in this case there was a motion to change the um the fee that was applicable the public certainly has the opportunity to comment about the fee that is going to be charged but they don't necessarily have a right to decide to make comment about the uh the decision of when the board will change it i'm not sure if that made sense in other words simply what the board's motion will be is not subject to the same right that's all okay mrs b for were there any other comments from the public not regarding this matter thank you okay i think we're ready to vote all those in favor please signify by saying aye hi
069those opposed please signify by saying i oppose and state your name for the record those abstaining please signify by saying i abstain i abstain again for the same reason mrs zebra and i believe the motion carried okay we are now at the finance and budget report dr haig thank you president brown the finance and budget report is in the hands of each board member and has been made available to the public i move for its adoption this is gina curry i second it thank you are there any comments from the board hearing none are there any comments from the public mrs buford there are no comments from the public thank you all those in favor please signify by saying i those opposed please signify by saying i oppose and state your name for the record
070those abstaining please signify by saying i abstain and state your name for the record motion carried okay we are now at the collateral assignment reports so we'll start with delaware county community college mrs curry thank you president brown there are no updates on the delaware community college at this time we have not met as the liaison board thank you thank you the dciu mrs mitchell uh i do not have an update at this time thank you legislative council mr fields thank you president brown the legislative council doesn't meet over the summer legislatively uh all i can say is that um people should start getting their p ebt cards now which provides money for groceries this is as a reminder this is a federal program administered administered by the state if there's an issue with that
071card to resolve it you need to go through snap the snap ebt program to address that nobody at the school district can help you with that that's all i have thank you mr fields the mendenhall tyson scholarship committee dr hague no update at this point um we just hope our our scholarship recipients get to have some in-person experience in the fall but i hope they do well whatever whatever that ends up happening for them thank you very much dr hague home in school mr war savage thank you president brown i have no update in regards to helmand school at this time okay thank you sir uh technology uh i do have a question for dr mcgarry or um the the collection of the chromebooks is that uh completed or is that still ongoing i still
072have a chromebook in my house that i need to return so i wanna i don't wanna get my hands spanked publicly but i didn't want to ask about that so we still have students are participating in programs throughout the summer i know that there are those who have used the chromebooks for summer stage i know that they are those who are in summer school two i think believe july 23rd so many dates in my mind of dates that we have to meet so we have summer school still taking place we still have extended school year for special education students we have summer school programming virtually for students that are in our english learners program so um yes it'll be ongoing for this return of the school year and again we're going to get them back
073in get them cleaned back up and get them back out we are getting uh folks to turn their chromebooks in i do want to mention that bob linski is not able to be here tonight his mother passed away recently but bob is working diligently to get them back as well as his team chuck lout who's done an excellent job and they're coming in um you know i think one week we had 300 and some odd chromebooks return in one week we're not the number that we gave out but we're working on that because there are a number of students still participating in work over the summer which is a compliment to the staff and to the students that are working so you can certainly turn yours back in we'll get it cleaned up and if
074your child and we'll get you the new ones when we start the school year thank you dr gary psba mrs curry did you have something you want to offer for psba yes thank you president brown um i wanted to um highlight that the psda equity division with dr heather bennett held a series of webinars that we were invited to in june and i attended along with dr mcgarry and rachel mitchell vice president rachel mitchell um the june 18th 2020 um addressing the moment and it was a wonderful um webinar that provided um us with racial equity um ideas and um they had a wonderful panel of superintendents the superintendent from reading um superintendent assistant superintendent from lower marion and i believe there was a diversity officer there from the state college area school district and
075it was a really good um a really good panel and a wealth of information and i've just received the online information so if anyone is interested we can definitely share it there was also a building the equity foundation through policy on june 25th and understanding the court's role that all that the dr bennett offered through the equity division of the psba i also wanted to mention that we dr council and myself we also attended a summit that the it was through cheney university on the ideas of mentoring and retaining and recruitment around minority candidates and so that was also a wealth of information and a lot of good collaborative connections that we made with different individuals throughout the area thank you uh dr uh mr disney's uh any other policy updates you gave some good
076information earlier on policy anything to add yes um i i believe this came out of the same pspa equity initiative that um ms curry just mentioned but the pspa has proposed a model policy dealing with educational equity and the policy committee took a brief look at it and president brown asked that the comprehensive deep equity team provide input so they are currently reviewing it and after that it will come up for consideration at a future board meeting uh very it will very likely come up with uh for consideration by the board at a future board meeting so stay tuned on that and that's all the updates i have thank you mr just new years i appreciate that communication mrs mitchell did you any have anything or mr neal yeah i i did just want to
077acknowledge um that the administration has been communicating more than ever and and i'm sure families are are starting to get overwhelmed with the amount of emails that they're receiving i do want to reiterate how important all of the emails especially during this time when we're experiencing the pandemic is and if you have questions about any communication please email committee questions at upperdarbysc.org and i know that the administration is doing their very best to get back to everyone as quickly as possible so thank you for your extra effort in in this difficult time where this is really the only way we can communicate with each other thank you very much next we have our old business is there any old business from board members hearing none we will move on to oh i'm sorry we do
078have small business mr brown i'm sorry uh kyle you can jump in if you'd like it's in regard to the aeronamic project um old business giving an update yes i'm sorry i i didn't jump in because the invitation was for board members okay however i do have an update for you from the uh uh concerning aeronautic i just wanted to let everybody know the district has received an open bid for the aeronaming project those bids came in below the amount budgeted for those improvements and upgrades as a result the district will save money on this project as long as it's able to move forward with these bids however there are neighbors in the area of the aeronautics school who filed legal objections to the township's approval of the project and that matter is currently pending
079in court as things stand the district is evaluating its options and determining when it will award bids based upon the above court matter we hope that we hope to have further discussion about this in the near future in the meantime as the law permits we will hold the complaint the compliant and timely bids that were received with an award expected within the statutory timeline thank you mr brown that's all that i have thank you mr behrman sorry i didn't mean to skip you um now we'll move on to new business we have a number of items to address the first item under new business is the athletics health and safety plan dr mcgarry thank you board president brown this is a retroactive approval because the state in the commonwealth has allowed school districts to begin
080their non-ve volunt their involuntary workouts with athletes here at the school at the high school the plans been made available we have vetted it and made it up to date with the most recent mass requirement guidelines as far as students coming to campus and wearing a mask and practicing social distance while they're not complete completing athletically the biggest concern that we have here as a school district this time is we we still have not had clear guidance regarding whether we will have actual sporting events in the fall we are closely monitoring how colleges and universities and professional sporting programs are handling this at this time we are moving forward with this athletic plan and providing as much protection and guidance as possible cleaning the areas where students will be gathering deep cleaning of those areas
081obviously enforcing proper hygiene temperature checks although there's this false positive with temperature checks we are implementing much of that guidance masks are to be worn when they're not working out rigorously or being on the field coaches should be wearing masks as well and we should be practicing the social distancing of at least six feet and at all times if we're not engaged in actually the athletic activity the other point to this aboard president brown is while you know we are looking to move forward our athletic program there is also recent guidance talking about how our bands and our music programs can move forward as we all know here in upper derby school district our music programs are just as important as any program that we have to offer the difficult part of the music program
082is that for example our wonderful wonderful choral program with mrs barb england at the high school in our middle schools right now the guidance is that you cannot have a full group of students together singing even if they wear masks so we're still working through how the music programs and bands and cleaning of band instruments can happen i did provide the board with some updates and some information regarding the national suggestions and they're pretty rich and pretty deep i've asked dr manfred mrs simone to coordinate a meeting with the high school um ud bop the band parents and the band team and as as well as the uh sorry the band students as well as the music program to work together on how we can implement that as well with our music program it's not
083that we're just focusing on athletics and not the music program but the guidance has come out much more so for the sports programming i'm not so sure where that's going to lead to i can say this to everybody here though for the fall and i hope the board we can we can put this more formalized many school districts will be limiting visitors not only to the campus during school time if students are in session but in particular performances or sporting events at least through the fall i know the upper doge school district if we are to hold a sporting event it would be limited to just those participants and those needed to put on the event we would not be having audiences or spectators attend sporting events or musical events here in the school district
084because obviously in the green phase we're still looking to limit 250 people in one space at one time and because of the social distinct implications and the mask wearing our focus will be on our students and our student athletes and keeping them safe so if we are to put on any kind of performance or any kind of sporting event we would be limiting outside participation in way of fans if that were to happen moving forward and i think the board should also consider when we open the schools up for the fall if we do um unless we're virtual that we limit outside use of our facilities because of keeping them clean uh throughout the school year i think is important as well thank you board president brown thank you dr gary would a member of
085the board like to make a motion to move this forward i motion to move this forward president brown i have a comment okay yes um dr mcgarry you just made a comment about um limiting the outside um does that include playgrounds at this at this point in time when we are allowing playground use while school's not in session um but as we go to the school year i think outside use of facilities are much easier to maintain and manage than indoor facilities so thank you for that for that question my recommendation as we move forward when school returns for in-session learning if the board chooses that option if they choose virtual options obviously that we wouldn't be letting i wouldn't think anybody in in the facilities but miss miss curry my comment is more about
086the use of internal spaces not the external spaces where the recent guidance is that social distancing and being out in the open spaces is less of a concern although it's still a concern in comparison to using close spaces where there could be more mass gathering of people okay i think mr fields made a motion thank you i'd like to make a second this is mrs mitchell on the athletic plan okay mr neil has a comment mr comments thank you president brown uh this is david neal um dr mcgarry i had a quick question has there been any discussion um regarding the televising of the sporting events like live streaming um so parents could in fact um watch their kids participate in athletic game or or such or another event yes we are working through those
087options uh you know if we were to put on a musical performance we would we have the capability we've demonstrated the live stream events and we've talked about that i do want to be clear to the board and the public i i want to be cautious i think we set a precedent and i know that some don't feel that it was as successful as i do i think the administration and jason taylor considering we have one kind of a person who does a lot of that work here in the school district we put on a lot of virtual events and we have to be wise that in the event that we're shut down and we're closed we don't have necessarily the capacity to keep producing videos and and celebrations we just don't have enough resource
088to do that so again that's a part of the patience i think we all have to work together we're going to try to recognize and support as much as we can in a virtual environment but there has to be an understanding that we don't have the capability of of constantly doing everything that way we just don't have all the resources and jason taylor is only one person he does a phenomenal job but he can't be everywhere we have to be reasonable with those expectations nonetheless we would try to balance as many of the spawning events or musical performances as possible but we have to be wise about the equity there you know a football game shouldn't get more exposure than a girls lacrosse or some other sporting event either and sometimes events happen at similar
089times so we have to be wise to make sure that we're balancing our celebration of all of our athletes and recording that and maybe this is an example of how you know we can work together with with individuals in the community to help live stream some of these events i think this is an opportunity for us to work together to do that so yes a long long-winded answer i apologize but we would like to try to have those virtual opportunities for all to access them but we have to be realistic about the lack of resources that we have right now and how can we work together to solve that that be an example of something i'd love to have a community advisory to say look we only have one jason taylor but we can have
090several people who might be on call to help us live stream something like that thank you for your response dr mccary okay uh so i heard a motion i heard a second are there any other comments from the board mrs b for there are any comments from the public there are no comments from the public okay all those in favor please signify by saying aye hi hi hi 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 motion carried the second item under new business is the faye school reopening health and safety plan dr mcgarry yes and uh i'd like it to again take a moment that to reiterate that these you know our plans
091that are obviously um imperfect and we recognize again um that we're we're trying to open our schools to the best of our ability um as you heard mrs masentonio say the head of the uda leadership and it's not lost on any of us that our staff is important we often hear a lot of the reporting about how this may not impact younger students um and that's open for debate and i'm not willing to have that debate um i believe that the the missing part of this are the staff so i do see a value in returning students to school i also see the value in having a virtual synchronous not asynchronous because i think that's a struggle so we're trying to balance both of those options and i think we've created some flexible plans that
092would allow us to do that a couple weeks ago i reported board president brown concern regarding the 180 days in the 900 990 hours that is referred to in pennsylvania as act 80. that's why the school board has to approve a calendar each year and that's why school school days are the type and length that they are because in the state of pennsylvania you have to have a minimum of a certain number of hours per level as well as a minimum of 180 school days the guidance ironically at the time before we put these plans in place before the pandemic was this debate whether or not the governor or the secretary of education had the opportunity to uh dictate if we can flex in and out of the actual number of days and hours in
093a plan um and when the um pandemic hit and i think this is part of the hypocrisy i think that's going on right now a pandemic happened it was real we're clearly hearing that it's real and i think people reacted and tried to provide safety with what information they had at the time and closing the schools and again that's open for debate was a recommendation that was made and schools had to rush to put these plans in place schools should be celebrated for the for their effort and teachers should be celebrated for their effort at the same time it was clear that giving state testing was not a high priority and focusing on the number of hours and days although important when a pandemic hit showed that we need flexibility so then it became the
094as i said uh during my last board meeting this idea of uncertainty all we can all we know is the future is going to be different and education's going to look different it's going to be different prepare for being different and we've all been working hard as superintendents for what is different and not staying with the old way of doing things so then it became a battle legally whether or not the 180 days the 900 and the 990 hours could be a flexible model i'm happy to report that there is a belief that there is flexibility and that the upper darby school district if the board is so moved to pick one of the flexible options the one that i recommended earlier that i review again that the board would be okay to meet and
095would be i think okay of meeting the hours and the days based on governor wolf and based on secretary rivera's latest guidance nonetheless the board does have a resolution prepared for this evening that after i go through these options again in our phased reopening plan for the school district if the board is so moved to come back in a situation to start the school year where it would be in a flexible model meaning that we would have students in an a.m and a p.m cohorts of students coming in for four days instruction at the elementary school level and obviously different at the middle school in elementary school and i'll go through that in a moment that there's a resolution that we would also approve this evening that would provide us that protection we believe provide
096us that protection from the 180 days and the 900 990 hours nonetheless different than the march 13th shutdown students who learn virtually whether it's asynchronous or synchronous will be an option that students will have an option because this has been the guidance from the cdc from everyone that you should still provide students with an option who do not feel comfortable returning to have a virtual option technically the the law was in debate says you can't do that so it's confusing if we're supposed to provide a virtual option how can that be in conflict so what we do know is that we'll have an expectation of attendance being taken students will have to log in at specific times to complete work meaning that there'll be an expectation that we're holding you more accountable even more so
097than we did when the pandemic happened this past year that's why we took our time when the school year ended to get ourselves in a better position to be prepared to provide virtual instruction more so than we did during that period of time with that said there were several options presented there is an option to be fully virtual i think ideally for the upper darby school district that were picked it would be a synchronous model i think there's a lot to be said for bringing students in i don't think we're in a position to bring everybody back in all at one time but the board has the option to pick a virtual model in the phased reopening plan on page four there are four boxes i'll go through them and then i'll go through the
098options that i'm recommending the first option is an option that brings everybody back in school if you if you are following us at home in the phase reopening plan template i'll go through these four options i believe they're on page four so the first box is a total reopen for all students and staff but some students and families opt for distance learning out of safety and health concerns the school district is still obligated to provide that option in in these in in either one of these flexible or for in-person options we are prepared that if the school board wants to open for in-person instruction we would try we would be prepared to provide virtual instruction for students it would be asynchronous to appoint if we did have enough students who selected virtual learning and freed
099up enough staff to teach synchronously we would make that switch and provide those teachers with a synchronous model we won't know that until the board takes action this evening and we will follow up with the communication asking students to register for a virtual session we'll then be able to switch into a synchronous model if enough staff is freed up to do so i do want to ask for cooperation from the public if you do select virtual and i understand if you do when the reason why you would please work with us that if you decide this isn't working out and you'd like to come back either for full in person or the flexible model if the school district goes in that direction that you allow us to flex you back in at a semester break
100where there'll be a much smoother transition for students so students who opt for that would like to work with you and allow you to come back for in-person if you choose to do so or if the district comes back for in-person and it's safer to do so the next option is scaffolded reopening some students are engaged in in-person learning while others are distance learning some grade levels in person other grade levels remote learning i found that throughout the world other countries have focused um probably a lot on this plan thinking that older students can do well on their own in a virtual environment and younger students should be in person so that there's been a focus on bringing younger students in for more instruction in person around the world and phasing secondary students in later
101so the idea might be we go virtually with high school middle school students to begin the year in elementary school students we try to get them all in as much as possible and then bring secondary students in over a period of time we are not recommending option one and we are not recommending option two here in the school district in the school district where the administration is recommending option three blended reopening that balances in-person learning and remote learning for all students and we will also provide an option for distance learning for those students and families who do not want to return to school at all we will provide that i want to reiterate again what that recommendation would be the recommendation the elementary level would be half day cohorts four days per week with am
102and pm sessions we'd like to try to have some preferential parenting support for that but we can't guarantee that we guarantee you an am or pm session this is all about the space and the number of teachers that we have and i'll explain that again when we get to the middle school but the recommendation would be half day cohorts four days per week am and pm at the elementary school to be clear i know there's comments coming in about special education special education students in our life skills program in our autistic support program and our multi-disabled program would be coming in four days a week for full in-person instruction four days a week and would not be cohorted in we'd be practicing obviously hygiene social distancing and mask wearing in that model but we do
103believe that the special education students in those programs do need a higher level of instruction and support obviously parents in special education who would opt for virtual would have the same opportunities as anybody else and that would be the case elementary middle school and high school as far as special education is concerned middle school there were two options presented the school district recommendation from the superintendent is to bring cohorts and put back on teams like we had before in this model we think that keeping teams together may be a positive in the virtual model that we can't give in the brick and mortar completely because we don't have enough teachers or space would be four days per week rotating three classes in the am three in the pm because we need to move some beverly
104hills middle school students over to drexel hill middle school and there's a lot of misinformation out there and i want to be crystal clear it's not because if we were to open live in person we can add another 450 students to drexel hill middle school it's because the classroom the square footage of the classrooms at drexel hill middle school allow us to provide more social distancing to bring students in where beverly hills middle school the classrooms are smaller and beverly hills middle school has a considerably higher number of students that are there as a result we would be shifting some teachers as well over from beverly hills middle school and some students over this is not about uh higher test scores this is not about some of the comments that are coming in as to
105what the hidden agenda is this is simply about providing the same opportunities educational in-person opportunities that drexel hall students get and beverly hills middle school students get there is no other hidden agenda and i do want to be clear as well that if we do have an opportunity to return for full in person we have to shift those students back to beverly hills middle school because there wouldn't be enough space for complete full-in-person learning for those students to move to drexel hill middle school i think it's complements the school district to try to solve this problem creatively using the space to do these things this move that i'm talking about for president brown and members of the public as well as some of the elementary school moves would also require a temporary consideration of changing
106our board policy 206 assignment within district that we'd come to after this was we'd be voted on in another meeting to make a temporary relief of that policy and i'll work with mr desnoyers to do that but again at the middle school level will be cohorts on teams four days per week and again at the elementary school level in the middle school level wednesday is not a day off students are expected to complete their work asynchronous work catch up on assignments we have to give our teachers a chance to meet with students provide some classroom virtual time with teachers and students and parents who are struggling with some of the work outside to catch up on that teachers need some time to refine their lesson plans and then we get professional development in the afternoon
107and we want that to be elementary middle school and high school because it's got to be fair for our teachers across the board in this district it's got to be fair across the board and that's why my recommendation will be wednesday similarly elementary middle school and high school the high school model there were two options the option that i'm recommending is four periods per day for four days per week that means eight meetings per three week rotation and again wednesdays would be distance learning at the high school teachers would have office hours to check in with students who need that help and this would be every week teachers would have lesson planning time as well as some time to get some professional development on you know our ability to shift in and out of a
108virtual environment in an in-person environment we're all learning this as you can see tonight as we navigate this it's it's imperfect and we're still making those adjustments to try to get it better but our goal is to make it the best educational opportunity that we can that would be the recommendation for the blended reopening the total remote learning for students is the final option and that means that we would have to provide remote learning synchronously or asynchronously for all students at the same time and no one will be in person we're calling these plans also for president brown a red phase a yellow phase and a green phase and i know we joked around a little bit in a conversation that we started out in green and we're not so green we're kind of yellowish
109green right now because there's more restrictions than the green phase that would be there and we have to be adaptable and and flexible that there could be more restrictions um we have to be realistic too that we all don't start to follow the rules where are your masks and we're going to talk about encouraging our students and strongly saying when you're here in the building wear your mask it's cool to wear your mask because you don't know who else is at risk and that's important as mrs macentonio said we want our teachers to be safe we want your moms your dads your grandmoms your grandparents to be safe let's be realistic about what we're expecting of each other and come together to solve this problem so in the red phase would be virtual only the
110school district would only go on that phase if we had to because the chester county department of health advised us to the school district will not close and shut down necessarily on its own without guidance from the chester county department of health or governor wolf or pedro rivera as well as the guidance when his teacher might get sick or a student gets sick we will go to the chester county department of health they will provide us guidance they will tell us how to communicate when to close when not to close we're working with them on this there'll be a decision tree that comes out and we'll work together on that i know there's questions about what's going to happen i can tell you that there's a strong momentum to not close schools many school districts
111many school districts are opening for full in person only they may have newer facilities they have more space we are not equipped to necessarily do it the same exact way and there's a lot of reasons for that here so in the red phase it would be virtual only the yellow phase is similar to what we're talking about here we would provide some level of in-person if the social distancing and the guidelines permitted in the yelling phase at that time as well as virtual learning i do believe in the yellow phase it would probably be more synchronous yellow in the lfa synchronous instruction than in person but again the guidance at the time will help us make that decision there could be a time that even one school might be in a different phase than another
112school in this district because the cohorts are because of what we have going on i could tell you that i've already experienced this summer that we've had situations where we've had to deal with a staff member or what they call a contact of a contact of somebody who tested positive and the time and energy to get answers is not easy so we have to be understanding and flexible with how we make these decisions currently in the green phase what we're recommending is what i described which is a flexible cohorting which is a combination of in-person instruction and virtual learning with an opportunity to flex out to only virtual learning for all students as well as providing virtual learning for those students and families who don't feel comfortable coming in at all and we need to
113be flexible right now the green phase has serious restrictions cleaning restrictions have been in all phases we will have deep cleaning of our schools deep cleaning of our buses we will be taking temperature checks in our plan there's a lot of of people who believe taking temperature checks isn't a good idea we're gonna give our best effort to have temperature checks we're talking about using cares money to bring in close to three hundred thousand dollars in additional hourly nurses to make sure that we have temperature checks for students who come in for taking temperature checks on our buses we are going to have staff wear shields face shields and masks and provide that for them and we want our students to cooperate with us we want our students to wear masks when they're transitioning from
114space to space and if they're in classrooms if they're six feet apart they can communicate with their masks off that is the recent guidance but everywhere else the expectation is that people will follow these guidelines also our families that are home tonight we need your help if a child is even closely think they're sick you got to work with us and keep them home if a staff member is sick we got to work with them and they got to stay home we have to have a tremendous amount of flexibility the reason why i'm recommending a return to some normal in person with some flexibility because if we return completely i don't know how we're going to have sub coverages or the support to provide we're going to have to provide so i think we have
115a very robust plan imperfect again i can't emphasize it's flexible and imperfect i think dr baglesi who's been really spearheading a lot of this work deserves a tremendous amount of credit you'll notice on page six there are a list of people that are working on the on these plans with us that'll be our support there'll be a team effort and a team communication uh we'll communicate out what we can regarding closing our schools and when we can't communicate something there's a reason why we can't communicate something as far as a coveted testing positive or staff staff members that are there we are working with our parents and our staff and those members who do not feel for medical reasons they can perform we're going to work with you following this evening if the board picks
116option one for a total return to school we still have to provide our students with a virtual option we'll put that communication out hopefully by the end of this week and if we return with a blended which is my recommendation for president brown we also have to provide a flexible model for those students if we have enough people who don't feel comfortable let's work together because there could be a tipping point where we get enough people who decide that they want virtual learning that we could provide a better virtual learning opportunity with synchronous instruction and this will require us working together to make those decisions and i can't emphasize this enough it's going to take a community effort and then when more information becomes available we should flex into if we can get into more
117in person at the same time we want to provide opportunities kids for socialize so within reason clubs after school in person or virtually will still be encouraged so that kids can interact with each other and have those positive moments to share i guess for me i don't know if dr manfrey mr salerno dr piglesi or anybody else wants to chime in i don't see the chat hopefully i'm covering enough um dr manfred feel free to unmute and you can can jump in on if you would if you would like dr mcgarry thank you very much members of the board thank you i just have one brief addition to what dr mcgarry was explaining and my addition is in regards to the middle school the option that we're recommending the flexible option that we're recommending that
118dr mcgarry explain the teaming option with six periods a day would enable us to have kids not transition in other words kids would be staying put in the same classroom and teachers would be transitioning from one classroom to the other enabling us to keep our hallways clear in the middle school we feel pretty confident with the size of our high school hallways that we'll be able to remind our students through some signage uh that they'll be able to social distance more appropriately than the kids at the middle school would be able to so we really feel strongly that that is a really strong positive feature that the kids would be staying put and the teachers would be rotating from one class to the other thank you dr manfred dr mcgarry were you done did you
119have anything else i don't have anything else i don't know mr salerno if i missed anything at the elementary school level if you were able to or or dr baglesi but that that's that was my review of of where we are with each of these options and again my recommendation uh for the blended okay would a member of the board like to make a motion to move one of these options forward and i think we wanted i think we want to do them um individually because there's different options for each of the elementary middle and high schools so i want to do them separately just so that the public is clear on which one we're selecting based on your recommendations okay would a member of the board like to make a motion to move one
120of the elementary school options forward president brown this is dr haig my children are about to enter elementary school so i'd like to make a motion that for the elementary school students we adopt the flexible hybrid plan where students are on either an am or a pm program four days a week we need a second this is mrs mitchell i second that okay um are there any comments from the board we're talking with we're talking about the elementary school options and i um we're making a motion to accept the option that dr hage just described which is the recommendation of dr mcgarry are there any comments from the board if i may president brown i'd just like to comment that um we did get a fair amount of feedback from parents that they would um
121like to have their kids consistently in the morning or consistently in the afternoon i think we all know that consistency is especially important for younger students and i'm just very happy that we were able to find a medium ground we know that virtual learning is especially hard for younger kids at the same time we just don't have the space to bring them all in so i think this is a really though we know as dr mcgarry has said it's imperfect and we know it's going to be difficult i think this is the best that we can do with the situation that we have and i thank the administrators for working so hard on it thank you thank you very much dr mcgarry just so that i'm clear the elementary school students for uh that would
122be in am or pm they would consistently be in amrp and they wouldn't switch back and forth between the two is that correct correct that's my understanding mr salerno anything i'm missing with that mr brown yes that is correct they would be consistently in an am or apm cohort they would not switch between the two thank you very much mrs celerio and i i think that you know when the board talks about this piece of it we go through each elementary middle school in high school and then public comment i guess before we take actional notes yep yep okay mrs carrick uh any other comments mrs kerry yes thank you this is mrs curry um i just want to also acknowledge the administrators for working extremely hard on these options i know that there is
123no easy plan um and we're all hoping that we can get back to a normal plan with everyone being back in school regularly but at this time i feel like um we you know with the blended and the am pm for elementary it will at least get them back in the building at a safe distance thank you thank you very much are there any other comments from the board mr neal thank you president brown um yeah i just want a second miss curry's statement earlier about administration they've done a wonderful job putting this together i do have a question for dr mcgarry i know earlier you said that parents may switch at like a semester could is that regarding any quarters or is it just that one time mid-year that a family could switch from
124virtual to in person or the in-person blend to virtual yes um so the option would be that if you opted to be virtual we'd ask that you at least consider working with us for the semester so that at the break let's say winter break if you wanted to go either virtual or back to the in person or flexible that we would be able to schedule you to bring you in that way we would provide that flexibility um as far as space is concerned so we have to work with those numbers to make sure that that's a reality to do that and doing it in the middle of the year middle of a semester is more difficult but you know mr neal will tell you the truth i don't think we legally could keep somebody out
125anyway so we'd have to work with families i'm just asking for families to work with us as we do that we would not make it mandatory to be there the entire year either way all right uh thank you dr mcgarry and this was uh david neal by the way sorry okay okay um any other comments from the board okay mrs buford comments from the public and i know you may have gotten overall comments about all the options but we're really trying to focus on comments specific to the elementary piece right now there are no comments specific to the elementary piece there are parents commenting from an elementary parent's perspective okay we'd like to hear those comments now okay so there are two of those of such comments um one is from shawante evans located at
126250 cambridge road in clifton heights we received our comment tonight at 5 33 pm via email regarding new business item 18.2 all of these are regarding that new business item before i read the comment i wanted to reiterate a couple of things um typically these comments are read but they are not always answered in in this scenario um at our board meetings our questions have generally been answered by the superintendent and by the board members and then by the faq and other previous board board minutes so i just want to make that clear that we're going to run through the comments and not necessarily answer them and if the board so feels there's something that we need to address after this meeting we'll follow it up with a with updating our faq dr mcgarry if
127uh and i'll leave it to your discretion sometimes there's simply a quick uh question or something you can easily clarify and provide an answer for that parent so i'm going to look to you to leave it to your discretion if it's something you want to just address quickly and answer then you know we we can put it to bed if we need to point taken mrs buford sure and poor president brown and ms buffer with that said if the general i think what i'm hearing you say mrs buford the general comments are about the reopening in general and not just a particular level so we want to go through those now and then have the board come back to those options or have the board finish their options because there isn't particular for each level
128no i think her comment was about elementary i see two of them from the perspective of a pair but not necessarily related to questions about elementary uh options so um and i'm only going to read these because they're mentioning the context of elementary so there's miss shawante evans at 250 cambridge road clifton heights may i interrupt i'm sorry this is david neal um could i make a motion to actually read all of the comments for the all levels right now and then we can proceed to a vote on the three um plans then i would need a second if someone wanted someone else wanted to read all the comments i don't think we need a motion on this there's dr hick i don't believe we need a motion on that but i would also like
129that to happen me too i'm not quite sure this is rachel why we started voting before we had the public comments so i just are i don't want to vote until we hear all the public comments and i don't want to make a mistake on this okay so let's hear i'll support that as well done okay i think we heard enough yes is that we'll hear all the public comments um before we move forward so okay so we'll continue with this one and then we'll jump back to the short start of the comments again michoante evans 250 cambridge road in clifton heights received tonight at 533 via email all of these comments are regarding new business item 18.2 she wrote she writes my children attend primus elementary school and drexel hill middle school i would
130like upper darby school district to consider two full days or am pm school schedules for the upcoming school year i'd also like the district to consider healthy food options for example backed lunch with a dick with a diary dairy is what she intended i'm sorry and sandwiches aren't nutritious for children in addition if in-person education is cut due to the pandemic does that mean school tax will lighten up on the community i know this has been a difficult time for the community but hopefully we can make this upcoming school year as positive safe and engaging as possible for students and staff and of common the following comment is from amanda deterrance located at 364 edmonds avenue in drexel hill comment received tonight i'm sorry earlier today at 11 26 via email comment reads number one
131transportation slash buses my 16 year old daughter attends alwyn in media how many buses bring children to elwynn in a typical school year how many more will you add now that they need to distance the kids and their bus aides how often will the buses be disinfected and will there be sanitizer available on the buses some of our kids cannot wear a mask so what is the protocol for that number two facilities how often how thorough will the schools be cleaned and disinfected also for the mask wearing since it will still be hot the beginning of at the beginning of the school year is there air conditioning available as we all know wearing a mask outside in this heat can be difficult therefore possibly impeding learning number three personnel students will it be mandatory for
132all to wear a mask students and faculty some kids will not want to wear one they have to have a doctor's note excusing them because of a medical issue will temperatures be taken on every student daily will students be able to bring a water bottle to school since the water fountains are not allowed to be used number four curriculum high school my son is a senior this year and like a lot of students were approved were approved for early out in early grad how will this affect their early out quote-unquote if some already have different half afternoon jobs and if they are put in a cohort or have to attend in the afternoon that will interfere with that can those students only attend the morning sessions end of her comments certainly dr some general comments
133here as far as cleaning's concerned deep cleaning every single day with cleaning expectation of cleaning and wiping down desks between sessions weekend deep cleanings on wednesday deep cleanings of facilities we also purchased i like to call them the ghostbuster backpacks that will go around hydrostatic electrostatic cleaning mechanisms for our buses and for the for the buildings we will require teachers to have a shield or a mask given their health situation as well and a shield is best students obviously can opt out of the mask given the the recent recommendation from governor wolf but we'd encourage that we will not have an expectation if we go to the social distancing model of wearing a mask all day every day in school that one in the classroom at five to six feet that they'd be allowed to
134have that mask off the teachers on average will have a 200 square feet of social distancing from the students in the classrooms we're also putting in new water fountains encouraging students they want to bring a water bottle their own water bottle the school will have new water bottle fountains that will allow them to refill their water bottles in the school and obviously those will be the places would encourage kids to go we would clean them as much as possible so we will provide opportunities for students to flex in and out water bottles deep cleaning of the schools cleaning the buses sanitizer will be will be around and stations marking hallways so that students notice socially distance walking through the building as much as possible and then finally for a child who is in a vo
135tech program or a special needs program or has any of those things all those things will be taken into consideration i know that's a comment that will come up later but we work with those families to make sure that those students get the education if somebody wants to be an early grad and we're in a flexible model or a virtual model we'll make sure that we make that happen thank you dr mcgarry ms b for next comment another reminder i forgot to say is that as with all other comments at any other board meeting or committee meeting setting there are three minutes as a limit so we have our cfo keeping track of that and we will read the comments up until the three minute mark thank you the second comment is from melba spence
136located at 3821 marshall road in drexel hill comment received this morning at 11 55 a.m via email comment begins on behalf of my son who whom is now a senior in the autistic support program of udsd i'm very upset because he is not getting enough reading writing life skills support and job training support how much more support will be offered for the disabled in the upcoming school year online learning is not successful for those in need of one-on-one support feels like everything has been put on hold end of comment next comment from al giatti located at 801 irvington road in drexel hill look comment received today at 203 pm via email comment begins in summary i believe strongly that schools need to fully reopen based on the following rationale which has been widely publicized number
137one there is strong scientific evidence that covet 19 presents lower risk of complications for children number two there is strong scientific evidence that the virus is not transmitted easily from children number three school closures have significant adverse impacts including a create quote-unquote virtual dropouts moreover even those who have access to computers in the internet are not learning in the same way this will increase our country's education gap b school closures negatively impact children's health including weight gain increased depression increase suicide rates etc see many children depend on the meals provided at school d school closures will result in many parents reading needing to quit their jobs e school closures result in increased child abuse and under reporting of this issue and number four the american academy of pediatrics strongly advocates that the goal should be
138to have students physically present in school and to do so in a safe way for both students and staff end of comment thank you thanks the next comment is from jen over everly located at 934 orvind avenue in drexel hill comment received earlier today at 1 58 p.m via email comment begins please instruct the schools to plan for the worst and be prepared to have online classes due to another spike in cases for the 2020-2021 school year the cases are spiking again now in july and the second phase is due to hit in the fall along with a seasonal flu plan for the worst case now and if things go back to normal by some miracle kids and teachers already know how to hold in-person classes i do not want to send my daughter into
139school and i should not have to if pennsylvania wants to experiment with our children's health i need to have the choice to keep her home we need to plan now for all students to have internet computers and to have working parents come up with a plan for care waiting until the last minute to make the track the drastic change to homeschooling does not help the parents teachers children or any citizen of pennsylvania end of comment thank you next comment rich and kate maxwell located at 423 winfield road in upper darby comment received today at 228 via email comment begins what is the time frame we have to decide if we want to enroll our kids in online learning for a year where can we learn more about this option next comment bill danbury located at
140539 argyle road in drexel hill comment received today at 1 28 pm via email comment begins if 100 online learning is not available at udhs is there a process to transition my children to homeschooling for the upcoming school year should a portion of a cohort show symptoms of a suspected case will the entire cohort be quarantined for 14 days how will impacted people be notified if a work action occurs due to health concerns would the student calendar be extended or truncated since quote unquote large gatherings are forbidden in philadelphia or are we anticipating a similar regulation from delaware's last chester county management would real-time quote-unquote zoom video instruction be made available part or full-time end of comment excuse me the next comment is from mr jim burrows located at 447 hampshire road in drexel hill
141comment received today at 3 31 pm via email there's no reference to which item he's referencing in his comment but the content implies it's new business item 18.2 comment begins we are truly saddened to announce that we will be withdrawing my daughter from the upper darby school district this was a difficult decision for us as she will be leaving classmates she has known for most of her life we were hoping that the school district would open in the fall however there is just too much confusion for our public schools right now and we cannot afford to miss another quarter of school we have to make definitive plans now to prevent a gap in her studies before she departs she wants to say thank you to all of the teachers excuse me and staff at drexel
142hill middle school for all their efforts we feel that they miraculously put together a curriculum from scratch to create some semblance of education for her sixth grade fourth quarter 2020. she will certainly miss her friends she will also miss her teachers she will especially miss the incredible music programs and bands thank you all especially dr manfred for answering my many and frequent questions as well as all the administration's efforts although this was a difficult decision in the end our job as parents is to ensure our children get a great education end of comment next comment and more located at 118 north cedar lane just a second i'm gonna have to hold just for a second sure i'll take over for right now i believe you're on ann moore 118 north cedar lane upper darby new
143business 18.2 i think parents should be given the option to home school my son is in highland park elementary school and i think the school district should offer to those of us that feel it's unsafe to homeschool our children as a parent we are we given that as an option for our children i'm petrified my son has special needs and i'm low resistance i'm so afraid to send him and have him get sick so what about his pca is she safe this really scares me next comment is from monique bunny 937 harrison drive and i apologize if i in advance if i mispronounced your name will there be any emotional and behavioral health support in the event of a teacher falling ill or a student dying i have great concern about anyone passing away and
144explaining that to students i do think this is an important one and we do have a plan to communicate any kind of a crisis situation here in the school district and point made number 10 catherine newell 22 2nd street lands down in parentheses in upper darby boundary common is under new business 18.2 if children required a mass throughout the day what plans will be in place for children who have panic attacks and difficulty breeding breathing wearing a mask for long periods of time i would like to know what the procedure would be the next one is from brian newell 22 second street lands down new business 18.2 what is your cleaning procedures going to be between classes number eleven uh shigenti evans 250 cambridge road i'm sorry miss b ford already read that one next
145comment 13 kate smith 417 47 16 cedar lane drexel hill new business 18.2 this is a common for the new business item pass item phase school reopening health and safety plan the specific plan does not get into the level of detail recent presentations the community regarding potential regrouping of students recognizing that the shift in students from bh to dhs to address available classroom distance distancing as as well as physical well-being i have a concern about academic well-being and educational opportunity under the proposed models the average roster for a dh teacher at dh would be 160 students 5 sections of 32 while the average roster for a teacher at bh would be 100 students 5 sections of 20. not only would this imbalance impact the equity of overall access to teachers by students generally across the
146middle school level but it would also logically impact teachers ability to differentiate to meet student needs which could threaten teacher morale if generating student growth is attached to evaluations that seems concerning given teacher and sub shortages etc that we have been hearing about for many years this is this reassignment plan seems particularly impactful to highland park students since they would be would be reassigned to more than 150 percent higher student to teacher overall ratios than they would if they attended beverly hills why is highland park selected for this adjustment is it the highest performing of the bh feeder schools and did administration feel would be less impacted by the by the reassignment this plan seems to set up dh for growth shortfalls how will this be addressed it is is it not an area of
147concern if not would you be willing to explain why not will the district hire additional teachers to equalize the overall roster adjustments assignments 14 bonnie prenderville 614 wilton avenue new business 18.2 what will happen if and when a student teacher staff member or a visitor to the building or anyone they live with or come in contact with outside of school comes down with covet 19 won't the teacher and all the students he or she came in contact with have to be quarantined for two weeks what about the teachers who do not have enough sick days to cover the quarantine time where they were only affected because of the failure to keep them safe subs will be required to a but subs were required but what about the risk those who work at multiple schools put
148on everyone else at those schools 15. remia bagum 7278 coven road upper darby i believe this is for new business 18.2 but it's not in there are the cohorts changeable or are they permanent for the rest of the year can you elaborate on the plan and how this cohort thing works i've heard that that there that the there is an afternoon cohort and mornings would be online if this is true what is the point of having the online when you are going to have uh to go in person anyway why not just have online for the whole day 16 reverend gregory gilbert um 818 childs avenue drexel hill new business 18.2 in a previous informational meeting with parents you mentioned that the pennsylvania board of education was insisting on students meaning their 180-day required uh
149days of instruction and allowed for five days of distance learning how can you how can your proposed plan be reconciled with those rules i believe ms bufer wants to take back over number 17 this comment is from miss jill altman located at 3846 anne street in drexel hill comment was received tonight at 809 pm via email comment begins at what point would we know whether synchronous learning would be available if we selected all virtual i would certainly consider going all virtual at least with my 10th grader if i knew there would be synchronous learning i don't want virtual with asynchronous if we did select virtual could we switch to the cohort model if it wasn't working end of comment number 18 comments from mr james santoro located at 5228 apache apache lane comment received tonight
150at 8 18 pm via email comment begins we ask that whatever plan you choose that it takes into account routines and how important they are especially routines of students who are part of our special education programs and children who have autism it also it's also important for families with both parents who work outside the home we have students who are part of the delaware county votec program and need to make sure they can fully participate in that program as this is a career path for the students and we all know that we need more people in the trades as well as the other programs that are offered in the delaware county technical school routine is important and having students go into morning some days and afternoon other days could impact many of our students one
151way or another if you're going to do the half day model we just ask that you consider having students participate only in caps in the morning and school learning or only in caps in an afternoon in school learning not splitting it up if that is not a possibility we do ask you to consider some flexibility for students that fall in the categories above listed listed above we know you are in unprecedented times and that this is not easy thank you for your consideration and of comment next comment from angel carol we're going to skip this comment there is no address that has been provided ms hanson can you look back at that email for me please or email miss carol to see if we can get her email her physical address next comment timothy bruno
152located at 58 north penn street clifton heights comment received tonight at 8 32 via email comment begins many plans have been proposed for continuing athletics and the proposed plan seems feasible my question is what plans and policies are in place for non-athletic activities such as music theater and other student activities end of comment next comment from lee jordan located at 90 pilgrim lane in drexel hill comment received tonight at 907 via email comment begins will there be time in between the sessions to sanitize the school it just seems like a lot of moving parts end of comment next comment by laurie patterson located at 717 concord avenue in drexel hill received at 9 13 tonight via email comment begins number one what percentage of the distance learning in the recommended models will be synchronous will
153the same curriculum be offered number two how many parents will need to opt into a full-time virtual model for there to be synchronous learning number three if and when there is a move to at home learning is the district prepared to provide rigorous academic synchronous learning end of comment next comment is from miss michelle fitzpatrick again no no uh physical address ms hinkson can you reach out to ms fitzpatrick so we can get our comment in prior to the end of the meeting next comment is from mr chris kulp located at 9 30 fairfax road in drexel hill tonight it was received at 9 22 via email comment begins hello board members and thank you for all for all your hard work if an elementary child is staying home and going with virtual learning will
154they still be sticking with an am or pm cohort end of comment that's in that's the end of all the comments that meet the guidelines for submission of comments we still have two pending comments um if dr mcgarry would like to respond while we're waiting for those or you tell me what you'd like to do next well i think there was so many questions i don't i don't want to you know have him try to remember all of the comments i think i want to direct people to the fa keys that we'll be uh making more robust and adding answers to uh i think we have all of the the comments captured in the spreadsheet if i'm not mistaken so that will be the uh that will make up the gist of the faqs that
155in addition to the one that already exists just expanding on that so everyone will be able to go get the answers that uh they need also there are some comments coming in in real time right now so if you will be patient with me i can look to see if there's anything that we have not covered sure so what we'll do is um you know we i think you detail the elementary school plan and we have a motion for that um okay so we'll we'll just we'll wait for the rest of the comments and then we'll actually vote on then we'll do the others okay i'm ready with the next one sure we have miss bonnie prindyville we do not have her address on the record miss hinkson is is uh finding that miss bonnie
156prinnyville is the secretary of the district so we know her personally we do know that she lives in the area we will provide her her physical address for the record however her comment reads what will happen if and when a student teacher staff member or visitor to the building or anyone that lives with they live with or come into contact with outside of school comes down with covet 19 won't the teacher and all the students he or she came into contact with have to be quarantined for two weeks what about the student the teachers do not have oh i'm sorry excuse me this has been covered i apologize so when you say it's been covered you're saying it's been it's been read oh it's been written yes sir got it okay this comment is from
157miss michelle fitzpatrick located at 908 roberts avenue her comment begins and it came in at 9 16 p.m our comment begins please help me to clarify this plan how is it fair that each of our drexel hill middle school teachers are responsible for five periods a day with 32 students equally totally 160 compared to to 5 out of 20 students totaling 100 for bhms this is not fair to the drexel hill teachers and to the students of drexel hill that need more independent help i understand you can't split even but this is almost 60 percent difference my concern is office hours and distance learning support will be much more for the dhms teachers will they be able to meet each student's needs end of comment there's still comments coming in yes this comment is from
158miss kia reeves she did not include her address this comment is from mr christopher culp which i believe we already read yes we already read so we're all caught up okay um all right so i think we're at the point where we can vote and we're going to vote on the elementary one we've read all we've heard all the public comments that have come in to date so with that said we are voting on the elementary school option recommended by dr mcgarry all those in favor please signify by saying aye hi hi hi hi hi those opposed please signify by saying i oppose and state your name for the record leo dogs are opposed okay those abstaining please signify by saying i abstain and state your name for the record okay motion carried the middle
159school option dr mcgarry you want to just quickly summarize that particular yes as we've gone through all of them the the administration is cohorts on teams four days a week rotating with am and pm sessions there'll be three cohorts at the middle school level with wednesdays for an opportunity to catch up on work asynchronous instruction will take place on wednesdays teachers will have office hours professional development and lesson planning time thank you very much are there comments from the board on the middle school option yes this is mrs curry okay um i'm i'm a concerned parent about the highland park catchment i know that there's been a lot of comments that have come through about the decision for the administration to take children from the highland park catchment over to drexel hill from beverly hills
160middle school one of my questions is that if we take the students from beverly hills and the new students who just graduated they will be going over to drexel hill as well once covid has um once we've gone back to a nor if you can say quote unquote normal schedule what will that mean for the students that have been taken out of their middle school over at beverly hills and this is directed towards dr mcgarry what would that mean for the students and how will the adjustment be made to help the student if they from what i understand have to go back to beverly hills um if we get if we do get back to a regular schedule thank you yes and depending on how this works out miss curry thank you for your question
161um depending on this works out the flexible opportunity um may be that that it's beneficial on some level but if it's not and we've returned a full in person and that's the recommendation um and it's safe enough to do that yes we would recommend at the break an easier transition at winter break if we could return in the spring to full in person learning then yes we would encourage that beverly hills middle school students would go back to to beverly hills middle school simply because uh we wouldn't be able to fit them all in person in drexel hill middle school and to the other comments uh that i've been i believe that the board has asked regarding to the number of kids in a class historically beverly hills middle school has had higher teacher student
162ratios compared to tracks drexel middle school so i guess my frustration with that comment is what we're trying to do is equalize educational opportunities for in-person instruction in class sizes on average in person that would range between nine to eleven kids in a class at a time compared to a full in-person session at beverly hills where the class sizes are over 30 on average so for me the equity issue is an ongoing piece and we should get behind building a new middle school to ease that for in-person instruction this is not about taking higher achieving students from one neighborhood to another neighborhood it just works out that in the methodology we use which is the same methodology we talked about when we move students around the district anyway this works out better in the in
163the plans that we have so we're balancing it and we will also be shifting teachers from highland park to um beverly hills middle school or to drexel middle school so as students move over we'll also be shifting over uh uh staff dr manfred anything you want to add to that um no dr mcgarry just said the staff will be coming from beverly hills shifting over the drexel hill not from highland park but i understand um what you're saying yes approximately four staff members from beverly hills middle school will be shifting from beverly hills to drexel hill middle school to help account for some of the larger numbers that the teachers will be responsible for at drexel hill thank you dr gary thank you dr manfred any other comments i'll get to the public ones and
164i'm gonna finish with the board any other comments from the board on the middle school option recommended by dr mcgary this is dr heg do we have um emotion on the table or are we just we're just sort of commenting on the plan right now we'll get the comments i didn't do we didn't do the motion yet but we'll get that in a minute we'll just get the comments thank you for reminding me that thank you do you have a comment dr haye yeah yeah i just wanna i just wanna sort of comment and clarify for people that it's um it's four days a week for the school to be open but the students are um gonna be in two days a week for half days each so that the phrasing on some of that
165has been a little bit um a little bit confusing and that there's four cohorts rotating through this four-day schedule coming in twice a week just wanna make sure that's clear for everyone yeah sorry thanks for clarifying that thank you dr hague are there any other comments from the board on the middle school option this is mr des neuers i have a comment certainly please please proceed the coronavirus pandemic pandemic has been and will continue to be a challenge for the world country state and district district administration was charged with developing a plan to reopen district schools in short there is no best answer to this problem i believe that district administration has done an admirable job developing a reopening plan that is that is as fair as possible taking it taking into account the constraints
166under which the district operates financial constraints facilities can constraints employees and student populations etc upper darby is doing more than some districts and less than other districts the reopening plan on which the school board is voting this evening offers the best hope for our students and employees to have a reasonably successful year given the recent uptick in covid19 cases nationally however we have to be ready to implement additional measures if the situation worsens regionally or locally with all this said i support upper darby school district's phased reopening health and safety plan thank you thank you mr disneyrs are there any other comments from the board on the middle school option recommended by administration okay mrs buford additional public comments have come in yes there are two one is from ms angel carroll located at 4202
167garrett road in drexel hill received tonight at 821 she just sent in her physical address comment begins i wanted to know how i can become more involved with the school board and community advisory group slash pupil service committee i would also like to express that i am not comfortable sending my child to school physically but would like to take advantage of the online option and she leaves her email and phone number thank you for your time end of comment the next comment is from mr chris culp located at 9 30 fairfax road um in drexel hill comment received at 9 51 tonight via email comment begins is there a virtual option for middle school students end of comment and there is one coming in live right now this comment is from miss erica fulton located
168at 2634 alden avenue drexel hill comment begins when will notification be sent on what cohort children are assigned end of comment okay so i think we've heard all the comments from the board we've heard all the comments from the public would a member of the board like to make a motion to move the middle school option forward this is don fields as the parent of an upcoming dresser hill middle schooler i would like to make a motion to adopt the hybrid plan as described by dr manfred and dr mcgarry thank you do we have a second dr haggis second thank you all those in favor please signify by saying aye hi those opposed please signify by saying i oppose and state your name for the record okay those abstaining please signify by saying i abstain
169and state your name for the record motion carried okay the uh i think we're up to the high school option uh dr mcgarry you want to just give us a quick synopsis of that option that you're recommending please yes and i appreciate dr haig uh there's you know going back and forth the high school uh has three so elementary two middle school head had four high school has three options uh for virtual instruction uh um in-person instruction flexible instruction so the high school in-person cohorts will be three cohorts we're recommending four periods per day for four days per week essentially becoming eight meetings per three week rotation or five meetings per week wednesdays would be again similar to the elementary school middle school with an opportunity for distance learning catching up on their work communicating
170with staff in virtual meetings staff would have professional development time and lesson planning time thank you very much dr mcgarry do it in the right order this time would a member of the board like to make a motion to move one of these move the high school option that he recommended forward president brown this is david neal i'd like to make a motion to proceed with the proposal by administration thank you for the high school thank you very much sir do we have a second this is leo my second thank you very much are there any comments from the board on the high school option um i just have uh one question and it goes back to the comment um the public comment about those students from the high school who will be going to
171you know have early out and things like that for jobs that they have so i just wanted to see if we could get a little bit of clarification on that so miss curry are you asking for students who already have an early out schedule yes there was a comment from a parent that talked about students who already have early out schedules and also those students who will be going to votech yes ms kelly miss kelly simone and dr manfred will be working with those parents to make sure that they're scheduled just to be clear the high school schedule that we're running is giving the students every class possible that they've requested as if it were a normal schedule so um even down to the leveling at this point in time we're running the schedule for
172those students to work with them so if students need to be in the am or the pm i i can imagine that mrs simone and dr manfred are making sure that they're working with vote tech students and students that have a half day program thank you dr gary are there any other comments from the board on the high school option being recommended hearing that mrs buford are there any comments when the public has any more comments coming from the public yes we have two more comments okay the first comments from is lisa greybull located at 715 blyth avenue in drexel hill comment received at 9 56 pm via email comment begins how are kids with ieps getting their time they need of extra help if they are going to school two times a week end
173of comment next comment from miss danielle king located at 22 west broadway avenue comment received at 9 58 pm via email comment begins is the district going to address the comments and report in regards to what is going to happen if a staff member or student gets covet 19 will they have to quarantine for 14 days if so how will that affect my child's attendance also who is going to teach the other cohort if a teacher has to be out to quarantine and especially if there are not enough guest teachers end of comment thank you okay i think we're ready to vote we've heard all the comments from the board and the public all those in favor please signify by saying aye on the high school option those opposed please signify by saying i oppose
174and state your name for the record those abstaining please signify by saying i abstain and state your name for the record motion carried okay to the next we're moving on to the next item of new business the declaration of an emergency under section 520.1 um president brown yeah can i make a comment i'm sorry can i make a comment this is leah though it's gonna make a comment um before we move on a new business i apologize i just wanted to make sure we got all of our votes out and we heard all of the public comments before i move forward with a comment um i just really want to say thank you to um dr mcgarry the staff the administrators for the hard work and the tireless conversations that we've had in regards to
175these plans um thank you to the teachers for providing their input thank you for the community members parents guardians that submitted their questions and concerns all of those were read and taken in by the board as well as the administrators as well as the superintendent those emails those conversations were vital to this plan and how we move forward i just want to start off by saying thank you to that um i'll leave it at that thank you okay thank you ms dawes the declaration of an emergency under section 520.1 dr mcgarry yes this is a resolution that suggested that since the board has passed tonight or agreed to a flexible learning opportunity as you can see in board docs there is an opportunity for the board to pass a resolution declaring that the school is
176moving in this direction based on the world health organization and center for disease control known as the cdc and prevention cdc they've declared a novel coronavirus copa 19 a public health emergency of in international concern and the united states department of health and human services has declared that covet 19 creates a public health emergency and whereas on march 6 2020 the governor of the commonwealth of pennsylvania proclaimed the existence of a disaster emergency throughout the commonwealth pursuant to 35 pa school code 7301c due to coba 19 pandemic and whereas on march 13th 2020 the president of the united states proclaimed the national emergency concerning the kova 19 pandemic and whereas the cdc pennsylvania department of education pennsylvania department of health and chester county department of health have issued guidance with respect to precautions that should
177be taken in school settings to reduce the spread of cove at 19. and whereas the board of school directors of the upper rv school district finds that it is impossible or impractical to comply with the guidance of the cdc pennsylvania department of education pennsylvania department of health and or chester county department of health and provide education with in-person attendance of all pupils during the prescribed length of school days typical number of days per week and usual hours of classes and now therefore be it resolved that the board of school directors of the upper harbor school district here by declares that it finds that an emergency exists within the school district for the 2020-21 school year pursuant to section 520.1 of the pennsylvania school code due to the global pandemic of covet 19 and certifies the
178same to the pennsylvania department of education and further resolve that a copy of this resolution shall be presented to the pennsylvania secretary of education for approval of the same and the provision of education provided herein and provided for in the attached health and safety plan and further resolved that the superintendent of the upper doge school district or his or her designee is directed to develop a system of educational services provided through direct in-person instruction and instructional activities remote virtual instruction and instructional activities and or other instructional activities deemed appropriate and provided in a manner that ensures that all students that all such instruction ensures that all such instruction and instructional activity shall be provided under the direction of a certified school employee consistent with the attached health and safety plan and further resolve that said
179plan for instruction shall ensure that all students in the district receive no less than 180 days of instruction for the 20 20 21 school year and receive no less than 990 hours of instruction or instructional activities for students grades seven to twelve no less than 900 hours of instruction or instructional activities for students grades one to six and no less than 450 hours of instruction or instructional activities for students in kindergarten and there and further resolved that the superintendent or his or her designation to the extent necessary resubmit the district health plan and safety plan to include this resolution and the attached health and safety plan or to the extent the district has not yet submitted the district's health and safety plan ensure that this resolution and attached health and safety plans are submitted to
180the pennsylvania department of education and seek the necessary approval from the same from the department and further resolve the superintendent or his or her designee to the extent necessary are hereby empowered to respond to any inquiries or requests for information from the pennsylvania department of education to ensure the prompt and timely approval of this resolution attached health and safety plan by the department further resolved the superintendent or his her designee shall report this board the action taken by the pennsylvania department of education on the proposed health plan and safety plan and this resolution as soon as practical and further resolve that the superintendent or his or her designation develop and implement a system to record student attendance and participation in virtual instruction and or virtual instructional activities that is equal to the system used to
181record attendance and participation of students in person instruction and instructional activities offered at district school buildings and take steps necessary to enforce attendance pursuant to school code for all virtual instruction in all virtual instructional activities and further resolve that the superintendent her his or her designee is hereby empowered to take the actions needed to implement the provisions of this resolution and to delegate responsibility for the same to other administrators or employees of the district approved on this date 2020 by the board of school directors of the upper army school district sorry dr maguire i didn't get that can you read that again no i'm always only kidding would a member of the board like to make a motion to move this forward this is mrs mitchell i'd like to move this forward do i have
182a second david neal i second that thank you are there any comments from the board mrs buford are there any comments from the public on this particular new business item 520.1 there are no comments from the public thank you all those in favor please signify by saying aye [Music] those opposed please signify by saying i oppose and state your name for the record okay those abstaining please signify by saying i abstain and state your name for the record motion carry okay the fourth item under new business is the anti-racism resolution would someone like to make a motion for this resolution uh thank you president brown this is a don out downfield i'd like to read the resolution and um move that it be adopted okay you want to read it before we do a second
183sounds good please read okay i'll give a brief explanation and then i'll read the resolution sure i would like to bring forward the following anti-racism resolution the goal of the resolution is to express the poorest desire to stand firm at our collective responsibility to foster an equitable and inclusive environment for every student and for those whose purpose is to serve students to that end i am asking the upper derby school board to adopt the following resolution against against racial and equity first i want to give special thanks to the upper harvey school district equity team for their efforts and assistance in putting together this resolution as well as for all the work they have done in regards to addressing equity disparities within the school district i will now read the resolution resolution supporting the development
184of anti-racist school climate by the board of direct directors of the upper darby school district whereas we are deeply saddened and outraged by the recent killing of george floyd and violence against black men and women and children the subsequent subsequent protests have shined a spotlight on the harmful effects of racism and inequality furthermore the public response has highlighted the racial trauma that our black students families staff and communities have not only endured for centuries but continue to face today whereas we must recognize that racism and hate have no place in our schools and society however we must understand that racism is systemic and it is unconsciously and consciously rooted in our institutions policies and practices consequently we acknowledge that we must look at our own school policies and practices through an anti-racist and equity lens
185to address any traces of racism and inequity that still exists within our own school community whereas we must center the voices of staff students families and communities who have historically endured discrimination and marginalization their lived experiences and stories require attention require respect require empathy and most importantly require action therefore it is essential that we establish an expectation that a diversity of staff students families and community members specifically those that have been ignored discriminated against and marginalized are heard and included on substantive school and district issues whereas we must better educate ourselves and seek to educate the community on the historical and current impact of racism and discrimination on our students families and communities as well as understand our role in perpetuating such inequity through continuous professional development and opportunities for honest dialogue and listening sessions
186we hope to build partnerships in the community focused on overcoming systemic racism and the barriers stemming from and perpetuated by systemic racism by doing so we can create opportunities to ensure that each child has the tools and supports needed to thrive as the district continues to reinforce an inclusive learning environment for all we must review how our current systems and structures prevent equitable opportunities for the students and communities we serve including the curriculum and resources we provide as well as the staff we hire whereas we must advocate to advance civil rights and cultivate an anti-racist school climate necessary to meet the needs of all students in our care our students no matter their identities deserve to feel safe to feel seen and to feel affirmed now therefore be resolved that the upper darby school board
187unequivocally stand firm in our collective responsibility to foster an equitable and inclusive environment for every student staff member parent and community member we commit to use our role as school board directors to recognize respond and speak out against injustice and racial inequity in our school community in support of this goal the upper darby school board commits to the following action steps action area 1 constructing and enacting an equity vision action area 2 engaging in self-reflection and growth action area 3 collaborating with families and communities action area 4 hiring and placing personnel these action areas are described in detail within the district's equity plan upper darby school district comprehensive equity plan proposal 2018-2022 located on the upper dari website upperdarbysd.org page slash 5576 thank you mister go ahead i was going to say thank you were
188you done i think you got to the end yeah i'll have a comment but i'll let you have others comment first okay this is um i'm sorry this is mrs curry i second the resolution thank you are there any comments from the board mr fields well i think mr fields had one as well this is mr des moyers i have a comment okay go ahead the recent deaths of george floyd and others at the hands of law enforcement have sparked deep thought discussion and protest across the united states people and organizations are struggling with the legacy of racism to a greater extent than ever before two years ago the upper darby school district formed the comprehensive deep equity team to review how best the district can incorporate equity into all of its operations policies hiring
189training curriculum discipline etc this process is far from over but the anti-rust the anti-racism resolution on which the board is voting tonight is an important step in the long slog towards equity therefore i'm happy to support the resolution thank you thank you mrs s neuers any other comments from the board mr war savage thank you mr president um i'll keep my comments brief because i realize of the hour of the evening it is but as an openly queer person of color who is an alumni in the school district i fully embrace and support this document and this is just the beginning of a series of steps that has to be taken by not only this board not only the administration but the entire school district community because it is a long time coming and i
190look forward to elevating our words from articulation to personification because that's really what our young people who are making the noise are asking for and that is what full-time alumni are asking for and that is what we need so i support this and i appreciate it thank you any other comments from the board dr haig thank you president brown um i just want to sort of speak to our students and staff and community members that who feel that the change is coming too slowly we i think we all i think i don't i don't want to speak for every member of the board but i have a feeling that what i that they would agree with what i say which is that we know that we are imperfect we know that this is um a
191lot there's a lot of work to be done and that we are far we are far from reaching the goals that um that are set out here but that we're i want every all of our kids to know just how incredibly committed every member of this board is to those goals and that we are open to the criticism that we may be falling short of those ideals and and that we take that criticism very much to heart thank you dr hague are there any other comments from the board mr fields hi um thank you uh president brown this is uh don fields uh i just want to say uh for the people for those of us who've lived here a long time it is time for a lot of us in upper darby to have
192uncomfortable conversations about race and racism only through uncomfortable conversations can we really have an honest dialogue about race racism our preconceptions and our prejudices and so i implore you everyone to sit and have those conversations if you come away from a conversation and you didn't feel uncomfortable your worldview hasn't changed that was an uncomfortable conversation okay so and that's all i have to say on that thank you mr fields ms dawes sorry i was having um new issues so i support this document and mo i think our our children are demanding a change in the culture of the community and the change in the culture that is seen in such a diverse school um i look forward to being a part of an environment where the kids feel comfortable about speaking up and that speak
193up isn't just a program but it then becomes the adopted practice of our our youth and the teachers that are fighting to do the right things for our youth in the comments mrs carey thank you miss dawes miss carrie yes good evening um this is mrs curry i would just like to say that i fully support the anti-racism resolution i feel that we have been working extremely hard on the deep equity team to work on the comprehensive plan and as leah said um as an african-american woman who lives here in this community um and has been a part of this community for 16 years and my children have gone through this district and are still there i fully commit myself to equity in this community and it is it is really really important that when
194children come forward or staff members come forward or administrators come forward with issues like don fields says that are uncomfortable that we don't get uncomfortable that we listen that we have to be slow to speak and listen and so i just would encourage everyone through this that we can continue to work together and that it will be courageous that those conversations are courageous and that they're sometimes they don't feel good when they come forward and so we need to be able to accept those comments and work diligently to understand racial trauma to understand victimization and to understand that these things do happen so i just want to thank this board and this administration for supporting this important effort to come out to the public in the community to let them know that we are working
195on this and that we have not turned a blind eye thank you any other comments from the board okay i'll say my comment uh obviously this resolution is near and dear to my heart i mean it's serving on this board i think it's very important just because of the makeup of our community and the makeup of our board our board looks like the community so i think we need to have a resolution like this and it needs to be backed up with clear action clear plans um in everything that we do it should become second nature and i spoke about this at the unity uh the unity uh gathering that uh it needs to start with introspect introspection and self-reflection and and um you know the changes that starts with each person so uh i
196do support this resolution um it means a lot to me not just in my school board capacity but in some of the other hats that i wear uh you know we've been looking at this and working on this for a long time so it's it's a it's a good thing i'm happy to see it move forward and i'm happy to see it have the overwhelming support that it does so i think we did we have a i think we had a second uh already so we had comments from the board uh now are there comments from the public on this particular item mrs buford there are no comments from the public on this item okay i think we're ready to vote all those in favor please signify by saying i i those opposed please signify
197by 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 motion carried okay the fifth item under the new business under new business is a resolution supporting renewable energy is there a board member that would like to uh make a motion on this item thank you president brown this is dr heg i would love to read this resolution um and then i will make a motion for its adoption please do thank you this is a resolution urging the general assembly to require 100 renewable energy in pennsylvania by 2020 resolution by the board of directors of the upper darby school district whereas climate change is threatening our way of life by by straining our infrastructure and emergency and social services harming
198our access to food water and energy supply aggravating health conditions including respiratory and heart diseases and causing premature deaths related to extreme events whereas the 2018 united gov united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change found that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees south is the minimum manageable temperature increase necessary to avoid massive local and international socioeconomic disruptions and will require rapid and far-reaching transitions in food production industry buildings and transport whereas existing safe reliable and cost effective clean energy power generation can meet the internationally agreed upon goals whereas a renewable energy initiative can produce large numbers of well-paying local jobs in our region and whereas upper derby school district is committed to principles of equity justice and inclusion and transitioning to 100 percent clean energy can help advance these goals by saving money that can
199be invested into under resource schools for bars sorry that's my my my ad lib there does not save the resource and helping to address climate change which disproportionately impacts low-income communities and communities of color be it resolved with the upper darby school board one encourages residents businesses and institutions in the upper darby school district to join in the county state national and international movement to transition to 100 clean renewable energy by 2050 i i hear i misspoke 2050 is the goal not 20 20. yes you scared me and number two seeks to act in partnership with nearby school districts with similar commitments where possible including the exploration of all viable cooperative energy purchasing opportunities and number three supports bipartisan legislation that embodies the goal of requiring the entire state to use 100 renewable energy for
200all purposes later than 2050 this is house bill uh 1425 and senate bills six 6-0 in the current legislative session by signing the pen environment coalition letter which is attached here and number four will submit a copy of this resolution to the elected officials senator tim carney and representatives margot davidson and mike zabel of the upper darby school district in the general assembly and to the governor of pennsylvania this is resolved this 14th day of july 2020. the penn environment letter is attached but i won't read it now um so i would like to move this resolution for adoption thank you doctor this is mrs mitchell i'd like to second it thank you are there any comments from the board i i would like to make a comment and i'll try and keep it someone
201somewhat brief but um as you all know this is something that's that's very important to me um our our primary responsibility as a district is to prepare children for their future and if we're gonna do this properly we can't ignore the fact that there's an existential threat to their future in the form of climate change um the fact that climate change disproportionately impacts low-income communities and communities of color means this issue has a heightened importance for our district we can't claim to have equity at the heart of our planning without addressing climate change and for a school district or another entity to transition to 100 renewable energy requires action on three fronts the source of electricity must be renewable uh local use of oil and gas such as for heating and cooking has to be
202converted to electric but then the third front is often forgotten and that's energy efficiency and the good news is that investments in energy efficiency can often pay for themselves through energy savings sometimes in a relatively short amount of time we are so lucky to have marvin lee and craig harnicek who've already gotten a shout out once tonight but they deserve it they deserve two shout outs um both of them are really knowledgeable on these issues and are already looking into projects that we can undertake to save energy and money but but while we can make progress on that path ourselves the the two other fronts that i mentioned changing the source of our electricity to renewables and converting our oil and gas consuming appliances to electricity those are much more challenging goals for us well
203i hope that we can use some of our savings from energy efficiency to fund projects on those two areas as a severely underfunded district it will be difficult to afford the investments and renewables that we need to make and so what we really need is action at the state and federal level and that is why we we need this resolution we're asking for state action and finally i want to uh thank my fellow board members for their anticipated support of this resolution and i look forward to are making some progress on this essential issue thank you dr hague we have are there any other comments from the board this is david neal um i just want i i concur with uh matters statements we have uh extremely talented employees in the administration that um find
204more energy efficient uh methods of you know heating our schools and and and construction materials all that and i applaud them for that and i think recently during the summer with the pandemic and the fact that upper darby has been so transparent in the methodology that we've used to understand what our community wants and and what we need during the school year coming up a lot of school districts have emailed us um offering support and saying hey we saw your presentation we think it's great and so a lot of people are looking towards upper rv and i believe this is another initiative that upper darby can champion and provide a leadership role in so i just want to thank the administration for all that they do in regards to that thank you mr thank you
205president brown uh thank you dr haig for bringing this forward uh um i really appreciate it um and thank you to our administrators uh for supporting uh these efforts uh uh marvin lee and heart attack who were already mentioned um i want to say uh so arbor darby's like this perfect storm of of uh things that come across that that kind of pile on each other as far as problems um it's a high level poverty uh climate change is an issue and then and then we have this cobit and the point i'm making is that one of the one of the results of climate change is a higher level of asthma and then one of the groups of people that are very successful to cover 19 and are endangered with coca-19 are people with asthma
206and so things like this they're on top of everything else they're a public health measure right to address these things so i just wanted to make that statement how important this kind of work is and i really do appreciate it thank you mr fields are there any other comments from the board okay miss before are there any comments from the public on this item there are no comments from the public thank you all those in favor please signify by saying aye 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 i abstain and state your name for the record motion carry okay our 99th i'm sorry our sixth item under new business is the transportation routing software services mr rogers
207and i'll try to make this quick i only have a 12-page resolution to read so tonight we actually are just bringing forward a new transportation routing software and an additional service you'll see the attached resolution outlines the breakdown it's an initial three-year deal that would have two one-year options to make it a full five year if we continue down the path uh with this service you'll see in the first year there's a spike in the cost uh just about eighty thousand dollars over the annual cost which is also eighty thousand dollars over our anticipated budget going into this year for this service uh but we are very confident that that eighty thousand dollars will be more than covered in the savings that it'll it will uh produce and also increase our transportation subsidy revenue based
208on the efficiencies that are built into this type of software so we are as an administration not concerned about the increase of that eighty thousand dollars there and that's a one-time cost it's more set up uh and initi initiating the uh software and services so if the board has any questions i'd gladly answer just a quick one you said you would more to make up for that eighty thousand dollar cost and efficiencies over what time you just immediately i mean i think within the first year with a good answer without without a doubt in the first year that the um savings will cover the additional 80 000 okay thank you would a member of the board like to make a motion to move this forward this is david neal i'll make the motion to move
209this forward thank you do we have a second i think i think i had a second already all right are there any other comments from the board this is uh don fields a quick comment thank you craig and thank you marvin for finding these things i think they're great it was all marvin are there any other comments from the board this is mr des neuers i would just like to say this is uh um this is a great example of um what analytics and technology can do for us thank you very much thank you are there any other comments from the board hearing none ms buford are there any comments from the public there are no comments from the public okay all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed please signify
210by 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 motion carried we are now at the time for the public hearing we will read both emailed and phone comments which are subject to the three minute time limit it must include the com the commenter's name and address so mrs buford i know we heard extensive comments earlier on one new business item but are there additional uh comments to be read at this time there are no additional comments to be read at this time okay is there a motion for the adjournment of the meeting meeting adjourned have a good night thank you everybody bye-bye thank you