001foreign good evening everyone welcome tonight we are starting over good evening everyone welcome to the Brandywine School District Board of Education regular meeting for Monday July 17th 2023. we are live in the Brandywine High School auditorium also via Zoom broadcast Miss Harris may I please have a roll call here president here thank you Miss Harris this time I would like to ask Miss Karen Gordon to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance English stands one nation under God into this liberty and justice this time I'll entertain a motion to approve this evening's agenda so moved second motion Miss Gordon second Mr Heller all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries tonight we'll start off our special presentations and recognition with uh some DreamBox winners good evening I am Michelle
002Hawley I serve as the supervisor for math science and gifted services for the school district and I am very excited to be here tonight to present our district level DreamBox Award winners DreamBox is an online game-based math program that we provide to all students in the district in grades K to eight it's a great tool for independent practice and helping them practice their math in meaningful ways but that in ways that are fun as well every student gets a personalized pathway so part of our goal with providing this competition each spring is to just get students in there and playing because it will automatically adjust to their needs so tonight we recognize the accomplishments of the top performer at each grade level across the district in total these students have completed over 2 700 lessons
003digitally in DreamBox just during the month of May as I call your name yeah as I call your name please come up front to get your reward and then we're going to stand and take a picture with everybody before we head to the lobby so for grade K from Mount Pleasant elementary school we have Valerie Westfall and she is not in the auditorium tonight okay grade one at Hamby srinivasan mukil come on down okay in grade two also from Hanby Elementary School Danish manukonda okay not here tonight grade three at Claymont Arya terractor Arya completed an astonishing 552 lessons during the month also from Claymont in grade four Christopher Johnson in grade five from Lombardi Monica Q not in the auditorium okay grade six from tally Middle School mid Hakeem it's not in the auditorium
004okay grade seven from P.S Dupont pie on Scott congratulations and raid 8 also from P.S Dupont Naomi Cooper she's not here students we would like for you to come down and gather in the lobby oh we're still working on do we have another winner come on up if that is finished and this is Denise from Hamby in second grade congratulations all right thank you very much this represents a lot of hard work and we appreciate your accomplishments congratulations I just want to say congratulations to the students you did a great job and thank you to the parents for supporting them and instilling a love of education and doing extra work outside of school will always serve you well so I hope you continue with DreamBox next year and ask one small favor to find a
005friend that didn't do DreamBox this year and bring them on your journey next year can you do that thank you very much and next up we'll have a overview of our administrative Retreat presented by Dr Lawson and Mr bevere good evening thank you Mr scrobot Mr Heller superintendent holder and more wonderful members of the board as well as our audience we're here this morning to share a little bit about our administrative Retreat that occurred last week this is just a broad overview it was four very intense focused days of work by all of our administrators inclusive of district office administrators building administrators to include principles assistant principals and our deans of students next slide so all of the work that we did over the course of four days aligns with our district success plan if
006you aren't familiar with the district success plan it is posted on the website we have four goals we're going to go through a high level of what we did each day aligned with each of those goals but once the district success plan was finished each of our schools was tasked with coming up with their own School continuous Improvement plans and we call them continuous Improvement plans because that's exactly what we're asking our schools to do continuously improve and grow and get better in the work that we do goal one is around high impact instruction of course right that's why we're here we're Educators to educate our children so we're making some curricular shifts going into next year we're really looking at our data and taking a deeper look in terms of what are the achievement
007gaps the learning gaps that students have experienced since covid and what do we need to do with our high quality instructional materials and remember that was legislation that was passed last year in Delaware that we must have high quality instructional materials in front of our students so we'll be making those curricular shifts we're adding curriculum in the area of ela thanks to the work of Tracy selikman and the teachers that she asked to be part of that committee for 9th and 10th grade we are adopting a curricular package that we believe aligns very well with the standards we talked a lot last week about solid solid teaching practices we need to make sure that our administrators are up on the latest teaching practices so that when they go into classrooms to observe teachers and they
008apply the Delaware teacher growth support system which is our new evaluation system that they will be able to provide our teachers with actionable feedback right that they will be able to let the teacher know this was your area of strength this was fantastic what about this and what were you thinking as it relates to this and how we can continuously grow and improve our Educators as well the other thing that we talked about in relation to this goal was calibration among our administrative teams teachers need to know what to expect when we're coming into classrooms it's not a secret it's not a gotcha it really is about growing our teachers and making sure that they are providing the best to all of our students good evening throughout the retreat we also focused on goal two
009creating a climate and culture that results in a positive learning environment in which all students feel safe and feel a sense of belonging we emphasize the importance of developing mtss systems to ensure the desired building culture is established from the very first day of school it's critical that the desired student behavior is taught reviewed and enforced in order for all of our students to reach third learning targets this work always begins with developing strong relationships with students we modeled relationship building activities as well as examples of classroom collaborative structures our superintendent led a session review on Safety and Security protocols he highlighted a number of safety initiatives that BSD has implemented put in our district well ahead of other districts in the state we conducted a safety tabletop exercise practicing or emergency responsiveness donor crisis
010school administrative teams also review the appropriate application of the student code of conduct through sample scenarios administrators calibrated their responses with other administrators from their own building as well as other District administrators Dr Lawson led a session updated administrators on number of the new laws passed this legislative session around student discipline and social emotional learning administrator's head input on how we can best Implement these requirements we were reminded how lucky we are to have a number of influential people in this District like Dr Lawson who helped push or prevent legislative language at the state level and lastly we invited equity and Beyond to lead a session on continued development of our leadership skills as they have done so with the school board earlier this year and talking about all stars our very own Mr Lisa
011McIntyre shined in her training around goal through a talent management the administrators walked away better understanding policy by digging into our very own board policies the ministers were trained on how to lead investigations and how they can best support their staff through the evaluation process ministers also received the state's required trainings on Title IX discrimination and sexual harassment we also discussed the district and schools Recruitment and Retention practices considering what approaches will result in hiring and keeping our excellent Educators while other districts across the country are struggling to fill their positions and then bringing it home day four and goal four we talked about operational excellence um Jill floret our new CFO did a wonderful job of presenting uh budgets not only the District budget but building budgets and all of the do's and don'ts
012around purchases the way that she would be able to pull state law and regulation right off the top of her head was impressive um one huge piece this year is that she is allowing our schools to carry over 15 percent of funds from year to year so that they can make very strategic decisions about how to use their building budgets Ms Jones Davis presented on family and Community Partnerships and how we as individual buildings in schools and also as a district how we can strategically partner with many organizations private in the community in order to better support our young people in the buildings and our staff as well Miss Flores also provided a school funding overview both the state of Delaware landscape and Brandywine School District's landscape taking us all the way back to our
013successful referendum in 2016 showing us exactly how we got to be where we are and preparing us for our 2024 ask to the community and then John Reed of course did a fabulous job explaining our Capital Improvement needs in the Brandywine School District always with a little bit of humor but with excellent history and you want to talk about someone that can rattle statistics off the top of their head hang around John Reed for a while it was just an excellent day and we are primed and ready for our 2024 ask referendum and that is it does the board have any questions for us in relation to our work last week um just one small question you mentioned the new assessment system yes if I recall we were a pilot for that is that are
014we still in the pilot phase or is that fully transitioning excellent question we did pilot all last year we are so thankful that delithia came forward and said I think we should do this we believe everyone was more relaxed our teachers were relaxed we were learning right alongside of them I think we're primed and ready to go um better position than other districts but we start Full Throttle for real this year it the pilot was just one year appreciate the presentation sad that I had the opportunity to speak with more than one attendee of the admin Retreat and kind of what's not covered in your presentation is that the response seemed to be that the vibe was just different this year very positive very engaging a lot of energy we have a lot of new
015faces in a lot of new positions and I was very uh proud and grateful to hear that there's a lot of positive energy and that the retreat was so well received and all this energy is going into the start of the new year so thank you for everyone that participated in thank you uh funny that you say that we I pulled a statistic and it wasn't even new to their position but four new principles six new APS and seven new Deans completely new but yes we had some movement too so you're right it was a lot of team building to get our new school teams um gelled in together it was a it was a great time thank you thank you so much and next up we have uh High School Ela curriculum update Dr
016kuch from the southbound good evening president scrobot Vice President Heller board members superintendent holder for the last year and a half we've been providing regular updates through board meetings Friday packets on our progress for our grades 9 through 10 Ela adoption we are happy to announce that we have made a selection and will be sharing our adoption story tonight but rather than me tell this story I'd like to hand it off to the folks who participated in this journey firsthand good evening my name is Tracy selikman and I am the secondary literacy coordinator for the district my name is Elizabeth tedrick and I teach at Mount Pleasant High School you know I'm going to be below it and I'm Robin Houghton and I am the ELA department chair at Mount Pleasant okay so um as
017you know we have worked through a year-long process of learning about hqim creating a vision and criteria reviewing and piloting um and getting support from the Department of Education um so tonight what we're going to do is just kind of walk you through our journey briefly um so I wanted to start off with something that Dr Lawson already referenced tonight which is um that the the Delaware Department of Education started this careful look at hqim and its impact on student learning back in 2017 and really what they did was they charged leas with making sure that they were closely evaluating and making sure that we had instructional materials in front of our students that were of high quality so that's where we started it off and that would include of course all tiers of Education
018so through the support from the Delaware Department's competit the Delaware Department of of education's competitive RPL that's the reimagining professional learning Grant we have received we received funding to support the challenging work of reviewing and adopting new curriculum using best practices such as Vision setting and criteria development in addition it has allowed us to identify areas for Teacher professional learning there's lots of support that you see up here that the state has been trying to provide different leas and I just wanted to point out too that we're super important to me one is that curriculum support guide which has been a little bit of a Bible for me taking you all the way through the process from beginning to end with really great comprehensive questions to ask along the way and then the other one
019is the the professional learning Partners guide this was important for us in selecting supports so as next slide as part um yes as part of the grant we received from the Department of Education to support hqim we enlisted a third party objective support from tntp to assist us in the high school review process we selected tntp because they are an approved doe vendor from that guide they are a national non-profit that is focused on not only ensuring great teaching in every classroom but also more important to me is that they have been really working hard to build capacity in our staff so that moving forward we we can grow and we can teach each other um okay so um this is a list of the amazing um the amazing staff that we had who are
020represented from each building as you can see um and there is also a special education and MLL Representatives I also would like to thank David walls coordinator of secondary special education and Dr suhaili Solano coordinator of multilingual learners for taking time to do a preliminary review of all of our curricula through the lens of effective supports for teachers for our diverse learners foreign so our timeline actually we were able to stick to it which was very exciting um the high school curriculum committee worked systematically and thoughtfully through a curriculum review process using steps recommended by both Delaware Department of Education BSD and our tntp partner we followed the timeline you see here and as I said we're able to pretty much stay on track I think I can read it off of there but I'm
021not sure okay so I'm going to share the criteria with you and then Liz who's on a pro at reading this vision is going to read it to you so the criteria and these were set by the teachers along with the admin on the staff and having a discussion so it was a process that we went through to narrow it down and the things that we said were non-negotiables we're building knowledge of self and others through diverse high quality texts including novel options multiple writing and research opportunities evidence-based discussion and caliber collaboration supports for all students supports for all students usability and a depth and breadth of Assessments including having a self-assessment reflective section for students as well as teachers I feel like it's sort of like the how many English teachers does it take
022to change a light bulb when we all draft one statement in one room all these English teachers um so we finally came up with BSD High School ELA teachers will provide high quality instruction grounded in literacy research that will support students becoming engaged Learners students will interact with rigorous diverse grade level texts and tasks to build knowledge analyze perspectives appreciate literature and see themselves in others our students will regularly engage in meaningful critical thinking and inclusive collegial discussions students will write routinely for a variety of purposes and audiences to advance their communication skills and to develop self-efficacy in service of becoming productive citizens and we read that every time it should be for every meeting this is oh no it's not sorry okay um as part of the review process we just wanted to share
023that the committee gathered stakeholder feedback at different points along the way throughout the year as you can see we gathered a teacher parent caregiver student and school administrative feedback and we're just we're going to touch on a few of these in um in some slides that are coming up all right so the first thing that we're going to talk about is that after we worked as to Pilot and there were pilot people piloting in every building across the district we um did a survey I guess is what we call a survey and these were the things that we came up with that were the strengths of the my perspectives program which we wanted to go with and we eventually did um and that was the rigor of the unit tasks and assessments so we would
024be able to use these with all students in all programs and have the same materials available to everyone and everyone be exposed to the same levels of rigor um planning supports for teachers uh has a depth of materials that can be used and suggestions for when and how they should be used and then supports for diverse Learners it has a great program in my particular classroom I had students whose home language was not English and they were very different languages I had a young man here from the Ukraine with me for this year and he was able to using the program click a button and see what he needed to see and then he would go back to English and it made it much more effective for him and I look forward to using that
025again in the future and it was just doing that next slide so as Tracy mentioned a few slides ago the curriculum committee and the pilot teachers are somewhat different um so all teachers had the were invited to attempt the curriculum and these were the people that went through with that pilot so we had ninth and 10th grade teams and won 12th grade teacher Katie Winters at Brandywine as well as the MLL and special education teachers okay so we were able to um as I said adhere to that hide line um to that timeline and um that Inc the experiences um that we were able to share and get from teachers uh was um not I'm sorry it was not just teachers but also our students so um in order to better understand their experience with
026the pilot um and their Ela experience in general um tntp mbsd conducted and actually me conducted a student focus groups using an empathy protocol adapted from tntp's opportunity myth to help inform our implementation for the next year so our student focus groups included representation from all three high schools and all levels of classes so these were some quotes from students um when Tracy came and and asked for feedback about the curriculum and they're really positive and we're just going to read through some of them so regarding accessing content outside the typical Ela classroom students have said we are learning about the psychology behind fear which was one of the units and it's better than just learning to write a claim uh it was cool to learn about older texts rather than just hours now so
027we can learn more about what happened in the past some of the stuff from Poe Ed girl and Poe is different from today and is different from how we would talk with our kids and families it gets me out of my comfort zone and out of what I am used to so that Harkens back to our vision statement about seeing yourself and others and experiencing the world Beyond yourself access to challenge and rigor it is more challenging it makes you go in depth and have to go back to the text to really answer properly and more two-part questions and then give giving evidence for how we think and usability I like the vocabulary and you can write your notes or we don't understand that one word the definition is right there Smith Alton was saying
028with her particular student and also I agree because the books have all the things prepared it is helpful to have it at home if I need it and not need the book it is good to write in the book and just looking more closely at quotes number two and three we'll call them in my own experience in the classroom we were talking about a story written by an Argentinian author and it was called House taken over and it's really sophisticated there's a lot of complex literary elements like magical realism and we started talking about it's a ghost story well who's taken over the house and the students I don't know and you're not wrong like this is a place where that answer is not wrong you don't know because the author made it ambiguous on
029purpose it is big on purpose and we have these conversations well what's ambiguity and why did the author do this and it was just really powerful and rewarding to have that experience because of the high quality instructional materials in front of us that it yielded such a rich opportunity to engage in that deep level learning that would probably not have arised with with other material and it's not to say that teachers don't know how to select these things it saves us the time from having to go through all of that so I it just was a relief and it was really cool to see it as we were doing it the success that it was yielding in the classroom and um this slide is showing you how the pilot teachers compared um hmh was the
030other pilot that we did and my perspectives on each of our evaluation criteria and as you can see um the teachers both curricula were generally positive as a matter of fact we went into the final days unsure which way we would end up going but at the end of the day we did rate my perspectives higher in all areas um I guess equal and one and we decided that it more was stronger in terms of these five career and fitting with our Ela Vision that we chose um I just I'm not going to take as much time I just want to share that along with Liz it the teachers um experiences in my building anyway that I was talking to regularly of having these materials was uh really different for them in that we really
031focused on the how we were going to deliver it making choices about the specific kids in my classroom rather than creating materials and that was something that was very rewarding for us as a department and we're really excited to build on that this year going forward it was a hundred percent unanimous from my perspectives yes okay so um we're at the close here um and I just wanted to share some of our next steps um we have three buckets here um during our uh so we have our teacher professional learning which is um is the first bucket um during our June professional development all 9th and 10th grade ELA teachers took part in a curriculum training provided by the publisher in order to orient teachers to the materials uh look at the architecture overall as
032well as at the lesson level uh this week I'm running a professional learning session to work with teachers to develop a scope and sequence for the year unpack units and identify common assessments to prioritize throughout the year we will use any if we have any provided PD days as well as grade level PLC time across the district to support planning with the new materials as well as focusing instruction on each school's instructional Focus area um the second bucket is leader professional learning leader professional learning will be provided monthly for our content admin to better understand the materials and what they're seeing in the classrooms especially as they relate to the new evaluation system the dtgss as well again as their connection to the school's instructional goals and then finally on the last bucket is the
033quarterly progress monitoring and we will be doing that monitoring throughout classroom visits using analysis of student work and feedback from stakeholders throughout the year as we did in Middle School thank you questions I have one question just to clarify it was the same group of teachers that evaluated both of the options is that correct yes um and then more of a general question when we select new curriculum is there a minimum length of time that we commit to that curriculum so there I mean it's five to six years usually um and that's and that would be because it number one it does take about three years to actually get you know to actually real I don't want to say start seeing results but it's you know it takes a lot of learning um and so
034um yeah usually it's five to six years okay presentation um and uh what you've given us and just the thoughtfulness behind um uh quite frankly your your uh piloting of the both of the programs here is actually very very excellent so congratulations thank you um my question is that um so with a side note that there's a lot of digital resources which is awesome well we also have print books well we have books for like a classroom set yeah so all teachers will have a teacher a hardback teacher edition what we are going to do is the same thing we did with middle school which is have consumables for students and they will get them every year and so that gives teachers the choice of how they're going to use whether I've seen in middle
035school they use teachers go back and forth using the online platform especially it's helpful at home when when kids are at home or they're sick or or whether they choose to use it in the classroom or they can use the hard copies wonderful and then also I see Will We Will the district also then be getting to turn it in as well I'm sorry will the turnitin will that also oh yes um actually so um turnitin is actually embedded in the curriculum so when they do the writing it's it's a part of the learning that teachers are going to have to do within the curriculum so a lot of them know how to use turnitin already but um but I don't know if that may look a little bit different online on the on the
036curriculum itself the platform that's great hopefully turn it in we'll have an AI chapter two as well important Mr salkman uh just for the sake of the audience it's listening can you explain what turnitin is yeah it's a it well it's actually a um it's a checker for resources so you're checking for plagiarism basically um and it's you the teachers have used it for years now at the high school not so much at the middle school um but it also is now they're developing the AI piece to look for AI um it's not yes of course none of it's 100 accurate at this point but yeah it's a plagiarism checker so the old cut and paste turn it in um is is going to be caught and will ensure that kids are producing authentic writing
037pieces I just want to say we don't the kids they can see an originality report and it'll say this much of it is not original or this much of it appears to be AI assisted we can then Coach the kids and give them a chance to rewrite or help them figure out how that happened um and then that usually means the next time they know not and they work around whatever they did the first time so it I found it very effective last year even as that AI was just coming out and kids were just discovering it it led to some really deep conversations about the appropriateness and how and when to use AI when it could be appropriate and that having it write your paper was not I just wanted to now acknowledge you
038know I know we've seen it over the last couple years you know specifically with curriculum our new curriculum the assembling of stakeholder groups to evaluate and get different input and I know the district has done that with you know other areas of the district but specifically with um curriculum so I appreciate the district for doing that and all the teachers that participated in it and I think you know it just speaks to the direction we're going in trying to you know build a consensus generate that buy-in and that will help with the implementation which will be you know translate to the success in the students and learning the material of the teachers enjoy teaching it and see the big picture so thank you everyone that participated thank you thanks thank you and lead us into
039our superintendent's report Mr Holland president scrobot Vice President Heller members of the board and audience members Sora is a digital library the students have access to from their class link portal they can choose to digitally check out books novels magazines and more elementary students in Brandywine were challenged to read a hundred or more minutes a week via our Sora reading platform you can see listed on that slide the winners I mean there was an incentive or the greatest amount of text being read at our buildings and we're thrilled to see the participation of our students you saw earlier this evening the participation in our math challenge here's a summer reading challenge initiative that our kids really grabbed onto each week students that meet the challenge requirements were entered into a virtual raffle with one winner
040per School drawn weekly at the end of The Challenge all students who read at least 100 minutes all four weeks of the challenge were entered to win the grand prize a Nintendo switch light sure what that is but it sounds really wonderful congratulations to the week's winners for high school as shown on these slides the grand prize winner was Lindsay from Claymont Elementary who read over 27 hours so far this summer roughly 200 students participated in the challenge this summer accessing 2 402 books and reading a total of 875 hours very similar to your comment after the math challenge students were acknowledged Mr scrobot everything they students do during the summer will come back to pay off in the academic year next year so congratulations to those students much thanks to the parents for supporting
041them in those efforts in an effort to increase attendance with a camp-like feel we have planned various activities with outside organizations for participating students in our BSD summer programs recently for instance winter Museum came out to our summer Academy with their on-site field trip called once upon a playtime students were introduced to the concepts of childhood and leisure activities from long ago through toys games such as alphabet gymnastics Jacob's Ladder tops Buzz saw and more this included demonstrations from the museum staff and time for students to have Hands-On play learning doesn't end after the final Bell on the last day of school this summer BSD is pleased to offer the 8th grade summer bridge program for identified 8th grade students this program provides Rising freshmen and BSD opportunities to learn and receive accelerated services to
042ensure Readiness in English language arts algebra and social emotional enrichment 8th grade summer bridge program also hosts guest speakers from our three high schools and district office to discuss transitional topics such as graduation requirements extracurricular activities SAT prep study skills and more the Brandywine School District Food Truck Brandy dine is again delivering fresh and healthy meals through the summer Food Service program where all children aged 18 and younger are able to receive meals at no cost fresh food is prepared aboard the Brandy dime offerings challenge daily offerings Change Daily and include freshly baked pizzas and grilled items such as paninis and burgers sandwiches salads and fresh fruit and vegetables thank you to our school nutrition team and supervisor Colleen Carter for again amazing efforts at keeping our kids fed year round the district is once
043again hosting our summer Fine Arts camp program from July 10th through the 27th the camp has 171 registrations for eight different art experiences this summer weekly camps run Monday through Thursday from 9 A.M to 3 P.M at Mount Pleasant High School and PS Department middle and we also include breakfast and lunch week one featured an intermediate Jazz Ensemble Camp taught by Springers Robert baronio students were treated to master classes from several local jazz artists and performed a completely improvised Jazz com concert on the final day beginning fiddle music taught by Elementary strings teacher Jean Marie Braddock taught elementary students traditional fiddle techniques and performed a concert on the final day music and art genres Through The Years taught by Megan stock and Amanda Fitz introduce students to musical genres and the artists behind them at
044the end of the week their artwork was presented in a gallery walk pop-up exhibit drawing basic anatomy in proportion was taught by Mr Mark Sierra and had students study the many facets of art including creation drawing in Reverse exploration of pastels and charcoal and more week two which runs the 17th today through the 20th has two camps currently in progress the gotta be Jazz Elementary musical taught by it Amanda O'Connor and Amanda Fritz is now in its second week the elementary students will learn basic acting singing and history of jazz which they will use to perform a complete musical in only eight days Mark Sierra returns for a second week to teach a painting class exploring five-layer mixed media acrylic landscape painting watercolor airbrush and more the final week July 24th through the 27th has
045a multimedia art course again talked by Mr cira exploring mechanized mental mini sculptures spray booths and stenciling the BSD summer Fine Arts Camp is the best deal in town for full day deep and enriching educational experience in the Visual and Performing Arts I'd like to thank and congratulate Dr Dominic Pizano who's in the audience this evening who oversees and helped do all the planning and pull off the summer Fine Arts now two years in a row after uh several year Hiatus thank you for your work behind the scenes Dr pizzano my June report to the board I shared this photo of Ford Elementary's ribbon cutting ceremony for their new adaptive playground while a real feel-good story it does pale in comparison to the latest big news coming out of forward this past week we received
046an email from the president and CEO of Special Olympics Delaware that read congratulations on behalf of the Special Olympics Delaware we are honored to declare forward Elementary School and official Special Olympics Delaware unified Champion Banner school for the 2022-23 school year under your leadership this email was to Diana golden principal the forward Elementary School staff and students have demonstrated their commitment to inclusion through Unified sports youth leadership opportunities for students with and without disabilities and a whole school engagement attached as congratulatory letter from the president and CEO of Special Olympics Delaware your banner will be sent out in a few months all we need from yous to tell us how you would like your school's name to appear on the banner once again congratulations on earning the 2022-23 Delaware State unified Champion School Banner thank
047you for all your school does to promote inclusion in Delaware so don't get me wrong I very much appreciate the steps of ensuring our physical structures are inclusive but physical changes don't hold a candle to the witnessing the tangible change of mindsets beliefs into actions actions not for compliance's sake but genuine and sincere deliberate and spontaneous their value statements how many times have we said that our children actually teach us more often than we realize and that we as adults would be better off if we just stopped listened watched and learned it's great to have an Adaptive playground it's amazing to have students who understand and value each other for the differences they have and are accepting the law in the past we've we've caught it on the chin as other districts have Across the
048Nation because we said that we were serious about our efforts in diversity equity and inclusion here is an excellent example of what a focus on Equity inclusion and diversity looks like and the results that we want to see again not the Adaptive playground but the change of heart the attitude and the mindset amongst our children and our staff that all kids matter that that's at the root of what we want when we talk about diversity equity and inclusion those pictures are powerful and I think that alongside the CEO of Special Olympics I think Diana golden and assistant principal Angela Williams the entire staff but mainly the students and the parents of forward on such an amazing accomplishment with that we are going to end the presentation tonight with a Sizzle video for July enjoy [Music]
049with this remember how we counted the body we went one two three remember we're not allowed to put up the tape on these right because that's the only way it is so I don't think it's that one [Music] um [Music] this morning you guys heard from a professional engineer talking about stream engineering so this afternoon I thought we'd like to talk about like high school engineering the Brandywine School District [Music] you may have noticed a familiar face one that's been before us several times in the last few months a member of the BSD National award-winning Samsung assault for tomorrow team and to see a student presenting to our students it's not new that's something that Brandywine has been doing in its stem camps for the past seven or eight years as our youngs engineers look
050at role models who are still in high school in the district and they encourage and support what better role model can there be so Kudos again to our team that planned our summer programming Dr Koch Nicole Warner Rebecca shakowski and a slew of others thank you as always for your attention to offering neat Innovative opportunities for kids to expand their learning as well as hone up on some skills for next year with that Mr President I end my presentation proud to be BSD great thank you Mr holler any comments or questions on the board fantastic I do not have any public comment cards to anybody via Zoom nobody via Zoom this evening that'll lead us into board member liaison reports and updates starting with Mr Ackerman dsba executive board the executive board has not met
051since our last meeting but just a reminder to board members the dsba annual meeting and retirement celebration for Dr marinucci will be August 5th at the doctor at maranushi's Farm I believe it's in Harrington and you should have an email if you don't just drop me a line and I'll get the information to you great thank you Mr Ackerman Miss Gordon any dsba legislative updates the legislative committee obviously has not met um this past month either and our our next meeting is supposedly October 4th well it's fantastic uh District finance committee has not met well we met on July 10th which was the day before our special board meeting July 11th so no updates since then uh the that meeting can be found on our district webpage under board docs for public consumption our next
052meeting is scheduled for August 16 at 5 00 PM Mount Pleasant elementary and Via Zoom will be posted on our website maintenance committee Mr Heller I was on vacation for that meeting after it was rescheduled good notes uh I do not have notes on that I will check and follow up with the board this week parent citizen advisor committee Reverend Perry um we are actually recessed until the fall we are recessed um we I'll touch base with you to make sure that we are touching base with the schools to I know a meeting or two ago we talked about uh generating more interest from the uh parent Representatives so we'll continue to work on that Mr screw around if I can add that that was a point brought out by Miss Lavina Jones Davis at
053our admin Retreat already setting the stage for buildings to have representation in order for us to revitalize and kick off the parent and citizens advisory committee early this year most likely October very good thank you Miss pigeon is not here no update for parents Council students with disabilities uh Wilmington learning collaborative um Reverend Perry I know you have a item do you want to give any update now or save it for the new business item I can save it for the new business item fantastic uh 917 wmph our next meeting is scheduled for July 24th 6 pm via Zoom that will be posted on our website as well any additional board members reports um yes Mr Crow but I do have an additional report if I may sure um so this past weekend I was
054invited to attend the API Coalition Summit in Washington DC which is made up of Asian American Pacific Islander elected officials in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States we heard a welcome address from vice president Kamala Harris's Aid and a keynote message from California congressman Ted Liu and it was a wonderful networking opportunity and a time to learn from other elected officials from where we could compare and collaborate on common issues in our communities and also in the aapi neighborhoods from Massachusetts to Virginia I was very proud to represent the Brandywine school district and make a stronger connection with fellow aapi trustees from the Christina School District Mr Jan failu and Naveen Baker thank you great thank you for the updates sounds like a wonderful opportunity thank you for sharing any other comments updates if not I'll
055just take this time like to take a minute to recognize miss Karen Gordon uh it is with great reluctance that I have accepted her resignation as a board member um but I wanted to thank her for her years of service not only for this board um but she was a 27-year employee of the Brandywine School District former president of the Bea Union she brought a balanced view seen both sides from the classroom and as a board member and as a citizen and I know personally in my time on the board she's been a wonderful listening ear and a calming voice uh when I needed it most um when I had a tendency to go down a rabbit hole she was always there to listen and bring me back so thank you Karen you will be
056missed we'll be counting on your support to help us out come referendum time and certainly our door is always open we hope you'll come back and visit and join us we're here every third Monday and I promise to be back and we do have a little this little well foreign so we will uh Miss Gordon's resignation is effective August 1st uh we'll gather the information for the policies and procedures um to fill that vacancy and we'll post those uh in accordance with those regulations in a timely manner all right with that um moving on for I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second motion missed stock second Mr Ackerman all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries do I have a motion to approve the monthly Personnel report
057as discussed in executive session so moved second motion Miss stock second Mr Ackerman all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries I have a motion to approve student matters as discussed in executive session so moved thank you motion Mr Ackerman second Miss Gordon all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries old business Mr huller social media litigation at the last meeting we reviewed the retainer language around the social media litigation it was asked or I shared that our legal counsel Mr Jim mcmackin had reviewed and had suggested an edit to the language Mr Ackerman asked that we pursue and get a copy of the revised retainer with Mr McMackin's addendum um before going forward and seeking the board's approval or rejection of moving forward with the litigation
058now just a reminder that we participated in a similar litigation that was brought forth against the company Jewel for Vaping the settlement actually goes to the district and its proactive measures to discourage students from engaging in jeweling and vaping this litigation is around social media particularly the company meta although others are going to be identified things like Tick Tock Facebook other social media things that have had adverse effect on today's youth so the attached revised retainer is there and uh it's the board's pleasure as to vote to engage in the litigation or to forgo do we have a motion to accept the superintendent's recommendation to proceed with the contingent fee retainer agreement so moved second have a motion missed stock second reference Perry any further discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed
059motion carries thank you Mr holler new business 10A swearing in of returning board members anybody didn't know we had School Board elections this past May if you blinked you might have missed it but we have returning members Mr Ackerman and Reverend Perry to go after medical Alliance right now Mr Ackerman repeat after me I do solemnly swear we're affirm I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America and the constitution of the state of Delaware and the constitution of the state of Delaware that I will Faithfully discharge the duties of the office and I will Faithfully discharge the duties of the office number according to the best of my ability of school board member according to
060the best of my ability and I do for you I do further assalm we swear that I that I or indirectly paid that I have not directly or indirectly paid offered or offered or promised to pay contributed or all [Music] tribute contributed or offered to or promised to contribute any money other valuable thing as consideration as consideration or reward for giving or withholding a vote for giving or withholding a vote at the election at which at the election at which I was selected elected to set office so help me God welcome back thank you Reverend Perry repeat after me I do solemnly swear or affirm I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America
061and the Constitution of the United and the constitution of the state of Delaware and the constitution of the state of Delaware and that I will Faithfully discharge the duties of the office of school board member and that I will Faithfully discharge the duties of the office of school board member according to the best of my ability and I do further solemnly swear that I have not directly or indirectly paid and I do further solemnly swear affirm that I have not directly or indirectly paid offered to promise to pay contributed or offered to or promised to contribute offered or promised to pay contributed or offered to or offered to or promised to contribute any money or other valuable thing as consideration or reward any money or other valuable thing as consideration or reward for giving or
062withholding a vote for giving or withholding a vote at the election at which I was elected to said office about at the election at which I was elected to said office so help me God so help me God welcome back thank you wording of that can be tricky at times what's that item 10B election of board officers I will turn the gavel over to our superintendent Mr holler nominations are now in order for the office of presidents I would like to nominate our current President John scroll up I'll second that Mr scrobot has been nominated are there any further nominations hearing none I'll ask Mr scrivot if he accepts the nomination I humbly accept that nomination Mr scrobot uh hearing no other nominations you are thus elected by acclimation congratulations on being president of the
063Brandywine school board for the next year thank you Mr Roller and thank you members of the board for your trust in me I appreciate it nominations are now open for the office of Vice President I would like to nominate our current vice president Jason Heller I would second that nomination nomination has been made and seconded are there other nominations hearing none Mr Heller you are elected by acclimation as vice president of the Brandywine school board for the next school year congratulations thank you thank you everyone thank you Mr holler moving on new business 10c draft of First Amendment to establish the Wilmington learning collaboratives and any other updates for the Wilmington learning collab with Reverend Perry the Wilmington learning collaborative met on June the 15th where we our main item on our agenda was to
064vote on our executive director Dr Laura Burgos we also discussed the details of our contract to which the board empowered me to enter into negotiations at that time we also changed our meeting date from a bi-weekly meeting to every third Tuesday of the month so we will meet tomorrow on July the 18th at that time we also discussed um the Wilmington learning collaborative had several number several items that we were responsible for completing during the first year which was our planning year that was outlined in the mou those being but not limited to the governing the appointment of the board the hiring search and hiring of the executive director conducting A needs assessment and root cause analysis the executive director building out the wlc team creating uh the elts and Community councils creating school plans
065and engaging with Educators and School staff parents and Guardians students and community members what we discovered was that uh because the board the full Council was not seated until February February the 9th I believe was was the exact date it was impossible to permit the executive director to be onboarded and to give her or him at that time um an entire year to complete the aforementioned assignments and so therefore as a council we are asking for us to revisit the mou and asking for an extension of the planning year to ensure that the executive director once she is onboarded that she will have um an entire year to do her due diligence to complete the uh the tasks that are before her um and and with that said I do want to add a caveat
066in that um extending the timeline does not hinder the work that we are currently doing we are just asking um for a little more time once she is onboarded again we will vote tomorrow to officially um make an offer to her so that she can start on Wednesday hopefully all goes well um and that and so her official official start date will be July the 19th and that will commence her year of planning to complete this the needs assessments building the teams and connecting with the community and so forth and so this is a first read um for the board specifically I would call your attention to sections 8.1 and you will notice the change in the verbiage that are that is highlighted in bold um planning years instead of 2022 to 2023 It should
067read two and we're adding excuse me 2023 to 2024 school years will be planning periods with additional support this is an addition and the initial phase for implementing it in census initiatives excuse me policies and programs by the wlc the wlc will as soon as possible reasonably as soon as reasonably practical excuse me um conduct a search and hire the executive director which we did and then after the executive director's appointment the wlc will conduct and open and honest needs assessment and the verbiage Remains the Same I would also call your attention to sections 3.2 of the mou entitled governing Council um there's some specific language concerning voting members and ensuring that we are clear about the voting members in addition to language concerning once vacancies occur for example we had a student representative graduate
068this year so Christina would now be responsible for replacing their student representative in addition to the red clay School Board representative um retired from her seat and so we red clay um would now appoint um her replacement and so that language is outlined in the the revisions of the mou other than that the other changes are dates just to coincide with the the extended planning year again this is a first read no action um is being asked to to take place tonight um other than if you have any questions or comments please feel free to um even contact me directly or feel free to respond at this time can I share just um I think it was just an oversight in the editing on page four which was under number two where it says in
069parentheses the planning year and the first year of implementation I'm sorry what page is that uh it's page four of the document second line it says in parentheses the planning year and the first year of implementation I think that doesn't apply anymore if we're adding a second planning year so I think I've just missed in the updates since there's two planning years now so those two years wouldn't cover the first year of implementation age four yes thank you um another typo was um page one the third whereas it says section it refers to section five to us it actually should say section eight which is um the and the original mou the planning year is outlined in section eight not section five so I hope we'll get a revised copy and Supply it in board
070docs and we'll also have that revised copy uploaded for the August meeting as a revised draft Mr President I would just like to say thank you to Reverend Perry for her leadership in getting the wlc off the ground where we are today um I'm 100 in favor of of the revised mou um I think we and others uh while we knew it was going to be a heavy lift we didn't anticipate just how heavy of a lift it is uh this isn't extending an established organization this is creating a new organization from the ground up and the work by volunteers from uh the three districts has just been amazing but it's also taken leadership to Corral that work and and Reverend Perry as you know serves as the reigning president of the wlc and has
071been a driving force behind that work so on behalf of Brandywine thank you Reverend Perry thank you any comments or questions from the board on that or as Reverend Perry said any questions reach out otherwise we'll get the revised draft and that'll be on the August agenda moving on to general information and meeting dates July 26th we have our board retreat at Rockwood followed by our regular August board meeting on the 21st here at Brandywine High School regular September meeting September 18th here at Brandywine high school and our regular October meeting October 16 at Brandywine High School any final comments or questions from the board just one um again thank you president skrubach for acknowledging um Miss Gordon for her her service to the district not only as a teacher but as a board member
072for many years we will be inviting Miss Gordon back to recognize her once she is formally retired from the position that either the August or September board meeting in a special recognition um so looking forward to that opportunity thank you Miss Gordon thank you that'll be well deserved recognition thank you Mr Homer hearing no other comments or questions I will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second motionless stock second Mr Heller all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you everyone for your time and participation this evening we are adjourned see you next month foreign