001foreign all right good evening everyone welcome to the Brandywine School District Board of Education regular meeting tonight is Monday December 12th we are live in the Brandywine High School auditorium also broadcasting via Zoom um Miss Harris may I have a roll call please here president here thank you Miss Harris at this time I would like to ask Reverend Perry to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance justice for all this time I'll entertain a motion to approve this evening's agenda second I have a motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye any pose motion carries let's start off the night with our high school reporters Brandywine High School Evan Gantt for his representative and if you come to the stage uh Podium please hello good evening board members my name is Evan
002Gantt and I am Brandywine high school student council president and I'm here to provide you the school's report for December our winter sports season is kicked into gear our boys basketball team is currently 0-3 with the match against Mount Pleasant on the 15th girls basketball is currently 0-3 with a match against Newark Charter School on the 13th our swim team is currently two in one with a meet against Caravel Academy on the 16th currently there are no updates regarding indoor track for the season yet and our wrestling team season is starting soon with their first match against Odessa on the 21st with all that we wish our teams the best of luck for the rest of the season brandywine's clubs and organizations have been adjusting and getting ready for the winter season myself and other
003students are working with Miss Holman brandywine's College and Career advisor to partner with CT in Delaware and organizing and preparing a Hanukkah celebration within the school this following Monday the 19th Marino is continuing to encourage students to become a part of the student voice adverse advisory a group available for students to engage in discussion and provide input surrounding the ever-changing landscape that is Brandywine High School Brandon's culinary and Hospitality Club has been working on their holiday cookie fundraiser perfectly in time for the winter season for anyone student government and its class offices are beginning to work with mdss to organize large student award breakfasts these award ceremonies will be met for all four grades and to honor students of various strengths Sports academics and Leadership within the school we're beginning to work with the administration
004that conducted The Freshman honorable breakfast this year to turn his plan into action a lot of details regarding the cost and frequency of the awards are still being decided but we hope to have those soon mtss also plans on working on their own student incentives separate from student council such as a student versus teacher basketball match and a talent show throughout the year brandywine's individual class offices are all doing great working on doing fundraisers to provide for their individual individual Prime costs specifically the class of 2025 is currently releasing pre-sales for their winter hot chocolate bombs and other winter treats delivering them on the 19th and 20th that's all I have for you brand new in high school or Brandon High School's report for December and thank you we're members and have a great night
005any questions from Evan no sounds like there's a lot of good student Sports and club and activity engagement so thank you very much for your report of course have a good night next up we have Concord High School Mohamed Udin and tasin akan all right good evening School District board my name is muhammadin I'm the student council president of Concord High School and tonight I am accompanied by my vice president Khan all right and since the November board meeting Concord has of course been very busy just recently our student council and our junior class board have been playing our winter ball as a lot of you have known that our homecoming was very successful and we project numbers just as high as homecoming for our winter Ball but however there were a couple problems you
006know we didn't want to add smoothly and because of those problems we are discussing and we are analyzing what we could have done better and hope to or hope to produce a dance that is even better than homecoming or yeah even better than homegoing all right so another dance that we're of course playing for is the senior prom our prom venue has just been booked and we have we have booked the waterfall venue and started playing out the events one of the biggest problems we had as a senior class board is the budget very tight budget that was left from the prior senior class board but due to this well to this adversity we have because of our homecoming dance have increased our budget drastically and we have if I do math correctly it's 20
007times now just due to our homecoming yeah yeah all right and one of the biggest things we have like to you know share with share with the district about our prom is that we are having a new painted method for our prom so we know that uh in these times after coven and everything families are not there financially yet we're still trying to get into back the motion of everything and because of that we are starting to have it we created a new payment plan for the prom ticket so this ticket is going to be initially 95 but we have broken up these uh payments into monthly payments monthly reoccurring payments we're going to have a 30 around 25 30 down payment and then uh this January and then coming February March April leading up
008the months leading up to uh the problems are going to be a reoccurring 15 or 20 payments something like that we hope that this will create a better um an easier way to implement the prom tickets into family budgets and we want to make it as inclusive as possible and that's why we created the recurring payment system as well as inside of our school Community we have also been very active outside of our community just recently we have we held there is a fall Leadership Conference held at University of Delaware tour of our clubs from Concord had attended dagger as well as Educators Rising this conference was a day-long event and it had lots of activities and engaging moments for students all across for students all across the state of Delaware to engage in and
009we learned a lot of leadership skills and activities then I'll continue along with Deca on the DECA president and recently we've been preparing for our state competition that's going to be held at University of Delaware as well this February uh as of right now Concord concord's Decker chapter is the biggest chapter in the state of Delaware and we're and that is something we take pride in um one of the biggest things that's always going to happen at the state competition down in February is that we were having a canned food drive for the entire state of Delaware I'm a part of the state officer team as well for Deca and we have been uh tirelessly you know planning this event out and hoping that we can raise as many and collect as many donations for
010the New Castle County Hope Center that's the homeless shelter that we're focusing on up here in New Castle County but yeah we're holding a um and we're sorry and we're having a friendly rivalry with AI Dupont High School to see who can which school can uh outperform the other and number of uh donations so that'll be fun to see and I have my vice president speak on other things uh good evening everybody uh I'm the vice president Concord High School um so I'll be speaking mainly about the amazing community service projects that we've been working on um I'm also the president of National Honor Society and me and Muhammad are also events coordinators for interact Club so those are like three of the biggest Community Service uh clubs in our schools so uh we know
011a lot about it so beginning off our interact Club has had our Thanksgiving food drive uh last month in November where we raised a bunch of canned goods and other stuff like that and we donated that to the Newcastle Community Center which Muhammad was also talking about prior um we also plan to do a lot more with the Claymont Community Center uh Miss Davis and Miss Johnson uh we are hosting a coat drive for this winner we plan on giving all the donations to the Claremont Community Center as well as coats to the Brandywine School District community and people who are also struggling uh financially after covet obviously um recently our stockings for soldiers just ended which was um at the Brandywine Town Center it was at the Brandywine Town Center and restocked soldiers and
012sent them off to a veterans who are serving for us and helping us um so internet club and National Honor Society partnered together in hosting as many hours as we can to help out so at that event we had over 200 combined hours through all of our members and we raised a bunch uh made a bunch of stockings and helped a lot of people out continuing on with that National Honor Society uh we have just recently ended our toy drive where we raised over 40 plus toys and also 300 to donate to children at AI Dupont Hospital continuing on our Concord football team this Saturday just hosted the uh football team uh breakfast with Santa as well as the holiday vendor fair and we had over one thousand dollars in sales and that all covered
013funding for classes 24 and 25 for all the events that they have planned such as the winter ball and their prom that they have next year continuing on our science has to Honor Society also had a breakfast Santa event at the Delaware Nature and Science Museum which we helped serve and prepare breakfast for over 300 guests and the staff had amazing things to say about everybody and we've also been invited to the same event next year continuing on with science National Honor Society we also partnered with black student union where we're helping recycle Plastics so we're currently collecting plastic water bottles filled with like common Plastics like chip bags candy wrappers bubble wraps and recycling them into bricks that will hold the garden up lastly uh our sports team I'm I just actually finished my
014uh swim meet like two hours ago uh we but um we were two for oh right now I don't have much to say about the other sports events because I wasn't planning on speaking about them at the moment but I just heard I haven't talked about it so I thought we should talk about our amazing swim team but yeah as you can see Concord has been very engaged in their Community one of the biggest things we were trying to strive for this year is a very engaged Community last year we kind of lacked that Insider school but of course with my new student council board members and student council in general we really want to push that community-based aspect in our school we're seeing making events doing fundraisers doing community service projects just to hope
015to get that idea of community across thank you any questions yeah actually um I don't know if you can hear me um would I be able to learn more about your uh graduated payment plan for prom I mean you don't have to I mean just because whatever everybody said it to me but I'm just curious about that I would love to install that of course thank you so much could you remind me of your name please uh t-o-c-k I also had a question about the um prom are you all taking electronic forms of payment for prom tickets I think so so what we're planning on doing is we're probably gonna do electronic payment method but we also want to help like um sell maybe a wristband or something kind of like as a memorabilia aspect
016as well but I think we do uh accept all types of payments so cash check card everything like that and can you um tell me what the interact Club stands for and what's the goal or mission for that club so internet Club is a community service based Club where we participate in like many events uh just bettering our community it's sort of like NHS in a sense we partner with them a lot because we do have the same sense of morals and stuff and like helping the community also continuing on with internet Club we're also like a leadership based club uh we have a rotary youth leadership academy event uh this President's Day weekend next year I was blessed enough to be able to attend it last year and it was an amazing opportunity to
017help me learn with leadership and events like stuff uh it was a lot of community building team activities and stuff like that it was a three-day long trip in Ocean City um it was this interact Club is basically helping build your skills and Leadership and helping your community and helping everybody else so is it a part of rotary yes it is thank you and adding on to that internet Club um that Riley trip that my Federal Officer was talking about those are for juniors only and we're uh we want to open it up to just Juniors because they are going to be the future of our interact club and as officers they need these essential skills for leadership and stuff like that so since we want to build that Legacy and kind of build that
018foundation for them to hopefully uh take on the next next role thank you there was something you said early on that I was really impressed with your uh I think it was homecoming you say you know as a student body you reflected and wanted to look at you know what you could do different in the future so I really appreciate that that's that's a great thing to do um and certainly the creativity with the payment options for prom stretching it out starting early and you know your your message of of community is being received loud and clear yeah you guys are doing some phenomenal things your groups you know dedicated to it the amount of hours uh the fruit food drives um you know the leadership you know everything you know really focusing on that
019community so well done thank you thank you that's great thank you very much all right thank you for your time and last but not least we got Mount Pleasant High School Dylan Kim and may Wong foreign good evening Mr President Mr vice president Mr superintendent members of the Supreme Joint School District board and members of the brand new on School District Community my name is Dylan Kim this is May Wong and we are the student council president and vice president of Mount Pleasant High School so we recently implemented a feedback Forum where students can submit any feedback ideas or concerns that they won't address on a Google form this allows students to offer ideas they want happening at our school and concerns that they believe should be addressed this implementation brings us one step closer
020to being a cohesive Community by staying in touch with the student body we've already had great engagement and look forward to what it can do for us and at some point we'd like to have a town hall after school where students can come out and talk about these topics and there's some of the topics that I've observed at school too so I'm really glad that we're having communication within our student body so that we can have a realistic Outlook of what what we as a student government should do at the beginning of Thanksgiving break the JROTC robotics team competed for the first time in the school year as a combined Middle School and High School robotics VRC atali Middle School they came in first place of the entire tournament with an undefeated Master streak we
021were part of the development of our Vex team and look forward to their progress in the future this is their only second season after being created last year and I'm really impressed with the progress that they've made the JROTC Cadets volunteered on Thanksgiving Day At The National multi-scolorosis Society Thanksgiving 5K slash 10k run handing out water to the runners at the halfway point of the 10K we appreciate the service to our community even during the holidays when they're obviously tired from school we want to we really want to support the community the drama Department completed their production and playing of their fall play she killed monsters and recently hosted auditions for their one act Festival a collection of mini Productions led by student directors and played into winter on January and artists auditions for the
022spring production Frozen had begun this week and in fact they're going on right now uh it's from 6 to 9 30. so we really wish those uh aspiring actors luck and they also have auditions tomorrow as well a National Honor Society food drive actually wrapped up just today uh we figured out we found out that out that the senior class went with the most fruit items donated and they'll get to vote for the five staff members to get pied in the face at the event so that'll happen uh last period tomorrow and we've heard that a total of 270 food items were donated so this is a really fun and interactive and also most importantly an effective way to really give back to our community and provide these food drives for it the people in
023our community our marching band wrapped up their 2022 season with a banquet two weeks ago although a normal tradition of Marching In the Claymont Christmas parade could not happen due to the weather the band celebrated a great season and dined together exchanging gifts and awards to each other for fun our music program at Mount Pleasant played their winter concerts last week with holiday themed songs and musical pieces that ensembles prepared unfortunately jazz band was not able to perform but all of our other ensembles honors and standard levels as well as after school have gave great performances winter sports have recently started the boys basketball team won their first home game against Glasgow high school this past Tuesday with a score of 61-29 the girls basketball team unfortunately lost their home game against Ursuline Academy on
024Thursday with a score of 21-78. as always our Mount Pleasant High School Community would like to thank you for um their continued efforts to provide a high quality education for us all thank you for your time and we are open to questions what what time is last period tomorrow for the pie thing last period so I believe it's at 1 45 when the call gets down for the event no I really appreciated the um you mentioned the feedback form from students you know engaging with your classmates to to can you know get their ideas to contribute to the overall you know School experience and and the town hall I think sounds like an awesome idea um yeah so good luck with that thank you any other questions from the board yeah all right thank you
025very much all right thank you and as always our students we know you guys have other commitments so if you need to exit we understand um but I will just say I know it's easy at least for me personally to get caught up in a lot of the chaos that goes into the world and the loud voices on The Fringe of the spectrum but listening to these students tonight and hearing the things that they're doing I am confident saying I think our future is going to be okay oops and that'll lead us into special presentations we have a equity initiative update Dr Lawson and Ms Davis good evening see if I can rearrange this a little bit so I can see good evening president scrobot Vice President Heller superintendent holder and members of the board
026I'm Lisa Lawson your assistant superintendent Ms Marquia Davis our supervisor of equity and culture and we are here to bring you the first of many uh updates around our Equity initiatives going on in the district so as usual we have to make sure that we're aligning our work our strategic plan for the school district which we had a workshop to indulge you with Equity is everywhere across our strategic plan but most definitely our Focus area one around high impact instruction in terms of academic Equity are all students getting the same access and opportunity as other students and then in Focus area 2 occult climate culture and Community uh certainly we want to look at Equity across the board in that Focus area it also touches Focus area three and four but again we're just getting
027started in this work also wanted to align our doe initiatives as you may be aware regulation 220 under title 14 speaks of diversity in making sure that we're embedding equity and diversity across all that we do in the district and then also we have the Delaware strategic intents which focus on Equitable initiatives the first that we have been working on student voice and empowering student voice as you heard there here this evening Miss Davis is doing a splendid job with our high schools around that we continue that work we would like to let you know about an equity audit that is about to take place in January we will go over the timeline in just a minute but in terms of what an equity audit is it is a baseline assessment it allows for us
028to have a starting point and some focal points as you know the work that we do is should be based in data and this is the kind of data that we would like to collect so we intend to go after that data for for all of our groups go to the next slide who who will be involved in this audit in this participation around these questions in this survey it will be all BSD employee groups so obviously our teachers and administrators and folks in our schools but we also want to ensure Equitable practices and Equity with our facilities our maintenance department our transportation department so all of the BSD staff will be participating to do this work we have decided to join our a few of our sister districts have engaged this particular vendor this
029particular company equity and Beyond so Newcastle County Vocational Technical School District red clay K pen lopen to name a few so we had them come in and do a presentation I picked out three pieces of their vision mission and values that we particularly liked and thought that I would share with you Dr Ernest Blackwell and Dr Robert Simmons LED you in a in our first session but they will be leading us as well their Vision includes systems that ensure every individual thrives within their organization I love that piece part of their mission is to collaborate with bold organizations to build a culture of trust belonging and interdependence through relationship-based strategic planning and implementation and then one value that stuck out to us was that no problem is unsolvable if we are committed accountable and inclusive
030this is very challenging good evening everyone why are we pursuing uh the equity audit um as we just recently did with our students and engaging them in a panorama survey is it was important for us to hear their voice it is also important important for us to hear the voice of our employees as well and thinking about how we're going to work to incorporate next steps as we move towards equity in our district we'll be able to do some comparing around student perception and employee perception based on the multiple surveys that we're engaged in as well this just shares a little bit about our partnership this past July we were able to partner with equity and Beyond with Dr Blackwell and Dr Simmons again as Dr Lawson shared they have partnered with multiple school districts
031up and down the state and we are excited to um engage their leadership with supporting the Dei initiatives in the Brandywine School District there is a focus on anti-racism inclusion diversity and Equity we're School leaders as well as our Equity Champions and district office staff will engage in five sessions with them and then I can't see foreign January we will engage in the audit and then also we have been um engaging uh the board as well and some of our conversations um and just work them working to understand their governance and where the role of equity um lies in that as well these are just a few of these survey topics that will be included along with some sample questions we are going to focus on the school culture and climate staff teach and teacher
032recruitment retention and advancement diverse Equitable and inclusive practices and policies as well as student experience and voice and voice and if you are at all familiar with the Delaware strategic intents as Dr Lawson mentioned they really closely align the Strategic the Strategic intents the first one is around elevating student voice the second is around diversifying our educated Workforce the third and fourth are around building culturally responsive leadership as well as culturally responsive teaching and then we also building Partnerships within our community as well and so as we engage in um moving towards those indicators we will also have some data to support some of the goals and measurable items that we're pursuing as well and so coming up very shortly um this is the timeline that we will engage our staff this month we will
033be communicating to all of our staff principals we'll see receive an individual link for their school as well as the district office and all of our other support departments as well we have set aside time on December 9th I believe is one of our professional development days so that we get the large um participation that we need from staff so time will be provided for them to do that during the school day and then also moving forward the month of January February we will be working collaboratively with the um with our partners of equity and Beyond to disaggregate our data and really dig into our data to plan our next steps there are any questions for us well thanks so thank you very much so as an as the next group comes up I again
034would just like to thank um Miss Davis Dr Lawson and the entire leadership team building principal staff for starting this important work and ensuring that our work is focused on what we outlined in our district success plan so thank you all right so next up we have uh House Bill 198 update and overview great good evening president scrobot Vice President Heller superintendent holder board members last February Dr Pruder provided an overview of House Bill 198 and projected plans moving forward tonight we would like to briefly review the bill and share the BSD plan which is in three parts part one is developing um or our K-12 instructional framework which also includes developing students respect for cultural and racial diversity enabling students to understand the ramifications of prejudice racism and stereotyping and providing opportunities for students
035to discuss and uplift the black experience part two is the actual implementation of the units and the lessons and then part three is the professional development surrounding that so and can be found in the most recent board packet so you have that you have the house bill language itself our plan and then tonight we're going to give examples in this overview but first some introductions so with us tonight we have Mrs ucheche I'm a deep way and she is the teacher of teacher Academy teacher at Concord High School and she's also our BSD teacher of the year over here we also have with us tonight Mrs Marquia Davis our supervisor of equity and culture who did a wonderful job just presenting um Mrs Regina Devins a fourth grade teacher at Harlan Elementary Kutch director of
036curriculum instruction Dr Lisa Pruder our social studies coordinator and also Mrs Adrian Stansbury our Equity coordinator this the purpose behind the bill is to ensure the study of black history that includes educating students about how black persons were treated their influences and contributions throughout history the study of black history is intended to do all of the following and so as you can see there examining the ramification of prejudice racism and intolerance preparing students to be responsible citizens to combat racism inequality and discrimination and reaffirm the commitment of free peoples to the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution beginning this school year and for subsequent school years House Bill 198 requires the school district to report each year to the Department of Education how we have implemented a curriculum on black history for students in
037grades K-12 and the professional development to support this work and this is reported on November 15th each year so just want to put this up as a reminder the report itself is organized into three parts we're going to present each of those three parts tonight in the form of examples as you have the plan in your board packet oh whoops all right so this first um these first several slides reflect um the work that we've been doing around our student voice um we decided to identify four different experiences I will be sharing two of them and then Ms Stansberry will be sharing too as well so the first image that you see um really the work that we did supports being trauma responsive and helping students to recognize the impact of racial and historical trauma
038on students and so I believe it was last year the joint student council actually came together inviting additional Student Union groups to participate in their conferences that they held they held two of them last year which focused on uh racial uh discrimination trauma as well as mental health during these sessions they had the opportunity to learn from a prestigious uh guest speaker Dr Julius Ma who is a well-known psychologist and in the mental health field and he came and educated our students around those particular areas they also had an opportunity to engage in restorative practices a restorative Circle they also had the opportunity to engage and dig into some of our district data as well and then collaborate as school teams to determine some next actionable steps with moving forward to leave with their schools
039as well as their next up-and-coming student councils the second picture up for learning provides a foundation for student leaders to utilize strategies tools and ongoing coaching in schools to ensure that all young people can pursue active roles in their learning their lives and their community the third picture in partnership with the United Way of Delaware Brandywine School District students attended the black student Summit in April of 2022 which is by far and for students who want to turn up the volume and activism of black student unions and associations the Summit is meant to prepare train refuel and uplift students and the adults that support them during the summit students were reminded why it's important to use your voice and how to do it in a way that powers up change for the better where you
040learn and then the last image just reflects the opportunity that we've established for our students to express their voice in 2021 we were able to engage our students in grades 6 to 12 and taking the Panorama survey and as well as again this year some of the content or topics included emotional regulation diversity and inclusion cultural awareness and as well as mental health this year we were able to expand the survey uh to include our fourth and fifth grade students as well um the students were also provided the opportunity to not just give an indicator of multiple choice responses but they also were able to provide some commentary around and provide some narrative around the choices that they made uh with their Selections in the data we are excited that we were able to capture
041very close to about 80 percent of our student body from 4th to 12th grade just shy we did 78 so we're still working to the next go around to pursue a higher engagement rate um we will we are in the process of releasing that data gradually with our district administrators school principals our Champions to and then work to anal lies the data and then create some next steps that support our strategic plan as well good evening everyone so this K-12 teacher Academy is a CTE pathway whose standards are based on the Educators Rising standards and the Educators Rising standards have cross-cutting themes that hit a lot of the indicators that the bill speaks to cultural responsiveness and competence Dei diversity equity and inclusion reflective practice practice ethics social justice advocacy and self-efficacy and um the
042social justice course is also um it's it's we're using it as a as a fourth level course for the teacher Academy pathway but it is also open to all students in the school and um their standards are based on the uh social justice standards of learning for uh uh social justice and so by the time students complete both the social justice course and level one to three uh of the teacher Academy they will have the opportunity to do the following they should have had the opportunity to examine the history of discrimination in the U.S understand the ramifications of prejudice racism and stereotyping reflect on their responsibility for Social Action and anti-racist advocacy plan and execute a social action that empowers and moves Humanity forward um if you can go to the next slide so with
043the pictures on the left yeah those are some social justice students from my social justice class uh they're using a Socratic seminar to engage in a courageous conversation around toxic masculinity and you might say toxic masculinity what is that the students chose that topic after going through a series of a process to decide um what they wanted to talk about to engage in courageous conversations and they chose that because some of the males in the class were feeling pressured by some of society's expectations and it was an amazing um experience I learned a lot I didn't know what it was until they brought it up so it was good and then on the um on the other side is the same students they're using a concentric Circle to discuss Erasure and cancel culture relative to
044American history and that led into the work that we do in studying the indigenous peoples of this country next next slide and this slide is teacher Academy yeah teacher Academy students and they are redesigning the school system after examining their own experiences in school so far and realizing that their experiences haven't really reflected who they are so they were tasked to redesign the school system and come up with their ideal learning environment and that's what the picture reflects that they are doing thank you hello there so part two of the HP 198 legislation identifies eight curriculum requirements to be addressed over the course of students K-12 education we are identifying and developing instructional materials to fulfill each requirement in elementary middle and high school last spring we created an elementary black history committee and that
045committee is now developing lessons for each grade level in Middle School social studies teachers are implementing the newly revised model lessons from doe which were recently created with HB 198 in mind Middle School ELA teachers this year are implementing a curriculum and many aspects of that new curriculum address HB 198 as well at the high school level social studies teachers have worked together during PD days and PLC time to identify where each requirement should be taught and to share instructional materials and high school ELA teachers are in the process now of selecting a new curriculum and they are using a rubric that ensures that we will choose rigorous diverse and culturally relevant texts across all grade levels Visual and Performing Arts teachers are developing units that highlight the achievement and contributions of black people to
046the Arts so this is where I get into the nitty-gritty of the curriculum um So within each grade cluster here you see great K to 5. we can considered the maturity of our students existing curriculum and state standards when determining where each requirement of HB 198 should fit into K5 and then 612. so the spiraling approach gives students the opportunity to revisit these topics with increasing depth from their K to 12 experience foreign so for example students first learn about letter A the history of black people prior to the African diaspora in social studies in grades three and four thank you then they'll revisit this topic in the context of world Regional geography in sixth grade and then in the context of world history in 10th Grade and now miss Devens will talk about her
047students experience with one of these items good evening so in the initial stages of the curriculum development the writing team collaborated on two Central themes one being creating content that students could have an emotional connection with and secondly the goal of affirming students value and their identity through our curriculum content um the third grade curriculum focuses heavily on black people prior to the African diaspora and African the geography of the continent of Africa Miss Pruder came in and piloted the unit that we had completed in my classroom with the most perfect third graders you've ever seen before in your life um and the first picture demonstrates a bonus benefit that these students experienced um exploring the globe many of them for the first time they physically held one they began to ask questions about the
048numbers on a globe what does it mean why is it tilted this way why does it move what is this in the center it was an explosively amazing Discovery period and Miss Pruder graciously answered their trillions of questions and we let the moment happen and it continued to get more brilliant with each passing moment the second demonstration which is lesson two of this same unit um is a simulation of the students participating in a gold and salt trade we divided the classroom into each country they completed their barter and pay taxes to the government and learned all about paying taxes spending money saving money and keeping just enough for yourself and the third slide brings us to the Western kingdoms of Africa that these students learned all about Mansa Musa and the wealth riches and
049Ingenuity that rests in these kingdoms prior to the African diaspora each lesson that we compiled is aligned with our traditional reading structure where there the lesson begins with a student focus a heavy focus on vocabulary that we hope transfers into other curriculum um content um these students then have opportunities where we check for understanding using many of the um platforms and apps that were provided to us during the pandemic they're still getting much use in our classrooms and giving extra opportunities for student engagement um our administrators also find it very important to implement successfully Implement HB 198 in our classrooms um they invested not only their Manpower but their time to personally come in and help out Ms pooter and myself to teach these Geniuses you'll see our proud proud principal Miss Tracy Roberts in
050the first picture helping students with the mapping exercise our Ardent assistant principal Miss Devon Johnson is on the right helping out a student and a diligent dean of students Mr Douglas cuffy also helping provide insight to a student within the lesson Holland has been so excited to have the opportunity to Pilot this content we look forward to more opportunities and resources to keep the momentum going thank you I'm excited about this slide right some of this you heard from the previous um presentation so I won't belabor it um again our professional learning that has occurred thus far we've been able to engage our districts in um District school and staff and multiple trainings the bottom reflects one of our elementary schools engaged in restorative practice training which we conducted in-house with our restorative practice trained
051the trainers the picture above the First Column is our uh administrative staff and champions engaged in professional learning with our equity and Beyond Partners as well the center again we've engaged our board and their first Workshop as they think about equity and their role in government governance in our school district and then this last part this family engagement I was pleasantly surprised to be invited to two spectacular events last week one of them which pictures so the one up top is of uh Talley Middle School which is the AVID program where uh Jeff Lawson is the principal and he has these Dynamic Avid coordinators Paula Mitchell and Tamika Pinkney they engaged their sight team to pack out the cafeteria with their families their students to engage in a contract signing party as students committed and
052repeated the tally and that oath um and celebrating their commitment to the AVID program which was powerful gave out t-shirts snacks families also bought socks and donated socks to our homeless uh cause and organization as well so that was one well then I got another invitation to go over to Concord High School where Mark Mayer is the principal I was unsure about what this particular family engagement opportunity was but when I arrived there were multiple male mentors that were invited to come to the school particularly the ninth grade ELA classes were participating there were about nine or ten plus or minus male mentors that showed up to Simply validate and affirm the value of students in the classroom there was not a dry eye in the room they bought a gift to just to support
053and shared how they were going to support their student and I'm bringing this up because this helps to disrupt The Narrative that we sometimes experience that suggests that our parents and our families are unaccessible or unavailable but these men showed up one in particular was a police officer he came for his niece he had learned how to scuba dive and swam to the bottom of the ocean selected these pearls and made a bracelet especially custom-made bracelet for her and that was his presentation to her pop pop talked about raising 18 grandkids but showing up for this one in the classroom and I have to go back to the police officer he was really moved because he said you know in his line of work he does not have the opportunity to see the good side
054of life he has to respond to the crisis situations but in this room these men showed up to validate our students to support our students to encourage our students and it just shifted the whole dynamic energy in the classroom in the hallways it was just a powerful powerful experience I encouraged Mr Mayor to find some opportunity to build on it to continue to bring our community into our classrooms just a powerful two-way opportunity for professional learning to occur we appreciate your time and attention have a great evening unless you have questions for us just just one question going back to the Panorama survey and the staff survey um how can we get copies of at least a summary of the data that was collected so the the data was actually just released to us today
055and so we are working to organize it to create some goals around it but we can um I'll follow the lead of superintendent holder to see how we can make sure you have access to the data anyone else thank you very much outstanding presentation thank you thank you next up we have Mr Kenny Rivera um mode of instruction for sat and PSAT thank you it's a top presentation to follow and I see no one wants to stand up here with me when I present going to async okay good evening members of the board superintendent holler I'm going to first start by giving some credit to Hope moffatt who could not be here tonight for her hard work with this plan along with input from the three high schools as a reminder all Juniors and some
056seniors are required to take the SAT exam as part of the Delaware estate assessment um that they're required to take the data from this exam is a major part of the school's accountability rating and it's also used to help teachers Drive their instructions for their students based off of that data students performance on sat and PSAT also have major implications for the student submission into college and scholarships as well this year the dates for the SAT and PSAT exams are up there you see Wednesday March 22nd all of our 11th graders and some of our 12th graders will be taking the exam and then on April 18th all of our 9th and 10th grade students will be taking the PSATs as well as 11th and 12th graders who need to do makeups for the sat
057on that day so tonight I am publicly presenting our plan to change the mode of instruction on these two days to asynchronous for high school students who are not testing uh there's more detailed information that and the data that was um available to the board members in the board packet so this is just a high level overview for tonight the last year the school district's sat participation rate was around a little less than 70 percent because we did not hit the required 95 participation rate a plan is due to the state by December 16th this year and just so you know just about every school in the state is in the same boat as us there so we all have plans to do and I know many of the schools across state are looking at
058our plan looking to adopt their mirror aspects of what we've put together we're only talking about one part of the plan here today a part of this plan is to change the mode of instruction as part of that comprehensive approach that we have to increase test and participation I I do want to be clear and um I want to say this multiple times we do not prefer or desire to have asynchronous days nor do we believe that just changing the days to asynchronous alone will achieve our our objective to increase the participation the Fidelity of the test Administration We Believe students should be in person learning from our excellent teachers you're going to see a couple of them in a couple minutes here um but the the importance and the impacts of this exam led
059us to this plan that we have for you tonight so we believe change in the mode of instruction will lead to First higher participation rates I believe this will provide for extra Staffing that will be available to follow the recommended protocols and practices the College Board asks us to follow by allowing us to have late arrival testing rooms so students who do come late believe it or not some students do come late to school they will be able to test instead of not being able to test at all allows us to have targeted makeups as well as the schools being able to dedicate resources to running these daily makeup sessions after the first test date it will allow us to have better operational Logistics doe goes around to the schools and monitors the test insights
060on Sat days and they gave us feedback last year that we did not have sufficient number of test administers and Hall monitors based on seating arrangements of students that's their wording both for PSAT 9 and 10 last spring and this fall testing was sustained through extensive support of District administration who came into the schools and helped administer and and the setting and the scene for that is quite often as I've been at Mount for the past couple years we have 80 to 100 students in the gyms being administered by District admin um maybe not the the best setting for students taking such an important test um with async because the other teachers are teaching and uh with async construction that means the other staff who typically will be teaching all the other students would be
061available to help facilitate testing rooms monitor the halls and lead to a whole school environment focused on the test we believe this will also lead to higher test scores and better school ratings in our accountability model um the staff and flexibility will allow for smaller rooms allow students to test with their own teachers who they know which is a much more ideal testing environment and we believe this will lead to better student outcomes on this test that we know impacts their college admissions school grades scholarships and gives us better more accurate data on how our students are actually doing also note that participation under 95 percent counts against the school rating so for every student that we have that falls below that 95 participation rate they count as a zero for the school so for
062example we may have a school where we have the students who test it all were you know 60 70 proficient which is very good very strong however if a third of the school doesn't test it appears to the public that our proficiency rate is in the 30 Which is far from the truth that's where we are next we believe uh this um recommendation is in alignment with the mode of other districts in the state um other states other districts are planning to do this in the state um last year we saw most of the Newcastle County Schools moving this way to the school uh districts in the county I was told did not plan to but then the week or week before ended up changing their mood to async realizing that this was too big
063of a thing to pull off with um not moving to async and the last Point here is we believe there's no longer term implications from this change because SAT exam will change next year it'll be a redesigned test it will be a shorter test and the window that we can give the test also changes when it becomes longer but it also begins it will be aligned to other state assessments that we give so we can give multiple tests to the whole building at the same time it will also mirror or overlap with the PSAT window I mean we could actually have almost a whole school build and tested at the same time depending what test the student needs to take which is going to be fantastic so the last part is we need to make
064sure we clearly and effectively communicate this to our community so beyond just tonight we know we have to submit the plan to Doe by the 16th we would want to update the mode of instruction on the school calendar make sure our families know we send out the email the monthly board report to our families we would love to include that in there and then schools would be happy to communicate this with their families as well and remind them as the day approaches thank you very much for your time and I'm happy to take whatever questions comments you may have how many days are we talking well two total but remember for 9th and tenth there'll be testing one day and then we're asking for async for them for the other day and then on the
065SAT day that's 11th grade and some 12th grade will be in here and then when the 9th and 10th are tested they would go to async so for the vast majority of students it's one day um Mr Rivera I just have one question um what are some of the efforts that are being done because I know 95 is very difficult to get as someone who does access testing for hundreds of students I know um these are some of the efforts that are being done previous to the test to communicate to families about the testing about what needs to happen they need to come with a Chromebook blah blah blah right so each of the schools is we're working with hope right now to come up with that comprehensive plan they're finalizing that right now going
066over all of the efforts they're going to take which includes the communication schools trying to communicate the importance of it and then once they know what Staffing is available they're gonna figure out the the plan in terms of how they're going to man and create makeup sessions as well the other key piece which I didn't get into this presentation is how we're going to attack the past and different this year so there's a one week window then there's the makeup you saw the makeup on the PSA T exam and we usually as a district and we will pick a day in that first week where you can pick a day for your to Minnesota sat we're going to attack this a little differently we're going on the very first day of the window we're going
067to give the SAT and then we're going to treat the next four days as makeups even though they're not technically makeups but that's how we're going to treat them to get very much like we do in elementary and middle schools with there's like a window and we test them as soon as we can and then we do makeup we're going to change from how the state does it and look at them as makeup days yeah I think so too around 90s or low 90 percent 93 94. it could I think part of it too is that build up um you know for many of you made your child may have taken AP exam or you they you build up the importance of SAT exam you you typically can see participate people don't miss big events
068a big sporting event and when you build up like this is big make sure you show up and I think if you also know now this year that we will catch if if you don't want to do it the next day the next day next day when you come back now you're gonna do it just just come and let's do it if that's the mindset but you're right that you know we have to have that Makeup Session and make sure we try to get students who come in late or else we're set up for already being behind good point an unfair uh stress on student School um we may or may not be a great test takers or unnecessary anxiety on students and um who may not necessarily need because may not need a test
069potentially um but for those two it's just like the map test running tests we do try to say the teachers will use this information to to better drive the instruction do planning whether for individual students or for the classes hold so we know where our gaps are and and how to better lesson plan um but you're right so that test anxiety piece is real um especially for someone who may not believe it's as important there's not a student incentive piece for them to do well on it like any other state assessment or map exam that we give three times a year it is um but we the data already says that um and so it's the place an emphasis on that something on something that we already know has advice and in addition to the
07095 percent uh attendance week I'm just a little concerned and that's and that this was a little bit uh more detailed in the board packet but that's under the Essa law that's the rules are written under there and we have to the penalty given to our district in our state is written under the the federal law and and so we do our best to create a plan to abide by the law so we're not penalized for that you make excellent points there and Reverend Perry to to that point um many of the vocational school districts um really um suffer in terms of s.a.t participation rates for many of those students who are going right into a career field they don't see the need for the SAT but as Mr Rivera points out the feedback to
071teachers across all spectrums of all students um how do we better address curricular gaps and holes that that data is important for us and while 94 may be the average attendance rate on any given day typically on Sat days that drops down to 78 80 percent attendance um so ways to encourage and support students to take that test even those who may not see it as important uh that data that We Gather in terms of instructional curriculum practices is vitally important I I think that there are other ways that can identify the student gaps other than a standardized test just because data says that that's not an accurate way to do so I agree but again it's a it's a national uh Benchmark regulation set forth in the Esser regs state of Delaware doesn't have
072any leeway around that participation rate but I am encouraged by the new committee that secretary holadick has formed around assessment and accountability our own data assessment individual in the district hope Moffett has been asked to represent Newcastle County on that committee so we will have the inside scoop and voice at the table as we do petition to see what could be allowable under maybe different Federal Regulations moving forward we're hopeful but to be clear not every state does the SAT for every student and that is one of the things that makes Delaware look bad compared to other states and this has been a problem that's been ongoing since we started doing this we require 100 of our students to take it other states may only be 10 15 20 and they're up here we're down
073here and people say well I don't want to move to Delaware because your schools are horrible so we need to kind of face that reality as a state and I hope uh Secretary of Education holiday is taking taking on that responsibility because that's something that needs to be addressed certainly agree superintendents had a conference back in October was one of the the topics discussed um we do our SAT scores when they're published do look substandard to our neighboring states who only published the scores the averages of those students interested in taking the SATs versus all students um we again that assessment and accountability committee that's being formed we're very hopeful that that can drive some of the change that needs to happen thank you Mr Rivera appreciate welcome so we do have some additional special
074recognitions and thank you to all of our friends and family who have hung in here with us so far uh next time maybe we'll try to move uh move those ahead of special presentations think of all the great information they would have missed if they were right good evening president scrobot Vice President Heller awesome members of the board all of our wonderful audience that is present this evening as well as those joining via Zoom my name is delithia McIntyre and I am the Director of Human Resources up on stage with me is hakima wicker and he is an administrator in HR as well tonight I know you must be feeling like I do proud to be in BSD we've heard about some awesome awesome student work at the high schools and swimmers setting records we
075heard about Geniuses in third grade I'm like well okay we are doing a whole lot of things right as well as Equity initiatives family engagement and the very very important work of house bill 198. tonight we have the privilege of bringing up some awesome people who are boots on the ground getting some of this work done right now I'd like to please invite in the absence of principal uh Tamara Grime Stewart I'd like to invite up thank principle assistant principal Ms Dana Jackson and it looks like Mr Edward Burks is going to join her Dr Sharad are you going to come up as well the two deans at Claymont and the other AP is out right now but they are going to do presentations of their staff and you can hang right here gentlemen you
076may want to join Mr wicker because you can hand out some awards for us and save some time so we are going to start with Claymont and Miss Jackson will share with you some particulars about what each of these awesome recipients have done but I would like to invite the recipients up with a quote that Ms Faye Schoenberger who is their behavior health professional of the year for their building said in her packet never underestimate the value and the important difference you make in every life you touch for the impact you make today has a powerful Rippling effect on every tomorrow so with that I would like to please welcome to the stage to join us Ms Rory gulotti teacher of the year at Claymont Elementary School I would also like to call up Ms
077Nicole Smith the educator support professional of the year and Ms Faye schomberger the behavior health professional would you all please help me welcome foreign good evening greetings to our Brandywine board president scrobot Vice President Heller our Brandywine School Board superintendent holder our Brandywine executive team colleagues BSD staff and Families my name is Dana Jackson and I am the proud assistant principal of Claymont Elementary unfortunately Tamara Stewart our school principal is unable to be here but she wanted me to share the following information about our amazing and outstanding colleagues on her behalf along with our Administration team Mr Edward Burks Dr Sherrod our deans of students tonight I have been given the privilege to introduce you while some of you to our amazing colleagues these women tonight truly exemplify BSD proud each one leads with their
078heart and truly cares about the students we encounter daily Claymont Elementary is able to accomplish so much because of colleagues like these three as I read about each person you will hear some common themes dedication love and longevity to our educator support professional of the Year Nicole Smith we congratulate you can I get another round of applause he's being recognized as our Claymont Elementary's educator support staff of the year she is currently a parent educator in our bsap program Nicole has been at Claymont for over 10 years working specifically with our autism program she has dedicated her life to ensuring that all students she encounters grow Nicole uses her talents and skills to connect with students and staff she goes beyond to ensure students are successful Nicole has been the Lead Teacher and has mentored
079new staff she loves the program she is also a program guide for behaviors and the analyst group sorry I messed that up but she is a leader in our building she cares so deeply for students and wants to ensure we are providing them with the best support we can where would we be without Nicole T Smith also Nicole is dedicated to our drama club where her creativity is able to shine here are some words that her colleagues have said to describe her guardian angel that's huge positive attitude amazing dedicated selfless and kind and sightful a team player and Nicole a heart of gold we could not agree more in the words of one of her colleagues she is simply the best thank you Nicole to our behavioral health professional of the Year Faye schamberger congratulations
080he's being recognized as Claymont Elementary's behavioral professional of the Year Faye is a district-wide social worker who supports Claymont Elementary among other schools Faye schamberger has been dedicated to families for years staff and students alike in the Brandywine School District and I mean 20 years over 20 years Faye has been the team leader for support services at Claymont Elementary and it's also the co-team leader for social workers across the district she goes above and beyond for families and our district from home visits to supporting families who are in need of food shelter and clothing Miss schamberger's Love of helping others is evident in all that she does during the pandemic Ms shamburger dropped off desks computers special treats to students and families in need Faye works hard to build relationships with students and families even
081after families have moved on from elementary they continue to reach out and seek her support she has a heart of gold as well and truly cares about people a few comments from her students Dear Miss schamberger thank you for all that you did for my family and for supporting me through my journey without my dad I know you really enjoyed him a lot and so did I I really love having you in Claymont elementary school and I really hope you enjoy this letter and I miss seeing you Miss shamburger for being there thank you for being there for me and helping me when I was down I thank you so so much you helped me through some tough times thank you so so much a few words from her colleagues you are nurturing and inspiring
082you are like family dedicated and supportive Claymont BSD is fortunate to have you you also have a great heart a great great heart Miss hamburger thank you all right to our teacher of the year Rory Galati thank you you are recognized as Claymont Elementary's teacher of the year Rory is currently one of our fifth grade gifted and talented teachers she has been at Claymont for over 15 years you are dedicated to your students and families Ms Galati she creates lessons that are engaging rigorous Interactive Miss Galati is dedicated to ensuring all students grow she also gives them a voice from coaching Girls on the Run to math clubs and after school activities Rory is about empowering all of her students I would be remiss to mention she is our fashionista as well welcome to the
083Claymont Runway When Miss Galati shows up Rory is innovative data driven and insightful Rory does not hesitate to support her colleagues students and family some words from her students the best teacher ever fun and kind your style made me so happy along with your family stories your kind words reassured me when I was down your organization good thinking and storing telling makes you a teacher that anyone can like you're nice you're kind and you're energetic I am so Overjoyed to be a student in your classroom one of her colleagues said it best you are inspiring and the students are lucky to know you and so are we so thank you um from everyone to you so thank you Claymont next I would like to invite to join me principal of Lancashire Elementary School I'm sorry
084Mrs Veronica Wilkie and Mr Paul iiboni I see you out there our assistant principal they will be coming up and while they are coming I would just like to read um a brief something from one of their recipients tonight teacher of the year Ashley surfoza she said when asked what do you believe is one of the most major public education issues of today I believe Equity is one of the most major public education issues today the importance of preparing all students for opportunities by providing Equitable practices is an ongoing issue in society I believe it is vital for educators to address this issue not only in the classroom but also in the district and the community in order to close the achievement gap for all students this is extremely important matter to me and I
085am addressing these issues at a foundational level at the elementary school so please come on up and join us and while they are coming I would like to please invite Ms Ashley surfosa their teacher of the year Latonia Davis their educator support professional of the year and Ms Laura Becca their behavior health professional [Laughter] [Music] foreign good evening everyone we are so very proud to be here today and you know one of the things we always say in Brandywine is proud to be BSD well we brought our own BSD with us today so we are not only proud to be BSD we are so so very proud to work with BSD Mr Miss Laura Becker our big miss swarza our ass and Miss Davis our D yes beans are free phenomenal women as I was
086listening to the Claymont presentation I'm saying he's talking about my people I mean they are awesome they are dedicated they are responsible they are there for children at every step of the way and just to tell you a little bit more about it we're going to start with Mr IO Boney the assistant principal here at Lancashire sharing a little bit about our teacher of the year Miss swarza good evening everyone members of the board superintendent holder and all of Lancashire at home hi guys one of the Privileges of being a building administrator is having the opportunity to publicly recognize outstanding Educators and it's truly a joy to celebrate these three remarkable women I'm honored to introduce the 2023 teacher of the year for Lancashire Elementary School Mrs Ashley's Forza so her students describe her in
087his exciting helpful kind happy respectful and pretty I won't I won't tell you who said that her colleagues say that Miss Forza is authentic that she authentically enjoys children she's conscientious and enthusiastic she hopes to pull the team together with blue ideas and she is not afraid of Technology I'd like to add that she also has a wonderful sense of humor and she has to she's a New York Giants fan and a Mets fan not everybody shares that sense of humor though um she's truly a team player embracing uh new challenges she has taken on the role of second grade English language partner for our Spanish Immersion program she sponsors both the robotics program which is a huge undertaking and Girls on the Run I think most if not all of our faculty would agree
088that Miss Forza as one colleague described is even keeled she doesn't raise her voice and yet her students are always engaged and on task she's been like that since her first year at Lancashire however sometime during the first year in our school we had a volleyball game between faculty and students using a beach a beach ball pretty tame stuff a lot of giggling tapping the ball back and forth until the ball went near Miss forsa as if in slow motion she transformed into Kerry Walsh Jennings the speed and the power of the hit it was a it was a blur now there were no casualties but I thought that was intense and then later we found out that she still was actively playing rugby huh but it's with that same intensity passion and focus that
089must Forza approaches teaching she continues to grow as a professional and as a leader in our building her smile and positive nature is absolutely infectious even through the zoom years this Forza is genuine in her care for students frequently collaborating with colleagues to learn all that she can she works long after school hours have ended she's doing her homework I feel comfortable saying that this is one of many awards that Miss Forza will be presented with over the course of her career we are most fortunate that she's a member of our faculty she is undeniably loved and admired by the entire Lancashire community a Lancashire Teacher of the Year miss Ashley's Forza he loves making me feel short okay so I'm going to now present Miss Becker our health professional of the year Miss Becker
090has been with Lancashire for over 30 years wow That's goes to say that yes that deserves a round of reports that goes to say that Lancashire finds her invaluable Miss Becker takes care of she was test coordinator she was in charge of PBS before it was MTS says she did a small groups with children family groups reached out on 504s a whole list of things that you would say I want to go home tonight if you don't so can you please not list everything she does but what no matter what Miss Becker does the first thought in her mind is how does it impact the students how is what I'm doing right now going to be beneficial and if it's not going to be beneficial if it is not going to help them she is
091going to look for another way let's think this through let's see what else we can do because she knows they're Paramount in all that we do and that includes working with their families to make sure that the families have what they need in order to support their children as well now don't just think it's the children she has been there for staff throughout her career we all know that if we're having challenging times that Ms Becker is going to help us through we know that if there's a student who we need some support for who are we going to call Miss Becker there's so many times during this school day that you just hear that name oh what would Miss Becker think where's Miss Becker um she see even now um she has been a
092staple at Lancashire she is continuing to help us grow she is building capacity within our schools because we know that all that she did can't truly be done effectively by any other person so we have to start looking in other directions as well and she is helping us with that recognizing that we all need to grow professionally so we thank Miss Becker for all that she does we know that she is phenomenal in what she does we know that she will continue to work with our children with our families with our staff with the community at large organizing Ronald McDonald House making sure that people everywhere has whatever what they need so we thank you Miss Becker for all that you do for Lancashire and the community oh and I was just informed her car
093was full of food right now for the food drive oh she delivered it already so um we just thank you so much for all that ah now I have the honor of presenting to miss Latonya Davis yes um I'm sorry Mr Miss Davis and I began working together probably about 22 000 in 2000 when we were both at claymonts during at that time we knew she was someone special we just didn't know how special she was working with our reading specialist and just absorbing everything that that woman had to give her all right um we said we parted ways for a while she went off to Mount Pleasant elementary school in the ESP program and boy did they cry when I got her back at Lancashire um Mr albac actually said she was our go-to
094person I understand why she's going um but she was ours and I'm telling you we are so thrilled to have her um no matter what is needed she's there teachers are begging me for this para professional this spooky can I please have Miss Miss um Miss Davis can I please have Miss Davis I'm going to be absent tomorrow can I get Miss Davis can I get Miss Davis because Miss Davis far surpasses the expectations of paraprofessionals Miss Davis as everyone at Lancashire knows needs to have her own classroom so we're working on that because she can take any lesson and reach those expectations with those children and she placed them high she came into the school as our Spanish Immersion paraprofessional that's how I got her and immediately prior to even coming into the building
095she said I'm going to learn Spanish so I can work better with these children she started at the end of the school year probably the first week of June and within that short amount of time she developed such a relationship with those children that they were also begging for her the next year don't we get Miss Davis again so Miss Davis has the ability to reach children from the youngest to the oldest for those most challenged to those without challenges she cares they know it and they love her she is fair firm and she expects you to give her your best at all times and for that reason she has been named our educational support person of the year Lancashire is truly blessed pretty fortunate to have our own BSD fantastic testimonials for our Claymont
096and Lancashire Educators and Educators support professionals um thank you again to the families that have stuck around and come out to show your support we thank them for what they do in our schools and we thank you for what you do to support them and sharing them with us so thank you that'll lead us into superintendent's report president scrobot Vice President Heller members of the board and everyone in our audience here tonight I am once again honored to share the latest updates of all the amazing things happening throughout our district it's been a busy month as our students and teachers prepare for the upcoming much deserved winter break I want to begin by showcasing some of the holiday spirit on display in our district Mount Pleasant High School's band in choir recently had the opportunity
097to perform at the 22nd holiday open house at Rockwood Park the free family event included a spectacular holiday display of lights in the park Museum tours free photos with Santa of course beautiful performances from our band and choir meanwhile at Concord High School the breakfast with Santa event returned this past weekend on Saturday morning community members were able to enjoy a hot breakfast all while taking photos with Santa Claus at the same time the conquered High School holiday shopping event also returned more than 30 vendors were on site which also served as a fundraiser for Childhood Cancer the event was organized by the classes of 2024 and 2025. I'm also thrilled to share that the magical choir from Concord High School made it to the top 10 in wjbr's Christmas choir competition community members can
098vote for the Concord High School choir using the link you see on your screen we'll make sure to share this link prominently in our post meeting recap and you know it's already prominently featured on our social media channels you can vote once per hour up till December 16th the winner will take home five thousand dollars for their music program we're wishing the best of luck to the Concord Madrigal choir and we can't forget that since our last meeting we also had the Thanksgiving holiday this year a decades-long tradition continued throughout the district I want to thank our school Nutrition department as well as district office team members who helped serve our BSD students their annual turkey lunch this tradition has taken place every year for the past 30 years you know more than 6 000
099turkey lunches were served just before Thanksgiving break also just before Thanksgiving Claymont Elementary School hosted a stuffed the bus Food donation event the school sent off approximately 1400 pounds of food to the food bank of Delaware Claymont student body and staff donated the food items and toiletries school student council helped load the items and even the bus drivers participated this was one of just many donation drives held throughout our district I want to thank all of our students and staff members for their thoughtfulness and generosity throughout this holiday season Claymont Elementary also received an exciting recognition this month school and principal Tammy Grime Steward were recognized by the Secretary of Education Dr Mark Holodeck alongside 11 other schools from across the state for their students growth and progress toward English language proficiency in the announcement
100secretary holiday congratulated both our students and the families and Educators who supported and helped them achieve significant growth again in the area of English language arts proficiency a reminder for our families the school choice window for the 2023-24 school year is now open the application window closes on January 11 2023. you can learn more about the school choice process on our website right on the home page we've also included the video replay from our recent Choice information night on the website as well as a compilation video showcasing all of our amazing BSD schools I'd also like to share that our gifted Education Services referral window is now open for students currently in grades one through seven we have all the information about the referral process as well as how it's conducted on our website you
101can find that information right on the home page and we'll be sure to include a link in our post meeting communication I also want to Spotlight Sabrina Fitzhugh and the gifted Education Services teachers at PS DuPont Middle School for recently hosting an information session for our incoming Middle School families this event gave our current and prospective families information about gifted education services at the middle school level while parents were thrilled to hear from the teachers themselves even better was the testimonials that were delivered from the students currently in the program pictured on your screen now is teacher Jamie Fitzhugh with some of his students our marketing Communications team is working on a long-term project that will eventually showcase all of the high school Pathways and our three District high schools as you know we have
102a lot of Pathways and course offering offerings right here in BSD whatever your future plans are we have a pathway to support those career goals the project is kicking off with our CTE Career and Technical education Pathways tonight I'm happy to share a preview of the work to come let's take a look foreign fits right in with that Equity statement that was made just a while ago as you can tell it's been another busy month in our district I always want to make sure to say this every month that these highlights are a mere glimpse into all that is happening throughout our district our schools are doing such an amazing and incredible job this year PS Department middle school students displaying great Behavior through mtss Tier 1 structures were treated to an ice cream social
103we're also fortunate enough to capture BSD School Nutrition department honoring their employee of the month the award was presented to Russell Perry who serves as cook at Springer Middle School nominations for the employee of the month award came from Russell's peers in the school of Nutrition department Mr Perry was nominated by five Springer colleagues our high schools have all completed their fall plays including Concord High School's recent performance of Elf Jr the musical you may recognize the student playing Buddy the elf in the photo that's Jared rollman who was just recognized alongside some of his peers for earning the rank of Eagle Scout for her Eagle project Elena planned and executed the building of two sets of picnic tables that convert to benches for accessibility and flexible utility she and her teammates installed them in
104a Courtyard at Mount Pleasant High School I want to congratulate senior Elena Walter for becoming the first female eagle scout in troop 5508 which she helped found and at Harlan Elementary School the school recently hosted a family literacy night the students and families enjoyed a night full of games giveaways Raffles a scavenger hunt and an in-person Bedtime Story by none other than their favoritest principle Tracy Roberts meanwhile students at car Croft and Hamby elementary schools are accounting continuing their work with their school Gardens in collaboration with healthy foods for healthy kids both groups of students participated in their first fall Harvest healthy foods for Healthy Kids is now gearing up to have yet another Garden at our district at in our district at Lancashire Elementary and over the last several weeks assistant superintendent Dr Lisa
105Lawson and I have been visiting BSD elementary and middle schools to have lunch with small groups of students these lunches have provided the opportunity to hear from our students about their school experiences so far this year and allows them to provide feedback needless to say the feedback and conversations have been invaluable and interesting I want to thank our building administrators who helped schedule these lunches and of course thank the students who are willing to come and participate and share openly with two strangers but yet uh very insightful in their responses as we've shared in many previous updates ensuring that our students have opportunities to use their voice and share their experiences is incredibly important to us some of our middle school students are taking part in a collaborative music project alongside musical group known as
106the Eastern Standard Trio the group is working on a piece of music that was written to be open to student and audience participation all of the music students at PS DuPont Middle School were invited to take part using either their instruments or their voices we have a video showcasing this collaboration in action let's take a look today at PS DuPont Middle School we had a very unique musical experience with the Eastern Standard Trio they came to visit our kids to perform for them and also collaborate on a world premiere for a piece titled A Grand Day Out written by Robert Linton what we're doing here is the trio here is going to be performing a piece and there's four different sections where we're going to invite you all to join us and make sounds with
107us the idea was we sculpted a piece that depicts a group of friends going out into nature and encountering very collection of sounds such as Birds winds water and then inviting the students to create those sounds on the spot just off the top of their head foreign thing about music is the the goal is so in the moment the goal was you know the 10 minutes we were interacting with the students and creating music that was just for a moment and then it was gone but the memories remain [Applause] it is a cool thing to be a part of their middle school experience because um I mean it is that those transition years and if you can keep the music alive in them now up through high school like it typically stays with them for
108a lifetime so it's trying to create experiences that they will remember way down the road and it's cool to have a part of that for the rest of their lives they would remember their Adventure in Brandywine State Park and smile when thinking about just how Grand a day it had been it's set up in a way that we have ideas and thoughts about how it should go but there's lots of room for adjustments and improvisation and to allow the students to surprise us with things we would have never thought about um and there was there was plenty of that and it was magic it was great [Music] [Applause] Brandon white school district recently hosted a unified Bocce tournament which included all secondary schools and the site program the events included Opening Ceremonies and Bocce games
109many students volunteered to help and even served as judges it was wonderful to see all of our BSD students come together to participate in such a wonderful event I'd like to thank Jess Dugan the Brandywine School District's adapted physical education teacher for her efforts in organizing the event we've put together a video showcasing this event but I will warn you be ready for um just how powerful and moving this video [Music] and the Delaware interscholastic Athletic Association Unified sports committee today we are at Brandywine high school and we are hosting the BSD secondary Bocce tournament the SC we partner with Special Olympics Delaware and we bring individuals with disabilities and without students to partner and compete and practice together to do events such as what we're doing today at BSD our focus is always to
110provide all of our students with equal opportunities in physical activity so we have Springer here we have PS DuPont we have Mount Pleasant High School Concord High School Brandywine high school as well as the site program [Music] [Applause] [Music] one two three [Applause] partnering with Special Olympics Delaware we're able to bring our students together and we're able to have unified opportunities to participate in sport it's great because it helps build relationships it helps build you know acceptance just a good strong inclusive community in in our district [Music] thank you that concludes my presentation for this evening I want to take this time to wish all of our families a safe healthy holiday season of course share my monthly send-off it's very easy tonight to see why we are all proud to be BSD any comments
111or questions from the board on superintendents report I would just sad maybe we can start to work some of these short clip videos into the uh our website get some prominent placement and cycle them through Delta till the next uh next meeting if we can uh that takes us to public comment uh we only have one speaker this evening uh Jeanette wilt Gonna Save My Spiel because I think you've been here before so your time will start when you begin to speak and you'll have two minutes hi I promise to be brief so good evening my name is Jeanette wilts I teach math and computer science here at Brandywine and while last time I spoke I was treasurer of DSA I was recently appointed vice president at the November board meeting thank you um I
112have some apologies and thanks tonight I was on a plane returning from Chicago during the last board meeting so I thanked Dr Lawson for speaking to the board last time about the early childhood education resolution I also want to apologize for the errors contained in that resolution and a special apology to Ms pigeon for her name being left off the list I know that Dr Lawson corrected the errors and gave the resolution the correct number to match brandywine's numbering system so I'm once again asking for the board to approve this resolution so that the funding system for our youngest and most vulnerable children is made more Equitable and thank you thank you Miss wilt moving on to board elite member liaison reports um dsba executive board Mr Ackerman we have not met since our last
113meeting we meet again in January great thank you very much and I know some of these I should have removed but may still be on the live version correct me if I'm wrong uh Miss Gordon no dsba legislative committee today you are correct a dsba legislative did not meet again this month and we will not be meeting until the first of February thank you very much District finance committee um through a host of conflicts we did not have any board representation at the district finance committee committee this month on December 7th uh Miss floret will present the financial monthly financial report shortly and our next meeting is scheduled for January 3rd early due to the early board meeting as well um educated recruitment no update missed stock is that correct uh no not not yet
114uh the um New format is in the process of forming right now great thank you uh health and wellness advisory Mr Heller yeah no meeting since the last meeting great maintenance advisory committee so uh meeting was held November 15th at Claymont Elementary and we talked about the recent State audit of construction financial documents which were many many years in a row found no issues with the audit and then we talked about the Thanksgiving maintenance activities um including the paving of the bus yard and I think we that might have been covered in the board recap from last month um there was some information on all those activities or on Facebook I remember seeing it somewhere um we talked about maintenance and Safety and Security funding that was included in the bond Bill and how that
115process goes for us to receive that funding and then we touch a little bit on the major projects for the next two summers that are going to go out to bid over the next couple of months and the next meeting is January 10th at PS thank you very much Mr Heller um parents is an advisory committee Reverend Perry uh the parent and citizens advisory committee has not met since our last meeting um as a follow-up to the meeting that was held in November excuse me in October with the principals uh the the principles were given until December the 15th to submit their respective names for the committee once the names have been received from the building leaders our Pio uh Danielle Pro Hudson will schedule a meeting for early January fantastic thank you uh Wilmington
116learning collaborative update um the Wilmington learning collaborative met on Friday December the 2nd via virtually attendees included uh the governor's staff or members of the governor's staff superintendents from each of three school districts as well as board members uh City representatives from the respective board excuse me school districts in addition to support staff our agenda was extremely aggressive so as you can imagine with any other aggressive agenda we did not have an opportunity to discuss all of the items on our agenda the items that we were able to discuss or have some type of discussion around were establishing meeting Norms our decision make to include our decision making process a council member termination dates the thoughts was it's being recommended that members term limits should be staggered so that a parent wraps and other appointees
117terms don't expire at the same time process excuse me the executive director job description the engagement and role of Delaware State University uh the Christina School District's current uh plan that the mou that they currently are executing and uh the group decided that our priority our top priority at this time is to complete the nominations of prospective board members of each the each of the three District Liaisons did work together to create a synonymous application process which we completed um I am pleased to announce tonight that um the parent excuse me the parent representative who will represent our district her name is Mrs Starr Wilson um last week superintendent uh link holder the director of community engagement and partnership Lavinia Jones Davis principal Tracy Roberts and I had an opportunity to interview Miss Wilson and
118were pleasantly surprised um her credentials are more than amazing um and we believe that she will serve in this position well some of her background uh attributes include she is a parent of two Harlan students um she brings to the this in particular Endeavor lots of community uh backgrounds she is a social worker for more than 10 years she's an advocate for student and students and their families Miss Wilson also understands the demands already placed on the school and the nuances that come along with being a school within the city limits um her application is rooted and connected with the Harlan family and the Metropolitan Wilmington communities most importantly she understands the heavy load that this endeavor will undergo but has articulated that she's already ready and willing to support this work and this the
119current work of Mrs Roberts the bonuses again is that uh one is that she is a a parent of two Harlan students one of which is a Kindergarten now which speaks speaks to her long-term investment at Harlan but also she is a former Harlan student herself that we found that out during the interview and she is also a former student of our superintendent that also came out during the interview so we unanimously agreed that because of these reasons her uh commitment to the community the fact that she is not only invested at a vested parent but also is a former Harlan student we believe that she is not just the ideal but the perfect candidate to serve as the representative on the Wilmington learning collaborative right fantastic and I'm sorry our next meeting will be
120held December the 20th uh virtually at 11 A.M thank you very much Reverend Perry uh 917 wmph no updates no meetings since last reported uh other than uh recommendation to the public to tune in to 917 for your more music mornings and as well as a variety of student programming and a variety of Music throughout the day any additional board member reports or comments um Mr I just wanted to um acknowledge that you and I and superintendent we were able to attend the recognition ceremony uh for our Educators support um personnel and uh thrilled just thrilled uh to see Meg Brown from Concord uh recognize and what she wrote um it was just so touching because it was so student-centered and um you know the people who are recognize I know teachers get a lot
121of attention um but the people who really run the buildings are are admin assistant our custodians um and the people who are there early leave late and I'm so grateful uh for all of our educator support personnel and obviously just a touching uh testimonies tonight from uh the people recognized um you know just so happy so congratulations again to Miss Brown no thank you you for including Miss Brown thank you Mr stock Mr President can I also just acknowledge uh the work of our director of Community Support Miss Lavinia Jones Davis and principal Roberts who was who both are here tonight great thank you I just want to add that the parent Council for students with disabilities next meeting is on January 5th at 6 15 at PS great thank you Miss pigeon that concludes
122board member reports uh this time I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second Motion in a second all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries uh Personnel matters do I have a motion to accept the monthly Personnel report as discussed in executive session so moved second Motion in a second all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries they have a motion to accept employ except the superintendent's recommendation on employee matter 23-101 as discussed in executive session so moved second motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries uh student matters do I have a motion to accept the student Choice reports for invitations and denials as discussed in executive session so moved second motion and a
123second all those in favor say aye aye aye aye any opposed motion carries takes us into Old business the proposed BSD and Bea joint resolution on Pre-K funding Dr Lawson yes thank you president scrobot Vice President Heller members of the board and superintendent holder the revised resolution is in front of you and just a couple of clarifications from last month so House Bill 86 was signed into law that was for the K-12 basic funding to be lowered to 8.4 so this resolution actually aligns to the 8.4 for kindergarten it would lower the basic unit for pre-k from 12.8 down to 8.4 so that that they would match this bill was presented last year before both House and Senate and it passed however I'm told it got lost in Appropriations so it did not move forward
124representative Kim Williams is reintroducing it for this legislative session so your resolution would support uh her reintroduction of this legislation um and our own representative Deborah Heffernan called me and indicated that she would be co-sponsoring and supporting this I haven't talked to representative Matthews but she indicated that she believed he would be in support as well and I'm here to answer any questions you might have move to accept the superintendent's recommendation regarding the joint resolution as a motion right here a second second Motion in a second all those any discussion I just want to say great job tailoring that to Brandywine school district of course you read through it and now it it reads very well thank you sir any further comments or discussion we have a motion we have a second all those in
125favor say aye aye any pose motion carries thank you Dr Wilson moves us on to Old Business board policy zero two dot zero one um a few amendments to board operations Authority and responsibilities this is our second read I've had a few uh text adjustments um stock any items you want to add uh no I can just update the community since uh this was introduced uh this past summer since that time um several of us have met uh to look at this policy to edit to um come up with something um that seemed to be um something that's something that would work for the Brady wine School District um and um so here we are tonight to take a look at this um as a second read move to accept policy zero two point zero
126one with the updates we have a motion do I hear a second I can't promotion and a second any further discussion Mr President I I would just highly recommend it I don't have a problem with the updates to the policy as I just made the motion but I would highly recommend that you contact the Delaware School Board Association and set up time with Dr marinu chief for our board to have a workshop to talk about superintendent evaluation we could also invite uh the president of the Cape Henlopen School Board who has actually done a doctoral thesis on superintendent evaluations and she's also consulted with Christina and at least one other board that I'm aware of that's a great idea thank you yeah that's a great idea and I also uh just want to clarify and
127um just ask the board um and that to take that so that we can take some time as a board um I would I would ask for the rest of the school year to do exactly what Mr Ackerman is proposing um and to take a look at we've we've taken a look at some different models that are out there um as well as I think some information from uh Mr marinucci too as well but I you know I think that this is an opportunity for us to come up with something um that is going to be a tool that is going to be um an effective Affair evaluation and will help to hold us as a board and future boards accountable to the community very well we have motion of a second any more comments
128all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries new business it's floret for Ray um monthly financial report for November 30th good evening members of the board um colleagues in the very thin crowd as the last presenter of the night that's one of the bonuses right um so you're a true fan um so we had our uh monthly meeting and I'll give a little report on that um since I know board members weren't able to go but there was one additional item that we talked about and that was the September 30th unit count um and this year like Dr Lawson was talking about what the spec Ed basic coming into play possibly in the future those divisors are in place currently and this year without an increase in the number of students
129we did see an increase in the number of units and that is students falling now in greater numbers in intense and complex categories and that increase was 66. and so we talked about pardon oh so we talked about um how that plays into the budget and how that plays into different funding sources um in terms of the monthly report um it's in very good shape local revenues are at 93.2 percent State revenues are at 85.4 percent so a total of 88.5 percent and five months out of the fiscal year or 46 1 so obviously we're way ahead because we get taxes uh the majority in October we talked about there was one line item and expenses that was over at 105 percent that was Safety and Security funding we're getting an additional Safety and Security
130line item from the state John Reed just submitted the grant for that so that will disappear as those funds come in um the committee talked about prior year encumbrances sr2 sr3 as we close out some of the old small encumbrances um moving into January the one item Mr Hanby couldn't be here tonight the one item that he said gave uh his heart um some exercise was a cash flow and I want to make a statement the cash flow in the monthly report um has an ending balance of 8.1 million dollars that what I said is a placeholder right now as I finish the final budget the final budget is going to include all of those new Appropriations and funding streams that come with the 66 new units that includes not just division one salaries it
131includes related Services part of the cash in so all of that is kind of working through the budget as we get to um to January and finalize that so please know that's a very minimum I don't expect it's going to be at 8.1 million but until I kind of ran those all those numbers in um I left it where it was and didn't mean to alarm anybody with that it I expect it will be higher than that um and as Mr scrobot said the next meeting is January 3rd at 5 PM so that the committee can see the budget before um I bring it to the board question that I just I heard you say 66 initially and then I thought you were speaking about 66 students that were intent and complex increase but it's
132not you mean there are enough students to warrant 66 teacher or staff units units correct and that would be paraprofessionals um support staff everything that's within the within the building and remember too this year there was new funding for HP 100 that was part of the unit count last year it was a cash allocation and this year it's part of the unit count so there were uh pieces across the board in the unit count that increased both related Services the HB 100 and the division one units does that um how does that translate to number of students in Tech intense and complex though like what is that increase or percentage of increase um I have the numbers here the complex was 97 um and now is 156. the intense was 56 and now is 88.
133so the greatest growth was I shouldn't say growth the greatest change was students who were intense moving to complex as a as a rubric as the IEP team um you know evaluated and went through that process so how does that the tuition tax look for that growth of students and that that's fine that's the exact question that the committee asked um and there's an interplay right because it's not uh 66 additional local funds they are positions and supports that existed and so it is that interplay and that's what I'm kind of working through right now that interplay between tuition um and local funds and units a lot of what we're going to see now is is some funds for 100 tuition-funded pairs that would now have state support that didn't have state support before so
134some of it's going to move off of tuition while some of it's going to move towards local and so that's what's shifting around and I should be able to articulate with the exact numbers in that final budget thank you yes I think as you work through that will be helpful for the committee as well as for the board in the January meeting any additional comments or questions great thank you very much thank you move to accept Financial reports so we got audit I have a motion do I hear a second second motion a second any comments questions all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries general information meeting updates next board meeting is early January 9th superintendent any comments why we moved that early did we talk about that earlier State
135oh yeah board meeting the king Holland yeah holidays January 15th okay January 9th here at the Brandywine High School auditorium followed by February 6th for anyone High School auditorium followed by March 20th brand new line High School auditorium February is also very early because of uh Valentine's Day and something after President's Day President's Day so yeah two very early board meetings uh followed by a late board meeting in March very well with that I thank everyone for your time and attention and participation this evening I will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries we are adjourned that concludes our December meeting everyone have a happy safe holiday season we'll see you in the new year