Brandywine School District Board Meeting - February 7, 2022

001all right we'll begin with our call to order and good evening everyone welcome to the brandywine school district board of education regular meeting tonight is monday february 7 2022. tonight we are live in the bhs auditorium uh with a zoom broadcast ms karpinski may please have a roll call mr scrobot here miss pigeon mr ackerman miss gordon mr heller here reverend perry here miss stock here all present thank you ms garbinski um at this time i would like to ask mr heller to lead us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with and justice for all this time i'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda second of a motion i think

002i heard miss pigeon first second mr ackerman all those in favor say aye aye any oppose motion carries leading us into everyone's favorite time welcoming back our student leaders for the high school reports first up we have ethan hondashane brandywine high school for his designee oh there he is yeah down front please ethan is fresh off his senior recognition swim meet this evening thank you good evening members of the brandywine school district board of education my name is ethan hondashane and i am the student council president for brandywine i am pleased to share that brandywine sports teams have been continuing to perform at the top level since our last report to all of you our winter season is proceeding full force and our teams have been accruing more and more victories our boys basketball team

003has been on a winning streak of three games straight and has triumphed over mount pleasant since their last report unfortunately they suffered a loss of glasgow on friday we look forward to playing christiana tomorrow night our boys and girls swim teams continue to be undefeated and are now both ranked by delaware online as the fourth and fifth best teams in the state respectively both teams defeated concord recently and are eagerly anticipating the upcoming conference championship meet the final meet of our season is with mount pleasant high school our indoor track teams are training now in preparation for their upcoming dia championships and our wrestling team is having a mixed season with three wins and two losses recently our clubs and organizations at brandon line are also continuing to be an active and positive force in

004our school our black student union is hosting a number of events for black history month we're having daily quotes on our morning announcements hallways are being decorated with information about historical figures and the bsu will be holding a showcase of black culture and talent on february 26th the bsu will also be having a restaurant fundraiser at mozella's on the 16th if you all want to mark your calendar and we will be selling flowers for valentine's day our freshman class is also celebrating valentine's day with a candy gram fundraiser to spread the love to significant others friends or even teachers our art and gardening clubs are just a few examples of our other clubs that have been meeting recently to share their interests as well finally one of the clubs that i find most exciting the

005ski club has returned at the remaining dormant for years the first outing is scheduled for this wednesday february 9th and will bring over 30 students to elk mountain for a day of snowboarding and skiing finally our student council has also been collaborating with students from concord and mount pleasant to organize a leadership conference for our student governments brandywine has also been continuing to hold opportunity talks or op talks where guests continue to come in to our counseling department to educate and inspire our bulldogs to go out into the workforce our bulldogs have also been shown off their beauty recently our school stores requested models for our school merchandise and on saturday we held a very successful prom fashion show where students modeled prom attire to their peers and the community members that came to watch

006our bulldogs have also recently held a dance show they will be soon holding a cabaret and we are currently working on the spring production of the wizard of oz which will be held on march 3rd 4th and 5th our bulldogs are displaying goodwill and charity in their actions our national honor society has been active and one of the results has been the after-school tutoring program for any student that wants help on their homework or on studying brandywine has also been selling special olympics spread the word t-shirts there have been after-school clubs such as the homework club where our beloved assistant principal mr murphy has been volunteering himself on friday afternoons to help students get their work done also one of our gym teachers and coaches at brandywine mr julian who graduated from brandywine in 2010

007is creating a club to enable and inspire student leaders to develop more school pride in our students i would also like to draw attention to one of our star bulldogs serena bala serena is a student of the year candidate for the leukemia and lymphoma society or lls the student of the year campaign is a philanthropic leadership programming benefiting lls in which students will fundraise and take action for the fight against cancer the kickoff started january 20th and during the next seven weeks she will be raising as much money as possible to help fund treatments therapy research and more she can't do it alone and she needs your help to raise funds for such an important cause if you could donate as little as five dollars that would go a long way and it would be

008greatly appreciated to know more or donate go to events dot lls.org slash d e slash delaware s o y slash s bala b a l l a h thank you so much for your support and good luck serena now last month's question from board member pigeon spurred a lot of conversation and continued discussion with all of the our members of the student council as well as our teachers peers and administrators through these conversations we have gathered a lot of perspectives on issues that we would like to resolve at brandywine and although we do not have time to discuss every issue there were a few repeating issues that we have encountered one of these issues is continued disruptions in student misbehavior in the hallways at our school we have experienced an unprecedented number of physical altercations

009in the school since we returned in september although admittedly since winter break this issue has seemingly lessened we are happy to share that there has not been a physical altercation since before winter break that's an improvement that we hope continues we also have a few students who repeatedly leave their classroom and distract other students from their learning by wandering around the school building additionally some of our students are struggling to complete their class work after their transition back from online high school as for the solution for these problems there is not a single clear answer to these issues we have been helping students grades by hosting tutoring sessions with members of the national honor society and homework clubs as we previously described a number of teachers have also been stepping forward this year to find

010ways to connect with the students the hallways have been addressed with a number of creative solutions some of which have been more effective than others one of these is a reverse hall sweep where administration selects a class to recognize closes the door and thanks those students who are in class on time with a small reward there has been a suggestion that teachers attempt to make classrooms more engaging when students enter by playing music for them there have been administrators and teachers monitoring the halls and we have had classroom discussions with our teachers in some classes we even had district office employees come in to help on the days where there is a staff shortage there have also been some responses to the hallway issue that have not received positive feedback the creation of posters and

011sel lessons although well-intentioned have not have not only not been perceived as helpful but some students especially those who already followed the expectations have been getting very frustrated by these attempts and see them as out of touch additionally collective punishments on students have not been received well and many students have expressed that they believe that reinforcement for positive behavior would be a more effective approach on a more positive note we are proud of the school we go to and our students are very enthusiastic about the culture and community that we have been able to develop at brandywine students gush about the teachers that they see giving their all to their students and making school as enjoyable safe and productive as possible students also love the diversity of classes and clubs that are offered at brandywine

012and the exceptionally high student involvement that we see there is also a sense of pride in our sports teams and other organizations that habitually lead the district not only in their performance but also in their enthusiasm and sportsmanship another point that we continually saw brought up is the diversity in our student body in race culture economic status religion and many other areas which our students feel greatly enriched educational and social community at brandywine while the return from the pandemic has posed some substantial challenges we as the brainy one community are working hard to become a cohesive and supportive community for all the students thank you for your time tonight and we would be more than happy to answer any questions the board may have now and we would also be happy to have a meeting

013with the board to further discuss some of what we discussed here thank you [Applause] thank you so much ethan for that um additional um added bonus to your board report and for really taking to heart my charge to you and um wow it was so much more than i had anticipated and um there's a lot to unpack there and i think that i personally would love the opportunity to sit down with groups of students and would i'm sure that other board members would too some people work on getting that scheduled and um maybe next month you can just add a little piece about how maybe some additional changes or some other things that have rolled out to kind of address some of those issues yeah of course thank you thank you after miss pigeon gave

014you uh some homework at last meeting how do you um students say you understood the assignment is that tick-tock speak um but also the bsu event on the 26th is that a something you need tickets in advance can you buy tickets at the door uh i'm not entirely sure to be honest but i can contact the vsu and have that information sent to you if you would like yeah certainly make sure that gets on to the morning announcements along with if you could ask mr roth to add the link that you had laid out for the donations and could you tell us again the student's name who's fundraising uh serena bala okay yeah please make sure that link gets on to the morning announcements to get a little broader audience and uh it's a little

015too a unique address there to write it down and remember yeah mr skrobot uh we will also put that that link for serena's work on the district website for those in attendance tonight and if you weren't joining us last month uh board member uh miss pidgeon challenged our high school reporters to come tonight prepared to share what they thought was the most positive thing what what gives them a sense of pride around their school or their building but also challenge them to identify areas of need of improvement and bring a solution based on that identified need so uh yeah as mr skrobot mentioned uh ethan you nailed it thank you have a good evening okay next up we have concord high school maya reeves and alicia garcia sorry about that a little short anyways good

016evening ladies and gentlemen my name is maya reeves and i'm the president of concord high school my name is alicia garcia vice president as our school as our second marking period has recently come to a close the students of concord high school have been working diligently to maintain good grades and prepare to the start of the third marking period off to a strong start our winter sports teams have also also been working extremely hard to continue their strong seasons as we will soon welcome the 2022 spring sports concord has been very busy as of late on january 14th our wellness center sponsored a pause for people to visit as students were able to see and interact with all kinds of pets as a therapeutic way for staff and students to de-stress our jobs for delaware

017graduate students hosted a jar dedicated to foster kids led by miss lucky upcoming cover annual spread the word to end the word that we believe that will be held on march 3rd a wonderful event to show support of inclusion and eliminate the use of derogatory words this month has gotten off to a good start as our black student union student council gay straight alliance and minority student union work hard to create activities and informational presentations to celebrate black history month and black icons in our society the student-led clubs have been working diligently to highlight and appreciate black excellence and history all over our world now about a month ago ourselves and the other leaders of the school's student council were challenged by the board to not only address what we like our school what we

018like about our school but also issues that are present in our school and to not only address them but to bring solutions for them like many of our other peers we appreciate the clubs we feel there are clubs for everyone in our school no matter who you are whether you want to drama math or just want to be around people who look like you there's a club for you this is great because it creates inclusivity and spaces for people to be themselves it surrounds you with like-minded people this helps create this helps create long-lasting friendships not only in but outside of school as well alyssia and i have benefited from this process through being elected as president and vice president of student council which forced us together as officers and friends however one of the

019most pressing issues we face in the concord community is the use of racial slurs in our school and the lack of effort to address it this has been an ongoing problem in our school for years whether it be by our students or staff members it has been a prominent issue that affects many people as leaders of our school it is our job and goal to ensure that our peers feel included safe and heard which is by popular belief has not been the case which is why we come to advocate and address this today when these situations occur and nothing is being done to resolve them it creates division and animosity in this place that we are supposed to learn it although as we listen to the students in our school we have gathered insight and

020solutions on how we can make concord a more inclusive safe and fun environment we propose enforcing zero tolerance for racial slurs the implementation of inclusion programs for both staffs and students open conversations within our school to highlight the negative effects of racial slurs can have on marginalized groups of people the code of conduct there is no serious re referring to racial slurs and these cause more harm to others than curse words or abusive language as for faculty students cannot be helpful to a high expectation if staff is not held at the same standard the words of michael jackson if you want to make the world a better place take a look at yourself in the mirror and make a change we're ready to make that change thank you does the board have any questions thank

021you for um taking the challenge that i put before you and i hope that it sounds like you all met as three different schools and then the student councils of your schools um and we're happy to i'm happy to meet with you individually or to meet with you as a collective to talk through some of the things that you've addressed and uh thank you for uh having the courage to come and talk about the issues in your schools so um beautifully absolutely i would say again you as well understood the assignment um you mentioned the wellness pause i think that's very important you know as we hopefully look towards the end of this pandemic that as young students in high school taking a advantage of the wellness centers that we have but you know using

022it as an opportunity to think about your own personal health whether that be physical health uh social and emotional health and i think you know it's good that the the pause was given for everyone to have an opportunity to do that and i think that also ties in uh with the items that you've addressed this evening and how to pursue that going forward so i commend you on that um also you had mentioned about the you know groups and activities in the school and how important they are and i think i've always been an advocate of that with you know my own children and anyone that i would come across that it's you don't have to be the star athlete you don't have to be in the leadership position but the biggest part of getting

023the most out of your high school experience your college experience or your work experience whatever that is a big part of it is just being involved in you know you two are certainly showing that now as well as your peers so keep up the good work thank you mr holler something i don't want to dismiss one of the suggestions the solutions that you all have um with regards to the racial slurs and the student code of conduct would that be something that we could look to add or have the code of conduct committee take a look at that absolutely and i just want to commend maya on her leadership i had the privilege of attending two student meetings and at the conclusion of that second meeting i wasn't supposed to say anything but i had

024to say that sometimes the adults need to take a step back and it was one of those days where i had to ask myself who was teaching who and listening to the interaction between the students the sharing of the concerns i was the student and they were the teachers and um it was refreshing it was eye-opening it was candid and i appreciate the push that the students are giving us to address very real issues that have to be addressed thank you certainly last but not least mount pleasant high school catherine farbah and william holmes good evening brandywine school district community my name is lily and this is katherine we are the vice president and president of the student council at mount pleasant high school throughout this month mount pleasant high school will be holding many

025events to recognize black history month to start our announcement show mornings at mount gives a black history tribute each day recognizing members of the african-american community such as annie turbine malone the first african-american woman to become a millionaire for producing and selling hair products for african-american women in addition members of the mount pleasant radio program are running nightly black history shows if you are interested in listening in tune into 91.7 fm from 8 to 8 30 pm another way mount is honoring black history is by incorporating it into our lessons one of our english teachers has created a whole unit on james baldwin students are being given the opportunity to study his work and write essays speeches and personal letters about this acclaimed author in addition mount is holding an assembly featuring a key arts

026production on february 17th this group is a theater company featuring multimedia presentations with images and live performances the performances at mount will give the students an opportunity to learn about black history in a new and innovative manner a few days ago the cast for our spring musical freaky friday was announced in the upcoming month the engineering department at mount will start back up its chapter of the technology student association and the administration team will hold another honor roll celebration for our high achieving students [Music] to address the questions posed at last meeting we decided it was important to get students perspectives throughout our whole school to complete this a survey was sent to all students about these questions the overwhelming majority of students best part about mount pleasant was the community many students emphasize the

027importance that the niche programs at mount have had on their high school experience for the students that are part of the international baccalaureate program many seem to appreciate the small class sizes and close-knit connections between the students in the program likewise other students found their time in our musical or jrotc or sporting programs to be the most significant and enjoyable the challenges or problems that the students at mount face range in a variety of areas one common challenge that many students faced was the disconnection between grade levels and programs at mount pleasant as a whole this often results in issues with engagement in school activities and groups of students never getting to know each other the student council at mount is currently working to plan multiple events with the intention of connecting all students the

028other main area students felt has been a challenge throughout their high school years has been the disjointed communications and lack of support from fellow students teachers and administrations some students expressed frustrations about feeling unsafe or not valued while at school we believed one solution to these problems would be to open up a line of communication between students and staff this could be achieved with the administration team sending out monthly surveys to students to allow them to address their concerns or thoughts on the events in the past month student leaders the administration team and staff members could meet to discuss the concerns and possible solutions to implement another problem that students expressed was their frustration with the cafeteria food students i understand understand the limiting nature of the school's budget with cafeteria food but we're suggesting

029that once a month a restaurant or food truck can be an option at lunch students would love to be allowed to buy chick-fil-a sandwiches or purchase from a local food truck we would love to further discuss these ideas and the other problems that were brought up by the other students and continue to work to improve our district and all students education three for three and i don't want you to feel left out so you understood the assignment as well um it was great um i also enjoyed hearing some of the uh black history month profiles that have been run on mount pleasant 917wu mph so that was exciting um and the monthly surveys do you see that how would that be distributed just through schoology or some other platform yeah i definitely think through schoology

030and possibly like students are going to need a reminder to do this so maybe like the first like the the first month or the first day of every month uh maybe in the first class there could be like an announcement for like five minutes for students to complete surveys and then it could be like a time afterwards for a group of students and staff members and possibly board members if you were able to have that sit-down conversation to address the concerns and make sure all students were being heard fantastic and i know cafeteria food has uh improved leaps and bounds from my time in these halls but i do think the idea as we approach into spring i think a food truck is a really fun idea so hopefully we can see something about making

031that happen not to mention you have nights cafe fine cuisine right there on site also for taking the challenge and and um answering it and uh is the the survey is that something you feel comfortable that you as student council members could address with your principal for sure i would definitely be open to addressing okay great well let us know how that goes next month perfect thank you thank you [Applause] certainly as always our student leaders are welcome to stay and uh enjoy the rest of the evening but we know you have studies to attend to so if you would like to be excused you certainly are and that will lead us into this evening's special presentations and recognitions starting out with uh update on the wilmington learning collaborative from department of education the governor's

032office like to welcome back governor carney mr simmons mr sheehan and governor carney i'm going to have to upstage you here for a minute because ladies and gentlemen we have a very very special guest in the house this evening brandywine school district's very own former teacher former principal and former superintendent mr dr mark holiday [Applause] the doctor secretary or secretary doctor careful what you wish for i thought that i would bring our closer tonight so we figured we'd been dr holiday first i would be remiss if i didn't take the opportunity with so many educators and students and of course the board here tonight if i didn't thank you for your patience and your resilience during this very difficult uh couple months with cove at 19 we really feel confident that we're over the peak

033we're on the down slope if you will if you follow the date every day certainly makes my life a lot easier you may have seen our announcement today my guess is with that announcement uh we'll have more people unhappy with it as we do happy with it and so that's kind of if we get an even split there that'll be pretty good i think uh given the challenges that we face but we really feel it's certainly necessary to thank all of you for for your patience and resilience i also want to commend the student presenters they were absolutely great both fun and and calling out unacceptable behavior it really takes some courage to to do that and we appreciate the leaders of of today and tomorrow we're just here to for the third time to

034answer any questions that you might have i want to thank mr holler in particular for hosting us at a number of events the town hall meeting of parliament was really exceptional we had a zoo meeting with with teachers and met with i think overall in the three districts we've had about 150 meetings several town hall meetings in person or semi in person we've had zoom meetings with teachers in each of the districts we've done door knocking in each of the districts and in fact this past saturday we were in the brady wine section of the cities and from 30th street north from from p.s from van buren down to about washington and all the blocks in between and i gotta say i had a an encounter with a woman really right off at the bat

035we started about 10 30 11 o'clock in the morning it was a little chilly out we have a group of folks that get together to do the norm docking and if we get a a warm body i'll scurry over and try to talk to whoever it is that answers the door and this particular case of an elderly african-american woman came to the door and she was wondering what all the commotion was about because we were just kind of get getting mobilized and talking about where we were going to go and so i took a good five ten minutes to talk to her and she was very curious to know what uh what we were doing but more than curious i gotta tell you she was skeptical i think because she's heard a lot of different

036people recommend this or that of the approach to the problem she certainly believed that we should do something but like just about everybody that that i've encountered over the last several months that we've done this everybody has a little bit different solution or approach to the problem what i know is that everybody agrees and i believe very strongly that everybody wants to do the right thing and help out i guess the question is how do you get everybody moving in the right same direction and that's really what we're proposing to do through the collaborative so as i talked to this woman and she looked at me like i was uh some kind of fly-by-night salesman i told her i was the governor i'm not sure she believed me she treated me like i was the

037governor there for a while but towards the end i think it started to sink in that if we all work together we'd be better off than if we were doing it one district at a time i've seen extraordinary things in the brand new one section in wilmington we had a great visit at harlan we've had a superb zoom meeting with the teachers at harlem we've been had great accommodations by lincoln and staff we had a really good day knocking doors i think what we're asking tonight is really pretty simple is really to engage us at the next step to see if we can pull off what you know everybody really wants us to do and i believe all of you want us to do that as well as i got towards the end of the

038conversation with this woman i wasn't really sure whether i was making any headway to be frank and i explained you know what what it was would look like and she she obviously had a long history and understood the long history of education uh in our city from the mid to late 70s with the desegregation order towards today but as i was about to leave she said to me she said you know governor i knew your dad and i didn't know what was coming next if you knew my dad you're not sure what that was he said she said your dad was a good man i'm not sure exactly what she meant by that but what i took away from it was i'm going to place my trust in you and this idea that you have

039to bring everybody together because that's really what we need to do and so i hope that you'll you'll vote tonight to approve taking us to the next step to sort out whether we can meet some of the questions that you have come up with a solution that's not just the best thing for the children in the northern part of this city that are part of the brandywine school district those children for sure but the children all across our city i'm really happy that the mayor's taking some time to come out tonight to talk about how important these educational issues are for the city from from his vantage point and with that it's really my great privilege to introduce somebody there's no stranger to any of you and that's your former superintendent our secretary of education

040dr holodeck thank you governor and brandywine board it is great to see you much has transpired since we were last together and as the governor said you have faced some tough decisions and difficult critics and we recognize um your efforts hard work and your support you and everything that you're doing and miss stock congratulations on becoming teacher of the year and the brandywine school board member so i have been following the wilmington learning collaborative work for about the last three months i've zoomed in prior to becoming secretary of ed and watched the governor and his team present and i support the model when i presented when i first became secretary my first week i presented at the newcastle county combined boards meeting some of you i believe zoomed in at least one was there in

041person along with the superintendent i explained in brief but i want to go into a bit more detail tonight that i don't contribute the struggles in the city schools to a lack of effort or interest amongst school boards or districts or administrators and of course the educators it's not those things i believe it is a capacity issue and an inability to stay focused on specifically those schools and so i came tonight to take a different approach and think back upon my leadership over 10 years as superintendent and identify more specifically this time the efforts that were made during my tenure consider and think about the formal presentation that you received from the governor and his team the slide powerpoint presentation having to do with essential elements and pillars that are going to be included in

042this collaborative and the challenges that we face in those schools okay so i became superintendent in 2009 at the end of my first year my team and i developed next steps for harlan elementary and here this is an unchanged document it's 12 years old here are the issues that the team identified funding leadership teachers supporting them more effectively would we be willing on quoting from the document would we be willing to approach bea regarding an mou around staffing we need to complete a comprehensive school review the teachers need specialized professional development in this school the instructional leader team needs coaching and support the students need additional counselors and counseling support can we look at a three-year grant opportunity directly from a document untouched goes on the school needs greater intervention structures and more resources there

043needs to be a focus on engaging parents and we need to look at instructional coaches that was all in a plan 12 years ago very similar i would suggest to many of the elements of the wilmington learning collaborative so that was in 2011. in 2014 joe brumskill representing reverend perry's area now approached the leadership team with the idea of an extensive summer camp focusing on reading and math and additional opportunities specific specifically for harlan students we implemented that camp in 2014. in 2015 we tried a teacher leader pilot specifically at harlan elementary school with a principal who's here tonight diana golden in 2017 and 18 i directed your superintendent to focus his entire efforts on your two city schools because we were struggling with the outcomes in those two buildings the performance and in 2018-19

044we launched the achievers academy bridges to wealth program at a ps dupont another initiative specifically for families in and around fiesta dupont and harlem they all have something in common they didn't last very long not because the superintendent or the board didn't care i would argue as i said in the beginning it's a capacity issue urban schools are different they need to be hubs of the community all of those strategies very similar to the kind of strategies that need to be included in the wilmington learning collaborative i've heard during these conversations the question of can we really expect the schools themselves to do all of this work and really change what's happening and the short answer is no and that's the beauty of the wilmington learning collaborative is that it will engage cbo's community-based organizations

045faith-based organizations we need to launch summer programming bridge programs we need to engage families in the community we need to ensure that we have teacher agency and community agency in these schools by permission participating on councils where they actually have authority to make decisions governance piece is actually really important to me and the fact that brandywine will have reverend perry and lincoln holder representing the district i think is critically important as well as the other districts with their city representative of superintendent and board member i'll close with this i see it as a second shot when people ask me about the accomplishments um that we had in brandywine while i was superintendent i can i can name a long list and it wasn't one individual it was an executive team working with an amazing committed

046board my biggest disappointment was not moving our city schools the data coming out of those buildings around attendance academics teacher turnover it's all about the same as it was 12 years ago 22 years ago 30 years ago it's changed very little it goes up a little bit with initiatives like the ones that i mentioned we lose focus because we have 14 other schools that are also priorities and lo and behold the performance is stagnant that needs to change and this collaborative as the governor shared is our best shot at starting to shift outcomes and opportunities and outcomes for children at harlan and the other schools that join the collaborative i employ you tonight to support this work bring link to the table and we're going to get an mou signed we're going to make a

047difference for those kids over the course of the next three years and beyond thank you so mr members of the report we're happy hi john i'm happy to answer any uh questions you have i know you have a long agenda whatever it's your pleasure sir sure i guess before we open up for questions i do see that mayor perzicki has signed up for public comment just want to give you an opportunity maybe this would be a better time for you to speak well while we're on topic ladies and gentlemen i'm mike perzicki i'm the mayor of the city of wilmington i'm happy to be with you this evening i think my perspective on this is uh is certainly different i'm not i'm not an educator and i certainly wouldn't second-guess anybody in your your head

048around and describe the profession uh an extraordinarily important one in our lives but my perspective is that of a mayor who lives with the weaknesses in our community day after day and have to deal with those problems and and very often this turns out i wind up dealing in the criminal justice system you know we have we have a great city it's a really healthy city there's so much good about it and yet somehow i have to square that really healthy part of our city uh with the fact that we are one of the most violent cities in this country on a per capita basis and it it hurts badly but i face that reality every day and the only the only thing that differentiates us from so many other cities is we have this

049bifurcated fragmented education system that seems to divide our community the way our the way our kids live with one another day to day they don't go to the same games together they don't go to the same events together parents don't go to the same schools together and it seems to me although it's not necessarily an elementary level but certainly at the high school level it seems to me the only distinguishing factor in our city's existence and i keep thinking somewhere at the root of all this it's got to be about our education i did talk to a harlem teacher about a year ago i was campaigning and i met with the young woman who taught at harlan she's just a lovely person i asked her about her experience about teaching here and she started to

050talk about teaching the kids and then she got teary-eyed and before you know it she really was upset you could see she was upset because she said the kids can be so difficult it's really hard to teach these kids and and i realize at that time how una how little we appreciate what teachers go through and how little support they get our kids see things day in and day out that kids in the suburbs can't even fathom you know we just had a 16 year old not a month ago a 16 year old in broad daylight shoot a 15 year old girl four times in front of her house because her boyfriend disrespected him on social media all the kids in the neighborhood who go to schools your schools heard that and heard the sirens

051and saw when that little girl was lying on the ground superman kids don't see that these kids see that day in and day out we just had six we just had five of our teenagers go up to philadelphia and carjack the us congresswoman put a gun in her face and take the gun and take the car back here 13 years old 14 year old 15 years old our students suburban kids don't see that i had to go stand in front of harlem a year ago and deal with 200 really really hurting parrots when a 14 year old was killed on 37th street in the middle of the day riding on a bicycle at 2 o'clock in the afternoon i had no answers i did my best but i didn't have answers my kids see that

052all the time and then they go to schools and and our teachers have to teach those kids i must tell you and i i think mark had said it earlier you know nobody nobody's saying that that the board isn't working as hard as it can and as earnestly as it can no one's saying that the administrators and the teachers aren't doing their very best but if you take a look at the numbers it's just not working and to me the collaborative the collaborative acknowledges all the things i talked about before and is determined to say we have to work together to try to make things better we have to use we have to use methodologies that you don't use in other schools and i don't know that it's going to work um i long ago

053gave up link i know you listened to me screaming yell at the reading consortium but you know i gave up on we're just going to change the whole system and start over again and so this this strikes me as a brave baby step that gives us hope that maybe we can make some maybe we can make some philosophical changes maybe we can make some collaborative changes that help the lives of the kids that i i represent and i know we all care so much about so i would i would just hope that you can agree to take this baby step with us and try to do something really helpful for our children thank you very much anyone from the board want to start with a question for the governor or i'll start um so i

054was there for your signing of the permanent opportunity funding and you know i want i once again want to thank you for that because english learners are so important and such a growing population in the state of delaware um my question for you is the funding for this initiative will this be additional funding for opportunity funding or will it come from the students from more english learners i mean that there are some overlap so it's a great question and it also is a question that's very consistent with others on the board who i've talked to individually and and frankly even the woman that i talked to that i mentioned across the street from horror on saturday morning which is how can we trust you even if we trust you you're gone in three years how

055do we know that this is going to be sustainability great question the answer is opportunity funding is now part of the state the statutes of the state of delaware it essentially is funding that goes as you know to to schools uh based on the number of low-income students and english learners that they have in my budget this year we started off with a modest amount because we wanted to see if it worked we put darrell green in charge of a committee of representing districts all across our state it goes to every district in school in the state that meet those criteria the budget for this year is 38 million we have made a commitment with a legal segment to take that up to 62 million 62 million is real money even when you're spreading it

056across the state that's number one number two is last year hospital one i believe it was provide additional uh resources for uh counselors to to meet a certain ratio i'm not familiar with the branding one ratio my my guess is it's probably a good one but it plusses up those dollars as well which would obviously benefit the schools these schools are already benefiting by additional title one resources that go uh for the students and then lastly uh two two other things i should say one is we did approve addition we did approve special ed funding for basic special education from k to three which heretofore was not the case so that's going to significantly help and accrue to the benefit of these schools and then additionally resources smaller amounts but resources that will go to

057the collaborative itself and one of the most important ones and i've heard from many of the educators maybe the most important thing in that settlement that i refer to we have agreed to plus up early education early preschool programs across the state and in particular across the city so that's that's walking the talk right that's real sustainability um it's the commitments of you know legal settlements it's the commitment says uh in our budget and in the law of the state so just to clarify it would come out of the 62 million is what you're saying yes correct thanks governor um a couple weeks ago i had the opportunity to meet with dr holliday and jim simmons and john uh just to clarify some questions that i had but one that i wanted to ask you

058tonight is especially in this district we have um a good amount of kids who live within the city that attend schools that aren't physically located in the city so my question is how will the collaborative be able to positively impact those students and the teachers that still have to teach them that are dealing with all the same situations and struggles but don't physically attend a school within the city boundaries right so they wouldn't be within the collaborative itself as part of those schools right so they live within correct and and they would benefit from some of these community-based organizations that would be providing services as they came home from wherever whatever school that they were they will also benefit because the programs that i just talked to go to all schools whether in the city

059or not in this city you have a concentration of students that meet those creatures so the numbers are higher i want to answer that question and i want to clarify uh stocks questions so yeah we did talk about this and um i don't know that the collaborative immediately impacts the students who live in the city and attend schools outside of the city so we all know that that is a unique issue to brandywine because you are the district we are the district who has stayed as true as possible to the original d-seg order with that said i would argue that harlan a true community school urban school is much different than new suburban schools so my kids attended car craft as you all know who had students from the city bust out to the building

060i would suggest that the schools in the city really don't need to be hubs of the community they never have been and they never will be it's not necessary because the overwhelming majority of families that live out in the suburbs have means to have other opportunities provided to their kids so it's a good question what about the city students i would hope and expect that students who live in the city that don't attend in your case harlan in time would benefit through the partnerships that are developed within harlan and other schools that are part of the collaborative in the evenings weekends summer programming and beyond okay so it's a great question um immediate impact will be the students in harlan but over time i would expect also that even students who don't attend parliament elementary

061and or ps if it ends up in it would have access to some of those supports and services ms stock asked a question about opportunity funding so to be clear because i think there was a little confusion there the 64 million is specifically for the entire state for el and children in poverty there is an additional seven million dollars that the governor has included in his budget requests specifically for the wilmington learning collaborative on top of that other there's other dollars okay is that 7 million per school or it is 7 million for the entire collaborative year 1. so not really a question because i think a lot of the questions are going to come about as the mou is developed and you know certainly superintendent holder will will bring those up i guess my

062question so we've heard tonight in you know from the mayor you know communities of trauma and the things that are that are seen on the day-to-day basis and secretary kolodek you had mentioned you know how programs and initiatives had fizzled out over time not because of you know lack of effort from the schools um but i think part of that too is you know a lack of interest in participation so i think this collaborative you know in its simplest form i think we can all agree that yes addressing the needs of students is a top priority and and the focus of this and i think everyone is on board i guess my question or comment is how do you see the collaborative or the funding that's um allocated to it how are we going to

063address some of the external issues that impact our students who reside in the city and you know i think our our schools do a tremendous job with what they have in the time they have to do it but if if the things the students are if the things students are learning in school are not reinforced outside or supported so how are we going to one address the the external issues and two encourage maintain and develop consistent participation from the community over time so great question the and there are two i think two parts to my answer one bit one would be to bring kind of other social services to bear to address maybe some of those problems that you're talking about and we've done that with the existing memorandum of understanding that we've been working

064under with christina for the first couple years in fact christina didn't have nearly enough students for this the five buildings that they had and so there was a consolidation that had to be done and in doing so working with the principals and teachers and darrell green and jim i guess towards the end developed um a plan that included an early childhood center on the first floor of stubs if you know where stubs is right down the street from howard and on the second floor parent support unit we've also talked about additional parent support units on the west side by the way the parent support units don't just service the parents of the children that are in that school though the proximity would lend itself to that so that goes in part to some of those

065other services that are needed this cbo engagement that dr holodeck's been talking about we expect will be part of it one of the challenges with that today is and we've we're doing i chair what we call the family services cabinet council which is a group of my cabinet secretaries that address uh issues just like this and we we've just had a a survey of community-based organization organizations across our state and one of the challenges across our city one of the challenges is that children particularly the older ones don't go to the community based organizations uh you know the boys and girls club uh or the power whatever like they used to and so we're going to have to find really um engage those organizations to think of things differently and engage other partners in doing

066that but you're exactly right what i hear from teachers most is the problem is and i have two two really good examples from uh from my visits to harlan you've heard me talk about the day i visited the second grade at home and this was just after i was elected governor and there was a little girl that i said hello to and we were talking and she was completely focused on something that was happening in her family or that wasn't happening her father hadn't arrived from georgia and this and that what was clear to me she was so distracted there wasn't any learning going on that day for her and lots of students you can multiply that and this is what i hear from teachers as well on the other side of that i met

067a little a boy this last week i guess at shortlist we were down at short ledge and he was all excited because it was friday and he was seeing his mom on friday and it just really drove home the point that we've been trying to make that we need to have creative solutions that address these issues that are issues outside of the classroom that affect what happens in the classroom and we believe that the collaborative will bring hyper focus to that you've got how many other schools that you say that you have lots of other i don't want to call it distractions but focus that you need to have it because all the schools have equal importance as i know so governor i um i understand the signing of the mou and the intent behind

068that and um and i do support that and and supporting mr holler and and reverend perry and participating to um establish what this will look like i think one of my concerns that i'm not sure that the collaborative does is address the mayor's concern and and many of our concerns about our older students and the fact that the city of wilmington does not have a traditional comprehensive high school and go ahead yeah there's no question about that and we've heard it everywhere we've gone and met the mayor and i have had all kinds of conversations about it about how to do it and how not to do it what i know doesn't work is this when we were knocking doors in in brown town in hedgeville uh which is on on the west side that's

069christina district kevin kelly who was with us that day he said you know where these kids go to high school what their feeder is and i didn't know he said glasgow glasgow glass goes way down there there's spacey mckean dickinson a.i brandywine i don't know about mal uh yes every one of those other schools there's space there and so we can't ignore that problem and not an issue and it goes more to john's question at the mayor's point with the older children but i want to get those i want to get these children in the ninth grade ready to soar and they're not we're not doing that we're not getting out of a third grade reading a great grade level and that's that's my that is my north star that's the thing i bang the

070table on every day because we know the kids read to learn or learn to read until preschool to grade three and then read to learn the rest of the way but we cannot this one thing this doesn't do and that's everything we want to take this step forward we've had a very difficult time i tried for four years to get people around the table john's father and link's predecessor this fellow right here to try to come around and approach that was city-wide it's easy to get everybody to agree on what the problems are and the challenges really really hard to get people to agree on what the solution is we we are convinced that this is a positive step forward does it solve all the problems no do we still have to deal with the

071high school issue absolutely um but we're not going to get there in my view unless we take more of a citywide approach because that's that's going to be a hard issue think about it i think it's definitely obviously a heart issue but i think that we put a lot of time and investment and money and human power and into the young kids which is very very important no doubt um from an academic aspect and you know social aspect but i don't want those kids to not be part of a system that's supporting them throughout their their lives and if we're already if we are acknowledging that there's an issue um at these young ages there's a the issue at the older ages is is i also think maybe even more important it certainly gets amplified

072right right and so yes and i think what better venue to have those kinds of discussions than this collaborative with that hyper focus to figure out what because let me i could tell you this because i've tried it you can get a table a conference room table full of city leaders and everybody will have a different idea about the high school question how to how to fix it what i do know the first thing we should do is make sure that what two or three hundred seats in howard are full we have empty seats an hour and that's a high school with a history it's been recapitalized 100 million dollar investment in it the 24 uh side of the of the complex is in great shape the 72 side is in great shape and we

073ought to be maximizing that uh as a really important historic city high school governor i would just like to say thank you to you secretary holliday mayor pizicki for taking time again coming expressing the the dire need i think uh having spent 20 years of my 30 years in education between harlan and ps uh near and dear to my heart and uh kind of echo what i said last time you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take and i'm ready to come to the table to have discussions to roll up my sleeves and make a difference will we have all the answers figured out immediately no but i think we owe the children we're talking about the opportunity to sit down and come together in their best interests i look forward to

074the opportunity at the risk of sounding like i'm pandering your name came up in a conversation i had with one of the doers in a positive way one of the things that i think that perpetuates mistrust is not engaging the right stakeholders and i commend you for hosting i believe 150 town halls but i want to hear you talk a little bit about the ongoing work to make sure that that we are engaging those people who will be directly impacted by the decisions that we make here so that's okay it's a great question i think it's one that you've asked me before my work is not done i'm not going to get in the way i'm not an educator i was raised by two but that's not but i am going to be there to

075support the board and the districts that participate the mayor and i talk about this i don't know seems like weekly um not so much this education part of it but the other parts that we're talking about there's nothing more important to me as governor in the last three years than this well making sure we get safe safely get out of code which is related to this and so my role will be different my role will be to to make sure that we have the sustainability my role will be to make sure we have the right people in addition to those that are already designated to be on the board uh the collaborative board my role will be to make sure that they have the resources my role will be to make sure that we have

076the resources for the early childhood component it's not just for for wilmington um my role will be to make sure that higher ed is preparing teachers for this environment my role will be to make sure that that we support our teachers so that they stay more than five years that they have that uh support so i got a lot of work to do and i understand your your concern there it's the same concern as the woman that whose door i knocked on on 36th street across the street from holland on saturday and she looked me in the eye just to size me up and figure out whether she could trust me or not thank god she remembered my dad which gave me a chance on that one but i got a lot of work to

077do so this guy there there's no question um the governor has been committed to this and he i'm sure has proven to this point he will be engaged i will become very much engaged with that said in regard to community engagement reverend perry that's going to be your responsibility you live in that community and you're going to be a board member and i would hope that you and link would say these community councils who makes up that group and what kind of activities are they organizing to ensure that that happens because i think it's safe to say the governor the governor and i are not going to be able to make that kind of engagement happen but you can you know in your community who the influencers are and you're going to have a voice

078at the table to ensure that the community councils are running activities one those community councils should have people of influence from the community on them and then equally important what kind of activities are they organizing and how are they getting community and voice community voice involved right and heard so i'm not trying to pass the buck i'll work with you i think you know that right i feel like we were passing a buck but [Laughter] thank you secretary holliday to that point when governor was speaking at harlan the point was drawn out that when we say the wilmington learning collaborative we're not talking about a collaborative of three school districts we're talking about a collaborative that includes the community that includes parents that includes the schools it's so much larger than three districts coming together

079to benefit students thank you other questions just just a comment um if you want to address the high school issue for say children my suggestion is let them choose whatever high school they want to go to and give them transportation so they can get there just like the charters do we've heard that more than once and and frankly to a certain extent it exists now the question is do we give those students the information they need to make the decision give really quick story if i made john so i was meeting with a group of eighth graders nietzsche and to help me with this at stanton middle school there are about 20 of them this is clearly anecdotable i went around the room and asked him where they were all going to high school only

080like three were going to their feeder high schools of mccain and dickinson they were going to st georges and delcast howard and this you know they were making those decisions but um and they weren't all city children a fair number of them were but the question is do we give them the resources to make the decision in the first instance and then the transportation to get there but we know that we've got lots of seats you have seats in your high schools so does red clay chris christina to the extreme really we don't we don't we don't know we're actually on a waiting list at mccain high school i'm sorry we're on a waiting list at mccain high school perfect so certainly governor secretary holliday thank you very much for coming out this evening um

081we've heard a lot of information this evening i think we've heard a lot of good questions i'd like to um if it pleases the board i know this we're voting on this later in the agenda under new business uh i'd hate to have this great conversation leave it and then come back to it much later in the evening so before we vote on it or if if there's a motion and before we take a vote i'd like to hear we had a couple of public commenters that wanted to speak possibly a few on zoom and i know uh here in the audience pastor pope if you would like to speak now you just use the microphone right there to your right we'd like to hear from you now and then we'll queue up anybody on

082zoom um after pastor pope speaks so i'll begin by saying good evening to president spog and to superintendent holder governor mayor secretary holliday i'm sitting here for a moment just a little bit nostalgic if i may because both of my children are graduates of springer middle school and randy brandywine high school we've operated the achievers academy in the brandywine school district for 17 years of under mr schrod's father who actually invited me into the home of your father and mother to discuss the achievers academy and when mr ackerman was president of the board robin perry i listened to you say that you thought dr harvey might be shifting the blame i know i know it was a joke made because you're very active in the community i have to say this we were brought into

083the brandywine school district we came in in 2005 began operating the achievers academy the following year or so dr holiday brought us over to concord high school when he was the principal at concord high school and i'm sure you remember that dr holliday and since then the years have gone by we've served 753 students who have remained in the brandywine school district we've taken them on college tours through a collaborative partnership and this is where i'm going with this with harvard university's financial aid initiative we've taken students chartered towards tour buses to take students to harvard every year since 2007 and to mit and i'm saying all of this to say not because of what we've been able to do but because of the opportunity to serve in the district here in the brandywine school

084district we had a 100 graduation rate of all students who have gone through the achievers academy and 98 of them have entered college we've seen 10 of them go on and get graduate degrees one is now in his final year of law school and we've produced five business owners all in this district and i have to say that i've served on three referendum committees here and everything that's been done in this district has been done to move students forward and i know there's a lot of challenges mayor pizicki i'm going to say to you i i heard you talk about the crime rate but i also want to acknowledge the fact that because of your economic development and community development throughout the city it is pushing forward what we need to improve the crime rate

085here because that's going to have a significant impact what we're seeing is the residual of what's been done year after year before your tenure and so i want to say that this collaborative this wilmington collaborative wilmington learning collaborative is going to have an impact we have never taken one dollar from the state or from the federal government to do what we've done to serve in the district we have an opportunity here the governor is allocating capital to impact the city of wilmington the the entire three districts that make up part of our city we don't want to miss this opportunity we can't can i can i go one step further we can't afford to miss this opportunity we've got a governor in office right now who's willing to not kind of use the term put

086his money where the money where his mouth is he's not just selling us lip service he's selling us on the opportunity to move our districts forward and to educate our students and so i want to say dr holiday three years ago and we're still here in the district waiting and available to serve but in 2018 he opened up ps middle school with the consent of miss mcintyre who's now director of hr here at the district so that we could host families we provided them with dinner and with a partnership and a collaboration once again with wharton school of business bridges to wealth professors of the university of wooden business school came down here i've taken a course at wharton to be able to teach financial literacy and entrepreneurial we had a six-week course where parents

087in the community came in the evening for two hours in the evening every evening for six weeks probably once a week for six weeks to learn about financial literacy to learn how to apply their capital so that we could move the city forward and i have to tell you that this is an opportunity that i'm encouraging the board that we don't want to miss governor county i want to thank you for being willing to to put the assets of the state towards educating our students i know i i won't just say i we all dr kurt apartment reverend perry we've had a discussion about this we've all witnessed what dr holliday has done in this district for 10 years i expect my expectation is he's going to perform at the highest level as our secretary

088of education so i just wanted to to stand today i've been coming to these meetings this is the second time i've ever spoken in the last 17 years this is the only only the second time i've ever stood up to spoke to speak i refuse to be a spectator in missing the opportunity that's been put forth by our governor by the mayor the secretary of education who are all working together to make this happen and i know the board is going to do the right thing to make sure that we have this opportunity to pursue this and i extend myself our community development corporation and my church to assist as superintendent holder and reverend perry take their seats as they're appointed to serve in this community and that's all i have to say thank you

089[Applause] for giving them all out of sorts here jumping around i did not uh go through my typical spiel of time on public comment so i apologize for that but thank you for your words um ms scott or ms karpinski do we have anyone on zoom that would like to speak to this item good evening president we do have um two comments on zoom so we have um first is dr priscilla mapassi and i know we were originally scheduled for two minutes in public comment this evening but if we could extend that to three minutes going forward um please make sure the clock adjusts that great thank you all good evening brandywine school board and community members my name is dr priscilla posse and i'm the pediatrician and director of public health initiatives at henrietta

090johnson medical center i did want to attend the school board meeting in person though i am still in my office due to a late clinic session so i appreciate the opportunity for virtual comments thank you for this opportunity as i want to speak in favor of the wilmington learning collaborative as a community pediatrician my priority focus is on the overall health and well-being of all children we know that environmental settings such as social determinants of health where people eat sleep work and play directly influence the impact of both physical and mental health outcomes for children a critical social determinant is the school environment and their education status a strong learning foundation in early childhood prepares children for the educational experiences of kindergarten and beyond to navigate multiple opportunities for advanced education and employment so that

091they can become thriving adults and contributing members of society as such i strongly support the wilmington learning collaborative which provides a framework to enhance educational resources for our students and to provide appropriate support measures for our teachers and education administrators as well to address our children's physical health and mental wellness needs as a henrietta johnson pediatrician many of my patients attend school in the brandywine school district particularly children who receive care from our claimant site our current educational landscape during this ongoing pandemic underscores the importance of educational equity and equitable access to learning resources and opportunities with the learning collaborative schools and school districts can benefit from partnership to ensure that children who live in one zip code receive equitable access to quality education educational resources and behavioral and counseling supports as children who live

092in another zip code in the same city of wilmington every child at every school in the city must have the same chance for literacy at an early age and overall academic success equally important the collaborative offers opportunity for parents and families to engage in curriculum development programs and educational promotion which is a critical component to sustain community building and support our schools are one of the most essential aspects for child development and i applaud our governor and his team elected city officials educational administrators and community advocates for the vision and intentionality of the wilmington learning collaborative i strongly urge the brandywine school board to vote in favor of our children their deserved education and the future that awaits them thank you all for the opportunity to speak before you this evening thank you dr paulson

093[Applause] mr president did you say we could go ahead and vote on that item right now not yet we're going to listen to public comment and then i'll entertain a motion to adjust the agenda take the item out of its order uh any additional zoom speakers on the topic of the wilmington learning collaborative um yes we have um brittany mumford hi can you all hear me okay yes we can i thank you um for the opportunity to speak this evening my name is brittany mumford and i am the executive director of an organization called delaware can we focus on education reform throughout the uh the state of delaware i am here tonight to speak in support of the wilmington learning collaborative for three main reasons one i believe that the collaborative allows for more flexibility

094it allows educators to have a more formal role in decision making and the also the ability to collaborate across districts in a way that is not only not really seen in other areas but is actually encouraged by the existence of the collaborative itself secondly it gives families and communities a more active role in their child schooling the community councils encourage involvement in funding and the school environment but more importantly they create a governing board of leaders that actually have a deeper knowledge of city schools and i don't want to you know disparage the intent or the commitment of any school leaders principals administrators school boards but they are by design dealing with the varying demographics and geographic locations of the multitude of students within their districts while these governing boards of the collaborative would have

095a unique understanding of the needs of students within the city of wilmington and lastly because it's a pragmatic solution families have been waiting decades you know for something to change and they just can't wait any longer we have this fantastic solution that has been proven to work in other areas we're going to take a year or two to figure out how to make it work as well as we can and then it can be deployed almost immediately we would have the opportunity to strengthen city schools now while the consortium and you know other groups can continue to work out a more long-term solution the bottom line being that you know it adds for more local flexibility it immediately helps our students and we know that our students can't wait and that's why delaware can wholeheartedly

096supports the learning collaborative and urges the board to morph move forward with a vote this evening and just thank you all so much for the opportunity um to share my opinion here tonight thank you miss comfort any additional zoom mascot that concludes all the zoom comments okay so do i have a motion to suspend the agenda to consider item 11a out of its regular order so moved second motion mr ackerman second miss gordon all those in favor say aye any opposed motion carries uh so moving to new business item 11a is the wilmington learning collaborative um superintendent holler did you have anything to add or did you have a recommendation to make to the woods it should be in the board move to accept the superintendent's recommendation we have a motion from the superintendent that

097has been presented to the board do i have a second motion mr ackerman second mr heller and the motion is the recommendation of the superintendent is that the brownie wine school district board of education authorized the superintendent and his designees to enter into negotiations regarding the creation of the wilmington learning collaborative with the goal of developing a memorandum of understanding to be presented to the board at a later date with the understanding that engaging in the negotiation process does not commit the board to vote to approve the memorandum of understanding or commit the district to membership in the wilmington learning collaborative any discussion on the motion i know we've discussed a lot this evening i will just add that you know again thanking the governor for coming and dr holodeck secretary holliday um you know

098i think it's important that as a board um we like we mentioned or i mentioned to our student leaders earlier today how important it is to participate and that's kind of where my head is on this to you know engage in the process participate let our voices be heard um you know be a collaborative partner in developing you know a future memorandum of understanding you know with you know fulfilling our elected duties to you know look out for the best interests of the students uh in the bernie wine school district particularly those who live in the city and will most benefit uh from a plan of this sort but also to look out for the best interests of all of our stakeholders you know our teachers our schools our administration anyone our taxpayers anyone that

099will be affected by this plan i think it's important that we take this next step and move forward so i will be supporting uh this and i hope the board members will do so as well well regarding engaging our stakeholders i think it's important that just as the governor and his team has already done that we do our due diligence as well and hosting our own town hall meetings and possibly knocking on doors as well to make sure that we do engage those who are directly impacted any other comments from the board we have a motion we have a second all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries [Applause] thank you again governor to you and your team we now return to our regularly scheduled program in the agenda we are

100on special presentations and recognitions item b uh employee recognition mr lithia mcintyre with the best of brandywine good evening president scrobot to superintendent holler all of the members of our board to our awesome audience who is here tonight in person and to all that are on zoom joining us tonight we have a part that you get to play now which you actually probably will really appreciate this evening and that is i'm gonna ask um while i call up our first principal diana golden of forward elementary to join us if you will all stand and give a standing ovation and celebration of our education support professional of the year and our teacher of the year for forward that'll give you a chance to get up for just a moment i like that okay and as you

101get your stretch and your wiggles out students this was a great opportunity for those of you that are still in the room to see how you can participate and have some civic duty and responsibility and how you can also celebrate the awesome staff that work and serve in our schools every day this evening i am very proud mr scrobott to present our first recipient and that is mr aaron krasowitz aaron is a secretary at forwood he was for a while the only male secretary now he has some additional counterparts that have joined the ranks we're very proud of him and uh his principal will share some great things that he's done at his building but i want to comment on some things that he's done just briefly outside of his school environment he is a

102member of one of our secretary committees that plans professional development opportunities for secretaries especially those that are brand new to brandywine and we know in the um the state that the country actually is in with shortages in various areas i'm very proud of aaron and the committee that he serves on that goes above and beyond to support new secretaries to our district and that has helped them to stay and help them to transition so that's just one thing that he's done he wears many hats but tonight we do celebrate you i'm going to invite your principal to speak but we want to present you with a certificate and an award aaron um thank you so much for all that you do for brandywine good evening it is my privilege to recognize mr aaron krasowitz as

103ford's educator support professional of the year sending an email taking a phone call running the copier helping a teacher greeting a parent walking in the door all at the same time that's the miracle work of an administrative assistant through all the pressure and demands during the school day mr krasowitz is always professional and compassionate with students staff and families mr krasowitz is the first responder at ford elementary by his patience and kindness he makes the front office a positive welcoming environment for all who enter or call he is a vital part of our school climate and the success of our building he ensures the building runs smoothly mr krasowitz's willingness to give his time to come in early stay late and mentor other administrative assistants exemplifies his dedication our school community respects him for his

104professionalism trust and communication he truly cares about our school and is dedicating dedicated to supporting each one of our students staff members and families especially over the past two years mr krasowitz has gone above and beyond to comfort our staff and families i know i represent forward when i say we are grateful to have mr krasowitz as our senior administrative assistant someone who is reliable resourceful supportive and irreplaceable and next we have to celebrate miss gretchen savage and miss savage is the teacher of the year for forward elementary school uh she also works with our ell population and supports them so would you all please give another round of applause for ms savin and the savage if you can come over here i have the honor of presenting ford's teacher of the year greta savage

105where do you begin when someone has dedicated the past 31 years of their life to teaching mrs savage has been an asset to the ford school community for all of those 31 years yes she currently teaches third grade over the years mrs savage has taught a diverse population of students in grades second through four her skills and dedication to ford's students staff and families have distinguished her over those years mrs savage brings incredible energy and professionalism to her classroom and our school one foot in her classroom and you can feel the positive learning environment where all students are respected and part of their learning under mrs savage's instruction and support all of her students grow academically and socially she has high standards for classroom behavior and models expectations national board certified mrs savage is a

106lifelong learner who takes advantage of opportunities for professional growth and leadership among her colleagues she was a founding member of ford's green team and a co-leader of the coding club as well as a coach for ford's girls on the run program and the cheerleading team more recently she took on the role of mtss tier one team leader as our district representative and co-leader of our school pbs team her willingness to volunteer her time exemplifies her commitment commitment to her students school and profession she makes a difference every day for each one of her students that will impact them for their lifetime we congratulate her on this recognition as ford's teacher of the year and wish her the best in her retirement this june i thought we had one more is that was that it no

107we do have another building okay we wanted to just like i guess i was going to say wait till the end to acknowledge all of them so i guess they snuck out are they coming back up top are they i believe so i think they went out to get a picture so um perhaps mr whipper if you can grab them just to let them know they can come back and when they're done next i would love to invite mr kenny rivera very proud and mr rivera tonight is going to be celebrating two people um miss janice stephens who we will begin with he has like he has a host okay coming on up with his admin team dr smith and mr lawson welcome uh we will ah mr stevens hello all right we're family others

108are here from tally because i see you all waving and coming thank you for your support of your awesome staff um we are going to start with a uh presentation mr winter thank you to miss janice steffen miss stefan is the educator support professional of the year for tally middle school she has served in our district for over 15 years and now uh tally has been blessed to have her presence and i will invite mr ververa after mr wicker presents you with your awards from the district to share some comments about other things you've done on paper janice steffen is tally's building administrative assistant in reality janice runs the building it starts with a work ethic that is second to no one she's always the first staff member to enter the building and from the

109moment she enters she ensures that the building's climate remains positive and professional she has a wealth of knowledge that is evident every time a staff member asks me a question to which i do not know the answer they all can say my response by now that's a janus question she even takes an active role on our mtss tier 2 3 problem solving team she makes a positive impact on the lives of our staff and students now everyone who knows janice knows that she loves two things her family and disney so on behalf of the tally family with a lot of help from miss eaton and miss fetter we wanted to let you know that we appreciate you for bringing your magic to tally with this poem be our guest i guess because our janice is

110the best put your acquisitions in the system and she will handle all the rest like aladdin had his genie and the mermaid had her flounder janice handles all our issues and we love to be around her all through the summer and the winter the heat tend the snow her tasks are never tardy we simply cannot let it go let it go dennis handles all the coverage each and every single day she channels her inner simba all the way she does things with a smile she never just says no she's the best we love her greatly unlike pinocchio our nose won't grow as the pandemic made things rough and our roles changed day by day we entered a whole new world but janice led the way her spunk and her whole style it's how we aim

111to be she speaks truth when she speaks out [Laughter] [Music] and some costless and vendor list galore even clean in some back closets end up a whole part of your world in conclusion oh dear janice we knew it from the start whether at brandywine or tally you'll be in my heart no matter what they say and this is why we are proud [Music] mrs robot our final presentation tonight is the teacher of the year for tally middle school mr ryan warful please give it up for crying and before we allow and release the awesome tally ensemble and crew to surprise us and entertain us a little bit i just wanted to say that ryan is an amazing amazing band director he does jazz he does many many things for the district my sons went through

112tally and uh i have a son now that's aspiring to be an actress speak actor excuse me because of the influence of you and your wife and so he is near and dear to my heart as well as i know he is to the tally family so mr rivera please feel free to give accolades now and contributions of mr warfall no singing this time sorry guys watching brian warfield teach music is one of the most amazing performances that one could ever say he is not only skillful methodical he creates a passion for learning music in the hearts of the students mr warfield's full glory was revealed on remote learning despite the challenges especially for teaching band he created a setup like no other looking like a wizard behind an air traffic control center he was

113even a building leader implementing our instructional focus of writing strategies on this time you can just imagine the positive impact this had on creating a cultured center centered around academic excellence teaching music to students at talley is more than a job to mr vorpal it is his life's mission we talk about being a family at talley and that is in part because of the servant leadership mr warfell has modeled for many years he takes the natalie family to a whole new level by blending human work together with being a tally parent and having his better half chaperone in him in the classroom next to him mr wolfel will do anything for his students parents and colleagues he is accommodating and creative to ensure any student with interest can take his music class he performed for

114hours last spring for our eighth grade ceremony his devotion to tally students can also be seen after school he is usually the last staff member to leave school every day because of coaching jazz band or the musical people gravitate to him because of his energy and kindness our last musical had over 120 students participating and we have had a strong music parent boosters for many years with his assistants mr warfel makes us all better professionals and just better people in general as a tally parent and as a colleague i am blessed to serve alongside mr warfield i i think uh tally has just put all other schools on notice instead of [Applause] um thank you to all of our recognitions tonight um you know thank you for your collective years of service um you know

115all the support from your peers and the schools here tonight what a testament to the value you bring to the district and those you work with so thank you very much [Laughter] all right so next up instructional technology presentation uh miss patti staker and miss bonnie your canon let's just go about just a little prelude as they come up to the podium we're going to focus on several elements over the course of the next three board meetings that have to do with instructional technology so i'm pretty excited about the news that's going to be shared tonight we gave a sneak preview of that news back and i think it was around october or so when we found out about the news and again um excited to share uh the great opportunity that these two have

116worked hard to bring to fruition ladies thank you members of the board superintendent mr parler howler and the public for your time this evening bonnie and i are here to discuss the emergency connectivity fund program and how it impacts brandywine school district students we're going to kick off our presentation with a video regarding the eci program highlights and then afterwards bonnie and i will explain goals and plans going forward so let's take a look [Music] at brandywine school district our commitment and love of technology is evident whether it's in the classroom or at home we want to ensure our students and teachers have access to the latest technology so everyone can thrive in learning so as you can see the directions here at the top we will complete number five together that was to give

117us that february will be bsd loves edtech month throughout this month we'll be sharing great interactive content showcasing all the ways we're using technology inside the classrooms and even at home we're also thrilled to share more information about a brand new grant called the emergency connectivity fund or ecf this grant is provided by the federal communications commission and is aimed to ensure students have access to technology at school and at home as a district bsd has been awarded more than two million dollars to use to improve access to technology with these funds our district is planning to provide any student who does not have a home computer with a chromebook this device will be owned and maintained by the district but will be for the students use at home and in school [Music] in mid-february

118all bsd families will receive an email with the survey link this survey will help us determine which students are eligible for a chromebook as part of the ecf grant we want to make sure our parents and guardians understand that your students school issued chromebook that they already have does not count as their home computer so if this is the only device that they have they would be eligible for a computer with the new grant money this is all part of our commitment to our students and their growth and learning make sure to look out for that email coming soon and stay tuned all month for great content [Music] federal communications commission established the emergency connectivity fund otherwise known as ecf this fund is part of the american rescue plan as a mean to help address

119the digital divide the emergency connectivity fund program provides 7.17 billion in support to schools and libraries for the purchase of eligible computers families qualify for the program if their child or children do not have access to a personal computer at home a school-issued chromebook is not considered a personal computer and the guardian's or student's mobile cell phone does not count as a personal computer either some additional facts about the ecf program which we wanted to highlight here is that the fcc um has dedicated 7.17 billion dollars towards the program we have until june 30 2022 to purchase the equipment for our families families must meet eligible requirements to receive additional devices for their students and that fcc will reimburse 100 of the costs associated with those eligible equipments the chromebooks the reimbursement on connected devices

120will be capped at 400 per device the devices must be used for educational purposes those devices can be used both at home and at school and we will be sending out it is strongly encouraged by the fcc to send out a survey to guardians to determine any unmet needs as part of our commitment to student success we are proud to announce that the brandywine school district was awarded 2.6 million dollars in emergency connected connectivity funds to provide eligible students with a new chromebook for their use at home and in school this fleet of chromebooks will have the bsd image and goguardian for content filtering and i really just wanted to share the actual eca commitment decision letter um for brandywine school district receiving the 2.6 million dollars this is an exciting opportunity for us to

121ensure our students have access to technology at home and in the school so our next steps our communication plans are to begin with internal communication with all staff external communication with our families and then engagement with our media partners and our tactic is to communicate communicate communicate and then communicate some more we will do that with a superintendent haulers regroup messages to um all families followed up by emails it will be posted naturally on social media facebook facebook or brandon white school district website and then we'll also work with our colleagues from for outreach to their families it's our goal that every family is aware of this program and hopefully we'll submit for this um survey so february is yeah he loves edtech month and what better way to kick off a month of celebration

122than to notify all of our families that they may qualify for a chromebook so we will be sending out starting february 14th a survey to assess whether or not families have the unmet need to qualify for a student chromebook next step after the survey is a data review to consolidate the survey results and review for eligibility finalize the quantity based on the data review and start evaluating or changing the quantity of the purchase order one of the guidelines clearly established by ecf is that brandywine school district is responsible for the inventory for two years i'm sorry ten years i wish it was two years but it's ten years asset management includes documenting information about missing lost or damaged chromebooks purchased with ecf funding there is no replacement chromebook for the ecf chromebooks that is clearly

123stated in the guidelines we also added that as a statement in the survey so guardians are aware that there is no replacement device if the original ecf chromebook is lost stolen or damaged brandywine school district has been committed to increasing the opportunities for both educators and students to have more access to technology this is outlined as part of our district success plan goal 2 the district innovation guided by the needs of the 21st century learner opportunities like the ecf program will help us to sustain these goals that we have as a district and help us to maintain and perfect that essential one-to-one model in all schools it's vital bsd students continue to build their digital literacy skills and understand the basics of internet safety such as creating a strong password understanding privacy settings and being

124responsible for what they can post in social media and what they should not post in social media in turn each student has a chromebook at home and in school will enable students to thrive in 21st century learners thank you and do you have any questions one quick question so it said we're responsible for the inventory for 10 years doesn't that exceed the life of the actual device good question most likely it does but we are still responsible for 10 years in case of an audit and i guess what is the consequence of a lost or stolen device it just has as long as we document it and note it there's no there's no consequence but they but we must just maintain the asset management of this fleet will students and families that qualify have to

125return this device at the end of the school year will they maintain it through year round families will have to return the device if the student graduates or if the student withdraws from brandywine school district and we do have that noted on the survey too okay thank you any other questions another question just a comment um i remember when miss staker and miss buchanan came and said well there's a great opportunity coming from the federal government and they explained it and they said it's almost too good to be true and my question to to them was well what are the other districts doing are they going for it and you can see that the state of delaware got six million dollars out of 7.17 billion somebody benefited and it wasn't quite the state of delaware

126and i asked what all was involved and uh patty just got a smile on her face and said well it's gonna require a lot of extra work on the part of technology and i said can we handle that she said how can we not handle that if it's gonna benefit the kids so i'm just thrilled by that response and i very much appreciate it and it speaks to your commitment both of you to our kids our families because it's my understanding that even if the family has one home computer but they have three students they're eligible for two chromebooks the idea is that every student has access to a device that he or she can use at the same time as other people in their household or other students so again thank you and that

127goal two on instructional technology and our former success plan this also resonates with goal five when we think of fiscal stewardship and how do we serve our families and the local taxpayer what a huge benefit and your willingness to expend the extra energy and it it's going to be a lot to benefit kids thank you thank you for your time thank you thank you next up we have dr lisa pruder [Applause] gsd black history and holocaust curriculum planning update good evening president scrobot vice president pidgeon board members and mr holler it is our pleasure to come with you tonight to provide an update regarding recent legislation surrounding the holocaust and genocide house bill 318 and black history house bill 198 the social studies department has been hard at work under the leadership of dr lisa

128pruder our coordinator of social studies and tonight we would like to share our progress today so with that i turn it over to dr lisa pruder thank you so i'd like to just share some information about how brandywine school district is going to meet the requirements of these two new pieces of legislation house bill 318 which calls for the teaching of the holocaust and genocide and house bill 198 which calls for the teaching of black history both of these new codes have long complex lists of requirements but we can think about these requirements as having two parts one part that looks to the past and asks students to better understand our history and another part that looks to the future and prepares them to be better citizens so in the code on holocaust and genocide

129education which applies to grades 6 through 12 the legislation asks students to analyze patterns of human behavior and look at the roles that individuals have played in history as perpetrators collaborators victims bystanders and rescuers to identify causes of genocide and also to preserve the memories and the legacies of those who survived the bill also wants to prepare students to be responsible citizens in a democratic society to understand the roles that citizens have in combating discrimination and misinformation to explore the mechanisms of restorative justice and also to reaffirm our commitment to prevent future genocide so we've already done quite a bit to meet the requirements of this bill before school started in august all secondary social studies teachers as well as high school ela teachers participated in a workshop led by echoes and reflections echoes and

130reflections is an organization that works with yad vashem usc showa foundation and the adl to provide historical background and instructional resources for teachers so that they can teach responsibly about the holocaust and genocide on the state in service day in october there was a follow-up pd for all secondary social studies teachers also from echoes and reflections this past january and our pd day high school social studies teachers took a survey where they described how they were meeting this requirement in their lessons and identified any remaining gaps in the curriculum this week on wednesday there will be collaborative planning across all three high schools at each grade level course to identify the best places that these lessons fit in the curriculum so for example the 9th grade civics teachers are going to talk about how students

131examine the constitutional protections for civil liberties and compare and contrast democratic structures of government to authoritarian regimes in u.s history students will study the holocaust in the context of the second world war and in world history students will examine case studies of other genocides such as in armenia and rwanda for middle school we are going to draw upon the updated delaware recommended curriculum which is being revamped this year with these two uh pieces of legislation specifically in mind so that new curriculum is coming online this summer and going into next year we're going to have continued collaboration and support for its implementation the delaware code on black history education applies to grades k through 12. like the holocaust legislation it looks to the past and to the future this bill asks students to explore the

132history and culture of black people prior to the diaspora to analyze the role of slavery and racism in american history to investigate the legal perpetuation of segregation and discrimination to examine the ongoing struggle for equal treatment and also to celebrate the contributions of black people in every chapter of american history we also want to prepare students to be responsible citizens by engaging with complex historical materials to understand the role that citizens have in combating racism inequality and discrimination and also to develop students respect for cultural and racial diversity i think it makes sense when we're thinking about the implementation of this legislation to think of these grade clusters so in grades k through three we're taking a multi-disciplinary approach through ela the visual in performing arts and social studies in grades four through eight we're

133going to draw upon that updated delaware recommended curriculum that's being written specifically with these pieces of legislation in mind and at the high school level we're going to work within the district to find the best places uh to integrate black history into the courses that we offer at each high school so although social studies is taking the lead in implementation work in other disciplines will augment the teaching of black history our next steps are going to be coordinated by two groups at the elementary level we're forming an elementary black history education committee and we already have the secondary social studies department chairs who will work along with district equity leaders this spring we are auditing our current resources and we're identifying our curriculum needs we're going to be using guidance from doe and the social

134studies coalition to select the best resources to use in our lessons we'll be planning professional learning opportunities and looking for ways to incorporate student voice in these offerings we also want to plan some district specific activities to recognize local black history for example the claymot 12. ongoing we our teachers will participate in district and state level pd much as they did for the holocaust and genocide bill and will be coordinating consistent implementation across the district thank you do you have any questions my only question is a couple of meetings ago we had a textbook given to every board member uh in regards to black history are you looking at that curriculum we're looking at all curriculum right now we're in the process of looking at resources and working with doe and the social studies coalition

135to determine the highest quality and best resources to use and to to echo off a ralph i was going to ask a similar question um i took the time to attend one of the presentations from the publisher of the black history 365 i think dr mckinney might have been in that meeting also and i i just found the uh the author's experience to be pretty profound in the content and presentation seemed just if i was a student i would have found it incredibly engaging and interesting so i just i was going to ask the same questions if we were looking at that curriculum we're in the beginning stages of that i think but we have that textbook i was just going to say um i love that you're incorporating the claim on 12 into this

136so thank you was there any discussion on um implementing a k through five curriculum for the holocaust age appropriate not it not right now um in terms of the the bill itself because it calls out grades 6 through 12 we want to be very careful and sensitive to the way that the lessons are delivered and implemented certainly you know looking at other literature at the elementary level about experiences and such but it does take a great deal of professional development and thoughtful planning and implementation given the subject i guess as you develop the curriculum how how strict is it or do teachers have an opportunity to introduce curriculum or not curriculum but uh incorporate lessons like of their choosing where's the teacher's voice to incorporate it's everywhere there is no set curriculum we're handing anyone

137we're working together to select the best resources and make our own plans here in conjunction with doe and the social studies coalition but there's a great deal of teacher input but i guess once that's established is it then the teachers select from that established curriculum or i keep going back to [Music] as a child elementary school or middle school the and i can't remember the ladies name i could look it up but she did the blue eyed brown eye experiment where she took the classroom divided the students up and watched how their interactions changed so if somebody wanted to discuss uh a topic of that the um would that be pre predetermined through the development of this curriculum or could they work that into a lesson just as an example i think that's something that's

138going to be discussed with these teacher committees okay fantastic who knows so it is a required element it's not optional right correct it is state law and again i'd just like to echo what ms stock said i appreciate the inclusion of the claim on 12. i know mr reed is still working with abha they're doing a dedicated mural at clemont elementary around the claymont 12 because that is a proud piece of not only claymont history but brandywine school district history to be included in board of education brown versus board of education landmark case and we we're in that and we don't often celebrate it so thank you for including that absolutely thank you thank you next up we have our high school schedule committee update dr mckinney [Music] good evening president scrobot i think i

139don't see vice president pigeon anymore superintendent holder members of the board um last spring you charged us with taking a look at the high school schedule to see if it was still a schedule that produced the best outcomes for our students so at the beginning of this school year i did former committee i have the members of the committee on the slide in front of you you can see that we have a well-rounded group we went with all disciplines and we also included all three of our high schools we also have some representation from our district so tonight i have with me three members of the committee that are going to help me present to you our work our findings and our recommendation with moving forward so with me i have miss jenn mckelvey she's

140social studies teacher at concord high school principal kerry calderon lacey she's a principal at mount pleasant high school and then miss joshua tabron special ed teacher at brandon high school so at this time i'm going to turn it over to ms mckelvie okay okay so uh i suppose we were out that you already discussed this okay so we were so we all met and uh we looked at all the research uh for both the block scheduling and the regular short period rotation we found that the research really couldn't definitively say that there was a correlation between the schedule and student performance there wasn't anything that indicated that one was better than the other it really just the research just emphasized that the schedule needed to be designed to increase opportunities for all students so that

141all students had access and um you know would be successful we had some specific research from the gentleman michael reddick with the american association of school administrators basically said that overall students in black and non-bloc scheduled schools have equivalent end of school end of course test scores he did say that it should be noted that while the scores were equivalent students in the black schools earned eight credits per year while students in the single period schools earned six seven at the most this is a really good opportunity for students who need to either do makeup credit at some point or students who may have a specific interest in certain areas and look to take more electives this allows for that um so that was pretty much what we found we did look at a couple

142of other high school schedules that were blocked we talked a little bit about having um a block with like a an abbreviated block you know a block with a skinny all these different things we looked at multiple schedules from all of all of the areas and these were just some of the ones we looked at um you know some have the the sel and there's an enrichment block each day so we did we did our due diligence as far as looking at the research and i'm going to turn it over to curie so in looking at the research that we found we then felt that as a committee we needed to survey the population that we serve and so we provided a survey out to the community including students parents and teachers the surveys were

143disseminated starting december 15th and we closed them on january 9th the data presented overwhelmingly that the community was in favor of us keeping the current schedule rotation that we have but there were some considerations that we probably could look at moving forward and that was looking at the possible rotation as you can see that four classes every other day was favorable by 84 percent but possibly considering having a rotating schedule for students by 83 and 88 on the student and parent responses and that's something that we currently do not offer as we offer a static flip schedule but looking at every day possibly every period rotating throughout was something that was recommended by the survey we shared the links with our counselors we distributed them through schoology and newsletters and other announcements so that we

144were able to get it out to all of the stakeholders um just to note that in the respondents we did have um 302 students respond 121 staff members and 160 parents respond but the percentages break down that in those numbers though small there was a high percentage in favor of the current rotation that we have for our high school programs so once we did the research and we looked at the survey we wanted to go to the point of the matter which was student outcomes so what you will see before you we decided to look at three different student outcomes the first thing we looked at was graduation rate um and just let me just give you a brief synopsis of the colors so when you look at that dark gray um it's closer to

145the black color all the way over on the left it is when we had all the traditional scheduling meaning when we just had the regular rotating schedule when you get to the light gray some of you may remember we did try one year block only at brandywine high school when they had the two semester blocks but the other two high schools remained on the traditional rotating schedule so since that happens during the yellow years that's kind of when we have some students who experience the traditional schedule along with the block schedule so finally when we get to the navy blue those are the kids who have experienced nothing but um our current block schedule that we have right now so what's the takeaway when you look at the graduation rates graduation rates have remained stable

146in brandywine through the rollout of block scheduling again with the overall rate in uh the 20 school year slightly higher than the 13 pre-block scheduling baseline and then we looked at dropout rates if you go to dropout rates you'll see that there's a significant decline since the september since the 2013 school year and then we took a look at um credits earned which was probably the most profound of the data that we did see so you can see that the introduction of the block schedule led to an immediate increase in the average number of credits earned per year so students are earning on average and additional credit per year under the block scheduling model and again as the other presenters tonight have shared with you um that is significant for high school because the more

147opportunities we give them to earn credits the more opportunities we give them to be successful and to matriculate with us and to earn a diploma um and now josh is going to talk to you a little bit about the recommendations coming out of the committee for moving forward so based on the data that we reviewed in in our numerous meetings we do recommend that we continue with the block scheduling um some of the things that we have decided to implement we're further training on how to better utilize the 90 minutes for educational opportunities in the classroom and that includes not just uh more training for the teachers but just an understanding of how to use that time collaboratively and integrate blending learning opportunities as well as how to effectively utilize technology and how to address

148students who need a tier one instruction with additional supports okay we also thought that this would be a good opportunity to look at how to use that time and that could incorporate the use of skinny periods for students who transition in and out of rti programs or tier two and three interventions and esl learning opportunities as well uh with the introduction of new ela and math curriculum this would give us a better opportunity an idea of how to include a skinny period that would benefit students during that 19 minute block and this would also allow for additional flexibility with scheduling okay do we have any questions yeah a couple questions so i just with the surveys so that was across all three high schools correct that's correct so i guess it sounded like the responses

149were somewhat lower than i would expect um and i always want to make sure that we do give considerable weight to student and parent preferences i'm curious and i don't know that we have this data but when we went back we're in a traditional schedule proposing a block schedule do we think or recall that people wanted to stay with the traditional schedule as opposed or do we think the percentages would have been the same i'm getting at the point that people resist change and is changing back to a traditional schedule just more of that resistance to change so we did as a committee discussed that um we took into consideration that a lot of things are changing right now and we are in the middle of covid so some of those responses just could have

150been you know what we don't want to endure another change um which is why the committee decided ultimately that yes we would stay with this schedule but we do realize that there are improvements that can be made to this blocked schedule that can lead to even more increased opportunities which is why this committee decided that we don't want to stop our work that we as a committee we want to continue so that we can improve the outcomes that come from our current schedule by adding the skinny maybe 245s that block up something short at the top but we did consider that but based on the data and based on the student outcomes we decided it would be best to just continue with our current schedule for now okay and i know um miss pigeon had

151brought this up in meetings earlier last year um she did have to unfortunately leave early but she did want you to know that she is listening in on zoom because this was a topic of interest to her okay um another question i had just looking at the graduation rates that statistic did that include the 2020 and 21 uh year for the block the current block scheduling data it did not we did not have that at the time sure we can get that if you want it though and i guess i know you know we've the superintendent and you know i've kind of supported him in in making decisions based on data and i guess i don't know that we have the data for the traditional schedules but i just anecdotally looking at my own children

152and their peers i'm just having a hard time understanding how the block schedule with the longer classes is better than the traditional schedule with the shorter classes when i feel just their attention spans are shorter um for a myriad of reasons and you know some of the high school reports tonight had you know mentioned some of the challenges in the classroom and in the schools like would a a i want to base the decision on data but would there be a benefit to having the shorter classes would that keep students engaged better with a more intense shorter period just just just something to think about as well so miss mckinney are sorry dr mckinney my apologies um mr scrobin uh i was actually part of the transition team when they went from the traditional schedule

153to the block schedule and it was because brandywine high school was having issues meeting ayt and again based on student performance and they had to look at a different model to move forward and the block schedule was chosen and i can tell you there was a lot of pushback around that block schedule but it comes down to and and i think uh miss tabron hit it on the head uh how do we use those 90 minutes right um in in some classes uh boy to have a 90 minute science lab incredibly valuable but it's it's about blended learning and that's something that we've talked about in the district for years and blended learning is a combination approach where in the classroom at any given time there could be direct instruction from the teacher just like

154you and i had access to where the teacher stands and they're delivering some content but it also incorporates online learning uh it's not a relinquishing of teaching responsibilities but there are online learning opportunities that are engaging and very productive and then it involves project based collaborative learning those three elements make up blended learning and when put together and put together well boy talk about engaging a student 90 minutes of standing listening to a lecture wow that's what college is for um we're not college uh we're here to deliver instruction in a meaningful interesting engaging way and uh 90 minutes does give you the opportunity to do that so long story short we switched to improve student out output and that happened here at brandywine high school it was not an easy switch and have we

155fully embraced blended learning we haven't we're farther ahead than we were but the opportunity is right between what's happening in instructional technology the access we now have to instructional technology coaches and uh looking at the curriculum the way we are uh it's it's the perfect storm to to hold hold firm and move forward with those initiatives so i thank the committee for their work i appreciate it so does the the the current block schedule i mean is there at least an opportunity to to rotate it so you don't have the same class at the same time every day so the crowd block schedule does rotate but just within blocks so the first two blocks one two three four and then we switch to one four three five six seven eight so it does rotate which

156i think uh principal lacy was talking about so there are opportunities to maybe do a full rotation but again those are things that we just want to be mindful of even though we didn't get as large of a response as we would have liked to the survey um it was clear that the rotating is something that students and families students and parents and teachers prefer well correct me if i'm wrong but we're not actually doing semester blocks are we we are not so really the benefits that what you were talking about don't really exist in brandywine because i i was in a school that had semester blocks and literally you could take spanish one your first semester in spanish to your second semester and three and four the following year and be done completely but

157the way we're doing it you you really can't do that and i don't see any benefit to the way we're doing it i i i'm sorry i i'm disappointed in the results um i just think it's the easy way out i don't think we've solved the question here and i don't think that i mean if the middle school teacher is telling me that they can't hold the kid's attention for 45 minutes why do i think the high school is different and can hold their attention for 90 minutes just don't see it sorry i guess i'm not sold on it either but i guess i'm willing to give it another year given that some of the responses talked about too much change coming out of the pandemic and it's not so much a matter of it

158may not be the right option to go back to a traditional schedule it may just be right now it's not the time well i think with with new curriculum it just gives us the opportunity to see what the curriculum looks like in real time and then again it gives us the opportunity to see what other support students might need and run that into the schedule i think we run the risk of moving too many things at one time and then we can't tell what worked what didn't work because we have too many new things happening at one time um and again i go back to our student outcomes for me if students are able to earn eight credits each school year um needing 24 to graduate that last year gives them an opportunity to catch

159up it gives an opportunity to accelerate and i i just firmly believe that we are giving students more opportunities to succeed i'll just add a reminder that prior to covid we have not been a one-to-one district which means teachers couldn't fully engage in blended learning uh they had shared some ipads i think 12 to a class so we were benefiting from the technology but far different when it's a one-to-one environment so our teachers are have just gotten those devices in their hands with their kids so that every student has access that's when you can really unleash the power of a blended learning experience and that's going to take a little bit of time to unfold and unpack but that's what can really capture and engage a student's attention for 90 minutes when you have a

160well-designed well-crafted instructional design model let me light the fire of urgency we don't really have the time in my opinion to take the time we need to have a sense of urgency with regards to student achievement you know every year kids leave the system and graduate they've either got it or they don't and we other children get left behind and it just feels like you know we don't have a sense of urgency when it comes to making sure students achieve and i'll beg to differ mr ackerman um if you look at our essar funds we doubled down in trying to get instructional uh coaches in the buildings to to accelerate that opportunity uh in reforming our district administrative team again we double down we put both of our assistant superintendents in charge of academic curricular

161areas to accelerate that focus we unlike other districts have dedicated portions of our esser funds strictly for curriculum work we added additional professional development this this year one of those days being this week with the intent and the purpose of driving forward the curriculum work that we know has to get done our foot is on the accelerator and there's quite a few pieces that are new to the district through esser again we have seized the opportunity that esser provides to accelerate teaching and learning and eventually student outcomes keep your foot on the gas put on the uh gas scorebot yeah i i'd like to suggest maybe we talk about this more in depth at a workshop because i'm curious to see the data um since the middle school schedule change and understand more about why

162changing or shortening the periods of middle school was the right move but it might not be in high school so i'd like to understand more than we could probably ever discuss tonight but also get feedback from the principals and the staff and the middle schools about how the schedule changes impacted students there good or bad and how that would lead a discussion about high school schedules sure it sounds like the board wants to pursue this a little more and it's not a voting item tonight but uh maybe if we can start to work on some of that middle school data and do it in a workshop or a work session of sorts no problem we can do that great thank you very much mr holler uh district news and update superintendent's report thank you mr

163robot for pulling up the presentation now good evening school board members members of our community one month ago at this very meeting i was discussing some of the challenges that we were facing as a district following winter break those challenges were felt not only in brandywine but throughout our state region and country the impact of the increased number of coveted cases due in large pot part to the omnichrome variant were very evident fortunately as a district our staff rallied together to provide students and schools that needed support to keep moving forward thanks to this teamwork and dedication we were able to maintain our normal operations throughout those challenging few weeks this teamwork took a variety of forms including teachers covering for colleagues district office staff covering classes mechanics and dispatchers driving buses and our paraprofessionals

164leading classrooms in the teacher's absence the pictures on the screen are from one of the four-year-old preschool classrooms at busch early learning center kids engaged in learning they were describing the weather outside and dressing the characters on the smart board based on those conditions then on to the calendar review of the day counting the number of days in attendance by tens then subtracting to see how many more days before the highly anticipated and much celebrated 100th day kindergarten parties on preschool parties the interaction with students masterfully facilitated to capitalize on both the strengths and areas of growth of individual students from an educational point of view it doesn't get any better an amazing teacher doing amazing things with her students except for the fact that the amazing teacher in front of the class was kristen

165reed who is the classrooms paraprofessional the students in room 111 didn't miss a beat thanks to miss reed's professionalism it was amazing to see and something i wanted to make sure to note in my report this evening similar scenarios played out in every every day across the district as our staff members rose to the occasion to support each other in the service of children so miss reed got tapped on the shoulder and went from paraprofessional to teacher and no one knew the wiser the pictures you see here were all captured since the return from winter break picture here we have a recent guest lecture at brandywine high school as part of the opportunity talks program aimed to show students life after high school springer middle school students recently donated their time to benefit the sunday

166breakfast mission car croft elementary recently wrassed up wrapped up their elementary basketball league several of our high school students visited the university of delaware to present at the engineering design celebration harlan elementary held their winter concert and tally middle school had a fun stem-based program on site for the last few weeks as you can see it's been an eventful month for our students who are all doing all sorts of great curricular work and extracurricular activities and again this is just a snapshot of all that's happening in our schools we're cautiously optimistic as we see the new data that's coming out regarding covet 19 in our community we like all of you are glad to see that it doesn't look like that it does look like that the peak of the omnichron cases is now behind

167us the ability to find testing in our community has also become easier and turnaround times are getting back to normal as well our district leaders continue their partnerships and constant communication with delaware health officials as we monitor this data well this is great news to see we know the tried and true mitigation strategies we've used throughout the pandemic continue to play an important role and will continue to be utilized throughout our school buildings we're continuing to analyze and improve processes used for our families especially when it comes to reaching out about covid related issues beginning soon our elementary school families will be able to utilize a centralized reporting phone number to alert their school about an exposure positive test or symptoms we're piloting this program in our elementary schools first but we'll hope to eventually

168use the same approach in our secondary schools one of the reasons we're able to do this is thanks to a new team member that joins the brandywine school district as part of the cdc foundation school liaison program this program is funded through the cdc foundation and will ultimately provide our district with two members focused on helping our school nurse teams with covet 19 related work so far our first release liaison has already joined the team her name is alexia walker some of the families may have already worked with alex through contact tracing and other outreach we're very appreciative that this program is providing our district with additional personnel focused on covid19 work many of our families know that the test to stay program is another great resource this program has been well utilized since it

169was launched mid-december last month the state of delaware's testing partner quaydel was facing staffing shortages and had to temporarily reduce locations by 50 percent leaving each school district in the state with one testing location we're pleased to report that all test to stay locations are once again operational and both brandywine school district locations can be used by parents and staff just as a reminder our district locations are brandywine high school and ps dupont middle school those here in the audience may have seen some of the quadell workers when you came into the building for the meeting this evening this program adheres to the latest cdc in delaware public health guidance and the overall guidelines have been updated in accordance with the late december early january quarantine and isolation changes as a reminder for our families

170all of our coveted resources are available in one easy to use section of our website this can be accessed on the main home page it's also easily easy to remember brandywine schools all one word dot org backslash covid hyphen response this is where you'll find our daily covered reporting numbers as well as information about test to stay and any upcoming vaccine clinics we're hosting with community pharmacy partners most recently we had a clinic just two days ago this past saturday that was open for students staff and also community members our pharmacy partners are planning to continue hosting clinics especially as many vaccine recipients become eligible for booster doses this is just another resource we're working to provide for our interested families in a convenient location all the previous slides are based on current protocols and

171guidance from the delaware department of public health governor carney's announcement today that the state issued mass mandate is set to expire at the end of march will require districts to make local decisions about mask wearing moving forward we've been told that the department of public health will be issuing revised guidance including quarantining protocols in light of today's announcement we will then need to evaluate the impact of those decisions on student and staff attendance we've been down this road before and are painfully aware that there are opposing views regarding students being required to wear mass no matter what decision is made some will be content others will be upset while this is a given there is a bright spot as of april 1st there's only about 40 days of school left it's been a recognized filled

172month as well we are thrilled to share that 38 of our bst students were named to the delaware music educators association all state bands including junior and senior band choral orchestra and jazz bands these recognitions are so well deserved for the hard work of our students and their teachers here on the screen now is a picture of all the recent allstate band and choir practice that took place in dover this group of students practiced on thursday and friday and performed on saturday and just off the presses hot off the presses as of yesterday we learned about a special winner among our students dmea announced yesterday that the winners of the sixth annual dmea young composers contest for the 2021-22 school year for the middle school traditional composition category the winner is adam menikuchi from pies

173du pont middle school with a composition entitled normatic passages nomadic passages adam describes the work as a composition inspired by nomads traveling across the sahara desert with their camels trying to locate a foreign object that will give them magical powers the full piece is a little over four minutes but we put together a shorter sample enjoy the following clip [Music] so [Music] so that was a bit choppy but adam's original score we'll put the link in the board recap is not choppy at all we tried to cut it up to give you an idea can you imagine that a seventh grader put that composition together uh when you hear the whole score played as a single piece he could start writing scores for movies tomorrow just an amazing accomplishment seventh grade unbelievable meanwhile brandywine school

174district also had five students recognized one twice by the delaware regional scholastic art awards one of the award-winning pieces is shown here on this slide and these recognitions are so well deserved for the hard work of our students and also their teachers we had four students recognized at brandywine high school and one student recognized at concord high school we've had the privilege of celebrating those scholastic awards in the past not an easy competition it is uh extremely uh challenging competition with lots of artwork and essays submitted from students across the country as you know brandywine school district is proud to have the state teacher of the year joshua tabron you may also remember that the brandywine school district has the state counselor of the year jody decosta jody was a counselor at harlan elementary lucky

175for jody since she's retired she was just sent to washington dc as part of this honor pictured here you can see jody with the u.s surgeon general uh murphy and leaders from the american school counselors association join us in wishing brandywine high schools susan holman best of luck as she is also now nominated for this honor this year congratulations susan we've had a few positive spotlights in the news media this month as well that we're proud to share first our students at mount pleasant high school who you hear on the airwaves of wnph were recently featured in the latest issue of out and about magazine which is on newsstands now harlan elementary school's thursday night bedtime stories was also featured recently on the delaware live website the article highlights how the program is bringing together

176the school community while promoting literacy and the joy of reading finally six abc recently stopped by tally middle school to capture the drop anywhere labs which were on site thanks to the non-profit organization learning undefeated as part of this program the students were able to use a shipping container that was transported to the school and outfitted with interactive screens that students could use for activities then students took those skills into the school labs for related activities stay tuned to our social media pages for more information on this program that's coming soon finally we have another great news story to share that we are featuring two of our schools it starts with the creation of a new club at brandywine high school focused on the use of technology with drones it follows those students as they

177hone and craft their new technology driven skills and ends with those same students finding a way to showcase one of the newly renovated schools in a way that we've never seen before take a look as take a look as we meet the brandywine school district brandywine high school aeronautics club and find out how they were able to creatively showcase the amazing renovations that took place at clemont elementary [Music] it kind of started my freshman year because i had this hobby where i was building rc planes in my basement and every time i'd go on dr wagner's engineering class i'd always talk to him about it and sophomore year me and dr wagner were kind of talking about maybe turning that hobby into a club for other people at the school to enjoy so drone club

178has a couple different aspects we teach kids how to fly drones but it's a lot more than that we also focus on filming with drones so we do lots of like high quality recordings with the drones and then there's also an aspect of building drones and fixing and tinkering on drones our principal here at brandywine was sort of asked to create a video for our choice open house um without any students in here right and so each school was tasked to do this and his immediate thought was like well what could the drone kids do what could they do in order to capture what this school looks like for potential incoming freshmen [Music] what else could we have as like backup shots if we can show we can do it at one school we can

179do it at another one at the same time those students that did granular in high school during their senior year now those skills and knowledge and experiences that they have we have to share with others so what we had got to do over at claymont is not only go through the same methods that we use here at brandywine to capture that school look at all the improvements that have happened we were also able to bring along our future [Music] it's 10 o'clock rather than just having aiden and i there like with brandywine we had about a dozen drone club members that were able to observe watch us fly and even we handed them the controller and they were able to fly and record themselves so look into the future we're just helping to train more

180drone club members as aiden and i graduate one thing we can't do is we can't go over that major highway yeah the experience of drone club and brandywine high school in general like it's really opened my mind to like what sort of things i can do like as a person like it i was just enabled to like have this vision and start it up all right nice nice job christian i was a student at claymouth elementary so to be able to have this opportunity to give back the community just volunteer my time drone club's time and just our ability to use our creative efforts to really show off these awesome renovations was a super cool experience for me i had never seen any of the new changes to the building so it's just really cool

181to be able to see them and capture them for others that haven't seen what's being done at claymont elementary so this is the experience that we got over at claymont it was a win for hopefully for claymont the district the taxpayers that will be able to see uh what claymont is now is a beautiful school but it was a win for these guys as well not just where we are now but where we hope to be able to go [Music] mr scrobot i i did fly an airplane a paper airplane at newark high school in 1982 just wanted the record left speechless and the only thing i can say is uh proud to be bsd i know we've been at this uh three hours require five minutes [Music] zoomers at home heard that we're going

182to take a five minute recess returning to 1007. dude we are continuing on i know i cut us shortly after uh superintendent's report did any members of the board have a comment question or anything i just have one quick comment um we just saw the video for the aeronautics club and i just think and we saw some other videos earlier tonight i just think we should recognize danielle and mick and the pio marketing team the content creation and video editing has been off the charts [Applause] thank you mr heller yes excellent job glad we could recognize you yes okay that moves us on we are at public comment as usual uh ask our speakers be uh courteous uh speakers and members of the audience courteous and respectful to each other this is your time to

183be heard regarding topics related to the bernie wine school district in education uh i will call the first speaker with the individual next on deck and i believe we do not have any zoom speakers this evening so we will begin with richard james with james ingrassia on deck uh good evening board um i want to talk today again about the need to make sure that our students have access to multiple diverse perspectives in the classroom and particularly in our school libraries especially in the context of what we've just heard about plans to implement bills on black history and holocaust education as many of you may know the national news about efforts to censor children's books gets worse every day i would like to see the board make a bold statement about protecting the freedom to

184read i've corresponded directly with several board members on this topic and i appreciate their responses there are currently 33 states where legislation is being concerned is being considered that will cancel the ability of parents and children to access the books that celebrate the firm and educate about different aspects of citizenship history and culture the national moms for liberty organization recently announced a new campaign moms for libraries which advocates removal of books about racial gender and historical topics and replacing them with books produced by a christian publishing company in virginia a school board renewed mouse the critically acclaimed graphic novel about the holocaust from school libraries in part because of claims that have included nudity i'd like to emphasize that the characters in mouse are cartoon mice and florida and other bills uh states bills are

185being considered that would criminalize circulating books to children that their parents objective with librarians and teachers potentially being subject to hefty fines dismissal and even imprisonment because they checked out a copy of harry potter or kid or even worse the 1619 project a book that is being banned specifically in schools specifically by name in many states i've been a librarian for 20 years and i've never felt libraries to be as under threat as they are currently the bsd libraries have a large number of books selected by our experts in literacy information and curriculum that are on many of these book burners lists i've checked for them in the library catalog for the district and recorded the holdings data and will be checking back to make sure they continue to be available in some districts superintendents

186and principals have acted preemptively to remove books that have not been directly challenged or gone through the normal processes in order to head off controversy and avoid noisy board meetings the supreme court in ireland trees versus pico ruled that school boards cannot remove books from libraries simply because they don't like the ideas expressed in them and the boards do not have absolute discretion over school libraries and the students have the constitutional right to have access to diverse materials in school productions in order to prepare them to full participate in a complicated and pluralistic society dear members of the board i know that we librarians have a reputation for whispering and hushing people but when our principles and values have threatened i promise you we will be loud in their defense thank you again for the

187great work you do and for helping our children to thrive thank you mr james next up james ingrassia followed by deborah reeves i believe i appreciate you keeping your word and uh regards to the parents who wanted to speak to you about some questions and taking the time to speak to them so i appreciate that i like to bring the light bill sb 195 digital citizenship education act which will establish into law the new required curriculum to recognize bias and misinformation while being able to recognize bias and misinformation is no doubt important the question to be asked is who determines what is bias and misinformation it will essentially silence all opposing views if we have to direct children as to what is and is not misinformation then we have already failed them children should be

188taught to be broad-minded and think critically free thinking was vital to our nation's inception without the ability to think freely you lack the ability to scrutinize nuance in many of today's public schools education systems children are being led to believe america was founded to preserve the abhorrent act of slavery that is far from true these kids need to be able to look at the facts and points of views from all sides and form their own educated conclusion teacher should not be directing children as to what they believe may be misinformation that in itself can lead the bias these children have having the ability to distinguish hard facts versus perceived facts is crucial to creating an informed opinion students are at or below 50 proficiency in english math science and social studies all before the covet

189shutdown schools do you really think another social curriculum is what is needed but what is needed is an honest-to-goodness patriotic pro-american environment i present to you the pro-american resolution a resolution which will reinforce that which makes the united states of america the greatest nation in all the history of mankind i print out a copy for each one of you to look over i asked at the next school board meeting if you can please hold a public vote to adopt the pro-american resolution thank you mr grazie [Applause] next up deborah reeves are rude i'm sorry i can't read the writing that says please i'm sorry deborah reeves reese thank you and on deck we have madison race uh stokes good evening to the bsd board dr holler friends guests and students i stand here today in

190support of my daughter maya and the student concerns that she presented earlier i am a past a graduate of concord high school many many years ago i stand here as a taxpayer in the community i stand here supporting the health and welfare of maya and i mostly stand here as a mother first just just in acknowledging what the young lady stated earlier it is irresponsible to use the racial slur or any use of the n-word in any form or fashion it is simply wrong as mother maya's mother and advocate i look forward to hearing the next steps and the specific plans that the district will roll out to help ensure that these behaviors do not continue especially from our leaders i've i am talking to dr holler i understand there's a diversity program possibly rolling

191out soon and i look forward to hearing more about that but here's the bottom line we can't just talk about unity diversity and exclusion and inclusion we must walk it talk it and be about the business of teaching it for all to benefit especially people in leadership knowledge is power is an old saying and knowledge is power is true but the true power comes in making sure that we understand and share what makes us the same and embrace and celebrate all the wonderful things that makes us different and swiftly address those people or things that stand in the way of our progress forward i close with just one of my favorite favorite quotes by maya angelou who maya is named after people will forget what you what you said people will forget what you did

192but people these young people will never forget how you made them feel my wish is that the young people of concord high school and of all the schools within the district walk away with a positive feeling a great memory that their concerns have been addressed recognized and a plan is such successfully put into place for a positive resolution the the young ladies that spoke today they leveraged their voices and used their positions to bring about change not just for one student not just for two students but for all students i asked the board just like you presented them with the challenge i ask you to take the challenge and make sure that you help them put these things that they requested and make that change adults we have to do better young people we owe

193it to you to do better thank you mrs next up madison ray stokes followed by cindy franco hello my name is maya reeves and i'm the president of bsu vice president i will be speaking on behalf of madison ray stokes who is our president um hello my name is tamara cassette and i will be speaking on behalf of my invitation speaking on patreon we stand before you today to discuss some issues surrounding the concord community for the past few months as you know over the last two years in our country and in our communities we have been impacted by many issues including including racial inequality unfortunately some of the racial concerns for concord have grown during the pandemic and we have and have continued as as we started the school year this year people in

194our student body have been using the n word in school continuously and through while in school and through social media interactions this has caused many of our black students to feel uncomfortable and at times unsafe at our school this has also affected our overall student faculty relations we have decided to take this problem to someone in power our principal it was in this meeting um with our principle that maya and i well madison and maya were troubled with a mixture of emotions upon showing mr mayor a statement that was talked about in a previous meeting we were informed that the statement was too lengthy in that it should be turned into a slogan a hashtag or put on a t-shirt after this principal mayor posed a question i hear these voice saying the n word

195what is that about except he did not censor it mr mayor actually said the n word a word that has plagued our country for centuries this is not only the only instance in which he said the word mr mayor also used it twice more when he was confronted about the situation many students and staff became aware of this incident through word of mouth it sparked an outrage and started rumors after after a leave of absence our principal was back in a building without an expedition or an apology to any of us repeat to any of us um but more importantly the initial issues were still not addressed the confusion hurt sparked the sparks from these events have introduced even more strain and stress in into conqueror's atmosphere oh if i'm being honest i haven't i'm

196was afraid to speak up about this experience that maya and i that mayan madison went through and as i stand in front of you today i am still afraid that no action will be taken to better this situation i'm afraid that action will be taken against those who try to speak out and in light of things how a lot of things have been handled in the past few months my fears are far from reality we as students of concord high school are expected to respect those around us and be responsible for our actions we as students are held accountable when we do not hold up to those standards so it is with hope that you can understand as we as students question when the head of our school is not held to the same standard

197okay so as students who advocate for justice and equality in in what is supposed to be a caring school community we expect that we we expect to be heard listen to and support it we want work with district we want to work with district and administrative staff going forward to create a healthier and more understanding school environment we want accountability diversity as education for our teachers and our administrators for our school community most importantly we want active and continuous efforts to promote acceptance equality inclusion and unity for all who attend hopefully after this meeting we can collaborate as students and to improve the concord high school experience not only for us not only for the underclassmen but for all future generations that walk into concord's walls we want to create a truly proud community one

198that is full of students who can smile and say i'm proud to be a concord student everyone wants to be proud of where they come from thank you for listening and we hope that this time these words help our school especially to change for the better thank you thank you very much questions were there any questions no no i'm sure the conversation will continue uh unfortunately the public comments section we we haven't we don't use it as a q a but we appreciate everyone coming out and i appreciate you sticking around this evening and our last speaker is cindy franco good evening good evening board good evening parents students thank you teachers can't forget the teachers i appreciate the opportunity to speak with you tonight uh i've heard a lot of great ideas but forth

199by different uh community leaders by the governor by the secretary of education i've seen some fantastic things on on the video here of what the children are involved in and i support wholeheartedly all of these wonderful things that are happening my concern is i don't know how much these efforts are going to help our children when we have assignments that are given that really can do nothing but harm them i'm going to read an assignment that was given to an ap english class high school english class i woke up to this email today it was it was on a thread which contains i think about 100 100 different parents from different schools we voice our concerns and give ideas of how how we can make change i'm going to read it real fast because my

200time is running out i'm going to censor some of the profanity in this book so these are inserts and quotations directly from the book i'll do my best to keep it civil the name of it is called song of solomon by tori morrison you would think by the name of that that this was a religious that this was a religious book it's not so when you want to talk about censorship i think this is where we should begin um reading that the book was assigned to the ap english class the father tells a story of catching his wife lying naked with her dead father and sucking on his fingers the character milkman has just discovered his mother was getting pressure was getting pleasure out of breastfeeding him until he was five or six his father

201never never let his mother alone with his son and neighbor caught her breastfeeding him and laughed and that's how he got the nickname milkman the word f-u-c-k has been in the story 15 times so far i think they'd only gotten through to the third chapter not to mention the other curse words the character milkman is sleeping with his cousin hager a character calls another character a baby dick baboon a drunk guy this is all you're gonna try to edit this a drunk guy you can edit you can edit it a drunk guy screams on a roof top for someone to come in him before he kills himself here is a sample verse on page 16. this is quotations from the book that the children are are being assigned to read when ruth was naked and

202lying there moist and crumbly as unbleached sugar he entered her and ejaculated quickly so i think all of your efforts will be for null if these type of assignments continue to go to war kids this for full transparency this occurred in the in the smyrna school district but if you think it's not coming brandywine i know where we are but this is a small state and this crap travels quickly so i i would i respectfully request that you keep your eyes and ears open to protect our kids from this kind of nonsense and parents please take a look at what your kids are reading make sure it doesn't contain this kind of filth this is not a political thing this is not this is not a republican democrat white black remit no religious affiliation this

203is about your kids and this can only damage them thank you for your time thank you we're at time next up we have school board business board updates delaware school board association mr ackerman the delaware school board association executive board has not met since our last meeting our january meeting was cancelled due to the covet spike and the impact on the place where we meet we do expect to meet again in march thank you mr eckerman delaware school board association legislative committee ms gordon legislative committee met via zoom on february 2nd prior to the meeting dr marinichi has sent the history of the legislature for the entire 2021 year and after our meeting i sent the documents to the board members so that you would be aware of the bills both of the senate and

204the house that had been signed by the governor and those that still required legislative voting you also receive the information concerning the documents discussed and voted upon by our legislative committee i'm sure you noticed that unlike many of the previous meetings the committee voted a neutral position for many of the bills that were presented two bills were tabled one was house bill 270 the subject of which was the choice program for school districts and charter schools and it was suggested that we wait for superintendents feelings about the bill the second was house house bill 294 an act that requires each school to provide each student in preschool kindergarten and grades two and four and oral health screening by january 15th of each school year the committee supported house bill 287 a bill related to increasing

205the elderly elderly property tax credit from 400 to and house bill 293 related to time limits for public comments during open public meetings the committee opposed two bills house bill 277 and senate bill 206 both opposed because of the usurping of local authority the senate bill is the one that's concerning us curricular decisions doctor marinichi also included in his legislative minutes some subjects briefly discussed and if you have questions concerning that information please contact me our next meeting is scheduled for april 27th thank you ms gordon uh district finance committee has not met since our last board meeting uh they are scheduled to meet uh this week wednesday the ninth at five pm so having not met um we will not have a financial report from dr hale so we can maybe shorten up this

206meeting tonight that pleases everyone uh maintenance committee mr heller now the main advisory committee met right here in randywine high school on january 25th the purpose of that meeting was to review and do a walk through of the entire remodel project that's occurred over the last four years here with all the coveted restrictions we haven't been able to do a big community regrand opening of brandywine high school um so we took a look at the school and discussed how we might be able to do that after the covet situation has passed us and we also started talking about future renovation needs for the district as mr reed pointed out this year two of our buildings turned 90 years old so there's definitely some needs long-term needs that are coming up that we've begun discussing this

207week the next meeting is march 1st at concord thank you mr heller um parent council for students with disabilities ms pigeon is not here we'll get an update on that later uh parent and citizen advisory committee reverend perry well i did have a chance to meet with our public information officer um to brainstorm and discuss the historic the history of the parent and citizens advisors advisory committee we plan to meet with the entire planning committee next friday the 18th uh i believe at one o'clock thank you uh health advisory committee mr heller so the last meeting was cancelled due to the staffing shortage with the kobut spike there's a small group of us meeting on march 3rd as a planning meeting to plan the next series of meetings great thank you 917 wmph advisor committee

208has not met since our last meeting however mr ackerman and i are scheduled to meet with members of delaware public media friday uh to discuss our ongoing relationship uh and potentially some contract language that will be presented to the board at a later date education recruitment and retention ms stock yes we have not met since our last board meeting but we are actually meeting tomorrow evening at mount pleasant elementary in the multi-purpose room um we are hosting a special and structured meeting so that we can focus on immediate needs and concerns and solutions um this meeting will be one of the first steps for us to be able to come together as a district so that we can recruit and keep talented and caring educators in the brandywine school district and i look forward to

209reporting about this at our next school board meeting thank you mr stock any additional board member reports or comments carrying none i will move on and entertain a motion to accept to approve the consent agenda so moved second motion mr ackerman second reverend perry all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed i've seen oh one abstention taking a roll call miss karpinski you're scared yes miss pigeon mr ackerman hi miss gordon yes could you repeat that please yes thank you mr heller abstain mary yes stop yes okay that is four years one abstention and one now thank you motion carries uh personnel matters uh do i have a motion to approve personnel matters as discussed in executive session second uh i guess who was the uh the motion miss gordon motion second mr

210ackerman all those in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions i abstain roll call please mr scrub abstain miss pigeon [Music] mr ackerman hi miss gordon yes mr heller yes reverend perry yes ms stock yes that is five years one abstention and one not present motion carries uh do i have a motion to accept student matters as discussed in executive session i have a motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions i abstain as i was not in exec session for that time roll call please scroll back abstain miss pigeon mr ackerman yes miss gordon yes mr heller yes beverly harry yes ms stock yes that's five years one no and one not present motion carries thank you very much uh old business uh miss davis approval

211of the 2023 school calendar absolutely i'll give you a minute as we pass down you have two calendars one with the muslim holiday we discussed in our last board meeting and one without the listening holder okay good evening president schwerbach superintendent holder distinguished board members bsd employees and families thank you for allowing me time this evening to share with you the revised strap district calendar for the 23-24 school year on january 10th at our last board meeting i presented to you two calendars for the first read one calendar indicated the muslim holiday i eat of 30 and the other without the muslim holiday board members reviewed the calendars and provided recommendations the recommendations were accepted by the committee and all calendars the two calendars were updated in front of you if you would like to

212just review what those changes were in the calendar that has the muslim holiday you will find that on page three where it says changes to the draft calendar and also the modifications that were made these were all the changes that we discussed or changes that we noticed that we needed to make if we are going to include muslim holiday in the 23 24 calendar you also have the other calendar in front of you which it also lists the modifications that were made as well so you can just have those side by side so this evening i'm seeking your approval of the draft calendar for 2324 with either the muslim holiday or the calendar without the muslim holiday and i'll open it up for discussion any questions from members of the board [Music] i appreciate your

213looking into the diwali impact and how does that play out in future um school years have we looked at that i mean i know we're really pushing well i can tell you you thank you so much for sending me the email i looked up that night and also the following day so as i stated in the board packet which i presented on the 28th so to give you guys time to review for 2023 the holiday falls on sunday november 12 in 2024 a holiday falls on friday november 1st which holidays on november 1st which is a holiday holiday celebrated in india and also throughout many many countries and mr um ackerman asked me to look it up just to see what the impact would be for the 23 calendar it is a festival that lasts

214over five days so theoretically you know it would require a lot to cover the whole thing but i know in the last meeting it was mentioned that um superintendent holder had mentioned uh definitely operational concerns i know religion is not something we actively track as a data point um i guess anecdotally any any more thought on the student impact are some schools impacted more than others um do we have a general idea of how many students and families participate so again that is difficult to track when you're looking at a religious day but as we've talked to students sometimes students end up coming to school knowing that they want to stay home and celebrate that holiday with their family or when they're out celebrating their missing schoolwork but looking at the attendance records is very

215difficult to distinguish you know if it was an excuse absent you can look at that but they may not always identify why they are absent but just in raw numbers i mean if we have an average amount of attendance absences we can see spikes on the holidays is that accurate we can look that up if that's is necessary for the board if that's what you're looking for so there was legislation that i believe passed in the last session i think the governor signed it that mandated the department of ed provide a list of religious holidays and that we don't you know have significant activities on any of those days has that been sent out by the doe yet i have not received that i have not received that at all and i've been in collaboration

216medina [Music] she's down in the newark area and that was her bill yeah but it's interesting because i'm also in collaboration with three other districts uh regarding the calendar committee and that has not been shared mr ackerman that legislation did pass and uh there's a list of holidays that doe acknowledges but it's it's also pointed out that it's not all inclusive and the idea behind that list is that districts are cognizant of those days and allow students to miss those certain days without penalty so it's not a list of days off that school districts are required to observe but uh in fact a list of holidays that we should honor as excused absences uh when when students take those off with a note from the parents so this is a little different in the fact

217that miss jones davis has presented two calendars one with an additional day off for that holiday right so even if the board chose not to adopt that as a day off students could take that day off without penalty academic or otherwise with a note from their parent thank you for your question my memory on that one question yeah i was just curious if mr holler had a recommendation one way or the other i was wondering if you had a recommendation one way or the other um as mentioned last time and it's just uh mentioned by president scrobot we we do find it difficult with the number of employees that want to celebrate and engage in prayer services on uh that day and uh i can tell you it's been nip and tuck uh to the

218point where um i actually was at a school doing uh after school emptying trash and that type of thing several times in the past uh four years just to make ends meet so it does affect operational need and these are members in our community who are very very committed to the brandywine school district and i do want to add that um because as a former principal i know how difficult it was for our custodial staff our nutrition department especially on this particular day because this is something that um that just like many many others who sell to celebrate jewish holidays they want that day off to celebrate with their families and it's the same for this holiday as well so this community is very very uh residents are very very committed to the work that

219we do in the brandywine school district and this definitely has shown to be an operational um deficit for our schools as well so the calendar committee is in agreement with this as well and i've spoken even with our principles and they also see it as a deficit in the building especially during this particular holiday uh for those individuals to be able to celebrate it thank you so is the proposal to actually close down the system that day or just no pupils office is open yes that is because i think that kind of defeats the purpose if you're telling me there's a staff issue we should really just shut down the system for the entire day for everybody because you still have the staff issue if you don't do that maybe the kids aren't there they're

220still established yes and no we we can keep offices open that wouldn't be an issue um if there was a building that um wasn't able to keep the office open we could uh slide people over to cover that office to make sure that it remains open but remaining open and uh covering all aspects of a regular student day that's what becomes challenging i have a follow-up question on that so when offices are open is the entire custodial and maintenance team also in yes what day and month is this again uh if you go to june right go to april oh it's april our holiday uh president's april 10th one celebrated during the traditional school year one typically occurs uh during the summer months but that can vary by weeks right and this is a major

221holiday because it is coming off of the hill of ramadan which is fast informal to mr everyone's point like if the issue if if we don't know fully know the student impact but we do know that it presents operational concerns i'd be inclined to say that schools schools closed i don't know why we would keep offices open that day well then then we're adding uh an additional day off for state employees that right the benefits is it necessarily considered a day off for state employees [Music] so that that would probably create an issue uh we have other holidays when we celebrate rosh hashanah um this is consistent with the jewish students we do have offices open that day yes so we would have to do that for all it's not a federal holiday for the

222jewish holidays all right it's consistent with the september holidays you want us to make a motion to vote on it let me ask you if we have a motion to accept one of the calendars um one more question so the to clarify the days where schools and offices are closed that's off of a state list of approved employee holidays yes and then additional holidays that we've added in the past the offices are traditionally open yes so this would stay consistent with how we've done in the business i'll make a motion to approve the calendar that includes the muslim holidays do we have a second sec second reverend perry all those in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions motion cares excellent thank you i have one more thing though it's short i know it's

223almost 12 o'clock but uh what what one additional item that i would like to bring to your attention in july 2020 the board approved for the district to include additional professional development days for this current calendar the executive team continues to measure the impact of these days on staff and students and will come before the board i believe in march to discuss the proposal for 2223 school year whether or not we're going to continue with the five half days that's all thank you so much i appreciate it thank you ms davis uh approval of board policy 6.3 revision ms karpinski good evening president scobot superintendent holder and members of the board during the january board meeting we presented we um presented proposed revisions to board policy 6.3 dealing with choice um we would like to

224put forth a vote for that this evening please i will entertain a motion to approve poor policy 6.3 revision so moved second have a motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed any abstentions motion carries next up we have an esser update yeah mr skrobot in in the looking at the time i don't have a problem this was not an action item in pushing this report forward to the uh march meeting if you so desire great idea yeah does it plays the board [Laughter] you want to keep us here until tomorrow do we need a motion yeah motion motion to move item 10 c s or update to next meeting motion another second favorite say aye aye aye aye opposed any extensions motion carries thank you dr hill that was

225the most enthusiastic motion new business we moved 11a to earlier in the meeting we are at 11b draft uh board meeting dates and times for fiscal year 22-23 mr holland that was included in the board packet and again it's just for informational purposes tonight uh if you have comments or suggestions around those dates please send them to me we'll take them into consideration put a revision in the board packet and it will be an action item come march thank you mr holler professional design services for the new charles w bush early education center mr john reed the brandywine school district facilities department followed the procedures of tuttle 29 advertised and put out a request for proposal for architectural services we had a team of five staff members including assistant superintendent cfo myself and two specialists

226from facilities that reviewed the proposals from five architects we selected abha as the firm with the best fit for the new bush school the firm includes a uh they're from wilmington there are mechanical engineers from clemont it also includes structural engineer a specialist consultant that only designs um special needs schools is involved in the the team um a kitchen consultant a whole list of other consultants that'll be involved in this process to get the school designed bid and bill superintendent holder is your recommendation that we approve the authorize you to negotiate for professional services contract with abha architects yes it is do i have a motion so moved second motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye aye aye aye opposed any abstentions motion carries thank you mr reed general information meeting

227updates our next board meetings are scheduled for march 21st april 11 and may 2nd all here at the brandywine high school auditorium any final comments from board members hearing none i will entertain a motion to adjourn summoned second motion in a second all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries we are adjourned thank you everyone for your time and attention this long evening