November 15, 2021 School Board Meeting - Brandywine School District

001caught up on that [Music] it has started great thank you good evening welcome to the brandywine school district board of education regular meeting on monday november 15 2021. tonight we are live in the bhs auditorium with a zoom broadcast ms karpinski may please have a roll call mr skrobot here miss pigeon mr ackerman miss gordon mr heller reverend perry kimberly stock five present to absent thank you and every board member's microphone on tried a little switch ralph and kim maybe is while we're addressing a couple microphone issues at this time i'd like to ask miss pigeon to lead us in the pledge of allegiance of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and before i entertain any motions to the approve the agenda

002i would like to amend amend tonight's agenda to add to item eight under personnel matters we'll be adding item b employee matter 22-01 and adding item 8c employee matter 22-02 and with that i will entertain emotion to approve the amended agenda i have a motion mr ackerman second miss stock all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries bear with us just a moment um i think we'll proceed here until we get a couple microphones yes we'll just if any members of the board have any questions or comments just project we'll begin with our high school reports and i'd like to welcome back our student leaders for those high school reports uh first up we have ethan hondashane brandywine high school and if you could come down to the podium all the way

003up front we would appreciate it uh good evening board members the fall season that brandywine just finished and we had a very successful season our volleyball team finished their season with a record of nine wins and six losses our soccer and field hockey teams both had very successful seasons culminating in playoff games that took place last monday our football team marching band and cheerleaders just finished their seasons with the blowout victory 40-0 on a football game against concord our cross-country team is last to finish with a wet cold and muddy state meet this saturday at brandywine creek state park we are now in the midst of the winter athletic season and our students are excited to get involved with their winter sports our fall play clue was just presented and both of the cast had

004amazing performances we are very excited to see what they do in the spring play our student government has also been very involved and active our class governments have had a car wash candy grams and a full festival and have many exciting things planned soon our student council just completed a dog-found shirt fundraiser and are now moving on to collaborate with teachers and administration to build a better school environment and community and to help fix issues that we have seen with the students returning to school after a long time away we are also attempting to plan a blood drive for later this year thank you ethan ethan a couple of questions you forgot to mention that you were also selected as the dollar online athlete of the week congratulations [Applause] so i mentioned last week i

005don't think you were here with us last week um he had a prior engagement but i had made a mention about the activities of joint student council and understanding that it's not kind of as it was last year the year prior so i just want to encourage you and the other students here tonight to maybe exchange information communicate with the other student leaders through the other high schools to kind of share issues and concerns that are that are going on and you know as we work to figure out uh some sort of another version of the joint student council or just you know having communications between the three schools i think is very important and i hope you guys will continue to do that uh throughout the remainder of the school year ethan one one

006more question before you go and this question is in memory of a very beloved board member joe brumskill do you have a goal for your blood drive in terms of the number of students uh we don't have a goal yet we're still trying to set a date and uh kind of move on from there so we're just trying to get it organized at this point but we'll we'll certainly set a goal um at some point soon well blood drives were always near and dear to mr brumsfield's heart and he would have asked that question have you been here today so thank you yeah thank you ethan uh next next up we have concord high school maya reeves and alicia garcia good evening board members my name is maya reeves and i'm from concord high school

007and i'm lindsay pearson secretary we have just finished the first marking period period and our fall sports seasons have come to a close our teams have been working hard since august and we are proud of each and every one of them almost all of our teams had winning seasons our volleyball field hockey and cross-country teams even won their conference championships way to go concord we would also like to recognize our very own coach k for being inducted into the delaware sports hall of fame this event was attended by mr mark mayer and multiple staff members as for the end of the marking period we are proud of each and every one of our students for demonstrating diligence throughout the past couple months it's been a huge adjustment from online schooling last year and we would

008like to applaud both students and teachers for a successful grading period for concord's halloween we held a costume contest on friday the 29th the last day of school before the holiday many kids came dressed in their unique costumes for a chance to win the prize for best group scariest content costumes funniest costumes most creative and cutest there were lots of laughs and photos taken and excitement shared by our conqueror students for this fun special occasion at the end of october our avid classes had a contract signing event where members pledged to continue to serve their communities and be respectful diligent members of society student families were invited to this event in support of the avid students becoming organized leaders and modeling a good example to their peers many people in our graduating class have been

009a part of avid since freshman year and have improved their grades resourcefulness and their leadership skills we are very thankful to our teachers involved with our avid program for their role in teaching our students to become the strong young adults they are today as november came along we started off the month by having our interact club and our national honor society members participate in multiple volunteering events during our month of service we have hosted a drive for delaware humane society where student volunteers collected donation in the lunchroom we also have done a winter coat drive for sunday breakfast mission and flags for military veterans and first responders we honor two of our own staff members trooper damian and nurse weaver on thursday at the flags of heroes we thank them for their service to others

010in the contribution to concord recently many students and community members have attended stockings for soldiers packing sessions for this upcoming holiday season as the month goes on we will continue to give back to our community both in and out of school from what we've seen our classmates have done a wonderful job in giving thanks as we progress through this month of giving as a council our team has many events planned for our students in the near future and hopes to continue with our fun productive school climate thank you and we'd like to know if the board has any questions no questions but i'm just i'm really grateful to hear all the activities and uh comments that you shared about service and giving back to the community that's really great to hear thank you for that

011um and next up we have mount pleasant high school catherine farbell and lily holmes good evening my name is catherine and this is lily we are representatives from mount pleasant high school in the past month mount held a successful halloween celebration in the mount community it is tradition for the seniors to dress up for the annual halloween costume contest we are excited to see the large number of seniors who chose to take part in this fun tradition the festivities were not only for seniors due to the mount pleasant blue gold halloween candy gram both the costume contest and the candy gram sale promoted mount pride and helped students get into the holiday spirit a few weeks ago the senior class officers organized a creative drone group photo for the graduating class of while it was

012a chilly morning to be standing outside in the football field the seniors rallied together and were organized into a large 22 signifying their graduation year this photo is a perfect example of how mount students are staying positive and creating new traditions with coveted regulations and guidelines if interested you can view the photo on mount pleasant's newsletter facebook and instagram page this upcoming week the mount community is holding many exciting events this week mount is uh having their college application week this time of the year is immensely busy for the seniors as they complete and work on their college applications the counselors at our school have made their schedules open throughout the week to provide their help and support to the seniors throughout this challenging process the seniors are immensely appreciative of the counselor's time and

013expertise in the application process in addition the blue and gold is holding another fundraiser this week this time it's a hat fundraiser students can pay one dollar to have permission to wear a hat typically wearing hats prohibited but the administration has made an exception to help support the uh blue angel club this week also marks the production of our school play love sick this particular performance um showcases nine different scenes and various couples and their loved ones due to covid the drama department wanted to be considerate of the health of students and their families as we head into thanksgiving break so the show will be recorded tonight and will premiere virtually this friday this coming thursday and friday currently the music department is holding its annual fruit sale in which music students can sell citrus

014fruits and other goodies to teachers families and friends this fundraiser helps support the music department and future field trips if interested in supporting there's more information on mount's website the students are feeling hopeful and excited as we enter the second marking period and and as winter sports begin we look forward to bringing you our continued monthly updates about the mount community and appreciate the district's ongoing support in our efforts to build a positive school year thank you are there any questions on the board sounds like a busy week of activities coming up great job thank you and certainly as always our students are welcome to stay and join us but we know you have commitments and schoolwork to do so if you choose to leave that would be perfectly fine and next on our agenda

015another special special presentation and i can't say that i recall the last time a sitting governor has joined us for a school board meeting so governor carney welcome thank you for joining us this evening thank you very much john for the opportunity to be here in this beautiful renovated auditorium it looks uh wonderful i was complimenting john reed on his his great work as as we came in i appreciate the opportunity again to be here with with jim simmons who as you know is a former uh brandywine school district employee and former principal of mount pleasant high school both of us have connections to the district many of you might know my father moved to delaware from pennsylvania in 1955 to teach at the what was then the mount pleasant uh junior high school uh

016i guess originally in high school then junior high school and now mount pleasant elementary school spent many years in the old wilmington public school district and then finished his career here working in the brandywine school district with uh special and federal programs uh we're here tonight to talk about a concept that that we've been working on for several years now actually with jim's predecessor someone else who's close to the the brandywine school district derrell green who proceeded hit jim in his position and who actually was instrumental in coming up with the idea that we're going to talk about tonight which is the wilming wilmington learning collaborative jim's going to run through a series of slides and we'll certainly be willing to entertain your questions when i was lieutenant governor i served lieutenant governor for eight

017years as you remember during that period of time it was at a time when all the testing assessments that were being done uh in schools across our state actually had some consequences in terms of ratings that schools and school districts had et cetera and one of the things that the the test did was to disaggregate the the scores so that you could know how different groups of students were doing one of the things that we learned was that our our students from disadvantaged backgrounds were not doing as well as as the other students and so i started a program that we called models of excellence in education and we invited uh we invited applications from districts across our state to show us what they were doing to help improve student achievement and during that period

018of time you know we focused on i was exposed to dr susan bunting who was the assistant superintendent there at the indian river school district and they really did a tremendous job of reaching all their students with special programs well you'll know that one of the reasons that i asked dr bunting to come in and be the secretary of education during my first four years she's decided to retire and we've actually offered that position this to another for anyone school district former superintendent markovic and he's going to join us in january as i think of the challenges that we face in our state chief among them is to make sure that we have a strong and thriving economy because if we do people have jobs and we'll be able to support themselves and their families

019and fundamentally that really depends on our ability to have a first-class education system and brandywine of course is one of the stellar districts in our state but we're not we're leaving too many children behind what i call the opportunity gap and that's why we championed additional funding for schools with uh higher numbers of students with disadvantaged backgrounds english learners and and the like and already the districts across our state and the schools have been put money to to to good use we know that the children who live within the boundaries of the city of wilmington uh are losing out on some of those opportunities and we need to do a better job we've already been working now with the christina school district in their schools they had five at one point uh stubbs bancroft on

020the east side palmer in south wilmington pulaski and buyer on the west side working with the district through teachers and principals we've consolidated those schools to bancroft the first to eighth grade school of bancroft on the east side we're building a brand new school there and a buyer on the west side which is being kind of renovated as we speak stubs was converted into an early education center and a parent support center all this designed to really help lean into the needs of these of these students but we know that the challenge goes beyond the christina school district in the city and so we are we're reaching out to the brandywine school district then to red clay later this week to form what we call the wilmington learning collaborative which will really give intense focus

021and a separate board to really lean into the needs of these children and tonight we're asking you to consider this you have two schools in the city at harlan and ps the panther very different and one or the other mayor may not be applicable to this idea but it certainly addresses will address and it is intended to address the levels of student achievement among those children and the backgrounds from which they come jim's going to walk you through that i'll invite him he's not going to tell you this but i know he's shopping for votes for his son jay who's up to be the athlete of the week in his performance from mount pleasant high school i think against tat law school milford uh where he had two touchdowns i want to say a couple

022interceptions maybe even through a touchdown so if you can go online jim would appreciate your vote for his son john thank you governor and that being said meeting adjourned now we'll we'll wait for a few seconds as we get this slideshow pulled up thank you so first governor thank you for uh setting the stage and thank you to the board for having us here this evening for the opportunity to present our education plan this collaborative is based on a framework that's been successful in other states around our country and we've adopted it and retrofitted it to apply to the city of wilmington next slide please here are a list of some of the challenges that school districts face but they're accentuated when you look at the schools that are within our city limits in wilmington

023as you know there are four governance structures with those four districts five if you include votech at the high school level the feeder patterns cause disruptions to students educations for our transient population and our transient families here's a real life example the current assistant principal of brandywine high school byron murphy and i became friends because of this very nature if you if you're not aware 30th street is the dividing line oftentimes between mount pleasant high school and dickenson high school and oftentimes we would lose kids because they moved a block or two and so byron and i would often call each other and say jim you're getting john carney he needs your support or john carney mr murphy's a really good guy when you go to dickinson make sure you look for him because he'll

024take good care of you so we developed that friendship and we know that that's an important direction that we need to support our kids it also occurs that as we share information about each other we know that this impacts each and every student at a different level the other thing i add in the governor touched on it is that our facilities are at very different standards and we've addressed some of those in christina and obviously you guys have addressed some of them here looking at this auditorium since the last time i stood here and presented to our senior class some years ago next slide this slide shows the current teacher retention data for over a three year period for all of the schools that are within our city limits and as you can see all

025of the schools within the city limits are below the state average here's why that's important to me as a former principal when you can retain teachers you can create a climate you also can develop relationships with parents that transcends just that one year i recall having students where i've had the brother the sister the next cousin and and then if you're really good at it which i hope that i was parents would say if you go to mount pleasant we want you to have mr simmons for science here's what it also does for building leaders when they create professional development around curriculum when you're continually turning over your staff you're continually redoing professional development and the teachers lose the ability to become really good and really knowledgeable at that curriculum next slide so it's our

026hope that we can create this different structure i put the big three up top um i put them in alphabetical order so no one felt slighted um and we'll use the mou process that we currently use similar to the one we use in christina around redoing their buildings and some of the things that we're doing in that partnership in this structure there would be a trustee partnership board a small staff and then the teachers there or the of the schools that are decided to participate and i'll go into that slide in a little more detail later on the goal of this though is to ensure or create an opportunity that decision making is closest to the people that it impacts and that's the buildings next slide please so why would you want to do this

027i guess my question would say my answer to that question would be let's get on the right side of the history together this framework provides an opportunity to place a hyper focus on the challenges that i mentioned earlier in all of the three district name roughly 85 percent of those districts buildings do not reside within the city the districts have to maintain a focus on all of the challenges and issues that are presented in a district and so i i think it's important for you to hear we're offering this framework not as a blame game but as a capacity issue and the ability to help provide a resource to address those capacity issues next slide please so here's what it could look like um i think when you think about flexibility you give the option

028of what does a typical day look like what does a typical year look like and i think the people making those decisions have the ability to collaborate together to decide what that could look like and be innovative in the way that they think it gives an opportunity to collaborate across districts i've often said that in the state of delaware and maybe in other states as well i'm not sure we've often spent a lot of time fighting to keep butts in seats because of looking at enrollment so that we can drive our district and so oftentimes we've kept secrets from each other not on purpose but with the intention of keeping those butts in our seats for our district this gives us an ability to keep those butts in our seats and work together for the

029benefit of kids the other thing i want to make sure that we state about this collaborative and what it looks like is that at no point is this a governance takeover model and all of the schools will remain in their current district next slide so here are some of the supports that could be offered so for students we we addressed that issue that i talked about earlier around that transient population that oftentimes moved their education is disrupted we get a chance to address that for our educators we give them the ability to sit at the table in decision making i believe i was fortunate when i was here in brandywine school district because we oftentimes had committees that involved teachers that they had decision making and they felt included and that things were happening with

030their support versus things happening to them or for them it was with them for our leaders we're offering an opportunity for professional development for principals and leaders and i think it's something that we've all fallen short of in some capacity because of other different needs here's why i think that's important when we look at the mo the data from the mobility surveys roughly 75 of the teachers say that they leave either the districts schools or professions because of leadership that speaks to that retention issue as well and the other part is i think this opera this collaborative gives us the opportunity to create community engagement the example i'll use with community engagement i met with the executive director from the pal center last week he talked about this great relationship that he has with the

031brandywine school district when i talked to michelle taylor at united way she talks about her great relationship with christina by creating this collaborative i can get united way health center and others to collaborate with all those schools in the city versus having a relationship with just one district next slide please so um the young man standing behind me and his team has already invested lots of money into or i'll say investments it's not always money into some of those problems and he's willing to do more in terms of the one i think is the most important is investing into our pre-k and adding additional seats we talked about creating a common curriculum willing to take on the cost a rising cost that that could incur especially if districts have either have a curriculum that we're

032not decided on have a new curriculum we're not asking them to endure those costs and then staffing i think that we've got to look at how we can incentivize teachers to stay and do those extra things especially if we consider lengthening the day all right next slide please here's some other examples that things that could be included and i'll sum this slide up with the number of non-profits that are willing to support districts and or schools again on an individual basis i think that we have a better chance at seeking that support from those non-profits and creating those different ideas if it's for a group of schools versus the individual school or individual district who may or may not have a better relationship with some of those non-profits obviously i'm not going to read all

033those things but those are some things that we thought about that were possibilities so as i mentioned earlier that i would talk about this in a little bit more detail when we look at the schools that we hope will be a coalition of the willing we'd create a board of trustees that would include each participating district superintendent and their board member that represents the city and then there's some other members included whether we talk about community members uh education specialists folks who have a hyper focus on the city of wilmington that board is important and can make some vital decisions and again i'll talk about that in a little second about how we get that worked out but i've seen it work link excuse me mr holler just mentioned joe brumskill earlier i've seen what

034can happen to a school when a board member has a hyper focus joe brumskill fought for those schools oftentimes above and beyond to say this is what we need for harlan right now and and again not to discredit the other board members the other board members are looking at the totality of the district joe said i'm looking at the totality and while i'm at it we're going to make sure we take it at two schools in the city as well there would be a staff that would oversee the day-to-day operations these titles aren't written in stone we just put them up as placeholders but an executive director who would oversee the day-to-day work someone in talent and uh teach give me teaching and learning to help with those curriculum curriculum decisions someone in what we

035would call hr to make sure that we're recruiting and retaining the best teachers for the kids that need us the most right now someone to oversee operations and then one of the things that we all know is important that i think we're struggling with to separate versus including is the sel and family engagement the social emotional learning piece that students and teachers and administrators are struggling with right now i think that's got to be a very important piece of this puzzle the last piece that i think is important or we think is important is the elt which is the executive leadership teams i talked about it earlier in terms of having teachers at the table having community members at the table who can share input into where they think that things can impact students at

036the ground level or at the lowest level when we mean the building next please so i talked about this one a little earlier in advance because i stopped reading to you but here's what it could look like we could create certain content specific schools whether it's stem engineering and again those decisions will be made in a collaborative effort giving a different ability to hire staff to do different things and be creative whether you decide to put more than one teacher in a classroom again having the flexibility to do all of those things makes a big difference next please how does it get done i talked about this earlier that i would come back to this slide we currently have an mou that we worked out between department of ed ogov and christina school district and

037then a separate one that aligns with or works with the local uh collective bargaining room in this case the cea i think that in order to get this done there would be an mou between each of the districts that would have some things in common and then because there's so some things that are different in each of the district's collective bargaining agreement you've got to make sure that some of those things are slightly different but i think that they have to align and again we would be able to talk about how the budgets get worked out between the districts and the collaborative versus the the additional investments that the uh governor's office and the state would be willing to take on so we're here's a timeline of what this looks like we're calling this first

038year year zero where we're planning having these types of meetings to try to garner support hopefully next year would be this first year of the collaborative the following year buyer's school that the governor mentioned would be completely renovated and look like a brand new school even though in the same location the following year after that the the new bancroft even though we don't know what the title will be at this point or the name of the building the new bancroft would be open he talked about a dual gen center in the stubs building we're looking to add a second dual gen center on the west side the following year would be the the second year of operation excuse me third year of operation and then also opening a third dual generation center because we've seen

039the importance helen anderson is the executive director the executive director excuse me doing great work over there working with our parents in our in our inner cities and then that last year hoping that this will align with the decision that comes out of the reading consortium so what does it look like before i turn over to question answers we're going to spend the rest of this month in december talking to not only boards but to community members to go on our feedback because we want to create a collaborative environment not just between the schools that decide to participate but also with the community as we as we design this plan by january we're asking the boards of those districts to give us a thumbs up or a thumbs down whether they're willing to participate our

040word is the coalition of the willing january and february we begin to work out on work on those mouss and negotiate those and hope to have them finalized by march then begin planning goal setting with july being the kickoff year next slide oh that might be you used to have one that's the question answer so that's what i just say so i don't know how much time we're allotted uh mr president thank you jim let me just make a few things make a few points in closing i realized we talked several times we mentioned several times the dual gen center but we didn't explain what that is in the dual gen center we have an early childhood education center on the first floor and then a parent support center on on the second floor the

041one that's operational right now is at the the former uh stubs elementary school which if you know that area is right down the streets from howard uh vote tech has been very successful so far we've renovated that building and we're looking to do that uh on the west side as well as you heard jim say we've been working with the christina school district uh dr bunting made a determination early on that's where our efforts needed to start uh so john your father i met with your father and then uh superintendent holiday about uh after the week proposal to consolidate uh the christina children or the christina part of the city into the red clay school district when that failed you know i had just been elected governor and had to pick up the piece and

042figure out what to do and so we've been focusing on christina and making improvements there their facilities and what happens in those classrooms and now proposing uh a city-wide collaborative with brandywine hopefully with red clay hopefully as as jim just mentioned there is the reading consortium that's happening right now and their deliberations uh members uh here are are part of that this does not prejudge any of that decision making but sets the table we think for a better educational uh experience for for those children for whatever is decided that way we're happy to let me close by thanking you again thank you for i've always thought that being on the school board is one of the toughest political jobs uh that there is um never has it been partnered and so we appreciate what you

043do over the last almost two years now of course 19 uh i can sympathize with all of you the difficult decisions that have to be made we're getting better we're going to continue to get better we're going to stick together as we do as delawareans and get through this and thank you for your role in all of that thank you very much thank you governor kearney for coming up today um i know the the timeline here um stretches out and there'll be plenty of time for conversation but i did want to give the board an opportunity just maybe for some high-level questions or comments that you would like the governor uh and mr simmons to consider as these conversations continue and you know as the conversation of mou's develop um you know we can allow

044a few minutes now to this is intended to be the first step the introduction into the concept and so there's going to be a lot of question we understand that jim went through the slides pretty quickly there's a lot of detail the devil's always in the detail as well yeah not convinced after and i'm convinced in particular after now four years that the children who entered first grade when i was first elected are now in fifth grade and they're probably not doing as well as they need to do and so we need to do better and i know everybody wants to do that and we just got to get behind a concept that we can all rally behind and make work did any members of the board want to make a comment i just have

045a i have a question for mr simmons probably is the ecap program that ps included in this learning community it certainly would be included if that's the direction that the board wanted to go in we're not excluding any building that's in the city limit so he clap he excuse me would be included i have a question microphone i have a question i i could be loud um many years ago 21 years ago now there was something called the neighborhood schools act most districts around newcastle county [Music] put their kids in schools that followed me brandywine did not do that we actually still have students who come from the city that go to um miami that go to lancashire and lombardi in addition to farla would there be an expectation that our other schools sync the

046curriculum with the city schools for city children or how would that work would you want us to funnel the city kids back to our harlem instead of having them in our other schools or how do you you know how do you rectify yeah that's that's a question that's that's been raised uh the first person to raise it was was darrell greenwood when i had a conversation with him about it and the way dorel frame did is if you right now we have various different curriculums in the city uh some good not some not so good um and so the idea would be to address the issue of people moving from one district to the other just moving across the neighborhood that they would be you know addressing the same curriculum the question that came from

047darrell is what happens when they go on to high school i mean is that going to affect the fact that they came from a different curriculum a gym probably has a better answer but we should all be aligned to the same standards right whether the curriculum's a little bit different uh that i'm sure makes a difference at some point but once you and by the way the students are not necessarily going to the their feeder patterns of school more so in brandywine than in christina and in red clay but in those districts for sure you can meet with a bunch of eighth graders and they're going to vote they're choosing into this charter school they're going to that as opposed to their feeder pattern which might be dick ticket center mccain what to your to

048your point i don't know that we would ask those schools to be sent those students give me to be sent back to harlan but i also think that it's a conversation for us to meet with the folks that know better than us because for me to stand here and try to make a decision around that without having input from you wouldn't be wise um so but i think that to your point you brandywine has and we've had that conversation around not following the neighborhood schools act which we could argue is why your your data is better than the other two districts by some amount right i don't know that if that's exactly why um but i think it's something to look at the other part i would add around the curriculum is we're not here

049to say that the curriculum brand new wine's using isn't good it could be the curriculum of choice that we decide as a collaborative we're going to use for all the ones that decide to participate it's not saying throw everything out that you're doing we're saying let's find the best practices amongst those willing to participate have a conversation come to an agreement and use the one that we deem meaning the group of us need is the best for those folks that we need to impact before thank you governor so much for this honestly a school of problem solving i think it's very exciting on so many levels as somebody who's an educator who um works at a school with high needs students this is something that's very very close to my heart conversations um about teacher

050retention and teacher recruitment and i can see that the numbers of teacher retention of these schools is honestly quite quite concerned my concern of course as an educator is that i love the parts where teachers are included as part of what i think with the um leadership counseling i think that's amazing i i cannot stress enough um you know an emphasis in keeping teachers involved especially when you're talking about uh perhaps enticing curriculum that is a lot of work for educators um if you're talking about the expectation of additional services such as providing uh as part of this plan which is understandable that there would be some level of compensation that that teachers um with this program would be excited about and definitely be on board um i would hate to see this program turn

051into something that becomes mandates as opposed to something that's a partnership and so that's that's the only uh word of caution that when i see this it's it's a wonderful um implementing my feed very early well there's no question about that i appreciate those uh those comments we do have in our current mou with the christina school district incentives to keep the teachers there but as jim said uh the reasons teachers leave are different than it's not just about the money it's about the team it's about the consistency of the team you know i i visited a suburban elementary school in the christina school district and there were about 20 teachers around the table for that conversation more than half of them started uh at fire or bankrupt or stoves or or palmer they all

052had their different reasons for for leaving but some of the things that you touched on are things that obviously with teachers involved you're going to have that as part of the the problem solving if you will that's the whole idea of the collaboration and to try to get all the districts that that have schools and children in the city uh to be part of that collaboration i have one more question um what is the cost to the taxpayer like what is the additional cost per student that have you evaluated that yeah we could do a whole meeting on that obviously uh there's a lot of money going into the schools and the children right now when you can't when you include title one and you include our opportunity funding which ramps up over the next

053several years pursuant to the agreement that we had with the aclu and the naacp with the suit that was brought against the state and so there are specific targets that we have to meet with opportunity fund as you probably know that's funding that goes to schools based on the number of low-income students and english learners and it's been very helpful in addressing and we'll be able to fund some of the things that you saw up on the board we're also looking at making additional investments to add some of the early childhood uh spots um some other things to help with the teacher retention but again you know it's not intended to be a mandate we're not here to say it's going to be exactly like this we're saying this is what the collaborative framework looks

054like we want we want brandywine to be part of it in whatever way you as a board sees fit you will be part of it and part of the operational board through the superintendent and a member of the board and then we're going to roll up our cities and go to work for these children um there's a couple comments i know there's going to be more time to drill down questions um and these are some things that i've said to you privately as well um you know my time as a parent in this district and on this school board you know i i've seen the great work that happens in our schools every day i have seen the blood sweat and tears the passion that our teachers put into their work and unfortunately that doesn't

055always translate into favorable test scores um you know in looking at the challenges i think on the through slide two um you know i i think in part of the conversation should be addressing and putting in some of those investments into some of the uh external challenges uh that affect our students you know societal issues you know crime poverty parental involvement all those things i think contribute to student successful outcomes um and i think there'll be more time to talk about that as well another slide mentioned participation and kind of i'd like to see some sort of timeline some tangible metrics that that this can be measured uh for success where maybe we can you know double down on the program or expand it to other schools within all of the districts or some hard

056metrics that you know we would really need to change course if it's clearly something's not working and as any kind of board is developed you know as we talk about community participants and education experts you know selecting people that that have proven track records of success and how that can be applied um you know but i think there definitely will be a lot to talk about and you know i think you've given us a lot to digest and talk about here this evening so thank you all great suggestions thanks very much thanks anyone else governor just a few comments as well first i i do believe that we have to look at what we've done in the city and how we need to do something different sitting here i kept thinking about the wayne gretzky

057quote right you miss 100 of the shots you don't take we do need to come together around our kids and i have to first say thank you for those opportunity funds they have made a huge impact and the support again as mr ackerman was saying because of our approach around the neighborhood schools act we have city students across multiple schools in our district and i just want to advocate that that opportunity funds continue to support those students who would be living in the city but not necessarily in the wilmington collaborative there are many things that we're going to have to work through i am a little nervous you know when i see two educators in the classroom don't get me wrong i would love to see that but knowing the pool of available educators and

058the depletion of that pool this year you know how do we ensure that uh we're being fair and equitable and providing the resources to uh our city students at the same time remembering that we have other students and those needs have to be met and finding that that balance and being creative in that attraction and then the retention of highly qualified very effective and i'll go a step beyond educators with hearts for kids and i know we have some champions even here in the audience this evening who are ready to roll up the sleeves to do the work that it takes to recruit those kinds of individuals and i look forward to the discussions that are in the weeks and months to come i think the board it would be advisable that we schedule a

059workshop uh around this where we can invite mr simmons and maybe mr sheehan back to engage in conversations after we've had some time to mull over all the pieces that we saw tonight in the powerpoint uh to have some individual discussions amongst ourselves so that we can take a very serious look at this opportunity thank you very much and i just for the record would like to say it's my own view that brandy brandywine's response to the neighborhood schools act was the best and the most effective and my guess is that if we went and looked at the actual results that they would be born out and the achievement levels of those of your students we know it we know what the achievement levels of your students in the city schools that are part of

060your district are we know what they are in the rest of the district jim mentioned the rest of the city jim mentioned uh the fact that in response to mr ackerman's question that in many ways uh the district could be a leader with respect to curriculum and other uh services as well and i think that's something to think about we certainly appreciate your openness and willingness to to hear us out and to because as you say doing nothing is not is not an option thank you very much i i looked at the timeline and one thing that does concern me is that it's a very short timeline in terms of unless you're governor with three years left from your term i understand but i think that the concern that i'm coming to is that you've

061still got the ready consortium with kind of the sort of damage hanging over the city and all the districts i think i'd be more comfortable if they adopted this as their recommendation so that would be great too but in our view you know we've heard that from my board if you will which is which was the legislature and they were very hesitant to do something that would pre-judge their work on on the commission this doesn't do that arguably this sets the table for whatever decisions they decide to make some of which as governor i would support and some of which you know frankly that i've heard of that that i won't support but whatever they are you know part of the reason arguably that the proposal didn't pass muster at the red clan ultimately in

062the delaware state senate was because the facilities and the costs that are associated with bringing those facilities and christina up to standard were great well guess what we found out that that's true and that's why we're on the last couple years making those investments and getting it to a place where people can't say that that the facilities are first class what's happening in this classroom it's so much better student achievement so much better we got a lot of work to do still but to your point about what's happening there this proposal in our view is way of not wasting any more time but using our time productively to put in better processes and better education for these children and better facilities thank you governor i think a workshop is a great idea mr holler um

063that we can kind of value some of these questions and follow up with the governor's office and mr simmons um but thank you again governor thank you mr simmons for coming out and sharing this information we will definitely uh have more to follow thank you again for having us don't forget to vote for jason exactly all right miss mcintyre you get the distinguished honor of following the governor um but we're excited to hear about the employee recognition of the best of brandywine thank you very much president scrobot to esteem members of the board those joining us in the audience tonight as well as those viewing online again i am felicia mcintyre the director of human resources and i have the distinct privilege of continuing what we started last month where we announced our district winners

064for our teacher of the year for brandywine school district as well as our educator support professional of the year and the additional honor of announcing our teacher of the year who went on to win the state teacher of the year competition tonight we're going to continue with four additional presentations and i would like to invite our other administrator and human resources mr hakima worker to come up and assist me as well as our first building principal tonight mr keith rawl from brandywine high school as we are going to allow mr roth to give some comments and to tell how his educator support professional for his school brandywine high school has contributed and done above and beyond types of activities to support the high school at this time would you all help me please to congratulate

065and welcome up to the podium mr byrd givens mr whipper will present you with your awards from the district we love your shirt by the way go to st frank and this is all i'd like to invite you to give some comments set this down thank you thank you for this opportunity to recognize frankly one of the most rewarding uh friendships acquaintances uh work partners that i have had the pleasure of developing over the last oh i guess multiple buildings right we're two different buildings together uh we're at mount pleasant and then here at brandywine and uh i don't know probably uh 18 years or so from 2003 to now uh and um i would tell you that the reason our building functions it's because of people like buyer givens but especially because of fired

066givens fired is is literally the grease that makes the machinery work without his contributions the machinery doesn't work as it should the reason we are in such a a beautiful clean facility that students get to enjoy every day the reason our classrooms are as beautiful as they are the reason we have what we need to function throughout the day there's not a time that i can recall that i have ever not said fired where is this where is that could we have you know this in a classroom that it doesn't magically appear faster than i can finish asking it if there's anyone i know that i can count on for the running of our building on a daily basis it's buyer givens and so it is absolutely my privilege to congratulate you as our building

067educational support professional of the year i want to give you this small token of our appreciation well pass them on to that someone special at home before they die and and then you know because because frankly and you and i both know this she's a part of your success as well many times we've walked in together in the morning uh as you you're coming to work and i know she is right there supporting um what what you do on a daily basis so thank you thank you for everything that you do to support children to support educators to support the administration and the parents frankly brandywine high school thank you again mr roth next i would like to ask principal mark mayer to come up as we celebrate and acknowledge the accomplishments and mr mayor

068will elaborate on those contributions from his building teacher of the year ms laurie mcgray english teacher at concord high school miss mcrae would you please come up and join us as we accelerate you as well good evening president skrobot superintendent holder respective board members and audience i am proud to stand before you to recognize concord high school's 2021-22 teacher of the year mrs laurie mcrae as we all navigate this journey of life we all hope to have a meaningful relationships that touch our hearts and soul to do that you have to have personal characteristics that draw people to you mrs mccray has many of those characteristics as a person and as a teacher mrs mcrae is kind patient compassionate caring genuine hard-working unconditional creative committed and loyal she is once a raider always a raider

069mrs mcgray mcrae strives to help us create our vision of being an inclusive school community that is focused on building equitable systems of practice to prepare all students for the future she lives at our mission of developing genuine relationships to connect as a school community she lives out our motto the conquered way helen keller keller once said the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched they must be felt with the heart that is mrs mcrae she touches our hearts congratulations to my colleague and my dear friend mrs mccray and finally for our last presentation tonight we would like to invite principal chris barr to come join us at the podium she is going to be celebrating and telling you a little bit about her educator support professional as

070well as her teacher of the year but will are you good okay we will begin with miss lisa welch miss welch would you please come join us she is her educator support professional and she is a paraprofessional in our district okay all right so so you can tell us about her we'll celebrate her and then we'll go on we're gonna make this low to the ground friendly good evening uh my name is chris beyer and i am a principal of the gloucester early education center and the joe brumskill early childhood assistance program it's a pleasure to be here tonight board thank you so much i'd like to share that lisa welch is our esp for bush early education center lisa demonstrates initiative and commitment to professional learning she recently completed her rbt to become a

071registered behavior technician this process requires professionals to participate in 40 hours of professional development and then complete an exam this certificate is above and beyond the expectations of her position lisa works with students with a variety of abilities and challenges her initiative in seeking the certification has enabled her to gain knowledge and skills to better support those students she demonstrates commitment to professional development and evidence-based practices and approaches in the classroom the bush staff felt that she exemplified an exceptional employee and nominated her for the bsd educator support person of the year she is recommended for initiative professionalism and dedication to her students and while she can't be here tonight to enjoy this evening she did receive flowers at school and i would be happy to take for her her gift back to her so

072thank you and lisa congratulations [Applause] and now i get to stay for my teacher of the year um i would like to recognize laura roper and ask her to come up here today to celebrate her um teacher of the year for bush early education center and the early childhood assistance program um we share that um we shared this honor together laura does teach at bush um and she has her family here with her tonight her husband charlie and daughter laura our excuse me so it's with great pleasure that i um recognize i recognize laura as teacher of the year from bush early education center laura is a consummate professional and a master teacher she truly understands child development and meets every student at their level she programs for their individual needs and makes accommodations and

073modifications to program for them accordingly laura has been dedicated to continually developing and improving her teacher skills and has been part of the early childhood community for 28 years her sorry 29 she always corrects me her attention to detail is impeccable in planning for her students laura collaborates with related service staff to program to meet her students needs she is always eager to take extra responsibilities on and has always taken the initiative in preparing in-services and activities it can clearly be inferred that she embraces any opportunity for professional development and has strong leadership skills in addition she serves as a building team leader and as a teacher mentor to novice teachers it's been my pleasure to be her immediate supervisor for over 20 years so laura congratulations [Applause] i'll put thank you very much and

074congratulations to our support professionals and teachers of the year for your respective buildings uh certainly i've said it time and time again um you know most of us don't go to work for recognition and accolades but it is important and it is well deserving for everything that you do for our students and for our district so thank you and with that we will move on to our superintendents report superintendent holler general news and updates good evening members of the board audience and virtual attendees i want to start tonight by sharing two special celebrations that took place last week that have become traditions here in the brandywine community first is the brandywine hundreds rotary clubs flags for heroes display on the corner of mount lebanon and route 202 the home of the brandywine school district operations

075center seeing all those flags representing family members of heroes directly connected to our community is sobering and leaves an indelible impression for reflection and thankfulness the district was thrilled that the flags for heroes project made a return this year veterans day tributes occur throughout the district in honor of our service heroes ranging from the playing of taps and moments of silence in buildings to more elaborate celebrations like that of tally middle school in honor of veterans day the tally band chorus and orchestra all perform special patriotic performances to honor those who have served our country it was the first time that these students have gathered to perform and they did a spectacular job please enjoy tally middle school's vocal and instrumental artists as they pay tribute to all current and past patriots who have served

076in the armed forces protecting our democracy and preserving the liberties and freedoms that we enjoy as americans you [Music] our school annually celebrates veterans day with a big school-wide concert so we're trying to carry that on today in the best way we can in coded times so our eighth grade band our sixth seventh and eighth grade choirs and our seventh and eighth grade orchestra all prepared patriotic pieces of music to present in concert today and so today we've been filming all of those performances to honor those who have served in the military so that we have the freedom to be here today and make these performances happen um [Music] when we started this several years ago we had five or six veteran faculty members who were here and we all just sort of started a

077conversation one day around wouldn't it be nice if we could do something to honor them and it just kind of boiled into the giant annual celebration that it has become [Music] this is their first any kind of performance together as a large group in a big setting and we're still having to sing over masks and sing space to part and plays faced apart and the instrumental players are all still wearing masks and to stand there today and see them rise to the occasion and and really live up to the expectation of being a tally leader sharing that gift in a positive way with others i think that just means the world to all of us here at tally we could not be prouder of them [Music] again special thanks to the tally students and staff

078and causing all of us to reflect and remember the sacrifices of those that have served our greek country on our behalf god bless our troops and god bless america next i'd like to say thank you thank you to all the parents and staff that took the time last spring to provide constructive feedback in our communications survey our new public information officer danielle pro hudson is using that information as the basis for our new communications and marketing strategy with only five weeks on the job she and michael and austin have already started to implement changes based on your feedback those of you who follow us on social media bsd's facebook instagram and twitter accounts have seen their handiwork for those of you who haven't and aren't faithful followers yet here's a quick video montage of what

079you're missing [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we organized this event in support of breast cancer awareness today is our annual walkathon which is also known as our halloween parade thank you to all brandywine school district school nurses for the work that you do [Music] [Applause] ladies and gentlemen you know you have the opportunity to really change lives through education and and i was drawn to it ever since i never wanted to stop or do anything else [Applause] and to stand there today and see them rise to the occasion all of us here at talley we could not be prouder our heart is at brandywine and it always has been wow there is a lot happening in our schools the best way to stay up to date is to follow us on facebook instagram and twitter and be

080sure to like our posts so that our students see your interest and your support as a reminder for our families we continue to utilize the brandywine school district covid dashboard located on our website this dashboard replaces the letters emails and phone calls to families to alert them of cases of covid in the buildings where their children are not deemed to be closed contacts as a reminder any instance where your child is considered to be a closed contact you will continue to receive a personal phone call from the school nurse or building administrator as a reminder brandywine school district follows all state mandates including the coveted 19 related orders last week governor john carney announced the mass mandate in all k-12 buildings would be extended through february as you know we will continue to follow this

081mandate you may have also noticed in our opening video of our performing artists the special mass that were purchased specifically for them needless to say our students have done a wonderful job with their mask use and compliance the district continues to faithfully monitor national regional and local covet data downward trend of the new castle county seven day average of new cases per 100 000 persons reported last month continues as does the new castle county trend in the seven day average for positivity rate we are hoping these numbers continue to trend in this direction with that said we do have to wonder how family gatherings will impact spread data this year as thanksgiving is right around the corner the district has seen a steady decrease of total cases over the last two weeks and data from

082the state level also continues to show an incredibly low percentage of in-person contagious student cases in public schools that also shows favorable decline over the past several weeks we're thrilled to report that we have uh oh i'm sorry we are working closely with our state partners to implement mandatory testing for all school district employees who are not vaccinated as part of governor carney's executive order all unvaccinated employees will have to participate in weekly covet 19 testing and then upload their results into a secure portal staff members can utilize the quadell testing that is already on site at all of our school buildings throughout the week or they can find a community testing center if they so prefer we are thrilled to report that we have an upcoming clinic for students between the ages of 5

083and 11 for covid vaccinations the clinic will take place on november 29th for the first dose and december 20th for the second dose this is in partnership with albertson's pharmacy we will be communicating the details to our bsd families in the next few days if you would like to register i also want to spotlight some of our team members who have been recognized in various ways college and career readiness world language and cte coordinator vicky sword was recently named the vice chair of teaching and learning of cultures culture special interest group for actfl vicki will also serve one year as vice chair and will be named chair next school year meanwhile middle school teacher at talley middle school renee mercer was recently served on the educator review committee and helped to review revise and rewrite

084the national standards in k-12 personal finance education and finally our very own 2022 delaware teacher of the year joshua tabron continues to shine both of josh's alma maters wilmington u and delaware state university as well as local media outlets have all shared josh's story these are just a few of our team members who work has put bsd on the state regional and global map our hats off to all of that so want to share some exciting news that we'll we'll give you more detail about in the coming months we're very excited to share with you that brandywine received 2.6 million dollars in federal grant monies out of a total of six million that went to the state from the fcc this information uh this these funds will be used to help support our students technology

085needs both in school and especially at home based on socioeconomic status and availability to devices within the home quite a few impressive reasons to state as i always do proud to be bsd in my report this evening but i saved the best for last the following is an email the principal keith roth of bhs received this past week about one of his student athletes the email reads good afternoon my name is jen avery and my son's name is matthew avery an 11th grade cadet at delaware military academy i wanted you to be aware of an amazing display of sportsmanship my son experienced during the cross-country championship meet yesterday by one of your students bobby bear if you're not familiar with the course at winotour it is a tough hilly course peppered with deep ruts and

086dips around the mile and a half mark matthew hit one of those deep dips just the right way and twisted his ankle causing him to fall to the ground as bobby ran up on matthew laying on the ground he stopped running to check on him after helping matthew back to his feet and making sure that he was okay bobby continued the race right by my son's side because of bobby's actions yesterday i'm sure it caused him to add a significant amount of time to his finishing time it truly was a selfless act on bobby's part and matthew is extremely grateful please thank him again for us personally kindly jennifer avery parent ladies and gentlemen that makes me especially proud to say i'm proud to be bsd that is my report for this evening mr president

087thank you superintendent holder any comments or questions from the board related to the superintendent's report no what a what a great way to end with a story of sportsmanship like that thank you for sharing next up will be our public comment segment we ask that our speakers and audience members as always be courteous and respectful of each other this is your time to be heard regarding topics related to the bernie white school district each speaker will have three minutes uh which time the microphone will shut off or we'll just simply thank you for your time please don't take it personally just trying to make everything uh fair to everyone and we do not have any zoom participants this evening uh so miss scott um once the speaker starts speaking if you could set the clock

088at three minutes uh i'll call the first speaker and then i'll call the name for the on deck and if the speakers could use the aisle microphone that would be appreciated first up we have dave brady followed by carol burge whoever's left attendees uh my name's dave brady i'm i live in clemont i was away from claim on for last two three years four years but i'm back now i've attended to claymont school i entered in 1943 and i graduated in 1955 from the claymode school i went in the military and later on i went into i went to delaware ud and i received my ba in history and my master's in counseling and i began a career in conrad high school as a career counselor and anyhow this story is this is an old

089story i've sat on this for 15 years i was working at the time that this occurred at the brandywine school district i began here in 93 i was a visiting teacher which persons deal with with the currency and school issues with children like that and also what may be the want of any principal that you may work with and i've at the end i've worked with eight different schools including brandywine anyhow long story short uh i uh i was at a meeting in december of 05 2005. as i said i sat on this story for a good while and it's kind of gotten to me lately uh i was at a meeting and it was at the old brandywine school district district office at the top of pennsylvania avenue i was in there with a

090group we had a teacher's day and i as a one of two people in the that slot i was in and there were other people couple teachers social workers so on and so forth anyhow i was uh sitting beside this young fellow and he and all of a sudden he started into his story for the day he told us that his he had a course at springer junior high school which taught and this is it taught that only white people are racist you heard that right only white people are racist that's what this young man was saying a white boy from springer junior high well i remonstrated with him i said you know you gotta be kidding me i've been around too long and this and that stuff anyhow a black teacher from p.s dupont

091jumped in and said well you must be racist after all my time military college legislature all that i'm a racist so anyhow i got up from the meeting walked over to my boss miss helper and but she wasn't there and i left a message with her secretary that i was leaving i was going to resign as of january 31st of 2006. thank you mr brittany afraid we're done thank you carol burge with alan benton on deck hello my name is carol burge i'm a retired pediatric nurse and child and family counselor last month i read the book not my idea a book about blackness and this time i'm going to read a is for activist there's a lot of talk last time about censorship and i'm not talking about censorship i'm not talking about taking

092books out of the library my question is why are books like this promoted on the brandywine school district as family resources a is for activist advocate abolitionist ally actively answering a call to action are you an activist this is obviously a book for preschool children l is for lgbtq love who you choose because love is true liberate your notions of limited emotions celebrate with pride are links of devotion m is for megaphones marching movement music hip hip hooray it must be may day in 1889 mayday was chosen for the international workers day by socialists communists as well as anarchists labor activists and leftists in general around the world n is for no no no no yes to what we want no to what must go no no no open minds operate best that's o critical

093thinking over tests wisdom can't be memorized educate agitate organize in a previous in the original version of this book it wasn't organized it was occupy p is for ppp peace march pro pro protest pow pow power to the pp people ya t is for trans for trains tiaras tulips tractors and tigers too trust in the true the he she they that is you and lastly z is for zapatista of course zapatista is a libertarian socialist political militant group that controls a substantial amount of territory in southern mexico my question is why are these books promoted on the brandywine school district website encouraging families to read with their children thank you thank you next up we have alan benton followed by tonya hitler good evening i wanted to respond to a letter that i saw online

094i have a feeling you're gonna be hearing about it soon um it is a letter uh from the citizens for brandywine school district um and i i i've read it i i think there's a lot of concerning things in it um and i i just wanted to take a chance to say that that i think it basically should be discounted um i i wish i had time to you know respond to every single point individually um you know there's i guess the most concerning thing to me was a personal attack against a recently elected board member which i really don't understand and i feel that i need to once again remind everybody the results of the most recent election in which the the winner you know got 72 percent of the vote uh compared to

09527 for uh for the other candidate um so i'm not really sure why we're choosing to attack this person uh in in this forum and uh you know continue to [Music] ignore the fact that the majority of the district has spoken and you know the platform that that candidate ran on that is what the majority of the district you know wants and that's what the majority of the district agrees with uh but i'd like to also uh point out a letter that the same uh group of people circulated the last letter that they circulated got people to sign on but there was another letter that was signed by close to 500 people expressing support for the way that history is taught in the district for diversity inclusion efforts in the district and you know if

096you do the math the percentage-wise it comes out to even more than the most recent election in which the prevailing candidate got 70 2 of the vote so the people behind this letter the people that are speaking month after month are in no way they're loud but they in no way represent a majority majority is spoken democracy has spoken and i encourage you to commit this letter and it and the ideas in it to the aspen of history where it belongs thank you thank you mr benton next up tanya hitler followed by ken darges hi actually um he introduced this well um i we did uh just send as the board knows a letter regarding the foia documents that we received from the board so that if you want to discount them it's stuff that's

097actually being used in the district but um if you're interested in reading the letter you can go to www.tanyathedoc.com and it's on the front page there um so we're waiting for a response from the board and looking forward to a chance to meet with you to discuss some of the things uh that we found in the foia documents foia's freedom of information act by the way so on a slightly different topic i wanted to tell you about a study that i just read about in k-12 districts that have diversity equity and inclusion directors like brandywine school district does the stated purpose of a dei officer is to close the achievement gaps between students in advanced and disadvantaged groups and we think that this is an excellent and admirable goal the question is does having a

098dei officer like brandywine has narrow the achievement gaps between minorities and whites the answer is no this is from a stanford study in fact having a dei officer is associated with wider achievement gaps between minorities and the majority group we could ask whether perhaps this is just because in districts where there is more of a need for an achievement or a need for a dei officer there is a bigger achievement gap however the findings do not support this when they looked at it over time annually in districts where there is a dei officer the achievement gaps between white students and minority students actually get bigger annually so why is this happening the social justice ideology that lies behind the dei officer actually tells black students that they cannot achieve as well as white students can

099they are told that they are victims and oppressed does this seem like it would increase their achievement scores i don't think so when social justice is the focus the standards are actually lowered for minority students and when standards are lowered the students are going to perform down to that new standard this is the case unfortunately in brandywine school district where only 53 percent of seniors are college and career ready this is based on the district's own numbers and yet 87 percent of students graduate thank you dr hitler next up we have ken darges followed by joan prorock at the last board meeting a number of parents got up and talked about the performance of the students in mathematics english which seem to be extremely low 41 college ready when they graduate the reaction from the

100superintendent was to talk about a three-year plan and pointed out that we now have a new social studies guru reverend perry mentioned that we have an uh a new equity zarina and i'm sitting there as a parent are trying to figure out how these two adds to our staffing are going to improve our math and english great but i'm just a parent i'd like to talk about the new free facility the school i attended we had some very complex problems thrown at us as far as projections etc one of the easiest ones though was dealing with budgeting and budget projections what i haven't seen from the board and maybe that's because it hasn't been created maybe i haven't looked in the right place is the budgeting that's going to go into this free school we

101need staffing maintenance maintenance improvements etc hopefully the board isn't thinking something along the line that once we get this new free facility that when we come up with all these extra costs that we can go back to the people and ask for a tax increase based on the performance of the schools this school district over the last two tax increases i think we're going to run into a great deal of resistance because people are going to learn about the 41 percent and the 53 numbers thank you mr dargis joan prorock followed by carrie flanagan in montana the superintendent of schools asked the montana attorney general to provide information on the legality of teaching social justice ideology he cited past case law and applied the law to the current ideas of social justice crt anti-racism and

102equity which are being promoted in k-12 schools today across the nation including the brandywine school district the ag's reply specified that aspects of social justice violate the equal protection flaws of the 14th amendment to the u.s constitution and title vi article 2 section 4 of the civil rights act of 1964. he briefly traced the history of race related law back to james madison who said that government by consent emerged because it is the only arranged arrangement capable compatible with the premise of natural equality he continued with the statement from justice john marshall harlan our constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens colorblindness has been the prevailing idea in supreme court decisions through our history from plessy versus ferguson decision to brown versus board of education to the present the ag mentioned

103that the purpose of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment is to prevent the states from purposely discriminating between individuals on the basis of race he continued citing the equal protection principle reflects our nation's understanding that racial classifications ultimately have a destructive impact on the individual and our society referring to the same case justice antonin scalia said in the eyes of the government we are just one race here it is american finally he wrote the title vi of the 1964 civil rights act protects all students who attend institutions receiving federal funding from being treated differently based on their actual or perceived race color or national origin the belief behind social justice ideology that more discrimination today is the solution to past discrimination is illogical and illegal thank you mr rock uh carrie flanagan followed

104by donna lee hi thank you for being here this evening my name is carrie flanagan my two children attend grade school in the district and i want to thank the district for being so adaptive and working so hard to keep our kids learning while also keeping them safe it's been a difficult two years and i want to especially thank the teachers food service workers nurses bus drivers and admin who nurture our kids every day i truly appreciate you i want to encourage people to get their kids vaccinated i did the science on these vaccines has been in development for decades and lastly i want to say i support bsd's work on diversity and inclusive education i've spoken to my children about racial dynamics regularly since they were children little and never have they been made

105to feel badly about themselves instead they are learning compassion empathy curiosity and that all humans all deserve the same thing to be treated with respect i hope bsd will continue to give our teachers the training and resources they need to teach all of our students thank you thank you ms flonigan next up donna lee followed by james ingrassia we as a society are killing our children we're responsible for allowing fear to permeate their lives by handing our children over to others to be schooled and raised we have allowed evil to penetrate all aspects of our lives it's time for us to say no so please pray with me heavenly father we have turned from you and rebelled against you instead of honoring you we bow down before all manner of idols we have taken you

106out of our schools and public places we have allowed fear to rule our lives merciful god i pray you will open the eyes and hearts of parents teachers and citizens help us see what a disaster we have created with our own hands help us boldly move from faith from fear to faith and be role models for our children and take the masks off let our children see smiles again let them experience love not hate for themselves and for others give them confidence by teaching them to read to write to speak and to think critically destroy these abominable curriculums please god give us the courage to say no more i ask this in name in the name of your son jesus please join me in saying the lord's prayer together our father who art in heaven

107hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever amen thank you miss lee next up james ingrassia followed by richard smith school districts across the country continue to proclaim that do not teach the racially obsessed grievance ideology known as crt what a likes thereof parents across america have been getting involved to hold schools accountable to that statement teachers and staff have for years been immersed in the many euphemistic words of politically motivated indoctrination the unique perspective of the parents must be recognized

108we are on the outside looking in the fact is our schools are failing the children on an academic level students are at or below 50 proficiency in english math science and social studies and this is before the abysmal coveted results were reported to quote california teacher of the year jeremy adams i think people are starting to wake up to the fact that 90 percent of students success has nothing to do with the future it has to do with the values the habits the background and the support that those young people have before they ever get to a school the school's role is to teach academics and may reinforce values by way of doing to others as you would have them do unto you it is a parent's job to teach their children core values such

109as respecting others responsibility honesty gratitude and compassion resist the harmful effects this divisive ideology can have on students and reserve honest patriotic education if you don't stand for something then you will fall for anything thank you mr ingrassia richard smith i thought i saw him leave earlier freeman williams [Music] and it looks like that concludes our public comment session moving on to board liaison reports delaware school boards association and executive board mr ralph packerman yeah the uh delaware school board association met on november 3rd uh we did have a quorum we had a presentation about from christy lloyd from the department of education on cyber security and ransomware defense that's the name i was trying to remember earlier um a very timely presentation and certainly one that's very important uh we also had a presentation

110from um mr simmons as well as john sheehan to kind of give the boards across the state kind of an overview of the plan that we just heard tonight from the governor the question that i i'd like to just pose to board members and that we've kind of charged ourselves with going back to our individual boards the national school boards association had on its own sent a letter to president biden asking for help with items that we didn't feel was appropriate we don't think parents are terrorists uh we think that we should listen to parental input as a board um and as the school boards association so i think the question that i'm posing to board members is when you get a chance uh you know if you feel compelled give me your feelings on

111whether or not these delaware school boards association should continue to be a member of nspa or should we leave nsba i mean we all most of us here have gone to at least one nsba conference and i think we found a lot of value in that conference uh but it is a question i think about 26 states have so far left the organization if i if i have the number correct we did not decide to take any action with regards to nsba membership but we do want to come back to our local boards and say what you know what do you want to do do you you know what's your direction as a board member how do you feel about nspa and should we look to lead nsba there is a new organization being spun

112up by the pennsylvania school boards association [Music] i'm not sure how many states are involved with that at this point but there are several states that are looking to form an alternative organization to nspa at this point i mean delaware's delaware's contribution our dues for nsb are are de minimis compared to big states like texas or california i mean we literally pay under 10 000 a year to belong to nsba um and you have states that are giving you know hundreds and millions of dollars with staffs that are oftentimes bigger than nsba uh so you know i personally um i think you don't leave you stay and fight that's kind of my position but i'm certainly going to take input from our board and we are going to revisit this topic at our next meeting

113which i believe will be in january has the dsba do they kind of have a list of pros and cons of what you know what we what we gain from nsba aside from the conference actually that question was asked by several members in attendance and dr marinucci said oftentimes they provide legal assistance with questions um they can also provide help with superintendent searches uh there's a there's a numerous items that they do but i can certainly ask him to provide us with a list that i can get out to board members and would any of those items could the dsba source some of those resources with the 10 000 we would save a fraction of whatever but something to consider yeah absolutely great thank you um delaware school boards association legislative committee ms gordon although

114i attend the executive committee with mr ackerman the legislative committee has not met and will not be meeting again until february 6. great thank you ms gordon district finance committee the district finance committee held its monthly meeting on november 10th we reviewed the monthly financial report as well as a discussion on the class side class size waivers both of which dr hale will present shortly and our next scheduled meeting is for december 8th at 5 00 pm maintenance advisory committee mr heller who is not with us i attended that meeting as well that was on tuesday november 9th we met at forwood elementary school reviewed some of the ongoing projects of brandywine's high school cafeteria along with mount pleasant high school and facilities uh the facilities building um with much of the nation we're still

115waiting on supplies and materials that are delayed um [Music] as always john reed and his team took advantage of students out of the building on thursday and friday of last week or of that week you know to make a push to get items completed in the school take advantage of the time when the students are not there more work is lined up for the thanksgiving break we are at the end of our funding for our 2016 referendum there will be some project closeouts and audits completed with in relation to the referendum dollars there are some pending projects at brandywine high school mount pleasant high school mount pleasant e car craft maple lane and tally related to some of the esser funding and the facilities there continued long-term planning and discussion with the state regarding minor

116cap funding uh wish i would have taking the time with the governor while he was here tonight to mention this but we have over the last 18 years minor cap funding from the state has increased by 14 so over 18 years 14 increase in funding compared to a 133 percent increase in the cost per square foot to complete minor cap projects within districts in our state so the funding has not kept pace with inflation and the cost of what it actually takes to get jobs completed so we will continue to work with the state and our local legislators to try to increase the minor cap funding that will allow us to maintain our schools uh you know do a nice renovation in an auditorium like this and the minor cap money helps us maintain it

117and extend the life over the years and our next meeting i think we're not going to have a december meeting we will propose a january meeting and i'll have a date for everyone at the next board meeting parent counsel for students with disabilities mrs pigeon so the last meeting was held on october 27th it's held via zoom there will be uh three additional meetings throughout the rest of this 21 22 school year so the third wednesday of the month so in january march and may and they're from 6 30 to 8 pm this past meeting was kind of a get to know you meeting [Music] getting to know the parents getting to know each other because a lot of the parents are selected to participate in the parent council of course it is open to

118any parent that would like to participate but there are certain key parents selected from each school and then they are also the special education department is also working doing connect and learn workshops family workshops and those are for families that are maybe new to the special education process and they're held throughout the year and all the information for those meetings [Music] can be found at the school with your educational diagnostician or online on facebook on the parent council facebook page okay thank you mr pigeon parents and citizen advisory committee reverend perry is not here i do not believe there was a meeting for that yet and i do not have a date for the next one uh health advisory committee mr heller i do not have an update for that report 91-7 wmph advisory committee

119did hold a meeting on monday november 8th um the broadcasting has been 24 7 as normal uh this year's wmph after school club has been quite popular and increased in popularity over previous years they've continued as a station to broadcast fall sports football volleyball and field hockey and will continue to do so with basketball into the winter we discussed the ongoing contract with delaware public media currently some of the recommendations by the committee are being reviewed by legal before being presented to the board for consideration hope to have that in the december or january meeting completed some compliance items such as reports for the national emergency alert system and some fcc compliance training was completed and we will be working on wmph broadcast licensing renewal that application is due august of next year 2022 and

120that covers an eight-year period and our next meeting is scheduled for next quarter march 7th of 2022 uh educator and recruitment and retention committee ms stock yes uh the educator recruitment and retention uh committee has not met since our last meeting however we are looking to schedule a meeting for early december so again i'm asking educators public if you are interested and coming to that meeting in early december you can send me an email at kimberlykimberly.stock bsd.catachild.de.us thank you thank you ms stump any additional board member reports or comments i do have a question mr president um for wnph um how was the reaction from dpm on the suggestions to reduce their time a little bit we haven't presented those yet we're working on the contract that will then be presented to them once the

121board approves the language for submission to have those negotiations perfect pardon me and that concludes board member reports um consent agenda i will now entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda so move second have a motion and a second all in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries personnel matters this was an amended version to the agenda so we will start with do i have a motion motion to approve the monthly personnel report as discussed in executive session second have a motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries item 8 b employee do i have a motion to approve employee matter 22-01 as discussed in executive session have a motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries item 8

122c do i have a motion to approve employee matter 22-02 as discussed in executive session yes second have a motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries student matters do i have a motion to approve student matters as discussed in executive session have a motion to have a second second motion in a second all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries there is no old business this evening new business dr hale uh can we hear from you on the waiver of provision title 14 section c commonly known as class size waiver that's great thank you good evening members of the board the information that was presented to you um in the board for this evening is in relation to title 14 section 1705 which um

123basically states that um in grades kindergarten through three classes must be at a enrollment of 22 or less or if any classes are exceeding that number that do not have what's considered to be additional supports in the class we would be required to come to the board and seek a waiver of the that class size requirement the information that's presented to us is as of the 1st of november and i had indicated in a written notice to the board that we were performing an analysis of all of the classrooms um that are impacted through that k3 and even as early or as late as this morning part of that process that we go through is looking at every classroom looking at what additional supports are available within those buildings and looking at those numbers to

124see that um whether those additional supports would provide us the opportunity to not have to seek a waiver and i am pleased to say that um based on our analysis and some additional positions that we've been able to afford through our esser grant we will not be seeking a waiver this year um of the class sizes for any of those k-3 so we've spent the last two weeks the reason that this is on the board we have to put it on every year because of the requirement for it to be posted and has to be up for a certain period of time and because the information becomes available to us on november 1st we do take that time and go through extensively all of the classrooms and speak with the principals vina davis was involved

125mr holler you know so we've been going through those conversations and even up through today looking at enrollments um even through today to see where we were to ensure that that any of the funds that we would be using to provide additional resources would be done so with good stewardship so again i am pleased to report that we will not be seeking the waiver this year and i would be more than happy to answer any questions that you may have so we need to take a vote to accept your recommendation that you're not making a recommendation you would not have to i don't believe that there would have to be any action on this because we have been able to indicate through the survey that's provided through class links that we've met the requirement as

126far as i understand nothing further is necessary i do appreciate your time and all the time of the district admin and the individual school administrators that have worked to i know not only this year but in years past to you know build build out the classrooms to where we do not need the class size waiver i don't think we've had one in my time on the board and i think that's a a great area of pride for me and as a district that you know we're able to maintain you know class sizes with within the the framework of title 14 and not have to exceed that so thank you thank you dr dr hale just to be clear that does not mean that we don't have uh classes that may have 23 or 24 students

127in them that is correct so that the classes that do also have access to additional support or we are in the process of hiring individuals as additional support that is for those classrooms yeah so as we go through that process we review every classroom even those that have less than the 22 to look at additional support to the needs of the buildings and that's part of our allocations process so as we go through and make those determinations and provide those buildings with the resources they would then go through the process to ensure that they have the necessary staff in place so all of the staffing has been allocated you know for those buildings to ensure that any of those classes that have in excess of 22 have additional supports that meet the code and am

128i correct in fact that our average class size k to three is lower than it's been in the last i can't remember that of the 145 classes that we have um in that k-3 this is the first time that we've been under 20 on average so it's roughly 19.95 as our as our average now certainly that's something that we review on a daily basis that average was as of the first of november um and as we know each day you know there could be students added to that and certainly students that could come off so it's something that we continually look at throughout the year to ensure that you know as additional students come into the district that we're providing the additional resources necessary to to meet the needs and mr skribot i'd like to

129commend dr hale and miss jones davis not only did they look at the november 9th data which they're required to but as dr hale reported they actually pulled data from today and even though i wouldn't have to take classes that exceeded that number today but not on november 9th into consideration but they did anyway which to me i just speaks to their commitment to keep that class size number as as low as possible okay thank you superhero um dr hale miss pigeon brought to my attention that this is listed as an action item so i will consult with robert's rules of order later but for now i will entertain a motion to direct dr hale to take the appropriate district action in lieu of not requiring a class size waiver thank you so much have

130a motion in a second all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries and you want to jump out of order do you want to do financials or john read next let's go let's say and stay in order we'll do minor cap improvements uh mr john reed good evening that's kind of disrupted his mojo here by getting into the middle here the brandywine school district has retained the services of an architect of record but it's more than just an architect that team has civil engineers mechanical engineers structural engineers so when we have a minor issue in the school these are the teams the professionals that we lean on they're also the teams of professionals that help us through permits when we got the lights here at brandywine high school there were permits involved

131we went out for a request for proposals we had six firms submit and our recommendation is to award the contract to two firms but we were going to divide up the school based on the firm's personnel's expertise of those individual buildings abha which is a firm that is located in the city wilmington would handle all minor cap work and essent work for the next three years at brandywine high school concord high school mount pleasant high ps2 plant springer middle school tally middle school clay mountain elementary marlin elementary and maple lane bs a plus a which is also located in the city of wilmington would be awarded carcroft elementary forward elementary hamby elementary lancashire elementary lombardi elementary mount pleasant elementary any work that would pop up at the bus yard the brandywine operations center darley road

1321000 pennsylvania avenue that after the work there if anything arose and also some of our miscellaneous properties any major work coming up in the next few years would not be included in this so the new bush school is a separate rfp which by the way is out right now for advertisement and firms are preparing for that now this is for minor cap work only and for asset projects only for the next three years any questions steree just what's the rationale with going with two firms um it was we have a lot of little projects and a lot of the architect firms in delaware are very busy on big projects right now and although they're little projects they're very important to us so we felt that it helped with bandwidth also um with personnel um the

133bsa plus a team has recently retained the services of an architect who came from another firm who was a lead architect for hamby lancashire and carcraft and bsa plus a has had worked on mount pleasant elementary in the past and these other sites in the past so when i pick up the phone and call these firms it's not like they have to come visit me for the drawings they already have them on their network so um when problems arise for instance last tuesday night the water line broke in front of clay mall you know we had kids the next day no one knew it because we're able to respond very quickly have access to drawings and we're able to get on this quickly and it's our intention to continue with that thank you mr reed

134i appreciate the the thought that you and your team put into thinking of these things and these are the details that go to helping things run smooth keeping operations going keeping students in the building when there's a flood the night before and they don't even know it so thank you very much any other questions on the board oh do i have a motion to accept the architect of record second motion in a second all those in favor say aye aye any objections all those i lost track of my thought here all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries back to dr hale for the monthly financial report this thing could just be a moment as we put it up on the screen here we go it's good evening the district finance committee

135met last wednesday to review the reports for the month ended october 31st 2021. as i stated this is the report that really is the most significant of the year as we receive the most significant portion of our tax revenue during the month of october so if we could go to page one of the report the revenue listed as you can see we continue to hold as it relates to our state funding now that our september 30th unit count has been finalized we will begin the process of formulating the final budget the district finance committee and the board will be presented with a draft of the final budget next month for consideration in january we will begin to receive over the course of the next several months the remaining funds from the state as it relates

136to our finalized unit count so we'll be able to provide all of that additional information you can see that on the on the current expense that we've received roughly 59 million dollars of our total allocation of current expense dollars over the course of the next several months we'll begin to see that that remaining portion come through i mean we certainly have every expectation to believe that we're going to receive 100 of those funds for the year our next page shows our expenditure report through october 31st we're seeing um relatively standard expenditures up to this point i mean certainly last year being through covid you know we we are seeing some more average type expenditures up to this point so what we're looking at at this point is okay so the expenditures to date for the

137buildings i mean certainly the the building principles are doing a great job as it relates to managing their budgets as well as looking at our various departments all of our expenditures you know as we review them each day you know the october 31st report is reflective of pretty much where we would normally be at the end of october um so this is something that over the course the next several months as we're looking at our final budget we'll be doing an analysis of our expenditures to see if there's any um any budgets or operating units that we would need to make an adjustment the key factor for us as we always report on is the where we are with the year as it relates to our salaries we currently have been nine out of our

138total of 26 pay cycles which is roughly about 35 so as we're tracking right now roughly about 36 of our total now certainly over the course of the next several months we should see that number smooth out a bit so that that's reflective of us being right on target to where we need to be with our budget this report is our operating expenditure report for prior year appropriations and again this is for any of the funds that we receive that are coded for budgets years 2021 or earlier so we report these on a monthly basis and again the majority of these expenditures are related to things like federal programs um as well as major and minor cap expenditures now there are some funds that we do receive um from the state that are fiscal year

13921 or earlier appropriations and all those would be be accounted for on this we had fairly extensive discussions during the district finance committee as it relates to our sr2 and 3 expenditure summary so it was a recommendation of that group that we provide over the course of the next several months an additional expenditure um you know whether it be through various charts or like additional information to begin to go into further detail as it relates to what type of expenditures are coming through so we'll certainly be working um with various individuals at the in the district to make sure that that we are providing information to the public that provides greater detail as it relates to that total of 36 million dollars that we receive and again that's over the course of three years um

140so we will be working through the district finance committee to be able to provide additional reports that will be able to further explain how those expenditures are taking place our cash flow statement um as you can see the first three months there are actual expenditure i should say four months moving on to the next page based on the information that we have received through october we're still anticipating to have roughly 10.3 million dollars on june 30th of 22. um in our budget in the preliminary budget we had anticipated 10.4 million so just basically a slight adjustment we are dealing with lower than expected interest revenue as it relates to the state's investment portfolios that's something that the district finance committee has been looking at and we'll make necessary adjustments as we go through the final

141budget so basically we are holding tight at our estimated 10.3 million dollar carry forward for june 30th and i would uh answer any questions that you may have at this time any questions from the board regarding the monthly financial report hearing none i will entertain a motion to accept the monthly financial report for october 31st 2021 subject to audit so moved second motion in a second all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you dr ham thank you general information and meeting dates we will have our next board meeting here at brandywine high school on december 13th followed by january 10th followed by february 7th 2022. is that february 7th date correct that early in the month i know that i know the 10th moves i think because of uh martin

142luther king day the following week we can always we can always come back to confirm that date but certainly i have january 10th down the february is that the seventh february i'm sorry okay great um those will be our meeting dates and i want to thank everyone for your time and participation this evening i hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable thanksgiving holiday always reminded of it's not about having what you want but wanting what you have and i hope everyone takes the time to give thanks i think we can all find one thing that we are thankful for and i hope everyone does that so with that i will entertain a motion to adjourn motion in a second all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries we are adjourned thank you