001hey good evening welcome to the brand wine school district board of education and regular meeting today is monday june 21st tonight we are live in the newly renovated clemont elementary auditorium as well as broadcasting via zoom ms harris we have a roll call please mr skrobot here miss gordon here miss pigeon mr ackerman president reverend perry here mr heller dr derrick at this time i would like to invite dr deb zarik to lead us in the pledge of allegiance indivisible liberty and justice thank you dr zarick uh before i entertain a motion to approve the agenda i wanted to make one uh addition for the board under special presentations uh between item b and c i'm going to add uh mr james hamby with an update on the bef so with that do i have
002a motion to approve the agenda second motion in a second all in favor aye any opposed motion carries this time i'll turn it over to superintendent holler for several special recognitions thank you mr president it is my distinct privilege to recognize two outstanding individuals of members of law enforcement who have served our schools our district our community well behind the scenes and publicly and at this time i'm just going to ask sergeant brian pixley the delaware state police if you could just please stand sergeant pixley in recognition and appreciation of your dedication and commitment to the health safety and welfare of the students staff and community of the brandywine school district regardless of date or time of day sergeant pixley's responsiveness thoroughness of investigation and communication with district officials was and continues to be exemplary
003just a few comments um sergeant pixley delaware state police oversaw all of the sros in our district as such he was in frequent communication with our buildings but especially with district leadership and being an administrator in the district being in charge of the health safety and welfare of students there's no more awesome tasks and nothing that gives you pits in your stomach when you learn of an issue than something around safety when i read in that appreciation um statement a minute ago that regardless of day or or time of day officer pixley at times had met me at 10 30 at a student's house because there was a need to contact that student because of a comment or a statement that was made about him or her or that he or she might have made
004thorough investigation honesty never a question about what was going on um there were times where we would get social media comments made at 2 30 in the morning he would be notified and by 5 o'clock we would be given the all clear sign because he and his team had already worked through the night to clear the the matter at hand and i i can't express my gratitude enough sergeant pixley for the behind the scenes work night and day weekends uh vacations even when you were off you were on and it was all about keeping our kids and our communities safe and for that on behalf of the entire brandywine school district i thank you for your service tell you the responsiveness of the delaware state police and any and all matters in the past i
005i would say probably 78 years has just been outstanding it is also my privilege to to recognize another one of our sros tonight not from the delaware state police but from the city of wilmington police department and that is corporal master anthony roundtree you could stand sir well the cheers are well deserved um in recognition of his unparalleled commitment to ps dupont middle school its students its families and its staff as well as the students families and staff of david w harlan elementary through daily intentional positive interaction with students you continuously build trusting and supportive relationships that extend outside the school walls and into the community that you serve this gentleman during covid made home visits to ensure that students had their books to ensure that they had their devices their hot spots when students
006were absent a wol he went on a mission to seek them out find them engage them and engage their parents that's not in the job description of an sro that's in the heart and soul of a man and for him to give of himself as he does on a daily basis whether it's in the cafeteria or out on the streets and again it's very similar to sergeant pixley it's 24 7. you might have read in the papers that um had a student who uh ran away and was missing for quite a while i will tell you that every day officer roundtree made contact with the parent was out in the community doing surveillance looking actively seven days a week on his time out of concern love for the kids and community that he serves that's
007my view of things let's see what the kids say about them so here's a little note from student nibri saunders officer roundtree deserves to be honored because he always welcomes us with open arms it's a middle school student describing an adult in their lives it gives us a fair opportunity and encourages us to make good choices he understands that we make mistakes there's always cool calm and collected here's the kicker and this is a child saying this he treats us like his own children like a father figure here's another student jayden scott i like having officer roundtree at the school because he's funny and keeps the building and everyone in it safe he makes sure people are doing the right thing and if you're not he'll address it for those of us who have middle
008school students it's not always easy for them to express exactly how they're feeling but i think those two students nailed it perfectly and that's what the brandywine school district wants in an sro as someone who's committed to the students staff families someone who is all about safety but is also all about building relationships that last a lifetime and that's his forte establishing those relationships so that as our kids grow older they know that they can trust law enforcement who are good people committed to doing the right thing and he exemplifies the best of law enforcement doing the right thing officer roundtree from my old school to your new home thank you for everything you do on a daily basis for every child regardless of whether they're in p.s or not just by nature of who
009you are thank you sir so wow that's a tough fact to follow but i'm gonna try here um tonight as many of you may or may not know is debbie dr debbie zarek's last board meeting with us uh she has been a great addition to our board and it's my honor to give her some recognition this evening i knew debbie before her time on the board our students have attended school together for several years and you know i knew her through her commitment to schools through her commitment to community and through her commitment to spreading the message of health and wellness so we have a small certificate here debbie just in sincere appreciation and deep gratitude for your dedication service to the students families staff and community of the bernie wine school district as a
010member of the board of nations and we hope that you will not be a stranger and that your level of involvement will continue years to come because you truly are an asset to our community so thank you next up i'd like to invite james hamby to the microphone podium foreign uh make there you go that's working making donations uh so we can give scholarships to our graduating seniors and over time it has grown but we never took on the full task that john and i had set out when we met with the kenneth education foundation back in 2012 which was to create endowed scholarships and then uh almost three years ago john passed away as you know and when john iii and i were talking i said you know this is the time to make
011these endowed scholarships reality in your dad's honor and so we launched the first endowed scholarship in john's name and since that time three years ago not only did we raise the funds to fully endow that scholarship but we raised the funds to endow now 13 endowed scholarships including two this year went to graduates of brandywine school district in honor of john because the original fund has grown enough to fund two scholarships overall this year brand wide school district graduates received 21 scholarships from the brandywine education foundation totaling 21 000 last year we gave 13 000 so we increased that much um we have been lucky that due to the pandemic we weren't able to really hold any fundraisers in the traditional sense but people continued to donate and uh the market was kind uh to
012us as well um and so that accounts for that increase michelle was down here and she will probably know the answer to this but can you name one of two things that's celebrating 50 years this year one of two things one you should absolutely know you go all the time that's correct the other is my birthday two great things that happened in 1971 at least in my opinion walt disney said i resent the limitations of my own imagination we certainly have managed to be able to grow the brandywine education foundation beyond our imagination um and the work goes on in february we launched um a fund that will be named in honor of the claimant 12. so one of the reasons i asked john to speak tonight because here we are in clemont high school
013the old climate high school um and in 1952 uh there was a lawsuit that finally reached its final conclusion in delaware and the chancellor hearing the case common sense uh decided that although he could not set aside the doctrine of separate but equal he could determine that clemont and the school and hokkaido were not equal in any way and he he ordered that the students involved in those two cases uh be allowed to enroll in the previously um all-white schools and so in september of 1952 12 african-american students um enrolled in claymont high school here next door and um next year will mark a milestone anniversary 70th anniversary of that event and so we launched this fund in in february in the hopes that uh within the next two years we will be able to
014fully fund a scholarship in the name of each of those 12 students so that their names will be said each year at the senior honors site and remembered and so you'll hear more about that but tonight i want to make a special presentation um i got an email back in march i think it was that again michelle kutch uses my name a lot she uh she sent this individual to me and she indicated that it was a young lady that attended mount pleasant elementary school the fifth grade men fifth grade and she's an outstanding student and her teacher nominated her to take part in a a national leadership academy on stem and she's not here tonight because she's actually at that academy right now it started saturday but uh there was an issue with uh
015the cost of the uh the the week and so um they asked if the brain went education foundation couldn't help out and so the the community donated uh 800 and the foundation agreed to kick in another thousand dollars to raise eighteen hundred dollars towards the uh roughly twenty five hundred dollars it's cost for her to be there this week and so her mother uh me is here tonight so i wanna ask mia to come up and accept a certificate and a check for that i would just like to say thank you for very much for the brandywine school district even allowing a child to be nominated to participate in a stem program because that is definitely something that all of our children need to be exposed to and it actually really does give them a
016great rounding of what they may want to experience or want to go into after you know graduating high school and what they want to major in in college and things like that it just gives them great exposure and i just want to say thank you very much for allowing that opportunity so again thank you for your support for the school district support and partnership over these years since 2013 we are happy to also announce that the state employee coordinated campaign has again accepted brand one education foundation as a choice so when that starts up in late august early september if you're a state employee you don't have to be a brand of wine school district employee if you are an employee of the state of delaware you can choose to make a donation whether it
017be a lump sum a large sum a small sum a couple dollars every pay period every every little bit helps um to fund these scholarships for students in the brand wine school district and also to provide grants to the teachers and the brainwashing producers so mr president thank you mr hamby and thank you for the work that you're doing with the brandywine education foundation next we have mr holler to discuss our american relief mr president members of the board audience i want to give you a synopsis of the brandywine school district's plan preliminary draft plan for the use of our esser funds you might have heard esser it's been in paper it's been on the news but it stands for the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds part of the american relief plan and
018by regulation districts are required to develop plans to be absolutely transparent to show the community staff and other interested individuals exactly how we intend to use those funds so i'm going to give you a high level overview of our use of those funds and we'll start by just taking a look at the actual amounts of funding that the district is going to receive i'm only going to cover esther ii and esther iii funds tonight as her one funds were received almost a year ago we received 2.6 million dollars and we kind of said it took us about 2.6 weeks to spend that amount that was in the initial phase of covid in our response the bulk of that money went towards purchasing student devices technology and ppe for students and staff in sr2 those funds
019were approved i believe in late december by the feds we received 11 million dollars roughly as for three 24 million dollars and those were approved in march and overall that's going to give us a total of 36 million dollars when we look at our annual budget it's a pretty significant chunk but the lifespan of these funds is anywhere from two years for s or two three years for s or three so when we think about it over three years worth of our budget it comes out to a roughly five or six percent of our budget for three years a few things to remember when you hear esser funds one it's non-recurring emergency aid they are designed to be one-time use funds so we've got to be very careful when we build plans around this to
020remember that they're not sustainable at all phases uh there's a very narrow time frame for expenditure you don't expend the funds you lose the funds and the budgeting of these funds is kind of interesting because there are certain pots or buckets that you have to spend these funds out of not going to read them all to you but you can kind of take a peek one of the funds has 14 of these buckets the other fund has 15 buckets and they primarily have a lot of overlap it would be a whole lot easier if they both had 14 or both had 15 but that's simply not the case but you get an idea of what those funds are used for and we're going to run through each one of these focus areas that's kind of
021what brandywine is calling them to give you an idea of some of the expenses in there and what some of the amount totals per focus area are in both of these grants so many districts are designing a plan around their sr2 funds and in a separate plan around their sr3 funds we chose not to work between two different plans we said let's come up with one plan and use two funding streams to support that plan so you'll see those focus areas as we go through first one involves any program that is already available to us through federal funding sources title 1 title 2 idea if it's an allowable expense in any of those funding areas it's an allowable expense in esser and the nice thing about esser is it goes back all the way until
022the first day of the pandemic march 18th so we can recode things that we've already spent local dollars that qualify using these s or funds so we've been very strategic in taking a look at a few of those and i'll point one out a little bit later in the presentation not going to read through all the bullet points but you get an idea of these are the things that we're going to target in focus area one around federal programming obviously much work to be done around learning loss especially for our special needs students and that aligns perfectly with the idea so you'll see that in focus area one so roughly 3.7 million dollars over the course of three years focus area two talks about a coordinated response how do we work with local agencies to
023support our students especially around learning loss and some of the local organizations that we plan on partnering with are listed there i'm going to draw a special attention to that first one on the list it's called boost 22. it's kind of neat because it is a joint project between all the districts in northern new castle county so red clay colonial christina and brandywine have come together and said let's take a look at what we can do for those rising juniors primarily in the city of wilmington to assist and support those students regardless of boundary lines so even though a student might be a red clay student but isn't with what within walking distance of ps dupont if we have an after-school tutoring program there we're going to let that student come in and receive the
024tutoring services despite the fact that he or she is in red clay and red clay is willing to accept our students newcastle county vote tech is another one of those districts so kind of a neat collaborative project between the districts something we've never done before school-based funding um two big pieces there first uh surveillance cameras we were in the throes of phase one of refreshing all of surveillance cameras when the pandemic hit we were using safety and security monies from the state those dollars were diverted into pandemic resources and everything got put on hold this gives us an opportunity to kick that project back up finish phase one and hopefully complete phase two and phase three in our refresh cycle it's also critical that we give dollars to our buildings undesignated they still have to
025use and fit it into those categories that we're looking at but dollars that they directly have control over so a principal with his or her leadership team and staff and identify specific things that they want to do over the course of these three years with those funds and i listed there the amounts we used this year's enrollment with a per student allocation to arrive at those figures just to give you an example uh concord high school 136 that's almost their annual budget so over the course of three years they'll have another whole annual budget they can devote the things within these buckets that they decide need work for assistance at the building level unique learning needs heavy into special education students supporting especially learning loss there also working and ensuring that we're giving extra support
026to students who are facing difficult circumstances whether that be mckinney-vento homelessness we need to target direct resources to support those students our el students absolutely and you see the early education community services coordinator we are very close we believe and very hopeful that sooner than later we'll be receiving some state funding for the new bush school that you've heard me report on and we'll be giving you an update a little later on but we want to get a jump start on building those relationships and partnerships with community agencies so that when that building is ready to be opened and mr reid three or four years i know i'm pushing it there but that we as soon as those doors are open we're full served because everything has been planned and taken advantage of prior to
027the first day with students preparedness is able to fit in an additional constable we currently have four that would give us five mr jordan is in the back who's our lead constable a valuable program if you're not aware of what our constables do we have school resource officers at all of our secondary buildings constables serve our elementary buildings they travel in between buildings on a non-routine basis so that there's never a set pattern but just an asset to the safety and security of our elementary buildings school nutrition during i can't say enough about our school nutrition team during the pandemic they were out in force preparing lunches and meals for our kids on a daily basis even when others were not venturing out our food service workers came out because they knew they had to
028feed our kids they derive their salary and pay they're almost a self-sustaining unit of the district so they really count on the number of lunches served and the stack lines for revenue to make payroll obviously we weren't serving as many kids during the pandemic but they weren't in session so we went into a deficit and we can replenish those funds using sr2 funds that's what they're designated for uh disinfecting training that's a bucket that the feds suggest won't take much for us to train our custodians they did a top-notch job and then disinfecting and cleaning supplies it's amazing to think that by the end of this year we will have spent close to 120 000 in hand sanitizer alone that that's a lot of hand sanitizer long-term closures planning for a repeat and again this
029is part of the fed's program if we had to go into a full lockdown how how would we respond if food service workers were unable to come out and work bus drivers were unable to work do we have funds in reserve that's also covered in a piece of this it's also covered again in another bucket you'll see some overlap between these pockets uh part of that is a digital arts coordinator we know that uh during the course of the school year we had struggled it's it's tough to teach at all zoom and room thank you to the staff that are here tonight for their efforts in making that happen less than desirable teaching the arts room and zoom even more challenge i won't say more challenging challenging about the same level it was tough but
030can you imagine trying to direct a symphony orchestra when all the kids are in their bedrooms at home across the entire district how that happens i don't know so we're bringing in a physician who can focus simply on the arts and getting us prepared and taking the next step towards digital instruction around the arts program educational technology a big one about four and a half million dollars lots of infrastructure upgrades between servers and wi-fi and device replacement software and then last year our technology team we're going to honor at the beginning of next month's board meeting for them to be able to absorb an additional 10 000 devices on top of the the load that they already had just a herculean task so they are in dire need of some support and we're able to
031put three positions in one network engineer and two technicians to help offset that workflow mental health services this might seem a little low for mental health services that's because we were carefully monitoring some legislation that is currently in the state legislators hands around providing additional mental health services and providers to schools across the districts we do believe that that has a good opportunity to pass and if that's the case then these monies would be diverted elsewhere for what we would have put in there so we think that is a sufficient amount should that legislation pass supplemental learning these next two are very closely related i would have put them in the same bucket but for some reason the feds and other people decided not to but they all focus on learning loss so supplemental learning
032we're kind of targeting as summer school before school after school even during the school day some aspects of remedial support for students and enrichment as well you'll see some of those there i have to give compliments to our our teachers who responded beyond belief i thought it was going to be difficult to find staff for summer school this year because they worked themselves silly this school year they gave it their all they are exhausted we ended the school year last wednesday and uh guess what summer school prep started on thursday governor announced then that we weren't going to have school on friday which put him at even a greater disadvantage and they were there in full force welcoming kids back to start on that recovery of learning loss today across the district and another session
033begins next monday so to look at these numbers of staff members who are coming in during the course of the summer to support kids because they know the quicker and sooner we can eradicate that learning loss the better it is for all students so thank you to those staff members who are rolling up the sleeves barely caught a breath before diving right back into it again thank you here's learning loss it's our biggest chunk this is going to give us an opportunity really to delve into a lot of curricular areas opportunities that we have not seen before so between supplemental learning and uh learning loss we're going to be looking at close to 8 million over the course of three years it's like a godsend to have that kind of money at our disposal that
034we can dig into curriculum there is a downside to that of course whenever you do curriculum digs and dives and changes you need professional development for your teachers and when and how we do that is going to be critical and follow up at the end of the presentation on that piece but by far our largest chunk will go towards learning loss safe and healthy schools about 1.4 million basic necessities around if social distancing is still in place as we move into the next year we will need additional deaths in the classrooms tables are no longer sufficient if social distancing is still in place for lunches we may need additional cafeteria tables to make that work and then also how do we eliminate mitigate some of those common touch points through door entry systems touchless air
035quality uh kudos to john reading team you've heard me sing their praises over the course of the past year uh comparatively speaking like brandywine's hvac systems are in incredible condition incredible shape that's because of his diligence his team and maintenance oversight committee's diligence in making sure that proper maintenance was done during the course of all these years this is an example of one of those where we can recode and expense so last year we spent approximately 350 on a control system for hvac at harlan elementary because it was going on 20 years old still functioning but needed to be upgraded that was before sr2 and sr3 but because related to air quality we can recode that that expense to esser and put 350 000 back into the facilities maintenance budget for minor cap repairs and
036maintenance so we're looking at all those angles he's got several other hvac control systems in the works one's at concord high there's a couple of known units that were going to be replaced and all those qualify for expenses under nesser continuity of services and employment um there is a reserve here if we needed to make payroll if for some reason we went into shutdown again buses couldn't drive how do we make sure that our employees are still able to work we have to give them work to do but also compensate them in the event of a total shutdown so this is almost like a contingency sword pact and we're going to have to have backup plans hopefully we won't have to go into shutdown those monies won't be needed we'll need to have a backup
037plan of where those monies are going to be directed so that we are good faithful stewards that money and it's going to things that we know need to be done included in this money are nine additional teachers for the elementary level um i'll give you a little more information on that a little bit later on in my superintendent's report those are the 15 buckets and the amounts allocated and kind of like a high-level overview of some of the major initiatives in each one of those and again there they are listed the greatest being the curriculum and instruction and technology because those two are integrated we have an opportunity to get some incredible things done around teaching and learning again the hesitation in my voice is because we're going to need professional development in order to
038make that happen in order to give high quality professional development we need face-to-face time with teachers that comes at an expense either we have to pay teachers to come in over the summer which we've done in the past but not every teacher is available over the summer and especially this summer as a large majority of our teachers are already coming in to support students in their learning loss if we do it during the school year as we have in some other cases it wreaks havoc on the building as your entire math team goes out for training for a full day and you've got 12 substitutes for building you can imagine what that does to school climate and disruption we can't afford that so there is a workable solution and i would like to propose that
039tonight to the board to allow me and the team to go back revise the planned and approved calendar for the 2021-22 school year by adding in professional development days at the secondary level we're looking at december 8th january 12th february 9th march 16th and may 11th of next year those days would still count as teacher work days they would still count as student days students would simply have asynchronous lessons that day allowing us to do face-to-face professional development with teachers wouldn't count against their academic course time for carnegie units as they would still be engaged for studies and it would not create any kind of disruption to the school bringing substitutes in and out at the elementary level it wouldn't be a full day it would be a half day and that is intentionally done
040because we know at the elementary level it's a burden for parents to find daycare if they don't have it it's one thing to leave a ninth grader at home for a day and trust that they're going to do their studies it's a far different thing you can't leave a second grader at home by him or herself and expect them to be supervised and safe so how do we accomplish this we go a half day at that half day midpoint run the buses if students have older siblings that are home because it's the same time that secondary is off or parents are home or grandparents or they can go to their normal daycare and it's not an issue great and for those students who don't have daycare we will keep them at the building level we're
041working with some agencies now to try to arrange that coverage and then they would be dismissed sent home on the buses walkers picked up by car at the normal dismissal time again a way so that we are not inconveniencing our elementary parents who depend on us to supervise their child during the course of the day so mr president members of the board that is my report on esser we will post this presentation on the district website we will seek feedback from staff from parents from community members we'll take that feedback we'll review it make changes as needed our timeline is by mid-july we want to resubmit our plan brandywine is i believe the first district to submit an sr-3 plan we've received preliminary approval we have four minor corrections to make and we'll be tweaking
042this plan by regulation every six months we have to go back review revise because we're going to see some areas where that contingency money doesn't need to be spent and quickly we're going to have to reallocate those monies to another area to another fund so again we're being wise stewards of those dollars thank you mr holar i just wanted to take a moment to thank you for you your team and the effort that you put into this to you know to find an approach that addresses all 15 buckets of need that'll you know address the needs of the district in a comprehensive way and you know give it give it some balance but also you know addressing more weight to the areas that need it most but to give a full comprehensive view of the
043needs of the district i think that's that's an important approach and i appreciate it and just know this will change as we get feedback from teachers from parents and communities don't go far because you are up next with your superintendents report well um we could consider that recommendation that'll help if i could get a direction from the board because if we are going to make any kind of corrections we have to follow a process it requires 30 days we have to post notice of making modifications or adjustments to the school calendar so the motion would be to modify the school calendar that's been approved in order to address those items correct do i have a motion from the board so have move motion in a second all those in fact or any discussion all those
044in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carry thank you i'm up for uh superintendent's report you see that the same association good evening board audience staff community members listening at home and welcome to the beautifully remodeled clemont elementary school auditorium as i reported last month we dedicated 26 million dollars to complete the renovation of kleeman elementary school thanks to the support of our community in the 2016 brand it's hard to believe that just a year ago this is what claymont elementary looked like or actually it was two years ago much has changed here you see the front and rear of the building this is what it looks like today as you drive in and drive to the back amazing difference section by section the school was gutted completely and transformed into what we see
045today so while we didn't couldn't give you a building tour there will be a time we hope during the course of the summer we'll be able to allow the community to come through and see the unbelievable job that our facilities department did in terms of the renovation here you see one wing and to the right is an example of the library here at clay last month i showed these pictures and my superintendent's report of what the claymount auditorium looked like and tonight you sit in a nearly finished auditorium i'm wondering if andrew if you could spin that camera around so that people at home can kind of see what we're all able to see sitting here before us what's that oh i need stuff okay always one in every crowd thank you one third of
046the floor had to be removed and reported to create a flat area for ada compliance new ada access to the stage new acoustical treatments new led house lights and stage lights as well as digital controls new hvac equipment including projector or i'm sorry not hvac av equipment including projector and wireless control of sound system new built-in chorus risers and new seating a total of 695 seats for clay models again kudos to john reed and team for his staff for overseeing this project and ensuring a product that can make our entire community proud speaking of proud moments on june 6th we celebrated the accomplishments success of the bsd class of 2021. even the brutally hot weather could diminish the pride joy and excitement of our graduates their families and the three high school staffs the class
047of 2021 brandywine concord and mount pleasant rose above incredible challenges to not only graduate but excel in this class we had a presidential scholar a gates scholarship winner a coca-cola scholarship winner moore's future of chemistry scholarship winner don't have a picture of this one but we have a student who is uh kind of shy and doesn't want the attention drawn to to him but he was accepted to over 20 prestigious colleges and universities many of which were ivy league and ultimately picked to go to mit next year we also had award-winning artists musicians athletes dancers and engineers in total approximately 750 graduates earned 12.4 million dollars in scholarship money to attend colleges and universities across the country from as close as dell tech wilmington u and ud to as far away as new york university
048university of colorado unc chapel hill ucla spelman emery johnson and wales amherst yale william and mary upon why pacific university several members of our graduating class have enlisted in the armed forces and many will go directly into the workforce we're equally proud of all of them their resilience determination grit and success many thanks to dr yolanda mckinney acting director now director of secondary education for the district principal curie caldron lacey principal keith roth and principal mark mayer for everything they did to ensure a smooth festive and safe day for our graduates but also like to draw attention to six of our graduates who were selected as secretary of education scholars for 2021. they are from brandywine high school madison bradshaw and sarah garner from concord high school lauren sue daya manat and from mount pleasant
049high school samaya laviba and olivia mcveigh congratulations to those scholars those scholars are chosen each year based on academic achievement and community service great students great families great teachers also supported by a great community is it any wonder mount pleasant concord and brandywine high were among newsweek's top 10 best comprehensive traditional public high schools in the state yes there were some charter schools that were above but again we are traditional comprehensive public schools and to see how well our high schools did again is a testament to our students and our families and our staff congratulations and before we move away from our graduates a special thanks to board member kristen pidgeon and several other just about every other board member up here who contributed to help organize and pull off the three bsd high school
050parades again this year tradition that was started last year and enjoyed thank you on thursday june 10th we celebrated another group of students the interns who are exiting out of our sight program site held a joint celebration for the class of 2020 as well as the class of 2021. those exiting interns many of whom have already landed part-time jobs for full-time employment in our community we know they'll go on to do great things of course bsd celebrated the accomplishments of students and other grades as well several student schools held car parades for their 5th and 8th grade graduate students lombardi students won opportunities to throw whipped cream pies and administrators for completing a math challenge and harlan staff walked the neighborhood to thank parents and families for their support all in all it was a
051very celebratory season in bst last friday night our elementary orchestra was featured on the big screen at the wilmington blue rocks game right after the final pitch but before the fireworks what a thrill for our students and their families our strings program continues to grow and excel even amid a global pandemic springer middle school continued its winning ways at the stock market game this spring taking not one not two but four top place finishes in the state in the stock market game which is operated through the university of delaware each team is giving a mythical 100 000 portfolio to build and manage an investment portfolio in a real world dynamic marketplace analyze and make decisions explore the consequences of those choices and seek new ways to strategize for success huge congratulations to teacher mike for
052the following students and their success there you see dan baxter who took first place his portfolio made 28 in 10 weeks if you want his contact information cp after the meeting unbelievable earlier this month i was thrilled to surprise miss joshua t ibran a special educator at brandywine high school and announced that she's been named brandywine school district teacher of the year for 2022. in case you're keeping track and i can tell you mr keith roth is this marks the second year in a row that brandywine high school produced the district teacher of the year as tabron succeeds dr judd wagner who was named teacher of the year last year steve brown was selected from an outstanding group of educators who each were identified as their building teachers of the year they are joshua tabron
053randy white high school or roper bush early learning center tasha moore car croft elementary brian horn claymont elementary lori mcrae concord high school greta savage forward elementary susan brooks camby elementary theresa willis harlan elementary stephanie claire lancashire elementary vicky ventura lombardi elementary sarah fobes maple lane elementary maria cobb mount pleasant elementary caroline phillips mount pleasant high school sharon wisdom fiesta pont middle caitlin bibs springer middle and ryan warfell talley middle school earlier today we had our third vaccination clinic for ages 12 and up our district nurses under the leadership of beth maddie have been very attentive to the needs of the community and i think have organized more vaccination clinics for staff for adults and for students than any other district these vaccination clinics are in partnership with walgreens and they've been very well run
054and very much appreciated we're proud to do our part to help our communities stay healthy we'll most likely host another event closer to the start of the school year and we'll publish those opportunities on our district website and on our district facebook account for our rising seniors bsd has entered into a partnership with christina i've already talked through that called boost22 so as you see it in the newspaper please be sure to share that with families and friends finally a sneak peek at what we're planning for for next school year and i kind of see the caption returning to what we've traditionally done sort of by that i mean yes it is our intent to return to in-person teaching and learning for all students reads pk is 12. but notice that young man has a
055device in his hand as do the students in this picture that won't go away so that's why i said we're going to go back to what we've traditionally done sort of there will be a continued emphasis on the intentional and strategic use of technology to enhance teaching and learning and outcomes for students that was part of our district's success plan years ago we're going to reinvigorate that success plan you'll see that in the coming months and focus on that teaching and learning aspect especially embracing technology and what it can do for us i see phyllis moogly shaking her head and cheering it on thank you phyllis bsd school day starts times we're going to go back to the original start times that we had for high school 7 30 to 2 18 p.m middle school
056will stay the same 8 10 to 2 55 elementary was 8 50 to 3 35 it may stay the same i will come back and let you know in the july meeting but just kind of giving everybody a heads up it might be pushed five minutes we were very cramped in between the middle bus run and the elementary bus run often resulting in late buses picking kids up and late buses getting kids home we believe possibly that five minutes of extra time could alleviate a lot of that pressure our transportation department is running several route scenarios i will come back with a definitive answer as to whether it's 8 50 to 3 35 or 8 55 to 3 40 start time for elementary next year and of course i'm going to have to put a
057little disclaimer in here monitoring conditions and restrictions so those same things that we've been monitoring for the last uh 18 months are continuing to be monitored our positivity rate and new cases per 100 000 we've seen great data coming out of the state for the past uh eight weeks or so and that data will continue to be monitored by the state by the department of public health also in that data currently bus restrictions are still in place state has not lifted those bus restrictions currently the square footage restrictions of three feet of social distancing between students in the classroom is still in place they have not been lifted we have to abide by those just as we have to abide by mandates around the wearing of mass those are not optional for us as public
058schools i put this bus and the square footage piece in there because in some cases it won't have any impact at all students at car crops they have large rooms almost a thousand square feet they should be able to easily have those students 22 23 students to a class in those classrooms same grade level at mount pleasant elementary huge school but some of those classrooms are 650 square feet we're going to kind of see how things develop we're monitoring it closely we may have to come back to our parents and say can you drive your child to school you answered that call for us last year fussing was not an issue because of the support you provide the district in getting your child to school it was a major concern of ours going into the
059start of the school year last year and again because of your efforts that was one less hurdle we had to deal with so just know that uh we're not out of the woods we definitely see the edge of the the field we're almost out of the woods but uh we'll keep everybody fully informed and abreast uh we do have some backup plans in case things get a little crazy but we're heading in right direction and our goal is all students to return for traditional start of the school year first day on the calendar yeah with that mr president that is my report as always proud to be bsd thank you mr holder appreciate it any comments from the board on the superintendent's report just one question um at the the sba executive board meeting a
060couple weeks ago we were told that you could have up to 50 kids on a bus based on the new state guidance so i'm i'm is that what you're referring to or are you still talking about 23 children on a bus uh this that that guidance has not been published the districts that i'm aware of um we are pushing as stated that they're reviewing it but the best of my knowledge mr trackerman that has not officially come out from steve i'm going to follow up with dr marinucci any other comments from the board i just want to take a quick moment and echo you know you had said about john reed earlier and you know give thanks to him um you know a lot of individuals in the construction and facilities field you know tend
061to focus on the nuts and bolts and labor and materials and mr reed does all that at a master level but he also has a a creative eye and he's always thinking about the experience of the students and how how will their environment impact their learning and i think this room here as you'll eventually see throughout the rest of the school and other schools in our district that he's been a part of um has really taken that to another level to maximize our tax dollars to create the best environment possible and sitting in this auditorium tonight knowing that the arts is an important part of the brandywine school district and you know part of a comprehensive education experience for our students um i'm glad to sit here this evening in this remodeled auditorium that looks
062fantastic and i know the kids are going to love it and just say that we're very lucky to have mr reed on our team so thank you and hearing no other comments we will move on to public comment um before we open just a friendly reminder that speakers are limited to three minutes each um don't believe we have anybody on zoom this evening all speakers are live in the room so we'll do our best to be fair and consistent and we thank you for your understanding so please limit to three minutes and when i call your name if you could step to the turn there in the back we'll start with richard anderson give us one second when uh miss harris are you running the time or miss scott you see the time on the
063clock on the wall time is yours okay this i appreciate uh you let me come up and uh talk to the committee uh my name is richard anderson i've lived in this school district 40 years my kids my grown kids have gone through the school district from kindergarten to graduation from high school now i'm here on behalf of my grandkids as they will start well one of them will start kindergarten here in the fall and i have some very very large concerns around crt now i didn't see anything in in your budgets that cut out for crt but i'd like to know is there a budget for crt is the record could you identify what crt just for the public listening um it's the um critical race theory crt that's hitting a country hard and
064i'm just wondering uh is it going to be taught in our school district i'm i'm highly against it uh i think it's divisive i have a five-year-old grandson whose best friends are black boys and girls he sees no color he was raised that way my kids were raised that way but i find that this is a marxist ideology that is a doctrine and indoctrination of our kids um your teachers are great and that's what i want i want to see them being taught uh traditional uh curriculum not interject this uh fad this crt i just wanted to to ask that question is there a budget that will allow crt into the classroom are teachers allowed to push that uh personally i'm a cold war veteran and i joined the army because i was patriotic and
065i believe in the constitution i carry the book and i believe that everybody is equal and should be treated that way but i don't see anything in this crt program that is not advised um i just i'm afraid that if we start interjecting ideology into our school uh it's going to take away from teaching and it's going to cause uh a real mess for our kids i i have uh very weird time appreciate your comments and your questions uh we have your contact information here uh the purpose of public hunt is for the public to speak to the board ask questions it's not necessarily a question and answer in a debate session but we can certainly make sure that someone follows up with you thank you very much in the next week i'm totally impressed
066with you otherwise so thank you next up we have jonathan tate that's good thank you um yeah so uh my name is jonathan tate um i've lived in the school district since 2007 um and i went i went here for high school at uh at mount pleasant and uh while i did not play basketball there i was a multi-sport athlete and you know you know uh was certainly you know a part of the athletics community there and i've been pretty dismayed to find out that um you know despite having you know like four conference championships you know seven state tournament appearances in the past seven years knowing the best you know overall conference record in the past seven years why uh lisa sullivan the uh boys uh basketball coach at mount pleasant was uh you
067know fired because the program wanted to go in a different direction and i mean you know just because like i wasn't one of her players i knew plenty of her players from from playing on other sports at mount and you know they all said that they had you know that she had a very positive influence on them and you know to me to to fire a coach who has been so successful and there are no you know allegations of doing anything illegal or anything immoral um you know it's just wrong i mean that i've you know i've heard rumors as to why why it is you know i don't know if they're true or not and you know frankly i really don't care because there's there's just not a justification for that um so yeah
068that's all just wanted to uh speak out on that you mr tate for your comments next up we have jay hitler all right thank you hello my name is jay hetler i'm the proud parent of two bsd students so as you know house bill 198 was recently passed to amend title 14 of the delaware code relating to black history education this bill includes subjects that highlight historical black achievements and topics that are useful in identifying and combating the racism that still exists in our country and i applaud these inclusions however included in the bill are several items that can be presented in a destructive way among them white supremacy transitional and restorative justice racial empowerment and the requirement to rely heavily on primary sourcing to receive a true perspective our district's own website links to
069one such primary source as ibrahim x kendi and his book how to be an anti-racist mr candy one of the most prominent advocates of critical race theory espouses ideas that are in direct opposition to dr martin luther king jr's and the civil rights movement dr king led instead of working towards ending discrimination kendi states the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination the only remedy to pass discrimination is present discrimination the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination the only remedy to present present discrimination is future discrimination he further states capitalism is essentially racist racism is essentially capitalist they were birthed together from the same unnatural causes and they shall one day die together from unnatural causes is this what we want to be taught in brandywine school district to be clear the
070brandywine school district's website currently links to and supports these sources and while critical race theory contains certain insights which are true and helpful crt unfairly assigns collective guilt arguing that all whites are racist even when their actions and words don't fit the description applied in the classroom crt can quickly become destructive one investigative journalist from new york developed a database of more than one thousand classroom abuses of crt two racing recent cases are illustrative in cupertino california an elementary school forced first graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and rank themselves according to their power and privilege in springfield missouri a middle school forced teachers to locate themselves on an oppression matrix based on the idea that straight white english-speaking christian males are members of the oppressor class that must atone for their privilege
071and covert white supremacy so i asked the school board and those listening do you support our public schools separating students into groups of oppressors and oppressed do you support mandatory curricular teaching all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism do you support the answer that present discrimination is the answer to future discrimination my hope and prayer is that as the district deploys the mandate of house bill 198 that the history of my country the good the bad and the ugly can be taught accurately one second and solution we have a lot of speakers tonight we really need to keep our three minutes okay i just want to quote dr martin luther king we will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character thank you very
072much and i am proud to be bst proud thank you next up we have natalie noble passing for the evening then we'll go to michaela hitler i want to speak about the bad effects of math squaring that i and my friends have personally experienced first of all max masks make us break out because they make us sweat on our faces and we want to cover our faces to hide our breakouts so it's endless loop we have lost some of our social skills and comfort in group settings due to remote and hybrid learning and also due to having to wear masks all the time we cannot connect and be close to our teachers or to our other students because of the masks we also make it harder to understand what people are saying and harder to
073learn masks also make it so you do not know when someone is smiling this leads to communication problems i like to joke and be sarcastic but without being able to see my smile when i do this friends misinterpret what i'm saying as being serious one time a friend of mine was hurt when i was said something and she didn't realize i was being sarcastic because she couldn't see my face when i realized that she was upset i quickly explained i was being sarcastic and then she understood we also do not smile as much when we wear masks because we don't because we know no one can see the smile anyway i l i learned that when we smile and increases our serotonin levels um and my mother was impressed that i knew this anyway when
074we are not smiling because of our mass we are less happy because smiling actually makes me feel more happy masks also make it harder to breathe i'm a dancer and trying to breathe while wearing a mask and dancing is very difficult especially for a friend of mine who has asthma and dances with me in our company and is required to wear a mask at competitions and recitals also the holes in fabric face masks that we wear are much bigger than the size of the coronavirus and don't stop it from spreading anyway because of the mask a lot of girls in our school feel awkward taking off their masks to eat lunch so we ended up going all day without eating the nurse in my school also said that she sees a lot of problems with
075people being dehydrated including me because we don't take off our mask enough to drink our water at any point in the day also all of our teachers have been vaccinated and many kids have too for all of these i feel like our district should allow us to take off our masks if we've been fully vaccinated and sane with our teachers that's all thank you miss hitler next up we have tanya hitler and on deck we have donna lee speed things up and i'll give two names uh miss harris can reset the clock please i'm speaking to you tonight because i want our district to make decisions for the coming school year that have the best interests of our students in mind i have an article here containing information about emails obtained through a freedom of
076information act request regarding how the national teachers union the aft influenced the cdc and their decision making regarding kids returning to school at the beginning of 2021 i want to ensure that the same thing does not happen in our state and district this coming school year emails between top cdc aft and white house officials show that the powerful teachers union was able to persuade the cdc to put the brakes on a full reopening of in-person classrooms the national teachers union was able to influence the cdc to include a phrase in their guidelines that would allow the local teachers unions to put pressure on the state governments and school districts and persuade them to not open the schools the cdc had been preparing to write that schools could provide in-person instruction regardless of the community spread
077of the virus however when the guidelines actually came out they instead stated that schools in areas with high community spread which it turned out included 99 of us kids according to a cnn analysis would be permitted to opt out of in-person reopening this is exactly what happened in our state and in our district additionally the cdc reduced the distancing requirement to three feet in march and yet our state continued to recommend six speed likely again because of the influence of the teachers unions and thus greatly limited the number of children who were able to return to school particularly low-income families our teachers have now all been vaccinated we have learned that the students tend not to spread covet and do so less if they are in their classrooms with the same group of kids every
078day than if they are sent to various child care settings on remote learning days as has happened during this last year i hope that our leaders do not use the covid variants as an excuse to not reopen fully in the fall and i hope that the restrictions placed on the students are minimal especially since evidence has found that as my daughter said the cloth masks that we have been using do nothing to limit the spread of covid we should no longer disrupt the education of our most precious commodity our children i also do not want our state or district to require our young students to be vaccinated since the effects of the vaccination are still not known especially on young children and young children are the least likely to transmit the virus i'm speaking to
079you today because i want to ensure thank you miss heller sorry that the brandywine school district opens fully in the fall thank you next up we have donna lee and on deck is carol burke burke sorry thank you i'm here to talk about house bill 198 which relates to black history education and as we heard was just passed by the delaware house and senate signed by governor kerry last thursday i believe that this bill contains topics that can be integrated into the curriculum during black history month and throughout the school year as applicable to the topics being studied however i fear that hb 198 will disproportionately sway the topic of learning away from u.s history overall to instead overemphasize black history and to do so in a negative and destructive way to all of our
080children i think that the devil is in the details and many tenets of critical race theory will be implemented in our delaware schools via this bill to the detriment of all of our students let me give you some examples i fear that the discussion of the relationship between white supremacy racism and american slavery will include telling white students that they are inherently racists and white supremacists as is espoused in critical race theory number two i'm concerned about parts of the bill such as the gold to quote reaffirm the commitment of free peoples to the 13th amendment to the united states constitution unquote well i believe that the majority of americans clearly know that slavery doesn't and should not still exist in the u.s and that this is a non-issue number three i question what is
081meant by quote the trauma-responsive and reorganize the impact of racial and historical trauma on students end quote well if a student or a child is currently experiencing racism i believe addressing that trauma is appropriate but stirring up past historical hurts the child has not even experienced is not helpful in fact it causes trauma to the child to continually focus on past wrongs and should be considered child abuse and victimization number four the bill requires instruction to quote prepare students to be responsible citizens in a pluralistic united states as one group working together the great melting pot which we used to be proud of and which is one of the amazing and unique characteristics of the united states number five tools of resistance they're referenced many times well what are they do they include things like
082riots and labeling white people as racists or requiring white employees to acknowledge their white fragility during diversity training i could go on but i won't because many of the items in this bill seem to be based on critical race theory which is very damaging to our students and our country thus this bill should not be implemented hello my name is carl burge and i'm a retired pediatric nurse i worked almost 30 years in hospitals the last seven at children's hospital of philadelphia after obtaining my master's degree from penn and psychiatric child and family nursing i spent the next 20 years counseling children and families when the coronavirus pandemic began we lacked scientific evidence or knowledge about how the virus spreads and who it affects and chose to use masks as we gained more information the
083use of mass for kids has become increasingly concerning it became clear that the covet virus is less dangerous to children than the seasonal flu there's widespread availability of vaccines for teachers yet schools have not committed to full in-person operation and will continue to make students wear masks in the fall the most convincing studies about the ineffectiveness of mask wearing for covert 19 are natural experiments comparisons of similar areas only one of which mandated masks for instance north and south dakota experienced similar waves of infection north dakota introduced a mass mandate but south dakota did not both states saw nearly identical epidemic curves the only complete random randomized controlled trial for the use of mask against the spread of coven 19 was conducted in denmark and showed a protective effect statistically indistinguishable from zero the cdc's
084policy ignores the guidance issued jointly by unicef and the world health organization which states that children age five and under should not be required to wear masks for children aged 6 to 11 they recommended mask use in classrooms only if the school is in a locality with widespread transmission and then only after consulting with parents and laying the potential impact on learning and psychosocial development they also advise against mass for older children when physically active schools have canceled some sports and other extracurricular activities which has limited kids ability to get needed exercise and social interaction requiring masks on playgrounds and while playing sports has led to cases of physical exhaustion overheating and fainting by hiding teachers lips and muffin their speech masquerading makes it harder for young children to develop linguistic skills and as uh
085michaela said not seeing the bottom half of the math makes it particularly difficult to recognize a max ware's positive emotions due to the limited effectiveness of masks in printing the spread of coronavirus among children and due to considerable negative effects both physically and emotionally of mask wearing as well as the fact that the majority of teachers have already been vaccinated it is crucial that our schools allow students to return to school full-time without the requirements to wear masks thank you thank you miss bird next up we have joan prorock and on deck is rachel thorpe miss harris hang on with the clock thank you reset the clock please ms harris thank you okay thank you thank you very much my name is joan pro rock and educationally i am a product of what used to
086be called the alfred eye pond school district i went to falk road elementary forward junior high and i graduated from brandywine high school in 1967. they were the smartest bunch of people i have been around before or since the rest of my life apparently i was there during the golden age we worked hard our teachers challenged us but alas 25 years later when my two daughters encountered the brandywine school district it was a different situation upon talking with my daughter who is now 44 she told me that she learned nothing in concord high school the year that she attended there and the only thing she could remember was being preached to about stds and avoiding getting aids she made straight a's in her honors classes and never brought a book home at night to do
087any homework that was a big difference from the private school that she had been attending the only reason we chose to try the public school book was because of the particularly high price of the private school my younger daughter went centali middle school for a year would come home and told me about the total lack of discipline the blatant profanity that was being spoken constantly into schools when i went to talk with the principal he assured me that no profanity was spoken and that he monitored the school the hallways every day and to think that was back in 1992 what has happened since then fortunately we moved to virginia right after that and our three children completed high school and a public school there which we were very satisfied with and 2016 we moved back
088to wilmington because two of our children are here and our grandchildren are here when we returned to north wilmington we were in and we saw we lived right up the street from brandywine high school now and we looked and i drove by there and i thought what in the world has happened to the school the parking lot is less than half full when i was there it was packed and i thought what has happened to brandywine high school and everybody that i talked to said well brandywine high school is terrible nobody goes there unless they can't go anywhere else now i do applaud you for the pictures that you showed up there but i don't know what's happened to it i remember being bored stiff in history class my teacher would read from yellow papers
089about history i didn't care about it it was over i was interested in what i could do to make my way into productive life let's not burden our children with social experiments and revisionist history we need to give our children a good academic foundation and let them use it to shape a better future for themselves and our world they are in your hands thank you miss pro rock next up we have rachel thorpe and on deck tom thorpe my name is rachel thorpe i'd like to talk about masks also um some parents in florida did wondered what with bacteria and other pathogens i'm a nurse by the way i'm a registered nurse so i'm very germ and pathogen oriented i'm a hand washer and a you know a wiper of all things all manner of
090things always telling everybody who comes in to wash their hands so the parents in florida wondered what is on the masks of their children so they did a small study and they sent the mass to a local university in florida to um to check and see you know what what's won these mess the masks were all freshly washed or new masks so they weren't contaminated they were worn by the children who were ages 6 to 11 for an average of six hours many many pathogens were found on the masks bacteria were found on the inside and the outside of the mass they found bacteria that caused meningitis encephalitis amoebic encephalitis tb strep staff including a strep type 3 for which there's no antibiotic remedy the the the pathogens they found also can cause sepsis urinary
091tract infections all sorts of terrible diseases that that can be caused by these pathogens by the way no virus was found on the mass only bacteria fungus and parasites a mass as you know provide a warm wet environment which is the perfect environment for bacteria to thrive um for bacterial growth of everything bacteria fungus and parasites it's like putting a petri dish on the children's faces every day children aren't cognizant of crass course contamination they're not cognizant of clean hands they touch things at random they touch their mess they touch their faces they're putting them in their pockets they're taking them in the bathrooms they're lying them on desks on books on other people's belongings so you can't really hold children responsible the general public can't be expected to comply with the same standards aseptic
092standards that hospitals use for mass use parents may not be aware of the regular need and hopefully daily need to wash the mask i was just with a bunch of children today who i don't know who some of the masks were really pretty disgusting uh so and there's also documented proof of psychological uh bad effects for children because they rely on facial recognition clues to read other people especially their teachers there's also documented proof of oxygen deprivation closing which the mass cause which causes um cognizant um cognition decline thinking ability decline so we certainly don't want that for the children or the teachers thank you mr next up we have tom thorpe and on deck terry sullivan thank you trust me she makes me wash my hands all the time for newsweek magazine 1937 and
093max forkheimer of the frankfurt school wrote a manifesto about critical theory in which he claimed that when examining society people cannot reason objectively in classical marxist fashion critical theory divides everyone in society into classes of oppressed and oppressors but possess that the so-called oppressed stand in the way of revolution when they adhere to the societal belief systems and cultural norms of their so-called oppressors therefore the cultural institutions that stand in the way of the marxist revolution must be destroyed through relentless criticism hence the name critical theory this is the crucial because in the 30s marxist was preparing the karl marx vision of a worker-led revolution that was going to sweep the west since the worker-led revolution wasn't happening they needed another oppressed class to serve this purpose that purpose was to tear down western institutions
094that stood in the way of a revolt and staged a marxist revolution using racial minorities as their new vanguard would be brilliant who better to re-educate than a demographic of people whose ancestors have suffered oppression in america based on their skin color who better to paint as victims of a belief system of the oppressors and to claim the only way of liberation is to demolish the institutions of the oppressors in other words the designers and adherents of critical theory admitted to their true intent not equality under the law not civil rights not freedom liberty and justice for all not a better life for racial minorities critical theorists admit their intent is to use racial minorities as the vanguard for a marxist revolution thus critical race theory was born we now see this ideology creeping into
095every aspect of american life from corporations staging white privilege training the school curriculum that teach students to view everything and everybody through the visit to the prism of race why does critical race theory peddle bigoted and obviously false assumptions about individuals based on their skin color not pure racial hatred racialism is a tactic a tool used by critical race theorists to tear down american institutions their aim is to abolish the nuclear family gender defund the police abolish the border prisons abolish the senate abolished electoral college abolish ice voter id bali's capitalism avalia's private and charter schools abolish religious freedom abolish free speech abolish rights objectivity abolish reality sound familiar these items are textbook critical theory we should reject a reduction to people of color and it's a tool but the dangerous clear purpose to impose
096simple unadulterated marxism in the united states thank you very much hi my name is gary sullivan i was until recently a proud class of 1979 great night my sister's name is lisa sullivan she is a 1984 graduate of mount pleasant high school my family has lived and attended the schools in the brandywine school district for many generations we have exercised our right a responsibility to vote in school board elections and referendums until last month lisa was the only female head basketball coach to coach a boys team ever in the history of the state of delaware lisa did this while being disabled she has reflex sympathetic dystrophy i was proud she broke the ceiling but she didn't did it at a cost to herself i think it is important for you to know why she is
097no longer the coach of mount i think it is important for you to know why their statement about taking the program in another direction causes lisa irreparable harm it insinuates that she did something unethical or illegal this was driven home by her former students stating that what she did must have been really terrible because she was the only coach of male that not only did anything for them had a winning senate season but gave a crap about them on and off the court i want to make it clear i'm not here today to get lisa's job back we as a family believe that mount pleasant never appreciated or supported my sister i'm here to ask you to look into the circumstances surrounding her time at mount pleasant my belief is what a school board does
098is that the board ensures that there is oversight into what decisions are being made and at all levels in the district my belief is the school board protects what is in the best interest of our community the school and the students i believe she was fired because the person in power utilized her position to settle a personal vendetta i believe it resulted from lisa's resulted from lisa voicing her frustration over the principal's decision to not let an honorable student come back five months after graduating to sign a division one scholarship lisa was upset that the principal denied the student his dream of having a signing day this student ever can overcame all kinds of odds to achieve what every inner city kid dreams of their signing death i believe she was fired in retaliation for
099speaking up this is there's more to the story but that's for you to hear from lisa thank you thank you ms sullivan except we have sydney sullivan hi my name is sydney sullivan i'm a 2020 graduate of mount pleasant high school i would like to talk to you about my my aunt and the impact she's had i was prepared to tell you today all the things she's done in her 27 tenure the last 13 as the head coach i was prepared to tell you about the numerous times that the administration has threatened to fire her and would say they could not do that at this time because they've won too many games i'm prepared to tell you about the numerous examples examples of which the administration has targeted targeted mistreated and antagonized students into a
100reaction and suspending them to attempt for them to not win a game so they could fire her i was prepared to tell you in my opinion how the administration would then use these suspensions to distract the students into their membership in the basketball team but there is a time and place for that story and lisa needs to tell it i was prepared to tell you about the dune call last july that miss lacy and my aunt had she did not want anyone else on the zoo and told my aunt not to record it i was prepared to tell you how the principal started a conversation off by starting she was going to fire lisa miss lacy heard a rumor that she took a basketball job at concord which she'd never even applied for and again
101at this time and place this story needs to be told by lisa there are many other situations i've witnessed as manager to come to light not only involving the mistreatment of lisa but the basketball program but most importantly the mystery mistreatment of students i hope you reach out to her and have the opportunity so she can tell you about this mistreatment of the students in her program i hope that you do not remain quiet in this situation and thinking and thinking because they fired her i hope that you act on this information and you hear or heard today to make sure this does not happen to someone else given the opportunity in the brandywine school district and the students at mount pleasant her unjusting fire firing has made trend trinomials negative impact in the community
102there's a lot of support for lisa not only in the basketball community but the community as a whole lisa has always put the best interest of her students first and foremost please listen to the podcast that is available to get a more complete pick picture google her name and mount pleasant basketball team to see the impact that she had within her 27 years and her students lives thank you ms sullivan appreciate everyone's public comments here i just want to go in forward with any of the speakers we have remaining to please refrain from any hear or say or accusations against other individuals um this is not the forum for that next up we have lisa sullivan my name is lisa sullivan i have spent 30 of my 55 years at mount the statistics for my
103program speak for themselves when i look back at the last 10 years and recognize how i was humiliated a little fully harassed until repeatedly that i ran a terrible program i realized now what a negative impact it had on me i was told to go to some male coaches in the school to find out how to run a program i did that even though i believe my program was better than theirs and i did not want to be fired constantly in the back of my mind i kept hearing mr gillilane and miss lacy say how they wanted to fire me and that they were going to firing the name two individuals at mount pleasant threatened to fire me so often in the last 10 years that you would think it would not have had any
104effect on me when it did happen but it did after the athletic director mr neff called and told me that the administration was moving the program in another direction i was devastated i reflected on the past 10 years and i'm shamed to admit that i came to the realization that i was in an abusive relationship with a president i didn't recognize it for what it was at the time what kind of example am i as the first and only female to coach a boy's basketball team in the history of the state of delaware a person with a disability and now currently in the metoo movement to other women how do i explain to people that i muddled my way through this hostile work environment only to be fired at the end how do i explain
105it to my family when i complained to the miss guardi head of the hr at brandywine school district about mr gilliland's constant harassment and the hostile work environment he established she gave me a book on bullying and told me to take me and i quote my mother effing power back she then proceeded to put the book in a manila envelope so no one would see me walk out of the building with it this reinforced my shame it will take me a long time and a lot of soul-searching to figure out why i didn't understand my personal value or why i didn't think i deserved better i had repeatedly reported the harassment booing and belittlement tomorrow to multiple athletic directors assistant principals principals assistant superintendent and these superintendents some chose to stop it but as soon
106as it left it started back up some chose to tell me it was my fault some chose to completely ignore it they never treated the male coaches in that way in that school the way they treated me i did break a glass ceiling for females to coach male dominated sports but i personally paid a heavy price i implore you to instill a system of checks and balances to make sure this does not happen to anyone else to make sure coaches are fired by people who are not or who are not fired by people in a position of power trying to settle a personal vendetta miss lacy told me in july that whenever someone talks about mount pleasant the basketball program and i are always talked about in the positive my rose my most recent review
107was glowing we have to be fair to everyone one minute what changed during sip covered one of the things miss lacy said to me on the zoom call in july was that if he was considered if i was considering leaving mount pleasant i would sit down with them before before i came to a decision you have to be fair to everyone she's had her three minutes she's had more than her three minutes it's not how a public meeting works future okay next up we have fran lewis on deck is willard johnson good evening my name is fran lewis i lived here in the school district for over 20 years my grandmother was a teacher at springer for many many years my two children have attended school did the schools here in the district in the
108past i've had two negative experiences with the school district one resulting in me moving my kids to private schools and the other was my experience as a volunteer coach for the boys basketball program at mount pleasant high school i have coached boys basketball for over 27 years my experiences with the administrations of the two schools could not be polar more polar opposite one was welcoming positive usually and usually did everything in their power to assist us in helping kids succeed and become better people not only in school but out in the greater world the other experience is that mouth was much was was much different coach sullivan and i would talk regularly about basketball and we would exchange ideas so we could make each team each other's teams more successful these conversations would uh usually
109end by her telling me what she had to deal with on a daily basis just to hold practice i always thought she had to be kidding me because i truly believe no one no school would treat kids in their building the way she was describing to my surprise when i came to help her and the rest of the staff i quickly learned she was not making it up i was completely blown away by the lack of support constant negativity and downright distrust of by the from the administration i do believe there are a couple of good administrators in the school who would try to help but they were always drowned out and overruled by a small group who had a personal issue with the basketball program those personal issues i don't know where they started
110why they began or why they continued it was before i came there but it was driving force with every interaction it is also my experience that most if not all of the other sports programs were not held to the same rules and standards that the boys basketball program was required to follow in my four years of volunteering i do not remember any of the administrators ever approaching me to introduce themselves inquire who i was why i was in the building what you know my coaching background or asked how they could help or just simply say thank you not that i was looking for that thank you because my focus was on making a difference in kids live there's a few of the kids here um just like any other one anyone who choses that chooses
111the education field as a career should be doing yes they would say good gain tough loss things like that in the moment but that was usually followed up with something negative or some complaint despite all the negativity and lack of support from the administration we are one of the best basketball programs in the state for more than 10 years we did that by 100 percent of the time following the rules set forth by the administration they changed on a daily basis and died we affected the lives of our players positively help them complete their graduation requirement thank you mr lewis [Music] i hope thank you mr lewis willard johnson on deck mark palmer hello my name is willard johnson i've been a coach in delaware for over 20 years i've spent the last 13 years
112as assistant coach at the boys basketball team with my time i like to highlight some of the great things coach lisa solomon has done for the basketball program as a long time assistant of hers i saw firsthand how coach sullivan's dedication passion exuded towards her alma mater mount pleasant high school and the brandywine school district was unparalleled to any coach of any sport within the district a coach that after 30 plus years of positive involvement with the district mount pleasant administration decided it is no longer she is no longer an asset to the team to school or community a decision that has left many people both inside and outside the basket community scratching their heads when we took over the mount pleasant boys team they were not in a good place players grades were not
113up to par they had become accustomed to not winning many games not qualifying for the state basketball tournament uniforms were outdated locker rooms were run down at this point coach sullivan and i decided we wanted to raise the bar change the culture build a successful program that used basketball as a tool to help guide young student athletes from whom majority come from not so typical upbringings to into becoming successful young men within the community we wanted to show them that we care about them as a person a student an athlete and during that same time we came up with a slogan that every player who put on a mount pleasant uniform can take with them in life no matter what you are doing or where you are there are only two things you can control
114your attitude how you handle adversity how you look at a situation you may be in your effort how hard you work at whatever you're doing as we look at other successful teams on all levels to model our program coach sullivan and i decided to build a program like a family-run business we actually statement we wanted community and alumni and school involvement we encouraged our players to play other sports attend sporting other sport teams games we had our team slogan attitude and effort we set rules and core values that we live by daily these rules were also the backbone that all players who put on a mount pleasant basketball uniform would adapt to in school and on the court these values they knew were uncompromising the core values was school and grades first priority we we
115had early study halls team tutors weekly grade sheets that show each player's classroom behavior integrity to be a good person a teammate a student honored to be proud and represent your school respect your parents your teachers your coaches school always led by coach sullivan the team accomplished all those business goals we raised funds that players on all teams participating in like car washes running youth basketball camps hosting crafts bazaars to raise money to get uniforms and equipment so we could be a successful program we provided hot meals for kids who spent long hours after school practicing and attending games the coaching staff coach fran we just mentioned we spent a whole summer tearing down our locker room and rebuilding it we won at 64 percent of our games 10 years in a row qualifying for
116the state tournament we have a 70 percent of our graduating seniors who went to college and almost half of those continued to play basketball in college now when my attention at mount pleasant is over and i get a chance to reflect i would like to publicly thank coach lisa for being a second mother to so many young black men and thank you for allowing me to be a coach and a firefighter thank you mr johnson mark palmer on deck brenner reed i'm going to kind of witness a little bit because they took away a lot of my thunder but i've been coaching for quite a few years um i can't do this um but i want to speak a little bit more about lisa as a person uh i will mention when you go into
117the locker room you go into the locker room there's a big board a wall-sized board in order that says mount and then family that board is covered with the names of every player that has graduated under lease and will boys are given their their name their number they are asked to autograph in their year graduation so it's become kind of a marquee piece in the locker room for them um we've even had alumni from as far back as 1967 contact us to get their names listed on there we've had 70 year old men in this room crying because they saw their name on this ball it's indicative of the program that she's built lisa's built quite a program along with will and fran it's truly a family it's lisa's family and it's also the only
118family some of the players have okay when i first got to mount as a coach i met the team manager his name was preston campbell uh he turned out to be autistic and i say he turned out to be autistic because no one ever mentioned it it was never commented on it was never a big deal he was just part of the family all the players looked after him took care of him and treated him as if he were team um essentially lisa's family has been taken away from her more importantly she's been taken away from the future players at mount pleasant to say they're going in another direction it's hard to believe based on all the criteria that we've just listed out here it's been a successful in every facet you can measure programming
119programming i've always assumed that schools faculty administration was there to do what is best for the students but it's hard to believe in this situation i certainly hope this does not come down to a couple of individuals trying to make a point at one point i was the freshman coach at mount pleasant and i was removed after i had an encounter with the school principal i think that's something you guys should look into i think you may see a pattern anyone that crosses particular paths is removed okay lisa is a genuine authentic person who i'd absolutely want around any and all students i would encounter okay they would become better people as i have for being exposed to her her genuineness honesty and work ethic you'll never be able to find a truer person lisa
120sullivan my guess is that in the near future this school board and district will be pushing for referendum to best serve the students needs by letting her go we're doing just the opposite okay now pleasant will be able to hire another basketball coach but they're never going to be able to replace lisa sullivan and will johnson thank you mr palmer what's up we have brenna reed members of the board thanks for having me my name is brenna reed and i am the mother of four elementary schoolers um in the district the charles w bush early education center has held a special place in our family's hearts since 2015 when our first set of twins were enrolled since the age of 18 months we struggled to identify and meet the needs of our oldest son mack
121had a variety of sensory issues and while he had plenty of vocabulary he had a hard time using it when attempting to communicate his own needs both of which would often devolve into meltdowns which were traumatic for him and for us as well by the time he reached his third birthday we had finally gotten to see a developmental pediatrician who confirmed that he needed an evaluation and recommended that we call bush mac was quickly evaluated and it was determined that his iep would include weekly speech occupational and physical therapy sessions in addition to ongoing efforts by his classroom teachers to address his social emotional needs within months we saw a huge improvement in his ability to communicate with us and others when we saw his anxiety go down dramatically mac was especially difficult to incentivize
122to complete any tasks that he wasn't interested in and each specialist went above and beyond in finding ways to gain his trust and increase his willingness to participate by the time he started kindergarten his iep no longer included speech and he was in was much more streamlined in first grade his teachers insisted that we move him to the gift the district's gifted program second grade and his iep was transitioned to a 504. now a rising fifth grader here at clemont he continues to thrive and we have no doubt that this was made possible by the care and expertise and creativity exhibited in his time at bush our daughter harper mac's twin sister was also enrolled at bush gec in those years and i consider it a formative time in her life and her personality the
123exposure to children of all ability levels gave her the opportunity to learn empathy and inclusion the idea that fairness is giving everyone what they need for an equal opportunity in a world that needs this lesson for many adults what more could we ask for for our children to learn this at such a young age also a rising fifth grader in the district's gifted program here at claymont she loves to read about people who work to work the to make the world more fair for everyone and she wants to grow up to be a civil rights attorney we live close to one of our bush teachers and for years we've all waived and said hi mrs roper as we drove by but we had no idea how important a role bush would play for us again
124in the spring of 2020 just as the world went into lockdown our second set of one of our second set of twins was diagnosed with a rare childhood seizure disorder and went from being a previously very healthy child to having over 100 seizures each day in january we had a newly four-year-old at every milestone and by may his speech and fine motor coordination had been massively impacted as well as his gross motor development and emotional stability those particular epilepsy tends to be medication resistant and we quickly initiated a very strict medical ketogenic diet and efforts to control the seizures juan called the bush and i knew he would be in good hands even if it was just virtually at the time the team recognized the need not to wait and agreed to trial a virtual
125evaluation we completed the evaluation and his iep was written just saw my time um i'm going to fast forward but i was doing really well um but also as a nurse in the pediatric icu at nemours i see the myriad of needs and struggles experienced by families in our community from preschool options to parenting classes to access to specialty therapies the proposal to give bsd a new and larger early education center would make an enormous impact in the lives of our district's families a dedicated space that would allow for a state-of-the-art therapy gym more square footage that could allow more students including more typical peers the number of ways this building could serve our community would only continue to grow thank you ms reid appreciate it that concludes our public comment moving on to board
126the board member liaison reports delaware school boards association executive or mr ackerman certainly uh the dspa executive board met on june 9th we did have a quorum we did have an honored guest in mr jason hale who came to alert boards to a questionable practice from the state auditor's office asking districts to sign memorandums of understanding that we would allow a audit of our local funds and pay for it without knowing what the scope of the audit was mr ackerman ask you to hold let's let's wait till our guest exit to give you the respect of the time that you have here for your report please continue mr eckerman so mr hale discussed the plan officer the audit of accounts of local school district funds the issue was a memorandum of understanding that was districts
127were asked to sign the districts don't need to sign an mou because the state auditor has full authority to come in and audit whatever they want so a mou was kind of an unnecessary accoutrement and mr hale was just letting boards know what was going on across the state and and i i do notice that uh in the news today i believe i saw a headline of the state auditor talking about some finding throughout the state so our feeling is this may be a gotcha type audit we're going to find something we're going to keep until we find something but again we're not going to agree to the scope of something and to pay for it unless we know what it is so we you know the auditor has full authority to do that um
128the officers for next year um i will continue as the president for dspa janice hanwell from cape pentelope and is the first vice president jason kevin from red clay is the second vice president dave 12 from seaford is treasurer and legislative committee chair um in our roundtable discussion uh twenty deprived from the capital school district they've had a very difficult time with an insurance claim uh you may not be aware but uh last year their middle school was was severely damaged by a tornado um so kovit kind of helped them in a way because they didn't actually have to utilize the building but the estimate is about nine million dollars of damage the state's self-insurance fund is offering 2.3 million dollars for that which does not sound to me like it's kosher uh he asked
129for help from the organization dr marinucci is going to look into it but i guess from brandywine's perspective what concerns me is is the state adequately indemnifying our buildings that if something like that were to happen to one of our schools tornado hurricane flood you know whatever parallels we're covered for i'm gonna be in the same boat where we're gonna be offered very very little for our building now in fairness to the capitol school district that building was slated for like a complete modernization about three years so you know that may have factored into it in some way but again um you know you got a situation where you just want to reopen the building uh for kids uh they looked at an alternative site like the old sears at the dover mall uh d.o.e
130put the kibosh on that so it was just an interesting discussion the next meeting is going to be the dspa annual meeting all board members are invited to that at the marinucci farm on august 14th uh prior to that will be the board member boot camp which i believe is july 9th of our new board member has signed up for that camp as well thank you mr eckerman delaware school board's association legislative committee ms borden yes dr hale also reported to the legislative committee with the same report that mr ackerman just talked about this was rather lazy meeting much of the discussions regarding our previous positions on house bills no positions changes were recommended by the committee new house and senate bills were reviewed and in all cases were considered to be either supported or
131neutral there are three bills of included which appear to have potential for state approval through the house the house approved the house also had approved them right after our june second meeting house bill 163 was one of the new bills that required schools to excuse a pupil's absence for observation of a religious holiday and further requires districts and charters to have a policy discouraging teachers from scheduling tests presentations or the like on days when some students may be asking for religious holiday the bill passed the house and was assigned to the senate education committee on june 17th our legislative committee remained neutral household 92 we've spoken to before became a substitute bill 1. this bill would reduce the term of school board members from five to four years remember elected after december 31st 2020 2021
132deville passed the house on june 10th as was reported out of the senate education committee on june 15th the senate has not yet voted house bill 175 this act allows one excused absence per school year for students grades 6 through 12 to attend civic engagements such as visits to a u.s capitol legislative hall the sites of political or cultural significance or participation in a rally march protest or walk out for a student to attend a civic engagement the student's parents or guardian must provide written permission no later than three days prior to the student span planned absence this bill passed the house on june 10th and was reported out of senate education committee on june 15th because the state legislative sessions will be ending on june 30th i will follow up on further decisions made
133on these bills and others that make create policy decisions for our next school year um mr ackerman talked about our next meeting being on august 14 and our first formal meeting will be on october 6th thank you ms gordon mr president i just want to add one one other note in i think there's some confusion uh at least on the part of the public as to what house bill 98 actually does and one of the reasons that the school board association took a neutral position we generally oppose any bill that mandates curriculum um but we were able to add an amendment to this bill that you know confirms that curricular decisions are still a local decision and i don't think our district has any intention of creating a hostile racial environment in our district um
134so i think you know that's that's kind of misspoken by the group here that may be a little bit concerned about something that i don't think is a problem here in brandywine and probably won't become one but i just want to say that that's the reason the school board association took a neutral position because of the amendment to the bill that confirmed that local control over curricula is his base and i think uh i think ms gordon covered that in a previous speech but i just wanted to point it out because we had a lot of her no i appreciate you saying that because i was going to make some comments at the end of board reports just of you know some of the misinformation that be out that might be out there that i
135i think that it's it's clear that it is not the intention of this board and hopefully future boards to disenfranchise anyone to create any division make one group feel more or less than the other um but i think it's important that the conversation is had and that the conversation is changing and times are changing and we heard tonight from mr hamby and we've mentioned it at a couple of previous meetings about the claim on 12. this is american history this is black history that happened in our own district that me as someone who grew up in the claymont area in the brandywine school district i didn't know about it until just a few years ago so that is the type of information that i think we can look forward to including in our curriculum to
136sharing to you know deepening the knowledge of our students in a way that is historically accurate is inclusive and important to all of us thank you for bringing that up and if i could just add to that mr robot it is our intent to focus on equity to focus on diversity to focus on accessibility and we do as part of a continuous improvement process having to take a critical eye of who we are how we operate identify barriers hurdles whether they are real or perceived and have to address them so we will be engaging in discussions around equity access race as part of again a continuous improvement model we are not pushing a marxist or socialist agenda at any stretch we the perfect example around the claymont 12 there are pieces of history that we
137don't do justice to you've heard me say previously like we live in a district that had something to do with the greatest educational act of our lifetime brown versus board of education and we don't celebrate it why is that we have to that is a proud piece of heritage that the brandywine school district has and embraces every single one of us has to examine ourselves around our implicit explicit views biases and every single one of us carries those with us and it's it's we are educators and it's through study through dialogue through uh productive critical examination of what we do that's the only way we get better and make sure that we are offering opportunities to all students by all i'm not talking necessarily race races included in that we're talking about gender we're talking
138about disabilities and abilities it covers the spectrum just like it does as a united people so at a future meeting we'll be happy to give a little overview on the curriculum work that we've already started digging into as mr ackerman pointed out yeah there are pieces of that bill that yeah we agree with what we didn't want was dictated curriculum from the states very much appreciated the work by the state by the school boards association and mr ackerman's leadership as president of that organization so we are going to embrace the opportunity to critically reflect and i'm not going to go on but i welcome the opportunity to to pursue that at a future board meeting to help clear up some understanding and to set the tone in the path for the vision going forward and
139one other piece to bear in mind is that the claymont board of education did the right thing immediately under the leadership of sega trion who was um evelyn trion's late husband and she's now passed away as well and there's a plaque in front of old main that you can go read to find out about delaware history thank you mr mr holder ms gordon where you finished with your legislative report yes takes us to district finance committee we have our monthly meeting on wednesday june 9th we reviewed the monthly financial report preliminary fiscal year 2022 operating budget tax warranties for 2022 and the bond anticipation patient note all of which dr hale will present shortly um our next meeting is scheduled for wednesday july 14th maintenance advisory committee mr heller thank you the committee met on
140june 1st right here at clemont this was i think our fourth visit over the several year remodel starting at the very beginning and then a couple of mid visits and then effectively the end of the project here which is what you're seeing firsthand um so mr holler kind of took a lot of that with his picture so you got to see where it came from and where it is now and it's absolutely amazing we also talked about the plan for the upcoming year projects in the district and there's pages pages of them but some of the highlights and these are either either underway or in planning are the significant cafeteria renovations at brandywine high school which started a couple of months ago concord high school some new auditorium house lights and hvac controls replacement now
141pleasant high school getting a roof replacement on the older wing and hvac unit replacement gym floors are getting refinished or refurbished in several schools library upgrades at talley so the list just goes on and on all 16 buildings plus administrative buildings have some work planned to keep them looking as nice as this does so again kudos to mr reed and his crew for this thank you mr heller uh mr pigeon is not with us tonight for an update on parent council student with disabilities uh reverend perry parent and citizen advisory committee um i just would like to announce that on may 4th we hosted our school board candidates forum we had about 150 people live stream through our facebook page i want to especially thank detv first state educated delaware pta for and that's of
142course um miss alexis andreanopolis uh and the administrative team and assisting us with the execution of that um we although we had 150 people live streaming of course we also were able to stream on local access channel 28 as well [Music] following the candidates forum as an executive committee we discussed how as a advisory group we could assist in ensuring that students have the necessary information students and families have the information necessary to make up for summer learning laws i want to thank miss michelle kutch who partnered with or assisted alexis and putting together a series of videos which will be posted on the vsd website the information will include workbook information um k through 5 reading lists in addition to for grades 6 to 12 in addition to the uh the instructions that would
143assist families and and navigating the online platform we also will be providing reading logs with the books in addition to resources um these summer optional learning resources will also be added to the website so that families can assist their students in in cultivating or at least helping to alleviate some of the learning loss that that took place during the pandemic so our next meeting has not been determined but um i want to of course on behalf of karen gordon and myself thank alexis andreanopoulos for all of the work that she's done behind the scenes um many many times she has single-handedly um stepped up to the plate and assisted in more ways than we can articulate so i wanted to publicly thank her for her service and wish her well in her future endeavor thank
144you mr health advisory committee dr zaire uh yeah before i give my uh committee meeting notes i just wanted to make a comment too about some misinformation that was about masks that have been stated in today's meeting um there has definitely been numerous studies that do show that masks do limit the spread of respiratory illnesses um if you do a quick google search like multiple ones come up so i don't know where the person got the information from about masks not spread not helping the spread of respiratory illnesses but that was incorrect um there was also comments about an increasing risk of other illnesses like encephalitis and urine infections which is also misinformation um again if you look that up on google you can't even find the study that they're talking about so um just
145wanted to put that out there um our last health and wellness advisory committee meeting was may 19th the brand new school district nurses has had set up and run copic vaccine clinic on may 26th they had over 600 people registered we discussed in our meeting how amazing the nurses have been this last year we truly appreciate them a special thank you to michelle scott for helping us set up these vexing clinics colleen carter head of nutritional services let us know that free meals will be offered to all the students at all the schools for next year this includes breakfast lunch and an afternoon snack there is legislation nationally to make this a permanent measure the brand new dine bus restarted today as well to provide students for our meals for our students this summer we
146broke out into groups to discuss our three tiers of multi-tiered services for tier one that serves all of our students we're planning monthly themes to begin next year to highlight some of the services available and to educate our students and their families about health related issues in september we will run the sandy hook promise start with hello we brainstormed ways to have a mental health screening for a portion of our high school students we're still looking into ways to make this happen and are hoping this can possibly happen in the next full year uh finally we're looking for high school students to represent uh to be representatives for our committee at hopefully all three of the high schools if any high school students are interested please reach out to your guidance counselor to let us
147know and our next meeting is scheduled for wednesday september 15th and i am planning to continue on the health and wellness committee as a physician and uh parent and community member so i'm looking forward to continuing my work with the brainerd school district um in that aspect that ends my report thank you thank you dr zarek um 91.7 wmph advisory committee has not met since our last meeting our next meeting is to be determined i believe it's in july but i will make sure um any additional board member reports or comments i have about two two quick things uh first of all the um delaware state board of education is accepting applications for student members currently which would be upcoming junior or seniors all the information can be found on the state board of education
148website um i don't have that handy but it's a long url but you can uh google the state board of education and then also we've given uh john reed several kudos i saw beth maddie was here earlier and i wanted to give her kudos also for her and all of the nurses mr holler shared some data with us and there was a couple of points that really stood out for what our nurses have done this past year just a couple i wanted to share was that they have spent 1348 hours doing contact tracing which is i think unusual for the state that our nurses have taken the lead on that over the department of health and then secondary to that they placed 22 195 phone calls and conducted almost 4 000 education sessions on covet
149just this year so i just wanted to give beth and her entire team of nurses kudos also for the extreme amount of work they put in above and beyond what they normally do this year thank you mr heller i stole a little of my thunder for july already but um some amazing stats thank you for bringing that the attention i just wanted to add i should have made this you know at the end of public comment but in past meetings we've addressed that you know board members may have comments or opinions related to topics shared in public comments section uh but not necessarily a direct response um and certainly we heard a lot tonight this was you know more public comment on a variety of topics than we're used to seeing um and i certainly
150do appreciate the comments that have come out in support for a beloved teacher um i'm highly disappointed um in the personal accusations uh and accusations made against individuals who aren't here to defend themselves and are counter to what public comment is supposed to be um but with that said i mean we hear we hear you and i think there are some fair questions that you know i would like to get some further information on um but i think we have to going forward we have to respect everyone's time we gave comment tonight on different topics and the lack of disregard for our fellow community members was disappointing and i did want to touch on the topic uh one woman had asked you know what has happened to brandywine not sure of the brand high school
151or the district in general and i just wanted to say that i think we've gotten better you know while you may not ride by a parking lot and see it full of cars we are a more racially and economically diverse district than we've ever been and just because students don't have their own personal vehicle to proud our parking lots is not an indication of anything i know brandywine high school's enrollment has increased steadily over the last five years all of our other high schools have maintained or increased their enrollments as well but we've gotten better and that's indicative of the superintendent's report showing that our students are gaining acceptance to top tier universities throughout our country they're getting scholarships in impressive numbers they're entering the military and workforce so i don't think that one person's
152experience is indicative of what's going on in the district because i do i think brandywine is is better than it was yesterday and we will continue to try to improve on what we're doing and there's always room for improvement and i think with that i will now entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda hello have a motion in a second all those in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries um did not have any personnel matters personnel report i'm sorry we do have the monthly personnel report for my apologies uh do i have a motion to approve the monthly personnel report just in executive session second i have a motion and a second all those in favor all right i have a motion to approve student matters as discussed in executive session second motion
153in a second all those in favor say aye hi any opposed motion uh revisiting old business i'd like to call dr lisa lawson to discuss student code of conduct i'm sorry just a second thank you presidents robot other members of the board superintendent holder i come to you for the third time this evening and bring data results as requested by the board in regards to our code of conduct that is being proposed for the 21-22 school year if you recall we had conversations in regard to the uniform policy that is embedded within the dress code and i was charged with going back and gathering some information from our elementary education teams administrators that includes principals assistant principals and deans as well as from the community with regard to the proposed changes in the uniform policy
154our elementary administrators survey uh the highlights are here you were sent the full survey in one of the board updates 60 of our administrative teams in our elementary schools are in favor of eliminating the uniform requirements and specifically what it drills down to is shirts with collars and jeans the proposal is to match the elementary dress code to the secondary dress code and the difference right now are those two items in particular 60 to 80 percent of those administrative teams agree that eliminating the uniform requirements will not create additional social challenges within the schools we then surveyed parents an email went to all elementary parents and guardians who have email accounts on our e-school plus system a link to the survey was provided and the survey was open for 10 days we received 930 responses
155from our community and as you can see there is a vast distribution among our schools in terms of the response rates we were happy to get response rates from all of our schools we even got responses from children who will leave us in elementary school and move to middle school next year the results from that survey with approximately 20 percent response rate was that two-thirds of our family so over 600 families were in favor of eliminating the uniform policy again we are speaking about collared shirts and jeans so that is the data we are hoping that the board will move forward with the proposed 20 21 22 student code of conduct so that we may move forward with taking it to print and getting ready for the 21 to 22 school year i will entertain
156any questions that you might have any questions on the board so just to be clear about the dress change um you're saying we're eliminating the college shirt so that people students can wear just a t-shirt without a collar and we were adding back in jeans correct so they they will be permitted to wear clothing that does not have collars and jeans will be permissible as a bottom um garment yes do i hear a motion to approve the 2021-2022 student code of conduct second motion and a second any discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you very much just a quick comment mr president we will get that message out to all elementary families or maybe tonight probably tomorrow to make sure that they have adequate heads up before they
157go out and purchase clothing for next school year we'll also put that information on our district website and facebook account thank you mr holler um you're up next with our brandywine country club update no presentation just a quick update for the board we have local legislators who are doing everything they can to promote the early childhood center proposal as reported previously we have submitted three certificates of necessity we've been turned down for all three of those but again thanks to the push of our local legislators led by deb heffernan we are gaining some attention down in dover we will know in the next two two and a half weeks whether we will receive any funding this year for that project so that's the good news um the other end of things not so positive as
158i was last month last month i reported that we had a very successful i thought meeting with ccovh and some of the local residents around the brandywine country club property they had requested some restrictions on the property and we worked through some language and proposed notes on a plan even went as far as proposing the drawing up of what they a declaration which would legally bind us to those agreements and should we want to deviate from those agreements we would have to go directly to county council seek their approval which in turn they would have to involve the neighbors get their feedback so it was in my view a win-win for both but at the last meeting there was a grave concerns around traffic even though traffic study numbers came back significantly lower than what
159they would be if mr pano actually built houses on that 40-acre site that he intends to donate to the district things ground to a halt and we we asked just how well-versed the community is in the project and from ccobh's point of view they said that they've engaged the stakeholders that they represent however in our discussions with many people who live in those communities they haven't heard too much about the project from ccobh so they're just kind of letting the board know there may come a point in time in the very near future where we have to make it very well known across the district including those neighborhoods represented by ccobh of the need for that early childhood center and strongly advocate for that childhood center among those individuals who are going to benefit and
160that's the entire brandywine school district bush's highly popular program we had a parent speak to its value tonight one of thousands and uh we will enlist their voice in the coming weeks to make that uh that known uh across all 143 communities represented ccovh so good news this month and uh not so good news but still our sites are set and our children need and deserve that early childhood center it's not a question of should they have it it's they have to have it driven to get that early childhood center built on that property that mr capano has so graciously donated to the district thank you mr hola uh next up dr jason hale to present several financial related matters if it pleases the board i'd like to vote on items a and b together
161then c through g individually as they are presented dr hale take it away thank you good evening um i'll try to get through this information as quickly as possible for the the first two items would be the april 30th and may 31st report timing of the board meeting last month occurred prior to the district finance committee meeting so i'll be presenting both the april finance report um and the month ending may financial report so the first report being april 30th the information presented on the revenue page shows that we've received roughly of our state revenue um that over the course of the next several months and really with only nine days left in the fiscal year i'm sorry yes let's see where it was um so we will receive the rest of our state funding
162throughout those next couple months and really with only nine days left the system is about ready to shut down so we've completed almost all of our financial transactions for the fiscal year 21. you can see here that we're in 99.6 of our local revenue that number will be over 100 percent as we still have not received our senior tax credit final allocation which actually happened in early june so the june monthly report you'll absolutely see the local revenue numbers being over 100 federal funds again we've had those funds for several months now and continue to spend them down you can see on the expenditure report that that the that the buildings are doing a great job you know this over the course of of april and may there is a lot of spending that takes
163place as we get ready to shut the system down again the principal's done have done a tremendous job this year um as well as all the other individuals that are in charge of budgets um being good stewards of the of their budgets and making sure that they're only expending items that you know that are necessary for the year so all of the items that have been expended and you can see here everything is well in line you can see that we're also at like roughly 83 percent of our revenue i'm sorry 83 percent of our local salaries and benefits through the month of april and with um roughly 22 of 26 pays that's 85 so we are trending lower than we would so that's certainly positive for our cash flow as we show each month
164we have our prior year expenditure report and again this is all of the expenditures that take place on appropriations that are prior to fy21 that occur during the current fiscal year lastly the page that we're showing here is the july through december actual cash flow information moving onward to the month of may we at the end of april had anticipated that we were going to be roughly a 12.2 million dollar carry forward balance on june 30th that number is still looking good and as we talk about the may report and i can certainly say as well knowing that we only have nine days left in the fiscal year um that we are absolutely going to be hitting around that number which is great um considering that we had anticipated in our final budget that we
165would be roughly 10.8 million so that's certainly a great financial position to be in moving on to the may report the information presented for may for revenue you can see that we're roughly 95 of our anticipated state revenue that number will increase again when you see the report next month through the month of june you can also see that we're roughly 99.8 in the local revenue again you will be receiving it was about 389 000 is what the the senior tax credit final allocation so you can see there that that will absolutely go over that remaining 137 plus a few other things so we'll be well over that hundred percent which is certainly good um moving along to our expenditures you can see over the course of the month that the balances are continuing to
166go down as the principals and the managers of the other budgets are expanding their budgets so we can we look at all of those expenditures very carefully throughout the end of the year to ensure that they're all for necessary items and again all of the principals and budget directors have done a great job with their budgets this year through 24 of um 26 pay cycles that's 92 percent you can see we are roughly at 89 so trending about three percent under our local revenues which is certainly good um and as that moves into our cash flow statement again you can see here that the month prior we're anticipating roughly 12.2 million at the end of may i'm still holding it at about 12 million so as of today we're at about 11.9 12 so with
167some things closing out between now and the next nine days absolutely anticipate that we're going to be hovering right around 12 million dollars on june 30th very good position for us are there any questions on the april may reports that i can answer for you hearing no questions i will entertain a motion to accept the april and may monthly financial reports subject to audit motion in a second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries just an insight had we given some of that 12 million dollars to that eighth grader at springer we could really be it's 28 of 12 million that's a nice number am i good to move forward okay thank you yes so the the next piece of information would be the tax rate proposal for fiscal year 22.
168um is required by law that we submit our tax warrant as it's called to the county i believe it's the second thursday in july might be a tuesday um but um the information to report here as we've talked over the last several years is that there'll be no change to our tax warrant um so in all of the categories um there is no change in our tax rate the information that we have in the warrant is just the general information that would go to the county to be used to prepare the bills that will go out at the end of the summer our total rate of fifty 2.53 point eight five cents per one hundred dollars of assessed valuation is remaining unchanged to give you an indication of what all of these rates are um
169this is what makes up our total the current expenses is can only be adjusted through referendum the county tax rate is the taxable rate which is set and cannot be adjusted um our debt service can only be done through our major capital and that's one that we monitor on an annual basis to see whether it needs to go up or down based on the amount of debt and then the tuition match and technology tax but the tuition and match being two that can be changed but over the last several years we have indicated that we will not be seeking any change to any of these i'm asking for approval of this to submit to the county which will reflect no tax increase for the fiscal year 22. if i hear a motion to accept the
170unchanged tax rate for fiscal year 20.2 seconds motion in a second all those in favor say aye any opposed motion carricks the next item up is the title one instructional services to private schools this is a request for proposal that is performed by the data service center emily ryan at the data service center is the coordinator who performs rfps for what we call kind of the consortium which would be the new castle county districts so what this particular rfp is to put out for services to be provided to the private schools in our local community this is done every every two years or so every two or three years i mean this is a requirement of the federal legislation for us to provide these services to students that are in private schools that um that
171are eligible for the services on an annual basis um over the last several years we've spent about twenty thousand dollars a year between twenty and twenty five thousand dollars um but what the data service center has asked is that each board of the participating districts approve this rfp and then once they receive approval from all districts they will then award the contracts so we're seeking your approval on this rfp for the successful vendor which is my apologies learned systems which um has been the vendor for the last several years thank you dr hill do i have a motion to approve the rfp as presented i have one quick question so this this contract is covers all the schools in the consortium yes it covers all the new castle county schools so the data service center
172has performed this for enough for a number of the newcastle county school districts um so that company will be able to perform those services for any private school student that's eligible for services throughout the gas county and then we just pay based on our usage right and it's something that's worked into our title one grant the equitable services to the the pedal um so just clarified do we have a motion to accept rfp for title one instructional services private move motion by the second second motion in a second any discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion cares next up non-bargaining unit yes um as has been our um past practice we are coming to the board this evening to seek um increase in salary for employees that um are not in
173bargaining units what this is is comprised of now that we have completed our brandywine education association contract we then are going back and looking at all of those individuals in the district that are not covered through a bargaining unit that includes administrators specialists mid-level professionals all of our secretaries those working in our food service department in the support staff capacity as well as our facilities department technology and our our facilities chief twos so the way that we have gone through this process historically has been to look at the increase that's been provided in the vba contract so what we are seeking this year is an increase of 1.75 which is what was been approved for the brandywine education association contract um for the roughly 160 employees now the information um discussed has been the total
174local cost of this is roughly 240 000 and that has been included in final budget from this past year so that was included again in the final budget and we were awaiting the completion and ratification of the dea contract before bringing this recommendation this would be a retroactive increase going back to july 1st i have a motion to accept the non-bargaining unit retroactive salary proposal motion and a second any discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion bond carries yes each year um that a that we receive funds through the bond bill we are allowed to borrow on a short-term basis those funds prior to the actual sale by the treasurer's office of bonds that's called a bond anticipation note that bond anticipation note that we received for our market pressure money
175took place in july of this past year what we're asking is to convert that bond anticipation note basically cancel out the anticipation note and to approve um bond number two zero two one a in the amount of two million two hundred ninety five thousand eight hundred and sixty dollars at an interest rate of 1.67 by doing this essentially we are eliminating the short-term debt that we've had between july and and the actual bond sale date and initiating this 20-year bond just for clarifying so that was bond number 2021-a yes actually i'm sorry the number at the top here my apologies is r-21 common 95-31 make sure for their emotion on the floor to accept the bond resolution should we identify that as r-21 comma 95-31 second any discussion all those in favor say aye aye
176any opposed motion carries preliminary operating budget yes and finally this is for information purposes only i'm not asking for um a vote this evening um the hopes would be that the board would take the opportunity over the next month to take a look at this as well as once we have the finalized budget as we all know and they've had conversations there's a lot going on from legislative hall this week so once the completion of the budget happens we'll have all of the finalized information as well as some more details that relates to our essers doing episode three funds all of that will then be incorporated into a final presentation that i'll make to you in july so um one or two for preliminary purposes to provide you the information that's listed here and this
177was all reviewed at the district finance committee meeting that took place last week on a tax basis we're anticipating just a slight increase as we see the assessed valuation of the district go up on a slight basis now as we see some of the assessed valuations change and some of the new properties that are coming on we are anticipating a slight increase there so if you look at the far right column and is where you'll see the changes one of the things that i wanted to note and we've been having a lot of conversation with the treasurer's office is that the interest rates have been going down considerably and to say considerably over the last two months the interest rate has been 0.00 so we have not received interest over the last two months and
178that's something we do anticipate that coming up but we do anticipate a year of below average interest so that's something that i wanted to making of within the budget i also wanted to note here that the one-time enrollment funding which was part of the september 30th unit count last year was going away so that's why you would see that reduction of the 700 000 there will be an increase to opportunity grants that's something that's coming through the redding consortium so um that increase of roughly six hundred thousand dollars is what we believe our preliminary allocations so that will be finalized over the course of the next nine days moving along you can see the slight increases for example in our tuition tax um there is going to so in the area of the other local
179funds you can see that there's a reduction in the newcastle county distance learning that is the money that we received from newcastle county that was their portion of the cares fund so that's just that was a one-time thing if we do get something from them based on like stimulus that they get then we'll make the necessary adjustments and you can see indirect cost is going up by about six hundred thousand because we are able to charge an indirect cost on the sr2 and the estrogen the large change very very large change that you can see down here is our federal and other aid i've eliminated from last year's budget our gear covered our gear mental health and what we would call the cares funding so that in total and then you see the bottom line
180there with sr2 and sf3 because we have spending authority on these funds and we'll um i'm including the entire 36 million dollars but we are working through in the in the business office exactly how we're going to go through this budgeting process mr holler's done a tremendous job with his spreadsheet i would say he's an accountant in the past life i think with all the spreadsheets and things that he's put together we're going to use that and as we are able to form that into the budget in more detail we'll be able to provide that information to you this information here is the complex calculation of how our taxes are are calculated including the amount of the tax pool so this shows you in total that at the bottom here the two dollars 53.85 you
181could give me one moment i'm gonna have to plug this computer here scott if you could um i guess eliminate me could you share reverend perry's computer please sure um reverend perry's going to have to share her screen or whoever there we go my apologies so the information presented on this page shows the calculation that takes place to generate the roughly 88 million dollars in total taxes that we collect so you can see there and this is based on the total assessed valuation we do know that there is going to be a reassessment taking place over the course of next several years and as we get more information on that we'll certainly provide it to the board the expenditure section here on the preliminary basis you can see that we have made some slight adjustments
182now the large adjustment that you would see as it relates to sr2 and sr3 would be on this line where last year you can see what i'm doing on this this for a preliminary budget basis is to take roughly one third of the overall expenditure and go over the course of the next three years so we anticipate 22 having that 12 million and then what we'll do is we continue to go through as mr holler said making the necessary adjustments on the budget we will then make that determination as we as we move forward so you can see that there's roughly an 8.3 million dollar increase in expense and that's because the difference between what we received in the cares funding and all those additional funding last year the difference between that and the 12
183million is roughly 8 million i've also made some adjustments to some of the other categories based on like some of the activity that we see with them making a slight reduction in the expenditures for child nutrition based on some of the information that's happening at the federal level as well as how we've seen that trend through covid but with all the schools being cp schools we do anticipate that there's going to be some slight reduction in that expenditure moving forward for next year the last several really the last page here just shows an overall snapshot of what we call the financial summary and this is just in total the revenues and the expenditures of the pages listed above to show that what i'm anticipating at the end of fiscal year 22 is a roughly 10.5
184million dollar carry for the balance so that would go from what we're looking at roughly 12 million at the end of this year to next year being roughly 10.5 million so that's certainly a good position as we consider and have conversations as to when would be the next referendum but we'll continue to have those conversations at the district finance so the information presented here is just for information purposes i know it's a lot of numbers you know it's 1007 and i welcome the opportunity to have a conversation with any of you or anyone in the community that has any questions about this um as we move forward and we get more information as it relates to the state's 22 budget we'll incorporate that um have the conversation with the district finance committee and then i'll
185bring it back to you in july for your consideration for a preliminary budget which we'll then finalize once we go through the september 30th that's it this doctor hale said this is not an action item but does any members have any questions at this time thank you dr hale we do not have any zoom or live public comments for the second public comment section uh we do have some general information and meeting dates uh the board retreat is scheduled for july 14th uh location to be determined should be posted shortly uh followed by our regular board meeting on july 19th mr president yes um the organizational meeting of a school board must be held at the official district office brandywine high school auditorium is not our official office we need to be at an unpleasant
186key beat me to the punch yes um we'll have to get that change for mount pleasant elementary back in our multi-purpose room which is where our district offices are attached to in that building and of course there wouldn't be a zoom option unless the uh pulaski bill passes and the governor signs it so um fred pulaski from the christina school district has been pushing legislation to allow for boards to live well actually words can live stream now but to allow for zoom usage at school board meetings outside of the state of if that does not pass in this legislative session the governor's declaration ends on july 13th we're back to bau which is we're in person until we pass the policy if that if that legislation passes we can craft a policy to address it
187very well and then followed by our regular board meeting august 16th um currently shown as vhs but to be determined i'd like to eventually get us back to the mount pleasant elementary so with that i want to thank everybody that's hung in there until 10 o'clock here in the room as well on zoom thank you for your time and participation this evening with that i'll entertain a motion to adjourn one last thank you to debbie's eric for all her time and a second all in favor say aye aye opposed ocean carries