001so recording this forum for anyone who could not be in attendance this evening very important we have one hour i mean one hour to learn more about our candidates um fortunately one of our candidates mr gusty has sent his regrets this evening and will not be joining us however he did provide an email address if anyone wishes to contact them with question it is guestyforbsd gmail.com that's g-e-s-t-y the number four bsd at gmail.com i am going to turn this over to my one and only alexis to review the format take it away alexis thank you so much good evening everyone and thank you for joining us for this important forum my name is alexis andreanopoulos i'm the public information officer for the brandywine school district and i'm just going to go through a couple of
002really quick ground rules and the format we have shared this with the candidates already but we just want to make sure everyone else is aware we have a number of questions that were pre-submitted by our parent and citizen advisory committee we will get through a couple of those each candidate will have two minutes to answer and we will rotate the order in which they answer um we randomly selected mrs stock to be the first to answer question number one so um question one would be kim and then tanya and then question two tanya campbell will just keep rotating back and forth so you each have an opportunity to answer first um because oh and there will be a timer excuse me there will be a timer on the screen so you can see how much
003time is left and then there will be a a nice sound when your time is up um i had now alexis i hate to interrupt you the time doesn't look like it's working right now so i'll keep time and try to get that up and running okay thank you you're welcome and then um just so the public is aware this is a forum and not a debate so um the candidates won't be speaking directly to each other there's no rebuttal um it's not that kind of a setup um and we know that in other districts not in bsd there has been some negativity in some previous forums um so we are i'm going to assure our what our listeners and our viewers that um you know we will model great behavior here in bsc as
004we always do so i am going to send it back to howard for the first question we are very fortunate in the brandywine school district to have three outstanding candidates for our school board um we would like to give each candidate two minutes to introduce themselves and answer the first question as part of their introduction the question is what is the role of a school board member and how does your background make you a good candidate mr stock we're gonna let you go first do you want me to introduce myself and then answer the question yes yes okay so i have two minutes to introduce myself and then two minutes to answer the question yes no no no no no oh okay okay our goal is that in your introduction you would also address like
005what the role of the school board member is and how your background prepared you for that role all right great uh my my name is kim stock and i am a parent uh for the brandywine school district my husband and i have been parents in the brandywine school district since uh when my oldest daughter received gifted services from k to eight and then she graduated from cab calloway and um and then she is now a sophomore at the university of delaware um i'm a current parent we are current parents because my youngest daughter is actually a freshman at brandywine high school and um and one of the reasons why i am writing for the school board is because i am a parent that is my number one job and i'm going to talk about that
006tonight actually but another important job that i do have is that i am a teacher for the red clay school board and because i'm a teacher i also understand education and i've proven i have a proven track record and my effectiveness as an educator as an educational leader with my service to the claymont community center and the programs that i was able to initiate and also to adopt so the role of a school board member is that you are an elected representative and as somebody who is a representative of teachers and students this year as a 2021 delaware teacher of the year this is something that i really do understand very well and it's a it's a position that i've gotten more comfortable with and i know that it's something that i can um use
007what i've learned this year as a representative as a school board member and i also know that a school board member is here to also pass the budget and as somebody who had to work with a budget at the claymore community center and who had to try to get grants to help to try to do that in order to run our programs um i had to seek partnerships i partnered with a christina school district i also partnered with other non-profits boy do i understand the process of money thank you thank you for that miss seller you will begin starting it takes us to reset okay let's let it reset okay well first i want to thank you all for uh having us here at the brandywine school district parent and citizen advisory committee um for
008hosting this forum tonight my name is dr tanya hetler and i'm robert brandywine school board my husband and i have lived in the brandywine school district for 25 years and both of our kids are in the brandywine schools we initially moved to delaware for me to go to graduate school at the university of delaware and get my master's and phd in psychology i gained considerable teaching experience while i was in graduate school and afterward as an adjunct professor a major component of a phd in psychology is an ability to understand and digest scientific research articles and utilize their findings to make decisions about programs spending and policy in such a way as to provide the most benefit furthermore as a psychologist who has counseled families and children i'm very aware of the social emotional psychological
009and societal struggles that kids and teens experience i've seen the ways in which children's and teens culture ethnicity family situations socioeconomic status and other childhood experiences affect their educational experiences for better or for worse and therefore impact their overall well-being and future i would bring my experience as a mom and a psychologist and a researcher and an instructor to my role as a school board member a school board member's job is to carefully evaluate programs curriculum ideas and spending to determine whether they will provide the greatest benefit in our district a school board member is responsible to wisely and responsibly use taxpayer money in the best way to improve the situation for students thank you mr seller for that great question um candidates please don't get scared when you hear that bell it's the ten
010second rule we have the great vanna white core scott on the timer so she's just giving it a 10 second warning uh miss alexis would you like to do the next question yes sir so i'm going to direct this first to dr hitler and then ms stock if you will follow up so the the next question is if funding were not an issue so picture unlimited funds if funding were not an issue what would be your top three priorities in the brandywine school district and dr hetler we're going to ask you to go first for this one okay i'm not exactly sure how this relates to the funding but i guess one of my biggest concerns is uh the the common core curriculum and the smarter balanced testing i guess how it would relate to
011funding is that i know that the federal government gives us money for using that curriculum and that testing and they're definitely limitations to it um so i guess that would be one of my ways that i would want to uh to change things uh to free us up from being bound to that where teachers don't have a lot of freedom in what they teach and can't use their own creativity which has been essential this past year for students during covet to uh some of my kids teachers have done amazing things to make an otherwise not very interesting time of sitting and staring at a computer screen more interesting so i like the fact that teachers would have more freedom um other issues well certainly the covet issue but i'm not sure how well i guess
012over the summer we definitely need to do something to try to remediate the situation um from this past year i know that the state board of education is looking into ways to um help bring kids back up after this sort of a year of a slump and um if yeah if there were no budget limitations i would say we could uh provide kids with lots of materials for the summer and uh also with some way to motivate them to do those materials we definitely were lacking in some motivation this year um with kids turning off their computer screens um or logging into a class and then leaving so some way that we could be able to motivate them to to really stick with the material and learn it thank you dr eller miss doc i'm
013sorry um you know based on the answer can you just repeat that question again was it um that what i would like to do if funding were not an issue is that the question correct right so the right word it is if funding were not an issue what would be your top three priorities okay so the the first priority obviously is we have to address our students our staff our community our parents our teachers emotional well-being and physical well-being of course during the pandemic i don't think that we should kid ourselves i think that this is definitely going to be priority number one and and when students do return into the building and of course a lot of them already have returned into the building for four days a week we need to treat oftentimes
014we need to treat this as the beginning of the year again we need to reestablish an environment we need to come up with protocol again so that students feel both physically safe as well as emotionally safe so that they can be so they can feel like they can trust the adults around them again and i think that this is going to be an issue that is definitely going to carry into the fault but the other issue that i care really passionately about is equity and education and um i want to first just tell you what equity and education is not equity and education is not about making anybody feel bad because historical uh historical laws historical different systems all have an effect on what happens today both in the classroom and in society but it
015is through education that we can actually bring these opportunities for everybody so equalizing the playing field i told you during my uh introduction that my oldest daughter graduated from cab calloway well i realized that the reason why she was able to get into cab calloway is because my husband and i spent thousands of dollars for her to be able to go to piano lessons and we drove her to her choir practices but not all families have these resources so should other students then miss out on certain opportunities just because they didn't also have those same resources we have to do better in education and so even though we're not talking about funding we are definitely going to need to take a look at our programs and our structures in our schools that allow for some
016students thank you dr stop thank you thank you thank you thank you next questions get a breathe get a breeze the next question how familiar are you with the work of the reading consortium and what is your opinion about the potential redistricting specifically for the students in the city of wilmington dr stock you will go first on this i just want to correct you i am not a doctor um i do have two masters so that's okay that's okay i just didn't want people to say oh my gosh you know uh so um so i am familiar with the uh reading consortium and i have looked into actually their their redistricting proposals and um the first i know that there are different um proposals to whether to go to one large school district or whether
017to go to two or three school districts keep christina kind of out of the redistricting um whatever it is that we decide to do we need to have different stakeholders really at the table to talk about what is really going to be best we have to take into account what is this going to do as far as personnel how would we shift people who would they work for there's going to be a lot of logistics that take place here when um you know for this registers game purpose and um and the reality is that we have to remember our number one priority which is our students so we need to take a look at what each district can offer for the students in wilmington and the reality is is that we have to take a
018look at which resources are available in order to help these students also have an equal playing field whether that be both in the curriculum whether that be both in our efforts to recruit and retain teachers and faculty of color or whether that be in making effort to bring the schools to the community as opposed to expecting the community to always have to try to find a way to get into the schools so there's actually a lot of things that we can do but we have to understand who who our parents are who our community is and the reality is all it takes is just saying to them what is it that we can do better for you when i had a conversation with superintendent greene of the red clay consolidated school district that was one
019of his approaches that he likes to take instead of saying this is what we want to do for you say to somebody what can i do for you thank you mr stop and i'm gonna get this one right dr hetler two minutes thank you um well i understand why people are talking about uh the benefits of redistricting um but i'm not actually in favor of it i feel like even within our districts already there's so much variety as we extend between concord high school and ps dupont middle school i think adding more schools in there would just add extra variability that we'd have to deal with red clay has even greater socioeconomic variability than brandywine school district so certainly combining those two would would lead to further challenges of having to to cater to different
020needs in different schools so i'm really not in favor of it i think we have a challenge enough with our 16 schools in the brandywine school district that um combining would not i mean i understand people are talking about doing it to save money on administration but i think um maybe there are other ways of saving money if that's what our concern is by uh decreasing uh the number of administrators within our own district as opposed to um combining with a different district and and i uh also have heard the concerns that um the property values have not been reassessed between say for example the city of wilmington and the suburbs and that there can be some discrepancy there between our different schools and that that would be a useful um thing to have happen
021i i think it hasn't happened since before i was born i kind of think it was in the 60s or something that they actually did that assessment for the last time and they've just been sort of estimating so i think that would make sense to do and to proportion funds appropriately based on that assessment thank you thank you um al alexis before i ask the next question and i i want to warn the candidates it's a long question um and i will repeat it if you need me to but i noticed that at least one person has their hand raised um among the the viewers um if you have a question or you or you would like to make a comment or question please use the q a box and type it in um because
022we need we only have an hour so we need to keep we need to keep it moving so um this is going to go to dr hitler first one of bsd's strengths is its diversity the district serves 10 500 exceptional students with differing needs learning styles abilities and backgrounds how will you manage the difficult balancing act between listening to the concerns of all stakeholders abiding by federal and state mandates ensuring equity and fairness and meeting the needs of all students to ensure they are set up for success when they leave bsd okay i agree that the variation in both ethnic background and cultural background and even special ed needs or gifted needs is definitely a benefit to brandywine school district i mean that's what the united states is based on that we bring people in
023from all different cultures and all different backgrounds and work together so i think that is a strength definitely um i do think that there are issues of prejudice still nonetheless um i don't think most people do that intentionally i think that it's uh generally something that we do without even realizing it uh of course there are always a couple bad apples who are know what they're doing and are very hostile and and judgmental and and view different groups in different ways but i think that for the most part our teachers and staff and our students um work together and and try to view each other with an open mind one of the ways that i've thought would be helpful for us to uh bring the different or the diversity together is to have um trainings
024done perhaps by teachers from the minority groups whether they're a racial minority or a religious minority or even a um a special education uh diagnosis and to bring those groups to speak with teachers and administrators or even with students and um to have almost like we have set up now but maybe with you know five or ten people up front who can discuss different issues that are currently hot topics um related to race or um these other variables and talk about their own experiences of them so that they can share that thank you dr hitler thank you thank you mrs stock too man do you need me to repeat the very long question if you could i think it was about um how i would go about uh meeting all the 10 000 some students
025needs while still complying to uh federal law and um was there another part of the question yes okay so i'll i'll skip the intro how will you manage the difficult balancing act between listening to the concerns of all stakeholders abiding by federal and state mandates ensuring equity and fairness and meeting the needs of all students to ensure they are set up for success okay well first of all i think that we should address what the uh federal and legal mandates are and that i i know for a fact that meeting the needs of certain students like our english learners has definitely been a challenge and it's one of the things the state is actually trying to rectify now by trying to pass um opportunity funding um as code for for our english learner students specifically
026as well as our students who come from uh lower uh socioeconomic backgrounds um so now here's the thing i'm not going to do this alone i have taken education law of course um and of course i as an educator um i do have to know what those legal ramifications are and what the legal guidelines are however um we do have people in the district who are also hired to make sure that we are that we are having the title one title three or whatever it may be those funding and that we are appropriately using that for our students now as far as listening to people and their needs are well one of the things that i intend to do is actually open up either maybe zoom uh during the pandemic or maybe an outdoor uh
027place where i can meet people and people can come talk to me um like a public forum um when i'm elected and and that way um i would love to talk to you and i would love to hear your stories it's one of the things that when people email me and they write me i say to them tell me your story what has happened where is it that you are getting um this perspective and where these questions are because because of somebody who's an educator who already deals with this in my everyday job i am more than aware of how to actually try to meet those needs one of the things that we can actually do um to get all of our students excited and motivated to learn is to actually adopt what are called
028the social justice standards and these are standards that help thank you mr stock i tell you what you ladies are doing an outstanding job and i don't know these are the times i wish i wasn't a brandywine resident because i don't know how i'm going to vote on may 11. and to the people out there remember may 11th is the voting date all right for the next question in your opinion what are the major issues facing public education today mrs stock your first okay so definitely um the first major issue is inequity this is what i wrote about in my application to become the teacher of the year um is my personal experience with both within equity in the schools and then also what i was seeing as an educator inequity is is not just
029because you're getting discriminated against because uh you might practice a different religion than somebody or that you might have more melanin in your skin um the reality is that that is a part of it but inequity is also um also explaining why certain students have a system that's set up for them to do it's easier for them to do a little bit better and um and where other students it's a much harder battle for them to do as well and so we have to take a look at the systems that we have in place we need to take a look at our discipline practices and the reality is is that prejudice although and since i am an educator i can say that luckily i rarely run into overt prejudice thank goodness but the reality is
030is that sometimes we do have um sometimes we do have some implicit bias whether that be for students who come from a different culture different religion who speak a language other than english that we all have this bias so what is happening um in terms of our bias as educators in terms of the systems that we've set up as far as discipline because we know for a fact it is not as if certain students behave worse than other groups of students so we need to take a look at what we've done here as educators and we need to ask ourselves some really hard questions the other important issue that i feel very passionately about is something that is teacher shortage because the reality is is that our critical need in different areas of where we
031need teachers for different um certified areas is almost nearly every single one of them including a regular english team thank you mr stock thank you dr hitler thank you well um repeat the question for me again so i make sure i get it right in your opinion in your opinion what are the major issues facing public education today um yeah i mean we've sort of touched on a lot of these before i mean obviously one is the covid uh and coping with that and figuring out how to safely get back into school um both for students who want to be in the classroom and then if we have students who are still uncomfortable being in the classroom um and what i'm proposing for that is to have two different groups of teachers to teach those
032two different groups of students um that way teachers and students won't be stuck in the position that they're in now where teachers are having to teach half of like give half of their attention to their kids in the room and the other half to the computer so that would be one one issue um another issue will be uh how we're gonna uh bring ourselves up out of this learning slump that we've gone through in the past year which again we've mentioned briefly the uh summer programs that the delaware board of education is considering um and exactly how they're going to work out um another uh concern i have is poor uh test scores and admittedly i'm not a big fan of the smarter balanced testing to start with so it's not the greatest measure of
033how our schools are doing um but to be able to work on improving test scores and finding a better way of measuring um how kids are doing that's more um indicative of how future success um the even the gpa is more indicative of future success than smarter balance so that's that's one of the concerns i have that and the common core testing which as i said before limits teachers and um how much uh variety and um creativity they can bring into the classroom um and i i think that teachers would do a better job and students would do a better job if there were there weren't so many restrictions on the teaching thank you dr hatler thank you thank you mrs alexis would you like to do the next question well it appears that we
034have a lot of questions being submitted um in the q a so i would like to defer to reverend perry um to maybe ask a few of those um we want to make sure we address as much as possible we have 31 30 minutes left it just switched um so we want to get through as much as possible so i will defer to reverend perry at this time okay first question we expect a lot of our teachers and it has been hard and often discouraging often a discouraging year for them as well as for our families burnout is contributing to teacher loss at an increasing rate what are your ideas around combating this problem so teacher shortage does not spiral out of control and affect class size and quality education for kids this will be
035dr hetler be your question first um well first of all considering the fact that it is uh teacher appreciation week i just want to say that i am very appreciative for both of the teachers of both of my kids um this has been a very trying and difficult year we've all had to adjust multiple times to different scenarios and i'm really grateful for my daughter's teachers at ps dupont and the ways they've gone out of their way to help her catch up with uh her schoolwork um and like mrs harwood and mrs kadama have been wonderful in helping her and then uh also mr harley he's brand new to our district and yet he's her choir teacher and yet he has been so uh responsive to how the kids are feeling um asking them how
036their you know how their week has been how their days have been and just making it almost like a mental health time in addition to singing time so that's been so helpful for her and my son is a junior so of course that's like one of the most important years in terms of preparing for college and his teachers have been amazing and he wants to go into art and they've been so helpful in pointing him in the right direction especially his his art teachers have been at brandywine high school um just giving him guidance as to what schools would be appropriate for him and what classes to take next year and where and when to apply and making a portfolio for him so they've just gone out of their way so i want to thank
037them for that and again i think part of what would make it more pleasant for them would to be to have more of the freedom and not be so uh constrained by the the common core standards um and and also not be so restricted by the amount of time the kids spend on smarter balance testing thank you dr hetler mr stop hi tanya thank you so much i know that uh that teachers really appreciate parental support so thank you so much for that um yeah absolutely i'm going to tell you as a teacher who has taught during the pandemic and has had the honor of representing our profession this year it has been really a a very trying year very difficult um part of what has made it very difficult is that a lot of
038things were asked of us this year and um it was uh we rose to the occasion we really did we learned how to zoom and room and zoom and room more and and and everything else that we did um you know but the reality is is that when you talk to teachers about what they were missing it was the ability to feel seen and heard and the ability to uh to have something given to us and say well this is kind of what we're thinking tell us how that's going to work we would have loved to have been able to have had some of that input there and so i think that is going to be one of the things that i do as a school board member because our teachers are so valuable and
039because uh teacher burnout especially from this year i really worry what are we going to do if we lose our best teachers and i can tell you that some of the best teachers in my building have told me they don't want to come back because of how difficult this year is this is on us this is not on them we have created a system in which teachers do not feel valued and they don't feel that they're in situations where they can actually grow so we need to be a school district where where teachers say you know what i don't want to go to pennsylvania i don't want to go down south i want to work for the brandywine school district and for the teachers that we have here let's give them an opportunity to be
040the stakeholders that they are because nobody knows our students better than the parents and the teachers and the people who know our students best and their academic needs are the teachers so let's treat them like the professionals that they are and let's thank you stock you ladies are doing a wonderful job wonderful job reverend perry next question yes sir next question what are your thoughts on the critical race theory in the 1619 project and should this be part of the of the bsd curriculum okay so uh my understanding of the critical race theory is that it is a law theory in which you are looking at laws and theories much like you can often look at theories in critiques in literature or in whatever school academic school that you have now critical race theory however
041is interesting because it does tie the laws and perhaps racist laws um that have been passed in in the past um for example the gi bill um why was it that even though we had um african-american soldiers um fight in the war why was it that they were denied um the ability to be able to have um every all of the benefits from the gi bills well you see that has that has an effect on what happens today because the number one ability to give wealth to your children is your house and if you are redlined in in certain neighborhoods and you're not able to have a mortgage you can't buy a house you cannot gain wealth and you cannot pass that down to your children this is part of what makes um society um
042unequal um not because people don't want those same opportunities but because those opportunities have been taken away so as well as um the pro 1619 project this is another uh way of looking at history and understanding okay what are the historical ties from slavery and the and and how was america uh framed um with um black americans and how does that affect how we see what's happening today these are important and critical questions and it's one of the things that if a teacher were to choose to talk about these things i believe it is helping their helping the students ask critical questions that hopefully would lead to some action whether it's going to be the complete curriculum maybe not necessarily thank you stock dr hitler um so the 1619 project was written by a journalist
043for the new york times and it was actually her opinion um and her perspective on one view of uh the united states and um it it posited the idea of what if the united states were founded in 1619 as opposed to 1776 which is what we normally would celebrate and um it was uh saying that the united states was founded on the basis of racism and that why we fought the revolutionary war was to continue racism in the united states several historians from ivy league schools have looked at this and found that what's said in there is opinion it's not actually factual so i think if the 1619 project is presented in that way as someone's opinion um and uh perhaps even the way someone can feel due to racism in the country that is
044one thing but if it's presented as a factual um history then that would be inaccurate um and critical race theory uh one of the uh ideas in that is that the racism of the past can be um made up for if we and flip-flop it and then we're racist toward those who were racist and i really don't believe that flip-flopping it is going to help i i think martin luther king jr would would not be happy with the idea that we should um treat uh people with a certain color skin better or worse than other people thank you dr reverend perry next question yes um if you could create a perfect k-12 step ladder for kids what will you change about the current educational curriculum dr hetler this question goes to you if i could
045create a perfect k through 12 ladder what would i change well i i know that uh studies have found that um well this is before k i guess um that any kind of a preschool is helpful for preparing kids for kindergarten but that would be before k um i i don't know i guess maybe a different uh i think we do need obviously standardized testing but perhaps um one that is uh better than common core i know some of the problems with common core are that it um it does tend to have a racist component to it that it's it's i mean it's being used throughout the country and yet it's not very i mean no one uh standardized test is gonna work throughout this whole country it's too too different in different areas and
046people are different and situations are different so perhaps a better sort of standardized curriculum and testing to help kids be placed more appropriately for the following year um i know one struggle that my daughter had before she switched over to the gifted program was that she because the teacher had so many students with so many varying abilities and and challenges my daughter was sort of put in a position of having to tutor the other students they would rank the kids based on their reading level and so she would end up paired with the child in the class with the lowest reading level and then her job was to basically tutor them because the teacher was so overwhelmed with all of these students in the class so in some way to um have fewer students or
047less variability so that the teacher doesn't have to cater in that large way thank you dr hatler mr stock question to you yes actually so the reality is is that it does actually start before kindergarten and the reality is is that if we can get students to grade level reading by the time that they are in third grade their indicator for academic success and that therefore life success is so much more multiplied so we have to put more resources into smaller classrooms free preschool and opportunities to equalize the playing field in the brandywine school district we have one free uh preschool program but what about all the families that cannot that cannot afford to pay for preschool like some of the families here in bsd so is it is it right that some students come
048into kindergarten already more ready to read and other students um are not and so we really do have to focus on on preschool to begin with and then in the early elementary we need to lower the numbers of students in the classes so that we can put more time and attention in getting our students of grade level reading and reading it's actually one of the things that worked for my daughter was that um she was at a private school from kindergarten to first grade and because of some bullying issues and she also wasn't able to read we ended up having her go to um to hanby for her second grade year and because of her teacher sandy meredith and because of the administrators there my daughter flourished and not only could she read by the
049end of her second grade year she was reading at several grade levels um later and so we need to put more supports there but we also need to take a hard look at our curriculum and our systems and ask ourselves why is it that some students it is easier for them to succeed why are some students still coming to class this year why are some students doing this why are other students off the grid this year what have we done in the past to not engage them in school it starts with curriculum it starts with leadership it starts with teachers thank you mr stock reverend perry yes are there any issues with the district calendar that you would address or change is this for me this is for you all right absolutely so yes actually
050there is one issue um so one of the things that i learned um while speaking to different community members is when i met with other with muslim leaders of the community one of the things that they expressed to me is they had some three simple asks that i felt like were something that i think that we could have made accommodations for those students one of them was about the calendar so of course students can miss school um for different reasons however other religions like the christian religion and the jewish religion we already take those days off of the uh school calendar and it's one of the things that they have asked for is can we take a look at this calendar issue and because i thought this was so important whether i'm on the school
051board or not is something that i've already uh given to the leadership of bsd and the leadership at red clay and i know for a fact that my leadership in red clay is already meeting with them to take a look at their asks to help equalize um and to help them feel more welcome in the schools personally as a teacher um i think that students and teachers are motive more motivated at the beginning of the year and so i would like to see just personally um i would like to see the calendar actually move up in august and end a little bit earlier but i just think that's taking advantage of when students and when people are most motivated and uh and soon after spring break the motivation level really does go down and we
052do see that a lot um but the reality is that as a school board member it wouldn't just be up to me these calendar issues it is about getting stakeholders to the table and asking them what is it that you'd like to see in the calendar issue now you hear the kim stock opinion about what i'd like to see about the calendar but just because i want to move it up earlier doesn't mean that's what makes the most sense for bsd so let's get people together let's get some parents let's get some students together let's get some educators together and let's get our school district administrative registration together and let's ask them thank you mr stock dr hetler sure um i would say i mean there's lots of different ways to to go with this
053question and and one of them would be um extending this school year some people have asked me how i would feel about the kids going uh into the summer more not just this year because of covid but just generally adding several more days to the school year and well kind of goes along with what kim said that i think adding more days is just going to be burnout that the kids can only handle so much and teachers too can only handle so much and it might just end up being filler time adding extra days so i wouldn't recommend that and plus i think summer is so important for kids to um you know have an opportunity to you know relax and go to the pool um read hopefully although we don't do enough of that
054anymore um so i really wouldn't get rid of uh the summer break or extend the school year into the summer um i know we also had a trimester uh we tried that for a little bit at one of the schools and that didn't seem to be beneficial in any way if we moved the school year forward i my guess is we would just burn out earlier so i'm not sure that it matters exactly when that is during the course of the year you know starting earlier isn't going to make much of a difference i do i do like when we start after memorial day because um otherwise we start we go for two or three days and then we're gone and then we come back so i think it makes more sense to start for
055real um after the holiday um so yeah i i think yeah motivation is already starting to wane now so adding a couple more weeks would certainly not benefit anyone thank you dr hetler perry next question if i if i may interject just so just keeping an eye on the time um we do have a hard stop at seven yes um so uh it looks like we probably have time for maybe one more or two more questions excuse me and then some closing statements from our candidates um so i just wanted to make everyone aware of the time it does also appear that some of the questions are directed at one candidate or the other we would encourage you to reach out directly to a candidate if you have a specific question for that one person
056um in this forum we do want both participants to be able to answer the questions posed so um we are going to definitely not get to all the questions so if you would like to follow up with the candidates um perhaps they can provide an email address for us at the end with that i'll turn it back over to uh to reverend perry excuse me what in your opinion please name one thing that you feel is the best thing about the brandywine school district and one area of improvement and how would you continue to support what you feel is the best thing and what how would you address the area of improvement dr hetler that question goes to you first i think that the best thing about the brandywine school district is that we're sort
057of a big family um it has something to do with where we live and the fact that everybody kind of knows everybody um but one year the year i don't remember which year was but i was at target the day before school started and it was the day when we had a hurricane coming and dr holiday canceled school for the first day so all of these moms were in target and all of a sudden all of our phones went off and we all got our message that there's no school tomorrow and it was almost like a big party in target that we all were in the same situation and you know we we talked to each other about it and i think that's a great thing about the district and i think the fact that
058there is so much variability within students and families and even teachers i think that is a bonus i think that is a great thing that's part of like i said what makes the united states great and it makes brandywine great um what i would improve i guess i'm going to go again to the test scores that i'm concerned that um we need to do something if there's another way to measure kids learning other than the test scores i'm good with that uh i'm not tied to those i just feel like we're struggling with getting kids and not just in the brandywine school district but throughout delaware and throughout the united states we're just not doing as well as we have in the past we we used to lead in our education and academics and now
059other countries developed countries are are bypassing us so that we're sort of in the middle of the pack now um so i'm not exactly sure how to change that but i think that is the biggest struggle the biggest problem for our school and the whole country thank you dr hetler mrs stock yes so uh the the best thing in my opinion about the brandywine school district is our students our students are funny they're thoughtful they're inquisitive they ask critical questions and you should see our teenagers if you haven't yet our teenagers are advocates they advocate for themselves they advocate for others they teach me how to be a better person and honestly um that's one of the reasons why i'm advocating for both a a student advisory committee to the district leadership as well as
060a student board member because i believe in our students so much and i believe that it's time for our students to actually be able to take more of a leadership role in our school district now what do i think could be improved in our school district the number one thing is access to programs and opportunities we do have some safeguards in place we do have the avid program and if you haven't checked out the avid program i'm going to invite you to do that because that's super exciting both in my school as well as in the brandywine school district so we also have other programs in which students with different learning needs can also be part of take for example the program that uh my oldest daughter was in with gifted services but my question
061for you is that i know that it is a non-verbal test that is given um in order to um to assess whether or not the student is is gifted i guess if you will in the academic sense um however are the directions always given in english or are they often given also given in another language in the home language that the child speaks because most of the students that i teach only spoke one language before they entered school and it wasn't english and i can tell you my students are gifted in many ways and so is bsd so we have to take a look at what are we going to help those students be part of that thank you mr stock at this time i would like to ask miss andreanopoulos if she would talk
062tell the voting places for people to go to on may 11th before we do our clinton statements i i would be happy to do that um reverend perry did we want to try to squeeze in one more quick question yes if possible because the brandywine school district services varying demographics what will you do to cultivate an inclusive environment particularly students who are transgendered non-binary or artistic for example that question go to mr stock first yes definitely well one of the things that i have learned from my students is to use my pronouns and that's not something that i would have known if it wasn't for my students so what does that do it helps to foster a safe environment it signals for the students that i'm a safe person that i'm somebody that they can
063talk to if need be and i'm also somebody that although i might make mistakes that i'm there to learn and i've learned i'm there to learn how to be better one of the things about our students who are transgender is that we do need to create safe policies for them however we need to go beyond just being safe for them we need to be able to celebrate the joy we need to celebrate their joy and we need to celebrate um and make them feel like we're not just here just to protect them we're here to we're here to love them like we're here to love all of our students so things like uh bathrooms for transgender students um if we are if we're just telling students that they just have to go to the nurse's
064um bathroom which unfortunately is the case in many schools um it actually i've heard from students that actually makes them feel terrible to have to do that and so as a result some of the students have told me that they won't even go to the bathroom all day long because they have nowhere to go we can't allow this to continue to happen we need to have gender-neutral bathrooms or we need to allow students to use the restrooms of the identity that they identify with it's not a big deal they are girls they are boys it is truly that simple and if we want to know how to better serve them let's hear from their families let's hear from their students and let's ask them what can we do to make you feel like you're part
065of this school and what are we doing that's making you feel like you're not part of the school and i think it really starts there honestly with with a lot of the issues that we have and that just happens to be one of them that i've learned a lot from my families and from my students thank you scott dr etler all right um so of course i believe that transgendered students should be treated with the same kindness and decency and respect as any other student i think that it's great if schools can have a unisex bathroom i know that lots of stores have been able to do that however they have more money than districts do and also have more space so we are limited in that way uh at least for now um so
066i think the next best option as kim said is the nurse's bathroom and admittedly it's not perfect people talk about how transgendered students when they use the nurse's bathroom the embarrassment of that can cause them to commit suicide first i would say i don't think that that is the biggest issue in a transgender person's struggle i mean there's lots of ways in which kids can be horrible and cruel to each other um in person or uh in social media and um and actually lots of kids have anxiety using the bathroom anyway regarding not who are not transgendered i know that that's a big issue for lots of children and like kim said they will you know hold it all day long and actually cause themselves physical health problems um so i would say that part
067of the issue with transgendered students needs to be related to our bullying policy and specifically um i'm guessing that a lot of the the unkind words may be occurring on social media and that needs to be in our con our code of conduct that uh unkind insulting cruel words are not acceptable in the brandywine school district thank you dr heckler um okay thanks to our candidates you both have one minute left to give out any information get your last minute votes get your last minute everything and dr hitler since mr stock went first at the beginning we would like for you to go i'd like to go first now closing remarks thank you okay so i i just want to thank uh everyone at the brandywine school district parent and citizen advisory committee for organizing
068this forum and giving me the opportunity to speak to you tonight and tell you a little bit about myself i believe that my education and experience in psychology research and teaching will be a benefit to the brandywine school district in determining the best ways to improve the academic performance well-being and future of all of our students regardless of their ethnicity race socioeconomic status or disability i want to return our students to school full time in the fall and also cater to those who are still concerned about covid by having two separate groups of teachers and if you want to learn more about me you can go to my webpage at www.tonyathedoc.com and i'll put it in the chat for you thank you dr hetler mr stop closing remarks hi everybody um by now you know
069a little bit about me you do know that i am a parent um and that's a job that i take really seriously but from my qualifications for this particular job you should also know by now that i am a lifelong educator i am so passionate about education because our students are the only thing that matters and that we should all of our policies that we adopt and every decision that we make we need to think about what is going to be best for our students and a lot of times sometimes to know and understand those clarifications is often to ask the stakeholders to ask those students it's been said that sometimes that because i'm a teacher that i'm always going to side with the teacher union as if i have always sided with the teacher
070union since 1997 when i began my education career i would like you to go to kimstockteacher.com to learn more about me you'll see videos and articles and you will see in action what i can do for the brandywine school district thank you mr scott i'd like to take this time to thank our candidates and our audience this evening please remember to vote may the 11th tuesday details are on our bsd website district um headlines and features if you um look on the website it'll tell you where to go to vote thank you for this evening signing off and remember better skills better pay thank you thank you very much for having us thank you so much for your time it looks as though reverend perry did put the email addresses of all three candidates in
071the chat so um we will keep this going even though detv had to leave us at seven we'll keep this up for a minute in case any of the participants want to um write those down or screenshot those um also i know there were many many questions we didn't get to so for those who um did participate and submit a question email is going to be the best way to go now um because this will be the last form that we are hosting i don't know if there are any more in the next week but um if you if you um have a question that did not get addressed please feel free to email the candidates i hope i'm not speaking out of turn there um for the candidates fine okay thank you so much
072and um just everybody thank you stay safe and uh have a great night thank you good night and i should say thank you to my co-hosts reverend perry and mr loss thank you you guys did a great job thank you thank you thank you