001[Music] [Music] like to call this meeting to order please stand for the pledge of allegiance one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all mr mccousland will you please call roll this is spice yeah mr grisback here this is hoppy here mrs janicek here mr mcgregor here mr modrak dear mr scalzo here mrs turner here mr christensen here all nine members present thank you i need a motion to adopt the agenda for business items second second motion was uh made by his advice and seconded by mrs turner voting is open i'd like a motion to approve the minutes from the uh last meeting so moved second motion was made by miss turner seconded by mr gregory oh i'm sorry i just heard something on my left i'm sorry i didn't catch who made
002the motions uh miss hoppy thank you [Music] loading is open motion carries thank you i'll announce uh executive sessions we've held in the last month april 12 2022 for personnel other legal matters and to receive information april 19th 2022 for personnel other legal matters and receive information and april 26 2022 for personnel other legal matters and to receive information do we have reports from student government he's here student government report today okay fantastic hello all right cool um good evening everyone uh it's a pleasure to be here again uh so as it stands right now we're at the calm before the storm and the storm that is uh staff appreciation week and ap tests not looking forward to them but a little bit more about staff appreciation all of sga is involved with this there
003are multiple committees planning out multiple facets of the event and so we are really working hard to make sure that all teachers bus drivers janitorial staff anyone just uh better the learning experience and that at the proper [Music] i could re i think my mic is cutting out but i'll just find there you go right all right um so as i was saying there are any high school teachers here right now we have an awesome week ahead planned for all of you so we're looking forward to that another thing was we recently went to william penn elementary to read to all the elementary school classes and we had a fun time there obviously i also went to william penn when i was in elementary school so it was awesome to just go back and see
004you know how things have changed how it hasn't and it's really good because we also promote literacy and just reading because those are awesome things and it's really important for young children to read and read often one more exciting thing is sga is funding a charity project that is being done by the sewing classes in the high school so they're collecting bars of soap to donate to local food banks shelters social services agencies and veterans clinics as we all know unemployment rates skyrocketed due to the pandemic so families weren't often able to buy the necessities like bar soap for example so with this money that sga is providing the sewing classes will be able to donate over more than 500 bars of soap to families who really need it and they are also knitting soap
005holders and temporary rags to complement the soap bars being distributed so that's all i have thank you thank you is there a pto pta report yes okay dawn can you hear me yes hi um good evening my name is dawn hughes i am a the pto council co-president and um some things happening around the district at abraham lincoln elementary elementary kindergartners teddy griffis and anna schubert melnick second grader jacob anderson joined third grader hazel camera as finalists for this year's wqed writers challenge the theme this year was write my future and students were encouraged to write about how they see themselves in the future the stories were published in lincoln's very own publishing center lincoln elementary submitted 37 stories from students in grades k through 3 to the contest a special thanks to mrs d
006who makes all the magic happen first grade teacher dawn dowds finished her afternoon book club their latest story was entitled someday students played a game where they had to answer questions about themselves they dressed up and brought in props and shared what they wanted to be when they grew up everything wrapped up with playing career bingo special thanks to mrs dowds who organized this book club over at ben franklin they're gearing up for the arts and science fair that's being held this evening the month of may is busy with end of year activities fourth grade activities and spirit nights upcoming they have olympic day fourth grade party and the fourth grade band and string concerts the recent events the spring fling dance and the saris candy fundraiser were great successes and their final pto meeting
007will be held on wednesday may 4th at 6 00 pm at george washington elementary um they just held the wii run trail event last week along with ben franklin and it was a great night for all and they are currently running a bundt cake sale william penn elementary had their has their talent showcase coming up on may 20th lots of students are excited about signing up to share their talents or volunteer a stage help it will be a great event for penn students and their families they also have the long-awaited career exploration fair assembly and event on may 24th and 25th students will enjoy an assembly a college trade school spirit day a career dress-up day and the career fair itself students will get to learn about and explore many career options from hardworking people
008right here in our community over at neil armstrong elementary they're looking forward to their spring events which include the spring fling and fun days to date they have 185 students registered registered for the spring fling field trips have resumed and the pto is happy to support these educational trips the staff appreciation committee is diligent working on uh events to celebrate the hard work and dedication of the staff at neil armstrong and lastly independence middle school has been busy preparing for the end of the year and move up day festivities thank you very much thank you dawn solicitor report i do not have a report this month mr christensen thank you thank you any updates on committee reports from the board i just wanted to let everybody know i believe the board got an email about
009the um arbor day which is friday at millennium park i believe 42 elementary students from lincoln will our kindergartners will be participating and then bring them back in 10 years to see how much they and the trees have grown and is being brought to you by the with the municipality also so any of them can attend i believe it starts at 10 a.m yeah thank you i believe we'll be there with our shovels too yeah okay any other committee reports no uh superintendents report thank you good evening everyone i'll start with the recognition of the two retirees on the agenda for your approval tonight william renegar started with bethel park school district in september of 2012 as a substitute custodian in march of 2013 he was promoted to head custodian and he is currently in
010that position at ims from which he will retire at the end of june and mark graham in november of 2013 mark began his employment as a substitute bus driver he was in that position until february of 2014 when he was made a full-time bus driver and he's been driving ever since mark retires uh from his bus driving position in june of 2022. oh where's mark oh there he is congratulations thank you [Applause] i'm gonna turn the mic over to mr crummy who has his five big things okay thanks everyone thanks for uh coming we're gonna present uh five big things we're gonna go back to number one here and we do this every month for uh people who are uninitiated and it's something we're always just talking about some of the best things happening at
011bethel park of course there are always many more than five things and it's always difficult to whittle it down one of the first big things that happened this month was kdka radio featured bethel park as part of its hometown tour and the eight o'clock hour was dedicated to bethel park some of the guests included superintendent walsh high school principal uh mr joe vulani our state championship baseball coach patrick zender and our wpial softball coach heather simplescott and also juniors addison hill and ava blatz did an amazing job advocating for the best buddies walk which happened this past weekend and they were on it so that was really cool uh the uh host for kdka larry richard and kevin battle they couldn't have been more gracious and more patient with us and they were just wonderful
012hosts so it was a great experience and also uh maw and paws country kitchen they were wonderful hosts as well so thank you to them another big story for this month is something that came to my attention uh last month and that is we have a young lady named lily puskar who's really a lovely young lady and she's also the lone girl in the mechatronics program at western area career and technology center in fact she's the first girl to take the class since uh veteran teacher morgan mitchell began teaching it when he called several years ago he was not giving up his age mechatronics in case you're wondering it comes from combining the words mechanical and electronics although it also includes computer controls mechatronics integrates principles from four engineering disciplines electrical mechanical computer and industrial
013and if you're wondering what that means it could be anything from like a conveyor belt a garage door even like household items like alexa and uh things like in siri whatever your device uh eavesdropping device of choices we also have um we have i just want to remind everyone that kennywood picnic day bethel park day is june 17th discounted tickets are 29.99 and will be on sale from 4 to 7 p.m on thursday may 12th in the high school's main lobby tickets will not be available through the district at any other time and they can also be purchased online using bethel park's promotional code bethel park so hopefully we'll see everyone on the racer april is also as you know autism awareness and acceptance month we've celebrated it with a number of different programs here
014at bethel park and on friday i'd like to congratulate mr mensch and his department as well as the interact club for uh partnering and coming along with amy hart i can't leave her out to stage a family sensory friendly movie night they watched in kanto and more than 100 people from various schools uh came out to do it and it was a lot of fun for the kids to have a lot of activities to include a group that often uh struggles to find inclusion so it was something that we were very proud of and it was a wonderful evening and we hope that it's the start of many more events of its kind also be remiss if i didn't recognize that bethel park school district has been honored with the best communities for music education
015that designation comes from the namm foundation for its outstanding commitment to music education the qualified members of the music department had to answer a number of very detailed questions about the program and the responses were verified through school officials and then reviewed by the music research institute at the university of kansas this is a very prestigious honor and it's something we're very proud of and it really if anyone who's familiar with our music department isn't necessarily surprised by it but we're also still it's always nice to recognize such a district strength also i'm going to sneak in the sixth one here jeff nell received the pmeas district one citation of excellence at their state conference in the poconos earlier this month and that's a really big deal and it's also by all accounts very well
016deserved because jeff nell is by all accounts an outstanding administrator and an even better outstanding music teacher and an even better human being so that's all i have for you those are our five big things thank you mr cromie i'm also going to turn the mic over to our curriculum leadership for your bright spots for april thank you very much for having us this evening tonight we're going to talk about some bright spots in bethel park the first bright spots are going to focus on the english language arts department our first bright spot is that we are going to be offering a pilot into literature for the sixth seventh and eighth grade ela in reading classrooms and i have miss kim pepper on the line and she's going to tell you a little bit about
017the process of deciding upon into literature for this pilot miss pepper are you there yes i am can you hear me yes we can take it away thank you mrs wells so we're excited um in grades six through eight we currently have a program called hmh collections and that is coming to an end at the end of this current school year and so we are looking to pilot and we'll be getting additional information on may 17th are in service day we'll receive training on hmh's new program called excuse me called into literature and we had looked through uh several programs and this one will hopefully be the piece that will connect our language arts and reading teachers uh to connect them and you know service the reading and language arts programs and if the pilot
018is successful hopefully we would continue on with that for an additional six years does anyone have any particular questions or any questions no okay thank you miss pepper thank you and our next bright spot is the summer of learning 2022 program we will be bringing back the summer of learning for students currently in grades k to 8. the summer of learning will take place june 13th through the 30th the times and the dates will vary depending upon the age of your student the summer of learning will be in person held at memorial for the elementary and neil armstrong for the students in grades five through eight and we will be focusing on the english language arts and math subjects and more information will be coming from principles soon i'm now going to pass over the
019mic to my colleague miss mandy figlioli hi good evening everyone i think what's unique about ms wells and i as positions are that we really have an opportunity to simultaneously learn and lead and i had a few extraordinary opportunities within the last few months both within the district and with some local educators that i wanted to share i really want to give a big shout out to the teachers at lincoln elementary specifically the teachers that are listed there mr jay johnson the principal rose d gregorio ist teacher dawn dowds grade one missy dewey and sarah liberto grade two kim de bald grade three and chris strotz grade four they uh led by miss beth kavala who was an administrative intern who worked with mr johnson also spent some time with mr minch she got these
020teachers together on a voluntary basis and they started meeting together on wednesday mornings and the question that they were looking at was how do we use the map growth data that our students are taking and provide opportunities not just for an intervention for students that are struggling but also students who need enrichment so i was very grateful this was all specifically based on math and they invited me to attend so the first six weeks i was able to participate with with that core group of teachers and each teacher took the lead once a month i mean once a week sorry and shared what they were doing in their classroom and so it really gave me a close look at the my math curriculum the exact path curriculum that they were using also they were using
021a variety of different fluency tools for technology so it was a really great opportunity for me to get my boots on the ground and see what's happening with math in the elementary schools well when this the week the final week came and they had all done their presentations we didn't want it to end and so they decided that they were then going to take it back to their grade levels and so grade by grade they each then met with their grade level team and shared what they learned and it was just really powerful to see the teachers taking the lead of their own professional learning and i learned a lot by by working with them and i was really grateful to be a part of it the second opportunity i had was with the allegheny
022intermediate unit and they have something that's called the math coaches network and i really feel as an administrator that my role is one of a coach and that the gentleman featured there is sam shane he felt he facilitated these workshops he was such an energetic and knowledgeable man and we spent two days march 4th and april 1st doing a lot of math and having a lot of conversation he worked us all day and he really did a great job of facilitating in a way that brought joy to the work and encouraging us to bring curiosity and creativity to math classrooms that you can have those things while also including rigor so it was a really great opportunity for me which then now leads me to how do i share my learning with the rest of
023the staff what i really want to do first is in moving into the end of this school year and into next school year is fostering mathematical mindsets and that's all of us even if you're not a math person i think that's commonly said that we all believe that we can do hard things and that we can do math and that pairs nicely with the growth mindset that we're incorporating with the growth the map growth assessment providing instructional support that just like when you're working with students that's going to vary from teacher to teacher and you want to meet them where they are a lot of teachers bring expertise to the table and we want to make sure that we we capture that knowledge and share it others may need support so we want to make
024sure that we provide that in a customized way promoting collaboration like i said what i saw with the lincoln teachers was so powerful and i really think that that's something that we need to build on um especially considering that we're all going to be working together under the same roof um in in elementary school in in the next you know five three to five years um promoting cl oh sorry fill the toolbox that was what i really gained from working with the lincoln teachers and also from the aiu and we want to find a way to organize those things share those things and make sure that they're easily accessible um so what i intend to do is on may 17th i'm going to offer a math workshop for the teachers and what i'd like to
025do is give them some strategies and tools for teaching math in their classroom and my guess is that a lot of them will bring expertise to share as well but what i want to work look at is a format called math workshop i'll be offering the professional development in that format and also encouraging the teachers to really think about how they utilize their instructional time in math and i'm sure a lot of you are familiar with content standards those are the items that your children have to learn from year to year but there's also something called the standards of mathematical practice and those are the same in grades k through 12. and essentially those are the habits of mind that we want our students to have when they're learning mathematics i know a lot of
026people we get a bad rap for the common core math um it's definitely something that i think is misunderstood at times but what we want to see is like the things that mr shaney felt was doing at aiu we want to bring joy and creativity and curiosity to the classrooms even in mathematics so we want to look at those skills and dispositions of the mathematical mindset look at some routines and procedures that they can use to have a math workshop in their class and then explore the tools and strategies that they can use to support that really deep conceptual learning and those will be the sessions will be differentiated because there are differences in what the teachers would need and what they're addressing in their content so we'll break that into three different groups i'm
027so really excited to have some time to work with the teachers and share what i've learned thank you thank you mrs biglioli mrs wells and mr cromie for your good news and bright spots for this month i have a few more items to share with the board i'll start with the books that i left at your seats tonight when you arrived from the board these were the programs from last weekend's shazda student conference and two of our bethel park students were honored at that conference you'll see them uh listed in the program both annabelle fransman and connor o'neil receive those certificates of recognition for their impr uh their accomplishments as high school students in bethel park uh coincidentally annabelle's at the uh western area career and technical center who are the ones that produced this
028printed book for uh the shazda scholarship event so congratulations to those two i also want to acknowledge that we received notice that madison kowal one of our student teachers or poverty substitute teachers was recognized by the pennsylvania chapter of the national state teachers of the year for an apple award for her successful work substituted in the bethel park schools and also an acknowledgement that april is the month of the military child this is a time to celebrate and recognize military connected students and their families and emphasize the important role they play in the armed forces community and so bethel park salutes honors our military-connected families here in our schools the last piece i had it relates to the handout that i left for the board this is the first of a series of presentations we'll
029give on the strategic planning process in progress we've now had our plan better part of five months and we've had some good progress in each of the six areas identified during the development process i'll focus on just one of them tonight and that would be the curriculum and instruction piece anthony there's it's probably not a very good visual because it's such small print but you can throw it up there if you don't mind yeah yeah step to the meeting could for others in in the audience could we put it on board docs in the public section i think there yeah we should be able to put it in the public sector chef for sure so the curriculum instruction section of the strategic plan had five goals uh the first goal was to ensure a comprehensive
030curriculum map and that process actually has made we made some great progress the board approved a mapping software system a month ago we've met with the developers and our maps are being produced uh right now and we're looking forward to training our staff and our administrators on using that tool to complete the mapping process the second goal is the consistent implementation of our curriculum our interventions our instructional practices as evidenced by our advanced performance on national state assessments a big piece of this would be our elementary curriculum mapping project that's going to be launching in the fall so that we can have curriculum maps taking what's currently in those black dusty binders and classrooms and digitizing that and then being able to modify it at a at an easy way uh easy process so that
031the process is beginning and i'm very much looking forward to the the conversations that occur i want to emphasize that that the curriculum framework that we're using will really require thoughtful consideration by the teachers to map the big ideas the essential questions and the knowledge and skills that we want students to have by virtue of their participation in the class a lot of the work there is still going to be ongoing of course we have five years set ourselves five years to accomplish all of these goals the third one is to improve our special education students performance academic performance particularly on state assessments and to that end we have already started training teachers have received a preliminary training on universal design for learning which is a sort of a pedagogical approach an instructional approach to
032delivering meaningful instruction to all students regardless of their their placement on the academic spectrum and in making sure that they're fully included in the curriculum another piece of this would be data use of you know data savviness the board approved the adoption of the map assessment system last summer we've had two administrations of that assessment one more to go this year and that's providing excellent data for our teachers on decision making for instruction student intervention opportunities etc the fourth goal is specifically regarding ap performance and state assessment performance improvements thanks to the grant from the nimsie foundation the district has provided great ap training for our staff our students have received some supports with ap workshops and we also have plans to continue growing that to our feeder courses so that they can get the
033same benefit of that rigorous instructional practices and the last piece is the goal number five is sort of a standalone goal to ensure that all students will have a steam experience uh more than once a year throughout their 12 years as a student in the school district again there's a lot a lot of work to do there and you'll see on this progress report that we've made some progress with this in five months time but we've given ourselves five years to get this to get this completely accomplished i'm grateful that we have a strong administrative team and excellent teachers to help us move all of this stuff forward towards our broader vision of being best in class unless there were questions about the report or anything else i'd say that's the end i just want
034to say thank you for putting it together and maybe just a little bit of background for others in the audience here so this i've been on board six years this is the first time we've actually had a strategic plan that we reported on and and mapped out what we want to be in five years what our goals are and then measure our progress against it um this is the first i think it's fantastic this these aren't goals that just the nine of us and a few others put together this came from a series of subcommittees that met over the past year that where where people parents students staff members board members everybody was involved identifying these goals and what are some of the elements of these goals that we felt were critical to our success
035over the next five years and now those became action items for the administration the staff to to work on what dr walsh just presented was the first update because we approved the strategic plan late last year so i've had a few months to put together formulate and and do some activities be behind each one of these goals so as we go through the next you know the rest of the the year every month i believe the the plan is to update another chapter another topic around a strategic plan so we'll get through roughly each of the the primary areas twice we'll do two updates a year roughly so i think it's gonna be a great opportunity for all of you that were you know either reading the strategic plan or a part of building the
036strategic plan to get an update on on the progress we're making behind each one of these things so it's really you know this congratulations i mean great work on on you know putting the the activities documenting the activities coming from the reporting structure but something that's going to be a part of every board meeting going forward or every voting meeting going forward once a month so thank you for sure yeah i think the important part i'll just add this on to further clarify i think the important piece is that we hold ourselves accountable to not just completing these but it actually moves the needle and so part of our reports in that graphic that we couldn't really read up on the screen is you know baseline where we are and where we want to be
037over five years time to move that needle whether it's a measurement of of achievement levels of professional development deliveries etc what we expect to have metrics by which we can measure ourselves on all of these areas right thank you any any other questions on that do you have any other topics that's all i had thank you okay next item on the agenda are public comments so this will be open to any comments related to items on the agenda uh everybody has two minutes to speak and um are we entertaining collins also do we have any call-ins anthony no okay hi jim maine's 34 85 south park road i would like to ask the board to reject the course that's being proposed contributions successes and leaders i had the occasion to be able to look at
038that this week and pulled it off of the internet and it bears a remarkable resemblance to a previous course it was proposed struggle success and leadership through a right to know request last summer i was able to gain a lot of information about the struggle success and leadership in fact during this course of emails it was suggested that they had to be discussed because of its possible relationship to crt while at the same time denying it now these emails were between a group of people including victor deep romprano janet o'rourke james walls jovilani kathleen gentile and ken nagle was also mentioned on there one of the there were six units listed in this previous course and one of them was exploring race ethnicity and prejudice discrimination religion unit 2 was struggles unit 3 was successes
039unit 4 was leaders unit 5 was pittsburgh minority experience unit 6 was moving forward now the most chilling thing about this whole thing is a comment each unit will encompass the following subgroups native americans muslim and arab americans asian americans jewish americans african-americans latino of the largest majority mexican-americans and puerto ricans american women this is classic crt defining groups who are oppressed and then if there's an oppressed group there has to be an oppressor group this is not really where we want to hit with in bethel park i do not believe the other thing i would like to mention very quickly is dr walsh put up there that they want the best best in class education for every student and i would like to make the comment that i think some of the people need
040the advantage of the dogwood charter school not for everybody but there are definitely some people that need it so thank you very much [Applause] good evening my name is mark graham 162 highland road you said that i was to speak on the agenda i did not come here because i you were going to recognize that i was retiring but i would like to address that first and foremost and thank you the board for giving me the opportunity for the last almost 10 years to to transport the kids to and from school it has been a joy of my life to be honest and when i think about june 30th and i think especially the little kids i drive the kids at lincoln i will be saddened when i when i retire i will miss these
041kids one of the greatest joys was when they were able to take their masks off and i could see their smiling faces i had surgery [Applause] i had surgery so i missed the first four months of school i actually had my surgery on the day of school the august 24th so when i came back some of the kids i didn't even know them from here up is all i saw until they anyway so that but i i thank you for the opportunity to serve bethel park in transporting our most precious um commodity our children and um and i will miss that um but i did come here to talk about the what jim just brought up and that is the um i thought this was a meeting about critical race theory so my understanding of
042that is is that kids are going to be taught especially if they're white that they're an oppressor and if they're non-white they're the oppressed i gave 10 years of my life to serve in the military okay i have three honorable discharges i've served with blacks latinos filipinos i would have given my life for any one of them and and i'm sure they would have returned to favor i am a white man and i'm proud of that but i am not a racist and if that's what they're going to be teaching our kids that if you're a white child that you're a racist or you're a white supremacist then i say it shouldn't be taught here in bethel park i don't even know if that's what it is but if it is it shouldn't be taught
043here so that's all i have to say but if it is i will fight against it even as i'm a resident of bethel park and i will fight against anyone who's pushing crt once again thank you for letting me drive the kids to school it was a blessing [Applause] thank you mark and if you know somebody to take your spot please let us know okay because we uh we need more we do have a caller jillian are you there yeah if you'd state your full name and address you'll have two minutes to make your comments go ahead thank you my name is moon bull 3237 postgate drive um i wanted to speak about the staffing changes on the agenda particularly the half-state kindergarten position like george washington that is set to be eliminated um mrs
044christopher lucy was my daughter's kindergarten teacher last school year it was a crazy school year and she just rolled with everything she made my daughter love school and i believe that mrs chris felinsky is the best of bethel park eliminating her position would be realizing many parents greatest fears about the restructuring process that's going on it's also my understanding that eliminating this position at george washington would mean at least 24 students in each kindergarten class next year my son is registered to be in one of those classes so if this position is eliminated he'll have 50 more students than his sister had in her classroom so we may seek out an alternative as ken mangle once reminded the board the pennsylvania state education association recommends kindergarten class size no larger than 18. um you know
045i know there are real challenges ahead to address but as the board contemplates eliminating not one not two not three not four but all five of our beloved neighborhood schools we have to wonder how many other people and experiences our children are set to lose uh that's pretty much it i appreciate everyone's dedication and service but uh i had to speak about mrs christopher lucy tonight thank you thank you [Applause] any other comments from the audience hi i'm deanna ford 1009 millennium drive i'm here as a lincoln elementary parent concerning the plan consolidation of multiple classes throughout the district but specifically my daughter's first grade class at lincoln they currently have four sections of 19 students each and on your agenda today it details the elimination of a first grade position but does not detail
046the addition of a second grade position this would take their class down to three sections of second grade next year resulting in class sizes of 25 or 26. this doesn't factor in the individual needs of students or students who may move into the district in the coming year and as we've seen with the current lincoln fourth grade class which has continued to grow until students in our zone actually had to be turned away from lincoln for fourth grade this year because their teachers have 27 students each i know i don't need to tell you all that smaller class sizes lead to better educational outcomes or that elementary students across the country are delayed because of covet or that our students showed more significant delays in math and science than those in surrounding districts as was
047presented at your meeting in february i know this isn't a new phenomenon and the classes are adjusted yearly as the enrollment changes but i argue this year is different our children are coming off two years of pandemic education and they deserve better they deserve to be a priority i understand that what this comes down to is dollars and cents and i know the money is tight and that the strategic plan is expensive but i'm asking anyway i'm asking you to dig through the budget again find the money to pay for the staff if you can't hire full union positions at least open year-long subpositions and classrooms threatened with high enrollments this can then be re-evaluated on a yearly basis a petition a petition condemning this plan the plan consolidations was circulated last week and generated
048roughly 500 signatures in the first 24 hours how can you all expect to hold yourselves and the teachers accountable to move the needle as you said and advance our children's education without making this investment we have to invest in the current students of bethel park before considering only the future students and i have two of those at home too please don't leave these kids behind protect them their teachers and their educations from slipping even further give them their best opportunity that you can't just succeed [Applause] we have another caller brendan are you on the line yes okay state your full name and address for the record and then you have two minutes to make your comments go ahead my name is brendan mccarthy i live at 101 jordan drive i'm calling in regards to the
049curriculum the addition of the class the minority class i can't understand why this is even a question to give kids this option no one's forcing them to take anything they have the choice if they want to take it we are one of the least diverse school districts around us and i think we can find a way to teach our kids a little bit about the history of this country and some of the atrocities that have gone on um that's the first thing second thing in regards to the the surveys i i really hope we're not just gonna get rid of those i re i really hope we're gonna we're gonna keep those the surveys and figure out you know about bullying figure out about um you know there's a lot of problems going on right
050now with kids and i and i think we should be asking them how they feel in our schools right now and that's all i got to say mike thank you okay i think she was going to but if you go it's my first meeting i'm a noob i'm sorry this is nerve-wracking too it's warm in here my name is samantha lee 5380 library road i'm a bethel park mother of three this is my first in person school board meeting i've watched the broadcast i've signed petitions and things like that but i think it's important to take this next step i've also observed the work of all of you on this board and while i may not agree with every decision i'm extremely thankful for your service to our community i homeschool my children which is
051partially why i haven't been here somewhere along the line i convinced myself that my opinion didn't matter in this conversation and that's not the truth home school families are just as invested in education as anyone else we also pay the same school taxes as our neighbors who utilize the public school system i have a background working with k-12 victims of abuse and i currently manage a co-manage i should say a homeschool center serving a diverse population of families i would like to address actually the school climate surveys i think it's extremely admirable to create an environment that is welcoming and accepting of all and at first glance this survey may seem harmless enough but too often i think seemingly innocuous things lead to more nefarious purposes edison said a good intention with bad approach often
052leads to a poor result this survey has good intentions but i feel like it's flawed in its approach surveys like this come across as nothing more than disingenuous virtue signaling if you want children to feel included stop dividing them these surveys create the very division that they seek to prevent they make students categorize themselves and others into potential victim groups instead of seeing each other as equals how do you empower people to feel valuable when you first force vulnerability and uncertainty on them they search for problems with no real solutions classifying anyone as marginalized only comes from a place of perceived superiority which in my pro in my opinion is a greater problem victim mindset discourages accountability and merit-based accomplishments we should have a responsibility all of us to equip children with the tools necessary
053for life's challenges and we should be doing that by encouraging fortitude to overcome obstacles rather than discouraging them with defeaters to surveys and self-limiting mentalities yeah i'm sorry i'm just asking completely just to wrap up sure sure i'm done fostering gratitude you know just not victimhood let's create more victors not victims i truly hope you reconsider and i thank you for your time [Applause] i'm kim bassetti i live at 3324 forest road and mine is staffing the position changes i agree with everything the lincoln mom said except i'm coming from washington where last year you asked parents to move their kids to william penn voluntarily hired two new teachers and are now eliminating four positions not two that'll be 27 kids in a second grade class we have 62 kids currently enrolled in the third
054grade class where my daughter is and the only position you're adding is a fourth grade position i i'm failing to see how these pos i mean there's a 20-year position in a 17-year position that no longer needed and i don't understand why that is um i personally know the two people they've both had my daughter i couldn't think of two better teachers and that would be what you would want representing the district and they're unceremoniously being cut and i can't see if they're that big a change in enrollment then i don't see it as a staffing problem it's a problem i mean are that many kids moving out of the district that now we can go from 18 to 27. we have 16 and 17 and now those kids will be in classes of 25.
055i mean we're near 30 kids in a class now at washington and the only thing we're doing is splitting up the 62 and fourth grade i mean these kids went through a pandemic these kids that are coming through into fourth grade now are going to be the biggest indicators of the lack of education that they got during that online so i just would like you to reconsider so if if anybody else has questions on on the class size and and those opening and closing positions tonight please you know we want to hear your comments but dr walsh will also when we get to that part of the agenda he'll explain you know that that isn't the full picture what we're voting on tonight we there will be you know other changes as we as we
056you know go through you know middle part of the summer but he'll explain the process and why this particular motion is on tonight but it's not it doesn't represent the entirety of positions we'll be opening either okay any other comments [Music] hi everybody christina headley 5881 irish town road i'm always here talking sorry i just wanted to address the climate survey especially for the high schoolers when it's asking about marginalizing majority struggling learners where do you fit in i think that if we're going to utilize a survey to help with the safety of our kids we need to ask how they're feeling we need to ask how they've struggled through covid how is their learning are they comfortable are they struggling what are the best techniques that they can learn that's what we need in
057school to help them grow and back to last week i think it was when mr scalzo was talking about getting back to basics of reading and math that's what we need if these kids don't have that they don't have anything to build off of the social studies curriculum it's already built into courses we have so why duplicate that for our kids it's i have a high schooler there's honors classes that that like honors chem then there's ap chem which one should she take she should take ap because then she may get college credit but she may not like it so should she take honors it's great that we have selection but in the opportunities that we have first students i think if we make it smaller because then they get more opportunities maybe they could
058take ap or honors camp and the next year instead of taking honors cam then ap cam they can take honors or ap chem and then take a biology class and get a full curriculum that's all different and give them different basis to help decide what they want to do it's just my opinion but i feel we need to give these kids these opportunities they had a hard time through the struggles of covid and that needs to be addressed with their learning needs [Applause] hello um if you'll excuse me while i read off my phone right whatever my name is cece mcnulty i live at 5563 clarion drive i don't usually come here i i'm disgusted that i have to be here i found out that there was a lot of people writing to or calling
059the board about crt or whatever their agenda is and i sent you guys an email and i wanted to read it to make it a part of the public record so people knew where some of us stand i'm writing to you today regarding the agenda items of the school district climate surveys and concerns arising in the community about diversity equity and inclusion the buzz that i've heard is that you've all received many emails from conservatives and republicans and very few from democrats regarding regarding the use of the data included in the surveys the reason being is that there is no democratic agenda in bethel park to force any of you to adopt what this right-wing is calling awoke agenda i didn't have a form letter to cut and paste into an email to send to
060all of you i didn't have a list of talking points to use to shape by email to you i like many of you am exhausted by the fire hose of news which wants to make every issue a conspiracy theory or a war to be waged there's no agenda here we want to live in a safe happy community where everyone has the opportunity to thrive and live their version of the american dream [Music] while most of you were running for school board i did help get you guys elected i did some work locally because that's what democrats do the only person that i didn't support with my boat was gail hoppe but i did i did say to people as i was talking to people in the neighborhoods that she would be an asset to this
061board because she was a mom who raised kids put them through public school and her kids are in the military like mine so she understands that america is more than just lily white bethel park this mob mentality is going to to lead to violence and and i i want the children who are marginalized to be safe but i also want our tax dollars to be safe from lawsuits that will leak what will leave us we need to to be we need to live in the moment and we need to understand that marginalized children and kids who have problems need to be a priority that if they're not something that we should see can i ask you to wrap up it's oh i'm thank you so much thank you very much any other comments any other
062call-ins no let's move on to the uh um my name is marcie yee i live at 5863 wallace avenue um couple things please allow those students who want to take a survey to see if their social emotional and educational needs are being met to do so please avoid overcrowding our elementary classes rooms and do not eliminate those positions they are very much needed and please approve the recommended course contributions success and leaders for all high school grade levels 19 years ago a bethel park principal saw my baby and asked me when did i get her she was the first of countless very well-intentioned kind of people who just assumed that my child was adopted from china because asian people can't be from here learning about people with similar appearances backgrounds and beliefs as yourself is
063beneficial learning about people who do not look the same as you and are from different cultures economical political and economic backgrounds is not just important it is imperative for our young adults to positively flourish within our society my parents and grandparents did not teach me everything i needed to know about grammar science advanced math and history they did not have the recess resources to do so i learned learned those things while in my public school as a parent myself now i do not have the resources to properly teach my children about the different cultures artistic economical political historical economic and social aspects of american minority communities but the bethel park school district does have these resources teaching our children that we are not all the same and teaching them that it is okay to have
064different backgrounds it's okay to have different beliefs and it's okay to have different opinions is empowering our children to listen to learn from and work with others this is a skill that is so desperately needed right now thank you all very much for your time and service to our community and i appreciate all of your opinions too i think everybody is here because they care so that's all thank you thank you [Applause] okay hi i'm michaela i live at 58 63 wallace avenue um and really quick as the minority i'd like to say that being a minority doesn't mean a victim just because i heard that brought up a lot um i recently graduated in 2021 from bethel and as a recent student i'm in favor of the survey just because they're a great way
065for students to express their opinions and it's understandable that not all students would like to take the survey and if that's the case they can just ignore it but i do think it's to the benefit of the students to make decisions and to give their input i'm also in favor of the newly proposed contribution successes and leaders course growing up i have struggled with my biracial identity because throughout my entire bethel park educational experience i haven't seen historical figures that i can resonate with being excluded from the narrative has negatively impacted my development of identity it is so difficult to imagine yourself as being successful when you are not provided with role models not once in history class was there someone's face that i could plug into and find a piece of my own not
066being included in the american narrative has resulted in countless questions from my friends and from bethel park students of where are you from what does this mean are you going to eat my dog and what do you mean you can't speak chinese and i can't blame them for this question because the reality is is that they've never been taught to recognize people who look like me as an american providing students with the opportunity to enroll in this class would help further their education as well as their mindfulness i can only speak on my own experiences but i feel that it is safe to say that other non-white black slash brown or racially diverse people would all feel better represented and have more faith in the possibility of their success at bethel park if they were
067able to recognize themselves in the classroom it's so difficult to look around the room and not see someone who looks like you and it's even more difficult whenever that's being taught in the classroom that people don't look like you where you live thanks [Applause] any other comments not on the phone let's move on to the business uh items of the agenda first up is the consent agenda um mrs hoppy can can you move that but before you do are there any items from this list that people like to see removed from the consent agenda for a separate vote no okay miss happy if you could take that sure section so i propose to move the consent agenda um with how many items oh my god nine 29 items you want me to read all those
068um no i don't think you have to read all of them just move on let's move all 29 items please second second okay motion was made by uh ms hoppy seconded by mr scalzo uh any comments or questions on these before we vote okay voting is open motion carries thank you mr mcgregor personnel okay tonight there are nine or eight points uh here excuse me you have a ratification of the bethel park federation of teachers cba approval of extra duty responsibility program acceptance of resignations appointment of personnel change of assignment approval of staffing changes approval of extended school year program and approval of staffing changes are we taking these one at a time uh yes please any comments or questions you can move item numbers first and i think anthony has a presentation okay we
069should probably move it second i move one second so the motion was made by mr mcgregor and seconded by mr grossberg anthony do you want to as a part of our discussion on this topic do you want to make the presentation yeah absolutely uh thank you for the time uh we're quick we're going to do a summary of the new agreement uh first up is the ratification of the collective bargaining agreement it's a three-year cba and before we all got together we went through the strategic plan process and that was heavy on our minds when we first started to sit down and put a proposal together we knew that we wanted to accomplish a lot of things within the curriculum and instruction and we knew that we had the staff to do that so when
070we sat down to negotiate we thought to ourselves what is going to get us to best in class and we feel with this cba it's it's a start to get us the best in class and that's what we want to accomplish a couple milestones real quick is that we met with the board before we met with the federation in december to kind of get a framework and priorities with the school board and kind of figure out where we want to go we kept this in mind along with the strategic plan come january we are ready to meet with the federation we establish procedures and we also exchanged first proposals from there we met weekly and bi-weekly for four months to go through the negotiations process we also cleaned up the contract there was a lot
071of mouss out there that we incorporated the mouss into the contract and cleaned up a lot of language not only did we focus on curriculum and leadership but we also focused on day-to-day operations we felt that with the day-to-day operations if we were able to settle those it gave the federation staff the opportunity to really shine and do what they have to do in regards to taking us best in class and that's kind of what we focused on we work together on a lot of these items and you'll see the areas with major changes here all the articles are on there i won't go through every single one because we'll be here for another hour so i'll kind of keep this short and sweet but we really wanted to focus on the curriculum piece um
072within the curriculum piece we're adding department facilitators more department facilitators because we felt that you know we can do great things with that we also put a curriculum council together within the curriculum council this is the process where they'll approve review deny any proposals that come across in regards to the curriculum so we're working together with the federation in regards to the curriculum another thing is the vacant season transfers starting next year we really really want to streamline that process when it comes to vacant season transfers a lot of the movements within the five elementary buildings we're trying to streamline that you also see with class size the federation and the district came together to actually decrease the class limited class size at the elementary level so that was another part of the cba that
073we thought working together would really accomplish us to get the best in class so the only thing i i'd like to add is i would like to thank the union negotiating team mr wells and mr har i think while it's not always easy to come together at the table and we have to talk about some difficult things i appreciated the collaboration the willingness to talk through the difficult issues we really kept it professional and i really uh respect what they what they brought and i thought that made the process work even better than many of the places i've been in the past that can get very contentious well we didn't always agree we we did manage to work through those difficult issues so i appreciate their efforts and their time as well absolutely well thank
074you to the whole team negotiating this and i would say that you know for those in the audience you know this we talked dr walsh gave an update on our strategic plan before but here's some other evidence of the value of going through that exercise because we're able as a board and administrative team to identify what are the priorities what based on what we want to accomplish the next five years what's most important for us to focus on through negotiation and i think that it was helpful for us i think that you know where there was negotiation it was from the standpoint of you know getting you know more value from from both sides and so i think that was a fantastic tool you know to be used to help guide us through setting our
075priorities any other comments questions from the board or anthony and doug will you you guys done any of the comments questions from the board good job come over and negotiate my contract [Laughter] so um open up for voting i will abstain due to conflict of interest voting is open motion carries thank you um we do have the contract here if we want to take the time to sign it i know they're here to do as well can we um if it's okay can we just i don't think the rest of our voting meeting should take that long if we could just finish this up and then do that is that okay is that okay with you do you have you won't turn into pumpkins or anything or anything like that okay okay we'll try to
076hurry we'll try to hurry okay okay um mr mcgregor can you uh continue with the rest of these i think we can probably do the next uh seven together okay six okay and what is the approval of extra duty responsibility programs the acceptance of resignations the appointee of personnel the change of assignment the approval of staffing changes and approval of extended school year program your second is that you buff okay motion made by mr mcgregor seconded by um miss fay face sorry can't think and talk the same time voting is open okay to be clear on that did we move items two through seven or two that's correct items two through seven okay just wanna double check thank you motion carries can you move item eight and then um mr walsh is a part of
077the discussion we'll explain okay um agreement what and i just lost it okay approval of staffing changes i move that is your second second so it's moved by mr mcgregor second by uh miss turner mr walsh can you give us a little bit of a kind of explanation regarding the stage of the process they're at right now with the whole opening and closing of positions well this is something that the board has to do on a regular basis throughout the spring and into the early summer in fact the board may recall back in july you opened two more positions as the class size warranted one of the things that we were that's holding up the process really was getting the cba completed because there's some more work we can do with esther's money about class
078size so this tonight's motion is getting us one step closer to completing our staffing assignments for the 22-23 school year but there's going to be more work to do without a doubt we have even finished kindergarten registration yet that dictates a lot numbers are are changing every day so that will be something that comes back up again as the numbers arrive and i think it's also important to note to the board that despite some of the information you're receiving via email no one's losing jobs here everybody's job is protected so i would say as this will be on our agenda for the next probably two months at least revisiting these kinds of things at least two months so i would say if it's something you're concerned about you care about follow it closely continue to
079come to the meetings i'm actually very happy to see so many people here and and we appreciate hearing from all of you so um so yes this this will continue to develop over the next couple months mr can i um the staffing changes as dr walsh said there are no furloughs they may move schools but there are no furloughs [Music] my concern and i will continue to watch to areas that are in high numbers as mr uh putinery explained the school board and the federation came up with a number of 23 students per class that is down from 25 students per class that was negotiated there's several people in the back shaking their head yes we are getting there but unless you want to redistrict before a new elementary center it that's too much in
080me as a parent that's too much of moving my child around they still know the faces that walk into that that building every day um so i would tell you again as dr walsh said in july we added teachers we hired in july the process needs to move but i want to also encourage every parent out there that has a kindergarten child to please register registration for kindergarten is down it is lower than where it was last year at this time so please register your students so we get a true number because i can't make decisions off of ifs we have to make sure that we all engage in the process correctly here this is a time for the board to be speaking and asking any questions on the motion that's on the floor and
081not for the public there'll be additional public comments at the end at the end you can just hold remember that so again as mr christensen said i encourage you to come back but i encourage you to watch the process because in the end washington did gained two teachers last year because numbers were high so please please watch the process okay mr mcconnell okay i do have a question so because the numbers keep fluctuating and we're going to be looking at you know the numbers of students in kindergarten first grade families moving around or moving in could you provide a financial outlook maybe not tonight but a month from now because it's still fluid and there's going to be kids maybe moving back and forth but yeah it's always a major part of our budget discussion
082okay every year and maybe next month you can kind of give us a really solid big picture look at that and if we needed to add a teacher or two what would that how would that look uh do we have the capacity can we do it maybe next month we can look at something like that sure we can look at it i mean i i can tell you off the top of my head that a new teacher each new teacher you add to the budget is about a hundred thousand dollars with salary and benefits and are you done are you done you done yeah i'm done mr mcauslin can you tell the people out here what the impact was of the millage change in 2019 to the effect of our teachers and how much we
083do not have in the budget at this time well i mean we looked at that every you know i got here almost two years ago now and and you had had a period of four years i think where you didn't raise millage at all and then you had a period where you dropped millage almost 1.9 mils in one year that alone cut 4.8 million dollars in revenue from this district um you know if i go back and i've done some of the math before if you if you look at those eight-year periods you've now since raised taxes to the millies twice and you're only back 3.8 million you've never got back to where you were four years ago if you had raised taxes even a minor amount like two percent over that eight year period
084you'd have an excess of 10 million dollars more in your budget which would not be an issue with adding staff at that point but you're not in that situation we had a five million dollar deficit the year i came and the only thing that really saved you was the essers money and the fact that you didn't spend some of your your expenditures because you weren't didn't kids weren't in class so you had a one-time flux of all the esther's money that kind of patched the hole so to speak for you um that year so the part of this is the millage cut is handicapped some of the budgetary it's got you're never gonna get that money back because you missed out on it so again that's an academic disadvantage to our students um so again
085i'm gonna encourage you to watch month to month things will change i'd also like to just thank everyone who emailed about this issue um i hope that the fact that we're not laying off any teachers is encouragement to a lot of you but this is i've only been on the board a short time but this is definitely the most substantive comments we've received about any issues that are actually really impacting the students at bethel park so like ms turner and mr christensen said please you know stay engaged stay emailing us stay watching the meetings and you know hold us accountable can you open up for voting if there's no other questions voting is open motion carries muskelzo curriculum committee i will take these one at a time our under curriculum committee we have items one
086through four uh first one's approval social studies curriculum two school climate surveys three dogwood charter school application four high school elective courses item one i will move item one approval of social studies curriculum second this is moved by mr scalzo seconded by mr kreisbeck any comments yes pick me um here's here's what i'm going to say first of all i appreciate everybody's emails i got a ton some were hate mails some were positive but i enjoyed reading all of them i want to know everybody's point of view and i do believe that the most important thing we've heard tonight is from a student who is living right now in the school district and is experiencing this so this is an elect this is not a mandatory course if your child doesn't want to take it
087they don't have to take it it doesn't cost us any money there's no we don't have to order books and it it exposes kids to other uh cultures and i'll do okay so i'll do the um i'm an educator so i'll do this and just say that study after study shows that exposure to cultural diversity i wrote it down because i you know can't go off the cuff because i flip out um anyway uh exposure to cultural diversity improves cognitive ability problem solving skills decision making skills creativity and innovation so i really think that we need to focus on the reality in front of us which is why all math and english are incredibly important and they are um we also have to be interested in helping our our kids become kind contributors to society
088and acceptance is one of the biggest things this is an elective you don't have to take it your kids don't have to look at it so i don't understand what the big deal is we got you know as many emails against it as we did for it so those kids could take the course we don't have to hire another teacher i don't see what the big deal is and that's that's my piece i think we should look at the students and not at what we are fighting about because we're grown-ups like i want to know what all of you think i may not agree i probably don't with most of the people but i want to know because it helps me to understand other people that's all so i prove it i say go for
089it i'd also like to speak out in favor of adding the courses and just adopting the overall social studies curriculum dr walsh laid out some of you know our strategic plans specifically he focused on curriculum and item number four in the curriculum specifically spoke um you know spoke to increasing our standardized test performance and one of those areas is the ap program i'm adding the microeconomics course that's included in the social studies program would serve to do that so i think it's a very good resource to have for our students as i spoke to last week i took the class personally in high school allowed me to get a good jump on my minor in economics also diversity equity inclusion items two and three would be furthered by the addition of the other course the
090contribu contributions successes and leaders as a former bethel park student spoke to a lot of times our core social studies courses don't always focus on the perspectives and the contributions of those groups whenever i took my social studies classes i didn't have a problem finding people that looked like me it wasn't an issue it was very easy to aspire to something because i could see someone who looked exactly like me not all students currently have that opportunity in bethel park this course would serve to do that again like ms fais said it's not a mandatory course it's completely optional in fact if we don't get the number of students to run the course it won't be run um so i think we should allow the students to make that decision of whether or not this
091is a course that you know they think would be beneficial to them i agree with all of that i would also like to specifically thank michaela for coming and speaking to us tonight we appreciate him [Applause] that was very brave and it was very powerful and i'm very sorry that you had that experience in our district and no student should have that experience in our district that is not okay and that is not who we are we don't bully people by holding up necklaces at each other come on we're let's be grown-ups everyone in our district needs to be able to work with other people when children leave our district they go into a workforce in a world where they need to get along they need to be able to talk to co-workers without getting
092fired and in trouble they need to be able to understand other people's points of views and experience the world from other people's eyes and care about one another and i don't want what happened to you to be repeated this course allows students who choose to take it to get to know people from other cultures and find out their celebrities their leaders their musicians their artists why would that ever be a bad thing it it's not a bad thing i support this elective any other board comments on this no i would just say that um when it comes to the this uh social social studies class around leadership um i would say i've i've talked to people responsible for the course uh some of the some of the comments that came up would lead you to
093believe there's some kind of hidden agenda within our curriculum department to teach critical race theory that's complete bs okay it really is uh however the fact that we have such you've had so many emails and such divisiveness over this it tells me we've done a terrible job of communicating what is actually in this class and what i would like to see with the contract we just ratified there's there's a fantastic area new a new program new way to adopt curriculum through the curriculum council i think this be a fantastic test to run this course through that so we can more see more the details focus more on see more what that final course is going to be i love the fact because i think they're great teaching examples i love the fact of teaching successes
094and even failures of people i think it's a great learning opportunity i'd love to see that so but i'd also like to see more of the details of you know the how the who you know that sort of thing so anyway that's what i'd like to see so i i won't support it at this point only because of that um i'm with you mr christensen i'd like to see more of the details i'd like to see where we're going and what we're doing and the details of what is in the curriculum and i totally agree with you there is one movie that i've made my senior in high school watched three times and it is put on by abc sports it's called the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat and they have to
095learn both but there's curriculum the new curriculum model i think will help straighten some of this out and really shed a light on what is in there because i had some struggles with it and what was in there just not being able to understand where we were going so that's where i am but again it totally my seven-year-old loves it he thinks it's you know a crazy show but i'm trying to stress to my 18 year old that there are good things and bad things and life is not all of a good and all bad but there are things that you have to learn from it and again if you have a high schooler watching that it is on youtube now it is called the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat i would
096encourage you to do it real quick point out to the board just for clarification that the current curriculum process requires the board to approve a course before it's written so mrs walsh journey you haven't seen the course curriculum yet because it hasn't been written yet that process begins with your approval to develop the course and then the teachers would then be authorized with funding to spend time writing the curriculum and developing syllabi and materials etc so to clarify in order to begin the process that mr christensen and ms turner have asked for we need to vote to approve the process correct this evening correct to have what they're asking for i think clarify though that i'd like to them just go through the new curriculum process that we are about to do in july i
097think it'll be a more an open process dr walsh what additional information would that give us besides the previous um resources that we were provided um for that that course in addition to you know youtube videos handouts things like that the course outline yeah so that that outline was more than we normally get i think the social studies department was trying to be as transparent as they could without making extra work for the department to write the course without approval so that outline and that list of resources and materials were things that they would consider including in the course development understood thank you any of the comments okay i'm i'll bring up the vote voting is open motion fails 3a 6a mrs gallows the next time uh item number two school climate surveys i move
098item two for a second second it's moved by mr scalzo seconded by mr griezbeck any comments you know i have a comment it's it's me it's not mandatory and and while i will say this i do not think that this is the best way to i don't think that the survey is the best way to find the information and certainly not to point out the struggling kids specifically because it is anonymous and um some of the questions are vague we don't have an alternate so had we like said okay we're not going to do that survey but we're going to do this instead then i might vote against the survey but right now we don't have anything so while there's like it's anonymous maybe some kid is going to say like this is happening maybe
099one person maybe the rest of you don't fill it out your kids don't have to it's ma it's uh what's it called uh not mandatory so my thing is is that we don't have anything else in place and if one person fills something out on there that says this is happening that's one kid that's that's still a win so i say that because it's optional we can pass it it doesn't cost us anything again it's literally you don't have to fill it out if you don't delete it who cares but i do think that we there we don't have anything else and what's the big deal dr jansani could you uh speak to the requirement that you mentioned previously about performing a um kind of like a safety and wellness survey from the state level
100we as you know we occasionally get audited regarding our school safety protocol there are recommendations that come forth from that that audit we they make notes on things that we do and then they make recommendations on things that we don't perhaps do but we are not in any violation whether we do a survey or not they do recommend that we do do a survey based upon safety for students and staff thank you for the clarification and you think that this survey would i guess satisfy that recommendation it would uh that's their recommendation once again it's not required but it is noted that we do not do it understood thank you sure dr walsh could you i think a lot of the audience thinks that the survey is something that's just arising now this year is
101this something that was going on previously and could you tell us about that well i can't speak to anything before last summer last year but uh during last spring we did conduct a climate survey of the high school students and this ims students so this is the same as last year but the survey has changed the process yeah the process was when it was actually very different last year because it was administered during school the approval tonight would not those surveys would not be administered during school they would be sent via email home for families to do together or to not do together so that's different than last year and this survey also is a shorter version of last year's survey was streamlined okay so we had a survey last year and this one is
102streamlined and this one is an opt-in and it is sent home to parents who can choose to do it or give it to their child yes and those things are all different from the one that was last year correct thank you i appreciate that and oh and is there um a state survey or something that this was loosely based on yeah there is a state climate survey okay thanks i'd just like to thank the diversity equity inclusion committee that put a lot of work into creating the survey they made sure that a variety of different voices were heard student voices parent voices various community members administration staff experts and this sort of thing while the survey is a little bit different than what they had recommended i still think it is better than not giving
103anything to our students and i think it has the opportunity to identify some areas in which students are at risk the example i gave last week was say for instance we find that a large percentage of our students feel uncomfortable or unsafe on the buses and that's something that we could you know use and maybe implement more bus aids to make sure that our students are safer in school any other board comments questions can you bring up the vote voting is open motion fails three six three yay six nay the next item on the agenda um i'm gonna ask the solicitor to provide a little explanation for for the people here we had a hearing just before this public meeting started so obviously there was no content on the agenda so um our solicitor is
104going to explain the process for this step thank you so i'll just give a little overview for the board because we did put this into the agenda with a placeholder in it we will be needing to make a motion on the floor to amend what's written here and adding either the word grant or deny in the placeholder section i would just ask board members to recall i mean so there are two options here your your administration recommended that the charter application be denied the board certainly in hearing the public comment and hearing the debate earlier this evening may choose to reject the proposal of the administration and grant the charter it is up to the board as everything else is and the debate around that and any discussion or questions need to happen on the
105floor here tonight so if if theoretically a board member is seeking to and maybe mr scalzo would make this this motion uh sits under his section um it would state that the board of school directors denies the charter application resubmitted by dogwood charter if the board seeks to go with the recommendation of your administration and it would of course say the opposite if that is what you wish to do okay any questions on procedure so we'll amend the motion first and then we'll take a vote on the substantive text of the motion after the blank is filled in okay so you want me to know the main motion has a blend the main motion has a blank until you amend it so the first motion that you as a board are going to have to
106do is motion to amend the text on the agenda to read the board of school directors and then fill in the blank okay okay move this first and then move move the change we're going to move the change in the agenda item first take a vote on that and then move the substantive agenda item so i'm gonna moving the board of school directors denies the charter application move to amend yes the agenda the agenda item to forward to say the board of directors denies the charter application resubmitted by dogwood charter school on february 28 2022 the board adopts uh and will issue the written decision of education to the applicant second so it's uh moved by mr scalzo seconded by mr greisbeck and now yeah any discussion on this so that this what we're discussing
107here what we vote on is how the agenda how the blank in the agenda was filled out is filled out based on the recommendation of the administration but we're not voting on the actual motion it's just the change that was made to the agenda item okay okay everybody fully understand as long as everybody's comfortable in understanding what you're voting on you may move to vote so we're voting right now just to put a word in there we're not putting it in just to put denies correct okay voting is open on the amendment motion carries so mr scales if you could move the motion now okay with the blank filled in and please read the photo i like to move item three the board of school directors denies the charter application resubmitted by dogwood charter school
108on february 28 2022 the board adopts and will issue the written decision of the advocate adjudication to the applicant second so moved by mr scalzo seconded by mr greisbeck i just wanted to quickly um make a note around procedure the next step that will occur is a decision adjudication will be issued formalizing the motion that was just approved can i clarify that they will get a copy of the report from the school district correct that is correct it has to be issued to the charter applicant so once the adjudication that has been authorized by the school board this evening is completed it will be sent to the applicant voting is open on this issue motion carries a1 okay mr scalzo last item in curriculum high school elective courses all right mr valani uh is online
109uh to explain any of this uh number four high school elective courses i i move item four seconds it was move by mescalzo seconded by mr mojack get this yeah questions yeah any questions yeah uh mr valani could you please uh explain uh the high school elective courses here just go ahead and give us a quick summary of what's happening yes thank you for having me so tonight similar to the processes in master schedule creation what we're putting in front of the board tonight is our initial demand tallies uh from our winter registration what this consists of is students that have pre-selected their coursework so the recommendations in front of you have under 18 demand tallies at this time so the motion tonight is allowing us to start to create the master schedule unlike sections
110in an elementary school or middle school high school students have nine period days where students a full-time schedule consists of seven classes so looking at these numbers while there are under 18 in their sections a lot of these courses could still be cut based on the enrollment a lot of them be are run in co co-run so we increased the numbers again the approval tonight allows these electives to run i think something that's interesting to point out nine of the classes that were on last year's under 18 list are all well over 25 this year so again this this does stand to change once students you know we talk about our music program our science labs electives a lot of times students select classes they don't always get those classes the way the schedule runs
111uh we have another 15 to 20 parochial and charter schools that come in through ninth grade so while we do run these courses in our master schedule we do evaluate them again and if anything is significantly low typically under 10 to 12 we typically do cut those classes combine them or make a motion on those so tonight's vote to approve these under 18 courses allow us to move forth with them in the schedule again we have an ad drop period that goes into 10 days of the school year so it does afford us the opportunity once the schedules are released in august for students to start making an appointment add to these sections and again it gives us a very well-rounded variety a lot of these courses are in sequence with other courses and again
112a lot of them run together actually putting those numbers close to if not over 18 once combined so thank you mr valani i have one more thing that i want to mention to mr valani or maybe even just ask him can you please provide us bethel park high school's rankings currently i know that you've been working really hard over the last couple of years can you kind of give us an update on the rankings yeah one of the things uh that came out a couple years ago um the district was looking at we have a series of rankings um ms wells miss figuelli shared some of our data from last year which is on the up dr walsh shared some of the things we're doing with nimzy and ap scores uh the u.s news and
113world report did come out i know about a year two years ago there were some concerns about where we were falling in some of those rankings i am proud to announce that we are trending upward in the sense that we are performing higher there in the metro pittsburgh area again this is not indicative of where we want to be we are continuing but we are trending upwards this year's rankings was a little disrupted so some of the performance data and some of the encouraging things are that 50 percent of this was based on the college readiness and some of those factors from last year but some of this is still from data from two three years ago as well knowing what we did on the future ready index it's actually pretty encouraging with the ap
114scores coming up and things there but we did in the patriarch mexico area we were 46 and the previous rankings were now 39 nationally uh 221 i'm sorry in the state 221 the 174. again knowing the data that we had last year's performance and just knowing with the nimzy initiative and the amount of students taking ap tests we are really encouraged that this is an upward trend that's going to continue into next year's rankings as well when we get some things back we also had some distinguished areas with our special education population our students identified as economically disadvantaged both in achievement and growth and that came forth on the future ready index this year which will be used in next year's calculation of the business time so great things happening it's a compliment to the
115staff the teachers and the students and the families at bethel park high school we are excited we have a lot of work to do but we are in heading in the right direction in my opinion thank you mr vaughn mr valani that's very encouraging i really appreciate all the hard work uh and i appreciate every every everybody everybody at that building every single staff member that's making it happen to have a jump in growth like that to show growth in just like the last two years really appreciate the dedication and all of the hard work that everybody's doing keep it going really appreciate it thank you any other comments or questions on this no voting is open motion carries thank you uh mr grossberg can you handle finance i think we can probably take all
116four of these together sure yeah we have four items tonight under finance item number one items declared unused and unnecessary item number two approval of donation item number three south hills interfaith movement transportation rental agreement and item number four agreement with buy and sell real estate um i move to approve items one through four on the finance committee agenda second um does anyone have any questions about any of these items any questions coding is open okay motion carries stern we have one third and final reading on policy yeah we have a third and final reading on policy 123.3 parents guardians immediate relatives as coaches that needs to be moved for approval second is there a second second sure the pick one by miss turner and the second by mr modric coating is open [Music] motion
117carries okay and then mr uh christensen i have two on second reading approval of policy 146.1 the trauma information approach and then revisions to policy second of three readings 218 student discipline 220 student expression dissemination of materials 227 controlled substance and paraphernalia 808 food services and 916 volunteers [Music] under other web one item uh mrs janice can you move that item i move the student agreement second second so it's moved by miss janasek seconded by scousel right any questions discussion on this okay well this one will also have to create a will you be creating a trust situation for that also okay voting is open motion carries thank you stan the vote of the voting part of the meeting uh last major topic any other public comments on anything on the agenda things not on
118the agenda should we address that oh yeah yeah we can do that i'll give everybody else a chance to think about their comments okay so yes oh oh yeah [Music] [Applause] look at those smiles yes thank you teachers thank you thank you guys [Applause] are you sure okay now any public comments on anything related to school i guess i'll say something um hi holly lisac 880 hershar drive um i don't understand any of this critical race theory or dei all of it i grew up at pittsburgh public schools so um i'm familiar with diversity and all this uh it's i i believe you were talking that that you wanted to be an elective and it's an optional elective so um if it follows through of course i don't agree with it because i teach my
119kids at home and i believe it's parenting and that's where it should be parents parents need to teach their kids about this and i do feel bad for those students that feel like they stand out or whatever but it's it's a parenting issue it's not a teacher's or government issue at all and it's been taken to our government and it's all over our country and it's ridiculous i'm the parent i'll teach my kids about that sex and everything thank you [Applause] any other comments anthony anybody on the line one on the phone if you can hold one second there's just one person yeah hello caller yep um you are in the meeting if you state your full name and address you'll have two minutes to make your comments okay this is brendan mccarthy at 101
120jordan drive uh i'm just calling to say how laughably uh representative of what america is right now that six white people sitting at a big table in a room full of a bunch of white people are going to sit here and decide that none of their white kids can even opt choose to learn about the history of minorities in this country it's pretty disgraceful and you should be ashamed of yourselves any other calls ma'am no other calls my name is bonnie ballas 5008 belmont avenue after hearing everyone's comments tonight i felt it is very apparent that there needs to be some type of community outreach contrary to some beliefs i don't believe it's the responsibility of the school district to raise our children it is their responsibility to provide a fair and appropriate education formal
121education should be a part of their upbringing but not the whole bethel park is a different community than it was when i was growing up asking to teach children kindness and acceptance within a community needs to happen much earlier than than high school and not with a crt curriculum or anything similar um i believe that it does like you said start at home and i think um that maybe there needs to be some education for parents in our community not that it is the responsibility of the school district to do that but i think as a community we all need to get together and figure something out if that is a problem and it is a problem within our community as we heard thank you for speaking up um i do not believe that it
122is the full decision of the students they do not have the right to vote i support parental rights and i support transparency with things that are happening in neighboring districts and parents losing trust in administration it has made a lot of people's eyes open and made them ask more questions which is great like many of you have said that we all have a voice and we all have differing opinions we are a community of people who should be able to work together to create a safe environment for our children and i think we can all agree on that so i thank those of you who voted no tonight until there is more transparency and parental involvement in regards to low enrollment people were looking for options i homeschool my younger child i co-direct a community
123a homeschool community center and people are looking for options they're pulling their kids out of school they don't intend they never wanted to homeschool but they're not happy with what is going on and i'm not saying just bethel park it's happening all over and this is affecting our community as a whole funding is is coming out you know and it's going to affect the schools it's going to affect the whole community so i think you know looking into a charter school i'm not saying dogwood but um you know looking for options for the community i think is very important thank you for your time [Applause] all right jim mains 3485 south park road i just have a couple quick questions could the school board please make sure that they would put the financial audit on
124the website so it's readily available other districts do it and we should have audits available for the last two or three years and the other thing is i'd like to know if we could have the up to most up-to-date budget information on the website too thank you hello um i'm still michaela and i still live at 5860 through wallace avenue i'm disappointed that the class wasn't passed because it is optional kids don't have to take it and they should be allowed to choose classes that reflect themselves and reflect their classmates but i am glad to hear that so many of you guys are teaching your kids at home about people who look like me does anyone actually know who the first female woman of color was in the congress it was pasty mink does anyone
125know what someone who looked like me what their life would have looked like when they first came to america well if i got here i would have been a prostitute as an indentured slave i probably would have worked for about five to seven years and then i would have died of syphilis now that you've learned that i see that no one in the room is severely affected or hurt by it it's not negatively impacting anyone and i would have to assume that if we're teaching about the history of minorities that that would be similar along the lines of what they'd be learning and as you can see everyone's still living everyone's okay and now you know a little bit more about me and about my background thank you [Applause] any of the comments [Music] hi
126christina headley again 5881 irish town road i was just wondering i know that the high school and ims had did the safety survey last year and i wondered what resulted from that is there somewhere that we could see what we implemented or what we did to try and make the students feel safer just a question thank you you know the public comments so i understand why some people voted the way that they did and i'm confused on why a couple of people voted the way they did specifically mrs turner when dr wells explained to you how to achieve what you wanted to achieve was by voting for this to pass so that you could then learn more um you still decided not to so that was confusing to me but i am going to watch
127that movie and yeah i hope that it fixes everything as it has for you and your family so thank you very much for sharing that and mrs gianseck just i appreciate what you had said but i just wanted to clarify too michaela wasn't looking for an apology for the community she um really enjoys being a part of bethel park i was very proud of that i think she just wants as i want um just people to have the opportunity to to learn about other people not how they were wronged not who wronged them i mean that's but maybe just what holidays they celebrate what you know backgrounds you know like um what was in the uh what was laid out for it uh again i i understand everybody has opinions and i still appreciate everybody
128sharing their opinions and hopefully you know this being able to communicate with everybody brings us closer and better thank you anyone else public comments any comments no call-ins any board comments i'd like to thank our administration as well as the representatives um oh i'm sorry go ahead one more i'm so sorry i i've listened to all this and my name is christina kornick i live on 220 blue stone drive christine just called the mic a little bit closer christina kornick 220 bluestone drive i'll try to keep this short because if i say too much it might it might go bad but basically i want you all just to think about where we're headed okay it may seem like we're doing a little bit here next thing you know we're going to do this then this
129then this it's very obvious that the country is very divided so is our communities the vision is everywhere we have to be very very careful of our decisions it may seem like a very small thing that we're trying to do here but even having it optional you're you're causing division and you don't even realize it just i just want you to be aware of that i just felt very compelled to say that right now i feel for anybody that's been through an abusive relationship or people don't understand them but we can't teach people every culture and person of the world we have to teach people that we're all good people that we're all here to do good that is what we're supposed to know and learn not this person's good this person's bad no no
130we all should be loving each other that's what it's about [Applause] hi melissa frank 1064 center gate road drive sorry um i just wanted to quickly uh just show my support for mrs chris falluci and what an amazing teacher she is i don't know if you guys know her personally or just know her as a contract as a salary but she is an amazing person and teacher and it's a very sad day for our school at george washington if she um has to leave us and i just want uh to express that i hope that there is a place for her at our school next year or at least in the district because she is an asset that this district should be fighting to keep and not lose and that is what's most important we
131can sit here and talk about curriculum and strategic planning but when we lose the people who administer all this to our children then we're really not doing a service to anybody and nor if we cram them in over crowded classrooms is that really going to be a conducive conducive to any type of teaching at all one thing is i'm relatively new to the surveys i'm trying to learn it a little bit but um as a child therapist for almost 20 years as i'm reading the questions on the surveys a lot of these things are triggering mental health issues and i'm wondering if there was any consideration given at all to if some of these surveys come back as triggers of mental health issues or possible depression or things of that nature if there was any
132type of follow-up that the district had planned on doing because i think it's somewhat irresponsible to just put these surveys out there without some type of follow-up because these questions can really uncover a wealth of different issues one of which would be mental health thank you [Applause] anybody else's board comments i just want to say very quickly um to dogwood charter school i rewatched your presentation i was real hot on this mic last week um i rewatched your presentation um this past week and i um i don't want to say i'm impressed because i'm not an educator but i i want your school in bethel park because i think it's valuable to students who may not fit the mold of a public school um so you know keep trying keep trying that's that's all i
133got i just want to encourage you to keep trying i want to thank our administration as well as the representation from the teachers union i'm doing a great job of smoothly getting that contract done um i did not expect it to be done that early so i was definitely pleasantly surprised i'd also like to thank all of the teachers who have been working so hard beginning to develop our strategic plan and slowly get us where we need to be and that report from mr valani was very encouraging to see where you know how much we had improved in our ap scores in just a short two years i'd also like to say i am disappointed that we didn't pass the social studies um recommendation from that department however i hope that once miss turner and
134mr christensen get the information that that they need and that they're looking for that that we can get that uh that passed and those two courses to students i think they'll really benefit them um i also hope that we go and we take another look at the surveys if we weren't happy with them and hopefully we can get something that can benefit our students i just want to thank the administration and the teachers for working so hard on that contract everybody did a great job and that was super fast so thank you it was great and um we appreciate you i especially appreciate the administration who comes here every meeting and gives us information and answers our questions and prepares things for us we appreciate all of you you help us and you guide us
135and you tell us what's going on and you're there for us so i just want to say thank you for that i appreciate you all motion to adjourn [Music] [Music] you