CSD School Board Meeting - November 9, 2021

001the reason for the topic is that determined thank you [Music] all right hello so i call this work session regular meeting tuesday november 9th to order uh mr robot can we please get a roll call mrs brancato here mrs crossett here mr dixon here mrs islandberg here mr goddickson carson mr lyden mr martin president mr panovsky seven present thank you can we all please stand for the pledge of allegiance [Music] of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all god bless america okay um four announcements we had an executive session from 5 15 to 6 50 regarding legal issues and personnel all right did anyone else have any other announcements madam president yeah i would just like to recognize

002two things if i could since we haven't had the opportunity to do this recently but i took note that a week or two ago the william tennant football team which prior to that had been winless managed to do a wonderful job in their last game of the season and win by a significant margin at the same time a young man in 10th grade by the name of raimir newkirk managed to score seven touchdowns in that one football game and later was selected as the carrier times player of the week i think any accomplishment such as that seven touchdowns i thought that might be a school record but i understand someone else may have scored seven touchdowns i don't know who that was and when but uh i think we ought to recognize the young man

003for that wonderful accomplishment and the same time not to be accused of being sexist there was a young lady by the name of michaela hansen who did a wonderful job in the cross country state meet was a district i was the league champion and so forth so we have young people to succeed in athletics in addition to scholarship and and the arts i think we ought to recognize them in that way and make it part of the minutes if i might absolutely mr martin that's that's perfect yes did anyone else have any announcements mr dixon i would just like to give a shout out to um my uh my son's first grade teacher my son is currently at mcdonald and and to mcdonald elementary in general i ran into principal ortiz the other day and

004i expressed this but i have a degree in english literature myself i teach a class at rowan university in it and so i think of myself as being fairly knowledgeable about language and linguistics and things like this and he comes home to me the other day and starts talking about phonemes as parts of words and asked me you know told me what the diacritical mark over a if you're writing the word cat on the board for a first grader to read there's that little curvy line you put over the a to let them know it's a short a instead of a long a i don't know if anybody here knows what it's called i certainly didn't but my son came home and did it's called the purvey and so i certainly learned something so i

005just want to thank mrs dorazio and mr ortiz i'm deeply impressed with the work going on there thank you mr dixon anybody else okay moving forward presentation student presentations william tennant high school emma weinstein sorry just one minute i'll pull it up while i locate my document i'm just going to introduce myself my name is emma weinstein i am the student government junior vice president i'm filling in for the president today it's my first time here i'm very honored you're doing great thank you here it is okay the major thing that i have up here is that we just closed the first marking period and starting on the fifth we opened the second marking period and everything so far has been going smoothly william tennant's chapter of mu alpha theta the math national honor society

006inducted their new members into the club last week so congratulations to all the new inductees key club will be hosting their annual blood drive starting tomorrow november 10th and ending november 11th for all students and staff throughout the school day tenant will also be hosting a veterans day ceremony this thursday morning to recognize our veterans and those who are currently serving powder puff practices have started and we will be having our powder puff pep rally and football game next tuesday on the 16th finally students will be having november 24th and 26th for parent teacher conferences and it will lead into the beginning of thanksgiving break thank you so much thank you well done next presentation middlebucks mbit elise jones hello my name is alize jones and i am a senior at william tennant high school

007and a level 300 cosmetology student at the mbit program the horticulture and landscape and design program students facilitate the design and installation of the never forget garden at the washington crossings national cemetery this project in partnership with the travis manion foundation frames the background of two of the cemeteries memorial walls and is in place to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the tombs of the unknown soldier students from all three levels of the program participated in the never forget garden design planning and installation plant material and mulch were donated by gasper landscapes and victory gardens middlebucks institute of technology is hosting a virtual open house for middle school and high school students on thursday november 18 2021 beginning at 6 pm there will be a premier video to kick off our virtual open house featuring some

008of our skills usa officers you can also explore our campus and programs with an interactive map virtually meet our teachers and take part in our questions and questions and answers sessions using the zoom platform prospective students are invited to sign up to the shadow where they can spend half of the day in a program that they are interested to to them visit for more information on the virtual open house and access to the exciting interactive event the automotive technology and collision repair technology programs will be raising money for the month of november to help the auto dealers caring for kids foundation purchase coats for underprivileged kids in the philadelphia area skillsusa is hosting their fall leadership conference at middlebucks my bad at bucks county technology technical high school on november 18th middlebucks will have 21

009students attending this event where they will learn about public speaking governmental practices team building skills we would like to remind everyone that you can learn more about the latest happenings at middlebucks institute of technology by liking us on facebook following us on instagram twitter and visiting our videos on youtube thank you for your time and the opportunity to keep you informed about what is happening at mbit thank you you did a great job [Applause] all right next is elementary and secondary school mr gabriel good evening everybody we wanted to take this opportunity on behalf of the instructional leadership team to share a little bit about the emergency and secondary school emergency relief or esser funds that we have received in the district so we want to talk take a look at basically the why how

010and what behind our proposed use of the grants out of all the norms that we typically go through prior to a session i think two that are really relevant to this particular conversation are keeping decisions in the best interest of our students and then considering is that statement assumption interpretation or fact as you'll see in the next few slides we leaned heavily on our student population as well as feedback and data in order to make some of the recommendations that we're making and decisions we're making about how to use these essar funds so for those of you that aren't aware there are currently four grants for esser grants that we've received esther one cares act the sr2 the arp esser and most recently the arp esser seven percent set aside all of these collectively are

011given to schools to address the coven 19 the impact of the coba 19 pandemic each one carries a little bit of nuance in terms of what it can be used for or the percentage breakdown which we'll get into in a couple slides so the next i'm not going to read those to you uh but they're basically just definitions of the three different the three different um three of the four um because the arp set aside is just an outsheet of arps or uh the three different grants uh guides for grant use as i mentioned earlier we're looking at our student body and sort of our breakdown both economics as well as ethnicity in terms of how we made decisions on the grants specifically our 41.27 as you'll see later of economically disadvantaged students we're doing

012some professional development with our staff around uh teaching uh with poverty in mind so that that's one of the big areas that we're focusing on and then feedback this there have been a number of different committees uh the act 48 committee which is the faculty-based professional learning committee meets once a year and we gain feedback from our staff we've mentioned this before the board we are on corrective action at the state level for a number of different areas idea federal programs and then a few of our schools are on tsi or atsi improvement covey related facilities needs uh we had sent out a couple thought exchanges last year throughout the pandemic and we're getting feedback from faculty students and parents on needs related to covid our hanover research which we've talked about over and over

013reports on state of mathematics reading english language arts unfinished learning which is our term for learning loss uh social emotional learning as if you remember back in january we gave you sort of a big picture view of the status of student academic performance and where we sit in the county and in southeastern pennsylvania we'll be rehashing a newer version of that this upcoming winner with updates student and faculty staff supports and then uh again the more thought exchanges and we now have a portion on our website that has the reports from past law exchanges from the past about two and a half years that anybody can access and take a look at what was discussed to some of the questions we had asked so we really took a look at a lot of different feedback

014mechanisms uh at the different levels to to make some decisions around programming uh we wanted to share some good news at first and really try to refocus on these moves are being made to help increase student data uh in terms of academic performance and one of the data points we got back recently from our elementary schools was the use of a program that we've invested in called lexia core5 it's a reading supportive program it helps to diagnose and work with students on their reading as you remember from the january report we're not quite where we need to be yet at least the state level however we've been making some really great gains early on uh with some of the supports we've put in place the extra instructional coaches uh trying to get a consistent literacy

015block across the elementary schools mr dixon you reference some of the work that's coming out of our work with the aim institute which we're now in year three of uh we're going to be continuing that partnership on the science of reading moving forward so uh this basically shows from august to october uh the increase of students from being below grade level in reading to at or above uh grade level so it's a really big positive right there we're having big jumps in our reading um early on in in some of the work we've been doing so back to the grants and again this these grants are part of the supports and the outcome of the data is partially what we're using you know a lot of this money for so these were the amounts we've

016received for each of the each of the ester grants uh just over 500 000 in sr1 just over 2 million and that's for two over 4 million in arp esther and then 337 666 dollars in the most recent which is the arp seven percent set aside so our proposal is that by the end of the 23-24 school year which is when we have to have the money spent by uh we will have established uh multi-tiered systems of supports mtss for students in reading english language arts mathematics and social emotional learning we will have established a centennial virtual learning academy grades k-12 social emotional and academic learning in greece k-12 and have established support for our five thousand plus students impacted by the covet 19 pandemic at the same time we'll have provided covert 19 related

017facilities needs and mental health supports for students and staff through this proposal as well as again support for five thousand plus students impacted by the pandemic so sr1 how does it break down so we basically have three big buckets uh that ester one breaks down into we have uh money spent on purchase professional and technical services like mental health services professional development for online and remote learning salary and benefit stipends for summer programming supplies web-based tools for online remote learning instructional supplies and cleaning materials and supplies and then part of esther one was we did have to give the non-publics our fair share uh their fair share of the money that was part of the stipulation of the grant so for esther ii uh it broke down this way salaries and benefits for kindergarten boot

018camp for the blended special education teacher that we're putting in place to help support our virtual learners and again our social emotional academic learning coordinator for the district again technical services mental health student assistance program diversity equity inclusion and education professional development support so i mentioned that earlier that money money much of that money is going to the penn literacy network uh we're engaging we have about 50 some teachers right now engaged in the course on poverty and teaching with poverty in mind which has been a really big hit so big that i think we're going to offer it again uh this upcoming summer in the next year so we'll be able to foot the bill for that moving forward and then again teaching and educational materials to address learning loss or unfinished learning and

019online learning and then cleaning supplies and with the american rescue plan arp esther so in essence sr3 is the third grant again you can see i'm not going to read it to you but you can see it's it's expanding the boot camp the teachers moving into math specialists for mtss and academic interventions for our lowest level math students our tier two tier three math students an additional instructional coach at the elementary level and then again just furthering the special ed supports and materials to address learning loss you'll note too in the notes uh in this presentation are further descriptions and definitions of each most of the the specifics mentioned here in the slides and for the seven percent set of size and again i we hope you're seeing the theme here is that we're not

020trying to do just once and dones we're trying to establish something and carry it through over multiple years right i think when we talked back in january one of the challenges we faced was the amount of ones and dones was the amount of very kind of brief you know tried to do something and it didn't give it a lot of time to really take hold so we're trying to really put into places we've talked about systems and carry initiatives through over multiple years assess how they're working change course if we need to or adapt but really trying to do this over multiple years so if you look across the three grants you're seeing a lot of the same in terms of types of supports because we're trying to keep that consistency year to year uh

021for the last one this this was a little bit more specific into how much we could or couldn't spend for certain outcomes so uh out of the 000 and change 48 went to after school set aside 48 went to summer school set aside and then another 241 went to what they call learning loss which we call unfinished learning that breaks down even further which i'll get to in a minute but for the after school set aside it was basically working uh on credit recovery through a technology called edgester to help support our students who were uh you know struggling to graduate and then the panther cub summer program we had presented last spring really helping our struggling learners over the summer kind of get up to speed and try to make up some of the

022ground that they might have lost during the pandemic so for that third area the learning loss or unfinished learning that breaks down into three sub-categories uh 30 of that budget had to be going towards social emotional learning uh the uh 10 was going towards social and emotional learning professional development and then eight percent was going towards reading improvement and 52 percent was going towards uh other expenditures related to learning loss so that was a little bit more directive in terms of how we could spend the money but again uh trying to be consistent trying to look for long-term solutions that took shape over time because we know uh growing and improving takes time uh you can see it's it's a lot of the same type of themes that run through we're looking at you know

023eventually adopting a social emotional learning curriculum throughout the district uh getting some universal screeners in maybe building some libraries for staff and students uh the hannover research modules they have some standalone professional development modules that we were looking into around social emotional learning that we think would be beneficial to use with our staff on our virtual pd days and then obviously our continued work with aim this is helping to support that ongoing work another summer we're going to be trying to offer panther cubs over the next couple summers as well as the edge this year credit recovery so i know that was kind of fast all the information is there do you have any questions mr dixon i i did have a question looking back at the slide that was showing i mean all the

024way back towards the beginning the reading at grade level yes there were some pretty dramatically high numbers there like a fifth grade percentage below grade level i mean is that was that for the entire like you explain that i mean 84 of the fifth graders were testing below grade level yeah like for the entire district right well i mean this is this was the conversation we started back in january right i think we've had um a lot of inconsistency over the past number of years right um in our in our programming we've had older resources that have not been aligned or integrated uh we've had resources and buildings that had competing pedagogical philosophies um i think our our recent efforts over the past two and a half years to try to first of all recognize

025that and and number two address it in a way that we're operating as one district made up of six schools not six schools independently in a district uh is is part of the work where we're getting into the the aim professional development is a lot for our teachers but that's why we're taking multiple years to roll it in along with that we're making major changes to curriculum we're going to be making making major changes to our resources used to support our students um you know we we need to work smarter and i i i'm sorry with the question can't you no it means to be accusatory towards you i was just surprised at the number and i understand that there it's very high uh and honestly it's hot can you guys like i'm trying to

026like it's okay i need a little quiet please uh we're gonna get more detail with a lot of this in the january winter presentation but it's that high all the way up into eighth grade um with students in our upper grades testing at a very low reading level i mean how much of that frankly you know like yeah do we have a sense of like how much the pandemic basically can and losing i mean you know effectively at least full instruction let's call it for you know that 2020 the way we did how much of it is attributable to that you have a sense it's hard to say we had the hanover report though it was called the learning loss or unfinished learning report that we had about a year ago that showed actually it

027didn't have huge impacts uh in terms of where we were headed you know our our bigger challenge has been trying to work with resources and our own programs internally that are aligned to the right to reading science the science of reading as well as this and i know to your point this is dr ben's mantra since you got here that you know it's got to be one district six schools not how you put it like six six schools yeah six schools you know who happen to share district resources mr dixon if you recall this is is not very different from when i interviewed for the job and i pulled data and that would be correct yes and one of the things that was shared by staff is that we were doing a bunch of different

028stuff and so we've tried to start creating some focus but we also heard from staff quite often with data being looked at to inform the decisions so we're trying to be much more transparent and visible about where our students are and have conversations about student outcome it doesn't mean that someone's not doing a wonderful program or doing something good but is it leading to improved student outcomes and that's where tough choices are being made and even how we're using esther funds to address those issues which is highly focused on reading and math right even even the the the the change with regards to um [Music] our middle and secondary program for instance with the bringing in springboard we're trying to get consistency of implementation with our curriculum and talk about standards-based i mean expectations anecdotally

029i mean obviously the numbers are improving based on the lexia stuff immediately and i can just tell you anecdotally like like my kid loves that thing comes home every day talking about what level he's on i mean so but you know to be in fifth grade and be in that situation it didn't just start doing a pandemic oh no no yeah i mean it's obviously baked in over years sure excuse me one second so if you want to fill out a card you can um yeah okay so you can as soon as we get to the community commons you can ask a question for that one we can absolutely follow up with it hand me your question and we'll ask you but i'll i'll i'll i have a question that just and i will admit

030my my unfamiliarity with some of the educational jargon but and i think i understand what learning is but could you just give me a simple definition of what unfinished learning is and what social emotional learning is as opposed to what i conceive as learning so unfinished learning is the term we're using in place of learning loss um it's to discuss what kids may have missed during the pandemic right because we everything got slowed down we lost you know the in-person instruction for a while so it was how is that impacting uh our students in terms of not being able to finish a full year right because we all got we all got the school shut down two two march you know two years ago in march so we're trying to make that it doesn't mr

031martin if you remember doing the hand of research what they uncovered is that the learning loss term and more and more has come out about is a deficit model term that is not accurate across the board to your very point we found that when they did analysis and we can drill down to each student some students actually did better well some did so if you remember that report we shared with y'all some students uh had like uh x percent where they were before covet and after covert loss some actually made more gains so they believe and more conversation has been around instead of assuming that every student lost something maybe they didn't get everything they needed to meet their whole potential so thus unfinished learning was a much more positive term to use make up

032for those that needed it right basically yes okay can i can i ask a follow-up just mr martin on that point does that also include hold on guys guys you're not running the meeting thank you my follow-up question on that is included in that in that um uh unfinished learning or whatever i know that before any pandemics the standard concept in education was like you know kids have the summer vacation you you learn a certain amount like let's say in fifth grade then you come back in sixth grade and there's always that beginning of the year review and some students need it more than others that kind of thing is that also included in that it would be like the summer slide right yeah if you remember that concept right we always assumed that after

033the long break over the summer kids would come back with a little bit less of where they left off the year because of two months two and a half months so is that included in that context it's it's included it's the same concept i'm just trying to understand i don't understand some of these terms and i'm just trying to figure out what we're talking about here yeah please follow up with the other one i apologize so for com just for the com for community to hear i just wanted to go over what we um for mental health and for student assistance what we've added to the district because i know we have a lot of students who are requiring additional assistance with that um what have we added to to the you know for the

034students to be able to discuss things and i mean to help them with what they're going through can i answer mr martin's question first absolutely mr martin are you ready for me i'm always ready all right you asked what is social emotional learning yes yes yes so i will tell you that the pennsylvania department of education you know we have standards and we have standards for academics but the pennsylvania department of education has also mr um goddesson is shaking his head this was his wheelhouse has um career readiness standards and under the career readiness standards you will see the um the guidelines from the state where social emotional progress and learning falls under so castle identifies social emotional learning is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply knowledge skill and

035attitudes to develop relationships manage emotions and achieve personal collective goals so it's the self-regulation it's awareness um decision responsible decision-making self-management that's what social emotional learning is and it if you look at the pennsylvania uh standards under the career of readiness goals that's where you see the where we get our our guidelines for moving forward with social emotional learning so it's how do we get along those soft skills and even some hard skills that for some students they have job coaches to do that but we to answer your question the district has invested in a social emotional academic learning coordinator who has been observing meeting with our school teams met with our support staff provided professional development for our teachers during their go time administrative professional development we have nine mental health counselors in the

036district that we're using to support we now have ten groups four students parents have to know students attend these groups without parent written permission there's a girls group there's a boys group there's a social media group but all of the things that we offer to our students that's different than regular curriculum parents have to give permission we we don't even accept permission over the phone it has to be written so we don't include kids we help our teachers with responsive classrooms supporting students helping us to self-regulate so there are a lot of support um i did do a presentation a while ago but we do plan on giving a presentation with the update of all of the supports that we have put into place so i can give you more later but i don't want

037to take up all of his time and i know you like me to keep it short thank you thank you i do have a question from mr gabriel as well um we got all this money and it seems like it's all being geared primarily towards elementary schools and we have middle schools that's in corrective action do we have a way to maybe create a boot camp or something similar to what we're doing an elementary school for students that's moving up to middle school so two of the positions that we're investing in are middle level reading specialists i'm sure excuse me math specialists so knowing that a lot of the challenges we're having in the upper grades is due to the uh you know challenges we've had in the lower grades over the years and we've

038talked about those at length last year so in order to kind of like get the upper grades a little bit more stable we really need to focus a lot of the energy on the lower grades but we did we do to your point between the edges here between the after school programming is for the secondary level some of the tutoring the credit recovery is for the after school for the upper grades and then obviously the two full-time math specialists which are student-facing positions it's important to note out of the four specialists we've added to the grant to elementary to secondary they are student-facing positions so that they're working with students in small groups all the way up through up through eighth grade and we have included secondary teachers in the aim training so many of

039our special ed teachers our reading specialists and some of the teachers up to the high school that are hitting some of those lower level readers in the upper grades currently which again over time we're hoping to see less of but right now because of the need and what's been going on historically uh we are including them in the in the mix you're welcome any other board questions thank you mr gabriel thank you yep you're welcome next we have um superintendent reports dr bedden thank you madam president a couple quick items one is just to remind the board and the listing audience that we will be approaching uh inclement weather season and i would encourage and we'll send it out in csd weekly but would encourage and remind everyone that we have um two locations uh

040for inclement weather information uh there is a staff one that guides the staff action if we have a snow related or the type of income weather situations as well as on the parent page that information about where to find information and what what x y z means when we uh have to make a determination about whether so just wanted to give people a heads up uh that that is coming uh as you know the board received a heads up and we received a heads up um and regarding uh and is now public obviously at the time i wrote this uh that the five 11 year old vaccination is available on now just as we did in the past both whether it was flu shots uh whether it was the the older kids with vaccination opportunities

041the district will have vaccination opportunities they require parent permission no student can get uh vaccination opportunities without parent permission so that is a choice item not a mandate from the school district the as you heard yesterday and the board was given uh notice we received uh early warning notice and then it was public the update from the governor's office about the mandate being anticipated to go through january 17th and that then it will shift back to local control and that is in part due to they said the vaccination being available to the younger ages but also as part of that they are still maintaining the mandate for early childhood programs because that tool and resource mitigation strategy is not available it also does not alleviate the requirement on transportation that still stays in effect because

042that is a federal mandate that comes down and has not been changed going forward and uh mr martin uh did mention and i had put a note that we have had uh uh several student uh outstanding uh performances so he shared that already i also want to recognize over the past month that we had food service a national nutrition week and to celebrate our food service personnel and had opportunity to join them in serving lunch and then also we had a transportation national transportation recognition we and i had a chance to join some of our transportation department staff at a ride-along on the bus we did take the opportunity to attempt to follow up with all persons who shared comments at last board meetings so either actual direct a conversation via phone or email to

043respond to those issues we do also have addressing your questions and concerns uh resource that is on our web page that actually drops down and tell people who they may want to talk to and contact to get answers to their questions as i shared with several of those people oftentimes the questions that they bring the board members won't have answers to and sometimes if it's a school-based issue we won't have the answer administratively without going back to the school to follow up on that information so not being able to or not responding is not an indication of it's not important um to the issue but there is a process and procedure everything that happens at a school doesn't come from central office so we obviously need to reach out to the principal i encourage because

044we want parent uh concerns and hear them to to start with the school when it's involving a student or school-based issue uh to give them a chance to to respond and obviously if they're not happy then we bring it to the next level to try to get an answer and resolution to it but we do welcome and encourage we try to create a fair and equitable process to the procedures at times we try to go beyond what is required to accommodate some of the challenges that we face with the pandemic being upon us um and as we are phasing back into normal situations we are moving back to normal procedures uh that have been in place and keeping those things that work well uh to service uh the information we continue to expand information on

045our website to make it available and we continue to work on the csd weekly that goes out is pulling anywhere from four to five thousand readers uh and we can see analytics that show how many people are reading it so i encourage uh parents to uh look at that when it comes if they're suggestions on how to make it better so that it's more easily readable we welcome that because we want to make it so that it is a user-friendly communication to help support the exchange of information thank you [Music] thank you dr ben ms heilenberg thank you 4.0 approval of the agenda it resolved that this centennial school district board of school directors 4.1 approves the november 9th 2021 board agenda as per the attached are there any corrections that need to be made

046that are allowed by pa state law i'm miss eidenberg i would like to make an addition to the agenda could we have a second to that motion second do we second before we make an addition yes oh good um just for everyone today during executive session um mr panovsky had sent in his um mr fanofsky school board director from region 2 submitted his resignation in accordance with sunshine act i would like to open the agenda can i get a second second all right and can we um take a vote on that to add that to the agenda you want a roll call or a voice vote um we can do a roll call that's fine okay uh mrs brancato no mr dixon yes mrs islandberg yes mr godickson no mr martin no mr lyden mr

047uh i'm sorry mrs crossin yes four four amen i'm sorry two three four yeses three no's thank you mr roberto that passes to add that item to the agenda all right um now that the agenda has been opened i would like to add item 4.2 to vote to accept the resignation of mr panovsky can i get a motion to accept the resignation can i get a second move all right um any discussion what is the date of the resignation immediately um can uh can we take a vote on that can i do another right oh this is to accept his um motion was made by mr dixon who second that second okay this is going to be a vote to accept the resignation okay mr dixon yes mrs islandberg yes mr godickson no mr martin

048yes mr lydon yes mrs brancato no this is crossing yes live yes okay the school code requires vacancies on the board to be filled within 30 days so the board will accept resumes of region 2 residents who are interested in completing mr pranovsky's term resumes letters of interest must be sent to dr ben's attention by 4 pm on november 18th so the board can review them before our next meeting on november 23rd at that meeting we will appoint a successor who will serve until december i have a problem with that that's that's a holiday week so people that are planning on going away with their families will be excluded that's a holiday week for most families okay is there any other board discussion i want to thank mr panovsky for his service and dedication to

049the students okay we will now we will now move to item five community comments for the community comments the first set the first batch are going to be related to the agenda the second batch the second set of community comments are just for whatever the community wants to discuss chris padaya from warminster tonight the agenda included changes to the school board policy 903 public participation in board meetings although we are thrilled that the violations of the sunset law that have been brought to your attention are being addressed it appears that the order of things also need to be addressed changes should not be implemented and website should not be updated before the proposed changes are brought before the board to vote the current policy is dated may 11 2021 however the website stated that the

050public comment protocol was effective august 17 2021 right up until last month the public comment protocol on the website was updated no date is reflected for the adoption of change and yet the green card showed up at the meeting on october 12th to change policy you need to put it on the agenda present it to the board and vote out it before it is implemented is there someone in the administration that thinks the board is just a formality and that changes can be made arbitrarily and that you can demand the board sign off on those changes before they are already implemented the law is the law and any changes to policy requires a vote thank you [Applause] next i have a kiri sellers so good evening carrie sellers southampton pennsylvania i'm a taxpayer i'm a

051community member and more importantly i'm a parent we need to address several issues that have come to light recently it appears that there is a concerted effort to deceive the people of this community i would like to address the edit of september 14th school board meeting referring to the two poster boards presented here i'm mostly referring to the comment beginning with we also but we also that comment was edited out of the recording of the meeting that was posted on youtube the anomaly happens just after the one hour 41 minute and eight second mark of the video who made the call to alter the recording of the september 14th school board meeting why was this decision made to remove that statement we have filed a right to no request regarding this information and let it

052be known if this board or any school district employee or administrator destroys modifies any records you are in violation of the law if the meeting is posted in the district's youtube channel as a record of what transpired at that meeting there and there is no verbage to indicate that what was viewed is altered you are effectively communicating that it is an accurate representation of what occurred however we know that the recording was altered we have the original copy this action was done with the intent to remove specific information from the record this is an egregious act and breach of public trust and shows a lack of integrity acting with the intent to deceive is not acceptable behavior for a superintendent or any member of the school board of the centennial school district thank you thank

053you thank you thank you [Applause] next i have joan twig my name is joan twigg and where mr pa well just want to start with we the parents have spoken and we will continue to speak the minutes of the august 17 school board meeting were voted on and adopted at the september 14th school board meeting to make any changes to any action that has been adopted requires the changes be brought before the board and put forward for a vote on october 13th at 1007 am the board secretary changed the meeting minutes and quietly re-uploaded them to the website under the direction of csd administration in violation of the open meetings law the minutes are not listed as having been edited at the file name and the file name was not modified to reflect that they

054were edited or updated we have in our possession an email from dr betten stating that he is aware of this breach and that legal counsel said that it is okay and a vote was not necessary this is very concerning it doesn't matter if your attorney gives your you improper counsel the law is the law and any change to an adopted action requires a vote what else are you changing without getting approval from the board today we received an email which is good news and i'm very happy to share this that we will be able to attend our children's winter concerts in december which is very exciting because we haven't been able to attend them i would also like to thank the board and my daughter's middle school for allowing me to attend her student of

055the month recognition it was outside but i was able to be there after some persistence on being there so i was very grateful for that and i just want to encourage parents to if they don't like the answer that an exception can always be made and you should fight these are precious moments with our children that we're never going to get back so i'm the kind of person i used to just go with the flow but now i'm realizing that you have to you have to make some noise and we don't get this time back so thank you thank you thank you can i ask a quick ques what is the video what is this video what no it gets better it's i don't i don't know it's something was taken out of a youtube

056video is what i'm hearing i haven't seen the video so they're more than welcome to send video and we can take a look at it we have the original and we have let's go and what i'm saying madam's losing control here what i'm saying madam chair okay let him speak yeah what i'm saying is i'm more than happy to accept whatever they have to look at what's being shown and follow up with a communications team so i'm not aware of this i haven't seen the video myself so i don't know what referred you but i'm going to have to look into it thank you dr ben okay next comment is stacy hill over the course of the last month and a half or so several right-to-know requests have been submitted to the centennial school district

057some appeals have been filed with the office of open records because the district denied and closed several requests without providing the requested information according to the office of open records statements of fact must be supported by an affidavit or an attestation made under penalty of perjury by a person with actual knowledge under the right to know law the agency has the burden of proof that the records are exempt from public access to meet this burden of proof the agency must provide evidence to the office of open records it appears centennial school district is submitting affidavits under penalty of perjury that include information that is not truthful in one case videos were not turned over because the records officer claimed that the videos were copyrighted when the office of open records requested the copyright details in

058the form of an affidavit or attestation of truth the response was well upon further review they're not copyrighted after all and in fact they've been posted on the district's youtube page in the public domain for two months the deception in the initial affidavit could not continue when the office of open records asked for required proof again and again we're finding that to avoid transparency centennial school district will deceive lie and break loss what are you hiding and what don't you want us to see you are tasked with the education of our children you you have an open window into our children's lives every hour of the school day but we aren't allowed to ask questions about what you're doing during that time if you cannot be trusted with these small things how can you be

059trusted with the people we hold most precious much less our tax dollars the parents taxpayers and residents of centennial school district demand accountability and transparency you are held to a higher standard the actions of most of this board and our administration are not acceptable and will not be tolerated any longer you are on notice by the way you have been sued by the parents of centennial school district we have copies for each of you being distributed now you have been served thank you for your comments [Applause] pennsylvania i am up here as a concerned taxpayer and parent i have a question to ask the administration is the school board meeting posted live to youtube or do you edit it to re in order to remove information you do not want the public to see i

060asked this because we have proof that in fact they are edited on september 14th school board meeting when the school board was discussing if the district would mandate the vaccine the following statement was edited out but we also are told by the cdc that we are supposed to work in a state collaborately because we are one of only six jurisdictions to have a health department every other jurisdiction that doesn't have one has to work directly with the state we are trying to comply with the guidance of showing that we are collaborating and working but we are very specific of putting the words per because of the fact that we are not recommending that from us right now after seeing this how is the community supposed to trust the administration i can play the differences but

061i ask the community to go on and watch the september 14th meeting and watch the video skip around one hour and 41 minutes in record your meeting so that you know what the full meeting is not just the parts that they want you to see this is not the only one we found we found many edits and i will be more than happy to waste the rest of my time playing the true video bucks county health department but it doesn't align with what they think they want us to ignore it we've been consistent and that's why we're very deliberate in putting the words per bucks county health department because we did not want to own that as a district but we also are told by cdc guidance that we are supposed to work in a

062state collaboratively because we're one of only six jurisdictions that have a health department every other jurisdiction that doesn't have one that has to work directly with the state because we were trying to comply with the guidance of showing that we are collaborating and working but we are very specific and putting per because of the fact that we are not recommending that from us right now okay so let's put that up so so okay so now i will pay the video that is on the website speak for a lot of people i can only speak that is that is not in the plan okay and but i want you to consider what you just said okay uh i want you to consider what you just said things change which is why i would never ever i

063will i will okay let me let me talk um okay so so that's what i'm saying why so bucks county health department if i take that out then i need to take everything out so moving forward we're going to go to um thank you for that comment sounds like it is um can i just mention that this board meeting is not currently streaming on youtube all right so next we're going to go to consent agenda miss islandberg thank you consent agenda does anyone wish to pull anything for six uh no there's another community comment second okay so um about a presentation that they just yeah i would have needed that i wrote that on the card about social emotional learning the whole thing that's what i wrote i need to get back to my child

064because i pay attention to her so we're going to pause that for a second and we're going to have amy cons come on up sorry i missed that one amy cons warmest of pennsylvania to my understanding based on the presentation included in tonight's agenda roughly 5.125 million dollars out of the 7.382 million dollars of state and federal covet and esther fund seen on slides 13 and 14 of the presentation is being used for diversity equity inclusion and social emotional learning programs although just about every parent can currently say they are concerned about the mental health their child under the current circumstances this seems like a gross misuse of funds the lexia core 5 assessment showed on slide 9 of your presentation shows the bulk of centennial students k through 5 are 50 to 80 below

065grade level as of october of this year centennial schools ranked 10th out of the 13 schools in the district in bucks county out of 500 schools in pennsylvania central bucks is 17th new hope solebury is 22nd lower moreland is 24th council rock is 34th jenkintown is 45th abington is 51st and pensbury's 59th centennial is 195th out of 500. so many students in our district are scoring below grade level we should not be compromising core curriculum subjects like math english history science education physical education the arts with diversity social issues and anti-racism programs i wise man once said i have a dream that my four little children one day live in a nation where they would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character children do not focus

066on their physical or economic differences and we should not teach them to start what we should teach them is that everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect with a program name like diversity equity inclusion or dei it seems you may not know the definitions or the difference between equity and equality equality is equal opportunity equity is equal outcome we should not focus on making all children the same the priority should be to ensure that we have they have all the same equal opportunity opportunity is there for all the students in our district the outcome is determined by the individual at this point the children of this district as well as the parents are being figuratively beaten into submission the radical agenda of the majority of this board and administration have been overwhelmingly rejected

067by the residents of the centennial school district's community please remember when voting tonight for these programs darkness cannot drive out darkness only light can do that hate cannot drive out hate only love can do that no no no i answered the question when mr gabriel was giving it you said you give me a couple extra seconds when we had the community comment is that related to the agenda yes thank you can i have your card it's just i scribbled my nose this is mike's perduto from warmester pa part one uh i on mr gabriel's presentation i just had a question that uh with the scores they were as i looked at it they were getting progressively lower uh grade after grade so with the teachers at the marking periods that they have if they see

068a student who's struggling in first grade for three or four marking periods don't you don't doesn't the caution light go off in first grade or does the kid go to second grade and the scores get worse and so on and so so forth wouldn't it be an indicator that these students are struggling like the first year they're in one grade and every marking period their grades are going down i think that's something you guys should look at as a board thank you thank you [Applause] i'm just going to write on your second card that you had this question okay you um okay miss eilenberg um consent agenda does anyone wish to pull anything from six [Applause] 6.2 a and 6.2 d thank you okay it resolved at the centennial school district board of school directors

0696.1 a approves the minutes from october 12 2021 work session regular school board meeting 6.1 b approves the minutes from october 26th 2021 committee of the whole meeting 6.2 6.2 b authorization to employ 6.2 c leaves of absence 6.2 e mentor 6.2 f co-curricular additions 6.5 waivers none 6.6 conferences and travel none 6.7 bids and quotes none 6.8 assemblies speakers and programs none 6.9 contracts licenses and services be a result that the centennial school district board of school directors 6.98 approves retroactively this standard contract for esy services at martin luther school for july 6 2021 through august 6 2021 for four special education students district cost twenty one thousand dollars plus any related services as required by the student's iep 6.10 textbooks none 6.11 acceptance of donations grants and bequests via resolve that the centennial

070school district board of school directors 6.11 accepts the ready to learn grant in the amount of 380 367 dollars 6.12 changes to academic programs positions and stipends none second thank you all those in favor aye opposed abstentions hearing none passes 7-0 uh president may i ask you a question i i voted for the minutes because i believe they are accurate but there was a question raised in in one of the minutes that i don't know the answer to maybe you could provide it on the minutes of the 12th i believe on near the last page it references a discussion that was held at that meeting in regard to a question that mrs brancato asked and the subject matter was religious exemptions for employees and it goes on to say that about executive sessions blah blah

071blah and the lawyer got involved and then it says mrs crawson said we would have an executive session before the next school board meeting and it could be added to the next meeting agenda uh my memory is failing but did we have such we did have an executive session um and no it was not on the executive session we did meet with time at 5 15 but it was not on the executive session that to discuss that subject yeah we didn't discuss that subject well i thought that would be the purpose of the way the minutes are that was what was going to happen with that particular subject that i just the minutes i think are accurate i'm not questioning the minutes in any way right and yeah and unfortunately unfortunately we did not discuss

072it um however i don't i don't feel it appropriate to discuss for the board because it's certain um personal preference and i don't want to cross a line that i'm not aware that i can cross with talking about somebody's religion so we do have to discuss it yes still open-ended then okay thank you okay 6.2 personnel and mrs brancato wrestle poll 6.2 resignations a second second thank you mrs mercado i wanted to vote on it separately do you not want it pulled i did want it pulled so we could vote on 6.2 a separately okay did anybody else have any questions on that one is there any particular re i mean is there something you're concerned about yes because i feel like from my information we have several resignations that people were asked to resign

073or be fired so you want to do a roll call i do okay miss robo that's going to be for the um 6.2 a 6.2 added red in first she did read resignations okay are we ready you all of course can proceed uh but if there's any concern the board is entitled to understand why that option was given to the employees not mandated to the employees so if you have any questions we're more than happy to clear that up because it was an option in lieu of because of what happened we can't discuss that here no you could recess though if you really needed to but i want on the record because that's a misrepresentation the way it was presented i just don't want to have any part in these people losing their jobs okay

074so i wanted to vote on it separately okay miss robo can we please do a roll call yes on 6.2 a mrs islandberg yes mr godickson yes mr martin aye mr leiden mrs brancato no mr dixon yes mrs crosston yes 6-1 thank you 6.2 d be it resolved that the centennial school district board of school directors 6.2 d change of status second thank you and mrs bonkado i just wanted to vote on that one separately also ms robel could you please do another vocal for 6.2 d change of status on 6.2 d mr goddickson yes mr martin hi mr lyden mrs brancato no mr dixon yes mrs islandberg yes mrs crosston yes six one so next we're going to have policies that would usually go to mr panovsky can i get mr dixon would you

075please okay seven [Music] 7.1 the centennial school district uh board of supervisors uh presents the following policies for initial distribution and discussion uh 7.1 a policy 309 assignment and transfer policy 7.1 earth 71.b policy 903 public participation in board meetings for initial discussion any discussion moving along uh 7.2 the centennial school district board of school directors presents the following policies are presented for adoption i'm sorry be it resolved at the centennial school district board of school directors 7.2 a uh adopts policy 609 investment of school of district funds 7.2 b policy 614 adopts uh payroll authoriz policy 614 payroll authorization 7.2 c policy 616 payment of bills 7.2 d policy 618 student activity fund 7.2 e policy 618.1 clearing funds 7.2 f policy 6.628 grants can i have a second is there any discussion seeing

076none ms robo can we just have a vote please you want to roll call that no i don't think it's necessary no discussion and you can call for the voice oh i have a voice oh sorry uh voice vote all those in favor please indicate by saying aye aye and he knows abstentions mission carry 7-0 thank you [Music] okay so moving forward we're going to have um financials uh mr goddard can i get you to take that i'll take care of that yeah thank you and does anybody want to pull any of the items hearing none [Music] 8.1 it resolved that the centennial school district board of school directors approves the schedule of bills investments cafeteria funds budget reports and general funds cash receipts summary october 25 2021 as pretty attached 8.2 approves the budget

077of the 2021 budget transfer for october as per attached 8.3 approves the pending bills list as per attached 8.4 approves a pre-approved paid bills list as per attached second any discussions here none all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions seven nothing thank you mr radickson um board discussion and comments mr dixon i do have a comment um so a brief preface uh i'm sure like like me i'm sure many of you may have had this experience when you were growing up uh in your homes you were a kid maybe you thought you were clever or maybe your kids have done it to you or quite probably both they come to you and say or i remember was doing this with my sister to my parents thinking we were cute well how come there's a

078mother's day and a father's day but there's no children's day and of course the response came and i'll bet some of you have heard this one before well every day is children's day right this is the standard parent response to that kind of thing i bring that up because at our last meeting there was a discussion of a book list now setting aside the questions about the process around that book list and whether or not using grant funds for a one-time giveaway is the single best possible use of those funds these are all legitimate questions and there might be a better process for that however i do want to also point out that i mean a lot of those books and it seemed like we were getting awfully close awfully close to suggesting that the

079problem with the list of books lay principally with the fact that they had to do with people of color and not people who are white male and heterosexual now i am white male and heterosexual and i don't want to be excluded or or treated differently because of that i don't think i'm evil because of that i don't think anybody like that is evil because of it i'm not suggesting that you know mr martin i know you commented on it or brought the brought the attention of that interest i don't think that's what you were saying you were saying necessarily however i feel like the commentary got a little out of hand we were very close i think to really outright race baiting on it we have people of color from all those different uh areas

080in this district and the fact of the matter is if you're teaching history the history of the america like the united states for example united states history or european history which are two major topics of history in uh schooling the reality is you're mostly teaching the history of the government and the government of most european countries and certainly america has been dominated by white heterosexual men which is just a fact it's fine so you're going to teach a lot of george washington and thomas jefferson and abraham lincoln and james madison and millard fillmore and all the rest my point my point is that every day when you're teaching history you're going through these kinds of things history class if for people to be interested and invested in and the same goes for literature class and

081and some of the other liberal arts you know people appreciate having voices and that that share their background and cultural and you know cultural background their gender this and that and that's why you have a black history month or women's history month or latino history month because every day every day is white history month is the answer and yes okay so excuse me no no one interrupts you when you are up here speaking no one does let him finish whether whether it's argument or not no one interrupts you when you're speaking let him speak my point is not to antagonize it we're better than this we are better than this all you angry people here there's nothing wrong with teaching george washington carver while we're teaching george washington or martin luther king jr while we're

082teaching martin luther we all know that's fine but when i when i reject that is enough no one will interrupt you when you were up at the podium let him speak look this is hard right i mean i've got a crowd thank you mr dixon i have a crowd of hostile people who are going to scream and yell at me and tell me i'm a racist okay the reality is there are a lot of people in this community who are hurt by that conversation in this centennial school district community and it wasn't really very cognizant of their feelings about being the feeling idea that that list of books was a problem because of who it was about not what it was about madam president i was mentioned so i would like the opportunity to respond

083to this yes mr murphy only because i was mentioned by name in those comments and i respect mr dixon that was not the intent of my bringing that to to the board i think a responsibility of board members is to kind of oversee and look into what books are being distributed what books are being used in the classroom and the point if you go back and look at the minutes that have a tv which hopefully isn't edited that i said that parents should have an opportunity to review the books and have input and that's all parents not just certain types of parents all parents for all students mr martin and i think that is an important thing to do i would have brought the list of names with me that tell fifth graders about all

084the problems with sports and uh politic everything to deal with sports which fifth graders don't need to know that was just one that comes to mind that was not the intent you read that into the mr in addition we we oversee taxpayer money and a one-time expenditure of i think a significant amount ninety-two thousand dollars as opposed to putting books in the library a thousand ninety-four ninety-four that's even worse 94 000 if they're in the library for children to get news they have multiple years usage buying a one-time expenditure of those funds for books that were not selected with any degree of parent input if you give the parents a list of books that they would like to have their children receive and they check off whatever the books are whatever they may be and

085any book can be on that list then that's fine mr martin try to say the school district is telling you what books your children should read i think that is wrong and we shouldn't be done i want to be clear mr martin yes mr dixon i want i want to be clear i missed martin i didn't mention you by name because i didn't want to be i'm not trying to be cute here right and mr martin i also preface this by saying uh you know i your your points about whether or not a one-time investment this is a valid point you know do you send you buy them for the library do you send them home it's a valid point about the process how exactly do we go about selecting the books that was not

086my issue nor do i think as i said mr martin that you were necessarily intending it in this fashion but at one point if you go back and check the minutes you turn to the whole group here because you knew you had them with you and you said there's one group that this isn't about and we know who it is that was very very close i just said that whether the group was here or not to be honest with you let's let's be productive first of all but all i'm saying is i felt i felt in my own self uncourageous and not saying something in that moment at the time that it happened so now i'm going now i'm saying something having said i also want to be very clear i like mr martin quite

087a bit he and i we talked so i'm not trying to be personal but i'm also trying to say we have to be listen this is about civility and how we treat our fellow community members i understand that there's some frustration out there about the drift of education we heard from a woman here about you know uh whether or not the topics are are spending money is the situation that what we're spending money on in terms of a curriculum or whatever i will say first of all in that comment and if she were here i'm sorry she's left there is the i think educators be the first to tell you this throwing money at the problem isn't always the solution just because you're only spending two and a half million dollars on reading doesn't mean

088you're not doing something it means that there's other ways to spend the money but second of all i would just ask i'm not going to be on the board anymore i didn't run again but i'm going to ask well but i am that is not appropriate but i am asking that we have a community of people we have a community of people who who can be hurt by stuff like that and that was not our best moment of support and i would ask going forward that we think about not doing it thank you mr dickson excuse me mrs brancato yeah it's a different different subject um earlier today the young lady said um the powder puff game is on i'm sorry on nov november 16th so it's come to my attention that powder puff has

089always been for the entire high school and it's come to my attention that it is now not for the entire high school only this juniors and seniors are allowed to attend that is a huge football stadium that is absolutely ridiculous that all the children in the high school cannot attend there are there are siblings that would like to attend their you know a freshman sibling wants to attend their senior their senior siblings uh powderpuff game that's always been the history of the powderpuff game it is open to every high school student they buy a ticket and they go so why are we limiting them and who made that decision um i do not have that answer honestly dr betty might have that answer that'd be awesome um dr best would you happen to thank you

090so that decision was made by the high school leadership team in conjunction with me we've had a lot of issues this year at home football games with student behavior our security service that we outsource to has not been able to provide us with any game workers this year because like everyone else they have the same staffing issues most organizations across our nation are facing we had fights at some of our home football games for the first time in eight or nine years this year that we felt concerned about the ability to supervise the students effectively so this is not a coven 19 related decision it's a it's a student supervision situation that we've had struggles with this year so what you're telling me is that every child is going to be punished for the for

091the behavior of some yes that's not what i'm telling you that is what you're telling me what i'm what i'm telling you is that we don't feel we're able to effectively support we have a lot of administrators they could all pitch in and and we still in that case do not feel like we can effectively supervise the students and we had parents at those games where the issues occurred thank you dr best that is not fair that is not fair to punish every child because of some and i really don't think that that's not right that is not right okay so um for reports district policy report would be mr karnovsky but he is i do have a comment as well please and then mrs crosston yes would you like to get um chief donnelly

092in here or is that only for mr panovsky yeah what are you referring to why wouldn't he come in here why would he why would he be why did you want him to come in excuse me why would why did you call him what's going on in the back of the room what's what's the problem well now that chief donnelly came in ask tell him what you wanted to tell him [Music] okay okay okay okay no i can't hear him whatever that is we don't need it one okay i don't know which one it is okay so moving forward um can i make a comment here absolutely please um i i just want to thank the audience and the community for coming out tonight it is very nice to be at a board meeting and

093not looking at empty chairs so i am very pleased to see the community out here thank you okay [Applause] so district policy report was mr panovsky so he is not here um i don't have that report does anyone all right um bucks bciu mrs heilenberg i do apologize i don't have my a comprehensive report which i had wanted to have but i will say that the bucks county iu is hiring just like centennial school district and they're looking for good folks to apply for jobs if you are looking for a job feel free to go over to their website they have the job postings listed thank you thank you thank you miss eilenberg then 10.3 is psba representative mr pranowski again i don't have any of his notes or um legislative council liaison is mr

094panovsky madam chair i can forward to the board the legislative report that iu provides to the superintendent so i can send that out in a weekly report to close the gap on any information for the board related to that area thank you dr ben then we have um mbit mr goddardson thank you um i do not want to repeat what our wonderful lady from mbit and our student uh said earlier tonight so i would just really refer to last night's board meeting and there were really just two items that you know had any real concerns and one of them was well first of all there was no superintendence meeting uh this month and there was no um work session for the board as well and you know the two items that came up was um

095the policy about the social media and that was tabled um because we did not have enough board members to you know push it through um our two fellow board members from centennial um were not present you know yesterday and the last thing that was heavily discussed last night was the health and safety plan that also failed you know due to a lack of votes so that is still reverting back to the initial health and safety plan from august that concludes my report thank you mr gradison any other board communications okay additional community comments we're going to start with mr spududo round two okay thank you uh nice for duda warmester uh everything just about was addressed but i just want to go over this i'd like to address the spending of taxpayer money before you

096spend the dime you have to do your spend a dime of our hard-earned money you have to do your due diligence research the subject matter prior to spending the money the board has the final say so please ask ask questions take your time you can't make an educ educated decision without the knowledge of the matter being presented it doesn't make sense to listen to a five minute presentation and then have to make a decision the board should have at least seven days to research and ask questions about the subject matter before approving anything ask yourselves do we absolutely need this now and how will it benefit our students and speak about the books that we spoke about at the last meeting the books that were introduced at the last meeting no one read the books

097prior to bringing it up at the meeting which i found find appalling that you would just put some try to put something into the system without reading it and that goes for everybody not just the guy who presented it it goes for everybody okay my suggestion is to instead of spending ninety three thousand dollars or whatever it is okay of the grant money my suggestion is to purchase 500 copies of those books put them in our distribute them into our library and notify the parents that they are there available for their child if they deem inappropriate for them use the residual monies for other projects in the district with that being said i ask the board president future to get involved with our tax money and stop rubber stamping everything that comes up look into

098each major proposal see if we are getting the best bang for our buck okay and do and do we really need everything and every position that is proposed i'm looking forward to a change that the residents in this community voted for have a good night thank you mr sperudo next we have paige mattis [Music] oh take your time um my name is paige mattis i'm an eighth grader in log college middle school election day was last tuesday and the four school board members who all won all ran on a promise of making masks optional when they are sworn in december is the board really going to remove masks in december do you realize how nonsensical that is i thought the school board was quote for the children but now you guys want to get let

099us let us get sick and possibly die do not speak while she is speaking no one does that to you or is disrespectful while you are speaking please reset the clock even if someone catches covet and lives there's still long-term effects like heart and lung problems i bet you don't want your child going through that unless you're a heartless monster nobody wants that can you wake up already we're in the middle of a pandemic that has killed over 5 million people and if you think that isn't a big deal that's around 1 in 1 600 people dead and i did the math myself just think about that now kids show less symptoms but that doesn't mean they can't die from it or spread it to other people 700 kids in the united states have died

100from covid and most of those were in the last six months are you gonna wait until one of those kids is in our district i'm sure you don't want to see your kids suffering from the long-term effects of copen and i sure don't want to see my friends like that either so please i am begging you keep masks mandatory until the pandemic is over one more thing people who think of mass harm children are just not right the science backs me up thank you thank you first you did a very good job next tina cairns my name is tina cairns 99 sylvan lane warmester i would like to talk about the discussion at the last school board meeting on october 26th about books using grant money five books were chosen for the elementary grade levels

101to quote increase awareness and help make sure that all the different backgrounds in our community are represented we are trying to make sure there is a diverse collection of materials that reflects the diverse collection of students that we have here in centennial end quote these books were about black hispanic lgbtq and other underrepresented individuals in literature a 2018 study found that 50 of children's books featured white protagonists 27 non-human protagonists and 23 protagonists of color yes more books were about non-human characters than characters of color it is admirable that centennial is trying to inject some diversity into the books its students read this is good not only for those students who identify with these races cultures and individuals but also for other students to expand their understanding of the people and world around them however

102at least one board member did not think this was a good thing they said quote respectfully you forgot one group in this listing of books and that's the majority of people in the district who i'm sure you could have found books for end quote this board member went on to bemoan the lack of books for the majority three times in the span of a few minutes whoever could they be talking about centennial students are 71 white 18 hispanic four percent black and three percent asian so the majority of students are white the words white majority were what they had so carefully tiptoed around i could not believe what i was hearing this was said and tolerated at a centennial school board meeting and is an embarrassment and disgrace for our district and township one last

103point the same member started listing book titles during the meeting quote i suspect there is an underlying message in these books i will cite a few examples one is called my family celebrates day of the dead i have no idea what that is about end quote the hispanic community is the largest minority population in and stirring up for southampton if i were this board member i'd put my family celebrates the day of the dead at the top of my book reading list we don't want our students to have such a narrow view of the world we need to do better and be better thank you thank you um next community comment michael megavan very good thank you michael megavin warminster taxpayer at the school board meeting held in august i listened as parent after parent

104and even some students expressed their concerns over this body's decisions at some point in the proceedings i felt called to the floor to make some comments and i said things that echoed what had already been said i also wagered that the board would have our words go in one ear and out the other i also said that if the board chose to ignore the expectations and wishes of the parents i'd make it a point to do whatever was necessary to get all of you out and replaced by board members who would listen and allow parents to be involved in how their children would be treated at school and what they would be taught so i emailed i canvassed i talked i worked for the candidates as did many of the folks out here in the

105audience and i spoke to known candidates who would bring normalcy back to our schools if they were elected to the centennial school board despite slanderous and libelous activity from an individual in our audience against one of our sitting board members there was a successful successful sweep of the seats on the board and that should be a ringing cacophony in that space between your inattentive ears right now question are you listening now these kids and their parents do not need masking or vaccine mandates continuing to give them anxiety nor do they need a curriculum designed to drive social and emotional wedges between them teaching critical race theory where do they use the more touchy feely misnomers diversity equity inclusion and social emotional learning undermines all that is truly desired for equality you'll likely hear very powerful

106quotes on equality everyone gets a chance and equity everybody gets a trophy from other speakers this evening additionally lessons related to gender identity sexual preferences and limited pronoun usage have no place in the classroom or school environment topics of this nature belong to the parents as they raise their children to be respectful to all of our brothers and sisters of the human race we stand in opposition of the methodical indoctrination of our kids they are not your political or social agenda pawns in closing i simply offer this father god give the incoming board members the ability to listen and the wisdom to do all that is right and best for our students give them strength to manage the challenges from all opposition give them guidance and insight in their efforts to raise this school district

107to a level for all to be proud thank you for your father help those who are leaving to see the errors and actions of their ways as i appreciate your prayer your community comment is over amen all right next community comment is going to be lauren mcrae lauren mcrae warminster two weeks ago i asked the board why my son couldn't go to the farm and had to watch a video on the farm instead the board responded by saying they are allowing field trips and i should have asked the school first they offered to go to willowdale to find out what was going on they acted like they had no clue i later found out that only nine field trips had been approved only three were true field trips and we're at the high school level

108science trips to bccc university of the sciences and east stroudsburg university also at tenet there was a soccer game a robotics competition and a magical performance log college has a trip planned to six flags in may the only trips at the elementary level were transportation between davis and mcdonald's for honors abandoned orchestra i find it interesting that not one of the three elementary schools had any trips planned for the entire school year where teachers not uh told not to plan trips because they wouldn't be allowed that's what some teachers are saying an administrator told me that my child's school will have one trip per grade after the new year it's interesting to think that five schools had no intention of planning field trips until the spring and the board didn't know this the board respond

109the board's response to me was deceptive and that only two out of six schools had a total of four real trips planned i'm noticing a pattern with policy it's that once it's changed and freedoms are taken away they don't come back until people speak up is that what happened was the policy no field trips last year and that changes were just not communicated for this year there is a disregard to what is important to parents and taxpayers you don't care how i feel because it's not of importance to you what is important what is important to me in is in the way of your personal agenda i express my concerns about the staff testing required their dna to be harvested for 10 years for unknown purposes my email went ignored and when i called out

110during the last meeting a board member laughed hysterically the majority of this board is out of touch with what the majority of the community want and by the way we're not bad people and does not support the extreme agendas and policies of the board we are seeing the fallout of these extreme policies as many staff members are resigning it's a suffocating environment and they are easily finding worse elsewhere we need politics i'm sorry policies to conducive to retaining staff not ones that make them run it's confusing to me how you ignore our pleas and then complain how we make a big deal out of things like how every other school is going on field trips using lockers and having the option of in-person conferences you are the ones breaking the law meeting after meeting and

111then shame us for holding you accountable by speaking out you won't give us an inch because you have an agenda and it's not ethical to force your own personal liberal agenda on other people's children it is the complete lack of respect for others who live differently and i would never push the way i live on other people's children when the pendulum swings too far in one direction you can always expect it to swing right back the other way you should have walked down the middle path because we all ultimately have the same goal and that is the best possible outcome for our kids it's time we start focusing on our commonalities instead of our differences and instead of installing the person who lost the election which you're going to do because the former board member

112had announced basically that that's what you're going to do i think is shameful i think is really shameful and at no time in history of people forcing others into compliance have been the good guys freedom okay next comment is nicole vernier thanks uh nicole near warmester pa hello for those of you who may not know me i went k-12 through centennial school district i currently serve as a violence prevention policy specialist working in the realm of dating domestic violence which includes bullying bullying is something that many students struggle with often because they don't fit in with their peers or the majority of people around them to be different can be extremely isolating and lonely especially as children develop and grow into adulthood i wonder how many people in this room can remember a time when

113they didn't fit in with the crowd due to some part of their identity what that felt like especially as a child i imagine those who may be struggling to remember such a time would identify themselves as part of the majority i want to explain to everyone listening that those with any minority status have a disproportionate burden placed on them to fit in for example students who identify as lgbtq have higher rates of suicidal ideation and struggle more academically i question why any board member would want to perpetuate this isolation and exclusion for any student from the majority may i remind everyone too that one of the fundamental responsibilities of school board directors is to quote ensure educational opportunities for all students of the school district let me repeat that for all students of the school

114district i was appalled at comments made at the last meeting calling dismissed books designed to help students who aren't part of the majority fit in to help indicate to them that they too are included and just as important and valuable as any other student i can't help but wonder as well how many school board directors here remember the case of brown versus board of education more specifically a fundamental part of that ruling called the doll test the doll test took young children and asked them to choose between black and white dolls to which they chose the white dolls even black students chose the white dolls psychologists detailed the harms this had on black students the way the desire for whiteness made them feel inferior and caused devastating impacts a reason why schools are now desegregated

115i encourage you to read more into those accounts they're heartbreaking but integral to how we move forward in our educational institutions to in fact ensure that all students are valued equally i want to also say like one of our board members grandsons i too cheer on the phillies and the flyers and that yes there are people of color on those teams but there also aren't any women it's important for young girls especially girls of color to see themselves reflected in professional sports too which is why the book about naomi asaka is vital to education and get this it also teaches boys that professional sports teams can also include tennis i question what it is that any school board director is afraid of with these books the inclusion of these books opens opportunities for children for

116students why would we want to limit that aren't schools literally institutions of education isn't the point of education to learn something we don't already know to expand our horizons so that we can grow and prosper i hope everyone here tonight thinks about this and i thank you for your time thank you okay next comment is going to be heather zykwa cycle heather's michael warmester when i spoke the first time about two months ago i addressed the board that due to the dictatorship and controlling tactics that this administration has been demonstrating that you will see good valuable and irreplaceable employees leaving well guess what employees are leaving so how many more employees do you want to see what do you really want to lose we the community know what is best for our school district you

117are not focusing on what is best for the school district if you were our school district test scores would not keep dropping our irreplaceable employees would never think about leaving and our students would be able to improve and thrive as of now the reality of this school district is you that you are focusing on is embarrassing disgraceful and unacceptable we talked about the reason why we're not having the powder puff game with all the students maybe if we didn't focus on diversity and teaching diversity to our students then you wouldn't have kids fighting on school grounds because like because everyone is equal in god's eyes thank you okay so thank you for your comment um mrs crosston mr dixon or i just want to say one final thing here um and to mr martin because

118uh i i did not know that my colleagues or my miss cairns and obviously they ran for office ms karens and um uh uh miss raniere were going to be here i thank them for them thanking them for their comments i wouldn't mean to single you out personally i mean again i was trying not to be cute i know mr martin to be a man of good character and i don't think that that was really i don't think any of his comments were coming necessarily from a place of true uh you know hatred or anything like that that wasn't the point but the point was still we have to manage how we discuss these things and know that our words mean things to people that's all and i'm saying you know as an exiting member

119of the board uh we could do better than we did at that last meeting that's all thank you mr dickson um moving forward um scheduled board meeting calendar events mr goddard thank you on the following board meetings and on the calendar tuesday november the 16th at 7 pm bciu board meeting at the bciu in doorstown thursday november the 18th 6 pm mbit open house it's a virtual presentation as mentioned earlier today tuesday november the 23rd 7 pm centennial school board meeting committee of the hall right here in this boardroom wednesday november 24th all schools closed thursday friday thursday through friday november 25th 26th all schools and offices closed friday december the 3rd early dismissal k through 5 monday december the 6th 7 pm centennial school board meeting reorganization meeting right here in this board room

120monday december the 13th at 5 30 mbit executive council meeting this meeting has been cancelled tuesday december the 2 14th 7 pm centennial school board meeting regular meeting right here in the school this board room that's it thank you mr goddard can i get a motion to adjourn so moved thank you meeting adjourned you