CSD School Board Meeting - March 9, 2021

001[Music] okay i call this um school board work session regular meeting tuesday march 9th 2021 7 pm to order uh miss robot can we get a roll call please mr bardnick mrs brancato here mrs crossin here mr dixon this is islandberg present mr goddardson president mr miller here mr panovsky here mr martin eight members present thank you can you all stand for the pledge of allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice okay announcements we had an executive session for 30 minutes for um personal reasons um and mr pranowski i have two things um first off um it was kind of brought up at our last meeting the idea of charter school funding reform there seems to be finally a push in our

002state legislature bipartisan push to allow some meaningful charter school reform on the home page if you go to centennial sd.org you will see a link you can click that will show you how to reach out to your legislature legislators to ask them to support charter school reform it's real easy you don't even need to know who your legislators are you just type in your information and it sends the message i urge everyone to do that i've put it out over facebook and twitter also um and my second thing is um we do have a a student who is here tonight with us from tenet uh and we have uh if there is no board member who has an objection to letting her speak before we get into the presentation section that way we'll just move

003the public comments up a little bit so that we can let her speak first okay so we're going to move community comments now is everybody okay mr miller no problem with that i just wanted to add one other thing to announcements i believe we had a historic moment over the weekend where for the first time black and white night was held virtually and both teams won fantastic it was a good it was a good turnout okay community comments for uh sarah hello my name is sarah lee and i am a senior at william tennant i appreciate you taking the time to listen i have dealt with multiple schedule changes throughout my four years here ninth grade we had six periods a day 10th and 11th grade was the year we had eight periods over the

004course of two days 90 minute class periods when covet hit last year we were given work to do on our own time then the beginning of this year we started with two live periods two flex periods lunch two life periods and two flex periods four days a week with wednesdays as a day to catch up and do work on your own time when we started doing hybrid we did 90 minutes once again hybrid ended and every class was split into half live and half flex as you can imagine this year has been hard on everyone mental health has gone down motivation has gone down jobs have been lost special events have been canceled everyone's truly struggling with something right now school is one of the hardest things for most though doing work seems pointless trying

005to keep up seems impossible we were mentally drained for staring at a screen for seven hours straight paying attention seems impossible even with all distractions put away wednesdays were a good thing for everyone teachers had the ability to plan for future classes students have the time to meet with teachers on a google meet when they need extra help with the assignments it was especially good for students who get anxious talking in front of a class students who needed to work to support family members would work all day on wednesdays students whose parents work during the days had to take care of their younger siblings on wednesdays students and teachers used that day to do work but also could attend to other priorities without missing any new work students who are stressed or behind with work

006use that day to catch up on missing assignments teachers use that day to grade and janitors use that day to clean everything extra well to keep us safe we all understand that we want to go back to normal as quickly as we can but i think wednesdays was a positive thing that we gained from the pandemic and most students and teachers loved it and got used from it another reason as i mentioned above with the schedule changes we have changed the schedule multiple times this year and wednesdays were kept throughout the year and have always had a positive impact i know office hours were brought back and replaced wednesdays office hours take place on tuesdays and thursdays anywhere between 20 and 30 minutes whereas wednesdays we had as much time as we needed to meet

007with the teacher i don't know if it was brought to your attention but a petition was made to keep wednesdays as is i created it knowing i'm just one voice but hoping many others would come currently as over 800 signatures as well as many comments from students that attend here stating why they feel wednesday should be kept yet again thank you for your time first of all thank you that was very well spoken uh when the idea of the alternating wednesdays first came up i actually raised concerns um my concerns were a little different but i did have concerns with it um i'm hearing you i'm hearing what you're saying loud and clear and i'm hearing concerns from a lot of other people that are saying the same thing um i i think that the

008idea of the alternating wednesdays was to give students more time in person in the classroom and i think you know we we do things and sometimes they work wonderfully and sometimes they don't and i'm just speaking from the perspective here and this is not anything about any employee in this district i'm what i'm hearing is it's not working so i i don't know if there what we can do to kind of revisit that um because i had originally heard it from sort of some staffing concerns but now i'm also hearing it from students that it's kind of confusing and not having i think the effect that we wanted to and i think you know we did it with our intentions were pure we approved it with pure intentions to try to give you guys because

009we're hearing is that we were hearing before there's not enough time face to face in the classroom but maybe you know we can find a different way mr i i just can't i would ask a question of clarification you're talking about wednesdays for the rest of this academic year yeah thank you mrs brancato so sarah when you say office hours they're on tuesdays and thursdays aren't most kids if the kids should i say this way so those office hours some people are still on the bus on their way home correct correct and it's only 20 to 40 minutes so by the time school ends some of those kids can't even participate in office hours unless they call from the bus yeah that is true so are a lot of kids saying that or a few

010kids saying that i'm sorry oh i i mean like in the past i've always used office hours when i needed to make up work but you know some kids are virtual and some kids are hybrids so that's hard for the hybrid kids because they have to go home and to my knowledge we have to leave the school after 2 20 and we can't stay after so most kids do have to leave and i know for me i live five minutes away from tennant but it takes me about 15 minutes to get home by the time i'm home it's 12 40 or 240. right so one one young lady um sent me an email and um she told me that she had to partake in office hours while she was driving and that just made me

011crazy yeah um so i appreciate you letting me know i thank you and and thank you very much for coming and speaking up for everybody that that takes that takes a lot that's i i really do appreciate it thank you mr miller yeah uh sir very well organized and very impressive and i i do appreciate hearing your words uh although i'm really answering mr ponofsky at this point and just again as your opinion was yours my mine is that we do have a process that we follow in the district and we we take guidance from the administration as to what they hear overall and observe so i i would look for administration to tell us if they feel there's a change and plan warranted and whatever reasonings behind it whether it's coming from our professional

012staff uh whether sarah does really have 800 people that are in the district you know i i i don't put a lot i i appreciate everything that you did but i i don't follow unsigned surveys or things like that uh i want to hear what feedback we get from inside our own organization that's credible so you know unless i were to hear something different from administration i i think we we need to follow the logic that uh led us to make this decision in the first place can i ask um the petition you you started is it through what website it's through change.org and so people give their names right uh correct so so so we can access the petition anybody who signs it would have their names in their hometowns on it now you

013are correct we can't prove that their hometown is what they say it is but it's it's not i wouldn't say it's exactly the same as unsigned letter because there is going to be a list of names attached and i i'm interested i also agree i would like to hear from administration about the wednesdays and see what their you know what they're hearing if it's different because what i i'm hearing is what sarah is telling us personally that but again that's just me mrs brancato so so sarah i got somebody sent the petition to me so it's not unsigned those are real names on there um with real signatures so they're not 800 ghost people um i mean it says right here we can read it says 800 signatures and it and the child has said

014young lady i'm sorry has said um has said 800 signatures so it's not it's not irrelevant and i'm concerned that kids who need office hours which let's be honest we all need office hours because this this is a crazy coveted world and if they can't partake in office hours when are they supposed to get that extra help and are we supposed to expect our teachers to have office hours at five o'clock on a weekend or whenever these kids can fit it in mr martin i just have one question have we given up hope of doing what we should be doing and going to school five days a week for every grade level like some other districts in this county are doing are we giving up hope that that is not going to occur this school

015year no we we haven't given up hope and uh i'm just going to add lib to a couple comments and dr bess can speak to the current status obviously you know we're following uh what the guidelines have come about the six feet and the masking for secondary students additionally to mr dixon's question as of this today we were informed and made aware that dr fosse has said they don't expect vaccination for secondary students until the fall so to your point about we may be starting school year in this fashion unless there's a decision to say that we we should do it less than six feet to mr martin's question so you could very well start school in this fashion so what we do today could very well carry over uh one of the things that

016i reflected upon and read and thank you you as i greeted you at the door i tell you we welcome uh to hear from you so thank you so anything is said here does not take away from you voicing we want this to happen and to hear your voice um one of the things that i reflect upon and ask the staff what happened other times and how do we engage students before the situation because buses still came students still had to leave students still had to go to work so everything they mentioned still happened during a regular schedule and i know that as a former high school principal what they're describing isn't unique now what she is describing is we did something that helped but as we transitioned back and it was an intent that

017everyone kept saying trying to get more face time with students and it also has a concern that we are telling legislators who are arguing that in person is the most important part of it and each time we do something that takes away from that we're killing our own argument for the importance of being in front of a teacher every day it also hurts us when we talk about the cyber school issue when we're saying that model doesn't work you think in person is important because every time i'm on a legislative call i bring that up how do you fund cyber schools if you're telling us it's important to get them in person and use that against us to divert money from us so those are some of the things that ran through my mind and

018trying to understand you know how do you find a way to create a win-win out of this situation but dr bess is here to share information yes so the the most important thing i think we all need to keep in mind is this hasn't even happened yet tomorrow's the first wednesday that we're offering an additional day of hybrid instruction so a lot of what i'm hearing is is assumption and supposition it may or may not occur but this this arrangement that you know we're looking at is not being successful has not even started so i think that's an important piece number one number two on the office hours ends remember the kids are in a hybrid cohort model which means that the days that they're in person they aren't able to office to access office

019hours virtually because they are in transit or going out to play a sport or something along those lines on the days that they're not in person they are able to access office hours and to dr betten's point we have 90 minute blocks of instruction at the high school there is plenty of time for teachers and students to interact either in person or virtually and the the entire point of this expansion of in-person days was to follow our health and safety plan follow the guidelines and to add more in-person instruction for our students because that's what we've heard from legislators that's what we've heard from the departments the various departments of health who are advising us based on science not just about physical health but emotional and mental health as well and i think that any

020plan can be shot before it's actually enacted but i think it's way too early for us to start saying that this is not working or not a good arrangement i just want to say something real quick um i know from i have a lot of friends who are in other school districts around here and the thing that has always worked best for them is four days a week where they got to keep their wednesdays now following off what you said office hours and that kids you know kids that aren't hybrid certain days who are virtual certain days can talk to students or teachers but the thing is they only have 20 minutes 20 or 30 minutes and students get anxiety i have anxiety i think a lot of students deal with it and to speak

021in front of a class and say that they have a question about something and that they may feel stupid that's what's the problem this is why it's hard for students i mean like anytime i get called on in a google me i get anxiety i get really anxious i don't want to say something dumb i think a lot of students feel that way that's why office hours were such a great thing and wednesdays were such a great thing because you could email your teacher and say what time can we meet i want to talk about something i want to talk about an assignment i want to make something up and i was able to get help i had a teacher stay on with me for like 30 minutes once just to help i um first

022off dr best let me apologize i have so many schedules in my head i think i was conflating our schedule with middlebucks where they have already started back um so i i do take back the it's not working thing um i'm hearing there's a lot of anxiety about it working i guess is the comments that i'm hearing um i i do believe dr best is correct that we can't say something isn't working until we've seen how it's working and so um definitely if it isn't if it if when we start back and this is becoming the fact that if it clearly is not working that is absolutely something i think we can all say we would look into also on a personal note you should really consider a career as a lawyer because you make

023really good and persuasive arguments so very good mr dixon and and sarah i second everything everyone said you're a very effective presenter so thank you for coming uh and i i just it's a question that i suppose in this school year is moot but i am thinking about next school year in terms of because i assume this year such rules are suspended but there are a certain number of instructional days and i'm wondering how that plays into this that we have to meet you work that in the calendar yeah right but i mean i'm thinking about like if this is a decision that we're to carry over the next year that's a question like i don't know uh so the the days are 180 then there's uh 900 and 990 so in her case uh

024the secondary is 9.90 that applies and our schedule depending on how many times we do something like this you know we have some flexibility some wiggle room but depending on how many times it happened you could eat into it so for instance we put in more than the hours the minimum hours in our year uh so without actually knowing how many times this would change um you know we would have to obviously as our responsibilities administrators we have to monitor that and make sure we comply so we would never get let it get to that situation uh for that to happen but to your point about how we build a schedule we build a schedule with the intentions of being in compliance and also making sure that we are providing the best instructional model possible

025for success i mean so my question basically is suspending wednesdays indefinitely does that bear any well this this year no right because we have been because of 520.1 um which was basically the resolution you most districts passed and turned in we have a lot more flexibility with our scheduling process 520.1 uh is expected to not be 521.1 said uh basically during the pandemic and up to four years ironically for another reason i checked with a couple legal counsels about what's the status of 520.1 after this year and whether or not it has to be acted upon because it's said during the pandemic up to four years uh basically their comment is don't depend on 520.1 to be there next year so everything that we do now is really about this year if we we have

026more flexibility this year because of the the status of covet and the pandemic when you did 520.1 mr broncotto so could we so could we try out this wednesday could we do two wednesdays and after two wednesdays could we survey the students and the staff and get their feedback after two weeks could we do that you could but i'm gonna be transparent you won't get a positive response because they've already decided it won't work your 800 student response or 800 person survey tells me they've already decided it's not a good thing could we do it anyway because maybe i just believe in people a little bit again i i said in the beginning you could do it that's the first thing i said so i believe i believe that people if we're saying we're doing

027it anyway and then after two weeks we can say can you give us your honest opinion and i don't think kids are just going to say nah i hate it if it started to work for them i think kids will be honest sorry about that sarah no you're totally fine um i just want to say i totally understand where you're coming from kids who sign things you know kids seem like they're so certain about everything i know a lot of kids are we miss in person time and i think that all of us would love to try it and i think that you asking to send out a survey means so much because a lot of us just want to voice and some of these decisions and schedule changes that are happening and affecting us

028and i know a lot of teachers that were really upset about the schedule change and felt like they didn't get a voice and that's mainly i think the problem was was we felt like we didn't have a voice and we weren't able to talk about something that felt huge to us um so i think that if you send out a survey i think the students would be honest and i know like i'm a student i might be biased and i some kids might not be because they're lazy but i think a lot of students sorry i just called all of us out but it's true i think so a lot of us miss in-person time and a lot of us miss being in school and being with our friends but yeah that's all you have

029to say mr panovsky so um first of all i want to say that i absolutely understand where you're coming from feeling like you don't have a voice um i do know that the the the educators in the district were part of the process um but i know that where you're coming from it feels like you weren't and that's that's absolutely valid um i would urge any student who is listening to this to do what you did to reach out we're here we have emails we will talk to you you know we're not we're not these uh distant people who only exist behind this board we you know i read every email that comes to me um i i try my best to get back to as many as possible but seriously like do exactly what

030you did and because it's effective and if if you don't come to us and tell us you feel like you don't have a voice then we don't know you feel like you don't have a voice we can't do something about something we don't know about so thank you yeah madam president i'd like to make a slight a request amendment to what said is you really should start with a high school principal that's what she's paid for to give her a chance to respond to the students all actuality jumping over that and not giving it it defeats the whole purpose of having those people in place secondly i would say that what you need to know is why i said what i said uh sarah is that we got half our students who don't even come

031on their actual in-person day so they've already decided they prefer the virtual version that's why i'm saying that what i said not to have anything against you but all the data we're showing is that they really don't they like the virtual aspect of it so we have still have even on in-person days about half the students showing up and that's why i was saying between what was already done with the survey and also the information we're seeing they prefer as kids not to come they're choosing that option which is what we gave them which is fine that was we built a system that allowed that and dr ben if i could just add uh since we made the announcement of adding the expanded in-person instruction at the secondary level all three buildings have had an

032uptick in students coming back for in-person learning uh we saw the same phenomenon at the elementary schools when we went to the four day model which began this week where we're at nearly 87 percent of our kids attending in person so in in all six of our schools when we've gone and offered more in-person instruction more students have come so i think there's a clear trend there that can't be ignored mrs brancato so so i'm i'm lost now can we can we do the survey or we can't do the survey because i want them to have a voice i'd like you to try it out first oh one thing you know sometimes i'd try it out and get used to it yeah um you might get you might be like wow more my friends are

033coming back to school and i know it's hard because we've all been living crazy for so long so maybe if we give it a try oh 1 000 but can we give a survey after a couple weeks and ask them their opinions because ultimately it's not a it's not us going to school it's them and um [Music] i don't believe that kids are all lazy i know you didn't say all lazy listen when i ask for the trash to go out i don't get a lot of volunteers but um you high school kids you you you know which way you want to go and and i think i think 99.9 of you want you want to be in school um so can we do the survey or we can do the survey did anyone have

034any other questions are we good so i'm gonna we can reach out to dr heinrich to have her take care of that the survey and reaching out and i don't see a reason why we couldn't do that but it would go through dr and heinrich can we see the results of the survey or is that not something we can say i'm sure we absolutely okay yeah so so we'll reach out to dr heinrich to because it really should go through her um to you know give it two weeks to see how it works and then we'll send have or send out a survey of some sort to you know to gauge what the kids are going through students just to share on that two-week timeline that means everybody will have only done it one time

035okay so let's do it a little more than two maybe give it a month yeah so let's give it a month each student will have a chance to do two wednesdays then yeah yeah and and dr heinrich will also be announcing uh later this week a whole series of uh senior cumulative events that we're going to be running this spring that have been planned with our student leadership group that's been meeting with our teachers and administration since september so the students do have a voice at william tennant high school and it will be heard with the events they're going to announce did anyone else have any comments thank you so much for coming out sarah i appreciate it thank you thank you so much and any other community comments i don't think there were are

036there any other community comments voice from above no he told me there weren't so so we're going to go to um student presentations for um [Music] actually yeah for logan merits what one should i talk about which one would you like to um this one seems a good fight there you go hi i'm logan meretz here to share the william tennant student report as we just discussed in that conversation teachers and students are mentally preparing for first hybrid wednesday tomorrow this past weekend on saturday the black and white generals caroline weir jt stone jackie kubala and mike burkowski along with staff mem leaders ran the canned food drive event from 10 to 2. both teams collected a generous amount of donations that will go to the klinger farmers market all while socially distancing students are

037now waiting to participate in the two other black and white events a 5k run and a clothing drive which are coming soon student leaders teachers and staff have been working together to discuss how other popular events could be socially distanced these main events include powderpuff which would be in the spring senior prom and senior graduation although these events are precarious the student body remains grateful for the events we've had and hopeful for those we may experience spring sports have just begun and teams are holding tryouts also members of the debate team will be participating in the virtual state tournament later this month the science national honor society recently recently created a virtual induction for new members it consisted of a google slides presentation with a warm welcome from the officers and administrators as well as

038an introductory slide for each new inductee seniors are currently building their applications for regional scholarships through naviance which will be due in early april that is all thank you for listening to this tenant report thank you thank you mr gabriel miss bowden is there do we have elizabeth on zoom oh do we have another one is she on and she on zoom hello hello good hello am i good to start yes okay uh hello my name is elizabeth wanarenko i'm a junior at william tennant high school i'm also a level 200 in the public safety program at middlebucks institute of technology the current happenings of mbit are national athletic training month is recognized in march to spread awareness about the important work of athletic trainers athletic trainers or healthcare professionals who collaborate with physicians to

039provide emergency care and prevent diagnose and treat injuries as well as medical conditions for people in work life and play including athletes industrial workers military service members and public servants the 2021 slogan is essential to health care our student in sports therapy and exercise management plan to recognize our essential workers by sending thank yous to our homeschool athletic trainers for all that they do the state of pennsylvania now has 11 new pa admissions inspector certified and ready to conduct the mission testing these automotive technology students completed the pennsylvania enhanced emission inspection certification course which provides the theory of statewide emission inspection procedures and tests required for the pa enhanced emission inspection certification this training is mandated by penndot for all inspectors and automotive repair technicians conducting emission inspections now they will start preparing for the

040pa safety instructor exam the belks county community college course and introduction to entrepreneurship is underway at an embed with seven students enrolled the course teaches understanding of basic entrepreneurial concepts gaining experience with useful tools and developing entrepreneurial skills through hands-on learning students in our horticulture landscape and design program are working on pond installations this month that will help utilize their own aquaponics systems to implement methods of sustainable crops productions their fish will provide nutrients to the herbs and vegetables that will be used by our culinary arts and science students and eventually the fish too we would like to remind everyone that you can learn more about the latest happenings that end it by liking us on facebook following us on instagram twitter and viewing our videos on youtube thank you for your time and the

041opportunity to keep you informed about what is happening at middlebucks institute of technology preparing tomorrow's workforce today thank you thank you thank you moving on to mr gabriel great good evening everybody uh thank you for the opportunity to speak again as we discussed back in january we had shared the status of student academic performance here in centennial and had made the promise to the board that throughout the spring we would be following up with a series of presentations at certain board meetings to kind of highlight the different initiatives that we're taking to help address some of the the needs that came out of came out of that report as you know i think it was two meetings ago we talked about the school calendar and how that was one of the systems changes we were

042making to help improve uh outcomes today we're gonna be talking about the atsi grant we'll get into what that is a little bit later as well as equity specifically related to our high school english language arts curriculum uh tonight i have uh mrs shimona james coles mrs melissa bolden mrs hope banshee from the high school and then mr joe ross actually had a family engagement tonight so i'll be stepping in for a few of his slides uh the objectives tonight will be really two things to try to connect a lot of what might seem like disparate happenings going on in the district right now to everything from student academic performance to state and federal mandates equity and then the process by which we determine books uh and what to bring into our curriculum at the

043high school uh we're also going to touch on the concept of an evolving curriculum the universality of classic texts and how they connect to the idea of a modern classic and their implement implementations or sorry implications excuse me in 21st century learning environments if you remember this slide from the january 26th presentation we are looking at all of this all of this programming from four lenses out of the office of teaching and learning uh both curriculum instruction assessment and different systems as we mentioned back then we had talked about different levels of student academic performance from achievement data to growth data we looked at ourselves both within the county as well as southeastern pennsylvania and the different peer districts in our area we also had shared the hanover research i think it was a meeting

044or two ago and about the learning loss estimator and kind of how covet has impacted uh certain groups of our students in the district in terms of learning loss so tonight we're going to be really focusing on curriculum specifically in the areas of reading english language arts at the high school and having an equity lens you know many of you some of you are on the equity team here in the district so this is going to be sort of a conversation around both of those things so here is the here's the big picture of connecting the dots right these are the sort of disparate pieces we're going to try to if we do a good job make clear on how they are are impacting each other so we have our centennial curriculum over there on

045the left uh which we'll get into mrs banshee will talk about a little bit we have our diversity equity and inclusion push here in the district and mrs coles will get into that as you know a few years ago we had our excellent equity quality review in partnership with the university of pennsylvania and gave us some recommendations and what you'll see tonight is we are implementing some of those recommendations and the work we're going to share and then two other things that we have going on we are currently under what's called corrective action as per idea the individuals with disabilities education act and i'll let uh mrs bolden talk about that a little bit uh but in a nutshell what that means is we've lost some local control over what we can do with our

046funding and i'll let mrs bolton talk a little bit more specifically about that the other piece from the state is we are william tennant high school is currently what's known as an ats i school an additional targeted support and improvement school it's a designation for three years this was a presentation that was given to the board back in i think may or june at the end of last year if you remember uh and what that says is that we are on we have um certain groups of students that are underperforming we're not meeting their needs we have three years to to correct that basically uh and if not we then move into a more comprehensive targeted improvement and again we run the risk of losing more local control over our programming our curriculum and and

047what we're doing in our in our would you emphasize that the corrective action didn't come into play for the current team that's how long have we been two years of corrective action mrs baldwin will talk about when that when that okay yeah so that's that's gonna those are the sort of the dots we're gonna try to connect to you all tonight and then talk about what we're doing to address um and and not end up in further further improvement moving forward so norms for looking at this data as you know we like to stick to our norms and help give us a lens to look keeping decisions in the best interest of our students intellectual and personal growth focused decisions on fact not on interpretation or assumption you'll see some data tonight that we're going

048to share in some research that's helping to inform our decisions and we've we're always thinking in terms of roi right return on not only instruction but investment is what we're spending getting is the results that we're hoping for and then remaining future focus on continuous improvement growth in curriculum instruction assessment and systems so uh in 1990 uh dr radine sims bishop coined the phrase windows mirrors and sliding glass doors to explain how children see themselves in books and how they can also learn about the lives of others through literature this has been a very popular and uh effective way to consider what we bring into our classrooms for our kids and i'm going to read you this short snippet from her essay there's a full link to the essay in the in the presentation and

049it reads she writes this books are sometimes windows offering views of a world that may be real or imagined familiar or strange these windows are also sliding glass doors and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author when lighting conditions are just right however a window can also be a mirror literature transforms human experience and reflects back to us and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as a larger part of as a part of a larger human experience reading then becomes a means of self-affirmation and readers often seek their mirrors in books so this really this idea of not only using books and literature to help kids see into the lives of others but see themselves

050is really going to be the the overall focus of tonight and sort of how you know the underlying theme that's going to connect all the different work we mentioned on the slide before so i'm going to turn it over to mrs coles right there good evening everyone i'm going to turn to the side a little um so one of the things when i presented to the board the last time about our equity work i always start with the definition of equity it is also on our district web page in pennsylvania equity has been defined as every student having access to the educational resources and rigor they need at the right moment in their education and it is across race gender ethnicity language disability sexual orientation family background and or family income and that's from the

051pennsylvania department of education we also have equity literacy that we're discussing equity literacy is a framework for cultivating the knowledge and skills that enable us to be a threat to the existence of inequity in our sphere of influence more than cultural competence and you go to workshops and you hear them talk about cultural confidence and diversity equity literacy prepares us to see even the subtle ways in which access and opportunity are distributed unfairly across race again class gender identity sexual orientation disability language and other factors and then there is the principles of equity literacy there are 10 principles which you have access i'm not going to read them but those principles refer to the knowledge dimension of equity literacy as it pertains to educators and the school's efforts to ensure equitable and educational opportunity for

052our families who are experiencing poverty as doctor i mean okay your doctor as if he mentioned um we everything that we do and i credit dr betting for this any meeting that we have he always refers to the equity audit so we had the equity audit in 2019 and there are six priorities that they listed for improvement and one of the things they share with us is that they are not separate that they work in conjunction but specifically for our purposes tonight priority two priority four and priority five really support this work that we're trying to accomplish priority two is access um assess and provide for resources including time talent and funding to be equitably distributed throughout the districts in response to students faculty and staff needs provide access for all students to a high

053quality instruction associated with rigorous coursework that engages students in projects and problem solving worthy of the effort required and priority five engage in purposeful communication with students their families csd leaders and faculty and staff and members of the larger school community for the purpose of learning with and from each other even when conversations have to be difficult and uncomfortable so why are we choosing some of these books that are anti-bias in cultural linguistic cultural and linguistic responsiveness validating and affirming marginalized learners is the first step to building bridges towards academic achievement and what they do is they call this vaping that we always validate we affirm we build and then we build that bridge to be culturally linguistic responsive means going where the students are culturally linguistically first and then leading them where they need

054to be academically and socially for success and again that framework is called that validate affirm build and bridge one of the things we're looking at is the books that we have in our classrooms and our libraries all of our books should be free of stereotypes free from tokenism which is something we discussed as some of the board members when we work with psba and that tokenism is like we just have one book on asian americans or one book on african americans or one book one lgbtq that's a token now we want to make sure that we have multiple that we avoid loaded words that our books are accurate and respectful and in our libraries books should include people not just animals there was a recent survey that showed that a lot of our books in

055our elementary schools are animals about stories and fables about animals no we want real people and it needs to show families and lifestyles that represent our program here in csd families in the community and that shows a diverse abilities be written and illustrated by people of color include doers of all ages and people of color and portray action towards change we should also consider choosing books with recent publications such as what we are doing tonight that more accurately reflect our diversity as in our society as you know we reported on some of the things our equity team has done our teachers building administrators and oli participated in the bciu curriculum academy where the importance of cultural competency and cultural awareness were addressed as a special project and she took this on herself mary ellen gilbert

056who is an equity liaison at davis every um holiday or every month she curates book titles around special themes and teachers it goes out to the teachers and they're able to add to it and collaborate at titles so to date and some of these things have also been posted on our website um we've done lists for hispanic heritage month uh indigenous people's day native americans day a month um dual a multicultural thanksgiving multicultural winter holidays black history month lunar new year and women's history month and i wanted to add that our students from tenet have been reading to our elementary students on some of these titles for black history month and for women's history month our librarians have worked to review and purchase diverse texts our in-service days with our librarian has been librarians have

057been devoted to ensuring that all students have the ability to see themselves in the books that they read as the new books are added to the collection their destiny which is the library catalog it highlights them and at the elementary level the books are displayed for this little children in the libraries our literacy coach rose mealy and myself attended um a professional development on that cultural linguistic responsiveness that vabbing and our tenant team equity team has assisted the english department in the review and selection of some of these books to make sure that they are culturally sensitive and foster um diversity and inclusivity that was so quick i have a quick question about that no no no but i i love everything that you know about the library and stocking the library and thinking about

058how to present my question is i'm sorry i don't know this off hand do like how are students like is there structurally getting to the library like you know is there a period a week or something like that for the elementaries yeah so elementary school they're still following their um schedules so they do go to their specials and so they are going they do go to the library and select books um we prior to them coming back in person um the librarians actually pulled books and met parents outside on certain days and was able to provide books so we we've always made sure that they've had the books that they needed thank you um as previously uh mentioned the district centennial school district has been cited for over the over-identification of students of color in

059the category of emotional disturbance and the amount of emotional support that we are providing to students and how the does this correlate with our um corrective action so this evening and each time we come together on the facebook pages there's a lot of talk about social emotional learning and support and how people feel about themselves school just managing managing time so um students identified as having an emotional disturbance or students who receive and students who receive emotional support struggle oftentimes with the ability to self-regulate and to support themselves and to feel better about themselves and to manage their behaviors um so this matches um this as a part of our corrective action centennial school district has to show evidence to the pennsylvania department of education that we have amended our policies and practices to support

060the social emotional well-being of students of color so that we do not over identify and at this point we are required to take a maximum of 15 percent of our idea budget which equals totally 324 thousand 78 dollars and 93 cents we have lost control of our ability to choose what we spend that money on it has to go to preventing students from being over identified and so we mr miller asked a question of when did this start 2016 2017 2018 2019 they took the state took that data and said that we are consistently over identifying our students of color so we want to make sure we have supports in place to help students be able to feel better about themselves and to see themselves to feel that centennial is a place centennial school district

061is a place where they can be and they can find support without being identified as a student who needs emotional support ms baldwin yes sir so um you're telling so what you said is that this they started identifying in 2016 correct no they they've been taking our data right and they looked at um our consistent practices right um from 2016-17 so my bigger question is something like this doesn't just pop up in 2016. it does is a long history of this process that led to where we are today i don't want someone to think this just started in 2016 it's just when they started looking at the data it's just when um so well pde realized that they needed to start looking at school districts and so this is something newer over the last few

062years so that's why they started with those years of data because pde realized that they needed to bring to the attention of districts where students are over identified i would say that a concern is that it could be another category moving forward so we have to be careful not just to look at the disproportionality of our students who receive emotional support but we're also keeping an eye on our students who receive learning support autistic support so we're looking at everything and as we uh change our practices and some of our policies we can meet the needs of more more students and i would refer to it as the curve effect as dr betten taught us this week so i would say to you that uh that what she just outlined is that we need to

063correct our main academic program we need to serve students in our what they call tier one where 75 and 80 of our students should be getting what they need and not being sent somewhere special and that's what we're finding that is contributing to this and if we don't address that you know it could be another subgroup another year and that's what we're trying to address in making some changes the cost factor that she outlined is actually bigger than that that's the money that they're saying that we give you that you must dedicate to this resource well remember the more students who are in special ed the higher the cost factor also so that's the other part of your budget that then goes to that allocation our percentage of specialist students in our district is higher

064than the state average and higher than some of the peer districts that we looked at i think mr dixon was first uh yeah i have a couple of questions just first of all for clarification purposes just to kind of put a point on it so we'd be fair to say that the funds and and the direction that we're getting from the pde on how to use these funds is meant sort of as a front loaded investment so that we're not in other words over yes students of color into special ed programs when they don't in fact need it yeah it's a preventive measure right it is and i mean then secondly my comment is i'm just i'm i'm terribly glad this work is happening it's funny i just as a brief aside i'm teaching a

065geneva smitherman who is an african-american linguist who worked in the 70s and at that time the fashionable thing was that they would uh stu school districts would see students of color who were speaking in black vernacular and say you must have a speech impediment and then they were enrolling people in speech impediment which was ridiculous and it sounds like that we had a similar type of problem here sort of transmuted so great mr miller yeah uh miss paulin thank you very much my my point in asking the question i did was not to it was to make sure that people understood you that the problem didn't start this year uh and the current team that's assembled we've since since the problem was identified we virtually had turnover in every area of administration so you know

066this administration is not evaluating this administration is working on correcting yes mrs allenberg thank you very much um my question is what are the benchmarks that we need to hit in order and is there a deadline in which to hit them great question so that we may retain or get back the ability to utilize that money as we see fit so um we are we have to submit data every year okay and we have to spend this money over 20 months for well so we have corrective action for two years this current year and next year they had to take of course this year covet there wasn't a lot of planning last year to prepare for this year so we are still in corrective action for another year so change will come over time but

067we're examining our data so each year we have to report so we might be in corrective action for another school year the report the notification comes out in february of of the school year so i'm thinking just my experience with corrective clear chances are we will be because of what happened with covey yes they pretty much are holding everyone stagnant uh from the information we received so it is a highly likelihood that nothing's going to change especially the fact that we probably would not have made enough progress to even create change given uh the learning loss and other things that have happened because of colvin but the communication that we've received is even at the federal level everything is kind of status quo with this process i agree i anticipate we will be in corrective

068action next year but we should still see hopefully a decrease in some effects of the work that is being done everything is going to take time because the students that we have in our district are already identified as needing emotional support we're looking at support being provided to regular education because now we're looking at not identifying so many more students as needing emotional support students of color because you can't there's not much you can do about what's already in place not unless students no longer need the supports but it's going to take some time so i do anticipate we will be in corrective action again next year but i still and but i still anticipate that if we're in corrective action we should still see improvement so i'm not i hear the reporting is annual

069what i'm not clear on is what our benchmarks are and if there's a deadline for those benchmarks so we have all right sorry let me answer that question clearly um we have a auditor i received communication today um we have been contacted so i will make a phone call tomorrow see what the timeline is and then i will receive more information as far as the benchmarks but the state is kind of behind a little bit of course because of covet so originally the the notification we received said that we would get contact in the fall of 2020. today i mean we received a letter but today i receive information log into the system and find out what you need to do so communication is a little behind so the answer to your question is i

070do not know the exact benchmarks because i receive more detailed communication today understood thank you for the mr goddard so if we end up identifying fewer students for special education how are we going to help the students that's going to be under achievers in regular education so great question and i think that that's going to be a part of the rest of the presentation um remember we right now for corrective action we are specifically discussing students who receive um emotional support so there's a lot of sel um supports just this week this week and next week teachers are receiving um social emotional learning sessions virtually so it's a process but we're starting now with regular ed and you'll hear some more in the presentation so why include the conversation around idea and corrective action in

071with our atsi conversation the equity conversation and the curriculum conversation because what we're noticing is uh as melissa and i are working you know our officers are working closely together we're finding that it's a lot of the same kids right a lot of our subgroups uh our kids that we are um not serving to the level that we'd like to be right now uh so this is really um about expansion and addition of resources and a programming to help all kids it's not about replacement right it's really about expansion and variety so tsi targeted state improvement the the regular tsi is an early warning system for at-risk groups as a signal of schools that may be at future risk for more intensive support like atsi we currently do have two buildings in elementary and middle

072school that are under tsi so it's sort of like a shot across the bow there's no designation yet there's no grant money yet it's just hey heads up these kids if this continues for another year you're going to be an atsi the high school is the only building actually under atsi additional target uh improvement it was it's supposed to be a three-year designation so we would have three years to get our scores up for certain subgroups which i'll get into in a minute however with the pssas and keystones not happening uh as was mentioned as melissa mentioned you know everything's kind of floating another year they're sort of just letting things move forward as is stagnated until the state assessment system which you know we we know is happening this spring is back up and

073running and they can actually collect data on on the students so uh the high school received uh tsa the atsi designation for economically disadvantaged students as well as our hispanic students and the indicators were our math and ela achievement our math and ela growth as well as our english language proficiency so those were the markers mrs islenberg to your question that we need to really take a hard look at and and get to those kids and make sure that we're providing you know uh supports for those students again going back to the why hope is here tonight you know we're going with that windows and mirrors theme right making sure that we are what we're teaching and what we have available to students is reflective of our demographic and of those students uh the atsi

074grant presents an opportunity mr gabriel yep but i think one of the things that you could actually respond to to mr goldeska's question is also why we're doing the work on looking at eureka math yep why are we looking at our early springboard literacy early literacy a program with a hanover research because at the end of the day if we don't address the math and ela and are again tier one program that's not going to help as uh miss bolden talked about stop the pipeline in a theater pattern we're looking at also a different approach to our middle school program with regards to a very focused math and ela program that would actually give what we call standards-based pre-identified curriculum uh with regards to math and ela that we're looking at and reviewing right now

075with our team but that is the work is around math and ela to actually fix our or try to address the shortcomings in our tier one which is our main instructional program it's also about differentiation of instruction within the classroom again not a place and as a parent of a special needs child the idea that we send the students somewhere to get help shouldn't be the first decision that we make right and and as dr matt mentioned right a few years ago we adopted amplify science in our middle schools to help address you know more rigor in science uh two years ago we adopted cpm math in grades six through twelve to help you know help um bolster our math program our tier one math program and as dr bennett mentioned we're currently looking at

076k-12 reel or k-10 rila reading english language arts to really look at what are we doing from you know this goes back to the work with aim academy right the work with pln and eureka and all the things we've been sharing over the past year that started you know a few years ago to get an emotion so that we can continue to build a tier one program as dr bennett has said it a few times he said it's not that it's not that the program we have was broken or flawed it's giving us what it was built to give us so what we're trying to do now is change that build to give us something different right so that all kids have access and have opportunity so some of the areas that we had targeted

077for growth through the atsi grant with the high school was increased student engagement with modern high interest diverse texts increase student engagement with nonfiction text increase student access to math resources increase resources for eld students and then professional development for teachers so this is a screenshot of our of our demographic breakdown from the future ready pa index so over on the right it gives our percent enrollment by student groups our economically disadvantaged which is one of the areas that we're struggling with right now our english language learners special education and then on the left it breaks it down by race and ethnicity so in in order to be true to data uh we had the department worked really hard with mr rutz to pull um our representation in our core texts in grades 6 to

07812. so going back to the idea of windows and mirrors right art do we have text that represent a variety of backgrounds so that students can see others lives and learn about others but can students also see themselves the blue text if you can see the colors up in the top box is our current percentage of um demographic makeup in a certain area so i'll highlight hispanic hispanic americans so we're currently at about 17.6 percent of our students are um of that background we only have 1.7 of our texts reflective of their experience right and that kind of goes back to what shawano was saying earlier about uh tokenism right well we have one book so that's great but when almost you know over 17 of our students are coming from a certain background a

079certain culture we need to have more we have more representation and more diversity in our offerings for those students and i mean i'm not going to go through all of these but you can you can read the rest uh as well as our choice books very similar right we have um populations of different demographics of students and right now our books and hope will speak to us a little bit more aren't really representative of who our students are in terms of trying to help themselves helps help them see themselves in the books we read in the stories in the fiction in the non-fiction whether it's representative authors male female lgbtq or a particular ethnic background so along with taking a look at those statistics it caused us to look at our curriculum and try to

080evaluate exactly what it is that we can do to allow students to see windows and mirrors um in the curriculum that we teach and to kind of put in perspective um in the movie shadowlands which is about cs lewis it talks about reading to know that we are not alone and particularly in this time where we're in remote learning or you know virtual hybrid environments um providing literature where students can see themselves and provide connectability is all the more important not only that but we wanted to make sure that when we were looking at the text these are the units these are the themes that we cover throughout our curriculum and these go through classics these go through modern books but these allow us to provide a unifying theme and connection with our students and

081allow us to sort of pair texts and provide a way that they can connect with the literature and when we decided to go and look at these books one of the things that our literary supervisor mr newman said is we should really get the students involved in reading these and seeing what their takeaway was and so rather than me tell you we thought that we would present a short presentation on their reflections thank you [Music] a lot of kids my age can't hear it's difficult to sort of enroll themselves in the literature that we read in english class because it's so either over like kind of it feels like it's out of touch with like our experiences um and i think that's also part of everything why uh putting more modern literature in school curriculums

082is like important to kids and their experiences thank you a lot of kids my age find it difficult to sort of engross themselves in the literature that we read in english class because it's so either old or like kind of it feels like it's out of touch with like our experiences and i think that's also part of the reason why putting more modern literature into school curriculums is like important to kids and their experiences some of my favorite things about the book were that it really really covered the importance of friendship during difficult times and making those connections to other people and another thing that really really stuck with me was the fact that these kids had to face their own mortality and deal with this grief while it was happening and they hadn't really

083faced these kinds of challenges before the representation in this book i know in high school i didn't really have that representation when reading in english classes it was really cool to see people apart pocs and the lgbt community and people coming from different home situations you including people from the foster care system and teen moms and people from single parent homes i thought that was really cool there are a lot of ways to be successful and the road to success looks different for everyone these different topics kind of related to everyone and all these different aspects of myself and i knew that my peers could also take away different things from the book as well [Music] some of the overall themes of stamped were the different perspective of history and how race has kind of

084been a systemic issue in ways that me a black woman didn't even know so it kind of took me out of my perspective and out of my box to see these topics of race and how malcolm x was treated and martin luther king and how race has been an issue for a really long time and how much work we are going to have to put in to kind of solve these issues stamped personally connected with me because i have taken history since second grade and i never really connected with history i've always been an english person but stamped really made me connected to history because it felt like it was my history um it was history in a way that i had never seen it before and it didn't feel like history it felt like

085it was just a story a fairy tale but then at the end of the book they said you know this isn't just someone's nightmare this is real this is what had happened and it changed my perspective on the history that i had already read and heard and learned for years and it changed it all and it kind of broke it down and restructured it in a way that is both terrifying and fascinating yeah i just like to emphasize i think the importance of increasing the diversity in the literature that we read i think we we read some really really wonderful works but um it would be really really nice to see more of the lgbtq plus representation and more of the minority representation and more stories about hardship that children can relate to i generally

086have struggled with finding books that i see myself in um and books that represent like me and the people around me because i'm lgbt and so i really think that it's important for kids like me to be able to see themselves or for people of color to be able to see themselves in the literature that they read especially in school the literature that they talk about and dissect i think that it's important because it allows you to feel seen and it allows you to feel heard i think the more that our curriculum can relate to each and every student we have the more beneficial it will be and the stronger we will be as a community [Music] and one of the things that we touched on tonight was hearing student voices and so our department

087took that to heart when we were selecting these things because we wanted to give them a voice and hear what they had to say um so with this here is the policy that we use that i'm sure you're familiar with and i'm not going to read this to you but this was the basic policy that we used to guide it we also took into consideration several things one is that we needed to kind of break out of this idea that curriculum is static uh that it it's not that way anymore that it is a constantly evolving situation and by incorporating modern texts we can couple them with the classics to help them relate to the themes of the past and see how they still exist in the present and some of these issues have always

088existed the primary focus is to connect with the students through the books so that we can teach them the skills we need to have their interest in what's in front of them so that we can provide the skills that they need beyond here and we need high interest and connect abilities so that they can see themselves the windows and mirrors what the number one thing as i mentioned was skills for growth by far that is what absolutely we are taking a look at we use the literature that we have to teach the skills but along with those things we also looked at their literary merit the genre what texts we compare with these books multiple perspectives and most importantly the last two the relevance to issues in society so that the students feel connected to

089the work that they're looking at and the mirrors and windows the process started with initialists of approximately 50 titles we narrowed it down to about 27 selections which were mostly non-fiction and diverse pieces following that we had the english department the literati which is our student english honor society the equity team and administration take a look at these things based on purpose and appropriateness and the titles that we selected were based on all the criteria that i've just met mentioned along with how well that they can fit and pair with the current resources that we have and how well they address the skills that we need our students to improve with uh last meeting you approve to the purchase of these items and they are i'm sorry i apologize thank you these um these were

090the ones that just to let you know that it's not every book that we looked at we approved uh and sent forward there were a lot of books that we decided were either dated or didn't address or didn't feel like they um and students provided the feedback on these as well that that didn't feel like they had the connectability that we were hoping for um this these are the books that uh you approved for purchase last month and they are on the way uh right now and these are the books that we are looking for in round two i should mention that we still have a portion of funds of the grant left uh in which we are looking to purchase the remaining books for the funds that were allotted for this but it's an

091ever-evolving process and as we find one book that we say no to we find three books to consider um but most importantly the idea is is that we engage all of our readers all of our students that are sitting in front of us on a daily basis so that we can connect with them why they're whether virtually or hybrid connect with them in terms of their socioeconomic status their culture their history and be able to teach the skills to all of our students by providing material in which they see themselves so to wrap it up and bring it back to the the opening slide again trying to connect a lot of disparate parts but the threads that run throughout i think hopefully are pretty clear at this point you know as mrs bolden said we've

092you know lost some local control in terms of the idea the atsi grant which is paying for the books is has been given to us which is great but again it's for this specific purpose we need to increase our economically disadvantaged students our english language learners right and and other different subgroups so that is why these are the books as we looked at last meeting as well as what we're asking for this meeting which will come to approval later on in the night um you know for to to meet our kids where they are give them the windows and mirrors they need in sliding glass doors to learn about other cultures learn about other people learn about other perspectives and point of views but then also see themselves represented in in what we in what

093we do any questions just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to go into such depth um everyone i really appreciate it and i feel like shining a light at that level is so important for our parents at home to see the effort that's being put forth to to close those gaps so i i appreciate all the work that goes into that thank you to the team mr martin they're doing a great job thank you i was going to save these until we got to the agenda but i'll ask them now and then i'll be able to move ahead are these books mandatory reading or are they optional reading for the students so when we look at our curriculum as i mentioned it's not any more a static curriculum it's an ever-evolving curriculum

094so to say that a piece or even a whole text is required reading many of the pieces that we've gotten particularly some of the non-fiction pieces are going to be used in in smaller sections and in isolation we are also in the process of developing and looking at how to make our 910 curriculum workable in terms of improving our keystone scores and addressing the skills that we need so when we're talking about required texts we're talking about an ever-evolving process and certainly some of these books will be considered but again it's not so much the idea of saying this is a definitive piece or at least i don't have that answer yet but as we go ahead and revamp the curriculum the curriculum will be put in front of you for approval let me let

095me ask you a specific question then sure i i have not read any of these books however i did take the time to read book reviews for all these nine books that you're asking about based on the book reviews that i read at least three of these books uh feature police brutality for example a student whose father is a police officer as we found out with the no faded letter that was sent out here in january i don't think they'd appreciate being required to read that book that it involved police brutality i just don't think that making that mandatory if it's optional i have no question if somebody wants to read an optional book read whatever book you'd like to read and have these available that's a wonderful thing if you make it mandatory i

096think that could create some difficulty some of the other comments i saw when i read the book reviews and i these are reviews i did not read the books uh some of these books uh feature strong language sexual content racial profiling white privilege systematic racism islamophobia and other things in that area which i guess to some degree that's what they're supposed to do if the books are optional i don't have a problem with it kids could read should read books that they feel good about that they learn that's wonderful these books are required reading i think that can create some difficulty with the students perhaps when they get home and other things and and raising issues that don't necessarily need to be need to be read as mandatory optional fine mandatory i have a problem

097mr kanovsky if you know my mr mr martin actually i certainly don't mind i have a question for you sure do you think our kids should be forced to read huckleberry finn no okay and dr seuss baby but not huckleberry okay no listen i i just wanted to make sure um even though i read it years ago and i don't think it you know was a detrimental effect but that's okay um i want to echo the thanking you for all your hard work that ms islandberg already started with um i know from my own perspective in my own experience how far seeing myself portrayed in literature in high school could have helped not so much me because i grew up in a very supportive environment but a lot of people i know who didn't and

098um for all of those people to the young lady who was speaking it's so unbelievably important for you especially when you're in high school to see yourself in what you're learning but also in many cases to see that life goes past high school and there is more that occurs in the world than in high school and that can just help so many people just by having the ability to see themselves and what they're reading and i did not have that and i know many people who didn't so ms heilenberg i just wanted to comment um in regard to the reviews that mr martin was was speaking about the whole point to this process is to bring into focus the fact that we've ignored a lot of these issues and haven't given our students an opportunity

099to learn that there are things outside of their own home environments and and yes some of these issues may trigger a student and i know as a parent with a child in school if someone came to me if my child came to me and said this text is upsetting me i don't want to read it i would i would talk to them about it ask what the reasons were talk with the teacher all of our teachers as far as i am concerned and that may not be the case but it's my perception are willing to talk to parents with concerns and give alternate work if that's what's necessary but i think to take these the subject matters that were noted and to just push them out of the classroom is uh is an oversight and

100i think that that's what we're trying to avoid here other questions i i think it's perfect i mean honestly i just think that you're you're addressing all students and that's how it needs to be um you know everyone wants to be seen and know that you know i'm out there there's other people like me out there and that's how it should be um you know i'm sure everyone's not going to agree so i don't expect everyone to have my opinion but i think it was fantastic and hearing those students speak their mind was just it was wonderful it really was mr dixon i do first of all i didn't know did you want to answer i think mr martin had a question well i i do want to add some clarity you do have a

101policy administrative regulation 105.2 that is a method for a parent or to address those types of concerns that mr martin uh raised so that does exist just to make everyone aware right only one of these books if i'm correct is non-fiction the other eight are fiction is that correct there's a couple non-fiction cracks i'm sorry i'd have to go back and yeah there's one i know of that is non-fiction i think so that was right and the 57 buses also that's the one that i know right now stamp is history yeah stamped is considered non-fiction and 57 buses based on a true story yes so um to address uh what what you were saying first of all we looked at uh several very notable um uh places that review books that have um you know

102very conservative and very liberal uh people on the panel and we evaluated those perspectives to address the book that you were talking about in terms of and i think you're talking about all american boys um i encourage you uh to to read the book because our job as english teachers is not to convince students of a side or of a perspective but rather to provide a safe place where students can have a conversation and again the the most important part here is that we're teaching the skills and the literary merit involved in this book as much of which has been addressed in our classics as well it just happens to be under the form of a different conflict in this case but um it is a very complicated and nuanced book that is not um

103at all black and white it is very gray in terms of trying to figure out the complications of it so again with addressing the equity team and taking a look at it and the complexities of it and listening to what the students had to say who read it that that's why we ultimately decided we also took a look at other curriculums as well across the nation and even in our area that are utilizing all american uh boys we have a local district right now who has taken a look at stamped and is having it as a not all school read because that's hard to do right now in a pandemic but they are having uh online virtual uh seminars just based on stamps and and discussing that book mr broncotto oh i never oh god

104andrew didn't get to talk yet no no no that's fine go ahead mrs i'll i'll wait oh all right no i was just going to say i mean thank you you kind of said what i was going to say in the sense that i also teach english literature at the collegiate level and indeed i mean the one thing and uh mr martin i'm sure you'll appreciate this that one of the things that you know i know as a when you're teaching literature you've got to not be afraid to present a book that will challenge the perspective at least of some of the students in the room it doesn't mean you're telling them they have to accept that perspective not at all but they have to be able to be exposed and think about things from

105a perspective other than their own and in fact one of the problems that you'll hear about college campuses and they're not wrong is when you know there can be this fear of like i can't hear something that upsets me you know what i mean sometimes you have to be willing to listen to something that will challenge or set perspective and there are ways good teachers figure out how to give students that space to like listen you're going to read this you're going to accept it or not and that's it you know but are there any further questions okay okay thank you thank you superintendent's report for the sake of time i'm not going to go in very much detailed in the governor's report i do want to point out to the board that we uncovered

106a issue with the calendar that was adopted for this current year april 1st was a snow makeup day there is a discrepancy and that we don't need to make up that day for students but that is a day that if teachers were not at work they would not meet their contractual obligation for the number of days that are scheduled to be work we are in the process of attempting to develop a course of action uh to address that uh situation we thought we had a solution but as of today there were some other questions that were raised that we need to consider in our meeting with the cea with regards to a solution to that situation the governor's budget again i'm not going to go into it it is attached to the agenda for those

107who want to see it but the context of it is obviously uh there's new leadership and dynamics we i did along i think i saw mr martin on there too participate in the bucks county advocacy community education meeting you know obviously there's challenges with the budget associated with uh coleman 19. as of the presentation of this current budget things have shifted a little bit as you know the 1.9 billion dollar plan is moving as you heard was probably going to happen as last time we met with you but it is moving uh that may shift some things uh but the proposed budget is a 38 7.8 billion dollar budget proposal uh the conversation has been is that as it was currently presented it's kind of dead on arrival but it really is if you know

108history you start at a point you start negotiating so that's what's going to happen in that process uh there is the raising of uh multiple fronts of new revenue um it is a substantial huge increase to public education as presented but there's some concern about how that's being funded that is creating the the concern between the legislators but a 1.3 billion dollar increase to basic education funding and 200 million increases special education funding a 30 million dollar proposed increase early childhood and 11 million dollar proposed increase to uh early intervention programs and with that said again not going to go there for a second time the big thing is to give you an update on the questions that you uh spoke to us about at the la the budget workshop uh to answer some of

109that and bring back some of the answers to your questions that you asked so mr greenwood will step in so sorry i talked fast but trying to consolidate some things to update you and get to the main thing of answering your questions from the budget work session so i allocated my time to mr greenwood to do that for you all thank you so uh i wanted to thank uh start by thanking uh the board members and and uh and the team here uh for participating in last wednesday's mr green i apologize madam sheriff i got in for the board secretary i did get a message that mr burdnig did join us at 7 004 uh p.m for the record i apologize they did send that to me and i meant to tell you i wanted

110to thank everybody for their participation their questions and their engagement in uh last wednesday's budget work session that may have been a first for centennial and it was a really great idea that dr ben brought to us and and really gave us the opportunity to go through it we've really tried to since our january 26 meeting present and and keep the board updated on the process because the budget is truly a it's truly a process right it starts in the fall and it's continually evolving as we work through the many issues that the budget the budget contains so i will go through these some of these were shown last week but wanted to highlight them again this shows our earned income tax updated through february now and again as you can see by the star

111in the center there we are we are at or slightly above uh the run rates and the collections uh from the prior two years um and one of the reasons that uh that you know this sort of has been surprising me i've continued to wait for the the other shoe to drop if you will um in a paz bow uh conference uh that also included the independent fiscal office this financial crisis brought on by the pandemic differs from uh previous pro crises that we've experienced in that the impact is not being felt uniformly particularly relative to wages another word of caution as we go through our budgeting is that the stimulus funds have provided stabilization on a temporary basis and and will certainly impact future budgets this was the budget as shared last wednesday 124

112million in revenue 126 million 527 in expenses for a deficit of 2.4 million and then the full if the full act 1 index was was approved that three percent would be 2.3 million and a 75 million dollar deficit again it is a work in progress and and that's the work that we are we are doing now now it's thousands this is a slide that i think we ended up spending most of our time on wednesday right it really laid out in front of us the options based on on you know between a zero and a three percent increase and allowed us uh to have some dialogue around that uh and we're going to come back to this and this is really the focus uh of our update tonight one difference as we move forward the

113long-range impact as we talked about here was really based on a flat 2.44 which is the prior five-year average uh going forward we'll look at a rolling average which includes not only the past but includes the forecast for the future for a more balanced view of what we would expect that brings us to our five-year planning a second update is that after i had gone through and put all the slides together the ifo came out with an adjustment to their original act 1 projections you can see that they had reduced slightly the employer cost index their eci number from 3.2 to 2.7 which brought down their estimated act 1 increase for the 22-23 year from 3.7 to 3.3 if we talked about it last week the act one forecast put on or proposed or projected

114by the ifo had a 3.7 increase in 20 22 23 and in 23 24 followed by a 3.3 and then at 2.7 so we've adjusted our rolling forecast to represent the most updated uh index so as we move forward we're going to show three projections based on the following the two percent increase in 2022 and then the five-year rolling forecast for the remainder of the the long-range plan a 2.5 20 22 increase and again that same five year or four years of rolling um forecasts rolling index and then a 2.5 with the ifos projected act one increase as a as i just shared with you this first scenario assumes the two-point 2.0 percent increase in 2022. uh this scenario shows a deficit of 862 666 dollars in 2022 and 805 thousand uh eight hundred five

115thousand dollars in and then making a surplus uh in 2024 through 2026. the fund balance in this scenario remains low below the recommended threshold until really the final year when we cross over sort of that eight percent threshold for the fund balance that that is you know that is as is shown on the left you know there's shows some financial stability concerns as well as potential costs for future bond financing uh that our bond rating could be impacted by that the second scenario is the 2.5 percent uh scenario this we forecast the deficit in 2022 of 468 756 and a deficit of 393 561 in 2023 surplus begins in 2024 and runs through the planning period the fund balance in this scenario remains below the recommended threshold until 2024 and then in 2025 we could

116begin to be in a position to support a dedicated fund balance strategy we talked a little bit about that last week as well and this last scenario includes the 2.5 increase in 2022 and then the ifos projected act 1 increases if they were each implemented this scenario we have the same deficit in 2022 of 468 756 dollars and then a surplus uh we begin to generate in in the remaining years uh fund balance recruit recovers in 2024 and in 2025 uh in 2026 we could again develop a fund balance strategy moving into the future this slide simply compares those three options the projected financial results on the left you see the annual surplus and deficit looking back five years and looking forward five years the red block is the two percent scenario the black is

117the 2.5 scenario and the gray blocker line depending on the side is the 2.5 ifo scenario the graph on the right shows the general fund balance uh over that same period for each of those three scenarios i've added this dotted line which sort of extends the fund balance as of the end of 2020 you can kind of see us dipping down below that and then recovering under the two percent rolling forecast we don't really recover our 2020 fund balance until almost five years later and that picture sort of demonstrates that under the 2.5 percent rolling forecast we recover that a year sooner okay yes mr dixon um the fund balance when you get out to 2820 three four five like i see that's represented as a straight line but i assume that you you're talking

118about the fund balance being a percentage like the recommended fund balance being the recommended was a 14 the the recommended fund balance is is an eight percent uh non-dedicated general fund not assigned fund balance my question is that that eight percent must go up over time right of our total well i i don't see an eight what are you referring to as eight percent is is a standard well you're extrapolating from the like this these are in dollars right so this is the same right i'm talking about where the fun so that that straight line that goes across right that represents where the fund balance if you go back where it's not knotted so this repre where we attempted to show here is this is where we are at the end of this past june

119right 20 right 20 yes based on the current budget and based on the future deficits we dropped below that understood until uh until 20 25 26 at a two percent understood my question is that the fund balance in 20 yes presumptively is the recommended 8 or thereabouts of the overall operating budget it is it is i'd have to look at that that's a great question i can get back to you it isn't i don't think it's it's in that ballpark it's in the range are we talking about the 2021 so 7.5 i think is what it says on the chart you have seven point five five percent yeah the fund balance for this year right my only point was that the an eight percent fund balance is going to go up over time you know

120like so what today's eight percent fund balance is is not what it will be in 2025 so i was just thinking that that line itself actually has to slant upwards that's true right so eight percent the eight percent is eight percent of the next year's fund uh total expenses is is how uh pde looks at that and you're correct right so you could show i you know talked about thinking myself hey do i slant the line or do i not that's i felt it very clear to just say hey this is where we were to get back to there in other words recovering the 2020 fund balance in 2026 isn't as good as it was in twenty okay um this slide just compares then the 2.0 percent uh the 2.0 percent uh rolling forecast to

121the 2.5 rolling forecast and as we've talked about uh in the meeting in the end of february the compounding impact of that decision so just with everything else remaining the same the expenses and the forecasted increases into the future the difference between a 2.0 and 22 and 2.5 in 22 after three years is an additional 1.2 million dollars and through that planning period it's an additional 2.1 million dollars you can see that a 2.2 percent is roughly 78 70 78 dollars a year in increase roughly six dollars and 57 cents a month and the two and a half percent uh increase uh to the median home is uh 98.56 or eight dollars and 20 cents to give that some perspective and looking at fund balance right so dr ben has suggested when we talked last

122wednesday about the idea of of creating sort of a signed fund balance which is a way that allows school districts to save money for things that they know are coming down the road right whether those are maintenance items whether we had the the uh example of the astroturf field that costs a million dollars and it needs to be replaced every 10 years or so we can begin building in planning for that so as to not be caught short and and not be deferring maintenance so i found this uh chart from five site our forecast five analytics tool uh which compares 2019 which is the latest information they have in fund balance and you can see centennial is in the blocked section these are all all the bucks county district schools and shows the varying fund

123balance amounts based on assigned or unassigned amounts balances yes what are the green dots the green dots represent sort of their percent of the expense so the green dot sort of runs over over to where it aligns on to this uh percent of expenses of the unassigned fund ballots okay so the red the red box represents that unassigned balance that dot should tell you about where it is as a percent of that year's expenses okay which is sort of the gauge of the 8 rule got it okay so i think this shows that you know centennial's fund balance has been managed very well over the years uh it's been fairly consistent year over year i think in a 10-year window it it is stayed relatively flat but other districts are certainly employing uh the tool

124and that strategy to identify and to commit and or to assign fund balances to future work centennial does have a 2.5 million dollar as a part of our total fund balance 2.5 assigned to the peasers rate increases so we have two and a half million dollars that was board assigned we have not uh utilized those funds but it's in the total of our eight percent it is a part of that number or part of our total fund balance the last couple of slides i have just again for perspective on utilizing our forecast 5 tool this slide shows uh the equalized mill rate right so equalized mills are determined by uh dividing a the school district's total taxes collected by its total market value each district has different taxes has different strategies around that different real

125estate values this tries to equalize those and you can see where centennial is in the list of bucks county school districts slightly below the average and sitting right there it's important to note that if you look at uh two of the four and possibly three of the four they're actually below the average because their property values are higher than ours so it takes less uh effort to raise the dollars to get to it so when we looked at property values of council rock and centenni i mean and central bucks they have a stronger business base that's helping so one of the reasons they're below the average is it doesn't take as much effort to produce as many dollars right as as dr ben you know alluded to and then you know preempted my slide uh

126you can see here you can see here which is perfect it played right in thank you you can see in here you know the residential uh uh assessed value in uh in central bucks um is is one and a half billion dollars in council rockets 1.1 billion dollars just the residential component uh in all of uh central boxes is you know on this chart uh for 2019 it's close to 1.8 billion dollars uh centennial is about 550 million dollars so that that impact and that value certainly plays a part of it and i know it's a very complex and it's not a necessarily straightforward uh process but we're trying to to share the information as we as we have it and certainly using the forecast five tool to do so i just for anyone out

127there listening i want you to pay very close attention to what was just said because that's something that i have been saying for a few years now that when we compare property values between centennial and central bucks and centennial and council rock i can tell you right now that the person who built the house i grew up in council rock build a development in centennial and the house i grew up when in council rock sells for 200 000 more than it does in centennial so it's easier for districts around us to get money because their properties are valued higher so that's so important that we keep that in mind any questions mr miller no i just wanted to toss in i last time we discussed this i was somewhat critical of the homestead exclusion and

128uh i've since learned that uh it it will remain level uh possibly because it's going to be subsidized but let's just say we're not the only ones uh relying on virtual activity that the front has been a little helped by uh digital gambling sure i don't know that's very good that was an important aspect of the of the planning and we heard that as well in in the conferences we heard that that homestead rebate hopefully people were able to get in that hadn't based on our february uh update and i do think that that will be funded there was talk about that last year and uh and really sort of brought the house down in harrisburg mr kanowski um so last week when we met for the budget planning meeting i had kind of asked

129uh to split the difference in a way with a lower a lower tax increase combined with finding extra savings obviously i don't expect that in one week we're gonna have that money found but in case people didn't hear that i do do want to say i had brought up the idea of trying to find about five hundred thousand dollars if possible to cut from the budget that way we could keep the tax increase a little bit lower and not affect our fund balance overall my apologies that is correct right so our plan uh the district the administration had found about 1.1 million uh in february through that work and and uh when i showed this this square back to the beginning where we said we spent most of our time um right the the board

130challenged the administration to find another four or five hundred thousand dollars in addition to the 1.1 and our work is is still ongoing because we're going through the the staffing conversations but i will tell you what we shared then is what's coming to be true uh you know while i still believe that um you know the 2.5 is doable it still puts a strain and could be costly even then if you uh had to go out and do bond because we are below the recommended uh 8 but again understanding that a covet place in in the issue of trying to as mr uh ponovsky said uh find that some type of medium between uh the act one and lower uh we are committed to trying to to find that and we think as you look

131at as you can see in the other slide that is two more years of deficits uh that we will face whether it's 200 or 2.5 it's just that 2o makes it even bigger and it takes longer to recover going all the way almost five years before you get back to that place of fiscal somewhat fiscal stability but we are continuing to work to meet uh the commitment uh that we walked away with uh definitely at least trying to to make sure that we can bring the board a solid proposal for the 2.5 at minimum thank you and i wouldn't expect that work to be done in one week that would be superhuman so thank you any additional questions thank you thank you we already did community comments can we um move on to consent agenda

132miss islandberg [Music] thank you madam president um anyone wish to pull anything from the consent agenda i would like to pull 5.1 fee okay anything else anyone else okay moving forward um 5.1 minutes be it resolved at the centennial school board of school directors 5.1a approves the minutes from the february 9 2021 work session regular school board meeting can i get a are we doing that just that b first okay don't we read up the all of five and then do it was one vote well i thought that we had regular 5.1 b separately after we do the rest usually right do all of five okay skipping 5.1 5.2 personnel be resolved to the centennial school board i'm sorry school district board of school directors 5.2 a approves termination 5.2 b approves resignation 5.2 c

133approves of authorization to employee 5.2 d approves lease of absence 5.2 e approves change of status 5.2 f approves co-curricular additions and deletions 5.2 5.3 exceptions to policy none five put two uh 5.4 appoints appointments none 5.5 waivers none 5.6 conferences and travel none 5.7 bids and quotes none 5.8 assemblies speakers and programs none 5.9 contracts licenses and services be resolved at the centennial school district board of school directors 5.9 a approves the 2021 agreement for services for an iep student attending pa school for the deaf 5.9 b approves the contract with action karate feasterville to provide martial arts character development to autistic support students at klingon middle school the cost of one thousand dollars will be paid through a mini grant from centennial education fund foundation 5.9 c approves a three-year contract with zoom

134video communications district cost not to exceed six thousand two hundred nine dollars and seventy cents five point ten textbooks be it resolved at the centennial school district board of school directors 5 10 a approves the purchase of new titles for william tennant high school's english courses selected for their high interest and diversity district cost not to three exceed 11 forty three cents five point eleven acceptance of donations grants and bequests be it resolved at the centennial school district board of school directors 5.11 a accepts the 2021 continuity of education equity gear grant amount of grants is 84 000 5.12 changes to academic programs positions stipends none a second do you want how do you do what role color do you want i actually have a question if you don't mind uh 5.10 a um mr

135gabriel the books are being the price of the books are being covered by a grant correct so shouldn't the wording of 5.10 a not say cost to the district should it say cost to be paid out of the cost of 11 000 you paid out of atsi grants okay can i make a motion to amend that to reflect that it is from a grant please do i have to make a motion for that this robot uh you can okay i would like to make a motion that we modify 5.10 a to state that the price is being paid by a grant not by the district okay one second second okay so we need to vote on that motion first all in favor any names any knees any abstain okay thank you any other questions do

136we want to just a voice vote yes uh all those in favor aye aye aye about no one uh 510 i own the rest okay uh abstentions c none so that note carries it's nine zero zero except five ten five ten would be 810 thank you miss robot [Music] moving on 5.1 b 5.1b uh be it resolve the centennial school district board of school directors approves the minutes from the february 23 2021 committee of the whole meeting second mr edictson what i would like to do here is amend um the minutes to reflect that um mr martin and mr dixon participated in the executive session on the 23rd and mr martin was excluded from the meeting due to covet conditions and mr dixon left due to emergency reason well second amendment thank you that's it

137i i have a question about uh that which i have no problem we weren't here but is it necessary to specify the reasons that we were not here in the no it is not so i mean i don't care so much for me mr martin do you care i was excluded for out-of-state travel had nothing to do with code okay so we can just put that they were um not in attendance that's what it says but i think if someone's absolutely of course they're absolutely yeah okay so the record then will just reflect that we were not present which is what it is but we're present for executive meaning yeah yeah sure i think that's what mr goddard wants to amend it to say that they were here for the executive sessions oh okay i

138didn't know if you meant that we should actually write into the record law perfect all right so we need to take a vote on it yeah um just to voice um all in favor aye aye [Music] oh we have to vote on the motion to approve yes yeah that was just too many yes minutes yeah uh another um voice all in favor aye aye aye nays and abstain okay thank you okay we're up to six be resolved that the oh anybody want to pull anything on six there's only one item we're good the result that centennial school district board of school directors 6.1 approves a motion to remove from the table the adoption of policy zero zero zero board policy procedure administrative regulations which was tabled january 12 2021 board meeting second all those in

139favor aye aye aye seven uh anyone wish to pull anything from seven seeing none be it resolved that the centennial school district board of school director 7.1 adopts policy zero zero zero board policy procedure administrative regulations as per the attached 7.2 approves the title and job description for the position of communications and marketing specialist effective january 1st 2021 as per the attached what did i swag so january i thought i said july i apologize i'll second that all right just for discussion discussion any discussion no but mr pinovsky seconded to say i did one discussion on uh item 7.1 uh now that it's down to three pages i hope that all the board members do read it okay and uh voice vote all those in favor mrs bronkato he wants us to read the policy

140because it's short now that was all it's policy zero wait hold on you're all over the map over here so you're saying we're doing we're seven one and seven two right now okay seven two is this a new position or is is this a trend transferring these responsibilities to somebody that's already here when it's outlined in your weekly report in the documents attached to the agenda uh this is an update to a current person's current job description and duties in their title and a reclassification from a non-exempt to an exempt employee that information was uh sent part of weak report and it's also a part of the agenda item information so it is a current person it's not a new position okay i just wanted to make sure any questions all those in favor aye

141aye abstentions thank you house is 9-0 policies mr pinovsky we have four policies for initial distribution policy zero zero seven which is policy manual access policy 318 staff attendance policy 332 working periods and policy 803 school calendars a lot of it has to do with updating to take into effect new legislation and to standardize our policies with psba they're fairly uncontroversial policies and they won't have any questions seeing them let's move on uh financials mr birdnick would anyone like anything cool 9.1 be it resolved that the centennial school district board of school directors approves to schedule bills investments cafeteria fund budget reports and general fund cash receipt summary february 2021 as per the attacks 9.2 approves the 2021 budget transfers for february as per the attacks 9.3 approves the pending bills list as pretty attached

142and 9.4 approves the pre-approved bills list as per the attacks second is there any discussion any opposed in the abstentions nano thank you for discussions and comments anyone okay uh district policy report mr panovsky again it's going to be very short uh we continue to work to standardize our policies to set them up to match with psba uh normally we would have already had our citizens policy committee meeting for the month unfortunately it conflicted with the budget work session so we will be holding that on tomorrow i believe um at 6 pm is that correct dr best 6 p.m and we will be discussing uh policies to bring up at future meetings and that is pretty much all i have happy ciu ms islandberg thank you um we actually have our bciu director meeting next

143week so i'll be able to provide a report after that thank you pspa mr panovsky um basically i already mentioned contacting the legislature psba came out with their yearly state of education in pennsylvania it's something good for all the school board directors to look at uh one thing that was very interesting to me is as of time of publication i think it was only about 16 percent of school districts in the estate were fully in person and almost 50 were hybrid like we are and the rest were fully virtual so it seems like we fit right in with that median across the state of districts that are in a hybrid model otherwise uh keep reaching out to your legislature legislator we get the daily emails and i think otherwise mr miller will probably say anything

144else i would want to say in the legislative council i'm going to ask again for participation on advocacy day march 22nd board members uh and key administrators uh you know if if you can't spend the entire day that's certainly understandable but if you have a window of time that's available please let me know and i'll make sure that it's used appropriately also mrs brancato is probably not going to believe this but uh i i have not missed a meeting of the nsba for the annual conference uh it is virtual again this year and i i am not finding enough there to suggest that we participate so unless somebody does feel strongly that there's something they want to see there i think we take a pass this year good save a little money okay hello thank

145you um mbit mr goddakson yes we had our meeting last night and is this was the longest meeting that i think we have attended you know at least i have attended that mbi team um it was definitely mbit has returned to our four-day schedule um they have approximately 700 students that's attending in person and about 95 that's still attending virtual but the main focus that you know last night you know dealt with was the reorganization and there were a number of community members staff members you know at mbit that spoke to this and we eventually went into executive session you know to discuss it as well there are currently two plans being proposed for the reorganization of mbit's business administration itm department and the maintenance component of mbit mbit has proposed two plans themselves and

146they are then also in conversations with the bucks county iu to have them present a plan we eventually decided to create a needs assessment you know plan for all three areas that will um you know be conducted by the iu the other component that we talked about was the new special ed program the explorer program at mbit and that has you know been approved by us um it will contain a one um one program with potential staff coming from or paid for through the districts but hired staff member at mbit um the last bit of facts is that if bit built a house and have finished it have had it up for auction and it was bid on an accepted bid of 140 000 and 1 cent so that has been approved as well the

147mbit's authority had a resignation and i believe dr benton was contacted in regards to a potential person from the centennial area becoming a new authority member replacing a person retiring that's it from my side it's just worth noting that retirement is someone who's served on the authority since 1965. so if i can just add uh of the two proposals that were presented uh it's not necessarily the fact that we'll choose between one of those two as other alternatives are being discussed through the month i have a question can you explain a little bit more clearly what the stakes were in this thing like reorganization like we have so we've we have a number of high-level retirements happening this year and so that gives us the opportunity to look at how we can fill those positions

148to best meet the needs of the students as well as financially meet our um our stakeholders needs so we're talking about among the faculty of the administration finance director and the id director so far yes and the purchasing manager he has not officially sent his letter uh his obligation yes so we're just we're looking at you know we're looking at replacing them as is we're looking at consolidation we're looking at outsourcing we're looking at the iu not really outsourcing we're looking at many possibilities in between those three we're just trying to figure out because we have this rare opportunity what we can do okay um mr dixon if you recall last year it was our district that proposed and then we look into this and possibly reorganizing mbit a different way and you know while

149it was discussed in executive session it's also been discussed publicly so it's not something we can't discuss at this table what's happening uh at mdit is an opportunity for us to put a plan into place where we can i wouldn't i don't call it outsourcing i call it reallocating because we're only talking with one possible vendor and that vendor is the bucks county intermediate unit which serves the same districts that mbit serves so uh you know it it makes bucks count intermediate unit already serves upper books uh we have an opportunity now where we could share a resource meaning one business manager that's already helping upper bucks also helping middle books and since upper bucks doesn't have a business manager and we may lose our business manager and lower box has a business manager that

150might be an opportunity to explore uh i'm sure now in in the central part of the state there's a situation where business managers are difficult to come by uh you cannot listen to this mr greenwood but uh what we're seeing happening there is something similar where they're uh self-incorporating and serving rural or small districts multiple rural and school districts because it just doesn't make sense for a small entity to have the same cost of administration not a centennial school district or even a central buck school district class so something we're going to look at and you know i believe that our district should push hard for that because it would recognize a significant saving for our taxpayers and i would say that it is getting late and we will have more than one more opportunity

151to discuss this further so any more communication i just was curious um dr ben madam president just want to uh and the board members update you we have been sending you copies of the communications to the staff as you know we have bucks uh county had worked with dr damskur we had 19 approximately staff members vaccinated as the the limited supply was available that he worked with the superintendents to get done as you know last week monday and tuesday we were pulled into emergency meetings then the governor went public with intent to do johnson and johnson dedicated vaccinations to school employees our allotment uh of the first and roughly 96 000 came out to 5082 slots at the closing business today they sent an update on the registrations for the slots our first administration of

152those new j j one shot applications start tomorrow there were only two iu's in the state that were used to kick this off were kind of the guinea pigs and the beta sites the state model is the bucks county model that was used that they're trying to follow to just to do this uh fascination across the commonwealth um you know running from march 10th uh through march 17th there was a heavy heavy back and forth with the state to try to encourage those appointments to happen in the afternoon and evenings and weekends to avoid disruption to school which accommodates some adjustments were made staff through conversations with the state and iu and others are encouraged to find and sign up uh slots uh that minimize the disruption uh to the school day and and because

153you know obviously we run into challenges when we're missing uh teachers but as a monday they have 100 of the slots already are registered for uh excuse me as a wednesday the 10th uh the 11th 100 the 12th 100 uh the 13th 100 and as you go farther out it starts to decrease but they will still be coming in so at this point 83 of the 5082 slots uh have been signed up for that allocated to bucks county so we have a high percentage of our staff employees we have started receiving also thank you notes from even support staff who are also a part of the the vaccination process so just wanted to make sure and again remind our staff we receive notification if you by some chance when they were scrubbing lists had to

154remove people who should not have signed up if you get a cancellation for your second shot by mistake for those who were in the original 1900 i'm doing this from memory karen please ignore that they were saying that may have been an era you should show up for your appointment to get your second shot in the original employees who were registered in the first round of the process thank you any additional communications any community comments all right schedule board meetings calendar events mrs islandberg tuesday march 16th 7 pm bciu board meeting location bciu wednesday march 17th early dismissal in service day tuesday march 23rd 7 p.m committee of the whole school board meeting location right here in the boardroom friday march 26th early dismissal elementary conferences secondary professional development friday april 1st schools will be

155closed for students staff our teachers are pending based on dr ben's uh earlier report so to be determined friday april 2nd through monday april 5th all schools and offices closed tuesday april 6 7 pm centennial school board meeting work regular meeting here right here in the boardroom mission have a good evening