CSD School Board Meeting - January 12, 2021

001card that they use they are in 8 000 school districts 80 000 schools uh and in all 50 states uh in terms of their products throughout throughout schools in pennsylvania we did talk with our rep and he gave us a list of the different schools in the area in the quad county area montgomery bucks chester in delaware county so these are many of the schools in our immediate surrounding area that use different combinations of the frontline products as you can see many are very local too to bucks county so i'm going to have dr tolks come back up and talk a little bit about the big picture of the life cycle okay and you can see their red areas and green areas what we're focusing on tonight are the red areas because those are not

002the areas that we have currently i can tell you we do have some functionality though that we don't utilize with front line and one would be management absences because we have our third party contract with kelly's services frontline as i told you we do optimize for our leaves we also have a section with professional development and one of the things we really want to push forward is to make sure that we can do some more integration with our some of our current programs like safe schools um we're going to be looking to see if we get some integration with that but what we're really asking for is to add that recruiting to hiring recruit to higher process which is so important as we employ um new people for our positions also as mr gabriel had

003spoken i think with regard to employment evaluation management system is also something that is part of this what this does is make it makes it like a one-stop shop for all the transactional issues all the transactional needs for our employees thank you you're going to see some statistics here this is from your previous hr personnel when they first got it like i told you it started in july you'll notice that they onboarded 54 new staff members through the solution at that time those 54 employees completed 497 onboarding forms which is an average of 9.2 forms per employee previous time it took to complete new hire was three hours and now it's 20 minutes which is a roughly a 75 percent faster rate the old way it would have taken the team 162 hours to onboard

004them now it takes roughly 40.5 hours to do the same work which is a time savings of 101 121.5 hours this is like i said previous hr data in the future though i am hopeful to establish like a current state in understanding how the process flows and mapping out those process flows of our utilizing our current staff and then once we have those process maps laid out it will be so much easier for us to do measurements of in-process measures so that we can then continue to do improvements to our system and also to how we hire and service our excuse me for interrupting but are people i'm getting emails of frozen screens people are not able to hear this meeting are things going out to the community or not okay i just got this

005again so are we at least recording it i don't think this is working to be frank with you at least what i'm getting on here but are we at least recording it okay thank you just check it i'm getting easier time to go to the website okay well that's two different things which is better the website or the tv channels okay okay i'm gonna move forward okay that's okay yeah i just was checking that's because all right again like i told you we've had front lines since july 1st some of the forms that we have been able to optimize are the benefits package like fmla and fraca other general hr forms the total forms completed including onboarding have been these are the big numbers 872 forms by 238 different employees so that took our average

006down from over nine um uh pages per person to 3.6 finally i'm gonna these are kind of you see that we have future process solutions and current process challenges i'm going to start with our challenges first because i'd like to end on a positive note but our current challenge is that we're very paper heavy which again leads to lost time accuracy and efficiency with our employees that's it's not a very con continual experience for those people who are trying to apply for csd and it's not an effective communication tool it does not the functionality doesn't also doesn't help us to identify or narrow down the best candidates for the positions so as we move forward what we would like because this does have tremendous functionality for us in the future is that we would have

007clearly defined recruit to hire process that we as a new team could outline and then monitor better access to platforms for advertising for recruiting for the district more efficiency for um for again selecting those top candidates there's actually some components and testing that we can actually funnel candidates so that we don't get people in front of employment managers unless they're highly qualified for those positions we also this also would offer a much better communication for those employees say they don't get the job one of the things our system doesn't do right now is when we do offer the job to somebody those who did apply for the job do not get a communication whether they received a job and part of that is because you can have 40 to 80 people apply for a position

008and the only way for me to really contact them now is by phone and i just don't have the manpower to do that but the functionality of frontline would make it so that we could deploy an email and still encourage these people to continue to apply at csd but this may not have been the proper position for them at that time so communication is key and when the processes are simple when they're intuitive and they're very welcoming to people it really enhances our brand as csd so i certainly hope you will consider this for our hr processes because we would be very excited and about it thank you thank you dr ben i i've gotten five texts already that we may be sending the signal out but it doesn't appear it's landing on verizon so

009i don't know what the big problem is uh dr tolks um i'm referring them to the internet are we pausing the meeting or uh i do have a question for you which is uh yes i know you've only been here a short time yes but uh do you have any sense of how often i'm interested in the uh the piece where uh you're talking about um uh zero notification capability currently to keep people up to speed which can lead to a loss of quality candidates have you seen that happen in your time here already actually when i first got here that was one of the first complaints that i received from employees was and actually i think from a board member as well was that there was no no notification when someone was selected for

010the position i recall this what's that i said i recall this yeah yeah so they're kind of hanging out there thinking well you don't care about me you didn't even reach out back to me um but the problem is that the only way to communicate is to dig back into those applications and then call every single person back what would you estimate is the cost to uh from start to finish to recruit and hire a new new teacher let's say to the district well it depends on the form that you use the platform that you use because if we can narrow it down to um a day or two it's the cost of um my employees within my department right but like now without this like yeah like how much is it costing us now

011the process that's process that we have in place just a guess just a well if guess talking about five yeah five to ten days of multiple salaries right because you're thinking of you also have to think of the hiring authority you have to think of everybody who's processing the three people and plus myself right if they're doing interviews with people all those people that are sitting on the panel so if you think about that in terms of costs you think about that with their salary i mean what i'm getting at is that the the the cost overage over what was budgeted is seven thousand ninety one dollars and eighty nine cents we could so if we could make that up in a single efficient higher single higher yes thank you that is logical yes thank

012you yes sir yes uh i've got a few questions uh number one the school districts are listed here is that their customer base in pennsylvania or just local i asked for i asked just for this this side of the state they're just local yeah just locals okay so um do they have a representative living in the area uh yes he actually lives dana believe me i'm not defending skyward they have not delivered on their promises since we bought it right so but one of the biggest things that we've had is anytime someone needs to come in we need to pay their transportation and everything else the rep that we deal with as well that's been an issue uh as far as the student information system goes with parents being able to monitor their children's progress

013online will we have fully vertical access kindergarten up to 12th grade that's a different product this is just employee front line for an employee onboarding an off-boarding process nothing with students okay separate totally from skyroad and that information they're wondering about scott no well i will to that point mr miller i will say that currently the two products that we're using are from a different vendor and that vendors products doesn't it doesn't work well with skyward because it's not part of their sis this does integrate with skype this is a back office right so this this will integrate with this skyward more effectively with our current systems than the current one okay so that will help sprung powder question here in regards are we using we were currently using talent ad and we're moving away

014from we were using two products that were power school products yes well we still are this year right right the hope is to make the purchase tonight and then start to transition and how would new candidates figure out where to make the application now well right now they have to go through talent ed and then we have to pick it up from there what would happen is it would be everything would be deployed from that one platform so everything once the employee applied into that platform everything then goes from there we now it doesn't come in to play until after i've made the offer to hire then we can put them into front line right now and then we do the paperwork for them so it's not necessarily notifying a candidate that they have applied

015and they're being considered that's talented it's a schedule that's talented right now so i'm working with two different platforms right now they do not communicate with each other so that manual process is what i'm saying causes inefficiencies lags and obviously could have issues with accuracy miss broncotto can i use the cost of this new program so we'll jump to the last slide here no that's all right so basically um as you can see here so there would be an initial upfront cost this year with a pro rated cost and implementation cost which is around eighteen thousand dollars um to get this up and running but then starting in 2122 the right hand side is the frontline product which is what we're hoping to get over the course of three years it's just over seven thousand

016dollars more than what we're currently doing and uh mr dixon you brought that up so if we were to continue with our current system which is you know the split products basically with the extra manpower and the disconnect between the systems over the three years this is an approximate cost about 75 900 assuming that that grows at the same rate each year as it has been we do know that the frontline agreement would total around 82 991 and change so it's again it's about a 7 000 more investment money-wise then we are current we would currently pay if we kept the system separate however i think what dr tolks was pointing out and then um i was going to go over from the professional learning standpoint we're really gaining efficiencies in terms of manpower people

017and being more deliberate and more focused in the decisions that we're making uh around what we pay for professional development and things of that nature we actually met today mrs robald and and the special ed department and talked about how we were going to integrate some other ways that special ed tracks professional development and kind of put it all into one bucket so that we're again we're saving processes paper and manpower that we're currently using just spreadsheets for it so i'm just trying to what is the initial this year right it's uh it's roughly 6 000 and change it's in the attach dock it's in the attached um pdf but it was about six thousand change per rated cost it's on the yeah it's in the board times so if you go into board docs

018and you click it has the cover sheet and it's got the fir this year cost okay it's about just to give you a ballpark miss broncotto it's uh it's about 11 000 and change for the setup for this year and then another six prorated costs so it's roughly 18 or 19 for this year and then this picks up in the summer i didn't want to put that in the chart because it didn't we couldn't really compare that cost the upfront cost to the current calls mr dixon did you have a question i think my question was mostly answered which is why it was about why the agenda item calls for 101 393 but this shows only a difference it shows the total cost of 80 what was it 86 yeah but again i mean i

019don't know if everyone heard but i was asking dr talks about the cost of because in this presentation one of the the biggest thing i noted going by was that because i know we've heard this in this room about and i'm trying to remember which we were hiring somebody or something and it came up the fact that people do not get notified once they are applying to centennial they're not there's no notifications going to them while they're waiting to hear how their application is proceeding through the process of whatever you know the hiring process so that there's no system in place to do that this program creates that system and the cost of hiring an employee you were saying dr talks like in the current system giving us a ballpark like how much does it

020cost to onboard a single about ten thousand dollars how much savings would you anticipate from having this system in place i said it was it was at least ten thousand i think you would per employee you hire right so every time you hire an employee with this system versus the current system you'd be saving roughly ten thousand dollars in people easy okay thank you is that shown in one of the graphs here the savings no okay if you'd like us to calculate that though we can actually that one where you had all the prices i mean that would really make a huge difference if you're showing something but then the price of it and with the cost next to it that your savings would really yeah we can follow up with the board uh with

021an email on that calculate that actual the issue is also you're losing i was asking dr tolks since you've been here have we been in a situation where like let's say we had an open position and we had a preferred candidate and because that preferred candidate was not contacted in a timely fashion or you know whatever the current system didn't allow for them to know what their status was they wound up leaking off and taking another job well well that is the issue because i can't even track that so i don't know how many people were actually losing because of that because we never contact them again so if i have a cycle where we're encouraging them to to keep coming back and that and you've got to create it so that you appreciate them

022applying in the first place and you want to welcome them to the csd family from the start and then you want to be able to communicate regularly with them so they feel important and we want to keep them coming right now i have no way to track that and i have no way to deploy it with the current system that i have okay so in a similar manner i just want to give you a quick overview of some of the metrics that we pulled off the current products from the professional learning management side um this is a chart that shows over the past three years how many sessions or how many hours we've allotted to the different goals that we had set as a district again these were goals that we inherited we got here

023uh so i guess a few years back the district decided that communications curriculum and achievement and diverse populations were important goals at the time and you can see we've tracked or the system is tracked how many hours have been allotted to those specific topics what this tells us from our perspective now looking at that at this is that we need to do a better job using data like this and metrics to help drive our goals as a district to help drive the professional learning that we need to do we need a consistent multi-year plan to address the different needs we have as a district and we've talked about that in length you know in cabinet about really getting a clear mission and vision together and really setting a path forward in the areas that the

024data and the feedback we're getting is showing that we need to go and then we'll be able to connect that to the professional development similarly we are able to break down the amount of hours that are allotted to different types or purposes of professional development from regular in-service days to act 48 to 2 aspects that we don't have anymore the in lieu of day as well as the nine hours which don't exist anymore in the current systems that we have and then also tracking support staff hours and this was really the focus of today's session that we met with special ed was we're sort of tracking that in a couple different places so our hope is moving forward to really bring support staff under the same umbrella as professional staff so that everyone has equal

025opportunity to professional development and that we're tracking and um making sure that you know everyone's got those those equitable opportunities to complete the professional development that we have data to show that we're actually doing that right now and that's why we have you'll see the differences in the numbers but again really some was tracked in this system others were tracked in a spreadsheet so everyone's getting their 20 hours all the support staff it's just a matter of you know where we're keeping the data our goal is to house it all in one spot so we have accurate reports on a more regular basis of where our employees are in fulfilling their professional development obligations that make sense and then i'm not oh so current process challenges again we have a very manual labor intensive process

026that's a little bit all over the place between departments and we're using a lot of different google sheets and spreadsheets to sort of balance out how we're tracking we're not capable of managing all staff currently in one single place and so what we would be able to bring together with this product would be to bring both pd and evaluations under a single platform again really connecting the pd to the outcomes of our evaluation and observation process uh as you can see we do have we don't currently have we have some data dashboards but not full data dashboards so being able to look at that data to make decisions moving forward and really just back to the the same kind of echo that dr tolks had shared single platform ease of employee management around professional development

027observation evaluation processes and then aligning our district goals to those outcomes in a clearer and more effective manner would be the hope will this also forward the information to pde or will it just be kept locally it will still have the same processes that we would then forward to to pde for act 48 hours and and those sorts of things you know it'll work with local and and iu based pd we'll have to be a little bit more manual on our end if we do professional development from things like batan and you know some other outside sources but we'll still have to manage that part um manually but it'll still once it's in there and then 48 hours get logged they'll all get pushed to the stage so at this point they will not be

028able to tap into pattan and and getting that information it's not there yet not automatically now what about what about absences will that all be tracked or will that be tracked there right now you have we have a contract with kelly services it does have that capability but we do have not turned that on pde is promising they're going to go to a real time database that they've been promising it for four years but uh a whole brand they may actually get it done at some point will we be able to do that i mean it would save us so much money in preparing files so uh are they are they talking about being able to do that or i guess i'm asking the same question uh mr gotticks in a different way or is

029there some interchangeability of data we have not heard currently about anything in relation to their interface with pde but that's definitely something we can answer so we already kind of went through the cost slide so do you have any any other further comments questions i'd just like to say this seems like a no-brainer to me i remember talking with mrs frederickson about the lack of electronic forms available to the staff and to the new hires and how cost inefficient it was so i'm happy to see this initiative being followed through on and i look forward to hearing more information and hopefully we get this process for everybody and get get this on board because it just it seems like a no-brainer to me great thank you thank you so um i believe now we're going

030to take a five minute recess because some community members are not able to hear what we're saying so we're going to try to fix the technical difficulty here and we're gonna be back in five minutes i'm sorry for the delay the community i spoke to him oh that's up to you welcome no guarantees but we're going to try three verizon is definitely lagging so i'm watching it back there but that's out of our control that's a verizon issue comcast is fine you can see it on the stream and everything fine we're trying to see if we can get you the sound in here because this is and it's coming yes and the stream on the website is fine hello hello hey i can already hear audio we have hot mics right now okay but the

031screens aren't down so why is that so we can hear the mics but the screens aren't shown hmm you hear me so testing one two testing um mr miller can i ask you to test your microphone please can i ask you to test your microphone please just test your microphone testing yes please testing one two three testing thank you i know thank you okay we're good to go you are unneeded test test one two test good night and it's not working i don't know anything about this set i was just the zoom guy perhaps we should go back to this test test test test test it is is i'm sorry for that break we are reconvening now however if you didn't miss anything these meetings are recorded so you will be able to see them

032since some people were not able to hear what was being said i did want to repeat something that was pretty important and i know some community members were extremely upset i wanted to address the letter that was sent out last friday regarding the attack on our capital please know it was not meant to come across as derogatory towards law enforcement in any way um the wording should have been um chosen a bit better um it should have been chosen better and i apologize um for that okay so now we are going to move on to um covet update dr ben mrs pressler and dr best good evening we're going to try to move quickly so it'd be a little bit faster pace to catch up and be respectable people's time as indicated any time there's

033a meeting and there's changes to what we're requested to do by the state we often want to update the board on those changes before we communicate to the public on how our operations are going to change the information to be covered is listed there for the sake of time i'm not going to read all those so i'll pause for a moment people take a quick glance the current situation uh that was uh on a january 11th 2021 june may 12th we did update that today is a current screenshot of the current status in bucks county um in csd we are sitting as you can see the incidence rate is still fairly high pcr rate substantial community transmission and then the normal information we recover there are new requirements and expectations that were sent out by

034the pennsylvania department of ed and pennsylvania department health just last week there are some key terms that they updated inside of their guidance specifically they made some tweaks to the blended learning model which is blended hybrid to to make sure people on the same page and then they have recommendations related to blended uh learning model for just elementary schools i do want to make it clear that uh the key to both of those to make sure people know that it is still requiring and expecting the implementation of the six-foot physical distancing between students the document says social distancing in their language health officials are nationally and statewide and regionally are asking us to consider the terminology physical distancing from the standpoint that in this current pandemic situation we really have to figure out how to

035have social interaction in a safe manner and just focus on physical distance again those are just terminologies we received a letter from the secretary acting secretary of education on january 7th which is the date this new information came it is also public on the pde website for anyone in the community to see the key information is that they talked about starting a second semester and recommending that schools and communities with substantial transmission consider returning elementary school students to in-person instruction they also talked about high school and middle school students staying fully remote provided that we are still following all applicable orders and safety protocols the second bullet the highlighted point is that we should be focusing on resuming in-person instruction for our targeted student populations i will say that the more important thing i like

036to celebrate for our staff and our district is nothing they have said we weren't already doing we actually were doing what they just recommended already we're already serving our targeted populations we are already implementing a blended hybrid learning model for our students the only difference is what they're saying is again elementary students full time but they put the caveat about six feet we can't do six feet with everybody in so the model we're doing is still meeting that the standard of having in-person instruction and maintaining the six feet uh physical distance and our special ed kids have really not missed a beat and yeah and we're serving esl 504 kids in person uh i won't repeat this this is a reminder that part of that requirement for being in compliance is what we signed off

037on an attestation protocol that the board had to prove and uh the president signed on behalf of the board of my signature saying that we would adhere to the requirements associated with being in person which was the face coverings and the school closing rules that you will see later that i won't go into detail over this was the previous model that's just there for people to see to see a comparison i'm not going to go over that but just so people can understand the difference in what changed in one place the new recommendations are determining instructional models for the second semester is about what happens when the incidence rate and level of community transmission and the pcr positivity rate the biggest thing you will notice is the focus on uh blended instruction and blending instruction

038for just elementary school and then your all the choices full remote that is the big changes on the right-hand far right-hand column that we would tell anyone to focus in on and again very similar to the standards before the main change is the right column for people to pay attention to but i apologize if i'm going too fast pause me but i'm trying to get through this because of the time that we've lost to be respectful of people's time um this part i will share a little bit but then i would ask our nurse coordinator miss pressler uh to come up uh to the mic and and join me in this part uh i will tell you that um this part is focusing on what happens when there's identification of a case of covet 19

039the rule stills apply it's interesting they say we should follow the recommendations you should but it's a recommendation that's the thing that superintendents have talked about like you say we should but it's supposed to only be a recommendation so the kind of conflict with each other so the recommendations are about school based on school size small you've seen this before medium size which is what all of our elementary and middle schools fall within so i would say to anyone in the community this will be posted for them to see would focus on this chart for elementary and middle schools with regards to what actions we are supposed to take based on case identification inside of our schools and then our high school would fall up under and that's a typo should be large recommendations for

040large which is greater than 900 students the area concerns that we shared previously and then we'll talk a little bit with this pressure about it we are greatly concerned that the challenge that the new model presents is you could actually have to shut down a classroom or school with short notice based on a number of cases that are triggered or hit and that's the one side that we are working very hard to try to stay in front of obviously as a nurse person shared with me we have coveted fatigue people are just getting tired of covets so they're getting lacks that she's always concerned about and then the third when i let her jump in here and talk about the three c's which is a key to us trying to keep from having to trigger

041a school or classroom closure in that process as we try to stay ahead of it with the work that she has to do and mr warden has to do thank you dr bedden so as you stated these three c's are very important in mitigation measures and keeping our kids in the building which is what we want that's our goal to have our kids in school so it starts out with our case investigation we are notified by the department of health daily of any positive cases in any students who are quarantined or staff the department of health is supposed to complete the contact tracing but at school we do that here for our students and notify back to them right away when we talk about cleaning and disinfecting it happens right away if there's a positive

042staff member i would reach out to mr whartonbee or the building principal he gets the maintenance staff in there that room is cleaned bioblasted all that is taken care of so these are three really important pieces in order to keep our classrooms and schools open that we are following so this is a new chart a new dashboard i'll call it that we have discussed using and this is really for families and this is also for staff so we can break it down by building and how many positive cases are in that building at that time so right now william tennant is not 11 plus positive cases in person we just wanted you to see the color difference uh the next slide will show you actually if the board approves what this would look like and

043it would be live as of tomorrow so as you can see our codes our keys on the top explain how many cases we are starting at zero and again this is in-person cases i want to make sure people understand that and it's also cases as reported by the department of health to us and basically the these are our guidelines so a family member might say let's say davis elementary okay davis is in the green that's great now they might see yellow and i update these with the help of mr ross daily then they might see oh it's getting to yellow so that's going to mean they need to start thinking about a change in plan we're going to be in contact with families if that would happen but we felt that this was a good

044idea that people could see things quickly and to our point and this is a point when we get to the end of this we wanted to make sure you're okay with this but we believe changing to this model is another method of communicating our parents so because as we get closer in that middle number to try to do everything we can to get people heads up that if something is going to happen so we believe that we needed to change to break it down by school level and then also be able to see the red yellow green coating that we're in danger of hitting that again when they hit there's a strategy with regards to if we hit that yellow or mustard level warning level that uh the effort with the the case investigation and

045the cleaning we actually have a really good handle on it as you know the bucks county health department works really hard they they really are are trying to stay on top of the contact tracing but as you see those numbers go up it made it challenging for them to keep up with it so i would make a public plea that one of the things they just shared with us a nurse pressler is having people get back to them and respond to them as they're trying to do the contact tracing if they can't do and say to us that they we're good to go with the contact tracing we can't stay ahead of this because once we do the three c's she's able to reset the number in the 14 day cap does that make sense

046to everybody that's key to us how we can stay in front of not having to deal with a potential classroom or school closure which would then trigger someone having to be home and we have to follow that model because an attestation agreement that we talk about so this would be posted starting tomorrow obviously we're back already but again we did not want to change the system without sharing it here with you all first but they literally behind the scenes have still been using this model to guide the decision making how she advises and her team advises uh the leadership team on where we are and what we need to do to try to stay ahead of it the other thing that we worked on thank you was what types of things operationally and staffing to

047give some metrics because you've always heard that term that could create a problem for us to function and operate in a school so we actually asked dr bess to work with principals other people to work in their departments to tell me what it is that if you lost this many staff that you be crippled and being able to deliver your service does that make sense so but we wanted to be transparent what would trigger that so uh dr bess sure um so as as dr bench that had mentioned the rationale is you know we we need to know at what point or what threshold can we not safely operate a school meaning keeping six feet a distance while providing instruction for the students so in the uh in the charts you'll see that follow uh

048implementation of each plan is is color coded so different staffing thresholds that you see are green that those are things that we feel we can operate under when we get into yellow similar to the graphic you just saw previously that's where we're in the warning zone and when we get to a red zone that means we're gonna we're gonna close the school potentially so william tennant high school is the first example that you'll see and it's a simple if then chart we have thresholds of percentage of teachers out on the left hand side on the right hand side what you'll see is uh how many teachers will be required to cover those absences so in the first row if william tennant high school has seven teachers out that means it will require 42 different teachers

049to do classroom coverages to cover all of their instructional periods and the numbers go on beyond that in a single given day things like this are are doable but if you think about a situation where those seven teachers uh who are out are not going to be out for one day if they've been told they need to quarantine for a period of two weeks or isolate for a period of two weeks that's that's depending on when they get the notification that's two weeks that we won't have those teachers and those coverages will be required every day and the numbers get larger as more and more teachers are out doctor dr best i have a question about that chart sure and i guess it would be the same for the next chart uh which is that

050you know the internal coverage 42 teachers the internal coverage 78 teachers would be fair to say that really represents like teacher periods because i assume like if a given teacher's out on a given day you're not actually getting 42 subs to cover no we have 17. those are internal coverages we're planning for um as everybody's aware we had a national teacher shortage leading into the pandemic and it's only been exacerbated by the pandemic right so daily sub coverage is not what it once was so one of the assumptions we made in this process is that we would have minimal to no subs reporting to the buildings on those days so those are our internal faculty members so for each teacher you got to cover six periods when they're out depending on the level because the

051schedules are different but yeah at the high school level that's that's accurate so it's teacher period yeah and so when you look at this this applies for both middle schools you'll see the thresholds are different because the size of the faculty is different so the high school you have 130 and change uh professional staff where in the middle schools you have approximately 50. and they very quickly get into situations where they're combining classes in large group areas where it becomes much more difficult to maintain six feet of distance and you know much less productive instructionally uh when we're simply housing students to do asynchronous work in the auditorium or in the cafeteria and you can see elementary as well threshold slightly different due to the size of the faculty but they very quickly are canceling

052interventions and combining classes our tech department uh because they can work remotely it's not as damaging to have a few people out but if we got to a situation where pretty much our building techs and central office technology people were out we would go remote because we would not have any support for for the network transportation we can do up to nine bus drivers out beyond that we can't transport the kids uh custodial staff we could go up to about fifty percent of our staff and still reallocate people and feel like we can get the cleaning done but beyond that it wouldn't be a possibility nursing staff we can have up to six out once we go beyond that threshold we couldn't effectively and safely operate our nursing suites and then with food services they

053can go up to about 35 of their staff out with reallocation before we can effectively feed the children uh each day we have a daily standing meeting where we just check in with the buildings and the departments to make sure that they are staffed and able to open the following day i'm happy to report that we were very concerned about that coming back from break and it's been much better than we anticipated and i think that's because of all the caution and care that people are taking and hopefully we don't have to get to those thresholds but we need to know operationally what those numbers are any questions yep in regards to substitutes do we have substitutes that's in the buildings on a permanent basis we do have some building substitutes it's been very difficult

054to find them uh not as many as we would like and that's not for lack of trying or recruitment uh by our hr department uh we've we've gone after them in very creative ways i just i don't know that they're out there right now but we are we are more almost assured on a daily basis that somebody out at every every school correct no we have the capability for that we have the budget for that but finding those people is difficult and we've had we've had building subs so i've had the quarantine as well the the good news is we had a outstanding day and i want to publicly acknowledge that to all of our staff when you get your nurse coordinator send you a good news note about the number of people who were

055here present minimal absences or concerns with health issues today it was probably our best day that we've had so far that she was so happy in getting that not only did she send an email she made a point to share it again with me when she came into my office which again i celebrate our staff coming back and working really hard while with us our safety measures continue the line is is with a miss pressler and our nurses continue to do an outstanding job advising myself the team will tell you i do very little when it comes to health situation without asking what she has advised or consulting with her and also miss bolden our staff wellness checks are still being done daily electronically all staff do a wellness check each morning electronically that are

056picked on their computer or their cell phone responding to their condition and the nurses and the principals see that which also helps us also try to get ahead of if someone's going to be out and trying to deal with those coverages if they're not feeling well and then the nurses are able to call and coordinate with that employee to advise them on next steps whether it be to stay at home still whether it be we really need you to go get tested right now uh so we can get an answer and start the clock ticking to get you back in as soon as possible or to say no no you're okay to still come to work when people are concerned if that's an issue and they still want to come and work hr again is

057also brought in based on legal guidance we review those people who could still do their function uh virtually uh and those who cannot so we do try to make sure that if their job can be done virtually uh that we we try to use that resource again within legal guides there are some tricky things that we have to maintain that would be problematic if we don't remain consistent in application of that we did successfully in a complement to our i.t department mr wardenby who was put on a short notice when i was touring the buildings and saw a raptor system could be upgraded to be a part of our wellness check as well as our contact tracing capabilities so it and his team quickly work to get those upgrading those orders and equipment every building

058the excuse me six schools in this building have the raptor system as you check in to our schools this is an example you know increase the contact decrease the contact opportunities for our staff with visitors other than them having to just give them their badge when it prints out it also decrease the contact and interaction between staff who are leaving to go to another building so for instance when i was at willowdale the other day i scanned my id into the system and just hit the button whether i was coming for a meeting or whether i'm just visiting to see how things are going when i leave i scan my id back out and it checks me out why is that important if there is a outbreak in a building we now can run a

059report that she can get to narrow down the contact tracing to see who was in the building at that time besides just the people we know like what other visitors and of course the system continues to do its normal safety checks with regards to uh checking for anyone who has any unlawful issues that the system scans for with their uh driver's license id and again this will be posted at the bottom is a little video for the sake of time we're not going to do that um but i think i got the point across and we said this because we want people to know how hard we're working to make sure we're running safe schools uh and trying to do the best we can but at the end of the day i would be remiss

060because she would give me the funny look if i didn't say this you know the covet five covet five code five it's all about people if we don't do our part none of this works it doesn't matter do we have the ability to start the testing process you know before a student or a teacher leaves the building when you say testing let me be clear and then i'll don't prove it uh no we don't we are still in the process of of uh um we work directly with let me back up that change we originally were going to be a district of choice in the front end of having the capability for our secondary students the model changed uh now that uh and it's a good model i and if you tell me you can

061disagree publicly but i think the way the county is doing it and working with us uh you can go to um one of the ambulance stations and get tested i did it when it first opened so i could tell employees i did it and i experienced it i went there they tested me um and they they come back out if it's positive if it's negative you're good to go if it's positive then they'll do the more aggressive pcr tests so they need to wrap it one first and then if it's positive they would do the pcr to get the more accurate one to confirm that is it called a false negative i guess or false positive whatever it's called to make sure it wasn't a positive that was not accurate uh they opened two more

062stations i believe that are function now three more so now we have four all the employee has to do and they were all sent this is show their staff id um and obviously what happens is if something happens at school or they cut or we get a hit in the morning with an employee not feeling well that's part of that conversation or the nurses will tell them to report to one of those locations to get tested and again they come right out and talk directly to the employee i want to be sure that everyone understands that testing and those things are also health medical records so we have to be cautious and that's why we've closed the gap on who gets that information um the hr and the nurse you know and the next person

063that may know if there's something with employee modifications they may bring it to me but i don't even know typically unless there's a need to know we try to protect and i think maybe their direct supervisor because they have to be out so we try to keep a span of control that controls people's privacy on a need and no basis but that's how the testing is done now uh i would just say that we're 1b in case you're wondering about vaccination uh situation we did at one point propose to dr damsker and superintendents that we believe our nurses could handle it uh if they brought it to him because he even said we we have a pretty good cadre of nurses in our county in our schools uh then the latest update is that they

064may uh identify select hospitals that try to expert the diet the process of vaccination um nurses our nurses are group 1a like other healthcare providers educators were moved up to 1b status the very next group of people who would get it again but we're waiting trying to get it there and i think someone's logistics of trying to do that process anything else miss presley so part of this plan is we have no choice in because the attestation agreement uh the main part is how we're communicating we're changing a dashboard if there's any concerns with us flipping to that different model uh we're asking you to let us know and also if you have any other questions about where we are right now in the process so that um you know we've answered your questions in

065case you get calls from constituents you got a question for mr mr miller yeah notwithstanding our uh the attestation protocols do we still have to update our uh report to uh pda so as a coach my coach would say to me i'm so glad you asked uh no and they put that in that facts so we were so glad okay that we don't keep doing that anybody have any further questions now miss crosston if you they don't i want to be clear we're pulling the trigger on the new dashboard tomorrow and starting in communication with families and make them aware of the new system we'll be just people would anybody like to make a roll call are we okay with it just for um it takes can we do a rope on this robot sport

066is that what you're asking yes please okay mr burdnick yes mrs brancato yes mr dixon yes mrs islandberg yes mr goddakson yes mr martin hi mr miller still here that's a yes uh mrs crossin yes 8-0 thank you uh i want to they're really two things to address and one is uh for our school board members and others to the community like mrs cross and shared you know as last week we sent out the letter regarding incidents at the u.s capitol we also had the opportunity to to share our district and be featured on six abc news and i want to assure our parents as you saw on that broadcast that two of our principals spoke that we assure you that your students that they're in a safe in our schools in a safe and

067healthy learning environment that our students are free to ask questions and share their thoughts in a safe space in all our schools we know students have been inquiring about the things that have happened schools were provided resources and the resources that you saw in the letter they are reputable organizations that you can click on them and see the information and learn about those organizations many in the community did respond to me directly about the letter expressing both concern and support these responses were welcomed uh which highlighted the different thoughts opinions and feelings and they're always welcome and i want to say that uh to the the community i welcome constructive feedback and that contributes to my opportunity to reflect as a leader so i want to be clear and let everyone know and clarify unequivocally

068that i always have and will continue to support our law enforcement office officials who serve and protect us honorably as a citizen and as a former soldier who served to defend our constitution it was tough to watch what took place at the u.s capitol a worldwide symbol of democracy i also want to express my sadness and pain at the loss of life including that of officer brian sicknick a 12-year veteran of the force who died in line of duty serving and protecting as well as officer howard living good who protected members of congress for almost 16 years i have family members in france who are currently serving in law enforcement and we talked about this a lot like the officers here who serve and protect us in war mister southampton and ivy land i know

069how our policemen and women dedicate their lives to upholding the law and providing safety and protection to all of us often at great risk and sacrifice to themselves and their families rest assured i appreciate and value our law enforcement and the wonderful working relationship and partnership we have with them i understand that that has always been the case in centennial school district and as i had the opportunity to discuss this with chief donnelly the warmest police department and chief mcpherson of upper southampton police department when i spoke with them this weekend reaffirming our commitment and our partnership which they also reaffirmed but i do want to say again my sincere apologies for any offense that the wording in the letter created that was not the intent we will will always continue to support i will

070our law enforcement officials and again that was not the intent please accept my apologies and i am absolutely a person who looks learns and moves forward by growing and reflecting the other item in the area is we want to take this opportunity to recognize all eight of you as this is school director recognition month we will be doing this this meeting and have something for you to our next meeting on behalf of the administration our staff our faculty the community who appreciate your work we would like to share with you that whereas the role of local elected school officials has served the commonwealth of pennsylvania and the local communities in meeting and needs of public education since the passage of the free school act in 1834 and whereas the local boards have discharged their duties

071to the public education in a manner which has placed public education in the forefront of our educational systems and whereas locally elected officials such as yourself have distinguished yourselves and your comm in your communities in this non-paid volunteer public service commitment because we all know you make a lot of money doing this whereas the contribution of you all as men and women should be recognized and appreciated by those who benefit from working work the workings of our public school system now therefore be resolved that the board of school directors of the pennsylvania school boards association hereby proclaims the month of january and school director recognition month and its commonwealth and further let it be resolved that this proclamation be communicated to all districts school officials and local communities in a planned program which brings visibly

072an awareness of the role of locally elected school officials to the citizens citizens citizenry of the commonwealth this was again from the pennsylvania school board association which was uh unanimously approved on july 18 1985 reaffirmed thursday december 3rd 2020 and again we join the pennsylvania school board associations as your local team and thank you for your service and the work you do in this unpaid and volunteer position thank you thank you moving on can we go to community comments let's give it a shot i'm sorry i'm so sorry oh it is i'm so sorry we're gonna do the diversity committee update on on june 23rd the cincinnati school board as you know passed a resolution resolving to unequivocally stand firm in their collective responsibility to foster an equitable and inclusive environment for every student and

073i'm shortening this because of time in support of this goal the centennial school board committed to developing a district-wide equity team with the representation from each building administration and the board of school directors for internal and external constituents you can visit our web page and learn a little bit more about what that means and we also want to say thank you to the 86 members within our district who participate as part of that process i also want the board to know that while csd is working is a work in progress we continue to work with the pennsylvania school board association equity services team uh led by uh dr heather bennett and the psba which is your association of public school leaders that partnership will help identify and address issues of equity for the benefit of

074all students it will include a work on our equity equity policy guide which we are currently developing equity action plan equity lens approach and equity systems uh continuum as we prepare to introduce as i prepare to introduce uh miss shawna coles who will be leading this effort in a role as director of equity and inclusion and education i want you to please note the following psba is one of only three school boards association that we know of in a nation that has developed an equity policy framework the others are oregon and maryland all the school board associations have been reaching out to them to learn and get that information also appointed pride is that centennial will again be a leader is one of the first districts in the commonwealth to use psba's new equity continuum

075of assessment this would help us evaluate current policies and practices through an equity lands psba will provide ongoing training and support through this policy development work the policy development workshop for our school board equity team our equity team members who are our staff and students and the school board members will be receiving additional information and your weekly report on that agreement and partnership that we will be bringing forward this time on this kohl's good evening everyone um i would like to stand to first thank you for this opportunity i'm going to try to speed through for those who know me you know that i always speak for my heart um and today will be no different i would like to honor the past work that the equity team had done because when we began this

076new iteration i was informed by dr mike masko former superintendent as well as other teachers and staff that there have been a diversity team in centennial for many years we learned from the university of pennsylvania that centennial was one of the first districts in bucks county to become members of the equity consortium i'm sharing this because i would like for the community to know that centennial has been working on diversity equity and inclusion for many years in previous superintendent david ball met with a few administrators and teachers to discuss returning to the consortium at the university of pennsylvania and developing an equity team the most simplistic definition of equity is simply to give our students what they need to be successful while being fair and impartial as noted on our dei page which thanks to

077mr ross has been up and running since november equity in pennsylvania is defined as every student having access to the educational resources and rigor they need at the right moment in their education across race gender ethnicity language disability sexual orientation family background and or family income additionally the pennsylvania department of educated education has noted that in order for students to do their best they must feel safe at school a healthy and safe environment can help students thrive every student regardless of again race ethnicity sexual orientation gender or expression should be provided the opportunity to learn free from discrimination fear or harassment this has been the blueprint for our equity team so i would like to recognize and thank the school board of directors for allowing the equity team to dream big and to flourish we

078started this team with seven members and as dr betten said we are up to 86 members across the district and that is incredible our district-wide team names are listed on the website please take a look at our middle schools and at our high school we have student voice teams and principal advisory groups who meet with building admin to guide and inform on how to break barriers to ensure we are growing empathetic citizens we are currently working to develop a parent advisory board to ensure we are hearing from all parents and engaging families from all of the diverse backgrounds we have here in centennial these teams are led by our equity liaisons who if not for this school board of directors we wouldn't have early on we recognized one person could not do this job in

079isolation we needed a team so this school board was gracious to appoint teacher leader positions in our secondary schools we have two per building in our elementary schools we have one per building and i need to let you know that we are one of the first to do this we are often asked how has this been accomplished each of our liaisons are working with their building-based teams and administrators on building goals ranging from food insecurity and student voice to proposing new um cultural culturally relevant courses diversifying artwork in our buildings book clubs and book studies we are working tirelessly to ensure we are a culturally sensitive district we are looking at which barriers exist and we're working to hear and capture all voices we are working with the pennsylvania school board association to develop the

080equity policy that dr bennett just mentioned so the decisions will be made through an equity lens in 2019 centennial again here the theme was the first district to conduct an equity audit through the university of pennsylvania the priorities for improvement are listed on our dei page equity is also included in our comprehensive plan and i should note once again we were one of the first to include equity as a goal centennial has been commended for being a culturally responsible school district and in fact it was noted that the anti-racism resolutions that were passed unanimously unanimously across the state including in centennial were because culturally responsive districts such as ours were at the forefront these districts who are districts who inspire other entities to move to act and to make decisions to the board members who

081have served on our equity team last year under the leadership of mr dixon i want to thank you mr miller you said when i first came to centennial to dream big and i've tried to do that and because of your efforts the equity team has been able to speak nationally and we are always we always have a seat at the table because of you mr panovsky is not here but he is the champion for student voice anything that involves our students he has made himself available and to ms brancato i don't know if you remember this but you told me one time after i presented that you were proud of me you told me that i should let you know if i needed anything and this spring you and i have many conversations as we

082as a district work to fight food and security for our families as a result of the pandemic you met with our equity team and in true fashion your passion shined through in november you joined our courageous conversations led by the peace center and passionately thanked our children and parents for speaking their truth you helped us as we try to create a brave space for student and family voice again i thank you all i'm looking forward to our continued partnership under the direction of school board president miss crosston and we graciously welcome mrs island eisenberg adam burke i'm sorry in closing centennial is a state-wide leader in equity showcased by psba aligned to pde's equity work through intermediate units we have been tapped to present at local colleges centennial is becoming a model that other districts

083are hoping to emulate the equity work that we have done has resulted in students feeling a sense of belonging being made to feel physically psychologically emotionally safe regardless of race gender identity sexual orientation religion etc by engaging in brave conversations our students will support it because our teachers have developed strong authentic relationships with them our students are developing into lifelong are developing lifelong skills such as kindness empathy and compassion for others in their lived experiences they are embracing difference and looking at those things that truly connect us as human beings the work we are doing as an equity team is exhibiting the fundamental goal of education which is to create a self-directed self-directed lifelong learners to function in society since the year we begin we since this school year again we had three workshops led

084by our life long time partner the peace center on courageous conversations i was invited by fourth grade students at davis to discuss what is equity and how does it impact our lives i facilitated conversations at tenet on equity today students from tenet were invited as the only school district in bucks county to a financial literacy workshop dr hamrich and i are working with temple university and westchester university to encourage students to go into the field of education which as was mentioned earlier is low and even more so for students of color we work with alpha kappa alpha sorority to replenish our prime closet with the hopes of having a prom and making sure that our families who are in need have the resources available ms bolden and her team are working to address trauma and

085the social emotional needs caused by the pandemic and civil unrest our csd farmers market at klinger and our csd food pantry at mcdonald continue to provide food and toiletries to family special thanks to willowdell for being designated as a no place for hate school and because of them we're working to add that designation to other schools every morning in our elementary schools students recite the diversity pledge that was created many years ago and at our middle schools they have created a pledge that they say as needed at our high school tenet has been on the ap honor roll for the past two years the ap honor roll is a distinction as you know based on expanding the program to include more diverse student groups and lastly later this month our student voice teams who presented

086to this board a few last year students from log clinger and tenet will once again participate in the school student leadership conference at the university of pennsylvania i know i can't tell it all i tried to tell you a lot but i hope this gives you a better insight to the incredible work our district is doing and most importantly leading i humbly submit that is because of the extraordinary work across this district um in the leadership across this district that we have not found ourselves responding or recovering for from a crisis which has occurred in other districts we are a family it is what i hear constantly centennial has the family feel i hear that constantly well csd family it is up to us to lead with integrity to increa and to agree to disagree

087politely and respectfully because our children are watching and listening they are counting on us so i thank you for your time i thank you for your support and i thank you for listening mr miller i tried to go fast well i was i was asking the board president for permission but i'm happy to deal direct because you are always direct uh shawana you have been tremendous on this program and i may have started the ball rolling but you knocked it up the hill thank you and dr ben you're joining us here it only makes us better we are the only school district in the state of pennsylvania there are 30 members on the psba task force and we are three of them the three of us psba chose us to be the first district in

088the state or in the commonwealth to pass the anti-racism resolution and it was passed here unanimously we have the largest task force assembled in the state and the only thing that i'm concerned about right now and i don't know how you're going to fix it is that the annual equity symposium this year is on a weekday not on a weekend it is virtual as many things are and of course we have school so we we can't necessarily uh abandon our other work i think we have school that day it's a wednesday i think some of some of the sessions are in the evening i don't think it is uh you know what i can actually i don't have it in front of me i i got the registration in the mail i didn't open it

089yet but where i'm going with this is it is free we don't have to travel and if we can find a way to host it in our building or i have a place in mind we gotta have our dinner gotta have that and i and i will still cover it that was that was well said thank you very well said miss coles i just want to uh i want to acknowledge how much effort you put into bringing that information to us tonight and i recognize that that was well thought out and uh took a lot of energy i appreciate your passion and i feel we're lucky to have you thank you thank you so much thank you for your time okay um community comments ms ward can you hear us ms ward can you hear

090me can you hear me yes hi uh you have three minutes just state your name and address my name is rachel griffin 252 kent wrote more minister and i am speaking on behalf of the letter that was sent out about the events of the capitol building i hear us can you hear me yes you can hear me mrs ward can you hear us can you hear me yes okay because i'm getting on the screen that you're asking me if you can hear me um this word come hear me it's from the can you hear me yes are we good uh you have three minutes just state your name hello go ahead go ahead try now i think there's sorry hold on i have to shut your meeting off okay i'm sorry um can you hear

091me now yes all right sorry about that the meeting was interfering with my zoom right um this is about the letter that was sent out for the events of the capitol building um i will start off with i appreciate the fact that the president of the board and dr betting did throw out an apology today however i would like a authentic public apology by via a letter to the community that they chose to divide in this circumstance um i felt that it was not only the initial letter was not only inappropriate but the response that i received back from the superintendent was unapologetic he is clearly standing by his original letter and his response was neither apologetic nor constructive it literally name-dropped his relationships with former police personnel and references his resume which is unnecessary

092his response indicates clearly that if he received more complaints other than mine that he would then apologize all of the ifs in parentheses in his letter says that loud and clear his parenthesis questioning if i am denouncing violence is not only appalling to me but negates my initial response to his letter i'm highly offended and disappointed in the lack of responsibility that he took this behavior by the superintendent and the school board president will not be tolerated in my opinion by the taxpayers and the voters there's no place for division and politics in the school district and i sent an email out to all of the board in what i initially responded to and dr bedden's initial response to me and that is my comment for today thank you thank you thank you for the

093school district her meeting curie sellers can you hear me just have to unmute hung up that's it we get up and come in we can have the community members come in here that were fading in and out that there's got to be a better way to do that well it was determined as you may or may not know that when dina came out that was the cable channels issue that was not madam president if i might just for a moment i i did see in the news media that one of our neighboring school districts i believe it's council rock is now letting public into their meetings in a restricted way and i think after what went on tonight with all nobody's fault but with all of the difficulties we've had here there should be a

094way with the room that we have with proper distancing that at least 20 members either through a sign up where they would be admitted and would should be able to come to our meetings address us personally and not have to put up with all of the difficulties that people did this evening and i would apologize to them for nobody's fault but apologize for all the things that got in their way of participating or watching this listening to this meeting if they're able to come in person and i see no reason why that can't happen that we should be able to do that and support that and find a way to do that by our next meeting and something we could all agree on right i was actually sitting here thinking something similar maybe we could

095have the overflow in cisca so they could at least be in the system and be you know we could put a camera up in there and even if they wanted to come in one at a time and address their concerns or comments or right i believe that's what council rock is doing madam president they're letting in if you want to address the board you can come in and they have 10 or whatever number it is then if there's additional people the other ones have to leave and then other people can come in much better than this way well the reason i thought of cisco is so if they wanted to watch the whole meeting they could watch it in there and then come over when it's their turn to speak could we make that work

096with our safety plan as i share with you when you that question was brought up that there's no reason that we couldn't other than to plan for it and that was the issue with doing it tonight we need to all the things you're talking about is go through and develop a system uh to do that and as i share with you i am aware of some districts to mr martin's example do that uh some are doing we do some are still fully virtual but if as i said you on the phone if that's the board's desire all we need to do is have a chance as a team to go through and plan the process out to to allow that which includes a system for coordinating signing up and and you know scheduling to that

097process so that we are making sure that we have equal opportunity and so it's like sign up by this date this time so we can actually plan it out and make sure that we confirm you know here's the time that you should be here here's a protocol and procedure and those types of things uh on the nurse's part for example working with her to understand what does she need from the person uh to affirm with regards because we do wellness checks everybody in here does a wellness check except for you all because it's your meeting so little things like that so does the red hat want to see how the right because about this because i need to make sure just so you know to the rest of the board the administration and the nurse

098coordinators is also to make sure that we're creating a healthy and safe environment for you all so we just need to develop a system that's all yes mr goddard um we had our executive meeting uh yesterday at mbit we actually had a parent from council rock school district that addressed the board directly yesterday so it is possible the other thing that we've done at those board meetings is even when we walk in as board members we take our temperature we fill out the form so there's a complete uh tracing mechanism in place you know for us to attend the meeting that is done even by the board does anybody have any other thoughts on on that well just with all due respect mbit is meeting in the cafeteria so and we were well under the

099minimum number or the maximum number of attendees and i think again what i would say madam president is it's not that it can't be done what we need to know is if you want to do it then we need to plan out a safe process i think mr uh golickson really laid out an example of that like we want to because again and i'm not being disrespectful but i have a responsibility that by oath for health and safety and welfare that i have to build a system because i look at the makeup of our board we have people in here who are at the risk level also so i just need to have time to build a system and then share that with you all because i think if you want to do it we

100need to develop it communicate it to you all to make sure people are comfortable with it so everyone understands the protocol and then we would communicate that to the public with the process so for example he made a good point then for example which is why we put raptor in all of our buildings for the contract tracing and things like that if something happened to consult with our nurse to make sure uh the processes and procedures she want uh you know i watch one of my former uh deputies who's the superintendent now in their meeting their students did came to person but they also have protocol wiping everything down in between uh the speakers to make sure that they're not passing anything when someone else comes up to speak at the podium okay will that

101could i get um just real questions if he wants to put him up all right miss robot could i can i get a um roll call on who is who is the emotion first before we roll call on something okay um i'll move that we start coming up divine designing a plan to allow the public into the meeting second okay are we uh ready for roll call yes um first of all mrs islandberg had a question wait i just have one question when we have a topic that creates a lot of interest from the public how do we determine who's allowed in while maintaining those guidelines or whatever guidelines we come up with where we're within the safety plan i could suggest what's in the policy which is we do have the right to set

102a time limit which would therefore set a number of people limit and you know open up the uh registration to speak say uh five days before the meeting so i all right to answer yeah okay what i'm trying to say is how do we we can open a registration fine but my question is say we have more than 25 people interested say we have more folks because you've seen this room packed we've all seen this impact how do we tell folks they can't come when we don't have enough room for overflow that's my only concern because i think that that in a moment can seem someone who may want to be here and we tell them they can't i think that will create an issue and i'm just curious to see and not that that

103happens a lot but we need to be able to address that as well i mean when you're done when you ask your question you're done you know likely ask them to leave the building right now the plan is to develop a plan for the community to attend you know we need to create that first and what i what i was going to say about the president is chair is uh one is i think you need to go through to see if you want it done which you were going to do with the vote i would also welcome the types of questions that was just asked so so and to give her an example in another district in pennsylvania we actually had a set time and a number of people and then the board would have

104to vote to extend it but we also had a sign up period that we could see to make the president aware before we got here that we had to her point an issue so i mean so that would be part of the structure that i would share with you all to try to get to an orderly fashion because at the same time i give you an example i would absolutely tell you that uh in my conversation chief donnelly would probably say to me you really would not want people sitting around your building unsupervised for example so a plan like get the factory and all of that because now you're leaving your building wide open to anyone and i can see him having that conversation with me from but we can develop a plan i would

105welcome that you know if you pass this motion to consider this that we also encourage members to pose their questions so we can factor that into the plan and then you all can respond to it miss robo can can we get our vocal on you have a question from mr miller i'm so sorry mr miller yeah the more i think about it the motion on second is a good idea we already have a policy that invites the community to meetings and we're under an impossibility of performance so i don't think we have to do anything to find a way motion-wise or resolution-wise to find a way to do what dr ben just said why don't we just leave it to administration and as close as we can get to the next meeting enacted that madam

106president the only thing reason i would say that i would like an affirmation because i do again because of the health and safety factor affirmed that there's no one comfortable that we are moving forward with something that they're uncomfortable with because of health and well-being aspect that was really my real reason for getting an affirmation at the board majority now if there's someone who does not want to attend then i just need to build into plan how they would attend remotely so that would be part of it but i just wanted to make sure that after the fact lessons learned that someone is not you know uncomfortable with it and if they are then i'll follow up with them and make sure i have a dialogue with them as we're developing a plan if that

107makes sense yes although i just wanted to do the roll call to make sure because i think that the community should be here doing it i want to make sure everyone else is comfortable with it so i don't want to try to put something forward that you know the majority is not comfortable with mr obama okay all right uh mrs brancato yes mr dixon yes this is islandberg yes mr godickson yes mr martin aye mr miller yes mr burdnick yes mrs crossin yes 8-0 would anyone like to pull anything i'm sorry five point seven d has avoided anything else could i just make a comment i believe uh there's one that um needs discussion first let's see 5.3 exceptions to policies an item for discussion that should probably be handled totally separate you can't read

108that in as a motion until you have a separate motion and discussion on 5.3 so i'd like to see that pulled off it's on the sick leaf and there's a memo there with the three options so we really can't roll that all in it's not on the printed agenda yeah somewhere out printed yeah it should be but yeah but either way you need to because of the the conversation that happened with legal counsel i believe that was that topic so it just needs to be a motion to pull it all together to her i'd like to pull 5.3 thank you i think right now you just need to pull it and we can bring it back pulling it per request no it's just if it's just pulled then we'll pull it okay we'll deal with

109it later it's not part of the consent agenda okay um 5.1 uh minutes be it resolve the centennial school district board of school directors approves the minutes from the december 7 2020 school board reorganization meeting 5.1b approves the minutes from the december 8th 2020 work session regular school board meeting 5.2 personnel be it resolved that the centennial school district board of school directors 5.2 a approved retirement 542 b approved resignations 5.2 c approve authorization to employ 5.2 d approved leaves of the absence 5.2 e approves change of status 5.2 f approves co-curricular addition 5.4 appointments be it resolved that this centennial school district board of school directors 5.4 b approves the retroactive appointment of thomas greenwood as board treasurer for the 2020-2021 school year at no additional compensation 5.55 waivers none 5.6 conferences of travel

110none 5.7 bids and quotes va resolved that the centennial school district board of school directors 5.7 a approves the quote from the recreation resource four from recreation resource for new playground equipment at mcdonald elementary school total cost of replacement is seventy thousand five hundred fourteen dollars and fifty cents to be paid by insurance less the deductible of 7 500 which will be paid by the three juvenile offenders 5.8 assembly speakers and programs none 5.9 contracts licenses and services be it resolved that the centennial school district board of school directors 5.9 a approves the standard contract for services with new hope academy for student 11-3 for 20 20 21 5.9 b approves a three-year agreement for mainline commercial pools for a chlorine dispensing system for the pool at william tennant high school district cost not to

111exceed 11 and 16 498.16 5.9 c approves the authorization for services with barry isa and associates to perform an asbestos hazard emergency response act three-year asbestos re-inspection district cost not to exceed 6200 5.9 d approves the agreement with the bucks county intermediate unit to support the financial oversight of the materials and services at christ's home from the title one part a neglected carryover funds no cost to the district 5.9 e approves the purchase of the three-year subscription for frontline education systems sister cost not to exceed 101 393 dollars and 11 cents 5.9 f approves the enrollment of bryn athens student 2-13 in accordance with policy 607 tuition income to attend klinger middle school for nathan borough school district will pay tuition for the student and will provide transportation 5.9 g approves retroactively the purchase of

112the licensed renewals for the world language spanish and french courses district cost not to exceed 41 and 32 863.32 5.11 acceptance of donations grants and requests none 5.12 changes to academic programs positions and stipends none do we have a second on that second uh it's up to you you don't have to since everybody's in the room but it's totally your decision i do have a question though uh in regards to the student from brent athen is this a four-year attendance or is this a student that's just starting to come into the district it is a newly enrolled student okay that's all i need to know thank you oh i'm sorry um that's customary that the insurance could pay first correct under the appearance of cover covering the deductible threat mr greenwood can you go to

113mike so the public can or mr warmest whoever someone needs to go to mike to make sure the public can hear you that is right miss brancato so the three individuals are going to be divide 7 500 and the way it works from the court's perspective bucks county probationary courts is they'll pay us and they'll back charge the three individuals so we will get a check from bucks county courts but yes it's only the deductible uh the short answer is no we need a vote we need a vote sorry yes you need to call for vote um all in favor aye aye madam chair yes you put you because we pulled 5.3 i would uh recommend that someone make a motion to table it until then uh moved 26 meters to vote on the table

114okay there's a motion to table so we need a voice vote or roll call whatever you want um all in favor aye aye thank you you should have to read it go ahead and read it again 5.4 a um approves the appointment of school board member shelly eisenberg to serve on the bucks county intermediate unit board of school directors through june 30th 2024. so we need a second on that second and i do have a question i would like to make a motion to change that change yes i would like to change it so that it only reflects one year for the year two thousand twenty twenty one i'll second that i actually have a question about it actually i i think my question will cover that all right uh my understanding uh through pennsylvania

115association of intermediate units is that the appointment is for three years by by statute uh and and i believe that ms eilenberg has certainly done a good job during her first year so my question is uh she should have been voted on to the board of par of the bucks county intermediate unit in her first year and should still have two years left on that term mr miller that was part of you read my mind because my question was this request came from the bucks county intermediate unit to our school district this wasn't something that was generated from here so they require that the board vote on this and if anyone has questions as to why i feel passionate about the bucks county iu and why i'd like to serve i'm happy to answer that

116question but don't we normally again procedurally we usually get a ballot from bucks county and immediate unit and we vote on all of the members not just our own member wouldn't your term be up prior to this date of june 30th 2024 i don't think you can appoint somebody beyond their term of office i think we have to look at what the bucks county intermediate unit requires if that's something that they require i'd like to ask the question as to does this need to be done tonight in terms of the general assembly set the terms for the intermediate at three years and the reason for that is so that you couldn't have a single year where conceivably the entire 13 school board directors on the executive board of the intermediate unit turnover so doing it

117the way they do it with the three-year term there's always experienced members on the board of the intermediate unit okay so would it be reasonable to um since she had one year already add two more years to this and then change this too i don't believe we have to do anything i believe that ms islandberg's already been appointed for three years and that we will get a ballot from bucks county intermediate unit to vote on the new members that join the executive council this year mr miller if i understood mrs eilenberg correctly this item is on our agenda at the request of the iu is that correct ms islandberg that's true could i just add i believe that there was backup where the iu sent us a lengthy document and requested that the board appoint

118this appoint mrs eilenberg and at that point they will put her name on the ballots and then we will receive the ballots for the board to vote on the entire grouping that's the form of which i speak but i don't believe that ms eilenberg will even be on that particular ballot because she's already appointed correct but they want us to do this at a public meeting that was the request every school district votes on every new member and they also have the right to substitute a member if they want but uh you know i i don't believe there's any reason we would want to do that it is the short version of this that it's pro forma and we have to do it to allow the iu to complete its process yes 2023 to finish

119out the three year and can i get can we vote on it well we've got a motion and an amendment so we have to deal with those two unless you want to make another amendment i will agree to them the change has a second right i did get a response from the iu uh the the attorney there believes that it is three years um she did say for our board secretary to follow with theirs and sometimes board members get elected to fill a uh an unexpired term of a no no another member which would address the issue that if she's appointed and then she leaves or not is not re-elected then someone would have to do her unexpired term um but that's her initial response and then just suggested that mrs robot follow up with

120ms robot will we vote on this or how would we refer okay well let me just clarify we had a motion and an amendment to make it a one-year term then there was another amendment to make it only a two-year term is that what i understand yes and then that would be the three years right made the amendment for the one year was second by mrs brancato but i'm hearing that there was another amendment to make it to june 2023 mr gold extended miss broncotta's motion first because it was made first okay that's the first amendment but you've made us there's been a subsequent amendment is that correct yes okay and who made that amend the second amendment to me you did okay and was there a second on that i don't believe there was

121no there wasn't i think i if i may i think this state is being dictated by by the bucks on the iu and i think that we need to i don't know that they're ex accepting of us changing the date on them so i i think we need to ask that question well i i emailed i just found their email miss olenberg's term expires on 6 30 20 21 so it would be this year yeah yes i was feeling the last portion of someone else's um appointment yes we have to vote on the motion that's been seconded correct or pull it well i believe if the board would agree we can abandon the amendments or we could vote down the amendments and stick with the main motion which was the original one which leaves the

122date as june 30th 2024 i ask a question madam president and i don't know the answer to this but i'm looking at the email and maybe this is where you'll have done it so i'm just asking a question it actually says the iu board members are appointed by the presidents of each of the local district boards to serve on iu board for three year term each school board needs to ratify by majority vote the appointment of the iu representative through a motion voted on at a duly advertised public meeting which is what we're doing so the board president needs to confirm the vote by completing the attached iu board member nominating certificate so when i read that even though since she's not over yet uh it does need to be three years and then to

123that part that you were talking about then her name would be on a certificate i guess nominating certificate well no that that particular document that we pulled up that's available mrs crosman would sign that and i would get that back to the iu because that's what they've requested right now we want to um follow through with what they're requesting the 2024. correct um so what is the next step ms robo well you could um vote down the two amendments and go back to the original main motion i think because the two amendments are out there on the floor and they're just kind of hanging out there was the second amendment ever seconded the fact that ms heilenberg was originally appointed for three years last year so no she was it wasn't i could i took

124up the end of someone else's appointment looks like you did an unexpired term that's what i'm looking at here okay so that then i apologize the second amendment was never seconded so do we need so if that doesn't get a second i do believe mr dickson was the one that appointed her through that ward yes last year and since he's no longer president it's now petty frozen but it could be a different president next year well here's the interesting part of the language i'm reading it now if their current representative listed below will continue to serve for the next three year term there is no need to do anything further other than to let them know that the member has been appointed reappointed for another three year term if a new board representative will be

125nominated please complete and return the attached nominating certificate to whoever this person is what is that what does that sound like to you ms rohl well i i would assume that uh the board secretary at the um iu would want this form they would need this signed by the board president and generally the board president doesn't sign anything that we haven't voted on okay then that's your local process now yeah correct again so what is next so what we've done is as uh mr dixon pointed out the second amendment was not seconded so it dies for lack of a second perfect so that's fine so we have the amendment uh that mr godickson made to make it a one-year term that was seconded by mrs brancato that we would i would recommend we vote down

126by a simple voice vote okay can we get a vote on that i'd like discussion on that motion okay okay uh the the intent of the the ballot that is provided by the intermediate unit to for all districts to vote on all members is because the intermediate unit serves the entire county okay the correct term for a member of the executive board of the intermediate unit is three years so for that reason i will be voting no on this the motion to limit it to one year as i believe it is out of order quick question must it be a school board member to serve on the board of the intermediate unit that's a requirement yes okay okay so can we do a roll call to this is to get rid of the previous the

127one year yes okay we're doing a roll call on the amendment if you vote yes you're supporting the amendment if you vote no you are voting against the amendment that is correct ms robol right we're voting against the amendment for one year because we realize that it is out of order but because the motion and the second are on the floor it has to be dealt with so yes that's correct okay yes okay so the vote on the amendment will start with mr dixon no mrs oliver no mr godickson i will vote no in this case mr martin no mr miller no mr burdnick no mrs brancato mrs crossin no okay that fails and then we need to vote on the the main motion and that can be voice vote or roll call all in

128favor of 5.4a hi want to point hi out that has nothing to do with that um i don't know why that because i'm not i'm not a deaf person but these people are saying they were on the web webinar it times out after two hours and cut them off and let them back in does that make sense like five pieces and i think your mic's off excuse me i think your mic's off oh i'm sorry so these listen i just i'm just passing a little long these people are saying that their the zoom webinar timed out and they couldn't get back in and they're asking if it was intentional listen i'm just i'm telling you what they're saying and these these are just community members they're actually is there a way we can correct that

129so they can get back on um you could try thank you so i don't know if we can correct it for today i'm not asked you know what i'm saying is we need to we we need to find a way that these people can have a voice i don't care if they have to write it in you know i don't care what we have to do we just need to make sure next time that because these people feel like we just did this on purpose and i know that we didn't at least we i didn't you didn't we're all sitting here i i don't i'm not accusing anybody of doing it on purpose but that's what the community thinks and we can't have that we can't have people thinking we did sat on purpose well

130hopefully we just passed that and hopefully we can have people um for the next meeting if it's a v if we get things done in time we can have people come in nate is it possible to restart the zoom session i also think they saw the part they wanted to see is it possible to restart the zoom session i can try not necessarily right this second from the from the beginning of the meeting there was three people in the room right one of them spoke as soon as the other first person spoke the other two got out of the room so it's not like we lost the police officer uh the lady that was there and then was gone and hers expired all i'm asking is if we can reopen the zoom there's an additional

131community comments section at the end of the meeting and let's make sure that won't interrupt the recording right be resolved that the centennial school district board of school directors 5.7 b awards the graduation rental equipment bid 2021 0-02 to light action incorporated in the amount of 14 483 dollars for the 2021 graduation ceremony second yes i did i would like to know if the stage this year contemplates space for the board of school directors who wish to sit on the stage as they did up until 2017 uh is included in this bid dr best we might still be with kovet so presently the answer to that is no uh our our plan is to run multiple graduation ceremonies uh over the course of a day and and run nighter reflections outside in the stadium the

132previous evening uh because we're not confident we'll be able to do that in the auditorium because we don't know what the restrictions will be now but we do know that we can run it outside our goal is to have as few people as possible on the stage to interact with the students as they walk across to receive their diplomas and to make sure that all parents are able to hear their child parents or guardians are able to hear their child's name read as they cross the stage we're not sure yet how many ceremonies that will be it'll be at least three we're trying to keep it to three but there may need to be a fourth any other questions i mean chances are chances are in june we'll still have some kind of coveted restrictions

133well i sat on the stage for 10 years with my fellow board members i think the time we put in deserves that that small accommodation but during covid we need the least amount of the kovid's crate this is crazy time mr martin mr miller i would i wouldn't have a problem if it was because of covid yeah it's all going to be cleared up by august so i can go on vacation now it just seems to me for the time that i've been on the board year after year the board's role in graduating the students that we graduate is diminished and i resent it well mr miller i'm sorry that you resent it but with kovid the kids have to come first because excuse me if we are still under covered restrictions we will be

134this is already almost the end of january that's june okay let's take a vote on this if we don't mind if um we're not gonna do a roll call but um all in favor of 5.7 b was that was that a no it's for objections okay any objections objection okay thank you 7-1 with mr miller post new business be it resolve that the centennial school district board of school directors 6.1 approves the first of all does anyone want to pull anything new business no okay moving on approves the 2022-2026 tax collector compensation plan with annual increases of 10.5 percent of the 2021-2022 base year as per the attached six 6.2 oh i'm sorry yeah there's two more 6.2 approves the unpaid leave request for employee 12-1 from january 18 2021 through june 15 2021 contingent

135upon securing a qualified replacement substitute as per the attached 6.3 approves the release and agreement in lieu of and in full satisfaction of a free appropriate public education vape for student 10.3 for the 2020 2021 school year pending graduation of the student second any discussion question if i might on 6.3 without going into like you can't probably when the is is there a real good reason to do this i mean i i i don't just the way it's worded and what i it said we're going to be paying taxpayers money to a private school i i i kind of question why why we should do that um this is a um in lieu of faith agreement one that was on for executive session today um it was actually presented a few months ago paperwork wasn't

136finalized till now so it is basically done already because it's for the current school year and um it is a cost savings that's what i can tell you in a public forum can you say how that's a cost saving lawyer's fees what are we saving yeah we're paying money out to how we save it there's but so much i can say in a public forum i can't explain how to saving that's i don't know why that would be it if you look at the attachment um that's included in the board docs if you look at the attachment it's a breakdown of what it is for in general mr martin if i may i'm not i'm not speaking about this or any specific case but in general you'll find that these agreements are not recommended unless

137the cost benefit analysis has been completed the constitution will be required to provide the well the free and appropriate public education least restrictive environment sometimes we cannot provide services that the student needs and it would be more costly for us to provide the service in our district than to assign them to another school president ms baldwin how many students do we have are presently assigned to outside institutions this is uh approximately approximately this is different this is a in lieu of faith agreement so in in in there's still one we can't fulfill yes this is one that we cannot fulfill in our in lieu of our our uh out of district placement numbers have decreased um over the last few years but yes the numbers are really low just for general knowledge you know we

138we have had catastrophic cases students had cost a quarter million dollars a year to serve and we pay that because that's required by the state council and i just want to i apologize i just want to say uh mr bolton did go into this in detail and explain the cost analysis at that executive session and i apologize that it was a while ago but that was months ago yeah but we were there and we asked our questions at that time and so hopefully that that satisfies that it was on for today too so it was on today's agenda as well to review it for executive session any other questions okay um all in favor aye aye all right no one's 6.3 i on the other two okay and nay is just one yeah okay miss

139island seven policies holiday policies presented for initial distribution discussion 7.1 a policy zero zero one name in class yes any others please seeing none moving forward um just to repeat 7.1 a policy zero zero one name and classification 7.1 b policy zero zero two authority and powers 7.1 c policy zero zero five organization seven point one d policy zero one one board of governance standards seven point one e policy zero one two board policy development process seven point one f policy one one one lesson plans 7.1 g policy 105 i'm sorry one five zero title one comparability of services 7.1 each policy 203 immunizations and communicable diseases 7.1 i policy 209 health examinations and screenings 7.1 j policy 314 physical examination 7.1 k policy 610 purchase is subject to bid quotation 7.1 l policy 611

140purchases budgeted 7.1 m policy 612 purchases not budgeted 7.1 n policy 613 cooperative purchases 7.10 policy 711 concessions and this is we're not voting on these these are just for distribution initial distribution and discussion this is our policy committee admin policy committee hard at work with colleen rochette guiding us and dr betten as well updating our psba recommendations for a lot of our policies 7.2 policies presented for adoption be resolved that the centennial school district board of school directors adopts the following policies 7.2 a you did pull that and i have it circled and i'm not reading it now thank you mr mellon 7.2 b policy 103 discrimination title 9 sexual harassment affecting students 7.2 c policy 247 hazing 7.2 d policy 249 bullying and cyber bullying 7.2 e policy 252 dating violence 7.2 f

141policy 304 employment of district staff 7.2 g policy three one seven point one or one educator point one educator misconduct seven point two h policy three four eight discrimination title nine sexual harassment affecting staff second and then we have to go back to 7.2a okay um all in favor discussion all right all right aye any nade all right reading 7.2 a policy zero zero zero board policy procedure administrative regulations mr miller a second and uh yeah my my concern here is that we we kind of put the cart before the horse uh policy zero zero zero as rewritten uh takes out the items that are in policy zero one two that we just received today for initial distribution so by if we would table this for a month then we could vote on this together

142with policy zero one two so the specific items are uh the citizens policy committee and the administrative policy committee are presently part of zero zero zero when we approve this they're gone and if we don't replace them with policy zero one two which we got initially this evening we wouldn't have a policy to hold citizen policy committee or the administrative policy mr dixon you seconded it i second any nays be it resolved the centennial school district board of school directors approves the schedule bills investments cafeteria fund budget reports and general fund cash receipts summary december 2020 as per the attack that's 8.1 8.2 approves the 2020 budget transfers for december as per detached 8.3 approves the pending bills list as for the attached and finally 8.4 approves the pre-approved bill paid bills list as per

143the second um all in favor discussion no discussion i'm so sorry any discussion all in favor aye aye aye nays thank you um board discussion and comments i'm chairman uh i'm gonna be very brief because of the time but just and i'm not beating a dead horse here but three three comments briefly uh going back to the infamous letter that we had discussed number one i think we need to develop a process if it's going to say the from the school board there has to be a process developed as to how that will happen so that it is from the school board on on non-routine letters on routine letters i i don't think that's it that nobody cares about that it's the one school story to it but i think it could be of a

144sub uh something that could be controversial i think there has to be a way to to do that to avoid that happening in the future and i think it's the the uh comments earlier tonight were fine that they're most appreciated uh going forward i'm sure we'll be a little more cautious about the wording but finally i think and i heard i think our name was mrs griffin suggested it might be a good thing to put out a letter uh since many people a had great difficulty in comprehending what happened this evening because of all the difficulties just clarifying without going into no just a simple letter two or three paragraphs assuming that the board would agree just clarifying and kind of restating what you all and dr ben said earlier in the meeting to go

145to the same people that got the original letter i think that would be very helpful and if that has to be a motion i would make it but that would be my suggestion as to how to hopefully close out that issue that'll be from the whole book right if everyone agree i would think that would be something that based on earlier comments this evening that were made that should be helpful we didn't make a motion for the first thing we're just i'm not necessarily a clarification letter i would call it rather an apology letter but in that clarification letter could be what was stated publicly at the beginning of the meeting many people probably didn't even hear it because of all that calamity i'm sorry that this situation happened but yes i do think that

146somebody that you guys need to put that in that i'm sorry to get information they can't i don't i don't that's i do think it's important for the community to understand that this initial letter was not from the from the entire board it was from all of us are we doing this as a motion because we we're having discussion and we have a motion but no second do we really need a motion and do we need to vote on something or is it just something that we don't the board leadership can decide amongst himself i do think it's a good idea um it does have to be doesn't have to be decided on tonight or how we're going to do it or should i i just wish i get everyone's opinion i don't want to

147make a decision for other people i think i think if you guys want to draft something and then just you know take your time and make sure everybody has a chance to see okay dr benny do you think that's sorry about the okay but not not i can't apologize for something that you said it doesn't make it i can say i'm sorry now you did that a million times i think it's nice that the community sees us as one verse that's it yeah you have your opinion i have mine i'm sorry listen i'm sorry all right so we're gonna move on i'm sorry mr dixon i i would like to you know just say that um with respect to uh the the issue that mrs crosston and dr ben addressed at the opening of the

148meeting uh the letter uh that they're referring to i first of all want to leave them twisting in the wind because uh although i was not involved in the composition of the letter i didn't know anything about the letter until i saw it but i read it and i said looks good to me without necessarily you know i looked at it quickly and uh you know sometimes this is why i think that uh it's good to have every set of eyes go over it because it didn't necessarily leap off the page to me the way that on reflection certainly it could have been taken and so for the fact that for some folks that uh who were offended by it i would add my apology you know i i i'm i'm uh taking responsibility for

149my role in that and that i saw it i didn't process it that way uh and i would further add just a few things you know i don't think normally i wouldn't attempt to speak for everybody up here but i think it's fair to say that everybody around this table is very supportive of our law enforcement uh both locally in warminster township and upper south hampton township and ivy land and more generally we live in a society of laws and therefore honest and uh engaged and and and hard-working law enforcement officials at every level of law enforcement are worth their weight in gold because without the laws we do not have a functioning society with that said what happened at the capitol was an attack on that concept and that's why the letter on the

150whole notion of a rule of law and that's why the letter went out and i would say that i know some parents were upset you know in terms of it perhaps looking that we're taking a political position but there's a position just in general the united states in every functioning democracy if it works works by the rule of law that was an attempt to undermine the rule of law and when children are watching which our children aren't who do they look to certainly they look to their parents and their guardians first obviously but we're school teachers right and we did and we're a school community we so i i did address that i didn't write it but i did read it and i didn't it like you said it it didn't jump out at me

151like that but once now the community the more eyes that would have seen it would have been better and i do apologize if it offended anybody sure and i don't have a problem with sending something out that says um that says that um to the community if it would make things a little bit better but i do want to i wanted to say a couple things because i know that the thing that really set folks off about the letter is you know was this was the paragraph uh with respect to the performance or you know comparing different responses to different things that happen with law enforcement i just want to say that the reason that it didn't leap off the page to me initially uh and although i do understand why some people looking at

152it a second time and that's why so i i stand i also stand with dr ben and mrs or mrs crosston for you know stating that we're sorry the wording could have been better i i'm you know i've got friends who are in law enforcement i i love our law enforcement officers but and we they're watching and we need to show them respect and i do show them respect and we also have children in our district who are children of law enforcement and we have to think about that but we also have many children in this district who are people of color and they're watching too and that is what that letter was about they see the disparity that at times happens and i don't think it's coming from an individual law enforcement individual law

153enforcement officers are like law enforcement officers anywhere or workers anywhere they have bosses they got things they got to do they're deployed they're not deployed but law enforcement is a tool it's a tool and how it is deployed and how it is used is a decision that's made by people who have power and people who make those excuse me excuse me excuse me i'm talking to i've i i express my support for the letter i apologize for its wording but i want to say some reason why it also went out thank you the law enforcement is a tool that's fine mrs broncolo i have the floor thank you i have the floor thank dude we're trying to you done you want every single person to express their political opinions like you're doing now okay all

154right can we just let's just take a minute um i'm going to continue whenever she's finished let's just give it a minute can we can we can you wrap it up in a minute yeah i will wrap it up quickly what i'm saying is that the we have a lot of students and people of color in our district and they watch too and they see two and that's what that letter was about and that's important we had a lovely speech about equity here that everybody stood up applauded but it's nice to talk about equity you also got to do it and part of doing it is not being quiet when you see it the president-elect the president-elect you're just putting down every single no i'm not in our district no i'm not these people go

155out of their way no let's just take it a minute andrew are you i'm talking about why we had to put that letter out why i mean i said we didn't have to but why i voted for it and all i'm saying to finish up wrap up is that there is something that there's a difference in response that happens and it's not because of the officers involved it's because of the people or making the orders and delivering the orders what happened in washington on wednesday was unacceptable everybody knows it an officer was killed for heaven's sake why weren't they there though that has a big question why wasn't there more people there when they were there for other types of incidents that has a lot to do with who's in power and who's making those

156calls and we as excuse me we as a district that are committed to equity i think are within our rights to say you know what to the students who are students of people of color in our district we see it too and you have a space safe space here to know that the adults in your life see it and we're not just going to be quiet about it that's all thank you andrew all right so we're going to be moving on to um 10.1 districts policy report are there any okay so there are none 10.2 bucks county school intermediate unit mrs islandberg we actually have a meeting next week so i will be following up with the report after i get that update thank you psba representative mr pinovsky's not here mr miller do you

157have anything i do there is equity work being done at psba and most importantly we have our advocacy day this year second year in a row being virtual due to pandemic it is on march 22nd and if any board member can afford the time uh it would be great to have you participate in one of the scheduled virtual discussions with our legislators that represent the district i'll also point out that megan schroeder has been appointed uh reappointed to the house education committee and we certainly want to let her know that we appreciate her being such a good advocate uh mr miller do you know the time on march 22nd uh i'll say i'll circulate the registration link to the board thank you and uh i believe the vote i believe it's from 10 a.m until

1583 p.m great and legislative cancer will also you sure but remember everything i said about the psba okay all right so middlebucks institute technology council liaison mr goddard i'm going to try to make this as short as possible we had our reorganization meeting yesterday and we have the same slate of officers as last year john gamble being the chair person from central bucks and one to hotel the vice chair from new york solebury two of the staff members at ndit also completed their administrative leadership program at temple we did have a parent as i mentioned earlier that spoke and she was really speaking in regards to council rock potentially going back to a five-day schedule starting on february 1st which could trigger you know some issues with our health and safety plan and also the

159desire for those students from council rock to come back on a 4-5 basis and you know all different slate of issues because we are four districts that send students to mbi team and historically uh um oh sorry uh is that the business manager and the technology manager have put in for their retirement at the end of the school year that would be a great loss to mbit that's it did mention that thank you any questions um additional or for commute uh communications anybody have any all right additional community comments um additional community comments we did post a graphic on the live stream uh there are people on the line however the protocol is that they're supposed to write an email beforehand to be able to speak through community comments so that is not up to

160me um you can you can let them speak the three minute dean if you can hear me in the back uh they want to tell the community coming through they have three minutes hello hello hello this is mike peduto all right mr spadillo can you um just state your address and then you have three minutes to speak and if you can turn down your feed we can hear an echo through yeah mr spado can you hear me hello no it's him we can hear us on the phone mike can you say something no it's our phone system hello hi hello hello can you hear me yes mike you have three minutes okay yeah okay well you know it won't put me on hold twice i just like to make the comment first of all just

161prediction i understand uh what you were trying to say there but it has it holds no validity to the context of the letter okay maybe you should read it but i don't i think you read it on a one-sided book the community okay and and i'm not making this up i didn't get uh an email sent to me insinuating that i was not authorized to speak for the community well believe me when i tell you i am and when we have a meeting in person i will be there with the people who authorize me to speak for them the letter that went out my question is why did it go out why did we need to send a letter why was it necessary why did we have to comment on a national event like that

162when we never said a word about the burning down of cities destruction of property the disrespecting law enforcement and the burning down of people's businesses in people's own neighborhoods we've never felt anything to address that but we sure did have to get our true to say how law enforcement failed and they're double-sided if that didn't have undertone of racial insinuation then i'm i i don't know what i'm talking about as my letter stated to the board the two your two groups blm and hp have a history of violence and destruction the magic group did not and i said as i said in my letter that it was bad planning on the side of the dc mayor and law enforcement so i hope that you realize that you have the community by pending that letter and

163rubber stamping it with all the boards not only did you tarnish the board's name but you you tarnish the name of everyone who sits on that board and you need to clarify who signed off on it and who did not because come election time we'll vote that's three minutes thank you thank you thank you for your comment are there any other additional community comments online for mr spurdudo although i did not compose the letter i most certainly did sign off on it and i do acknowledge that the wording of the fourth paragraph like i said you know didn't catch it myself but i recognize your point and frankly one of the positive things that came out of all this i thought both here and even nationally was you know looking at the emails that we

164received dr bedden because of all this had the opportunity to speak to a lot of community members by telephone and honestly you know talking to each other like people in those kinds of connective moments are often more you know as mrs brancato was saying earlier not during the meeting but people can be you know keyboard commandos we all know that it's easy to get for all of us myself included to be on your facebook page where all your friends agree with you and saying it it's when you have to talk to each other that helps and this forced the conversation that is good um and i think that's a productive conversation i think there were things about the process that have been acknowledged that could be better and i think they will be in the

165in the future but the bottom line as i said i still stand by the notion that the choice to use i'm not talking about individual officers individual officers are individual people 99 whatever however high a percentage of them like most people are dedicated people doing their jobs an officer was killed trying to do his job it was absurd insane terrible and a terrible tragedy for his family that that happened thank you but there's still the question of the choice to use the instrument and who holds that choice and when it is deployed and the children in our community children watch adults see how they behave and then ask questions and they ask their parents and they ask their teachers and so yes that's why i think at times the school district the people who represent

166the teachers the and when i say the teacher i mean the entire educational community we have a duty to say something to the students about an issue of this important one way or another thank you thank you were there any more comments no okay schedule board meetings calendar events um that's going to be monday january 18th all schools and offices closed martin luther king jr day tuesday january 19th 7 pm bciu board meeting location is bciu tuesday january 26 7 pm centennial school board committee of the whole meeting boardroom friday january 29th all schools closed in service day monday february 8th two hour delay in service monday february 8th 5 30 pm mbit executive council meeting location mbit tuesday february 9 7 pm centennial school board meeting work regular meeting board room um can i

167have a motion to adjourn so moved can i get a second sec oh in favor aye thank you meetings adjourned