001okay [Music] i'm ready good evening everyone i'd like to call to order the meeting of the board of directors for the school district for the city of allentown for today march 24 prior to tonight's meeting an executive session was held to discuss confidential and legal matters the board welcomes and invites public public comment you may address the board on agenda or non-agenda items the first opportunity for comments at the beginning of the meeting is limited to agenda items only if you do choose to address the board please fill out the comment card and hand it to deputy superintendent ramos common cards are located at the podium near the door um once your name is called please come to the podium state your name and address for the record and we will be asking everyone to
002please limit their remarks to three minutes we're going to hold to that this evening um mr secretary can we please have the role miss brown president scott over present ms harris here ms matheson here mr miller here ms ortiz here mr palmer mr thiel as well here thank you very much um now if everybody could please join me in the pledge of allegiance and i'm followed by a moment of silence of the united states thank you [Music] at this time uh for board of direct excuse me board president remarks i just want to thank everyone who's here present with us today and those who are watching um us online i am just going to wish you all well and and turn the floor over to dr um stanford good evening i had to turn this
003on uh good evening madam president members of the board of education i don't have any uh remarks tonight i'm going to yield my time to our solicitor mr jeff satanic to give us an update on the fact-finding good evening as i reported at the last regular meeting the pennsylvania labor relations board appointed uh finder john m sconier to review the open issues in dispute between the allentown school district and the allentown education association which represents our teachers in the district we have been bargaining for i believe close to two years and notwithstanding uh the valiant efforts of many individuals and uh state mediators uh two state mediators actually um we have been unable to reach a collective bargaining agreement the teachers association did reject the two independent state mediator recommendations that were issued last year
004as a result of that process the labor board uh did follow the impasse procedures that exist under pennsylvania state law act 88 of 1992 and appointed an independent fact-finder uh we did uh have a full day hearing um it's about a week and a half ago and we provided the fact finder hundreds of pages of information regarding the demographic and economic basis of the district the actual written fact finders report will be issued via email to me late in the evening on monday the 28th and the fact finder is assured that the report will be issued at that time because under state regulations the fact finder will not get paid if he does not issue the fact finders recommendation by midnight on the 28th um the report will outline the nature of the open issues
005between the district and the union even though we've been negotiating for a long time we have many tentative agreements but most of the focus of the report will be not surprisingly on salary and health care benefits and there was extensive testimony at the hearing on that issue now let's talk a little bit about procedure the fact finders report will remain confidential and not subject to public review only board review and teachers union review for a 10-day period following the 28th of march and i believe the 10th day will be april 7 2022 we are advised that the teachers association will vote on the fact finders recommendation on the 30th so two days after it's issuance uh i see somebody shaking their head no but that's what we've been advised uh by the union leadership and
006uh the teachers union like the school district will be faced with an option you can't pick and choose elements of the report it's all or nothing you either approve it as is or you reject it if the teachers union approves the collective the fact finders report and the school board at a public meeting which will likely take place on march 31st after an executive session where we will carefully review the costs and elements of the report recommendations with the board um approves the report then we have a collective bargaining agreement if the teachers reject the report they will need to revoke that rejection a second time in a second day in a second 10-day consideration period after the report becomes public so the members of the community will see the report once it becomes public
007and if they reject it if the board accepts the report on the 31st the union will have to vote again within the next 10-day period after the report gets published and if the union changes its mind and agrees to the report then um the uh parties would have a collective bargaining agreement if the union were to approve the report on the 30th and the board were to reject it we would need to schedule another special public meeting within 10 days after the issuance of the report to vote the report up or down he reported up and the teachers voted it up we have a collective bargaining agreement if both parties vote it down or if one party still holds out on the report we go back to conventional collective bargaining under the circumstances so i
008wanted to outline the process hopefully we will be able to report to the community on march 31st that the teachers union accepted the report and the board accepted the report so that we can bring these lengthy negotiations to a an end on the other hand if other party rejects it the community will have an opportunity to review the terms and provisions of the fact finders recommendations and uh address things in that fashion okay uh so unless there's questions um i just wanted to outline what the process would will be uh once the report is received by the district uh our administration will get very busy and engage in a costing of that proposal and address the financial impact of the proposal on the district and they're also going to have to address the educational impact
009and i will say that the fact-finder himself was very moved by the difficult circumstances that we are facing here in the allentown school district but also is very aware that we have currently many teaching vacancies in this district and many support staff vacancies in this district and what makes this complicated is is that our situation is going to be driven by both financial necessity and educational necessity and i will be in a fortunate position of not having to vote on the recommendation uh the board will have to make the uh difficult decision of weighing the impact of the situation on both our educational needs as well as our financial needs both of which are extremely challenging by everyone's analysis so the next week will be an important week for the allentown school district you attorney
010sultanic did anyone have any questions okay seeing none at this time um we will open the floor for a public comment on agenda items mr secretary no comments okay then may i please have a motion for the approval of the minutes mr miller is there a second ms conover um any discussion seeing and hearing none please call the roll what's going over yes ms harris yes ms mathison yes mr miller yes ms ortiz yes miss wilt yes ms brown yes 7-0 passes thank you very much that brings us to the portion of our meeting where we have informational updates about um community relationships we have within the community and we're going to start with our student reps this evening um and we're going to start with madison walker from building21 [Music] oh can you hear
011me does the mic work is the blue light on okay is it huh a little closer oh can you hear me yes oh sorry good evening everyone just this wednesday building 21 held our sat school day where 58 of our year three class tested on tuesday we held a coffee and conversation for our school-wide family to receive important updates 146 students including me received our february school-wide incentive students who had two or less infractions as well as 80 percent or more of our work completed received the building 21 t-shirt we are very proud to share that three b-21 seniors have been hired as field canvassers for civic 360 and penn future they will serve a critical role of working on the front line of helping to advance voter registration outreach efforts including civic engagement activities
012get out of the vote and vote by mail digital campaigns community education organizing efforts surrounding electoral fieldwork that advance and advocate around school and environmental issues affecting communities of color their work starts now we're currently welcoming three teacher candidates one from lehigh university one from cedar crest college and one from kutztown university as observers in our building and via enrollment is still occurring we are excited to begin notifying families of our future students early april events coming up our student government has a spring dance planned for april 8 student-led fashion show will take place on may 13th at voting 21. our prom will be held on may 28th at the renaissance hall allentown hotel the building 21 yearbook committee is excited to start taking orders for our 2022 yearbook next week thank you for your
013time thank you very much madison that brings us to um drought and hillary inga good evening my name is hilary inga i am a sophomore at direct high school and the alternate board representative can you please lean into the mic a little bit more so that those on zoom can hear you as spring comes near the huskies are getting very excited about the spring sports seasons that is ready to begin as volleyball manager i am excited for our first boys volleyball game tomorrow night greg our primary board representative is at his final practice and preparation for it and i'm happy to be with all of you to share the exciting things going on at heroes also in spring sports our first track meet is this monday march 28th and softball and baseball are in full
014swing it will be a great spring for all of our athletes here are some notable events that we have going on at dira the spanish honors society sold cookies around st patrick's day the spring dance will be held on april 9th for all grade levels the senior trip to washington dc is coming up and interested students in 9th 10th and 11th grade had the opportunity to visit lcti today the junior class is sponsoring a volleyball tournament that is open to all students and staff members we will update you on the results next meeting and the executive council is piling some fun community events with our local elementary schools as well as for our students in the building finally a new and exciting news some of our huskies intended attended the return of the youth council
015the purpose of the youth council is to advise the mayor and the allentown city council on any concerns that need to be brought up this gives us students a chance to have a voice for our peers our school and the community thank you very much jimir [Music] on monday march 21st 40 of william allen high school's our students had the opportunity to visit the banana factory in bethlehem to view an art exhibit by lehigh valley native bart cooper the exhibition heroes my heroes actually have real superpowers pays homage to popular comic books characters and american histories leading ladies of justice and change in his work barr cooper explores the relationship between the shared characteristics and superpowers of these comic book heroes and important women in history such as harriet tubman nina simone rosa parks and
016sojourner truth island's art students carefully viewed the 10 artworks in the series of the crayola gallery at the banana factory they then had a discussion with bart cooper who talked about his work students had the opportunity to ask questions about his life as an artist his artistic process and how and why he made the choices he did in this series after the artist talk students then had the opportunity to make some art in one of the visual arts classrooms at the banana factory one of the resident teachers led students through the process of creating an artwork and the style of bar cooper paying homage to one of their own heroes island's our students did a fantastic job with their creations after being inspired by bart cooper's work members of the island band and representatives from
017the football team and the girls basketball team visited service electric for the mike zambelli show on tuesday march 22nd they discussed our nest academic support program for student athletes miss melissa roerich started the program 12 years ago and that and then the asd forged a partnership with the afterlife foundation this year we expanded our partnership to include st luke's hospital system currently the the nest program provides academic support to all athletic teams at island as well as provide mentoring workshops presentations and individual academic coaching students met with mr cerakos from kutztown university this month on an opportunity to be a part of a research project aimed towards understanding the barriers to enter and challenges for success faced by unrepresented secondary students in computer science primarily students who identify as female underrepresented students of color and
018slash or students from low socioeconomic backgrounds this project will result in a new pedagogical framework for introducing high school students to computer science and computational thinking the new framework will not replace existing curricula instead it will provide computer science teachers with tools to encourage inclusivity and collaboration making the classroom experience more welcoming for all it will also provide guidance for introducing computational thinking to a broad broad spectrum of classes in the arts humanities sciences social sciences and mathematics students who return their consent form will go through an interview process to be accepted as part of the program two students will be selected to obtain a job in computer science field on tuesday march 22nd 60 william island high school drama and literature students saw a production of julius caesar at symphony hall performed by the
019willpower tour which is dedicated to bringing shakespeare to students in pennsylvania the performance was modified script of shakespeare's classic drama the students got to experience the talk back with the cast after the performance william allen parent student teacher association has reformed any william allen parent student or teacher interested in being a part of the psta the next meeting is being planned for monday april 25th 2022 at 6 00 pm in the media center last week was safe to say week this week that week william island was full of many different activities and events for the students and staff on monday the students signed the i promised to say something pledge on tuesday staff enjoyed morning treats from the upper perk coffee truck and students were trained in second period on how to use the safe
020to say app on wednesday students participated during their fourth period in mindful activities as well as restorative circles thursday the day focused on anti-bullying and our student for change proposals we ended the week having members of promised a neighborhood at our lunches to speak to the students about stopping gun violence finally march is national women history month and william allen celebrated with the daily women biographies for students to read and learn about women who have influenced our history from all different cultural backgrounds that's the report thank you very much it was great to hear about everything that's happening in our high schools thank you very much and now we'll go back to our regular order um so that would be you ms brown for the human relations commission okay so for the human relations commission
021we are currently planning for the budget in the banquet in september um this is the first time in history that the human relations commission created a scholarship for students so encourage anyone that you possibly can to attend if they choose not to attend they can also sponsor a ticket or even donate uh so the proceeds from the banquet will go to the scholarship um if i said that already sorry we are currently working on the criteria for the scholarship and recipients will be announced in may the previous year because it's held in september and we're still working on that we are also on a journey to educate not only the commissioners but also the community so with that being said on may 10th there is a landlord engagement tenant workshop that will be held at
022st luke's hospital sacred heart campus on fourth street and the auditorium on the fourth floor from 6 pm to 8 pm marketing materials will be soon distributed in may the human relations commission will also have a fair housing workshop for city employees and they will also have a workshop for separately for commissioners and the public further details will be announced soon uh the commissioners also recently attended lgbtq training and next month they will attend the diversity equity and inclusion training we encourage individuals to come out to the hrc meetings which are held every first thursday on the first of the month um every first thursday of the month and it's in person at city hall on the fifth floor in the conference room it starts at six and it starts on time and i have
023nothing else for the human relations commission thanks very much you're welcome um next up is library um and we did meet this month this was the first month that i and ms ramos were able to to um attend as a new representatives along with ms harris um as representatives of asd um one thing that i can share i was driving during some of the meetings so my notes are a little sketchy i was going off memory but um director haines renee haynes shared with us that they're they're very glad to know and see that um library use is increasing again um they're feeling people are feeling more comfortable to be out and about and they're they're um thrilled to see that that the wonderful library that we have is being used by the community um
024some of you may know or all of my colleagues may know that all of allentown school district students received a library card um and they are seeing an uptick in in our students um taking advantage of that and using the facility and then the last thing that i just want to say is that they are getting ready for summer programming they do a summer reading program every every year and are really working to re-engage our students and keep them engaged over the summer months so that they're ready when fall hits again so ms harris is there anything that you wanted to add that i missed or yeah excuse me yes um the library this because the students were able to to get those library cards i've been on the board for five years and that's
025the highest i've ever seen uh of circulation because the students have those cards so because the school board decided to make sure that every child had a library card it has become very beneficial to our students into our community to have that for that initiative that we had taken upon us and the library delivered them to them and it seems that it is working much better for our students so i just want to thank i want to thank the board for that initiative in the administration for that initiative thank you thanks ms harris um next up is the allentown recreation commission we did not meet this month there's been a change in our meeting scheduled the board decided that they would meet quarterly so the next meeting that we will have is in june carbon
026lehigh intermediate uh yeah so i'm excited to say that i finally attend the first meeting um and so the resignation of nancy who was previously on that committee was done and they welcomed me it was a great experience one thing that i was not so surprised but other districts and other schools because there's many representation there of different districts are experiencing um the lack of teachers within the district so i thought it was just allentown school district for the most part but it seems to be across the board um and i don't have anything else to say about that all right thank you and ms ortiz i realized i jumped ahead um i skipped the allentown school district foundation there was no meeting this month the next one's on april 7th okay thank you um
027lehigh career and technical institute it was really nice last night to that the student representative report which is a tradition of an lcti joint operating council meeting the student representative report was given by an allentown student it was emilia martinez britto he is a senior at allen high school but he is all day at lcti so he is taking his academic courses up there uh he was a very engaging charming young person he's enrolled in dental technology he recited a whole list they go through a process of micro-credentialing he recited a whole list of those credentials that he has earned and then announced that he has been accepted uh in pre-dental for his college and unfortunately he mumbled the name and i don't know which college and that he is on his way to becoming
028an oral surgeon wow wow and then the part that especially kind of touched me we were very concerned last year because our students weren't able to attend lcti in person as a result of code he said when that was finally over he loved the welcome after being virtual last year from the staff and from all of the student body when he finally got back in person i was thoroughly impressed uh in other kinds of things we've been working for some time on some equity issues up at lcti in particular a number of our students do not always have the financial wherewithal to purchase a uniform shirt or pieces of equipment as the registration process for lcti is going on this year as students get their acceptance letter they will also get a link to an
029online virtual store they're calling it where they can buy equipment or uh they will receive a voucher if they are financially eligible to purchase the equipment for them we're making progress on that it's been a little something each year and there's more to come our fifth graders have been enjoying themselves they've been taking a ride up to lcti where the staff has what sounds like a whole lot of fun and adventure planned for them to introduce them to the kinds of programs that are at lcti and then they are given a booklet as they board the bus to go back home the booklet is very informative it is really something that they can show their parents as they start to make some long-range plans for their future but it even includes a teacher's dream a
030quiz at the end did you learn anything today and camp lcti will be from june 14th to june 17th registration will be available online very shortly and again some scholarships will be available through the foundation to pay their tuition that's it great thank you okay um safety task force nothing to report okay um ms harris the city youth initiative no report at this time okay thank you very much um that brings us to the board of directors report may i have a motion for approval of the board of directors report ms matheson is there a second oh second mr miller is there any discussion seeing and hearing none please call the role ms harris yes ms matheson yes mr miller yes that's ortiz yes miss wilt yes miss brown yes that's caught over yes 7-0
031passes thank you secretary and treasurer's report is there a motion for approval of the secretary and treasurer's report so moved ms ortiz is there a second second mr miller is there any discussion on the motion seeing and hearing none please call the roll mr miller yes it's ortiz yes miss wilt yes ms brown yes it's conover yes miss harris yes miss matheson yes 7-0 passes that brings us to the superintendent's report is there a motion mrs conover is there a second second ms ortiz is there any discussion on the motion seeing and hearing none please call the role ortiz yes that's wilt yes miss brown yes it's conover yes that's harris yes miss matheson yes mr miller yes 7-0 passes thank you very much that brings us to the personnel report may i have a
032motion for the approval miss matheson is there a second mrs conover is there any discussion on the motion well as always i just want to thank those that are moving on i i i always come through the personnel report after as i always say after so many so much time in the district um there's always names on there that i that i know from my time with my students and and for those that are moving on i just want to thank you for your service for those who are changing positions i thank you for your flexibility um and for those that are coming i welcome you um so uh with that unless there's any other discussion can we please have the roll call as well yes ms braille yes miss conover yes miss harris yes
033miss matheson yes mr miller yes miss ortiz yes 7-0 passes at this time i'd like to pause for the administration to acknowledge dr michael henry thank you mrs wilt and thank you to the board of directors you just approved the personnel report and in that report included dr michael henry dr michael henry i'm proud to announce will be our new executive director of human resources he's coming to us from duvul county public schools in jacksonville florida where he currently is the director of human resources and that district serves 130 000 students and over 8 000 teachers dr henry is coming to us with a wealth of experience overseeing middle schools as a regional superintendent elementary schools as an executive director and other experience in pupil services and human resources in some other districts and i
034couldn't be more excited and more proud to have found a match in dr henry and i am counting the days to april 20th which will be his first day here in the district and so dr henry welcome he's there on the screen if you're not aware hello would you like to say anything to the group dr henry well first of all good evening and thank you for inviting me to this board meeting i'm excited about coming to the allentown school district um i i come to you as a former teacher former vice principal principal at every level and have 11 years of hr experience and i'm just looking forward to working with the staff in allentown pennsylvania um as ms ramos has most eloquently stated that april 20th can't get here fast enough and so
035i'll be making that journey from um from rainy florida today to um to the exciting weather in the pennsylvania area so i'm excited about the transition thank you dr henry congratulations thank you dr henry welcome thank you what's this is my up encounter with dr michael henry uh and as i stated earlier often when i meet teachers especially as a parent um i usually ask three questions one what inspired you to be a teacher to what continues to inspire you whether you're a teacher any former educator um and then i asked dr henry why alan found um i was surprised by his comments not one educator was able to answer those questions for me um i've even had again in the past people walk out but i appreciate your character i appreciate your response um
036again bless you for coming to allentown welcome to allentown and i hope um your response live on through you through your time here at um allentown school district and again just welcome and thank you thank you so much for that thank you miss brown okay um we'll move on to the finance report may i have a motion for the approval of the finance report so moved ms ortiz is there a second second mr miller is there any discussion on the motion seeing and hearing none can you please call the roll that's brown miss wilt yes miss conover yes miss harris yes miss matheson mr miller yes miss ortiz yes 7-0 passes thank you very much okay that brings us to the point of our meeting where we will open the floor to public comments on
037non-agenda items um so when mr hargit calls your name please come to the podium state your name and city for the record and uh kindly limit your remarks to three minutes first card is don michelle dutch gotcha sorry i don't know who that is hi i'm don godshell i'm the executive director of community action lehigh valley um i'm here today to talk about the a proposed allentown youth center more than two years ago we approached uh the allentown school district to hopefully purchase mckinley or cleveland school because we have to stay within a certain section of the city in order to stay within the guidelines of our neighborhood our npp we had interviews with focus groups we had interviews with in public meetings with allentown residents and community leaders um specifically those community leaders decided
038that there was a great need for a brick and mortar youth center now we know that you guys lost a superintendent then you gained a superintendent you were doing a feasibility study which has been completed for some time so we are looking for you to please move at some point on the sale of mckinley or cleveland our proposal for this youth center was that not only did it need a specific brick and mortar building while there are other you know buildings or or um community centers within the city that do specific things we those are usually um centered primarily on recreational and sports driven uh focuses and we wanted to make a one-stop shop for students to be able to do a host of things not only to play basketball and soccer and and have
039a football field but also to have classrooms that in order to do those things they would first need to get their homework done and we would have tutoring centers within this brick and mortar center that would allow them to be able to go and get that done before that they can come and enjoy the other facilities within the center so we also found that when we did these focus groups that people um noted that there was a lack of arts and music programming within um the allentown district for schools that we wanted to provide not only academic support but vocational training and we wanted to have a recording studio i am a former producer for abc news so i wanted to be able to teach kids how to do news producing um there would be
040theater space and studio space to dance to a variety of dance hip hop and and and lots of different things a student lounge and community space for other members of the community to be able to come and and utilize the center so while i know that this has taken some time for the school district to make your decision i'm asking that you do that soon because there is a need and it's not for us it's for your children so thank you uh adrian brown my name is andrean brown i am first a mother of three students in the allentown school district and i must confess my oldest son who is 17 years old should be graduating soon and he is struggling and he's struggling because in the height of the pandemic he had to go
041to school virtually and of course a lot of our students struggle then i also have another child that's suffering with mental health issues why because we went through a pandemic and we could not utilize the resources that we needed and i coming from a community that had a youth center that's the reason why i can stand before you right now so i know that there's a need right now in the community for me for youth center not just because i have struggling kids but because i am the product of a community center and my family can utilize that but also we have a focus group that meets every fourth sunday in a small little space that we have on ninth street and we discuss this all the time why isn't there community center in that
042central area for our students we know it's an area where the students struggle we know it's a high crime area and students need support especially after school we know right now our schools are struggling there's a lack of teachers so right now us building more schools may not be effective because we don't have the teachers to teach but we do have volunteers in the community that are willing to go into community centers and give the supplement that the students need i find that arts is a great way to support students it helps students to improve their academics so i find that even with my children doing stuff after school with the programs that i can get them into they are performing better so to have a community center where they can cater through the arts
043or even do mental health awareness through the arts that would be a great thing to have and i feel like now is the time for the school district and everyone in the community to step up it's time our students are struggling we're getting over the pandemic but they are still struggling prior to the pandemic and now the pandemic happened so what are we going to do now to make sure that they have a safe haven after school where they will feel safe where they can learn the arts where they can learn even recreational skills because all students don't go off to college we know that a lot of our allentown students actually go off into the workforce so we can teach them entrepreneurship skills there's so many things that we can do in a community
044center and i just think now is the time for us to push forward get this thing done for our students because they need it right now thank you thank you very much dennis pearson my name is dennis pearson and i represent the allentown flight day association and i'm here to announce and hope to get that pushed forward that we are scheduling a essay contest having an essay contest uh for youngsters in the middle school sixth seventh and eighth uh grade and uh we do have a deadline for this and the deadline is the students should have their essays in by april the 22nd and the process goes to may 3rd 26th where then we will pick it up and judge these contests we haven't done this for many years in fact i have given you
045a piece of paper from 1923 showing uh deal telling the essay that somebody who i assume is dead uh bertha schwartz uh uh she wrote an essay a wonderful essay and and that's what we're looking the essays will be on be read before the public for a concert june 7 14 to flag day in west park if there's rain then we go to william allen high school if that is scheduled so i asked you to uh work on this uh this situation so we can get it done and i thank you for the cooperation and by the way nick uh it's just my grand step grandchild's name is nick miller he come from was from a slavington thank you very much jessica lee ortiz hi my name is jessica ortiz um the executive director and
046co-founder of the ortiz ark foundation i'm here in support of community actions endeavors to get a community center don gave me a little paper from community action it says sports facilities classrooms recording studios trades so the ortiz ark offers these things right but in a small building on 9th street for each one of these bubbles that dawn represents your teaser foundation's youth group has to pay someone else we currently use a gym that asd loans us but we have to pay for a million dollars insurance that's a cost for us to use studio space from several artists in the area that's a cost if we could go to a building that another organization community action was in support of all non-profits it would ease our costs it is real hard right now to separate the
047kids or decide who's more important this week artists are the rappers or is it the basketball players or is it the theater kids we have a small nonprofit grassroots started by my husband myself and my three children in the community we don't get much financial support only by those when we do advocates or small grants that we write having a community center is so important i'm an allen canary alumni my children are alan canary alumni but i'm also a product of what happens when you don't take care i got pregnant at 14 years old i went through the prison system and juvenile detention and all that because they took our negro cultural center away when i was a young girl so what happens with all that free time and all that in between time the
048kids have nowhere to go the commit the boys and girls clubs right now severely underfunded but they don't meet the needs of the community there's no community studios in there kids are everybody's aspiring rapper we have to keep up with the kids keep up with the times if community action is saying we're willing to take on this burden and build this not just for community action but for all the grassroots for the allentown school district kids we can really increase the grades i my heart broke when the lady said now about her kids because that was one of the reasons we developed our programs we had kids at the ark constantly we were blessed to have miss phoebe havers advocating helping us pair up kids helping them go to schools talk to principals with teachers
049to mend these relationships because not all kids can do virtual learning that's the reality so we need to be ready in situations where kids have a safe haven have classrooms we only could take a certain capacity we're one organization right now we have 182 kids registered each week we have to pick and choose which kids get to come to program like they call it based on the size and capacity so we need to support organizations like community action because we're not supporting community action we're supporting the children that are our future that we say we're all invested in so we need to really think about how we invest and how we come together for this project thank you thank you very much louis perez how are you doing oh louis perez executive director of reciprocity
050um also in a couple of there were many hats um i'm a proud board member of community action i'm also a board member of lehigh valley justice institute and i'm also an advisory council member to the criminal justice advisory board um i say all this because it's where my passion is i grew up here in allentown as well got here when i was 10 years old from bronx new york my dad had a third grade education so needless to say he couldn't read or write english or spanish just barely articulate himself properly and that led him into drugs which became a family ordeal my first time encountering a police officer i was 10 years old and i have four bundles of heroin two thousand dollars in a diaper bag pushing my 19 day old sister
051as a kid i knew it was the wrong thing to do you know at 14 i got a scholarship through pick program which was a program from rob i had a penn state scholarship but my life my troubles some home my responsibilities as a 10 year old kid to have to raise my brother my sister gave me no outlets made me frustrated made me angry just to be transparent i'm also homosexual i was fighting that identity as a kid as well which created more anger more frustration and no outlet by the time i was 14 i got into a fight that led me into juvie 16 just like jessica we grew up together i had my first kid and at that time i had to live out on my own because we had to leave
052home my sister was being molested as a kid we had no safe place to go not even in our own home not even with our own family um going through the justice system i had a judge that stopped me in my tracks and changed my whole life my first sense of direction she gave me was the community action because with my record i wasn't going to be able to go get a job i had to create my own job and i took the entrepreneur course through community action and that led me in my path to be self-sustainable to do something creative i'm artistic most thing i wanted to escape my space and my world i would go draw in my room now i'm an artist i also do um makeup i do beauty health and
053wellness i opened up a salon i say all this because right now our county our state our country has had to restructure itself rethink think outside the box money isn't the problem anymore there's money all over the place everyone's throwing money but we don't have the solutions and honestly even lehigh county we had a meeting with judge um rightly he wants to do something for the youth the at-risk use right now we're displacing them from their homes to send them to other counties because we don't even have a detention center think of the trauma that that causes to our kids if we had a place an alternative place to send them to we could create better kids better futures and think i'm glad to see some youth on the board those are our next community
054leaders the ones that lead us we need to invest into our community i think community action not only with their reputation community action has the position the scope the ambition not only that we have the evidence to show that we've done so much in this community and are still willing to no matter what so i appreciate you guys and i hope that we can get through with this thank you thank you [Music] thank you very much everyone is there any old business to come before the board is there any new business to come before the board uh nancy ms harris yes i want to bring some new business before the board okay yes i'm just going to reiterate what was said tonight um i was part of that pandemic the rescue rangers as jessica would
055had them um i was part of ortiz ark foundation where we as a grassroots fed you know clothed fed uh rescued people from fires who you know and then they open up a center you know we can't get for the for the for our students and our families and not only that they also made sure that during our pandemic and when the kids were at school when the kids were home the parents had to work we were stopping by to make sure that the kids were okay they had to come to the window or they had to come to the door just to make sure they were okay see these are the things that we need and if we had a community center then that would not be needed and we would have a central
056place that you know our kids most important our children to be safe to be safe and if we if we think about that that's what the school district is for it's to educate and to while they're there to be safe but what happens when they leave the building and if we could have some place where they could be safe until the evening even better because we are building the new community leaders we are building the next generation so i'm just asking my board members who think about this as we make our decisions thank you thank you miss harris is there a motion to adjourn so moved for a second ms brown all in favor aye meeting adjourned you