March 28, 2023 Meeting of the Abington Board of School Directors

001good evening and welcome to the March 28 2023 meeting of the Edmonton board of directors I note the attendance of all board members with the exception of Dr clyman Who is excused please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you the Abington Board of school directors has convened this evening's meeting at the administration building and the public is welcome in consideration of the health and safety of the school Community this meeting is also being broadcast live on the Abington School District YouTube channel this meeting is being recorded and will be accessible in the district's website and cable channel no later than Friday March 31st 2023 to allow those members of the public who cannot participate to view the proceeding at a later time comments from citizens

002will be conducted in person and by phone information regarding participating remotely in public comment will be displayed on the screen at the time of public comment and the board thanks to public in advance for its cooperation an executive session was held this evening prior to the public meeting regarding Personnel matters I remind us all that this is a place where we hold dignity in high regard everyone's voice is respected and welcomed in the space we'll begin with any additional announcements or agenda items from my fellow board members thank you opening comments Mr Allen nothing thank you thank you Miss yes all right Earth day is April 22nd and Briar Bush they're going to have an earth Fest from one to four keep that in mind thank you uh and I apologize I just want to

003pause um for a moment because there was something very important that I wanted to do and I'm going to ask Dr fetcher to do it now I apologize thank you Miss Brown our hearts are with the loved ones of the victims of yesterday's shooting at Covenant School in Nashville Tennessee and our thoughts remain with their entire School Community who experience another senseless tragedy before we begin tonight I would like us to take time to pause for a moment of silence in their honor thank you may I continue yes please as school safety is Paramount in the education of our students the Abington School District we are grateful for our continued partnership with the Abington Township Police Department who assist Abington schools with staff training building inspections and ongoing awareness and alerts we are constantly working

004with them and making improvements in adjustment to our Emergency Operations plan each year just last week we hosted safety training sessions for our aides paraprofessionals and administration administration building staff trainings are held throughout the year to prepare for a variety of emergency scenarios we implemented earlier this year our Raptor visitor management system that requires visitors to our buildings to scan their photo ID for background check before being permitted to enter our school police officers regularly Patrol our campuses and check the doors are locked in addition to our sros and security guards who are in place at our secondary buildings later this evening Dr melkor will talk about this during our orientation we have we have had a threat assessment team in place and in conjunction with the Abington police when needed this team analyzes any

005tips that come in from our school Community for further investigation lastly please be reminded that if you see something say something anonymous tips may be submitted online via the safetysaypa.org or by calling one eight four four seven two three two seven two nine tips may also be made to our threat assessment team which includes Dr melkor coordinator of safety Mr Stephen hawkwind and director of pupil Services Dr Rob Rosenthal additionally it is essential that we continue to make the availability of our Mental Health Resources a priority in our school community please contact these student services department or your school's student school counselor for Support also this evening Miss bombsy will be presenting during the orientation some of the resources that are available to our families thank you thank you Dr Thomas Frazier I apologize thank

006you you may proceed with your comment or your opening comment or were you finished well thank you thank you Mr K Dr Mowry welcome to the meeting this evening everyone thank you Miss Glasser uh yes I was able to attend the Copper Beach science fair this past week it was wonderful it was very fun to see all of the students presentations and I feel very lucky to be in a school district that produces such bright amazing curious uh students it was really great excellent Mr Muhammad nothing thank you thank you Miss facie I'm sorry I'm a little a little shaken but but okay Miss faisy thank you Dr fetcher anything else yeah I would just like to take a moment to congratulate the students of Abington Senior High School who collectively raised 48 876 dollars

007during Abington Abington last Friday which benefits six different pediatric cancer organizations in our area I would also like to congratulate our fifth grade elementary student school students who celebrated the completion of their dare program last night at the annual DARE graduation hosted by the Abington Township Police Department Dr melkor and I were fortunate to be part of the event which brings together our soon-to-be middle school students each year it is the first of many Milestones they will be celebrating this spring and I know Mrs Brown was there as well yeah it was a great a great event a lot of dancing a lot of fun screaming it was a really great event I also had a chance to attend the breaking bread Abington event which was also in collaboration with our Abington Township Police so

008two great events in one week thank you Dr fetcher please proceed with this evening's orientations yes Mrs Brown first we have our budget update I'm going to ask Mr Victoria Mr Lady Lion Eddie and I will um provide this budget update this evening but I want everyone to please note that there are no formal actions on the agenda this evening this is uh simply an update on the budget Mr Victoria so this evening I will review the changes in Revenue and expenses alternative scenarios regarding the senior citizens rebate program as well as the look ahead to the May 9th meeting since the board approved the preliminary Budget on February 14th we have received additional information which impacts the 2023-2024 budget Governor Shapiro's budget presentation on March 7th allows us to update our state revenue forecast

009our workers compensation providers School District Insurance Consortium provided an updated cost c-pass are self-insured medical provider provided Miss Alfonso a second look at her medical premiums the rates of the second look were higher so the first look rates will be used and Berkheimer has also provided updated earned income tax information so this second column shows the preliminary budget that was approved by the board on February 14th the total revenue and fund balance was 186.7 million dollars this was made up of 176.7 million in revenue and 10 million in fund balance the total expense in transfers were 188.3 million which would leave a fund balance of 6.7 million dollars with the updated information from Berkheimer the earned income tax is projected to increase six hundred thousand dollars to 9.4 million using the information from Governor Shapiro's

010budget pdes projecting that state revenue will increase an additional 1.6 million dollars to 44.4 million the increase this is an increase in basic Ed and special ed funding total revenue would increase 2.2 million dollars compared to what was approved on February 14th and the use of fund balance would decrease 2.38 million dollars to 7.6 million of fund balance use in the 2023-2024 budget due to changes in revenue and expenses the total revenue and fund balance would be 186.5 million on the expense side the expense would decrease 150 000 in mandated benefits this is due to the workers compensation amounts that the school district Insurance Consortium being less than was previously projected this would bring operating expenses and transfers to 188.2 million dollars with the projected ending fund balance of 9.1 million dollars changes in revenue

011and expenses increase local Revenue to 133 million dollars state revenue to 44.4 million dollars and the use of fund balance to 7.6 million and the total revenue and fund balance being 186.5 million the total operating expense and transfers would be 188.2 million dollars with an ending fund balance of 9.1 million dollars at a previous board meeting the board asked for a no tax increase budget scenario in this scenario the local Revenue would increase to 126.2 million dollars the state revenue would be 44.4 million dollars the use of fund balance would increase to 2.4 million dollars and total revenue and fund balance would be 186.5 million dollars the total operating expense and transfers would be 188.2 million dollars and the ending fund balance would be 4.3 million dollars the following slides will show the impact on

012seniors who qualify for the rebate at different rebate scenarios so here's a tax increase of 4.1 percent and maintaining the rebate at 25 percent of the PA refund the seniors who qualify for the rebate program would see an increase of 35.26 cents to 135 dollars and 26 Cents no tax increase and maintaining the senior rebate at 25 percent would not increase taxes on seniors who qualify for the rebate program a tax increase of 4.1 percent and increasing the rebate to 30 percent would increase taxes on seniors who qualify for the rebate program between 2.76 and 122.76 a no tax increase and the senior rebate being 30 percent would increase taxes on would not increase taxes on seniors who qualify for the rebate program a tax increase of 4.1 percent and increasing their senior rebate program

013to 40 percent would not increase taxes on the first two income levels and would increase taxes on the third and fourth income levels between 77.76 and 97.76 and then the no tax increase and increasing the rebate to 40 percent would not increase taxes on seniors who qualify for the program and then looking ahead to the May 9th board meeting the board will be asked to adopt the 2023-2024 proposed final budget authorized the advertisement of the board's intent to adopt the final general fund Budget on the June 27th meeting the impact of the Sterling acting and gaming property tax relief on the final budget will also be reviewed on May 9th both of these topics will require a board resolution and if additional information becomes available prior to May 9th meeting further budget updates will be

014provided in April thank you thank you questions or comments from the board let me ask what information is still outstanding for us to get and when by when will we get it we're waiting on several bits of information we still are unclear as to what the federal revenues will be for the title programs we're waiting for that we only still have estimate estimates for the um gaming and Sterling act proceeds which impacts the taxpayers significantly because um that's the amount that gets reduced on the on the slides that Mr Victoria just reviewed we are doing the uh input presently of all of your directors budgets into our budget system and we're evaluating that so we are evaluating expenses so on the revenue side we're getting close to what we believe the revenue will be with

015one major exception we will not know what the assessed values for Real Estate will be in Abington and Rockledge until the first week in June so that impacts the tax revenue so there there's always changes between the December time frame when we get an estimate from the county and when the county actually produces that valuation in the first week in June so that's that could be a significant impact and really we're looking at the expense side next thank you any additional questions or comments from the board Dr fetcher please proceed with to our next orientation this evening Dr butts director of teaching and learning Dr Stephanie Viola assistant director of Elementary teaching and learning Miss Laura Nama assistant director of secondary teaching and learning Mr Daniel file principal of Abington Middle School Miss Fatima Rogers

016principal of Copper Beech Elementary School Mr Edward Harkins mathematics chairperson at Abington Middle School Ms Amita Abraham teacher at Overlook Elementary School will provide an orientation this evening on the student achievement update with where Visions from feedback provided by at the board information session on March 21st good evening Ms Brown Dr Fletcher and the board of school directors earlier in December we provided you with a student achievement report based upon the Future Ready PA index which is primarily built upon the results of the pssas and the Keystone examinations along with other indicators such as attendance and graduation rates tonight we will continue our review of student achievement but through a different lens of the assessment data and more importantly how we use that data to support our decisions in nurturing our students to grow and

017to achieve academically we anticipate that this presentation will be the second of three presentations in total this school year on student achievement and growth for tonight's presentation we will focus on four questions what are the types of mid-year assessments given what are the results of our assessments to date what does this tell us about our students achievement growth and their learning and lastly what our next steps are in our work with student learning in the fall winter and spring we assess students using various benchmark assessments to determine areas of Need for future learning and proficiency toward end-of-year goals depending on the student's grade level they may be given the acadians reading the i-Ready Diagnostics or the linked benchmarks benchmark assessments are given multiple times a year where students are assessed against end-of-year goals at this

018time we wanted to mention that the focus of this presentation will be focused on mathematics and English language arts benchmarks at this time Dr Stephanie Viola and Ms Laura anama will share some of these results good evening we will begin sharing results from our Ela assessments this slide shows results from acadians reading which is a series of short tests that assess the acquisition of K through 3 grade 3 literacy skills such as phonemic awareness the alphabetic principle accuracy fluency vocabulary and comprehension the data that is displayed indicate how we performed between the fall and winter of this year although not all the subtests are the same from fall to winter we see areas of improvement across grades kindergarten through three each School takes a close look at their students results in great detail including by

019grade and subtest in order to identify specific areas of concern and to address gaps in scores among their disaggregated groups next we share results from the i-Ready reading diagnostic the diagnostic is a computer adaptive test that matches the difficulty of test questions to the proficiency level of each student it is Criterion reference which means it's designed to measure student performance against a fixed set of predetermined criteria or learning standards in accordance with what students are expected to know and be able to do at each grade level this slide shows students achievement levels and evidence of growth after the winter administration of the reading Diagnostics Improvement gains are noted at each grade level with respect to achievement the left side of the table the district average showed 22 percent increase in the percent of students on

020or above grade level with 62 percent of our students on or above grade level with respect to growth on the right side of the table winter results measures students progress toward meeting grade level expectations by the winter we expect our progress to annual typical growth to be at 50 percent or higher this would mean that the median or middle student was 50 percent of the way toward meeting their annual growth goal it would also mean that about half of the students in the group made more progress and about half of the students in the group made less progress than the median student our median was at 84 percent which shows strong growth Additionally the winter results showed that 43 percent of our students already met 100 of their annual typical growth this means these students

021are working towards meeting more aggressive stretch goals will share some results from the secondary level good evening at the secondary level we use the Lincoln Benchmark which is a benchmarking test that goes against the end of year goals for each grade level at the middle level those are aligned with the standards for the sixth seventh and eighth grade pssa and for the high school level it's working towards the Literature Keystone exam or the 9th and 10th grade standards um the mid-year Benchmark allows us to evaluate where students are in their learning progress and determine whether we're on track for performing well on those future assessments we look at predicted proficiency and growth at the mid-year predicted proficiency is a calculation based on students historical performance on the state assessment compared to their Benchmark achievement essentially

022an algorithm is applied to the student scores based on the historical data from previous benchmarks and state assessment scores to predict the likelihood that a student will be proficient on the state assessment at the mid-year Benchmark we saw 71 percent of our sixth graders 61 percent of our seventh graders 69 of our eighth graders and 72 percent of our students in English 1 and 2 at the senior high school are predicted to be proficient on the state assessments growth is calculated based on the amount of change in a student's mid-year score relative to a peer cohort with the same beginning of the year achievement level again this is based on an algorithm that is applied based on historical data on how our students have done and not just our students but all students throughout the

023state of Pennsylvania on the pssa and Keystone exams this number does not simply represent students who have improved over the first semester but it's actually showing how they have grown in relation to their peer group and so positive growth means that they've either outperformed their peers throughout Pennsylvania or they're consistent with that peer group so for our students in English language arts we see that 64 percent of our sixth graders 62 percent of our seventh graders 73 percent of 8th graders and 45 percent of our students in English 1 and 2 have that positive growth now I'm going to have Dr Viola continue with talking about mathematics on the iready math diagnostic we also see improvement with gains and achievement noted for each grade level with respect to achievement again the left side of the

024table the district average showed a 20 percent increase in the percent of students on or above grade level with 50 of the students actually at or on or above grade level related to growth on the other side of the table as I shared from the previous Slide the winter results measure students progress towards meeting grade level expectations again at the middle of the year we look for 50 or more median progress towards typical growth meaning about half the students in the group are halfway to their typical growth Target for the year and the rest are working their way towards meeting that our median for math was 63 percent additionally it's worth noting that 27 percent of the students have already met 100 of their annual typical growth and these students are working again towards more

025to more aggressive stretch goals Mr Nama will continue with secondary so again returning to the Benchmark and looking at mathematics we see here that at our midterm uh 80 of our sixth graders and 28 of our seventh graders are predicted to be proficient on the end-of-year state assessment when you look at the eighth grade data you'll see two numbers for eighth grade and that is because in our eighth grade in Abington um about 60 percent of our students are in pre-algebra eight and those students took the eighth grade Benchmark which is aligned with the 8th grade pssa exam and for those students we see 26 percent of the students are predicted to be proficient the remaining students in eighth grade are in honors algebra and those students took the honors or just the algebra Benchmark

026which is aligned with the Keystone algebra exam and we saw 62 percent of those students are predicted proficient at the mid-year um and again as we talked about growth the growth that you see here in blue is calculated based on change in the student's mid-year as compared to their beginning of year peer cohort and again this is based on kind of that comparison and so we see 94 of our sixth graders 80 percent of our seventh graders 95 percent of our eighth graders that are in pre-algebra and 98 of our students in Algebra 1 have positive growth which is very exciting at this point we've reviewed the types of Assessments we're administering and provided a snapshot into students progress and so now we're going to discuss how we analyze the students progress and use that

027information to inform our instructional decisions data in Abington is analyzed by teachers core teams and departments and to help illustrate this for you first we'll have Amita Abraham a reading specialist from Overlook Elementary School describe her role in working with teachers and collaborating on a core team then we'll turn to Ed Harkins from Abington Middle School who will describe how he collaborates within the maths Department there and following that we will hear from two of our principals Fatima Rogers from Copper Beach and Dan feil from Abington Middle School who will talk about how they lead these conversations as principals so here is Miss Abraham the reading specialist one of the reading specialists at Overlook Elementary School good evening the members of the core team consist of the building principle the elementary curriculum specialist School psychologists

028and counselors the math teacher and the reading specialist the core team meets weekly to discuss student and building concerns three times a year we review i-Ready and acadians benchmarks the main goal of this process is to reflect on the effectiveness of the instructional practices and the intervention programs that we've used during our win time or what I need time after the mid-year assessments are administered in January the reading specialist in the Math teachers analyze data from acadians iready and curriculum-based assessments various reports are used to determine whether students have made growth in their current wind placement when is a dedicated time where all students in a grade level receive the support that they need this support can come from a reading specialist a math teacher a special education teacher or a classroom teacher based on

029the analysis of the Acadian subtests and i-Ready domains students May benefit from a change in their Intervention Program with another reading Specialist or classroom teacher prior to meeting with teachers the core team reviews student performance to ensure adequate growth has been made suggested group changes will be discussed at this time along with supports that can be put in place for teachers and students link it has been a helpful tool in compiling data and tracking progress across multiple assessments finally the reading Specialists and the Math teachers meet with classroom teachers individually teachers are given classroom reports such as the one on the right which outlines students overall performance and highlights the specific areas of need a close examination of the Acadian subtests determines the focus of instruction teachers plan their win small group lessons based on

030this analysis after students have been placed in groups reading Specialists May screen students further to determine the most appropriate intervention to meet students specific needs reading Specialists progress monitor students two times a month to measure the growth and the needs of the students they see adjustments to win groups with a reading Specialist or a math teacher can be made approximately every eight weeks when is fluid in nature so although reading and math groups with a specialist may not change weekly classroom teachers continuously monitor progress and make decisions on small groups and differentiation based on the most recent data mid-year data review and Analysis provides us the opportunity to make informed decisions that support students growth and performance now Ed Harkins will speak about the Middle School good evening everyone receives one college credit for statistics

031and probability tonight for for this data analysis thank you for the opportunity uh to let me come here and share how the Middle School uses the data we receive from the IXL and the Lincoln Benchmark exams first thing we do is it gives us an opportunity to track the math skills by level and growth one thing when you take just a quick look at the IXL data to the top right your eyeballs tend to go to the fact that geometry and measurement seem to cause a little bit of trouble for the students so we use that data to focus on those areas but you can also put a positive eye onto that data and you can see that our students are algebraic thinking and our numbers and operations are strong and that's a great sign

032for the students who will be going into Algebra 1 next year and the students that are currently in the algebra one that those skills and that Foundation should be there for them next year we also identify skills to address in win groups so we have our groups we use the data to decide what we're going to do with the students in those groups we also use the data to determine who should be grouped where as you can see with the with the Benchmark data to the bottom right you can see that you get at-risk students you get Highest Potential students you get to see their growth from Benchmark one to Benchmark two so it gives the teacher an opportunity to make good decisions about where they put their students and where we can help them

033the most you can also see there's priority skills that are listed down below that gives us an idea of where we stand with the things that we've taught and it gives us an idea of where we stand with the things that are coming in the curriculum it also is is used tremendously by our math coaches our math coaches visit one math classroom three times in a week and we we change what we do every time we go in so the math coach will go into one class period and work with a small group on current content to pick up any students that may have had trouble with some content to get them caught up and things of that nature the next time the math coach visit the same class the work on past skills they'll

034spiral back and try to help the students on things that they've seen in September and October or November it may have forgotten and then the last the third time that the coach goes in the coach actually addresses the skill that is needed by all the students in the class and addresses the whole class with that skill and we use the data that's at the bottom of that right hand chart to identify those priority skills so we're making decisions based upon the results we're not just trying to figure this out as we go along okay uh we plan pre-class questions to address skill needs so as a department we can look at Benchmark tests and we can say hey this content seems to be causing a little more difficult than we thought let's address it in

035some of our pre-class activities we don't have to go back and reteach it so to speak but we can we can go back and touch up revisit and address any issues that might pop up it also gives us a chance to reflect on past instructional content and look to the Future to instruction to the Future instructional kind what that means is like for example we could have a class and I can actually put a question up from Lincoln benchmark 2. and show the class like hey here's the question we we completed on Benchmark number two and when you look at this question you notice that 30 percent of you chose the correct answer which was answer a but what we notice is that 50 percent actually chose the wrong answer which was B and we

036can use that to engage in mathematical discussion find out what went wrong where it went wrong and address those issues it's a great opportunity to build that math conversation in the classroom and now future use like for example maybe we are teaching Transformations rotations and Reflections right now I know in my mind that that was on Lincoln Benchmark but I didn't teach it yet so I'll teach the content but I'll bring up those Lincoln Benchmark questions and I'll talk to the kids and say hey look I know we took this in January and we didn't learn it yet but let's go redo these questions revisit them and give them a shot this time now that we've seen the material okay so sorry I got a little wordy there but I think I covered everything we

037need I appreciate the opportunity to come and present this to everyone thank you Miss Rogers floor is yours foreign well that's a hard act to follow I have a script here Copper Beach administrators and our core team have been working closely with our teachers to focus on using student data for multiple sources to analyze student needs set goals and plan for strategic small group instruction we review pssa iready unit test informative assessments which are classroom observation exit tickets and homework to group students and work to meet their individual needs and when which is what I need throughout the year teachers look at individual student performance across multiple assessments we look at these one at a time shortly after they are administered we follow an assessment calendar and use a data protocol to keep us on

038track teachers look at data at a high level and look at overall student performance then we work in great groups to drill down areas of strength and need for each standard area in math and reading through this process teachers know how students in their grade level perform in proficiency and growth in their classroom grade level and across the school through the reports we receive from Lincoln such as Lincoln's student grouping model teachers can see which students May struggle or succeed with Concepts standards and skills they've been taught we implemented the protocol on the right hand side here that's on display which guides the teachers thought process as they analyze their classroom data and develop a personal goal for their class this is a small portion of our data protocol that we use at Copper Beach

039through this process teachers evaluate how individual students perform and plan to ensure that all students grow so you'll notice here that students are highlighted in different categories these are kids who we are looking to move into different categories but it doesn't mean that we ignore any student every student we're looking at them to more so grow within their categories or amongst other categories also through this process teachers evaluate how individual students perform and plan to ensure that our students are growing you will notice that a teacher here aims to move their students from 55 to 80 percent on the already diagnostic so at the bottom teachers create their own individual goals and we revisit those goals when we come together at the mid-year teachers look at them and they determine are they on track to

040more so meet their goals and they can adjust as they deem necessary because it's their personal goal we continuously follow this cycle with our teachers where students take an assessment we work with our teachers to analyze the assessment determine student needs and address those needs each assessment allows us to see how our students are growing and progressing it is an opportunity for teachers to reflect on your teacher teaching and further plan to meet the needs of students the mid-year data gives us the opportunity to check in with ourselves measure our progress at this point in the year and make instructional decisions to support student growth for the remainder of the school year I would now like to introduce my colleague Dan file thank you I'll provide an overview of our new programming and targeted support

041for students specifically in English language arts on the left side of the slide the targeted skills that ELA teachers are focusing on in our win program are Illustrated there the past assessment data as well as our fall and winter benchmarks have helped us to tailor lessons for individual student needs you likely remember that when is a new time that we've added to our Middle School schedule this year having this time has resulted in targeted supports for classroom teachers but also for the the time when we have coaches and other individuals support our classes on the right side of the slide you'll see an example of the progress of one particular teacher's classes the data shows the progress of the students compared to the fall and winter benchmarks that's at the top of the slide at

042the bottom of the side you'll see a comparison of those winter benchmarks only between this year and last year this data is an example of some of the sources of data that teachers coaches and departments are using to assess growth to assess achievement and to plan for instruction for further student learning you've heard link it mentioned mentioned several times this evening this is a place where we receive this data and we also get it down to individual students and needs with individual standards so we're really able to dig deep to help support whole classes and individual students like to pass it along to Dr butts for the next steps thank you thank you Mr file so looking ahead we wanted to share what the next steps were after this presentation in this rotation of Assessments

043that we discussed with you as the year continues we are fast approaching the pssa and Keystone exams which will take place over the next two months we will also be looking at end of year Diagnostic and benchmark assessments this will end out the school year and round out our data sets to provide a more complete picture of where our students are with their growth and their academic achievements in addition to that we're going to take a look at some of our future programming the data helps inform not only designing some of our summer programs and content for those summer programs for our students but also planning for the 23-24 school year things like scheduling course selections class placements and developing additional intervention plans as the students move from grade level to grade level and from

044level to level we prioritize during transition meetings what is important for students to help them in the ensuing school year lastly we look at this data and it helps to shape our professional development program for our teachers in the summer and in the school year following school year as well at this time if you have any questions for us we are more than happy to answer them thank you questions or comments from the board floor is open past um someone mentioned I think about a week ago talking and they mentioned predictors of success so with the predictors of success involved like I ready and Link it and those computer or software programs yes all of the different assessment sets that we talked about today have different elements of the level of prediction so you heard

045um everyone tonight refer to in their assessments the the ability to predict success on the upcoming pssa tests and so that is kind of baked into those assessments and which those assessments are compared to other data sets and validity reliability measures are applied you heard us speak about like algorithms and those algorithms are based upon those larger data sets that we are able to draw these comparisons and have this predictive analysis and then once the weaknesses are identified there are programs software programs to deal with those weaknesses like to strengthen those weaknesses some of the programs that we use not only have things like benchmark assessments which are these assessments that are based upon end of year goals or standards the iready data the i-Ready program it has additionally these Diagnostics which determine Ace the

046strengths and needs of individual students and through artificial intelligence Maps out a pathway of learning for each individual child and that way the program supports kids who may be at below grade level performance and getting a trajectory towards reinforcing skill set or filling in background knowledge to build two current present level expectations for performance Dr butts could you expand that and talk a little bit about not only what the program presents but also the interventions that occur once we have that information there so there are a lot of interventions that are going to so um I'm glad that you brought it I'm going to go back cite a few things that you heard tonight so one of the things that we look at within the programs itself so I mentioned I ready has a diagnostic

047and the diagnostic will help pinpoint where the students strengths and needs are and map out a pathway of learning for that student but in addition to the artificial intelligence that is provided in the system teachers are also able to look at the data and actually have small group instruction based upon that data with their students so it's not just simply a computer platform that's providing some Remediation in reinforcing skill set development but it is also the ability to look at that data and have teachers use small groups to provide specific and targeted learning for students based upon that data so in the case of i-Ready there are already made items within that program that teachers can draw off of the that curriculum and teach to their students in small group instructions in addition to that

048you heard at the middle school level with the math program that they look at the data and they'll specifically Target during win times which is what I need times they'll Target specifically what are the kids deficits or needs and target small groups of students to come and work with the math coaches on those needs so those needs can be both within the curriculum of what's currently being taught and it can also be outside the curriculum using diagnostic tests and benchmark assessments to determine needs that they see for students and that's those those types of interventions are taking place K8 K-12 within our system so it's not only computer-based but it is also very much person to person teacher to student in small groups and really digging in very deeply into the data to determine this

049is what the child needs thank you additional questions or comments from the board yes um I have a comment and a question the first comment is it's great to see the Improvement especially among the grade school kids in reading and math um and I know that everybody has been working hard to facilitate that growth for our kids so thank you um the question I have is related to um I guess it slide six the percentage of students with positive growth in literature at the middle school um and I was just wondering I don't know if you can answer this right now but I was wondering if that um positive growth rate is typical for that subject or if this is um anomalous so if it's okay with you um I am going to turn this

050over to mizanama okay um thank you and she'll respond to that particular question so the literature are actually our ninth and 10th grade students um that are in English one and two so that um that group is actually about twice as large the N value on that of the other three um and that we've only been giving this Benchmark for two years um so this is relatively um you know similar to I don't have the exact number in front of me but I remember it being around 50 from last year so um I think it is pretty consistent um the other thing when you look at this we do give the Literature exam at the end of 10th grade and we are giving the Benchmark to 9th and 10th graders so we do expect to

051see a little bit more variation between that growth if that makes sense because we give it over two years but they're not actually going to take the test till the end of 10th grade great thanks that's helpful yeah yeah any additional questions or comments yeah I'm looking at slide eight and also um I Echo the recommendations for the really across-the-board growth that we're seeing in terms of progress to end of year goals as well as just growth in comparison to peers uh and so we see that here on slide eight growth in comparison to peers is is great and so it's just a question in regards to the predicted proficiency versus the growth and so the growth is fabulous but the numbers here especially for grade seven eight and eight algebra tells us that many

052of our kids are not going to be proficient by the end of the year even with the growth in in seeing that they're growing at a much faster rate than most of their peers and so just what does that say about the state of math education across is this National peers or Statewide peers um and then I just wanna sort of echo something that Mr Allen said a few meetings ago about sort of the Divergent math routes that we might need to explore for students so I'm going to actually turn this over to Sarah Harkins and he's going to talk about this math data this idea of this growth and we are proficiency lies with our math students you bring up some really good points I believe as far as you know looking at the

053predictive nature of this particular assessment there is a lot of research to to support the predictive nature however having said that um these are estimates at this particular point in time and we also recognize as well that the assessments that we are looking at are particularly challenging assessments especially if you look county-wide and Statewide so I'm going to hand this over to Mr Harkins sure thank you I'll do the best to answer your question uh like when you look at the data and you see the growth the growth makes you feel good that the students are picking up some things but then when you look at the proficiency they may not be picking up the things that you're teaching in class so one thing you have to look at this data is that this data

054was derived in January so we haven't really gone through all of the day all the content to teach all of these kids so some of the concerns that are presented to me is definitely the grade 7 program a new program we're getting used to teaching it we had to address our speed of teaching the program where we're going a little bit too slow so we didn't get through the content that we expected to so we made adjustments to that content also the grade 8 algebra the 62 percent like when we've we've given this test in the past we've had a much higher percent in our honors algebra group do a lot better on the Keystone so that's definitely a place where we need to pay attention and work a little bit harder to get those

055kids to be more proficient in that exam because there are honors kids but again that group is is 50 of the class it's it's a big group so uh again the growth is a positive and then the proficiency just just to the point of teaching what's on the anchor standards and what is the eligible content in getting those students prepared to do the best that they can so is that a function of on last year's pssa in the state of Pennsylvania um 32 percent of students were proficient in sixth grade so right now we're at 80 percent predicted so I mean that's if if that happens significantly outperforming the state um in seventh grade 27 percent of students in Pennsylvania were proficient and eighth grade 22 percent were proficient so when we look at this

056and as Mr Harkness just said this is at the midterm and he when he was speaking earlier um I forget which geometric concept he mentioned but he mentioned you know that they took this Benchmark and there were questions on content they hadn't learned yet you know we do expect this to go up and we're already seeing that our mid-year scores are equal to or outperformed the state from last year so if that helps give you kind of because I know when you see sixth grade and you see seventh grade you see such a significant difference but realize that historically in Pennsylvania the seventh and 8th grade pssa exams in mathematics um are very challenging for students across the board thank you any additional questions or comments yes so yes so first of all thank you

057so much for this really detailed presentation I'm impressed with the level of attention that you're giving our students and that you are so focused on the data and analyzing the data and what does this mean and how can we how can we use it to help our students um so I first just want to comment that I truly appreciate all of the work that goes in behind the scenes that we from the outside may not always appreciate um so thank you for that um my first question is you presented a lot of the interventions and sorts of things you're doing for students what are you finding has been the most impactful interventions and is there more of that that you're thinking to do so program evaluation is also an important part of the data analysis

058that we conduct so we focus today on mostly student and what we're doing at the building level for data analysis uh we when we select our programs we really are mindful of putting into place evidence-based programming that research suggests to us are the most effective effective instructional practices or programs there so I'm just going to highlight one of them to you right now and I'm going to ask Amita if you don't mind coming up and Amita is going to share one of the programs that we use if it's okay with you I'm throwing like a little bit of a curveball one of the programs that we use well actually you can choose hegarty or record whichever one you want to do uh is research based and I think she you know and looking at that

059particular program can share the efficacy of that and the work that she does as a reading specialist and so that's just one item for time's sake maybe we'll just kind of highlight this one for now sure and then maybe follow up with additional programs that we see that are very efficacious in student learning and achievement so one of the largest gaps that we've seen since covid has actually been in our younger students our K1 and two kids who have phonemic awareness or phonics gaps and so since that time we have equity which focuses on Phonics hegarty which focuses on phonemic awareness both of those two programs are led by the classroom teacher as a whole group lesson but then based on what we're seeing whether it's through acadians so when we do our Acadian subtests

060we're getting specific data on phonemic awareness and phonics both of those two so when we look at those two we will then either ask a classroom teacher and give them some support in doing a repeat with kids who could benefit from a small group instruction on either hegarty or Equity or the reading specialist will pull and we'll do something a little bit more detailed on that I would say even our third graders we've noticed that some of those third graders because they've had two years out they're coming in with phonemic awareness gaps and to fill that Gap we have a program called it's still the hegarty program but it's bridged the Gap and that's for the older students so we're also finding the teachers were just recently trained on that some of the teachers do

061that in their small group and then reading Specialists also we do that within our group and we have noticed a huge increase in student performance just getting that additional phonemic and phony phonics support so I would say that that's probably the largest gain that we've seen through just having the coveted Gap and noticing that kids have improved I hope I answered your question yeah yeah you gave one very concrete example thank you any additional questions or comments from the board most of mine have been answered so I just have a question for the future considering the proficiency levels of our seventh graders and our eighth graders in our grade of the 40 and the 62 percent in grade eight next year we're moving to all students taking the same math 8 program my question is

062will the supports change considering that the text is a bit more rigorous I believe correct me if I'm wrong or we're using a Visions for for that whole program um do you foresee any of the interventions having to change or do you need more support in that area so that our students are successful on that algebra one Keystone exam not to say that those exams are the be-all that's one data point for a student but if we're looking ahead and we're seeing our rate of proficiency here and we know that we're putting our students in a more rigorous environment next year looking ahead do we need to Pivot so that's a really good question one of the things that our math department and Mr Harkins behind me and uh mizanama have been working on is

063in looking at Algebra 1 and grade 8 standards and all the content and all of the skill set development you know they've really tried to focus on where there are commonalities between those two subsets so when I talk about grade eight I'm referring to grade eight standards anchors and eligible concept content as measured by the pssa and when I refer to the algebra one it's the Keystone anchors and eligible content as measured by the Keystone exam so they're looking at all the commonalities between both of those two assessments which is really the commonalities between the standards and they're really looking at ways of blending that content even though someone may be in an eligible one class that they're still getting the content that is in the grade eight standards I think that the current program

064with the two periods of math per day provides opportunities to support students in learning with those two sets of Standards I'm going to just turn it over right now to Mr Harkins who's been working very hard at drilling down deep into those standards and he'll share with you some of the things that they're working on to really support our students as far as the type of interventions that need to take place I'm going to actually have him address as well some of the things that currently are being done during wind time which he he did reference here and if he anticipates any additional needs with that for the upcoming school year all right it's me again good news is we have 8th grade teachers that teach algebra to all to half the students in the

065school right now and also intertwine the eighth grade standards within that content so we do know what we need to teach outside of the algebra in order to have the students meet the needs of the eighth grade standards also and when you do a comparison between the pssa eligible content with the Keystone algebra content there's a significant amount of material that's on both exams for example systems of equations is a straight up algebra content but that's on on the 8th grade pssa so there is a lot of content that goes back and forth between the algebra and the actual eighth grade pssa so it's not as overwhelming as it's going to seem I would say the most support that we need is to continue with the double period to continue with wind time and definite

066support from a math coach to come in and help the kids that need help and break groups apart and support those students that are that are a little bit struggling again but but for us as Math teachers we know and we're committed to the fact that we know that algebra one is a gateway course that's the course that students need to be successful in in order to be successful in the courses that are at the high school if you don't have a strong foundation in algebra one you're not going to do well in algebra 2. you're not going to do well in Geometry a lot of people think well what do you mean geometry it's a whole different course but if you teach geometry you'll notice that when it's just algebra with pictures is how

067I call it and then trigonometry so we know the severity of making sure that these students have the skills necessary to be successful when they go to the high school and try to tackle those more challenging courses and algebra is the answer to that okay I agree Bob Moses would agree as well um a second question about supports outside of the school day do we have do we still offer one-to-one tutoring for groups of students who require that I know that was something that was mentioned in the past I'm not sure if we still offer that at this point we still do have the ARP Sr 7 set aside grant for after school programs I can uh Mr file would you like to speak to that for the Middle School sure we we continue that

068through this year and we are planning to extend we're hoping through May and that support is not only just Ela and math but also include science social studies and anything else we can help kids with who are willing to stay after school I will say that separately in terms of reflecting on feedback we've received over the course of the Year specific specifically from our teachers we're looking at trying to do a more expansive program to include more kids for next year I can't tell you we figured all that out yet but we do have something that we hope to make better next year I don't know the high school oh same thing I'm hearing at the high school thank you any additional questions or comments from the board Dr fetcher thank you thank you thank

069you shall we proceed to the next one yes please Miss Judy bombsy director of student services Dr Robert Rosenthal director of pupil services Miss Anissa Dungey counselor at Copper Beach Elementary School Miss Diana fine Smith Abington middle school counselor Mr Eric forkheimer Abington senior high school counselor and Ms Brook Jacobs Abington School District social worker will provide an orientation on student services in the district and policies and procedures to address bullying thank you Dr fetcher good evening Miss Brown Dr fetcher Board of school directors as Dr fetcher mentioned tonight and wrote in a fam a message to families today regarding the recent tragic shooting in Nashville we continue to make the availability of Mental Health Resources as a priority in our school community tonight we'll detail the staff we have available how to access the

070services and highlight some of the supports we have in the district the student services staff that are listed on this slide are the people delivering the services that you will hear about tonight in addition mental health therapists Behavior Specialists and Student Assistance Program or sap counselors are also professionals who we contract with to provide services to students and Families the mental health therapists are provided by Child and Family Focus they are able to provide therapy at no cost during the school day for students who need ongoing therapeutic support we contract with Pediatric Therapy Services to provide a board-certified behavior analyst along with licensed and registered Behavior technicians to assist with students with mental health and emotional needs who also exhibit behavioral difficulties we partner with altersgate for counselors working with students in all of our

071schools through the Student Assistance Program to offer help to students who are dealing with drug and alcohol program alcohol problems depression or thoughts of suicide the sap team which includes counselors psychologists School nurses or social workers have all had special training to help students with these problems sap services are short term if additional support or intervention is needed referrals Are Made for More long-term support similar to the previous slide this slide lists the staff and provides links with contact information by elementary middle and Senior High along with how to access services for mental health behavioral health or sap services there also are links on our website to all of our school staff and there always is the student services mailbox that is monitored daily for any general questions additionally we will be sending out a

072newsletter in April that will provide this information as well here are all the District employees and the schools in which they serve they have school counselors psychologists social worker certified School nurses in each of the buildings thank you the counselor psychologists social workers and nurses are available in the schools to assist with virtually any issue that comes up for a student even if it's something situational such as an upsetting news story staff can be contacted directly or through a principal or other staff member in the school or Again by emailing student services anyone can refer a student for services a teacher a student a parent a guardian a student can refer themselves or a friend can reserve a peer can can refer appear and if a peer does reference a need for services their name

073will be kept confidential these are some of our Universal prevention programs and practices that are offered across the district social emotional learning lessons are provided in the classrooms at the beginning of the school year we conduct welcoming programs and remind students about the safe to say something Anonymous reporting system that Dr fetcher also mentioned tonight students can report all sorts of concerns on the safe to say system bullying harassment mental health issues or safety concerns each School uses a positive behavior intervention and support system that includes school-wide climate activities to promote social emotional and physical wellness along with anti-bullying lessons incentives and fun as well as bonding activities for the students building a positive climate in the school and encouraging a welcoming and inclusive community is all part of a student's establishing a feeling of

074belonging and preventing bullying and other anti-social Behavior additionally each school has earned the designation of a no place for hate school no place for hate requires the completion of three projects that fit the criteria established by the Anti-Defamation League as fulfilling the mission of inclusiveness for example projects focusing on challenging bias and bullying celebrating diversity and promoting respect for others differences there are core teams in each school as was mentioned in a previous presentation that meet to review students and the need for more intensive Services whether it's academic behavioral emotional or mental health concerns inter information reviewed these teams include academic attempts attendance behavior and Universal screeners which are completed by teachers and indicate whether there are concerns about a student's Behavior counselors meet with students to discuss academic planning and course selection and the

075nurses conduct Health screenings and hold Health conferences with students we evaluate review and redesign our services based on feedback from surveys and input from members of district and building committees including bullying prevention wellness and climate if you're interested in joining any of these committees you can email me or student services we also provide parent education programs and links to resources in the community as shown here on the website here are some of the parent education programs and linked here are some of the resources that are available to the community this slide shows the positive behaviors that are that the schools highlight as part of their positive behavior interventions and support system or PBIS five of our schools have received recognition by the Pennsylvania Department of Education as implementing PBIS with fidelity the components for this

076recognition include establishing a leadership team coordinating activities developing a Continuum of opportunities to involve parents and Guardians ensuring data review having the program in place for a minimum of three years and designating improved climate as one of the top goals in the school the other four schools are in the process of achieving this this recognition at the conclusion of this year and next year we continue through a multi-tiered framework to offer targeted and individualized supports to students who may need more than is offered in our Universal programs and services these supports are listed here on this slide and include counseling on-site on-site therapeutic supports evaluation for special education services or specialized accommodations mentoring checking in with a specific staff member on a regular basis plans for truancy supports when transitioning to a new school home

077visits individualized plans for health conditions and consultation with families and staff our presentation tonight provides example of our services in a more detailed description from our staff starting with Brooke Jacobs who is the school social worker at the high school good evening thank you for having me the role of the school social worker is to address barriers to learning in partnership with other student services staff incorporating the person in environment perspective the list on the slide is just a few of the tasks that the three social workers now in Abington School District take on daily home visits occur to support students and families who are facing barriers to engagement in school activities we work to support families in identifying and addressing needs that may be interfering with students regular attendance in school we provide parent

078coaching to address avoidant behaviors as well as non-compliance in the home and we coordinate mental health and or behavioral supports to provide further intervention beyond the school hours at times this can include engagement in crisis situations that require in-home as well as Community coordination of Mental Health Services or getting Care at a hospital additionally if anyone is familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of need you know that it is critical that we address basic needs such as food clothing stable housing safety and access to Medical Care before anyone can expect a child to engage in adding subtracting and multiplying we address these needs through referrals to County and Community programs and we'll even at times deliver food to families who may need it you can refer to that Resource page that Judy pulled up earlier to see

079additional supports that we provide in the community the social workers also act as District truancy officers when school-based interventions do not resolve attendance concerns social workers refer students to higher levels of Intervention which includes district court and at times the Montgomery County Office of Children and Youth supports in rare circumstances students may be required to report to county level court that would include non-compliance with School attendance as well as Behavior mandates in the Home and Community as well much of the school social workers day includes coordinating services for students we attend building-based meetings to provide intervention for students who may be struggling behaviorally and emotionally some of those outcomes may be coordination of outpatient therapy and behavioral interventions such as ABA or ibhs Services we do crisis planning family reunification engagement with local and County

080resources as well as tradition transition planning but it also includes individual and group counseling as well this year specifically at the senior high school I have a coping skills group for the full-time emotional support students we coordinated a safe harbor grief group and I initiated along with two interns a girls group focused on socialization and self-esteem individual counseling is also part of my day currently I'm focused on students who may be struggling with motivation for school and working towards their graduation I work in conjunction with the school counselors to engage those who may benefit from additional supports and become another encouraging voice to let them know that they can find success in school I also welcome the opportunity to support my colleagues with reminders of strategies to connect with disengaged students as well as staff

081trainings I recently was asked to provide a senior high special education department meeting this the department-wide training for working with traumatized Youth and creating a trauma-informed learning environment for those students it's a welcome opportunity and beneficial for all Educators to remind themselves about the whole child when informing the best way that they can learn a day as a social worker is certainly never the same and never boring these are some of the community resources that we work with social workers form Partnerships with our local providers we're regularly reaching out to psychiatrists and therapists mental health hospitals and we also serve as the direct point of contact for the office of Children and Youth juvenile probation and the Abington police department at times we will attend County court for these agencies when asked to support to

082provide support for a child or family we also participate in a program called Hub Hub is a partnership with Abington police that brings together local intervention programs to support community members who may benefit from Services outside of just regular police intervention this unique partnership brings together the school district with agencies such as child and Family Focus adult and juvenile probation the office of Children and Youth aging and adult Services mobile crisis local hospitals and anyone else who may be available to attend and provide intervention additionally Abington cares is a new partnership with the Abington Education Foundation the cares program will provide immediate support for families in crisis such as gift cards right now I have a family um where one sibling is providing a bone marrow transplant to another and we sign a gift card

083home for the family to be able to get some food our goal is to really increase our Outreach and be able to support as many families as possible in the future eventually including Their donation of skills or perhaps even Furniture as needed for Abington School District families Additionally the social workers in our district attend our community events that impact our students this year we were lucky enough to participate in the Ukrainian Cultural Center welcome day we have an upcoming ELD family night at the senior high school and we always participate in transition events for our schools whether that's our open houses the sixth grade transition to seventh or anything else that's going to help support our families in success in their school day a significant part of our role is understanding the ways that our

084local Mental Health Providers adjust their services to meet the needs of their clients and our students through strategic meetings with Partners including Child and Family Focus Horsham Clinic the light program and Rogers Behavioral Health this year we've been able to ensure strong relationships are formed and that we're referring appropriately to each organization we regularly meet with new providers moving into the area as well I can tell you that complete mind care in Blackboard are two brand new agencies that recently opened providing both outpatient and Psychiatry for our Abington families so meeting with those individuals allowing them to get to know us as well as the services they can provide our families allows us to provide the correct resources for our students we also play a role in bringing programming into the schools in addition to

085the regular Services Child and Family Focus is currently offering an in-school program for the evenings in the evenings for families we're providing family suertos as well as strong African-American families and I believe we're on our second round of both programs this year at the middle school upcoming events will include the National Alliance on Mental Illness bringing a program called question persuade refer into the senior high school and alderscape will be providing vaping prevention programming at both the middle school and the senior high School social workers engage at in initiatives at the county level as well we participate in County truancy task force meetings Suicide Prevention task force meetings Roundtable discussions with County juvenile court systems as well as Student Assistance Program County meetings just to name a few helping students parents and Guardians navigate resources

086and supports can be challenging but also extraordinarily rewarding now I will turn the presentation over to Anissa junji school counselor at Copper Beach Elementary School good evening everyone I'm here to talk about the elementary student services the student services team at the elementary level is supported by school school psychologists school counselors School social worker and School nurses our teams use a multi-layered approach that includes prevention intervention and Outreach our supports address the diverse needs of all students ranging from grades kindergarten through fifth grade at the elementary level a few of the ways that we address prevention include participation on our PBIS team whole school events that cultivate a positive learning environment and in the beginning actually start with hello I think is the first week of school start with hello assembly and just in February

087at Copper Beach we participated in the great kindness challenge where children are given a checklist and have an opportunity to perform as many contacts as possible we also participate on our school core team that's been noted previously and we meet weekly to review and analyze data to identify students who may have some challenges and we collaborate with the teachers to create and Implement plans that address the concern and we even cycle back to make sure that the interventions are working as a school counselor a large part of what I do involves classroom lessons that allows us to reach every single student in the class excuse me in the school some of our lessons start with meeting the counselor it's really important to do that right at the beginning so the students know what our role

088is and how we can support them and also how they can access team members it might meet the counselor lessons I actually show pictures of what I look like what my office looks like and how they can find us some of our lessons include topics such as bullying prevention which is an October conflict resolution growth mindset coping skills goal setting and our upcoming lessons for fifth graders transitioning to the Middle School a significant part of being a school counselor is making sure the climate is positive and part of the prevention that helps with that is the bullying prevention committee and at Copper Beach we have two third graders two fourth graders and two fifth graders that participate in these committee meetings and they look forward to them and always ask me when the meeting is

089they come up with ideas and topics that support all the students in in our school and they are kind of the pulse and the guide to what's happening in our school some of what we do is come up with challenges to make sure that all students feel connected this week all the students are to give five compliments to people outside at recess and our paraprofessionalism aides are helping to recognize this and make sure that we're implementing it some of their ideas are make five people smile make a new friend include everyone in a game even if they're not your friend and I think that as we continue to do this and this becomes natural if we move from kindergarten to first grade this just builds the Copper Beach School climate and I'm sure this happens

090at all of our schools we also work to intervene when necessary some of our interventions include sap groups facilitated by Aldersgate right now at Copper Beach we have had 58 students already participate in groups and we're going to have a second round that starts around the end of April we also have small group and individual counseling sometimes the school social worker is conducting or facilitating a group the school psychologist I work with groups we all work together to make sure that we're supporting all of the needs of our students we also have check in and check out and that is a research-backed strategy that provides immediate feedback to promote positive behavior and also facilitates positive relationships and mentorships between students and staff one thing that we are really implementing with Fidelity at Copper Beach are

091restorative practices when students have disagreements our relationships aren't always perfect and we tell them that's okay our restorative practices are helping students to learn to resolve conflict through communication we work to build repair and restore relationships and we also let them know sometimes it's not just a one-time event relationships are sometimes like a roller coaster sometimes they're up sometimes they're down tell them that's not a bad thing we're all learning how to grow and move forward when things don't work out as we expect it Outreach is another major component of Elementary student services and at Copper Beach the school nurse social worker counselor and psychologist had a presentation for the PTA and we also have monthly newsletters now just in case you're not sure what an elementary counselor does I'd like to share my experience

092one one given day the first day back after winter break I woke up in the morning I automatically knew that some of our youngest students might need support separating from their families because it's the first time that they've had such a prolonged break and I wanted to make sure that I had feelings papers basically it's a paper with faces with lots of feelings and they can Circle how they're feeling calm music videos which they like on my screen and plenty of fidgets and puppets so as soon as it was time for arrival I alternated between our front lobby and our Cafe area to greet our students and in a little less and than five minutes I greeted hundreds of students as they entered school off of the school bus and it was wonderful to see

093and feel their energy they were ready to return around nine o'clock I returned to the lobby and just as I thought I needed to assist a young student who was in tears separating from a family member I encourage the family member to give a quick hug and reassure both the student and the family member that all was going to be well once the family member was out of sight the student calmly walked with me to class and then I checked in with the student a few times and then I got to make the best phone call that counselors ever get to make to call the parent and let the parent know the child is calm feeling good and participating in class I could hear the relief in the parent's voice I returned to my office

094and started my check-in and check out with students and by 10 o'clock I was able to see five students and they all had a solid winter break and were happy to be at school as soon as I was finished that I had a student drop in who was just not having a great morning and that happens to us all and that's okay we discussed what happened before school how the student felt about that and then we tried to choose a couple of coping strategies I have a digital coping skills students really love everything digital these days and pick two strategies that the student you know would be comfortable using and then I gave the student a pass to return if needed luckily the student didn't need to come back so that was a success right

095after that I followed up with a student needing support and unstructured settings this was a first grader it was around 10 30. they have recess at 11 I had to see the student right then and there we read a social story that was related to the students needs and came up with two things that the student could safely do in unstructured settings next I go to my office return phone calls respond to emails now it's time for an individual session with a student that I see weekly and then some social skills practice now it's time for lunch punch and these are some of my favorite activities so from 12 P.M to 2 p.m I held a Lunch Bunch every half hour with a different great second third fourth and fifth and this is a time

096where students can meet other students in their grade that sometimes they don't get an opportunity to speak with they talk with one another enjoy each other's company and although they don't realize it we are playing games that promote positive friendships building skills and a positive self-concept on this given day our Focus was getting back on schedule and returning to school several students mentioned that they could not fall asleep the night before and retired upon waking up this morning I felt the same way we shared how many hours of sleep we each felt that we needed to be successful and wake up feeling refreshed it seems that a cup of hot cocoa reading a book listening to calming music or watching a funny show before bed helps many students to fall asleep and most importantly stay

097asleep right after that it was time to eat and then get to a classroom guidance lesson this was a lesson that I was really happy to present it was a conflict resolution lesson to third grade but it was also the end of the day so I didn't know what their energy level was it was exciting they participated they responded well the lesson went well and now it's 3 P.M and time for me to check back out with the students I checked in with and at that point it was dismissal so it was a success a successful day in the life of an elementary school counselor and now I'd like to introduce Miss Diana fine Smith the school counselor at the middle school who will review some of the activities of student services at the middle

098school level all right good evening everyone thank you for having me this evening so the Middle Ages and the preteen years are arguably one of the most challenging times in a child's life and perhaps even for you as their parent or Guardian during a stage of development students are experiencing a number of biological emotional and social Milestones which include puberty discovering their self-identity determining who their friend groups are and are not among much more as a result students undergo a period of dramatic and rapid growth during this time consider this period under construction otherwise known as leave me alone mom the hard wiring Connections in their brains are undergoing reorganization so by the end of childhood the regions of the brain that are responsible for producing emotional responses are very well developed however the regions

099that are responsible for processing controlling regulating those emotions have yet to be this is why pre-teens and adolescents May display behaviors that their parents might find quite frustrating including testing of boundaries acting on impulse engaging in Risky behaviors a desire or need to fit in preoccupation with appearance or sudden changes in hobbies and interests in conjunction with these developed Milestone students arrive to school every day with a multitude of personal and life circumstances that further compound those adolescent experiences they come to school grappling with real complex issues which can include things like separation divorce grief and loss traumatic experiences bullying bias as well as mental health and much more the role of a middle school counselor is to support students their families as well as their other Educators and not only navigating these adolescent Milestones

100but also their major life circumstances each of these factors directly impacts Student Learning and Development middle school counselors support students in acquiring the knowledge skills and attitudes to better understand and navigate their biological emotional and personal changes as a critical member of the school-based team middle school counselors serve the role as a child development and social and emotional specialist and use a wide variety of interventions as you can see on their slide to support students with their academic social emotional and behavioral functioning middle school counselors provide various Direct Services to students which can include but are not limited to individual and group counseling individualized academic planning Crisis Intervention and management and classroom-based lessons that are focused on skill building in the areas of career exploration self and social awareness relationships self-management and responsible decision making

101middle school counselors also indirectly impact student learning by coordinating and collaborating with school Mental Health Providers as well as families moderating monitoring student attendance and academic progress middle school counselors also serve as a critical member of the school-based team in the development and implementation of individualized intervention plans using the multi-tiered systems of supports model that Miss fonsi alluded to earlier my colleague a current 8th grade school counselor Miss Haynes describes the life as a middle school counselor perfectly when she states that no two days are the same at the middle school and as a school counselor that keeps me on my toes every day at the middle school is dramatically different from the one before and we must always be ready for any situations that present themselves on the screen you'll find a few examples

102of various scenarios that may arise in the day of a life of a middle school counselor please note however that this by no means is an exhaustive list I will highlight just a few that arose recently first there are times when I may start my day facilitating a giep meeting with a family of a student receiving gifted services and academic enrichment in Reading Writing or math usually not too long after that students start to drop by my office seeking support on things like how to improve their grades in the current marking period together we'll review their academic progress develop short-term and long-term academic goals as well as develop an action plan to improve them at times I may also be asked by an administrator to schedule and facilitate a restorative conference between two students in

103Conflict to support them in repairing the harm that was done recently I facilitated a conference between two students who experienced quite a rift in their friendship due to some ongoing miscommunication and misunderstanding very shortly thereafter I met with one of those students again as a follow-up and provided additional individualized support on how they can rebuild that friendship I may also be asked to facilitate classroom-based restorative circles to address class-wide Behavior last week a teacher as well as a few of their students requested my assistance directly to address recurring interpersonal conflict among students in the class to address this I facilitated restorative circles that were designed to foster a sense of connection amongst the students demonstrate as well as emphasize the mental and emotional impact that negative comments and remarks can have on student well-being and

104finally to encourage and promote kindness and appreciation for fellow classmates every week I attend four grade level team meetings to discuss individual student issues during these meetings we'll discuss student concerns collect student information and data which is then later shared with our building level core team the purpose of this multi-disciplinary team is to brainstorm coordinate and develop appropriate academic and behavioral intervention plans using the information and data provided by the teachers using the mtss model as indicated by Miss haynes's quote earlier middle school counselors must be ready for anything that comes our way at times emergencies will arise and I'll be called away from my regular duties for example recently I was unable to attend my scheduled grade level team meetings because of a student emergency that required immediate attention that morning students visited my

105office concerned about another student in class who was being bullied I took their statements submitted them to our assistant principal our school climate officer for further investigation and follow-up during the course of that same meeting I noticed that one of the students was displaying warning signs of suicide I asked the student to remain with me in my office and conducted an initial screening based on the nature of the student responses I completed a full risk assessment consulted with my immediate supervisor contacted the parents and made subsequent recommendations for follow-up with mental health providers finally I may end my day participating in an IEP meeting to provide counselor input on a student's performance and needs similarly I may end my day by facilitating a 504 accommodation plan meeting to review a student's present accommodations progress monitoring

106data and complete necessary documentation to make updates or changes although no two days that the Middle School are the same there is one constant students continue to confront a wide range of Developmental social and emotional challenges throughout the course of their seven hour school day and there's rarely a break from it by now you might be thinking wow her hands are really full at the middle school while this may be true you really ought to see my heart next I'd like to introduce Eric vorkheimer secondary school counselor who will now talk about student services at the high school good evening I'd like to continue with services in grades 9 through 12. and again that would include nurses psychologists social worker who we heard earlier tonight and and counseling and I'm going to focus on the

107counseling part and I'd like to break that into a few main categories to include academic development personal social college and career career exploration and transition planning academically we want all students to achieve but we also understand that the definition of achievement varies from student to student to begin we want to make sure that all students have access to the most appropriate and most rigorous academic curriculum at the same time we want to be able to offer the support needed for those students we can do this through lunch and learn and teacher learned we can do that through tutoring through the Abington Tutoring Club which is a joint venture through Abington National Honor Society and we can do that through after school tutoring via teachers which we have every Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday in terms of

108scheduling in fact we're actually doing scheduling right now scheduling includes teacher and counselor advisement and we'd certainly like individuals to work with their parent or Guardian at home on scheduling that's one of the reasons that we give about a month to get that scheduling completed academic progress monitoring again is a joint venture between home and the building and if there's any academic concerns we certainly want to be able to seek the solutions needed that could be a student for getting assignments and me working with that student on an organization plan the use of a planner or it could involve more details and a possible team meeting for students whose bridge to learning a little bit wider we may need to use additional resources some of them we heard tonight such as the child study team

109core team sap team Aldersgate Community Services we're the same project which is a joint venture between Abington counseling and the Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania individually we want all students to be happy healthy and thriving but we also know that this may not always be the case so we always encourage students to seek support that may be an individual counseling session to work out a strategy or a plan to alleviate stress or to re-engage academically that could mean a mediation to work out a pure concern that could be a Crisis Intervention which we've heard earlier with a referral to a community resource or organization or it could just simply be someone to talk with a chance to de-escalate or even a quick pep talk to help the student make it through the day many students may

110not be aware but transition planning starts the either walk into the the senior high foundations of innovation classes mandatory for grades nine through ten work with many of the counseling developed interest inventories navion surveys and career exploration tools that continues with classroom presentations and guest speakers I'm aware one of our chefs have visited our cookie and nutrition class and I'm aware of local entrepreneurs coming into our entrepreneurship class career Chatters are also of note their industry professionals that come into the building and talk about their Journey how they got to where they are in their professional career and their job is to inspire our students to perhaps walk in their footsteps in 10th Grade we introduce Eastern and career trades and in 11th grade we ramp up College and Career exploration and profiling for students

111planning further education we host College representatives in the building where the colleges can come in talk to groups of students and highlight their academic credential highlight their academics highlight their offerings their initiatives and everything that they have to offer for students we were able to host 51 individual colleges this fall we're also also able to organize college tours we're able to put together 18 college tours this fall and we pretty much had full buses on each of the 18 tours we know that connecting with the parent Community is vital to Student Success so I'm going to do a little bit more of an interactive presentation as I go through the next few slides our College information nights are highlighted here in this slide and you can see welcome to the high school is our first

112one and that's primarily for grades nine through ten nine and ten and talks about a general intro to the high school you can see some of the other presentations that we have online for you they're all done live we record them and then we post them for individuals who may not have been able to make the live session our College and Career Fair which we had earlier this month on March 9th brought in over a hundred different colleges trade organizations and all branches of the armed services and again it was great to see our hallways packed full of students taking advantage of that opportunity the Abington advisor is a newsletter that we will put out every other week and it details all the information that we would like to put out to the school community

113Through the counseling office you can see in this particular Edition we have information about Eastern the career chatter that I had mentioned earlier and additional information wanted to scroll down to show you some of the trips that we took to local colleges and then additional information that we will highlight and post this is also posted on the Abington counselor Facebook page we also have Google Classroom Pages for individual classes so you can see here the class of 23 24 and 25 and 26 this is where we'll post individual information relative to one certain class so for the classes of 23 24 and 25 we recently posted information about course scheduling and for the class of I'm sorry 26 25 and 24 for class scheduling and for the class of 23 posted information about upcoming scholarship

114opportunities so this gives us a form to be able to post individual information for individual classes and finally a Google site counseling Google site that has all the information that I just went over all in one place so whether you need to make an appointment with your counselor whether you need to join one of the Google Pages or whether you missed information in one of our newsletters this Google site will have it all posted for you and give you the opportunity to preview that information at your leisure and in closing in closing just a few numbers during the month of March which when this data was compiled we had approximately 19 days in the month of March when this was compiled the Counseling Center saw 2294 students during the month month of March within those

11519 days thank you I'm sorry up next Rob Rosenthal director of people services good evening school districts are required to adopt a policy or amend an existing policy related to bullying and review the policy every three years school districts are required to post the policy we posted the policy on the district website and in the classrooms the classrooms have posters with definitions of bullying that are developmentally appropriate and finally the policy and procedures for reporting bullying need to be reviewed at least once a year with students which we do in the fall this first document is the board policy statement entitling entitled bullying cyber bullying and unlawful harassment it is on our web page it describes the purpose of this statement as striving to maintain a safe positive learning climate that is free from bullying

116and harassment it also lists guidelines that include the encouragement of those that have been bullied to report it as soon as possible so that the district will investigate all complaints as soon as possible that appropriate discipline action be taken in accordance with board policy and our code of conduct that confidentiality of all parties will be handled with care and that staff inform all stakeholders of this policy through a variety of means the second document is the superintendent's administrative procedure entitled bullying cyber bullying and unlawful harassment it describes the definition of bullying cyber bullying and unlawful harassment it outlines reporting procedures which encourages all to promptly report such incidents to their principal assistant principal athletic director counselor coach or other trusted School official in all cases the principal is then informed the person handling the complaint

117is directed to handle the report objectively neutrally and professionally setting aside any biases this document then describes that all reports are investigated and what if any interim measures are put into place to protect the student from further bullying it lists the possible disciplinary consequences it describes a mandate that these procedures be publicized and reviewed and that data on bullying is shared with the State Department of Education the procedures for reporting and investigating bullying is in our superintendent's administrative procedure on harassment and bullying teachers have been trained on how to deal with bullying situations the principle or designee is responsible for investigating reports of bullying they will investigate the allegation and conduct an impartial thorough and confidential investigation of the bullying disciplinary consequences are based on the seriousness and repetitiveness of the behavior this flowchart helps

118to explain the process of what happens when a peer conflict is observed or reported the printable or designee investigates and then determines if this event is pure conflict or bullying in the interim measures are put into place to protect the student from further potential bullying or unlawful harassment if it is determined to be bullying the principal contacts the parents or guardians of all concern disciplinary consequences are followed according to our sap and interventions are offered according to the individual circumstances for both the victim and the student who bullied our department reviews how effective we're doing through a number of different means we utilize numerous data sets including discipline reports by building and the number of students who receive support we also review the evaluation and observations of our staff while student achievement is always a

119top priority we also understand the importance of the health of the whole child including Mental Health and this concludes our orientation and we would be happy to take questions thank you questions or comments from the board you have a comment or two and a question decades ago while learning about um childhood pedagogy you mentioned Maslow's theory of hierarchy of learning and that was somewhat parallel with a Gestalt theory that the whole is better than the sum of his parts so you all are fortunate that you get to deal with the whole child whole child with HIPAA being what it is today teachers Educators we get to know just the sum of the part and so you have a you're fortunate to be on that side of it thank you for your work and then the

120question you mentioned restorative practices I'm just curious have you guys ever implemented either yoga or meditation opportunities for kids so we have done um quite a bit of mindfulness practices and in some of the schools and some of the teachers might do you know a version of you know not meditation necessarily but physical activity during the class they will put up videos and things where the kids are you know developing some calming routines we do have some staff who are certified trainers so we have looked at the staff training and working with some of the teachers after school I don't know if anybody else thank you any additional questions or comments from the board just thank you guys for your presentation um and you know just recognize that we pay yeah when we send our

121children to school we send them to there to learn but all the work that goes on behind the scenes of supporting their learning and ensuring they're in the classroom and ensuring that families get the support um is not always always seen so thank you for this any additional questions or comments I'll just end with I've seen a theme of intentionality both from the counselors as well as the student achievement update and the interventions that we have for our students I just want to assure you that you are critical members I heard someone say that critical members you are critical members of what it takes to meet the needs of our students in the day in the life of a counselor I look forward to buying that book so go ahead and start writing and with

122that being said I want to thank you for your time and thank you for all that you do for our school community thank you we are first I want to thank you for your patience we've had three different orientations two of them protect well all of them one uh how much money do we have where is it being spent the mid-year how are our students performing with those services that we're providing uh the service the policy for addressing bullying and our final one we're going to have after a five minute break because we're human beings and some of us may need to step out for a minute so five minutes thank you so much for your patience we'll be right back thank you for your patience as I shared before our little break the importance

123of providing this information to families who are watching especially given the climate that we're in now so I appreciate the information and I'm sorry I can't apologize for the length but I can say thank you for your patience and with that being said Dr fetcher please continue with our next orientation thank you Miss Brown uh it's our final orientation for the evening Dr melkor assistant superintendent Mr Angela barius principal of Abington senior high school and Mr Daniel file principal of the middle Abington Middle School will provide an orientation on student offenses and disciplinary procedures thank you Dr fetcher Mrs Brown members of the board I'm going to first walk you through some information related to your board policy and the superintendents administrative procedures regarding student offenses and disciplinary procedures as well as the annual safe

124schools report that is submitted to Pennsylvania Department of Education then Mr file Mr barriers will provide some context related to middle school and Senior High School procedures and finally I'll share some additional information some of which you heard in the last presentation with regard to district efforts related to restorative practices as well as other non-exclusionary practices first on the screen are three statements from the board policy regarding student offenses and disciplinary procedures the policy indicates the authority provided to school administrators related to discipline as well as note several of the disciplinary measures in the second bullet that are available to the schools finally third bullet indicates the importance and and requirement of notifying students parents and Guardians with respect to discipline I would note that in the second bullet what you don't see listed are

125some of the restorative practices that you just heard in the last presentation some others that have been implemented in our schools over the course of the last few years those include peer mediation youth Aid panel about which you'll hear from Mr file Mr Barrios the focus of this policy is mainly the 24 offenses for which students can be excluded from school through either in-school suspension out of school suspension or expulsion so what occurs as you know on an annual basis is the office of the superintendent conducts a review of board policies and saps and both the policy and the two saps related to discipline and student offenses are under review for additional Clarity that needs to be added within the policy for the for the 24 offenses but also incorporating some of those restorative practices

126that are non-exclusionary in nature that have been implemented particularly at the middle school and the senior high school over the course of the last few years with respect to exclusion which relates to students being suspended or potentially recommended for expulsion from school that exclusion happens in accordance with PA school code which is what is shown on the screen the school level principles the system principles May suspend a student first from school for offenses included on the board policy for a period of up to 10 10 days the specific procedures for how that occurs with respect to opportunity for informal hearing opportunity for a formal hearing if a student is recommended for expulsion is within that superintense administrative procedure ultimately if an expulsion is recommended parents and Guardians and students have an opportunity for a formal

127hearing and then that recommendation is ultimately presented to the board of school directors as a confidential student matter for approval any exclusion of a student from school any in-school suspension out of school suspension expulsion that occurs ultimately is included in our safe schools data reporting you see three particular types of incidents which we are required to include in that annual report incidents are violations of law regardless of disciplinary consequence so for instance there may be a youngster at elementary school who inadvertently has a pocket knife and a backpack didn't intend to bring it to school but it's in school that needs to be reported as part of the safe schools data report even if that student doesn't receive a consequence of exclusion from school for that incident any incident that includes student exclusion from school

128and finally any incidents that involve local law enforcement as you know we have sros at the middle school and the senior high school we also have two school police officers anytime those individuals are involved in incident we need to report that as well the safe schools report is publicly accessible they'll show you just briefly how to access it through the school district website on the district website in the overview of Abington School District tab at the very bottom of that page we are required to have links to the Essa every student succeeds act Federal report for each of our schools those reports are available through the Future Ready PA index about which you've had a number of presentations over the last few years excuse me on the Future Ready PA index if you scroll down

129to the bottom of the page there's a tab for school safety report school safety report takes you to the PA School safe Schools website and from there there's a dashboard to access information for any of the school districts any entity within Pennsylvania this page houses information going back as far as the 2017-2018 school year through last school year so from here you can access any of the reports that have been filed for Abington or any other school you see on this first page what we are required to report are all incidents even if they are code of conduct incidents and and Mr file Mr barriers will explain what that means as well as any other incident that is State reportable you see what some of those examples are fights bullying an assault threats there's additional

130information that is also included that is related to truancy and attendance one of the interesting ways that the data is presented is what's referred to as a geospatial view and you see that on the slide on the left hand side and what that shows is a Green Dot for each of the 22 school districts in Montgomery County and with the geospatial view shows is the incidents per 100 students for each of their school districts you know on the right hand side of the slide you see each of the 22 districts listed for 2122 in the number of State reportable offenses non-code of conduct offenses that each of their school districts reported you see Abington listed second from the bottom what you see is last year Abington School District reported 65 incidents that are on the

131list of state reportable offenses that we need to provide to the state each year 65 incidents out of 8292 students so it's a incident per 100 students of 0.78 which was the lowest rate within the county the final column rank out of 686 is wary to the school district's ranks out of all of the entities which include school districts Charter Schools Cyber Charter schools in the state each of the entities that reports this data Abington last year was ranked 642nd out of 686 meaning 44 entities within the state reported better lower numbers lower incident rate than Abington School District but again what is not included in this count is any incident that is based on Code of Conduct so that might be an instance such as you know running in the hall minor physical you

132know somebody pushing someone else not a fight those types of incidents usually are not going to result in an exclusionary consequence they're going to be handled in a different manner within the school and that is what Mr Barris and Mr file will share a little bit more information about with regard to how those types of incidents are handled so first Mr five so it goes without saying that we certainly want to avoid any exclusionary measures in the middle school and we try to do that through our proactive measures our school-wide positive behavior support system and the explicitly taught expectations are ways we do hope to capture positive behavior on the part of the students additional ways we communicate school rules and expectations include the publication of our student handbook and grade level and other team

133meetings while we hope to promote positivity we also do share potential consequences with our students when a student's action requires a consequence we do act according to District policy but we also consider the individual student and other related factors one of the reasons we use something like restorative practices as a consequence or part of a consequence is to make sure that we are making a resolution to a situation also a learning experience for the kids we never want to lose sight of that as part of this process with that being said there are serious consequences like an exclusion from school I'm Dr melkor related those that may be state reportable where there are exclusionary offenses we don't take them lightly I can say though with the change in the grade spans we have increased the

134impact of our of our school-wide positive behavior support system we are focusing heavily on our students being safe responsible and kind we have made plans to alter the original plan to get us through the remainder of this year and are already reflecting and planning on ways we can be proactive and get a solid start off to the next year again hoping to avoid any kind of exclusionary situation for the kids and to be proactive and positive and I'll pass it over to Mr Barrios for the high school thank you Mr file good evening at the beginning of each Academic Year we hold grade level Town Hall meetings during the meetings we provide an overview of the Abington senior high school and we review the student handbook during the review we also delve into the student

135code of conduct which is in the handbook in January a second town hall meeting was held for each grade this meeting served to remind students about upcoming events and behavior experts expectations in our school it is also important to understand our intentions Behind These meanings our Collective goal is to build a sense of community school-wide and to let the student body know they will be learning in a safe environment where learning is our priority we also inform our students of our open door policy for questions and Council so they they can have the best experience at Abington Senior High School ultimately we want to provide students with opportunities to build the confidence of students to achieve their unique goals with respect to peer mediation during the summer of 2021 approximately 15 Abington senior high school

136students were trained as peer mediators the training program under the direction of Mr David travasquez pro bono coordinator for the Pennsylvania Bar Association focused on finding solutions to student conflicts before they escalated into physical altercations student mediators are supported by members of the counseling department and building Administration in their function as student mediators peer mediators were also trained at Abington middle school and will function in this capacity when they migrate to the senior high in future years the school-based youth Aid panel serves to support an initiative between the school district and the Montgomery County District Attorney's office woven into this initiative is a partnership with Georgetown University Center for Juvenile Justice Reform Georgetown University along with the DA's office will review the suspension and referral to police data sets with the end goal of evaluating

137the success of the program in addressing disparity and disproportionality in our student population the focus of the youth Aid panel is to provide alternatives to exclusion from school and law enforcement consequences school-based community service is a restorative practice employed by Avenue Sierra High School administrative team students have the opportunity to complete campus-based Services activities while receiving informal mentoring from staff members and the student's grade level principal school-based community service serves to enhance the level of price students have in their school earlier you heard a very robust presentation about our counseling Department's interventions however I'd like to touch on a few more the counseling Department's intervention support students and Families by addressing barriers barriers to learning whether academic social and emotional or behavioral in nature in many cases students receive school-based support for members of the

138student services department along with outside providers who address attendance and behavior concerns these supports may include individual counseling parent-teacher conferences group counseling and referrals to the school-based intervention teams principal conferences are an integral role in our practice parent counselor and student meetings are essential an essential part of our work with students and parents and Guardians when students engage in conduct that may lead to a suspension our Collective goal is to provide meaningful feedback to students to change behavior and to share expectations for Effective problem solving principal conferences of this nature are focused on students meeting expectations and finding success in school student conductors refute reviewed as a component of the meetings and there are times when consequences are extended because of the conduct under review an essential part of the meeting is for this student's

139voice to be heard and an understanding about the reasons for the choices made by the student the student is given an opportunity to identify corrective action and take ownership for their actions the meetings are restorative in nature with the ultimate goal of change and maintaining a safe and orderly environment for the school community the counselor's role is to review the academic progress of the student and to describe supports in place for the student and or steps to Student Success the parents and Guardians have a voice in this process as well and the emphasis with the parent is the partner between the school the parent and the child the senior high school introduced an evidence-based student mentoring program for the start of the 2022-2023 school year the link crew program was enacted for all incoming 9th

140and 10th grade students during our first year of reconfiguration link crew students serve as peer mentors using advisory pre to connect with students mentors offer support to newly enrolled students through building tours link crew has also supported incoming students by having activities that Foster a positive Community such as Opening Day activities study sessions for midterms and a movie night just to cite a few examples of their work thank you so as you heard from Mr file and also Mr barriers as well as in the last presentation the goal is to extend these alternative types of disciplinary consequences restorative practices K-12 you heard efforts that have taken place at Copper Beach in addition to training peer mentors at the senior high school in the Middle School we've also engaged in training fifth grade students to serve

141in in that capacity at the elementary schools and then as they become sixth grade students and middle school students next year to have that opportunity as well on the screen you see some of the social emotional learning opportunities that you've heard described in student services presentations in the past our second step program which is available K to eight to help students with decision making and building you know the the ability to make appropriate choices and rethink Ed which is a new program at the senior high school that you approved for implementation for this school year schwebs the school-wide positive behavior intervention system that you're in the last presentation again is an effort that has an impact on discipline on Behavior within the building and again becomes an opportunity for us through some of the Committees

142that you heard the student services presentation to look at data look at programs look at Effectiveness and make adjustments likewise scenario review and data analysis we've implemented this year working with school administrative teams working principals Council working in some of the superintendents committee meetings for bullying climate Equitable practices to look at sample disciplinary scenarios and identify what the response was look at the data look at alternative ways the situations could have have been handled and look at through a restorative lens instead of an exclusionary lens and then finally the restorative practices you heard peer mediation and youth Aid panel mentioned Youth Court is one additional example that we are investigating uh exploring as a potential opportunity that we can introduce over the course of the next school year at the middle school we're working in

143all of these uh restorative efforts with peer mediation training and potential for Youth Court through the Pennsylvania Bar association's pro bono office Mr Dave travazquez has been heavily invested throughout the years in the school district and working with school-based teams and working with students to conduct those trainings so that concludes the the brief overview of disciplinary consequences restorative efforts that are underway and we're happy to answer any questions thank you questions or comments from the board floor is open I have a question well um thank you for your presentation I appreciate it I know that it came up last time we met and I was doing some I went ahead and I did some digging around on the safe schools report and I had some questions because we have 65 incidents last year compared to

144Norristown of a 1015 but we had many more incidents involving law enforcement especially last year and considerably more than Norristown last year and considerably more arrests being 41 last year with Norristown only having seven so I don't know to do our arrests and our incidents involving law enforcement are those including our school resource officers okay yeah so what we will do at the end of the year is we'll do a crosswalk between the information we have within Skyward and the information that the police department has from the reports that the two sros file with every Township Police Department any involvement of a law enforcement official with a student related to discipline is to be counted so with my earlier example of you know the the elementary school student who inadvertently brought a pocket knife to

145school if part of the process with that student is a meeting between the parent student and officer hawkwind or school police officer to talk about you know the seriousness of it we will identify that as police involvement because he is a law enforcement officer for the school district with respect to the arrests what counts in that category is even if there is a summary citation if even if a student for physical altercation within the senior high school is issued a disorderly conduct citation that counts as an arrest it's it's not necessarily a child is removed from school or physically arrested but any any consequence that is resultant from the law enforcement involvement with that incident is is listed within that category um and I also I want to just voice my um encouragement of a

146yeah I mean of what you're doing as far as restorative practices and I I'd really love to see that I've I've worked in situations where we've had youth court and seen that it really benefits our students um so I'm a big fan of that and I appreciate that you guys are delving more into that any additional questions or comments from the board um can you speak a little bit more about the school-based community service school-based community service could be for example if a student um I'll just give you an ex we'll give a name but let's say a student happened to be caught vaping THC in a bathroom we would depending on the student's record we would take a look at the facts and assign a student to youth Aid panel with the condition of

147doing community service what that would look like it could be 15 to 20 hours of campus-based cleaning up after school the parent student would have to agree to this but doing different things throughout the school in some instances if a student's having academic trouble could be assigning that student after school to work on grades and things of that nature does that answer your question so the community service is taking place outside of school hours yes yeah okay thank you yep and I do have one more question um so um Dr melkar you talked a lot about data that we're collecting related to interventions and what's working and um based on the information that we have I know we had a pretty extensive presentation in terms of academics and so if I think about how we

148use data to measure our success in academics is there a similar sort of thing that we have for this sure and I'm going to ask Mr file Mr Barris to talk a little bit about some of the data tools that have been developed for them to look at you know for instance locations where different offenses are taking place the types of offenses that are taking place the types of consequences um ultimately you know we're looking at data with regard to disparate impact of who the students are who are receiving consequences in what types of consequences they are receiving but the data meetings are occurring at the secondary schools as part of weekly building administrative team meetings and then also with involvement of myself as well as Dr Brown and looking at you know what is

149that data telling us as far as who the students are what additional services and and supports we can put in place did a great job um I would say in addition to um what what Dr melkor shared we do take a careful look at um the where the when the who we also look at um you know individual learning environments if maybe a newer teacher is struggling with classroom management and they're having classroom disruptions how can we help them out so we'll look at it from that point of view but um but we try to take a look at you know week to week month to month over the course of the Year Dr Brown's been very helpful this year with creating a an interface that's simple to use and and to pull the data

150quickly which we love and and also to look at that and and offer solutions for individual students we do at times take that into team meetings when relevant we also will work with counselors and and of course families throughout the entire process of um of a situation especially if it's a student with recurring office referrals or offenses thank you any additional questions or comments from the board another vocab where it comes to mind and that's transparency thank you for taking the time to show community members where they can find the data because there's nothing that that's being hidden but when it's exposed making sure that we have a plan to address it so I thank you for that we will move to agenda item number three which is comments from citizens comments from citizens are

151being conducted both in person and by phone the phone number to participate in public comment is 267 -715 3717 and is on the screen at this time you may join in by calling in on your mobile or landline phone and if there's anyone present within the room please be sure to state your name and address the mics are to the left and to the right of you hello everybody can you can everyone hear me yes ma'am okay great my name is Karen Jean Charles I'm on Osceola my son has a statement he would like to make come on it's okay you are welcome young man you are welcome in this space your voice is powerful and we are here to hear what you have to say hi my name is Kason um I'm in ninth

152grade and I'm currently at the high school and I just wanted to like read something that I wrote about bullying at the high school because I think it's kind of an important topic that needs to be talked about more okay okay he wants me to start Edmonton School District takes pride in being an anti-bullying School District in fact the district is designated no place for hate but it is but is it really true as a student that has been in the school district for most of my life my life has been pretty interesting to say the least the school district May deal with and give random punishments to people who are caught bullying others but what about those who are randomly attacked what about people who are stuck in a place where they are too

153afraid to talk to anyone I recently started High School this year as a freshman coming into a completely newer faster and more chaotic environment has been hard but there's one specific thing that's been following me around since elementary school bullying the first half of this year went smoothly for me I enjoyed most of my classes and I had someone that I knew from an old class or a friend in most of my classes but when the third term came along I began my gym class now don't get me wrong I love my gym class I have a I have good friends there and I enjoy myself most of the time and most of all I get to play my favorite sport volleyball but with the good always comes to bad I've been insecure about myself

154most of my life and I know that I always feel so I'm not good enough or I'm underperforming everyone else I frequently compare myself to other people but doing better than me at my school and on top of that I've struggled with body image most of my life I've always felt like I was too fat or wished I was skinny the kids in my gym class would not only criticize and ridicule me because of it but they would make comments that made me extremely uncomfortable however I'm not a confrontational person so it's hard for me to tell them to stop not only that but I'm afraid it'll only make me easier to pick on and make me seem easier to pick on this went on for a while and I had to keep up keeping

155doing all the bullets are being shot at me I didn't understand why I had done or why all this was happening to me and eventually I broke and one class of teaching got so bad I was made fun of for my weight my looks and was compared to a notorious child predator for being simply black and fat after the class I couldn't help but cry on one of my friend's shoulders sexual remarks were also made towards me as well but thanks to my family and friends who stood closely beside me I was able to rise above in The Bullying eventually became less frequent the thing is there are multiple times in instances where I considered self-harm starvation or even suicide because of how hurtful the things being said to me were even though the things

156even though things have calmed down there's still another question why are reprimands not consistent for every child of the school district saying that kids are mean or it shouldn't happen doesn't solve the problem in any way and when they tell you to just ignore it that only makes you feel smaller so I want to know what steps the school is going to take to change things the school's current protocols for bullying have obviously not been working as people on me are still being people like me are still being picked on daily just because the kids stop doesn't mean it couldn't happen to anyone else an adult shouldn't have to annoy School administrators with their problems because nothing is being done about it on top of that the guidance counselors at the school are really helpful

157but when it comes to bullying their Authority is limited and with that being said my last question is is the Irvington school district really a no place for hate [Applause] thank you for your voice hi my name is Kathy Spalding I live at 1708 High Avenue in Willow Grove I'm right by the Crestmont Park Willow Hill is the closest elementary school to me I I'm concerned about bullying too I have seen bullying I've lived in a Township uh June would be 27 years I remember when I used to walk my dog on the way to work and the middle school kids will be waiting for the bus several times I had to intervene and stop fights and and keep the kids apart and it was so bad until I made that a daily occurrence for

158months and I would stay there until the school bus actually came I mean maybe I should have addressed it but I didn't know where because I'm not a parent I don't have any kids in the school I've also seen a lot of bullying outside the school like in Crestmont park right after school sometimes on the weekends I mean I see this I saw it last week it's um so I'm just wondering is there what what can we do or the school only wants to address bullying that occurs on school grounds and during school hours that's that's what I'm just saying bullying is is really a problem and I see it because I'm out all the time uh with my dog and I'm playing with the kids I consider my house dog and kid friendly so

159a lot of the kids do come over from the neighborhood and I have water and juice boxes and snacks for them and they tell me about things that are going on if I happen to know the kid and know the parents I will go to the parents which I have done in other casings but I mean it's I personally don't think enough is being done to address this problem thank you for your voice there are mics to the left and to the right of you please be sure to state your name and address for the short shortness hi everybody my name is Leona goldshaw and I live at 1711 sharpless Road in Meadowbrook I have three children who are two in the currently in the Abington School district one who is a sophomore in college

160now but went through the Abington School District my I also have a son in ninth grade and a daughter in seventh grade I'm also an education attorney so I hear a lot of what's happening in the community about bullying specifically my daughter in seventh grade has been severely bullied and I also talked to many of her friends and other parents so what I'm about to say I will try and keep it short but it is not just my personal experience it's my experience from being a Community member so harassment and bullying what I have seen has been very much based on race religion disability lgbtq status it is severe it is pervasive and it has increased dramatically from the time my daughter who is now 20 years old and went through the system to my

16112 year old who's in seventh grade it has it is I am not the only one who thinks this it is a real pervasive and severe problem that this school district needs to address immediately we all know that mental health is a problem you see it all over the news many of these really young kids are self-harming they are injuring themselves they are going to hospitals they are having suicidal ideation and most of the time it's because of unaddressed bullying I'm going to just give you a couple of examples so you can see the severity just yesterday my daughter who is lgbtq and Jewish was shoved aside in the hallway with someone she didn't know but it's been talked about and said the kid said to her move it Jew another child last week held

162up a Heil uh Hitler picture and swastikas to her face and said Heil Hitler Heil Hitler repeatedly in her face another child that same day made a joke I asked out a Jewish girl the other day and she gave me her number not her name in reference to the Holocaust tattoos that are placed on your arm the same day her friend texted her uh she just after she just been told to move it Jew that was a child in front of her on the bus was drawing a swastika onto the seat in front of him as she walked back through the hallways she was another child she didn't know said ew she's gay based on how she looked a friend of hers the day before had listened to a song that was repeatedly played on

163Spotify called treat you better referring to hating over Jews turning them into soap as well as was done in concentration camps the f'sler is used routinely to refer to her lgbtq status Kanye West's comments led to a slew of oh we support Kanye and we don't like Jews that was unaddressed what is happening now on these beautiful slides is not working it is just not working it looks good it sounds good but wearing silly socks to school as a no place for hate is not going to do anything we need to pervade but we need to go beyond the surface level and penetrate the platitudes we need to go under the core and educate our children as to what they are saying because I do not think they understand the ramifications of what they are

164saying I do not think they have any understanding about The Echoes of history that they bring up when they make these comments they need to be educated not disciplined and sometimes these things do get to the right places and sometimes these children are disciplined and they joke about the half day in school suspension they got where they got to play on their phone or they got to do whatever they wanted but they don't learn anything I want to thank you for your voice because it's a solution and the solution is to bring in one of these numerous programs that exist like no place for hate from ADL the Southern Poverty Law Center Facing History in ourselves they go they create Committees of stakeholders among students administrators and teachers to work together to address it in

165ways that can be creatively addressed within the school setting I've made notes of your concerns and I'm going to ask that you follow up with an email with a list of those things thank you so much for your voice there are mics to the left and to the right of you please be sure to state your name and address um hi my name is Eileen Denton and I live at 1978 Moreland Road and some of you may recall me coming last year when my seventh grade child was also lgbtq was being bullied incessantly unfortunately I had to take her out of the school and so she did cyber school which she hated but unfortunately she was also suicidal and Miss Jacobs the social worker said she probably should go to inpatient mental health not that

166something should be done about the treatment that she was receiving fortunately I didn't listen and she was home and she was back at school this year she's having a better year I think because she's learned to blend in and keep her head down but I've talked to many other parents that take me right back to where we were and listening to you takes me right back to that last year I came specifically tonight because of this bullying presentation but it took 17 slides of stuff before bullying was even mentioned I didn't really write anything ahead of time but I will just say one thing the American Society for school counselors recommends that there are 250 students per one counselor in the elementary school if we're including the school psychologist 311 children for one okay 311.

167if you take the school psychologist out which you should because they have to spend most of their time doing testing okay that takes it to 934 to 1. now if you have second step those are lessons that have to be taught you need to have enough counselors to make counseling be a special like art and music and PE and have a counselor come in and do the Second Step lessons I have no idea how these teachers are possibly have enough time to do a second step lesson if you notice the scores in seventh grade Tanked and bullying peaks in seventh grade how can you think those things are not related how can a kid learn when all they're thinking about is what's going to happen to me next and how can teachers teach when there's

168fights going on outside the door kids are crying kids are having problems they can't do their job I've encountered great teachers and great counselors but they cannot do their job when they have this kind of stuff going on I mean I want to love the school district I've been a part of it I have kids in the high school too you know but it's so frustrating to come and say something and I know that you guys care but it's just like when is is something really going to change the slides are great but the reality is it's not working so please please talk to other school districts I am seriously questioning those statistics for violence I am a youth librarian and I deal multiple days during the week with middle school and high school students

169from Colonial School District there is no way we have fewer instances of violence than they do it's not possible I talk to those kids all during the week not possible I'm not sure what's going on here but there is a serious disconnect between the parents and the kids and and everybody up here and everybody in the administration serious disconnect and I'm not here because my child's suffering I'm here because of everything I hear and the people that email me and contact me because they know I've been here and I can sympathize with them unfortunately I can't do anything other than show up here and state my case again and say please listen please thank you there are mics to the left and to the right I'm rashona Myers 1436 Marshall Lane I'm here tonight on

170behalf of my daughter who's in Middle School last year I mean I'm right here I I hear everybody here and it they're my daughter seventh grade was a hard transition year she was physically verbally bullied by kids in her class I spent the first three months of our seventh grade year trying to keep her in school between her guidance counselor the vice principal Monday mornings Fridays Wednesdays were a struggle if you look at her attendance record you'd be like how is this kid pass she is academically strong she is bright she is smart we finally got her through the year she did well academically but it took a great toll on her social and emotional well-being as well as mine spent my day just trying to get her through the Academic Year this year has

171been a bit better we have sort of overcome that social aspect there's less bullying but we faced a new challenge this year and that's anti-semitism she is in class with more of her peers but there are times where she is sitting in class where maybe the teacher is not paying attention or there's a substitute teacher and kids in the class will make remarks making jokes about Hitler making jokes of drawing swastikas on things that said the bus one kid gave approval for drawing a swastikan a sweatshirt she sent me a text in class which I know she's not supposed to do she's not supposed to have her phones out and she said Mommy I'm not I'm uncomfortable I said go to the guidance counselor go to the principal go file a report I can't why

172not I'm afraid my kid is afraid to say something you have a program say see something say something these kids are terrified they are terrified of being who they are and the ramifications of what will happen if they report another student I picked up the phone and made the phone call for her as somebody who has faced similar things over the course of my life I at least have the knowledge and the strength to make that phone call she doesn't like Leona said I have to believe many of these kids don't know what they're saying and the ramifications of it but on the other hand I'm not so naive to think that in this day and age they don't know what that means so your system your parade slides your great presentations your policies are

173failing maybe not our Elementary School students but definitely our middle school students on mass scale and it have to believe it's rolling over into the high school as well I worry about my eighth grader going to the ninth grade next year and what she's going to have to face it has been a hard three years for everyone and it's only getting harder and I'm not sure we're doing our job as parents as Educators as administrators when I know we have the resources in place to do it so let's come together as a community and let's really work on the solutions and not just put together fancy slideshows thank you for your voice you're welcome there are mics to the left and to the right of you seeing that there are no additional speakers in the

174room Mr Lutz callers on the line our next citizen for a public comment is phone number ending in 6158 please State your full name and address we can hear you if you have a device playing in the background there may be a little lag time but if you can hear me we can hear you hi can you hear me yes I can okay good evening everyone my name is Barbara anderschwartz I'm at 2132 Susquehanna Road in Abington thank you for taking my call I would first like to say a huge thank you to Abington Township Police Department and our school resource officers for keeping our schools and Community safe the fact that we have amazing fros makes me feel secure sending Mike's child to school in this day and age knowing that our schools are

175not soft targets and thankfully you did not listen to the crazy and sane ideology When Miss Clayman wanted to get rid of our school officers now withhold your respect to some of the board members it was surprising to say the least that you actually sat up and listened to these concerns from the parents at the last meeting about bullying and about the bathrooms being closed as most of the time when it comes to public comments you start the stopwatch and start listening your incumbents for this community you were voted in by the people to represent us and our children please remember this when you cut us off and sometimes thank us for her voice Administration thank you for your presentations tonight you have all put a lot of work into telling us about your days

176with our children however it sounds at least to me like lip service it's my child that is being targeted by someone I want to know what is being done about it and I want to know that it will never happen again not to hear that you are checking boxes and patting yourself on the back for a job well done Dr fetcher Dan Odom and Judy bonds have all done an amazing job with the anti-bullying committee however it is severely lacking in parents and students we need more parents to step up and join this committee and help give ideas listen and share your experiences at the schools and what your children come home and tell you about their day as well as keeping the district accountable to keeping this District at no place for hate community

177please please consider joining the anti-bullying committee at only at the the meeting only happens a couple of times a year and so far since covert has been on a zoom call it doesn't take a whole lot of time and I would suggest that to the board as I have only seen one member attend the committee meetings that some of you should attend it as well to see what's going on I will thank those people for who turn up and um are trying to make changes to the school for the bullying stuff we can do better than this we really can but it takes everybody in our community to help and the parents and the students need to step up to and tell the administration what is going on thank you very much good night thank

178you for your voice Mr Lutz our next citizen for public comment is phone number ending in 1797 please State your full name and address hi Tara ing on Gregory row and Rydel can you hear me there's a big lag so yes we can um okay uh good evening I wanted to thank you for the orientations also to say I'm so grateful to everyone who spoke before me tonight we need to keep the focus on these serious issues and as Mrs Brown says to do the work parents are not upset that the district isn't perfect we we know a lot of districts are going through through similar issues but what what's upsetting is the lack of Frank dialogue and real action on the tough issues um first I'd like to clarify something from the part of

179the presentation on social workers I heard that there are three social workers um and I wasn't sure if that's for the high school only or if that covers a district if they're more like I wanted to know how many social workers are at the middle school and how many are at the high school and uh referring to the peer conflict flow chart that was presented tonight that chart does not address what happens when they're repeating when there is a repeating cycle of harassment or minor incidents of violence for example an act that does not remove the bully from the school by explosion many of these instances may not make it into the safe schools data reporting numbers but they still have a significant impact on students as we've heard tonight I've heard many accounts of

180repeated harassment or minor assaults this is separate from the very eloquent speakers that spoke tonight um with no end in sight so parents and students that don't feel the district is doing enough or anything at all or those who are affected over a long period of time with no discernible Improvement they're not upset because they don't know if Johnny Smith was suspended for two days for assaulting their kid they're upset because the harassment continues Miss Glasser said it best at the last board meeting one day of being harassed or assaulted is too much and the families in this situation are not going to be happy until this Behavior stops nor should they be and they should have every child should be able to go to school in an environment where they feel welcome safe and

181secure I have one more new concern that was brought to my attention tonight about the middle school bathrooms I just heard today that the doors have been removed from all of the bathrooms at the middle schools and now you can see into them including the urinals I wanted to know if this is true and if it is true why was this done and how are you protecting students privacy this is not an appropriate way to solve the bathroom problems for example if a male student is using the urinal they may not know that they're visible from the hallway and that's a huge problem I have more comments but I'll save I think I'm out of time so I'll save it for the second session thank you thank you for your voice Mr Lutz can you

182confirm if there are no additional callers on the line that is correct thank you are there any additional speakers in the room seeing that there are none Dr fetcher thank you Mr Brown uh first I want to take a moment to acknowledge our ninth grade student this evening I understand it takes a lot of courage to come out here and share your concerns but it is essential and important that we hear your voice that we hear everything that you experience in order for us to address this and I really appreciate that and I understand that that is not an easy task to come out here so I want to take a moment individually to address you so thank you very much at I also want to acknowledge what I've heard this evening and it is

183something to which we are facing many challenges for any child to go through our a school day and experience bullying and some of the stories that we hear is unacceptable and it is our job as a school district to continue to improve to continue to look at what we have in place to see what's not working and to brainstorm and come up with new ideas we heard a little bit about the bullying committee from one of the callers today I encourage any parent to be part of that as a you know to join together to for us to be able to listen to the concerns that are being brought to you to brainstorm ideas together as a community because without that we will not be we will not be successful I also um want to

184acknowledge the fact that it is essential for us as a school district to evaluate our programs evaluate who we are bringing in to speak to the students um look at what types of audits we can do what is part of our curriculum what are what types of resources do we have what's working what's not working and I definitely hear what has been stated tonight and I agree with what has been stated tonight as this is a huge problem and something to which we need to face and we need to address so I appreciate the time that um many of you have taken this evening to share these concerns I I also appreciate the fact that there have been some really good ideas in the conversations that I've had over the past couple weeks since our

185last board meeting I had opportunity to meet with some individuals parents and listen to some ideas that they shared and I think that's important for us we can see things from our perspective but it's important to hear the voices of our children I just encourage open dialogue if there is an issue please work with the school please work with the principal there is no reason why we can't come together and work with our children to make this a better experience and I'll go back to what I stated in the beginning every day for a child in any school should be full of fun education and it should be it they should feel safe and if that's not occurring we have a lot of work to do which we do and it is essential for us

186to work together to make sure that that's the experience of every child coming through our school system so I just acknowledge what is being said tonight I appreciate it and please know that it is something to which I internalize I think I take very seriously and I assure all of you that I will continue to lead this district and work with the staff in this District to address these issues but also to partner with you parents and our community members for solutions to to work together in terms of there was mention of in the bathroom situation the doors were removed on bathrooms for security purposes there are no line of sight within the bathroom we had one instance where students felt that a bathroom that had two different doors on it um what one of

187the doors didn't did not make them feel comfortable because of if someone went walked into the threshold and kind of looked they could see the Stalls so with that we worked with the students talked to the student those individual students and are replacing the door on that particular doorway so there will be one locked door but the other door that is open has a wall so you cannot see in similar to the senior high school where um you walk into to the bathroom and there's a wall you turn and then make another left and then there's uh sinks um part of other than security we we also want to make sure that we are the doors are not locked we heard a lot about concern about the doors being locked at the at um our

188last meeting and and the access to these bathrooms should the bathroom not be able to be in function we will we will put either rope or stanchion in front with a sign that it says out of order it is is one of the efforts to try to address the ongoing concerns that were brought to our attention but also for monitoring purposes in terms of sound and individual staff members that are located outside of the bathroom to monitor the bathrooms thank you thank you Dr fetcher that takes us to agenda item number five which is personnel Miss Fraser can you please read the recommendation for approval of the Personnel addendum uh sure it is recommended it's recommended that the board of directors approves the changes in personnel as reflected in personal addendum number five one and

189confidential Personnel addendum number 5.1 a do I have a second second thank you Mr Brown the Personnel agenda begins with item number one in the request for leaves of absence from four professional staff members I bring your attention to item number two and retirement of Miss Dawn vazi special education teacher at Willow Hill Elementary School who has served the district for 22 years the Personnel addendum continues with compensation for parent meetings IEP meetings interpreter and translation services and support Personnel items thank you questions or comments from the board as always we say thank you to our retirees 22 years of service is a lot thank you for your service uh Mrs Flanagan Mr Allen aye Ms Frazier aye Mr K aye Dr Mowry aye Mrs Glasser aye Mr Muhammad aye Ms Basie aye Mrs Brown

190I eyes have an emotion passes Miss Fraser can you please read the recommendation for approval of the financial report yes um it is recommended that the board of school directors approve the financial report for the period ending February 28 2023 as reflected in addendum number 6.1 do I have a second second thank you Dr fetcher I'm going to ask Mr 180 to please summarize the February 2023 financial report thank you Dr fetcher as of February 28th we received 141.9 million dollars of Revenue which is 84.3 percent of the 168.5 million dollar Revenue budget last year through February we received 134 4.1 million dollars which was 82.2 percent of the then budget Revenue collections are 7.8 million dollars ahead of last year year to date we've expanded 101.2 million dollars over 180.9 million dollar expense budget

191which equates to 55.9 percent the same time period last year 96.2 million dollars were expanded which is 54.4 percent of the then 176.9 million dollar budget expended 4.98 million dollars more this year compared to last year uh at the same time with respect to our Capital project fund the district paid senior high school project contractors just above nine thousand dollars in the month of February that concludes my summary report if there's any questions I'll do my best to answer them thank you questions or comments from the board explain again Mr Allen aye Ms Frazier aye Mr K aye aye Dr Mowry aye Mrs Glasser aye Mr Muhammad aye Ms basey aye Mrs Brown I I have an emotion passes Miss Fraser can you please read the recommendation for approval of the payment of bills uh

192yes it is recommended that the board of school directors approves the payment of bills for the period ending February 28 2023 as reflected in addendum number 7.1 second we have a second Dr Fletcher thank you Mr Brown I will be happy to answer any questions that you may have regarding the payment of the bills questions or comments from the board Mrs playing again Mr Allen aye Ms Frazier aye Mr K aye Dr Mary aye Mrs Glasser aye Mr Muhammad aye Ms baisy aye Mrs Brown I I have an emotion passes Miss Fraser can you please read the recommendation for permits for use of buildings and grounds oh yes recommended that the board of school directors approves the applications for permits for use of buildings and grounds as reflected in addendum number 8.1 all permits are

193subject to change per the provisions of the health and safety plan pertaining to covid-19 pandemic we have a second Dr Fletcher thank you Mr Brown the permanent continues to reflect requests for buildings and grounds for meetings and other school activities and events I bring your attention to permit number 297 which is for the Abington School District art Department art display and exhibit that will occur April 3rd through April 4th from 12 30 pm to 6 30 p.m at the administration building also permit number 299 is for elementary Camp ASAP which is Abington summer Academic Program thank you Dr fetcher questions or comments from the board let's play it again Mr Allen aye Ms Frazier aye Mr K hi Dr Mary aye Mrs Glasser aye Mr Muhammad aye Ms Basie aye Mrs Brown I always have

194an emotion passes Miss Fraser can you please read the recommendation for awards of contracts yes yes it's recommended that the board of school directors approves the awards of contracts as reflected in addendum number 9.1 do I have a second thank you Dr fetcher thank you Mr Brown tonight for your consideration we have one award of contract and that is for Network components uh this award will replace one of our remaining two uninterruptable power supply or UPS units in our server room questions or comments Frazier aye Mr K aye Dr Mowry aye Mrs Glasser aye Mr Muhammad aye Ms faisy aye Mrs Brown I I have an emotion passes Miss Fraser can you please read the recommendation for breakfast and lunch prices yes it is recommended that the board of school directors establishes the following breakfast

195and lunch prices for the 2023-2024 school year as reflected in addendum number 10.1 second we have a second Dr fetcher thank you Mr Brown uh we are recommending no change in meal prices for the 2023 uh 2024 school year the cost for lunch will remain 2.95 for elementary students 3.30 for students at the middle school and Senior High School the price for adult lunches will remain at 5.80 per lunch I remind you that a 10 cent meal increase occurred for the 2022-2023 school year and followed a five cent increase that that was followed by a five cent increase that was in 2018 and 2019 school year and again in the 2021-2022 school year regarding the breakfast prices we will maintain prices at one dollar and forty cents for elementary level and 1.70 for breakfast at

196the secondary level I remind you that although we although a 10 cent meal increase was approved for the 2022-2023 school year Governor wolf enacted a universal free breakfast program for the current school year as of October 1st 2022. Governor Shapiro has announced continuation of the universal free breakfast program as part of his proposed budget the last increase in breakfast prices prior to the 2022-2023 school year occurred for the 2015-16 school year thank you questions or comments from the board I'm happy to see that there is no price increase as far as balances for lunch can you speak towards that the average balance and if students are disqualified from certain activities due to a balance first I'll take the last question and then I'm going to turn it over to Mr lionetti students are not disqualified

197for any events or anything based on school lunch or breakfast balances thank you but Mr lion 80 if you could answer the first question Shirley Dr fetcher uh presently across the elementary and secondary schools we have 1010 students that have negative balances in their student food service accounts the average her student is roughly between 30 and 35 dollars per student that's just an average IC ranges as low as 10 cents debt as high as 419 dollars of debt going unpaid by students the reason for for that is the law does not allow us to discriminate against those folks who are unable to pay for a meal for whatever reason and our food service program provides the meal that is that is requested we do send letters each month through the principal's office requesting payment a

198lot of parents reach out to me and we work out circumstances regarding those unpaid balances and the letters that go home do encourage families to if they have true need apply for the school lunch program through the application process and some families follow through the total amount of debt right now is just under thirty three thousand dollars so it's significant and it climbs um each week thank you and is that that accumulated from when lunch was free or is that that just that is just for this year just for this year okay thank you very much for that information any additional questions or comments from the board Miss Flanagan Mr Allen aye Ms Frazier aye Mr K aye Dr Mowry aye Mrs Glasser aye Mr Muhammad aye Miss basey aye Mrs Brown I eyes have

199an emotion passes Miss Fraser can you please read the recommendation for psychological testing services yes it is recommended that the board of school directors authorize the administration to contract with pediatric therapeutic services for the provision of school Psychology Services through June 30th 2023 in an amount not to exceed twenty six thousand dollars we have a second Dr Fletcher thank you Mr Brown this recommendation is to authorize the administration in a contract with pediatric therapeutic services for the provision of school Psychology Services through June 30th questions or comments from the board something that's being at all levels so this this is due to a vacancy and as we fill in the vacancy uh this to do evaluations of students we've had a vacancy that will we anticipate and on April 5th in a department and this

200is to get have services to continue that that position as we fill that position any additional questions or comments from the board Mrs Flanagan Mr Allen aye Ms Frazier aye aye Mr K aye Dr Mary aye Mrs Glasser aye Mr Muhammad aye Ms Facey aye Mrs Brown I always have an emotion passes Miss Fraser can you please read the recommendation for the confidential student matters yes it is recommended that the board of school directors approves the confidential student matters as reflected in addendum number 12.1 thank you we have a second Dr fetcher thank you Mrs Brown keeping in mind the confidentiality of student matters I can answer questions that you may have questions or comments from the board Mrs Flanagan Mr Allen aye Mrs Frazier aye Mr K aye Dr Mowry aye Mrs Glasser aye

201Mr Muhammad aye Ms faisy aye Mrs Brown I I have an emotion passes Dr fetcher any additional reports for this evening yes Mr Brown I provide the conference attendance and professional leaves for your information I bring your attention to miss Marie Elson art teacher at the senior high school who will be presenting at the National Art Education Association conference on April 13th and 14th her presentations will share create creativity promoting activities as well as strategies for using Contemporary Art in the K-12 art classroom thank you very impressive any questions from the board in regard to that any other business that may be appropriately part of me brought up by my fellow board members seeing none we open back up for public comment comments from citizens are being conducted both in person and by phone the

202phone number to participate in public comment is 267-715-3717 it is featured on the screen at this time you may call in using your landline or mobile phone please be sure to state your name and address if there is anyone within the building who would like to make a statement there are mics to the right and to the left of you I'll be brief but I just wanted to just restate what I had said earlier about the number of counselors per student um and as far as the Middle School the recommendation is 250 students per one counselor at the middle school according to my calculations from the slide is 293 to 1. you might say oh that's not terrible but if we have a crisis situation which we clearly do then you really need to address

203it with crisis level Staffing not above the recommendation the senior high school is at 250 to one so that's considered appropriate but as I mentioned Elementary School the foundation of everything that happens after that 934 counselors okay 934 students to one counselor okay the school psychologist cannot counsel students they have to do testing we have to pay outside agencies because there's not somebody to do all the testing that needs to be done the school psychologist can't do that there's not enough people to teach the Second Step lessons to provide the support to be eyes and ears to know the students to see what's going on you cannot expect the teachers to do this they're teachers they're trying to teach they can't be doing this they can't be addressing bullying all the time these kids get

204set free in the Middle School in sixth grade and you see how unprepared they are a social emotional development is not there they have not learned the things they need to learn to have the freedom that the middle school provides and you see the consequences so I would just encourage that if we unless we can make the middle school half the size it is now then we need to address what's going on in the elementary school and preparing these kids for when they go to the middle school and not take the doors off of the bathrooms which I hope you would consider transgender students who are using the bathroom that fits their gender identity and how they may feel about having to use the bathroom with the doors off I understand the concern about vaping

205and people you know piling into the bathroom but that's a severe violation of their rights and I just hope that you consider that and put the doors back on the bathrooms thank you thank you for your voice there are mics to the left and to the right of you saying that there are no additional speakers in the room Mr Lutz can you confirm that there are no callers on the line that is confirmed thank you at this time we uh Dr fetcher remarks just thank you for your comment and agree that you know as what we can do as far as counselors in those positions we will continue to recommend and what we can do within our budget and I I agree with you 100 that you know the more we have the the better

206thank you and we'll close out with comments from my fellow board members Mr Allen Miss Fraser nothing thank you Mr K Miss yes Mr K I'm Mary um I just want to thank the parents and the student who came forward tonight um to speak up and insofar as there's a curricular component um to addressing some of the challenges that kids are experiencing in the Middle School um I would encourage the administration to explore teaching materials so that we're sure our students understand the implications of what they're saying thank you that's it for tonight thank you Miss Glasser yes I too would just like to thank the parents and the students who came and shared how they are feeling and what they're experiencing I may be short on words uh but I certainly are am feeling

207the feelings that have been expressed and in thinking deeply about what more we can do I may not have all of the answers right now and we may not have all of the answers right now but I do think that we are on the same side in the presentations that I saw I see people that care deeply about the well-being of our students and trying to put in the time and effort to make sure they're okay and I hear how it's not doing the thing that it's meant to do and the ways we want it to happen so I do hope that we can continue to think about how we improve this because I think we all have the same goal and I hope that we can keep that in mind as we continue to

208work towards solutions that work for everybody thank you Mr Muhammad yeah I just want to thank the student who so bravely came and shared his his experience with us this evening I want to thank the community members who have come here in person who have called in and shared the experiences that their children are are going through as a victim of bullying and someone who has had suicidal ideation as a result of bullying I I hear you and you know I look forward we look forward to working with you all to to address this issue you all being the administration and the community as we address this challenge and I also want to just end with uh saying the name Devon Whedon a 15 year old who was shot down on his way to school

209this morning in North Philadelphia a student at Gratz High School it's uh a terrible state that we all are in right now when it comes to the high degree of violence that we witness that we hear about that we endure and um we've got it we've got to be better thank you Miss Facey um I wanted to thank everyone I want to thank you guys for the presentations tonight and also to the student who came out and shared with us and told the parents who came out and spoke and everyone who called in we do listen to you and I take these things back and I think about them and we talk about Elam and these are all important conversations to have and also I just want to call on parents and community members of

210students and you know kids aren't kids don't just naturally hate kids don't go ahead and do that they are taught that they learn that and we got to do better Dr fetcher just like to reiterate that I'm thankful for all the comments this evening from the from our citizens from parents and from our board members with your suggestions and and thoughts and bringing those forward I believe that the conversation needs to continue and I I want to open that lines of communication and make sure that people feel that there is a line of communication that when there's a suggestion and you know we heard some things about one of the speakers tonight's book about a a particular program and I invite those comments or those suggestions to be communicated to me to our staff to

211student services and so we can evaluate and look into those ideas we do try to work with very other school districts and and see what's going on in other school districts but sometimes you may have a resource that we haven't come come upon yet and I appreciate that and I appreciate your willingness to share that so overall thank you very much to our community this evening for what I believe it was an extremely productive and Powerful meeting today thank you a second that uh sharing your story leads to awareness awareness leads to action action leads to the positive change we want to see and that will take all of us including me because I am a member of this community and I look forward to doing the work with you this meeting is adjourned have

212a good evening