001for [Music] a [Music] I see a couple Thomas Parkers and one of those Linda um good looking one is right here one um one Thomas Parker is actually it okay so I don't know if that's her but it is signed in as me as well or that may be because I see it Jose's name is on there now so that may be this see John is Thomas Linda are you on everybody wants to be signed in as Thomas until it's budget season then there's only one right for sound check is someone here can everyone hear me yeah we can hear you Lisa can hear all right thanks thanks I'm in okay all right I'd like to call to order the regular board meeting of the board of directors of the school district for the city
002of Allentown for today August 27th 2020 there was an executive session held prior to this meeting and an executive session was held on Friday August 21st 2020 to discuss legal and personnel in confidential matters we will now have the roll call Madame secretary please call the role Miss brace here miss Conover present Miss Harris oh she walked out of the room oh I'll come back to Miss Harris Miss Johnson Watts here miss mat here Mr here Mr theal here miss Wilt here miss Vega here just waiting on Miss Harris I see you that sorry Miss Harris I didn't realize you had walked out of the room so M Ramos is doing roll call okay we're all here okay um please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a Moment of Silence
003I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands One Nation godible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much it's that time of the year where we have to say welcome back to our our our teachers Paris custodians food service and all the staff secretaries every body in the school so welcome back to everybody I hope that it's a wonderful year um teachers report next week and students start back in two weeks um I would also like to say thank you to uh Mr Delgado and all the Rob staff as well as Mr schel and Miss saba and all the Brigadier General anime Hayes staff um for opening your schools up for the board members to be able to have tours of
004the two buildings we went on um on the two building tour and I encourage board members if you would like to see the buildings to to reach out um I can help you schedule them or U Mr Parker to see all of our buildings so that you see what the the children are in um I know everybody's been working hard over the summer to get them ready for when the kids can finally return back to school um so thank you again for opening the doors and and being with us late into the evening so we could really see our buildings Mr Parker do you have any remarks yes I will I will be be a bit brief um because I'm going to tag in someone with a a very special announcement um I am absolutely
005excited as we get ready for this return to school um our students our families there's a buzz in the air with our staff um everybody's ready for school we are absolutely you know not happy that we have to do it in this virtual environment but everybody is ready um to go back to school um you know maybe a few high schoolers that aren't excited because they want to extend summer but everybody's excited to back to school um so so I want to thank everyone who's had a part in preparing this from our internal staff that we always thank our central office team um our our teachers our principls our parapros our custodians our food service every single one of them have been absolutely great um but I'll extend an extra thank you to to our
006community so we have a lot of Community Partners who are consistently working talking and engaging with us because because we now know that education and schooling is not what it was last year and it may never return um the community is much more engaged and involved with education and the community in Allentown has been spectacular um from um people who are taking care of children in daycare during the day and working with us to ensure that we have um the materials resources and food that kids need um to those that are just reaching out to ask how we can support um be it Financial or or in kind I want to extend a thank you to our community because they've been Dynamic um and now I want to do a a special announcement and Mr
007sang um our our new executive director of middle schools is on board um and he's going to give a little bit of detail about again this is a a pet project of mine um when we began having the conversation about Assurance students a career and College ready um starting at the middle school level I think that started as a vision of this and not it wasn't a vision it was an expectation and a mandate from this board of directors that we transform the Middle School experience and ensure that our students are College and Career ready starting early at that level and and we've taken a few steps with our Middle School transformation and today we take another step with something that is impactful for um a number of students but sends a strong message to
008our students to our families and to our community about what this board values and mandates in terms of meeting the needs of kids we are launching our middle school version of our early college where we'll have um I think the number is now about 40 students that are in Middle School in the Allentown School District that will be enrolled in college courses at um Elric we have Al eth grade students enrolled in a college course with loads of support um to ensure that they can be successful but what more says be prepared and be ready for College and Career than having the opportunity as an eighth grader to to put a college course under your belt I am I'm Goosebumps right now excited about this opportunity that will be available for students at all four
009of our middle schools Mr sang if I didn't say everything I mean you pretty much did you kept saying you're going to turn it over to me and then you spilled all the beads but I'm excited it is exciting it is it is your baby um I'm excited to let you know that in partnership with lric that ASD is extending our early college you know duel enrollment programming to include a middle school cohort our students will be taking a college entry level history course during the fall semester taught by an Elric Professor our students will be reported not only by El tric but their homeschool social studies teacher guidance counselor AP principal and other support staff uh we are so excited to have 40 middle school students uh with the opportunity to earn uh three
010college credits this fall so when they ask what's happening at Allentown and why our kids are excelling make sure they tell the story this board set the expectation four years ago when I came that we had better get it together and make sure that we're providing a a wealth of opportunities and experiences for our kids our Middle School transformation is rolling and here is another example of 40 kids having the opportunity in eighth grade to walk into high school already having a college course under their belt absolutely exciting and we're looking forward to seeing great things from those students students and hearing some feedback from their families about the experience wonderful news thank you um at this time if there's anyone from the public who would like to speak on agenda items now is the
011time to raise your hand there is a time at the end of the meeting as well where you can speak on non-agenda items um so if you if anybody wants to speak I'll give a couple minutes for hands to or minute or two for hands to go up and we'll let you in um Kendall H if somebody can let Kendall over Kendall if you can state your name and address for the record and then you'll have three minutes hello my name is Kendall Herzig I live at 539 Mohawk Street in Allentown and I'm an incoming freshman at zero I'd like to State my I'd like to share my thoughts so you are the adults that have to make these decisions but I would like to tell you this from a students's perspective since I'm being
012affected by these decisions I was stuck in my house for four months just like every other kid in every district and now I have a chance to go back to school and Allentown decided to go all virtual which you're looking out for our safety so thank you for that but I'm also signed up for lcti which I was really excited for and then Allen Town says that I can't go but every other district is sending students to lcti whether they're virtual or not so I don't understand why it's safe for them but not me and now I have to sit at home and watch kids that would be in my exact same class do these cool activities in the actual classroom but but I can't and virtual learning is nowhere near the same as actual
013learning in class and it's just not fair so please let me go to lcti if I can't be in Deer at least let me go to lcti thank you thank you K I don't see any other hands raised right now oh here we go um Amy h hi this is Amy herzeg and I live at 539 Mohawk Street Allentown Pennsylvania and I would like to speak to the board you may start I am the parent of an incoming ninth grader at De she's also signed up for lcti I learned on this past Friday that lcti is open and has been planning on being open on a hybrid schedule and I was so grateful that my daughter will be able to go in person to lcti to do that needed handson learning for that kind of
014education however I was incorrect in thinking that I found out that while the eight other districts are sending kids to lcti whether they're open or not Allentown will not allow Allentown kids to go to lcti and I would like to ask the administration and the board to really look at this and consider it because in the past board meetings I don't think this has been discussed and that lcti parents and students have really been talked to specifically about this um I'm fully aware that Allentown schools are going to be virtual as we have all known that for a while and Allentown doesn't have the same facilities and resources and has all different kinds of issues they have to deal with to deem their building safe but lcti has had their opening plan and safety guidelines
015approved by the pde and it has been on their website it was updated on July 31st and continues to be updated they have de deemed it safe to attend on a hybrid basis and have followed all the requested guidelines East Penn and Salisbury and Southern Leigh recently went fully virtual for secondary and are still allowing and sending kids to lcti if their parents choose to let them go east pen also set out a separate parent survey to the lcti families and I feel like Allentown parents should have had the same communication lcti is its own entity and have their own resources and I don't think that their plan should be canceled out because Allen Town's plan is not ready um I have asked if I can transport my child myself to lcti but I was
016told Allentown won't allow me to do that the kids in Allentown are already at a disadvantage of what kids other kids get in other districts this is a phenomenal resource for them and they should have the chance to use it just as the other kids go at least let the parents make that decision Allentown has a lot of full-time LCI students too called the cat program where they attend lcti all day um and these kids will also not be able to even go those two days these Labs require the Hands-On training you can't do auto mechanics and cosmetology Etc on a computer because who's going to want to hire people that learn those things on a on a computer so please do this for the Allentown kids and reassess and really look at this plan
017and let these kids go to the tech school and thank you for being there there for the kids I understand these are all incredibly hard decisions you're making and I really hope you'll consider this thank you thank you Amy I don't see any other hands up so we'll move on to the information updates the Allentown human relations commission Miss Vega is there an update no update at this time we were having tech technical issues getting on and making it public at the last meeting okay the Allentown Public Library Miss Harris um just want to let you know that the hours of the alltown library are going to be open from Monday Tuesday from 12:00 noon to 8:00 p.m. Wednesday through Friday 9 to 5:00 p.m. and um we did meals for the kid for children
018up to age 18 up until August 21st and um we just want to let you know that it is going to be open especially during our time uh virtual learning that that is also a resource to use for parents and children all right thank you very much the Allentown Recreation commission Miss Harris or Miss Wilt there is no um report at this time okay the Allentown School District Foundation miss wilter Mr theal there's no report at this time okay carpon Lehigh Intermediate Unit Miss Conover there's no report at this time okay lcti Miss Conover Miss Matson or Miss Johnson hi LCT reconvened on last night at their regularly scheduled monthly board meeting there are no monthly board meetings in the month of July um they did a presentation on their roll out for what will
019happen in terms of the new format for Education under covid um they explained briefly how the adult education went and modifications are being made for the full um access not in terms of everyday access but in terms of the completion of the reopening process one of the things that was great about presentation is that it was very clear that there is going to be constant re-evaluation of everything that is underway um two key questions for them one was if a student receives a lcti issued computer do they need any other computer to do their ASD schoolwork they do not they are able to use the lcti issued computer to complete ASD work as well because there will be access there they've all also set up a single signin option to try to simplify the process
020as much as possible and their help desk is also going to involve uh information that pertains to ASD as well I'm sure there's more information to be provided later on but I just wanted to give that highlight and also that they did mention when asked were there any students that did not get their first choice and they said that every student in ASD receiv received their first choice for their courses so we're looking forward to hearing more and seeing how that progresses sorry my computer froze were you done Miss Johnson Watts yes okay I'm Sorry Miss Conor IA your hand was up you have to unmute would it be appropriate ask Melle Johnson Watts I'm on that committee and I I was not in that meeting yesterday I ask her y you can go ahead
021okay so Miss Johnson Watts if you can um can you speak to um what that ongoing evaluation means is it possibility that that if in fact um or was it discussed that um lct's plan that they have in place if it didn't work if the students um go back to being virtual or they didn't speak to they didn't speak to that what they spoke to are the different things that are being put in place for constant disinfection um they also spoke to the fact that every um every student that is in the virtual plat not excuse me every student that's in the hybrid platform ultimately will be there on two half days um and then in addition to that the whole concept of classroom would be asynchronous meaning that it will be at the pace
022and schedule of the student versus synchronous meaning that you have to be present uh at a specific time with the teacher until all of the different concerns are thoroughly evaluated and worked out so the the overall what could happen if that's a ongoing discussion and one more question did they speak to what the end result was um when we all shut down in March what happened to our ASD students did they did they they went virtual and did they make it or was it a problem did they speak to that at all that wasn't discussed at this meeting I don't I don't have that answer at hand um but that's something that um perhaps we can revisit thank you very much Miss wat Miss go ahead say say that again Sarah I was just gonna
023ask if you had anything to add no no we're good okay um then it's the safety task force Miss Conover Miss Harris turn that over to Tiffany P to give the update okay is she in the room yes can you hear me would you mind um assisting us because neither one of us was at that meeting but I'm sure it was are you going to position the given update if you have if not Mr Falco sure we had our ASD um safety survey go out this week to our staff students um families and the community it went out on our district website so I'm encouraging everyone to go go there and fill out the survey and we're also continuing to work on a process to um include additional stakeholders um at our safety task force
024meetings at each level thank you very much Miss P you're welcome all right that concludes the information updates next on the agenda is the secretary and treasurer's report may I have a motion for the approval of the secretary and treasurer's report so moved Mr F second by I'll second Miss Wilt Madam secret or is there any discussion on the motion seeing and hearing none Madam Secretary please call the role miss Ma yes Miss Johnson Watts no Miss Harris no Mr Miller yes Miss Conover yes Miss brace yes Miss Vega no Miss Wilt yes 63 passes okay um next is the superintendent report Mr Parker you have a presentation to do first yes thank you for um the opportunity as we prepare for our opening of schools we wanted to again as we have in every
025meeting take the opportunity to um bring you an update on our preparations for the next school year we know that this is new and different for everyone involved and the the team at Allentown school has been hard at work preparing to ensure that our students have a high quality learning experience uh so I am going to ask Dr Brown who is leading the charge to tap in and she will um lead us through a presentation of our updated um back to school planning with a specific special focus on um supporting our students with IEPs Dr Brown thank you Mr Parker um may I have uh permission to share my screen so that I can get the PowerPoint up while we're waiting to transition into the PowerPoint um I'd like to remind our community our uh
026partners our school board of directors um our family survey remains open on our website so any families that have not completed that survey as is the case every well twice a month um we encourage you to go to our website and complete that survey so that we're able to keep a breast of your preferences um we have uh the opportunity for families to identify what type of student that they um have whether it's a student with an IEP an English learner student or student participating in any of our programs such as Early College dual enrollment or lcti um additionally on our website and um we'll have our communications director share I mean I'm sorry manager share this as well each update that we provide to our community the PowerPoint is uh visible and accessible from
027our website so you will be able to follow them from the moment that we started the planning up until now as we continue to tweak and finalize things and so let me move into presentation uh format let me see here I need to share my screen is my screen visible for everyone yes okay perfect so as we start each and every one of our updates to our community and our board of directors we remind you that all of our work has always been Guided by uh five key principles first and foremost health and safety um secondly flexibility third uh family engagement fourth but certainly most critical high quality instruction all of that revolving around constant communication and as we move through this presentation it's exciting to share how much our our our team has shifted
028from linear communication to Bonafide Outreach creating meaningful two-way dialogue um opportunities for our families not just to complete a survey but to participate in live parental sessions um and you'll hear more about that but we wanted to start here because again all of these updates and all of the changes are are fluid and coming through each and every day most recently the state department of education has developed a dashboard for school districts to use um in addition to the supplemental guidance that the state has put out to inform School District's health and safety plans as well and so Allentown is right in line in including that revised information in our plan as we move forward this is a screenshot of the um the uh the dashboard but what I'd like to share here is these
029indicators these are the public health indicators that we've spoken to our stakeholder groups before and we've even had our County Health Department director on to share some of these key data points prior to the development of this site so that's one area that we're very proud that our team was very forward thinking and very proactive in looking at these public health indicators now the state um has moved into a position where they're able to support us with a user friendly tool and if you go to the link for our families and our board of directors you'll able to see you're able to see um within a 7-Day window duration what the levels of confirmed cases are what the incident rates are per 100,000 you're able to go on and click in to see what districts
030are in what area and what the levels of community spread are so we just wanted to highlight this as another one of those informational points that are informing our discussions and our decisions as we move forward um in this update you will hear about our staffing and professional development progress um again that Outreach and support that we are working so diligently to provide for our staff and our families we have some highlights in a partnership with our Allentown Public Library new updates to our parent University technology and then again as Mr Parker said the emphasis will be on our special education plan and how we um and our team has worked very diligently to provide a robust specialed virtual campus program first and foremost as we speak to Staffing um with the district um moving
031into the virtual instructional model for the first quarter we wanted to gauge where our staff was again and we'll remind everyone that we um disseminated a staff survey uh back in the end of June well we went back out to our staff to ask two main questions um can you do your job virtually out of the 2400 staff members that we have 110070 um responded and you can see the breakdown here the majority of our staff can do their job virtually um what we wanted to follow up with was what is your preference in terms of teleworking and reporting to our building again going back to that key one of the key principles that's driving our work health and safety and the other survey data that we shared here with our our staff and our
032families being concerned with health and safety we want to keep making sure that we give our critical stakeholder groups an opportunity to be um in conversation with us about their comfort levels and so here um the majority of the responses uh folks responded that they had a preference to tela workk if their job could be done virtually um and so it's important to note that out of the 700 well let me go back it's important to note first out of the 1170 responses approximately 830 were of teachers the other responses were spread among our other employee groups custodian security par professionals Food Services the survey was extended to each and every staff member within the district within the telea workking um pref preferred option we had approximately 584 teachers that responded as that being a
033preference and within the reporting to the building option approximately 267 teachers responded that they are ready and and ready to uh report to their buildings um we'll continue to give you um our latest update on professional development um we shared some introductory information with you last time we were before you um the the work continues our instructional leaders between the dates of August 14th and August 25th we had more than 40 of our instructional leaders which include our principles and assistant principles participate in any number or all of the trainings that are listed below we had approximately 350 plus teachers participate in that period of time in the same uh types of offerings for professional development and then we began to um see more of our special ed specific uh staff move into their training
034modules as well so we wanted to share that and let folks know that we are absolutely busy here building capacity and preparing our staff to take on um this new normal if you will now adding to that when we were here um during our Ed committee meeting we shared that we were going to pay particular attention to outreach and support for our families so here we'll share that we've had um more than 60 families represented in any number of trainings and supports that we've begun to offer so that includes supports within our special ed programming which you'll hear a little bit more about later um student services and also our District Parent working group that helps inform much of the information you'll see on our parent University our community organizations we have 84 plus organizations
035that we are engage in authentic partnership with that means sharing our our marketing not our marketing but our informational materials with them getting them in their hands our posters our postcards with our QR codes that they can share with our families when they come to their child care centers or their organizations and and be able to access information immediately on what our virtual campus looks like and how and what they need to be prepared for to support their amilies so this community organization piece includes not only child care centers throughout the city but again faith-based organizations neighborhood organizations and we continue to go back and and add to the table and make sure that we're bringing our entire Community along in this effort um one of the Partnerships and Community organizations that we're highlighting this
036evening is the Allentown Public Library there are two strands of work that we're work that we're trying to uh move forward one is Library access for all during the uh closure of this um of our opening of schools while we're opening our virtual campus we still want our students to be able to have access to the library and so how we're doing this is we've uh coordinated and we've gotten um generic uh student information to the library so that a student will receive a library card much like you received a generic uh promotional offer in the mail where it will say what will be addressed to resident and it will have your address so these library cards will be produced and sent to our students and it will say fourth grade student have their address
037and the library the age appropriate library card will be in the envelope and ready for that student to use and we have a snapshot of a uh public relations uh piece if you will produced by the library where our students will have this additional support as they're working through um this virtual campus environment so we definitely want it to highlight that the second strand of work that's still in the making is we're partnering with the library to see um how we can provide our students with additional novels outside of just their regular Library offerings but novels that are attached and embedded in our Core Curriculum um primarily our Ela curriculum and so stay tuned for that cross your fingers but right now we're very happy to announce that we will be providing library cards direct
038mail to all of our students um in terms of our parent University I'm going to share some updates we've um worked very hard our Communications Department to get grade level schedules um uploaded as well as programmatic schedules so that as our parents are looking for information they can go to our website I may have to stop sharing and then reshare yes they can click on our website the link would have taken us directly there so here's our virtual campus website or web page I should say and I'm clicking now on our parent University can everyone see that can someone answer yes okay perfect thank you so as you can see here's our virtual Campus Parent University so parents will be able to find information by uh scrolling through any of the hyperlinks on the leand
039side and are using the the thumbnails if you will in the center of the page so for elementary and we're still building this so please bear with us for elementary if they're looking to see a daily schedule what is it that my child should be doing and we presented this to you to our community in our last Ed committee meeting you'll see what an elementary virtual campus schedule looks like you'll see the specific pieces of that synchronous asynchronous or anytime realtime learning spelled out in terms of subject times on task and then which programs are utilized for the instruction and as we said with ele with regard to Elementary attendance will be taken in the morning during morning meeting but at two additional checkpoints in the afternoon because again we want to keep tight watch
040on our levels of participation so that when we need to triage to make sure students um are in proper attendance we're able to do that and have the appropriate data um there are learning platforms that are housed under learning platforms the goal is to to make all of this information userfriendly and to have it at the fingertips of our families uh we'll continue to upload information I don't think we have our supplies and materials there yet but they are um ready to be shared out just again so families have that information and understanding um I'll go back one more to show um I'm going to go here uh just for a second because LT I is one of our uh special priority programs that we've really been taking great care in making sure that we're
041partnering properly as I mentioned um we meet weekly with the lcti curriculum and Technology folks and I'm going to ask um Mrs Sawyer to step in and walk us through some of the new developments as recently as today that have um been shared from lcti with the district but uh before we jump in we will just speak a little bit to the lcti program the lcti program is going to evolve or roll out if you will in two primary ways a hybrid uh model as well as a virtual model the virtual model while it will be primarily populated with the allent toown students the virtual model is an option for any student that would like to opt into that model again ASD is virtual so we will primarily be the the consumer of the virtual
042model but it is open to any student that from any District that attends the uh CTE program the hybrid model is comprised of Salsbury Southern Lehigh and East pen and one other District um those students that are attending lcti will be um exposed to a prog a five-day program that has been collapsed into two days and they will attend two days on um during the virtual closure um the other piece that I wanted to make sure that we mentioned um that is that in addition to this informational piece lcti has partnered with the district and will um facilitate a number of parent sessions beginning next week so that we're making sure that we're all communicating um the same messaging um to our families and then lastly September 10th during our Ed committee meeting lcti will
043be on hand to um present their instructional model but um quickly if we could Brandy have you jump on and just walk us through some of the um new information that we've received from lcti absolutely sorry I was having a problem unmuting so um lcti as a whole um the the ninth grade students enter into a rot rotational schedule where they do half of their day at a in ASD and half of their day um in a rotational model for the first half or the first part of the part of the semester so they'll be doing those rotations um in their CTE program virtually and um then able to choose a program so when we do bring students back into uh the building they'll be able to go right into practical applications our students that
044are there for a full day in the academic center still take academic courses at lcti um full day however as they take those courses full day at lcti they'll be taking their academic courses um online while they're uh virtual for the three days off and then the two days there they'll be working in their CTE program as well so their their curriculum and their instructional model is evolving through the process where we'll start asynchronously and then we'll move into a synchronous model with them as we continue virtual with the hope that we can bring students back into the classroom to be able to do their um practical application as soon as they get back so they don't miss any instruction okay thank you um so again this was just to give an example of where
045our our uh parent University um is at this point um again the team has worked very hard to get things uploaded and we continue to work um hard to get them uploaded um I'll move on but here's their instructional model but since it's not properly uploaded I won't walk through that um let me unshare my screen to move on with the presentation oh I do want to show one thing and I apologize oh boy whoops not there for our families that oh I'm sorry this for our families that are looking to get a jump start can everyone see my screen yes yes um we we have a series of how-to videos that have been uploaded so you can see here how to get started with class dojo that's um a class management tool that our
046teachers use to communicate with their families how to connect your device to Wi-Fi how to uh select an internet browser um our elementary principles along with some of our Community Partners have gotten together and put together a series of very basic how-to videos so that all of our amilies can begin to self-direct and prepare themselves even ahead of uh school starting so definitely wanted to share that okay okay um that is uh one of the last of our updates before we move move into special ed and we'll um hear some more about the parent sessions throughout the rest of the uh presentation so I'm going to ask uh Brian siket to jump in good evening this first slide that we're talking when we're getting into the special education department we are starting an overview of
047students with disabilities that have an IEP in the virtual world so we're going to discuss the what's and WIS of it we're going to talk about fape and what it is and moving on down the line of different learning models and the highquality instruction that we will be having and then we're also going to talk about our Communications that we've had already and in the future and our Outreach to different organizations the different types of supports we're going to offer families and we're going to also discuss how we're going to monitor all of these systems and obviously talk about the flexibility that is needed I okay now we're going to talk about fape what is it it it's a free and appropriate public education for all students now some students in the Allentown school district
048have IEPs so when they have that that is a legal binding document that we will need to follow so we are just because we are going virtual it does not mean at this time that those laws and um compliance monitoring checks that we have in place they they just don't go away we still have to do it so there's quite a few non-negotiables that we are talking about during this presentation for students they are specially designed instruction that is going to have to be met by our teaching staff we're going to talk about related Services later on in the presentation what they are are how they're going to be delivered and also to discuss mental health and the behavioral supports that some of our students need our IEP teams will still be revising IEPs we
049still have the compliance deadlines that we've always had um so if you're issued a permission to be evaluated that we still would have 60 days even during this time of Co we'll continue to have to do progress monitoring for all students and just stay in comp C with all testing moving on to health and safety for our um School psychologists that are going to be testing these students some that testing does need to be live so we are following the the pte recommendations and on the guidance that they have offered and there is the website in case you wanted to see it the in-person protocols are going to be followed for right now as of O as of August 1 we started testing for early intervention students these are students that are are not yet
050sitting in the Allentown School District but they will become the first day of school so in early intervention some students have an IEP that's carried through but we will need to test them to see what it looked like in our educational model so right now we have five centers throughout the school district that ATT test centers they're just centralized for families we asked them where we can meet and then we set up the the they the school psychologists follows the protocols at South Mountain administration building Trexler and the two newcomers what special ed program student enrollment and Staffing looks like so this is a slide that talks about our numbers and what they look like as you can see as of August we have 15,218 students 2984 of them 19.6% are students with IEPs and
051these this slide is broken down by each building and the percentage of students that have special ed needs now with this this is our staffing model and so supports what does support look like that is uh it could be your learning support teacher emotional support teacher life skills autistic there are two groups in this we have lowi incident students and high incident students our high incident students are included and mainstream well they they change the word back and forth all the time from mainstream to inclusion right now the the high incident students are included our low incidents are more of our self-contained classrooms we okay you can go where should I be Brian there you go right there first thing I want to do with this when we're talking about high quality instruction I want
052to introduce to you our supervisors tonight they are going to take pieces of the presentation so you don't just have to hear my voice the whole time so first to lead us off for highquality instruction is Miss Elizabeth Morales she is the Middle School supervisor she is the supervisor of middle school for special education Elizabeth good evening what is high quality instruction for special education well for our inclusion students that will be given a differentiated and individualized supports that will be provided by a special education teacher um in order for them to meet their individualized education goals as well as close collaboration with the related service providers um also and close collaboration with the regular education general education teacher for our low incident students that will participate in the unique curriculum that means differentiated supports
053during scheduled times with special education related service providers in order to meet their individualized education goals and short-term objectives as well next slide please thank you expectations part of the expectations for our teachers and I do apologize that was in the previous slide as well it was three uh we're expecting our teachers to hold a minimum of three small group instructions strategically coordinated with the regular education staff related service providers students and caregivers so that way they receive individualized instruction part of this instruction is synchronous real-time learning and asynchronous anytime learning and real synchronous realtime learning is face Toof face the special education collaboration is important with related service providers and caregivers to provide students with the best possible programming in order to meet their individualized education goals with asynchronous learning anytime learning is Independent
054Learning the special education teacher will assign work in order to meet the students IP goals and in order to meet their specially designed instruction and be able to provide remediation at this point I will pass it to my colleague Mr Mark Stoltz Mark should probably unmute good evening everyone I'm Mark saltz and I am the alltown school district's uh supervisor special education for the elementary schools um for our low incidence programs are self-contained classrooms uh for K12 we use the unique curriculum for all subject areas and the digital platforms we're going to use to deliver that instruction is the Google classroom zoom and zoom breakout sessions and for synchronous learning or real time learning live learning um we are using a rotational model to support Blended learning because the unique curriculum is a blended learning
055program um and during synchronous learning uh the students will be broken up into three groups uh group one would be students that are logged into their Chromebooks with the unique curriculum working on their assignments in their various subject areas while group two is meeting face Toof face with their classroom teacher um and that teacher is working with those students um on their areas of need um that is supported by the data that's provided by the unique curriculum group three is students that are working on skills that have already been taught and have demonstrated understanding of those skills but have not reached Mastery level criteria yet on those skills so they're working towards mastering those skills um in a more independent uh setting next slide um asynchronous learning which has been referred to as anytime learning
056um with the unique curriculum again there's also groups and at this time um you will see students again working on their Chromebooks in the unique curriculum but at this time they be working on skills that have already been taught and they are practicing them um so that those skills are reinforced and they're working towards Mastery while the teacher is working with G group two and the teacher may be uh targeting instruction on their IEP goals on uh other areas of need uh or progress monitoring the students to see where they are uh in their progression towards Mastery of their IP goals while the there is a group working independently um that are working towards Mastery on previously learned but yet not yet mastered uh goals Christine thank you and good evening yes I'm Christine pavle
057I'm uh one of the supervisors of special education um for our high school programs I'm going to talk about our virtual High incidence programs High incidence includes those students in learning support they may or may not also have speech hearing Visual and or emotional needs we are using the Learning Management Systems as well as virtual platforms listed on the screen to provide synchronous same time or real time learning and asynchronous anytime or Independent Learning for students in high incidence programs espcially designed instruction using these platforms will be essential for their learning and moving towards mastering their individual goals and objectives next side synchronous learning or same time face- to-face learning for high incid in students will follow this rotational model where students are in three groups group one students will log into the core standardized
058instruction in English math social studies and science using the Learning Management Systems group two students will have face-to-face time with their general education and special education teachers at times and at times related Services as appropriate who will collaborate on how best to serve the students special education teachers will use data and information from The Learning Management Systems Google classroom and zoom sessions to meet student needs and plan plan for intervention Andor enrichment instruction in and do that in small group breakout sessions the third group students will have independent time but still be supported to work on performance Mastery targets individually and are in small breakout groups most importantly we designed structured remote learning for maximum student engagement for our students with disabilities by making sure their virtual learning is age appropriate relevant and personalized to
059them we want to also create opportunities for positive collaboration with peers and to make sure to check in and connect with families students and families regularly lastly providing timely feedback as well as supports using Google classroom and our Zoom platforms will build the students motivation for learning next slide asynchronous learning or anytime Independent Learning for high incident students will follow this rotational model in which is three groups as well students again will log in to the course standardized instruction in the content areas using our Learning Management Systems group two specially Ed special education teachers will provide flexibility and support they will use time throughout the day to meet the individual needs of students monitor their progress on IEP goals and support them through Google Classroom Andor zoom and group three students will have independent time
060but still be supported by special education teachers to work on performance Mastery targets individually and or in small breakout groups based on student family and teacher schedules thank you now we're going to talk about the virtual campus and related Services their roles and responsibilities and at this point I'm going to kick it over to Elizabeth um who is no longer muted good and she's going to talk to us talk us through the how what the virtual campus for related Services looks like the virtual campus for related Services incorporates close collaboration between our related service providers our regular our general education staff and our teachers in order to meet the students individualized education plan the students will Pro the related service providers will be able to provide breakout sessions in small groups of Ono one and
061also with collaborating with our community with our Community Partners in order to meet the students individualized education goals these plans as you can see you we had the virtual breakout rooms and we have occupational therapy speech therapy Vision orientation and Mobility will coordinate very closely with all groups and collaboration with the families as well for those onetoone sessions next slide please what is related Services they are necessary related services will provide virtual again related services will have students benefit from their individualized education plan in order in order to meet their individualized education goals effective effective special education services and related Services is Meaningful for all students in order for students to make progress within their general education as well as specially design instruction and as well as their individualized education goals as the IEP team
062fits and deems theu students needed in order to meet their individualized needs next slide please these are the roles and responsibilities for our related service providers we have speech and language therapy improves communication from physical therapy to improve gross motor skills American Sign Language interpreters that are provided by iu21 counseling services and transportation when needed for our students based on their individualized education plan and their disability category next slide please now we're going to talk about virtual learning conditions and schedules when we were brick and mortar the teacher managed the schedule they guided the classroom they're sitting face to face with them the teacher continually prompting them and actually seeing their progress or lack of progress and make the changes in person now things are totally going to be very different because being virtual now
063you have families and students they're going to have to manage their own schedule the teachers at this time we will we have the schedules posted but they're not in front of them so it's going to look very different the student IEP initiatives and gning uh guides learning routines the teacher is going to be doing that the family is going to be part of that along with the student it's going to be a continued communication two-way communication whether it be asynchronous or synchronous learning and the frequent monitoring is going to happen in Both Worlds by the teachers by our office the low incident schedule for synchronous learning is above now what we're looking at here this is like a rotational model because it allows at this time for what Elizabeth just spoke about the opportunity for
064related service providers to come in and coordinate with the with the the low incidence teacher we're going to have targeted group instruction based on the IEP goals so if a teacher sees two or three students around the same level she can do that in a breakout room with a small group instruction and at that time we can move forward with our progress monitoring GNA be able to continue to have our IEP meetings during these times as well but we we also know that we're going to need flexibility from people because for example if a parent is working until 5 o'clock at night they're not going to be able to go and do an IEP meeting so we are going going to have to be flexible this is a lot of the things that we've already
065done and it actually it went it's pretty amazing the Outreach that has happened already if we could speak to the next slide we first of discuss the communication we're doing through our Communications Department we're posting things continuously on the website School messenger calls using radio stations again uh Dr Brown talked about parent University and then I'm going to speak a little bit more about the FAQs a little bit later um our Outreach we've in when we had our opening of schools task force we've reached out to the Ark of the Lehigh Valley just today we were in meetings setting up meetings with uh Casa Guadalupe because we know a lot of our students go there maybe now during the day possibly after school and we wanted to build that bridge with them and we had
066a a great meeting today to talk about how we can collaborate together in the community um another one that we did reach out to and spoke with and are continuing to work with is the Children's Clinic at the Lehigh Valley Network because they do see a lot of our students especially the loow incidence students next slide please thank you how we're going to support our families and what what are we going to do a lot of them have questions well just this past Tuesday we started out with a group um professional development for parents I believe we had a total of 36 people on the call on the zoom call um there was numerous questions about what's going to happen people just one information so we've set it up we had it again today we
067had a little bit lower number than 36 but we still had quite a turnout we're going to move towards having an a onehour live Q&A session at least once a week if it calls for more then we certainly would be able to do more um we're we continue to Fe feed the communication Department um things with regular updates that can be put on our parent University and another thing that was pointed out that we we have available in our department which is a big resource for families is our special education facilitator we're going to utilize them not only helping the case managers and within the building and manage that but they can offer strategic conflict resolution if a parent's having a problem they might call the principal the principal's in a million things and we
068give it to the special education facilitator to solve the problem next slide please thank you now how are we going to monitor this we have reports from all of the virtual platforms that we're using we'll review them bi-weekly we have something that's called a roll call where our facilitator and supervisors sometimes are in the roll calls meeting with our our teachers who are called case managers and walking through it we're we're looking at things like compliance we're looking at um uh due dates for possible re-evaluations students grades attendance all of those types of things are covered in a in a roll call we will have virtual walkthroughs building level weekly bi-weekly meetings our department does meet at at least monthly usually more but I just put monthly there because that definitely happens it's going to
069happen a little bit more now in the beginning until we're up and running but we'll definitely be meeting at least monthly and we're going to also have our continued focus on our school Improvement plans because they were part called out as part of the subgroup with special education why they're on those Improvement plans this is Dr Brown's Big Board wasn't mine but I loved it pratic adaptability I'm not being mean I'm being nice she making me sound smart so that see the word in parenthesis that's what I wrote flexibility we it's true story so programmatic adaptability is required to have sustainability and I sat in her office and thought and thought and looked and I'm like oh yeah I know what you're talking about now so with that we know things change Moment by moment
070you all know that so we are asking everyone that is in our department to be extremely flexible our related service providers are going to continue uh offering these services but we're going to base it on the teacher schedule and make sure we get it individual schedules will be scheduled based on the Family's ability availability we are going to continue with the Q&A as we said um I believe that one thing that was on here that got taken out we're trying very hard to nail down how we can put in a special education hotline our interpretation and translation services for other languages we have that available um our low incidents students in small group as we spoke to before we strategically put them in these small groups based on their levels and again we may need
071to call on the person who is in the room and our with our loow incident students to assist the student in navigating this virtually next slide I believe at this point this is where I turn it back over to Dr Brown and she's going to finish this up right very much thank you Brian um yes so again as we've done in the past we want to make sure that we let our community our Schoolboard board of directors know what our next steps are uhoh something happened here know what our next steps are don't know what happened to my PowerPoint oh here my apologies I hit something wrong um so we wanted to share what our next steps are again just to make sure that we're absolutely communicating out and letting everyone know uh what we're
072doing I mentioned earlier in the presentation that we've partnered or reinvigorated our Partnerships with our local Child Care Centers so the intention is to have a Citywide meeting for collaboration I spoke about the um academic collaboration but let me also mention collaboration on meals so that our students that are in are local Child Care Centers during this virtual closure period will still be fed and still be receiving their ASD meals uh breakfast and lunch and multiple meals where applicable um we will host a virtual Town Hall tomorrow for our teachers to give them um a number of updates that we shared here this evening but also some specific information that our teachers um are absolutely waiting on but again working through the process and things changing this is now um the time for that to
073occur we will continue um to hold Outreach and informational sessions based on programs so you heard U Mr siket speak a bit to his sessions our academic team has some sessions scheduled um beginning next week lcti will be partnering with us for some sessions our goal is to saturate the environment if you will with parent sessions so that we're able to provide a live opportunity for our families to ask whatever ever questions they need and to quell some of the angst and anxiety and let them know that while this is all new we are in this together and we're absolutely going to be in partnership in this work we are absolutely enjoying planning for our virtual convocation not just because it's the most challenging thing I think we've ever had to do in addition to
074going um virtual but making sure that we welcome our teachers back um appropriately on September 1st we're continuing our device and Wi-Fi distribution um yeah we forgot to talk about that but I guess we'll have to update that uh a little later we'll continue the device and Wi-Fi distribution we're currently working through that our buildings are busy having a distribution uh times scheduled each day for our families um a reminder families we absolutely need you to continue to register for virtual campus that is how we're making sure that we can intentionally get devic Chromebooks and Wi-Fi into the hands of our students through the registration for virtual campus process which is on our website as well we continue to acquire um different types of PPE so that when we move into our hybrid model based
075on our community spread levels we are ready and not um waiting uh to the last moment to acquire those things and then lastly um we our next presentation very similar to what you heard this evening will be on our Esau program and a deeper dive into our lcti program and the partnership that we've cultivated in that regard for our students and so that concludes our update for this uh two-e period uh so this is information that is all new from our August 13th visit or I'm sorry meeting and uh you can look forward to hearing another update update on September 10th during our regular education committee meeting thank you very much Dr Brown and everybody else who presented on the opening of schools I I know it's been a a task so thank you for
076all your time and effort put into it to make sure our children are receiving the education they need um Miss Johnson Watts I see that your hand is up if you have a question or comment yes um first I want to say congratulations um this went from this massive what to a major how and um congratulations to all of you on on successfully rolling out a uh a plan and what I I just wanted to highlight a couple of things that I was very happy to hear um one of course is the different virtual education opportunities that are going to be provided to the parents but the other is the direct man provision of library cards I I anyone who knows me well knows how strongly I feel about the importance of the public library
077so I can't say enough how much I appreciate the way that this has been interwoven into the entire Outreach um and then the other thing is I I never knew the phrase free appropriate public education so thank you for the education on that um and then the question I had uh as we were going along which I was so thrilled to see was happening was the Community Partners that are going to be supporting as well as supplementing some of the interactions that are that are going to be critical at this point in time uh we we would all love to believe that everyone's looking at their cell phone or is on Facebook but there's still folks who are just going through every single day and when they catch their breath a kasic Guadalupe or some
078other organization is the perfect way to find out what they need to know so thank you for that and then um the only other question that I had was is it possible for us to continue to receive uh information on the number of parents that do participate and and and and take hold of some of these opportunities because that is so helpful to us to know that uh the community has really uh been impacted absolutely absolutely and if I may um not related to what you just said but I absolutely forgot this there was a slide missing but I have to go back um a heartfelt thank you to Our IT department Jose Rivera we were in a bind just yesterday um afternoon trying to determine uh supports for our teachers and how to get
079them in time for them for September 1 and he went above and Beyond he got us exactly what we needed temporarily for free um so that we can go back and re-identify the proper resource but without him we wouldn't be able to welcome our teachers back with the supports that they need so special Kudos and shout out to it and Jose Rivera as well so I just had to go back and say that I I do have a question um I know in the presentation it was that that kids are going to be using Google Classroom um to have information shared between the teacher and the and the class is that the only Google option teachers have in the Google Suite or can they use things like Google sites to create class websites for their
080students to be able to access with additional information on it so I'll begin and then I'll allow anyone from the academic team to jump in yes they are what we're doing is making sure that any of these other uh platforms if you will like a Google site we're going to have objective criteria that if you're going to use them here's what it here's what's allowed and here's what we're expecting so we have some degree of standardization while still allowing any autonomy and we actually um have developed and um again thank you to Brandy Sawyer she took lead on this um a Google site professional develop professional learning uh space for our teachers and we'll highlight that um during our next meeting but absolutely um that will be available to our uh teachers to use and
081I don't know if anyone from the academic team would like to jump in and that and that'll be K to 12 that everybody will be able to use it I will say yes with an ashri um and the asri would account for anything that I don't know at this moment in time that could come up okay okay um do do any other board members have any questions or comments all right that so that was just an update presentation we're not voting on anything with that that was just to bring us up to speed so um there are four items on the super superintendent's report may I have a motion for the approval of those items so moved Miss is there a second I'll second Miss Wilt any discussion on the motion seeing and hearing none
082please call the role Mr Miller yes Mr theal yes Miss Wilt yes Miss Vega yes Mrs brace yes Miss Conover yes Miss Harris yes Mrs Johnson Watts yes Miss mat yes 90 passes okay um next is the Personnel report may I have a motion for the approval of the personel report still move this is Cheryl okay is there second second Mr F any discussion on the motion seeing and hearing none please call the rooll Miss mat yes Mr Theo yes Mr Miller yes Miss Johnson Watts yes Miss Harris yes Miss Conover yes Mrs brace yes Miss Vega yes Miss welt yes 90 thank you and Mr Parker you have an introduction to make yes absolutely thank you for um giving me the opportunity I'm actually going to have Miss Miss Pollock prepare um because I
083want her to have the honor of introducing um our new hire to the district as you know we have a um a a long standing employee who did Dynamic work for the district who retired earlier this year in rooster you know you're famous if you're known by just one name um so we we've searched and identified someone who who in rooster is irreplaceable um but someone who can come in and be a dynamic version of himself and provide great supports for our our homeless families here in the Allentown School District so miss miss poock good evening everyone I'm very excited to introduce Jimmy Torres um as our homeless liaison Jimmy um is a product of Allentown School District he formerly worked for Center for humanistic change where he um aligned our families and students with
084resources um he worked in a number of our schools across the district he knows our students he knows our families and is very familiar with the community I'm excited to have him as part of our team here in ASD um and and looking forward to working with him so um for for our community for our district for our leadership um that is an absolute absolutely critical and important role um and I wanted to absolutely make sure that we took pause to to recognize um Jimmy and know that he will have a great impact on our community moving forward thank you very much next up is the finance report U may I have a motion for the approval of the finance report so moved is there a second I'll second Wilt any discussion on the motion
085hearing and seeing none please call the role Miss wi yes Miss Vega yes Mrs brace yes Miss con over oh do that a no that's a no okay Miss Harris yes Miss Johnson Watts yes Miss mat yes Mr Miller yes Mr theal yes 81 passes okay next is the building report may I have a motion for the approval of the building report so moved Mr Miller is there a second I'll second Miss Harris any discussion on the motion seeing and hearing none please call the RO Mrs brace yes Miss Vega yes Miss Wilt yes Mr theel yes Mr Miller yes Miss mat yes Mrs Johnson Watts yes Miss Harris yes Miss Conover yes 90 passes okay thank you um at this time if there is anybody from the public who would like to speak on
086non-agenda items now is the time to raise your hand I see um Eugene Clay is first Eugene if you can unmute yourself okay let's try Lara can you hear me yes if you can state your name and address for the record okay my name is Laura zaharakis and I live at 1500 coltsville Road in in lower St in Township I appreciate this time to speak to the board I've been a school counselor in the district for over 15 years I am speaking today because I have some questions and thoughts to share about equity and social justice in our district to be honest I actually feel a bit uncomfortable talking about this here because I respect my administrative leaders and I know that I do not know the operational ins and outs of creating and making
087program decisions but I also know that people shouldn't be shy about asking questions and voicing concerns because if if one person has them chances are that others do too and my intention is purely to be helpful before I go on I think some context of why I am speaking today is necessary last month I attended a virtual American school counselor Association conference one of the sessions highlighted how the Asen National model which is a framework used by school counselors to design and deliver School counseling services is an effective and efficient way to help their students the model emphasizes using data about student needs to make programmed decis ISS this is an example of how the model is when as social justice after the session I found myself reflecting on two things one is how important
088it is to advocate in Pennsylvania for more Equitable and fair funding for school districts and I'm grateful that Mr Parker is involved in this advocacy work for our district and our students so that they can have increased opportunities and access to resources that students in wealthier districts and other zip codes have the second is the big question of whether or not systems in the Allentown School District reflect the ideals of social Justice are decisions about which schools get different supports Based on data or something else I've been thinking a lot about social justice in my self-education about systemic racism and self-reflection on my hopeful journey journey towards anti-racism I recently listened to a podcast in which ibram kendi makes clear why and how the Silence of white people who identify as n non-racist has hurt
089people of color in our communities well my silence of someone working in a system of inequity is not helping my students so I need to voice my observations from the front lines is it is important to add that over the years I have shared my concerns about what seems to be an equitable distribution of resources with several colleagues and also some leaders that I thought could be helpful the resources I reference are primarily people are schools and families need skilled people to help intervene and support in a timely and effective way examples of the things I wonder about include why do some elementary schools have more than one corporate partnership and others have none why do some schools have position positions dedicated to family engagement and others do not why do schools with nearly the
090same number of students have a different number of Administrators or counselors to support those students and why do some schools have access more than others to parently asms and Outreach workers there are many more examples like this some examples are due to inequitable Staffing ratio some examples are due to the benefits of Community Schools the reality is that in our school district a student and family who live on one street do not have the same access to resources and support as a student living on a different street um can I have like 10 more seconds yeah you can keep going okay I want to make um clear that the pattern of decisions and systems that created this inequity started years before the current Administration my concern is the present situation and how the district can
091make progress especially during this time of heightened needs my hope is that our families and stakeholders will see future evidence of the district moving towards a more Equitable system of social justice for our children just as the Strategic plan outlines in closing I have to say that I'm proud to work for this District I chose to work in this District over others because it is my hometown and I want to do what I can do now um to help the children Thrive I deeply care about the dynamic and promising community and I'm motivated by the words of John Lewis when you see something that is not right not fair not just you have to speak up you have to say something and you have to do something so that's why I spoke tonight and there's
092a lot of talent in this district and I think we really need to collaborate with each other as well as with the community stakeholders to ensure that every student in the alltown school district has access to the same standard of care and Equitable educational resources thank you next on the list is Mark libl Mark if you can state your name and address for the record thank you president Grace Mark liel downtown Education Association president 2101 M Boulevard majority of of my role as education leadership is advocacy I've spent my career advocating for fair funded public schools for all students across our Commonwealth regardless of their zip code would not be fulfilling my responsibility if I did not advocate strenuously for the professionals I represent like to take this time to acknowledge Mr Parker's examply leadership
093and being the first superintendent in the state to call for full virtual instructions for our students I was inspired to see Allentown School District Take the Lead equally inspirational was the Monumental response of our Educators to the Herculean task of switching to Virtual learning on the obverse reopening plans for the professional staff of this District took two too long there was too much time that passed between the decision for our students to return virtually and for the professional staff to be informed about what returning to work look like for the 2021 school year profession is already stressful add the stress of a daily existence during the pandemic to not knowing what the upcoming school year would look like with less than one week before opening we have a situation that was overwhelming for many of
094our professional staff in this District LA consideration it has deep impact on instructional staff's ability to appropriately plan and therefore has lasting repercussions to our students education not happen again I am equally concerned that the lack of fair and Equitable collective bargaining agreement would be RW in much the same light please I implore the district to come to the association with a meaningful proposal and the will to bargain as required to settle this thank you for your time thank you Mark um next on the list is Miss Sonia hi if you can state your name and address for the record uh Sonia Davis 329 and a half north 15 Street Allentown PA okay and you have three minutes to speak okay um I would like to thank uh Dr Parker initially for allowing me uh
095a at least a phone call to express how I felt about the virtual learning and how the child uh childcare industry can support uh the families of Allentown school district and I would like to thank Dr lria Brown for including me on several meetings um so I can stay a breast of you know what's going on and actually um being willing to collaborate with the child care industry um lacricia also has attended some director Network meetings and we as direct childcare directors we are excited to have that that relationship so that we can continue to work as a team um I just wanted to say I'm I'm thank I'm thankful for that um it's an opportunity and it's uh it's it's it's a good thing and all the future stuff that we have to to
096work on to make sure that the Allentown School District students um can receive the support as well as their families um is phenomenal um that's all I wanted to say thank you Sonia next on the list is Tim Kierney how you doing can you hear me yes please state your name and address for the record Tim Carney 6065 white tail Drive Coopersburg thank you Dr mat or uh Miss mat Dr Brown and Mr Parker I hope you are enjoying my emails feel free to forward them if you would like um thanks for um asking for our input as teachers and community on the reopening our teaching setting and for SRO I appreciate that I also um I'm hoping that negotiations are resolved to take one of the stressors off the plate of our teachers um
097I understand the situation you're in my daughter goes to a surrounding district and the same day she was getting notification about her busing to go for a hybrid iners we were getting an email from the district saying they were closing so I can't imagine what the District administration is going through however I do want to say that um our teachers just found out this week midweek about our setting and so they had been waiting to find out about setting up daycare and I realize a lot of people are in that situation but um it was a little bit uh stressful for that um for them to find out I I still haven't been able to really get on Edgenuity to find out the program that the kids will be learning um and I'm just asking
098for the community patients um I'm an old dinosaur I started with film strips and movie projectors and chalkboards and now I'm learning Edgenuity Class Dojo Google Classroom Google Slides uh how to run a zoom meeting and bitemoji um last thing I want to say is the new school we had a uh the staff was invited in and it is an incredible building so I want to thank everybody for getting that done on time and it's a it's a beautiful place to be teacher I'm looking forward to when the students can return there thank you thank you Tim um next on the list is Jessica Ortiz okay her hand went down next is Sharon Billington Sharon if you can state your name and address for the record Karen Billington 15 9 chw Street Allentown I just
099want to thank the Allentown school district for rising to this occasion I can honestly say I have never seen any Administration in our past 35 years be able to coordinate and mobilize the way you have under these conditions this is all new for teachers parents students Administration everybody out there and I am very impressed with the dedication that I've seen from Administration from teachers hanging in there from parents and from the students themselves it is not ideal kids learn better in person but you're doing the best you can under extraordinary circum circumstances and I just wanted to say it's not gone unnoticed it may not be preferential but it has been amazing how you tried and you are trying and you're continuing and you are doing it all and trying to pull it and pulling
100it together the one comment I do have to make is that over the past years computer training for our children has been very lacking and very minimal in all grade levels that is something that you guys got to focus on now and you have to start early in Elementary yes children know how to play games and how to use their thumbs with texting and things in that regard but they don't understand quite all the mechanics of things and this is what you're going to be finding out as school starts um because parents don't know some of these things too because it has evolved so much but the computer access and training has to be done young has to be done early has to be done throughout all the grades and building upon it for what's
101going to be needed for specific courses um so I'm I'm encouraging the board to look at those kind of trainings for our children and having them as you know graded courses um also when we do go back in person that this technology and does not fall behind again this has to be maintained now because this is the way of the future and just like Mr Kerney said I am a relic of the past I'm lucky I can do my email I do not own a cell phone and I do not know how to text so these are things that parents don't have access to whether because of not being able to afford them or never learning themselves so it will require patience but it will also require getting in there and keeping our kids current
102with everything and not letting them fall behind again but again thank you so much congratulations on how well this is moving um it will have its up ups and downs well we will have frustrations and failures but we will also have great successes and that's what we all have to focus on so thank you very much for all that you have done thank you Sharon um Jessica Ortiz can you hear me now yes if you can state your name and address for the record Jessica Lee Ortiz 523 Tillman Street Allentown pa1 18102 hey you have three minutes um first I just want to thank um the Allentown School District as superintendent Parker and Miss Phoebe Harris for helping us out and the uh black student union uh with our company cultural Collide this weekend where
103we were able to service and meet 650 families from um Allentown and reach out and kind of find their needs um so I really thank them and appreciate them for uh partnering with us on this opportunity I'd also like to say as of today rtis Arc Foundation has been able to provide um stable work environments for Allentown School District families and we we just want to um make it known that we are working with any families in the community that may not have a space and helping them create spaces um just something as simple as a trifold or a TV tray for those that do not have dining room tables or creating a workspace for families who have three or four uh children in one space and working with the school district to make sure
104they all have their own computers and then creating a space that they can all kind of uh focus and be in tune together so I thank for the part ERS ship and um I really appreciate it and and I just wanted to put that out there about the Ortiz Art Foundation and and how we're trying to at least help with the families and if you do know of any families that don't have a work space and we need to help we're here at at no charge and at the service of the community thank you Jessica and for all you're doing in the community I don't have any other hands raised um so we'll move on to um is there any um old business to come before the board seeing and hearing none um there there
105is new business um Mr Parker I'm requesting an um for us to have an a discussion around Athletics um so and if I'll kick it off to you to share some athletic information with the board and the community thank you thank you uh so uh to to begin this conversation and I know we have a number of our parents and our students and our staff members that are that are eager and excited for the athletic season to to begin that are online uh we're going to have a a a continued conversation this evening about Athletics um but before we do that I I would not be myself if I did not take the opportunity to express some of my my thoughts and concerns and this is this is Thomas I don't even know if this
106is superintendent Parker this is Thomas so I'm going to read you the the definition of equity from the National School Board Association we affirm in our actions that each student can Will and shall learn we recognize it based on factors including but not limited to disability race ethnicity and socioeconomic status students are deprived of Equitable op educational opportunities educational Equity is the intentional allocation of resources instruction and opportunities according to need requiring that discriminator discriminatory practices prejudices and beliefs be identified and eradicated so so let me say that and say to to my board and to my community as many boards and communities have had conversations as of recent as it relates to Sports um I've taken an opportunity to crosswalk the the districts in our Commonwealth that have decided to play and that have
107decided not to play for for whatever various reasons and it struck me that overwhelmingly the districts that have chosen not to play are districts that are economically disadvantaged our districts that are African-American and districts that are latinx it is not by accident that the districts that are Urban in urban cities are the districts that find themselves in this place to make decisions for the best interest of our children that are seemingly misaligned with communities that are around us that are making some of the same some different decisions in the same spaces so as my board uh Ponders and considers what the outcome of education and Athletics will be for students know that it is against the backdrop of what I'm going to clearly identify is a failure in leadership at at the level of our
108Commonwealth to address this situation in a way that provides equity for all of the students that we serve I will tell you 100% the last thing that I want is for any student to be to to not have the opportunities to compete the last thing that we want is for any of our students to be disadvantaged disenfranchised or disconnected from the value that competition brings so why is it that we find ourselves here either by intention or by accident that districts that are overwhelmingly economically disadvantaged African-American Latin next are the districts that have overwhelmingly identified that it's not safe for athletic competition I think it is I won't use that word I I think it's unfair to to my board members who are having to ponder this this evening and to our community who is
109having to wait and deal with this issue um as as many are that this is something from an equity standpoint that our children our other children in other districts that look like allent toown have been disadvantaged from competition while boards and superintendents and athletic directors and principles work to ensure that as we keep kids safe we also keep them in spaces where they're not deprived of opportunity I hate that this is a decision that has to be made uh but it is a decision that has to be made but I wanted to make sure to put those those records those comments on the record um and I would challenge anyone to do the research look at the districts that have chosen to not play and tell me if you see any level of a pattern
110and if you do then ask yourself about equity and what Equity means in terms of resource allocation an opportunity for students that are being served in economically disadvantaged African-American and latinx districts with that um I could say that and then you all don't have to um I will open the floor to uh Miss Ramos and Mr Falco um to walk through a presentation this evening um regarding our um potential options for return to play sports for this season thank you Mr Parker Mr Falco can you share your screen please um and while he's doing that I'll just quick introduction we do have Mr Dave stout here um the athletic director from deff we have Mr Randy AA here the athletic director from Allen and as Mr Parker said um our team's been doing a lot
111of internal research a lot of analysis and we've been having a lot of difficult conversations um to bring forward this information to you so we're going to share with you some updates around the information we've received and the Count's received from our health providers um we're going to share with you the research we've done around what's happening within our conference and within the state around the districts that are going virtual and we're going to post some some options for the board to consider um and try to make this um as concrete as possible um so so that you all have tasked with a very difficult decision um hopefully this will help you it's as much research as we could generate at this point in time and know that it does change regularly so with that
112I'll turn it over to Mr Falco and our athletic directors thank you Jen um good evening thank you Mr Parker as Jen said we're going to review some information um we're going to start with uh the information we've received uh the guidance from our Health Partners St Luke's and lei Valley Health Network and we'll start with st St Lou's um school districts throughout the region are currently in a moderate risk classification no school districts are in a hotspot Zone and while children infected with covid-19 are less likely to develop severe illness compared with adults children are still at risk of developing severe illness and complications from covid-19 the incident of reported positive cases since initiating the voluntary workout period the high School sports has been extremely low athletic directors and coaches have done an excellent
113job in returning District Del student athletes to exercise without undue risk of viral transmission as almost all positive cases among athletes appear to be the result of activities outside of sports sports that involve close sustained contact between participants lack significant protective barriers and have a high probability that respiratory particles will be transmitted are considered high risk for transmission the ability to eliminate or minimize danger zones is critical these areas include locker rooms buses Transportation equipment rooms and travel from low to higher risk areas resocialization plans must include detailed strategies for these areas likewise the PIAA published guidance entitled return to competition individual sports guidelines designed to provide strategies for mitigating risk of disease transmission by sport strict adherence to these guidelines May mitigate the risk of disease transmission is Sport the mental and emotional benefits
114of Coach to athlete and athlete to athlete relationships are well documented strategies to maintain these connections are very important the importance of regular physical activity and measured resocialization to Sport and other extracurricular opportunities is critical whether or not competition is recommended by a district structured opportunities for student athletes should continue we High valy net Health Network the current uh Pennsylvania Department Health Data shows that our region is above in some cases well above the 10 cases per thousand people threshold which according to the paa Department of Health and National guidelines equates to a moderate medium risk for Community transmission this gating criteria is important to consider when determining if and what sport should be allowed to participate in competitions low contact risks sports that can be done with social distancing or individually without sharing of
115equipment or ability to clean the equipment between use by competitors examples of these types of sports would be bowling diving fencing golf rifle skiing swimming tennis track and field cross country can be put into the low risk category of appropriate accommodations are made moderate and intermediate contact risk fors uh these involve close sustained contact but with protective equipment in place that may reduce the likelihood of respiratory particle transmission between participants or intermediate inter intermittent close contact or group sports or sports that use equipment that can't be cleaned between participants examples baseball softball gymnastics ey contact sports that involve close sustained contact between participants lacks of significant protective barriers and high probability that respiratory particles will be transmitted between participants examples of these Sports would be wrestling football soccer competitive cheer and volleyball in talking with
116our downtown Department of of health and Vicki kler today um she reminded us that um it's not necessarily the kids that are involved in the actual sport involved in the practice involved in the games but it's the things that kids do outside of that that we do not have control of that that's that's important when it comes to the spread covid-19 as Mr Parker said we took a look um at school districts in Pennsylvania we took a look at schools dist districts within our own EPC um and those going virtual across the state have either cancelled and delayed or suspended their fall athletic clook um some of these districts are contemplating change we've seen a lot of change in the last 48 hours EPC districts the survey went out 24 hours ago um and many
117of those school districts have changed their mind about participation we've updated our health and athletic sorry our athletic health and safety plan uh to to include return to competition as you may recall we the board had uh approved and reviewed our athletic health and safety plan as it pertained to voluntary workouts for our kids there's we spent significant time with the athletic directors and our Health Partners St Luke's and Amy cter um head trainer to revise the health and safety plan to include return to competition we take in the P daa's language uh in their document we turn competition and Infuse that into our own plan as many school districts have done or will do the uh plan itself um includes much of what was in the original plan but the return to competition really
118delves into uh venue and venue Logistics so we've taken a look at those venues that our kids would particip participated for example tennis we we participate at Oakmont tennis club and our own J Bernie CR Stadium as Mr Parker said um we we propose some some board considerations as options I don't know if you want to take it from here Mr Parker would you like me to continue with the options sorry I was muted um so I'll step in here for for a little bit and then I'll I'll kick it back and then we have both of our our our athletic directors here as well in over the past uh week couple of weeks we've had a number of conversations um regarding this and and our respect and value both of them and they bring
119a lot of perspective to the conversation um as well um and I start this by saying and I've been saying it all day and for the past few days there there are no wrong decisions um it's just I think a matter of what your your your best perspective could be um based on the children that you serve and where you see um value is are important I personally lose sleep because I know and understand the impact and the value that Sports has for kids who find college and other opportunities because of their impact in sports and potentially limiting or mitigating their ability to have that Avenue is something that I personally struggle um with 100% so um when you look at the options that are available for board consideration um the the first option is
120playing lower risk Sports um and counseling others option two um is to play All Sports on the current schedule as proposed option three is playing the lowrisk sports and then postponing um highrisk Sports to um later in in the school year and seeking an opportunity for um competition during during that time and then option four would be uh cancelling all sports or suspending all sports um in in the district so I'll I'll kick it back to Mr Falco and to our two athletic directors they are infinitely more well vered in um each of these and its impact than I um and again I'm going to underline Circle again the position that that this board and other boards are in in terms of making these decisions based on the The Local District and local control I
121think is is is not a Fair situation because this involves competition across districts and across um across schools inherently there are some Equity concerns abound if one community and one district has different a different situation in terms of covid and its impact and we know the impact of covid in communities like the ones that we serve um having to make this decision is not one that I envy um so I absolutely support you and and applaud you for your um for for your level of of Engagement and really listening to our community and and making this decision and and voting with you know the best intentions for kids in mind so Mr Falco and um Stout and AA yes um Mr Parker I we I was involved along with Randy and Dave in an EPC
122meeting late this afternoon as things are [Music] changing drastic in this 36 hours Dave if you could just kind of give us a bit of an update on UPC meeting that took place this afternoon okay so East pen conference have decided to move forward with fall Sports meaning all fall sports with a delayed schedule which was approved a few weeks back we did vote on that a few weeks back we approved the move ahead with the fall scheduled a delay a delay start time for competitions um all 16 schools are moving forward U they will be putting out schedules tomorrow uh they're just waiting to find out if allent town is opting in or opting out it is my belief if we opt out that we will lose fall Sports um other than low impact
123Sports if we do vote on that um but we will lose the fall Seasons it'll be hard logistically to play in the spring if all other schools go all in now with fall Sports it'll be very hard to schedle games with teams within our County or within our area would also be it would also take away from our spring Sports if we would play for All Sports in the fall or in the spring I'm sorry uh it would create a challenge to field teams um but again the East pen conference all surrounding school districts including Theus and Pocono Mountain West which are both fully virtual are opting in for all fall Sports I don't know if Randy if you have anything to add yeah Dave I think you kind of covered everything I know you
124it was cutting out a little bit there but I did want to just make that clear that I know one of the options there lists that a an alternative spring um spring fall season so moving this current fall season to the spring I don't necessarily think that that is a possibility at this point um it just doesn't sound like the PIAA is going to do that because of so many schools playing in addition as Dave said we wouldn't have anybody in our local area at this point um to even play so we would have to travel you know make considerable considerate travel to actually play somebody else around us um it's just not going to happen um if I know Dave had had given some of the facts and where the EPC is um I'm
125going to take a moment if that's okay Mr Falco Mr Parker to just kind of give my opinion on it um and I just feel strongly about it so I'm just gonna kind of go ahead and and speak to you know my opinion on on this decision um I do want to give a quick shout out I know it's late but Mr Falco's birthday is today so happy birthday to Mr Falco he's been working real hard on this entire project with us so just going forward again I want to thank the administration I respect Mr Parker's thoughts on this on this subject um but I do wear my heart on my sleeve and I fight for our kids um so I might get emotional but that's okay um and again some may argue that allowing
126Sports to go on is is not fighting for our kids and it might not be protecting them but I would argue that as an assistant coach with the legendary Doug Snyder for almost a decade I saw firsthand every single day the impact that Athletics has on our young people in a positive way there's no doubt about that there's no questions about that and Mr Parker did touch on that student athletes participating in sports will have their lives impacted for the better I do not need a health network to tell me that or to prove that I do not need a political party to decide that it is fact I've lived it so board of directors I ask you this why not choose the path that we know impacts students in a positive way rather than
127choose to take it all away because of something that may impact students in negative way you see there are always risks to participating in athletics yet we play them anyways because we know the benefits far outweigh the risk that's why an ambulance is parked outside of a football stadium on every Friday night I see this as being no different on behalf of William Allen Athletics and our department I ask you to let them play our students are often placed at a disadvantage in many areas and that is no secret I think we have the opportunity here tonight to make sure that we do not add to those disadvantages and confirm what many of our students already think when they come to school every single day thank you Mr Parker can you speak at all about
128spring Sports yeah so I I will and and and I'll start with I absolutely um respect and value the perspective that that our athletic department is bringing and if they were not advocating for kids I'd have a problem with all of them um so without question that is exactly where where they should be um we we just have to make sure that we balance safety um as well I understand the impact and the opportunity for kids um but it's it's a it's a really hard conversation if and when we do have uh cases where students are positive or become positive um through through competition and activity and collaboration with people from from other schools and other communities um and again there's a reason why urban districts around the Commonwealth have have made the decision um
129if you one of the things that that I've been interested in exploring is if there is an opportunity to um push back some of the sports until the spring if there would potentially be other schools other districts um that would be open to playing some competitive Sports in a in another season um during that time we'd potentially have the opportunity to have better testing in place um so that um our students are not at a disadvantage as it relates to safety with with covid um there there are just so many variables right now and again I will underline our teams our athletic directors our trainers have done an exemplary job exemplary job this is not at all a reflection on on anywhere on anyone else um this is my perspective um I would love to
130see and would have Lov to have seen our our Commonwealth our PIAA um our even our EPC you can tell them I said it I don't care about anybody I would have loved to have seen someone take the opportunity to step back and assess the impact on districts and schools that serve students that are economically disadvantaged africanamerican and Latin X and then ask the question about moving forward because now we're at a place where our kids potentially are disadvantaged because everyone else is moving forward and I don't have anybody any issue with anyone else but if the issue is creating a Level Playing Field and we know that there are communities that are impacted differently now we're at a space where we have to make the decision whether or not to further disadvantage our kids
131and I don't think that's a good space for for us to be in I think there are opportunities to explore whether there's something available in the spring um again I I would probably agree with the athletic department that that's a less likely and less attractive option but it is an option um compared to if you see some of the um um other districts on this screen that have decided to cancel our suspend sports for for the season and many of them are school districts that have similar demographics to Allentown so I wanted to make sure that you had the opportunity to have a balanced um kind of presentation and approach there are Pros there are cons on on each side of the aisle ultimately as a board and as individual board members um you have
132to make this decision with um and I'm I'm sure with a with a heavy heart um but we wanted to make sure that you had the opportunity to hear perspective on both sides of the aisle and have a balanced level um to of of information to process from because I know this will be a um a tough decision thank you Mr Parker um Miss Conover I see your hand is raised if you would like to start us off finally finally so um I want to ask a question first Mr Parker because I'm stuck on Urban I keep hearing you say urban districts are at a disadvantage I'm not sure what what that means oh so what that means is if you look at the list of districts that have decided to suspend or suspend Sports
133for the season primarily those are districts that are Urban economically disadvantaged and communities of color which means if they've decided to suspend or delay Sports the children that live in those communities are not competing in the regular cycle of sports as the other kids across the Commonwealth are competing in the regular cycle of sports right now and to me that's it's a disadvantage because there are kids who get College scholarships every day because of their athletic prowess and it isn't all football there are kids that get feel hockey and every other I mean there are kids that change their lives based on Athletics and this is for them and I'm talking about not just Allentown but all districts that have had to make this decision while we continue Sports across the Commonwealth it puts them
134at a disadvantage so are you saying because of that um we shouldn't or the recommendation would be we shouldn't um move forward with fall Sports because of the districts who are um black and brown have decided that they're not are we allowing them to make a decision for us I don't think that's anywhere close to what I said no okay so that was a question so you did you answered it so here's the thing with me and I've I've spoken to the board I've sent emails to the board everybody I think knows how I feel at you know as it relates to um Sports I think we should move forward we have 177,000 uh plus students in the school district we decided not we decided to go virtual because of the risk of students being
135in Brick and mor being outside what do we have like 168 how many how many athletes do we have in the fall I at a number does anybody know how many athletes we have I think I read 68 Lisa something like that so we have 168 AET Miss Conover you're kind of going in and out okay can you hear me now yeah that's better okay I don't think we as a board has a right to make that decision for our students our high school students especially who have worked very hard for this opportunity I don't think we have a right to say that okay we're going to um cancel sports or we're going to we're going to we're gonna have St Luke's come in and give you an exercise regimen and then um we'll try
136it again the that's unrealistic that's that's that's playing that's crap in my opinion and I'm and and and pardon me because I feel really strong about this I think that our students are um first of all let's say every student that plays in our district or play sports they're not there because somebody made them join a team they're there because they chose to join a team so they're going to do especially after being in quarantine they're going to do any and everything they have to do to maintain be safe and to win and for us to sit around at a on a at a table and to say you know I want to keep them safe so let's not let's cancel I don't think it's fair and I think that as a board that we
137should allow our students to play all if the Pia says it's up to the school districts to make the decision let's make the decision let's make right decision let them play the sports and I'm a parent and I have kids that play and I know they are some risks but you know what what am I going to do lock them up all day we have to give them that opportunity to actually stay safe and play the game just like Randy ATA said when we send them out on that on those fields we don't know if they're going to make it back at the end of the game but they're putting everything that they got into it and we need to support them they're doing their part let us do our part said it thank you
138for being concerned but I'm a parent and I'm sending my kid out there you know me I'll come in a in a building with a shield on in a mask but let them play what's going to happen when you tell them no for All Sports and everybody's home do you think they're going to stay in the house when they're not in school what they're going to do is they're going to sit around and they're going to blame us for not allowing them to be all that they could be so that's that's my um to to the to the board and to all those who are you you look out for us but to to me it's not a help it's a hindrance thank you Miss Conover uh Miss Wilt I see your hand is up
139thank you um Madam president Mrs Conover um spoke very eloquently along the same lines as myself I just wanted to Echo um her comments and uh Randy comments in that there there are so many more enriching things to sports than just playing the game and for our ASD students I I concur that sometimes that is more important to our kids than the actual game some of our kids come to every practice every day and never actually make it Off the Bench but they're there because they're building a sense of family a sense of um Pride um relationship ships with adults that they may or may not have in their life elsewhere and I I just want to say that I am on board like Mrs Conover I think we should let the kids play I
140I understand the risks believe me when I tell you this has kept me up at night when I ran for Schoolboard I never thought we'd be making decisions like these um and we are not the experts and I appreciate all of the effort that everyone has put into providing us with the information um so we can try and make the best wor the best bad decision I guess is what I'm trying to say I've come to realize there are no good decisions living in the land of covid um but I I just want to be on record also as saying that I support um option number two um and letting our kids move forward and and playing um with the the delay as listed thank you thank you Miss wi Miss Johnson Watts so I
141am of the mindset that we should allow our students to participate as fully as possible in sports whatever that option is it looks like it's been narrowed down because of of uh geography you know which which nearby um districts can we actually compete with so on um but as full as possible and here's why few key things I think we need to start having in our conversations as many medical experts as I've listened to I've heard people talk about vaccines I have not heard anyone talking about eradicating this virus so at some point we have to begin to build understanding that life has changed dramatically yes but it has changed why rebuild with this particular group of students I would not suggest the entire School District learn to rebuild by sending everyone into classrooms right
142now I would definitely not and I want to make that very clear because I don't want people to collapse the conversation about sports participation with going into the classrooms two separate conversations here's why children are not mandated to join a team children choose to be on a team parents are required to provide medical clearance through a certified physician you just can't show up and say Let Me In coach you must have a certified doctor's note and you must have a signed permission slip from your guardian this is an entirely separate group of students now some may say ah you're just saying that because they're athletes and everybody always favors athletes well guess what let's be very clear about what athletes do the regiment that they maintain the lifestyle that they subject themselves to in order
143to be excellent athletes this is not a story about preference this is about a profile that may or may not be able to take certain levels of activity so I just want to make that very very clear I want to make sure that when people walk away from this conversation and look at this year later that they understand where I'm coming from and where I think others may come from as well as it pertains to why this particular type of student and not all students so that being said I am of the mindset that I know that any child is given the opportunity to participate is going to do what they have to do to comply with the requirements to be able to continue to participate it's not as simple as walking down the hall
144and saying Hey where's your mask no you are on a field of play there are a number of requirements for what you do and how you do and those things are going to be monitored closely it's a small group of students the list goes on and on if you'd like for me to elaborate offline but what I do want to say tonight is that I'm for the full access to play because I understand we have health uh monitoring conditions in place we have requirements in place uh our Sports Personnel will want the privilege of knowing that they have served our students properly in this situation so um I I I want to hear uh before we vote we'll hear all of the options once again but I'm of the mindset that as much opportunity as
145we can provide let us do so thank you thank you Miss Johnson wats uh Miss Vega so first of course I want to say thank you to everyone who put this together to give us as bunch of information as possible um like they said earlier I never thought I'd be come an Allentown School Board director and have to make this decision extremely difficult you'll say yes and you'll make some people upset you'll say no you'll make some people upset everything that everyone said I agree with on the other hand I also agree with the safety of the children so can't so two questions a is does this decision have to be made today that's the first question and then the second question is is can't we ask the parents of those athletes and if you
146have enough athletes then you move forward those are my two questions so um I'm gonna ask Falco to tag in and help me with the with the first question um so if you look under option two tennis starts next week um cross country starts in a couple of weeks and then the other other sports start later so I'd say for the low contact Sports um that decision is is kind of a a right now decision but for the high contact Sports there's a bit more time before that decision has to be made in terms of start the part there however is the um the conference has made their decision as of today um that they're going to move forward and they're developing schedules um I think they're as we speak developing schedules that um that
147Allentown is the the last District that either opts in or opts out of the schedule and then they'll have to develop their schedule based on it so the timeline is there is time before Sports start but the timeline in terms of working with our conference to ensure that we're on the schedule I don't think there's a lot of space there so I so athletic team am I am I am I accurate there and and I'll say before they chime in I I absolutely hear value and support everything that's being said like I said at the top um we we have to have the the meaningful dialogue um as a as a as a leadership body and there are there are no wrong decisions um I think every decision is is the right decision based on
148you know your perspective and and where you see understand and value um so I appreciate everybody's perspective and and I hate I hate as a superintendent that you have to to be in a position to have to make this decision but so athletic team am I am am I accurate on that with the scheduling issue I miss something Mr par yeah um the the schedules um as as David mentioned they're waiting when as to put the stamp on the schedule um there's also the piece about the PIAA so many practices need to occur before practices a um competition but if that's the case then why why is this being brought to the board today so that we can vote on it publicly today why wasn't it given to us at the last meeting or before
149because obviously we were going to have questions as I as I said earlier this is this has been this has been a topic and a an issue for all e the several weeks things have changed in the last 36 hours regarding oh no um and this is kind of where where we stand at this point um several schools in our in our EPC had agree uh to to certain competitions and and and things have changed and this is where we are are at this point yeah I'm just going to chime in real quick I know Mr Falco answered the question um for director Vega and we do need 15 so there there has to be according to the IAA there has to be 15 days of practice prior to competition so you know while you
150see the competition dates are a little bit further out there for some of the sports we still need to have an answer now um in addition to 15 days we need kids to get physicals um and we've been pretty hesitant to ask our families to go pay for physicals um before we actually have an answer you know I'd hate to see our families go pay for physicals and then you know we turn around and tell them they're not playing so um that's kind of why we're here asking for an answer now um and also just in terms of the schedules yeah the league does have a schedule ready to go with Allentown School District on it and it has a schedule ready to go with Allentown School District off of it so um they need
151to make that public starting tomorrow most likely it'll come out either way um but that just kind of speaks to why you know this decision um needs to be made now um but I understand I understand this is as you said in your opening statement there this is not an easy decision for anybody to make it's not an easy decision and getting these options right now in this moment and making a a decision right now in this moment makes it even worse um Linda we we did receive this uh the documentation for this uh yesterday at noon just I don't know if you missed that or if you I did absolutely missed that and I did check my email and I absolutely missed it so so there no way to so for for for the
152a athletic department so are you guys confident that you're going to have uh 15 or more players like you said Say Yes um with the parents saying yes I want my kids to play can I speak on that um so far we've had the kids that have been working out voluntary practices had their parents have signed off for them to be here at our workouts all summer they had to have a parent sign off for them to be part of our workouts with the expectations that there would be a season so I would be confident that the the kids that are coming their parents sign off on them to be here with the expectations of playing they would sign off on them playing in competition okay that was helpful thank you right um Miss Harris
153see your hand is up yes um I wanted to go back to Linda was saying why is the urgency we have to go by the fact that the governor just gave us you know information to play or not to play because district will decide that then we had to go to wait for a PIAA to decide what they want and so now we have got this on our plate because this is when we got it so that's to do it like this um I just want to make sure that I'm I'm just going by everybody else said I concur with it all I don't need to say any more but the fact that I will I really want our children to play and as well of with PIAA sport you got to remember that Rob
154has an RBI program baseball program that they use J bourney crumb which is not a part of paaa but it's still our athletes we want to make sure that they get the play too as well so I'm asking you know to include that on our vote for all to play thank you Miss Harris uh Miss Conover your hand is up next yes I was gonna actually say what a little bit of what Phoebe said Linda um I have had because you made a comment about parents like can we include the parents parents are hitting my phone right now as we speak because they couldn't wait for this day because they want their kids to play I happen to have a a kid who played every sport there was almost except football it seems like since
155she's been in ASD and um you build relationships and um we had to wait for to to find out if there were going to be Sports at all that just came down and Pike and there were some emails and I know we're all busy it's crazy not to take away from what you're doing because sometimes I get to my emails sometimes you guys include me in but um there were emails that were sent back and forth that was letting us know that this was coming down the pike so now that Pia finally said okay you know what you guys can move forward but we're going to leave it up to the school districts that kind of like throws a monkey wrench in the in the um situation we want our kids to have to be
156at an advantage not a disadvantage and again I'm going to go back to what I said before for us as a district or board to say they can't play or um this student is not going to meet their goal for graduation in terms of because of um we want them to be safe and not giving them the opportunity to actually be safe and follow follow protocols that that's putting them at a disadvantage so I hope I answered your question I'm I'm passionate about this no parent and I'm gon speak for as a parent no parent sends the kid out to get covid okay but my kid is going not to get covid but I'm a parent who has I thought about it I've had discussions with my children I've had discussions with other people's um
157kids and families and we're good with it so I hope that helped I understand where you are but I hope that helps I appreciate that um I I think it's Mr Miller you're next your hand up yes okay go I'm in full support of option to uh to move forward with the proposed EPC uh plan uh I I would agree Nancy I mean this is this is a really tough decision uh the balance between the safety and and our students uh the sports can't can't understate the impact that Sports has on on students uh the structure the responsibility of showing up it's not just about playing the game um I do think that we need to you know take all the risk mitigation uh procedures as possible but I do believe that we should follow
158option two um being that you know the state and Pi PIAA has put the decision on us um I think that's the best route for us right now um regardless of our decision I will make the amendment to uh for Central Catholic uh they they decided to play no matter what our decision is and for them to use our Stadium as we have a contract in place um so I will Mo motion to uphold the our half that contract so that's it is that Mr Parker just a question on that is that um is that a question for whether or not we would hold a contract just so I know if Mr Miller needs to officially make that Amendment to the resolution so that it's official that we have a if we have the contract
159does the contract stand for Central Catholic yeah so so the the contract stands uh unless there's action by the board to to to limit outside activity um of District facilities um to this point there has not been uh specific action which means that contractual obligation still stands uh so so I don't think the motion is NE necessary but absolutely it can be um an addition that gives a significant level of of of comfort that the district will uphold that obligation okay just so you have that information Mr Miller thank you president you're welcome so I I I sent I sent the board information you know about how i' I feel about the sports and I'm just going to say it publicly um clearly it's the other side of where most of the board members are
160um I just can't I can't say that I feel comfortable letting our kids play sports less than six feet apart from each other without masks on against kids from other districts our teams have done an amazing job clearly of keeping our kids safe within our School District boundaries through their practicing um and meeting as their little cohorts in their teams what concerns me is when we now go and play against other districts who may not be fully virtual and may be hybrid and you're now putting our children at risk from those kids who have been in schools you don't know what they're doing in their school district on paper they may say one thing but you don't know what's actually going on behind those doors so I just don't feel comfortable saying that our kids
161will be playing against another team from another school district what I would and this is for high and moderate risk low risk they can go they can play but the high and moderate risk are the ones that I have the problem with what I hope is that our coaches are able to find creative ways to keep practicing with our children so they don't lose skills so I'm not saying they can't practice continue to practice and play against each other and also work to build portfolios so that when colleges come looking for kids they have something to show them if major college are stopping Sports for the fall there's no doubt in my mind that recruiting for future classes is going to look different over the next couple years so when I hear our kids are
162put at a disadvantage I hear what you're saying but I also see that colleges are stopping so they understand what's going on I Echo what Mr Parker said I am disheartened that the PIAA has placed a loss of Revenue over our children Children's Health and this is not a decision we should be making this is a decision that PIAA should have made for every District so that no child is left out of playing whatever sport it is they want to make or whatever sport they want to play but the fact that money is placed over our kids health is what I have a huge issue with and so I'm personally going to go with medical advice medical advice says if you're unmasked and within six feet of someone your chances of catching of have catching
163covid is increased I my conscience does not allow me to say I'm G to put a child at risk because they're going to play sports so I just want to say that um Mr theal or I'm Sorry Miss Harris your hand was up um yes I was I wanted to know with testing being free can we add that on to an amendment that the CH you know the high-risk um athletes get tested weekly um Mr Mr Falco what's the what's the current um forgive me for not remembering the details of the health and safety plan what's the current um cycle I don't think I think the answer to that is yes but I want to make sure what's in our current cycle our our our athletes are pre-screened every day every before every single practice
164but the that's a prescreening I think U Miss uh Harris is talking specifically about a um an actual test test when you when you do the screening is that a full test it is it is not it is not a test um I'm not sure if I totally understand so so Miss Harris I I so I think the answer to that is um give me an opportunity actually Mr Mr Fry may be on um I I would say the answer to that may may have a um a foot in the legal World in terms of whether the school district can mandate a um an actual test for a student once a week I don't know that answer specifically um John if you know that answer offand you can let us know if not we can
165absolutely research it and find out legally what the school district's flexibility is there in terms of of mandating test I think Mr Parker can you hear me I see my little light on yeah think we can hear you okay uh yeah I I don't think that that is a problem uh legally uh it may be a problem uh from the point of view of whether or not tests are available to the district that will have sufficient turnaround time to be meaningful but uh certainly um if the board wishes to um you know adopt one of these options and certainly add that it's condition upon um uh a an aggressive program of um prevention and making sure that the uh the CDC guidelines and so forth are strictly followed but I think it's more of a
166question of the availability of the test rather than the legal ability through who are the health partners that were with our with our sport St luk so they would be able to administer the test and keep know private and things of that nature yeah so so again I I hear you um I I think if if if Mr Mr Fry help me out again I think if you were to add something to the resolution that was um you know testing pending a um a confirmation of the district's legal ability to do so um just because I want to make sure that we um follow all privacy laws and our students are kind of well protected with with any kind of testing and the sharing of that information I just want to make for for any
167kid for any reason um make sure that we're absolutely solid before we commit to um taking that route Mr Parker is it okay if I just jump in here about the pre-screen process no I Mr I just because I this is specific to testing so I want to stay on testing you got it right thank you um Mr the your hand is up yeah so I um a couple thoughts here first of all from from a personal level and I don't talk about it now now that I'm 54 years old but um having been very involved with with sports in high school and even playing with broken bones and not allowing my parents to x-ray them um as a child growing up um had a great impact on me uh in which there's no question
168that there's it's already been said and I'm not going to belabor that point the the obvious is the opportunity for our children to play sports and I do support that it's it's about how to mitigate the risk and and clearly and Mr Parker thank you for your leadership in articulating the the lack of leadership from the state uh in providing that that leadership that they should have provided so if it's not going to come from the the state government or the PIAA and it's being pushed around locally now we're looking at being as a member of the EPC we're thinking about testing screening Etc and we're we're talking about the more higher contact Sports what can as a conference we do to create an equal playing field in terms of testing or or I should
169say even just screening and then the actual um mitigation steps that will be taken which will be mutually agreed upon by each member in the EPC um so I think you know that would be one of my questions for Mr Parker for you and Mr Falco and the staff um is there is that have been a conversation that has gone on in terms of the EPC coming up with certain guidelines that would help you know uh have have an agreement between all the different districts yeah I'm glad you brought that up and and I know that Mr Falco Falco you have a little bit of an echo I'm sorry um yeah thank you for bringing that up and and I I know um um that that Sarah Jane had mentioned it too yes there's been
170conversation uh between the um athletic trainers to create commonalities across each of our EPC partners and making sure there are certain standards um that we all U abide by um because you know as as you say we're doing some things to ensure our our student safety and another District let's say you know is not that puts our kids at risk and we certainly don't want to do that um Amy cter I can't tell if you're still on or not um but I know we had that conversation yesterday or today so te tennis starts August 31st it is August 27th is that an ongoing conversation with an actual deadline and OB Ive to be completed before that it's ongoing right now so so I I I'll say um in in in defense of of EPC everything
171that I've I've seen thus far um has been um really focused on ensuring that kids are are as safe as possible so with without question um I will I will give them Kudos there all right athletic team um our athletic trainers are doing everything to keep Kids Safe I think the EPC also is in that space um I don't I just I'll I'll find out the question about testing because I think there are some some other legalities around student privacy there that that I want to make sure we don't um kind of step into um I know that our health and safety plan has the um all the protocols in place to to keep our kids safe but that extra layer of security that I think I hear um from Mr theal as well as
172from uh Miss Harris um will Circle back on that extra layer of of Safety and Security um to ensure a to identify what we have the capacity to do and then B to ensure that um every possible procedure is in place well Mr Parker the one thing I would advise is that we don't make any of these options condition upon something that we're not absolutely sure we can fulfill so I don't think there should be any conditions wait I'll wait my turn because I'm not done that's what I'm suggested that you don't put conditions on it at this point because the worst thing we could do is say condition upon testing every week or what have you and then not be able to accomplish that yeah thank you that makes sense and again it's it's
173something we can we can investigate and and make sure that and communicate back what the um the the options are U moving forward um in terms of just what the legal um space is and again I'll say to to each and every one of you as you're having this conversation um I I value everybody's opinion and perspective in in this dialogue it's it's a meaningful dialogue it was the the elephant in the room dialogue that that had to happen um and and I think everybody has the right to be on whichever side of the aisle there is and ultimately everybody is in their own space looking to do what's best for kids and I think that's what's important um and again because I'm not done taking the shots I need to take I I detest
174that you all have to be in a position to to make this decision in addition to the multitude of other decisions that you have to make to support the children here in the Allentown School District um it is it is a heavy decision so I appreciate each of you for for being engaged all right uh Miss Vega you're next yeah I had a couple of questions wasn't sure really who to address it to um Sarah you had said that colleges put their Sports on hold for this season was that right yes not all but some colleges did okay and um the NFL also has put uh the preseason on hold um do we know what our covid numbers are here in the Lehigh Valley I don't have a number on me um Dr Brown or
175Miss Pock do you have any um any sense of where we are at the present moment can we go to The Graphic that was presented earlier this evening thanks sh I thought I saw something earlier so we we'll get to that go ahead you want to go to your next question or we get that no no I'm just listening um and just really struggling I never sit here and make a decision based off of what I feel always make a decision based off what the community tells me and it's so split um and I'm just trying to really just soak in as much information as I can okay just hope it's quiet you guys hear from me while you guys have Sitting doing nothing yeah Miss con you can okay so the question that I
176have is when we talked about we were talking about testing I wanted to hear from AA because we jumped Phoebe made a comment and said something about can we get the kids tested every week um and a t started talking about um uh about what am I trying to say about say it again screening screening the screening screening right I want to talk about screening because what happens is we don't want to to make our kids I mean we we we don't want to get crazy either I mean don't we take temperatures we have St Luke's willing to to do training how come we can't have them assisting Us in in in in and making this situation safe I'm looking at I'm feeling now and I'm just is just out of all honesty that this
177conversation is really being GE towards not letting our kids play and we're doing a commercial for not letting them play instead of actually um hearing from parents and hearing from people who are supportive of them playing so so can I resp can I respond yes you can yes you can if I wanted to gear the conversation to not letting the kids play my ads would not be on this call because I knew where they stood this morning I knew where they stood last week so if my intention was to steer the conversation in a certain direction I would have left a tea I would left him at home because I knew where they were but the conversation has to be balanced and that's why they're here to give a perspective I'm going to give a
178perspective we're going to bring data so that you all can have a balanced conversation and there are different perspectives and multiple perspectives and they all have value and they all have a meaningful place at the table and what I appreciate most is when we get to disagree without being disagreeable and and and everybody gets to bring that perspective now what where AA was going is what's already in our health and safety plan that was approved by the board that's in place for every student absolutely there's value to that conversation where where Miss Harris asked was in addition to what we're already doing is it plausible that we have another layer with um kind of a testing on a week so so I can explore that but I think that's different from the protocols that we
179already currently have in place for kids which is why I kind of move that conversation along um to specifically address testing because those live in in different spaces but but staring the conversation I think I've been clear on where I stand with this for a couple of weeks um okay so let's act outst in the let's act like I didn't say I'll take that back so let's let's not automatically assume that everybody that's in this space that's listening not just the panelists but I'm talking about the attendees as well let's not automatically assume that we are clear as to what protocols are in place for protecting our children because how can we talk about testing if we're not talking about what we're already doing but but that's we talked about that when the board approved
180the health and safety plan so we can go over it again if that's the request absolutely because I want I want I want the board as well as the community to have an understanding that we are striving to keep our kids safe I don't want people to get caught up because when you talk about Co and you talk about people dying people tend to say oh well maybe we shouldn't let them play you understand and that's not what I'm trying I've thought about it I'm a board member but I'm a parent too and I'm and I've thought about it several parents have thought about it and I I don't see you know I need folks to be act I need folks to be considered in this not just us I need folks to be considered
181in this not just some people are afraid let's let's ruin kids Liv let's just not let them have sports I don't I don't agree with that so I'm I'm I'm leave alone for the moment so I I just found that we had 600 this is for Miss Vega we had 620 new cases yesterday in the state of Pennsylvania I think that's what you were looking for that am I correct yes okay so there were 620 new cases yesterday per what representative schlosberg posted this morning yeah I think Dr Brown has something coming up now and just I I know you guys answered this mentioned this earlier but there's been a lot of conversation so I'm just going to ask the health officials here are recommending that we don't move forward or they're just providing us
182information so so I I'll think and and I'll kind of kind of Punt this to Falco again um I I think the health officials have been squarely in the face in the space of providing information um with a I think in some conversations there have been some well I don't think you can move forward if this type conversation but they've kind of stayed clear of giving full direction to school districts um and and rightfully so because then they own the accountability for school districts moving forward or not if they make that recommendation so I think most of the health officials have stayed um clear of making an outright recommendation to school districts um and allow the districts to kind of look at the information that they have um and then make their decision moving forward
183you're exactly correct you're exactly correct Mr P it's a hot potato um nobody wants to catch the Hot Potato so the local school boards are the ones that catch the potato in their lap missil your hand is up I was going to make a motion if there's not any other comments or discussion on this there's not unless is there anything else with the math that's up that we need to know oh Miss Johnson wats your your hand is up I I just want to emphasize that the children are not being mandated to participate in sports the children are choosing and expressing the interest in sports after being informed on the news and all of these other resources as to what has been happening across the country and here in our area related to covid-19 in
184addition to that as always you must have medical clearance in addition to that as always you must have Guardian approval signed and I am entrusting our teams to make sure that all of those Provisions are being taken with the utmost Clarity and verification thank you Miss John wats um Mr Miller if you want to make your motion feel free oh miss will your hand NOP okay Mr Miller if you want to make your motion go ahead I I would make the motion to move forward with option two with the addition of the following uh that the district makes a best faith effort to explore weekly testing if allowed legally and exploring potential Health local HealthCare Partners um second being that we uphold Central catholic's contract regardless of any future ASD Sports decision and third requesting
185a letter uh sent by the district to the EPC that they also explore weekly or some kind of routine testing for for their uh Sports okay Mr point is that motion good just make clear that uh and M Mr Miller the sense of your motion is not that uh approval is conditional upon testing correct that it be explored correct it's a best faith effort yeah the best faith effort is important yeah then uh Madam president I I I think that that's okay I I would strongly recommend against any strict conditions applying but the ones that Mr Miller said I think are appropriate and um uh would serve the would serve the district okay second okay so there there's a motion by Mr Miller seconded by Miss Conover Conover without any any what Fen said any
186strict conditions yes so the motion on the floor is for option two which is for to allow All Sports on the already modified schedule with adding in that the district will make a best faith effort for weekly testing that the Central Catholic Central Catholic contract is upheld regardless of our decision and that we send a letter to the EPC for them to look into weekly testing as to make a best best faith effort for weekly testing of all athletes am I correct Mr Miller and Miss Conover yes yes Madam President we want to use the word explore though right for yes I I would say that we're going to make the best faith efforts to explore the uh possibility of weekly testing the way you stated present sounds like it's conditional I wouldn't recommend okay
187so we're making a best space effort to explore the possibility of weekly testing yeah that that that's fine okay you're good with that Mr Miller Miss con over the first and second for the motion yes yes okay um because this is a new business item if um I we should let the public comment on it I guess I should have done that before the motion Mr Fry right oh no before the vote's fine okay so if anybody from the the public would like to comment on what we're about to vote on I do see somebody's hand up um Addie Conover yes hello can you hear me yes just please state your name and address for the record a Conover my address is 110 West Federal Street okay and you have um minutes what did you
188say you have three minutes to speak okay I would like to say I'm from dff high school I'm a senior and I play a lot of sports probably more Sports than you can count on two hands um I'm currently playing a fall Sport and I would like to add that um the board and many other folks in this town or whatever their main focus is to get our ASD students to the next level of education and I feel as though these sports are um a lot of these kids way of doing so I don't know if you guys understand what I'm saying but um a lot of people don't have the money to uh to afford colleges like that and a lot of people go to sports to do so but if we cancel these
189Sports and I seen one of the options was that we'll have it in the springtime but if all the other school districts aren't canceling them who are we going to be competing against and if we are competing we're not competing against the best and that's not that's not looking good on any type of transcript at all so I just feel as though we it shouldn't be canceled it should be the parents it should be the parents choices because again we can't y y main focus is to advocate for the children but that's also what the parents main focus are as well and I feel like we are old enough to have a voice and I think that it shouldn't we shouldn't cancel it so yeah that's it okay thank you very much welcome um Sharon
190Billington hi um I thought it was very well said by Mr Parker about the inequity found in sports in our Urban schools and this is especially now brought to everybody's attention under these current covid situations uh we though as Allentown I think should look at another way not that we're wanting to do sports but that we want to we care more about each and every child than about parents living vicariously through their kids or other misguided priorities numerous families are multigenerational this child's going to come in contact with people that they haven't come in contact in their practice group with we don't know what the other schools are doing and how diligent they will be as far as testing whether we test our kids or not if the other schools aren't doing it it's not
191going to matter and as far as the socialization and the competition aspect it will not be what it was and going ahead with contact Sports will still not allow our kids to have that experience that they are missing whether they play or not I'd rather have my child and my family healthy than have them score a touchdown and end up in the hospital make the de and yes I understand that we take that risk every day when we allow our CH children to play certain sports but that is with that child singularly that is affecting them if that child contacts covid it's going to spread to numerous others so yes we take that personal risk but now we're going to have to assume that risk for everyone who's in contact with our child and as
192a parent yes my child and myself be able to come to that decision that if something physical happens to them we'll have to deal with it or we accept that risk but as a parent I would not feel very good about the fact that my child cont contracted it and then spread it to someone else so we need to make the decision that is right and safe for all and when it comes to children I always ER on the side of caution and unfortunately those 168 students could could mean over a thousand plus infections for other kids and families we maybe could look at the lowrisk sports as a trial to see what competition really looks like and if we do approve though fall Sports and get put on a schedule have 15 days worth
193of practice but then have to drop out what are the consequences if we do drop out before competition starts does this cause ASD to have to pay a fine or lose standing for next year's Sports so I think there's again a bigger picture picture we have to look at but again this should have been a unilateral Commonwealth decision so that the playing field would actually be level for all of our students in all of our schools at all of the same time thank you thank you Sharon um next is Ed White thank you for giving thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak my daughter you just state your name and address for the record sure Edward John White 1922 West Highland Street Allentown PA 18104 thank you I'm board member of the Allentown
194School District Education Foundation and the PTA at William at William Allen PTSA at William Allen and txa middle school and milenberg Elementary School my daughter is a 2013 graduate of Will Allen High School where Shannon Mayfield was her principal and she received an excellent educ ation at William Allen she was recruited in three Sports after playing five sports at Allen and she would not have received the opportunity to play at the top academic universities in the country had she not participated in sports at William Allen I strongly support allowing the decision by the school board to approve this uh reopening sports for Allen Town School District students let the kids play and let the decision up to the parents it should be the parents who make these decisions for whether the covid-19 risks outweigh the
195benefits of allowing their children to play in sports not the school district the school district is here to allow opportunity for children in the Allentown school district and I firmly believe that the Allentown School District should support all students in the Allentown School District regard regardless of zip code or ethnicity or race and that this gives students of color particularly the opportunity to get a great college education my daughter graduated as president of her class with an unweighted 4.0 GPA and was recruited by schools from the ivy league to the Patriot League to the university Athletic Association and the Liberty League because of her excellent academic record and her athletic success at William Allen without Sports she might not have attended the University of Rochester where she succeeded not only in the classroom graduating as
196by Beta Capa graduate but also as a multiport athlete in field hockey and softball where she received honors in both Sports as a liberty league student athlete on the all Liberty League teams for both Athletics and academics she was an all League player in both Sports and participated in the national championship tournaments in both Sports at the highest level of division three Athletics all because she was allowed to participate in sports at the high school level at William Allen in what was then leh have valy conference she was a scholar athlete president of her class and a five sport athlete at Allen including four Varsity Sports and 13 Varsity letters all of which led directly to her success as a student athlete in college I urge you to vote Yes for allowing Sports to continue
197in the Allentown School District join the other schools in the eastern Pennsylvania conference which have approved allowing kids to play sports this fall with reasonable accommodations and protocols for safety of the students and allow parents to attend to watch their kids play allowing social distancing safety protocols for disinfection and safety and I urge you to vote Yes for this for let the students Play Let the parents decide whether the benefits outweigh the risk thank you for listening to my opinions and have a great night thank you Ed okay there is a motion on the floor is there any discussion on the motion from board members yes I wanted to make sure include that the art Allen baseball RBI is a part of them all the athletes playing the RBI program at at William Allen because
198that's not part of PIAA okay so you would have to make an amendment to the motion then correct Mr fr I didn't understand uh what M was saying okay William williiam Allen they have an RBI baseball program that they do a b uh J Bernie crom that is not PIAA that's separate from that is it in last sport yes we just want to make sure that's included so if well I think I'd defer the athletic directors Parker if I could um so that is and y'all give me a nod if I believe more of an intramural um type sport um we have a number of um sports that operate in the city and some of them are you know City and School District are independent um operations so is the ask that just that one
199continue or that all kind of intramural sport leagues that are engaged continue I guess we need some direction in terms of what you're what you're looking for um specific to that organization I want only that organization that goes with the Allen ASD I'm only asking for that one yeah and so I don't and so help me out I don't believe we run that organization but we allow them to use our facilities I know way more about sports over the last month come on AA I'm I'm I'm ready I remember that RBI program helped get that field done there's the on that help get that baseball field so so I think the issue is as of now um our athletic feels similar to um the City have closed their facilities um for external groups our district
200facilities have been closed for external groups as well the only people using District facilities have been you know our student athletes in their practice and preparation etc etc so so the request is to allow this group to utilize District facilities for practice Andor games yes that J Bernie because this motion is about PIAA in our high school sports can that be something different you might want to consider this as a separate motion not really but it certainly could be taken up separately I would I would agree so Miss Harris are you okay waiting for that motion until after we discuss this motion and you can make your own motion okay so that that's not tied to our high school sports I don't know um Mr what do you think Miss Harris like Mr Parker said
201at this point I think you know the issue is because the RBI program is not an actual ASD sponsored sport um it's not a PIAA issue I don't know that I can give clearance to allow them to use the field at this point okay good enough thank you then I will you know I'll do I'll take that Amendment off the table okay is there any other discussion on the motion seeing and hearing none please call the role m brace no Miss Conover absolutely yes Miss Harris yes Mrs Johnson Watts yes Miss mat yes Mr Miller yes Mr theal yes Miss welt yes Miss Vega no passes okay Miss Harris are you taking that completely off the table or do you want to make it now no I want to make it now okay okay I
202want to make the motion that um the RBI program at William Allen be allowed to use the J bery crumb fields for the games and practices hey is there a second I will second can you repeat that one time one more time yeah I just want the the Allan RBI Baseball team to be able to use our J Bernie field for their Gams and practice so Miss Harris made the motion Mr theal seconded it um Miss Johnson Watts I see your hand is raised for discussion yes um this is new to me so can can someone tell me a little bit more about the relationship that's been established with the district and um what is it that they have in mind in terms of um calendar I I I just I mean I I just
203can't say that in the vacuum yes or no I I I I I don't know very much well you know that the J Bernie crumb baseball field was totally redone that was because of the RBI they apply for their grants and they um and they baseball uh Mr can go ahead and explain a little bit more so if I if I could um I'm going to tag Mr AA out here and I want to tag myself and Mr Falco in just thank you to level um and then we'll bring it to your end so I I think the issue is a building use issue and and I want to kind of start there um because this is one of a number of athletic programs that utilize I or practice on or play games on ASD
204uh facilities so this is one of a number Allan has some de have some that utilize ASD facilities through um a number of of Partnerships some more for formal some less formal um in place so I want to just kind of start there at the high level that when you when you go down this route know that this is one organization and then next week you're going to have um three or four more organizations asking for the same consideration uh because right now we blanket disallowed any outside groups so from a from a from a safety perspective from a covid from a usage perspective to limit the outside usage of of ASD facilities I think this is kind of similar to where uh Mr Miller um had the conversation uh a minute ago about um
205Central Catholic or is it Catholic Central Central centr um so that conversation that's a more formalized uh contractual obligation um I think most of the others are less formalized but are are still important to those organizations so to give some wide context before we dive into this group specific um know that it's a it's a a signif signicantly more Global conversation about the district's building use policy as it relates to engaging outside groups right now and when you move from AC um from from um athletic groups then it's the same conversation for buildings and other community groups that want to use the schools so I would just I'm not telling you which way to go I'm just saying it's a more broad conversation in terms of context now now Falco and and Randy in terms
206of this specific organization can you speak to that I just wanted to give the context first yeah the the the grant the I RV Grant through National Baseball League um uh sponsored the renovation of the baseball and softball field the coach baseball coach High School wrote the grant for money as an organization it's not necessarily an organization to update so so if I could just remain on the on on the question that I raised as part of the discussion I I I'm just wondering if if we don't have time to prepare for this type of motion and have that type of information available um from a building and Stadium committee perspective uh I don't know when the next one is coming up but I just feel as though it wouldn't be fair to that Organization
207for me to make a decision at this time without truly knowing what's involved and I wouldn't want to go in One Direction or the other without having given them a full uh review without them we would not have had a baseball field without them they wouldn't have been able to renovate that baseball field and for actually have a baseball field and a softball field we it wouldn't have happened because of their connection with the Major League Baseball that's the reason why we got the grant that we got and I'll say to to miss Harris's Point stud to to Miss Harrison's point they have been Dynamic partners and we do once we resolve our own athletic um conundrums we do need to revisit building use um and and I think set some parameters around who and
208how um are going to to to be in and out of our our facilities absolutely I I I personally will be abstaining from this vote because I don't want to be forced into a decision that I'm not ready to make and I do not want to go on record in either direction okay so I can take it off the motion I can take it off the floor because I want everybody to be okay with it and understand it completely so I will I will table it for now and um we will come back and I'll get the information well get the information from the athletic uh directors and Mr Papo and we'll present it to the board they'll present to the board all right help me out sounds like the motion's withdraw and the second
209also withdraw his second and so the second or speaking is that okay Madam president yes go ahead Mr the thank you Phoebe if I can make a recommendation instead of tabling this specific motion that we would take all facility use to um the committee co-chairs um maybe building would be the appropriate one I mean I would defer that to Sarah as president to decide which one and work with the administration then bring that back out through the process with co-chairs Committee of the whole Etc um because it is a a larger conversation as Mr Parker said and it needs to be addressed more comprehensively um so it's going to take a little more time to do that thank so Mr the are you pulling your second I am okay all right so both motions have
210been pulled and we'll send this to the building committee to look to look at okay thank you that is that the stadium committee or the building committee I forgot about the stadium committee it should go to the stadium committee I I don't know who Norm who would normally do our outside organization cont contract because this is this was specific to J Bernie crumb but we have organizations that might ask to use deff's Fields so it's it's it's a facility use is what we're talking about right so that's stadiums you know uh Fields buildings Etc so it encompasses everything so is that under policy Mr Parker or is that under I would I would send it to building committee and then have the building committee um refer to or communicate with policy and Stadium committee as
211as necessary as the building would be the overall umbrella um but then the offshoots can be communicated to other groups thank you okay great all right um is there any other new business Miss wilt pardon me I was eating a piece of propcorn me put my video on um I would um yes I would like to take to take a moment to make a motion um to ask the administration to re-evaluate the logistics of providing our lcti enrolled students um with the option of exploring um attending LC lcti as part of the hybrid model second was that you Mr Theo yes all right did everybody hear the motion yes yes say it say it again yes I would like to make a motion to reev for the administration to re-evaluate providing our lcti students that
212are en our lcti enrolled students students the option of attending lcti in the hybrid model okay so there's a first in a second is there any any discussion on this yes a I have a discussion okay Miss Conover why do we take a vote for it to be for us for them to be um not be not be um hybri what is it that we're really asking for I'm not clear I know we had a discussion but what what what's specifically are we asking that the parents have the option of sending their kids to LCT they want actually my what my motion does Miss conver is actually um is basically asked the administration to look at what that would mean so I'm not saying I'm not directing them to say that I want to see
213them do it I'm asking them to re-evaluate what the logistics of that might be um so I seconded motion thank you for explaining to me sure it's already it's already seconded oh who did who second it you Mr the seconded it we're just doing discussion now oh okay okay I I have clarity thank you yeah I I was struggling with how to word it all night long so thank you for asking that question because being able to explain what I was trying to say worked out well so thank you thank you nany is there any other discussion um because it's a new motion under new oh go ahead Miss Johnson wats my question is with that re-evaluation are we then going to have a chance to review it before a as a recommendation is made
214that would be my hope yeah I because I think that a lot of things that are happening right now are happening in in in a in a roll out that's going to be that's going to be challenged by the timing of our meetings and so I I'm not sure where do we insert our ability to approve any recommendation that is made do does this because what what's going to happen is we're going to be looking at the uh Committee of the whole meetings do do do you understand what I'm saying are we looking at a timeline for this to have been completed so that we are voting on this what what what is it that we're what is it that we're looking to um to do in terms of the implementation or execution of anything
215that comes from this re-evaluation I I'm just I just want us to be clear so that we're not just putting something out there and then we're wondering where it goes sure um my my intention is is actually to do with this motion is to create a dialogue that would answer those questions I I totally respect your um response to me because as a new board member I sometimes don't remember always the structure of how things go um so I do believe that we should as a board collectively we should have um a presentation and the ability to discuss and and vote on it so um Madame President Mr for any any guidance that you can offer we could we could have a a special board meeting like we've done in the past immediately following Committee
216of the whole which would be on the 10th which is three days after school would start for us so the kid if we would vote if the if the administration would come back with a recommendation whether to allow or not allow and we take a votee on it it would mean that then potentially the 14th so four days after they would have started school hybrid they could potentially go into lcti does that make sense yes yeah I think if if the board has a sense that it wants to vote on this that special meeting would be necessary however I'm I'm not certain that uh from a legal point of view that if the if the decision is from the um Administration to allow attendance that it would necessarily even require a board vote um but
217uh certainly the board the board feels it wants to vote on it certainly it should thank you yeah the reason I'm asking is because there's a lot of logistics that are involved and I don't know if it's if it's one of those scenarios where um how can I put it I don't know if it's one of those scenarios where we are putting ourselves in a position where we almost are in that conversation about the logistics I you understand what I'm saying so I that's why I'm I'm being um being very Mindful and very very clear about you know you're saying that the board doesn't need to vote on it okay so what what do we do do things happen and then I take the sense of your motion is that you would like to direct
218the administration to reconsider the feasibility of having virtual students attend uh votech uh physically and uh they can if you want to embellish that by saying get you know get back to us with you know your your report in a week or something something like that whatever you want and then you can decide from that point whether you um you know whether you need to reconvene to take any action can I can I go ahead Miss con all right so Nancy you made the motion I second it right Mr the second right he start okay so here's the thing does there need to be a motion can because I remember there was a someone who spoke out today who said that they wanted their kid to go lcti right did we hear that earlier yes
219yes I also heard somebody said that they they and and I'm only saying this because I have to say this to get provide Clarity on what what I'm getting ready to say right I also heard that they asked if they could transport their own child to lcti would they be able to do so and they were told no do we have to go through a whole motion and to go back and reconsider the whole thing to actually have conversation with the parent to make accommodations for that parent if they their child decided that they wanted to go go um to lcti using the hybrid model can we make accommodations for for how does that work Mr Parker how would that work because what I'm saying is like it's already we already set for for for
220um for uh September for opening the school lcti already gave us the tools so that mean that the district and lcti were in communication with each other and there's a plan in place this is a parent that wants something different for their child what can we do or what does that look like Mr Parker so so I think that that's a that's a question the question becomes what the I guess where the where the line is drawn in terms of all students virtual what that truly means and whether we as a as a district are all students virtual if we if we move the line back to say lcti students now have the option of being virtual or in person and again like I said about Athletics I no bad options you just have to
221make the best option with the tools that you have available um then you can make the decision that lcti parents now have the option to attend in person or be virtual then the district would have to go back and manage work with lcti to manage the logistics in terms of Staffing um to ensure that they have the Staffing in place to address whatever the influx of kids are that would want to be in person I would probably push back over allowing one parent the option and not all parents the option I think there are some some some issues that the district would face if it's not you know if if we're going to allow a parent to do it I think we need to allow all parents to do it um so then it's managing
222the transer ation it's managing you know lcti whether they have or what they need to do in terms of Staffing to um support the students that um would then be enrolled in the class and then I think it's also managing um whether it's just lcti that students will have the opportunity to attend full day or or whatever two days a week or whatever is um or what that means also for students that are dual enrollment as of now um our um L lric has identified that they're dual enrollment online we do have students that dual enroll with um um Penn State um leab Valley we've been working with them on insuring that they can do that um virtual as well so if you give that option tol tric I think you've got to give that
223option to the students there as well um and then what I would again kind of my you know my job is to give you both sides of it and you know we make the decision as best we can I think we begin walking the path of um what does virtual look like and who gets virtual and for our students that are most in need in ASD should we then be creating spaces and opportunities for them to have in-person instruction as well because if we're going to support in-person instruction for students that are enrolled at LCT I I think we should be supporting inperson instruction for students that are enrolled in ASD so ask this question too um what how did we do because we closed abruptly in March because of covid and then we didn't
224know if we were going to go back or not and then we got the word that we weren't going back so we had lcti students um in session how did we manag did they make it through that period of time when we were virtual say that one more time did they make it through how did they manage what did we do from March until June with lcti how did we manage did the kids succeed was the struggles I I I I have nothing has come to my desk in terms of students having um abject struggles um I I would I would defer to one of the principles if they were online in terms of whether there was something that they you know have specific knowledge of in terms of struggles but but to my knowledge
225um students were successful right I didn't get any emails stting that there were issues and I didn't hear anybody say that their kid wasn't getting not to take away from what I'm not minimizing what par said now I'm just saying so I'm just wondering if there were any ISU until now because we're getting ready to go back in Su session we haven't heard anything that said that um with pents for against virgal at lcti is that correct y okay and again for me I will I I'll I'll I'll I'll say it again it it's going to be really difficult to defend supporting in-person lcti while we have students that have disabilities that are not in school well thank you for explaining next me um I guess we could take a vote since this is a
226a motion something new Under new business there's anyone from the public that wants to comment on it now would be the time to raise your hand Mr theal you raised your hand uh just to could you repeat the motion as it is presented please sure it's to I'm taking this hope I got it right to re-evaluate the logistics of offering our Allentown School District lcti enrolled students the option of attending the campus for hybrid education is that correct okay thank you you're welcome I didn't see anybody from the public putting their hand up um so since there's no other discussion from the board um if you can please call the role Miss wit yes Miss Vega yes Miss brace no Miss Conan over no Miss Harris yes Miss Johnson Watts yes Miss maon no Mr
227Miller yes Mr theal yes 63 passes okay is there any other new business to come before the board Mr the is your hand still up from last time it is okay and it's not okay thank seeing and hearing uh no other new business is there a motion to adjourn the meeting I so move we adjourn second second Miss Johnson seconded by I'll give it over all those in favor I I any opposed all right have a great night everybody thank you night folks