September School Board Meeting - 9/17/20

001uh so all right kim looks like i'm gonna drive i i sent it to you oh you did but um all right so let me close this let me okay let me look here i got a request to unmute is that intentional no all right i'm going to go here for a second that i'm going to get out if you could just take a look and see nope you see the whole thing right yep i'm gonna share mine tell me if it looks okay and if it does we'll go with that as a look that looks okay i'd go back don't go too far in um what is the trick looking for board members as they enter okay [Music] okay uh mike working can you hear me yes i can thank you this so foreign

002i got it kevin i can be your backup if you need me i think we're just waiting on mr schupak and mrs moore yep okay is everybody ready to go i'm sorry for the delay would everyone please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay i would like to announce that we met in executive session i'm sorry this is not going well for me is can you hear me we can yes okay there we go now i'm hearing people thank you we met the board met in executive sessions uh on september 14th to discuss staffing and current responses of the hr responsibilities of the hr

003office that meeting lasted approximately one hour we met on september 16th to discuss staffing that meeting lasted two hours and 20 minutes and we met again this evening prior to this meeting to discuss personnel education contracts uh confidential placement agreements and other legal matters and that meeting lasted for one hour i would like to have a motion for the approval of minutes the minutes include the fmt committee meeting of august 10th the board business meeting of august 27th the um ccob meeting minutes of september 14th and the community relations student life safety and wellness committee meeting of 9 14 20 and do i have a motion thank you chris a second rose mary thank you are there any questions or comments on the minutes mrs moore i apologize on my screen i'm not seeing mrs

004franklin becker is she here we only have she is not no i have eight board members thank you you're welcome um any questions or comments all in favor okay mr sherman thank you got that yes thank you all right financial reports i'm looking for a motion to approve the financial reports as presented in items 4b through 4l for august of 2020 they include the food service bills cafeteria report the outstanding investment report cash flow summary comparisons of taxes collected real estate tax escrow report trust fund report reconciliation of cash counts budgetary deficit status report general fund and federal program bills capital reserve fund and the bond fund is there a motion to approve those financial reports rosemary thank you any and a second please second i got beth petruna there any questions or comments on

005the financial reports all in favor great thank you we have a motion to approve the treasurer's report from august 2020 kathy thank you second a second thank you any comments or questions okay seeing none all in favor please raise your hand okay we're going to go a little out of the um order on the agenda tonight dr christian i understand you have a presentation to give and we would like to do that now thank you mrs moore we thought it would be good to do this first before the first public comment and we'll certainly receive comments after that and at the end of the meeting kim if you would drew if you would put that in presentation mode go back to the first slide please thank you so good evening everyone and good evening to

006all of our guests out there tonight i want to update the board and the community on our discussions revolving around the possibility of reopening prior to the november 30th date of which we're already approved it's important to note that the board has advertised a special meeting next tuesday the 22nd at 6 pm and so tonight they will be hearing the presentation accepting public comment asking questions of the administration uh and then slated to consider the emotion on september 22nd which hopefully will make more sense after i present the following slides you can go ahead drew or kim i want to thank there's a group of doctors and medical experts that i've been i've met with a few times over the past month and we've discussed a variety of things not just uh metrics which is

007a very popular word nowadays but also discussed anecdotal things that have taken place in schools that have reopened not just colleges but local schools in the area and their experiences with dealing with the virus they also happen to be parents in the district and they were very objective in their approach and have been a great resource to me so i want to thank you thank each of them so these are the pennsylvania department of health and department of education guidelines we've moved from even though they are red green and yellow we've moved to low moderate and substantial as the describers and many of you are familiar with these presently we are in the low range in our county positivity rate uh in the three percent to 3.3 percent range over the past several weeks and

008we're in the moderate range uh for the incident rate per 100 000 people which is uh we've been in that 35 to 40 range for the past several weeks and you can see actually it says seven 43.8 in the last seven days you can go ahead drew so the pennsylvania uh covet 19 early warning monitoring system dashboard every friday around one o'clock sometimes earlier they publish all the county data for all the counties in pennsylvania so you can go there and you can click on the map and you can select the key metrics that you would like to see and i discussed looking at two of these metrics at the august 27th board meeting and one is the positivity rate in our county and you can see there is a slight uptick um and so

009it's up to 3.3 as of last friday and we'll see what it is this coming friday and then you also see the rates per 100 000 people and you see those reported and they've been fairly steady as well i talked last month about the key metrics and i've heard from several constituents and parents who have said what are the key things that you're looking at and so not to be too redundant but the positivity rate is certainly one that all superintendents and school boards are looking at as well as the incident rate we also want to see the positivity rate and incident rate trend down or remain stable at least and so while the positivity rate's a slight uptick we're still in the low range there and the the other cases have been as the

010incident rate had been fairly stable in the past few weeks various various organizations medical and others are saying there could be an uptick three to four weeks after labor day weekend and so anecdotally i know there are some school districts that have opened i know one in upper northern montgomery county today that had to close in elementary school for two weeks because they had three positive cases i'm aware of one local district that has a positive case so they are not closing but they are following mitigation efforts uh and i know of one in one or two in bucks county that have experienced uh cases and so i'll talk about those uh in the coming slides um also i talked about you know obviously having the workforce to support what our students need um for

011our faculty and staffing to deliver continuity of education and quality instruction first off i want to thank all of our teachers and our support staff i think they've done really a very very good job an excellent job in opening school in a virtual platform and i know that that is not what uh many people wanted as our opening uh but i do understand you know we made that decision and that's how we opened and uh the staff has done a great job uh really putting together and demonstrating that is different from last spring when we were thrust into a remote world and had to adjust in less than two weeks we have surveyed our staff and i have talked with our leadership from our professional staff and the majority of our staff uh is is

012prepared and and want to return for in-person instruction uh yes do it you know i know that our teachers want to see your children uh i also know that our teachers and our support staff want to be in a safe environment so that they can do their jobs and so yes we will have some people who will require the potential to take a leave or may have day care issues and there are avenues that they can pursue to investigate those if they qualify and so we've had those candid discussions but i think that the start of the year although some folks have not wanted all virtual i want to commend our teachers for those outstanding efforts we've identified the needs for additional supports in our schools particularly our k-3 students and i'll talk about that

013in the next couple of slides our k-3 students really um and probably our four or five as well uh struggle with as much screen time as they're getting um and i've heard from parents concerning that uh we've tried to provide more breaks for those students so they don't have as much screen time and they also crave to be with with their peers and they want to see their teachers and therefore we have started to procure cadre of substitutes and aids with a variety of certifications that will provide supports when we are able to go back to a hybrid model for our students that they will be working with our teachers and in some cases possibly have to be a substitute for our teachers should they need a teacher need to take a leave for a

014personal reason and we'll continue to actively pursue them as the need arises you know there could be cases uh should the district move into a hybrid mode there could be cases where a teacher is exposed to somebody with with the virus and needs to quarantine and we will have to move as deeply and as as quickly as we can to make sure we can continue to provide that quality education uh and i know that that's going that's a challenge for the districts that are experiencing it right now and they're moving as quickly as they can but we have to acknowledge that there will be disruptions you can go to the next slide please back one please forward one please thank you so when we talk about the potential to reopen um there are pros and

015cons and and many of you have shared them we certainly acknowledge and i've said this in communications to the community that in-person instruction is better for our students particularly our elementary students i know our secondary students certainly want to have in-person instruction too but they are more adept uh to handle a virtual program than our young guy our little guys the digital platforms and resources are challenging for our youngest learners especially as we're trying to limit the amount of screen time they have you know a hybrid model does provide us the opportunity for six foot distancing because it limits the numbers of students in school and so we've we've been planning for that to move to a hybrid model which will not be perfect but it does provide a safer environment and avoids larger groups

016of students and staff in a contained room such as a classroom we do have the technology to provide in-person at-home teaching and learning we upped our band pardon me our bandwidth to 10 gigs and i know we've had a few blips but for the most part the connections have been very good we have teachers using zoom they're using hover cameras uh other assistive technology and using a variety of resources to provide that at home teaching which can continue in an in-person and at-home model we've provided families i and we certainly should the board vote to move to a hybrid model we will have to reconfirm those choices to verify how many students are coming to school some of the cons however though i think we all have to realize and people have said to me

017you know you need we need to learn to live with the virus and and i do admittedly i struggle with that comment and i talk to the medical professionals about that and i struggle with it because it's so young it's it's not it's not something that's been with us so long very long and so there isn't a tremendous amount of research there isn't a tremendous amount of data and i think we have to we all can acknowledge that the risk cannot be eliminated um unfortunately there will be positive cases that will require quarantine and possibly periodic closures of school we're seeing that up in salterton this evening as they have to close the school for two weeks and i reference some of those neighboring school districts that have had a few positive cases thus far

018next slide the hybrid allows for a mixture of in-person uh instruction for some of our students while some are learning remotely um we will have students who while they're in school there could be nine or ten students in the classroom there will be students at home who will be engaged online uh and so that will require the you know use of technology to access those students and it is challenging but it does provide that daily connection for our kids to their teachers um we'll certainly combine independent activities large group instruction small group synchronous and asynchronous instruction whether it's at home or in person we'll certainly maintain the supplemental supports and services specifically for our special education students and our english language learners the virtual instruction strictly online uh we will be once again asking families

019pending the board's approval uh to commit for half the year through the 22nd that that's approximately halfway through the year we don't know uh we're hopeful there'll be thera therapies for the virus we're hopeful there'll be a vaccine there are many different reports out there that you can read on a daily basis and get really you can get feel really good about them or be rather skeptical at the same time but we're going to we're going to look at it at one semester at a time in that virtual mode it's you know your students have been experiencing it now for the first two and a half weeks of school as we wrap up the third week tomorrow but once again we will still have to provide those supports for our special education students and our

020english language learners even move ahead drew i'm going to ask mrs graguidis to talk about this and this is a summary chart for k to 12. each of our schools each of our school levels have specific charts that our principals will share pending the board approval of a move to hybrid um but i thought we would give an overview of what it would look like to remind folks of what we talked about this past summer rosemary thank you dr christian um basically implementing both the hybrid and the virtual instruction schedules simultaneously allows us to maintain the integrity of our very strong curriculum while still providing those supports that dr christian just spoke about as well as our interventions and services to all of our students whether they are hybrid or virtual it also allows us

021to keep these elementary classes intact if we would ever need to quickly revert back to an all virtual environment for a couple of weeks or longer and then back to hybrid preventing that kind of yoyo mentality of changing up the classes so if you are to look at this table you will notice that in the hybrid group a and b in school you can see that group a is in school on mondays and wednesdays and group b is in school on tuesdays and thursdays while these groups are in school they are receiving that direct instruction from their teacher and applying those learnings into their assignments as they typically would they're continuing to receive those guided reading and guided math groups within that small group but it may still be a synchronous environment because we do

022need to adhere to the social decision measures likewise group a is at home on tuesday thursday group b is at home monday and wednesday and now you see group c which is our virtual only group they are home monday to thursday these groups are still seeing and interacting with that direct instruction remotely they're watching the synchronous lessons using our technologies that dr christian spoke about earlier they are also continuing to receive guided reading guided math within those small groups synchronously so in essence our virtual children are doing the same exact thing that our hybrid students are doing but they're doing it monday to thursday on fridays you notice that all students are going to be at home accessing remote learning that could include additional focused lessons on social emotional learning that is not the only

023day that we are doing those lessons but it could be an additional day it also could mean at the elementary level weekly culminating activities continued synchronous instruction is going to take place at the secondary level all levels will have social check-ins office hours time for those parents to reconnect professional learning time and staff professional development in order to continue with this planning that is going to be needed and each school will share their specific schedules but in a nutshell this is what it would look like k to 12. thank you those fridays at the secondary level there will be synchronous learning but there is going to be a need for staff to do planning because balancing hybrid and virtual certainly requires planning and we will work that into the calendar and that will also uh

024you know there will be asynchronous activities then for our students to do and it does help reduce screen time which has been something that i've heard from several families about at all levels next slide please so let's talk about the recommendation that the board will be reviewing tonight and then potentially and then voting on on tuesday it's my recommendation that pending board approval our k-5 students return for in-person learning in a hybrid model on monday october 19th we already discussed about the monday wednesday and tuesday thursday approach that we would use um and so we're asking the board to consider changing that november 30th date to october 19th so moving it up more than a month ahead of schedule um you know we have been in the low rates uh for positivity rates for several

025weeks uh in a row uh and we have been maintaining the incident rate at an understandable and acceptable level um as i said it does not eliminate risk uh entirely but i think i think we all realize that we will say that uh families may remain in virtual instruction as per their previous request but we will be asking all families to reconfirm their commitment to one way or another while we suspect the data may come back similar there certainly could be changes and people could have a change of heart and we want to do our best to honor those and we do need some time to honor those um you know rosemary talked we talked about the importance of preserving our current classes to maintain those peer and teacher relationships and i do acknowledge teaching

026hybrid and teaching virtual there could be some classroom management challenges particularly with our younger guys and so we'll use the technologies that we have certainly need to help provide additional professional development to our teachers who i think have done a great job thus far getting started but when we talk about our youngest students in k-3 that's where we'll need to provide those additional additional supports so our plan is to use that cadre of subs and aids that we're employing uh and we've been able to use grants to do that to employ additional aids that will be used in those elementary classrooms so that they'll be able to help our teachers keep kids who are in in person focused on the work that they need to do as well as assist the teacher who may need

027to spend some time working in small groups with students in guided reading lessons who perhaps may be in the virtual center because regardless of how many students are virtual in a class we will have every other day because the hybrid model will have kids learning virtually so the principals have when they scheduled in the elementary level they split their sections as best they could with monday wednesday students and tuesday thurs thursday students and then we also have our virtual students placed in there as well so that way when we were able to move to hybrid we could do so and keep the social distancing that we want um certainly important to use the technologies that we have and we've been our teachers and administrators have come up with some creative ideas to improve what we

028have and we're implementing them as quickly as possible but we've been we think we've been very successful and we know while this presents a change that we want to take that challenge and we will do it successfully um you know it's certainly possible when we have scenarios where uh a teacher needs to quarantine or a group of students need to move in and out and go completely virtual you know we don't want those experiences to take place or we have a teacher that needs to take a leave of absence there certainly may be a scenario where while we have a certified sub coming in to help support that teacher that we ask the teacher the teacher's able if they're healthy enough and able to do so uh teach remotely while we still have that certified

029sub in there and providing additional support for our students that's that's going on in other districts as they've had potential cases or people's lives change and they may need to request an accommodation so that is entirely possible that that could occur the majority of our staff though are planning on being in and and i appreciate the candor in their responses as it's helped us plan for the upcoming switch later this month or next month certainly have some essential things that have to be accomplished in order to move in this direction first the board has to approve it next week and then we need folks to reconfirm their in-person and virtual requests and we're going to provide a relatively small window to do that if the need arises we could probably extend it a day or

030two i do want to thank our parents we had about 98 participation in the last survey um and so we expect uh similar uh participation in this one we will not we're not unless you're a new family we will not be asking again about transportation we will instead handle those on a case-by-case basis if your particular circumstance has changed but we have been building the transportation routes based upon the previous data that we received um and i certainly understand there may have to be some changes um but we'll handle those individually uh rather than surveying five thousand again five thousand plus individuals so the survey will be shorter but it will ask you to confirm your desire for virtual or hybrid the goal is then the week of october 5th and it could be later

031that week to distribute the transportation assignments i'll talk a little bit i'll talk a little bit later in this presentation about the requirements for riding the bus and then also confirming our cohort assignments for our students in case we have changes so that parents know that if they are monday wednesday or tuesday thursday we did have some people that did not reply so we assigned those families based upon where the need was so that we could balance classes for safety reasons so people need to be informed of what they selected lastly and i don't want to be a naysayer but we absolutely have to continue continue to monitor the cove of data on a weekly basis i i certainly understand if we say we're going to if the board approves that we're going to move

032the hybrid then we need to exhaust every effort that we have to do so we made a switch uh a month and a half ago uh and i know it it was troubling to many people so i certainly understand the responsibility and the commitment that we're making that said you know i talked when i met with a group of doctors that i met with and medical professionals um i said you know we were running we were talking about different scenarios you know we're at 3.3 positivity right now you know if we jump to 6.5 percent and nearly doubled we'd still be in the moderate range but it would have doubled within a week or two and whether that's statistically possible or not i'm not sure um but those are things we certainly need to keep

033an eye on certainly if we were to jump to nine ten eleven 11 that would be considered an outbreak and as many of the colleges have seen they've had to move to exclusively remote learning so i don't want i understand the responsibility to the commitment we're making here pending board approval but we still need to monitor the data next slide for grades 6 through 12 our goal is to open a week later and that's monday october 26th in a hybrid model uh once again we have the same two cohorts um and you can you can see that we have the uh families who remain in virtual instruction as per their previous requests next slide guys when we talk about six through twelve and i said this earlier that our our older students are more adept

034to learning uh in a high in a virtual mode while not ideal uh we have to acknowledge that hybrid is not ideal either what we want is a full return and we're just not able to do that right now in the pandemic we certainly may have a need for additional staffing at the secondary level that's a little more challenging because of the different certifications that are required uh and so we're pursuing all those opportunities now uh to make sure that we have have those things covered but it is undoubtedly a fluid uh a fluid motion of fluid motion part of a a fluid situation uh where folks may be required to take a leave and they don't have much time to give us notice um that happens in a regular school year with anybody who

035might become ill or need a leaf for whatever reason and we move as quickly as possible it's certainly exacerbated when you're talking about a situation that involves a pandemic i think the key really is to use the technologies we have to provide this remote instruction you know particularly at that when we talk at the high school level some of our ap courses and some of our advanced courses where maybe we only have one section it's imperative that we're able to provide that in-person and remote instruction simultaneously so kids keep moving forward uh and progressing towards their goals academically one of the challenges with it so you can go back i'm not telling that one true and one of the challenges we certainly need to acknowledge is when you're teaching uh and whether it's virtually and

036in hybrid mode uh the reality is is that we have some teachers who like to walk around the room and move around a lot and so you know we're using as much as we can to provide technology and extension cords or whatever we need to provide access for those teachers to teach and move around the room so they're not completely stationary but that certainly is a work in progress um so it will lead uh for those i was always a teacher that moved around the room uh and so this would probably be a little bit of a learning curve for me um but it's important and imperative that we get that content distributed to our students similar similarly to the younger grades you know we have the board vote and then a week later we

037would distribute our transportation assignments and then just confirmed the cohort assignments as we did have some families that did not select monday wednesday or tuesday and thursday therefore they needed to be assigned at the high school level keep in mind too things are different than k-8 and you have a wide and vast program of studies you have students that are taking electives where they might be moving from one class to another and there's a different group of students in those classes so the balancing of those classes is something that the high school administration is presently working on to make sure that we can keep the social distancing that we need so that is less than perfect without a doubt um there's just more there's more changing in a high school situation but for those classes

038that we have difficulty balancing we may have to use some of our larger areas uh more creatively so that we can provide social distancing but i talked with dr bakani and his team today and they're working through all the different classes to make sure that we can make it as equitable and equal as possible between the cohorts can move forward please we need to make sure that student and staff safety is our top priority and while this list is uh lists uh several important things it's not all inclusive of what our expectations will be and and all the things that we are implementing um most importantly it is critical uh that if we move to this hybrid mode and we're bringing students in if your child does not feel well they need to stay home

039we can't have the ibuprofen or tylenol effect that covers symptoms and then three or four hours later we have a child child not in the will anytime they would display a fever we need students to be left home we do have an isolation room designated in each of our schools for students in the event that they would accept exhibit any type of symptoms where they feel ill so that they can be separated from the rest of the student body and from the staff and then and a parent can or guardian can come pick them up right away i have been in contact with the montgomery county office of public health more than i care to share as is our hr director one about asking all the questions that we've had but also investigating potential cases

040that we've had from this summer and since staff has returned you know there are certain things that we can't control i know that our teachers are doing a great job and we have about 80 to 85 percent of them teaching from their classrooms right now teaching our students and they come in and go directly to their rooms and they wear their masks in the hallways but we can't control everything that's going outside of our schools you know whether wherever you're traveling or where you are on the weekends and so there are situations where unfortunately we get a call that somebody may have been exposed and so we immediately contact the office of public health and they they just told me as recently as last thursday that they're adding additional staff because of the amount of

041requests they're getting in the county um so that they can do that contact racing one of the frustrations that the office of public health has shared too is they said unfortunately about 30 of the calls that they make people are not being cooperative or not returning their calls one not being cooperative means they're not sharing who they had contact with and that's really frustrating to those dr arkoosh and the representatives from the office of public health came and spoke to all the superintendents and asked us to to express that to our communities that it is critical to help them limit community transition if they have accurate information about contact tracing and they need people to be responsive and they need people to be honest um if it happens they'll be positive cases and we need

042folks to share share that information so they can prevent further community spread go ahead we would potentially have a need for exclusions from schools and this is the most recent uh chart that from the office of public health and uh as far as excluding students from school the amount of time they would need to quarantine until they were safe to return should that be the case in our situation we'll have students then they'll stay with their current teacher and they will continue to learn remotely obviously they need to be healthy but at least they can check in and have contact with their teacher and see their peers on a regular basis we will make sure we distribute this along with all of our materials to all of our schools and make sure all of our

043parents and guardians have it as well good i've been asked and approached by multiple residents and uh we did have a presentation this monday night at our community relations and student life committee meeting where felix scherzinger went over all the different supports that we have because it's not just about being safe in our schools it's about our students being well uh socially emotionally mentally these are trying times for all of us particularly our children it's hard for them to grasp the challenges that we are all facing they want a return to see their friends they want a return to see their teachers we all want to return to normalcy without a doubt and so we need to provide those supports for our students should they need them um felix did present on monday night but

044i'm going to ask mrs burke just to go over some of these services that we provide and i'll make sure that our principals are advertising these as well to each of our families good evening everybody um as dr christian stated um the district takes social and emotional well-being very seriously and there are a number of programs in place to support our students first we have the colonial assistance and referral effort or care which is a prevention intervention and referral process that provides students and families with assistance in dealing with any type of concern that interferes with the student's learning and school performance this team consists of an administrator school and community counselors school psychologist school nurse home and school visitor and behavioral health advisor our student assistance program or sap is a school-based program that's

045designed to help students k-12 remove barriers to their overall success barriers can include substance abuse alcohol tobacco and or mental illness the sap core team is made up of specially trained school personnel including teachers school and community counselors administrators nurses school psychologists behavior health advisor and our home and school visitor we partner with the carson valley children's aid society who provide confidential mental health screenings and recommendations for students referred by the team with no charge to parents parents and or school staff may refer students to the sap team at any time our school counseling services include office hours and check-ins our school counselors in all of our buildings are available daily to address student concerns answer questions and provide supports to our students and their families they're available to meet with students upon recruit upon

046request or at pre-arranged times additional counseling services for students is provided by lincoln and lakeside these are community-based services right now we have six community councillors we have one that services our k-3 buildings one in our 4-5 building two at the middle school and two at the high school and they are integral members of our school community who serve on the care and sap teams they assist students with social emotional and mental health barriers that energy interfere with their learning in addition to meeting with students individually they also run small groups in order to support students who are having similar challenges we have been working with these community counselors as we call them for as long as i can remember so many of these people have been with the district for over 20 years threat

047assessment and trauma-informed care practices the virginia student threat assessment guidelines or v-stack is an approach to violence prevention that emphasizes early attention to problems such as bullying teasing and other forms of student conflict before they escalate into violent behavior all building and district office crisis response team members were trained in these guidelines trauma-informed care practices refer to being informed about and being sensitive to trauma and providing a safe stable and understanding environment for students and staff these days covet 19 presents situations where they could where could provide trauma to some of our students and staff this year through monies received through a safe school grant all csd staff will be trained in trauma and foreign care practices some of our community counselors have already been trained and utilized this approach when working with our students

048suicide prevention and intervention is also considered and our staff is being trained and has been trained all csd staff has been trained in suicide prevention however um we've just submitted a grant for our crisis response team members to receive specific training in suicide prevention as it pertains to covid19 daily morning meetings in our elementary schools were developed as part of the responsive classroom model morning meetings are where students and teachers greet and welcome each other share something about themselves or their lives listen to their peers and ask follow-up questions and offer comments it's during this time that students make connections to their peers and learn that others may have feeling similar to theirs it's also a time when teachers are able to determine if a student may need some additional attentions and supports and make

049referrals for that so as you can see we have quite a bit of supports in place and supports that will be in place to address student safety and wellness thank you so we have to look at the impact on our physical space as well uh and some of this is redundant but it's worth repeating uh there is a requirement for mask and face coverage for all students uh except when they're eating lunch um we absolutely must practice our social distancing uh it's all about duration and distance uh as far as being six feet apart in less than 15 minutes together um so if they're within that six feet it has to be briefly and so you know we're not we certainly understand as kids are moving around school and uh potentially getting off the bus

050and moving into classrooms there could be times that they're close together just like we are when we're in the supermarket uh or other places but we need to do the best we can to maintain those distances um we have reduced our the amount of furniture in our room so only what we need and we bought more portable furniture uh so that we can socially distance children particularly at the elementary levels when they were accustomed to sitting at the kidney tables which would put them in very close proximity to one another every night currently as our faculty leaves we go in and spray with disinfectant using our sprayers and they hit every classroom they have all the desks they hit the walls they hit the classroom they let it they let it sit for the appropriate

051amount of time they the maintenance staff goes in the dresses other rooms and then they come back uh for uh to finish uh cleaning the room uh and that has uh we're following the epa's tools for schools and the products that they use um so that it destroys the virus and keeps it off of uh hard surfaces and frequently touched services so i thank our maintenance and custodians for doing such a good job i know they'll continue to do that we've outfitted hand sanitizer stations in all of our classrooms in the cafeterias in the hallways uh everywhere we can and the reality is i think we all realize that this will be needed unfortunately far beyond uh 2020 and into 2021 even even with a vaccine or even with therapies it's the new way in

052which we need to operate we unhooked all the blowers to prevent the spread of germs and we'll be using paper towels certainly posting hygiene signs promoting proper hygiene amongst many other things we have directional signage on all the floors of the class of the hallways of all the schools even though we're minimizing the amount of travel that our students do when they do have to travel to lunch and or to leave the building we need to keep them separated and keep them safe so i want to thank joe lally and his staff for prepping their buildings next slide please social distancing sideline strategies um some of these i discussed earlier this year um and so we're doing that rotating the teachers to keep students in one classroom keep them in that space um easier in

053k to five and six to eight than it is in high school we can still take advantage we're able to come back and hybrid to some outdoor physical education activities and certainly if we're in hybrid in the spring we can do so as well we will be as we finalize the data for folks that are taking our buses and folks that are driving and we finish those routes there may be a need to stagger our arrival and dismissals not significantly but we may be asking and each building will be a little bit different those of you at ridge park you certainly know how traffic can get backed up onto cars lane uh and those of you who attend white marsh elementary certainly understand uh the truck uh challenges of joshua road so every school has

054a little bit of a different scenario so tim mcdonald our district safety officer will work with the local police departments and so we may ask for some latitude for different grade levels and or our buses to arrive first or second as opposed to all of our of the cars because we do appreciate the number of parents that will be driving their children next slide please transportation i referenced earlier in the presentation certainly a requirement to wear face covering or mask on all buses um we have asked and we have been very pleased and we certainly appreciate the parents who are able to opt out of transportation and so that we can have smaller bus runs which makes kids safer we are limiting capacity first student has asked us our transportation provider they've asked us to

055keep the immediate seat behind the driver empty and we're respecting that and we're putting one child per seat except where there are siblings involved where we will allow multiple children sitting and that's why you see a range from 22 to 30 students so in any given day if we have 40 percent of the school in in an elementary school normally for example plymouth elementary we would need 13 perhaps 14 buses for the entire student body and that's with students on a 72 passenger bus because we're reducing our the number of students coming in to about 40 to 42 percent on monday wednesday or tuesday and thursday but also that's offset by the fact that we can only have 22 to 30 students on a bus we're still probably looking at about 10 or 11 buses

056first student we've been meeting with them regularly as they've been recruiting drivers i won't lie that that's been a challenge for them they are almost ready to go with the full slate of drivers but they still need to do more recruiting including getting additional subs to complete those runs and i think that's i know that's something that many school districts are experiencing in the area many many drivers retired at the end last spring and decided not to return because of the pandemic and it has not been an easy job to recruit for but they still they're offering actually signing bonuses and they're offering immediate training so that they can have drivers ready to go i've said to them if they want to do a recruitment night here provided we can do social distancing or recruitment

057day we can hold it outside we would use that and they will they will do that for our community if anybody is interested our buses need to be disinfected on a daily basis i've talked to some of my colleagues and one of them described to me a product that exists that allegedly lasts for 30 days to disinfect a bus and that that is not something that we were interested in we feel they need to be disinfected on a daily basis maybe that product does exist it's just not something that we were willing to risk next slide please our food service and we still we're still planning there are some some schools that are using in other areas that are using their classrooms for lunch we have seating separated enough that we can take students to

058the cafeteria provided we follow certain safety measures and we can keep them six feet apart it will change the schedules a little bit and the elementary principals will communicate that with their families but we we didn't reduce the cafeteria capacity sorry reducing the number of students in the cafeteria the capacity is still the same uh to increase that social social distance there are some buildings where we're using an adjacent area if we need to uh to provide additional seating i don't think that would be needed but we have identified extra space should we need needed as i said before sanitizing stations available everywhere disposable silverware single serve condiments replacing the pumps where they get multiple uses and elimination any any self-service areas for our students we have been participating and we've been providing thousands of

059meals per week for our families who need it and it's been free that will continue uh and so laurie mccoy and dave sherman will get out that information when we move the hybrid uh how the meals will work for free meal when the children are in school uh for potentially those who need it and also those who've been taking advantage of it uh on the days when we're not in school or for those people who are choosing an exclusively virtual setting uh as we continue through the school year so more information to come on that next slide please so i tried to be succinct uh but also convey a plan that we're looking at moving forward we will accept public comments momentarily i want to remind everybody if you just logged on we are the

060board does not have a motion this evening to move to hybrid they wanted to hear the presentation be able to ask questions and they have scheduled the meeting on tuesday september 22nd at 6 pm to consider this motion and this recommendation before we move on in the agenda the board members have questions for me or the administration thank you um that was um extremely thorough so i appreciate i know all of us appreciate the details i may have missed it um did you did you discuss anything with regard to ventilation in each of the buildings i did not have that slide up there but we do uh we talked about that in august and i can put that information together and send it to our community as well and put it on our token page

061we do use in merv 13 filters in most most of our areas there are a few and i'll get joe lally to put together the detail there are a few areas where they're not compatible but joe is you know i'll have joe put all that information together and if he could provide that to us at the fmt meeting on monday that would be extremely useful absolutely that'd be great thank you um i i would like to first of all thank uh thank our teachers um i think i'd be remiss if i didn't do that for their outstanding efforts um so far in uh in in teaching um in a remote environment um i think it's been very robust and i know it hasn't worked um you know it hasn't worked perfectly for for every family

062but i think um you know we can all agree that i mean compared to the spring there's just a much more robust curriculum that's uh that's being delivered um i'm a little concerned for you know for our teachers you know we had them start the year remote they switched to that they've been doing a great job and uh you know one of my concerns is now we're basically asking them to switch again to deliver a hybrid model where they're going to have kids in front of them and they're also going to be teaching kids remotely at the same time including some students who will be fully virtual and they won't see in person you know i'm not a teacher but it seems to me that that's a very different way of delivering education and it

063seems to me that that would be very very very challenging um and i'm just wondering you know i'm just concerned about frankly you know burning out our teachers and i want to be sure that um you know that they're going to have the you know the the support the training they need to to be able to do this um and uh you know and i just you know want to make sure that they're you know sort of on board with you know with this with this model um thank you adam and your concern is my concern uh and i've talked with cea leadership and they've shared uh some concerns and it's been a it's been a candid conversation we absolutely will provide the professional development that's needed and the supports that are needed too which

064is why we're looking at uh providing additional human resources in many of those classrooms to assist uh with students that are in person uh and students who are online um as i said earlier the virtual model was not ideal for everybody and there are many people that don't like it the hybrid model is not ideal we want to be back we certainly want to be back and so certainly cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good um i i will continue to meet with our uh cea leadership and i know our principals are meeting with their teachers and listening to them um and if there are things that they need then i will seek to provide them and so i certainly i i think um i think the comment of being burned out

065is is happening in a lot of professions in this in this situation and i know our parents are eager to have their children get back in school too so it's a certainly a balance um but i want to provide those supports and make every effort to do so um dr christian if i could ask maybe not for tonight but uh maybe on tuesday at our special meeting if you could talk about what it might look like from a recess perspective like giving those kids the k to five kids the breaks that you know they they'll need um and what it might look like you know when we get them outside and if they're going to be using the playgrounds and that kind of thing so you know maybe not so much tonight but at least

066for tuesday we could talk about that if we had a recess plan and we can go through all that uh dr christian could you also just um i want to be sure that i understand you know you've talked about sort of certified subs and instructional aids i i just want to be clear sort of a sort of who how we would deploy them and then be you know are we sure given the fact that i would imagine we're in competition with a lot of other districts that were going to be able to attract the the staffing we need and and then keep that staffing um you know throughout i i don't want to you know be in a situation where we say we're going to open hybrid and then you know we end up not

067being able to deliver um the education we want to deliver because we don't have the the staffing yeah i don't want to be in that situation either so we are actively engaged in getting both certified teachers as well as instructional aids so what we need particularly in the younger grade levels where we need some assistance in classrooms and we have teachers that are in person teaching we will have we can provide additional support in that classroom to assist with children where we have a need to provide an accommodation for a teacher who may need to teach remotely that's where we need a certified teacher so we are seeking seeking long-term subs based on certification needs and then we are also seeking uh subs that are they're certified but they can go in any classroom at

068a moment's notice and so it is possible that i would see my teacher who i've been seeing every day for two or three weeks virtually and if that teacher needs to teach remotely we still have a certified teacher in the room so not ideal but it keeps that connection between the teacher that is currently the teacher um and this is something that i've reviewed with the elementary folks uh in particular the principals as far as how we would make this work the challenge and competition uh with other districts is a very real one and that's why we will also use our existing employees to provide those provide additional help in our buildings there will be days where perhaps they're just people who take a personal day or people who are out sick and we don't

069get enough subs in general just not not alone for let alone the ones we need it for because of kogan and so administrators will help out central office folks will help out uh we have other instructional aides that are certified teachers they will be called out so um it is a big jigsaw puzzle and it has many moving parts to it um but we're moving as quickly as we can and we have procured uh we're up to about 20 to 25 that we need um and depending upon what the staff needs are after the board approval uh we may have to go out and secure more um so that will be it will be a very uh very busy very busy couple of weeks without a doubt if i could just say one more thing

070um i think the thing that and i see we have you know some people with their hands up and and that's great and public comment you know please bring it on um but one of the things that i want to make sure everybody understands is when we vote on this on tuesday if we get the votes to then offer the hybrid choice there will still be a choice for families to be all virtual we're not taking that away from anyone for anybody who is nervous about the virus and about their children being exposed we understand so we want to make sure that everybody understands that we're we will continue to provide the virtual education that we have been providing it may look slightly different but we're going to provide that um and then the other

071little thing that and i had to ask this of dr christian on the side um and i want to share this with everybody is when you guys when everybody gave their um survey in and said what they wanted to do if they wanted to be hybrid and if they wanted monday wednesday or tuesday thursday our administration i don't know how they do it but they they they made it happen to where if and when we do have hybrid your students will be where you had selected so they'll be able to stay with their class and if you chose for if you have five kids god bless you um if you chose for all five of your children to go monday wednesday that should be you know there can be mistakes obviously but that should be

072how it is so if you were to choose hybrid now for this future thing and again if if we approve it um your students should be where you had selected them back in august um so i know there's a bunch of hands up maybe that answers some of your questions again feel free to comment that's why it's here um but just want to make sure that people understand that i know i would assume that that's what a lot of the questions are about um that's all and you know just to be clear if you choose um virtual now your child i i i believe dr christian you said your child will be learning from home but not part of a virtual class you'll be in the same class with the same teacher just you know

073in learning from remotely in that class all for four days of the week with the same students right so with the same people they've been with yeah okay good question that's that's our design if there's no other board questions we can move the public comments please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi uh i'm erin riley residency is um 18 viburnum court lafayette hill and um my comment is i serve on a county tourism board and they're talking about restaurants and bars reopening to 50 people indoor gathering obviously everybody's going to try to keep covid procedures good but basically what that just means is over the next month we're going to have a lot more people going out because indoor venues can now accommodate 50 instead of 25 people at a time

074so i'm just wondering and with the flu season and everything you know it's possible that our county viral loads are going to increase so i wanted to know what is our trigger for ending in-person instruction if needed so as the positivity rate and the incident rate increase is there a benchmark number at which point we would seek to close down again so the is the benchmark in the county is uh exceeding 10 positivity that doesn't mean the board would have to wait for that there's other cdc has a recommendation that is greater than nine percent um but if if it would move dramatically the board individually could choose to move more remotely more remotely removed to virtual a virtual setting more quickly in the example i gave earlier if it doubled in a week i'm

075sure that would give the board pause but the triggers right now are the stat of the office of public health as it has listed on their website and i had them earlier in the presentation which i'll i'll post to our website tonight thank you you're welcome can you please state your full name place of residency before commenting i think you're muted uh helen okay hi there can you hear me yes hi my name is randy halbert i live in lafayette hill and um i first want to thank you dr christian for reconsidering um the original proposal from back in july and to come back with something where um the families will once again have a choice hopefully um and i really do appreciate that and i think but what concerns me about the plan that

076you propose is the huge lack of urgency that i'm seeing here um you know i'm sorry i can't hear you right i heard i heard everything up until when you said but you had a concern ah yes can you hear me now okay so what concerns me is the um i see this plan is as lacking urgency um you know the idea of a an opening of october 19 through k through 5 which is a month from now and then october 26 for you know the middle schoolers and high schoolers um that's a really long time and but every day that passes these kids are falling behind um you know i have a high schooler and he is doing chemistry labs watching them online he's trying to learn french online it's not working um with

077every day that passes these kids are feeling more and more isolated and so i think there needs to be more of a sense of urgency to get these kids back um i i understand and i fully appreciate that there are things that need to be done um starting with you guys have to vote on it first of all so i do understand that but i think that there is a way to um expedite the process and what i would suggest is and this is just an idea but something like perhaps um you send the survey out to everybody tomorrow to vote to to so they can express what they would like hybrid or virtual of course with the caveat that this is assuming that this proposal passes on the 22nd but if you send out

078the survey which you already have because you've done it once before send it out to the families in the school district let them express their preferences and then on the 22nd when you all get together and vote um hopefully it will pass and then you're good now you you already have gotten a start on the whole process and then you have to believe to arrange to figure out the transportation the cohorts and things like that and the way that i see this you could really push up the um return date to october 5th um so that is my only that's really my biggest concern about the proposal as um as it's been presented on this call um you know i look at other neighboring school districts um in our county and they've announced their returns

079um and they're getting it done in two weeks um you know i'm assuming you guys that you know you've had all summer to uh get a lot of this together and i'm assuming you have um and so i i guess you know that would be my only plea to you is that uh to reconsider um you know tweaking the proposal if you would uh just to push up the timeline a bit because with every day that passes it's really hurting our kids thank you for your comments certainly take that under advisement dr christian can i just before anybody else comments you know i understand you know some people may say it's a lack of urgency it's you know you come up with a million reasons and again for the purposes of transparency we are doing

080everything we can to figure this out this is literally the world's biggest rubik's cube and every time we think we have one piece put in place something else moves and it it cannot be that the the scale of trying to ensure that we have certified teachers available and how that's gonna how that's gonna look combined with families and what they choose combined with transportation combined with outbreaks you name it it's there i just want to reiterate to the public we are really trying to figure this out seven of the nine of us have kids that are affected daily from this we're not we're not delaying because we enjoy it we're not trying you know this this is not political this is not your way my way we're trying to figure this out so everyone has

081a choice and i just i want the public to understand that the administration is working i think dr christian and i'm i don't think i'm exaggerating got four hours of sleep last night and that's about probably the max he's had since march everybody is doing the best they can and i just you know for every email that we get that says keep them out we get an email saying keep them in for every like everybody's doing the best they can and we're trying to figure this out and i just ask for the public to to think about that and yes we understand the sense of urgency but we under also understand that this is a pandemic we don't want kids to get sick if somebody gets really sick you're going to be right back on

082this call screaming at us because somebody got sick we're not prepared you know nobody we've never dealt with this before right so i just ask that the public understand that we're doing the best job that we can we understand the sense of urgency for those whose kids don't want to come back we also understand all the other issues and it literally is the world's biggest rubik's cube please state your full name place of residency before commenting this is mike miller from lafayette hill um and uh just wanted to first uh thank you all for considering the possibility of moving the date forward from what you had said before i had raised my hand initially to talk about a similar subject as randy really just to ask that you guys consider moving it up um sooner

083and you know brett beth i appreciate your comments there and i know you guys are all working really hard and that this is brutal but we're asking for really is the choice and so that the parents that don't you know feel comfortable sending their kids back can continue to go virtual and those of us that one hybrid can do that and we know the risks i mean we've all been reading it and we understand the risks and we're saying that we feel like that sending our kids back is less risky than sending um you know then the coveted risk so you know we look at the neighboring districts and maybe this will turn into a question then for dr christian or whoever wants to answer it is you know lower marian and central bucks both

084announced within the last week that they were going back and are going back within two weeks from the date that they announced it um what is it that's making it take five to six weeks for for us to be able to go back i i can't speak to what their circumstances are with their planning whether it's as it relates to staffing or transportation um you know upper dublin is going back uh they announced but they're not going back till november november 6th or november 2nd i believe so um you know it would be hard for me to comment on what their particular circumstances are uh i know that um it's many several factors for us including making sure that we have uh the cohorts correct making sure we have transportation correct certainly providing more professional

085development for our teachers uh in preparation for move the hybrid combination of all those things i hope that answers your question at least in part yeah it does in part i mean i realize the thing is i guess you guys were working on this all summer long and you laid out what looked like a tremendously well thought out plan back in july so at least it feels to those of us who are the outsiders that you guys had a lot of this in place and were ready to go and then had to suddenly change gears so it felt like maybe you could gear it up a little more quickly given that you've done so much advanced work that's all i understand and i have not made perfect decisions without a doubt i can tell you

086that so but i appreciate your comments please state your full name place of residency before commenting please state your full name liz place of residency before coming hi this is liz i'm in uh white marsh township i just want to thank all the teachers for their extremely hard work that they're doing um i see it through the computer and i know you guys are doing so much more than we've ever imagined um i'm just not sure what everyone thinks school is going to look like this year if this gets approved it's not going to look like regular old school kids are not going to be on the carpet during morning meeting moving around the classroom i don't know how teaching both hybrid and virtual at the same time will work but i'm willing to bet

087the kids in school will be watching the same exact lesson that the kids are watching at home but at a desk instead of a kitchen table um our family is going to be sticking with virtual because it's working for us and if i can keep my kids home to help the teachers out we're going to do that but now they're at home and they're going to be watching a teacher teach a lesson through a computer with a mask on i feel like they're getting the short end of the stick just because i'm keeping the wellness of teachers in mind teachers are getting the shortest end of the stick they're working harder than ever right now late into the night through their lunch breaks and now we're adding even more on their plates and asking them

088to do it with the mask on for six hours of the day um and it just seems like we're asking too much of these teachers uh the little breaks that they have will to figure out what they're doing are now gone because they have a group of kids in front of them i just want to encourage the board to think about what this is going to look like i want nothing more than having my kids in school we love their teachers this year and we would love for them to meet them in person but we're in the middle of a pandemic and it doesn't appear to be going anywhere and sometimes we have to make sacrifices i don't think there's a right answer to this or an easy answer but i know what i would

089do thank you please state your full name place of residency before commenting please yes good evening my name is sarah scarola plymouth township resident um first of all again thank you to all the staff the board and um most certainly the teachers for these first three weeks which have been you know very eye-opening and very difficult for everyone but truly uh truly something we can all appreciate i think um what liz just said actually ties in to what my comment was going to be but first i had a request for clarification on what the um what the virtual fully virtual experience would be because i think i've heard two different things stated and i just want to make sure that we're understanding that this is a difference from the plan that was presented in the

090summer which was that the fully virtual cohort if you will would be in a fully virtual setting with the teacher face to face through zoom whereas now it sounds like they the fully virtual and the kids at home would be seeing the teacher presenting to the class so can i confirm that that is different from the original plan we had discussed that uh back in july as a potential we looked at a couple different models um and so it is it is different they would be sticking remaining with their current cohort uh in the in the schools that they're in we're trying to sorry god oh no it's gonna say so so that does clarify and i just i wasn't sure that that was completely understood uh based on what kathy had said earlier or

091mrs paducy rather so my thought on that as a comment is that you know i think we are looking at that group of fully virtual kids plus those students who are remote for the two days a week having a learning environment learning situation at home that might even be more difficult than what they're experiencing now because they are going to be having to see the teacher through the mask they're going to be not having that sort of face-to-face experience through zoom so i would just you know keep that in consideration um when making a decision about this but also curious and here's where my question comes in is if we have been able to observe or get some feedback from schools that have started with the hybrid to understand how it's going because anecdotally i've

092personally heard that people who are in a hybrid model from the start are having a lot of trouble with it and i was just curious what kind of feedback or observation has been made to that so far i meet with superintendents twice a week it's once a week now now that school has started we certainly share anecdotes of what's going well and what our challenges are and then i also speak with my colleagues in chester and delaware counties where i used to work and it's a range it's a range of feedback from things going very well to things uh crashing and not not going very well um some are fans of hybrid some despise it uh despises too strong too strong a word they don't they don't like it everybody agrees that we don't like

093the situation we're in whatsoever and that that seems to be the overriding factor please state your full name place of residency before coming my name is kathleen dutil i live in white marsh township i have a child in ridge park one in the 4-5 school and one in the middle school my first question is have there been positive cases among the staff currently in the buildings that have required quarantine we've had to investigate the possibility of cases i can't talk specifically about staff members and then my comment is so our family will always choose the virtual option until our doctor advises otherwise we chose to stay with the district's virtual academy because of our respect for the district teachers and the education provided before the pandemic the presented plan for virtual and for fully virtual

094instruction especially for the k-5 is a lesser education than that offered to students in the building it is not community building to watch your classmates and teacher interact while you sit at home how are virtual students supposed to access their education and even hear clearly over technology with a masked and moving teacher in a classroom of noises the presented plan puts the minority of fully by fully virtual learners at a disadvantage as the teachers cannot pride provide equal education to those never present in their classroom while managing the education and safety of those who are i previously wrote to the board asking to keep my kids with their wonderful teachers and classmates hoping for some consistency and difficult times at this point with this presented plan and a one-month timeline i would prefer the original

095virtual academy plan that puts all virtual learners in a class with a teacher dedicated solely to virtual learning this seems kinder than forcing my elementary kids to watch school from the sidelines and forcing teachers to juggle three groups of learners and classroom safety please do not accept the virtual aspect of this plan as is thank you please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi my name is casey snyder i am in conshohocken borough my daughter is at colonial middle school apologies i came into this call a little bit late so i don't know if this was already stated but was there a survey provided to all teachers within the district as well as support staff like janitorial special needs aids cafeteria workers etc survey regarding what regarding their sentiments on your plans

096to return to a hybrid model uh we we've surveyed our professional staff uh not regarding their sentiments but regarding uh other aspects of employment okay and just to follow up on that so you have not surveyed them as to whether they feel safe coming back to the school district is that correct i did not ask that specific question but i i communicate regularly with the leadership team of the association and they share the sentiments of their association members certainly and i completely understand that um bear with me i am within the scientific research community so i am all about advocating for oneself in this so i might recommend that you survey your teachers and that you survey your support staff you survey your janitorial stuff the individuals who are going to be boots on the

097ground because listen we as parents we are not going to be there full time we are not going to be taking those situations as they come as things evolve with the cold and the flu season so you know for me personally i think that's very important i know my daughter she has been experiencing a very positive experience thus far in the virtual model her teachers have been amazing and eighth grade colonial middle school and i want their voices to count and i as a parent would like to see what they're feeling and certainly i understand that there are politics involved there are higher voices that speak for all but that's not really true everyone has their own voice and i think it's important that it's said here um so that's my first question and statement

098my second question here is are you planning or do you have an advisory board that all of you are taking into account that includes healthcare professionals the research community teachers etc or are you merely taking into account emails received from parents who feel very polarized right now certainly we take emails as a portion we listen to all the voices that contact us and there have been many that have said try to open and several that have said stay virtual um i report to the board of school directors and then i've been fortunate enough as i mentioned earlier i did have the opportunity to meet several times a few times with a team of medical professionals for my own edification in addition to meeting with county county officials on a regular basis since since may that's

099included dr arkoush and also representatives from cdc and other medical institutions and then lastly uh i provide the board with all the information we've had multiple four county meetings where we've had teams of doctors presenting and medical professionals epidemiologists uh providing their advice and then lastly we get information from the department um and the and the department of education in pennsylvania and that's fantastic to hear and i understand that but will you be having or do you have a coven 19 specific advisory board for you as the school board district here given that it's in a situation that's going to evolve and continue through 2021. i i we do not have one presently but we certainly can investigate that i'd recommend that you do i appreciate that thank you thanks for your time please state

100your full name place of residency before coming hi this is melissa livni from lafayette hill and i want to add to the chorus of thank yous for the consideration that you are giving this matter i can't believe there's one person on this call who's not nervous or worried about their children being exposed to coved and i appreciate the efforts that you're making to create a safe as possible plan i do have concerns um about the safety of returning to the building i'm sure that you can't say that they've been positive teachers but just knowing positivity rates in the population i can't imagine that there aren't and it makes me even i guess my my biggest point is that we are going to choose fully virtual b not because we're scared but because we think it's

101the safest choice for our family and the safest choice for the teachers who are going to be and the staff in the building and we also believe that the consistency of having one place um is important and once you bring kids back into the building there's going to be much more inconsistency as teachers as you've said earlier are going to need to take leave and i want to echo the comments of previous parents who've talked about the second class citizenship of the families that are choosing virtual who are going to be watching their teachers with masks on through screens and i actually not even knowing that this was on the agenda tonight wrote to ms carr my younger son's principal today to ask if it was at all possible to support the teachers better in

102the classrooms even as it stands now they're doing a tremendous job but i am worried that they are going to break and if there was even somebody who could say the kids could ask or the parents could ask what are we supposed to be doing now what page are we on someone who could supervise the children in breakout rooms so that smaller group learning can happen for the younger kids they're not allowed to be in breakout rooms unsupervised so can we have a parent volunteer or can we have other people supervise them and it concerns me that our fantastic teachers are now being asked to do to teach three separate cohorts or two cohorts of children one of whom will never be in the room and um i don't know i guess i am um

103repeating what other people have said and don't want to take up more of your time but just to strongly consider enhancing the staffing within the classrooms as they are now and to truly consider how much of an effort it's going to take to bring the children back in for a hybrid model for how long before it gets shut down again and is it worth putting the effort into making the model that we have at home already stronger rather than switching and then having to switch back and then i said one sort of practical question all that said if families do choose the hybrid model and rates go up or their kids are coming home and saying yeah the teacher's not really wearing her mask or my friends are hugging me and i can't get away

104from them or can they switch from hybrid back to full virtual is that going to be an option if once we get boots on the ground it doesn't feel comfortable anymore so that's a practical question after all my ramblings i apologize for that no no apology comments uh we're asking families that are committing to virtual to at least commit till the end of near the end of january if there is a family that would need to transition out we would we'll handle those on a case-by-case basis it's case-by-case basis but i'm sure we would be able to accommodate that in some fashion please state your place of residency before commenting hi um aaliyah devlin white marsh township um i just wanted to thank all the teachers my daughter was an incoming kindergartner and loves her

105teacher i mean everything you know is going as great as it could be with the virtual aspect but obviously you know us personally we are eager to get back to a hybrid model um just commenting on some of the people who are wanting virtual only i mean i would hardly call it a second class teaching um being home virtual that's your prerogative to stay home virtual and you guys have that option it would be nice to give the option to those families who want to be hybrid um myself and other families who are watching at home i'm almost in tears like for some of the elementary kids who are in wonderspring and sorry getting emotional but they're learning with masks on and on their tv in front of their laptop with no one around to

106help them um and as a little kindergartner and first grader i mean they need someone to help them and whether it be in person um you know if you don't want the hybrid your comments really are irrelevant because you have that option right now so um that's really all i have to say about that but i do have one practical question for going back to hybrid um i know a lot of people have put extensive stress and links into finding and scrambling for these quote pods if you will which i hate that term but i guess it's technically what we're calling them so i would just ask um you know obviously like whether it be monday wednesday tuesday thursday i know i think kathy had mentioned but just trying to keep those pods together because

107it would really affect child care and stuff like that um when going back so thank you please state your full name place of residency before coming hi my name is amy segal scam and plymouth meeting can you hear me yes thank you i just have two um i think quick questions and and of course thank everyone um for everything that's been going on so far um i know for certain that the virtual option will remain and i likely considering different choices for my different children um so that's why i have the question i know you're asking for if you choose virtual to commit to that until january 22nd but at this point do you expect that that option will remain for the entire school year i think we need to be prepared that it'll have

108to be in place for the whole school year the whole school year just just based upon what i'm reading but i hope i'm wrong and i know you know no one has a crystal ball but i i just wondering if there's if if there's a the ability to return fully to school out you know not the hybrid will the ver you know do you think the virtual option will go away or will likely still be offered uh likely still be offered i i hope i really hope that we get to the point where we can welcome people back okay and then um i know that the for the there was some a slide that had a lot of data on it that um you're gonna share that i didn't get to read fully but you

109mentioned the cr there's a county or county department of health um criteria for the school to close again if we um were to get above a 10 positivity in the county but is there some criteria within our own district or schools that that you'll be looking at like if a certain number of children or staff test positive you know is there like a possibility that a school or the district may close outside of the county data that that is a distinct possibility and i i believe we have it posted on our page but if not i'll get it up on the website or have our tech folks do it first thing in the morning there is a link that uh has the requirements for what you must do if you have a certain number of

110cases and it's a sliding scale okay thank you so for example and uh we'll go to the next speaker but if there are two unrelated cases um in your in a school and you're in the moderate range then you could be i don't have in front of me you have to close for three to five days for cleaning so that's what's happening up in [Music] southernton had more than two cases so they're closing i think for three days to do a deep cleaning in one of their schools please state your full name place of residency before coming please must be me yes so um this is marisa russo in conshohocken um you've received a letter i believe and um i'm i'm rather astounded this is this is ridiculous um i was angry for so many

111reasons and never in my wildest dreams would i imagine that the district would lay on a schedule like this where a teacher is teaching hybrid to two groups of students and also teaching virtually i was disappointed with the administration's choices on many things i'm hearing entitlement and a lot of the community members and we'll have to consider homeschooling this do the teachers know have the teachers been notified not that it's hybrid because this is not hybrid this is a particular situation where a teacher is now managing a situation where they have children in their class and children that are at home all of the time do they specifically know this plan i have shared components of this plan with the cea leadership and i'm sure we have many teachers watching tonight and we have just

112uh i know our principals have discussed it but i certainly appreciate your opinion and oh there's more i believe i have three minutes that's what i was told are you ready um i'm sorry you're right this is it's really a lot to swallow it's it's a lot to swallow i was prepared with the written letter and yeah so i was concerned i was still angry about monday when i made comments about the schedule as it stands because it did not need to be this way it did not need to be this way to push everyone to the edge there was opportunities for asynchronous learning there was opportunities to have families connect teachers connect to students individually there were opportunities for that i now know the reason for the schedule was so that we could put

113align everyone up together um i don't know why a virtual family would now choose to stay in this district i'm making the virtual choice as the safe choice for my family for the teachers and for the community the virtual the virtual schedule my issue was with the schedule because it affects everyone and we are for children going into a building for two days to go into a building for two days and live out the schedule the way it is in the environment they need to live it out those children will also be home for three days what will those three days look like you know it seems like a victory for many people we have yet to address those three days and i have friends who live in the district whose daughter's school was disclosed

114who her school was closed my closest friends that are teachers within the last two weeks have all experienced close events that have affected their lives related to coronavirus um this is not what i was originally going to say because and it's not as collected because there's just an element of shock here shock and disappointment that will be it for all please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi this is maria elias in plymouth meeting um i'd like to be able to make an informed decision when the questionnaire comes so if maybe mrs guidas or somebody else could chime in on what the um hybrid model would entail in class i guess um so for example right now we have everybody using the google platform would the children in the classroom also be

115using the google platform um would they have to carry their books back and forth would just what would it look like and if that isn't figured out quite yet if that information could be provided before we have to complete the questionnaire that would be helpful we are asking the students to travel back and forth with their technology to avoid sharing of technology in the classroom um but we will not expect them to have to use it uh as often as they would if they were at home because they would be using their materials their books their journals so we would ask them to carry some of those things not as much as they have currently at home right now but they would not be sharing technology so we would ask them to travel back and

116forth with that they would also need to use that technology to meet synchronously in their small groups with reading specialists or other support services in the building so they wouldn't have to be able to congregate in small groups okay that's helpful um and then one follow-up i asked a similar question when this was originally in our original meeting about what the communication protocol is i understand that the county would be handling contact tracing but if there's a written communication protocol it would be helpful to know you know if there's a an identified case or a suspected case what would be the timing of communicating to the class and parents um would anything come from the school or would we have to be wholly dependent on the county to communicate that to us no it would

117come from a school and it would be as immediate as possible please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi my name is colleen stock i'm i live in plymouth meeting my question is um how will the schedule change if we had selected originally for my kids to be virtual if they continue virtually on fridays are they not in class like they are now that is correct mrs e stock on fridays they would not be having classes all day long they would attend for some time small group instruction community building but they would not be in class the whole time and what is going to be done to ensure that the kids who are staying virtual are connected with their teachers and their classmates they they would be connected ideally they are still

118interacting with their teachers their classmates um previously when we were speaking about the virtual it was a one-way communication this would not be that case it would be interactive i guess i have the same concerns that other parents do about when right now virtually they're all learning on the same platform so i do have concerns about what it will look like when the teacher is in a mask and walking around the room is there going to be proper equipment so that they are audible to the kids who are staying virtual yes that is our plan with the technologies that we have we have tests going on right now and we'll continue to do so so everyone has the proper technology and if we need to improve the microphones we'll certainly do that thank you can

119i jump in real quick we have our two student representatives on the call i'm wondering if we could pause on comment and let them i'm sure they have homework i just don't know if that's even possible but just wanted to throw that out there to respect um these two gentlemen's time and see if there's anything we could do sue do you have any thoughts it's fine with me if they would like to to get their report over and to then move on uh yeah if the if the board allows we would uh we would be willing to do our report right now okay go ahead gentlemen okay thank you all right so to start off um we would like to begin by thanking all the members of the school board uh we're grateful for the

120opportunity you gave uh me and dhruv to represent our peers and we're excited to be a part of the board this year and i just want to say we're very happy to have you this year thank you sorry that it's not in person um we have a good time at our in-person meetings but um we appreciate your joining us tonight so thank you we hope to continue what our predecessors max and courtney have done as expanded a student represent the student report to represent all the students of the colonial school district in addition we hope to bring new items to the table that future representatives will be able to carry on with that being said we would like to jump into the first student report of the school year all right so i'm going to

121be starting off with white marsh elementary parents of white marsh elementary students were sent welcome letters and important information that included pick updates orientation dates and introductory activities for groups of students and more the kindergarten orientation took place on september 2nd and 3rd via zoom where students met their teachers classmates and families with interactive activities a virtual classroom held a ceremony on 911 to remember and honor the police fire and ambulance who were true heroes that day white marsh elementary held it back to school night uh yesterday the 16th uh during the evening via zoom i'm also going to be moving on to ridge park elementary they held a virtual kindergarten orientation on august 25th it was attended by almost 100 people kindergarten teachers specialists and the school counselors nurse and principal all all participated

122all families picked up materials and learned resource and learning resources on august 27th devices were provided to all families upon request ms mason school counselor shared helpful hints to all to all families on supporting students as they return to school virtual back to school night was held september 16th and it was a great success moving along to plymouth elementary on tuesday september 15 and wednesday september 16th families were invited to participate in their virtual open house families had the opportunity to meet their child's classroom teachers receive and receive information regarding the virtual classroom environment families were also invited to meet their students special teachers and or their plymouth elementary literacy team these were enjoyable nights for all on friday september 25th plymouth elementary will be hosting the virtual yes i can character education assembly program

123this program is designed to encourage students to believe in themselves encourage perseverance in all that they do and have compassion for others and more along the way there are powerful stories fun interactive activities contests and incredible magic with a surprise ending so make sure to check that out alright we're going to be moving on the country hawking elementary on august 27th the conshohocken elementary held its material resources and device pickup um over 171 ipads and laptops were distributed families teachers are working extremely hard on launching the school year this includes doing remote team buildings and one-on-one zoom sessions with students and parents on friday september 11th teachers acknowledge 9 11 during the morning meeting also on friday k-2 teachers held class reunions with last year's classroom to connect with conshohocken students conshohocken elementary is currently

124celebrating national hispanic heritage month which runs from september 15th to october 15th they will be participating in activities to learn to learn about the hispanic culture these are being infused through the morning meetings finally on september 17th contract elementary will be celebrating constitution day next up is colonial elementary colonial uh colonial elementary provided materials and supplies which were distributed to students in august they also had two very successful virtual open houses that last week september 8th and september 9th the 5th grade students are beginning band and string lessons this week and are extremely excited other than that they are focusing on routine and virtual learning they are also welcoming 16 special education learners this week teachers and staff are excited to work with everyone this year and are glad to make connections with the students

125next up is colonial middle school colonial middle school provided over 1200 1200 materials before opening day they also provided 300 students with laptops live instructions have been a great success classrooms resumed normally with periodic breaks between classes colonial middle school has also provided additional office hours after school this provides extra support for the students we are also glad to hear that student activities will resume this includes the music program steam clubs odyssey of the mind tsa bsa newspaper club and sports which includes soccer touch football basketball and street hockey moving on to plymouth white marsh high school they held a virtual open house on thursday september 10th it was a successful evening with very strong participation this week pw hosted virtual activities fair for all students club sponsors and student leaders utilized bonus block each

126day of the week to hold informational meetings for students in grade 9 through 12 to promote involvement senior sunrise was a success with pto's assistance thank you to all the parents who made this happen fall sports and activities are back with excitement from field hockey football and other sports deca students created personal cards for every freshman to learn about more about their organization and lastly um dr berkani has been collecting information and he's heard many positive comments about virtual learning this farm i would like to thank every i would like to um thank you for allowing us to skip in front of the line um hopefully we didn't take too long i know you guys are going to be here for some time um and i'll pass on the drew to finish it off i

127just want to give a shout out to mr weiner he wanted a shout out um this is a conclusion of our 9-17-20 student report thank you for your time okay dhruv what what mr weiner didn't tell you is that he's going to give you a quiz tomorrow on everything we talked about tonight oh perfect so there you go thanks guys thank you both okay i guess we'll move back on to the to the public comments please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi everyone my name is ty miriam shu and i'm conshohocken and i have a my oldest daughter attending rich park kindergarten and not so much a question but a request i'm always supportive of choices and i'm so grateful for a choice to go to hybrid and when i was

128one of those 73 parents who picked hybrid in the summer to return and you know start my child school age for the first year in kindergarten you know hybrid model but now that we have started virtual and the option looks completely different from what the summer is as in um you know the expectation of someone who's going to be fully virtual hybrid in person or not what would be really helpful for me to make a wise decision on if i want to continue my child going virtual or if i want to you know move to hybrid is to really just understand what that interaction is going to look like so if you had a vignette of a child who is attending tonight olivia attending um kindergarten and is in front of their computer and and

129you can see what the video is going to look like and you know the teachers walking around and interacting with kids in person if i can just better understand what that experience is going to look like i think i'll be able to make my decision a little bit better because i do i do fear that whole concept of second second level citizen that my child the virtual and because i chose to go full-time virtual that i'm not she's gonna her her delivery of her education is going to digress because there's so much more focus on trying to keep the kids in person manageable so if we can just get a better view because i know we keep talking about oh you know they're going to be able to deliver we're going to have microphones but

130really to understand view wise as my child is sitting in front of the computer what that experience is going to look like even if you just you know demo it i think that would give me a little bit more comfort and a little bit more visibility into the experience so we can choose a little bit widely thank you so much thank you i think that is a great question i think i can shed a little bit of light on that it's not going to look that much different than what it does look like now the added technologies into our classroom with teachers having dual monitors they are going to be able to stream into the home the same exact lesson that the students in the classroom would see on the interactive whiteboard therefore you would

131be seeing this thing if i know you got my money dave when the students are watching that lesson they would continue to do so but then when they go to apply that lesson into their assignments just as they do now those cameras are off and the children are working on those assignments at the same time the children in the classroom are also working on those assignments please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi my name is katie mcmenamin in conshohocken um i have a daughter who's in second grade at conshohocken elementary and i guess i want to kind of echo what a few of the other earlier callers were saying about the plan to go if we plan to stay fully virtual with her um i mean our experience so far has

132been really great every teacher we've come in contact with has done just like an amazing job of um keeping her on task and working with all of the kids to get them you know to work with this new technology and my biggest question is if she does stay fully virtual um will she still have the opportunity to volunteer to participate in class the same way that she does now because i think that's a very big reason why it works so well whereas if she's just sitting there and not getting to be an active participant i think that would be a detriment we do want to keep that connection in that interaction state your full name place of residency before commenting hi my name is tamara mcdevitt plymouth meeting pennsylvania um my comment was it's first

133of all i would like to just applaud every teacher in this district we have middle schoolers and um an elementary school child in second grade the middle school teachers have done a phenomenal job of keeping the kids interested and the elementary teachers for you know having children whose technology for the most part is on a lesser level than those kids that are in middle school um have really just gone above and beyond in the last two weeks it is difficult i'm not going to lie but the improvement that have the improvements that we have seen in our especially in our you know lower class second grader in the last two weeks has been amazing and they truly are making connections i have the same concerns as many other parents we will do virtual um and

134at this point i guess it's whether we stay with the district or have to move to a cyber platform or something of that sort is to kind of be you know a student that's a fly on the wall kind of watching a teacher walk around without the face-to-face interaction that they currently are having all day long is definitely a concern along with the fact that it seems like we dropped a day of educational material what i had heard a lot from the middle school teachers was that the classes were shortened because of the breaks which are phenomenal and are working really well to refocus that age group um but they were a little concerned about fitting everything in for the school year and now it seems like a day has dropped off um to the

135parent who said that we shouldn't have any concerns that truly is is not valid because some people have medical conditions and their kids can't go in and take that risk so that's a little bit of a callus attitude i do understand a lot of parents want to go in i do want to keep our teachers safe and other students which is why we would keep our kids home but definitely have some concerns about what exactly they're going to be doing every friday and how that time is going to be made up in the other four days especially for the higher level kids since everyone essentially is virtual three days a week still this isn't full-time normal school hi mrs mcdevitt um the same kind of idea and what we talked about before still applies that

136direct instruction would still be taking place the four days a week and then the friday would be your lessons that are applied into that asynchronous environment or within that canvas or google classroom platform learning would continue part of the professional development and the work of the curriculum team is to take that curriculum go through the essential questions and the eligible content and make sure that we are indeed getting through that entire program and this is not this is not about uh should not be about folks that are commenting everybody's certainly going to advocate for their child and their family situation uh so this is not about debating uh opinions of what what preferences people have between virtual and hybrid and so if you could focus your questions towards towards us uh rather than previous commenters

137i think that that's fair to everybody please state your full name place of residency before commenting my name's karen mondoro i live in lafayette hill i just want to thank dr christian the board and especially our teachers uh for everything you've done that lost so far i have been amazed with the patience of our teachers during virtual learning i have three kiddos one in kindergarten fifth grade and a seventh grader and and one hundred percent for them being back in the building my question though is more towards lunch i have two on one schedule and one on another schedule for lunch is there any way for us to standard standardize the lunch schedule um i feel so bad for my fifth grader when he comes down 15-20 minutes after the other two and they're out

138playing and he's like all alone yeah we have we've had some challenges there and we haven't been able to resolve that as of yet um but i'll sit with the principals and see what we can do please state your full name place of residency before commenting my name is kevin smith from lafayette hill pennsylvania i want to thank the board for the for the time and consideration today um i have a fourth grader and a first grader and for for them that the virtual option has not been working it has been extremely challenging and extremely emotional for them despite the best efforts of their teachers who are amazing and i don't see that changing into the future as a parent i believe that i should be given the choice on whether my child goes into

139school or learns virtually i think that should be my right as a parent and my wife's right as a parent that was taken away from us on august 6th and i'm asking the board to give strong consideration to allowing me as a parent next week to choose the hybrid model of which i think would be best for my children i i firmly respect the comments that have been made so far today but again i i think it comes down to parents having a choice of what they know and believe is best for their children and the hybrid model is what allows that choice and that's why i feel that the hybrid model should be the option that is given to parents is again we have that choice my question for dr christian and the board

140is around the substitute teachers i'm i'm just curious dr krishna i heard your comments earlier about the substitutes and that there may be a need down the road to hire more substitutes i'm i'm wondering at what point did did the board and you decide to begin looking for and and begin searching for the substitutes in order to expedite the hybrid should it get voted on as quickly as possible been something we've been investigating since before the school year started but i did say that we were starting in hybri in virtual i apologize kevin uh from speaking there uh for at least uh well originally until november 30th because of our safe my safety concerns um and i promise it would be revisited every three to four weeks but it's been something we've been actively doing

141for a while please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi this is christy feda from plymouth meeting this is my 14th year in colonial school district i just wanted to say thank you dr christian for the thoughtful and thorough presentation i appreciate that you are trying to do this right instead of fast i hope you the board votes on tuesday to approve this return to school families that want their kids to stay home will get that either way so please don't take away the chance for other kids to return hybrid i do not know what the best way to do this is as far as teaching separating classes teachers wearing masks microphones whatnot but i hope you will figure out how to make both virtual and hybrid families happy and especially consider

142what is best for our teachers uh because our teachers have done a phenomenal job so far this year and deserve consideration in this decision someone stated earlier that this is not going away anytime soon and this is true this is exactly why we need to get our children back to school this is the new normal children belong in school they deserve a chance and a choice thank you please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi my name is colleen james and i'm from plymouth meeting i have two kids in ridge park i was just wondering if i know you guys touched on recess and how that would look and you guys said you would talk about it at next week's meeting i was wondering beforehand if we could get a better idea

143of what an actual typical day would look like in the hybrid such as are the students gonna have to sit at their desk all day are they going to be able to get up and stretch bathroom breaks i know kindergarten has bathrooms in there but basically what what are the restrictions going to be and are the teachers going to have to focus more on kind of keeping the kids from touching each other and getting close to each other and is that going to be more of a distraction being in school um what's it going to look like on their lunch and break time and are they going to be able to play i i don't know if you guys have any sort of plan for that or any sort of plan for the math and

144reading in the small groups like i can comment we have uh in each of the buildings we certainly will provide bathroom breaks and physical breaks opportunities provided we can spill it here or bathroom breaks have to happen but the physical exercise breaks moving around a little bit we still have to make sure we're six foot socially distant there will be recess provided but there'll be designated areas for the children to go and we'll keep kids when they're outside we certainly understand that they're less susceptible uh to any transmission than inside um and then we will but they will do less traveling they won't travel down to the music room or our specialists will travel to their room so we're trying to minimize the amount of movement within the building but not minimize their movement altogether

145please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi my name is kate clark from white marsh township my children go to ridge park in kindergarten in third grade first and foremost this is unrelated to tonight's topic but i would like to say thank you to the board for hiring a dei officer i'm proud that my children are growing up in such a supportive and diverse district next um i'd like to say that i've been fabulously impressed with my children's teachers at rich park the level of parent communication and engaging of the students has been above average compared to our previous three years in the district and we are we were happy before my children love with an exclamation mark as my kindergartner said they're teachers i want to let you know that i'm

146a teacher in a local district i've been working all summer and putting many hours into the school year so far i also live nearby teachers and i'm friends with many teachers in the district and i know that they too have been putting in long long hours i honestly have no idea how a teacher is supposed to meet the individual needs of each student when they are attending to students within the classroom socially distanced while wearing a mask and still attending to the students on the computer i also wholeheartedly agree that the teacher would need fridays to prepare however how much of the actual curriculum would have to be cut considering that students would have only four days of instruction i know in my district we have 30-minute zoom classes with our students and have been

147asked to decrease the amount of homework or give no homework or asynchronous work at all this makes it harder for us to provide the same rigor as we would have in the past i heard mrs answer my question if the curriculum would need to be shortened and that you'll look at the essential questions and review that to make sure that the students are still meeting you know still getting the full rigor but i still think that that's another challenge that will just be thrown on the teachers um i also wanted to know and this is actually my question how can teachers be trained in yet another method of teaching one that none of us have ever handled before it is that rubric's cue and uh still learn that while still virtually teaching at the same

148time in other words will there be professional development time for the teachers prior to october 19th date and how will this impact the curriculum if there's more days off for the students there will be professional development time we have a profession professional development day scheduled we may have to look for additional time maybe on a friday afternoon uh prior to uh if the board approves it and that would be when the students would be doing asynchronous uh learning um so that we wouldn't be sacrificing uh too much time thank you so very much and i also need to say thank you to the board i know you guys have a thankless volunteer job and it's really impossible i also know board members in my uh district that i teach virtual learning has been a different

149experience for every family however until covet 19 is under control i feel like this is out of our control thank you for your time thank you please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi good evening my name is rebecca lederer i live in lafayette hill and i'm the mother of a second grader and a kindergartner at ridge park and i kind of just wanted to piggyback on what some of the other parents were saying regarding the virtual so full disclosure i am a pediatric er nurse and also work at a contact tracing center so i'm very well versed in covet we've chosen to keep our kids away from all these social gatherings since march announced with this virtual option it seems that i'm going to have to choose between the health of

150my children family community or having a better education for them because it will be different um right now the teachers are doing phenomenal it's hard for each teacher to focus on the kids because they all want to answer and i just feel that for my kids who are young watching the other kids in class learning while they're at home is going to be disadvantaged and just not fair so i asked the board to reconsider or come up with another virtual option for the families thank you please state your full name place the residency before commenting please hello can you hear me yep please state your full name place of residency before commenting eric schwartz plymouth township i have a student in first grade in fifth grade um so i just have some general comments and

151a few questions that that primarily go to the administration and that the board can use as information to make their decision and in order for me to make an educated decision i know a lot of people have been bringing up in the past about in order for me to do the survey you know i need to make an educated decision based upon as much transparency as possible and i am concerned about the hybrid model with the current setup you know i think the sixth to twelfth grade might be able to you know transition that role because of the just the age and the environment but my kids being in a k through five format just some of the comments and shock of you know they're building right now i'm watching these awesome teachers my you

152know teachers have won because i want to see one of them and you should just watch some of the recorded lessons at the end of the day you know they literally have 12 to 15 kids that are just basically falling off their chairs and they're trying to stay focused and it takes all their energy to do it they keep them all on mute because they can't keep quiet and you know mrs grigota said that it's gonna be pretty much the same format so my questions you know are how do these kids bring the materials back and forth in the hybrid model if they're going every other day they write two sentences in their books and then the following day the teachers say let's bring them out and let's continue on that are we bringing all

153their materials to and from school every single day with a loaded backpack and a loaded lunch you know we have to you know what are we going to do with the specialists right now they're on weekly specialists so when my kid is home with jim what is he going to do you're not going to have a maybe you are going to have a microphone and a camera outside for gym teachers but they're doing essentially you know 20-minute lessons and then they're on does that mean that you know for music class my child's not going to participate so these are the questions that i need to have answered for me to make an honest educated decision on whether i stay with a full virtual or i go to hybrid you know the breaks you brought up

154earlier is bathroom breaks and things that nature there are times when a teacher says look the kids on the on the screen you need a break so we're gonna we're gonna end now and you get a seven minute break before we start back up again what do the kids in the classroom do are they able to just sit at their room my son has to get up and move around and interact he cannot sit still if he doesn't get that he will fall apart so i'm these you know so my question is what prevents a family because of these uncertainties if we don't get the decision as inappropriate as it might sound and just say i'm gonna pick the hybrid option and i'm just gonna stay home so i have the opportunity to go in

155and go out as i please can can a family do that dr christian can they just say you know what i'm not ready to go knock out till january but i'm going to essentially take the hybrid option and if i'm not comfortable i'm just going to stay remote because it is the same class i could try to answer some of your questions about the materials again teachers have supplies and materials in the classroom we sent home many materials at home because we realize that families may not have those at home so you would not need to travel with everything back and forth teachers would be able to explain what is needed if they didn't already have that at home as far as a family choosing hybrid and then choosing to stay home if you go

156virtual then you go virtual so we would have to have a conversation about that please state your full name place of residency before commenting hey my name is kyle i'm from and i have a question for dave is a sherman someone just like hector are you looking for me me because someone else started talking yes do you please say your full name place of residency before commenting sure my name is jennifer schindler i'm in lafayette hill and i am the mother of a junior in the high school and i just wanted to say thank you guys so much for putting this out there on the table tonight i know it sounds like there's a lot of controversy out there and a lot of conflict going on with these younger parents but i can tell you

157as a mother of a high school junior that he's been really really trying hard to stay focused and stay engaged in his classes and his extracurriculars and it's been really difficult to spend six plus hours on the computer all day plus on the computer all night for homework and then any of his clubs that he's working with meetings after school during bonus block and whatnot is all on the computer and he hasn't been able to break away from it and his headaches and his eye strain are incredible so i just want to say that there are those parents out here and put another voice to it other than the parents who are really concerned about their young ones um i'd my son will watch a teacher wearing a mask give a lecture from home a

158few days a week for the privilege to be in class and not have to be on his computer on the days that he's in school so thank you so much for working on hybrid and i really pray and hope that you vote for it please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi michelle ward plymouth meeting um i have a question so my daughter is in first grade at plymouth elementary and i'm not sure what the percentage as far as teachers teaching in the classroom versus teaching from home i do know that her teacher right now is teaching from home so if we opted for the hybrid model and if her teacher still needed to stay at home because i know her kids are virtual too what would happen to her teacher would

159she be required to come into the classroom or would she still be teaching from home probably one of the most challenging pieces uh mrs ward uh in this whole thing for every school district is that that the potential that a teacher may need to take a leave under the family first corona relief act um so what we would do in that situation potentially because it's teachers would have to go through an interactive process is that we would we would provide a substitute teacher but during the transition we would allow the teacher more than likely speaking hypothetically we have to go through each case is different teach remotely so that we could have a certified teacher in the room but we would still keep that that teacher who's familiar with the kids working with the students

160every scenario could be different uh and every uh person who may need to apply for a leave has a process to go through and uh and so that it's a bit of a challenge and so it'll therefore make october if the board approves this a busy month but we will handle it please state your full name place of residency before commenting my name is alyssa brezzinski i'm a resident of plymouth township first i want to echo all of the sentiments expressed to thank the board and the teachers for all of their hard work thus far it's not an easy job and i'm sure a very thankless one and i just wanted to follow on to the last question that was asked um certainly there are there's some degree of risk that you know everyone has

161an opinion about in terms of sending children back into the classroom and i would just like to ask that as much information about what that classroom setting will look like can be provided to the parents prior to making that decision um you know people have gone through a lot of effort on the parent end as well to set up pods make arrangements for their children you know while they're in school and the parents are having to work and understanding you know whether my child will be in a classroom with their specific teacher versus taking a laptop to school and doing the same thing they're doing now is is very relevant to me you know will they have the opportunity to get outside which it sounds like they will and is great um but as much

162information as can be provided to the parents before making a decision would would be very much appreciated and i also have a question in terms of you know we're seeing a lot of schools in our area shutting down for one to two weeks due to positive cases and i just would like to understand you know given the size of our schools which are larger than some of these small schools which are already shutting down would the intent be that if there are those two or more unrelated cases that the entire school shuts down is there a possibility for quarantining of just individual classes what will that look like i'm a little bit concerned about going to an on and off model where kids go to school for a week it shuts down for two weeks

163you come back for a few days which would seem to me to be more chaotic than what we have now i agree and it was interesting the southerton school last night distributed a communication that said that they had two individuals that were positive and they were not required to close the schools when they got a third case today the office of public health required them to close the school for two weeks [Music] my interpretation of it is once there are two unrelated cases you need to close the school depending upon and i'll put the chart up on our website uh depending upon if you are in low or moderate uh for your uh for your indicators that you have to close the school for three to five days if there's more than four cases it

164could be five to seven days i think the challenge is is when you are in uh maybe you're low for your positivity rate you're under five percent but you're moderate for your incident rate maybe you're at 40 incidents you're not below 10. so that could be why they they did that but the office of public health has that ultimate decision to make we have to report to them immediately they go through the contact tracing uh and then as cases are reported to them they come back to us and that would cause the potential for a closure uh for extended days excuse me they think saturn didn't close for two weeks for three to five days i'm sorry thank you but all closures would be on a school by school basis not a not a class

165by class basis uh my understanding is it's based it's it was at one time it could be the wing or a class but my unders the way i read it is it would be the school do you have concerns given the sizes of the schools we're looking at i have a child at ridge park and a child at ces that would be difficult given the numbers of students in those schools particularly at the the four or five and above to keep the schools open on a continuous basis i'm hopeful that because we're reducing the uh attendance rate uh by more than half that we can mitigate that risk but it's impossible to eliminate all risk please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi my name is rita montemayor i'm in conshohocken i

166have four children in the district grades four six eight and ten and i would also like to thank all the teachers and staff they really have gone above and beyond and i have two comments which may seem like i'm playing devil's advocate but i'd like you to keep in mind i am in conshohocken conshohocken elementary is a title one school there is a large number of parents who are not on this call who may not get their voice heard because they are not in a financial place to have internet or even food in their fridge and access to schools would be a great benefit to them having schools closed is causing a further divide between the haves and the have-nots and i hope that you will consider them in whatever decisions that you make and

167also on the other side of the argument i'd also like to mention that having a comeback date in november is a difficult timing i anticipate when colleges close and send their students home for thanksgiving break that we will have an uptick of cases in our communities we know that kovid is spreading on college campuses among these young adults and um they will be coming back and we have children with siblings who are in college so i just want to bring to mind that november may be a very dangerous time to be reopening thank you for your time and thank you all for everything thank you for your comment please state your full name place of residency before commenting please see your full name presidency is that me hi my name is amy cunningham i just

168had from plymouth meeting i just had a question if you could answer what made the shift between providing specific teachers for the virtual students as opposed to now just having them live stream the class in the current classroom we were trying to maintain the current classes the way they are and we had looked at a couple different scenarios to do that we also thought that there would be the potential for multiple changes as far as requests uh whether it be changes in what teachers needed or changes in parent preference but ultimately uh when we looked at the data and we created class lists you know the intent was to to keep kids with their teachers and certainly understand the challenges with that and that's why we're going to make sure we provide the resources they

169need to to be successful okay thank you and i appreciate all that you're doing to really cater to the needs of our kids just one more question so for the kids that will be staying totally virtual how will they be able to interact with their teachers and hear their teachers i have friends who have kids that are doing virtual and they can't hear the teachers and the teachers are walking around the room and the technology is not catching the teacher being able to see what they're doing and teaching and i'm just concerned that my son because of um some vulnerabilities in our family is not safe going to school um just curious about how he'll be able to interact and hear and and participate in the class so we have we've had good success so

170far with the cameras that we're using has been perfect no um but we also are doing additional testing with different microphones um and then we're also offering extra screens uh for the teachers there were a couple demos earlier this week that allow for that and and i think that i think we had a suggestion earlier providing parents like some a better description of what we're able to do will certainly be helpful but it is certainly appreciate your comments it is change and i certainly uh respect all the hard work that our teachers and our principals are doing right now very they've been outstanding and it's clearly been a different effort than this spring or this past spring absolutely his teacher is doing a phenomenal job and i'm just curious if he has a question or

171would like to answer a question how will he be able to interact with his teacher because she's doing a phenomenal job right now sure so that's why we're going to be providing additional aids in the room as we need so they can recognize if a student has a need who's in person or if a student has a need that's online and i've been in elementary classrooms and they're often put into groups and needed you know individual help so we'll make sure that he gets he gets his question answered okay thank you please state your full name place of residency before commenting this is the last commenter yes good evening my name is angela walden i'm from plymouth meeting and i just wanted to first of all thank everyone for all the time that they are

172putting into this decision i know it's extremely difficult i also want to say that i know that the teachers and administration and board members will do everything they can to make sure that the kids are given the education that they deserve and require i have a junior who is on autism spectrum and there are ready gaps in communication and learning and during this time teachers have been able to work with him to get him to a point where he can understand to communicate with him break through all those barriers he's doing great uh he's very social so he does miss his friends but i'm trying to deliver things to him in such a way where he sees that this is life and you can't always control all of your circumstances but you have to roll

173with the punches you have to make accommodations sometimes there are modifications and every student has their individual need and teachers behind the uh camera are doing everything they can to make sure that these kids get what they deserve so i'm going to trust the process i'm going to continue to tell him to stick with it and to persevere because they're going to be times like this again in his life where things aren't going to go the way he wants and it's just a matter of how he handles the situation and how he responds so i want to thank you for your time for your energy for your support and for um just showing me that this district is able to do what they promised to do with the child like mine who has special needs

174and who will come out of this thriving and shining so i'm just waiting to see what happens next but uh no matter what it's it's going to turn out well it's going to be good and i appreciate everything you're doing thank you i hope region is doing well please state your full name place a presidency before commenting that was amazing drew before we do that um drew question he's a panelist and has his hand right we have oh kim ferrari has the last one we'll get drew on there okay hi this is actually nick ferrari her wife and i live in uh white marsh township and my son goes to white marsh elementary and i just have to say as a person who a works in healthcare and b has a child in the school

175district i guess my concern is you know we brought in dr coffin about a week or two ago and we listened to her professional opinion um and we knew what her opinion was about this and then we've allowed the process to go on for only two weeks now and we're saying let's go forward when colleges are closing st joe's prep is currently going to be going to virtual teaching and there's a lot of other things in the community that aren't going forward so i just my concern is that we're taking these children who yes you know they're getting the virus but they're not spreading it and we like to say that and that is a truthful statement but they're also going to give it to other people who are older who can get it from

176them so i guess my concern is which has been brought up a thousand other times by other people so far as my son may stay home virtual and he is not going to get the education that he needs because the teacher can't interact with him at the same as he can in the classroom and i know that dr christian i appreciate you so much you are an amazing person and you keep saying they will be able to interact with them my concern though is that as a parent their the interaction is not going to be there because there's no way for a teacher to look at 12 kids in a classroom and see my son who's at home on a laptop who's not involved i don't really have a question i appreciate everything you guys

177have done up to this point um but just just please keep that in mind that there are children here who are going to get lost if their families have to choose virtual and the parents realistically have to make a decision what's the safest thing for their child to do that's all thanks thank you for your comments uh dhruv you'll be our last comment we'll move on to the agenda hi my name is drew vagerwall and i'm a 12th grader at plymouth white marsh high school and i reside in plymouth meeting before i begin i wanted to say thank you to the entire school board this decision is not easy and your time and efforts have been well respected as a student of plymouth white marsh virtual has not been easy teachers have had issues with

178zoom teaching curriculums that were previously in person and even had trouble getting into simple breakout rooms in preparation for this meeting i decided to reach out to my teachers and ask them what was the hardest moment of teaching in their career they all said that their first job their first job in their first two weeks of school were the most difficult the idea of teaching in front of students was difficult being prepared was being prepared was a struggle and they said that it was hard to adjust to their teaching lives eventually they said they gotta hang the hang of it teaching became easier students listened more and as the curriculum became easier everyone started to follow similarly to the first two weeks of teaching virtual can be a difficult transition but they adjusted to teaching

179before and this is just another step to teach students important education i believe that the safety and protection of our csd families teachers and staff is that the utmost importance i want to go back to school but putting the our teachers staff bus drivers and everyone helping us in risk is not the way to do it putting our teachers live at risk is not worth going to school when we do go back to school during this pandemic we should change our approach well my points may not be considered i do want to put it out there students should have the option between two groups a and b group a should be monday and tuesday while group b should be thursday and friday rather than the current option where students alternate days in the groups wednesday

180would be offered as a deep cleaning day between each group so that we can contain the students better and more responsibly this will allow us to navigate our groups more effectively and out and allow us to directly contain each group however i think it's important to go to school at the right time when kovit is just another memory it is pointless to go to school and then the following week be forced backed into virtual because students and teachers are battling covet 19. going to school now will limit and reduce the chances of us going to school permanently or for a long period of time as the safety will be compromised for all members of csd to summarize my main point if we all stick with the virtual program now we will severely reduce the cases

181of covet 19 and increase our chances of going to school for a longer time term a longer time period period which is what everyone wants thank you for your time and listening to me thank you this is more donation approval correspondent thank you um there's a um i'd like to make a motion to accept a donation in the amount of four thousand six hundred and fifty dollars from com congregation or me sadaka committee in lafayette hill to contact an elementary school the donation will be used to cover the cost of student supplies for kindergarten first and second graders the board and administration would like to acknowledge and thank the um congregation or meet sadako committee for the generous support of our students is there a second thank you any comments or questions just thank you

182all in favor raise your hand so dave can see you okay thank you uh dr christian superintendents report board action is requested for the recommended personnel changes appointments for promotion employment and transfer are subject to the presentation of valid credential employment verification documentation and state mandated requirements is there a motion to approve the superintendent's report beth petruno second chris thank you any comments or questions for dr christian all in favor okay thank you and um new business i'd like to make a motion to approve a revision to the k-12 calendar for 2020 2021 to designate august 24th 25th and october 12th november 3rd february 12th as act 80 days is there a second to that motion chris thank you dr christian could you explain four people watching what act 80 days are act 80 days

183act 80 is a regulation that school districts can use when they have in service days to count those days as instructional days if you do certain things such as curriculum writing or parent-teacher conferences we don't use them to replace uh replacing the 180 instructional days for our students but in extreme circumstances um it's good to have them quote in your back pocket uh if everybody remembers probably five or six years ago the 13 or 14 snow days everybody had with the ice storms and everything like that so it provides some flexibility uh for school districts so we've done this annually for for several years we probably won't use them but it's nice to have in case we need them all right thank you um all in favor thank you uh beth petruno educational contract approvals

184um this is a motion to approve the educational contracts as outlined below the first is for life work school the 2021 tuition for two students at forty thousand three hundred and twenty dollars each or a per diem rate is two hundred and twenty four dollars and tuition for one student at fifty six thousand eight you lost your volume mrs petruno can you hear me nope we can hear i will i will do these um mrs petruno if you get your volume back you can jump in um i'll finish up with lifeworks a uh tuition for one student for the 2021 school year at fifty six thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars or per diem rate of three hundred and sixteen dollars i'll group that together with um a motion for the timothy school tuition for

185five students for two thousand twenty twenty one at seventy eight thousand dollars each tuition for three students for um approved for on a pda 4040 in the amount of 93 600 and one-on-one services for two students at a per diem rate of two thousand uh two hundred and nine dollars and fifty cents for each and um is there a motion to approve there i'm making the motion in lieu of mrs petruno can you i can secondly hear me we can hear you now okay thank you any questions or comments for mrs burke on these um contract approvals okay all in favor okay beth you're back on okay we can try this again um this is a motion to approve the placement agreement in lieu of vape due to restrictions regarding student confidentiality and privacy this

186agreement was reviewed in executive session sir second beth suchland thank you any comments or questions on this placement on this agreement all in favor okay continue yeah um this is contract approval um for mciu vhs consortium motion to approve the contract for mciu to provide vhs program services for the 2020-2021 school year is there a second chris any comments or questions all in favor great mrs suchland yes uh this is a motion to approve the administration's recommendation of the memorandum of understanding dated september 17 2020 between the colonial education support professionals and the colonial board of school directors regarding the discretion of scheduling of security guards during the covet pandemic and so that is a motion um can i have dr rodriguez explain before we get the second and we need the second i'm sorry

187let's do this let's do the second first okay is there a second okay all right dr rodriguez could you please explain what we're talking about here thank you sure um this mou is specific to um allowing us to schedule um here it's current security guard staff for different uh shifts and potentially different work a work schedule um we do have obviously no students in the building right now but we do have some athletic events and activities that would require security guards attending after you know the end of the actual regular shift that they normally would work when students are there so they've agreed to enter into an mou so that the administration can schedule um and retain their employment for specific activities that would normally be outside their regular work shift and work week thank

188you any other questions or comments all in favor great thank you mrs northcutt it is recommended that the board of school directors authorize the continuation of the district's fall interscholastic high school athletics programs in accordance with the montgomery county office of public health's guidance for sports updated august 25th 2020 and the district's athletics and safety plan accept that with respect to the montgomery county office of public health guidance high contact outdoor sports are to be treated as moderate contact sports all participants must submit the required permission slips and participate in daily clovid19 screenings is there a second to that motion second are there any comments or questions i i would just like to comment if the board doesn't mind um you know this was certainly a challenging decision and what the board did previously was

189not cancel football and i met with several representatives from the football team and and i certainly appreciate how devastated the boys were because what we did pass uh were some restrictions that made it very challenging to play um less than one percent positivity will be a challenge and uh i met with several group of a group of passionate parents that represented even a larger group of passion parents and i expressed to them my reservations and my concerns i do think though um because it's outdoor because the season has been reduced to uh four or five games when we normally play nine or ten um and that we've had a stable uh rate um that and then because also because the student athletes will have screenings before each and every practice and we will communicate with

190the other teams about their screenings before any games that we can proceed these are life events and life moments for seniors and uh and so we did allow other sports such as field hockey and soccer and so that's that's for that's the reason for the change does anyone else want to make a comment uh i'm just here when when would the um when would the earliest be that they could uh they could start playing games and how long would we see the season lasting uh until first game would be uh october 9th october 2nd is a as a buy and the first game would be october 9th and it would be for right now four potentially five games one one per week any other questions or comments i just want to say thank you to

191dr christian and mr gretz for working through all of this and trying to find a way to make it work okay anyone else all right um all in favor please raise your hand any opposed mr sherman did you get everyone eight people thank you um moving on solicitors report i have no report committee reports rosemary community relations student life i'm the community relations student life committee met on monday 9 14 dr scherzinger reported on the district's various support programs and resources for parents and guardians during this difficult period of virtual instruction mrs burke reviewed the current status of required immunizations among our student communities and provided information regarding the ability availability of flu shots mr brett's provided an update on the status of the high school's fall sports programs and extracurricular activities mrs mccoy reported

192on the district's act of participation in the usda's program which has helped fund the district's provision of 5 000 meals a week for district children mr sherman reported that that the district has gathered more than 3 600 phone numbers from families so that they are able to receive text messages from the district in addition to the information that is provided in emails and other uh sources um the client um ms newell gave an overview of the changes additions to the district web page related to covet 19 and diversity equity and inclusion and then um also we learned that the colonial adult evening school has been canceled for the fall some instructors are offering classes independently information is available on the district's website and a spring adult evening school program will depend on the status of

193covid19 thank you okay curriculum ms petruno the curriculum committee met on monday september 14th um mrs grigaitis shared that colonial has returned back to school and she introduced the principles which shared out highlights from each of their buildings at the elementary level the 4-5 school the middle school and the high school mr bogley shared technology updates and enhancements he also guided everyone to the colonial school district website parent page and to the technology department page and then to tech support and shared with everyone how to find answers to some general technology questions the curriculum supervisors also shared details on the professional development that many of our teachers participated in over the summer and the professional development that they did at the beginning of the school year it was also discussed that professional development was offered

194to our guidance counselors on the social emotional well-being of students and we also discussed um the new teacher induction that took place um prior to the school starting and we would just like to welcome all our new teachers into our district we're very happy to have you mrs burke also reported on special ed programs and supports that have been put into place um mrs burke i think was going to just take a few minutes to share an update um about our special ed programs good evening um we currently have about 55 students with significantly complex needs who are attending school in person um five days a week from one to i'm sorry from nine to one um and uh right now they're handling it very well and we hope that we can continue doing that

195um for those students who are not able those those students with complex needs who are not able to attend school but who are struggling behaviorally with accessing the virtual instruction we are sending behavior therapists into the home um to assist thank you so much that's the end of my report okay thank you uh facilities kathy we're going to have an fmt meeting committee meeting on monday at 6 p.m where we'll be going over middle school the paving ventilation hopefully throughout the buildings so anybody wants to get an update on that please feel free to join us monday six o'clock all the information is on the website um other than that dr krishna is there anything you feel is pertinent to share now before then not at this time thank you that concludes my report uh

196adam finance no report this evening thank you beth hr no report chris policy no report eunice isn't here for the tech school chris you have anything you'd like to say i do not at this time okay um jen intermediate unit no report cathy legislative or jeff if there's anything we need to know the report okay uh anyone the only thing i wanted to mention is um there is a lot of complexity going on with the governor's order and uh the restrictions for spectator sports and the likes today or actually yesterday the governor's office did file an emergency appeal from the decision of the western district uh board of pennsylvania and um that appeal has been fought with the third circuit court of appeals to overturn um what i perceive was a rogue decision of a

197federal court regarding the governor's authority to impose restrictions uh so that appeal is underway and uh we're waiting to see if the governor vetoes the state legislation uh regarding spectators okay thank you uh any municipal or community liaisons residents of conshohocken have just received their fall winter 2020 2021 newsletter on the cover is a wonderful photo of the almost completed renovation of aubrey collins memorial park the park will now feature a new pavilion all new playground equipment suitable for children of various ages as well as new safety surfacing ada compliant play apparatuses and a new zip line and the zip line in marywood park is one of the most popular attractions so it's great we're going to have that at aubrey collins as well this marks the fourth park to be completely renovated place space

198for children within the last three years uh the conshohocken environmental advisory committee will be hosting a contactless community cleanup on october 17th this is their semi-annual event and more information will be posted online and on the borough website rosemary while you have the floor do you have anything for the colonial school district education foundation yes um another reminder please please if you are making orders from amazon please make your order through amazon smile and mark the colonial education foundation as uh your charity and to date the foundation has received 1 sixty six dollars and eighty cents because of purchases that are made by um uh uh our can our families who have designated csdf as their uh charity so this is a great way to support the foundation who has been very involved in supporting

199the assemblies in the past at the schools the food program during the summer and a variety of other activities at all of our schools and looking forward to seeing how they're going to be supporting the program this year okay thank you rosemary um any now's the time for public comments if there's anyone who still wishes to comment on anything of a general nature mrs moore mr sheridan two comments to read yeah i apologize there were some email comments submitted prior to the last meeting uh with regards to the diversity position [Music] and i'd like i apologize that those were not read i'd like to read them at this time the first is from jemina clay dingle of plymouth township she says i'm writing in support of the newly hired director of diversity equity inclusion and

200thank the board members for approving his appointment this communication serves as notice that as a community member i am 100 percent supported of mr james and excited to see representation in the district administration as we as a nation grapple with two pandemics that we face one that is new to all of us code with the other that is new to just some of us systemic racism which has inflicted and impacted the lives of black americans over 400 years it is imperative that we take specific intentional steps to support students of color in colonial i am reminded of a quote that i heard recently that resonated with me and that i feel applies here the quote is sometimes change comes at the speed of trust as a black parent and colonial i know that trust is

201an area that needs to be worked on the dei committee is a step in the right direction hiring mr james is another step but it's up to the district to ensure that these steps are not just performative but are actionable it is up to the board to show us that we can trust them to hold the district accountable and ensure that mr james has provided the space opportunity and support to impact change i am one of many parents of color who have had discussions over the past few weeks on how to hold the district accountable accountable for change simply put we cannot wait any longer we cannot wait for you to run a marathon because our children need for you to sprint sprint with intentionality sprint with action sprint with the moral imperative to make

202things better for our children thank you and we welcome mr james to the colonial school district again that's from jemina clay dingle of plymouth township also naja barksdale of plymouth township writes greetings superintendent dr christian and all board members i would like to send my appreciation for the approval of the diversity equity inclusion position filled by mr gerald james thank you all for seeing this through and wanting to become part of the change we want to see in the world as a parent and member of the dei committee i expect mr james to be fully supported in his efforts to do the work for our children and staff to mr james my husband and i are in full support of you in this position if there is anything we can do please do not hesitate

203to contact me this position is very important and we have high expectations of what is to come looking forward to seeing you at our next diversity equity and inclusion meeting and finally there's one from leslie wood of white marsh township she writes to the colonial school board and administrators it is with pleasure and an honor that i write this email of support for mr gerald james our newly appointed equity diversity and instruction officer mr james was interviewed through a rigorous and competitive selection process i truly believe that he will be an exceptional addition to the team and a positive and active leader in the csd community my ask is that in order for mr james to be set up for success that the entire csd community including the board and administrators provide mr james with

204the tools support access and resources to do what he was appointed to do that way moving forward our school district will be one of the premier school districts in pennsylvania where educators students and parents will want to work and attend looking forward to getting diversity equity and inclusion started and i think we're all very uh excited and looking forward to have mr james join us in the district office next week he starts monday and his uh first focus groups with students begin tuesday with dr bakani okay um public comments we have two available please state your full name place of residency before commenting jamie leibowitz plymouth meeting um my comment would be actually i have a question are they going to be taking temperatures as people come into school if we go hybrid they are

205not we we are not we wouldn't be able to be able to get that many students through through that quickly we will not be taking temperatures we're going to be asking parents to screen their children before bringing them sending them to school okay okay and then the other thing is is that uh the senior drove um you know kids are really smart and i and i have to say that my daughter who's in 10th grade is enjoying working from home and doing um virtual learning and she even has a ceramics class that she's doing at home and she's enjoying it um and i almost think that even though i know she wants to go back and we all want to get back to something that's normal i think that people like he said like the

206safety of everybody really needs to be considered because even with like my job i work two days a week in the office don't feel extremely comfortable and i'm home three days and we still keep a small circle it's just really interesting because i feel like he has a lot of insight and yes i get it doesn't work for everybody to have their kids stay home but i think that this is our new normal and it might just be better to just stay home a little bit longer until we know it might be safe for everybody to return and thank you for everybody and all that you do please state your full name place of residency before commenting hi lisa dunleavy white marsh township i just wanted to say very quickly thank you so much for

207another long board meeting and for all the time you spent in executive sessions and other meetings leading up to this and the september 22nd meeting um you know i don't think you'll make everyone happy as was evidenced by the calls and comments tonight but i think the key takeaway here is that parents have a choice and we're all adults and yes we have to kind of go back and review the slides and sit with this and you know make our own decisions as a family and when the survey comes we have to make decisions but to not have a choice was actually hurting families and so you know i think there was a lot of pressure to bring back choices so that all families could make the decision that works for them and i know

208it was evidence-based and i think someone mentioned earlier that the chop doctors from the policy lab if you want to go on lower marion school district site from september 3rd they had a really great session encouraging lower marion to return to school citing all the metrics how it's safe we're very stable in our county we're very stable in our local zip codes and i thought that watching that was really you know very positive and made me very comfortable with where we stand as a county and a district so i'm glad that we're following that and you know taking all of that into consideration and i think the key is families simply need choices yes it's hard to make them but we need to have that option so thank you so much for all the time

209and thank you for you know giving us a choice putting it on the table and i hope you will all vote to again give people a choice on september 22nd thanks very much thank you this is more that concludes public comment okay uh any board members have anything they'd like to add before we conclude tonight all right i would just like to very quickly just thank dr christian and our administrators who have spent an incredible amount of time and angst over all this i i don't want anyone to think that anyone has taken any of this lightly the board the administration and um also to thank the teachers for doing a really amazing job in a very difficult situation so i just want to put that out there and thank you all for tuning in

210tonight and i'm sorry i also would like and she probably doesn't want me to do this but i want to congratulate dr rodriguez on her retirement and she will be with us for several more months um but she was on the agenda tonight and it's i met leticia several years ago uh briefly um and we have both i think heard of each other and i'm i'm fortunate that i've had the opportunity to work with you with tca and i wish you the best in the next chapter okay uh meeting adjourned goodnight night