School Board Meeting: February 15, 2024

001fine I'll check e good it's Thursday February 15 2024 and this is a meeting of the ccer Rock School Board I and I'm going to uh do the Pledge of Allegiance when I introduce the student yeah thanks Mr py Maddie thevon would you please lead us in the pledge please remain standing you're going to be able to hear Maddie sing as well 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 [Music] all what sooud [Music] we [Music] the [Music] of the thank you Maddie well done Madam Secretary all call please Edward present Joseph hogo present Mike Roosevelt here piki here y Pali present tracyi here Nicole Khan here Linda Stone here and an Herer

002[Music] here okay next we have Mr tvit and the cancer Rock North stud Advisory Board welcome thank you good evening Board of School director directors Dr Sano and administration as always it's my great pleasure to be here this evening to present Council Rock High School Norse student Advisory Board in addition to this tonight we also have Nate Lake who is going to be speaking of the Sloan school and Sam naroditsky who is GNA be talking about our achieve program this time I will hand it over to Tim Gracie our 12th grade prep hello again board as you know I'm Tim Gracie the 12th grade advisory representative for Council Rock North today I have lots to inform you regarding the senior class as well as a variety of crn academics to start with the fun stuff

003the class of 2024 has the annual Disney senior trip in a mere 54 days just this past Sunday reservations opened up for dining for Disney and eager seniors have been waking up as early as 6:00 a.m. to secure a spot at their favorite Disney restaurant we're all looking forward to the trip and April 9th could not come fast enough additionally the senior boys are currently being called upon to participate in the annual Mr crn event which is going to be Mr America this year Lily will be telling you more about that as far as academics go the second semester of the year has commenced and midyear grades are all settled therefore students and parents can access and view students respective grades for the first half of the school year with the beginning of the second

004semester program planning soon follows counselors have begun meeting with 9th 10th and 11th grade students regarding their courses for next year and discussing teacher recommendations along with program planning seniors can now send out midar grades to colleges or universities that request them through Naviance on a different note I'd like to congratulate the 11 National Merit finalists s Keith and enthu Audrey Chan Angelina Doris Michael dorin Michael fan Sonica Jane Kelly Lao Brady a arnov Rees Shane Waton maker and Kevin Yuan for their hard work and impressive academic achievements that's all I have for you this evening and I look forward to meeting again soon good evening board I hope everyone had a happy Valentine's Day my name is Leela Nagel and I am the class of 2025 Sab representative today I'm going to be reporting

005to you about the clubs at North and about the recent and upcoming activities of the class of 2025 recently the class of 2025 has majorly been involved with Junior Prom planning we have an official day of April 19th and an official theme which has yet to be revealed until the week of the dance Also regarding the junior class last week a group of Junior kids went to Hershey to continue their bill for making Hershey Kisses the official state candy the bill passed out of committee with a unanimous vote and will now move on to its next steps now on to clubs these past months of December January and February has been Pride months for fundraising and various drives for a great number of the clubs at North firstly as for drives the girlup club from

006December 4th through 8th had their menal product Drive the EAC Club had their sought collection for dog beds from December 8th through December 21st and and North Outreach Club had their hat glove and scarf drive from December 11th to December 15th in January the national English Honor Society had their biannual book drive from January 9th to February 14th in which all books were donated and rppa had their Penny awards from January 29th to February 9th where all funds were donated to St Jude Children's Hospital to raise funds for their Club sad sold candy canes during lunches on December 18th through December 21st also selling candy at lunches was this was the Spanish club Who Sold candy grams during the month of February for Valentine's Day furthermore the speech and debate Club have accomplished many things

007over the past 3 months they have been in a variety of weekend invites multiple students have placed in the top five in the region and they have recently won their lead Championship notably multiple competitors won bids to compete at the Tournament of Champions at the University of Kentucky moreover speech and debate was recently recognized by emry University as one of the top programs in the country which is a big accomplishment our future Business Leaders of America team team came home with top honors with the strongest performance in a decade at the regional leadership conference with 38 first place finishers the region is comprised of 21 Bucks County high schools with 88 Council Rock North students qualifying for the qualifying for the 2024 State leadership competition in Hershey this April lastly on a musical note sck

008and buskin is debuting their winter show Diary of Anne Frank on Thursday February 22nd and is performing through Saturday February 24th also Color Guard placed first at the minute Atlantic indoor competition at North pen high school that is all I have for you today thank you good evening board members I'm Olivia esposo the student Advisory Board representative for the class of 2026 I'll be covering again tonight updates on the sophomore class and Athletics as far as sophomores go student officers are putting final touches on our winter semi-formal dance the theme this year will be neon North and it will be held on March 15th everyone is very excited to have this event appr approaching quickly fundraisers have also been going very well with one that just happened at Jules and lovebird and another coming up

009at Chipotle now moving on to Athletics the swim team has individuals heading to districts divers that placed at the Suburban one Patriot meet include lilan Tetro Skyler kenes and Alex janetti some divers are also individually headed to districts where the team is confident their teammates will do well boys basketball was ranked 36 of 43 at the end of their season with six wins and six 16 losses girls basketball finished their season ranked 28 of 44 with a 10 and 12 record wrestling team on unfortunately has come to an end after a tough loss to Quaker toown but individually the wrestlers will go on to a tournament where they will represent North both JV and varsity cheer won their last competition most spring sports are now in full swing preseason with tryouts starting on March 4th

010that is all I have to report to you tonight but I look forward to the next meeting thank you good evening board my name is Lil Al buer and I am the Sab representative for the class of 2027 with it being halfway through the 2023 to 2024 school year both the student executive board and the Freshman Class officers are working hard to plan and coordinate enticing events which will take place in the coming months in December SCB finalized their holiday project they were able to provide many children with gifts and it was a great success currently sebb is well underway in creating the talent show which is scheduled to be held on Thursday February 29th auditions in January designated 14 acts with individuals in grades 10 through 12 who will be performing in the show

011these acts range from singers to magicians to bands there was also the possibility that another fun event will be held later in the year Mr crn is a contest formatted event for senior boys which donates all proceeds to a charity of the Winner's Choice it consists of a show that will include a variety of categories such as a choreograph dance a Q&A and a talent portion in the past this event has been a favorite of many students however sebb is still looking for applicants at this time and needs to finalize planning in order for this event to run as for the Freshman Class the officers are helping the class of 2026 organize wemy the winter semi-formal which is scheduled for Friday March 15th the class of 2027 is also considering local vendors to hold fundraisers

012all freshmen were recently introduced to the new grade principal Mr spara and are currently meeting with their counselors to finalize core selections for next year thank you hello my name is pelina Nena I'm a junior at Council Rock North High School and a level 200 student in the medical and Health Professions program at middle box Institute of Technology what is currently happening February's career in technical education CTE month where we celebrate and recognize both the students who attend the Career Technical Center and also the value of Career and Technical education the 2024 skills USA District 2 competitions were held at Western Montgomery career in Technology Center in January in February with MB students participating in 49 competitions with a total of 66 NB competitors nbit placed in 28 events during 10 earning 10 bronze medals

01318 silver medals and 21 gold medals some competitions were one person events and the other were team events the students who earned gold medals will compete in the schills USA state competition which will be held in hery Pennsylvania in April we want to congratulate our six automotive technology students who have successfully completed their training and have earned the steamed title of Pennsylvania certified state inspection mechanics another certification has been achieved by the level 100 Public Safety students they have successfully completed the incident command 200 course this certification is a testament that to their commitment to improving their Knowledge and Skills in the field of Public Safety nbat is currently accepting applications for the 2024 2025 school year applications are due Friday February 16th 2024 I look forward to reporting to you at the next school

014board meeting thank you for your time and the opportunity to keep you informed about what is happening at middle box Institute of Technology good evening board my name is Nathaniel Lake I'm here representing the highlights of Sloan school for the first semester of the school year in English class Mr Rose's class we have explored and identifi the fundamental elements of a resme and cover letters compos both highlights our skills and previous work experience we've learned how to correctly incorporate quotes and citations in our essays and complete unit completed a unit on short stories in Geometry Mr Kelly's geometry class we have put emphasis on developing students Lo logic and reasoning skills throughout the school year in algebra one Algebra 2 and Analysis we have identified where certain topics can be applied in the real world

015and what careers the topics can serve as a baseline too in analysis specifically we just finished a lesson on applying quadratic functions to physics determining whether a hitting a hit baseball would result in a home run in Mr Clash's science class in biology we have studied topics from the basic unit of life the cell and its organel and functions cell division and genetics in astronomy we completed our first semester course in astronomy in which we studied plants ancient astronomers impacts and stars and galaxies environmental science students in this class have studied e ecology human impact on the environment ecosystems and biomes and how energy moves through the environment in Mr C's social studies class in world history the this year we have studied topics ranging from conquests of Mongols to the European Renaissance and Reformation

016American Civ 10 topics include the Cold War lifestyles of the 1950s Kennedy and civil rights movement in Psychology Personalities in Psychology we study personalities classic and operant conditioning learning styles discussing class based upon the topics above in government and uh documents such as the United United States Constitution and declared the independence are on our the Declaration of Independence excuse me sorry um in group dynamics class at Sloan gives students the opportunity to process current life events while receiving feedback from their peers and the counselor students are expect exposed to guide Ed imagery and visualization experiences in addition to being taught coping skills to deal with life's challenges psychoeducational groups are also facilitated including topics such as understanding anger coping with anxiety and depression resolving conflict and L loss and self-esteem enchantment just to name a

017few schoolwide activities minding your mind um excuse me sorry uh universal Technical institution came to our school and presented their programs available and pro process and requirements for enrollment after graduation we have continued our partnership with Miss GIS autistic support class and meal packing for caring for friends thank you my name is Sam nitzki I am a student in the achieve program achieve is a tra transition program for students 18 to 21 years old we get soft skills for work from volunteer opportunities in our community I have I volunteered at Crossing Community Church in Star bro Cafe on Wheels the first semester now I volunteer at St Mary's Hospital my classmates are volunteering at the Knack charwell and good stuff thrift store we also run a cafe at a STAR Center Tuesday to Friday stop

018by for a great cup of coffee we work on Independent Living skills such as budgeting cooking and selfcare here we do community based instruction in the spring we will be taking the train to Philadelphia in October we worked with Sloan on a pumpkin decorating contest we raised $150 for the autism cares foundation in November we shared the friends giving with Sloan at the Star Center it was delicious we have been busy we have been busy we have been busy this year thank you that was an awesome update thank you so much um MRIs would you like to add anything thank you for having us this evening and hearing the many great things that are happening at the Star Center as well as Council Rock thank you thank you just next on the agenda is the

019superintendent report Dr Sanko thank you Mrs ply school board members community members staff here with us tonight and those tuning in on the Council Rock YouTube channel thank you to the student Advisory Board from Council Rock High School North along with their principal Mr trusevich for your report as well as our representatives from Sloan school and Achieve finally a thank you to Maddie thevon for her beautiful rendition of the national anthem this evening Maddie stepped away from The Faculty concert taking place at this very moment at Newtown Middle School this concert is a Showcase of musical Talent featuring performances by our teachers and staff and it's a fundraiser to benefit the music scholarship fund for Council Rock students thank you to our music department staff for arranging the concert and for providing an evening of

020entertainment for the benefit of our students and espe especially for sharing Maddie's talents with us this evening we are now in the third marking period and we've passed the 100th day of school year the Home Access Center opened last week for parents to view their student second marking period report cards our teachers staff and principal spent spend their days working with your student and their observations can help parents complete the school day Picture that grades and test results can only quantify so if you have a concern or a question or need additional insight into academic progress please reach out to your child's teacher this month we celebrate two Council Rock High School students whose artwork and creativity are being recognized from coun Rock High School South congratulations to senior Britney conver who was recently named

021the Pennsylvania art education association's student artist of the month for February Brittney was nominated by her teacher Mr Michael Catalano who praised Britney's talent and passion for art as well of the level of personal dedication she brings to every class most importantly Britney is celebrated as a kind empathetic student with a heart of gold Britney's hard work is paid off in acceptances to the School of Visual Arts in New York and the Rhode Island School of Design among other national art programs congratulations Britney the entire Council Rock Community is proud of you from Council Rock North we congratulate 11th grade student Dylan mcaffrey whose work of art will be included in an exhibit at the world-renowned Franklin Institute Dylan created one of the six Works selected to be displayed at the art of the brick

022exhibit in the 13 to 17-year-old age group The Art of the brick exhibit is a critically acclaimed collection of inspiring artworks made exclusively from one of the most recognizable toys in the world the Lego Breck Dylan attended media day at the Franklin Institute yesterday to meet with Lego artist Nathan sua if you visit the Franklin Institute make sure to look out for Dylan's Lego creation named a raving twister that will be on display until the end of August congratulations again to Dylan and the know that the entire Council Rock Community is proud of you during the march board meeting Mrs Beth Lynch our art Department coordinator will be here to highlight these and other students in the impressive catalog of artwork our students have produced this year at your seat this evening we placed a

023few Hershey Kisses the iconic treat that was born in nearby Hershey Pennsylvania a few years ago six new town middle school students Cameron forthsight Lana hakma Emily Kennedy Caitlyn Landers Elaine law and odley Tom Audrey Thompson had the idea that the Hershey Kiss should be declared the official candy of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with the support from their social studies teacher Mr Rich lochran these students took their idea to State lawmakers to make their idea reality the students spared no effort in making their case for the kiss they sent several hundred emails and letters spent hours meeting with state legislators and the Hershey Company they conducted interviews with newspapers and with advoc advocacy groups they also visited the capital twice to Lobby in person the efforts of these this dedicated group who are now Juniors

024at koun Rock High School North are being realized by Pennsylvania lawmakers the group got a firsthand look at how our state government works when their proposed legislation made it to a state house Hearing in Harrisburg last week the Hershey Kiss Bill formerly known as House Bill 1030 went before the Pennsylvania tourism economic and Recreation development committee and I'm happy but not surprised to report it was passed by unanimous consent the next step is for the bill to go to the house floor then onto consideration by the PA Senate even better the group is scheduled to meet with the her Hershey executive to discuss next steps and discuss how they can get the bill to the go to Governor Shapiro's desk the authors of the Hershey Kiss bill will applaud we applaud your determination perseverance and

025Ingenuity I expect we will all hear more about the Hershey Kiss bill in the coming months but in the meantime enjoy the kisses we shared tonight we are just a little over two weeks away from Council Rock Education foundations annual fundraising Monte Carlo niga this event is a celebration of public education that unites local businesses Community organizations and Council Rock families and staff C generously supports educational experiences that enrich Council Rock students directly through a grant opport through grant opportunities that fund Innovative teaching throughout the district Monte Carlo night is planned for March 1st at the fuge in Warminster PA tickets are available on the cff website as a reminder to Council Rock teachers who are listening the deadline for submitting a grand application to cff is next Wednesday February 21st the application is available

026on the cff website so teachers if you have an idea you think would expand your teaching and broaden the scope of experience for our students I encourage you to apply for an innovating learning Grant from C grants will be awarded in April and at the end of and at the May 16th board meeting the grant awardees will be publicly recognized thank you to kre for providing opportunities for our teachers to explore New Frontiers in teaching and learning each year Council Rock School District selects a charitable organization that works to the benefit of children in our community this year our district districtwide charity is the autism Caris Foundation a locally founded group that supports and provides resources to students and families experiencing autism thus far Council Rock has raised over $8,000 for autism cares and the

027year is not over yet an upcoming event for the entire community and is autism cares night at the Philadelphia 76ers when the Sixers face the Oklahoma City Thunder the game is scheduled for for Tuesday April 2nd and ticket sales benefit the autism Caris Foundation more information and a link to purchasing tickets is under the news tab on the Council Rock website later this month representatives from The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation will be presenting a drug abuse prevention information session to our Council Rock Community this inform this informative program is meant to educate at parents family and the public on preventing drug drug abuse and seeking help for abusers abusers and their families this event is open to the public and will take place on Wednesday February 28th at Holland Middle

028School in the auditorium at 7 p.m. a couple important dates to note Friday February 16th all schools are closed offices are open it is a professional development day Monday February 19th President's Day all schools and offices are closed Thursday February 22nd there is an education committee meeting here at Chancellor Center at 7 pm and Wednesday February 28th is the information session the joint effort between the FBI and DEA that will be held at Holland Middle School from 7 to 8 p.m. thank you to the community for their flexibility regarding the snow day earlier this week factoring in the two weather related clothing so far this year the last day for school of school for students will be Thursday June 13th and the last teacher day will be Friday June 14th if we need additional weather

029related clo uh if we need an additional weather related closing day this is an advanced notice for teachers in the community that the next weather related School Clos closing day this year will be a flexible instructional day final confirmation on the last days of school will happen in April just so we can get through the rest of February um however please note the graduation date of Tuesday June 11th remains unchanged this is a reminder that the most accurate and trustworthy information regarding our district is found on re on resources websites and social media platforms maintained by the Council Rock School District as with this and all information regarding Council Rock we advise the community to be cautious about the accuracy of information posted on social media platforms District maintained sources are your best source of

030correct and Li reliable District information finally tonight you will hear discussion on the incident involving a durm school Services employee on December 15 2023 the Council Rock ad Administration like the community finds it abhorent that this incident occurred and is inexcusable and it's inexcusable that durm school Services created conditions that enabled their driers actions to occur Council Rock is sensitive to the gravity of this matter and has never wavered in fulfilling its obligations to the families of the students who are on the bus in question and all students of Council Rock families who ride buses on December 15th Council Rock reacted swiftly as did Durham to address the incident parents were informed promptly of the incident the district cooperated with the police investigation the district also immediately questioned Durham on how this driver got behind

031the wheel of a bus and what Durham was doing to ensure this type of incident would never happen again the driver is facing charges from the December 15th incident that driver was employed by and hired by Durham school Services as a third-party vendor Durham school Services was in full and complete control of hiring and and the vetting process involving this individual and all other bus drivers by way of background Durham school Services was unanimously approved as a vendor in April of 2022 and began transporting Council Rock students in July of 2022 we anticipate hearing from Durham school services tonight about the steps they are taking to ensure incidents like this never happen again this concludes the superintendent's report thank you Dr Sano we have the solicitors report n Mr Clark thank you uh the board

032met an executive session uh this evening uh to discuss potential litigation the board Al also held a retreat on January 30th of this year thank you uh next on the agenda we have the presentation by the Duram School Services uh could you please also introduce yourselves I know you have a few people from your company with you thank you point point of information I have a point of information sure I I'm unclear why this item is under routine actions and that it is not occurring after public comment and after approval of the previous meeting minutes I I don't imagine that we are about to have a presentation from a vendor every month moving forward so I'm not sure what is routine about this [Music] item um so when we were setting the agenda we felt

033that this was this is about the well-being and safety of our children which the top priority for us so we felt it's very important after the introduction by Dr Sango to have them present and then we have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss among ourselves in public we have a chance to do that in private as an executive session or a work session but I think the public it was in the news everybody has been talking about that I think the public deserves to know exactly what is going on I agree which is why I think it should occur um after the public comment but that's fine I'm going to make a brief opening statement and then uh we'll follow up with the presentation and then obviously take your questions uh good evening Dr

034Sano esteemed members of the board and the Council Rock Community my name is name is David armit senior vice president of operations for Durham school services tonight we're here to apologize and share with you the actions we are taking to help prevent what occurred on Friday December 15th from happening again here in Council Rock first off we' sincerely apologize for the unacceptable actions of a now former driver of ours he has been charged with criminal actions in getting behind the wheel of our vehicle and driving while under the influence under a previous process the former employee in question had access to bus keys that allowed him to operate his bus without checking in with dispatch we will explain in our presentation how those processes have been changed and shorted up upon being made aware of

035the situation by the Council Rock transportation department we promptly notified local authorities and fully collaborated with their investigation subsequently the driver in question was immediately released beli of Duties and terminated for their reprehensible actions we do not condone nor tolerate any unsafe type of unsafe behavior and we're deeply troubled by his recklessness to put our students in the community in danger however to be clear we do accept responsibility for the incident happening in the first place furthermore I want to emphasize to all of you that we did our due diligence in checking the individual's record prior to hiring hiring him and there were no indications of any past driving violations on the state or federal level in short he passed all the state and federal background checks that are required to be a bus driver

036in the state of Pennsylvania and as a result we proceeded to hire the individual under no circumstances would we knowingly hire any individuals who would POS POS a risk to them or others in the community additionally we are proud of the over 150 dorham school bus services drivers monitors mechanics and staff who serve the commu Council Rock Community and represent the values of getting our kids to school safely and it's an honor to serve the Council Rock Community this evening we aim to illustrate in our presentation the protocols we have implemented to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future and then following the presentation we will take questions our team members in attendance our vice president of safety Michelle Simon our region manager Bob Scarpa and our general manager Michael Choson uh who will

037also address your questions thank you for your time at this point I'll turn it over to Michelle start the presentation good evening thank you for allowing me the opportunity to come and share with you what our policies and procedures are for hiring um drivers and monitors across the the Durham business I wanted to share with you all the pre-employment screenings that we we perform on all employees within Durham um it's a very comprehensive package as you'll see uh Motor Vehicle Record check is completed on all drivers uh we perform a a robust criminal background check which includes um the national sex offender registry Social Security Trace County criminal and um felony and misdemeanor checks and then a national widescreen um Plus Check um I want to hit on one point um related to um what

038all of this entails uh in terms of the criminal background check so the the way that the background checks are performed is based on a candidate's social security number trace any any locations in which that um candidate has resided we will do checks in those particular areas so it's based on um what shows up in the system on that check um to identify What county or state level checks would be required for that candidate in addition to the criminal record checks um there's the employment verification process that's required pursuant to DOT regulation um and then of course uh drug and alcohol testing um as well as do um physicals or non doot physicals for monitors and then last but not least um and I did this out of order um but the do drug and

039alcohol Clearing House so that's a requirement pursuant to regulation that we have to run on all candidates um for driving positions to ensure that they have not had a violation um drug or alcohol related within um the previous three years um recorded in a National Database so that's sort of the the background a snapshot of all of our pre-employment screenings that are performed on drivers and monitors um across the business next I wanted to talk just briefly about our driver trading program so our driver trading program is is in full compliance with the entry level driver training regulation that went into effect a couple of years ago it is a comprehensive classroom in behindth wheel training um comprised of approximately 20 hours of classroom training approximately 20 hours of behind the wheel training um including

040Dem demonstration and proficiency of transporting passengers um and again this is an industry um leading training program that's supplemented with um company specific trainings as well technology is a large component of our safety program within Durham one of the um largest pieces of technology that we use is drivecam litics uh drivecam litics is an event-based repor recorder um it's an event-based recorder that identifies any GeForce triggered movement in the bus so any any action or behavior that is identified through the movement of the bus um we get an alert based on the behavior and the management team is notified on uh certain behaviors on action being required um action meaning additional coaching or training um where necessary so it's it's a leading indicator to help provide additional coaching and training opportuni to drivers based on

041the behaviors identified as their driving a snapshot into Durham's Regulatory Compliance um what we do to ensure compliance to all reg regulations as well as um company policy so you'll see here four four components um a large component of our Regulatory Compliance is comprised of the driver qualification file so there are federal requirements in addition to to State requirements for this piece um and we maintain and adhere to um full compliance to each one of the required pieces in the driver qualification file one thing that I do want to note here is that we do within Durham require all of our drivers to submit to and be qualified with a DOT medical exam which is above and beyond the state of Pennsylvania requirements random drug and alcohol testing another area which Durham exceeds the reporting

042um requirements pursuant to regulation um the requirement federally is 50% and 10% um to test employees on a random basis annually uh the the new town um location has um in 2023 exceeded the federal requirements at 66% of our safety sensitive employees being drug tested and 11% of our safety sensitive employees being um alcohol tested um our uh pools are done quarterly and um are compliant with um regulation related to post accident testing reason or Reasonable Suspicion training excuse me Reasonable Suspicion testing as well as I mentioned as a part of the the file process um to be qualified to be a driver um we require all of our drivers to be um certified from a federal DOT standpoint in addition to the PA physical uh and all of our drivers upon completion of the

043federal physical um the medical exam is reviewed for completeness and compliance to ensure that our drivers meet do minimum medical standards um unfortunately there are um times when examiners erroneously qualified drivers and it's our role as the motor carrier to ensure that we have medically qualified drivers behind the wheel last but not least is monthly safety meetings so we do exceed um the requirement with month monthly safety meetings at the location um this allows us an opportunity each month to provide an area of focus um to our employees uh in including but not limited to driver training uh passenger interaction training and any do and OSHA compliance um training that would be required and that concludes the component of um the safety process and program I'll turn it over to Bob Scarpa hello everyone thank

044you for having us tonight um I'm going to review with you some actions that we've taken so far and some additional steps that we are in the process of working through um you know let me change the screen sorry some some key processes that um we've completed and action plans we've put into place is having drivers to ensure drivers are interacting with our dispatchers and supervisors um before and after each trip whether it's am or p.m um so we can so we can ensure Reasonable Suspicion actually have a conversation with them um dispatchers are auditing keyboards so when drivers come in and return their or or take a key in the morning um we hand it to them off of our secured board when they return in the afternoon or after their am run they're

045to return that key to dispatch we keep it on a board dispatchers are then audited those boards after each shift if any key is known to be missing supervisors notified they go out and check the vehicle if that vehicle if we find the key on the vehicle we put it in the office driver comes in for their next shift we then have um some coaching with that with that driver on proper key process if we can't locate the key on the vehicle we then call the driver have them come immediately back if we make contact with them they come back we get the key from them go through the key process with if we can't make contact with them and can't locate the key we contact our maintenance department who then goes out and disconnects

046the battery ensuring the driver has to report to the office before they operate that vehicle we then sit them down and go through the key process at which point we're looking for reasonable suspicion when it comes to our fueling our fuelers are to obtain keys for any vehicle that needs to be fueled am rep p.m whether in between runs or after runs they have to obtain the key from the office and then return the key to the office for each vehicle that they fuel they're not to take multiple keys out with them at one time it's one key one vehicle at a time return the key to the office get the next set of keys and go fuel it so that's been corrected um those are some action plans on key distribution and process some

047refresher training that we've completed training that people have had but we went back and did some additional training we all of our staff members went through um as well as myself went through Reasonable Suspicion tra suspicion training and procedures again um so all of us have completed that multiple times in this one school year in-person training for drivers we brought our uh director area director of safety in um she came in over a week's period and in smaller groups went through reasonable suspicion Fitness for Duty and Reporting um sus suspected um suspected issues right see something say something so we went through this with every group in in the facility both facilities um and everyone went through the training the district came in um the district security um and safety um lead came in and

048and took the drivers and dispatchers through Fitness for Duty and security training so that was also a collaboration with the district which I thank you for that was great um and then obviously training on the revised key distribution process um to everybody to reiterate it some actions that we're in process of working on the interlock ignition devices which for most is considered a breathalyzer type scenario so we've been researching that the devices to determine what options capabilities and applicability of the technology is it for the school bus industry um drug and alcohol testing as Michelle said we are we exceed um the federal requirement um but we're going to explore possibilities of potentially increasing the random pool um and then working with the district to get the fiber optic Network up and running for the

049exterior cameras in the facilities so those are processes that we are in the process of working on with outside vendors so with that uh we'd all be happy to take questions um and um so before we do that I would like to uh open it for uh comments from the board if you have any uh specific something specific to say or if you want to ask questions uh Mr zi okay I have a lot to say there has been a lot of very legitimate anger fear frustration among parents whose children ride the Durham school buses myself included there is nothing more important to me than keeping our children safe at school and that includes on their way to and from their schools I have prepared comments and I hope that you all don't mind if

050I read them I read these comments as a board member but also as a parent who relies on Durham to transport my elementary school students and holds the basic expectation that they will be safe on Durham's buses as a board we have committed to more communication and I intend to honor that commitment we have a new solicitor and with that change comes new legal advice that allows us to communicate more parents and Council Rock are rightfully concerned and are owed an explanation I appreciate Durham being with us here tonight to discuss this incident with our community let me start by being clear about what happened on December 15th 2023 a student returned home via school bus and reported to their parent that the bus driver seemed to be behaving strangely that child happened to be

051the last stop on the bus route the parent called the school district who immediately radioed for the driver to stop driving and notifi the police the next run for the driver was to an elementary school where the principal stopped the driver from picking up any more children the driver left the elementary school and proceeded to the right toown bus depot where Council Rock Administration met the bus and waited with the driver until he was taken into police custody I want to let all parents know four important facts most important no one was injured there was no accident no property was damaged but most importantly no one was hurt two a very brave student saw something and said something make no mistake no child should ever have been put in that position but we are very

052grateful that she stepped forward and we are very very appreciative of her and her family while we will keep her identity confidential at her request she's a hero three families who had children that rode with that bus driver that day were notified immediately four upon learning of this incident our board president called a work session for our board to get information about the incident the response by Durham the respon response by Council Rock staff and the district's options for continuing with or terminating our busing contract the work session occurred on January 4th and was reported as required by law in the solicitors report on January 18th all board members were invited to attend those who participated in the work session were Ann Herer Nicole Khan Yoda Pali Linda Stone Ed Tate and myself the administration

053first explained to the board the sequence of events on December 15th as best they understood it at the time representatives from Durham school Services attended and answered questions from the administration and the board members in attendance I also want to share that I was very distressed to read news articles over the last few weeks that had information that was not provided to the Schoolboard I'm not sure where that breakdown and communication occurred there is one basic question that the administration and the board asked of Durham how could this happen How could a middle schooler notice something so wrong but no adult noticed it when an impaired driver showed up to work as David arett said keys were routinely left in the school buses and when this driver arrived at work he was able to hop

054in the school bus without interacting with any Durham staff that's completely unacceptable I wanted to see this policy had changed with my own eyes so I asked Dr senko to please set up an unannounced visit to both bus depot while all board members were invited Miss Khan and I attended and were able to see both Depot unannounced and speak with drivers monitors and other staff we observed bus drivers coming in for their shifts and requesting their keys we met some wonderful drivers and I want to be clear that I have no reason to believe that this was anything other than an isolated incident the incident occurred shortly after the new board was sworn in I know parents have expressed concern about District y communication coming out more than a month later and I understand that

055concern it was our understanding that the bus company would be communicating with all parents sooner than they did but the bottom line is that we are committed to more open communication all over the district Durham operates 125 buses each day and we rely on them to keep our children safe the previous School Board had selected Durham in part because of their emphasis on safety and their state-of-the-art safety precautions such as onboard cameras heartbreaking alerts and driver training as a council Rock parent whose children ride and continue to ride these buses and as a member of this board I'm not yet satisfied with DM's response I believe we need to reexamine our busing contract alternatively I have requested Durham to provide bus monitors on our buses in addition to preventing problems like this a bus monitor

056could help on other bus problems like rendering first aid or handling bullying or other student issues many districts provide bus monitors I have also requested that Durham absorb the cost of bus monitors based on this incident lastly I want to take a moment to assure our parents who might feel nervous sending their children on school buses I have no reason to believe that this is anything other than an isolated incident I have continued to send my children on the school bus and I hope that with proper precautions we can all feel confident about our children's Transportation thank you thank you Mr Z the any other comments from the board before we ask questions Mr R yeah I've got other questions but if that's a separate section I can wait any other comments okay so before

057we go into questions I think that um because student safety is one of our priorities uh we are all upset with what happened and we are here tonight to understand I think we understood a little bit about how it happened but make sure that something like like that never happens again it was clearly a systemic failure of some sort that caused this event and uh I also find it unacceptable that the board was not given all the information up front we find found out things from the media the day that the reports came out so it's something that I would like to at some point Duram to respond and with that please work questions for Durham Mr ruselt yeah thank you I I do have a couple of questions for Durham um thank you for

058for coming out today and having your presentation to communicate to the community not only what you have done but what you are planning to do or what you are doing it was reassuring to hear from my colleague Miss SOI that um that some of these implementations have have taken place I'm curious my first question is where is durm in the process of the rest of them do you have a timeline of when the rest of your new planned initiatives are going to be completed yeah I I think the uh the easy one is the infrastructure the fiber optic infrastructure um you know we we we've gotten an idea of where all the cameras are we've committed to at least get the installations done uh we just have to secure a vendor and and ex on

059it so and we'll be working with who who have we been working with Michael Michael okay do you have a timeline for that um I do not not yet but we can get you one it'll be it'll be relatively quick thank you my next question is in the presentation you mentioned an alert system based upon g-forces on the date in question that this incident occurred did that alert system work was Derm not no ified yes there were two um alerts that were identified um in the area director of safety um quickly connected with um Michael and um that's where the dialogue started so I I would have to defer to Michael on specifics but yes there were two events that were triggered where um the area director identified that yes there is something visibly wrong

060we need to to get this individual off the road immediately at what point in the route did that occur and what to durm take when that took place in other words why is it that a middle schooler the last one on the route gets off why is why did that alert system not take into place and have action sooner so drivecam is not an immediate it it there's an alert that goes out it goes to the company called Linux who they analyze the videos as an alert comes through they analyze the video and then the video is sent Within the microphone I'm sorry then the video is sent through an alert to us sometimes it it can take them depending on on the time frame it could take them a few hours it could take

061them an hour it could take them till the next day depending on the time of day that it occurs so there is a time delay through when an event occurs to when we get the event I understand that's the video but I thought that the presentation was specific to g-forces and having an alert system based upon g-forces and that Durham recognized that the driver needed to be removed immediately when did that take place let me see if I can clarify so it is a GeForce triggered technology um and all of those events that are triggered by that g GeForce um trigger are reviewed by Lix so Lix reviews all of our events and classifies them based on the behavior scen that process is what Ro what Bob was talking about is that sometimes it's not

062immediate so that can happen at 2: p.m. and we may not receive the notification of that in our queue for a couple of hours I will say when I received the phone call on the 15th of December from the area director of safety it was probably 4:30 Central Standard time so that would have been 5:30 so I it's hard for me to tell you specifically when that event came through but it is not necessarily immediate at the time that the trigger happens because it goes through a formal review process thank you I'm hoping that that is that timeline to tighten that up is part of your consideration if not this is mostly a retroactive technology um and I think that the the assumption that I took as one board member from that presentation is that

063this was more instantaneous um my last question is did this driver work for First Student the prior bus company for this District before or was he a Durham driver was he hired by Durham specifically what's the sort of history of that driver this was a new driver hired by Durham he did not come over uh from first student uh he had been with the company a short period of time uh probably uh less than two months thank you I'm I'm sorry I had one more question with regards to these new initiatives that you developed were these based upon your own internal and problem evaluation of this incident and other incidences from the a that you're aware of or did you did dorm reach out to other bus companies to try to figure out hey are

064we being the safest bus company out there is there something else that we can do I'm just curious to understand what the where that came from based on an internal review uh we didn't go to any external bus companies and and ask what their processes were when we learned of what the process was candly was a hold over from first student we said there's a problem here and obviously uh we need to change it so that's when we came up with what you saw as far as controlling the keys and making sure that people have eyeballs on you know drivers as they come in thank you I yield to the rest of my colleagues thank you anybody else Miss scan uh thank you I guess I I have a couple questions um in terms of

065the action steps the we talked a lot about the key process um the keyboard um auditing of the keys refueling process and the refresher training for the employees are these steps prepar clarification for those at home and those you know throughout the the media that we were able to read on the in the news um were those steps already not in place prior to the December 15th meeting so the the the key review process clearly was was not in place I mean the at the time the fueler basically was controlling the keys and not giving them to dispatch so that was the the the change that we made in terms of the key process as far as the training goes the Reasonable Suspicion training was deployed to our to our staff and it was basically

066reinstituted uh after the uh after the instance or the incident and then the fitness for Duty training was done by the district obviously we hadn't had that before and internally it was the first Fitness for Duty training that we had done with the drivers um as a result of the in thank you um and in terms of the possibilities I was going to actually ask the same question that Mr Roosevelt asked um you know we definitely would like to see an update and timeline of when those possibilities if they ever are going to come to fruition or whatever obstacles there there are so as some sort of update I know coming out of the I think Mr roselt also asked the question where some of these um possibility procedures or protocols to be placed I

067know at that January 2nd Meeting those were some questions we had already asked dur Durham and some of you were sitting there the possibility of more testing more random testing a greater pool as well as um the breathalyzer and then we talked about that whole uh exchange of keys and what happen in all of that process I am happy to report that um this morning I know Mrs AI already alluded to the fact that she myself um Dr Seno and Tony rap did two surprise visits from the very morning early shift to the mid-afternoon shift to go in and and see the protocol we were able to ask questions see the keyboards um so we appreciate that um and then one more question I had regarding one of the the social media um articles uh

068regarding I guess there was some question about where this individual um was residing one of the questions I had was at some point I guess it was in one of the articles that they were living in some sort of um home that wasn't like a like a permanent residence in the application and vetting process is there ever a followup or check-in to see if the ID that they I would imagine um provided matches up with their actual permanent residents or their current residents as they are employees through Durham yeah it it sorry it when we did the background check on that individual his driver's license and the background check address matched so whether he was at you know a halfway house or we we have no idea you know what his living arrangements were at

069the time of the incident but when we screened him and everything you know all of the checks came back the address on his driver's license was the address that was basically used for you know following up on his criminal background history his driving record and everything else so it was news to us as it was to the community that he wasn't at the address that that he had given us I mean that could be another possibility right some sort of routine check because obviously um myself also being a parent that my son has been riding the school bus since he was in kindergarten it was surprised to read that in a newspaper article or see it on the news versus information so thank you for that clarification Mr hii um first of all um again

070I appreciate you coming out and um giving us background and what steps you are planning to do in the future I'll keep it real simple uh I agree with Missi 100% on the words that she said she covered everything uh succinctly um I guess my question is is you you know this happened so as awful and Despicable as it was what do we do to prevent anything from like this to happening again um it shouldn't happened in the first place but like I said how do we do it I guess a couple of suggestions that were were said and we try to go in a timeline things that may be able to be instituted a little quicker and I don't know how it works as far as uh your agreements or whatnot but um a

071couple questions do Drive ders ever have the vehicles at their home for any period of time like for example you make a run in the morning you have a few hours off at lunchtime and you come back in you don't come back in the afternoon you basically take your vehicle out again for an afternoon run certain in certain cases there are Park outs approved parkoutdoor to take their vehicle home or to a designated parking spot where they'll park it which is closer to their schools um their PM pickup as opposed to coming back to the yard um but that is vetted out and then it's it's actually documented in our B curve system that it's a park out yeah and I I just don't know if there's any way to prevent something from happening in

072the interum between those hours um another thing that you were talking about that has been mentioned in a couple different things you talked about the key failures and what happens if somebody doesn't return a key or whatever I mean is it possible if someone does not follow the protocol of their keys as opposed to just bringing them in or saying something to them could you because it would also end people making this mistake is is it possible to Institute a breathalyzer to that person who fails to return those keys as opposed to just meeting him in person that that is a possibility um we do have uh labor partners that we would have to work with on that um you know the the the drivers are represented by a you know uh by a union

073collective bargaining agreement so all of that would have to be worked out with them as part of the process um candidly I never thought of that as you know as a possibility when we were presented with the breathalizer it was kind of thought about holistically um and that's kind of where we've been focusing our our attention uh as far as you know in putting it out uh throughout the entire system but not just somebody makes a mistake on the key process so again working with vendors working with the local unions um you know we'll we'll come up with a an answer for the for the administration on where we think it's going to go and candidly there might be some downsides to to this um and we'll bring those to the attention of the administration

074as well what does it do for recruiting this there is no school bus application for breathalyzers that we know of in the United States and we have to remember too that while there were maybe 14 or 15 of these incidents in 2023 those were all criminal action activities actions that took place and um we have to I guess weigh what are the unintended consequences of of addressing all of it versus the you know the the criminal for for example so but those are discussions that we'll have once we do our do our research and present you know the options to to the administration or at least present what we found to the administration thank you m Stone yes um I understand Tracy's uh suggestion of a a bus monitor and um I recognize the difficulties

075in in uh um establishing that but are there other Alternatives where you have more immediate feedback than the system that's in place now either where somebody is actually monitoring uh cameras on all the buses to look for any changes in behavior um or maybe uh phone check-ins every 30 minutes or every hour with every bus driver from a central location to talk to them and make sure things are all right because it may not just be criminal activities that we're looking at but if somebody if someone has a u some medical condition that all of a sudden acts up you know something unknown how would we how would you be able to um react to that if somebody I don't know has a dizzy spell or has a heart attack I mean that's yeah yeah

076I mean you know right now I mean we've got state of the Zone GPS systems in our vehicles now I know that we have state-ofthe-art GPS systems in our vehicles it's called Zonar now it's not GPS as as we thought at the January 4th meeting where it's ter by turn know with GPS monitors speed monitors certain different safety activities ities that are going on um so and we look at that and my team gets safety alerts um speeding alerts that go directly to the general manager and to the supervisors they get them basically within minutes of a speed event taking place I don't know that you know calling a driver first of all we we we have a zero cell phone policy that for termination purposes for safety purposes if we call every driver every

077half hour they're either having to pull over stop the bus shut the bus off take a phone call from us or they're going to answer the phone as they drive and and we're going to have to terminate them because it's going to come up on drive cam so with we we're actually creating a more unsafe environment to do some of those things but we do monitor the Zonar intently for any activity that may tell us that there's an issue and if that if that helps or or as I say somebody monitoring cameras where you don't have to actually interact with the driver yeah so the camera systems that we have are Scion cameras um and they're hard drive cameras correct so that can only be monitored when the vehicle comes back to the building and

078we take the hard drive out so if a district calls us or a school calls us and says I I Need video from bus number three because there was an incident on the bus of of bullying let's just use that for we have to go out take the hard drive out replace it with another hard drive so that when that bus goes out it's recording then take that and bring it into the office and view it so we could view video but it's going to be dated video it's going to be the day before so it's it's difficult to to to look at cameras that way and that's a separate system from the drive cam yes system totally separate there's two separate camera systems on us by the way it's camera systems that I believe

079this district has never had before so we those are all cameras that you know we had to get the the union to agree to and so now we have definitely have more observations going on any other questions s Zaki okay yep I have a few questions or a lot of questions sorry um so we talked about the triggers that um the heartbreaking and um we've talked about two bus camera systems all those things none of them as Mr Roosevelt I think correctly said all of them are reactive none of them are proactive none of them are live is that accurate yes okay so then one thing I would suggest is maybe there's a way to with some sort of different technology to have something that could be live some some version of those things I

080don't I don't know what exists but um you know that certainly is something that I would want you guys to look at um um next is um you sent an action plan to the board or to the superintendent um I'm wondering if you'd be willing to make that public it's similar to what was in this tonight yeah it was in the it was in the uh basically the action plan we sent was in the presentation it's almost word for word but sure um this is all public record so yeah good thank you and then um along the same lines can you explain the process between the event on December 15th and your communication with our school um Community like what happened in in between there and and um if you have the dates and what

081what um you were waiting on before Comm communicating with the the school Community um well I I know we were collaboratively with the district on the communications um I know after the December 15th incident we did get the communication to the Holland uh parents uh with the limited information that we had um candidly we we didn't do anything else because the driver had not been charged okay so we want to we don't want to put out information that's incomplete that's going to you know make everybody in the community um unsure because we don't have all the facts so we waited to to get all the facts before we released any further Communications to the community okay thank you um my last question is for Michelle um can you explain again about the sorry to put

082you on the spot um could you explain again again I know you talked about the drug testing and the alcohol testing and the medical safety um training I I would like to if you could elaborate on that or go over it again it was a little okay sure so the drug testing component all of our um employees whether they are a driver or monitor would would um submit to drug testing um the drug testing panels are the same for both positions um so that's pre hire and then um post hire for all of our drivers they are enrolled in a random testing program um so uh each quarter we submit a roster and random you know number of employees get selected um based on the draw and that's for both drug and alcohol testing for

083for drivers for safety sensitive positions other than the random testing the only other times that there would be a qualified reason to test under our policy or DOT regulations would be post accident in the event that there there was a DOT reportable accident and our driver was cited um or of course Reasonable Suspicion and so our our internal drug and alcohol policy does also you know include Reasonable Suspicion for all staff does that answer the drug part yes okay the the medical review process all of our drivers I'll speak specifically to drivers um undergo a DOT medical exam and that is in addition to the Pennsylvania physical so essentially when a candidate comes in they submit to both of those and are examed by the the the medical examiner for both and complete both sets

084of paperwork the dot exam is much more robust it looks at more medical conditions and quantitatively identifies where there could be risks that then is compared to or looked at um to determine medical qualifications based on dot minimum medical standards so there are standard set forth under do that drivers have to meet in order to obtain a DOT card so for example uh if somebody has hypertension their hypertension cannot be what it's the disqualifier is anything over 140 over 90 so it's going to look at that level of of um detail when it comes to a driver's medical qualification same thing goes on insulin dependency so if we have a diabetic dot standards are much more rigorous so do standards say if if the A1C of a driver candidate is above 10.0 they are not

085regulated um so they've got certainly they they their blood sugars are not being regulated and could pose a risk of um an issue on the road and so those people are put on medical hold we as the motor carrier pursuant to regulation are ultimately responsible to make sure that every driver is is fit and meets minimum medical standards so there are times that operationally um we're challenged because we pull those people off of the road to ensure that they're compliant um whether it's insulin uh a lot of CPAP usage people that need to wear a CPAP machine um so they're be so that they are properly rested um so after the physical is completed that physical is reviewed by a team of doctors and nurses who are much more qualified than I um on DOT

086regulations um and they provide us guidance based on the information contained in the exam if there is question for followup then we take it back so in this case Michael and his team would take it back to that candidate or that current driver and explain to them what we need to ensure that they're cleared medically and can operate a commercial motor vehicle uh thank you just a quick followup um you so I think you alluded to the drug and alcohol testing being more um stringent than the requirements is that true because I believe if if I remember correct and some somebody can correct me if I'm if I'm wrong but I think we talked about that at the January 4th uh session and we were told that you were concerned that it would be a

087union issue so I wanted to make sure that I'm understanding that so I think that and I don't want to speak I wasn't here in January 4th but what I will say is we organizationally as National Express Duram School Services as a whole we operate our drug and alcohol random testing under a Consortium meaning every location across um the US is thrown into one Consortium and we pull percentages um to achieve the 50% and the 10% required by do regulation to get that calculation just coincidentally um through with all locations um into that one Consortium the location here down the street 66% of their employees were tested for drug and 11% were tested for alcohol so that was not intentional um the larger Consortium did also exceed regulation um but by Design we you never

088know because it's all randomized so 13,000 employees are in the random pool and we select a certain percentage to ensure organizationally we achieve the 50% and the 10% um required by an an on an annual basis thank you thanks for being here any other questions who's first Mr hialgo thank you Miss pie thank you guys for coming here today I don't know if I'm close enough to this mic um so thank you for the presentation you mentioned a lot of protocols that you're that you have in place and that you've created since the incident um besides the uh the bus key board um which I have a question about um what are the other things that have changed because I mean you already had most of this in place so what was it again just

089in summary that anything you've changed since then besides the the the keyboard if that's even yeah the key the keyboard was probably the biggest thing that we changed and what that did was enable us to view and interact with every driver before we hand them the key so we can ensure that they're fit for Duty um the other thing that we did and again it was you mentioned in the presentation is we went ahead and instituted a lot of retraining on Fitness for Duty not unfitness for Duty for reasonable uh suspicion and then we also implemented the fitness for Duty uh training so yes sir the maintenance the maintenance part is is the area that that we totally revamped so because that that's the area that that we feel we had the biggest disconect um

090and we've taken care of that well thank you um jump around here so as far as can somebody what if there's not somebody there monitoring the board can somebody just bypass that no we've got we've got procedures in place to ensure somebody is there at all times okay and then I know we're talking about alcohol and drugs um with marijuana being a prescription drug that's a that's a pretty tough one especially for our officers in the back I'm sure um what is that part of the pro process too because I mean how do you really determine if somebody's inhibited with something like that you asking how how do we identify if somebody is is that monitored we pursuant to do regulations um the panel that we test for is a dot five panel drug test

091which is inclusive of marijuana okay so that is the same for our non-dot um positions as well um across the board because of the safety sensitive nature of our uh positions that we have well thank you very much um also uh let's see I'm going to lose my thought for a second um you mentioned 15 incidents in 2023 but this was unique or that were they were criminal related I didn't quite follow that part yeah there were 15 approximately 15 instances of bus drivers um driving under the influence of alcohol um and that's across the country so um that you know that that's what I was referring to okay but they're criminal all of them are criminal I just thought maybe you were saying they stole the bus and they were D oh no no

092no no no no these were these were bus drivers at a specific School District or contractor that knowingly took their keys drove drunk and got subsequently got caught La last question are you confident that you you're doing everything you can or there and you're going to continue to work I do I do I think the biggest change was the key piece and the observation piece um and I think you know controlling the keys uh making sure that our our staff have you know eyes on our our folks I do think that's a huge step in preventing the uh preventing this from happening again okay thank you that's all for now thank you Miss P yeah um I wanted to just make a couple of comments and ask a question one is I'm confident that the

093administration responded very quickly on the day of the incident and very effectively and kept us informed and I appreciate that greatly I think that gives us a lot of confidence um we got a good briefing as a board on January the 4th and um we're getting additional information tonight which I appreciate um I like the zero cell phone policy by the way that's better than our state law um I want to ask a question that I believe I asked on January 4 which is are you confident that none of your staff interacted with that driver that day before he got behind the wheel because the way the scenario is described he arrived in the lot went right to the bus in which the key was already sitting and was able to leave without anyone interacting

094are you confident that that's the case and that that nobody was negligent yes he he arrived late he missed the first leg of his journey he went to the bus and went right on the second leg of his journey which was the middle school okay that's what I understood and the new process is intended to prevent that from happening because the bus's keys will be secured would not find the keys in the bus great okay well um you know just briefly to sum um you know I think we are not done what you presented here is a good start but this has to be an ongoing Contin process um I I hope that there's a heightened awareness that uh we have to be really Vigilant about safety and there's there's safety threats that you might

095not have imagined no one may have imagined this particular scenario previously but it happened so I encourage you to be proactive and very thoughtful about safety processes going forward and I I assume I know you're a sizable National company which is a strength in many respects and your n and your safety program is National and whatever you look learn in Texas gets applied here in Council Rock and so forth and I you know I I I really hope that this incident means that there'll be a heightened awareness and you know you're going to be C creative and take proactive steps in the future to continue to enhance safety um so I think this is encouraging but I think it's a first step so thank you we we agree it's it is an ongoing process Miss

096hoer thank you for being here um you talked about your internal Across the Nation I'm hoping that you will go and look in the other bus companies and what they're doing well for safety and that you will maybe take some of that in as well so hio thank you Miss py uh just last question this actually was um I just wanted to clarify because I think uh I think you said that U that you learned things from the from the from but I would like you know just the specifics for my own police so we know what wasn't uh relate to us thank you so um and I was going to bring this up so when I was reading the reports from the media I found out and I think we all found out that

097this person was a recovering alcoholic living in a halfway house and we had no idea about that before and then he had uh wh the night before and then he had shots of vodka before going to work and on his way to work he had a hidden run he hid another car and then with a damage car he came to the depot nobody saw that he was in an accident he was able to get into the bus get the keys and keep going and and apparently when the police interviewed him he had no recollection of the Hidden run I mean this is scary this is really scary you have someone in that condition driving our kids to and from school this is extremely serious for us so um I really appreciate coming and giving us

098the information and uh we met January 4th we heard your presentation you talked about some things you could do right away which you did thank you and then you had a whole other list of things that you looking into it it's now almost a month and a half later and you are still looking into them so I think we want a very tight timeline of what you plan to do next because what happened is very serious and I don't think everybody in this board is 100% certain that with all these measures in place this is not going to happen again and the safety and wellness of our children is our number one priority along with our education so we expect a very quick response about next steps and we are very happy that you have

099been working with Dr Sano and his administration but we would like to speed things up as much as possible and and we will We Will We Will accelerate the timeline and we'll get some information to the administration on those open items thanks for thanks for being here um while we're talking about buses and drivers I just want to use this as an opportunity to reach out to the many drivers that live and work and serve our kids real well in this community for many years um as as Michael knows for sure he knows since January or since December 15th that our cabinet team has been making unannounced visits to both bus Depots um and we've spent a lot of time tonight talking about listening to the change in the process of keys the question we

100have um is how will you Monitor and ensure that this system your new key system is effective and remains in place indefinitely okay so I I can guarantee you that this is not just a fly by night system that we put into place now granted we did revise our Key System due to this unfortunate situation that happened on December 15 Michael um and the supervisors are committed to following the process and I will be checking up on the process Dave will be checking up on the process as he makes visits um and our area safety director um an mura will be will be doing some follow-up visits as well spot checking unannounced checking by you guys which you've done and I've done in other facilities um for the same reasons I think that's the way

101we're going to kind of stay on top of this um we keep copies of all of the audits that are done every day so we're going to have copies of those so we can go back and take a look at those as well so our due diligence on a on a on a leadership team going in and doing our followup is key to holding people accountable to following the processes thanks Bob any other questions from the board Mr thank you I have a couple of quick questions uh just in follow up and listening to the discussion here um the first is this was a criminal in a police case and to the best of your knowledge is it still uh yes it is okay and um you indicated that you've got this drug test that's

102randomized and that uh this driver in particular was a new hire specific to Durham so when was his last drug test and was he ever captured in one of these randomized drug testings he was um he was a relatively new hired employee but he was random drug tested in November of 201 23 with in with a result of negative okay thank you and you indicated that he had been terminated at what point was this driver terminated from Durham at night that night on December 15th thank you um and then I think that the other thing that this board and this community is looking for um we've heard of these internal modifications which I think is great I'm I'm really happy that you're taking this seriously to get in front of of this uh this whole

103situation and that you've responded however can you provide the community additional Assurance on putting faith and trust to putting their kids on a bus tomorrow morning uh next week moving forward to reestablish that because I I think that you've implemented a lot of things I understand that there aren't necessarily National regulations that control this you've implemented new things as a result of internal problem solving I agree with Miss Herer and encourage you to reach out to others I'd like to know how Durham currently compares to other school bus companies in this area and I'd like I I'm wondering if if you had prepared to make some sort of a statement on how safe you believe your company is in addition con connecting to what Dr Sanko said um could this school district receive something in

104writing indicating your commitments and all these new add additional initiatives that you've added here something that we could have in writing as an addendum that we could attach to the contract is that something that you're prepared to do and to that I'm done I'll wait for your answers let me let me address the the the first uh as far as our safety culture record I I'd put our safety record culture process program Keys aside up against anybody in the industry I think I think we're that good and I've been in the industry a long time I've worked for First Student for a long time in fact I was over oversaw this contract for a while um I think Durham does a better job that's just I mean it might be selfish because I'm standing here

105working for Durham but I think we do a great job job fact of the matter is the key process that was broken was a hold over from first student so we we corrected that and I'm not here to bash first student um but I do think our program is is is very good if not great um as far as a commitment to safety and yeah we that's a takeaway and uh we don't have any problem adding that to the con to the to the contract say hialgo thank you Miss py um just the last question because you know I was concerned about not but I concerned about what you had said um I'm wondering I guess the time frame will just be when the police report came out my guess is the media got that

106information from a police report so that would have probably taken some time before that was available yeah I yes I I'm I'm assuming I'm assuming so we could find out but I mean obviously you're not you didn't go and get the report you weren't really interested to do that right the report not that you had to I'm just asking yeah no okay I don't even know when the report was available I think something came up um that said he was gonna the individual was going to be charged yeah uh and at that point we were notified by the district that you know we need to provide sure that's fine so it wasn't like you were not getting it to us or we weren't the media goes to the no we were letting we were letting

107the in the investigation plan my understanding is there were some jurisdictional issues uh between Northampton and new town and the district attorney was trying to you know figure that all out so um yeah I I don't even think it was available because of the delays on the on the uh on the legal side okay just give him more clarity Mr hogo if I may sure um it was uh Mr armett correct it was a complaint that was jointly filed between Northampton Township and New Town Township and I heard a couple times tonight about information there was information we didn't know as a district because as you well know it's a criminal investigation the police were handling it we didn't know until we went to the courthouse to get the complaint and that's when we learned

108to some things that Mrs py referenced tonight um that's when I learned the statement that was the exact statement that was made by the principal who uh tried to prevent the driver from moving and keeping kids off the bus so at no time did we have that information before the the complaint was uh was filed and then we were we our our team our security team actually went to the courthouse and got it um so that's when we received the information thanks the O the only thing in this specific incident is uh when we met we asked you if you had reviewed the tape of the bus driver driving that day and I remember you said that you had and when we got the report from the police uh we found out that this person

109had threw up in the bus several times and he was trying to uh clean it up so is it is that something you saw in your tapes or it's something that came up lat either so while the while the bus was sitting at the elementary not picking up elementary students uh it appeared from my vantage point that he was bent over with his head between his legs and he could I did not see it he could have been throwing up I saw the principal came to the door he opened the door she confronted him they spoke okay um I presume she witnessed it and that's where that information came from I did not actually see it on the tape thank you are there any other questions so uh if if you don't mind I would

110like you to stay until after a public comment in case anything comes up and then you can thank you abolutely um so this is public comment for agenda items only public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to address the board we would ask that you limit your comments to no longer than three minutes please consider the fact that there may be young children in the audience or are watching this broadcast live on crtv when speaking it is our goal to maintain a respectful environment so that members of our community have have an equal opportunity to address the board without interruption while the board welcomes your ideas and will consider them in deliberating an issue we may not respond to your comments or questions so um going through my list for uh agenda

111item I only have one name Ty Jones a b WEA however I Cent and for whatever reason uh your Council Rock security guard harassed me in the hallway I told him I was under the weather so he called the police on me uh I have this in case I vomit you know I'm under the weather I apologize I'm taking proper precautions sorry could you please State uh your Township it's it's listed as Northampton oh okay you see it on the list it says North he doesn't say nor HT thank you I don't appreciate being harassed today and what a g under the weather I have P I have children here and I am a parent and I deserve a lot better than that so excuse you Yoda about this drunk bus driver the bus company

112explained what happened and Yoda you had full knowledge of what happened but you kept it in your inner circle unlike Yoda some of my kids actually go to Council Rock your kids don't mine do Yoda doesn't want her kids to go counsel Rock and yet she wants to serve on the school board yeah no shade or fraud there man she she's just using this as political stepping stone probably like possibly her other friends the four real honest people on the board Horner hickey hiago Roosevelt and Council Rock parents want answers I'm wearing my favorite I in Jersey because I have answers I do have answers and this is too much nonsense I'm under the weather I'm out here because I care about kids unlike you I care about kids Council Rock kids and Council Rock

113staff you see last month Clark and Yoda admitted they had a private Democrat meeting with Rudolph Clark Law around Thanksgiving and that one meeting that one night Yoda Nikki Tracy Tate and stone sold out themselves their families they sold out counil Rock they destroyed a 40-year relationship with East burn and Gray law firm and they sold possibly the solicitor job to Rudolph Clark no in exchange for possible money future possible political bribes the majority of Democrats did all this in one meeting and one night you must be forgetting you must be forgetting that there's more Council Rock parents than there are of you there the bus Yoda congratulations on your temporary School Board gig congrats on your immoral possible illegal business relationship with Rudolph Clark Clark a message from pensbury my friends there you suck

114you really suck on a different page her hickey hiago Roosevelt you're amazing and you're honest people who have Council Rock's best interest at heart 30 seconds 30 rest in peace Randy Savage you four Horner hickey hog or Roosevelt you're the cream of the crop the cream always Rises to the top the cream will always rise to the top to the top the cream will rise enough's enough I that's 3 minutes as I as I mentioned but the cream will always rise to the top I explain it very very clearly there was no reason for me to be harassing the hallway all I was doing is express my ideas and I am a parent your three minutes are up thank you for your comment God bless so uh next is the approval of meetings of the

115meeting of the board um approval of minutes of the meeting on the board of January 18 2024 can I have a motion to approve please wait are we there was one person signed up for no there's only one person yeah but is there anyone else that's all we normally don't do that because they sign here if they are on the board but that's yeah and if there's someone here who wants yeah the bus it might be are there any questions from the audience for the bus company okay go ahead yeah yes please so Jennifer Losi New Town Township um so I just had a question so when you were going through the information you said that the driver actually missed the first leg of his run but was able to pick up the second and

116third leg just a second just the second so who covered the first leg because you would think that the company would be scrambling to try to find a replacement right we were and we did right going need to come to the podium to answer these questions someone right so the the whoever's at the Depot they're they're scrambling so and so didn't show up correct right we need to get another driver correct and nobody noticed that this guy drives in in a beat up car when they're looking for him because he hasn't made his run he he reported as late he did speak to the dispatchers that he was coming back late they said we'll cover your high school go straight to the middle school on the phone okay thank you that's helpful the drive cam

117litics is that actually more of an analytics for training purposes as opposed to real time feedback for driver safety yes so drivecam is a training tool correct okay that's all is a training tool and Zonar did you get any kind of um alerts on your Zonar System no we did not okay thank you thank you any other agenda item comment or questions all right all right we're going to proceed with item J approval of minutes of the meeting of the board on January 18 2024 can I have a motion to approve please I move to approve the U minutes was Miss Stone second Mr hialgo second I have a question sure about the minutes um I'm hoping Mr Clark here can help me I'm I'm looking at the motion [Music] to recommend the firm of

118Rudolph and Clark be appointed as solicitor can you give me explain to me what recommendation is to be the solicitor I'm not respectfully I'm not sure if I understand your question a recommendation is not an appointment correct I'm is this is a question regarding the minutes the motion reads I move to recommend that the law firm of rud Rudolph and Clark be appointed my question is that is a recommendation correct Mr hickey is this a question regarding the minutes or are you trying to question me to say you don't believe a recommendation is a motion and therefore it was invalid yes okay I think we're on the minutes right now um but again if you are going to go form over substance I think it was very clear what the board was uh was uh

119motioning and doing at that point in time and the the board voted to appoint us but the question regarding the minutes is that's the way it's recorded in the minutes I don't recall exactly what the language that was used I'm reading the exact language that was used and that is my question I move to recommend that the law that the firm of Rudolph and Clark LLC be appointed there's other things that are after that my question is we voted on a recommendation not an appointment correct and again is this Rel related to the minutes are you objecting to the way the minutes are are written or are you are you trying to make a point that our appointment was invalid because it's a recommendation if it is this respectfully would not be the appropriate time

120to do that because this is a motion on the minutes motion to accept the minutes as written okay so then I can bring this item up I guess later in the evening I you you can the the issue before the board right now is whether or not we're going to approve the minutes I I think I understand addressed have to be addressed could I miss P could I could I just say something Mr Ros to just avoid potential contention here I think Mr picky is and and I agree um we're approving minutes and it's important that we understand it but if if to your Council and your opinion that this is better placed or part of this is better placed in new business or old business that's fine but I I think that this board

121or Mr hickey I guess if I can speak for him is trying to understand are we approving something that maybe we're unclear of a definition or does that not matter that we're just approving the way that these events took place the way they took place is that what's happening the the approval of a minutes is not an opportunity to go back and rewrite what occurred at an earlier meeting so if the word recommended was used and you want it changed you can't do that you're approving the minutes as the official record of the meeting that happened on and forgive me if I'm missing the date January 18th so all we're doing now is is approving the minutes as the official minutes of the Council Rock School District School Board from January 18 2024 and I

122have in front of me the exact motion that was uh that took place and it said I move to recommend that the firmer Rudolph Clark be appointed as the solicitor for the CER Rock School District Rudolph Clark will shall represent the ccer RO School District in all legal matters including special education the board shall approve special councel when appropriate upon the advice and consent of the solicitor just for clarification yes Mr hialgo thank you very much yeah I mean I think I mentioned brought that up but that's not now's not the time it'd have to come under old business we are just approving the minutes to Mr Clark's uh point and uh obviously there's a lot of discussion to be had about motions and and that's to be had under old business correct if we're

123going if we so choose if you so choose which we do the motion in front of everyone right now is to approve the minutes of the January 18th 2024 meeting thank you so that I'm going to move on to that then the minutes um Miss uh Donna so we had a motion in a second can we uh I am I'm I am actually asking about the minutes yes okay I was only clarifying what when these guys should do that so and also usually the president is the last person to speak you but that's kind of what's in this motion too the president allows all other members to speak before they they speak I just wanted to read you the motion Mr hio in case you I'm okay with that it's right there in the minutes

124hopefully everybody obviously is reading them this this year but let's get to the point um so the solicitor did these first of all uh it doesn't it shows that there's a there was a point when there was no solicitor present I would like that to be basically absent I in the minutes the beginning well it says seated upon motion uh you know but it doesn't say that the other solicitor was ABS I like a little more clarity number one number just take go ahead okay um and then I'll take a little bit of uh question on number 21 Rudolph and Clark appointment and basically did somebody tell you what to put in here you made these choices yourself can you explain what what you're sure sure so basically it talks about uh the discussion took

125place concerning transparency change and the selection of a new solicitor that was probably almost 40 or 50 minutes yes I I don't get into I I do summarize and that's basically what the minutes are supposed to be to okay okay and then so miss ply also made a prepared statement before anybody else spoke that was the motion was made and the president made a uh a a statement which I want added to the minutes because it was a prepared statement there's not a lot of detail on what happened last last please can I just finish there's not a lot of detail about Miss P's statement but we did see verbatim was Mr Clark's statement after Miss ply basically said her statement well that was in the beginning but as soon as we came off a

126recess Miss Miss pie asked Mr Clark to explain some questions that maybe they spoke about before recess or not I don't know if anybody was present but my point is is that verbatim from the from the transcript Mr Clark's statement made it into the minutes what I find a little unbiased a bias about that is that we there's so much that was not mentioned in this okay and it really Paints the picture when you state his claim that um that you know situation where the minority board uh uh can block any business from occurring right by requiring a vote of a 2third you basically are painting the fact that all of the questions that we asked where we were denied in public the answers to a certain process of hiring a solicitor down to that

127we were trying to fill a bust or a block a vote is disingenuous and I want more detail into um into this so I'm going to continue it's still my time thanks and you guys can come back when it's your time I'm not interrupting you Joe I know God bless you me and him are get along we've been doing this for eight years almost so can you whoever's talking up there if you can't keep quiet we're going to ask you to leave all right um so basically uh I also wanted to know from the solicitor there was a statement made after the meeting from Miss Yoda miss py that she put on the that you put on the on the website right and it details the what happened with the so that's either going to

128go in these meeting minutes I don't think you're going to tach them to after the fact but that's going to be my question is I would like this this is a state that was publicly published by the president about what happened last last last uh last meeting so I want to figure out how we keep these things on public record number two I mean there there a this all ties together in a sense that I mean there's there is a statement from Miss ply from that's not making it into the minutes that basically said and I might as well just grab it out here because we are doing the minutes and since we're reading things let me just get back because this is very important to make sure that there's a that there's a there's

129a there's a because we didn't get many answers last night I mean last last meeting but the one that really I thought was basically a new majority was elected by the public at the last election on no November 7th so we have a new majority whoever wanted out to join in decided to change solicitors because we felt that this was best that we needed for a new direction that we would like Council Rock to go into and your prepared statement even says something like we have a new majority leadership the plan to take the district in the New Direction changing solicitors Is Not Unusual right and uh I'm going to paraphrase and the board supervised whatever so typically make changes like this because they want to make sure that they have the best team on

130the board to implement their vision and policies that they championed or campaigned on so we're talking about changing solicitors to to to fulfill campaign promises and in other sections of your comment you you said that we weren't part of the majority we chose not to so my point is what I'm making that I want clear on the record is that the only substance that we had is that it was a political decision the four of us aren't part of that and so I can actually conclude that you hired somebody that's going to do your team which you already said we were unfortunately you said I chose not to so I'm going to use your words to say that I want that in the minutes is what I'm saying so we have to figure it out

131and I'm just going to that's only one point there's so many more Could you um is is there a way to go over it with the solicitor and I'll be glad to amend the minutes no we're we're we're not going to amend the minutes that are in front of us now based on the comments that Mr hialgo is saying and just so we're clear about the the uh amount of detail in the minutes um section 706 of the sunshine act says written minutes shall be kept of all open meetings of agencies the minutes shall include one the date time and place of the meeting two the names of the members present three the substance of all official actions and a record by individual member of all roll call votes taken for the names of all

132citizens who appeared officially and the subject of their testimony the minutes that we have in front of us clearly meet that standard and then go well beyond that standard by giving a significant amount amount of detail the minutes are not supposed to be a Verbatim transcript of of what is what is said at the meeting they're supposed to meet those four requirements and then provide uh a little bit more more detail um he's responding to me can I finish please may I finish Mr Tate hold on Mr Tate no I'm going to ask I'm please please we take turns here okay no because he raised his hand before but I was still talking you will speak next thank you this is really all I'm trying to say is there is much more detail than there

133is already even your your statement was was put in the minutes verbatim so please don't tell me that because there was confusion over the fact that four members or at least four members attempted to abstain and it was not appropriate for them to stain uh the the board secretary and I no no I'm correct um please take turns when you speak and raise your hand so I can acknowledge you thank you um so the secretary and I had a conversation the night of the meeting and then at several points during during the month as to how it should be should be listed and that's why there is a little a little bit bit more more detail in there and that was my gist when I look at this I say the solicitor got with the

134secretary and put his words in verbatim and now you're going to turn around and tell me that I can't and again this goes back to you working for Yoda and not for us or the people of council Mr Mr hio if that's what you took from what I just said absolutely um I I'm I feel bad about that the secretary provided me with the proposed minutes and asked me questions about what I should put in there I didn't get with anybody and then and cook the minutes that's not what occurred and frankly I don't care if you insult me insulting the secretary that that she's doing something improper I think is unfall for but think it's improper Mr Clark what I believe is is that your your statement after your few conversations went in there

135completely verbatim so all I'm saying is same standard and and you don't get to choose is are you working for for us or do we work for you uh I work for the nine of you and the school district I'm not sure you work for me because why are you saying that I can't amend the minutes to put things into it or that you're not going to you made deis judge or solicitor on the February 15th you cannot add things to the minutes of January 18th that you're discussing tonight no these will be in the minute the question is these will be in the minute for tonight that you will look at in March if there is something in tonight's minutes that you don't think is correct or needs to be amended you can make

136a motion to amend the minutes okay well thank you because all I'm saying is uh you had the chance to go afterwards and amend am minutes here's the transcript your speech for this letter by letter made it into the I was not given that chance so what I should do then is not wait till the meeting to bring it up because I'm not approving it tonight and I do believe that we have the legal right to amend it year a year down the road I had to switch a vote because it wasn't right or something wasn't right about so we'll leave it at at that but I do plan on at requesting and whatever we have to do to get this information into the minutes I will do it so I'm just going to leave

137it at that and we're going to continue on thank you and you want to speak because I I respect you I'd be honest with you I I respect everybody are we done can we ask okay Mr Tate yeah it's 9:15 and we haven't gotten into the uh business agenda yet so I'll be extremely brief um Joe I don't think you meant to imply that Miss hly was being disingenuous and the drafting of the you use the word disingenuous Joe and I I think that's I did not I used the word disingenuous I think Mr Clark used the word disingenuous that's okay we have a transcript all right and I'll make that can you please wait for your turn when to speak I and I do apologize I'm out of order thank you thanks Joe these

138minutes are just as succinct and the typical summary that we always see every month in our minutes and um I don't think there's anything improper and um I support these minutes I've reviewed them and I think they're accurate thank you Miss Khan and then Mr hickey thank you Miss poly um I think part of what I'm hearing in this discussion for the approval of the minutes is the accuracy or verbatim um having sat in the audience and watched meetings or listened to meetings at home the entire meeting of uh is captured on record for its entirety um for the January 18th meeting so if there is any um in terms of of hesitancy that something isn't captured it is definitely captured and I do know for a fact it was captured and pieces of it

139were also posted on various social media platforms um I do love what Mr Tate has to say that we still have a full agenda including talking about education and some of the initiatives and things that we'd like to update the entire entire Community um regarding all of our committees that's all I have to say thank you thank you Mr hicki yeah uh like I said my apologies for bringing this up at this point in time like I said we can address it later but the reason that I wanted to ask the question and clarify it is because if something were to happen during this meeting where we need the advice of a solicitor do we actually have a solicitor we only recommended one we didn't appoint one so in my viewpoint as and that's I

140asked you is a recommendation does a recommend ation equal an appointment and if it does not do we actually have representation here at this meeting tonight if we have a further question that needs legal clarification that that was the point of my questioning it is clear when someone says I move to recommend that they were making a motion I would say that based on what I observed from the back of the room that evening that all nine members knew that was on the table in front of them was a motion to appoint Rudolph Clark as solicitor if the five members who voted no voted yes thought they were just recommending us for something and not appointing us as solicitor you perhaps that might be a problem but the conversation was clear Mr hickey that the

141motion was to appoint us as the solicitor for the district plus it says I move and again it's when we talk about form over substance you know I when we were here last month there was a conversation about Robert's Rules and how we F follow Robert's Rules well clearly from the discussion this evening we don't members are talking without asking for to be recognized by the chair so again it's form over substance it was very clear uh what was what the motion on the table was if you are concerned that we don't have a solicitor you should not have that concern you do you have since I think 9:05 on uh Thursday January 18th so I guess it's just whoever drafted this motion used a poor choice of words I guess that's what I'm supposed

142to assume because in my opinion recommending an appointment and appointing are two distinct things no they're not it's the same thing you're again you're you're you're you're trying to to respectfully you're trying to pick out one word to try to make a point that doesn't really exist it was very clear what the motion on the table was to appoint a solicitor for the district are there any other questions and for your information Mr Hidalgo the statement that I made was during the reorganization meeting in December it was not during the last meeting what you read is something that I put on my political page and this has no place in the minutes of the councel RO School District so uh with that could you please I assume we need to make a roller call please

143yeah I'm going to respond to that I'm going to respond to that um your your your letter is talking about the meeting and you say it has no no no no right to be in I would be very I would be very happy Mr Hidalgo if if Dr Sango wants to make that as part of public caner Rock website because then my voice will be heard beyond the people that follow my political page so I'll be very happy for that if you all agree I'll do one better we can put it in the meeting minutes for to turn more memorialize it for eternity until you know until eternity is no more um since we don't seem that we're getting to a vote on this anytime soon can can the uh people from dorm is there

144any need for them to stay they look like they're all unless if they no you please you can go get leg thank you so much thank you thank you for coming do you normally do roll call for the minutes yeah yeah yeah I think do roll call please we have a motion in the second Edward Tate yes Joe hogo no Mike Roosevelt yes piy yes Yoda palali yes Tracy aeki yes Nicole Khan yes Linda Stone yes and an Herer yes Mission passes 8 to one so the motion passes yes 8 one yes thank you so finally we're going to go into what really matters which is the education of our children and we're going to talk about the reports from different committees and first we have the education committee uh Miss K please thank you

145Miss ply good evening thank you for those of you that are still in the audience uh the education committee met on January 24th the evening was primarily informative in nature with presentations and for full board discussion on the following topics Council Rock Education Foundation presented a summary of what they do their initiatives and programs that they support and fund through grants um they are doing some great work um to support our students and schools here in Council Rock we also had a presentation from Tamar uh Tamara gray our supervisor advisor of curriculum instruction about the new planned science course guide and provided a sample of a fifth grade science course guide overview in line with the PA chapter 4 guidelines those community members and families who wish to see a sample can do so by

146viewing the presentation from January 25th on the Council Rock YouTube channel at approximately 43 minutes or on the Council Rock website uh Miss gray will continue work with this project and we look forward to further updates um Rene Devin our science coordinator provided a steals standards update the Steels is an acronym that stands for science technology engineering and environment environmental literacy and sustainability standards that's an update in regards to Pennsylvania change and our science standards um we had some terrific students who assisted um Miss stevin in her presentation thank you to Winston Emma and Annie um who presented Al alongside Miss develin um the update to the new steel standards is an ongoing process and full implementation across the district will begin in the 2025 26 school year in combination with with new state assessments

147and more information will be coming um the proposed School District calendar for the 2025 26 school year was presented to the board for discussion and and the administration will be seeking approval in an upcoming board meeting most likely April um along with an approval for a graduation date uh lastly we had a very robust discussion about the initial exploration of full day kindergarten in Council Rock each board member board member shared and expressed various interests and viewpoints the outcome of the discussion was that there was enough interest so that Dr Seno and his administration could continue further exploration into the F into the possibility of full day kindergarten for our district um in a pre- meeting with Nicole Crawford Al Funk Dr Seno and other administrators uh today that I had the upcoming education committee

148meeting on February 27 2 at 7 p.m. 7 p.m. here in the chancellor Center um they will present their initial work and findings um by our Administration that will be presented uh I will be able to provide much more information um in our next after next week's meeting um in our next board meeting I welcome our community members to attend next Thursday to uh to view um the education committee meeting um I'd also like to thank all of our Administration staff for the second round of school visit visits uh which took place on February 7th um it concluded with a secondary schools as well as a visit to the renovation site of Richboro Elementary School which is coming along very nicely um thank you this concludes my report and now I would like to move

149to approve consent agenda items B through e as contained in the attachments to this agenda I have a second second Mr Tate are there any questions yeah Mr selt I do have a couple of questions um pertaining to the item D and item C for Mr delin um thank you very much for the report that was sent to this board to detail um I will be brief I'm the first thing is a lot of times these are subject to solicitor review I assume that all all of these are in that same category subject to solicitor review with that um I'm curious the what a steel c c first the it this the date is stated for the term from January 1024 through 53024 I'm interested to understand why the date of the agreement predates the

150approval nothing has occurred yet as of this time that's when we reached out to alls we have a young person who's in an out ofate facility where they need these related services and we can't send somebody from Pennsylvania thank you welcome um and then regarding the Keystone Freedom Academy um I'm interested to know if this is for or and you don't need to go into particulars here but is this for particular students or is this a relationship the district is looking to establish if needs arise moving forward this is for a particular student thank you you're welcome that concludes my questions any objection I forgot to please so uh you can report that as unanimous thank you so next we have the bux County Intermediate Unit representative is Zaki sure um the IU board of

151directors will meet on Tuesday February 20th the only update we have tonight is that we will vote along with the 13 other school districts in Buck County to approve the programs and services and instructional materials and Research Services budget thank you uh middle Buck Institute of Technology representative M Stone yes hi there were a few items of interest at the uh mbit board meeting that we held was held on Tuesday February 6th and the uh good news was we got the results of the district skills USA competition and mbit proudly was the winner of 49 medals including six gold medals by Council Rock students and those students are Robert Snider and Robert mer Nikki excuse me if I've mispronounced a name Gabriel fit and Jackson doll from CR North and Shan Campbell and Cavin Dowling

152from CR South so we wish them all the best as they move on to the state competition itions in Harrisburg um the board also authorized public auctioning of equipment and other items that are identified as obsolete or excess so these proceeds will be deposited into the mbit general fund um and finally the school has acquired a shipping container which is going to be their next project they are going to design and build this into a housing unit hopefully being used in uh where it's needed in the community so they're working on finding out where they can um use utilize This Isn't that cool so uh that concludes my mbit report thank you Miss Stone um caner Rock Education F Mr Tate thank you it's late I'll be brief Dr Sano mentioned the Monte Carlo night

153that is March the 1st at the fuge in Warminster it'll be a lot of fun um and um Miss Khan mentioned the great work done by cff and really it's it's a terrific organization that does a lot for the district so you can have fun at the Monte Carlo night and support a a great activity and um a great organization uh it's late so I won't even bother mentioning the golf outing it's June 24th at Jericho Country Club which is a fantastic golf course if you've never played it it's it's not easy to get on the course and the C golf outing is fairly reasonably priced for a beautiful golf course that's June 24 thank you thank you Mr Tate uh the next we have policy committee Mee uh policy committee report and missaki you're

154gonna give it yeah sure uh there's excuse me there's no update for the policy meeting tonight but we have a policy meeting scheduled for Monday March 4th and we are going to be focusing on policy 903 the public participation in public meetings policy 103.1 non-discrimination qualified students with disabilities policy 248 unlawful harassment and policy 249 bullyingcyber bullying thank you next we have facilities committee I'm sorry oh I have a question on their report yeah sorry yeah thank you so policy I was pretty rushed in there um we had a policy meeting scheduled for you announced miss eki last month we had a policy meeting what happened at that policy meeting or committee meeting so we canceled that policy meeting um because we were a couple reasons but we were expecting new guidance from P um

155psba and I always get that that backwards and uh so we decided to wait and discuss policy 903 after those standards had been released we also had advice from our new solicitors that um we wanted to revisit the advice of our old solicitors so we wanted to get some time to to uh wrap our heads around that what policy are we talking about 903 903 did you mention that to be on the next meeting I didn't hear that that was I skipped it okay it was the first one so yeah I just wanted to make sure that that was basically the three of you canceled the meeting after your conversation meaning the the committee person and and a four I was involved in the com the leadership and the policy person and of course the

156superintendent right okay I just wanted to clarify that because usually if a policy meeting is it's it's okay I was asking for two weeks to get that uh information about the policy you know and and now I guess the guidance is out is pretty good right okay okay so that that it all it all fits together as I think about it the the policy is out from psba um there's not a significant change from what you you currently have uh but we think psba has done a a good job um and uh it will be at the policy committee committee on the 4th all right thank you sorry about that any other comments questions so we don't have to vote on anything for that uh so next we have the facilities committee and I think

157Mr Tate will give a report thank you Miss P um very briefly um we discussed the items that are before you on the agenda um upgrading of playground equipment in elementary schools um approving some security enhancements um at richbo elementary we're we're very active in enhancing security measures at all of our buildings and we don't discuss the details in public for obvious reasons um the nxl demand response agreement um it's um an interesting agreement that involves us voluntarily browning out a building at various times particularly when students are not in buildings um in exchange for a rebate from Pico that generates revenue for the district and um uh change order for the richbo elementary school addition and renovation project we also had a lot of um update from the Consulting engineer with dwey engineering who's

158managing both the Sal feinstone project and the Richboro elementary school project um a lot of good questions from the board and a lot of insights from the engineer so it was a very productive meeting um I should mention also that on February 2nd and the facility's co-chairs Miss P Dr Sano Mr rap and Miss um binda richel participated in a get acquainted online meeting with an Architecture Firm connley hickey um that specializes in um historic restoration the subject was as you might guess Chancellor Center we discussed a variety of possibilities um including an RFP process and you'll hear more about that as we go forward that's the report our next meeting is March 14 so I'll move on the agenda items I move to approve wrong one sorry give me a second I move to

159approve consent agenda items B through H as contained in the attachments to this agenda can I have a second I second go back B through e b sorry numbers sorry B through e b through E Yeah strike that I move to approve consent agenda items B through e as contained in the attachments to this agenda yes I second M Stone are there any questions about this yeah Mr rusen yes thank you I just wanted to add a couple more pieces in here for the record uh um there was a couple questions during that committee meeting that answers have been provided one of them uh that I had asked regarding the playground mulch to ensure that it was ADA Compliant I wanted to report that we had heard back from the facilities and they included the

160specifications of the mulch W which had a manufacturer statement that indicated that it did meet Ada standards and was U met for the appropriate ASM which I believe is um I also wanted to indicate or follow up regarding signatures I believe that's being obtained I don't know if that has been obtained at the this week this week thank you are there any other questions any objections so you can mark this unanimous than right so um we proceed to the finance committee uh we have a report first and who is giving their report tonight rone yes hi so there are a few um items that are that we're not voting on but we started our meeting um discussing the Cornerstone Investments we had a presentation um and we're doing really well I guess the the state

161of the economy has actually helped um our investments and we've earned o a million dollars over what uh Council Rock was expecting uh for the year ending June 23rd and um sorry June of 2023 and we're estimating again to be well over um what we anticipated for the 23 24 budget year um so that's good news for our bottom line and as required we have our financial statement was presented um to us and assured that we have no material misstatements and we're in accordance to Gap um so we'll be voting on that uh financial report and we also talked about the spending on substitute teachers um and we're well under budget right now for the year and part of that is due to the fact that we've stopped hiring building subs for the month of

162September when they're not really utilized as much um I know this was an issue I understand was an issue last year so they've made that change uh that helped with some saving but did not reduce the coverage because they still were a we still used uh daily substitutes it was only the building substitutes that were changed and that uh that's part of why we're running under budget and we'll continue with that process next year where we won't be bringing in building substitutes in the month of September uh and then I'd like to then move to or I will move to approve the items B through o through H sorry second Mr hialgo second are there any questions any objections so you can mark this unanimous Madam Secretary oh you have a question I'm sorry yeah

163I just have questions I don't have objections um pertaining to item F the Bucks IU programs and service instructional materials and research service budget um this is I just want to make this clear for the community and I agree with Mrs Khan this is this is education this is what this body does this is what this District does is educate kids so I wanted to spend a little bit more time on this to make sure everybody understood the Bucks County IU has presented a 66 page uh I'll call it a manual I think maybe that's the term that they use and I just want confirmation from from Alan Cole here um am I right in concluding that this is effectively a menu of items and that typically uh the administration will make requests of what

164services the the IU offers that this District could benefit or use and this is the menu option being presented yes that is correct so the Bucks County iouu like uh other intermediate units across the Commonwealth uh kind of serves as a liaison between local area school districts and the Pennsylvania Department of Education so they're very good about um informing us about pending legislation educational related whether that's act 55 act 56 act 158 which we've talked a lot about um they also provide a program and service advisory so that Nicole and I can meet with Lake colleagues across the district and know you want to speak to that in a little bit sure once a month we meet at the Bucks County IU with our counterparts from across Bucks County and that's a great opportunity to

165be able to collaborate and work on different projects together find out how other school districts are approaching certain initiatives and that work is led by Dr Rachel holler who runs those meetings and I also just while we're talking about Dr holler want to point out that she also LED she and her team the program quality review that we requested earlier this year for our English language department and they will be providing us with a comprehensive report uh related to that program qual review later this month another example that I can offer at this time is uh we work closely currently at the elementary level with Mrs Sarah D Marino who is a training specialist she's helping to lead our team and partner with us on the implementation of the multi-tiered system of support otherwise known

166as mtss which is a framework that we've been talking quite a lot uh about you know over the last year so uh we do appreciate the resources that are available to us and certainly take advantage of those thank you Mr Funk and Miss Crawford sorry go ahead Al no I just I think another couple examples we have utilized the services of the Bucks County IU for our comprehensive planning process in consultation with uh developing our guidance plan we we intend to use them for our literacy plan as well so the 66 pages is certainly a uh a very rigorous robust menu but it's not everything thank you so one of the responsibilities that each of us the nine of us on this board have is to review and approve curriculum um one of the items

167on this that the IU is doing is is indicating that it uh item two on page four lists curriculum and instructional Services item six lists steam Services nine lists online learning um and so I just want to make make sure just to sort of continue with the analogy that we're at a restaurant and we're being served a menu um that this is before we've dined it's not after we've dined and are paying the check as part of this also indicates that the budget is increasing okay Mr Roosevelt if I if I may add the programs and services is one portion of the overall budget of the Bucks County Intermediate Unit they have a budget of about $212 million a year um and your analogy is a good one it is it is like a menu

168while on page four and I don't have that open in front of me where you referenced uh curriculum and instruction they do not come to us and say you're going to use this reading program it's quite the opposite so we just this year introduced and our board paid for reading Horizons and and wonders so we could reach out to them and say give us some of your expertise or give us independent eyes on it uh another thing that you mentioned is the the steam program so we take advantage our kids have an opportunity to go to the Fab Lab um you know we have our own steam program here but we try to bolster that and we send our children on uh field trips so the you know the IU is an entrepreneurial kind of

169um um organization they do a lot of fundraising to reduce costs so that school districts like us and the other 12 in in the county can benefit from that so your analogy is a is a perfect one and and what Allan Nicole provided are good examples of how how we have used them we'll continue to use them thank you the IU has been great um in a great resource for this board and for this district and I'm glad that the three of you indulged me to uh to make some of this more clear and also just to sort of wrap this up the IU works for um all of the Bucks County school districts and in in a close collaboration and they're they're willing to assist us and are reflective and responsive in our needs

170um which which I appreciate as this is education so I'm excited for some of these things I'm hoping that in upcoming educational meetings uh educational committee meetings that we can do a lot of discussion about some of these offers and maybe how they fit or maybe how they don't fit within Council Rock um and and get a deeper dive into the curriculum that we're looking for um moving forward I'm hoping that um you know and I think this is the opportunity since we're sitting here at the menu that the administration will will work with the board during committee meetings to re review and evaluate what this curriculum is how it can work and I'm looking forward to hearing information from from from you Mr Funk and Miss Crawford and and of course Dr shanko regarding

171these educational initiatives that that help keep Council Rock at the top of the state thanks very much thanks I don't I I don't want to continue the conversation and and get Dr Hoffman all a big head and and and brag about the IU but I will say to you know we're talking right now about the programs and services opportunities um I had that opportunity as a director and and Nicole and Al have that but we have the luxury because we have uh a robust IU in Bucks County all of our cabinet members have monthly meetings with their like colleagues from across the county um and besides a great opportunity to collaborate it's the wealth of information and problem solving and learning from from each other so regard irregardless of of of our role we have

172those monthly meetings which I have found in the programs and services as well as the meetings I go to monthly now as a superintendent of great benefit to the district any other questions comments I do want to add that um during the last two years that I covered the IU and I'm sure miss oaki Will do going forward um being on the IU board was a pleasure and there every time there was something concerning cancer Rock was always in my reports and if there's something we had to pay it was definitely both in my reports and on the finance agenda because we the board had to approve that so this is not something new but it's nice to see that there's even now more opportunities for the IU and the districts to work on different

173things um yeah Mr hialgo thank you I'm my mic's been on the whole time uh so we're still on the consent agenda for finance right okay um so at the last meeting Mr rap uh in an email you stated that you it was requested peser information from the state be disseminated to the board he send which is the retirement State retirement plans yeah so when I receive those those six documents they all say confidential do not disseminate so it's sensitive I would like to know you know why that is and then also understand um what we should be doing with that or why was it why was it uh requested and disseminated to the board like just to I don't know so I know it's marked confidential because as a put piecers member you're allowed

174to have access to it and I shared it with the board who is of responsible for this Pie's member as far as why it was requested I would imagine to look at the numbers that are in our financial statement and compare it to that but um that's just a uh you know and and it was requested by one board member and okay we send it to all the board members I appreciate that any other questions are there any objections so you can mark that unanimous although Mr T just walked out of the room um so next on the agenda we have item I Personnel actions yes Mr spring um would someone please make a motion for that I never get to make a motion that's say see if I can do this I moved to

175approve the Personnel actions uh contained in the agenda attained in the attachments of agenda's items I and J of this agenda let me try it again okay I move to approve the personal actions as contained in the attachment of items I andj to this agenda second please second Miss can second any objections okay you can mark that unanimous please so the next item uh on the finance agenda is item K ADR PP assignments and payments I'll finish up I move to approve the edrp assignment payments as contained in the attachment to this agenda I second Stone I second are there any objections assume you can mark that unanimous although Mr D was in the bathroom Okay um so we are going to proceed with uh board item seven which is the vote to accept the

176resignation of middleb Institute of Technology board representation and I just want to tell you that at the last meeting I realized and I think we all realized that uh miss an horer was very passionate about serving at the mbit board uh there has been a miscommunication about this and I didn't realize her desire and passion until after Miss Stone was uh appointed Miss Stone was very graceful to suggest to resign and allow Miss hner to serve Miss Stone would you like to add anything um no at the last time I met um with uh an I mentioned to her that uh that I would offer to resign if she she was still interested and um she grac graciously accepted so you know we got a lot of work to do on the board and you

177know if you're willing to pitch in then the power to you and I'm glad that uh you've gotten you know what you what you were looking for and uh I will still be plenty busy on the board so great um can I have a motion please I move to accept the resignation of Linda Stone as the representative of the school on the board of directors middle bucks Institute of Technology can I have a second a second n sorry sorry second are there any objections Miss K was yeah um are there are there any comments thank you for your service are there any objections all right we can mark that as unanimous okay so next we have to vote for the uh middleb Institute of Technology border representation can I please have a motion sure I'd

178like to make that motion if I could I move to nominate Ann her for the vacancy of Representative on the board of directors at the middle bucks Institute of Technology I second Stone second any objections we can mark that unanimous congratulations thank you very much for recognizing that I have a very strong interest in mbit and I look forward as well as I know the students staff and teachers will be very pleased um and especially being this is CTE month I'm excited to start and thank you very much Mrs Stone I appreciate that you're very welcome congratulations so next is a public comment public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to address the board we would ask that you limit your comments to no longer than three minutes please consider the fact

179that there may be young children in the audience or watching this broadcast live on crtv when speaking it is our goal to maintain a respectful environment so that members of our community have an equal opportunity to address the board without interruption while the board welcomes your ideas and will consider them in deliberating an issue you may not respond we may not respond to your comments or questions so according to my list the first name is py quick from Northampton good evening Miss ply and the board thank you for the opportunity to be here Patty quick from Northampton first I want to reply to a comment from Mr hogo earlier what I heard you threaten is that you will stifle the voice of the public I can assure you that my voice will not be stifled

180I'm here to offer a reminder as to why all of you serve on Council rocks board it certainly isn't to witness the behavior at last month's board meeting and to see it repeat at this month's board meeting and it certainly won't be to sit back and watch all of you turn this district and this board into those of our neighboring districts if any of you are here to push your self-righteous personal or political agendas you've chosen the wrong form Forum Council Rock School District has a real student impacting problems look at the mtss model that's needed at the elementary level look at the secondary math department look at the postco gaps in student learning and look at the abysmal teacher pipeline that prevents us from being able to replace the soon to retire teachers from

181this district and even to fill the vacancies that the district has daily I bet few if any of you on this board fully understand that those problems exist but you've certainly demonstrated it your desire your willingness and your ability to divide this board down a party line a divided board focused on politics is not focused on students do you realize the culture you could potentially create and be the Catalyst that sends teachers and administrators out of this District in droves do you realize that in today's market those teachers and administrators can get a job anywhere I'd prefer to have all of them stay here you want to help this Council Rock Community you want to put it in a New Direction keep the infighting to a minimum and solve the real problems use your position

182for the common good for our schools for our students and not for your own agendas collaborate with each other touch across the party lines and keep the students at the heart of all of your decision-making Council Rock was once a Utopia we lost some of that reputation under Dr Frasier and previous boards but we have an amazing opportunity under Dr Sano and all of this wonderful Administration to return to those roots board members all of you have a choice to make you can be the push or you can be the pull will you push away the quality that surrounds you and the reputation of this District or will you pull this community together across party lines focused on solving the real problems facing the education of the students in Council Rock 30 seconds if you

183choose to push you can rest assured we will push back we have no time or energy for any of this students first is our motto it is the exact reason why you were elected to this board thank you for your comment next I'm sorry I don't think I can read it correctly is is it Aiden arbman okay from Northampton okay good evening my name is artman and I'm a freshman at Council Ro High School South I watch every board meeting at home but felt the need to come in person tonight to share my thoughts what is the point of this board is just another platform for promoting majority over minority putting politics above everything else this new majority needs to put an end to it and the public has done with the lack of transparency

184the newly formed board claims to have a shared Vision with a key focus on communication and transparency the idea that everyone will work together as a team and will be a a part of all discussions yet it seems like there's a lack of transparency collaboration and teamwork it is clear that our previous solicitor was going to be replaced whether the minority liked it or not however when you were interviewing and meeting with new firms you should have included everyone just like your new vision says even though the majority's vote will pass it's still important that everyone is included when asked simple questions there was no clear response stop priority izing politics over everything else put an end to the political games and start focusing on the needs of students first always thank you thank you

185for your comment next is Joshua Morris Joshua Morris thank you for letting me speak um are you from Northampton this morning thank you um good evening everyone my name is josu I am a freshman at Council bar High School South um what I experienced last board meeting on um January 18th 2024 was a lot of actions leaning towards negativity disrespect and little transparency some people say that they are happy with our new Democratic board majority but I am deeply concerned about what is next in my school district at the reorganization meeting Mrs pie said we must recognize that as a board member we are all just one of nine votes to be effective we must work together as a team and we need to work effectively with Dr Sano and the administration um but at

186the last board meeting um it has obviously been proven that there is not much transparency in our district what shows this is the fact that Mrs Pie and her Democratic colleagues went behind the Republican minority's back after majority was sworn in um and met with a new law firm um a majority cannot do everything they want right away before they are even sworn into the district transparency is to include everybody not just to go behind someone else's back we need a school board in our district that cares about new ideas of all sorts of things um in our schools without politics not some woke agenda that a majority wants to put in place because Unfortunately they cannot understand the word no for a change during the elections the Democratic Schoolboard candidates were not even transparent

187either showing the negative attacks and lives window together for C rockpack and the Republican candidates also known as the friends of council rockpack calling them extremists but it seems to be in this case that you newly elected Democrats have been the extremist so far in our district um we are supposed to keep politics outside of our schools so let's keep it that way and have normal discussions without hate just like our Council roato students PR always thank you and have a good night thank you for your comment so next I have Vanessa Smith of Northampton let's talk about transparency this board called for it to be transparent is to be free from pretense or deceit I actually knew nothing about your Visions during your campaigns because the only thing you ran on was book Banning

188you were being deceitful to our community you used my name to lie about me and what my mission actually was I've sat in meetings about this topic of books and their appropriateness and I always hear well the other side so I come here tonight to ask the other side a question I never came here to book ban I actually stated many times I didn't want books removed I wanted awareness I would love for someone to tell me why awareness is wrong our district computers have programs on them that do not allow children on certain websites really to protect students why shouldn't they be able to view and read anything they want yet the school protects them and that's exactly what I was asking for with books right now if a child picks out a book

189off the shelf they have no idea the content in the book so what is wrong with helping kids be aware of the content before reading it I want a child to pick a book from a shelf and know its content so they can decide if they want to expose their minds to it or not many books on our shelves have explicit sex including molestation brutal detailed rapes beastiality and more some children don't want to expose themselves to that some parents don't want to either our children are not at the age of having a maturity level to fully protect themselves that is why as adults we need to protect them and that is why I'm asking for awareness so I would love to have a conversation with anyone who can tell me why awareness is wrong

190at the December 7th meeting the school board president made a speech finally we must recognize that all that as a board each of us is one of nine votes to be effective we must work together as a team we need to work effectively with Dr Sano and the administration everyone will be a part of this discussion and conversations everyone means all Schoolboard directors Administration teachers staff students their parents and other taxpayers everyone who lives in Council Rock School District will be kept informed and invited to contribute by meeting privately in November while excluding board members you have proven that statement false by secretly deciding to fire our solicitor you've proven that statement false by not answering questions hence leaving your fellow board members and the community in the dark you've proven above false by continuously

191using the reference of majority versus minority you have proven that statement false by hiring a solicitor that silenced parents and community members proves the above statement false the hiring of a solicitor who thinks it's appropriate to make off-colored comments during a meeting honoring law enforcement prove the above statement false the fact that the public was held in the dark about a drunk bus driver proves the above statement false during the 18 board meeting when the solicitor's report was read it was announced that there was a work session related TR to Transportation on 1424 was that about the drunk driver why was the public not not notified about a work session and what was discussed I thought work session details were supposed to be made public so again this goes with a statement above I don't

192app appreciate being lied to so next is uh Jennifer lesie from New Town okay um jent M McKercher from Northampton um good evening I'm Jen mcer I live in Northampton Township so Kosen oconor is a law firm that solicitor specializes in labor and employment law and this is all available in board docs as well I have a copy of it so back in December or sorry November 30th of 2021 an engagement letter was created addressed to Kristen Marcel and Ed Solomon stating that he was going to be representing the Council Rock School Board now I question why wasn't all of the board members included in this engagement when this meeting supposedly occurred in November as per the engagement letter which is available on board docs why weren't all the board members notified until January right

193before there was a vote to approve per Miss Kristen Marcel she initiated a motion to approve the engagement of Coen o Conor on behalf of the district not on behalf of the school board which is clearly not what the latter States at the end of the day how long are we going to sit and go here back and forth on the choice of a solicitor or the words that are used in meeting minutes none of this is helpful for the kids okay we need to start focusing on the safety of our children that safety across the board includes busing includes bullying and and safety from potential outside violence because as we all know there is a shooting epidemic in our in our country as a district we are bleeding money to send kids to other

194schools instead of focusing on delivering a quality education here in Council Rock when are we going to talk about how we are going to address declining test scores how are we going to address the fact that 36% of our elementary school students tested below Benchmark for reading according to the September 2023 Dibbles testing in districts similar to ours the expectation is for 15% to be below Benchmark at Welch Elementary School which is the only ele school that you Mr Roosevelt represent 50% were below Benchmark 50% our district comprehension scores showed 43% were below Benchmark Welch is 53% below Benchmark in comprehension and I know people have asked you to meet with them about this we badly need to do a better job of educating our kids that's it we need a better reading program 30s

195teers who are trained to be reading specialists in every Elementary School our teachers care and they want to do what's best for our kids but they need the training in order to be able to be equipped to teach our children we need to be providing better tools if we hope to remain a desirable School District when children don't read they can't learn and when they can't learn they get depressed and that does not lead to good things your time is up thank Youk you thank you next is NAD Asha if I say the name correctly NAD Asha okay Debby evangelo good evening you are from uh Northampton Northampton thank you this new majority board as you apparently refer to yourselves now owes an apology to all the taxpayers parents and children in the Council Rock

196School District for your outrageous behavior at the last school board meeting I have lived in Council Rock School District for 28 years and I have attended and watched many school board meetings and have never witnessed such an unprofessional and embarrassing display Council Rock School Board has always functioned as a nonpartisan group of members who strive to work together with a unified goal to do what was best for the Council Rock children and Community however it is very clear after the last school board meeting that your new major majority a name that Miss P delighted in repeating over and over has no interest in transparency to the community or policy discussions with the other four board members instead you would rather operate as a clandestine dictatorship and Petty political group hell Ben on pushing forward your

197agenda regardless of how it neg negatively impacts our kids in community while you may have the votes to change existing school policies you do not have the right to Blindside the other four board members and the community by having secret meetings with a law firm and then simply announcing that the district has hired a new law firm and solicitor with no proper discussion or transparency there was no reason given as to why this change was even necessary let alone why was done so quickly or how this change would benefit the Council Rock students and Community the prior law firm and solicitor had been representing the Council Rock School Board for over 40 years what was the rush when the four other board members who I might add were the only voices of Reason in the

198room that night tried to ask questions and get more information for the community regarding this huge vendor change Miss pully refused to answer and continually attempted to shut them down it was sickening to watch and unacceptable and regarding this new law firm Rudolph Clark I find it very suspect that one of the attorneys affiliated with this firm Steve sanero donated $4,000 from his own political committee sanero for state senate to a pack created specifically for board candidates Ed Tate Nikki Khan Tracy oaki and Linda Stone known as together for Council Rock what a coincidence Miss P has said that Rudolph Clark contributes to 30 seconds parties but this situation is very different in this case Steve sanero donated a lot of money directly to four specific Schoolboard candidates who are now sitting on the board

199and voting to change a reputable 40-year vendor of Council Rock and to give that huge business contract to Santa's Law Firm that is not ethical and reeks of a quid proquo at the very least these four board members should have abstained from this vote to eliminate any appearance of your time is up thank you thank [Applause] you next on the uh list is Liz y if I said it correctly Liz y o u e Liz ya yes Northampton and you are from Northampton yes thank you miss py you have stated that the first goal of the new Council Rock School Board is transparency a Qui Google search of the firm Rudolph Clark shows negative articles on the levitown now.com newssite as well as the institute for free speech website pensbury School District actually changed their

200Law Firm because of issues they had with Rudolph Clark the way in which pensbury went about changing their Law Firm was the correct and transparent way the June 2022 article reads the 8:1 vote Thursday evening by the school board came after months of talk among board members and concerns by some other um by concerns by some of of Sorry by some over advice offered by The Firm of Rudolph Clark which was represented by School Board uh pensbury School Board since December of 2013 District officials said they interviewed eight law firms and narrowed their search down to four interviews were conducted with two finalists including East bur and gray PC a doy toown burough base law firm that dates back to the 1940s eastburn and gray was picked Thursday evening by the school board this is

201very different than the way things happened here Ms poly the five Democrat members of the board had secret meetings with other law firms you had a secret meeting in November before the December 7 reorganization meeting where the five of you decided too appoint Rudolph Clark and you didn't include the four Republican members of the board why didn't you include this at a public school board meeting as an agenda item this way the public would know that this was something that you were considering it took pensbury months of discussions with all school board members before they made their decision how is this Con conducive to your first goal of transparency a promise you made to the students and parents of Council Rock you all should be ashamed of yourselves the parents of Council Rock should wake

202up because if you do not if you are not transparent about what law firm you forced upon the school district then what else are you not being transparent about I'd like to remind the public that the former law firm eurn and gray was kept through previous administrations both Democrat majority and Republican majority so why did this have change have to happen now thank you I have nobody else on the list so uh unless if somebody wants to to speak M Miss president am I able to speak regard no she has to speak would you please dat your name and your Township yes hi uh Lori Catz Northampton Township uh Miss P that your last name k a TZ okay thank you thank you Miss p multiple times throughout January 18th school board meeting you Ed

203the phrase New Direction for Council Rock would you please define that term or phrase for the Council Rock Community what new things should the community expect regarding the topic of full-time kindergarten please detail for the taxpayers which are comprised not only of parents of Council Rock students but those on fixed incomes in the community and members who don't have kids uh in the public school system what is the cost of the proposed full-time kindergarten program if it's to be instituted as a Northampton resident my Township taxes will be increasing from my understanding 28% buckss County taxes will be increasing I have people living in my district and in our community who are having difficulty making ends meet it sounds like we have a lot of renovation and construction occurring presid in Council Rock please help

204me understand why this is a priority now other than what was stated at the prior meeting that the majority of Pennsylvania school districts have this program in place also uh speaking to the community um seeing the uh anemic turnout um I'm encouraging parents to show up to Schoolboard meetings and get involved this way um if they can't attend the school board meeting then please consider the prayer meeting that happens outside at the flag pole uh outside Chancellor center from 6:30 to 7: ahead of the meetings where we do pray for everybody every single person on the school board and everybody in the community thank you all right so that concludes our public comment and next we go to uh am I able to miss point of order I'm sorry new point of order may I

205may I comment on the public comment um that would be your personal yeah you're not speaking on behalf of the board this is your personal nobody speaks on behalf of the board um all right so somebody in the public mentioned um Ed Solomon and Kristen Marcel and I know that Ed Tate can vouch for this um they they publicly accused Ed Solomon and Christen Marcel of going behind the board's back and and appointing a law firm which could be nothing farther from the truth as Mr Tate would would if he chooses to attest um we personally in executive session interviewed the the law firm uh the only reason it probably comes up like that because it's special counsel and it has to do with things that you can't speak about publicly so to come up

206here and try to paint the same thing that happened last week with the leadership of christen Marcel and Ed Salomon is just wrong and I'll leave it at that number two my name was also mentioned in public comment regarding somebody saying like I just heard people talking out while I'm speaking people are speaking out in the public I'm going to ask the solicitor if whether or not if I you know if I'm asking somebody to be quiet when when the person who's um speaking am I stifling First Amendment speech or is that actually part of our policy that you know basically what happens when somebody's interrupted the person's speaking from the public the board has the absolute right to maintain decorum in the room all right so people are yelling and interrupting the board has

207the absolute right to ask them to either be quiet or to leave the room and so I'm I'm sorry but you know I never want to mess with anybody's free speech I live by I love this country and we are going to make this we're going to make this happen we're going to make this happen we're going to make this country uh what what it's what you know the stick with the foundation uh so we're going to keep fighting for it not going to not going to I mean push or be pushed back start pushing because we got to make sure we keep our country I'll leave it at that okay uh are there any new business Mr ruselt thank you um I don't think it goes beyond this community this audience and this body

208that we find ourselves collectively at a Crossroads um there we're we both need to balance myself as one board member as I indicated before wants to talk get to the business of this board wants to talk about education um continuing off of one of the public comments pertaining to that um I've one of the reasons that I wanted to be on this board was to understand the difference between testing and education um I receive lots of comments from the community and the people of my district I try very hard to respond to them and uh and to meet with all of them and I still open that invitation um I want to reiterate that again uh if if I've missed somebody if I've it was not on purpose and and I apologize for that and

209please reach out to me again to have another meeting um additionally to that it is late it's 10:30 at night I know that um a lot of us make these commitments to do the business of the board to be here for committee meetings to be here for board meetings um at the same point the community doesn't want to see fighting and doesn't want to see division they want us to do these things to focus on education to be able to answer to a member of the community why is my son or daughter on the honor role but they're uh only basic or below basic on Keystone tests and I know the answer to some extent from this Administration is we can either teach teach the test or we can teach the material and there's conflicts

210there this is something that's important to myself I expect a lot of the rest of you sitting around this table as well as members of the community at the same point we've got unanswered questions uh regarding process and the solicitor is important in this case it's directly or specifically pointed out in the motion that it's for special education this is a member of our uh a percentage of our community that has a very hard time um at home and it's going to continue for the rest of their lives and hopefully it can be as enjoyable as possible these these children are are gifts and um and that shouldn't be overlooked so this is what we want to get to but the community also has answers as this board does have answers we were denied the

211ability to discuss we were denied the abil ability to deliberate this community was denied the ability to understand all of this so do we hold an executive session for this board so that we are not arguing in public to have discussions about uh some that were raised that weren't answered at the last board meeting and then put out a statement or do we hold a special meeting to just talk about that where this board in public can ask those questions or will the leadership of this board Andor the solicitor put out some sort of a statement to answer the community's questions because as one board member I find myself at a crossroad I I can agree with part of the community and upset the other part or we there's no two ways about this we

212have to get onto the business of Education that's the business that this board does we have to figure out a way to move past political division and be effective for the community at the same point we need answers so those are my questions for new business um I'm happy to have them now if this board entertains that I'm happy to have an executive session I'm happy to have a special special meeting to just talk about that uh I don't expect the answers are forth with tonight and many of us can ask them over and over and over again and they won't be answered or am I wrong any other comments Mr hicki yeah I I I'll picky back on what Mr Roosevelt said um I agree with your son mix exactly either these questions need

213to be answered in public or in private and then relay to the public because we we do need to get into the business of educating kids and fortunately we now talk about it at new business where we were able to handle the business of educating kids previous to this but we do need to settle it because we are at a Crossroads um part of this board is whether we're not supposed to agree on every particular item there's going to be disagreement and discussion and there should be on on how we're going to do best for the kids but when you can't trust other board members of what they're going to say to you in private and then what they're going to say to you in public that's a problem both ways whether the problem is

214that I have trusting someone else or someone else has been trusting me that's an issue and I don't know how how to get past it at at this point in time uh like you said I I've been struggling with this whole process and you know I don't I'm trying not to let it cloud my view of what others do just because I don't get an answer from them for example Miss oi gave a wonderful statement tonight in in in reference to Durham and I don't want the fact that I can't get answers from Miss eki about something else to Cloud what she's doing for the good of the district and maybe it's a fault of mine but but I'm I'm struggling with it and and I'm really having a hard time because the the questions

215that I asked the number of emails that I've gotten from the public if if I don't address this then I feel I'm not being diligent in doing my job I mean I don't know 100 200 I don't know and the public can can verify this for me I answered every single email that I receiv whether they're from my D because I don't represent my district I represent the the Council Rock district and like I said I think that everyone deserves to be able to put this behind us we we need to address this as to exactly what happened get the truth as to what happened and then move on because we all know that the end result of all is this is most likely going to be that Rudolph Clark is going to be our

216solicitor however as Mr Roosevelt me mentioned Pro proc process was done so poorly and so non-transparent the public deserves to know what happened this is a 40-year vendor and one of our largest vendors I mean we just had one of our largest vendors discussed tonight and it was talking about well maybe we should replace them and all well there probably are fourth largest vendor not the law I'm talking about the solicitor there probably are four fourth largest vendor when it goes to the outlay of money of what we do and for this just to be ignored and I guess now since we've all said let's forget about it and move on that it's everything's okay me I struggle with it and as I said maybe it's my problem and and and I'm going to have

217to get over it but until I get answers whether it's publicly privately or whatever I will continue to struggle with that and I will continue to try to do my best to not let it cloud my judgment as to the good the other members of this board continue to do and with that knowing that Rudolph Clark will most likely be our solicitor no matter what's going to happen I do want to publicly thank East bur and gray for their representation of this District over the last 40 plus years and with that I'm finished so Mr hi I would like to um respond a little bit so we are not sure how much we could share but our new solicit has encouraged and advised us to be more open in our Communications so I want to

218share with you more information about what firms we considered in the process of uh making a recommendation to the board and the solicitor so uh other than Rudolph Clark we consider Hill wallak and we spoke with David true love from that firm and also we consider kileny law and uh spoke with son K kilin because I know you wanted to know I wasn't sure if it's bad for a law firm to um if we share publicly that we considered them but we didn't go with them but apparently uh we encourage that it's okay to share that because it happens all the time law firms like other firms they sometimes they get the business sometimes they don't um um so and as we said in the last meeting it's normal and appropriate for newly elected people

219to discuss their goals and recommend a new solicitor prior to sharing in so this happens is very common in the Commonwealth and by doing that we did not violate the sunshine act so the recommendation was brought to the board appropriately and the board um at least in the last two years that I've been on the board has several has six days that has the agenda and at that time they have the opportunity to review the recommendations and the items and ask questions and uh Mr Tate and I we called everybody to give ask if you have any questions and give you more information so I hope hope the community can understand that I cannot publicly disclose all the considerations that went into the recommendation to change solicitor but you should know that concerns about their

220representation were raised to the entire board multiple times over the past two years this did not come from nothing and in fact most recently Eastern Bray and gray informed us that they will not cooperate with a transition to the new law firm they are dropping cases in the middle and have not turned over all the files yet so the district asked them to work on matters and they decide to drop them so th this is extremely unprofessional and highly unusual because as we know LW firms lose or gain clients all the time and I think it's ethical for them to make sure that they don't drop their clients and they bring their cases to an end or at least they cooperate with their clients so is and gray show us clearly that they do not

221have the best interest of cancer rock at heart and this is one of the reasons to me is clear that we need to change solicitors actually um when pensbury school district chain solicitor from D Rudolph Clark to isper and gray Rudolph Clark fully cooperated with isper and gray because this was the right thing to do and again there are things I cannot publicly disclose but I think a lot of people on this board have information about why this change was necessary so and I will don't want to like take over more time but I don't know if other people have questions or they want to make comments I appreciate that so I guess excuse me you already you already spoke are there any other Mr Hidalgo and you you will come back to you Mr

222hick well thank you for that um so just responding you started by saying that you didn't want to like you didn't disclose the other firms because you didn't want to like make them look bad or disparage them or whatever but then you went on to say the reason why you changed eurn and graay for something that happened after the fact and you just publicly uh called them unprofessional and some other things that were like I mean you're disparaging someone that was with us for 40 years and that part of this is why I'm glad we're having this conversation now because this is what would have happened had we had a chance we would have talked about East bur and gray and whatever you know things pluses or minuses and we would have said I we

223would have said well what's the rates you know Dr Seno get the rates what are we paying I'm pretty sure that that East bur and gray has been giving us very very low rates Market I'm only guessing this is my because I don't really know but my my my uh J is is that they're below Market rates it was a very special relationship that we had and the institutional knowledge that was lost and I think Rudolph and Clark I mean I'm actually impressed when I hear Mr Clark talk uh you know about certain things not obviously um in public but I was impressed with our executive session but um what I have to say is there's there's a lot of process here that so that's one thing you basically said you didn't cooperate and do

224this last week and now I'm appreciating we're doing it now one of the things you wrote in that public statement on January 22nd was that I can say that retaining the same firm for decades with no review is far from best practice so again you're publicly saying that for the last decades you know that previous administrations or previous boards didn't really practice best practice by reviewing the law firms but you they were who we were retaining and you know what they did I mean I think we all know uh if you go back and just ask that there were uh there was RFP processes within the last you know 10 years and it was done publicly it wasn't done in six days it was a very long laborious process how we usually do things as

225you go out to RFP you have subcommittees you get together you talk you interview and at the end of the day you make a decision over 40 years they've done that more than just once and you're sitting here saying it's never been done it's it's just not right and so what we're trying to say is even though everybody did it and over and looked at all the different firms you know in public or whatever they always landed back on East bur and gray so that's to say something than to I wasn't able to give my input I'm giving it now after the fact and I think you know that's I'll leave it there so thank you for your time anybody else M Zaki okay um yeah I'd like to to address it um and with

226all due respect to Mr Clark and to eastburn and gray I didn't run first school board to change the solicitors I ran to first school board to help our kids and to help our school district the phrase we often hear is students first it's not solicitors first um we spoke tonight at Great length about an incident that has happened within within our district that could have been horrific I mean I if you just think about what could have happened I mean that keeps me up at night this is an opportunity or I'd like to see it as an opportunity when something like that happens for a silver lining that maybe we could all work together um and move forward and that's what I'd like to see anybody else Miss Stone yeah I I agree in

227that uh we I believe we answered all the questions that were given to us there was you've asked um and it is common to make these changes I find it strange that we would have the same solicitor for 40 years that's that's more unheard of than making a change um at the beginning of a reorganization and with a change in leadership and so I agree with you and with Mike that it's a time to move forward and focus on education safety um whether or not we moving forward with kindergarten uh how we dealt with the Durham bus is showing how we work together and and make improvements and make sure our kids are safe we have to still deal with bullying issues and that's what I want to focus on and getting our kids educated

228and back up to par and so in my mind to to argue about um the solicitor and as you said Bob it's a done it's a done deal let's go forward and I think we can do that so Mr Rosevelt Mr Tate wants to talk he can go before me thank you thank you Mr roselt um say what you will about the process uh I feel confident that the decision we made to hire Rudolph Clark was the right decision I think this is the right Law Firm for our school district uh I talk to people in the legal Community around here people that I know well and respect and I got strong recommendations including one person uh with another Law Firm who said that perhaps Rudolph Clark is the best law firm for Education law

229in this region if I hadn't heard those recommendations I would wouldn't have voted to hire Rudolph Clark thank you Mr Ral and then Mr hick thank you yeah I I could do this all night I'm happy I've pulled many all nighters for architecture and an architecture stool school I could literally ask questions till 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning and keep going but um I won't unless that's the will of this board I would like an answer though when I I have questions for the solicitor I have questions for other members of this board when it is a when is it appropriate for us to ask these questions and get these answers and relay them to the community if it's not now please let me know when I'm happy to do it now Mr

230hii I think Mr Rosell is looking for an answer first what are your questions I've got lots of questions like I indicated but are we GNA I'm assuming we're not going to get answers tonight or when so I'm asking for a venue of when we can ask questions in a professional and business-like manner either in front of the public or in private and then relay the questions to the public I'm I'm cognizant of the time I'm cognizant of the time of our administrators have to get up tomorrow and educate our kids and don't want to keep them here all night off tomorrow oh we're off tomorrow are we off tomorrow yes we're all night baby the kid well the maybe the kids are off right but but our our teachers our teachers Dr Sano and

231the cabinet here is not so uh I am I'm I'm I'm concerned about all this and I know a lot of us have kids at home but at the same point I would like to understand when some of these questions can could be answered because Mrs P I understand that we had six days but several of those days were over a weekend so it really only amounts to a couple of business days that being said the decision was clearly made before we even walked in the room so it would have been a waste of of my time the four of ours time and Mr Clark's time and Mr amoo's time to go through questions um the problem is is that we didn't we were denied the opportunity to have this discussion have the deliberation I

232struggle to understand how the five of you were able to meet with three law firms where you're only discussing the services as a solicitor these law firms can offer the district and still come to some sort of a clear and organized answer to vote Yes without having a deliberation I I don't know how that happens um and clearly this these discuss discussions occurred in November before being sworn in so you had more than 3 days more than six days more than a week that was provided to us we had a wonderful retreat at the IU and one of the the points that the IU impressed Upon Us was that this board is supposed to have equal opportunity to information that was denied additionally I'm glad that it came out that the uh that the meeting

233there was a meeting with Durham that attended prior that was this information gathering meeting that was announced in the previous thing I I'm happy that we had that here today to have that discussion for this board to ask questions publicly that's what I think was appropriate um I had problems and reservations with that meeting that were communicated and I chose not to participate I came to that meeting and then left because I believe that this is the type of inform information that should happen in front of the community the community as tonight should have the opportunity to ask Durham these questions and understand that and as board members I only got this presentation from dorham that we saw tonight yesterday so I don't know I there's the details for that item on the agenda don't

234have any further than what everybody is seeing here that we've got a Durham school Serv presentation and the presentation we saw yesterday I don't know how many of you had that presentation before I don't know but these are the things to Mr hickey we talking we all saw it yesterday I mean whenever Dr Sanko say we did not see it before wonderful that's great we really pushed very hard to have them come here and present that's that's great and and that's what I think should happen so I'm glad that we had that I would have preferred that that to happen back in January or whenever it was first available to coincide with the police and what Durham had to do to do that as soon as possible to get in front of the community and

235communicate that I I don't know why I wasn't privy to any of that so I don't know maybe that's because I walked out of the meeting I I'm not sure but this comes back to the discussion of trust it's incumbent upon this board that this body and each of us have some level of trust and unfortunately we've heard from the community in email and in in comment that to some degree that's been broken and that weighs heavily upon me we we as a body need to figure out how to bring that back together and part of that as Mr hickey indicated is getting some answers the community needs these answers so the question stands are we asking them tonight and will they be answered or is the same thing going to happen where it's just

236going to bounce to does anybody else have a comment or the you know this doesn't need to be answered so that's the question are they going to be answered tonight or is the venue that we can have where we can this the four of us can ask questions and then relay some of these questions to the public can we figure that out together and reestablish trust amongst ourselves are we doing this tonight or is there another place that's the question well you you can't discuss this during an executive session because it's not an appropriate topic for the an executive session it's not listed under the sunshine act any of the nine board members who have a question for me or or Peter are clearly able to reach out to us and ask us questions and

237one thing I do just want to clarify Mr Roosevelt because I think I I mentioned it last month before board members are sworn in they're not official members of the board so indicating that there or trying to infer that there was something illegal about them deliberating before or they were sworn in is just not accurate they can have all the discussions who that they want at the time there were only two seated board members um so there was no violation of the sunshine act in any conversations uh that the board members were having before they were sworn in after that time clearly you you cannot deliberate as a majority but that doesn't mean that one board member can't go to another board member and say how do you feel about this issue and that board

238member says I'm inclined to do a and then that board member goes to another board member and says how do you feel about it the sunshine act prevents a majority of you from getting in a room and deliberating it it doesn't mean you can't have discussions in a group of two or a group of three or in a board of nine even a group of four because that doesn't violate the sunshine act thank you but that didn't answer my question so would you prefer us to the four of us to send you emails with our question you want to ask me questions feel free to ask me questions okay so I'm I'm glad that you mentioned this element about sunshine um so it's your opinion that up to four of us can go meet right

239now tomorrow with law firms to discuss what their services are as a solicitor for Council Rock School District and then for us to communicate within each other to find out how we feel about that and then maybe the pleasure of the board changes you're okay with that with us effectively looking for other law firms to replace you as you put it out this happens a lot this is very common for you and you just pack your stuff up and you walk away so you're okay with that as a solicitor that school boards can do this because this changes all the time right so so not to be not to be smart but um I don't deal in okays I deal in what is legal and what is not legal and so then tell me if

240that's legal are in your legal opinion you're no no no not in my legal opinion it's just legal the sunshine Act is very clear that if if it's not a majority if it's not a quarum of the board you you can do that that's why very often when you're having certain issues you may have a time where there is and I I represent one Board of 15 um I know it's horrible uh it's difficult I didn't mean horrible there are times when they will have discussions of four at a time to try to reach a decision about something uh or they will have six or seven at a time because it's not it's not a quorum that's perfectly legal right and the five the five members of this board two of them sworn in three

241of them unsworn had to in November and then you admitted in January 18th meeting that you wrote the motion that Mr hickey was questioning at the beginning of this meeting so under who asked you to write that motion and when was that asked I think it was directed to my partner Peter muso I think it may have come from Miss paly and Dr Sano Dr yeah yep okay so if I if I may on February 12 on February I'm sorry on January 12th I had a meeting with board leadership Miss ply and Mr Tate like we have done since I've been in this role the question came up from Miss p and Mr Tate about a motion and I suggested we called Mr amuso uh because I did not think that was my or our

242responsibility we in our wheelhouse to write that motion and several other law firms were met with in November M and then are you prepared to release a timeline either this board leadership and you as solicitor as far as the dates that you were communicating with whom and when to the four of the US and the community that led up to that date January 18th I just gave you the names of the firms that we considered right right and I'm also asking for the dates and those who attended I don't even remember that I can find out the dates but it was all happened before the swearing in okay there was nothing illegal nothing illegal happened after the new members were sworn in there was no meeting of the five of us for any reason that's

243that's comforting we are very very careful follow that that that's comforting but but then these members were sworn in in in January or excuse me December 7th I believe they were sworn in December 7th and so no further communication aside from that phone call to Peter amuso occurred a week prior is that right well even if there were that wouldn't be a violation of the sunshine act Mr dat we were very careful not to meet or discuss as a group of five after December 7th on or after December 7 and um most of the communication at that point um with Mr Clark and Mr amuso was confined to me and Miss P it didn't involve Dr Sano until we met with Dr Seno on January 12th janary and Mr Tate informed me yeah that there

244was going to be a change of solicitor questioned the motion and I suggested to Mr Tate and Mrs P that we call the attorney to get the the motion um again because that was not in any of our wheelhouse yeah and we were to your point we were very careful not to violate the Sunshine Law once our new colleagues were sworn in and and and before cognizant of the fact that they weren't members of the board but particularly after December 7th I I'm I'm happy that we're welcoming this conversation but once again I am cognizant of the board uh and and other colleagues here so um but I'm still trying to figure out if that's the case after December 7th and up to January 12th the five of you somehow figured actually the 12th yeah

245I think I will help you with the that would be great that's that's what yeah thank you so I we met before this saring in and we wanted to make this change at the reorganization meeting but for reasons I cannot publicly disclosed but you know very well you know very well that it was not appropriate when someone is sick you have to respect that okay so don't Don't make me say but there I said there are things I cannot publicly discl it's not appropriate to publicly disos Miss P if I just could not to belabor this so nobody gets to the wrong idea the five members who voted to approve us could not meet all together and decide at that moment to deliberate after they got sworn in nothing in the sunshine act prevents them

246from sharing their thoughts with each other if there are not five of them who are present at the time I'm I'm fascinated this is probably the third or fourth time that that you have mentioned sunshine I haven't in any of my questions here so I I'm not sure why you were we're fixating on that one point I'm just trying to establish a timeline that's what I would is trying to do in uh in January 18th I'm sorry but implicit in your questions is that you are claiming a violation of the sunshine act you're saying you have please don't please don't put words in my mouth I'm not putting words in your mouth but I'm saying implicit in your questions is that you keep saying the five of them when did the five of them meet

247and then you the question that you asked me was can the four of us meet and I we started to have a discussion about a qu and that's lack of a quum so implicit in what you were saying is your is implicating the sunshine act I'm just trying to get the matters of facts out and trying to ask a series of questions it's it's not for me I'm not a a prosecutor and I'm not a judge and I'm not a jury to determine whether anybody violated the Sunshine Law in practice or principle or violated ethics Acts or anything that that's not up to me I'm just trying to understand and get the answers for myself and the community Mr Tate sorry thank you Mr Tate thank you um we could resume this conversation at next

248month's meeting if you want we can get answers to any additional questions the questions that I heard previously were who did you meet with I think we just answered that question I think we gave you more insight into the process you want dates we can look up dates um I have have more questions and and if there's additional questions you know you can give us questions and and Joe Joe let me please if you have additional questions you can give us the questions and we can pull together the answers for you um I'm not saying we're going to answer every single question into the detail that you want but but um we're happy to answer questions and I think we we answered the big one for you tonight which is who else did we talk

249to and we told you all right may I Mr hio well thank you thank you Miss p and this is good this is productive again I feel like um we probably missed some things not including us in this process but what is uh Mr Clark what is the role of the board what is the role of the board MH you're the board of school School directors for the Council Rock School District you are your job is to run the school district okay so actually I'm going to disagree with you and say that Dr senko is the one who gets paid to run the school district and the board from what I understand from from probably Mr Cox and everybody else was that um the board is really just supervises the superintendent and this we're not

250supposed to get down into the weeds and all the rest of that stuff that you would hear from Andy block and everything like that um so the role of the board is to supervise the superintendent and so my first and question is or I think it was already answered I'll answer it you did not inform Dr senko or in get his input or any of the administrators in the choice of a changing law firms in the middle of all the litigation that everybody complains about without without even asking what is his and for new board members to do this to not even to not even consult who you're supposed to be overseeing and to think that you run the school district is not anything because each individual of us have zero power you put five

251of us together and you have a quorum and then that's when you have a voice so there's no individual voices here it wasn't done right you you really have to go back and I'm saying from people who have done this for a very long time are looking at us and saying I cannot believe how that went down and you really should consider re-evaluating it it's not a done deal and so I'm going to leave it there there's no more questions except for the that we did not consult the superintendent and you know what to give me a yes or no to say it's a yes or no it's not even a Ben Franklin close it's a yes or no we coming here with this we met before the election me before the swearing in it's

252legal I don't I'm I'm sure you guys tiptoed through that and that's exactly right and I respect that again there's some respect here but I'm going to get back to where I need one last question because this is important Mr hickey started on it it's something that I think I brought to his attention and I'm just going to leave it real quick because we're going to have to spend some special time in the future getting everything squared away we made some progress tonight but it's not done um so basically when we move to recommend that we appoint Rudolph and Clark um recommendations are not legally binding that's one thing maybe it's a legal back door that somebody could use against us in the future second part is the uh the uh is basically when we

253wrote the second part where it says basically Rudolph Clark shall represent the Council Rock School District in all legal matters no problem including special education no problem the board shall that's a big word right approve special counsel when appropriate upon advise and consent to the solicitor I believe the people who voted for this abdicated their authority to you to the to the solicitor because with all legal matters which is not what you're supposed to do it literally says unless you tell me that advise and consent if you don't consent we literally can't do it and you tied the hands of the people that voted yes and that's what I feel is something that we can revisit and you can comment here and then one more thing because I'm you're good at like keeping track of

254that um I would like to have the law cited that you're saying laws very clear about the Robert rules and and everything else and of course we weren't obstructing we weren't obstructing to vote because we're still here tonight at almost midnight it wasn't obstruction it was just trying to get answers and we all are equally affordable it didn't go down afforded the right I got to finish my sentences you know afforded the right we're equally afforded the right to get this be part of this process and we were cut out and we all you all took part of it because you didn't you didn't even reach out to us and Miss ply you did not give me or Ed you didn't give me the phone number the name all I heard was Rudolph and Clark

255I'm thinking like you know red nose and stuff like that like I'm thinking like Christmas still all right so where is the memo saying hey guys we're changing solicitors oh okay here's the phone number give them a call if you want so that's my piece but I would like you you're so good at following all that you're sure sure so I'd I'd like to I'd like to follow up on on two things one is as I said before um I I I looked at some of your meetings watched the videos from last year at times you don't really appeal appear to follow Robert's rules to a te um nobody does I'm not an expert on Robert's Rules uh most municipalities school districts don't follow it don't do that level of parliamentary procedure um so that

256was my point about last last month the other thing too Mr hialgo um you know and Google is a wonderful thing um recommend put forward someone or something with approval as being suitable for a particular purpose or role similar words are Advocate endorse commend approve it was very clear what the motion was it was very clear that the motion was to approve us as the solicitor for the district because you don't the the the the person making the motion was making a a recommendation um if you you want to stand on on that word and those sort of form over substance and and semantics that's fine the district has a solicitor we were appointed appropriately um last month and we are serving the district excellent last comment because I've been holding this one it's like

257because we are the letter of the law you know not the spirit so the you just mentioned kind of the spirit was that the recommendation was you know we knew what we were going to do so you basically just said the spirit of the emotion you didn't say it I'm I'm I'm paraphrasing it's not the spirit it's the letter no you're right I'm saying that that motion was very clear I move to recommend and I find it hard to believe that any of the nine up here and again I'll now apologize to all the staff who are who are here so late um I find it hard to believe that any one did not know what that that meant I move to recommend okay okay and sorry no you're good now how about the last

258thing because you didn't answer uh advise and consent do we literally have to go you have to approve any special Council that we have in this motion does that mean that you have veto Authority we it is standard language that we use in all of our appointment motions it's been in several of our letters over the years um to Ure sure um that if special council is going to be appointed uh that we are involved in the process for a variety of reasons but at the end of the day we do what the board tells us to do is that what the is that what the motion says or does the motion say you have to consent to it it says advice and consent so that means doesn't say what you just said so if

259you want to overrule us you are free to do it okay right because we just say there's the door right correct okay thank you I I appreciate that and if you want to say to me uh if you want to hire a law firm or special counsel and we think it's a bad idea you can always tell us well you can you can agree with it or you can get out the door so why put advise and consent like I said it's standard language that we've been using in a couple of other school districts for a long period of time so and I'll apologize for the uh uh for the long night for the administrators hey can we vote on like a uh like a day off tomorrow something just joking uh Mr hicky I

260just try to I say bring this full circle and in the effort of time um a lot of the audience are thinking we're just discussing a solicitor and what does this have to do with anything but the solicitor is involved with some of our most atrisk students and some of the those with special needs so this does affect this does have to do with students which is the point of all this what are we doing for helping students the solicitor is very vital in some of the students that need our services the most so this is an important discussion so it's not just to be blown off that being said I agree with Mr Roosevelt and and that being said I want to to address this at maybe our next board meeting at you know

261once again when we get to Old business you know in the in the effort of time because as I said the questions of trust that I have remain and I think will remain until I get better answers that I don't want you know other than I don't want to talk about this now I don't want to get into this now um I'm not at Liberty to disclose or whatever you know I think we deserve the answers I think the people do but not at 10: after 11 um on a Thursday night I'm prepared to stay here all night I'm this is what I signed up for but however this is an important discussion it does affect kids and please be prepared I'm not going to give you prepared questions so you can have a prepared

262answer but do be prepared to discuss this at the next meeting as well at Old business so next month that 10: after 11 we'll probably still be sitting here answering questions unfortunately apologize to I I guess Miss K wants to say something thank you Miss Polly um I know Mr hickey you just brought up a point about special education um and representing students with special needs I was wondering if Mr Clark could speak to I know there is a I believe it is a a solicitor in your firm that deals is actually a special education teacher so a kind of a specialty um Samantha n is uh was a special education uh teacher uh before um she went to law school um Samantha is uh heading up our our work with your your special ed

263uh Department uh my partner Mike barbiero who also um essentially leads up all the litigation for the firm uh much much younger in his life uh worked in in special education and as I indicated before uh at last month I've done special education work uh for the Bristol Township School District many years ago uh several other of the attorneys in our firm have done it um we've taken over all the special education uh cases uh we're on top of everything so I don't think uh you know I think the district is well covered with us handling that work thank you I appreciate it I appreciate that thank you Miss hardner I do want to speak because Mr Clark we have a ton of questions and J as Roosevelt said and again the administration I'm sorry

264we can go all night or we can send in the questions because we have t you're you get paid by the taxpayers and we have to answer to people you're you're free to contact me anytime you want there will be questions and that will be fine and we need the answers I'm always forthcoming with answers any other questions I move to a Jour no wait old business this was all new I thought that was old I guess this was this was both old and new business right okay most to journ yes yes we a journ thank you all