School Board Meeting: October 7, 2021

001good evening ladies and gentlemen uh just bear with us this evening i'll give you a little comment here these are brand new microphones that you have to push to talk and you ca if you're not pushing it you can't talk so bear with the board as we work through this but good evening anyway it's october 7th 2021 this is the october school board meeting for the school directors of the council rock school district i'd ask you all pleased to rise for the pledge of allegiance madam secretary roll call please andy block i am here mark bardick here edward tate here michael thorward here denise brooks here miriam mckee here joseph feldaigo here christine marcel here and ed solomon here thank you uh good evening dr fraser super superintendent's report please thank you mr solomon good

002evening to the board and to our council rock community i want to begin this evening with some good news to show once again that the arts remain alive and well in cr and that's because council rock is one of only 20 schools or school districts in the state to be named as an outstanding visual art community in 2021 as named by the pennsylvania arts education association these select few school entities who received this endorsement have demonstrated the importance of the visual arts program through rigorous and inclusive programs highly accessible programs and highly visible programs and all of that indeed we did so heartfelt congratulations are extended to all of our student artists our art teachers our art coordinator mrs beth lynch and all who support the arts here in cr this recognition is certainly well

003deserved by all of you thank you and congrats now as most of you know we remain challenged by transportation issues due to the overall labor shortage that's occurring uh please know that we continue to work on solutions both short-term and long-term solutions and while there aren't any easy answers here for us or for much of the larger service industry we do continue very much to focus on it and we're hopeful to see some improvements ahead and of course we also remain challenged by covid since our last board meeting when the board authorized the administration to convert an elementary classroom to full virtual instruction for seven days if and when we have three or more positive cases wow infectious in a five day period uh unfortunately we've needed to do so with three of our classrooms

004including two classrooms here in the past couple of days i also want to remind parents that we have an early dismissal day this coming wednesday october 13th that afternoon will be a professional development day for our cr staff and lastly one of the items that's on our agenda this evening is our district membership to dvcee the delaware valley consortium for excellence and equity allow me to to point out just a few aspects about and what it is and what it is not uh first please know that we here in council rock have been a dvcee member since 2017 so with board approval this evening this would mark our sixth year of membership the work that we engage in with dvcee is directly supported by our crsd strategic plan and make no mistake about it this

005work is about diversity equity and inclusion and this is work that's designated to benefit all of our council rock students what we want and you've all heard this from me before is for all students to have equitable opportunities to participate and to succeed in all aspects of school and for all students to feel that genuine sense of belonging and that genuine sense of being valued in all aspects of school and when i say equitable opportunities this is where that equity piece comes in so if you would please take a look at these two photos side by side this is the difference between equality and equity and this illustrates literally illustrates the importance of equity we have three individuals here with diverse needs pretty evident to see pretty plain to see on the left despite having

006diverse needs they're all being treated the same and the result is that only two of these three are being included in being able to watch the ball game on the right hand photo on the other hand because they have diverse needs they're being given what they need that's the equity piece not equality and the result is that all three of them are now included in being able to watch the game this is diversity equity and inclusion you have it all right here in this right-hand picture while on the left-hand side all we have is diversity there is no equity and because there is no equity there is no inclusion for this uh poor fella here on the right and look in doing this work our intent and you've heard this before as well our intent

007is to lift everyone up and not to make anyone feel badly about their place in this world this is about again diversity equity and inclusion it has nothing nothing at all to do with our concert rock school district curriculum it also has nothing to do with critical race theory in fact i'll tell you the first time that we here in in council iraq were accused of teaching council or teaching critical race theory i got that via an email and to be honest with you i had to look it up i wasn't even sure what critical race theory was and here we were being accused of teaching it that is not at all what this work is about here in cr what we are about is serving students and meeting students needs and simply put our

008membership with dvcee helps us to do that both for students who tomorrow in school we want to feel that genuine sense of belonging and for all cr students who once they graduate from cr they're going to enter a world that in all likelihood looks and feels quite a bit different than who we are here in our 72 square miles and we have a responsibility to ensure that they're set up for success from day one to hit the ground running whether they go to college go into a career the military whatever path they choose to take it's likely to be a more diverse world than what they experience here and we have got to set them up for success in that regard so this work does indeed benefit all students and again it is on the

009agenda this evening and uh when we get to that item we'll be requesting the board's approval thanks mr solomon thank you sir mr cox good evening solicitor report please mr salomon the board held an executive session this afternoon as you know on collective bargaining that's all i have to report tonight very good sir from there we're going to public comment so we have eight folks that have signed up for public comment uh unlike the last several meetings i obviously will go right down the list um full transparency there's eight on the list 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 viewers in the audience who are

010watching this broadcast live on cr tv when speaking is our goal to maintain a respectable environment so the members of our community have an equal opportunity to address the board without inter interruption while the board welcomes your ideas and will consider them in deliberating an issue we we may not respond to your comments or questions mr cox timekeeper please first up i have paula barson from northampton good evening ma'am bless you first words you see when you open the crsd website school is where children spend most of their day during the week it should be a place where they feel safe and can thrive in an environment where they are comfortable when children don't feel safe and seen all aspects of their lives are impacted in their time in school they are not only learning

011a prescribed curriculum but also how to make friends how to advocate for themselves and others how to make good choices and that as much as we seem as much as we seem the same we are all very different this district has an obligation to educate the whole child socially mentally and emotionally but this is not only about the children what the children are learning right now but how they are prepared for the future when they graduate and leave the cocoon of this district and go out into a bigger world they need to be prepared to navigate a larger broader and more diverse community one of the pillars of the 2019 2019-2023 strategic plan focuses on diversity and inclusion it states that the district will embrace and incorporate diversity in all of its various dimensions and

012continue to build an inclusive and welcoming environment for all students and district stakeholders in conjunction with this the school board unanimously approved an anti-racism resolution which states we must better educate ourselves and seek to educate the community on the historical and current impact of racism and discrimination on our students families and communities as well as understanding our role and perpetuating such inequity it has partnered with dvcee and livingstrong to further support ongoing educational equity improvement efforts these programs are designed to help the district ensure comparable performance for all learners without performance gaps as well as equitable access inclusion treatment opportunities resources and accountability for students and staff the demographic of our district is changing slowly but it is changing we need to be cognizant of that change and meet the needs of the entire community

013because if people don't feel safe and seen they will not want to stay here this has a direct impact on our property values it is for this reason or these reasons i believe the dvce initiative should be continued in conjunction with the strategic plan already in place everybody has a story to tell and everybody should tell their own story this is how we learn from each other and this is how we ensure that all students know that they are important beautiful valued and worthy it is also how we ensure that this district remains strong that people want to live here and that our property values don't decrease as mr salomon himself said at the education meeting this is a no-brainer thank you thank you man stuff is i'm sorry matt this button thing next up

014is nicole hahn from rights down please good evening nicole good evening nicole khan from wrightstown i sincerely apologize good evening as a lifelong learner i want to continue to educate grow learn and i know all parents want this for their children when we want to educate ourselves about others we do so by looking beyond ourselves and our own experiences through this process we do not look in a mirror but instead we want to look through a window to different and varied perspectives we as parents want our children to feel welcome valued and provided every opportunity to succeed in school and in life when we look forward to the future whether that be higher education military service training programs or the workforce we want all our children to be successful we need to teach children how

015to work and live together with a diverse group of people most importantly we want to teach the model how to respect each other our best foot forward is to work together do what is right for our students and give them the tools to become successful and productive members of our society this district has collaborated with the delaware valley consortium for excellence and equity since 2017. resource resources such as the dvc-ee provide one of many tools in the district's toolbox the school board members approve and created a strategic plan where one of the key strategies is to embrace and incorporate diversity in all of its various dimensions and continue to build an inclusive and welcoming environment for all students we need to continue to learn and grow together for our children in the future of our

016school district this is an opportunity to build a better community to grow and learn from each other as individuals we all want to feel welcome accepted and treated well by our fellow neighbors school is a place where students develop their understanding of the world and their ability to make meaningful change in it we want to keep excuse me we want to keep politicians out of the classroom who are trying to make it a battleground creating divisions and endangering public education together we can reject divisive agendas and make all our schools and council rock school district a place where every child can learn grow and thrive let us continue this important work bring our community together and make it stronger thank you ma'am next up is yoda pali from upper makefield good evening ma'am my name

017is yotap hailey i have two children and i've lived in albert makefield for 18 years i actually came from greece for graduate school united states and made up for my upper midfield my home i have plays for you tonight i want to thank you for approving the renovation of sulfine stone elementary it makes me happy to see it as i drive by eagle road every day my son attended our beloved zulfine stone and the need for innovation was apparent then and has only become more urgent since he graduated especially thank you to andy block our current upper micro school board director for passionately advocating for it i know he's not here in person but i'm hoping he can hear it i also want to thank you for creating such a comprehensive strategic plan among other

018things the cancer rock school district's 2019-2023 strategic plan has a well-defined strategy to in your words embrace and incorporate diversity in all of its various dimensions and continue to build an inclusive and welcoming environment for all students and district stakeholders i agree that every child is different and we need to build a community that supports everyone in every step of their journey from elementary school through high school we must prepare our next generation to experience a diverse world where they will work with many different types of people we need to celebrate the diversity that we have and be broadly inclusive what i would like to hear from you tonight is how your strategy has been implemented and what specific actions this board has taken to embrace our diversity i would like to understand what the

019inequities are and what specifically the plan is to fix them i would also like you to expand in detail on what steps you have taken to make sure that bullying is not tolerated in our schools and what types of educational classes and seminars are being provided to make sure everyone in our district is accepting of our differences thank you for your leadership and your time thank you ma'am next up is jimmy karcher from northampton good evening my name is jennifer mcarcher i am from northampton township um i two things i wanted to touch on tonight um one of the things is the diversity and inclusion program and i just want to state that the most important thing to remember about diversity inclusion is that it should not just be about race we should really be

020looking at the potential impact that these words can have for students who have any number of differences whether it be religion gender sexual orientation or even just learning differences our goal should be for all students to feel included since council rock champions success for every student every day i believe that we should strive to have protections in place that allow all children to flourish um also on the topic of covid mitigation i will again address the need that we have particularly at the elementary level to have more stringent mass requirements our mis our weak mask exception form has continued to lead mass squaring to decline even further and we are seeing cases increase at the elementary level particularly in my son's elementary school i urge the board members to consider the fact that at least

021one of our community members is now dealing with longer-term effects from a case of covid that was brought home from their child who acquired it at school i hope board members who were not able to allow the administration to properly enforce mask wearing remember that your decisions are now continuing to impact day-to-day life of a formerly healthy individual and i hope you can sleep well with that information good night thank you next up is susan siemens from newtown good evening good evening my name is susan siemens i'm not running for school board and i live in newtown in 2017 i retired to stay home and take care of my two children who were getting ready to enter third grade and fifth grade today i have a seventh grader and a ninth grader i retired because

022i wanted to spend time with and teach my children how to be good kind people and i wanted to help them prepare to become productive citizens of our country from 1987 to 2017 i worked as a paralegal at two of the oldest law firms in new england i worked with attorneys who revered the law and our constitution the manner in which they practiced law taught me to love the law and our constitution over the past 18 months i've watched the school board meetings on youtube and i've helped my husband prepare to come to these meetings along with our friends first to try and reopen our schools so that my children could get an education and then to try and keep them open and functioning in as normal a way as possible my husband would sometimes

023rant about what took place in these meetings and after listening to the post game comments i honestly thought at times that it couldn't be as bad as it was but he was right i see that now he was right with everything going on now i can't any longer stay on the sidelines it's time for people who love this country to get involved before there is no more country the announcement on monday that the u.s attorney general will use the criminal and national security arms of the justice department and the fbi to investigate parents speaking up at school board meetings as domestic terrorists should frighten us all we are talking about free speech protected by the first amendment to our constitution and to threaten threaten u.s citizens with a criminal investigation for exercising that right is

024just is not just anti-american it will have a chilling effect on this country just as chilling today facebook shut down the page of a vital member of our 30 seconds man reopen bucks county because it dared to provide a forum they got shut down the state created our federal government not the other way around i'm here tonight to urge the elected members of this board to stop pushing racism and racism in school also known as crt stop teaching them that america is oppressive and evil evil stop teaching them that race stop teaching them racism masquerading as civil rights education to my children so that they can become good productive citizens of this country thank you thank you man next up jonathan siemens from newtown good evening sir good evening we'll tag team action tonight um

025i just want to take a minute to talk about the mask too and thank the five board members that left the health and safety plan in place um i know people like the woman who spoke earlier think that cases are going through the roof i brought this graph i'm happy to pass it around the green line is console rock central bucks and penridge the three districts in the county that have mask optional in some form and the higher line the upper line the red line are the 10 districts that don't so if you can tell me how the masses are helping i'd really like to see that last week in our school district we had 23 positive cases out of dr frazier knows the number 11 500 and some odd kids that's 0.002 percent um

026we're not going to get to zero that's not should not be the goal the countries in the world that have been trying to get to zero new zealand japan denmark norway they've given that up in the last two to three weeks and i wonder you know i sat here in those meetings with all these people packed wall the wall and all the people jeering at the five of you that that wouldn't vote to make mass required and telling us oh we're just going to do it for the beginning of school and we're just going to see how it goes and you're going to see the cases are going to go through the roof well they haven't where are those people now they're not here so thank you again for that the five of you um

027and thanks for standing up to the four horsemen of the apocalypse on that one i appreciate it um i'd also like to uh talk a little bit about some of the other things going on in the district uh this critical race theory that i mean if dr frazier didn't know what critical race theory is i think the nine of you should maybe have a meeting separately and ask him what kind of uh intellectual curiosity does he have that the superintendent of a district like ours didn't even know what that was um and and when you read these things from this group like this is as my wife said this is critical race theory this is racism disguised as some social justice project and and to bring that into 30 seconds sir and and to tell

028you know our kids that if if you're white you're an oppressor like these questions are you can think that they're not but these questions are being asked of our students by your teachers right now all you got to do is go on the community a little bit and ask people and you will find out that that's going on thank you next up is alex and i apologize the last name is is unknowledgeable it looks like from northampton just for the record sir could you just state your last name please enten good evening members of the school board ever since you all approved the books at the april 26 meeting i've been asking you to go back and revisit those books to see for yourself how inappropriate they are for our kids and up to today

029i've yet to see any of you do anything about it i wish someone could explain to me why as an example to one of the books its premise is that white america will continue to plunder not only black bodies but the environment too but enough about beating the dead horse so let me ask you something else superintendent frazier keeps stating that he's against critical race theory which for the record i don't buy but if that's the case parents constantly stand up here and give examples of how their children are being taught about white privilege and other items related to critical race theory yet all those parents get from superintendent fraser is a pattern ahead and told it will be taken care of i've yet to hear that a teacher was fired or suspended without pay

030or any other disciplinary action that was taken so it could be one of two things either our administration staff is incompetent in taking care of those issues or perhaps superintendent frazier and assistant superintendent elliot are complicit in all of it the superintendent will get on after our speeches and say for the record he's against critical race theory any lingo such as 1619 project white privilege social inequality diversity equity and inclusion is critical race theory period whether you want to call it critical race theory or diversity equity inclusion or include equity and inclusion the board members are obligated to this community to stop this hateful rhetoric taught in our schools penridge school district has removed diversity equity and inclusion from their curriculum they understood that this type of cultural marxist ideology has no place in their

031schools council iraq has always been at the tip of the spear in offering top-notch education diversity equity inclusion with a sinister and deceptive plot will force the district to institute things such as leveling leveling will remove gifted and talented programs as well as honor classes to dumb down our kids the programming preview of upenn's dvce classes involves acquired techniques to manage a predictable backlash to efforts to address social inequality translation when parents question the teachings of critical race theory they should be called racists and oppressors the parents of this school district will now go away and allow this administration to teach our kids whatever they want we make decisions of what they should teach them not you i know it's tough to be the first board member to stand up for what's right the great

032winston churchill once said that courage 36 greatest of all the virtues because it's upon courage that all the other virtues lie show your courage force the removal of diversity equity inclusion from our school district and the removal of the books you approved of the april 26 meeting also decline any further spending or participating in upenn's dvce programs and training as well as any other organizations offering training to our teachers related to diversity equity and inclusion your courage today will have great impact on our kids and our country tomorrow thank you thank you sir and finally brian cole good evening sir just on here for the record your township my son is a student here in council rock thank you sir thank you uh ladies and gentlemen uh board members thank you for this opportunity to

033speak tonight and also for the leadership you've offered through your current positions on the board especially during these trying times i'm not a doctor a lawyer a first responder or a teacher i'm just a parent much like sitting on a school board parenting means making decisions that have an impact on our children we hear a lot about what kids want or what kids like but if other children in the district are like mine they would want cake for breakfast pizza for dinner ice cream for lunch fortnight contests and six hours of recess and it sounds pretty fun but that's not what's best for our children as a parent i have to make the responsible choice not the easiest choice not necessarily the popular choice but the right choice and we expect you our school board

034to make similar decisions you haven't been tasked with making the popular choice unfortunately or the easiest choice you're here to make the choices which will help us prepare our children for the future and help us make them safe while they're students here in council rock we knew almost 300 years ago that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and we know it now masks help prevent the spread of viruses whether it's the flu chickenpox rsv or other viruses every household knows that one sick child can quickly become a sick family but covet is a bigger threat than those viruses while not in the context of germs more in the context of fighting crime there's a scene in the movie the dark knight rises where batman cautions a young arrogant detective to wear

035a mask when the young detective protests and says he doesn't need a mask he's not scared batman explains the mask is not for you it's to protect the people you care about yes covet is less likely to pass to pose a serious health risk to healthy children however anyone carrying the covet virus with or without symptoms can transmit the virus to others including their friends their families vaccinated or unvaccinated healthy or immunocompromised masked mandates should be required and they should be only made exceptions when approved by a medical professional masks help limit the spread so can social distancing and so can responsible choices thank you sir that concludes public comment okay sure my pleasure just do me a favor state your name in the township you're from please and you have three minutes uh my

036name is kristen connolly um just moved to northampton township churchville i guess that's the township in august i have two girls at maureen welsh first and third and a one-year-old we moved to this district for the district we moved here for the schools and i'm disappointed in the board's decision to not require masks so when governor wolf came out with the additional mandate to require math i was a little relieved i have a um my father's going through chemo treatments and i was very nervous that my children would bring copenhagen to him i come to find out that a number number of children are not wearing masks i think with about three clicks you can get to this form and this form i can fill out tonight i can check a box i can send

037it into their school and my children don't have to wear masks that's really disheartening to me um i don't have as many fabulousness prepared as these people but i will do that in the future um right now we have about 120 cases that have happened since the start of the school year one of those cases um maureen welch has about 27 since the beginning of school year one of those cases was in my daughter's class this week and closed contacts are not required to quarantine i was completely confused when i found out about that um i think i have maybe a little bit of background knowledge in this because i teach interdifferent east town school district which is the best public school in the state i'd like council rock i'd like to be able to

038say that my kids go to the best public school district in the state and this board can make that happen those of you that voted to require masks i applaud you te i'm in the middle school across from conestoga high school we have over 1200 students and staff in that building and every single child and adult in that building has a mask our whole district has 50 cases i mean i think the numbers speak for themselves bringing home clovid to individuals vaccinated unvaccinated my children can't get vaccinated yet they'll be the first in line so i really applaud those of you that are putting children's health and safety as well as their 30 seconds man first i think that's it thank you for your time and your service and i plan to be back here

039i will be here for you know at least the next 18 years with my children so again thank you for your service i'm a public school teacher i am i believe in the public school system but i want you to do what's right thank thank you ma'am we'll go to letter g miss marcel would you mind reading that please i moved to approve the minutes of the meeting of the school the board of school directors held on september 9 2021 second second mr bailek any comments from the board any objections we're hearing none i'm going to mark that unanimous please apologize moving on education committee mr mckee please thank you the education committee met last week on september 30th um we received presentations from dr elliott on a number of the items on our agenda

040for tonight um i just want to thank all the public who participated in that meeting along with my board colleagues we had a good opportunity for questions and for discussion and i thank you for that uh moving on i'd like to move to approve the consent agenda items b through i as contained in the attachments to this agenda a second please second second mrs marcel any board comment uh mr hildago please we're only discussing b through i sir well one of the uh agendas uh uh consent agenda item c came to uh a conversation i had today so i don't know if i would wait till after the vote to have a comment on c or yeah now okay so i wouldn't pull it off the the uh consent agenda just for this but i

041was speaking to a friend who is a uh is the chair of bucks county the board the board chairman for bucks county community college and he reached out to me to ask um about the dual enrollment uh opportunities uh that we're providing and so i know we're using gwyneth mercy uh for this consent agenda was spoken about at the committee meeting uh he wanted to make us aware that one of the initiatives for the board of bucks county community college this year is to expand on their dual enrollment with the schools in bucks county and maybe was wondering um who the point of contact was for that if we could get him that he would appreciate that and maybe i would ask i know we use we're partnering with bucks county community college for uh

042maybe other institutions for people want to take ap classes during the year they can take care of their gym in the summer through through through one of those institutions including bucks county community college has there been any reach out to them to date for dual enrollment for any other programs or and so here we go thank you our i'll defer to dr elliott on this i do know that early in my tenure uh perhaps even preceding dr elliott start with the district uh there was some preliminary conversation but nothing ever got off the ground but i would tell you this is great to hear so if you could even either share dr elliott's contact info uh with the person you spoke with today or give me that person's contact info or just give it directly

043to dr elliott we would certainly love to uh love to have that conversation yeah and i can add to that mr hidalgo i'd love to to speak with him and one of the action steps in our strategic plan around redefining student success is looking at opportunities to increase stool enrollment with our for our students particularly our high school students so that is something that we're definitely interested in pursuing thank you appreciate you guys yeah and it seems like a natural fit being being in our district alone mr bile get your hand up sir i thank you i will push the button um all right i have some questions about this and i i think expanding this to any school is is a good idea including bucks county community college so i i've discovered some things

044with this dual enrollment process i have a sophomore at home who's taking some college classes as well and just have some questions regarding this i see that the expenses it says expensive student expense of student or school district so who's paying these tuition and other charges is it the our district or is it the student mr bilik the the students or the families pay the tuition if they choose to take the course for dual enrollment so why is why are we listed at all as a district in in this in this document you mean why are we listed in the agreement with gwen and mercy correct um our teachers are the teachers of record so in developing the agreement with gwen and mercy since our students take the courses here at council rock they don't

045travel to gwen and mercy to take the courses we worked with gwen and mercy to ensure that our teachers meet their qualifications to be the teachers of record for the college credit that's part of the work with the agreement that we've developed with them and i would just add to that and i don't know the particulars in this case but uh typically and i believe in this case the tuition amount is a decreased amount relative to if they were just going straight through gwyndon mercy or any other institution of higher learning that's correct i appreciate that i'm not sure that answered my question though i just maybe and maybe this is to mr cox it is it clear in this document uh that the family is playing or paying the uh expenses and not the

046school district yes it's clear that the the reason for this contract is because the school code requires that the um the partnership uh between the public school and the uh and and the college that's awarding the credits be be written down and there are certain provisions in the school code uh the statute that applies to these kinds of contracts that requires certain language that appears in this but this contract does not require the district to pay these amounts okay and that's clearly written in here because i i just couldn't find that but i'm gonna trust your assurance that that's clear in this contract um so i have another just comment about about this so under i appreciate the fact that the credit costs are lower with this agreement and of course going to mercy or

047bucks county community college or whomever is setting up the store enrollment is going to accept these credits whether they're taught on their campus or by their instructors or our teachers so that's good do the families and this would be a discussion i guess with the guidance counselors but do the families realize that if they apply to penn state or another school that these credits may not be accepted again as you said that would be something for the families to discuss with the guidance counselors the um when the students sign up for the particular courses that are dual uh have a dual enrollment option uh the instructors here at council rock explain um the program to them and provide families with information and and the parents can ask those questions of the guidance counselor to find

048out if those courses would be uh transferable to wherever they might apply for post-secondary education uh i'm not quite finished is there a way that we can just have some training with our guidance counselors just to make sure that we're putting that information out there as opposed to waiting for the question from the family because i uh what i wouldn't want to see i think this is wonderful uh what i wouldn't want to see is a family putting out thousands of dollars for uh credit hours and then they them not transferring to a different school and them and then being surprised by that or transferring in some other way so there's just some way that we could train our guidance folks to make sure that conversation is happening it's kind of a disclaimer i think

049that would be great but would that would anyone object to that no and i think i think it would augment training that they've already had but we can certainly make sure that that's re-emphasized through additional training excellent thank you mr bilac the provision that requires the student to pay these costs is set forth in section three b on page one bottom of page one the student submits payment okay thank you very much welcome sir mr douglas sir yeah just to follow up maybe perhaps uh for transparency reasons would it be possible for uh gwyndon mercy college to actually be able to uh disclose which universities credits are transferable for it's it's on a case-by-case basis he's nodding his head now i can't really answer for certain whether or not gwen and mercy knows for certain

050which classes transferred to which colleges i mean that's an individual college and university's decision regarding what classes they will accept from another college and sometimes the answer from a particular institution changes you know from one period of time to another period of time understood thank you if it's any consolation you both mentioned it um my daughter managed to transfer community kind of community college credits to our university there's a hurdle or two sometimes you gotta you know thread the needle but uh it does work i mean i i'm i wish we did more of this not less but it does it does work so well let me comment on that so i think what you said is your daughter was able to transfer a credit card to bucks county community college to her ultimate four-year

051university yes so but she was taking courses at bucks as as a high school graduate on campus or on their online programs all right she was taking them for summer classes and yeah so my understanding in my short really time in this is is that sometimes universities view credit credits taken at a community college after high school graduation differently than credits taken um during your time in high school is that is that correct is it have you heard that before yeah i think that's fair all right so again i just while that may be true and there's you know i know bucks has agreements with other universities and i know we have a matriculate matriculation agreement with mbit and bucks and a couple other one of the birds i can't remember which but um i

052just i just want the parents to be aware and the families to be aware so there's no surprises again i think this is wonderful i just want to create that awareness so that parents aren't putting out this extra money which is not insignificant even though it's discounted without this knowledge mr cox i'm trying to read this quickly i don't see item 3b i'm not seeing and maybe i'm just it's i'm blind to it right now i'm not seeing where it says the student pays it's 3b and it says student students enrolling in fall courses must submit registration forms with payment keep forgetting to hit this button and then it goes on to say the same thing for spring course and the student eligibility criteria that is in 3a is what is required by the statute

053which is why this agreement is required okay so i apologize i was looking at 3a and then subsection b of 3a so i was a little confused by that my apologies thank you i just want to make a comment i do think it's important for counselors and parents to be informed in that transparency i'm a parent who paid hundreds of dollars for my my kids ap tests uh that they got good scores on and their colleges and their universities did not accept that credit i think that is part of of all of this every school is different it always can change and so maybe that is something a disclaimer that you can put in the program planning book um because i had asked that at the education committee meeting is it noted that way in

054the book so maybe just an added sentence that says be sure to talk to your counselor about um whether these credits you know are transfer you know how they transfer to specific schools but the reality is also that you know sometimes that those courses through this partnership are providing things for kids that you can't get in council rock so there may be interest in enrolling i mean i understand generally it's you want the credit but in and of itself it may not necessarily dissuade it if it's something that a child is interested in and could open the door to other things but i think the transparency is what's needed mr odago please sorry two points to what we're talking about maybe when we talk about the school district paying for books it's because the school

055district is already offering these courses so maybe that's if that's what section you're talking about okay well forget about that then um but i would say this if bucks county community college is a two-year university and they give associate's degree um i think they work really hard to get those those courses transferred to and i think they probably do have a list as my guess they have something more concrete and that would be really important to um to compare to the other universities even though i would only think four hundred dollars for three credits is is absolutely a steal but if you can't use it at the university or list the possible universities you'd be looking for then um it would be great to try to get that more out in front of uh of

056the students and and parents when they're making these decisions thank you mr dog any other comments on the board any objections on this all right hearing none i'm going to ask the secretary of record that we announced was unanimous consent mrs mckay thank you i moved to approve the attached agreements between council rock school district and the bucks county intermediate unit to provide equitable title 1 and 2 services to eligible non-public schools subject to audit and solicitor review have a second please second mrs marcel ii any board comment on this any objections to i apologize dr thorward yeah i'm the reason this isn't in the consent agenda i struggle with giving any education entity licensed or indemnity when as a result of any willful or negligent act or a mission and i i can't vote

057for this if that's if that's in there so i i'll just take full credit for why this is not in the consent consent agenda and why i'll be voting now mr cox dr thorward i did suggest changes to paragraph six and five five and six of both of these documents um and those changes have been made specifically the the way it was written initially was the district was indemnifying bciu for bciu's negligence and vice versa which did not make sense to me the way the agreements read now is each party is indemnifying the other from the own party's negligence which to me is satisfactory if you oppose any kind of indemnification obligation i can understand that but the agreements have been revised in a way that is is fine with me it mr cox i

058i appreciate that and i heard that it it's it's a lot of words and and i didn't i mean i'll take your word for it that it's there um but i i read it you know i so if you look at paragraph five of either of those contracts dr thorward the old version was written so that the last word in paragraph 5 was box iu it now says district so what what that paragraph now says is that the district is indemnifying bucks iu for the negligent acts of the council rock school district paragraph six mirrors that the way paragraph six was written it provided the last the last word there was the district meaning council rock it's now been changed so each party is indemnifying the other from from each party's negligent acts in a

059way that is is pretty standard and so those provisions as revised look look okay to me okay um push your button mr doggo i just wanted to understand when when we indemnify people for uh willful acts is that that to me doesn't seem i mean does that mean carp lodge we're indemnifying them willful sounds much different than negligent i don't i don't know off the top of my head how a school district would act willfully but um what that what that provision says in each case is that each entity is indemnifying the other from that initial entity's own bad acts whether they're negligent reckless or intentional if council rock school district were to intentionally violate the law well that provision requires council rock school district to indemnify the bciu if the bciu were to intentionally

060violate the law it's required to indemnify the district from the consequences of that intentional violation so mr hidalgo that's how i would that's how i would explain that to you and then it also applies to con misconduct with less culpability such as negligence or recklessness thank you for the legal lesson it's important that it's out there so we understand this thank you that was clearly understood thanks mr block i do apologize if you need to chime in sir i i've got to constantly remember you're on the line so please feel free to yell uh i'm here and i'll send you a text if i can't get in okay thank you sir anybody else yes thank you yeah just a quick question this is a continuation of an existing agreement this is not a new agreement

061is that correct so we've been working with bucks iu to support our non-public schools through uh the equitable share that they're required through title one and title ii for several years uh the uniform grants guidance from the essa grant requ allows districts to establish multi-year agreements with entities so this agreement is starting a new multi-year agreement for those services does it have to be this long the agreement uh it goes to i'm sorry i missed it here it goes until what 2026. it's a three-year agreement can we is there a reason to have a three-year agreement as opposed to a one-year agreement there isn't a specific reason other than having a three-year agreement with the relationship that we have with those non-public schools as well as with the iu it just helps keep that relationship

062strong helps us to be able to better serve those schools rather than potentially having to change every year and find potentially another provider i think the advantage with working with the iu for this purpose to support our non-public schools with their title one and title ii services is that many other districts also use the iu for this same agreement and the iu then can meet the needs of the students with say one staff member serving students who would whose the funds would be attributed to several different schools within that school it's for stability and in terms of the cost structure as i understand it and uh these agreements do have a short escape hatch um to the benefit of either party the 30 days it's we so we can terminate for any reason within 30

063days any reason at all right that's correct is there any claim that the iu can make it against us for terminating within that 30 days i ask this for this reason there's potential there's certainly three and there's potentially four board members who won't be here next year so i'm thinking about these longer-term contracts that with just one more active board member or board meeting left for many of us entering into a contract that maybe another board won't find acceptable so that's why i'm asking these questions there's no one more committed to the use of termination for convenience provisions than i am and i'm pleased to see it in this contract and council rock can terminate for 30 days for any reason or for no reason whether it's because a new board comes in and uh

064finds this uh concept um objectionable or or for any other reason or for no reason candidly just for budgetary it can it for convenience means for any reason or no reason very good thank you okay so dr thor did your mindset change or do i need to go to a role court do you want to i don't need a roll call i i mean i truthfully i got what i wanted in the end which okay all right so i'm trying negligence so good so here are no objection i'll ask the secretary uh mark that unanimous consent as well mrs mckay please thank you i moved to approve the 2021 2022 and 2022 2023 revised school your calendars as attached to this agenda and dr sanko would you care to say a word please have a

065second first second mrs marcel dr sanko please thanks mr mckee so what you see in front of you are calendars that you have previously approved with some slight modifications the first one the 21-22 that's the current year we're in now as we all know we had a weather-related closing in september so that calendar reflects an updated end date in the school year providing we don't have any further weather related closings additionally we have streamlined the the the the language and the verbiage for the days that schools are closed and offices are closed we've unified the terminology to be used so it'll say on a particular day that that the schools are closed and or the offices are closed and following up with the 2223 calendar they're the changes you will see on that 2223 calendar

066so it'll just identify the particular day that the schools and or offices are closed rather than identify the reason for the closure thank you sir any questions from the board mr adago um i'd like to know you know for the public to know how and why we're doing this and to state a uh a personal uh take on this and questions about how does this how does this uh correlate with equity diversity and inclusion where i think what we're doing is we are excluding all religions and celebrations of holidays and national holidays national holidays not so much but religious holidays there's so seems to be a question of whether or not we're we're being inclusive or not and it has to do with not with bless you with christian or non-christian holidays and you know

067maybe this looks cleaner you know it's much more streamlined like you said but are we losing a cultural opportunity here to actually um celebrate the differences that we have than to ignore them or change what we've been doing for the last 250 years so i probably will vote no from a moral standpoint on the changes to the calendars when we're taking out religion you know we're supposed to educate about everything including religion and including i think it would be an inclusive thing it's a great opportunity to uh to educate than to uh separate oh no i just rhymed almost oh go ahead thanks mr hidalgo and for the public's edification the the catalyst behind this uh and the person who brought this to our attention i think was was correct on this was that our

068calendar was just inconsistent uh that some some holidays named the reason other holidays had no reason listed the discrepancy was around religious based holidays so honestly administratively we looked at this and said we could go one extreme or the other um and which extreme we went wasn't that important to us but we did want to be consistent so if it's the will of the board uh to to go the opposite approach which one of our neighboring school districts does they name every holiday as the reason why we are we're equally good with that i guess i think i think we need to be consistent one way or the other previously we were inconsistent so we opted to go the route of just indicating school status but uh we just as easily and administratively we would

069be just as content to go the other extreme which would also now make us consistent that would be more agreeable to me thank you anybody else on the board want to comment mr bilac sorry um so i'm just wondering how we identify these holidays to the students and the teachers uh we received an email this week or sometime there was a recent recent jewish holiday and homework was assigned and it was um an issue for the parent and i can appreciate that because as i was reading that i was wondering how much homework is given over you know the winter break or a christmas holiday let's just say for example um so if we don't name any holidays how do we understand the significance and the importance um so i wonder if if it may

070not be a bad idea to go the other direction um just so because it does you know we don't want to focus on religion in the in schools of course right but um having some level of um understanding and and uh discussion and idea around it might help a teacher to avoid that kind of issue well we might as well go around uh mr tate i think your finger was up first push the button sir i'm i'm pushing really hard um yeah i i would favor restoring the names of the holidays particularly because i'm proud of the fact that we we were one of the first to identify or vote to make diwali a holiday so i think restoring the names of the holidays is a wonderful idea mr brooks you were close second yeah

071i agree i would like to see the names of the holidays there i admittedly when i looked at this and i i saw this as an agenda item i thought it was a revision because of the weather i actually did not pay attention to uh that change and so uh i agree i'd like to see it should be consistent all the days off but i would like to see the the holidays actually named mr snike or doctor snyder you have version two saved somewhere do you have a version the other the one you the buttons pushed do you do you have the one that you didn't present saved all right i i've got a feeling anybody else no i i agree i i think our kids need to know these holidays they need to experience

072them share them with their friends um adding a new holiday this year is delightful for the community and it gives our kids an opportunity to share that day uh with their peers and and the community in general so i apologize but i think i need one more so mr cox from a process standpoint do we bring this back next month or can we invert these motions uh for formal approval and then via dr sanko in his office we'll follow through what's the uh what's the proper way to go here either way is fine dr frazier whatever is the path of least resistance if it's all the same to the board i'd like to do an approval night and and dr senka can just come up with the next one is that all right all right

073any objections to that you want the motion changed then yes was it ms mckee's motion it was uh are you agreeable to amending your motion uh to in line with the boards without objection i'm fine as well thank you so just unanimous on that um we want to do a role i wouldn't do a role okay that's fine sorry mr secretary roll call please and if i may could i please be clear on the they're on me right now prepare for blast off mrs mckay you're blocking you mute yep that's the phone there he goes mr block can hear us i can sorry i was getting ready to vote okay thank you sir miss mckay please i just wanted to hear the motion in full that we're voting on right now what i heard ms

074mckee is uh to uh approve the calendars as revised provided that the uh holidays will be identified um as appropriate um and in line with the board's general conversation do a real call please thank you andy black yes mark barlick yes edward tate yes michael thorward yes denise brooks yes marion mckee joseph hidalgo yes and kristen marcel yes it's um yes 9-0 thank you vicky keep moving on down please i move to approve the attached 2021 2022 delaware valley consortium for excellence in equity dvc ee full membership subject to solicitor review have a second please second mr tate forward discussion please motion to table i have a motion a table who second that second second by mr odago mr bilik i think this is a valuable undertaking and a valuable program i'm just concerned about

075the timing um we rece recently received a report i think either monday or tuesday this week that was 65 pages there's a draft report i'd like an opportunity to review that thoroughly and have the public review it thoroughly i'd also like to see what other vendors are available and i just i just think it demands the time um between now and the next meeting to review any further comment dr thornton i i had at the um education committee kind of indicated the same thing that um i i this is the first tangible thing the public can see from this consortium to be fair i'm not saying there aren't multitudes of intangible things this is the first tangible thing this report um we've heard comments on both sides of this tonight and and i i would

076like to see this final report out for the public to see to see the good work that's being done um and you know unless this administration can tell me that 30 days is going to matter and that's fine and and we should take that into consideration as well further in terms of tangible things and and i expect no answer tonight because i'm only going to ask tonight it's been a while but when i did recruiting fairs and stuff we we heard about how useful this was for job fairs um we had to keep track of how many people we talked to how many resumes we got how many interviews came out of it um how many job offers were made from those interviews and how many acceptance were i assume we're doing something similar here

077and and that's another tangible that we can give to the public that you know just say this is i don't think and and i don't want to come off as questioning the value of this i'm just trying to you know solidify it for the public as a whole not me personally the public as a whole as as to what you know what's going on here um this report is a big deal we spent uh a chunk of money on it we just got it to to mr bilix uh credit here when he commented on that um i haven't read it all yet i've i've started but it takes time it's meaty and it's not finished it's it's a draft so i'm going to have to do it again when when the final version comes out

078so i get what mr bailek's saying i guess in the end so dr elliot can you i know that we have posted in board docs uh i guess a flyer a preview flyer that has some dates in there with some workshops that one of which i know is being advertised for registration currently there's also a september 22nd date that's listed in here which is obviously passed at this point can you just speak to the time timeline piece of this certainly so there are several workshops throughout the course of the school year so as you mentioned there is uh one upcoming in october that um you know teachers and and our our staff would have the opportunity to attend uh through this membership uh as you said we did miss what was towards the end of

079september uh the one workshop there will be some other workshops later in the year so you know again delaying this um until uh you know after we see the review or until the next meeting uh would mean that we would be missing um some other possible learning opportunities that our teachers could take advantage of mr salman mr mckay sure absolutely thank you i just want to speak in support of continuing our membership and personally i see two separate items here i see the report that's just been delivered to us and i see our membership i see the two of them in somewhat different lights having been a member of this consortium since 2017 we have already benefited from our membership through workshops through job fairs through the opportunities to network with other districts and share

080ideas and strategies i would love to see that continue i think it's necessary in our district we comment on the the the cost of this i believe our membership is twelve thousand dollars i think that is money very well spent it it it enforces our commitment as stated in our strategic plan around the ideas of diversity and excellence and equity i think that we need to sort of put our money where our mouth is and say if these are our ideals membership in this consortium would not only benefit us but would make very real our commitment to these these core values mr odaga please so there was a lengthy discussion about this last week and i really thought all of us uh did a great job of of digging into who we are where we're

081gonna go and and who we want to be um was was one thing i remembered that we said if we didn't go forward with this um membership another year that you said dr fraser suggested that we would have to sit down and really dig in and i think that again i'll set it then and i'll say it again i think that's a really good exercise that we really should do because we are uh since we've been in this membership it's not because of the membership but i would say since since the time 2016 2017 we've seen um division like you've never seen in this country probably since maybe the 60s and uh so i'm not a history buff i'm just just kind of uh you know just stating stating what i'm feeling so my my

082questions were to the administration for this meeting was to focus on what we might be able to measure and that was the uh the hr component of this and i don't know if that was going to be delivered tonight but um what what a and then besides that if this is the sixth time we've been a member of this this will be the sixth renewal and we kind of talked about well how can we tell uh uh that this is working um i believe again that it's not a racist thing it's not it's a bullying thing and we can bully people because of race and this is when we got back to when we did that um that resolution i almost to be honest with you wasn't feeling comfortable with it because i thought that

083we were focusing so much on race and not so much on the core problem which is race is just one one thing you can you can bully somebody about but there's the we have a big gap in socioeconomics in this school district and um that i don't know if that's being addressed and again when it comes to people um let's just say racism for something because that's something that i've dealt with all my life especially with being the first generation american on my father's side half my brothers uh were born in a different country um i i've i've seen it i've lived it um not so much these days but this is something that goes beyond school this is something that um that is is at the home it's passed on from generation to generation

084and i really personally thought that we were on our way out with culture the way it is pop culture diversity the good things that we're talking about i really felt like in a generation or two this would be gone but what i'm finding and to be honest with you is you turn on the tv they are dividing us you turn on social media it's all dividing i think even in in facebook they'll say that one whistleblower just came out that you know what diversity uh division that gets clicks you know things that make people upset that gets clicks it's kind of like another thing when we were growing up and they tried to do the good news there was a point there where channel 6 tried to or one of the stations tried to come

085up with the good news and it didn't work it didn't work so we went back to turn on the news and see what you see every day and uh you know if you are retired you're old you're home and i think about my mom i think about the best thing i ever did was when she stopped the newspaper she became a lot happier and if you don't listen to the tv um the problems that we have are not just in this school it's not i i think actually we have the staff to to champion anti-bullying i think the real problem is is out there in in in the world with what we're being fed and that should be addressed but uh can i make a point of order please yeah with the motion on the

086floor is the table it's the table that's where i was the table they're trying to let them breathe yes it's a table the discussion about the membership that's the motion i made so i with all due respect i i uh this is good conversation and it's conversation that should be had among the board and it really highlights the reason i believe that we should table this motion have that conversation um but i just i would just ask that we keep that conversation to the motion the table and have a vote on whether we're going to tabor i agree with correct thank you mark move forward thank you yeah anybody mr tate on the table motion that's on the table on literally i'm aware of the motion and i don't see any reason to table the

087discussion um or to table consideration of this contract i think we've had plenty of discussion um i was out of town on business last week and missed education committee from but from what i understand there as as i believe mr hildago alluded there was a healthy discussion last week about this contract and i don't i don't see any reason to delay it so i'm not supportive of tabling mrs brooks i also do not want to table this this was on the agenda on august 5th it should have been passed then so we could take advantage of the resources that this provides when our school year started this has become unnecessarily divisive uh the the committee meeting is the work session where we decided about these things and it was through that committee meeting that this

088was brought forward i also don't appreciate a motion to say to to table any discussion because this is what we should be discussing the the fact of not putting this forward i'm looking at what's being offered in october that our um staff will miss a session uh that talks about eliminating stereotypes helping teachers build authentic relationships with students helping a workshop that focuses on child specific responses to situations in the classroom relationship building helping to undermine the negative impact of stereotype threats and implicit bias we talk all the time that we're so busy dealing with buildings or pandemic like we want to get back to helping kids let us help kids this is exactly supporting our teachers in the initiative that we have agreed to in our strategic plan time is wasting i absolutely do

089not want to table this we absolutely should pass this to support exactly what our students and our teachers need what this community needs to help move conversations forward this is not the end all of this topic this is one piece that will support a strategic plan there are other things that come forward but if we continue to bog down and kick this down the road to avoid voting on anything that will move us forward on a strategic plan then we are setting our strategic plan up to fail let's get this done mr block yeah i see no reason to table so let's uh let's vote that up or down and get on to the discussion i i need a clarification dr elliot uh i see him through this pamphlet that i'm looking at that's on

090the agenda limited seating um if we were to if we were to delay this and if we weren't to delay this are we still going to get into these classes that are offered we mean how limited is limited by their spectrum i mean is it um with respect to the the sessions that are upcoming i'm not sure off the top of my head what the total seat limit is but typically they run sessions and have you know certain limits for districts uh with how many how many people that you can send and then if there are additional spaces available they allow more people from the district to come um but again you know the the time is of the essence for us to to register if um folks would like to attend these sessions that

091are happening uh this month thank you anybody else i'd just like to respond to some of the comments uh regarding tabling the motion so i've been consistent in all my time on this board we've been members of this organization since 2017 i don't know if we've ever been presented with an alternative to this organization so whether it's our insurance group whether it's our solicitor or any vendor that we have i want to know that we're getting the best for council rock and we don't know that because we haven't been presented with options so as dr thorward said the report that we received is really the first deliverable we've had very little time to review it it's not a final report the we have a responsibility as board members to make sure that we're bringing the

092very best of this district for the funds that we're paying no matter what's if it's a great amount of funds or if it's a small smaller amount of funds that's the reason for for my suggestion to table this motion it gives us time to ask the question of dr frazier what other what other organizations are out there what are the programs are out there because we may be by joining this membership again we may be missing other opportunities for our students and staff thank you mr barlock mrs marcel or you want to go or i can comment if you're not ready thanks appreciate it thank you so i i said i asked dr frazier last week pointed question if if we weren't to do this where would this land the administration and the district and

093he's and he said it would be a big step back in a strategic plan um you know when i talk to the community i i really view this as the year of the child the year as a kid years the council rocks student and for me going back and redoing a strategic plan that we voted on years ago um is a lot of time wasted when we need to be educating these children 2017 i wasn't on this board but this was voted in um i'm not looking to to shake this apple card at this point mark i i respect it to denise's point uh august 5th this was on the agenda there was conversation then we pulled it i'm concerned that if we have to enter into a strategic planning committee and a conversation that

094where does that leave the things that that i really find important like overcrowded schools bullying going on in our schools bus services that we can't get a handle on that we may never get a hand on um so for me to twelve thousand dollars and i think of a public comment somebody [Music] remembered what i said last week was a no-brainer um i think it's a no-brainer at this point but but with that being said this is the year that this district needs to be transparent to the customer we need to be more transparent to our community in the tax base and i'd love to have that conversation later about bringing the parents advisory council back on board getting parents involved with the curriculums getting parents involved with the library books that are going in

095the libraries and the books that are coming home to our children that for me is a bigger piece right now this to me is a no-brainer let's get it done and let's move on and get these kids educated mrs marcel thank you mr solomon um i appreciate your comments and i agree with a lot of what you said um i think that unfortunately um a lot you know even at the meeting last week a lot of the public comment focused on curriculum um which is i which is good i just think that in a lot of cases um people aren't really clear and they have concerns and so i think from a transparency standpoint that you know i know there was um a parent who said in last week's meeting that you know she thought

096that this membership was fine but she just wanted to see the materials or just know know what it's about so i think that there's a clear need and interest from the community and knowing more about what this is i think that there's a need in our community to talk more about um the curriculum process what it is what it isn't because i think that people are paying more attention because of the fact that we were virtual you know and they're trying to make sure last year and that a lot of parents um are just interested in what's going on they're worried about their you know their children uh whether it's a learning loss or another issue um and so from my perspective i think we need to do a better job at communicating about what

097this is what this isn't what curriculum is what it isn't the report that mr bilik mentioned is very lengthy and i think there's a lot in it but it's going to take time for us or the the board that is going to be coming in it's going to take a while to get through that and to make some good decisions based on that um and so i think there's you know unfortunately unfortunately there's a lot of work ahead and i think the more that the district can be transparent about a number of these topics so that it helps the community to work towards something together i think the better um and so i know i mentioned to dr frazier earlier this week you know trying to spend time at an education committee meeting talking about

098the curriculum process and you know kind of demystifying it because i think that i've been talking to a lot of community members that really don't understand it and they want they want to know more which is great but i think that that means that we need to do a better job of communicating and making sure that there's information that's available because people are interested so from my perspective i'd like to see that and i also would like to you know for maybe for your team dr frazier to think about some ways to quantify the the benefits of that of of this membership um whether it's through recruiting or doing surveys i know i mentioned that education committee meeting and so if we're able to have more information and have a greater dialogue as part of

099the report that we got then i'm happy to to support this and to not table the motion this evening but i also don't want to walk away from tonight's meeting without you know some some next steps that maybe our board you know can agree upon mr salmon can i make a comment please mr lock please thank you um i i support every effort to communicate with the public um faster better more clearly more directly i think that's noble and in a district this size in a community like ours in times like these it's harder and harder but i just want to caution us to be really careful with the words transparency here because i think it conveys the notion that the district's not being transparent and i'm not suggesting anybody means that i said but

100i just think that we need to be careful about this this has been something we've been doing for years coincidentally with the politics of the day it's being questioned this is something that's been on our radar screen for months and it's been put off um and you know i hear the majority of the board here talking about wanting to get on with with the good work so you know let's do that but let's not let uh tonight's discussion create some kind of doubt uh in in the system this is all about trying to do the right thing for our kids in our community so um just wanted to make that comment thanks thank you sir anybody else mr oh yeah i'll be very brief um i view the special report that the consortium has produced

101for the district as a special project that is independent of the membership that we're talking about renewing um and i think conflating those two issues uh confuses folks unfortunately um i have i think a simple question for dr fraser dr elliot does the consortium have any role in council rock's curriculum no not at all and the workshops that they offer and that uh our teachers and administrators attend also do not uh lend themselves to anything that would influence our curriculum mr buck yeah i have two things um one was in response to mr block's comment and i think transparency is a very good thing and i think that we can always strive to be more transparent and just by some of the public's comments whether you call it we're not doing a good job of

102educating or we're not doing a good job of transparency there are questions out there that we have to solve we are a public elected body and we're we're responsible to the public so um let's make sure we're doing what we need to do the um i see the preview attached to this um and and this is this is germaine to the discussion about tabling i see the preview attached to the original motion and an invoice i do not see an agreement however which is something that's out of the ordinary so do we have a 30-day out clause in that agreement mr cox no because this is just a one-time fee for for a membership so you know the district could withdraw from the consortium at any time um but it pays this up front i

103believe um and and that's the that's the cost i'll save my comments on the uh on the next motion um i'll say this um i'm i'm not saying that there's five people well i'll let the vote go go ahead anybody else good oh dr ford i'm sorry um i agree with mark i'm and and i think i was up front i i don't want to criticize the value of this it's it's more of you know tangibles and i heard mrs marcel say it i've heard you say it ed i i i i want to measure what we're getting out of this it cannot be in the ether it's got to be measurable somehow it doesn't i'm not going to put a dollar figure to it but but i i want to be able to tell

104the public we joined and we got this um and and and you know when it comes to recruiting that's easy if we haven't been doing it we should be and we should starting now um when it comes to these uh sessions it can be as simple as these people went to this session and and and provide it you know to it we never asked for it so i'm not i don't want this to be a criticize we've never asked for it maybe we should have this is year five or six of this now maybe we should have just you know kind of um i'm trying to sell it to the entire community some people fully embrace it some people have a problem with it that's fine but you know what what can we do to

105kind of bring everybody in into one place with this you know we we got this you know we tried this we we went to these sessions it helps with you know i don't want to make it burdensome i don't want to make it a lot of work but just some report backs from this this is a big topic so you know how do we how do we show it to people month after month or quarter after quarter whatever whatever it is how how do we do this so that people can um understand it i mean i was fine with tabling it just to try and get some of this in place but i see enough board members here saying they want this that i i think i'm okay with with you know moving forward with

106it it's but these are you know just kind of some things to think about how you know what are we getting out of this so um and i think with anything and i think yeah that was just going to say that i think in today's world with the amount of public comment the amount of social media play you know you're getting touched in restaurants and when you're out with your families or whatever you have to justify it i've been asked where where's the money going what are we getting for it and i don't i don't think it's too much to ask maybe it's something we've never done before so that's where it's a sticking point but um people care if they didn't care they wouldn't be sitting in the audience right now watching at home

107so i think we owe that to them maybe transparency wasn't the best word i don't know but but but let's advertise where we're spending our money and how we're getting a value for the dollar that's what i think is important so would that be oh i'm sorry i just want to say i want to repeat something that i said at the committee meeting it's fine to see how many teachers are going to certain things what i said at the committee meeting is that there are metrics that result from this that aren't easy to capture we do not have a means of capturing how many students feel safe at school feel that they can be their authentic selves at school that they're comfortable at school these are the skills that our teachers who will participate in

108this these workshops will bring forward so the rewards and the metrics that really matter are are very very difficult to capture and i think that i appreciate this conversation but it demonstrates so deeply the need for us to really actively and always through this and other way and other opportunities to bring these things forward conflating the report that we just got with this membership is an issue conflating crt with all diversity equity and inclusion topics is a problem we need to educate everyone and and the you know putting forth everything we've we have written in our strategic plan if we could actually put the energy and the resources and the time and the effort to carry through what we have approved is our strategic plan we will help make these conversations better and diffuse some

109of the confusion uh and you know and maybe you know temper some of the emotion because it's all it's all to help our students and help our district be better these these are all positives for me this is an incredibly easy vote there is nothing contentious here for me at all i hope we can move forward and so that we can finally you know move on to some things that will make a student and staff experience better thank you anybody else yes sir you've been doing this for five years so answer the question that you just asked you know like what have we what have we gotten what has gotten better what have we done what are we doing with this you know have we not had success in the last five years and the

110goals you just said that we should continue course we've moved the needle tremendously since the time i've been on the board so let's keep going and this is one way to do it this has been a successful helpful resource for us it is one small part of the effort that we're going to bring forth so yeah so let's vote and move on i'm trying this is just going to be a motion to table then we have to have the discussion because i did have questions at the last okay or uh committee meeting that i wanted so we're gonna we're gonna do a vote right now on the motion table madam secretary please mark barlock yes edward tate no michael thorward no denise brooks no mary mckee no joseph hildago no christian marcel no it's salmon

111no andy black no okay hey mrs mckay it's back to you back yeah eight one nine again thank you sorry mr mckee thank you i moved to approve the attached 2021-2022 delaware valley consortium for excellence and equity dvcee full membership subject to solicitor review second please yes mr tate okay any board comment now mr daca um i don't see it in the in the slides from last week but i was wondering isn't there wasn't there something mentioned about student material that could be a deliverable with the consortium or my crossing did you say student material or something along those lines something to hand uh some kind of curriculum or something as you said it's not part of our curriculum but is there something that materials that they provide and i just can't find it there

112are a student there's a student uh forum that they hold that some of our high schools participate in i did send the board uh i guess it was earlier this week monday maybe i'm not sure some more detailed information about their offerings it's not curriculum because again this is this is completely separate from curriculum but some some information about their offerings but i limited that to the board because that document is meant for member districts and educators with registration links etc um so that was sent at some point earlier this week okay and i in the last discussion i thought we were having a hard time uh you know determining how you would actually uh put some metrics into the success of the program over the last five years but one part that we thought

113i thought we could would be from the hr standpoint so i had asked i don't know if christine was made aware of my inquiry um but if she could speak to that tonight or not and if you're not prepared that's fine but um yeah i think we're probably not prepared for that piece uh with the turnaround time from last week and uh all that we've had going on since last week mr hidalgo sorry about that no that's fine that would be a cause for abstain abstaining until i get the information i requested last week right mr cox anybody else mr bilock please so i just want to be clear that i'll be voting against this motion for a couple of reasons and none of them have to do with the intention of the program and

114the connection with our strategic plan i think they're good i think it's necessary and i think we should continue that just like any vendor relationship we have i think this is flawed in a couple ways first of all uh the there is correlation in my mind maybe not to others but uh please respect my thoughts um regarding the report and the membership this is a vendor this is the first work we've had from them and i think reviewing this report in along with the membership is appropriate in my opinion this is probably the first time that i can remember that we're voting on something without an agreement um so i i i'd like to see what the agreement is and what exactly our responsibilities are um beyond just the invoice that's presented and i'd also

115like to know what other programs are out there and what we may be missing for our students and staff because we've only had this program i i don't mean only for four or five years is coming into the sixth year i suppose but we've only had this program during that time and and to my knowledge we haven't explored others and no one can challenge me on the fact that i am not consistent in this i want vendors reviewed on a regular basis every three to five years you can go listen to the video um listen to the videos every three to five years whether it's mr cox's firm or any anybody else who we pay uh funds to as a school district and i think we should do the same here so those reasons for

116those reasons and for those reasons only i will not be supporting this motion tonight thank you sir anybody else are you hearing none oh dr thorward um yeah i with respect to other opinions here i i can completely join this report and this membership and and and i'm struggling here because that again this is the first tangible delivery we've tangible to the public delivery we've ever received from this organization uh i i um i i wrestle here because the work is important the work is strategic as we've been told but if we vote this in and become a member and the report comes out and is in the public just chokes on it what you know as a representative of my community what do i say um and and that's um frankly it was easier

117when it's intangible to sell it because the ideas are noble they're very noble um but we're about to be giving a very candid work and it will become public record this report at some point whenever it's not a draft so i'm struggling here i i can embrace the i i do embrace the ideas i embrace everything about this except for the fact that uh especially now and especially in this divided uh environment you know we're going to vote this in and and it will get voted in and then that report's going to land and and and whether we like it or not they are the same because the authors are the same so i you know i i don't want our staff to miss anything so i i in a way i feel pressured and

118we have dragged our feet on this so i i get that too so um i just wanted for the record you know to come out there and say you know when this report lands i mean it reflects on this too whether we like it or not it will so that's all i i really um again the ideas are noble uh the strategic plan is important this is important um i wish the timing was better that's all michelle doggo yeah um see i have a lot of questions the more i look into it you said this is not curriculum related okay so the professional development section of the presentation the scope of the work is curriculum expert uh will work with curriculum leaders to refresh knowledge of backwards design planning so i feel like that's curriculum

119related uh mr hidalgo if i made that the item that you're referencing is not this membership that was one of the items we had in the consent agenda with the refresh of curriculum it is something different mrs marcel um i was wondering dr frazier if you thought it would be appropriate to take some time before the next education committee meeting just to think about some either qualitative or quantitative aspects i know miss brooks talked about how it's hard to measure but just trying to think about um just a way for us to just be aware of you know how many people are going if there's any way to to measure if they see value um if we're if we can somehow track that we've gotten applicants from you know i don't i don't know what

120that is because i don't do human resources i do not do surveys um but i'm just wondering if maybe that's something that we could think about just as a path forward perhaps so that we can have a way going forward to look at this and potentially other other organizations or other professional development opportunities so that we can just look at the roi and you know kind of where we want to spend our money once we have the report it may be that we want to do more in this area or you know i don't we don't know because it's we have a lot of to go through but just trying to think through um that aspect if you don't mind you don't have to speak to it now but i just wanted to offer that

121can anybody else i just have a quick question dr elliot when we asked dvce to look at that and and take on the report that were that that we're waiting on um what was the sense going directly to them was there another was another group out there that would do that type of thing i mean give me just a sense that um is it because we belong there for five years that you felt confident in them i don't know if that was a softball question but just just just for my own clarity if you would certainly so though the work to move uh towards the work that was done in the spring with uh with penn first started out looking much broader at other other organizations or groups that could do a much broader review

122looking at some curricular aspects and some different different avenues the the scope of of what we were looking at to make it a much smaller focus at the secondary level most of the other organizations would not do that kind of work they really wanted to be able to come in and in the process of doing a a review do it with you side by side and work with you which meant a much longer process it wasn't something that they would just come in and give you a report and and finish um and penn uh has the ability and has the connections with uh how they do their reviews by pulling in um people from neighboring districts other experts uh in in the education field to be able to conduct this type of review in a

123shorter period of time and really target the focus on a specific area that that we ask for and to kind of really helped shape the report to target what we were interested in looking at thank you and let me just yeah jump in there on that to augment dr alia's response because part of the irony here and the board uh you'll remember this that in addition to the strategic plan in addition to that anti-racism resolution and a couple other pieces one of the things that the board approved uh at the beginning of the 2021 school year as you do every school year are my objective performance standards and one of those objective performance standards last year was actually this review that uh dvce just did and our conversations about it at the time and this

124is the the part that is full of irony is that it was around a curricular audit and we ended up writing it that it would be a curricular audit or or other uh equity-based audit so our first outreach to organizations uh and i would say we reached out to five or six organizations dvcee actually wasn't the first um they were they were one of the organizations it was first around that curricular audit um as dr ali has said the proposals that we got back uh the meetings that we had were just not not to our liking from a process timeline standpoint or outcome standpoint then we started looking at holistic equity audits and the scope of that just turned out again to be too big so we narrowed the scope just to the secondary level

125and just to course placements leveling that sort of thing and um you know what are the what are the realities around all that so um and mr bollock part of this is to your point around every three to five years and i certainly won't disagree that you haven't been consistent in that there aren't there aren't many peer organizations like dvcee who provide the membership benefits that's on the agenda tonight however there are other organizations that provide the service akin to the report that was delivered and so some of those organizations are the ones that we reached out to um and there's certainly i don't know if there are any in this area peer organizations uh that are local that we could physically attend the workshops um off the top of my head i'm not aware

126of any um but uh but when it comes to these kinds of audits these kinds of reports the 65-page report that's being referenced here this evening there are definitely other groups who who do that sort of work thanks anybody else mark mr barlock what's where's the irony there i'm confused by that term this is what's ironic about this the the curricular piece because you know the the the national narrative around curriculum and diversity in curriculum is very different today than it was this time last year or say 13 months ago when we talked about my objective performance standards and approved those objective performance standards last year because the primary mindset going into that for you know the board as a whole who approved those was more of a curricular based audit a curricular-based diversity audit

127than than anything else and now we're intentionally trying to you know have an arm's length arm's length distance from the curricular piece i continue to grow confused because i've been lectured all night that these two things are not connected now you're saying there's a there is a connection there so no i'm not mr butler what i'm saying is we started our outreach started our outreach started by asking for a curricular audit that didn't come to fruition second option was to look at a holistic equity audit that was something that also didn't come to fruition so where we ended up was a much more narrow look at the secondary level only and course placement of students only so it's not a curricular audit nor is it a holistic equity audit i understand the term irony is

128just striking me um the uh this is a board of directors that are simply asking questions and uh and sharing concerns uh just moving on from that miss marcel made a comment that sparked the question do we not know how many staff have attended these workshops individually or or on average we would have that data i would just have to go back each year and look at each workshop and how many people attended so it would take me a little bit to gather that data together but i can compile that do we have feedback from staff do we do um questionnaires or any kind of response forms from these work workshops so the the dvcee leadership does surveys after each of their workshops and they gather information we have not done a survey of our

129staff in a form to ask for that feedback other than anecdotal talking to folks after they've attended a workshop i've you know know who's attended and then i would talk to them and ask how did it go what did you learn you know was it a good workshop what are you bringing back what are your questions what do you think our action steps are as a result of this so we've gathered some of that anecdotally over time okay thank you anybody else all right hear anything i'm gonna ask for i'm sorry mr dagger please i apologize but if miss um dr elliot i apologize um construction of the innocent classroom is the next series coming up so could you just take me through because i'm reading uh the the write up on it and so

130we'll have two three four five uh professionals attend this um seminar for a series of four and how does that spread out to the broader community of professionals in our school district so this particular series is a a four-part session so typically uh what uh dvcee encourages is that you uh for the four-part session send the same people to each session as a team that the um sessions are connected together i can't speak to this particular session obviously no one has registered for it yet and it hasn't started but i can speak to some other multi-part series that they have offered in the past and in those sessions the team members that are there they do action planning they think about uh how they're what they're learning they're going to bring back to the district

131uh it's part of what dvcee typically includes in those sessions with you're here attending representing your district how are you going to take that back what are you going to share in some cases it's within their building they develop plans that they're going to utilize the information in their building when we try as much as possible to have representatives from across buildings uh to attend so that we can share the wealth and and work together with principals working together or teachers that are attending from different buildings to work together to see how can we how can we take the information and and share it uh from a to a broader audience thank you um this is a good question uh can we trace where privilege checklist came from that's been in our school district would

132could you could you narrow it back to one of the classes in this consortium or some other uh source in the past the privilege checklist please don't the privileged checklist where did that come from did it come from one of these classes through the consortium it did not i don't know where it did come from but it did not come from this organization can you be sure that i'm pretty sure that yeah okay pretty sure good job anybody else all right roll call please madam secretary edward tate yes michael forward yes denise brooks yes miriam mckee yes joseph hold on no christian marcel yes ed solomon yes andy black yes mark bilick no yes seven two okay now we're going to move on to letter m mrs brooks bucks county are you please uh thank

133you um our meeting last week started with an update of the early childhood program um one of the many services that the iu provides um the facility where this program was held last year had a fire two years ago almost two years ago in january of 2020. um so when that happened it rendered the building unusable uh quaker school quakertown school district was very kind and offered a temporary space to the iu uh in one of their buildings and in october of 2020 a new building opened in telford um the well not a new building just a space the space was formerly a daycare center so because of that it was very easy to adapt to iu programming and so there are five classrooms in that building currently two head start one pre-k counts uh

134one for developmental support one for autistic support and in a few weeks on november 8th an additional classroom for students with complex needs will be added the iu has begun its work on their comprehensive plan and that will be completed in the spring as a reminder to the community the iu is providing free covet 19 testing this is available to employees contractors or students who are symptomatic appointments can be scheduled through the iu website and additional locations will pop up in parts of the cam other parts of the county if needs are warranted we had some discussion about the act one index for this upcoming budget cycle the index for the 22-23 school year is 3.4 percent but the most notable action of our of the iu meeting last week was the approval of a

135new contract for four years for dr mark hoffman the executive director it was unanimously approved and he now has a contract through september 26th of 2025. thank you ma'am miss who's doing nbit mrs mckay thank you thank you mbit committee of the whole met on tuesday to discuss items in preparation for our executive council meeting which will take place on monday and we will report back to you next month on that meeting sadly i just want to mention to all of you the passing of mr mark miller a long time school board director from the centennial school district and also a very long time member of mbit's executive council mr miller was a past president of pennsylvania school boards association he really was a lifelong advocate of public education and advocate for all of our

136students i know on behalf of our district i'll express our condolences to his family who will join us on monday where mbit will recognize his contribution thank you man cref liaison mr tate thank you mr solomon we haven't met as a board for a couple of months with summertime and transition and executive director the board will be meeting on october 25 and i'll have a report next month thank you sir policy committee committee uh dr thorward yes thank you um the policy committee has not met however there are three policies on the agenda i'm going to make a motion and then i can talk to you about them i move to approve consent agenda item b as contained in the attachments to this agenda um these are just uh changes and i'm going to ask

137dr sanko to just kind of comment on them real quick but these are just changes based on changes to the law they're minor and that's just to keep us in compliance thank you dr thorward the changes are with regard to the compulsory attendance ages as of 2019 act 16 has mandated that compulsory ages are from 6 to 18 previously they were ages 8 to 17. so essentially in all three of those policies the numbers will change uh from uh will change to six years through 18 years of age thank you dr senko anything else dr thorward so i i we could do a first read second read but because of the minor nature of these i'm hoping we can just approve them and move on because there really is not anything substantive in them other

138than complying with regulation any other comment from the board then mr barlock trying to push just a quick question do we have to be specific in the policy or can we just refer to the current law either which is but these but these are fine and in fact i had a very brief email conference with mr frederickson and dr senko having reviewed these prior to tonight and then reviewed the statute they're in good shape these changes i'm just trying to keep it simple and maybe i'm making it complicated if i keep trying to keep it simple but um you know if we just refer to the law then we don't have to update our policy every time it changes it's probably been many many years since this has changed i get that this is a

139policy where a parent reviewing the policy on the website might be informed by the specificity okay i like that answer anybody else any objections okay hearing none let's mark that with unanimous consent as well mr byalik finance committee sir the finance committee has not met since june we have a meeting scheduled for the 14th that's next thursday um i'm going to ask our acting business administrator to make any comments he'd like to make after i make this motion i move to approve consent agenda items b through e as contained in the attachments to this agenda second second mrs marcel comments of course i'd like to say thank you for announcing that we do have a finance committee next week we have a lot of things coming up that need to be addressed uh next year's

140budget for one thing for sure and uh results of how we've ended the prior year as well the only other comment that i'll make is a letter e [Music] that's really an act one mandate that we send out these notices to homesteads that qualify for the homestead exemption the iu prints those out and sends those out they must be sent out and completed by december 31st so this is something that's pretty consistent where school districts utilize the iu typically does this mailing for school districts because they have all that information too that they can get from the assessment office very good thank you i will just make a comment regarding the next meeting and i'm going gonna look to mr frederickson as well you know um we have a lot of people watching these meetings

141now uh either live or after and finance is always an important topic but there's a lot of people paying attention to it i would ask the president or whoever makes this decision that this finance meeting be held via zoom it is much much much easier to read the numbers on the screen when it is presented via zoom if if that's not a conflict with youtube that's what i'd like to do any thoughts on that we can accommodate whatever works for you best zoom is fine um unfortunately when we've tried to live stream to youtube with zoom at the same time we've run into issues but i'm happy to try it again and if you think zoom's a better format that's fine zoom has added several controls so that if individuals from the community are watching

142and they wish to ask questions we have a little bit better control now we could try that if you'd like to mark i i know i don't have a problem with that i mean that it is probably the one meeting where seeing the numbers to your point is very important to everybody if anybody objects please chime in otherwise that's that's fine with me okay so uh we'll we'll talk on uh monday and uh we'll um maybe do a trial run if possible right absolutely okay very good thank you so let's let's call it a zoom meeting uh for next uh next thursday at seven o'clock the finance meeting okay great any other board comment any objection to these are hearing none i'm going to ask the secretary to record that unanimous as well please would

143you like me to read letter f please i moved to approve the agreement between lancaster lebanon intermediate union 13 and council rock school district as attached to this agenda second second mrs marcel miss taylor push the button our current service provider for this function has discontinued their services we've received notice that effective at the end of the month accutrace that we've been using for a number of years will will no longer be able to to facilitate our act 168 forms which are required for all new hires as they enter the district it is the form that we are required to send out to all previous employers to attest that our new hires have not been um convicted of any kind of sexual misconduct or any kind of abuse of children just very briefly so we

144do utilize the accutrace system to facilitate that process with the discontinuation of their service we were able to find a new provider in the lancaster lebanon iu13 they very um interestingly developed their own program to facilitate the process and the program is so good that they have been able to offer it to other districts so central bucks is a district that uses this they're very happy with it it is actually a cost reduction for us as well it's not a great cost reduction but we will save about four hundred dollars a year in moving over to this new provider and it is essential um to our function because it's so much paper without a system because you do have to send one of these forms to every previous employer so that's what's in front of

145you tonight it's a new solution to a discontinued product at a lower cost thank you thank you mr another board comment dr thorbert um i saw on this homegrown please don't take that the wrong way but a school district created their own and cloud when i hear homegrown or cloud and then personal data i kind of lose my mind are we sure this is secure have we done a security audit on this have we made sure that personal information this is this is big deal kind of stuff um are are we i i just because everybody else is doing isn't good enough for me i have we looked at this and you know when i hear cloud as soon as you put it on a cloud you're at risk um so i i don't i

146don't mean to put you on a spot but i want to make sure real sure that when we put this type of information somewhere it's not at risk we can dig deeper with mr frederickson on that and certainly report back okay any objections okay matter secretary roll calling this then please michael thorward no from a security audit standpoint denise brooks yes marion mckee yes hidalgo yes christian marcel yes it's solomon yes andy block yes mark bilac yes and edward tate yes eight one and mark would you mind taking g h together i move to approve the personnel actions is contained in the attachments this agenda and item h is i move to approve the personnel actions addendum as contained in the attachment to this agenda second second dr philbert anything in particular mr okay any

147board comment on this any objections all right hearing none i'm going to ask the secretary to record that unanimous as well facilities mr tate thank you mr solomon our next meeting is coming up on october 21. our last meeting we got an update on construction projects particularly hillcrest and sulphine stone things are proceeding well um and we got a report on the energy audit that is an ongoing the end room monitoring uh that is ongoing um and i have one agenda item it's agenda 7a i move to approve um i move to approve consent agenda item b is contained in the attachment to this agenda second a second is mr marcel any board discussion on this any objection doug routine okay all right hearing none i'm going to ask the secretary to record that as

148well unanimous consent 8a we're back to public comment i don't have any other people signed up looking in the audience anybody no takers and you board new business i i have a board comment mr brooks so um i was disappointed and confused to discover that there was no discussion of the health and safety plan at this meeting i thought the board was pretty clear that every month we would talk about this so i'm confused that there was no discussion item for that there was also an email from dr frazier to talk about uh council rock participating in the state's pooled testing program because of the timing of that recommendation i um it was unable to be added to the agenda as a for a vote but i did ask our leadership to put it on

149as a discussion item so since that was not the case i'd like to bring that forward for discussion now i have been i mean dr fraser can attest to this i have been asking about our participation in this program for months i understood initially that there was hesitation by the district so i kept following up to see so i was very pleased to see that that was being brought forward to us and i guess i would love to hear from my board colleagues who responded to dr frazier uh in opposition to putting this on the agenda as to what the rationale is for not participating in a program that is free to community free to the district completely voluntary that was being offered as a pilot program that the district said would benefit our efforts

150particularly because we are seeing some schools like welch with an exceptionally high transmission rate six percent of that school has already um are is listed as as coveted positive since the start of school so i would love to broach that subject and see what the hesitation would be about this since the district has asked said it will support our health and safety efforts would pilot it to see if it was worthwhile before expanding it to the district no cost and voluntary you rally the comment mr state thank you ms brooks i responded to [Music] dr fraser and and board leadership that i supported our engagement and utilization of this process and was disappointed that it hasn't gone forward and i want to point out that this was a recommendation from the superintendent from the administration

151that was requesting a tool from the state at no cost that the superintendent felt would be valuable in addressing the covid 19 pandemic which there is no greater issue on our docket right now than the pandemic and i'm really disappointed that this matter is not going to be voted on tonight and i'm disappointed that the board is not going to take this opportunity to provide another tool to the administration anybody else i'll comment from where i stood on this um i think it's an it's an interesting concept i think it's something that needs to be brought to a committee and and listened and vetted out and be able to answer questions of the board and not brought directly to a board reading that's kind of where i stand on this i'd be interested in hearing

152about it i have a lot of questions about it today's article in the inquire is very interesting that a lot of districts aren't even using it so you know it invites a lot of questions and i'm not sure um and speaking of mr cox you know this is the type of work that needs to be done at the committee level and if it's vetted out it looks like it's something the board is willing to have that conversation further at the board meeting then we go ahead and do it so that's where i was on it i did get no response to my ask to have it as a discussion item but it would have been appropriate given the the circumstances and the timeliness of this um to have a discussion yes it could be at

153a at a committee meeting but that just delays it even further and given the timeliness of the request i would have appreciated a discussion item on this tonight point thank you mr brooks anybody else old business mr odaga yeah i uh dr frazier when i went back and thought shortly after my question i i thought it might have been unwarranted to to try to uh just out of the blue conflate the two of the white privilege checklist and the consortium so i apologize for that publicly and just wanted to say that maybe there is a means to the question to find out where that does come from because you can do some research and obviously there's some google searches but i know we're on top of it now but uh again i just thought i

154didn't want to leave leave people with the thought that i thought that there was a connection because i have no uh thought that there was it was just a question on the fly in in the in the uh in the heat of the moment so thank you just want to say sorry thanks not necessary but thanks mr hidalgo and i did add it to my to-do list to uh try to track down the source of it anybody else old business uh just wanted to check in with our mbit representatives we got an email about the health and safety plan for mbit can we get an update on that what the direction is what's new what's changed and what the thoughts of our representatives are we held an executive session during which time we discussed the

155health and safety plan i'm looking for guidance as to whether it's appropriate for me to um describe that conversation ms mckee i would say if your attorney advise you that the discussion should occur in executive session that this public forum would not be an appropriate place for that i suspect it as much may i speak with you individually mary and you can always speak to me individually it's fine i just i is there i think the health and safety plan is public record now right isn't it the changes to the health and safety plan it is there may there may be there have been from time to time there are discrete aspects of a school district's health and safety plan that may qualify for executive session discussion particularly if there's a threat of litigation around

156the the plan which which has occurred mbit is represented by a very capable solicitor and if he thinks that a discussion should have occurred in that forum then uh i'd be persuaded by that and um ms mckee or any other member of that board you know is not at liberty to violate that attorney-client privilege so if that was uh the context of that conversation i'd advise ms mckee who's here now in my legal care uh to keep that conversation private um and uh yes that plan will have to come to a public vote at some point and uh in the context of that public vote there will be good reason for the board this board to learn uh what's in that plan when is the vote scheduled for the health and safety plan for mbit

157it's on our agenda for monday and that's why mrs marcel i believe forwarded the copy of the plan as of today is that right miss michelle yes i shared earlier today the current version of the plan as well as some notes from mrs trouse does it make sense for us to briefly have an executive session are we permitted to do that well i don't know because i was not present at the mbit executive session i do not think this board right now has a basis to go into executive session to discuss some some other entities executive session if that if that plan is going to be on the mbit agenda on monday it will be public soon um and i think a better place for discussion of what you can relay from that executive session

158ms mckee would be a one-on-one conversation thank you and and mr bilac is uh looking intensely at me i i'm i'm trying to answer questions right and if i may i'm not in any way trying to be coy or dissemble about this i i just know that um we had legal advice that was discussed during that session so i wanted to be cautious in that regard but in terms of the plan itself i believe that that is appropriate for us to discuss here yes as long as it's public yes so the issue comes down to the the masking and the um the direction of the mbit so we have we have uh children in our school who have the opportunity through exception not to wear masks for health and safety reasons i i for one

159want to make sure that carries through when our students are at mbit is there is there a significant change in health and safety plan that would affect that can i ask that question i don't believe so at the moment my understanding is that whatever health and safety plan is established by the lea which would be the sending districts is uh the health and safety plan followed by mbit okay so fair to say just for clarity that any student if i'm a student at council rock south and i have a sufficient mass exemption per our uh policy that i will still that exemption will carry to mbit i just want to be clear about that yes that is correct and mrs strauss assured us that as those exemptions are presented to mbit uh within the day

160they're able to confirm that with the sending districts and i i just want to clean up my language i believe i referred to the health and safety plan when specifically i meant the masking directives of the sending district okay that's that's all i have any anything else i'm missing anyone um i was just going to add that i was traveling for work earlier this week so i was not able to make the committee meeting but i believe that um there there may be language um and it may be it i think it they posted it this afternoon so i think it is public i saw the version that you forwarded to me ms marcel so if that version you know if it is public then this board can certainly discuss it i just don't know

161where that institution is in terms of you know it's its plan whether that's public or not um i think it seems like um that miss mckee captured the masking aspect of it i'm just looking through the track changes on the document really quick i think that the other changes relate to i believe it's it's um perhaps the quarantining process but i'm just trying to get to the right page give me a moment please uh let's see i don't i don't see edits to it but i know that some members of the public were emailing us that um mbit um let me see trying to get to the right page i think that they are following a 10-day quarantine so they so it's not a track change um that the quarantine is different than council rock

162but it's it's just it was in the health and safety plan previously if that's helpful so i'm looking at the health and safety plan and i don't see the tracking from the um from the the ascending school but i'm obviously going to take your word for it and make sure that um that that's what's uh what's occurring thank you you're good mark anybody else all right hearing on meeting adjourned thank you you