Council Rock School Board Meeting 8-5-2021

001all right folks good evening it's august 5th 2021 this is council rock school board the director's monthly meeting i'd ask you all pleased to rise for the pledge of allegiance last thursday man congratulations thank you madam secretary can you have the uh roll call please andy block here mark bilick mr bilock is getting ready for vacation edward tate president michael thorpe here denise brooks mrs brooks is away on vacation miriam mckee here joseph hidalgo president kristen marcel here and ed solomon here with that good evening dr frazier your superintendent's report sir please good evening mr solomon uh good evening to the rest of the board i think this might be a record crowd for the month of august i like it it's more than the phillies are putting in the seat oh boy oh boy

002all right and certainly good evening to everyone watching at home as well welcome uh to the month of august uh which means the countdown is beginning as we are starting to edge closer and closer to the start of the new school year to that end i do want all students and parents to please know that our home access center otherwise known as hacc uh will open on monday august the 16th so uh another week and a half or so we'll get that information out to you uh and as we plan more and more for the start of the new school year there is one item in particular that i want to note that is not on this evening's agenda and that is the topic of mass uh or face coverings while i'm not quite sure

003the back story or what's been out there online through social media or otherwise um it seems like over the past couple days that there's been a couple email campaigns on both sides of the issue uh which of course is okay um again though it is not on the agenda this evening uh the board did have a vote did take action on may 20th uh and at that time the board voted to open this upcoming school year with a mass optional approach that may 20th vote had my support via a recommendation behind it and i noted at that time that my recommendation was following squarely on the heels of that of the bucks county health director dr david damsker now many of you know that throughout this pandemic i haven't always been completely on board with

004some of dr damsker's recommendations especially when those recommendations have differed from some of the other health organizations or agencies the reality though my honest reality as i look back with the clarity the 2020 hindsight provides is that dr damsker has been right a lot more than not and not that he needed to certainly but dr damskur has earned in my eyes a great deal of credibility and as we continue to work to make decisions that are in the best interest of our students a great deal of trust which is critically important and look doing what's best for students in adele and adults hasn't uh it's always been the standard but it hasn't certainly been easy to put it mildly to determine what's best especially giving that competing guidance that we've encountered along the way this

005evening i want to be as clear as i was as counsel rock school district superintendent of schools on may 20th in that i will not be recommending required masking for rcr students i continue to trust dr damsker's guidance i also sense that this board as a whole uh stands behind it's may 20th vote and that is why the topic is not on this evening's agenda so again i offer that because there's been a lot of email traffic over the past couple of days um and a little bit before that as well uh that action was taken several weeks ago like i said late may uh that decision that vote uh stands uh our council rock schools are moving forward and i want to tell you that we're moving forward in the positive direction uh we're

006going to focus this year on uh some of the learning loss that occurred with too many of our students over this past year plus and we're going to focus uh our energies and attentions on the social emotional needs of our students which also deserve and require a great deal of attention and we're also going to engage in some academic program reviews this year for the sake of strengthening those academic offerings to our students and how we do and can best deliver them now don't get me wrong we are not of the mindset that this pandemic is over because we know it's not and yes we will continue to be mindful of the fact that some of our students have not yet had that opportunity to be vaccinated as adults we'll bend over backwards to help

007keep our kids safe and healthy because that's what we do here in council rock but you can and you should expect to see our schools and our classrooms look and feel very much like they did in february 2020. as a district we are re-centering individually and re-centering collectively and we are refocusing on the fundamentals of how we best serve the awesome kids who are our cr students from teaching and learning to extracurriculars they are awesome right they are awesome love our see your kids so from teaching and learning to extracurriculars to all the ancillary services that we offer we're going to re-center refocus on those fundamentals to make sure we do the absolute best work that we can with our awesome students i will also share from a health and safety standpoint that dr damsker

008recently uh shared with me and some others the results of two major studies both of which showed that amongst hot hospitalized kids who had tested positive for coven 19 that almost half of these kiddos were asymptomatic and only about 15 percent were deemed to be significantly symptomatic and to quote dr damsker the true risk of symptomatic hospitalization of children is minuscule end quote in my opinion when you think about that coupled with the learning loss that we know occurred here and elsewhere coupled with the social emotional piece all of that has to be weighed out and that's what i've done and i throughout the course of the past year i tried to call it the way i saw it tonight and going back to may 20th i tried to call it the way i see

009it and am i at a different place tonight uh was i at a different place on may 20th yes um what i knew um and some of my lived experiences contributed to those to those changes um and i'm good with that and i hope that that you're good with that and lastly on this topic i want to be sure that everyone is clear uh in that we are not offering a virtual option this year we were prepared to offer a full cyber academy at the elementary level but the reality is that when we did that registration process we only had about one percent of our elementary students who ended up being registered and we just couldn't run the program in a fiscally responsible way and again you couple that with the fact that we know

010it's best for kids to be in the classroom with their classmates and with their teachers so that decision was made a couple months ago to not offer that elementary cyber program what will happen is that our schools will open on monday august 30th 30th as i said mass will be optional and i want to emphasize that word optional um when we open school i expect to see some students wearing masks and i expect to see some students not wearing masks and it's all okay it's great you want to wear wear if you don't don't both approach is perfectly legitimate um equally valued i'm not wearing a mask right now um but we held our district leadership team meeting in this room the past couple days and um as i said to them i'm i have

011one on me and uh if if i'm around somebody who wants me to have a mask on then then i'll put my mask on that's just the kind and respectful thing to do and when i'm around students as we start the school year probably i'm going to have a mask on and the reason being is i don't want any student to feel uncomfortable wearing a mask if they know it's not required if some other friends aren't wearing one maybe if they say see me or others like me wearing one then maybe it makes them feel a little bit more comfortable doing so and to me that's just a pretty basic part of being an inclusive community and a kind community it's incredibly important for all students to feel welcome in our schools to feel valued

012in our schools and to just feel that genuine genuine sense of belonging and we all know there are many reasons why a student might not feel these ways and from where i sit as the council rock community and we all are the council rock school community i am asking all of us every single one of us to please do our part to make sure that wearing a mask or not wearing a mask does not become a reason why any council rock school district student feels unwelcome devalued or like they don't belong while in school if we do so if we can come together and do so together we will do something that i think would be pretty impressive because there's lots around us locally nationally that's very divisive the politics the rhetoric the animosity that

013has gripped and in many ways split apart uh so much of our nation um again as part of our cr community we can ensure that our schools here in cr are inclusive and that they are just simply kind and friendly places to be for all kids for all kids um and if we do that for no other reason than because it's in that environment that we know our kids will flourish then let's let that be the reason thank you thank you dr fraser and mr solomon before we move on if i may you sir agenda wise under education committee um item let me find it here item 4g approval of uh 2021 22 delaware valley consortium of excellence and equity membership um i know that we've gotten a number of uh questions and inquiries on

014that um just today that honestly i haven't even had a chance to really go through closely as well as the past couple of days uh because of that and just due to transparency while we've been part of dvcee for a few years now um in the same manner in which we desire to be again this year i think it might be in our best interest collectively here to uh to table that for this evening add that mrs mckee if it's okay to the august education committee agenda and then um you know potentially bring it back to uh to the board meeting i believe our september meeting is on the ninth yeah and i i concur with that i i haven't been able to get back to some folks that have texted me and sent me

015emails myself so i appreciate you doing that and i'm sure there's some folks in the audience that would applaud that as well thank you sir very good thank you good evening mr cox solicitors report sir mr salomon good evening i don't have anything to report tonight beyond what i circulated to the board earlier in the week other than to announce the executive sessions on july 6 the 19th and the 29th all of them on personnel that's all i have thank you sir from there we're going to go to letter f public comment uh let me just give a quick editorial school board policy uh tonight is going to be enforced with the amount of you folks that want to talk to us and we're going to hear you all and we're going to have you

016go as long as you need to go to get your point across the first set of 30 minutes will be agenda items only and i know that took you a little bit down the different road so i'll do my best to ensure that agenda items go first if i miss your name because you wrote it or i can't understand it like my handwriting just feel free to raise your hand and we'll get you right up to the podium this is agenda items only public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to address the board we would ask that you you limit your comments a little no longer in three minutes please consider the fact that there may be young children in the audience are watching this broadcast live on the cr tv when

017speaking it's our goal to maintain a respectful environment so that members of our community have an equal opportunity to address this board without interp interruption while the board welcomes your ideas and will consider them in deliberating an issue we may not respond to your comments or questions so bear with me i want to go down first i'm going to ask mr salomon if i may dr thorward if your name is called and you don't have an agenda item just wave it off and he'll that'll be fine yeah so please don't we'll make sure we catch everybody okay although dr frazier is removing uh dvcee from there there's several folks that want to talk about it first up will be alex inten from churchville hope i didn't butcher your name sir and good evening all right

018good evening directors of the school board under educational committee heading for tonight's agenda letter g states to approve 12 000 membership into delaware valley consortium for excellence and equity all the school board members should put their pencils down right now and not approve anything further from upenn's dvcee until everyone in the district gets a look at the report we were promised from them why is it that the administration of the school district implement changes without the board's consent we demand an end to upenn's dvcee involvement in our school district and end to diversity equity and inclusion plan set up by this administration we are the taxpayers who paid this administration salaries and we constantly showing up to the public comment about this topic why are our voices not being translated into action by this school

019board let me provide you with some inside baseball into what will be happening once the report comes out it will state that the district should hire a diversity equity and inclusion departmental head who'll oversee curriculum and instruct teachers on how to teach critical race theory in the classrooms and to that point teachers in our district were already told that critical race theory curriculum is coming and that they should start preparing to teach it i urge you to look at the books that you approved to the school's curriculum at the april 26 meeting they are filled with hateful rhetoric that has no place in the school district the book that you approved titled between the world and me is a letter to the author's teenage son about feelings symbolism and realities associated with being black in

020the united states and it goes on to say that quote the main character is confident that white america will continue to plunder not only black bodies but the environment too how could you think that this is appropriate material that should be taught to our children please go back and take a look at the books you approved and see for yourself how inappropriate they are here's some more food for thought we just spent millions of dollars in equipment to implement zoom into all our classrooms so that children who are not in school can still be involved in the material that is being taught that day that gives the kids who are not feeling well to go to school opportunity to not miss any class work and better yet to not have be marked absent and now

021this is no longer an option for the 2021-2022 school year could it be that the administration doesn't want the parents to see what their kids are learning in class parents all across this country are showing up to school board meetings to fight against evil cultural marxist ideology that is diversity equity and inclusion we are putting our shoulders to the wheel and we will not rest until the cynical narrative is removed from our kids classrooms thank you next up i have jennifer gestner from holland good evening hello how's everyone i'm jennifer gessner i'm from holland i have five kids in the district i have three at south one at holland middle and one at hillcrest first i just want to say thank you for the summer program um dr elliott it was really beneficial my son

022is excited about starting the next school year i see red reduction with his anxiety um and he's excited so thank you um so i would just wanted to move on to um there was an email that was posted on social media from our the teachers union president and as a as a formal union special education teacher and as a high school counselor i am unsettled with the letter with part of the letter that was sent out to the teachers and this is the part that's unsettling for me teaching is and has always been a political job if you don't believe this to be true someone did you a great disservice i feel as though in my professional development in my undergrad graduate work in addition to my professional development everyone that i encountered gave me

023a great service and held provide for all my st my students over the years and i'm concerned with how this mentality is being entered into his classroom and how his and um as a union his role as a union president he's leaving him he is impressionable and that he is influencing the climate of how relationships are formed with amongst teachers in addition to parents and teachers um so um i'm sorry i usually don't come up here with notes and i have a lot so um so um let's see i'm sorry for the um's but uh so let's see so um so i like through my educational experience i had learned that curriculum is to be displayed with the students experiences and taking them into the classroom and leaving my political biases which i try to

024stay neutral i i'm not a political person at home and through my professional development i've learned that to accept and tolerate students with disabilities from various cultures and you know in this way it gave students the opportunity to um to build character and i just find that with my children i'm just not seeing that character being built within council rock and i don't know what it's missing i mean with my professional career you know we've had peer mediators that were able to become problem solvers and leaders within in the student body and it also gave them the opportunity to learn tolerance and acceptance of their peers you know um and i'm just going to use some examples like with my own personal experience as my as myself growing up in addition to my professional so

025when i look at a student that may have adhd or an adult for that matter how many times are we impulsive right we might move our hands or we might say something out of online but through tolerance and acceptance on building character for a student that is asian they're and we want to discipline them as students right they um disrespect they are um they show disrespect if they look at at an adult when we're trying to discipline them and um so as a teacher we have to accept that difference um as a as a descendant of a holocaust survivor you know one of the biggest things is that being able to communicate and just express my um my thoughts and my feelings was very difficult growing up and it's even difficult for me to speak

026now but i'm over that but anyway um but you know it's so to get that understanding of where our students are coming from and i'm not really sure if all this is happening and one of the most impressionable um professional developments that i had was when one of my um colleagues um gave a uh it was a course that he gave us um on how to identify uh maybe a student or maybe have more empathy for a student that is not that is of of the lgbtq plus community how how our words and how our actions can influence how they're feeling in the classroom so i'm just you know i'm sorry about six minutes okay but uh all right really quick so um bring all this up because i'm not really sure what the dvc

027ee through university of penn is really about um when i go through that rabble hole and i read it it seems like it early started on with the color of skin and then they're focusing on you know um hiring teachers so we have a really diverse um professional staff and um and so i just wish there was more transparency so if you can give us an ex like more about how that's going to help our community that would be fantastic um so i just want to leave with dr martin luther king i look to the day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin by the context of their character and i hope that council rock will be doing more with our character so thank you very much next is misty

028law flurry from newtown township please hello everyone and good evening thank you for letting us have a podium today i hate standing in the middle and shaking so much but um so yes i am going to talk about um what dr fraser you had just removed as an agenda item 4g but i would like to at least express my opinion since i'm here my concerns um since we as a community first heard about this organization out of the university of pennsylvania called the delaware valley consortium for excellence and equity a lot of information has come up in our community good bad ugly all of it and i know you probably have heard it even even more than we as parents have um and they have been in we we first heard about the dvce as

029um it was discussed they would conduct our equity review of our programs training hiring practices all these different things from april to june of this year and i do believe we have not seen that equity report yes just yet and so my concern was since we really haven't seen a lot of documentation or data from come from the dvce yet that we would we would thoughtfully consider um whether or not we actually need this membership with the with the 12 000 membership for teachers and staff for school year 2021 and 2022 so i understand this twelve thousand dollar expenditure in addition to the twenty thousand dollars we have already spent for the equity review we are waiting on ha isn't in is an expenditure the district has invested in in the past and i think

030you did say that dr frazier and i understand that this 12 000 has already been accounted for in the current budget but i would like to better understand um what line item in the budget this money is being allocated from and if it's okay i will email you about that dr elliott tomorrow to ask that question if that's appropriate however my question is um do we have to spend every dollar in the budget especially when our digit our district has some financial concerns and could any of that 12 thousand dollars that's already budgeted in our education budget be made up for in training options from the bucks iu or could any training be outsourced and offered with money the iu has already been allotted to spend in our district since we know so little about

031what dvcee has and would be offering and we don't know how many of our staff have participated in past membership offerings or what the materials were that they were trained on or the materials are that they will be trained on i'm requesting that the board table the motion which has already been done this is not about whether i disagree or agree with the delaware valley consortium on excellence and equity in fact i personally have not seen anything from them updated except for what's on their face on their website however i know that this board operates by making informed decisions and i think the prudent decision tonight is thankfully what dr fraser had said to table the motion until we can all have more insight into what this would look like for our community thank you

032thank you man [Applause] looks like next is wendy king from newtown same topic correct yeah that's okay okay i'm wendy king from newtown pa triplets in goodness elementary um i've been researching all this stuff and it it's all coming back every it's the same thing different names there's like 10 different names for this but what i'm reading i don't like i don't want my kids to look at peter because he's black or samuel because he's indian or whoever because they're any color and think there's a different i don't raise my kids like that i have a 32 year old 35 year old daughter who graduated council rock and didn't raise her like that either and i just don't want them thinking that they're that somebody else is different because they're not thinking that right now

033and i hope to god they never think that because we're not different and i'm not sure why you want this in our school district i'm just surprised because i kind of felt like dr frazier that you kind of called us racist twice in emails and well that's how we took it and that's how i took it that's how a lot of people took it we were kind of offended and i was like where's this coming from like does anybody remember the lady and the guy on sycamore street outside of starbucks like we all rallied around that so i don't think we have a problem i'm surprised that we can teach um i i don't can we just go back to basics and like teach the kids how to be kind to everybody and that there's

034no difference we all bleed we all you know fall down get a cut you know like it there's just no difference i want to go back to years ago and teach that instead of putting in my kids minds that were everybody's different you got to watch this person and oh you can't look at that person and you know i have a son with autism he comes home on the bus this year and he says mom i don't understand i'm seeing all these black life matter signs we don't discuss it and i said okay and he said well i don't understand mom what does that mean he said does that mean that my life doesn't matter and i said no matt i said it's just it's just a group some things happened over you know last

035summer and you know they just wanted a sign out there to get it out that they think black people are important just like we are and he said well of course they are he says you know what mom animals lives matter too i'm like you're right matthew absolutely right but you know like so he's he was confused you know like in and it would be like colin or brennan saying to me mom can peter come over but oh mom he's black can i play with a black kid mom huh is it okay they're never gonna do that mom this guy's brown can he play with me you don't believe what my house looks like so i have every kid from every nationality they're friends with everybody our kids are not thinking that way and i

036really don't want to put in their head i got one more thing but i guess i have to wait for the end of the it's not about mass but it's about one of our questionnaires for sex ed and it's got to go there's a second set above a comment okay thank you [Applause] i think that covers everyone that signed up for an agenda item if i'm up it looks like medical freedom oh that's iu medical freedom that's fine that's not on the agenda so we're going to wait till the end is that's an update sir back row raise your hand we're going to move that to the second half folks second half of a public discussion we'll get through it as quick as we can yes sir sure that's really just an update from the

037iu i mean mr cox i think that it's i think it's second okay is agenda items the policy speaks to agenda items i think it's referring to items that are that are gonna on which the board is going to take official action the point being before the board takes that official action members of the public have an opportunity to speak about that issue that's how i interpret the policy i mean this is within the board's discretion but uh the way you've set it up mr salomon i think works fine dr thorpe we're talking about six minutes six minutes all right mrs brock you're up first let's go let him talk so we spent six minutes deliberating it yes know what you're saying yeah i'm just going to take it easy on the guy with the

038microphone sorry i'm just setting a timer for myself so i know i'm going to set a timer for you too ready yes you went first or me my mind is already going so i'm the boss okay all right my name is megan brock i'm from churchville i'm commenting about the iu uh what my comment in terms of relating to the agenda is about the influence the iu has on the council rock school district and every district in this county this is something i was not aware of until really this february when i started uh submitting and reading through thousands and thousands of pages of write to note requests i've spent over the past four or five months probably at least 400 hours reading requests from over a hundred agencies to get a clear idea of

039what happened in the 201 2020 to 2021 school year as a result of that we're hours of work i've put together this packet that i presented at the iu with with fellow parents which details how the the iu use its influence specifically rebecca malamus who's the executive director of the iu to undermine the credibility of dr damster and keep thousands of children in bucks county out of schools thousands i'm sure at this point all of you are aware of the 1955 disease law disease and prevention act i don't know if i quoted it i quoted it correctly but in that law it says local boards and departments of health shall be primarily responsible for the prevention and control of communicable and non-communicable disease including disease control in public and private schools in accordance with the

040regulations of the board and subject to the supervision and guidance of the department obviously i don't have the time to go through this 50-page document with everyone tonight however i did make copies for all of you so you can do that on your own accord the reason this is important and why i think it's very relative to what what is going on tonight and to what you shared tonight dr frazier i was really thankful to hear about the stat that that you personally talk about how you are committed and have understood the importance of following dr dansker's guidance i know you haven't always been that way because i've read your emails so i know you weren't always on board with that fair enough right i wanted to say that that um in this presentation i'm

041going to read the first one a quote that i think is really important relative to what we're speaking about tonight from winston churchill he said those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it every kid should have been in school last last fall every kid was going to be in school on june 15th when dr damskur released his guidance i have multiple emails from all the superintendents the iu sent it out everyone was like yeah yeah we're going to school going hey guess what you know allegheny county pittsburgh county west chester delco they all want a doctor dr dansk's guidance because bucks county is one i believe of only 10 counties in pennsylvania that has its own health department of health i believe only seven have a public health director all right

042now per this law legally legally then legally now dr damsker sets the rules and he was going to set the rules and then what happened rebecca malamus and jeff seltanic jeff saltanek did a webinar you can see it it's online on june 24th with sponsor jeff saltanek is a education lawyer he's uh high i believe the union's passba who sponsored the the webinar he also happens to be an elite level donor of paspa 11 minutes totally criticizing dr damsker not a he's not a public health director by the way he's a lawyer all right and then you can read the story of how rebecca malamus took his record his criticisms and spread it and by july 13th there's an email dr damsker saying why won't anyone listen to me kids need to be in school

043and you know what you won't find in this freaking emails no one's talking about what's best for children no one was talking about what is best for children you know i'm not a politician i'm a mother i live in this community i know there are children who are abused in this community i know there are children who have commit who have been suicidal because they've had their lives taken away from them i am thankful for this board i am thankful that you are on par with dr dansker please keep it that way it is the law thank you thank you let me ponder mr siemens you want to go with iu sir that's your name where you're from jonathan siemens i live in newtown thanks for letting me speak now and i'm sure everyone's aware

044here that i've been a pretty staunch critic of the board and our superintendent and i want to just take a minute to just say thank you to dr fraser for what he said tonight i i was pinching myself to see if i was dreaming because he and i have not been on the same side on on this for a long time and uh and it was really nice to hear that his report tonight so thank you for that um so i just wanted to take a another minute to talk about the the intermediate unit and specifically about the meeting last month when our board representative denise brooks went there yes sir i stopped okay that's fine the rule is that the speaker address can is to address their comments to the chair but a speaker

045can speak about a particular board member if he or she wants to or the solicitor or the superintendent um that's within that that speaker's right the rule is that the speaker has to direct his or her comments to the chair so that that's the distinction okay keep it to me then okay there was a question mr odago yeah sure why don't you state your your view mr tate so i don't miss statement uh mr doggo there's a policy 903 about public participation in board meetings um and it says all statements shall be directed at the presiding officer no participant may address or question board members individually and it is the discretion of the the presiding officer of the board um to interrupt or terminate a participant's statement when the statement is too lengthy personally directed

046or abusive so it's it's a gray area but it's it's a matter of you know if um bringing up a board member's name particularly when she's absent is my only concern i okay understood thank you okay i mean it makes sense to object and overruled fine so just so everyone's clear my my view of it is that that that rule is that rule is meant to maintain an orderly meeting so rather than having a question and answer session between a speaker and a member of the board uh or having comments become too heated a public commentor's comment should be directed to the chair but that doesn't mean that he or she cannot speak about a specific board member's vote or position the viewpoint of the solicitor for that matter the viewpoint of the uh superintendent

047as long as it's relevant to school district business so that's how i come down on that policy i think folks have the right to criticize board members the lawyer anyone specifically if that's their if that's their uh view of things so and just to be clear all i said was her name if if mr tayden give me if he had given me a chance to finish he would have yeah and that's why i say something objectionable fine and and next month if you want me to come back and repeat this when she's here i'm happy to do that but we've we've been very consistent in letting this go i just want to bring it direct it to me okay not very tall but i can take it okay um i take it every day that's

048fine uh i hit the wrong button sir i don't know if you're keeping track of your time i'm not um so we will we will guestimate on this all right i'll go sit down i'm sure you won't take three minutes please continue yeah so i'm we all know what the intermediate unit does it provides essential help to the more than 96 000 students throughout bucks county and our more than 270 private and public schools and currently right now as i said denise brooks is the council rock school district representative to that group at the meeting last month uh and this only came out because uh somebody was there recording and it was on social media she voted in contradiction to this board this board voted seven to one back in may to uh make mass

049optional it's well-covered territory when she goes to the intermediate unit whoever not just her whoever would be representing us she's not representing denise brooks and her constituents in her part of the council rock school district she's representing this board and for her to go there and vote in contradiction to what this board has passed to me is it goes back to and i'm sorry dr frazier to pick on you again but it goes back to last fall when the board voted to two to return our elementary kids school to school and then the next month when the plan wasn't in place dr fraser said well i didn't think that was a real vote and this board did nothing about that so now we have a representative of the board who thinks well there's not going

050to be any recurs repercussions i'm just going to vote the way i think we should vote the hell with the rest of the board i think the iu should make mass mandatory and to me i i just don't see how the board can continue to to stand for that and i would i don't know all the ins and outs of the board policies but i would ask at this point if it's possible to have another board member who will respect the votes of this board represent us in this district at the iu i think you should make that move because what's going on now and what happened at that meeting last month did not she did not represent this board thank you ma'am since i'm enforcing the policy this evening for the first time i'm

051going to bend the rule and that's it after this evening agenda items will be discussed first all others will be discussed afterwards not knowing that and you arrive this evening you're expecting to speak so please you have three minutes to voice whatever concerns it is and then you better have a good excuse why you can't hang out the rest of the night i have two children at home that haven't eaten i have three and i haven't eaten either good evening who are you where were you from ma'am thank you for the opportunity my name is julie musto and i'm from churchville my husband and i come from out-of-state blue-collar towns but we love living in bucks county we work full-time jobs and i have late i i was laid off for much of the pandemic

052we volunteer in the community at the schools and with athletics my son is a council rock sophomore as parents we have talked with him about so many of the issues facing our society locally in our nation and globally he is receptive to conversation and forms his own opinions based on his own personal experiences we encourage kindness and believe in minding our own business as best we can we aren't perfect parents he's not a perfect kid i am here today to discuss crt lessons at council rock school district i understand that crt is very controversial and complex my questions are what is the purpose what does it solve and teach i would like to share an assignment that my son received in his reading and writing workshop he was asked to complete a privilege check the

053checklist consisted of 53 questions and my son answered every one yet he received a zero excuse me he didn't answer them he answered as he saw it he re received a zero he was allowed to redo the assignment so he changed all of his answers to yes made up some answers that he didn't align with and just to get that better grade once completed to his teacher's liking he received full credit i have no idea how this assignment helped him to become a better reader or writer for another assignment in the same class my son was asked to write an essay about a politically charged social social agenda it was an opinion-based essay but his teacher didn't like the what what he wrote it wasn't her opinion she sent my son an email saying she

054disagreed with his opinions and sent him articles linked to the world wide web to sway his opinion it is my understanding that teachers are supposed to teach her job wasn't to teach him her opinion it was to teach him how to express his in writing plain and simple she was not following the learning objectives of the class she was virtue signaling in the following weeks i talked to dr frazier and met some board members too we discussed the two topic lessons the crt and crt in general i was told that they would do their best to fight the teaching of crt and to that point dr frazier even confirmed his stance in a later notification to council rock school district unfortunately teachers are sneaking crt-based lessons or whatever they want to call it if you

055want to call it equity and inclusion or however they're calling it they're sneaking it into the classrooms again i ask why how does this help our test scores how does it help our children enter the real world where they will have to work and make financial decisions for their families does it teach our children to value one another regardless of their skin color does it teach pride in our country the usa where you can do and be anything with commitment dedication and hard work the simple answer is no crt doesn't teach any of that it creates division and it threatens the dignity of the individuals it proclaims to protect i urge you dr fraser and members of the board to reject the teaching of crt dei i beg you to instead shift to creating inclusion

056of all every color white brown whatever color you are mixed everyone stop pointing out the differences unite and create an environment where every kid can have a sense of pride in themselves and pride in the council rock school district let them see not the differences but rather see each other for the awesome individuals that they are thank you again my apologies i think that's it good thank you dr frazier thanks mr solomon uh like mr solomon uh i'm not the tallest person in the room but um i too can take the criticism um the only ask that i have and it is an important and significant ask is that the criticism be factually accurate um over time there have been uh not consistently um and not repeatedly but there have been uh inaccuracies stated at

057that podium um about some of my actions so i just want to point out a couple here this evening because to be honest with you when i hear the comments from from a multiple a multitude of speakers here i actually don't think we're talking about different things um i think that there are some language being used um or not um you know that we're just not on the same page in terms of what some of this means i do not want and mrs musto you're right i put it out to the community in plain clear language i recall our conversation and uh appreciated and valued our conversation and still do and as i said to the community in writing as i mentioned to our district leadership team uh when we met in this room the

058past two days we will not be teaching critical race theory we will we critical race theory has nothing will have nothing to do with the council rock school district um so it was mentioned earlier the teachers um i didn't write down the exact quote but something to the effect that uh teachers have been informed uh the critical race theory is is coming to the district um or something along those lines i just want folks to know that that is not the case and that is not going to be the case um and there was also a comment that um actions have been taken that the board hasn't been aware of um i i don't certainly do not believe that that's the case with frankly anything um of of import and and certainly nothing around diversity

059equity inclusion or critical race theory or um or like i said anything else of of import um that's really important to me operating with transparency being genuine is really important to me and when i hear a couple folks talking about the importance of of inclusiveness um that's that's the eye in dei um and like i said i i to me you got critical race theory and then you have diversity equity and inclusion they aren't even close to being the same things they just aren't and and i'm happy to have that conversation i'm certainly not i'm certainly not a you know foremost expert on on either but i certainly know enough to know that they're different things and one of them um yes i very much value in our school district and one i very much

060do not value and do not want to see in our school district um so i just think it's important for me to say that for folks to to hear that because if it's not said then i'm afraid that folks would just hear that and assume that it's true because no one no one at the diocese is speaking up to say anything different and then lastly there was a statement made that i had made a comment last december that i didn't think uh it was a real vote in terms of uh the december opening um that's that's also not accurate um and i i never said anything publicly or privately remotely along those lines and again happy to have that conversation with anybody who would like to uh actually spend a good time with the board

061on that topic and um so uh again my uh the invitation is open to call me email me and uh happy to engage uh really in any of these topics because again there are kids um and at the end of the day i think that we have a lot more in common than not a lot more similarities in terms of what we want and in terms of what we don't want and i hope that uh as i said in my superintendent report i hope that we can get to that good place that is inclusive that is kind that um is a place that allows our entire community allows all of our kiddos when they come to school uh regardless of what school it is in this district to feel valued to feel uh like they

062belong to feel special and all those things and um uh that's to me that's that's what it's about that's that's the whole point of it i don't think critical race theory does that i do think uh diversity equity and occlusion does that um so to be continued thank you thank you sir uh dr thorward i'm going to ask you to read letter g please just a moment to catch up with letter g i got it i moved to approve the minutes of the meeting of the board of school directors held on july 1st 2021. second i got it i need a second you sign a second okay i'll do it any objection any conversation i have secretary to record that passing unanimous consent i'll go back to you dr frazier sir uh well if we

063could uh because we have a couple uh uh well tonight they're gassed uh not much longer uh with us relative to the personnel actions so would we be able to move the personal action 6g and the addendum 6h uh up to now please don't would you like me to make a motion yeah let's go jump in there all right unh sir thank you i moved to approve the personnel actions as contained in the attachment to this agenda and i further moved to approve the personnel actions addendum as a as obtained in this agenda second mr tate with a second we're good yeah we got a second oh got a second oh you're gonna vote it first oh vote for it okay all right give me a roll call please the madam secretary andy block yes

064denise brooks is absent yes miriam mckee yes ed tate yes mike turret yes ed solomon yes kristen marcel yes all right thanks mr solomon appreciate that adjustment and my congratulations to two new administrators in the district we have mr donald bach who is our new i.t infrastructure manager and we have miss vanessa robson who is our new assistant principal and athletic director joining us at council rock high school north so uh mr bach i'm going to invite you uh up to the microphone it's really not optional come on you can [Laughter] he's trying to ladies first all right i know i know which which i appreciate uh all right so mr bach is uh as i said uh joining us as in our uh information technology department as an infrastructure manager coming to us from

065uh is it notre dame high school notre dame high school okay as uh currently since 2013 i.t engineer and systems manager uh and was a teacher in the uh at the school before that uh math and a technology teacher prior to that uh undergrad at lehigh university in computer engineering got all that right yes you did fantastic well congratulations welcome to council rock the floor is yours thank you i look forward to serving the community and making sure that we have the best network possible to educate the children indeed all right thank you welcome man a few words dr frazier man a few words that's it all right also just approved as i said is uh vanessa robertson uh as new assistant principal and a.d athletic director at cr north vanessa is uh going to

066be succeeding mr rob finley who many of you know who will soon be returning to truman high school where he from where he joined us just a few years ago so vanessa is coming to us come on up from the school district of haverford township where she is in the same position as assistant principal and athletic director at haverford high school and served in the same role uh several years prior primarily with athletics and activities director both at avon grove high school down in southern chester county and even further south at the staunton river high school prior to that so again thrilled to welcome you and uh congratulations on the floor resource thank you dr fraser and the board and district administration who's here uh from the bottom of my heart i'm so excited to

067be here and join the team and return home to bucks county i set off set in a path about 11 years ago to get as much experience as possible and return when the timing is right and i couldn't be more excited to be here at council rock school district i'm ready to hit the floor running as soon as haverford lets me go thank you so much terrific [Applause] and mr t thanks for being here as well okay thank you dr frazier my compliments to the team for two looks like two great hires good job welcome aboard you got work to do all right we're gonna go education committee uh mrs mckee please ma'am thank you mr salman um while the education committee has not met uh dr senko and elliot were kind enough to carve

068out some time to meet with me this past week uh we worked on creating the topics and agenda items for upcoming meetings this year our next education committee meeting will be on august 26th now i'd like to move to approve consent agenda items b through e as contained in the attachments to this agenda second second dr forward any board comment any objection hearing not only as the secretary to record the motions passing unanimous consent continue on mrs mckay thank you furthermore i move to approve the attached pennsylvania department of education emergency instructional time proposed calendar and schedule section 520.1 for the 2021-2022 school year contingent of final solicitor review second and mr block thank you and i believe dr elliot would like to say a word about this item thank you miss mckee just very

069quickly uh for um updating the board as well as the community this this particular plan that we're submitting to the pennsylvania department of education for approval is really just a plan that we want to have in case we would need it this particular plan was something that we also submitted last year it is something that pennsylvania department of ed has made available to districts to allow districts flexibility if they need to alter schedules in order to meet the required 180 day and the 900 or 990 hour statutory requirements that are required for education as per the public school code so we are submitting this um with the intention of having it just in case we need it but our intention as dr fraser had noted at the beginning in his superintendence report is our kids

070are back in school and and we are operating as normal but because the state is allowing this flexibility um only if you submit this for approval we want to just have it there in case we need it so it's really precautionary and no other measure than that thank you miss mckee dr any further discussion from the board dr thort i'll start and i'll be a contrarian and ask some questions um we use the same type of plan last year to keep kids in high school sent home early not having lunch in school we used it for hybrid we used it for a lot of things like that i'm inclined to vote no because i don't want us to do any of those things and i want to kick one of the legs out from under

071this chair in fact i'm going to be voting no just for that reason i i think kids need to be back in school and in front of teacher i know that you're that's your desire i am no way insinuating anything else i don't i i just want to take the option away so that's me i'll be voting no just because i and and probably this will not pass or will will pass but um i we need to figure out how to do this in the classroom and and so therefore after watching and and [Applause] mr oldago um i had questions like we're not bound by these these are just something we can submit so that the approval process would be go quicker that's correct it looks like if people could see in the public it's

072just showing all the different options that we basically experienced last year is there any thing additional on here that we hadn't experienced last year as an option no this is this is really just as you're saying mr hidalgo for us to have it in the event that we would need to make a change which hopefully and we're not planning to um by having the approval of the state of this plan we could move more quickly if needed to but again that is not our intention is there a deadline to when this has to be submitted or can we take time to let everybody vet it a little more because to me it seems like i mean the first option is traditional instruction 100 in person and then 100 virtual and then these these mixes of

073the hybrids that's where it might be you know um there's other options besides what we came up with but um so i've been asking for contingent plans of what happens and this is basically what i was asking for i'm not promoting anything but uh what we're going forward with now but um is there a deadline or can we wait another until next meeting to submit this there isn't a deadline the only deadline is once we submit it it has to be approved by the board and sent to the department so we wouldn't be able to um if we would need to operationalize any of this which i don't anticipate that we will but operationalize any of this until it's approved by the department of education so we can absolutely wait if that is the the

074will of the board to do so dr elliott quick question not sure the answer but it would fit with mr hidalgo's line of thinking when we submit to the state do we also need to submit the minutes where of the meeting where this is approved yes that's correct okay so we'd be looking at october or september approval minutes not being so we would be submitting in october then at that point that's correct to assist there i mean if if you needed us to approve minutes at a committee meeting we can announce it and do it correct uh mr cox i mean um we're we're voting minutes i i don't i don't think mr hilda and i won't speak for i don't think the idea here is to hamstring you for for two months i i

075think it's um for a little more uh digestion on that so yep easy enough and just two other quick pieces one this is under public content so just so folks at home know uh you do have access to this uh via board docs uh in tonight's agenda and the only other piece and it's not relevant um obviously this time of year uh so much anyway but this is what we used last year to have flexibility on inclement weather days so um we still would have some flexibility because we got approved a couple years ago for the flexible instructional days uh those fids as the state's calling them but we're limited to five of those uh so if we have another bad winner then you know we would we face that limitation with the feds we

076don't face that limitation with 520.1 and there are a couple other components that um are just you know more operationally difficult with the fids than uh than what we had with the 520.1 but again that's not a september or october thing just so the board is aware of that mr tate i was i was wondering just that um dr fraser that this item on the agenda would enable us to get a sixth snow day with virtual learning that sort of thing so we might use it in case there was a particularly bad winter as you say so yeah and so one of the pieces for instance um just that i can think it's a big one i guess off the top of my head is the flexible instructional days and dr elliott i need you

077to correct me if i'm incorrect on this is uh written and approved in a manner that any day would need to be synchronous instruction um that we could not do an asynchronous day am i correct on that um i would have to double check our application i'm not sure that that's exactly correct but there are some things with the flexible instructional day around how we're providing other services supplemental services for students that that make the the limitations of a flexible instructional day a little bit more difficult than the section 5 20.1 um flexibility that we have that we would have yeah i recall nursing being one of those that's written into the that flexible instructional day criteria if you will so dr just for clarification if we don't approve this what happens again so the

078public's aware so if the board decides not to approve this and we do not submit a 520 um 0.1 section plan for approval to the state then we are limited to only being able to use the five flexible instructional days this year that were approved uh two years ago for us to use um throughout the year and we're just limited to those five and no more than that mr block yeah i i don't have a problem waiting in a very limited manner consistent with dr thorward's suggestion so you know i'm also happy to vote for it tonight what does give me pause is waiting too long because in my opinion taking away any kind of flexibility we have would be short-sighted nobody's got a crystal ball on this board or in the public unless i'm

079missing something that would be great if we did i don't think anybody's got any intention of operating any differently than we said we would this year but at the same time the future is unknown from a bunch of different perspectives so you know if we want to put the actual vote off um for a short period like i said i'd be okay in that case i would suggest maybe you make a motion a table to see if that's there um you know otherwise i'm happy to vote for it but like i said this is something that provides us flexibility so ultimately i think we need it so dr thor just so i'm clear you don't want this at all or is it you want more info i personally feel like and and i've been reassured

080my feeling when i heard yeah but if we do a snow day we have to do synchronous learning not asynchronous i don't think very highly of asynchronous learning at all so i i anything i can do to kill that i i will and and this this this this is this is part of that uh mr hildago suggested letting the public and the board um wait wait a month uh and and and if he wants to make a motion to table it i'll second it um but i don't know that i'm going to move on this one so um whether you voted up tonight or not is is entirely yeah mr old doggo please yeah i mean now's the time to talk about it it's on the agenda this is where we we hash it all

081out because my questions are like uh can is this for school specific like let's say we have to shut down a school at some point would this pertain to that does that count as one of the five days in a school situation in an emergency situation where it doesn't have to be cove it could be something else that shuts the school down one individual school yeah so more involved uh although not overly complex uh so front end going into that day making that decision um and you know for the for the next few days uh yes it counts as one of those five days what we do in that situation and we do it through dr sanko's office is we apply to pde for a waiver for that school those students for that day we've

082had to do that we did it just this past year with a couple of schools we did it um four years ago or so with sulfine stone um i recall so not a lot but here and there uh power couple power outages last year you might recall uh and so pde has approved those um we don't have a ton of volume or experience with that but the ones that we have had those three or four uh we have gotten the proof so then once it's approved then now we're kind of reset back to zero so we still have all five left and that's why i'm glad we're talking about it because um i'm also thinking that uh if we this is just so that the school days count so otherwise it shortens the school year

083if we have to close schools and they don't count that as a day then we're into june we're we're extending at the end into longer into the year so uh are we able to change this once we submit it and modify it because maybe just get something on the books at some point and then if some new technology come up with a new system can we submit that to modify the plan so we can submit we did last year we had submitted the plan um earlier in the year and then when we were making some changes to the schedule midway through the year we resubmitted an updated schedule to um pde to let them know that we've made some changes so we can do that if we would need to we did try in in

084the sample schedules that um are part of the supporting documentation with this this evening to put as many possibilities as we could think of to try to cover our bases just in case looks good um well thank you because i say we're just trying to again be able to if some curveballs come our way we're able to move forward with the state and approve those days so the options are if we wait we could approve and really quickly prove and then approve minutes and get it in and probably the turnaround could be rather quickly if we needed to do something in an emergency basis if we wait and just happen to get caught in the next month or so before we submit something from a covered standpoint you're talking about any well no we're gonna

085have to do over five days we're covered for the first five days and then we're like scrambling if we don't have something in there for i don't expect this to happen either way it's a doomsday scenario but so i would say from a coveted standpoint we are not covered because the flexible instructional days are for emergency school closures um i believe that's correct um so from a covid standpoint you we would need the 520.1 um from a weather standpoint we don't need the 520.1 up to five days um okay and then the only other piece is i don't know how long it took last year for pde to approve this what their turnaround time was that would be the only other factor i don't think it was it wasn't very long i i hope this

086is not going to happen but worst case scenario we're into june with the school year if we get caught before this is approved and approved you know i mean submitted and approved so i'll leave it up to you guys the first time i've seen it there was no educational committee so this is the first we're seeing it mr salmon if i may yes mrs mckay thank you i'll be brief i just want to speak in support of this motion um i know that we all feel very strongly and we're convicted about getting our kids in school physically in the classrooms uh 100 for learning i know that we're all committed to that um so with all due respect dr thorward i don't see this as in any way undermining this i do think that this

087is as dr elliott said this really is kind of a fallback measure a just in case measure um i'm satisfied with the language as it stands now i really appreciate the flexibility that it gives us uh mr dalgo as you stated um we've seen weather events over the summer there was a tornado last week we don't have to wait to see if we have a snowstorm so so looking at those possibilities i feel very confident in submitting this to the state to give us greater flexibility and i would be prepared to vote for it tonight mr tate real quickly just a question uh dr fraser dr elliott if we are approving this item then any changes to the school schedule that we would implement exercising those options would have to be approved by the board

088would it not that's right yeah so any anything would come before the board and we would have a chance to vote up or down right thank you we'll take it to a vote are you online mrs morris are you there i am on the line um i have been listening to the discussion and you know i think i probably feel similar to mr block that i'm happy to support this this evening um i'm also happy to wait if the board would like to discuss with more so um i'm happy to go either way um well i think we got four if i go five then that's probably passing um i just want to make sure that we're not that we're going to revisit this and make sure that we tweak it that there's the possibility

089that we can do that but at least this is a good start yeah there certainly is i mean this this can be revisited at any point what do you think you're risking my opinion all right let's vote it did anybody vote on did somebody second it yeah yeah it's already on the floor i'm gonna ask for a roll call please mr tate yes dr thorward no miss mckee yes mr haldago yes miss marcel yes and mr solomon no mr block mr block i'm sorry you were apologize for that did i count 5'3 yes g we tabled uh letter h please ma'am thank you i moved to approve the attached stock you sign renewal for enrollment purposes as contained in the attachment to this agenda second i'll second it i'm sorry that's okay is there any

090discussion on this is there any objection right hearing not going to ask the secretary to record the motions passing unanimous consent uh letter i mrs brooks is on vacation there's no update letter j mrs mickey i understand you have the mic again thank you um mbit executive council met on july 12th at which time we approve salary increases for support staff as i have updated the board negotiations are ongoing with the act 93 bargaining group at mbit there was discussion about the health and safety plan at this time no changes have been made to mbit's health and safety plan so that their plan is consistent with that of the sending districts there is a new interim business administrator his name is bob regal his name may be familiar to some of you as he spent

091a number of years here in council rock we congratulate jim davey an mbit multimedia technology teacher he's won the a.c.t teacher of the year award and it will be moving on to nationals finally the executive council will convene again next week and that concludes my report thank you ma'am we'll move down to mr tate and the other council rock education foundation thank you mr solomon the foundation hasn't met recently due to the summer time but we continue to search for a new executive director as i think everyone knows gail acosta has done a marvelous job as executive director but she's stepping down she'll assist with the transition um it's an important position it's on the home page of creationfoundation.org and if you're not interested but know someone please point them that way we are really

092hoping to find somebody good for this position of executive director of the council rock education foundation thank you sir we're going to move to the policy committee dr forward please sure we met on july 19th it was a fairly quick meeting there were two policies that came out of that one is on bullying cyber bullying and the other is policy six on meetings which is ironic because we started talking about policies tonight um that changes basically because of changes in state law uh so with that i moved to approve consensus oh one more thing before i i moved to proof mr cox sent me another policy or sending me one policy 903 i believe mr frederickson said is coming your way does that sound right 3 24 i'm sorry 3 24. yep yep so we'll

093we'll schedule another meeting in the coming months for that and at the last policy minute meeting i solicited input from the board on our policies for mbit representation in box iu so they're still percolating too so we'll have a first read on those in the coming months as well sorry for taking so long thank you um i moved to approve consent agenda items b through c as contained in the attachments to this agenda second mr tate ii any discussion do we have any objections hearing none i'm going to ask the secretary to record that motions passing with unanimous consent slide down the finance committee dr thor would you mind covering that as well sure we did gnh so it's just consent um i moved to approve consent agendas items b through f as contained in

094the attachments to this agenda mr block with a second any further discussion from the board any objections hearing none i'm going to ask the secretary to record that motions passing the united consent that's it remove the second phase of public comment and i need to apologize to a mr hogan if i was reading this and i did read it after the fact that you wanted to speak about 520.1 my sincere apologies for missing that so if you would like to still speak about it i feel obliged to let you go first sir all right so thank you for letting me speak i am a resident of west rockhill township in the penridge school district so i'm not a member of your immediate community but i'm here to speak as president and board member of bucks

095county sports association that's the role that i want to talk about so the reason i was going to tailor my comments to 520.1 and i found this conversation very interesting that you guys are the only school board i'm aware of in bucks county that's even talking about this issue at all um that that is declaring that covid rises to the level of emergency where you're going to need these days and that's a big commitment to the school year to like miss mr thor mentioned to even have that option so what i want to do is give you my experience as president of bcsa and just hopefully yeah give you that background on what we did which was in december of last year when a mass mandate came came down from pennsylvania saying that you know

096they amended the existing mandate to say that athletes need to wear mass while they're actively playing sports everybody went along with that including you know council everybody every youth sports organization in bucks county went along with it i'm actually not aware of any across the state that didn't we decided we're going to go ahead and start our own organization i'm not here to like talk about that i'm actually not here at all to talk about the mass one of the things that came out of that that's been talked about widely about bcsa is that we said we're not only not going to require mass but we're going to prohibit them that's like a talking point that i'm always out there with the thing that i want to bring up with you guys that i think

097is more relevant to 520.1 and specifically the parts of the health and safety plan which say we're not going to quarantine we're not going to contact trace we're going to treat this like the flu is weak basically just made up a policy just made it up out of thin air they said healthy children can come and play period that's it end of discussion if you have somebody in your household that's sick if you have somebody that shares a room with you and they're sick if you are healthy come and play with us and at the time i was kind of really worried about that i didn't know if i was going to get in trouble i didn't know if we were going to make covet explode but it just it didn't feel right to make

098healthy kids sit at home while you know they missed their basketball championship game or they missed two weeks of school or whatever it is at the time i did not know what would happen with kovid and now i know and this is the part that i want to tell you we had six athletes take us up on this offer so that's six kids who came to a practice or a game while someone in their household was actively sick with kovid of those three eventually developed their own symptoms in the following days not one of any of the six transmitted at our practices or games not a single one and we keep an eye out for it i'm an engineer i'm a data guy i have like spreadsheets for all this stuff so i was looking

099for it i was trying to learn like what happens so long story short observing that and seeing you know you don't have to do everything that we've done to the kids requiring all this stuff and in particular the thing that i'm most concerned about with this upcoming year it's not really the mass it's actually the quarantine i think that that's the best part of the health and safety plan that dr damsker has helped you guys develop i think it also has direct implications on 520.1 because when you don't quarantine healthy kids and you allow them to just move on with their lives and be kids i question what's left to call an emergency so just wanted to give you that background and thanks for letting me speak again thank you sir [Applause] jeanne lindros from

100holland i going to bounce between the two sheets to try to make it as even as possible good good evening nice to see you hi youtube okay please okay good evening my name is jeanne lindros and i live in holland and i have two children enrolled in council rock as a parent and an individual with an advanced degree in public health i'm here to say that i find this four-page oh of course i left it over there the four page um council rock health and safety plan to be opaque anemic and woefully inadequate especially considering the more contagious and virulent coveted strains circulating today combined with the fact that a significant portion of the students are ineligible for the vaccine to be fair i reviewed your 51-page plan last year and i found it to

101be incredibly comprehensive thoughtful and detailed so i know our district is capable of much more we know that schools can be a safe place to learn when multi-layered mitigation is used however for the upcoming year layers of protection universal masking and distancing are being removed or limited many of us are concerned about these changes and this plan does nothing to inspire confidence in your our community's ability to keep our children safe as such i'm publicly requesting that the school board and the district communicate more details about what has been done and what you plan to do to protect our children i have many areas of concern with this plan but in the interest of time i will focus on a few given that the pandemic can change on a dime positively or negatively responsiveness and

102flexibility of these plans is cited as critically important by state and national organization and is even noted on the first page of your council rock plan yet since the plan was approved on july 1st there has been updated guidance from numerous national and state organizations bucks county has moved into this substantial transmission phase and the delta strain now makes up 93 percent of all coveted cases any one of these individual factors should probably at least trigger a review but to date there's no documentation in any board minutes agendas nor is it on tonight's agenda with school starting in less than 25 days what are the benchmarks metrics or criteria that trigger a view a review what is the composition of the crsd healthy health and safety plan development team that's tasked with monitoring and updating

103this plan on a regular basis per your words when do they meet how are the recommendations documented and are they available to the public and why is this not a standing agenda item as recommended in your own plan i would also like to ask um for further clarification on case identification notification isolation and tracing plans based upon my review for the current text in this plan there is no place and not nothing in place and there is nothing required so as a parent i will receive a letter from the school if there is a case of head lice in my child's class but you are not required to tell me if there is a case of covet furthermore there is no isolation quarantine or return to school protocol outlined there is no clarity on how

104this may differ for vaccinated students versus other students there also appears to be no arrangement for students or staff to have access to free and timely rapid tests based upon the minimal text provided in this document it appears to be a drastic departure from national and state recommendations not to mention our own seawar protocols from last year further elaboration and details must be provided to parents and staff lastly this health and safety plan does not include anything regarding vaccination or testing protocols for staff and or contractors that will be interfacing with our children as dr damsker has said himself vaccine are the best tools to combat this virus at a minimum parents should have access to the vaccination rates of staff at the elementary middle and high school i want nothing nothing more than to

105have these kids in person uninterrupted and have access to extracurricular activities i'm fearful this plan will not allow that [Applause] jen mckercher from churchville please hi hi good evening good evening nice to see you good to see you um thank you all for all your hard work i know as a volunteer in you know our elementary school you guys don't get enough credit and thank you i appreciate it um i am just here tonight to urge you to follow the recommendations of the cdc and the american academy of pediatrics and requirements for elementary school students i'm not here to fight a battle on masking across the board um even though you know as of right now the cdc is recommending that even fully vaccinated people wear a mask in indoor settings where there's substantial or

106high transmission which unfortunately we're now considered bucks county to fall into that category um as of last week the positivity rate was at three percent and we know the testing's down because people that are vaccinated are not presenting as much and you know they're not getting tested um i'm just extremely alarmed that by choosing to adopt the health and safety plan that central bucks did which was done in consultation with dr damskur it provides for no contract tasting no quarantine requirements no daily screening for symptoms i fear that this sets us up for a free-for-all for parents of elementary school students to send them into school because there's no reason to not send them to school and they're going to be masculine so i don't think anybody here would disagree that it is vitally important

107for these kids to be in school in person and i'm concerned that there's no preparation right now for a virtual school option i personally know families that with the elementary school students not being able to be vaccinated as of yet have opted to and the guidance that we weren't going to require masks they're sending their kids to cyber now because they don't feel comfortable um i i feel like by not requiring mask in elementary schools we're setting setting them up to fail i have an eight-year-old son who's not able to be vaccinated yet and the last week when masks were dropped you know i had the conversation with him that you know you're not vaccinated yet i know cases are down but it's one more week i would really like you to wear your mask

108he went into school and i think there was two kids in his class who were wearing masks and i found this out over the weekend i said you know did you wear it no there was only a couple kids mom i said well you know you we talked to you about how important we felt it was for you to merit since you're not vaccinated did you think maybe that would have been a good thing to do to make those other kids feel comfortable and he's like you know i just it wasn't required i didn't want to do it these kids are young and i think we all know that they're not really able to have that level of you know making great decisions all the time that's why we have rules in place for them

109to guide them so they're young they're not the most cooperative um i'm concerned that the spread of the delta virus delta variant is leading cases to rapidly rise i don't want to see our schools close i don't want to see us have to pivot to virtual and by having no virtual option and no mass requirement i feel that that's we're putting the kids in a place to suddenly fail and be home and that's not what is good for them so i really just want to you know my goal here is to say can we at least protect the elementary school kids until they have a chance to get vaccinated so um four mass choice for the other ones who had the opportunity but thank you man thank you i don't can't get the last name

110but stephanie from ivyland good evening can you just state your full name when you get to the mic and good seeing you nice to see you sorry i wore hoop earrings and masks get stuck in them i have the same problem challenge i know i figured you did my name's stephanie nemec um i am a mother of four so i have one in holland middle and three at maureen welch uh my position isn't nearly as articulate as jeannie lindross's because as i mentioned i have four kids so i wrote my notes on the way over here but i would like to second everything that she said and then kind of just add a little bit as well may 20th was a completely different environment for covid rates as genie said things are changing on a

111dime and we need to be flexible we didn't have a rampant delta variant rates of hospitalized children are on the rise rates of kids dying from covet are on the rise this is not may 20th this is august and we are heading back to school and into cold and flu season you are responsible for our kids health and safety the american academy of pediatrics reported today 72 000 kids have been diagnosed with covid in the last one week we require chickenpox vaccine to come to school delta is as contagious as chickenpox we have one tried-and-true measure shown to reduce the spread of covet and the delta variant masks one of the arguments why the kids shouldn't have to wear masks is this mental health challenges behavioral health depression suicide it's on the rise as a

112result of covet 19. as a social worker i couldn't i couldn't back that statistic anymore i couldn't be any more moved by the fact that suicide rates are on the rise and as a mom of kids who have depression and anxiety and go to therapy i am so so aware of the impact on our kids mental health but i don't really believe that our kids mental health was negatively impacted by wearing a mask it was negatively impacted by a quarantine where they couldn't see their friends and they couldn't play their sports and they couldn't socialize so we all know we are all in agreement in this room that that is the top priority right so what will happen what will make our kids have to quarantine again what will make our kids not be able

113to see their friends it's not wearing masks when they're exposed at school and no one is masked they will be back in quarantine cut off from their friends with no virtual option and what about the mental health of the kids who will be wearing masks this year they'll be ostracized they'll be made fun of dr frazier you mentioned you will wear a mask so that the kids will feel included while i totally appreciate that sentiment i'm not sure the kids care whether or not you're wearing a mask they care whether their friends are singling out the kids who have parents who are highly educated on the science behind covid and the delta variant is not right as jen said there were two kids in the classroom that last week of school who were wearing masks

114my kids took theirs off too the kids were all completely fine when masks were mandatory it was a habit they didn't notice it we'd be halfway home from school and they'd still have their masks on and i said oh you guys can take your masks off now but they didn't notice and they didn't care because we normalized it when it was required wearing a mask was normalized i don't really know why we took that away so i'm willing to propose a compromise that i would love to hear the board discuss elementary school kids since they do not have the option to be vaccinated they should be required to wear masks now middle school let her speak folks now this goes against the guidelines that everybody should wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status however i'm

115willing to propose a compromise that the middle school kids and the high school kids since they're eligible for the vaccine that's not the fight that i'm gonna fight i have one kid who's vaccinated so i'm not so worried about him dying if he gets coveted but i'm worried about my three other ones dying if they get covered let me just jump in ma'am you're over three minutes can you tie it up please sure so what will the school board do when one of our own kids gets the delta variant in the classroom and winds up in chop's icu on event where does the responsibility lie and if masks are optional is it fair to our teachers to have to police it they have more than enough on their plates but they will have to know

116which kids are supposed to be wearing masks and which kids aren't and i don't think that's fair to them you mentioned concerns about learning loss when we wind up in quarantine again because our kids are not masked there's more learning loss so i'll wrap it up you said you'd bend over backwards for the kids but you won't just tell them that they have to wear masks you won't just normalize it we are neither an inclusive community nor a kind community when we can't all do a very basic thing for one another wear masks until everyone has had the opportunity to be vaccinated wear masks until kids are no longer dying from covid wear masks until the delta variant dies down wear masks until the american academy of pediatrics and the cdc no longer recommends it

117thank you [Applause] all right next one up is michael wendell from holland state your name where you're from for the record dr michael hedrick from holland i have three children in hillcrest elementary school well one kindergartner coming in this year um yeah i think that we're having a lot of the vision here about this mass issue and i'm here to talk about that you know so our elementary school children are susceptible to this virus i'm on the front lines i see this i'm an immunologist i've seen this i've seen this virus i've looked at the genetics of it i know it's changed we're dealing with a different virus than what we were in 2020 it just is different folks we can look at the rates of infection it's out there it's with the aap the

118american academy of pediatrics for the bigger part of 2020 the rate of infection in children school-aged children they made up about two to three percent what are we seeing today in the last week alone we're not in school now remind you we're in the last week alone 19 of the new coveted cases where school age children this is facts this is test positive so it's creeping up in our children and you know we the good news is we do have a vaccine and yes i'm a vaccine proponent i love them i work on them all the time i think they're a great tool and this vaccine will keep you from getting it's not going to keep you from getting the virus it will keep you from getting sick but it's not there for our elementary

119school kids yet it hasn't been proven safe for them it hasn't been proven effective in them yet and those studies are ongoing and at some point we may have this gray vaccine for the children we may not my suggestion is to come back and at least for our elementary school kids the kids that can't get this protection let's give them the mask back let's use the tools that we have available to keep these v keep this virus down you know this is the delta variant it is different i have seen it in my colleagues from around the world i've seen it impact their families i work very closely with teams in india i've seen it's anecdotal of course this is anecdotal what i'm giving it's not exact science but i've seen very close friends and

120their families and their children in the icu i've seen people lost healthy individuals i've seen children scarred from this virus from this delta variant that is here that is the primary covet strain that we have now so now just in closing i think we do have to take into account you know that this will affect our elementary school kids i think we have to put the safety measures in place that we know work i mean we know it works folks look at the rates of flu we had this year almost non-existent but in closing we have to consider to keep the kids safe and you know making the taking this taking the massive way i hear that it is going to be you know optional but i would like to see this put in place

121for mandatory for our kids i just can't get vaccinated just yet to keep everybody safe and maybe i'm different because i've worn masks for 20 years to keep my test subjects from being affecting my test subjects nobody likes mass they're not comfortable i understand that i get that i don't like them but they are a great tool and i think we have to keep that on the table for our elementary school kids thank you thank you sir next up vanessa smith from langhorne vanessa smith good evening just state your name again for the record please and good to see you yep i'm vanessa smith from lyinghorn do you know that in 2018 477 kids died from the flu we have done absolutely nothing for the flu never wore masks never quarantined none of it we

122lived our lives sadly 337 children died from covid but that's still less than the flu all i'm asking you is that you keep choice i should be in charge of my health and my kids and you should be in charge of your health and your families no one should choose for you we may not all agree with each other's choices to take care of our own health but we still have that choice it came to our attention that there was a survey going around for people who wanted mass to be mandatory so we decided to make a very similar one for mass optional so 5 40 yesterday evening we released our survey for mast to stay optional we gave all community members a voice and yes school age community members too we feel that their

123voice should be the loudest as they are the ones whose rights were taken away we received 663 signatures in a 24-hour time period 21 of those signatures are not see our community seven of those are neighboring school districts who want our school to be a leader and the rest or which was 14 have relatives in cr school district we relied on social media to pass it along one on the form is a written letter basically stating we want mass to stay optional their names and their signature in agreement to mask optional a few other questions like email are they a part of the cr community what school their child or grandchildren attend how many children or grandchildren attend i've printed out this for you to view and we're just asking please all com please we're

124all coming together as a community to ask you to stick with the choice but i have here printed out for you um what we had and as i still think i have time sorry two seconds to be exact a few seconds all right i'm trying 50 50. okay so i'm good um as of right now we are up to 689 signatures of people who want math to stay optional so just so you know i blacked out their email because i didn't want their emails to be used for anything thank you next up michael howes am i saying that correctly good evening sir just for the record could you state your name and where you're from please sure my name is michael house and i'm from upper mayfield nice to see you sir and i have

125uh three kids in the council rock schools uh i recently had one in each so i guess i have a concern that goes beyond elementary schools so i i think there are enough people here and i know several of them who are going to speak to you about the the science and and how things have changed so i'm not going to bother with with trying to do justice to something an immunologist can do better but i i think that we may not be taking paying as full attention to the fact that we have a very hard job here it's hard to be in charge of people's health and hard to be in charge of people's well-being i know this personally because i'm in charge of a team of people that has several hundred folks that

126have spread around the world and i just saw the large contingent that i have in india absolutely get decimated by the delta virus and i actually lost two members a 23 year old man who was healthy sorry it's still a little hard for me to actually talk about this and a 40 year old he caught it from his kids so the idea that we're talking about kids here as if they're the only people who are getting exposed is just asinine we have a lot of things we agree with here everybody in this room wants our kids back in school five days a week in person instruction i'm with you asynchronous sucked it was not a good way to learn we've got people who are actually coming together and saying hey we now have scientific based

127recommendations for when you should actually be masking and when you shouldn't be masking the cdc is aligned the american association of pediatrics has lied it would be interesting to see what doctor dancer thinks about these new recommendations they're not really a lot of dissent here except we seem to be hiding from the fig leaf that on may 20th where the situation was different that dr damsler said that it was okay and so we agreed that we were going to pull that off and there were 490 signatures that talked to you about that little fiasco of trying to pull the mask mandate four days before the end of school guys that was just not cool but this should all end soon right we're not suggesting that we go back and lock down our kids and go

128back to school and do asynchronous learning we're just saying while the delta wave is coming and it's already hitting people i work with in georgia it's work hitting people i work with in florida it's here guys we need to protect ourselves as the doctor said with the met with the mechanisms that we have and it's not fair to say that this is my individual decision i'm sorry that is a false argument you cannot have an individual decision and a contagious deadly disease simultaneously you can't you'll fire in a church you can't drive your car recklessly even though it's your car and you're right because it endangers another person and when you send your kid to school unvaccinated without a mask the cdc says you are putting other people at risk not just the students but

129the staff the people they're going to go home to people who maybe are immunocompromised and can't get vaccinated and i'm with you this i hate wearing this thing but if you can tell my daughter that her skirt has to be a certain length and that her shoulders have to have straps have to be a certain width you can inconvenience yourself with the mask it's not a big deal guys and we don't have to do it much longer in the back just get a little more vaccination and we get past delta wave i really don't think this should be a controversial decision for you thank you for being okay thank you sir mr solomon dr fraser please thank you again just uh within the uh you know mindset here of providing clarification when needed um yes

130we did have dr damsker's guidance back on may 20th um but i think it's important that the community knows that as a school district we um and i personally check in with dr damsker on a very regular basis um typically that's multiple times a week and that has also been multiple times this week so always uh checking with him to see if guidance has changed once the cdc and the aap came out with their uh guidelines uh looked you know specifically for uh changes if any uh to his guidance um and uh again my recommendations have continued to be consistent with what i have heard from him and he has maintained consistency uh from may 20th uh through now so yeah and i'll echo that you know anytime i call dr danster either calls me

131right back or we communicate within 24 hours so this school board member is constantly in contact with him as well thank you katie palmer good evening nice to see you can you just for the record state your name where you're from yes my name is katie palmer and my daughter i will be attending hillcrest elementary this fall and thank you all for coming today and i'm so moved by all of the healthcare professionals that have given us some great science as to what is going on right now with the covet 19 pandemic we have two immunologists here which i think is pretty pretty awesome um a pharmacist nurse and a public health official so thank you for coming today i'm here today in support of bringing back universal masking to our schools remember the path

132back to normalcy is not linear and delta has changed the game last week 72 000 pediatric cova cases were reported in just one week which is a five-time increase in cases since the end of june like my friend steph said this is not may we can no longer ignore the recommendations from the cdc the american academy of pediatrics and the children hospital of philadelphia doctors and scientists everywhere are telling us that unvaccinated children should be masked when indoors at school local pediatricians including those at the chop care network of newtown a network that many of us rely on for our children's health have also signed a petition among health care providers calling for masks in schools i know many of our kids probably see dr cardos dr ursula they are all for masks in school

133we should be listening to our local local pediatricians recently myself along with dr zuckerina katina have started a petition for parents in the district asking for indoor kuvin 19 prevention measures with a focus on universal masking in our schools for the start of the school year i have sent this petition to each one of you each one of the board member members as well as dr frazier this afternoon this petition is to ensure all voices in the district are being heard the measures we are asking for we hope to only be temporary until vaccines are widely available to those under 12 and or that the risk of transmission is once again at a low level again we recently became into the level of substantial transmission as of 2 pm today we have gathered signatures of

134434 members of the council rock community representing 543 children all who support universal masking in schools until vaccinations are widely available in conclusion i'm here tonight representing these hundreds of families who are asking you to please bring back universal masking in our schools at least at the elementary level until these children have a chance to be vaccinated a mask optional policy is not enough we know that the greatest protection occurs when all are masked thank you thank you next up is a joanne mcgurney good evening ma'am from rich bro just for the record state your name and sure my name is joanna mcinerney i live in ridgeboro um and i'm just here to say thank you i'm really here to say thank you to the board uh but i i probably have to say to

135you say it to me you can tell them right learn quick thank you it's been this year's been a doozy it's been really really rough on everybody i don't use the word doozy oh um okay kids are watching you can translate for me yeah um it's been rough it's been rough on everyone and i know you guys have put in so many hours i've watched it at home i've come here it's so really really thank you for all of the time all the consideration and considering so many different viewpoints i'm also thanking you for making the mask optional policy and thanking you for continuing the mask optional policy i do firmly believe the parents have the rights to choose what is right for their children i also do not think that masks are innocuous masks

136are a barrier and they impact our children in all different ways it is up to us parents to decide if we are willing to take the risk of covid which is pretty low for children or if we want to take the risk of obscuring so much of their face i thank you very much for giving us that option um my kids are pretty typical they don't have any kind of special circumstances but they were very negatively impacted by masks this year the social and emotional component was drastic so drastic that my child who was in eighth grade told me that she actually didn't make a single new friend until june 4th when she was able to remove her mask it's really significant and i thank you for balancing all the different uh factors here so

137that we can keep our kids as healthy as possible both physically and socially and emotionally i have two other kids at elementary school and it was extremely difficult for them as well both from the social and emotional aspect and also from a learning loss it's critical that young children be able to see their teachers when they're learning how to read my daughter was in first grade when covet hit she had to learn how to read at home and not really with me because i was too busy it was with the computer and when she got back to school her teacher's face was covered it's really important for these kids to be able to see and to be able to fully understand all of the sounds and combination of sounds that our alphabet makes to set

138them up for future success and literacy she also wears glasses she has a condition called lazy eye and she is at risk of losing the vision in that eye if it is not corrected she cannot wear her glasses with a mask it doesn't work i have tried everything when the mask goes on the glasses go off it is extremely difficult for her she can't see when she's in the classroom and she is at risk my children aren't extreme examples but they do demonstrate some of the unintended consequences of masking that i fear are not always being taken into consideration but having heard some earlier comments today i think are um so wrap it up please okay if kovid were a disease that severely impacted children it might be worth it but it's not if we

139knew that masks worked 100 it might be working we don't parents have the option if they want to send their children to school in masks and they did and i really hope that you guys were able to see the kids when they got to go to school without masks on june 4th it was incredible and some of them still wore them and it was okay and you can buy an n95 mask for your child and you can send them in but i do feel like forcing universal masking is something that is against children and i thank you for being four children and i thank you for all of your time [Applause] next up is bill lynch bill lynch hey luigi now bill lynch everybody gets it wrong bill lynch you're now going last what was

140your name again good evening everybody my name is bill lynch i'm from holland pennsylvania sir i am here to ask that you please make masks mandatory for all elementary school students at least until this population becomes eligible for a vaccine please provide appropriate physical distancing to all elementary students while eating rather than asking parents to make a special request and have their child segregated to a different room the council rock health and safety plan states that it will be continually monitored to include updated guidance from the cdc padoh and pde and that's excellent but to date you have not done so because my asks universal masking and physical distancing among all elementary students align with the updated guidance from all three of those entities in fact my asks fall within the guidance of all additional

141groups including the aap the ama and the usdoe i'm also going to be leaving a petition with you this evening that is signed by 170 medical providers who either practice or live in bucks county who agree with these recommendations rather than synthesizing guidance from multiple sources your health and safety plan defers to a single source the bucks county health department which has consistently taken a cavalier and contrarian stance i hypothetically ask any council rock teachers who are who may be listening if they would pass a student who submitted a research paper with only one source the plan in its current form has the potential to jeopardize the health and safety of all students k-12 teachers and building staff regardless of vaccination status but i am focusing my ask on our district's youngest students students in

142k-6 represent half of the district's student body and due to their age they must begin this year unvaccinated since the delta variant has positioned coveted as a pandemic of the unvaccinated i am begging this board and administration not to strip away the effective mitigation efforts that worked last year for in-person instruction and continue to be recommended by a plurality of oversight agencies in may when the board voted to make masks optional bucks county was experiencing a downward trend in cova cases unfortunately that trend has reversed we currently have substantial spread in addition to the presence of the highly infectious delta variant even dr damster was quoted on levittown.levittownnow.com as positing part of the reason cases could be rising is that restrictions are gone this has been and continues to be a very real global pandemic

143effective mitigation strategies are not an affront to personal freedoms no matter how many times that's repeated with freedom comes responsibility during a pandemic we all share the burden of keeping each other safe none of us want this none of us enjoy this and the longer we indulge the belief that some of us can simply opt out the longer it will take all of us to truly put this behind us the board has communicated consistently that you remain ready to pivot and the time to pivot is now before our children start school and before things get worse vote to make masks universal in physical distancing during meals mandatory and elementary schools provide effective layers of mitigation for the youngest students in this district who are ineligible to get a vaccine it's possible that this would not

144be the popular choice but that is irrelevant because it will be the right choice you will show our community and our children what courageous informed and compassionate leadership looks like thank you thank you next up is natasha from newtown you're going last you were bad good evening just state your name and where you're from please natasha from newtown i'm going to go off of my script a little bit because i want to say thank you for acknowledging the importance of following local guidance what happens in new york florida other countries is irrelevant what the cdc guidance provides is much less relevant than what the local community is experiencing okay i also want to address what the dr frazier you said about being factual because half the people here are not being factual the delta variant

145if you call the pharmacies around here they're not testing for it so i'm not sure where we're getting the delta variant from okay i call them chop i go to choppa if you call chop they refer to the extra throat all of last year they refer to covert as a mild disease in children mild again i don't know what these folks are talking about the aap that um some folks are mentioning here is sponsored by pfizer interestingly enough when that started to circle it around uh that went off of their website but we have screenshots so that's okay it's all captured um so if we're trying to follow the recommendations of all of these professionals we need to follow the recommendations of factual and honest professionals not cnn so maths do need to be optional

146because they were required all last year and they were beyond what i can say it's actually interesting to watch the people come up here with masks take them off put them on on public property and not sanitize so i don't know if maybe i'm catching clothes from people over here if the adults can't wear them right i don't know what the kids are doing i but being vaccinated you can spread it just like everybody else all right that's pretty factual right okay so i will finish this so they do need to stay optional we we've already put up with the mandates of last year and we supported those who felt uncomfortable the same people who are asking for the mass to be permanent or whatever they want to call it are the people who didn't

147want the schools to open either and now they're sending their kids to schools they're eliminating the six feet that they fought for and yet they want us to still say well if you feel uncomfortable you have to make you have to force your kids i don't have to force my kids to do anything okay and neither do they it's that's just not right so i'm going to leave it here because i was much calmer when dr frazier spoke and then i listened to the lies and the lies and lies and by the way for those of you who are referring to data this is bucks county department of health you could like if you'd like to i've been looking at these numbers there was zero deaths over a seven day period as of august 1st

148i think that might have been one or two there's three people in ventilators in a community of six hundred fifty thousand three people in ventilators okay 10 people are hospitalized 650 000 i'm sorry that is not substantial i don't care what the cdc says next up is justin holzen from newtown quitter jennifer oh from newtown how do you say that you're going to say it again when you get to the mic too blame the husband right husband's lebanese my name is easier okay welcome good evening thank you very much good evening um and for the record i am also a healthcare professional we are here tonight to thank you and to encourage you to stay the course with the currently proposed health and safety plan that follows the guidelines of dr damsker our bucks county

149health director thank you dr frazier for your opening comments and support for this reasonable decision understandably the community is anxious with the rise of coveted case counts cases these numbers of course will continue to fluctuate as circumstances and seasons change but let's keep some perspective according to the bucks county coveted tracker we had eight deaths contributed to covid in the month of july eight deaths in a population of over 650 000 people everyone of eligible vaccination age has been able to get the vaccine if they choose to do so covid endemic is not a temporary situation it is not going to be over anytime soon the delta variant is only one out of 160 variants according to the who more will continue to evolve that is how viruses survive we must adapt and provide our

150children with as much normalcy as possible wearing a cloth or a paper covering over your face is not normal it is dehumanizing damaging and they do not work there are no randomized scientific trials that support the use of a paper or a cloth face mask to prevent the spread of microscopic viral particles for this we have presented many many articles to you over the last few months luckily though there is an option for these parents who want to know that their own children are protected from the sarge kobe dupri virus they're called n95 masks they are available and they are proven to work scientifically to prevent viral spread in order to wear them properly you must wear them with the two very tight straps around your face it's basically like breathing through fiberglass but they

151do work um and you may not use them repeatedly you can only use them one time they are disposable and thrown away after each use so just for your knowledge the budget that you'll need for this uh to supply one child with one mask for every day of the school year will range between 360 to 1880 per child depending on the market rates and that is your best option that is a great option you can send to your child and an n95 mask i've made copies for you of data those collected by k-12 schools for mitigation and in-person student density on the covet 19 school response dashboard hundreds of thousands of data points have been collected from 49 states showing the reality of student masking with transmission outcomes also with distance and density mitigations the

152data shows that none of these efforts have worked to slow an impact on reducing the transmission of this kobe 2 virus i printed the graphics as large as i could for you i'm sorry the print's tiny i tried to write the numbers down for you so you could read it and i also put the source for the website on the bottom but the reality is doesn't matter how much we talk and want to make ourselves feel more comfortable these measures do not work so just because some people may feel a false sense of comfort by the visual of a covering a nose of a covering over the mouth and nose of the general public does not mean that it's actually effective i'm amazing um these are likely the same parents who feel comforted by the

153thought of vaccinating their children with an experimental injection the reality is not everyone is going to be vaccinated so we cannot wait for that i would like to encourage those parents who would like their children mass to send their own children in with an n95 mask and leave the decisions appropriately to parents over their own children thank you for your time thank you i'm not gonna even attempt the full name griselda from holland can you state your full name and where you're from for the record please sure my name is griselda zugrino catania and i have lived in holland since 2014 my family and i moved here soon after i finished my phd in immunology at yale because of the excellent schools i'm here today to advocate for the safety of my daughter who's entering

154second grade at rolling hills elementary i'm also representing other like-minded families in the district um like katie said in just four days we've collected signatures and support from over 430 families in our community representing 540 children we're just moms we don't know what we're doing but you know we spread the word and got some signatures not everyone can be here or feels comfortable being here we ask for your leadership in spite of political pressure as this is not a political issue but a matter of public health and safety cases are going up the delta variant has changed the game and recent guidance from the cdc american academy of pediatrics and pennsylvania's department of health are all recommending masks as part of mitigation in schools based on case levels i am here to ask you to

155consider implementing mitigation measures recommended by the cdc in at least a temporary measure until vaccines are available to children under 12 and or based on the level of community transmission the epidemiology of where we are today has changed from the end of the last school year the cdc coveted tracker lists county as an area of substantial community transmission that's only one level below high which is their highest ranking the delta variant is much more transmissible than previous variants infections in bucks county have increased roughly tenfold in the past month alone delta is as contagious as chickenpox without mitigation on average one person will infect eight to nine other people with delta this is much higher than previous variants which infected about two other people the science on covet in kids is clear children can be

156infected with sars kovi too can get sick with and die of covid19 have lasting covets symptoms a lancet study showed that about 4.4 percent of children had symptoms 28 days later that's one in 23 kids so if you know everyone is not wearing masks that's like you know one kid in every classroom have like having long covered and can spread the virus to others covet is responsible for more pediatric complications and in-hospital deaths than seasonal influenza we shouldn't ask our young kids and their parents to choose between going to school and staying healthy and safe young kids will be eligible soon right within the next few months we should give them the opportunity to be vaccinated before asking them to enter our schools and classrooms unprotected experts support masking the facts are clear maths are

157not harmful to children mass do significantly reduce disease transmission i wear a mask mainly to protect those around me when our personal decisions affect others we cross the line where the public good outweighs personal choice having an option to wear a mask in an indoor setting where most people are not wearing them is not enough evidence from the cdc shows that the relatively low levels of infections in kids seen during the last school year were in part the result of widespread mitigation efforts in schools including mass mandates masking for the unvaccinated is in line with the newest guidance and i'm asking you to listen to the experts follow the science revisit the health and safety plan and reconsider the decision to make mass optional at least six to eight weeks after our kids under age

15812 have a vaccine or plan to add or reduce mitigation efforts at delineated local case rates so action can be taken swiftly thank you for your time thank you [Applause] mr lindros you're on here twice are you speaking again or did you just sign twice so i'm going to cross you off of this thank you i just want to double check with you you're good uh mr jonathan siemens good evening again he's back i'm jonathan siemens i live in newtown i have two kids one going into north another going into uh newtown middle when i hear about the mass mandate i i think of the gentleman that was here i think it was at the june meeting who told us all about the story of his his special needs daughter who because of the mass

159mandate couldn't wear her hearing aids and like he talked to us through tears about how difficult that was to see her go through the pain that she had to go through and and to say that this is a simple equation of well everybody wear a mask or nobody wear a mask or there's a choice it's never that simple and there's people like that that are caught in the middle and and what does somebody like that do if there's no choice um and you know for everybody that comes up here we can find doctors or organizations that will support our point of view um you know the cdc's been all over the map i'm not sure why anybody would believe what they say now but um same with the america american academy of pediatrics uh i

160think we all can agree maybe maybe we can all agree that johns hopkins university is maybe a leading medical organization in the world and the doctor there marty mccary he thinks that mass are a waste of time and his group there did studies on covet deaths and i would urge everybody to look it up for children and found that there were exactly zero covet deaths of children in the united states that did not have an other another condition such as leukemia nobody without an underlying condition that was under the age of 18 died from covert the united states in 2020 so i would i would again don't take my word for it go to the johns hopkins website and look for it there um and in the end mass is as great as the proponents

161of mass say they are you still have that choice you can wear masks you can let your kids wear a mask i'm not co-parenting with the school board and the administration of this district for my kids i should have the choice on whether or not my kids can wear a mask and my kids should have that choice and and just finally quite honestly you know i said something about the what i think about the cdc and the aap and those are just guidelines they're not constitutional rights they're not the natural laws of mankind that we are all born with and to say that oh it's just a mask no it's not um and to a lot of people it's not that simple and i do appreciate the fact that this board is giving us the

162choice and i hope that you stand strong in that regard thanks christine esposito please good evening good evening i just wanted to thank you um dr frieza for your comments we had emailed actually a week ago i think when i wrote to the board and to you expressing my opinion about keeping the mass optional i'm a concerned mother of a fourth grader and a kindergarten at maureen welch elementary and i'm here to ask you to maintain the health and safety plan that was voted on earlier this summer which gives parents the option to decide to mask their children or not i just said i had emailed with you and and how you said that you have grown to trust dr damsker and i really appreciate that as he has been right most of the time

163um i'm asking you and the board to continue following the local guidance as these officials are on the ground near us and have the pulse of the community and health of our neighbors the issue comes down to an understanding of positive and negative rights a negative right imposes on another a negative duty to not do something to another person if i have this right as a community member all is asked of you is to refrain from blocking me it's called liberty positive rights impose a positive duty a duty to act in a specific way or provide a good or service if i have this right you respect it by complying or giving me whatever it is this is called entitlement other neighbors are not entitled to have me or any other parent mask our children

164against our will however you have the liberty to choose to mask yourself and your family and i support that no one should interfere with you doing that in the end of the day this is a personal and medical decision that should be made by the family or in consultation with the family doctor and this is not a one variable issue and families need to weigh all the factors to make this decision and i just want you to want to thank you all for respecting the liberty of our neighbors and allowing families to make the decision that is right for them thank you [Applause] is there a wendy here from newtown do you need to speak again ma'am or was that the first oh you're speaking again wendy from newtown okay i i think that whatever

165our department of health director says if he says to us in a month from now look guys we really need to mask again i don't think any of us are going to have a problem with that because he's telling us but i don't want anybody else to tell me my son with autism needs facial expression he didn't have it his year was horrible i don't want to go through that again because i can't go through that again but that's not the other thing so the other thing is is you guys did you know that this like sex ed paperwork that was going around or during the year like the things that it said like things i can't even repeat to you was on this from council rock for eighth ninth and tenth grade i'm not

166sure well i'd have to bleep a lot if i told you i can't say because i don't know if there's kids watching you know yeah let's let's err on the side of caution yeah please um if you were to contact me directly that would uh yeah we can't have this okay it's this is actually something a child predator would say to somebody online okay yeah that's yeah yeah yeah let's leave it with that see your tv please yeah we can do it so as far as masking i'm not for it i mean look if if if we had to do it again because our you know our director health department director said we did like you know i trust him but i'm not doing it for somebody else you know i mean i'll go with

167him i don't know where these 19 000 kids dying from it that was brought up because the only thing i saw was today on the news that there was like 30 000 at the border with with covid but i also my brother's also a er doctor in arizona and i asked him i said how do you get this test how do you know if you have the delta he said there's no test for that i said well then how can they call it that if there's no test how do you call it that he's like i'm not sure i'm not sure what's going on so if you don't have a test you can't give it a name i don't think i mean logically but i'll send you that and show you please thank you next

168up i have a scott han hand finger good evening sir uh good evening thank you for having us um scott hanfinger i'm from holland pa and i'm here tonight to express support for changing the health and safety plan to have mandatory masking in elementary school level i'm not asking for hybrid or virtual learning or anything like that all i'm asking for is a mitigation plan for the students who are on vaccine ineligible to receive a vaccine and until the time that students can get the vaccine and have it fully kick in math should be required in the elementary school level um we've seen tonight this is a pretty touchy subject for a lot of people um and you're gonna you know you're gonna hear stats about no kids died from covid um and they don't

169get sick from covid and then you'll read an article about a children's hospital that is overflowing with uh cove pediatric covet patients um so you're right like we're gonna see all sorts of statistics um on both sides of the argument here we could really do this all night but at the end of the day it comes down to a decision that this board has to make about how they're going to proceed with the upcoming year for students and the board is making a decision to essentially host an experiment on the students in the elementary school level you could either go safety first and have mitigation or you could have no mitigation which is essentially what we have right now and we're going to find out in a couple of weeks who's right and who's wrong

170about this so hopefully nobody gets sick i don't want that to happen to anybody i want all these kids to be in school but we're going to find out in a couple of weeks what's going on here um and hopefully i'm wrong um so we're gonna see so anything that you know i just feel like this is a preventable situation and we're gonna find out so all right that's all i got all right thank you sir [Applause] next up is uh michael hedrick from holland okay thank you okay we'll go to the next one loretta did you just uninsert i do not see you on here but happy to hear from you come on up just take your name where you're from please michael mandel from holland okay um i had a prepared statement uh

171but most of the people who uh agree with me kind of went over everything so i'll just we have three minutes so do what you gotta do thanks my name is dr michael mandel and i'm a pharmacist at a local community hospital i'm here to plead with the board to implement all the cdc guidelines on indoor activities at our schools these include mandatory masking on buses and inside the schools distancing ventilation sanitary measures and contact tracing not for the entire year and not for the entire school district just for schools that educate children under the age of 12. i have three children twin boys age 10 and a daughter age 18 and we have to wait for the fda to allow emergency authorization to vaccinate for for their ages so when i decided that i

172would speak at the board meeting i was excited but then it quickly escalated to anger and fear the anger is because i cannot believe that i'm actually here trying to plead my case to the board in the community at large to make our school safer for our children fear because based on my experience not just what i've been reading in the journals and social networks or hearing in the news or in the supermarkets or restaurants or watching our government on our neighbor's debate my fear is based on actual real life working with and talking to my colleagues at the hospital talking to patients or their families in the trenches at ground zero is what the worst results and outcomes this virus has caused and continues to cause how many on the board or in this

173room can say that well i'd love to stand up here and talk about data points and statistics and why vaccines are important this is not why i am here i'm not trying to convince you of that nor do i want to convince you of that i'm trying to come up with a bipartisan solution because i may disagree with you but i'm not going to doubt you're here to do what's right in the best interest of your children and you're just as passionate about doing right for them as i am about as i am for doing right for my own i don't want our schools to shut down i don't want our society to go back to lockdowns and i'm pretty certain that something on both sides that we can all agree on i'm not asking

174you to change your beliefs i'm asking us all to come together i'm not here to trample on freedoms i'm here to show you with my with my heart and tell you that i'm afraid i'm afraid and i fear for the for the lives of our children mine my neighbors the communities i fear their health in their lives as this pandemic gets worse i see it i work in a facility that deals with it i know all of us fear for our kids well-being i'm pretty sure that we can all agree about that we all fear for our kids well-being but just give us an opportunity to add another layer of protection those who believe in the science before uh going back to pre-covet business as usual i want it to but i'm just asking for

175just some time so that we can get our kids vaccinated or those who believe that vaccines are are the way to uh to put coven behind us that's all i'm asking and then and then we can go to mask optional thank you thank you sir loretta sterk she had to leave joseph giaconda good evening sir good evening my name is joseph giaconda i'm an attorney uh i live in newtown and i have two children currently attending goodknow elementary one of whom has special needs last year both my children were compelled by school policy to wear masks when attending school in person and right before the last week of school the board wisely made masks optional and boy were my kids thrilled you'd think that you had summer start early they were absolutely thrilled it was

176the greatest gift they could have gotten well i understand the mask optional policy is not currently on the agenda today i'm here to let the board know what is obvious which is that there's significant community support for keeping the mask optional policy there's a lot of talk about data on both sides i actually think the data is largely not in dispute the cdc itself says on its website quote children are less likely to develop severe illness or die from covid19 that's today that includes this so-called delta variant the cdc is right the united kingdom study in july of 2021 found that deaths and serious illness following covet 19 infection in children is extremely rare children themselves are simply not at risk for dying or serious illness from covid even without vaccinations in fact many of

177these kids one thing hasn't been talked about many of these kids already may have antibodies that haven't been tested because they may have already developed some degree of herd immunity as they are often asymptomatic and have often been exposed to covet over the last year and a half we have no idea so it's very possible a large segment of the of the student population is already essentially vaccinated by being exposed to it further widespread availability of coven 19 vaccines has already altered the landscape of who is currently at risk as of today 55 percent of bucks county adults are vaccinated and that number goes up every day that does not include those who already have natural antibodies who may already have had covet and since 2019 there were 62 000 cases in bucks so if

178we assume some percentage of those are not included in the vaccination count two out of three people adults and bucks are now largely immune thanks to the virus there's widespread availability for the vaccine in bucks county for those who want them among adults in other words right now i could walk down to cvsarity and get a free vaccine so therefore among adults anyone who is currently vulnerable is choosing to be vulnerable every single teacher staffer who works or visits a council rock school can be protected by a vaccine which is highly effective even with the covet variant according to official statistics bucks county has a vulnerability level of low in fact i just looked today as some folks did there are two two patients currently in a 650 000 a person county who are in

179the hospital in icu with covet two okay the hospitals say on their websites that this data means there is quote enough capacity to absorb even a new wave of coveted infections so if the children are not at great risk and the vaccinators are not at great risk and the hospitals are prepared to deal with any possible contingencies why are we forcing children to do something that doesn't work and in fact president biden's top advisor dr osterholm said on cnn this week quote we know today that many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out so unless you're going to wear respirators in school which was not required during the 2020 school year the reality is the masks don't work anyway others

180have said more eloquently than i that requiring masks for eight hours a day harms children emotionally i want to note a physical impact that has not been discussed the journal of the american medical association dated june 30th of this year conducted a massive clinical trial of 25 930 students 68 more than 2 out of 3 had problems wearing the mask and this is the most disturbing fact the percentage of carbon dioxide in their blood after nine minutes was double what would be allowed legally by osha nine minutes not eight hours a day so in conclusion we must trust the science but the science is not on the side of mandatory mandatory mask wearing for children who would be required to wear masks for eight hours a day and try to absorb their own carbon dioxide

181in conclusion i just want to say for those people who are concerned about their kids and want them to wear masks i respect that i respect freedom and liberty wear a mask your kids can wear masks that's fine i i support that if you want to give them a vaccine give them a vaccine when it's when it's approved get a vaccine these are all freedoms and liberties we cherish but as the law says for the rest of the community to impact on my liberty there must be a compelling state interest in order to tell me and my kids what to do this data does not show anything near that and therefore i support the board's uh courage and bravery and recognizing that the science is on the side of freedom and liberty and if the

182children want to wear masks and and you all want to remast that's fine but recognize that just wearing masks is not going to solve the problem vaccinating adults is the solution thank you thank you sir hi mrs luigi i let you sit long enough come on up i totally appreciate it i found out not only was i blind i'm also hard of hearing but can you just meet your name for the record please dawn d luigi and i'm from ivy man i want to just say i'm so pleased to be here it's my first time back since i retired my name is dawn de luigi and i'm a retired council rock teacher who served many many families some of them yours in this community for over 40 years in a variety of capacities elementary school

183teacher reading specialists secondary education with an english degree i retired in 2017 and boy am i glad but you're probably wondering you know i'm looking around and i'm wondering if anyone else has the experience of an actual teacher for over 40 years you know someone who's actually been in the classroom and um i'm thinking yeah i think i want to do this i'm coming tonight so you may ask why am i doing it it's certainly not for me um it's not for my family because they're not here and um it's not for glory or any lessons that i can teach you it's basically for the children and for all the families that i've taught in these communities ones that i have had the pleasure and i loved my job many many years of promoting many

184educational attitudes that extend far beyond this room and their limited time here i represent what i feel and i've been door knocking a lot the majority of council rock student families and communities who would like the word choice that speaks volumes choice is the word we all get a smile around here don't we because we feel strongly as a parent as a grandparent as a community member that i want to choose i want to choose what i eat for dinner i want to choose how my kid gets to decide what movie if i want to you know parental guidance on my television i want to decide what is best for my family when it comes to health and covet 19 i'll let the experts choose and from what i've heard tonight it sounds like there's

185a lot of discrepancy it doesn't sound like everybody agrees which is my point are we going to stick with the health plan that you voted on at the end of and continue with this healthy plan for i believe as we all stated we know all the health stats they've been implemented in thousands of letters and forms most recently telling all of you and our friends out here the risk of serious health issues for covid19 not the delta variant is low in children and i'm not going to go into that right now because we've all decided we've all heard we all have an opinion i'm here as an experienced council rock teacher i'm here for all of the teachers who are probably too scared to show up probably don't want to risk their jobs by speaking

186out i'm here for all of them i'm here for the children who are being impacted by all of our decisions and i want to make sure that you hear that we are just trying to do the best we can when you teach in a classroom for over 40 years i want to show that facial expressions speaking clarity non-obstruction of your face all impact social emotional element of learning friendships many lifelong are made in these classrooms i know it i lived it teacher student relationships are built in these rooms i know it i'm living it i'm seeing my students and their parents everywhere life lessons are learned through the emotional and social development by looking at someone's face i know it's very hard to tell and i tried to find out what was behind the masks

187of the people that are wearing them tonight but i could not see the raw emotions they were not laid bare and honesty is the best lesson we can learn in this when we get a full facial view and we get to hear someone just remember what you do when you get a text you never hear the intonation in a voice you never see the person and learning comes from seeing and listening and hearing and making sure that this is a positive learning environment so i believe that we need to make council rock as i used to say none better because there is none that is better than council rock you are on the cutting edge and i want to thank all of the board members when i came here tonight i was kind of thinking

188yeah this is going to be a really hard sell but you're already sold you know that choice works so what's my job tonight my job is to be the voice for all the teachers the administrators the retirees like me the employees of all the unmentioned who want to speak out for these kids who can't or they won't or they feel threatened and i use the word fear mongering very lightly but we all know through politics that that word is something that we all fear now it's your job your choice to make this decision for us keep wearing masks a choice never make something a mandate because once you steal that choice from all of us that becomes an impedement of our freedom and i know council rock does not want to be guilty of removing

189that precious tool thank you for your attention and may i add my intent was for you to see my massless face your emotions have had full impact on all of us thank you thank you for your service 40 years it's fantastic uh i have megan brock you signed twice are you speaking again thank you my name is megan brock i'm from churchville um i mean a lot of things i've already said i guess what i wanted to talk about was medical freedom and i just wanted to share from my own personal experiences i when i graduated from college i was a registered nurse i worked down at the children's hospital of philadelphia as a pediatric icu nurse um and i was an icu nurse for almost eight years so i've seen and been at the

190bedside of children who have died i have personally taken care of children who have died of the flu i've taken care of children who have died of abuse i've taken care of children who died of overdoses i don't want to say i think sometimes when we bring up statistics of the reality of how many deaths are occurring in coveting kids sometimes people think it sounds heartless trust me when i say i i thankfully do not know that pers that pain but i've walked through people who are watching their children die and i understand it's devastating it's absolutely devastating so nobody wants any child to die right none of us we all agree on that we all want children to live a safe and healthy life however we understand that life has risk inherently all of

191us in this room will die all of us no mask nothing can prevent that we are all going to die that is the reality of our mentality and unfortunately we live in a world where the reality is sometimes children do die and it's awful but it's not always preventable about 150 to 200 kids die a year of the flu we accept that not that we are happy that happens we're devastated that happens we understand there is a the under 18 population in america 74.2 million children that is those numbers are outliers we don't make public health decisions on outliers interestingly about 80 kids a year there was a i don't know someone did a poll in like 2010 that found about 80 kids in a year die in a bathtub has anyone ever come to

192a school board meeting and demanded or any public arena and said hey 80 kids didn't eat a diet bathtub we need to get rid of bathtubs no because we understand that life has risk we also understand that that every choice has a reaction something that might say and i guess i'm just going to try to wrap it up medical freedom is a fundamental liberty in our society and i think that anyone who's paying attention to what's happening in our count in our state in our country understands that we really are determining does personal freedom matter it's particularly when we talk about vaccination and vaccinating our children why i care about mass and i and i commend you for making mass optional and i hope and pray you will have the courage to continue that path

193because i know it's going to take courage i know mr block you said you don't have a crystal ball i'm going to say that in the next month or two there's going to be tremendous pressure on this board to go back to masking children into taking away choice from kids please have courage because i this is not and what's the end game in all of this covet isn't going away it's going to be seasonal this is going to happen every single year so we have to make a choice to have courage and to allow to have courage and make a choice that is based on the the bedrock of our society and that is personal liberty as a parent no one has the right to tell me what kind of medical device if my children

194need to be vaccinated it's it's a personal choice for every parent if people want to master kids if they want to vaccinate their kids that's their choice but i just hope and i pray and i thank you for the courage you've already shown and making the choice to allow parents to have the freedom of choice thank you thank you [Applause] i have one more speaker listed and as my good friend mr cox pointed out to me school board policy dictate i'm sorry ma'am raising your hand yes you didn't sign the paper come on down there come on what's that speech who who are we talking about yes well i was just going to address that our school board policy says that only taxpayers and people living in the district are permitted to have public speaking

195i'm not done but mr hogan i gave the liberty to earlier in the evening so with the recommendation of our solicitor you were going to go last so can i let this young lady go first thank you and that from now on that policy will be here too as well good evening ma'am can you state where you're from and sure ahema is my name a-h-e-m-a-a-s-a-r-e for the record and i live in upper holland um and i am a parent of a six-year-old that will be that's going to be in first grade at holland elementary and i also work for chop and um i guess what i would say to you all well first of all dr frazier thank you for the communication all last year that was amazing you and your staff i don't think

196i've ever gotten that many emails in my life from a school district but it was wonderful it was amazing some of it i didn't agree with but i was glad for the level of communication i don't think that all school districts get that privilege so i've been in healthcare for 30 years don't ask me how old i am um but working at chop i think has been one of the most eye opening things for me this especially throughout this pandemic as of yesterday we have we have reinstituted our 100 mass mandate regardless of whether someone's vaccinated or not we also by october all of our employees no matter whether they're patient-facing or not must be vaccinated to keep your kids safe not to keep us safe to keep your kids safe so when you walk

197into chop by october you will know that every single person in there has been vaccinated whether they're cleaning your room whether they are mop you know whether they're giving you a needle every single person from the person that meets you at the door so you will not get you will not contract we're we are trying to lower the risk of infecting your families and your children because we put our children first 70 of our patient population cannot be vaccinated obviously because they're young and i think this virus has become the great equalizer in this world you know we talk about countries that aren't developed in countries that are developed right but it's we're on the same boat now right i certainly we've been privileged to kind of live in a little bit of a bubble

198you know we're not in louisiana we're not in florida bucks county has been a little bit you know not as not as bad as other places right i would certainly love to keep it that way um i would say put yourself in the place of the administrators the teachers the bus drivers the cafeteria workers every single teacher that we entrust our children to to take care of them all day so we can have the peace of mind to do whatever else that we do i want to keep that i want to keep that peace of mind knowing that you know that the children are safe within that environment and the teachers are safe i know last year you all struggled with with recruiting teachers and recruiting bus drivers and i've been seeing billboards at 95

199people recruiting for bus drivers people are afraid and and due to fleece because they they don't know you know they they know that they're driving children who cannot be vaccinated are not vaccinated and they don't want to put their lives at risk and they certainly don't want to put your children's lives at risk either right i say all that to say that and i support i mean pretty much everything that i wanted to wanted to say has already been said for the kids that cannot be vaccinated they're really just like sitting ducks they really honestly i know some of them i empathize with the children that have learning disabilities and really need that interaction and we really have to figure out something for them um but for those that didn't mind wearing masks because it

200was the rule i mean i think we all know that elementary school children are a little they follow the rules a little bit better um of course they all threw it off when they when they didn't have to wear they were very excited to do that and to see their friends finally but they kind of go with the flow of their children and i think we have to treat them as children we want to protect them we want them to be around and that's all i have to say i really hope and trust that you'll make the right decisions so that we will not have high case rates for these children in elementary and middle school who are not yet ready or even prepared to be vaccinated thank you thank you ma'am is there anybody

201else before i wrap it up sir 45 for you i'm going to hold you through it then okay all right miss walker good evening ma'am hi welcome to council rock thanks i see watch you all on tv my name is jamie walker i'm a mother of three at central bucks school uh school district i wanted to tell the board last year that when central bucks decided not to follow our health department i felt very unsafe they decided they were not going to listen to our health department i decided to find a school that did i sent my three children to a private school that followed our health director followed his advice the school was mask optional so i have three children my fourth grader had 21 kids in his class i don't even recall a

202case of covid in his class never shut down no one was quarantined he played at recess with the other fourth grade class and i think the fifth grade classes went out there too because he complained it was too crowded on the blacktop nobody wore masks and nothing nothing happened nothing happened i have a seventh i had a seventh grader she was in she switched classes she was in the secondary school her classes had 20 some kids in it she went to you know math you know all the all the classes one day she texted me she's like the girl next to me went home sick i'm like she is coveted like she is coven she test i said she got tested two days later she had covered they wanted to quarantine my daughter my healthy

203daughter they wanted to send her home for no reason she didn't get sick i have a ninth grader there too who did the same thing switch classes you know went to math english science guess what else they got to do they got to eat lunch they got to eat lunch kids got to eat lunch not one bucks county school let children eat lunch did they do you want to know why you didn't you didn't follow the health department children didn't eat lunch i think in central box they placed kids six feet apart kids sat in the hallways and they ate snacks on the floor that's what you guys did to children i don't know if council rock did that but our ex our did that he didn't weather this storm um okay so that was

204my experience last year through a pandemic with nobody vaccinated nothing happened no these aren't like statistics and numbers and chop and this is my like i put my kids in that because i didn't want my children to wear masks i made a choice i made a choice i took my kids out of central box i drove 40 minutes four times a day i paid a lot of money for my children to be normal they saw each other's faces they ate lunch they did normal school things now what's going to happen i'm thinking is probably the state will go back to mandating masks i mean that's like kind of an obvious um i wanted to discuss the disease i'm not a lawyer i'm not i'm not an attorney i wanted to discuss the disease prevention and

205control law of 1955. maybe you got about two seconds okay a health department can only mitigate something for two weeks the board the local health department that's it so when the state wants to put mass backs back on it doesn't apply to bucks county i hate to tell everybody that unless our health department mandates masks for a school year that's what is going to make children wear masks again i'm putting my kids back in central bucks mass if the state puts a mass mandate in it doesn't matter it doesn't matter i don't i think that's what everyone has missed here the local health department overrides the state so you will be setting yourself up for lawsuits because you guys cannot put masks on children that's it thank you ma'am [Applause] 45 seconds i appreciate again

206alex enten from churchville superintendent frazier stated that he does not support critical race theory and i really applaud you for it but he supports diversity equity and inclusion well then you're not being truthful with the community in the new york post article titled what critical race theory is really about it states quote its supporters deploy a series of euphemisms to describe critical race theory including equity social justice diversity and inclusion and culturally responsive teaching so diversity equity and inclusion is critical race theory the term equity is not equality don't try to interchange these words everyone here stands for equality none of us stand for equity thank you that'll finalize the second half of public comment any new business from the board that's on the mississauga i just wanted to add you know to the educational

207education committee agenda on august 26th if we could just review what we passed tonight because i was kind of a flash vote to have something on record but i'd like to make sure that that's reviewed again if we're talking about the contingency plans that we're submitting to the state i would like to make sure that people have an opportunity to see what we've just voted on and then for us to you know take a stab at it okay very good dr elliot duly needed thank you man any old business from the board all right hearing none meeting's over thank you no that wasn't the word you