Great Valley School District Board Meeting - April 20, 2026 at 7:30 PM

001Today is the one. Okay. Hi everybody. Um, welcome to the Monday, April 20th school board meeting. This is a voting meeting. I'm so glad to see everybody. I'm Rachel Gyos. I'm your board president. We're going to get started um by first saying the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, let's get started. Um, these meetings are recorded and there is live stream happening right now and you can go back and watch it later. You can find that information on our school district website. And let's start out with the best part of the meeting, which is our recognitions. Who are we starting with? Yep. So, we're going to be honoring our

002Black History Month poster contest winners. And introductions and the honors will be presented by Kira Garrett and Shannon Moroni Garrett. So, if you'd please take the podium. I know we do have certificates as well, uh, but we'd love for you to give some larger context behind this uh, important contest. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Gfredo. My name is Kira Garrett and I'm the student district program chair for the Black History Month poster contest. And I'm Shannon Moroni Garrett, president and founder of Neighbors in Black and White, the sponsor of the Black History Month poster contest. We would like to thank Great Valley School District for making this wonderful program possible. And for a little background, Neighbors in Black and White is a 501c3 nonprofit established to promote racial unity. This year marks the sixth year

003that we have sponsored the Black History Month poster contest in the Great Valley School District, and it just keeps getting better every year. Before presenting the awards to the student winners, I would like to share the goals of the program. to help nurture a culture at Great Valley where everyone feels included, to encourage students to learn about black achievers and related nonprofits to uplift the black community, and to highlight students talents in art, research, and writing. At this point, you may be wondering, well, who are the judges for the contest? We assembled a diverse panel of judges, including GBSD staff, students, parents, Council on Diversity and Inclusion members, and community members. Special thanks to all these volunteers. As always, it was really hard to select winners this year because all the submissions were amazing. But

004after careful consideration, our judges selected nine winners, at least one from each school in the district. Each winner is receiving a certificate from the school district and a monetary award provided by Neighbors in Black and White. All right, I think we're ready to give out the awards now. Dr. Gfredo, I know you like to do the honors. Well, oh, that's perfect. Thank you so much. So, we're going to call your names, uh, each winner from each school. If you could come up, receive your monetary gift from us here at the podium and the certificate from Dr. Gfredo, and then stay in the front of the room to take a photo with others who will join you. Our first winner is from the high school, Prrenavi Janna Lagada. From the middle school, we have a winning

005team of two, Luchia Miniona and Hannah Fedco. They won at the five stick center from the 56 center. Sid Gada from Charles Town, Santiago. Seigua Cabrera All right. Now from General Wayne, we have Eliza Momentman. And from Katie Markley, Rocky Karatha and from Sugar Town, Rion Singh Yav. And finally, the nonprofit selected to receive a $250 donation from Neighbors in Black and White is Bibashi Transition to Hope, serving the Philadelphia community with Health and Social Services. Babashi was nominated by Kyle Bishop, who should come on up and win his award as well. You've got a she. Oh, Kylie. I'm My apologies, Kylie. Congratulations. There you go. Congratulations to all of you for your amazing work. Thank you. You want to do two rows? Ready photo. One, two, three. Come on up. Uh, next up is

006our Delaware Valley Excellence in Teaching Award. And we have Dr. Capola, our high school principal, here with our honore. First, congratulations to all the students. It's awesome. And I'm pleased to be able to pres to share with you about one of our amazing teachers here in Great Valley. So, the Delaware Valley Excellence in Teaching Awards is an esteemed program designed to honor and recognize outstanding educators in the Philadelphia region. Each year, 20 exceptional teachers are selected for their dedication, innovation, and impact on their students and school communities. This year, there were hundreds of nominations throughout the Delaware Valley and one winner from Great Valley, our coral teacher at the high school, Katie Deizio. I'd like to share one excerpt from her nomination for this award. Dileia Maldonado, GV class of 2025 and freshman at Westchester

007University, wrote, "At Great Valley High School, I have been fortunate enough to have Mrs. Dezio is my choir teacher. She has been a huge influence on my decision to pursue a music education as she has shown me that being a great teacher isn't just about the subject. It's about making students feel seen, supported, and encouraged. She fosters a love for music while also building confidence in her students. And that is the kind of impact I hope to have one day. She has worked hard and succeeded in creating a classroom where students not only thrive in their musical studies but also feel a sense of safety and belonging within their school and community. And she has inspired me to try try to do the same within my musical career. And Dileia aspires to be a high

008school music teacher largely because of Katie. So Katie was honored at the Franklin Mint Federal Credit Union Awards ceremony this past Thursday. Dr. Gfredo, Mr. McCcluskey and I attended and she's positively influenced countless countless lives as a music educator and we are so fortunate to have her on our Great Valley High School team. So I appreciate the board also taking time to honor her this evening. Thank you. Sure. Congratulations. Yeah. All right. Our last recognition. Unfortunately, the teacher could not be here, but I at least want to um draw attention to Connor Tayback's award as a Citadel Heart of Learning award winner this year. Um, the Citadel Heart of Learning has been an award well known throughout Chester County and they've expanded into surrounding counties in the greater Philadelphia area. Mr. Tbach is a special

009education teacher at our middle school. I wish I had, you know, more uh to to share. Uh, but Mr. Tbach is a role model for all of us. His deep caring, particularly uh for students who learn differently, is just uh beyond reproach. He is an outstanding educator, a model for all of us. And unfortunately, he is unable to be here. We'll see if we could schedule something for May, but if not, I wanted to make sure that uh I honored the award. So, uh a round of applause, please, for Mr. Tayback, our middle school teacher concludes the award. All right, next up, I always lose my page. Um, student council, correct? Yep. Katie Markley, come on down. Good evening, Great Valley School Board. My name is Aina Deved and I am a fourth grader at

010Katie Markley Elementary School. We are all members of the KDM student council executive committee. We are excited to be here to give you our KDM update. At the end of January during the PTO bingo night, we sold snacks and water to raise money for the people's pantry in Frraasier. Also, at our KDM Heritage Night in March, we sold snacks to raise money. Together, we raised over $150 for the pantry. Using the money that we've been raising, we have planned a shopping trip after school in the spring. We will buy food and supplies that the pantry needs to serve the Great Valley community. We will also visit the pantry to learn about what they do for our community. Hello, my name is Max Morris and I am a fourth grader. In February, KDM made over a

011hundred cards for the residents and patients at the at the Veterans Hospital in Coatsville. We sent them. We sent them so they arrived in time for Valentine's Day. Our hope is that they know we appreciate all their hard work and service to our country. Each month we meet with Dr. Hoffitz during our lunch to discuss our ideas and plans for Katie Markley. He is willing to listen and hear what we have to say about KDM and our ideas for the community. Hello, my name is Paige Simmons and I am in fourth grade. During our February lunch, the executive committee met with Dr. Hoffford and we decided to do something for our community during the two weeks leading up to our 100th day of school. We made a goal to collect 100 personal care items for

012the people's pantry. We are proud to report we were able to um collect over 270 personal care items. We delivered those items to the people's pantry so they can be used in our community. Dr. Hoppitz promised us if we were able to reach our goal, we would have an all school recess. So later this spring, now that the weather is nice, we look forward to having that. Hello, my Hello, my name is Ever Turk and I'm in fourth grade. We had some other activities during this spring. On April 17th, KDM hosted its 7th annual mindfulness day. The student council also got to greet the students as they arrived at at school that morning. We learned various new techniques to be mindful. Students from Westchester University also joined us and teaching us new techniques as part

013of as part of our music therapy activity. We look forward to another great day. Hello, my name is Alva Sassy and I am a fourth grader. At our school fair on May 15th, we will have a booth where we will be giving out KDM Coyote paw print tattoos to those that want to show their school spirit. We will be accepting small donations for anyone that wants to give towards our people's pantry shopping trip. If you are free on Friday, May 15th, come stop by our booth and we will give you a free KittyM coyote paw print tattoo. Our school is a very busy place right now. We appreciate all the wonderful opportunities you have to pursue our different interests at KDM. Thank you for letting us share what our awesome student council has been doing

014this year. Thank you so much. And thank you, Mrs. over for uh everything you do and Dr. Hoffitz as well. We appreciate your leadership. All right, Anna, come on down. Tell us what's happening at the high school. Good evening everyone. Just want to say congratulations to all of our recipients today and great job to KDM as well. So, moving on to the high school. First of all, if you guys went to the musical this past weekend, hope you guys en enjoyed it as much as I did. In student council, right now, we're kind of in that transition into next year's leaders. So, last week we had our student body speeches and the whole week they were able to campaign around the school and then they gave speeches in the auditorium. And that same process is

015going to happen in the following weeks for our class officer elections. and it is coming up pretty quickly, but our student representative spots will also be opening up and Justin and I will definitely be supporting them in that transition as well. All of our new student council officers will be inducted at a student council meeting. As you all know, April is autism awareness month. So, our Great Valley Best Buddies program is organizing the coin wars which is still ongoing. So, it's a friendly competition between all the home rooms and they're all trying to earn the most amount of money in their own jars. And all of these profits go to both the Eagles Autism Foundation as well as our Best Buddies program as well. So, what I mean by a friendly competition is that you're

016trying to collect the most amount of points for your own jar. And you do that through pennies and paper bills. So pennies are one point and then dollar bills are 100 points. But on the other hand, you can kind of sabotage other home rooms by giving silver coins. So nickels, dimes, and quarters are able to subtract points from other home rooms, which kind of brings up that competition level. So overall this year, we have a lot of active participation. I see all these home room jars that are pretty full already. So we're looking forward to that. Our athletic leadership council was something new that was started by Mr. Moffett who's our head boys soccer coach as well as Mr. Miller who's our athletic director. We had our first meeting last month in March and basically

017all of our sports teams have representatives. Usually they're future team captains or also they can be underclassmen who have a lot of potential. And I'm personally a part of this because of tennis and then swim and dive as well. And we learn a lot as student athletes to um how to better lead our groups and a lot about like leadership qualities and team building. There are also events for college readiness opportunities. So we have some athletes who may want to pursue that in college as well. I think next week we were invited to Downtown West High School to learn more about that college recruitment process which can be a little bit um complex in that transition. And there will be former and current D1 and D2 NCAA athletes who will talk and give us a

018Q&A about that college recruitment process. And also fun fact about that, there will be a speaker which is Cliff Crosby. He is a former D1 athlete, NFL player, and Super Bowl champion. So, he'll be present at that event, and it'll be very exciting to get to know more about this recruitment process and meet some college athletes as well. Another club I wanted to talk about today is the women in science and engineering. And I choose today because they recently I think last week had a competition which is the Annenburgg Symposium. So what this club does is throughout the year they research and deep dive into one science topic. This year it's epilepsy and the effects on people and then they go to the Annenberg Symposium to share what they've learned throughout the year to the

019judges who are usually renown science professionals. And the club overall does a lot to provide opportunities for the students in terms of meeting professionals and having some fun events. Earlier on this year, they were actually able to go to a live surgery at a local medical center. So, they were able to meet some surgeons and watch them perform the whole thing live, which was pretty cool, then ask some questions at the end of that. So, overall, this is a really good club for our girls who are interested in STEM fields. Lastly, I wanted to highlight the music program. They have been pretty busy these past two months. So, we had our designer bag bingo happening, which was really successful. It was a huge success. And then last week, our concert band took a field trip

020down to South Philly to the Gearard Academic Music Program. And this was a really educational and fun day for them. They were able to play some of their upcoming band pieces for this specialized music program. And they also played some combined pieces with the students at the Geared Music program. And also something interesting is they were they got some instruction from Dr. Patricia Cornet of Temple University who is one of the best collegiate band directors in the country. So it was very nice for them to sharpen their tools and prepare for upcoming concert and meet some new people there as well. Just overall play some good music. We do have our marching patriots who will march at the Malvin Memorial Parade as well. So, you'll see them out in the streets then. And upcoming, we

021do have our last corral concert and our last orchestra and band concert coming up. So, seniors will be recognized and there will be awards and nominations given out during those as well. And you're all really welcome to come as well. So, upcoming events, we have our corral concert on the 30th. You're very welcome to come. That's the last one as well. On May 3rd, which is approaching pretty quickly, we have our student achievers banquet and Justin and I will both be attending as student achievers. We're very excited to celebrate all of our achievers at Great Valley High School as well. And looking into May, first two weeks are packed with our AP exams, so our students are busy preparing and studying for those as well. That's all I have today. Thank you for listening and

022have a great night. All right, we are going to move on to the rest of our board agenda. Everyone is more than welcome to say, but if you would like to take a moment and scadaddle out of here and get on with your Monday evening, we understand. Thank you all for being here. Thank you parents. Thank you parents. All right, let's move on. Uh, we are moving on to section six, the superintendence update. Five. We are moving to five. I completely skipped. I'm sorry. The board did meet in executive session to discuss legal and personnel items. Is there any secretar's correspondence? No correspondence this evening. All right. Is there an IU report, Dr. Rizzo? There is an IU report. Um, so they spoke a little bit about um CCDC Great Valley. So, that is the

023IU building that is opening up right over here. Um, they are on track for a fall of 2026 opening, although they were a little bit squirly when I asked for an exact date. So, um they have contingency plans for when they open, but they have already held staff meetings. They've already held parent sessions. Um they are staffing mostly internally, moving some people around from different places because they are um at capacity in a lot of their centers. Um there is open enrollment and they're working their way through weight lists and we also got to see kind of a rendering versus what it looks like right now of the construction and it is going up. It looks like a building. So, um we will have new neighbors I guess soon in the fall. We'll track that

024progress. Um, another thing they highlighted was their grow your own program. I've definitely spoken about this before, but what they do is they take their own staff who are interested and they put them in a pipeline to get into positions that they need to fill. In this case, it's special education um, teachers and so they take staff or aids or anyone who wants to attain those credentials but can't do it through traditional paths and they have their own program. Um it's a very customized, personalized program um where they train teachers into roles that they need. So they were having a hard time filling special education teacher spots. They grew their own and um if we they talked about from August of 23 when this started to December of 26, which is when this current class

025will end, they will have graduated 139 special education teachers. So and these teachers are being very successful. So, this program is really pretty impressive and they're looking to expand. So, can we grow our own world language teachers? I feel like that's the next shortage I keep hearing about. I mean, what else can we do? That's incredible. I know it is. It's very impressive and the people who run it are incredibly energetic and committed and um we've gotten to meet some of the graduates of there. So, it is a great program, but I will go back to them with grow your own world language teachers. Um so, that's fun. Um they talked about the Chester County School District and Intermediate Unit Advocacy Group. Um and this is a group of people in the county who advocate

026for different things, but one of the fun things that they advocated for was to change the law about having to put into newspapers about changes in our meetings because it has cost the IU $40,000 to post changes for their meetings. Um so this was a a good change in law. So, that is um something that is arcane because who even sees a print newspaper every day anymore. Um and then the last thing they noted was all of our online tests are going um digital this year. I think it's the first year that the PSSAs, the Keystones, everything has to be digital. And the one thing that they are kind of just putting the watch out for for districts is that the research has been really clear that when tests move to all online scores do

027drop. you see it you see a dip in scores from when pe kids were using uh paper and pencil tests. So that is just something to consider when we see um scores from all of these tests come back next year is that we've gone fully digital and this is going to be a little bit expected. So and oh the last thing I want to say is I always talk about the food at the IU which is amazing. Okay, that's great. But this time we were at um the child and career development center out in Coatsville and students in their programs made handmade soaps. So we got to go home with handmade soap and it was by far one of the coolest gifts I've gotten from them. So I like this position. It's really cool. Great.

028Thank you. Uh legislative reporter Trisha. Yes. So, the legislative committee met on March 25th, and it's nothing new. Actually, I was interested to hear, did did you get reporting that the um the publications requirement bill had passed? Is that is that hot off the presses? Yeah. So, um in our last committee meeting, we talked about these there's two kind of like competing bills. One of them is the House Bill 1291 which is is trying to continue the requirements for publication in print papers and then the other is Senate Bill 194 that is looking for the flexibility. So these are in two different phases and kind of um uh fighting with each other to see who who kind of wins. At our last meeting, there was no um no movement to actually being signed. Um uh

029next one is House Bill 17, which is the requirement for cursive um to be taught in elementary schools. Um and that is still under active consideration. Um, also in committee is, and this is interesting to me, um, Senate Bill 128, which is a curriculum transparency requirement, um, which requires school districts or will require school districts to post online curriculum meetings, um, beginning in 27 uh, 2027 2828 school year. Um, there's currently no requirement um, to post those. Um but if if this bill passes, um there will be a requirement to link uh to to reply to include a link for every textbook used. Um a full course syllabus and a written summary of each course. Um and then the state academic standards that are aligned with each course and that um any changes to the

030curriculum will need to be posted within 30 days. Um so if that actually goes through, it seems like a pretty ownorous process. Um, Senate Bill 835 is um the PM MIA flag display. So, there's some discussion right now in the Senate. Um, that would require, if it passes, would require that um PMIA flags get flown everywhere the um American flag is flown. Um, and it's unclear if there if that's just like one per building or if in every classroom it will have to be. So, that that is a potential big expense if that if that goes through. Um, another potential cost issue is um, House Bill 2285, the school nurse staffing and reimbursement. Um, right now the requirement is that there's one certified school nurse per 1500 students. Um, and this bill would take it

031down to one per um, 750 students. So doubling the uh, the current requirement. And there will be an increased risk or an increased rate in the reimbursement. But the way it's currently written that that increase in reimbursement will not fully offset the requirement um for the the the new ratio. Um and it also includes um $3 million in grants for feminine hy hygiene products to be stocked in the school. Um House Bill 830 is parental notification of bullying. Um right now it is just by policy for each district to decide when and how and if um parents of both the aggressor and the victim get notified. Um this bill would make it required um to notify both both families um and then to be explicit about what next steps um were being taken to to

032address it. And then finally um House Bill 41 um is the PIAA playoff reform. And so right now there's um this difference between boundary schools and non-boundary schools um non-boundary schools. So private schools, religious schools are allowed to recruit athletes. Um and obviously boundary schools are are not allowed or even able to do that. Um and what that has created is this situation where you have when once you get to um postseason play uh there's an unfair advantage to these schools who are allowed to recruit. Um so what this bill would do would be to give PIAA the authority to separate boundary and non-boundary schools um once you get outside of regular season play. All right, thank you. Uh, moving on to committee reports. Uh, learning and innovation committee met on April 13th. Yeah, that's

033me. Um, we met last Monday. We had a very packed agenda. Um, a couple of things we discussed was validate me. This is a new service through the IU that will take records from students who attended school outside of the US and translate them into what it would mean for what they have already completed so we know where to place them in our schools. Um, so that is a big both timesaver and help for our staff to really understand the educational experiences students have had prior to coming to the US to properly place them and understand their experiences. Um, we talked a bit about homework and kind of what the homework policy is in the district, what it looks like practically and where some work can be continue to be done on that. Um, we

034talked about the Burough Lending Library. It's on the agenda tonight, I think. Um, this is a library of Indian authors that is going to come on loan into some of our elementary schools to really highlight that literature. And, um, we talked about the student information system update. We're still moving along. records are being um uploaded into that system in accordance with all of the legal regulations and only what needs to be there is going in and um we had a lot to discuss. So we weren't so that was supposed to be our last meeting of the year but we have added a meeting to May 18th to cover the things we weren't able to cover last week. Um can you elaborate on the homework discussion? Sure. We talked a lot about um what the policy

035set back in 2018, something like that. Um that was set where there was a lot of work done about um what is appropriate for kids at different grades and how much is a maximum that can be that is really beneficial at different grades. And the message coming out of the teaching and learning department is really if the homework is beneficial, how is it going to um advance students learning and support them? And there seems to be some um great adoption of that. But there do seems to be discrepancies in how some teachers or some teams or some places are using homework and just collecting feedback from the community. Again, I have people tell me sometimes, you know, my students have a lot of homework. um it seems like too much and my line is always

036please, you know, contact the teacher, contact their counselors, let them know so we can work through this. And we talked a lot about how what the policy says and then what's happening in practice and how our teachers can be supported to implement the practice in a way that supports them in the classroom and how we can start to see more consistency across the board. Um there was work in place, there's always work in place, that team is always working really hard, but we acknowledge that there is more work that needs to be done. there is more information sharing that needs to happen with parents about what homework looks like and why and kind of how we can help make things a little bit more consistent consistent both across different teachers and then across different grades.

037And we talked about that ramp um that ramp up from fifth, sixth and that ramp down from seven 8 to make that transition a little bit smoother. And the same things when we go from 8th grade to 9th grade and just make that connection as homework demands really change. Thank you. All right. Um policy is going to meet on April 28th. Um finance committee of the whole will meet on May 4th. communication committee will meet again on May 12th. I do have an update for Miss She wasn't feeling well, but she did forward me. If it's okay, I'll give the highlights of our communications committee meeting. Uh the committee met virtually on Thursday, April 9th. Um in addition, Miss Marston and myself attended in addition to our board members on the committee and it was

038called to order at 3:15. First agenda item was an update on the annual goals. Miss Marsen shared the communications and teaching and learning have recently been exploring a feature in Qualric that will integrate with our website and allow for users to complete a form that will help to guide them to particular information. This feature will provide website navigation and provide important data regarding user needs and search behavior. so we could see exactly how people are leveraging our website to which capacity and then work to customize and make that information even more easily obtainable. Miss Marson then provided a parent key communicator update. Uh she and I met with the key communicators on March 16th and we discussed the format and structure for the groups and our intention to conduct an audit. They are a parent

039ally group that we work with three key parent key communicators from each school and we were working with them about how they garner information from their school communities, how they disseminate that information. So, um it's an opportunity for us to just kind of revisit the process, how members are selected. Um so, the district will be exploring these refreshing type of formats as we roll out our new application for members this summer. Uh and the final PKC meeting of the year is scheduled for April 29th. Miss Marson also gave an update on the work around digital accessibility and ADA compliance. A task force comprised of our communications, teaching and learning and special education administrators, supervisors, and coaches will be developing training for staff to share the compliance standards and best practices for digital content. The members

040will develop the training this summer and will facilitate the sessions with staff in the fall. The final agenda item for this meeting was our um parent/caregiver communication survey. This survey was facilitated last spring in order to gain a better understanding of how families prefer to receive information from the district, including the frequency, the format, and channels of communication that are most effective and accessible to our community. To track progress towards implementation, the same survey will be facilitated again for a two-eek period uh beginning today and running through May 1st. Uh the meeting concluded at 6:47 and the communications committee uh the next meeting is scheduled for May 12th. Thank you. Thank you. Um the facilities committee meeting was scheduled for the 23rd of April. It's being rescheduled to sometime in either the last week of

041April or the first week of May. And moving on to section six, the superintendent report. Thank you very much. Two components to this evening's report. one, I'll share some happenings across the district as I always do as well as our heart award winners. We'll end with that and then the second part of the report will be devoted to Dr. Wexler giving her third equity plan update of the year. She's already given those prior uh so as that comes to uh a closure and completion with the plan, she'll highlight some of the work um to date. So, first we're going to highlight the art goes to school program and this was funded through the foundation and um you can see the dates there pretty self-exloratory. We value the arts a great deal. You heard about wise,

042you heard about uh women in science and engineering. You heard about our music programs. Now you're hearing a little bit about art. So, I want to thank the foundation uh for this bringing art to all of our schools. So, thank you so much for this grant. Our activity bus at the 56 center is up and running. It began on April 13th. Uh this was also due to resources and funds raised by our foundation. So the original plan was to provide an after-school activity bus for some of our younger age students, elementary 56 center with the intention of trying to get children involved early in the school process where they could become a part of their school community early and help to overcome families with any sort of transportation barriers. What we're doing this spring is

043really like a dry run where we realize that we're largely capitalizing on families who have already scheduled these activities. They most likely already have transportation. But we've learned a lot in the process because our foundation is scheduling this bus with crafts. It is not funded with any district resources and we had about 40 students register. So we are getting that need. Our intention for next year with the activity bus is to really announce it before this school year ends. Uh at the 56 center and Dr. Hammond and I have had conversations. Our goal for the year is to really get all of our clubs identified for next year in June and then to communicate that to families and also make sure families are aware of the activity bus. We'll reinforce that message over the summer

044and then again in August when everyone comes back and get the bus running again in September. So it is the monies were raised with the focus on elementary age students. Uh we want to see how this goes next fall as fully intended and then whether there's reason to proliferate this to secondary schools or the like. The reason we're not really using the elementary schools a whole lot this year is because many of those activities have transitioned to the morning time. So they're starting before school, but I do plan to engage our elementary principles in those discussions about what could possibly happen after school. So more to more to come in that arena, but I did want to highlight the activity bus. Our AI think tank which is aligned to a district goal. We met in

045this very room uh on April 15th and we had about 40 combined staff members. That's administrators, coaches, uh we had teachers, our secondary teachers, and we worked with Advive who came in and really facilitated the development of a mission statement. They helped us to just do some very rough sketching of a scope and sequence. We have a very robust digital citizen curriculum K to6. We recognize that we want to expand into upper grades and so we started having some of those early discussions as well. So uh discussions will continue with the groups between now and the remainder of the year. We won't have any formal professional development days but there will be meetings after school with the teachers. will gather their input, their suggestions and our goal and we will have this is to have

046some guidelines or a very basic framework that our secondary teachers can use in grades 7 to 12 next year with teachers and really just to the teachers to to boil it down. Some will say as I roll out this assignment I don't want you to use AI at all and you're not going to use it and we'll have some guidelines on what that looks like. Others might be the complete opposite. It might be an assignment. You're able to use AI. All of this completely, but tell me how you used it. Give me a print out of maybe the chats and the conversations. Or perhaps it could be segmented where you're going to be able to use it in the brainstorming phase of this project or assignment. Um, but anything beyond that once the concepts developed

047that needs to be your own work or vice versa, maybe you use it, the teachers may give license or permission to use it at the very end as a proofreader. Uh, so we're working on those type of guidelines. It's going to be a work in progress. We are not going to have it all figured out. AI is moving way faster than we're going to be able to keep up. But I do think the establishment of an AI think tank of teachers who are on the front lines with our students and AI um is going to be really helpful. So um we know in the future in subsequent years we'll have policy considerations for the board whether that's consideration around a separate AI policy or just an augmentation of our current policies we have acceptable use

048we have policies on digital devices we have academic dishonesty policies so uh there'll be more to come I think as we go into next year but this year was just a soft launch let's get people together let's work with some experts and um let's get a vision together and let's get some some fundamental parameters that we can venture forward into 2627 with just ask a question about that please. Um so well a few questions are we going to be seeing um maybe a summary or maybe you've presented and I've missed it already but um like the K through six digital citizenship curriculum and what that looks like. I can certainly work with teacher that's something I could share with the board. we can look at those documents if it's not or maybe synthesize it a

049little bit so you don't have a hundred pages to pour through. Let me kind of see what that looks like and I'm happy to share that with the board later this week. Those documents. Sounds great. Um and then as we're um as we are supporting our administrators and staff on acceptable use of AI, are we also simultaneously thinking about instructing students on the use of AI? Meaning we sort of assume that they're using it, but are we planning to teach them how to use it productively? Yeah. Part of our goal is that we we want our teachers to have those conversations in the classroom with the students. So it won't necessarily be like formal training but trying to corral just 7 to 12 right now just focusing on that middle and high school getting examples

050talking about academic dishonesty. Um we've done some early scenario work with some of our students already and our teachers. Um give them hypothetical real world situations but hypothetical where a student uses AI for this part of an assignment. Is it cheating? Is it not? So, uh, we'll continue to build that. Our goal right now is to get our teachers in a ballpark first, make sure I think they're going to have questions. I think we're going to work. So, before we have those 180 teachers delivering specific messages, I do think we're going to have a bit of focus with them next year where they'll be working with their their students, but certainly we'll be layering other parts of a digital citizen curriculum for those those older grades and those examples. But I would say um don't

051expect a whole much around that right now because that focus is on the teachers, but it's certainly something we're we're being mindful of. Yep. And on on the AI topic, are we providing the teachers with resources for AI detection or that is that a subjective um assessment right now? Are there are they using any of the kind of AI detection tools? And and if so, how's that going? And if not, are they planning are you planning on doing that? Yeah, the detection tools are a bit of a mixed bag. Um there are we do have teachers using uh turnitinitin.com where students it's largely looking for uh plagiarism issues and so on. So I'm not so sure we're using direct for AI but there are sometimes hits coming back that says this looks like it was

052largely generated by using the internet a copy and paste. So there are other structures the the problem that you have is is those tools can be misleading. So they're trained like if you're an English language learner and you're just learning language, those models are not trained on how an English language learner is using the language. So you will see some bias come through with those detectors. Uh and I also know that with some of our students, at least the group that I've worked with, our secondary students, um they're very worried. They're saying we're not using AI, but some of these are coming back saying there's a 20% chance or a 25% chance that I might have used the tool. And so I think we have to do some further study around that. Right now our

053teachers aren't it's a matter of just how do we want students to use AI. Uh we've looked at some tools. We looked at different AI engines. We looked at chat GPT. We're a Microsoft district. So we we certainly look at that Google. So it's been a very introductory exercise. And we've had teachers that have shared that yeah I'm using AI regularly in my lesson design and even periodically with my kids. And there are others saying I'm not using it at all. And so that's where we are. So um before we start getting into tools or the the students uh we have a lot to just manage these secondary teachers to support them fully because their learning is very very varied. So right now nothing in the pipeline as far as those tools. But I did

054want to share some of the caution that we're going to have as we we move forward and explore them. I I think one of the one of the worries I have and I think one of the worries that kids have too is you know how how are we going to handle conflicts you know when this when the teacher says well this looks like AI and the student says it is not AI and honestly they could either one of them could be correct um and and how is that going to have to get woven into a disciplinary policy and the academic honesty policy I think there's just a lot to think about that feel feels a little worrisome oh it is it is it is a huge endeavor to take on AI uh because it is

055as I said this and I'm not saying this stuff because we're being lazy. It is moving very quickly and so uh even I think what we know to be true now is going to be significantly different by the opening of next school year even some of the the big launches that are coming. So you're absolutely right. These are all concerns that our teachers have shared. Um and I think right now it's let's just kind of get in the ballpark. Let's have some common discussions. It'll be a very what I foresee is a very loose framework or guidelines that just really allow students either you're not going to use it at all or you're going to use it some and here's where you can use it. It's very prescribed and then I think we're going to

056learn as we go and we'll get feedback in this think tank. Hopefully those members will stay on. We'll have feedback loops. Um this will certainly be an ongoing topic and then there's the policy considerations that I mentioned uh a little while ago as well. All right. Thank you for the good questions. I appreciate it and this is a a monumental task. So, we just dove in this year and I I thank those teachers and administrators who gave up the time to to to work on this last week. Uh we're entering, as you know, it's spring. It's hiring season. So, our human resource department has been up getting replacement advertisements out there, attending fairs. Uh I do encourage the board, we do have a new video, uh recruitment video, and it's about four minutes long. It's

057definitely worth a watch. Uh I really want to thank our HR department and Miss Marsden for their work. Uh really highlighting all the good things hearing from our employees here at Great Valley about what makes Great Valley special and why they work here. Uh I think it's a great video and um hopefully you'll have an opportunity to check that out or anybody else because it will be available on the website. And I think this is our last item is our legislative breakfast. Thank you to the five board members who were able to attend. uh Great Valley was very well represented uh last week at the annual legislative bre breakfast host hosted by the CCIU. Um we had a good representation. I know at our table we had time with Senator Kamida. Uh I thought that

058was great to hear about what the challenges are facing public education. Um even as you went through the legislative report, in my mind I'm listening and I'm going, "Oh, there's an unfunded mandate. There's another unfunded mandate." So that was one of the themes that we shared is a lot of great things that our government wants us to do or PD wants us to do and it's hard for us to argue but they don't come even I use the nursing example. It would be great to have two nurses in our high school. We're not going to get funding for that. So that could be an unfunded mandate. So okay you're it now goes from one for 1500. If it's now two we're going to have to find that additional money to fund a nurse. great examples

059even uh we're just saying please the are wonderful things but I think our key asks were just be mindful of how much is being passed on to school districts as a board I present ideas to you and then you challenge the administration to find funding streams what we're seeing at government is they're just passing things with no consideration for funding streams and the districts will figure it out um so a lot of the the central themes were unfunded mandates we talked about the basic education funding and the inequity ities in our commonwealth. And then uh the big hitter was really the driving cost of special education. I think for Great Valley, we know that families come here because we do a great job uh serving children who learn differently or need specialized services, but it

060does come with a cost and unfortunately we're not really getting a lot of that money from Harrisburg or from the federal government. So, um, several superintendents including myself presented on these themes and I want to thank again the board members who were able to make it and certainly all the representatives who came time and lended us their ears. Um, and then our heart awards. This is actually the last part. Uh, four great honores for you this month. Uh, Mr. Ailla who works here as our data specialist in the district office. Very much of a behind thescenes type of person. Bob does a lot of tech support. He's the guy we all go to when we have problems with our system and you could read some of the great things there. Bob is really instrumental in

061working with Dr. Oul as we migrate over to Infinite Campus. Uh so congratulations to Bob for his recognition. Chrissy Rowings, one of our kindergarten teachers at Charles Town. Uh the kindergarteners are just uh very special. It takes a special person to teach kindergarten and I was glad to see Chrissy being honored. Casey Ruro is one of our teachers at the high school and again our our high schoolers are honoring her and and her as a science teacher in the high school. So congratulations to her and our nurse over at Sugartown, Jean Spiski has been honored for great work. Gan also serves as our lead nurse. So she kind of serves as this department liaison for all the nurses across the seven schools. Congratulations to all four and to anyone listening. Please continue to bring those

062recommendations uh forward. We we love reading them and it's always hard to just pick four, but uh we've been really pleased with how this program has taken off this year. All right, with that, that concludes my part of the report. If it's okay, Miss Gus, we'll transition to Dr. Wexler in the equity plan update. But there we go. Um, just just before we start, um, Teresa Marsden and I put this document on the website for the public. So, this is the actual plan and then it's highlighted in green what things have been accomplished in yellow what's still in progress and then what isn't highlighted green or yellow um, is there. So, just for you to refer to as the board and for the public as well. Um, so I'm just going to do a brief

063update. There hasn't been a whole lot to share, I think, since January, but these are the just a reminder of the six areas that are embedded in the plan that we've been working from since um since the first year and we're in year three. And what I did was I took the PowerPoint that we used in January and put here in the highlight pieces just a couple of updates for you. Um, I think I had mentioned in January that we had a two-day training on restorative practices. And so we had a cross-section of cabinet level administrators. We had teachers here, counselors. I think there was probably, I'd say about 25 of us in total. And we spent two days together learning about restorative practices. Um, just last week I opened it up as an opportunity

064for people to come back like it's a community of practice for our teachers and our counselors to share. um their implementation of some of the things that they learned in that training and um it was great feedback. Uh one of our teachers at Katie Markley had said that it's been helpful with helping him actually structure some morning meetings which is a part of responsive approaches which was formerly responsive classroom. So we talked a little bit about the integration of these two things. Um and others talked about using the the questions that are part of restorative practices in their classroom. And there was just really good feedback from the teachers who said we'd like to have more teachers trained in each building. And the dialogue was could those of us that were there that are feeling

065a little confident in starting to get their their feet under them with it be able to go and support other teachers like if we able to have like a half-day sub and perhaps go into a classroom and support their colleagues. So that was sort of the gist of the conversation. And then I'll just add that in um May we will have two administr or Dr. Betts and a counselor Miss Deetsz Dr. Deetsz now um will be trained to be trainers. So they'll be our internal trainers on this work and again as we talked about with equity this helps with disproportionate discipline and making sure that we're using alternatives to suspension and things of that nature just by way of background. Um, so once we have internal trainers, I think the goal, the recommendation would be

066for the fall, um, to then look at pulling out a couple of teachers per building really, especially at that K4 level. I think that's where we're primed to do this work. Not to say that we couldn't do it above in other levels, but I think that's where we're getting the most synergy right now is at that K4 uh, level. Um, I'll also add too this, you know, I think over the past three years, we have the e the building based equity teams that are up and running. Sometimes the work is hard to measure. Dr. Oul did a professional development survey as part of the PD committee that's part of our comprehensive plan. There were a couple different factors that were measured in part in with our staff in terms of meaningful professional development and equity

067was one of the stronger ones. So I think that shows that the work that the principles have been leading in tandem with Dr. Holland Sims and myself, it's our faculty gave us feedback that yes, they're having these conversations in their buildings. uh there's more discussion about and if you think about three or four years ago there was no discussion whatsoever about educational equity. So I think that's a highlight and it's just one metric. These things are like I said a little hard to measure. Um nothing additional to add here although I'll Dr. Gfredo mentioned the activity bus. So that's up and running it sounds like or will be. So that's a great addition there. Um and then I'll just go to number three. So part of the plan too is looking at our CST which

068are child study team process and MTSS supports which is that multi-tered system of supports. So what I had tried to do this year with Dr. bets was we met with each team at each building. So K through four and 56 K6 um to look at just a comprehensive review of the interventions that we offer to students and that's from a behavioral lens mental health and academic with the goal um so what I have developed is just a very precursory internal kind of audit just getting feedback from those teams with some recommendations about how to enhance this moving into next year. Um, we've actually had some discussions with Westchester and the goal would be really that ultimately there's a public document where any parent can see what lies within tier 2, what lies within tier three

069and how we, you know, monitor those interventions across both systems. And that would be for all interventions, behavioral, like I said, and academic. We have our counselors at the elementary level and I believe at 56 and Miss Dinsswmer could speak to this as well are doing things a little bit differently now with their groups. So instead of just offering groups to families and teachers, they're trying to use some data and structure them to be like six to eight weeks long and use some pre and post intervention data. So that's kind of going back to that idea of MTSS. That is the idea is that rather than relying on people to refer kids that you have data systems that are kind of consistent and coherent across all the buildings. So we'll be sharing um it's again

070it's just an internal document that we've kind of collated to look at what we have in place now and then recommendations for moving forward um within that because this is really MTSS is really critical just to the functioning of our whole system and making sure that we have opportunities for kids to get the support they need across across all levels. Um, okay. And here I mentioned this earlier, so this is a little bit repetitive, but as I said, we did the restorative practices in January, and then the goal again would be to have two to three teachers trained in each building. Um, in in addition to our counseling staff, but there's no I don't think there's any other additional updates around this area. um classroom culture and climate. Again, another metric to measure how effective

071we are in this equity planning work is climate assessment. So, I believe in May you will present on that those data and I think we've seen some changes that are favorable. So, that's good. So, again, in thinking about how do we measure this um those are those are some highlights. So, more of that will be discussed in May. Um you heard a little bit about hiring or retention. I mean Miss George has done a tremendous job with uh the two assistants in the HR office and streamlining procedures. We are bringing front front line in which will enhance the onboarding process which will be super helpful. Um and there was a we have an annual uh diversity hiring fair that is held through uh what was DBCE. It's not just CE. Um and Miss George went

072to that and represented the district. I did not go this year, so she went on my behalf. Um, and we will continue to do our best to to diversify and that's one way that we've been able to uh interview candidates and look for some of that uh you know, differences in background and such. Um, again, that was just going back to that green and yellow highlighting of where we are in each area. And then recommendations for moving forward would be um the policy writing. So all the work we're doing with restorative practices, the goal would be to embed that into our discipline policy. Um so I have some samples that I'll be working toward and the goal will be to provide some recommendations around that. Although I don't know that we want to pass a

073full change prior since I won't be here to see that through implementation. But um that would be the goal is to provide some draft for for the district to look at and so that we can really be a little more articulate about what our philosophy is of student discipline. Um because right now the way it's written it's just a leveled system. It doesn't. We talked I won't go into it, but we talked as a team about how we'd like to re uh rename some of the things in there and be really transparent about the fact that the district has invested in restorative practices and sees it as an alternative or a supplement to more traditional uh discipline measures for students. Uh again, continuing on those systems and structures of support so that we're making sure

074we're transparent about all supports that we offer to students. And then our last CDI meeting is Wednesday and two of our principles will be updating that group. I know Dr. McCarthy plans to bring her members of her building based team and they're going to highlight some of the work that they've done with belonging through dignity. Um also some responsive what responsive classroom responsive approaches looks like in action and some of the book study work that they have done um there. So hopefully that'll make it a little more tangible for people to see what building a community in a classroom looks like. And Dr. Cohen and Dr. Da have done work at the 78 building. Um, one of the the things that was brought up in here is looking at discipline dashboards and really talking with

075staff about if there is disproportionality, what does that look like in your building and unpacking alternative strategies to suspension and exclusion. So they've done that work with their faculty and I have asked them to come to the CDI meeting um on Wednesday and just talk a little bit with the group about what the work that they've been doing um as a team there at the 78 building and that's all I have. Can you talk a little bit about the we're talking a lot about discipline and restorative practices and being more transparent. It's all good stuff. And then how do you ensure consistency so there is a clear plan so that my idea of restorative justice doesn't look different than Niha's she's expelling everyone and I'm sending everyone on their way with a really like I

076understand your feelings kind of thing. Yeah. I think that was I think that was to the takeaway I had when we met the other last week was that I feel like we're primed for that at K4. And I think what's happening is you're seeing in pockets. We're seeing our principles utilize it across the whole system. Um the the challenge we have is that it looks different at each level depending on the needs of the student and the infraction. So that's kind of the work that I need to do next is look at some other policies and say like do we want to you know articulate and this is we the principles and I have talked about this like at the K4 or K6 level. Here are some examples of restorative practices. It might look different

077at 78 and 912. Um when you say consistency, I think that that is the challenge is we won't be able to have like a formulaic response unless it's a pretty significant policy violation. But what we can do is maybe say around like if it's a first infraction, this might be an option. But when it's repetitive, then we do more suspension and exclusion. So we've looked at a couple that have modeled kind of that process so that you can see like all right maybe if it's not happening repeatedly we can try some of these alternative approaches but once it gets to be more but we need to map it out still and that's the work that we like we've kind of just spent the whole year educating and shifting mindset and letting people try strategies because

078I felt that it was really important that we created a positive narrative around this and not something negative which can happen with restorative practice. practices, it can become sort of like, oh, we're letting kids get away with everything, right? That and that's not what we're saying. We're just So, that's I I do think we're we're in a good spot, but the next step would be to just be a little bit more articulate about what it looks like at each level. Yeah. Question though, just to share to that, and I know you did highlight this idea that we're going to be training the trainers, Dr. Deetsz, Dr. Betts, very similar. I think back to our discussions uh about responsive classroom, right? We used an outside consultant for several years to build that capacity. I think this

079time around we're bypassing that, right? We had to do some training, but it's let's get that internal capacity and then we'll start to use those trainers that'll help itself with the consistency by having our own staff turning this around, working with the principles. But you're right about that gradation as you move throughout the system as you get up. But yeah, I do think we we got a very solid foundation lead this year and the idea that we're going to have some trainers uh in the pipeline. We can then proliferate the training and hopefully improve our systems. Yeah, I mean there I'll be candid there's there are a few buildings that have asked to have their whole staff trained. You know, they're ready to go. And so that's something that will need to be worked out

080too. Like do we want you could pilot it in one school. That's something that the IU has recommended but then that creates other challenges too. So, we haven't taken that approach just yet, but it's something that could be could be considered maybe at an elementary school. So, all right. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Sorry. So is the um the the goal with this policy which or not with this policy with this practice which I'm fully on board board with is it is it to keep it more as like a a set of tools that the that the faculty have kind of in their toolkit of discipline or or is the goal to eventually move it to like actually enshrine it in policy and kind of state like this is this is the official kind of discipline

081overarching policy of the district. Our goal originally was to embed it in policy. When we looked at a few other surrounding districts, one of the things that was missing in ours was the vision was not clear that we in Great Valley believe that students have a right to alter, you know, to these other practices and you see that in some of the districts that have embraced it and they're very public and transparent about it. So I think since we do have buyin and we're creating capacity um ultimately I mean my recommendation would be that you memorialize it in policy so that when there are questions or concerns from community members about why a student wasn't suspended immediately or this or that like we can kind of go back to that and say well this was

082a shared you know we created this this is foundationally what we're what we believe is is good for students. Not saying that we don't think that there needs to be suspension or exclusion because we know that that has its purpose in its time too. I'll give an example like at 78 which Dr. Cohen will talk about. They've just started using some think like a like a think sheet process where students fill out um how they're processing the event and then there's a conference sometimes with the administrator that might be facilitated with the student andor the counselor. So they're kind of taking these additional steps rather than just a you did this now you get detention or they might be still doing detention but they're also still holding that meaningful conference to help the student process

083through like what went wrong and what they could do differently. Um and then there are some districts that have like restorative practices panels, you know, that ultimately if you wanted to go in that direction, that's a bigger commitment, but where students meet with like a panel of educators when they've done something, you know, pretty significant in lie of discipline if it's a first offense. So there's all kinds of ways that, you know, you can take it. Um but we've just tried to be a little like slow to go fast because you know we're like I mentioned before I think too like working with our union and educating them so that they understand too like what the goal and the philosophy is because that that is important as well. So and I think you mentioned exclusion

084as well you know part within a system both internally and externally we have some educating to do. I I think a lot of people think the most severe consequence you can assign a student is give them an out of school suspension. And I think I know I've heard the board raise concerns about that. And I think that's an old mantra that just has carried over generationally. So we're we're trying to break generations and decades of of practice where people think that's a strong message. And I know being a high school principal for 10 years, you know, you think yes, out of school suspension, you put them out for 10 days. What are we doing to repair any relationships that were broken? what are we doing to have students reflect and really become a better person?

085Uh I I think it goes much deeper and so we're questioning some deeply held beliefs and traditions around discipline. So you're right, we will have to go slow to go fast uh fast, but I find myself too people are like expel or you know sometimes we're talking about 12 13 year old children and so no our mission and um I think this is the mission of the board that we're trying to execute is to help students learn from their mistakes not to repeat their mistakes and grow and be productive uh humans as as some of you like to to to share. It's definitely more time consuming on the administrators and councils. So that's another reason why we were like okay let's just kind of taking this year to learn and shift minds because I don't

086I'm always mindful about putting something in place if we don't have the capacity but it is more it's more timeconuming too right because there's conferencing and repair and those kinds of things but so far I think we're I think if I asked all of our principles they would tell me that they're they're still on board. Um, so I think it's been well and our the trainers that we have from CCIU have been fantastic. Um, and they're willing to stay on board to consult and support and a few of I think Dr. Forest um had the one of the consultants out to work with her staff already. So some of the principles are doing that and I think there's momentum increasing to get the IU staff to come out and even do a little bit more

087training with their faculty just to make sure everybody understands the why and that it's not it's not you know getting away with everything. It's not that at all. Um it's but it's really taking time to educate and build that that mindset shift and kind of to to that mission I think and not not to give you any assignment stand but I think it would be really awesome um just because it's such a paradigm shift um that I think a lot of people um you know in the community at large may not understand um that there are really significant benefits to taking taking this disciplinary approach and if if they were able to see the data um and how it played um that might be a really helpful exercise or at least a bit of information

088for them to have. No, I totally agree and I know we've done work with our staff and I think some of the other layers getting that out there more to our community at large to understand what what it is we're trying to accomplish. Yeah, the climate data should help a little bit on that. I think we've been cautious about saying we just want to reduce disciplinary data because then that can take on a negative spin sometimes too. But I do think like I believe when you hear from Dr. Dr. Cohen and uh Dr. duo they will there has been a trend downward now they've also done some other things preventative wise so so it's a combination of both right it's that preventative piece but um but yeah overall you'd like to see some of that

089data go down especially for students who have been historically disciplined of different groups um but also in the climate data I feel like it picks up a little bit of that too just seeing that kids have fair process and feel like they're heard and that their relationships can be restored when they make mistakes I think those are things to continue to look at in the in the climate assessment piece too. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? We good? Okay. Thank you. All right. Moving on to the first public comment. This relates to our voting items only. There will be a second public comment at the end of the meeting for any other items that folks want to speak about. Three minutes. There's a buzzer. You keep talking for 30 more seconds, then we turn off

090your mic. All right, we'll keep it moving for the moment. Um, moving on to consent agenda items. All right. Is there Where am I? Uh, a motion to approve 801 through 8.20. Motion to approve 8.01 through 8.20. Is there a second? Second. All right. Um, Mrs. McGibney, any updates or changes from last week? No updates or changes. And any board questions on any of these items we discussed last week? Okay. All in favor of approving them. All right. Motion passes 80. We are down one board member tonight. All right. Moving on to there's nothing under financial. Um, and moving on to section 10, personnel approvals. Is there a motion to approve 101 personnel items? Motion to approve 10.01. Is there a second? Second. All right. All in favor? Motion passes. 820. Um, yes. I mean,

091I we really could have withheld one of them for everybody's benefit. Uh, Dr. Wexler, we do this begrudgingly. Um, we are only allowing this vote to go forward because we know it's your time to shine and really take on something great in a new district. Um, and we're so grateful for what you've left behind here, which is a legacy of thoughtfulness, consideration, thoroughess, attention to detail, and just holding yourself and everyone around you to a really high standard. And it's appreciated. You will be missed. But we have you till June 30th, so we're going to work you to the bone. That equity plan better be wrapped up. No, thank you. And I I I'm sure Miss Scu speaks for the entire board and and me. Uh thank you for all the good work. It's been

092a a pleasure. Uh the Central Buck School District is getting one heck of a superintendent. So we we know you're going to do great things there and um it's glad to know that we were a little part in getting you ready for that and uh we wish you nothing but the best. But thank you for all you've done. I appreciate it. I don't know if there's any other comments for Joan. I do have two other pieces, but I I don't want to move on unless there's anything additional. All right. All right. Um, in addition to Joanna's departure, there are uh two retirees on there, and I always like to honor the retirees. First is Donna Ahern, one of our teachers at the 56 Center. Maybe some of your children even had Miss Ahern uh over

093the years. So, uh we certainly wish her a happy retirement and thank her for her years of service. And also Steve Orekky. You might not have heard Steve's name as much. He was our HVAC specialist and with us for many many years. Uh Steve was outstanding training other people that came in just a lead within the department. Miss McGibby, I don't know if there's anything you want to share on Steve or if I covered it, but um I know he works, you know, with with Dustin and the team. So wishing Steve also uh happy retirement. So thank you to all three for your service. Thank you. All right. Nothing under policy, nothing under program approvals, nothing under facilities tonight. Um, all right, we're already back at our second round of public comment. Um, this can

094be on anything voting or non- voting agenda items. Again, you're limited to three minutes. Just state your name, where you live, and we welcome all public comment. You will hear the annoying buzzer, but you still have 30 more seconds. comments now. You can do after you can give them to Mrs. McMiny. Thanks. Uh good evening all. Thank you. Brandon Grafe from 8 drive in Malver. Um thank you for your time board and Dr. Gfredo and administration. Uh I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm here to ask you to consider a change to the grading practice for students enrolled in TCHS and related programs such as Allied Health, specifically moving from listing these courses as transfer credits to calculating them in the students GPA as part of the Great Valley curriculum.

095Students in these programs complete Great Valley academic coursework each morning and then continue their day meeting additional academic, technical, clinical, and professional standards. This is college, rigorous coursework that requires mastery well beyond a traditional school day. Despite this level of commitment and rigor, these grades are not reflected in students GPA in the same way comparable EP academic courses are. As a result, students in career and technical pathways may appear less competitive for class rank, honor role, scholarships, and college admissions. Not because of performance, but because of policy. Now, I want to be clear. I'm not asking for this coursework to be weighted like AP classes or any other coursework. I understand the differences, but I'm just simply asking that students own their own high school include these earned grades in their GPA. So, it reflects

096a complete and accurate picture of their academic achievements. Several districts in Chester County, comparable districts in Chester County and Delaware County already do this. The current policy, I think, unintentionally suggests that technical and allied health education is less academically valuable when in reality these programs prepare students for in demand careers, post-secary education, and immediate workforce success. Including these grades would promote equity, consistency, and recognition of achievement while aligning with Great Valley's mission to support diverse and meaningful pathways for students. This issue reflects outdated thinking about career and technical education which I was guilty of myself until I had my own child enrolled in one. Uh the standards have changed. The workforce has changed and the value of these skills has never been higher. This change would not lower standards. It would accur accurately reflect the

097standards students are already meeting. I want to thank you for your time. I hope you'll consider this policy change. I understand nothing happens fast and I was already in contact with Dr. Gfredo and Dr. Alul about this and I know it's on their radar and I just wanted to put it on the board's radar as well. Thank you. Thank you so much. Just give me please. Appreciate it. Good evening. Jen Adams, Charles Township. I wanted to share an experience and then a related concern. In the fall, it seemed everywhere I went, from the soccer field to school events to walks around the neighborhood, I was hearing reports about how kids at the 56 center were feeling isolated from their friends. They're confined to one classroom as a result of the house structure there. Rather than

098perpetuate the complaining I was hearing, I along with neighbors and other fellow GVSD parents decided to put our heads together and streamline our questions and concerns. I offered to send an email on behalf of the group to get a line of communication open. I emailed Dr. Hammond and Mr. Bray on January 20th. The next day, Dr. Hammond responded informing us that he would not be opening a parallel channel of communication with our group, but we could relay our concerns to the parent key communicators. We collectively did not know about this PKC district protocol. We were weary of having a middleman, but we respected the process. And on January 24th, I emailed the three PKC's at the 56 center requesting a meeting. February 4th was their first available date, so several of us met with them

099via Teams on that date. We shared our questions and concerns, and since they neither work for the district nor are they familiar with the inner workings of the school, they were unable to provide us with any answers. They said they would meet with the administrators and get back to us. On March 23rd, after multiple follow-ups and almost 7 weeks later, we received an email, not with any answers or information, but to tell us that there would be a parent orientation for the 56 center on June 3rd. So, months of trying to follow the district protocol resulted in nothing. I emailed Dr. Gfredo to express my disappointment with the PKC system and I received anformational response stating how parents can reach out about their individual child's experiences when there is an issue. But it wasn't acknowledged

100that this group of taxpayers has been given the runaround. It would have been very simple for someone to listen to us back in January, but here we are. I don't know if the intention with all this was to deter us from from pursuing answers by making us feel that our concerns don't matter, but if so, it worked. Because as a result of being detourred to the PKC's, I very much feel like my concerns don't matter. Rather than appreciate the attempt to be proactive, I feel it's been unnecessarily difficult to have any sort of dialogue or get answers. If what I've heard about the school from my friends and neighbors is misinformation, wouldn't you want the opportunity to correct such falsities? As Dr. Gfredo reported from Miss Litzky, the PKC process should be reviewed. Is that

101all my time? Shauna Cliff, 28 Glen View Road, Phoenixville. Good evening, members of the school board, administrators, teachers, and community members. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Shauna Cliff, and I'm a resident of Charles Township. My daughter is a first grader at Charlestown Elementary and my son is a seventh grader at the middle school. I'm here to talk about something that has a real impact on our students academic success and well-being. The transition between the 56 center and the middle school. My son spent one year at Great Valley Middle uh 56 center. I expressed concerns about the transition from the 56 center to the middle school to his teacher and administration, but did not feel as though any of the issues I raised were adequately addressed. I was

102simply told that there would be a parent orientation night at the middle school, a sixth grade visitation day to the middle school, as well as a transition day for incoming students in August. My main concerns were the lack of homework, grades, and the chance to change classes. I have been a sixth grade teacher in the Rose Tree Media School District for 20 years and my entire career has been spent helping new sixth graders transition to the middle school. I recognize that this is only the second year of the 56 center, but I'm hoping that work can be done to make the transition smoother from six to 8 from 6 to 8th grade. My first concern is homework. My son did not receive any homework and uh except for nightly reading and even then there was

103no accountability. Other teachers who had previously worked in the middle school were given nightly math homework and even homework on the weekends because they knew the expectations the teachers would have the following year. In seventh grade, my son typically spends 1 to two hours on homework each night. This is not what I would consider an unreasonable amount, but it is quite a jump considering he had nothing except the 20 to 25 minutes of nightly reading he did the previous year. My second concern is with grades. As of now, students do not receive grades at the 56 center. When students took assessments, they received only a check minus, a check, or a check plus. At the middle school, students receive grades across five core classes. anywhere from 75 to 90% of their grades are based on

104their assessment and summitive assessment scores. I would hope that the district would ease a transition by considering grading at least core classes at the 56 center. My final concern involved students remaining in a single classroom throughout the entire day. When I visited the 56 center prior to its opening, I was impressed by the building's design. Each house included four classrooms connected by a shared common area which creates an ideal environment for students to transition to classes with less stress. The setup allows students to develop important um this setup allows students to develop important organizational skills such as managing materials and adapting to different teachers. Okay, I couldn't get this Good evening, members of the board. My name is Marie Carbo and I live at 29 Marian Road. I'm speaking tonight as a parent of a

105third and fifth grade student in the district. I want to share my concern about iPads and technology use for our younger students. Each year I make the decision to return my students schoolisssued iPads before the end of the year. And I don't do this lightly. I do this because the device consistently leads to behavioral changes, increased conflicts at home. What's most difficult with this decision is that it puts me at odds with my children. They feel singled out and punished when in reality I'm just trying to protect them. This constant pull of iPads has become the source of daily tension in our home. requests to use it turns into arguments. Limits turn into power struggles. This isn't about resisting technology altogether. It's about recognizing that at this age, the costs outweigh the benefits. My children

106use a few school approved programs like Dreambox and Epic, but the limited educational home use does not justify them bringing the device home every day. Despite the digital citizenship training, children do find ways to download in inappropriate games and applications that they learn about on the bus, some with violence and language that is not acceptable to me. At home, I maintain clear boundaries with technology, but the school issue devices undermine my efforts and also create confusion confusing and conflict between school experiences and family values. There's a growing body of research that shows that young children do not need personal devices to learn effectively. In fact, excessive screen time is linked to decreased attention span, sleep disturbances, and challenges with emotional regulation. Hands-on learning, face-to-face interaction, even boredom all play important roles in healthy development, especially

107in elementary and five, six middle school years. I'm asking the board reconsider the necessity of sending iPads home with younger students. at the very least enforce stronger restrictions like not being able to download apps, which is something at my house they have to ask for every app if they want an app. Plus, they only get an hour on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Um, clearer safeguards and more alignments with what families in our district would like for their children. I am just one parent here tonight talking about this, but maybe survey the parents and see how the parents are feeling because hear from some parents that the iPads at home are causing conflict in homes. Technology is a tool that does support learning, but it should not create stress, conflict, and unintended harm in our homes.

108Thank you for your consideration. Hi, my name is Sarah Svario. Um, I have a child at uh Charles Town and a child in the 56 center. Forgive me, I wasn't quite prepared tonight, but I do feel like I wanted to follow up on what Jen had to say. Um, my son is is currently in the 56 center and um, specifically to follow up on Jen, the the self-contained classrooms has been so difficult for him this year. He's 11. Um, he struggles to stay and maintain focus without movement. Um, there's a stagnation I think that is there for him in the classroom as well as socially being siloed in the individual houses. Um he spends all day every day with the same kids. He goes to class with them. He goes to lunch to recess to

109special and then he does move classes for special and then obviously outside for for lunch and recess. But it is limited movement. Um I I just want to encourage you to look into this and to consider. Um they have he has a fantastic teachers. There are great staff there who have talked to me. Um, I think they recognize and are willing to accommodate, but having the opportunity for my son to see a kid that lives in our community and he goes to school with it during a specialized core extension time isn't ideal and I just wish he had the ability to not be so socially stunted and and and be able to grow. Um, the last thing that I'll say is that I do appreciate this idea behind the five six center and um kind

110of keeping these kids out of elementary or developing them out of elementary school, but they're not yet ready for middle school. But I just think that there might be missing an identity there because they're older than elementary. But yet my son who's in kindergarten, he can sit with whomever he wants at lunch. He can play with whoever he wants in his grade at recess. And my older son, who's in fifth grade, often sits with his class except for mix it up days and has limited kids that he can play with um and access on the playground. Thanks. Can you briefly state your address or your general residence? 540 Springs. Thank you so much. Thanks. Are these your glasses? Yeah. Good evening, Sher Lawrence, Charles Township. I am here to speak tonight about AI. Uh my

111husband uh is uh one of the AI experts that works at Vanguard and he and I get into a lot of arguments over AI because I do not appreciate AI. Um I have a journalism degree and I just see AI as taking jobs away from writers and all that other stuff. One of the concerns that um I have is that as AI is developing there is bias and I know that when I was in school we were not allowed to use say Wikipedia as our primary source in our research papers. You could use it to find the actual primary source but if you ever uh used Wikipedia you got points off. Um, according to the MIT uh Sloan School of Management, there is inaccurate content obviously online um they quote generative AI tools also carry

112the potential for otherwise misleading outputs. AI tools like ChatGpt, Copilot, and Gemini have been found to provide users with fabricated data that appears authentic. These inaccuracies are so common that they've earned their own moniker. We refer to them as hallucinations. Um that's from a generative AI working group at MIT. For example, of how AI hallucinations can play out in the real world. Consider the legal case of MATA uh v Avikana. In this case, a New York attorney representing a client's injury claim relied on Chat GPT to conduct his legal research. The federal judge overseeing the suit noted that the opinion contained internal citations and quotes that were non-existent. Not only did the chatbot just make them up, it even stipulated that they were available in major legal databases that they weren't. So, as the AI

113uh uh working group uh is working through how AI can be used, especially at the high school, I think it's super important to point out that it's not necessarily going to be accurate information. And how do you get the students to actually research to make sure that this is accurate? Even if AI says it's it can be found in a particular uh website or database, is it really there? Um there's a lot of AI slop out there. Now you've you've got things like sloppanda happening. It's a whole new world that we're only starting to learn about. And I really feel strongly that our high school students who still rely on Wikipedia, who may be using AI, do not necessarily have a good understanding of is AI really truthful to me. And I think that needs

114to be all right. Thank you everybody. Um, moving on. Any other board comments? Um, I have one comment and one question. Um, I had the opportunity to go to the high school play this weekend and it was amazing and we took friends who are from out of the district who have theater kids, legit theater kids, and they said it was the best high school performance they have ever seen. Um, so it was, if you've not never been able to see it, they are truly amazing. It was really wonderful. So, kudos to all those students. Um, and then my question as we move into like activity time in the schools and all the stuff happening, I think I would like a better understanding of our um, kind of rental process and what happens both internally and

115externally when a group wants to rent at our school, how we're managing it. Um, and I know that facilities has more and more and more on their plate even with the new acquisition. And so just kind of wondering how that all plays out, what the system looks like, where we may or may not need support, and just thinking about ways to make our our lot of resources that we have now as a district available to the community easier for us to manage internally. Um, so just like a better understanding of that process somewhere down the road. Um, I just wanted to shout out Dr. Cohen. Um, my son attended the Friday night event at the middle school. And so I happen to know, I think she's mentioned before, she gets to school rather early each

116day. I think to the tune of like 6 a.m. And I picked my son up at 9:15 p.m. and she was walking out of that building. And so I know she's not the only one who keeps hours like that. Um, but I did want to acknowledge that. And I rolled down my window, thanked her profusely. She was lovely because she always is. Um, and I'm just so grateful that we have teachers and staff and administrators who are just going that extra mile on a Friday night when I know that hanging out with a group of middle schoolers is maybe not everyone's idea of a good time. Um, but it's appreciated and I saw her. So, thank you all very much. Is there a motion to adjurnn? Motion to adjurnn. Second. All right. All in favor?

117Have a good night everybody. Thank you so much.