01/08/26 School Board Work Session

001Good evening. I would like to call this January 8th, 2026 board work session to order. We'll start by having members of the board read the district mission and goals. >> Thank you, Dr. King. The the district mission of the school district of Hford Township is to educate and to inspire a community of lifelong learners who become well-rounded global citizens. >> District goals academic excellence in an evolving world. prepare future ready learners who persevere, adapt, problem solve, think critically, and are supported by engaging learning experiences and intentional use of technology. Belonging. Honor every individual's inherent dignity through equitable, inclusive, and diverse practices. Social emotional growth. Build a learning community that prioritizes social emotional wellness as a foundation for academic success, resilience, and strong relationships. Community pride and civic engagement. Empower students to be active, responsible, and

002contributing citizens through shared responsibility in community partnerships. >> Thank you. Mr. Tessa, can you call the role, please? >> Yes. Mr. Flagler >> here. Miss Lee >> here. >> Dr. McCay >> here. >> Mr. Schwarz here. >> Miss Snagris >> here. >> Miss Snder >> here. >> Miss Weedman. Dr. Shelton >> here. Dr. King >> present. Thank you. We'll continue on to section two, public comment. The board values public comment. There are two opportunities on the agenda for members of the community to provide public comment during the meeting. The first opportunity on the agenda for public comment is to allow members of the community to speak on action items listed on the agenda for a board vote. The second opportunity on the agenda is towards the end of the meeting which allows members of the

003community to speak on any topic. Public comment allows for residents of the township to speak for three minutes. A timer will be set at the start of your comments and an alarm will sound indicating that your time has been completed. Should you have any materials for members of the board, please leave them at the end of the table with Mr. Tessa for later distribution to the board. Please note that if appropriate, a member of the administration may follow up with you at a later date. At the beginning of your comments, please state your name, confirm your residency, and the time will begin for your allotted three minute remarks. I do not have anyone that has signed up for section two of public comment. So, we're going to continue on section three. Can I have a

004motion to approve the minutes from the December 18th, 2025 regular board meeting? >> Son moved. >> Second. >> Moved and seconded. Any discussion? >> All in favor? >> I. Any oppose? The motion passes. Item 3B, the bill list. Can I have a motion to approve? Can I have a motion to approve the bill list in the amount of 1,170,984.37? >> Shelton second. >> Moved and seconded. Any discussion? All in favor? >> Any oppose? The motion passes. Item 3C. Can I have a motion to approve the second readings and adopt the following policies reviewed at the December 4th work session? >> Moved and seconded. Any discussion? >> Question in um 706.1 disposal of district owned property. There's a paragraph on the second page where it refers to district users and district lifestyle life cycle, but district

005isn't the same capitalized term that's used throughout. Just for clarification, you're just saying we should capitalize district. >> Yes. >> Yeah, that's fine. We can make that without needing to um review this at a different meeting. And um I just wanted to say that these second readings did not have any changes from the prior readings. So it's the same as we reviewed at the last meeting. Additional discussion. All in favor? >> I. >> Any oppose? The motion passes. Item 3D. Can I have a motion to approve the personal actions listed below? >> Second. >> Moved and seconded. Any discussion? >> All in favor? >> Any oppose? The motion passes. So we've now concluded the action portion of the meeting and we are moving into the working portion of the meeting in which items are being

006provided for information and discussion purposes only. None of the items discussed are being considered for full official action at this time. We're going to move into section four which is committee reports um for academic and people's services. Miss Lee, >> Miss Saxa, thank you Miss Lee. Uh we are very happy to have with us this evening uh many people who have been working hard on our comprehensive and our strategic plans. And so this evening we're going to give you an update telling you where we are in that progress. But I don't have the clicker probably should or could someone click for me? We could go to the next slide. Okay. Uh as you recall, our district undertook a strategic planning process last year that garnered input from all types of community stakeholders. Uh this resulted

007in the strategic plan goal areas that you heard uh spoken at the very beginning of this meeting. Additionally, the Pennsylvania Department of Education requires all districts to complete what's called a comprehensive plan. Strategic and comprehensive plans are two related but different plans. Uh, comprehensive plans are shorter. They're three-year plans, and they're focused on student achievement and growth data, and they're, as I said, required by the state. Strategic plans are typically longer and broader in focus, as they set the priorities for the entire district's functioning rather than only the student achievement and growth plan. Tonight, we'll share an update on progress towards goals on both of these plans. But first, before we get to that though, uh we want to celebrate our district's performance on our most recent uh state assessments. These are from the spring,

008for the most part, the spring of 2025. For more details about our academic performance, you can refer to the November work session presentation where we did an entire um review of slides and data. But when we shared that with you, the information on this slide was not yet available. And now that it is, we are proud to announce that Havford ranks in the top 4% of the state as measured by the percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced on our state assessments. So what you can see here is um our math rankings. So, not only do we see progress over the years, but we are also thrilled to highlight that our seventh and eighth grade math rankings are number eight out of 620 and 10 out of 623 districts and charters. These are really amazing

009rankings and we're so proud of the students and teachers who work so hard for this level of performance. As you can see that these scores are built on a very solid foundation of being ranked 24th, 26th, and 19th in the state in grades four through six, respectively. Next up, we'll just take a look at English language arts. Here, I'm happy to highlight that our seventh and eighth grade rank fourth and eighth out of over 600 districts and charters. and our fourth through sixth graders ranked 26th, 24th, and 12th, respectively. Again, our students and teachers and administrators should be very proud of reaching these levels of proficiency. And finally, our Keystone rankings are in the top 3% of the state. Among approximately 580 districts and charters, our percent proficient or advance earns us rankings of 15th,

010sixth, and 16th in algebra, biology, and literature, respectively. These end of course assessments show that our whole program K to 12 builds to incredibly high levels of success. It's particularly helpful to look at these data points. Now, as we present our strategic and our comprehensive plan progress, you will see that even with high rankings like we were able to get this year, we will always strive for continuous improvement. Our teams are working diligently to improve our practices, to refine what we're doing, and ensure that we are a great district for all students. So, as we review our goals for this evening, we're reminded that our areas of need are relative and that our overall picture is one with so many achievements to celebrate. And so we will now move on to our strategic plan and

011action steps. We're going to start with the strategic plan update. And uh first up is our academic excellence in an evolving world goal area. And I'm going to introduce our co-chairs uh to with us this evening we have Meredith Hearn and Heather Panero. And another co-chair of ours was not able to join this evening and that is Mrs. Kirsten Montgomery. >> Hi, good evening. Last year, we had an opportunity to work with a group of educators to identify how we could incorporate perseverance, adaptation, problem solving, and critical thinking in our students learning experiences. We found that these qualities live within the principles of design thinking, which is a human- centered approach to problem solving that encourages understanding problems and needs, generating creative solutions, and refining ideas through collaboration, experimentation, iteration, and and reflection. To begin

012this work, we will be completing a self- assessment of current instructional practices and curricular resources to identify where the elements of design thinking already exist and identify opportunities to intentionally embed these elements into our experiences for students. We will also develop a crosswalk between the framework for observation and practice, which is the evaluation rubric for our educators, and principles of design thinking to ensure alignment between both instructional expectations and classroom practices. From there, we will update key instructional and curricular tools, including our textbook evaluation rubric, our resource evaluation tool, and our lesson plan templates to reflect and support opportunities for critical thinking, problem solving, adaptation, and perseverance across all classrooms in an effort to ensure that these practices become a part of who we are and prepare preparing our students as future ready learners moving

013forward into the summer of 2026. ICS. We will begin to identify and plan professional development opportunities for our teacher leaders and administrators um which will aim to introduce the principles of design thinking to them and empower those leaders to support the academic excellence in an evolving world goal uh through the updated tools and resources that Heather just mentioned. And then continuing into the 2026 2027 school year, the UBD curriculum frameworks will be updated to include those principles of design thinking, particularly in assessments in order to make student learning more visible with a focus on student voice and choice. This process ensures that all students across the district experience the principles of design thinking infused directly into the curriculum. Finally, we will continue the intentional use of technology across our district as guided by our technology

014plan and supported through those tech plan and AI committees. The focus remains on using technology purposefully to enhance instruction, support staff, and ensure responsible effective use of emerging emerging tools like artificial intelligence. Together, these steps create a clear and intentional path towards embedding design thinking and purposeful technologies across our district. So, I'll now turn over to Christina Carter who will begin the update from the belonging group. >> Hi, good evening. So, we are back doing a strategic goal around belonging which was formerly diversity and inclusion as we mentioned before with the language shift. Tonight, you will hear from two of our tri chairs. who I'll invite up and um unfortunately one was unable to make it but I'll share his name as well. So Dr. Alicia Payne from Chadam Park, Beth Mastercola from Coopertown and

015Dr. Jabari Whitehead unfortunately was unable to attend but he has been working greatly on project. So I will hand it over to Miss Master. >> Hi, welcome again. Um I feel like I'm always talking about belonging. This is my second time on the uh same same goal but very happy to do so. Um of course in decreasing the disproportionality of minority students in enrichment and higher level courses prefer to look at it the other way. We're trying to increase um the representation. But of course we will continue at the elementary level to look towards unleveling. Of course third grade math is going to be our first target for next year. and then researching the best ways to look about that for fourth and fifth in the years to follow. Um, and right in hand with

016that, of course, is more opportunities for training teachers to differentiate better for our students. Um, at the middle school level, I'm going to go to instead of high school, they already have a great system in place where they analyze data consistently to seek out opportunities to move students up. um we're just going to continue that work with Dr. Han and his team, make sure that the system is actually working and and consistently monitoring those numbers. And then at the high school level, finally, um as we've heard from Pete and his team for years, they have so many opportunities, so many different courses, um the AP classes along with enrichment and and um honors courses. And we again just have to make sure that the students are aware of these classes, know the benefits of taking

017these classes, and we want to make sure that the numbers match, you know, that they know the opportunities are there. So that's what we're going to be working on um in the next couple years. So next, Alicia. >> Oh, I'll take it up for you. Oh, you're okay, Beth. So just to go backwards, ours is broken into four priorities as it was in our previous action plan, just to give you some clarification for it. So our second priority is to increase the representation of diverse staff and identify ways to retain those currently employed. Our goal is that every student within the organization has someone that mirrors them and how they identify and has someone who can be there as an advocate for them as well. So we steadily work to do that each and every

018day. And we have seen an increase from our last action plan to now and we're going to continue to do that. Part of recruiting is retaining. So we have done work around um asking our current staff members of diverse background about their um what has gone well for them working in the district to learn what we need to continue to do better. And through that we were able to provide administrators training around how to continue to retain our staff. Ongoing we also started a new admin of color support meeting where they had a group at the beginning then we check in with them throughout the year. In the fall, we had um our black male educator affinity group and allies. So, I was an ally, George was ally, and our other HR assistant director, Mrs.

019Butler, um attended the black male educator convening where they could be in a space with others that are like them and they can just learn and grow together. >> We had the largest group too as well. Hire had the biggest representation. [laughter] Just want to throw that out there as well. >> We did. >> I wasn't part of this presentation, but I had to say >> you're always welcome. [laughter] He's always what we did. We enjoyed ourselves and learned a lot along the way, too. And we had phenomenal teachers, just so you know, who all showed up. But also during the 26 27 school year, we will have a program started for culturally responsive mentors for our educators and admin of color because often we know that you may know how to do the job,

020but you don't often know the unspoken things that you need to know in the organization that aren't always told to you and sometimes you need someone else who's like you to be able to explain that. So being able to provide that as well. And then in the spring, we're looking to address all staff sense of belonging so that um everyone feels like they should be here in our district using targeted universalism. And when we think about targeted universalism, that's where you take what's researchbased based off what might work for a subgroup and apply it to the whole. So when we say an education was good for one might benefit all, this is that approach when we think about target universalism. I'll hand it over to Alicia. Thanks. Okay, so the third and fourth piece of

021our four priorities under belonging. The third one, um Kristen Luther and I have been working on uh culturally responsive teaching and practices in the classroom to help ensure access for all students and we are targeting um micro professional developments and we are bringing them to you through the help of Anna Deacon um for little professional developments about being inclusive, using language, using equity purposefully. And we are also going to be using a S'more platform to track um clicks and track with some survey data how the information that we are presenting is being used or useful to our staff and stakeholders. Um the fourth one is identifying barriers and strategies and implementation steps to increase the engagement of students and families from marginalized groups and the marginalized groups are listed up on the slideshow. Um two

022parts to this. One is to conduct one-on-one anonymous qualitative interviews to understand the lived experience of some of the stakeholders in our communities and then to use that data to analyze, synthesize and collect themes and from those themes then to develop some action plans to make families and other stakeholders feel more included in our in our spaces. And the second piece is to also engage community groups in um skill building of how to develop equity lenses when looking at certain situations and to help them feel empowered in the community as as they're being welcomed into the work that we're doing. That's it. >> Well, thank you to my team and the committee members who have all worked to put this together. I'm going to hand it over to Mrs. Nicole Bettiselli. >> Thank you. The

023social emotional growth committee has been very busy since the start of the strategic goals. And I'm going to turn it over to Miss Ashley Leech, Miss Jen Munch, and Dr. Charles Day, who are the chairs for the social emotional growth committee, and they're going to go through the steps we've taken so far and what we're doing in the future. >> Thank you. Thanks, Miss Melli. Thank you to the board. Um, our next strategic plan goal uh is social emotional growth. Social emotional wellness has been a goal over the past five years. So we are continuing to build upon a strong foundation that we already have. Uh we plan to continue building a learning community that prioritizes social emotional wellness as a foundation for our academic success, resilience, and strong relationships. One of the key focus

024areas of this goal is executive functioning. That's what came out of a lot of the work that we saw from our surveys to our stakeholders. Uh our initial goal is to develop a tier one curricula or I'm sorry a tier one executive functioning curriculum at the elementary and middle school levels. Throughout the work of the committee, we were able to meet throughout last summer to develop training that was provided to all elementary staff during the opening professional development days this year. The focus of that professional development was sharing universal language and a common understanding of what executive functioning is and what it means when we say that. Uh this fall we explored tier one curricular resources to determine if um an already developed curriculum would meet our needs. Uh at that time we did determine

025that it would be best for us to develop our curriculum based on researchbased uh uh practices and strategies in alignment with our current structures. So, our next work that the committee is currently reconvening to continue working on is to actually develop that curriculum and we're hoping to complete that by the spring of this year um to be able to share an overview with uh our staff members at the elementary level in order to potentially be implementing by next school year. Jim, oh, the other thing I wanted to just mention is through our collaborative work, we did learn that a tier one curriculum does already exist at the middle school. So that work is going to help us to develop our ele elementary curriculum as well. And then in addition to our focus area of executive

026functioning um we are working to expand our social emotional learning curriculum at the middle school level giving students more tools to understand themselves manage emotions and build healthy relationships. Uh this work is not about adding isolated or disconnected lessons but rather about creating a coherent developmentally appropriate progression that builds over time. >> Good evening everyone. Um the third goal area is um working to expand wellness initiatives across all grade levels by creating just new opportunities for students to learn, connect and grow within a supportive environment. uh with a focus on intentionality, obviously inclusive practices uh that promote overall well-being. Together, these efforts uh will ensure that our students thrive not just academically um but also socially, emotionally, and physically. I'm going to turn it back over now to Miss Carter to introduce the community pride

027and civic engagement group. >> Thank you. So, if our group can come up. So, for community pride and civic engagement, we have a tri chair and we also have one of our committee members join us. So, Dr. Jillian McGelbury from Lynwood, Greg Dina from the high school, and Alex Host are our tri chairs, and they're also joined this evening by Pat Bader from the high school. >> Yeah, good evening. We are excited about this goal, community pride and civic engagement. It's something that um all of us are very passionate about. Um and essentially the goal here is to empower students to be active, contributing um and responsible citizens through shared responsibility and community partnerships. And we've broken it down in a couple of ways. The first piece is a real focus on service learning. Um,

028and when we're thinking about service learning, we want to be thinking about um, how we're developing some kind of a learning goal or almost like a guide for planning. So, when we're planning some kind of a community service opportunity or project that there's also a learning piece involved for the students. So, that's a really important piece of it. Um the second piece there is that after the project or the experience happens there's opportunities for the students to reflect on their learning. So kind of to carry it on and extend that piece a little bit further. Um and finally ensuring that we have uh service learning opportunities built into our curriculum K to2. So there are a couple of pieces that we're working on with um service learning. >> Um good evening everyone. Um, I just

029want to take a moment and thank uh Dr. Hayes and this the the board for uh your support for my uh AP European history textbook last board meeting. Um it's been a long time coming and a lot of books reviewed and uh the book should be here to the book should be here tomorrow or next week. So thank you very much. Um [laughter] so in terms of mentorship within the community and civic uh engagement goal, much of the recent work uh focused on inventorying what we are already doing well across our district at our respective schools. Um our focus then shifted to researching what other nearby districts have implemented regarding mentorship. Uh also taking a deep dive into what school districts are doing nationwide to implement mentorship. Um, I will say, uh, taking a spearhead

030with the research, no single standardized mentorship program is really going to work for us. Um, but mentorship is unique to each district. So, it's going to be unique in our own Hford way. Um, I'm confident in our continued work knowing that in the future we will have a mentorship program we can all be proud of. Um, our 2026 27 mentorship plans include continuous research of mentorship and best practices. Uh, expanding mentorship opportunities in and eventually outside of our district for our students. Uh, identifying students for eligible eligibility uh, for the mentorship program. Uh, define mentorship and program training orientation for mentors. uh in intrabuilding mentorship and interbuilding mentorship uh in the 2026 27 school year. So thank you. >> Hello everyone. Um, as far as uh community partnership goes, our goal is to build and

031grow community partnerships that will connect our students to real world real world opportunities and empower them to take an active role in their community through meaningful district and community collaborate collaboration. We are looking for ways to help students develop citizenship and contributive mindsets that extend outside the classroom. This works or th this this work the works include expanding our mentorship programs, service and volunteer oper opportunities, internships, job placements, and our involvement in community events. Over the next two years, we will continue to grow initiatives such as our service boards, our job boards, our job fairs, our uh skilled trade fairs, as well as expanding our cooperative education programs. By strengthening our role as community liaison, we can better connect our students, our schools, our local partners, and this will ensure our students graduate not only

032career ready, but also community ready. Thank you. So, as you've heard, we are generating some great mentorship and service opportunities for our students. So, we also want to be very intentional about how we celebrate those opportunities and the spirit of community pride and civic engagement. Um, that is also the value of our school district's impact in the community as well as the value of connecting our community to our schools. So, this includes streamlining our methods across the district for how we might celebrate and promote our role in the community, student service, and community mentorship. uh also aligning our district to be a little more user friendly uh with access for when and where our community interacts with our school district. So that in could include things like branding, our social media presence, um generating things

033for community pride like school stores, sideline stores, as well as uh some already extensive work that Anna Deacon's done to standardize our website platforms across schools, make them a little more user friendly for access for our community. And I would just like to say thank you to this group. There's no other group that you'll see that has such pride and belief in the Hford spirit and the possibilities to come. So, thank you for the energy you bring to it. >> Thank you. Go fors. >> Great. Thank you so much. Uh to our strategic uh plan action uh teams and their chairs, we uh you will notice some connections. We're going to turn now to the comprehensive plan goals and action steps. And and what we found is we actually had to because of the timeline

034develop our comprehensive plan uh sort of right alongside of our strategic plan. And when we looked at the student data, it showed us the same things we heard about in the surveys of staff and in the focus groups and in what the children told us in their focus groups. And it and so it really showed that our our strategic plans and comprehensive plans while they focus on a little bit of a different thing, they can be connected. And I think you're going to see those connections here even with some of the people who are chairing them. Uh so we're going to start with uh growth uh priority one goal from our comprehensive plan which was uh really focused on supporting students in fourth and fifth grade. are trying to advocate for uh consistent growth no

035matter where you go to school in this district in fourth and fifth grade. And so uh the first team is going to tell us about consistent implementation of core curriculum. So I'm going to w up uh welcome up uh to our podium Dr. Adalzy and uh Miss Leech is helping with this as the co-charing with it, but she already talked so Dr. Adise is on. Okay, >> so you're stuck with me. Uh hi, good evening everybody. Thank you so much for having us here. Um what uh Miss Leech and I the committee that we're chairing for this is really looking at consistent implementation um across all five of our elementary schools within fourth and fifth grade. Um I know it's something that the board has recently talked about since the arrival of Dr. Hayes is

036that study plan do act approach and uh I think it's kind of a good comparison to the approach that um Miss Leech and I and the committee that we worked with are taking to undertake this work. And so the first thing really was um a study where where are kids having success? what classrooms, what which teachers um are we seeing the most growth with? Um and Miss Leech's job is then really to go to our experts, right? The the teachers who have been incredibly successful and learn right alongside them of what that looks like. Um what what are the practices and the instruction that is happening in their classroom. Um you heard earlier a little bit about like a qualitative approach. We're taking both that quantitative and the qualitative approach of looking at the data,

037but then also hearing from the voices, hearing from the people. Um and from that then creating like a common walkthrough form. So just to kind of for some background information a walkthrough form is not something that we currently have that's you know we we have um some processes and procedures that are common but a common walkthrough of that if I'm an administrator I'm a principal I'm a uh humanities coordinator. I'm walking into a classroom. It is a walkthrough tool that you would use to look at what best practices are happening within instruction of that class. And so that will be one of like the major takeaways to begin with um from you know from the work that we're doing. Then moving into um that really supporting teachers is then our number one job. How do

038we get the approaches that are working best in the classrooms that kids are seeing the most success and spreading that to all of the classrooms across all of our elementary schools and uh really then working on adjusting. Hey, we've been doing these practices. We've been working alongside teachers. our instructional coaches are working alongside teachers. Then going back to the study, is that working? Are are we seeing success? Are we seeing growth? Uh and that is something that will continue to be ongoing. Uh you know, really to take us to the end of this plan because change, especially in an organization our size with a with the number of students that we have. It does take time because we don't just want to, you know, we want to implement practices that are sustainable and practices that

039are going to last. It's not just like the next hot thing. It's something that really becomes ingrained in the culture uh of of our buildings. So that's that's the growth plan priority one. I think I'm trying it back to you, Miss Exa, for priority two. >> You got it. All right. Thank you, Dr. Adelizzy. Uh up next, we're going to hear about priority two, which also came from our study of our PSSA data. Um and what we wanted to see was more consistent growth as we mentioned. So we talked about, okay, first thing, take care of the core. Second thing, how do we intervene and enrich? And how do we know how well that's working? And so that's where Dr. McGelry and Miss Meker are chairing a group looking at that started out looking at

040progress monitoring. I'll turn it over to you. >> Yes. Started out that was uh that's a a good start. Um thank you. Good evening everybody. Thank you for your time. Um the in our comprehensive plan, our priority number two is progress monitoring. Uh which we know is a critical component of any um effective MTSS framework and particularly any targeted intervention program. Uh this area is near and dear to my heart. As many of you may know, prior to becoming Lynwood's assistant principal, um I served as the interventionist um when we first began implementing MTSS. So I've worked really closely with the growth of this uh particular framework as well. Um I've seen the growth over the last five years and and so I I think we certainly are um looking at the right thing and

041finding the resources uh that can help our students. Um our work with this particular goal began thinking that the idea of progress monitoring would be our starting point. Um again we know the criticality of this uh component uh within effective MTSS. However, as Miss Saxo said, and like all good stories, uh twists and turns come up and um unexpected rocks are are turned over. And through really great collaborative conversation, um among our committee members, some of them I know are here tonight, we identified that perhaps we needed to shift our thinking a little bit. Um, collectively we uncovered that there's still some work that needs to happen um to ensure that we're using the most um robust system for targeted instruction and effective implementation of interventions um so that we're confident when ready and we

042find the most effective progress monitoring tool um that we will be doing so efficiently and with fidelity. Uh therefore our work now is starting to look a little bit more at the uh instruction targeting the instruction and how we can best reach the needs of our students um so that we can forward look at the progress monitoring tools. >> Thank you. And therefore our revised action step is um revisiting our MTSS framework for tiers one, two, and three. MTSS um that's talking about the multi-tered systems of supports that we have in place. We have many elementary parents there and in the community um the kids refer to this as when what I need time. So that's the the common time there and there's a few critical pieces. One is professional development and we are working

043um even next month we have pulling a team together. will be um coordinated with the IU and studying some of the most recent research on how to best revisit our practices and uh make sure that we are implementing the most updated research into our everyday practices for kids. Um completing needs assessments at the district level and at the school level to um make sure we are addressing all needs that are identified there. having a manual, an MTSS manual available to guide teams, interventionists, reading specialists, classroom teachers. We want to make sure that's in place. The robust multiaceted um interventions and enrichments that are going to be implemented. And finally, um continued professional development um starting next year and continuing on after that. So, there's a few different pieces together as we will address progress monitoring

044while also um really improving the system that we have in place. Thanks. >> Thank you. An example of making sure that um we are diagnosing the problem accurately before we just throw solutions at things. And um in trying to do so found that oh wait a minute, our solution was going in the wrong direction. We need to back up a little bit and start over. And so we are um refocusing our efforts on that. Um we are changing topics only slightly because another one of our comprehensive plan goals is in the area of science. And so we have our STEM supervisor, Kevin Smith, who will be here to talk to us about our goal when it comes to science. >> Thank you, Mr. Saxa. Good evening, everyone. Um, I just want to say this, it's

045been a really exciting time since I've been here, especially working with science. Um, but there's still standards being in place. There's a lot of new opportunities to grow our students, to grow our learners. Um, previously we were in high school and we were talking about our new classes, but the foundation starts prior to them getting there. Um, looking how we began with this priority goal just wanting to identify implement and respond to the needs. One of the biggest pieces is a what doesn't get monitored doesn't get done. So we're want to make sure that we're monitoring science instruction at the elementary level and the middle school level adequately. Um so at that point we actually at the fifth grade level we introduce some some assessments at C being CDT. At the middle school level, we

046being used to study out um which I can share some of that data with you in a in a moment, but 85% of our middle school students have taken the the benchmarks that gives us an idea of where they're starting and what our students need throughout the school year and allows our science teachers to plan adequately. We found that their strengths there were life science and physical science. Um but some target areas are earth and space and also technology and engineering. and are we're confident as a middle school team that the new kits that we have will only give our teachers opportunity to go deeper in the learning that already exists. Um and there we have considerations opposed to doing benchmarks in grades one to five. We're really thinking about unit assessments um and also

047making sure that they're digital and standard aligned considering the new platform for the PSSAs but also thinking about just not overesting children. Um so we can get adequate information without testing them and testing them over and over again. Um so this is an opportunity really to look at our data from our CDTs. In fifth grade um 88% of our students throughout the district participated. I'm happy to report that almost 74% of them are either on or above grade level on the CDT. Um we found that their strengths are environmental literacy and life science. Really the opportunity to demonstrate in every other level at their own level. Like I was pleasantly surprised looking at that data. I had to refresh my screen to be sure it was accurate. Um because they're they're showing mastery and skills

048that haven't been taught yet a scope of sequence. Um in seventh grade we had 97% um participation. Um Dr. Heran and his team do a really good job of not only capturing the data but also working with their teams to look at the data to improve from. So we looked at our baseline for our sixth and seventh graders. Again be mindful this is the very first assessment. They have not learned any of this material. We're nine and 10% respectively. But again the science team is very excited. After we left Westchester, we actually looked at some of our assessments to be sure that we're continually growing our students. Um, we saw that the strengths were earth resources and conservation and and also genetic factors were some of the things that we found that our students in

049middle school or sixth and seventh grade were strong with opportunities for growth were our food food and cellular reproduction, but also the effects of the eco change. Now going to our eighth grade which was a little bit different. Our sixth and seventh grade teachers had to completely develop that benchmark. Eighth grade, we're we're fortunate enough to be given one through study island that has all the components, covers all the standards because we have a six through eight band on that assessment because it's only given about every three years. 94% of our students participated. 35 were found to be on level or above level. Um I there were so many different opportunities for strengths because they actually even though it was 35% they just came back from summer. is some topics they haven't seen since sixth

050grade. So considering that piece and this was the second or third week of school and correct me if I'm wrong Dr. Har when you gave that assessment this is a great starting place for our teachers. Um one of the opportunities and just considering pieces are the technology and engineering which we're looking to infuse within our tech classes. Um Dr. Her myself Mrs. Saxa have been in communication just really looking to refine that piece and then also earth and space science. Thank you so much, Mr. Smith. Uh, and our final section of our comprehensive plan was addressing what was an achievement gap between our students who qualify for free and reduced lunch, which is also by the state referred to as students with SCES or socioeconomic status. Um, and there was a an achievement gap between

051the that subgroup and the all student subgroup. So, our goal is over the next three years to shrink that achievement gap. And um there are multiple ways we're doing that and doctors Berdoni and Day are going to share that with us. Many congratulations to Dr. Baroni who just recently defended successfully defended his dissertation. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Uh so the opportunity gap exists across many levels. The one that we feel is something we can really tackle and tackle really effectively is the socioeconomic status group here that we have at the high school and throughout the district. So what we're looking to do is decrease the achievement gap between the economically disadvantaged subgroup on the spring 2028 state assessment. So we have three years to accomplish this goal. We want to

052go from 15% to 8% in ELA on the PSSAs, 20% to 12% in the math PSSAs, and at the high school level on the Keystone exams, 18% to 10% on the algebra 1 keystone. So, focusing on the high school group, which is what I'll talk about now, getting from that 18% to 10%, we have a two-pronged approach. We have an academic focus and a social focus. The academic focus, we're going to use CDT data, especially in our algebra 1 college prep group, and we're going to assign the CDT to all of our students. We're going to take that data, really dig into it, go deep into it, and then from that work on assigning groups similar to some of the MTSS pieces that we've heard earlier tonight to really build those areas that we can

053kind of close those gaps and close those areas to make them have growth. And not only will it affect the socioeconomic group, but implementing changes like this will also affect the overall population as a whole. The social focus is something we're also very big on. That's building relationships within the building. So along with the community pride and civics engagement group that you heard from earlier, we are working on a survey which we're going to give to our students to see how we have relationships in the building and then from those relationships really find time for those students to further make those relationships. The more they feel they belong, the better they the better they do in all of their assessments overall. So that is our focus overall and Dr. Day will talk about the timeline

054to roll it out. I'm sorry. >> Sure. All right. I'd like to call the meeting uh back to order, but I do need to note the board took a recess because there have been very concerning comments heard from the audience that have been perceived as threats, including use of profanity made toward speakers. As a board, we are required to ensure a safe and comfortable environment for our speakers and attendees. To be clear, this type of disruptive behavior is not acceptable in this forum and it will not be tolerated. Should this type of disruptive behavior continue from anyone in the room, they will be removed from the meeting. >> Thank you. >> All right. Great. All right. So, Dr. Verdoni did a great job of uh outlining kind of the initiatives, the two-prong approach, the social

055and the academic approach um to our goal. Uh the timeline you see on the board that it's very very similar for both. We are waiting on data from the CDT and the pending survey. Um once we get that data, our plan is to implement these initiatives from February to June, which aligns with our second semester at the high school. Um after that in the summer, the high school team will obviously reflect on on what happened and re-evaluate it and we're going to look to uh expand those goals if we can um and obviously make improvements where necessary. Uh I'm going to do the next slide as well. Our middle school team has been working very very hard on this and uh Mr. David Ford, he couldn't be here tonight um to represent. So I'm going

056to read their focuses in the academic and social realms as well. So, the middle school, they're going to use CDT CDT data as well. Um, they're going to identify students who need additional assistance. They're going to make teachers aware of those students and monitor them more closely. And three, they're going to drive instructional decisions. So, they're going to use that data um to really target those specific students. The social middle school, they're in collaboration with their counselors and PBIS team, they're going to identify and monitor students who need additional supports. Um, they will use systems such as check in, check out, and an evidence-based uh tier 2 system of support. Um, the middle school can elaborate more on that um if needed. So, we're going to pass it back over to Jen. All right. >>

057Thank you so much. >> Remember to clip all the things. Okay. So, uh those are the updates. Uh as far as next steps go, uh as you can see, it's ongoing work, right? Uh we will continue to share progress both with the board and the public via presentations like these as well as written updates, highlights in Havford happenings, all of those sorts of things. Um and and you've heard some ambitious goals this evening. To summarize, as you can see here, this is what we anticipate resulting from our efforts this year and in the very near future. Uh we'll complete gap analyses. We'll build our service learning. We'll continue to focus our belonging, intentionally engaging families in a different way. We're going to formalize the executive functioning support as was described. We're establishing mentoring programs and

058we're building consistency across core instruction as we refine our approach to MTSS or what I need time. Um, we're also going to uh monitor our progress towards our science standards, especially with the implementation of the new steel standards. And I'll just say this, all of this occurs while we continue the day-to-day business of teaching and learning. Uh, and it can't be done without the support of our board, our staff, our students. Uh, some of what you see here um, can be done financially within our current budget. We've done a lot and we continue to do a lot within our current budget. We may come back to the board with requests for financial support for things like professional development or maybe some executive functioning materials. Um, all of those things would be built into a budget,

059but we want you to know you may anticipate seeing something like that in the future. Um and and we'll continue to update you on that as the needs may arise. U so I tried several times to fit all of the names of the people engaged in this work on one slide and I couldn't do it without them being like four point font. Um there are dozens of people uh involved in this work. You know you saw the great variety of the folks who were here tonight to present. they represent their own teams and we just want to express our gratitude to all of those um that you don't see this evening as well as those who were able to uh present this evening. There are people from every building, department, grades span and role contributing

060to this work. Um they're contributing their research, their creativity and of course their work ethic to making this uh happen. So congratulations to them on what has happened so far and uh we are very much looking forward to our near future where we'll continue to see some of this uh come to fruition. Um so uh we're we're thrilled that we're able to coordinate all of this work and remain focused on pursuing the priorities that were established by our community through our strategic and comprehensive planning process. So thank you. >> Can I ask a question? [laughter] Um, first just thank you so much. I appreciate I know just the immense amount of work that this slideshow was demonstrating. So, I just appreciate everybody's efforts putting into this. I have several questions, but just for time sake,

061I'm going to just ask one. um when it it was showing up for me when we were talking about the gap the priority one um and just thinking about the ways that we're assessing improvement being about the overall percentage when we're doing that that's meaning our percentage in the state is that correct when we're saying the 15 to8% in ELA or what percentage are we looking at at that point >> when we're looking for uh the achievement gap you mean reducing the achievement gap yeah so that is on the uh state assessments so it's for Keystone PS and PSSAs. >> So is it meaning that we're trying to move from 15% in the state to 8% in the state for this group? >> We're trying to reduce the gap. The gap is currently between the

062the SCES group and the all students group. There's a 15 percentage point. >> So we're we're looking to look at an improvement within ourselves. This is not comparing to the state. Yes. Right. That is what I just wanted to clarify. Thank you. >> Thanks. >> I just wanted to echo my thanks to all the work hard work. Um, you know, I was part of the workshop that kicked off the strategic planning process and it's just it's great to see it, you know, get built out and implemented. Um, and I guess I had sort of similar questions, but how what kind of tools are we going to use to monitor the disproportionality um and and the social emotional learning goals? >> Sure. So, the disproportionality um in fact, Dr. Moira was working very hard to try

063and get update of the numbers and and he's got one version of it, but he was refining that. Um, so we are looking like just at who is enrolling in AP and higher level courses and is that percentage of that population proportionate to the percentage of the overall population? So if 10% of our students are Asian, are at least 10% of our AP classes students who are Asian or have been identified as Asian? So that's sort of like what we're looking to do. So we're just looking at actual enrollment numbers for those. Same with the gifted programming. Um so that we can just use those data for social and emotional. We are still looking at um like how do you monitor progress when it comes to the um having once we finally have a a

064tier one of executive functioning. We'll see um we'll start tracking who is recommended for potentially a tier 2 um intervention and of those are there those who then would qualify for tier three when that doesn't work. Um, one of the things you'll hear us talking about at some point is looking at how do we um, manage all of these data and how do we create plans and make sure we're reporting what's working in a way that, um, can help us continue to support kids every year. And so, um, that's the kind of thing we would be collecting. We wouldn't be collecting for social and emotional like we're not going to collect like this student is dealing with this problem and put that in a system somewhere, right? But we are going to say like these

065behaviors are occurring. there are interventions that are going into place. We are seeing whether those behaviors have decreased or the replacement be behaviors have increased and therefore we know it's okay now to remove that intervention or we believe it's time to add a different intervention or an additional intervention. Um so we want to respect um of course students privacy but really we need to know if what we're doing is working and then try something else if it's not. >> Just additionally you heard um Dr. Gilbury and Miss Manager mentioned about a systems process with MTSS and some of the metrics that we can use to identify if there's success whether it's in social emotional growth or executive function and things are also like Miss Saxa said um the number of students finding success just within

066the tier one strategies and not having to move towards uh tier 2 interventions. So it's not always going to be that quantitative data metric. it can also be that system process to ensure that what we have in place um is working for you know x amount of students. So there's that additional approach to to monitoring things that is not just specific to a a numeric data point. Um, I just love that the presentation began with the 2025 academic achievement rankings and like that could have been mic drop right there, but then you see um, you know, the team and the robust attention and focus on all the work that underlies it and you're like, oh, that's where these trends come. That's where the student progress comes from. And I love that it is um like

067the academic achievement is one thing but it's built with the um social emotional wellness, the belonging, the engagement in school and community and that these um component parts of what makes Hford successful, what makes our students successful were so well demonstrated in this and just the robust teams and um thoughtfulness that goes into that made this a great presentation and um hopefully eye opening to folks who aren't aware of all of the effort and planning that goes in behind the scenes. And um also just you know certainly a point of pride for our community to have uh this great commitment and focus on all of the um comprehensive aspects that help our schools and students be so successful. Believe it or not, I just have a couple information items to add to that. So, sorry

068about that. Um, you did you may have caught Miss Mastercola share that um our elementary teams are taking a look at leveling practices. You may, if you were here last year, at the end of last year, we uh brought some ideas to the board about unleveling fourth and fifth grade ELA, which we have done, and we will be bringing uh an update on how we um perceive that to be going so far to our February meeting. So, we'll have more information about that. But I also wanted to let you know that the uh teams are now just taking a look at math. We said we would look at that at the end of last year, elementary math. This is elementary. Um, and so we believe that by March we will be able to come back

069to you with an update after we've talked to all of the stakeholders. We sort of think we know what direction we're going, but we still want to get a little bit more stakeholder input. Um, and talk to you about what we're thinking we will do when it comes to leveling at elementary math starting next year. So just an information item on that. Um, also you will see at our next meeting a Wilson contract with the DCIU and then also the usual outofd district educational contracts that you might see on any typical meeting. for the Wilson contract. Um can you explain it just says um that it will I'm looking at the language here um for uh tutors for individual students and groups. Can you explain how many students or what groups participate in the Wilson

070tutor? >> Sure. So um we have um I'm sure you remember over the years we've been training our own staff to be um teaching Wilson. We're right now at the point where we're relying mostly on our own staff, but there are some um groups that meet at a time where our staff's not available or um at the high school. Right now, we don't have staff who are trained on Muslim, so it's primarily high school and then some students at the elementary level. So, it's not many students at this point um relying on the IU. This is a not to exceed um dollar figure because most of them have been um we've trained a lot more staff. So, um we're utilize our own staff for this. and it is special education students in case I you

071said okay sorry >> just wanted to thank the chairs and all the committee members for all the hard work that you've put into this um it's very thoughtful and um one one note is the executive functioning piece um I have four kids two in elementary and two in middle school um my middle school kids are doing great thanks to Dr. and um what they're implementing there. Um and I'm excited to see this kind of roll into the elementary school. It was actually just brought up at our um fall conference, the need for my third grader to have a little bit more executive functioning um brought in. And um I learned that there are tools already at the school so they can actually access some of that if need be. But I love that we're going

072to make this a consistent um program cross district. Um I do have one question though. I know that you noted that there is the curriculum in the middle school. Are we going to be re-evaluating that and looking to see if we need to add any additional resources or supports there or do we like it where it's at? >> Well, it's the second year that they've been doing this during advisory. Maybe you have heard your children come home and talk about that a little bit. Um, and really Dr. Gavio deserves so much credit because she really put together the program, began implementing it, thought about how kids could apply it. Um, so we're we're going to do that for the next couple of years. We're learning the lessons from what she's doing. Um and then we

073will we always will uh evaluate it. We don't have a plan to make any changes to it this year or anything like that. We're learning from her this year and then and then we'll be looking at that just as our regular part of our processes that we always do. And with that I am I any other question? I'll turn it back over to Miss Lee. Thank you Dr. King. All right. Well, thank you um to Miss Miss Saxa and the team that was a part of that presentation. We are going to continue to 4B facilities. Um Miss >> Thank you. Uh there are three items on the facilities agenda tonight. Uh update on our facilities master plan. Um discussion of summer stage using our high school this summer and Pico gas service agreement. So I

074will turn it over to Mr. Ta. >> So this evening um JR has provided us with an update of the facilities plan. Um we had given him the ask of putting in the comments um whether these projects how they were generated whe whether it was through facility study um do they impact security, safety, efficiency and then maybe when the last date of the install was or an upgrade to those systems to the best of our knowledge. So we do have that provided here. Um he did in this report um what items would are planned for his general operating budget versus those items where they're on a capital request list. This kind of just shows that he would anticipate for the summer of 26 looking at approximately $1.1 million in projects and that's obviously up for

075consideration. This is kind of his um best guess on what needs to be done based on the um condition of the facilities. One thing to note too as well, we were notified this week that the um school the public school facility improvement grant has been released by the um DCED. So that does provide schools the opportunity to have projects funded up to 75% for items like roof repairs, which we know is this worksheet at one point. Boilers and controls, plumbing systems, energy savings projects. They look for projects that are at least $500,000. And again, it's a 25% match by the district. Um the like I said, they just opened this week. Deadline for applications are March 13th, so they don't give you a large window. Um so we are working we're going to start working

076with Ken Matthews, with J.R. and Dr. Hayes to kind of prioritize and bring to the board what we're maybe the reasonable applications are to have some of these projects done and have them uh more than partially funded. So, just kind of, you know, we'll keep that on your radar and what we think is a viable option to maybe present and maybe there are items on here that don't meet the 500,000 but can be combined. Maybe there's more than one boiler that's being replaced at different times. Maybe we can lump it into a project to make it eligible to receive some additional funding. Is that grant um a rolling review or no? It just goes till the the due date and then they start reviewing it. Like is there any benefit to us getting it in

077sooner? >> I don't believe so, but I can research that to see if there is any advantage kind of like first to line here's the available funds. >> So the the 1.1 million for summer of 26 would um would that come from our capital reserve fund? Is that what you said? That would be the plan. >> That would be the plan. And then there's five million for the middle school roof replacement. Is that that would be a separate project or >> be a separate project, >> but also in the same 26 time frame. >> That's the thought. And these numbers here, Jerry, they're estimates. So that could be lower, but these are the best guess as of right now. >> Okay. Yeah, I appreciate the um addition of the descriptions that focus on safety, uh

078energy efficiency, and dealing with systems that are obsolete. Like it it doesn't do us any good to have a school building that can't function because HBAC or some other critical system is in not not functioning. Um so finding the the priorities to um invest in so that uh we can make the necessary upgrades and have the school environments that uh support our programming is important. But yeah well um what would be the time frame for making these decisions and putting these costs into the budget? like what's the next steps the board would have to to be planning >> so we can meet we'll meet again further with Jar when we do his operating budget and then talk about how we bring these to the board to kind of get them moving because some of them

079would be time sensitive as far as being able to schedule work over the summer so that >> we've had some initial conversations about prioritizing some of these as well um working into the budget and things like that. There's also a couple other grants for consideration um that could cross over to uh safety, security, and things with construction as well. So, those are ongoing conversations we will be having and as we tease some of that out um we'll have a more refined list, but we wanted to start uh to at least give the basis of, you know, last known installation reason for needing to address things um so that we can make those informed decisions. >> Yeah, appreciate looking for whatever reports or grants are available. Um when you get beyond the work that's earmarked for

0802026 um 27, those future schedules start to add up to a considerable investment. And I know our finance part of the agenda is looking at future budgeting and multi-year planning. So this will be important to have um this facility improvement plan be considered with other budgetary requirements. >> You mentioned that that uh some of these projects obviously looking at here some are standalone, some are might be be combined for that grant in particular. How many applications are allowed per district? Um, should we bundle everything into a big package and swing for the fences or is it or is it better to um parse them out into different areas and then ensure that we at least get something for I mean obviously if we're looking for example at the at the middle school roof that's five

081million bucks right there. That's that's one that could be that hits maximum. But I just want I'm just curious. I know that in some cases you can have multiple grants per jurisdiction or per district in this case with the anticipation that you would not get all of them [snorts] but but but that you could get one or two. I just know what the kind of risk reward of some of those things are. So if we can kind those questions and figure that out. Um and then this this grant can be coupled with with other ones too. I assume there a couple more grants out there. our roof. One of the new grants that that is coming out in the budget year is solar solar for schools again. And we we already had an application for

082that from uh from last year I believe. So it might not be very difficult to another one of those. Yeah. The more grants we can apply for though the better. There is a compressed window this year for all grants for this is not just school district. This is statewide because the budget took till November to get passed. Normally these grants get advertised in September, October and they're awarded in January, February, March. This one I think is due in March and I don't believe they have changed the date even though they they they let it go uh monthly. So we do have to hustle on something but appreciate you keep an eye on this and yeah, if we can get some more clarification on what precisely and and some dates of when we need to act,

083when we need to vote, that' be helpful. All right. Um, the second item is >> Go ahead. Go ahead. >> Question. Um, yeah, especially like the middle school roof. I think Jr. you said that was like high priority, I believe. And I I guess one of the things about the the whole budget is how much opportunity do we have like to do a bond you know rolled into the the bond versus a capital capex fund. >> I know we I know our borrowing capacity would allow for more but that's something I definitely pose to PFM to see you know how much more >> that might be part of the discussion we have the longterm plan. >> Right. Exactly. >> Thank you. Anything else on the facility plan? All right. The second item concerns the summer

084stage theater usage. >> So, next we have representatives from the upper derby summer stage. Um, they are coming to the district seeking use of facilities for their program. They um are displaced from their current site. >> Absolutely. Um, perfect. Thank you so much. I love that. >> Yeah, that's perfect. Thank you so much. Um, hi everyone. My name is Chris Lunar. I'm the artistic and managing director of Upper Derby SummerStage. Um, with me here tonight I have some members of our team. We have Justin Heimbecker, the executive director of the Upper Derby Arts and Education Foundation. We have Ryan Stone, who is our summer stage business operations manager. We have Stephanie Colatin, who is our SummerStage programs and community manager. And then we also have Jim Thompson and Jackie Langley who are two members of

085the board of the Upper Derby Arts and Education Foundation. I just want to start off by saying thank you so much for having us all here tonight. I promised Dr. Hayes there would be no flash mob or confetti cannons, but we will still try to put on a good show nonetheless. So, thank you for having us. Um, and before we dive in tonight, I just wanted to take a moment to say leading up to this presentation, it has been um nothing short of wonderful to work with Dr. pays Tony Jr. and Joe McConey who is um the head of security to get to this point. They have been um true partners and collaborators throughout this process and their leadership and dedication for this community and your students and teachers has been so evident and clear

086in all of our conversations and we've just loved working with them. Awesome. So, I'm just going to start off with what is SummerStage for those of you who don't know. And um SummerStage is one of the nation's most successful youth theater programs located right here in Delaware County. Since 1976, we have been um working with young people to help them find the magic within themselves and share that magic with the community through live theatrical performances. Um, Play Bill, which is those little programs you get if you've ever been to a Broadway show or a show downtown, actually named SummerStage one of the top five performing arts summer camps in America. And that's a distinguished, um, an honor that we hold very near and dear to our hearts and very proud of. Um, and of course,

087uh, Upper Derby summer stage is a program of the Upper Derby Arts and Education Foundation, which is a 501c 501c3 not for-profit organization. So, uh, as a summer theater camp, a lot of people say, "What are you teaching?" Obviously, we're teaching singing, we're teaching dancing, we're teaching acting. But what are we really teaching? We are teaching creativity and imagination, collaboration, conflict resolution, growth mindset, time management, emotional intelligence, and countless other life skills that set up our young people for success no matter where life may take them or no matter what journey they choose to go on. There are countless other summer theater programs here within the region and across the entire country that their sole focus is on creating the next generation of Broadway performers. At SummerStage, we create outstanding performers, but our sole focus

088for first and foremost is about creating outstanding human beings who can take what they learn at our program and take it back to their school, their neighborhood, their community, and make the word world a better place at the end of the day. So, how do we do that? Summer Stage is a community that celebrates many things. And I always like to say it's the little things that are actually the big things at the end of the day. You know, process over product, the power of ensemble, we over me is something you hear a lot. Leaving our egos at the door, developing your character both on and off stage. And of course, at the core mission of everything we do, filling the world with love in um the anthem fill the world with love. That is

089a core part of who SummerStage is. The words brave, strong, and true are evident throughout that song. And that's something we talk consistently on a daily basis uh with uh to our participants and our staff and how our choices in decisions e emanate those values. So I think an important thing to address is why are we here in Havford talking about upper derby summer stage? Um so for summer 2026 um the program is historically located at the Upper Derby Performing Arts Center which is at Upper Derby High School. Um, Upper Derby School District let us know for this upcoming summer that there would be a large uh capital project going on at the high school campus that would make day-to-day operations and our show experiences when we're bringing in um customers and audience members from

090the surrounding community um just a bit difficult to navigate at the end of the day. So, in order for the program to continue operating this summer and not take a summer off, we agreed that we would look for a relocation um this upcoming summer, which led us to here and meetings over the past few months with Dr. Hayes, Tony, Jr., Joe um that have been really, really wonderful. Um through those meetings, we've looked to put together some details that we've outlined um in a number of different uh pieces of paperwork and things like that. But tonight, I've just tried to gather the highlights of what we've c come to could exist in a potential partnership agreement between SummerStage and Havford School District. So, we've discussed a potential partnership that would involve us being on site

091at Havford High School for 9 weeks this summer. That season would begin on slash around June 15th, coinciding and working alongside the end of the calendar school year to make sure we don't affect that and that students and teachers can end the year successfully. And then the season would end on Friday, August 14th. The programs that would be housed at Havford High School would be our children's theater program, technical theater, mainstage, summer stories, and dance troop and cabaret. Um, just some additional details here to sort of understand the scale of how this program operates. We've reviewed some of the daily hours, worked with JR about how we can set up his facilities team for success as well as Joe the security team as well. Um the main thing here that I think is important to

092talk about is the performances because performances are a big part of what we do at SummerStage. Um, so for six out of the nine weeks we we would be on campus. There would be public performances where audience members from um not just throughout the region, but I'll say the tri-state area because we do have audiences that come as far as New Jersey and Delaware as well would be at Havford High School for shows. Those shows are mostly our children's theater shows that run for six weeks um on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. You can see each of those shows has five per five performances. And then for two weeks during this agreement that fall during those six weeks there the children's theater shows take place. We actually also run a mainstage program which is essentially adult

093theater. Um and that takes place on Friday and Saturday evenings um as well. So a great question that came up in our very first meeting and I think Tony was the one that posed it and I really appreciate it was why Hford why are you guys here? And there's a lot of really great reasons. First and foremost, Hav Havford is our neighbor. By staying local, we can remain accessible to hundreds of participants that engage in summer stage and stay local for all of the thousands of residents that already consider SummerStage a part of their annual summer tradition. Also, as I mentioned, the high school has a fantastic theater space that uh would be really exciting for SummerStage to produce in on the scale that we do and bring shows to life in that space. um

094a shared commitment to young people. I think I brought this up in our first meeting with Dr. Hayes, which was um in actually preparing to meet everyone for the first time. I came across the strategic plans and goals, which was actually really wonderful to hear about all of that tonight. And I said in that meeting, there's a way that SummerStage is a partner in all of these at the end of the day, not just during the summer, but during the school year and beyond. And that partnership doesn't have to just be with SummerStage. it can be with SummerStage and the Upper Derby Arts and Education Foundation in where that organization is driving towards this year as well. So, we're very excited about bringing that commitment that we know you guys have for your students and

095the commitment that we have for our summer stages every single summer. And then last but not least, Havford fuels summer stage. When we looked at the data of those who were involved with summer stage, 20% of the program is actually made up currently of Havford uh residents, which is our second largest group after of course Upper Derby and Drexel Hill residents at the end of the day. But I thought it was really exciting that the second largest group was alongside this group of people that we were talking to. And then last but not least, um there are some benefits to us putting on a show and um singing and dancing all summer long. Um first and foremost is um this is our 51st season this upcoming year and this is the first time in the

096history of the program. It would not take place in Upper Derby Township. That is a really big deal for a lot of people that are a part of our community. And a lot of people have been interested to see where we're go, where we will be headed and excited about whoever is going to be our partner in this exciting unique summer and moment in our history. So we look forward to figuring out how we can work with Havford to make sure you guys are highlighted throughout that process of sharing the news that we would be here over the summer. Additionally, um like I said, performances are a huge part of our summer programming. We have between 25,000 to 30,000 audience members that come through our door in six weeks. So that puts Havford School District

097and Havford High School at the forefront of those 25,000 to 30,000 audience members seeing the school, seeing the district, seeing the facility in action week after week for our performances. Additionally, um the local economic impact throughout the community. We have uh close to a thousand participants across all of our programs. We have close to 200 staff members. All of them are buying coffee multiple times a day. Um often for lunch, which we like to remind the kids, coffee is not lunch. Um they buy they go out into the community and buy lunch as well. And we also think there are some exciting partnerships with uh potential local vendors and local restaurants that we would love to engage and figure out how we can get them in front of our summer stage audience and our summer

098stage participants again to really highlight the community aspect there at the end of the day. And then last but not least, stronger community relations. Um something that has been very very important to us from the get-go is we invest in our relationships with people. We want partners when we're trying to put something together and create something not just for young people but also the community at the end of the day. So something that was important when we were having these conversations was making sure that despite this being a unique moment for the program's history, we don't want this to seem like it is um simply transactional at best. This is an actual relationship. We want to be here. We want to be involved in the community and we want to figure out by being here

099in the community how we can also expand our impact and access um to all of the Havford students that we currently have programs for across those different age ranges. >> Thank you. That's all I've got. >> I have a question if I may. Um what is the impact on ESY um students that may have programming at the high school for the summer? >> We don't hold ESY at the high school. We have it at the middle school. one of our elementary schools. So, no impact. >> Okay. So, there'll be no impact. The other question is, do you have any programming that's inclusive? Um, one of the things that our local theater uh folks do is they do sensory viewings and and things like that so that the whole community can access. >> Yeah, absolutely. We've

100actually been working over the past few years to ex um expand um our how summer stage can be accessible and inclusive not just for the community but also for our participants as well. Um, starting two years ago, we became the first arts organization in Delaware County to be culture city certified, which means that all of our staff is trained to work with participants and audience members who might have sensory needs and um, support them whether they're in a rehearsal or attending a performance. Additionally, we also added uh, specifically a sensory inclusive performance for our mainstage show. And last year we had our first sensory inclusive children's theater performance as well. Um to make sure that we can access both of those audiences for this upcoming summer. Some things that we've already been investigating because we've

101actually been looking at them over the past few years as well is um ASL uh translation for performances. Um I'm uh also open open captioning for those who might require open captioning for a performance as well. And then of course we have worked with local municipalities and townships for discounted tickets as well to make sure that summer stage can remain accessible for everyone from an audience standpoint. >> Okay, thank you very much. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Yeah. >> Um my question actually is probably more for J.R. Um I would assume to get to this point, you've already thought through all of this, but I just know your staff is incredibly busy during the summer. So this feels like a big undertaking to have to do that as well as all of the facility things

102that you do during the summer. Does like is it safe for me to assume that this feels like a comfortable undertaking for the summer? >> Okay. So, [laughter] so J.R. is going to say we can make it work, right? But like Chris [clears throat] said, uh they've been talking with J.R. and Joe and Tony. Um Jar and Joe I think ways way more than myself directly, but we've definitely looked through the logistics, the potential impacts, impediments. Um even during um meetings with the township, I've mentioned to them how this is a potential possibility because there's an impact on the community as well, not just >> traffic alone. Yeah. >> Right. On the facilities. Um so a lot of those logistics have been looked at. It's obviously not fully vetted out, right? Because it's not a

103decision been made yet. >> U but we've done a lot of the background work to be able to make sure that should a decision um for summer stage come on board, we planned that out. So, we have all that logistical and cooperative um work together. I'll say, you know, and then and I know nothing about summer stage and I personally really have no connection to it. Um but I do know coming in one of the things was really uh being um cognizant and honoring the traditions of Hford Township, but also looking at novel approaches to things too. And this presents an opportunity to do that. um to continue um with Hford's community pride, civic engagement directly related to our strategic plan goal that we just heard about. Um but also looking at new ways we

104can expand that that partnership, that branding, that promotion um as well. Um and I logistically, I'm sure JR has some things that he has hesitations on. He'll say it'll work because he will make it work. But but we have looked extensively at um at making sure it is not a we wouldn't have come to this point if it was a >> I assume so. But I still wanted to have the >> That's correct. >> Yeah. >> Exact question. And I appreciate your very thorough answer to the accommodations question. >> Of course. Yeah. If if you don't mind, I just would love to add on to the facilities and impact of that just cuz I'm always the first one to say when we're at Upper Derby as well, there's probably nothing worse than the one time

105of the year it's supposed to be quiet and you can get some work done for all the theater kids to come on in and make a lot of noise and build sets and things like that. But our goal um when we're at Upper Derby and it's our goal for being at Havford this summer as well is I we never want a school district to feel like our presence uh did not set up the teachers or students for success the following school year. So what we've done is we've worked to provide um JR with a calendar of the rooms when they would be used and things along those lines. And what we'll actually do is um about 3 to four weeks before the program even officially ends, we'll start tailoring rooms off of the schedule and

106handing them back to have a facilities so that come Friday, August 14th, the main thing we're probably handing back over is the theater space, the choir room, and maybe one other classroom closer to there. but the cafeterias and everything like that we've already handed back so facilities can set those up for success for the incoming students and school year as well. >> Yeah, of course. Thank you. >> I had a question and and comment and Dr. Hayes I think already kind of alluded to my question. Um you have been talking I guess with with township township as part of the the planning for this. >> We have not directly engaged with Havford Township yet. We've mostly been our conversations have mostly been with the school district. Um, I think we wanted to make sure we

107got to this point and people were feeling good and um, if people are feeling positive about that, that would definitely be our next step because we understand the community impact. Um, but go ahead. Sorry. >> No, that's fine. >> No, you I have during my meetings with the township, I have mentioned this as a possibility. Okay. So, there has not been any, you know, official planning conversations. Okay. Um, >> yeah. Dave Berman and them wouldn't be caught off guard like, "Wait, what?" >> Yeah. Because I'm picturing uh the front of Upper Derby High School has many more parking spaces than what I'm picturing being available on the Hford campus. >> Well, we've even discussed transportation options and things as well. And I think once once a decision is made, then we'll have further discussion about

108the details of those logistics. Um but yeah, I mean we've talked about transportation and what that looks like in parking and parking into community areas and all of that um as considerations, you know, for for whatever it would be moving forward. >> Yeah. Part of that could be solved with just signing too for people who aren't familiar with with our with our schools to point to way go to find parking. I mean we football games, we have those and I never have trouble finding uh parking spots. So I'm assuming that the crowd is going to be you know uh somewhere. the the other it's more of a suggestion I guess from you mentioned local economic impact and working businesses >> uh if you haven't already uh t for economic develop HPED Harvard for partnership for

109economic development they were >> local business I'm not even sure what they'd be they're not a bid but but they're local business boosters you know they plant flowers and do stuff but I mean I'm sure they would love to hear about this so that they offer ideas for for vendors, offer, you know, suggestions for lunches and coffees and those kinds of things. That would be, I think, a very good thing for them to know about. They may they they might be able to offer you guys some more options for um for those things that I think it'd be great ideas. So, that's just a suggestion. I'm sure Township mentioned it as well. >> Yes. Yeah. No, absolutely. And we work actually currently with um Discover Havford as well. We do a performance now. >> No,

110you're all good. Good. You're all good. We do a performance at the holiday festival on Brooklyn Boulevard. So, we have some contacts there that we're looking forward to touching base about um because we definitely want to make sure um we're getting again, you know, as many local vendors and stores and things like that um in front of our audience and our participants as much as poss. So, so you're in good shape. >> Yes. Yeah. And I just wanted to mention on the parking note too, actually, we that was one of our first conversations was like where are we going to park everyone? So, we actually did um we did an overhead view on Google Maps and we counted all of the parking spaces and believe it or not, Havford has more parking spaces than Upper

111Derby does. Um, so we actually we worked through all of that and we figured out a parking map and we've put forth like a first draft parking proposal that will get um refined over time, but we've already integrated um a street operations team that'll be welcoming audiences and directing traffic so that none of that spills into the local community because the last thing we want to do is have the people um living directly by the high school feeling like this summer program is impacting them. So, there's also a Goodwill sort of campaign uh planned there where we're going to actually walk the neighborhood. Um we're going to first of first and foremost invite all of them to a show and you're all also welcome to a show as well. We'd love to have you. Um

112but we're also going to provide them with essentially a summer stage info card which will have a hotline on it so that they can contact us directly at any point during this process. If someone parks in front of their driveway or things like that, again, our street operations team will be able to respond to that immediately so that the impact is not um the impact is felt by the community in the ways that we want it to be felt. >> I I have a comment. Um I'm very familiar with summer stage. I um have been taking my kids over the years and I really do feel like it is such a gem that we have in our backyard. Um, so I really do feel um I'm grateful for the presentation that you presented and and

113you know the diligence that went on um before this. I do have a little a question on scheduling because um when you go through August 13th or 14th I I do have we spoken with athletics because I think that athletics start that Monday. I think maybe some start right before that. Um and so just understanding the logistics going on because obviously you all will be there. That's a lot. And our athletics is also a lot um going into that area and obviously I won't be on the stage, but just having everyone on that campus and and how that'll go >> and the summer band program. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Um so, uh we did talk to Greg, the athletic director. We're going to work everything out to make sure sports and the play all work

114together. Um the work they put in is amazing. It still amazes me when I hear him speak. You know what I mean? So, no, we're going to make everything work out. Um, we got a plan and I think it'll work no problem. >> Thank you. >> And yeah, I'm um I'm also a fan of of summer stage. My kids are older now, but um it was a summer tradition like you said to go and enjoy the show and and this students who get to participate a fabulous experience. Um, I think we would be remiss as we get this, you know, feel-good presentation and hear all the plans, but um, you know, what we also need to consider is the impacts on on the district and, um, somebody just speak to if this is, uh, if

115there is renumeration for using our facilities for the summer or what kind of um, financial arrangement there is. Yeah, we had discussions about that. Um and um we looked at our uh facilities usage schedule um in full transparency and and I told Chris in the summer stage group this, you know, we're not looking to make money off of it. I don't they're not looking to profit off anything either, but we do need to make sure the facilities cruise and the impact um is able uh you know to be addressed and sustainable. So uh we do have a number I think you know if there is interest in moving forward with this then obviously we'll share that for consideration and decision but um yeah we have a we've come up with an agreeable number I think

116that their board was comfortable with as well um in all the background work uh to make sure that >> that our facilities are good and covered and and they're able to run their program and there's benefit to the community too and it's not impactful. >> That's fair. Thank you. >> Thank you. um also a summer stage family over here and current um summer stage junior uh participants. Will that actually remain in Upper Derby? Um because I'm just thinking of that that traffic when those families come for the mornings is pretty hectic. >> Yes. >> Just wondering if that would be also a driver here. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, um uh currently the plan is for SummerStage Junior to remain on site at Bonner Prreny in Upper Derby Township. we are looking at um those families

117because we do have a decent number of families who sometimes have one one student in each program at the end of the day. So we're trying to make sure that um both drop off in the morning and pickup in the afternoon is convenient so people aren't feeling torn in one direction or another. Um that we've worked with that in the past. Obviously when it's less than a mile apart is a little bit easier, but we're working through how to make sure that is um easy for parents and guardians this upcoming summer as well. But yes, the program will still be an upper derby. >> And I do just want to say for those concerned with traffic, they do an incredible job of traffic flow. So I'm very confident in what they can u bring to

118our our neighborhood. >> All right. Well, thank you for the presentation and we look forward to getting more information about this potential partnership. >> Awesome. Thank you all so much. The third item on the facility agenda is for the Pico gas service upgrade agreement for Hford Middle School. >> Yeah. So the uh Pico is going to expand our service at the middle school. Right now we are on interruptible service meaning that if we had oil in the building and um there was a strain on the grid at that time due to colder weather we would convert to oil for that period of time. We have not that recently. So, Pico is offering to actually do this upgrade to allow us if there were to be an increased load in gas service that was needed. Um,

119they would do that, but we still wanted to put this in front of the board so they knew that the um service was happening and that it was at no cost to the district and looking at different different gas rates than that we would. >> Oh, you did a great job. Perfect. That was it. So, this will also get us in line so when we start doing more work to the middle school and trying to get it more energy efficient, we can start moving out the boilers that are aren't gas efficient even though they're running on gas and start going to the high efficiencies so we can start bringing down our gas usage. gas is definitely um cleaner burning uh more efficient and we do want to get away from the oil part of the

120boilers and we haven't really run oil in oh it's got to be at least eight years. Um it's we've always been running gas because gas has been cheaper. So this way there has to be more work done. They have to enlarge the pipes basically to bring it into the building so that they can accommodate our usage and the cost is being waved um from what Pico you know explains to me they have a calculation and they know when their payback would be from the usage we use. So they're waving the u the uh as you can see it I think it's 707ome thousand dollars. So, we're just asking to uh just move with it so we can get it all uh get the work going. >> Plus, we also >> zero. >> Yeah, it would

121have cost a zero. Plus, in the other thing, we just in the same not with this contract, but in the same thing, we just took Manoa and the high school were both on the TSI, the interruptible. Um, which you know, we do have no oil at the high school for the last four years or five, I can't remember when we did that renovation. And then Monoa two years ago, we took the tanks out and made them gas. So in the whole mix, we're just moving everything to gas >> really quick before the board starts deliberation or not deliberation but discussion. Um I just want to say that for this discussion and any eventual vote of the board that I would recuse myself because I work for a PICO affiliate company. Thank you. I just had

122a question because when I read the agreement, it talks about a connected load of 4591 MCFs. I'm not even sure what those are per year, our maximum obligation. And I guess I just didn't know how to interpret that. Like it how was that number determined? Are we comfortable that that's the maximum? Like if we get near that, does the building won't go cold? Like I don't understand >> where that number came from is right now we're at top of my head. I didn't it's I think we're 3.9 million BTUs we're running in the in the middle school right now and basically that's saying that they can accommodate us up to 4 point >> what 4.5 or six so we have plenty of room even and then when we go to remove all the boilers our

123gas usage is going to go down. So they're just trying to tell us this is how high you can go. So if you decide like to say we decided to put in some industrial kitchen that has all this gas usage, we they might not be able they won't be able to service us. So they're just telling us the limit that we can go to. >> But that from your understanding of the our current operations, >> we'll never Yes. We'll never go to that. >> All right. >> I I just have one question. not knowing all the legal ease of it all um of the contract they're waving the $77,000 for this installation. Are we then committed to have to utilize gas for a certain amount of time? And clearly we're that's the plan, but I

124just want to make sure we're not like being committed for a 5-year contract or something like that. Like that doesn't seem to be part of the contract, but I just wanted to be really clear. >> No, no, we're not committed. Pico basically owns a transmission lines. We Tony deals with Provident and Provident um bids out our natural gas for the building. Correct Tony? So it's not Pico that are like right now Pico's probably not giving us our gas. I could look at the contract. I don't know if it's NRG right now. So Provident um bids out our gas uses every year or no every three years. I think it's three years. So Pico just basically ends the transmission lines no matter who supplies us. >> Okay. >> So this is not making us commit to

125anything. No, this makes us no commitment to Pico. >> Okay, great. Thank you. >> No problem. >> When do they I do the work? Actually, >> um as soon as I get the contract over, I can get you a date. Um they're just waiting for the contract to be signed and sent over and then I'll get a date from then. >> It seems to be mostly in the >> that could be like disruptive for the students obviously. >> No. It'll be like if you're looking at the middle school all the way to the right of the building where um where that fenced in area is is that's where all the work's going to be going right across the street there. >> All right. Well, I appreciate um the opportunity to move to a more efficient

126and beneficial heating source for our school. this opportunity to get a free improved transmission or whatever. >> Correct. >> All right. Thank you. >> Um, those were the three items on the agenda. Tony, anything else? >> All right, then I'll go back to Dr. King. >> Thank you. Um tonight we have two policies for review. Um and then we have a an item for discussion with many policies and so we will um get to that as it comes. The first policy we have for review is um a new policy. So it's uh would be 209.1 food allergy management. And um as can be expected, I have some uh comments and questions. But I think first just hearing about um since this is a new policy uh why this is being proposed now, where this language

127come from and the um uh any sort of uh administrative um uh guidance that we've gotten uh from from folks who have weighed in on on the specific uh process here. >> That's you. >> Sure. [clears throat] So, uh, last month we talked about 209.2, which was diabetes management. Um, and we mentioned that 209.1 would be forthcoming. So, the time is now. Um, this is based primarily off of a PSBA model. Um, there's a particular section of the school code that references out food allergy management. Um, and a lot of the practices that are referenced within the policy itself, um, are things that the district is already doing. there's been input from um people services the people services department and then also the nurses um had some feedback as well. So there this was customized

128uh to some extent for the district and that is what what got us to here at this first review um tonight. >> Thank you. >> Um so my my first comment uh comes from the purpose statement one um and I think It's a noble goal to eliminate the likelihood of severe or potential potentially life-threatening allergic reactions, but I think it's more realistic to say something like because it says brain says reduce and or eliminate. And I think what I would suggest is reduce um maybe to the greatest extent practicable. Um because that's what our goal is. You know, nothing can really be no danger can be eliminated. Um so that's that would be my suggestion on on that one. And then on that same uh uh numbering there, number three seems out of place to

129me because this is the first sentence. It's really all one sentence, but it's, you know, the board's committed to providing a safe and healthy environment. Um, and therefore, in order to do that, we're going to reduce the extent practical, the likelihood of severe injury, um, ensure rapid and effective response. And then it kind of switches gears and says, "But we're going to protect," it doesn't say, but um it's protect the rights of students providing them through necessary accommodations. And I think we should keep that, but I think it's it's just a separate entity. So not having it be number three and saying something like in addition to making safety a priority, the board seeks to protect the rights of students by providing them for necessary accommodations, something like that. >> So are you suggesting that

130that stays though in the purpose, but just like in a separate paragraph? I think so. >> Okay. I just would want it to remain in the purpose. >> I think so. Yeah. I I agree. I just it it seemed weird like to include it in those two with those two other things that we were doing. And um but yeah, I agree with keeping it there. Just it's not about safety. It's about it's about the students rights. You know what I mean? >> Yeah. As as long as it remains in the purpose, then I'm fine with it being moved. I just really want to make sure the rights of the students is still maintained in the purpose. >> I totally agree. So I'm actually wondering if I feel like that last sentence and the purpose the

131focus of food allergy management that sentence there >> um I actually feel like that should be more at the top. Yeah, that's as soon as you started talking, I was like, she's gonna put this at the top and that's the right move. >> That sets the tone, I think, for what the policy really is and what we're trying to accomplish. And realistically, it's management, right? >> It's it is not, you know, reduce or eliminate or all those other things, >> right? Yeah, I totally agree. I like that a lot. Putting that uh as I wouldn't even change it, just putting that first and then the second paragraph. Yeah. Okay. >> I agree. My comments on this draft policy were um there's two definitions that are listed and then subdefinitions, but then when you go into

132the guidelines, those definitions aren't highlighted or or fully used. So just for consistency uh there >> um >> especially medical plans of care. I underlined it like 10 times, >> right? Like that's a defined important term. They also um you know have licensed health room staff but then will refer to just the not just but refer to the school nurse which isn't the same defined term. So things like that should be consistent. um under guidelines it has within 10 days of enrollment the district or within um or within 10 days after diagnosis of a food allergy all you know these things are supposed to take place and it feels like that's missing a step like I think the district responsibility should begin when it is notified of the enrollment um or of the allergy not

133just because a student is enrolled or there's a diagnosis so trying to um just >> connect the dots there >> I have the same comment Um and I would we my revision was to say and not like so within 10 days of enrollment and notification of the school district. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> So yeah because I agree the it can't just be you're enrolled you didn't tell anyone you have this allergy and then we're supposed to do something. We need to know to do it. Right. So you need to have a notification piece. >> And then I do think um the phrase is used a couple of times about about um accommodations, substitutions, modifications, and it seems that that is focused on the student who presents with an allergy. I'm also interested in the

134extent to which there may be broader implications for our student body. Um, sometimes in my experience when there's been like a classroom that's designated as peanut free or some other um, you know, item isn't permitted to be brought into the classroom or there's designated areas of the lunchroom. um that might benefit from being clarified just what the extent of those accommodations and modifications and substitutions might who might be engaged in that. >> Is that more for like an AR though or I I guess how much detail are you wanting it to be in this paragraph? >> I just was um I hadn't scripted it out, but just considering yeah, how that phrase is used and um there isn't at this moment an AR for this. So, if there is, that would probably be the a

135better place to get into detailing that out, but um just for consideration. >> We we say that the superintendent or designate in coordination with the school nurse can develop an AR, but I don't think we have one yet. So yeah, I think it probably makes sense to um I guess work with the nurses and see if they need an administrative regulation and maybe if not to add some language like um like Bridget is is saying um under confidentiality I wasn't I wasn't sure if we were like talking about HIPPA here or not, but um I guess I just wanted to say can we add something like when it says the district shall maintain confidentiality of students with food allergies to the extent appropriate and as requested by students, parents, and guardians. Um I I almost

136want to say like unless necessary for life-saving procedures or something like that. Um I know it says to the extent appropriate and maybe that's all that we need. I'm just thinking, you know, confidentiality only goes so so far. Like if you need to tell someone, you need to tell someone. >> Sure. I think we can add a qualifier to that that and again that that um confidentiality subsection is a is PSBA language, but it's I think it's the intent is really to just maintain the the furer protections for the students and the health >> the allergy being related to like health student health records. >> Yeah. And and but also yes, if somebody's somebody's in an anaphylactic situation and they need an EpiPen, it's gonna come out. >> I think like one of the things

137Bridget was saying where it's like, well, you're all going on a field trip and you know you're going to be in this small room and that's where you're going to eat your lunch and someone has a severe peanut allergy. It's like, well, you're gonna maybe you wouldn't tell them Sally has the peanut allergy, but like someone in the room has a peanut allergy. Like please don't bring peanut butter. Something like that. That's what I'm thinking. Like in a safety scenario. I don't remember like this was years ago. So, at one point in time, our elementary schools had food allergy tables that students could opt out of. But, do we continue to have a food allergy table? Because if so, that's not really confidential, right? So, I I don't I don't know if they still do

138or not. >> I honestly would have to check. I think there's tables that children can choose to sit at, but that was a while ago, so I would have to check. Yeah, it was a really long time ago for me, so I'm not sure if it still exists or not, but if that does exist, then I think the wording of confidentiality might need to a little bit of a review. >> Yeah, >> because that's very visual of who's sitting there, [laughter] >> right? >> Those were all of my comments. Anything else? Yeah, I'm looking at um under delegation of responsibility where it talks the second paragraph um in the event that a student requires the use of an EpiPen any trained unlicensed school employee can administer that EP pen. What is our current practice in

139the schools when a student requires an EpiPen? I know when I taught um only those who had that child in the class were trained um like going on a field trip you were trained ahead of time. Are all of our teachers trained and And in that case, do we need to modify any language? >> I don't have the answer to that, but I do know that we have a lengthy EpiPen policy. >> We do have a lengthy EpiPens policy and we do train specific staff, but our nurses in reviewing this policy thought that it would be great to have all staff trained at the beginning of the year. Um, so that was a discussion we had going through this policy. >> Yeah. And so if we're going to train all of the teachers, do we

140want to change that language? So that mentions all all staff I guess I don't know it may not be all staff just be all teachers >> so so also in the related are you in 291 food allergy or in 292 so in 292 as it relates specifically to diabetes management we did change the language under delegation of responsibility uh for all school employee training I mean we can mirror it in 291 as well if that's helpful Yeah, I think mirror >> because they fall into the same section of 209. So, >> yeah, I was looking at 0.1, but um we can mirror that. >> Yeah, we we hadn't had discussion on 291 yet, but >> that was a topic that was or that was a conversation that was brought up that we did change in

141292 previously. So, we can mirror that. >> So, I guess I'm So, the language now says any trained unlicensed school employee. So, that is pretty broad, but focused on who is the training. And then is your request to make it policy that we try to train all of our staff like in addition like we still want just trained employees to administer the MP pen but you want to add >> the train if we're going to now once this is implemented if we're going to train all teachers at the start of the year. I still think like the goal is to train everybody, but in case somebody didn't get trained, we don't want to just say any school employee can issue it or utilize an EpiPen, right? So like keeping it focus on trained. >> So

142do we have um first off, do we have a target number of trained individuals per building? Is it more than one? Is it more than five? I'm thinking about someone in the case of an e If we're going to rely on strictly those that are trained and let's just say the number is three. I'm sure it's not and all of those three people are out. Are we then going to say okay there's no one trained. So where is the safety net for both the district and the students? How many do we have per building? And then how do we expand it to ensure that regardless who's absent or present that day that that our children are going to be safe, our students are going to be safe. So I think that's why the nurses when

143we were discussing this they they said let's just get everybody trained. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> And I'm thinking too like we have support staff that are with students like in a one-on-one or within the classroom like they probably should be included in that. >> Yeah. Your question though is if I'm hearing it correctly everybody trained but who's delegated initially secondarily third in the case of absences to administer >> right >> so it's a combination of training and delegation responsibility to administer okay >> it's kind of you know it I think about if someone needs and this is a probably not the best example but I mean in a case of an emergency if someone needs to call 911 like who is the person that's going to do the thing. >> I I think for

144consistency then, right, if we're going to mirror the language in two with 2091 or if I'm flipping those what we had just talked about, if we're going to mirror 2092, 2091, then we can mirror the delegation and in 2092 uh that goes into the AR. >> Okay. >> So in that AR myself for Miss Batistell or whoever that designate is um we'll develop the AR for the administrative or the administration of that. Okay. And then that delegation responsibility so we can keep that consistent within both would be my suggestion. >> Um one thing on the delegation if you're doing like a tier setting of like primary secondary is also including the access to the epipens. They're kept in the nurse's office. So just like having that like in an emergency, how how would the access

145happen? You know, they're labeled in a bag for each individual kid. So it's like the process of getting to there. >> Just want to be sure we don't throw in any emergency situation. We do want them to have the access to Great. That seems to wrap it up for that one. Um, and then for 2092, uh, we have diabetes management along with the 2092 AR. I don't think the AR was attached. >> Um, but I think it mostly is what we took from this one from last time. the AR I believe is updated in board docs. >> Okay. It just wasn't on the um agenda. Um and so you can see um in the policy the a couple minor changes that were made from the last reading and then from the general guidelines um my

146understanding is that was moved to the AR. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> After last month's meeting and then further review um with people services and Dr. Hayes um it just kind of made more sense and I think actually we talked >> I think we talked about it we did >> we talked about you as well so um it just made more sense since it was regulatory language to move into an AR >> so that's all the the red line that was removed >> and again you know that gives the district the opportunity because this is really how it's being implemented and gives district opportunity that if best practices change to more easily change the um AR to mirror those best practices and then obviously that would just require notification the board if not multiple readings.

147Does anyone have any comments on this first reading? >> I do have a comment for under the purpose for number two. The sentence still feels like I'm not really comfortable with the wording. I I understand the intent, but I am still not sure that you're in a position to assist and prepare students with diabetes or Yeah. the ready to learn piece. >> I think that the purpose is the immediate safety and long-term health of students with diabetes. I don't think we need a number two. That's what we're doing number one. >> Yeah, I agree. I think it's super here. I mean that's what the district is doing every >> day policies >> like the food allergy [clears throat] one is focused on reducing or eliminating risks and ensuring an effect effective response seems like that's

148the >> yeah right >> similar purpose for diabetes one >> that's a good point yeah I think we could just go right get rid of number two >> should the language though then mirror the food allergy language so that there are it's not just the immediate safety and long-term like that there's similar language >> like protecting the students rights by providing them >> um the necessary accommodations. Yeah. >> Yep. Just like it seems to me those purposes should just be the same for both. >> I agree. Yeah, that makes sense. >> Making sure that we're not like, well, you're safe now that you're alone or something. >> Yeah. No, I like I like the wording for the food allergy. I just like it seems very easy to just cut and paste that over to the

149diabetes management. >> So, that was going to be just for clarification. essentially taking three in 2091 and moving that into the purpose for 2092. >> Yeah, but I wouldn't I wouldn't have them numbered. I would just have the first sentence be uh the district recognized program meets the immediate safety and long-term health of students and then have um the next paragraph, separate paragraph be >> protecting Yes. In addition to making safety a priority, the board seeks to protect the rights of students by providing them Yeah. Okay. Anything else on this one? That one? Then we can um make those changes and send it to a second reading at our next board meeting. All right. Now for the fun discussion. Um We're not necessarily going to go over all of these policies. Um what uh we

150really wanted to do was was present this as a possibility in the future. Um looking through our policy book. Um it's uh there's a lot in there. A lot of these are are very very old policies, you know, 15 plus years old if not more than that. Um and so looking at the 200 specifically, which the 200 section is um about students, there were um a significant number of polic that are listed here um that are really about student discipline. And so having them be separate policies can lead to um confusion, can lead to different um consequences for similar actions um or or or or that type of issue. And so we thought that it could be useful to combine these policies into student discipline that incorporate elements of the policies that we already havevious.

151um obviously student discipline if found with um weapons, student discipline for threats, that type of thing. Um and and all of these. So um really putting them into one policy and having it be um more uniform and I think more um easy to understand from a student and parent uh community member perspective. Anything else to add to that, Justin? No, I think you um summed it up [clears throat] that there a lot of these are kind of interrelated and there's there's overlap. So, part of the thought process was um in in a prior discussion I was asked if we've ever done this before and we've we have in at least one district. Um, I will say I I went back and took a look at that district that we did it for and it the

152way that we did it was we ended up kind of layering it because some of it falls within um disciplinary issues. Some of it actually falls within like student rights and um regulations and um non-discrimination and things of that nature. Um but it all would kind of live in one place instead of all being separate policies. And so there would be a consolidation where um there would be some ease for the reader or somebody who's researching a particular issue and once they find um the policy itself or kind of series of related policies um I think the other district we did like a 0.1 point 2.3 point4 um but it's all right there instead of trying to search and find where you know your particular issue may fall. I think that makes sense and and

153and you know maybe not putting them all in in one single policy that discusses all of this might not be the solution. It might be like you said to have like um a 218.1 for the student discipline 218.2 for student rights. Um especially when you're thinking about I mean one of the policies is student rights. Um when you're thinking about policies like dress and grooming that I think have a dual layer to them where on the one hand you know there might be some student discipline on on it and on the other hand we want to have some student rights for dress and grooming. And so you know those those um sort of dichotoies we might want to handle in other um in in maybe a a a dual sort of way. But we we

154wanted to start this discussion and see what the board thought about doing something like this instead of having them um you know all peace meal. >> And just to add in another um important aspect of it is as you talk about the student discipline uh administratively we're actively looking at um student conduct, student incidents responses to ensure that there's you know equitable approaches with that. um providing the guidance to the staff uh to allow for their um appropriate responses for interventions and supports, but also that uh across you know school buildings and across the district um we're making sure that we are um looking at proportionality, disproportionality, equitable approaches um but also the ease and the access for the families as well. Right? So, similar to what Justin had just mentioned, um ensuring that uh

155families have um accessible um easily navigable um policies should it relate to something. Um so, as we're actively looking at that and and we'll plan to share a lot of that towards the end of this academic year as we're engaging in the work, um this also will help us um give some give some guidance with the work we're doing there. Um and then further there are a couple updated things um in terms of like Act 44, the Crown Act, um some township laws that have come into play um that may want to be discussed and considered as to why something might not be consolidated because it is a standalone as it relates to a different statute that is is new. Um that's not across the board. Um but for some of these the uh intentional

156selection um does have that new associated statute or whatever. I had a question around that because you know the act 44 especially with weapons and the notification requirement would that live in a different you know would we consolidate these just in terms of student discipline aspect the like with the weapon the act new weapons notification policy that would live somewhere else >> yeah and I don't because I know the notification would be part of kind of the AR and action with it but it does associate with the policy >> right and And we could do it a number of ways, but um most likely um with a a policy or kind of a set of affiliated policies like this may turn into um there's going to be at least one AR. Um but there's there's

157kind of I would envision envision it um Dr. Shelton as almost like parallel branches kind of running with each other. Um that would be kind of a procedure specific to a weapons offense. Yeah. Um that's how we did it in a different district. Um but we you know we're not wedded to any singular format. I think it's going to be um a lot of different voices at the table and a lot of collaboration on this. Um but the nice thing is frankly um as Miss Nongress pointed out that some of these policies are so dated that we have a lot of wiggle room to to work with the drafting and consolidation if we choose to move forward this way. >> A lot of improvement even if we kept them separate is needed on these policies.

158Yeah. >> Okay. I just wanted to be sure that I mean if the focus is on the discipline aspect, you know, we we include or we're able to easily include some of the statuto >> there. There certainly going to it's not just going to be um awards smithing consolidation if you will. There's also an updating aspect to this that is is going to be part of the process. Okay. Thanks. I >> think a lot of the wording from these policies isn't going to be used at all. I mean, other than the ones that, you know, that come from code, things like that, but I mean, it's they're very outdated and um you know, questionable whether they really reflect what we do in our district. So that's that that's sort of the point is is to

159have a uniform process and have it um understandable and digestible to someone who is looking for what it says what what it means. >> I was looking at this list goes from weapons, terroristic threats, deals with sexual assault, and then goes to dress and grooming and use of bicycles. And it just feels like those are not equivalent disciplinary matters. So maybe consider the degree or severity of some of them and um maybe have Yeah. I'm not I'm not quite sure why dressing, grooming, and use of bicycles made it into this. >> Yeah. And and so that's that's the intent of this is to have that open dialogue about, you know, what is appropriate to consolidate what is not specifically dressing, grooming, um with the Crown Act that just went into place. Um and the township

160has a bicycle helmet law that is new uh which has opened up discussion about motorized scooters being allowed on property and the liability they have and things like that. Um so like Miss Snagass said, >> this intent is not for just um wordsmithing revisions. This is a full >> reision of and review of policy that I think would take some significant amount of time to really thoroughly and and accurately and effectively do. >> And then there's other polic that we looked at recently around like tobacco and um I think there some others in this section like care of school property and other things that maybe should be included on this list or considered in and what that consolidation would cover. >> Sure. And just for the the board's edification, the the subheadings or subtitles when

161we did this in another district were um there was an overall policy like an umbrella policy and then there were subsections for one was for student rights. One was for student it was student responsibilities and equitable treatment of others. Another a third branch was prohibited behaviors and prohibited actions. And then um the fourth uh was discipline and due process rights for the students. So it there's kind of again there there's some inter interreation there and overlap um >> but an opportunity to re like reconsider represent reformat how this is >> you can combine a lot of it >> so those were the sub areas what was the title of that section >> the overall like the entire policy was I think still student rights and responsibilities that makes sense general student rights >> we referred

162it before to discipline it was like discipline as of overall title doesn't make sense But like if discipline is a subsection that makes more sense. Okay. >> And and just in hearing that if discipline and due process is a subsection and for a family they have a question on you know an incident that occurred or something they can easily get to that section to see what policies fall under that and what their rights under that due process are rather than having to you know go through and try to guess which is which or or reference four different things. And I think like bicycles and dress and grooming are on here because if you look at the policies they they're they're kind of just made up and um you know they're from 15 more than 15

163years ago. And so I think honestly we would scrap them. I mean, I I think when we're thinking about consolidating this and and just think about how we would incorporate them into um the this new uh framework here, which like like I mentioned with dress and grooming, I actually think a bigger piece of dress and grooming isn't um student discipline, it's really student rights um and expression and making sure there's not discrimination for dress and grooming. So, like that's why I think it fits in overall, not necessarily because it actually is tied to something like happens. I mean, honestly, it sounds like a student handbook more than anything else to me. Like all the different policies that fall into a student handbook, you know. >> Um well, so for this uh I think the board

164should digest it and and see if they have um further comments, taking a look at the policies or anything. Um if and uh if you have more comments, you can um let me know. Um and and I think at a future meeting then we'll uh we'll come maybe with some some further suggestions on what it would look like to um to to implement something like this. >> That would be at a at a further work session. So it wouldn't be something we would come to the board with a first read of. It would be something like this where we're uh brainstorming. >> Yeah. And just to add for um the full board understanding, some of the conversation we had um and I will send this over uh is the policy review calendar that we had

165back in the fall um has been revised slightly. Um and in addition to addressing, you know, relevant policies during the winter and spring portions of the school year would also be the continued conversation of policy consolidation under certain um under certain sections, right? So the 200s, the 300s, the 400s, the 500s. Um but it would be that dual approach where we are we would plan to review, revise, update specific policies and also engage in that comprehensive conversation around the consolidation of policies under certain sections. >> End of report. >> All right. Thank you. That takes us to 4 D uh finance. Dr. Thank you, Dr. King. Uh we have three items and I think this could go fairly quickly. Um so the first item is probably the uh again for information purposes for action at

166the January 22nd meeting. Uh it's a long-term financial planning proposal. I see Ian Tyson in the audience. He stuck around. Thank you very much. Uh but he and uh Jamie Schlesinger had given presentation I believe at a prior board meeting. So there is the the proposal draft. Um so I just open up to comments or if Tony wants to add anything proposal. I had asked Ian if he wanted to come tonight in case there were any questions from the board kind of you know what's the intent of this program what's the return on investment of the program and what what you could expect to see additional items you want to touch on benefits of the program what happens after we kick off the program your involvement in going forward >> sure those are all great

167questions um what it would look like after the kickoff it would go hand inhand with the budgeting process for next year. We would work with Tony and his team to take his information that's coming off the 2026 27 budget, integrated into the long-term plan, and then start to answer some of those questions. How do these bigger investments play out over the next couple of years? Do we are we showing a surplus this year? Does it dwindle over time? Are we maintaining growing the fund balance? Um, so the goal would be to have this start with that process and then wrap up as you're adopting that final budget. So that way you would be certain with some of your decisions that you're making. Do we need to raise taxes by X, Y, or Z percent? What

168if we do this program this year or push it off into the following year? Um, in terms of the return on investment, I think part of that depends on, you know, what are your goals as a school district? Are you trying to minimize the need for tax increases over time to limit the burden on community members? Are you trying to ensure that your investments are sustainable over time? Um those can be answered in you know um the short and medium term. You know you can take a look over the next couple of years like are your tax rates going up at a slower rate than they were before? Um are you generating enough revenue to support those investments over time where you don't need to have a significant tax increase in the future. Those are

169the kinds of things that you would look at to determine if you are meeting those goals. So, I think it kind of depends on, you know, where you want to end up and how you could use this information to help you get there. >> I also, um, just in terms of part of the purpose of of looking at this, um, I'll equate it to kind of a feasibility study of our finances. Um, you know, the board has the goal of keeping a 5 to 7% fund balance. um if if we want to consider some of um you know programs and initiatives and priorities that community members have expressed interest in and that the board has aligned to to goals um to support students. We also want to look at what does five years down the

170road look like? Uh and what do we need to maybe consider doing now in order to set ourselves up for success um to accomplish those goals, right? Um, so I don't know, and I don't want to speak for Ian, but I don't know if there's an immediate return on investment more so than it is looking at um, really projecting out what are the conditions we need to put in place in order to accomplish some of the initiatives, the priorities um, or whatever those projects or future programming things um, that are of high interest and are of benefit to students that we want to be able to do. >> I have a couple of questions. It says multi-year financial projections and you just mentioned five years. Is there like expectation of how many years would be

171included in a multi-year financial projection? >> That's actually a good question. Um it's um typically five years. Um I would say the minimum you would want to do is about three. Um anywhere after five, you know, it kind of gets more into speculative territory. Um the way that I like to think of it is, you know, you want to make sure that the next couple of years have as much information and confidence as you can. And then those last couple years whether you know it's four, five, six, seven, you can go even further out. But once you get out that far, it's more so the trend than the exact number because, you know, we're not trying to predict where your budget's going to be. We're just trying to say like, you know, you get out

172far enough, these are the pressure points that you're seeing. Here's how it could magnify over time. >> Um, can you speak to what the end product for the district is? Is it print out a report or do we then have access to an ability to manipulate scenarios, change assumptions, update and run run the model on our own? >> Is it like a priorities list or kind of >> Yeah, just what do we get and is it like does it become a a tool that we have access to and and can update and use or is it kind of a snapshot that's done at the end of of this exercise? Yeah, that's another great question. Typically what we do is we turn over a final report to you all that's got the, you know, the analysis,

173the accompanying um um backup to it. Um, you know, it'll have that PowerPoint report is usually what it takes the form of and then you'll also get like, you know, printouts of the more detailed Excel model that you can review a more detailed description of the assumptions that go into it. Um we do turn over the model in some cases to our clients but in most cases what they find is that you know um I'm not saying that this is happener but there's enough turnover in the staff that the person that picks it up um is no longer there and then you know they don't have the internal capacity anymore to maintain it. So it kind of depends on um you know your comfortability with using it over time to update it on your own.

174Um but that is an option too. >> Okay. Just something to consider to its usefulness for the district and um ease of updating as factors change. Um there's another uh aspect of the proposal that I was wondering if you could unpack a little um there is this focus on staffing level comparisons um and while certainly staffing is a key uh portion of our budget and you know we we have great people that run our programs and services, right? So um that is important. I was wondering if that could be expanded to look at the um a broader set of functions and level setting where we are not just staffing but um facilities costs or um you know curricular expenses uh services consultants things like that that we um could have those comparisons to a group

175of peer districts on the different functions throughout our budget and not not just the staffing because um I think the information that we will get from this exercise is um one that will have us need to consider all the budget levers at our disposal. >> Um short answer is yes. >> Yes, we could include that in there too. I think we included the staffing at the request of the district, but that's also, you know, readily available. And if we're doing the staffing at the same time, it's it's no problem to include some of those financial benchmarks as well. >> One of the things um Tony and his department has been doing internally is looking at kind of some of those budgetary allocation trends, right? Is there overages? Is there underges? Um I think maybe mirroring

176something like that from an external lens as well on a broader scale um could pair with that too just to kind of as you're saying you know um where within each allocated amount based on other districts are we in line with that are we over are we under are there ways for us to cost save internally you know and things as well >> right and I think um there is you're familiar with the pier set of districts to understand you're saying different programs or offerings that they may have that we want like okay well how did they do it how did they fit it into their budget is it because you know their transportation costs are x% and ours are more than that so we need to try to you know um I think that

177would just give us more areas to explore to find opportunities in than um you know solely focusing on on the staffing level comparisons Any comments or questions from the board? So this will be at the next meeting for an action. Um the second item on the financial committee report would be the student activity fund report which uh Tony has provided and I think this just for information purposes. >> Yeah. So, this is just a snapshot of all the clubs and activities that students raise funds for, whether it's field trips or other extracurricular items outside of the regular. Okay, great. Any questions or comments on the student activity plan? If not, the last item was an intent to donate. Um, this is from the American American Italy Society of Philadelphia. And I I presume this is

178in support of our Italian language program this section. >> Yeah, this is actually a recurring donation. Uh, so we were very grateful to this group who continues to support our Italian program. We're one of the few districts in the area that continues to offer Italian as one of the languages. Um, and so they are particularly interested in the work that we do. And uh this funding has uh funded things from you know special projects to enrollment in um certain extra activities for kids supporting of the clubs as well as field trips. So I don't I haven't asked them specifically how they plan to spend it this year but those are the types of expenses they've been able to enhance the curriculum um using these funds. >> Great. My daughter took Italian she went on a

179trip to Italy. She's high school. >> [laughter] >> I'm not sure which. >> Um, so yeah, we appreciate the American Italy Society of Philadelphia and I assume this will be on our next meeting for any questions or comments that or anything else in the financial section. I will turn it back to >> Great. Thank you. We have nothing listed for other items. Um, for report on executive session, excuse me. The board met before tonight's meeting to discuss a confidential employee related matter with council. The board also met to receive an update from council on a right to know litigation matter in the court of common please of Delaware County. Section seven takes us to um the second opportunity on the agenda for public comment. I have one person that has signed up for this evening,

180Richard Lori. I would just ask for you to state your name and confirm your residency for the record and also just a reminder that there are allow for public comment and when the timer does sound, I would ask that you would to conclude your comments. >> Okay. I just want to know let you know that I came here tonight because of the urging of the of the superintendent. I was at his wonderful uh meet and greet last night. And the good news is I got introduced by the principal to the things they do for autistic kids and their library. They have the most awesome library I have ever been in in my life. And they had real books. They had spots for small groups and cushy cushy things and place for the librarian to read

181books to their kids. Uh so I thought I'd just sign up on my next topic uh for uh advocacy and that fits in with tonight which is instructional leadership and cognitive development. Uh instructional leadership is big issue with me as a you know reading leader and I went when I went to the uh Philadelphia school district I was the first high school guy in their leadership in education apprentice design program and theyounded into us the importance of instructional leadership. So, I can't tell you how impressed I was by the collaborative leadership and instructional leadership which I saw here tonight with how many people put in and there are leaders all over schools and especially teacher leadership and collaborative collaborative leadership works best. And I'm going home with my reading list on what is design thinking.

182Okay. And the other issue that that I noticed tonight uh real good is about two things about first measurable measure individual growth. It's a difference between measuring collective growth and individual growth of students. And that's an an issue which I'm working on right now for goals and measures of of growth in the IEP for an autistic child. And um you know we have them the importance of formative and sumitative assessments and they are issues we need instructional leadership too and also on the way we are programs for teaching autistic kids to read and instructional leadership even comes to the school board because our two new members the reason why I supported you so big is because I have experience in education. So you know you have a role in instructional leadership too as people and

183also uh the Wilson methodology I heard a lot about it a lot of good things about it. I had a uh I conferred with a colleague of mine from the uh who teaches elementary school in Delaware Murray who explained to explain to him her all about Johnny and she said that the Wilton meth methodology is good for teaching word recognition but not so much for comprehension. And certainly my grandson if they used it at the middle school would benefit tremendously for that. and they don't have it at the middle school and they should because what I would like for my little Johnny and the other autistic kids is a teacher is a reading specialist that's certified in reading special education and the Wilson methodology because that's what he and they need for their reading program

184and the computer program that he has been used in the middle school for the last year and a half has not been effective for teaching Johnny to read. So I want you to look into that that what we're using. It's a computer-based design program that is not effective. Teachers are the experts, not the programs that we get for our children. Okay? It's not the the the publishers of those programs. Teachers need to be the experts in the teaching of reading and finding unique ways to meet our autistic children's needs. It's the interaction and the chemistry between the teacher and the student that makes effective teaching. And that will never change. AI will not be effective teaching. Neither do computer-based reading programs. And that's all I have to say and I expect instruction. >> Before you

185leave, I still need you to state your name and confirm your residency for the record. Thank you. >> I I live at 1246 Dill Road, Rich McGlory. I speak here and I just love, you know, to advocate for autistic children. >> Thank you. All right. The next regular meeting of the board is an action meeting scheduled for January 22nd, 2026 at 7:30 p.m. in the boardroom of the Oakmont Administration building. I will now accept a motion to adjourn the meeting. >> Moved, seconded. mood and