001welcome to the july 8th 2021 board business and conference meeting of school district for downtropics for which it stands first order of business this evening be appointing a board secretary i'll accept a motion to appoint martha q as board secretary effective july 12 2021 through june 30th 2025. moved welcome aboard martha next i'll accept a motion to appoint kelly kaiser as the assistant board secretary effective july 8th 2021 through june 30th 2022. moved in second any discussion and if you'd be kind enough to call the role dr crispin flazer here miss larson here miss mingy mr sento here mr schwartz virtually here miss nogris here miss wiedemann here and mr feynman here thank you i have a couple items before we hit the regular agenda i know there are a number of folks who've signed
002up to speak about their taxes this year and i just want to let you know that the budget increase of the school district of haverford township this year was 2.6 percent if your tax bill went up by more than 2.6 percent due to the reassessment that was done by the deal by delaware county last year too late it's too late to appeal current year's assessments but if you're interested in appealing your assessment for next year the deadline is this coming august 1st and the you can call the delco chief assessor's office at 610-891-5127 the mission of the school district of haverford township is to educate and inspire a community of lifelong learners who become well-rounded global citizens the board and administration are committed to ensuring that all of our students feel welcome and ready to
003learn in addition to the variety of areas of academic learning students in the school district of haverford township learn about respect responsibility and citizenship we as elected officials and participating community members have a responsibility to model the behaviors our students strive to develop as we engage in our meeting this evening let us be mindful that we serve as role models of the citizens we hope that our students will become as communicated on our website and board agenda documents the long-standing practice for public comment at our meetings requires residents who have a statement to read at the meeting to email the following information to kathy schwartz name address phone number and topic before three pm on the date of the meeting we will continue this practice moving forward the purpose of public comment is to provide
004the board with an opportunity to hear from the public about issues that the board will be voting on that evening or in the future hearing public comments enables the individual board members to make informed decisions when they vote on items in the agenda an individual board member cannot speak on behalf of the board or the district without the consent of the rest of the board best practice if you have questions is to refer them to the appropriate department within the district that would be the superintendent curriculum office special education human resources or the business office if you're seeking a reply i'll accept the motion to approve the minutes hang on bear with me to approve the minutes of the june 17th public board meeting move second second any discussion all in favor aye aye aye
005any opposed motion carries thank you next item on our agenda is public comment we have 19 people signed up this evening so when when i call your name we'll ask you to come to the podium state your name and address you'll have three minutes to speak and because of the volume this evening we'll we'll ask you to finish up when when the timer goes off every minute first speaker on the list is john ryan good evening my name is john ryan i live at 534 calmer road um i'm here to obviously talk about the tax issue and i know you're not voting on it but i'm hoping someday you're going to vote on part of what i'm going to suggest at this point this tax issue uh started basically from the development of new construction
006in delaware county and the county over assessed it for years and basically what happened is uh the new construction people sued the county and in 2017 they ordered a new assessment the problem with the new assessment is it was done really poorly and right now you have a lot of upset citizens out here right now because we as a school board picked a handful of them to go after and i guess we spent a good amount of money to go after those people and what happened with that is that created disparity in that neighborhood and what i'm going to tell you is i have a spreadsheet of the entire township i'm a practic a practicing realtor i've studied it for a year i knew what the military was gonna be because it's a matter of
007math nobody's taxes got bumped up excessively by the school board it is not their fault but they did adopt a poor document basically the assessment is bad we have twenty thousand properties in this township and what i'd like for the school board and i will be going to the township meeting is to reject the assessment we should make our own assessment i know they you know the county spent 6.5 million dollars in three years to do this assessment poorly they didn't use sales records there are numerous examples not forty some examples thousands of examples and most of the people that got hurt in this were the people that obeyed the law the people that got permits to do their property improvements the people whose taxes went down those are the people were there their stuff
008laws quite honestly complete scaffolds i mean it's simple for me i look at it every day i see what a house sold for if a house sells for five hundred thousand dollars in 2015 and assessed for three hundred and twenty four thousand dollars in 2019 somebody didn't do their math right and as a school board that is educated that is smart we should be rejecting this assessment it wouldn't take long for us to assess twenty thousand properties i could do it in three months wait honestly i could do it in a month and you could start looking at that assessment and adopt that and i'm gonna ask the township to do the same thing because we can't start working on issues until there's equity and people feel like they're being treated equally right now these
009people are coming in and they're blaming you quite honestly it's not my beep they're blaming you and they shouldn't be blaming you they should be looking at the tax the county and we should be basically rejecting what the county's come up with there's no doubt about it thanks john about to ask you to finish up thank you it's basically what i had to say next speaker is angela erso good evening my name is angela urso i live at 1242 dill road i'm here tonight to address the board about summer reading when i'm about to read or direct quotes from the book stamped written by ibermex kendi this book was donated to the district by bipac approved by our district and is currently on the summer reading list for 9th graders and 10th grade honor students
010and i quote the principal function of racist ideas in american history has been a suppression of resistance to racial discrimination and its resulting racial disparities the beneficiaries of slavery segregation and mass incarceration have produced racist ideas of black people best suited for or deserving of the confines of slavery segregation or jail cell consumers of these racist ideas have been led to believe that there is something wrong with black people and not the policies that have enslaved oppressed and confined so many black people end quote another quote the only thing wrong with black people is that we think something is wrong with black people and quote all of these words have so much power for our children and they're being given to our children and embedded in our curriculum without any kind of parental scent consent
011or parental heads up or anything like that there's no true context of stamp yet we are providing it to our young minds another quote if there's anything we know about humans it's that most of us are followers looking for something to be part of to make us feel better about our own selfishness are we teaching our children to be followers are we supposed to be teaching our children to be leaders i'm confused by this quote um are we teaching them that by default that they're selfish or bad in some way um i'm gonna leave you with another quote which which seems to be a call to action for for teens in my opinion i i know that the readers truly commit to a racial equality will join me on this journey of interrogating and shedding
012our racist ideas but if there's anything i have learned during my research it's that the principal producers and defenders of racist ideas will not join us and no logic or fact or history book can change them because logic and facts and scholarship have little to do with why they are expressing racist ideas in the first place end quote this practice of ushering adult concepts onto our children is a constant theme of the current school district administrators as a mother of one child in high school two children in middle school and one child in elementary school i grow concerned that we are placing these adult concepts onto our children which at best is propaganda and at worst is indoctrination the work of [Applause] the work of candy is inappropriate for children of any age the concepts
013are adult concepts and have no business in k through 12. please stop embedding serious adult concepts into our curriculum please teach our children core subjects please stop indoctrinating our children they deserve better thank you there seem to be a lot of followers in this room [Applause] excuse me if you'd like the opportunity to speak who's the next speaker who's the next speaker our next speakers are david and laura donation i'd like to thank the board for giving me an opportunity to speak unfortunately i'm not as experienced as a realtor and i don't quite understand how let's name an address oh my name is david tassier i live at 124 west westwood park drive is the second ward in haverford township i wish i could speak more on the technicalities of the assessments but i'm not
014i i'm not privy to that information and i'm not quite sure how it worked but my wife and i purchased our home 22 years ago and our escrow payments were approximately 300 a month 3 600 a year today we pay we pay our own taxes this year our total tax payment is nine thousand eight hundred twenty five dollars and sixty three cents and that's approximately eight hundred and eighteen dollars a month six thousand three hundred and fourteen dollars 31 cents for school tax alone which is a 760 dollar increase from last year we've almost tripled our taxes in 22 years we've worked very hard to constantly make improvements on our home example heat air conditioning new roof landscaping the list goes on and on we're approaching our retirement age within the next 10 years and
015look forward to being mortgage-free if these tax increases continue which i'm assuming they will because they've never gone down we will never be mortgage free that is what our monthly payment is going to become a mortgage payment within the next few years our monthly tax payment will actually exceed our monthly mortgage payment it's it it's simply unsustainable and quite frankly it's unheard of we talk about a better education better schools stronger community which is all wonderful and i and i'm behind that but at what cost if the community can't afford the taxes and leave whose children will be attending these schools i'm basically begging for possible solutions to ease the tax paying or i'll have no choice but to sell not my house my home i'm sure i'm not the only citizen that feels this
016way and i thank you for your time i appreciate it next our next our next speaker [Applause] our next speaker is dan furia i'm sorry about that can you hear me um i actually i don't have much to add i apologize um mr jordan we need your name and address please dan furia 213 colfax road average thank you i i just want to reiterate the same exact thing the last guy said i've lived here for 13 years as a homeowner and i've read and read and read and tried to understand what's going on with tax reassessment and it's it's extremely frustrating that i still don't really understand it i'm not asking you guys to explain it tonight but i do want to share a very similar experience which is that um yeah my my real
017estate taxes the burden uh the increase this year is is so significant that it is a pretty stressful financial burden just the quick numbers uh it increased 1 625 this year so my normal tax per year was about 6700 and now it's 8 400 and it's difficult but again i think the issue has already been been touched upon and i know you have a lot of people to get to so i'll leave it at that thank you thank you our next speaker is christopher kessler my name is chris kessler i'm it with a 2437 west darby road in havertown usually you start with exciting stuff beginning of the day at the end of the day and start with the boring stuff at the beginning so i hate to bore you with math at the end
018of the day but i'm going to go there uh we've lived here for my wife and i have lived here for three years and this year my school tax went up uh 73.6 percent we were paying uh we moved here we were paying four thousand and eighty eight dollars last year we had a three point four percent increase forty two hundred and twenty seven dollars and this year we will pay seven thousand three hundred and forty two dollars in school tax now i live on a busy part of west darby road right a couple houses up from uh crust pizza and the parking lot that's there and and so what i decided to do is i took a look at the at the homes uh three to the left of me three to the right
019of me okay if you look at all of them they their homes were reassessed at an increased value between 131 percent to a high of 256 percent with an average of the seven six homes that i looked at 217 percent increase in the assessed value my house however this is because and i'm just one person i'm sure thousands my house the increase was 334 in my assessment okay all these homes are the same as mine same size same square footage everything's the same basically i live on the corner of east hillcrest and on that road i took seven homes which are directly across the street from me and so i am one of 13 homes excuse me 14 homes i'm the one in the middle and uh their average cost when assessment went up about
020212.5 percent so pretty close pretty close one straight to 17 the other one 212 pretty close i would just like someone to be able to tell me why my property assessment went up 334 percent now east hillcrest has a better location than me they're not on a busy street and in the old assessment all of those homes were says just a little bit higher than mine not much a little bit more because the location okay interestingly every single one of those homes right now is now assessed lower than my house and lower than the houses on west darby road uh and even very interestingly i'm sure there's an explanation for this but there are two blocks up on the listed as uh part of the township of haverford and their assessment went down okay so
021uh there's something wrong here i have a uh i only have a little bit of time left but there was a couple things that i noticed on our website uh the town the town one here let's take a look here what does this say all right okay it goes community asked questions asked commonly asked questions who conducted this county-wide reassessment tyler technology because the assessment was completed in an effort to re regain county-wide uniformity of property tax evaluation those are your words i'm going to read you another one called it's about arbitrariness okay an agency's decision is also arbitrary if it is made without regard for the facts relies on fact findings that are not supported by any evidence or lacks a rational connection between the facts and the decision i think we've arrived thank
022you mr kessler thank you to finish up our next speaker is christine shuster you could speak at the mic that way [Applause] next speaker is barbara miller barbara miller going once going twice okay looks like we don't have barbara miller is that correct next speaker is alexis pasternak hi thank you my name is alexis pasternak i live at 609 woodland drive on july 9 2020 pennsylvania state board association template for an anti-racist resolution was introduced and on august 6 2020 you adopted it i have gone back and watched the school board meetings leading up to its adoption it was stated that input would be taken from stakeholders and several school board members indicated collaborating on the resolution to get it to its final version i saw no email from the district or any correspondents of
023any kind asking for input to say we don't have to is simply not an acceptable answer with that answer i have questions why didn't you send out a school-wide survey to parents and guardians prior to adopting the resolution did you even consider that why was there never an opportunity for a panel of people to present opposing arguments and viewpoints on the resolution why and how is this particular resolution tailored to the school district of haverford township the solution none of what you are currently doing is measurable it's subjective and subject to change i have watched many school work presentations and that to me is the common theme why didn't you email this resolution once it was passed to every school district of haverford township parent and guardian not everyone is on social media sites like
024twitter and facebook if you truly felt that it had significant validity you would want everyone to see it wouldn't you why couldn't you wait until the school started in september 2020 to consider it when you had a greater chance of having the attention of families who exactly exactly collaborated on its creation the resolution called for the development of a district-wide anti-racism and equity teams on october 22nd 2020 you sent out an email for parents and guardians to apply to be on the parent guardian equity team you gave families one week to apply one week this group is supposed to be representative of the entire school community your words is it only 145 people applied and 25 to 30 people were chosen think about that only 145 people lied what does that tell me people were
025not paying attention and you or you already knew who you wanted you do realize that there are over four thousand parents and guardians in the school district again if you wanted to create real buy-in and support for what you were doing you would have sent out a reminder email an email with a heads up to look out for the survey or you would have left the window of time to apply much longer i've said it before and i will say it again i find it concerning to say the least that you chose a pandemic to adopt the resolution and create your equity teams the limited references and overly simplified definitions used to fashion it and with virtually no requested input from parents and guardians other than those who wanted it says so much i hope
026what is happening is not an attempt by people to create problems or stir up issues where there were few to create an inflammatory school environment for our kids to learn in and our kids to teach in our teachers to teach in or to will things to be much worse than they are to support the argument that the school district is a racist and intolerant community okay unfortunately that appears to be what you were doing with your lack of transparency please you are grooming our children to be social justice activists stop please stop our next speaker is robert simonson robert simonson going once going twice zoom okay our next speaker is also zoom phyllis silverstein says not sure if she's attending or speaking she didn't log in either last call for phyllis silverstein our next speaker
027is helene conroy smith good evening my name is helene kamaray smith i live at 32 east westwood park drive i want to talk about the sunshine law and how important it is to allow for public comments hearing tonight the rules again stated by you mr feinberg that's really not part of the sunshine law stakeholders are allowed to say whatever they like at public comments they're able to file right to knows as well to gather information public comments and right to knows are the foundation of our republic so why is our school board members trying to censor and confuse taxpayers about what we can and we can't say and why is our is our school district stopping us from getting information on the right to knows what do you have to hide had the taxpayers receive
028transparencies we'd be able to make informed decisions and statements at meetings regarding the policies and the contracts as contract season is upon us i do as a stakeholder request that this administration does not sign current contracts that are influencing our schools and that are not having a positive impact on our community or our children these contracts include psba which mr feinberg you are a consultant for them the delaware valley consortium with equity education mnet sage wellness university of penn the chop policy lab in the pennsylvania association of administrators we know what's going on public needs to have full review of all contracts moving forward as part of the sunshine public law has a vested interest in our community the ill-defined omnimun gathering of contracts are designed to balloon our school budget we can't see the
029contracts we can't see the budget expenses and we have no public viewings prior to signing you are signing agendas your agendas online are scant how can we know why are you not being transparent and let's talk about several influences by outside groups and connections you have political connections that are coming into our schools that are impacting our tax dollars bipac indivisible keystone center for change psba the southern poverty law center brought in by the state of pennsylvania delaware valley consortium equity of education and h can hcam was noted to have a seat at the table in the april 2 2019 school board meeting hcn is a divisi is a division of indivisible and the haver for democrats does haverford plan to allow humanon and the nra into our schools because i don't want that that's
030for sure parents hope not all of this sounds ridiculous yet here we are as a community will haverford allow catholicism to be taught in our schools since dei is a work of ideology and like into a religion when the board members and administrators when are you going to place the entire community at the forefront of your planning when will this district show transparency why am i being fought over to have my information be shown to me it's a public right to know you have lawyers fighting me against me why is that when is this politics going to end and when is the people of this community going to take back this school district thank you our next speaker our next speaker is christopher welsh good evening my name is chris welsh i'm at 115 water
031view circle in havertown what i'm going to share with you tonight was written by myself and my wife jill who's home with our rising second grader and our rising kindergartner we're proud members of the coopertown community so i i'm here not to speak about anything that's been spoken about i'm here to talk about the health and safety plan for our kids next year we have serious concerns about the health and safety plan in its current form the plan does not follow the current cdc recommendations on vaccination on i'm sorry on masking for unvaccinated people to obtain federal funding from the american rescue plan our plan is required to follow the cdc guidelines but eliminating the mass requirement at the elementary school level does not follow the cdc guidelines as those children are not able to
032be vaccinated because and they would be in an indoor setting also the cdc requires masking for all individuals who are using public transportation which includes our school buses we ask that you reconsider the proposal that's posted on the website that removes the social distancing measures and removes the masking requirement for all students we urge the school district to keep the current masking and social distancing measures in place for unvaccinated people which by necessity includes all elementary school students and all students under age 12 who are not eligible to receive the vaccine at this time in the in the plan that was excuse me and the plan that was put out on the havertown website the first section the bullet point is universal and correct wearing of masks the word masks is hyperlinked to the cdc
033guidelines the cdc guidelines require masks for all unvaccinated people which again has to include children and our haverford health and safety plan right next to that bullet point says that all individuals that are vaccinated don't need to wear masks but doesn't make the same requirement for unvaccinated people removing these masks and by not doing that by not following the guidelines it places our funding in jeopardy that we're getting from the american rescue plan act removing the masking and social distancing also potentially jeopardizes the health and safety of the community particularly for any community members who've decided not to be vaccinated and does so inequitably and i believe it's premature at this time the coven 19 delta variant is a serious health concern for unvaccinated individuals please let's let's be polite let the man speak i
034pay taxes too various health experts and organizations including the world health organization have cautioned against the removal of such safety measures especially since the delta variant is highly transmissible on june 28th the same day in which the district chose to make masks optional dr fauci stated in an interview they asked for a little more time given the noise in the room while i'm making my public comments he stated that when children are out in the community they should also be wearing a mask while the current incident positivity rates remain low experts warn them that the communable more communicable delta variant could change the rates rather quickly and given that the cdc has yet to issue any new guidance for the school year and the delta variant accounts for more than 51 percent of new cases
035we'd ask you not to make any premature decisions and removing the masking requirement and social distancing doesn't treat our students equitably because some students are under the age of 12 again can't receive the vaccination and removing the protocols doesn't create a safe and fair learning environment for vulnerable student populations i'll ask you to please finish up sure finally the decision i believe is premature because we're almost at the point where uh that students under 12 might be able to get a vaccination that vaccination might be available in september so if you keep the mask requirements for one more semester we might be able to have the whole population vaccinated and i support your resolution on introducing anti-racism curriculum i'm going to ask you please i'm going to ask you please to keep the meeting in
036order our next speaker is colin mccrawson sir do you have a threat that you'd like to speak out loud kristen kristen i'm sorry i heard someone say something about a gun and i find that concerning mr mccroson my name is colin mccrossett and i'm a resident of the township i live at 600 george's lane i want to speak tonight in support of the basis program and continue to address the numerous lies told about it which are threatening the success and well-being of students teachers and staff i want to review again some of the really great parts of the basis program basis has helped to train teachers and staff to better help transgender students in school it's enabled the high school anti-defamation league club to attend a conference and educate their peers about anti-semitism and basis
037has enabled the high school's african-american cultural enrichment club to go to the smithsonian museum of african american history and culture there are a lot of people who have become opposed to basis because they watch a lot of fox news but the list of things that opponents of bases are against include the following things if you're against basis in the township if you're against an anti-racist resolution then i guess you don't want jewish kids and their friends to learn about anti-semitism that's a part of basis i guess you don't want black and brown kids to learn about american history at a museum that's a part of basis in the resolution and i guess you don't want teachers to be able to help transgender students feel safe in school i mean those are really terrible positions what's
038been happening at these school board meetings is mainly white people have been arguing against basis using lies and hypocrisy they've centered themselves in this process using euphemisms like stakeholder and taxpayer as though they're the only ones who have a stake in education or pay taxes and they've made themselves out to be neutral and victims it's a process of victimization while labeling everybody else who might disagree as political outsiders these are ways to talk about race in america without having to name race these people claim that the school board is censoring them yet this doesn't look like sen's dream to me i mean you're all speaking right so that's not censorship they claim the school board is run by a political agenda but we have politicians and local people running for office who have their own
039agendas so that's another hypocritical part of it they also and this is really insidious they want to discredit and gaslight some of the students of color in the district who have experienced forms of racism in school the opponents of racism claim that it's impossible that racism could exist here and they demand to see evidence quote unquote so if you're a student of color if you're a black kid in haverford schools i guess to these people your education and your experience of racism it doesn't matter to them and if you if you do matter what they want to do is say oh we want to see evidence of the racism what are you going to do put kids on trial i mean interrogate them about what they've experienced the hypocrisy about that is when their own
040white children say that they've been bullied in school that burden of proof magically disappears i guess they don't need to have evidence for that students of color families of color lgbt people are and immigrants and people who are religious minorities are entitled to feeling safe and welcome in school in the school district they don't deserve to be told they're liars by grown-ups who want to act like children and scream and shout the basis program has done great work we should be proud of it and i urge the district to continue it thank you our next speaker is lisa militi lisa mr feinberg and other members of the board good evening in previous meetings just before the public had the opportunity to speak with our school board leadership you read what appeared to be a mission
041statement oh could we get your name and address oh sure lisa militi 2129 chess sorry in previous meetings just before the public had the opportunity to speak with our school board leadership he read what appeared to be a mission statement along with that you made a statement referring to some protocol or procedure that board members must refrain from engaging in conversation and or dialogue with the residents you serve this comment was interpreted as you were diverting us to contact human resources or other departments within the district when our questions fall under your authority as the leaders of our school district not subordinate staff can you kindly clarify this and direct us where we can find a document a written document protocol or procedure that reflects the statement you made i yield my time for you
042to explain and clarify thank you for your comment to our policy not to engage in dialogue during public session based on your response yes there's one conclude that you're just not willing to have much needed conversation with the people you serve um one more thing one more thing just like to say i thought it was very unethical for a school board member to call a room full of concerned parents followers [Applause] our next speaker is elena wisely good evening my name is elena wisely i live at 612 little brook road in havertown i'm tired of the lies i'm tired of the lack of transparency i am tired of the unprofessionalism of this school board with the eye rolls the faces the the inattention attentiveness the smirks and clear example here tonight thank you for helping
043me prove my point [Applause] not to mention the blatant display of attire attacking parents who are concerned on social media it's utterly despicable and this is not the example that i want my kids to follow so when you say that you want to lead by example you are not you are by far leading and fit to lead our children you refuse to answer our questions and yet you are the ones that make the decisions you call the shots not the people that are just as seeing that it happens you guys make these decisions right here in these meetings you vote therefore it's you we elect you to do a job for us you should talk to us about the decisions that you make there's a lot of conflicts of interest that includes democratic party leaderships
044here in haverford that includes as helene had pointed out earlier the pennsylvania school board association these are conflicts of interest on our board the anti-racist resolution that was brought to our school was helped to happen by outside influences who are extremely radical and political in nature i'm concerned about the health stability and mental well-being of our children coming in after a year of being in a pandemic our middle school and high school students have not been in school full time for over a year i have yet to see a plan to help guide them through this school year emotionally and mentally we've already had a 12 year old threatened violence on our students in the school what are we going to do to help these kids because sage wellness isn't going to do it castle
045social emotional learning that all push biases they want us to examine they want our kids to examine implicit biases they are too young for this are you kidding me you're giving awards to kids for saying that they examined their color you're making kids see only color and having them think that this is normal this is not normal and this is not okay i'm asking you to remove from our library every book that you have allowed to come in there that is written by ibram candy who is a marxist extremist and those books are absolutely disgusting i'm also asking that you remove any program that supports critical race theory because yes these programs support critical race theory and you need to remove them and teach our kids math writing and reading thank you our next speaker
046our next speaker is todd hall good evening my name is todd hall 535 country club lane i continue to ask the school district about the equity leadership teams what is the student data that's being examined how does it relate to valuing diversity and practicing cultural awareness i i did ask the board and as we've been reminded of tonight and as we know it's directed to those who enforce the laws are the regulations not the board so for example if you had an issue with the taxes to you and you wrote to your congressman and they said contact the irs you would just say oh okay great sounds good so um i was directed though i'll give some credit here i was directed to the school district um by the school district to go to the
047pennsylvania department of education equitable practices hub and the site mentioned school processes level to consider subgroup level programs and practices the pennsylvania department of education defines subgroups in terms of race you must cease and desist putting our children into groups with different programs and practices this is what's called segregation and why are we doing this why are we all here why are we concerned well it seems that a lobbying group in our school district was formed in response to the presidential election election of 2016. they brought their concerns to the attention of the school board and provided a report of racism examples in the township and this led to the implementation of different programs some of these reports that i read were no doubt disturbing and made me sad and these were the actions of
048adults not they're not part of the jurisdiction of this school district another report it caused me to shake my head it was about an employee of an organization that leases space from the school and uh someone who works there explained that well the former president isn't building a wall um you know because of any racism he wants to keep up bad people and drug dealers it was then told to that organization that they shouldn't have anyone make political statements what if that same message is said to employees of the school district um i see that you know on tonight's agenda there's a construction of offense to be put around the middle school property i'll be honest i don't know if it's for security or for athletics but is what's the reason for the fence is
049putting this up racist is it unjust um you know it's very apparent that the principles of critical race theory are being taught in our school based on writing on based on what i'm reading on the pennsylvania equity website that i was referred to the school board president has sent retweets um that just that discuss why implementing critical race theory is a very hard fight and generally people only you know retweet items that they are in support of our community experienced an event recently where a citizen went onto another citizen's property and left a note saying that their thin blue line flag was racist this type of activity will only increase if you continue to promote ideas that claim institutions and organizations in our country are racist please stop spending our money and it's our money
050it's not yours you're entrusted with it on equity consultants teach children to respect other people including others that are different than them generally speaking our children get along fine with each other including others of different races we don't need to accomplish this with a way that divides people into oppressor and oppressed groups we are all one group human beings who are by nature sinful are commit wrongs all of our children are in one group and there are children that need an academic education thank you [Applause] our next speaker is andrew pidgeon andrew pigeon 1728 hawthorne avenue howardtown pa good to see you all in person um the last time that there was a plan released by dr arushi and i believe it was voted on by the board for the children to begin the school
051year with three feet of social distance and other mitigation factors the prior year my family moved from linwood elementary to chestnut world we enjoyed our experience at linwood and the kids adjusted nicely to their first year at chesterworld i really did not want them to have to switch schools again but after last summer and cove had hit i started getting the feel that the public schools may not be open in person for school i did get proactive and register them for catholic school in the district to be safe because i knew that a kindergartner first grader and a fourth grader would learn much better in person than what everyone just experienced in the spring much to my relief dr ruschi's plan appeared to be in line with the catholic schools plan both had the same
052three feet of social distance with the same mitigation efforts i unregistered from the catholic school since none of the kids wanted to change schools again again thinking that they would have the opportunity for in-person learning the same as the catholic school that was a big mistake by me we all know how different september looked than what we planned on in july of last year so here we are one year later and decisions are being made again currently there are no masking requirements dr rushi has once again committed to these policies which i'm appreciative of but i need to ensure that they do not change and i do have to remind both the board and those parents navigating a pandemic what the facts are around children coveted and masking now that the data is in part
053of the cdc's website since the beginning of the pandemic 326 children ages 18 of age or younger have died from or with govid while the death of one child for any cause is tragic to put in perspective there are 70 million children in our country 18 18 or under i ask you to remember that stat whenever anything pops up or whenever you're making a decision around coven the common cold kills 500 kids on average per year and the thought of hybrid or virtual learning has never been mentioned any loss of life is tragic but with life comes risk the death rate for 326 out of 70 million is zero .000 four six six a risk any right-minded person would more than willing take for in-person education i felt it was important to bring this up
054because i'm hearing the same rumblings this summer that i heard last summer i realized the chester county health department has stated they're out of the policy for public schools business but i need to be sure i'm hearing about vaccinations i'm hearing about possibility of remasking i do not want to hear about any covenant mitigation strategy at all from anyone we are 16 months into this pandemic and 326 kids have died from it kobe does not affect kids the way it does the elderly we have known this forever but we still decided to make ridiculous decisions based off fear my kids have suffered enough please stick to your guns and ensure that in september our kids returned to school one hundred percent in person with no covered mitigation each week in the township we were between
055four and eight cases for one hundred thousand covid may spike if you want to call it that in the fall we're going to have to live with it please do not cave any pressure this year once again i d enrolled my kids from catholic schools based off what you presented in july do not pull the rug out from underneath me again in august when it's too late for me to make any changes enough is enough my kids have suffered enough thank you for all your time our next speaker is tom east hello my name is tom peace i live at 734 millbrook lane it have a haydock lane i've lived there for 22 years i have lived in the area for 39 years moving up from dallas texas where i left all my exes the
056reason the reason i'm coming tonight is because i was looking on the website at the 2021 budget update that's presented and on there there was a board meeting that occurred on january 21st uh 2021 in which the board said they were going to hold the in the increase to 2.6 percent of the appraised value so my house used to have an appraisal of 350 000 when the new appraisal came in it was put at 950 000. my taxes uh just went up three thousand dollars which is um it's about 24 uh the main point i want to make is that i heard what was said earlier but i believe that there's a mathematical problem in that the millage rate should have been adjusted by your own language to not be bigger than 2.6 percent so
057[Applause] so i would i would offer that since you have said that you you you cut the millage rate uh from 33 33 um 0.5 to 6 to 16.7 i think there's a mathematical adjustment that needs to be made and so i would respectfully ask the board to reconsider the tax rate send out a letter adjusting it so no one's taxes go up more than 2.6 percent [Applause] thank you our last speaker is maggie burke maritzas hi can you hear me yes thank you one person um my um my topics are also based on the taxes and i'll be brief thank you for those who um want me to start my video hold on one second pardon me man but we'll need your address also okay um my name is maggie burke moritzes i live
058at 411 covington road um and i'm following on the discussion of taxes and thank you for all those who laid out so much information before um our home as everyone else's was reassessed and um in receiving my taxes they were raised by eleven hundred dollars um i did not know that i could you know appealing taxes that you didn't know exactly what they were would not have been possible for me in september um and in talking with a number of my neighbors it appears that ours were not in line with most of theirs many of their homes have larger properties have one or two additions on them and we have none and yet our assessment is significantly higher as are our taxes so i'd like to ask that you consider that for those of us
059and you'd have to go through the list obviously well you're seeing large increases that you give us the opportunity to pay the flat tax rate from 2020 while you're looking into this um and i would you know prioritize you know those where the the wrong calculations are um the other piece i would like to bring up is um i've lived here for 23 years my husband and i um we have no children and we are both retirees and i would like to cons you to consider that um senior citizens could really benefit from a reduction in school taxes i'm not asking you to waive them but for someone who has paid taxes and having had no children now that i met you know my senior uh my at my retirement level i think it would
060be nice to start offering that to others i would ask the board to look into how many seniors there are in hereford township and actually how many people there are regardless of whether seniors if they have no children and maybe redirect some of that money um to you know senior services senior housing etc because i don't feel that the senior community is nearly as well served as you know the rest of the of the township so um i think that's all i have to say i just wanted to thank you for allowing me to bring my point of view up thank you [Applause] you know because so many of our speakers have talked about taxes this evening i'd just like to make a couple of points one when the reassessment came out we we worked
061with school districts from throughout the county to push county council to throw out this reassessment one of our speakers this evening talked about the fact that it was not well done and we agree with that be that as it may we do not have authority to change your assessments it's done by the county period and we do not we do not have the authority excuse please let me talk we do not have the authority to whereas i'd love to be able to offer some kind of break to senior citizens i've talked to our elected officials in harrisburg about this and we don't have the ability to do that we operate under state law so i would say if you if you're looking uh to push on either of those fronts whether it has to do
062if it has to do with the arrest with the reassessment county council is the place for you to defend the chances of them doing anything about it at this point or i would say not high they spent a lot of money and got a lousy product but it's the product we did object but we have no no but we have no we have no jurisdiction [Music] they they set the rates we set the 2.6 increase on the millage rate for our own budget and that's that's where we have latitude and we kept it at 2.6 percent any increase you saw above 2.6 percent is because your property was reassessed at a higher value we talked about it and they decided not to well that's it's water over the dam uh solicitor and an uh auditor
063for all the districts in delaware county and and they pushed jointly to have this this reassessment thrown out and it county council would not do that so i'm sorry we're going to have to continue with our agenda we're not called did you set an arbitrary number there or you just didn't divide it by the budget yeah are you what's your name were you on the list i did it through the computer but apparently speakers we we listed the speakers that were rece that we received emails from prior to three o'clock this afternoon it was like two weeks ago the last elderly we're going to move on with our agenda thank you for your comments but not on you know crt you choose what you can engage back and forth the next item on our agenda
064is the superintendent's remarks dr rushi thank you mr feinberg i'm going to use my remarks as an introduction to nicole badistelli's presentation this evening overviewing excuse me could you please let's bring the meeting to order if you'd like to leave that's fine otherwise please be respectful and let us work ryan's gonna be popular as i mentioned i'll use my remarks uh for a brief introduction to the presentation nicole will be delivering this evening uh outlining our uh health and health and safety plan and i think i can speak and say that just about every administrator in in the district would concur with the speaker this evening about about the frustration over over changes uh in plans we have even since school closed uh as recent as tuesday of this week uh received notification from the
065department of education that the pennsylvania department of education and the pennsylvania department of health will be following cdc guidelines uh what we are also informed that the cdc guidelines are going to can we close the doors please because folks are talking in the hallway [Music] no please close the door closing the doors and with that being said that the current guidance on the cdc website uh will be revised uh in in some way we have yet to receive that information but we have been told to anticipate that there will be a change coming to that we were also notified that the delaware county uh as of august 1st will no longer have the chester county health department as its health authority that will be the pennsylvania department of health will serve as the health health
066authority there we're not asking the board to take any action on the plan tonight that never was our on our agenda for them to take action on it but for nicole to present it the outline of it and that we would ask them to take action on it on july 22nd thank you dr rishi good evening uh mr feinberg dr rishi members of the board colleagues and community members um like dr she said i'm to present the thank you okay i'm going to present on the updated health and safety plan a lot of what i'm going to talk about we've talked about over the last few months like the masking order ending and um different orders in pennsylvania ending so it's a lot of stuff we all have already heard of and and know about
067um so there you go thank you so um as dr richie just said a lot happened on tuesday of this week so on tuesday we were notified by the chester county health department that delaware county will no longer be under the chester county health department like doctors just said and we will be under the pa department of health in addition to that email we received another email from the department of ed uh education uh notifying us that the department of education and the pa department of health will follow the updated cdc guidance the cdc guidance is not yet out um the new updated guidance is not yet available so i put a quote from the email we received from the pa department of education regarding this change so this all happened this tuesday and if
068you can move to the next slide i'm going to go through the required um portions of the health and safety plan it's a little different from the more extensive health and safety plan we had to submit last year prior to the start of the school year so as we all know the masking order mpa has ended so in addition the chester county health department would which is currently our health authority issued a letter that mass would not be required for summer programs so right now master not required for our summer programs we have students in right now we did receive notification as well as all other school districts on tuesday that our school buses are considered public transit and therefore fall under the federal order for masking and we are to require masking on our
069school buses regardless of vaccination status so we were notified tuesday of that and if you can move on to the next no thank you um as we know um pennsylvania lifted the physical distancing and occupancy limits that's why we are all able to be in this boardroom you know looking like it did prior to kovid our school buildings our offices are now at full capacity there's no alterations or restrictions um all the distancing signs have have been removed um but we will consider any recommendations as we receive them as we anticipate getting updated guidance from the cdc and slash the pa department of health at this point but this is where we stand as of july 8th of whatever time it is right now which i feel like is something we had to say frequently
070in the beginning of the covid pandemic hand washing like we have always done we will continue to encourage routine hand washing especially something we typically do at the elementary level regardless of any pandemic we'll still have our hand sanitizers available they've all been installed in all of our classes so they're they're there um available for our students and we'll continue to post the signs around our buildings regarding proper etiquette you know coughing into your elbow so they'll be available the cleaning and maintaining of our facilities we'll continue to use our epa approved disinfectants that um for use against covet 19 we're going to continue to clean and disinfect areas when we're notified that someone who is positive was in that area during their contagious period and again continue to ensure that our ventilation systems are
071properly operating and having schools that don't have the um climate control to have the windows and doors open to increase airflow contact tracing quarantine and isolation thank you we are going to continue to report as we're required on any positive case of covet 19 to the health department we will provide the list of close contacts to the health department as well we will support the public guidelines as you know if they change if they're sent to us we've been doing that this entire pandemic of notifying people if they were close contact and abiding by the quarantine and isolating isolation procedures we're asking that if any student staff member contractor was in our building when they were contagious you know and they're positive although they notify us so that we can go through with the contact
072tracing in addition if they were a close contact to someone that were also notified so that's not a change from this year because you go to the neck thank you sorry there's no computer here anymore diagnostic thank so we'll follow our normal policy regarding communicable c's we're going to maintain our adequate ppe which we have available to our staff and our nurses um we're going to ask that anybody who's going to enter our building staff member student do the at home screening before they arrive at our building so if they're symptomatic not to enter the building symptomatic and if they come to school and are symptomatic they would be sent home and again this was already stated but if anybody becomes ovid positive to immediately let their supervisor know that we can go through the
073proper contact tracing and isolation and quarantine we're going to continue with the rapid antigen testing that we have available through project acet we have that available for symptomatic students and staff members who become symptomatic at school so not that they arrived symptomatically so we don't want you to come to the building symptomatic but if throughout the day somebody became symptomatic we do have testing available to us and that information went out earlier in this year we're going to notify the community if there is a vaccine clinic much like we did with the radnor clinic that was run for students 16 up and then 12 and up there's a student who has a medical diagnosis and an iep we work with the iep team to make sure they're taken care of in any specially designed instructions
074or different strategies that they need we'll have a meeting with the team to make sure we meet their needs we'll continue to coordinate with stake and local health officials by reporting cases and consulting with the health department on specific cases as we have throughout this past year your three minutes is up i was just about to say i think i went over the three minutes are there any questions yes have any other information is it online available to us or the public about the coordination with the pennsylvania department of health now that cchd is out that has not been just announcing it we were notified of this on tuesday and we still are waiting for additional information regarding that okay great when resources are shared with you can we make them available to the board
075and the public as soon as that possible and ready so that we can have a better understanding of the relationship and all the other districts in delco that are now under the pennsylvania department of health and therefore the cdc's i guess ultimately in charge of those recommendations that will come from pennsylvania department of health you're asking if we can make the information available we'll share with you whatever we receive when we receive it i'm sure we'll save it at 4 00 p.m the day before and it's fair to say that this move puts us in line with many other districts around the state who don't have their own county health department yes county doesn't yet have our own we were able to partner with chester county recently but um in the many cases around the
076state where there's not a county health department they report to pennsylvania yes and that happened for you know we were lucky to be under chester county throughout the past year but many other areas that don't have a health department were under the pa department of health let's keep going thank you one is talked about contact racing and i've got a high school student who's doing some summer sports and activities so is that happening even during the summer if students are kind of doing summer sports um in pre-season if it's a district yes okay um just to let people know that that is happening um and then i did have a question about our our ability to our interest in collects collecting vaccinations status i understand that even if students um availed themselves of the um
077of the radnor vaccine clinic that was kind of coordinated with the district um that the district doesn't have lists or reports doesn't have that information attached to students but i would yeah you definitely can't i'm not going to be allowed i'm going to continue to ask my question i would think there are um some vaccine like someone who's vaccinated um might get a different result after a contact tracing and instruction i get different instructions about whether or not they need to quarantine they're vaccinated or not so i'm just curious um the extent to which we could ask people to um submit their vol voluntarily their vaccine status to help with contact racing or um what on that so i will i'll i'll take that in to your question into two parts could we ask people
078to voluntarily share that information yes we could ask them to voluntarily share the information i would not recommend it because voluntarily sharing medical information i think there would be a lot of questions understandably why you know what what you need to know this for and then if we use it it's not accurate to me it's it's not that it anyone did anything with any ill intent but if i said to you out of six thousand six hundred and some students what percentage or vaccine well this percentage report that they're vaccinated so i don't it doesn't paint an accurate picture to have that okay so but um is is someone's self-reported vaccination status into account for things like contact tracing and quarantine instruction so if we contact a parent and a parent says the child has
079been vaccinated then the nurse would have that conversation with that parent about what the quarantine requirement may or may not be for that particular individual i'm sorry i didn't any other questions or comments from the board sorry it's a board business meeting we don't take questions from the floor you're welcome to you're welcome to email any any other comment but if you didn't hear them go ahead i just have a question because i know there's a certain component is there a written component to this this year i know that we had to submit something oh this is on our website we posted i think june 18th there's a draft of it obviously tuesday we found out about the um public transit masking so i'll have to update that but there's a draft that's on our
080website right now and it's been there for a few weeks so that people can take a look at it in its entirety and and so last year we had to submit it i believe to pde um are we doing that again with the new with this new one yes okay um and and so they'll know that when they change the guidance right after we voted on it um that that that we need to submit i mean i um yes i guess it just seems a little bit fluid still so yes i mean i wanted to make sure that was clear we got information tuesday and um i'm sure something will change as it did last year um well thank you thank you so much thank you nicole how are we collecting community feedback on the
081graphics on the web so it's on the website people are welcome to make public comment like they did tonight um and it's there for everyone to see have you received any calls i have i don't know i get a lot of emails so i'm going to think about that one i don't think i've seen a comment from a public any other questions from the board thank you nicole thank you wait for the cdc thanks a call next item is for uh information purposes only secretary to submit for insertion into the minutes proof of publication as it relates to the schedule of regular public meetings for the 2021-2022 school year next item i'll accept a motion to approve disbursements from the general fund totaling 859 683.77 i'll accept a motion to accept the recommendation of the
082project architect kcba and associates inc and owners representative cb development services inc and authorized change orders as listed moved in second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve the option b proposal from miller sports construction for the haverford middle school fencing project at a total cost of one hundred fifty six thousand five hundred seventy nine dollars which is the pa authorized co-stars contract preferential pricing we're not actually putting a fence around the middle school as i think was mentioned earlier no that's a it's around the stadium but that's refer that's part of the address is the middle school okay so if you'll recall last year the um actually right before the pandemic the board voted to replace the track over at the stadium and this is
083being put in as a safety security uh measure to protect that invest the financial investment that has been been made there to discuss with facility liaisons has been reviewed by our facilities department as well replacing the existing that is correct the fence around the perimeter nuts yes all in favor aye opposed motion carries i'll accept the motion to approve the addendum the original adhdra designated person environmental engineering consultant contract which extends services through june 30 second any discussion all in favor [Applause] motion carries i'll accept a motion to authorize special counsel for tax assessment appeals to resolve the following assessment appeals pending in the court of common pleas of delaware county under the following terms as listed moved in second any discussion just that there are two on here um and one actually uh i
084think was a recommendation where we increased the assessment correct of a property over 2.8 million dollars opposed i'll accept a motion to accept the retirements and resignations as listed second moved in second any discussion i'll accept the motion to approve the appointments as listed moved in second any discussion yes i'm waiting for the vote if you could make him if you could make him official all in favor aye any opposed motion carries welcome aboard i'd like to uh welcome mr alexander quinn who will be joining us from where he currently works in the upper darby school district mr quinn serves as a lead teacher he has teaching experience at the elementary level as both a general education and special education teacher and he will be working with dr raimondo's at manoa elementary so mr quinn
085welcome dr ramondos thank you for bringing him forward for approval this evening thanks dr hershey i'll accept a motion to approve the following educational contracts for students attending out of district esy placements for the summer of 2021. any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve the following educational contracts for students attending out of district placement for the 2021-2022 school year including esy moved in second any discussion all in favor the opposed motion carries i'll accept the motion to approve board policy 800.1 electronic signatures and records as discussed at the june 17th 2021 school board moved in second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to appoint uh board members listed to represent the district at 2021 pspa delegate assembly on saturday october
08623rd 2021 and fill in the blanks or steinberg with sweden and miss larson second moved in second any discussion thank you for signing up you three [Music] assembly is process by which the statewide association um sets their policy priorities for the year ahead coming years of um next regular public board meeting uh is scheduled for july 22nd 2021 right here in the board conference room at the obama administration building board reports why don't we start at the end of the table no report um yeah really quickly i um was able to attend uh cle that i found very interesting was the education funding in pennsylvania inadequate inequitable and unconstitutional it was put on by a law firm and the public interest law center and it focused on a lot of what we've discussed before as
087a board how inequitable the pennsylvania funding is um very little funding goes through the fair funding formula and a lot of it uh the funding is sort of hold over from decisions that were made a very long time ago and are not applicable to the current landscape in pennsylvania and in pennsylvania schools they also talked about the the well-known lawsuit that's us going through the courts right now um that's trying to get more fair funding through um the pennsylvania constitution so it was a really interesting cle that i was able to attend and um i just wanted to share with the board non-lawyers tell us what cle means oh it's a continuing legal education um it's just a credit i think that there were non-lawyers that were present as well um since i am an
088attorney it's i'm i refer to it as a cle sort of second nature but it's just a seminar basically unfortunately the delaware county community college has not met in a while so i don't have anything to report as our liaison of delaware county community college i do just want to thank john ryan for coming and helping us better understand the tax uh bills that everyone just got as well as the reassessment that happened last year that has resulted in everyone's tax bills that they just got being maybe confusing or higher or lower um millage rates and um all that other stuff is not exactly easy to understand and um i will continue to try and better understand dave do you have a report for us no reports from ocean city questions coming on but on
089the hedges here thank you thank you kristen i have attended two of the statewide um sba school leaders uh online forums um where a variety of topics were discussed um including this budget which did result in a million dollar increase in basic education fund uh carve out for um some of the highest distributional um and there were some gains in civilization and other topics um i fell short of uh what like edgy and was advocating for and as part of the process failed to address some other goals that were had around other funding reforms regarding charters and special education that would have been more beneficial but there isn't increase that yet we also talked about uh proposed new school code legislation that will affect in a variety of ways different equity initiatives of support case
090that ruled on the regulation of office and there's also um a bill that was passed now act 66 that gives parents the option to um have their student school year um that needs to be requested by um there's information on our website if you go to the website it splashes up um information on that one thing that as we have talked um in that forum and in another that i meet with i think it should be noted um that that does not traditional eligibility or bia so it's not a chance to get another football season under your belt like that it means to address uh vid related court calls this past year um this group this uh weekly we're taking the summer off and then we'll resume meeting just once a month in the fall
091um it has been a real help throughout the pandemic to collaborate and listen to the concerns and and the work that was being done by the state of pennsylvania to navigate the challenges of kovid and other um budgetary and other topics that um face um and i also met the double board leadership um about budget taxes safe plans for them here board met an executive session prior to the public meeting to review tax assessment appeal litigation matters with special counsel in addition the board conferred with district administration regarding safety and security data reporting that i'll accept the motion to adjourn thanks everybody