001okay all right i'm going to um start the webinar and let our attendees into the room and we're live on youtube okay let's to take three you ready this time without the mute good evening everybody welcome to the april 8th 2021 regular public uh board meeting of the school district of haverford township if we could rise for the pledge of allegiance please i pledge allegiance mr regal could you call the roll please okay uh dr crispin here mr fleischer here miss larson here uh miss minji is absent right yes okay mr cinto here mr schwartz here ms snodgrass here miss wiedemann here and mr feinberg here thank you bob i'll accept a motion to approve the official minutes from the march 18 2021 regular public board meeting it's in terms and second moved in second
002any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries thank you dr rushi what do we have for student recognition this evening thank you mr feinberg we're highlighting uh two groups of students this evening on both from the middle school mr haran the building principal is here uh mr jason langen who is a teacher at our middle school and also the student council chair uh is here and our student council students are some of the group that you were going to recognize for their work around black history month and women's history month and then we have some student athletes with some tremendous accomplishments that we just want to share with you with you this evening so mr moran am i turning it to you or to mr langen great thank you good evening everyone thanks for
003having us i'm jason langan i've been the director of the student council program for the past 14 years and i know you had originally on the schedule to hear about our recent work with black history month and women's history month however my gang kind of already prepared a little something a little tour de force about all the things they've been working on throughout the course of the year so we're hoping we're not gonna mess up anybody's plans too much by going from our three minutes to our four-minute slot so i'm gonna let drew take it away and begin less of me more of them go ahead drew good evening my name is drew shulman i'm an eighth grader and one of this year's co-captains for the hms student council i have been a member of
004this group for three years and i'm very proud of all the things we've been able to accomplish in that time this year in particular has been memorable because it has shown to me the value of creativity and having a positive outlook very quickly we learned that this was not going to be a year that we said to each other this is going to be a bad experience we knew that the year would offer challenges but we made a decision to accept the only things we could control which is our own outlooks and attitudes while i certainly missed some of the experiences i had grown accustomed to over the last two years in a way i am proudest of the account of the work we've done this year please take a listen to some of my
005teammates as we explain some of our accomplishments hello to everyone my name is lena fedoul and i am also an 8th grader on student council despite all the changes student council has been through during the 15 years of its existence the one program that never changed was the annual thanksgiving food drive we knew that despite the pandemic and the need for social distancing this could not be the year that we had been in this important program as we knew that families were more in need than ever so we so instead of our usual quality of students to bring their food items to their homeroom classes we decided to host a weekend drive-through for through extremely windy days we collected items from not just our classmates but the entirety of havertown people who didn't even have
006any connection to our school dropped by and asked what was going on and then returned later in the day with their donations this resulted in a tremendous turnout and we were able to support the families just like we had done in the past plus we got our exercises we kept running after cardboard boxes rolling down darby road it was a great way to start the year hello i'm rebecca vitale also an 8th grade student council member it is no surprise that the potter cup is one of the highlights of the hms calendar however you don't need to be dr fauci you should know that damning 3 000 people into a gym probably wouldn't have been the smartest call knowing that charity organizations like alex's lemonade stand come to rely on annual events like ours we
007wanted to do something to help out in some small way we decided to host an hms teacher corn talent show over 20 of our talented staff members shared their amazing skills and created videos which we were able to turn into a virtual show for our classmates to watch on youtube and they did watch they've the video received over 1500 views in just one week and we were able to raise over thirteen hundred dollars to support alex's lemonade stand it was a lot of fun and it was a great reminder of how much our teachers care about their students plus it showed us how weird some of our teachers actually are my name is christian schumann and i'm a sixth grade member of the student council i am one of nine sixth grade members of our
008group it was very exciting to be able to get involved with this group right from the start of the school year there are lots of clubs that i've been doing that have been doing their thing throughout the year just like ours and we wanted to thank the teachers who have found creative ways to run them and give props to the various students who got involved being involved in clubs and activities is a way to feel connected to the school we also learned this year to embrace a 24 7 education we challenged ourselves these past few months during black history month and women's history month if you visited if you visited our school website you may have seen some of our videos that we produced for our school community we went into our neighborhoods to find
009locations that highlight that highlight black history places that might not ever be highlighted in our textbooks and classes we went on and found them we did the same for our march madness women's history month tournament it was our turn to play the teachers as we took turns presenting to a panel of teacher judges to tell them about the great women in history that didn't get a lot of recognition it was a great opportunity to highlight important people and prove that our teachers are lifelong learners too we hope that we were able to communicate to our classmates that learning is not something that just goes on from bell to bell for the past decade student council has participated in the greater philadelphia martin luther king day of service connecting with groups like city year and global
010365. while we weren't able to attend these events this year we spent martin luther king day plastering the hms hallways with signs showcasing positive thoughts and quotes we wanted to give our classmates a good feeling when they walk through the halls on the way to their classes speaking of coming back to class this we were excited to reopen our doors to all of our students to help bring back some classroom community we designed a teacher game book for them to use to help connect the students to one another plus since we approve them we know they're fun thank you for giving us some time to present at tonight's meeting during our regular meetings we learn about leadership skills and styles as well as teamwork and collaboration techniques so we know how difficult what you are
011doing is we thank you school board members for your leadership and hope that some of us will be taking your seats one day have a good night great thank you mr lang and and and students mr langan is it okay if you know one or two of our board members sometimes they have a question that they'd like to ask the students that we're recognizing absolutely we love them thank you fleischer yeah i'm wondering where the teacher uh weird video is oh we've posted i think it's about an hour long of just over a bunch of our teachers doing different talents and stuff and we had one teacher that did basketball tricks and a mrs miss hay who did a gorgeous art piece and i think that's on mr lang and you can double check this
012but i think it's on the hms youtube channel but i'm not completely sure about that i will double check it's there somewhere are there questions or comments from the board well i i want to thank you all very much i i hope that you will be taking our seats one day it's wonderful to hear the good things that that have been going on uh especially in in this unusual year mr feinberg i think ms larson had a question kristen yeah just really quickly i want to thank all of you for um everything you know you're doing it's it's so hard middle school at least for me was tough enough as it is and then you lay a pandemic over it i mean you all are doing great things and moving mountains so i'm really excited
013for your work now and even in the future so thank you for sharing tonight and our second group that we i want to bring attention to tonight to we would just like to take advantage of this time to let you know some of the wonderful students that our teachers and administrators have an opportunity to to work and clearly that was a great example of hearing from those young people uh and we have several other students from the middle school with us um this evening who are runners uh and runners to the true definition of the of the word and i will let the students know now we have some board members who um are also runners uh that these students um and are involved with private running clubs and also with our own school track
014and track and field team and they've participated at local and national levels and all four of these students have achieved uh at the at a national level um olivia sleeslick is a two-time national champion for her age group cameron mcgeehan um placed seventh in the 1500 meter at a national championship mallory myers a national champion for her age age group and meyer's a two times national champion for for age group so i'm going to ask those students if they just tell us a little bit uh about uh what you what you've been involved with and i'm confident that there will be some board members who might want to ask you uh some questions and of course mr grant if there's anything that you wish to to add that i may have forgotten hi my name
015is cameron mcgann i'm an 8th grader at haverford middle school and we have competed in virginia beach multiple times and we also ran over the summer for some first opportunities since covid we ran in exton pennsylvania and homedale new jersey we ran multiple cross-country running series me and olivia also placed first in paris kentucky with three other girls we are 14 year old national champions in that we also raced in tallahassee florida and we raced in that girls cross country and i placed 23rd for my age um yeah olivia you want to go next hi my name is olivia i'm also an 8th grade runner here at the middle school and um as cameron said we've been doing like a lot of national runnings and i also ran in tallahassee florida and i placed fourth
016and yeah great our private track club that we ran for during covid we ran for the ford flames track club led by greg myers and coach debaur and i'm very grateful for them because they really helped me extend my running my love for running and i also really found my love for running over quarantine and it really helped me keep sane with my mental and physical health and yeah great cameron mallory dimitri um okay so i am in sixth grade and i am not able to be on the middle school track team yet next year i am planning to but yeah i competed in virginia beach i got first in the 3000 and fourth in the 800 i am a one-time national champion like you said and yeah really yeah like cameron said we went
017to many meets and it feels good to do something while you're just sitting here at home yeah hi i'm dmitry meyers um we're from belize and i like my dad used to run track i said i like it i'm a two-time national champion in the 3000 and the 1500 and i'm a three-time all-american i'm pretty sure wow from 2019 2020 and 2021 and i like track personally the training is hard and it can get annoying sometimes but i just like to do good you know you know you might you must all have a propensity for perseverance and that stick-to-itiveness so i i see a couple of our board members have some questions that they would like to ask or maybe comments to make ms larson thanks um so thank you all for sharing your running
018experiences um it's just one of the most wonderful activities there is um you know in my prior life i was much more of a runner than i am now but i just enjoy every minute of it um cameron i did want to ask you said you ran home dell when i ran cross country in high school i ran home dell and i that is one of the hardest courses that steep hill up in the beginning and then the bowl like in the middle of the run how did you do it it was really really difficult that's for sure we ran the 4000 meters the 4k and the 5k there um and the bowl i don't think i actually ran the bowl but i know our 5k high school runners did um and it's definitely especially
019because we ran in the summer it was definitely a challenging experience thanks for sharing sorry you're muted congratulations all the runners these are incredible achievements thank you for sharing your your stories um thank you for plowing through the training dimitri um i just want to say i give you guys all 11 out of 10. antoinette all right i've set a question um the only reason that i like to run is because really cool places hold 5ks and so it's fun to travel there um but where is like the coolest place that you have had the opportunity to run either just like for fun or like for a competition um i think one of my favorites was probably either extend or we haven't where we were supposed to run um the 5k in belmont which was
020like a very hilly course but we never got to try that out due to covid but maybe we'll try that out for um high school but i like exton and roastery those are my two faves some of the cooler places that we traveled were definitely tallahassee florida in december of 2020 and then me and olivia have also ran in kentucky multiple times for our cyo cross country nationals and then we also it seemed like a mud run but we went to ohio for cyo nationals back in 2017 or 2018 i'm pretty sure and we ran in like a corn field so it was a whole mud run and it was a really fun experience and it added a little bit something to distract you from running in all this pain in this mud dave yeah
021i have a question so i got in i guess a bit into running in my 30s and you guys are all in middle school i'm just curious when did you start running i mean like like what age did you pick this up because i didn't get you know i didn't get into after college um i started running cross country in like first or second grade i honestly my mom was a runner so i kind of just like started practicing with her and she's been my coach ever since and um ever it's just been my sport and yeah and then i started track in like third grade yeah so cross country was my first sport for sure in high school we have a brand new track now so hope you enjoy that and and like the
022previous group feel free to run for office right larry there you go i just like to echo one of our students mentioned uh how it helps with mental and physical health and i would say it's a great lifetime habit and it's great to hear uh your accomplishments and your interest in this and uh i'm i've been running for over 40 years so i i i love it and it's great to hear what you guys are up to thanks for thanks for being here with us this evening so mr langan thank you again for bringing your students students thank you for just giving us a little bit of a window into your world it helps us to remember why our work is so important so we appreciate you taking time out of your evening to be
023here uh here with us tonight thank you so much for having us we do appreciate [Music] great okay the next item on our agenda is uh student reports we have ian savage from the middle school and kate van gervani from the high school ian sorry i have ivan's video i'm just going to play it sure the screen good good evening everyone my name is ian stobig and i will be reporting for the middle school tonight we welcome back most kids into the school building this week everyone was happy and excited to be back back we are persido wearing our masks and practicing special distancing april what is world autism month we have a community workout event planned for saturday april 24th from 2 30 to 3 30 pm at the football field spring sports events
024season is at is in full swing meeting meets and games will begin on april 21st we are approaching the lat the final working period of the school year the third marking period ends on a friday april 16th thank you for allowing me to present and have a good night everyone you're watching thank you very much for your report we we look forward to it and appreciate it katie hello my name is katie bon giovanni and i'm a senior at haverford high school thank you for having me here tonight to talk about the exciting things happening at haverford i believe i speak for everyone when i say that it is absolutely incredible to be back with all of our classmates five days a week we are so appreciative of all the hard work of teachers administrators
025the school board and district staff has made this transition possible the first day back after our much appreciated spring break felt like the first day of school in the best ways possible as we saw some of our peers that we hadn't seen in person for over a year and were able to experience being in a full classroom and all that comes with it this week there's been catching up laughing and learning and has made us excited for to give it our all for our last quarter of the school year the third quarter ends tomorrow which is especially hard to believe for seniors as our time at haberford comes to an end we have exciting events planned by senior class and student senate officers to look forward to auditions for the class of 2021 immigration speeches
026will be held in may i know i can't wait to hear the moving words of the selected graduation speaker come june many seniors like myself will be spending april deciding where we will be spending the next four years we will have a senior decision day grab and go breakfast on may 3 to celebrate our decisions hard work and the amazing places we're headed while students of all grades prepare for ap exams in may many juniors are preparing for act and sat testing as well there will also be virtual college visits available for interested students and the counseling department remains a wonderful resource for all questions regarding plans for the future a big congratulation goes out goes out to katya girslinova who won haverford's first gold at the piaa state swimming championship since 2016. our cheerleaders
027brought home their second district one championship victory in five years and we can't wait to see them represent us well at states we're also proud of the varsity ice hockey team who became champions in the flyers cup playoffs our spring athletes have officially begun their seasons and we are looking forward to seeing all that our affords will accomplish this spring after a very successful winter season our fords have also been dominating outside traditional sports with the esports team coming in second place in a national competition the science olympiad team has made it to states and will be competing on april 17th science olympiad recently placed in the top 10 and eight events and nadia awad tyler e and ian kratzinger came in second in the region for codebusters next week will be the annual senior
028voter registration drive senior leaders and members of the young democrats and future republicans clubs will be registering as many seniors to vote as possible the goal is to register over register over 85 percent of the senior class to make us winners of the governor's civic engagement award for the third year in a row it's amazing to see our students of different backgrounds unite to bring the importance of civic engagement to our students haverford high school is exciting things to come over the next few months and it'll be even better to be able to experience them with all of our peers together we are so appreciative of the hard work that has made it possible for us to return to school and understand the important role that our actions play in keeping us in the building
029stay safe and thank you for having me here tonight thanks for your report daddy it's great to hear all these good things that are that are going on next item on our agenda is public comment anna um mr feinberg we have five um people that have asked to speak um if i could ask the attendees if they can raise their hand it would just make it a little easier for me to move them in to panelists but i do have a list so we'll start with ms nicole hoops i'm going to bring her into the room and i'll just remind our speakers to please start with your name and address and you'll have three minutes at the end of three minutes and i will give you a reminder to please finish up thank you hi
030um nicole hoops my address is 153 signal road um drexel hill i have three boys at um in haverford one in third grade at manoa and two at harper middle school sixth and eighth grade um thank you for getting the kids back into the building my third grader is beyond ecstatic to be at school five days a week full day um he's really excited to be at school with his friends um and to see the kids in the b cohort when he was in a my other two boys in middle school um are bummed you know not to be full day but they're really happy to still be at school five days with their friends um as i'm sure you know and you've heard from parents over the last month a few months and year
031how difficult virtual has been for the students mental health and um overall academics i am a teacher as well so i um feel the pain on both sides as a teacher and as a parent and speaking to my own children daily about how school is going for them and the one thing that i just really wanted to ask the board and dr rushi to consider is moving forward into next school year obviously virtual is probably still going to have to be a thing for some students that are not comfortable to come back into the building but that please all students if they are going to be virtual be haverford online i know that in the elementary schools that is how it is you know if you're the only way you're zooming in is if it
032is covered related which i agree with 100 if a student has to be quarantined and they can't be in school we don't want them to miss school if they're well enough to participate but for the middle school and the high school have have for online as well as students virtually zooming in not for coveted reasons and as a teacher and as a parent that it's not an acceptable education for our kids because they're not getting a hundred percent of their teachers attention if you are on harvard online you are getting 100 of your teachers attention face to face through the screen obviously and if you're in person you're getting 100 of your teachers attention face to face but when you are teaching the simultaneous and the children are learning this way as well it is
033impossible for a teacher to give each class and it's really two separate classes and speaking from a teacher i am teaching two separate classes so i know what our teachers i have are going through and i know how my own children are learning right now and it's not beneficial to them so obviously this school year you know it's probably too late to change anything but i'm just asking and begging really for next school year um that any student that is virtual is going to be in the haverford online and any student that is in person is only in person none of this simultaneous teaching because it's really not beneficial and our kids are not getting a good education so that was that's my piece thank you very much for your time thank you thank you
034i'm gonna put you back in the attendees room okay um next we have um miss pasternak and i'm gonna just move her into the room whoops oh i think i took the wrong person okay sorry miss gone deck i took you in i'm gonna put you back my mouse was jumping okay this miss pasternack yes okay thank you i'm trying to make sure i got you in there correctly thank you your time um if you could state your name and address and i'll start the timer sure thank you um sure um i just want to make sure you can see me yeah yeah we can't see you if you want to okay okay um my name's alexis pasternak i live at 609 woodland drive town pa um i do want to start off by i
035also want to hop on what miss hoops said i i i do thank you for getting our kids back especially our elementary back to full time my son is thrilled to be back um that being said um you're dr rushing board members politics and special interests have no business being on a school board school boards are supposed to be responsible to all people in their community every decision about every item should be made with the interests of everyone in mind you've clearly not been doing that since adopting the resolution in the spring of 2020. you cannot continue to expect people to be told that their school community is racist and not have valid questions having questions is not a denial that racism exists or that a person does not want diversity inclusion or equality or
036that a person is intolerant or bigoted sadly that is exactly how it is being framed by many parties and they know exactly who they are please provide the data on haverford school districts racism open up the equity team to all students provide information on the kosa tied dei organization the district is now associated with please post all curriculum resources and pedagogy on the district's uh website k through 12. please advise immediately if teachers will be adopting curriculum from the national education association's edges program their stated mission includes promoting social justice and activism and education my son is not going to school to be an activist please stop discounting taxpayers parents students and teachers that have valid questions and concerns you would go a long way in alleviating those concerns by being more transparent and accountable
037thank you for your time okay thank you thank you okay our next speaker is ms england i'm gonna burn to the room is england i'm sorry ms england can you hear us okay i can move her back to the attendees and we can come to the um oh she can't hear us okay we we can't hear you for some reason and you're i think you've done mute oh there you go can you hear me yes we can thank you i'm sorry okay okay here you go no that's okay i apologize um my name is jenny england um i live at 119 wood lane i just wanted to take some time to thank the district and board members for returning our elementary students to full-time in-person learning even in the short time that my first grader
038has been back in the linwood building i've seen improvement in his engagement with school improvement in his reading and improvement in his mental health he comes home excited to share things that he has learned and it is incredibly important that he is having such a positive experience with his first year as a full-time student at haverford so thank you so much oh thank you you're welcome okay our next comment is from ms helene conroy smith i'm going to bring her in the room okay um miss smith if you can put your name in your address and i'll start the timer sure my name is helene comray smith i live at 32 east westwood park drive havertown pa the mission of the school district of haverford township is to educate and to inspire a community of
039lifelong learners who become well-rounded global citizens the anti-racist revolut resolution rejects the mission by supporting a political agenda marxism which is based on a false premise of systemic racism as racism does exist it is not heavily part of this community a few incidents of bigotry and hatred does not classify it as systemic as the national narrative is showing my own children organically created friends with kids of all nationalities of all races our children and employees of this district have been labeled racist and i'm asking you for the data for your claim a right to know on data was filed back in december and it was denied we will legally obtain all data as taxpayers we have the right to know if you are making a claim we have a right for that information this cameron
040board agreed to politicize our school district using our tax dollar money and our children is an absolute disgrace this is marxism and this must end as of december 3rd i have requested the information on the equity team which has not been fully disclosed i've asked for all curricula to be posted online i've asked for a policy to have parents notified on controversial topics nothing has been done no answers have been given and this board is operating against our own school board policies you have an obligation as to all the constitutes in this community your constitutes are asking for middle and high school to be fully open utilizing the classroom and outdoors for lunches it's time for our children to be in school it is also time to open up these school board meetings there's plenty
041of room for at the high school auditorium for parents in the community to attend these school board meetings it's time to open up it's time to have discussion and full disclosure and it's time to place time and energy into education and not into politics thank you thank you okay we have one more speaker tonight we have mr raspalada i'm going to move to a panelist hello mr bilotta good evening dr ruschi uh mr feinberg russ bolado 108 lewis road havertown of course thank you dr rushi mr feinberg the board for allowing me this time in a very short time roughly about two two and a half weeks the school district will be saying goodbye to someone that has given 41 years to this district i have always talked about unsung unseen heroes of our district
042the behind the scenes employees well a true behind the scenes person is george ramplin george will be retiring i cannot even think of the transportation department without george a part-time bus driver it's buster bush just crashed a full-time bus driver part-time mechanic lead mechanic transportation operations manager transportation director since 1994. he's the person who when there was poor weather snow ice and such would get out to the depot early and that early is 2 30 3 o'clock in the morning and take the bus out on the roads to see if the school should be closed and report back to the superintendents a very strong statement george would always make when asked how come our buses do not use tire chains in bad weather i will never forget this statement his response if the buses needs
043needs chains to get around they do not belong on the road quite simple george brought in the current edgelog software in use and was a very early adopter of the product he has been a long time user and in 2017 was presented an award from from them at their conference in las vegas another interesting note on how george is in the background when the new manila building was going to open the district and board had to go through something that any board member does not like is small redistricting since george had all student information in edgelog with distances we as a district were able to utilize that product with george thinking outside the box to help us get that done as director he not only managed our district needs but also that of somewhere between
044120 and 140 schools george basically manages the third largest transportation system in this area behind septa and upper derby transportation george along with other districts developed the shuttle service used by non-public schools to lessen the length of time a student is on the bus george fleet management was unique rarely did we purchase new buses but one-year-old buses from other districts and that would save us a lot of money he also would present the board with best options for the environment he presented conversion to biodiesel and then the propane-fueled vehicles as a very viable solution currently we are in a multi-year conversion to the propane vehicles the state passed the law uh maybe about five six years ago related to snow removal from roof tops of vehicles george approached the board with an option to forego
045bus purchases for one year and invest in a rooftop snow removal system for our buses haverford again was the first district in delaware county to use this system and actually allowed other districts to use it after our fleet was done anyone familiar with the bus depot there is a lower parking area that is now entranced to uh the uh murray place trail uh that has a um retaining wall the buses will be brought down to the lower area drivers would use ladders and roof scrapers and would manually clean the snow for buses note that the purchase of this equipment which was in actually it was longer than five years which was in 2010 was paid for itself during the 2010-2011 year because labor costs were so much reduced when we had so many very back-to-back
046snowstorms not only did he bring edgelock software into the district but also web trip software to help streamline special field trips sports trips and band trips i'm gonna go back a lot of years on some if you can recall hurricane fran that was uh somewhere in the late 90s george and his staff stayed in the office till all students were home safely and he and his assistant were picked up by the township front end loader to exit the office and area as the depot is on a floodplain and well let's just say it flooded today the depot is a modern facility both for transportation and maintenance george and many of the drivers would always try to respond and move the buses to higher ground when heavy rains were forecasted and come during the irene and
047sandy hurricane periods he moved all the buses out of the depot up to the taxi facility just uphill top road as well as placing them at various schools to protect our investment these are the unseen heroes of haverford and george will be missed not only was george involved with our district but community as well he's been a lifelong member of the lanark fire company and can always be seen at the gate at the end of the track on friday night lights football games george congratulations from a friend on the next chapter in your life and hope you enjoy it and try not to i know karen too much thank you very much thank you mr bilotta [Music] just want to recognize mr bellato as a long-time school director uh in haverford that i had the
048pleasure of serving with uh and he spent a lot of time uh uh was very invested in in our our buildings and our fleet uh very invested in uh our construction projects and uh uh was a valued member of the board and i think everyone in the haverford uh community shares uh uh his comments uh about george ramplin he'll be sorely missed uh he's he's done great work for us for so many years in so many ways so thank you russ okay that brings us to next agenda item is the superintendent's remarks dr rishi thank you mr feinberg a few things this evening uh ian already mentioned within his student report earlier that this month is autism awareness month um autism acceptance month we and certainly the children in our school district have many opportunities
049to interact with with peers learn about students who have autism and how to work with them we will be expanding those programs at both the middle and high school next year uh bringing additional staff on uh to work with students at that level so we just want to recognize that month and and how wonderful that population of students has been to work with for both our the adults and children in in our system also as a public sort of public service announcement um each year the district attorney's office runs what they call a safe school summit uh representatives from all of the schools in the 15 school districts and non-public uh parochial schools as well attend it's usually a day-long seminar seminar speakers are brought in we learn about you know keeping our schools safe
050our current district attorney is looking to assess that safe schools program and to look to see are there different ways that those dollars that come into the county can be used what has been described as a transition to perhaps looking at mental health behavioral needs substance abuse needs that seem to be more prevalent everywhere and to move away from the safe schools you know looking at how many door locks we're purchasing what type of surveillance systems we we are putting in and perhaps get to the root of why we sometimes feel that we need those devices so the first step is going to be a survey and we have agreed to support the efforts of the district attorney's office in that we will just be disseminating the survey we are not collecting the information but
051we will disseminate two parents of our middle and high school students a survey for them to complete they will also be asked if there's if their children can participate in a survey and there may be a staff survey at another point in time the purpose of the survey will be to then take those results and at the district attorney's office design a strategic plan for the use of safe schools funds that come into the county and how they could best be used to meet the needs so we're participating because we see this as our opportunity to identify what the needs are and if there are funding sources to you know to support that so those surveys will be going out tomorrow to um to families again in just in grades six six through twelve um
052you know the survey will come from the district but the responses are going to going to go elsewhere uh my final remarks tonight uh again as our student reporters uh katie talked about how exciting uh it was to see her uh friends back in class again both cohort a and cohort b together uh and we know that there have been some questions you know about how's it going uh and by all reports it seems to be going very well i commented at a meeting today that while visiting the high school mr donaghy and i were touring around the high school we happened to be in the hallway during change of classes and and remain stationary for that period of time but i mentioned to him that at not one point in time did i see
053or did i hear him have to say wear your mask appropriately put your mask up where is your mask you know and he commented that like so many other things uh the students in the high school are very respectful and responsible of you know what these requirements are and they're following the the guidance they want to be in school so they are you know following that guidance we are however a school with when you take out the haverford online attendance we are a high school that has over 1600 students in it now so when you have over 1600 students you have increased you know as we knew going into this and increased the the opportunity for interaction uh over these last three days if you look at our chart that's on the website you will
054see that there are uh eight instances what that have been identified as positive or probable cases we want to reiterate again that the identification of a positive or probable case comes from pde and that identification is an individual who has been in the school or involved in a school activity while contagious so for example if a student was not in school on tuesday when we turned after spring break and it was reported to the building that that student was at home and the student had tested positive for covet that child would not appear on our chart that child was not in school at any point in time when when they were contagious and as i said that's the definition that was derived from the pennsylvania department of education that we are you that we and
055all other school districts are using so to date there are eight instances you know where students have been in school or in a school activity school sponsored activity um during a contagious period we have roughly 40 students in quarantine that's not entirely surprising remember i started off we are a high school that right now has over 1600 children in it uh you know occupying it during the day so you have 40 students who are in you know in quarantine it seems like a high number i recognize that but by comparison to you know the total population of the building that is not so what puts someone in quarantine although the cdc and others have changed the guidance in terms of social distancing in where uh students need to be now three feet apart and uh
056not always six feet apart the the definition of a close contact has not changed a close contact is still anyone who was within the can with um within less than six feet with a contagious individual so when you have a student at the high school who visits four different classrooms with four different groupings of students throughout the day right it's not a surprise and that's why i said like yes 40 is a lot but by comparison one individual we know that if we were six feet apart we would not have anywhere near 40 students uh who were in you know in quarantine at this this point in time uh you know students identify close contacts and sometimes those close con our students have been very honest and very forthcoming um and and we appreciate that
057that helps us helps i'm gonna even say us that helps mr donaghy and the staff at the high school to do the work that they have to do so a close contact might not necessarily be the just the people who are in my classroom but our students are saying i i was involved in this activity outside of school and these students you know my these are my friends so our school officials are then contacting families and letting them know you know your child was in close contact with someone who has tested positive our administrators people who contact the parents cannot tell you who that that is not information we cannot say this is who your child was with and this is the person who has tested positive uh we're not that's not information as i
058said that we are able to to provide and again as a parent myself i get how that can be frustrating uh you know to know not to be able to know that but we cannot divulge any names around that so we look at close contacts in terms of you know what the students will share with us about their activities outside of school a close contact could come from bus ridership so it's not just looking right you know right within the classroom that case investigation you know that we had talked about many many meetings before you know before um also looks at you know the contacts outside of what students are doing within the four walls of of that classroom then that brings us to you know questions that we've had about students there are still
059students who are zooming in and they weren't zooming in at you know some other period of time well if a student is at home because they have to quarantine or they are in isolation and they are physically capable uh and want to participate in their classwork we're going to do everything that we can do to enable that child to participate in their classwork we're not going to tell them you weren't in haverford online you need to miss the next 10 days of school so we're going to work with with those students work with with those families we are we continue to encourage our families if your child is symptomatic they're just not feeling well um you know to keep them home if that parent contacts one of our you know building print contacts mr haran
060mr donaghy or one of the assistant principals again we're we're going to work with that family um i've heard things you know it's not fair about kids coming in fair is not equal uh and our building principles need to have the autonomy to listen to a parent uh you know my child has not tested positive but my child is symptomatic and i want my child to stay home we want that child to stay home as well but we also want them to be able to participate in their in their school work particularly if they want to participate in their in their school schoolwork what we are not making accommodations for uh is you know our family's going on a vacation our family is going to take a long weekend uh we've got a dentist appointment
061or you know something that we're making i miss the school bus i overslept uh we're not making those types of accommodations you know for students um but where parents are talking with administrators at the building uh and there is a need for health reasons that a child cannot be present in school um and we can get them to zoom in we're going to get them you know going to get them to zoom in like any other time that we make a transition or a change from you know one model to you know to the next uh there are things that we learn along the way there are modifications that we may have to make if we feel we have to adjust something that's in the health and safety plan we'll come back to you um
062you know with that but at this time it's too soon for us to say we're going to make an adjustment to the uh health and health and safety plan even our athletics there is no reason for us to make a change for what we have expected of our athletes and the coaches our at our coaches are following that health and health and safety plan if there are a group of athletes who are on quarantine that that could be they were closed contacts at an event outside of outside of school uh it is not that it is occurring on the on the field our administrators are going out to the field and actually unfortunately removing students from the field if they learn late in the afternoon that that child was a close contact to someone so
063we're doing the best that we can working with the students and so genuinely appreciate the openness with which our students and their families have been communicating and sharing that information with us so that's it for my update this evening uh mr mr feinberg i don't know if there are any questions from the board thank you oh bridget can i just ask a question about um covid procedures um if i understand the schools are responding quickly to notifying families and students if they were close contact but if um that notification or that close contact happened outside of school um families would not necessarily get a call from the you know the school nurse or the building principal to inform them um i think it would be helpful to reiterate that in any circumstance of a um
064that a parent or student learns that they are a close contact to follow the same rules as if those instructions came from from the school directly and if someone is a close contact and is waiting for a test result to spend that time at home notify the school um i think you know that that the possibility that the contact happened outside of school is um important to recognize that we still need to protect the the school environment and inform the school so that um the you know the other students are protected sure um and our pandemic coordinator is here with me and steli yeah so we do um if a family does tell us that their child was with a certain child at something not related to our school we still contact that family and
065issue the quarantine order because we want to do everything we can to ensure the health and safety of our buildings and our students and our faculty so we'll still contact families even if it wasn't necessarily a school exposure or athletics exposure or activity exposure so if we get that information we will follow up and issue the quarantine order based on the information we get regardless of whether or not it happened on our property any other questions from the board okay next item on our agenda construction update ken matthews from cb development ken hello good evening everyone just a brief update this evening high school i'll start with the high school work continues well really no no issues to speak of where uh contractors are on schedule the roof should be going on here in the
066next week or two and the concrete slab on deck should be poured so we'll start to really see the building getting closed and keep moving so things continue well from that standpoint we also have a few change orders this evening for the high school so if anybody had any questions on them or progress we can certainly answer them questions from the board okay all right and then moving on to linwood you can see things are really starting to take shape they actually delivered some of the playground equipment this week which is great inside the building we're probably about 95 percent done working on punchless uh buildings based been pretty much cleaned up for the most part other than the some of the common spaces so we're working over the next month or two here to
067kind of wrap up all the loose ends get the punch list mostly done and then really be working on the cafeteria expansion getting that work done over the next few months and then the site work you really start to see take shape and working on the underground basin up front and then as soon as school ends a few days shortly thereafter before you know it then the old building will be torn down so so things are moving along well there we also have another you know handful of change orders for linwood this evening if anybody has any questions any questions from the board everything looks great ken well thank you things are things are moving along well so we'll hope that continues okay well thanks thank you for your report thank you have a good
068night you too next item on our agenda is a bond sale parameter resolution we have jamie schlesinger and george magnetta from pfm jamie hi everyone can you see my screen yes yes we can perfect great well thanks for having me again i know it's been a few weeks since i was last here and good to see the school is still chugging along and try to get you some more money pretty soon i guess before i get started on this new financing i have good news to report you might recall we talked about the process that we were going to be discussing with moody's investor service about the possibility of a upgrade for the school district and it finally happened so last week we heard great news the news investor service upgraded us to a double
069a2 credit rating which for anyone that's not in the business that's essentially two notches below the best you can be so aaa's the best double a1 is after that and double a2 is the next level so congratulations uh we've been kind of working on this for a few years now and i think it's been you know great diligence of the board uh doing what they need to do uh administration has done a great job and kudos the fact that you're actually borrowing money in the middle of all this and you got upgraded so that really does prove that we're doing a pretty good job here so good job everyone that said let's go borrow some more money maybe so we have been going along with this process tonight we're going to ask you to consider
070a parameters resolution like we've done in the past the plan here would be to potentially issue bonds within the next couple weeks for approximately 10 million dollars this would be mostly for the construction project for the high school as well as borrowing some additional funds for buses about 1.1 million dollars or so so in total close to 10 million is what you're going to end up with the consideration which george will discuss in a few minutes would be a 12 million dollar parameters resolution uh that concept like we've done in the past would mean that we have some flexibility to allow us to kind of structure and amortize the debt based on the new interest rates that we'll get through our competitive auction process based on what we're looking at in the market actually i
071sold bonds yesterday that were a double a-2 for a township in berks county somewhat similar structure it went really well the overall interest rate was probably somewhere around 1.5 1.6 percent of the yield so obviously we think we'll be somewhere in that range once this sale goes through in the next couple weeks a pretty stable market right now which is why we're trying to jump into it and they've seen these charts before but uh i'm just going to touch on you know your current debt profile right now uh we the last issue we did um you know about 15 million dollars that was in advance for funding through a bank loan but this is the next round where we'll be looking to add this new issuance uh this is an assumed uh kind of max
072schedule overall just from touching on the plan here we're about done uh so when you look at you know this is maybe hard to see for some people so i'll try to zoom it out a little bit but this has been the plan from the beginning we've kind of touched on all the blue and the red and the green so far so this next step would be the purple section again you'll have close to 10 million dollars about nine if it would be for the construction projects which would leave us about a seven and a half million dollar issue sometime next year uh depending on kind of the final cost of the related projects obviously you could go a little higher a little lower depending on how it all shakes out but overall uh you
073know if we get strong rates as we expect i think you know the needs of the the mills may not be as much as what we originally anticipated uh so every time we keep doing this uh we're chipping away at that plan so overall i'm really happy with the way things are going so far just going to touch on i know you've seen this a thousand times so uh certainly stop you've got any questions but from a timing standpoint we're about halfway done uh kind of a formal uh you know rating is done was upgraded there's kind of one extra step we need to do for them but we're going to finish the preliminary official statement uh sometime early next week post what is called the invitation a bid which gives the potential bidders of
074the bonds the access to looking at the security and structure of the transaction and we expect a price bonds on april 21st which would allow us to settle sometime mid to end of may so i'll stop if anyone has any questions again you know from a schedule standpoint this is that max schedule i talked about you know we have to show high coupon rates and higher borrowing amounts but clearly we're not going to come anywhere close this but that's the way we've been doing it over the years and that paul is the state guidelines anyone have any questions from the board jamie i just want to thank you and also uh dr ruschi mr regal in the business office it's uh it's wonderful to to see the recognition from moody's that the district is [Music]
075being well managed from a financial perspective uh and it's going to save our taxpayers money as we complete these projects so we don't take that for granted we know a lot of work went into uh getting that that upgrade on the rating and we appreciate everybody's work yeah i i agree and i i know you might ask well how much stick it'll save uh based on this this notch for this particular transaction i think it'll save you probably about 150 to 160 000 so you know just on that transaction going forward obviously any new transaction any refinancing will just kind of add to it going forward so that's great it certainly helps ari you have your hand up yeah you kind of took the words right out of my mouth i was going to ask
076jamie to put in the late terms what that improved rating meant um and not so much in dollars and cents but sort of what that means in the markets for us and the way the markets feel about the school district of haverford township yeah i mean uh from a dollar sense i you know it's about a 10 basis point so that's 0.10 percent difference uh in interest rate from kind of a double a3 to a double a2 you know that moves a little bit over the course of time but anytime you're in a market uh where you're in the the higher standards of the credit process it attracts more you know bidders uh people that want to invest in this type of credit you know it adds adds attention to it so all those things
077are of course a good thing for for the district and uh obviously we'll hope to maintain this over the years but you know generally speaking uh when things go poorly in the economy people always want strong credits so we're obviously we're in a good position right now i think we'll get a lot of attention at the next on sale does that essentially mean we're an attractive investment opportunity in the bond markets yeah definitely fantastic and um another leg of that stool is the taxpayers so thank you to all the taxpayers out there who pay their taxes on time and uh continue to support the work that uh the district is doing yeah that the plan here is was well received by moody's and uh you know we've been talking about it for a few years
078now and uh to see how it's all kind of coming through it it really is uh shown it would be credit upgrade of course any other questions from the board jamie anything else i know we have uh parameters resolution on the agenda uh yeah if you know certainly you can have george you know give any you know high level uh discussion on on what the what you're going to be approving that's the only thing i would i would add i'm sure i know he's on the phone or resume george you want to give us the two minute version sure good evening congratulations on the upgrade um as jamie noted it's a parameters uh the the numbers uh are not to exceed amount of 12 million not to exceed rate of 5 jamie expects that the
079rate will be much less than than five percent uh a 16-year uh bond issue uh not to exceed call date of 10 years with um increasing yields in the latter two-thirds of the the 16-year period um this authorizes uh the the the the the president um to and other um officials to take to to sign documents to um file with the department of community and economic development to get approvals it'll be overall level debt service um we as jamie noted he hopes to hit the market uh on or about uh april 21st parameters resolution gives a little flexibility if the market is off a day or two and um it's essentially pretty straightforward it's for new money the the high school construction project and buses [Music] we expect to be consummate the transaction somewhere in
080may sometime in may mid-may that's that's great um we have a question from bridget yeah i just wanted to um confirm so the five percent upper end rate in the parameters resolution is quite a bit higher than the current market levels that jamie mentioned you know being closer to one and a half um how like committed are we to going forward if let's say the rate comes in at four and a half and is just you know really much higher than what we had been seeing and modeling um does this parameters resolution kind of require us to go forward if the rate if you read um that there's a document that will be signed this evening um and it is uh called proposal for the purchase of bonds and there's a a small paragraph on
081page two at the bottom that notes that um it may be cancelled and terminated by the school district at any time upon payment of fair compensation to the financial advisor for its services through the day of written notification of such termination so clarify that our risk exposure is not all the way up to five percent we're not kind of just signing absolutely we'll go forward no matter what thank you for explaining that out yeah and i will point out in this it gets a little technical but the five percent we have to do it this way because the department looks at the coupons as the rate even though the yields are really what drives the payments you're making so we always have to show a higher uh five percent number because we there's a possibility
082we can get premium bonds with you know three or four percent coupons thank you james that's right uh because they they they're one of the other parameters is you could have a hundred and thirty percent of the par amount um uh you could have a uh a lower um a a higher balance a lot of premium um lower par yeah i expect we'll probably have two percent coupons as my guess and most of it that's probably my guess based on based on the market any other questions from the board well thank you both very much we look forward to moving this moving this along okay thank you thank you everyone have a good evening next item on our agenda is an update on the planning underway for senior class of 2021 events mr donahue hello
083everyone thank you for having me um i just want to run through uh some of the senior planning and give you a little bit of insight into what goes on at the end of every year let alone a pandemic year so uh april and may um and i'm just trying to run through things that sometimes we get a lot of questions or sometimes uh it sparks some social media attention so just to give everybody perspective out there so our senior dues are due next week senior dues are an annual fee to help us reduce uh some of the costs for graduation cap and gown diploma diploma jacket tassels uh all things like that uh they don't cover all of our our fees we don't make any money off them we do not invest in bonds
084and make two percent like we just heard uh so sometimes we get questions um about our senior dues but that that kind of kicks off the season so that's due next week um and as always we'll assist anybody who needs any type of assistance one of our first events that we started a few years ago is on may 3rd senior decision day so the seniors uh a lot of times have to make decisions at the beginning of may on what they're going to do for college uh trade schools careers so they have to around that time of year they have to make decisions and start putting deposits down on different places so we have kind of a day that uh that they can wear their their gear of whatever they're doing next year and we
085give them a free breakfast um normally they all come and sit in the cafeteria together obviously we can't do that but we're going to look to to try to do something where where they can maybe even gather outside socially distance if at the minimum it'll be a grab and go type of thing and then we do different things during the day and the teachers wear their college shirts so it's it's a fun it's a fun day and it starts kind of the festivities looking towards graduation and then in may we have this year we have three windows from the college board usually there's only one testing window this year we have three testing windows um so we're figuring out all that out some of it's digital some of it's on paper some of the tests
086are at home some of the tests are in school so uh the the teachers are working with the students to try to come up with the best schedule and with it being a month long it actually helps space out the test better than in years past so it's kind of a positive thing from the pandemic and then delaware county comes uh and visits in may and we do free applications for anybody who shows up to delaware county whether you're going to delaware county uh to start your journey or if you're just doing a couple classes in the summer they come you can fill out your application for free uh and get some insight into the great offerings at uh delaware county and then in in may and early june what we do is we have
087graduation speaker auditions which have really grown in the past few years mr mullen uh oversees um the process which involves administrators and other teachers uh and we had that this is the toughest thing we do um and all the tough things we're gonna do in the next two months is figure out who the speaker is and then people who might not finish in first uh to call out the names so the the runner-ups call out the names um and last year we had 30 people auditioned during the pandemic so it's it's about 10 percent of the class almost auditions for to be the class speaker which is just a great it's a great sense of spirit and and we look forward to it it's very tough but we do look forward to it every year
088and then this year we're mixing in the powder puff game on election day so normally powder puff game is is thanksgiving spirit week but obviously we couldn't do that so that the senior committee um said can we do it in the spring sometime it seems like election day would be a good day to do in the afternoon it doesn't conflict with sports um it's again it's an event that doesn't take a lot of practice so we think we can pull it off all in one day and then june 2nd we do our annual uh scholarship evening awards uh in the morning we have a college athlete recognition breakfast we're thinking both of them are going to be virtual this year we did it virtual last year it worked out very well mr mullen was the
089emcee for the uh scholarship evening that took 40 minutes normally it takes two hours and uh the students didn't have to go through the long-winded speeches but we get tremendous community support in that evening so and we want to recognize the students and and that's just the main theme of we want to make sure the seniors get recognized in in uh at the end of the year and then the other considerations and a lot of planning goes into these and sometimes they go unnoticed you know by the public but we have our play our concerts which are going to be virtual this year we have senior nights for sports we have all types of uh honor societies um so all these this year are going to be virtual um so there's a lot of planning
090going on right now behind behind the scenes we don't have dates for all of them right now uh but we're going to make it work and it's going to be it's going to be a lot of fun for all those involved and even the last few days of activities and and things such as that and then one of our things is we have to find a replacement for katie and erica so going in the next year we had to find new board representatives so there's a lot of things with the tie up that lead in the next year that the seniors are a big part of and then uh one big news is the senior prom it's gonna be outdoors at the harford reserve this year um we just had tremendous support from the township
091uh allowing us to to go there um we do fall under the numbers of an event for pennsylvania we do have 471 graduates uh potential graduates as always um so we're under the number for to be allowed to be in one spot for an event uh and then this year we're very fortunate we're going to keep our prom tickets to to uh the covert rate of 10 per person obviously all of our social distancing and coveted regulations are in place um part of the covet is we cannot allow guests from other place places to come it's just too hard to to contact trace it might put us over the limit um and then you know it's better when we're outdoors we know who's there and uh our chaperones and all we just want everybody to
092be safe and have a good time so so it's a little bit of a drawback that you might not be able to bring someone who graduated or someone uh from you know a different school but we're just happy to be able to have the event we do have a tentative rain date for the next day um we're probably gonna have the event as long as there's no lightning thunder heavy tornadoes we're looking forward to the event on june the 4th and our blast parents are very involved we have a bunch of secrets we can't tell the community but they're very involved in uh doing some plans so maybe we can transform the reserve into uh a different type of place and they're going to have new turf too uh just for our event so we're
093looking forward to being there and then lastly i we we're unable to find an indoor venue just just in case you know there's some uh social media things circulating around we have 400 we usually have 500 over 500 people who attend to prom so we've called drexel brooke we've called the man music center we've called the police touch museum we we've called all different places and we're unable to have an indoor venue there are there is some other schools having an indoor venue but they're significantly smaller than us and they don't have the participation that we do and then the last week of school we we have of course senior exams the staple of any uh great education system is that you you throw some exams in there right before uh graduation so we will
094have our senior exams the seniors wanted to get out of them because of covid but we uh we're not doing that uh and then our senior walk so we spoke to the elementary principals and we're going to do an outdoor uh we usually walk through the elementary school and the students kind of do a clap out but we're going to uh we're going to do it outdoors and you know hope hopefully it doesn't rain uh but we're gonna go to elementary schools and usually that's a great event it takes about a half hour but it's really meaningful and and it's it's a memory that lasts a really long time uh and then on wednesday june 9th the seniors you know hopefully can just come and pick up their cap and gowns hopefully uh you know
095in a two months from now the the regulations keep uh keep increasing in our favor not decree you know they they uh so they can come in and pick up their cap and gowns and for some reason if they can't pick up their cap and gowns uh last year we delivered them on the buses with uh with their teachers and then then the big uh obviously the big event is graduation so i just wanted to kind of tell you where we we are with that uh we have not finalized any plans uh it's too early in in the covert world we're two months away so that's that's like seven or eight dog years i don't even know how long that is two months uh anymore but uh this is where we are right now we
096have a committee of class officers uh student senate officers teachers uh we have a couple uh most of the people who are on the committee live in the community some of the teachers so we are they're all elected officials so sometimes people ask well who is this committee what you know who made up this committee they're they're elected officials so they're the students who represent the student body uh and they do a wonderful job and they come from all different social stratas so they they have the pulse of the school so we meet uh every two weeks and go over things from graduation signs to graduation mask uh to picking out the party favors for the prom so uh we meet and discuss you know what's the best route for graduation i also uh have
097central lakes principals meetings uh and dark county uh intermediate union principals meetings and we just every single meeting we discussed graduation prom and other big events such as that and there was a regional summit meeting in march with all the iu's from uh four local counties and then we've been working with kathleen synod she's uh believe it or not everybody's from havertown in the world i guess she's a former harford resident used to live right across from chatham park elementary school she's been working with us but we we just can't have the graduation there at the last conversation we had the most we could do would be nine feet apart uh it would only be one ticket maybe two tickets for for family members uh no tent absolutely no tent uh and the cost would
098be forty to fifty thousand dollars minimum to do it outside rain or shine so it just doesn't seem like a feasible uh place we called newman university they're not hosting graduations so we're just trying to see you know what our options are right now in the meantime students took a picture with their diploma and started receiving their graduation signs so we're just kind of getting in the in the mode of you know what's next for the seniors and and it was it was very touching moment and it really uh woke us up that we came back to school we took the picture on the same week you know on the same 10-day span and uh really got us you know thinking and then uh we're ordering a graduation mass for each student that's part of
099the committee's work no matter what we decide we're going to live stream the event no matter how we do it or where we do it and then we ruled out uh drive-by and driving graduation so you see a lot of them on social media facebook the size of our class 471 students a drive by would take many hours for the class to drive by get out of their car get their diploma get back in their car and you know grand mom and everybody else would have to stay in the car so we didn't it didn't feel very haverfordish uh a drive-by and then a drive-in if anyone could find me a location for cars in the local area just just let me know because we were racking our brain forward but it's it's not happening
100and it's not happening out back one person said to me you can just have it out back next to the construction and uh we're not doing that so so we just ruled that out so that's kind of where we are right now and then just some other so some considerations are uh and we're looking into having it at uh either having it at our stadium or if we if the guidelines get tighter where you know the kova guidelines get tighter where it we get to a point you know where it does it doesn't continue to improve like it has been then we would do something such as what we did last year where we did deliver to the diplomas so some of our graduation considerations and what we're looking at right now is having a
101graduation in our stadium the the graduation in the stadium uh again would only be two tickets per graduate okay based on the cdc the pennsylvania state's numbers of how much you're allowed in an outdoor event it would be two tickets per graduate so some of the some of the chatter and when i see people around they say well since it's outside you can just have as many people as you want but but they're not aware of the guideline right now that you only have 50 percent capacity in an event so our stands hold roughly 2 2 500 people so we would still have to you know decide on the 471 graduates and the 100 adults on the field you know are they part of the number so uh some of the chatter's been well we
102can just come and stand at the fence uh well you're not gonna be able to you know stan a thousand other people aren't gonna be able to stand at the fence so uh so we're just working on that working on the best way we do want to involve the families uh we're listening to to the students and what they want to do um as we go in the next couple weeks we are going to be you know getting more input from the students uh so our goal is to have a more definitive plan by may the 10th and and again a more definitive plan so we'd like to put out a plan on may the 10th um with the get you know no guarantee guarantee but the guarantee is june the 10th is graduation we're
103going to try to include the families and we want to just make uh the next two months the best they can be for the seniors and we're really just happy to have them back at school so zayn we have any questions on any events or where we are now questions from the board bridgette did you yeah thanks could you speak a little bit more about the prom on the um the turf i'm trying to picture in social distancing like are we picking we have to social distance okay so it's it's somewhere in between hula hoops and mosh pits okay now we're setting up uh what i can tell everybody is we're setting up a dance area so the nice part is about the field is it's way bigger than a dance floor and our students
104dance they dance at events okay so we're not having we can't have dinner you know we can't have a sit down dinner or anything like that so there's some different sections there that we're going to section off and we're going to spread the uh the students out and and we are going to have to you know they're going to have to wear masks um end up with all the yeah so they they can you know they can design their mess any way they want and hopefully matches their outfit uh so so it is it is gonna have to be social distance we are having to have a lot of chaperones just just to help with that the students have been following the rules excellently and they always do um so we're not worried and then
105we're going to like kind of we're kind of gonna have to do an assembly and kind of say okay this is kind of the way we're gonna do it so we're gonna have an assembly about buying tickets and all and explaining things um and then the blast is gonna do some things where um there'll be other things in just dancing you know so i can tell you that so that'll help spread the students out um spread the students out as much as we can okay and just one other question because i've seen this on social media discussion so it's on the athletic field turf right so yes so their dresses should not be planning to wear high heels on they yeah they can't wear hot the camera high is in the respect for the new
106turf right they can't wear high heels so they they can wear uh pumps is what i've been told uh and other footwear uh now i will tell everybody every problem i've been to they take their shoes off after the pictures and throw them and then they can't find him at the end of the prom and i'm always looking for somebody's shoes so uh so they can wear this high heels to it if they want but like they're going to come down we kind of have a walkway so they're going to come down near the pavilion area and then walk onto the field so when they're on the field they got to take their shoes off if they want to wear high heels to the event they can antoinette yeah i i i really just want
107to say thank you so much for all of the work that you're doing i know how exciting it is you know to be a senior and to go through all these events and i'm really impressed but just by the creativity um you know of you and everyone else involved and it sounds like the students are really taking um you know taking the reins on this and that doesn't surprise me at all it's exactly in line with everything that i've seen from our students so um you know thank you as well for um including them um my only question is whether there's been any uh communication to the students who are over 16 that they are going to be eligible for the vaccine soon um you know just as far as things go we all want
108to see sort of and can you know regulations ease up but the only way to do that is to make sure that the numbers are down and obviously we heard tonight about some uh quarantines in our high school and so um i i yeah i wanted to ask if there have been any communication this year we're talking about that and we even have a meeting next week about that um and we've been fortunate we had a couple students who already got vaccinated uh just because they're involved in the community in different ways and one of them would have had a quarantine but yet he had a shot he has vaccination already so yeah we really if that could happen that would ease a lot of a lot of things that we're we're doing and and
109even going in next year we we we hope that happens and happens fast great yeah and just encourage everyone and you know if anybody is living under a rock you're all eligible as of a week and a half from now um april 19th so 16 and over go get your vaccine thank you thanks antoinette kristen yeah um what was my question it just like came in my head and went out because i was so excited about 16 year olds and up getting vaccines um um so something that was tough last year for many reasons but as a board member it was strange to not be participating in graduation so mr johnny i'm not trying to throw a wrench in your plans but is there any way and maybe we as a board can decide this
110how can we be involved this year how can we send off our graduates and celebrate them yeah we definitely we we want as many people who want to be involved involved and that's why we're planning on 471 graduates and 100 adults in whatever we do you know and it's great that a lot of the adults have gotten their vaccination too that helps out a lot but yeah we want as many people involved last year we everyone was so nervous and we we didn't we didn't know we didn't want to go outside the bubble uh but this year we can expand the bubble a little bit and and just make sure everybody's safe and and yeah the more the merrier and and that's what we're here to do is to celebrate the seniors and i and
111that's sometimes people don't realize that that's what we're trying to do you know but um yeah we want the board involved we already ordered the board their uh gowns so your graduation gown uh we don't have ones that won't make you sweat but hey i think we'll be all right sweating this year thank you any other questions from the board um mr feinberg i'm glad that mr donaghy mentioned uh a meeting next next week that he uh ms battistelli and i will be attending and it's a county-wide meeting to look at an effort to actually have either vaccine sites right at each of the high schools in the county or centrally located and a focus upon our high school high school population so hopefully we'll have um a more definitive update for you um you
112know after that but thank you pete for um for mentioning that i neglected to mention it earlier yeah that's great bridget you have your hand up just one last thing i think hearing all of these exciting plans and seeing all the events that are meant to send our seniors off with the fanfare and celebration they deserve is um like to antoinette's point a um a public service reminder to redouble our efforts to keep covid out of our community and out of our schools so that all of our students can enjoy and attend as many of these events as possible um and i think that begins with being responsible and being safe from covid outside of school and in school and everybody doing their part to make sure that all of the seniors get to attend
113these events that so much work and creativity and effort have been into pulling off thanks bridget pete please thank everybody who's been involved in in the planning for all these events but we know that it there's a lot that goes on to get to even to where you are right now let alone going forward so thanks for bringing this to us this evening great thanks everyone have a good night next item on our agenda is first reading of policy 824 maintaining professional adult student boundaries mr parker thank you mr feinberg members of the board uh i know i'm the last on the program agenda so i'll try to move efficiently through the materials today so along with the uh the board policy liaisons uh we are presenting tonight to the board for a first reading
114a new policy number 824 entitled maintaining professional adult student boundaries and my plan is to give a brief overview myself and then of course invite the policy liaisons to comment since they've done a couple of meetings worth of work on this policy uh and and then of course open to the board for questions and comments we started this process with a psba template for the policy material and then the district solicitor's office did review that at template they were familiar with the policy they've introduced it in a couple of districts uh and made some slight adjustments and then of course the board liaisons as i said over a couple of meetings put it into the form that's being presented tonight and that's the document that you have in your packet uh the the new policy
115824 essentially attempts to codify rules and expectations for student adult interactions across the district i it has very broad application to all adults interacting with students in our schools it applies to both in-person contact and in virtual environments to the extent that we can envision what that will be thanks to the to the policy liaisons who uh were very careful to you know to add that to the uh to the psba materials that we had the um you'll see that the the policy itself in in the third paragraph of the authority section the first section qualifies this policy so as not uh to interfere with what we would all consider to be appropriate personal relationships or unduly restrict uh such interactions in other words we do we want to make sure that we have rules
116and regulations and set expectations but we don't want to uh so constrain you know interactions that it becomes burdensome you know to the you know to the to the district environment and um and of course any interactions that are properly said to be based upon legitimate educational reasons uh as that term is defined early on in the pop in the policy uh would be recognized as such and permitted and that actually leads into a paragraph on exceptions that we'll go over in a couple of minutes uh that said there is certain conduct uh that is clearly prohibited on page two and we'll look at that a little bit more uh and uh uh because that that's conduct that you know is uh i think by any reasonable mind would be objectionable uh in the school
117setting again the the definition of legitimate educational reasons is set forth right up front in the policy page one after the authority section uh the authority section uh uh introduces the policy uh uh and it's the purposes behind the policy uh on page two uh you'll see under guidelines uh and i i think it's worth stating here that in the case of a policy such as 824 i think it's fair to say that there are always going to be some gray areas right some interactions that are generally innocent uh and uh you know with good intent can sometimes cross a line uh and so we'll talk about some of those areas in a moment but before you get to the gray areas uh right up front in this policy this policy is structured to start
118with a series of enumerated activities or actions or conduct uh that are prohibited conduct and so you can see that uh beginning on on page two uh under romantic or sexual relationships clearly outlawing and prohibiting adults in our schools from any of the activities that are set forth both in the introductory paragraph and then enumerated in 1 through 12 below so again that's that's absolutely prohibited conduct and as you'll see not subject to any exceptions that's simply prohibited conduct probably not a lot of surprises in there for you and frankly it's conduct that would be prohibited on other bases also but now it's all captured and codified in one place and then as we move to page 3 you'll see a series of enumerated interactions or conduct 1 through 19. and that's what i would
119refer to really as the gray area that's that really outlines areas that you know in many cases would would be um would fall into the prohibited conduct category but it also may be conduct that you know in in certain contexts is acceptable so it's it's phrased in this policy as examples of conduct that violates or could violate professional boundaries and so that that part's going to require the exercise of discretion frankly that's yeah that's the fact this we're talking about regulating conduct and interactions that will call upon the discretion of adults and put the burden frankly on adults when there are any questions raised to explain why certain conduct conductor interactions occur if you go to page four then of the policy you'll see importantly that policy does provide for certain exceptions again these don't
120apply to the prohibited conduct under romantic or sexual interactions adult to student any student no matter what their age but they do apply to conduct where um discretion uh would need to be exercised and those exceptions are most prominently the two the two leading exceptions would be an emergency situation where some conduct contact occurs which someone might look at from uh objectively from a distance and think violates one of the one of the areas of conduct that is inappropriate but an emergency justified that particular conduct or contact and then of course legitimate educational reasons as defined and it's important to note that uh for both of those uh there's a there's a sentence in the policy that indicates that the adult needs to be prepared to articulate uh the reason for any deviation from the
121requirements of the policy in other words the burden would be on the adult to explain why they had some particular contact that some observer or maybe even some some person who was part of the activity thought that it was an inappropriate interaction again no exceptions to the romantic and sexual relations section of the policy that part is a bright line rule in addition to those two primary exceptions the policy also recognizes two other exceptions or categories of exceptions the first being as you see in the middle of page four circumstances where personal relationships develop between an adult and student's family and the example given is when children of two families become friends and so the policy is not really intended to to reach those types of relationships or limit activities in those contexts and then
122secondly non-district related civic religious athletic scouting or other organizations or programs would provide a context where this policy is not necessarily intended to to reach where an adult in the school environment has interactions with with a student in those other contexts moving further down page four you can see that this policies is intended to apply to electronic communications and that of course could raise many many questions uh only some of the hypotheticals that we come up with during our discussions but clearly inappropriate contact and interactions can occur not just in person uh but in a virtual world or in some social media world and this policy is intended to try to reach that conductor interactions when uh when the interactions cross the lines drawn early in the policy you can see that on page five
123at the top uh the policy states the electronic communication with students shall be for legitimate educational reasons only and in this regard we uh at the suggestion of uh the policy liaisons we we did consult with the district principals i just did a relatively brief survey type inquiry to them about whether this provision would raise any particular barriers or obstacles in their practices and the responses we got back really is that this would not present a problem that there's not a lot of um certainly cell phone contact between uh principals and students and and they as they report or with uh teachers and and students there are probably instances of that and uh we may end up in the long run providing some additional guidance in this area for instance it became apparent in our
124discussions that one place where this may occur is with coaches and teams and activity sponsors and their their participants and sometimes you know just to give out notices and so forth there's you know there's some text con contact and phone contacted you know could be uh skirting around the edge of the the prohibitions in the policy and then it was pointed out that there are some i guess some fairly uh widely used apps these days for uh that can can uh make uniform if you will uh uh the requirements for uh those kinds of contacts so we're we're still looking at that that may be something that we add as a as a guideline at another time uh but in the first instance we don't think that we have a big problem in that area
125nor do we think that this provision will um uh prevent any real obstacles according to the principles uh to the operations of you know their schools um and then the last part of the policy is dedicated to uh where this where any improper activity might be reported uh and that really depends on what the activity looks like or the interaction looks like obviously there are times when um and i almost hesitate to bring up the phrase because we suggested we might be through with this but uh to the extent that any of the conduct that is alleged seems to look like a title ix sexual harassment type behavior and that conduct is to be uh you know to assessed by the title ix coordinator and should be then if in fact it meets certain thresholds
126uh would be run through the title ix guidelines for investigation and action otherwise the the manner that these complaints would be handled would be in the manner of the procedure set forth in the general harassment policies for students and staff of course uh there are there's also a mention at the end of the policy of the as i started uh my presentation there are other areas where this type of conduct can be prohibited and can be reported and addressed and those those areas are mentioned at the end of the policy the child protective services law of course always a factor in our setting the educator discipline act and provisions of the safe schools act so this is just another another way to uh to safeguard students uh in our district um and i think a
127very significant uh policy development that should should improve our environment or at least you know give redress to anything that does occur in our environment i want to say i should have said at the beginning that it's not as though we took this up because there's some indication that we have a vast problem in our district in this regard these policies were have only a few years ago been put forth by psba they're a good idea uh and it's it's a good policy for us to have in place uh if and when we need it but certainly we're not bringing this to the board because we think that we have a significant problem in this regard so let's mention that and with that i'll invite the board liaisons to add anything or perhaps call to
128our attention anything that we didn't seem to address that we've talked about in our meetings in the in the document that you have before you now uh and then move to any board comments or questions that that there might be i was just going to say i don't mean to interrupt and jump mr parker but maybe for the benefit as you were saying of our audience and for the school board members could you speak a little bit to how some of these policies come to the board's attention like for example one of the ways that we can look at policy is for our own uh kind of audit structure where we can look at them but sometimes they come from as you mentioned psba and and there is that psba policy news network where at
129the state level certain policies are recommended to look at so we may take a look at it from that perspective too could you just speak to that process how they review law they review changes and then they they they may recommend that to us so that we can look and see whether that is a an applicable um uh policy for for our benefit yeah and i'm not sure i can say it a lot better than than you just did mr sinto but i that's correct uh quarterly uh the psba policy news network uh publication uh is provided because we belong and uh and subscribed to the service they provide their recommendations about sometimes new policies sometimes policy revisions sometimes simply asks the districts to take a look at their policies to see whether they're comfortable
130with maybe a new statute that has been passed and to make sure that we're comfortable with our solicitors that our policies continue to be compliant with the new law and so i look at the the policy news network uh quarterly oftentimes however and this just occurred i consulted with your solicitors because policy news network sometimes recommends that policies be opened up for relatively minor matters and they sometimes they'll say for legal liability you need to look at this and i take that seriously sometimes they say there's been a slight change in the loan you might want to revise your policy or for instance i think one good example is that you know the the bidding thresholds change every year and you know our policy years ago was put in place to say bidding thresholds are
131this but they'll change year to year and uh you know we will abide by the the new bidding thresholds and then they're appended to the policy and so we don't really go into a policy change every time because it happens annually that the bidding thresholds change but that is the process and then of course the other way that uh policies come to our attention are simply our own experience i mean our central uh administrators in each department they're always spotting reason you know places where they think they need some some updated policy support or reference and and so some policies and i think you'll see more of this are going to be coming out of those departments one that comes to mind that we need to try to address is the acceptable use policy and
132that's a real significant policy that should be updated from time to time and that's probably on our near horizon uh just for because of our own practices not necessarily because psba is telling us to look at that and then of course you there could be an event in the district that points us to a uh a reason to revisit one of our policies so they're the reasons that we would you know address certain policies this one was nrq actually for a year or more it's just hard to get to everything that uh that's in the queue and so uh this was a good opportunity we had some time and as you know the liaisons undertook it and we think we have a uh a good document uh headed by the solicitors and uh uh ready
133to adjust in whatever ways we need to but hopefully put this in place in relatively short order do the policy liaisons have any comments before we just open it up generally for the board very thorough um discussion of and recap of our meetings thank you for that i hope we have everything in there i mean you guys did a lot of work on because this was the only policy in front of you i think the last time and uh i think we've captured it all but please let me know if we left something out antoinette yeah i just wanted to add that i think that one thing that the policy liaisons to try and do is really grapple with the um sometimes competing interests of what this policy um is intended to do right so
134it is obviously intended to stop inappropriate um relations between adults and students but um you know then we kept thinking of like well what about this like does that fall in and what about this and then we sort of got lost in some different hypotheticals and so um you know we did try and and think of all of those different things and really did make changes to the psba general um proposed policy just like i think we have with most of the policies that we adopt so um you know there was a lot of like thoughtful intention with this policy great thanks dave you have your hand up yeah first of all i want to thank all the policy uh um um group and parker as as well i just had one question that that
135maybe it's uh this could be clarification or maybe it would be a slight tweak um i was looking over some of the um the gray area that you mentioned um is it is i'm wondering if if it's possible obviously everything covered under um romantic and sexual um relations is is prohibited um under the under the inappropriate social interactions um these this this that gray area that that you mentioned and i'm wondering if we could parse it out a bit and also have some things that make some of these less gray i mean just just to give a couple examples um 18 and 19 uh furnishing alcohol or drugs um and engaging in harassing or discriminatory conduct prohibited by you know laws is it possible to to make a section in there where we kind of
136put a bright line next to those things that are that seem to be pretty you know important or pretty out there i mean you guys went to more hypotheticals and such obviously the um that then we have so maybe you thought about this i'm just wondering if if there could be that distinction made between some of those things that are gray but some of those things where i think there should be a clear kind of bright red line you know in front of more or less yeah i mean that's that's a good point uh obviously number 18 is is absolutely prohibited and prohibited not only by this policy but any number of other prohibitions uh applicable to adults in the school environment wondering if like maybe we could change language for a couple of those
137from could be to you know could be permitted to is prohibited just kind of just just clarify that maybe maybe there's some more things that i haven't thought of yet um but yeah just a suggestion one throw out there yeah and of course the the the governing uh introductory sentence does say that these are examples of conduct that violate or could violate um so you know i want to be careful that we don't say 18 is a clear-cut violation you know um but that means that uh number seven is never a violation so but let's see if we can't come up with some some language that might satisfy what you're raising i'll share that with the liaisons and uh and then you know we'll bring that back to you at the second read and like
138i said maybe there's a thing i'm not thinking of but i just figured i would put that out there as an idea yeah yeah it's certainly legitimate yeah that there's that's not a gray area you're right and so to the extent that i described it that way that wouldn't be accurate for number 18. thank you any other questions or comments from the board well thanks again to policy liaisons and mr parker for working on this and uh if board members have any other comments they could submit them uh in writing and we'll look forward to bringing this back when you're ready okay very good thank you next item on our agenda is uh board liaison report kristin is there anything that we didn't just touch on mr parker um stated everything and then some so
139i really appreciate you covering all that um there is just one little addition that i wanted to mention um so when the policy liaisons met on march 22nd we also discussed policy zero zero six with the simple title of meetings um so based on board member feedback during the board self-assessment process the liaisons began discussions around a possible shift um in policy language or alternately a shift in structure related to board committee meetings um so these discussions are ongoing with the policy liaisons and board and district leadership and we will continue to communicate out about these and as the discussions evolve in future policy liaison reports and um antoinette thank you for letting me stand in for you and you can have this job back writing your policy liaison reports because you do it so
140well okay well thanks for filling in i appreciate it all right thanks everybody next item on our agenda is uh budget transfers i'll accept a motion to approve budget transfers in the amount of twenty six thousand five hundred dollars first and second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye opposed it's a roll call thanks thanks bob dr crispin yes mr fleischer yes miss larson yes mr sinto yes mr schwartz yes snodgrass yes miss wiedemann yes mr feinberg yes hey voting yes thanks thanks bob i'll accept a motion to approve disbursements from the general fund totaling 471 644.21 moved in second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to accept the recommendation of the project architect kcba and associates inc and owner's representative cb development services inc and
141authorized change orders totaling 95 858.19 as listed larson moved crisp and second second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept the motion to authorize the administration to prepare and advertise bid documents for the concrete work needed at chatham park elementary coopertown elementary and haverford middle school schwartz moved beat him any discussion i just wanted to point out that um this and and some of the following items are work that was previously discussed and presented um to be done over the summer and that would utilize the fund balance that the district has set aside specifically for these kinds of capital projects thanks bridget all in favor i'll accept a motion to authorize the admin the administration to prepare and advertise bid documents for the paving work needed at chatham park
142elementary the maintenance and transportation building and the oakmont administration building second moved in second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve johnson controls to perform the hvac mechanical upgrades at chestnut walled elementary and manoa elementary at a co-star's price not to exceed forty nine thousand five hundred eighty five dollars second moved in second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to accept the recommendation of the owner's representative environmental control systems inc to approve a contract with newber environmental services inc for the asbestos removal and related work at coopertown elementary at a cost not to exceed fifty seven thousand dollars moved in second any discussion yeah i was wondering um two questions one when will this work be taking place and two
143how will families um be or how have they been or how will they be notified about this work taking place um this will be summer work that an exact calendar i do you don't have at this point in time um ms mastercolo spoke about it at her pto meeting uh just you know letting folk letting parents know uh we mentioned it in haverford happenings when we did like an overview of what some of the projects would would be um this is ongoing work that that you know that occurs across the dis across the district uh and it's cooper towns turn uh you know this summer so typically we do some type of work like this uh each one of the summers if i'm not mistaken um just just to add on to that the asbestos
144that is there has been pretty well sealed there's no dust or anything leaking out right now it's it's layers of floor exactly it's encapsulated in 20 years of floor wax right but it doesn't need to be done obviously but it's not it's it's not danger for anybody yeah yeah thanks all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept the motion to approve the attached parameters resolution for the sale of 2021 bonds by the haverford township school district crispin move in second moved in second any discussion all in favor all right any opposed motion carries thank you i'll accept the 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 larson moved don grass second
145moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve systems design engineering inc sde to perform design service for climate control upgrades to chatham park and coopertown elementary schools at a cost not to exceed nine 567 dollars but second moved in second any discussion did someone speak to what um i guess a little bit more detail about what this work looks like um it is a large sum of money so i'm just trying to understand what the cost is going toward this is part of the capital plan that's coming out of the bond issue for climate control or air conditioning at coopertown chatham park so it's a design and engineering work for a large project uh so is it um mr eagle is it design
146and engineering and then that's separate from the cost of any installation and materials correct they will do the design work the engineering and then they will also also do the bid work and then they also manage the construction of it thank you all in favor could i just add one thing as we keep an eye on on this project um in the latest round uh or recent round of announced federal funding for schools one of the uses that's eligible is upgrading ventilation systems as a facility mitigation to covid so we're hearing across the state that a lot of districts are interested in using this money for climate control hvc ventilation kind of projects and there is a concern that the uh you know the costs of the project and materials will escalate so i think
147that's something to keep an eye on i think um it's to our advantage that um this is the project that we had had our eye on for several years had begun conversations and preliminary planning um and are ready to proceed at this point so we're still ahead of the curve but um as we get into the construction and and the bidding for this we should be mindful of the competitive nature of the market around these kinds of projects and this is part of the 62 million dollars that jamie at bfm was talking about the 12 million is going to pay for phase 2 of the high school and then start paying for these projects and then the last bond issue which will be like the cleanup bond issue next year will uh finalize the 62
148million or whatever it turns out to be to defund all the projects that that'll be the last bond issue next year hey bridget i'm just curious since we were doing this and we're still in the preliminary ish phases would we would we qualify for any of that um for free that money event potentially that funding or because it is very planned is it every kind of money if we refer to doctor rushi on that on the eligible uses and okay we might be getting and what other priorities there are for that we may be getting about 1.3 million okay so yes you'll hear some wonderful numbers from some much needier districts than ours sure sure yes each one of these projects is estimated to be between four and five million okay so it's okay and
149that the federal money my understanding has to be committed by september of 2024 yes oh okay right and 20 has to go to supporting quote unquote learning loss um but would there be specific vendor i know sorry we're getting off in a tangent here would there be specific vendors if this money um were to be able to be used for hvac upgrades we need to work with specific vendors or could we put it out to bid in the way we're doing that now i don't know not learned a lot about the use of those of those funds and and right now our focus has been on uh how we as a district would define learning loss and what you know what we can do with with those funds to address that k through 12. i
150mean the project assessed itself has to go out to bid yeah you don't have a choice as to whether we can use that money to fund it that's a that's really about the the money and what the parameters are for spending the money uh and being able to spend use part of that for that project otherwise we just use the bond money any additional discussion on this item all in favor aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve denny electric to provide library lighting for coopertown elementary school at a co-star's cost not to exceed twenty nine thousand eighty eight dollars moved in second any discussion all in favor any i'll accept the motion to accept the uh retirement's resignations as listed congrats moved second moved in second any discussion all in favor
151any opposed motion carries and i'd just like to acknowledge that we have a couple of uh longtime folks uh kim cox 25 years rebecca mackerel 23 years and thank to thank them for their longtime service i'll accept a motion to approve the following properly certificated persons as guaranteed daily substitute teachers to work each school day during the 2021 school year as indicated below subject to other interim assignments and clearances including act 168 of 2014. crispin now clarkson second moved in second any discussion all in favor could i just point out in here that um that broad topic doesn't um capture kind of all of the assignments and and new positions in there and would somebody speak to the director of transportation it does not that applies only to the first listed candidate mr bateman to
152speak to the director of transportation yeah that's a notable um position there yes yes that is our appointment of kevin de paulo as our our director of transportation you heard this evening uh mr balada uh a resident speak about george ramplin uh and the legacy uh that george has has left um in the district in the district and really throughout the county and the region uh george's is well known uh kevin has been working with us uh for a little over two almost three years um so he has been working under the guidance of george has taken in and like been a sponge uh to learning a lot from george and i think most and most impressive has been uh kevin's demeanor and his understanding that the most important aspect of the climate and culture
153within transportation is that we are a service organization and that you know when we receive phone calls emails and how to be responsive and to end attentive to you know to parents and guardians if they're calling transportation there's usually something they're concerned about uh so he's very mindful uh to be sensitive in in taking those calls he takes them personally during the beginning of the year you may remember we had a period of time where a lot of our drivers were on either quarantine or isolation kevin called every driver every week to touch and touch base with them and ask them how they were how they were doing how they were feeling and to let them know they were missed um so you know it's it's i'm confident that the same culture that has been
154part of and that department is known for uh will be will be sustained uh with kevin in that role dr rishi a person meeting where we can can meet him dr rushy sorry to interrupt i noticed he was a springfield high school football coach so we need to make sure he's not performing any espionage in the fall duly noted any other discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve the following non-acceptance of appointment one second second any discussion can you clarify what that means i don't know if that's a topic or you know that's something we've been asked to vote on before probably got another job you appointed you appointed someone into into the position coming craig yeah i'm sorry what what what's the which one is
155the question on not accept non-acceptance that was someone who uh accepted employment uh was board approved but uh then declined to continue in the process and appear to to complete the paperwork uh uh in spite of numerous attempts to you know you know to our do that so uh we gave notice that we would be then rescinding that appointment what if we didn't approve it what would happen i'm just kidding no it's from my perspective i'm not going to ask mr regal to pay anybody who's not coming to work so i guess being abandoned yeah all right all in favor aye aye opposed motion cars i'll accept a motion to approve the leave requests as listed moved first then second lived in second any discussion i'll accept a motion to approve the following educational service
156contract for a student attending out of district placement for the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year moved in second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept emotion hang on i'll exp accept a motion to approve the student educational excursion as listed larson moved packet moved in second any discussion can we say what the excursion is high school cheerleaders approximately 24 students to the pi double a cheerleading state championships to the giant center in hershey pennsylvania on saturday april 10th 2021 it's exciting i think katie told us about this and i think that katie said that it was the first time in a while that they have gone to this so good luck girls and boys look they've won states recently so they're in familiar territory um i approve their visit
157all in favor aye aye aye any opposed i motion carries thank you board reports antoinette um sure just really quickly i do just want to encourage everyone to get vaccinated if you're not eligible already you will be eligible on april 19th which is coming up very soon so um i think eligibility is opening up and vaccine appointments are opening up and let's get back to normal please go get vaccinated thank you thank you ari uh there's a lot of items on tonight's meeting about facilities and a lot of planning and thought and processes and finances goes into this work i can't thank the district enough all the members of uh the school board and all of our vendors that help us maintain our facilities so that our students have um up-to-date state-of-the-art facilities that are
158safe to learn in thanks dave on the report kristen no report laura no report sal no report bridgette no report but just a encouragement for everyone to keep up with the safety protocols and um the masking and the distancing so that we can keep our focus on keeping our kids in school and everybody healthy i just want to report that the board's continuing our visits to pto meetings last night kristen bridget and dr rushy and i attended the chestnut world pto meeting and we thank thank the folks there for their participation and their questions a number of us participated in psba's advocacy day back on march the 22nd uh we had meetings with uh representative zabel representative vitale uh there was a joint meeting with all four of the state senators from delaware county um
159and i think it was a pretty good day uh uh statewide uh the numbers were up in terms of uh the number of uh school leaders participating and the number of legislators that they met with so uh thanks thanks to the board members who attended larry can i ask you what sorry to draw puke ask you a quick question about advocacy day um this was the first year i was able to attend actually i popped in during the lunch hour do you think this is a format that may be adopted in the future like i can't drive to harrisburg over my lunch but i can hop on a zoom call have you heard anything about that there's been considerable discussion and actually they you know they had uh two virtual events this year um i
160i i think that there's there's certainly some distinct advantages uh to the zoom format but uh also nothing really replaces being at the capitol and uh being in the offices uh meeting them in their offices so i think we'll probably see both formats uh you know rolled out uh in the future okay you avoided saying hybrid there that's good because that word floated across my brain okay uh give me a second here i have to get my statement on executive session the board board met an executive session prior to the meeting uh to just to meet with council to confer uh regarding collective bargaining negotiations and conferred with professional financial advisors and bond council regarding capital financing uh with that our next regular public board meeting will be april 22nd 2021 via zoom and thank
161everybody for this evening and i'll accept the motion to adjourn [Music] all right everyone good night everybody