001okay and we're starting the webinar mr um feinberg if you want to give people a few minutes to come into the room will do thank you okay good evening everybody i'd like to call the meeting to order welcome to the january 21st 2021 board business and conference meeting of the school district of haverford township if we could say the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all mr regal could you call the role please dr crispin here mr fleischer i'm here yes i'm here thank you i'm sorry miss larson miss larson had a a little bit of a emergency at home so we're she may join us later okay uh miss
002mingy here mr sinto here mr schwartz yeah ms snodgrass here miss wiedemann here mr feinberg here thank you mr regal uh i'll accept the motion to approve the official minutes from the january 7th 2021 regular public board meeting 10 10 moves second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you uh we're going to adjust the agenda a little bit this evening in two ways uh dr ricci would like to make some opening comments um and also we do have i believe 20 people who have submitted public comments and rather than having all of our musicians sit through an hour of of uh public comment we'll move up the recognition of the pmea students uh prior to public comment dr rusi thank you mr feinberg i i would
003like to take a moment this evening to address some of the concerns that have been raised at our last few school board meetings regarding our school district's equity initiatives and the work that many of us know as basis but before i do i want to explain our protocol for any audience members who may not be familiar with school board protocols our school board and administration does not typically provide an on-the-spot verbal response to public comments and this is true of the vast majority of school boards throughout pennsylvania a school board meeting is a formal meeting held to conduct formal official business in public and as such most school boards choose not to use this time for a back and forth exchange with residents and parents because of this there may be times when it does
004appear that that we aren't really listening to the comments i can assure you that quite the opposite is true we listen to we absorb and we reflect upon every single public comment and where appropriate the administration follows up on them after the meeting when an issue rises to the surface of needing more widespread information we schedule public meetings and plan presentations as we did so many times throughout the summer while managing the impact of the pandemic upon our schools after several weeks of receiving receiving similar public comments and in some cases the same exact comment at our school board meetings each calling for an end to our district's equity initiatives i feel compelled to clarify the intent and goals of our initiatives i believe the comments we've received are based on misconception about what equity
005means in the school district of haverford township over the last few weeks we've received several public comments from residents who believe that our equity initiative known as basis belonging and sociocultural identities in schools are politically motivated and designed to make each student equal for each student the same we believe strongly as a board and administration that every student is equal in that each student and staff member has the same rights deserves the same care the same respect and is an equally valuable member of our school community however we certainly don't want our students to be the same this is simply not the meaning or the message of equity in fact we celebrate and we embrace our students individuality equity is the freedom from bias it means creating a condition of fairness the goal of our
006basis work is to create a school district that is supportive inclusive and safe for all students regardless of their race their gender sexual identity socioeconomic class religious beliefs educational level class status and any number of identified identities or identifying characteristics for which our society might judge someone that is equity we want all of our students to feel supported included and welcomed here and we want them all to have the same access to a high quality education that is equity in order to achieve this goal the basis work provides opportunities for our students and staff to build meaningful relationships to learn about various cultures and widen our world view basis is not a curriculum it's not a set of lessons but rather it is a district focus on ensuring that all students see themselves reflected in
007our curricula in the materials that encourage critical thinking while considering multiple perspectives today many things in our society have become politicized but i can assure you that our school district's equity initiatives are not part of any political agenda there is nothing political there should be nothing political about committing to ensure that every single child who walks through our doors feels safe welcome valued and nurtured black white gay straight transgender binary and every intersection of these identities poor wealthy liberal conservative every single student here is expected to treat their classmates and our staff members with kindness and respect and they should expect to receive that as well there is nothing political about that that is the work of our school district and it will continue we are very proud of this work and we thank our
008community for supporting these efforts thank you mr feinberg thank you dr russia i'd just like to follow up briefly and say that you know i've i've run for school board uh six times now and oftentimes my friends will say to me that i must be out of my mind why why do i keep coming back and the simple fact is that i believe in the value of american public education i believe that our role here the mission of the district is to create informed american citizens and i see this the basis program as an integral part of that mission um and i i would also just like to mention that i know that uh all of my colleagues on the board uh share that sentiment so thank you dr rishi and welcome thank you so
009the next item on our agenda uh i'd like to uh recognize mr donahee and mr hart uh for recognition of our pmea district level students thank you mr feinberg uh i'll be quick i know we have a full agenda tonight but we have some excellent students with us tonight who've uh achieved the status that is pretty remarkable um and i just want to thank the board for taking time out to recognize them and mr hart miss hendler mr brennan for the fine job they do with the high school and all the music teachers of the district they do such a tremendous job when the students get to uh haverford they're they're ready to take it to the next level and with us tonight we have 18 wonderful students who take it to the next level
010each day and and really have impressed us this year and they've been practicing with their masks on uh in class you know they cut holes in their masks they they've been very careful and and they made it to the next level which is even uh remarkable so i'm going to pass it on to mr hart and our pa pmea district 12 award winners thank you so much uh dr ruschi miss saxa mr donaghy mr feinberg members of the school board and haverford community good evening to you all over the years pmea district 12 festivals have been a wonderful experience for our students they meet like-minded people from neighboring schools they rehearse and perform quality repertoire and they learn from wonderful guest conductors this year's festivals were another unfortunate casualty of the coronavirus pandemic and yet
011despite this fact and with full awareness of it our students chose to still take part in the audition process they chose to practice hard and they were selected through their efforts through competitive audition to earn pmea district level recognition they bring honor to themselves to their families to us as their teachers and to the school community the district 12 band students representing haverford high school are as follows and i would ask that you gentlemen um make sure that your cameras are on and then you please uh say hi um as i introduce you they are henry allen and nathaniel drew thank you and cole yocono thank you and please join me in congratulating these students i would now like to turn things over to miss hendler who is our choir director at the high school
012so thank you very much for having us here this evening thank you mr hart and once again just thank you so much for allowing the students uh to come on to the meeting tonight and for recognizing their efforts thank you also for your support of the music program throughout this time it just really means a lot to to all of our students to be able to keep their passions going so thank you so much for district choir we had tom huangpu who is not able to be here tonight but we can still clap for tom owen crewson uh alexandria lauff who's also not here tonight shane linehauser shane is here shane can you say hello oh no sound he's trying okay well shane said hello hello um jose paulo carpio um there he is uh
013sofia politano thank you uh libby switzer could not be here tonight sarah wax also unable to be here and then elizabeth womack who is with us thank you and now i will turn it over to mr brennan to introduce the orchestra students thank you miss handler uh good evening everyone my name is joe brennan i'm the orchard director at haverford high school before i proceed as has been mentioned before i'd like to on behalf of all the music students their families and our music staff throughout the district to thank the board the administration for their time this evening uh their continued efforts uh and support as they've always have done for us thank you so much it's now my pleasure to recognize those students who were accepted into the 2021 pmea district 12 orchestra on
014violin chloe hewn saw chloe chloe chloe she was here a moment ago all right there we go uh on viola uh kevin zhang who is always on and always with his camera on thank you kevin hi thank you jordan barbie also on diola and she is not here this evening uh on cello both of our cellists are here though katie yoon hello and before mentioned jose polo carpio thank you and then finally uh and unfortunately amelia was not here but on double bass amelia lind thank you very very much everyone thank you mr brennan again thank you board for uh taking time out uh this is one of the highest numbers of students combined get getting the pmea and and during a coronaviruses a pandemic is even more special so we we thank you uh
015for taking time out to recognize these wonderful students well congratulations all and keep up the great work and thank you staff very much thank everybody have a good evening if you'd like to stay and listen to an hour of public comment you're more than welcome to but we understand if you have something else to do anna you're ready to read i'm always ready mr feinberg all right okay um we had a few comments um this evening so i'll i'll just start from the top our first one's from louis capiche from 222 steel road dear haverford township school board and dr rushi unconventionality is the theme for the school year 2020 2021 it is the year our children attend school differently it is the year parents are more engaged with their children's education our eyes are
016open to the instructional practices utilized and the curriculum used equity and anti-racist program which is marxism have infiltrated our k-12 public school district canceled culture needs to stop as it limits free speech tax dollars may not may not stifle free speech or infringe on rights you are creating bias and thus creating divisiveness and doing so with our tax dollars regards our next one's from alan bailey at 2930 normandy road i am saddened by the lack of support for basis programming expressed by community members at the board meeting today the flawed thinking behind these comments is precisely the reason why we need to include this type of education in our schools it is the hope that our children can one day create a more inclusive community rebecca phelan at 2535 rosemont avenue to the members of
017the harrofford township school board and community thank you for your support of the basis program i am writing to express my concern that racist views are being allowed to set a hostile tone for meetings and for the parent guardian equity team's important work when equal weight is given to racist letters and speakers that is opposing anti-racist education as if they are valid points of view it makes our commitment to justice and inclusion seem negotiable our community has a long way to go in addressing the needs and rights of all but i know that the school board each school and this generation of students is up to the task we can't let a few unwilling or backward-thinking parents drag down the effort thank you for your time margaret clark at 205 mill road this is a
018letter in support of bases and the parent guardian equity team i am prouder and prouder to be a resident of howardtown when i see the school district install programs such as basis the school environment should feel safe for any student encouraging students to have compassion and teaching them about differences amongst themselves creates a safe environment for every student i am a parent of a child who has suffered in the school district due to her differences as a grown-up she feels still uncomfortable walking in habertown because she might bump into people she knew in school the basis program teaches compassion and that can change how a student feels about their education angela halpin poynton at 2525 i'll cut avenue dr rushi and school board members after watching last week's school board meeting as well as prior
019meetings i'm concerned by the letters others have submitted questioning the investment in the basis program as a mom of two white males in the district who likely have all the privilege that our local community and nation have to offer i am outraged on behalf of all the disadvantaged people within our district like me the majority of our community favors the investment in this program and thanks the district for utilizing it in my opinion all these letters against it are just further proof of how much basic programs like basis are needed as a community we have a lot of work to do to foster a feeling of welcomeness and ensure all of our students are educated in a community based on fairness please continue to persevere towards this goal this is from linda chaga at 206
020east park road dear dr ruchi and school board members i have just learned of the equity or basis program in the school district is discussing for implementation i am quite concerned with this and the direction we are heading in educating our students first i must tell you the reason i moved to habertown 33 years ago was for the outstanding school district and the blue ribbon elementary school chatham park i can tell you it was more than worth it my child my child received an education equivalent or i think better than provided by our top independent schools one of the reasons for this was of course the curriculum but that the parents were part of the programs and there was a kind and loving understanding of differences and boundaries between parental obligations and school curriculum my
021child and classmates were taught kindness diversity and respect through a carers program with ms mallum it was outstanding and allowed their peers to participate and to be there for one another as we progressed through middle school and high school i was personally informed by numerous faculty staff and administration that this class of students now including all the elementary schools was the kindest group they had ever seen we must have been doing something right i'm extremely proud of this but i must tell you this is the same class that has produced some of the most amazing doctors lawyers media producers teachers nurses hairstylists business owners parents and on and on i do not approve of the program you want to spend taxpayer monies and decrease the much-needed time our students need on curriculum yes we want
022well-rounded citizens and we have proved that we can do a fine job of producing them i know mr feinberg attended one of the finest public high schools in philadelphia where i grew up so he is a fine example of public education he has had his children graduate from haverford and they are two were very fine students i think we need to table this program and not use our students to test this experiment i am sure there are many who agree that this year has been extremely difficult for us and now is not the time to make an unnecessary change but to strengthen what we have done so well thank you for taking the time to listen to my concern i hope you can tell i'm passionate about our schools and our community and always wanting
023the absolute best very sincerely yours tiffany and michael gotti from 129 east turnbull avenue dear haverford township school board and dr rushi we as parents guardians and taxpayers are kindly requesting that parents and guardians be notified via permission waiver to opt out our children when controversial materials or lessons will be presented in the classroom we ask for a board policy to be drafted by february of 2021 we are asking for all lesson plans to be posted for parents to view this includes daily lessons plans in grades k through 12. anti-racist and equity programming is part of a political gender controversial nature and divisive equity means that we all end up at the same place so every child in harford township schools will end up in the same place will not have students entering the workforce
024military service college or trade school do you expect all students to end up at the same point upon graduation and then go on to have the same future the equity agenda you are implementing promotes everyone to be the same end up at the same and devoid of individuality our children have no business being part of a social experiment that in 10 years will have failed just as many past bandwagon jargon laden based programs failed all programming and public education should identify measurable goals that utilize data reading writing and math and all have measurable outcomes how many times was the common core restructured and re-evaluated many education is big business and this anti-racism and equity training is as well our tax wallets will not be forever open for tax increases to fund these types of programs
025further you're catering to a small group of parents and guardians and completely disregarding the rest of us who have a wide spectrum of beliefs and values education is a gift our forefathers fought for every person living in the usa to have we want 90 of our students to be on grade level reading for graduation moreover this is measurable and attainable with good research-based reading programs we expect our students to be 90 proficient in algebra 1 by graduation using mathematics with empirical data with replication we expect our children to be fluent writers who can compose short responses during using rich vocabulary we desire students proficient in reading excuse me in writing spelling and focus even if students utilize technology to assist with their skills all math reading and writing proficiency are attainable measurable and part of
026real life we need to stop utilizing our tax dollars for political agendas in an article in the washington post written by valerie strauss in 2014 said it is time for those who fight for equity to question the very assumptions of reform the goal of public education is to enhance the life of every student we ask that the parents and guardians of this district 6444 students should be given that right students be given rights regards this is from ali armstrong at 1113 larchmont avenue hello it has been brought to my attention that someone has filed a right to know request to find out the identities and addresses of the volunteers on the parent guardian equity team i must encourage our district to stand up against this type of intimidation please make a clear statement about valuing
027valuing the input of parent volunteers many who are from marginalized communities and may fear that they could be targeted to the same violence and hatred we see in national news if their identities are shared thank you lisa allen at 1721 ridgeway road dear school district of powerful township board members and school leaders i'm writing to share my unwavering support for the district spaces curriculum it is unconscionable to me that any community members could speak out against it particularly after witnessing the white supremacist led riot and insurrection our nation's capital resulted in death and destruction i am appreciative of the unanimous support of the board of the last meeting more must be done to speak to those who will continue to disenfranchise disenfranchise any groups within our community the right to know requests for names and
028addresses of the volunteers on the parent guardian equity team can only be read as a means of intimidation to silence those who would speak out and in favor of the equity in our district this is disturbing and must be answered with an unwavering statement of support saying that no amount of intimidation will silence the district in its goal of making meaningful change that is inclusive of all people board policy states that the board president can interrupt public comments when information that is not factual is being shared in public comments it is essential that the school district make a clear and strong statement to refute misinformation such as comments that were made at the last school board meeting sincerely this is from lawrence serlin at 1721 ridgeway road to the haverford township school board i am
029writing in support of the basis program that has been proposed to provide more balanced learning in our district i understand that some of the community have recently spoken out in opposition to the program i believe they are misguided and misinformed or have a warped view of racial bias in this country and the need to adjust our school curriculum to better reflect the diversity of our society i also understand that the same group of outspoken critics of basis have attempted to intimidate those who volunteered to work on the program's recommendations by seeking their names and addresses the district should protect the identity of these those individuals as appropriate under the exceptions to the pennsylvania right to no law indeed the work of the committee is presumably protected as part of deliberations of a gov governmental group
030in any case attempted intimidation should be met with determined opposition sincerely this is from um the brower family at 1565 vermont road it is my perception that the individuals who oppose bases program in the district have a fear that their students will be exposed to values that are not in line with their family values in an effort to understand the opposition i went to the haverford district website to look for information i urge opposers to seek out the basis information seat sheet clearly available on the website and not participate in assumptions and gossip a sense of belonging and individual value is important for everyone regardless of race sexual orientation gender identity religion and political affiliation this is why people naturally seek out other people like them resulting in the political split we find our country
031we find our country and i fear our own community facing but what if if our community embraced and supported the differences instead my understanding of the basis program is that it will create an environment in which all students do feel a sense of value and importance that they might be able to discuss their differences without fear and that their needs as individuals are met so we have less students seeking violence drug use hate crimes or suicide as a way to deal with their lack of self-confidence and value as i understand it the curriculum will include factual and non-biased information from various points of view that will serve and represent all the students in our district in an effort to create critical thinkers and empathetic humans well i know that the while i know that the
032way the curriculum will change is the bit muddy and hard to explain i suggested the district perhaps provide a bulleted information sheet that provides an understanding of the efforts by grade level so that the parents may more clearly understand what the program is about well i say the information is about basis is clearly provided on the website it's not easy to find and there are is only one document updated in 2019 that answered some of the questions the parent guardian equity committee is a new program and there is concern that these unelected individuals will be deciding changes to the curriculum but my understanding is that any change made will be inspired by what is learned from them while this program is in its early stages i suggest attempting to be more transparent about goals and
033intentions the confusion is creating misinformation and fear my household supports these efforts and i appreciate the work being done by the committee jen leath 2 282928 morris road dear haverford township school board directors and district community to say it has been difficult and challenging school year is an understatement i write this evening to thank you all as a school board of directors and to thank dr ruschi the district administration and our staff for their unwavering commitment to provide the best and safest educational experience for all of our children despite the prevailing challenges this academic year and doing so often in the face of unclear or non-existing governmental guidance i also want to thank you for all your continued commitment to the basis program when the basis program was started in 2017 it was a trailblazing
034commitment by our district as we witnessed a reckoning in our country which invokes reflection on belonging and social cultural identity we are fortunate the basis work is in our classrooms basis demonstrates that our district is centered on pedagogical excellence and understanding of what our children need to be equipped with as they navigate the world around them now and in the future i know that it is programs like basis that will help prepare my children and all the children in the district to lead lives that recognize the importance of and respect for differences and acceptance of others gene loots at 169 clemson road to the school board and superintendent i wish to share sorry i wish to express my strong support and gratitude for the parents who have volunteered to serve on the parent garden equity
035team and to thank all the teachers administrators and parents who have supported the basis program and by doing so embrace the challenge of making however educational environment the best it can be i am deeply deeply distressed that some parents have wrongly suggested that working to create an inclusive environment will detract from their children's education as a parent of two children in the district and an educator myself i know the opposite to be true the basis program is a wonderful step forward for our district for our children and for our entire community educating our children to succeed in the 21st century requires that we prepare them to treat each other with compassion understanding and moral integrity this is as important as teaching them to wash their hands study after study shows that students who feel like
036they belong are able to learn more the basis program sets haverford on the path towards teaching more math more science more reading not less patti mcgoldrick at 1 112 north drexel avenue i'm writing to say thank you to the school board and to the administration for your dedication to our students during this unbelievably difficult year my daughter is a current junior in the high school and has flourished at haverford this past year there have been competing needs with within our student body and no playbook to follow i feel the board members in the administration have done an outstanding job of trying to meet the very needs of our students faculty and staff as a parent i am very grateful that you've used your skills and expertise to lead us through this challenging time i would
037also like to thank the school board and the administration for your ongoing support of the basis program young people can only thrive when they feel accepted for who they are it's important to many of us that children learn not to just tolerate but embrace the differences in others i work at a local university and our corporate recruiters tell us constantly that they are looking to hire young people who are able to work in well diverse able to work well in diverse environments therefore the basis program isn't just the right thing to do but the smart thing to do as well this is from julie kim c carroll at 1359 maryland avenue dear dr rushi miss sarah christensen and the haverford township school district board members i'm running to express my support for the basis curriculum
038used throughout the district in support of our students growth as a social worker mental health therapist in area schools for many years i can attest to the positive effects of such programs for both academic and developmental achievement for young people i am very concerned to hear of undermining comments and misinformation about the basis program being spread by various community members i appreciate the statements of support by president feinberg and other board members it appears that we need more education of the public about the importance and goals of basis i am also calling on you dr ushi to make a statement in support of the program and to clearly refute the misinformation being raised as we can see throughout our country leaders staying silent about misinformation can lead at least to confusion rancor and lack of
039trust i'm also writing to express my strong support for the development of the parent guardian equity team in the district how i wish such a group had been in existence when my children were in school i am particularly alarmed by the inappropriate request by various community members for the names and addresses of members of the parent guardian equity team this type of reckless behavior is intimidating and only undermines the purpose of the team creating a chilling atmosphere of hostility and fear this is not the example we want to be studying for our young people i call on you dr rishi to break your silence and speak in strong support of the parent guardian equity team and the ongoing need for an importance of anti-bias and anti-racist training as a leader of our school district please
040take this opportunity to be clear about what equity means and to push back women's for misinformation and attempted intimidation i have always been grateful for the overall positive experience both of my children had in the district schools they graduated with honors and now are gatefully employed i am dismayed to learn the timity of some district leaders over openly supporting such important issues as the basis curriculum and the implementation of equity for all the values of standing up for truth inclusion and the safety of every member of our community are elemental to what our town and district should stand for let's show our students what accountability and integrity look like thank you for all the time and effort you continue to give the district it has been a challenging difficult year on many levels i look
041forward to working with and supporting you in whatever ways i can to make our community more safe welcoming and equitable for all katie bigandy at 201 mill road dear however township school board directors i want to thank you for your comments during the january 7th meeting showing song support for the district's basic program from what i heard during the public comments it sounded like there was a bit of misinformation about the basis program particularly i was confused to hear that a few residents believe that the term equity means that every child in harford township schools will end up at the same place if i believe that the school district of harvard township was implementing a program to ensure that all children think alike talk alike and act alike i would join these neighbors in objection
042to the basis program but this is not the case and so i want to address the misinformation stated last week first equity has nothing to do with ensuring a uniform end product in reality equity means everyone is treated fairly from the beginning so that they are able to thrive and develop into their true authentic and diverse selves stated more simply equity is akin to fairness and as i repeatedly tell my daughter who just so happens to be obsessed with fairness fairness does not mean symmetry nor does it mean uniformity fairness does not mean that both of my children are forced to eat the same snack every day rather it means that they were both given the opportunity to make their own snack choice unfortunately not all children are equally welcomed to make fields to feel
043safe at school when children or adults do not feel safe their minds are unable to learn if children are unable to learn then how will we ever achieve the learning goals desired by last week's commenters the basis program will help ensure that children of different backgrounds and beliefs belief sets are welcomed and made feel safe at schools that their learning goals can be met and so the children throughout our district can feel comfortable further developing their differences this is quite the opposite of trying to ensure that all children end up in the same place as parents and educators know all too well the concept of creating uniformed children has no merit and is quite frankly impossible children truly have their own minds and their own spirits and that is what the basis program is all
044about the basis program opens the doors so the children can be diverse it sounds like it should appeal to last appeal to last week's commenters who identified themselves as having a wide spectrum of beliefs and values the basis program will ensure that our children learn to honor a wide spectrum of beliefs and values unless of course a set of beliefs and values are harmful to others as a parent i have many responsibilities among them are a duty to uphold the physical and mental wellness of my children and responsibility to teach them about actions and consequences and a responsibility to prepare them to survive and thrive in the real world when they come of age i am in favor of the basis program and it supports these goals for my children all the children in harford
045township as they continue to develop into their unique selves this is from alexis pasternak at 609 woodland drive dear school board members in dr roushi george allen yancey sociologist at baylor university wrote this past summer that we need solutions that drive us together and not pull us apart that is the only way we'll have sustainable pathways away from the racial alienation poising our society we do not need to engage in more recrimination and name calling victories by those techniques will face constant challenge and keep our society in turmoil the way forward is to move forward together i feel that adopting anti-racist theorem theory pursuing equity over equality and the theory of white fragility will likely not ensure long-term successes for anyone of any race no solutions are offered therefore we will will be in a
046perpetual state of turmoil the beautiful concepts of diversity inclusion will be turned on their heads but feelings will not win in the argument and that is not what i'm trying to do board members and dr ushi all that i'm asking is that you think long and hard about what you are implementing i think we can all agree that we want our children to be critical thinkers and this is a start how we make that hap how we make that happen is another thing and as nancy said doing this will be hard extremely hard but why but why should we be surprised at that usually the things worth having are hard if families want to adopt anti-racism and white fragility theories and apply them in their own life that is perfectly fine with me i will
047continue to work to be kind and empathetic and that is what i continue to teach my son to do in the meantime i kind i'm kindly requesting that that there be a school board policy implemented by february 2021 in which parents and taxpayers can have full access to daily lessons and curriculum online and parents and guardians receive notification of any concepts associated with critical race theory specifically the anti-racism and or right fragility approach ahead of time with the possibility of opting out thank you for your time andrew pidgeon at 1728 hawthorne avenue dr rushing school board members i would like to start this message by thanking you for your time and effort on this board i know that none of you signed up to face the public health challenges we are facing i truly do
048believe you feel you have the best interest of our kids at heart i would also like to thank the hard working and dedication of our teachers they have been as flexible as possible and making the best of an all-around bad situation having said that you need to understand where i'm coming from it is on me and other parents to fight for our children's future and children's education so i apologize for anything below seems harsh it has become that important to me and my family the first time i wrote you it was to let you know that virtual schooling was not working especially for kids at such a young age i'm now writing to tell you that hybrid isn't much better and in a way it's worse because we get feedback from teachers about how much
049more engaged the kids are at school than their own zoom the kids come home happy twice a week then cry when unpacking the 30 pound backpacking preparing for tomorrow's zoom while twice a week is surely better than zero is a constant reminder of how things should be and how things are different or are in other school districts one of the things i do like i do not like to say in front of my kids is it's not fair because frankly the world isn't fair but i feel to make my point to you i must isn't it isn't fair to my kids that we chose to live in harford township think about that for a second my kids are at a distance distinct disadvantage because their parents have chosen to live and have for township and
050enroll them in a highly ranked hereford school district i bet it is not a statement that you ever thought that you would hear is it but when i look around it it's absolutely true throughout the school year during varying levels of lockdown europe has kept their schools open states like florida have been open this entire school year catholic and private schools have been open this entire school year in our district neighboring school districts like westerhick and upper dublin have their elementary school kids back five days a week springford is going back at all levels five days a week in early february in all these places that brought their kids back five days a week in person learning there has been no greater covert problems than the problems we are currently facing in haverford the fact
051that my kids have spent half of this year at home on a computer not learning and half of this year going to school forty percent of available school days puts them at a considerable disadvantage and that is not fair months ago you recognize the need to get at least our elementary schools back in school five days a week and you have you have done nothing there have been no plan to do this that i've made aware of my kids cohorts have six eight and ten kids in them are you telling me that the catholic schools or whistle hicken and upper dublin have less than 20 kids per class in them no way do you really think that if governor desantis or the catholic church's decision to be open five days a week was killing kids
052and teachers or causing uncontrollable spread throughout the area it it wouldn't be front page news come on we have the data we know the testis we we have the test districts nothing is happening in any differently in those districts that is happening in ours which is only utilizing two of five available days hybrid isn't slowing the spread is doing nothing but slowing the education of my children we as parents have the right to determine what it is in our children's health interests what they have experienced this year from the hereford school district is anything but healthy no one is forcing any child to attend in-person learning if you decide the risks of coca-19 are greater than the mental health and education crisis that these kids are going through so be it you have made arrangements
053for those parents those of us who feel differently also have the right to have our kids in person five days a week the same as complete complete competing public schools or all catholic schools are currently doing please open the schools for education five days a week and give the tax paying parents the opportunity to make our own health decisions please do not please do your best to provide a safe environment as possible for the remainder of the school year this will give my kids a chance to recuperate from this nightmare of 11 months with no consistent schooling by an actual educator this can also start the process of our kids getting caught up to other schools who long ago made the decision that in-person learning is critical for our children thank you for your time
054okay that um mr feinberg the next comment is a um a group comment from approximately 330 individuals with 300 electric signatures i can't read all the names on the list and their addresses but their names and addresses will be posted as part of the public meeting minutes if anybody wants to see them online this is from um stani tayo and christine c wagon on behalf of of the group dear however township school board and administrators we are writing to collectively voice our continued support for the belonging and social cultural identities in schools basis program although we do not always submit public comments to the school board to reiterate our support for this existing program we are very happy and proud that the district implemented this program by submitting this group comment we would like to
055convey the enthusiastic and ongoing support for the basis program within the harford township community the comments against basis program at several recent board meetings fail to represent the sentiments of the majority of the harvard township residents we wholeheartedly endorse the stated goal of the basis program to ensure that every member of our school community feels included respected and valued the goal of inclusion applies to identities represented by the i and basis it does not refer to welcoming all values values that are sexist racist racist homophobic transphobic anti-semitic or anti-immigrant in nature are in direct conflict with inclusion and belonging those values should not and cannot be welcomed that is why it is essential that educating people about equity belonging and inclusivity is a priority for the district and the students and the families cannot act
056opt out moreover these lessons are in line with the common core principles to prepare students to flourish in their lives and careers as they encounter and engage with people of varied backgrounds it is imperative that the school district continues to show strong support for the basis program in addition we would like to remind the board that the policy manual 903 states that the board president is able to interrupt public speakers if the presentation is out of order or not factual when faced with repeated false statements regarding the basis program the board members should act to request that the board president interrupt to provide clarification we would also implore dr rushi and the sdhc board to stay through support for the privacy of our parent guardian equity team and condemn public requests for the names and
057addresses of volunteers on the parent guardian equity team as such requests are inappropriate at best and threatening at worst thank you again for your actions in creating and supporting the basis program and your continued commitment to the harvard township community our last comment is from samantha hand at 9 fairfield road good evening um school board members and dr rushi equity and anti-racist programs perpetuate racial stereotypes compel discriminatory speech and create hostile work working environments that violate the civil rights act of 1964 and the united states constitution on monday we celebrated the life of the great dr martin luther king jr a famous quote from dr king the function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically intelligence plus character that is the goal of true education we are diverse and
058offer opportunities for all in the usa because of the work of dr king the marxist agenda presented as anti-racism and equity promotes racism separating people by color gender sexual orientation religion religion and political affiliation is moving backward we're moving away from the good work of dr king not every taxpayer is in agreement with marxism parents have the right to request written notification for material that is not part of math science language arts or history in k-8 taxpayers should have full access to the curriculum online daily lessons need to be listed online for transparency we are asking for a policy by february 2021. thank you mr feinberg thank you anna next item on our agenda is uh reports from our students we have zoe starr from the middle school and erica borby from the high school
059zoe you want to start us off sure um good evening everyone um i'm zoe starr and i will be reporting for the middle school thank you for allowing me to present tonight the second marking period will be ending on thursday february 2nd we are all working very hard as the quarter ends and we are all trying to start the new year off right many kids in our school were happy to celebrate and honor dr martin luther king jr on monday our student council created and hung motivational posters for school students in our school also painted little libraries collected and donated clothing to cradles to crayons participated in community trash and leave cleanups packed and delivered food to local organizations and food banks helped neighbors with house projects wrote thank you notes to veterans and health
060care workers and donated time to record messages for people who utilize alternative communication devices several of our students will be attending the delaware valley con consortium of excellence and equality or dvce student leadership institute on friday january 29th the annual the annual institute will be held virtually this year and students will participate in several sessions designed to cultivate learning laughter and preparing student leaders that's about it that's about all i have for today today i thank you so much for allowing me to present tonight well thank you for your report sounds like uh monday was a pretty busy day and a good day lots of activities zoe erica hi everyone i'm sorry about that my computer died but i'm glad i made it back just in time good evening staff community and members of the
061board my name is erica bourbee and it is an honor to be here tonight on monday january 18th students head off in order to celebrate martin luther king jr and his extensive civil rights contributions while it was a bit challenging to engage in service opportunities this year haverford's students went above and beyond to honor his legacy with clubs like young democrats hosting a zoo meeting where members crocheted plastic and yarn for local homeless shelters the last day for psat registration was friday january 15th with psats scheduled to be taken on tuesday january 26th zoom meetings practice tests and 10-minute math tip videos are being offered to students to ensure that all test takers are as successful as possible as the second semester comes to an end students are reflect the first semester comes to an
062end students are reflecting on the highs and lows of our hybrid semester students are thankful for our teachers and their consistent support these past few months as well as excited for our second semester thanks to the established comfort and familiarity of our hybrid schedule first and second block finals will be on january 26th 7th and 3rd and 4th block finals will be on january 28th january 29th will be dedicated to final exam makeups as well as a transition day for students freshmen have finally completed their first ever high school semester and seniors are counting down the days till graduation mid-year transcript requests are being sent out so seniors can fulfill college requirements and keep prospective universities up to date on their grades clubs continue to meet virtually as well best buddies hosted their name the
063tune kahoot game over zoom today and fbla members will be attending a virtual region awards ceremony on monday january 25th the senior planning committee is also hard at work brainstorming different ideas in order to make sure the class of 2021 has the best senior year possible last but certainly not least many of our winter sports teams are competing this season and student athletes are allowed to have two adult spectators at home games wrestling is our way at ridley tonight girls and boys basketball is home tomorrow night against springfield and ford swim and dive is away at upper derby tomorrow starting at 3 45 pm all games will continue to be live streamed on the athletics youtube channel and i know our athletes will continue to bring home wins it may be the end of the
064semester but the fords are still as energetic and determined as ever i am grateful for this opportunity to present tonight and i am looking forward to my next update in future weeks thank you very much it sounds like things are things are moving so that's great dr rusci it looks like we're back to you yes thank you mr feinberg zoe and erica it's always great to hear about what's happening in the schools particularly since we don't see as much of it these days so thank you for paying that extra attention to creating visual images for us of what's happening in your schools you've both done done a great job a few things to update this evening mr feinberg just a public service announcement at our february 18th meeting to further clarify the work of the
065district as it relates our basis work and as it relates to equity uh sarah christensen and her team are putting together a presentation uh which will again you know further educate folks remind people uh what the core of this work is about and also present on some of the results that we have seen you know of that work so that's coming up on on february 18th um yesterday i sent out an email to community and staff members regarding the lack of the availability of vaccinations specifically it seems specifically within delaware county that is not just my assessment alone but coming from you know working with my colleague superintendents across the county similar messages have gone out in several several of the districts and i i just feel we have a responsibility now to respectfully and
066responsibly advocate for our staff you know for our community we hear a lot we believe in doing everything we can to get our students in to in-person learning more than we currently are and the vaccine is just another step that's going to get us you know get us closer to that so we are trying to advocate as i said you know respectfully and and responsibly but we will continue uh to be advocates for our school system and trying to do everything we can to to get our students back it's been a long time since we've talked about some of the mitigation strategies and i just another public service announcement you know want to remind people of the importance you know of wearing wearing masks and social distancing and and that social distancing concept of six
067feet as we start now understandably to receive emails from parents asking you know please can you revisit can you bring students back into into school within delaware county it the chester county health department is our health authority and there has been no movement on the six feet distance between between student desks i'll share with you it is the hope of many of the superintendents that if we were to be successful in obtaining vaccines and getting everyone vaccinated that we could petition the chester county health department to reconsider that to lessen it in some way but as long as that requirement for six feet of social distancing is in place we have no other alternative other than what we are doing right now just because of the logistics and the physical limitations that exist within our
068buildings we encourage parents to monitor the number of coveted cases on our website just as a reminder with the new requirements that were issued from the pennsylvania department of education in conjunction with the pennsylvania department of health there are thresholds at each one of the levels that once we meet them our schools must close we are in constant contact with the chester county health department about our mitigation strategies in an effort that should we reach that number and be required to close that we are closing for no more than a day and actually i shouldn't say close i should say return to virtual learning because you know students it would still be a school day students would be at home learning but those counts are updated every day we transit we moved away from updating
069just on sundays so that parents could have an idea of when we are getting getting close to that with that in mind we also want to remind people if there is anyone who lives in your household who tests positive for covid please keep your children home regardless of how they feel they are considered a close contact and should not come into our schools our building principals your children's teachers will work with you but please do not send your child to school because they seem fine as a mom myself i get it like they seem fine they're okay that's to be in school but if there is someone who resides in the house who tests positive for covid the children should not be you know should not be coming to school along those same lines if
070you find yourself in a situation where typically you are coming to our schools for food distribution and you or the person who typically comes to the school to pick up the food test positive for kovid call your building principal they will make arrangements they will work with you so that you do not have to come to the school in order to get to get that food uh for your family so just just a few reminders as we all experience covet fatigue and just you know forget about some of these things uh just a couple of couple of reminders about that and if it's okay mr feinberg i'll move into the next item because it's actually our recognition of school board directors please january is school director's recognition month and that provides us with an opportunity
071to express our appreciation and our gratitude for the enter the timeless dedication of our board members each member of our school board engages in this work on a voluntary basis receiving no compensation for their time effort and energy that they devote to our community they are motivated purely by the desire to work as a system for the betterment of the children in our schools and while they do not receive monetary perks that other organized boards and different entities may their reward is the interaction with students even virtually and the success of witnessing work that comes to fruition whether that be the establishment of a new course a new club a new elementary school a a new wing onto onto a high school or the implementation of some new curriculum the time dedicated by our board
072members extends well beyond to thursday meet two thursday evenings each month when they are here for the for the public our board members represent the district on various community boards and state organizations which require time to prepare actively and participate in that work and they review materials and read materials prior to each one of these board meetings and liaison meetings that are held held throughout the month each one of our board members received a little packet little envelope at their home today because thanks dave for holding that up there because we were not able to be physically present in the room so we'll ask you uh if you would open that now um this is what would have been on your table by your seat um in in the boardroom for you we feel that
073it's very appropriate uh given what we are experiencing um this this year so you can put those on and i will take to the public uh what we have provided for each one of our board members it's just a note of appreciation on behalf of the students within the school district at h pride pin uh that hopefully they can then they can proudly wear when we are out and about and given the current times that we are in as you can see from some of some of our board members uh uh haverford ford's uh face mask you are leaders you are models uh within within our community and we hope that you will wear those masks um and modeling uh a good choice to wear that mask for all of our our community members and
074wear it with your h pride so on behalf of my colleagues and the students thank you for everything that you do for all of us uh to make this such a wonderful district in which to live to work to learn and to grow thank you thank you thank you dr rishi i i um bridget and i have been attending these uh twice a week statewide psba board leadership meetings pretty much since march and on the meeting last week there was some discussion of uh you know some of the some of the positive aspects of living through this covet experience and one of the things that struck me is that we have this whole crop of school board members 4 500 of us statewide who used to think that there were you know issues in their
075school districts pre-covered and it's really helped to put things into a different perspective um and i think we're you know we've we're growing a crop of uh school directors that are going to be significantly more resilient uh going into the future once we get through this thing and um i certainly want to thank uh all my board colleagues again because um you know they certainly didn't know what they were getting into um and this year anyway you know and then none of it's taken for granted folks and really appreciate all your efforts and commitment and contributions so thank you all thank you larry very happy to serve thank you larry and thank you dr ruschi and thank you for the mask and pin uh by the way i'm sorry dave i didn't hear the question
076this qualifies compensation this is our uh that's it so don't lose it okay moving right along next item on our agenda is a construction update ken matthews from cb development how are you ken you're muted but we can't hear you how about now still can't hear you ken do you want do you want to call do you want to try coming in on the phone for the for the audio do you want us to go on to bob and come back to you all right and you can text me and see we'll see if we can get you get you worked out there okay mr regal you want to give us a first look at the 2021 2022 budget okay uh we have a little presentation um this first look has been provided to the
077finance liaison meeting last week and a budget this size is always put together as a site-based bottom-up budget meaning that departments put budgets together uh the school buildings have allocations the technology department has a has a budget they put together curriculum pupil services all the way across the board and they have a deadline in december that they need to put their budget together they put in requests also for personnel uh we accumulate all those budgets and then we put together um mostly contract items like for instance here all your salaries are based on contracts and and benefits are made on based on contracts or regulations and then and then we also have debt service which is a big component because of all the borrowing we have done to build all our capital plan and you
078accumulate all those and put it together and hopefully it comes out with a small number but if we go to the next slide uh uh anna we can uh this these are the assumptions they're similar to in the past but numbers are a little different act one index uh for us is 3.0 percent uh the downside is that in the year of a county-wide reassessment here you have to maintain the index from the prior year so our 2020-21 index is 2.6 percent uh so instead of three percent we our ceiling for increasing is 2.6 and that's mainly also because of the fact that we do not have an act one exception if you remember in priors we got act one exception because our special ed uh uh but our expenditures increased higher than the index
079and we were allowed to increase it proportionally in our percentage increase of our millage the pscrs employer conservation rate didn't go up very much it's at 34.94 so for every dollar spent on salaries uh 34.94 gets sent to psers we do get half of that back on the revenue side as a subsidy from the state so it's really half of that due to the uh tax free assessment uh january first we get always get a certified assessment no matter what year it is and then any changes from january to when we may when they cut it off for the real estate taxes uh is our assessment which we apply our millage to get our tax money um on the next screen you'll see that but uh we also have debt service in here of about
080385 000 for phase two we were kind of hesitant to hesitating on phase two because of some of the issues with the pandemic and how we would come out financially but uh we are sitting pretty well uh that we did add part of the the debt service for phase two there's also capitalized interest the 2019 a bonds i believe it is the new money bonds we did capitalize interest of 850 000 and that's essentially your um you're you're borrowing extra money uh and the rates are low and then you're able to manipulate the the funds that you receive to be able to to phase in the debt service at a longer rate so that it's not all hitting you all at once so that that was a large dollar uh bond issue that's the 37
081million dollar bond issue that is paying for lynwood so it needed to be phased in a little slower than just in one or two years so so that gets to be a credit against our debt service if you go to the next slide um these are the new positions that are in this budget so when you're putting the first budget together you are kind of loading it up you're putting every everybody's wish list and there are parameters peop uh schools have allocation limits and so forth there are limitations to what they can put in but they do put in it and and we evaluate it once we get the numbers and see what they're like and see whether we need eight teaching positions or one psychologist one assistant principal but if we don't put them
082in and consider them then you know we might later on have to add them to the budget so um down below there's student tech positions that was uh i think dr rushi i don't know who who brought that up but that that's some of the students can learn while helping out our our tech department and learn some of the tech tech skills that they have so um if we go to the next slide this is actually the reconciliation of our old assessment or new assessment our old assessment was 3.171 billion dollars when they did the reassessment as you can see it pretty much doubled to 6 billion 360 million uh dollars so we're only allowed to collect the same amount of tax that we would have collected with the assessment at 3.1 billion so we
083had to adjust the 2021 millage rate to you know make the math equation work out and as you can see we were at 33.579 mills for the 2021 school year uh converting that so that we're bringing in the same amount of money is 16.7458 mills so if you take the mills and multiply it by the assessment here you're going to get a tax levy a 106 million dollars 503 787 we get tax relief money that's the gambling money that it has been allocated to the school district and it comes in the form of a reduction in our assessment which everyone gets the same amount of money i think last year was about 180 dollars so that hasn't been calculated yet but has to be taken off the bottom line and then it comes in a
084form of a subsidy from the state uh so you have a net tax levy of 104 million for 2020 21 and the collection rate that we had put in last year was a little lower than the 97.3 percent that we normally have because of the fact that the pandemic we felt that people the collection rate would be lower uh i don't think that's fanning out that way but once we get to get closer to all 100 collected we'll find out how much we brought in and and we might end up adjusting that which would bring us in a little more uh revenue so the value of mill uh is now six million dollars if you increase your millage of 16.7458 by two point six percent you're going to end up with um an additional uh
085two million six hundred twenty three thousand so uh we add that to the uh to uh the 2021 tax revenue uh when we do the 21 22 budget so if we go to the next slide uh if i do for a minute before you go to the next slide you know for the for the homeowner who is looking at the recent reassessment can you point out here what what that what number should be of the greatest interest to that you know some homeowners felt like there was a possibility that their taxes were going to double okay reassessment and and i know you were you were taking phone calls from some folks and explaining the millage rate to them and that the millage rate was also going to change so if they want to if they
086want to look at it from the perspective of 2021 they would take the the the changed assessment multiply it by the 16.8 and then divide by a thousand and that would give them their taxes under their new assessment uh the equivalent taxes as they as they had for 2021. now if you go to the next slide i'll show you um down below the 16.7458 with a 2.6 percent increase you can see down below is 17.8 mils so if they take their changed assessment their new reassessment multiply it by 17.1812 and then divided by a thousand they'll get the uh the taxes that we're proposing right now for uh 2122 with the 2.6 increase so it's pretty simple just take the assessment multiply it by the 17.1812 and then divide by a thousand and you'll get
087your your your tax bill and this is one this is a financing the budget that i do every year and i have we have detail in the next couple slides but the revenue uh that we have before the tax increase is 131 million 46 000. the expenditures are 137 million right now uh 137 million 538 a lot higher than the revenues and that we do have a budgetary reserve that's not funded by tax dollars so so the shortfall is six million four hundred ninety one thousand which is pretty large uh but you're also talking about our first look our you know when everything is put into the budget uh uh there's our our taxation at the 2.6 that's our ceiling 2.6 we can't go any higher higher than that right now so uh that that
088would bring in the two million six hundred twenty three thousand that we had on the prior uh slide and that leaves three million eight hundred sixty eight thousand uh that we have to reduce in order to get balance the budget so that's that includes those new salaries that includes uh a lot of um add-ons that you know we have to evaluate and uh and get that number down uh because to balance the budget so uh as you can see the 2.6 what i did was i took the the uh i i calculated the average assessment because you can take the total assessment and divide it by the number of parcels and i think there's 17 million 155 parcels i think and if you divide that six billion dollar number into there your and multiply it
089by the millage you're getting an average tax increase 155 dollars i think last year the average tax increase was about a hundred and forty dollars so 180 excuse me 180 bob bob you said 17 million parcels i think it's 17 000 17 000 parcels yeah i yeah yeah yeah 17 150 i said um let's go to the next slide uh here's the revenue budget as you can see i have two two actual years in 2021 a budget year in the next month or so we'll have a projection of the 2021 budget but as you can see the current real estate revenue is the same because we had to keep it the same and this is before adding the tax increase uh and we did give additional money for transfer tax because we feel like with
090the interest rates low that'll we'll be able to bring in money there and most likely in 2021 that million eighty thousand will be higher than that but uh tax delinquencies we have to get a feel for what's what hasn't been paid as of december 31st what's lean and what what would be delinquent uh and then we made estimates based on uh state sources of funds as you can see on the right 80.4 percent of our revenue comes from local sources which is large yeah only 18 percent comes from state sources and um uh 1.33 from federal sources so one of the biggest numbers on the state sources is down at the bottom it's the retirement revenue i remember i told you had 20 million dollars on the expenditure side and we get 10 million dollars
091back in a form of a subsidy on both our social security and our retirement uh so um that's why the 34.46 or whatever they had back there is really half of that so if we go to the expenditure there's three pages of expenditures because there's so many line items but uh the first part is a breakdown of of two years actual and two years budget and you can see the salaries the total salaries are 62 million uh it covers probably the largest amount is the teachers which is the second from the top the right column is a variance so you can see that the difference between but budget to budget from 2021 2122 is 1.8 million dollars if you go to the second grouping that's your benefits uh we do have a zero increase projected
092for medical but it's 192 000 higher because that's the medical that's assigned to the the new positions um so um down below you can see uh the retirement contribution is 21 million the social security is one 4.6 uh and we're looking at 1 million 474 000 variants from the prior year's budget the next section is for professional services one of the biggest components of professional services is iu services you can see the iu services is 2 million 2 000 compared to the prior year's budget of 1.8 million so you're almost 200 000 over that um there's other professional uh which covers different varying uh varying areas but uh i think part of it is uh legal services part of it is uh we have some more money for subs so it was a a group
093of components that that are in professional services that that we use that are up uh and then you can also see technology support because we're doing a lot of remote learning and we have a lot more computers so the support on the technology is up we'll evaluate all those numbers uh and you know to refine the numbers and get them down to where they should be but if we go to the next slide we can see the next area this covers uh purchase property services this is everything from uh disposal services electricity water repairs uh copiers uh um maintenance uh there's rentals there's uh uh leases that we have equipment leases uh for both facility and transportation we have uh and that's up three hundred thousand that whole area the next column is uh is
094other professional services and that includes primarily most of that is a special ed tuition charter school tuition uh vote tech tuition the contribution to the delaware county community college and those are the probably the largest one that covers all our insurances our whole fleet of insurance with from general property liability to bonding insurance to eno underground tank insurance athletic insurance is all in that section any but you can see the largest increase is the charter schools because of the increase in the number of kids right now that are are attending charter and cyber schools and that increased from 300 000 to over 900 000 on that line item we go to the next slide um there's supplies up at the top uh supplies uh we did have a large uh budget in 2021 for books
095and that is not as high this year so there's a reduction there uh but this is pretty much other than maybe general supplies and i think the diesel fuel number uh that came from transportation might there might be an error there because that shouldn't be 120 000 higher but that's numbers been put in and and and that number will probably go back down but uh as you can see we're pretty flat in this area the next area is equipment we have about 000 in additional equipment in this budget compared to 2021 and then the last two areas are primarily debt service if you'll see you'll see interest on bonds and then you'll see principal on bonds and that is our annual payment for debt service on all the capital projects all the building that we've
096done some of that is new and what they do is they wrap around the new debt service around the old debt service and the maturities go out far farther so that when when the old debt service disappears uh then the new debt service comes into play and what it does it levels out your debt service so once we're done with these projects our debt service will be level for about 10 to 12 years if we do don't do any more projects but this year as you can see is probably the biggest year for these projects where increases in its uh a million 1.5 million dollars increase in debt service after that we're pretty much home free as far as uh not totally but pretty close to being home free as far as all the debt
097service on the high school projects it also includes the climate control uh for the two elementary schools and the and linwood elementary uh but this year is the the year that where the debt service really hit so if we go to the next slide these are the cost drivers and if you go through all those lines of expenditures and you look at all the lines that have significant or material increased variances and you add them together they pretty much come close to the the bottom total for how much the our our expenditures are increasing from 2021 to 2122. and you can see uh sour increases for contractual are on the top and then new salaries are next and then salary and benefits is for both of those increases iu services capital maintenance we added back
098the 300 000 in capital maintenance that we took out last year for budgetary reasons um computer repairs charter school increase and so forth and debt service on the bottom so these are the areas we concentrate from now until the uh proposed final budget and then the final budget to to look at ways to reduce these expenditures so that we can balance our budget if we go to the next slide uh even though we have you know that that large number if you take the 10-year average of the increases that the district has had our average increase is only 2.85 percent which is very good yeah uh we're you know there's a lot of low numbers we did have from 2021 to 3.22 increase increase because we took the exception for the building program but uh
0992.85 percent over a 10-year period is very good the next slide this is the opt-out version at the finance liaison meeting there's two different ways of moving forward with the budget one is to adopt a preliminary budget and then going through a lot of channels and then sending it to the state and then you go and um and then you you you go through some other steps and then you're you in april you do the proposed final budget and adopt the final budget in june but if you're not going to change your tax number which uh raise your tax number let's put this way above the index you have the ability to do the what they call the opt-out version which you present the budget and you provide the state with just your tax information
100and then you submit it on the by february 2nd and then you don't have to do all the state reporting that you in january and february that you normally do and i think we did that a couple years ago first year i came here uh and then we can just move forward with uh finance liaison meetings in february march and april as we refine the budget and then get to april 22nd where we adopt the proposed final budget and then the final budget uh anybody have any questions questions from the board antoinette yeah thanks um i guess my main question is um the the six million um i think i don't know can we go back to the it's only a couple slides ago one yeah that one so that like the oh you know
101that one or the other one but like a 6.4 million difference um between you know the the revenue and the you know this this year um well that's the that's the 6.4 million dollar increase from last year's budget to this year's budget okay can we go back that's so increases in line items the variance right there see your budget for 2021 was 30 131 million and then you're 21 22 expenditure budget is 137 million okay so maybe we need to go back farther then um i guess i was just trying to ask about what in a normal year when the um the first budget is proposed i remember from last year that it was also um you know needed to be refined to get down to the actual number that we were anticipating um the
102budget would be and so i was just wondering if this year was exceptionally higher than in previous years or around the same as that first budget number it's probably around the same you know but not not exactly but if you go to that slide and with the cost drivers on it one of the things there antoinette uh you know we are looking at the enrollment projections and and go the other way our enrollment projections are a couple of years old now and they've also impacted by covid hybrid haverford on you know haverford online so we're coming right out with the first budget with um probably a little more positions than we typically would have so one way that you could look at it here antoinette is to say like okay so which of these areas
103would we be looking at you know for potential potential reductions and the first that we would start at is the salaries because anything that and the salaries would be the staffing positions because if even if we changed one that will impact the um new salaries and the benefits so it you know impact both of those those lines there then we would also take a look at the charter school tuition and we'll go through student by student are there any that are you know in 12th grade you know are there any that we feel you know we're just in for this year talk with uh folks in the curriculum office who who try to talk to people before they're going into into charter schools um take a look at what what's driving that diesel fuel so
104like they're the conversations that we will start to have now and then you know if we still need to do something you know we'll look then at that capital maintenance and what's projected for capital maintenance that might be able to move into the capital committed that we had talked about um after the finance liaisons now i mean it's possible to move for instance the 300 000 capital maintenance too you know we set up this uh capital fund balance committed to capital and you could actually move you know that money to there because that's coming straight from a fund balance to the capital fund and then paid out of there so it's not part of the budget process it's a one-time expenditure and you know you look at the numbers like the 120 000 for diesel
105fuel and that's not that's probably was a an error in input and the debt service we can probably you know i'm not i'm not saying you know people put a lot of information in into these budgets and that and and it's not that you know it's easy to make a mistake or or to to um you know you multiply the gallons times the rate that the iu provides and and maybe come out with the wrong number so um we have almost you know you you have the 768 000 new salaries if you add the benefits to that that's close to 1.2 million dollars for that line item uh for new salaries so um so there that you know there's a lot to look at here it's uh um and to get that number down um
106great yeah i think that was really helpful um from both of you so i really appreciate that and i guess i just wanted to get sort of a sense of um how how how high this hurdle was to get over but it seems like it's it's not abnormal um to start here i i've been doing it 33 years every budget has been larger in january than june by a lot so that's just the way it is and it's because you're it's a site-based budget from called the bottom-up budget and it's starting from you don't take for instance you don't take every line item and multiply it by uh 2.5 and then you're done you're actually putting the budget together when all its components every individual salary is recalculated and put in at its 2122 rate
107and and uh so you're putting a lot of detail in there and and it takes time to go through the detail once it all gets accumulated and and then to look at you know what are the potential reductions there thanks bob thanks antoinette bridgette um yeah i just wanted to make a couple of comments and i appreciate dr rusci's kind of interjection of questions about enrollment and selection of you know in-person and hybrid and [Music] online and charter school because i think you know when we get a presentation that's a lot of numbers and pages of spreadsheets it's helpful to remember that like here's a list of cost drivers but the real drivers our education program and the students in our school and and what we need to provide um to support a quality education
108right so that is like understanding our enrollment um i think we'll hear soon about a demographic study that will help inform that um the salary um and the positions in the school is is based on trying to um have enough staff for different scenarios i understand this is a model um that or a budget that's presented assuming that the fall starts in more typical schools open our kids are in our buildings but i think um you know we will have to survey families and see about the you know haverford online and how many people will prefer to stay with that learning method on versus being in school and because that affects staffing i think the charter school line item here is significant and um i think it points to a reason why we as a
109district and in kind of coordination with uh school directors across the state are constantly advocating for charter school payment reform that is a big ticket item but our district isn't as adversely affected by payments to outside school providers as as many districts around us and across the state so um i think having this number in here um is important to understand um the issue of charter payments and um as dr rushi said that that kind of working with the families in our district to try to get kids to um you know choose to to come back to our schools i would say that the 300 000 of capital maintenance i i i would be a proponent of um using the reserve that we've allocated from prior year surpluses for that purpose um i just i
110think that's a you know a good use of um that surplus that we had before um and i just wanted to note that the um the debt service number i think early in the presentation you said that it's a big number um but just to put it in context um the total of 12 million dollars is less than of our budget to um you know essentially pay for us to be in our buildings which i think is not a um unreasonably large percentage or an abnormally large percentage of a school's budget to go to debt service um so just wanted to kind of put that in there that it is it is the number that's manageable and is kind of in line with um what schools allocate for um for that kind of cost of
111funding their buildings thanks bridget dave thank you yeah bridget mentioned the um the the uh the charter school tuition cost that i questioned about that as well uh bob do we do the breakdown between the cyber charter versus brick and mortar charter schools for for for that number or not it's all cyber fire that's that's all cyber okay that's what i that's kind of what i thought um and that represents i mean last year i i i'm i'm assuming that that with kovalev we saw an increase in that number from from our from our budget last year is this this is it is going off of that trend or is it going off of enrollment numbers and i'm just curious whether where the number um covet mm-hmm dulcovid pretty much i believe it's about 54
112students there's a few that are special ed and then they get the larger tuition of about 36 000 and we're seeing this in every district statewide yeah i figured you know that larry yeah that's um when you put pizza i know also just real quick uh laura crispin had a question as well she's having trouble with the hand raise button so just uh she can go to her she has something as well so sorry laura if you can't put your hand up you don't get the plug i know i know um yeah i don't have a hand raised feature anymore it's gone now i don't know where it went so i don't know if maybe i was added as a i don't know non-speaking panelist or something anyway whatever it's fine it's fine um not
113the biggest problem today um so uh bridgette and dave kind of already asked one of my questions uh which was about the charter school do we get a sense that that 640 000 is gonna kind of go back down after the pandemic or [Music] we would hope we would hope that we would hope that it would you know that it would go back down it depends on some of the reasons why people may have opted for that okay yeah i was just curious um and then i just wanted to clarify one more time the 1.5 million debt service that is for phase two of the high school plus hvac at the two elementary schools and the roof is that correct no well all of it is all of it is combined for all the projects
114the debt service slowly over a number of years for linwood for okay phase one we borrowed the money for uh linwood and phase and phase one okay but we're putting money in for uh phase two uh phase the hvac uh projects really don't the debt service doesn't kick in until the next year but it's not a large as large it's probably not even a third of this number uh and that'll be the last increase and then it'll level off for 10 to 12 years so okay great yeah i just wanted to be clear i understood all the different capital projects and kind of where they fell into this so okay good thank you for that um and then i guess my last question is about staffing costs so the staffing cost projections here are for
115sort of under normal operating conditions so does this include any i guess this current year we're using a lot more um substitute teaching than usual and so that's increasing our current staffing are we projecting that we're probably going to be doing some pandemic learning again maybe for at least some part of the the next academic year are we including any potential increases in um staff costs due to substitute teachers and things like that in this budget or not um actually not as much substitute teachers as it's i'll describe it right now as a big what if and that's what we need to narrow down so some of that is well what if we have a segment of our community who wish to remain and have referred online but it's not enough that we can reassign
116a teacher from that grade level so that's where you know we need to start getting better data and a better perspective which i know is going to be difficult because people aren't going to know right now what they you know what they will we'll be doing for september absolutely 22's budget has been put together almost like we're going back to a normal okay school year and you saw what happened with 1920 when you know when the pandemic we actually really had a lot of savings but i think there's been a lot of adjustments in 2021 so that probably you know we're probably not going to get the same amount of savings but i'm not you know i haven't really looked at the projection in that in that much detail so okay great thank you uh
117yeah those were my questions thank you thanks laura any other questions from the board bob i got a quick one for you could you just refresh my memory and tell tell us what the uh charter school tuition rates are for regular ed and special ed for the district now they're probably about 13 000 for regular ed and about 36 000 roughly i think or a little higher for uh special ed so if we had to just give a ballpark number for what it costs us to educate a kid in our online uh school you know what what's that number look like uh mr feinberg nicole can actually nicole is with us tonight uh and nicole badestelli can talk can talk about you know about those numbers okay i think sometimes when the people in the
118charter school a couple parents had called and they said well the money's following the student but really it's taking money out of the school district's budget and we're not we're not getting any uh efficiencies of scale in the sense that you know you can't say okay we can reduce a teacher because if kids are coming from all over the different buildings and stuff and going to the charter schools it's actually costing the district more money yeah yeah so the i have um unfortunately i don't have the updated pde 363 with the um cost for this current school year but last year it was twelve thousand four hundred and eighty six dollars for a student um in general education and oop it just disappeared thirty four thousand hold on one second thirty four thousand five hundred
119sixty two dollars for a student receiving special education services special eds the special ed services could be as minor as uh occasional speech and language therapy correct so yeah and last year we had roughly 12 students pre-covered out in cyber charter schools and now it's around 54 i think bob said so and that's all coveted related and mr feinberg you can remember a long time ago when i think i first presented to the school board we had about 60 students down in cyber charters charter school before um that have referred online program so we're kind of right back up to where we were when we were before we had an online program hopefully we can bring them back you know so thank you for that uh any other questions for bob bridget your hands up
120or did you just forget to put it down okay have we resolved our technical difficulties with ken matthews can you hear me yes we can ken all right we solved the problem so uh thank you just do a kind of a brief update where we are at linwood so right now you know i think everybody can see the works continuing on the facade of the building inside things are really taking shape you can see the terrazzo behind me throughout the hallways it's probably about 90 percent done other than the cafeteria area so we're really getting down to it we're in the process of negotiating the extended time with the contractors which most likely the schedule is going to slide to probably around toward the end of march to finish up most of the building um
121end of march early april so um you know the substantial completion was originally february 1st so i you know with the covid shut down that that's what really makes the slide happen so but other than that things are moving along well so um tonight we have as we normally do we're starting to finally kind of get some of these change orders processed so you do have some in front of you some are typical course some are covid related uh but wanted to see if anybody had any questions about that any one in particular excuse me questions from the board regarding the change orders um we had talked in the prior meeting about making some adjustments to the cafeteria can you just confirm that these change orders aren't yet related to that additional um modification of
122the billing no uh bridgetoes so some of those modifications are just being were just sent to the contractor so we'll start to see them trickle in now over the next two to three board meetings so that we can get uh moving with that work and try it um you know that it probably will trickle a little more into april end of april to complete that but the rest of the building will be completed ahead but you'll start to see them um very soon i have a really quick question just on the timeline um because so you know um as maybe should have been expected because of the shutdown with covet where the the timeline is sliding a little bit but um we you know that won't affect um the the building actually be completed on
123time which was the students weren't expected to be in the building until the start of the next school year so this doesn't you know i mean it changes the timeline obviously for when it's completed but it shouldn't change the timeline for getting students in the building and also being able to demolish the old building after the school year is that right that's correct that's correct none of that timeline is affected at all thank you um so then as we over at the high school uh you can see a lot more equipment out there uh really trying to get all the underground stormwater work done they'll be starting foundations here any day we had to move some things out of the way for the new new addition so we have a lot of equipment released those
124type of things so everything's trending very well at the moment uh steel is supposed to be on site by the middle of february which is hard to believe it will be here before you know it so all in all things are moving along as expected uh contractors are have been good to work with so um all all good things um and then we also uh this evening have in front of you some additional servers for kcba kind of encapsulating some of the discussions with the board and looking at the area behind the auditorium and those bathrooms so we really want to capture that area as part of the we'll call it the phase 2 music classroom wing edition work to really kind of complete that entire area of the building so that's what's in front
125of you this evening to approve kcba to continue with that work thank you ken no problem any other questions all right well thank you very much ken looks great over there at linwood it just knocks me out every time i go by the building yeah really it'll be great to see it see you come to fruition here soon all right well thanks a lot we've had a request thank you all for a brief seventh inning stretch before we continue so if you would like to you know stand up and stretch it out a little bit ready for my brain break next item on our agenda is board liaison reports and we have three of them this evening so antoinette if you want to start us off with policy don't think we've met since the last
126meeting am i missing something nope i'm not going to argue with you greg i'm right right you you are and you'll recall that we had we had been scheduled as a group for the 18th which of course was the martin luther king celebration day so we moved that so we'll be meeting on monday and you will have plenty to report to the board at the following meeting right [Laughter] okay on the finance liaisons met on the 14th um and liaisons are larry me lara and ari in addition to going through the first look at the budget which was just well covered um the other agenda item was um consultation with pfm um and they had prepared an analysis uh regarding some scenarios for the next couple of rounds of bond financing for our capital projects
127um the scenario presented just under 10 million dollars to be raised sometime this year um in the middle of the year and that would support phase two of the high school project and then this would be followed by just under seven million dollars of financing in 2022 and that would pick up the climate control projects and roof work at chatham and cooper town and all in those would complete what has been kind of 61 million dollars of financing and refinancing to get through these significant capital projects uh since late 2018. the two upcoming bonds would be structured um and this is what bob was mentioning that the annual debt service obligation kind of doesn't increase significantly with um estimates now showing it goes from like 12.3 to 12.5 million in our peak years of debt
128service carry one advantage about talking about raising money now is that the rates are very low and pfm reports that there's been a lot of demand for issuances um so the timing is right but um probably more importantly than trying to time the market exactly right is to make sure that um our capital plan aligns with the timing of the project so the phase two work at the high school and uh the liaisons wanted to make sure as as ken had mentioned the conversation about some additional improvements to include in that music fitness wing to bring in some expanded restroom capacity and and make some adjustments to storage we want to make sure that that's well scoped out so that uh when we raise the money we um have that aligned with the project um
129but uh so even if that kind of delays the timing of the proposed like 10 million dollar bond for a little bit we're still in a good position with um the amount of funding that we have available from our prior bond issuance so we we've got some time to to make sure things align um and that was the finance report thank you bridgette next up dave what do you have for us on facilities sure the cities committee uh met on tuesday so i'm sorry i didn't get a report out earlier but uh just didn't have time to um we we met with some of the with with the firm who um we have looked at for our enrollment study i think i asked a couple of questions some of the things were regarding how they
130would calculate online versus versus in school individuals indicated that school-age children coming in uh has while it's decreasing elementary school it's increasing in middle school and in high school and liaisons had an opportunity to test in a couple questions if we were to um move on with this study it would take about i believe two months to be completed so a couple of things on that um can ken and i believe bridget mentioned a little bit about some of the some of the potential additions or alterations i guess to to the face to face to high school project that would rate that would likely raise the cost of that project by about 550 000 um but it would result probably in a better overall product it would increase the size of the bathrooms um and
131add at a including adding a new uh whole new bathrooms and dinner neutral bathrooms there also would be a some light touch fixes on the existing bathrooms near the entrance and timeline for that if we are able to get some quotes and bids in this year i believe we would do that probably around the fall we could probably get this going by the summer of uh 22 to 23. so this is just a timeline on on that some of the other improvements by the way would also be new green rooms so students who are about to perform would not be waiting in the hallway outside the auditorium in high school if you're familiar with that whole situation so a couple of good things right now we are still in preliminary phases kcba is getting a
132of the change orders is to give them some more money for the for the design and construction drawings for those improvements um and so more on that to more on that to come thank you dave appreciate that okay budget transfers i'll accept the motion to approve budget transfers in the amount of forty three thousand eight hundred dollars moved in second any discussion it's a roll call vote bob we can't hear you bob dr chrisman yes uh mr fleischer yes um miss larson still is is she here or no no okay uh miss mingy yes mr sinto yes mr schwartz yes miss snodgrass yes the sweden yes and mr feinberg yes eight voting yes thank you bob i'll accept the motion to approve disbursements from the following from the funds as listed mad grass moved him
133in second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to accept the recommendation of the new linwood elementary school project architect kcba and associates inc and the owner's representative cb development services inc and authorized the change orders as listed minji second moved in second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve the additional services with kcba architects for the haverford high school project at a cost of forty one thousand eight hundred dollars chris schwartz second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you i'll accept a motion to approve the accelerated budget opt-out resolution certifying the tax rate within the inflation index for the 2021-22 school year moved crisp one second moved
134in second any discussion can someone just explain that opt out yeah thank you larry what is that opt out please for the benefit of the community since we're not going to exceed the act 1 index we're stating that we're not going to exceed the act 1 index if if if we were then there's a different timeline because we would have to put that out uh to the public for a possible referendum vote and we're saying that we're we're not doing that we're saying saying our tax ceiling is 2.6 percent okay in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to accept uh the retirements and resignations as listed moved in second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to accept the appointments as listed minji move
135crisp moved in second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve the family and medical uh leave act leaves of absence including ffcora subject to receipt of and consistent with requirement documentation as listed oh pleasure second moved in second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve the 2021 negotiated agreement between the school district of haverford township and the education support personnel association effective july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2022 and authorized the proper officers of the board to execute the said agreement subject to legal review minji move question second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve the resolution to vaccinate our educators now minji second moved
136in second any discussion i just want to say thanks for putting this together it's really important so um thank you great i was just gonna ask that um some of the highlights of this appeal be shared with the public at this time uh this is in concert with the community message that we sent out yesterday uh looking for respectful and responsible advocacy on the part particularly of um of delaware county the superintendents throughout delaware county in conjunction with chester county health department and the delaware county intermediate unit have been working for many weeks now coming up with a plan to vaccinate that we've identified four locations across the county uh identified you know there will be staff from each district on coming to support that so we were not relying solely on county help to
137get that up and running and the health department very you know very supportive of those efforts with a calendar all planned out um and now are being told you know that we will not have the vaccines and it's not not even given a date as to when we can move our plans forward and i think everyone knows that the vaccines are an important part of a process for returning to education i want to thank in particular our colleague my superintendent colleague william penn who did the heavy lift in terms of putting this together and then sending it out to all of us and asking for you know for input there's a lot of that that's been happening for the last 10 months where we each you know take things and one or a few people
138get it started and then you know get it out to everybody and there's a lot of teamwork across the county which has been a nice outcome it was a topic of conversation at a at the delaware legislative council meeting their delaware county legislative council meeting and have the support of all the board members present to um participate in this kind of resolution yep all in favor hi any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion uh to approve the board statement condemning the january 6 attack on the capital any discussion can can we read this out so people know what this is i it looks like a draft i have i mean is this the final just because there's a bunch of comments in it actually this this is a draft is this not for a
139vote this evening no i thought this was just on as a as a discussion item i didn't see the wording to a print to approve it um sorry about that because it is it is in a draft format um this was this is a draft format uh as our board members know uh ms larson mr schwartz uh took the initiative similar to what i was explaining superintendents have been doing across the county uh you know took the initiative to put together a statement um shared it with board members individuals you know could provide comment to them and the process is to ultimately you know bring back what we think would be representative of either the majority or as close to plurality uh and feedback that was pre you know that was provided uh you know
140for the for those uh yes what we have is is some comment the i i did receive an email from ms larson earlier um i think she was also under the interpretation under the impression that it was going to be discussed tonight um however you know in a follow-up email she was anxious that we would get you know a statement uh you know to get a statement out um but i'm not sure what to do by the fact that as we said there are comments on it it still is in still is in draft you know draft format i don't know mr schwartz if there's any addition i mean i i think the intention was to discuss it prior to um prior to to to this meeting uh frankly we um we we allowed things
141to talk about this evening prior executive session we think into it so um i'm i'm i'm happy to leave it out there in draft form for for the public to re to look over and if we could release it though um after addressing some of those comments this i mean the sooner the better it's we unfortunately weren't able to get statement out before our last meeting because literally the inspection happened the day before our our our board meeting so but yes i i we we keep it out there for for for the public but but i wouldn't suggest that we release this officially prior to on this board meeting because it's gonna be two more weeks so the sooner the better i would say but i would be okay with leaving in drafts for right
142now and then finalizing it tomorrow or early next week wait well we can't send it out unless we vote on it right i mean it's arrested right right well okay i mean final product do we yeah so i i just want to just want to um clarify the the statement can sit there you know for ongoing board and you know board input uh you know for ongoing board discussion about that typically a statement like this is not put out for public input you know prior to this would be the work you know the work of the board again i want to stress you would individually be providing input the discussion could not occur in executive session it is it would have to you know it it occurs in the context of a public meeting once
143those you know once the input is gathered from each of the members and then some type of consensus or majority plurality is you know is reached around the document and then you would have your discussion uh at the meeting about that all right so we're going to push this off um and uh i'd encourage board members to submit their their uh comments um as as expeditiously as possible and we'll circle back to kristen and dave once there's once there's a consensus document all right uh board reports antoinette um thanks yeah um just really quickly i just want to thank um dr rushi for her statement at the beginning of the meeting today and the commitment the ongoing commitment to the basis work equity work um anti-racist work that that we as a community i think
144um really are proud of um and i just want to again reiterate my uh support as a board member for that ongoing work for the district so um thank you for making that definitive statement and um thank you for the ongoing work in that area oh and i really wanted to say sorry that i really enjoyed the um the our music scholars today um i think it's really sad one of the things that covet has taken from our young musicians is playing together and so it was really really nice to hear the creative ways that they are still continuing their art and and excelling at it so um thank you for also bringing that in front of the board that was a really that was a treat thanks antoinette ari i second that antoinette thank
145you for thanking dr rushi in the administration and the basis work sarah christensen the parent guardian equity team for making have for the best community in school and out of school that it can possibly be understanding the limitations around vaccinations and social distancing requirements by the state and chester county health department i just want to really reiterate my support for expanding or or reevaluating analyzing and revisiting the current instructional model and any ways that we can as a district expand the number of hours and numbers of days that students get in class instruction i just want to voice my uh my support for that thanks arin dave going to order here so i um yes i also would would like to give my congratulations to armies of scholars that that was great to see them
146this evening and also second what antoinette and ari both said about you know dr ruschi thank you very much for your statement in support uh basis this evening uh i also would would echo my support for basis and the parent guardian equity group again you know what we saw on the sixth indicates a need for these kinds of programs these are two these are to make a welcoming environment for for all students that is there that is their purpose so they there's not some other agenda there's not some political agenda it is trying to make schools a safe looking place for kids i just i'm i'm so glad that dr ruschi was able to have a few minutes to reiterate that this evening like to just stress that to all members of the community well
147thanks a lot thanks dave also congratulate i'm sorry also congratulations on our new president joseph r biden as well just inaugurated just um yesterday so like the fireworks thanks dave laura yes uh thanks um so as everyone has already said dr rushy yes thank you for your comments at the beginning um it was impactful um and i appreciate those those words um and sarah and all of your hard work for basis and the parent equity team um thank you and i look forward to continuing this work with all of you and you have my support um congrats to the pmei students um i it's got to be really hard like antoinette said to uh to you know play a musical instrument or be in a choir when you can't be together um but i'm glad
148that these students were able to make it work somehow and be resilient and be recognized for their excellence um for everyone involved in a new student registration i know it was a little different this year but on my end it went really well so thank you for all involved um it was really it was really smooth so i'm sure it was a lot of hard work but it seemed easy on my end so i guess all the hard work paid off um and then the last thing um i was very glad to be a part of the zoom call was it friday i think it was last friday um with our new senator-elect uh amanda capoletti and um larry was there dr rushi was there bridget was there um and superintendents and school board members
149from all over her uh district so i was glad to be part of that conversation um i know that although she's not on the education committee she is an advocate for public education and i think she'll be a strong voice for us and for all the districts in her area so um you know that was it was nice to to hear from her and uh especially um with her background in public health i'm hopeful that you know she can bring a strong voice for getting more vaccines rolling um and getting this pandemic under control a little bit so anyway thank you thanks laura sal there are a couple things on the psba uh liaison front there is going to be another advocacy day on i'm just going to look this up here so i don't
150mess it up march 22nd and the registration for that is on psba's website and that is is free to be a part of that so if anyone's interested in joining for that either reach out to me or just go to the psba website to check that out one other item so pspa is providing members with complete coverage of the governor's budget proposal and they are asking if you would like to plan to join them the next day february third at noon for an hour-long budget complementary webinar bringing data and analysis on uh the budget in terms of advocacy so that information is also on pspa's website and we can provide you with that if you're interested just a quick congratulations as well to our pmea members yeah i do believe that those students are selected
151from among students in delaware chester and philadelphia counties to be to have that honor so there are quite a few number of students that typically would audition for that and so it is it is quite an honor and i also wanted to say thank you for our mask and i will try to not use this mask to cut my hole in to play the the uh wind instrument so i'll try to keep this one to the side and preserve it intact so thank you thanks sal susan uh first of all i would also like to thank dr rushi for making a statement that i hope everyone understands we all agree with and we were all very supportive and very energized by her statement uh the second thing i would like to say tonight is and
152i know i talk about my experience a lot but having been in classrooms in haverford township for 40 years and listening to all the words and the language that we heard tonight i just specifically would like every single person who's listening to know that while a teacher might teach math history social studies you might might teach science might teach music or art they're always teaching kindness they're always modeling fairness and they're always talking about respect so those are not things that we selectively pull from anywhere that is basically who we are and i'm proud very proud to represent haverford township thank you thanks susan bridget i also want to um appreciate dr ricci's remarks at the beginning i thought they could have been said at the beginning of the meeting and then following public comment
153and and maybe here to wrap us up at the end um and i loved having the music students on um too bad we didn't get a chance to hear some of their musical talents hopefully there's another format for that soon um this um as we were able to be recognized and celebrate is um uh school director appreciation month and um i know this time of covit has drawn a lot more community attention to the school board a lot more interest in the working of the school board um our board will be doing some work to kind of do an assessment make sure we're following best practices for how boards function and governance um and we'll be able to report out on that soon but it is also a time to start thinking about um if
154anyone in the community has interest in um serving the school board um psba is doing a training there was one today or yesterday but there is um opportunities on monday the 25th at noon and 4 to learn about um the role and and function of a school board and the directors that you know i think i would say what it really takes is the commitment to public education and an interest in in serving the community and we are um we are led now with um a great group of directors but if someone in the community has an interest in serving please do some checking out of the psba resources to learn what's involved we're hoping you know that we continue to have a school board that's well staffed with committed people who have the best
155interest of public education and bring a diverse set of skills and experiences that reflect our district i've been spending a lot of time as larry mentioned there's just um a lot of different meetings um i went to the psba essentials of board leadership the first of a four-part series um to uh um you know as a vice president of the board to talk about governance and advocacy um building consensus communication evaluation um i was at uh the senator capiletti meeting i attended the psba weekly buzz and the delco legislative council and um a lot of the topics and themes are the same the need to advocate for resources to concerns about special education and charter reform and at this moment the vaccines came to the top but i also wanted to bring up how in
156all of these forums local here in delaware county or statewide the psba annual conference there is a theme of equity that is driving our work it is um this conversation feels like it's happening you know here in haverford township it is a broad priority across the education landscape in all forums it's it is not a unique or locally crafted kind of program it is foundational to what public education means and i think the the comments that we hear from the um community uh just redouble my effort to um support basis and the work that we're doing in our township to to be inclusive and welcoming and supportive of all of our students and their unique needs and gifts and to have students that are trained here and learn by example of how to navigate in
157a diverse and complex world and taverford i think is doing a good job of that has more work to do and we are in partnership as i said with um every educational forum that we're in um learning together on on how to improve this work and and make this movement um something that benefits students everywhere thanks bridget um i want to thank my fellow board members and and also dr rishi um and i'd like to thank the members of the community who took the time to contact us in support of the program i'd also like to ask the district if we might be able to reach out to the folks who it seems misunderstand what the program is and what the purpose of it is and invite them to please take some time and attend
158our february 18th meeting uh where sarah will describe the program more in depth and perhaps it'll be a beneficial educational experience for those folks there's been a lot going on legislatively last week i i met participated in three meet and greet sessions with psba with three new state senators in the area gail saval in philadelphia senator kane who took senator killian's spot and also senator capoletti earlier in the week of uh i met with a couple of senator capiletti's staffers uh just to talk in general uh about the education environment um they uh [Music] i invited them to attend our legislative delco legislative council meeting which was held yesterday morning and uh three of three of her staffers uh came to that meeting which was great and i have a feeling uh that at least
159will get some representation in that legislative meeting regularly um uh in addition to the delaware county legislative council meeting yesterday morning i also attended the legislative meeting at the montgomery county iu last night there was a new state representative there napoleon nelson who previously served i think for six years on the cheltenham school board so he'll be a a great addition to the house education committee uh in harrisburg uh for us uh also want to mention that senator carney who's not our state senator but i believe represents nine or ten delco districts has been appointed to the senate education committee his chief of staff has been attending our legislative meetings in delaware county uh for the past two years so um that's great we're going to have some uh very well uh versed uh uh
160public ed supporters uh on on those committees uh from our area um i guess last but not least uh today uh i also uh was in a couple of meetings one is uh psba's charter reform task force uh we've met uh once a week for i guess the past month or so and probably for another month or so and we're we're trying to put together uh practical feasible recommendations for legislation on charter reform and it's a good group it's statewide a real variety of districts urban suburban rural rich poor and we're making good progress so hopefully in another month or so we'll have an end product and later this afternoon i met with the pa schools work coalition to get a briefing on the school funding lawsuit that's been in the works for a couple
161of years now uh it sounds like they expect it to come to actually come before commonwealth court in the spring or the summer um and that's been an ongoing saga in pennsylvania for for a long time um we're blessed to be in a well-funded school district uh the meetings that bridget and i attend regularly we're with school directors from districts that are not as fortunate and they're not able to provide their students with the same kinds of resources that we take for granted so that this school funding lawsuit is uh is very important and i'm hopeful that it'll raise some consciousness in the legislature and we'll see some good results all right it's quarter after 10. the board met an executive session to consult with council on personnel matters and pending litigation and i was
162just prior to the board meeting this evening and why we were a few minutes late our next regular public board meeting is february 4th 2021 same zoom place same zoom time 7 30. and with that uh thank everybody and i will accept a motion to adjourn and move thanks all have a good one night good night good night everybody