Virtual School Board Meeting - December 17, 2020

001live on youtube and we are we are now broadcasting um mr feinberg if we just want to wait for the attendees to join yeah we'll give them a couple of minutes now okay good evening everybody i'd like to call the meeting to order welcome to the december 17th board business and conference meeting of school district of haverford township if we could rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republican republic it still stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice justice for all mr riegel could you call the roll please okay dr crispin here mr fleischer here miss larson here miss minji here mr sinto here mr schwartz here miss snodgrass here miss wiedemann here mr feinberg here thank you

002bob i'll accept the motion to approve the official minutes from the december 3rd uh 2020 regular public board meeting and 10 moves larson ii moved in second any discussion in favor any opposed motion carries thank you i'll accept a motion to approve the official minutes from the december 7 annual reorganization meeting second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you next item on our agenda is public comment and i understand you have a few for us today we have a few yes um i'll start with the first one the first one is from a group of um from the community so i'll read all their names first and then i'll read their their letter um from sarah mccafferty yvonne fabella stacy joseph fitzgibbons kathy and michael golightly

003lauren hilferty joanna branch casey sachetti mara mclarney elena carroll hannah vernon latonya king katie norton lisa allen larry sterling cora pinock beth klaus julie kimsey carroll chris shelton krista mallett patricia neville's sharon and joe pennock michelle collier krista kerber rebecca phelan jennifer pearson winterley elizabeth cook kimberly presnell and benjamin lieberman margaret and robert ledbetter and shannon corrin dear president feinberg and members of the board we are writing in strong supportive basis the parent guardian equity team and the initiatives of the school district has taken in recent years to create a learning community that welcomes and embraces students and families of all races ethnicities genders sexual orientations abilities religions and other variances teaching children the value of fairness inclusion and appreciation of others and difference is essential it and not a political act the fact that

004some community members object to the goals of inclusivity and belonging shows the necessity for basis and is all the more reason why the school district needs to be committed to them we also want to voice our belief that the parent guardian equity team should be a safe and brave space for the school district community members to work together towards these goals in solidarity our next one is from michael and deborah merning at 1107 garfield avenue in havertown pa dear school dear the school district of harford township we as taxpayers and concerned residents are seeking to have the children of harvard school district educated we desire to have the students learn their abcs in 123's mathematics reading writing science and history are all crucial to creating critical thinkers encouraging children to ask questions is necessary to

005encourage learning in public education we understand that kindness inclusivity and equity matter but the children of the haverford school district need to be educated not indoctrinated your policies in recent years have been harmful to some students and in fact have not been client inclusive nor equitable your belonging and social cultural identities in schools basis program has strong ties to political theories and agendas we do not believe all of these theories are developmentally appropriate for children and they are not settled wisdom nor do we appreciate that not all views are being incorporated into the curriculum as the district moves to fast track the basis program we desire to have detailed information and transparency to your current agenda a group of parents was chosen to be on a panel for the parent equity guard parent guardian equities

006team these parents guardian's name should be shared with the community the breakdown of each parent who signed up to participate in the group needs to be publicly provided the number of funds being spent on the basis program needs to be described in detail and shown to the public our children are not being educated what is now occurring in this school district k-12 is redirecting our children away from basic academics and towards an academic environment of learning that is divisive and destructive we want our children to go back to the basics where kindness and what unifies us matters please leave it to the parents to teach their children values regards the next one is from lauren elliser at willow brook road habertown hello to dr ricci and the members of the school board my letter relates

007to the school district's basic program i would like to request that parents receive detailed and specific information regarding the basis lesson plan that will be discussed to our children in school before such discussions occur specifically i would like to know the concepts that will be discussed i would like to see the videos that will be shown and the print material that will be given to students etc it is possible that there will be times when the basis agenda presented in schools does not perfectly align with the core values taught at home this can lead to confusion in students confusion that parents may not be aware of unless their child decides to say something about it as parents my husband and i would like to have the opportunity to have proactive conversations with our children regarding

008what they will hear in school rather than reactive i hope that the school district will always present all aspects of the basis lesson to parents before it is presented to the students thank you this is from alexis pasternak at 609 woodland drive dear school district of harford township we as concerned community members comprised of parents guardians and taxpayers kindly request the school board of the harvard school district create a policy to protect the rights of parents and guardians as the harriford school district works to advance its mission of socio-cultural proficiency by means of the basis program curriculum and instruction we are asking for a written policy that notifies parents and guardians and requires a parent guardian consent signature when any controversial topics are going to be taught in school parents and guardians want to notice

009along with information on the prescribed lessons some examples of controversial topics we are asking for notification are brain pops blm protest video the new york times and nicole hannah jones 1916-19 project any police brutality discussion below grade 10 critical race theory and any anti-racism lessons for grades k-12 we like we would like them to be written specifically into the policy or we are requesting more emphasis to be placed on critical thinking and discussions through balance lessons not out of context lessons or instructions which appear to have an agenda and where students don't feel as though they can truly speak their mind and or feel they must self-censor we are requesting 90 percent of our students graduate high school on grade level reading the mental and emotional well-being of all students should be at the forefront

010of the haverford school district's policies and practices that you choose to implement we do not feel that that is what is occurring the harvard school district recently chose a group of parents who were supposed to be representative of the 6 400 students you service to make changes to curriculum and we are requesting this motion for a policy be carried out immediately we have a diverse group of learners in this school district and we are asking you to educate based on actual data not theories we are looking at specific data to support education not theories we desire the same thing as you do for our children to be proactive and caring members of society it is time each child no matter their race ethnicity religion or class is represented educated and supported thank you for your

011time next um comment is from marianne butera at 17 with croft road elected board members oh yeah elected board members i am truly distraught over the fact that the school district continues to choose to spend our tax payer dollars on unnecessary litigation in an unjust fight against hard-working cat retired residents while cutting necessary resources for our students taxpayers should be aware that although you claim to be committed to protecting the school district's quality of academic programs and have stated that every attempt has been made to adequately fund these priorities your 2020 21 final budget includes a 1.7 million dollar in reductions including a 10 reduction in supplies delaying the purchase of new textbooks delaying the purchase of new school buses and facilities equipment delaying the hiring of a new psychologist secondary teacher and a human

012resources manager the combination of two administrative vacancies of the high school into one position the reduction of substitutes at the high school delaying the purchase of new ipads at the elementary level and delaying for one year all professional development for staff this is completely unacceptable because you are willing to spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to pay your attorney scott cadell and your expert appraiser jack coyle whose advice you have listened to without truly understanding what appeals involved when the money could be used to better the education of our children the school board should be fighting for our students not against lifelong community members the fact remains that your expert appraiser has found the entire reassessment basically falls filing appeals against 24 residential properties is not going to fix those fundamental flaws and tolerance

013reassessment what is truly concerning is that no additional revenue will be acquired from these appraisals the only people that stand to gain from this are scott goodell and jack coyle while our students education suffers scott goodell's statement to me regarding these appeals i would be pissed off if this was me as indicative of how truly unfair the appeals are again there will be no need to be upset if this was a fair process but it is not as you know furthermore i questioned greg parker's role in our district as a full-time general counsel when the law firm whistler pearlstein has served as our district solicitor for the past two years why is the district paying a solicitor in addition to several other law firms i.e special education and labor council we have an in-house general

014counsel who's compensated over 190 000 annually what is even more concerning is that according to our records while greg parker was a full-time employee in our district hired in 2012 his media based law firm catania parker served as district solicitors per written fee agreement from at least 2010 through 2018. although i requested all the records from the school district pertaining to greg parker's employment and contagion parker the fee agreements from each year between the district of kentangia and parker appear to be missing i would be appreciative being provided with these agreements in a timely matter i would also appreciate the district providing me with the documents i formally requested on october 6 regarding the assessment repeat appeals and financial records and statements from any and all board and or district solicitors or paid consultants including

015but not limited to holstein and associates and coil lynch and company we're in the midst of a pandemic people are struggling to make ends meet and you have chosen to attempt to destroy our hard-earned accomplishments you continue to ignore the uniformity standards of the pa constitution thus violating our equal protection rights by applying the law how you see fit there is still time to do the right thing for not only the homeowners you have unfairly targeted but for the students as every single taxpayer should be allocated to the re every taxpayer cent should be allocated to the resources necessary for them to receive the education they deserve rather than on attorneys and appraisers who are the only ones benefiting from these um our next email is from helen conroy smith at 32 westbrook park drive

016habertown pa hello as the district advances their social justice program under basis and belonging the community members request a board policy in addition to protecting the rights of the parents we ask for a written policy that notifies parents and requires apparent consent signatures when any controversial topics are taught in school parents want to notice along with the information on the prescribed lesson the community asks specifically for lessons from brainpop's blm video 1619 project by the nyt's group inclusive of nicole hannah jones reframing of history any police brutality discussions below grade 10 critical race theory and any anti racism lessons for grades k through 12 be part of the notification and written to the policy however chose a group of parents who represented the 6400 students who serve to make changes to the curriculum and move

017towards indoctrination as taxpayers we are requesting this motion be carried out immediately we desire our children to be productive caring members of society we are requesting 90 of our students graduate high school and grade level for reading we are requesting the board place more emphasis on critical thinking not indoctrination literacies we have a diverse group of learners in this district so we are asking you to educate them we are looking at a specific data to support education not theories it's time each child is represented and educated i did offer to volunteer my time to be on the volunteer board of parents for social and emotional information succession with dr dodie and was not chosen i am not surprised as we can all agree i have been calling this district out for blocking out parents from

018other point for other points of view also i've asked for the parental names of 30 contributors to the volunteer group to be released i was told that information will not be shared unless the parents agree if you have nothing to hide open this group up to all parents 146 signed up to volunteer as some parents do deserve to have a voice you see we graciously allowed your agenda critical race theorem abram kenzie's work is divisive and others want no part in his teachings many others in the field of academia liking candy's work to a new religion religion is not permissible in public schools taxpayers do not taxpayers do have a voice you are purposely taking the voice away from the conservative community i do not want this for my children in a public school regards

019that's the end of public comment thank you anna next item on our agenda is student reports i understand that we have a video from ian slavich and then we'll welcome erica borby from the high school uh we we do mr feinberg i'll start that right now good evening everyone i am ian slavik and i would like to thank the board for allowing me to present this evening our her school community he collected over 400 toys for our annual shop toy drive we hope our efforts have made it it's some needy children happy the hms coffee cart club which i am a member of will be up again operating after the winter holiday break we will be here providing free coffee after our staff as a token of our appreciation of their hard work we are

020all looking forward to the winter break i hope both of you that you who are as well thank you for [Music] thank you all oh and please please enjoy the holiday it break thank you to the board nerd for allowing me to present and if you watch the meeting later thank you for your presentation and we wish you and your family uh happy holidays and a good winter break also next erica borby from the high school good evening staff students and members of the board i'm erica burby and i am excited to be presenting tonight while there has been a temporary hold on all in-person extracurricular activities there has been nutritive age pride in the halls of hampton high school drama club live streamed this year's play virtually on youtube on saturday december 12th i

021hope you all tuned in as the 100th subscriber was awarded a free drama club mask in addition to that nhs hosted their annual holiday gift pride for families in the nursing community student senate also coordinated the toilet drive that put together kits containing toothbrushes band-aids and other essentials that will be distributed by our social workers and kendra's our school newspaper the foreign and entertaining articles with my professional favorites being the articles that cover virtual learning through the eyes of an educator painting inc club is also up and running and are accepting poetry photographs short stories and other creative pieces for the class of 2021 this week has been a long awaited occasion for many early action and early decision students congratulations to all my peers who received their college decisions these past few weeks and

022i am proud to say we have awards being accepted to tough universities such as japan and colombia as the students keep rolling in i am certain that our senior class will continue to achieve greatness last but certainly not least i think you could safe to say that our community certainly enjoyed the snow day tonight it was so wonderful seeing neighborhoods come alive with children of all ages having snowball fights slamming and evening talking about highways everywhere i looked laughter filled our streets and there was so much during the year and i was reminded that even in these unprecedented times there's still so much love to be found in hammertown thank you for allowing me the chance to present tonight i will wish everyone safe and happy holidays thank you erica i think everybody enjoyed the

023snow day today children parents teachers staff so i hope everybody did and thank you for your report the next item on the agenda my understanding is that the high school fall athlete recognition has been uh deferred to a future meeting that is correct mr feinberg to the january 7th meeting so we will look forward to seeing those students that evening great thanks dr ushi next i'd like to welcome gene kasner from the chester county health department gene welcome back we really appreciate the times that you've spent with us already and we're happy to welcome you back my pleasure my pleasure i understand uh board and staff that you uh have at least three topics for me to cover so i'm going to cover those i can take some questions about those or uh you know

024field additional questions that may not have made it on the list so let me just bring up my list and we'll start uh from the top in no particular order uh so in school transmission uh so that's the topic i wanna i'll cover it and then if there's additional questions i'll be happy to help understand it so in-school transmission is when we through case investigation identified that individuals in the same cohort whether that's a team or a pod or a classroom have become positive with covid and have no other exposure risk that can be associated with being positive except for being connected to the first person in the cohort who has become positive so they don't have anyone at home they didn't participate in extracurricular activities they didn't attend a family event or a wedding

025etc so and that's the value of the case investigation and when when we do the investigation and there are there's nothing else to explain it then we ha you know by default have to link it to that original uh case uh in that cohort so that's what we call in-school transmission and the chester county health department's guidance for a very long time has defined in-school transmission as two or more cases that fit that criteria so two or more positives that have no other connection or household connection other than each other and therefore they're related uh so two or more typically what we do is when we see two it raises our eyebrows at the health department to say we you know we should be watching this and let's see what evolves from it when we

026get a third case if that case is then connected to the other two is when we're generally reaching out and saying okay tell us what's going on here i mean we've already talked about the first two cases but we're coming back to look for a little bit more information talk to us about the environment tell us where these kids were is this contained in a particular area of the school is it is it all adults just children etc um and we had actually had a you know an opportunity to do that in your cooper town school and what we originally were thinking is these are just some cases that are starting to come up once we did the investigations when we determined that these cases are related and therefore worked with uh your staff to

027appropriately quarantine that uh portion of the building which is pretty well contained already so it was a perfect example i apologize that you had to live that example of how something kind of grew because we had people in quarantine and they were becoming positive uh the the silver lining here is that the school did exactly what they were supposed to do they moved people appropriately into quarantine and then as they were in quarantine they became positive so they weren't continuing to expose your student and staff population both you know both the young and the older ones involved in it so uh you know difficult um you know scenario to have to run through you you always you know there's no pleasure in quarantining a large group of individuals but it was the right move to

028do and it has certainly contained and that's what we do we are never trying to prevent a hundred percent of covet in your schools we can't do that we have to be realistic but we absolutely are trying to limit it and that was a really classic example uh and maureen i know i've used your example to you know relay the the value of the partnership between the value of that um investigation piece and how it was caught pretty quick and and appropriately dealt with so thank you for all your staff's effort on that uh particular scenario you're welcome absolutely uh so do you want to take question you want to go question topic by topic with questions or would you like me to keep rolling i am here for you i think if you don't

029mind doing it doing the topics because it just they were some topics that people had mentioned and then sure the board members may have questions be happy to uh okay so the next topic is the state of contact tracing uh so in our uh recent guidance we updated it to kind of expand upon a second strategy within uh contact tracing so i'm not sure if everybody remembers but in the early stage of the pandemic when cases got so high uh we we public health in general realized that the information we were getting from contact tracing was starting to be diluted it was starting to lose its value because people couldn't give enough information to trace back where their infection may have occurred or started uh and there were so many contacts of people that the

030time to get through them was becoming increasingly difficult and their you know that it so our their circles were becoming so wide that everybody was connected to everybody and it was really becoming uh less of a strategy and more of uh an exercise um to follow so we're in that scenario again because of such high numbers now back before we just stopped entirely and this time because we've have enough under our belt and we have additional strategies to use we didn't stop it we moved it into a secondary strategy which we're calling contact notification so when the when the county is in uh very high and high transmission we're doing contact notification when it's in low and moderate we're doing contact tracing so the difference is really who's doing part of the work so with

031contact tracing you all know that all the names come to the health department and whether it's through automation or a personal phone call we're notifying every close contact of every positive now what we are doing and we're doing it with schools we're doing it with businesses we're doing it with uh faith-based organizations we're doing it with everybody the the individual who is being sent home is getting the information about how who to contact and how and what information to give them so then they can do you know move themselves into quarantine uh so it's it's kind of finding that happy medium of we don't want to just stop it entirely let's leverage those who are positive to notify their own and we found a lot of people were already doing it because in our case

032investigation of our general public a lot of people are saying don't worry i already told them all and and i'll be honest with you we we got the most contacts through the school systems because they trusted you to give information that then came to the health department so from a school community standpoint you guys were already doing part of contact trace so we created you know we get we gave each school district our standard quarantine letter on letterhead with all of the guidance in it so as you're sending an individual home uh as a close contact whether it's a confirmed one or suspected one they're getting their quarantine letter right away with all the same guidance they would have heard from us on the phone which i am super fortunate to be you know working

033with schools because you're doing it to the best degree we're really you know if you can imagine a restaurant doing this probably not but your investment in uh you know the safety and health of your students and staff i mean it's working it's working and this is just continuing it so so it's the contact tracing the very traditional that you've heard all along and the contact notification at some point i expect that we'll say dear schools we would like to have those contacts come to the health department and then we'll continue the way it you know the the traditional uh contact tracing so what we did then at the health department is we moved all of our contact tracers into case investigators because now we have more staff who can accommodate getting the case investigations

034done predominantly the 18 and younger and then the 65 and older and then there's a team that kind of works in that middle group as well so that's uh contact tracing with contact notification added on to it and then the last of the three topics was coveted testing in schools uh when we think it may begin uh so this is this is a great and new uh topic and i assume it is about uh the antigen testing and not uh the traditional pcr testing is that correct maureen that is correct great uh so a lot of uh good energy around this initiative uh and you may have heard that it is kind of the brainchild of chop policy lab uh and part of their um you know their their engagement has really been taking it

035to the state and ultimately taking it to the federal coveted task force in shining the light on the needs for testing in our school communities so this test it is a a point of care test it is a rapid test and it is a test that is administered using a small swab that goes up to about the mid nasal uh that swab then is rubbed onto kind of like a credit card uh sized uh instrument and reagent is put on it you wait 15 minutes and you're looking to see if there is a line indicating positive or negative so the power of this test is uh twofold and these are really the two objectives of the initiative one is to test of course with appropriate consent any individual who is on your campus who for

036whatever reason you're sending home related to covid so before they go home or even shortly after they go home you will know if they are antigen positive which means they have a a significant enough viral load in their body to detect the presence of copen they may not be showing signs or symptoms yet so that's strategy or objective one the second objective is to leverage it uh i mean we'd love to leverage it across the entire school population to uh have ongoing monitoring of uh and detection of positives so it's typically called sentinel surveillance uh since we can't do everybody we're gonna we would advocate we start with the staff that is teachers building administrators facility staff it doesn't matter all staff getting tested once a week every week so this anagen test is really

037good for objective number one it is good for objective number two as long as we can have consistency in testing each week as soon as we start to break some of that consistency we lose some of the value of the test um and what that second objective does is it catches a person a little bit sooner than we might see anything coming across as um signs or symptoms of coping we may catch them a couple days earlier and get them home sooner before their uh you know risk of exposing others increases so there's value in both there's planning going on for both strategies the health department is doing the lead planning with uh chop policy lab and chop policy lab is bringing a lot of assets to the table not only the test kits but

038also confirmatory pcr tests that are also rapid follow-up where needed training materials they're doing the training etc so the timing of it is up and coming our goal is to have enough of it in place to start some schools uh in that january 11 week we know a lot of schools aren't back until then we know there's parts of it that you're going to have to look at your solicitor may have to review the consent form etc uh we're fine we just need to give ourselves a deadline so we're ready uh and if schools want to start to stagger it out that's more than fine you this is not a requirement it's just another tool in the toolbox i think it's a great way to kick off the new year to say that we have

039a tool to help monitor and bridge us until that vaccine is getting in the arms of our educators so january 11 is our target we uh we are working regionally so you you may have heard that montgomery county and bucks county are currently doing pilots they're doing pilots on various aspects of the initiative uh the data system is not done being uh integrated into this we're hoping that happens next week so we are quite frankly selfishly taking all of the lessons learned from those two pilots that are kind of building it as they're using it and listening in and implementing them in for our kickoff in uh january i know at least montgomery county will also be pushing out a little bit further in uh january as well so that it's an exciting opportunity uh

040and has some some good value as long as you know we we uh remain consistent with the ongoing and we make sure we get the right information in the hands of uh students and staff who are uh engaging in it so i hope i covered it uh but certainly you know you guys always teach me with your questions so what questions do you have thank you gene and while the board members are are putting their questions together i also want to thank you for mentioning that with the testing you realize there are many steps but not only at your level but also at the district level in terms of not just with the solicitor looking at a consent form but even starting right from right at the lowest level of how does this occur who

041administers the test right what's that process so i just don't want that for any of our colleagues who may be listening i don't want people to think that we already have a plan in place not you know to to roll this out um this continues to be an item of discussion on our our weekly calls um at which you know gene is is a part with the other school districts in the county so thank you for mentioning um that there are additional steps to looking at that yeah we uh and quite frankly we we opted out of doing any december piloting because there's a lot we have to put in place i mean we have uh several hundred thousand of these tests sitting for both counties that we had to actually get into our uh

042possession so there's uh and and part of my goal is to not just have it drop at maureen's doorstep but do that planning this is what my team does all the time do the planning get the critical information from the schools tweak that plan get some feedback uh and roll it out it's not a race it's another tool it's nor is it the uh you know the silver bullet we still have to stick with all the other uh measures that are in place this is an an opportunity to identify positives a little sooner uh and the the state is providing the health department with a different allotment of these cards to use in other settings so what we learn from schools is going to be huge in how we may use it in a day

043care or with a first responder squad etc but yeah there's still a lot to put in place which is why i just had to put brakes on trying to do a a pilot uh and you know i know there's eagerness to get it going but we got to get it going right you don't need a healthcare provider to do it on site uh access to one yes a school nurse or someone from my staff will operate off under the health department's direction our medical standing order our license will allow this to be done in schools once the secretary of health um you know puts that in writing but we've already put a lot of those pieces in place and the barriers seem to be you know overcome which is why there's some renewed excitement around

044this just recently that third key barrier has just been addressed so i'm happy to be a part of it and it's going to be a learning experience but i think it's going to be a nice tool for for your staff great our first question is from bridget hi thank you so much i'm gonna go back to um the first topic the in-school transmission and kind of following um the news it seems like that's a pretty rare occurrence that you know something's been called in school transmission um can you speak to concerns that it might raise that um that the mitigating factors the distancing the masking that those things weren't working or weren't effective um to lead to in school transmission or how does that happen if the school's kind of following all the protocols uh

045so the bottom line is nothing's perfect it really isn't i mean look look what happened to our governor you better believe he's been following the protocols to be able to stand up in front of everybody and you know he had to report he's positive uh excuse me so when you in school transmission is not uncommon i just happen to be super transparent and honest with it uh it is what it is you are not a sterile environment that is you know hospital grade level i mean we even get it in the hospitals uh and they're big they're used to this with you know lots of other diseases uh so i just i am forthcoming to say we have cases in our schools we have in-school transmission but it's being limited because of what's being done

046so that's that's the first it is it's more common than you would think uh in delaware county there's a good number of schools that have current in-school transmission and i would say current that would be from november till today some are older and you ultimately kind of age out of being in school you have to meet certain criteria x number of days since having a new case so on and so forth so some of these are labeled internally to us for a while but you know from the public standpoint it's just that initial moving to quarantine is a bigger impact so in terms of what went wrong in my mind nothing went wrong and here's why you identified that first person all of that person's contacts got moved to uh quarantine and then the individual

047who was positive is home in isolation they became and maureen keep me honest because i cannot remember every scenario across the county but they became positive while at home so by virtue of you putting them at home you have limited that further transmission if you didn't put this contacts at to home it would have continued through and impacted more people because it didn't impact everybody so it's not uncontrolled now because we're not perfect there may have been a slip here or slipped there or very frequently someone is bringing their positive status into school from their personal life and i don't remember how this one started uh but that is by far more common whether it is the child or the staff member it's our outside choices that are bringing it initially into the school and

048then it all moves from there i hope that helps bridgette it it doesn't i think that you know important context for everybody to hear um and then i just had a follow-up question to the contact tracing moving to contact notification and i thought i heard you say at one point that an individual who gets a positive test kind of gets a sheet of paper and is charged with kind of notifying contacts on their own so in a school setting you also though described that the letter goes home maybe from the school to people who were in that same classroom or whatever so should people in our schools and school community be expecting to get a call from like hi i'm jimmy's mom in the math class and i'm calling you or will it continue to

049be um through the schools that that information is coming excellent uh point of clarification so the we have schools doing it both ways so and and maureen i don't know how you you guys are operating in terms of you know sending it home and then they communicate versus your team communicates it out so maybe you want to answer that for your own district we're pretty much and nicole battistelli our pandemic coordinator is as um here with us as she always is but um and and i will invite her to jump in because gina i'm going to say we're doing a lot of communicating you know we're notifying people but i'll ask you if nicole wants to add more more on to that yeah when we are provided the um close contacts or if we identify

050them in schools we are then sending the quarantine order uh to the close contacts we are not relying on other people okay so but those other like they might choose to notify people that they know they've been around with but we should continue to expect messages to come from the school yes if the information is given to us we get the quarantine order out yep right okay so and that's the beauty of it you're covering a good portion of their close contact circle because you're covering everybody who they were exposed to at school they then should cover those that were outside of school and with the majority you know obviously the majority of their day is spent in school so covering a large portion of their contact circle which is a huge help to you

051know the overall health and safety of the community so i applaud you for it thank you next up antoinette thanks yeah i think this was planned because this is a good segue into my question um which is about quarantine periods and so i don't know um what the status is on quarantine periods i know that a couple weeks ago the cdc came out and shortened it for both people who are positive and those who are just exposed but have a negative test so it has chester county changed their guidelines for quarantine uh yes in fact we did we changed it last week and published it to uh the school so we're calling it alternative quarantine periods uh and so let me walk you through it because there are some nuances in here it's it's not

052as easy as it sounds uh so we all know quarantine is what helps to break that transmission cycle uh public health and chester county health department completely continue to support the um effectiveness of the 14 days we understand however that there are burdens on some individuals or some sectors or some types of employees that cannot carry that out we understand 14 days is a long time to get compliance etc so we accepted the alternative uh periods and let me walk you through how they work so first of all the any alternative period is only for quarantine not for isolation so close contacts only and it applies only to asymptomatic individuals if you are symptomatic you got to stay with the 14 days okay so that's those are the two uh fundamental ground rules then from

053there an individual can quarantine uh until they have completed day 10 without testing as long as they have had no symptoms through the end of that day 10. so again they have to remain asymptomatic the entire time second option is the quarantine can end after day seven if the individual has received a negative test and that negative test had to have been collected on day five or later and the person has to be asymptomatic until that test result is received if i could put in a few more ands into that statement so those are the two alternative one with testing one without testing there is no shortening quarantine shorter than seven days regardless of a test result so the key piece for you as an employer and every other employer in the county is you

054have to decide as an organization are you going to support alternative quarantines if you are then you have to have mechanisms in place to be able to verify is this day 10 and have they been asymptomatic or is this day five when they took the test what's the test result etc uh it certainly complicates things it frees people a little sooner um so and we're hearing there's a mix it may be acceptable for staff because it helps you get staff back but not for students uh so we're hearing a lot of different uh iterations of it uh my county employer is you know doing the same thing deciding how they're gonna uh operate they know my opinion about it uh but we also have some critical 24 7 operations that the county has to maintain

055so that's kind of the the layout of it it's all written in the school guidance which is posted on our website uh it is the section that was uh newly added to provide that clarification and gene if i may jump in here uh as uh our board members have just heard that there's a lot of and if but for their imagine the flow chart that's with it uh right now knock wood um we're we're looking at our you know our staffing needs that was primary concern to us a few weeks ago and as long as we can stay with the 14 days we feel that that has served us well from a health and safety perspective so we are not coming to ask and and also if i may in the chester county health department

056in your guidance there is some language and i'm paraphrasing but to the effect um very strongly supporting maintaining the 14 days um and that it you know if you want to look at alternates here's the way that you can look at alternates the only time we will look at alternates is if we become um you know incredibly concerned over our over our staffing um would we then come in and talk about altering our plan for that yeah i think the nice thing too to add on to that is this antigen testing will complement into you know schools who are deciding to remain with the or any any well you guys are the first access to these tests um schools deciding to keep that 14 day so i think it's you know it's a nice pairing

057again we're still layering we're this what we're almost you know we're at nine ten months and we're still layering more and more strategies on it until that vaccine is out you know and wide enough um use in our communities so great clarification maureen thanks yeah thank you both for that that's really helpful context um from both sides um my my last question is um actually about um the vaccine so i mean we talked about tonight how um how much has to go into planning-wise getting people just these antigen tests right and so um i guess my question is what is the cat what is the health department doing planning for the vaccine i know that there's a lot um of noise out there about who's gonna get it first you know and um that teachers

058may be in that second level of um you know the hierarchy and so um i what i guess what i what i would hate would be that the vaccines were sitting in your office like those antigen tests are and that we don't have um you know the the instructor in place to um to start administering no and honestly you know the antigens uh appeared at chop policy lab kind of unannounced because there was a a green light at the federal government and they shipped them uh so great question we've actually been planning for several months for vaccine uh we knew this was a virus that needed to be controlled through vaccines uh we actually changed our flu program in both counties as an opportunity to practice some of the strategies we need to put in

059place specific to covid so it was a great great opportunity so we have the best of the best planning our vaccine in both counties we're getting great support and participation from delaware county staff delaware county council you name it and we because we have chester county specifically has a very large um flu program we're literally pulling from that and kind of teaching delaware county who has a smaller flu program how to leverage that there's also the medical countermeasure uh program that i'm sure you guys are familiar with as they you know partner with schools uh in your county that's another piece so we're really taking two models and two plans and marrying them and only changing what is necessary because of coven okay so um we are all of the administrative pieces are done because

060we we know a rough order of time when our counties will receive a vaccine we have prioritized to align with the federal and the state priorities uh educators are in the higher priority uh group i don't look at look at it as a uh you know a pure prioritization it's more of because and you know this because of the the limited availability we have to phase it in but that does not mean we have to complete phase one before phase two starts and vice versa um and it doesn't mean that it's gonna take uh you know phase one is gonna take up all the you know produced vaccine and then we're gonna have a a lull of no vaccine before we get the next round uh so i'm happy to report uh you know the

061chester county uh you know has received not the health department has received his first vaccines today this is day four day four of the national rollout so that's pretty cool that's pretty cool and then we know uh delaware county is gonna get theirs next week and we know federally qualified health centers are going to get theirs next week and so is the health department so it's rolling it is really rolling uh out and the nice thing is we're not getting hundreds of thousands at a time i know that sounds bad but it's also good because there are some pretty uh strong requirements around how this has to be handled and it's not just the the cold storage that everyone's been hearing it's it's all aspects of it um but we vaccinate people all year round

062and this is another reason why we expanded our case investigation because we need to take our best nurses off of that and move them into the clinical aspects of vaccine administration so i asked my uh team if we were to get vaccine next week are we ready you better believe they said yes they had smiles they're so excited to get started i think probably the biggest piece and this is you know i there's a difference between the two counties uh delaware county ha in their and you probably have heard they're setting up their sites and these sites will be for testing or and or vaccination so they have sites already laid out and underway that will provide the appropriate coverage from inclement weather colder temperatures wind etc we did a lot of outdoor testing so

063we have to we're procuring all those other measures to get us indoor um so we're just at different stages but it's all going to come together and you know we're all going to get uh you know we start with our health care uh providers uh big system hospital first then all the other types of providers are first responders and then we immediately just start moving in um to the next uh not priorities just groups and it's really some of it is based on numbers too with it because both of these vaccines package differently and then have different requirements around them so it's a glimmer of hope yeah so i hope we i hope we go into 2020 and that's why i really think this anagen is a bridge for for you know your communities yeah

064thank you so much yeah i appreciate getting all that information because i do think a lot of people are really um you know holding out hope and and and living their lives in a way that's really difficult you know waiting for that so um so thank you i appreciate that yeah and we'll let all superintendents know when our vaccine pages up it's going to start basic and then it'll start to grow more but it's really you know tell me the groups not the order within them because that's going to keep going like this it's going to be a chess game because we have to maximize the use of the the vaccine but yeah we'll we'll announce that so then folks can go and if you're hearing questions and they're not there you can't find them

065ask because you're probably not the first one and once we start hearing multiple ques or the same question multiple times we start putting it out on the website in that faq model so that'd be helpful okay next person with questions is kristin hi thanks um so just a question about the antigen testing which sounds exciting what is the funding for that going to look like are school districts paying for that at their own pockets is there county state or federal level funding i cannot believe i didn't cover that kristin uh so the actual materials are all at no cost they are straight from the federal uh task force uh we also receive some additional materials from and this is all through chops procurement so chop is the lead fundraiser the lead solicitor for uh partners

066and product and whatnot uh they they even have the ability to connect us with other you know more infrastructure like if we wanted a van to kind of roll around the county with it um so anything from my department free you guys already pay your taxes we got this um we do have to decide uh you know it takes two to three people to do the testing because there's got to be a little checks and balances the person you know putting in the putting the reagent on should not be the reader just things like that and then you got to have a good assembly line to kind of follow through so we're estimating two to three people so where those staff come from maureen's gonna have to you know help us understand which i already

067know the answer do you have staff who can do it if not then that has to come back to my department and chop policy lab to say how can we get creative around staffing this even if we regionalize it or uh in chester county we're we're thinking about who we can partner with uh we have um you know nursing students in our iu what great experience so we're we're getting creative and there's um you know plenty of opportunities we're already engaged with credit care do you use credit care in your uh district for some of the nursing services yes we do they have already stepped up and said we want to partner with it so we got them going on their clia license to protect them from you know their liability we'll welcome them they're

068they're you know it doesn't have to be a medical but love it to be medical so so that's where the the dollars are gonna sit it's gonna be around the stacking piece of it uh so my goal is to help find that funding whether it's through my grants that are covered related any leftover cares dollars i'm looking for from our counties uh and anything chop can bring to the table okay thanks um and i'm just trying to visualize what a potential rollout would look like um so would students and or staff be tested potentially weekly daily monthly like what does the time frame look like good question so we're only going to focus on the routine weekly testing with staff because we don't have enough to cover staff and students um so that's that's number

069one um and the you know the idea is and it may look different between your buildings or between the districts whether you test when they come in for the day or when they leave for the day and there are some arguments for either one but either way you're still preventing them from coming in your door either it's the next day or today so um it's it's it's not that big of a difference we have uh 24 7 operations that test folks like prison uh they test at the beginning and end of a shift so we got to be we got to be realistic like we know teachers have pre-class requirements whether it's a club they're supporting or planning you know administrative whatever um so that's going to really be where we work with your schools

070to understand what's going to be best but only staff once a week and we have to be consistent with that week or that routine in order to get the best data out of it the students would be fall into the scenario of if they are uh sent to the nurse for anything coped related uh you know robert's in class during morning sharing time he says you know he's sad because and he shares that his mom just tested positive yesterday okay well he's going to the nurse because he's now a household contact and he's going to get tested before he's sent home same with uh you know or if someone becomes ill so it's any reason on those flow charts you're sending someone home adult or otherwise we want to grab that test before they leave

071because then that tells us gives us a little bit more information in a shorter period of time and if we're seeing several people we may want to test the close contacts before they go home not just the person who is presumed to be a potential case so i'm calling it cluster buster it's not my term it's from my hometown in detroit michigan uh but you're literally trying to tamp down a potential cluster of cases that could translate into in-school transmission trying to get a step ahead with every new strategy well detroit's a great city by the way got to go there a few years back and uh yeah more people should check it out when we can all travel again um so i guess what i'm trying i'm thinking now um chop is usually pretty

072good about this but i'm imagining you gave the example of little roberts being pulled from class because mommy tested positive that way you see it tested are they going to be rolling out some educational materials around like um what it looks like to get tested at school by the school nurse and just to make this a little bit less scary because i'm thinking for um especially our younger students this is potentially very frightening to them uh yeah actually i just viewed a draft of a um of a video that chop has already put together uh probably not kid based enough but at least it tells you as uh you know our school leaders and parents this is what it looks like here's you know here's the package here's the process but i love that idea

073of doing it for the kids i love it that's a great idea um and then i guess my last question is um so the vaccine rollout is you know started as you mentioned which is exciting and it is that ray of hope um i just know that we need so much of our population to be vaccinated in this two-step process um in order for this to actually work and first to achieve you know what's called herd immunity um through the vaccine and i guess a few things are coming to mind i know there are segments of the population that for whatever reason they may choose not to vaccinate um and then there may be other people who just have they're not anti-vaccinators but they if that's a term but they are just hesitant because of

074the way that um you know this went faster than usual through vaccination trials um and i i just i'm wondering what advice or what words of wisdom do you have for us to kind of um support public confidence in getting this vaccine making sure we get as many people vaccinated as possible as the vaccines roll out um so there's any plug you can give us yeah i don't have the right messaging quite yet uh because i think people are you know as someone said before we're feeling we're still in that fatigue and yet there's a little glimmer of hope but we know there's still some a lot of time between you know getting that vaccine um what i am doing is asking schools to be a communicator with us uh they trust you you're you're

075you are like the beacon of communication in in every you know school district it's a phenomenal um uh tool that you can use to do it so uh some of it is you know we have to we have to dispel the myths we have to explain and i literally was reviewing our web page although it's simple it needs to be repeated uh you know a lot of times just because it's been a fast process and it's under a you know emergency use authorization that doesn't mean it was shortcuted because it still had to go through all the steps it's this you know pandemic has told us that the timeline can be shortened but not the integrity of that testing so you know it's hard because it's you know it's connected to government it's it's fast-tracked

076it's you know not enough is available at the same time we already know certain populations are not fans of a trust government giving vaccine or even trust vaccine in general and they're they're not even the formal you know naysayers uh it's just it's just systemic over the years uh so we hope to come out with some uh messaging we'd love for you know i i would advocate we work with the iu much like we did to tell the kids school's going to look different but we're still here we're still your teacher we're going to be covered up part ways so i would look to our ius to help with that they did a phenomenal job on those videos uh for the beginning of the school year and they see familiar faces they see the nurse

077they see students talking about it some of it is you know it's like recycling our kids got the families to recycle because they became the policing you know entity at home mom don't don't don't throw that away fine um i think that's i think there's some power in that especially knowing that our kids aren't going to be able to get this the age limit is 16. so let's protect our kids do what we have in our power even if it's just for this one vaccine it's in our power as parents and as citizens and as americans so that so couple different ways to angle it love to love to work i mean if you guys have some you know some expertise in communicating you know to the to the to your audience uh the right

078way and you know getting at the heart of it we're all ears thanks jean for taking my questions appreciate it laura yeah i just had a quick question about um not the antigen testing but the standard pcr testing with winter break coming up and lots of different holidays going on and ongoing through january um plus the surge where are we at with sort of just the standard testing and turnaround time [Music] excellent question uh so uh testing continues uh if you have not gone to delaware county's website to see where you can get tests that are anywhere in the county not just those supported by or run by the the county staff i encourage you to we just did that for del uh for chester county so we mapped out where they are in the

079at which pharmacies etc uh so that so that is key because um it's not always clear how much testing is available or at least you know the how it's spread out uh the second piece is you know not all these places are the same test or the same hours or you know you fill in the blank uh so we are trying to expand testing and it looks different in each of the counties um and it's you know we've been planning to expand testing and i'll be honest with you the surge went way faster and sooner than expected so it caught up with our planning so we're kind of hovering and hobbling along and we're ready to expand in uh january so in delaware county uh the expansion is through some partnerships so uh delaware county

080has partnered with several health systems who have agreed to carve out and save time slots for testing of people who don't need to use the hospital people who are not insured peop teachers if we need to if we need to get a a pcr test to confirm an anagen test or if a if there was an exposure at a fire company we're sending them there so so they're expanding it and we're gonna mirror that in chester county uh and it's pretty amazing that the hospitals with how much they're dealing with they're still able to do this which is fantastic uh the other thing we are considering is changing the type of test so right now it's the really long nasal swab that goes to the back of your brain it feels like it it just

081takes a little bit longer to do that and there's more tests available so even just having the mid nasal you can put more people through the same physical testing site with the same number of staff so it's time slots it's locations it's partnerships it's type of test and it's the lab so we're constantly looking to partner with other labs different labs labs that uh you know not that they don't have capacity uh challenges because they all do it's really what are they built for from a you know a mat some just that they're they've day one they've been built for mass testing so some of their availability is starting to free up because enough other labs have come up um to to speed so right now our turnaround time uh it's it's unfortunately probably in

082that day seven period seven days later so when you think about like an alternative quarantine doesn't buy you much when testing the test results are lagging from a timing standpoint but yeah so we try to keep it in that three day but it it's just exceeded it great thank you any other questions from the board dr rishi do you have any other questions i do not thank you for asking me mr blenberg well gene thanks thanks thank you again you're welcome and your expertise and uh it's it's great that you're you've been willing to come back and see us and we look forward to the day when we won't see you anymore yeah can i at least come back one more time and say we're done please [Laughter] hey pleasure i i i know you

083all um at on so many levels have have had to make the less than pleasant decisions the no-win decisions and my hope for you is that this holiday you do get to take a deep breath be with your family stay warm and healthy and i don't know about you i'm kicking 20 20 out and looking to 2021 so i wish you the happiest and healthiest of holidays and we'll see you in the new year likewise thanks again thank you next item on our agenda construction update and matthews ken hello everyone uh don't have too much to go through this evening i know you have a lot on your plate all i'll gets right into it so for the high school uh work is started they actually broke ground they have all the construction access roads

084in construction trailers have come to the site they could start uh they'll start stripping topsoil tomorrow and into next week and then right after the holidays foundations and actually we're hopeful to get the first steel delivery uh in the beginning of february so it's it's gonna move quickly uh which is great so think things are on track there uh in the same fashion you can see behind me linwood is progressing that's the cafeteria and the cla gym wing really things are really moving along from that standpoint the inside of the building the classroom wing is is nearly complete with case work ceilings uh beautiful terrazzo floor uh is mostly done in the hallway so we seem to continue to be on schedule no other effects of of covid at this point uh be it with

085workers knock on wood or any real further supply chain issues so as far as schedule we're remaining on track which is all good news um any questions on the high school or linwood as far as progress is concerned questions from the board um i have a question sorry i couldn't get my hand up quick enough um are we for seeing the snow causing any problems the high school um no they it we buy a christian in knowing that it was through the winter you know they need now they did lose today uh certainly you can lose days but if for some reason there was a a very significant storm they own as part of their contract removing the snow and continuing to work so dealing with the frozen ground uh getting it out of the

086way so we can do foundations protecting things to continue working that's all part of their contract so you may you're gonna lose a few days in our climate contractors should assume about four days of lost production a month due to weather obviously that ebbs and flows depending on the months but as an average that's typical and that should be built into all their schedules okay thanks um and then the other thing we have tonight there's you know there are a number of change orders as as we typically have uh starting to really kind of get through them now the paperwork side of it excuse me a lot a lot of these things may have been items that have been done already but if you have any questions on them but there is one to just

087point out after review with the district administration and the facilities committee uh it does seem to i think from a consensus it seems to make sense to expand the cafeteria square footage uh so what uh we're presenting here tonight is a request for kcba to for additional design services to do that cafeteria bump out so that they can do those drawings and then we can get the contractors moving on the work and try and keep it close to on schedule within their time frame to finish it may trickle a little past our completion date but that's what we're presenting here tonight any other questions from the board all right ken well thank you very much keep up the good work thank you all have a wonderful holiday season and uh to ditto her statement i

088hope you do all get a good break and can just enjoy family so be well and safe you too thanks a lot take care next time we have carl hogan our independent auditor carl all right um i'm gonna be obviously super quick again uh i think uh we've been through the numbers for 2020 a couple times with the finance committee um with the board already so this is just going to put a ribbon on it all we're going to prove i get the game plan is to approve the audit tonight i'm not going to walk through the financial statements like i did previously but i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to walk through a presentation a quick presentation i put together for tonight and uh so i'm sure on my screen everybody can

089see that yep all right here's my best uh my cartoon every year so you know accounting humor so uh in the audit report the audit reports actually in your board packet tonight and uh you know uh it's a pretty long document but i'm going to just take out those excerpts and not scan around like it did last time with those items i think are most important obviously the most important part independent auditor's report um the most important thing we need to take away from this is the opinion paragraph like i spoke about last week it's a clean audit report the numbers are fairly presented for the year ended june 30th 2020. this is a synopsis of the budget to actual schedule that's in the back of the audit report that blows everything out by object

090and sources of revenues um so as discussed last week we have your budgeted revenues which were budgeted at 127 million came in less than budget about 1.4 million dollars less than budget as discussed um those amounts that were under budget were primarily related to your local source revenues and especially in the categories of delinquent tax revenues um collections slowed off at the end of the year due to covid and due to investment earnings good news is as i spoke about last week the district is conservative with budgeting revenue so this could be a lot worse otherwise but um you know when you actually take it as a percentage not bad at all um expenditures um budgeted at 128 million came in at 122.5 million um 5.8 million dollars under budget a lot of various reasons

091there was the impact of covid there was um situations where there were maybe some unfilled vacancies that weren't filled but also there was also debt service refunding during done during the year which was a savings about six hundred thousand dollars in addition if you think about it just because of the covid there were supplies that weren't purchased um also because the buildings were shut down there were some savings there and some savings with transportation etc but overall once again when you're looking at a 128 million dollars you take it as a percentage it wasn't that much less under budget when you take into all those factors and having the weird year all together other financing sources uses this is a transfer over to your capital projects fund if you remember in previous years you committed

092fund balance um to fund capital projects um so this is just a transfer of that committed fund balance of the capital projects fund this 1.2 million dollars funded projects that you necessarily didn't borrow money for so this consisted of the cooper town element or modulars and also the biggest pieces related to the high school track so that money was sent over to the capitol projects fund um to pay for that so when you started the process um at the beginning of the year you budgeted to use 764 thousand dollars of fund balance you actually added 2.3 million dollars because of the various uh you know ups and downs up above um so when you add the 2.3 to your fund balance at the beginning of the year of 15.3 million the school district has 17.7

093million dollars of fund balance as of june 30th 2020. so here's that 17 million dollars of fund balance um as you can see it's broken out into various uh sections non-spendable which is self-explanatory um there was 843 000 that was used to balance your 20 20 21 budget um but during uh the process of this audit um the board has decided to in order to get this unassigned amount to within eight percent of your next year's budget to take the excess of uh what's over that eight percent and put it to six to put it to capital projects the school district's really going through an extensive capital projects um improvement plan at this point in time and since the savings that we identified in the previous slide are one-time savings the board has decided to

094commit to one term or one-time project or one-time expenses for capital projects so this is an opportunity to be prudent conservative put that money aside so you can not only subsidize those projects that you have in the pipeline but also you can pay for any kind of projects that come that you necessarily don't want to borrow money for the next slide is your food service fund as you can see i put a three-year running average of the food service fund as you can see we've discussed in the past the food service fund has been running a loss from its operations in 2020 with the shutdown the loss was exacerb exacerbated all this money these losses from the operations is coming as being subsidized by the general fund so when you had the shutdown you had

095no revenues coming in you had to pay all your employees per the state mandate and the loss from operations was a little bit larger in the in in the in 2020 related to that um the capital projects fund this is a fund that we have been spending a ton of time in um the past couple years because of all the projects going on and not only in the current year but the projects are going to be going on um for you know a couple years down the line so in the case of the capital projects fund there were six million dollars sitting in it um you had 16.3 million dollars of expenditures um related to capital projects most of this is related to the new linwood elementary school there was a little bit related to

096kicking off some of the haverford high school renovations and then this 38 million right here is the net proceeds from the um the bond proceeds and the bond premiums of the debt that was issued to fund um the capital improvement plan of the district so when you add the six million dollars uh i had the six million you added 22 there's 28 million dollars at the year-end to be expended for the various uh projects as you can see down below we kind of point out some of the major additions during the year but obviously the biggest ones being the elementary school the high school renovation and the high school track um i would be remiss not to talk about the net pension liability this is good news just because things are kind of leveling off

097here on the right hand side and i've shown this slide in the past and if you look back these rates have not been increasing so this 34.95 if history is telling us everything and if the market conditions stay the same i'm hoping that will come in a little bit less if we looked at this 34.51 maybe around this time last year it may be a little bit higher so the trend analysis is that it's definitely leveling off it's definitely a big nut to swallow on an annual basis being you know a third of all teachers eligible salaries but the good news is it is leveling off and if we actually took this you know we put it back to like 2008 2009 you'd see the rate was 4.76 percent um back in 2008 2009 so

098you could tell we had a huge jump to 2015 2016 in seven years and now it's kind of slowly but surely leveling off and hopefully it continues to do that in the foreseeable future um and then the final slide obviously um we talked about what kind of audit report you had it was a clean audit report um we just discussed um the fund balances of all the different major funds of the school district i think the one thing that we could take away from you know going through these numbers the past couple weeks is that haverford was in a you know a stable financial condition to um react to any kind of financial situations that it's going to be thrown at it um related to the pandemic so um i know when you're putting together

099the 2021 budget and now even when you're putting together you're starting the process of 21 22 there's still a lot of unknowns um i know you're reacting as you go along but at the end of the day the school district was on solid financial footing coming into this year and then finally there was no findings obviously you have a business office staff that is adequately staffed to be able to implement the proper internal controls and also there's some big reporting deadlines that the business office needs to meet there's the pde annual financial report this is like the big report that the business office files on the annual basis of pde which has been filed um financial statements um which we're going to approve here tonight are going to be posted to the mf bond um

100bond website um they need to be there by december 27th and then there's a single law there for the federal awards um since you receive more than 750 000 of federal awards um you need to perform a single audit and your major program mostly on an annual basis is your idea program for special education and that'll be filed well in advance of the nine months of year-end so um that's the end i mean it's uh you know the process went smooth and i really this year was a really good process i feel like there was a lot of involvement on all ends in terms of the process so i appreciate that because don't really get that from all levels including management in the board so any questions any questions from the board carl i want

101to thank you i also want to thank the business office and the administration for for their efforts it's a it's a great report and that's not something that happens by accident so thank thanks everybody for for a job well done we're going to be voting to approve this order report uh later this evening correct yes that's accurate all right well carl you have a great holiday thank you you too thanks a million should we do a seventh inning stretch yes kid i was gonna make us do a brain break right yeah i was just gonna say jen will take out her book of breaks next item on our agenda is a presentation from chartwells we have tom hillebrand the district manager and lisa tade director of dining services hi good evening everyone um i just

102wanted to introduce myself i apologize that i was not available um for the interview last week i was feeling a little under the weather but i feel a lot better now um i have just to let you know i have worked with chartwells in the next 18 days it'll be 37 years i've worked my way up through the ranks and started as an assistant food service director and proud to say i've spent the last 37 years serving communities of pennsylvania new jersey virginia and more importantly the communities of delaware county and i'm real excited about partnering with the school district of haverford township so lisa tatty is also on i have the pleasure she's probably the only person in our mid-atlantic region that has more tenure than myself and we've worked together uh for the

103past 37 years and um i know she's excited about the uh the opportunity also so but first let me just say i don't know if it's official yet but i want to thank the school board for selecting chartwells i also want to thank the committee uh that evaluated the proposals for selecting chartwells and we're excited about the opportunity to serve your community so i'll pass it over lisa and she might want to say a few words good evening i also want to say i appreciate the opportunity to be serving haverford township school district i'm i'm a lifelong resident of haverford township so nothing makes me more excited and happier to be able to serve my community and practice my career in the community that i live in and with the people that i know very

104well so i'm i'm extremely excited for this opportunity and i know it's it's going to be wonderful having chartwells as your food service provider as tom said we've worked together for many years and i have worked in districts in new jersey pennsylvania and virginia just for a short period of time i most recently worked in del oro county also so i am really looking forward to the opportunity and we appreciate this opportunity yeah um please if i could ask maybe one of you just very briefly if you could highlight for us like what can we expect to see in january february i'm not any longer than that yeah sure i mean it might be happy to know that what they will and what we won't see sure well in sure and we'll both take you

105know parts of that i mean certainly if it's allowable and we get back to some type of uh regular food service and even without it i mean my team my support team of of our regional chef our dietitian our marketing personnel and myself it's if it's allowable and i know our contract doesn't officially start until february 1st but we would love to have boots on the ground and work through a transition um in your program well before we get to the the contract start date um and when i say that we'd like to work with the staff um initially our executive chef who i take a lot of pride in working with um he he's already uh set up training classes that he's ready to to fulfill in the district um with the personnel that

106you have there and these training classes will be in various different subjects basic culinary principles batch cooking food presentation um introduction to quality assurance um and in addition to that he'll also work with the um you probably do know that lisa won't be uh full-time in the district probably till next uh school year but we also have an interim director one of our assistant directors who has held positions as a director of dining service in the past another lisa our chef will come in she'll be there hopefully she's available now so as soon as we can gain access to the the campuses we'd love to um and our chef will work with the director of dining service to set up our menus review kitchen functions along with the production personnel in your kitchens and decide

107on what quality assurance needs we might have um he he'll also meet separately with all the leads in the schools he'll go over any concerns they have everybody always has concerns with change as we know and i'm sure there's a lot of anxiety but we like to sit down and just walk through their questions answer their questions and work with them on what they feel works best in their kitchens so from that's from a culinary perspective from a training perspective also our dietitian we use a ver a web-based um nutrition and menu planning system um our dietitian will like would like to come in and begin that training with the personnel so they're familiar with it that includes customized production records that we use she'd also like to just give them refresher courses training on

108reimbursable meals the usda guidelines we know that all the guidelines are changing fluidly through the whole covid situation just to make sure everybody's up to speed on where we go from here and also offer training and support as it relates to chartwells uh food allergy protocol and medical conditions protocol we feel that's very important um with because there's more allergies that pop up you know than we've ever seen so it's another just a refresher course uh that we'd like to do and lisa also you know is would be involved in some other training so i'll let lisa speak to what you could see on her behalf yes as tom said i'll be involved with a lot of the training that's that's one of our key initiatives when we come in is to um assess the

109food safety and workplace safety needs of the district and of the employees of their knowledge surfsafe training is the gold standard in food service and i've been a very active surf safe instructor and proctor for many years so i'll be involved with food safety training for the staff and um we'll also do some safety workplace training assessments to make sure that the employees come into a surf work to uh into a a safe workplace because we we really care about the employees we want them to be safe when they come into the workplace and and most importantly we just want to really provide all the tools that the staff needs to practice good food safety and to have a safe workplace yeah and another thing that i think when you when you talk about a

110difference um that we'd like to say is you're going to see a difference in food presentation that's one thing that we pride ourselves in is standardization of menus and that goes to how we display food how we serve food and basically just as an example if if you take a calzone we just want to make sure that the taste and the look of that calzone is the same time and time again and appealing to the our customers so that's one thing that we're gonna you know we want to make sure that happens on a daily basis um and i guess that i haven't seen the operation uh since last year so certainly um we have a lot to learn on our end also but i think the the period that we have is going to

111be invaluable from february 1st to june to make sure that when we come back next school year also that we hit the ground running and actually we've made a lot of differences and changes between february and june that'll just catapult us into the 20 21 22 school years okay before i sit up for questions from from the board i just want to say for the public's benefit you know we're looking at uh contracting with chartwells for food service management services so it will be for the director position and uh and management of the food service department we wouldn't we'll be keeping uh our food service employees in correct and then they're also adding an executive chef and the uh food service management company has a dietitian who covers more than one district so we'll get

112the benefit of all all of that so executive chef will do a lot of training that's correct and questions from the board well we thank you both for for coming out this evening uh we'll we'll be voting your contract shortly and wish you both a great great holiday so thank you we're very excited thank you we're very excited wish everyone a happy holiday thank you thank you next up is second reading on policy 104 and 104 ar equal opportunity and non-discrimination in employment and contract practices mr parker thank you mr feinberg and members of the board uh tonight we have in front of you the second reading of uh the policies mentioned policy 104 and the associated ars the documents that you have in front of you now reflect uh the comments and revisions of

113the policy liaisons and the solicitor's review uh drafting and then further review in response to many questions from the policy liaisons the changes from the first reading have been incorporated into these documents into these drafts and with that i believe that they are are readying out to place in the queue for uh adoption with several others at a subsequent meeting and we hope to put these together in a package representing the the collective policies that relate to the new title ix regulations and adopt these finally and then move on to some other subject matters because the new title ix regulations have taken up a lot of our our time your time and certainly the policy liaisons but uh any questions be happy to try to address or if any of the liaisons would like to

114comment uh but i do believe we have made the changes that were discussed and viewed at the last meeting questions from the board hearing none very good thank you we will uh with as i mentioned with a a few other policies we will bring this back for adoption in the very near future we hope to reach all these early in 2021 that's right looking forward to that thank you and thanks thank the liaisons for working on on these policies thank you next up uh liaison report dave is that you on uh facilities that'll be me yeah i'll uh gonna i'll just expand a little bit on what uh uh mckenn said you all had i i i in the agenda you all received the the summary of the meeting that we had earlier um last

115week just to explain a little bit about what what's going on and and why it is the cafeteria that's newlywed building currently or currently when it was designed it was in in l shape which looking at the design looked okay um once you actually get into a building and see the 3d you know reality you know things do tend to look different however and the rooms the cafeteria was separated into two rooms and when you get there and look at it you know this is very very pronounced so we have a lot of so we have a lot of money left in our contingency in our in our in our budget for our contingency plans oh and i'm sorry also in addition to the kind of odd shape and setup of the room it also

116only has space for 16 tables 16 tables would accommodate our largest class size that we have currently in our other projects which was chestnut wald and manoa both times we built new schools we saw increased enrollment so the current layer of the cafeteria would really limit our ability to to to expand should our enrollment increase like it has in similar schools that have been rebuilt so we were presented with two options um to expand the number of tables there to try to you know make the cafeteria into a single room one of them was to remove an interior wall keep the same shape of the cafeteria the way it was but move into your wall and add in two additional tables the other option was to as kenwood schneerle is simply expand the cafeteria take

117one of the exterior walls and move it that's a more expensive option but does allow space four more tables total of 20 increase from 16 and looking over everything you know that we came to a consensus you know the liaisons did that since we're building this now might as well do it right expand it make it all one room give us the additional space for for expansion so that's that's the outlier or that's the that's the option that we were looking at um presenting it's a bit more expensive but it fits within our budget and unless it and allows us to to do things right the first time so you'll be seeing uh change orders they will not come all at all at once they'll be coming you know in gradually over the next couple

118of months we're still well under budget and this will give us a better building at at the end of the day so if you have any questions or anything specifically that you'd like to to chat about i'm happy to attempt to address them i'm sure can we be able to too as well next meeting but that was my meeting for the for the illumina school great thank you dave uh next adam on the agenda larry i'm sorry i have a finance liaison report as well don't worry all right okay um so as a member of the finance liaison i participated in the selection and review committee for the food services manager and we just heard from chartwells there were five uh companies that submitted bids for this food management service and there was a rubric

119that those of us on the selection committee who included three principals and in the folks in the business management office scaled them on cost um kind of their the ones that were most important to us were cost um their references and experience and um the way that they would work with our existing staff as has mentioned they're going to come in and be the overlay of management but we're retaining our staff um and so in reviewing the proposals uh chartwells stood out and was the most highly scored um really conveying a sense of um their kind of passion for food services the creativity that they would bring to the um food menus um their ability to interact with students to do surveys and taste tests and samples and the way that their food program also

120has aspects of kind of an educational program with linking it to mood and health and and kind of educating about the importance of nutrition and food in that way obviously as they describe they bring a lot of resources to the district in terms of their experience they're a dietitian and the chef and they'll also be making some commitments to purchasing equipment and and new new things for our cafeteria um they you know thing examples might be that we'll see uh like a kiosk or a separate station an island um panini presses or things like that that they'll bring to bring some innovation into the food services program and the goal is really to increase participation and purchasing of our meals program to help get it on better financial footing as we saw in the audit

121report so after doing the scoring we had the opportunity to interview two companies one of which was chartwells and again you know after having the opportunity to ask questions and hear from them um the the review committee um and financially as uns agreed that um chartwells was um the one that we would recommend issuing the contract to so that will be on the agenda later the other scope of the finance meeting was reviewing comments and updates to the audit we had seen a draft audit report at the earlier meeting in december and subsequently submitted some comments largely on wording and presentation within the district's management discussion and analysis piece clarifying and kind of just making sure that the information really highlighted the um the district's financial condition and the auditor worked with us and and

122made those turns and and that was in the um the draft that we received and is available for us to vote on tonight thank you very much bridget larry i also have an update from the parent equity team go right ahead thank you so the parent equity team met via zoom this past thursday december 10th in a session led by dr tara doty myself and sarah christensen were in attendance along with the parents our discussion was framed by defining equity as the awareness of one's own power and an understanding of how it is delivered and received by others as a group we spend some time discussing this definition we then discussed some ideas around what we wanted our children to experience with regard to equity within the context of school family and community we spoke

123of our collective desire for our children to feel welcoming and belonging within these contexts to experience multiple perspectives to embrace differences and to include and extend welcoming and belonging to others the group also began to identify some possible future equity focused supports and resources for families in response to some of the public comment that the board has received regarding the basis program i did also want to point out that the common core state standards which the pa core is based upon highlight the need for students to understand other perspectives and cultures as part of how it defines students college and career readiness for the 21st century so i'm just going to quote a bit of the common core state standards here students come to understand other perspectives and cultures students appreciate that the 21st century

124classroom and workplace are settings in which people from often widely diverging cultures and who represent diverse experiences and perspectives must learn and work together students actively seek to understand other perspectives and cultures through reading and listening and they are able to communicate effectively with people of varied backgrounds they evaluate other points of view critically and constructively so i share this tie into the common core state standards because education theory and practice have shifted away from school schooling being the mere transmission of abcs and 123s some decades ago the widely accepted and research-based consensus in the education field is that education is an inherently social practice that requires students to have social emotional intelligence as well as the ability to think critically and work cooperatively with people from diverse perspectives and backgrounds as they engage with

125the general curriculum so in light of modern education theory and practice it's my assessment that the basis program is a positive supplement and even a compliment to the general curriculum here in haverford and that the basis program helps ensure that our students are ready for college career and life in the 21st century thank you thank you kristen next up dr ruschi do you have any additional comments this evening i do thank you mr feinberg i find myself like others not sorry to see the end of 2020 coming um but i do try to look periodically at you know what what were some of the good points what were some of the high points uh and truly speaking on behalf of all employee groups in in the district i think you know one of the high

126points for us is your dedication as a board you sincerely put the needs of children first and you balance those needs with ensuring that you are supporting and i will go so far as to say taking care of uh those who work for you um in this in this community so on behalf of the others i want to thank you for your dedication the number of meetings that you have attended in the last nine months the things that you have read up on uh the thought that you've given in preparation for questions so that you can gain some clarity help us to gain uh clarity around that which which we're trying to make decisions and then being on the receiving end of decisions at a time when no matter what we do there will be

127some portion of our community unhappy you are dissatisfied uh with the end result of that decision yet you persevere and have incredible resilience so thank you for everything that you that you have done uh again on behalf of all employee groups i want to wish you happy holidays if you're in the middle of celebrating holidays i i hope those days have gone well thus far and for those celebrating hanukkah and upcoming holidays and for all of us looking forward to and to a brighter 2021. thank you thank you very much dr rushy next up i'll accept a motion to approve disbursements from the following funds listed seconds moved in second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries i'll accept the motion to accept the recommendation of the new linwood elementary school project architect

128kcba and associates inc and owner's representative cb development services inc and authorize the change orders as listed worse than second move done second any discussion all in favor sorry i just want to point out that um on this change order um the the cafeteria change is on here that we were talking about so um thanks for all of the info dave and also ken who i know isn't on anymore for um giving us information on what that means and when i should clarify that what is on here is at this moment just the um kcba to do the planning and design for the area the actual cost of that um changed footprint and added space we will see in subsequent chain order change orders once we've had a chance to have those be bid out

129and built into the project um we understand they'll come in um over maybe several months in the spring as the different trades are um are bid out for the work but um this is just you know an initial smart smaller piece for the design of that it's a way to spend more money any other discussion on this item all in favor all right any opposed motion carries thank you next i'll accept a motion to approve the local district audit report from bbd llp for the fiscal year ending june 30th crispin move read him in second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries next i'll accept a motion to award the bid for food service management company to chartwells for a period of five months beginning february 1st 2021

130and ending june 30th 2021 with up to four one-year renewals upon mutual agreement subject to final approval by the pde division of food and nutrition moved in second any discussion i have a question larry sure um what are we agreeing to there's no details here and like with a change order we see a lot of details and numbers um what is this agreement what are we getting what are we what are we paying what are they given we're paying for a company to manage our food service operation from february 1st to june 30 and to provide a director and an executive chef and then also there's some other items outlined like they're gonna put capital uh improvements in uh in the way of startup costs and they'll start implementing a program to [Music] change the

131food program so that participation goes up most of chartwells current food food service school districts their contracts are probably making it a hundred dollars more in spending per student uh across the district so assuming we have 6 600 kids and say 300 or 400 of them are participating in in buying lunch if you add 100 dollars to that you're 400 300 to 400 in additional revenue which will make it profitable for us and also provide food that you know more uh choices and quality increases that will make the kids happy you know understood i'm all for all of that but what is the financial arrangement there's no details here we don't hire contractors normally without you know having a full picture of what the particulars are both the rfp and the contract are strictly regulated

132by uh the department of food and nutrition as part of the pde so the contract as well as the the rfp the format of it is all uh boilerplate that's provided by them and uh there is a it is a little different in these five months because of the fact that we're in a covet environment so it's very hard to get a guarantee and say okay we're gonna have a guaranteed profit of a hundred thousand or fifty thousand at the end of this five month period so they did guarantee a 20 000 profit and they're going to put together implement things and get things in place looking at 21 22 as their year when things are back to normal and having really hit the ground running at that point and and uh 21 22 we're

133hoping they'll be providing us with another guarantee maybe it's 80 or 100 000 and then uh if they don't meet that meet that goal then uh they will write us a check to for the difference great can you supply these materials to the board i can i i did provide a summary and a 100 page document uh that he did you know did provide in the summary but yes we can send that back out okay great i mean yeah obviously it was provided um but like i said there's no details here and the other thing that was uh requested was you know when we hire people and obviously chartwells um lisa works for chartwells but we usually get supplied resumes for these key hires it would be nice to have a resume for lisa just

134to see what her background is her education where she's worked since eventually next september she'll be working here full time as a chartwells employee for the benefit of our students and anyone else that buys our food all right that was actually in the weekly update so we have seen pieces resume um was thank you i did not see that i was focused on tax reassessment thank you chris and i will say that was something that um as the board delegate to the review committee that was you know obviously something that the committee took into account looking at the resumes and experience um and then the finance liaisons and are you a part of that too so you know that got the application to review and and participated in in the interview so hopefully there is

135enough information to be comfortable with chartwells themselves i was just going to ask bob to point out um the fee and this goes to aries ari's point about the cost um is isn't a fixed amount like we're not contracting to you know 50 000 for x to chartwells but is there's an administrative and management fee that's on a per meal basis as well right right sometimes they bid it as a fix but we did it as a percentage because we knew in the five months that if our if we didn't sell that many lunches because we're in the sso program that if it was a percentage their fee would be lower so that's why we did it and uh all the revenue that comes in just like in in uh in-house operation goes into our

136accounts they provide us with a budget and then they each month they provide their monthly expenditures uh for their staff and uh and then they show our payments and then we pay them for everything that they purchase plus their management fee and then we pay our bills and then at the end they're budgeted what they provided us in that rfp they have to meet that budget goal and if it doesn't match that goal and we end up uh losing money then that's where the guarantee comes in uh they cover the the cover say if you have a lawsuit or that you don't meet that guarantee that's when they're would write us a check for the difference so any other comments or questions all in favor aye aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you i'll

137accept a motion to authorize tax assessment council scott cattell esquire to file appeals to the court of common pleas pertaining to the following properties and to enter into negotiations if appropriate to resolve or withdraw appeals depending on information and recommendations from the district's appraiser all settlements subject to final board approval my grass moved crispin second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to authorize tax assessment council scott cattell esquire to intervene in any actions filed by property owners appealing their assessed values and to respond as necessary to protect the interests of the district glacier moves in second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to authorize tax assessment council scott cattell esquire to join

138with other districts to file an action against the county of delaware and appropriate parties seeking to compel production of certified tax rolls and other appropriate relief second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept the motion to accept the retirement as listed on grass moved crisp in a second moved in second any discussion certainly like to thank mr galato for 24 years of service to the district all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to accept the following appointments as listed larson moved pleasure second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve the following non-acceptance of appointment as listed larson moved second minji moved in second any discussion what happens if we

139don't vote on non-existence i've just never seen this before i mean of course i support this person's decision good question all in favor aye aye hi the opposed motion cars i'll accept a motion to approve the leave requests as listed my grass moved moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve the following educational contract for a student attending out of district placement for the 2020 2021 school year as listed chris benmou larson ii moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed carries i'll accept a motion to approve the course selection guide for the 2021 2022 school year as presented at the december 3rd 2020 board meeting person moved second second within second any discussion i heard susan before bridget

140on the second by the way all in favor aye aye aye any opposed and thanks everybody for your good work on on producing that annual den and peace uh executive session give me a minute the board met an executive session prior to the public board meeting to confer with legal counsel regarding potential a potential litigation notice and pending tax assessment appeal litigation our next regular public board meeting is gary we have ford reports thank you bridgette or maybe not maybe everyone will pass but i thought i'd give everybody a chance to report out if they wanted thank you bridget antoinette we're going to alphabetically do you have anything for us um i do really quickly i just want to say thank you so much to all of our staff and teachers administrators um you know

141maintenance workers school bus drivers everybody top down for everything you've done this um you know this fall and i really hope that everyone gets a chance to really enjoy this time off um you know and really just take a break um you know don't think about work don't think about school um you know turn off and um and enjoy the holiday so that's my report thanks everyone it's a good report ari keep your masks on limit your indoor gatherings covet is not over dave one second when what it said and everybody happy new year enjoy a good night thanks dave kristen um similar just want to wish everyone happy holiday season stay safe um limit your gatherings maybe avoid gatherings all together um you know enjoy the holiday if you can those of you who

142are working on the front lines i know you don't get any rest or respite during this time so just thank you for your work and the rest of us let's do what we need to do to help alleviate their burden thank you laura 2020 is almost over i'll see you in 2021 everybody sal no report happy holidays everybody susan happy holidays everyone no report bridgette um i want to echo everyone's appreciation for the hard work that the district has done to get us to this point here at the end of um and to wish everyone a good winter break and looking forward to better days ahead in 2021 um but also wanted to just say that the email that came out uh announcing today's snow day was maybe my favorite email of the year when

143you know a lot of bad news or just you know changes and and all of that come in emails that one was warmly appreciated and as erica said it was so great to see kids in the neighborhood out enjoying the snow day so when um so much has changed in this school year it was really sweet to be able to have a good old-fashioned snow day so thank you for that here here on the legislative side for the past week and and into january i've been coordinating meetings with psba with newly elected legislators so that they can meet their superintendents and school board members and we can introduce them generally to the the major uh education issues that they'll be dealing with and it looks like a good group of new legislators so far we're

144looking forward to working with them i also participate in pa schools work which is a statewide coalition of uh education advocacy organizations and where we met today to work on formulating a budget ask for the governor uh for for next year and as you are all aware it's going to be a terrible budget year so that should continue to be an interesting process that group is also very much focused on fair funding uh and implementation of the fair funding formula i'm also participating in psba statewide charter reform task force and we met today to to start to work on trying to formulate legislation that can be put into play for charter reform in the coming legislative section so all those things are in play additionally uh antoinette and bridget and i all participated in the

145delaware county legislative council meeting this past wednesday we had i think 12 of the 15 delaware county districts represented it was a good meeting and we're looking forward to working with that group going forward um i'd like to echo my peers and their best wishes for everybody to have a a safe and and great holiday season uh and also uh can't wait for 2020 to be in the rearview mirror um things things can only get better so happy new year and happy holidays to everyone uh again thank you to all my fellow board members uh for all your your uh trials and tribulations and hard work thank you to uh everybody in the district for the work that you've been doing uh since since march 13th friday the 13th by the way um and uh

146with that uh our next regular public board meeting is scheduled to be held on january 7th 2021 right here in this same zoom room uh unless anybody has anything else i'll accept a motion to adjourn thanks everyone meetings adjourned night everyone good night