001what um we're live it's in the tupperware okay good otherwise we ready ready to roll yes all righty good evening everybody welcome to the july 23rd uh board business and conference meeting of the school district of haverford township uh if we could take a minute for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice pearl thank you mr riegel could you call the roll please dr crispin here mr fleischer here ms larson here ms minji here jacinto here mr schwartz here ms snodgrass here miss wiedemann here mr feinberg here thank you bob uh before we start uh i'll accept a motion to approve the official minutes from the july 16 2020 regular public board meeting cento moves
002minji second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries thank you before we start public session i want to take a couple minutes as you know there's a lot of pressure now in terms of online learning and cyber charters and statewide we expect that cyber charters will be pushing very hard and upping their advertising to try and encourage folks to enroll in in their facilities i'd like to stress that haverford online is not the emergency covert 19 programming that our students and families experience during the shutdown crisis instead it's an established 12 year old program staffed by haverford teachers with the support of our entire school community of administrators counselors coaches and sponsors in stark contrast to pennsylvania's cyber charter schools haverford online has a consistent history of high
003performance and student achievement and you get a haverford diploma upon graduation although the cyber charters have slick advertising websites and brochures which i might add are paid for by taxpayers if you dig a little deeper you'll find that their academic track record has been consistently lacking for the past 20 years even the national charter school organizations have expressed grave concerns regarding the lack of performance by cyber charter schools so before you make a decision to enroll your child in a cyber charter school i'd just like to take a few minutes and review a couple items in a june second paper from the highly respected brookings institution it was stated we find the impact of attending a virtual charter on student achievement is uniformly and profoundly negative and then they went on to say that there's
004no evidence that virtual charter students improve in subsequent years in 2016 the national association of charter school authorizers the national alliance for public charter schools and the national charter lobbying group 50 can released a report on cyber charters that found that overall cyber students make no significant gains in math and less than half the gains in reading compared with their peers in traditional public schools a stanford university credo study in found that cyber students on average lost 72 days a year in reading and 180 days a year in math that's a full year compared with students in traditional public schools from 2005 through 2012 under the federal no child left behind act most pennsylvania cyber charters never made adequate yearly progress following no child left behind for all five years that pennsylvania's school performance profile
005accountability system was in place that was from 2013 through 2017 not one cyber charter ever achieved a passing score of 70. in fact many of them scored in the 40s and 50s with graduation rates for the most part that can best be described as dismal and i would add that haverford scores were consistently in the high 80s and 90s with graduation rates close to 100 percent under pennsylvania's current accountability system the future ready pa index all 15 cyber charters operating during 2018-2019 were identified for some level of improvement cyber charter tuition rates are estimated to be approximately twice what it costs to provide those services for each regular education student who enrolls in a cyber charter haverford taxpayers would have to pay twelve thousand four hundred and eighty six dollars for the coming school year
006and for each special education student who might enroll in a cyber charter haverford taxpayers would have to pay a tuition of thirty four thousand five hundred and sixty two dollars for the coming year if you have additional questions regarding the haverford online program i'd encourage you to contact trish note her email is first initial t last name note n-o-t-t-e at haverfordsd.net and if you go to our website uh you can find your way pretty easily to a great deal of information on the haverford online program and a building list of frequently asked questions so thanks for bearing with me but this is an important issue and we hope that you if you're thinking cyber education that you'll take a real hard look at haverford online instead thank you very much next item on our agenda
007is public comment anna how many speakers do you have this evening um we have nine this evening i'll start with the first one which is christina duff at 309 walnut place havertown pa hi everyone there is a strong argument for opening school in person with a potential 14-day closure as needed if an outbreak occurs if school can open if schools can open sports clubs extra curricular activities especially those that occur outdoors should also happen with three children in the district two that have qualified for giep i did not feel that the spring remote instruction met their educational needs i am highly concerned about their being a predictable schedule with live education for math and science at the very minimum even if you were to skim these articles there's plenty of science to back the opening
008of schools science is not opinion well i also realize this is a bit much for a public comment for tonight's meeting i wanted to ensure it was noted and taken into consideration our local pediatrician also supports a return to normalcy for children with mask wearing indoors and outside when social distance cannot be maintained so the rest of the comments are quotes from different articles or publications chop has a whole policy on the return to school safety during coven and states all decision makers should be mindful that as long as there are cases of sars cov2 in the community there are no strategies that can eliminate trans transmission risk in schools entirely the goal is to keep transmission as low as possible so as to safely continue school activities it's from the chalk policy lab while
009we consider the safety let's also please remember the mental health and educational wear welfare students these results could certainly be relevant to what u s children are experiencing particularly in hard-hit areas we should treat school closures like a low-grade traumatic stress event for most children and recognize that stress effects will be more severe and those with pre-existing emotional disorders and those from vulnerable families from jwatch.org not a single one of these articles recommends closing schools one even states however it is not at all certain that that the same advantages can be expected in the case of the coven 19 pandemic it is even possible that school closure may have negative effects and lead to greater medical economic and social problems modeling studies seems to indicate that school closure can be significantly effective for for infection
010control only when the outbreaks are due to viruses with low transmittability and attack rates are higher in children than adults this applies to influenza viruses and influenza infection but does not seem valid for coronaviruses including sars cov2 which have different transmission dynamics or for covin 19 which affects mainly adults and elderly individuals almost six months into the pandemic accumulating evidence and collective experience argue that children particularly school-aged children are far less important drivers of sarah cov2 transmissions and adults therefore serious considerations should be paid towards strategies that allow schools to remain open even during periods of cloven 19 spread in doing so we can minimize the potentially profound adverse social developmental and health costs that our children will continue to suffer until an effective treatment or vaccine can be developed and distributed we're failing that
011until we reach herd immunity that's from pediatrics academy pediatric publications research suggests that social distancing techniques along with careful hygiene cleaning and use of quarantine can reduce the spread of disease in schools the international examples described in this brief in this brief provide insight into how these strategies can be put into operation in various contexts to protect the health and safety of students staff and families that's quoted from the learning policy institute denmark and norway for example have made on-site student attendance optional in the 2020-21 school year and school employees over the age of 60 and those with designated health risks have been given the option to contribute to school operations from home by denmark's second week of reopening school 80 to 90 percent of primary school students and half of the children in preschool
012in kindergarten have returned to school denmark has adjusted staffing to accommodate the smaller number of employees who have stayed home for medical reasons but officials say that schools are operating at capacity and cannot yet accommodate all students that's also from the learning policy institute and if i could interrupt you yes this is a very lengthy email with you know a dozen citations and um you know is is there anything else in the email that's a statement by the by the author instead of they're all just statements for this evening we can post it if that would help let's do that okay thank you um the second comment is comments and questions from niles and liz hansman at 65 treaty road drexel hill pa dear haverford school district leadership first thank you tremendously for contributing your
013time and expertise in developing the safe reopening plan we recognize that your job under the current circumstances is more complicated and fluid than anyone could have previously anticipated also thank you very much for being transparent in your decision making process and making your meetings available online for parents to listen to and watch in real time or after the fact in order to be informed while working around our varied schedules we are parents of a second grader at manoa continue to be impressed by the entire hfsd especially during this difficult time we have a few comments questions to add to the discussion that are important to our family one in the hybrid model we would like to reiterate the encouragement that some of the board members expressed in considering using every every weekday as an opportunity
014to teach scholars in the classroom the option of having either wednesday or friday as a full at-home learning day could be better utilized as an alternating learning day for scholars every other week and our family would welcome that option for example cohort a attends monday wednesday friday and cohort b attends tuesday thursday with the following week's attendance being a monday wednesday and b tuesday thursday friday etcetera two what are all the technology platforms sellers are expected to use for the at-home learning days in the hybrid model three for either the haverford online or the at-home learning days in the hybrid model what is being done to protect the privacy rights of our scholars the use of google as a basis for communication and document sharing raises concerns about the information protection of our scholars all
015minors the use of zoom as a virtual meeting space also raises privacy and security concerns and although we are not familiar with canvas we would also like to know what is being done to protect scholars and families privacy and security with these platforms thank you again elizabeth and miles hansman these are suggestions for continuous learning during the hybrid schedule from michael and rachel mcguire at 2305 avon road ardmore pa dr ruschi and the haverford township school board my wife rachel and i live in art in the ardmore section of haverford and have a rising sixth and ninth graders from a safety standpoint we are happy to hear that the three feet spacing is off the table we are also pleased to see one of the a day b day schedule supported by the regional educational
016laboratory study and the haverford township school district endorse the science behind the week on week off as my wife will tell you i have been proposing an a b arrangement by week with shorter days and probably an extended year for a while now we support this program based on the benefits of this model including one having half the kids in the building at any given time will inevitably allow for more distancing and slower community spread to flatten the curve two allows for a weekly deep cleaning in the lower grades in addition of course the district's presumed daily cleanings three predictability of schedules for kids and parents this can be done for the year barring a full closure we want to stress that we think it's very important to have a consistent learning schedule for the
017kids even when they are on their remote days considerations should be given to a live stream of the lesson focusing on the teacher for at least part of the day or a learning period this allows for the following one kids learning virtually for a week are more incentive incentivized because they'd be back in class next week whereas full-time virtual we're going to have some kids failing unacceptably behind two this model can work with the high school's current block scheduling please consider thank you and best wishes this is a comment about the hybrid learning plan from jen brady at 508 achille road habertown pa good evening my name my name is jen brady and i am the parent of a rising first grader first i want to start by saying my husband and i want to
018say thank you for all the work and thought being put into opening the harvard school district during these challenging times filled with uncertainty we realize there will be no good option that suits all family needs as a health care worker and school administrator we genuinely appreciate the tough decisions you are having to make and know you are trying to make the best of an impossible ever-changing situation i would like to express extreme concern over a hybrid model that eliminates one full day 20 of the school year that could be used for in-person learning and instead will be potentially used to clean the classrooms and buildings friday was the example brought to our attention at the last school board meeting i know it was an example that make but makes no sense there isn't even a
019break in between the two groups that are being brought in for in-person learning so what would be the point of taking a whole day to sanitize couldn't this be done properly overnight or after school hours alternating three-day groups with two-day group allows for more teacher interaction and assistance with school work socialization which is absolutely necessary for our children's mental and emotional health and well-being and less of a burden and financial expense finding child care ensuring distance learning is taking place why not say group a monday wednesday in group b thursday through friday or similar model and rotate less days in school also means more exposure to other people and places for families who need alternate child care we are a household like many habertown families with two full-time working parents and multiple children the spring
020proved to be pretty unsuccessful with remote learning for a child who's only six years old who thrived in learning from his teacher in the classroom and struggled with focusing just after a few weeks of disconcerting all while two adults tried to work and manage a younger sibling there were several nights he cried while going to bed because he missed his friends and teacher and didn't want to listen to another 25-minute math video the teachers really did a great job with creating distance learning videos but for small children focusing on a video for a long period of time is impossible it would be naive to anyone to say that children will be getting the same level of education instruction at home as they would in the classroom that simply just is not true i have a
021strong supporter of doing the safest thing possible for our children all while taking into consideration all aspects of well-being i beg you to find a model that can be safe for both teachers and children with as much in-person learning as possible thank you for your time and your consideration this one is um about haverford online from vivian hobaker at 1312 darby road habertown i apologize if i didn't say the last name correctly um greetings i have a question concerning haverford online to my understanding if there if there aren't enough students in certain grade you'll be offering a curriculum provided by a third party can you tell us more about it will it be different to what will be taught to the students enrolled in a hybrid model well the one offered to the students who
022attend in person be more personalized to their needs also i believe it was mentioned that there aren't enough students from grades three to six to enroll in howard foot online from a certain elementary school and you won't be able to have a full-time teacher dedicated to them from that school what does that mean does that mean the students will have any available elementary teacher within the district for that day checking on them or providing live live instruction what about the students in middle school i also have a suggestion if you don't mind my work just announced that they're letting us continue to work from home due to safety concerns until the beginning of the new year and then we will reevaluate the situation would it be possible for you to consider that approach as well
023why don't all teaching be online virtually so all kids have the same and equal attention to education from their teachers or maybe for the fall situation can be reevaluated after that thank you the next one is from monet riley at 400 glendale road unit b12 howardtown pa good evening i have two agenda items i'd like to comment on first i applaud the district's creation of the anti-racism resolution as many districts find a way to break down systematic racism recognizing the need to do so is a big first step for the language in the document i suggest removing the word traces at the end of the second paragraph as it minimizes the experience of students parents and staff in the district if you're going to make it a resolution it should not be lip service if
024your resolution minimizes experiences how can we trust promising actions would follow i would like to all i would also like to board to the board to consider creating and hiring for a position of an equity officer in haverford the time is now secondly in the health and safety plan i was hoping to clarify the district's plan for students suffering from normal childhood illnesses throughout the school year and how to ensure they aren't missing large quantities of school days or the learning plan for when those students are home quarantined will classes be live streamed thank you the next one is about cohorts and grouping in the middle in high school um from rachel churmside at 2936 morris road ardmore pa to the school board in a previous board session we heard from dr brennan who discussed
025the cohort groups are important for mitigating the spread of coven 19. if students spend the majority of their time with the same group then it lowers the risk for students any infection would spread less widely if students need to quarantine due to potential exposure only to one group may need to be out rather than closing down the whole school i would like to suggest that the middle school in high school schedules students in cohorts as much as possible such as the same groups of students move from class to class together i understand students have different schedules but at least one core class could move together could you please address whether there are plans to do this because it may impact my decision where to send my children thank you the next one again is about
026hybrid models from james fagan at 1518 robinson avenue habertown pa for the hybrid model i have a few questions if it's one if a child is quarantined for the 14 days or test positive or covered how they continue to complete school work as they will not have in-person dates two how do you intend to switch children from hybrid to online back to hybrid for those children that need quarantine or have tested positive for coving three what is the n number of students affected by coba that you will go online only four what is the end number of district positive tests or percentages will you go to online only five if we choose hybrid and it becomes clear that there are concerns about a child's safety how do we move them to online out of hybrid
027six per the survey that was sent out the other day it states that two children per per seat on the bus but the last school board it was stated that only family members said two seat per to proceed has something changed or was it written in error thank you the last one is from chad urban at 205 east manoa road habertown pa school board members and dr rushi after watching videos from the july 9 and july 16th school board meetings i have come away profoundly disappointed during the july 9th meeting lawrence feinberg stated that the health and safety of our students and staff is paramount and that goes without saying those words do not reflect the plans that were laid out by dr ushi where she is pushing towards in-school learning regardless of the impact
028to students their families teachers and school staff i do not understand why the goal is to get children back into a physical building it should be to keep the students their families teachers and staff safe and provide the best possible educational experience it is mind-boggling that presentations are being made to the board using phrases low transmission possibility probability and slow slowing the spread substantially ultimately allowing for greater attendance you are starting from the point where you're accepting the possibility of transmission in schools so you can get students into a physical building 100 percent online learning for all students not have referred online should be on the table as a viable option from day one and i'm disturbed by the fact that dr ushi will not consider this as an option unless ordered by the state
029it is also troubling that i have heard no one on the school board bring up online learning for all students as a viable option i do not see the benefit of two shortened days in a physical building over 100 online learning we know that any plan that includes in-person learning is likely to change and there is a strong possibility that the impact of cobia 19 will continue to get worse into the fall and winter why not start with a strong foundational virtual learning that is sustainable and provides value to our students rather than to try to force an in-person start a decision can be made later to return if the situation allows these are unprecedented times and they call for leadership that you are elected or hired to provide we want all our children to
030get the best education possible we all but we also want them their families teachers and school staff safe all of your decisions should be made with the idea that the health and safety of our students and staff is paramount unfortunately this is not to seem to be the case that that's all for this evening mr feinberg thank you very much anna i appreciate you you're reading those to us i want to thank everybody who uh took the time to write to uh bring your your questions and concerns to the attention of the board and administration i also want to thank the folks who submitted questions and participated in the q a on haverford online on tuesday evening which was very well attended i'd just like to point out that in haverford and in the other
031499 school districts around the state uh boards and administration and parents are all going through this same struggle uh for every email that we get saying how can you even think of opening we get an equal and opposite email that says the kids have to be back in buildings we will continue to work on our plan as best we can and try and have options just that will i can't say satisfy everyone because that's impossible but hopefully uh there'll be something that uh everyone uh can live with um i also want to point out that this this whole situation has been very fluid and continues to be fluid uh today uh dr levin the the secretary of health for pennsylvania speaking about opening schools said the following it is critical to drive down the case
032counts now in terms of the rise of new cases in order to prepare for schools to reopen the then said during a news conference thursday if we don't do that now that would put the opening of school in jeopardy so it's it's not out of the question that by the time that we get to the opening of school uh you know the the state may make a decision for us so we'll just have to do the best we can uh and carry on next item on our agenda superintendents report and i'd like to welcome jeannie kasner the director of the chester county department of health gene thank you for uh listening to the concerns this evening i think you you've got a pretty good taste of uh you know what what we've been uh hearing
033from our our residents um and we're curious to hear what you have to say good evening everyone uh and thank you for the opportunity to uh be with you this evening i think it's critically important uh you know to continue the conversations and to continue the transparency uh and i appreciate being a part of that not only through our work with superintendents but also joining board meetings and community forums with it uh what i thought i would do is you know just make sure everybody understands the general um context in which the chester county health department in well for both counties not only chester county but also delaware county are working to support schools so when we assist schools we're really looking at assisting in the planning for reopening and development of this health and
034safety plans we all know those health and safety plans are grounded on physical distancing face covering health monitoring cleaning and sanitation among other topics and it is truly centered around the health of the students as they are receiving education um it is not a small task by all means that all of you are grappling with i've been in this since january and the dynamics of a school truly do present additional challenges that we have not seen in other uh areas and other organizations such as long-term cares and hospitals or day cares so we have to continue to work through this and part of that is the health department's commitment to having a response team specifically for school so we have that team uh up and running and the team will evolve and continue to grow
035as the demand warrants and that team is serves as each school district and their school's primary point of contact so as questions arise schools have a direct point of contact to go to as more detailed guidance has to be developed that team is leading it uh they also are the team that completes investigations of coveted cases relevant to staff faculty and students in schools they provide the additional guidance to the schools based on the results of the investigation they engage the contact tracing team so we have a separate team doing contact tracing so there's a handoff from the investigation to contact tracing so any close contact is you know contacted by a health department staff member given the appropriate information and guidance for quarantine and then of course our school team is here to support
036communications whether it's through forums like this or written communications that may need to go out to families and staff the health department is also continuing the collection and analysis of data that's always important that kind of guides our understanding of how this pandemic is playing out in our counties while also taking in information from neighboring states and other states across the you know united states so how do we do this we do this because we are public health we do this every day of the year for many many diseases right now we're doing it for one disease on a huge scale i have a staff of just over a hundred people and that is the staff we are using throughout this response and that is the staff that we pull from to create a specialized
037team for uh schools we do have the ability to add staff or contracted individuals as needed and we had to do that with nursing home support etc and we're well prepared to do that for schools uh as things ebb and flow so we're pretty nimble we have this support of not only delaware council members but also chester county commissioners to be able to be dynamic and not to have barriers around acquiring additional staff another key aspect is understanding the reporting that needs to occur between a school and the health department so there is guidance out on when to report you know reporting immediately around probable and confirmed cases and all schools will learn what that is uh the definitions are in our guidance at this point but our the school team will also further assist
038in that and the that reporting is really what starts the health department's you know efforts in the investigation so we can give that guidance to the school whether it means cleaning or you know moving students to a different area of the building or closing a building our goal is not to rush in and close our goal is not to overreact and jump to closure without the appropriate information weakling from our investigations the investigations is are becoming more involved because people aren't quarantining at home now we're green so more people are out and about which means there are more questions and more activities the individual has done that helps guide who we need to determine is a close contact and then of course as you've heard with the contact tracing i think my message to not
039only the school board and the school administration but also to our families is we really do have to take contact tracing seriously it is a proven public health strategy that has been used for decades to stop the transmission of diseases and viruses and what we are currently running into now is people frankly refusing to give the health department information about those they've been around during their infectious or incubation period and without that information people are unknowingly out in our communities in our schools going to restaurants etc not knowing they may be maybe actually transmitting particularly when there's still a large um you know evidence that transmission does occur without any visible demonstration or medical demonstration of symptoms so a lot of what we ground our guidance on really anchors on the tenets of what we've
040been saying all along they sound really simple um they've gotten annoying i must admit because we've been doing this a long time but they truly are within our individual control and that is really the masking you know having an appropriate face covering on ensuring as much as possible six feet separation as frequently as possible washing of the hands cleaning of frequently touched surfaces these are things we have heard and we continue to preach for the last many months it these are the the you know the strategies that are going to remain important as we come into reopening schools just like it's reopening of a daycare or of a movie theater etc etc so the the fortunate thing is we actually as individuals have a chance to impact this um and then you couple that with
041all that the school and staff are doing not only communications and reminders and teaching of how to hand wash et cetera et cetera we're strengthening the school's ability to uh reopen and i'm not saying that we're reopening in part in person that is for each district to navigate but at some point we are going to get back to in person and these measures are going to have to remain in place until we have proven that in person can operate without these measures so i'm going to pause there and turn it back to uh our school board if there are specific questions or more information you'd like for me i am more than happy to address those thanks gene questions comments from the board bridgette hi thank you for your information and presentation i think one
042thing that um community members and and family sending kids to school would appreciate just going through the process of what it will look like if there is a child or a staff member in a classroom who maybe has symptoms or is suspected of having covid um could you just talk to the kind of the reporting um the notification to other people in that classroom or school and the recommendations that would follow absolutely uh so we have a general framework in place and the framework is intended to cover the 80 of the scenarios i'm not going to fool anybody we are none of us are going to be able to consider all the potential scenarios um but the framework will help navigate through them and as we have new ones or nuances to existing ones we
043are going to update that framework as we go so the framework is if an individual whether it's a student or a staff member is in school and starts to exhibit signs of coronavirus they are expected to go to a separate area of the building we're calling it an isolation room so that individual is kept safe and can be separated from the rest of the school population until that individual can get home uh so once that once that is in place meaning the individual is removed you know separated from everybody else the whether it's the school nurse or another designated individual will actually go online and fill out a form on the health department's website that form goes directly to our school team our school team picks up that form and the assigned whoever's assigned to
044that school district will begin that investigation and that investigation may involve contacting the school to ask further information can i get the attendance list for any individual who was in the room at the you know for the time that our individual of interest was um or where else in the school was that individual if they're not remaining in their classroom so we're pulling out all that information we are contacting the family asking that family um additional information about their unique situation because it may be they just you know they had gone over the weekend to a family barbecue and that tells us something along with all the school information to kind of put together an assessment of what is that individual's risk right now and likelyness to have coronavirus and what is the exposure level
045of everybody who's been in contact with the individual if that exposure level is low the school will be directed to continue the instruction to the rest of the students or allow that staff member other staff members who may have interacted to stay at school but we are going to require you to send the individual home okay but others may not have to leave if it's a low risk if it's a high risk then yes we may say that classroom should plan to leave early now low and high risk i know everybody wants a definitive black and white definition it's difficult because one building is different than another building one classroom makeup is different so the way i've been explaining it is and this has helped as we've worked through daycares and nursing homes and first
046responders what we're looking for is schools to go all in and implement multiple uh prevention strategies multiple mitigation strategies if if we're wholeheartedly doing those we by default are reducing exposure risk but if there is a measure strategy that failed let's say for example in this scenario the individual is a student and for whatever reason in that room all the students were allowed to keep their mask off all day and we didn't have six feet well now your exposure is higher because and i call that a um you know we have had a failure in our prevention measures but if all everybody in the classroom was respecting the six feet had their mass on we had them washing their hands we had sanitation hand sanitizers available they were all sitting forward they weren't touching each
047other we're probably going to deem that as a low risk and not be disruptive to the rest of the class and say let's send them all home and this is where the the school team by virtue of working with the same schools in the same district over and over start to develop that relationship and that awareness of the uniqueness and the similarities across schools and can give that guidance more quickly and with more confidence because they have started to seem see some patterns in the school that's also where we'll be coming back to the school and saying dear school you really got to get serious about your mass we can't have these failures because this is the net effect of them um so while i know it's not comfortable that there's no definitive you know
048here's every single scenario we could possibly think of and the exact flow of how it's going to happen we have a really strong public health grounded framework and then from a reporting standpoint it will be the health department's responsibility to be in contact with the individuals who are probable or confirmed cases because we need to give them appropriate information it will also be the health department's responsibility to be in contact with the close contacts of those who are probable or confirmed cases so we won't be asking the school to do that now the school may help facilitate it from the standpoint of will you please send this letter or this email to all students in classroom 1a and that's much quicker for you to do through your communication channels but it's our message that you're
049helping to facilitate so that's kind of how we see it play out it has worked for other organizations that we've had to plan and partner and help communicate with so you will give us the feedback if it is working or is not working and then we're going to adjust unique to schools at that point i hope that was helpful it was yeah laying out the framework was helpful just one quick follow-on or hopefully quick um for the the person who presented as a probable case um is there going to be a standard expectation of a of a kind of a quarantine or isolation at home for a set period of time or how would that be determined so pardon the dog in the background um so that would be excuse me that will be determined
050by whether that particularly for a probable for a confirmed they're going home and they're going to follow the confirmed period of time at home for a probable likely the recommendation is that individual should be tested and then that's going to tell us are they going to be on the 10-day or the 14-day path because there's a difference between the infection period and the incubation period and that's why we have a 10 versus 14. and that's kind of laid out in the guidelines so it's really going to be based on the number of symptoms that probable has have they had testing but they're waiting for the results or are there other people in their household that are already confirmed then that gives us another direction we can take with that individual even without a test result
051okay laura you're up next yeah thank you so much for talking with us tonight that was extremely helpful um i had a few questions related to testing um so are are individuals responsible for getting their own testing or is that something that the health department would do it can be both so we have a growing number of physicians who are doing testing so if an individual has a primary care provider we would start there if that primary care provider for some reason doesn't do the testing can't do it in a timely manner etc there are options they can go to a cvs or other pharmacy they can also go to a health department testing site now those sites move around they're not all day long and they may have some limitations but if we run
052into a scenario where we truly have a need to get someone tested uh we have the means as a health department to make that happen we did that in the early stages we even knocked on the front door did the specimen collection got it to the lab now certainly with the number of students we have in you know any district or even both counties that that's not feasible but it is our job to make sure that we address those barriers so it's going to be important for families to communicate to you if there are barriers particularly if they're barriers we have not heard about since the beginning of this pandemic okay um and then in terms of the length of time to receive test results um i think we've all been hearing of you know
053these these cases where it takes three four weeks to get your test results and by then you know you've already done your quarantine um in your experience how long is it taking to get test results these days you know that's pretty unique to the lab um we've all seen in the media that some of the large commercial labs are beginning to report delays and it's really delays out of sheer volume um not due to their lack of ability uh you know our we are seeing so i we have a lab as a health department that we contract with and it is used by both counties that lab has a specified contract through their contract a turnaround time we're seeing that they're bumping up on the higher end still acceptable but on the higher end so
054we're already starting to put other um strategies in place having a second and a third lab you know to turn over to having um additional partnerships with high capacity labs even if they're out of state so on and so forth what we have to recognize is even if our numbers aren't high we are going to be impacted by our surrounding area if their testing increases even if ours doesn't it may impact our turnaround time because of the surrounding volume unfortunately as it is nothing you or i can control we just have to plan for it so we've already started that we've already you know had communications and fortunately county leadership um weighs in and and starts to you know to really push that uh partnership with various labs and you know i'm confident we'll have
055a secondary lab and other potential ways of testing even if it's tapping into more of the state resources okay um and then my other question was about mitigation strategies um i think that the the plan that we have laid out previously and we're going to hear more details about it tonight has sort of these layers of protection that we've been hearing a lot about um and so i was wondering um from what you've seen and what you've experienced with places that have already reopened um like daycare centers and nursing homes and and places like that um by implementing these different layers of protection have has that been effective in these in these kinds of places yes and it's been effective when they're used in combination and that's partly what we added to our guidance is
056these are not standalone you can't just do six feet and say we're good um and in my opinion because i err on the side of caution and i know there were some questions about you know if if students or staff are six feet apart can they take off their mass i'd rather err on the side of caution and say no until we know we're we're good in our schools because you have schools are like a daycare like a nursing home uh from the standpoint of you're in a contained area so we have to see how it plays out and you're different from a nursing home because the entire population coming into the school leaves every day and comes back in in a nursing home the challenge was or the biggest variable was the staff coming
057and going and what and i'm not saying that they caused anything it just became a fewer variables so you're dealing with a greater number of variables so you're much like our uh day cares but we have seen even in hospitals when hospitals have their appropriate protection personal protection equipment on and they're working face to face with extremely ill we didn't have any health care infections so it does work um but it has to work collective and integrated strategies that's the key okay great thank you my last question is sort of related to that question we've had a lot of experts coming and speaking to us over the past few meetings um and i think they've all been sort of generally consistent but i was wondering if you had any other recommendations so besides the six
058feet of distance um masking frequent hand washing as much ventilation as possible it seems like those are sort of the things that we keep hearing over and over is there anything else that you would add or you would recommend are you telling me are you telling me my 19-page document wasn't enough well it's more for the public than anything else there was something else that you would recommend just again to err on the side of caution i would just be curious to hear your thoughts on that so no i think it's the diligence and the commitment to them and the compliance where we see things and and we're hearing this as we do investigation now simply people being out in public without a mask is becoming a theme of close contacts and positives it really
059is it's not all our shore goers it's people staying right here in our neighborhoods without a mask and that's see it's really simple it's really important um what i like if i have to like something about a pandemic like this it's the consistency of these measures that they truly are working what we're dealing with is fatigue and someone's ability whether it's a physical ability a mental with it and i guess you've been we've been at this for far too long um but there's got to be a way we can re-energize folks for the sake great thank you so much i appreciate you you're welcome you're welcome before we go on to the next board member i just had a quick follow-up which is um the scenario where a student is sent home and then chester
060county health department talks with the school follows up with the family and then comes back with some advice what would you envision that the time frame is for that turnaround um so are we initiate an investigation within 24 hours okay any investigation a is going to take different time than investigation b um i don't have a good excuse me i don't have a good assessment of a standard time to turn it around because our investigations i'll be honest with you they're getting more complex because our socialization is getting more con our socializing is becoming more complex so i cannot guarantee you how quick it will be but what we have done and this is unique to schools is when there is a um even a probable case we're not going to wait and this is
061we're doing this now we are not waiting for a test result we're not waiting we're moving straight into the investigation so we can make some assessments and give some direction because it's sooner is better than later but i also want to you know tell people we can't panic we can't say oh my goodness we didn't get the investigation done within the next period of time um because if we panic then we're going to we're going to lose sight of what that information is trying to tell us and really drive out where we need to go for either that case that room that school that family uh and we're going to be reacting as opposed to leading and guiding that so in that scenario if that student is sent home do we bring the whole class
062back in the next day that is the guidance we will have to make based on the initial set of information we have and that's probably one of the hardest pieces to do because we may be working with very limited information at that time and what we don't want to do is overreact or under react and that's the challenge my department has and that's what's on their shoulders right now and it is a tall order uh but we're hoping working with first responders and nursing homes and health care providers and our grocery store you know all of our essential employees for you know four months hopefully is going to be meaningful um training and guidance and patterns that we can transfer into our school setting thank you you're welcome next board member antoinette yeah thanks um
063again uh to echo my colleagues thank you for joining us tonight um i have some questions um based on the self-monitoring and self-reporting that we're asking um you know of our our families um because our health plan does include a lot of um cooperation with um with our the you know the different family members and so um it looks like it'll be the case that if someone thinks that they were exposed to covid um you know that they should contact the the health department and i guess um i just want to know what that's going to look like so you know let's say i get a call from either um you know a friend or a family member or something saying i just got a positive test result and i had you know my child
064that i'm usually sent to school spent the night there um a couple nights ago um you know who how do i know who to call um what is the response um what it what is the responsiveness that can be expected to that um i guess i have two concerns um one concern would be that someone is sort of just freaking out and doesn't know who to turn to and the other concern is if it's too difficult to contact someone they're just not going to do it um so i guess i'm just trying to get a picture of of what that will look like good question so if it's you know and you're absolutely right there is a lot in this pandemic that were we're counting on the honor system and the compliance of everybody whether
065it's a parent a an employee etc etc in those scenarios we've made it easy there's one phone number and it is the chester county health department's phone number 610-344-6225 that phone number has a tree you know a press one press two um and it will have it already does uh have an option for if you're a school recording coronavirus if you suspect you as an individual irrespective of you know your employment or going to school has an option and that is put to various teams that will walk the individual through we're doing it actively now on an everyday basis where someone feels like they have coronavirus or they were told we have test results as long as the test result is in we can actually confirm for the individual um and in the beginning it
066was not uncommon i have coronavirus i have a test result can you give me your name they're not on the test you know the positive list and some of it was anxiety we get that uh or we can get them to give us the information through their physician so it's going to really depend on what information they're bringing to that call uh if the information is shared with the school then it's the school reporting to the health department and sometimes we'll get the parent and the school and that's okay because that school team will be able to reconcile that and then have that opportunity to say okay we've heard from both we know what we need to provide guidance for um honestly we're fielding calls about sniffles right now and by that time that call
067comes to the school team we're saying it sniffles it's okay go back to work go back and and it's not necessarily teachers but you have a lot of staff still in your buildings prepping and maintaining the property so we're already doing that and that's partially where we've already started to refine our guidance we can't answer all the sniffle questions because a sniffle by itself is not coronavirus indicated so we've refined it we're not looking at suspect cases anymore we're looking at probable cases so the next iteration of our guidance will narrow that focus so then you as a school don't have to report as much and a parent doesn't have to report if it's simple sniffles because it's got to be more than that it's got to be in combination with an exposure or multiple
068symptoms etc yeah so actually that's a really good say going to my next question which is um you know what advice do you have for parents who are supposed to self you know self-monitor their children every day before they go into school um because i do think that uh you know you're probably gonna get two again two two opposite sides of this one being um you know my child coughed one time this morning and so you know should i call someone um should i keep them out of school that sort of thing and then on the other side you're gonna have people that um maybe don't understand uh you know all of the symptoms or what they should be looking for um to recognize them so i you know again what sort of advice do
069you have for um for parents in the district who are going to have to we're asking them to monitor you know their child every day for symptoms um you know the obvious advice is to keep your physician's number handy because they will they know you're they they know the children if they have a you know have a regular um health care provider uh you know what's tricky i'm a mom um we all walked around saying i'm breathing different is that shortness of breath do i need to go to work do i not need to go to work uh what we see is after that initial and i'm gonna guess on a couple weeks it starts to kind of find its own cadence because people have settled in and we're beyond the initial anxiety of a
070change in our life um so we have been asked to do perhaps some videos on how to do that it's really hard i'm not a doctor um so i'd like to maybe put that back to um and maybe partner maybe ask your school nurses to work with us on what might be helpful for parents because we're going to ask them to be a pseudo uh you know doctor each morning and and it could be that we even prioritize on what are those symptoms that you know because you've you've heard fever was the top symptom now fever is kind of going down in the you know uh pecking order if you will um never did we hear about loss of taste and smell until more recently so the challenge is is some of these may even
071change throughout an academic year and we just you know it's a tough one so i'd love to maybe collaborate on that with your school nurse uh because you know they know your student body they they know what they're used to hearing and seeing from a student population okay great well again thank you so much i really appreciate you being here very welcome next up kristen thank you for being here director kasner for taking our questions tonight um i just want to remind the public that the reason we are consulting with chester county health department is because we do not have a health department here in delaware county and we are paying quite a bit of money to help you wrap up your capacity to support us so we thank you for taking on our county
072um so i just wanted to tag on to one of the questions about self-reporting for our multilingual families are there options to um i guess how can they report if they they speak other languages other than english uh absolutely so uh we have spanish speaking students i'm sorry students spanish spanish-speaking staff on staff some of our staff their sole role is to interpret that's what they do for the health department that's what they do for this pandemic we also have access to uh you may be familiar with it uh resources like language line where there's a third party on for the languages that we don't have staff members who can speak it and that has been effective we've used that on our phone banks we've used it for direct consultation we used it for you
073know investigations and contact tracing so we are fine we have access to lots of languages there and that is built into that service that we have um through through the health department great thank you you're welcome and you mentioned that there will be teams assigned to each school or school district i'm just imagining a scenario where we go back to school and after a few weeks you know worst case scenario there are a lot of cases popping up or a lot of suspected cases do you feel that your department has the capacity to support the school districts both in chester and delaware county i just heard the number that there's 92 000 staff and students in chester county i'm not sure about delaware county it's big so it's really how we're going to scale it
074is really going to be determined by what percent is going in person versus not in person if we have a large number of schools and districts committing to any level of in-person even if it's just special ed and ell students come in person and everybody else's irrespective we're going to scale so right now the team is our core team and you have the best of the best you have the individuals who do this every day as a part of their regular job plus additional people who already are used to working with schools in their other capacities in the health department they're our core and then they will begin to train others and bring them in and be the you know again the extension of our team as we need it so we're already planning to
075expand and we can always reduce if we have less in person but my assumption is every school district regardless of where they start their goal is to re get to in person whether it's this academic year or the next and if we're still managing this my team has got to be able to follow it along and be able to scale with it so i've talked to at least chester county leadership to say we need to start adding more now particularly because our core team is they're already active and they're already up to speed with all of the the guidance unfortunately the guidance is not that different than what they've been using for the past six months during this it's how do we now teach frame and revise specific to schools because that you're now our
076audience because you're becoming active as opposed to our long-term cares they're kind of coming off of that wave we still have to maintain those and that's a whole other team um that we have set up yeah thank you um so i know a lot of there's been a lot of talk around the mental health benefits of students returning to the classroom um i think what's left out of that discussion is that the classroom is going to look very different than a normal classroom in terms of social distancing masking all the various protocols um that'll need to be followed not to mention classmates potentially being removed or teachers getting sick and this just sounds like a traumatic way to do school to me i just i don't know um if you have any thoughts or if
077you've heard any expert opinions around trying to strike that balance of you know bringing kids in for the socialization and quote unquote mental health benefits but um also training them to be um i mean it's it's going to be emergency learning again just in person at this time uh it is i think if uh i think if we have heard that guidance on how to strike that balance we wouldn't have this question i don't think it's there yet um i have you know two school-age children uh i i struggled with the online for the short period of time i know how my two are going to react if they go in person whether you know particularly if you know with the just the general physical dynamics of it all there's no good in my mind
078i have not heard any good balance for that because it is going to have an impact and i think someone had uh mentioned and maybe it was in the public comments you know that the notion of this is this is going to be trauma this whole pandemic has has been and will continue to be trauma you know where i lean to you as education experts is being able to identify is there anything we're adding to that trauma that we could have an impact on and if so i'd love to be a part of that whether it's through my department or another county department such as the human services that works with you know mental health and intellectual development and you know fill in the blank that we may want to bring in and leverage a
079little bit more you know we have an adverse childhood experiences and aces coalition in chester county we draw upon them for input guidance whether it's messaging or be aware teachers you might have to you know navigate these different scenarios if you're in person that you hadn't considered before so i don't claim that i'm the expert on it i draw on those that surround me um that do it on an everyday basis so sorry i don't have the the crystal ball for that one no it's okay um i think i have one more question let's just see if i can find it now another concern for me is just the risk to teachers i know um we're focusing on students and their well-being and that's incredibly important and absolutely needs to be a piece of the
080discussion but i do worry about our teachers being in the building in a hybrid model four days a week exposed to multiple cohorts of students and we know that kovid released the research at this point is showing that kobe can more adversely affect adults than younger people um are there additional precautions we can or should be taking on um you know the four-pronged approach to hygiene and safety i i don't i don't know if there's an answer to this i just want to find a way to make sure we're having our teachers walk into the safest possible situation absolutely and um the really early discussions around schools were so focused on kids and i said stop it's the entire population it's the secretary it's the principal it's the maintenance it's the coach it's everybody and
081i would say that regardless of what the trend in transmission is because we're all together in a building and we're interacting so the plan i shouldn't say the plan i'm sorry the guidance the health department has given is irrespective of student versus staff versus faculty versus administration it is for everybody the the adults in our schools truly have a higher ability to actually comply to wear the mask and not play with them to not rub their eyes to be consistent with their hand washing to not share utensils etc not just to be the model for the students but for themselves so the guidance is the same for everybody in my mind my my underlying assumption is the adults are going to be more likely to be able to actually carry it out and all of
082the guidance is doable when it's the individual clearly we have to rely on the school's sanitation and cleaning but most of the guidance is really centered on us as individuals and that's where you know and i think we even use the words empower staff that their mask is for them as much as it is for the students um thank you and just one final follow-up to that um i know hipaa regulations can prevent us from explicitly naming who has contracted a case of cobit um but i feel like once we get into a classroom situation where we have smaller cohorts of students a certain student is absent for 14 days or the teacher is absent is there anything in the guidance about how we're maintaining or protecting confidentiality it seems like it's almost impossible at
083that point it is nearly uh it is risky with that uh so you you you know schools are not going to communicate names health departments are not going to communicate names the schools have to strike that balance of the the communication and i know in chester county i i talked to our school district saying we can't do what we did in the beginning and this was before delaware county was under um you know our health department here in chester county in in the early stages every every hint of an exposure or a a symptom was communicated and i get the reliance communities have on their schools to be communicators but it it frankly became way too much so in chester county this time we said we cannot do that so some of it is we
084have to set the expectations before the door is open even if it's virtual school and i i truly believe the expectations families in the community community of the school have to be set uh because and and i'm already hearing this from school districts our recommendation is indicate that your first has occurred and you are still being diligent about all the procedures and processes and prevention strategies but it's you put it out there yes we've had our first positive and we're continuing our great work we're following the plan we're safe um after that our guidance is don't over communicate after that but everything i'm hearing is you say it once communities and families are going to expect it every time thereafter so we're working through that right now to figure out you know is there some
085general statement that can be made but it's the same thing as any other communicable disease you might find in a school pertussis you can kind of look around and see who's out of school and oh they must have been the one because we got a letter that pertussis is in the school um so it's difficult but we just have to agree we're not sharing personal information on any level not just the name it it may not even we're not even going to the gender the age or anything on it and we yeah thank you you're welcome next up dave okay well first of all i also want to thank you for being here this evening to chat with us and also thanks chester county for adopting us as well my pleasure and we help department
086here and and they'll go pretty soon but we do appreciate it so i have a couple questions to to ask one of them was with regards to screening i've had a few and most of the guidance that's out there right now asks for a certain level of screening whether it's a system screening prior to showing up whether it's temperature screening at the door we've heard varying things about the effectiveness of that it can yield a lot of false positives it's not exactly the best um not the most effective way in determining you know who may be um at risk i just want to get your thoughts i guess on on on screening are there any certain methods that you believe would be [Music] best to utilize do you think it's you know maybe on the
087lower tier of uh of the other the other approaches that we're taking for mitigation uh so i i do think screening is effective um it it really causes people to pause and take accountability for themselves or in this case their children as well in sending them out uh my employer the county i'm required to screen every day now we have automated it where we can you know go on our phone record stuff and you know we take it to a very serious level our hr department gets notified if i report anything that hints at the symptoms so there's a whole series of questions we ask very quick very efficient now the state's guidance is have that done at home that's where some of the challenges start to lie so does a school district invest in
088a tool and a mechanism for parents to do that at home or do parents just do it at home on their own i know what i prefer something that's more consistent and has some visibility for the school but i also recognize that that's an investment it requires time it it's going to change i mean ours just changed yesterday to include travel so i know there's that whole level of how much more confusion can you add to this how many more steps after brushing our teeth and making sure they comb their hair before we send them out the door um so i do think it's effective uh i don't honestly i don't know that i've heard much from schools on how they're going to go about it except to just have the parents okay do it
089and report accordingly now that report is only if you're in my mind it's going to ultimately probably be as on that end of this option list it's going to be you're going to hear that someone is going to be absent for the day okay okay but we so if i could add on to that if that is the mechanism being used i would advocate schools ask why are you absent because if it is coronavirus related that's when you need to know and we need to know but if it's no they just they broke their foot they need a day to recover great okay great the other question i had you know when we're looking at the at a hybrid reopening because that's the way that we're able to achieve six-speed distancing i just i'm wondering
090is there and i know forever thinking this or not but as far as uh you know cohorting children sending them to school on different days you know we're considering maybe sitting then one group there monday and thursday another group tuesday and friday but then we're wondering well is it better to send one group there monday and tuesday and you know make the days consecutive and consistent it do you think that there are are there any benefits to either approach or drawbacks other approach that you can come that that you can think of just kind of which would be preferred is tracing easier for one is it is it you know not you know is it it is is is everything with regards to cross cam to cross contamination that we should worry about forward a
091goes down monday and b goes to the same room on tuesday could that could that provide a a bigger risk than if a went there both days and then was clean and then b went there and next two days so you're gonna have to clean the room you know just your general regular cleaning every day right so we're not walking into a contaminated room the next day even if it's a a and a b um cohorting is always good it's good from a you know managing who is with whom it's good from an investigation standpoint it's good from a contact tracing standpoint that's where you'll see in our guidance assigned seats is another fashion of cohorting so you always so it's a very quick it helps in the turnaround time as well uh but i
092don't have an opinion and i'd be happy to ask my team if they did whether group a comes in monday tuesday yeah and then versus group a monday group b tuesday right i i don't know if we're we we're at that level but i'd be happy to ask my staff if that's of interest but cohorting in general firmly support we we did it in um other organizations and it works okay great um just one more uh two more questions actually i guess one of them is with regards to teachers we talked a lot with students testing positive and what the what the protocol is for that or a student experiencing symptoms what protocol is for that the same thing for teachers or is it a different absolutely yeah we're not we're not differentiating we want
093the schools to have one process for all people to include if you happen to have a a visitor or an ancillary staff member who shared across buildings yes okay so would that run the risk i'm curious if with everything risk of teacher having to leave a class during the middle of the day and should there be a backup plan i guess if i if that's required you should plan for that backup plan okay uh but i think that's true even if all of a sudden there's flu-like symptoms in a teacher right yeah the teacher has to leave and then suddenly there's a group of 20 kids or you know 10 kids right you know what i do so we said yeah okay good so i want to make sure that was that was out there
094and then the last question and this one might be too complex to answer we're already at nine o'clock now but um i guess one question i also was about one of our challenges is with regards to busing uh pde released some guidelines for busting i won't go through them all but i mean they're generally the masking on the buses the seating members of the same family on on the same seats do you have any thoughts just the general rule i mean i know if you remember all those all the protocol for busting would you have any additional recommendations for that so if you haven't read our guidance on transportation busing i encourage you to um in addition and this was a recent recommendation from my staff that hasn't made it into the guidance is um
095we support two people to a seat on the ends of the seat even if they're not family members because we want all the kids facing forward hopefully the bus routes are not an hour long um but but when you add on the strategy of how that bus is filled so our um our investigators have recommended you fill the bus from the back seat along the window on either side and then you start to fill along the aisle on the back seat so the person who got on first is on the bus the longest but is going to have less time sitting having a a second person in their seat because the folks getting on at the end of the route are getting on there so it's like this you know you're almost serpentine the bus
096and we were going to try to diagram that out if that had added any value because it's about the time right so if we're saying no eating on the bus let's minimize talking mass must be on facing forward hands to yourself again all things in combination and hopefully we can get the kids there and then into a bigger space okay that's helpful i appreciate that absolutely serpentine approach i guess if you will yeah you're welcome thanks before we go on to the next board member i'd just like to point out that uh two hours ago cdc revised their recommendations for schools it's now posted on their website so you know what's new yeah before our last board meeting last week uh you know that's when governor wolf revised the three feet up to six feet
097rule so again to the public this this changes you know at the drop of a hat and we expect it to keep on changing um dr rushi did you have a question before i go to the next board member or no i was just going to comment that that will be tonight's reading does that mean i can count on you dr ruschi to update me tomorrow morning excellent i'm going to bed early kristen you have your hand up again i think laura had her large ears up before oh yeah i i do okay um so my question was about masks um i think there's a lot of confusion um in the united states in general about what kind of mask is okay i keep seeing people with like the regulator mask that you you know
098you would use for painting your house and i've heard those are not safe um i've seen people with all kinds of homemade situated like i just i feel like everyone has sort of seen it all um and if masking in schools is going to be it sounds like one of the best ways to keep everybody safe um it would be great if everybody had the the most effective kind of mask and knew how to wear it properly um so what what recommendations do you have for for families about the kinds of masks to buy the kinds of masks to avoid um and then maybe resources that we could share out to families and teachers and everybody about how to properly wear your mask how to properly dispose of your events things like that yeah let
099me i'm going to start with the end of that because we do have resources on the health department website so i'd love to share that with dr rushy she can get it out or you can link to it on your website how to make a mask the material washing it all of that's been out there for a while and it hasn't changed um doing a cloth-based mask the most important thing is making sure it is cotton based so you can breathe um for me i need a mask that has a little bit more space it forms here but it gives me a little depth here because when i breathe in i don't want to be eating the mask but that's my personal style so masks need to be up on the nose and down to
100the chin and the mask need to be you know where it's enclosed here because that's what we're trying to keep from escaping the the particles that's what will keep it um the the typical and i should probably should have brought in some mass here the typical blue surgical mask those are great uh the cloth masks are fine they're both pretty equal in um in their effectiveness there is no evidence indicating that our general population needs to wear the n95 mass which you know is typically used in our health care and other industries it's not necessary you know we're not face to face all day long with very ill people the if a shield is being used that shield should come down below the chin because i've seen some that are mentioned and should come to
101hear not mid-cheek if a shield is being used and the the governor i'm sorry the secretary of health at the state's order for universal masking does allow for a shield so i'll point to those resources and maybe one other tip the the masks that have the little wire in it to go along the nose is super effective a it seals it a little bit better it's comfortable it keeps it from falling down and for those who wear glasses like me it prevents the fogging that's really helpful actually i know i'm a college professor i'm not sure how that's going to work out with teaching and the mask and all that it's going to be yes yes and then there are uh the the improvements in mass that have a clear opening for those who are
102uh deaf hard of hearing prefer to read lips they're they're really getting improved originally i thought they're kind of creepy and scary looking but i've seen some uh as recently as yesterday someone sent me a link to them they're really nice looking and fit much better with it so if students are in need of that that's another uh an option as well great thank you so much i appreciate it you're welcome kristen so i think one of the more difficult things about all this has been the enforcement piece um at all levels just um even like guidance we're seeing coming out from the state is just that guidance um there's language such as should do we're strongly encouraged um i guess what i'm trying to understand is this might be a more logistical question for
103the district but how we are going to teach our students to follow these protocols um the the protocol you imagine you explain for the bus sounds great in practice but i also know that buses can be the wild west and our bus drivers are already over taxed um i just want to make sure that as a district we're thinking about how we're going to support bus drivers how we're going to support teachers and really what the first days of school are going to look like because i think that's just going to need that's going to need to be time to teach into all of these protocols to make sure that we can have a healthful uh school year so the added value you all have is you have fabulous educators this is what they do
104they've taught already the kids to not open the door for the stranger let's keep the school door open for the stranger uh there's so much that we'd need to draw from as you as educators to do that now if it is um me personally i i'm i'm mentally envisioning for my kids the first couple days isn't reading writing and arithmetic it's here's how school's going to look and feel and operate now we're all going to go and wash our hands i need you know everybody friction friction friction water etc um and unfortunately we have to build that in to our uh our time if we're doing in person and allow for that and not assume we're going to have to just piecemeal it in among the reading reigning arithmetic it's a commitment that the school
105has to make in order for it to be effective and continually come back and remind it so there's you know in our guidance it's you know simple cues of maybe the morning news includes reminders you know or i know the principal who is with my kids school he loves to use jokes to get the kids to want to do what he wants them and needs them to do and it happens to work in that school but he's an educator so he's leaning on that skill and that's what i would employ um all of our school districts to do when it comes to teaching that and if there's something we need to help with by all means we're in it with you um but we're also going to look to you as the the educators to
106help with that and frankly you know part of it is educating the parents as well and that's a piece we have tried to do between the beginning and now but we'll also be having to do more of it with and on your behalf thank you any questions any other questions from the board any questions from the administration i don't have a question mr feinberg but i do uh you know want to thank gene on behalf of the team i've mentioned previously how i came across other individuals and it was you know through county meetings that i've had the pleasure of meeting gene uh working working with her she gets a lot of really tough questions when she's meeting with superintendents i will only speak for delaware county very difficult um questions thrown at her and
107you know always always follows up with do you need more information is there something else that i can you know that we can can do for you so i i do feel that we have a partner uh here at the chester county health department great i am glad you think that that has been my my big mission uh you've all have asked fantastic questions uh and i hope everyone listening to this understands that these questions are out of passion and care for the health and safety of the students and staff in your school district uh that's what keeps me going your guys's passion you're not pushing this away you're you're not afraid of it you're standing there with the health department and the health department wants to stand next to you and get through this
108um it is it is what we do what we're committed to so tough questions or not whether we have the answers or not we're always learning from each other and we and we're committed to applying it and figuring it out if we don't have it to apply so i applaud you all keep up the great work and uh thank you for the opportunity to participate tonight gene thank you very much please thank your colleagues we absolutely appreciate the good work that you all are doing for us and i'm sure you're going to have a very interesting year it will continue as i said as i said to others we are writing this textbook together well thank you very much all right you are very welcome have a good evening next item on our agenda is
109an update on the opening of the 2020 2021 school year and the return of the high school band dr rishi thank you mr feinberg um here we have a screen very very similar to folks uh we've been using this i'm just sort of just building upon it from one one week to the next so uh this evening we'll talk you know a little bit more about the hybrid model uh but then also do you know a few updates in in here as well um you can see you know we continue to put there the text in red just since we started talking on july 2nd all the times any of this guidance has changed and now tomorrow we will be adding in there that cdc uh did change on july you know july 23rd and
110we will be taking a look at that uh that guidance immediately and see what that has in store for us i'd like to start this evening however by talking about why the change from five days to hybrid because that's a theme that we have noticed coming in in in our questions and uh maybe maybe in in my discussion last week uh was not very clear as to why that change came about and there's a perception that i want to clarify uh for people people are asking you know why did the board abandon or why is the administration abandoning the idea of five days with students in school and that was an option five days students in school was an option that we had had presented earlier and all along had said that on july 16th
111we would take a look at the components to a hybrid model so that the board our our intent all along has been to provide the board with as much information as possible so that there would be a good foundation when we say and this is the recommendation of the administration you know what what we are recommending in in terms of opening so i think there was a the perception that we then moved away completely you know from the the hybrid just by looking at the model well if you recall last week we had mentioned that the board meeting started at 7 30 and 3 30 that afternoon had received the information from uh from pde uh and from the governor's office as well and a significant change there really focused on the minimum of six
112feet of social distancing between students and staff everything else that we had been reading up until that point clarified six feet where feasible well what this did what this information clarified for us is while six feet of social distancing when it's not fee when six feet is not feasible that three will be okay three in every classroom is not okay uh and so that's when we're saying the looking now at you know at that model we cannot open schools and back when all of this first started i had said we would not be able to open schools five days a week for all students if we had to comply with six feet of social distancing everywhere so i just wanted to put that out there as as a rationale so there was no directive from
113the board to abandon that and you know and start looking at the hybrid model uh that is the the history behind very brief history uh behind that change there are and you may hear about you know some districts that are still going to continue to look to brings to bring students in uh i would just ask people to keep in mind that there are so many variables that influence the possibilities that a school can or cannot take into consideration some things down to the square footage available in classrooms the class sizes and in in our districts here and and parents of children know our kindergarten and fifth grade all the way from kindergarten up through fifth grade we have classes of 20 25 26 children in grades k one and two in our older grades
114we at five four and five we have classes that are at 29 students so when we talk about um working with all of the students at six feet of social distancing well that's very different if there's a district where there are 18 children in the room and and we have 29 children in a room the number of adults that are assigned within a room also comes into play so if there's a particular program and that program has additional adults in addition to the teacher that's also something that we have to take in into play and the number of excess spaces that are within a building we see differences there right within across our own district uh in how much excess space is maybe able to be created in one building and not a possibility at
115all in in another building so that just accounts for some of the differences like why can't everyone do this do the same thing on in surrounding district surrounding districts there are different variables and different opportunities that are available to each of us in you know in order to do that i'm going to bring up a picture and just you know just to remind you what we were looking at this is the same classroom we saw two weeks ago uh the picture to the left for the picture to the right with three feet of social distancing and the picture to the left is that same exact classroom six feet of social distancing um the three when we thought that was you know was going to be okay we even had people look at that and say
116well that looks like the classroom as you know as it has already always looked uh and that is true with some thing excess furniture you know bookcases and such having been removed from you know from that classroom the six feet of social distancing the piece that that is required uh in that new guidance is there has to be six feet of social distancing for the teacher that teacher has to be able to maintain six feet of social distancing and you can see with the picture on the left will be much easier for a teacher to possibly move a little bit around the room and that comes back to you know creating that environment that is somewhat familiar to students uh you know a place where they will feel welcome and want to come in and
117to engage with their peers and with and with their teacher so what we are looking at now is you know hybrid and have referred online all right that we're looking at and that's what we have talked about started to talk about last week uh we had our presentation on you know haverford online and we talked a little bit about what a hybrid model would look like our employees want to provide parents with as much information as as we can many of our employees are parents of young children or school-age children themselves and and understand the desire to know as much as possible in making this decision it's not an easy decision to make where we can create a picture we will create the picture the challenge is that there are some things that we just
118don't have an answer to it right to at this point in time some of it we won't have an answer until we know exactly how many students are going to participate in which one of the two options and some we need to have more conversations with our teachers uh to see you know what that what um they see as possibilities uh and even our speaker tonight you know mentioned we've got such great teachers they're creative they're innovative they're going to look at how they can take that environment and and make it uh the best that it can be i in our conversations with staff this week you know reminded them the the district the culture the climate the sense of community that everyone knows and loves about our district was built over time and and
119things could grow and change you know over time um and now it is the goal of everyone who is is working to create that same or very similar culture and climate they've not lost sight of the importance of you know of doing that we had our first live meeting [Music] participants on tuesday evening uh we're going to do a similar live sessions for the hybrid model because there is such a large interest in that or large by number interest in that we're actually going to break those sessions into level so tuesday uh at five o'clock five to six thirty for elementary seven to eight thirty for the middle school and then on uh wednesday we will have a session for high school five to six five to six o'clock um our pupil services will do
120an information session as well uh and that date is going to you know will be communicated in our communication out to families tomorrow which is the final a few logistics there to to finalize and make sure that we can get everyone that we need to be able to be available for that so we want to answer the questions we want to give people an opportunity to learn as much as possible about these options so what the hybrid option you know which which option to you know to select uh and actually uh dave one you know one of the questions that you were asking of our speaker this evening about you know which model and and is there a model that is more you know recommended than the other well that is an area where pde
121has been very helpful to us um in the study that pde commissioned uh that was you know was completed the focal point of that and that you know is on our website uh for people to go and read it require it all of that study was to look at the number of days that you would be able to be in school before that school would experience five positive infections i don't there's nothing magical i and i also want people here that that does not indicate that when you get to your fifth case that schools are going to shut down or not that was not no go back that was that was not the intent anna can you go back one thanks yeah that was you know that was not the intent uh the intent of
122this study is to look at what type of a setup would increase the chances that you would be able to keep the schools open longer and that one and the one uh the hybrid model there where you divide your student population in half and each half attends 40 of the available days that is predicted to slow the spread of the virus substantially meaning that it would take five times as many days before the school would experience its its um fifth fifth occurrence so that's i may not have gone into as much detail last week i talked about the seven different models and you might remember seeing the pie charts that were there and i had said blue is good because blue is community spread the opportunity for the virus to be spreading out in the
123community not related to the school not something that the school can control and let's look at the you know really small areas where the school can have have some control so there are two aspects when we look at at hybrid one is which model which model would you would you consider uh and there was a question to look at you know possibly some type of of a six day rotation where we would have either three days in school three days at home learning however that you know that would be structured but the idea was that if we did the sixth year that there would be more opportunity for you know contact time with the teacher uh and certainly the pros to that you know developing and sustaining the the relationships if there's more time that
124you're able to be in the classroom interacting with one another we believe that's going to be you know be an outcome of it and then increasing the opportunity for in-person learning the more times that the children are in the classroom just increa increasing that um the one con to that and and really the one that took it off the table for us uh when we looked at the transportation aspect to it our board members are very familiar with the fact that we transport to over 100 locations it's not just transporting um students to our seven schools but to over 100 locations and that would significantly significantly complicate the transportation aspect uh on because you're going to be dealing with some of the private parochial schools in the area that are going to be on a
125five-day schedule um and we're already looking at having students work in two different cohorts and the trans the transportation that will be different on those given days for that as well i know we also you know pointed out that that's not one of the models that was recommended it doesn't mean that it's not a good model it just they did not look at that and really study that to see how many how you could continue attendance before reaching that fifth occurrence in the district so the next one that we looked at and what we had talked about before looking at a monday wednesday and a two tuesday thursday um the pros being that that is that the contact with the teacher is spread throughout the week so i see my teacher monday the idea is
126that monday afternoon my teacher can queue up what i'm going to do what i'm going to be work working on on on tuesday over time maybe there's an opportunity for even some interaction with with other students not initially but maybe over time and but then i'm right back in the classroom again that teacher can queue up what i'm going to be working on on tuesday and then friday our hope is that there's an opportunity for the for the teachers to bring both cohorts together online or smaller groups that would be mixed from out to like a smaller group of students from cohort a and cohort b and bringing those those students together because we're hoping that we eventually get back into school this is not i would not say that the plan that we are
127laying out and and hopefully that you will will approve next week is the way that we will conclude the school year i've said to my colleagues in the district let's just look at september and october and and then see we can reassess this and see and you even you know heard gene talk about you know if cases decline if you look at what's going on in your in your community then maybe you can gradually start to introduce more into into your environment we did identify cons with this model as well that it is an interruption to learning uh although that could probably be a con for anything that that we're talking about this evening and the coordinations of lessons for a grouping and b grouping um will be something additional that the teachers are going
128to have to to work with uh and trying to keep that pacing you know somewhat similar as they're working with with those groups as well the other model that we have mentioned was having students come monday and tuesday wednesday is the virtual day and then the second cohort coming thursday and friday one of the pros to that is that we have two days two consistent days of instruction on also a pro that there would be a day of cleaning um in between the cohorts uh although i i don't know if you were going to weigh or you know assign a point value uh to the different elements that we looked at i don't know how heavily that would be you know would count as a pro that one of the cons to that is that
129there are three school days that lapse before the student would see the teacher again so i would leave my classroom on tuesday and then i'm not back again until the following you know following monday uh to see the t see the teacher again um and then there's also we talk a lot about the classroom and what the classroom teachers are doing with this with the students but there are a number of other uh other adults whose interactions with the children are just as and sometimes maybe even more important and they're people like our school counselors our social workers our therapeutic health providers uh for them to you know it could potentially be a full week before they would have an opportunity to see students and work with them in person they're still available online but
130you know to be able to work with them then in person the second aspect to a hybrid model that you need to consider to give consideration to is how the students are actually cohorted and we were asked to to at least have a conversation internally and look at if we could identify you know cohorts by neighborhood and that the pro to that was and under understandably and and many of my colleagues who are parents of of young children uh thoroughly agreed with this wholeheartedly uh that you know neighborhoods are already supporting one another um and if the if we are able to cohort by a neighborhood that that support can continue if their children are in you know in school the same days as we looked at that and and engaged in our discussion we
131felt that a con and it it may be more impactful in other areas of our district than than another area but that does have the potential to divide the students by demographics and to possibly alienate families who are not connected and don't have you know some kind some kind of support it's also more difficult to keep families together if numbers do not work out for class sizes so if we're trying to you know group by you know grouped by neighborhoods um and even with it within a building looking at grouping by by the neighborhoods you know if you've got a lot of children who are one age in one grade level and not as many in in another grade level it's going to um complicate might be too strong of a word uh but you
132know right now we're looking to not add complicating variables to figure out what what we need to do but to try to look at how we can streamline a process uh and get information you know have a decision made on july 30th so parents can start to plan that's the other thing that we're hearing you know from from some people who are giving us feedback make the decision i i need to know um you know some people have indicated that their employers have already said that they might be able to be flexible with schedules and they want to know they want to know you know what is it going to be so that i can if i have this opportunity i don't miss it with my with my employer so another uh co-working model that
133we looked at was to identify by alphabet and that is the one that you know that i mentioned last week we are able to keep families keep families together there will be a variety of students who will be placed into the class our system is already set up to accommodate this there's a lot of time that our teachers and and building principals at the elementary level really put into identifying those those class lists um at the high school level it's more by you know by the course selection uh but there's there those lists have already been identified and to look at how we could take that and now layer in alphabetically break them in half in some way we feel that we can maintain some aspect of having a variety of learners you know um
134and a variety of children in that classroom the con one of the first cons that we identified for there you know is that some class sizes may actually may be uneven with this model as well and we would need to run that and actually take you know take a look at it and see what modifications you know would would need to be done um one of our other um other cons that i'm sorry that the bullet is there but the the item isn't there but is looking at we would not say um across our district that all students would be divided like all of the students whose last name begins with a also up through k will be in cohort a and students whose last name begins with an l through z would be in
135in cohort b it that cohorting by alphabet would occur at the building level the uh example that i will use for that a through k in a building with 600 students could very well end up being only 200 children and a through k in another building might be 350 children so we're not going to be able to come out and say district wide if your last name begins with a k you are absolutely going to be in school you know on this particular day and just like um any other times we do placements if there are concerns questions that parents have after that information comes out you know we encourage them to you know talk with the with building principles we always talk through what concerns are about placement and see what we can do
136to mitigate those concerns you know in some way so not an exhaustive list i mean it's a week of looking you know really looking at this for the hybrid model we are going to be recommending that we do the monday wednesday because of the importance of that teacher contact and the interaction and the teacher laying out the next level of work that the children can and students can engage in and that the cohort model be approached by alphabet we can answer more questions about that when we do our you know live meetings next week for parents i also wanted tonight to give you a little bit of an update we issued our parent preference form and as of six o'clock this evening we had two hundred and two thousand uh 894 responses from now that
137that represents individual students just keep in mind we we need to find out about each student and some families are choosing different options for uh for their children uh of that number 2445 have already indicated uh that their children will attend uh the building uh hi if it's a hybrid model and 450 have indicated that they will be participating in in haverford online we in that parent preference form we also asked about their intent for transportation 651 of the 2894 students represented there will use the school district of harrowford township transportation and as of this evening 311 of the 2894 respondents expect to use our food service during during that time so in closing here our timeline just you know reminding folks our information sessions are going to be held the week of july 27th
138it's the 30th that we will be asking the board for approval and i want to to kind of help the board a little bit i want the public to know that the what the board is approving is the health and safety plan and that plan identifies in almost like an outline way what our approach to distancing masking screening hygiene cleaning of the of the buildings it's not solely this so there's there's a lot that the board is you know taking a look at they have a draft of that document and there's an opportunity for them to you know submit questions submit comments to us so that we can refine that and get that you know get that posted posted for folks and we're hoping to have approval of all of that next week and the
139parent preference response would then be due on august 1st we will have inc we will have concluded all of our live um q a sessions we continue to update our faq document on on the website and we'll continue to do so based on the questions that keep coming in i take some questions now and then we do have um all of our building principals have put together sort of an overview um you know some of them are seven minutes maybe 10 minutes um so there's an overview of elementary and what this what our health and safety plan would look like in an elementary building there's an overview of our middle school and an overview of the high school that we'd like to show you uh this this evening but before we do that if there
140are any questions any questions from the board mr sinto hi um thank you for putting all this together uh my question is about the um the process of our voting to approve the plan next week it's my understanding that that health and safety plan is then going to be submitted to the pennsylvania department of education is that correct that is correct mr center okay so that depart the department of education is requiring that from every district in the state in order to reopen yes okay and then as the year progresses if you know the fates allow us to you know add some more things to the plan to get students back into the classroom safely would we then have to approve an additional plan at that point or is that yet to be determined as
141things change yeah that's yet to be determined we do not have clear guidance on that yet okay thank you laura dr rushi thank you um this is a lot of work i know you and all of your team have put into this um i just had a few questions um we haven't heard anything yet about um career and technical education and i was wondering um and also um dual enrollments dude duel did i say that right it's 10 o'clock isn't it dual enrollment students there you go um who are at the community college um if you know i know that we can't go into every single detail of every um you know possible situation tonight but if um parents had questions about that are those kinds of questions going to be addressed at the information
142sessions yes okay the information session i can very quickly say that the um career and technical school is planning to to open um so we did receive notification notification from them and i'm sure we'll get a copy of their health and safety plan okay great um and then i had a question um about the the recommended plan um for for teachers is it easier hybrid is is challenging um so is it easier for teachers to do this alternating um you know monday wednesday and then tuesday thursday or is it easier for teachers to do um like the back to back monday tuesday and then thursday friday with sort of a planning day or a virtual meeting day in between uh and we had meetings with um teacher groups uh throughout throughout the week um and
143i don't have hard numbers to put onto it but you know it's a personal preference for some you know what they feel they would be able to accomplish uh we you know with students um so i i don't want to say there's it's definitely one way or you know or the other but you mentioned dr crispin hybrid's hard it's hard i know i'm preparing for it it's really hard yeah and yeah you know that's what people that's what people are focusing on you know how can i do all that i want to do yeah yeah okay um because i i would like to vote for whichever plan would make it easier on the teachers personally while still maintaining all of the health and safety protocols to keep our students safe um because it is a
144heavy lift the hybrid is a heavy lift um okay so that's that's helpful to know um and then also um i do feel like the alternating schedule is going to be challenging for working parents who have young kids at home um how do we have a sense that there is going to be um there's going to be you know child care available in the township that there's going to be after care available things like that that um you know many of our working families rely on uh another meeting that i had this week we invited uh the child care providers just was a you know a zoom meeting talking with them about this model uh so that they could be you know could be prepared we had also asked them did they you know think
145about with some of the colleges and universities going online you know maybe reaching out to them and seeing if they could get you know more space there uh their two big issues for the providers who joined our meeting number one is is transportation and i said something we can't like we can't make any kind of commitment to you know to assist with tr with transportation and the second thing they're worried about is wi-fi access which you know is interesting they know that the kids would be coming and have a you know a device with them and thought it was great that they would be able to support that you know in some way but the facilities that they are in in some places do not have to their knowledge uh adequate bandwidth and the wi-fi
146access for the numbers of students that they're that they're having they're also concerned about the social distancing and the number of students that they the number of children that they will be able to you know uh so we're looking at you know at our spaces as well um you know with some might say well you only have half of the student body in the in the building yes but they're spread out by you know by six feet we're still using you know using all of the classrooms that you know that are that are there but we're working on it to see what we can do it's okay for our staff members as well our staff members will be in working and some of their children in the area you know we already know some of
147the districts that have voted and are going with a hybrid model okay um and then i i my last question is about kindergarten because kindergarten is um is half day so how does that play out in the in the hybrid scenario because it's a little bit different than um you know the full day programs and that's another piece that we wanted to take a look at to see if there was something that we can do maybe a little different with that and that might depend on what we end up with how many people using transportation great thank you next up antoinette sure thanks um so i actually have a lot of questions on the health and safety plan um the draft that went through so is now a good time to ask those well actually
148if i can i can say like i sent that as a draft to people that intentionally so that you've got questions like some of your fellow board members have sent me an email with those questions obvious some of the things if you're noticing something that we can fix in it right away um if not if it's if it's a question piece then we'll put that together and get that back out to ever to everybody um but if you want to ask a couple of them now uh i'll see what i can do i'm not the sole author of that that's the you know the only thing okay um that's fine i guess some of them are more logistical um well i guess a couple questions i had that have to do with the the hybrid
149program itself which um because for the middle school and the high school we have them being um you know they have like i guess what we can call like a three-quarter day um in school um they're being dismissed at at lunchtime and i guess i just um with the fact that they're going to be six feet apart in the classroom um was it considered for them to eat in classrooms or have some have some students have their lunch in their classroom and some students have their lunch um in in in the cafeteria or gymnasium or whatever it may be in order to achieve the the six feet of distancing there which i know um i believe the reason that they have to be sent home at lunch is um that six feet is impossible to
150achieve in the cafeteria um with all of the students there so i just wanted to know if that was considered uh that is considered and and i i i don't want to get out in front of anything but if if we can make a change anywhere it is more likely to be at the middle school where we are looking to see if that will be you know possible what you're talking about there it comes down to the custodial support that is going to be needed for you know for something like that the supervision that will be needed when when you've got that like that many small groups spread throughout the building eating they have they can't be left alone and the adults who would be would be supervising them at the high school uh we
151do not see how we can accomplish all of that there we are exploring further uh the principle i shouldn't say the principal at the middle school has been exploring it further he would like to you know be able to get this get the kids in school as much as possible okay um great and then um i guess because one concern i have is um about after school sports and after school activities and um because i mean right now you know in the green phase um i believe sports and i think your next presentation is on the band um you know will continue um through as long as we remain in green um but if students are being bussed home at 12 30 um and then you know sports or after school activities are supposed to
152start at three um they wouldn't be bused back at that time right no they would not they would not be bussed back at that at that time um some of the actual activities like um band chorus orchestra uh the schedule that's at the middle school they're actually those students would stay would not go they would stay and then we would you know bust them home afterwards you'll hear a little bit of that about that in mr haran's video the activities at the elementary school i i don't know about district course for the elementary level how to safely make that work uh jen saxa has been working with our muse with our music teachers and there may be some virtual things that they're able to get students in you know involved in uh any activity that
153we can offer you know maybe there's something that we're doing a little bit earlier you know looking at looking at all of those things that you're talking about yeah because i guess because one one concern i have is that you know if we have an after-school sport at the high school for example um you know that a student wants to be a part of um but they don't have a ride back to the high school um and so you know they they get bused home at 12 30 or whatever the time is um to get sent home for lunch um but they need to come back and so i'm just concerned that students would be not going home um you know and and having those other two hours of instruction um because they feel like
154it's so important for them to to do that after school sport that they don't have a way to get back to so i'll take that up with mr dunny um sorry let me just look at a couple other my questions um and so i guess to for the the the child care um question that that lara had brought up um you know i guess because in normal times we have uh or the district has um on-site before and after care um and so are those currently continued to to go on as planned you know for the cohorts potentially in the you know if uh cohort a student has monday wednesday their before and after program would run as scheduled monday wednesday is is that the current plan yes yes and they they all you know
155agree to and of course you know they want they want that and that's um you know at the elementary buildings and then also we have the y providing aftercare at the middle school for our elementary students they would want wish to continue as well right okay great and then um i guess you know you sort of alluded to this a little bit with um if there are child care providers um that could assist you know for for the remote days um you know the district will certainly work with them or you know um help facilitate that or at least put them in touch with parents and that sort of thing but was there a discussion about how at that point they're not actually just doing child care they would actually be helping to facilitate the
156remote learning because you know as we've discussed in previous online present you know presentations regarding online learning um you know the younger students really do need that um adult facilitator um you know to either for the the asynchronous and asynchronous learning or even just to make sure that they're attending their online you know um live classes to the extent that there are them um were there were those discussions had with the child care providers yes and we're going to do a follow-up once we know what model we're working with uh having a follow-up with them some of the providers as it said they said they will not have the the wi-fi access uh others feel that they will so we would you know have a meeting so that they know what our model now really
157looks like beyond just cohorting at this point we were just talking about the cohort piece okay um and then i guess the the last thing that i want to say for the um the the model that the district is presenting as a recommendation is i think i think that it's also um a pro for the monday wednesday tuesday thursday um for those that receive the free and reduced lunch because i think that what i saw was that um they would actually be given that the day before yes it's not right thank you yeah so that does seem like another another area where you know um the monday tuesday um and then your thursday friday schedule would probably be a disadvantage for those students yes yeah thank you okay all right that's all i have for
158now thank you dr ruchi for the presentation and for answering the questions bridget hi thank you i had been jotting down some questions and then you mentioned that there are some videos that i am interested in making sure we have time to get to because i think those will be informative um but just a couple of the questions or things to i think point out for the community's understanding is in this presentation tonight about the hybrid model we didn't hear much about what the remote learning days might look like i understand canvas is going to be the district-wide tool but it might be helpful to briefly reiterate kind of the expectations on the remote learning days in a hybrid model and then i had a couple other things that i can follow um so those
159remote learning days will be a combination of synchronous and asynchronous uh you know learning and another advantage that we saw to the monday wednesday is that the teacher could get the children prepared for what they're going to be doing on tuesday when they're leaving his or her classroom on a monday um and it may i would not expect you know right away that the teacher is going to say and on tuesday we're all going to get you know all going to get together but we would hope that they would you know eventually start to get to thing you know things like that and it may be a combination of i'm going i want you to i want you to watch this um this video i want you to at the high school level do a
160certain type of an experiment um you're going to log back in you're going to do this group work so it you know might be something that you and you're going to work as a group and you're going to start focusing on your project on tuesday here's what i want you to have finished by the time you come back on wednesday so it'll be a combination of of a lot of that thank you um i um i noted the the lunch service and um i've seen it described as kind of a grab-and-go or more of a bag lunch could you just talk about what people should expect with particularly lunch service at the elementary school in high school and how it's going to be different than what we had previously been able to serve it'll all
161be cold sandwiches and salads that's what the combination thereof which would there will be no hot lunch right and um just one other quick thing of in elementary schools um could you just speak to the availability of recess i know everybody thinks that that's a um you know that's an important part of the school day and and one of the kids favorites certainly and just what recess might look like or perhaps that's going to be in the video uh they'll tell you talk um talk a little bit a little bit about that and how that's going to be set up at each one of the buildings but you know pretty much the children the 15 children that i am with in in my room um will be the 15 children that i am with out
162at recess in a designated area and then if there you know or five different home rooms of that grade level uh they will rotate around to those designated areas it doesn't mean there are different activities uh the one that one different activity will be the playground equipment so that they will all get a chance to you know have an experience with that during the week next up ari thank you larry dr ruschi uh just a couple of questions the draft template document on the health and safety plan from pde is uh six we we're up to 66 pages i don't know if it has any intentions on growing um i assume when we submit it to pde it becomes a public document and will be published for community uh review yes we'll put it on
163on our website next thursday you know wednesday whenever the board agenda is is out it will be there great is there an opportunity to shrink that a little bit so that it's a little easier to digest i'm going to assume you're not going to talk about the size of the font yeah can we shrink that down into a more concise tighter package for the cons for the community to review at all um i i guess i i kind of feel like what we've been doing each week in terms of talking and particularly last week and this week um last week's presentation about haverford online um part of last week talking about the hybrid model the hybrid model this week and then earlier you know talking about the cleaning the sanitizing uh the mask requirement they're
164really like if if what you're looking for mr fleischer like what's that 70 000 foot foot view uh that's really what that what that is um and then i think one once we got this all mapped out we know that our building principles are going to start looking at the logistics of what all of that will look like like what i just described um about you know recess well there's going to be a different plan for recess at manoa from the planet cooper town from the planet you know at chestnut world and those principles will start communicating that great yeah a much easier guide to follow building specific grade level specific would i think be beneficial and i do just want to point out one item on page six of the plan it says inclusion
165of a diverse group of stakeholders is critical and this is from pde to the success of planning and implementation leas which is the school district of haverford township correct yes are highly encouraged to make extra effort to engage representatives from every stakeholder group for example administrators teachers support staff students families community health official or other partners which we obviously have brought in several of those with a special focus and this is the most important part to me on ensuring that the voices of underrepresented and historically marginalized stakeholder groups are prioritized how are we meeting that recommendation i know with some of the staff members who have been you know have been involved with that i can go back this was a full team effort so i can go back and get more specificity about that
166in particular thank you it seems like a really important recommendation pde is uh highlighting for us good luck thank you next up kristen um i just wanted to know how we're planning for substitutes this coming school year um i'm just thinking about our teachers who will be in the buildings four days a week um they may be doing some hybrid instruction on fridays or have you know they'll have other responsibilities so they'll be fully engaged with their work um many of them either live in town or outside of town their children may be in some sort of hybrid model of their own for learning i'm just wondering how we're going to support our teachers and their child care needs potentially anticipating for staff members either being out for their own illness for the illness of
167their children or other family members who need care i also know many of our substitutes tend to be retired teachers who come back and we know that you know our older community members are at higher risk for complications of covid so i'm just i'm wondering what our substitute plan is to recruit people and beyond that how are we going to be training these substitutes um in the protocols for in-class instruction but also how are we going to support them and train them to teach students online if they're filling in for this hybrid model and i also know too with technology oftentimes you need a district login to get access to canvas or whatever platform or online um online platforms are being used and i was assuming our subs don't necessarily have haverford um signing credentials
168so i just want to make sure that someone's thinking about how substitutes will be trained um on you know in participating in this hybrid model but also how we're going to staff our subs and in terms of the training and what we're going to do with them um maybe at one of our august meetings we can talk you know a little bit about that uh in terms of how that's going to work we don't have all the you know all of the answers to the questions we know there's going to be a shortage of substance of substitutes it is a concern for all of us if we don't if we can pick whatever model we want and if we don't have enough adults we can't open we or we can't you know sustain and keep
169our keep our schools move uh moving forward all the more important reason for all of us to practice all that quick social distance masking all the protocols that gene talked about earlier tonight we had asked um chris and our building principals to keep a large space in their building needed that like do not set schedule classes in there do not so that in the event like the planning that with the level that we're at now for planning is teacher needs to leave during the day what what happens there so we've asked them to at least leave a large space in the building that is not scheduled uh that if you needed to put two three like you know if you have a huge room and you can get people socially distanced in there uh to
170put them in there so that we would have the immediate need uh you know taken care of um but you know beyond that we're you know we continue our building principles are in doing interviews now uh for our teaching positions we are continuing with our guaranteed building subs and so we do have like an extra substitute at each one of the elementary buildings uh we have i think it's four extra substitutes in in the middle school and in the high school we will have six days of additional substitute time if we can move forward with our partnership with kutztown for the reading specialist interns that they want to to provide for us so like we are starting to take a look at that was a really that was a plus for that kind of partnership
171it was more so the um availability of having six days of substitute time um that we can count on every week that was very attractive to us with that so i i don't have a long list of you know what we are doing but we are working working on it as things become available laura there we are just something that i just thought of and i'm not sure if this has come up yet but um thinking of partnering with colleges i know a lot of colleges in the area have teacher education programs for undergraduates and graduates and i know that a lot of those students are not going to be able to do their field placements and their all of that is there some way we could partner with these programs to have some of
172those students in some of these online spaces where that would facilitate more live interaction um certainly explore it what the possibilities are yeah and we would just have to see what the responsibilities would be because to provide instruction and work with students they have to hold their certificate of course of course um yeah just just something i was thinking of it could be sort of mutually beneficial for everybody and we do have a lot of colleges in our area and almost none of these students are going to get their student um their their field placements or their their student teaching done um because of all of this so teachers are taking student teachers oh that's great okay the thing is you know this will become someone who is in our building every day uh and
173can be there to provide the support what we what we feel we cannot take uh are the you know i need to do 10 hours of observation but we're unfortunately we can't continue to support our profession uh that way um but we will support our profession with with student teachers and that's pretty consistent throughout the county okay that's great good thanks any other questions from the board okay dr rishi what do you have for us get your popcorn sit back uh we've got our principals did a tremendous job um i asked them to you know think about what their what the day would be like in a hybrid environment um and and they they really they want to get a positive message out to everybody um that they and their teachers are are going to
174make the best of of a situation good evening ever for community school board dr rushi cabinet my name is joel de bartolomeo the principal at chestnut wall elementary school thank you for allowing me the opportunity today to share with you a day in the life of our students k-5 what it would look like in a hybrid model and here we are taking a look at a day in the life of a student in kindergarten through fifth grade in our hybrid model students will be clustered and cohorts of a or b mondays and wednesdays tuesdays or thursdays kindergarten the same online fridays will be for instruction focus on interventions enrichment and social studies and science arrival and dismissal will be extended we will be flexible here you see our instructional day will begin at about 9
17510 kindergarten p.m about one o'clock logistics for the information about a rival dismissal will come from your principle we're going to take a general overview of the instructional day something new that we'll be doing this year building in some breaks which will be outside whenever possible students could get some movement breaks throughout the course of the day hand washing supervision by teachers will also be part of our day here we see an instructional day for a student in grades one through five each day begins with a morning meeting that'll be k through five english language arts will be between 100 and 110 minutes math between 65 and social studies and science about 30 minutes each day instruction for social studies science will be photo focused for friday online sessions specialist classes will be 16 minutes
176guidance will be its regular 30 minutes and those classes will get outside for breaks when possible here's we see an example of a cohort moving through our specialist classes the same will be in play for kindergarten and here we see what a kindergarten day might look like not too much different from how a kindergarten day would have looked two years ago all of our decision making runs through the lens of our basis group we are very much focused on the warm and compassionate environments that exist in all of our classes we want to make sure we sustain the belonging and inclusion that we've worked so hard to build over the past five years thank you all for your continued patience and support be well good evening my name is jillian mcgilvery i am the proud
177principal of linwood elementary school and our hope tonight is to paint a picture of what your child's day might look like following a hybrid model here in all of our elementary schools the most important thing particularly after we welcome our students back after not seeing them for these long months is to help our students reconnect with one another building relationships with each other reconnecting with children who they may have known last year from class building some new friends and really building strong classroom communities that has always been a priority of ours it is more than ever now a really really important piece of what matters most when we're bringing our students back to school as educators as parents as community members we know that these past few months have been really really difficult on our
178children on all of us but certainly our children and it is our hope as the educators here in haverford to give your child the experiences they need to feel connected to one another and connected to our school communities once again we'll have some different protocols in place when students are arriving in the morning when they're walking down the hall when they're walking out to uh to recess to the cafeteria and we'll be maintaining six feet of distance and we'll be going through lots of hand sanitizer but the things that won't change for your children are the welcoming welcoming greetings they receive each morning when they enter the building from staff members from administrators from their teachers who they've missed so much um they're they'll be checked in with and asked how is your day how
179are things going for you as always we have a very heavy focus on what we call our morning meeting at the elementary level which is time dedicated to building that strong classroom community and helping students to connect with one another throughout the day those pieces will remain they'll be in place it might look a little bit different certainly we know we'll be maintaining social distance in the classroom we know that half of our students will be present in front of us and the other half of the students will be remote but we're going to do whatever we can really looking at all possibilities of how we can create opportunities for students to engage with one another while they're in person while they're at home we know that the relationship building and the connections to one
180another are some of the most important pieces of school and we look forward to getting back to that one other piece i want to mention is specials we also know that kids love specials they get really excited and talk about what special they have today specials will continue but once again they'll look a little bit different um the class special area teachers will be pushing into the classrooms this year so music will be in the classroom art will be in the classroom library in the room guidance in the room p.e whenever possible we're going to be outside getting some fresh air and playing around so the schedule will be slightly different we know that some of the students will be in school two days a week and if some of the students are home from
181two days a week how can we give those kids uh the same experience so for example if mrs mcgilvari's class is scheduled for music on mondays perhaps mrs mcgill first class has music for two days or for the whole week and then the next class next week her class goes to the library for the week and the next class they go to art for the week or perhaps it's half a week so we're working closely with our specialist teachers to create a model and a schedule that will work for all allowing all of our students to experience specials in person and virtually greetings harvard township school district community i'm jabari whitehead principal at chatham park elementary school i'm here to talk to you about the classroom what it's going to be like when your child
182arrives here at the classroom at any of our elementary schools first they're going to get to school they're going to walk to a cone a designated designated area that's set up and they're going to meet a caring adult it's going to be a teacher it could be a paraprofessional it could be me but either way they're going to be meeting a caring adult we have wonderful principals we got caring teachers this will be great now where do they go next they'll be physically distanced from one another upon arrival by that cone and they'll follow their teacher into the building physically distance until they arrive to the classroom upon arrival at the classroom they will use hand sanitizer which will be provided by the teacher as an another precaution to get our day started now once
183in the classroom what happens next you might ask they have more in your meeting just like before they're gonna be wearing a mask they'll be physically distant at their desk they'll put their things down to location but then the conversation starts they'll talk about the weekend they talk about what happened the night before the teacher will ask questions they'll be able to play games that are physically safe physically in a healthy manner physically distant so they can still connect with one another they'll build bonds and friendships in this smaller environment because we only have half the students in so there's a little gift there this time around we have opportunity for teachers to build even deeper relationships with this smaller group each day that they're here then a day moves forward there's language arts there's
184math still there's special art classes look a little differently where the espressos will come to the classroom by the way we still have caring adults who provide the meaningful instruction provide even more feedback even more frequent feedback to help your child succeed then still be enthusiasm they'll still be caring adults it will create a vibrant environment here at school student work on the walls will still be there artwork will be all over the building a celebration of our students still will take place here in our classes they just child will go home they'll be able to do the work provided and then the next time they return the same thing will occur i'm excited about this the principals are excited about this the teachers are eagerly excited they're thinking about how are we going to
185do our best for our children of the school district and guess what our best is only a foundation for you being even better parental involvement we're going to involve our parents as well virtually physically distance if there's opportunities for that but we're going to find a way yes we will i'm javari white i'm the principal of chatham park elementary school oh i forgot one thing but make sure you know arrival will be staggered and this missile will be staggered other than that but other than the mask other than making sure our children learn it's going to build relationships and make sure every child is successful i'm jubar whitehead principal chattel park thank you all right are we on our healthy spots yes okay so we're gonna play a game it's a healthy game we're going
186to test each other on our multiplication facts are you ready yes youngest first get it started what's nine times five nine times five is 45 what is eight times seven good evening haverford families my name is georgia mundos and i'm the proud principal of manila elementary school the purpose of this video is to show you the day in the life of our elementary students utilizing the cafeteria when we come back to school when we're coming down to the cafeteria it is going to be essential that we're washing our hands it's important that we're washing our hands thoroughly counting the 20 seconds we're singing happy birthday twice the students will have the opportunity to watch their hands at the bathroom or in their classrooms [Music] we're gonna come into the cafeteria and once we come into
187the cafeteria we're gonna find our assigned cohort spot and then also our assigned seat that we are going to be sitting in the cafeteria i'm gonna sit down now with maximus and enjoy my alumni lunch as well hey maximus how are you good how's everything going good yeah i know i know i know i need a haircut i get it yeah i'm excited for the kids to come back to really excited hello elementary families my name is beth mastercola and i'm the principal at coopertown elementary school a primary focus for the upcoming school year will be allowing students and teachers to get outside as much as possible there are many benefits to this but we will primarily focus on mask breaks taking in some fresh air and also taking advantage of the many many mental
188health advantages that come from being outside each elementary school principal is assessing their outdoor space and allocating space to each teacher this will be true for recess additional breaks as well as for outside learning opportunities i am standing outside a fourth grade classroom at coopertown we have set up an opportunity for a class and their teacher to perhaps do yoga their ssr time or maybe even to learn a tick tock dance with the whole class we have very imaginative students and teachers at all of our schools and we know they will make the best of this outside opportunity we might ask you to send in some beached house thank you good evening this is dan haran the principal of haverford middle school i will be reviewing a proposed plan for the upcoming school year and
189giving you a glimpse of what a day in the life of a middle school student may look like we know that returning to school next year will be different for all of us and we appreciate that we have the time and form to explore opportunities for our kids families and staff we are planning as we always do to provide a challenging and supportive school experience for our school community i would like to introduce and commend our administrative team who have been working so hard this summer to prepare for the upcoming school year matthew crater is the sixth grade administrator randy taylor is the seventh grade administrator erica harvey is the eighth grade administrator and jessica gondak is the coordinator of secondary special programs we are all committed to serving our staff kids and families we
190take great pride in creating a safe welcoming and nurturing environment for our school community our team has been built with a primary focus on building and maintaining authentic relationships we know how important relationships are to the success of our staff kids families and community our focus and challenge for the upcoming school year will be on continuing to build and maintain these authentic relationships we understand that the health and safety of our staff kids and families is paramount the school district's health and safety plan will articulate expectations and plant action to guide our school community on how to address distancing sanitizing and hygiene masking and screening and monitoring the focus of recent discussions has been on a hybrid model and we will explore what that model may look like at the middle school we would divide
191grade level kids into two groups who would attend school on two consecutive days each week our teachers believe that two consecutive days of face-to-face teaching would be most beneficial we would take a grade level and separate them into two groups an a cohort and a b cohort we would also divide kids within their grade level as well into cohorts according to their math class that will give us the ability to have the smallest class sizes and keep our leveling structure in place this is our proposed sixth grade schedule for our hybrid model you will see that students will begin arriving to school as early as 7 30. they will go to their homeroom and remain in that homeroom with their cohort for the day students will not travel from class to class in the middle
192school staff will travel and meet students in the appropriate classrooms our sixth graders will attend two core classes after homeroom they will have a short 26 minute break after their second core class that break will serve to meet several needs we will be giving our kids the opportunity to have a snack perhaps take a movement or mask break and we will also build in some unified arts instruction during that time after their break they will attend their three remaining core classes our plan is to dismiss our bus students at 12 30 and they have the opportunity to have a grab-and-go lunch if they like our walkers will be dismissed at 12 35 they will also have the opportunity for a grab-and-go lunch specialized music programs like band chorus and orchestra may remain at school from
19312 30 to 1 30 to have that specialized music instruction all of our students when they return home at some point whether they're the specialized music students or the students who are dismissed at 12 30 or 12 35 will be expected to participate in their unified arts instruction that will be offered online through synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning opportunities this is our proposed seventh grade schedule in our hybrid model it's almost identical to the sixth grade schedule with the only difference being the time for the scheduled break during the day our seventh grade students will have their scheduled break after their third core class this is our proposed eighth grade schedule in our hybrid model again the schedule is identical to sixth and seventh grade with the only difference being the time for their
194scheduled break the eighth grade students will have their scheduled break after their fourth core class this slide details core classes at the middle school language arts and math classes are leveled by ability and performance in sixth seventh and eighth grade science and social studies classes are leveled by ability and performance in eighth grade world language is considered a core class in eighth grade and our levels are determined by the use of multiple data points and professional input from teachers curriculum coordinators and administrators core class periods at the middle school will be 47 minutes long sixth and seventh grade students will have two periods of language arts eighth grade students will have one period of language arts sixth seventh and eighth grade students will have one period of math science and social studies and our eighth
195grade students will have one period of language arts per day the unified arts classes will support the core content area classes and provide a daily exploratory experience daily interdisciplinary experiences and a 26-minute scheduled lesson or break opportunity will occur for our students and our students will also continue their learning when they return home after dismissal our core and unified arts teachers will work together to deliver instruction that supports academic integration as well as providing opportunities to experience new relationships between content areas we know that our kids will need brief well-designed research-based breaks in school to prepare their brains for learning brain breaks will be targeted to support students our kids will also need moments when they can safely remove their masks as well scheduled opportunities with supervision and adherence to our health and safety plan
196will be provided to allow students the opportunity for brief breaks during the school day we will continue to support our kids who have special needs specially designed instruction occupational therapy physical therapy and speech therapy will be provided in a combination of virtual and face-to-face settings students who have an iep giep 504 or el needs will be supported by our student support team is quite lengthy includes our parents administrators teachers specialized staff and a whole host of professionals that are ready willing and able to support our students and families we always focus on new initiatives at the middle school next year we will be focusing on our health and safety plan building relationships our one to world chromebook initiative or have referred online initiative and working with students and staff to increase club and community service
197opportunities at the middle school we are excited to work through these challenges together to support our kids families and community our staff is looking forward to working with you and your family next year enjoy the rest of your summer and we look forward to seeing you at the beginning of the school year all right good evening this is pete donaghy i just wanted to run through a day in the life of a harford high student in our new environment our administrative team that's really been doing a great job helping myself this whole summer it's listed here you can see the assistant principles tech coordinator miss hazel is retiring miss gondac coordinator special programs and also miss patterson is retiring also this summer but we do have miss raptuson starting uh next week so we're happy
198to have her on board and working with miss patterson for the rest of the summer in our plans our main goal is to reconnect and connect the students so each year we connect the students in september we want to reconnect them to school they've been out since march which will be six months which is a long time so um you can just see some of the different ways we're going to reconnect them in person and online first time ever we're doing an on person and inline model which you will see to start a school year so that's that's something different and also we want to resume our extracurricular activities whether that's in person or on a zoom or google hangout we want to reconnect the students and get them connected to as many extracurricular activities
199as possible to continue to build our community through our new methods and ideas so it's very important the first week of school we orient them to the new environment so our schedule we had a lot of questions on what a schedule would look like at the high school level we're looking at 65 minute blocks uh four blocks a day each block um and a hybrid model which i'll go over uh in a couple minutes the hybrid model would allow us the distance at six feet very easily in class and it would also decrease traffic in the hallway and then with our hybrid model in the afternoon when the students are at home or on their way home we want to provide the three e's for them which is extracurricular activity enrichment and extra assistance if
200needed and i'll show you that in a second and then we're we have a bunch of different models we're ready to go with a bunch of different hybrid models we have a day-to-day model also we have all different kinds of models but we obviously feel the hybrid model would work in the six foot social distance world uh and we want to link that the students up with the with their classmates who the other half of the class that's not there we want to link them up uh each week online with their teacher at least one day a week and then we're uh we're doing a great job with canvas on making sure uh all our courses are on there and the teachers have been really working hard this summer to get everything on on canvas
201uh and it's been wonderful and each year all of our freshmen are taught in their science classes how to use canvas so the only group that we need to get up to speed is our freshman so just a quick daily schedule uh so we'd run through the blocks one two three and four we'd stagger dismissal at the end so there's you can see there's 65 minute blocks and then we would have grab and go lunch i just gave you an example of band orchestra core sectionals would occur you know we're working that out um and then at the end of the day we would have enrichment extra assistance and extracurriculars either in person when we can or we would uh do it online through through zoom or google hangouts for students who weren't in school
202that day also who needed a little bit extra assistance or wanted some clarification on what is going on you know in school that they learned the day before so here's the model 7 30 to 12 in school uh grab and go lunch and then the three e's start at 12 o'clock and then arrival and dismissal uh just to give you a glimpse the students would come in go right to their first block class they'll go directly to their first block class and they would sit in their assigned seats so that they're not you know uh putting themselves uh in harm's way in any fashion uh arrival is staggered uh it's naturally staggered with students coming in at different times the buses usually arrive by 7 10 each day bow tech students head to their bow
203tech buses walkers usually arrive between 7 10 and 25 so arrival is normally uh staggered and then in the afternoon we would do staggered dismissal where bus riders would go first to get the buses off and running so they can get to their next stop whether it be the middle school or the elementaries and then we would do walkers walkers and anyone who drives to school with parks in the neighborhood and then we would have the three e's would start at dismissal so be a natural stagger uh which would uh keep students at the safe distance from one another and then safety our safety plans uh we've been working very hard um tonight you'll hear about our our marching band safety plan so we've been working hard with the teachers we had a faculty meeting
204last week to go over uh safety initiatives um but we inherently we have some really good support our nurses we have two nurses in our nurses office and nursing assistant daily we have already begun to speak with the custodial staff and facilities about cleaning and sanitizing uh and then our social distant classrooms are coming together and then we're continuing all of our safety plans for not just the school day but after school activities ms patterson's putting a lot of time in with the athletic directors around the central league to try to figure out athletics uh again marching bands this evening and we're beginning to talk about our larger extracurricular events and activities and how that would work and then uh our mask and shields uh hallway personnel our staggered arrival and dismissal and then our
205at home support we're beginning to really uh correspond well with the parents they're giving us their feedback um and they're going to be a vital part of keeping everyone safe and then our support personnel we have a great deal of support at the high school we always have we had the support well before any pandemic occurred and you can see the different people listed there who help our plan help all of our students help our students who have have plans and programs that they need to make sure that they can get their support in school and online each and every day so you just see our team there of of different people who help out and then just uh summarize uh we are have have a new schedule but we're looking at this for the
206same great results um there's some things that are new that we have to uh create and then there's other things that aren't new that we have to uh you know make sure we we continue to do them well so we need to connect after our long layoff make sure our support systems are in place make sure that our new schedule works for everyone both at home and at school and then as always safety first so just like my colleagues talked about tonight we need to make sure safety's first we reconnect with the students and we have a great year so thank you for your time and thank you for all your planning and uh each thursday night putting in the time to uh make us successful and we want to you know thank the uh
207the community members that are watching tonight too and thank you for for being uh so attentive to our needs and working with us in our partnership so thank you and uh have a great day um mr feinberg the principles are not here this even i am sure they are um in the audience in some fashion but we do not have them as part of the of the panel uh many of these details do not end up being part of the health and safety plan uh but i i hope that this gives a little bit of insight and and helps the both the board and members of the public to see that our principles are looking at the logistics they're really getting into detailed level um of what this and what this environment can look like
208in each of each of their buildings um any of our board members are welcome to attend the drop-in meetings uh that are scheduled next week and that's the principles will be in attendance at those meetings it'll be run very similarly to the waiver and the haverford online if anyone was able to participate in that i just want i want to thank all the principals this was was very helpful i think that hopefully the folks in the community will feel likewise do that and is this gonna be posted online videos okay great i think again uh just like larry said this is these were really wonderful videos and i think they're gonna be really helpful so thanks for posting them we won't ask you which was your favorite [Laughter] has her hand up larry i would
209just like to say as a parent i think all these questions that we've had tonight from my colleagues and from all the parents that i've seen online are always about such specificity and the one thing that none of us know is specificity but i want to congratulate the principals on really showing us what would what would a day look like uh now we know we're using haverford curriculum and we're going to work with it as best as we can kids are going to come to school they're going to have morning meeting and life will go on for them socially and emotionally so i congratulate the pare the principals especially on a job well done and thank them that's it no question thanks susan bridget yeah i was just gonna say um watching the videos um
210i think they did a great job of really kind of answering a lot of the intangibles about what the school experience may look like and for me as a parent trying to decide i will say last week i was completely swayed by the haverford online and impressed and leaning that way and this additional information has been very helpful but is maybe making my household decision just that much harder because this looks great too and i appreciate that you know this level of thoughtfulness is being able to be shared and so people can really kind of visualize what what the experience might look like in this um these uncertain and challenging times so thanks for those videos thanks for sharing thanks for sharing that bridget because part of the message that we want to get across
211you know people we know people aren't choosing haverford online because they don't want to be part of the school community and and people are not choosing the hybrid because they don't want to do something and no one wants the situation that we're in right now so the most important thing for us to get across to parents is it is your it is your choice we we recognize that and whatever you choose will be the right choice for your family please feel confident that our administrators and our teachers are going to do everything they can to make that experience the best experience and not that one is better than the other but the best experience for the children who are are participating in it for whatever reason uh mr feinberg if there aren't any other questions
212um we do have one final video there have been a lot lots of questions about the band our marching band and how the marching band is going to return this is not something that requires a plan to be brought before the board so that it's not a plan that you will be voting on um our but our staff have worked very carefully to look at the model the model or return to athletics uh and what makes that different in terms of bringing the band back and there have been lots of questions that the high school has received about that so we would like to uh mr donaghy and i are giving approval for the band to begin their plans for coming back and we'd like to show you why great this is a summary of
213the marching band health and safety plan for haverford high school developed on july 13th and revised on july 20. scope and application the band program at haverford high school consists of six performing ensembles for this plan we are concerning ourselves with the highlighted groups competition marching band and football band as is the case for athletics this plan applies to the green phase only preparation all band families and band staff should re-familiarize themselves with the current coven 19 symptoms and here they are this is from the pennsylvania department of health website the goal of this presentation is to provide a summary framework for minimizing risk to ban students and band staff during summer marching band practices and band camp itself screening screening begins at home with a pre-screening students and parents will be provided with a
214chart of screening questions upon pre-screening at home if a student answers yes to any screening question they should remain at home and notify the band director right away once at rehearsal the band director will ask each student and staff member the same screening questions if a student or staff member answers yes to any screening question they will need to leave rehearsal environment rehearsals will be held outdoors only for marching band outdoor rehearsals are considered best practice that is a quote from the recent aerosol study the only time students or staff would enter the building would be to use the restroom or to move large school-owned instruments outside at the beginning of rehearsal and then back inside at the end of rehearsal band lockers will not be used for the storage of portable student-owned or school-owned
215instruments hygiene students and staff should wash their hands prior to every rehearsal students and staff will provide their own large clearly marked water jugs for each rehearsal no wind instruments will be shared school owns percussion instruments accessories and cases will be wiped down after every rehearsal percussionists will bring their own sticks and mallets students will be encouraged to clean and disinfect their instruments at the end of every rehearsal students and staff will be encouraged to shower upon returning home from rehearsal masking all staff members will be required to wear a non-valve style mask at rehearsal we need to stay away from any mask that has a round valve on the side of it those masks are not effective all students must wear a mask when they are in the school to use the restroom or
216situations occur that might make maintaining six feet of space between individuals difficult for example entering or exiting the practice field distancing at rehearsal all students and staff will maintain a minimum distance of six feet between individuals at all times when in basics block warm-ups or in drills spacing between individuals will be set at four marching steps which equals seven and a half feet so we're actually going beyond the recommended six feet students and staff will avoid congregating before or during reversal or during breaks different sections of the band will have designated drop-off and pick-up areas to promote distancing between individuals and vehicles students should travel to and from rehearsal only with members of their own household communication any band student or staff member who has tested positive for coven 19 or who has answered yes
217to any pre-screening questions should contact a band director right away this plan is subject to change given current metrics in our area if delaware county moves into a yellow or red phase we will carry out both our competition band and football band seasons virtually and this mirrors the haverford athletics plan of only doing in person during the green phase any changes will be communicated by the band director in consultation with the principal what's next pending approval marching band activities will commence as outlined in this summary and in the larger pde health and safety plan template for competition marching band which is our extracurricular marching experience electronic sign up materials schedule and an acknowledgement for families to review and sign will be posted to the band and abandoned orchestra parents websites voluntary practices will begin in
218late july band camp week one will begin two weeks prior to the first student day which would be the week of august 17th for football band which is our co-curricular marching experience a schedule and acknowledgement for families to electronically review and sign will be posted to the band and band and orchestra parents websites band camp week two which is when football band comes will begin one week prior to the first student day which is the week of august 24th thank you for watching and please stay tuned for updates this is a summary of the marching band as i mentioned it's not a requirement that the board review and vote on the plan however we wanted you to be aware of that those students if all goes as as planned should be returning and able to
219engage in that level of activity at the at the high school and you know to let you know for those types of activities that is what mr donaghy and i have asked you know of the groups to submit things like that that's great any questions or comments from the board okay seeing on anything else dr roshi can i move on you can move on thank you next item on our agenda is a discussion of a proposed anti-racism board resolution and i just want to provide a little context here i guess there are sort of three things that came together one is that the district uh has been involved in the basis work for the last couple years um second is that uh psba has had a an equity initiative for i think about the last
22018 months and then uh the black lives matter uh movement and the the good work that uh our students did in uh putting together a march in the township all those those three things sort of coalesced and uh this uh uh resolution was a a template uh provided by psba uh that we've been starting to to work around sarah who leads the basis work uh incorporated some of the goals from the the basis program we've had input from board members and uh some of the members of the community uh and we see this as a working process um i i believe it's uh on the agenda for a possible board vote but um i um i doubt that we're going to get to that point this evening i think that that it's going to continue
221to be at this vehicle for for discussion i'd like to suggest that perhaps uh we open up the discussion with board members and uh vice president uh bridgette has offered to help coordinate additional comments and uh perhaps work with sarah to blend the input from the board and community in with the work that's underway uh with with the basis program and then uh i my guess is we would see this come back for uh another reading and and uh vote uh when we when the board feels that uh it's complete sound like a plan so i like to just open it up for board discussion dave yes thank you very much i just had one um suggestion or i guess one question um to put out there and that is um will the resolution will
222that include any or will it would be separate would it be a separate document or a separate protocol or separate anything i guess for benchmarking i mean we've seen a lot of great things in there but i would suggest that i put something in there saying we are you know maybe stated goal or at least state a you know individual goal if you will so we can measure our progress um over time with all the four areas that we're describing so that's just each one yeah that's that's a that's just my input i guess into the um into the resolution i think that you know in terms of goals that there are other mechanisms that we could look look at um to formulate some goals related to this this is more as you know a
223general statement um it's inspirational i mean i you know i i i get that i but but i would like to to tie it to something that at least you know it at least has some inspirational goals to it some benchmarks here that we go for we if we don't get there that's you know we've just said at the time but but i would look to something like that so we could see how we're doing measure our progress i think that's a good idea the other thing i'd like to mention is that um hand in hand with this is that there will be a board policy uh that will be forthcoming so it's you know there's a another component to the work thanks kristen sure um so i just had a few suggestions to help
224improve this i'd like to see us capitalize the word black when describing black men and women as a sign of respect and to highlight the importance of black lives also in paragraph one we mention that we're taking a stand against violence against black men and women i'd like to add and youth to that um the reason being black youth are targeted marginalized and criminalized in our society and schools and um being that this resolution is applying to our schools and our community i'd like to recognize the injustices that they experience um paragraph four second to last sentence we mention through continuous professional development and opportunities for honest dialogue and listening sessions we hope to build partnerships in the community focused on overcoming racism and other barriers um rather than being so aspirational and just hoping
225i'd like to see us use more active language there either aiming seeking or we will build partnerships excuse me kristen is there any way anna can put this up dr rushi while we're talking about it so that the community can follow along yeah i think so but i don't know is anna still sorry to interrupt you kristen we'll try to get it out right now thanks um i'll jump down to another comment then um i think it's really important that we're defining some of the terms that we're using within this document otherwise we're risking this being open to very wide interpretation some of the terms that i would like for us to define are anti-racist inclusive culturally diverse in diversity and equity and equitable so i think there could be a space for a definition
226section either prefacing or at the end of this document if it's possible for us to get these questions and comments in writing to bridgette that would make her task a little easier so um yep happy to do that i have them all in writing um all right well for the sake of time being that it is 11 um i'm just gonna keep going um paragraph five last sentence we talk about the importance of students feeling safe feeling seen and feeling affirmed i'd like to add to that the verb be safe so be safe be seen and be affirmed so we'd have actually you know students let me say so students deserve to be and feel safe be and feel seen and be and feel affirmed and i know it's a little bit more awkward reading
227but i think it um better encapsulates the aims of the resolution um and just another comment i did want to um agree with the community member who suggested that we take out the the use of the word traces of racism in paragraph two last sentence um because i agree with her that that really does seem to minimize the experiences of black people and others facing systemic racism um in terms of our action items i noticed that none of them actually use the language anti-racist or anti-racism in them so i would like for us to re-examine those action items and make sure that they're tied to the spirit and intention of this document and i think to dave's point about the action items we might want to set more specific goals in terms of addressing discrepancies
228and discipline for student students of color um taking steps to lower suspension rates for black and latinx students and actively working to increase the participation involvement of students of color in our honors and our gifted programs and bridget i will make sure i email these to you that's all i have great bridgette um yes my initial reading of the resolution kind of echoed um things that kristen and dave had identified but i will add one since this is a board resolution i would like to see that one of the goals or a goal be added that um address the board's own work in this um either as you know through a board training in anti-racism practice and bias um and that we um we learn as part of this process and and be able to
229help guide it to some of the the goals that have been previously stated other other comments from the board hey larry can you just help us um you're heavily involved with psba and have been for a long time can you help us understand if you have any background information on this coming to the districts around the state and what other districts around us have been working on this or possibly approved it already i don't i don't know uh what other districts have approved it yet i know i'm sorry which one wallingford approved it at their last meeting i know that it's a statewide effort um it's just part of the there's a an equity division at psba now with a director they do a lot of training and a lot of outreach work and it's
230good work gotcha well i would just like to reiterate something i said at the last meeting about our unique position in this issue as an lea or a school district charged with educating children developing our community members k through 12 to be the best citizens that they can be to make an impact on this specific issue and other than the parents at home i really feel as though we have a really strong responsibility to make this a very strong resolution to make our basis function a very strong function to do this important work to make our society more equitable and a better society for more of our society so thank you for bringing this to us pspa and to the board for working on it making this document stand out around the state i'd love
231for our document to be as we work on it and fine-tune it a model for other districts to look at and go wow haverford really nailed it that would be great any other comments or questions from the board at this time okay hearing none so we'll we'll get the comments that have been made uh to bridgette and we'll be bringing this back thanks everybody next item on the agenda i'll accept a motion to approve disbursements from the funds as listed move autograph second moved and second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve the 2020 2021 idea pass-through monies agreement with the delaware county intermediate unit totaling one million one hundred sixty seven thousand nine hundred seven dollars and eleven cents dr rushi could you just give us
232a couple sentences for the public of what this is uh yes actually um nicole battistelli is with us tonight as a panelist um in case there were any questions about this uh this item um or another yep just started my video i'm here so this is the money um the federal dollars that come to us uh through the iu so um these are the ida funds for special education um we're approving both um 611 and 619. 619 is specific to kindergarten students who remain in early intervention for their kindergarten year which they have the ability to do um and then the other dollars are for our school age students that's great thank you could i get a uh can i get a motion on this not grass moved in a second any questions or comments
233from the board i did have a question um so the total of the two idea grants um means and i just wanted to clarify that the the second one the 619 is for a total of 822 um and it's the one for the kindergarten students also getting iu services is that per student or total that is total it's roughly 180 some dollars per student um i will just note that for the public that um you know these these contracts come with requirements to um prepare and complete cost reports um and kind of audit the employee programmatic records all this kind of stuff um that is a lot of administration for a really small grant so i uh you know it sometimes just is baffling to me the um the way that the money comes in
234and must be applied and used but thank you for you know obviously the important use of these dollars but um i appreciate the cumbersome compliance part of it as well thank you any other questions or comments from the board all in favor aye any opinions next item on the agenda i'll accept emotional i'll accept the motion to approve the professional service agreement with sage wellness group llc to support the school district of haverford township in achieving its goals related to incorporating comprehensive and culturally relevant equity-based and anti-racist techniques into the district's daily practices at a cost not to exceed thirteen thousand dollars larson second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve the retirement as listed not grass moved minji second moved
235in second any discussion to thank miss lawless for 24 years of service to the district and the community all in favor aye aye any opposed motion parries i'll accept the motion to approve the appointments as listed crisp moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept the motion to approve the leave request as listed podgrass moved crisp in second moved in second any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to accept the recommendation of special counsel an authorized settlement of pending special education administrative proceeding 7-52972 for placement of special education student from 2019 through 2021 not to exceed fifty thousand dollars second minji moved in second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries i'll accept the motion to approve
236the agreement and corresponding amendment with kutztown university to use haverford township school district as a placement site for graduate students as litter literacy interns swarthmoof larsen moved in second any discussion does our um proceeding under an in-person plan hybrid plan any of that um affect the way that we would be able to accommodate and work with these students it does not affect our ability to to accommodate and work with them the way in which they're they are working would change but it does not affect our ability to have them with us all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries i'll accept a motion to approve the following list of contracts presented by the curriculum department move short second moved in second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries next item item nine
237we're going to table uh to a future meeting for approval takes us to board reports ari anything tonight no other than to say thank you let me start my video for a great month it's almost over of marathon board meetings so i want to thank my fellow board members for putting in all this time i want to thank all the administrators and i want to thank dr ruschi for keeping us on point all month long antoinette um sure really quick um as we've mentioned psba has a lot of um resources for board members and administrators and um i had the opportunity to attend a session this week on um covid liability um i think everyone knows in my other life i'm a lawyer and so it was very interesting to me um to to watch
238a seminar on that and i got cle credit for it so it was really great um but that's uh that's the report thanks um we look like we're not going to hit our record tonight i also thank the board for that thanks internet dave i was going for the record tonight too i i'm wondering if we make it to midnight but uh just like all what i already said thank you all you know my fellow board members and the administration for for doing so much and thank you for the principles by the way for those reports for for the videos though those were great and uh 11 15. so i'll pass it along thanks everybody great kristen yeah i just wanted to echo the thanks that other board members have expressed to dr ruschi and
239her administration um also the principles those wonderful videos that you all put together tonight um i know this is not an easy time to be doing this work and it is a in some ways an impossible task so just thank you for um staying up on all the guidance and changing as the situation continues to change um and thank you to my fellow board members for asking all the specific questions that you do great laura uh yeah i just wanted to say um this is this is all hard and i i just feel like we're all choosing between really hard options um in my other life i'm a college professor and i'm preparing for hybrid but we don't know what's actually going to happen with colleges and it's just it's hard um but you know
240i i think i want to um reiterate what pretty much every single one of our experts has said um and that these layers of protection um i think in our daily life um but also you know in our schools and in our our public spaces make sure you're wearing your mask and you're wearing it correctly make sure you're washing your hands and using hand sanitizer keeping your distance um you know i just i feel like there's the only way that we're going to get our kids back in school and have any sense of normalcy as if everybody's really following all of these layers of protection so um yeah um and then also just thank you to dr ruschi and everyone on her administration um this is yeah it's just hard so thanks sal no report
241susan no report bridgette um i am also going to echo the appreciation that i have for the administration in gleaning um going through all of the the guidance and and thinking creatively and um you know with so much care and concern about maintaining kind of the quality education experience in whatever format we can deliver that um i would also like to suggest there's i think i saw 30 some um community members who stuck with us to this late hour and i know many more people will be watching the board meeting um in the different formats through our website i think it's great the communication that we're trying to get out to the community i would just continue to ask the community's patients um as these plans are developed and things are changing we appreciate the
242the questions and the suggestions um but one of the things that i have um observed in my two and a half years on the school board is um what a complex uh institution our public school system is um i know everybody's you know especially interested in in the choices and experience and and the impact of these things on their child but um it is a really daunting task for the administration to be planning in the best interests of over 6 500 students and for all of the staff um and balancing the mandates from the governments the different um and changing safety protocols that are thrown at us so um i you know just asked the community for a little bit of continued patience going to the website looking at the faqs joining next week's um
243info sessions and throwing in the questions that you can make a good decision and trying to just appreciate the the needs of across the whole district and us trying to find um a safe and valuable school experience for all of our students and staff great thanks i want to thank the the administration cabinet principals uh all of our staff for for the hard work that they've been doing uh for the last four months we have a keen appreciation for how much work is getting done i'd also like to thank my fellow board members great questions thorough covering a lot of ground um and hopefully uh vocalizing a lot of the questions that are out in the community so that uh our community members are are getting those those answers also i'm sure we're not going
244to satisfy everyone and we're not going to answer every question but we're doing the best we can the board met an executive session on july 17th and july 22nd to discuss a legal matter our next regular public board meeting is scheduled to be held july 30th 2020 the i'll accept a motion to adjourn congrats moved what second we're out of here good night everybody thanks good everybody good night