MSD Regular School Board Meeting August 19, 2021 Part 1

001ava's sister your sister-in-law i'm sorry yeah hopefully it didn't make it worse he said they treat it according to your symptoms so we're just moving along i go back to next thursday if it's not everywhere good evening everybody it's uh six o'clock on thursday august 19th uh welcome to the mcguffy committee as a whole strober i'll turn it over to you thank you mr president good evening to everyone in the tenants here all of our families uh guests also at home now let's go through around six items for um to make topics tonight first on our agenda for uh bond refinance from again i apologize mr mcshane i've practiced with amy i'm going to say bonnie so right off the bat so bending and yeah i didn't want to so betting and scatter good uh

002they're here he is here virtually maybe do you know mike if uh mr mcshane has joined us yep he just joined mr mcshane i'm gonna allow you to talk at this point you can unmute your microphone thank you very much perfect timing it's nice to see everybody today i'm sorry that i'm doing this through a phone unfortunately i'm running in two different directions but everything we go over tonight um we reviewed with amy you're a financial advisor and um whatever your decision is we're gonna get your next meeting in september to enact it so we're going to talk about a couple things first we're going to talk about outstanding debt where the market is maybe a potential refunding opportunity that could come down the pike in september and then possibly how that refunding opportunity can

003help offset a cost for a new money project so i don't know if everybody has their hand out in front of them amy did you hand that out yeah we do so you know the district has been very fortunate over the past couple years where we've taken their outstanding debt we were able to lower their outstanding costs refunded at low rates and that graph in the first page represents a 20-year municipal bond over the last 10 years and you can see in the last three we've approached and then hit an all-time low just so happens the majority of the districts that was issued between the years 15 and 20. so from a debt perspective the district's in very good shape um going forward there's a lot of noise in the municipal market there's a lot

004of noise in the treasury market there's a lot of noise in the fixed income market and what i mean by noise is there's inflation pressure which could drive rates up there's variance of you know the coronavirus that could drive rates down and there's all kind of pressures in the markets what's the fed gonna do and this is all happening real time today and it's affecting interest rates now we are still in the realm of all-time lows in the municipal market but all this noise is causing a lot of volatility that we really haven't seen lately when we've seen rates go from a volatility of one to two basis points to we're seeing anywhere from five to fifteen basis point moves in a two day period and the reason i'm telling you this because the next

005or the thing we're going to talk about is the potential refunding of your 2015 and 16 which is great rates are low we can refund that debt and that's on the next page so the good news is that that was at somewhat of a higher interest time the bad news is that those bonds aren't callable until february but if you some older board members remember we can refund that 90 days in advance of that date and we can actually lock in the rate when i say refund we can close an issue 90 days in advance but we can actually lock in the rate roughly 40 days in advance of that so for the call dates february we're able to lock in rates in late september unfortunately we're in august now i'm glad we're talking about

006this but anything presented tonight i just want to make sure everybody knows that this is near the all-time low and we expect some volatility going into the end of september however uh we're going to have all documents ready to go so that when that date hits we're able to lock in wherever rates are you know we think and potentially you could be in a position where rates are somewhat higher or slightly higher but it's still going to make sense so what's that all mean to you today if you were to refund that um actually i'm sorry page five or page two was your outstanding debt just so you see that and that's just list every issue outstanding and then the state reimbursement with that on page two just so you see there's a the graph

007at the bottom represents your payment stream so you're roughly making the same payment every year until 2036. page three is the refund that we're talking about so based on today's rates you could refund the 15s and the 16s not change anything just lower the rate leave everything the same just with a lower rate and you're going to save what's highlighted in yellow so on a cash flow basis roughly 668 thousand that's seen at the very bottom under total and the way we're going to take those savings under this scenario would be debt service reductions in the first two years so that would give you all that savings back to this year's budget and next year's budget roughly 250 a year 258 and 310 and then after that we would leave everything the same and that's

008typically how you would structure refunding you get it all you get all the benefit today and then everything else remains unchanged so that's what we would typically do well talking to your administration about some new capital in this in how we could potentially use the savings from this for funding we looked at and said okay well if you have a need for new capital and in this case we're going to use page four i'm actually assuming on page five but page four if you have a need for new capital the best course of action with the refunding if we take that savings and reduce your interest cost of the life of the issue and the reason we would do this because there's going to be a cost to the new money and we could use

009these interest savings to offset that cost so under that stand on page four now highlighted in yellow you're going to save anywhere from in in the highlight yellow thirty four thousand the first year to a hundred and two thousand a second the final year but when you take into consideration state aid and reimbursement go to the low highlighted yellow the final column net that's your savings after state reimbursement which brings back to the budget roughly 60 thousand a year under this scenario if we were to refund the 15s and 16s we would see debt service reductions from the budget perspective of roughly 60 000 in today's market and that's important because we're gonna use those savings for page five page five is an example of if you were to spend five million on new capital

010and your administration is going through the list now what that new capital would be there could be various items you would issue that debt and that's on the left-hand side that's an amortization of five million and we're utilizing a wraparound structure meaning that we're taking consideration your current interest payments on your other debt and we're wrapping around that so that this matures after your old deck goes away you can see interest on that debts ranging from 0.3 to 2.05 percent the average cost that's probably just slightly over two percent on that issue on an ongoing basis if you look at the year 2023 24 under total debt service it costs the budget about a hundred thousand a year well what we're going to do with that is we take that hundred thousand we look at

011your existing debt then we add back in the savings from the refunding piece which is sixty thousand they come up with a new total highlighted in blue and when you add up all and do all that math it comes out to this project would cost this 5 million dollar project would cost the budget about 43 000 in new dollars that weren't budgeted before so it was a hundred thousand dollar increase but the refunding is going to save us 60 the net of it is 40. and that's a one-time increase that's that's how your debt service remains constant throughout the life of the issue even though your payment goes up in the years 37 38 and 39 what happens is that your existing debt goes down so we look at it as a big puzzle so

012that it all fits together as one big payment so after you pay that increase of 43 000 based on today's rates that's the only increase you're going to need for the budget and that only extends your debt out roughly two and a half years basically and you can see that but that graph at the bottom on the graph on the bottom right hand side you're going to see in the blue that's your current payment stream and then the gray would be the addition of the 5 million and you can see that it fits together like a puzzle so that you have that one time increase and then after that it goes away and that only extends your debt up to which is important because if you have other projects which you probably do your debt's

013gonna you're gonna need to issue more debt sometime in the future and you're gonna have room to do the same thing with any new debt as well so that's in a nutshell how you can accomplish the refunding and the new money at the same time and they can go hand in hand and one can help offset the other um all that today again is good news bad news is that we're going to do all the documentation but we can't control interest rates between now and late september but we're going to be ready to go so that at your september meeting you can pass your resolution and then very shortly thereafter maybe the next day we can go into the bond market pending where rates are and lock in your new capital and the refunding at

014the same time and then complete the transaction so that that's a that's a lot of information i'd be glad to go over ask any questions regarding it or um you know more or less should you borrow more or less anything like that i'd be happy to answer any questions at this time and i wanted to further it by the reason we're looking at the 5 million is because we know we need a roof on the middle school high school which is you know the first estimates about 2.7 million and then we know we have multiple projects that we could look at we have joe walker's roof windows paving you know parking lot issues so we know that 5 million wouldn't go far and you could use that to determine where you're going in the future

015the difference between the 5 million in addition to that we had lease payments we had a we have a van that we're going to be paid off we have a truck that's going to be paid off and the big one is the energy project from 2008. so if you look at that 44 000 in next year's budget we wouldn't it wouldn't really cost the district any additional budgetary money because we would just reallocate the 44 000 from the lease payments and make it go to the bond payments so the impact on the budget would be you're getting 5 million to do projects that you need and we're just going to use the least money because we you know we don't need another van at this point in time our trucks are in good shape and

016we just did an energy project so those funds can be reallocated and you could use those to potentially do the roof and some of these other projects and even use it to figure out what you're going to do in the future as far as your five-year plan your 10-year plan and work with um you know the hhsdr which is our architects and who and have those we just had a committee meeting and we did a tour of the buildings so we know we have projects that we need done this would give you money to do some of those without really having a taxpayer impact because that money is becoming free the other piece then and we're going to monitor and mr wanger wanger's going to talk about it whenever he does the swap is we're

017going to continue to monitor that to see if between now and then if there's a potential to buy that out and we'll he'll talk about that when he does the swap review at this point in time it's not really worth it but who knows where the market will be in a month and if we can get that gone and be out of the swap we would try and do that as well um we can prepare for just the refunding or the five million uh we won't need to vote until next month but we would like to get a little bit of direction from the board as if you would just like to do the refunding or take out the additional money so that's all the paperwork we've already started on the back end i've gotten

018a lot of that to mr mcshane as far as the tax information and all that so that's what we would need the board to to really give us some direction on tonight and then we wouldn't vote until next month on the agenda tonight we do have to make sure to hire um mr mcshane's company to do the actual selling of the bonds and we do have to hire dinsmore show which is chris brewer who is the bond council so we wanted to get that in place so that you know if we don't do a bond issue we don't pay them anything but we wanted to make sure we had them secured in the event that the market stays where it is i don't know if anybody has any questions for mr mcshane no thank you

019thank you thank you so the next step we do have jay wager from the susquehanna group [Music] yes it is we do have some um new faces swap back up a little bit just to give you a bit of a primer on what this interest rate swap is it is essentially an exchange of tax flows or cash flows uh the district receives a taxable rate uh based off of libor and pays a tax exam rate so the premise of this swap is that there is always a marginal tax rate structure for taxpayers which creates value for a tax-exempt security relative to a taxable security and the exchange is intended to take advantage of that embedded marginal tax rate structure when this was entered into back in 2006 the district received a one-time payment and so

020the largest part of the value proposition that the swap was realized in 2006 it has been close to cash flow neutral since then uh the aggregate monthly cash flow is positive by about 16 to 17 000 since then which was the original plan uh and so it has worked as it was intended to but you're now carrying this swap on the books the value the termination value today would be about a negative 48 000 meaning the district would have to pay bnp parabot which is the swap provider to exit the swap uh john mcshane had mentioned just a few minutes ago the volatility in the market it affects the swap market likewise and so two or three weeks ago that termination value was about twenty thousand dollars so it's more than doubled in just a

021short period of time our thought process is that as you're if you're going to consider a refunding and potentially some new money that that resolution would also contemplate the opportunity to terminate the swap at a target value that you would all agree to now you might say it's zero and that's fine we might not get there but this would be the appropriate time to embed that into a transaction it would be more efficient in terms of cost of issuance to combine it with a refunding issue but the primary goal here is to get out at a as low a cost as we can again on a month-to-month basis it is not costing the district much money um but this would be that i think the time to do it as part of a larger transaction

022it would get it off the books you don't have to worry about it um and it would be gone is there a termination date for this swap uh the termination i should know that i thought i think it's 2031. yeah so another 10 years uh the swap that this debt is associated with doesn't amortize very quickly so most of that is in the last two or three years of that term out to 2031. so normally as you would amortize a loan the determination value would decrease proportionately as you decrease the principle but there isn't much principle being paid on an annual basis for the next seven or eight years and you said the current amount that we could get out for today would be about approximately well the what we call mid market which is

023the value that being bnp uh parabol provides is about 48 000 there would be an additional i think twelve thousand dollars of financing costs to call it sixty thousand all in to exit the swap today again a couple weeks ago was more like 35 000 32 000. yeah i would anticipate it to continue to rise for the next it's um the fluctuation over the last couple weeks is due more to volatility in the market than a movement of interest rates this swap when it was entered into in 2006 was done in a much higher interest rate environment so when rates are near zero it doesn't produce much cash flow for the district because you're exchanging one short-term rate for another changes in short-term rates don't affect the value by a lot because you receive cash

024up front it basically is amortized over the life of the loan so getting it to zero will take some time we would be looking at doing this at the same time as the other so potentially yes i think the appropriate step would be to include it in the authorization as if that were going to happen uh but not obligate you to terminate the swab just because you do a refunding transaction so it would be kind of an or proposition if you will an and or but not necessarily an and so we could affect the refunding transaction you could borrow new money and if we don't like determination value we don't have to do it now but it's been authorized so if the market came back quickly in between meetings we would have the ability to

025execute without having to wait three or four weeks to come back to you again thank you i think it's time to get out of this swapped i've never really liked it since the beginning and the and the benefit and correct me if i'm wrong part of the benefit of doing it now is to save because we're already going to be paying bond council to do yes to swap we're already going to be paying the solicitor to do we're already paying the fees and so if if the market is fits and we can get out of it we're going to minimize some of those costs now it's definitely time to get out of it yeah do you have a target recommendation number d or d or does the board have a number that they're i think

026it's a zero we tried zero i tried i tried zero all the time uh we were rejected on the zero response my personal opinion would be a hundred thousand hundred thousand as a ceiling um i think we can be low i mean if you wanna establish a ceiling you always have all the all the resolution does is authorize us to proceed so it doesn't obligate the district to anything we certainly would check in on the day and when we terminate a swap it's a telephone call so amy would be on the phone any board member who wants to be um on the call would certainly be invited and you have the right right up until the point where they say here's our value do you accept it to say no so it's not an obligation

027it's merely an authorization to proceed so if you want to cap it 100 we can do that um it would not be my recommendation that you spend that much money to terminate the swap no i wouldn't either but we still need to get out of when we get out of it for 60 thousand i think we should do that but i think we need to give you enough leeway to be able to make that decision based on what's going on in the market because it might be a hundred thousand today and two hundred thousand in a week yeah so again i think patients would be will be rewarded um you know it just in the last two or three weeks it's gone from 20 to 25 to 48 if the volatility subsides i think it

028will drop back to something more like 30 to 35 so again i'm okay with 100 being the kind of authorization cap but it would not be our recommendation to spend that much money it's not going to cost you anywhere close to that much money to keep it in place for the next nine or ten years right i would agree but i think now's the time definitely to get out of it and we don't need that number today you can give that some thought when we come back with the resolution we can plug it in at that time so again tonight mrs todd is just going to be on the agenda to give authorization correct right but later in the regular meeting is on the agenda to give authorization to no no no we would come

029back next that's right with time resolution that would be drafted by mr brewer reviewed by your council okay uh so that we've made sure the agenda is just to uh engage benny and scatter good and the debt and the bond council okay is what so that we can start with the process okay the resolution that we will come back with in september um is intended to comply with the local government unit debt act which is the state law by which would you issue debt obligations uh and and interest rate swaps for that matter and so that would include a debt service uh savings target for the refunding issue a maximum amount of new money as well as a maximum uh threshold amount to terminate the swap why don't we just set it up so that

030you can cut less if you think it's the numbers yes so we're not going with that rich our crystal ball was actually in the repair shop correct me if i'm wrong we've been as low as like 20 25 yes that's been that's been the absolute low so you know just the mid market value i think somewhere in 30 to 35 i think is a reasonable target but i do agree with mr leisure's point of let's create some wiggle room here so that if we get to the day of doing a refunding issue and you know it's 37 we haven't boxed ourselves out of a transaction that you really want to terminate and if everybody's comfortable with that number uh we can jay and i can keep in touch and i can send out emails you

031know when we when we think it when things move and at least let you keep you updated on where we're at right what you have to remember i mean i think i'm sorry i'm sorry go ahead what you have to remember is it's not really cost it's not that's exactly right to keep going with this yeah so to address your your direct question of our recommendation i think 50 000 is more than enough on the high side to terminate um i would be reluctant to spend your money to terminate a swap that isn't costing you anything i know it creates a little bit of maybe angst um but i you know i work in a world of real you know where do the dollars go and i like to preserve the dollars so what's the

032reverse side of the swap shoe man what's the reverse side seems to be okay now but the reverse side of it is we pay money it's currently paying us a very small amount what's the opposite that it would do the maximum if you turn well so so long as we have a marginal tax rate structure the monthly cash flows are going to be very modest anywhere from some months some months it's as low as a dollar 72. this past month it was 143 or something like that so it's inconsequential cash flow on a monthly basis to your budget so long as there's a marginal tax rate structure the real the the issue of of abolishing the marginal tax rate structure comes up in every presidential election so you have another three years before you have

033any discussion of that coming back keep in mind it has been a discussion point in every president-elect presidential election going back to the early 1980s and nothing has ever happened you know my cynicism leads me to believe that congress won't do anything until there's some kind of catastrophic event and there's got to be a mandatory overhaul of the tax system but that's just me that's certainly again our crystal ball is not working right now uh but the marginal tax rate structure the the value tax the sales tax they've been around for decades and we have yet to see anything change other than the top marginal rate goes up or down by three percentage points depending upon which party is in the white house or a running um ruling in congress i should say it that

034way what was the past pennsylvania attorney's general recommendation of swaptions i'm sorry what was the past recommendations of the past pennsylvania attorney general wasn't there a lot of issues um uh mr wagner had recommended had made a recommendation everybody terminates swaps based on uh some uh transactions that had occurred at bethlehem school district uh they almost went bankrupt well it's it's a long story side of this story here why i'm concerned yeah so what i wanted to say to that point is our view of interest rate swaps is it's like any tool in the toolbox if you're using it appropriately for the right job it's going to work fine uh if you've turned a screwdriver into a hammer or a saw you probably have a really bad outcome and there's been some really bad outcomes

035there have been some yeah and i would say very wrongly you know inappropriately used tools so in 2006 we received 215 000 that's correct could we ever have to pay more than 215 if if the marginal tax rate uh system goes away and we get to a sales tax or some kind of value added tax right you would be at risk of being upside down on a monthly basis and so probably over time it could reach that value yes again is that going to happen in the next three years absolutely not however if it becomes a significant discussion item and the markets believe it's going to happen you'll start to see negative cash flows okay so would behoove us to get rid of this but at a certain time it's not making you any money

036and if we can incorporate it into a transaction where it's as efficient as we can make it to be yes to your question earlier our recommendation every year has been as long as it's not costing you money don't terminate it but this is a rather unique opportunity to exit right sounds good and mr mcshane have wanted to say something i think mike's going to unneed him he's back over there thanks everybody i just want to add a swap advisor and i'm giving you my point as your investment banker when this transaction was entered into versus today we've seen that that unwind value it was probably as high as over 200 000 at some points and from a board's perspective we always said boy if it ever gets to a range where it's almost costing us

037nothing which to me is that range of you know 25 to 50 000 because of the unknown the sort of one in a million risk that they do abolish the tax code and it's worth getting out of and so based upon the value being so low and they're still being 10 years left i think it does make sense to get out of it but not not at a hundred thousand i would my and this is just john mcshane i'm betting in scattergood not as your financial advisor or your swap advisor 50 000 seems like a level that would be a high water mark to pay to get out of it anything more than that because a cost benefit analysis um i don't know the risk reward is worth it but what i do like about

038it now is that it can be part of this transaction and not cost the budget anything so when things align sometimes it makes sense i think this is one of those special times we've got a refund it's producing a lot of savings you've got this quirky transaction that has sort of worked for you since 2006 it accomplished this goal and now we get a chance to get out of it for you know one tenth of what they gave us you know hopefully we get it down to 25 000. so from all when i add all that up to me first link would make sense that's all that's always just one to add thanks john so i think you know just to to set uh expectations as we as you approach the next meeting approval date

039um you know let's start at 50 000 and you know if between now and then board members have a different opinion we certainly can adjust that value but i think that's the good starting point for the conversation does the board all feel that way yeah yes good thank you very much thank you thank you thanks mr mayor and are you okay with us looking at the potential of the five five million yes yes maintain our bills well and i'm not going to speak for mr mckee but i believe he said that you know if we do the roof we can get another 20 years is that right two thumbs up yeah so it would be within our right now when we have the money wrapping around and we have some you know leases coming due

040it would make sense sounds good yep now it's definitely the right time with the rates that we currently have the rates are not going to stay where they're at very long okay so next we received a invitation to come present from penn commercial and we have several folks tonight that are here to speak to us some about some of the programs that they could potentially offer to us to our high school students hi thank you my name is nicole lane i'm the campus director at penn commercial i am here with my colleagues mackenzie miller she is our program director for our tony n guy cosmetology program and ben crawford is our program director for our cdl program and we would like to start off by thanking you for allowing us this opportunity to present on

041our college and high school program we worked actually we began working on our college and high school program with trinity school district um we actually have been working with them for five years um on our cosmetology program and that this that was the development of our um current college and high school program that grew and we are also working with all of the green county schools for cdl right now so which is why i brought my colleagues with me they're going to talk a little bit more detail about those programs specifically but this program allows high school students juniors and seniors to earn college credit while they're attending school as i said we're going to be kicking off our fifth year for cosmetology next week and for cdl as well we're starting with green county

042in october um for those of you that do not know where we're located we are right in washington at the junction of 1779 and we've actually been providing post-secondary education since 1929. um although today we're going to focus on cosmetology and cdl we do offer other programs that are customizable for the college and high school program actually all of our programs are customizable with the exception of nursing uh because nursing you have to be 18 years old to rotate through a clinical facility so all of our programs are customized and it's not one size fit all for every school district so we can offer programs such as medical assistant phlebotomy any of the trades that we offer etc um we we understand the purpose of this college and high school program is is that we

043understand that there are times at the ctc that students are unable to get into their first choice we have the ability and we have the facility to accommodate that overflow and that is what we're doing with trinity we're accommodating the overflow for the students that are unable to go and um pursue or enroll in the program that is their first choice we would like to work together with the school to supplement and provide the training for the students that have been denied their first choice maybe because of class size or another reason we would like to work collaboratively with you on an alternative training opportunity and steer them into the career path that they're really passionate about and you'll see today when um my colleagues are speaking they're very passionate about uh these careers as

044well um there as a safety and security are always something that can be an issue um that i know is a as can be a question what are your safety and security protocols so what we currently to do with the with trinity and with the green county schools is that they provide us with the vetting process and then we accommodate and follow the vetting process for each of those districts there is a little bit of variance but we accommodate whatever their requests are we are able to do that in the building in addition to any computer could you explain what that means uh like background checks for students and things like that that's what i mean by vetting but we also have our own day-to-day safety and security measures that we run on a day-to-day

045basis so those can include all of our staff when i say staff i mean administrators instructors clerical maintenance everybody in the building we all complete the pde act 126 training at heyer we all have our state background checks done every year all of our exterior doors are locked and every staff and student has a customized programmable key fob to enter all of our classrooms and labs have windows so that we have visual access to see what's going on in the classroom all of our classrooms have phone systems that are tied directly into the 911 system all of our high school students are segregated from our other programs so and mackenzie can talk about that a little bit more too but they do not interact or interchange or have class with any of our adult students

046do they walk in the hallway at the same time in and out but we do have we have a side door back in cosmetology that our van can drop the students off at the side door and it just takes them right into the onto the cosmetology floor the only time they would leave that classroom space for the designated space would be for the restroom although there are restrooms in the back but if a student wanted to get something out of the vending machine they would walk down the hall to the student center should the student leave that room and go into the regular campus they can leave that room but those are managed that's managed by the instructors it's just basic classroom management it's classroom management yep so just like any other classroom yeah i'm

047well aware what they do there i'm currently enrolled yeah but i'm just saying for high school students you're an adult student high schools they manage the classroom differently because they're high school students that's my point it is we also um we work with the um like the self-surveying police department the fire department are both within one mile of our campus we um also do emergency evacuation training and drills with all of the students our traditional students and our college and high school students every spring and every fall and then again we can customize whatever the other security requests that the school district would have um so we do i really would like to spend our time talking about the programs individually i think once you hear what the students are actually doing from the school

048districts that we are currently working with um it might answer some more questions i'd be happy to answer any additional questions whenever they're done so i would like to call it mackenzie thank you nicole thank you to all of the board members and everybody in attendance um i'm not sure if you're familiar with tony and guy so i just want to tell you a little bit about our company and our program tony and guy might be a little bit more familiarly known to you as tg or you might have seen their bed head products out on the shelf they're colorful they're fun they're funky but what you might not know about tg and tony and guy is that they're also a world-class company that offers international techniques and education in the cosmetology field at tony

049and guy we're offering a hands-on fast-paced very progressive study of cosmetology we utilize a lot of technology in our program where our students are all issued ipads they have access to their web books and textbooks online as well as labs activities and interactions through that webpad is as well as interaction in the classroom with your teacher an example of how we've been doing this successfully with trinity for the past five years is we start the students out in their junior year generally in their first year they would do what we call our fundamentals program in that fundamentals program they would be attending on average right now trinity students are doing it two hours each day of the week they come in and they are immediately getting immersed in the cosmetology field so they start cutting

050coloring learning verbiage learning body positioning they are taught classic fundamental forms color techniques styling techniques that were designed by the artistic team at tony and guy and they are practicing them for that entire year of study on top of that they already dive into the science and art of hair coloring trichology infection control they're also starting at that very first level their personal and professional development assessing where they want to grow in the future and in the career within that first year by doing the two hours a day our trinity students have been able to complete between three and four hundred hours then in the second year of attendance they would they are normally attending five hours per day that allows them to complete the 1250 hour requirement that is set forth by the state

051board many of our trinity students by the time they are graduating high school are licensed professionals employed and they have completed and graduated our program as well and i can tell you we have seen some beautiful success stories and some very young very successful cosmetologists in that second year they start to get a lot more progressive and learning more advanced techniques they go into what is called our intermediate level of education this is when we will start to schedule them working with salon clients when they come into our student salon so they can get more hands-on and immersive practice with the techniques they've been learning for the previous year we also introduced them to different techniques so they don't just learn the tony and guy artistic team styles they start to learn other methods of

052how to create a similar form by using different methods i don't know if any of you have had your hair cut recently but if you go to a different stylist often we can create a similar outcome by using many different approaches and we have to teach our students how to take different approaches to tackle challenges and to achieve results we also help them study nail technology so manicures pedicures nail enhancements they learn about skin care facial treatments makeup application hair removal by means of waxing and tweezing we also start to teach them about design decisions how to look at a person and assess their face shape their body type and discuss their lifestyle and give recommendations as a professional on what really makes a person feel their best we also like to challenge our students

053artistically at this level of education we have a project that we like to call the avant-garde challenge if you've never heard that term before it's an artistic term that means without restriction we challenge and push them to be creative to tap into their creative artistic side and be more of a trendsetter in the industry rather than a trend follower once they've completed those segments of education they then move on to our senior level of education in our senior level that's when we tackle those challenging subjects that everybody is always surprised to hear that a cosmetologist studies anatomy and physiology chemistry electricity and business and they take a lot to dig into and we're really helping the students develop their professional path and career at this point to their interactions with the salon clients they're starting

054to feel more comfortable and they're starting to take more of that leadership role determining what what techniques to use to drive to the outcome of success and satisfaction for the client once they've completed that then they move on to what we call our state board prep or graduating senior level especially for students who have been with us for approximately two years we are going to recap every single subject that they have studied retest them on those subjects and help them identify what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses we're also really helping them to polish and tweak their talents techniques and help them discover what they're most passionate about in this industry so that they can land a job that isn't just you know a one-time and done job it is a career and

055it is a successful and fulfilling one beyond that we also have another challenge for them where they have to do a business project we challenge our students to go into the driver's seat of a business owner we want them to make a business plan as if they are going to open their own salon yeah it's really awesome yes it really shows them how to make how prices are set what does it cost to just even open your doors how are you going to pay your employees what product line are you going to use what are you going to do how are you going to market and it really really lights the fire in those entrepreneurial spirits that we see in our industry and those that don't want to open their own business are much more

056responsible and accountable employees we do so many fun projects and we really give them a lot of exposure to the different avenues that the cosmetology field presents every week we have different guest speakers from local salons come in and do immersive workshops with our students so they can get a lot more exposure to different ways different methods and different means of success in the cosmetology field we also have a lot of really fun creative projects too where we've collaborated with local photographers we've collaborated with local design artists and we've even worked with local musicians we've done photo shoots fashion shows this summer we even did a music video it was so fun and so cool and the students were so excited about it and it's going to be released this fall so we definitely know

057that it's a faster pace than what some schools may offer but it really is inventive immersive creative and nourishing to the people who are truly passionate about our cosmetology fields one of our founders of tony and guy bruno muscolo once said tonyan guy isn't for everyone but it is for someone and we're always welcome and motivated to get passionate creative students to add into our family if you have not seen or experienced our facility i invite all of you to come out and check it out because it is a beauty anybody today can come give us a call we're going to be leaving some documents some flyers here for you call you can come and get a complimentary haircut manicure pedicure or if you just want a shampoo blow dry come see our facility come

058talk to our students you will feel the buzz in the air when you walk in the door we have so much fun and we work so hard but we really enjoy what we do thank you all so much i'm going to ask ben crawford um just a couple questions well more like statements i guess that's just to verify i know people who were in the cosmetology program during last school year yes and because of the integration and technology in the cosmetology program they were still able to complete their hours even working within the district's hybrid method correct absolutely yes yeah with last year with everything that happened we did we worked and collaborated very well with the districts and what their hybrid preferences were and we adapt to that right yeah and then um juniors

059and seniors so one thing that i just to clarify i like this because um you had said earlier nicole had said earlier that we are able to accommodate the wactc overflow and we all know the wactc program is 10th grade and i know from experience that it's difficult for students to enter after 10th grade and get their hours in by the 12th grade yeah so if we had like a late bloomer in 11th grade who suddenly decided i really want to go for cosmetology they'd be able to complete the hours at your program absolutely we're usually very flexible to try to help any student that really wants to pursue that passion you know if a student is a late bloomer and enters in late whenever they are enrolled we can always work with them with

060offering makeup time at no cost over the summer or they can enroll as a full-time student upon graduation at the high school and complete any remaining hours to obtain that certificate and get their license thank you thank you i have a couple questions you said that as a junior you work two hours a day that's what trinity is doing currently there's a senior five hours a day yes what are the as a senior five hours what time would that be would that be from we could be very flexible based off of what the school you know required or what the school requested what we're currently doing with trinity is that those students come in at 10 30 and they leave at 4 pm and they get a half an hour lunch break and keep in

061mind some of the courses that they're going to be taking in their senior year at this program would cover cork requirements at the school so like if they're taking chemistry that's a science credit that they would not have to take at their school correct as far as i know i would have to double check and verify with what your stipulations are for that but it has worked very well with trinity students do you have a percentage of people who complete the program and are successful at get passing the test state test um with our high school program our completion and passing has been 100 percent with our high school program i've had some of those students that were my students that went through the program and they make a lot more money than i do

062i know that feeling from some of those same kids yes same students are there any other questions that i can answer for you in regards to our cosmetology program thank you very much thank you very much i'm going to welcome up ben thanks thank you thank you all very much for your time uh the cdo program uh that we have i i over the years trucking has changed quite a bit especially in the area that we're at right now uh there was a time where um you could go to school i'm sorry yeah uh there was a time where you went to school you went in for three four weeks and they would put you out in the truck over the road and that was pretty much the extent of the the learning process with

063driving um we've seen with the over the road uh driving there are so many more areas now locally with driving for the gas and oil industry the construction we have put together a longer program a 220 hour program that gives us an opportunity to put a little bit more safety and a little bit more time over the road with these companies with our guys uh this was in a request to some of the trucking companies that were local and we've been really successful with them with the high school kids we have a lot of opportunities with penndot alex paris pepsi coke they all are really interested in getting guys out of school and training their way our program what we would do in school uh we would come into your program we would actually have

064a class set up for you here we would come here for you so you would have to not worry about transportation or any kind of problems with getting kids to and from once we had 40 hours of uh classroom time we could get them their permits they would then be on the road for the 180 and we would take them out we would experience all the any kind of uh practicing hills country getting these guys up to speed with what some of the demanded that the local companies are looking for um we we would get our 18 year old we would have to identify who your 18 year old students are or students that may be 17 turning 18 uh the school that we uh green county like she was saying in the past i

065mean we have worked with the entire school district in greene county and how he did it down there was we would get eight students from september to december and then eight more students from uh january to may we would split those guys up and uh after um the first 40 hours of getting their permit we would then put them in a truck four students each and we would uh go monday one monday wednesday and friday with four tuesday and thursday the other four and then the following week we would reverse that so that they would get their entire amount of driving equal distributed time on the road um once they completed the [Music] the 220 hours we would uh then schedule them to be tested up in our place up at the third-party testing we

066have amanda that's been here for 15 years uh he's really highly uh recommended by the state he's done really well and we would give them to uh hopefully pass they have to do a permit they have to go through skills and then they do their drive testing once they complete that then they would uh get their license probably within five to ten working days and be able to go out on the road and actually work some of our guys in greene county are working part-time while they're finishing school some of them graduate and then go ahead out in the in the workforce we have almost 100 of the students coming out of greene county are all being employed or at least offered employment before they get out of school so they're all doing real well

067some of the jobs those guys are at range from 50 to almost 100 000 if they want to go with sand companies that'll take them so the opportunity for the trucking industry is just unlimited for these kids i know a lot of people don't like the thing about trucking is an alternative for you know a job a lot of people would rather see their kids become doctors and lawyers but i'll be honest with you there's so much demand these guys have a lot to be proud of when they can come home making you know 75 thousand dollars and eighteen years old i don't see many opportunities that i had back in the day doing that you know so um we just feel that the a program we have is is one that we've put a

068lot of time and effort with a lot of i've personally gone around to all these trucking companies and asked them what's some of the things we can do to make a better product it's time behind well it's not beating up the vehicles it's getting those guys out and having them driving we put a lot of time and effort into driving those guys so when they leave they're safe to a point where a lot of our students coming out are getting jobs with companies that wouldn't even have taken them before they would have two three years experience we've gotten them into you know like giving them a chance and they've done really well so um the big thing about us with you guys we would cater to whatever you guys need as far as the time

069and and coming down and be able to work with you on a schedule uh greene county like i said um they have had not really too many problems or anything he's rampant and smooth there with uh the entire greene county school district and like you said i mean i don't know if kids have any questions about it but i'll be more happy to can an 18 year old get a class a license yes sir uh yes that hazard endorsement that's well i was going to ask that because i know they're separate yeah you have to actually get the cdl and then you have to do the separate hazmat that's correct so does your program do the training for the heart we do not do the hazmat because of the background checks and the longevity it

070takes for them to go through the checks and stuff we would probably be through the 220 program before they could actually have that done so we can help them uh you know studying forward and have them prepared for it but we don't source your question yeah under 21 they can have a cd over they can't be the state of pennsylvania right so any jobs locally they could get your guess i had a question you said you come to us what does that mean what does that tell you well instead of you guys busting people to our school or having to worry about transportation we would actually come to you and try to figure out like where we could have a class with the 40 hours needed for the permit you make the big truck here

071i think about classroom instructions correct yeah classroom instruction but you know the students we can vote up here and pick up the forks and do it so that they don't have to drive and meet us anywhere that would be no problem at all sure thanks we do that down in green county thank you very much nicole could you just run by the list of the other i know these are two big programs yes but i know that there's a lot of other opportunities for mcguffey students so can you run by that list again yes medical assistant and phlebotomy both of those programs have a certification attached to them and there are national certification through the ncct those classes are again can we can run them at any time we just kind of do the math

072whenever we have the availability when a student would be in the building we just customize that schedule to that um the medical assistant program is an 18 month associate degree program phlebotomy is only 12 weeks short with a clinical component attached to it we also have a drafting program which is an associate degree program we have an electrician program which is a nine month diploma program we have a welding program which is 12 months with eight qualification tests attached to it excuse me we have an hvac associate degree program with two certifications attached to it and we also have an aesthetics program which piggybacks cosmetology a little bit it is a different program but it is still a state board licensure program it's only 400 hours um that would be a program that would be

073what we were talking about at probably just a senior level program for that but um those are and i'm sorry um information technology is also an associate degree program anything that we offer we can do with the exception of nursing thank you thank you you're welcome thank you so much for your time we appreciate it um does anybody have any other questions okay thank you thank you okay thank you yeah uh next i have on the agenda i wanted to spend a little bit of time uh to review a strategic plan that uh i've put in place uh presented to most of the board members i think it's an understatement to say that one of the main roles of an effective school leader is to be that of a visionary leader the vision helps the

074school to have a road map of plan an understanding of um really not only where it is but where it wants to be and so might you have that cute foot okay so uh it's the the board itself it's the five-year achievement plan really the work on this plan in earth began day one when i first started taking time to learn more about the district itself eight months into it i've learned a lot and based on my time here and working with teachers you you all of course my administration i would like to present four main pillars or goals to the plan uh they are teaching and learning climate culture strengthening community pursuing excellence and for tonight's purposes um as part of this community report i'm going to take a very high level view of

075this i will tell you that now to also let you know that as far as the plan itself there are strategies and there are goals and timelines to accomplish these strategies which i will be doing in several phases one is as we uh fingers crossed i roll our new website i'd like to have that be one of the focal points the website i do plan on having a town hall not only first with our teachers come monday as we invite them back to in service but also to create videos around each of the pillars and to describe not just to them but all stakeholders students as well as our families where we'd like to go with these colors so again what i want to do is i'm just going to quickly read to you uh

076what each of them stand for and then you'll see examples of each of those pillars i'll maybe we'll take two or three we'll go through all of them we'll take two or three so the first pillar is based on a fundamental principle of what we do here but definitely what all schools do which is teaching and learning and under that it says we will improve academic growth and achievement among all student groups enhance career and college readiness through standalone curriculum instruction and assessment and intentional and robust professional learning experiences let me just take a few examples actually uh commercial you're one of those examples so if you noticed i said career and college readiness oftentimes it's the other way around and we know here at mcguffy that there are opportunities experiences and career paths that

077didn't always lead to college so when the pres the idea was presented to have you come out here it's exciting and i look forward to visiting with you and seeing what you have to offer that way um but another example actually and that will happen here just a few moments after i'm done is we had to take a look at our curriculum something that maybe hasn't had a focus of the school not to say that the education here wasn't in fine hands because it was but there are ways that we can enhance and improve that curriculum in fact the board you many months ago recognized that and uh the very first major point of that was to hire a director of curriculum instruction which is dr cochrane and that was really the starting point for

078a lot of things we're going to be doing another example of that actually is looking at a lot of your curriculum k through 12. and the very first area that we're focused on uh the first area that had in my mind um i don't say concerns but definitely has not been looked at in in a way that brought together everything that was taught k-12 is mathematics that good work started in april this past year and in fact another example or facet of teaching and learning is during our two day in service when it comes to professional development professional learning one of the things i heard from our staff was we get great pd come august two days in august we're taught something new and we're gonna unroll and unravel it during the course of the

079year what happens is but then it's not followed through so this year we have two main focuses for our professional development and we're gonna go from two days to three days for staff one of the focuses is going to be on health and wellness coming out of covet or going through covenant wherever we may be at this point there's a lot of trauma both experienced by our staff our students and our families and we need to make time to make sure that we have tool belts that effectively equip our teachers to um have those discussions with our students but also too and i have reminded this almost on daily basis our staff incurred a lot of trauma and it was because they were focused more on the safety and well-being and education of their students

080than oftentimes they were themselves so i want to make sure that we're also focused on that and we're going to have a day of looking at health and wellness ways we can take care of ourselves and that will carry out through the school year the second focus will be two days on instruction on both language instructional techniques as well as instructional techniques can be used in the classroom to improve the way in which we're teaching students again a consistent approach that's going to be focused on math for everyone that teaches math k through 12 and then all other subject groups will be working on those techniques and language techniques just as an example i just want another thing i'm sorry i probably could go through all seven but i know for tom i want to

081just take the highlights but it's something else i'm very excited about is number three and that's the five-year renewal cycle and all that really means in fancy terms is that our eye is always going to be on everything that we do here everything not just mathematics to start with but it'll be language arts science every curriculum that we look at here is going to have an eye all the way through as far as the cycle is concerned i believe dr doctor will speak a little bit to that tonight so we'll go too much for us so that's pill number one teaching and learning moving on pillar number two is climate and culture the way i've always thought about climate culture climate is to feel in a room when you walk into the room is it

082sunny is it raining is it partly cloudy what's the field you get where or in that room right and here i want to have a climate that is surrounded around this idea of joy it's an emotion that same emotion that our students feel kindergarten first grade second grade probably all the way through elementary making sure that we're maximizing that opportunity and it's not just that i'm going to walk into your classroom and see students smiling and laughing and there's hahaha it's this idea that we're engaging our students and then we're helping them to realize their fullest potential again this is a five year cycle my plan says to foster a school environment that is safe encouraging and creates a true sense of ownership for all stakeholders a couple ideas there number one we currently do

083not have a comprehensive consistent communication plan that's really important you can either let a culture develop on itself and it will and it'll develop into whatever wants to or you can be systematic and intentional in what you expect and having high expectations for what that looks like and that starts with the way in which we communicate that starts with the platforms that we're using to communicate what we're communicating when we're communicating how we're communicating making sure that those channels of communication are left open so it's very important as far as number one um i just talked a little bit about number three let me just jump down number seven this is an area that again almost from that first month as i was looking at what we provide here i'm really interested in investigating and

084we have a team right now of middle school and high school staff that are looking at potentially by mid-year presenting a possibility for investigating a junior rotc program for the high school i think the community here at mcguffy is well suited to have an rotc program i'm not sure at what branch that would be and again i'm not sure of those costs but that is something again as we look towards our climate and culture to have that ability to have our sons and daughters be in a program that teaches so many fundamental skills lifelong skills so i'm really excited about that dr robert on number six could you please explain often some we use terminology that the community doesn't understand would you please explain pbis yeah sure so pbis stands for positive behavior intervention supports

085uh it is something that we so another way of saying that is the way in which we help students to navigate uh each other navigate through the classrooms understand what is expected as far as behaviors are concerned and rewarding those behaviors in a consistent approach and we do a great job of doing this all the way through from kindergarten through middle school at high school maybe we don't spend as much time on that so we want to make sure that we're spending time looking at the ways we do this in a consistent manner across k12 thank you you're welcome next we have pillow number three uh and i remember the questions i was asked uh during my interview um i apologize if i bring it up way too much it's only been eight months but

086i do recall um you know questions about our community and the strengthening of our community and i've seen uh the role as we've talked about the role that we play as a school district in our community and the role that community play is our exposure so number three says we will seek an ongoing two-way process of building relationships and working collaboratively to support all students resulting in transformation transformative benefits for the mcguffey school community and then on the next page there are seven examples of that um actually let me just touch on the first one we're going to actually discuss that quickly tonight coach dalton's going to come here and talk to you about the idea of fundraising for a building wrap and i'm not going to tell you what that is other than to

087say that we have the ability to not only provide safety and protection to this building ramp but also to provide a positive brand or identity to our buildings and again i only give too much weight to that but it's this idea of creating building wraps building identities uh on our campus for our students the pride that we all feel in mcguffy athletics in academics in our arts these are things that we want to highlight as far as strengthening our community the next thing i really want to just bring up is number three um we have a lot of we have show that tonight with our community we have a lot of community engagement i think we need to tap into that when it comes to the creation of a foundation now this foundation again would

088be separate from the school board it would be a 501c3 but i've i myself have been a part of the foundation for almost eight years in my own local district and the positive benefits was for the community to see the impact they could have through the raising of funds to help not only with scholarships for students that's one of the things that we raised money for but also helping to bring technologies innovations into the classroom so again on their strengthening community i have the creation of a following c3 number five as mr haynes is aware we are are definitely working with the claysville area revitalization plan they're looking at the ways in which we can improve play work and stay within our community and they've actually had several events here already at claysville i'm sorry

089at mcguffy and let me just speak about one more because it's in the parenthesis there and that's this idea of number six parent university so again strengthening our community we're looking at ways in which we can communicate with our families an example of that of course was recently we had um a group meeting about social emotional learning and trauma-informed care and we invited members of family members from each of the buildings we had a community representative we had a board representative there and the idea there was to make sure that there are there are misunderstandings or things maybe people don't understand that we want to help them understand and that whether that is seo or whether that is what your son or daughter is learning in sixth grade math we want to look at ways

090in which we can build a closer partnership between the school the child and of course the family parent guardian and i would just say as a member of that group one of the things i appreciated was the the back and forth that it wasn't just the school trying to help the community with a better understanding it was also the community trying to help the school get a better understanding um because perspective is important um and it it gave um time for both so thank you oh thank you and we're gonna as you as you know we're gonna be expanding that into october and um okay and then finally the last pillar pillar number four is pursue excellence and says we will be driven to do better today than yesterday to support 21st century learners at

091mcguffy scholarships and i i gotta say before i go into uh the seven items under this oftentimes many of these ideas are cross-pollinated across all four pillars so for example when we talk about having a renewal in our curriculum cycle that's not just teaching and learning but that's also here making sure that we're better tomorrow than we're today better today than we were yesterday and that's going to be a focus that you're going to see in a lot of different ways uh one of them actually was on display again tonight when we're talking about refinancing and ms todd was talking about along with mr mckee about whether or not when we finance we look to extend it out to five million dollars and and in part of that process is looking at the future of

092our facilities here we have to have our eye today when we're going to be in the future and that's an example of this idea of school building renovation future facility planning um we are currently looking at ways in which we can reimagine our high school middle school here which we're almost right next door everything from maker spaces to a fab lab to an a place where it's um you know for good behavior on an honor bar for those that have high honors they can go not a bar you should probably replace so there's a lot of different ideas we have uh towards that again something we're looking at and also too um one of the things that that we looked at we noticed when i first started was we are a one-to-one school and we

093will continue to be a one-to-one school utilizing the google classroom and um i really want to focus on making our school something that's available for our families for our students for our teachers 24 7. but to do that we are currently in the process of creating a strategic plan for the next five years of technology and we have a technology team that has been working on us in fact even though this is the first time many in the community have heard this um we've been working on this plan actually since april of the last school year so with that i'll open up to any questions and again i apologize for being brief but i do have the option with the board here to speak too many of these items already okay seeing them uh the

094next item i have is uh coach dalton's gonna come up and talk to us a little bit about one of those ideas that one of those pillars with a um idea around fundraising for the tower rap how many of you have seen the uh the projected power wrap can you put that up it's a lot of talking when you're here all day and all night for a week football can't yeah okay so um basically um it's this first part that i think would be a great thing to start the school year because if you look back on the board it's a really good visual um as you come into the uh the main entrance that many of the kids come into it's got a giant highlander it says you're in highlander country we also want

095to do a windscreen coming up the fence that says welcome to highlander country um we've been able to afford the windscreen already um but we need some help to do that now with that said there are two anonymous 1 000 donations up there right now for that which is about half the cost if you remember prior to we have a fundraiser in place ready to go the problem is where we put the funding like how do we do it so mrs todd talked about uh there indirectly and doc talked about it was the uh 5013c or being part of a county foundation or something like that but i just don't see that that'll happen in an hour and i kind of think that that would be a great thing to start the school year after

096everything that the kids have been through so i i don't know where you guys are at with it i there's no way that we won't sell hundreds of those bricks in a walkway there's no way that people don't want to um be remembered as you come in and all those kind of things i've talked about a vo tech a person who is really good at the bricklaying aspect and we could work with them to replace uh current bricks in the walkway with these bricks and they would have people's names on there's insignias and all those kind of things but that said we can't again we can't do that unless you want to go in another direction there's probably five booster clubs maybe six there are 501 3cs already so then to me then then it

097would be a shared fundraiser where if the booster club was willing to do that they would get a percentage of the sale and we would get a percentage of sale but then that takes us to uh another advertising all that kind of thing that hasn't been a really easy solve either so i guess that's around a lot of problems but that was a really nice thing to welcome the kids back i think and doc brought up the safety and security one of the things chief could probably talk about it too one of the things is with intruders and all those kind of things they want people to be able to see out but they want people to be able to see in because then there's no vision line boy this hallway's full this is where

098we want to go in this is where we want to do something i'm not misspeaking on that am i chief right right so a lot of schools have used the imaging aspect to also create a security aspect right right i'm just kind of confused on are we going to be asked to make some kind of a decision tonight or this is just a hey this is a neat idea and more to come later no no i think what coach i'm wrong here so this is something that we looked we've been looking at as far as our high school municipal committee coach uh within the last few days said you know he has a few donors that would be willing to help out with this um how do we go about taking this money and putting

099it somewhere for a rap that's going to be part of our school and i went back to the company and said if if we could somehow say okay my friday could be up by wednesday and they said yes so you could actually have this up for me on friday that would be great i'm just having a difficulty with like i don't have anything that i'm looking at document that says this is true what's included and how it works and this is what it's not we've had problems like that before we're asking we're being asked to prove something that we have we're not looking at what's involved so well i guess what i'm saying is that we've tried a fundraising component now for multiple years and we can never come upon a solution so you're asking

100ultimately you're asking us to approve the two thousand dollars or maybe as a until the point that the fundraising project goes in and then the first 2000 goes back into the general fund i don't think we're really right we're just asking for is okay years ago when we the my program didn't have rain jackets had an anonymous parent who didn't want to be known donate to six thousand dollars to the district and the district bought the rain jackets somehow or another you were not involved but that was another i was a previous business manager i don't know how that i mean they just they said they accepted an anonymous donation we vote on donations all the time that's when we can vote to accept donations i think the hiccup is that the donations that we

101currently have don't cover the full cost and you would like for us to do something to cover the rest of the cost i do think we've had a solution in place for a while we just one was a pandemic obviously and now you know how do we move forward i guess that's what i'm asking uh mrs todd is it possible that we have money somewhere in safety because it's part of safety i mean some schools have used safety grants in the past do we have money we could pull from any place else that would be used for safety like you'll have you know like liquid fuels or uh accuracy money that can only go for certain things should we have any money anyway dedicated like that what's the total cost twenty two hundred dollars i

102think he said we have two thousand it's thirty seven fifty i think is exact i have the invoice on my we can provide this the reason why this is being presented in this this way and i apologize for not having something in front of you was again coach came to me and said listen i've actually got several donors can we look at ways in which we can either look at fundraising and then how does that money disperse from that fundraising to actually put something on the building it's a little bit different than buying coats for it's just gonna walk away from this is actually something that we're gonna prove to be as part of our facility and so i that's why i wanted to start that discussion we may not be able to do it

103by wednesday but at minimum for discussion purposes and doc said what would it hurt i mean we're just going to bring it up and go from there i like the idea i think it looks great i think it would be something really good for the the climate and culture i am just concerned about the minutia of it right true well one person like saying you're talking about twenty seven hundred dollars i mean we're we're looking at loans for millions and this is something that's welcoming and exciting and it's not dated it's not like a sixty thousand dollar uh expenditure we had recently so i think it's something we should consider doing is that possible i mean when we make a motion later or something i thought okay i thought he said something about what okay

104or what yeah oh grandma it's just a cramp on what that word let it be known athletics is dangerous she's got water we're going to take a short break here and uh go from there this is mr mr haynes is [Music] can can i interrupt real quick please we're not actually on live right now let me give you the thumbs up when we're ready okay thanks mr wilson okay we're back for uh committee of the whole we're talking about the uh tower rap out front i was saying i i like the idea i don't have a problem necessarily with saying like figure out the where the money's coming my my concern is that because we don't have anything in front of us i don't want to say you know like god bless figure figured out

105the school can pay the difference and then the difference ends up being a lot more than what we thought it was going to be understood i can see us raising the money by wednesday it would just come as a motion at the next meeting to accept the donation the donation or i would be okay with the school paying for the difference with a not to exceed yeah yeah and i'd be okay with it i mean so like we've done that before so i mean something like that you know you know mr dalton says it's 37.50 [Music] he's got some donations here a little bit ago yeah so if we so if mr what mr harden was saying so if we said not to exceed 17.50 i'd be comfortable with that because you're going to add

106your donations and we're not going to pay that and you may get more notation donations and we won't pay that much right or maybe not well that would be really nice so we can order it and get it i think the goal is just so do we have to make an official vote on that during the regular meeting then yes we have to make a motion well we're not going to fight right now right when we get to the meeting it's not your job don't help yeah i mean that's why in a sense like is would there be any logic in using the athletics fund i mean would you potentially then just kind of put it back there put it back in with either ticket purchases okay then it sounds like the general fund is

107probably the most likely to get involved thank you just two last items um next number five we have an update from dr gartran about curriculum dr carter all right good evening everyone i'm glad dr oberg heard my my hope which was put about an hour and a half of you know other items and discussions in front of me so that everyone is is good and ready to hear another um you know some more information from me but um in seriousness i want to is the my first time up here since i had the opportunity to begin in this role and so i want to again thank all of you for your support um you know dr erberg thank you for um you know the the chance to work alongside you and the rest of our

108team and of course thank you guys for for putting in this role and it's been um it's been a really really good first almost two months and so i'm excited to kind of share what have we been up to what you know what are we getting started with and there is a lot to share and i'll try to kind of move through it uh briefly just for the sake of time and knowing that there is a lot else to do but i am excited to share and mr wilson how's my slides up so that's good um and so there's going to be a couple different areas that i just want to give an overview of for our board and for our community on what we're starting to do from a curricular standpoint from a community

109standpoint and so starting with that mr wilson if you want to go to uh curriculum beliefs so a few beliefs that are kind of guiding what i hope to do in this role and what our administrative team is hoping to accomplish from a curricular standpoint you're going to hear moving forward a lot of talk just about joyful learning engaging learning students becoming lifelong a lifelong love of learning and you know kids always come in and they can't wait to learn and i always say you know true the tradition in schooling is to to beat that level of learning right out of them by the time they graduate right um and so my hope our hope is that we can can really emphasize a joyful learning experience that has them graduate wanting to learn for the

110rest of their life you know whether it's formally or informally that that a love of learning new things stays with them instead of uh filtering away uh the kind of second core thing or curriculum belief that that's guiding a lot of this is that the curriculum should be connected to the expected learning outcomes so not not really a shocker there right if we expect that a student would be able to you know perform algebraic operations then the curriculum should probably lead to that it should probably emphasize the ability to perform those operations curriculum should be frequent frequently reviewed and dr oberg touched on that with the renewal cycle and we'll talk about that a little bit uh in in this time here this evening and lastly that kind of is a core belief or curriculum

111belief at this point curriculum should be collaborative it should reflect input and perspective of numerous stakeholders our administrative team has been great we've already had you know some discussion with different stakeholders and and teachers and things like that and uh excited to start talking with students about what they want to need so those are kind of some core beliefs that are driving this whole process and so now we'll do kind of a couple a couple of things on what we're trying to do or what we've started doing to this point and so that leads us to language and instructional routines and so what that is it actually started in mrs you can go ahead to the yep so when we were starting to dig into math we kind of came across the existence of mathematical

112language routines and then instructional routines that are designed to to increase student engagement and mathematics instruction increase their level of just ability to connect to the content and the language routines were actually first developed to support english language learners you know because you can imagine if you already have a language barrier and then you're trying to learn mathematics what that could potentially do for you but after they kind of started utilizing them it's out at stanford is where they were developed they started to say well wait a minute like this these aren't just good for english language learners these these are just good ways to to engage kids in mathematics so we we started learning about them in our professional development as an admin team and with with some math teachers and some elementary teachers

113of course who teach every subject and we kind of had this epiphany of wait a minute these aren't just good language routines and instructional routines for mathematics these are just sound instructional practices and so we now are going into this school year with a focus on these language and instructional routines that you see um and i i'm not going to spend a bunch of time and i'm not going to read the list of routines there because i know everyone can and also because and i i can't wait for this we talked about it yesterday and i started getting really excited each month we're going to spotlight through professional development and through presentations and board meetings one or two of the different routines and we're actually going to if you guys are on board we'll have

114you workshop and will come prepared with one activity each month to participate in using those routines and and so next month you can look forward to not just hearing that we're doing three reads as a strategy but that is our our september focus so we'll do a three read during committee um in that each month teachers won't exclusively do like the theme of the month right because we want all of the themes to be utilized they're going to be learning about all of them during the end service but each month will offer a focus for professional development of course a focus for presentation at the board meeting and then through the course of the year each of the routines will have that monthly spotlight but they'll all be used throughout the year in in different

115classrooms and at each program level and so the focus of the first two and service days is going to largely be about these routines and how they support us and creating a joyful environment and then also what does a joyful environment look like what does it sound like what are teachers doing what are students doing whenever learning is joyful and so that is the first topic i wanted to talk about today and as we've uh mentioned several times math is the next kind of thing that we've really been digging into as a as a team and that i've i've found myself developing just a lot more knowledge about mathematical practices mathematical learning and content um my wife is a math teacher and so i'm waiting for the point when she says to me okay like

116no math talk at the dinner table like you can't lean on me to uh to to be the math expert right um but she she's been very helpful and and so has um rob bear from iu1 who we've had the the opportunity to work with and so what you see here is is not the uh the pyramid from the game show but this is our our math achievement math success pyramid and um something that i became tuned into several years ago was that you know the notion of math people and how it's not that uncommon for even adults in in you know in our world to say i'm not really a math person i don't i don't do math that much um and for lots of reasons is that uh something that people say and

117i've i have said that myself in the past that i said you know i'm more of a i'm more of an ela person i'm more of a reading person right but um all people can and should be math people and whenever we you know give this impression that there's math people and not ma and non-math people our students pick up on that right if their teacher isn't comfortable with mathematics then it comes even if the teacher doesn't think it is it's it's coming across if you're you know if your mom or dad or brother or whoever is is not you know comfortable with math then you you kind of pick up on that as well and so our goal is to set up our mathematical structure in a way that all kids can engage all

118kids can be math people and this pyramid is just kind of a an illustration of steps we think as a as a team can be taken to to build up to that achievement for all and so we talked about you know the language and the instructional routines we're going to talk a little bit today about a couple of the other blocks in the pyramid and then you know hopefully before too long here we'll be talking about that very top block in in mathematics achievement and so um go ahead mr wilson to the next item there so we are like i said a little bit ago working with mr rob bear he's a math curriculum specialist from iu one and i think we've had about three days cumulative obsessions with him so far with our administrators

119and with a team of math teachers at the elementary and secondary level and we have he'll be with us the first two in service days next week and then we have about five more days that we can spread out kind of throughout the course of the school year to to bring him in for support um and so all of our elementary teachers and our secondary math teachers will be spending uh the full first day and then half of the second day directly with with rob leading their session helping them walk through how do we apply these language and instructional routines in number sense and uh common math vocabulary we talked a little bit last time we met with him about misconceptions and even just the words that we use when we talk about mathematics and

120and one of them was when you talk about like carrying a number and several of us i i don't know that many of us in the room knew that when you say like carry the one that that's that's not technically the best way to explain it to a student and as they scaffold up or the other example like if you're at a lower grade level and you say when you multiply something it gets bigger but then when they get to a place where that you know shortcut or that that trick so to speak when that no longer becomes reality if it's a lot easier if we teach from the beginning using sound vocabulary and not and not teaching misconceptions to begin with so that's going to be like i said a focus of the math

121professional development session and then throughout the school year we're going to continue that instructional focus and walk through focus so that we can can you know dig into how is it going how are we doing with the routines are there certain routines that are taking hold more than others and we're also going to be developing a resource library a warehouse where our teachers will submit starting with the in-service time submit how this can work for their classroom and their grade level so that once we build up a database we can very easily you know next year if there's a new second grade teacher or what have you they could come right in and be able to access that to help them with their their planning as far as the actual core math resource curriculum so

122for this current school year and we kind of made the decision earlier this spring that uh you know late in a year going into a new school year we didn't we didn't want to drastically change you know the core curricular program that we were offering especially because our middle school math program has one additional year remaining on an existing contract and so we said okay so for one more year we're going to continue with elementary with go math middle school with with ready mathematics and then high school math is kind of course specific just because you know they branch out into trade and geometry and calculus and so each each course is kind of course specific with their resources but over the course of this year we are looking at evaluating core resource programs throughout

123the year and a goal by the next spring so i would say by march april uh as a tentative timeline that we'll have a recommendation for what we'd like to adopt starting with 22-23 so that k-8 or at least k to 8 that we would have a consistent curricular program that we would be using that consistent language and part of our review is going to be looking at several different programs you know kind of selecting ones that are reputable and then out of those which one works best for us which one matches best with our vision for for long-term instruction and k-12 alignment with the standards in an instructional focus so we'll certainly be talking more about that and and be looking for for that to be part of our budget and our adoption for

124next school year one more item for math and this is just kind of items i'm sorry the gold really doesn't show up well on that screen i should have used all white but um on the horizon and like i think all of us are aware math is a a huge thing there's so much to do and so i did want to just put up there kind of what what we'll be talking about moving forward so not necessarily items that i i want to get into deep detail on this evening but things that we'll certainly be talking about in the in the weeks and months ahead and one is going to be our alignment of standards and our pacing of what we're teaching at different points in the school year so that we can ensure as

125a student moves from grade level to grade level that they have received the appropriate instruction and the the timing and the pacing to succeed as they climb off program level to program level we're also going to to dig deep into what we're doing as far as benchmarking and as far as how do we assess if a kid is struggling in a particular area or a particular standard or if the whole group is struggling and then we we need to look at how we're instructing students at that that base level right we're also along with the core resource we're going to take a a dive into what supplemental math resources make sense and what ones do we want to kind of streamline out so that we're not doing you know this math website in this classroom

126and then this classroom has a different math website and it's it's piecemail right so we we want to decide what do we cohesively and consistently want to make as part of our supplemental resources and then of course the the next uh last item there is what do we want to do in terms of our intervention and what are we doing when students are struggling or not understanding mathematical concepts so those those are all things mathematically to to kind of look forward to and and that we're excited to to really dig into the work on um and so the next thing that we have is just thinking about long-term planning and vision and consistency and wanting not just for math because you know math is the focus right now but what are we doing next and

127then what are we doing after that and how are we giving due diligence to every subject and content area and so we put together a first uh kind of proposed draft of a curriculum cycle and um you can see the phases up there and and these are similar to the the phases when mcguffey previously had the you know a curriculum and adoption cycle and you see seven phases um and that's kind of how the current draft looks but it could be condensed as well if as as we make discussions moving forward you see that there's two development phases and then two monitoring phases those could potentially be combined into one development and one monitoring phase and so if we you know collaborate collaboratively if we decide to merge those it would take it down to

128a five step in a five year cycle as opposed to seven and so i do have just a first first rough draft of um of a proposed cycle and the green highlight is to indicate that the tentative or the proposed implementation year and i will stress you know beyond the first part of that beyond math implement implementing for 2223 and we we feel pretty strongly that ela does need to be next uh the following year because honestly ela would be next year except we don't want to look at doing k-8 math in ela in the same school year we thought that that would be pretty overwhelming for all of us and so beyond those those two feeling like they they do need to be the first two pieces there um the other steps in that

129cycle are are gonna be discussed and i'm going to you know work with with each of the building principles work with the departmental leaders in each department and if we find out that a certain department that's not slated to implement until later needs something more urgently or if a department that's earlier in the phase doesn't need something necessarily right away then then this is all subject to kind of adaption and movement but i did want to share with you the first draft proposal and like i said math is is a pretty certain like that's that's what we're going to do first and and i feel pretty confidently that ela will come next but but everything beyond there we'll still continue to talk about and look at what makes the most sense and like i said

130this this is of course spread out over the seven but if we decide that we want to do it as a five-year cycle and a five-year thing then we certainly can can look at combining the the two um uh monitoring in the two cycles to get to that so anyway that is some information on the kind of just that review and so the last item i want to to kind of talk about today and i appreciate everybody's patience and and um you know a lot of a lot of things to listen to today both for um our board members and our community members so i just appreciate all you guys and i i did want to talk a little bit about social emotional learning um and kind of what we as a district are wanting

131to do with that and what our our vision is and to try to just communicate openly on what we intend to do and are planning to do versus anything you know that because it i know it's something the more information the more familiarity you have uh the better understanding that uh can be gained and so i want to start actually with my why about you know why why is this a focus of of our team why is this something that is a school district we feel is important as part of a joyful learning experience and so and i'm excited and i'm sorry if i spend the most time on this particular slide out of everything but this this slide is kind of my research that i did in a nutshell which is why i'm so

132interested in it and i just think it's super interesting and super meaningful so hopeful students are students who are likely to to be joyful to be engaged to overcome obstacles in front of them and so i i learned and i did not know this until i started researching it that hope is actually like a measurable quantifiable thing i always thought yeah there's helpful people and there's people who are less hopeful but there are actually two types of kind of measurable hope and one is pathway which is like your strategic ability to to plan steps towards a goal and so someone with a high level of pathway hope is able to think about the steps that need to be taken to reach their goal or to accomplish something agency hope is your belief hope that's your

133belief that you could accomplish a goal and so someone could be high in either pathway or agency and right like you could have all the pathway hope in the world and you could be like i know i would need to do this this and this to get there but then if you don't have agency hope you would never believe that you would actually take those steps and i guess on the flip side you could have all the belief in the world but if you don't have the pathway hope of what you need to do that would also be you know a barrier to to success um and so hope is so important and and it's you know it's critical to everything that we want to do it's critical to our students being engaged learners because

134if you're hopeful you're more likely to persevere you're more likely to find academic success and to overcome obstacles when a child experiences a traumatic event in one example of a traumatic event would be what's known as adverse childhood experiences or aces um and so that that's not necessarily the only trauma or adversity that a child could encounter but that is the most kind of common or the most researched example and so when a child experiences adversity they tend to have reduced hope and that reduced hope tends to to lower their level of resilience and so in my research sample of the 200 respondents in my in my survey reported having at least one major childhood adverse events in the first 18 years of their life um and and actually almost 23 of them so you

135know over one in five had four or more major adversities reported in their first 18 years which the four or more is kind of the the uh benchmark for for where someone might experience really significant um lifetime struggles and just because i didn't want to only rely on my small survey of 200 people uh within our region there is a sample that had been conducted recently of 25 different states uh individuals in 25 different states and you can see again 60 with at least one childhood adversity 17 with four or more and so the the fact that my survey had a higher prevalence of aces i think has a lot to do with the demographics of the the population i surveyed that all of my respondents were within the central appalachian region which of course

136we are a part of and there are factors there that um that fed into that just by nature of of that demographic and so like i started to say hope levels are directly connected to resilience and academic success and perceived social support is what um increases hope not even social support that's received but if you think that i have a parent or a coach or a teacher that is there to support me even if i never go to that parent teacher or coach they that's enough just that i know that they're there even it's even as powerful as if i actually get support from them um and to to show in a measurable way um two students and again all of this is projected or expected based on based on on data but a student

137who experienced four aces who had a below average level of hope um would be expected to have an academic resilience score of 92 on a scale of 30 to 150. take that same student and if they have an above average hope level all of a sudden their expected academic resilience goes up to 109 on that scale and so that's a significant difference in their academic outcomes in their their projected life outcomes and so next up there is just a little graphic that kind of outlines so so what are we talking about like what what's all of that mean in a in a nutshell and that is that emerging appalachian adults including of course you know some of our students if they have adversity they are likely to have reduced hope and low levels of academic

138resilience and success unless a supportive factor intervenes and has them have increased hope levels and high levels of academic resilience and success and so that is that is what we want to do we want to support our students so that we can boost all of their hope levels right because whether you've experienced adversity or not having a supportive person in your life really makes a huge difference um and so what we have to do i'll start with that's what are we required to do as a school district go ahead mr wilson is we do have to provide training about the signs and impacts of trauma to our administrators our staff our board members just about the signs and symptoms of trauma so that's what we have to do right we have to provide that training

139and that awareness so that so that people know how to respond but i want to talk about what do we want to do what does this actually look like and i'm hopeful that this will help us to to start to move forward together and so what we want to do is we want to build the capacity of our staff and our community to help our students become and stay hopeful and resilient and so um we did you know we do have a district team to kind of start working on that we also have a community team that has started and actually i'm happy that i see almost that whole team in this room um between between the people that have participated so far and i i would encourage anyone who would like to to help

140us in this in this objective to you know get in touch with me or get in touch with with anyone on our administrative team because we do want to grow our community our stakeholder involvement we want to talk and work about this together and i will point out um with the t-shirt that you see there one of the first things we did as our with our district team is we did a t-shirt design contest for our journey right and and so one of our high school students hannah shingle came up with that design and we actually i believe the shirts came today and next week every one of our staff members is going to get one of those shirts to just get in that mindset of we're tarting our compass forward we're embracing this journey

141to help our our students become and stay hopeful and resilient um so at the ground level what that looks like so and there's um some jargon here just like when when dr oberg had the the you know pbis and he clarified what that was so tier one if anyone is not familiar with that tier one is just the term that we use when we're referring to all students or you know all students receive tier one instruction or tier one support or tier one programming uh it's also kind of it's called the universal level and so it it's it's not really a tear which is funny it's just the term for all students uh that participate and so what do we want all our students to experience this year we want staff to greet them at

142the door every day hi how's it going good morning glad you're here we want in the first class of the day for our teachers to check in with the students same thing how's it going um how are you today do you need anything um how what can i help you with i mean we actually have been modeling that with our staff as well and dr oberg starts our all of our staff meetings all of our admin meetings with a temperature check where you know on a scale of one to five um how how are you doing you know one would be i'm really in a a tough spot today 5b and i'm having a really great day and it's just it's a way to just get a quick read on how everybody is doing in

143in supporting and checking in um as always you know our school counselors are ready to be there as a support for for all of their students and we're also looking to build upon some district-wide traditions of support and community involvement i mean that's going to be kind of the next charge for our community stakeholder team is to start thinking about and planning what traditions and events and things that we can do to pour community all together because it's awesome when we work together and it's awesome when all of us on all sides of the equation are pulling together for our kids so that's that's what we hope to to accomplish and what it looks like for all students next i want to talk about if a student was struggling at that second or third tier

144so tiers two and three would be students who have experienced struggle um they're likely not as hopeful as we you know as they could be or you know they may um you know be uh be withdrawn they may be be acting out they may be struggling academically and so what we want our staff to really start to think about is and and i i will say right now i don't think there's really anyone in the district that would actually say to a child what's wrong with you right i i sure hope not um but it's just as damaging if we think it as if we say it and so we want our staff to start thinking about what have you been through not what's wrong with you what have you been through and how can

145i help and so one piece of that is we're going to start using the language handle with care it's it's based on language that they actually use the west virginia state police in partnership with the west virginia school districts whenever state police have had to be involved with a child in the school system for for whatever reason they the the school stakeholders in the building that you know that care for that child will be alerted handle with care not and it's not specific it's not into details of what's going on it's just enough to to say if this kid is having a bad day there's a reason and be extra patient with them be extra kind with them because you don't know what may have they may have experienced or gone through but we want

146you to know something so that you're you know handling with care and so that's that's a piece we're gonna start to to go over and implement with our staff and we're going to continue the use of of our tier two and three programs so again this would only be for students who have already shown a struggle or or you know obstacles in in their path and i also stress that all of these at the tier two or three level um would would be with parent involved specific written permission from a parent or guardian before we even start participating to the point that with like our student assistance program i've sat in many meetings where we we get to a student on you know who's been referred and we we say no parent permission skip to

147the next student and as much as we might even want to you know discuss interventions or or things in that student assistance program um that's how seriously we take that you know that idea that the parent the guardian the family has to be involved uh for for it to be effective right and so you can see esap which is just elementary student assistance and then student assistants at the secondary level and and that would be through either a teacher referral or counselor referral or administrator referral for a student that there is a concern a specific concern about whether it's socially academically um concerns with attendance come up or behavioral concerns um and so that's kind of our first place where a student would start to get extra extra support or extra help and then the

148other things that you see there checking connect is our k-8 and then renew picks up with secondary students those are kind of like intensive individual support programs where a school team comes around a student and helps to mentor them and helps to try to to really boost them in a positive direction and then for tier two and three for for pbis again that's about a team a small staff team meeting and talking about what does a struggling student need how can we support them and the same thing with guidance groups and so again just kind of some safeguards because i know that i've i've heard that we've heard that um concerns about we you know we don't want to do anything that um breaches that trust or confidentiality with our community and so we we

149really do take that very seriously and very carefully and so um it's always a partnership with with the parent or guardian um any any information that we um we do gather or use in terms of an intervention to help a student is kept very you know to a need to know circle of the the team members on either sap or the tier two or three support um and and that's not that's not shared out it's not anything that um that goes beyond there and and so we i just want to stress that to everybody that we we take that very seriously and we really um really want to to do that because we we care so much about about our students and and we don't want to to do anything to to set that back

150we also are supporting our staff this year with with uh our our efforts uh we started back in the spring with just a weekly healthy highlander staff newsletter that went out via email and it had it might have resources or it might have information just about self-care for staff and just trying to be mindful that our teachers struggle too sometimes and and they won't show it or they won't acknowledge it but we want to make sure they know there's resources there and that's also with our employee assistance program that's available to all staff and then also we are doing in-service training on the third day for all of our district staff on how to just recognize and care for students who who may be struggling and how to you know take care of yourself and

151your students and i mentioned we have a district sel team and those team members are going to make it known to their colleagues that they're also available as a peer support not only as a support for students so um the next kind of last part and i think this is a really important part um just so that we can all again have that that level with each other um there are some things that that what we are doing doesn't look like and i i completely realize and understand where you know it's there's lots of information and there are places right that are doing things differently or calling things a certain way um and so what we here at mcguffy what we are not doing we're not attempting to teach any philosophical techniques we're not trying

152to alter anyone's personal values or any practices or beliefs um we're not attempting to to pressure any child to share or express personal information or feelings and we're not we're not forcing participation right we're not we're not doing anything like that um and we're again most students are would not even participate whatsoever in the the uh advanced support tiers because generally up to 85 or 90 percent of all students would never even be considered for you know for a sap referral because that's that's reserved for students who have already displayed some level of academic struggle or attendance or behavioral struggle um and we don't intend to exclude students or ostracize them and and of course it's it's not connected to anything with um critical race theory or the 1619 project it's it's you know not

153not at all related to any of the the information that you see up there and i think that's important because i i've been taking an online class that i'm i'm very behind in so dr edward and i hopefully we're gonna get uh get an extension because we're both in the same boat but one of the things i've learned in that class so far is is you know about the uh and you know the perceived program or the perceived way that something is and that if something has perceived a certain way just like perceived social support it's it's you know perception is is reality for for those who who perceive something a certain way and so i i guess part of my goal tonight is is to say hey like if those are perceptions please like

154talk to me give me a call and i know i've spoken to several guys about that um but please like reach out i would be happy to to walk through that or if there is a specific or particular concern or or if you're just saying i want to hear more i want to i want to talk more about this and where i am please reach out um and so the last thing was actually a surprise so the second to last thing i want to talk directly about you know the move this world um program that from the middle school last year and and what that was and kind of just this just being a a chance to kind of say hey like here's here's where we went with that here's kind of from a district

155standpoint we we heard you guys and um we we know something we learned some lessons there and so it was it was a supplemental adoption as i i think we have talked about before and there was really good intentions right the middle school team got a grant they were excited about it and no i was excited because they were excited and those guys are you know a great team that i've worked alongside for for several years and we had you know some really good discussion through january and february about it we're like we're ready to go it's you know this is awesome and there were some lessons learned you know on the actual implementation of it and there are steps we not just for our middle school team but i think our whole district team

156lessons to learn and steps to take about collaboration and communication and involvement of all stakeholders in that process and so where we are right now because i know that you know there have been questions about so if it's not moved to this world what what are we doing or what will it be and the answer for at least for right now is is we're not like there's not going to be a a supplemental program to come in right away because of what we just talked about that it wouldn't be prudent and it wouldn't be effective to try to bring something in without proper research without proper involvement of you know committee members and committees that were we're starting to form and also it's not essential to have right it was it was supplemental from the

157very outset and so it does not have to be a part of of what we're doing and so that's just kind of say to to everyone okay like as a district team and i really want to dig into that that anything we do might do in the in the future let's learn from that um let's learn from you know the good intentions there but the the application that maybe we can uh can grow from so the surprise the last thing mr wilson is just a mr rogers quote and i you know i know i've gone on for for quite a while so i'll just read it and it it's just i had seen it before but it just came up recently and was really just powerful and and i thought it was worth sharing tonight

158that uh mr rogers said he was asking for 20 million dollars don't worry i'm not doing that tonight and he was before the senate communications subcommittee and he said this is what i give i give an expression of care every day to each child to help him realize that he is unique i end the program by saying you've made this day a special day by just being you there's no person in the world like you and i like you just the way you are i feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable we'll have done a great service for mental health and so you know mr rogers all those years ago was echoing what we hoped to do uh here at mcguffy and so again

159i know that was a number of things and that that was a kind of a long time after already an eventful evening so i am i will stop here and thank you everyone for your time and attention thank you to our our board and dr oberg thank you to our community members here and to anyone who's online and um you know thank you everyone have a great evening i have a couple questions is this powerpoint available on the website i saw people taking pictures on himself and taking notes and said there a way we can see that powerpoint absolutely i think mr wilson can we get that online and um i just want to reiterate we are definitely not going to have the high under period and some are going to go and some are

160not and separate anybody correct so there there is there is a highlander period foreign yeah correct there will not be students who are yeah who are sorted out into different my groups there will be no child in tier 2 or 3 without parent knowledge correct correct thank you and that was kind of my i had a couple questions just for clarification um because i know that this came up in the discussion panel last was just that last week yeah yes it's been a busy time anyway there um there's no child who like from the daily check-in with teachers you know if a child says i'm having a bad day that doesn't qualify them for tier two no not okay and i just wanna make sure parents and guardians understand that it's not like the teacher's

161keeping track of of that or anything yeah right yeah now on the other hand if during the daily check-in a student says i really would like to talk to somebody then the parent would be contacted and have to give permission and all of that exactly so just so that we clearly understand everybody that that um it's not a target to the mass masses um and tier two and three a student isn't even placed in those tiers without parental consent absolutely perfect spot on that and then i had a couple questions about curriculum yes absolutely i like it that's good anybody else have anything for the sel before we no um am i hearing correctly i i think i would get the idea that we're looking at not just a vertical alignment of curriculum but also

162horizontal horizontal so like across the the grade levels in the district so all fourth graders wherever they're in the build right um but k through eight or k through 12 because i heard k for eight several times and i'm wondering what what that means for ninth or twelve yeah so so the only time thing that's delineated k to eight and nine to twelve would be the particular core resource okay so like we you know you have like a series like right now it's go math for elementary um and then it's different at middle school and so k to eight is kind of where those core curricular programs serve because once you hit ninth grade it's a specific curricular textbook or resource for each class so the the delivery of standards the alignment of of teaching

163and instructional practices will be k-12 it's just that the core resource potentially would go k to eight because once you hit 9-12 it has to be a little bit more course specific okay and then um i know a lot of schools are walking away from common core um or where are we with that are we doing pennsylvania standards how are we aligning the curriculum yeah so we at this point we would be basing it off of the pennsylvania standards because that is you know that is in pennsylvania that's what districts are are kind of aligned to or should be aligned to so yeah we would be looking at the pennsylvania specific standards yeah thank you awesome any other questions or thoughts all right well thank you guys and we appreciate you thank you absolutely very

164good thank you last item for committee tonight so uh in the june board meeting i was asked to consider bringing forth policy 707 which is use facilities and basically that policy centers around the ability for the superintendent to use school facilities for a number of things at the last meeting we had a read of it and i was asked by several board members to consider specifically uh superintendent's ability to schedule use of school buildings for very specific instances we've been working with anderson price uh to look at that uh mr russell lucas actually uh sent us the revision to policy 707 if you'd like to do that sure and so what i did uh just to reflect the discussion from the last board meeting if you uh take a look at what's been distributed i

165just made one change to the second page of policy 707 right after it creates these tiers of different kinds of activities that get priority for buildings i just added a sentence that states uh and they should show up either in red line or or underlined depending on whether your copy is in color the use of school facilities for any activity or clinic involving health or medical matters other than district related athletic physicals and health screenings compelled by state law shall be pre-approved by the board and then essentially below that there are some other restrictions on what facilities cannot be put to what particular uses excuse me facilities can't be put to so the intent was and i you know you can tell me whether or not this reflects what you want to do but specifically

166anything that would be uh health or medicine related apart from uh say team physicals or the sorts of vision dental screenings that you have to do under state law hearing screenings right hearing screenings and just to be clear that the second part of that paragraph that language actually is still the same from the policy you just added that first sentence all i did was add one sentence that's right yeah that's good that looks good so you guys can decide if you want to add this to the agenda for uh for a first reading either tonight or at your september meeting or well and just to be clear so that everybody understands what it says shall be pre-approved by the board that would mean it would have to come to the board for approval which means

167it would have to come up um for public discourse as well so it would be put on the agenda the public would have the ability to speak to whatever is on the agenda before a decision is made correct correct which is i think from the community members that i heard from what their concern was i like that any other questions i had i had a question on fees number five very last sentence 500 security deposits required for all groups famous to be held in escrow and to be returned within five days after conclusions of these scheduled events now does the word escrow cover the fact that if there's damages that comes out of that or do they automatically get the 500 dollars back no it would be deducted from the security deposit is that stated

168somewhere where they do they sign something that states that i don't know what they sign i haven't looked at the forum but listen if you're uh amending the policy anyway why not make it clear that i just noticed that damages can be taken from the security deposit right now sorry it's we're talking pennies on the dollar but okay if it says yeah i agree i understand what you're saying that's the law that's just the way that was written it it looks like so do you change the word yeah why don't you take it out of escrow and just make it aiming to be held by the business office and to be returned minus any yeah minus any wear and tear for damages or something so it's up to you if you're going to approve this

169tonight first reading obviously we'll have to wordsmith that a little bit if you want to add it on for september then i'll i'll amend that sentence and get something to you clean it up in september right mr president committees report is over thank you okay that was a lengthy but very informative interesting committee meeting okay it's 8 26. um we're going to take a recess until class on a recessive i'll start the regular meeting at um 20 till 20 to 9. all right mr wilson i'm just going to mute the session will stay live but everybody will be muted give me once thanks mr wilson good evening it's august 19th 2021 i'd like to call order the regular school board meeting in mcguffey school district roll call please mr group here here mr harden here

170ms jackson president please join me in the pledges of the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all this time i'd entertain public comment on agenda and non-agenda items foreign okay i'll start my name is katie morris from south franklin township i am a mother of three young kids and um i know that i came in here on guard i will start with that expecting a flip flop with the masking that we've been talking about for quite some time and i am under the impression that that is not the case um so my guard is now down i'm thankful that i don't have to be a mama bear tonight i'm sure

171dr oberg appreciates that so um i did want to bring this to the attention of the solicitor and um mr group as he is the president of the board and then also our superintendent um this is from the children's health defense it's a non-profit organization run by uh bobby kennedy jr who is a environmental attorney this serves as notice that the mandate for any individual to wear a mask any individual be vaccinated against kevin 19 or to be tested against kevin 19 for employment or attendance at a university or other institution violates federal law all kevin 19 mass whether surgical and 95 or other respirators respirators are authorized not approved or licensed by the federal government they are emergency youth authorization only they merely may be effective federal law states title 21 usc of the

172food the federal food drug and cosmetic act [Music] states individuals to whom the product is administered are informed one that the secretary has authorized the emergency use of the product to the significant known and potential benefits and risk of such use and of the extent to which such benefits and risks are unknown and three of the option to accept or refuse administration of the product of the consequences if any of refusing administration of the product and of the alternatives to the product that are available and of their benefits and risks diversity use authorization products are by definition experimental and thus require the right to refuse under the nuremberg code the foundation of ethical medicine no one will be coerced to participate in a medical experiment consent of the individual is absolutely essential a federal court

173held that even the u.s military could not mandate emergency authorization vaccines to soldiers that is dough number one versus rumsfield and in 2003. in the letter dated april 24 2020 the food and drug administration stated that the authorized face mask must be labeled accurately it may not be labeled in a way that misrepresents the product's intended use as source control to prevent to help prevent the spread of stars kobe 2. the letters specifies that the labeling may not state or imply that the product is intended for antimicrobial or antiviral protection or related uses or is for such or for use such as infectious infection prevention or reduction any eua mandate requiring individuals to wear face masks conflicts with section 360 which provides that the person must be informed of the option to refuse to wear

174the device liability for forced participation in a medical experiment including possible injury may be incalculable children's health defense urges u.s employers universities and other institutions to respect and uphold the rights of individuals to refuse to wear eua masks and so i have brought down my tone quite a bit because this isn't something that i need to be concerned at concerned with at this moment but this is something that that you all should be aware of that exists and that it's emergency use authorized only and it can't be enforced um and we'll hold you to that um i'm i'm glad we're not having to have this battle because there are local schools who have flip-flopped and that was a big concern of ours in this whole like they want to test for our children with you

175know going around the classroom put it all on one testing and that's not going to fly either as far as i'm concerned so i will push back on that as well i'm hoping that doesn't become a thing but you just never know just came up um the only other thing that i wanted to just follow up on was the transportation issue that we brought up last month and i still want to know who's going to enforce the masking on the buses because as far as i'm concerned that's a federal thing and so is there going to be a federal agent that you know makes everybody comply to this order on each bus no so that's what i have to say about that and i know that i don't know if it's on the record i

176would like for it to be on the record um if there will be children denied access to the bus if they do not have a mask on i would like that to be on the record i know that was talked about after last board meeting i would prefer it to be in writing or and or and or on the record for that matter and then also i'm confused why summer school busing wasn't a problem or wasn't a discussion about masking on buses for summer school but then it became a problem and for the fall when this order was in january and that wasn't that was my own my other comment last month that was not brought up i would like clarification on that too why we're all the sudden concerned about following demands and being

177compliant um and what are the repercussions for not knowing that law that order not law the cdc order what's the repercussions for that should we uh you know call biden and let them know our solicitor didn't know that and we had the our buses running so that's all i have to say thank you guys i hope to hear some answers to my questions thank you hello i appreciate katie's remarks um my name is teresa coppola mother and taxpayer from franklin township and i appreciate haiti's remarks especially um because there's definitely some still confusion about orders and laws so i'm going to talk about that at the last school board meeting it was suggested by our solicitor those of us highlighting highlighting excuse me the distinction between orders and mandates and the law we're just splitting

178hairs as if it were all just petty semantics and nothing more than that but as a legal professional surely our solicitor is well aware that that's not true that words and their meanings matter i'd like to bring attention to a few recent court rulings that demonstrate this one a federal suit and then i'll bring it back here to pa in october of 2020 the cdc issued what it called a conditional sailing order which created a four-phased approach for the cruise line industry to follow if they wanted to resume sailing this order included things like restricted voyage lengths testing of all staff and passengers and other virus mitigation procedures saying that they would then be allowed to gradually resume operations if certain thresholds were met the state of florida sued the cdc seeking an injunction before

179the federal court meaning the cdc would legally be prohibited from enforcing their overreaching orders regulations policies and right in june of 2021 federal district judge steven maraday wrote a page decision in favor of the state of florida in their lawsuit against the cdc the cdc then took it to the 11th circuit court of appeals on friday july 23rd they sided with florida so as of july 23rd pandemic restrictions of florida-based cruise ships are no longer in place meredi's decision concluded quote the cdc regulations can no longer be enforced and that they should merely be considered non-binding recommendations or guidelines the cdc of course did not want to let go of their perception of power so they then sent a letter to the cruise industry which included some new requirements florida's attorney general swiftly filed a

180motion saying that this better violated the injunction now the letter did acknowledge that the conditional sailing order was no longer mandatory but that it still had the effect of a recommended guideline but what effect does a recommended guideline have when a federal judge just ruled that you can't enforce it this letter also requested that cruise lines notify them if they intended to comply and stated that those who do not comply would have to follow several requirements the letter also said that the cdc would enforce a mass requirement on those non-compliant ships but in a later court filing it rescinded this hmm so cruise ships or transportation um why would the cdc say that they were now rescinding this i thought masking on all transportation was a binding federal order so it seems that the cdc

181knows where this is going with the case in florida florida's governor stressed the significance of this matter after the 11th circuit court of appeals sided with them over the cdc quote the importance of this case extends beyond the cruise industry from here on out a federal bureau will be on thin legal and constitutional ice if and when it attempts to exercise such sweeping authority that is not explicitly delineated by the law this brings me back to pa as respected attorney tom king made a similar statement just this week that name tong king may sound familiar to some of you that's because tom king is the lawyer who brought the four-county federal lawsuit against wolf and ravine last year for their own overreach and unconstitutional orders washington county was proudly a part of that lawsuit tom

182king also happens to be the solicitor for butler area school district and kdk just reported this tuesday that tom has advised butler school district that quote there is absolutely no reference in this public school code to the wearing of masks the state codes governing school districts do not specifically authorize mandating masking so it's not to say that it doesn't say you can't do this it has to say that you can do it so law and orders and mandates are clearly very different things one more example last year here in pa over in lebanon county a family-run italian restaurant exercised their right under the constitution to operate their business as they saw fed that means that in the spring of last year when lebanon county was still considered by wolf to be a yellow phase colony

183taste of sicily reopened at 100 capacity with zero restrictions of any kind no masks on their employees or customers no sanitizers no plexiglass no social distancing nothing they were cited and fined multiple times inspectors and letters from the state came again and again and again but when they went to court what actually happened let's hear it from their attorney eric winter of prince law offices quote the department of agriculture tried to cite the restaurant for things that they couldn't lawfully cite them for the crux of the legal argument is that orders that have been issued by the governor and department of health are legally unenforceable now that is not just attorney eric winter giving his legal opinion no that is what his argument was before the court and judge carl garver agreed he ruled that

184the family business was unconstitutionally cited that none of the alleged violations were actual food and safety violations they were found not guilty and would not be liable for any of the arbitrarily assigned fines that the department of ag which oversees restaurants or the department of health or anyone else from the wolf administration tried to give them they have been operating at 100 capacity mass free since may of 2020 but wait if governor rick's emergency order was law how was taste of sicily found to be not guilty of breaking the law if the masked mandate was law how were they able to break it it seems again that when actually tried in a court of law we discover inarguably that there is a vast difference between orders mandates and the actual law is written why is

185any of this relevant because for too long these agencies and politicians have wielded power over us and the only reason they've been able to do it is because they are counting on us not knowing any better they expect that people just do will just do whatever they are told um without questioning or challenging it but people across our commonwealth and our nation are waking up becoming more educated about those things my concluding remark echoes what others have said over the past few weeks i believe we need a new solicitor perhaps someone like tom king a solicitor who acknowledges that admits that there is a difference between orders mandates and law and advises accordingly thank you very much mr president is there any way you could read what the procedures are under public comment nothing school

186district highly values the input of residents making important decisions that impact children attending mcguffrey school district public comment on agenda items provides residents with the opportunity to share their input with the board of directors commentary should be addressed to the board as a whole not to individual members the superintendent individual staff members nor the audience please be sure to state your name email address in the township for your side when you that's enough thank you and i would just say that there's nobody tonight who's spoken who has violated that thank you i would totally disagree with that okay mr minsky i'm justin coppola from south franklin with my wife and daughter four points i'll address what are sunshine laws some policies of mcguffey school board which you just referenced some of them and how you

187guys govern my right to know request addressing the attestation form sent back on november 23 2020 from the pa department of education and to address the board and solicitor about public knowledge what are sunshine laws sunshine laws are regulations requiring transparency and disclosure in government or business sunshine laws make meetings records votes deliberations and other official actions available for public observation and participation sunshine laws also require government meetings to be held with sufficient advance notice and at times and places that are convenient and accessible to the public the pennsylvania sunshine act 65 requires agencies to deliberate and take official action on agents agency business in an open and public meeting it requires that meetings have prior notice and that the public can attend participate and comment before an agency takes the official action the board

188swore an oath to the mcguffey board governance standards and code of conduct i will highlight some of those points models responsible governance and leadership by leading with respect and taking full responsibility for board activity and behavior complying with board policy and all applicable local state and federal laws and regulations opening i'm sorry operating as a collective board and making decisions communicate communicates with and engages the community by distributing relevant information about the district seeking input through a variety of methods we as members of our local board of elections representing all the residents of our school district believe that this is what you took an oath to in order to maintain a free and strong country our civic obligation to the community commonwealth and nation is to maintain free and strong public schools in the united

189states of america without surrendering our responsibilities to any other person group or organizations that would include the pa department of education health cdc teachers union and whatever else wants to try to make recommendations i'm going to go to the right to know i sent two right to nose out there's three points that i want to hit on i asked for a copy of the signed submitted legal document the attestation form that was signed and submitted i asked when it was publicly deliberated when it was signed and submitted and i asked for the emails that would involve anything that dealt with this attestation form between the pa department of education the solicitor the collective board and the acting superintendent at the time so when i got a response by what the uh public meeting was it

190was december 3rd which was after the fact that this legal document was signed by the acting superintendent and the president of the school board at that time it wouldn't matter but also the acting superintendent at the time [Music] stated it was a non-voting item we had to sign it i'm just going to go straight to the emails at first when the acting superintendent at the time received this email she conjured up to what she was going to address the rest of the board to for what these emails say and the first person she went to would be obviously the solicitor then said amy looks good i made one additional edit below which should show up in the highlighted the red is that the red after the solicitor gave approval of this to be sent to

191the board and then was sent to the board and i believe the superintendent right now was cc'd to it one of the school board members said amy thanks for the update i would vote to say i would vote to stay with the hybrid schedule at this time another one stated thanks amy we have six days to see if additional clarification on this comes forth from the state keep me posted this is that out of station form this is the legal document that you guys signed that literally had everything to do with the health and safety of our kids and it had needed to be signed by the school board president and also the acting superintendent at the time which was stated and needed to be submitted by uh 11 30 of 20 of last year

192which was the day in which it was due which obviously the school board meeting that was talking about it was december 3rd that very legal document the acting superintendent at the time with the new the superintendent right now attached that with the board's approval all the board voted for yes for it all the board i believe that some of them didn't really understand how much power this form actually had this was the response we received your we've received your email from the pa department of education and again the acting superintendent at the time and the superintendent right now so with that this is obviously a violation of the government and sunshine law broke the law the decisions affect the parents and their children's lives when clearly this attestation form went against their their wishes the

193board president and vice president after being on the board for 20-plus years never advised the board to bring it public on this public voting item this behavior will stop because if they did it on this i'm sure it's not the first time if i was on the board right now i would own up to my mistake i would make it right and i would apologize to the parents and children of mcguffey and then motion to fire the solicitor andrew and price works for the board and the district they fail to do their job and they are wasting our tax money fixing it they never advised the board that this was breaking the government and sunshine law it broke the law also andrew and price works for south park highlands west allegheny fort cherry and canada

194mcmillan i would imagine these school districts would do the same on terminating this law firm services for this action because if they did this at mcguffy well we'll see when the right to know request from these districts about their attestation form and have their parents decide for their districts i'll end with a scripture and a statement the first one to plead his case seems right until another comes to cross-examine him proverbs 18 17. what do you say school board thank you thank you thank you mr good evening my name is monique fry and i reside in morris township the coven 19 emergency is over the former commissioner of the fda and who is the seat on the board of the who and who has a seat on the board of the pfizer dr scott guidley

195said on friday 8 13 21 that coven 19 will become an endemic virus in the united states there have also been two professors who have declared the pandemic over the mortality is the lowest it's been since march 2020 in spite of the rising cases of the delta variant dr gottlieb also said booster shots will not be needed every six months in addition he said this the covet shot could become an annual inoculation much like the flu shot there is a bmj british journal of medicine study that suggests that covid19 will become an endemic as well an article from 218 of 21 says that sars coveted two will not be eradicated but will become an endemic 90 of over 100 immunologists infectious disease researchers and virologists in the bmj study concluded the coronavirus will become endemic

196coven 19 is no longer an all-consuming threat we need to remove the verbiage in our health and safety plan that states that mass will be required when mandated we just discovered mandates are not laws it's not enforceable not only are these studies showing that mass are not efficient but we will no longer mask our children let's also not forget it is illegal to deceive children into believing that mass will prevent heal or treat a disease no more masks not in the schools not on the school buses nowhere my child will not be masked governor wolf is encouraging schools to host vaccine clinics our superintendent has given his word that mcguffey would not have vaccination clinics on the guppy grounds and i'm thankful for that um the other thing that he's encouraging our testing um i

197personally don't care what funds become available to mcguffey by offering vaccines we're testing on school grounds our school district's not a hospital to shed some light on the wolf initiative 87 million dollars in federal pandemic relief money is available for public and private schools to hire private contractors to provide pcr tests to the schools in pennsylvania for free the initiative is stemming from the delta variant that we are told is rapidly spreading this pcr tests these pcr tests will be performed by the students concentric by gingko bioworks states it is more efficient karen hogan who is the gingo executive states these squads that our children will be administering on themselves without medical training or any training in collecting specific bodily fluids are a nice shallow swab please think about this as a former washington health

198system lab employee i was trained to administer nasal swabs and oropharyngeal swabs donning and daunting ppe and the collection of bodily fluids via points of care i know that in order to obtain a substantial specimen a shallow swab is unacceptable if a student is unable to administer the test don't worry another person who is most likely not trained in point of care testing will assist the student i do hope that our school board hears us when it comes to the rights and health of our children as we all have experienced the blatant disregard of our education experience and for some our expertise the virus has run its course the pcr tests results are nonsense as they are not confirmation of either flu or covid this is admitted by the cdc themselves and recalled their emergency

199use of the pcr tests they do not belong in our school as for the social emotional learning and the trauma-informed care i am still navigating and learning more about this um i believe there needs to be more clarity clarification as to what information is collected and where that information goes once collected um there was i i as we were watching the presentation i was curious where the um the data that was um on the slides was found um i i still would like to see some evidence that this approach works um as far as pennsylvania information management system um i'm aware that some information has to be submitted to that system however it's unclear what information gets submitted um data like how many computers in the school district are and how many other electronic devices

200there are are things that get submitted but i'm curious what else gets submitted to pims um i think it's important i think it's important for the community to see that transparency um that with the social emotional learning there aren't going to be any overreaches whether intentional or not because i do think that this is something that an accidental overreach so to speak could happen um i would like to present that there are other options of social emotional learning that don't require data collection one of them that i've been looking at is the center of relationship education there are several different platforms available for learning from this curriculum but it all involves relationship skills from couples to military and everything in between i believe this would be an excellent alternative to any data collection measures currently

201in place um as far as the curriculum that was presented in dr doctrine's presentation um not the curriculum itself but the changes about the math i know that there are other school districts that believe math is racist and that other things are racist and i don't believe that anything um critical race theory is going to be implemented obviously it's not allowed to be now but i was just curious what the math is do any of our teachers believe that math is racist i'm very curious about that and i may not know until my own child goes to school um the other thing about the math presentation dr gotran pointed out you know the different math things carrying over the one from experience with my daughter being in joe walker and being taught the math lessons

202in jo walker common core doesn't teach you to carry over the one so i'm very curious what curriculum will have and if that curriculum um [Music] um will the details be shared with us those are my questions thank you thank you i do believe and you can correct me if i'm wrong he did say common core is not being taught here [Music] right just just to clarify that's the pennsylvania common core yeah so another way of saying good evening i'm libby chapman and i live in south franklin township i have one child remaining at mcguffy and as i said before i've had a very good experience with the other two who've come through the system we came here when my sons were i think sophomore and junior so we haven't been here our whole lives

203but my husband is from is a graduate mcguffey graduate so we have a definite interest in the community and in the school in the district i wanted to say first that i love to hear about the opportunities for the students that were presented early on with cosmetology and cdl i think that we we have a lot to cheer about a lot of programs to offer and i think that's really exciting not to just box people into college as the future but also all these other industries who desperately we need we need qualified people so i'm appreciative that you're hearing that and that's something that we're considering as a district a cheer for so many of our teachers and guidance counselors here at mcguffy and the opportunities that they do provide for our children i also

204wanted to thank you at the for the last meeting for making the masks optional and a personal choice for students and parents to begin the school year i'd also like to thank you for voting to ban crt from our school curriculum i do want to hear more about the social emotional learning and would like to have the contact of a doctor who presented on that i'm very interested to hear more about that and what that looks like in in the school in the school day for my my child who's here i also appreciate that you are continuing to discuss the facility use and thank you for bringing that up again and hearing from the community that a lot of people were not in support of using the school for the vaccine clinic i was concerned

205when i read the pennsylvania department of education post about how the department of health is directing vaccine providers to support coven 19 vaccination clinics at institutions of higher education and k-12 schools and then working with concentric to provide free cova testing that concerned me because as a parent if i'm concerned about my child having covid i would want to take my child personally to my doctor or to our doctor and work that out i don't think that's a responsibility that the school should take on and i hope that you consider that as you're updating and editing the facility use policy so i thank you for that consideration i did want to share a scripture that has has been in my mind lately from first timothy two verses one and two where paul admonishes and urges

206christians to pray on behalf of all men for kings for all in authority in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity in this passage godliness translates from the original greek word that means motivated by the fear of god piety or reverence toward god dignity is translated from the original greek word meaning gravity or honesty if we are taking a close look at what is going on around us during what many of us call unprecedented times we can draw a conclusion that many decisions laws mandates recommendations and resulting actions are not cast from a position um are coming from they're sorry not cast from a position of fearing god or from honesty many decisions and actions are coming from a position of fear and control rather than science

207or even common sense i'm amazed at how quickly a fellow human being who chooses to wear a mask can turn on me for being unmasked yet if i was the same distance away unmasked and actively eating i'm not glared out or demonized as a super spreader it continuously amazes me the opinions vary across all circles of people and this is unfortunately dividing us further but as a person of prayer i believe wholeheartedly that it's important to hold ones up in prayer including those who are in positions of leadership all of you and all of the teachers that my my student comes in contact with i've been acting actively engaged in praying for our nation our local area and the nations for some time now and in praying for mankind and authority we should expect the

208result of leading peaceful quiet and tranquil lives as the bible tells us in that passage of scripture that's the result of our prayers that ultimately we lead quiet and tranquil lives that we're not stirred up or on guard or feeling like we're we're attacked or we're attacking i think that that we can continue to have peaceful tranquil dialogues and express our opinions and science that we have that we've researched and not crop caused people to cross their conscience i think that's a big thing for me is that i feel like pressure and pushing of guidelines some laws some guidelines has been um has caused people to cross their conscience and i hope that as a school board we you wouldn't put us in a position as parents where we have to cross our conscience i

209don't feel like you're doing that now i feel like there's a lot of listening and transparency in what has been spoken tonight and i'm i'm pleased to be able to be a part of the school board meetings and will continue to be an advocate for my children and an advocate for you as well i i want to see everyone doing the best and the right thing by all of our children as we're here to educate so thank you for for hearing me thank you frank garciambo donald township um i love this and i dread this because i always have thoughts that might bite um i felt over how overwhelmed at the beginning of this meeting between mr oberg and the uh assistant uh superintendent with all of this data and everything you said was what

210you're going to do and i don't and i appreciate the request to put this online that we have i never heard any of this stuff before for someone who said he's not mathematical that was the most compartmentalized um a bit of information that that uh the five-step thing that five-year plan that was presented here earlier and i thought to myself my goodness my first computer was a commodore 64. and i learned basic you know what basic is if then if then very simple and computers are mathematical um rocks they don't work if the math is not input correctly and so i listened to programs and have you ever looked up the definition of a program ask a computer person what a program is it's a law that cannot be violated because if it is it

211won't work and so i heard for almost an hour and a half i think the programs that makes me suspicious because it's doesn't matter what we say or do you're going to do it and that puts me on guard for what am i going to do with my grandchildren i got three grandchildren already here but i got two that are coming in that i'm doing my best to talk to the parents to get them to don't allow them to come into a government indoctrination center because i don't know why nobody nobody you know sits up straight social emotional learning i mean our country's falling apart in case you haven't noticed and we're in trouble in case you haven't noticed and there are powers that are working to take absolute control over every one of us

212and i don't like that and i don't think we should we as americans should should accept that kind of uh uh influence in our lives and i certainly don't want that influence in the lives of my children my grandchildren you see these programs that have been proffered earlier tonight um are designed to mold a child into the way someone wants them to be i don't like what you want them to be i don't want my grandchildren to grow up to be like you i don't want them to follow state regulations per se especially if they're wrong we've heard over and over again people are defining laws and mandates and i can't think of that stuff when i retired i stopped thinking i let someone else do the thing but and so i'm here tonight to

213just express my frustration with what's happening in a school that has governmental control over innocent children that unfortunately we'll be conditioned because of the parents that graduated from here and don't think they're smart enough to teach their own kids how did that happen good evening everyone good evening so before i really um my name is marjorie foreign from uh east finley borough before i really get started on what i wrote like some of them have said we kind of came in here cocked and ready we're ready to give it to you um there are a lot of things that go on and that we do not agree with and we do not feel that our children's best interest has been at heart i've only been here this is my fourth time and uh i'm glad

214to hear how it's going so far but this is kind of what i was ready to tell you all so i'm saying anyways um all right so i'm a single mother of five and as i said before i recently buried my roots back into my hometown a year ago this is where i've chosen to live mcguffy is the school of my school of choice it's my children's school of choice we are eight days away from the school starting back with everything going on lately and the school is beginning to backtrack again we are being being put in the position to continue to discuss things that should be behind us it only seems to be getting worse when it comes to the heightened fear that is being advertised on the television they continue to put things

215on the news that help consider their narrative they put misinformation and lies on your television they are censoring facts trying to hide and discredit any positive information that comes out on any ill effects of masks in the shots when the doctors that have experience in treating patients with the virus are silenced and other doctors are on the television and are making announcements and suggestions on how people should proceed through this pandemic have never treated a kill the patient so there's doctors out there that haven't treated cover patients but they're taking advice but they're telling you to take advice from them they're the people that they're putting on television [Music] i am not controlled by the news and by what others seem to think i should be doing i don't believe something just because i heard

216it on tv they tell you what you want they tell you what they want you to believe they have programmed you into thinking that you have to listen they tell you if you listen you're doing your part and you're such a good person us fighting against it are trying to save our freedoms before it's too late they are practically ignoring the constitution they're ignoring the fundament fundamentals of what our nation was built on and telling you to do the same who's in charge of you the solicitor who's in charge of him who is he getting orders from [Music] we need a solicitor and board members that will always follow the constitution and their pledge they took truth outweighs opinion i was told the other day which i always have a lot of opinions on things

217but i do like to educate myself and go by facts but i was told the other day that we all have our own opinions well we all know what they say about opinions let me just give you the definition of the word opinion it is a view or judgment formed about something not necessarily based on facts or knowledge so we receive facts and then we frame our opinions my opinions are based on facts some people's opinions do not line up with the facts and that is where there is a problem so much information with facts and hard evidence is being hidden and completely taken down so that you don't know and see it they don't want the truth to get out we've got the president of the pa health department lying under oath for all

218of us to see that there is she stated that there is no harmful effects of masks and that there is no evidence there is a ton of evidence and it's all being censored deleted and completely ignored you want to talk about protecting the children but straight landorus about the helpful information that is out there pretend it doesn't matter it doesn't exist because it doesn't exist because it doesn't fit the narrative you've been told to follow um the flu killed more children in 2018 and 19 than cargo did during the 2020 pandemic there were concerns then where were your where were the parents with hysteria then focused on something else because the deranged little people on the tv do not tell you to be scared since then did we ever have a daily death count on

219the tv or on our phones this has gotten out of hand masks are a false sense of security it may make you feel good but they are doing nothing to prevent the virus and they are doing more harm than good by far during the spanish flu of 1918 it has been found that more people died from the mask wearing by contracting bacterial pneumonia than the actual clue doctors that have actually treated cova patients are being hushed and turned away their experiences have been silenced most the children have gone all summer masculine at home in public and on school buses during the summer activities our football camp this week we're completely massless butler county has decided to stay with their decision of not mandating masks the solicitor has stated that they do not have the power

220to mandate them he stated that there is no reference in the school code 1949 of wearing a mask this indicates that we've been trying what we've been trying to say this solicitor knows his boundaries he is protecting the school from them and um and making the right wrong he is protecting the school from making them making the wrong moves in another case about the kentucky governor bashir is being sued by the on fire christian church due to mandating masks a circuit court judge so there is a ruling in court right now that is out i believe on appeal um that it's been found unconstitutional somehow the government thinks that they can they say it's an emergency if they say it's an emergency then it overrides the constitution well absolutely nothing overrides the constitution thank you

221very much thank you you're welcome hi i'm lillian fry morris township and i just want to make it clear that none of us kids want to wear a mask in school or on a bus i do not understand why we do not have to wear a mask in school but we are forced to on a bus i personally have the belief that you should not be forced to wear face covering of any kind it should be optional a school bus is not public transportation so you you cannot just get on a school bus and expect it to take you where you want it to go thank you mr wilson we do have a few people online this evening if you wish to participate in the meeting please use the raised hand function mr group there

222are no hands raised thank you very much thanks for your input folks reaction items before uh before you do that i wanted to make a motion um to that the school will take out of general funds no more than seven seventeen hundred and fifty dollars is that correct yes the motions on those oh all okay i have another motion and i don't know maybe you added this but i would like to motion that the school moves forward with a cooperative agreement with penn commercial to offer our students up the same thing that other schools are taking advantage of i second that have a motion a segment any questions on the motion i i just like to say they presented really well but there's more than just what they had there she named several other things

223if if i'm in it yes i have actually as a superintendent not even had a chance to look at this i yeah they they came to us and asked they could present and i said that would be a great first step for myself and for the board to hear the programs i have told them that i will come and visit their program uh once we get the school year started so um and i respect what you've asked for i would ask to give me the opportunity and my team the opportunity to first review what they're presenting i heard some other programs i wasn't even made aware of until tonight uh if you allow me to do due diligence to vet the program then i'll bring that back and present it in a formal manner well

224my motion was that we move forward if moving forward means you're you're uh verifying everything and coming up with the plan then that's i hope you would do that yes i'd like everybody to go and visit i know they gave us an open invitation i was very excited about the fact because i know that it's come up before and some of the concerns were oh it's going to take students away from western area career and technology center that is clearly not true they said specifically it was to address um the overflow from wactc um they're not competing wactc's programs are open to our students at at grade 10. so for students who want those programs we all know that we only have so many slots for wactc and there are i know i have had

225family who have not been able to get in to their first choice um this would provide them another opportunity another concern i know that's come up before is about safety and they addressed it that they addressed that very clearly so i i think the the motion holds in that yes let's move forward which would include vetting um we even had uh one of the public speakers mentioned how exciting it was i think we we move forward right in there i'm not saying what the plan is i'm just saying strategic vision the same thing as other schools and we really need a motion if we're going to go ahead with that it doesn't matter yeah i mean because ultimately you are going to be approving an agreement right so at some point in time what what

226you're going to do or what some you know however you proceed you're going to bring back an agreement similar to the agreement the trinity has you don't have that tonight so you can't approve that agreement tonight i mean why don't you just direct him to move forward with that in an agreement i just don't want to be sitting here next month and going well we never did that so my granddaughter is a senior you know maybe there's something there that and it won't hurt to make an emotion yeah it won't hurt so we have a motion in a second okay any other questions on the motion is the direct uh the superintendent and the staff move forward to look into it yes okay [Music] like this it will be next month it is now because

227the new law doesn't take effect to august 29th yeah all the all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye aye opposed no no although i would say having been to the training that because it doesn't involve money you could actually you would have to as a board have a vote to add it to the agenda correct and then you could be you would have to have a board vote to add it to the agenda i'm not sure whether it falls within one of the exceptions candidly but like i think you could have proceeded here simply by just giving them the direction and to bring the contract back to you [Music] thank you thank you okay now we'll move to the monthly action items motion approved july 29th 2021 minutes so move

228second notion of a second any questions on the motion all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye opposed motion passes the motion improves the general fund schedule bills so move second motion of second any questions on emotion although the papers motion signified by saying aye opposed motion passes emotion approve the food service schedule bills dated august 19th 2021 check number seven five eight seven to check seven five nine nothing still moved to the amount of ten thousand dollars ten thousand change we have a motion in a second any questions on emotion all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye opposed surpasses the motion for the treasury report for the month of july 2021 is submitted motion second any questions on the motion all those in favor of

229the motion signified by saying aye aye opposed motion passes promotion through the gob series 2019 bill list dated august 19 the amount of a thousand 372 dollars i have a motion second questions on emotion although the favorite emotions signify by saying aye aye opposed function passes motion to approve the memorandum [Music] so did you draft a motion because i drafted one yeah hers is close to yours i don't know maybe maybe yours is better swear word power wrap yes the motion approved to purchase a tower wrap for the middle school high school with the district cost not to exceed to paid from the general fund with the general fund to be reimbursed from solicited donations second motion second any questions on emotion i'm excited i think it's gonna be awesome well we have to actually

230vote on it well i have i have a question on the motion one what are we gonna do when the uh donations exceed the seventeen hundred and fifty dollars wouldn't that be a wonderful are we gonna wrap more than one power okay so you have a plan for that we always thought ever had a problem spending money no no absolutely not that's a good job of raising it too any other questions absolutely all those in favor of the emotional significance superintendent's report need motion to prove a memorandum of understanding buy-in between the pennsylvania state police donald township police and mcguffey school district as presented so moved second motion second any questions on emotion i had a question this is just a regular thing that we have to do every two years or this our that's

231what this is the regular from everything that's right thank you any other questions on the motion all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye opposed motion passes in a motion to approve the list of courses at the community college of allegheny county and the university of valley forge is dual enrollment opportunities the 21-22 school year motion in a second any questions on the motion all those in favor of emotions signify by saying aye aye opposed passes commercial approved west green school district student wg one a m to attend mcguffy school during a 2021-2022 school year to participate in the cte 15.999 engineering technologies technician program so much studying emotional secondhand questions on the motion no but just to be clear because we missed it um because we hurried the motion west

232green school district will be responsible for the tuition correct that's correct because while we can see that they can't and this was because the student is out of the district but they were taking up something that's not offered in the district and they're in their district yes okay thank you number four did we actually vote on that no you didn't i thought we did all those in favor of the emotional signify by saying aye opposed motion passes emotional approval curriculum from mcguffy high school course number six two seven five personal finance for adoption show a second a motion to say any questions on emotion i have a i this is just silly it's number six two seven five personal finances for when you're being adopted for an adoption organization i thought maybe the little kid

233could take some finances probably an english teacher talk about semantics fix that any other questions on the motion all those favorite emotions signify by saying aye aye opposed motion passes motion for the changes in mcafee high school student handbook motion second and questions on the motion all those in favor of emotional signified by saying aye aye opposed passes need a motion to prove the changes to mcafee high school student handbook some move second wait a second middle yeah i don't think he got that second one's middle second one second one says high school yes it's supposed to be middle school right middle school student handbook so mood second promotion second questions on emotion this is the middle school correctness okay this is the high school now this is the middle okay all those in favor

234of emotional signify by saying hi opposed coffee passes i see what happened number seven is the same way yeah the motion approved the changes to the mccyber student handbook changes 2021 school year as presented motion of the second any questions on the motion these will have to be fixed in the figure all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye opposed function passes the motion-approved claysville family practice dr kristen rumsberg as school physician who performs physicals for students in grades one through one to six and eleven any questions on emotion all those affirmative emotions signify by saying oh wait i have them okay i'm sorry i had a question i'm just pressed i was just a little slow in processing um i know that students in grades 1 6 and 11 are

235required to have physicals um but they don't have to get them at school correct they could get them with their pcp and submit that correct this would be just for parents who would choose to have their children engage in this physical correct there's no charge to the student yeah i just was curious because i had several parents contact me about forms that were sent out asking for permission for the school to communicate with their family doctors um and where that came from and how that came about and what that was for i would need more information i couldn't speak to so have them contact you i mean i i would imagine what that means is that for the for the families pcp to be able to give information i know but i think the question

236was why would they need that um and why all of a sudden did that appear when that hasn't appeared before like how did that happen and and why the sudden request for that but i will have them contact you dr oberg and this is not that no this is just i just want to clarify i know for falls and winter sports and well this coming year they had to have a form filled out by their pcp and given to the school prior to participating well that's standard practice right but that's not the parent signing over permission for the school to just be able to contact their doctor and have a chat right right i don't know what's happening so again okay thank you i'll look into it any other questions on emotion all those in

237favor of the motion signal by saying hi hi opposed need a motion to approve the attached fundraising events for mcguffie high school clubs and activities for the 20 21 2026 over here second two second any questions on the motion all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye opposed emotional approved list declarative elementary student activity fundraiser for the 2021-2022 second i have a motion and a second any questions on the motion all those apparent emotions signify by saying aye aye opposed motion passing your motion approve the list of clansville elementary pto fundraisers for the 2021-2022 school year still move second promotion in a second any questions on the motion i do um what's the difference between student activity fundraisers and bto fundraisers specifically activity fundraisers are the ones that we do in

238the um for the school and those things go to towards i mean they're similar like we paid for additional things like for instance if we go to a competition we do luncheons and different things you know we could do specific tio kind of their fundraisers are for like state bodies as a whole as opposed to specific small groups that they travel so we do some smaller fundraising just as a student activity fundraiser and it supplements like some of our steam activities and things that we may do for competitions that we don't i mean the most that we ever have in our student activities fund probably has about a thousand dollars so it's sort of for those extra extra activities thank you any other questions on that motion all those favorite emotions signify by saying hi

239motion improve the participation in a love in a backpack program through the salvation army to clayville elementary and joe walker elementary for this 2021 22 school year second motion a second questions on the motion i was just wondering if we could read the public content so that the public understands what it is salvation army washington corps has selected claysville elementary and joe walker elementary to participate in a love in a backpack it's a part of the feeding families for their life campaign excuse me participation by family is involuntary and proof of income is not required each week salvation army would deliver a bag with 9 to 11 food items to the school for students to take home on friday their goal is to encourage families to gather together round the table with one another encouraging

240families to eat healthy food and have healthy conversations with one another one day a month students would receive a free bath book and school supply in their bag there's no cost to the district the value of the service would be up to 15 000 a year depending on student participation i have a question what book is it free book and school supply in their bag we proofread the book i could not tell you i i know i don't know and i know that we've promised we've participated in the program in the book in there but i would certainly approve those before they go out today is it the same yes but different books each month right yeah yeah okay very good question very good question any other questions on the motion um all those in

241favor of motion signify by saying aye aye all right opposed motion passes promotion accepted the donation of 400 from the hartsell family to go to support the mcguffey ffa program second motion second any questions on emotion all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye opposed motion passes now we're into executive session i know we haven't we do uh we have several items for personnel to discuss tonight okay i think should we go to executive session second motion second degree executive session all those in favor of the emotional signify by saying aye aye opposed we are in executive session as of 9 15. i don't yeah oh there's me a few i'll talk to you at this point i'm going to close the meeting out when the board returns from executive session

242you can use the same