February 22, 2022 Regular Meeting of the Board

001hello all right good evening [Music] i'd like to call to order the mathakton board of school directors regular board meeting here on february 22nd 2022 please rise for the pledge hi my name is jalen and i'm a fourth grader at arrowhead school please stand for the pledge 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 with liberty and justice for all experts and folks that was jalen miller uh one of our outstanding students at arrowhead elementary school and next we have a short video from chase cowan hi my name is face cowan and i'm in miss young's fourth grade class at arrowhead elementary school i am here today to tell you what i like about my school the

002first thing i like about airliners is that they are all very nice erwin is a place where i've made many friends the equipment at recess is also great we have had many fun assemblies and activities and my favorite was the pmx show it's cool that i am the fourth last fourth grade class to graduate in the old air red building i have made many memories here thanks for picking me to open your meeting bye let's give a round of applause to both chase and michael and they will both receive an honorary junior student board rep certificate on behalf of the methachton school board with that i turn it back over to our board president ms drummond thank you dr zerby the public is hereby advised of the audio and video recording of this meeting for

003the purposes of rebroadcasting and an executive session announcement the board met in an executive session immediately prior to tonight's meeting in classroom at arcola for the purpose of consulting with the solicitor regarding information related to threatened litigation involving the february 15th work session meeting and the pennsylvania sunshine act in terms of attendance i can see all board members are present and next is recognition of guests and schedule speakers dr zerby thank you madam president uh this evening we have two guests and scheduled speakers we have the award of excellence dr aaron roberts principal of arrowhead elementary school here is this evening to recognize some outstanding employees for the math action school district particularly those that are working at arrowhead elementary school and our second presentation is a senior tax discount program uh presented by mr

004bricker dr roberts the floor is yours all right thank you dr zurby and uh chase the check is in the mail for all the nice things you said about arrowhead all right so first up i'd like to i'd be remiss not to recognize our school nurse with everything we've been going through the last two years so it gives me a great honor to recognize nurse kelly uh nurse kelly has gone above and beyond the past two years for our student staff and community from contact tracing which we you know twitch at when we say to providing band-aids she's always professional caring when dealing with any health-related manners with all the challenges the pandemic has presented nurse kelly has demonstrated resilience guidance and leadership and kelly i'd like to personally thank you for all you've done

005to support our students our school and our community so nurse kelly thank you all right up next and i got in some trouble for the pitchers that are up here so i apologize mrs hopson but anyway i'd like to also recognize uh mr this is uh jennifer hopson she is a learning support teacher at arrowhead she is extremely genuine is extremely organized in everything she does as an educator this is evident in her lesson plans the student activities she provides in her iep meetings she is very detail-heard she is thorough and she is usually the first one to hand in an assignment when given to her she's shaking her head yes over there sometimes i can't send the email out and generally sends it back to me she is excellent at building student relationships and

006on numerous occasions jen has served as a mentor for our teachers so jen thank you for all you've done to support arrowhead and i'm in fact the school district so thank you mrs hopson [Applause] all right up next we have mrs sandy fisher our kindergarten teacher at arrowhead mrs fisher is also in the fact and alumni and currently a kindergarten teacher at our head sandy is an excellent educator she holds high expectations for students and herself she works tirelessly to be the very best she can be she is a strong student advocate and is always willing to help and support students and staff whenever called upon sandy is creative engaging and student-centered our students families and staff simply adore sandy so sandy thank you for everything you've done and all your hard work and dedication

007to our school [Applause] all right up next mrs rosado is not here let me just get to gloria's next here but i'd like to recognize her gloria is a personal care assistant for our students at our head gloria does a wonderful job in supporting all the kids at arrowhead she's she displays a genuine care and kindness when performing her job responsibilities she's always wanted to help a student in need whether it's in the classroom specials lunch or recess thank you for everything gloria [Applause] up next is tracy hansen unfortunately tracy could not be here tonight as well she did email me this morning and said that she was uh you could not attend but let's recognize her tracy hanson is an instructional assistant at arrowhead it's been wonderful to see tracy supporting our students she

008always has a smile on her face and a very positive attitude she is calm when interacting with students and staff she is kind and has a wonderful sense of humor thank you tracy for all that you do to support arrowhead students in school keep up the great work [Applause] [Music] all right lastly we have mr tom damas tom has done a tremendous job in being flexible and supporting our students staff and community with all of our on-site activities especially with uh with covid tom is hard-working reliable he's easy to work with and will help whenever he's called upon tom thank you for all your hard work and assisting our students staff and community and thank you for helping to keep our building clean throughout the pandemic so tom davis everyone and thank you dr serbian

009school board for allowing us to recognize these fine employees [Music] uh oh [Applause] okay before we move on uh we want to uh uh madam president wants to address uh a matter in the audience um yes per policy 903 no placards or banners will be permitted within the meeting room so if you could please remove your posters that you have we would appreciate it thank you very much next on the agenda we have mr bricker with the senior tax discount program recommendation uh this is a presentation that mr burker presented this month to the finance committee of the board and he's here this evening uh for your consideration in terms of uh what it can be uh benefit how it can benefit some of our citizens in the community as well as if it's something

010that you're willing to uh take on uh it'll likely be part of an action item as we get closer to the approval of the 2022-23 budget mr burger thank you dr zurby tonight we're going to be going over the property tax rebate program specifically designed for senior citizens this is based off the long-established pa property tax rebate it's funded by the lottery and slot machine proceeds the program's guidelines and parameters for qualifications that math factor will use will be adjusted slightly from what the state uses program is designed to include the state income qualifications maximum rebate amounts and ranges for the rebate it is beneficial for individuals that are 65 years or older a widow or widower age 50 or older and anyone that's 18 or more and permanently disabled the maximum household rebate is

011650 the supplemental rebates for qualified homeowners can boost the rebates to 975 dollars under the state program the sliding scale is based on the total house income it includes all income and half of the social security income as well both homeowners and renters can qualify and can apply for this rebate for the math acton program we'll be using several different income ranges going from up to eight thousand dollars with the 650 state rebate and eight eight thousand fifteen thousand to five hundred dollar state rebate and then fifteen thousand eighteen thousand a three hundred dollar state rebate eighteen thousand thirty five thousand two hundred dollar state rebate income ranges for the state rebate renters is up to eight thousand dollars would be 650 and 8 000 to 15 000 would be for 500. the total cost

012from attackman school district was 138 in the 2019 report and individuals can qualify up to 261 property owners and 35 renters former factors school board the prior to this recommendation the rebate needs to be set we were setting it at 30. so if we use the 30 percent number the metacate school district would be at 41 517 dollars and 90 cents the impact of the budget would be roughly about forty thousand dot forty one thousand five hundred dollars a notification to the public would be when it starts and the program overview in the business office we'd have to develop the rebate form create the process for verification we'll be using the state approval as the verification qualification and we'll create the account codes and accrual accounting for the checks and mailing of the checks and

013that's my presentation are there any questions from members of the board again this is not something that we're asking you to take action on this evening it'll likely be a part of the the conversation uh as we progress through the uh budget process mr mcginnis tim the income levels does that include or exclude social security pension distributions or are we just calling that all ordinary income it's income plus half the social security income too i'm not sure about the distributions on k1s but i would consider that income typically yeah it's it's treated as ordinary income so if anyone's taking their rmds or and any combination of social security they're probably going to be above that range and not qualify for this is that how we're looking at it correct thank you um mr winters yeah

014just to clarify a little bit tim i think the first two pages for the audience to understand is the basis of the program is off of the state program that's correct so the numbers that you see are related to the state and the the cost associated uh that is on page three at 138 000 is related to the state program what this is proposing on page four is the uh a percentage of that rebate program that is provided by the state in a similar manner and this program has been implemented at wizard and north penn and some other districts around us in similar manners uh somewhere between 25 and 30 um as the as the discount or the the factor on top of the state rate i hope that clarifies it for people but really

015the most important page is on page four and the total cost for implementing something for those that may be on a fixed income any other questions to my right how about to my left ms drummond so what is the mechanism that the district would use i mean i know that people submit their property tax rent rebates they sometimes do it through their state representative i guess first of all we should make sure that we advertise it with our state representatives here from athactin but um so we get notice like we would be notified of people successfully completing a property tax front rebate receiving the funds and then we would send them an additional check on top of what they get or is it somehow administered through the state can you just clarify that please no

016it would be administered out of the business office we'd have to handle it there any individual that's qualifying for the state rebate would then be approved for the matthackton school district they'd still have to submit that information and we would then be able to cut a check to those individuals okay so districts wouldn't or taxpayers would need to submit their rent property tax rent rebate to the state and additionally to methachton school district for them to receive the additional amount correct once the state approves them that that will be validation for us to approve them for ourselves okay so they would need to show proof of payment of their property tax rent rebate form and then we would give them the additional amount that's correct okay thank you mr german any other questions from the

017left seeing no other questions about yours thank you so much mr burker and that ends the guest and scheduled speakers for this evening okay thank you dr zurby next we have reports with committee meena committee meeting minutes attached um and then we have updates from the iu and north monco ms reese do you have those updates for yes um we had a relatively quick meeting for the iu on january 26th and that meeting was quick because many of us participated in a budget uh training so they they made sure our meeting was quick but the biggest um the biggest news from that meeting is that we welcomed new directors um they went over the audit results um we approved the member services budget for each district which is on our agenda this evening from athactin

018um in hr news i know it's always all over all the the news about hr you know there was resignations etc but the iu was able to hire 24 new people which was wonderful so if any you can keep your eye on their website for things if you're interested in employment and then the only other big announcement was at that time 600 people worldwide had signed up for that incredible inclusion seminar i know i know some of the board members have including miss cancro and um i wanted to thank the iu and mathactin and the sca for making sure that that was available um and then we also meet again tomorrow so i'll fill you in on that next month and tomorrow since we'll go right to north monco miss drama you might have something

019to add but tomorrow north monco meets because of the holiday so this report is from january 19th so i believe mr almond is taking north monco tomorrow and i'm taking the iu but um i just wanted to remind everybody about the car show it's the first car show for the north monco foundation which is exciting in april and methachton had several district skills winners so if you were unable to see that on the on our website we were able to present those awesome students um and uh that's all i have unless you have anything else to add mrs drummond nothing to add thank you miss reece um next we have report from student board representatives good evening everyone to close out last month minithon hosted a dining donate at the collegeville bakery on january 31st

020that wasn't the only dine and donate the girls basketball team held one on the eighth as well february was also quite an eventful month from with acton with the chess club hosting its first meeting on thursday february 3rd additionally over the past month the warchester fire department offered students the opportunity to work as volunteers and the young action club hosted a fundraiser on friday february 11th where participants were able to design and paint mugs for ten dollars the proceeds of this event were donated to the clean air console council lastly the key club sponsored a donation drive for the spca and all donations were due by february 12th sports are going well athackton as usual with the boys varsity basketball team winning the pac championship on february 16th with a score of 55-42 now that

021the pack finals are through the boys basketball team is moving on to the playoffs on tuesday february 22 and friday the 25th the girls will play wednesday february 20 february 2nd and saturday february 26th at home varsity softball tryouts sign ups began this month and the girls spring track and field held its first meeting on thursday february 16th good evening the student body is beginning to settle into their end of the year excitement prom tickets are being sold on february 23rd through 25th for ninety dollars during the all the tick um during all the lunches late sales will occur from february 28th to march 4th in a 105 and a 125 during homerooms for a hundred dollars yearbooks are also on sale with the deadline being april 1st to purchase course selection for underclassmen for

022the next school year is currently finishing up in celebration of black history month the bsu has created a calendar in front of mrs naylor's room highlighting the efforts of key people of color in their contributions the bsu is also doing a scavenger hunt utilizing qr codes that simultaneously teaches students about black history as they participate with the chance to win a 50 gift card lastly the methachton theater company show or the matthackton theater company spring show this year will be spongebob the musical on february 24th 25th and 26th thank you thank you so much um tweet foundation is miss mister this mary jane barbone should be here this evening uh to do a report uh from the nethackton education foundation there's mary jane oh great thank you good evening everyone and thanks for having us

023here um we just wanted to let you know um you know we've had a very uh a busy very few months the past in the past three months or so we've been advertising and interviewing for a new executive director our alumni committee has been getting back on track and we had some meetings with with dr zerby and others in the district trying to see how we can attract alumni to come and join our network and in in support and in support of our foundation our apex event is back again we have already scheduled our our big event in the fall for september 29th uh we have bob kelly back as our emcee anyone who attended last year's event know that he really uh spiced up that that night um something that i would like everyone

024to look for is uh we'll be looking for nominations for apex award nominees coming up we'll have information throughout social media and on the websites uh starting next month but we look for businesses individuals alumnus teachers teams who have done well in our district and those who have supported our district and our community but all the information on the criteria for for the nominees will be there several of our board members will be attending the virtual meeting of the national association of education foundations coming up in march 2nd to the 4th that that conference is always very informative to help us um in many different ways we get to network with folks and we get to meet other people in other foundations and share ideas our program support committee has already received several several submissions

025for programs that they're asking for our support so that committee will be meeting soon to review them and hopefully continue to support um support all those requests so as you can see um you know we have been very busy we're looking forward to the continued support that we're able to provide the school district for programs and financial support of those so thank you thank you miss barbone next we have communications ms kelly [Music] good evening so congratulations to matthachton high school's 11 finalists in the national merit scholarship competition that is up from five finalists or a 120 increase in the number of finalists from last school year the national merit scholarship program is an academic competition which recognizes students from across the nation students are selected on the basis of their skills accomplishments and potential

026for success in a rigorous college study the post prom team is working very hard to make the annual tradition a fun night to remember for our students organizers are seeking volunteers so for some additional information please visit mcdactin.org postprom the post prom community walkthrough is scheduled for april 22nd from 6 30 p.m to 8 30 p.m and members of the methectone community who are interested in learning how to swim can look no further the office of community education is offering several classes of swim lessons for kids and although adults registration for swim lessons for kids ages 3 to 12 will open on march 5th registration for adult swim lessons and other aquatic programs are open right now so go to mathactin.org c-o-m-e-d for additional information and to learn how to register thank you very much

027thank you and next we have superintendents report dr zurby thank you madam president as you can see there's a couple advisements uh listed on the agenda but more importantly i want to just provide an update on the health and safety plan as you board members recall on december 16th of 21 the board of school directors approved two metrics that would allow persons inside school buildings to choose between wearing a mask and or not wearing a mask the first metric is date driven we're beginning january 31st 2022 for grades 7 through 12 and february 28 of 2022 for grades k-6 the second metric after the first metric was met uh is based on community transition levels and that's the positivity and incident rates we need two consecutive weeks of below the high community transmission as seen

028among the lower providence and township municipalities the first metric is certainly we met one of those the january 31st date for grades 7 through 12. unfortunately we remain in a high transmission as a district community even though the actual positive cases over a 10-day period within within this the school district itself meaning uh in the schools that that we have a record of uh we have we have three active cases as of this morning for students and we have four active cases for adults for a total of seven district-wide in our schools are and and so our but our community positivity incident rates remain above the high threshold uh so for for example for the period ending 217-22 we are we have a combined incident rate of 146.77 and a positivity rate of 13.02 and

029if you recall the high-level chart or the chart being used the uh the thresholds are are over a hundred thousand uh per uh anything over a hundred thousand um is is in the high range and anything over ten uh percent is in the high range but we also have county data and if and and generally speaking uh we've trended as a district community meaning lower providence and and worcester we trended better in most of these numbers than the county did for the last uh two years generally unfortunately we're seeing that the county has uh in the most recent seven days is heading even in a better direction uh with with the decrease in incident rate and positivity so the week ending 217 2022 for the county we have a positivity rate of 7.3 percent and

030an incident rate of 89.7 which if if if in fact we were following the county data as as the metric we would we would then consider that being week one underneath the high level but as of right now we still not have done we still not have reached week one for uh with the district so looking at the uh community transmission you know while it is possible that uh when we break the the 14-day average down of the data that we receive we may be able to see a result as early as march 1st because these numbers generally come out on tuesday afternoon or late afternoon or potentially the following tuesday to potentially meet those thresholds and move to the mass optional environment again i'm only saying that as an optimistic uh under understanding um

031i don't i don't have control over the numbers but it's my job and goal to say once we've reached that threshold to communicate with our parents and certainly let the board know uh but we will certainly let the entire community know that that is uh what we're proceeding to do and we'll provide parents and staff you know proper notice on that uh with that said uh while that all seems very optimistic and we're on on the path forward uh please be warned that uh the cdc i'm in a call today from uh the county department of health cdc is likely to make an announcement tomorrow about changing metrics i don't know what that means all i know is that they may be making an announcement um and that could be to uh to our depending

032on how you look at it could be to the benefit of people who uh you know want to have masks on or to or to people who want to have mask off i have no indication at this moment in time what that actually will be but as soon as i know and if there's a matter that i need to bring before the board and before the community we'll certainly do that that ends my report can i just ask a really quick clarifying question dr zurby if i understood you correctly if the cdc says something tomorrow that means we should reconvene you will ask the board to reconvene and if the cdc does not say any you know whatever they're saying tomorrow or not saying tomorrow it's possible and again whether it's optimistic or not it's

033possible that we could be masked optional as early as three one or three six is is that that's enough that's exactly what i'm saying you know there may be something that says uh for the matter that you passed on december 16th is no longer a an appropriate or valid matter under the cdc which as you as you probably recognize the county department of uh public health has been following the cdc all along the way so they viewed they've used the same metrics and they told us if there's a change at the cdc level they're likely to make those changes as well therefore it's likely that if if it's significant enough uh that you need to be advised we may have to call a meeting and uh you know you know determine that path forward okay

034i'm sure all of us will be available if needed and uh three one or three six sounds pretty good all right thank you um now it's time for public comment on board action items the board will now take comments uh this is an opportunity for residents to comment on matters that are to be decided upon as outlined on the agenda the board asks that you keep your comments to four minutes or less the board of school directors may choose to respond to matters following the conclusion of the comments on board action items please state your name and municipality can you hear me john andrews law of providence earlier this month i spoke at the property committee meeting and again at the work session a week ago i'm sorry not five days ago not seven about

035the arrowhead sprinkler water supply issue that uh you have an action item this evening to commit something around two hundred and sixty thousand dollars for an indoor sixty six hundred gallon water tank piping pumps and an and an immense concrete pad for the water tank to sit on and at the work session i proposed some alternatives uh one of those was a pipe to the water mains today i spent some time looking on on the website the math acting website uh on the home page they're at the top of the page they're words such as a board and one of them community is rather interesting if you click on community and you go to arrowhead construction photos there are 66 photos of various aspects of the construction number 21 is a view of the adjacent

036property on which there sits two 100 000 gallon water tanks probably less than 400 feet away a pipe from one of those water tanks to the new school probably would cost 26 000 or less 10 percent of the solution that the engine the different contractors have presented i think that needs serious study and it represents a pipe to that adjacent property represents a very logical reasonable and timely solution rather than rushing into a bumbling solution i rest my case thank you thank you my notes uh joe bickelman from uh the audubon section of lower providence township audubon is located where that big yellow bus is parked with the sign for school bus drivers in front of the building that's not being used the audubon elementary school okay i'm here to speak about the item also

037for the change order for this 6600 gallon water tank pardon my smile or if i laugh at this okay because this is ridiculous [Music] we're going to spend 168 thousand dollars for the tank and we're gonna spend ninety five thousand dollars for the cement slab this is two hundred and sixty three thousand dollars let's go back to the to the design phase of this when the architects are putting together the design that's going to go out for the original bid you know they're sitting in front of their computer screens now and they're known how much length of pipe they're going to run vertically horizontally how many sprinklers in the rooms the hallways and everything like that and nobody checks to see if there's sufficient water pressure to run it architects also look into how much

038electricity is coming into the building and a system that's as major as the sprinkler system for fire code you think somebody at kcb architects would have looked into the water pressure at this building and now we're sitting with 263 thousand dollars outside of the main bid package to build the building so it's not being bid on [Music] this is not being bid on this 263 000 it would have been bid on if somebody would have done the right work at kcb architects during the design okay but we're in a period of discipline leniency around here so we're not looking at kcba oh and by the way kcba is going to get five percent of the 263 000 that's in their contract i believe it's five percent they'll get twelve thousand five hundred dollars rather than

039paying for the whole thing all right they're gonna get a percentage of this also the 6600 gallon tank this is the funny part doesn't fit through a 36 inch door all right i keep thinking that that dog would stick in its mouth trying to get through the door it doesn't fit through the door of the 6600 gallon tank so we have to take it apart and put it together the next thing is during the presentation of the building of the hour head school storage for a principal was much needed every principal needs storage right dr zurby you can't hear enough principles need storage this 6600 gallon water tank is going into a storage room at arrowhead elementary okay a storage room that was there for the principal to use it's ridiculous it is just ridiculous

040that this wasn't looked into at the design phase ridiculous i know you probably all talked about it somewhere but it's ridiculous the next thing i would see i'd like to speak to is the reduction of the public speaking from four minutes to three minutes don't reduce it be more like south korea okay and don't reduce it because [Music] a couple years ago dr zurby out of the clear blue decided to reduce the gifted program by two teachers that caused people to come up to this podium and speak so eloquently in defense of that reduction that came out of nowhere formed a committee to study the gifted program it's been a couple years there's no report from that committee okay so don't decrease the time comments thank you this is a bad look [Applause] [Music] good

041evening jessica bradbury lower providence township regarding item 9f to approve appointing a new law firm to handle the right to know requests and item 10i the right to know safety and security specialist has the district considered hiring a consultant to do a deep dive into our current processes surrounding the right to know process in order to provide recommendations for how the process can be improved i believe that we would benefit from having a professional that is familiar with something like six sigma or kaizen process improvement to assist us could you clarify who is currently serving as the right to know officer for the district is it mr regina or dr sorgini i looked at the website today i believe it's dr sorgini who then reports to mr regina so i was wondering why this new

042role would report directly to mr regina and not to dr sorgini and if elizabeth yantosh has approved to move into this role under item 10j on the agenda will the hr specialist role that she is vacating be backfilled does the budget have an allocation for this new role to be created regarding item 10r the job description for the k-12 climate counselor how does this job description differ from the general guidance counselors that we have the website staff directory indicates that we have 15 counselors presently will this new position also have the same reporting structure as the other counselors have we had a conclusion on the strategic planning process over 100 volunteers participated in it and there was supposed to be a meeting in january wasn't that strategic planning committee also to have input into the

043dei department i mean what is the current status of our chair of the math department and the chair of the english department my understanding is these two departments have been without a chair for quite some time is the district placing more importance over hiring a climate counselor than it does over finding chairs for our math and english departments regarding item 12b i would ask this board to reconsider revising policy 903 to reduce time for members of the public to speak i tried to review the policy committee meeting minutes from february 3rd but they weren't uploaded as of 5 30 pm trying to see if there's additional context to understand why this change is proposed weren't many of you on the board a few years ago when the time was increased so please this evening can

044you explain your motivation behind this revision and reduction thank you for your time [Applause] okay sheila smith lower providence as stated on an open on open records government although not required to provide an answer it is good practice whenever possible to address the questions real time answering questions can demonstrate a commitment to helping constituents and in many cases answering questions informally at a public meeting can reduce future requests under the right to know law which saves time and money for both the agency and the requester i am concerned about the presentation and the right to know information on the district website and that was presented by dr zurby last week with dr zerby i don't understand why dr zurby presented data only on top requesters is he trying to shame community pen members board policy

045801 specifically states that the district shall limit shall not limit the number of records requested i respectfully would submit that presentation the presentation addressed the wrong questions here are the correct questions that should have been addressed why has the right to know legal cost increased 78 856 percent over the last four years it has gone from 1 575 to almost 1 million dollars in 2021 excuse me 2020 21. answer because we have significant increase of right to know year over year unfortunately the total number of requests was not readily available dr zurby please re provide the total number of requests why has so many right to know requests being filed filed answer because despite the district and boards claims that they foster transparency they make it extremely difficult or impossible to obtain credible information in

046a timely fashion this leads to lack of trust and frustration with current administration on the board misread state that she asked her peers if they had the same challenge that was the wrong question she should have asked what does the other board do to foster trust and transparency and collaborations many have sent several recommendations to the board and dr zurby only to be ignored this includes town halls fireside chats a yammer community and many more why doesn't the community trust the current administration and board answer the administration and care board have not acted in good faith with subset of the community they refused to engage in a civil two-way dialogue they refuse to respond to emails they refuse requests for meetings they misrepresent information using confirmation bias to shape the narrative that fits their political

047agenda they have acted in a hostile minor towards members of the community this includes foul language inappropriate gestures to community members of board members emails with the lower providence supervisor to defame and plot against a community member stating they were a problem allowing care supporters to go over the four-minute rule and one versus virtual placing speakers in a predetermined order to benefit the care propaganda this feedback would align align with the mea survey which states the matthackton school districts do not have confidence in msd and matthachton school district leadership here are additional questions that i would like answered where is the 2021-22 information there were six months into the school year so what are the right to know requests how many requests were completed within the five-day deadline how many requests were not completed within

048the five-day deadline what are the reasons for these delays where the delay is intentional because if the people didn't respond the individuals would have to file an appeal and if they didn't you wouldn't have to respond how many 30 days extensions were requested and what was the total cost of those extensions how do these delays impact customer experience as outlined by the strategic planning process since the board members values transparencies why are there so many appeals shape um share the type of requests that we have won thank you for your time [Applause] jim alec warcester that was superb superb i mean you know this is why you got to keep it in four minutes you need to hear that stuff sweet stevens payment of the bills 53 and that figure is pretty much been the

049same every each and every month for years i don't know how they managed to do that but don't pay it get your money back i'll give you an example of why we're spending a lot of money in right to know i filed a right to know request for mr navarette and miss larcenises emails in 2019. you guys denied it as not being specific enough i appealed to the office of open records at ap 2020-0054 and won that appeal you filed an appeal of my appeal to the court of common pleas and you lost i represented myself i didn't have a lawyer and i still won you then appealed that decision to the commonwealth court of pennsylvania and you lost again now how much do you think that cost for a bunch of emails according to

050the three judge panel this is a quote the school district's position is without merit also they stated moreover we reject the school district's argument that its good faith effort to amass the potentially responsive emails should not act as the the request is specifically or sufficiently specific and or that all of those emails constitute records so again i asked you who authorized these lawsuits which involved miss larcenises emails when uh and where was the authorization given because i can't find it and you deny there's any written correspondence who authorized the expenditure of the funds your right to know process is in disarray you now wasted over a million dollars of taxpayer money somebody needs to look into this to see how we can get our money back the hiring of a new law firm to shelbourne

051dooley um if you remember i was the one who told you not to fire him that you were making a mistake now you're hiring them back you know that firm that's how where i learned to file right to no request is from that firm they're experts so at least we'll get an expert in here who kind of knows the right to know law the problem is you still have a lawyer in charge of the right to know process and if you leave a lawyer in charge and don't watch what they do it's not going to affect spending so you need to get a right to know officer who only uses the lawyer when it's absolutely necessary board policy 903 after review it seems like the changes you made are punitive especially since several meetings though

052i pointed out that that policy has been ruled unconstitutional on a federal court you're making a mistake again and you need to listen to members of the public especially ones tonight fantastic uh the um shenandoah situation how much is in the shannondale fund can anybody tell me because the case came to a conclusion but you guys don't tell us i mean just go google the website at moncopa.org and there's the judge's order the guy's lost [Music] so what's going to happen with the money right the judge says that the taxing authorities assessment is the one they're going to use so what is the implication for us you should have been telling us us that already so we would appreciate that information thank you [Applause] good evening john carr warcester township i'm going to keep it

053short and simple the last two speakers kind of hit on what i was going to speak about the right to know um we saw this happen with within a specific township from a specific individual um and uh the the problem was solved very easily they spent a lot a lot of money as we just did um to me it blows my mind um that we can look at that dollar amount and be okay with it to me what this speaks uh from a simple view is uh there's something that is is hiding there's there's not transparency and and since there's been uh new officials elected into certain positions and new people hired into certain positions that number within the township went from hundreds of thousands of dollars to next to nothing and i think that

054it's it's deserving of all of our taxpayers money that something gets looked into with this right to know it just to me seems i'd say shady but it seems like if somebody asks a question if you're not going to answer it that there's something hiding and um i don't know what that is i'm there's people that speak that really dive into that kind of stuff but just from an overview looking at this it just seems astronomical the amount of money that that was spent uh of our money all of our money you know if you live within the district your money too um i think if it came out of your own personal pocket i think you'd be a lot more apt to not have to pay out as much so i think that to

055me it looks like a personal agenda personal ego thing with certain many people that sit up there and i would just ask that if we could put that aside and and uh figure out a way to cut this cost it's it's just it's maddening to sit and listen over the last two years of all of this money and all these questions i think it would stop i think you could stop that one individual if you're just open and transparent thank you [Applause] uh brian earnshaw lower providence a few items on the agenda that's comment about um and a lot of these comments will sound familiar because i asked them uh last week at the work session and none have been answered or responded to on the treasury report the money held in escrow for the

056shannon litigation is seven point three million dollars um dude that what mr dr moloch reported on was news to me so i'd appreciate if you could confirm that and if so what's going to happen with that 7.3 million dollars there's also 22 000 sitting in the capital campaign account uh we're resulting from the field project i'd like to know what's going to happen with that account and whether there are still any monies due to that fund from uh pledges that have not been collected on the right to know solicitor change the new rate is gonna be 160 an hour what is the current rate being paid and during dr zerby's presentation and i believe the subsequent discussion there was a lot of talk about the failures of the current solicitor who is responsible right to

057know given those failures is the board or the administration seeking any return of fees that have been paid and if with the new right to know solicitor if you're expecting a decrease in legal fees will the budget for next year be reduced for legal fees the current budget has an increase of 575 thousand regarding the capital reserve expenditures i looked at the list of equipment being purchased as i mentioned last week your costs seem high have you received bids and who are the vendors that you're purchasing this equipment from uh mr beckelman and mr andrews spoke quite well about the the uh water tank so i won't comment on that you're hiring the right to know safety and security support specialist again will that result in a decrease in any legal fees in next year's

058budget regarding the dei position for the job description being approved does this replace the current budgeted dei supervisor position and if not why are you going up by one in this department also could you confirm whether it's a position that will be under the mba contract that seems seems remember seeing something out in the job description and also can confirm what the expected compensation level is for this position regarding the change to policy 903 just shortly less a little less than four years ago um the policy committee met and i'll quote from their minutes the committee is recommended recommending due to the length of board agendas the time allocated to each speaker be modified to four minutes in duration now we're going back to three in less than four years and in fact that policy

059chain was approved by a vote of nine to zero uh back in 2018 may 22nd voting for that change for three to four minutes ms reese mr winters ms drummond and ms aubry larcenise so i'd like to understand why you're going now in less than four years from four minutes down to three the only explanation that's been offered is this is what other districts are doing mr andrews proved that to be false last month so why i'll yield my remaining 35 signs for an answer oh so thank you [Applause] i do plan to answer at policy when we vote on it that's normally what we do so when i vote on it i will just discuss it all right ed thiel lower providence uh good evening everyone first i want to encourage the board to

060vote for the new dei position but with professional development written in the description of the position dei is complex and sensitive and please make sure that all levels of staff from you know all the teachers to all the administration especially have access to specific training to help them navigate through this topic i've been through it before in my company and it's really helped me and others have a common reference reference point to work from um this is an important step for the district and it'll have a positive impact on the learning environment for all of our students i also fully support the raise and the substitute pay for building subs this will help alleviate some of the stress and teachers within the district i do want to comment on some of the right to know

061issues and i do appreciate that we're looking for ways to help save money to the district i also agree that i think you know having more transparency on some of the committee meetings having them made public i think will help alleviate a lot of the issues that we're seeing um but i don't i still think there's gonna be um some problems you know specifically as stated before and a number of the things it's really one person that's costing the district a tremendous amount of money and they're not normal requests um they're really designed to harass the community and overburden our district as seen by the astronomical price increases some of those additional requests you know are looking for results of covid tests um looking for data surrounding some of the evil protests that were out

062there last year information surrounding right-to-know requests to kind of have the ultimate do loop there of more right to know and more right to know including as as mentioned personal emails um and also requesting for documents that are he already had in his possession um which was stated in the request um i can only personally see what's been appealed in the system because that's all public record um i don't even see the ones that aren't appealed out there he's basically stealing money from our kids and even cutting it in half is not going to help you know i've heard from several people in the district they don't want to get involved because of of this behavior around with everyone else please use all your legal help that you're hiring to help prevent him from harassing

063and overburdening the district which the law actually states that that it's allowed to do um thank you for continuing to implement the health and safety plan that was voted for in december i'm a bit disappointed tonight to see a lot of people without masked in here you know it really prevents i've talked to a number of people that weren't going to be here because of that it's really creating an antagonistic atmosphere for everyone to be here and i really appreciate that we we follow the the policies that we pass and we continue to move forward in that way and hopefully soon we'll be able to go with mass optional as the numbers has come down uh i appreciate your time tonight and thank you for [Applause] hello uh joe rittenhouse lower providence uh i have

064three items i didn't see the health and safety plan on here i'll stick to those three number one right to no requests uh very simply i think that the issue is not is yes we are spending way too much money but we could absolutely decrease the amount of money just by increasing the amount of trust we have in you guys which is something that is severely lacking the trust is the issue we not many people attend the committee meetings if they were recorded it would help i'll volunteer to do it there'll be other people who would gladly do it increasing transparency is the only way to go forward before we go with hiring another lawyer maybe we should do have somebody come in assess what are we doing wrong um i mean you guys are

065the establishment here it's not like web services are gonna take you guys down so maybe every 30 days publish stuff preemptively let people know they would happily not file right to no request that they know information is forthcoming and coming out at a regular basis so uh it's a huge issue but the idea that it's just one person who's harassing the entire district i mean it it may be one person sure right now but i guarantee you it's gonna be a lot more unless you increase the trust so moving on to item number 10r the approve the job description of the dei and climate counselor i've now been educated on what di means over the past year we've all been talking about it um climate counselor we haven't really defined that i kind of want

066to know what that means what it what what climate are we going to be observing with the climate council i also want to know will this be a mea contract will this be a teacher i actually think it should be a supervisor administrative position um so i'd like some more info on that before we go making a brand new position and finally uh 203 public participation in meetings it goes back to trust it's just nobody trusts you guys because i mean i've watched i've been literally gouging the meetings for the last seven years watching every single person on this board make decisions two times speed going through it all there's been way more people than this at meetings who've had four minutes to speak some of you guys were them so the idea that we

067have to less than four years later move back to limit the amount of time has nothing to do with oh this is what other districts doing it's the fact that your opposition or people that are opposed to the current political paradigm of the board are showing up and you're scared of that and so i i think that if you want to go a very positive direction when it comes to the minutes you should be increasing the amount of time we get to speak not decreasing it um let's see how much time do i got you know i'll do the same as uh mr inchel i'd like i'll give all the remaining my time just to have that question answered before you guys vote on it why do we need to decrease the amount of time

068that people get to speak as miss reece has indicated we'll get to that later in the agenda and i guess the question is if you're going to get to it later in the agenda am i only going to have 30 minutes to respond at the end of it you're going to cut the amount of time i have 25 again these are you make the rules up on the fly this is the i mean that's what this is it's whatever is beneficial to a very small minority of people sitting on the other side of this table that have to be separated from all the plebes out here so thank you very much [Applause] yep sandy cats lower providence was coming tonight to thank you all for supporting the health and safety plan that is tied to

069the community spread i truly appreciated the decision to move the work session to virtual i am concerned about the complete disregard and disrespect demonstrated recently at board meetings including tonight toward all of you and for the health and safety plan that requires masks in all our buildings while cases in montgomery county and our school district have been declining transmission remains high and we are hopefully only weeks away from the numbers that will drop our metrics enough to go mask optional i didn't talk when any of you were talking so please give me i'm getting i'm getting to an action item but it doesn't seem like it yet we can have a professional and respectful discussion with masks on to set another appropriate date to return to mass optional let's set the example for our children

070i want to express my concern regarding the change in the dei position it was initially approved as an administrator position this is a much needed important role for our district and the changes recommended at last week's meeting minimizes its importance i am concerned that the re reporting structure will have a negative impact on the dei officer's ability to affect and implement real change please reconsider i want to give a shout out to all the board directors administrators educators therapists and parents participating in the live series on universal design for learning with shelly moore on wednesday nights in collaboration with the montgomery county intermediate unit for the first time to my knowledge the pa inclusion collective a grassroots organization of six district passionate parent groups of which methachton is one has brought this invaluable opportunity with

071shelly moore an internationally known educator researcher and storyteller the series was is free repeat and no cost to the district opportunity for professional development for myth acting staff and parents to learn alongside one another i want to thank dr angstadt dr walsh and mrs ricky for making my act 48 credits available to our educators we have over 100 registered from our math acting community the pandemic has shown us that using a framework such as udl which ensures the curriculum is accessible to students with the greatest support needs can be used to ensure all students get what they need make no mistake udl is not just for special education students but rather a way of thinking and doing that benefits all students udl is a framework that provides our educators support to include all students inclusion

072is not a program a goal or specific instructional technique or one location inclusion is a culture a mindset an expectation where everyone has value and can and will learn and succeed alongside their peers inclusion is a civil right separate is not equal for any student when we include we celebrate the diversity that is our community and as our students did this earlier today i want to give a big shout out to our theater director mary fitzgerald and especially the assistant director deden snaylor who have worked hard to meaningfully meaningfully include all students in this week's production of spongebob join us to celebrate the diversity in our theater company thank you [Applause] okay seeing no other comments oh no you're good there are no comments okay seeing no other comments on board action items then may

073i have a motion to approve the work session meeting excuse me [Music] sorry i'm fat it takes me a minute to get up here good evening my name is timothy francis rhodes from lower providence township i'd like to thank the ccp tonight for a continuation of the masquerade that they've been doing since the beginning of the pandemic i would like to ask the four people that are had coveted that are presuming teachers they were wearing a mask in school is that correct they are vaccinated isn't that correct they're probably boosted isn't that correct can you please answer that i'll give you one minute [Music] the vaccination status of our employees is confidential information we don't even know that how will the masking could you explain to me did the mask work for those four individuals

074do you have an agenda item you'd like to speak about please i i do i do hold on i do i have an agenda item it's about a water tower okay that you guys are trying to build and that you guys are enjoying the bdsm of our kids wearing continuation of mess do you have any additional comments oh i definitely do i have tons of them but i don't think i'm allowed to say them to you guys see this is kind of fun that i'm wasting your time because last week you wasted our time [Applause] not to interrupt that we could create the time i just want us can we get a clarification of why we're not responding during this this moment if you don't mind we don't commonly respond to comments made from the

075podium uh we as board members generally uh you know listen to the the comments made and then we're on an action item prior to uh a vote on the action item when there's comments uh from for the board members before the vote they if they care to do so they care to comment on on the matters and they may ask the administration to clarify questions and to clarify any of the uh the comments that that were that were made at the podium so at this point in time you know we're not going to be responding and we we don't generally respond so with that said if you have any other comments we'd be glad to hear them uh generally this is a point in the meeting where it's comments on board action items and then

076there's a part at the end of the meeting where any matters that might become before the board or had a potential to come before the board there's an opportunity to speak then as well sure i have one last thing let's go brandon [Applause] are there any other comments on board action items and nothing that's right okay all right seeing none may i then have a motion to approve the work session meeting minutes january 18 2022 and the regular board meeting minutes january 25th 2022 as attached ms cancro second mr mcginnis any comments seeing none all in favor any opposed okay motion carries nine to zero thank you um next we have fiscal items mr berker thank you madam president tonight for your approval is the list of bills treasurer report there are no budgetary transfers

077we have to approve the mciu member services budget two student activity accounts the right to know solicitor capital reserve expenditures two change orders and three allocations the increased scope of the bas at skyview and the building substitute rate increase thank you does anyone want to take anything [Music] separately in this race i would like to take um nine i don't know if you can separate them out specifically but h two separately please okay i'd like to take nine f separately okay all right thank you um then may i have a motion to approve all fiscal items x 9 f and 9 h 2. can i get a motion mr mcginnis and a second miss cancro any discussion on those items mr renters uh some of the questions one of the questions was related to the

078shenandoah case the shenandoah case just came back the judge ruled recently we are scheduled for a information session tomorrow on the results of that so we have not discussed that among ourselves for one second of all the 7.3 million dollars that is mentioned um is because the taxpayer has paid under protest so when a taxpayer pays under protest we must put away 25 of their tax bill and since this case has lasted so long it has reached to the point of 7.3 million so that is correct um i'm not sure the ruling i would describe either way but uh certainly those that want to they can look online to see how the the what the judge said actually um and let's see here um certainly budget items related to legal bills uh right to know

079expenses all those types of things will be continued to be evaluated in the finance committee um the field project i don't know tim if you can answer the 22 000 in the field project that amount is still there related to the the uh astroturf at some point that would be helpful and i don't know if um this and something else related to that uh also the comment related to sweet steve and sweet stevens is our uh special education attorney as well as the right to know uh attorney so they're not necessarily so clear on those charges but there is a supporting schedule that is reviewed at the finance meeting and is available online and has been for at least the last three or four or five months i believe so you can see the tracking

080of those individuals from an itemized perspective i think that's some of them mr bricker do we do we know about the athletic field uh fund or is that something you need to look into that's something i'd have to get back to you on okay we'll get that answer for the board and just to clarify something that mr wenner said so my understanding because we haven't had a full discussion or or information session on shannon dell but it was something of a compromise it the the finding was not in our favor nor was it and i'm i'm sorry to interrupt you but i think it's important for us to to know that um while there may be a judge ruling that you can find on the internet there still is a period of potential we're not

081completely out of the litigation on the matter yet so um while you certainly can speak on it uh we just want to be careful about what we what we say okay okay so then that would explain why it's not something that has come before the board in a public meeting understood i will say that this case has been on over for 13 years so this is not within just our time it's been going on before our time so that money is just as upsetting as it is for you as it is for us and i will say we have done our due diligence to make sure these lawyers brought it to this case into where we are today 13 years we are very very frustrated so we understand and we we hear you the only

082other question that came up that if you could discuss we did it in finance was the capital expenditures um just about how you investigated the vendors and the bids for those costs short of capital expenditures are typically purchased through a co-store or a coast or similar uh vendor they're state approved contracts that eliminates the bidding process because it's already been vetted by the state and these are replacement items one of them is a 21 year old 16 foot lawnmower that's being replaced other one is a zero turn radius lawnmower they're all within the bidding scopes and within the parameters allocated by the state bidding rules and i actually just had a question also um can dr zurby can you just talk about the process of um for the dei position removing from the budget sure

083thank you yes uh if in fact this evening uh the board approves the uh the position uh uh i'm sorry the job description as uh as listed uh we would then uh bring before you uh in a following meeting the removal of the supervisor position um in fact and then then also as part of the budget process you know deduct the difference between what is commonly uh considered to be a probably a bachelor's plus 15 uh fact and education association a position which mr baker is about about how much it's roughly all in about eighty thousand eighty five thousand dollars which is which is a significant difference from what is actually in in the budget uh but uh i think that that should answer that question thank you any other questions on the motions yes

084mr young mr breaker just a quick question on nine i a for connexus for the automation system did we do any analysis on the efficiencies that would be created for a cost avoidance on the cost to run the old system now that we're proposing the 650 increase over and above the 60 uh 62 500 yes the biggest savings would be on the annual maintenance i believe it's roughly about six thousand dollars a year the other issues associated with this is the parts that are being replaced are now obsolete and those parts we will be retaining and using them to replace other parts throughout the school district okay thank you anybody else okay um so can i get a vote this is on fiscal items with the exception of 9f and nine h two all in

085favor any opposed okay that's nine zero thank you all right can i get a motion to approve item nine f the right to know solicitor is cancru second mr winters any discussion um i i have to be honest this has been a difficult issue for me to get behind um i fully support a revision or or alteration of some sort to our right to no process i have concerns about whether or not this is the way to go about doing it one of the things that i hear people talk about is um that we should be answering more questions at board meetings um and i will be honest um i don't think that that's necessarily the solution i don't know that this is a number that we necessarily have off the top of our heads

086here but do we have a sense of how many of these right to no requests are regarding information that was requested during the course of a board meeting uh very very few that's kind of what i i suspected so um i i i'm all for transparency i'm all for sharing of information i've even offered to just you know carbon copy every email that i send and receive to members of the public if that's what it would take to make this go away um but i just want to give an example of what it is that we're dealing with the right with the right to know requests so that people have an understanding of why this has been such a difficult issue for us to resolve the intent of this is not to discourage right to

087no request because i do think that there is a a time and a place and it's an important function of our government but there's also right to new requests that i believe are designed to generate churn and that's what this is one any and all records and or records of communication to and or from the open records officer regarding this requester's request submitted to the district on 12 1919 at 2 35 pm monthly from 12 119 to present including those on personal computers and personal email accounts these records are requested in their native and original format which includes metadata two any and all records and or records of communication between the open records officer and the solicitor regarding this requester's request submitted to the district on 12 19 19 at 2 35 pm monthly from

08812 119 to present including those on personal computers and personal email accounts these records are requested in their native and original format which includes metadata any and all records and or records of communication between the methachton rtk or right to know atmothachton.org email address and the solicitor regarding this requestor's request submitted to the district on 12 1919 at 2 35 pm monthly from 12 119 to present including those on personal computers and personal email accounts these records are requested in their native and original format which includes metadata any and all records and or records of communication to and or from the open records officer regarding a search for records responsive to this requester's request submitted to the district on 12 1919 at 2 35 pm monthly from 12 119 to present including those on personal

089computers and personal email accounts these records are requested in their native and original format which includes metadata that's number four but wait there's more number five any and all records and or records of communication to and or from the methachton rtk or write to no methactin.org email address regarding a search for records responsive to the requester's request submitted to the district on 12 19 19 at 2 35 pm monthly from 12 119 to present including those on personal computers and personal email accounts these records are requested in their native and original format which includes metadata that's five there are as part of this single request 34 of those so if anyone sitting here tonight could tell me exactly what document i could easily pull up and hand in that would satisfy this right to no

090request i would love to know it because this is more complicated than any one person can just handle as a matter of course aids these comments these requests are designed to disrupt our district plain and simple the information that is generated because of these right to new requests is not of any significance the process does need to be re examined um and i'm open to hearing ideas on how we can and adjust it but um simply generating these emails and then sending them off without a legal review i mean there's privacy issues there's legal precedents that are set any time that we hand over documents that have a ripple effect throughout the commonwealth um you go to a school board training anywhere in pennsylvania and you're going to hear about this particular requester and the

091problems associated with these requests so this is a very unique problem that we are having here in methachton and uh i'm just not sure that this is the way to address it i just want to add you know i am in i am in support of this because it's temporary and we're doing whatever we can to comment on some of the questions or concerns that were brought up last week i had asked if the two new board members had been given any advice because they have gone to more recent trainings and in fact they did miss rocco mentioned that they didn't really talk that much about right to know but they did talk about committee meetings so she did offer some some insight into what else we could do there probably is more that we

092can do or things that we can do differently other than just this step but it's at least a step in the right direction to kim's point if she kept reading those are right to no requests so when we get them we have to read through them and respond and do the search and you saw how long it took just to read that so it is it is um a concern and we are trying to address it and i believe it was a gentleman from warcester mentioned that the township had had a difficulty the same difficulty and they were able to correct it so hopefully we can correct it one change we have made to transparency over the last few years is prior to our time on the board six years ago seven years ago was

093there wasn't work sessions so the work session is when we do most of our our conversations and the committee meetings so if there's a better way now because of um youtube and some interest in the board people are watching those work sessions we try to do the minutes um with a lot of the presentations attached so we i think we can keep working on it i i do support this just because it's a one step and hopefully there will be more steps miss purdue i just have a question in reference to our strategy here i just wanted to clarify what other steps have we looked at just because i mean even from the presentation last week and just being on the board for the two years i know the length of the request that we

094get right and i sat here last week and i said let's make sure if it's in reference to board meetings presentations we have those information available if it's not readily available we make sure it is readily available right that's one less thing we can do but i also know the extent of those requests that we get that are very long and to the point where yes you do need support you do need a second eye on there you do need someone to review it but i'm just wondering and looking at this because yes when i took my board member training also it came up and my thoughts and was noted as one of the districts that have a problem with right to note request and it was in that training it was indicated it stems

095from one person so my question is what what else have we looked at when we're thinking about bringing in someone else to look at this and also moving someone in our car in a different position what else were some of the options that we discussed and talked about in trying to remedy this so some of the other options included actually bringing in house counsel um that was that was something that uh i'm sure that you you may have heard from other comments from members of the public uh we've talked about addressing it with other additional support staff and other administrators um there is a there is a perception that um you know we turn this over to the uh solicitor uh and that that solicitor is one person who works on you know 36 000

096records and there's the redaction of it uh quite frankly um there's there's a number of employees that work for the solicitor that do that work for for them so it's not the solicitor themselves actually doing some of that work um it's a team of people and so what we're proposing here is that a uh part of and as i explained last last week part of our challenge is not just uh the request um and and and the uh the volume of requests and the frequency of the request as i explained but it's also been some of our uh decisions that we that we made along the way that uh meaning that we appealed certain matters uh which you know under advice from the council we we had made those appeals and we lost those appeals

097but in the in the in the cycle of the appeal process uh we would get more requests that were similar to those that were would be in the appeal from the the same individual or potentially other individuals and what happens is we we got into you get into this loop of of uh of appeals uh right to no request and uh you know extensions and it's just it's a lot so what i am recommending is that we're not i'm not recommending that we take a process that is clearly flawed and just put another solicitor in place what i'm suggesting is you allow the solicitor if approved this evening to come in and assess the process uh their their experience they've done the right to know process for us in the past and it's a matter

098of making different decisions uh and making sure that we reduce to the the greatest degree possible our reliance on the solicitor from doing any of the work and we would we would likely need them to help us out with any appeals that are in in the hopper at this moment in time our goal would be to resolve those with the uh with the individuals uh that we have the appeals within and the office of open records as soon as we can solve those the goal would be to make sure that you know we set the parameters up internally to make sure that we're limiting and reducing the number of times that we need to touch on the solicitor so there's there's two things happening here there's a change in the solicitor to help us with

099process and advice and and there's and there's uh in-house individual being transferred from one position to another to be primarily 90 95 percent of their time dedicated to the solicitor process someone who has you know paralegal understanding and and is someone that that we trust uh internally has worked in the hr office for a number of years and and that is that is well prepared to take on on this and and help us uh you know find a better path forward and then so i believe we also have comments and emails made about what legal action we have in reference to that one individual have we looked into that at all i i'm gonna rephrase the questions make sure i understand it you're asking whether or not um we we looked into taking legal action

100against uh the one requester or or requesters um the only the only legal action that we've decided is uh to appeal the request i mean there's a there's a law called the right to know law and it it allows for members of the citizens of the public to make requests and uh you know and it's it's clearly spelled out that um there there are things on the requester side that they should be considering and not to use it you know in what what is termed in in the in the law an abusive uh manner and and there's a there's an obligation for the district to make sure that um we review the records that we've released because we're solely uh responsible for uh the you know retaining the items that should be protected under laws

101that should be protected under attorney-client privilege and those things that are protected under i believe it's 708 of the of the right to know law so with that with that said um you know that i i don't know i'm it's not my it's not my understanding and it's and we haven't had ever had the conversation about taking any other action other than appealing matters and appealing requests um sorry to just jump in and i don't know if mr summer can help us out too when miss perdue asked about legal action at my iu meetings they do give a legislative update but it's i don't often share everything because sometimes it hasn't moved from one level of government to the other level of government but mr summer isn't there uh legislation in our state that is

102working on this uh there is a proposed legislation uh i believe it passed the house and is in the senate it might be vice versa i apologize if i'm got that wrong but there is proposed legislation there's two bills that are proposed to realize the right to know law one is with regard to commercial requesters which certainly make up a certain percentage of the district's right to know request and the ability to charge those commercial requesters for those requests the other legislation that is proposed is a vexatious requester bill which would allow a a an agency including a school district to request to the office of open records that an individual be identified as a quote unquote vexatious requester there are certain due process that would then be followed if such a request were made

103but ultimately there would be an ability of the office of open records to suspend quote-unquote a requester for a one-year period of time from making requests that is proposed legislation it certainly hasn't passed the legislature it has not gone to the governor i can't give an update on whether that's likely to pass or not but it is legislation that is is out there at the moment i don't think i will add to this i think what kim pointed out was actually is so accurate because it's not about our ego like like some of you might have thought of the trust or the transparency we are trying to be transparent we spoke about it last year we went through many meetings finance meeting work session we wanted to actually put it into our website and put

104in just so you could see how many requests were being done last week when dr zerby did his presentation it was very clearly showed where most of that right to nose came from and i think if we were to get a percentage from mr regina you know out of 100 you know what percentage really showed something based about our meeting information something that we could easily access versus a description of like um ms larson needs to share with you it is a weekly and it's by one person and we have to be you know we have to really be cautious and for for our uh school district as well so please understand we are not happy with it i just i just had one clarifying comment miss reece had um mentioned asking um myself and

105greg young about anything new we would have learned in training i i actually never said that we didn't cover right to know i mean well when you asked that question last week i was driving and i was in a bad area so i couldn't actually answer but i know greg did but later i made the comment around the transparency of committee meetings but certainly we did cover right to know in the full day school board training i would say that there wasn't anything there uh new alarming anything different than than what we're already discussing here on the table so i just wanted to clarify that thank you any other points and just to excuse me just to restate this is probably step one of of being able to manage and control maybe costs but it's

106only the first step i think we have to look at you know the two levers the the people meaning the resources the law firm and in the process and look for opportunities to use lower cost non-premium labor i.e law firm labor to process right to no request it sounded like dr zurby was looking into that with some in-house paralegal support but anything else we can do to reduce those costs um and then mitigate requests or at least provide the transparency that we're trying to provide to reduce the request volume so yeah we're looking at it it's a big number and there's certainly areas where we can approve it i have a couple of questions um could you uh dr zurby please clarify in the memo it says the rate is 160 an hour i know

107we're trying to do this differently but could you please speak to the current rate we're paying you know what the current labor rate is 195 dollars an hour 195 thank you and um dr zurby can you speak a little bit about the in-house services we are already or we have been providing on right to no requests certainly uh and this might be a repeat from uh last week but uh you know we have technology staff who you know conduct uh the searches we certainly have uh secretarial staff that you know partake in uh i'll call it the communication side of of the process uh we have a right to know officer that is uh and dr seugini that's uh responsible for overseeing the matter certainly there's there's a number depending on the request there's a

108number of people that can be involved in a quest so if they're looking for um you know uh invoices or bills uh you know we may have to go to the business office and we if those things aren't electronically they're in paper copy they have to be pulled so just about everybody and at least in central administration has been involved in right to know one way or another at some point whether in helping uh to process a request or or you know at least being involved in how we can improve processes and and things of that nature and you as board members are often involved in in those processes as well not necessarily fulfilling the request but responding to uh you know questions on whether or not you have certain items thank you and then

109just one last point i have about the summary performance report reads no later than six months so um i think it does we said we were coming back at four months to okay so and then monthly uh there was a finance report as a standing report on the finance committee meeting so it'll be monthly and after four months and then definitely by six months for sure so it is in the process that it's going to be for four months yeah no later than six months is four months that's correct thank you okay any other questions on this one uh mr winters yeah i think there was a question from the uh from the public related to the repositioning of the human resource specialist position if that position would be filled or are we just repurposing

110maybe this was discussed last week i apologize yeah uh that position has to be refilled so if you approve the recommendation here this evening uh lashes there's there's three recommendations one the solicitor piece under hr there is a job description and a transfer if you approve all three of those um then we would be advertising for a uh uh i forget what her title would be but it's but we would we would look for her replacement it's a this new position would be a 52-week position would be a 52-week position that would be a full-time position correct sorry then with that question the person also asked just to clarify the right to know mr regina why is it going to be under you and the history of who is in charge of right to know

111yeah well mr regina was the right to know officer for a period of time when he uh arrived here in northacting and then when we hired dr saujini as part of his role as a director of hr we uh transferred that responsibility to doctors virginia anything else on this one okay just real quick to clarify for the preliminary budget then this this position has not been put in the budget right it is not in the budget at this moment and it will be added if approved okay um [Music] so this is for 9f i have a first and second motion all in favor and any opposed okay that's eight one thank you um next we have nine h two um the change order can i get a motion to approve that ms cancro the second

112miss aubry larsonness and discussion last week well at the property meeting i had asked for a breakdown and then we were given the breakdown and last week ever they were able to answer all my questions except it looks like there's a diff we talked about the difference of 144 000 plus and 168 000 plus and sorry for my voice um teaching poetry all day reading a poem um sorry and it's a difference of almost 24 000 and i wanted to know what that difference was hey 144 000 is the material on labor costs there's a 15 percent markup and then there's a 1.3 bond markup on that so say what the first markup was 144 000 is the materials in labor and you have a 15 markup that is in the contract and then you

113have a 1.3 bond markup and that 15 goes where exactly to the contractor okay um so when it says labor i know what that is material i know what that is subcontractor i know what that is rental equipment i know what that is and then it should be plus that 15 for the um [Music] uh other con the main the head contractor and then whatever percent you just said to the bond um and then i don't know if mr young wants to answer the questions or you want to answer the questions or i can as well but we did have a very very very lengthy conversation from at the last property and throughout about the water pressure and yes to mr bickelman they were aware or to mr andrews i don't know which one excuse

114me they were aware that we needed to know the water pressure and they had been trying to find out for two years the water pressure and we need the sprinkler system none of us are happy with the fact that we have to have a change order to make sure the sprinkler system will be approved by the fire marshal but the building needs a sprinkler system there were multiple requests to to have the water pressure tested there were long delays lack of response uh so that that caused that delay uh on the 90 some thousand dollar slab that that number seems you know extremely high but uh mr bricker could you go into a little bit of detail of of what's underneath that slab the kind of detail how we get to 94k not being an

115engineer or an architect what i can tell you that i do know is that there's piping and there's electrical wires that are under there that need to be potentially removed or replaced and the concrete also has to be brought up to us level to be able to support the weight of the 6600 gallon tank so there's there's pretty delicate infrastructure running underneath that area that needs to be addressed yeah i still have to break up the concrete concrete that was already poured and i'll have to remove potentially items or place replace stuff and then re-pour the concrete and can you address the the size of the tank and how we're going to get it in there so there are three different options for the tank one of them being to have a tank that we'd

116have to tear open the walls um that was actually option one and two where we'd have to reopen tear down the walls and then slide in the tank through that option three for a slightly more cost but less damage to the physical building was to bring it in in pieces there's a 6600 gallon tank that we are purchasing that actually comes in pieces that will be put together by individuals over what i estimated from the conversations about two weeks okay and that five percent to kcba for the overall cost is that built into the 168 plus the of the total 263 is that inclusive of a five percent fee back to kcba there is no fee for kcba in that okay thank you for clarifying um and then the only other thing thank you mr

117young the only other thing um i think we addressed everybody's concern they were aware that this was a problem but we had to put make the walls and we did tour the building see where this was happening and we did inquire about the storage there is many different storage areas um but yes it is taking away i was happy to see not as much storage as i thought was being taken away so um it is maintenance storage it's not classroom storage wear it correct thank you that's made me happier too to see where it was that it wasn't you know um it wasn't as crucial of a location any other comments is aubrey larsonis just to be completely clear and transparent on this so the delay in the water pressure testing was not on the

118kcba side or on our contractor's side correct in my opinion it was not okay thank you anything else yes so not sure if that clarified it but the the request was to the water company to come and test the water pressure correct so to test the water pressure you need a water company to come out and allow you to test it on the hydrant that's is in locations of the building as i understand it again not a fire expert to do that we need their permission we need them to come out there we need them to be there we need to hire a company come out there we need to have witnesses come out there we have to do the testing i do believe that the first testing was somewhere around 10 or 11 o'clock

119at night and then we had to do a subsequent testing and from the results of that the water pressure requires us to put in a 6600 gallon tank to support the sprinkler system without the pumps cavitating thank you and just not to keep belaboring the point but i do think it's an important point and we because it is a lot of money change orders happen but this is a large one um many people got involved which we heard about at our property committee we had to get help in order to um fix this problem dr could you just speak a little bit about the process and then also there was a question about adjacent water tanks water tanks adjacent to the property and how they may or may not factor into the solution so the

120water tanks that are being referred to by a member of the public are the water tanks that are adjacent to the arrowhead property and are particularly designed to provide water to the number of customers with which uh they're designed to serve and you'll see that within it within any municipality and uh water company there are typically water storage tanks that provide you know a certain level of excess water when when their customers so need need that for us to use that those water towers as a matter of fire suppression um would have an inverse impact on the the rest of the residents and therefore and plus they're not ours they're not on our property they're not our responsibility they're not our we don't own them um so so having having no having understood all of

121the challenges associated with uh with our uh relationship with the audubon water company and understanding um their limited and historical challenges within the methectone community um you know getting access to to those water towers is nearly an impossible you know task even if it was you know engineeringly appropriate um and then i guess the other question is in terms of the overall scope i mean this this isn't a matter that uh has been taken lightly there are a number of people involved there are there are just significant uh challenges of cooperation and um that's as much as i can say at this point thank you are there any other comments on this motion okay um [Music] all in favor then of 9 h2 any opposed nine zero thank you thank you have a good night

122thank you next we have personnel items dr sorgini good evening for your consideration this month we have the following personnel items i will highlight those items that are additions from the work session we have four resignations classified with one addition danielle venezia personal care assistant at woodland we thank danielle for her service to the students of matthachton and we wish her well one employment classified the approval of one job description confidential exempt two changes of status classified one uncompensated leave professional one uncompensated leave classified a series of supplemental contracts including several additions to the list of spring coaches a department coordinator and and an additional mentor two additions to the classified substitute list additions to the list of approved district volunteers and one job description professional thank you okay thank you um anybody want to

123take any of these personnel items separately okay may i have a motion to approve all personnel items as presented ms reese a second mr winters any discussion um i just wanted to i i did not i did not click on it today i meant to um you had mentioned there might be there were there might be additions and i think you said said there were additions to the coaches so how many vacants or what which vacancies do we have we were able to fill the seventh and eighth grade softball positions so there are only several remaining positions that are vacant at this time and dr spiwak continues to work through those okay thank you so much and then i know a member of the public asked today and i believe liz and i and others

124discussed it last week and the job description professional development was added for the dei climate counselor so that's all i have thank you any other discussion mr mcinnis hey dr sergini uh i see some of the vacants and i i know your your struggles with them are any of these like red alert right now i know some people we have some interested we haven't just kind of signed them up to a contractor are we really sweating like any of these out and if a member of the public would like to know and whisper campaign if you will or the track and field boys assistant coaches are ones we're having difficulty filling mr mcginnis okay uh we're also at this point in time we are looking into the the vacant freshman team vacancies and whether or

125not they will be needed based on uh the interest in freshman sports or if those individuals will just play up to jv gotcha so so freshman tracker is the ones we're really worried about the the boys track and field okay thank you thank you and just to remind sorry that's not really hr but to remind people i believe the spring athletic paperwork is due this friday so that also i guess helps with knowing the numbers of people interested in in in those sports i know i know i just did mine yesterday mr winters yeah so uh one on uh 10 and seven there is the supplemental contract director shoujini this is fulfilling a role for ela at the high school that has not been filled since september is that correct that's correct mr winters i

126believe uh since october since october that's the english department coordinator which was asked about today and and and from the from the audience so we are outstanding on one uh coordinator and we'll just make sure that there's no disrespect towards the coordinators the coordinators are volunteers to obviously get paid but they need to choose to come forward from from the teaching staff that's correct and they are always given to a union position it's not like we would hire a coordinator outside of the high school to be a coordinator yes that's corrected somebody who is already a a member of mea and our teaching staff and uh dr i don't know if it's doctor mr spank he's doctor for the second at least so mr smith is filling the role as the the mathematics uh coordinator

127at this point yes at this time and we've encouraged and tried many times to fill this position and would hope that somebody from the union would would take this position and get paid for it yes we have and that's our hope yeah thank you um the there's an open question i think i know the answer the professional the job description for the dei climate counselor is defined as a professional position so there therefore it would be an mea position is that correct that's correct is there uh some i know there's some debate back and forth about if it should be an administrator or if it should be a staff is there some discussion about how um being the role of climate counselor that the the belief is it needs to be a sort of uh

128aligned position that can have an influence in the trust of the staff as well as the admin as opposed to being an admin position that obviously sometimes does not carry is that part of the philosophy here absolutely thank you miss obrilartenis yes i had um additional questions around this k-12 dei and climate counselor as well um so i know i had raised questions last week about them being a member of mea i know in the past we've had toas or teachers on assignment that have functioned in administrative roles when they do that does that do they still remain i'm assuming they still remain part of the mea organization correct that's correct okay is there anything that we do differently in terms of how we handle them administratively other than additional compensation but in terms of

129reporting structure or anything like that because i'd imagine it's a difficult position to be in to be put into a role where you are suddenly supervising people that have previously been your peers it can be difficult especially for a teacher on assignment but one of the differences between a toa and an administrator is that they do not take on evaluative components so they do not evaluate their peers okay um so another question that i have and i don't know if you can answer this dr sergini or if this would be for dr zerby but will this person have a seat at the administrative table at farina so like i understand that the idea is for this person to be more immersed in the everyday school culture seeing what's going on in all the buildings accessible

130to all in the buildings but i want to make sure that there's a line of reporting that enables them to be in communication with the members of cabinet as well so is that something that we are planning to do or if not can we plan for that to happen i i plan that for that to happen i mean that's a key component of helping um you know educate us about the things that need to get done and how we can work with principals to get those things done and and through that collaborative process uh will they be every cabinet meeting no will they be at at regular meetings for for us absolutely uh there's there's no question like we said well like i said last week um we're certainly going to have them come before

131the board on a monthly basis as a standing agenda item because i think that's important to keep everybody apprised of progress and activities and so forth uh certainly uh we'll have them included in the process of the weekly memos and and most certainly uh they got to be directly involved with each department uh from hr to their curriculum office to what's happening at the building level and once this whole thing is organized where we're we've got a full team approach because i'm not putting this all on just one person's back uh but when we have a full team approach we have seven advisors you know teachers in every building we have the k-12 uh dei uh climate uh counselor and we have administrative support in the uh title ix coordinator and and then on top

132of that we also have uh coordination with the montgomery county intermediary unit who has uh who runs java like and and other sessions to help educate people so you know there there's a number of levels that are that we put in place here and this is a critical role for you know being in the middle and kind of making sure that things are happening and and educating and informing us okay i appreciate that i think it's important um because i think that the issues around de and i are happening at both the individual level and at the systemic level and so i know having somebody that's in the building on a regular basis will help to address those individual level concerns but i do want to make sure that this person is given enough authority

133and empowerment to be able to implement systemic changes as necessary as well um i don't think that this is necessarily because this isn't to say that methachton has a problem that has to be addressed i think that there are issues um but i think it's more of a you know we we know better so we need to do better um here at methectone so i'm excited that we're going to be moving forward with this position it's not exactly the way i had envisioned it at the outset and i think it's going to require a lot of revisions as we go a lot of oversight from from the board um and just making sure that that we're all moving forward with the way that that we want to see this happen um i am a little

134bit concerned it sounds like they report to two different people our director of people services and the title ix coordinator we don't often do that but we you know the challenge for us is uh you know they're they're the person's kind of serving a quasi role in terms of being considered a counselor in the middle and all of our counselors are underneath pupil services where at where at the same time we know that there's a specific tie for the work that they will do in matters of you know discrimination with the title ix coordinator yet coordinator and and together uh they'll they'll conduct the evaluation as part of the process with feedback from principals okay because i'd imagine having two two people that you report to could be a blessing and a curse so i

135just want to make sure that it falls more on the former and less on the ladder thanks the only thing i want to add to is that we went through the interview process i wasn't part of it but i know it's multi-step with dr sergini when we did look it as the administrative role and that we were not satisfied with what we came through it was a multi-step as dr sergini said last week so i do feel like this is a wonderful niche to be a comprehensive approach with all team players and i agree like it the more impact within the schools but then with the administration is is going to be important for us thank you and if i could just add what i like about the placement and this job description that we

136revised um i did sit in on the interview process and it felt like that the candidates we were very divided on the candidates and it felt like some of them were not as approachable as we would need them to be here in the facton so that's why we revised it to be a counselor type position and then what we're doing is we're making the reporting um normally mea would report to their principal their building principle and we're bypassing that step so it's a direct report to administration so it's it's um it's strengthened in terms of the link to administration versus just a typical mea position would be um and also the the dual reporting to pupil services and to the title nine coordinator there in the job description there are times where this person would

137serve as a student advocate and would be working would be working i don't know antagonistically or i don't know like against the the title nine coordinator like not in conjunction with them so then having that other report to the pupil services kind of neatens that up and makes this able to happen in terms of a student advocate role yes ms purdue so i know we went through the pro process in october to try to fill the position initially this position was a director's position and based on the candidates we had we decided we wanted to cast our net a little bit wider try to see if we can get a candidate that will fit the needs of ms acting from what i understand from when we try to take on the work of diversity equity

138and inclusion if we learn anything it's not a one size fit all each environment each community no matter where it's at whether it's at work or school it's all different and there's different needs so when we went back to try to look at this role we wanted to make sure there will be someone that will be able to really advocate for our students and also bring what is needed and when it comes in regards to professional development to our staff and at all levels right just really to ensure that when issues are being raised we have a single point of contact currently i'm a fact and we do not have a single point of contact we do not have a point of contact that can really resolve some of these issues that come up and

139many times those families so those students that are involved in these issues are really left out on their own and the only way we can move forward and able to ensure that we are providing an equitable environment for all our students is to have somebody that's fully in this position to be able to be immersed to be able to have those difficult conversations that are needed it's not going to be easy i don't think they're going to transition into this role easily but we also know that it is much needed here and so this is why we're fully invested i don't want to hear i think we've heard where people feel like it's not a check box to me when i think about this role i think this person will come and really help hopefully

140bring our school together our school community together and it will only just serve students but also serve our teachers so i think one of the questions that i heard today was defining what climate or how climate came into and i'll add that to zurby and maybe liz you can comment on that because we talked about this and we kind of more of the job description based on what other districts nearby are doing and so maybe if you can speak on how we came up with the title and include a climate in the description yeah i think i think that um you know the the genesis of of the way that job description and the uh uh the titles uh emerged is to uh to know that you know the the matters of diversity equity inclusion

141um have a direct impact on the climate of a building and then secondly we also know that under act 44 which is a which is a safety act they included all the social emotional uh components necessary for both for students and for staff and so the the concept here is to make sure that not only is the uh the uh the k-12 dei and uh climate counselor on you know meetings of the cabinet or or or other meetings uh you know in the administration but also serves uh in a number of other roles specifically on the act 44 district uh safety committee so that we're we're having someone in the in the middle advising us on the uh on the matter of social emotional uh matters that that impact all of us whether we're adults

142within the system or we are uh students and families within the system so that's how the genogenesis of the dei slash climate had emerged thank you i just had a question um also about on um 10j2 ms yantosh i had asked for full package compensation price at the work session yeah we put that in the board memo but uh i don't remember do you have do you remember the numbers okay total excuse me sorry total cost for this year including benefits compensation is ninety nine thousand seven hundred forty six dollars and eighty cents okay and it's estimated that she would be spending eighty five to ninety percent on right to know that's correct okay thank you are there any other questions miss aubry larson sorry just one final clarifying question around the dei position what

143is the net head count for this department then with this new job description this is a description is an amendment to the existing position correct it's not creating a new position that's correct okay thank you just another clarifying question is but we're only voting on the one right but then there is there a plan for additional resources within that newly created department with the climate supervisor you mean i'm sorry are there other additional head count requests coming from in future meetings for dei so so i think uh from the presentation i i laid out you know the larger uh call a team approach which is which includes seven advisors at the building level which a we haven't you know created a job description for those and and or or told you what those estimated uh

144supplemental contracts would be uh that would be based on the amount of time associated with you know the need for for those individuals so so right now we're really talking about a structure that's already in place in terms of our title nine uh coordinator and with the approval of the the k-12 dei and climate counselor will be the second person within that office and uh likely as we bring forward the recommendation on the job description for the seven advisors we would hope that you would approve those as well to complete uh the team approach to that office that will that will you know at this point in time that concludes that you know you know uh office now two three years from now we make we make different decisions it may happen but we don't

145have any uh other visions at this point in time okay thanks and then just one quick comment and maybe two questions sorry guys so on the resignation side the comment is you know a less a much less scary number with the four the four resignations are we saying that the early notification program that we implemented are we considering that a success yes we are i had no additional by the february first deadline and then the final deadline for the increase would be a five percent increase as of march 1st okay and then from a year-over-year trend comparing february to prior februaries is this number significantly lower than what we typically see i i i couldn't say at the moment thanks okay um anything else all right all in favor of the personnel items as presented

146okay any post okay nine zero thank you thank you thank you okay we don't have anything any voting items listed under curriculum and programs and next we have policy uh for those items being voted on this evening for second read and notice to repeal mostly items in second read had either no changes or very few edits as commented 903 is the policy that probably saw the most revisions that was brought forward due to the necessary changes due to the pensbury case and minutes were also reviewed during policy for that also the noticed repeal for 349 was removed due to the title ix adjustments that we do have now in our policy in the updates mandated by federal law that allows us to repeal 349. thank you would anyone like to take any of the policies

147separate mr renters 903 separately anything else okay may i have a motion to approve all policies except for um as presented including the motion to repeal was cancro second miss purdue any discussion on those policies ms perdue i know one comment was brought up in reference to the policy minutes not being attached so i believe it was in reference to 903 903 was discussed at our january so all policies on the second reading was discussed part of our january policy committee meeting so it should have been attached to the january meeting and unfortunately i checked and for this month the policy meeting wasn't attacked but those will be for policy that are up for first read and i will check to make sure that gets it added to the agenda okay any other comments okay

148all in favor of all policies except for 903. any opposed okay 9-0 thank you all right can i get a motion to approve a revision second read to policy 903 public participation in board meetings mr mcginnis and a second miss purdue comments mr winters so when i did see this i i did not attend the policy meeting in january so i was a little um surprised about it and i i i will be um not voting for this um i did talk to samara uh soon after to understand uh the philosophy and and understand the where it's coming from so i do understand it a little bit i do also want to comment that the working session was added so we went from um three minutes from the audience to speak at a voting item

149at a at a regular meeting plus three minutes at open forum from six minutes to 12 minutes over the last four years so the individuals that are speaking are speaking twice as much as they did before i'd like to keep that at this point in time uh i will not be supporting this i don't know if that means um it's related to the uh the minutes i don't know if we need to change other things and and but i don't know what we should do if if this does get voted down uh if we need to do something differently if i could just add madam president my suggestion would be um and certainly there could be further discussion amongst the board um before any any motions would be entertained but if there is a a

150solely a concern with regard to a time limit aspect of 903 but not necessarily some of the other revisions to 903 which were as mr regina mentioned largely in order to comply with recent federal court decisions involving public comment at meetings if the the sole concern would be the the time limit i would just suggest uh perhaps a motion to amend the uh the second reading of 903 to amend solely the time issue uh and then if there were a second on that and then discussion amongst the board if that item were to pass uh then obviously there would be support of the board for for keeping it at the four minutes um and then the item the other revisions could be voted upon this evening if then if however there were a motion to

151amend uh to change it from three minutes back to four minutes and it failed it likely means that there would be enough votes to pass 903 without amending it so just procedurally certainly as i mentioned there could be further discussion on the board at this time um but if if there's a desire of any board member to vote on the 903 as revised with the exception of the time issue a motion to amend to approve it with just the revisions of the time would be suggested um to answer uh mr earnshaw's question i did vote for and several of us did i think sometimes you see through the years different needs and we increased it today we had and i don't i think i wrote everybody down and 11 people um speak um at the

152first part and we can we have unlimited amounts at the second part i mean we have unlimited amounts at the first part too but people might not have something to say about board action items um and as far as i think someone mentioned being scared um yeah it is a little scary i'll be honest because due to pensbury you you can say whatever you'd like and many of you do and that's your right but yes it is scary and why while our solicitor was here i found um our public registration list to speak very scary to be honest i believe they had 570 people on it it was brought to my attention that a bot may have created it i have no idea what that even is but some of the people that signed up

153i don't know if they even knew they signed up but um i can tell read you some of the names of the people that signed up i won't read anybody's real names because that might be i wanted to ask the solicitor if that was allowed to say some of the real names that signed up but we have george glass monica lewinsky joe poopypants biden let's go brandon liz smells santa crumpus demo democrats trump won and i farted so that's just an example of some of what goes on so yes i am in favor and i remember when i used to speak sometimes it wasn't quite enough time so somebody else would continue your speech i'm sure people will will speak as they see fit we also receive emails some of you send them directly to

154our names and some send to the information the board which i think that has increased communication because some people it's easier for them to just email that way so i think we've tried to get everyone fair time to speak any other comments yes mr young so for for 903 and the timing for the changes i i just i haven't heard anything that that would cause me to vote in favor of a policy change for nine or three i don't think that a change from four minutes to three minutes would have any impact on any type of bot activity sophomore naming convention of who is signed up to speak because the uh i don't want to call any of those names out but the uh that person is not going to show up to speak so

155they they wouldn't be under a time limit clock so for me i i don't think it's appropriate um to vote on a policy change for nine or three um i will also add one of the reasons oh i'm sorry mr rocco you can go first i just wanted to add that um some districts also cut it off like they say we're only going to allow one hour and we have never done that and i i don't want to ever do that i think it is important that everyone gets to say say their piece um so when we talk about other districts doing this or that that is something other districts do which is allowed or they wouldn't do it but we we do not do that miss aubry larson is so yeah i a few

156years ago was the chair of the policy committee um when we amended the policy to go to four minutes for courtesy of the floor in public comment um but i will say that things have changed dramatically in the last few years that i've been on the board um things that i've seen in the last couple of years that i never thought that i would have seen um specifically behavior that i i experienced personally um the emails that i get that are threatening the the fact that i have to have security walk me to my car after a meeting um the actual threats that have come at the podium so yeah i think that it is an appropriate time to reconsider how we are getting public comment there is no shortage of ways for us to

157get feedback from the public i get it all the time i've gotten phone calls at 11 30 at night so there's plenty of ways that people have found to reach out and share their comments with the board um i think reducing it by one minute to to be more in line with what other districts are doing um it's a a very unusual time to be on the school board and what we're seeing here in methachton is what we're seeing across the country and i don't know that this will make a difference but i can't help but think that it will help that's rocco yeah i you know i tend to agree with mr winters um i i can't approve the way this is written right now so i can't i won't be voting for this

158to move forward based on the time change and i time decrease i should say i feel like the same concerns that or some of the same things that um that mr young had said while he was speaking around the bot and and these trivial names and things like this i don't think decreasing the time will change my concern with this is if if we want to be in line with other districts too the other piece i have is most other districts allow comment from home for their board meetings so by decreasing time and not changing other avenues i just can't stand behind it so i will vote no are there comments how many other districts um do allow for comments from home at the legislative meeting there were i'll have to check my notes and

159i can get back to you but on that particular call i believe there were six out of about nine of us that were on that meeting so i can check but quite a few um there were quite a few i think it on that person now not every district was on that call because people don't make every meeting but it was only met's acting and one other school that didn't okay because i think it's also um worth looking at whether or not they have other limits on their their speaking time because i know there's some districts for example that limit it to one hour of public comment and or the first x number of people that show up for a meeting which is not something that i would want to see us do here because

160then you have people you know camping out or you know like people who have other commitments or work schedules that prevent them from getting to the meeting before it starts would be excluded from public comments so i think it's worth noting that there are other things that districts are doing that we wouldn't want to necessarily do and i think that we we should look into other ways to get public comment um but i know we've had some technological issues i guess with getting the the virtual platform and the hybrid experience going here yeah i i can appreciate that there are other avenues in your rights some did mention you know they only allow for a certain time some of them allow folks to call in some of them will read questions that were sent ahead

161of time so there are different avenues it was just myth acting in one other school on that particular call that didn't allow it um and that i do feel that just in this particular case you know i i can't vote yes i i don't want to sway the conversation one way or another but i think our solicitor made a simple comment to to you to suggest that it sounds like all the concern is is that we're hearing right now is about the time limit and maybe some other things if that is the major concern uh some of the other matters that were changed in the policy are valuable uh if they're not a problem for members of the board so please know that um you know if you so choose to uh you can make

162a a motion to amend that and then revisit as a policy committee those other pieces if that's in fact what you want to do other comments is cancer i always said the wrong i i mean i i am not in favor i i do think we should amend the motion and with removal of the time limit discussion only because we are coming from a pandemic as we could see we've got more people involved here they want to be heard i understand this is our this is what we're here for hours longs is what it is just we have to be open to everybody speaking and we believed in it i did four years ago to increase open communication and transparency and no matter what whether we like to hear what we some things we like

163to hear some things we don't it's about being open and listening to everybody taking back the information and and and making the right motions forward so i am not in favor for reduction at this time this is not the right time to do this it's just not so so i don't know what kind of motion we need to do but it's just my thoughts sure so miss uh can't grow it my interpretation is you're making a motion to approve the second reading as listed with an amendment uh from the change from four minutes yes to amend it to not include the change from four minutes to three minutes that it would the changes as presented would be approved but not the change from four minutes to three minutes correct yes that is correct is there

164a second mr winter second so you can now have a discussion as a board on the proposed amendment which is the amendment um is to approve the second reading changes as listed in the document with the exception of the time limit will remain at four minutes instead of moving to three minutes um after you have discussion on that amendment you'll vote on the amendment and then we'll go from there samira i would just as the policy chair i don't know if you have any any thoughts i i i'm open to hearing everybody's but i would like to hear yours as the chair of policy no problem so 903 came up to policy just because as mr summers said this was part of a i guess part of a court proceeding right this is how we

165landed with 903 while reviewing 903 we looked at the time also right because now we're looking at the policy in entirety when we looked at this we looked and mr andrews provided us with data that he pulled together in reference to what other school districts are doing and that same information was reviewed at policy committee also just in reference to what other school districts doing when it comes to comments right we currently have it where we start off our meeting with as we have it today we start out up our meeting with um taking meeting taking public comment on board action items and then we finish off our meeting again with um courtesy of the floor when we have our regular work um meeting our regular board meetings one of the things to know some

166while some school districts may have five minutes that someone can talk they they have five full minutes we're given when we do the two times last to speak a total of eight minutes so with within that we saw there were variances as far as how how much time is allotted to each speaker we've been on calls where our public comments have gone maybe two hours maybe longer and it and it's all valuable feedback but we also know that there's times that you can get your point in a certain amount of time and people yield their time or as we see today people stand up at the podium and waiting for responses where we have a certain format that we provide those responses to so with that said we looked at the policy and this is

167a recommendation of the policy committee is to amend the time to three minutes with leaving it that on it on a regular board meeting you still have time to speak on the action items and still have courtesy of the floor and i don't know if kyle if you happen to have the information how many and we looked at this as far as districts that have the five minutes are they getting two times fast to speak uh i can't speak to i believe that some of them may have two time slots i did uh i'm certainly aware of the handout that was provided to the board i did review the information i also reviewed both the policies as well as the actual agendas from other board meetings because there are times where a policy may have

168a certain time limit but the district on their agenda utilizes something different so there's there's it's not entirely easy to see exactly what every district does but just in terms of the review that i did there were there's one district in the county these are montgomery county districts one district that had a two minute limit 13 districts that had a three minute limit two districts that had a four minute limit and there were five districts that had a five minute limit and i i did note that three of those five districts did by their policy allow the board president or the overall board to reduce the amount of time uh per speaker at their discretion at any meeting and that information was contained within a memo that was distributed to the board thank you and

169so with that i don't think i mean from what i'm hearing hear from board members it don't seem like a lot of people maybe some are concerned with the time as far as cutting it down from three minutes to four minutes but i'm also hearing where board members will prefer to have an option for those that are unable to attend meetings providing an option for people to call in i've watched some board meetings where people are able to participate virtually and it seems like that's something that's being asked regardless where that ends up or or not and that could be up for discussion at a different time if that's some another option we want to explore currently what we have is 903 as it is is we have to proceed with the changes on this

170policy whether we amend the time or we make the motion to amend amended based on the time reference but we still have to move with the proposed changes of that policy just because there is legal action on this policy any other discussions on this amended motion this is the amended motion to keep the time at four minutes is that correct uh it's the emotion to amend the emotion to amend sorry the motion to amend policy 903 to keep it four minutes okay any further discussion on that okay so we're go ahead sure so a yes vote on the motion will change the attached policy that's being presented from three minutes back to four minutes so if if you as a board member want it to remain at four minutes uh your vote will be a

171yay if you wish to move forward with the proposal of three minutes you will vote no on this motion to amend okay all in favor of the motion to amend to four minutes the time all in favor there's four do i need to roll call no okay all opposed to that motion to amend five thank you that does not pass okay so now if there's any further discussion on 903 as presented you can certainly entertain that if there's no further discussion you can move forward with the vote on the second reading as presented of 903. okay anything else in the second reading as presented but kyle now our answers are inverted that's correct so the proposed policy does include a revision from four minutes to three minutes so if if you were in favor of

172that as well as the other changes to 903 uh your answer will be your vote will be yay if you're uh opposed to the proposed uh policy you'll vote no okay so this is to approve policy 903 as presented in the agenda all in favor opposed okay that does pass five to four thank you mr summers for walking us through that okay next we have other doctors irby yes under other we have gifts and donations donations as presented there trips uh we have the uh 2022-23 school calendar dr walsh it looks like he's coming down and then before before he speaks we also have the 2022 graduation date under other area dr walsh thank you dr zurby good evening everyone the administration is seeking approval on the proposed 22 23 instructional calendar as attached a

173few highlights as discussed last week the first day of school for grades 1 through 12 will be tuesday august 30th as well as the kindergarten orientation on that same day teacher preparation in service will occur the week before on august 24th and august 25th additionally there will be an in-service day for k-12 staff on monday october 10th to establish beginning of your goal setting act 13 requirements safe school tasks as well as professional development also shared last week the administration will be moving parent-teacher conferences up by two weeks to november 7th and 8th for grades k-8 this will take place two weeks earlier in order to provide proactive communication such as fall benchmark data as well as how the students are adjusting to their new teacher in class as well as progressing socially and emotionally

174this supports the mtss model by early parental engagement for all students the elementary principals in the curriculum office will be providing professional development for staff on topics to focus on during those conferences in addition wednesday november 23rd is now an inclement weather makeup day finally the last day of school is tentatively scheduled for wednesday june 14th thank you okay thank you may i have a motion or does anyone want to take anything under others separately first okay may i have a motion to approve all items listed under other as presented ms cancro to have a second mr winters thank you any discussion ms rocco yeah i you know i did struggle with this one um and i just wanted to to talk around a little bit of the thought process around the calendar change and

175at the work session um we did have an opportunity to follow up with uh one of the educators and um that that offered to talk with any board members that have questions and i did that i just i do struggle by moving it up two weeks because i do know that there is a burden that comes with that however with the early intervention of our students um i i just i feel that that's so important to have that sooner um especially when we are looking you know at trimesters which these little ones are on and and i just you know based on i really gave it a lot of thought and i'm supportive of the change because i i just feel that some of those conversations need need to happen sooner so i don't want

176to allude to the fact that there wasn't thought given to this decision um but you know i ultimately do favor the the calendar change other comments miss purdue so dr walsh when we reviewed the calendar at education and similar to mrs rocco i talked to some of our educators also just because when we have educators on the call late at night waiting to provide input to the board i i always worry about that right just because i feel like we always need to go to our stakeholders and make sure we're getting the right input from them and whenever that happened i'm like did we miss something did we check with the you know right people and i think we ask you that all the time education did we check and i believe you provided this

177to the mea to look at it per se just to make sure and i think like what they said was that just to make sure everything was okay in reference to the union rules and everything one of the things that came out of my conversation with our teachers is just making sure that with this move with moving it up two weeks ahead of time would they have what they need to in order to ensure that they're having useful and meaningful conversation with parents right and so i think in your email you know that the building principles will make sure and i just want to know what what will we have because i'm trying to think about the two-week move and is it is it is it not enough time for our teachers to have enough

178information to be able to provide parents the information that's needed and then also what support do we have in place for our teachers in order to meet this new timeline sure i can i can answer as many of those questions as i can um first of all this is uh uh in support of our mtss model early parental engagement that's a key component for this other districts that do use the november 7th and 8th have had great success with the trimester schedule not all the districts are on a trimester schedule so communication early and often it also is focusing less on academic progress at that time of year because it is the 45th day of school and more about adjustments the feedback that we got from some of our administrators is that early communication was

179shared with them that's essential so it is more about sharing fall benchmark data some things will also be shared we'll be talking about how goal setting will take place um today was an example there were parent-teacher conferences today for grades k-8 so it really talks about the continuum of progression as the year goes on so the november focus should be all about how the students are adjusting socially and emotionally when we look at characteristics of a successful learner that's the key component for this fall a lot of parents are asking for less about academics more about how's my kid adjusting to the teacher to their friends are they getting along with others there's anything i need to be aware of and i don't think anyone will argue the case of early intervention and early communication

180for all students not just struggling students when is the fall benchmark data usually conducted and compiled usually late september early october is is the past practice and that's something we're looking at for next year as well first six weeks of school we usually gather the data okay and then when we talk about i guess helping our teachers adjust right because one of the things we said this year was that we were going to limit introduction of any anything new when we think about going forward and i know the question was asked last week is this something that we can push to another year also in speaking to some educators i think they feel like this timeline probably it's not attainable whether we waited till next year to do it or not and i guess in

181knowing that we'll get the full benchmark data by early by you said september right so maybe okay so october time frame when when will we have time when in your i guess in your discussion with the building principles when will we be getting our teachers ready to have these discussions in november and what will we change from the discussions that we currently have now later in november good question so if you notice from the proposed change this is new to our district as well the october 10th in service day will be an opportunity by that point much of the benchmark testing will be completed and we have time allocated for principals to have those discussions on looking at student benchmark data and having our data meetings to prepare students for their goals which can be

182shared a month later at the insert at the parent-teacher conferences the only thing i wanted to mention was i wanted to clarify some of the things that i said i said similar to what people already said after reading the comments about the calendar i'm not going to get into them but some people said x some people said why some people said z and um then i also spoke to people and what i had stated was originally when we switched the report cards for k-4 there was discussion of pushing it back and i i was i respect that later discussion the decision was made to move them forward so what my suggestion was whether it was good or bad was a compromise of if we try it this year and this calendar is approved could we

183please get feedback as to if it was successful or not successful and who you know what it's not necessarily that it has to always be cater for you know we do things differently sometimes so that we look at it again for the next year and when i had suggest one thing that came out of my conversations with educators was it's always you know talk to us whatever and what i had said talk to the teachers i did not mean of course as uh miss purdue said we want our stakeholders around what i was saying is now that you're here is it a year a tiny bit less or a year a tiny bit more okay just to to um i know now that mr regina is in his position he's out and about a lot

184you know is to go out and about now that you've been here more than a year to talk to the teachers that's what i meant not not talk to them you know after a decision is made that's not kind of what i meant i think that's how it came across so i will support this i think change is can be good and change can be bad so i support this with some hesitation and let's see how it goes other comments on this okay seeing none um [Music] all in favor of everything listed under other anybody opposed okay that's 9-0 thank you thank you okay next we have um dates for board members calendars please note future board meeting dates on our agenda and also they're posted on the district website um before we get to

185old and new business and consultation with the board vice president we are going to just briefly take a quick minute recess to stretch our legs coming back at 1001 sorry 9 15 10 o'clock 10 o'clock thank you [Music] all right we're ready to resume the meeting um next we have any old or new business from board members okay now it's time for courtesy of the floor the board of school directors will now provide opportunity for residents to make comment on matters that are or may be before the board the board asks that you keep your comments to are we still four three three minutes or less the board of school directors may choose to respond to matters following the conclusion of the comments please state your name and municipality amy sorello lower providence the unbecoming

186conduct of a couple of board members during the virtual meeting last week was a disgrace one member didn't even have the common courtesy to stay on camera when certain parents and community members were speaking during public comment it's much easier to hide behind your mask and hide your disgust behind it isn't it another board member and her spouse seemed to have an on-camera celebration at the expense of a community member as an educator in a neighboring district i wonder how your students parents will react to your childlike antics you should both be embarrassed by your conduct and if you aren't embarrassed don't worry i'm embarrassed for the both of you grow up and show some respect grow up and show some respect for the position to which you were elected and to the parents and

187community members of the methachton school district and dr zerby what you said about the district numbers are not true the positivity rates that are listed on the montgomery county coveted hub site are per 100 000 so we only have approximately 36 500 residents combined in lower providence in warcester the positivity rate the positivity numbers excuse me over the past 30 days was 377 in lower providence in worcester that was 276 positives in lower providence for the last 30 days and 101 in warcester for the last 30 days that's a one percent positivity rate with the seven total cases in our methachton school district buildings out of approximately five thousand plus students and teachers that's point one four percent how can you say that the district is still in high transmission the district numbers you receive

188are not accurate you are continuing to force max on our children based on false information someone should go to the monco covid hub at moncopa.org and look at the available data for instance the week ending 217 22 the positivity rate in warchester was 154 per 100 000. there are only 10 100 residents in worcester so you can't go by the 154 positive cases per 100 000 you would have to multiply 154 by 0.10 which is 10 because 10 of 100 000 is 10 000 and that puts you at 1.54 positivity so none of the numbers that you're getting for the for the district are correct um our county and district numbers are under the 10 threshold the district has been around 1 for the past month please do the right thing and consider the reasoning

189i just gave you our children should not be required to wear masks any longer the criteria you voted on has been met [Applause] joe bickleman audubon section of lower providence i want to talk about the the water pressure sprinkler system again you know this is 263 000 if you go back to the design phase as an architect and you're designing that you're going to say what's the water pressure call up get the water pressure or the flow okay they don't get it at the time of the design phase two years ago hey we need to put an alternate for a water tank in the bid okay two years ago we need to put an alternate before we go out to bid so that we can get some savings on a contingency if we don't get

190the water flow and the pressure two years ago okay i don't remember this problem being discussed from two years ago throughout the facilities meetings it just came about what two or three months ago okay so you need to put you need to realize what happened here you know somebody screwed up at the design level okay because they couldn't get the water pressure so put an alternate in two years ago the other thing i want to talk about is the arrowhead school sending area the building is being built for 625 kids there's 414 kids in there when my kids went to audubon and they closed my kids when autobahn closed for renovations in 1990 they went to arrowhead now i live right below mill grove off of egypt road okay so i'm wondering when the new

191arrowhead opens are you going to adjust the sending areas to pull in the residents from uh egypt road going from the perky omen creek up egypt road to make a right on paulings and down paulings to encompass that area which would be sending mill grove residents casselberry residents colony arm residents and people down pauling's road that section to arrowhead to fill up that arrowhead school that's going to be under utilized and this will take the heat off of the woodland school because that's what happened when audubon closed he pulled in all that section up to audubon i mean up to arrowhead so i think you should do that the other thing uh i learned mr winters this has to do with your comment i i had no idea it was so uh profane and how

192it was done until uh dr malik brought it out from and it's in a transcript so i don't know what happened but you did apologize but you said that wasn't who you were okay and uh i used to watch a lot of candid camera and when they got caught they never said that's not who i am you know people on canon camera you know that was who they were so i was just appalled by that and disappointed and i'm very disappointed you lowered the time from four minutes to three minutes all this tape and everything doesn't look good the red velvet rope tour doesn't look good it looks like you're going to the club you know it just doesn't look good it's part of your problem and remember you're the boss not dr zurby all

193right thank you [Applause] jessica bradbury lower providence township can you confirm for the us this evening that there was a separate viewing area available for members of the public to observe and make comment if they chose to sit outside of this auditorium i thank you for making that possible because you have shown that it is possible to have a hybrid meeting with engagement from the public that's not physically present and i'm certain that there are creative ways to enable that hybrid meeting format for both committee and board meetings going forward choice all we have ever asked for from day one is choice i would like to ask you mr almond and you dr zurby to provide us with more information on why you believe you have the authority to mandate universal masking the pennsylvania supreme

194court has overturned the statewide mass mandate because the secretary of health does not have that authority nor do you montgomery county has confirmed that there is no mandate imposed by the county so tell us the statutory section that you feel grants you this authority while some children may tolerate the masks or may not speak out against them many students are and continue to suffer they're being victimized every day by this universal mandate and yet rather than recognize the damage you're causing you're telling these young victims that their feelings are wrong you refuse to acknowledge the trauma and harm caused by two years of unnecessary masking mandates and quarantine of healthy children reading recent guidance suggests that one way masking is effective and that protects the person that chooses to wear the mask do you support

195the statement my body my choice miss drummond if you do then how can you continue to enforce universal mass mandates overriding the right of a child to make the choice for their body the science has evolved and the guidance has changed we keep hearing that a few people say that we're the loud but vocal minority so let's let's gather some data survey the parents of methactin and find out how the majority feels that is your role to listen to all of the people we haven't been heard for close to two years and today we stand before you and say enough is enough please free the smiles of our children [Music] anybody else for courtesy of the floor emily spence in lower providence township as already stated but we should all hear it again we have

19653 cases in lower providence in worcester out of a combined population of 36 000 people that is 0.14 percent of our population because of 0.14 percent we are masking 4 500 students all day long if parents want to protect their children against kova by wearing a mask we are not asking for that right to be taken away it is our job and our right as parents to make those choices but some people feeling uncomfortable or unsafe should not cancel the ability for others to go mask free as a special education teacher i implement reasonable accommodations to students all day long mandatory masking of 4 500 students is an unreasonable accommodation for the few who still want their children in masks on january 19th vinay prasad associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the university of

197california wrote an article masking is now little more than an appealing delusion it arms us with a visible symbol that communicates our commitment to minimizing the pandemic's damage it makes some of us feel empowered by giving us something that we can do in the face of a largely invisible threat to a certain extent that is understandable but most of the masks worn by kids have likely done nothing to change the velocity or trajectory of the virus but the loss to children remains difficult to capture in hard data but will likely become clear in the years to come less forgivable though is the decision we have made as a society to shift the anxieties of adults onto the youngest members of our society who count on us to defend our in their interests before our own

198when the history books are written we will not look wise or kind for insisting that kids and toddlers wear masks for hours on end year after year without ever testing this policy with controlled trials we will look ignorant cruel fearful and cowardly freedom does not come with conditions it should not depend on an arbitrary metric given by mcdactin or cdc or montgomery county we the parents and community of nethackton come here with the belief that if our elected officials were presented with public opinion with research information prevent presented rationally we would be heard and considered in the decision-making process however meeting after meeting month after month we plead our cases only to be presented with body language from the board that conveys the clear message that listening to the concerns of parents is nothing more

199than a nuisance all we ask is that you allow us to decide what is right for our own children to allow us the freedom to make the choice and allow us to unmask our children thank you [Applause] anybody else for courtesy of the floor [Music] jim alec warcester um it's amazing to me that your your default position seems always to go to retribution and punishment you know we got punished tonight you know down to three minutes okay but you know you don't realize what it's like for us to listen to some of you up there for three and a half hours you know actually i'm gonna take a dvd of the meeting and send it to the cia and they could use it as a form of torture so so i understand your pspa training

200alerted you to a fact in resident as being a problem now is this the same organization who wrote to the doj complaining about moms is that the organization we're talking about because they don't really have any credibility i heard somebody talk about behavior you know audience behavior and i got security and i'm afraid you know you guys don't remember when you were in the audience screaming and yelling at the audubon hearings i had people calling me an mfr telling me to sit down threatening me you know it was your group so i think you know don't be hypocritical when it comes to that stuff um you love to enforce board policy but you continually forget that it's got to be enforced equally and i believe that's covered by the 14th amendment kyle you can look

201that one up have you noticed that care supporters your supporters have come to this microphone and attacked other members of the public why is that i mean you know do you agree with that tactic attacking public uh you know members of the public you know if you if you're all for that then sure well i'll start doing the same thing um did anybody read the recent cdc study on masking it seems that you guys up front are putting us at risk with your paper and cloth masks because the cdc said they don't work all right what they told you to do is put a well-fitted n95 mask on so i expect the next meeting since you guys are so masked gung-ho to bring in your well-fitted n95 mask and make sure it's tight enough where

202it makes a mark on your face do that for three hours and we'll talk about mess again um and any of you board members attend the recent apex awards i know you did miss cantrell and a few other people did guess what happened oh dave you were there too i got pictures of you without a mask the whole room full of people at the presidential caterers and this is like six months ago no masks everybody's walking around with that mess but what you do is you make the kids suffer so you got the elites drinking and eating and you got the kids wearing a mask it is shameful thank you [Music] [Applause] i'm much shorter uh joe rittenhouse lower providence so i've got three things one is very quick um this past week the youtube

203channel came down uh because of terms of violation said it was terminated by youtube this was literally the first comment i brought up over a year ago about this it's a very easy easy fix again there are people in this community willing to help just ask and people will do things to help you guys secondly i'll talk about mass but this applies to it um i don't have kids in this district i want to i really do i want to bring my kids up in this district this is where i want to live for the rest of my life this has been a great community i stand up here against mass because of the principle of the thing again like was brought up we've seen all of you in public situations without mass while our

204students are masked we've seen the students uh students on social media walking around the halls without masks there's pictures of teachers in their classrooms without masks online we know this exists so what it really comes down to is this does not feel like it's about mitigating covet and i know that because again i remember it was six feet for the longest time now it's i guess 60 feet but let's curl you know put all the social distancing out the window throw all of us in together to protect us you guys and to protect other people who can't be bothered to protect themselves i mean it sounds i want to believe that this isn't the case considering all the dei talk but it feels like all we're pushing is well you know we'll you guys can

205sit there but we'll keep you separate you know but you can still come separate but equal that's what we're really advocating for as care separate but equal i i that's it's gone beyond this um and finally to miss cancer's point and i i think that this is literally the heart of everything that we've been talking about the right to know the three minutes everything like that it really is you guys the trust and not a matter of uh oh you know things weren't said in a board meeting and now people are filing frivolous right to no request it's just the attitude it's just the personality it's the inability to say i don't agree with a lot of you but i assume these like decent people want to work together and like there are people here

206who offer to help you there are people here who want to bring in suggestions you bring data but it constantly feels like the issue is not some big policy change we have to have a committee meeting it's just the personal attitudes of the people on the board who four years ago decide hey we're going to increase the amount of time because we want to hear from the public and now four years later they cut it away you've got a lot of trust to make up in a year and a half um i don't know if you can do it i i hope you i hope you can but truthfully that would be that's 99 of all the problems is just the simple things nobody trusts you that's it thank you [Applause] good evening kathy opperman

207worcester township i'm a grandmother of a first grader and an eighth grader and um i'm sorry ms reese that you're scared and i'm sorry that you're threatened that shouldn't happen but our children have been scared for two years my grandson is afraid to put his mask even a little bit below his nose he's afraid and he was kindergarten and first grade and he's had to live like this the kids should not be scared that they're going to get other people sick if we're looking at the township numbers for worcester and lower providence i would ask that you would take out the three assisted livings because the last time i checked 65 percent of cases in all of pennsylvania were from assisted living's or the vet veterans home so if we're using their numbers they have

208a whole covet ward at shenandoah where a friend of mine works so i don't think we're really looking at what the cases are a few years ago about 10 years ago i had my first taste of politics i had to go to washington d.c and speak to a senator on a real estate matter and it was a another co-worker of mine and at the end he was getting called down to vote on the floor and i said senator can i ask you a question when you go downstairs to vote are you voting for what your constituents say are you voting for what you feel and he said oh i vote for what i feel and i walked out of there so dejected that that's how our government is run and i feel here that that's

209what's happening you're not listening to the constituents and to whoever said it before survey the parents talk to the kids people are coming i came to my first meeting in october and i was actually appalled i was like oh my gosh why is there a division why is there such nastiness why are board members looking down the whole time that certain people talk and they don't even give eye contact i was appalled and and i was i was really shocked that that was what it was so i have a minute back and i'm gonna start for sheila because she prepared four minutes and now she doesn't get four minutes so i'm going to start for her with my minute this is for sheila smith according to guidelines in the pa sunshine act answering questions can

210demonstrate a commitment to helping constituents and in many cases answering questions informally at a public meeting can reduce future requests under the right to know law which saves time and money for both the agency and the commentator slash requester mr regina stated the majority of the questions asked during the board meeting do not turn into right to know how do i know that statement is accurate where is the data to back up this statement it appears the only way to get answers is to file a right to no request i am still waiting for responses this is sheila from eight emails going back to last august and questions i have asked at past board meetings so the statements made about numerous channels are simply false yet again you did not answer any of my questions

211i raised tonight the total number and types of requests have not been provided sheila come on finish right there you go where am i yeah okay sorry wait am i supposed to say my name and you start over okay all right i'm gonna have to be okay okay all right sheila smith lower providence i am greatly disturbed that you are trying to deflect the mismanagement of right to know on a community member rather than take accountability i am also concerned about the following board violations board violation 0 801 public records the board shall designate an open record officer who shall maintain a log of all record requests and their disposition according to a right to know filed last year the district denied the request stating the log does not exist that's in violation ensure district

212staff are trained to perform beside john job functions relative to requests for access to rex records based on cycle time lack of compliance with the five-day rule and number of appeals lost it is very um apparent that the staff is not appropriately trained violations around board policy zero one one clearly communicate promote open honest respectful dialogue amount among board members staff and community and encourage input from school community the board has currently taken action has taken action to limit limit public comment emails are not acknowledged or addressed i also encourage purdue kim reese to review past board meetings to reflect on their responses tone facial expressions and gestures so the board does not create an inclusive environment where all are all able to be their authentic selves and share their concerns what will the board

213do to address these psychological safety concerns you have an ethical obligation to create an environment where community members oh crap community members are not embarrassed rejected or to misdismissed when speaking up plan thoroughly adopt and implement a collaborative and comprehensive planning process including regular reviews the current comprehensive planning process is being mismanaged i would like to understand the district's internal audit practices to examine how board policies are being administered to evaluate the compliance and efficacy excuse me efficiency this would provide if you provide an independent objective evaluation by bringing a systematic disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management control and government processes leaders lead um responsibly so i encourage care board members to review past board meetings and clearly highlight the disrespect shown to newly elected heart candidates and community members

214act ethically never use the position for improper benefit to serve others miss purdue used her position on the board to benefit the care candidates in the november 2021 elections i am also concerned about the following misrepresentation of the dni dei kim information that was utilized to inform dei actions the that where is the unbiased verifiable credible data utilized to make an educated informed decision i hear this is much needed where is the data to back up these state statements opinions are not facts again for your comments [Music] [Applause] uh brian earnshaw lower providence um regarding right to no requests uh the reason i've filed writing rugrats in the past is because i don't get answers at these meetings um or in responses to uh emails that i have sent to the board and the end

215of the administration in the past i came to work i talked spoke at the work session last week hoping to answer some questions but they weren't so i had to ask them again tonight and as far as having the opportunity to speak at courtesy to floor and during public comment on board action items the topics i can comment on are limited during public comment on board action items if it's not a board action item um i would get shut down so about this opportunity of having to speak for four minutes before and four minutes at the end that's not really relevant um that's why it's important to answer questions also is that i got some responses tonight some of my questions i asked before you voted on various matters but i had no chance for

216follow-up questions and i had several but now the point is moot i mean you provided some sort of explanation about the change from four to three but it didn't hold water in my mind i had no chance to ask a follow-up question if you were to answer my question from last week i could ask those follow-up questions tonight okay i hope with this change of three minutes that three minutes gets equally enforced i did notice one instance last week and i've had them before that members of the public who you tend to agree with are allowed to speak beyond the established time limit there were there was one member of the public that spoke for nearly four and a half minutes um and as far as enforcing policies i think there must be some consistency

217um policy 903 states all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer at last week's virtual meeting there were members of the public directing comments directly to ms rocco and mr young with no interruption at all from the board president okay so i'm hoping that everything gets enforced equally and i really don't understand how what policies get it get enforced and which ones do which ones do not last week's mass required um i assume they're still tonight um i actually came to this meeting late because i watched the meeting online at the beginning to see if the meeting will be shut down see if it may worry sends me to come over so i saw that people in the house were not wearing masks so i came to the meeting so that's one policy for

218some reason not being forced tonight another policy relating to this auditorium i took a picture of the sign coming in no food or drink permitted in the auditorium at any time thank you like 12 water bottles at the front table so there's a policy consistency enforcement that needs to be addressed and i hope it does thanks [Applause] he's a little taller than me hi my name is shannon chase and i live in lowell providence i have a junior and a freshman at nebachton first of all i'd like to thank you those of you who have endured the last year and a half to two years of harassment and hateful comments through and still continue to do your job because you know as elected officials this position is about the children not your political views or

219anything else and i appreciate that and i commend you for it as a board i'm sure you know you are fully aware or at least i hope you are that you are elected to follow and carry out all policies not that policies that are in place not just and i in fact size the word are not just the ones you like or that you that you put in place all of the policies it is your elected job and responsibility to adhere to the policies not condone the breaking of those rules and the policies it's pretty simple really it doesn't matter what you or i believe the policies here are in place you must follow what you agreed upon it matters what policies are here what the policies are and it's your job to uphold them

220until they are changed [Music] i'm sorry i just need to ask if we could please keep the chatter in the audience down because it's very difficult to hear speakers at the podium please state your name in municipality oh i thought she was gonna speak you good okay uh john carr worcester um i would yeah i would piggyback off what she just said i would just say change the changer change your opinions on some of this stuff none of my kids go here uh i lost my family all four kids uh we did the palps we saw a problem there we ended up putting them into a christian school and sacrificed making some sacrifices as a family it was our choice we would love to be able to return to myth acton um they're part of

221the the all the athletics big athlete and um hopefully sometime soon we can get back to that i'm going to take a different approach look at this as a business as a former educator now in business i look at the grassroots i heard a woman say that earlier and i say the grassroots are the students and when you look at business you look at assets and liabilities uh i think our students are the biggest asset that that we have um moving upward we have our teachers and their assets as long as they have a great work environment and they're passionate about teaching because as we know some uh might not be leaving all their political views um left or right uh and or pronouns at the door before they step through the the building the

222school board right now i look at the school board and and this isn't a personal attack on any of you as a liability and here's why because in an organization you have to you don't have to like each other but you need to get along at least perceive that to to the public at least show that you know you can play nice in the sandbox and uh you know since the previous election and the new people have come in you haven't really quite shown that and and i would say that you should strive to do a little bit better with that [Music] the superintendent um dr zerby i i don't know where you stand on some things um i know that you know there's a board and there's you but i would say that from

223my understanding the superintendent's the head of all the schools and um you should facilitate that and speak to where you see that fit and i i don't i don't feel that from you all the time i don't feel like i feel like the board is is what they say goes and and other than miss reece i don't think any of them are educators um so my focus is always on the kids and my again my kids don't go here but um in wrapping up i feel like this is a netflix series season four that i'm going to and uh i just think it's absolutely crazy with seven cases that the kids are still math thank you comments [Applause] anybody else for courtesy of the floor good evening katie lee lower providence i didn't really plan

224to speak tonight i have two things i just want to say quickly number one i wanted to voice dr roberts presenting the awards to arrowhead arrowhead in my opinion is the diamond of mafacton school district we love it from dr roberts down for the teachers everyone there is amazing the families the sense of community it's the most amazing school um so i did want to recognize that i appreciate those awards that were handed out today um the next thing i did want to say though of course miss aubry larceny is allowed to go through the database and hand pick the most confusing right to know request she can find i know personally last week i filed a right to no request for simple data points that i'm sure any of you know off the top

225of your head dr zerby especially and of course i got the email that it was delayed 30 day delay and i probably will never get a response i was asking for how many buildings are there i was asking for six numbers that's it six numbers and i will never see that information so i do not think that it is all exactly as miss aubry larceny's painted it i think you should have someone look at it outside of the board with an unbiased opinion i think it is about transparency and you showed your cowardice as a board tonight voting from four to three minutes so i think it is a board problem i think we don't trust you we don't believe anything you say we don't believe that what you're doing is for the benefit of

226our children thank you [Applause] hello it's very late and i wasn't going to speak but i think the time is right i'm shelley agus i live in lower providence i was very disappointed that dr zaraby and miss purdue and mrs drummond did not talk about your dei coordinator it said here there was going to be a report and i was looking forward to it and i did not hear it i came here for the very first time in oct in september about six months ago and at that time you were speaking about crt and i was very concerned as a former educator and having read a lot and seen a lot it concerns me about what's going on in many schools all over this country and i said that to you and you said no

227we're not teaching crt don't worry about it i said but you're not going to teach it but you're going to bring somebody in called the dei who's going to come in with all kinds of material and they're going to do all kinds of things some of it we're going to like it some of it we're going to be very upset about based upon what i've read and all the connections i have in other schools so i would like and i thought we would have a chance to be on this committee to take a look at this person who you were hiring to see what the duties would be to see what the programs would be and i would like to request that myself as a community person and other community people and parents and i'm

228a parent and grandparent but not from here we need to be part of this because this is touchy touchy stuff and it can be good and it can be terrible so please please include us in looking for this person and let us know what is going to be required and what are the things you're going to be doing with our kids because that's the most important thing thank you [Applause] [Music] anybody else for courtesy of the floor john andrews law of providence i put a lot of effort into making a simple presentation relative to an expensive change order at arrowhead it appears to me that nine despicable people for no reason disagreed with me to the so we're spending over a quarter million dollars in something that would be better at one tenth of that

229price and then the superintendent spoke about the 200 000 gallon water tanks right next door to the school in a non-answer i think the board should have asked what discussion was had with the water company on the issue of water for the sprinklers hardly a trivial issue with regard to uh right to know i put in the right to no request last week to look at the utility drawings for arrowhead i got a 30-day delay response beyond insensitive i find so many problems with this school board that i wonder why out of a lack of respect of the public do they continue in office i am very disgusted and i'm not a not a wild person i'm very disgusted with the performances at these board meetings by directors thank you [Music] [Applause] anybody else for

230courtesy of the floor any other comments from board members um i just want to say to the community members that spoke i can hear your emotion i do care about the children in this district that's why i ran for this position i hear you i have concerns i had to sit through last week's work session with many people of the community questioning why i wasn't concerned for the public safety at last week's meeting because i chose to continue with the meeting in person i was called out by name numerous times as are other board members that sit up here but that's the job i signed up for they didn't scare me i don't feel threatened but i can tell you that that's the job i did or that's the job i signed up to do

231rather i am here to listen and to help serve the community with that said i hear your concerns i am equally concerned that there are seven cases in this district and our kids are masked i've made that clear when i've sat up here and voted for an optional environment what upsets me is that we have tournaments in this building basketball games all kinds of events where people aren't monitored but last week there was plenty of room to distance and i questioned what was different from last week to a previous meeting and i just wanted to know because if we're not going to be consistent then i have an issue with with the why and that's why i asked the question it's not because i want to put anyone in harm's way but we now know

232one way masking works so i just want to tell everyone no matter what your belief is i hear you and that's it any other comments from board members i just wanted um um i'm sure in their 30-day delay they were given an explanation but if you could just explain how the 30-day delay works and and why that's sometimes necessary for the rtk because there was two people i think who brought it up ms reese i i didn't hear the question i apologize um sorry um i just wanted there were two people that brought up the 30-day delay it was probably written in their 30-day delay response but if somebody could either mr regina or yourself explain why there is sometimes a 30-day delay it might depend on what the person asked but if you could

233give just kind of a brief explanation sure sometimes it's retrieving the records that we're looking for misery sometimes depending on what the specific is in a map or a drawing there's some security information in there that we need to make sure that we're looking through and redacting properly so it's not always as simple as finding a document as you know we get requests for that and typically we send the documents to people without even doing the right to know requests so some things just take a little bit we need to take a closer look at them before we produce them any other comments that's kind of no i the only comment i have is because everyone keeps bringing up about me and a picture of the apex i kept my mask on the whole time

234because it was required i took it off at the end of the night when the event was over i did do wrong but i did ask a group of friends that i'm i i support it aim high and i took the mask off so i do apologize you are correct but i did wear it for the whole event so again i apologize that that was put on as cameron social media because you're right it doesn't look good when the kids are mass miss cancro not to i just wanted to say i think there was some confusion part of the apex awards were outside and part were inside so there were many people there because it was not in mythoctin without their masks inside but anybody who was part of mathapton school district when we were

235inside wore them i the other pictures that you may have saw seen were outside that's all we're not arguing mr young and just to continue with what um ms rocco was saying there wasn't a lack of respect for the health and safety plan the priority at least from my perspective was to vote to continue the meeting because we had important business to cover and i didn't feel personally that their their the health and safety of anyone attending here was at risk so i voted along those lines to continue the business that we had at hand and to and to get it done and just to follow up on the being consistent it it is about consistency so if if we allow it one week we don't allow the next week and we have all this

236business to cover of course i'm going to say let's keep let's keep moving so that's it any other comments from the board mr aubry larcenies yes dr zurby could you clarify for us where the percentages that we report on our website are coming from for the um the coveted numbers are we doing calculations or are we just pulling this directly from the county no we we pull it directly from a county uh resource so you know there's no calculations whatsoever the only calculations well the only actual numbers that i deal with is taking the count of of the students inside the building from that i just copied the percentages and the numbers from the county website as as are provided to us every tuesday okay and that's how we've done this since the beginning of

237the pandemic since the beginning of the reporting and the pandemic that's correct okay that's what i thought i just wanted to make sure i clarified because there seemed to be some confusion about that um yeah so this this is exactly why i feel like there's really no winning in our situation right now if i make eye contact i'm not taking notes if i'm taking notes i'm not making eye contact if i smile it was the wrong time to smile if i crossed my legs it was the wrong time to cross my legs and if i don't respond to you then i'm wrong but if i do respond then you start yelling at me so i'm confused as to exactly how i should be behaving because nothing seems to be correct for anyone who has been

238able to make it through this pandemic not feeling at risk that's a privilege because there's many people who have been [Applause] [Music] we've watched science evolve in real time over the course of the last two years okay uh mr german can you help me out here [Music] would you like to keep speaking i i'm gonna ask the audience to kindly allow miss aubry larcenies to state her piece okay well then you know i'm gonna just let the record show that people don't want to hear what i have to say so don't ask questions if you don't want the response i'd like to make a motion to adjourn uh can i get a motion to adjourn a second meeting adjourned stop testing the only way