February 17, 2022 - Methacton School District Work Session Meeting of the Board

001oh uh okay good evening jack how are you i am good sir how are you jack do you mind speaking again i i think i had my speaker off i said i'm good sir how are you i'm great thank you so much uh listen uh i don't know i can't remember if you've been through a virtual meeting with us before but uh when we get to uh guest and scheduled speakers i will be uh you know uh controlling all of the presentations okay and so you just tell me if i need to go to the next slide or however you see fit as you're doing your your show okay okay all right thank you i can just say scroll down to photo okay thanks great good evening everyone i just want to check that i

002can be heard microphones okay thank you good evening everybody hello uh madam president uh i have seven o'clock and um just wanna make sure we're counting everybody here we got one two three four five [Music] six okay i think we have i think we're ready to begin okay thank you um it is seven o'clock on thursday february 7 thursday 17th 2022 we will now resume the recess meeting from tuesday february 15 2022. the following board members are no longer in attendance it looks like mr winters and mr mcginnis are not in attendance and the remaining board members are here um ms kencro has joined us since the last meeting we will now have recognition of guests and scheduled speakers dr zurby thank you madam president uh this evening there's a number of guests and scheduled

003speakers i'm just going to share my screen here for a second on the agenda for tonight we have arrowhead and eagleville construction updates uh jack ayers from vedavias here we'll get him on in just a second dr sergini will be talking about building substitute rate recommendations i'll be sharing a right to know update and recommendations as well as as well as officer of diversity equity inclusion update and recommendations so with that said mr ayers let's let's begin uh with your presentation mr aoes you are muted so we're going to ask you to unmute and then begin speaking thank you all i apologize sorry about that happens to everyone um again my name is jack ayres and i represent vidavia construction management and the mathatten school district uh the current update on the arrowhead elementary school

004project now the the first photo you see it's the building exterior uh the window installation and curtain wall is eighty percent complete metal panel installations are twenty percent complete the rooftop units will be set by crane later this month gas and electric utility service to be installed this month moving to the next scrolling down building the interior the concrete placements are a hundred percent ceramic wall tiling will begin this month uh gypsum wall board hanging and finishing is continuing it's moving right along and the interior wall painting is continuing the building interior mechanical electrical plumbing work uh plumbing and mechanical piping installed and tested at 60 percent hvac ductwork installed and tested at 70 and the cable tray installation has begun there's a lot of that done currently down upcoming work february's last march the

005uh epoxy terrazzo installations will begin starting at the second floor the first deliberate delivery and installation of casework will occur and we're going to start putting it right in the classrooms ceiling grid installations will begin painting to continue including dry fall painting of gym ceiling and the elevator delivery and installation will continue we'll begin rather there's the current budget numbers that we're holding right now and there were a few change orders that were put on the table which are under those budgets uh the the project is is currently on track according to the schedule updates are any questions on arrowhead any questions from members of the board uh miseries i don't know if i should wait till finance um or not but it i have a question on one of the change orders would you

006like me to wait till finance or is now the proper time is it related to the actual finances on the change order or the actual work being done combination go ahead okay sorry i just didn't want to go out of order um we talked at length at property as to why we need um copc 01 the 168 um thousand dollar change order for the pump and i'm i understand completely and we had asked at property to receive a breakdown of the work and we did receive that i see and 11 cents on the change order i see 144 um on the on the breakdown and i'm just concerned about that it says labor 32 860 material 68 538 subcontractor 41 565 and rental equipment 2000. so um i'm assuming material means the actual pump at

00768 000 it's labor it's still i'm sorry that's tank the tank sorry i caught calling it the wrong thing i apologize the the bolted steel 6600 gallon tank is 68 000. so can you explain how much labor and i did ask in an email but i know mr jones is not here so if you don't know the answers if it could be before next week i want to know exactly how much labor that entails like how many days is this tank gonna you know how much and what what the subcontractors why we're giving the subcontractor 41 000 well i don't have a current duration of what it's going to take to put it together however i know there's two labor costs within that one labor cost is to supply and install the tank in place

008they're going to erect the tank bolt it down to the structural concrete foundation the other labor is for all the piping all the copper all the water piping that has to go to the pump which is going to feed the sprinkler system so that is from our mechanical contractor our plumbing contractor okay so the labor is for the actual the labor is for the the tank and the subcontractors for that piping and then the concrete slab we're at the don't exceed 95 000 and please forgive my bluntness but after doing this for a while we know there's an upcharge to public public entities is this a typical cost or is this another up charge like our friend the fuel tank um no it's not a typical cost because uh we don't actually have the detailed

009design yet for the foundation so we're waiting on that to find out exactly what it's going to be but it should not exceed that 95 thousand dollars no no and i want to go back to the 144. what i mean by that is i i do need to know before next week before i officially vote for this how much labor is involved for 32 000 and i and how much for forty one thousand it's just you know we all know change orders happen and and and we expect them and we know why this one happened we need it i can't vote no or the school can't have a sprinkler system that is not my problem but i want the people providing the work to give me more information because it's public money and misery we'll

010make sure that we break out we'll make sure that you get and the rest of the board gets a copy of the of the labor breakout for these two change orders because it's big and then the only other question i have um is the i see a change order the change order it looks like forgive my math it's been a long day but it's like a 20 000 plus difference between what's on the accelerated fire protection um uh information and what's the from with traffs like there's two i know it's traffs and accelerated fires together but there's a 20 000 difference right and the differences of labor labor time between each entity the fire protection contractor he is going to take less time than it is going to take the guys on site to pipe

011it all in and and to answer your other question they are prevailing wage rates so which are which are pretty high understood understood i just need a little bit more information and i okay maybe just a little bit more information because i'd like to know how long this is going to take how many people i want to know what the prevailing wage is whether it's expensive or not um and i do understand it's needed but i just for my own sake it's hard for me to vote yes without a tiny bit more information and i really and maybe i'm overthinking it but i do need and someone can explain it later there is a 20 there is a difference between what's on our agenda and what is on this i will put that together for

012you thank you and thank you again um for um for the awesome tour of arrowhead and all your work and uh we're still crossing our fingers always on time and everything so thank you again you're quite welcome are there any other questions from members of the board on the arrowhead project yeah just just to add add to the request jack when you're breaking out that later it'd be good to understand the separation between design um you know skilled versus non-skilled if there is any some of the nuances that drove that number to 30 000 because when we were doing the tour of the school we talked about the the infrastructure the cabling that was under underneath the existing slab um and then whether or not there's any any uh risk or pushing built into that

01330k estimate and what what percentage that might be for the slab no for the labor yeah but the labors for the tank okay is that what you're asking yeah the the all-in costs we were when we met at the school we talked about the the drill down cost of the architecture versus the actual um work well i can get you to labor on both of those activities and a breakdown of the prevailing wages um the manufacturer's labor he has to he has to submit prevailing wages as well just as long as the contractors do is too so i can break all that down uh and get you a total breakdown of this change order okay are you able to get to the number of resources working the project yeah i can ask for that as

014well thanks any further questions from members of the board before we move on to an eagleville update saying none um jack please move on to the next part of your presentation okay edobel elementary school it's just the uh couple quick photos and and some brief descriptions uh from what you folks know from our last tour we completed the secure entryway on the exterior the new edition interior if we could scroll up hey there you go up up down one i'm sorry yeah that's just a photo of the uh new main office area and it's all coming together and feeling like home for everyone the new edition interior this is just a photo of one completed classroom all cleaned waxed and and ready to go and moving down [Music] this is an interior renovation of an

015existing classroom and how it looked on the tour upcoming work uh the contractors are currently working on punch lists throughout the school mostly on night uh shift continuing the necessary testing and balancing that that's roughly about eighty percent complete now uh we're gonna complete the remaining terrazzo tile at the lobby area once we get the materials in the end of this month uh we're going to complete the remaining wood doors and hardware that shipped on the 15th a couple days ago uh we completed the acoustic acoustical panel ceilings around the unit ventilator shrouds um then the contractors are really working hard to come to complete all punch list items that satisfactory to the owner and the architect and us of course uh we're going to complete all required training and instructions and we're going to

016continue obtaining all the close out documents including warnies o m manuals attic stock etc any other questions on eagleville any questions from members of the board on eagleville not seeing any not seeing any of them by miss purdue no um what what are the items on the punch list uh they vary from you know caulking here and there touch up paint um the the linear metal ceilings uh which those guys are going to be working all day into school tomorrow working on that uh there's mechanical punch list items from the mechanical engineer um that are above ceiling or on the walls and that type of thing electrical plumbing um so and they're getting done so we're going to uh we're going to be able to close this out fairly quick and fairly soon we still

017do have the um just to let you know we still do have the flagpole lights coming and the additional light pole and we will be doing some additional overseeding out front once the spring hits so we're going to see that and mulch it again so we can get some grass coverage thanks jack uh mr any other questions it's a punch list based on um a list provided to you by facilities also based on recommendations from the um building occupants the punch lists were provided by the architect and the engineering firm plus plus we also received uh a list from uh the staff at eagleville as well yes i was wondering okay and fedavia added to the architects list as well in representation for the owner thank you miss purdue uh mr german just regarding the

018floors we talked about those i just want to make sure we're on track to get them get them where they need to be yes we are as soon as we get the materials and we're going to have the manufacturers wrap there and we're going to make sure that everything gets done to everyone's satisfaction okay thank you ms drummond any other questions from mr ayers on eagleville seeing no other questions thank you jack you're welcome to stay on with us uh are you welcome to sign off as you see fit next on the agenda we have dr sugini uh dr sujini is here to talk about the building substitute rate recommendation dr sergini thank you dr zurby good evening everyone and thank you for the opportunity to present to the board substitute teachers are an essential

019component of providing continuity of instruction to our students methachton school district contracts with substitute teacher service sts to provide substitute teachers when the fact and teachers are absent next slide please tonight i come before the board with a recommendation for a pet for a pathway for improvement to address the shortfall of substitute teachers we are experiencing i am recommending that the board take action to increase the pay rate for building substitute teachers who commit to work in our school buildings five days per week every week from 135 dollars per day to 165 dollars per day our goal is to create long-term relationships with our substitute substitute teachers that guarantee them opportunities in our district by providing a pay rate that is competitive in the current supply and demand situation in return this commitment will help

020to provide our students with greater continuity of instruction when our methachton school district teachers are absent next slide please substitute teachers generally can be classified in one of three ways daily substitutes long-term substitutes and building substitutes regardless of designation our substitute teachers in each of these three categories are in the same narrowing pool of teachers from which we are trying to attract our candidates the first substitute designation is those substitute teachers who are daily subs these individuals work on a day-to-day basis and may work some or all of the days in a school week and may work in one or multiple school buildings daily subs usually fill absences of one or two school days with no long-term commitment to a position or to a building several years ago matthachton raised its daily sub rates and

021we continued to be assured by sts that our daily sub rates are on par with the other districts in montgomery county that are serviced by sts with only two of those districts providing the same higher rate for daily sub teachers as they provide for their committed building substitute teachers the pool of available daily substitutes is small and looking to increase rates again within this category of daily substitutes would not bring about any commitment to the district for days worked in a week at a prior board meeting i presented on the second designation of substitutes our long-term substitute teachers long-term substitutes must hold the certification that is specific to the vacant position for which they undertake a greater responsibility in the classroom due to the length of time that the math acting teacher is absent this

022includes lesson planning grading and greater levels of communication with our stakeholders we very much appreciate the flexibility of the board for allowing us to expand the designation of long-term situations from the previous threshold of 45 days of absence to absences of four days or greater i'm happy to report that this change had a significant positive impact on our ability to fill these positions as they arise tonight though i'm here to talk with the board about our third designation of substitute the building substitute building substitutes are individuals who commit to serve in the same building for at least three days of the week we try in this process to honor their requests for the specific building to which they want to be assigned in these positions our building substitutes assume daily teaching position vacancies especially those

023absences created the prior evening or the morning of a school day these individuals can have full teaching credentials or be certified guest teachers through sts our building subs implement the plans created by our methachton school district teachers where they may also supervise our students in the large group areas at nethackton high school in our colon these are short-term daily assignments that provide continuity of instruction to our students increasingly school districts have come to rely on this third designation of substitute because building subs can be relied upon to be in the same school building on a regular basis next slide please when we examine the fill rate for substitute teachers we can see the decrease in our fill rates between the first five full months of the 2019-2020 school year immediately preceding the start of the

024pandemic and the first five months of the current school year the fill rate is the percentage of all of our open positions including both long-term vacancies and daily vacancies for which we were able to fill the position with a substitute teacher from any of the three categories of designation the decrease we see in the numbers this year is primarily attributable to the difficulty that we have filling the day-to-day absence positions that are filled both by daily subs and building subs it is this issue that would best be resolved through the ability to attract and retain building substitute teachers next slide please to address this situation at the start of the school year we sought to secure up to four building subs per building at the high school arcola in skyview and up to three substitutes

025at each of the four k to four elementary buildings at present across all seven school buildings we have ten and a half building substitutes of the twenty four that we sought to secure sds informed us in late january that recently raised higher rates of pay for building substitutes in other neighboring school districts is now providing these districts a competitive edge for attracting the narrowing pool of substitute teachers sts identified that of the nine school districts they service in montgomery county mathactin now pays the lowest rate for the building substitutes with the other higher districts ranging in pay rates between 140 and 170 dollars per day in light of this and in an effort to ensure the continuity of instruction in our buildings i am recommending that the fact an increase from 135 dollars a day

026to 165 dollars per day the rate of pay that we provide to individuals who are willing to make a full commitment to be five day per week every week building substitutes in our school buildings the rate would only be provided to those individuals who commit to a full five-day work week sts has also agreed for the remainder of the school year to reduce by two percent their markup that is charged for for providing building substitutes if this increased pay rate is approved by the board sts will be undertaking a campaign on our behalf to advertise this rate through social media flyers and lawn signs methactin would then follow with our own social media information as well as advertising directly with our home and school associations and through our principal newsletters i would then provide monthly

027updates on the success of this change to the board through the weekly memo with regard to budgetary impact if all 24 building substitute positions are filled the total increase cost to the school district will be approximately 60 thousand dollars for the remainder of the school year based on the number of school days remaining from february 23rd on next slide please we recognize that attracting substitute teachers has become an increasingly difficult prospect for all school districts in addition to this recommendation for attracting building substitutes and the already mentioned change to our long-term substitute designation we have also recruited and trained guest teachers who are individuals with four-year non-education degrees who have become substitutes in our schools one important source of substitute teachers is our pool of recently retired math acting teachers we are exceedingly grateful to

028our retired teachers who currently return to service substitutes and we will be reaching out to our upcoming retirees about opportunities to continue to serve as substitute teachers moving forward we are investigating alternative incentive programs such as referral bonuses and longevity bonuses to attract substitutes we are also working with sts to pursue a new opportunity to certify classroom monitors which is a program created by the commonwealth of pennsylvania in december of 2021. this is similar to the guest teacher program and it further expands the qualifications of individuals that are certified to teach as substitute teachers to include individuals with either 60 credit hours of higher education or 3 years served as a paraprofessional in a school district we are also embarking on a partnership with a local university to assist with the training of future teachers

029and substitute teachers to augment our pool of substitutes and qualified teaching candidates as vacancies become available and i look forward to presenting to the ed committee later in the spring next slide please in summation i'm asking that the board approve a pay rate increase from 135 dollars per day to 165 dollars per day for individuals in the building substitute category who commit to work in our methacton school district schools five days per week every week in an effort to attract substitute teachers to our school district to best address the continuity of instruction for our students this recommendation is based on the context of the marketplace and the limited pool of applicants that are available with the hope that this change will have the same positive impact that the change in long-term designation previously approved by

030the board had on attracting longer-term substitute teachers thank you for considering this recommendation any questions for the members of the board uh ms aubry thank you dr sergini um i had a couple of questions one um i guess really this just one covers it what are the other districts requiring in terms of defining a long term or i'm sorry and defining a building sub so are other districts requiring their building subs to commit to the five days per week or is that something that we are unique in doing some are and some are not uh there are only i can tell you that there are only uh two school districts who are paying their daily substitutes the same level as the building substitute the overall goal is to exact a five-day commitment because we are

031in need of the substitute teachers five days so generally that's the goal we had reduced to three days a week the building substitute designation in an effort to compel more individuals to uh to commit to us but this uh increased rate would be solely for those that actually commit to be with us five days a week every week so then the one district that is offering 170 per day do they have a requirement for a number of days per week they do but they are well they their their issue is they are trying to attract building substitutes but they have also allowed for an increased rate to the daily substitute teachers as well of the of the nine districts only two districts are for daily substitutes are in the 165 to 170 range all of

032the other districts for daily substitutes are in the 115 to 130 range but then with the building substitutes that's where we're having difficulty attracting individuals and that's actually compelling people to commit to the other districts which then gives them the teacher for a longer duration of time and further depletes our even daily substitute pool okay yeah i appreciate that this is a really complicated situation with a lot of moving parts and a lot of numbers to track in a lot of different areas so um i i definitely support this and i appreciate you taking the initiative to bring this forward i just want to make sure that we are being as competitive as we can be so it sounds like we're getting there thank you absolutely thank you and please know i've been in weekly

033if not daily communication with sds and and asking them to assure me that we were competitive and at the end of january that's when they said look over the last several weeks um districts that we service have recognized that the pool is narrowing and they they have increased their rates and that's what brings me before you tonight thank you sabi larsenis uh miss german i think your hand was up next i thank you dr sorgini um i have a bunch of questions not all really like some are just related to the idea of substitutes in general um but so is there any sense of like a fluid designation um between being a long-term sub or building sub like for example if there was a building sub who subbed for four days but and had that

034certification do they then are they then a long-term sub or so that was my question and then also sort of with that is there a different designation if a building sub would choose to not do the five days for the increase rate but choose to just be three days for the are we making yes um so yes and yes we are making a designation between the three days and the five days the increase in in the rate is is to attempt to compel individuals to commit to us to all five days that would have a tremendous impact for us uh there is also fluidity between the the designations there have been circumstances where we have had long-term or longer-term situations arise and individuals have moved into different designations and for that period of time that

035they're serving in a position they would receive the higher rate that we provide because they are are carrying that proper certification and during that time they're undertaking especially lesson planning and providing that continuity okay thank you um and is there do we still i know one time we had different rates between the certified teachers and the guest teachers um just because of that certification and is that i i don't remember is if that's still the case and will that be the case at all here or it's just but they're both the same we still do for daily substitutes have a designation a different rate for guest teachers as compared to a fully certified education uh major teachers uh we also have different rates for individuals who substitute on a daily basis uh for the first

036one through the first day through the 25th day that they are a daily substitute for us in days 26 on um i keep coming back to it but what we're really trying to get is individuals to commit to us whether they are a guest teacher whether they carry the guest teacher certification or a traditional teaching certification uh regardless they would be eligible for the increased rate if they commit to those five days per week and then um how is i know one time we had a presentation about how our fill rate is comparing to other districts and that's i know that's not for this topic but at some point i'd be interested to know that i i can actually provide you data um i don't think it's a secret the uh hr directors in the

037county are in regular communication with each other uh so i i can tell you without uh saying specific districts we generally fall in the middle of the pack there are some districts who have a significantly lower fill rate than we do uh there are others who uh have a higher rate than we do quite frankly with the the fill rates in the 60s that's certainly not where we want to see it especially given that historically we were well into the 80s if not beyond uh but given that narrowing pool uh the 60s is is a decent rate but we can do better and what it's coming down to and and i you know it's not advantageous to be com to try and be competitive with your neighbors but at the same time it's a narrowing

038pool and and we're really trying to attract especially the individuals that aren't in that pool right now who might either already have a certification or might have a four-year degree and are considering an opportunity like this and that's who we're trying to attract into the pool and just one more is um how many do you have a ballpark number of how many guest teachers we've been able to recruit since we started the program we were able to train six so um we had an initial commitment much higher than that we had done a informational session and then we did another orientation after that and then as far as those who committed then to the actual training and attended in-person uh with the administration back in december we were able to train six and you said

039there's another upcoming round of recruiting we uh we're going to be recruiting moving forward uh if we have the interest we can uh conduct our own training again sts has also developed a a training for guest teachers that they are able to complete online what we enjoyed about being able to do it directly is it creates that relationship it allows the individuals to know that we're committed to them as well and we're able to provide information that is specific to the fact and in the training so if we have the interest we can certainly conduct that again but in the meantime we also have the training available through sts directly okay thanks that's all i have thank you thank you miss german miseries um i'm in full support of this i just had a couple

040questions um and i will say um i know there's people in the public who like to make fun of me because i mention i'm an educator but i just want people to know there has um i don't think my cup my building one day this entire year has been covered for substitutes so it is as if people are unaware it is a across-the-board issue in in all schools and i am working for one of those very competitively um priced substitute districts so my question and you may have covered this what if a person will commit to us for four days a week like i would imagine someone who is interested in doing this maybe can't commit for five days so i think you covered it but i think i missed it yes absolutely and we

041we actually changed that designation at an earlier date to go from five to three recognizing that there would be individuals who could only commit to three or four days a week so they they do make a slightly higher rate but this increased rate would only uh be applicable to individuals who commit to all five days okay and then when they are a building sub are they are they committing to a certain building and the reason i asked that and i've brought this up before for example in my district we my grade level at seventh grade often does not get the substitutes and i understand why because the k to six need it more is that how we work or if a five day a person who's willing to give us five days says i'll only

042go to arrowhead or i'll only go to the high school or only go to arcola are they given that opportunity yes generally they are we're very grateful to the individuals who will commit to us and there are some who ask for specific buildings and we do our very best to honor that there have been some occasion occasions rather where uh especially in our k-4 buildings if um we actu if we have building substitutes available to in a particular building but another building has a greater need that day we have asked them to move over to another building we try to limit that because again we want to commit to that relationship that we have with our substitutes and we want them to be happy in their their workplace also and i can tell you we

043actually just had a conversation today with an individual about the building that they are interested in working in and it's a transportation issue and they're closer to one specific building in the district as compared to all of the others and uh that's where that individual is likely going to be assigned um okay and the only other thing i i will comment just in case any board members are on the fence on this i appreciate this effort because it's not gonna get any better in the spring i mean just for example i know for myself i've been lucky that i have not been had to take too many days so the days i've taken have been a few sick days but i still have like my personal days that typically i use more in the spring

044and hopefully and hopefully you know illnesses are less in the spring but this is crucial because the spring gets people that's when they're typically personal time is is needed not always but you know different personal events so thank you for taking care of this thank you thank you miss reese any other comments or questions from members of the board miss purdue mr sojini thank you for providing this update i do have i was disappointed to hear about just this guest t-shirt so far and i was wondering how else are we recruiting for that just because i know we've talked about it before and i was hoping to hear a higher number and we uh we did recruit quite vigorously back in the fall i was initially very pleased with the uh the initial interest but

045as far as those who were actually committing uh the number came down to only six i'm very grateful to those individuals uh who went through the training with us but it was a lower number than i would like to have seen my hope would be that with the advertising that goes with this increased rate in the event that it were to be approved that we would be able to attract some individuals who initially had an interest but maybe had decided not to for for other reasons okay now as far as the retirees also returning how many have have we been able to get in teachers return we have quite a few retired teachers who come in uh on a on a pregnant pretty regular basis and this has been consistent in mathacton for pretty much

046the entire time that i've been in the district and we are profoundly grateful to our retirees we are in the process of reaching back out to all of our retirees from the last five years uh to let them know that we miss them and we need them and we would love to have them come back and we're also preparing a communication that will go out to our uh retirees from this school year telling them that we miss them already and we'd love to have them back also okay thank you and then one more one last question so what you're asking us to vote on is for specifically you're asking it for the end of this school year and so and so when i look at it i'm just trying to think just because from what

047i'm seeing across even in pennsylvania alone across other school districts it seemed like the the rate keeps increasing for um substitute teachers right and i think um that seems to be a band-aid fix right we're all trying to increase to stay competitive but i'm also wondering if you're asking for just for the end of this school year what are the plans for next year and i know you talked about some of our efforts and i've heard some of these efforts discussed already in the past and maybe you'll bring some of that back to the education committee and we can discuss but i'm just wondering if you're only thinking about this year do you think this will go back to 135 or are we expecting that this number will keep climbing absolutely mrs uh purdue i

048my hope is i'm going to come back to you and and tell you later on in the spring that this change had a a positive impact the way that the change in the long-term designation did and i i would then be asking you to continue that rate moving forward assuming that our need continues to be the same but i also wanted to be prudent and ask for this change for a specific period of time that way i would be able to identify its uh efficacy and decide whether or not that was something that i i needed to come back to you and ask for an extension on and you are absolutely spotted on in your assessment of that um there there have been increases it's been interesting and unique that the daily substitute rates in

049my research especially the the nine districts that are serviced by sts other than two that are paying a higher rate the others actually range between 115 a day and 130 a day for daily substitutes so what ended up happening is those rates didn't increase but all of a sudden in january when we reached a need that kept growing and that pool didn't grow districts began to increase their building substitutes to try to draw people in and to keep them from going to other districts so then i guess i guess what what uh when you're in your meetings with the other um hr administrators what are some of the i guess long-term plans right just because i feel like eventually it's going to keep going if we keep progressing this will keep going up so it

050would be nice if you know you come back to us with some long-term plans or the everyone in the county is having the same conversation what will this look like long term and i believe in my initial presentation to the board i had talked about the fact that comparing uh 2011 to 2021 there are uh two-thirds fewer certifications being issued in pennsylvania as of last year so that's definitely an issue that is pervasive across the county across the state and even across the country so it's certainly something that we are continuing to investigate and look at ways to address thank you any other questions from members of the board say no other questions thank you dr sorgini we really appreciate you doctor next on the agenda is the right to know update and recommendations i'll

051be giving that presentation just bear with me on that so good evening and tonight i plan to share an update on our status of the right to know uh process from the factoring school district i will be sharing some of the challenges and will share issues with our process that with these recommendations are designed to improve our process and have an impact on reducing our costs associated with processing right to no request the recommendations this evening is to approve the appointment of michelle bartle dooley llp as dirt as district solicitor for right to know in accordance with the terms of the attached memorandum and required the administration to provide a summary performance report to the finance committee of the board no later than six months from the date of approval the uh the memorandum is

052attached to the agenda the second uh recommendation this evening on right to know is to approve the job description for the right to know safety and security support specialists as presented that is also on the agenda and the third option is to approve the change of status for elizabeth iantosh from human resources specialist at the foreign education center to right to know safety and security support specialists at the farina education center hourly rate no change and this will be effective march 23rd with your approval this is a new position so the right the no law was enacted in 2019 uh that establishes the the office of open records to assist citizens in obtaining public records of their government the law outlined its purpose uh including that requesters are to use good judgment and seeking records

053from the public body and not to use this law to harass or overburden a public body from performing its functions second and that all records are presumed to be public records unless disclosed unless disclosed is barred by law attorney-client privilege or as outlined under section 708 of the right to know law third uh these rules apply to the public school district along with other agencies as well as a couple other bullets there and you can find that information as uh listed in sourced below aside from the law and the attorney-client privilege the right to know law under section 708 allows for exceptions when a record if released would have a reasonable likelihood to result in a substantial or demonstrable risk of physical harm to a person or security of an individual it also includes documents

054or data related to computer hardware source files software and system networks that could jeopardize computer systems the the list on the screen here is just an example uh there's actually quite an extensive list under sections 708 but it is and i it gives you an idea that the law does provide the the district the ability to protect what is considered uh information that could be a substantial risk of harm to individual or to systems but it must be recognized that the burden to protect that information rests solely with the school district ensure to to protect those records the staffing and process associated with the with right to know in public schools varies but generally an administrator is appointed as the district's right to know officer along with that appointment some districts provide secretarial support and

055most have technology staff who assist when needed while mathactin has all of this in place we also have engaged our legal firm in assisting us with processing right to no request some of the common school district requests from citizens include contracts with vendors payroll records from construction projects tax collector statements copies of presentations made at board meetings staff directory information contact information both personnel contracts and third party providers the thacton school district similarly receives these requests that other school districts do but we also receive other unique requests and some of these requests ask for some of the following items uh records of communication from the right to know officer on a monthly basis records of communication between specific uh school board members records of communication between administrators records of communication between administrators and school board

056members records of communication from the solicitor copies of solicitor invoices copy of redacted records from an individual's former request copy of search terms used in a right to know process and copy of documents from third-party providers i'd like to now share an example of of some of the challenges that we have in the fact and again this is only you know part of part of the story so when we talk about our right to know and some of the challenges that matthachton has had you know it does relate back to volume uh there's been a lot of discussion about the cost associated with our ability to process right to know but as an example if we take this period of time between august 10 2020 through november 30 2020 we received uh 29 separate requests

057from one person having a total of 886 items or 30.6 items per request uh this requires a a determination of each search term uh criteria that best meets the the request for each of the 886 items so theoretically it's not 29 requests it's 886 requests uh this requires uh the execution of the searches for all 886 items and then the requests customarily generate several hundred to several thousand pages of records uh these requests then are required to be reviewed uh to determine if there are any responsive records and if if any of the the records fall within section 708 of the right to no law or the law itself or attorney client privilege and then thus redaction is required if that does occur and generally speaking uh under the law this is all supposed to

058take place within five days from the request the outcomes uh for for this example uh just to give you a perspective of cost the outcome of such a such a period of time would say that we had 29 requests or nearly two requests per week the district spent about 355 000 on the right to no request that includes 189 000 of internal costs and again while we don't keep timesheets on on every on every request and and work that we do internally um that that serves as an estimation based on my interview at the time with those people who are working on those items but it also includes 166 000 of external or legal of fees associated with the processing of those 29 requests and this is just indicative of the challenge that we had

059from 20 20 21 uh going forward this slide is simply outlines that over the past four years we have seen an increase in costs associated with with right to know legal expenses in fact this chart shows that the district spent nearly a million dollars on right to know legal expenses during the 2021 school year this slide simply shows and this is posted on the district website as listed down below as cited this slide simply shows that part of our challenge listed listing the top 10 requesters that means the most frequent the top 10 requesters for those periods in time and that the aggregate number of requests within that given period of time as as highlighted in the the circle there is slide 11. uh this slide is similar to the previous slide but it but

060it actually shows the associated cost with uh processing all those records now again these associated costs though these are specific to uh the legal costs uh that that we have from our right to know legal firms so regardless of the regardless of of how the district processes the right to know request the level of effort and the cost is directly attributed to the frequency volume and complexity of the request and the advice received from our legal counsel so as an example uh we we were we were not using our right to know uh solicitor in 2017-18 in the same manner as we are using them today equally we did not have the same volume frequency or complexity of requests in 2017 as we did last year and this year basically we were able to handle

061the right to know request uh then by utilizing the right to know officer and some secretary of staff back in 2017 we would call upon the solicitor for advice from time to time however over time as the district began to receive more frequent and larger requests we made decisions to best provide citizens with access to information while taking efforts to ensure compliance with the law attorney-client privilege and that information that's protected under section 708 of the right to know law it got to the point that we could no longer handle all the requests internally with our staff and combined with advice from council determined that a process that would include the use of counsel to help us manage requests and the volume of document review while keeping an alignment uh with the advice provided by

062council on the uh and and the appeals that were uh moving forward on on certain items with the office of open records and and those that were in the commonwealth court basically the issues here are significant the processing of requests over time along with the appeals created additional work and an additional volume of records that contributed to the cost increase we considered hiring uh staff in-house we also considered uh hiring you know legal counsel uh to uh you know just just to take on some of these these matters uh we met with uh with requesters to try to mitigate and and uh try to come to some uh other resolutions but all by and large uh we need a new approach to the process and uh we need a new legal perspective and advice to

063counter the trajectory of cost given the cost and the performance of a legal council the district issued an rfp in november of 2021 the conclusion here is that the right to know law is an important part of providing transparent government services the district's success on appealing right to no matter is under section 708 or under the law or under a time attorney client privilege has been poor um we've we've lost more of those appeals than we've uh than we've won many appeals have led to additional costs associated with processing similar requests a second time while awaiting the outcome of appeals the current legal firm has missed deadlines associated with the right to know process which in turn created additional cost and expenses the current legal firm is not responsive to the district's needs and right

064to know and while a change in personnel internally and which is part of this recommendation will allow us to keep current with our our common right to know request and take on a line share of our unique request we still need new eyes on our processes and different advice going forward an rfp was issued in november of 2021 the rf i'm sorry an rfi was issued in in november of 21 the rfi included sample request and required responses six of the nine firms that we had sent the information to responded to the rfi all respondents were reviewed and uh by considering cost response to rfp their experience with this type of work previous working relationship with the district follow-up response there was an interview in the second round a technical response and sample redaction process

065respondents were narrowed down to the top two firms based on a scoring matrix interviews were held and that with the top two firms and also submissions of sample letters and documents were provided so the first recommendation here this evening as i presented on slide two of this presentation would be to approve the appointment of michelle barto dooley llp as district solicitor for the right to know in accordance with the terms of the attachment of iran and require the administration to provide a summary performance report to the finance committee no later than six months uh from the date of approval so what this means is uh just the second part of this is uh you know it's clear that as part of engaging a solicitor in the right to know process we we know that we

066we need to have uh you know proper checks and balances in place and and what we're recommending here and what was discussed as part of our finance committee meeting this month was that having a process whereby the administration reports uh to the board on the progress and performance of the solicitor involved in this right to know uh process with us uh is to happen so that if we choose you know in six months and where the performance is is not better uh then our existing uh you know we can choose at that time to put another rfi or go to another firm again this is a this is a service and is something that the district can choose to to get to get assistance on as they see fit the second recommendation is to approve

067the job description as as posted on the on the agenda and then to prove the status change for elizabeth yantosh from human resources as i mentioned earlier it's important to know that the current secretary support the internal support that was assisting dr surgini from time to time we'll be leaving the district uh this is this creates a void in the support uh for dr sagini and is a second change in less than about four months uh the uh so so really what we're talking about here is not really replacing that support but actually we're giving more dedicated time uh where we would see ms jantos probably committing anywhere between 85 to 95 percent of her time on the right to know process and then committing time to help with uh the maintenance of safety security

068and documentation uh for uh for for the secure the safety teams in the district but really the district needs to ensure some consistency and a high level of professionalism uh there's probably no one more professional and more capable of assisting dr sergini than ms yantosh so we have all the all the confidence in the world uh in and helping us uh to make improvements here in internally uh the district uh uh has identified the task as outlined in the job description and uh we are certainly uh confident in uh the uh the recommendation of ms yantosh so that summary recommendation is to approve again uh dashell bartle to approve the job description as listed and to approve the status change of ms yantosh from human resources to a right to know if approved uh ms

069yantosh's position on human resources would be advertised and it would also then allow for us to make a a a solid transition uh for the new hire in that office uh as she would still remain with us in the farina administration building with that said i will uh now take uh comments from members of the board bear with me just bear with me a second i'm trying to find my microphone button yeah i'm sorry uh ms ms aubry denise i saw that you had your hand up yes thank you dr zurby um looking at slide seven these unique requests that we've received is this information that is posted or shared somehow from other school districts is this readily accessible other places and that we are somehow not sharing this information is there a way that

070it could be more transparent by i don't i i don't i don't know is this something that other districts are sharing voluntarily well on i i'll post a slide back up so i believe this is a slide you're referring to uh but but commonly uh you know communications uh between uh these individuals isn't something that is that is normally you know posted to the district's website these are these include emails text messages you know all sorts of different communications uh similarly uh you know the you know invoices and and other uh other other requests as listed here some of them like for example a copy of search terms are not something that that's commonly requested and certainly um a copy of redacted records from an individual's former request are our unique requests you know on

071and of themselves and the way that i'm reading this some of these are right to know requests about a right to know request which so it basically becomes like an exponential each right to no request then generates more rights and no requests and it will continue to keep growing from just one requester yeah yeah that's what that that's what that's referring to under the third to last one and that's where the you know as i was trying to explain that's where the the the bottleneck occurred it's almost like we're go we're just going we just keep going around and round and round we're removing the same records and and we're we're appealing certain things at the same time new requests are coming in that are similar to those appeals and and it and it just

072it just um it just it it gets very voluminous it's obvious i can see that so so you know what i'm trying to explain is there's not one right answer here uh you know if if we were playing monday morning quarterback um we could say well we should have done this this and that and the other thing and you know we we've heard some from some members of the public that we should have done this we should have been done that but when you're in the middle of of it and you're watching it more from one thing to the next and then you're waiting for the appeals to come in and you're waiting for all this other stuff to happen it isn't until you start losing the appeals and and then the records now are

073are processed two or three times that that have become that it becomes an evident problem uh for us to to to really manage well and when we talk about the cost so whether we're using the solicitor or doing all the work in-house there's still a cost to it would have would it might have been less if if we weren't using to select the solicitor it may have been but you know our you know while our solicitors may charge you know 120 or 160 an hour or whatever it may be you know we would still have uh you know administrators uh managing it we would have secretarial staff uh technology staff so there's there's the the the connection here is that um we really probably should have i should have come to you sooner uh than

074now with with with this change in recommendation but um when you're in the middle of it hoping that you would win certain appeals on matters and which would then allow for a decrease in the uh the amount of records that you need to produce and then you lose it it creates a different situation yeah and i i understand that the the attempt the the appeals were attempts to stop the bleed we are we were looking at trying to establish some sort of a baseline of okay can we all agree that these records are no longer going to be part of the right to know requests because there is nothing to be gained from those records it becomes it's it's that churn that we had just been talking about um so i understand the nature of

075the appeal process um the the firm that is currently handling right to know just so that we can be clear about that is that sweet stevens cats williams that's correct okay and that differs from our current solicitor's office which is whistler pearlstein that's correct okay um did both of those offices respond to the rfi they did okay um and who prepared the rfi uh mr bicker okay um and then how many replies we got six replies were they all complete mr um mr bricker i'm sorry you say that again were all six of the nine firms that responded were all of their responses to the rfi complete yeah okay do we have any kind of an estimate as to what our cost savings could be um just a ballpark range if we do make this

076move to dvd well combined again we're doing two things at one time here uh so we're we're moving tosh uh uh who is you know you know is is a seasoned professional i think oh absolutely to be clear none of my questions are about whether or not liz yantosh is the appropriate person to be pregnant yeah but i'm what i'm hearing is you know it's hard for me to say what the uh what the actual outcome will be given the fact that no uh liz will be you know of course with the board's approval we're making two changes at once so the question really is you know you know what what did the solicitor say in their interview process with us about how much they think they could save us and uh they estimated somewhere

077in about 50 percent okay and so when we revisit this if they have not come close to that fifty percent i would assume we would be revisiting the entire process here we could either revisit the entire process or we could then go to the second you know best one that that had responded to this because it's only going to be six months old we could revisit them because this is a service and i wanted to make sure that everybody understood that you know we we we can choose uh to go out and do another rfi and and get a competitive uh number but the the same types of firms are going to be the ones responding again the the other option is because it would only be six months old we could reach out to

078the second best uh firm or the second or the best the last two best firms as an example and we could interview for for against those two uh for the process because it's a service not a product that's required uh for bidding under the bidding requirements i'm just giving you what you can do um but but the flexibility is there for the board if in fact at the time uh we present uh six months from now if if approved that they're not happy with the performance and i think that's the key thing uh we see where we are now with with the processing of right to know and the advice we're getting from legal counsel um the the finance committee you know made an excellent suggestion about putting this safeguard in place and it allows

079the board the flexibility to make change and you don't have to wait six months i mean if there's a there's an issue that comes up in three months you can you just make a change and and cam sorry to jump in um just because that was that was going to be my point i was just wondering about this six month timeline like how is that dictated do we have to wait because in your previous statements you mentioned that at this point we kind of waited too long right to find us some type of solution so i'm just wondering is this this six months just seemed like a long time for me and comparing that to know how much our fees are and then i'm glad you asked the question um about the what the cost

080savings are just because i thought that would be important to know with uh making this change or asking for the board to vote on this so i i do want to clarify that do we need do it need to be six months it does not need to be six months um it can be it certainly can be any time frame um but i think that's what we had discussion about at the finance committee and that's what i put on on the on the uh motion so if we want it if we want to do if we want to leave the motion as it is or we want to change it that's up to the board but we can certainly say that after three months uh we bring a report to the board and and i

081can commit to that as well all i'm saying is i'm sorry but by the time we get through through all of this you know it's going to take a month and possibly two to get all the transition worked out so by the time you that's why six months seem to be the the most reasonable time frame yeah i and i mean looking at some of these unique requests i'm trying to kind of think outside the box of what are some things that we could do to alleviate some of those um i'm wondering if just posting all of our our emails to the website is the answer or or or conversely i'll just do away with my myth act and email address if that would save us some money in terms of these right to no

082requests um we could go back to paper copies of documents and and couriers um if that would save us some money it's just a thought yeah i appreciate your thought but i i i i wouldn't recommend that at this point in time um no but i also wouldn't recommend the amount of money that we've spent to date on this so um i'm just saying no desperate times i i i understand uh miseries um i i appreciate and i i appreciate your honesty in saying i probably should have brought this to you sooner and in high and and you know when i go to my mciu um meetings i meet with the other 20 montgomery county um director board directors and and they don't have issues like this and and i go to my um north

083monco and they don't have issues like this so it's hard for you guys as administrators because you don't have the advice of other superintendents and right to no request officers because they're not dealing with this i know i guess it was probably six years ago in our trainings we were warned about a member of school board directors are warned across the state as well as across the country about a gentleman in our community but not about right to know requests so this is relatively new i was wondering if mr yang or miss rocco in any of their new board trainings had heard anything about any advice on what to do with right to know requests i didn't know if that came up in any of their new board trainings so it wasn't just new board

084members in the new the new board member training it was re-elected board members right to know didn't go very deep in those trainings um however i i look at this as an opportunity to control two levers cost and process so if if we're looking at costs and we're looking to make a change to our rfi rfp we can control costs but if the scope stays the same for the content that we are processing with right to know requests to ms larson e's first question is is there an opportunity to control scope i didn't see much in the presentation that shows whether we're considering a change in process or change in scope for the type of material that we're that we're restricting in a right to know request i'd like to know if there's going to

085be a review of that process and a potential recommendation to reduce the number of items that are contained or protected under right to know and if we could provide that information and be more transparent to ms larcenese's question uh i'd be interested in hearing that so we could drill down into or actually um improve the the information that we provide to the public as well as control costs yeah i i i don't know if it was apparent and i apologize if if it didn't uh if i if i didn't uh elaborate on that as much as i should have but but that's exactly what we're we're asking for from the board to have uh a a a firm that's been experienced with uh right you know serving uh school districts with right to no request

086and other other municipalities in fact without with right to no request to put new eyes on our process and at the same time we internally uh are redoing our process so that um we're taking more of the work in-house uh and and and and then with the advice of of new council knowing that uh you know we're not going to get ourselves we don't want to get ourselves back into that that that uh circular cycle uh to be more uh prudent with with our decisions with respects to you know appeals yeah so that's what i mean that's that's exactly it's it's our determinations on appeals under some of the vagueness associated with section 708 of the of the law and then the second part is um you know taking more of that work in internally

087thanks ms drummond thank you um regarding uh miss yantosh could could you um give us she you said you said her hourly rate ish and then is she full-time with benefits i'm just trying to get sort of a number um as to exactly what that salary would entail like 85 to 95 percent of her full benefit salary package just so we have a can you know a way of really um demonstrating the cost of this um sir deeney would you would you get that for the board and we can send that in friday memo thank you okay thank you um and then i guess i would i would request that of other um administrative time as well an estimate of hours spent and what that has cost the district um an outline of that and

088then um if someone could speak to student privacy and student privacy concerns you're talking about providing thousands of pages of documents to somebody in the public and i know that there are a lot of protections around student privacy and student privacy concerns and i just want to talk about what is at risk for the district if we should miss some information that would identify a student in a in a case or something like that i i just want to hear you know about our liability exposure really um in that area please well well so i think what i tried to present in in the uh presentation was that um it is the burden of the school district to make sure that those items that aren't protected under the right to know either by law by

089attorney-client privilege and by section 708 are are prevented from being provided to citizens so you probably are our best expert on all this uh dr hank said uh if you want to talk about uh student privacy just a little bit uh this is you know really something you deal with on a regular basis so hate to call on you uh no it's fine absolutely so we really do make sure that all records are protected with the confidentiality claims and you know if we have any concerns about any type of ferpa violations we're constantly following up on them it's something we take very seriously um in fact this week i had a conversation with somebody about a potential for concern so if jason um gets a particular right to no request and involve student records he's

090communicating with me about that as well and and sometimes uh dr banks said you know you know when they're requesting say for example records of the superintendent or records of any administrator there could be from time to time um information in their in their emails that might be a part of a search that would be included with something else and uh and uh and so it is the obligation of the district to then make sure that you know we're not releasing any of that information that's so that's why we need to review all those documents that's correct and and we would redact or not provide that document in case the confidential information is in there that's protected does that help you yes thank you thank you uh other questions from members of the board uh

091ms perdue so i just got a few last one is i believe in one of your slides you indicated some of the um the list as far as the items that people requested in one of them was presentations at board meetings and i'm just wondering when we're thinking about improving this process we're also thinking about some of the things that we're doing now how we can improve on those things so i'm wondering are we not are people not able to assess all the presentations that are um if it's a presented like a material that we and from the board means because i'm wondering how much percentage of this is also coming from that yeah very i don't know what the percentage is and maybe uh mr regina or dr cindy gina you can you can

092uh you know apprise us of that if you know the answer but um i can tell you that uh commonly what what occurs is we'll have a a work session like this and and you know that this presentation has not been posted to the the agenda however after every board meeting whether it's a work session or a voting meeting there's a section on under the board section of the website where all presentations are posted uh so commonly what happens and and dr uh uh sergey and mr regina are you know correcting me from wrong when someone makes that request we just we just basically respond right away to them to the requester and tell them here's the url for the the the uh presentation so yeah you're right is there anything else to that that

093we can now we we we do i mean there are certain items that we get in a right to no request that our communication is direct with the individual we either call or email them directly and say we because we've done a great job i mean right after the board meeting amanda's posting all of these uh to the website so it's typically within a 24-hour period they're there uh if not sooner the ones that we've had recently i think dr sergini can speak to sometimes our committee meeting ones um they're a little bit tougher to find they get posted but you have to go into the committee meeting then to the board then to presentation so we we still direct people there but we've had more questions about committee meeting presentations than we have board

094meeting ones probably within the last 12 months dr sergey that accurate that's accurate and i think that's where i've heard the um questions being asked to is mainly around a committee meeting so maybe there's something that we can do there right if it's taking people an extensive amount of time to find certain documents then we can we can work on improving that right and i don't know if we put it an extra tab right where the regular board meetings um presentations are but it's certainly something that we can do there because i've heard that comment come up also and i think if you if that was one less email that you had to receive or one less request that you have to see i'm not saying that will fix our problems but that will help

095alleviate some of the problems yeah miss purdue that's an excellent suggestion we will we will make something happen with respect to that thank you okay and i believe you also mentioned that you met with our largest requester in reference to right to know and to talk about issues or how we can mitigate some of those problems or concerns i'm wondering was that a meeting that you would say at the end was you found valuable were there any lessons learned are there any things that we're taking back from having that meeting or was that something that we wanted to do but weren't able to do no we i think uh you know uh we learned quite a bit uh from from that meeting and uh you know it helped it helped us make some changes at

096that point in time so uh it just it just it didn't necessarily materialize in everything that we wanted and it certainly didn't materialize and everything the requester wanted but it allowed us to you know better understand and make some changes internally to reduce reduce some cost even though we were still spending money and and still you know getting getting requests any other questions or comments from the board ms drummond just i forgot to mention this comment but i would be in favor of a closer timeline to reevaluate like a three-month um timeline to re-evaluate the process so uh what are you suggesting three months or you or is that what i would like to see three months three months okay so i as i said earlier you know it's gonna take the board isn't an

097agreement it's gonna it's gonna take about a month a month and a half to get up and running so we would give them a month and a half to to is that is that what we yeah uh ms cancro we had a discussion in finance being you know i'm on the finance committee and we discussed that because we're like we were concerned because this was a prior law firm that we had worked with and but i will say that we have one individual from that law firm who is an expert of it i feel like the information that they are the ones with the most skill with with actually saying that they could reduce it by 50 but each month the finance committee will review the costs and the procedure and especially working with mr

098jankash training her better so i don't think three months would really be helping us when we're trying to look for cost containment and reduction so that's my only opinion we discussed it as a group i just felt like six months was but at any point maybe maybe we could check in at four then yeah then at any point we could go back and and tell them that request like you said they they're they're more of a service so at any point we could really have that discussion right doctors where we actually like yeah if i could if i could just add what miss cancro said there's a standing item on the agenda for the finance committee for right to know expenses so that should be able to at least monthly provide a barometer for for

099everyone uh but i'll be glad to present it at any sequence of time the board so suggest um you could maybe check in with the board at four months then or something okay are there any other questions or comments okay i'm sorry can you hear me yes i can yeah i'm sorry i'm not quite home yet um to second what miss purdue was saying in regards to a committee meetings and the documents and perhaps being more forthcoming with some of those documents i can't help but ask the question and wonder if we recorded the committee meetings could that also help alleviate some of right to know requests digging for information i know it's been brought up in the public in the past um you know maybe not even necessarily a live stream but just a

100recording so people can watch the meetings because there really is a lot of information shared at those meetings and i do feel that there are a lot of requests that come up from them so i just wanted to suggest that yeah there's also an additional cost that's incurred we've talked about this in the past with um having personnel there to record the meetings so so i guess my question with that would be what would the cost i would like to see what the cost would be and perhaps then look at what some of the right to know requests were in terms of cost you know i can't i would need to see then what the personnel cost and that's something we can review at finance perhaps but you know i wonder if if one is

101greater than the other my guess would be some of those right to know requests that may be stemmed from committee meetings or greater so i just wanted to put that out there yeah ms rocco i i you know this is a a certainly a fine request we've had conversations about this probably over each of the last nine years and the the the matter boils down to uh as ms perdue recognized that um you know creating well first of all creating a video now creates another record uh but besides that um it is it is the the documents uh like the presentations that i have that people are looking for um not necessarily uh the uh not necessarily would videotaping the committee meetings uh help improve the challenge associated with accessing the documents uh because because

102we've been doing it unfortunately at a distance if we did zoom all the time you know you could see things real well and it would probably make it you know different story but uh the way we do our videotaping at the distance it becomes hard to read the stuff on the screen using you know the distance of the camera to the from the audience uh but with that said you know certainly you know get any information for you that you need but um i i there's there's there's other value associated with um having the committee meetings the way they are um and and doing the work of the committee to be able to uh come for forward and make recommendations uh at the work session and then for the whole board to vote on so

103uh we'll try to get you that information but um it wouldn't be the recommendation to to do that this at this time okay um understood i think accessing the documents is going to be a big help miss reece brought up earlier i wasn't able to answer um and this isn't specific to her question but in my in-person school board training there was a lot of talk actually around committees because some districts have committees some don't some record their meetings some call in uh questions and this was at the pennsylvania state training so there were people there from other counties besides montgomery county so you know i i we did actually have a long discussion around that that's why i brought up the question um but i do think at least to miss produce comments on

104uh the documents i think that that will be helpful thank you yup thank you thank you for that and we agree i i told miss purdue we're going to move on that find a new way for people to access it any other comments or questions on the right to know seeing no other questions the next presentation is an update on the office of diversity equity inclusion and i will be presenting again this is a status update as presented this evening just bear with me till i get my screen organized this evening i'll be recommending to the board of school directors for the consideration next week the approval of the job description for the k-12 dei and climate counselor in order to provide some perspective this slide outlines a summary of our status we advertise for

105the position of uh of uh of the supervisor of diversity equity inclusion back in august of 21 we received feedback in september of 21 from our district dei committee as part of our strategic planning process and we held interviews for the supervisor of dei in october of 21 and determined that there were no viable candidates we reviewed the process the job description and the candidates we also recognized that at the end of the process while no one fit the job description of the supervisory position and and recognizing that that position was also not only new to methachtom but a relatively new type of position for school districts in general we considered the qualities and feedback from the interview team and combined that with the feedback on matters presented by the district dei committee and their

106work over the last several months we determined that there were certain characteristics that were really important for this position to be successful and provide needed support the first one we wanted someone with excellent people skills someone that is easily approachable by both students by students parents and staff we wanted someone who is accessible who is in the middle of it all who can support building principles advise central office and be available to support students directly staff and principals when they need it furthermore we wanted someone who can hit the ground running in support of teachers that knows education and that knows the social emotional components that can provide valued support for both students and staff we also know that the student assistance and behavioral health supports available are an important component of act 44 and

107we needed someone very knowledgeable about sel we wanted someone who would be laser focused on ensuring that programs and services are well communicated to students parents and staff as well as ensuring that student and staff social emotional needs are at the forefront of their work we recognize that our staff and students belong to a greater school community beyond the four walls of our schools and that we need to have someone who will engage our community leaders in much the same way that our k-12 career and college counselor does with the business leaders in our area we will work we will work with the the person will work with the mciu as they ramp up services to support districts with diversity equity inclusion matters um and include them in the uh in in the job of

108like work groups we know that from our district dei uh committee feedback that accountability and reporting documentation and communication are paramount furthermore we know that whatever we do there has to be a connection to us to uh i'm sorry there has to be a connection to support principles and school counselors on restorative practices and implementing and learning experiences as a result of student discipline we also recognize that one person can't do all of this alone the result of the considerations and feedback came can be summarized in the structure proposed here in the office of diversity equity inclusion it includes our title ix officer that is mr regina we're all claims of discrimination associated district policies and efforts to educate trained staff on prevention awareness and reporting of matters of discrimination will be his responsibility the

109office also includes the k-12 bei and climate counselor which is the job description i'm asking you to approve who will be scheduled in buildings in order to be the most accessible the students and staff and will have the flexibility to support principals and school counselors on matters as they arise the office will also include seven building advisors together with the support of the montgomery county intermediate unit the oversight of the title ix coordinator and support of the k-12 dei and climate counselor and building advisors we will be able to provide student and staff program support promote positive school culture and diverse equitable inclusive practices and provide an accountability through reporting documentation and communication during continual improvement looking deeper at this structure it allows for the designation of a district point of contact uh someone who

110can among many things help principals and district administrators with the promotion of positive climate and diverse equitably inclusive practices serve as the title ix advocate for victims serve on the district safety team in support of climate matters be the hub for the reporting documentation and communication of allegations of discrimination assist families and staff with access to district and community resources and support the communications of allegations and discrimination and assist families to support the and also support the curriculum the esl program and many other aspects within the district the title ix coordinator is already in place and the process processes required under law have been implemented and trained upon the building advisors these will be teachers or other staff members who are passionate about the matters of diversity equity inclusion and climate and they will be

111uh supplemental contracts uh for and will be the points of contact at the building level for students families and staff they'll be there to help principals uh and uh would be able to assist in climate matters as well as provide information and resource back to the k-12 dei climate counselor in advising the district in a more graphical representation the k-12 dei and climate counselor serves to coordinate activities and support students and staff in similar fashion to that of the district's k-12 career and college counselor the value of this professionally certified staff positions supports our targeted type of person who will have excellent people skills is easily accessible will support the student assistance and behavioral health as required under act 44 of our safety plan will engage the greater school community will manage the reporting documentation

112and communication of the dei matters and will support principals and counselors in implementing restorative practices and learning experiences associated with matters of discipline the recommendation for your consideration next week is to approve the job description as presented any questions from members of the board uh miseries um where in this and forgive me is the focus on professional development where would i see support of curriculum office but where is professional development it's in there all of our professional development either it either generates from uh hr through the office of uh of uh curriculum or from like in in the example of of the title ix position um you know mr regina would be working with the office of curriculum to develop that that professional development and i and i know tomorrow there are some great topics

113on the list of uh professional development choices for the teachers i just would like since this is this is the perfect opportunity i'm in fully supportive of this i'm i'm sorry that it's taken this long but listen it's important and i know you we've been trying to figure this out but i just need to publicly state you know i haven't been very vocal about this topic because i i appreciate that miss purdue and miss drummond and mr navarette were kind of on the committee and you can't have too many you know you can't have too many cooks in the kitchen you know but i i have felt this as an educator deeply for the last year just because the world is a different place and our school system and and not just mafactan it is

114desperate for the appropriate curriculum and the appropriate way to just enlighten our staff and our students and i want to just give an example because i really don't think it's an understood entity even from myself i just participated in a three-day training for the student assistance program for those unaware of what the student assistance program is it's from the department of pennsylvania education all school public school districts have the sap program the fact and has it everybody has it some very slightly it's a very strong program in our schools to help children and there's a system to it and that's why you're given a to be sap certified a three-day training my three days of training were broken into six sessions 3 a.m and 3 p.m we spent an entire pm session on this topic

115because it is really really important and i think people don't understand it and that's partly our fault you know as a as as a district or as i don't know what you want to say that we need to educate people because i really think it's misunderstood it's nothing different than i was growing up in the 80s 70s and 80s um and we were given you know very intense intense is not the right word but you know the egg in the frying pan they talk to us all about drugs and tobacco right and we all got that in our schools and this i kind of relate it to that that there's just a lack of knowledge our world is ever-changing and i'm reading my students a book right now that takes place in 2003 about a

116refugee from afghanistan and the kids are really loving it and it's part of our curriculum and i think to myself how powerful this book would be now 20 years still later because of what's gone on in afghanistan and how we can help children understand what other children are going through that have are coming to our country um so anyway i just i fully support this i hope this means that we can get moving i truly hope these building advisors are given pr it doesn't it's amazing how much you can learn in an afternoon but some really good con if we could see if we could be approving some conferences to be going to um it is so crucial it is so crucial um i as a 49 year old educator for 20 plus years i

117don't know all the right terminology and i want to do that i want to do that for my students so that they feel safe everywhere they go in in in schools and i have started to get some training and we all as educators need more training and i know as a parent i could use more um we all my husband i shouldn't say that we all know in our workplaces have these types of trainings and education is sometimes behind and i think some districts are behind and i i'm very proud of the thactin but i think we're a little bit behind in this and i i'm thrilled that uh this was presented this evening and i i know it's different than what we originally thought but as long as it gets as long as this

118prioritizes this and gets what we need i'm in full support sorry to go off but the training i had was powerful and i'm looking for more of it to help all students thank you miss reece for sharing we appreciate that uh mr young thank you for the update dr zurby a couple of questions just starting with the timeline and forgive me just for not being on the board at this time but the september to october interview process was that the planned window for for the for the recruitment process the one month uh no no the the ad advertisement for the supervisor position went in august and the interviews were in october and and dr zugini was there part of it also like early november i think there might have been but yeah if you pull

119up slide uh where's the timeline slide three so job description august advertise august start the interview september end october do we know how many candidates were interviewed during that that one month period was it was a 29 there were 25 initial applicants as i recall there were 10 that went through the the first round that was um broken down to and i don't want to misspeak but there were a certain number that came out of the first round and they went into the second round we went through four full rounds of uh interviews through the process with with the ten doctor sergey no sir not with all ten uh each round there were subsequently fewer so the the were broken down to a smaller number we then went forward to the stakeholder round with uh

120three candidates i do recall that the third round had three candidates in it the fourth round had two finalists in it and then no obviously no no offer after the two that's correct okay um and then were there any adjustments to the interview process to to maybe identify higher quality candidates and it's interesting just thinking out loud that we we went through ten three then two that's that's a that's a pretty pretty deep detailed process to get down to the final two you would think that one of those two would be selected but did we make any changes to the to the process or considered during the november meeting whether we would re-enable that that interview um that interview window considering it was it was one month no we we did we didn't have any

121against what we did is when we got through the interview process um we we evaluated uh the feedback that we received from the uh the individuals that participated in the universe on camera for a second okay the reason why i'm asking this question so there was there was a significant reflection and was sniffing in time on on the reflection of that of that position and what the next step should be the of the obvious you know determination would be well we'll go and re-advertise the position for a longer period of time or find the right period of time for which to advertise the position or consider the feedback that we received from from the uh the interviewers and we learned quite a bit from the people that applied we recognized that they there were people

122coming to us from all walks of life you know someone with a special education degree someone with he's an assistant principal and i i can't remember all of them uh but but but generally speaking nobody was coming to us with the you know i i sat in in central office and was a uh a supervisor of uh of uh diversity equity inclusion that could handle all these all these matters and so while all those matters are are important and still are important uh we we began discussing you know the the likelihood and the challenges that other districts were having also with with recruiting so for example we spoke with uh with you know there i think there is what three or four other districts in montgomery county that have uh designated individuals that are either

123directors supervisors or coordinators of diversity equity inclusion and in speaking with those superintendents most of those uh processes took multiple times to get to a candidate that could could you know you know fit a role or that they were satisfied with in terms of uh you know working working on so what we what we came up with and it was it was it was a lot of discussion about you know what's what are we what are we really looking for what are the key elements of our concerns that we need to address and the things that i outlined here this evening you know were the key items that that popped up i mean making sure that our principals and our our school counselors you know have the right support someone who's knowledgeable who's been been

124working with other uh uh folks in the field uh who who can get the support from the mciu can work with our principals to make them more knowledgeable in our system principles more knowledgeable about restorative practices in dealing with matters of discrimination whereby when we're thinking about how to handle discipline associated with that how best we can make it a learning experience for everyone uh you know at the end so that was one of the things and and the other the other probably the one of the biggest things is you know we have other requirements uh that that had started creeping up for example act 44 uh it started out as you know a a safety and security uh act that was primarily designed for physical safety but just the just almost a year ago

125started putting in uh matters associated with social emotional learning not only for students but for staff as well and so when we start thinking about the greater complexity of things that we need to accomplish um it was important for us to consider you know can we get someone who's approachable who's already good with with people and get them where they they most certainly need to be and and in our in our assessment it wasn't it wasn't in central office it was in the school buildings where they would best be suited you uh just one last question the are we now voting on a position title and job description or are we i'm trying to figure out what the uh the structure is are we talking about a position now are we talking about a department

126yeah so i'm just going to go to the slide that has uh outlined and so here here is we we currently have established by the board an office of diversity equity inclusion what we what the recommendation that's on the table is a job description which includes the title for the k-12 dei and climate counselor that's all you're approving but i wanted you to understand the perspective of what we need to do now right now i do not have the job descriptions for the billing advisors what we would do is have the k-12 a dei and climate counselor work with our our our office of curriculum our our uh with uh mr sergini or dr surgini and mr regina and our building principals to develop that that job description bring that back to you as a

127board get that approved and then uh start recruiting the building advisors so the only thing that's really in place right now um and every and every duty that i've said that title ix already does they already do so so that's already in place um they are the the top person uh that that's responsible for matters of discrimination they they start uh and they monitor and they they track the uh the title ix process so that that's already there i'm just trying to give you a perspective that all the things that we want to try to get done certainly can't be just laid in the lap of one individual and that's where a team of of seven eight nine of nine uh can can help support not only the buildings but can help support the district

128as a whole and the community okay so we're voting on one one position uh job description change with a future plan to uh add additional resources to the office of uh dea and i got done correct okay thank you any other comments or questions from members of the board yes um i know dr sergini mentioned stakeholders involved in the interview process of ten three to two i i want to be certain that those stakeholders through each of each candidate are the same so that every candidate is getting the same experience so for example if there's five interviewers for the folks that make it to the final round that those five interviewers have interviewed every candidate whether it be first round second or third so that the feedback and consistency in the interview process is there

129can we assure that that is happening that's exactly how we do it okay so so dr saudini you just just confirmed but what i think she's asking for is in is in round four of the interview process there are five interviewers and any any candidates that come before the individuals in round four go before the same five interviewers that's exactly how we that's how we handle every that's the only appropriate way to to have we've been doing it the same way for ever absolutely but the groups change from time to time so typically ms rocco and maybe dr seujin you're probably you you run this so you why don't you tell her how we how we do it from first round all the way through absolutely so there were four interview rounds and uh this

130was after uh the paper screening took place from our uh the resumes that were submitted the individuals who were chosen to go to the first round that was conducted utilizing our bid cruder system our bid cruder system allows uh those chosen for interviews to record answers to interview questions that allow the interview committee to then watch uh independent of that individuals were then chosen uh from the vidco round and and to dr zerby's point everyone in each round is asked the same questions and everyone who was participating in each interview round uh as the interview panelists they see all the individuals answering all of the same questions so that was our first round the second round was in an in-person presentation that included both our i'm sorry interview that included both interview questions as well

131as a presentation on a particular topic and again the individuals involved in that all the same questions and also all the same individuals who were participating as panelists the stakeholder realm similar situation with another separate presentation and uh questions again all of the same questions asked of the individuals in that round with all of the same interview panelists and then equally in the the fourth round the same panelists the same questions all asked of the uh of all candidates wonderful thank you thank you thank you thank you ms rocker for the question and and thank you dr sugini any other questions or comments uh ms aubry larsonness yeah you you did speak to the one question that i had was who is going to be choosing the building advisors and i'm happy to hear that

132that's going to be coming after we hire this dei and climate counselor um i i'm a little bit concerned about how the the evolution of this process and how this position has evolved it is this i believe that we originally talked about this as a director level position that is correct and reading this where exactly would this position fit in the the org chart uh this would be a person that um it's it's a it's a it's a teaching it's technically a teaching position it would be in the nethackton education association and the idea is for them to uh be in the middle as a school council like any other counselor within the district similar to our k-12 uh career and college counselor okay i'm just wondering if this person is going to be as

133effective as a member of mea and and being in that that tier of the organization i think is something that we should should think about um the other question that i had um is when looking at the the structure slide when you mention support the curriculum office that seems a little bit vague so i just want to make sure that we can be clear about what that means um and this is not be because i want to you know diminish the work that happens in dr walsh's office but i want to make sure that this person doesn't get pulled into curriculum um at the expense of the other role the other functions that should be part of this role no it's not it's not designed it's designed to advise uh like for example when we're

134selecting resources or when we uh are doing professional development so when when dr walsh's team sits down and says okay we're creating a professional development uh day for all the teachers you know we would we would likely pull this individual in to see what whether what the trends are what feedback they're getting from the mciu and their other java likes you know what their experience has been in terms of the feedback they're getting from the building advisors so that we can build those components into the professional development offerings for our teachers as as part of that work but you know it's really an advisory to to to all those aspects because you know diversity equity inclusion is not a it's not it's not just segmenting certain aspects of of of the operation it's something we

135we need to you know take into consideration through through all the work that we do so whether it's curriculum sitting on the building or or district well actually they'll sit on the district safety team um they'll they'll be working and they'll be rotating through the buildings uh and they'll have homes in each of the buildings so that they can be there to support uh teachers and and be a direct access for teachers and and students or when they need them and one of the great things and we we've seen this as we were working through this process our student groups uh specifically at the high school um could have used this resource a number of times already this school year and uh and and that's another reason why you know i think this is the

136right fit uh even though you know it it's certainly as as mris mentioned you know we should have been you know here sooner but you know i think this is the in all indications uh you know when we when we go out and we uh advertise for for a counselor you know we're getting anywhere in the neighborhood of 45 to 55 applicants for this for that type of position and you'll see in the job description there is a requirement for them to be uh nationally a certified nationally from a nationally accredited uh program of diversity equity inclusion as part of the work and their commitment to this position would it be possible then with the current job description for this person to be a member of mao as opposed to mea my concern is that

137there is going to be some challenges in having a level of authority um at the building level um i i want to make sure that this person is going to have the authority to really um yeah there's a no i miss i'll be listening i i think i you know i don't want to speak for you but but we we debated this as well because the challenge is once you have the authority you're sometimes less accessible or and and what i mean by that is um you know it's unfortunately it it it and it shouldn't be this way but but it commonly is where you know we would have teachers coming to fellow teachers just tell them stuff that they wouldn't necessarily come to an administrator and tell them and and what that does is

138it provides a level of protection for our staff it provides a level of protection uh for this individual uh because they'll be they could they could potentially be hearing some things that you know are not um or that are actually you know rather challenging and then they and then then working with mr regina uh who is that administrative and and does have the authority uh can can make those things happen and working with our principals the key element of all of this is making sure that we have someone in the middle who can help everyone um and can uh can be that that that um information resource that people are are not afraid to go to because part of as part of the discrimination issue i'm not saying here in the faction uh particularly but

139but just in general okay right no i i understand that completely um i guess the one other thing i would ask is that this person then have some sort of authority to report to the board as well even if it's just in the form of our weekly memos but um just so that we can have some sort of insight as to what's happening in this office um you know and checks and balances and this type of work is especially important so so to that i'm glad you brought that up i i know i had a conversation with some with someone about that and it's not while it's not in the job description um we will include as part of the friday memo uh something from this office uh so that person will be required to

140uh you know submit something on a weekly basis and b uh i think it's an imperative that we put them on the agenda uh in place of the report that ms drummond and ms perdue have been doing for the last several months where they can then report to back to the district uh as as a whole okay thank you other questions or comments uh miss cancro no i i agree you know i i hear what kim is saying but i do think it's better i think of this position as really being someone who you have a leadership team they work together but they're going to collaborate they're going to really connect and i there's a value of really being in the field you've got i think the team that we're setting up here will really

141work with everyone in so many levels so i do think even having them come and uh present at education committee meeting that that's where diversity and equity inclusion is is kind of put under so and then also having the board as well but i do think this position is fantastic and how it's positioned i think it really there will be so much value working together with everyone on so many levels that i think it's well thought out and it did take a little bit a while to get to where we were but this is truly um it will it is a great spot where we are right now going forward so thank you for doing the work thank you ms cancro any other comments or questions from members of the board ms drummond just one

142minor one really but to andrea's point of professional development if we could maybe um just include on the if the graphical representation of the position is the slide that we refer to to really know the duties um could we just add curriculum and professional development support i would just like to see the phrase professional development in there in writing just so we don't lose sight of that important aspect we we do have curriculum listed but i'll have to look at the job description to confirm if professional development is or isn't there but if it's not um i think it's it's it's appropriate to add it and we'll make that adjustment before next week yeah i would like to see that thank you absolutely okay thank you any other comments or questions members of the board

143seeing no other comments or questions um we are going to then go on to uh the rest of the agenda as as presented here real quick super quick i just wanted to say and maybe i missed it and i j dr sargeni i'm sorry but i we put a lot on you ideal world when is this person starting if if the right person is found well ms reese assuming that the the board votes in favor of this on the 22nd the earliest we would post would be the 23rd and do our due diligence and posting it would remain posted at least a week if not longer um we come up very quickly on the march meeting so as much as i would like to be able to say that we could have the position posted

144the interview process take place and reference checking done and a recommendation to you in time for that that would be my hope but i think it would be more prudent for me to say probably april i i just want to have have you know a light at the end of this tunnel thank you so much thank you ms reese uh on the agenda then uh for next week we have the award of excellence uh dr roberts will be here to uh share some outstanding individuals who work here in mathakton have committed their their time and energies to help students staff in the community in the arrowhead uh part of our district uh mr bricker will be presenting the senior tax discount program recommendation uh this is coming out of the finance committee and then we

145go on to uh reports as as listed there's an advisement as listed there we'll have public comment and then we'll go on to fiscal items mr berker thank you dr zurby this month for your approval we'll have the list of bills treasurer's report budgetary transfers to approve the mciu membership services budget of one million five hundred eighteen thousand five hundred eighty dollars with matthaq's contribution of representing a decrease of 488 dollars from last year they'll be the approval of two student activity accounts one for a high school science fair club and one for the high school hydroponics farming program will be the approval of the appointment of dichelle bartle and dooley as district solicitor for right to know matters we're asking you to approve the expenditure for the capital reserve in the amount of one

146that one hundred sixty eight thousand six hundred eighty three dollars and forty five cents there's also two change orders and three uses of allowances the first change order is for not to exceed of ninety five thousand dollars to provide and install concrete stop under the water tank and one to provide and install the brake tank for sprinkler system due to low water pressure from the utility at an increased cost of 168 and eleven 899.11 the three allowances there's one for the gissum and metal stud partition to close off the hvac chase room uh room 131.4 a total 1236 the next one to provide additional framing for the support of the tall wall at the library totally nine thousand five hundred sixty two dollars and thirty five cents and finally two thousand eight hundred nineteen dollars

147due to the change in the condition of the coordination i'm sorry changing coordination of the kitchen plumbing adding floor sync and moving another and then finally this month we'll have the request for the master plan 2022 to approve the increased scope of the bas at skyview to include all building automation systems at an additional cost of a hundred and three thousand six hundred fifty dollars bringing a total project cost one hundred sixty six thousand one hundred fifty dollars miseries do you have a question any questions mr bricker jack's gonna get me the information on the breakout of the labor and the subcontractor but maybe you know the why one document says 144 144 000 and some and some more in one and the actual agenda says 168. and if and i i'm sure there's an

148answer i just don't know it so i think the document that was provided had three different options associated with it and the option that we chose was the 168 that's the one that allows us to bring in the welded tank it it does but it does but that's the document that says 144. so there's somehow 24 yeah let us review that i think i think there might be something wrong there so mr um you know tomorrow we can take a look at that and uh confirm all the information with jack and either we post that or make the corrections thank you ms reese any other questions on fiscal items for mr bricker i'm not seeing any on the on the agenda yeah i haven't posted we have personnel items uh dr sergini thank you dr

149zerby and good evening again everyone for your consideration this month we have the following personnel items three resignations classified hayley stapleton paraprofessional at arrowhead and matthew barr accounting specialist at farina we're grateful to hit for haley and matthew's service to matthachton and we wish them well and emily albert paraprofessional at woodland resignation for retirement we are profoundly grateful to emily for her many years of dedicated service to the students of mathacton and we wish her all the very best in her retirement we have one employment classified robert people second shift custodian at methachton high school we're very happy to welcome robert to matthackton two changes of status classified lisa oliveri from pca at worcester to paraprofessional at warcester and elizabeth yantosh from human resources specialist at the farina education center to right to know safety

150and security support specialists at farina education center one uncompensated leave professional as noted one uncompensated leave classified as noted a series of supplemental contracts including summer school coordinator at methachton high school in addition to the boost program a revised list of spring coaches curriculum writing iep writing and a mentor additions to the classified substitute list as noted additions to the list of approved district volunteers as attached the approval of one job description professional the k-12 dei and climate counselor has attached and the approval of one job description confidential exempt the right to know safety and security support specialist as attached thank you any questions for dr seugini on personnel items i'm not seeing any ques oh i'm sorry miss reese sorry i thought someone else would have asked it i know we have um community

151members concerned about spring coaches there's a few vacancies and i wanted to reiterate to them that it every year it is a struggle um we did have i believe someone actu be concerned about the uh two arcola positions and we actually discussed that back in january at education because dr spiwak was concerned about that as well because it was two positions in the same sport and sometimes at least if you've got one grade covered at least you have a little buffer so i don't know if dr sergini or dr zurby wants to reiterate that the the board human resources dr speedwack are aware and are trying and if anyone out there can coach any of those things i know at north penn i have friends who say oh why don't you have um uh why

152do you have co-ed teams at your middle school and their response is always like well we can't find coaches would you like to coach and then they're like oh sorry i can't but anyway if any someone could reiterate that we're working on it absolutely miss reese and i can actually speak to that um i i do anticipate bringing at least we had six vacancies going into the agenda this week i do anticipate bringing at least two more names forward next week uh with the intent to fill these softball positions at arcola so i'm getting a little bit ahead of myself but i am confident and know that we will have candidates that will be added to the agenda for the action meeting thank you and i i know it's something we do discuss every season

153there's always a couple vacancies and i know you guys scramble um so thank you thank you miseries any other comments or questions for dr saudini on personnel matters seeing none we'll move on to curriculum and programs we have nothing on the agenda for curriculum programs but we do for policy mr regina thank you dr zurby uh we have a number of items for first read uh many of them are centered around extracurricular activities and athletics um along with uh both concussion management and sudden cardiac arrest uh not many adjustments made to these uh policy 626 is something the board can likely see probably every year it's just an adjustment to our guidelines on bidding and quote thresholds that's something that's reassessed each year and can change so we do evaluate policy 626 on an annual

154basis and second read items are all items that we had discussed uh the previous week thank you any questions uh for mr regina on matters of policy take no questions we'll move on to the next item which are uh matters under other gifts and donations approve the donation of a thousand dollars for the methachton high school piano cover and locks received by jim and kim beam uh second we have a uh trips approved the trip for matthew high school baseball spring training tournament uh april 11th through the 16th of 2022 uh in orlando florida and uh 13c uh dr walsh is on the call here this evening just to talk about the school calendar thank you dr zurby and good evening everyone for your review and consideration is the proposed 2223 instructional calendar by the

155administrative team the administration would like to highlight a few things of note the first is the start date for all students in grades 1 through 12 which will be on tuesday august 30th as well as the kindergarten orientation that will take place that same day this start date is projected to be on the same start date as the north monco technical center induction for new teachers will take place the week before on monday august 22nd and tuesday august 23rd with teacher preparation in service days on wednesday august 24th and thursday august 25th in addition we'll be having an in-service day on monday october 10th as a result of teacher and principal feedback in order to allow for the beginning of the year goal setting act 13 safe schools task completion as well as professional development

156another proposed change is moving parent-teacher conferences up by two weeks to monday november 7th and tuesday november 8th election day to provide earlier and proactive communication with families to support their student pathway for learning these conferences will now take place before the issuance of report cards to inform parents of student progress as it relates to the social emotional well-being of their children in addition to their academic progress after the first nine weeks of school the main focus of the fall conference is to share the beginning of the year benchmark data how the children are adjusting to the new grade level or class relationships with their peers and others and discussing academic goals for the new year now more than ever it's important to engage earlier than ever before to inform our families about their student

157progress also to note is the wednesday november 23rd day the day before thanksgiving which is listed as a makeup day due to inclement weather and as a result provides families a longer fall break over the thanksgiving holiday if that day is not needed you will also notice there are two early dismissal days built into the school calendar the first day is friday january 27th which would be for professional development for all grades k through 12 as the end of the marking period is that is also the end of the marking period for the first semester the second early dismissal will be on thursday march 23rd for professional development for teachers in grades k through 8. the last day of school is tentatively scheduled for wednesday june 14th this proposed calendar was shared with and received

158support from the mea union co-presidents thank you dr dr walsh and then the last item under this section of other is the 2022 graduation is established graduation from the high school class of 2022 for june 9 uh 2022 uh located at matthackton high school campus beginning at 4 p.m eastern time and of course as board members you you will certainly be invited and we will certainly be asking of you to participate as you uh normally would in helping us issue uh graduation certificates and and things of that nature are there any questions on the matters of other uh miseries um dr walsh i we did speak about the calendar at um education but it's always such a complicated topic that uh things come up later i did um speak to several k to four teachers

159k to four teachers are always our our friends who i don't i don't know they they get a lot on their plates i i feel like um and i think that they from from a lot of what i gathered that they're because of the trimesters and because of the change of report card that it had been discussed before your time here that possibly those conferences would be moved back instead of forward um i am you know the education committee and and uh respects your respects the administration's uh decision to go forward but i would ask that this year be kind of used as a um a trial per se and that after uh the first semester happens and these conferences happen that we could um that you could really like actually talk to the k-4

160teachers um personally no survey like talk to them um by going to their rooms or however you feel it necessary to talk to them not just through feedback from the principal just to see how they felt it went and did they like it did they not like it what was good what was bad and okay we like it this way we like it back to thanksgiving or you know what we really do need it after the first trimester i mean i get the point of moving it up there's arguments on both sides but if we could just use this year as a a pilot so to speak since we pilot curriculum if we could pilot these dates for the conferences to see how it goes i think that would that is a compromise thank you

161for the suggestion thank you miseries uh miss abu darcenis uh yeah dr walsh by moving the conferences up to earlier in the year um i guess i i'm concerned and this isn't really a question more of just a statement i'm concerned that this may create an additional burden on these teachers and i'm wondering if it might be given the additional strain that we have seen through the pandemic if it might be a good idea to um give us another year before we implement a change like this i don't know um in terms of what what exactly this does to their workload um but i would imagine that having conferences earlier means that they have more that they have to get done in less time so i wonder if it would be possible for us to

162kind of put a pin in this until the the following academic year um well certainly you know we can certainly respond as well but uh the previous experience also is some teachers actually held conferences the week before thanksgiving so in essence for those teachers who exercise those conferences the week before this would only be just a few more days prior to that um coming out of the pandemic the feedback that we received from parents in the past has been earlier communication is better rather than later communication just so they our teachers do a fantastic job on reaching out to those students who might be in need those tier three students but those students that do not fall in certain tiers giving them feedback as well it's really more about the adjustment um to the new

163year and it's just so critical as our students are getting back into their routines after this two-year uh pause if you will but you know there's certainly the administration can take all that feedback um working with the principals and so forth on you know looking at a change down the road we appreciate it and then the other thing is not a question just a statement i am glad that we are approving graduation um this month and not next month and i hope that um going forward given that we are unfortunately or for for better for worse we are not seeing snow days anymore um so i think that we can with some certainty predict when graduation will be at the beginning of the year so maybe we can start approving it even earlier but i

164will take it one month earlier this year than it has in in previous years and let's hope that that's a trend we can continue going forward thank you yeah thank you miss abraham for that comment because i'll just say this the way the reason we're able to to do that and and possibly even do that one more year from now is because we have uh the flexible instructional days which is approved three years uh in a cycle the unfortunate part is there's not some uncertainty uh we haven't heard a thing from pde about whether or not they're going to make flexible instructional days available again so we don't even know if we can apply and of course as we replied before you know we don't know whether we'll be approved so you know there's there's

165some variance uh to that but uh the reason we're able to do that is is the simple fact that we we have better control not complete control but better control of managing the calendar and and having managing delays within the the school year and the days so so thanks for bringing that to our attention and and i just i thought that explanation would help people understand um other comments or questions uh on matters under other going once twice okay on the next is uh dates for board member calendars and with that i will turn it over to madam president miss drama okay thank you um we have dates for board members calendars um and then next is does anyone have anything for either old or new business wait a minute i have to go see

166everybody liz before we go to courtesy of the floor um i know there was some unusual names um given on our sign up sheet so i'm assuming you're aware of those unusual names and i would hate for those unusual names to appear on the screen because some of them were very inappropriate and very immature um so i was hoping that i don't i know because you're new at this and i give you credit because i'm not i wouldn't be as good at it um that people will raise their hands so that you can call on them i'm not sure our procedure and possibly you know that they have their correct name in their um sign in yes i will i'm going to ask um and that's a good segue miss reece if everyone on the

167zoom please put if you choose to speak please put in your first and last name in the zoom so that we can identify you um i can't identify people by just their first name i need we need first and last name please um is there any old other older new business are we moving on seeing none okay so now it's time for courtesy of the floor um the board of school directors will now provide an 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 four minutes or less the board of school directors may choose to respond to matters following the conclusion of the comments and we ask that you show your full name on the zoom to be called

168on and please state your name and municipality when you're called on and um we will now begin all right first we have mark bradbury [Music] all right i'm sorry can you hear me good evening can you hear me i'm sorry yes thank you all right i apologize um good evening mark bradbury little province township um this is uh in regards to mrs reese his comments about uh greg young and miss rocco uh you're an educator correct ms reese i think you've brought that up once or twice before or or maybe a few hundred times before so why don't you lead guide and educate the new members of the board who've only been there a month and a half why don't you help them instead of criticizing them and that is the same statement that i

169want to say to miss arbi los angeles as well why don't you help them okay they're new at this and you are not you are leaders elected leaders and you're an educator ms reese are you not educate them help them guide them don't criticize them if they don't know what's happening that's your fault because you're a leader and you're an educator guide them help them thank you for your time good night okay um next we have john andrews mr andrews you can unmute please good evening uh john andrews law of providence this evening i want to talk about a serious subject namely the arrowhead sprinkler water sprinklers are a mandatory requirement for a new school and these sprinklers need an adequate water supply and as a side note i might mention that when sprinklers are

170required in private homes they have a separate water supply out to the street where the water veins are and so in this instance i'm not aware that there's a separate water main a water pipe just to supply the sprinkler system at last week's property committee meeting we dr malik and i heard of two change orders totaling 253 thousand dollars that cost now higher by ten thousand dollars would cover the cost of a sixty six hundred gallon water tank pump piping and a concrete support pad in an interior space intended for storage the stated reason is low water pressure for the fire sprinkler system low water pressure is not the root cause of this bumbling change order to smaller pipe to the water mains is the root cause perhaps just perhaps there may be a widespread

171low water pressure issue affecting perhaps 75 other homeowners and their homes supplied by the audubon water company so the problem of low water pressure may be more more widespread than at the arrowhead school to me an educated and experienced person it is absolutely clear that a better and cheaper solution is needed and possible for the new school ideas start with a bigger second pipe to the water mains others include an outside water tank perhaps insulated another is to re-establish the recently abandoned 12-inch diameter well pipe that underwent an expensive 30 000 closure just last year per a board approved change order that was an expensive change order and in that instance the the wells could have been closed perhaps for 10 of 30 my urgent request here and now is for your board to table

172these change orders and involve smarter consultants to develop a rational and timely solution i speak for a smart fix for this serious issue and not to place blame on anyone issues such as this one are reason to give taxpayers both more speaking time not less and then for board to heed their concerns and suggestions thank you next we have jim malik can you hear me dr monk you may unmute can you hear me all right [Music] okay can you hear me [Music] hello can you hear me over there yes okay jim moloch warcester um guys uh made the news pretty interesting the thing i found interesting about it is you actually answered somebody's questions he answered the reporter so maybe you should put that into practice for us uh dr zerby left out some significant

173facts in his right to no presentation in 2017-18 our right to know legal costs were seventeen hundred dollars in total we had angela lynch as the right to know officer not the solicitor in october of 2018 the solicitor was put entirely in charge of the right to know process now our bills and invoices are in excess of one million dollars a year that's where the problem lies it's not a requester problem when you put a lawyer in charge of the entire process and then don't monitor well you got a million dollars here's something that dr zerby forgot to mention the district defaulted and provided no responses to 17 of my appeals the oor granted me all those records without redactions in full dr zerby failed to mention that i won an additional five appeals which

174you appealed to the court of common pleas you already lost one of those common pleas court cases which you appealed to the commonwealth court you lost that appeal in total as well dr zurby did not provide the total costs associated with all the litigation that you and the board initiated and have so far lost who authorized those lawsuits who authorized the expenditures associated with those lawsuits and why aren't you telling the public about them i need to make a few corrections regarding miss larcenises comments there's never been a request from me or anyone else for redacted records the truth is that the district gathers thousands upon thousands of pages of records which have nothing to do with the requests the the solicitor bills to analyze those non-responsive records and believe it or not they even

175redact those non-responsive records and charge us for that most if not all of the issues with the right to know process have been adjudicated by the office of open records they've determined that search terms and right to know charts are now records and you guys are giving them to me i'm no longer being billed for legal invoices and the board members now have to prove that they actually did a search for records on their personal computers that's all because of the office of open records telling you guys you were wrong now i've heard somebody reference in a typical right to know request i'll give you an example of what i feel is in a typical right to know request i attended a board meeting held in the high school auditorium after the meeting miss reece

176approached me and just dispersed my professional reputation in front of john andrews and mr beckelman in her fit of anger she shot me the finger as she was leaving the building what she didn't realize was that the school district's security cameras were running and captured her behavior on the video i did a right to no request for that video which you guys denied i estimate the district spent between ten and twenty thousand dollars attempting to keep that video from me well guess what i won and you had to give me the video so before you guys make statements about the right to know process you need to know what you're talking about i would suggest you be um become more familiar with what's happening thank you [Music] okay next we have brian earnshaw mr earnshaw

177you may unmute at the january 18th work session there was a lengthy discussion at the end of the meeting about um committee assignments and unfortunately how about if i could interrupt uh mr would you please uh state your municipality please um i provide that to you when i registered to speak at this meeting um so the committee uh the the board talked a lot about committee assignments and unfortunately there was more time spent discussing committee assignments than the 118 million dollar district budget i'd like to inform mr young and and ms rocco that when i joined the board a few years ago i did in fact have been put into the committee assignments and there was no seniority consideration uh in those committee assignments so that must be something new um that developed within the

178past couple years regarding the second reading policy board policy number 903 where the time to speak is being reduced from four minutes to three minutes at the april 19 2018 policy committee meeting the committee recommended the time allocated to each speaker be modified to four minutes that was an increase from three minutes um i believe i was on that committee at the time as was uh director aubry lars denise at may 22nd 2018 board meeting that policy was approved increasing the time to speak from three to four minutes by a vote of nine to zero reese winters drummond and aubry larson east all voted in favor of that change from three minutes to four minutes so my question is why is the board changing to three minutes now the only explanation offered by the board

179president was that this is consistent with other districts uh mr andrews provided they had a proving that that was incorrect either misinformation or lying to us um and at 2018 the average time we looked at was in fact four minutes it probably was some distance for five minutes so what districts have decreased since then and i'm not aware of any of them and mr andrews heard that as well so i'd like to hear the real reason why you're reducing the time for us members of the public to speak um from four minutes to three regarding the dei position that was discussed tonight is the dei supervisor position being eliminated and has or will it be removed from the budget or are we going to have two positions in the budget for dei i like to

180understand that um and also what is the estimated cost of this dei and climate counselor regarding the change orders um with the for the water tank and the concrete slab i'd like to understand why this wasn't known as to be an issue with water pressure before the construction went the kcva dropped the ball or who did this doesn't seem to this isn't the first time the sun like this has come across and also for the concrete slab why is it not to exceed estimate you can know the contractor is going to come in close to that 95 000 because you've already put it out there and also are there competitive bids being done for this for this job or are these no bid contracts regarding the capital reserve expenditures did the board or the administration

181receive competitive bids for this equipment do note that i believe the costs seem high and can that schedule be updated to identify the vendors that this equipment is going to be purchased from regarding the right to know solicitor um how does the 160 dollars compare uh to the current rates being paid and there was a lot of discussion about failures of the currency who's been hailing right to know as the district attempting to recover any of those fees from their mismanagement of the process and with the implementation of this change in the right to know solicitor and to hiring this person is the 575 000 increase in legal fees from that's in the budget currently going to be reduced and then finally regarding the charges report um any updating to provide an update on the

182shenandoah litigation where the district is holding 7.3 million dollars of taxpayer funds in escrow and if no if there is providing updated what are the next steps and there's also still 22 000 sitting in a campaign capital campaign account for when the turf fields were put in probably over five years ago um i'd like to understand what's going to be done with that if anything thank you mr earnshaw for your comments okay next we have joe rittenhouse hello can you hear me yes all right give me one second okay uh thank you for your time tonight i wanted to keep this brief but i don't think anything will quite beat the record of the new school board president cutting off public comment before it could even begin simply put the board's behavior this past week

183has been illogical mean spirited and downright wrong the board is operating in a paradigm that has passed and certain members need to let go of this petty tyranny and move forward we have a small group of adults holding with not operating in the best interest of student health and education months ago i think a statement like that would have been made in bad faith however i think recent events including tuesday's anti-science publicity stunt demonstrated this to be true the masculine mr mr rittenhouse could you talk about what how this is a matter that may come before the board the every single thing here is a matter that will come before the board the masking policy from attack and school district runs not not only counter to the reality it has been mocked and flaunted by

184the very people who voted to enforce these arbitrary metrics we exalted the pandemic team during the the heavy months of the pandemic and considered every single proposal of theirs with care and then all of a sudden with some new political vigor we decided to throw these recommendations out the window the second ops optional masking came onto the table threw these metrics into the system and now these same board members have fled to different states where they've been seen massless we've toured our elementary schools without masks they've feigned fear when suddenly confronted by families and students and teachers who are also amassed this pearl clutching could not have been more obvious and this hard behavior went so far as have supporters of the board threaten mathakton teachers jobs parents and students by saying i'm worried i

185might accidentally back over them with a car when leaving a school board meeting when confronted with the simple fact that the last per the last in-person meeting was mask-lisk and had members of the audience without mass the question was raised what import what what is difference but between last week's meeting and the meeting that was cancelled on tuesday and the quiz behind the quivering and the quaking we heard well we had important business at the time so i'm kind of blown away we spent so much time today if there was no important business and i'm surprised by that but hey now that i know the di position is no longer considered important i suggest we ask the position entirely simply put no one is taking this seriously the power trip anymore one need only go

186on to social media to see teachers current with acting teachers in the school masculist with our students one look at tick tock or a snapchat map to see that students are ignoring the mass mandates entirely and i'm personally excited seeing that some students are already planning a walk out if the new masked optional deadline is not met and honored are we truly to believe that no one that we are going to move backwards if metrics go up again and we're going to force children back into mass people will no longer imply students will no longer comply it's time to let this go and move back to education and la the other thing i just wanted to point out and i'm i'm genuinely serious about this when it comes to the right to know request and

187the the filming of the policy uh the policy committee meetings i will donate my time and my energy to to help the board and the district move up into the 21st century when it comes to how to do this we're all using zoom right now it's automatically recorded if we wanted to be we could do in zoom and in person committee meetings at the same time i will donate the time the money the energy whatever it is to make it simple and easy to record and it will save you on right to know we have cloud funding services that will gladly cover vast amounts of swaths of stuff that i'm sure we we fight legally so i i think that we really truly need to look at updating how we do the systems and i

188am i am genuinely offering my time to help do it thank you all right thank you next we have katie lee you can unmute hello good evening hi yes we can hear you thank you okay my name is katie leet i am lower providence uh i just as joe ridden house and very very upset with the way tuesday night stage performance went off by ms drummond dr zurby and the four additional school board members quickly voted to adjourn the disgusting political theater clearly violated board policies with more than two board members performing board activities outside a meeting to plan the charade it was not an unsafe environment you were simply mad because you're losing control 10 unmasked people in a room that seats 350 plus people is not unsafe plenty of room to social distance

189and oh by the way the data the science you cite now shows conclusively one way masking is sufficient i've seen photos of most of you on social media with friends mask free you are hypocrisy at its finest and you know what i'm mad too your anger is related to power i have more at stake my children and their education i wish i could go back to 2011 when we moved to mcmacton because it was a top 10 school district i wish i had known your priorities would not be my children your priorities are masking my children simply to receive government funds writing the theatrical script from tuesday bullying new elected members you said you'd never work with if they were elected but wait a minute you're all still here your priorities are reducing public comment

190from four to three minutes so you can ignore the constituents you are elected to represent you hide information and do not do what's best for the public and children so we are forced to file right-to-know requests increasing a significant cost to the district you fight and delay teacher contracts which reward the glue literally holding the show together while approving more and more extra administrative positions like the two on the agenda tonight you have created this mess it's time you fix it your nine zero dictatorship is done the angry public you are supposed to serve blew that up so now you have a choice you have two more years to still make a difference and i urge you put your egos aside work with the new members listen to the public all of the public not

191just the ones blindly following your lead shift focus back to a true and academic education and rebuild the math acting from 2011 thank you next we have emma bradbury you can unmute can you hear me yes i'm a bribery lower providence township i don't think children should be forced to wear a mask because kids and teachers can't see how we are feeling i think we should have and choice to wear masks or not i don't wear a mask at school because i can't breathe well it makes me stuffy my teacher can't see my emotions sometimes i get breakouts when i want to come back to my factom but i want to come back to my factom but like i don't want to be forced to wear a mask some people can't hear when people are

192wearing masks i want the board to ask doctors or be too freaked from asks thank you thank you miss emma next we have liz santucci good evening jeremy yes okay great thank you for the opportunity i wanted to speak tonight about the proposal for the timing for the fall conferences in the upcoming vote for the 2022-23 calendar the teaching staff was not aware of the significant change proposed to the fall conference dates until it was shared with a few of our leaders about two weeks ago we felt that it was important to survey the k-8 professional staff who would be affected to determine the timing that they felt was best for the conferences and to share important information with the families as a background we would like to note the survey was presented to the

193teachers blind and not with the information that the proposed calendar change had the dates in early november the survey was completed by approximately 86 percent of our professional staff and of those respondents 78 percent noted they preferred thanksgiving or later with only about nine percent choosing the mid first marking period which would be around election day the many comments provided which were emailed as well indicate that the majority noted that conferences around thanksgiving or later are preferable in order to allow teachers to work with the students for a period of time to gather sufficient data to learn about their students and have enough academic and social emotional information to share with the parents also due to a significant number of assessments at the beginning of the year specialists such as the math and reading support

194do not begin formal groups with students until about mid-october this staff who currently participate meaningfully in the late november conferences would not have that opportunity as they would have very little time with the students and their input would be missing from the conferences as it was shared that the calendar modification for earlier conferences was prompted by a request from the board we would like to share that we are very willing to answer any questions you may have or elaborate on the information and perspective shared in our survey and the lengthy comments provided last week we do respectfully request that you consider our professional input regarding conference timing that we feel is best for our students and our families thank you thank you um next we have um lauren nalgen can i mute okay can you

195hear me okay yes okay lauren nelgen worcester um first i wanted to just mention on the front page of the math acting website it says very clearly at the top learn lead succeed together i think that's an awesome motto but i think it's unfortunate that our new board members have not really experienced that a great example was tonight with ms reese there was no reason to call out mr young or miss rocco regarding their training as i would assume every board member should be up to date on what is appropriate for right to know as you're all sitting members of the board and i know there's a lot of things to cover but if you're all going to be up there it makes sense that everyone should know the same information and miss rocco and

196mr young are at a disadvantage they're new so i would expect the learn lead succeed together would come into play here and mr reese as an educator i would hope that you would work towards that goal and not away from it so hopefully that's considered in regards to pivoting virtual for tonight i actually have been asking for virtual opportunities to participate as a parent of five children who works full-time attending in person is not always an option so as that parent you can either watch the recording or send an email like i did this week and i did not get a response so unfortunately the email system isn't really working and parents are left out i wanted to let the public know that my children are in the cyber charter program this year i have

197four of them in the program the reason for that is when the virtual option well i guess when the plan the health and safety plan was created the children if they were removed from the classroom due to illness or close contact they weren't able to participate in the classroom meaning listen to zoom and for me as a working parent and there's many of us having the struggle to try and catch them up for the quarantine period which fortunately has been shortened but still nevertheless is there that was a challenge and as a traveling working parent i couldn't commit to that i received four letters in the mail the same exact letter essentially telling me that my children were going to fail because they are set up in the cyber program right now um if we're

198looking at costs we could have sent one letter there are four children living in the same household but that letter really doesn't welcome me back in flip side maybe you should see how we're doing and hey maybe in the spring things are going to change and maybe you do want to come back to methactin so i would encourage you to look at those letters and possibly reconsider the tone and finally um regards to substitutes mr dr sorgini i certainly appreciate as a hiring person myself that the people who are looking for jobs the pool is low um so perhaps we consider accepting three days at the higher rate and maybe those people will come on as five you know they are substitutes and they don't really know what potentially what they're getting into maybe they've

199been retired maybe they're considering it um but why not give them the same benefit of three days a week and then if they commit to five maybe there's some type of bonus for committing let them see what it's like and then perhaps they will choose to stay so that you know before they just jump in feet first and not knowing you know how five days a week is going to impact their life maybe it will be worth it to them so all things i would you know ask you consider and thank you for your time okay thank you next we have jason clee oh sorry i clicked on kip markle all right okay markle okay um kit markle worcester i i really thank the uh the board for giving teachers the opportunity to speak i

200also happen to live in the district i would also like to talk about the proposed calendar for next year a couple of things were said um mea does not approve the calendar first of all uh the calendar is shown to the mea presidents to make sure it doesn't violate anything in the contract and the cut and the presidents did say it does not violate anything in the contract so that was sort of implied that um it was approved by mea and that's not really something that mea does one of the other things that was said was that many conferences are held the week before thanksgiving sometimes teachers have to have some conferences before thanksgiving because families go on vacation that week but as a rule the conferences for cater for held on that week of

201thanksgiving um one of the things that mrs miss aubry larceny asked was if it would be an additional burden for our cater for teachers and i can tell you that yes it would be we have many many things coming next year that are going to really impact the k to 4 learners and the staff my suggestion would be to take that election day and make that an in-service day for teachers to and their principals to review what's working with inclusion and full-day kindergarten and the new wonders program and the math piloting that's going to be going on to review that to see what's going well what needs to be changed etc i think that would be a great opportunity for that and then move the conferences to the monday and tuesday of thanksgiving week to

202um to still give you that wednesday snow day makeup day mysteries also miseries also talked about talking to teachers after making the change but i would say that really the conversations should be had before the changes are made teachers were not asked about this change and the only reason that we kind of found out was that the president showed it to myself one of the co-vice presidents to get to get my eyes on it and then when i saw that conference change i just thought this is just really not gonna work for the k to four um staff and their families um so that's sort of my plea uh there were three teachers that did meet with dr walsh and mr regina to discuss our concerns and if any of the board members would like

203to reach out to me personally you have my email and i would be happy to talk to you personally about the concerns we have with this change again i thank you and um i just hope that uh maybe you could hear us on this thank you thank you next we have jessica bradbury hi good evening can you hear me yes great thank you jessica bradbury lower providence township the virtual only format of this meeting tonight is a violation of district policy of standard practice and a pennsylvania statute people should not be required to register in advance or risk being denied the right to speak at no point over the past two years of this pandemic has the district provided a mechanism for audience members to object throughout the meeting until this evening can you explain

204why that is can you help us to understand tuesday meeting why was it adjourned without board taking comments before their vote why did you ignore the member of the audience that raised an objection on tuesday under section 710.1c of the pennsylvania statute title 65. if you adjourn the meeting this evening mrs drummond without answering these questions and providing a valid justification then we will consider that acknowledgement of your guilt that you have and continue to intentionally violate pennsylvania statute and board policy our school district also has policy 006.2 governing attendance at meetings via electronic communication this policy states a majority of board members shall be physically present at a board meeting when a board member attends through electronic communications typically not more than one board member may participate in a public meeting remotely during a

205meeting the president may exercise discretion as long as a majority of the board members are physically present isn't there a reason why policies exist mr drummond do you believe that only some policies should be enforced while others ignored you've been very strict in applying the four-minute limit found in policy 903 which governs public participation in the board meetings so can you help me to understand why policy 903 is enforced but policy 006.2 is not can you help me to understand why you're proposing revising the policy and reducing our time limit from four to three minutes is it because that's what other districts do as parents we don't teach our children to think we we don't teach our children to do what others are doing we teach them to think critically so please set a good

206example demonstrate to them what's important and that is respecting one another and listening to their views regardless of whether or not you agree and how are the children doing this year are there any plans to review more data around performance emotional health and mental well-being and what about the teachers i think we know anecdotally they're not doing very well but has the district considered administering an anonymous survey to gather feedback around satisfaction and ask them what would take to be better working environment how can we improve and related to the health and safety plan it's that time of year for parents to decide whether to return students to methactin or re-enroll in parochial vaccines have been available and many have natural immunity other countries and states have proven for months that schools are a safe

207environment without masks it's time for this board to embrace the fact that we must learn to live with kovid it's time to free the smiles of our children so please pledge on your honor to tell us that you will never take us back to a universal mask mandate thank you next we have lisa genomas lisa can you hear me yes can you hear me okay yes thank you okay um lisa g newman's worcester um so i'm a young mother in the district i'm actually speaking for the first time tonight i'm not usually one for public speaking but after this past tuesday i just can't sit by any longer while so much needs to be said i was unable to attend what was supposed to be the school board meeting because i had a prior commitment

208so imagine my utter disbelief to hear of a cancelled meeting at methectone because of mask wearing well i went i had actually gone to um a prior a priorly scheduled uh sixers game with some family and i was sitting surrounded by thousands of masculist moms dads and children while tens of thousands of people could gather seeing shoulder to shoulder select members of the school board thought a small group of concerned mothers and fathers was a threat to public health this is beyond ridiculous ending the meeting was disgraceful and as others have already mentioned it's a violation of your own rules as well as state rules i have no problem with individuals making a personal decision to mask or asking their own children to mask but forcing what should be a personal decision on the public

209is completely inappropriate chop has endorsed making masks optional in schools one of the major influencers on our covet pandemic team's decision making and there's also plenty of data supporting mask optional from a growing group of diverse well-respected harvard johns hopkins etc trained doctors as part of the urgency of normal organization who agree the detriments to children far outweigh the benefits of mandatory masking we have all heard that science changes but how come when it changes in favor of ending masks in both adult public meetings and our schools those few facts are ignored additionally now that i've come to this meeting i have concerns about the way that we're treating our teachers um we keep hearing about how teachers are dissatisfied and how we have issues recruiting and keeping teachers and then um i had i

210heard a couple of teachers speak before me who weren't even made aware of this change with the report cards we're talking about how can we make their lives easier well we're doing things to make their lives harder without gathering their feedback first so overall there's there's a lot of different things to be concerned about masking teachers and we definitely need to have some changes thank you thank you next we have katie thiel oh um katie is using an older version of zoom so katie you're gonna i have to promote you to panelists here for a minute is that okay let me do that okay i'm here oh sorry i didn't know i'd be on camera hi um well thank you sorry um that explains why that explains things okay thank you very much um first

211thank you all to all the board members for the work you do for the community while while i may not always agree i deeply appreciate your time and commitment if you are being threatened or harassed during this really stressful time that's wrong and i'm sorry thank you for continuing to support and implement the health and safety plan i appreciate the reliance on community data to move to optional masking and i hope the data continues to move in the right direction and we can be option mask optional soon um i do want to speak to tuesday as i was there miss rocco and mr young in particular i want to remind you of your duty as board members to uphold district policy this includes implementing the current mass policy that was approved by the board in

212december i didn't witness that many people have stated people attending games and restaurants and sports previously attending games restaurants and sports are choices school is not a choice it is compulsory for all students in the state of pennsylvania this includes students who need access to school and may be immune compromised or have other reasons that they need universal masking this creates the safest environment for almost all and that's why it is important but regardless of belief school board members are responsible for strengthening the community surely that does not include a community behavior that was witnessed this week which includes shouting threats and leads our district to be highlighted on the local news for discord our community is better than this moving on i do want to speak in support of the increase to building substitute

213pay as someone with previous experience as a daily and a building substitute this pay would have made a difference in my decision on where to substitute when i was previously a building sub only because i know there were questions i was committed in a different district for five days a week to a specific school incentivizing reliable substitute teachers will not only attract more subs but it will also alleviate the stress of teachers experience when they need to take a day off or a purse for personal or health reasons this is desperately needed and i am really glad matthachton is taking the steps in regard to right to know it is absolutely shocking there is one single member of the public that has requested over 800 items and cost the district over nine hundred thousand dollars

214that's a lot of money that can be used elsewhere i hope that the new solicitor can provide insight into fixing that situation i'm glad that step is being taken finally i fully support the di position please vote to approve this next week thank you very much thank you um okay um next we have jason clee hi can you hear me yes all right jason cleveland providence um it is time to end mask mandates and follow the science with all uh due respect to the members of the board i believe some of you are misinformed about the risks of kovid especially when it applies to kids in our schools polls in the u.s and other countries show that many of the public believe that covet is a much higher risk than it actually is especially with

215omnicron fear should not guide our policies in schools science should the cdc has recently had to admit that most masks used by the public don't provide much of any protection against covid um kids have fallen so far behind because of masks in our schools and have harmed our kids more than helped uh child development and social skills have fallen behind as well as learning it's time to follow the science and end the mandates thank you thank you next we have gretchen degale gretchen can you hear us yes i'm sorry if i got your name wrong go ahead baby i've been in elementary school please plea could you please state your your name and your municipality you say i'm grunting to geo from lower providence now you can say it go ahead i'm gretchen's your friend

216out loud i'm gretchen did you from lower providence and i'm from elementary school and the guy from the news said that nobody's talking about this mask thing in school but everybody is we want to have a we want to be able to breathe and not have a mask on thank you are you finished thank you ms gretchen um next we have vince josephs can you hear me okay yes yeah all right first of all uh props to that little man that just spoke he's okay with me could you please state your name and your municipality the one that you just stated sure vince jones it's worse tester uh before i get started i ask a second miss markle's point the board should ask what teachers think before they make sweeping changes that affect their jobs

217maybe so many wouldn't be quitting also retroactively bump their pay grade to account for year for year experience and not a one for every two year scale they work hard they deserve it so gather around if your kids are in the room make sure they hear this it's imperative everyone understands why k-12 students parents and staff are forced to wear masks if against their own wishes it's not the state the governor not the cdc not the department of ed not some judge court or other nebulous bureaucratic body not an injunction in another district not the teachers union not even the superintendent you're off the hook dave take a breath there are exactly six reasons you're forced to wear a mask if against your own wishes grab a pen and a pad and write them down

218ready the six reasons you're forced to cover your face are kim aubry larcenies liz drummond andrea reese mcguinness samira perdue and paul winters that's it those are the only six reasons you have to wear a mask everyone needs to know this and those six people should own it every student in arcola right after the pledge should watch a video recording of you in the morning announcements a video hi we're kim grand larcenies liz drummond andrea reese and educator drew mcginnis tamira purdue and paul winters and we're the reason your parents don't have the choice to take your mask off we could change it right now if we wanted but we don't want to have a great day regressing emotionally bye at every volleyball game all six of you should go down to the court and

219announce to everyone there that you are the six reasons that they don't have the choice to wear a mask see how the crowd reacts at me fact and high on every sign on the door in the hall that says masked mandatory add a note that says this rule is the sole decision of kim grand larcenies liz drummond andrea reese drew mcguinness samira perdue and paul winters and nobody else hold a special assembly in worcester elementary until all those little kids that you are the six sole reasons that their parents no longer have agency over their faces then tell their parents one by one especially the ones that have kids in speech therapy better yet hand out masks to all the students with your six names printed on the front every student should associate that mask

220and the years of potential emotional trauma sustained therein with your six names it's important they'll need to remember your names in therapy one day it's not about the safety of the kids stop saying that maybe you've noticed every person and child you know got covered in the past three months did any families get calls from the school asking how they're doing nope when teachers contracted covid were all the students in the classes notified nope the most telling example that mandatory masking isn't about the kids was on tuesday night you had a mostly empty auditorium full of adults some of which refused to comply with your masking rules and you read an oddly prepared statement to shut down a public forum were the kids in danger that night was shutting down a meeting full of adults

221about the safety of the kids no it was about power and control not that you exercised either on tuesday what we all witnessed from you was panic and impotence you weren't worried about the kids you just suddenly realized you have less power than you thought so your rules mean nothing when you can't enforce them did you watch the news today you'd love it if the police could just drag parents out of the room but oops turns out when school board members spend a year denigrating the police they don't take orders from you see the cops that are on our side always have been 12 people who took off their masks got y'all end up hiding behind zoom calls again what will you do when it's 50 people or a hundred what's the plan at the

222next indoor wrestling match when all the parents take their masks off how about the teachers i know they're listening or watch the news today what if they decide to take their masks off in class because they don't think six elected officials should make that decision for them fire them good luck with that lawsuit anyone catch action news today you can't hide from the media in last month's board meeting the ones you didn't scuttle away from a statement was made that high school student morale is up due to cancelled midterms and finals that'll serve them well when they're 23 addicted to pills and can't find portugal on a map thank you for your comments next we have ed thiel ed um i'm gonna have to promote you to panelists as well just a minute okay all

223right you can you can on you sorry i'm having difficulties no that's okay we can hear you all right ed theo lower providence um i want to say thank you to the majority of the board tonight for continuing to put the health and safety of everyone in the community first it was clear that a number of people intended to break the health and safety policy and cause a scene i'm disappointed in the people that chose to disrupt and intimidate the rest of the audience i would hope they would be able to disagree and talk about the issues without resorting to name calling and bullying because that's really what i saw what happened from a lot of the audience that was there mrs rocco and mr young i want to remind you of your responsibility as

224a board member to uphold the policies of the district particularly the health and safety plan failure to do so means that that not all members of the public will be able to participate at board meetings do you represent all in the facton or just people who disrupt meetings and cost the district hundreds of thousands of dollars with their right to know requests designed really to harass the risk district i've read a number of them and they're targeting specific people why do you openly encourage and organize your supporters to violate this policy there's a big there are big problems that the board should be focused on and you appear to be encouraging chaos discord and division instead i expect better from my elected officials just note i also want to say i really support the dei

225initiatives that are going to put push forward i'm a little disappointed that we couldn't find a good candidate but i appreciate that we're moving forward and trying to find the right candidate to support that thank you very much thank you next we have sandy hamilton oh wait sorry i have to [Music] okay sandy hi sandy hamilton lower providence we can hear you okay um from what i understand the blue masks that most of us wear and that kids are wearing in school are not are not as effective as we thought they would be um i understand that they need to be changed every 30 minutes or so to be as effective as we had hoped um i think kids are depressed wearing a mask they want to connect with their friends um and i appreciate

226what then said about the speech therapy for the children there they they are not getting proper education or learning if they don't see their teacher's mouth and they can't hear properly they're not learning as well as they could that's a very stressful um [Music] i had a question about the under the dei i don't know if the parent resource is still on the website about the anti-police book something bad happened in our town i think that's very confusing for children to think that police are bad and then they see a police officer in the school that's very scary for kids i i don't know if that's still on the website um i just think that's very unsettling for kids uh to think that police are there to hurt them um so i'm hoping that we

227going back to the mass media i hope we can make mass optional um i don't see a need to mask anymore due to the the science thank you so much thank you next we have aaron mccool erin hi good evening can you hear me yes excellent thank you for the opportunity to comment this evening i'd also like to thank you for your persistence and ongoing focus oh i'm sorry state your your name and municipality please yes aaron mccoy lower providence thank you um thank you for the opportunity to comment um also like to thank you for your persistence ongoing focus on keeping kids safe and providing a healthy learning environment in an incredibly challenging time i also must express how sorry i am that your continued targets of harassment and negativity rather than productive and

228constructive discourse you did not create this pandemic but you were thrust into a situation that no one could have been prepared for and i am grateful that you have stuck with it this long so thank you for your service most of us whatever our race gender or zip code believe that our families and neighborhoods are stronger safer and healthier when we come together to overcome shared challenges and develop collective solutions but today when a vocal few fuel divisions among us and reinforce national narrative that has politicized the pandemic they block our efforts to provide quality schools and robust learning options for every child joining together we can rewrite those rules so that teachers and students can thrive in the face of uncertain challenges as the world continues to recover from this pandemic the board has

229created a health and safety policy that relies on health data to make an informed decision every day we're closer to healthy threshold holds being met and it is very likely that it will very soon be safe for our community for students to gather indoors at school unmasked the existing policy is in place for a reason and i was disappointed to see voting members of the board publicly announced on their campaign page that they felt the established board policy requiring masking at meetings should not have been followed in the public meeting on tuesday this was simply a continuation of the relentless negativity and disrespective leadership that i've witnessed throughout the entire pandemic simply put this was a public meeting announced and shared following sunshine laws and failing to uphold your own policy would have been unfair

230to members of the public attending in person expecting that mass would be worn because that's what your policy said you would do the arguments about masking are near obsolete the closer we get to these thresh healthy thresholds board members represent all students in the district not just their supporters please work to find consensus and bring communities together rather than promote further division i hope that this remains a priority moving forward recognizing that we could once again face challenges and differing opinions on many topics in the future i'd also like to say our education system is on the precipice of really great change and some may even call it a renaissance the pandemic has brought to light shown a bright light on gaps and inequalities that existed long before 2020 and presents us with a challenge

231to address and make the world a better place for our children it's critical that we embrace this change in the opportunity it brings in pennsylvania we're about to adopt new science standards that provide endless opportunities to center equity and instruction engage students and build critical skills to thrive in a complex world all districts in pennsylvania are responsible for creating an environmental literacy plan as part of our commitment to the chesapeake bay agreement and the recommendation is that this includes meaningful watershed education experiences in elementary middle school and high school the new environmental literacy domain further advanced multidisciplinary learning that can integrate civics education complex content knowledge required to excel in ela and middle school and high school to effectively integrate these changes into advanced curriculum and learning experiences for children it's critical to provide ample

232time and support for teachers to integrate new strategies and reflect on practice and this relates to mrs reese's comments around detroit dei training in order to fully incorporate equitable strategies and innovative new education we need to provide teachers with workshops but also communities of professional learning time for reflecting on their practice and time to map how new content maps to curriculum i'm asking for you to seriously consider investment in teacher professional learning as a process not just a series of workshops please consider emphasizing professional learning and ongoing development around dei with the new office i would also ask that you reconsider making this a leadership position i'm concerned that the level of strategic vision and influence needed to shift instruction and culture cannot be achieved without the leadership role please as a board focus on

233removing support and removing barriers to allow our teachers to embrace innovation in education become excellent educators and help our children thrive thanks so much for your time thank you um all right next we have amy smith amy good evening amy smith for sester township we can hear you great thank you i want to compliment dr sorgini for advocating uh for the new um the new recommendations uh to bring in and secure substitutes and to be competitive i know that things are difficult right now i am numerous people have spoken this evening about uh teacher shortages and teachers leaving the profession all together and and i recently saw um a graphic that came from the state that showed the number of teaching certificates that have been issued in the state of pennsylvania and the last statistic

234that was on there was for the 2019-2020 year uh school year and it showed that there were a little over 6 000 teaching certificates issued for the entire state of of pennsylvania and if you when you looked at the graph and you looked like six years ahead um that was a significant decree decrease it was like more than than half um so we're up against it right in terms of being able to attract new talent to retain teachers it's it's difficult right now so um i appreciate everything dr sardini is doing to to try to um bring in substitutes but i would also like to make the point that it's really important that we're talking to our teachers uh to work on retention as well and and just to give them the supports that they

235need and and i'd like to make a a strong uh statement for communication that their strong communication from the admin to the teachers in every department at every level so that the teachers feel valued that they not just feel valued but know that they're valued not only by the families and the students that they serve but by the administration as well and i'd like to give kudos to the principals that i know work really hard at creating that environment in each of their buildings i'd also like to speak to the office of diversity equity and inclusion i like to say thank you for the updated job description um professionally i know that these positions are becoming increasingly difficult to fill because it is a specialized area i know that multiple universities and colleges throughout our

236area are expanding certification programming specifically for this role so hopefully over the next few years it's something that will grow as more and more school districts are are bringing on this type of work but thank you for the updated job description i would like to advocate for professional development being included in there because certainly anything that we're implementing for teachers or anything that we're asking them to do should be supplemented with robust support and training so that they feel comfortable working in those modalities so thank you for that and and i just want to speak to tuesday night and the recess of the work session to this evening and i want to say thank you i know personally that there are two members of our math acting community um who are going through chemotherapy and

237while everyone may not feel the need to wear a mask because they don't feel that they're at risk we still have members of our community that are at risk um and until we get out of that that critical phase that that high transmission phase i'm grateful that we have a health and safety plan in place that protects our community i know every single one of us when we know someone who's ill we step up and we want to do things to help them and i think it's great that we have protections in place for things like schooling um until we get out of that high transmission phase to make sure we're protecting our most vulnerable so thank you thank you next we have beth piper hi can you hear me yes hi beth pfeiffer lower

238providence township uh i'm a community member who was actually thankful that this meeting was switched to virtual unfortunately there are many of us in the community who for one reason or another can't get to the school board meetings to be able to speak to you guys i'm one of those community members as it seems that i always have another meeting scheduled at the same time as your meetings thank you for allowing us to speak in this form so that all of our voices can be heard hopefully it can be considered uh in the future to have some sort of hybrid model for school board meetings as it would really help people like myself be more able to participate as i sat thinking about what i wanted to say this evening i found myself at a

239loss for words about what is happening in our district and in the world around us i'm saddened by the way some of our community members speak at you they seem to talk down to you their tone of voice is demeaning and very disturbing to me they may threaten you or say things that i'm sure make you wonder why you all do what you're doing for our community i don't know how you do it how you can sit there and take the bullying and abuse because that is what it is i am so sorry there are a lot of people in this district who are very appreciative of all your volunteer work for our community and our school district and i wanted to thank you for the continued support of a health and safety plan that

240is guided by expert recommendations and tied to community spread thank you for working to keep our community safe i hear that the adults fear that these kids are suffering as a result of wearing masks when i'm in the school as i'm the yearbook coordinator uh and i have spent a good amount of time in school this year believe me i can see that socializing is still happening these kids are actually acting kind of normal even though they're wearing masks and they all seem to be kind of happy i mean they're in school and that's really what most of these kids want in addition both of my kids have made new friends this year even while masked and one of my children has speech therapy and hasn't had a difficulty in participating and has shown improvement

241while wearing a mask some of the concerns people are expressing are just to remove mass from their children at the detriment and risk of other children in the school as we watch our numbers decrease many doctors and specialists i've listened to are optimistic that we will soon move to the next phase of the pandemic where disease spread will be less and mass will become optional soon move to the next phase of the pandemic but not not that time is not now why why can't we wait to make mass optional until later in the spring when the weather is better in the spring it'll be more conducive to opening classroom windows for increased air circulation or when the classes can be held outside why can't we wait until when it will be safer for everyone involved

242no one loves wearing masks i've even gone back to the gym wearing a mask when i'm inside working out sure it's not the most comfortable but i have to do this for those around me who are at risk and who probably wouldn't survive this illness but in school it is different these students teachers and staff are sitting in rooms together for hours at a time when it is known that the longer one is exposed the better the chance they could contract covet 19. it's no secret that a lot of us have gone back to something closer to normal pre-pandemic times of socializing and gathering if everyone is wearing a mask indoors yes even cloth masks there will be less transmission that than if only some were mass we want our kids in school and mass

243has helped us to keep them there in closing i hope that you continue to do what's best for the health of our students staff and community members give everyone the chance to enjoy a public school education without the fear of getting sick just for going to school thank you next we have ashley wilkerson dr wilkerson can you hear me yes okay thanks ashley wilkerson lower providence first i'd like to thank the district for ensuring that the health and safety plan is being followed it's completely fine for people to disagree with the health and safety plans and it's fine to protest them but there's a line that's crossed when we're prevented by a group of people from following our health and safety plan it's the policy and it's what people expect when they enter our buildings

244i'd also like to say on a more optimistic note that i'm glad that our cases are trending down and it looks like hopefully we'll soon be in a new phase of our health and safety plan where we will be able to go mask optional without jeopardizing our most vulnerable community members and i hope that as we close in on that new phase we can work to heal the divisions in our community and move forward second i'd like to comment on the right to know presentation dr zerby and i'm going to quote one of your slides here you said that requesters should use good judgment not use it to harass or overburden a public body and as i look at the information on your slides the volume the scope and the cost of the right to

245knows for one individual seem to fly in the face of that i mean we as a district are talking about requesting quotes from law firms for the cost to deal with just one person and i'd like to ask how this is not an overburdening of a public body instead of restructuring our administration to deal with the requests of one person i'm curious why we aren't also asking a court if one person causing more than six hundred thousand dollars in legal fees from right to no request qualifies as harassment and the overburdening of a public body uh to use your your quote and if this does qualify as excessive pers would it be possible that pursuing it could afford us the opportunity to recoup some of our tax dollars as well i'm curious if that has

246been addressed and hope that will be at the meeting next week and finally on a brighter note i'd like to give a shout out to the staff and the students who've been working on the production of xanadu junior at arcola they've been working super hard literally every day after school for months now i would name all the teachers but i'm afraid i would leave somebody out i don't want to leave anybody out because they've just been amazing with the kids the show is going to be on march 4th and march 5th and i hope as many board members and administrators as possible will attend and support our kids thank you so much thank you next we have julie stern okay next we have julie stern hi yes we can hear you thank you julie stern

247um lower providence township first i would like to thank the board for all of your hard work over the past two years this has been a very difficult time for everybody in this community and across the country um many of you on the board did not anticipate um facing this type of situation when you first round for the ran for the board some of you knew exactly what you were getting into when you ran and i will remind everybody on the board that you all have a responsibility to keep the health safety and educational experience of the entire district at the forefront of your work and and i commend you very much so on trying to do that during such difficult times um there have been some really wonderful things that have happened in this

248community in the past couple of years which i would also like to highlight tonight i'm really excited about the new arrowhead building i will never have a child who will go there but i'm really excited for the kids who will be able to learn in that environment in addition the full day kindergarten program starting in the fall i think is going to be a really amazing opportunity for our students and also a way for this community to grow and to attract new residents as you know there's a lot of building going on in the in the district um and many of those new houses will have many young families and those kids going to full day kindergarten are really going to benefit from it uh from it being here um i too would like to

249briefly discuss what happened on tuesday night there certainly seemed to be a concerted coordinated effort among members of the public to disregard district policy that to me is appalling we set an example for our children and part of that is following the rules and sometimes we don't like the rules but we still follow them because it's the right thing to do the demonstration that happened on tuesday night should never have happened in this community and i'm very very sorry that the board had to deal with that we teach our children to be good neighbors and to care for their peers yet many adults have seemed to forgotten the basics of acting towards the community good next i'd like to address the health and safety plan including using metrics to decide when masks will be mandated

250and when they can be optional um i really am very proud of this district for not just throwing a dart at the calendar and picking a random date that seemed like a good idea in december for when to change the mass policy tying the decision about wearing masks or not makes sense when you look at the local community spread and so making that decision in december was quite thoughtful and forward thinking as some of the speakers earlier said on the numbers uh locally as well as across the country are definitely decreasing it's really nice to see that much of that is because of the ongoing mitigation strategies that we're using but as the weather gets nicer and as the numbers continue to drop obviously what we need to do may change and that will be

251a really nice thing for everybody i would like to address a comment earlier tonight about um somebody attending a sixers game or watching the super bowl and seeing all these people out i will remind everybody that in right now in philadelphia county to attend any event indoors you must show your vaccine card and you must be fully vaccinated and to that there are no exceptions while i do not personally feel comfortable being in a space with thousands of people unmasked indoors knowing that everybody was vaccinated in that building certainly added a level of safety we do not have a vaccine mandate in our school district nor am i suggesting that we have one but it does make a difference those are false equivalencies and that's not right and finally i too would like to address

252the right to know issue that was brought up earlier this this evening i would ask the public to ask yourself why a handful of people are costing the district hundreds of thousands of dollars that could rather be directed towards improving the educational experiences for our children improving teacher pay working towards getting substitute teachers for the district i mean all of these things are really important and all of these things cost money um and we you know need to be mindful i think of some of the frivolous nature of some of these requests that seem to be um being made just uh as a form of harassment thank you thank you next we have alicia rhodes hi alicia rhodes lower providence um i heard a lot of this health and safety act discussed tonight from december

253but interesting enough i can't find it anywhere on the mythactin website um i just went on there it looks like it was last updated possibly in september so you know i really encourage people if you're going to sit here and push this health and safety plan that you actually have it updated on the website i mean i i don't know do i have to file a right to know to find out about it i mean and i have three kids in the district you know this this is ridiculous you know a lot of kids have vaccines a lot of kids have natural immunity you didn't even ask the kids do you want to wear the mask i just you know you did a lot of surveys back when we went virtual you haven't asked the

254parents nobody knows anything so you know i just encourage you to actually listen to what people are saying and actually talk to the parents talk to the kids thank you thank you and next we have mike ryan can you hear me okay yes good evening michael ryan lower providence first i just wanted to say uh there was a great presentation by dr jeannie regarding the substitutes uh very thorough and the data to back up his recommendation uh very impressed by that presentation unfortunately that was followed by an awful dei recommendation i really hope that the board scraps this recommendation and goes back to a position that is at least the supervisor level and maybe even a director level position but that's not why i signed up to speak this evening i wanted to speak this

255evening about the events that occurred on tuesday night and the subsequent social media post made by the heart team the day after i really hope that after the election last november things may return back to normal and all the theatrics and political games would end apparently i was being too optimistic i was really surprised on tuesday evening when after ms drummond read her statements about the need for audience members to wear masks according to district policy and then miss rocco directing her comments at miss drummond as opposed to the audience members who are violating district rules is this a glimpse of what we can expect from you in the future individually picking and choosing which district policy or procedure residents should abide by i really hope that that is not the case and you will

256follow what the board as a whole has already voted on and approved when i was a board member i was given a booklet entitled essentials of school board service a guide to surviving your first year published by psba it's formatted based off of various topics and in the form of questions and answers i would like to read one of them which greatly applies at the current time the question is what does it mean when we are told that all board members should support decisions of the board even when they disagree with them this concept this is the answer this concept is often misunderstood and expressed unclearly it does not mean that you are expected to pretend to be a cheerleader for a course of action you argued or voted against what it does mean is

257that once the vote has been taken school directors should accept the time for debate on the issue is over and that it is time to move forward constructively once the course of action has been decided all members of the board are expected to work together to find the best way to implement it it can be damaging to students the district and the community if at every step along the way the focus is diverted from the best way to move forward by continued sniping and rehashing of the original decision or attempts to throw new roadblocks in the way i truly hope that the new board members take this advice moving forward i can tell you from my own past experience of being on the losing side of an issue or a vote it is absolutely important

258to follow the guidance i just read because failure to do so will irreparably harm our students and our district in my opinion ms rocco and mr young have an important decision to make regarding what their four-year term as a board member will look like you can decide to govern for the applause of a few members in a meeting let's be honest there are members to the far right and far left on a lot of important issues they are usually the most vocal but think about tuesday night were there five thousand the facton residents who voted for you here in support of this maskless protest no there wasn't in fact it was just a relatively small number of which some didn't even reside in our district were there 5 000 or more people who voted against

259you here to support the continued masking again the answer is no my point is that most methachton residents fall somewhere in the middle of the extremes they want to see the theatrics end they want to see the board and administrators get back to business and focus on providing a quality education for all of our students my plea tonight please choose to govern during your four years based on what is the best for our students and our residents and not just for the applause of a few thank you very much thank you all right see no one other hands rates for public comment um that are meeting the name requirement yeah um we do have more yeah we we we do have uh one person that has just a first name on uh listed so i'll

260just make an announcement that if that person wants to be called on they need to have their first and last name yes i had made that announcement yes next we have nicole bunton bowder hi nicole can you hear me yes great nicole bought her worcester township since the beginning of this many of us parents have stood in front of the board and implored you to allow for mass to be optional that fell on deaf ears we use points made by doctors and scientists specifically stating concerns that there's been no research done to know the safety of our children having to wear them for six or seven hours a day and i'm not just talking about emotional things like that of course i'm talking about that too but i'm not just saying that my kid isn't

261still smiling with his friends there okay so i don't want to really hear that from anybody however it wasn't from the left side's narrative that these doctors and scientists were talking but now it is let's quote cnn's dr leanna when she said well first the vaccines work children now have access to those vaccines if you want to mask up you the wearer are protected and because the omnicron variant is milder we should not rely on case counts as a reliable metric to gauge the pandemic's threat to public health accordingly any masking ordinance should shift from a government mandate to an individual responsibility that is especially true for young children because there's actually harm that we should be discussing of children continuing to mask end quote even back when governor will shifted and said that the

262state had no right to mandate mass that should have been the school board's cue that they shouldn't have the right either but it wasn't what you all missed though is that by doing so governor will shifted any and all liability from the state directly onto you the school board both of my children my 14 year old daughter and my seven-year-old son recently had covet and i am a million times more afraid of what the masked mandate is doing to them than i'll ever be of this virus and i don't want to hear the doctors and nurses are out there masking and they're fine my children did not choose to be a doctor or a nurse my children did not choose to be part of an experiment which is exactly what this is we don't know

263how this mass mandate will affect them in the long term whether that's emotionally or physically so give my children and all the children to methachton their right to breathe back give them back smiles from their friends give them back the ability to learn cues by facial expressions give them back the ability to see their teachers smile when they've done something great enough is enough vaccines are available to any parent that still has fear per cdc the right mass protect the wearer per cdc natural immunity exists per the doctors you have been following there is actual harm to masking our children that needs to be discussed and you need to stop gauging the public health crisis on the omnicron numbers why are we not trusting the science now unfortunately there is no pcr test for the

264damage you have caused to continue to cause our children two responses i want to make to people that talk philly did change no vaccine cards are now required just so we know they are changing they are responding to the science and i will never expect my children to follow rules that make no sense they aren't going to learn from this mother to be laid down and walked all over thank you thank you next we have sheila smith hello sheila smith lower providence can you hear me yes thank you so first i just want to respond um and ask the board so if i look at policy um zero zero zero code zero one one i'd like to understand your perspective on how recent behavior acts is not a violation of this when it comes to

265act ethically so when it talks to respect the role and authority of other board members so again i won't go into detail but i do find the hypocrisy of some of the speakers and the board members pretty amazing when you think of the past behavior and if you would just please go and review that board but really what i want is the emails that i have spent have i sent to dr zerby and the board since last october excuse me actually september and what i'd like to really understand um is around the dni so i go back to the audit for um this alleged audit from dr campbell where he allegedly examined current policy processes roles and responsibilities i have yet to see or hear any of that i am on i guess we haven't

266met since the summer and i was at the workshop the dni committee so we still haven't heard anything about that the other i just want to comment about the right to know process because again this was one of my questions since last august and i've had several conversations with miss reece um on this in fact the two-hour conversation where she talked at me so that i would like to understand so it's interesting how people say there's a few individuals again data can be manipulated i was part of a dni um right to know request that still actually hasn't been answered and it's a year and a half old i also have been asking what is the process so again this board has said over and again how they really relish transparency and interaction but simple

267request says what are the survey questions we're told to file a right to know requests which by the way i can send to people because i have them so that's what i don't understand so for all these people that are up in arms about the six individuals that are spending all this money you might want to really look at the board and and dr derby why if we are it's our money why aren't we no as long as if it's not an individual person why can't we take that out so another area i'd like to focus on is around the board policies around bullying um and the resources so again safe to know and i'd like people you know you look at the policies and the practices i understand this is a state mandate however

268have you really looked at how it's administered because being on the receiving end and watching how bullies are actually favored and told like well everyone's or everyone's entitled to an education while your child then is fearful for his or her life because of the ongoing bullying so it's just things like that that i've been waiting for answers on since since actually august september october i keep on sending emails and i'm getting no response so i would really like to hear those responses thank you thank you next we have john ferrara john my name is john ferrara i'm the president of lower providence i have two children currently attending school in the district at the close of the video of tuesday's meeting a man can be heard clearly shouting you're all monsters i expect that some

269of the people who have registered for courtesy of the floor tonight have done so specifically with the intent of yelling and screaming and calling you names i'm going to use my time tonight to say that no you are not monsters you are members of this community who have volunteered substantial free time to work in the interests of the students and of the community dr zerby is a professional who has kept our district safe during the deadliest pandemic in a century i want to express gratitude for the work that you were doing under extremely difficult circumstances i'll further point out that there is an explicit strategy to affect political ends by encouraging people to channel their personal grievances into displays of seething histrionics at public meetings such as this the strategy targets you the school board

270members because of the public access to you that open forums such as this provide that strategy is an abuse of the openness and transparency provided through democratic process shouting you're all monsters at you is unwarranted and outrageous i invite you to view those people who came onto this soon to scream and to shout and to call you names through that lens i invite you to view their bellicosity as a signal of their bad faith on december 16th the board voted to go mask optional in the schools once the data supports doing so that was a good policy appropriately rooted in an empirical measure thankfully it looks like that day is drawn here maybe the particular metrics that were selected at that meeting were good maybe they could be better fine we'll learn at least there

271was an effort to find a time to relax restrictions and to tie it to real world conditions that's great we are all just doing our best to figure it out in a time of extreme uncertainty you deserve to be praised for your efforts not yelled at not called monsters so thank you for all your good work all right thank you next we have kathy opperman hello i'm kathy operman i'm a resident of worcester township i have i'm a grandmother with a first grader and an eighth grader and um if you know me i'm passionate about mental wellness of children and adults i would also like to thank the board all of you for your hard work through these last two years but it's time to acknowledge the harm that has been done to our world

272and to our children and to fix it can we it's time to acknowledge the division within our community this zoom room and our nation and to fix that too can we it's time to see the smiles of our children to hear their voices unmuffled see the teeth they lost see their braces see their joy see their shyness and to even see the pout on their precious faces it's time it's time to acknowledge our responsibility to unleash the fear that has caused more harm than we may ever be able to fix in their impressionable developing minds it's time to be the change to be unafraid to move forward and it's time to heal it's time to stand up stand together and stop the madness that continues to spiral out of control i feel like i'm living

273in the twilight zone do you are you still searching to for the truth because it's coming out every single day the only mask that works is an n95 mast and unless our safety plan requires that it's not really a safety plan but we've survived a lot we've been through a war battle after battle friend against friend neighbor against neighbor family against family good versus evil love versus hate facts versus on backs life versus death information versus misinformation and we are all tired we are all exhausted parents are exhausted we all want to be heard we all think we're right and we all have lost sight it's time to stop and take a deep breath it's time to acknowledge our children are not dying they get the virus they get better it's not their job to

274live in fear that they will make other people sick please stop scaring them it's been two years of fear fear that is used to control people it's time we all know people who have died i have lost friends our medical system failed them our government failed them and that's all i'm going to say about that it's time to stop voting by your party lines it's time to do what's right for the kids it's time to stand up to the challenge of those who may question why you cross the line the answer is simple you put politics aside to do what's best for the kids it's time to acknowledge our children are suffering from stress anxiety and fear they struggle in knowing right from wrong when it's time to put the mask off or on especially

275the little ones let's work together to heal them now the school year is almost over no matter what your color or your creed no matter what science you believe no matter your party or your fight it's time to create peace in all hearts and all minds that's our duty that should be our fight to live free and in peace for those who believe a mask will protect your child wear it you have that right whether we're in high or low transmission you will still be able to get this virus you will not be safe from it to our board members who work tirelessly working for no pay i thank you and i ask you i implore you and i beg you to allow our children to live as you once lived as a child no

276mask no fear no anxiety breathing easily in a school with teachers they can hear where they're greeted by their teachers smiles and their friends smiles or kindergarteners first and even some second graders have never experienced school like you or i did it's time thank you okay next we have um kelly mann good evening can you hear me yes okay kelly man lower providence it's really hard to follow kathy kathy that was great um i don't really have anything prepared i just wanted to come on and say that i was a little disappointed that optional masking hasn't been um wasn't a choice then at the end of january for the older kids 7th through 12th grade i'm hoping as the numbers are trending down that by the 28th it will be optional for all grades i

277think listening tonight it made me realize that the adults community members parents some of us have moved on some of us might still be back in march 2020 and basically that's holding back the kids you can go to a store now you can go to a concert you can go to um kids sporting events and it's mass optional environments everywhere except for school and healthcare facilities basically people it is not stopping people from taking their kids out into the public it's not stopping kids from play dates to sleepovers um playing sports so it's kind of confusing especially i have younger kids for them to meet up at these different events or play with their friends with no mask on in school they have a mask on all day the other thing i wanted to address

278is for instance i have two elementary school kids they've both had cover they had coveted symptoms for two days each they then go back to school and now they're in mass so how do we explain that i think it's time for optional there's many kids in this district i'm sure teachers staff members that have had covert this isn't march 2020 where barely anyone had it yet so people have natural immunity um how was that going to be looked at moving on into the future meaning will this health and safety plan be re-evaluated for the stipulation that was created by some of the board members and voted on for the health and safety plan when will that be looked at because i worry about next year these numbers go back up in the fall are we

279going to be putting mass back on these kids will this health and safety plan be carrying over into the next year um because i know that there's parents including myself that would want to look for a different option for my child if this is going to be an ongoing thing into next year to put these mass back on these kids that's just too tough for them so i hope we can go to a mass optional environment sooner than later and i hope that you can reevaluate that stipulation that was put onto your health and safety plan thank you thank you next we have uh jenna tress china yes jenna truss um we're sister township i'm here tonight to speak out in support of those members of the board um the big six maybe plus one

280um according to mr joseph's to continue to support and follow our health and safety plan i would also i would like to thank them for putting the health and safety of our students teachers administration and support staff at the forefront of their decisions despite overwhelming pressure from a minority of the public i find it very sad and demoralizing that a small minority of people continue to find it necessary to disrupt school board meetings and prevent our district and community from moving on to more important matters the current health and safety plan which you can easily find on the coven 19 data dashboard for those looking since it appeared to be difficult for some people is such that we are following recommendations while levels are decreasing following the omicron search they are not at the levels

281approved to go to masks optional which it seems several speakers do not understand is the approved health and safety plan currently if you're unsure of the current plan please go read it once our community reaches certain thresholds masks will be optional indeed i do work in covid research and i'm monitoring variants of concern and even now anyone can look at the news to see that there is a new concern about a new sub-variant on the rise that may cause issues yet the fact that a vocal minority of people showed up to a meeting and refused to mask causing this meeting to move online tonight sets a poor example for our students and our kids we as parents and educators are supposed to be setting a positive example even if we don't agree with a policy

282we work to change that policy peacefully we don't disrupt and agitate and throw temper tantrums until we get our way this is a position of privilege we are sitting in let's use it for good and affecting positive change such as continuing to move forward with the dei initiative instead of continuing to drive division and strife this board and hundreds if not thousands of others across the nation have been hijacked from addressing important matters for far too long can we please get back to the boring routine business of educating our students and ensuring that they get the best education possible a vocal minority has taken to expressing their dislike in disruptive ways and unfortunately it seems that they now have members who have a seat at the table encouraging them chaos division and disruption is not

283how we improve our district ranking or do the things that were supposedly at the center of the goals of mr young and ms rocco when they were elected we were featured on the local news this evening because of this nonsense is this really how anyone wants our district to be highlighted for disruptions during school board meetings rather than the outstanding accomplishments of our administrators teachers staff and students to the point of our accomplishments i want to echo what others have said that we need to better hear our teachers and communicate with them i've done this before when speaking to the board and i will say it again administration please be open and transparent with our teachers they're not a dime a dozen and we parents love and value them so listen to them have an

284open dialogue with them and take what they say back and implement their recommendations please do better be a better example for our kids thank you thank you and next week um okay it looks like we have three more raised hands so that's given the late hour that's the public comment we're gonna finish with um so next we have uh ramona de la rosa ramona hi ramona de la rosa or sister township can you hear me okay yes i can thank you okay perfect um good evening i know it's late um but i did want to stay on and thank the members of the board who chose to vote to support and follow our health and safety policies i appreciate decisions that are made based on scientific data and respect the challenges that an ever-evolving pandemic

285can pose because of this i support your decision to recess tuesday's meeting due to audience members refusing to comply with indoor masking it's unfortunate that people chose to disrespect district policy and disrespect their fellow community members while at the same time knowing that those actions would disrupt the meeting thank you miss drummond for showing strong leadership in a difficult situation i am however particularly disappointed that ms rocco did not seem to understand why we needed to continue to follow the indoor mask policy to have the belief that when someone breaks a rule without consequence that the rule should no longer be enforced is deeply concerning we have policies for a reason policies provide guidance consistency accountability efficiency and clarity on how an organization operates if we need to change a policy there are procedures in

286place to do that choosing to not enforce a policy because someone decided individually to ignore it is no reason to casually do away with it it sets a bad precedent and a bad example as a board member miss rocco your responsibility is to respect policies and encourage others to do the same whether you agree with them or not now with regards to masking i realize that many do not wear masks outside of school but we have heard time and again that school is the safest place for our kids it's also the only consistent indoor environment where everyone is masked due to the current mass policy many families feel safe allowing their children to join in school activities whether that be participating in the school musical the indoor ensemble or other extracurricular activities we're excited that

287there's an upcoming airhead field trip planned for our kids that are interested in design engaging engaging in these kinds of activities is important for all students whether they are participating in them directly or getting together with friends to watch the fun as parents we send them into these indoor environments knowing that the transmission risk has been reduced due to masking this not only helps to protect our students but the families they come home to i certainly look forward to the day when transmission rates are low enough to support a mass optional policy i believe that day is coming very soon again i'd like to thank the board for responding thoughtfully to an ever-changing landscape and for all the difficult decisions you've had to make to keep our kids safe as possible over the last two

288years er urge you to continue to follow the recommendations of public health experts and always put the safety and health of our students first thank you thank you and next we have panipa muhammad um all right hanifa i am going to need to promote you to panelist because of your version of zoom so get ready for that can you hear me yes hi uh honey from mohammed forest has a township thank you to the members of the board who chose to vote to protect the entire community including those who are immuno-compromised by following the health and safety plan thank you for not caving to pressures from others simply because they are loud and threatening recently my daughter was assigned by a teacher to sit next to a classmate that expressed racist views the teacher refused

289after being asked multiple times by my daughter and other faculty members to move her to another seat to this teacher a seating assignment was more important than my child's mental health well-being and safety if we had a dei director on an administrative level that had true decision-making ability i would have reported this incident to them i did not know who the point of contact was for this incident mrs rocco and mr young you both said previously that you didn't know if a di director was needed you've both said let's wait for the survey do you still want to wait for the results of a survey to see if a dei director is needed at this school are you okay with having a child's learning experience being uncomfortable having to deal with racial intimidation because a

290teacher doesn't want to change the seating arrangement how should this have been handled ms rocco i know you believe that dei is a class for bullies so what are your plans for this teacher who is bullying my child should the teacher be provided with professional development training which is clearly needed mr mr young i know that you believe we cannot administrate our way into a utopia and that this is just people behaving poorly so how should we administrate our way to accountability for people that are behaving poorly why did you both run for school board is it to help children and strengthen the community are you both here to handle the process of choosing a competent dei director thank you and finally we have kelly ludwig wait a minute hi kelly hi um kelly ludwig

291lower providence we can't hear you real well hold on let me see how about now better okay um kelly ludwig lower providence i'd like to start by thanking the administration and board members who have continued to support and follow the health and safety plan for keeping our schools and communities safe as an attacking graduate and now parent it disheartens me to see how polarized response to school board decision have been as of late the refusal to wear masks the request to ban books for anything that is for equity or inclusion in our schools these are not things that are only heard at the fact in meetings these things are being heard at school board meetings all over the nation the talking points and the script are often identical across this country which makes it clear

292for those who watching it is not an original or organic movement but one orchestrated by outside actors who wish to divide us the health and safety of our children is being used as a pawn for a larger agenda i asked the board to not be influenced by these ex by the extreme rhetoric and the horrible policies being advocated for coven numbers are going down and it looks like we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and mass now are ensuring we get back to normal pre-covered mass-free life as soon as possible i believe that most parents want our school to be safe and welcoming spaces for all of our children and by working together we will get a normal course normal course of life much sooner thank you so much

293to the board for protecting our children thank you um okay and as we okay um just as we wrap up public comment i just want to say that this was my first time administrating this on through a zoom and that any and i'm also trying to keep everyone's time so any um time variances were entirely unintentional on my part um and with that um do we have any comments from the board um dr zerby could you clarify the point for us um about the legality of this meeting on zoom please so the uh the the uh the message that was uh well i guess the best place to start is uh tuesday uh february 15th uh the board uh uh as as you all know uh asked the members of the public to follow the

294policy as such um with with such refusal a a recess of the meet of that meeting was announced both place time and location being virtual uh for the meeting to be resumed um as as part of and those are matters of the sunshine law requiring and allowing for our meeting to be recessed so this evening we have resumed the meeting as we had intended and announced and uh we will conclude the meeting here after the the board so adjourns okay um there were a number of things that were brought up but given the late hour i would just ask the board are there any other comments to to wrap up and maybe we can take our future thoughts into the voting meeting um anyone have any thoughts to wrap up i'll save my statements for

295next week okay thank you for your doing this liz for your first time i'll make a motion to adjourn unless someone has something to say i'll tell you i'll take you i'll take your motion to it really quick someone mentioned the um health and safety plan so yes there is information on the covet dashboard regarding the metrics that we need to meet to go to the mask optional it's just that the actual health and safety plan is not updated so if someone is looking and maybe maybe it doesn't need to be i just think there's some confusion around masking because that's not updated and people are wondering well is it the county data that we have to be below 10 is it the district data because the district data has a lag and then the

296health and safety plan itself hasn't been updated since september so i just wanted to put that out there that might clear up a little bit of confusion because a few people commented on that but that's it everything else i can wait thanks i don't think it's a matter of confusion that needs to be cleared up i think that the derby if you can speak on um the current status of my health and safety plan the board did vote in december and updated the health and safety plan that plan should be available on the district website can you confirm or have your team look into it to make sure that most updated version of the health and safety plan is on our website and i think that's regardless of the point because the health and safety

297plan as we currently have it in place states that in our buildings masking is the requirement whenever i walk into any building where there's a no on the door that masking is a requirement that means i'm expected to wear a mask i don't show up and then decide i'm going to put on a mask whether i'm being asked to or not and that's just the way it is we're living in a pandemic and that's how it is yes no i get that i'm i'm only referring to the no i'm i'm not referring to the masking i'm maybe there was confusion i'm referring to the confusion around the thresholds that need to be met it says out of the high but i think there's just some confusion around what does that mean that's what i'm referring

298to in the health and safety plan nothing to do with tuesday night totally aside from tuesday night yeah so if i could just try to best answer that uh so the the board approved uh a mass optional environment based on two thresholds those those thresholds were obviously date related as threshold or metric number one and the second uh metric was that the uh that for two consecutive weeks uh the transmission within uh the methacton community that include lower providence and worcester township are to be below the high threshold so uh the so miss purdue is absolutely right the health and safety plan as uh currently posted is the health and safety plan until such time that there's a change in the actual action uh of of the the rule that or the metrics that were

299were approved so the moment that that gets approved the letter will be coming out of my office uh to all the families and then the the new plan will be posted up on the uh district website so so in order to avoid confusion uh with what's expected uh we kept the plan in place uh as it currently is and as has been previously approved the the important part of all this is uh i believe we communicate it out on on two occasions uh and reference uh the the uh the metrics that the board approve for december 16. i believe we did that uh prior to the winter break and then at some point uh following the winter break i don't remember the exact dates off of the top of my my head here uh but

300it but it's most important that just for clarity's sake that we recognize that the numbers that we're using are those that are referenced in the combined uh lower providence and warchester township that's what we that's what we discussed and it's not the montgomery county uh uh numbers uh and the purpose of that and it was part of my recommendation that um those numbers were we actually trended better matthachton did than the county uh all the way up until maybe just recently unfortunately so that means that you might see the county at a a positivity rate of say 9.89 and you see methactin but just a week before that at a 14.2 percent uh so we're always a week behind in getting those the the the uh the breakout from uh fr for the municipalities that

301that make up the school district uh so that's one of the other challenges with with using that metric so you will you will see likely that the county numbers will continue to trend downward like the district's numbers are but we're always a week behind because we don't get the numbers i'm trying my best to work with the uh the department of health to see if they can't get me those numbers in advance at least get them to me in writing but as of this point i've not been successful at getting that so i hope that helps and and uh clarifies where we're at but but basically the dashboard lists the actual uh uh four quadrants for or uh or thresholds both the low medium substantial and high and talks about uh the ends and ores

302of the incident rates and positivity and when and when to interpret that and that comes right out of the cdc slash montgomery county department of health thanks any other comments oh we got the motion all right we got the motion uh second the motion of everyone's seconding the motion okay um i thank you all for hanging in there uh this is lead hour and uh meeting is adjourned good night