001good evening i'd like to order this special meeting on december 16th of the methectone board of school directors please rise for the pledge the public is hereby advised of the audio and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcasting um we have all board members in attendance except for miss aubry larcenise now we have recognition of guests and scheduled speakers dr zurby thank you madam president uh this evening we have one speaker and myself and uh if it's okay with the board um i'm gonna remain here at the seat and uh let you know that there is a paper copy of my presentation at your seat uh we will also share the copy of the presentation on the screen so on the title slide and i'll be naming the slides for my person
002in the back to to forward them so good evening and welcome to the special meeting to consider modification to the methacnyl school district health and safety plan uh slide two or slide one i'm sorry okay excuse me dr zurby sorry to interrupt um mr ahmed do you have any announcements before we start i would just like to advise the public that masking is required in the auditorium in the school please if you could thank you and is there rules if there's not masking in the auditorium i'm not i i'm not pre i've never had this we haven't had this before so i wasn't sure for those for those people in the audience that uh are currently not wearing masks we asked you kindly uh to uh put a mask on and if and if so
003you do not have a mask we have the disposable ones available for you thank you very much i'm going to ask the people who are not masked if you could kindly get a mask we do have disposable masks for your convenience in the lobby and if you choose to not use a mask then i'm going to ask you to kindly leave the meeting on the on the district webs on the district website there is uh for where the meetings are listed there is a notification there that allows for medical exemptions if they were provided if the name and the medical exemption was provided to me we have one person on that list and we know who that is if you need a mask there are some available if not we're going to ask you to
004please leave the meeting you [Music] oh thank you very much dr zurby thank you madam president uh so this evening i'm i'm presenting on the uh the motion that was posted on the agenda so it says approve the modification to the matthackton school district health and safety plan to provide for a mass optional indoor school environment in buildings that educate students in grades 7 through 12 and for non-student buildings beginning january thirty first two thousand twenty two and for buildings that educate students in grades k through six beginning february twenty eighth uh twenty twenty two uh this uh the district pandemic team is a team of school nurses teachers administrators parents board members and has been advising the superintendent since the beginning of the pandemic discuss the future of masking in the district and supports
005moving in a mass optional environment next slide please uh making any changes to an environment will have an impact uh this slide uh i share several matters that we must consider when making uh this decision there will be a larger number of students included in the contact tracing we will need to move from a from a three-foot circle to a six-foot circle for contact tracing obviously making the circle bigger likely making the numbers uh greater however the counter to that is the increase in vaccinations that we've been made aware of in fact uh the montgomery county uh department of public health says that i think the number is up to 88 percent now of uh individuals eligible for vaccination have at least one shot and and and that is a good that is good number
006um but uh from those vaccinations uh we're also going to be implementing the test estate program as it's listed there in january and that will occur all of that will go prior to the outline motion that's that's before you all other mitigation matters will stay in place so as they're listed there will be no change to the uh the cleaning protocols no changes to uh wearing mask on bus and in fact that can't change because that's a federal uh requirement and you see the rest of them listed there and and what's also really important is the uh the principles have provided as we discussed that at our last regular board meeting to get some feedback and i got that feedback and staff members you know some have have some concerns but but are but the
007proposed mass optional plan but their concerns for the most part can be supported and that there is no indication that this change or this proposed change will impact the operation of our schools next slide please when we look at the recommendation the following factors were considered the recommendation from the district pandemic team the county department of public health plan to release a sliding scale mastering recommendation they were they are they're in the process of providing that out soon the superintendents have all seen that draft of the recommendation the planned end to the state masking mandate if you recall uh the state department of health uh probably uh almost a month after our board decided uh to implement a masking mandate back in august of the state came out with a a masking mandate and that
008mandate you know covered everyone in the commonwealth they recently as everyone's aware had lost a challenge in in the courts and as a result of that that has changed the requirements for from the the state uh but in but during that period of time uh they had also come out and said that regardless of what the court was going to rule on that they were going to expire that mandate on the 17th of january 2022. another matter uh that was another contributing factor was access to vaccines by adults and students of all ages we've held some vaccination clinics here in the district and you'll see later if this is approved one of our responses to that is to continue uh having more vaccination clinics the the county claims uh and again the 88 was something
009i i learned today uh superintendent superintendents in the county meet with the department of health and uh chop on a weekly basis it's usually on thursday at one o'clock the information you know just wasn't updated from 85 to 88. the the chopping county department of health say that the time frame if you're going to choose to go to a mass optional environment the time to change would be in late january uh and no later than as as a result and the reason for that is just and it's maybe obvious for everyone but the reason for that is we're going to be coming out of a holiday and typically uh the trend has been coming out of holiday we see transmission spikes for the first two weeks coming out of that let's just give you an
010understanding so those are the other contributing factors uh we go to the next slide uh if approve our district response will include the following i will provide additional nursing staff to to meet the needs so right now we have uh seven buildings and eight nurses we also have anywhere between three to five additional nurses per day and those nurses are part-time they're helping out at the elementary levels they're helping out doing contact tracing they're helping out running the the employee testing testing assurance program and and helping our nurses and relieving them so they can continue doing the things that that they need to do and the response is we will definitely need to hire an addict one additional nurse for sure in order to mainta to manage the test estate program our additional response will
011hold some additional vaccination clinics prior to the plan change we will address staff concerns to meet their needs so as i mentioned before there are are some staff that have some concerns and uh feedback from the principles is that you know there are some things and accommodation that we can make to help support them in in those with those concerns uh we'll continue uh to uh monitor the impact by our uh our data dashboard we will implement the test the state program is targeted for january 10 of and we will continue and we just heard again today it was reaffirmed by the county department of health that if you do go with the mass optional environment you will be able to implement the test to stay program the current regulations as i mentioned that our
012last meeting uh require that the cesa program has a mass mass requirement but that is going to be changed and that's confirmed again today in a meeting um trying to think we're the uh we continue to follow the cdc and county recommendations and uh you know they're they're they're they're they're making recommendations and not having uh requirements there are options for the county to require masking they have the right to do that and lastly we're going to continue to maintain the self-monitoring protocol and the school the board of directors reinstituted masking mandate as needed that last one is probably the most critical when we talk about even considering making a change and what i mean by that is everyone on this board knows that we could we could make an action today tomorrow the information
013that's provided to us could completely change not only uh what we expected in the future but change our mind about our vote even today and i i i recognize that and and i respect the challenge that even having this conversation is for for all of you and for members of our public because you know we can't predict what someone's going to tell us what the experts are going to tell us and what the trends are going to be we can only make decisions based on what information we have today so when when the department of health and chops say that if you're going to consider a mass optional environment the the best time to do would be at the end of january after the the after a uh a perceived spike based on history uh
014last year as well as uh as as we trend into the the summer months so it's important for everyone to know that if we find that there's a a a reason that we need to go back to a mass mandatory environment i'll be making that recommendation to the board and we have the very right uh to make it optional or to make it mandatory and so that's within our purview that's within uh the the rights of this of this school board so with that said i just want to make that clear so if you decide not to approve this uh motion uh this evening you also have another chance to do it at some other time if you so choose to or if you make it if you make a decision tonight you also have
015you can get back after january and say hey you know what we're changing it and you can do that and that may not be the best practice but that may uh may it definitely needs to be communicated that may have to happen uh based on uncertainty in in this whole process so the last slide if you would please it is just the uh again the the motion but the note at the bottom if this is approved i will take the health and safety plan and make and do the strikethroughs of all that stuff so that is that it's updated and if it references all the uh practical matters associated with with the motion that's approved so with that i'm going to end my presentation and take questions from members of the board any questions i'm
016sorry any questions for my left uh miss purdue i just have one in reference to um the last statement you made about um i guess to reinstitute the masking mandate as needed i think it would be nice to have a little bit more information on what will require us to reinstitute as far as what type of metrics will we use if there's a need to update and if you i mean if you don't have that now i think that's something that will be needed just because if the decision comes or if the time comes it'll be nice to know what metrics we're looking to use to um change our position if the need yeah i i i don't have that number for you here this evening but i can tell you that if chop says
017all all districts that are optional right now you ought to think about changing because here's what's happening here's what we're forecasting down the road you're going to have a problem i'm going to share that with you and i'm going to recommend that we're going to avoid that problem and by you know taking an extra step to to do that so i you know certainly there there are numbers the county has the the the low moderate substantial and um uh high thresholds and we can certainly use those so for example at the very least if it's if we're in high which would mean your positivity and our incident rates are at a certain level or greater um that could be uh for for two weeks that could be something we we could consider but those are
018those are the metrics that are out there right now i wouldn't think that there'd be anything different and that was my question i'm sorry to be slow on the mic i have no problem with optional masking starting on the dates that you said no problem at all my question is for example um where i work which in the district that touches this district we are going mask optional on january 17th however it's still based on low medium and high so if today was january 17th we wouldn't be able to be mask optional because we're at high so that's my only concern i have no problem whatsoever with me with changing to mask optional but not if we're in in high and and that's that's the truth like we all know princeton and cornell just went
019virtual i know those are higher level institutions i'm just giving an example so so that we're it's not necessary to come back here and mandate and those kinds of things so that's just my question so and i apologize because i didn't realize the matrix they weren't still there um i just assumed if we were in high it's not optional anymore and i was reading our the new plan incorrectly quite frankly because it it's confusing i'm sure it's confusing to everybody so anyway that's my one question and my one concern you know that that's that's a fair concern the uh the county uh so in our in our conversations not my conversation with them but the superintendent's conversations with them you know we've asked you know can you give us something other than we recommend because
020every every column in the in the chart says recommend or or not recommend uh there's there's no column even in the high that says we require you you should require this or that and so it it the that that's part of uh the dilemma as we're as we're getting in with the information we have today obviously there's stuff going on over here where there's there's you know spike in transmissions we have the state saying well we're going to get rid of the uh the masking requirement on january 17th no matter what we have confusion even though we've shared uh communications with our parents there's still confusion about you know who has you know who's doing masking and then obviously you know as this is all transpiring you know certain districts are are taken upon themselves
021to create their own rules outside of of what the county is doing so this is not an easy decision and it's certainly uh one that you know requires a lot of thought the reason the real reason that we're here besides you know making the determination whether or not we are want to go with a mass optional environment is to provide a decision in advance of the choices that families need to make prior to i believe january 22nd which is are am i going to continue with in-person instruction or because of this change may i opt for the asynchronous instruction plan we want to be able to inform them whether it's on whether we go january the end of january with a mass optional environment or the end of march we need to give them a
022road map to say it's possible that we are going to go mask optional whether it's on a specific date or if it's by a set of thresholds like um uh the ones that are in the the low uh moderate uh substantial and and high uh chart does that does that help any other questions to my left yeah if i could just ask the members of the audience to remask who are currently unmasked thank you so i i'm just going to ask if if people would be so kind we're trying we're trying to uh conduct the business of the board the board has set a policy where masking is is required inside inside here if in fact you don't have the medical exemption it's important that um and in this mat this matter is important for
023our students our staff and our community that the board has an opportunity to focus on making this decision this evening and uh and i and i recognize that uh people in the audience may have different opinions uh with regards to masking and i think everyone on this at this table has varying opinions to the matter as well the thing is the board made a decision and we'd like if you would please respect it so that we can continue the conversation and they can focus on making the decision rather than continually you know trying to monitor masking in in the room and i'm just asking for people to kindly cooperate with us if i can just say something i know that it's a week before christmas we all want to get home as fast as we
024can so the quicker we can move through it the better thanks uh mr mcginnis i'm sorry so uh a couple of questions if you don't mind uh the last time we were in this meeting uh the discussion was um did we poll the faculty are we going to lose faculty members because the decision tonight one of the decisions tonight is to change their work environment right and that's not on them it's on us so if we vote to change their work environment we can only expect an answer from them do we are we able to anticipate what's going to happen are we going to lose teachers are [Music] three four five of them going to raise their hand and say you know what i'm out because again if we change their work environment that's on
025us not on them so do we have a a pulse on what's happening there we do so i ask all the principals to meet with to to discuss with their staff and i'm talking about an informal i didn't have them do a survey or any you know i don't have everyone's response but we our principals are very familiar with the with their staff and they're very familiar with those who have al always had concerns about uh masking and and challenges associated with covid and the feedback that they that i received in general you've got two to three and on average two to three teachers that have concerns but like i said earlier those concerns can be supported and there are there is no one that has reported that a teacher would decide to go on
026a leave of absence or or leave their position as a result of this change okay that's fair so the other question i have is why wouldn't we tie it to metrics right so it feels as if we are proverbially throwing a dart at a calendar right and we're landing on january 22nd so january 15th you know we're finding ourselves an environment that is untenable and all of a sudden we're kind of lockstepped into making this decision on january 22nd i know you said well we can change our mind but if i'm a parent wouldn't i want to know some data there to see what's going to happen in the next week as opposed to being reactionary because if i have data without context is is useless right so why wouldn't we frame this in some
027sort of hey if it's x we're mass if it's y or no mask we're optional all that other stuff because right now our our current trajectory doesn't seem like there's a lot of strategy to it and that's the only thing i have a problem with i'm not opposed to mask optional i'm really not you know this is you grab us a year ago on this board we were dying for this opportunity to have uh boosters to have vaccinations to have all this other stuff but if i'm a parent out there and i want to say it's january 18th and we're four days away from this mandate what does it look like i would rather put some bumpers on that decision for our parents so they can make that decision as opposed to saying yep we're
028mass optional and oh by the way we reserve the right to come back and change this it it doesn't seem very structured in my opinion no that's that those are those are fair comments i appreciate you sharing them let me see if i can uh you know respond to those so we had it when i say we we talked about that very thing in our pandemic team and one of the challenges is that once we decide that we're going mass optional if it's by a date or if it's by some other metric um the the thought from the group was that we would we would have a very hard time bringing the kids back when the metric flipped back two weeks later if if so getting kids to wear masks after we after we've made
029it optional is going to be a a huge challenge i'm not saying it's impossible i'm just saying that's that was that was the feedback so the thought was what else is out there that is that is going to change the trajectory in in any way whatsoever uh so because we were all waiting for the vaccinations and that was that was the key element at least you know many months ago that once we have access to the vaccines for the 11 through 5 year olds i think that's those are the ages um we would be able to uh you know you know consider this you know this thing that we're doing tonight but having having another set of metrics to say when we're going to start that if it's not on a specific date i'm i'm
030okay with it's it's just if i if i go if i go b beyond that and then i then two weeks later it it flips just for another week then i'm back in there for another two weeks i'm going back and forth so the county plan is the one that the the pandemic team said it doesn't make sense for us to keep moving from we could be in moderate and go to uh substantial and back to moderate and we would be one week wearing mass two weeks later outlast and going back and forth now some might think well would that also make sense to you know if transmission is is up why wouldn't we just continue to you know require the mask but it's the management side of being able to manage the students manage
031the staff and know when we're going to be masking and going in and out it's not impossible but i'm just saying that was the feedback from the pandemic team so the thought was should we just if chop and the in the county are saying don't go mask optional before the end of january that seemed to be the you know a reasonable approach to say okay we're gonna do seven through twelve they're likely to have uh their their their boosters and uh their original vaccination well in advance and give a little bit more time for uh the eleven through 5 year olds to get the second shot and be in and be prepared so that was to help me understand the conversation so help me understand this so let's play this out january 22nd we go
032mask optional and i'm just throwing a date out there january 30th we're in a high transmission environment it's spiking we're not going to go back to mass because it's just too hard to manage is that what we're saying well i i'm i gave you what the pandemic team i'm just i'm just looking for clarity your doctor is that what we're saying i i think that is uh the that is what that has been said now the the challenge with all that is but for how long will will we be in we'll be in high so are we going to be in high for for two weeks and then we're going to go back down to moderate so there's there's no challenge there's no bar that we're setting this policy to we're just throwing darts well
033what we're saying is you know do we do we have a mass optional environment knowing that going forward uh we're going to continue to live with the uh uh the virus and uh you know there are schools all across the country that have been mass optional i'm not worried about any other school other than the fact so right now in the scenario that i rolled out that january 22nd rolls by we're mask optional all of a sudden we're in a high spike we're not going to react to that well i will be how there's there's no trigger mechanism in our plan right now and again i am not against mass optional i am not but if i'm a parent i just need to know what to expect and i need to make decisions based upon
034those expectations because listen we've all gotten the emails some parents are like i'm out and that's okay i completely respect that but we need to set up parameters for them to make decision because if there's no decision criteria we're just throwing darts and for the third time i am not against mass optional i just need a better policy from us as leaders of this district to say these are the bumpers that we're going to go against if we stray outside if there's a variance this is what we're going to do if we stay inside the bumpers this is what we're going to do because it's only fair to these parents because if we just say you know what we're just going to i don't know we'll figure it out then that's not fair to these
035parents they need to make decisions based upon their children and and all the criterion that their family's health is based upon because if we're not saying this then that then that it's not a policy it's a guess that's my only problem with it so mr mcginnis uh so then to answer that the best thing to do would be to modify the the motion to say what it says there uh so long as uh we're not in a certain level so we have four levels we have the low level uh we have the moderate level we have the substantial level and the high level and so you know the you know again we didn't discuss this as a pandemic team but i would say that you know at the very least if we hit high level
036we we are in mandatory masking then we need to spell that out right because right now and i'm repetitive now we either we either spell out a plan or we say you know what january 22nd or mass optionals and you know what january 25th we'll figure it out that's not fair to parents in this district in my opinion no i i should yeah i appreciate the feedback but that that is so the response to that could be uh using the county chart and doing that as a as a mechanism to trigger the change to mass optional and to bounce back then that needs to be discussed any other comments mr mcginnis keeps referencing january 22nd but we are referring to january 31st correct yeah january 22nd is the day that parents have to choose uh
037to either go online or in person and then that's i just wanted to be clear so that's the the date for them to choose now i i hear the metrics comment um i i am a bit afraid that we're going to be in a situation that we were in the past when we were returning to school we were basing it on numbers and cases until we finally got to a point as a district that we realized we will never achieve those numbers to actually get back and this board sat here and said we need to change the metrics so we can get the kids back to school i hear some parents are concerned but i'm equally hearing from parents as well as students that they are concerned with masking continuing we are talking six weeks
038from now so the numbers just came out of a thanksgiving holiday heavy fall sports season winter sports season i know sports will continue these children are continuing to participate in unmasked events throughout the entire year i don't believe that mask optional means they have to not wear a mask everyone will have a choice but we are talking six weeks from now so i want to also be mindful to those students and those parents that are reaching out to us that are ready for this so i appreciate the thought that went into this plan i appreciate the county conversations i appreciate the principal conversations the feedback that you shared um i would love to see this play moving forward any any other comments from my right mr winners yeah i think when we go to uh
039public comment i i agree that we need to have some type of bumper on high transmission so at the very least i will uh expect that we will probably have some type of amendment to this so people understand uh that that will probably come up for conversation i think it's fair to the committee to understand that this as itself is probably not something i can support as is so if if i could ask mr winners are you do you think that uh having a uh so i i think i think high as i think as is is fine with the anticipated dates and there's a practical nature related to i understand uh the pandemic's concern that once you get rid of the masking and making it optional that they're going to be a lot of
040people that will never want to go back we just saw that here so um we we know that there's going to be a resistance once there's a relief on the masking which is fine but there will be i understand but i think it's the correct thing to do for the community and for parents to understand if we do get to a high transmission level that we need to return to something that helps mitigate and i'm not going to get an argument with anybody about if it mitigates or not i believe i believe and i'm sure somebody would tell me i didn't read the right stuff i believe that it helps mitigate at that level it would mitigate a low transmission as well but we're making a choice between balancing of of all the different needs
041so i would like to see some type of uh high transmission of either either or lower providence warcester or monco being a high transmission whatever that time frame is that it would trigger a return to masking thank you for sharing that appreciate it are there any other questions i think we need to make a decision sooner than later parents not only want to make a decision whether to go from virtual to in person but they want to go from in person to virtual so we we didn't pull the parents we didn't pull the community we got some input from the principals and it sounds to me that there's a small percentage and correct me if i'm wrong dr zurby of teachers that have concerns but there also could potentially be a very large percentage of
042teachers that are excited about this and ready to move on um school could possibly be the only place these children are wearing masks they could be going to eagles games well they are and they're going to sporting events they're playing with their friends they're gathering in lard up with large volumes of people but when they walk in the door well guess what tommy you got to put your mask on i think we need to kind of move past that mindset of we're protecting people by making them wear masks and the only place that they wear them [Music] mr willis yeah as a response to that i don't think uh um honestly i think there is a a responsibility of being on the board for the health and safety of all students and all staff so
043there's a responsibility there independent of somebody going to an eagles game so from from my perspective as a board member i have a responsibility for doing what is i believe the correct thing to do and i'm not making a decision about keeping the fact in students in the facton or having the fact and students leave to go to charter schools i'm building it based on a health decision so it's just a difference of opinion i think we are making a decision that allows people and that's been an argument for months that we haven't had a matrix that allows people to know when we're going to get rid of the masking that's what we're doing here that's what we're trying to do to do here and make that criteria so that's just my response though thank
044you mr winters um i left ms cancro you know i would say that you know we you know we're coming into this for the past 10 days i really thought we were being very collaborative working with all stakeholders that were involved in this process so i am a little frustrated where we are today because i understand what everyone is saying however when we are looking at this back in november we knew that the state the governor was going to remove this in january of 17th his background and his information should have been from the experts from the health care of the state so he puts this time down i agree it doesn't look great because there's absolutely nothing with low moderate there's no no metrics to it but this is what he's done so the
045state has removed the mandate on january 17th we've been informed since november there's a recommendation that has been discussed with the pandemic team from dr zerby the pandemic team approves it in december 6 on monday 10 days ago we reviewed it he said please provide me feedback dr zurby was like the pandemic team is approving it that account the county department of health is going to be doing this slide and scale for mask optional we've talked to chop the county department of health we're looking at all of these things the cdc the county recommendations for some reason we are choosing not to follow state and local recommendations again we do have to follow some health care agency and we're choosing not to follow them or we're picking when we want to choose them because we're
046not satisfied with the parameters they've placed no i am not satisfied that it is gray feeling but is the recommendations of the state and local health agencies that we choose to follow them and for us to choose how we're going to pick what school district we're looking at or what parameters we're going to put in it's it's a little bit difficult for me to to do because we did meet liz and i did meet with the mea leadership we did ask dr zerby to get feedback from the principals we do have an hr that talks to the staff there wasn't a lot of pushback on this they said to go forward to this recommendation to follow the county guidelines so that's where i stand i want all the kids to be here safe and i
047think with the vaccination of teachers the boosters of the with the teachers the vaccination from five ages above the test to stay for masking and on mass we have all these safety guidelines put into place we will have to pivot if our health montgomery county tells us we need to put it back on a mass mandate that is what i'm going to rely on you know they don't have clear guidelines like we want but i think we also should have went back to dr zerby last week last friday last monday to really push back on this and do the metrics so you know i we all have a choice to do what we're going to do step forward now but you know i'm following and i'm looking all of this and we we did our
048job thoroughly we're following all these guidelines we're following the cdc and the county and chop so that is just you know i i vote to keep this and if we will have to pivot if it spikes to a high threshold that's the only thing that i'm saying but we have to follow any one health agency that's that's my okay i just want to make a point of clarification i don't think we're sitting here as you stated and not trying to consider all the information provided by us i think we have the information here and looking at it when i mentioned metrics with my initial question or comment it wasn't to say that i don't think we can go mask and optional from the fact and based on the information that we have here now but
049i'm when i mentioned metrics i brought it up because dr zerby's last comment also referenced reinstitute and masking and i wanted to say if that happens we need a metrics around that because people will want to know because if we implement masking now and we come back and have to change it in march people will want to know what metrics are we using to change it that was my question so my question is not to be i guess confused with what we're being asked here to do today my question or comment was really in reference to masking if we have to revert back and pivot as you said what criteria would we use to pivot and that is something he didn't have that was my question so i have no problem with masking optional i
050just wanted to be clear so that all massaging parents and students and teachers also have the information to know that whatever decisions we made is going to be based off information so whether we decide we're going to use the county data recommendation recommendations made by the cdc and chop that's something that needed to be stated that was my question and i asked that because people in the public may not know what criteria would we use to be in stay masculine is my question so it wasn't asking for metrics in relation to this i think we've all reviewed we may have had conversations with dr zerby to make sure so we didn't look at this last or two weeks ago when it was presented and just left them coming here today to bring it up and
051ask but this is the point of having this conversation so we can bring our concerns to the public so it's not a matter of that it's just really asking to dig into it to say if we have to pivot what uh what are we basing it off on i just have a question um and maybe dr zurby you can help clarify this so the the governor's um suspension of the mass mandate on january 17th was not was to then allow local jurisdictions to decide on masking mandates is that correct that's what was part of his statement yes thank you um and you know just i'm hearing all the discussions here and it sounds to me like um there there may be a will to amend this motion to put the parameters in there um that
052that will then reflect the masking requirement um or the suggested requirement that the county um that the county deems appropriate um okay are there any other questions from the only oh sorry miss rocco go ahead i was just going to say and i just to the the metrics point on the contributing factors when it says the county department of health planned to release a sliding scale masking recommendation like we don't have that so that's where my concern is and all that i want is i want to tonight to vote yes to masking optional starting january 31st and february 28th and those who want to get their shots get their shots i just want to make sure that in there it says however if we're high on january 31st we can't do that that's that's it
053that's all i want so here's so here's i'm i i'm not debating i'm not debating this but let's say for example uh the uh the board would would rather hear add an addendum i'll call it to to the motion so it would read like it is it would read approve the modification of the health and safety plan uh to provide mass optional indoor school environment in the building to educate students in grades 7 through 12 and the rest of the what's on the screen i don't know if you can put it on the screen uh can you put the emotion on the screen thank you and then after that it would say the district will remain in or shift to mandatory masking when in two consecutive weeks of high transmission based on the methactin uh
054positivity and incident rates now when i say methactman you know that on the chart you can search by the school district and use those or you could search the other option is to use the county my preference would be to use the uh the school districts only because we ten we've generally tended to run much lower than the county uh on on those metrics but that would that if that meets some of your your concerns that allows us uh and i think as mr mcginnis said allows us to be clear with all of our parents that hey when we hit this this is what's going to happen and this is what we're going to do but anything less than that you know then there's a mass optional environment and that way it allows parents this
055to decide now before january 22nd whether or not they are comfortable with that uh mass optional potential mass optional environment so long as it's out of the the the high area so that's just a thought is it what i have or not i don't think it's worth it okay so i don't know i mean so if if people are are interested in in that particular part to to move this thing forward and allow at least uh us to be very much more clear with with our families and to allow or prevent us from having to come back and have this discussion again as another meeting and maybe that's the best path forward but i think so the only question i have is because i don't know what the district you know i'm okay with having
056the high positivity rates but i don't know what the district um area entails it does it entails shannon dell and meadowwood you know what does it entail just this the children uh you know the the families of this district like i don't know those parameters i'm not familiar with them so i kind of feel like we have two huge we've two we have two metric systems to choose from the county or the the combined the fact and lower providence and warchester set of data if you look on the district chart that we provide the county information and we also provide the school district information so uh we can certainly choose either one i'm just saying that if um i'm just i'm telling you that the mythactin numbers are generally run lower than uh the county
057numbers that's just and if that's important or not important then then you can make a decision on that i would agree with mathakton i mean i forget what it was there's um upper perk right now is through the roof so no offense i don't want them to be part of our matrix right now right because they're high so i'm fine with can i i want to ask a question if i can just to it's in regards to what miss cancro was just saying so if i'm understanding i i also want to use the my fact in numbers not the county but i think what i'm hearing and what i is going through my head right now are we at all going to take into consideration the actual positivity rate within this school meaning our dashboard
058i think right now has 20 some odd cases so we are now counting our district numbers of people who aren't even in this school may not have children in this school and then when you mention the two retirement communities i i guess i understand we can't break out okay these 40 houses don't have people in myth act and i i'm not asking you to do that but i'm i'm saying are we at all considering the fact that mython district and community may have such a low number of positivity but we're basing it on two large townships i think that is a bit concerning i know we need a metric but i just want to be clear that we could have 12 cases in this entire school but we're basing it on a district-wide number i'm
059just a little concerned about that now that that i mean that certainly makes sense my my challenge with with doing anything other than the numbers that i've given you we have not uh made any pivoting changes on the individual positivity that we receive in in in the schools so um other than through uh communicating with the county department of health almost a year ago when we actually did close audubon or not on arrowhead elementary school for i believe uh one to two days because of a high number of cases which weren't a result of spread within the school but happened to be a uh an outpour of an event that occurred prior to coming back into school over the holiday so so what that said is i i don't know what that number would be
060is it is it is it 40 cases in the district like we've never we've never had that conversation and i don't know where uh if if we use mr mcginnis's uh rhetoric it would be throwing another dart at that uh so that's i mean i i don't think that's a good way to to do it but i understand what you're saying so the best choice is because uh we've been using them and we there's trends associated with that are the are the ones that either the county uh post for the county dates or the data or the uh the ones for the fact that that would be my recommendation if you're going to use a metric at all and i understand that and i understand that would be a hard metric i am just i
061i need to be clear that the district's numbers could be very low and we're back to masking and the positivity rate here is extremely low and i just have concern with that i'm not saying you can do anything about that but in front of the public i just want to say that i have concern with that certainly that's fair um and and that's and that's likely what we're going to see we're going to see more cases in the community than we do seeing in our students because uh the the data from chop i don't have that but the data as chop is telling us you know students are are in a better position being in schools because of all the precautions and things that we've taken over the time yeah just to add that too
062it's just that we were we were closing schools last year based on incident rate um and within the schools and like we you know and so that's where cases positive cases so that's where i would rather not i rather have i wish we had had this discussion i understand that we're here now with this discussion i respect that um but i'm looking at incident rates was what was our determining factor of like shutting schools cautionary procedures and now we're looking at positivity rates of our dish our district so my concern is who are we to pick the metrics and where is our health agency helping us and guiding us on that and that's where i just have that i do just have a difficulty with that so i'm just that's a it's a fair comment
063but uh we've been using these two sets of metrics from the very beginning and they're the only two that i can say um the county uh you know first first part of our conversation when we get on with the superintendent superintendent meetings and the county and chop we we review where we're at and and they use those those those numbers so it's it's the county numbers and then we have access just like the general public has access to go to the county site they can look at them at fact numbers or they can go right to our district website and we update those uh regularly any any other any other comments yes mr young it's important to remember that with our reaction to the numbers last year were an absence of vaccines and at an
06488 percent a vaccination rate of at least one shot we should be maybe managing a different mindset of how we manage through this and i think we i think it makes sense to add a metric to this if because it doesn't sound like there's a majority here that wants to make a vote as is but but i think we just have to remember that 88 is is the number that should be top of mind any other any other comments so i'm just going to make a question to the the solicitor uh if we could um given uh mr young's comments that they're likely to be a need for modification to the uh motion how should we proceed in in dealing with that you really have two options you could either make the motion to amend
065the agenda now and if there's a second you could take discussion um then take the vote to amend the agenda and allow the public to comment on either the original action item um and the proposed uh amendment or we could wait until we get to the actual action item and then make a motion it's really the board's pleasure what would you do i think that's something now so it's clear that would make that would make sense uh so is there any objection right now for us uh considering the the uh amending the emotion uh so that why don't why don't you why don't you state exactly what we're voting on and then ask that question that's fair i'm sorry yeah so it's it's the it's the motion i'm sorry can you put on the motion
066please so it's it's that language right there and then the next sentence starts off with the district will remain in or shift into or out of mandatory masking when in two consec following i'm sorry following two consecutive weeks of high transmission rate based on nethackton uh school district levels so again are you okay with that do you want to try my action i mean you can okay or we could try all right i'd suggest emotion as as is um with the addition of the district will remain in mandatory masking when the matthackton school district is in substantial or high transmission for two consecutive weeks optional masking will resume when the methacton school district is in low or moderate transmission for two consecutive weeks so just so everyone knows that motion is different than the one
067i had read in terms of two of two things yeah yeah i i thought the whole discussion we just had was around the word high not substantial and high okay so so madam president would you like to make a motion and read that and then and then actually wait for a second because if i made madame president we should uh propose the motion see if there's a second then take discussion on the amendment you want to do your do we like my motion or do we like your emotion yours is fine as long as you take substantial out i think that's what i heard substantial in here yep okay um so i'm asking for a motion to amend the motion that's correct okay um all right then may i have a motion to amend the
068motion so that the new motion reads approve the modification to the matthackton school district health and safety plan to provide for a mass optional indoor school environment in buildings that educate students in grades 7 to 12 and for non-student buildings beginning january 31st 2022 and for buildings that educate students in grades k to 6 beginning february 28 the district will remain in mandatory masking when the matthackton school district is in high transmission for two consecutive weeks optional masking will resume when the matthackton school district is in low moderate or substantial transmission for two consecutive weeks mr mcginnish may i have a second miss reese any discussion on the amendment okay may i have a vote to approve the no with a comment oh right how are we doing this public public comment then on the
069amendment no you would vote to immense promotion and then is that where you want it we have to take a vote to amend the motion first and the public and public the public can comment on either the amendments we're not voting on the motion we're voting on the amend and the amendment of the motion correct okay so all in favor of this amended motion should i roll call you're not required to roll call but you certainly can okay um yes no yes no yes okay the motion carries five to three so that is the amended motion on the table then for tonight thank you okay now it's time for public comment on board action items the board will now take public comment as an opportunity for residents to comment on matters that are to be
070cited on as outlined on the agenda please keep your comments to four minutes or less the board of school directors may choose to respond to matters following the conclusion of comments on board action items jim malik borschester um i can't agree with um miss cancero any anymore and she made the statement who are you guys to be making this decision i mean what are you guys doctors scientists um why are you going to mandate masking for high or substantial transmission somebody tell me other than you know what i'm afraid of high and i think we'll just mask up can somebody give me science give me give me a you know a scientific reason other than yeah you know what i think it's a good idea because that's what you're doing throwing darts there's darts being
071thrown up front [Applause] you know it's it's so frustrating um when you see people who have no concept of the science behind what's going on sitting up there making decisions now dave you said that um you know you would go back to your masked mandates if things didn't work you don't have the authority or the power to do it somebody should read you the supreme court decision that just came out that shows you don't have the thought this board this district has no authority to even make them wear masks none zero so let me help you out um the supreme court upheld a lower court ruling that the masked mandate of the acting secretary of health health was illegal and null and void as of a couple days ago not january the department of health
072is a commonwealth agency and so is the school board and that's how they came to their conclusion because you're an agency the an agency's regulations are valid only if they are adopted within the agencies granted powers issued persuade the proper procedure and they're reasonable mass mandates do not fall under the acting health secretary's granted powers nor do they fall under your granted powers under the school code so you better have your solicitor go read the school code there's nothing in there that allows you to mandate masks and if you continue on this course somebody is going to get a court to tell you that and it may be me the implications for you guys are simple the district is a commonwealth agency there's nothing in the school code that grants you the power to institute
073or enforce a mandate you know prime example these young ladies here came with no masks well you didn't see security tell them to leave because they can't this happened before there were a couple guys back there no masks they said no the policeman was standing there he told me he can't enforce anything there's no statute you guys have no power at all i mean why people are wearing mass in the audience i i have no clue and here's what the supreme court said you cannot just whip up new policies and regulations regarding student health because the proposed policy or regulation is related to student health and safety because that's what you guys are doing all right so my advice to you again is get somebody with some medical knowledge on your pandemic team you know
074instead of miss larcenies and and um you know get some advice that you can actually work with here i'm i want to hear somebody tell me what the sciences that came with this amended motion just just explain it to me thank you [Applause] amy sorello lower providence jim took half my my comments but um the pa supreme court has affirmed the commonwealth court ruling that pa that pennsylvania agencies do not have the authority to issue manda mask mandates pennsylvania public schools are considered a commonwealth agency just like the department of health and is defined as such in the 1949 pennsylvania school code as and they refer to public schools as local education agencies quote an agency derives its power to promulgate regulations from its enabling act the 1949 pennsylvania school code is the the enabling
075act for public schools in pennsylvania section 501 of the pennsylvania school code does not apply here the adoption and enforcement of rules and regulations under section 501 apply to conduct and behavior not health and safety statutes regarding disease control are straightforward and very clear regarding what control measures can be taken at this time there is no existing rule or regulation that permits any pennsylvania agency to mandate masks i ask that you revise the health and safety plan and adopt optional masking for the district the dress code will also need to be revised to remove the reference to masks finally i ask that you implement optional masks for all students staff and visitors effective immediately if you continue with the proposed staggered unmasking of our children you are opening yourselves up for lawsuits lawsuits that you
076will lose because pennsylvania agencies do not have the authority to mandate anything your mask requirement is unlawful in fact you broke the law tonight when you forced us to put masks on and everyone else that walked into this building so i hope you do the right thing and issue optional mass for the entire district starting tomorrow [Applause] anyone else for public comment [Music] amanda burnett warster tonight i'm here to ask each board member to vote to make masks optional opinion and fear should no longer carry any weight in your votes and should have no place in the decision-making for our children the mask mandate is unlawful and should be dropped at every grade level immediately the critical threat to our children is not coveted the threat to our children lies deep in the mismanagement of
077power and control your complacency on the issues of our children's mental health social growth quality of education and teacher dissatisfaction is a clear indication that you are not attentive to the actual pulse in our schools our parenthood or our community parents know their children we are the only people the only people who should be making decisions in regards to masking or any other recommendation of health care we need our board to be objective lean into facts away from fear and start making decisions for the methachton school district that will actually improve the quality of education and our environments because at the end of the day it is not your job to offer me medical advice i do not need your opinion on how to raise my children your job is to create a school district
078that excels in education employs the best teachers offers safe school environments and improves the quality of our community i implore you to make the best informed decision and begin the momentum toward improvement tonight with a vote for mass optional [Applause] moai lee where is your township i'm in 6th grade skyview upper elementary school so last week a student from arcola talked about how most students don't mind masks i'm actually here to talk about the exact opposite you see i have some friends in my class that mind wearing masks they purposely pull down their masks when no one is looking same goes for some other kids during lunch kids are also afraid to stand up against authority to talk about masking for example teachers another important reason why students mind masking is because we feel suffocated
079in those tiny little masks we can't breathe properly we also can't see each other's emotions like smiling therefore i request the board to vote optional for masks and let students have a choice to breathe free [Applause] sorry excuse me uh ed thiel lower providence um thank you board for making this motion to change the uh what you're voting on tonight and please follow through with creating a metric with these established criteria for removing the mask optional rather than a set calendar date um we should be concerned about the school district's rate and transmission but also the status of our local hospitals those are the critical resource that we need to make sure that they're not overrun and that's really what the what we're trying to get under control here so we can all get back
080to normal you know we can always start with one metric that you're proposing today and you know adjust if that makes sense you know we really want to protect against the issue where you know we pick the wrong metric and we never go back to school we always have the chance of when we set this metric tonight we can go and make that amendment so that we can get to the right criteria if the hospitals are really in good shape um this kind of metrics not to protect the people that go to football games and to with that don't wear their mask there it's for all the students you know in the district that do wear it and want to be in a safe environment those are the ones we're really trying to protect you
081know if we get to those dates and i i really agree that you know if the criteria works out well we should be adjusting to this mass optional point because because we've actually met those criteria um um one concern that i have that if we go to mass optional if if i prefer my kid to wear a mask i don't see anything in the policy to make sure that they wear them all day kids you know listen to and they don't listen to your policies all the time and i don't see any guards in the system and and the current policy that we're putting forth to do that you know when kids see that their friends are not wearing masks they're going to want to do that too and that might be against the parents
082wishes you know if we're talking about actually meeting the parents wishes we should actually be looking to address those in those situations my office has gone to these mass optional not masked criteria for this and it's worked pretty well once we set out this clear goal it's kind of nice to have that data that says okay when we meet this criteria we're going to go to this plan so this has actually worked out really well for them and i really appreciate the board going through and amending this action today thank you ashley wilkerson lower providence township i'm speaking as a parent a taxpayer and as a physician i'd like to start by thanking the board for their efforts to keep our students and our staff members safe over the course of the pandemic it has
083been a wild ride as crazy as the past 21 months have been the goal has always been the same to get our kids physically in school and learning and to keep them there and we've done that well this year and now the guidance from the county is changing and the question is before us as to what we do with masks and um dr zurby you mentioned the chop policy lab recommendations and so when you mentioned that i was a little bit confused so i pulled up on my phone just now wanted to read you one of the recommendations from their website and it says high vaccination rates strong community commitment to testing when individuals feel ill with cova-like symptoms and low-coping 19 incidents make up the essential foundation for a mask optional approach so i'm
084really glad that the board voted to amend the recommendation because that is consistent with what chop policy lab recommends for optional masking and i really hope we get there soon i was also disappointed that when the county has shared specific guidance for when we should move to mask optional and actually has a graph that shows when we should move that we didn't see that as part of the presentation they recommended masking indoors for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals for high and substantial spread it's clearly in the information they've been sending out to districts and i'm really disappointed that that wasn't part of the presentation today uh as far as other issues that were addressed ms rocco you brought up a great point about whether or not we should be using the numbers in the district versus
085the community so i did the math looking at the district website there are currently 42 students listed as having covet in the district that's not staff that's just students so if we extrapolate 400 kids per grade and multiply that out based on the incidence per hundred thousand that puts us in the high range and i think it actually puts us at a higher range than the community at large so we're probably better off using the community numbers for myth act and then we are using just the numbers in the schools mr young you mentioned that you see people attending events outside of the district where they're not wearing mass in their close proximity and people absolutely have the right to choose to do that the difference in the schools is that we have people who
086for various reasons are at higher risk of covert transmission and they have the right not to be worried that they're sitting next to somebody who is unmasked and unvaccinated and could become somebody who transmits the virus to them kids need to be in schools and this is how we keep them there the last thing that i want to mention is that coming here one of my questions which has been partially answered was how do our staff feel about this because uh thank you for bringing up the point that this is their work environment and it's really important especially since we're seeing such high teacher burnout not just a myth acting but gosh across the country teachers are exhausted in our district you look at what they've been through they went from literally overnight having to
087switch to completely online learning with no training and then going to a more structured online and then going to hybrid and now finally this year back in person and having all kinds of other requirements held at them all the while juggling 504s and ieps and behavioral health plans and everything else they're exhausted and we really do need to know how they feel and i know teachers who were not surveyed and have concerns i'm a little confused as to why we don't just survey all of our staff find out their concerns and address it in a group so they feel heard because when you're burned out feeling heard is one of the most important things as an employee so i hope that we will survey our staff find out how they feel about this and work
088with them with whatever plan that we do so that we can make sure that they feel like they're in a safe environment we have a teacher shortage right now we have a substitute shortage we have literally no teachers beating down the doors of any schools in the county or in the state it is really really important that we make sure that we support our teachers and they're comfortable with whatever plan we have in place thank you good evening my name is aaron ranieri from lower providence um i am a teacher in the district and have been for 20 years and yes i am burnt out from wearing this eight hours a day i can't breathe and teach the things that i need to teach i cannot smile at my students they cannot smile at me
089i cannot see their emotion every day yes i am burnt out there is another side of this and every question that i hear being asked from you guys does not that take that into account ever you assume that everybody is scared you assume that we are scared to death to be in front of our students listen not a lot of us are speaking out i am not afraid to speak out but believe me when i say i'm one of the only ones with similar feelings that a that is not afraid to speak i don't know why i think because we wear a scarlet letter believe me when i say i have a scarlet letter on my back every day there are people that teach with me that do not talk to me anymore people that
090i've worked with and been friends with for 20 years they will not talk to me anymore part of the reason is because i was quarantined not too long ago i was quarantined pulled out of my classroom as i had students walking in and out of my classroom it was embarrassing to say the least i have had enough of this i can't take it anymore so yes i am burnt out but not in the way that you are talking about it no one brings up the other side and i will wear that scarlet letter because i've had enough listen there's one thing if you were to ask me the one major concern that i have for our students before the pandemic the biggest difference between 2002 and 2020 is their mental health blame social media i
091don't know what it is i don't know but it's different and the lockdowns and the school closures and the masking and then not smiling at each other it is not making it better i am so sick of kids are resilient they're not they're impressionable at these ages i mean everything we do everything some of them aren't learning to speak correctly in the lower grades because their teachers are masked some people some kids with special needs they're not getting what they could get because of the masks i also have a question with this testing listen you said that there's not going to be anything different um for when kids are quarantined so my question is this if if you are going to test to say will it only be the non-vaccinated students will they too wear
092a scarlet letter on their back because it's embarrassing i don't want my students to to have that on their back will there be privacy with the testing are we are we aren't we not going to quarantine them because if they're vaccinated they don't get quarantined but if they're non-vaccinated they get tested and they stay correct i just want to make sure that's the case so that would end the quarantining of healthy people including teachers who are pulled away from their students when they are not sick it has to stop are you guys concerned at all with the fact that there's probably going to be discrimination lawsuits the montgomery county board of health and with you guys i would be concerned about that thank you [Applause] [Music] sheila's wait a second okay sheila smith lower providence
093168 days one hundred and seventy six hours the number of days and hours that our children have been masked what have you done to our children math squaring and social social distancing requirements pose serious threats and long-lasting harm to our children's physical and emotional well-being what is the impact to our children who live day in and day out in the world without smiles without physical contact over the past 20 months seven of seven of you have taken away our constitutional parental and student rights hindered our children's right to quality of education and impose medical treatment without our permission or support and we are worse off because of it you have failed every student and every parent in this district the current career care bear excuse me the current care board members are so blind by
094self-righteousness that they exhibit zero empathy for parents students and staff that don't agree with your beliefs study after study have proven that healthy people under 18 do not suffer from major covet events and unlike other pathogens such as influenza children are not infecting older and vulnerable adults oh shoot i was recently told by an administrator that every child receives excuse me every child has the right to in-person quality education as of october 14 a little over a month into the school year 630 students didn't have that right they were first forced to quarantine for 10 days for no reason at all not all that 630 one was for one contracted covet and by the way fun fact we all know that vaccinated children students who were the ones that uh that transmitted coveted to other
095children our former bird i'll skip that i recall on election day paul winters had said that he will accept no not one child's death what about a child from suicide or drug overdose our child our children have a greater chance of being murdered by a school shooter than of dying of cobit hence the last three weeks so just so let's talk let's put this comment into perspective do you know how many children have died from covid since the beginning of this pandemic less than one percent 98 percent were of that 535 were high risk and had pre-existing disease and that's from the cdc website of so that's for the source hundreds of studies have shown the negative impacts that they have and so i lost my job of the children okay so fun fact humans
096can spot a smile more than a mile away so there we go as far as children being able to connect with others you have forced them to have no emotional contact our children have become depressed from social isolation being forced to wear masks all day most no longer enjoy going to school their grades have suffered tremendously in fact i know for a fact hundreds of students felt scared and threatened to even go to school last week because of everything that's happened so as a result suicides and deaths from overdose are at an all-time high more than a hundred thousand americans have died from overdose since since um in 2020 from to from may of 2020 to 2021. it's an increase of over 30 percent such deaths have doubled since 2014. opioids are up 75 percent
097so here's the bottom line a child can get and give covet regardless of vaccine status the number one cause and number two cause of death in children is suicide and overdose thank you for your time medical treatment and social disdain is child abuse unconstitutional and unethical [Applause] good evening ramona dela rosa worcester township i'd like to start by saying that there are many parents who are unable to make the meeting tonight i may be one voice but i speak for many as far as the proposal i don't understand the timing of it let's look at what's happening around us and the recommendations and actions being taken it doesn't make sense to change our current course for instance and one of the board members already brought this up cornell university just went virtual because they had
098over 900 positive cases last week with a high percentage of them being omicron according to montgomery county's reporting both lower providence and more sister township are in the highest transmission zone range that's also already been mentioned and while death is the worst outcome for kovid there are plenty of people whose lives have been significantly impacted due to long covid and others who have no idea what impact this disease will have on them for the balance of their lives scientists have found that even asymptomatic cases can end up with delayed long-haul symptoms in multiple studies both here and around the world they are finding organ damage and asymptomatic cases including in children researchers at chop found that children with covid even those with mild or no symptoms show signs of blood vessel damage that may or
099may not cause long-term complications my point is there's still so much that we don't know but we do know what the cdc and the who have to say the cdc recommends universal indoor masking by all students staff teachers and visitors to k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status the cdc released three studies that highlight the importance of layered prevention strategies they found that school districts without a universal masking policy in place were more likely to have covid19 outbreaks nationwide counties without masking requirements saw the number of pediatric covid19 cases increased nearly twice as quickly during the same period on tuesday the director general of the world health organization stated this quote it's not vaccines instead of masks it's not vaccines instead of distancing it's not vaccines instead of ventilation or hand hygiene do it all do
100it consistently and do it well end quote this is a matter of public health if we go mask optional it increases the risks for everyone in the school not just those who are no longer masking it is illogical and irresponsible to drop the mass mandate in school at this time we not only have the highly transmissible delta variant coupled with a high number of cases but we also have the new omicron variant which is apparently doubling cases every two days for anyone that's done a doubling everyday math problem you know the growth is rapid and it's exponential some may say if you don't agree then take the virtual option and keep your kid at home first of all our kids have missed enough in-person learning second this year's current virtual option is not a good
101option for many of us especially those of us who have children with ieps it is not equal to the virtual environment we had access to last year if we want our kids to stay in person you are our last line of defense on this subject i ask you to make the decision that mitigates spread and maintains a safer in-person learning environment for our students our teachers and for everyone that works in our schools thank you [Music] excuse me just a minute could i ask the any audience members who are currently unmasked to please mask before we continue with public comment thank you hi i'm julie stern delfino lower providence township i too speak as a parent as a community member as a physician and as a pediatrician first i'd like to thank the board very
102much for all of your hard work over this year this has not been easy for anybody you have a very very difficult job and you have all taken this very seriously and we do appreciate your hard work it's been a very difficult balance for everybody um we have to take into account all of the stakeholders here our students their families our staff and our teachers everybody is tired everyone is tired physicians are tired we're really tired teachers are really tired students our tired parents are tired but we are a community and we must work together it really saddens me to see what's happening in this community and how we have been torn apart by this it's not necessary we all need to think about each other and that includes being respectful and wearing masks when
103we're asked to because it is an important part of public health whether you want to believe it or not it is important it's important to be vaccinated vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective readily available and free if you choose not to vaccinate that is your choice but understand that the consequences of that are not limited just to you i do support the board in their decision or in their proposal to go to mask optional when it is safe to do so using clear metrics that are understandable and readily readily visible to the public will be an important part of that i do have faith in our students that they can change with the times when they need to when they need to mask because of community spread they will and when they
104have the option not to if their parents agree they will have the option not to all of our students all of the students in this community deserve a good public education and that is the role of the school board that is the role of us as parents and that is the role of us as a community is to work together thank you [Music] uh joe written house lord providence um so i rise today and supported the change of the health and safety plan until i heard the uh the new change which i'll address so i still want the vote but i could spend the entire time up here i only have a few minutes talking about studies on masks i could talk about the pandemic becoming endemic how it will never go away but today
105i will leave it to others i could spend the next minutes talking about the restrictions that have had effects on our children how mental health i could talk about how some children in uh the lower grades haven't ever had an interaction with some of their classmates without a mask i could bring up the entire uh the terrible mental health on our students but today i leave that to others i could bring up legality i could bring up the onslaught of lawsuits that are waiting in the wings some people watching this right now hoping they won't have to come to that but today i don't want to talk about that i want to talk about one thing that's principles and i want to speak clearly and bluntly with a little bit of real politique in there
106the principle thing for the duke to do as a school board is to mitigate harm and increase the quality of our education and it seems the tide has shifted it seems we're no longer trying to mitigate harm but we're swimming upstream almost hoping for a perpetual pandemic so we never have to get rid of these powers i this isn't in my script but i i i'm kind of blown away that we spent years talking about or two years now talking about the pandemic team and how much we trust them and the experts all of a sudden the pandemic team got shortened to two directors who changed everything so you know damned if we do damned if we don't we'll we'll throw them we'll throw the entire pandemic team out for the will of two people
107all right we could fall back on what the state wants we could fall back on what the county suggests but none of that talks about what we as a district should do i was saddened that prior to this meeting there were members of the board who were tweeting about this before we even came up here to vote some saying sharing articles that said we need indefinite masking forever it's not open-minded it's not open to suggestions and then to come here and say your pro an optional uh mandate is ludicrous it's what you do in private which you do in public i could talk about how one said if uh ugg this means unpaid volunteer school boards would once again be in the hot seat thanks tom wolf with an angry face you are in the
108hot seat this is your decision that's not principle this is not a decision that you wish if this is not a decision you wish to make you're free to leave there are people who will make that decision i'm surprised this isn't a unanimous vote truthfully i think from like just the perspective of you guys being up there i think you want to move back into focusing on education but now we've just added you know a whole nother section to this health and safety plan it says uh oh you know it could go up for two weeks now in two weeks and we're gonna go back and forth for masks you know forever does anyone up there believe that manco is gonna get rid of their coven figures anytime next year when are they gonna stop
109so we have this is just prolonging the problem indefinitely because we will never know when this pandemic is over if it's endemic it will go on forever i understand this decision is difficult for you today but the moral answer is clear there are students and parents who are waiting for your decision and sadly they have left their responsibility you've left them with nobody to help them except you nine people who have the choice you can't leave it to somebody else except for one other group the parents the teachers and the students of mathakin trust them trust them i think you want to get past this i think we all do and but you're going to prolong it with this new amendment and we're going to be doing this all summer long [Music] go for mask
110optional thank you anybody else for public comment james dutco um parent of two small kids and we recently moved to the methecton school district because we saw it as a shining example uh to the school districts uh in the surrounding townships um i encourage you to vote against this i think uh wearing a mask is not at all a burden i think if uh i don't have a prepared statement uh thank you for the time and the chance to be able to uh address you and for all your work but it's you know if you want to continue to be an example and you want to continue to support the parents and protect the kids in the school district i think wearing a mask is like the minimum amount that we can ask them to
111do you want to suppress the level of viral replication and the the uh level uh the chances that the virus can have to spread around i mean that's what's that that could be an example for all of southeastern pa you know i mean we don't have to do what bucks school districts in bus bucks county and chester county are doing um so yeah i just encourage you to vote against this continue to wear masks it's not like yes it is endemic it will be here forever like the last person just said but that doesn't mean that there won't be future solutions i mean pfizer has a new pharmaceutical treatment that will come down to mitigate the symptoms of it blocking the blocking the protease essential for the replication of the virus there's going to be
112more newer treatments in the future and for now we can continue to protect our families because the kids don't just you know you have 12 cases in your methectone school but they don't live in a bubble they don't live just like by themselves they talk to their grandparents they visit they go around i mean it's it's not just the school buildings it's the whole area so anyway that's that's i'm sorry i don't have a prepared statement and if that was kind of rambling but thanks for your time and i encourage you to vote against this any further public comment uh hello my word sister township good evening uh i don't want to talk about debate um whether it's good to wear a mask or it's or it's better to wear a mask or it's better
113not to wear a mask i just want to echo what miss cancro said who are we or who are i think parents get to make a decision but who are the board to make such a decision if pa supreme court already uh ruled uh the phpa government does not have the authority to uh impose mass mandate why why would the school district has this authority maybe the solicitor can help me answer the question i i know some people some parents don't like remove the math mandate and some parents uh strongly uh suggest remove the mass mandate but if the uh the school board uh imposed still imposed mass management do do you guys have the authority to do it to do it if you do it will you get into trouble in with the legal
114case that's what i'm saying i just i just don't think even if people don't like it if the scuba does not have the authority they still have to do it they just don't have a choice it's not in your hands that's what i want to say thank you anybody else okay seeing none um okay so the motion i'm just going to re-read the motion that's on the table here um it is approved the modification to the matthackton school district health and safety plan to provide for a mass optional indoor school environment and buildings that educate students in grades 7 to 12 and for non-student buildings beginning january 31st 2022 and for buildings that educate students in grades k to six beginning february 28 the district will remain in mandatory masking when the methachton school district
115is in high transmission for two consecutive weeks optional masking will resume when the methecton school district is in low moderate or substantial transmission for two consecutive weeks do i have a motion to approve ms reese do i have a second mr mcginnis okay any further board discussion [Music] no again my only my only concern is again is following what the montgomery county is saying is that it's a recommendation and not a mandate so i go back to that and i just go back to the fact that we're arbitrarily placing um metrics on here without even i do agree not talking to the pandemic team not having dr zerby go back to montgomery county again we're not following our agency that we should be following so that is my my only reason why i would not
116vote for this because i feel like we're just placing these mandates on without doing full investigation and allowing us to have a consultation with the agency we should be following but i do think we should follow the recommendations and we're offering opportunities for vaccinations and providing a safe environment for all our students so um very quickly because i i think everyone wants to vote last night i attended a training for school board directors and although this is the beginning of my seventh year as a school board director i feel it's important to keep learning and i missed the first hour of the training but i attended the entire second hour and a gentleman's three people spoke and one gentleman spoke who's been a um in education for over 40 years and his comment to everybody
117on that training was no matter what do what is the best in the best interest of children and that's not always possible right because there's budgets and there's things like that but in the bottom line is you do what's in best interest of children and here we have two sides right whether they're right wrong in it doesn't matter some people feel this is best some people feel that is best so i am gonna vote for optional and i respect miss cancro and miss rocko's and mr young's concern about adding the high that was the compromise i was willing to make based on the recommendations of the physicians i have spoken to and it is absolutely your right to do what you wish i would not feel right about voting yes to optional masking without encouraging
118those to get vaccinated doesn't mean you have to doesn't mean i'm going to put a scarlet letter on you my 16 year old is hates needles hates them she went on wednesday to get her booster and i was proud of her does that mean i'm not proud of other 16 year olds who don't make that choice absolutely not but she made that choice to protect her grandmothers and her friends and for the patience of one of the physicians that spoke what that physician won't tell you is that she's a pediatric oncologist she's not just a pediatrician so she has spent her entire career saving children's lives so yes i do look at her opinion as more significant than my own i just teach children she saves children i'm looking forward to when my 13 year
119olds can get boosted so that they can be as safe as possible so i will vote optional with this one small amendment if that's the compromise that makes me feel a little bit better i apologize for that um any further comments from the board yes yes i did want to make a comment i i am having a hard time getting behind this new plan with the change i did want to make a comment right now there's actually 24 cases in the district and as our enrollment report in october was 4610 total enrollment that is half a percent um of covet cases in the district so i think that when i was making this statement of i'm concerned about the numbers district-wide and i understand dr zarby can't police that i wasn't expecting him to i
120just wanted to make a point that we are basing our high on a whole district of residence in two townships with a number of 24 and i believe last week it was in the 30s and that was the highest we've had so i did want to make that point i i'm concerned with that like i said that's half a percent another comment was how would we can how would teachers administrators be able to make sure kids were wearing masks if parents and or children want it or parents wanted their children to you know that's a personal home decision and we as parents really need to work with our children to trust them we we send them on a bus to trust them that they're not going to be vandalizing a bus or bullying someone on
121a bus we tell them to do the right thing and make the right decisions we tell them to listen to their teachers in the classroom we tell them what we expect of them as their parents and they are our children those are conversations that have to occur at home i would in no way want a teacher to have to monitor who is supposed to wear a mask and who isn't so i s i know we're not talking about that as a board but because it was brought up i can't sit here and not say anything another thing i'm so glad someone brought up the drugs that are coming from pfizer and i believe uh another pharma company as well unless they're both from pfizer but i know there's two drugs coming on the market in
1222022. i mean that's another thing that we need to keep in mind we do have new medication that is coming very soon to treat covid those are just some points i wanted to make and someone did say you know regarding the vaccines they're safe they're readily available and i'm happy that this area has a high percentage of vaccinated individuals and i'm hoping that that helps people feel safer any further discussion from the board no just the one i just wanted to get clarification with dr zerby the the one person asked about the test to say the vaccinated and unvaccinated and i do want them to understand the clarity that it's for all if you could just explain yeah so we will be doing the test to stay for all the all the students uh but
123the the the uh the all students will be eligible to participate in tesla state so if you are vaccinated you can and you are exposed you can still get tested um but the the county exclusion protocol i'm trying to be clear here because there's a difference the county exclusion protocol does say that um if you're in this if you're in the new bubble in the six within the six feet and uh you choose not to participate in the test to stay program you would then have to quarantine if a vaccinated person is inside that bubble and is not experiencing symptoms and chooses not to participate in pesticide they would not have to quarantine and just add the privacy is is it is a private yeah the only people that have that conversation are are the
124parents and the nurses in the district uh no one else has access to that information or uh asked that questions and and primarily uh for the the uh the protection of information for our our families we've always kept them some districts have lay people do some of the the contact tracing uh we have all of our nurses do that so when those conversations need to be had it's with the trained medical professional uh yes mr winters yeah so just to repeat that doctors are because we have had this conversation several times the quarantining process is not a manufacturing process in the test to stay this is a process that is defined by the county if we want to participate in the program is that correct based on vaccinated and unvaccinated students the exclusion process is
125a rule in that is made by the county adopted by the county as part of the county code for the department of public health for the county so that exclusion process is the thing that we have to follow it's similar to the the exclusion processes with other transmissible diseases whooping cough things of that nature that our district has been following for years this is just a different protocol for this particular covit 19 virus and we need we need to follow that our nurses are compelled to do that so it is a county thing it's not our determination uh we follow the rules as as they're dictated by the county yeah as a comment i think it it as uh as many on both sides have asked that there's better uh cooperation among the board in
126the community and we all wish that i know certainly i do um i think it is best that everybody has a a uh honest uh argument and consistent and not uh try to spin things around to the point are they we are accused of spinning at the same time when there's elements related to how we describe how quarantine is to be performed and we talk about it and we explain it and it's understood but it's accused that dr zerby you're running something that is outside the norm it is disingenuous i just want to make that point and i spoke to this at the last meeting with mr winters we know my children don't go to the district it's been made very clear by many people that is absolutely an accurate statement that is a county
127guideline not something myth actin is pushing so i make that very clear to people i talk with that that is not something that is coming from dr zerby this current board the former board that is from the county so i just wanted to mention that any other points of discussion from the board okay seeing none um i'm gonna take a roll call vote on this miss reese yes miss purdue yes miss cancro no mr winters yes no no yes i'm a yes so um seeing that motion is past five to three the motion as amended thank you um now it's time for courtesy of the floor um where's there there's 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
128to four minutes or less the board of school directors may choose to respond to matters following the conclusion of comments you can also submit questions via email to information methacton.org anyone for public comment at this time seeing oh hi okay can you hear me okay janelle lombardo uh lower providence i have a child in skyview and woodland um we spent all night talking about the health and safety of our children regarding the mastic debate um but i'd like to change the topic um and bring before you another issue um this one in particular also directly affects the health of our kids and no one seems to be doing anything about it um tonight i want to talk about the heavy backpacks so that our children are lugging around day in and day out uh i
129want to talk about the fact that they're they're so heavy that our kids are struggling i want to talk about the fact um that our children aren't wearing coats to school because they have nowhere to put them i want to talk about the fact that our tax dollars paid for lockers in these schools and they're not being used i gave the benefit of the doubt that the reason was because of covid and trying to keep the kids apart and not wanting them to stand next to each other but no i learned the reason that they're not being used isn't covert related it's because uh the lockers weren't being used as intended i don't even know what that means or what kind of answer that is but that's what i was told so i have a
130real issue with us not using these lockers when our kids are struggling according to the american academy of pediatrics they recommend that your child's backpack weigh no more than 10 to 15 percent of their body weight so for an 80 pound child that means that the backpack should weigh no more than 12 8 to 12 pounds backpacks that are too heavy can cause pain lead to serious injury and affect posture children can end up with injuries to their joints back spine muscles neck and shoulders from backpacks that are too heavy for their developing let me say that again developing spines so based on this calculation my daughter should only be carrying a max of 13 pounds um i weighed her backpack multiple times it's 19.8 pounds and that is school related material only no personal
131items okay that's 6.8 pounds over her recommended max my daughter's been struggling from the beginning of school with the backpack she complains of back pain all the time to the point where i couldn't let it go any longer i actually did reach out to ms barrical and in her defense she was she was great she was amazing she was lovely to deal with she was responsive she emailed me back right away she personally called me twice um to see what she could do however none of the solutions offered uh made an impact or in my opinion offered any solution so i'll tell you what they were one she said she talked to the teachers directly to see what could be done about lightening the load allowing kids to leave stuff in the classroom she confirmed
132she had the conversation yet nothing has changed my daughter still brings home everything the teachers are not on the same page on this topic some are saying you can leave stuff others are saying no you have to take it home in case we go virtual so the teachers aren't on the same page with this but even if they could leave stuff in the room at night where in a desk that they share with two other students it's just not feasible the second solution was kids were shown a video in class on how to properly wear a backpack okay both straps on make sure it's tight that's great but it doesn't lighten the load so that's not a solution three i was told she could carry her lunch bag and her um laptop in the front
133so take it out and carry it in the front um this doesn't lighten the load either okay it's just redistributing the weight it's still the same amount of weight on her developing spine not a solution and what happens when she trips and falls and breaks the school laptop okay then we have another issue the fourth solution was if your child really wants a locker they can request one i'm sorry but what child is going to single themselves out and request a locker when none of their friends are doing it they're not going to do that so that's not really supporting the whole child when you're willing to sacrifice their emotional health over their physical health so none of these four solutions are good enough for me could you wrap up please thank you i will
134um so i'm bringing this to you now because i've hit a wall i've emailed i've gone to the principal like nothing is being done about this there's an issue this is not healthy so if we're gonna stand up here and make health decisions for our children thank you let's make some on these other issues as well thank you for your comments thank you any other comments for courtesy of the floor ashley wilkerson lower providence first i just want to thank the board for voting for a health and safety plan that has clear parameters and will make sense to parents second mrs rocco i just wanted to clarify your numbers because i think you may be confusing percent positivity with case counts per 100 000 and it's important to differentiate those two since it's used in
135the plan that was just booted into place we actually can't calculate percent positivity because we don't know how many students were tested and you need that in order to calculate it what we can calculate is the cases per hundred thousand uh which is the metric that we'll most likely be using and using that metric if we do what you said is 21 cases out of 4 600 students our case count for 100 thousand is 455 and if i look on the county website the cases per hundred thousand lower providence or 155 and more sister are 106. so again we're still looking at if we use district numbers alone with students much higher case counts than if we just go ahead and use what the county recommends which is the numbers for the community at large
136thank you [Music] 168 days 1 16 167 hours the number of days that you have excuse me could you please state your name in municipality are you going to start that over again i'll keep it paused while you do so well now you're just taking my time we'll restart thank you sheila smith lower providence 168 days 1 16 76 hours the number of days and hours you have masked our children and social distance our children stay out of our children's medical treatments i find the hypocrisy under under unbelievable you same in these same individuals are the ones shouting my body my choice focus on operational and fiscal efficiency educational excellence and teacher engagement student safety bullying and stalking current policies protect the abusers over the victims diversity equity and inclusion certain board members are pushing
137the central centralization of education forcing unnecessary medical treatment and utilizing confirmation bias on our students the current board members should focus on academic priorities and performance that lead to our children's future success success rather than grooming our children to be social justice warriors fun fact dr zerby the district needs to do a full swat analysis not just a slow look at the declining enrollment numbers and regrettable staff resignations here are a few words to help you understand the benefit of the tea and swat voucher program charter schools private schools decrease in tax revenue i could go on here are the fun facts from the last seven years year over year of increased taxes and debt matched by plummeting year over year of district ranking teacher morale and student and parent engagement significant internal deficiencies of
138school safety bus driver requirements and transportation operations year over year of declining enrollment declining graduation rates and school performance increased division and distress that's the one thing we can agree on by misleading the community especially on the dni efforts so again the survey and re the survey report results and the audit report was never presented to the public there has been zero transparency on dni issues there had there has been a great deal of gaslighting and the dni survey only had 1585 responses 73 percent of those responses were students grades 7 through 12 that conducted the survey without parental consent nor did they have a chance to review the questions i close with this it is okay to not have all the answers it is okay it is to have different opinions it's not okay
139to utilize confirmation bias knowingly misrepresent and withhold information and force your ideologies on others we the parents and the community members are not the enemies we entrusted you to educate and protect our children your jobs volunteered or paid only exist because we exist because our children exist we are your employers by virtue of the taxes that we pay and the business we provide you we challenge raise concerns and questions your decisions because we love our children and we will fight for our children we love the community we live in and we are devastated as we watch our children sink into fear depression apathy and anxiety and watch the board override our rights as parents the school performance and teacher morale and engagement plummets and the parents and community division increases please invite all to the
140table not just those who align with your ideologies beliefs and values despite our differences we are stronger together thank you [Applause] if i could kindly ask uh any unmasked audience members to please mask thank you it's getting old liz getting old uh i agree jimmy warsester um board policy 903 is unconstitutional but you can enforce the four minutes so your problem is you don't enforce it on people you like but you really strictly enforce it on people who you don't like or disagree with that's where you get in trouble you should tell your solicitor and ask his opinion because you could get yourself sued doing that so just food for thought um i heard the you know the word metrics brought up the most important metric for uh healthy school-aged children is death we have
141zero here zero since the whole pandemic started zero methacnum second most important is icu admissions rare third severe disease rare and it goes to what i said before about kids don't get it and don't spread it that's a general statement the reason that they don't get severe disease and they don't spread it is because they lack ace2 receptors in their upper respiratory system and they cleared the virus right away so there's a reason a scientific reason why the safest place to be is in a school with kids because it's the lowest risk group on the planet um in your motion to um re-mask and then you know if it's in the high zone you didn't consider any science because one of the things you have to consider is the characteristic of the virus so you
142could be in the high zone but you have a virus like omicron that is a totally benign but more infectious and there's no need to mask so you didn't factor any science into your decision science on omicron is people hardly get symptoms i mean they're going to people are going to get the virus joe written has great it's here to stay you can't prevent it if you could it'll be gone by now it's here forever but in your little i don't know we'll call it the winters mcginnis you know uh scientific whatever they did didn't even consider the fact that the virus could be totally mild and benign so you should have done that so you're going to have you're going to have problems it's going to be a seesaw again now i heard the
143vaccine is safe anybody see the news today the cdc came out and recommended against using j and j's vaccine because of severe clotting problems with the vaccine now in my opinion as a doctor is that's not safe i have a adolescent son who i'm not going to have get the the vaccine because there have been multiple reports of myocarditis and heart inflammation with the vaccine see and what it is is a parent making a risk decision his risk of dying from covid is essentially zero why would we take a risk of damaging his heart for the rest of his life so you know for you guys it's like oh you know oh why don't we do that let's throw the dart oh yeah we'll do the high step it's just you need some medical advice
144from some knowledgeable people um what's the end point for covid you guys are going to keep doing this forever when it's endemic it's not going to be eradicated like you know polio it's endemic it's here forever so you're going to be at these meetings in your mask for the next 20 years you're going to have like a mask imprint on your face so i think you better start figuring out how to deal with it anybody else for public comment [Music] joe ridden house lower providence um i so thank you for going mass optional i think that that's the positive but now starts day one of trying to remove the policy altogether so i hope that the three who voted no uh feed to the fire ask every week when when is the end point for
145the health and safety policy regardless now that the whole health and safety panel is here i just wanted to make sure that we know what the end goal is if we meet 100 vaccination we won't i but if we are if we do does that is that when it ends is that when we call it again i don't think that the monco i don't think the state i don't think they're ever gonna stop counting covet numbers it's going to quietly disappear two years three years from now off their websites so are we going to continue this every single week from now until the end of time i think i think that that's a real possibility oh you want me to pause we can catch up i want to be polite it's okay good okay i
146i don't have much more to say but um and then the other thing is the see-sawing back and forth i truly believe that after we go mask this if you think that you're going to come back and these kids are going to say oh we're going to put these back on you'll have a revolt you'll have a revolt of people in your hands who will say no and frankly i support that i hope that the kids consider i saw the issues we were having with the tick tock trends and things like that that i are appalling what happens if one turns around and says hey just don't don't do it after the attack and says we're going back into masks every winter we come back in the fall everything's great for a period of months
147and then we go back in the mass from now until the end of time i think that csong effect is going to affect these kids for years to come and they will eventually revolt and you won't be able to do anything so um i guess day one when is uh when are we removing all the mess thank you [Applause] township i want to talk about two other issues not related to masking tonight uh one is the uh the threat um that has happened excuse me small can you speak up a little bit please hello maybe bring closer uh i just want to talk about the two issue that is not related to masking one it was the threats we received in the past week um i think there is we receive at least three emails
148from dr zerby in the past week uh it's regarding uh some a rumor about the threats in uh arcola and sky view it just it didn't really have much detail about uh what the threat was about and then how it was handled all we heard was that it turned after the lawyer for enforcement investigated and turned out it was a non-threat then uh because my daughter um does not go on the social media so weird we really don't know what exactly happened then i i read something on social media and the grown-up social media saying there was one boy in arcola was like a considered by rumor like a she he could be the threat and then and even got a list of names i i don't know if that's true or not it just
149got me really concerned and alarmed if if people talk about a list of names because we didn't know anything and then later i found out like many of my daughter's friends didn't go to school on friday i i don't know how severe this is and i just want the board or the administration could give our parents more information you don't have to talk about the names just give us more details about what happened so we can feel safe and sure to send my kids to school and i heard this coming oh i think today we got emails saying this coming friday would be a date like the rumors that it would be a date with a threat or something so basically i just want to have more information on that so we can feel more
150rest assured so we can feel safe to send our children to school every day um second issue i want to bring up was about the arrowhead project and i heard uh i know this project the building cost was uh 35 million dollars in the interest the 17 million dollars overall was more than 50 million dollars but i heard recently um we needed uh have a sprinkler system which was not uh planned which was not mentioned uh in the original contract whatever and basically it was oversight i want to find out was this uh oversight on the architect company the kcba or or the contractor i assume i mean for i i'm not expert at just by common sense i feel should be like the architect company's responsibility what concerns me is that this is not
151the first time uh things that have not planned and then we have to take the uh the cost on our side and we had this dry dirt problem and has moving electric posts and the third time as far i know maybe there are more i i don't think it's right to handle cases like that like if we're a family we're doing some home project we talk to the contractor i want this they will move on this uh bathroom remodel then i want this thing that you get done in a certain pattern then we when we negotiate the price and we get the final result and we don't have to worry about that we need to move like a a pipe or anything but this has happened to our district uh a few times i think
152it really needs the board we really need to get some attention on this i don't know if this is legacy issue left by the previous board director mr navarrete since he was the property committee but since we have thank you sorry i just want to finish up quickly i just wanted a new board member and a new president since you're here you can take more time to look into this project thank you seeing no one else for public comment are there any other comments from the board i just want to um i guess ask in reference to the use of lockers right so we made a decision with the pandemic on the use of lockers can you clarify what that decision was or the point of view and then when we decided we'll revisit that
153aspect i'm not certain we actually made a decision about lockers associated with covet locker decisions uh the operation of the districts it goes back many years actually before my time uh the use the way we no longer use lockers as a matter of safety and timing within within the day i remember correctly there may be some other matters associated with that if the board would like i can certainly gather some from that detail and share it with you any other comments from the board seeing none can i have a motion to adjourn miss reece do i need a second on that meeting needing a jar yep one motion all right meeting adjourned thank you