October 26, 2021 Regular Meeting of the Board

001hi my name is ocean yarn and i'm an aide to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and now we have a comment from elias orlandon moy arcola student hello my name is eliza damoy and i am a seventh grade student here at arcola i am here to tell you why i love my school arcola is a really great school we have a great principal and our teachers are nice and supportive classes are always interesting and i learn new things every day i have a lot of friends and teammates on my team we have a great athletic program and there are many sports that students can choose from i play basketball and soccer and our

002coaches are very supportive i am looking forward to another year at arcola let's give a round of applause for both of our students and now you can take over the meeting again madam president those kids are always a tough act to follow let's see so 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 with the exception of miss reece in attendance uh recognition of guests and scheduled speakers dr zurby thank you madam president this evening we have one guest speaker but two presentations it gives me great pleasure to introduce our new arcola intermediate school principal mr michael bordreau michael please come forward to the podium michael has yes he's day two on the job and he's already in front

003of the board given the presentation and uh we we respect the fact that this evening it gives him great pleasure to introduce the award of excellence for a cold intermediate school and that is the recognition of staff and the second presentation that he'll make is the m awards that are traditionally made at this time of the year uh recognizing students for outstanding academic achievement mr boudreau all right hi uh thank you very much it's my honor to be before the board this evening uh for the first time and i hope for uh many more times uh afterwards and to have such an award to begin with is excellent so we have the methachton school district award of excellence first we have as the newest member of the arcola office team in 2020 mrs stratton has

004done a fabulous job and is a terrific addition she works collaboratively in the main office and connects with all staff students and families she is the first person you see in the morning and is often the first person you reach on the phone as early as 7 00 am mrs stratton has worked hard each day to be up to speed in her role to learn the ins and outs of the building in a short period of time and has taken on additional duties to assist in the office so that we can be efficient and effective in our daily work this is stratton [Applause] mrs mcphates is a math acting graduate and has served as an instructional assistant at arcola since 2002 she provides daily support to students and staff and is a team player in

005the building she approaches each day as a new day she has a quiet kind and gentle approach and works hard to serve our students you can find her hard at work in the classrooms lunchroom and during bus duty thank you [Music] mrs holtz has served as an instructional assistant at arcola since 2016. she works each day to support students and staff and is willing to lend a hand at sporting events lunches and anything needed throughout the building she arrives each day with a dedicated and caring approach and seeks to provide help to all students thank you mrs holtz [Applause] mrs cosgriff has been with the district since 2003 and has truly exceeded all expectations in her role as a school nurse when we were faced and are faced with a global pandemic during this intense

006time she quickly went into her deep training and background in nursing and has been a true leader to our administration students staff and families with her knowledge and support she is detailed organized and communicates consistently and so that the job gets done mrs cosgriff works around the clock to help support us with all our health safety and welfare thank you [Music] ms cantelo is both a matthackton school district graduate and has been employed in the district since 2000. she wears many hats and serves many roles and can be found each day in her lab as an eighth grade science teacher she's a true advocate for all students and staff members as she works collaboratively to help be a problem solver all over the building ms cantelo takes on the school musical student congress and any

007duty that is needed so that the jobs get done she is all heart and in her words bleeds methachton green for life ms ames is a graduate of methacnyl school district and has been employed in the district since 1991. her passion is in the area of social emotional well-being of kids she serves on the health and wellness team at arcola and has taken on many roles as a coach an activity sponsor ms ames is flexible kind and caring and comes each day with the best attitude her reason for being here is the students and she works tirelessly to see that they get what they need no matter what thank you miss ames [Music] certainly [Applause] uh i got to say uh just before we go on with the next uh presentation of mr boudreau i

008got to say it was a wonderful day and very uplifting day uh when miss kelly and i uh went around uh to arcola to uh surprise uh many of you uh with this opportunity and so uh you know while ms mangano was no longer with you she sends her best and and dearest because uh uh like you she loves the children here in the school district and does whatever it can be and and we appreciate all the work that you do for our students uh staff and communities so thank you so much mr border let's talk about the m awards for arcola intermediate school absolutely so the arcola intermediate m award winners so the bethan school district the m award is given to those students who have over all four marking periods a collective academic

009average of 93 percent or better and we can show a listing of the achievement which is quite impressive our grade seven students and grade 8. thank you congratulations i just want to once again just say it is an honor to be before you this evening and thank you for the opportunity you to uh piggyback off of dr mangano and uh this uh a great way to introduce myself and my opinion to the board and to our uh teachers and to recognize you and get to know you in this in this manner and congratulations to our students as well so thank you mr bordeaux and and that ends the guests and schedule speakers for this evening okay thank you dr zurby and congratulations again to all moving on to reports we have our various committee reports

010appended to the agenda for gei do we have an update this month [Music] okay and i apologize i did note earlier that all board members were present except for ms reese perdue just joined us you didn't miss anything i apologize for calling attention to you there uh intermediate unit ms reese is not here this evening north montgomery technical career center ms drummond yes we met on october 18th um our budget planning cycle has begun um the main a big topic was about the skills usa that is no longer going to be overnight at kalahari like it usually is but they did find space at bucks county technical high school so they are able to host that for one day and have a leadership conference nonetheless there is um there were students of the month um

011they're thinking of starting uh health and health students of america which is like skills leadership but for healthcare and as of october 1st there were 1003 students enrolled and they also mentioned that our usual holiday dinner which is not going to be in person but they are going to allow board members to pick up food curbside and i also do want to announce that they do have curbside restaurant service now you can check the north monco tech website and you can go in and pick up food from the restaurant and the bakery on certain days of the week and i believe you have to order ahead but it's a great way to support our students and see what they have on offer there at northbound hotel thank you thank you miss drummond now we have

012our student board representatives just like september october has also been quite an eventful month for nathac to start the month off m awards were distributed to all high school students with an unweighted grade point average of 93 or higher additionally on october 2nd at 7 am sats were held and students were expected to receive their scores by october 15th october 13th was an especially significant day for all methodist sophomores and juniors as they had the opportunity to take the psats that morning from 7 40 to 11 30. all students currently taking an advanced placement class to school year were able to purchase their exams from september 30th to october 21st on the topic of college students were also able to attend various college visits hosted on zoom throughout this month schools in which students had

013the ability to observe consisted of but were not limited to brown university nyu usc and juniata college furthermore the registration for passionate math students to take the american mathematics contest was open from october 19th to the 22nd this test will occur on the morning of november 16th in the methectone lgi from 12 to 5 pm on october 23rd the black student union and emma sachton sponsored a food drive at the lower private township building the new the donations for this event are going to an organization which provides for the economically disadvantaged in the surrounding community also the national honor society met earlier this month to elect official leaders regarding the fact and athletics teams the girls field hockey team and both soccer teams are performing extremely well the boys soccer team won their first ever

014pac championship and their district opener is tonight at pv at seven o'clock field hockey's district opener is tomorrow night at seven and the girls field in the girls soccer team has their district opener tomorrow night against neshaminy on october 29th there will be a halloween costume contest through which students will compete to see who wears the best cons costume winners will be selected during different lunch periods that day and will win prize prizes mini thon has also been selling blackout t-shirts leading up to the crossover football game against opera park yeoman this will be the football team's last game of the season shirts will be sold all week for fifteen dollars up until wednesday thursday and friday will be sold for twenty dollars ap test signups were due thursday october 20th for those who want

015to take them lastly trivia night is going to take place on monday november 1st at pj well hands from 6 to 9 p.m it will be minneapolis first big fundraiser of the season thank you and to just add on to that i just got an update that boys soccer is already up one nothing so we're off to a good start for the foundation report it does not look like we have mr beam or ms krelovic here this evening so hopefully we'll hear from them next month that brings us to communications miss kelly good evening everyone next month methecton high school will host a virtual open house for families of current private and parochial middle school students who live in the district the event is scheduled for november 16th and will include an overview of the

016academic programs available at methecton high school athletic and activities opportunities a panel discussion with current students the registration process and so much more for more information please contact the high school counseling office in other news thanks to generous donations from members of this vibrant community the methachton backpack program continues to serve students in need in the district as a friendly reminder there are donation collection boxes outside of the east wing entrance at methecton high school and the arcola intermediate school main entrance to provide an easily accessible way for the public to drop off pre-packaged serving size food donations for the backpack program please visit the mythactin backpack program's facebook page by visiting facebook.com slash methachton backpack for a list of the most needed pre-packaged food items and for more information on how you can help

017support our students through this program and also a special thank you also goes to the program volunteers miss liz drummond dr danny falston miss emily otero and miss gabby winters for all of their contributions toward making this program successful thank you very much thank you miss kelly and now our superintendent's report dr zerby thank you madam president as you can see there's a number of advisements listed on the agenda for this evening as well as uh matters for which i will be soliciting proposals for both on enrollment uh services as well as on right to know legal services that ends my report thank you dr zerby and at this time the board will take comments on board action items as a reminder this is an opportunity for residents to comment on matters that are to

018be decided upon as outlined on the agenda we ask that you keep your comments to four minutes or less we may choose to respond to some matters following conclusion of the comments when we get to those items in the agenda and please introduce yourself with your name and municipality if anyone would like to speak for public comment please come to the podium [Music] jim malekwester a payment of the bills i asked this before but gonna ask it again do you guys look at the bills and the legal invoices before you pay them if you do raise your hand for me because i gotta know somebody's looking at the bills okay because nobody raised their hands last month i alerted you to documents i received that show you have been double paying legal invoices does anybody

019um anybody check into that is it being investigated see me personally i think you need to investigate that situation with the legal invoices you also need to do an audit of all the legal expenditures that's my recommendation whether you do it or not you know i would say you should but just somebody else may do it for you so maybe better off to do it yourself um sweet stevens can anybody tell me what sweet stevens did for their 126 thousand dollars last month is that all right to know what is it it's not really spelled out so i i really can't tell you i guess the question i have were any of those invoices double paid maybe you can look into that whistle prostein can anybody tell me what whisper pearlstein does for us we're

020paying their legal bills too forty six ninety four thousand six hundred ninety dollars to whistler pearlstein for what can anybody tell me what for [Music] i guess the point i'm trying to make is if you hire a lawyer and you don't watch what they're doing you end up with a million dollars in the right to no fees or you end up with two million dollars of just legal fees overall so i think that needs to change the modified quarantine i was informed that a teacher was asking students in class what their vaccination status was anybody want to comment on that practice i think it's not a good practice i think that needs to be addressed and investigated at the last meeting mr winters was very agitated by comments made by the public regarding the board's

021mishandling of covid and it was ironic because during his little tirades he was touching his face and his and his mask repeatedly i stopped counting it 20 times okay now you understand once you touch it you got to change it so um i just thought it was ironic for the comments to be made um according to the monko website not one school-aged child has died from covet none zero same thing with my facton the case fatality rate is less than tr the traditional flu according to the american academy of pediatrics zero percent to 0.3 of all child coveted cases resulted in death now that's not a narrative those are facts um and vaccinated people still get it still spread it and they have a higher uh viral load because the the antibodies are ineffective so

022when you're going to make a strategy you got to look at all that stuff so common sense if kids are sick stay home fever stay home contact stay home kids come into school ask them the same questions take their temperature if they have a fever don't let them in contact don't let them in symptoms don't let them in and let let them go back to normal that's what they want thanks anyone else for public comment [Music] good evening jessica bradbury lower providence township item 13b modified quarantine program let me first start by saying that this is a good opportunity to make testing more readily available to those families that are interested in using it anything that helps to keep our children in the classroom is worth exploring but my questions from last week went unanswered

023in a situation where there is close contact with someone that has tested positive are the vaccinated students treated in the same fashion as the unvaccinated students i believe the answer is no they're treated differently and subject to different roles correct me if i'm mistaken but only unvaccinated children are sent to quarantine does the vaccine prevent a student from contracting covid the answer is no can vaccinated students who are in close contact contract the virus remain asymptomatic and spread it to other students yes they can so why are you only forcing unvaccinated children into quarantine where they are given work to do in isolation asynchronously that does not come near to matching the quality of education that they would receive in the classroom please explain to me why we do not have the same protocols for

024vaccinated and unvaccinated children the vaccine only provides a potential reduction in the severity of symptoms that's it covid is not going away no vaccine or vaccination rate will eradicate it it's time to stop moving the goal posts and learn to live with this virus it's time to stop punishing and isolating the unvaccinated because their views do not align with yours it is time to return to protecting private information like medical history it's time to restore a dignified and respectful learning environment for our children 13 cepa youth surveys also referred to as pays the district promises that collecting this type of social and emotional data comes with many benefits but you have yet to disclose any monetary figure tied to the historical collection of this information and the truth is that we could have just one

025student take it and receive those benefits so why are you trying to get a high rate a high percentage of respondents this is why it should be given as opt-in like spring ford is doing based on the recommendation of their solicitor this ensures that all parents are fully informed this is a third party administered survey where responses are allegedly anonymous wasn't the dei survey also anonymous so why did a recent right to know request indicate that you stored ip addresses of the students teachers and community members recorded and stored them i realized that our pre-teens and teenagers may be engaging in drinking drug use violence and that is all the more reason to make sure all parents are fully aware of this survey and given the opportunity to talk there to their children and to

026opt out imagine how surprised they would be if their 11 year old came home and asked them to explain what is crack crank shrooms molly why are you asking them if they enjoy spending time with their mother and father if they feel close to their mother and father if the rules and their family are clear how often they attend religious service this is where the lines between the role of the school and the role of the parents are getting too blurred please ensure that parents are being engaged and informed of what and how their children are learning and what type of information is being collected thank you [Applause] taxpayer question for y'all sorry yeah you need to introduce yourself with your name and municipality uh keira maloney lower providence question for you you guys are

027all out there wearing masks cancro and reese and derby you're at these awards right here sir this is the time for comment on action items is this i need some action i need you guys to speak up for the kids and i need everybody to watch i need you to take it you're not going to do this to me again you shut me down last time sir sign up for your kids people watching this these people are doing whatever they want these kids need a voice all right i'm going to make a motion to take a brief recess you're hypocrites it's what it is you play games this is hypocrites you're hit 500 people you're not wearing a mask you're here and you're wearing a mask dog and pony shows where it is i'm out

028people need to wake up this election is so important so that is normal like to make a motion to make a take a brief recess there's a second okay we're gonna take a brief recess we'll be back you all right so we're going to reconvene the meeting here um just a couple of quick statements um again the primary purpose of a board meeting is to conduct the business of the board we are are open to public comment we will hear public comment but if the meeting gets out of order again um i don't see that there will be an ability to continue in this venue so um i do ask that people please remember that we're all adults here and we we're trying to do what's best for our district with that i will return

029to courtesy or i'm sorry public comment on board action items good evening sheila smith lower providence so let's see i was recently told by a matthackton school district administrator that every child even a repeat bully and stalker or worse has the right to in-person education this does not seem to apply if you're unvaccinated as of october 14th a little over one month into the school year 630 students were no longer entitled to in-person instruction their learning experience was totally disrupted not to mention the scarlet letter that now appears when they return to school after mandatory 10-day quarantine study after study has proven being quarantined imposes greater psychological burden than the physical suffering caused by the virus being exiled from school and extracurricular activity leads to a lack of indoor excuse me outdoor activity dietary sleeping

030habits are disrupted from the children's usual lifestyle and could potentially promote anxiety depression impatience annoyance and other manifestation manifestations last week our board president stated herself that only one child out of 630 tested positive because of contact tracing that is 99.8 percent of 630 students had their learning experience disrupted for no reason another fun fact we also know that one case excuse me one case maybe more it was a vaccinated student that tested positive for covet 19 and forced unvaccinated students to quarantine for 10 days so tell me how is a staying school program a good thing when not one person on this board is challenging the current procedures and advocating for the county and the pa board of education to look at all scientific data and explore excuse me and explore other options for

031then to force medical treatment on our children thank you [Applause] [Music] uh brian earnshaw lower providence um some comments on the fiscal items on the jennifer dice meeting regarding 9f the eagleville roofing project um is mark sobek the only company that can do this work and if not uh were competitive bids obtained and if not why were they not we're spending about 79 close to 80 thousand dollars with this firm regarding the general obligation bonds and the amount to be borrowed um jessica bradberry asked an excellent question last week and that was whether or not the fiscal the surplus from fiscal year 2020 2021 had been factored into um the amount to be borrowed um because those that surplus was set aside for capital projects except for about a half million for charter school cost

032and i'm sure given that it's october 26th uh mr bricker knows what that surplus is i'm gary i can guarantee you that audit is done at this point and that amount is known so that should be considered in the amount to be borrowed if it has not been already um regarding the treasury report last week i commented on the taxes held in escrow and i thank mr winners for his responses um yes i'm aware of what that fund's there for that that litigation's going on for a long time but my main point of my comments were that upon resolution of that litigation those funds need to get returned to taxpayers and i didn't hear any comments on that um and i really would like to hear the board's perspective on that uh whether that money

033is going to be returned to taxpayers if there's any left over after a final resolution or if that money's gonna be retained for additional spending i think that's very important and with an election coming up next week it'd be good to hear from mr navrat ms gancrow and ms drummond on that matter um regarding a list of bills i spoke last week about the amount of legal fees in the list of bills this month it's 170 000. nine of the last 10 months those payments to law firms have exceeded a hundred thousand dollars for the 12 months then in september 2021 1.9 million was paid to law firms and in the last fiscal year the district went over budget on legal fees by over a million dollars um i asked what actions would be taken

034um and the witness and the board president why i reacted the way um in some of your responses to my comments your initial response was vague once again and your next response was you're going to ask your law firm how to reduce payments to law firms it makes no sense so i'm hoping to hear tonight some things about how when you get to list the bills how legal payments to law firms will be would be resolved and if you really don't have any um i've developed a list which i'll share with you during courtesy of floor thank you [Applause] uh good evening craig young we're stir um i'm not going to pile it on on the finance questions seems like we have some work to do looking at double paid maybe balancing some of the

035budgetary items i won't go into that i wanted to speak tonight just really quickly about the pays survey i'm in a strong opponent of the pay survey i think we should vote no to that if we look at the population that's included 6th 8th 10th 12th grade we're talking about 12 year olds being asked if you brought a gun to school and got caught would your parents be upset how many beers did you have and i'm paraphrasing how many joints of marijuana ecstasy tabs cocaine are these appropriate questions for a 12 year old not at all let's focus on educating the kids quality of education let's get out of the business of surveys can't be a money grab we have three million in surplus you don't need the money because you don't spend it so

036let's get out of the business the surveys focus on getting back to educating our children thank you anyone else with public comment on board action items seeing none then i guess we're going to move on with the agenda may i have a motion to approve the board meeting minutes for september 21st 2021 work session and september 26 2021 regular board meeting ms perdue the second his drummond any comments all those in favor aye motion carries eight zero fiscal items mr bricker thank you madam president tonight for your approval is the list of bills treasurer's report budgetary transfers the approval of resolution 21-05 for general obligation bonds series 2021 the eagleville elementary change order gc003 which is a credit in the amount of forty five thousand four hundred and twenty eight dollars and the approval of

037mark sobek roofing consultant to provide the infrared scanning at across the 30th oversight design phase of the roof at a cost of thirty thousand one hundred fifty two dollars and if the product is approved the construction management fee of forty nine thousand fifty dollars thank you mr bricker does anyone want to take any of these physical items separately no okay all those i'm sorry can i have a motion to approve the fiscal items as listed ms drummond in a second mr mcginnis any comments from the board mr navarrette yeah tim while you're up there one question so last week we talked about uh guidance to pfm uh for the bond resolution what is the what is our final guidance now going to be to them irrespective of what the number is in the document the

038guidance was not to exceed the 13 and a half i think it's 13 and a half million dollars that we said we needed to complete the projects not a penny more okay now that doesn't mean it doesn't close out a penny or more differently sure absolutely that's the guidance and i want to point out too that the surplus dollars that we ended last year with were allocated to offset borrowing for this issue as we've done for the surpluses that we've had in previous years and mr bricker i know there's been some questions about the legal invoices and we have investigated that correct we have confirmed we are not double paying any invoices i have not found any double paid invoices okay thank you for confirming that um as far as the sweet stevens katz williams

039bills they provide a number of services for our district correct yes they provide uh right to know and they also provide special education okay and those are obviously identified as two of our biggest expenses and legal fees so it would be understandable for us to have significant bills from them and whistler pearlstein is obviously our solicitor kyle summers so that's how we end up with legal fees on our bills does anyone else have any questions or comments on fiscal items miss cancro i know that we discussed about the charter schools we had asked you to i don't know if you have those numbers tonight or not but about the we now know the number of kids who are attending charter school and we're i don't know if you could tell off the top of your

040head about what we were talking you know but we asked you to investigate on the numbers so currently the number of students that are enrolled in virtual charter schools and as well as the one brick and mortar charter school are exceeding the number of students that we had post posted in our budget um but we do have the reserve that was set aside via the committed funds to account for that difference at this point in time it looks like we'll be very close to being on target for that at this time meaning we'll use the committed funds as well as the budget thank you anyone else all right all those in favor aye motion carries 8-0 thank you mr bricker moving on to personnel items we have dr sorgini good evening and thank you madam

041president for your consideration this month we have the following personnel items i will highlight those items that are addition since the work session last week we have three resignations professional including the addition of alicia adenopose special education instructor at arrowhead to whom we extend our thanks for her work that she's done with our students and we wish her well in her career pursuits and cheryl pifer certified school nurse at methachton high school for retirement it's hard to put into words exactly what cheryl has meant not only to the students and staff of the high school but especially as we have seen during the last two years to the entire school district as she led so much of our health and safety response during the time of the pandemic cheryl has cared for thousands of us

042in the math acting community including many of us who knew her first as students and then had the honor of serving with her as colleagues cheryl has represented the work of school nurses at the local state and national levels and our community is a far better place because of the good work and the depth of caring that she has had for all of us we thank cheryl for her selfless dedication to methachton and we wish her great joy and much happiness in her retirement three resignation resignations classified three employments professional including the addition of amanda ferch eld instructor at woodland amanda is already well known in our community as a as the coach of our varsity field hockey team we welcome amanda full time to math act and look forward to the good work that

043she'll do with our students and also carl kralick technology education instructor at mythacton high school we welcome carl nemethect and also look forward to the good work that he will do with our students at the high school three employments classified including the addition of vanessa polinski recess assistant at woodland we're happy to welcome vanessa to woodland into methachton and look forward to the good work that she'll do with our students of woodland six changes of status professional one uncompensated leave professional one uncompensated leave classified a series of supplemental contracts with additions from the work agenda including activity sponsors and winter coaches adjustments and points and compensation for several positions including band and orchestra at skyview and student council at warcester and retroactively approved several supplemental contracts at the high school two additions to the classified

044substitute list additions to the list of approved district volunteers and six swim instructor additions to the community education thank you dr sergini it's been a busy month it certainly has uh can i i'm sorry um are we going to take any of these personnel items separately yes 10 and 12 please yep thank you mr winners anything else all right can i have a motion to approve all of the items under personnel with the exception of 10 m12 mr winners and a second mr navarrete comments from the board mr winners yeah um i can i guess i can read this now can i read this one uh as for item 10 m 12 uh i have submitted as of today to the secretary of the board based on state laws at the public meeting on today

045is my intention of obtaining the vote i don't agenda my item 10 and 12 i'm sorry i touched my mass dr dr milk which involves the approval activity sponsors due to conflict of interest under the ethics act the nature of my interest is as follows my wife will become the co-sponsor of the national honor society at my doctor high school and would be compensated for the sublime contract so the other thing i want to point out i think you did a great job dr sejini for pointing out miss pifer i know that many out there haven't had students go through high school or don't have any students in the district at all but i think if you have any understanding of how much ms piper has met to our district and what she has done

046especially over the last two years you should uh be thankful that she's been a part of our district and there's probably nobody that i've ever thought about deserving of retirement more than miss piper thank you mr winners mr mcginnis i was going to comment on miss pifer myself but i will just second what mr winter said i'd like to also add on to the love fest for nurse piper and and also say that the pandemic team um she she was the heart and soul of the pandemic team in this past two years um we would not have made it through um covid as safely and um as smoothly as strange as that may sound without the guidance of cheryl piper she has just been a a wonderful guiding presence through the entire year and she

047will be greatly missed in our district but as mr winter said no one deserves to retire more than cheryl piper also sharing love for cheryl pfeiffer um you know she's just been amazing an amazing stabilizing force in the district and um i just i thank her for all the hard work that she's put in in this unprecedented time all right anyone else with comments on personnel all right all those in favor of the items all those in favor okay just making sure i have everybody 8-0 and the motions carry with the exception of item 10 m12 can i have a motion to approve item 10 m12 on the agenda mr mcginnis second mr neverett comments from the board i just wanted to thank the sponsors for the um they're stepping up and and taking on

048these responsibilities i know that um adding to the teacher work day right now is um not something that many relish doing but i do appreciate it because our students are are much better for it and um thank you any other comments all those in favor opposed and abstaining motion carries 701 thank you dr sergini and i don't even need to look at my agenda because i see dr walsh there so it must be time for curriculum and programs thank you madam president for your view and consideration approval under 11c revised curriculum effect in high school physical education and forensic psychology in addition approval to move forward with english 12 career connections to be written and brought forward to the board in the spring of 2022 as part of the curriculum review process lastly 11b women

049in america will be brought forward to the board next month for approval for implementation in january 2022 that's the end of my report thank you dr walsh can i have a motion to approve items 11 c and d under curriculum mr mcginnis and the second mr never at any comments from the board seeing none all those in favor and our motion carries eight zero thank you thank you dr walsh policy mr regina thank you madam president uh this evening under policy for first read zero zero seven for policy manual access will now be uh just an online manual access uh throughout the 113 series the revisions specific to uh pronoun and keeping that specific and consistent throughout our documents in 238 custody child custody was specific to transportation some changes with regards to that and

050that'll end the report thank you mr regina can i have a motion to approve the items listed under 12 b for a second reading this evening miss purdue is there a second miss hall comments from the board seeing none all those in favor motion carries eight zero other uh dr zurby thank you madam president under other we have a number of uh gifts and donations approve a backpack program donation uh from lower providence presbyterian church of two hundred and ten dollars approve a donation of a weltzer piano from andrea cronin donation of one thousand dollars approve a donation to the mathan high school theater company for costume accessories from mr salvador puma senior on behalf of beverly cantrell and casey parkinson donation of six thousand dollars approved the backpack program donation received from generous individuals

051noted in the attached document 471.39 there are no trips uh the uh and then under 13c is a student modified quarantine program 13d is the pay survey and 13e is a substitute rate that ends my comments on those matters unless there's questions from the board thank you dr zerby does anyone want to take any of the items under 13 separately miss hall um yeah can we take c and d separately all right so then i will take a motion to approve items 13 a and e mr mcginnis and second miss drummond comments on those two items seeing none all those in favor oh i'm sorry mr ahmed i look too fast i just i just want to thank the donors for the backpack program the lower providence presbyterian church and the 10 individuals who donated

052monetarily thank you mr mint any other comments mr neverett yeah i just want to thank dr sorgini i know we asked for a bunch of information of you last week thank you for providing that that was helpful thank you anyone else for 13 a and e okay all those in favor and the motion carries eight zero i may have a motion to approve item 13c miss hull and a second miss purdue comments from the board ms cancro no i think it's important for us to just go over again uh dr zerby where the program is generated who's running it and the purpose of it just to clarify a few things sure mr can't grow uh again this is this is a program that's not uh designed or organized at all by the methachton school district

053in fact the program that i'm talking about here was the same test to stay program that chop was talking about more than six to eight months ago and the county department of the montgomery county department of public health has determined that now is a good time to implement the chop recommended test to stay program which basically is a set of rules designed to support students to stay in school and basically the the rules consist of the rules that are put out by the county department of health not by the fact the school district we don't make the rules we just take the set of rules from the county and apply them uh to our situation so that we can as i said last week and i'm saying again this evening keep adults and students safe

054at the same time keeping them in school so this isn't a conversation about whether you as board members are electing to decide or decipher between vaccinated students and non-vaccinated students that's not that's not your role that's not my recommendation my recommendation is to for you to approve this program so that under the rules that are already in place whereby i have to put uh students who are not vaccinated out on a quarantine it's not my choice the county says this is what you do and we just have to follow that we don't have a choice the the code requires us to follow those rules this program if approved will allow us to uh reduce the amount of time students will spend out of out of uh out of uh out of school and that's the

055only reason i would say that we should approve it it's not about whether uh we're vaccinating and not vaccinating the only people that are going to know this are the people that already do know it meaning our nurses i won't know it nobody at this table is going to know it kids in the hallways aren't going to know it no one else is going to know it parents will know it the child will know it the nurse will know it and that's how that's that's the rules of doing any health care related matters it's confidential information and all it really does is give you an opportunity to address the 200 remember that number at the elementary level last week that's what we'll be addressing so we'll i can't tell you that all 213 if we

056had it at the beginning of september which we we didn't because the county wouldn't allow it at that time but we would have a lot less of a number of students that were impacted than than we did so that's why you should approve it uh for no other reason i hope that was uh of a problem i think it's also important just to say that it is parent choice for participation that is the you know it's my two biggest thing sorry dr derby is it's montgomery county we are under their jurisdiction on this and this is allowing us for your parents for the parents have a choice to participate in to keep the kids in school vaccinated or not vaccinated you now have a choice as frustrated as you may be you don't have to

057vaccinate your students if that's your choice and you could stay in school with this test that's why i would be in favor for this so thank you yeah i think it's important to stress that these quarantine guidelines are not under our purview i think i appreciate you pointing that out dr zurby we're following guidelines from the county and students are not required to give their vaccine status if a student is identified as a close contact and the family doesn't want to disclose their vaccine status they don't have to they would just follow the quarantine protocols and you know there were some comments that were made during um public comment um about you know there was somebody said that there was a teacher asking about a vaccine status is my understanding that that was um a

058single isolated incident and it was handled um not a methactone district employee and the 630 students that were quarantined were not labeled as unvaccinated um you know it was any student that's under 12 years old is by definition not vaccinated because the vaccine is not available so this was not about identifying or or discriminated against students because of their vaccine status this is about following the guidelines that we are given and doing what we can to keep as many kids in school safely as possible so i think that this is a great opportunity and and i fully support it ms perdue so first of all thank you dr zurby for providing the um draft consent form um i know so is this still is the form still a draft and we'll get the official form

059from the montgomery county department yes that that publication is a draft and it will be updated once we have the official guidelines from the county okay and then my question for you is i know we talked about how this form will be i guess provided to parents and currently it's asking for a signature so if a family runs into an issue a parent run into an issue where they now need to print this form out and sign it and they're unable to are we requiring them to come to the school to bring this foreign or will we have it where online they can sign this form in order to still provide it to the school nurses there there are a number of methods under the the purview of the nurse that they can get the

060authorization from a parent uh to move forward with this okay i just want to make sure so i don't want there to be an incident where a student is sitting in the nurse's office for a prolonged period of time because their parents now have to leave work just to come provide this form yep well the the the form will be posted online uh the nurse will be able to reference that online form to the parent uh give the parent the the amount of time that they need in order to make a decision and uh from there um you know you know follow through with the decision however we can basic best get the authorization to either proceed or or not to proceed and then if it's not to proceed we'll like we do now we

061would require the parent to come pick the child up that's fine thank you and i just want to say that based on the number that we've seen as far as students that have been to quarantine due to close contact i support us having this program in place just because i know many many parents within our community have asked for it when they've been in a situation where their children were close contact so i think it makes sense to move forward with this any other comments seeing none all those in favor motion carries eight zero moving on item 13 d may i have a motion to approve item 13d on the agenda ms hull second mr winners comments from the board ms cancro dr angsted can i ask you to come to the podium so you

062could just clarify i feel like um dr engsted you know is director of pupil services and she has been the amazing person who's gotten us grants i know that you may not have all the access but i know off the top of your head you know how many grants we've received and utilizing the pace so if you just go over again parent choice to participate and the pay survey please okay so the pace survey is administered voluntarily to students it is a 40-minute administration on one day we are this year doing the testing online the same as we did in 2019 the links are provided to us from the pays survey people for lack of a better work and those links are disabled after we say the testing is completed they are provided to us

063directly by them in terms of safety i mentioned that last week we are asked frequently in fact we're currently undergoing a risk assessment for safety and they ask directly for our pay survey data for the last two years or two testings in terms of grant funding we did use the data for a competitive grant last year and we were awarded 176 thousand three hundred dollars and we referenced the pace survey data in that in terms of how it helps to support our mental health programs and in terms of what we receive from the pay survey once it's administered we generally get our results in april early may we have the option to get state county and rlea's pace survey data i work with the county we determine what other supports we may need both prevention

064and interventions and it is based on participating in the survey as well as what our data shows and currently the county is working on doing strategic planning based on pay survey data to see how the county can work together to do more interventions and prevention supports for our youth um and this again we've been doing it since 2015 or i'm sorry 2013 this would be our fifth administration of the survey the only thing i would add is that we did we do take the test and we take it during a non-academic time which is eighth period correct and at skyview and arcola they use a flex period or an eighth period at the high school i did check with dr graveny she said it is administered during an english class and this has gone this

065is done for both public private and parochial schools across the state from penn state so that's great thank you anyone else the only thing i will i mean i understand people's concerns and i will definitely understand that and and know that you have the ability to opt out but this information has been has been utilized successfully and i understand those questions could be very harsh for sixth graders and so you're able to go online and review the questions can you not yes you can so definitely do that we've notified the school counselors have notified all parents of this this survey so you're able to go and review that and then you can opt out if this is something you don't feel comfortable with but this information hopefully tonight answer some of your questions that you

066guys had anyone else miss hall i just want to point out that within montgomery county there is one district that is not participating in the survey every other district every other public school district is participating there are two local parochial high schools that are participating and two cyber charter schools that are participating as well you miss hall um i i think you know i want to reiterate the comments that ms cancro made that this is um all parents have been notified that this survey is is being offered being administered and have the opportunity to review it and to opt out parents do know their students best and they know if these are things that are going to make their student uncomfortable that are going to make their parent the parent uncomfortable but i do think

067that it's important for us to get this data so that we can identify what risks we have in our district we can identify what needs we have um this is an important part of supporting social emotional learning and and identifying students in need it's all part of i in my mind it's part of supporting the whole child so um i am i'm glad that we are going to continue to participate it and i i think that it's great for parents to be involved in their children's education and what's happening in the school and this is just one opportunity for for parents to see it and and review it and make a decision for themselves so thank you dr angstadt miss hall i have one more thought um two years ago when i participated in the

068pspa conference um the state attorney general addressed the conference to use this data to help inform the public that we needed to push the legislature to increase funding from mental health supports within the schools so that is also what this data is used for um so you know with this data we can show the need for more funding within our schools for mental health supports thank you miss hall that's good to know anyone else all right all those in favor motion carries eight zero [Music] we have listed some dates for board members calendars is there anything for old business no any new business miss purdue so i have a few comments to make and this is specifically going out to hawaii term the three plus one team the three plus one team are the group

069of candidates that are seeking to sit up here at this board and feel that they deserve to sit up here and make decisions for our students and parents in mathan school district personally i have talked to several of these members and in all those discussions i have not heard any relevant points as far as your candidacy or your decision to run for school board it's very upsetting to sit here and have everything that this administration or the school district is doing get ripped apart many of these members that are also seeking to run for position to sit here are never in favor of any practices or procedures that will ensure that our students are safe within our school whether that's including masking or even having a survey that will ensure that we can get the

070proper funding needed it's very very in a word used by some very disappointing to see how information or things done by the district is used and claimed to be work done by these individuals when they've never said here played a part in the decisions that will ensure that we can return our students through this school safely all those decisions were made by the teachers effort by the administration by the staff to ensure that mistaking in this school year of 2020 and 2021 can ensure that we can have all students in the school building safely none of what is claimed as far as returning our students to the school building was done by the three plus one and i call it three plus one because even though one candidate is no longer out and pulled out

071because they don't support things that is done i feel like that's all for play and i'm sorry to take the time to speak about these things but everything that you have said or come out to say it's not factual you choose to use the wrong information or choose to twist the data in a favor that weighs heavily in your favor you have not demonstrated anything that you have or anything that you're running against as far as calling board members bullies when it comes down to it you guys are the actual bullies okay sir can you please escort these gentlemen out thank you and you have said that you respect the school district but clearly you don't because you choose to use information that is considered privacy out in the public pay and in the public

072so today i am calling you out and i feel that your own fit in your candidacy or whatever you're seeking for it so i'm just going to put it out there it's disappointing to have student board members sit up here and have to hear some of the things that go on anyone else i i'm sorry if that's the way that it's going to be then we'll just end the meeting here did you have something because many of you choose to ignore the science and choose to come to these board meetings and choose to say and choose to speak out about the things that make it more and call everything that's done here is politically in our favor but actually it's not because everything is twisted around and now and i'm saying my comments now and

073we'll give you guys a chance to speak on it also thank you thank you is there anything else for new business okay i had a couple of things that i also wanted to bring up around new business i'm going to reiterate though that i do need the audience to please keep things under control guys last week ms cancro made comments about how we need to change the narrative at mathactin and it got me thinking about how the role of our board is to set the tone for this district and some of the things that we have on our agenda this evening i think are really moving us in that direction um one of the things that that really got me thinking in addition to to miss cancro's comments was a blog post that was shared

074by many teachers that i know in many districts so this is not in the fact in specific um and it was also emailed to me by by a teacher and this blog post talked about the unbelievable stress load that is on teachers right now and that is on education right now and um you know we've met with our education association and we've heard from them their concerns about many teachers feeling like they're they're kind of reaching their limit um they're being asked to do more um and not necessarily by our administration it's it's you know more is being expected of teachers every single day um and i've been trying to figure out how that we can respond to that um in addition we have fewer teachers coming out of our education higher education these these

075days we've got a third of the teachers coming out that we had 10 years ago and even economists are talking about how in the economy at large we have the great resignation people are leaving careers that they've been in for years um people are making changes in their lives a lot of that coming out of this pandemic and when i look at things like the substitute plan that we approve to to try to help alleviate the substitute shortage i feel like that's a step in the right direction um but i'd like to challenge our administration and our board to take this opportunity now that we are kicking off our strategic plan and and heading into this this new mindset that we start to look at ways that we can ease some of the burdens that

076we put on our teachers one of the things that i hear a lot of these days is a need for more data and more testing and while there may be a time and a place for those things i don't feel that now is the time to to be asking our teachers to do more i think that we need to be looking at ways that we can bring in assistance for our teachers in the way of being bringing in administrative help to do some of the the tasks that don't necessarily require a certified teacher and you think we should be looking at ways that we can reduce the number of meetings that our teachers are required to attend um shorten those meetings whenever possible and now i think is not really the time to be asking

077our teachers to take on anything new um i think that it's important for us to respect the fact that our teachers have been through um a couple of years like nothing any of us have ever seen and i think that the things that we have done to this point to try to alleviate that burden are not enough and i'd like this to be part of an ongoing conversation between our board and administration and our teachers mrs drummond and i will be meeting with the association again next month but i think it's important for us to continue to have these conversations about ways that we can ease the burden of the unnecessary tasks that are put on teachers so that they can focus on what's really important which is the education of our students so that's

078all i have for new business i i don't know if anyone wants to comment i certainly don't have to but um i just i'd like to see us set a different tone going forward so if there's nothing else for new business then at this time we will move on to courtesy of the floor this is an opportunity for residents to make comments on matters that may be before the board we ask you to keep your comments limited to four minutes we may choose to respond to matters following conclusion of the comments we need you to identify yourself by your name a municipality and i want to reference our board policy 903 which is public participation in board meetings again the primary function of our board meetings is to conduct the business of the board we

079value public comment but i do want to make sure that it's very clear that members of the public shall not be permitted to participate in debate regarding issues before the board nor to question school staff regarding regarding board and administrative issues the presiding officer that's me may interrupt or terminate a participant's statement when the statement is too lengthy personally directed abusive obscene or irrelevant and any individual can be asked to leave the meeting when that person does not observe reasonable decorum with that we can move on to courtesy of the floor good evening mark bradbury louis providence township i'd like you to share with you my comments on the care political mailer from the incumbent school board candidates running for re-election that was sent to the residents of warchester and little providence township which i

080received this past thursday october 21st this isn't about board business i'm sorry miss purdue brought it up i understand and no i can't no this is my first amendment rights miss purdue brought it up let me speak this is not abortion brought it up the right is to speak on a matter that is or may come before the board my point is miss purdue brought it up personally attacking my family this was sent to my house based on all of you that are sitting up here are you on all care are you not again this is an abortion okay i apologize for taking your time but you're out of line and i apologize you can proceed not to you honey marissa oh can you restart that thank you uh marissa rocco lower providence first thing

081i want to say on a later note miss pifer deserves a retirement more than anyone i had her all through my four high school years and she was absolutely wonderful one of my best memories of the high school was always visiting her and the nurses because many of us did back then second miss purdue i'm really upset by that comment i sat at an education committee meeting with a conversation with miss reese miss cancro miss um mrs ricky and a few others with some great conversation a few weeks ago you were the only board member to choose to not turn around and look at me when i was speaking that's disrespectful i have been engaged in this community my entire life i graduated from this school i've lived here my whole life i also do

082feel that it's important to speak tonight i do have disappointment in the fact that some of the events in the last week and this is a board action item and you will or not a board action item a board concern i'm speaking about the fact that the three members who are up for re-election chose to run a campaign saying unlike our ops opposition of our children our children attend the fact in others say that we are proud in all capitals to send our kids to smithhackton schools i stood at this exact podium three months ago and said that i had to pull an 11 year old boy out of skyview last october crying this board failed him on an in-person education he moved back to catholic school because let me remind you my kids started

083in catholic school my son moved here in grade two moved my daughter in grade four i moved them here because of the reputation of methactin and being an alumni i chose and we felt that they would have a better education here so we did move that so we were here only to have to move him back last year after a successful year of in-person school a full year at five days a week he chose to stay there he prefers faith-based education those are his words with that said is it now a negative for families who are taxpayers in this district to choose faith-based education are there tax dollars less than yours whose children go here they are not that's the answer they are not next i'll touch on my daughter who you may have heard

084her name mentioned during the emma ward recognition she was here through last year she was in this school until the finish of eighth grade she said to me after one and a half years of a very rocky school one and a half years i don't think that i want to go to mythactin high school i think i will be better off in a smaller setting after visiting various parochial private schools we chose a school with a later start time which i feel is beneficial to teens and studies show that it is and that's something i would like to see here in the future her school also has longer class times at one hour per class at least one hour per class rather and a 10-day cycle with daily rotating classes and schedules so she never

085has math every day at 8 15 or math at the end of the day one of the big reasons we chose the school was for this alone these are all things that can be implemented in myth act in school this is not just a private school thing there are local schools in the county public that do block scheduling that also do rotating schedules i want myth action to become a school of choice let's tackle the problems we have with good solution but please leave my children out of your campaign that was uncalled for jim molly sister you guys are real angry tonight guys are angry um me personally i wouldn't go that way the week before the election i would have kept it you know the way you were doing it but uh maybe you're

086scared that could be it um miss purdue and this is through you mr chairman uh maybe she doesn't realize that her position is apolitical that's why you file crossfile republican democrat and now we turn this meeting into like some political attack i think you need to look into i said before the conduct of the board you have conduct for kids parents administrators i think it's time you develop one for you guys it's about time [Applause] and you're cutting off mr bradbury did you guys see what happened to the pensbury school district they tried this censor game like you did and they're getting sued in federal court so you know i take it for what it's worth but uh i think he's got a case um you stated miss larceny's that you're following the county's guidelines

087relative to covid said it a couple of times guidelines well you know guidelines are not law so you have the ability to say no right quote me a statute and i'll listen to it but you're saying they're guidelines so everything you've said about covid is is part of my language baloney um mr winters gave us a public apology for his behavior several months ago but never told us what he did to warrant an apology can you tell us what the apology was about i'm still mystified you know and we got another board member up here who's just absolutely rude in my opinion um it's it's consistent it's consistent with the behavior of this board uh no apology from mr mcginnis for you know telling a mother to check that at the door okay i mean

088where's the apology where's miss cancro condemning that kind of stuff where are you on condemning that kind of stuff um so my my advice to you with all this i call it behavioral problems with the board you need to develop a code of conduct so that you know you guys are regulated just like everybody else um you brought up a narrative i can't believe you did it talked about switching the narrative so you know what a narrative is it's a fictional story you go look it up in the dictionary according to wikipedia a narrative is employed by political people to cons constrict people's perspectives and alter relationships between groups and as a result fiction has the potential to become fact well that's perfect that's exactly what you guys do then you pay your lawyer a

089million dollars to keep the facts away from the public so we can't challenge the narrative i mean that's like you know that's soviet union type stuff um but here's some facts our state ranking has plummeted since the care group took over and you can use whatever numbers you want teacher satisfaction is less than 20 percent we've been over taxed every year for the last four years 12 million dollars our school has been politicized by holding black lives matters rallies on school property right next time that happens i'm going to sue so you decide you're going to hold a political event on campus i'm going to get an injunction and sue you guys that's a that's a fact [Music] thank you elections for courtesy of the floor is there no one else for courtesy of the

090floor come on up to the podium amy sorello lower providence um do i because this has to be something that could be a board item or not do you guys approve the library books you do not then who do i direct my concerns to about library books the issue of library books could come before the board so it is a matter that you you could bring up um the recent video that's gone around social media highlighting parents in the north penn school district that are concerned about the filthy books their children have access to in their school libraries prompted me to search in the facton school district's online card catalog the following are just a few examples of the questionable books and video that our children have access to in our mathfacton school district libraries

091perks of being a wallflower has descriptions of sex masturbation bestiality forced oral sex all boys that aren't blue is pornography basically it describes graphic sexual situations including sodomy dreaming in cuban is an ebook one reviewer said that there are at least 30 different sex or sex related scenes in the book one girl character masturbates to her mother's old boyfriend's picture while she's imagining him performing oral sex on her that's real appropriate the bluest eye described as pornographic degenerate perverted explicitly explicitly describes child molestation pedophilia masturbation orgasms bestiality and sodomy beloved described as dark and disturbing one reviewer said it seemed that the author used sex as the main focus and selling point for the book this one summer is a cartoon book and it contains foul language and descriptions of oral sex true diary of

092a part-time indian this is a good one because the author is a known sexual predator and offender the book talks of sex and masturbation bestiality sex with inadequate objects and foul language the kite runner is another graph that has graphic descriptions child gang rape and foul language tricks is about teenage prostitution where there's rape scenes described fly on the wall how one girl saw everything has foul language and male genitalia is described in detail sex and violence a novel contains promiscuous sex and violent rapes are described perfectly good white boy contains masturbation and promiscuous sex grasshopper jungle contains sexual thoughts and acts throughout the book threesomes masturbation and foul language angela's ashes is available as a book and a dvd which is rated r by the way and that is available in our library which

093contains sex scenes masturbation foul language and nudity what that's even doing in our library is beyond and the next one that i don't understand why this is in our library either one nation under sex by larry flynn are you kidding me that's a joke who's going to do a book report or have to do something some sort of a paper research paper on larry flynn the hate you give is anti-police it's divisive and it has foul language there's 37 curses in the first chapter it's your world if you don't like it change it um activism for teenagers which i don't have a problem with frankly but the problem is is that the interest level is kindergarten through third grade why are gay rights birth control racism and abortion topics for k-3 they're not drawing the

094vote is also a biased divisive book that a quote and that book says that all conservatives are racists dear martin is another divisive book and in fact it's lit teaching dot com says if you're thinking about teaching dear martin as a whole class novel you're going to want to get real about your classroom population this novel is not going to work in a wealthy mostly white classroom it goes on to say that this one's going to be hard to get by a group of white conservative parents too since all the white characters in the in the novel have negative character traits and they're hard to relate to our children need protection from damaging ideas and images until they are mature enough to evaluate them for themselves it's the parents job get rid of those books

095now again the board doesn't approve library books [Music] good evening school board john andrews law of providence [Music] when we are near the end of months of campaigning by two groups to win the upcoming election of school three of four school directors i and joe bickleman find it very interesting that the care group postcard is silent about its poor decision to rebuild the old arrowhead school that decision has 25 years of debt totaling 50 million dollars that decision was effectively made in an august 2018 board meeting ahead of so-called public deliberations extending through november of last year mr navrat's emotional and convincing statement was effectively we need a school in western lower providence i argued the decision needed facts such as proper environment projections and studies such as could we better use the underutilized arcola

096school later i argued that since the students are bust it doesn't matter where the school takes place my arguments and those of others in your public were totally ignored high school rank has plummeted in recent years it is ignored by cr by the care group now about enrollment it continues its decline with minor gains due to significant completion of approved new housing projects and losses due to the pandemic impacts the care group ought to be silent about their arrowhead decisions and in hiding instead they flout a the dream of a stem academy 50 million dollars could be used for numerous better results such as teacher salaries or lower taxes your votes should favor the heart group for the good of most acton thank you [Applause] [Music] uh joe ridden house lower providence so i was

097actually in a dei session before i came here but i had one ear in one ear out and i all of a sudden heard my name or a skin to my name so i decided well i better come on over so uh i before i get into what i now want to say i just wanted to speak briefly about the strategic planning session i thought it was wonderful to have the groups it was nice to be able to sit and talk to people i don't normally talk to it was wonderful at least in our communications group i felt that it was very effective i do think that the time scale in which we are doing this is drastically too short for the undertaking you guys are attempting um i would push it off genuinely i

098would keep continuing these sessions until they can break them down to further and further groups and you can get more feedback and solve specific problems uh then i just coming to speak what i heard on the way here uh the genuine cowardice of the board to use a platform that they have unlimited speaking time to can say whatever they want without any kind of uh distraction from anybody from the public and they get to control the time to come in here use it as a political platform one week before the election i might end i thought you know hey maybe we'll get it'll just fly through obviously they just want to be done with this meeting and get to tuesday nope the care team obviously wanted to have something to say but not the people

099up for election no let's get the people on the board her up in two years don't worry not a board that's not something that's before she spoke about i understand it's not an accident so i can't speak to her what she said while sitting on the board so this is the bullying this is what i'm talking about you can email miss perdue if you have concerns with what she said well then i will continue with my other comment so in the last year we had a global pandemic back and forth policies we gave up leadership when it was convenient and we took it back from parents when it wasn't we had things that were we were terrible with communication with parents and teachers we had absurd legal fees we had a call to dissolve the

100district and merge it with norristown and we had an exclusive anti-equal monta money culture that preempted the call for diversity not a single person up here can say they are not part of a monoculture and have no diversity of thought not one person continuing that same group that called for diversity openly bullied parents used racial slurs used homophobic slurs called for teachers in this building in fact i think one was here earlier to be hit and attacked those are people sitting on the diversity equity inclusion committee right now if you're going to make accusations like that oh don't worry you know what if you want the accusations if you want to see the evidence it is available it's going to be available at midnight tonight at care from effect and dot info from there you

101can get all the information and everything that you want to see about anything continuing well and i i can only say with the last minute i have i have seen one positive one positive from the last half-decade rule of a small minority of people who will bully harass and attack individuals who don't have kids in the district who look differently from them who don't have any kids at all i will say that there is now a positive very young very active very vocal assertive caring group of community members who no matter who you are what you love who is in your family or whether or not they even attend methectomy school district they are paying attention they are loud and they are vocal and they will be here for a long long time and i

102look forward to that for many many years to come thank you [Applause] good evening sorry greg young where's esther um we know it's not a political meeting right it's not a it's not a time to to speak to a platform no matter what you know what group you're in care hard etc not appropriate to say i'm disappointed is is an understatement it's ridiculous to use your platform and just leave it at that um but what's great about this country is that we can all think differently i think differently than you probably uh and that's okay that's what makes america great um you know one dog whistle i heard earlier social emotional learning so that kind of perked my ears up that's that's really in my opinion focusing less on the children the quality of the

103education more on children attributes things that are not related to education we don't need in parentis uh i'm sorry what was called as in loco parentis which by the way was created this legal doctrine was created years ago for the purpose of discipline only not to act as somebody's parent in in the terms of care um worrying about their health status etc it was for discipline only so it's misinterpreted here i think you know or excuse me our ranking slipping has a lot to do with you know how we're approaching education specifically i have two three children in mathan schools two in elementary no grades k through four and i know it's common across most school districts now in pennsylvania but i think that's a reason why school rankings slip because hey it's okay everyone

104can have equal grades you're doing good enough that's not the type of educational experience i want for my children it's probably not the type of education that you want for your children no spelling tests i mean you know i'm looking at my phone right now and it has spell check in it but what what where what are we doing why are we not issuing spelling tests spelling tests you know i think improve mindset improve intelligence people need to be able to spell it's just a it's just a shame and it's a disappointment of where we're going with with education k through 4. you know i think we should spend less time i said this before trying not to be redundant but less time on surveys more on education less time on dividing our children through

105race and stacking dii task forces with non-diverse progressive leaning potentially dangerous memberships it's it's one single type of thought and those in those um in those tasks for us we need more diversity there we should spend more time on figuring out how to improve stem curriculum [Music] civics education children are suffering in those areas more time in building an inclusive community that honors and supports culture of the past and the present let's get out of the cancel culture targeting school names mascots symbols and images how we're going to plan to cancel those paint over symbols etc let's spend our time on more productive areas you know i think most importantly we really need to spend less time on teaching our kids what to think and rather how to think i think we're spending more on

106what should you think about instead of teaching them how to be how to be creative thinkers thank you [Applause] anyone else with courtesy of the floor hi i'm shannon chase from lower providence i just wanted to talk about the idea of this cancel culture and the idea of our mascot and using the term warrior which is fine by me i don't warrior is a good thing i would agree with everyone here the warriors are people who go into battle and fight i get it but the idea of using native american imagery they i read last week as well as other people read letters from native americans within our community in pennsylvania who have said it is not respectful they do not want us to use their imagery period end of story you're not respecting them

107you are not we are not by putting a native american feather head creature mascot is not respectful they don't want it they don't ask for it they said no plain and simple every single organization native american organization in pennsylvania has said it is not respecting them you can say you want to respect them all you want they don't want it they don't want our respect so let's not it's their imagery they get to say how it is used end of story this is ridiculous that it's even discussion it is their right it is their imagery not ours we don't get to see what we do with it so let's honor them let's honor them and listen to what they are saying i will have week after week native american letters telling our board they do

108not want us to use it thank you anyone else for courtesy of the floor jessica bradbury lower providence township i'd like to talk about some of the words that are being thrown around and why as a community and a school district and we need to work together to calm the fears create active engagement between all of our stakeholders and listen openly and honestly first de i or diversity equity and inclusion ms aubry larsenace you indicated last month this is not a class that's taught it's a framework well another framework is social emotional learning or sel sel is governed by the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning also called castle then we have crt critical race theory sometimes just critical theory this is a modern version of marxism but instead of division by labor class

109it's dividing us by racial sexual even gender identity it states that many of our systems are racist and oppressive it aims to undermine the foundation of this country diminishing values of faith family and freedom and anyone that disagrees with this movement is labeled a racist a bigot or worse this theory aims to divide us are we teaching sel and crt to students in grades k-12 no are these concepts being incorporated yes the district embraces the whole child concept this is seo social emotional learning it sounds good on the surface of course we want our children to learn compassion and responsibility all of the teachers i've spoken to said that this is incorporated naturally as part of their training as teachers where it becomes dangerous is when it becomes a framework pushed by leaders and organizations

110with political motivations in december castle's ceo karen niemi issued a statement revising its definition for social social emotional learning the new one emphasizes student identities marginalization equity just communities and the collective rather than the individual in june she had a webinar where she said sel should be used to elevate some students over others based on race so you see crt seo dei they're all related why are parents concerned because unlike equality where students are treated the same and given the same opportunities taught to work hard in order to succeed equity means that you treat some students differently you treat some better than others depending on their level of oppression the pa school board which you referenced tonight has a published guidance saying that we must replace the word equality with equity under your guidance the

111following things have occurred in methactin your focus on the whole child has resulted in our district de-emphasizing academic achievement de-emphasizing academic achievement as stated by dr angstadt during the august community conversations spelling tests vocab words numeric grades have all been eliminated at the elementary school the lowest grade a student in high school will be awarded is fixed at fifty percent nothing lower a sixth grade substitute teacher asks the class to raise their hands if they are unvaccinated so he knows who has anti-vaxxer parents an eighth grade class was lined up in each of the students instructed to state their pronouns and apus history told students that the parents questioning the content of a textbook are q anon conspiracy theorists and that the children of those parents are too stupid to be in ap classes no

112this is not an attack on the amazing methachton teachers this is us as parents and taxpayers sounding the alarms because political viewpoints are being pushed by you through words like equity social emotional learning whole child parents want to be involved in the education of our children we need complete transparency trust and respect to move forward thank you we need you to re-emphasize academic achievement because that is the role of your time as education thank you very much anyone else for courtesy of the floor all right let's please make your way towards the podium so that i can see how many we have left [Music] okay sorry i wasn't planning to come but i was listening online and i heard can you give me your name and municipality sean cadugan autobahn lower providence so i wasn't

113planning to come but i heard some really disruptive noises in the audience and i really felt concerned with some of the members of the board and some of the people that i thought might have been here so i wanted to just come by just to show support uh i'm not really into theatrics and i didn't come with a crew of clappers but it's sad that these disenfranchised supporters are loosely joined by unfounded rhetoric i hear words like cuckoo bananas suggesting bus seating based off of vac status at previous meetings i've been to and some incomprehensible arguments from some national uh playbooks that i've actually seen on crt uh thanks for excuse me thanks for riding the wrong uh this is to uh dr zurby and in the uh and the board of being totally reactive

114to kovid and actually taking a more proactive stance in looking at how you can work with the student modified quarantine strategy that's designed to keep people in students i should say longer in school and doing that in conjunction with the county thanks for working together to get full day kindergarten regarding raising hourly rates to make us more competitive to bring teachers in to do full-day kindergarten and that's you know based off of the research from sts i'd also like to see some more support for students that have special needs because there's a high turnover in that area for those teachers so i don't think education is a is a bad thing i'm glad there are those with open minds on the board and dei initiatives that can actually hold a meaningful conversation and ask thoughtful

115questions beyond talking points they heard on the show or read in social media in the past equity is not a bad thing look at how it helped the irish and the italians who were seen as outsiders and not good enough to be considered white i understand this to be true after finishing historian david rodriguez book working towards whiteness a book about how these new immigrants became white between 1886 and 1925. 13 million new immigrants came from southern eastern and central europe up until that point people considered white generally healed from england the netherlands germany and scandinavian countries so i think equity is a proper term should be used and considered and should be thought of thank you [Applause] uh brian urschel laura province um last week's meeting i spoke about the elimination of the three

116teaching positions that were vacant and it sounded like the response is that those were budgeted positions so i'm wondering what is the budget surplus of a surplus that will result from limited positions in my estimation it'll probably be four to five hundred thousand dollars of a surplus we should expect at the end of this fiscal year i think i heard earlier that the funds set aside to cover increased charter school costs out of the fund balance will be fully utilized this year um so perhaps take that budget surplus from the three teaching positions and offset those charter school costs so you don't commit the budget taboo of using fund balance to fund your ongoing operating expenses regarding legal fees i spoke earlier didn't hear anything about plans to to um get those under control so

117here's some thoughts implement a monthly reporting and a review of legal matter by legal matter of legal expenses by the finance committee on the board get a report detailing every expense going to a law firm regard i've heard recently that there are some appeals of litigation of rights and air requests that the board the district lost at the office of open records as well as at the courts so consider implementing a policy where appeals or litigation or any matter where legal fees will exceed a certain threshold require committee or the board approval close lengthy litigation matters shannon dell figure out get your lawyer to estimate what it's going to cost to close out that matter and attempt to settle hopefully less amount than you're gonna pay the law firms and then release those funds back

118to taxpayers consolidate legal firms in my review of the list of bills the district is currently making payments to legal firms totaling six different firms by consolidating you're going to save a lot of administ administrative expenses and you have some economies of scales in your rates and two fix your right to know process you can do that by answering questions you get from the public either at these meetings or by email when i don't get an answer i file a right to know request well first i send an email i don't get a response so i follow right to no request i've had instances where the administration has responded to me and saying if you want that information file a right to no request it also seems like every right to know request is going

119to an external law firm these should be handled internally given the million dollars you spent on legal fees to handle rights and hurt requests you could probably hire six paralegals to handle right to know and still save money hire one pay him a hundred thousand and cut up a million dollars in legal fees it's simple map to show the tall savings just some things to consider um i hope you take this seriously and implement some of these policies um regarding ms purdue's comments if i remember correctly there's a policy a board policy which addresses political statements and any political activity in a school building i think that should apply to board members as well i know this policy can look for review and maybe you need to state that her statement was clearly political addressed

120to campaign this board has cut off comments from the public to deal with that and i think it was inappropriate um i've sat at that table for two years you take a lot of heat from the public i've taken heat from dr malik you take it you're doing this voluntarily because you want to benefit the school district and you believe what you're doing is appropriate i was on a board when it came to the arrowhead new building project i was one of nine that was adamantly against the project i took heat from the public i got emails from the public comments from the public you stick to your guns you deal with things right you've got to remember you're there voluntarily if you don't like it walk away thank you anyone else for courtesy of

121the floor [Applause] um rebecca catagnas lower providence regarding teachers doing a lot parents and children have also been asked to do a lot i'd say more than anyone in response to the board members stating that community members not trusting the science i want to say there is no scientific truth when speech is shut down truth and science actually occurs when opposing viewpoints are allowed to be expressed openly and critically in the same space to the woman making the statement regarding the mascot and that we shouldn't be allowed to use the image because a few native americans she knows stated it's disrespectful along this line of thinking as a mother of three little girls i don't want my daughters over sexualized by school supplied literature that romanticizes rape now i'll go ahead and say my prepared

122statement over the past several months several parents vested taxpayers and community members have posed questions and concerns to the board and have written dozens of emails left voicemails requested meetings and posted questions on the care facebook page only to be blocked from posting and sending further messages we are still waiting for answers to many of our questions and concerns last week jennifer cancro asked us to change the narrative about in fact in school districts and performance ranking of 67. we are not able to change the narrative to fit her political agenda we have an email from dr zerby dated thursday june 24 2021 that states in terms of ranking we have been focused on niche and will cross-reference with others when appropriate facts matter since the board is unable or unwilling to provide these answers

123we will provide the much needed answers our parents student and staff and community members deserve operating with fiscal efficiency 2021 revenue forecast 112.9 million approximately 1.1 million above budget 2021 real estate tax increase despite uh year over year decline in enrollment of 14 since 2010 we went on the arrowhead construction cost 24 million 265 518.90 35 million with debt interest empty audubon school building since 2017 operating costs 200 000 annually 7 million on eagleville renovations 946 000 spent on right to know requests and assessment appeals the number of right to know requests increased 34 over the past year currently there is no right to know criteria or process to determine if a right to know even needs to be filed or if the information can just be provided to the requester a requester filed a

124right to know last november 2020 is still awaiting a response 11 months later educational excellence and teacher support engagement admin board have an obligation to be transparent on what is being taught to our children including all resources a curriculum should help guide teachers to create balanced lessons and use material that will train the students to think and function independently our district adopts common core standards this approach emphasizes skills over content and process over product and relative standard standards over absolute ones the top three critical success factors for student engagement and performance are the parents teachers and learning resources methachton school district is ranked 67 while 11 other montgomery county public high schools rank among the top 50 in pennsylvania year over year decline in enrollment since 2009 to 2010 enrollment has gone from 5332 to

1254610 14 percent drop most recently the district lost 110 students from september 2021 to may 20 uh 21. last week it was mentioned the total cost for textbooks and resources for twenty 2020-21 is one hundred and eighty one thousand seven hundred and forty two dollars and seventy three cents point sixteen percent of the total uh but okay thank you uh write in joe rittenhouse [Applause] [Music] good evening lucy beau of lower providence let's talk teacher engagement out of 320 responses over 60 percent disagree or strongly disagree to the question i have confidence in matthackton school district leadership 87 percent of survey respondents would not recommend working at methachton school district this information can be found in the june 2021 methacan education association survey there needs to be a review of all positions in the district

12670 percent of the 113 million dollar budget goes to school administration support and maintenance and teacher salaries and benefits there are 400 teachers and 215 professionals that means that 53 percent of the positions in the methamphetamine school district are support secondary roles minimal direct interactions with our children in addition several administrators have moved to new roles without sharing relevant competencies an experience that makes these individuals qualified for their new roles last november the board approved seven hundred thousand dollars in additional annual salary for new administrative roles meanwhile the number of teaching resignations and students leaving the district steadily increases whole child approach and mental wellness resources many parents are not aware of what resources are available within methadone school district there's no transparency on the vetting process and selections criteria for the third party resources

127and organizations being utilized for the whole child approach and mental well-being there's no understanding of approvers or approver qualifications where are the evaluations on the effectiveness of these programs whereas the data the metrics that supports the claims of increased attendance and improved academic outcomes and social and emotional well-being 44 students utilized the reach program in 2020 2021. 513 utilize counseling and mental health services within 2021 at skyview what are the trends possibility for proactive interventions have we gotten feedback from our parents students if this is helping special education a curriculum for students who do not take the alternate alternate assessment does not exist it was confirmed that pilot program framework highlighted that the board meeting last fall was not shared with teachers it was geared to the special ed requiring a higher level of care

128does this framework even exist is this framework still being based on current math mandates how is this pilot program evaluated are you able to share learnings five special educational instructors are changing status to be full-day kindergarten teachers for 22-23 school year what is the impact of their students one of our parents shared that her child will have had a different special ed teacher for all four years she's been in eagleville elementary you are setting our most vulnerable elementary school kids to not thrive what plans will be put in place to support these students to transition to a new instructor will there be shadowing cost implications with two day notice we'll make every effort to attend the 1028 matthackton special education meet great to have our questions answered current board policies and associated procedures and guidelines

129provide more rights to the bully rather than the victim students are forced to see and in some cases interact with their abuser over 20 families share that their personal and heart-wrenching stories of how they left the district because their child was continually tormented day in and day out and they were extremely frustrated by the support the school offered in all cases the child was worse off once the school got involved if they even got involved their child suffered from depression low self-esteem anxiety self-harm and their education suffered greatly in many cases the scars have not gone away and the child has been forever changed thank you thank you [Applause] sheila smith matthackton school district parent lower providence so i just want to follow up on a comment um regarding the total cost of textbooks that

130wasn't the case the point was there that many teachers spend hundreds of dollars of their own money on that so for another day for that topic right now i want to focus on the thacton school district dni again i was on the committee there were 46 members on the committee 21 were community members four students three board members and 18 methecton school district staff 97 percent of the dni committee excluding mathacton school district staff openly identify as democratic liberal diversity of thought is a reality that there is more than one way to think about something was that really the case on this committee in addition parents have questioned the dni committee task force and its influence on the school board member and administration over the past year parents were told repeatedly at board meetings at

131community dni and matthachton school district dni were two separate organizations yet three board members navarrete purdue and drummond regularly participated in the dni task force and amy smith the dni x um community and she um posted on social media that the community task force members are not involved with this board please leave her out of this the three board members um provided updates on their progress and their input into matthackton school district administration the current the care board also partnered with this task force to update the matthackton school district code of conduct last february let's talk the dni audit report allegedly prepared by dr campbell dr campbell did never presented an audit report that reviewed matthachton school district policy procedures and practices that was not an accurate picture of existing policies and the determination of

132the extent on which they are being implemented and an assessment of their effectiveness in promoting dni there was no role mapping of existing positions performing dni responsibilities data was not provided to highlight where matthachton school district has problems with racism or discriminations just one email sent the day after this situation was highlighted survey request the dni survey people were told to file a right to know request in order to see the questions and the results the dni survey had 1585 survey respondents 73 percent of those responses were students grades 7-12 who took the survey without parental consent and zero controls meaning the same person could take that survey 1585 times so that was that about the statistic the survey which by the way none of those recommendations were even made over to the next topic

133was the dni committee report so recommendations were developed at the workshop last august at arcola i was there majority of the participants were matthachton school district administrators and staff and community dni task force and liberal and democrats made up 99 percent of the workshop participants based on the participants i would highly question the level of diverse thought and healthy debate [Music] crt and matthachton school district i'm just going to jump to the examples so on june 16th um director ralph neverett had posted on twitter about consolidating the 500 uh district schools so that's one methecton school district no longer celebrates or even mentions columbus day in fact a fourth grade teacher at arrowhead said a student came home and said my teacher told us columbus day is not called that anymore and the name um

134and the name is changed because he wasn't the greatest guy and killed people instead several teachers in midtown school district celebrated national coming out day and indigenous people day thank you but just to clarify you were referring to d and i do you mean the d-e-i d-e-i okay just wanted to confirm thank you good evening kelly mann lower providence i'd like to yield my time to sheila smith there is no yielding of time if you have comments to make you can certainly make them uh but you can't yield it to another individual [Music] right here um this guy right here just go up here and just read this page several textbooks and resources including board approved ap history text give me liberty and american history edition by eric fauner fauna proudly teaches marxism and supports

135the communist party mhs library resources this will be discussed in detail from another parent an mhs junior english class reading assignment the color of water a black man's tribute to his white mother by james mcbride msd is partnering with acsd to support the whole child approach acsd states that educators must become equity and instructional warriors sample resources include disciplinary practices to support students of color by robert jackson beware of the equity traps and tropes acknowledge that our systems practices and narratives are designed to perpetuate disparities in outcomes for black and brown students thus there is no path to equity without a consistent anti-racist approach anti-asian american racism didn't go away educator support is more important than ever current board members including the president belong to the monco bucks pa moms for blm facebook page which

136put puts black and bipac voices first members must support crt blm and all things that support bettering the lives of black people this ideology is reflected in several board members voting and actions over the past year an approved photo of a student with defund the police on his graduation gown was included in the 2020 mhs yearbook approved blm protest at mhs on june 14 msd hosted a dei workshop series in march 2021 sample topics discussed include racism is a white person's problem and we are caught up in it deep down we all know color matters and a discussion on how white people are treated better than black people how is em how is msd not pushing crt the benefits of marxist system and indoctrination board members in the administration are pushing to centralize education forcing

137unnecessarily medical treatment and utilizing confirmation bias on our students do you see the difference the diverse thinking and balance on the board perhaps the current board should focus on the academic priorities and performance that led to our children's future success rather than grooming our children to be social justice warriors anyone else for courtesy of the floor brian legend lower providence township i do know that you guys on the board have a difficult job and you are here as volunteers and you all had your own motivations for running and i don't think it's appropriate to question others motivations for wanting to sit at that table i think back to 2014 and 2015 when there was discussion of closing audubon and arrowhead elementary school and this auditorium was packed with people screaming at the board that was

138there bringing signs it made the 11 o'clock news you could look it up on lower providence patch and i do know that you as the care group got your start from that meeting and questioning the board and ran on a platform of not closing audubon and then three two or three years later miss aubrey larson ace mr winters and uh miss reese who were members of that original care group voted to close audubon so i do think that people who are running for the board they're trying to do something for the community and they should be applauded and not put down by anybody thank you anyone else for courtesy of the floor [Music] we're going to start your time good evening vince josephs for those of you watching worcester for those of you watching at

139home what you may not be able to see is the barrier of yellow police tape that separates this podium from our elected officials and superintendent on stage he's the one not facing the crowd why you may ask well police tape only has one purpose obviously which is to alert whomever is on this side of the yellow polyethylene barricade in this case the whole community that what lies on the other side is a crime scene that crime many would argue is the deliberate and systematic destruction of ramifacton school district over the past six years by many of the elected members of the school board next tuesday three of them will be on the ballot they are in part responsible for the hole we found ourselves in and tonight have made a last-ditch performance to gaslight us

140into believing something other than what we knew to be true two hours ago which is that this school district is a sinking ship that needs saving we've already hit the iceberg they know this because they steered us directly into it if you're one of those people who believe that a public school district's primary purpose arguably its only purpose is educating our kids within the foundational and traditional guard rails established by their parents and the people in our community that pay for all of it this should concern you it's impossible to overstate the damage that's been done six or so years ago the elected officials on this stage were handed a perfectly good school district fast forward to 2021 it's a shell of its former self the situation is not unique to schools we've seen this

141play before it always ends in tragedy take for example a family owned and operated restaurant with 30 years of success one day mom and pop are gone the business is left to their adult children in hopes of carrying on that legacy kids of course have no idea how to run a restaurant but come on how hard can it be changes are made to the menu nobody asked for these changes let they make them anyway customers voice concerns why is there kale in my lasagna before you know it there's cranberries in the coleslaw football sunday wing special has been replaced by a jazz brunch the customers don't like it shut up customers we know what's best for you the staff of the restaurant who were previously treated like family and despite lower than average wages had

142worked there for decades suddenly don't feel appreciated and they quit the restaurant rating begins to fall exponentially they try to save themselves by creating new rating systems or reimagining the dining experience see the old standards don't apply if you just create new ones it always ends the same way less customers know staff a legacy ruined and the people responsible for the damage make excuses as to why no not one finger points back at themselves you know there's a member of this community who speaks up at every meeting i'm not sure how old he is but he's old enough my senior that i refer to him as mister he voices his concerns every month and not one of you ever give him the respect that he deserves that he's earned his questions are ignored my dad

143he's a united states marine a vietnam vet awarded a purple heart if i ever treated my neighbor who was my senior the way you treat him the way you ignore him and disrespect him my pops would get in his truck drive from new jersey and smack the sideburns off me before drew could mean drew mcginnis could bang that little gavel of his our senior citizen neighbor and his generation left us a perfectly good country a perfectly good school district and you beat on it like a rental car all this talk about equity and stakeholders in the classical definition you have no equity in this school district you have no stake you support the demonization and destruction of our institutions why because you didn't build them when our kids get on the bus the bus driver

144is in charge in school the teacher the principal they are the adults in the room they respect them if our kids get some anti-police anti-american neo-marxist vitriol spewed at them we don't want to tell them the teachers are wrong here's how it works the kids graduate high school smart they go to college they leave dumber than when they went in eventually they get in the real world and they realize k through 12 was the best education they ever had step four eventually they have their own kids and realize their parents were right all along don't mess up step one thank you anyone else for courtesy of the floor good evening board my name is lorraine canton lower providence i am i've lived in trooper for 23 years i don't have children i was never blessed

145with children but i am a piano teacher and so i have known and taught many of the same children that you have here i have not been involved in politics last week was my first time at a school board meeting and i must say that i am just really appalled at what goes on here this is not what i was expecting a school board meaning to be and someone addressed the issue of bullying in school which is certainly a real problem children learn from their parents and i tell you that bullying in school will not stop until the bullying in this room stops thank you anyone else for courtesy of the floor okay do we have any comments from the board before we adjourn mr winters yeah uh a couple comments uh i did make

146inappropriate language at a meeting where i was representing the fact and i apologize for that and i that was my mistake i owned up to that mistake and i'm sure that dr mullick knows more details he just wants to make sure that i say it publicly again and i need to do better i am going to be a lifelong learner and learn from my own mistakes and have an open mind towards what i need to do better i was embarrassed by what i did and that's exactly what happened you want more uh i don't think more provides any more insight um i think uh the one thing that bothered me a little bit about the comment or related to the give me liberty book because i did go back mr rittenhouse had pointed out i

147don't remember when it was uh three or four examples where he had highlighted things my my son got the book over the summer and i took a look at that book and look at those those passages and i'm not a history expert and i'm touching my mask of perfect so um i'm not a history expert so i my father-in-law more or less is i gave it to him had him look through it uh obviously that's not the be-all end-all of and he saw nothing wrong in the book the specific elements i gave him to look at he saw nothing wrong in the book there might be things in there that are not exactly the way i would have worded them honestly there were some phrases in there but to call him a marxist to call

148that book something that we are trying to to shove down and then indoctrinate our students without even probably even looking at the book does not show an interest in lifelong learning so i stand by that book and i stand by the ability for our teachers to teach the right thing has been suggested that they have the ability to do we're in agreement on that i think we're a disagreement if that's happening today or not i think it's disrespectful to our staff to assume that the nine of us up here had that much influence even if anything you guys were saying was true but it's certainly remarkable to believe that we have 600 staff members that are lockstop and barrel behind us to indoctrinate our children around marx's theories i mean seriously seriously okay well we

149we disagree so uh [Music] that's we're not going to have calling back and forth i'm sorry mr winters do you think about anything else okay miss cancro well guys uh i just wanted to address some of the questions just so i know uh mr earnshaw you have asked about the legal fees and i in the past couple finance meetings that we did have all those points that you did point out we are doing and looking into just so you know in advisement the superintendent is soliciting proposals for legal services respect to the process for right to know um we do know that there there are some individuals that are have lengthy lengthy requests that do require legal advisement so i do agree with getting one source as a paralegal or some things to that so

150we are looking into that and we we've tried different ways to deal with the right to know um as far as the litigation as you know we it's been a 13 year and we are hoping for a close so we i tell you that i can't talk any further about that but we also have the right to know process we are posting online so the you know everyone is aware of how many right to knows do come through this through the board and um and we are looking to consolidate legal forums the other thing is we do have for the legal fees the different ones that we have we do have the details and expense and um we did ask um tim bricker to provide that to us going forward so that we you everyone

151can see where the details aren't broken out um and then the only thing mrs bobe i would definitely answer all those questions with the education we do always ask for like any programs like at the reach as far as that or any programs that we do that we have an analysis of what happens we do ask for parent and teacher requests of how they've done and students so it's all three areas um i do know that even in arcola we had nine students coming out of district and it went down to one that was two years ago before the pandemic but we always do a post analysis so and the question is if you don't mind writing them up if we don't but i will definitely address those in in the education um and then

152the only thing i'll say about the narrative i don't mean to change the narrative that we should change it on political positions what i'm saying is that i think dr zurby did it very well those that attended the strategic plan we did discuss when it comes to our ranking and i thought it was very well said what he's going to do moving forward so definitely go back to that he's going to be talking about it again in february it's just about we are doing really positive things i think the teachers the the the administration the board the community we are taking all suggestions and we are moving forward we are growing and that is what i'm trying to say i'm just trying to say change the narrative because i don't want to see this what's

153happening right now so that's all i meant so thank you anyone else yeah just to add on to what jen said and mr andrea's question about um some of the the funding in terms of uh covering charter school costs when we did the budget last year um we made some assumptions about how many kids we're going to continue to stay in charter schools or might come back to myth act and as part of that assumption what we did was we set aside and committed funds from the surplus to cover any um any difference in our assumptions so those numbers are higher than we expected so just to answer your question the the funds will not come out of our general fund balance those are committed funds that we set aside to offset potential future expenses

154um that's similar to what we did those other funds came out to offset costs for the project of transportation to replace the fuel tanks uh we had a leak of one of those tanks required them to be replaced on a rapid basis and we took the opportunity actually at that point to also upgrade uh the system that that the drivers used to fuel their buses that allows us to do some analytics around fuel usage on a per boss basis allows us to track drivers um positive system and then uh the balance of that then was used to reduce the amount of money that uh will be borrowed now to fund the rest of the arrowhead project so in effect returning all that money to taxpayers being used for projects that would have otherwise been done

155thank you any other comments from the board i'm sorry dr zurby go ahead so i just want to follow up on uh the comment uh for mr winters in terms of uh uh books and and uh the concerns that were raised by the member of the public uh it's important that uh and i'll have mr regina just share a few comments here on what the process is but but but the board does two things one the board sets policy on this on how materials are selected and reconsidered and secondly uh they approve the expenditure for for those those they do not provide any input into what books we we select or purchase so with that said uh mr regina i think we're going to share a little bit about policy 109 yeah thanks dr zurby

156so so we certainly have a protocol for addressing any concerns when it comes to resources in the district initially you contact the professional that's currently using the resource you want to address it directly with them at first give them the opportunity to share why that resource is being utilized if you don't feel that that's an answer that you're looking for you can certainly go to the building administrator at that point i'm going to the building administrator they'll arrange a conference between you and the party we do ask that you you follow that process um if you're still not comfortable with that response there's a next step as well you can reach out to the director of curriculum and they'll create a committee that has two teachers a librarian a building administrator and the director of

157curriculum that will meet with you and go over that resource as well still if if you are still concerned with that um you can go to the superintendent to resolve that matter so there are a number of steps uh before addressing the board that we ask that you take and uh please refer to policy 109 um and it can step you through that process if you have any questions about that you're certainly welcome to call me as well in the office thank you thank you mr regina and dr zerby mr winners yeah the other comment i wanted to make was around social emotional learning um i i hope that people have an open mind and not just read one article or watch one tv show or one newscast to watch to understand the purpose of

158social emotional learning for all students all students no i'm sorry if you're going to call out i'm going to have to ask you to leave i i didn't even hear what he said so social emotional learning is something that we have done and you can choose that you don't like it or not but the purpose that i am supporting it on is in the right place in my heart you you said an individual once said to me several weeks ago up here that they're a good cut they believe they are a good uh judge of character my character stands behind the social emotional learning for all students the reason that we're doing this is to improve the ability of students to learn throughout their 13 years in fact so that they are lifelong learners so

159they could go to college and decide if they agree or not they could go to a career path and perform in that career path and whatever it is they need the skill sets to learn the basic structure to learn the purpose of social and emotional learning is not necessarily a test score to but to make sure these students all students perform in the best way possible take a look of it in that viewpoint and argue that that is not the goal anyone else not yet motion to adjourn all right well i did want to say one other thing before we adjourn um i apologize i usually try to take really good notes and keep up with what was being said during the public comment um i respect and and appreciate all the feedback that we

160get from the community however tonight that was near impossible at times um the amount of disruptions that we had in the audience made it very challenging for us to do the work that we need to do up here so i think we need to um i'd like to recommend okay so i think i'm gonna make the recommendation that we move our meetings back to zoom if we can't get better um resp behavior from the audience i don't want to be up here trying to police the audience but um i'd like to be able to just do my job thank you so much everyone have a great night