July 27, 2021 Regular Meeting of the Board

001good evening everyone i'd like to call to order the july 27th 2021 regular board meeting of the methectone school district board of directors please rise for the pledge the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all the public is hereby advised of the auto and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcast um by way of attendance we have all board members present except for ms hull recognition of guests and scheduled speakers dr zurby thank you madam president uh this evening uh we have no uh documented uh scheduled speakers however i just want to bring to the attention of the board that at the work session last week we did have on the agenda that lower providence township

002was coming before the board this evening or planning to come before the boy this evening to present a recommendation on on audubon elementary school that is currently a vacant school here in the district um they had reached out to me and asked for more time and we have tentatively put that on the agenda for the august work so other than that i i think it's also important that uh this evening we just update the board on one particular item on the agenda that was that was discussed last week and that is the ire sports workout pilot program that dr spiwak had shared with the board uh so this evening i know that dr speedwack's here he has some additional information to share with the board and then we certainly can ask him any additional questions

003if you may have them dr speedway good evening and thank you for having me here tonight to just provide a few more details and an update on what was presented last week with regards to the pilot program at iroi fitness on germantown pike i think it's important to recognize that the concept that was shared last week providing athletes access to iroi is a good one however i do want to share some updates to the school board and make you aware of some numbers that should be noted prior to moving forward the pilot program without transportation would cost between fifty four thousand dollars per year for a hundred students and upwards of a hundred thousand dollars per year for 400 students if executed through a full fiscal year so while the pilot might be in a

004funding range of 25 to 29 000 as was presented last week we need to proceed with the understanding that the pilot program will be very successful and that it is one that we would eventually be proposing uh for an extended period of time so we need to ask are we fully prepared to fund a year-long project given the numbers that i just shared lastly mr bricker looked into what the cost might be if we were to say that the iroi sport program would provide a steep discount for families with acting families to engage directly with the gym and then the district would cover the cost of students on free and reduced lunch similar to the process that we now follow for the waiving of our student activity fee this is an option that we would

005have to explore further as a district so with that said the up the update on the numbers and the additional information is are there any questions uh regarding the iroi proposal thank you dr spivak mr mcguise um thank you dr spiwak um obviously we may have moved too fast on this with these numbers and i get it i'd rather numbers be real than fake uh obviously last week i spoke as a proponent of it um at 25 24 25. um unfortunately these numbers kind of pierce the veil i'm going to vote a no on this i'm not saying it's dead perhaps some of the athletic parent booster families or groups can continue to look at iroi but in terms of supporting this as a board and kind of making it a pilot program right now

006i i think with these new costs that it's just cost prohibitive and i will be a no on this vote thank you mr mcguinness are there any com other comments or questions for mr dr spubach on this particular matter ms cancro um i would have to agree with mr mcginnis i think we should also just continue to explore opportunities that we can utilize looking at our facilities and really looking at what we have and really making sure we have safe equipment enough space for all the students everyone be able to utilize it during school hours and outside school hours so if we could really do an investigative research of what options we have that will be viable for us i think it's a district that all students can benefit benefit from movement um and and

007have access to a gym so absolutely thank you miss cancro any other uh comments from members of the board uh mr navarrete yeah just one just follow up on what jen said i think what i'd like to see out of this is let's let's come up with a comprehensive long-term plan for this clearly it's an area of improvement for um for our athletic programs for our students um what space what other space is available within the high school i know that's been looked at before and maybe we just need to put it on as part of our long-term facilities upgrades good suggestion uh any other uh final comments uh for doctor or questions for dr speedway if not thank you dr spiwak thank you and uh that ends uh guests and scheduled speakers for this

008evening thank you dr zurby moving on to reports the only committee that met in july was property property and transportation committee minutes should be attended attached to the agenda um do we have an update for the dei committee from ms perdue or mrs drummond okay um we don't have our student board representatives here the iu does not meet i don't believe oh you do have something i'm sorry go ahead mister no i just wanted to very quickly since um i wasn't at the june meeting um and we always the iu always meets the day after we meet so i just want to very very quickly tell the board a few things in the community the iu did meet on may 26th and june 23rd we do not meet in july our next meeting is august

009but i wanted to let the board know a couple important things that you may or may not be aware of as of july 1st the iu took over chester upland just like they did with harrisburg and they're doing a great job in harrisburg that led to chester upland and people may say well why does that matter it just continues to show what a strong iu montgomery county has and how respected that they are so i did want to share that furthermore um we've been talking about the opening of the early learning academy forever but due to covid it was uh not uh not fully opened all yet but it is going to be fully open by august 30th um include i mean it's already been open but including a um partial elementary hospitalization program which

010is just continues more mental health services but there is a grand opening celebration and i will forward this to you guys on friday october 8th at 3 p.m and for anybody who's very familiar with the area this early learning center is the former house of the iu so many of us as educators were there dozens of years ago making posters and doing our laminating at the iu before we could do it now so that is now a beautiful early learning center that we can all go to on friday 8th at 3 p.m so i did want to share that thank you miss reece we have no update from north monco technical career center this month and for the foundation i believe we have the wonderful miss krelovich thank you first of all i want to

011thank the board and dr zerby for having me here tonight for those who don't know me my name is nikki krelovich i'm the executive director of the methachton education foundation and if you haven't heard about the myth acton education foundation we raise private dollars to provide innovative educational programs for all manufacturing students in the facton this past year has been particularly exciting as we have hit yet another milestone at the foundation we have awarded over four hundred thousand dollars in grants to math acton schools [Applause] to name a few of the grants that we've supported this year it's our hydroponic farm in our forensics lab at the high school mental health support programs for math actin students stem kits and marine ecosystems in our elementary schools the methachton backpack program we've continued to support helping

012to feed students in need in math acton and our new career readiness program from uncharted learning that's just to name a few of the programs that we've been able to support this year thanks to donors sitting up here and sitting here in the audience so thank you all as part of our career readiness partnership with uncharted learning we are seeking volunteers from all industries who are interested in sharing their business experience and this is where i'm going to turn and look at the audience talking to you guys here we need your help we need your help coaching we need your help with mentorships we want to provide our math acting students with the opportunity to learn about real life business experiences and you can help us do that if you are interested we have coaching

013and mentoring volunteering opportunities ranging from once a week to just eight times a semester if you are interested you can go on the methactin website and click on the foundation or you can email us at info mathactinfoundation.org i also want to share some really exciting news that we are only sharing publicly for the first time tonight as many of you remember back in 2019 the foundation held the very first matthackton apex awards and finally we are back september 30th at the blue bell country club will be celebrating the best of the best best in the mathactin community we're going to be just celebrating folks who've distinguished themselves or have made outstanding achievements alumni community members businesses tonight i'm going to tell you who the winners are for 2021 so buckle up in the alumni category

014the winner this year is mark small [Applause] mark small was from the methactin class of 1997. he joined the united states army's special forces after graduation and he gave the ultimate sacrifice for his country when he was killed in action in afghanistan in 2009 we'll be presenting this award in his honor on september 30th at the methactone apex awards this year the winner for the educator category is mark constable was from the math acting class 1969 he was a graduate a teacher an administrator a coach an announcer for the methachton football games and the co-founder of the math acton education foundation we are excited to celebrate mark as well in the community advocate category this year the award goes to amy sala and the aim high studio [Applause] amy sala and her aim high volunteer

015stepped up during the pandemic to support the most vulnerable in our community with food donations deliveries personal care items clothing donations and served as many as 75 families a day at the height of the pandemic we're very excited to celebrate their contribution to our community this year because kovid has made it very special for us to be back gathered in person we have an award that just started this year called the climb hire award this award will be going to dr mack and the skip back pharmacy volunteers [Applause] dr mack and the skip back pharmacy pulled together a team of hundreds of community volunteers somewhere who are here today they helped protect montgomery county from covid through the clinics around the county including at methachton high school these superheroes put over 45 000 shots into

016arms to protect us all thank you very much to dr mack and the volunteers from skip back pharmacy this year for the business we will be honoring the collegeville bakery for 26 years the collegeville bakery has fed the myth acting community but as you've heard they are truly more than just a bakery they regularly collect food and toys for community members in need through day donations and pizza kit fundraisers they have helped support methachton schools sports activities clubs including our special education alliance they even in the small town that we live in donated meals for the skip back pharmacy volunteers at their covid clinics so we are excited to celebrate the collegeville bakery [Applause] our final award will go to a team usually this is reserved for a team a student group or a club

017in mathacton this year the award will be going to methacton high school's unified track and field team this is mythacton's first ever unified sports program which connects students with disabilities and without disabilities to compete together as a team the foundation is thrilled to celebrate the inclusivity compassion pride and teamwork demonstrated by matthakton's unified track and field team [Applause] everyone here tonight is invited to celebrate with us at the bluebell country club on september 30th it is a fundraiser so that we can raise more money for these great programs in the thacton schools if you need any information you can find us at mcthactinfoundation.org and i encourage you to reach out thank you very much for having me tonight you miss kralovich for communications miss kelly thank you madam president and good evening everyone we are

018very excited to welcome our new and returning students back to school on august 30th please save the date for the back-to-school night events taking place at each building at mathacton high school the back to school night will be on september 14th for grades 9th and 10th and on september 20th for grades 11th and 12th at arcola the back to school night will be on august 25th at sky view upper elementary school fifth grade back to school night will be on september 8th and the sixth grade back to school night will be on september 29th over at arrowhead elementary back to school night is september 23rd at eagleville it's september 22nd woodland it's september 21st and warcester september 13th further information will be communicated by our building principles you can also find a list of these

019dates on our website methacton.org the information is right on the home page under featured news thank you very much thank you miss kelly our superintendent's report dr zurby thank you madam president as listed under the advisements i believe those were discussed last week and i have no further comments thank you dr zurby uh the board will now take comments on board action items this is an opportunity for residents to comment on matters that are to be decided upon as outlined on the agenda board asks you to keep your comments to four minutes or less the board may choose to respond to matters following the conclusion of the comments and board action items so um for those of you who have never been to a board meeting before um that's things that are to be voted

020on on here it's helpful but not necessary if you can refer to what uh item on the agenda it is that you're speaking to and if you could introduce yourself with your full name and municipality um you can please come to the podium and be respectful of social distancing for others ashley wilkerson lower providence first i'd like to thank the board for their support of dei and i'd like to ask the board to vote in favor of the job description for the supervisor of dei second i'd like to share some of my family's experiences that i hope will illustrate very much why we need to hire a qualified supervisor of dei as soon as possible i'll start by sharing with permission some of the things that have been said to my children during their years

021in mythton you're jewish aren't you i'm glad i'm not jewish get in the gas chamber little jew jews aren't human they're vegetables that need to burn and get demolished and wiped from the face of the earth get in the oven you killed my god that's a lot to unpack isn't it let's start with the fact that when i had a conversation with my children about speaking tonight i learned of many other incidents of anti-semitic slurs they stopped telling me about them because any time an administrator was notified it got worse we need a fully staffed dei office let's talk about the fact that some of those horrible things were said in elementary school not just in the upper grades we need a fully staffed dei office let's also acknowledge that this happened to students who

022chose to disclose their religion to others it would not be otherwise obvious imagine if you will how much worse it is for students who are black or brown or students who have a visible disability or anyone who is visibly different from the majority of the students in our district imagine what they overhear when they walk down the halls we need a truly fully staffed dei office i'd also like to point out that there are more subtle issues that can be addressed by a supervisor of dei things that are small but had a tremendous impact nonetheless one of my children was recently asked to fill out an application for a school organization one of the questions asked about outside activities and examples were given scouting church activities things like that the only suggestions were for religious

023activities were church related as a result my child thought that the activities related to our jewish school were irrelevant for the purposes of the application of course i know that the phrasing on the application was not intended to alienate children of other religions but intended to or not it did this is an inclusion issue that could be addressed by a dei office in closing i would like to ask again that you vote in favor of the dei office job description i know that you have heard and i know that you will continue to hear from parents who do not think it is necessary and i would argue that the very fact that so many people are unaware of the ongoing hate speech in our schools is yet another reason that we need a qualified supervisor

024of dei thank you [Applause] [Music] shelley leonard lower providence township thank you board and administrators for your work last year while it certainly wasn't the way i imagined my daughter starting her time as a student with acton her kindergarten year was really such a success because of the teachers staff and the leadership at woodland elementary school woodland is an amazing community of diverse and kind people my daughter was fortunate to have a lot of great learning experiences but one of the standouts was her opportunity to learn about diwali it was so neat to see my daughter's classmates light up as they shared about diwali over the zoom my five-year-old's world was broadened and i got to listen to mrs engler's happy diwali dance about a thousand times in my household [Music] i was grateful that

025my daughter was learning about another culture because i understand that school is more than just reading writing math and i appreciate the whole child approach that math acting gives my daughter one of the reasons why my husband and i decided to move here in 2019 i have full faith and trust in the amazing things that matthachton teachers and staff are already doing i believe that the teacher's efforts paired with the director of dei can provide even more powerful learning experiences for all matthacton students i am here in full support of the di task force and i ask the board to hire a director so that my daughter and her peers next 12 years here in mathakton are diverse equitable inclusive and as culturally enriched as possible thank you [Applause] [Music] john andrews law of providence

026this new microphone setup is great tonight i speak on several boat items the weight room and dr landis's temporary support of the office of def of the office of dei dr spiwak made one case for more weight room facility just one option was offered i roy sports and its new location for about thirty thousand dollars for the fall part pilot program i differ and say that must be compared to an option for larger space at the high school first off enrollment is down about 300 there from the recent peak so there's room available also competent staff is available there and extra busing is not required that's the way other high schools have gone so where they they've charted they have uh gone down the path that we need to do there's no need for a

027rush and the education committee has yet to see any expansion option for the vote for dr landis dei is in a state of flux and we as a community should consider what is needed for math acton there is an audit paid for from our taxes but yet to be shown to us it's not a classified military secret the office should be put on hold until the audit is made public and considered an open meeting also my view is that we start with an office of d and i equity is a lesser issue here and can be added after we get some successes with diversity and inclusion and to add to what dr wilkinson spoke to when i was in high school in college in the rotc program as a freshman or a sophomore the major

028oftentimes spoke of showing us movies about uh diseases that people can get from uh sex contact but he he did show us a movie that was taken at one of the uh nazi concentration camps where hundreds of people and on a daily basis were told that they needed needed to have their lysory lice removed from their heads so they were stripped down and the movie showed them going through a tunnel to the gas chambers that was the last for those people on a daily basis and clearly the nazi attitudes were wrong and should be put to rest thank you [Music] [Applause] puja chanda lower providence township first i'd like to thank the board administration staff teachers parents and of course the students for showing perseverance and tenacity over the past year it was a scary

029time with many unknowns and i think some parts of this community came together in beautiful ways i was born and raised in this community and graduated from affected in 2006 my village includes friends i made at woodland my husband who i met in the first grade friends and mentors i met through with acton's marching band and the list goes on i moved away twice but the relationships and bonds i developed here while growing up kept bringing me back eventually my husband and i decided to start our family here because we love it here so much that said it was hard growing up in the mathan district as a child of color with a different cultural background not a lot of people were aware of things i celebrated at home foods that i ate the accent

030my parents have or my traditional indian clothes that i wore for halloween my first grade teacher had us do an activity where we listed a number of typical morning tests in chronological order and she told me i was wrong because at my house we brushed our teeth before eating breakfast not the other way around in high school a teacher very innocently called me pocahontas because my hair was in pigtails another teacher made me and two other indian students stand at the front of the class and talk about being indian with no preparation or forewarning there are other instances where i faced racial slurs or was just made fun of for being different these are just a few of countless tiny instances that contributed to me feeling like an alien for most of my student life

031i never quite felt like i belonged i never shared what i did on weekends because nobody knew what diwali was or what pujas were and i felt embarrassed about being different my parents weren't involved in the community because there was a huge language barrier for them it was already hard to grow up with parents who didn't always understand or approve of american cultural norms but it was harder to go to school every day and try to blend in so much that the only difference different thing about me was my skin color these examples illustrate why teaching diversity equity and inclusion are necessary within a community today i'm part of an interracial marriage where every day we find ways to unite our italian and indian upbringings we have an eight-month-old daughter with a sanskrit first name

032and an italian last name we know she will face some struggles as a biracial person but we don't quite know what they will be and i won't always have the right answers for her i don't want her or any other child to grow up thinking that being different is bad or wrong having a dei leader as a part of the methachton community would help foster a diverse equitable and inclusive environment where all children including children like my daughter or children like me can grow to be not only strong and confident young adults but accepting kind and unprejudiced human beings thank you [Applause] hi marissa rocco lower providence i'm here tonight to talk about a little bit about dei but the health and safety plan i also have notes on iroi but i don't know if

033i'll get to that so i had a much different experience than the person that who was just up here i actually graduated in 1997 and mark small actually was a friend and a classmate of mine so i was really happy to hear that he will be receiving that award but what i'm here to talk about is the fact that i still have a group of six friends that i went to school with here one is hungarian one is asian one is indian and the rest of us are a mix i never experienced anything as great as those bonds that i still have and see those girls every few weeks but we never saw color we never saw people's nationalities as different we actually embraced one another but that also comes from what i learned at

034home and what i learned at home was to treat people the way i want to be treated while i am not saying i'm not for approving a dei supervisor because that's not what i'm here to say i want to make sure we choose the right person and what i mean by that is i don't know that we should shuffle people around into different positions i want to make sure it's the right person i work in human resources we do a lot of dei work that does not make me dei professional i could not pursue a dei position even though i have 20 plus years of hr experience there are certifications out there for dei professionals to name a few cornell has an e-course the american management association has a course and microsoft has many unconscious

035bias trainings for free i want to make sure that we're doing all the right things if we truly want to be inclusive you see my husband's family immigrated here from italy and he went to kindergarten without speaking a word of english he was poor his mom had to make his clothes and you know how much fun he was made fun of a lot and he still talks about it because when my kids complain that they don't have something he looks at them and he laughs because he says you don't know what i went through so would his italian upbringing make him not part of dei because his skin color is white because he went through all the same things and then while he's 45 and i think perhaps times have changed he still remembers what

036that felt like when he was six years old getting on a bus and not speaking a lick of english so i don't want to dismiss people who maybe look the same or like the norm i want to make sure dei is inclusive of everyone one of the things that a few people mentioned last week was children with um special abilities someone mentioned autism as of july 23rd there was not one resource on our dei resource page that included autism not one there was asian american there was african-american i can't name them all but there was not one resource for autism [Music] my daughter still doesn't quite understand what autism is and we have a very dear friend whose son is autistic and i have to be honest i can't even properly explain it to her

037all the time and i know what my friend goes through and it's hard for me to explain and if my daughter at almost the age of 15 can't grasp it i think these kids here need more lessons on that so let's make sure that's actually part of the dei plan because like i said there's not one resource on that page one more thing regarding the health and safety plan my daughter said to me tonight why do you even go to this board meeting you're not even in this school anymore meaning her and my son don't go here anymore because i'm a taxpayer and because i want to advocate for people that maybe don't have the resources to go to a different school so in closing with the health and safety plan i'm hoping that this

038school does not make a virtual or asynchronous day friday if this school needs to go to um virtual learning that is doing a disservice if we truly care about these students we will make sure we do the right thing and get them five days of in-person or online live instruction thank you my name is lisa yannick i'm a resident of lower providence a retired myth acting teacher having proudly served here with great love and enthusiasm for over 37 years i feel i'm being called to continue teaching particularly to explain the difference between dei and crt the purpose of the dei in any school situation is to develop and promote safety and understanding in the areas of racial social sexual and gender diversity every single one of us falls into all four of these categories listen

039again and think of you and your child and how he or she could benefit having someone on their side if they have a problem concerning racial social sexual or gender difficulties questions or concerns in past years if a child was abused because of a difference if it wasn't reported using a particular form it didn't get counted so methachton had zero reports of incidences over racial social sexual or gender issues leading some to say in these forums we don't have problems in the facton the dei program in the factory would provide one more source for comfort advice and safety within our schools is that really a bad thing the program would also provide resources for students teachers and parents to learn and to resolve problems crt or critical race theory is something completely different it's a

040very high level of educational philosophy and is not being taught as part of mathatton's curriculum of course u.s history should not be taught without mentioning the truth of civil rights and the horrors of inequality in our country even when i taught second grade we read and discussed about branch rickey jackie robinson the kkk prejudice and segregation that negative part of our country's history should be taught on all levels but never is it taught to crush the spirit of any child and if you are a parent who feels that only you should be teaching these topics at home i sincerely hope that you can teach truth and keep in mind that even the grand wizard of the ku klux klan is teaching his children but probably isn't very truthful or kind thank you [Applause] matt hayes

041warchester and uh as a father of four four young children of mixed race and i want to start by saying hate speech of any kind is untolerable bullying of unkind is intolerable but in methachton high school and i'm speaking about the dei vote and suggesting that we table it until the audit is here until october in fact in high school we have a mural on the wall with about three dozen raised fists and the big bold words saying power to the people a likeness of martin luther king jr is falsely put in this mural martin luther king jr was a fantastic great man and he never said power to the people malcolm x the black panthers they said power to the people with raised fists the hate group of the aryan nation raises their fist

042in hate mao zedong and the communist people republic of china say power to the people with race this the venezuelan dictator yugo chavez raised his fists and said power to the people as he slaughtered hundreds of dissenting citizens andres brevik the man convicted for murdering 77 innocent people in norway mostly children raised his fist and said power to the people as he was convicted of murder we're supposed to represent an institution of learning albeit it's a public school and yet this school board and the administration and anyone who approved this mural and the dei sanctioned activity has been at best forgotten a recent history or at worst embraced a very dangerous hate-filled socialistic worldview there are many reasons why we celebrate martin luther king and not malcolm x and the power to the people with

043ray's fist of hatred is not one of them instead of wasting further taxpayer dollars on another like-minded dei initiative i suggest that we instead embrace uh the state of israel and and led to the devil's advocate role or the tenth man rules it's commonly referred to the tenth man rule dictates that if nine like-minded individuals all agree on a problem the role of the tenth man is to disagree on the point out the flaws of whatever decision that nine body body would come to the term as the tenth man job is to look at things creatively independently and from a fresh perspective and to engage actively with and reconsider the status quo of those nine individuals this person is a loyal dissenter that forces a group of common-minded individuals to slow down reconsider the wisdom

044of decisions and whether contingency planning or other risk mitigations might be worthwhile because failure to do so will run risk that the nine of you in common thought are not seeing you're not hearing and you're not processing what perhaps a few hundred or thousand individuals in your community are saying i'm asking you all to listen to the community standing before you as the current proxy tenth man please listen to those of us that are voicing concerns process and respect our voices and disagreements with you and remember that the harm that you are and i believe unintentionally doing by advocating for such policies and views consistent with crt equity versus equality and slogans like power to the people with raised fists that historically are symbols and slogans of at best communistic intent and at worst racial

045fighting are dangerous and need to be stopped [Applause] alexandria radcliffe lower providence first off i'd like to thank the board on their support of the dei and i would like to ask them to vote in favor of the director of dei job description tonight i graduated from the facton in 2016. so while other people are speaking about their children's experiences i'm going to tell you about my recent experiences and what i have witnessed them with acton i was privileged enough to not experience even close to the amount of hate that other groups got however i witnessed so much of it i cannot tell you how many times i have overheard children with disabilities being the butt of another student's joke half the time the kids don't even know that they are being made fun of

046and think that these students are trying to be their friend other times people have the best intentions and still don't have the understanding of how to interact with people with disabilities and that could be so easily remedied with a few lessons of inclusion i have seen black students ostracized by other students just for being black i have seen them just sit by and do nothing about it while simultaneously being used by their friends saying i'm not racist i have a black friend and i can't even imagine what that must feel like for them i've seen asian students mocked for untrue stereotypes i've heard homophobic slurs being used in the hallways i have been told the stories of what is said in the boys locker rooms when no girls are around to hear or defend themselves

047the list goes on and on worst of all i have seen those who stood up for themselves or others more harshly disciplined than the bullies that started it all basically i've heard and seen it all at mathactin and i'm sick of hearing that the same things are happening to the younger generations this is so why it is so absolutely important that the board appoints an amazing director of dei if we had wood in the past most of these things would have been properly dealt with or could have been avoided completely we need to educate the future generation on why it is important to be kind and accepting of everyone not just people that are similar to ourselves i work in child care and i see the importance of that every single day diversity equity and

048inclusion are not bad words like others make them out to be every child deserves a fair shot in life and this is just one way of ensuring that every student should feel safe loved and welcomed at meth acting regardless of their race disability religion gender identity sexual orientation and so on and that is not up for debate finally if there is the idea going around that dei will harm a particular group of students you are already admitting the need for it in our schools by implying that one group currently benefits from the lack of dei i truly hope the board votes in favor of everyone today thank you good evening honey from mohamed warsaw township i'd like to thank the board for the support of dei and i like to ask them to vote in

049favor of the director for dei i've been a part of the methacrin school district for over 10 years each year that one of my children attended mythical schools they were faced with racism and discrimination some of my children were called the n-word some were told to go back to africa india wherever they assumed my children were from one of my children was asked if they had a bomb and was threatened to have her hijab pulled a teacher once asked if monica would take my daughter for cosmetology because she wore a hijab i believe that all these statements were spoken out of ignorance martin luther king said the most two most dangerous things on the planet is sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity dei can help educate all of our students dei is important because it helps

050students understand the importance of diversity and the world the diverse world that we live in and how important it is to have equity all of our students need to support in an inclusive space we need support and an inclusive space for a safe school environment discrimination and racism already tearing our nation apart and it is time for me facting school just to stand and help in discrimination and racism in our schools the change can start with you hiring a director for dei can make the district stronger thank you [Applause] jenna truss warcester i'm speaking in support of dei we moved here when my daughter was in second grade we moved from a majority minority school district an area my children grew up surrounded by minority children my daughter's one of my daughter's best friends in

051second grade was a minority she came home in second grade and asked me what the n-word was because her best friend having called the n-word in school i was shocked because growing her growing up surrounded by minorities that was never even a question we have heard repeatedly those sorts of things spoken and issued in this school district i have a friend who we grew up less than a mile apart she still to this day 20 plus years later speaks of the racism that she experienced in myth actin growing up i have a co-worker who when she found out that i am in matthackton said we lived there for two years my children experienced racism every single day going to school we moved out of the district because i was not going to subject my children

052to that somebody said talked about risk part of my job is risk mitigation hiring somebody for dei is risk mitigation this is risk mitigation that is my job is risk mitigation hiring somebody to handle and deal with this head on is risk mitigation so i am here to encourage the board to hire somebody for risk mitigation and start dealing with this issue head on almost every one of our workplaces has somebody to deal with diversity equity and inclusion and become a more inclusive workplace so why wouldn't we do that as a school district and help our children be kinder we want to be the fiercest advocates we can for our children so why not start at school as well so that we don't have to do that so much thank you [Music] good evening my

053name is kristen sherman from lower providence last night i reviewed the job description of the supervisor of diversity equity inclusion and why i do think diversity equality and inclusion are necessary in education i do not think this position is necessary there are already positions in the school district that can fulfill roles that this job position can take care of such as the director of hr director of business affairs the director of curriculum are capable of doing this supervisory role so why spend money on something our children will not utilize directly dr zurby you're an administrator you're the director of the school district but my children will be able to identify you in a lineup they would be able to identify every teacher they have encountered so why create another advice administrative role when you can

054use the money and spend it on hiring a couple of guidance counselors or school psychologist people who could really engage the children guide children to their future gauge mental health which has impact been really impacted this past school year educate our children to see people for people and not and excuse me and extend diversity equality and inclusion also why is there a vote on a position this evening when the dei survey results have not been shared with the community the way this board is spending money with the lack of evidence to support this position is necessary makes it harder and harder for me and many others to trust you and your progressive agenda maybe take some of the 20 million dollars you have laying around and hire one or two more counselors psychologists per school

055building they could have one-on-one contact with the children and formed long-lasting relationships with our children a supervisor of dei will just sit the top of the hill with the rest the administrators and will just be another nameless face to so many children in our district so please hold off on the vote for dei supervisor and consider if this position is really necessary especially since there is no data to show the taxpayers that this district needs it thank you [Applause] good evening kelly arnold lower providence i would like to thank the administration and board for their commitment towards creating a more inclusive and equitable environment for all students in mathacton my family strongly supports the establishment and approval of a dei director in mythactin and we urge you to approve the description up for vote tonight

056there is no question as to the need for dei initiatives in mythactin we've heard from many others about the difficulties they've directly faced in our community a few years ago one of my own children came home very upset and concerned for a classmate there was a student of mixed racial background who received learning support services other classmates were tormenting that student about their differences whenever they got the chance behind the teacher's back we brought it to the teacher's attention and thankfully with the fantastic teachers we have here it was promptly addressed no one initiative is going to stop all the mistreatment that we have going on but we can invest the time in equity and inclusion education before it happens and at a young age we can make a difference while our teachers are wonderful

057at addressing problems when they occur approaching dei initiatives head on and setting up standards of how situations are addressed only stands to improve the school environment i feel it's extremely important to mention that di dei benefits all students it helps expose them to the diversity they will encounter in the workplace and promotes education about many different backgrounds and being open to many different ways of thinking it helps to develop well-rounded students who are able to interact with peers who may not be exactly the same as them whether for reasons of race religion gender sexual orientation socioeconomic status or learning or physical differences i heard a lot of concern that some students will benefit and have an easier workload than others and achieve higher grades without working for it as anyone who has taught in a

058classroom knows teachers are constantly navigating these situations of inequity and other challenges in their classroom when i was teaching like the majority of teachers i took steps to help create a welcoming and inclusive environment for all students i would try my best to be open to and aware of the struggles my students were facing and understanding of personal challenges it certainly never meant that someone from a diverse or challenging situation would get an automatic a but it did mean that situations were taken into account and any student who had a legitimate need for extra time or support was given it while our math acting teachers are wonderful they certainly do not have the means to level the playing field when there are so many things outside their control as i have brought up so many

059times before our teachers and students need support and in this situation the appointment of a dei director and the implementation of district-wide dei initiatives will help provide that one other thing i'd like to bring up is the proposed mask optional policy for the start of the school year this is contrary to the current aap recommendations which strongly recommend masks for all people in a school setting the cdc also recommends masks for all unvaccinated individuals in schools which would at the very least be all children under age 12. we should not be looking at neighboring districts to see what they're doing with this decision with the increasing spread of the delta variant amongst unvaccinated persons now is the time to look to the experts the aap and the cdc while i'm not suggesting mandating the vaccine

060for all children under 12 are not even eligible yet and while i'm aware of the academic social and emotional concerns regarding masks for young children the effects of quarantines illnesses and death cause far greater interruptions to learning and developmental and mental health struggles we know that masks work and are most effective when all parties particularly the unbacks needed or wearing them we also know that distancing works but that's going to be lessened as well on the plan what i am asking is that you follow the aap and cdc recommendations and require masks indoors for all students unless they can provide a positive antibody test at the elementary and sky view until the vaccine for ages five to eleven has been available for a minimum of six to eight weeks allowing parents wishing to get their

061children vaccinated the opportunity to schedule an appointment have their children get both doses and wait the required two weeks for immunity if we're truly concerned about the whole child their health and safety should be paramount during a pandemic i believe it's everyone's hope this year will be as much of a normal return with the fewest interruptions to in-person instruction as possible masking specifically endures until a vaccine is available is our best chance at limiting interruptions and keeping all of our kids safely in school thank you [Applause] hi good evening katie thiel lower providence i'd like to thank the board for their support of dei and i'd like to ask the board to vote in favor of the job description for the supervisor of diversity equity and inclusion a review of our school testing scores on

062the pennsylvania future ready index available on the pde website indicates there is work to be done in regards to dei in our district for example in 2019 71.5 of skyview students were proficient on the ela pssa a review of the student group breakdown shows some concerning results while 71.9 percent of white and 85.3 percent of asian students were proficient 56.7 of hispanic and 41.3 percent of black students scored proficient only 38.3 percent of students with disabilities were proficient while these scores are just a snapshot in time the large gaps among the success of our students indicate a need to look closer the supervisor of dei is needed to lead conversations focused on how our learning community curriculum and environment can address these disparities in student success when a person begins a teacher training program one

063of the first theories they encounter is maslow's hierarchy for those unfamiliar the basic idea is students or even just people and adults cannot learn or perform their best unless their basic needs like food and shelter and they are met and they feel safe and accepted a feeling of safety and community is vital to to student success and mental health how are we supporting and including various ethnicities races and religions in our learning communities are our educational practices supportive of students with disabilities and diagnoses such as down syndrome autism and dyslexia these are questions that i would hope the supervisor of dei will tackle and it looks like with the description they will there's already progress in our district for instance the unified sport team is absolutely amazing the queer fact of the day at arcola

064that was brought up last month in the meeting is actually sounded wonderful to me it indicates a greater variety participation and voice of various student groups in our schools an active lgbtqia group is fantastic and supporting this population of students is vitally important according to the trevor project lgb youth are almost five times as likely to attempt suicide compared to their heterosexual peers they would fall under the dei category and supporting them is vital why as a community would we not work to create a safe and accepting environment for all students i have seen comments and concerns about mythacton school rankings over the past few months and years if we as a community want to raise our school test scores and district rankings we need to continue to invest and support ndei starting with the

065approval of the supervisor position we must make sure that we support all students in our community regardless of race creed ethnicity or sexual orientation and ensure that they feel accepted and supported so they can succeed and perform to their highest ability we also need to support our teachers so that they have the means to do so with what they have on their plate thank you so much for your time today hey doll my name is kira maloney i'm from lower providence i don't speak well in in situations i guess so bear with me um so when did we as adults decide it was okay to bring our kids into this craziness of this world the media and the politicians have this whole world gas lit and i'm i'm sitting over here listening what's going on

066what happened with acting i was in the fact and there was some stuff but i mean it sounds to me like you can't walk down the hall and i agree and i'm sorry for all your kids that are going through and they're hearing this stuff from other kids this is a problem of the heart okay this is a problem of the heart there is no you can't legislate evil out of people you can't do it okay so i just have a couple of things to say and i'm going to leave because this is in the core of me okay so the dei why don't please wait until the study comes back what was how much did the study cost how much did it cost i'm asking they won't okay he won't respond why would you

067you paid for a service and you haven't even got the service back how is that how is that uh a good decision you don't even have the facts quit playing games with our kids here we go i was taught when i was young okay i was taught to treat all people with respect not based on skin color martin luther king said it since we're talking about martin luther king you don't judge people by their skin color it's the contact of their character correct something like that told you i don't do good in situations like this bear with me do you want to others as you would have them do unto you remember that always be willing to help see someone when you see someone need even if it stretches you a little bit stand for

068the flag and kneel when i pray our job as parents is to teach our children respect dignity moral dignity morals and matters love and to protect them encourage them help them strive to help them to be better than we were i'm asking you to hold off on this until you get the results to to see the whole thing through please i'm asking you i'm a taxpayer but you know what this whole last year i feel like it doesn't matter i give the money up but my voice can't be heard it's fine um so there's a picture and i want to the school board is this is for you there's a picture of a young man in a graduation gown with the from the police written on painting on the back okay not funny it's not

069funny a little bit my daughter was happy sir please direct your comments to the board i'm done with the lantern this is not a two all right so to find the police on the back you have lost control of the school this is lower providence not north philly i promise you that we as a society are not built to live with the police promise you we have top-notch police officers in lp we raise our children at home don't teach my children about sex because it might be different than the values that we're putting in our kids at home it's a matter of the heart any anything you like as a woman said they're going to be another board a faceless member of a board god bless you have a good night [Music] my name is

070vince josephs i live in warchester township part of the matthackton school district in montgomery county pennsylvania i heard something racist today at the fact and actually the methachton dei webpage was one of the resources the book by tanashi coates is a great quote now let's play a game called is this racist let's see white america is a syndicate to dominate and control our bodies the power of domination and exclusion is essential to the power of being white without it white people would cease to exist for one of reason is that racist yes sir you need to direct your comments is that racist excuse me you need to direct your comments to the board i do believe it is you may recall in the may 18th primary a ballot question to amend our state constitution which

071asks shall the pennsylvania constitution be amended by adding a new section providing that equality equality there's an l in there of the rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged because an individual's race or ethnicity quick background on this was introduced by senator vincent hughes a democrat and i mentioned this so this particular fact is not later used to perforate my point while i love this amendment i very much disagree with some of the opinions he voiced when he introduced it for example his words discriminate based on race is cooked into the dna of this nation he said it's reflected in our nation's found foundational documents our education system hiring and how we police yeah no i disagree with that wholeheartedly but i can't help recall something thomas soul once wrote he said

072some finger believed because they are demonstrably true but many other things are believed simply because they've been asserted repeatedly and reputed and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence now those same opinions are a common theme in the content of the resources and materials recommended for parents from david zurby and the dei committee which still remain on your web page whether or not you change the preamble now if you'd like to read other opinions to the contrary or what they think supported by quantitative and empirical methodology i'd recommend the works of robert woodson dr carol swain wilford riley ian rowe ismail hernandez and of course thomas sold just to name a few i couldn't help but notice that none of their works were on the dei resource list but but their books not

073platitudes so you do have to read them in other words do the work as a sidebar anyone who believes discrimination is baked into our constitution i'm more than happy to discuss it with you over coffee i only ask read it first i brought a hundred please take one on the way out well the good news is pennsylvania overwhelmingly overwhelmingly voted yes and our constitution for pennsylvania has changed to say equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged in the commonwealth of pennsylvania because of race or ethnicity of the individual short sweet beautiful i for one am proud to have those words in our commonwealth's constitution and when those words are attacked as they inevitably will be given the efforts to fell the word equality out of favor i'll defend it to

074the teeth now quickly this brings us to another bit of legislation house bill 1532 entitled teaching racial and university equality it's in the house right now in our state i'll truncate it best i can no workplace training teaching or communication by a school district shall adopt express or promote any racist or sexist comment concept described as one race or sex is inherently superior to another a person by virtual race or sex is racist unconsciously a person should be discriminated against the person should receive favorable treatment because of the race or sex meritocracy is a merit-based systemer racist and sexist and the usa or pennsylvania constitution is fundamentally racist the keeping score at home the falcons scored nine for nine for violating every single one of the items in those bills defined as racist here's the

075part we should pay attention to thank you and thank you for your time thank you thank you no sir you've had your four minutes you need to take a seat do you want to hear the part about how pennsylvania will cut off your state funding for two years if you violate any of those items sir i'm asking you to please take a seat can we afford to have state funding that does conclude your public comments sir sir surprise your committee violated every one of those that does conclude your public comment you are disrupting the public meeting at this point and you should allow the next person to speak thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] margaret herbison lower providence township um i just have to get up and say that i find it upsetting to hear that

076so many people think that their that the need for the dei director and the dei office is dependent on how many children these issues have affected how many kids need to be affected by racism bullying and lack of inclusion before you think it's important enough to do something about is 10 kids enough does it need to be 50 or 100 kids before you think they matter or are you looking for a percentage does it only matter if 25 of the district is being affected by these issues because i think every child is important and every child deserves to feel safe included and worthwhile in our schools and i guarantee you that if it was your child that was being affected you'd be the first ones to stand up here and speak up about it and

077want something done you wouldn't be fussing about how many other kids it was affecting too you'd think it was important i'm sure as you've already heard i am not the only parent in this room whose children have been affected by these issues and i asked the school board to vote to approve the dei director job description thank you [Applause] hi good evening erin mccool from lower providence i am here speaking tonight to express my support for the dei initiatives here in mathacton we have a responsibility to support all of our students staff and families within the mathactin community based on the experiences we've heard tonight and prior to students and staff within our district there are areas where we clearly have room for improvement i've heard a lot of confusion around what dei diversity equity

078inclusion means also what critical race theory means and i want to offer a little bit of a different perspective about how diversity equity and inclusion can support all of our students in mathacton conversation on diversity equity and inclusion is not a new one the education system has made strides long before the pandemic but it is clear we have more work to do educational research clearly demonstrates that when students feel a sense of belonging and feel safe in school their academic achievement goes up this goes back to foundational educa educational theorists like maslow but is also demonstrated more recently research on teaching and learning also demonstrates direct teaching styles that drill math facts and memorization are not effective in fostering a student's ability to think critically solve problems and be innovative even before the pandemic student

079schools have been moving towards student-driven learning experiences for all learners i am concerned that this is an area where mythactin desperately needs to improve if we are to address the inequities that exist and improve the test scores as it's such a concern for many in our district there are instructional strategies and pedagogies that do promote diversity equity inclusion while simultaneously providing an academic experience for all of our learners as a personal example during the pandemic we received an email from the district providing resources to elementary students that are typically reserved for students in the challenge program these are resources for students that have been identified by the school as high achievers and therefore eligible to receive more challenging experiences among these resources i'm going to call out is a program called the unless contest the

080program is offered by the philadelphia zoo and is currently offered only to the challenge students at arrowhead and woodland elementary school on a personal note i developed that program with my colleagues when i sat at the philadelphia zoo i worked there for 14 years and when we developed and designed that program it was designed for all learners never did we expect that a district would only offer that to gifted students we designed it so it was flexible teachers were able to incorporate math ela and stem and have students wrestle with authentic problems and students could participate at whatever level they were able to in some districts we saw gifted students working side by side with students from special needs we saw students from cultural backgrounds doing amazing work that was driven from their own lived

081experiences and their prior knowledge and their abilities i had tons of research when we developed this program that show programs like this that promote competition benefit all students and the student driven aspect again allows students to participate at their own level in programs like this the expectations are the same for all students students we expect high achievements scaffolds and supports for different students so participation barriers are removed but the work students put into the program and their ability to be challenged and experience productive struggle is not limited programs are student driven meaning students develop projects and strategies that speak to them and draw on their own lived experiences this is one example but there are countless project-based problem-based programs that matthachton can take advantage of that would advance dei at the same time we are

082advancing academic achievement i was quite disappointed as you can tell but to see these examples of the challenge program that had not been offered and that was just one but had not been offered to the entire student body these were the these are the good educational programs right these are the things that make school exciting for students and make them want to learn i have to ask you to wrap it up sorry um i think investing in a dei officer providing teachers with the time and resources that they need will help us to take this type of learning to the next level in our district while allowing for academic achievement thank you thank you jim alec warcester um i was so disgusted at the last meeting that i didn't even want to talk and right

083now i have a pit in my stomach kind of like the gentleman over there who was very emotional about what he was saying nothing i can say to you guys is going to change your mind on how you're going to vote but i'm going to hit a few points mass don't work i would tell you to see the denmark and the marine study that show that they don't two prospective randomized control studies that show they don't work and the pediatric literature supports that putting mass on kids interferes with their development it to me it's almost child abuse to be put in a mask on a kid whose risk of dying from covid is zero do not put masks on kids it's ridiculous you're not universally enforcing word policy 903 example right here you cut the

084gentleman off at 8 408 said you're done but the young lady you're like wrap it up last week you let dr darby talk for an extra 45-50 seconds so i would say it's time to be fair with the public and people who disagree with you show us how you can tolerate diversities of ideas i see on the payment of the bills 40 grand to the solicitor for right to now and i heard last week you spent 900 grand on right to know now if you do the math okay 260 business days at 125 an hour that's that's 280 000 bucks having a lawyer full time every day for a year to do right to now you're paying for three lawyers to do right to now give them use the money on the kids i mean

085stupid waste of money stupid as far as this um diversity and inclusion goes uh you're making a huge mistake huge mistake you cannot social engineer people to to behave certain ways just can't do it so again i saw sky view coming i saw arrowhead coming and now i'm telling you again you do this you're making a huge mistake and i'll bet you get sued because it seems to me when i look at this diversity and inclusion program you got going seems to me that white people are the problem here okay i don't hear anybody saying hey you know look at these white people this that it seems to me that white people are the problem white people are the ones that need to be educated listen i don't need to be educated about any of

086that and my facton is not a racist school district i don't care what anybody says so um now i had questions about the um the decision to create this position who made the decision for this when was it made how was it made the gentleman talked about not having the survey results how can you make a decision to appoint somebody without the results of a survey you know how was dr campbell chosen i would suggest somebody do a little research into dr campbell i have and it doesn't make me too happy about maybe his little bias and bringing that to methachton so um my advice to you guys is don't do it you're making a mistake thanks [Applause] uh good evening uh my name is ed thiel and i'm the resident of lower providence i'd

087like to thank the board for their support of dei i'd like to ask the board to vote in favor of the job description for director di it's super important that we get this right and i think having to focus on what we're going to do how the plan is going to go is going to be it's going to really put us in the right spot i'm also concerned a little bit about the health and safety plan that's up for approval before i go into those concerns i do want to thank you for all you've done over the last year during this pantemic i know it's been extremely difficult you've had terrible decisions to make and you i know you've done your best to to work through all that i want to thank you for that

088i do fully support us returning back to five days of school but with the proper precautions in place i'm a parent of three kids in the district and they're all younger than the age of 12. um both the cdc and the the american academy of pediatrics both recommend that they the students wear masks now you know the cdc even updated their guidance today so that everyone um can be safe especially with the delta variant that's around i've recently discussed this with my pediatrician and he supports wearing masks and he was kind of con he was kind of concerned that we weren't in that position in the first place we really need to protect our kids with these mitigation strategies and we should be really working as a community helping our neighbors try to end this

089pandemic as quickly as possible hopefully that vaccine will be available for my kids soon and now and i please caution you to exercise exercise caution so your schools maintain these masks until it's available to the rest of the population i thank you for for all you've done for our kids [Applause] [Music] sandy cats lower providence i am the very proud parent of team of acting grads and i have a beautiful daughter that is a rising 9th grader and she happens to have the attribute of down syndrome i'd love to thank the board for your support of dei and i'd like to ask the board to vote in favor of the job description for the director of dei i'd also like to share my understanding of what equity is and what equity is not equity is

090not about giving everyone the same thing equity is also not about about providing one student more than another equity is most certainly not about teaching children to hate themselves because of the color of their skin equity is about addressing the whole child and giving each child what they need equity is teaching the necessary coping skills to the ap student who thrives on challenging work but struggles with anxiety so that she can work to her full potential equity benefits all of our kids all of our students strategies that are developed for special education students can also benefit other students who are not in specialized education those middle of the road students that we've often talked about perhaps most importantly when we utilize these strategies and help all our students work to their potential together our students

091learn to empathize and learn to work cooperatively in a way that supports others these are necessary life skills some will assert the children with iep and 504 plans get what they need just based on those plans but that is unfortunately only partially true ieps and 504s do not govern how these children are treated by other students much work needs to be done to ensure that these students are treated equitably i'd like to share a quote from a neighboring district downing town area school district which encompasses the benefits of dei schools that are inclusive quote schools that are inclusive inclusive and foster the whole child are better able to meet the wellness and academic needs of all students dei work creates a culture of kindness respect compassion and grace school-wide strategies that align wellness inclusion diversity

092and equity empower all students to meet their individual and unique goals end quote we don't need a survey to tell us that we need a dei director we already know there are students who do not feel safe or who feel worthless because of the color of their skin or their sexual orientation or their less than trendy close due to their economic circumstances or their struggles with a learning disability dei is not a program it's a work culture it's a mind and heart set that ensures that everyone feels included everyone feels supported and everyone thrives please let's keep the e in dei thank you again to the board for your efforts to create an office of diversity equity and inclusion so that we can learn about respect and celebrate our differences and i wasn't going to

093mention i'm going off script now i also co-chair the special education alliance and that is thanks to dr zerby the administrators dr angstadt and all of you on the board i have to ask you to wrap it up okay i just want to say we have a page on our website if you're interested in teaching your children about autism about down syndrome call one of the sca parents thank you [Applause] karen lutz we're sister township i wear my mask it works because i like to taste and smell [Applause] and for what it's worth i do not give permission to be recorded except by the facton school district i would like to thank the school board for the support of the director of the office of dei and i would ask the board to vote in

094favor of the job description i believe strongly in the need for a director now and of the office of dei in order for our school district to move forward and deal with some real issues surrounding a lack of understanding and compassion and heartless speech by some members of our school community i do not need to see data i live it every day and have seen with my own eyes how my son with a disability has sometimes been treated while attending methachton schools like tabling the vote is just stalling i have great concerns about the children of those community members who oppose the dei office and how they are influenced by their parents their children go to school with my son given the polarization and agitation in our community it is obvious to me that we

095are in greater need of this office more than ever before what we are seeing on social media and in the community proves my point filling this this position is the right thing to do and to do it sooner rather than later and anyone who needs information on autism i would direct them to the autism speaks dot autism society of america and autism speaks thank you [Applause] good evening ramona dela rosa worcester township first i'd like to thank the board for the support you've given to our district this past year though we have each faced individual and varied challenges it has been a difficult year for all of us i appreciate your time and efforts to make hard decisions while keeping the safety of our students top of mind i also appreciate your support for dei

096and ask that you vote in favor of the job description for a supervisor of dei there is important work that needs to be done in our district i know that because my family and many others have first-hand experience for us it isn't about the results from a survey it's the reality of the challenges we face every single day and the hard work we do to advocate for our children it's the reality of having your child relentlessly bullied into self-destruction it's the reality of having your child called the r-word it's the reality that some teachers understand how to make their classrooms inclusive for all and others who don't think your child belongs in their classroom or on their team ieps don't fall into the laps of everyone who needs one and having an iep is not

097a golden ticket to getting the support you need for your child time is of the essence the work of building a more diverse equitable and inclusive environment will be a long-term effort but getting a strong leader in place and staffing the office should not be i believe it is critical to the success of the fact of the faction's dei effort to have a dedicated full-time supervisor leading the charge it is clear that this will be a challenging position and we need a candidate that is ready to rise to that challenge it is also clear that the district needs to be educating and communicating frequently clearly and decisively with the school community i am disheartened by the abundance of misinformation and confusion circulating in our community i really don't think the district or the board can

098over communicate the facts on this topic i appreciate the administration voicing the rejection of hate and discrimination in last week's meeting and hope you continue to do so in your words as well as in your actions there are so many benefits to creating a more diverse equitable and inclusive environment for our kids exposure to diversity helps prepare students to navigate and become a productive part of an increasingly diverse world learning to communicate with those who are different is a critical skill needed to succeed embracing diversity leads to a reduced fear of difference and increased tolerance of others inclusion promotes increased self-esteem and a sense of belonging diverse work groups are more fact focused better at processing information and more innovative than homogeneous groups gaining a deeper understanding of those who are different from us increases

099our capability to have empathy listen to the language of dei inclusion by the simple nature of its definition means everyone it does not mean lifting one group up only to push another group down universal design for learning is a framework widely utilized in inclusive environments it improves and optimizes teaching and learning for all students it helps to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful challenging learning opportunities inclusion means all all are welcomed all are respected all are valued to fully participate universal means all equity acknowledges that biases and barriers do exist for some groups and individuals and must be addressed so that everyone has the support they need to reach their full potential there is no inclusion without equity and isn't that what we want our administration our board our teachers and

100our coaches to do for our kids to support all efforts to help them reach their full potential dei should not be what divides us it should be what unites us thank you [Applause] good evening michael ryan lower providence i'm speaking tonight in favor of the district's dei efforts including the jobs description as well as comments on the temporary administrative duties assignment that are both up for a vote this evening i would first like to address the need for these efforts at last week's meeting i couldn't believe my ears they hear a few comments from community members including we are making up a position and setting us up for a problem we are creating or there is no data saying that we need this position or even we are spending thirty thousand dollars to find us

101some problems let's provide some information addressing the needs that if you say aren't there i'll begin with two letters from dr zurby regarding dei a portion from the january 15th letter from dr zurby the district's mission and core values speak to the ideals of diversity equity and inclusion and is the perpetuating factor for this work to ensure a welcoming environment that allows each individual to learn lead and succeed i look forward to our collective efforts ahead and know that we can accomplish great things by working together a portion from the january 22nd letter from dr zurby to the community the mission of the methectomy school district is based upon the core values of our community among these nine core values is the tenet that we appreciate our diversity unfortunately there have been racist incidents in

102the recent past that vehemently go against everything we stand for as a school community let me be clear hateful speech of any kind is offensive and unacceptable it will never be tolerated in our schools recent incidences of zoom rating and bombing that apply these racist behaviors are counterproductive toward providing a safe learning environment for all we must all recognize that the inappropriate actions of some can have a direct and lasting impact on many end quote this is confirmation from the district's own superintendent for the need of the district's dii efforts some of you may be asking what about the data part let's take a look at the niche.com school district rankings that a few community members have been harping on for the past year the vactin school district currently has an a overall rating let

103me repeat that an a overall rating however there is room for improvement the first three rating criteria are academics in which we also received an a teachers which we received a b and diversity which we received to be with the latest teachers contract settled you can see the district's commitment to improving teachers pay and the other matters over the next few years so what else can a district work on diversity identifying an area that could use some improvement and working on those areas is exactly what we expect of our board and administration the other data the recent survey although the results are not yet public i can anecdotally add in speaking with members of the community who actually completed the survey they spoke of issues with their children or their students involving race religion special

104education lgbtqia just to name a few that last point leads to my final comment you don't have to take my word for it you have heard individuals speak again and again at public meetings with their own personal stories involving these areas where they've experienced discrimination or lack of inclusiveness although we or our own children may not have personally experienced this it doesn't mean it's not happening and we shouldn't be attacking those who have experienced it i have more but i'll wrap up quickly in regards to the temporary administrative assignment i hope the word temporary is true this needs to be a full-time position it should not be coming from anyone in this district i don't believe that anyone currently employed in this district has the experience in this area when it comes to hiring for

105this position i hope that the board is involved from day one to see every applicant that has applied and it's not just one or two administrators that are narrowing down the group thank you [Applause] all right there's oh i'm sorry go ahead [Music] providence township um i have two kids in the pacton including one that has special needs he goes to arrowhead firstly i want to thank the bode for the support of dei and i'm here to voice my support for the need for the dei supervisor it's our personal experience in our head and my fourth grade my then fourth grade experienced it where a first grader from my younger son's class came up to him and spoke about him to my fourth grader then my fourth grade until now he is now going to

106seventh will not tell me what he was told but he is still upset about it i can't believe a first grader would ever speak out of malice this is education we need to give our kids we need to give them this right now and stop what's going on i've been listening to all of these board meetings through all of these days and listening to the community come here and talk against this position but we can see from all the comments the need we have in this community it is a huge need and it needs to be a position focused on this [Music] we need to teach this to our kids now we need to start early and start now we can't have history repeat itself our community needs this position please please vote for this

107dei supervisor because our community needs it personal experience and many people have heard from we need this position in our school district and we need to start now waiting for an audit only stalls this we need it now thank [Applause] [Music] good you greg young where's esther thanks for the opportunity to speak with you tonight uh just i'll be pretty brief i wanted to cover the health and safety plan as well as the dei administrator um i think it goes without saying last year was a was a challenging year everybody's a volunteer parents board members we're asked to do the impossible make decisions with very little data stick to those decisions and you know deal with the consequences if we learned anything from last year i think we we figured out that we needed to

108make decisions a little quicker and i think the failure to make decisions really impacted the children in a negative way whatever happens this year with regulations guidance covid new variants i just ask that the board as leaders make decisions quickly but also have the flexibility to change those decisions not on a dime but no wait and see politics and and just and just do what's best for the children you know when we talk about topics here i think the criteria is at least for me what's in the best interest of the children all children and then how is what how is what we're deciding on going to improve our school ranking and the ben and the educational experience for all of our all of our kids for the dei administrator i think no one can

109deny that the need for diversity equity and inclusion i did like what mr ambrose recommended in focusing on the d and the i first for me personally i just haven't been able to get a definition on what equity is sometimes you hear definitions that equity is you know equal results where equality is everyone starts out equal i'm not even sure if that's uh an accurate description but i need someone to define what what equity is because there's some dangerous examples of what equity is i did like what a few uh speakers ago she had a very um rosy view of what equity is i like that definition um you know i i think this this role is important um but i do feel like it's a bit rushed i think we need the results of

110the of the uh survey you know we paid for we paid for the survey let's get the results we decided on a process let's follow the process of a process oriented person um perhaps the results will modify the job description might be an opportunity there [Music] now fully staffed position let's figure it out if that's if that's the right thing we need uh certainly we've heard many you know heartbreaking examples tonight of of uh you know people behaving very poorly in this district i think society as a whole has major issues i don't know if we're going to be able to administrate our way to a utopian environment but um you know we can try but i think as in as as as important this is i think we need to follow the process and

111uh and make our decisions in a very prudent way thank you [Applause] [Music] joe written house load of prominence uh thank you for the board for the time to speak today i want to speak where we have two voting items one being the health and safety plan the other is the creation of the dei administrator position on the adoption of the health and safety plan i want to speak in support of the plan currently up for the vote uh and i want to but more importantly i want to know that the vote the spirit of this uh proposal is what's at the center of this conversation it says the district's primary focus is to provide in-person education for students grades k through 12. uh so the plan also lays out good mitigation efforts uh parents

112and students and staff's choice all of these should be applauded supported however within uh talked about earlier we were very slow on how to respond to different things in the pandemic and i said within this plan i worry that there is a ability to backtrack or to pass responsibility off to other organizations and i want to encourage the board to when it comes to health and safety plan to focus on that uh primary focus that they put into the words um no one in this community knows better than its residents what this community needs i think it's vital that you stay focused on this and i asked that any change not come from monco uh uh public health office or the pde or pennsylvania department of health i ask that when it comes time if

113something changes and you need to make a change it come back for a vote not be automatic and say hey if we're going to go if we're forcing ourselves back into virtual um i think we should have another vote before we do that secondly on the dei administrative position the three rules of power are how do you give somebody power what do they do with that power and how can you take it away the creation of this position has will indefinitely have long rippling effects on the district this position has the chance to shape curriculum teaching student life has the potential uh to influence how millions and millions of dollars are spent the position the board is voting on is a very very serious matter and it's worth serious time to vet and constrain the

114position so it's appropriate none of this means that position isn't necessary it simply means you know to the contrary it may be vital however at this time the public has zero data in support of this no data from the equity audit no data from the survey no information from the data has how it has been compiled or its raw numbers there is currently zero information available to the public to justify why we are going barreling towards a 9-0 vote uh on this position so i worry that simply rubber stamping this without this data is going to blow this up even more without dialogue we can't see what will be considered success for this position what will be considered failure uh at best it'll be counterproductive and it'll set this position up to fail or at

115worst it'll just make the situation that we've heard here from multiple parents tonight worse so if this is of the utmost importance the data behind it is equally of the most important and must be transparent um pardon me i want to just read this quote it's a little off with respect to dei any update that states any update that comes from the superintendent or just simply says that they have provided information what information was provided what conclusions can be drawn what actions if any should be taken or proposed overall any update from the board seems to raise more questions than answers once again highlighting the need for a new perspective these are the words of the current board uh you know half a decade over half a decade ago this was your consideration for multiple

116things we need the data we need the information this is your position so i'd say hey let's pause let's get the information we have let's come back that's how i want to speak on the di position more information is nothing but good so i i hope that we get more data coming our way thank you [Applause] hi i'm julie stern delphiner lower providence township first i would like to thank and acknowledge the board for all of their hard work and dedication to the students and staff of the bethacton school district and all the citizens of lower providence and worcester townships the past 16 months have been some of the most challenging times many in our community have ever faced this board has worked tirelessly often with inadequate and at times conflicting recommendations to provide education

117to our students while trying to assure their health and safety of the children and the adults entrusted with their care this balance has been precarious especially in the face of pressure from all sides from community members none of you thought that this was what you were signing up for when you ran for office yet you have each risen to the challenge that has faced us all thank you for all that you have done and will continue to do for our students in the upcoming year i have been a member of this community since 2004 and i've had a student in affected schools since 2012. my child is now in high school i'm a proud first generation american the child of a refugee fleeing the horrors of nazi germany and the grandchild of those persecuted by

118the pogroms of eastern europe each of us in this room have our own family stories to tell the events and life stories that shape who we are whether we are recent arrivals or have been on these shores for generations whether we are barely holding it together or whether we have excesses to share regardless of the color of our skin the church the synagogue the temple or the mosque we attend and regardless of how we identify or who we love we all have something to learn from each other and we all have something to teach each other none of us are perfect we are all better people when we recognize the struggles of our neighbors and bring each of us along and up to an improved society i sat in this room last week horrified by

119the hateful rhetoric of members of this community directed at this school board the need for an office of diversity equity and inclusion with a strong director could not be more obvious let me be abundantly clear critical race theory is not taught in the k-12 curriculum it is a graduate level theory discussed in law school however civics citizenship history from a variety of perspectives and critical thinking are important topics included in an age-appropriate way throughout primary education in this country yet we must and can do better to recognize and celebrate the differences and strengths that each and every one of our students bring with them to the classroom it's not just reading writing and arithmetic we are providing our children with the skills to succeed in life to be a kind and thoughtful people and to

120be productive members of society diversity training has been included in countless businesses universities medical systems and industries throughout the united states for years because it is needed whether we want to admit it or not discrimination does exist in our society every time i attend diversity training as part of my job as a physician i learn something i learn not just about other members of my community but i learn more about myself and how to improve the care that i provide for my patients and their families by being sensitive to differences and how things may be perceived unintentionally sorry i have to ask you to wrap up okay i'm sorry this is true for our children as well and for this reason i ask for your support for dei [Applause] [Music] good evening uh good evening

121sean cadogan lower providence thanks a lot to the board for all the work that you guys have done to this point um i am for the dei position i also want to highlight some of the things that highlight why the dei position is multifaceted my wife and i taught our children self-pride we expose them to inventors and leaders doctors lawyers pharmacists rocket scientists and executives of color and not just in february for black history month dei can help especially with those who racially socially sexually or gender wise have been bullied and taunted by students who are no better than them it can help them feel more comfortable and safe with who they are my wife and i have also volunteered in the facton over the years it also affects sports that some people are actually

122overly concerned with if you think you have a divided team that has a chance of winning guess what you're wrong a lot of people have been getting fed in their virtual world at home with two sides of the fence we're about to all come together so this is very critical at this point dei is proactive if done right and guidance counselors and psychologists are more reactive more after the fact schools have an average of one guidance counselor per 455 students across the u.s we don't have enough guidance counselors for reactive work i am for a full dei position to address these issues both proactively and holistically thank you very much anyone else for public comment on board attraction items we'll see let me put my glasses on okay good evening i'm dr darby janine darby

123as everybody has mentioned today i'm a resident of lower providence i'm here again to express my support in improving the position of the director of dei i shared my family's experience the last time i was here and i'm not going to do that today but i'm just going to talk about a petition that was circulated in support of the placement of this role for the 2021 2022 school year over 800 signers and ryzen currently participated so i'm going to share some comments from the fact and alums students parents and community members that were shared on the petition comments so bear with me as a graduate of two years i can attest that my facton is in desperate need of some diversity and inclusivity guidance as well as the removal of the racially insensitive and ignorant

124mascot warrior which is really just a caricature of a native american i want my children to be educated in progressive district that recognizes the value of diversity and takes action against discrimination i'm signing because i support the need for this type of position within a school that i attended many years ago i am a parent in the facton school district who wants a better future for my child my kids will one day be entering the fact in middle and high school and as it stands today there needs to be major improvements and inclusivity this is a step in the right direction this is a much needed change at my fact and to ensure that all students feel welcome and have the best possible education our schools should be safe for all students it's so important

125for the students teachers and staff to understand that their experiences are not the same as those of others our diversity is beautiful please act on this immediately my daughter has faced racism within the school this is a proactive measure measure for change that is definitely necessary this is so important it's a great step in the right direction for change in this district which is long overdue our district is incredibly diverse with black white brown and asian diversity is a blessing and should be celebrated and integrated into the curriculum supporting and educating our students there's more methacta needs someone who will protect minority students and ensure equality for all change needs to happen all students in our schools deserve to be treated fairly and equally this position is one of the many steps that are necessary

126for this to happen change is long overdue in this district enough said yes we are waiting for the results of the equity assessment survey but guess what that's not a show stopper the results are to provide some data for the director of dei to work with there's so much more that needs to be done than reviewing the survey data which i understand had a low turnout and was mostly completed by students we cannot make the necessary changes in our schools if we don't have a dedica dedicated leader to guide the administration principals staff teachers and help implement the di practices so again i support the position of the dei director and as the matthackton school district tagline states learn lead succeed together [Applause] anthony lower providence township so thank you uh for all your efforts

127in the dei initiative and bringing that to the forefront and all you've done over the last school year to ensure that our kids ultimately got back into school and you know receive the education as best as possible aside from that i'll try to keep this pretty short because i actually think my children would be better up here at this podium speaking and really sharing the most simplest of lessons that we all learned from a very early age of you know we all want to be treated as we want ourselves to be treated we want to treat others that way too right that golden rule and i think at the heart of that is where dei initiative stands and i do feel it's important that we support the dei director position because in reality i mean

128that is all of us what is represented by dei it's equity it's diversity it's inclusion right it's the good the bad the ugly you know the mistakes we made the things we do want to do better you know it is all of that so why be opposed to the differences we have and why not celebrate those differences and also challenge ourselves a bit learn maybe what we could do better learn what we do well you know so i think that's really at the heart of it personally i've experienced a director you know recently coming on board within our firm it was you know definitely needed to to create different roles to make sure we're seeing opportunities come across where maybe they haven't been historically with growth in our firm um but i also see the

129struggles because that was an individual promoted internally not somebody coming from external not somebody who could bring a unique perspective on that role they're also burdened with you know the typical you know other responsibilities of their job so that's why i see having a dedicated person in that role is is very critical because they can focus the conversation much better than i am of course and help us to make good decisions come to reasonable uh understanding see where we're all coming from and i i do think it's important that we vote on that and approve uh the dei director position so thank you for your time and good luck with the decisions [Applause] hi nicole bought our worcester township i had something written tonight i'm not even going to read off of it as far

130as the health and safety plan i support it i have a kindergartener or he's going into first grade now who they weren't allowed snack at school so he would come home after eating a good breakfast in tears because he was so hungry so i'm really happy that you're making masks be optional for children um as far as the dei i just want to say that i'm concerned that people are putting a lot of faith into this being the answer my daughter we came to work or we lived in worcester but um she went to private school i put her in methacan in second grade and her very first year there she was threatened by another child it got to a point where it escalated that he was going to stab her my child is not

131different she's not she doesn't have a disability or anything like that and the teachers and principal they handled it amazingly and it was my job i felt as a parent to explain to her that there are some children with mental health issues which i think is the bigger picture here and there are some children that struggle for whatever reason and she has to be strong and i felt that that was my job as a parent so people are putting a lot of faith in a dei officer to come in and create this equality for everybody but i think everybody should know that that's not going to fix everything my child was bullied again last year in seventh grade she has braces so she's always brushed her teeth after lunch they took her toothbrush they rubbed

132it around a trash can the teachers stepped in after i asked them to they did it in a way that the other kids didn't know that you know that the teachers knew but it's i think the job is the teachers that are there every day interacting with the kids to listen to the parents and i feel like the whole society as we just said here between social media and everything else that's where our kids are learning this from it's where they're learning the hate speech it's parents and we all need to do better with that i can't speak to dei officer again my concern is that people are putting a lot of faith that that is going to change and i just want everybody to know again that my daughter experienced terrible things but it's

133not the school's fault i you know i just think that it makes me nervous for everybody to put a lot of faith in that and i agree that we should really look at whatever the research was that was done because maybe that job description does need to change maybe mental health needs to be made a part of it because i think that is a huge issue i think that's the enemy here i think there's no coping skills that are taught to children and that's not just a teacher's job that's that's at home too and i feel like that is missing you know there's no mentality anymore that people you know you build yourself up it's it's okay we're a victim and we feel bad and that was the thing that i pushed to my daughter

134was i know you're scared now to go to school i know that you're hurt because of what these kids did but you're going to be better than that and you're not you're you're not going to like wither away and do nothing you know you're going to stand up for yourself so thank you i just want it to be put out there that i don't think it's the only answer maybe it is for certain parts of it but it's not the only answer thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah whatever all right my name's ty darby uh i guess i'm a resident of lower providence um i'm speaking today to push in favor of the di office so my thing is education is elevation so with the dei office they can help educate the children of mcdacton

135to elevate their thinking to incorporate everybody like include everybody be equitable towards everybody and understand the diversity of each individual and not treat them differently as they would other people but they also have to understand the charac different characteristics different upbringings of everybody else so to have the di office means it means that everybody can have a better environment in my factoring because i can speak on that because that was not the case when i was there i graduated class of 2020 so it's not that long ago but yeah i i would really like for you guys to push the di office because my two younger siblings are still in the wagner school district i want them to have the same experience as me and my older sister thank you [Applause] [Music] all right i'm

136going to say that concludes our public comment oh okay if there's anyone else who's interested in speaking if you could at least make your way to the back of the room so we have a sense good evening board members my name is timothy rhodes i'm from lower providence township a couple things i want to hit on one of the board members last week was talking about a american academy of pediatrics i'd like to point out they are sponsored by pfizer on their own website so again i don't know what kind of money you're getting from them because i don't know what boards you're all on because there's like three groups you all oversee each other i think it's all ridiculous um but i do also want to point out that covid as a whole for

137kids because i heard somebody say that's not true trust the science i do want to point out that unfortunately 337 kids did die from kovid since 2020 of march of last year and that information is very basic and simple to find and is actually on the cdc website i can spell that for you c d c so if you can go to that website i don't know if you got the technology don't know so if you can maybe get a license on there i don't know but you can sit there and look it up and find the information if i'm seeing and hearing all this and realizing that i'm putting my kids through an area that can't teach you know basic math how to look something up that's a complete failure on you guys okay

138as a school board it's ridiculous okay basic math that's all i'm asking for okay the other thing i want to point out is this diversity thing that you guys really want to push for i mean if you guys are really for it i'd like to have a show of hands of which board members would step down right now immediately in the name of diversity as a record shows not one of the colonizers want to sit there and raise their hands for diversity thank you [Applause] channeling my word sister township i just want to speak on the dei uh permanent position first i want to clear a few confusion or misinformation a few other speakers just mentioned someone just mentioned almost every workplace has dei i want to make it clear it's not d e i

139it's d and i i know most fortune 500 company other big corporates they have d and i program not not having e because like as greg young said we're really not sure about what e means equity means someone says equity means an equal outcome but we're here for equality equal opportunity another thing i think i i heard a lot of heartbroken stories from people of color with disabilities i fell for that um and also a mom also mentioned that she her kid didn't have any she was white and she also encountered bully problems i think a lot of people are confusing the problems with the solution support of dei the dni the concept is what everybody here is for we want to have a diverse and inclusive community here but is that the solution to

140how to hire a full-time permanent position to do this other people also proposed that we should have more uh closing close to the students counselors working on individual problems to be a personal example to show them how to do it instead of having an administrative role to do maybe have more bureaucracy instead of solving the real problem and also i also wonder if there's a systematic discrimination in my facting if there is what on fact and policy is this i'd like to know if there is this needs to be corrected or all the cases just individual discrimination because we're all human we're all sinners we all make mistakes we all have discrimination one one kind of the other people living in the city disagreement people in the country people in the northeast discriminate the rest

141of the country all kinds of stuff it's just human nature and this needs to be addressed i just don't think we can generalize this as a systematic discrimination and also i want to be clear many of us who opposed to have the permanent dei position is not against the special education or people with disability we are we're for them but the what we oppose is the way dei has been carried out in my factory in the name of the d and dei and they promote crt anti-white anti-police socialism we're here to oppose a radical left-wing indoctrination of our children okay for those who speak no i'll read a few uh references from the receptive resource list on the massachusetts dei resource the book titles okay there are so many book titles i should read two

142books for you something happened in our town that's okay malcolm added i could get stopped by the police just because i'm black even if i don't do anything wrong that's not fair josh said what if it's a white man in the car would the police have shoot him shot him they probably wouldn't have even stopped stopped his car said his father sometimes white people are treated better than black people said his mother but it's not right everybody should be treated fairly i think this is just to teach the kids this is the way it is you're being black you're victim you're a white your oppressor this is crt and another book not an idea a book about why i have to ask you to wrap it up now okay racism is a white person's problem

143okay let's have complain to have anti-bully in our school perhaps we need to teach our kids resilience as well elena roosevelt said no one can make you feel in fear inferior without your consent [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right i think that does it for public comment at this time we're going to take a brief 10-minute break i'm going to start the timer so that we'll come back but i think everybody needs a chance to stretch their legs we'll return bonnie nice to meet you thank you [Laughter] [Music] yes no i wrote everything you if i wasn't perfect how are you is have some drinks every for time [Music] great [Applause] um [Music] anyway um there you go thank you is are you all right we're ready to get started again may i have a motion

144to approve the special meeting minutes for june 9th 2021 the work session meeting minutes for june 15 2021 and the regular meeting minutes for june 22 2021 as attached mr navrat a second from mr mcginnis any comments from the board seeing none all those in favor motion carries 8-0 fiscal items mr brooker thank you madam president tonight for your approval we have the list of bills treasures report there are no budgetary transfers under the eagleville project is the approval of optimal performance balancing for tab and commissioning and for change orders the last change order uh is had the tbd updated to be eighty-five thousand dollars for the hvac units um the high school project also has four change orders for approval the hour ahead product has the approval indian valley design for tab and commissioning

145as well as expanding the agreement with hill's carnes to a total of fifty four thousand nine hundred nine dollars and finally to approve fidavia to move forward with the design phase for the roofing project at eagleville elementary and building the and building automation system at skyview arcola for the 2020 projects thank you mr bricker does anyone want to take any of these fiscal items separately mr mcginnis uh yes i'd like to uh take d eagleville project separately please okay any others all right can i have a motion to approve all of the fiscal items with the exception of 9d mr winners in a second miss purdue comments from the board all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries eight zero may have a motion to approve 90 the eagleville project items miss reese is

146there a second mr winners uh comments from the board mr mcginnis uh tim if i'm reading this correctly the uh item number two uh the thirty five thousand four hundred sixty dollars and four cents the relocation of the rainwater conductors is that the same issue that was inside the wall that we talked about last week then that we were going to address with kcba uh for since it should have been on the original bid docs and it wasn't yes that's the same item we discussed then why are we voting to pay for it tonight it is approving the work it's not recovering the cost associated with it in either way the work would have been done either in the bidding originally or that would be now the the area that would need to be discussed

147with kcbea or the engineer which would be more engineering would be the markups associated with those items but it would have been more it would have been much more cost effective if it was in the original bid docs than what we're paying right now it definitely would not have had the markups associated with a yes okay so when we approach kcba well let me take that back have we approached kcpa about this we've told them but we're concerned about that we have an issue with it we haven't replied no okay thank you um i just wanted to double check on five i know we talked about it but wasn't that in case the heat to rent the heating units wasn't that if we needed to or have we now determined we need to so the

148estimated delivery of the units will be middle of october so we will need to rent them um they'll start to have to be put in middle of august so that we can have the hvac for the beginning of the school year this projection takes you from the beginning of middle of august to basically the middle of december which covers all the time frame and estimated plus a little bit as the units come out we'll get a credit down and that'll write down so that's this is kind of like the maximum amount any other comments mr navarrette yeah just to follow up on drew's line of questioning um both item 92 and 93 both fall into that same category right we're talking about wall hydrogen spigots that are visible on the exterior of the building uh

149it's it's the it is this the piping that was on the plan design the original plan i'm sorry the original plans of the building should have been captured the question that is and why kcba has not gotten into this it's a decision as to was it a kcba issue or a more engineering issue yeah understood so what i'm going to ask then is that we come back to property next month david with with some answers on this thank you so then it is possible to approve these items this evening but still recoup the costs in the conversations with kcva we could recoup the call which it's possible i'm not saying we will it's possible because the other side also has to agree to that that we could recoup the markups the work would still be

150done either way but the markups would be the items because even if they had put it in it would have been they would have been moved either way and that cost would have been built into the original budget but the markups would not have been [Music] can we make sure kcba is at the property committee meeting sure thank you anyone else okay all those in favor of all the items listed under 90. i promotion carries 8-0 personnel items dr sergini thank you madam president for your consideration this month we have the following personnel items one resignation administrator this is an edition from last week tim merch from the position of supervisor of special education we thank tim for his service to methachton school district and we wish him well in his career pursuits two resignations

151professional we thank linda seibert and victoria beatrice for their service to the students of methachton school district we wish linda well in her retirement and victoria well in her career pursuits one resignation classified for retirement we thank marianne pastino for her service to the students of mathacton school district and wish her all the best in her retirement six employments professional including one additional from last week veronica laguna general music teacher at arcola four employments classified including one additional from last week retroactively approving charles jacobs as a summer student worker at facilities one job description administrative one change of status professional one uncompensated leave administrative two uncompensated leaves professional including one additional from last week christina catone instructional intervention specialist at arrowhead two uncompensated leaves classified both of these are additions from last week a series

152of supplemental contracts including the addition of contracts for the kindergarten ready program and a supplemental contract for summer iep writing and two additions to the district approved volunteer list thank you thank you dr sorgini does anyone want to take any of the items under 10 separately okay um [Music] then i will take a motion to approve i was kind of waiting for somebody to come in with that one but nobody okay so can i have a motion to approve all the items under personnel with the exception of 10 i miss reece is there a second miss drummond comments from the board um just a quick question mr sergini yeah uh dr sergini dr regina did answered most of my questions last week but i wanted to know where obviously now we need to fill mr

153merch um but where are we in terms of getting ready for school what what more vacancies do we have is my question we're moving forward with the supervisor of special education position as well as the arcola principal position we also have several teaching positions instructional assistant positions and pca positions that we are moving forward with as well and refresh my memory i don't know why i need it refreshed after six years but it's always a tricky time of year so when since we don't have a board meeting again until august and um we just will we'll have those positions listed for august and we will and then we just kind of and they'll be before you for your approval in august okay so if someone is starting like the next meeting is what oh not

154the work session but the next voting meeting is after in-service starts is it not or no it is right before insurance i think that's right before in service starts okay so those people just kind of officially wait till that night they do okay all right thank you any other comments all those in favor of the personnel items with the exception of 10i motion carries 8-0 may i have a motion to approve item 10-i mr mcginnis the second mysteries comments from the board i'm gonna oh can i yes go ahead so i'm just going to start because i think i might probably be one of the more different people perspective that i'm going to bring to this i just want everyone to know i've worked with a lot of people in this audience a lot of

155people that are watching i my whole core is from the beginning of the time i believe in inclusion and working for the children i mean that's just who i am that's my core being my concern is the process i am not questioning diversity queen inclusion i believe in it again it's my core the process that i have concerns with is we came in and we wanted an audit we we put this gentleman dr campbell in we created a committee of 30 people you all went together we did this questionnaire i haven't seen the audit it didn't come i am the chair of education nothing came through me so i'm concerned because we i hear both sides um and i understand and i hear both of you i hear the stories i meet with people one-on-one

156um it bothers me that we didn't present the audit it does bother me because i believe that we sent a questionnaire out and we provide we got a lot of subjective feedback from all stakeholders but the objective data that we had asked dr campbell to do was to really analyze our school district to really look at gather all the information analyze it decide and then present it to us so that we can act on it and you know i didn't see it we didn't see anything as far as the school district structure how is hr performing how is pupil services performing guidance special education athletics activities where's our curriculum how's technology facilities communications professional learning and continuous improvement and with that how did we perform as leaders how did the teachers perform has a support

157staff before him and how did the staff perform so it's hard for me because in our all careers we have to present of the audit with where the strengths are because you know what we all want to know where our strengths are i think this administration and this board has worked tirelessly with communities such as the sca to put amazing programs in if you saw that list that dr zurby presented it was phenomenal we need to know our strengths the soar program mtss that touches all children there are so many things that go on the hr process we have an amazing top dollar approach to hr i will tell you for the past three years we have brought in all stakeholders in to the process we get everyone involved we get all feedback it's like

158a multi-step we have no information if we address diversity equity inclusion in our hr process so it's about getting the needs also so where is our strengths where are our needs where is the summary with the summary there should be goals that we should be focusing on it should be a recommendation of level of support i'm okay and absolutely support that we should have a coordinator but i also think like you said there is not just a one stop just putting him in like there's in services there is sending maybe hr to training you know there is on hands coaching there is observation with report there's teachers on assignment and coaching i just felt like we we i hear the frustration of the community because we didn't present the audit that we put all our

159community together to do so i never saw it i never saw it so i believe in this i believe our community needs this but i feel like we fell short in delivery and that's and that's my honest truth so um i just want to really share that because i think we've done such amazing strengths i think every one of these administrators and leaders and teachers that's what the purpose is in public education is provide diversity education inclusion equity and if we need to continue training them and we need to identify it i just that's where my frustration is is that we don't i don't even have an audit to say where are our focuses should be and where are our strengths because we have a lot of strengths and i think we get caught off

160guard by feeling the negative statements and feeling off put by it that's all so again i am that's my core for the past 25 years what i do for a living is this i just think we did not deliver to our community the audit that we put a whole community together with so that's that's just what i needed to say so i apologize [Music] [Applause] i i appreciate you sharing that um so my understanding of the timeline of this process um and you know for those who are more closely involved with it please correct me if i misspeak but my understanding was that we approved a year ago that we were going to pursue establishing an office of dei and to is my understanding that it was never predicated upon the results of the equity

161audit and the audit as far as i understand it and dr zerby please correct me if i'm wrong here is scheduled to be coming out but it's not designed to be the the driving force behind establishing this position yeah madam president i think um this just listening to people's comments and uh from the public certainly from members of the board and and the the uh i think there's a misconception about what the audit was and wasn't um it you know obviously when if we look at the word audit in and of itself from a perspective of the annual audit that we do with the with our business office on an annual basis that looks at you know a lot of details across a broad spectrum of of different services and it does exactly what i

162believe miss cancer was referring that she would have hoped to have seen when dr campbell presented uh his uh vision for an equity audit he was really talking about conducting a survey and and the survey was at best a a set of responses based on the questions that were asked but not necessarily a reflection of the work that our administrators do i do or our teachers do from from our perspective only so it it's not like they're you know that they're looking at at hard facts uh hard data to come back and say this is these are these are your strengths these are your weaknesses and and that is typically as ms cancro had mentioned typically how we we do make recommendations and and so the confusion here maybe it's not confusion it's just maybe

163how it was all all being discussed at the time uh we may have taken away from those conversations something different and that's probably where some of this you know confusion is at this point at least that's that's the perception i'm getting it at this moment because uh you know there's nine of us uh or 10 of us on the board here that you know sat through those presentations uh and and had the discussions back in august when i made the initial recommendations and we know that um you know i i had a i had a a proposal at that moment in time and i think we all kind of took a pause at that at that thing i said let's let's just hold a second let's get an outside expert in let's take it let's

164take a broader look at things and and what we did do and what we did accomplish is we got feedback from a broad spectrum of members of our community our our student community our staff community our our external community and and we use that information to give me feedback about what needs to be considered as part of a starting point for position of diversity equity inclusion in the district i i think there was a number of comments from members of the public that made reference to uh you know this isn't a uh this isn't the the solution it's not like if we put this in place you know all matters of or challenges for dei go away that's really not my belief and and certainly if anyone believes that that's what we're trying to accomplish

165here um they're naive but i really think that um you know there needs we need we need to start in a place we certainly need to present the information that we that we got from uh the survey but the challenge that you need to know is we had a timeline with all that and then august 4th my administrative team is getting presented that data so we would you know we don't we don't normally present things to the public until we understand because we need to understand what it is that um the information is suggesting to us so that we can also be well prepared and at least apprised of that so so understand that you know the timing of this may not be perfect either but but certainly process i i i understand that and

166i understand the confusion um because that's not how we normally operate and on the flip side you know jet miss cancro just mentioned she wasn't part of the you know the dei committee i wasn't part of the dei committee we all can't be part of the committee because then that would be a board meeting but i thought i looked at the survey a different way i thought the survey just to give you know i heard people say we didn't pay all this money for a survey we didn't pay all this money for a survey we paid the money for dr campbell to run some meetings and do other things as well the survey was one part of it i looked at the survey as what are some things we need to look at that we

167didn't know we needed to look at i think everybody knows that um dei looks at one part of it and i i thank uh our retired teacher messianic she did a wonderful job helping us understand dei and that's what we haven't done a great job with yet because that's why we're doing this because i think there is confusion around dei and i do think our resources that we're providing are not are not um all of the resources that are needed yet and some of them do need to be weeded through and that's why we need this but quickly to just kind of piggyback on what messianic said and i'm not an expert on this at all either but part of it is dealing with issues that arise you know individual issues that is definitely part

168of it because it's tricky and then you have the professional development part of this we received some emails from teachers that say i need help with this as an educator i need help for example i haven't been given all of my training in this area yet because we're always learning as uh one of the people mentioned who's a physician that she has to learn um who works at chop but but anyway i was you know an example is i was given a very informal training it was if you're available you can go and luckily i happened to be free after school and i went to this training and it was about the use of pronouns and i had a student come to me this year telling me that she that they would like this pronoun

169used and i was so grateful i had that training and by chance i took this training i was just happened to be lucky enough and my room became a safe place for this student and i'm so grateful i went to that training but all of my colleagues and all educators need that training so part so back to that so i appreciate i understand what you're saying jen that but i looked at that survey as how to help us with what kind of professional development we need what kind of um all element all all students are given lessons that are character related you know we've all learned that since kindergarten you know different things but what kinds of things do we need how do we do it the best way with also making sure we fit

170in matt you know everything else so that's what how i looked at the survey i do respect people's concerns that we haven't seen it yet but you know my one concern that i have i support this fully but my one concern is i think we always have to be careful we were a little and we've discussed this at meetings um in the past we kind of had cut our admin a lot you know when recession came and we're finally building it back up with uh you know curriculum supervisors and an assistant superintendent so we're we've built our admin back up and needed or not the dei position is going to be the busiest the busiest the first second year there's a lot to be done because our just just our world you know so my

171concern is somehow not temporary that's not what i'm calling it but and it it still fits it doesn't matter this job descriptions can still be approved the way it is but my concern is no matter who we find and i appreciate the couple people that said it's got to be the right person not just someone that's around you know um that we make sure that person is versatile because they are going to have to do other things in the future what i mean by that is you know education is fluid and budgets are fluid so they need to also have others you know skills that if there's their job is not a 365 day a week job forever i don't know what that means so that's just something i say to be careful when we

172get there but as far as i'm concerned you know last question i will have and i asked uh dr zurby this i mean it's not like methachton is um i think someone said progressive like it was a bad thing but actually maybe i'm not gonna say late to the game but some people could say we're a little late to the game but i think we're about average in montgomery county in terms of dei i think dr zerby you can fill me in but there's about eight to 10 districts and i don't want to say the wrong thing because that are in the process of looking for a person like we are possibly or i don't know what i wasn't sure what you're push the wrong button sorry some districts in montgomery county already have this

173some are in the process like we are of discussing it is that is that correct that is correct i just want to say thank you first of all to the community of warchester lower providence over the last two meetings our first our return to impersonating so the last two meetings that i've attended i just want to say thank you to the community for being brave enough and making the time to also attend these meetings paying attention to what's going on and coming in whether you disagree with what you may have heard that the board is doing or what the administration is doing or whether you agree and you're in support of it i think sitting up here we appreciate it i think about it every day why do i sit up here i sit up

174here because i'm a parent i have two kids in the school district and i'm not going to go into everything else but when i came to my factory i was actually recommended to come to massachusetts um this district we moved into this district and in coming in i know the parents of mathan are very passionate very supportive very helpful always there i attended events and i always see parents there and i know these are full-time working parents they're lawyers they're physicians no matter what their occupation is i just know they always made time to be in the schools to support their schools whether it was working in a library whether it was working in the cafeteria no matter what they were at their home in home and school serving as classroom parents they support it

175and it was one of the things that pushed me to make the decision to sit up here to represent the school district as the school board director because i wanted to also make sure i gave my time just the same way all of you are giving your time to stay here and not just to listen to us but listen to others provide comments and input about the things we can do when we think about miss acting we're always striving i say striving to be better this district was recommended to me as a great school district and i stayed up here because i believe in this school district and i want to continue to make it better i heard one of the comments today as far as what we're doing with dei is risk mitigation i

176strongly believe that i was fortunate enough to be part of the participation with students in auditorium and ms acting that provided input about they were alumni and also parents and also current students that provided input on the things that ms acting can do to help them in their as far as life skills to progress to be able to work with others in college in the workforce they found a need these students took time out to sit in the auditorium with us to tell us what they learned from the curriculum and what they thought our curriculum needed when we look at our rankings diversity is something that we when we think about it we could really strive to do better in the beginning i know we sent out a brief survey to the high schools not

177just to the high schools but to other school principals just to find out what are they doing in the area of diversity what we received back the input from those building principles you could just tell it was diverse as far as each building was doing different things so you saw where some buildings could do a little bit more some buildings were doing a lot more and it's really like and i think erin mccoll called it there's so many programs that are available in ms afton but we may not be providing those programs to all our students at the same level when i think about diversity equity and inclusion or this initiative to that we embark in on i think it will really ensure that all our students at miss acting still support it each and

178every student student in our district is important to me and that's why i say i sit here to represent them i make time to represent them i make time outside of war meetings to to make sure that i am up to date to really be able to represent those students and i feel diversity equity and inclusion in our district will help us all will help our teachers also providing them resources that they need to really be able to address issues that come in day in and day out i actually was fortunate to sit in one of the committees for this and i think jen to your comment it will really address a lot of things when we think about community relations which is something that we see here when we hear the comments that come

179out from these meetings we can see we our community is a different in sprite of the skill when we think about it but i'm hoping having someone that's professionally trained and that's the key word here because when we started this i don't know how many of you started this journey with us when we started talking about diversity equity and inclusion we talked about having someone in the administration maybe coming in taking on the position doing the work what that meant that that person was going to be in a position while i'm working on their coming role full time we also knew that that wasn't going to work because diversity equity inclusion is something that you have to really focus on that individual has to be trained and so in short i support us going forward

180with this role i support a staff in the diversity equity and inclusion which we approved to go forward with just because i think we will all benefit every one of us every one of us sitting here every one of our children and our children to come will benefit from having this office i don't see as an office that will create division but i think with the right person in place that have the proper training to do this work it will put my factoring at a very different place and i truly support it [Applause] no i i i want to follow up and see her great job samara by the way um i think it is it although uh sometimes it's hard to sit up here and listen to everything it is good to see the

181community all out here expressing their opinion i will say though sitting here and listening one side clap the other side not clap and then the other side clap and the other side not clap it's divisive and i know there's stuff that people agree on both there's things that people have said on both sides that people would have agreed to but you don't clap and that's our problem it really is a problem and i see that as a problem i know that maybe not all so the the comment about equitable equity and equitable practices so i uh i looked into the abington school district who has a uh an officer i don't know if i have their exact job title here but something like that um similar and the basics uh the the discussion point here

182is equitable practices and in their comprehensive plan for the 2019 through the 2022 school year they talk about shared values and i think there was a couple comments about wanting to know what equity means and and really understanding what it means but if you talk about these shared values that abington has hopefully that's a starting point that we can build upon and i'm just going to read them real quick there's not too many public education providing opportunities for all children is the cornerstone of american society and essential for the future of our country diversity is a strength and an asset everyone can learn and learning is accomplished in different ways and at different rates every individual has human equal value a secure and safe environment and a peaceful conflict resolution are essential to learning and

183to society the commitment to excellence is essential and worth the effort a quality school district requires allocation of appropriate resources successful individuals and institutions actively engage in the process of reflection and improvement shared decision making and active participation strengthen organizations and communities the involvement of each school family and every member of the community is essential to the educational process and every individual needs to be prepared to function in a global society i don't know somebody can come up the courtesy floor and argue against those 11 points they're welcome to i believe in those 11 points so what they have done they don't have a definition of equity they have a committee that helps identify and understand the demographics of the group analyze data define equity and recommend vision for equity for the abington school district

184they analyze district policies and practices with equity lens and establish recommendations for revision as appropriate and they develop and recommend an equity action plan and policy for the school district and that's in areas of curriculum discipline academic achievement human resources opportunity and access professional development communication family engagement the school climate abington is one of the better school districts in pennsylvania um i think we're going down the right direction and i will one last point i will say one last point two actually one title nine is coming down the road it is going to be an issue for all school districts no matter what we do around anything it is as we've been threatened with lawsuits what happens in in america uh when we decide to use the legal system for every type of conflict and

185one of the things that i've been doing not reading so sam i'm listening on audible to a book called soul of america and the early section it talks about how teddy roosevelt was handling post construction and what to do about it and some of the things he said is unbelievable of what he said on the on my opinion the wrong side of history but the way he approached it and worked through the issues and identified that he needed to learn and develop is why teddy roosevelt is considered one of the better presidents we need to be able to look at our stuff at ourselves constructively at ourselves constructively and move on thank you [Applause] i should have gone before them just a couple quick notes on my side excuse me um you know we started

186this effort um i guess really as a country we were launched into this discussion um well over a year ago now um i love where it has taken us um somebody mentioned before they were first generation american im2 um it's interesting growing up as a light-skinned man with a hispanic last name that doesn't really speak spanish people just like everybody else said here right people make assumptions about you about because of the way you look or the color of your skin or uh the uh um the flavor of your last name um and paul i'm so glad that you brought up the clapping and not clapping because that was that may be the biggest observation that i'm going to take away from here tonight there was something that almost every speaker said that i could

187take from this meeting tonight right that i agreed with um where they hit me and said oh i hadn't thought of that it's every meeting right things like this position isn't going to solve all of our problems and as dr zerby said this certainly certainly is not meant to right this is an important first step as the result result of our first set of discussions to move this district forward and one of the things i said often when i first got up here four years ago was what kind of district do we want to be right what are we doing how are we making our programs our district our community better this falls exactly into line with that what kind of district do we want to be do we want to create that environment for

188our children that is safe that is accepting that is loving that is supportive i don't think there's anybody in this room that would disagree with that right it's all a matter how we get there this process was laid out back um when dr campbell first proposed it um we had kind of a late start it was difficult to do in the midst of covid over zoom but we got we got pretty much to where we are now um a little later than we would have liked but i think it's important to note there were three of us up here um on this board actually there were more of us from administration standpoint that were part of the the larger dei committee that was formed each of those groups got to see the results from the

189entire survey so let's be clear the administration has seen the results in some way shapes and form and some administrators have seen more of it than others some of us board members have seen more of it than others what's here in this job description um points to the major themes that we saw coming out of that survey it talked about curriculum issues we talked about human resources that talked about pupil services right the main functional operational groups within our school district um i think it's great dr zurby mr regina thank you for um placing this person kind of under mr regina and kind of outside what i would say are those normal functional groups because this is a person that's going to have to span multiple areas they're going to have to have a broad

190range of skills and it's going to have to be a pretty special person and as others have said specifically trained in these issues so i wholeheartedly support where we're going with this this is the kind of district that we want to be thank you [Applause] yeah i just want to thank everyone who spoke tonight and um you know just my understanding of the timeline is that this position was approved on july 28 2020. and the audit or the survey was conducted by dr campbell to sort of guide this job description that's before us tonight and guide the functions and duties of this position um and i also agree that i like that it's going to be under the assistant superintendent because this position is going to encompass so many facets of our school society really

191all of them and um so i'm in i'm in favor of this position i heard your stories and i you know heard your heartfelt thoughts and um i just uh i'm definitely in favor of this because i think this is going to raise up all of our students and create the school society that we want it to be [Applause] thank you mr winners for your comments earlier about the uh the clapping and it really kind of put into words something that i had been feeling and hearing people speak tonight and that there is a divisiveness to what we're hearing from the community and but we're we're also there's a lot of commonality i look back at the notes and what i wrote and i i'm hearing well i'm opposed to dei but i'm okay with

192d and i and and a lot of confusion around what exactly equity means and the fact that all of us who are i'm going to make a big assumption here we're all more educated than most of our students in our schools because we're all adults if we're struggling with identifying what this is and how to define it our kids are struggling too our teachers are struggling too and we need to give our students the resources to be able to make it through this world we need to give our teachers the resources to be able to meet our students where they are and help them to be successful when they leave our buildings when i look through this job description pretty much every facet of this job function will come through the board again they're going

193to work with the director of curriculum instruction and assessment to develop curriculum well guess what we approve curriculum here at this board they're going to talk about policy we have a policy committee policy changes are approved by this board all of the the practices that i see that that could potentially really shape our district will come through this board this is not a rubber stamp this is not a blank check that we are saying here's your job go ahead and do what you want with it there will be oversight there will be supervision there will be learning for all of us along the way um but i think the fact that that we are feeling so divided over this to me underscores the immense need for this position right now are there any other comments

194from the board before we move to a vote then just very quickly before we very quickly before we vote i just wanted to add a member of the community said it should not divide us it should unite us and i know that is not easy i know that that is not easy and we don't all have to agree but i hope that this is a step as she said not to divide us but to unite us because we all chose to live here we all care enough or we wouldn't be here so i really that is my my hope all right with that are we ready to bring this to a vote all those in favor of where am i item 10 i i i any opposed okay that's what i thought 8-0 the motion

195carries [Applause] [Music] curriculum and programs um we do have a couple of items on the agenda do we need dr walsh [Music] thank you madam president uh tonight i'm seeking approval of the participation of the facton school district in the following federal programs for the 21-22 school year title 1 part a title ii part a title 3 and then title 4 part a thank you dr walsh [Music] can i have a motion to approve the participation in the federal programs as stated on the agenda miss reece the second miss drummond comments from the board this can't grow oh i was i couldn't tell if you had to comment or if you're getting ready i'm not used to the new procedure okay all those in favor aye the motion carries 8-0 thank you dr welch i'm

196ready under policy we do have one thing um under first reading we have some minor revisions to the code of conduct so that will be voted on next month correct okay making sure i got that right so if any board members have any concerns or items that they'd like to discuss in the code of conduct we can get to that at next month's meeting when it's up for a vote um moving on under other we have no gifts and donations this month or trips to approve we have coveted resolution um and actually a handful of other things so let's does anyone want to take any of the items under others separately how about 13 g all right any others all right so then i will take a motion to approve all items under 13 um

197a through f mr mcginnis is there a second i do thanks miss purdue any comments from the board on these items i can't get used to the back and forth again ms drummond yeah i guess i just wanted to um it came up i i just wanted to um state that it's my understanding that this appointment as the temporary administrative administrator for the office of dei it is in fact temporary um and that there is a job posting that's going up and and candidates will be interviewed um so this is just it's because um candidates can be held at their job for 60 days and and there's certain you know process that has to be followed so just to get us started with the beginning of the school year that's why we're having this temporary

198administrator in the position that's correct mr neverett yeah um on the health and safety plan um i took off my glasses to read um on the health and safety plan um one of the things and i hope we don't get here right i hope you know everything willing that our uh you know our numbers stay where they stay low there are no upticks you know beyond what we're seeing right now and we don't get to the point of having to go back virtual again if we do go to that point um i guess my question is why would we go back with an asynchronous day on friday as opposed to just being in four or five days can you comment on that i think that when we were looking at the planning uh for this

199um we uh we basically stayed status quo from where we were at the end of last school year uh certainly um you know going five days a week is certainly appropriate the challenge that we will have if we decide to go five days a week you know we will need some time to do a ramp up um if we need to do that that changeover but but that's understandable so uh you know it certainly can be uh five days a week uh but it certainly can be with uh the asynchronous uh day as it's currently planned i think is important with either of these plans the continuity of instruction plan or the health and safety plan is to realize that this probably isn't the last conversation about all this stuff and what i'm and i'm

200sorry to say that you know we were starting to get into uh and this is from the from health experts as well we're starting to get into the the conversation about oh next year will be this it'll be that it'll be this and now you know you you see stuff peeling away and so likely you know we'll be visiting some kind of uh topic on about this matter probably in september again so that being i'm sorry that being said and so we can we can certainly make that you know we can make those instructional adjustments at that time because that you know if we like or we can make him the seat however we want to proceed if that's the wall of the board if it's not too disruptive i would suggest we just make

201the change this evening and just go forward with it and just make our commitment here but again i'm one of nine here so um everybody can have their say and if we want i'll come back and i'll move to amend that part of this motion oh actually i was going to ask mr summers if we do need to amend it because it's not in the motion itself it's in the attachment well the the motion is to approve it as presented okay um so it right it incorporates the attachment okay and i was just gonna say and i we won't get into the weeds about this but um and not get into the debate about the four versus five but i know i was a proponent of the four because that's what i taught but it

202was when we were hybrid because of the duality of that and that some children were home and some children were in and teachers were doing both and it was abnormal and that was the reason for the four days so the way i read this health and safety plan it was if we went all virtual it would so i would i would also state that you know hybrid versus all virtual or two different things so i don't want to get into the nitty-gritty but i understand what mr navarette saying i understand what dr zerby's saying that this is more or less certainly not arguing arguing in either way i'm just i'm just trying to let you know that the facts are that we had challenges even at the beginning of the school year with respects to

203um pace and of of instruction at the secondary level and how that is handled versus the pace of instruction and the time on task at the elementary level uh they're two different things and and so um there was a lot of debate about win wednesdays and all sorts of of uh you know proposals and modifications that we're trying to be uh addressed and and and so this was really uh designed to say okay this is what this is where we ended it at last school year um certainly it is disruptive to families we recognize that but we also had feedback that this is helpful for families and having that opportunity to you know uh you know for for families and for children to be able to uh you know get things done because realize this

204if we go to virtual instruction remember we're not proposing a hybrid model here at all so if we go to virtual instruction all altogether we're going to be told to do that that's how this is written and by the time we're told to do that you know it's it's likely going to be uh pretty challenging within the community within your homes and and and having you know uh you know four days and one day you know might be helpful in the beginning and it could allow us to then you know modify something uh but but at any any rate um i think i think we got to do two things one know that there's going to be change and we got to be ready to be flexible so that's that's all i'm asking um so

205we make the modification here this evening we can find ourselves into the situation uh you know november possibly december having to do some virtual and you know we can ease our way into it if we have to make modifications then we we can do that so i just want i just want everybody to be comfortable that um there's no one great decision that that the 10 of us are going to make that's going to satisfy every family here and that's that's the challenging nature of all of this i think i think we're good with that point um so then my suggestion is we plan for the steady state of five days a week and if we get into a situation eventually where we have to make an immediate you know decision to go virtual and

206we need to you know adjust and do something you know as we transition to full-time and that's and i think everybody will understand because at that point things will have gotten pretty bad so so then i think what you would need to do is make a motion that does modify the motion to say uh with that change in it sure so i mean certainly you can have further discussion but if you'd like to make a motion to amend uh to specifically amend item uh within the motion item 13d uh both the continuity of instruction plan and the health and safety plan both reference the four days uh synchronous and one day asynchronous so you could make a motion to amend the motion such that those two items would be revised to reflect five days of

207synchronous instruction well then i move to amend the motion on the table for items thirteen d one and two to reflect uh five days of continuous virtual instruction i second okay did i pass kyle you did excellent well done so now you can have a debate on that particular motion to amend okay so now we're debating the motion to amend nope i agree with it i think it's important to provide instructors that flexibility of what they need to do but five day will give all parents confidence that we will deliver so i i need to make a clear a procedural clarification the motion that was on the floor originally was all items under that number except for g and now there's a new motion to just address one of the matters so should we vote

208on just the matters that he just referenced and then go back to the other letters so the the motion that we're currently discussing is to amend the motion which is to approve all items except for item g um with the exception that the within item d items one and two are revised those are revised to allow five days of synchronous instruction leave it to navarrete to confuse things go ahead mr hummond i i just agree that five days of instruction should be the default especially if it's gonna if it's all virtual and not hybrid because i know that the teachers um you know there was there was a lot of challenges with the hybrid instruction and i get that but i think if it's all virtual that that should be the default yeah i agree

209i think that um if if we end up in this worst case scenario and i i hope that you know with the availability of vaccines that we don't but um i do hope that we are able to offer a little bit of flexibility um for our our teachers and our families um as we move forward but i agree that the default should be five days so with that it sounds like we've got a pretty good consensus so all those in favor of amending the motion as mr neverett spoke to i okay all right the motion carries eight zero so now we're back to items thirteen yes right now on items thirteen uh through a through f uh as amended with item d having the approval of those two plans as as uh presented but with

210the amendment that it's five days of synchronous instruction what he said all right any other comments then on these items ms mysteries so i am approving this um don't want anyone um but i i can't in case people aren't aware so again we are letting masks right now be optional but i like dr zurby said it's important to note 3 o'clock today another announcement was made that you know the cdc is recommending different different things so it's i can't in i can't vote without at least acknowledging that i also wanted to acknowledge um all the emails that we received asking us to ensure that children under 12 wear masks at school and right at this time we are making it optional and i respect that um i don't have children under 12 so i feel

211very um i don't know guilty's not the road if i had children under 12 i would find it difficult because i would want to send them to school with a mask so if this remains optional because we are letting the the powers that be make these decisions i would like to help teachers and students through that if we get to that point that you have half the class in masks and half not or whatever so i just would like to say that because we do have to acknowledge acknowledge that um but i am in favor of this and i'm happy we can we can give that option at this point yeah i i think it's important to acknowledge that as well and i think that it's important to to also acknowledge that these recommendations on

212masking are based on the community incidence rates and positivity rates and right now montgomery county is sitting at an okay spot um and so i like that we can take our guidance from the county level um we're we're not missouri we're not you know seeing what's happening in in kansas city and that area um as long as we don't end up there we can continue to have this option but um you know i think it's important to note that yeah if our community prevalence levels change that we are going to have to make a change potentially any other comments from the board on these items i just am wondering if if the pandemic team has another date on the calendar as of right now to to reconsider the health and safety plan i'm not sure

213what you're asking is is there a date set that the pandemic team is meeting again um until we return to school in september okay but as the the one board representative on the pandemic team i will say that there have been times where we weren't planning to meet and then we did um so we will continue to meet as needed if something dramatically changes in the community and nationwide whatever um we have yeah this went through the pandemic this proposal right and if we need to if we see a need to make changes it'll come through the pandemic team again um whenever that's necessary anyone else all right so all those in favor of items 13 a through f including the amendments to the items under 13d motion carries 8-0 and now i'll take a

214motion to approve 13g which is the iroi sports pilot program i was gonna make a motion to table it just because it seems like things have changed and i mean i think we have to have a motion to okay emotion first and a second and then we can discuss and go from there so is there a motion to approve mr mcginnis is there a second miss cancro okay and now discussion from the board i was just going to say it seems like things have changed and we still have some things to work out so i was going to table it so that it wasn't dead but that we could change make those changes if yeah i think our two options right now are that we could table it or we could vote it down and

215it could still be revised and reworked and brought back in a better form or we could vote to approve it as is but it doesn't from what i've heard it doesn't seem like that's the consensus mr mcginnis yeah like i said um when i was presented by dr spiwak the numbers that came back from the last week there were some things that were not contemplated and all of a sudden they became concrete numbers and those numbers that were presented this week it really became cost prohibitive again in my opinion so i hear tabling it but until we can kind of come up with a better plan right um but i want everyone to know the reason we went down this path is because we got together and said and it's a common theme tonight how

216can we improve the life of some of our kids and specifically the kids that use the workout right now in my opinion it's subpar and dr spiwak did a nice job of stack ranking where we stand in our in our league and we're at or near the bottom and it was really a matter of accepting that as the status quo and doing nothing or investigating a better path now is iroid the best answer for us no is it a long-term solution to what our kids deserve and need no but it was a thought now unfortunately it's come to fruition that it's a little too pricey and again i think for the interim the parents groups the football club the softball club the field hockey club i would highly recommend to go talk to iroi if

217they can figure it out but right now i don't think as a board again my opinion i don't talk for anybody else my opinion is that the numbers came way too high for what we were contemplating this program to be and that's unfortunate because we are now back to the status quo of a rather inadequate workout facility what does that mean i don't know how do we fix it i don't know we got a lot of leaky roofs in this district right now that are need to haves am i sitting up here saying a workout isn't workout areas and need to have no it's a nice to have but it's not a need to have but eventually our kids deserve better and that's what drove us down this path but unfortunately it's it doesn't seem

218feasible as i said i think i'll be voting no i think it's better to kind of put a stake in its heart a little bit and then if someone a lot smarter than me which isn't hard to do can figure out a better path have at it we can leave as is and go ahead and vote in my mind miss purdue i was just going to say it may be helpful if dr speedwack i don't know how much time was spending looking at the options but maybe trying to take some time to look at what other options are available whether it's within our own facilities or not just because from the sounds of it it seemed like the space that we were going to be offered at iroi wasn't significantly bigger than the space that

219we have now right so maybe there are things that we can do so it may be good if he can come back to this committee with another option i don't know what those options might be but i'm sure him and his team are capable of trying to provide other options that can serve the needs of all our students all right anyone else so then all those in favor of approving the motion all those opposed nay okay all right so the motion is voted down zero to eight we don't see that often all right so dates for board members calendars um as of right now we have education policy and property and finance all still listed on here but i do believe we've already established that policy will not be meeting in august um and i

220believe is education meeting in august yes but i will not be there i will be on vacation i apologize but mr winters will be running it you leave it incapable hands on all right um [Music] um sorry okay i just i was worried i am going to be there it's property that i'm not going to be at so i apologize i got them confused all right well if there are any changes to these um calendar items they will be updated on the uh district website um anything for old business uh just very quickly um i had received an email and someone had thought that i had lied and i said that um i would correct that um that i it was a matter of semantics and i i wanted to respect that that person felt

221that way um when i had told the gentleman that we weren't changing the name and it wasn't an option um what i was saying is there has never been an agenda item brought forth to change our name it has been informally discussed at times in the last six years i've probably received an email once a year don't quote me on that about that that i've received once a year at property we once talked about it because we had to replace the um i don't know what you call that it's like a bulkhead but i know that's not what it is the big stone thing that says in the fact in high school so we had to replace that because it was unsafe and we were talking about replacing the fact in high school so we

222had said well should we put something else up there like warriors and we all just said no just could you just use the same letters if possible and save money so it is not to say it has never been discussed it is just not a agenda item a formal agenda item so if i misspoke i apologize anything else for old business anything for new business all right so then at this time we will take courtesy of the floor um this is an opportunity for residents to make comment on matters that are or may be before the board we ask you to keep your comments to four minutes or less we may choose to respond to matters following the conclusion of the comments um also identify yourself by your full name and municipality and i just

223wanted to reiterate a couple of things that i had also talked to last week comments that are made at the podium are to be directed at the board this is not a time for a question and answer members of the public shall not be permitted to participate in debate regarding issues before the board nor the question school staff regarding regarding board and administrative issues and procedures during meetings of the board and that if anybody is any statements that are too lengthy personally directed abusive obscene or irrelevant can be interrupted or terminated so with that we'll open it up for courtesy of the floor john andrews law of providence on page nine of nine of tonight's yellow paged agenda item number 14 dates for board members calendars there's a board member calendar event on august 4th

224that is not listed there i believe that's some kind of a informal board caucus and i believe that if there's a quorum there that the public is entitled to observe and i think maybe the solicitor might comment on that mathactin is a large taxpayer-supported government activity now with an annual budget of about 110 million employment of about 800 staff inclusive of contracted services over the last decade exclusive of the pandemic enrollment here is off the most of any county district by 10 percent while total county enrollment is up about four percent our high school rank has plummeted from the teens to the sixties we now have an extra debt burden of 50 million dollars for the unneeded caterpillar arrowhead school this board only began community involvement in that boat after it had decided the issue

225in august of 2018. quite a long time ago the navaret claim was we needed a school in western lower providence like that was the only issue an emotional one the facts are that all students are offered busing so school location is not the issue it was when kids had to walk to school on sidewalks this board failed to consider the huge anti-arrowhead community input response to the act 34 hearing the only mailing to residents is the annual tax bill we always get it in contrast many other school districts provide also semi-annual or quarterly reports to residents they communicate these inexpensive reports are factual and easy to understand they can be viewed as advertising tools and may get us better directors here residents can find much info on the website but that is a tedious and

226costly activity cost starts at probably at a thousand dollars a year for hardware software and internet fees we used to have a newsletter that didn't cost a lot of money named the messenger but someone killed the messenger then dr zurby killed the data portfolio also for the upcoming election a democracy deserves an informed electorate the candidates cannot afford mailings at 58 cents a pop just for required first class postage in contrast the district can mail at three or four cents a pop please give serious consideration to exhuming the messenger even if that is a departure from ignoring your public thank you [Applause] jim malik warcester i thought i'd seen it all until uh we're discussing clap fixation we're all we got some clap fixation up there um you guys are so controlling that you've you've

227sunk to clap shaming i mean how ridiculous a statement is that you know maybe you don't realize this country's called america so if you want to clap you clap you don't want to clap don't clap but who cares but you just said to everybody you're basing that as one of the reasons for voting for the dni the clapping in the audience was one of the reasons we need dni i don't need you in my life telling me how to clap either there's the rest of the audience okay you don't need to be in students life telling them how to think how to feel how to act you're not their parent your job is to educate or make sure they get a good education you want to educate the entire child you know you're going to

228start with the basics math science arithmetic deal with your uh state ranking that's like through the floor and it's not because of diversity it's because you don't have your priorities straight now you um lied to the public at the last meeting about a couple of things number one was your misinformation talk and you talked about you know you guys never discussed changing the mascot there's never been any discussion about it there's a video of the de ni committee out there that proves you're wrong there has been discussion and also they want to get rid of arrowhead the name arrowhead you know i'll send you the link so you can be informed because you're obviously misinformed now you also gave the public misinformation about the allegation that you were somehow censoring miss ma and it was

229a huge mischaracterization of what happened well there's a beauty the beautiful thing is called videotape go back to the meeting and find out exactly what was said mr winters after miss ma spoke said the line that was crossed tonight accuracy of the floor is questioning somebody's faith and then you said i agree and i'll be having a conversation with your solicitor about the content of courtesy of the floor at a later date to be sure we are very clear on what items can and cannot be addressed well who who are you to tell us what we can say you know the first amendment allows us to come up here and address you and petition you for our grievances my grievance is your arrogant you smirk you think it's a joke and you provide misinformation to

230the public that's my directed comments at you and they're not personal because you're an elected official so cut the smirk try listening to people when they talk and don't be providing misinformation to the public we want the truth thank you [Applause] hey y'all vince josephs worchester uh first of all i do need to uh i got a little bit emotional when i came up earlier uh i don't think people get and not just me um some of us cry some of us get heated up we're up against the clock and our hearts stop beating a little bit faster um i don't think people get this worked up about the roofing plan on the elementary school so clearly it's a hot issue um you said uh you know we're behind in how progressive we are we

231need to be mo you know and you said and i'm paraphrasing uh progressive is a good thing ask a conservative if they think progressive is a good thing is mafactan going to become a progressive school district because some conservatives might pull their kids out of school that's a that's a political issue politics divides so i want to know if that's the direction we're moving towards personally the thing about my uh hang up with progressives is it's in the name literally never stop um the more important thing is when people come up and we talk about dei and against it and for it everything i've everything i've heard from from everyone about being 4dei if i only came to these meetings i would agree 100 everything i heard every story was appalling if someone's called in

232a racial epithet suspend that kid and never let him come back again if my kid says expel them he won't say it but those are disciplinary issues and they're horrible paul what you described looking for a definition of equity from er i forget the name of the school but i heard that as a definition of values and equality and a lot of us are still we haven't got a straight answer on what equity is that's important because it's one of the three initials we just want that answer and it's clear that nobody has it um more importantly though the the thing no one has discussed and the reason people are upset about it is not special needs it's not kids being called awful names and being bullied it's the resources on your website from the

233dei committee miss ma said it's on the website there there are critical race theory lesson plans on that website we have screenshots of all of them there is anti-police resources on that website it's on there i'll give you a few examples and some of them are still on there one here's a quote calling the police actually puts the safety of our black and latinx students at risk i don't agree with that educators should be thinking about how to use curricula as weapons to fight injustice we are committed to disrupting the western prescribed nuclear family structure now i happen to be part of the nuclear family structure and i take umbrage with that i don't i don't want it dismantled nothing and again i don't take the false dichotomy of that i have nothing against a

234non-nuclear family but being part of one that's upsetting to me i don't have time to go through it but i really suggest you take a look at the bill in congress that i mentioned because the nine items that they define in bill 1532 as what is a racist or sexist concept what is currently on the website checks every one of those boxes and the penalty as if that bill goes through and it's in legislation is a investigation by the eag be a good standing for a civil complaint but most importantly gives the state the judge the right of a succession of the transfer of state funds to the violating entity or institution for the remainder of the fiscal year and the entirety of the next fiscal year well thank you yeah thank you that's legal

235that's expense and there's a class action attorney with his hand hovering over an easy budget four minutes if that bill passes thanks y'all [Applause] hi marissa rocco lower providence so i do want to thank miss reese for clearing clearing up rather the confusion of last week both miss larcenies and miss reece told mr chipman when he spoke about the warrior mascot that that was never a topic of conversation but there is a board meeting from august of 2020 where it was in fact discussed i'm not saying it was an agenda item but it was absolutely discussed as a topic of conversation that was a blatant lie to the public and to mr chipman while i do appreciate the apology i want to be transparent and i think the board needs more transparency and i want

236to be transparent to tell people that you can go back and watch this and see that this was discussed in august 2020. so this was at a board meeting not at a dei community task force though that was a separate meeting with many other topics but i'm not going to talk about that tonight what i am going to talk about is something that miss ranieri talked about last week this district is losing good families i know i've said it time and time again i didn't want to pull my kids from this district and as a matter of fact i made a deal with my son i give this school 30 days to pull their act together and if by october 1st i don't see changes you have to leave this school he cried he's probably

237going to be mortified that i said that but he did he started at a school and within one day he felt better because he was in person learning his own teacher wrote me an email to thank me for doing the right thing for my son that says a lot that a sixth grade teacher in this district sent me an email saying i did the right thing to get him an in-person education and as a matter of fact part of the deal i made with him was you can still go to myth acton for high school you will not go back k through eight he's starting seventh grade this year i sat him down this weekend and i said unfortunately methachton is no longer a choice for you for high school we are lucky we have

238the resources to send our kids to private school but not every family has that option he understands why he can't go here and he's fine with it but this is another good family this district lost my kids aren't trouble makers my kids aren't hateful they don't say mean things to other kids but that's two kids that are no longer here as far as d n i which somebody did trying to open my phone because i have notes here which somebody did speak to yes in the corporate world most of these roles are called diversity and inclusion not dei i do agree with that one of the things that bothers me most about the survey that went out so i'm still confused whether it was an audit or a survey but in any event i as

239a taxpayer did not get a survey but my daughter was told in eighth grade that she absolutely had to complete this survey she was told she had to complete the survey i was infuriated as a parent that she was told she had to complete this another thing i wonder if every student took that survey seriously these kids are in middle school and high school did we ever think about the fact that some of these kids may have put juvial answers on there things they thought were funny maybe if parents had more education on the survey prior to going out we could have really set them down to tell them what this survey was for to help them understand but i know for a fact kids answered the survey in that jovial kind of manner i

240agree with mr joseph's conservative parents are pulling their kids out of school there are some things they're learning at a young age that maybe we're not teaching them at home there needs to be more transparency and what we're really covering and teaching in school to our children i'm glad you voted for iroi as a no nothing unless it includes every student having the same opportunity should be paid by taxpayers if that was only for athletes it needs to be funded either by the foundation or by athletic parents thank you [Applause] [Music] uh brian earnshaw lower providence um about a week ago or actually a week ago today i sent an email to dr zerby and mr bricker and copied all nine board members relating to some matters um on the list of bills that's why

241i received no response to that email i do thank ms reese for raising some of the questions that i had at last week's meeting to which mr bricker responded to certain questions i followed with an email to mr bricker and he answered some additional questions but there is one question that has remained unanswered and this relates to legal fees and payments to law firms and that question is has the board administration take any steps or change any policies procedures to address the significant recurring amount of legal fees why do i ask that question the june list of bills include 173 thousand in payments to law firms i went back and looked at those lists of bills for the past 12 months the last fiscal year those payments to law firms total 1.722 million dollars an

242increase of 1.1 million or 193 percent over fiscal 2020. in fact legal fees paid in fiscal 21 were three times the amount paid in fiscal 2020. when i look at the last six months of fiscal 2020 if you annualize that amount payments are 2.5 million which indicates the trend of payments to law firms is just getting worse in april and may mr bricker made a presentation of the finance committee and the board about legal fees it was a lot of factual information but it did nothing to address how to control or reduce legal expenses the only discussion and recommendation that's put forth by a member of the board was to post the name and the rights in a request made by memphis of the public that's not going to solve the problem that's the only

243consideration and this thing has been put on this on the table to control these expenses you think about the tax bills that do the end of august coming up if you pay 5 000 in property taxes 115 dollars will go to law firms at the current rate 2.3 percent of local property tax revenues are going to law firms currently what can be done and what will be done to correct this trend i'm hoping that can be answered if not tonight at next month's meeting of the finance committee or the board thank you [Applause] sorry short uh kellyarnone lower providence uh first off thank you for approving the dei director position i appreciate hearing that tonight um second with regards to the health and safety plan tonight we heard a lot about risk mitigation and we're

244going to try and apply it to di we can apply it in different ways and getting ahead of a problem and being proactive yet we also heard we're not going to follow the aap and cdc masking recommendations because recommendations because we're doing okay here where is the risk mitigation where is that happening we know masks work we know they work best when all parties specifically unvaccinated people wear them i have four kids in the district they are all under 12 years old they cannot get the vaccine i was told i had to make a decision about virtual or in person that would hold true through january under the idea that my children would probably be following the current recommendations not be applied to the schools especially when we're looking at a building like arrowhead which

245has an antiquated ventilation system we know that my husband was on the committee that toured the schools and evaluated did we need a new arrowhead i know what the ventilation system looks like he knows what ventilation systems look like i trust his judgment we're going to put five to 11 year old child i'm sorry five to ten year old children in that building who cannot be vaccinated they have no option and we are saying you can wear a mask if you want you don't have to that doesn't cut it that just doesn't work it doesn't make sense it doesn't follow through with what the experts are saying it's truly alarming especially since we're cutting down the distancing um i really hope that as the start of the school year approaches the district will reevaluate the

246masking policy prior to the start not a meeting in september not after having the pandemic team meet then i know you meet occasionally randomly but before that apply the risk mitigation to stay ahead of the problem as the local cases are rising they're not as bad as they are in safe florida but they are increasing let's keep kids in school everybody wants them in school this year that's what you keep hearing they're not going to be in school if the cases keep going up why not stay ahead of the problem for those kids who don't have an option it doesn't have to be an across-the-board decision it doesn't have to apply k to 12. the children at arcola the children in the high school they have the option of getting the vaccine their parents have

247the option of doing that those younger kids don't miss reece i appreciate you saying what you said about the mass policy and everything but you're right you don't have a child under 12. i have four what is my house going to be like what's going to happen when one of my kids catches it and the rest of my kids are out for three to four weeks as it slowly makes its way through so i'd really appreciate if we could reevaluate that prior to this start of the school year specifically for those children who are ages 5 to 11. thank you all right it looks like we're about done with courtesy of the floor then um any comments from board members before we oh okay if there's anyone else who's interested in speaking for courtesy of

248the floor if you could start to move forward [Music] chaling ma we're sister township first i want to thank miss kanker for her comments you exhibit to the public your site has a real not phony person with true emotion and great mind i really appreciate your comments i'm impressed personally second if a permanent di position was already decided in july or august some board members i just said in 2020 why vote today i got confused what were you there voting for if some board members can clear this confusion i really appreciate i want to talk about talk about the divisiveness um a few board members already mentioned i'm appalled and amused and mispresent the funny logic flaw some people are fought for the permanent dei position and some were not but both sides were used

249by mr president to support her argument to justify the permanent di position how can how can this kind of di program represent the interests of those who oppose this program and even unite them together with those who support it i just don't get it and i think the public the board is already clear don't most of them don't have a problem with the dni the problem lies into we don't have a trust in the current dei committee like i said on the may 25th meeting dr campbell how how's the fighting process when go through how is he was he really carefully vetted and he got so many anti-white anti-police statements i already mentioned in may 25th meeting you can go back to to watch it and the survey itself was biased in fact the survey

250only had a racial gender sexual orientation related questions they didn't even cover anything on disability or special needs and stop using special needs special ed students to support your currently carried carried out dei program and and one i want to continue to mention this the resources i mentioned at the ei community website and some people wrote to dr zerby saying there are a lot of anti um white and i police statements um which is not it's not supposed to be there and it will divide our community even more and then for for some short time maybe one or two days and those uh offensive links were taken off from the website however i don't know it was under whose pressure was out of dr zerby's own administration decision or out of the board support and

251then there was they were added back with the added disclaimer i can read it for you these links are being provided as convenience and for the informational purpose only they do not constitute an endorsement or an approval by the massacre school district of any of the products services or opinions of the corporation or organization or individual the massacre industry bears no responsibility for accuracy legality or content of the external site or for that of the subsequent links okay then why put it there it means like can you throw a bunch of junk there and they say i'm not responsible for whatever i posted there it just doesn't make sense to my kids i think my my first grader can even understand the question if you you don't you cannot be responsible for links to put

252why not put some other links for example like a hills hillsdale college and pleasure you no left education why not those why only your left-wing ideologies over there and then you say i'm not responsible for those and many of the books there are on taiwan and their police that's all i want to say thank you [Applause] uh joe ridden house lower providence actually wasn't going to say anything but i i i'm racking my head for ideas um to gain trust because clearly there's a large section of the population that does not trust the dei um efforts now is it valid i don't know but like how can we bridge that gap and so this is just something i'm throwing it out there you know speaking to try and find truth uh the the current dei

253committee that exists within the district um i when i applied for it the rubric that was used the the to decide who should sit on the task force um it it had a very very distinct bias for a certain way of thinking it was just built into the rubric um have we considered rotating people on the committee i know that members of the board are part of it i know members of the community are part of it i know that other parents would love to be involved so maybe there's rotating spots on this committee that can come in and out that way you have different perspectives coming in constantly so we have true diversity of thought um it's no secret that like everybody's voter registration is available online the majority of the board is made

254up of one political uh the current committee is one political leading that's i that's the reality of it so i guess my hope is that maybe if we set up a system in which we can rotate people in and out just get somebody hey i have you know we sit on this committee for a period of um a year six months and then we invite more people on just to give different perspectives yes i'm sure that it may slow the progress of some of the efforts of the dei uh committees or the the new position but maybe that slow temperate like moving is what we need to gain trust from up 50 of the population so just an idea i just think that it's something that should be considered um i didn't think of it

255until literally just now but um there's just so much that can be done to bridge gaps if we're truly talking about inclusion and diversity and you know i i don't think that anybody who is pro dei is like a bad person i actually think that we're all coming from this from a very honest and truthful thing where we don't want racism we don't want sexism we don't want transphobia we don't want anti-lgbt stuff thrown into the faces of people um but i worry that we're talking past each other and so maybe if there's a way that the district can extend a hand to be like to a large section of the population that is not okay with the what we is are perceived as political advances um i think that would go a very very

256long way to bridging that gap thank you [Applause] ashley wilkerson lower providence i have two thank yous the first is to the board for voting in favor of the supervisor of dei and i look forward to seeing the administration advertise for and fill that position with a qualified individual as soon as possible my second thank you is to the district for adding back to the website the link to the anti-defamation league which was temporarily removed for anyone who's not familiar with it the anti-defamation league works to fight anti-semitism which per my previous comments is definitely needed in this district so thank you for adding it back [Applause] greg young worcester i'll be brief i know it's after 11 o'clock and everybody's exhausted but um you know i think the the approval tonight is is it

257is a good thing one of the one of the key components i think we need to focus on is to provide clarity my my children are 14 12 9 and 5. my 14 year old is confused i think my 12 year old is confused as to what's part of the health and safety plan and what's part of diversity equity and inclusion my 14 year old she'll be embarrassed if she looks at this so hopefully i'll just block youtube from my internet when i get home but uh she said if i don't wear a mask excuse me people are going to think that i'm racist so she's confused my 12 year old is confused so i just think we need to provide the children clarity and i think it starts with maybe not starts with but

258the resources any material that's on our website that's near our logo that incites hatred divisiveness it needs to be removed i think we need to have uh more supportive material on there now i know you know we have issues we have big problems to fix here and that kind of goes back to the iowa thing anything that's not for all children shouldn't even be on the table right now because we have we have bigger issues to fix but the materials i mean from a conservative more middle road but but conservative fiscally for sure we really need to review that that material and that content and my question is is dr landis in the interim position going to start with the resources and then pick and choose or select either through a committee what what resources

259stay but i think we need to address that pretty quickly because i think that's just a an urgent matter and then the clapping thing you know i think we as leaders we really need to support the community and to call out you know who claps who doesn't clap really no place on the board or in any position of leadership to do something like that it really it really divides the public and it's it's it's a mechanism for um losing confidence uh in our leadership to uh to see that type of thing happen all right thank you [Music] way down amy smith for sester i just wanted to take a minute to comment on the retirement of mrs linda seibert she's been a teacher i know at multiple schools in the district but particularly she's spent

260some time at war sester with my kids and i just wanted to take a minute to thank her hopefully she's watching this at home or we'll watch it later but just to publicly thank her in front of the board for all the things that she's done for our kids over the years because she's really been fantastic and i also wanted to say thank you for approving mrs joyce amici at war sister as the interim principal i feel like as a war sister parent when she came in to to help um with the last part of the school year at worcester this year she did a really phenomenal job and and i'm glad that there's that continuity for the kids that she'll be there to start the school year at least or whatever happens so thank

261you for that um and i just wanted to take a minute to to comment on the approval of the job description for the dei office i wanted to thank the board for approving it this evening i know it's been a year-long process in terms of where were we going with it and that there's committees that are involved and and i just wanted to say thank you for putting that up there i do think it's incredibly important as we're talking about the website or the district's website that has the dei references i agree with with people that you know it's good to have some kind of leadership in place for that so that everyone's being advised in a way with a professional that can help us navigate all these waters and i just one last thing

262i want to say to mr winters i understand what you were saying with your comment about the clapping it wasn't about you shouldn't clap and you should clap or vice versa it was about let's figure out where our common ground is and let's make sure we're listening to one another because there were common threads and what everybody was saying this evening and i know that you were trying to acknowledge that so i just want to say thank you for doing that thanks just real quick good evening i'm like falling asleep here um dr janine darby of lower providence i just want to thank the board for approving the the position or the description job description for the dei director i think this is a first step in um finding a solution for everyone that spoke

263this evening and i just wanted to say thank you we are all in this together it's not just one person it's not just nine people in front of here it's all of us in the community together so um let's work together let's not be divisive um let's um take care of our kids the best way possible [Applause] hi good evening katie thiel lower providence i will be quick i just wanted to offer one piece of information and just a little bit more uh i just wanted to comment on one other thing but uh first i wanted to thank you for the approval of the dei um supervisor and moving forward with that um with the wrestling of the term equity i know a lot of us are focused on race and ethnicity and creed today

264but um i have my master's degree in literacy and i spend my work as a literacy coach and when i think of dei i think of literacy and reading as equitable work and so um i just wanted to offer for anyone who's here was wrestling with it the way that reading has been taught in the last 20 years um it's called balanced literacy in fact wonders has balanced literacy as title that approach leaves one-third of students who do not have any other reason than they just don't learn that way to learn to read and so it sets up kids from the beginning regardless of anything else to struggle there's a science of reading for anyone who has no idea what i'm talking about because i'm taking a whole lot of research and a lot of

265people and sticking it squeezing it into like 30 seconds um the apr reports by emily hanford you can google her the knowledge gap by natalie wexler these are sources of information that are really useful and i am really hopeful that the dei work will look into these literacy practices because for the students who are struggling or the students who might not have the background knowledge they need to succeed and you might not see them struggle in elementary school but you will see them struggle in middle school and high school when they start to fall behind when they don't have the background knowledge or they don't have those higher level critical thinking skills it's not just an issue for say pennsylvania it's actually something that the united states and literacy researchers are looking at across the

266country and even in some other first world countries in europe and australia um and then i just wanted to bring up i have uh i have three children under the age of 12 in the district um none of whom can get the vaccine so i did want to share in hearing you wrestle with the idea of what the what the response is and thinking through like oh no oh no they could go virtual again this year oh no and then thinking through again what if there's an exposure in a classroom so then one kid is home and what and but the other two are in school and what does that look like last year when the kids were wearing masks you were like okay well at least they had mask on so only those kids

267have to quarantine but not the whole class so in having mass optional for kids who can't vacs who aren't vaccinated does that mean the whole class is quarantining for how long and it just looks really messy and um i'd like not to repeat that but i can't stop the pandemic so i just wanted to offer that um and uh i would love to see if there was masking at least for those who aren't vaccinated next year thank you so much for your time thank you for everything you've done last couple months thank you hi erin mccool lower providence i'll keep it brief um just wanted to quickly say thank you once again for approving the dei position and also all of your work this year dr zurby's list um i think it was last month

268of all the accomplishments in the face of a pandemic is just incredible so thank you um i want to speak quickly to some of the comments in the community i am thrilled that we've approved this position that can help to provide some leadership around this initiative and i've looked at some of the resources on the website and clearly having someone in place that can help to curate and bring the community around those resources is really important but also just reminding ourselves that the kids are really struggling like the rest of the world right now and they are coming back into school and having witnessed all sorts of trauma in every aspect of their life and as much as those of us with younger children try to shield them from the media things trickle through and

269they hear what's happening they hear about racial incidences and people dying of covid and floods and climate change and all of that and some of the resources that i saw online that are that are being shared as anti-white or anti-police i see as giving kids a language to explain what it is that they are seeing and feeling and we know in trauma-informed education if you all are education experts if they're experiencing this and witness this and we're not giving them chances to talk about it and learn about it then that is making the problem worse for them so just just wanted to point that out um i'm really disappointed to see some of the things that are happening on the national scale coming to our community there's a conversation about critical race theory that is

270clearly inappropriate in a public school setting it's a academic concept it's a legal framework um clearly we are not the only district that is having this discussion it's not an elementary school curriculum it just isn't and it isn't being taught in elementary schools and i would like for the education professionals in the room i've been working in education for my entire career to really think about coming out and and and really i would really appreciate you um just explaining that to people it's it's not a curriculum that's being taught in our school um and you know certainly this is something that the dei person can also start to have a conversation around lastly and then i'll end masking policy i also agree children under 12 until we have the choice to get them vaccinated i

271would really strongly encourage having the mast in schools understanding quarantine has not changed i myself dealt with the situation in my program this week where i had a positive exposure and we were forced back into looking at the exclusion guidelines and quarantined cohorts and just a good reminder that it's not over so having those multiple layers of protection in place as is recommended would be really appreciated so thank you [Music] all right i think that's it for courtesy of the floor i just wanted to well i was going to address a few things but it looks like most of the people who raised questions have left mr andrews you raised a question about an event on august 4th i i'll be honest i have no idea what that is so if you could please email

272me directly with the information that you have because i'm not following what you were mentioning there um mr earnshaw we have taken steps to address the legal fees um we are looking at our right to know process and we are looking at ways that we can improve it so that we can reduce those legal fees um i don't want to get into specifics right now at 20 after 11 at night but it's something that is happening um and one last thing that the question about um the links that were taken down on the website and then replaced and who was it that authorized doing that i did i asked dr zurby to please restore the links to the website um once i found out that they had been removed because i feel that that speaks

273to the need for dei in our district we we need someone that can evaluate these resources and help us to determine what's the right stuff and what's the maybe the not so good stuff the disclaimer that is there is similar to disclaimers that you'll see on many corporate websites when you are leaving their site you we can no longer be responsible for what you find off of our website that content can change by the minute we have no control over that so it's a standard piece of language it's actually taken from the library of congress so i take full responsibility for that um i think that that speaks to what we need in our district um i don't know if anyone else has any thoughts or comments i think we're all pretty much done here

274so mr mcginnis motion to adjourn i think we're all in favor have a good night everyone