June 22, 2021 Regular Meeting of the Board

001hey ralph i just want to check my mic can you hear me okay not too good jim okay thanks i know you want to hear me how about right now do i sound a little bit better awesome thanks good evening everyone good evening it's 90 degrees one day and 65 the next pennsylvania gotta love it i know it's crazy hello good evening everyone good evening evening good evening all good evening everyone good evening ms drummond good evening [Music] it was nice to see the rain stop today so i think if if we make this a quick one we get in there you know out here in about a half hour we can all take a walk with our significant others and enjoy the the weather i think it's cooled down a little bit apparently that

002would be lovely just so you know we were we were without amanda this evening so we're having a little bit of technical challenge but we are streaming live right now so um you shouldn't be aware of that normally we wait to stream uh when we give the go but um amanda's substitute uh is new to the process and uh and he's shaking his head right now and we we we recovered and we're good to be sure i had to long it log in closer to the router so uh settings changed a little bit so camera good evening kim i was just mentioning to the group that we are actually streaming live right now because we had to get ahead of the curve and i do have 701 uh on my clock so um yeah you

003would think after a year my computer would know tuesday nights are not a good time for updates but no so sorry guys um looks like we have the whole board no uh ms reese is she scheduled to be off today she is away so she will not be with us tonight so with that um if we're ready i can begin yes we are we are ready and we are streaming live at this moment all right good evening then i'd like to call to order the june 22 2021 regular meeting of the facting school district board of directors please rise for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay the

004public is hereby advised of the audio and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcasting given the need to conduct this meeting in a virtual environment board required members of the public wanting to make comments on agenda items or courtesy of the floor to pre-register by 5 pm today um by way of attendance miss cancro here ms drummond here miss hull here mr mcginnis here mr neverett here ms perdue yeah ms reese is not here mr winners yeah okay recognition of guests and scheduled speakers dr zerby thank you madam president this evening we have assistant superintendent mr regina to give a presentation on the substitute uh teacher update mr regina thank you dr zurby good evening board members typically we do this report a little bit earlier this year but we certainly felt

005that it was prudent to collect all the data just given uh where we started this year where we ended this year we thought it'd be good to look at all the end of the year data over the last four years so dr zurby you can proceed to the next slide for the agenda this evening uh we'd like to look at the fact and end of year results we're going to take a look at the four year trend data our per diem rates and how those per diem rates compare to those in the county and the surrounding area we'll look at some comparative data both with fill rates and with per diem rates some of our future areas of concern and then certainly recommendations to close out the presentation to start our our results for this

006year absences you can see were 10 600 of those absences and and this is just those absences within the mea organization uh 6617 of those positions needed substitutes as you can imagine for some of us our specialist positions counselors nurses well nurses is a bad example but we there's many of our positions where we may not need substitutes if an individual is out of the 5331 of those were filled that leaves 1286 unfilled with a fill rate of 80.57 percent you can proceed to the next slide doctors irving and our four-year trend as you can see i won't go over some of the the numbers that seem somewhat consistent obviously your eyes are drawn to the 2019-2020 data as most of us know once we went to a asynchronous virtual model and in march of

007last year we really didn't have any absences except for those that already existed um which obviously impacted some of the the actual numbers as it comes to absences and subs needed but as you can see uh we did have a relatively high year with 10 600 very close to where we were in 1718. uh our fill rates 87.4 percent in 1718 went up a little in and have gradually decreased uh although i i wouldn't necessarily say that kovid didn't have a major uh factor in all of this but it's just good to see the data you move to the next one just a graphical representation of what we've seen in the last four years and proceed to the next slide dr zurba you'll be able to see how this compares to some of our neighboring

008districts the fill rate really isn't terrible as we compare it to those around us your eyes are probably drawn immediately to district a and district e because you'll notice that those substitutes in those areas typically are around our size and our fill rates the difference was they proceeded with a proctoring program so they had about 3 500 uh proctors that came into the district and they kept a lot of their teachers online with those proctors the one thing that they're battling now of course is absences weren't used this year so they saw um and are seeing a major increase in personal day accumulation and sick day accumulation um certainly this year that that many of the others did not see and if you proceed to the next slide dr zurby just a graphical representation of

009what we just saw in the table again not a not a terrible position for us and still within the 80 raised range but one that we would certainly like to increase to something a little bit larger for sure closer to 90 and of course 100 percent would be fantastic if we look at our per diem rates our per diem rates have stayed the same since we do have our guest teacher rates non-retiree rates and retiree rates we do have a fluctuating scale based on the number of days an individual may sub with us so if they sub between one to 25 days we do pay 115 a day and uh for for non-retirees and then 135 a day for those that are here 26 or more uh with a long-term rate of 249.54 um which

010which is a generous and very competitive rate as you move on to the next slide dr zurby you'll see our rate comparisons this is our starting day-to-day rate comparisons and this is with every surrounding district that that shared their data within iu23 as you can see we're really the middle of the road the 150 and 165 so the 150 was a school district that just moved to 150 and the 165 is a district that's moving to that at the start of next year if you move to the next slide we'll see a graphical representation of that now this does not include and many of you may have seen the new north pen rates um this does not include the north pen rates and i'd be happy to talk about that with the board uh afterwards

011if you have any questions but they've increased their rates by 50 in each one of their categories starting next year which certainly puts them in a totally different category from the rest of us with how much they're offering move to the next slide we can see our rate comparisons for extended teacher rates so this is of course not using the 165 rate since that district has not gone to that strategy quite yet but many of the districts are not moving to a as you start to accumulate more days in the district they maintain their rates similar to what they had from 1 to 25 days we increase ours from 26 plus which allows individuals that invest their time and loyalty with us to increase their rate to 135 which has kept us in a pretty

012decent category amongst our peer group within the sts program if you move down to the next slide you'll just see a graphical representation of what we just talked about are rate comparisons for our building and sub rates so this is a strategy that many of the districts are starting to employ one that we have been doing for a number of years but essentially hiring building substitutes that come to the building every day they do not need to look for a specific position each morning they have a job waiting for them and they're utilized in a number of different capacities whether it's jobs that weren't filled or with some of the responsibilities maybe in a different building if we have to move them this is something that we had historically had three building subs and we

013now utilize eight building subs in the district and honestly there isn't a day that they are not utilized in one or even multiple capacities if we move down we'll just see again a graphical representation of what we just discussed our substitute pool comparisons so from the 1920 to 2021 school year the total number of working substitutes were 129 last year this year they are 126. and i apologize 18 the dates are off the 1819 was 125. 1920 was 126. and 2021 was 124. my apologies on the date mess up there uh what you'll notice is there were the next slide or the next bullet is 41 substitutes worked last year that did not work this year and we have brought on 39 new substitutes this year so again if you look at the first summary

014bullet it almost looks like we've only changed two substitutes we've just lost two but essentially we've lost 41 and added 39. for long term substitutes we definitely had an increase in the usage for long-term subs this year we had 17 two years ago 15 last year and 26 this year and and much of that as you can imagine is due to the pandemic and our average daily absence in the month of march as an example which is usually a pretty good indicator april uh march has the most days that we can use to try to keep our denominator somewhat large april with the break that we have in april and then may is really an outlier when it comes to months so but it gives you a good idea to know we have 49 absences

015per day within our professional mea group areas of concern for the future of course is rising cost uh one thing that we're obviously seeing is it's a very competitive market so the two of our neighboring school districts are as we discussed earlier are looking to increase one already has to 150 the other is looking to go to 165 and then north penn certainly has uh increased quite dramatically in this last board meeting i believe what was passed we also are seeing markups from sts with some of their additional employee expenses on their end um so they have increased by a percentage point some of the areas of markups as it comes to day-to-day substitutes not with our building subs and not with our long-term substitutes the certified substitute pool continues to decline um it actually

016has stabilized pretty well over the last three years but our certifications across the state uh are not increasing and certainly this is a direct correlation um the less that are available the less that we're going to have in our subpool and and if we go down to the next slide dr zurby you'll see a graphical representation of that uh since 2010 it's been a 66 percent decline uh until this year in 2020 um i i did not the new 2021 data won't come out until this summer for recommendations at this point one thing that we have utilized this year and it and it's something that we'd like to utilize in short-term capacity not if we have an individual that's out for let's say longer than three to five days uh we would look obviously to

017have somebody an individual classroom but working with the association we have established a large group instruction program essentially where we'll still utilize the google platform teachers will have asynchronous assignments and this can be done by utilizing some of the large group areas and students still continuing on with their work with one substitute proctoring in a large area this will also allow us to send the substitutes that we have at the high school down to the elementary school where it's certainly more impactful to not have students in a large group area that are in elementary school certainly is much more difficult for the younger learners to be in that environment we recommend continuing to move forward with the guest teacher program that's done very well for us and actually some of our building substitutes and district

018substitutes happen to be guest teachers um at this moment in time i'm not 100 sure where our numbers lie it's uh in the teens at this point of dedicated guest teachers so as you remember that started off with two in the beginning um so that program is doing rather well for us and continuing with our eight district substitutes uh that will go to each building that's two at the high school um and we recommend to continue going on with that program with that being said as you can imagine this dr sorgini will be continuing this presentation in the future um and i'd be happy to take any questions from the board at this time thank you any questions some members of the board on the information i know this is the first time you're seeing

019this so i can understand that we're not asking just so you know we're not asking you to take any action here this evening but certainly uh this is this might uh you know perpetuate into further discussion uh ms cancro yeah i just wanted to ask a couple questions based on your recommendation if you know we have membership that's about 400 so if we have 49 teachers a day i'm curious why we would not want to increase the eight per building substitutes to per se 10 to 11 because that ratio would be a little bit more consistent as you so i'm just curious why that maybe would not be happening uh to be honest miss cancro um we really we could it certainly wouldn't hurt us to request more of them to be honest in the

020past we've actually struggled even filling all eight by the time we were filling them we were stealing from that pool to put them in long-term sub capacities so we we haven't been very successful in maintaining the eight for a long period of time but but it without uh increasing further costs we we kept it at uh at eight but could certainly look at increasing that i i wouldn't suspect that that would increase our budget line item i guess if i think about it because we're already trying to call them in and it would allow us to lock in sub so i just think of when you say we're we're the most competitive when it comes to the long term sub where our position is so i just feel like especially if you're trying to create

021large group area instructions that will probably be in place at the high school on a consistent basis you're going to put someone there probably in a long-term position there so it's just something to possibly think about for that though i appreciate that recommendation thank you thank you miss cancro uh mr winners yeah i was going to ask the same question from jen um say the 10 600 uh absences it i think it can be misleading because when you do the math online that that means that somebody uh potentially took a leave of absence for six months it it it is not the daily absences is there do you have the comparables a little bit between sort of a couple years ago versus the covidier here uh where there might have been sort of an inflation

022of those numbers i think i i if somebody sees that number on the in the public i think they're gonna not understand that that is just somebody calling out with a cold right i know that's a that that's a fair that's a fair assumption mr winters it's uh all of the data that we looked at is the same sense of of how we pull it which is whether it's long-term assignments short-term assignments our absence our asop program pulls all of that information directly regardless of how they put the absence in um it's been one of the struggles of the program for us to be able to pull out some of that data to determine which is long-term sub-data which is short-term sub-data but yeah it's accurate from the way we've pulled it every year um

023so but if an individual is out for 180 days based on an absence for a sabbatical they're they're going into the system the same way i'm so you're right it could be a little bit misleading when you see that thank you yeah thank you mr miss purdue i'm sorry mr winters did you finish yeah no i i don't i mean i understand there's no recommendation but certainly uh if you're you could come back in september october if you find that things are not working in the way we had hoped especially since the supply and demand is getting tighter and tighter so thank you miss perdue i also just wanted to touch on i guess the total substitutes for the district and just really um seeing i guess maybe if we can consider so i don't

024know if maybe um to the point where mr winters just may maybe coming back and letting us know if it's feasible to increase the on the total number from eight just because when i think about it just based on um i guess what the nearby districts are doing i think that's really going to impact the number of subsidies that we'll have available so it may be something to look at and then when i look at your recommendations i don't see how we i don't see any plans on there or any recommendations for how we get past with the neighboring school districts also increasing the pay right so that may be something for us to consider or maybe i don't know if you thought about that just because i think we're going to see that impact

025us a lot it's a it's a great point ms perdue to be honest i'm not sure how much of this is a supply concern and how much of this is a cost concern what what and what i mean by that is those individuals that are very loyal to our district and want to work in the fact and um may not whether we increase the price and stay competitive we we may not lose those individuals and i i don't know as if we're going to take people from those districts that have a larger amount anyway there there's many individuals in the subbing pool that are very loyal to the districts for which they represent i i'm i don't want to dismiss the idea that rising raising the cost and the price may certainly attract people i'm

026just not so sure we're going to get the desired results um at this point in time so i i certainly would would love to be able to analyze the data in september and october with dr sergini and dr zurby and then if we recognize that this may be uh something that's troubling us if we make if we need to look at that cost again it might be something we can come back to the board with at that point good recommendation thank you thank you miss purdue miss drummond yeah i guess i would echo the idea of looking at the rates again because i know that we did that a couple years ago and that seemed to help us hold the line um but it does seem like at the same time the supply is getting

027smaller and the other as well as the other districts are getting more competitive with their rates so i think we just need to make sure we're keeping up but my my question was actually about your data with the guest teachers and i was wondering if those numbers of guest teachers are already included in your fill rates or are they apart from that or are they addition addition to that no it's a great question they are a part of our fill rates um matter of fact ms drummond the two of their guest teachers if i remember correctly are actually our building substitutes um so they've even been able to utilize that role that's been beneficial for us because the guest teachers cannot perform long-term substitute roles so we know we could if they've been dedicated guest

028teachers for us and they're doing a great job um it's something we could continue to utilize them in um because it's like they cannot be in one position for longer than 20 days in a row to do the certification so the large group instruction areas is a perfect place uh for the guest teachers that have been with us for a while good question and yeah and i would just suggest i know you did it in the past that um and i saw there's an orientation another orientation coming up in the fall and just to really sell that program to the you know because i know we have a lot of great parents you know educated parents who um you know maybe would welcome that opportunity so thanks thank you ms drummond any other questions uh

029for mr uh regina uh mr navarrete yeah jay this is good information thanks i know last year certainly the last two years quite honestly or kind of difficult years to make any um judgments off of right because there's there's a lot of other things that factored into fill rates than certainly how much we're paying um the um to that end have we do we get enough data or do we have data from sts that speaks to how some of the other factors that may contribute to decisions just even things like where the population of substitute teachers versus where the school districts are um that because like you said quite honestly raising rates you know at some point becomes a zero-sum game right we're just we're just throwing money away um so i just i wonder

030what what are the other factors then um that we've heard i mean even in your conversations or dr sergina your conversations with substitutes or even discussions you know among teachers as to you know what the other factors are um that make substitutes decide i'm going to take gigan mfacton versus north penn versus phoenixville or somewhere else yeah we're that's that's really where we're we're blessed with the school district that we're in to be quite honest you know a lot of the interests from the substitutes are just enjoying being in the fact and people know who they are they're welcomed each time they come our students are great our professional employees are very cordial and work with them to so that we get a lot of feedback on how receptive we are to the substitutes which

031is why we have so many loyal ones um but certainly the the number one feedback that our vendors talks about is is cost um anything that that certainly could increase uh that is something that it is a natural driver of where that could increase um i talked a little bit about north penn everybody's eye is on that right now they increase their rates to ultimately to 200 a day so we and everyone in the county is watching that as being that they increase at such a large they need such a large volume of substitutes and they run their own substitute program so they're not involved with an sts or an ess or a kelly services we're not quite sure what that looks like with the entire group and and the entire iu is kind of

032watching uh this whole thing to see how it develops because the price point to be quite honest is just a is a little bit high for most of the others in the county so um many of us aren't quite sure that the sub pool is there to even complement the increase in that value but um that's that's what we're going to watch and see this fall okay thank you any other questions for mr regina seeing no other hands thank you mr regina thank and uh we'll make sure that we do a follow-up with the board uh with with some of the recommendations that you provided that ends the uh scheduled guests and speakers for this evening thank you dr zurby next we have reports we have our um various committee reports appended to the agenda

033do we have a dei update from ms purdue and ms drummond yes i do just a few minor updates to provide today um the district audit survey was completed the survey opened on may 10th and closed on may 23rd dr campbell dr mangano and the leadership team in addition to all subcommittees are currently looking at the data and reviewing it there's a full di committee meeting scheduled for the 23rd so tomorrow at 6 30 pm and the results from the survey and recommendations will be presented to the district administrative cabinet in july and to the full administrative team in august in preparation for the 2021-2022 school year and that's all we have for now to the next meeting okay thank you miss purdue thank you uh let's see intermediate unit we do not have miss

034reece this evening um north monco technical career center miss drummond do you have any update i do we met yesterday evening for north montco tech the report is that there were six state skills winners from the school that went on to nationals that we don't know yet how they have done the results are not known yet but we'll find out later this summer we went over our health and safety plan for the fall and had discussions we didn't decide on anything but we just discussed what the plan should be um we are planning to start our in-person meetings in september um and other than that there were just a few minor issues regarding ordering printers a new point of service system for the cafeteria um an mou with the thomason township police department um and

035that's it but but you know we had the uh there was a senior recognition uh held earlier in june that was very successful and you know i just want to say how proud i am of all those students of north monco tech and uh the perseverance they showed over the year um you know it's a very hands-on school and you know maybe they didn't get all the hands-on experiences but they all did extremely well and so i'm just very proud of all the students thank you mr drummond um we do not have our student board representatives they are hopefully enjoying their summer break um nothing from the foundation this evening um it looks like we don't have um miss kelly this evening either all right possibly taking a well-deserved vacation so superintendents report dr zurby

036thank you madam president um as as listed on the agenda we have a number of advisements but in addition to that i just have a few uh comments as we complete another school year a year dominated with covid uh related matters i believe that people forget the other extraordinary extraordinary work that this board this administration and our district staff have accomplished so i'd like to take a little bit of time here this evening and summarize a year uh with some very notable matters so um this is several pages long and i'm going to do my best speed reading but i think it's critical that we remind ourselves of the great work that we did so bear with me we expanded the reach program at the high school to help support the mental health needs of

037students we provided supplemental after-school academic supports for students during the school year and have some ready and planned for this summer we instituted a multi-tier system of supports for intervention it's an intervention model for academically struggling students we approved a kindergarten ready summer program for for all kindergarten students we coordinated a vaccine injection access for staff and a family vaccination site for at the methampton high school we ran weekly coveted assurance testing we approved and implemented a well-balanced set of educational options for students during the pandemic which included online instruction hybrid instruction and dual mode instruction as as the options and couldn't have done that without saying a huge thanks to our teachers and our support staff for getting that done we continued with and shared results of students uh through the benchmark testing uh

038program and for monitoring their progress during the pandemic we approved a program to be implemented next school year to increase our inclusive practices with a change in our use of our special education staff assignments will better provide for students at the k-4 level we approved a soar program at the elementary level to begin next school year we we expanded the stem program at the high school by approving the mathactin csi program and the hydroponics lab with help from the education foundation funding we established a diversity equity and inclusion office engaged with a dei consultant and progressed forward with determination of needs within the district we maintained a program of athletics and activities during the entire school year and did everything possible to provide for a full and complete student experience given the circumstances we revisited

039the strategic plan uh progress and are planning for a community-wide effort in october of 2021 we approved the construction of a new arrowhead elementary school we progressed forward with several major master plan construction progress projects we converted the csiu business accounting software to a web-based version we transition to a new prescription management plan to save the district money we open several new depository accounts to maximize interest rates on on bond funds we we received a clean 2019-20 local audit we projected a 20 21 22 budget well under 2 we routed bussing successfully during a hybrid model of instruction we served over 200 000 meals with curbside distribution program we managed to acquire grants for food services from farm to school grant and giant foods for amount of about ten thousand dollars to support the backpack

040program we celebrated a 10-year partnership between the facton and aramark food services we settled employment contracts with our major labor groups the mea teamsters and hopefully this evening soon to be the mesbah agreement we provided a roadmap for reopening the fact in schools we communicated and maintained a covid19 dashboard we communicated good news newsletters we managed technology distributions exchanges and collections we held virtual town hall meetings we hired an assistant superintendent for the first time in 14 years we appointed dr matt walsh as a director of curriculum we promoted dr sojini to director of human resources and melissa gorla to supervisor of secondary education we hired nicole berkel as a principal at sky view upper elementary school appointed a technology director and hired dr gravines as the new high school principal and by the way

041i don't have this on my list but she did a very outstanding job with graduation we also appointed or we also managed to do all these personal matters while providing opportunities for professional leadership growth for emily otera nicole starson and joyce amichi all teachers seeking leadership role roles we implemented the title ix policy procedures and training program across the district we avoided furloughing large quantities of teamster mespa and mespas staff by providing additional support and academic services to our students your very own superintendent of schools attained his national superintendent certification through the nassa p program and certainly not the last item or the leased item but this evening this board has an opportunity to make a significant impact in the lives of so many as we consider the future programming options within the district none

042come closer to creating an impact on our youngest learners in quite the same way as the implementation of a full day kindergarten program would so an affirmative vote on full-day kindergarten would be the icing on a year that appeared to be consumed solely by cobit decisions when in fact this board this administration and our staff accomplished a great deal of good to this and to so much more i say thank you to the board for their dedication to the administration for their perseverance and to our staff for giving of themselves each and every day to support our students and our parents so thank you you sure that was all this year that was all this year and that's not everything that's that's what i can remember uh from this morning i the personal change is

043alone um you know it's it's been an incredible year and um i am i'm very proud of the work that we've done and and even more excited to see what's to come in the 2122 school year all right that's a tough act to follow dr zurby i just think we did we did all that stuff and worried about you know cleaning and distancing i can't tell you how many times we had uh mr jones measure the classrooms i mean it's just how many times bob how many times at least five yes yeah uh enough said but but uh this is a this is a tribute to everything uh our our parents you know without their support you know we would have been able to do all that stuff but certainly uh your dedication as as

044volunteers elec elected volunteers uh you know you know says a lot about your commitment to this school district and to your community so thank you this was definitely a community undertaking to uh to get through this past year and i'm hopeful that we are all looking at all of this in our rear view um with that we will move on to public comment on board action items so anyone that has pre-registered to speak on anything that is up for a vote this evening please raise your hand uh keep your comments to four minutes or less please and introduce yourself with your name and municipality okay first i have jim malik whenever you're ready can you hear me okay uh yes i can okay thank you um four months to an election dr zerby sounds like

045a political action committee i mean i don't know what year you were looking at dave but uh you know what can i say payment of the bills sweet stevens 52 000. can anybody tell me what the breakdown of that is what percentage of that is right to know anybody tell me let me ask you who looks at these bills every month does the board superintendent who looks at the bills put it this way has anyone on the board looked at the legal invoices associated with these bills because obviously the answer is no i mean you let the solicitor spend what 600 grand on right to know and didn't bat an eye so either you're looking at them and ignoring them or you're looking at them and you want the spending or you didn't look at

046them at all so maybe you can explain to me who's looking at the invoices for all this money going out the door because 600 grand the right to know that's money going out the door somebody needs to be responsible for that so you may shake your head but do you understand what happened back in 2018 to start the whole right to know fiasco you guys fired frank bartle and you let dr zerby put kyle in his law firm in charge of right to know instead of the right to know officer yes it's not really funny at all there miss larcenise it's not a joke you guys are wasting taxpayer funds and there should be an investigation of it one way or the other there's going to be an investigation i guarantee you at the special

047meeting you voted on a settlement agreement for shepard restoration and i believe it relates to your vote tonight about the canopy project and when you look at the settlement agreement it says mcfacton school district without notifying sre at some time around october 14 2020 retained a design professional other than sre to continue with the remainder of the canopy project now would that be our good friends kcba architects or is that the unnamed individual they were talking about in this settlement agreement can somebody tell me that because it looks like you're hiring kcba architects for the design and construction of the canopies my question is were they the ones that you basically let do the work and not tell somebody you had a contract with ending up with us getting a settlement agreement because they were

048going to sue us it ain't no joke you know what you guys do is no joke it's no nothing to smirk about all right how about giving us some answers then we don't have to file right to no requests i'm asking you a question you won't give me the answer was kcba architects the people who took over for shepherd restoration and you guys didn't tell shepard restoration it's a simple question can you give me an answer because we ended up forking over 85 000 can you help me out see the lack of transparency thank you dr malik is the problem with this board regardless of how many pats on the back you get as a reminder the public comment period is not for question and answer has not ever been and will not be for

049the sake of the efficiency of the meeting next i have margaret herbson whenever you're ready hi margaret herbison lower providence township um i just wanted to say um about the full day kindergarten i am really excited to see that up for a vote i um i think it's a a great idea it's great for the kids um studies show that there's higher long-term achievement better reading scores benefits for disadvantaged and low-income families higher test scores self-esteem and independence greater creativity and nothing that i've seen shows any negative consequences for the kids and that's who it's for so i just wanted to thank you all for putting that on the table and i certainly hope it gets approved tonight thank you thank you miss harveston next i have brian earnshaw whenever you're ready uh brian earnshaw

050lower providence uh at the work session last week i asked three questions on the list of bills and i did not get answers so i'm hoping that they will be answered tonight when you get to that item in the agenda um rather than filing a right to no request again go on an answer i think about a week so that should be enough time to do the research on those um regarding the final budget while you may be happy with the tax increase less than two percent it could have been a lot lower um there's been no detailed review of the budget and any probing questions by the board or the finance committee uh the administration as you know has a past history of over budgeting this which the budget should have been challenged there's

051been no indication that a 200 000 budgetary reserve has been removed so i assume it's still in there it's clearly not necessarily 115 million 450 million dollar budget uh excess staffing as presented by dr zerby in march in april of 2019 has not been addressed yet the board has not reviewed a salary schedule by employee which is inc inherently needed in reviewing a budget of this size and there's really been no operational changes to reduce costs regarding the unallocated fund balance there was additional explanation regarding seamless summer for three hundred thousand dollars i still don't understand why the district is engaging in this program at that level uh it seems to me like a social program that should not fall into districts responsibilities and it could open the door to other similar type programs down

052the road um committing the balance of the funds to master plan projects i think is just again uh retaining money for additional spending that's not needed uh the board has gone on spending sprees with respect to adding building capacity that's not needed while not addressing the excess capacity in the district i import it's important to highlight this is the fifth consecutive year of a multi-million dollar budget surplus and there's no signs of stopping especially what happened with the budget review this year regarding the master plan projects um item i1 says that there's a bid amount of 9538 item two says a bid amount of 16 403 so for those items were there competitive bids obtained and if so why does item two kcba for the high school canopy and pad pads project indicate that no

053bid was obtained so my question there is was hillis carnis selected as a result of a competitive bid project and if they were was casey bay as well selected through a competitive bid process and if not why not regarding full day kindergarten um i know this is going to get approved but i really would hope that this is not approved um the district is taking cost savings from instrumenting the soar program and just spending it out the door there's been many studies that show full day kindergarten is not needed um and i think this just adds additional spending uh where the taxpayers could have gotten uh 1.3 million dollars of savings um on the amounts their bill for property taxes thank you okay anyone else for public comment on board action items joe written house

054whenever you're ready hi there can you hear me yes i can okay hi there uh very briefly i just wanted to speak on i wanted to echo uh brian earnshaw's concerns on the tax increase um specifically the seamless summer i worry that this will become an endless summer program where it will just we will continually take money that should be returned to the taxpayers and spend it on more and more programs and we'll find another program to move forward with um on top of that echoing the concerns about right to know uh i wanted to say that i feel that um there is an excess of the right the spending on the right to know and i i feel that we could absolutely decrease this as a self like a self-inflicted wound um just by

055being transparent um and then finally i wanted to speak on the meeting minutes um i've been reviewing the meeting minutes and i guess i i the only word that comes to mind is editorializing there is quite a lot of it in the meeting minutes so that if somebody who um doesn't have the time to sit in and listen to these meetings doesn't have the time but you know is more you know able to read just wants to take the time they would not get an accurate depiction of what's happening within these minutes at all um and i worry that we're setting ourselves up for failure because i brought up previously that uh currently methachten is in violation of youtube's terms of service by labeling the uh board meetings as uh youtube kids program and if

056the only avenue in which we have to get an accurate representation of these minutes is to turn to um the the video release from the district that is in violation of the tos of youtube we stand to lose that right stream and even if we set up another account we'll go around you know that's an account ban so all of this can be solved very easily by just transcribing the entire meeting um i i understand that that while that may not seem like the time and money worth it i i think that accuracy and transparency and education is 100 worth that money um and i i truly feel you are one one troll or one you know vicious meeting away from losing the right to stream to uh uh such an available platform as youtube

057and if like i said if the only place we can get accurate information for word for word before what was said is not from the minutes but from youtube we're you know we're we're just hoping that everything doesn't fall off a cliff at any given moment um so just if we're going to approve uh the meeting minutes that do not accurately reflect this you know uh i i i'm just worried um so i'd ask that going forward the meeting minutes be transcribed um whatever it takes i i think that it's act needed for accuracy and transparency thank you thank you next i have jessica bradberry hi good evening can you hear me yes i can thank you jessica bradbury lower providence township uh with regards to item 10i the unallocated fund balance have you explored

058the idea of returning the balance of the funds back to the taxpayers of this district i don't think i've actually heard us discuss that at all this year i'm in a normal year we heard roughly 700 of our students qualify for free meals this is amazing and we should continue to do this but the program that we're looking to extend that's not required that is feeding every student not only in our district but anyone that shows up and requests food and i think dr zurby said we served 200 000 meals this year which is astronomical considering we were hardly in the classroom it is the scope of this district to educate our children not to feed everyone um if we returned the surplus to the tax-paying households the households would receive roughly 200 to 330

059000 depending on what we agreed upon is the surplus which we can't agree upon um can you remind us why you are proposing that we raise taxes next year while we're committing these surplus funds for an undecided undisclosed future expenditure mr brecker if you may would you refresh our memory how much will the average household spend next year with that tax increase i think it's not 200 to 300 300 so if we're increasing taxes and not returning the money and we have all that money to allocate for next year it just seems like it's not the year to be increasing taxes thank you next i have chandling mom whenever you're ready hi can you hear me yes i can hi trinima we're sister township first i want to bring up the uh settlement with ice

060re um also uh i know we paid our sre 108k to settle the the dispute the case uh because we had the contract the canopy violate the the contract with sre and contract canopy project with the kcva if i understand it right or if you decide to answer dr malik's question so we can be more understanding what's going on so my question is uh if we already signed a contract with our sre and then we broke it and then we paid money to uh settle that and then we signed another contract with kcba to do this project that does that mean we're paying double for the same canopy project so i'd like to get an answer on that second is the art right to right to know request um i think the district should do

061better on the right to know or the transparency we don't always have to file the right to know request you understand what's going on in the district i can give you a number i think it was published in a work session in april uh the rtk request cost in uh school year 2017-2018 was only 1k and then in 2018 and 2019 was 50k and 2019 to 2020 was 200k and 2020 to now uh not yet finished this school year is 600k so it's been increasing exponentially so i don't think this is responsible for a fiscally responsible way for the taxpayer to spend money like this it's like we we are supposed to we're entitled to know the things which we should know then we the this district has to spend money on this request to

062um to feed the public information i think this just should be like a with better information put on the website or answer to the from the administration directly on the next thing is about the next tax increase uh i think brian arshal has mentioned over and over in the past six months about the budget surplus every year it's been two or three years on the board has never given an answer on that uh we had a budget surplus for many years but i don't know what we're going to do with the surplus yet we still have the tax increase like he just said we could do without any increase this year so i i again this is not a fiscal responsible behavior and the board has not not seemed to give us a a good

063answer to that and the for sale i also want to talk about the meeting minutes so i have noticed uh for example the uh may regular main meeting last time i i read i was listening to the meeting and here uh some example i don't think the media minutes were accurate reflection of what people really said in the comments um or is not true to what exactly happened for example mr clifford and barber on here can read a lower province review the website and share safety drills and in cooperation with local authorities as positive and diluted opinions with the recommendation to visit the freedom of information requests after reading this what idea do you get but what he actually said was he he said that he he felt that website was good doing that to

064in to describing to describe things like that but his main focus was however he was to complain the dei committee's anti-police opinions and the links put up in the dei site which are anti-blue or pro-black all that kind of stuff but the meeting minutes i don't think it reflects anything he said in there and another example is that john carr warczester shared the morning announcement with the harsh language at the intermediate school and the process approved statements again when people read it they had no idea what he was talking about thank you mom that's four minutes anyone else with comments on board action items okay um i know there was a lot of questions about the right to know process and while that isn't necessarily a voting item um i just wanted to shed a

065little bit of light on that because it's something that we've been hearing out about again and again the board recently received a copy of a right to no request that was shared with the board there are 60 items in this one request from a single requester i want to read some of these just to give you an idea of the complexity of what it is that we're dealing with to help you understand a little bit of why our costs for right to know requests have gone up so exponentially um the requests that we got prior to 1718 were things for you know a copy of a presentation or copy of a contract things that we could reasonably provide with minimal effort on the district's part here is a right to no request that we received

066any and all records and or records of communication between the solicitor his associates and or his staff regarding the requester's right to know request on september 18 2020 at 7 42 a.m monthly from september 1st 20 to present including those on personal computers and personal email accounts these records are requested in their native and original format which includes metadata any and all records and or records of communication between the open records officer and the solicitor regarding the requester's right to no request on 9 18 20 at 7 42 a.m monthly from 9 120 to present including those on personal computers and personal email accounts these records are requested in their native and original format which includes metadata any and all records and or records of communication between the open records officer and the methectum right

067to know or write to no methecton.org email address regarding the requesters write to no request on 9 18 20 at 7 42 am monthly from 9 120 to present including those on personal computers and personal email accounts these records are requested in their native and original format which includes metadata that's three this email has 60 of those items so when we have legal fees associated with right to know i think it's important to understand that any and all record and or records of communications must then be reviewed and redacted appropriately employees of the district regularly communicate regarding students and regarding other confidential matters these records need to be reviewed and redacted it is a time-consuming and tedious process we are looking at ways that we can streamline that process but it is costly that is

068why our right to no fees have gone up the way that they have anyone who is interested in learning more about the types of requests please know that according to the office of open records right to no requests themselves are subject to a right to no request so if anyone is truly concerned about what types of requests we are getting and what is driving these costs you are absolutely free to request any of these i'm not going to take up any more time on that matter this evening may i have a motion to approve the suspension of board policy 006.2 with specific regard to the limitation on the number of directors participating electronically drummond thank you miss drummond is there a second okay thank you miss cancro any comments from the board all those in

069favor all right hi i'm opposed motion carries eight to zero may i have a motion to approve the minutes from the special meeting and work session on may 19th and the regular board meeting on may 25th is attached navarrete thank you mr navarrete is there a second thank you thank you ms perdue comments from the board uh yeah can we just um go over the policy um or or can i ask kyle to just um weigh in on our meet our on our minutes as presented to um just are they in full compliance of what's required um kyle can can you expand on that for us please sure the sunshine act requires that um minutes be taken of public meetings and that those minutes uh as part of what they include include individuals who speak

070or provide testimony is the way in which it's described in the sunshine act and that the subject of those presentations of that testimony be reflected certainly i believe our minutes appropriately comply with the law there's there's certainly no requirement of having a transcription or a word by word recounting of uh the meeting and and so we are in compliance with the legal uh mandates thank you any other comments from the board seeing none all those in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries eight zero fiscal items mr bricker thank you madam president tonight for your approval we have the list of bills treasurer's report budgetary transfers taxes for 2021 to 2022 which include local service tax real estate transfer tax earned income tax and amusement tax list of our depository for the 21 22 fiscal

071year the approval of waste management as our waste and removal and recycling company at a cost of 158 777 dollars 52 cents over three years averaging 52 925 and 84 cents per year we also have the final budget adoption for 2021 2022 which is to approve the final budget approve the general fund budget of the methacrylate school district for 2021 2022 fiscal year in the amount of 114 million 392 640.67 requiring a millage of 31.2645 an increase in property tax of 1.3325 we also have the corresponding homestead and farmstead resolution we have the unallocated fund balance to approve the unallocated fund balance ending june 30th 2021 in excess of seven percent of the budget to be allocated as following committed funds in the following order commit funds not to exceed three hundred thousand dollars for

072food service expenses associated with the operation of the seamless summer program commit the balance of the funds to the master plan project under master plan we have two projects under eagleville one is to approve hills carnes engineering at a bid of 9538 dollars to provide construction testing there is a change order from hollenbach jc over at eagleville for a redux credit of twenty eight thousand seven hundred seventy four dollars and twenty cents under high school and canopies we're gonna we're requesting to approve hills carne's engineering associates in a bid amount of sixteen thousand four hundred three dollars to provide construction testing we're also asking for a kcba to be approved as a design professional of a high school canopy and patch project an amount not to exceed thirty thousand dollars and finally we have the

073fidavia agreement for the board to approve this month thank you mr bricker does anyone want to take any of these fiscal items separately all right then i will take a motion to approve all of the fiscal year yeah can we can we take um let's see here why don't we take the budget separate um and let's take the um let's take all of 10i individually because i think there's some discussion that needs to be had there can we please conclude h with uh g they go together and they'd have to be approved in order okay i'm okay with that thanks tim all right so we've got g h and i anything else okay so then i will take a motion to approve all fiscal items with the exception of 10 g 10h and 10i jen

074can't grow thank you miss cancro is there a second winners thank you mr winners comments from the board on those items seeing none all those in favor oh were you sorry mr never were you yeah sorry i'm jumping late here i'm just trying to type something and get my hand up at the same time um no that's okay um related to the master plan work at the high school i guess i think it's important to note that the settlement with sre was related to a dispute over amounts that were invoiced um and tim correct me if i'm saying anything here that needs to be corrected but it was related to amounts that were invoiced that we didn't think were accurate um that's simply what it was that right tim that's correct right so the settlement

075amount um equated to the amount that we uh believed was due uh in addition a uh five thousand dollar amount um to cover uh you know some some future work i guess that that might need to be completed that completed our obligation to estari and the kcba uh design work is in addition to that that is work that um sre would have done if we would have continued the contract so i just want to make sure that it's good that we're not paying double for anything um we didn't overpay for work that was done and i want to thank mr bricker for his diligence in reviewing these invoices and i'm i'm sorry bob if i'm shorting you here too with you or mr sacal is part of fedex there's a lot of people involved in

076this process certainly um for taking the time and having the uh excuse me going through the effort to make sure that we're not just rubber stamping invoices that we're making sure that what does come in um is exactly what is due i'll just add one last thing that the design professional of kcba was not the one that was related to the settlement agreement thank you for that clarification mr brooker mr winners yeah there were some outstanding questions um uh tim there were questions from last week related to um a check two zero zero zero three eight and then the sweet season sweet stevens uh 4 15 i think checking me 415 and i think there was one more that i did not write a note on that somebody else had my back for do you

077have answers on those time the one that was back dated was a purchase of services related to the peasers and it does go back that far that's the way that it it's handled um i can't remember what the question was on sweet stevens the 415 do you know what the question was on that one i imagine that the question is related to how much is related to uh right to no request but i don't recall exactly i just wrote down the check number honestly at this point i do not know the check number but i can tell you that in looking at the uh right to know uh for june there's a 5900 that fifty nine hundred dollar charge there is a two hundred seventy four dollar and eighty cent charge there's a three hundred

078and sixty dollars and seventy cent charge mr bricker in my notes i have um this was a payment for a bill from march for a hundred five thousand dollars from march i would have to look that one up we'll move on to something else while i try and see if i can find that one yeah that was it's part of this month's list of bills but it was from an invoice from march yeah no i'll just say a couple things one uh we do see uh we are not reviewing i do not review the legal bills on a monthly basis for the approval of the physical bills uh but we have seen copies of the legal bills and the breakdown of where those legal expenses are going um so a couple other things related to

079the the bids there were questions related to the bids of these additional uh veteran i don't know what section this is 10 so the the bids for the construction work um it's not considered a service in our opinion so we we put them out to bid uh there was the reason was the first offer came in over 10 over the bid limit over the limit so we had to go out there and get that and we got three uh the first one on eagleville actually came below the threshold where we did not have to bid it the second one did require to have the bid so that followed a general practice uh with regards to kcba they are filling in with regards to the design professional for any changes not to exceed um that is

080just the design professional to fill the gap of the one the former company sre and the one that was replacing them through the bidding process due to certifications and ability to perform the job and have the time to do the job so the the difference for with all of them uh separate from kcba is they're required uh bid or or multiple uh quotes versus kcba's is a professional service which doesn't require that uh same level of uh financial scrutiny okay um i i believe a lot a lot of the um the courtesy of floor had some questions about the the list of bills last week that we related about duplication of pico so many of the questions were answered as at the time and i just want to make sure that it's understood that we

081are trying to answer the questions during the dialogue session of before the voting items or after the courtesy of the floor thank you mr winner's excellent point any other comments from the board okay so all those in favor of these fiscal items any opposed motion carries 8-0 and now i will take a motion to approve items 10 g and h we'll take i separately winners thank you mr winners is there a second jennifer cancro thank you miss cancro comments from the board seeing none um mr summers are we required to have a roll call vote on the budget uh no you're not okay thank you for the clarification okay all those in favor then hi any opposed motion carries eight zero and now i'll take a motion to approve item 10i for the unallocated fund

082balance can't crow thank you miss cancro is there a second i heard mcginnis comments from the board mr navarette thanks um i just let me start with the um the seamless summer i know uh tim i asked quite a few questions and asked for quite a bit of detail and i want to thank you for providing that there was a lot there to digest but that was i'll be honest that was exactly what um i needed to be able to look into it at a much deeper level in terms of the assumptions about reimbursement rates and meals and um you know uh how much many meals we would have per student excuse me per uh the split between breakfast and lunch monthly breakdowns uh what we um you know what an average month looks like

083um also how much we talked in finance too about the uh the food services account some of the equipment that comes out of there we talked about the um that ninety thousand dollar provision from aramark so first let me just say thank you for all of the detail and effort that you put into answering those questions because it came from a couple of board members um my concern here is that this is we have a program in place to be able to um to serve those that are already in need um i know we're uh i know we have a a sizable surplus here from this year but um as i look at the numbers that mr bricker provided and even if we bracket expenses or excuse me bracket the number of meals even if

084we look at reimbursement rates i mean we're still looking at you know even on the low end i'm you know conservatively talking 200 or 250 000 um i just i just don't think it's an expense that we need to spend on this when we have a program in place i think we'd be better served by advertising for uh the programs that we already have um and then bringing back kind of that normal student choice uh that we have at real time for all of our students uh i also think there's you know kind of as an aside it's probably a benefit to our students in being able to really get back to quote normal um where lunch is concerned as well so um from where i stand right now i'm gonna vote no on this

085um i think the i'd like to see us uh perhaps amend this motion and uh simply uh push all of this uh all the surplus for now into master plan projects pending um pending something coming back from the administration in uh say august or september uh on student programs uh that might be one-time programs in the next year or two that we can push this to so thank you any other comments okay um with that then um i will take a vote on item 10i are you are you doing this separately or not uh no the motion was brought forward as one item so it's 10i altogether let me let me just make a statement let me just make a statement um because uh it's critical that if uh the board decides uh to vote

086down uh this uh number 10 i that it still leaves open the requirement for us to have the board vote on what to do with the surplus so so we can't we can't leave tonight without doing that otherwise it goes into the unallocated fund balance and we were then in violation of a major matter and and i don't want us to be in that violation yeah so just just uh so so what i think what you have here and mr summers you may want to just correct me if i if i don't say this properly but you have an option of voting the matter down or someone making a a uh an amended motion uh something that maybe mr navarrete had mentioned but again i'm not suggesting any either of the two uh i'm just

087saying that you know just be careful just be careful if this if this is if this goes through and it's voted down um we're gonna we need someone to at least make a motion to take care of of a final matter i'll make sure all right miss drummond yeah i just wanted to ask the question i mean my understanding is that the seamless summer is um the result of an increased reimbursement rate from the usda to schools um to cover this for schools and i just wanted to ask the question if anybody knows what other school districts are doing in montgomery county regarding seamless summer so my understanding of mr i'm sorry yeah mr baker do you have that information i think that was some of the data that you collected yeah so the uh

088article that was mentioned had a 4.25 uh rate uh in a subsidy that which was not is not the case that we are receiving um the numbers we're receiving are closer to 300 3.70 which is below the 3.94 cents that we are charged per meal breakfast is closer to two dollars and three cents per meal so that would create a larger gap with regards to school districts an area i think there's two other schools nearby that are not doing a seamless summer but i can't speak because i have not really pulled all the other schools as to what they're really doing so so we believe that most of the other schools in the county are doing are continuing the seamless summer i i don't i only know a couple i don't know all right i

089know that there's a couple nearby that are you can't count narstown because they do it all year round every year due to their severe needs um i know that i think saturday's not pv is so i mean i don't know i didn't poll anyone to get that specific miss cancro just for clarification then will the students have options to buy hot meals a la cartes all those things that they were presented prior to the cobit or does this affect it so that students all have to receive the same food with a seamless summer we could potentially serve different meals the obviously the people doing pickups would get the same meal because they would be prepared and that would be for a week uh mr bricker just for for clarity's sake i think in our conversations

090if we were doing the seamless summer option during the school year that would be with a set number of staff that our america would have and have a set cost if in fact they were doing the same this summer and had the options of a la carte uh where they would have to do the checkout that would be additional staff which would mean additional costs which would in my our understanding is it would inflate the expense greater than the three hundred thousand dollars which we projected am i accurate or not you're correct so can i jump in then to the high school per se because that is by far the most diverse in food service so you're saying that those students will not be available to have the salad bar the pasta bars all those

091things the subs to order before they go in it will not be the same program as they left march 10th of 2000 yeah that's i mean i i understand that's my only reservation for voting for this only because i do want us to return we we do have a program already in place so in my in my opinion i would i would vote down this because i think it's opportunity for everyone to continue the program that we had prior one option for consideration uh in this and i know that you know this the the uh the the thought for for this is coming from a good place meaning we're trying to do what's what people think are is best for our students and our families within our community uh the district could um if you

092if you wanted to uh you could take a portion of money let's say i'm just going to put a number of the surplus say 50 000 and put it towards the backpack program and therefore uh allow us to do the national school lunch program which would which would have the subsidies associated with the free and reduced students as we normally would and then and then we would have all the um i'll call them uh access to the uh alternatives and and um a la carte type of of options for students and and then there's we could also we could have a more robust uh you know backpack program as as a as an indication that um you know we depleted most of our our inventory and the buildings as part of you know providing for

093the families during coven so that that is just something for the board to consider if that's another option if in fact uh what you're hearing from us this evening you know in terms of the recommendation isn't sitting well for you right now i don't mean to confuse all this but i just want you to know that you know you know i know that this is coming from a from a good place it's just the camp is a little challenging um the other the other option that you could you could decide is that and mr bricker you'll need to correct me if i'm wrong you could commit the three hundred thousand dollars to the fund and uh we could revisit the application process for this ema summer program um at next month's meeting with some additional

094information if that would be helpful i don't believe mr bricker that you'll have to apply before that time do you know do you have an idea of that typically we've already had it set and it has not opened yet so i don't know when it's going to open and close at this time but as we're not serving in the summer it puts it in a gray area because i don't know what they're going to do usually we're already done by now i'm trying to come up with some options um mr winners yeah i i don't know what the i'm not a supporter of at the very least i think we we should remove uh 10i won um from this uh voting item i guess i don't have to ask for the tabling or an amended

095i'm not sure exactly what i need to do but i believe we should if it if by chance uh we decide to move forward with this um on the on a clear understanding of the complete cost and understanding of um you know how it's going to be implemented starting in late august um i believe there's other ways we could find the three hundred thousand dollars we we have the two hundred thousand dollars in the uh budgetary reserve um we have we know that we have master plan projects that will certainly be needing of money uh for next year so it's not like it's like we're trying to push money over to the side that's not the case at all um so i i believe there's too much un unfinished business on the principle to see

096in the summer and i would hate to allocate it for something that potentially we're gonna unallocate if we choose not to proceed with it so i don't know what the proper procedure is or if there's i don't want to on dialogue at this point either so yeah no i am i'm kind of keeping track of what everyone is saying here um so that we can figure out the best way to proceed so miss drummond yeah i mean i will say i'm a little torn here i i was i was very much in favor of the seamless summer and expanding it to all families um i appreciate that that is limiting of food choices for all the students and so so i'm i'm rethinking um but also i you know i i i guess is is

097could could we table this at that at this time um maybe or um i i also wanted to comment dr zurby to your your comment about the backpack program which i like and and i would say i would find that acceptable uh as a replacement for the seamless summer um to to allocate funds in some amount to the backpack program i guess i would say i guess i would ask that then the backpack program um be more open to families who apply that that any family who feels they're in need even if they don't meet you know a certain income threshold right now but they feel they're in need of of the backpack program that they're able to get those services from the backpack program so to make that a little easier okay so just

098so that i can be clear on the on where we are and what the process is so what absolutely has to happen tonight is that we need to have an agreement on the disposition of the unallocated fund balance in excess of seven percent of the budget correct okay so if we wanted to commit funds to the backpack program would that also need to be done as part of this motion this evening it not necessarily would have to be done the the most important thing is that anything in excess goes to a committed fund and you could just actually it would be 10 i2 it's all you have to approve and then at a later date if you choose that you want to send money to the the backpack program or you want to send some

099of those funds uh to this cms summer program you could take a motion at a future board meeting to take committed funds and move those committed funds to another committed fund as as part of that process so you could you could unallocate those funds even if they were associated for master plan projects and then commit them with a board vote to some other uh matter so you really you really only have to take the the letter or 10 i too if if you can commit to that we can move on and uh get more information and have further discussions about potential options okay so then for simplicity's sake um and kyle please jump in and correct me if i misstep here i know you're listening carefully um so we have a motion um by ms

100cancro seconded by mr mcginnis if we have miss can crow does she have to remove or rescind the motion or does it have to be amended sure so there's really two options um any board member could make a motion to amend the motion that is currently before you and that motion to amend could be to um remove item one the um food service commitment from the motion there were then if there were a second to that you would then debate removing um that item making that amendment you would vote on that whether to amend and and then if it passed you would vote on it as amended so one option is any board member could make a motion to amend or based on the discussion that has just occurred you could ask the board if

101there is any objection um from any of the board members to removing the motion and revising it um to be a motion to approve simply item two and if there's no objection um you could have uh the motion be amended in that fashion okay so that sounds like the cleanest option so is there any objection to me removing 10 i from the current motion i'm seeing none so with that the motion on the table right now would be for 10 i2 which would commit the balance of funds for master plan projects okay do we have any further conversation on this item mrs drummond i i'm really okay with this um but i would just like to ask that this topic be addressed again before the start of the school year get on the agenda absolutely

102i'd like to see this um as part of our july meeting so that we can um consider allocating funds to the backpack program i think that that's a wonderful suggestion dr zurby so um in the interest of time and and to allow us to give the full attention to that that i think it deserves i'd like to see us kind of come up with a plan between now and then so that we have something on the agenda for july we will do that thank you okay anything else all right so now i'll take um a vote on the amended item 10i2 all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries eight zero thank you everyone for your patience and discussion on that matter now we are on to personnel items dr sergini good evening thank

103you madam president for your consideration this month we have the following personnel items two resignations professional including one additional since the last meeting last week linda eunice instructor of fifth grade at skyview upper elementary school for retirement we thank linda for her 16 years of dedicated service to the students in the factory school district and we wish her all the very best in her retirement two resignations classified including one additional since the meeting last week five employments professional including three additional since the meeting last week those three are lauren kirkman grade five instructor at skyview upper elementary school robert montalbano grade seven social studies instructor at arcola intermediate school and megan rowley reading specialists at eagleville elementary school one employment classified one uncompensated lead professional one uncompensated leave classified with the change in end date

104to july 12 2021 and a series of supplemental contracts including one for room movements uh that is an addition from last week and one for summer iep writing that is an addition from last week all right can i have a motion oh actually does anyone want to take any of the personnel items separately okay i'll take a motion to approve all the personnel items as listed oh my goodness thank you mr mcginnis is there a second and then and girl can crew yes okay any comments from the board miss purdue i just have a quick question in reference to resignations um when it's not um associated with a retirement are we conducting an exit interview from those individuals and if we are what are we doing with that information i have conducted uh exit interviews

105with resignations not for retirement and that information is processed and shared and utilized moving forward so when you say shared and utilized what what do you mean is it like if someone is leaving due to whatever reason that they provided their interview are you using it looking at ways if it's something that we think we can improve on as a district yes certainly and we're having conversations about what that might be and uh thankfully we do have very few resignations that aren't for retirement any other comments from the board no just congratulations to mr ewanks i've mispronounced i but she's been was a fantastic teacher in the sky view yes she will be greatly missed all right there's no other comments then all those in favor of these personnel matters any opposed motion carries 8-0

106thank you dr sorgini we have nothing this month for curriculum and programs um for policy we have seven policies that are up for a first read and six for a second read i may have a motion to approve the policies that are up for a second read this evening excuse me i'm seeing 10 per second read you're right i'm just looking at the notes in my script here so that must not have been updated from a previous version so thank you miss drummond for the correction we have 10 up for second reading any comment or i'm sorry can i have a motion to approve those 10. i'll make the motion to approval thank you miss hall is there a second mr winners miss holly totally expected you to be the one that would catch me

107on that misnomer she beat me to it thank you all right any comments or questions from the board on these policies seeing none all those in favor aye aye aye any opposed motion carries eight zero um let's see we have gifts and donations full day kindergarten psb a voting delegates and health and safety plan mess the mediators proposal and instructional plan modifications so i don't see anything simple about this so i'm going to say can i have a motion to approve item 14a the gifts and donations drummond thank you miss drummond is there a second mcginnis thank you mr mcginnis any comments on the gifts and donations just thank you very much yes agreed all right all those in favor aye aye motion carries 8-0 and now i will take a motion to approve the

108implementation of full-day kindergarten for all my facton students beginning with the start of the 2022-2023 school year as presented dramat thank you miss drummond is there a second i do thank you miss perdue comments from the board mr neverett yeah i want to thank the administration um for all of their work that has gone into getting us to this point it was something that we talked about and discussed starting three four years ago um there was a lot of time and effort that was put in um certainly need to uh call out uh dr eucher uh for all the work that she did in putting this this program together um you know developing the curriculum for it um presenting us with that data in a in a concise and coherent um but still very detailed

109way um and i think kim said this at a previous meeting but it's among the best presentations of information that uh that we've had in this board so i appreciate your commitment as an administration to getting this done our community appreciates it this is a giant step forward from effect thank you agreed miss drummond i just want to reiterate i i want to thank everyone involved um with getting us here and a special shout out to dr euger and her euchre and her comprehensive binders of presentations um you know that really you know we're so complete and and left me very comfortable making this decision mr winters yeah i i just want to say from the five plus years i've been on the board i was very conflicted on the full day kindergarten from the

110beginning and i am definitely a supporter at this point i think obviously that the research has been done but i think there's a there's a few things that have been said uh publicly that i want to get clarified you might not agree with them but i just want to clarify there the the issue about why we're doing this is not to spend money instead of saving money it was all around the education of the children and making sure they're developing and we're seeing it seeing an issue with the development in in especially on the language side in their earlier grades so there's been discussion about well we were better with t1 well t1 was not necessarily fully inclusive from a perspective of of how now we're going to affect every student with an additional half

111a year um there's been discussion about you know that we we sort of went about this in sort of the wrong direction we've been talking about this for a long time we've identified the educational need we were able to identify the best way to deliver it in a way that actually is more cost effective than i thought it could have been several years ago um i think it's uh the principle that the the administration and and led by dr eucher took was just looking at the data and the right thing i am sure that somebody can send me a study that says full day kindergarten is not needed uh you know and five years ago i wasn't necessarily sure that full day kindergarten was needed in the factory but i think in today's times full

112date kindergarten is really the most important addition that we can do to this district at this point in time honestly i would like to see what we could do i know we can't that's overreach i understand but pre-k and and making sure that all individuals three four and are prepared to learn because those are the most important years for setting the stage for them to be successful learners and citizens in in the community so i i know that there has been some spin from the community about how we've gone about this i think it's completely not true and certainly it's disrespectful to dr eucher and her approach that she took um you can attack the board members for our purpose of why we're doing it but certainly don't attack the dr eugene administration for taking

113the right approach of bringing a fantastic improvement to the packing school district i heartily support this thank you mr winners i i'll i'll echo a lot of what's already been said um the the discontinuation of the t1 program by a prior board left a a void in in what we were doing for our earliest learners um i i happen to see it firsthand in um the t1 program disappeared between my two children that have gone through the district and i've seen the difference in in how um you know the impact that that program had and then what happened when it disappeared and i um the conversation around full day kindergarten pre-dates my time on the board i have a very distinct memory of miss brenda hackett handing me a binder on full day kindergarten when

114i first came onto the board um this is a conversation that has been going for a very long time and i i applaud this administration and this board for making it come to fruition and i think that um it's long overdue for us to be doing something to address the needs of our youngest learners and i think over the next several years we will see um some some real growth in our district as a result of this do we have any other comments questions complaints anything all right all those in favor of approving the implementation of full day kindergarten hi hi any opposed dr zurby i don't normally vote but i was i'm voting for full day kindergarten so i know i know it doesn't count but i'm raising my hand anyhow all right thank

115you the emotion carries with a vote of 8-0 we will have full-day kindergarten starting in 22-23 sorry i just needed a moment with that may i have a motion to approve the appointments of samir perdue and mary hall is voting delegates to the psba delegate assembly on october 23rd mr honor and i'll take miss drummond as the second any comments from the board thank you can i just speak up yes again i'm going to make a push mary i was going to i was going to answer if if we need to if we can add a third later on can we add another dog at a point in time i think we have to submit it to psba now yeah i think it's due in mid-july with the name so it has to be voted

116on and approved tonight i i am more than willing to be the third so do we have to amend another moment anyone object to me amending the motion to include mr paul winners as the third voting delegate all right so now the motion is amended may i have a um so we have a motion on the floor to approve the appointments of samir perdue mary hall and paul winters as our voting delegates the psba delegate assembly any other comments thank you paul thank you samir and thank you mary all those in favor aye aye all right the amended motion carries eight zero and now for our health and safety plan um dr zerbe if you could just walk us through this item because i know it has changed a little bit since last week and

117i want to make sure everybody is clear on the changes yeah so uh last week uh the the motion that was on the the work session agenda reflected the conversations that we had in the pandemic team with the information that we knew it at that time which is about three weeks ago and in this last month probably month and a half we we've seen a lot of change happen rapidly and because our meetings fall outside of when these changes occur it it's hard sometimes to keep to keep pace with um you know the decision by the county and their decision by this entity that any or or the guidance that that occurs so with with that said uh in looking at the information uh i wanted to uh i made a modification that will uh

118put in into play uh and address three main areas areas for staff uh areas for students and for adults and students in athletics and activities as well as uh any outside groups where on the on june 23rd and for staff beginning on the 16th and just so you know um you you previously approved a motion that allows for for number one to occur anyhow but this is just sums it up for all of our populations and gets it complete because some of the other challenges that we've had is knowing exactly where are we at this moment in time because there's there's five versions of the health and safety plan there's four different votes on the plan over five months and it's it's really hard to keep track of everything so i figured let's just put

119it all in one place um let's have the the board consider this and it would then put into play uh the the cessation of all the required mitigation protocols that the plan last approved and this is documented and is the one that is located on the district website of the of the 223 2021 plan that plan is then is being modified so whereby the cessation of all the required protocols outlined including cleaning sanitation disinfection and where masking social distancing is a matter of personal choice and most importantly not a requirement so that's generally worded throughout all three of them are all four of these items uh with the exception of number two where we're asking for uh the parents to make that decision and the last one is that we wouldn't we wouldn't require as

120we do now entities to submit a mitigation plan along with their application for use of facilities so i think this sums up all of our our other plans because if you remember we've had health and safety plans for athletics and activities we had a healthy safety plan for instruction and and then we also included some information over over the period of months about the outside use of facilities and it's my understanding that this takes care of all of it right now and puts up puts a button on it and and and cleans it up so questions at this point in time well first i want to get the motion on the table good point so can i have a motion to approve the health and safety plan amendments as posted my guinness thank you mr

121mcginnis second awesome oh thank you mr neverett sorry mary okay so now any comments or questions yes mr drummond yeah just just to clarify so then so then um what this means regarding cleaning sanitation disinfection that then those that's only as it relates to the health and safety plan so then all cleaning sanitation disinfection goes back to how we normally clean and sanitize and disinfect that is correct yes okay thank you any other comments from the board ms hall i just want to say thank you for uh adapting this i know that change has been constant since the rates have been improving so rapidly um but i'm happy and hopeful that we're making this motion agreed this feels like a real milestone mr mcginnis um just to make sure obviously uh june 23rd is tomorrow

122uh email going out tonight to all the constituents so no one shows up tomorrow morning confused i just want to make sure that there's clarity everyone knows everyone's you know kind of been alerted i just want to make sure that we've kind of walked through that process if you will to make sure this gets communicated assuming we all vote for it yeah we'll take care of that as if if approved here this evening as soon as the conclusion of the board meeting i'll compose that message uh staff is already in for aware so number one's already been approved so that's not an issue uh the the issue will likely be in in number three and number number four and then for number two students don't really return here to school until uh sometime in july

123so we'll have that communication out to parents in advance of their attendance thank you yeah i do agree with i'm sorry withdrew because there are organizations that are doing those summer camps that when making their decision they're they're looking at our health and safety plan so thank you all right any other comments from the board never thought we'd be here a year later all right all those in favor aye aye aye any opposed motion carries eight zero uh may i have a motion to approve the mediator's proposal between mesbah and the facting board of directors as presented and crow thank you miss canker was there a second i do thank you miss purdue comments from the board mr winners first i want to thank everybody that worked on it so it's a lot of work

124and one that lasted a long time uh i will be obtaining this though on this particular general items so my wife is an office assistant at the eagle go elementary and have her hourly rate changed by this proposal in accordance with the pennsylvania pennsylvania ethics act prior to the meeting i submitted a written memo to the board secretary that indicated my attention to abstain thank you mr winners any other comments from the board seeing none all those in favor hi any opposed any abstaining so the motion carries with a vote of 701 with mr winners abstaining and now i'll take a motion to approve the modification as attached for the k-6 online delivery model for the 21-22 school year as presented mcginnis thank you mr mcginnis is there a second ken crow thank you miss

125cancro comments from the board mr navarette dr zerby can you provide us a quick update on uh how things went in terms of conversations with folks this week and changes in numbers yeah so i think um when i presented at the work session i think we had 24 in the secondary and 27 in elementary so secondary being 7 through 12 elementary being k through 6 of parents of students that have selected to come all online based on the initial um offering uh we had we had conducted follow-ups with all the families as part of uh the the the challenge that i presented last week and as a result of that we had a number and i i think we might have dropped it by another 10 total i don't i don't have the number in

126front of me but i know i shared it with you you might you might already have that but it's less so we have less students now that are going to be returning to all online after hearing uh and have a receiving the communication from our our families and and and those that still remain have a choice up until i believe july 15th to make their final determination so we've we we've sent a letter to them to all of them and and and included what the program would look like again that we only communicated to the k through six parents as a result of of the potential modifications that could occur based on our conversation from last week so i know that the modification is only for k-6 but um i hope that we will at

127some point communicate with families that have opted for the online or virtual instruction just to let them know what the actual numbers are because there may be some parents who are going to reconsider their choice at the 7 to 12 level as well um once they are aware of the what the numbers are so i just want to make sure everybody has made a fully informed decision no that's a that's a fair uh question i think the data that we received back indicated that there are uh substantial uh home circumstances that that are are preferred as a result of this option being available which is similar to um some actually some of those uh secondary students were already students in the um mafactan virtual academy prior to covet i believe it was 12 total so

128almost half were formerly in there and we have a a another number about another half that that is that is new to that that group but again that it's still actually lower than the the 50 total that we have on an annual basis so sorry i think you know certainly we'll be we'll we'll we'll double check with everyone prior to the school year starting but and we'll likely do that before the 15th of july just to make sure that everybody has made whatever decision they need to make and we're all on the the same page okay thank you dr zarby any other comments or questions from the board on this item seeing none all those in favor me opposed motion carries eight zero dates for board members calendars mr navarette and the property committee will

129be our first return to in-person meeting in the lgi on july 12th and uh we've got our work session and regular board meetings scheduled for the arcola auditorium july 20th and 27th so looking forward to seeing everybody in person uh anything for old business anything for new business mr winners yeah i i know that we worked with the skipec pharmacy with vaccine clinics and hopefully at some point in the in the next quarter here uh the age group that vaccinations could take place will be lowered again um is i i i don't know if the county or iu or anybody is uh doing something to have clinics in the schools or if there's anything we can do proactively um certainly some of the things that are happening with the d variant and being more uh

130infectious for the younger younger younger folks is a little scary um especially as that seems to be accelerating so i don't want to be a party pooper but the reality is we really need to be flexible here in the summer and the more opportunities that we can give our students to get the vaccine as quickly as possible we're all better off so i don't know if that yeah well well said we continue to meet we're not meeting twice a week with the county we're meeting once a week now as part of the summer process um but as soon as that gets organized um and we can get ourselves on the list for uh that uh vaccination process uh you know we'll certainly be in contact with with cheryl piper who organized the last one uh

131in coordination with the pharmacy uh but that is our that is our hope the sooner we get that done uh the better we all are and it helps with a much smoother return to uh in-person instruction uh in late august all right anything else for new business no the other thing is i do i'm sorry we we uh i believe um we have the audubon issues going to come up at some point in the next in the next few months is that correct is that in july or august yeah i believe that's going to be in july right now i believe in my conversations with uh with the township were slated for july 20th as a as a conversation point thank you anyone else with new business all right with that i will move on

132to courtesy of the floor uh now is the time for people to speak on any topic that could potentially come before the district again we ask you limit your comments to four minutes or less please introduce yourself with your name and municipality first i have jim malik whenever you're ready you hear me okay yes i can thank you very much um why did your name a municipality please jim malekwester uh why didn't you guys give the surplus back back to the taxpayers who you over taxed the reason there's a surplus is because you over taxed us [Music] so i guess what is this the sixth year now where you do the same thing and just stick the surplus into the what reserve fund and don't make any adjustments and just keep over taxing i i

133think that's a real problem full day kindergarten four months before an election is that like is that a coincidence or was that dr zerby your political strategist doing doing that for you uh miss larceny have you ever been deposed [Music] it's nothing to really smirk about because you have to answer questions and you have to also tell the truth it may be something that um you're going to be visiting soon i was surprised about your requester shaming regarding the right to know law you read the wrong request to the public you should have read the request regarding yourself and mr navarrete in ap 2019-2010 [Music] where you guys were asked for records you never even looked for them and when the office of open records wanted you and mr navarrete to give a affidavit you

134know under the penalties of perjury you refused maybe you could tell the public why you refused to provide an affidavit under the penalty of perjury instead of smirking up there about you know how the right to know process is because the problems are because of requesters um let me educate you about the right to know process because you really have no clue you really don't um 2017 to 18 it was the thousand dollars you spent on right to know 2018 19 is 54 000. 1920 210 000. 20 20 21 621 000 to have your lawyer do everything possible to not provide records that's what the money went for um why did it all happen what happened in 2018 again you got rid of frank bartle and hired your new solicitor then you gave him a

135blank check to do whatever he wanted to do with right to know by making him the right to know officer so if you really want to know where the problem lies the problem lies with you and your spending habits now you guys filed five lawsuits uh with the court of common please who authorized those lawsuits and those lawsuits involved you and mr navarrete so who authorized those five lawsuits they weren't authorized by the board at a public meeting they weren't authorized in executive session the public was never allowed to comment on whether or not to file the lawsuits where and when were they authorized because they these lawsuits involve you and mr navarrete and right to know requests my question is are we paying the solicitor to protect you and mr navarrete is that what

136the expense is and not because of requesters who really want to find out what's going on in this district [Music] see it's very simple there was a settlement agreement we were we were working on with dr zurby we agreed the terms and you guys shot it down you shot it down could have saved could have stayed hundreds of thousands of dollars but you guys want to keep going on with your litigation so the solution's really easy here all you got to do is get rid of yourself next i have margaret herbison hi margaret herbison lower providence um i just wanted to say thanks for letting us know that we can ask to find out who's filing all the right to know while i would hate to cost the district more money i would be very

137interested to see who is filing all of those requests that are costing so much money and possibly are they the same people that are then complaining that those things are costing so much money um and i would also like to just say that it's a shame that people in the district can't disagree without personally attacking and just being nasty i do think there's a way to disagree without doing those things so thank you for dealing with the public um that's all thank you miss everson next i have brian earnshaw prior inertial lower providence uh first on the master plan projects approved tonight could you clarify the bid versus no bid it seems like the to me that the hillis cartes engineering association associates are providing testing and expensing services in both the items that were

138bid on kcpa is providing services but one firm was subject to bid and the other was not so i don't understand that regarding the the property trans commit transportation committee many minutes were they on the agenda um i looked this morning and they were not there i don't think i had later but they were added at some point during the day today if the board president could ask the chairman mr navarette to get them posted more timely i'd appreciate it um my question of the list of bills from the work sessions still have not been answered they were not answered tonight so if mr brooker could maybe take a look at the video from the meeting um from last week and get me answer those questions otherwise i guess my only recourse is to file

139a right to know request um and that has happened in the past so some of your rights to no issue is self-inflicted um and then what is the plan to address the excess legal fees spent this year um you know it looks if you project it out you're gonna spend seven to eight hundred thousand on right to no requests it's if that's going to continue it's more cost effective just to hire an in-house attorney um that likely wouldn't be a full-time job um just dealing with even if there is the volume um and then you could use that attorney to handle other legal matters and stop paying the other five law firms that the district is currently paying so you got to come up with a solution because these costs are not going to go

140away um you just can't wish it away it's going to have the same issue um and then some things on dr zerby's list at the beginning of the meeting about accomplishments uh there's a couple of things on a number of things on that i thought of immediately that were on his list um and as i've said this is you know this is a fifth consecutive year of multi-million dollar surplus the district added this year over 50 million dollars in debt obligation that the taxpayers are responsible for excess staffing in the high school has not been addressed excess building capacity in arcola has not been addressed it's still less than 60 utilized autobahn it remains an empty building and maintenance costs over a hundred thousand dollars a year and if you drive by the building you

141can see it is deteriorating the shenandoah legal case is still open uh with additional six to seven hundred thousand put away an escrow of taxpayer money every year with increasing legal and professional fees to address that matter the board refinanced debt pushing out debt maturities and increasing interest costs to taxpayers spent one and a half percent of the budget on legal fees which is one million dollars over budget and finally for the first time that i can recall a board member used profanity during a public meeting with no nothing said by other board members or any apology from that board member which is very disappointing thank you all right anyone else for public comment okay john carr whenever you're hi john yes john carr warcester can you hear me yes i can okay very good

142um i'll just start with uh the the vaccine for parents for young children i think that's a parent's choice and i don't think it needs to be made to be pushed for young kids as they're pulling vaccines off for young children right now seeing that it's some health uh concerns i know that everybody wants to return masked lists but they don't need to be necessarily vaccinated i think that's a parent's choice and i hope that that stays that way um regarding the the road map to return that dr zerby uh had stated um we're not sure what that return is for for next year and and obviously that's coming up needs to be coming up shortly hopefully we're wondering what the plan is for the school year so that we can make a decision for

143our kids and and is there going to be mass or no mass i know it seems like for the summer that there's not why uh i guess my question would be is that for the school year as well or is that just for the summer program as of right now um and and as i started to look further into um the the dei task force i went back in and educated myself on the the first meeting and and my feeling was that that bruce campbell um was selling a service um and and i'm not sure that this is uh appropriate for curriculum for our students for what this what this is and i'm curious as to if this is going to be in our curriculum where is it going to be implemented is it going

144to be implemented in every every subject i've talked to teachers that are math teachers that their school is is wanting her to uh incorporate this into math and i don't see how that would be uh very effective and also too with the survey we never received a survey i don't know if we currently pulled our students out of effect in this year due to the mask mandate and maybe that's why we didn't receive the survey but i've talked to several people that knew nothing about what was going on i'm not sure if it was sent out to everybody in the in the uh in the school district or just a select group to try and get a gauge for uh the problems that methectones seem to be having that um i don't i don't really

145see where that's coming from fully so uh i would i would question um that survey and and who it was sent to to get the gauge for this dei task force uh bruce campbell did state that it's going to be a long process and have to be tweaked along the way which means that he's going to be quote unquote i guess employed i don't know how that works or how you guys have that figured out but um it seems like he it's pushing an agenda on our kids and and i don't want them to feel um like they need to apologize for for who they are and and that's a concern of mine and uh that's about it thanks next i have joe rittenhouse hi there can you hear me yes i can perfect okay

146so uh briefly i just wanted to speak on the right to know requests i know that it hasn't come up since it was uh proposed in one meeting but the idea of outing uh right to know um people for you know what their request was the name of the request or everything entitled um i'll just be frank i feel that the district is like solely responsible um for how right to know um has become such a big issue but it's i like and to be clear statistically this is happening all across the country methacan is not an outlier according to any of the data that that i've looked at right to know has exploded in the past year because you know the students were home parents were home with their students they had questions about

147what was going on in the curriculum engagements and things like that so we are not um an outlier in any other aspect that we are fighting uh parents and students you know and community members who want to file right to know and the fact of the matter is i i truly don't think that uh there will be any real change in outing those names but i think that it will scare normal parents into going to somebody who doesn't have an issue filing right to know i know for a fact that the the foundation for individual rights and freedom has said more than willingly they will fund and fight with acton on right to no requests uh for transparency and i mean we're talking a multi-million dollar organization um so i i think that a lot

148of this could be solved up front like totally transparently by just changing the way in which we do uh get information out to the public there's there's multiple servers available uh to upload information free of charge um it's you know you have stuff like the blockchain that can help get this information out there and not drive up uh server costs like if you were going through amazon or things like that so just speaking all right to know um going to the dei task force i just had some questions about the dei survey uh mainly is a lot of the information around this has kind of been it's been moving at a super fast pace but with little to no oversight uh it feels like uh we haven't really seen what the data is i know

149that it was said that the things would be presented to the administration and then going forward in july and august but i feel like parents are you know tuned into this now and would very much like just the simple raw data of how many students took this survey how many parents how many people in the public we don't need names we don't need any of that we just need you know what were the answers this is the the survey was anonymous when i took it so i i felt that uh there's nothing in there that you know we should be scared of sharing and i just want to make sure that the survey wasn't used to reach a particular outcome without coming you know without us seeing how that methodology came about um i specifically

150want to talk about with the dei committee about um one dr campbell's contract it it's very unclear when it ends like what's going forward is the pay rate consistent i know we are we are paying him double essentially what he's been paid in other districts so i figured that was a question that needed to be asked and then he i i've i've been reading a lot of his literature i've been reading a lot of sources that he's provided and we have available on the faction's website and a lot of this comes down to cultural competence um and i just wanted to bring up that literally today the uk did a report on cultural competence as part of their education programs and they found that schools should consider whether the promotion of political controversial terms such

151as cultural competence privilege uh are consistent with the duties under their equity act they should take steps to ensure that young people are not inadvertently indoctrinated into political movements they also said that this you know they felt as if they were leaving children behind they found that most of the quote unquote students that were in groups that they deemed as privileged or uh majority you know sanctioned under culture competence were actually most underprivileged thank you mr richards that's four minutes anyone else for courtesy of the floor okay jessica bradbury hi good evening can you hear me yes i can thank you jessica bradbury lower providence township in november the board approved the statement of work with dr campbell and it had very little detail about what deliverables would be provided for the 30 000 fee

152it did not include any acceptance criteria of these key deliverables could you let us know are we using taxpayer money to pay for his services according to table one of dr campbell's proposal the consultation activities in winter included developing the audit the equity audit and in spring we would develop goals and assessments in response to this audit after last week's session where my questions went unanswered i contacted dr zerby and the board with these questions and was surprised to hear from dr zerby that the public will not receive results of the equity audit until october five months after they've been collected will the detailed and anonymous results be published or just a summary that can't be verified the original survey is no longer available and dr zerby said i would need to submit a right

153to know request to receive it is that true why wouldn't we publish the questions that were sent to our students is it a district policy to ask children as young as 12 to answer questions without parental knowledge or consent questions around what's their gender identity and their sexual orientation based on dr zerby's response to me i learned that it is common for us to discuss sex with our students in the middle schools however the curriculum is not public so the parents are not able to stay informed about what our children are learning parents of the community have been reviewing the district d e and i page to try to gain a better understanding and we're finding various links for classroom resources that cover topics like privilege oppression intersectionality we find recommended books for younger children

154one was called something happened in my town a child's story about racial injustice have you read it let me share something from the book after school emma asked her mother why did the police shoot that man it was a mistake said her mother i feel sad for the man and his family yes the police thought he had a gun said her father it wasn't a mistake said her sister liz the cops shot him because he is black mr winters if you're pro law enforcement as you stated recently do you endorse a book like that being listed as a resource by our district i asked dr zerby if we could plan a town hall style meeting with dr campbell so that all of the parents and members of the community could ask questions to learn the

155direction of the de initiative and i was told my request was less than appropriate and that he is unaware of a need to drive greater transparency in this process the role of our school district is to provide a solid education in the areas of math science english and other core curriculum so as we divert more taxpayer resources to consultants and things like an equity audit please let us know how do parents and members of this community stay informed as to how this will influence the future education of our children please we would like an answer to that question thank you next i have kelly mann whenever you're ready uh i just wanted to comment i agree with the previous callers john carr and jessica bradbury i had wanted to comment tonight regarding some of the

156dei resources listed under the teachers resources tabs on both the mathactin.org website and the dei taskforce.org website which clearly states serving the fact and community and references our schools within the description column next to the resources i encourage parents to go to these pages and review the themes and the content geared toward all grades and especially young children grades k through five two of the concerning resources i found where something happened in our town which was previously mentioned and not my idea a book about whiteness i wanted to know who is choosing and approving the teacher's resources listed on the methacton.org and dei taskforce.org teachers resource pages i'd appreciate an answer since i know some of you are on the committees thank you okay next i have channeling ma lingama worcester township i also want

157to talk about the dei and also uh the arcola new journal news uh queer facts of the month i did not get to know it until last uh regular board meeting in may i believe john carr brought it up and i believe many parents didn't know that either so if you google arcola journal news and then you should find the first hit then you see a journal news every week if you click on june 1st and may 25th both editions have a featuring clear facts of the mouth i don't think teaching middle school students career facts is right especially with our parents knowing this was happening at school so it's not school's job to teach students values it's the parents job and many parents don't even agree with this kind of ideology so it is

158also not right to disclose students or teachers or staff sexual orientation at school because it's a private matter so speaking of diversity and inclusion i would also like to ask the board especially mr navarette since him as a current board member and the future board candidate and also a current dia commit committee member are you sincere you're you're advocating diversity inclusion are you anti-christian because as you posted on your election page this spread month our children need to know that they are loved and supported especially when a vocal minority says otherwise so i am a minority i am also a christian so a christian's personal belief is that practicing lgbtq is a sin but christians are taught to love the sinner and hate the sin so if mr narrative like other to respect different people's

159beliefs and meet opinions why can't you do the same to those who believe differently than you by simply calling people who don't agree with you your ideology not supporting or loving you are truly the hate promoter you are doing exactly the opposite of the ei initiatives we're supposed to do so and instead i think the di initiatives should have a more balance to focus on all kinds of people who need support from athactin why always blacks in the lgbto the amounts of adrenaline is not just pregnant or drink teens what about people with disabilities i think they probably having a different skin color is having disabilities more challenging than having a different skin color and what about supporting those special ed students and the teachers outside although there are really few very few people in

160there so i'd also like to know since there's a dia meeting tomorrow is it going to be open to the public are you going to do this secretly send an announce results to us okay how much time do i have next i want to talk about the curriculum transparency so the school district has any plan for curriculum transparency including textbooks online or for parent or online study for parents to easily review before the school year starts and update the websites as as time goes by each time there's a revision of the curriculum because right now as parents i have no idea what is being taught to my children at school until i see the homework or i see uh there's uh school slides and in one of the class uh my daughter was taking the

161teacher put like the pride month and then the the color you know the rainbow flag on the side without saying anything to the slide and my daughter just came home asking me this is very confusing to children and my daughter is only 10 years old i i think this the curriculum should be transparent to the parents what should be the teaching scope what shouldn't be uh last and not least i think i've stressed many times on april 20th if you google or youtube search the media regular meeting on the time for 2 hours 20 minutes 25 seconds mr mcginnis has set a profanity so next i have amy smith thank you amy smith worcester township i just wanted to take a minute to say thank you to the board for approving full day kindergarten i

162know that it's something that the board has an administration have put a lot of time and effort into developing and into researching and taking public feedback and teacher feedback and staff feedback and looking at the logistics and i know it was a big undertaking so i wanted to say thank you because i know there are very very many if that's grammatically correct uh parents tonight that are happy to hear that news and i also think that it's a huge plus for our district uh for parents in the area who are looking to possibly you know make a move and and are looking to enroll their children so i i think that was fantastic and i wanted to say thank you for that and i also wanted to say thank you to um and i know

163that i did this last week and i won't go through the whole list again but i just want to say thank you to all the staff and teachers for another school year this was a challenging one and i feel like um you know we came out of it on the other side community's intact and um you know while we all may have different struggles to face going forward in the in the wake of the pandemic i do appreciate um all of the effort and time that was put into making this as successful the school year as it could be and i'm excited to hear about the things that are are coming up for the next school year and uh one last comment about dei i just wanted to say thank you to the board for

164your support with rolling out a dei office and the dei initiative and really being open to everyone's experience and making sure that no one has to apologize for who they are as a previous speaker said that we're making sure that as children are navigating their personal development and growth that everyone knows it's a safe space and as a catholic christian woman who has been instructing sunday school for many years and running a program i am grateful that you are taking that approach thank you miss smith and next i have dr janine darby whenever you're ready hello how are you guys tonight um um dr janine darby of lower providence um just wanted to come on here and and just to tell you guys thank you for being who you are and um doing what you're

165doing for the district um totally appreciate this board this year haven't really been involved until last year um with attending these board meetings but it's so important to be here and i'm glad that you guys are rational folks professional folks and know what you guys are doing and i know it's been a very challenging year and i applaud you for making it through the year the school year um the other thing i wanted to mention is um you know thank you so much for implementing starting the process of um implementing dei practices in the school district which is much needed um i have four children two have graduated from the school district and all four of my children have dealt with discrimination and racism and i'm glad that the the district is now aware that

166these issues are happening and are putting into place necessary curriculum necessary um policies that will take care of these needs for all for the under representative groups whether it's racial religion lgbtq and you know people with disabilities so i appreciate y'all looking into this and implementing a dei office and also starting with equity assessment to see what the needs are um for the the district so definitely appreciate that and look forward to seeing the um final survey results um you know and seeing how the factor school district the climate can be better for um all students and not just a select few um or the majority of the students as some parents um have alluded to um because they don't understand what under representative um groups deal with um so i thank you for that

167and then also i look forward to i'm hearing more about a director of dei being placed into in this office to continue doing the work of dei and making sure that all our kids are safe um and protected while in school and not having to deal with discrimination racism and other things because this leads to mental health issues which i had to deal with with one of my children and so um definitely looking for more support um in that arena um and uh yeah so i think my four minutes is all already up but i just wanted to come on and just thank you guys for this and i look forward to working with the school board and working with the administration and continuing these efforts so thank you and you'll have a great summer

168thank you dr darby all right i believe that concludes courtesy of the floor i don't see any other hands up um i'm sorry there's one more vince josephs whenever you're ready hi thank you can you hear me yes i can my statement this evening is for the parents and community members i need you to first say your name and municipality vince josephs worchester thank you my statement this evening is for the parents and community member taxpayers and the board you're welcome to listen i understand that the july board meeting will be returning to an in-person format as opposed to a one-sided virtual zoom call when i wrap up if i'm wrong or right on that please uh let us know if if that is the case uh it would be helpful if you'd let us

169know where and when implore every participant on this virtual call to attend that meeting in person to every parent grandparent or guardian with a vested interest in the education of a mafatman student or students that are passively listening to this recording at a later date your attendance in person next month is paramount ask your neighbor to come whether or not they have children in the school he or she pays the same school taxes and likely wants to know how their money is being spent attending that next meeting is critical for every parent who has been deeply unsatisfied or frustrated watching a virtual meeting in which parents and community members ask questions and raise material concerns that are essentially redundant but for the grace of whether or not a board member chooses to answer which is

170rare why else is this important given that courtesy of floor is a forum for the public these virtual meetings have been absent of the most fundamental element of a public forum the public in a full room when a parent speaks every head in the crowd that nods in agreement is a powerful display of public opinion conversely the quiet size of disagreement or in some cases groans of disgust are amplified to magnificent volume when performed in concert by a large crowd when a sycophantic declaration of praise is made often by the board to themselves typically void of any actual substance prepare yourselves for the awesome sound of 500 eyes rolling in unison in person particularly passionate topics raised by very brave parents may often even garner cheers or applause or not but it's an accurately calibrated

171gauge which has been used for centuries by which to measure the popularity or unpopularity of any given idea most importantly the faces you see now in its virtual meeting will once again have to look back at a sea of taxpayers that's us or perhaps they prefer a foreman a forum in which the ideology of a few is hermetically sealed from the contamination of public reaction by the masses a few months ago a certain board member responded to a female's question about virtual meetings by stating at the end of the meeting i'll censor this he said to quote park that expletive outside unquote that actually happened curious to see if in person he'll show the same disrespect to say a concerned mom when her husband is sitting next to her perhaps we'll get the answer to

172her original question i suggest he uses the in-person meeting to apologize but that's just me in summary to the community please put the in-person board meeting on your calendar hire a sitter attend in person bring a grandparent afterwards meet somebody of like mind or even better engage in open discourse with someone who has a different opinion from your own whether or not you choose to talk at the meeting your presence alone speaks louder than words and to the board please be sure there's enough chairs thank you next i have sandy cats whenever you're ready sandy cats uh lower providence um firstly i just want to thank you all uh the board and the administrators uh the list of accomplishments that dr zurby read earlier tonight to us and the year that we have had was

173just truly amazing we've had a terrible year and we were able to highlight i listed at least 25 and i and i stopped writing because i got tired but just to highlight a few that i did grab the reach program the kinder readiness program increasing inclusive practices the soar program for k-4 the establishment of the dei office continuing athletics um program without a stop during this pandemic and then to have the community list only negatives is is just so depressing like let's celebrate everything that we have done uh i mostly want to thank you also tonight for the efforts with the diversity equity and inclusion committee i am proud of all that we've done with the dei task force as part of the community but also the internal methacton dei committee our kids with disabilities

174have been at the forefront of thought for both and i for one as a pr a parent of a daughter with special needs and down syndrome i truly appreciate that inclusion means inclusion for all that is white black lgbtq disability limited incomes inclusion means all and i thank you all for everything all the hard work that all of you have done thank you miss cats anyone else that has registered okay um any comments from the board before we adjourn miss purdue i just have one point of clarification just because i noticed several times during the public comments um the dei task force was mentioned and also um i wanted to clarify the ddi task force is the task force that's serving a community what we created was the office of diversity equity and inclusion on

175our district web pages states this office serves the students staff and community of the massachusetts school district in providing advocacy oversight and focus on matters of equity diversity and inclusion i just want to make it clear for all the callers on here listening and those that will listen later the office created by the massachusetts school district and approved by the school board is different from the dei task force which serves the community and whether board members serve sit on that or attend those meetings or not is separate because what board members do outside of this board is also different it's on my own time i work full time at a company and i choose to serve on this board because i truly believe in the potential of massaging school district and want to continue to

176make it a better school district so what we do outside of the board or outside when we're not attending board meetings it's totally separate from it and i just want to make that clarification that the di task force and i'm going to say it again the dei task force is different from the office created by the school district to really support the diversity equity and inclusion in our school district and i do want to say thank you for saying for really ending us on the good note and really highlighting some of the accomplishments we had a really rough year but we pulled through and there's so many things to be celebrated and so thank you all and thank you to the administration for that thank you miss purdue mr winters contemplated saying something or not

177but i'm just going to say one thing i think the line that was crossed tonight in courtesy of the floor is questioning somebody's face i agree and um i'll be having a conversation with mr summers about the content of courtesy of the floor um at a later date just to make sure that we're very clear um on what what items can and cannot be addressed during that time um because the last time i checked we have a separation of church and state here and i don't think that that's the place are there any other comments from the board that's i just want to say one last thing um if i have to say this at the end of every board meeting then i'll do it um i want to be 100 crystal clear that methachton

178school district is a place for diversity equity and inclusion i do not want any employee any student any staff member of this district to feel unwelcome being who they are unvalued or less than while i'm on this board the comments that i'm hearing from our community um are upsetting um i respect everyone is entitled to an opinion on certain matters but there are certain things that that i will not abide all of our students all of our staff all of our employees are welcome for who they are does anyone have anything else before we adjourn mr mcginnis yes i look forward to seeing everyone in person next month motion to adjourn good night everyone