April 27, 2021 - Methacton School District Regular Meeting of the Board

001okay we are live all right excellent uh we may begin all right good evening i'd like to call to order the april 27 2021 regular board meeting in the thacton school district board of directors please rise for the pledge hello my name is browser country fourth grade at eastern elementary school please stand for the pledge of allegiance 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 hello my name is claire quan i'm in fourth grade at uofl elementary school i would like to tell you why i like legal bill first the teachers the teachers that i had were amazing they were fun nice supportive and make learning fun for me second my favorite activities are

002fun days clubs assemblies and field trips sunday is amazing because there are so many games and i like the bouncy apples they're so fun also the field trips we went to the auditorium and learned about space like the solar system from mr chantry it was great the art and environmental club pa club are awesome too assemblies and other activities like safety patrol student council are spectacular although we couldn't do a lot of them last year because of the pandemic i still look forward to it another of my favorites at eagleville are math and art math is so fun i like how it's so tricky but always have an answer my favorite special is art i like the art projects we do like charles mcgee art and rectangle landscapes it's so fun but the other specials

003are awesome too all of these are my favorite things at eagleville and what i think legal feel awesome although i would be graduating from eagleville i will never forget the wonderful memories i had there thank you for thank you miss jenkins miss b miss neverett miss hendrick miss monstello and other teachers thank you for working hard for us to make yuba elementary school awesome especially during the pandemic thank you let's give a round of applause to both of our junior board members they did a wonderful job well done and we'll certainly issue junior board members certificates to both of them uh thank you dr harmer for having them with us here tonight i'll turn the the meeting back over to our uh madam president thank you dr zerby by way of announcements the public is

004hereby advised of the audio and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcasting there was an executive session of the board held on thursday march 25th virtually for matters of school safety and security in compliance with act 44. there was also an executive session of the board held prior to this meeting tuesday april 27th again virtually for matters involving the student settlement agreement uh for attendance we'll do a roll call miss cancro here miss drummond here miss hull here mr mcginnis here mr navarette here miss perdue yeah miss reece here mr winners all right now recognition of guests and scheduled speakers dr thank you madam president this evening we have four guests of scheduled speakers our first one is our regular or monthly award of excellence and this evening we have none other

005than eagleville principal dr kelly harmer here with us to share uh about some outstanding employees here at methectomy school district dr harmer i'm going to turn it over to you just give me a second to get the presentation live on the screen thank you okay it's all yours all right good evening school board members and dr zurby thank you so much for the honor to present the award of excellence for the these uh fine eagle staff members first i'd like to start with michelle petco michelle is uh our office assistants and attendance secretary at eagleville she's such an important part of our office stephanie evil and she wears many hats throughout the course of each day michelle regularly communicates with parents our school nurse and teachers daily and is a true student advocate her other

006responsibilities include breakfast duty lunch duty recess duty and numerous other office clerical duties with all these things on her plate she still brings positive energy to the job every single day melissa gopher balor is an exceptional personal care assistant she provides academic and social support for her assigned student but more importantly she's invested in providing the tools needed for the student to be successful i regularly receive praise from the students parents and our staff about melissa and the wonderful work she's doing each and every day thank you melissa jane holmes is a caring and hard-working fourth grade teacher she is also a leader and true advocate for her students jane builds connections with her students and takes time to get their know their interests jane is always up for joining committee or pitching in to

007approve eagleville her genuine love of our school and community makes jane holmes such an important piece of the eagleville family nicole kraus brings passion knowledge and history to her art classes at eagleville nicole teaches the history of famous artists and the children are fascinated to learn different styles of each artist brings to their art every time i visit her classroom i'm greeted with children that are immersed in their current projects and decided to have me see their work nicole also brightens the corridors of eagleville with student artwork and works closely with teachers in order to coordinate projects that coincide with their curriculum after school art club is another contribution nicole makes here at eagleville which is very popular offering to our older students melanie connor is one of our outstanding reading department aides melanie possesses

008the ability to immediately connect with our students which in turn leads to incredible academic gains our reading specialists and teachers lean heavily on melanie since they know she has a toolbox of resources and skills to provide academic support for our students the students enjoy melanie's positivity and upbeat style of support sharing jacques nowitz if you were to look up kindergarten teacher in the webster dictionary most likely you would find a picture of sharing supplements sharing embodies all the qualities that make up kindergarten including kindness sharing curiosity energy and the love of learning sharing students are truly lucky to have her leading them as they begin their educational journey the true measure of a teacher may be the smiles that greet them every morning i can say with confidence that the smiles of mrs j students

009light up at eagleville each and every day join me in a round of applause for all these fine employees it does uh it makes a huge difference uh while we're proud of all the employees here at matthackton school district and their contribution to making not only our students and our school community uh a wonderful place but but certainly we're we're equally proud of being able to recognize uh just a few of them on a monthly basis to show you and the community how important they are to us and what contributions they've made uh specifically uh to the students and and our our uh school community so thank you dr harmer uh job well done this evening and uh we'll make sure that uh all of these uh employees uh get the certificates that we have

010for them on this so with that said thank you dr harmer uh you're certainly welcome to stay on for the rest of the meeting uh but you're also welcome to to leave us if that seems to be uh your you're inclined to do so so that said we'll go on to the next uh scheduled presentation and that is um we have with us this evening uh two uh i'll call them regular guests i guess it'd be the the you know on an annual basis we have uh mr tom kelly from zesewitz music and we have susan basic our uh uh coordinator uh for music here in in the district so i'm not sure which one of you want to go first but um i'll i'll let either of you talk now and and you guys

011can battle it out on screen mr kelly would you like to speak first sure why not i appreciate the opportunity thank you uh thank you dr zurby and the board members staff that's on here and those that are in attendance uh i'm proud to be the education representative for zes with music but tonight i come to you as a representative of the namm foundation and nam stands for the national association of music merchants and this particular uh prestigious award the best communities for music education uh has been awarded to the mcfacton school district uh for the fifth year running thank you amanda kelly for i couldn't remember how many it was so um it's it's uh it's an honor to be with you tonight but but really we're here to honor uh the community the

012administration the staff the parents the students um the namm foundation started this particular program 20 plus years ago and uh and and it isn't just to give you the scope and sequence it's not just apply and and you get this particular award they did not publish this year how many people applied but it's in the thousands last year it was just over five thousand people um this year uh only 686 school districts across the country were awarded this particular um you know uh accolade if you will uh and i'm proud to say that memphian is one of them and uh and it it's it's quite a quite an honor and and and ride that wave if you will uh i know that mrs bastick may talk about the uh the actual um application process it's

01330 plus pages of documentation that goes into great detail um it talks about uh the the ensembles that are provided band course and orchestra uh the performance opportunities the concerts uh rehearsal spaces that are provided um and uh and and all of this through a pandemic the staff of the mafactan school district really has has risen to the to the top of of the heap it's through the support of many different factors parents students staff administration uh that that you're continuing to to to delve into this particular accolade and and i'm very proud to to be here with you all tonight so sue can you add anything else sure can first of all thank you a very very big thank you um it takes a village really to keep a music department going and our

014musical activities going so from the bottom of my heart i'd like to thank our parents our community members our staff our school district staff most importantly my wonderful colleagues they they're out there doing an absolutely fabulous job every day and of course our students because without our students we would be nothing as mr kelly indicated the application for nam is quite extensive and this year they asked the question what activities have you been able to do as part of while the pandemic has been going on and yes we know the pandemic has made a very significant has had a very significant impact on everything we've done but when i sat down and thought about all the activities we've been able to do as a department the list is lengthy and i'm proud to mention it

015the very first activity to get going um once we started school this year other than marching band doing summer camp was our adaptive learners class at the high school our adaptive music class they were the first class live back in the high school our first music class were very very pleased with that speaking of our marching band they competed in several virtual competitions in the fall our high school chorus every other monday evening runs a coveted cafe so that the students can perform for each other we have done two family sing-alongs uh two beautifully put together family sing-alongs coordinated by our k-4 elementary music staff we have had virtual concerts this year for the holiday season and again for music in our schools month and we'd like to thank ms kelly for helping us get

016them onto the website those concerts were done on flipgrid and featured the performances of our students we have had virtual rehearsals all year long we are now preparing for a virtual k4 spring concert which will be held via youtube live on mar on may 26th so yes we have been able to keep music going here in the factory and again it's thanks to all of the great efforts for everybody and we really really appreci we really really appreciate that i think probably the most important thing though that we've been able to do as a department this year is we have served as a lifeline a social emotional lifeline to so many of our students at home i can tell you that many of my students have told me that when they talk to me and

017when they talk to my colleagues sometimes it's the only people they've talked to really outside of their homes all day and that is really gratifying to hear and to have the opportunity to continue to share music with our students regardless of the educational environment this year has been absolutely wonderful and very much appreciated so thank you to everybody and we're very very delighted to accept the award again this year congratulations big time thank you well done mr kelly uh miss basslick uh thank you both so much and when i say your regular fixtures you're welcome to come back every year okay thank you thank you very much have a great evening you too thank you so much uh next on the agenda is uh full day kindergarten it's entitled financials fit and sequence so bear

018with me one second until i i get that presentation posted so this uh presentation i'm going to uh go through it summarily but uh generally speaking uh most of this information was shared this past month in in both the property committee meetings and the finance committee meeting so board members that have that are parts of those two committees are seeing much of this again but i think it's important that generally speaking these last three pieces of information are probably going to round out the information that you need as a school board member in order to make a determination based on a recommendation that we'll have dr eucher and myself bring forward in may for your consideration so with that said uh let's jump right into the presentation uh certainly four-day kindergarten fits well within the

019uh tenets of the uh the five tenets of the whole child and it's certainly uh you know targets creating an exceptional effect on school district experience for all in terms of full day kindergarten you know that dr euker has been before you provided three options in her last visit with you back in january both a a half day option two half day options and then the full day for all students we will be recommending the the third option which is full day kindergarten for all students beginning with the 22-23 school year and this presentation is going to assume that we're going to answer some of these questions like you know how can we for afford the program how will the students fit and so forth uh but a couple points of information so when we

020look at uh moving from a half day uh program uh to a full day program there are some immediate adjustments that take place transportation being one of them there's no longer a need for the midday runs that's going to save us about seventy seven thousand dollars annually in terms of food service now we currently do not feed kindergarten students but we would now feed them in our review of that particular matter based on the subsidies for reimbursable meals we we've estimated that this will be a cost neutral event in terms of further financials we know that in order to complete an entire program in the bethan school district for kindergarten based on uh the enrollment projections we're going to need four teachers or four classrooms and four teachers in each of the four elementary schools

021that's arrowhead eagleville woodland and worcester we're also going to need some support staff and it's outlined here in this presentation two aides and two pcas as projected in addition to other financials associated with this we have projected year one cost and then we have the projected annual staffing cost and so we'll look in the column uh to the to the left where we talk about staff that's taking all uh 20 staff and putting them into uh the same uh into this program uh it would be about 2.5 million dollars we believe that there'll be an investment of about 50 000 in curriculum resources 50 and about in furniture or some professional development um there will be a reduction uh in an additional cost including the jump start program and like i said earlier uh transportation

022which would net about uh a 2.53 million dollar year one cost so that is the staffing plus uh some of these one-time costs and these uh what are called would-be annual reductions if we look at the projected annual staffing cost we know that we have an existing uh kindergarten teachers in the district we actually have 7.5 meaning that we have we have eight bodies eight physical people uh but that teach 7.5 uh sections of kindergarten and that cost is about 1.1 million dollars we also have an existing staff reallocation of six which i'll explain in just a few slides but we're going to take some of our existing special education uh staff reallocate them within the k4 structure which costs us about 8 000 and then we have the existing uh staff and sports support

023staff uh to do a reallocation of two of those for 132 000 or a total existing cost uh in the budget of a 2.1 million dollars in terms of uh new uh staff needed we would need new two new support staff two new teachings 2.5 teaching staff and so when you look at the math associated with this the uh the 0.5 person up up in this part first part you should know that their benefits are already included up in here and that they would just be picking up the additional hours down this bottom part here just to make sure you're you're following me on this so the total new cost required in the annual budget would be about 375 000 but if we take out the annual cost for the jumpstart program and the annual

024cost for transportation that would leave us with a net new annual cost of about 281 thousand dollars to implement full-day kindergarten here in math active now the key element of all this and you'll see this in a minute is making sure that we uh adopt the the soar program and the soar program dr angstadt spoke uh very eloquently about uh which will be addressing the the behavioral and mental health matters uh within the k-4 realm and providing infusing outside behavioral specialists into all four of our elementary schools and certainly you can ask you know her any more questions about that if as you see fit and it's on the agenda for your approval this evening but aside from soar we also need we require the realignment or the reassignment of uh staff which is which

025is inclusive of this k4 inclusive practices program delivery structure modification for to begin on the 22-23 school year which would be the same uh time frame for which we would implement four-day kindergarten so this is not for next school year as the soar program is to start next school year but the k-4 inclusive practices would be two years out also we can uh we have some conversations in the finance committee about how to address a one-time cost and then there's you know other other you know financing options that we could uh allow us to ease into the uh the 280 some thousand dollars of annual additional expense uh if we see fit so we can certainly talk about that in a few minutes and and just so everyone recognizes not only the board but the

026members of the public you know this is not a matter for which the board is voting on this evening so this is really the first presentation uh in in its entirety uh outside of what dr yuka has previously provided so i just want to make sure we're clear on that the only thing that is on the agenda is the soar program so let's talk about the you know how how are we going to reallocate uh those those staff and when i think i'm just going to come back here for a second we're talking about the reallocation of these six uh staff here okay so uh what what we've been uh trying to address for a few years now and since uh to uh since 2019 uh we received a uh an audit from the state

027as well as we had a third party uh expert come in and do a review or we'll call it an audit of ours our special education services and as a result of both the state audit and the third party expert review uh the recommendations for more inclusive practices and a really uh restructuring of the way we deliver special education services was highly recommended as a result of those recommendations and many conversations and a discussion uh that dr angstadt had within the last several weeks with all the special education staff at the k-4 level as well as with discussions with the with the sca which is the special education alliance which is our parent group that helps support the endeavors of of students with special needs within the methectomy school district both groups which are highly

028supportive of this particular change it should be known that the key elements that are listed on this slide is that we improve access to the general curriculum that's what that's what inclusive practices really means is that our special education students gain greater access to the regular education or general education curriculum that's what this program does and as a as a simple example in our current structure we have special education teachers that are set up in classrooms what we're considered down the hall in this in this scenario and in this structure our teachers will be pushing into the regular ed classrooms where the special education students and regular education students will remain for for the day instead of leaving instead of the special education student leaving the classroom and going down the hall to where the

029teacher is and when we talk about gaining access to general curriculum we're not only talking about gaining more time but we're also gaining you know the expert of two teachers being in the classroom teaming and working together to not only provide instruction to the special education student but to all students in the classroom in addition to that another major uh benefit to this restructuring is for our staff it actually allows our staff to be greater specialized in a particular grade level by doing this it allows them to plan better and to become uh you know more engaged in uh the work across that particular grade level rather than being able to which th which is what they do now is they actually uh juggle their time between multiple grade levels which can be challenging and

030and and lastly from a district perspective this allows us to to have a continuum of supports and services for our students so how does this actually work and look so look if we look at our current program structure in k4 special education program delivery we have teachers organized by certain uh areas those areas are k2 learning support three forward learning support itineraries support emotional support as it's listed here and these are the number of positions that are currently in there and the number of instructional assistants that are currently assigned to these areas and support is then provided by students leaving the regular ed classroom going down the hallway to the classrooms that these aids and and teachers are are located in the recommendation is that or the modification will be to change the structure at

031the 22-23 school year whereby we have uh the special education teachers organized by grade level which allows them especially in grades three and four allows them to to specialize on the grade level uh where we start seeing the students being seeing them getting more identified uh compared to grades uh one and two but it does something very uh particular that actually not only provides special education services at the k level but allows us to i'll call it a complete two major uh task at one time and that is to not only to to meet the the needs of inclusive practices as dr angstadt has organized here but also allows for us to now have a dual certified kindergarten teacher in each of the four elementary schools where they the teacher can not only uh provide

032uh the the kindergarten uh class uh instruction but also be the one who's already uh most familiar with the behavioral mental health and other adaptations that are necessary for providing services to students with special needs in the kindergarten level so the staffing levels actually still all stay the same but it's just a modification of how we're using that staff for the purpose of keeping students in the classroom and also for the purpose of being able to provide for their kindergarten in terms of uh fit uh we we understand that uh in looking at our overall enrollment the enrollment projections inclusive of the new construction at arrowhead and the construction on eagleville you can see that the yellow area means that enrollment is projected or is at what we call the warning level that is that

033is those cells in yellow and then a critical level which are those cells in red in terms of space and redistricting uh principles have already determined the means to provide the appropriate space for the program this means providing two additional classrooms for the ability to offer full-day kindergarten starting with the 22-23 school year it will require four classrooms in each building and in terms of redistricting it's my recommendation as i spoke to the property committee meeting uh members that we review uh the balancing of enrollments against the available space it will require a third party to come in and help us plan and adjust for any of the modifications that are necessary given the projections and given the actual enrollments as we proceed forward this may allow us to phase in a redistricting approach it

034may allow us to uh you know you know kind of do the same process that we did uh know just a few years ago with the closure of of audubon but it's really important that um you know someone who works in this space in terms of redistricting and enrollment is able to come in and work with the administration so that we can provide the board any recommendations so that we can have a vision for how we can manage what is currently projected to be some challenges at worcester potentially at woodland and and we want to make sure that with the uh construction of arrowhead and eagleville we can leverage uh those investments uh to the best of our ability in terms of sequencing uh we want you to just really understand that the reason we're

035asking you to consider full day kindergarten almost a year ahead of its implementation is that uh by doing so it allows us to prepare and prepare well we not only need to uh you know take care of uh of the professional development of teachers which will go from teaching a half day program which is much different than teaching a full day program and certainly uh we need to make sure that we take care of all the transitions and all the planning necessary for room configurations parent communications and if redistributed redistricting is included in that first year a communication and review and recommendations associated with that certainly transportation and new routing needs to occur for uh for for that uh for the for the new those schedules and there may be some other uh scheduling modifications

036that are necessary there's a you know abbreviated timeline associated with the implementation of uh the uh full day kindergarten project uh it's listed here from having the board presentations with uh may being the opportunity where the board could consider uh adopting uh the recommendation from the administration if that were to happen uh the the rest of the uh uh the rest of the timeline would be uh implemented uh with uh within within this structure so uh with that said i'm just going to open the floor up to some questions i'm going to also just reiterate the fact that i'm not asking the board for a vote or anything of that nature this evening this is a really first opportunity for the full board to kind of get a handle on what is really around the

037corner in may with dr eucher and myself uh coming forward with a recommendation so with that said i'll take questions from the board mr winters yeah one one question when you talked about the do cert dual certification for moving forward for the kindergarten the seven and a half uh current kindergarten teachers did they have or a portion of them have that dual certification already they do thank you uh ms german yeah i i noticed um dr costen was in this presentation and i have heard that name but if someone could just share more about the process of her engagement and evaluation of our current practices and how that informed this presentation i'm sorry ms drummond uh i i my window was open and uh motorcycle was going by so i had to i had to

038remove myself from listening to you to shut the window i apologize that's okay i was just uh asking about dr costin and i i know i've heard that name but if someone could just um share a little more about her evaluation of our current practices and how her evaluation has informed this presentation absolutely uh dr angstadt i know that you're on a call with us as our resident expert would you mind not a problem so we had dr costan come in she is a leading expert in inclusive practices and when we receive the results of our compliance monitoring audit once again pointing out least restrictive environment and disproportionality as areas of need we contracted with her to come in and do a needs assessment for us we wanted her to review our existing programs and

039really kind of just give us an outside opinion of what is it we could do to further enhance opportunities for inclusion what her report indicated is that we had many of the resources but it was the allocation of those resources that could be better utilized and she just provided a lot of feedback about you know thinking about the number of transitions for kids during a day having kids still going down to separate learning support classrooms and that there were just newer ways of providing those same services within that least restrictive environment so taking that information into consideration then we really started analyzing how could we provide the same support and the number one thing that i remember even as the special education supervisor years ago was the number of concerns teacher or special ed staffs

040had about teaching multiple grade levels and what could we do to improve that and this structure would allow us to finally make that change and allow them to focus on a particular grade level while also ensuring that we have the necessary support in kindergarten for students who may be at risk or have developmental delays and have some area of expertise in that area early on great thank you and then i just have a sort of question which i know is maybe in the weeds but you know i know that sometimes we talk about the scheduling and um just to make sure that you know the cafeteria space and the special schedule and all of that is i mean of course you're it's being addressed but it's all feasible with this because i know sometimes that

041gets tight now that's all been discussed uh by the elementary principles and as as you all may recall and maybe you don't because it's been over you know two a two year process dr euker has been before you a number of times and you know she's been leading that uh leading most of those discussions uh not only here with the board but with the other elementary principles so i'm confident that we'll be able to manage you know all those other particulars so there might be some modifications in order to make sure that things uh you know run properly and certainly there could be an impact depending on whether or not we have to redistrict as an example but but certainly we believe that we're going to be able to provide the services in a in

042a in an appropriate fashion okay thank you other questions for members of the board uh mr and everett i just wanted to thank you and this is a i think a pretty fabulous summary of uh everything that's been presented to us so far i think you've hit all the high notes i know we saw it in property we saw it finance i still have some small questions around the inclusive practices model but that's just my unfamiliarity with everything i would say that um the sca sponsored a number of sessions with dr colston um that were open to the public and there were a lot of people from a lot of school districts i don't have any other board members who are on there um but it i'll tell you what it helped me a lot

043in terms of wrapping my wrap my mind around what we were doing and why and some of the you know simple things even just you know just accounting for transition times because we have kids walking down the hall and um and walking back and just lost instructional time um obviously that's the kind of the bare minimum type of thing but um yeah thank you for this this has been a multi-year process um to get to this point i appreciate the efforts of everyone here to to really weave a lot of these solutions together um so that we can we can put together a uh a program that's best for uh all of our communities so thank you very much thank you mr ms hall i think we might have already expressed this in property so

044i'm sorry if i'm re-asking kind of the same thing but in the presentation last week for store we talked about the need for a sensory room and space for the clinician for the reach program and now we're talking about two extra rooms for the kindergarten per elementary school have we started to identify how we're going to utilize all these spaces as we move forward in this dr einstein in terms i know where the kindergarten rooms are guys so the the plan is currently all of the special education teachers have individual rooms so as we move to the 2022-2023 school year we would create learning support suites where there would be two rooms occupied so if kids or students still needed small group testing or they needed some direct instruction our special education teachers still have

045a place to call home and provide that support for students additionally for the reach program we're looking to use the same space that our current central behavioral mental health specialists would use they share that same support in the building so they would make sure the schedule matches up so they would have a space available and we're currently looking for room in each location to use for the sensory room thank you sure thank you miss hall any other questions from members of the board again you'll be able to you know absorb this information and also ask questions uh next month as well uh any any last questions on this if not thank you very much and the next presentation that we have for this evening is the budget present budget update and we'll have mr bricker

046join us on that presentation is up and live thank you dr serby tonight i'm going to be presenting the april update to the methodical school district's budget for 2122. what you'll see here is the changes in revenue that occurred in the april update we were impacted by an increase of assessments of about 4.8 million dollars we also had changes in social security due to the changes and staff which also includes the retirement impact and there was other medical and other benefits that impacted that allowed us to reduce the overall revenue specifically to real estate taxes by 142 773.59 the current millage was reduced to 2.398 percent next slide please uh what what does this mean to the homeowners so what we did is we create we changed the slide a little bit from last time

047where now the values are more round numbers and the assessments uh would be assessed based on the the values so more people know what their home is worth versus what their assessment is the circular line there is the mistaken school district average the average home value in the factory is about 371 thousand dollars which gives you assessed value of seven 174 280 the impact of this tax increase would be 128.95 cents per year for the homeowner or a total real estate tax of five hundred six dollars and eight cents next slide please with expenditures um i already mentioned that the fact that salaries went down we also had an increase in medical prescription and eye care but we had decreases in dental social security contributions retirement contributions and workman's comp policy came in which was

048positive it was a nice 19793.99 reduction uh total changes are 169 000 we also did have a change on the operating expenses but that was just a reclassification of the expenses it's neutral to the to the expenditures but it is putting the expenses in the proper area uh you'll see in the bottom table that what the health care increases were based on the second look they range from open choice three at thirteen point eight five open choice two fifteen percent pos fourteen point four four open choice three ten percent and so forth down twenty one point one five percent for the rx uh good news is the third look came out and the numbers have been reduced so we'll see some savings on the may update when provided to the board next slide please overall

049we have a balanced budget of 100 115 million 226 thousand uh 339 379 dollars and three cents next slide i wanted to point out some of the things that we did this year uh to help save the budget and cut expenses we have 500 thousand dollars of charter school costs that we would be paid and we're committed funds thanks to the board's uh decision to allow us to commit funds so we're able to take that out assuming that those charter school expenses are one-time expenses and that way we don't impact the taxpayers with that amount charter schools just to be to point it out charter schools in the methadone school district average sixteen thousand seventy seven dollars and thirty five percent per student on cyber charter school schooling where the district virtual academy charges forty

050nine hundred dollars we have four thousand dollars of id cost uh that we've done to align our one-to-one cost that we've been able to use a grant for we have 272 thousand dollars of debt service which will be through the paying off already of the esco release and depending uh payoff of the north montgomery technical career center lease a curriculum will be pushing items from next year's budget into this year's budget by buying roughly about 153 000 worth of the textbooks and other items that they need from the next coming school year we also lowered our legal costs by about 175 000 which is dependent on us making the changes to reduce that make an effort to make those changes to reduce the legal fees and we have lower substitute toss again of about another

051250 dollars the total of all these costs amount to one point seven five million dollars being removed from the budget next slide items coming up um in may we'll be using the april and a month assessments we'll be changing the millage rate based on the change of assessment and any uh extend expenditure changes uh we will have staffing changes there were some recent retirements you'll see some on the uh coming up we also have the property eno insurance we'll get the final number there and i already mentioned about the third look on medical and prescription of note is all major changes in the control of the school district have them incorporated in the budget with the above items being the only remaining items the open contracts with the confidentials mayo messpa and teamsters are still

052open and once finalized will be incorporated into the budget and that concludes the budget report any questions for the board uh mr mcguise tim did i hear you quickly and say the third look is already in yeah it came in uh friday okay but it's not reflected in these numbers correct no i haven't had a chance to apply it to the to the staff yet um small medium or large impact um i guess that's all relative but i'll say it it's probably a a good good amount of money uh to reduce just stay small tim put set the bar low come on pal but it was but it was good news correct yes it went it went down it went down for the most part the prescription went down the medical went down uh so

053we should see a reduction in health care benefits thank you other questions uh mr nevra yeah just um i guess to follow up on drew's point there the um i guess in your estimation given what we you just talked about not only with the third look but also with some additional retirements coming in i know we typically have seen assessments kick up uh over the course of the budgeting season so is it very likely that we're looking at even going lower in terms of tax increase once the final numbers are in i believe we'll be below the two point three nine eight i think we'll we'll be closer to two as an estimate right now but that's without knowing all the different items on where the assessments will fall because obviously a reduction would go

054the wrong way for us yeah certainly um one question on the second and last slide one before this one um just to make sure so it's clear for everyone those last two bullets on there about reducing legal costs and substitute costs those weren't paid by any deferred or committed funds right those are simply changes that we've made operationally that we can uh take out of the budget correct yeah so the the lower legal costs for hope and operational changes will lower our legal cost by about 175 000 um in from the preliminary budget and then the uh substitute cost so each year we we evaluate the substitute cost and what we try and do is get that nutritional savings that has been mentioned and we try and transition the attritional savings when someone's out some

055of them sabbatical or changes in position occur where that savings then gets put into the is through a budget transfer helps pay for the subs we've reduced the sub it's probably the sub cost annually by about 900 to a million dollars annually in that category so the nutritional savings that may have been seen previously in the salaries and benefits is not really going to be there in a normal operating ear got it thank you i just want to make sure that was clear for everybody that was watching thanks thank you any other questions on the budget because his next presentation is the uh forecast uh ms german i just want to thank you for including the point of reference about the cost of cyber charter schools because that's a something that the psva and the

056um iu the mciu legislative committee has been working on um you know without working on to bring light to the um you know that the cost of the cyber charters is 16 000 to us but is 4 900 per student within our virtual academy so i thank you for including that you're welcome any other questions uh comments on the budget seeing none now we'll go on to the forecast mr burger okay this is the uh forecast uh for this current year and where we anticipate to end at this point in time uh forecasted revenue is about 1.1 million dollars above budget a lot of that comes into grants that we received and did not receive example was the school safety grant we are not going to receive that due to covet some of that uh

057expenses as well as the uh benefit of the grant won't be seen until next year um the county grants came in about 319 000 with the assets of about 193 000 interesting comes over by 100 ish over by 172 000 and we have other grants of about 154 000 but the main driving item right now is the interim real estate taxes due to construction and the cos that are increasing as the construction closes uh about 850 000 so that's that's a significant increase from where we anticipated the bay next slide okay so in the expenditures you have a uh total savings uh um are you on the right side yes i just the the titles on that that's go through me for a second um there's two million dollars of surplus of un unspent or

058expected surplus in the expenditures uh driving that will be the obviously the trans transportation of about 2.6 million dollars you have 946 000 of legal costs that are well above our budgeted numbers technology had 350 000 as we purchased chromebooks this year so that we would not have to purchase them for next year as we move to a one-to-one setting um that was anticipated and a decision made so that we can get the one-to-one setting and align our leases and technology needs on a more flat and steady future level uh medical insurance is saving us about 265 000 based on choices and decisions being made and people services is estimated to have a savings of about 250 again the most important thing in this is the transportation savings of 2.6 million dollars that does include

059us paying them the um the 36 roughly of 39.6 percent of the unrun routes background we're back it's a very relatively small number in comparison to the total bill next slide i committed funds uh one of the things i wanted to point out um while there's the savings over there we also are using our committed funds when you look at the way that's done the committed funds will actually come out of the general fund potentially giving us a negative savings a negative impact on our general funds but then when you un or use those funds which is an off-balance accounting term way of using it it will actually show as that netting back to zero and putting us back having the money money back in our account uh it's 3.3 million dollars the original plan

060was to commit five hundred thousand dollars for the fuel tank and two point six million dollars for peasers uh the pisa's projection as provided by the financial areas at pasbo and other areas all had peasers coming in close to 40. we made a prudent decision to have 2.6 million dollars set aside in case that occurred and to make sure we did not impact the taxpayers with that now that we know where appeasers is and the stabilization of that we were able to uncommit them for the peasers and actually use those funds to save the taxpayers on the escrow and north monco ongoing lease payments next slide so here's how it all pulls together our revenue is up by about one million dollars our expenditures are down about two million dollars giving us roughly a 3.1

061million dollar savings we are going to be spending from our committed funds 2.8 million dollars which gives us a net cash of about 300 310 000 from the district's point of view next slide okay so this is kind of showing you how if you look in our audit our audited financials this is kind of taking it through how it will go you'll see the committed funds for the fuel tank five hundred thousand dollars there uh we'll be using that five hundred thousand dollars which will leave us zero in those committed funds you uncommit the funds for psrs and then you use that to pay for the leases so that's kind that wash is there and you have the unassigned fund balance impact of 3.1 million dollars and you have your committed funds for the charter

062school 603 thousand dollars our net forecasted income this is important we are showing a loss for the year of 190 again that is only due to the fact that you're using the committed funds to pay the committed funds are in the general funds and unassigned funds so they'll then assign funds will get you then the committed funds will come in and replenish that amount of money at the end of the day we will have to recommit some funds to the uh because we'll have still have a surplus to the uncommitted funds we'll still have to commit funds so that'll be in your june board meeting and that concludes the forecast on the projection questions on the forecast see no questions on the forecast um david i just hope i'm sorry go ahead no it's okay

063all right um can you put that back up absolutely can you go back one uh i mean it's one slide maybe yeah yeah that was it uh no yeah so let's start here realistically right i mean we can talk about the cash flow cash flow committed funds sorry um they committed funds expenditures here right but essentially when we look at this year over year those are those are still last year's those are last year's funds right so we're as you stated right then the the big number here to focus on is the 3.1 and i think you broke that down really well right it's driven by primarily by transportation right the numbers was a 2.6 uh in transportation costs that went spent can you go back one more slide dave i missed it go back

064one more slide three yeah yeah so when we talk about legal fees so the number here now comes the 946. i think that's different than what we saw in finance right does this number now include um the costs associated with the shenandoah litigation at the end of march this is the this is the same slide presentation that we've done in finance it will actually be going up when all the shannon dell legal expenses come in as well as the other trailing legal expenses come in so that is just projecting where we think it will end at this year and to be clear that's 950 000 over the budgeted figure of 425 000 right so it's a total expenditure of roughly 1.4 million dollars any other questions from members of the board not seeing any other

065questions uh thank you mr bricker thank you that and that ends the uh guest and schedule speakers for this evening you can turn the uh the meeting back over to madam president thank you dr zurby so moving on we have our committee reports um all of our our standing committees of the board have the reports attached to the agenda uh for the dei report we have miss drummond yes thank you um yeah the dei report is that the uh dei leadership team um and the matthackton school district dei committee we held our first meeting on march 24th and that was to introduce the members of the committees and outline the work uh the subcommittees have their own scheduled meet team meetings to meet throughout the month of april and we're working on the equity audit

066we're working we're going through the questions and working on that the full committee is going to meet again tomorrow on april 28th to work finalizing the audit for a may release um if you have any other questions there is a section now on the factom website for dei and you can stay apprised of our work that way thank you thank you mr drummond um and for the intermediate unit ms reese um hello uh we met we're always a month behind because we meet tomorrow so we also met on march 24th and i'll just give you a brief update um for those unaware because it's it's been a while since i've said this all the board documents for the iu are on on the iu site it's all the business of the iu and it's a

067it's a it's a lengthy agenda that we go through um but uh most uh prevalent to uh with action was as of march 24th the iu had um administered 10 600 vaccinations um so it was amazing and they had about 1 640 more to go so it was a total a little over 12 000. so just a huge thanks thank you to everyone involved at the iu uh they worked with a company called ami the department of ed the national guard and the governor's office and um uh dr regina speaker just thanked the hr directors for their incredible um organization of all that uh the other big topic was just that uh all the superintendents in entire montgomery county are always talking to the iu about the substitute teachers across the county and the state

068is an issue right now and um another just notable point because i think it's happening all over is the iu had 15 uh retirements sorry i don't know if anyone heard that yelling in the back so someone's yelling at a dog i apologize um north monco's next i don't know if lit liz wanted to share or liz you wanted me to share oh go ahead okay um my other notes page here we had a very busy meeting on april 19th um and i won't go into every detail but because there are 9th graders 10th graders 11th graders 12th graders part-time full-time them coming back into the building has been a very complicated uh but productive process so um they uh have over 60 percent of their 10th graders now the 11th the remaining 11th grade

069graders were coming back may 5th not full-time that means or full-time for them and the 9th graders were going to remain hybrid due to the numbers it just wasn't possible and we they knew they had met a couple more years with those ninth graders but um every uh everyone who attends the tech center is aware of what's going on it's one to let the members of the public know that the the tech center has been working really really hard and working with the montgomery health department because it's a trickier trickier building um the superintendents take turns um it used to be two year turn and then uh dr gallagher had three years so does mr dietrich uh dr dietrich from north penn is going to take a third year um we had shared that the

070noctius uh assessment which is huge for them that they the written was very good and they have the practical uh exams next so the hands-on exams next um they have a slightly revised calendar for the north monco because they actually did have a few snow days they had some in but they needed two teacher days so students will be have been apprised of that um [Music] and then the most exciting news i can't believe i'm saying this and uh we will be sharing um i'm the tech center will be sharing and i'm sure we'll be sharing more may 5th finally curbside pick up lunches from the uh culinary students so um there's going to be online ordering and payments i will forward that to the board members i think i have a day off on

071may 18th so if anybody wants to join me for curbside pickup um they are going to have a senior recognition um and it's going to be indoor at north penn but it will be split and split into two groups due to the size that'll be live streamed just like matthackton did a five-year facility plan excuse me a 10-year facility plan north moncos working on their five-year facility plan um last two things it was a busy meeting um gina padovich is their uh director and um we renewed her contract and i just hands hands a big round of applause for gina part of it she's really handled um everything very well um and then we um uh renewed the contract for jeff saltanic and for those familiar with mr satanic it's his 43rd year as the

072north monco technical career center uh lawyer solicitor um and he asked everyone not to do the math so thank you apologize for the long-winded report and if i could just jump in and add one thing and that was that they really wanted to recognize the school nurses and all of the school districts um for working so hard with you know contact tracing if needed and just you know advice and they gave a particular shout out to sheryl pfeiffer at the high school for her help and assistance with everything um monk north monco tech related so i just wanted to mention that as well thank you both uh now we have our student board representatives reports we have chris spletzer and nolan mccloskey yes thank you good afternoon everybody the junior class social is going to

073take place on may 25th at hebner park is going to be a hangout for juniors with food drinks and games all following approved social distancing procedures by the country this will be an afternoon event to celebrate the conclusion of the school year sports are finally back in full swing boys lacrosse girls lacrosse and softball each only have one loss so far this season due to kobe there is no conference playoffs so the team with the best record at the end of the season is the pac champion now i'd like to pass on to chris for his report yes hello there um we are officially well into the fourth marking period and by my calculations we have 33 days left of instruction after the school day of this meeting i am pleased to report that we've

074seen swift upswings in the number of in-person attendees as relative to earlier months and with those in-person attendees methachan is shifting back somewhat to its former sensibility and glory ap tests are on the horizon for many of methectomy students and with the cancellation of official finals this will be one of the last great efforts on the part of many of our students this year i am pleased to report a sense of buoyancy is abound through the school and the hallways as april will soon give way to may people continue to get vaccinated each and every day as with passing and with passing days sports extracurriculars and even the average school day returning to normalcy seems more and more plausible planning and administrative work from athactin's senior event has started in earnest with dress codes being

075established tables for the venue being set and superlatives being voted on that will take place on the 21st of may graduation has also been determined for the 10th of june at subaru field home of the philadelphia union information was released by dr gravin's last week to the seniors and please check the website for more information and thank you very much for your time thank you both and now for our methachton education foundation report we have miss krelovich thank you miss aubry larsonis and school board directors and dr zurby we've got some exciting news at the foundation that we wanted to share as many of you know next month is teacher appreciation month it starts in may and every day while the fact and teachers go above and beyond for our children this year has been

076especially challenging our teachers and staff have risen to the challenge for our kids so now it's our chance to share the love share the love is an opportunity to show mythacton teachers and staff our love thanks gratitude while supporting a great cause you can recognize your child's current and former teachers as well as staff members and aides with a share the love certificate from our website and a personal message you can learn more at mathactinfoundation.org as you heard just from our school board representatives or our student school board representatives graduation this year promises to be extra special it'll be the first ever high school graduation at philadelphia union subaru park every graduate will receive eight tickets with a fantastic view of the ceremony there's also going to be a drawing where seniors will receive where

077there's a raffle for seniors to receive a private suite where their family can watch the ceremony thanks to the district the foundation has two very exciting fundraising opportunities that offer convenience and family to families and support educational opportunities in mythton the first is graduation pre-orders that can be sorry graduation flower pre-orders that can be picked up right at the graduation ceremony through our partnership by with pennies by plaza flowers and the fact and owned family business the second are private suite reservations that families can take advantage of so that they can enjoy the comfort and convenience of the graduates graduation ceremony while supporting a great cause more information is available in the factantfoundation.org all of the campaigns and the appeals that the foundation offers like share the love and the graduation suites help to fund

078innovative educational programs and support economically disadvantaged students in mythacton as an education foundation we are a 501c non-profit and donations are tax deductible to the extent of the law we raise money through partnerships with businesses individuals and foundations to fund innovative educational opportunities for all of the kids in math acting we work closely with the amazing teachers and administrators in this district who develop these really cool ideas into programs that can enhance our student learning things like the stem maker spaces in the elementary school loner instruments for economically disadvantaged kids mental health resources entrepreneurship courses and the new hydroponic firm lab and should i mention that thanks to mr savitz and the support of the administration and the school board methachton will be the first high school in pennsylvania to have this lab the truth

079is there is so much more we can do you can learn about all of these things that i discussed tonight and more about the foundation at mythactinfoundation.org we'd like to thank everybody who has donated to all of our campaigns to help our mission and if you have any questions about any of these things please reach out to me directly thank you thank you miss krilovich i see we have three such uh programs on our agenda for this evening it's very exciting to see the work the foundation is doing uh now for our communications update ms kelly thank you and uh good evening everyone the maftin unified track and field team hosted its first meet of the season at home against perk valley and lower moreland high schools on april 19th it was a picture-perfect day

080for our student-athletes coaches and attendees and speaking of pictures we posted a slideshow and a video of highlights on the district's website and social media channels so please check it out if you haven't already and congratulations to all of the matthackton high school students who participated in the delaware valley science fair which was held virtually earlier this month mathactin had a very strong showing 15 students either please first second or third or received honorable mention in the competition sophomore lucy wang earned first place in the biochemistry category and won the bronze medal overall in the 10th grade fair lucy's project focused on the single cell atlas of mouse colitis tissue okay she's now eligible to represent the thactin in the international science and engineering fair which will be also held virtually next month um later

081this week skyview upper element excuse me skyview upper elementary school will be holding their annual career day event virtually on thursday students will hear from the keynote presenter stephanie fee she's a former field hockey olympian and now an entrepreneur on friday students will engage several pre-recorded sessions hold discussions and reflect on the presentations through writing activities on may 10th methectomy high school's art students will be putting their creativity on display when they unveil their vision of a new and improved ridge pike the students are participating in lower providence township's reimagine ridge pike design challenge the purpose of the challenge is to help generate ideas and discussion regarding the comprehensive planning process we can't wait to see what our students come up with and finally if you've been on the high school campus lately you've probably

082noticed a huge sign celebrating the class of 2021 you can't quite see it from space but the sign is still pretty impressive it's located near the corner of crew mill road and the campus entrance very special thank you to the facilities department for building a custom frame for the sign we hope our seniors families and the methecton community enjoy it thank you thank you miss kelly and now for our superintendent's report dr zurby just want to reference the advisements that are listed on the agenda and uh and ms kelly it was thank you for all all your work on uh publicizing all the great things that we do and certainly just want to also mention that uh you know for the last several months we've been you know highlighting uh all the activities on a

083monthly basis that that have have been occurring and uh ms kelly has done a wonderful job of organizing that material so you'll see another one coming out by the end of this month as well so thank you ms kelly and thank you everyone for for all the reports and updates that ends the reports for this evening thank you dr zurby um at this time i will take public comment on board action items so this is an opportunity for residents to comment on matters to be decided upon as outlined on the agenda this evening we ask you keep your comments to four minutes or less we may choose to respond to those matters following the conclusion of the comments section um we require that members of the public wanting to make comments please pre-register by today

084um if you have pre-registered to speak and would like to do so please raise your hand in the zoom okay i have oh it looks like i am not a host dr serby i can't let anyone in to speak there we go okay first up we have joe rittenhouse thank you can you hear me yes i can wonderful uh firstly i want to thank uh and speak in favor of the five day reopening plan uh and just say i'm really ex just as the senior said i'm very excited that we seem to finally be turning a corner to a safe and exciting transition back to some normalcy um additionally i'd just like to ask that we look as to further timelines and benchmarks associated with what that transition means going forward i also was approached

085by members of the methacan theater and music community over the past couple days uh in concern to what five-day return to school will mean for concerts uh plays and musicals uh i know that there's a lot of hesitancy to get back into the building and so i wanted to suggest uh time timeline and weather permitting that some thought be put into kind of some outdoor productions uh concerts i know me as an actor i reveled in the fact of doing shakespeare in the park in college and throughout my career so i think it'd be something that'd be really great to give the kids a chance to see a group of people see their their work and then last week i spoke in opposition to uh one of the texts that is up to vote for

086night that would be eric founders give me liberty six edition both volumes one and two compile um i don't want to rehash exactly everything i just want to say that my opposition stems from uh eric foner is listed as the hoover institute as a prime example of how not to teach u.s history in 2021 he has also listed the horowitz freedom foundation as having wildly radical views on race karl marx america very openly biased and questionably anti-semitic specific chapters involving race policing japanese interpret slavery civil rights george wallace trayvon martin michael brown include openly framed opinions and some outright racist assumptions one statement on 10 for page 1049 uh it's a chapter it says a polarized nation it says there's a racial component to lacking of intelligence which i found important um i own a

087copy of the book and i'm just sad to say that uh in my conversations with the district i was actually only one of four people who reviewed the textbook um since march 24th and there was only one parent who reviewed the textbook it seems there was no mention of anybody on the board reviewing it so i just wanted to ask is that i i'm unaware of if there's a separate time or place where the board reviews it so please correct me um i also want to say that dr walsh has been absolutely wonderful in his communication in regards to the contents of the book [Music] he spoke to some of the teaching staff in a review that yes in his confirmation the book did concern it did in fact have a a a bias or

088a perspective but teachers teaching it would promote and provide supplemental information to bias and misinformation presented within the book now i thought that would be like super comforting but it's actually a little bit more concerning i i think that the process that we go into reviewing these books could be changed and i want to encourage the board going forward to think about that um the idea of just trust us it'll work out it kind of scares me a little bit so the question's asked did the board read the book do you endorse the contents of the book um in my opinion a vote of yes on this particular book means uh as thomas more said silence is one consent solutions possibly extend the time period in which this book could be reviewed by the public

089ask for a cross-section of parents to review the book and submit material submit it to the diversity equity and inclusion committee there are many other texts that i recommended i think that there are um many different ways we could go about this i think that the way the process review doesn't give a lot of access to most members of the public so i think in the 21st century we just need to be a little bit more open and accessible for people to review thank you thank you okay anyone else okay next i have brian earnshaw uh brian erschel our providence um first regarding uh item eight uh board policy item one um i asked this question again and wondering when will the board reserve in person meetings um what's going to be required for that

090to happen um are there certain benchmarks that you're expecting to meet certain vaccination levels or what or are we just going to do virtual only in perpetuity so i'd appreciate an answer to that question on the list of bills i note again this month a significant amount of legal fees i also note that mr brecker's forecast presentation that to date legal fees are forecasted to be 950 000 over budget and if i heard correctly um that would mean legal fees spending would amount to 1.4 million which is 1.3 percent of the annual budget which is just an extraordinary number um and that apparently is not even all in because mr bricker seemed to indicate that there's more legal fees to be included but if there's a forecast for the full year i didn't quite understand

091why those aren't in the forecast so a questions the you know accuracy of the forecast as well and regarding legal fees i've not heard anything does this be a review of them at the finance committee this month there wasn't and i'm just wondering what steps the board is taking or will be taking to get these legal views under control because spending you know over one percent of the budget is just as i said extraordinary uh regarding m10e the resolution regarding the payment pay off the north montauk technical career center bond series i asked this before but nobody's ever told me what the interest rate is on that debt i'd be interested to hear that also in mr brooker's forecast presentation he has a funding to pay off that debt for the district of 1.191 million

092the resolution says that matthias contributes to 965 000. so if somebody could explain that difference of approximately 150 000 or so difference i'd appreciate that regarding item 10f the mciu district cost plan a reference the amount of 626 000 for the next year i'm wondering how that compares to the current year and whether that amount is going up down staying flat or just how that compares um regarding supplemental contracts item 11l2 if you could explain what the act 48 committee is and why a supplemental contract is required for that um i agree with the concerns regarding the textbook i did read part of that book online i found a lot of opinion and bias in the sections i read and the sections on current history reads more like an msnbc interview than a high school

093textbook um and then i think finally regarding under other 14 d1 the soar program i went back and looked at the presentation from last week's work session and there was no indication of the cost of that program um the agenda item in a case that is funded from cceis funds so i'm wondering are those funds a one-time um contribution or a grant for next school year or are they perpetual um because i think you need to understand if those costs won how much they are and two whether or not that's going to be you have to be layered into the budget if and when those funds expire uh thank you thank you mr ernshaw next i have jessica bradbury good evening can you hear me yes i can thank you jessica bradbury lower providence township

094first i hope that the board approves the return to school plan for next year so that our students can be restored to a five-day of in-person educational model dr angstead had indicated the soar program was funded by a grant and like mr earnshaw i do have a question about what the total cost will be and wondering if we will cover that regarding the proposed textbooks is it possible in the future to revisit how we make these books available for review maybe allowing evening and weekend hours so that it is more accessible to the public as i mentioned last week i especially like the 6th grade world cultures and geography book and i think our youngest learners will really enjoy the newsletter format of the materials for grades k through 5. we are fortunate to live

095in one of the greatest countries in the world and we've made great strides in recent years to celebrate the diverse backgrounds of people in our community in the four minutes that i'm given right now to speak on voting matters i will not be able to elaborate on all of my concerns on the ap history book but the author downplayed some great tragedies like hurricane katrina and 911 instead highlighting his own political viewpoints and criticizing our government overshadowing the sadness and horror of the number of american lives lost during those two events he uses the book to demonize the men and women that serve us in law enforcement who were the true heroes that rushed into the chaos on 9 11 to save lives as people with diverse backgrounds we will always have diverse thoughts beliefs

096and ideals we will not always agree but it is through dissent and respectful conversation that we collaboratively work together to shape the future for our children over the past week you've heard from members of the public that the author writes for a radical left-wing publications he embraces marxist ideals he was even raised in a family of communist sympathizers i'm wondering and could we hear from the board members on their opinions as they read the ap u.s history book i know the administration highlights his pulitzer prize to justify its selection a pulitzer prize like an oscar or an emmy is just a self-serving marketing tool for the industry the board that presides over the judging process is comprised of media execs reporters university faculty and other notoriously progressive people this award is not given based on

097high standards of objectivity as an indicator of excellence or achievement if we are to uphold a commitment as a district to create an apolitical and safe environment for all of our children could we consider one of the other 19 books on the list provided by the ap college board as a better selection instead of give me liberty a book filled with political propaganda thank you thank you next i have trembling mom hi chun ling ma worcester township i just want to comment on the ap history book also um i'm probably not the least one to comment on american history because i did not grow up in this country but my children will be educated in this country and will learn american history uh i i did not personally read the book but i read some

098reviews on amazon it really concerns me um basically it uh assume americans want more government involvement in their lives than when opposite is true and also a very important history like 9 11 or a lot of the founding father ideologies are not really emphasized enough uh like aston eisenhower and also do always it was only mentioned twice in the book um it just someone's a version of the social injustice but not an accurate history of the united states instead it elaborates a lot on the minority persecution the slavery uh women's suffering but none of this is balanced by the amazing things that have been accomplished but by the american people so it's i agree with uh miss bradbury it's just more of the political um propaganda and i heard in the college i saw in

099the college board there were 20 books that were um available for selection and i don't know what's the justification for our um director of the curriculum to select this one and i don't know if the board has reviewed the book in person if you guys agree with uh why why this will get picked and another thing is also um i'll go back to um mr uh return house suggestion i think this um process should be probably delayed uh uh with more parents involved with more reviews so the board can get a more balanced idea of whether this book a textbook is fit for our ap history um course another topic i want to touch upon is um i like to know when the in-person meeting can resume and i don't see any technical difficulty uh

100blocking it i appreciate right now we have the availability of having online zone meeting with a lot of people who cannot attend in person can also dial in but at the same time i think we also need an in-person interaction and i think that the board can do both versions available make it available to the public i just don't know if there's any technical difficulty blocking that so if you can if you guys can give me an idea one the in person can resume that really great thank you next i have kelly mann hello um i just wanted to talk to in regards to a given before you get started i should have said this at the very beginning if you could just introduce yourself by your name and municipality oh sure my name is

101kelly mann and i live in uh lower providence thank you i also wanted to talk in regards to the textbook that give me liberty um this was just brought to my attention this past week when some pictures of pages in the textbook were messaged to me by other concerned parents um when i read them i was shocked instead of facts i was reading paragraphs of heavily threaded one-sided opinion politics and propaganda i was not aware that viewing textbooks prior to approval was an option and that's probably my fault i could look into that but if that information could be related to parents i think you would have a lot more people on this meeting objecting i guarantee many parents are probably not aware that that is an option as a parent of students i have

102two mathematics students and one that i'll have a third i'm very concerned about what i see about this and i will definitely look into future textbooks in closing i wanted to ask the board members along with the other people that spoke prior to me did they read this textbook did they read what is in question and what we are concerned about thank you uh next i have sandy cats whenever you're ready hi sandy cats lower providence um i just want to say thank you i cannot express exactly how i'm feeling right now the presentation thank you to the board uh dr zerby dr angstadt uh ms drummond mr navarette for referring to both the evaluation done by dr costin and the training that we brought to math act and just in february on inclusive practices

103the presentation today on the kindergarten full day program i know that's not up for a decision today however the plan to restructure staff and services and weave in inclusive practices is excellent research has shown that inclusive practices benefits outcomes for all students children with and without abilities this plan provides access to all and all the appropriate supports and services that our kids with special needs need it gives them access to the expertise of the general ed and special ed teachers in the classroom as opposed to sending them down the hall as mr nabaret mentioned and you know the time wasted sending them down the hall they have the experts right in the classroom with them access to their peers with opportunity to model learning and behavior from their peers our kids are our own best

104models access to the curriculum because the teachers can collaborate to make accommodations and modifications for their students in their home room class and many a times what i've learned is accommodations and modifications that have been made for my daughter benefit most of the kids in the classroom above all children with diverse abilities will develop a strong sense of belonging and not not feel like the occasional visitor to the general-led costume the icing on this cake will be the board's approval of the plan to bring soar to our elementary school staff and children so our teachers have on hand expertise from the mental health team to provide social emotional and behavioral support for all of our children again i just want to say thank you this has been a long effort and i know a labor

105of love of many of you so thank you thank you miss cats um next i have michael ryan whenever you're ready good evening everyone michael ryan lower providence i just want to make a quick comment in regards to the textbook that's in question um i think would be important for dr walsh when this comes up in the the agenda to maybe go over the process of how a textbook is adopted and you know how that how that moves through um you know it starts in the curriculum office it needs final approval from dr walsh before it even gets to dr zerby dr zerby would then need to vet it as well in order to even get it on the agenda for this evening to be viewed by the board um this was put up on

106the agenda in last month's meeting um discussing the time frame the textbooks are allowed to be reviewed by the public uh i just think it's important to go through that process that this isn't just a school board decision new one school board member you know picked out a book and decided hey this is what we're going to do this comes from the experts and i think that's the important thing to remember here is you know i wasn't an expert with covid so i wouldn't speak you know to the science behind covid i'm not an expert when it comes to textbook selection but part of having administration is relying on your director of curriculum instruction and assessment relying on your superintendent to make the proper recommendations to the board so um i just hope that during

107the part of the meeting where we go over this that they kind of go over through the process here you know the the proper means of doing this and you know i greatly appreciate the um the structure that is in place to go over these things so thank you very much thank you mr ryan i see no other hands raised so i believe that we'll end our public comment portion of this evening and i will now move on with the agenda may i have a motion to approve the suspension of board policy zero zero six point two with specific regards to the limitation on the number of directors participating electronically reece thank you miss freeze in a second thank you mr winners comments from the board seeing none all those in favor any opposed carries

1089-0 may have a motion to approve the board meeting minutes for the work session on march 16th and the regular board meeting on march 23rd is attached thank you mr mcginnis in a second thank you mr neverett comments from the board seeing none all those in favor aye aye aye any opposed motion carries 9-0 uh fiscal items mr berker thank you madam president tonight for your approval we have the list of bills treasurer's report budgetary transfers the north monkey technical career center budget resolution 21-02 which is in regards to paying off the north monco techno career center lease mciu district cost plan the earned income tax credit for the volunteer firefighters the food service management agreement is a one-year extension with hour mark and a general supply bid awards does anyone want to take any

109of these fiscal items separately all right then i will take a motion to approve all items listed under number 10. thank you mr mcginnis in a second i'm all right thank you mr neverett any comments from the board seeing none i have my hand up sorry i'm trying not to call out sorry i got i got yelled up for calling out which is true um uh there were two questions regarding finance um the difference between the iu expenditure um the six thousand six hundred thousand this year versus last year do you know the difference off right now if you don't mr bricker that's okay but if you did i don't know the difference off the top of my head however the number is based on students and the students needs okay thank you and the

110the other finance question was the north monco um interest rate percentage i believe the weighted average coupon on the north monkey career center lease is 2.41 thank you very much thank you miss reece any other questions yep mr winners yeah i think there was also a question in the differential between the 965 and the 1.2 million dollars i believe that's the amount difference at tim is related to state refund is that right that'll be that'll be the plan con numbers i haven't gotten final numbers to put into the forecast so i can't really give that information as i don't have it available but it did the difference would be related to the state portion of the of that reimbursement is that that's the plan that's the plan con amount yes so any other comments seeing

111none all those in favor all right any opposed our fiscal items carry 9-0 moving on to personnel dr sergini thank you madam president good evening everyone for your consideration this month we have the following personnel items we have three resignations professional two of which i spoke about last week when i thanked miss linda wilkinson for her 18 years of service to the students of mathacton and ms barbara valerio for her 32 years of service this week we are also adding miss mary ellen barbudo for and thanking her for her 33 years of service to the students of mathacton and we wish linda barb and mimi all the very best in their retirements we have two resignations classified both of which are for for retirement and last week i thank both chris boyle and janice stickley

112for their service to the students of mathakton we have one employment administrative we have two unco uncompensated leaves professional two uncompensated leaves classified a series of supplemental contracts several of which are retroactive due to needs that became we became aware of after the last meeting and also we have this month the addition of four volunteers to be added to the district approved volunteer list and that concludes my report thank you dr sergini um would anyone like to take any of the personnel items separately all right then i will take a motion to approve all items listed under number 11 personnel reese oh sorry that's okay i got you andrea miss reese and a second mr winners comments from the board miss reece um mr sergini i know we've had different a couple retirements each month

113and i know um we because of that we always wait to acknowledge all of the retirements if i'm correct in the spring is that still the plan and that's correct ms reese we are planning that for uh an upcoming month okay thank you and then um there was a question i know about act 48 um for the supplemental contracts uh i believe uh you know planning professional development but i don't know if an administrator has a better answer to that question thank you i can certainly answer to that act 48 is from uh the year 2000 or required that beginning in the year 2000 all professional educators would have to continue with their professional education development over the course of their service in the profession and as a means by which to keep their certifications

114active in order to accomplish that they need to either take six credits of an approved uh coursework by uh in courses that are approved by pde those can include graduate or doctoral level courses or also courses through the pennsylvania inspired leadership series that is offered through pde but the majority of our staff accumulates act 48 credits through uh here at methachton school district and we do have a committee that consists of educators across all the levels of k-12 education as well as our administration and those meetings are generally held after the school day so our teachers who serve on the on that particular committee and meet on a monthly basis are compensated for their time after the school day thank you there's also a board representative that's part of that committee the act 48 committee

115as well correct i'm sorry madam president you're correct no that's okay i was just adding on there giving my two cents uh any other comments from the board mr navarrete yeah just a quick question um on uh how come we're just paying a uh basketball coach now thank you for that question mr navarrete i certainly apologize we were in a situation where the same individual served in two different capacities and was compensated for the other capacity the way that the schedules worked out this individual was able to serve as both a jb and a freshman coach because the schedules for both practices and games did not overlap unfortunately she was compensated for the other season but we came to realize that the compensation did not go through at the correct time in december and january

116for the other role in which she filled great thanks that makes sense appreciate it [Music] any other questions seeing none all those in favor of the personal items as listed hi hi any opposed motion carries 9-0 um curriculum and programs dr walsh thank you madam president and good evening everyone attached to tonight's agenda our recommendations for various textbooks and resources that is part of our ongoing curriculum review process the textbooks have been on display for public review as part of our practice since march 24th and today four community members have come in to view the textbooks proposed and we have received three emails regarding the ep us history textbook i shared that specific feedback with the ap teacher who vetted this textbook along with the social studies department coordinator and chair the secondary curriculum supervisor

117as well as the building principal and made them aware of the concerns that were raised the teacher will use the textbook along with other sources to provide a balanced perspective of the viewpoints to align with the rigorous ap us history prescribed curriculum to that end it is the recommendation that this textbook along with all other resources and curriculum listed in tonight's agenda be approved thank you dr walsh um given the conversations that we've had already i'm going to presume that we're going to take 12a 3 separately so i will take a motion to approve number 12 curriculum in programs item a 1 through 8 with the exception of number three so one two and four through eight is there a motion thank you mr winners second miss reece okay any comments from the board on

118those items seeing none all those in favor okay oh i'm sorry no i just i thought that i know that uh dr walsh you read through the principle what was done in the last 30 days but could you also walk through the principle was what is the identification and what other support mechanisms you have in choosing all these books generically sorry absolutely absolutely mr winter so the curriculum review process it's it's an ongoing process and this started about a year and a half ago with the curriculum writing first thing we do is we write the curriculum um based on the pa core and academic standards and in this particular case with ap ap is actually written from the college board they prescribe the curriculum teachers have to go through a thorough training in order to

119teach the course so that is part of the vetting process to begin with the college board does provide the approved curriculum then we find a resource that matches up best with the curriculum and as in many cases we look at various resources the department the coordinators the teachers who are teaching that prescribed curriculum and then they make recommendations there's a textbook evaluation form that's filled out it's then signed off by the department chair ultimately signed off by the building principal and then the curriculum supervisor of that department um and this is about a six-month process this started back in the fall and we have now brought this forward at the march ed committee meeting as always we leave all um curricular and program materials on display for at least 30 days um and then we

120get that final approval from the board so this has been about a year process it started before i came here and um the textbook recommendation vetting took place back in about october and november as part of our budgeting process so this is something that the the teachers do not take lightly i respect their professionalism um they are in the trenches every day teaching this curriculum teaching the materials and again it's not just the textbook that drives the curriculum it's the resources it's the open source documents it's the conversations it's the debates um and it's it's that's what makes it richer and deeper for our students um and in particular ap is a college level prep course and ultimately it's about the exam the assessment at the end of the year that is given so it

121leads up to the culminating activity which is that ap exam which is just around the corner for all our students i hope that helps describe the process thank you dr welsh you're welcome all right do we have any other comments on items 12 a 1 2 4 through 8. okay all those in favor aye aye aye aye any opposed okay the motion carries nine zero and now i'll take a motion to approve item 12a3 give me liberty the ap us history text reese thank you miss reese is there a second winners thank you mr winners comments from the board mr winners yeah i mean i i really i do appreciate the the community looking at to this book but i think there's a conceptual thing that maybe i'm not in agreement on uh as dr

122walsh sort of indicated these are books that have been vetted by the staff um and looked at in different ways but the book in themself is not the entire teaching the teaching is the dialogue around these subjects and the principle and i have if somebody wants to know i did look at the ap us history uh uh course and examination description all whatever inch of paper um i also looked online in a purchased version of a pdf uh of the item uh of the book in question um i do believe there's some things that that we we should trust the teaching and the dialogue these are 10 to 11 i assume actually 11th and 12th graders i'm not sure exactly i think they're 11th and 12th uh primarily these are individuals that are independent thinkers

123as well and the principle of propaganda and the words that have been used uh marxist communist um interesting i believe there's a section in here about the red scare so i i really believe that we we're there is an overreaction towards you know some opinions in this book the whole principle of this book as i understand it is to discuss how great america is because it continues to try to be better and try to re-evaluate itself through all its issues through time and the this most recent edition the author talks about uh what it is to be an american and around the issues that are specifically around immigration and some and incorporating more of those into the different chapters throughout the book um there i'm sure there are in things in there that i don't

124like i am sure there's things in other books that i don't like but the principle of a book by itself being to be all of our how we teach in the facton to me is is not what we are and i have no problem uh voting for this and i'm sure somebody will put my name against some type of quote of the book and say that's what i voted for i'm voting for the principle of education and the principle of how good our staff can have a dialogue with our students and make them independent learners thank you mr winners go ahead sorry um i um after we we received an email before the meeting last week and as soon as i received that email i just confirmed again with administration that we went through the

125process we always go through i just wanted to make sure and they did they said yes and then when we received the commentary last uh at the work session i was like oh and i so i i went and saw what some other districts were using and i and i i was very concerned because in six years on the board and six years on the education committee i hadn't heard anything like this there was some uh conversation about the elementary ela series but there was never you know such pushback on a book and it concerns me because it's a big deal it's a big deal as a board you know you vote on the budget that's a big deal you vote on policy that's a big deal and the textbooks are a big deal so

126i reached out to the author because i wanted to let him ask him what he thought and he very nicely um responded to me so i'd like to read that to everybody dear miss reese it's long so bear with me thank you for your message it is difficult to respond to charges that have no basis in fact but let me try if you will excuse me for being a modest my long career as a teacher and scholar of history has been honored across the political spectrum i am one of only two persons who've been elected president of the three major professional organizations of historians the american historical association organization of american historians and society of american historians these organizations are hardly known for promoting pro communist or politically biased interpretations of american history my books

127have won among other accolades the pulitzer prize the bancroft prize twice los angeles times book prize and many other awards they have been enthusiastically reviewed by writers from the left right and center in the national review a bastion of modern conservatism for example the reviewer declared my book the story of american freedom on which give me liberty is based approaches brilliance i mention all this because i pride myself on objectivity when i am writing of course i hold political opinions as does every author of a work of history but the contents of give me liberty are based on my extensive research in historical documents and on reading the scholarly books of other historians i strive to be fair-minded to all outlooks indeed the underlying theme of give me liberty is that the understanding of freedom

128the central idea in our political culture has been contested throughout our history and thus the book explains how americans of all backgrounds and persuasions have thought about and attempted to achieve freedom each chapter contains an insert juxtaposing two statements about freedom from its historical time period the point is to enable students to think for themselves about how they and other americans define this key idea this is the opposite of attempting to impose my own outlook on the students give me what give me liberty is widely used in high schools community colleges and four-year colleges in red states and blue states and by liberal and conservative teachers in the preface i haven't i haven't included my email address and i invite students to share reactions with me i have received numerous emails from teachers and students

129some questioning one or another point in the book others urging me to devote more attention to an issue of importance to them i have never received a complaint that the book is politically biased or on the contrary many teachers and students have praised it as an even-handed and fair-minded equally important many students from throughout the country have written to me to say that they really enjoyed reading the book recently i received a handwritten letter from a high school student simply saying thank you for your book give me liberty is probably the only textbook i have actually enjoyed reading another recent letter states as a high school sophomore in us history i just wanted to thank you for writing such an engaging comprehensive and interesting textbook and one final letter from a high school senior your

130book not only taught me a great deal about american history but also inspired me to continue to study history in college before reading your book i had little understanding of history as a vital and dynamic narrative i could go on but my point is that i strive to write in a clear accessible manner and students seem to find the book engaging there is no point in assigning even the best textbook if students do not read it of course the key to the study of history is the teacher in the classroom not the textbook but many teachers have thanked me for making their job that much easier by arousing a deep interest in history among their students one of the students quoted above also praises my commitment to social justice give me liberty introduces students not

131simply to presidents and captains of industry but also to previously marginalized groups it highlights the struggles against slavery for women's rights and for dignity in the workplace as essential parts of the history of freedom in this country this is not because it offers a negative account of american history but because if they want to understand the tumultuous world we live in today students need to be familiar with those americans who have struggled to make this a more just society what could be more pro-american than that best wishes eric foner thank you miss reese any other comments from the board ms drummond yes i i had great concern when i heard that um the author could be anti-semitic and also was possibly postulating defunct theories about race and intelligence so after the meeting on tuesday as

132dr walsh can attest i went over and i obtained the book on wednesday and um i would just like to mention a couple comments of note um one is that uh eric foner was born in new york city the son of jewish parents um so is himself jewish um [Music] and uh one of the commenters made a comment about how hurricane katrina was referenced in the book um and i will just uh read a short excerpt that talks about and and i guess in the in the context of saying that the death toll was not mentioned um appropriately the book does say vast numbers of people most of them poor african americans remained abandoned amid the flood waters bodies floated in the streets and people died in city hospitals and nursing homes by the time

133aid began to arrive damage stood at 80 billion the death toll was around 1 500 and two-thirds of the city population has has been displaced um the the comment of the that gave me most concern was about this you know about a race theory and i was unable to find anything in the book um after perusal about a race theory except for the following that uh describes tweets issued by president trump which promoted his ideas and insulted political opponents now this was on page 915 of the book the caller referenced a page 1049 so um i'm not sure that that community member has the most current edition um but it talks about uh insulted his political opponents critics and even political allies such as his attorney general jeff sessions often his tweets had a racial

134component he declared basketball great lebron james and maxine waters a black member of congress lacking in intelligence so this was the only thing i could find in the book that talked about race and intelligence and since this is properly contextualized in my opinion i'm comfortable with this book i and i also want to say to the teachers and the administrators in the committee who have chosen this book and selected this book and i i just want to you know say math acting school district has such a strong ap program we have a great success with our ap program our ap testing success our students and you know who go on to further their education this way and who enter college with a number of credits under their belt because of our success and i i

135trust in this continued process thank you thank you miss drummond are there any other comments from the board miss cancro you know i don't have a long-winded like i i appreciate everybody's information i i respect the process i just i'm eating this i do have to say that though the last chapter a divided nation i just didn't feel it had that balanced perspective of viewpoints of us history so for that it just really doesn't make me feel comfortable i i do appreciate how we're going to provide other resources to make this become a balance but um for this that's why i'm not gonna be voting for this book but i appreciate everybody's perspectives on this on this call and and the administration staff and and the process that we put it through and that's exactly

136why we do it but um for me i just did not i don't feel comfortable with that part of the book thank you miss cancro any other comments from the board mr navarrete yeah just to i guess follow um i do appreciate you know i paul i think um stated it far more eloquently than uh than i could um but i did indeed answer the question that was asked um i did i did review this textbook uh after the concerns that were raised last week and i appreciate dr walsh uh you sharing uh the complaints that we received from the community i think that helped uh put some context um and point me to the right spots in the books that people were looking at so i appreciate the effort that the administration and our

137teachers have put into this i trust their judgment and part of the part of offering uh a diverse course load is uh offering a diverse set of viewpoints for our students to consider so um i look forward to uh continued success of our ap programs thank you thank you mr navarette any other comments from the board i know the question was asked about um in reference to board members reviewing the textbook and i do want to say i think all of us on here review the textbook right so this is the part of the process the textbook is available for parents within our community and also available for board members to review and we all have access to the textbook and have reviewed the contents of it i know from my experience in looking at

138it i thought it was one-sided but i guess in my opinion i was looking for more of it right which is with content that probably wouldn't get until taking a different level so if it was more like on i believe they started off with indian american history and you you're looking for a little bit more but given what the ap course is designed and how it's supposed to be it's supposed to expose you to different things and i think in the end based on the way it's structured and the material supplementary materials provided by the teachers that students will have an engaging discussion just because i feel like it brings a lot of what we have seen in our american history and it brings a lot of current events in in introduce a lot of

139the current events in the textbook so i think it should be fine all right any other comments okay so um i'm gonna ask can i just make a comment real quick i'm sorry i didn't want to state that um i i did take a look at the textbook also i'm i'm glad that that was provided to us electronically in the way that it was um i have you know i i did not see [Music] bias the way that other people did when they reviewed this i thought that there were um criticisms on both sides on especially in that last chapter that's being referenced a lot by the public um my daughter is in the class right now she has an excellent teacher who is doing an incredible job with these students and i think we

140have a lot of success with this class in the ap program and i will support the administration in this recommendation thank you miss hall so with that i'm going to move to a roll call vote um miss cancro no miss drummond yes miss hull yes mr mcginnis yes mr neverett yes miss purdue yes miss reese yes mr winners yes and myself also yes so with a vote of eight to one the motion carries thank you everyone for all of your work and um thank you dr walsh and the entire curriculum team for your work in in selecting this text i have every faith that this will continue to prepare our students well for the ap exam and future successes thank you so moving on with our agenda um now we have item 12b new programs

141and curriculum we have um three new programs being funded by the method and education foundation which is terribly exciting may i have a motion to approve the three items under new programs and curriculum i heard mcginnis first is there a second dramand thank you mr drummond comments from the board seeing none all those in favor aye aye aye aye opposed motion carries nine zero on policy we have six policies up for our first read and we have 12 policies for a second read which means that they would be approved this evening so i may i have a motion to approve these 12 policies is listed thank you miss hull is there a second dramond thank you mrmand comments from the board seeing none all those in favor aye aye aye any opposed motion carries nine

142zero um under gifts and donations we have a gift from the vasalooza family of a flute we have no trips we have a dissertation study to approve um and we have the soar program and oh goodness we have a lot of things to approve here um actually dr zurby why don't i let you go through these sure so we we have uh the dissertation study as as mentioned uh and that all that information is uh listed on the attachments the soar program dr angstadt presented this uh uh last week and certainly this is for providing uh support for uh behavioral and mental health supports into our elementary schools starting with the 21-22 school year uh the the the funds and doctor and let's see if we can answer some of the questions that that were

143out there so the the cceis funds are actually funds that are originally allocated to us through our uh idea funding which as a result of the audit requires us to designate a certain portion of that funding in order to address the the issues that the audit has designated so dr hank said those funds are in about how much at this moment in time so for every year that we've been required to um withhold it's 15 of our idea part b funding so every year we've been putting aside about 128 to 140 000 these funds can only be used to provide early intervening services and so when we proposed we put together the proposal for the soar program i did reach out to the bureau of special education to make sure that it met the letter

144of the law to use those funds for this purpose the response from the state was absolutely they thought the program was a great opportunity to really address not only inclusive practices for any chances of disproportionality and we will continue to be um setting aside those compensator or i'm sorry the comprehensive coordinated funds until we start addressing the matter so we will be setting aside that same 15 next year and most likely the year following so that we need to start using the funds as they're prescribed and it is it is our intent at least to have the sore program operational with the behavioral with the third party behavioral supports in the classrooms for a minimum of two year period we've we indicated that in the presentation and we will evaluate after that two-year period meaning

145the first year being very intensive and then there's a titration schedule uh that dr rankstad referred to that we would ease off so that our own teachers start taking uh you know taking those model behaviors and implementing themselves over time so that we become the resident experts so it isn't designed to be a program that will be in perpetuity so this is the proper i'll call it articulation of those funds uh that are that are our one-time funds that over these next couple years will be used uh to address uh the challenge uh the next item is this as a summer student programs again this was uh shared last week by dr walsh and team please note that there were some modifications and dr washington we just mentioned the modification based on the comments from

146the work session that we added here absolutely dr zurby um what we added was we made sure that there would be a site coordinator available for the on for the students especially at the grades 7 to 12 who needed additional supports and we will already have a site coordinator for our intervention program and a site coordinator for our supplemental program so there will be a live adult available for anyone who wants to drop in or just needs online support in addition we'll be providing some services to our families over the summer on social emotional well-being um we'll be putting information out as they are scheduled throughout the summer and they will be uh recorded for those parents who cannot make it due to vacations or or work schedules or such and then also there will

147be some central behavioral health and reach services for current students in the program that will also be able to address social emotional wellness but that will be determined by the clinician for those students who are currently in those programs so we will definitely be addressing the scl as was discussed last week as well as on-site support thank you dr walsh and we also highlighted in the revised document that our counselors uh there's some intervention with our counselors as well is that correct yes they are available throughout the summer um they can schedule any appointments that might be necessary as the counselors rotate through um with their summer hours and summer days by appointment excellent um so those those are those were modifications and the only financial modification i believe it was a was it a

148five thousand dollar change from last week as a result of that's correct okay and that's all spelled out in the uh revised attached document the next item is the 21 off-season practice games camps and clinics as presented by dr spiwak nothing has changed between uh the presentation last week and until now and then of course we have the instructional health and safety plan uh both of those plans are attached for your your approval this evening again uh it should be real clear for everyone that uh we'll be moving forward with the instructional plan and planning for uh the implementation of the five-day in person as well as uh the alternative uh uh all online option uh with an with an option to make a change at the in mid january as presented uh the there

149is uh some likelihood that by july we'll be seeing some other recommendations uh from the cdc that we might have to consider as part of the health and safety plan i don't know exactly what they would be but as uh history has shared us uh you know things change on a regular basis and you know we will we will make those recommendations uh where appropriate and when appropriate prior to the school year uh start uh we did uh provide the list of uh the distancing for classrooms to the board just today so uh all of them as i indicated in the meeting last week while it talks about the safety plan talks about a greater than three foot distancing there is not a classroom that we're recommending to be occupied that would be less than

150i believe and dr angstadt correct me if i'm wrong i think it's four by four that's correct dr zerby with some classrooms four by six and some you know so there's a there's a lot of uh variation now we'll be also sharing that same list uh with the uh the the leadership of the math active education association uh just so as we go into this uh process and this change um everyone's very familiar with what we're going to do and we'll be including that list as part of the uh selection booklet uh for parents when that selection process begins and i believe it's in early june if it's not june is it june 1 through the 7th i think that i think that's okay if not if not it just read the the timeline and

151the presentation but but that's that's when that is and then the last uh two items is the mciu representative uh miseries has been serving as the representative for the the last uh uh i guess few years oh just one year okay and uh and there's a rotate she doesn't know i don't know it doesn't matter it's the position is up for uh re-election so there'll be a a requirement for a nomination and then as a determination by this board uh to submit a name to the uh the montgomery county uh intermediate unit and the last is a agreement for uh a supplement agreement and a release of an agreement with a student two one zero four three four thank you dr zurby um so seeing as we do not have a name yet for the

152nomination i'm going to say that we'll take a motion to approve items listed under other 14 a through g and i if that's okay with the board so is there a motion thank you miss reece and i'll take mr winters with the second comments from the board i already commented last week on soar but um since the last week i've been sharing the uh program and and what dr angstadt and her colleagues have put together with many people i know in education and they they just were like wow going down to elementary they were they were just super impressed and super excited and they asked me to forward the information and and it just felt so good and then hearing miss cats um and her understanding of inclusion and that sore and inclusion practices all

153just will come together it just is one of those really nice board moments so thank you again to um dr engsted and everybody involved ditto agree any other comments all right all those in favor of items a through g and i i any opposed okay the motion carries um and now i will ask for a nomination for the mciu representative uh mr summers do i have to have a motion for the item itself or can i just take a nomination you can just take a nomination okay thank you um so do i have a nomination i'd like to nominate andrea reese second okay um are there any other nominations any comments on the nominations thank you andrea for your work thank you and i would just say sorry i the last year has been such

154a blur that dr zerby is correct it is two years but i just haven't walked into the iu in quite a while we are still having our meetings through zoom and uh but my picture is still on the wall and uh i would be happy to continue there and all the great work they do yeah as a comment i i filled out i think miss hackett's uh term and then i think it was only maybe six months or so but it is a fantastic uh experience if other board members at some point want to uh have contact with the other uh 18 districts in montgomery county and really get an understanding of what a fantastic iu we have in montgomery county um it's certainly something that is a is a pleasant uh board position and

155it really is a rewarding and really fantastic organization to be supporting as a board member all right so then we have um a nomination for andrea reese for the seat on the iu board for a term of three years all those in favor hi hi any opposed all right motion carries nine zero and we have our dates for our meetings for next month is there anything for old business anything for new business mr mcginnis yeah i would just like to take a note of um george marinko who was the head football coach and assistant football coach at matthackton for over 40 years uh looks like coach is coming to some end of life issues and there's a gofundme page out there but i can speak for myself that he was instrumental in teaching me how

156to work hard and i know there was several generations of young men that benefited from his teaching so everyone keep them in your thoughts if you don't mind thank you thank you mr mcginnis anything else for new business madam president just to uh real quickly make the board aware tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock am the united states supreme court will be hearing a case it's bl versus mahanoi area school district which is a pennsylvania school district it's a case involving the authority of school districts um to discipline students for off-campus speech um and has signific or could have significant implications of uh what authority the school district has for bullying uh behavior that may occur off campus inappropriate communications it's it's rare for the united states supreme court to issue a to take a case

157involving school law issues there have been a handful of them throughout the decades but tomorrow morning at 10 a.m the the court will be hearing argument in that case uh and my understanding is it is streaming on uh c-span's website if anyone's interested or the united states supreme court's website if any board members are interested in listening and given your commitment to education law mr summers i expect you'll be watching with popcorn yes mr winters is this i i thought i read it was only an audio feed is that correct that's correct the us supreme court uh does not allow cameras in their court um i just will say miss hall has been sending me information about it because she is our she sends me my homework so miss hall um i have a very

158busy day tomorrow with school and uh mespa and um uh iu meeting so if you could keep me posted i would really really really appreciate it i think i'm going to let the legal experts give me a summary after it's all over i know the policy committee has been watching this one for quite some time it will be interesting to see what happens uh anything else for old business then or new business okay with that then we will move on to courtesy of the floor um this is a time for members of the public to comment on any items that could come before the board at a future date um or matters just of general concern we required members of the public to make to pre-register by 5 pm today please keep your comments to

159four minutes or less and if you could introduce yourself by name a municipality so if you pre-registered to speak during courtesy of the floor please raise your hand okay joe rittenhouse whenever you're ready now yes i can joe written house lord providence um first of all thank you for the board for acknowledging that you have read the book in question that i was speaking about um i just wanted to address some certain points uh that i was kind of blown away with um i completely agree with winter sentiment uh director winter sentiment that what is in the book and the quotes attributed the book should be prescribed to the votes to the book i uh to the section on race and intelligence to director drummond's point the presupposition of that comment assumes that race is

160by race and intelligence are biological that is the cornerstone of every white supremacist that has ever existed in the united states and its horrible history when it comes to white supremacy that that comment in and of itself should be disqualifying for that book um including the comment that says thus two visions of america classed one based in exclusion and whiteness and the other and welcoming and diverse both were deeply rooted in the american experience um i can't think of a more polarizing sentence than that so i and politely i don't think that the idea that supplemental uh additions to the book are make up for the fact that it is the authority of the book as the appeal to authority has been mentioned um i think i'm minus the the other members of the uh

161fact and alum who are here i think i'm the only person who's ever taken this class um and so i can truthfully say that i do believe that uh there's elements of this book that will be influenced in ways that i i think the board should be aware of and the public should be aware of um and also to the point about uh i just thought it was very uh questionable and slightly unethical to reach out to the author in which you're paying to say here yes i'm good please approve my book now give me the money for the book um that's i i can't uh ethics 101 um and then the other thing i just want to make aware less dramatic less important but equal equally is like something that should be aware of

162is um currently i know that the methachton school board is streaming on uh youtube um but the channel in itself as of this moment is in violations of the community guidelines or terms of service of youtube and i know that the board wants to continue uh virtual meetings using the service um but literally it would take one this is i mean this is just me knowing the terms of service very well is it would literally take one comment to remove the entire uh youtube channel ability to live stream to the public um being as i think it's up till 2019 uh we started listing the uh the youtube videos and board meetings under the youtube kids program or youtube children's program and because of the contents of some of the meetings it act we actually

163violate that very heavily so if we you know we can fix that very easily by turning unlisted videos or videos that are as kids to regular youtube um but i worry that you know you're going to get one or two people who are genuinely upset hit the dislike button and report the comment as not being appropriate for children and you'll lose the ability to stream to the public so that's just something you should be aware of um as far as the terms of service go for youtube kids um and how the videos are listed currently under the under our youtube channel so i don't know if that's a separate you want to make a separate channel just for the board so that it can be adult and keep all the concerts and stuff on one

164but uh like if if the board's going to continue virtually i think that that's something that has to be looked at before that privilege is uh lost because it's a third party thank you [Music] thank you uh next i have shade darby hello um shade darby lower providence um i just wanted to come on and thank the board for their consideration with the textbook um i am a 2017 alum and i was enrolled in the ap us history class um and i thought the textbook was lacking when i took the class so i'm very thankful for these um new updates for when my younger siblings go through the class and other students as well so thank you so much for your consideration and i'm glad with this decision thank you miss darby and next we

165have chandling mom to lingman we're sister township i just want to go back to that textbook um comments made by miss winter and then miss reese i i don't understand a logic when miss winter said they can supplement the course with other materials and it's up to the teacher to give the students a a more balanced view of the history if that's the point if that's the case why pick a textbook and then why this textbook and then why do you like if you think if you meant the textbook is biased and you expect the teacher to give a more balanced view i think in the first place you shouldn't pick this textbook you should pick a better textbook and second from miss rhys i don't think she can use uh the authors himself defense

166to valid the book of course the author will say oh of course my book is good and you can't expect the author to give a neutral and biased opinion on his own book i just think it's just common sense no matter how how well you know the letter was written by the author um another thing i want to touch upon is i think um mr mcgillis owes the public a formal official apology uh in terms of swear words he spoke in last meeting and this is a school district and his he is a board director and we're here to educate our children what kind of example is he is setting for our children by speaking the swear words uh i think this is to the benefit of benefit of himself and also to our district

167that's all i wanted to say today thanks thank you okay is there anyone else who has pre-registered to speak okay um next i have jessica bradbury good evening jessica bradbury lower providence township first of all congratulations to the music department on the educational award that was bestowed this year matthockton has such a rich history celebrating music education and i was happy to see such a great honor with this award i'll respectfully ask again for the criteria that is being used to determine when we will restore the option of in-person meetings with the hope that when we do return we will still provide an option for live remote participation for the public as a permanent option for board meetings thank you to the board and administration for having a discussion this evening about the ap history

168book i'm glad that we do have a thorough process that allows for so many levels of review i'm hopeful and i have faith in our teaching staff that they will do their best to frame the materials so that they do provide for a healthy dialogue in an educational setting is it possible to share more details about the operational plans to reduce our legal fees after the march meetings the board had asked for a deeper dive into the legal fees and the right to know process but this month we were told that they needed more time to prepare this information so i was wondering if we have a target for when that review may be taking place do we know how much legal fees have been incurred for the shannon dell case compared to the amount

169that we would receive if we won that case also i'm wondering what is the source of the projection data in the full day kindergarten presentation ignoring this current year enrollment if we look at the figures from 2017 to 2020 the enrollment at the k-2-4 level has been mainly static maybe a slight decline so i'm interested to see where we obtained a projected increase of 200 students across those grade levels over the next three years today we've discussed the return to school and athletics extensively but we've overlooked clubs and other extracurricular activities as we look to the future have we started to plan for the fall yet to resume in-person clubs and other in-person after-school activities for those students thank you next i have lauren nelson hi good evening lauren nelgen worcester um i just wanted

170to mention one item and you know please know it is not a criticism i also i run a business where we do charitable donations so i understand the challenges with fundraising but i just wanted to mention the the education foundation's fundraiser for graduation i think that it's been a hard year for everyone and all of our students you know deserve everything of course but i think that the fundraising situation for graduation you know it was it was tough to see because essentially and maybe i misunderstood so if i did i do apologize but it came across as that there were 16 suites available and there was a price tag for each of those and you know unfortunately not understood that only 16 can do that but it's a really big price tag um and you

171know i know as a family of you know five children i couldn't afford to spend two thousand dollars to sit in a suite and i just think that in a year where we're trying to really drive home and make some some true changes about including everyone and having everyone feel like it's a level playing field you know i feel like that fundraiser really didn't take that direction because there are many people who certainly couldn't participate and everyone that is has a graduating senior wants you know the best for their family and their children and i think that if if those fundraisers are going to happen in the future we could revisit them as you know perhaps they are you know rewards for maybe the student who had you know the most community service hours or

172made the biggest impact or you know buddy walks or anything like that to have all of the students able to have that opportunity and i know again it's an unusual year with graduation but i just felt like in a year where we're really trying to have a message of including everyone that was really you know dividing because many people can't afford that price tag so i just hope in the future that you know when we do have fundraisers like that for benefits you know they can be things that all families can participate in versus just those who can you know really afford it so thank you thank you next i have brian earnshaw uh brian earnshaw providence um first thank you to ms reese and mr winters for uh answering the questions i had during

173the public comment on board action items portion of the meeting and in addition to dr zerby and einstein and you know the additional information regarding soar i really appreciate that i do acknowledge that miseries mr wares and dr zerbilly or dr zurby are generally the only people on the board that reply to my email so again thank you for that um a couple things regarding the presentations at the front of the meeting um regarding full-day kindergarten um i wonder if the board has reviewed any provided any studies to say stating why you know fully kindergarten may not be beneficial with children i know there are i remember reviewing those um um a while back and i don't know the rest of the board has seen those um regarding the financial portfolio kindergarten i think it's

174important to note that the net new annual cost is a bit misleading um full day kindergarten is going to cost 1.3 million dollars in addition to the current budget it's just the fact that the store program is providing savings as an offset so a full-day kindergarten was not implemented and the soar program was the district would ever have an opportunity to save 1.3 million dollars in annual costs and you could truly get to a zero percent tax increase in a given year if you didn't not do full-day kindergarten so showing 300 000 in the net cost is is really i don't think appropriate um again regarding enrollment i asked this question before i believe at the finance committee meeting um you're probably the point where your enrollment data the enrollment study is stale you should

175be looking at a new enrollment study before you start redistricting uh i would think that was something to be important and again whenever i see this enrollment chart and building utilization i have to point out that arcola is less than 60 utilized and declining every year regarding the budget presentation um the slide on deferred or paid via committed funds was slide six of the presentation um there's a lot of not really much showing here about operational changes and everything else could be done to implement you know change to reduce or control expenses um it seems like the lowering of legal costs of 175 000 is a bit arbitrary there's no plan on how to achieve that i think the board should challenge that and again i don't think the budget's been reviewed in detail enough

176to identify um all those potential cost-saving opportunities that might be out there um and regarding the open contracts there's been no discussion of what the potential additional costs are once those items are settled so if there is an increase in expenses are they built into the budget um is this going to be unfavorable variants are other cuts going to happen or there's xx expenses in the budget to absorb those so i think that's important to look at as well uh regarding the forecast presentation um i compared the forecast of revenue expenses to the january forecast to what's shown in the april forecast uh revenue did go up 700 000 which is great i think majority of that came from in the january forecast as doctors already replied to my email um that it was unfavorable

177state revenue due to delayed payments from the state that are now coming in so that was building a forecast what i don't understand is why expenses went up by 3.2 million from the january forecast of the april forecast um so that might be a good thing to look into um there's really i don't understand legal expenses as i pointed out earlier it's 1.3 percent of the budget and when i understand that the forecast is incomplete so i would i think it'd be good to ask mr brecker to update his forecast for um all those legal expenses are going to be coming in and again where the steps are going to be taken to reduce those legal fees um regarding the north bronco tech center lease in the budget the 1.191 million based on the response

178to the question i had it sounds like that forecast expenditures overstated it doesn't include the state funding that's going to come in so again that forecast should be up there for that um thank you thank you mr earnshaw that's four minutes uh next i have shannon puffer thank you shannon puffer lower providence i wanted to start with a comment just taking a step back and thanking the administration the teachers the board members every single person that has been involved in this last year it's an unprecedented time and i know we've all heard that but just the amount of effort that has gone in is just i'm just so grateful as a parent in this district talking about a a history an ap history textbook just going back to some of the comments earlier i think

179it's important to note that these kids are engaged when they get to ap history they want to be in that class they want to engage with the text they want to think outside of just history you know just dates and people and all of that mr winters made a comment earlier that i just loved about continuing america continuing to try to be better and constantly reevaluating itself and i think that's what an ap student can take with the emotional intelligence that comes from being a junior or senior in a class like that i understand that there are going to be things that are questionable in any textbook so i thank you for approving that one i would like to read it myself taking a step back again going to the mfacton education foundation and the

180fundraisers i am the vice president of the methox and education foundation and i just want to make a comment about some of the things that we fund thanks to the generosity of our community both community members as parents people in the community and businesses we've been able to fund the backpack program quite amount quite a large amount of money has helped with un um socially disadvantaged or economically disadvantaged students in our community we've also funded the maker spaces in the libraries we funded uh loaner instruments for economically disadvantaged students who could not participate in the music program without the the assistance and we're getting we're really excited about the hydroponic farming and the forensics labs as well as other things that we've done throughout the years the engineering program as is another example i could

181name so many things that our community has helped us to be able to fund this fundraiser in particular is an option um as as we heard earlier everyone gets eight tickets for graduation which is quite a few more than i got when i was graduating high school so that is wonderful everyone has that free no no question ask i think for the convenience and comfort some people can use those boxes if they would prefer to have that that option and they can afford to it's for a good cause it's so we can continue to support the things that the foundation is able to to support that said some of the people i spoke with were so grateful that they had the opportunity for family members with uh knee replacements hip replacements older people that are

182able to come but aren't comfortable sitting among everybody it gives them that peace of mind so i think it's a great fundraiser i'm excited for the innovation of being able to do that and i hope that people that can't afford to can take advantage of it and enjoy it but most of all i'm excited that we can have the graduation at the at the field for the first time thank you miss pepper uh next i have mike ryan whenever you're ready everyone michael ryan lower providence i just want to thank mr summers because he saved me about 30 seconds of my time in regards to the supreme court case uh some of the things i wanted to put out there as a former school board member and someone who still stays heavily involved with psba

183i received some information last week in regards to uh two bills on the senate side that are in front of the state government committee they were actually reviewed today and i'm happy to report that they both successfully moved past the state government committee i just want to take a couple quick minutes to talk about what they were the first one is senate bill 312. this was sponsored by senator brooks who's a republican in mercer county this one was in regards to the right to know law which would allow agencies such as school districts and local governments to charge reasonable fees which can be assessed for the search review and compilation of records which are requested for commercial purposes so i thought that this is a good one as a school board member we had seen

184a couple people who were abusing the right to know request for commercial gains and i think that that was a a big draw on district resources the second one is senate bill 552 which deals with vexatious requesters this is a sponsorship by a republican in jefferson county senator dush this would create a process by which agencies may petition the office of open records for relief from a vexatious requester you may be asking yourself what a vexation requester is those are individuals who use the right to know law with malicious intent to intimidate harass or punish an agency which results in bogging down the agency and wasting taxpayer resources school districts and local governments have seen a small but steady increase in recent years the number of individuals who are using the law on this matter

185this was never anticipated by the general assembly when the original statute was passed while cases of vexatious requesters are not the norm there are certainly individuals who have and continue to abuse loopholes and the right to know law to attack agencies and waste taxpayer resources and the time has come to address this significant concern i'd also like to read from senator dush's memorandum i'll take two of the paragraphs here numerous entities such as state agencies municipalities school boards frequently report that they are overwhelmed by burdensome right to know law requests while most of these requests come from valid requesters some of these requesters have been identified as having vexatious intent with their request this issue is a top legislative priority of the pennsylvania school board association the pennsylvania state association of township supervisors and pennsylvania

186municipal league pennsylvania state association to township commissioners the pennsylvania state association of burrows and the county commissioners association of pennsylvania whose member alert whose members regularly grapple with such requests on a regular basis please join me in sponsoring common sense legislation that will assist numerous entities by alleviating some of these burdensome vexatious requests that hinder our right to know request system thus making it harder for the citizens of this commonwealth to receive the information that they seek so i just wanted to make sure to put that information out there to the school district in terms of there's you know a lot of talk about legal fees and districts and i thought that was important real quick i also want to mention with psba they released their 2021 state of education report for any board member

187who hasn't seen it please look it up on pspa.org it is a great report please be aware there is another report out there which is not by psba i don't know the individual or individuals who created it i did check with psba it was not theirs they did not review it and they do not stand by the information in there certain information has been manipulated data has been changed so i just want to let the board aware of that and that's my four minutes thank you very much thank you mr ryan proof that board members never really go away next i have ms herbison hi peg herbison lower providence township um a couple of things i just wanted to say it's very exciting to see the progress that's being made toward inclusive practices the inclusion

188presentations that were mentioned by mr navarette that were partly sponsored by the sca are still available the dashboard the inclusion dashboard is accessible to our district indefinitely so if anybody is interested in checking that out you could contact me or sandy katz and we would get you the information i'm sure susan angstadt also has that um i would like to say i personally appreciate the virtual format of these meetings um it's made it much easier for me to attend and to listen in and get information in a timely manner you know sometimes i jump on late and i would probably never show up at school 20 minutes late for a meeting but i certainly would jump on and and listen when i can um and i have definitely attended more meetings in the past year

189than i have in the years previous because it's so accessible um and lastly i just really want to thank all of you for everything that you've done to help us get through sorry i'll get a little emotional how crazy this past year has been and i'm sure that when you ran for the school board that you did not expect to be making decisions that were truly life or death for staff for students for families sorry um and i just want you to know that some of us really appreciate it we see the work that you've done and how hard it has been to just make find a balance between the safety and the educational needs of everyone in the district and like i said i just wanted to say thank you to all of you

190and to let you know that your work has not gone unseen thank you thank you miss herbison next i have cara colas yes i can oh look at that all right so i i just have two things so one of the things that's interesting is i hear a lot of talk about ranking and and the school's position and part of why my husband and i chose mathakton because of its standing and and part of why i was encouraged when my children were in the challenge and the advanced courses was because i wanted them to learn to think critically and so part of that is all tied together right we should be helping all of our students to think more critically and censoring a text because it doesn't center on a particular group's political view or

191view in general isn't going to help our students get to that higher level it isn't going to help them look at texts and come to their own conclusions and i just wanted to speak that i respect the process i respect the teachers who reviewed those texts and the fact that it has been going on a year and it was a group of teachers it wasn't the board in a group with some agenda picking that it was it was educators um just you know speaks to me that the process is working and i greatly appreciate it and then i also i know you guys probably can't respond to this but i am curious how many people are on these calls um i work for the largest defense contractor in the united states and we have managed

192to operate quite successfully by zoom and to get things done and to make major decisions by zoom in large team meetings and the school board is not putting f35s in the air so i honestly think it's kind of disingenuous to make a big deal over it i absolutely think that throughout this year and to when vaccinations get to a certain point makes perfect sense and i think it makes the board um calls more accessible for people and part of government is accessibility i mean i think like four people came to the meetings before um so you've had a much more diverse group of of people and parents who lead busy lives and and i think this that zoom's not going away and i just appreciate it so and i appreciate all the work that you

193guys are doing so thank you thank you miss coles and next i have julie stern delphiner um hi this is julie stern dolphin from lower providence township i really just wanted to echo a lot of what has been said previously first just an incredible appreciation for the board the administration our teachers and our students who have really done an amazing job over the past year under some really trying circumstances and it hasn't been easy for anybody and the incredible amount of hard work that everyone is putting in is really obvious our students who have been able to go back to school in person i think are hopefully thriving there and the students who for a variety of reasons have chosen to stay at home um are are doing well as as well and and i

194think all of that meeting our students needs where they are has been really important i do also want to echo um what was said earlier about the uh the debate that we've had this evening about the u.s history uh ap history class textbook choice for for next year um and i really applaud the process uh that the teachers and the curriculum directors have gone through to choose this text and to allow our students to think critically and look at some really really difficult times in our in our history from a different viewpoint and hopefully that will allow for some robust discussions in the classroom and some advancement in critical thinking as our young students become adults and need to use critical thinking throughout their lives and this is one way to be able to start

195that process to continue that process and to really develop that process and i applaud you all for for making this choice um and uh and finally in terms of um you know return to the classroom for next year and also in person board meetings um i agree with cara i have attended way more board meetings in the past year and i was going to board meetings before this but not with as much regularity as i have been able to this year and i really appreciate being able to listen to board meetings for all of us my son included uh while i'm cooking dinner oftentimes and that's certainly not something i could be doing if i was attending in person so um i i appreciate this format and we're all anxious to return to a period

196of time that we consider normal um and seeing each other in person but but this has been i think one of those silver linings uh in a difficult year is improved and increased community engagement and i really applaud you all for working hard to make this as successful so thank you it's been a long night so have a good evening everyone thank you dr sterndelfeiner all right do we have anyone else who has pre-registered for courtesy of the floor all right so with that i will um conclude courtesy of the floor um and if the board has any closing remarks before we adjourn just real quick i wanted to address miss uh nalgene's um concern about the sweets um i'm not sure she might have not heard and or that may not matter she may

197still have that concern which is her right um that there were is it two i can't remember if it's two or four but that there are some sweets being raffled off so that there are uh some people that will be able to enjoy them just from the luck of a raffle so there was tried to make some balance there so thank you all thank you miss reese anyone else for the good of the cause mr mcginnis uh yes there was a question regarding the presentation on legal expenses and that will be at finance committee next month thank you that's good to know all right anything else mr mcginnis motion to adjourn for a second of course there's a second all right everyone have a great night