March 23, 2021 Methacton School District Regular Meeting of Board

001all right one moment please okay we're live we can begin good evening i'd like to call to order the march 23rd 2021 regular meeting of the netherlands school district board of school directors please rise for the pledge 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 for all hello my name is rashna nalakala and i'm in fourth grade at woodland elementary school i'd like to share with you why i like living all our teachers make learning and going to school fun my favorite part of school is specials i like them all but i enjoy library the most we have a huge collection of books in our library and

002mrs yorkum helps us pick books that i would like and help i learned a lot about our body this year and found it fascinating we did a lot of fun art projects in art like bubble letter name tags and zentangle landscapes jim gave us an opportunity to give try all the different sports in music we learn to do folk dance which helps us work as a team and be in sync i also love when we have special assemblies like the rainforest assembly where i held a hidden cockroach and a time when a magician came we also have special events like the science fair the art show and family gymnast that helped me interact with my teachers and friends outside of school i especially love fun day which happens at the end of the school year

003i went on a lot of field trips like to the philadelphia zoo legoland and our very own marlin planetarium where we went every single year and explored our solar system all of these activities and the teachers make woodland an amazing school to go to my teachers here are very kind and thoughtful thank you mr ogstrom dr euger and all the other teachers for working so hard to make school exciting during the pandemic although i will graduate from woodland this year i will never forget how much fun i had at woodland elementary thank you big congratulations to both of our students well done we will issue them junior board certificates uh in the mail so thank you you can turn the meeting back over to madam president those students are always a tough act to follow

004the public is hereby advised of the audio and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcasting by way of attendance we'll take a roll call miss cancro i'm not hearing you miss cancro here okay there we go mrs drummond here miss hull here mr mcginnis here mr navarette here miss purdue yeah miss reece here and mr winners here all right recognition of guests and scheduled speakers dr zurby zurby you're muted thank you very much we'll try that again this evening we have several uh incredible speakers and our first is our own very own principal at woodland elementary school ms dr deb euker here to present the award of excellence dr euger good evening board and thank you for having me and thank you for recognizing all our um our schools and the employees

005in our schools for doing a great job this has been a difficult year so we appreciate everyone um a couple people have stood out for this year so the first award of the excellence goes out to bert hoggstrom he's a fourth grade teacher at woodland elementary school he's an advocate for his students as an and has taken on different leadership roles at woodland bert is respected by both the staff and the students mr hogstrom creates a classroom environment where students feel both supported and challenged bert works well with all staff and is a role model of patience and resilience woodland is lucky to have mr hoggstrom congratulations bert lauren mckay is a third grade teacher at woodland she is dependable caring and supportive lauren has a passion for teaching her favorite thing to teach is

006writing and her students thrive through her writing workshops mrs mckay has a talent for connecting to her students and families she is kind nurturing and knows how to motivate each child to do the best job possible lauren is well respected within the woodland community congratulations lauren cassie williams is our art teacher at woodland she brings art to life with child-centered and motivating lessons as you walk down the halls of woodland you can see the amazing student artwork miss williams teaches arts essential elements of color shape form value and space through motivating interactive units every child in woodland benefits from having miss williams as an art teacher for as long as they are at woodland congratulations cassie wendy raquette has had several positions at woodland and is currently the reading assistant she supports students at every

007grade level giving them the confidence they need to succeed in reading wendy is flexible and willing to help in any way possible the staff at woodland has come to rely on when wendy as their go-to girl because she can wear so many hats wendy will go out of her way to help any member of the woodland community congratulations to wendy katie shireman is the recess aide at woodland due to covet 19 the role of the recess aid has been quite different this year when recess isn't an option katie helps in a variety a variety of ways she has been a proctor and often office assistant instructional aide and anything else woodland needs because she's certified katie can even stub for teachers when needed mrs shireman is dedicated hardworking and flexible she does a great job

008no matter what role she is in we are fortunate to have katie as part of the woodland team congratulations katie robin sheard is an instructional assistant at woodland robin works mainly in the emotional support room but is willing to do anything to help the woodland community she's dependable reliable and conscientious mrs sheard is nurturing and kind she has a gentle way of getting students to do their best work robin is an example of someone who has a heart of gold robin is a valuable member of our woodland community congratulations robin thank you everyone for listening let's give a round of applause for all of these outstanding individuals uh as as as we recognize these are several outstanding individuals that make up an outstanding team at woodland elementary school led by our outstanding uh principal dr

009euchre we appreciate all that you do all that our teachers do and all that our staff do for the students here in the thacton school district so thank you so much please let them know that the board appreciates all that they've done next on the agenda we have the reach program and here this evening we have a special guest we have a representative joe webster uh who is here to make an announcement and then we'll actually follow up joe's announcement with a short presentation from dr angstadt with regards to the reach program so so uh representative webster uh the floor is yours and we certainly appreciate you being here and being prepared to share with us uh this extraordinary announcement so so unmute yourself don't be like me there you go you got it all

010right i had to i had to look all over the screen where's that mute button well good evening everyone and thanks i'll be very brief um you know this better than i do that any program that supports the whole child in education and meets the needs for for our students to succeed in school and their young lives well that certainly deserves the commonwealth support this this hundred thousand dollars it's a it's a i guess a significant grant right it helps it helps this program expand and it's one that i'm particularly proud of uh because it came from a discretionary funding so so your actions to request the the the and and then a little bit and i always have to give credit to my staff this these are almost never things that i do so

011if you're ever in a in a district office uh please say thank you to all the the great team that i have on board because they make this they make this all possible um but there isn't a specific grant for this kind of funding so we did do a little work to to make it happen and i'm i'm proud to sort of present that tonight um you know many of uh the conditions we keep saying uh over and over that mental health care is health care and and if these conditions appear early in youth and young adults then it makes sense that we pay attention to their needs at an early age you've certainly as in the factoring school district have started that with the reach program and in light of the last year we've

012been through um you know it's just been a little bit tougher so i'm i'm simply glad that we could support that that i could help a bit and i want you to know i will always look forward to supporting the vacuum schools so thanks sir thank you so much representative webster i must say that we appreciate the fact that you recognize uh and believe in the same things that we believe in and and the the person behind all of this uh you know way back of just a few years ago was our own pupil services director dr susan angstadt and susan uh she's the one that applied for the grant and uh and joe in your office made this all happen uh but here here this evening susan's just gonna give the board a brief

013uh summary of where we are and where and where the reach program has made an impact here in mythactin for our students and for our staff so if we if i could um let's let's have susan uh share with us uh those thoughts and then we'll give an opportunity for the board uh to thank uh representative webster and certainly susan for for their work in these efforts so dr angstad bear with me if i get to that part of the screen okay okay thank you i would like to say that on behalf of the students that participate in this program um we can't thank representative webster and his team as he mentioned enough for supporting this program it is very valuable to our students so i'm here to just give a little update on reach

014some people are not familiar with it and i just walk you through the next few slides so why do we need reach why did this come about if you look at all the research when we were applying for school safety grants the number one thing that stuck out was the need to provide access and improve access to mental health services for students and it was important to be able to have students stay in their home schools when a student needs to go to a therapeutic setting there's a disconnect they go out to get the help they need but then they need to transition back and this way they get to stay in their home school they get to participate in the factory's great academic curriculum and also all the extracurriculars why they're in school with

015their peers and so that was a really critical piece of why we started to look at it additionally we saw that we were seeing an increase in mental health needs not just you know anxiety and depression but kids with trauma suicide ideation and a lot of students with eating disorders and all of the reach services work to help kids that have needs that fall into those categories the other important thing was looking at how soon could we reach out reach out and help kids the earlier the better i'm making sure that we were giving them intensive mental health supports and strategies on how to cope and how to understand and and work through some of the needs that they had and then more importantly for the whole district is how do we reduce the stigma

016associated with a mental health disorder and students who participate in this program have no problem participating in the program they see the benefits of it they have met peers that have similar um needs and have built some great relationships as a result next slide so what does reach provide as i said before it does provide access for a therapeutic level of care in the home school it is daily group therapy and individual counseling it provides collaboration with families school professionals outside medical and mental health providers providing that continuity of care so everybody's working with a common goal our students have telephone access to their clinicians 24 7 they can call if there's a crisis they can call on the weekends they're there for them and then we also have families that participate in family therapy

017they will schedule appointments they will come in they will participate in phone conferences and that has been a big help for many of our families and then lastly the on going support and consultation and pd every day in a building for our staff learning how to work with students learning how to maybe approach things differently but the clinicians also help with that relationship building and really trying to get students to open up and talk to their teachers about the concerns that they have and that helps with academics next slide so where are we with reach as you may recall we started the reach program at arcola year pilot we started in november of um the 1819 school year i should say um continued it only at arcola for the 1920 school year and then this

018year we were able to add a third counselor at arcola and expanded to be skyview arcola and we also added support at the methachton high school so in total over the years we have had 80 students participate in this program we currently have 41 participating right now and there are seven other students currently going through the intake process so when we look at cost it we we spend money on the program there's no doubt about it um we have spent 569 700 and i'm sorry it's cut off there on the end dollars um but we did receive a competitive grant um through the pennsylvania crime commission on crime and delinquency um in the amount of 176 370 that paid for uh some of our programming if we were to look though at what would the

019district need to spend to support students the way we've always supported them we typically would look to a therapeutic placement and while not all students may necessarily need that type of placement if you looked at the average cost of tuition on a per student basis and then include transportation it comes out to about an average of 76 000 per student so um i did the math for you there that's a very large number and again it's an estimate of where we might be if we didn't have these supports available but also just keeping in mind that this program really helps to keep kids in their home schools and the students seem to really enjoy participating in the program families are appreciative of the program and really just wanted to give you an idea of where

020we were from a numbers standpoint i'm proud to say that next year we will also be expanding this program into the element elementary schools and more information about what that will look like and how we're kind of tying it together with something else that's very exciting will be shared at the april board meeting and the april ed committee so we're very excited about where we are thank you so much dr angstadt and now uh for members of the board are there any questions or comments for dr angstadt or for representative webster ms drummond i just want to thank representative webster for being here and for the grant um and i do have a question about the program i know that in years past we do we do sometimes have to place students out of district

021um to give them what they need and i was wondering if you off the top of your head if you know what kind of numbers before like pre and post the reach program um we have with out of district placements sure i don't have exact numbers but i can tell you the first year that we prior to putting in the reach program we had to send out 12 students to alternative placements so they could get what they needed at arcola we currently have one student that is placed out at the high school we may have two students that are placed out but many of our students are receiving support through the reach program and we really go to the reach program first before we look at doing something more restrictive it is difficult once you

022go out to make that transition back it's hard to leave your friends and hard to leave that setting but we always want to make sure we're addressing the needs of students so those conversations are held on that case-by-case basis thank you very much sure other comments for representative webster ms reese um dr engsted out of the 80 students that you mentioned um are that 80 different students or just per year the number of students that participated okay um i just want to say and last week i got emotional going over the whole year of the pandemic and i promise not to do that again but as a board member this is possibly i believe the most um important thing that i have ever voted on in the last six years um being a seventh grade

023teacher and a parent of three teens um i cannot imagine the difference this has made and you hit the nail on the head dr ingstad with talking about being able to keep these kids here with their friends in an environment that's comfortable for them with extracurricular activities it is really something i am so incredibly grateful to you to bring to us um and i'm incredibly grateful to the other board members for agreeing to it and incredibly grateful for dr webster doctor i just promoted to uh mr joe webb mr webster um for helping us afford it um it is it i don't know if people can truly understand the difference that that it makes and and the name of it about raising expectations and children's hopes is exactly what it can do and not many

024districts have it and this isn't about competition or anything like that it's about the fact that you were progressive enough and that we saw the value of it and found the funds um and i know people worry about rankings and unfortunately things like reached are not part of that and those are the things that really matter and i honestly thank you and i i think sometimes administrators don't always feel that they make a difference and this makes a true difference so thank you honestly especially right now and i'm so glad to hear we are expanding it even more thank you thank you thank you misery's other comments uh from members uh mr winters yeah thank you andrew did a really good job there i i there's two points i want to make i want to

025thank representative webster also because in in some ways this is really an unfunded mandate the expectation is that districts need to solve mental health issues and we are trying to solve it but we we've decided to done it do it internally with our funding and now we've getting the support from the state which is fantastic and hopefully it can be leveraged uh i want to thank dr angstadt because i think she has done a fantastic job but i think she understated the importance it has to the rest of the staff and what it has done for the morale of the schools where this where the reach program has put in where there's an where there's an outlet for administrators to talk things through everybody to talk it through all on the be on the same

026schedule and and on the same page so the proximity of having in in uh school support is obviously the key to this program and springfield does a great job but i i think you under underserved the the value it provides not only to the students but also to everybody involved in the in that individual school so again thank you both good comments mr winters uh other the comments question ms aubrey larcenis i just want to echo what everyone else has already said um representative webster i can't thank you enough um as an advocate for mental health myself i it means a lot to have the support from harrisburg for programs like this um and dr angstadt i know that you um attempted to put a monetary value to this program in terms of what it

027has cost us and what it could have cost us but i i truly believe that this program is priceless um i think one thing that can't be underestimated here is the the work that this does to destigmatize mental illness and and mental health care so um having that as part of the normal school environment um can the benefits of that for the students for all students is immeasurable not just the students directly involved in the program so thank you both for for everything for the funding for the program for everything you do to keep it going well said madam president are there any other comments from members of the board once twice representative webster thank you so much again uh we appreciate all your efforts and your support of the methanol school district and certainly

028i want to welcome you to remain on the call with us this evening if you you so would like to uh but you're also welcome to graciously uh bow out i'm going to ask you to forgive me tonight um and first i'll say to mr you can call me dr webster i don't mind but joe is just fine as well um but dr zerby um tonight is my birthday so i'm gonna i'm actually gonna go enjoy the rest of the evening i apologize uh for not staying on a little longer but um and you know we all recognize the power of this program and and what dr einstein has brought to this program so on that note i'll i don't do it alone well we appreciate you very much and and i think i think

029most of you know i have i have two great young methachan graduates uh now in their 20s and all doing their thing and and this school district means an enormous amount to our community so with that i'll sneak out and go have some birthday cake thank you happy birthday to you happy birthday good night thank you dr hank said you're gonna have to stay okay here we go i wanted cake or ice cream ice cream right uh we'll go on with the rest of the agenda and thank you everyone for uh the fine comments that were made here to see the next uh presentation that we have is methane forward so i'm going to share some information with you there just bear with me a second so good evening and i'm pleased to be before

030the board this evening with several members of my cabinet to share a few important matters i summarize and entitle that as my factom forward so the agenda for this evening uh to talk about the framework the existing and plan strategies and next steps but first and and foremost our fundamental focus is to continue forward with many of the uh existing strategies that are already in motion and to share with the board a number of new strategies strategies that will be targeted to our collective division all while we plan for a new strategic planning process that will be inclusive of school and community input to drive the district forward over the next five years that plan is based on a collective vision to ensure an exceptional month acting school district's experience for all and is predicated

031on the following two goals the first to increase the favorable feedback from our students parents staff and community and our second to increase our state ranking these goals have a direct tie to our vision and how people feel about the experience and how we are compared to other school districts and how those two are the most uh significant metrics for which we will gauge the exceptional school district experience and having a collective vision where our strategies the things that we do are focused on accomplishing some very many great things in terms of favorable feedback we will prepare a baseline survey that will be used annually and will help us collect information from our students parents staff and community and we will focus in on the components of school and district rank so that we can

032ensure our strategies are laser focused it is true that methactin has enjoyed a high state a high state ranking over the past 17 years with our average state ranking of 71 during that period of time we have been ranked as high as 11 and as low as 175 with an average state ranking during the first 11 years of 78 and of the most recent six years an average of ranking takes into consideration a number of areas that we will be focused on including academics culture and diversity parent and student feedback experience teacher quality clubs and activities health and safety measures facilities and athletics so we have established this framework uh for decision making that helps us accomplish these goals and realize our collective vision and those are related under the framework based on the whole

033child the whole child tenants are closely aligned to the two goals and especially to the categories within rank and is based upon our fundamental framework that needs to consider students from the belief that we are providing an environment that is healthy safe where students are engaged supported and challenged so let's take a look at a number of the current strategies and several that are planned within the the context of the five whole child tenants the first is healthy so we have one of our directors with us this evening to review the healthy tenants and the strategies outlined thank you dr zerby um the first tenant of the whole child is the belief that all children should be entering school they need to be healthy and learn about practicing a healthy lifestyle and in order to

034target some of those the items listed here are action steps that we're working on the first is to address to address the healthy tenant the district administration will be recommending to the board of school directors at the may 2021 voting meeting to approve the implementation of full-day kindergarten at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year and the implementation of a full day k program provides value to our students by providing more time to develop their academic abilities and improve their social emotional and behavioral skills it provides value to parents and guardians who work outside their home and or are offering better support for their children by limiting disruption disruptions within the day and allowing for a more focused and independent learning experience it provides value for our teachers by providing additional time for them to

035develop stronger teacher-student relationships which are critical to the development of the whole child additionally full day k provides value to the district with the geographical comparative market position to attract new families as well as to the community with opportunities to continue to prosper in a diverse and exemplary community-centered environment as i previously mentioned we're looking at expanding the reach program at the elementary level to support students social emotional and mental health needs with this expansion the district will be able to provide access to intensive mental health services for all affected students in grades k to 12 who are eligible for that support in terms of inclusive practices we are continuing our work a presentation scheduled for the april 2021 board meeting will provide information about a new k-4 program designed to support the behavioral and

036mental health needs of our students while also providing our staff with substantial professional development opportunities over the next two years the next item trauma-informed care plan the district will be developing this plan using the model and guidelines provided by the pennsylvania commission on crime and delinquency something that we received some grant funding for earlier through a meritorious grant in this first phase of the plan will include awareness training on trauma-informed care for our staff the next one is that another strategy is to investigate school start times how and where possible later start times could play a part in providing older students with more sleep thus providing a healthier start to their school day in november of 2020 several schools in the district had upgrades to their hvac systems by adding an h2 prime air filtration

037system to help fight against airborne viruses the remaining school buildings and offices hvac systems will be upgraded over the coming months or in conjunction with the construction schedules and lastly our district nurses have worked in partnership with the montgomery county department of health to implement covid19 assurance testing locations across the district this testing offered to staff and third party contractors provides knowledge of asymptomatic carriers of the virus and helps to minimize spread of the virus within our schools thank you dr hank said our the next whole child tenant is safety thank you dr zurby the second hold child tenant is the belief that each student learns an environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults in february the district began working with the state police and lower providence township police as well

038as for a student to implement the installation of the bus stop arm cameras that can be used to cite drivers who run the bus stop arms for the remainder of this school year this initiative will continue to gain momentum with a full-scale full-scale effort beginning at the start of the 2021-2022 school year the facilities master plan and safety audit plans is yet another example of the district making efforts to meet the safe tenant by addressing structural cosmetic environmental safety and security improvements on all of our district facilities to provide for a proper and safe learning environment this is an ongoing effort that we'll be undertaking with the district a technology infrastructure and systems review was initiated by the notice of hacks that occurred in another local district earlier this year this brought extensive infrastructure security

039testing followed by the procedural and hardware software modifications that are in line with industry best practices this too is an ongoing effort while the district continues its efforts with their emergency response teams in each building the district will be implementing the state mandated threat assessment teams process district-wide to ensure we remain current with security emergency response protocols and leverage the training and knowledge to best support our students staff and community this presentation shares a number of important strategies that we may have started prior to the pandemic and unfortunately had to be placed on hold during the pandemic one such matter is the rachel challenge program which provides a sustainable evidence-based framework for positive climate and culture in our schools along with reductions in bullying alcohol tobacco and other drug use this program will be revisited

040in the upcoming school year to stop the bleed training for staff is part of the pennsylvania commission on crime and delinquency meritorious grant where the district was able to purchase stop the bleed kits for all of our schools at the start of the 2021-2022 school year all school staff will be trained on the effective use of these kits in the event of an emergency the district uses csiu software for its business and financial software needs and will be migrating to the newest version of this software moving from a client-based system to a web-based system the new system provides features and security measures currently not available in our current version finally as we all know ensuring a safe environment was part of the board's goals when considering this construction of the front entrance of the eagleville

041elementary school and the replacement of the fueling station located at the transportation building the front entrance is slated to be completed in january 2022 and the fuel station in may 2021 thank you mr regina the next whole child tenant is uh engaged thank you dr zurby the whole child tenant of engage is the belief that each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and broader community we will be addressing engagement via our review of the high school schedule and process for scheduling to ensure that we are leveraging equity and access to programs along with ensuring an efficient and effective use of resources a review of arcola honors and high school articulation and access to the high school programming will take place to ensure equity and high level of rigor and

042alignment the curriculum department will be working with principals and curriculum coordinators to ensure that our curriculum and what is taught is aligned with the eligible content assessed on the pssas and the keystone exams along with continuing to focus on the alignment and rigor of common assessments kindergarten through 12th grade we recognize that with the implementation of the trimester standards-based report cards at the elementary level this year that there is more communication and education required over time to help parents and families understand and partner with teachers to best support their child more to come on this effort the curriculum office is planning to supplement the existing wonders curriculum with additional resources requested by teachers and staff that will help support the delivery of ela instruction for all students the district will presenting a five-day in-person instructional

043plan for the 21 22 school year at the upcoming may school board meeting the district will also be providing a structuring timeline for community-wide strategic planning effort to provide input from various constituencies to guide the district forward over the next five years under this whole child tenet of engagement we will implement an athletic and activity parent booster 501 c 3 and parent manual by august of 2021. these efforts pay specific attention to ensure that our families have all that they need to support their children and that they too have an exceptional experience while the district will continue to use google classroom for the next school year the technology department is working with a number of educators from across the district to conduct a preliminary investigation of a learning management system to see if we can

044better leverage technology to support teaching and learning and of course the district will continue to focus on the one-to-one chromebook tablet k-12 initiative that we started to ensure access for all our students here in the methectone school district thank you dr walsh the next whole child tenant is supported and the whole child tenant have supported is based on the belief that each student has access to personalized learning and is supported by qualified caring adults as such the board of school directors have established a diversity equity and inclusion office and engaged a third party expert to assist in the district with coordinating an equity audit and helping prepare a plan to address matters as a result of the survey the targeted interventions and supports will be provided to eligible students based on baseline data collected this

045school year with programming to be held this summer more information on specific dates times will be available in the very near future prior to that prior to the pandemic ms gorla worked with her staff to investigate a scheduled modification that would allow for more time for students in grades five and six in addition to organizing staff with greater focus on specific instructional areas such as math and ela instruction these changes continue to be developed with the intent to see greater student growth and achievement not only in math but in all subjects uh in grades k through six the implementation of an mtss framework will take place starting with the 21-22 school year and provide for tiered interventions for students that have specific needs that will result in direct explicit instruction to targeted skills with an

046overarching goal of supporting the student to access core curriculum like other reviews listed within this presentation the 712 counseling program review will allow us to ensure that our program uh and school counselors are performing tasks that are particular to their expertise and are in direct support of the child to ensure our structure is as effective and efficient as possible a review of the child study teams and referral processes and each school will ensure a common format to addressing academic social and emotional needs of students the team approach will use teachers counselors principals specialist parents and guardians to develop strategy strategies and interventions for students who are facing challenges critical to our efforts is communication and the frequency and strategies for communicating our various messages as such we we will be producing a comprehensive district communications

047plan that addresses the strategies associated with accomplishing these goals and targeting our vision we will be developing a baseline survey used as part of the gathering on an annual basis that survey will be released in october of 21. the technology office has implemented a number of security and time saving measures and will continue leveraging single sign-on and third-party software rostering and file convergence uh measures that begun this school term and lastly under the uh the fourth tenant of supported uh our uh our our construction of the new arrowhead elementary school is probably one of the most significant measures that that the district has taken in some time and will provide the school and our community with a state-of-the-art facility to help support safe healthy and support student growth and achievement for years to come the

048next tenant is challenged and i believe we have uh dr sergey thank you dr zurby the final whole child tenant is challenged that tenant holds the belief that each student is challenged academically and prepared for success in college or further studies as well as for employment and participation in the global environment we will be investigating the international baccalaureate offerings and determining how and if there is an opportunity to bring these courses into the high school in the next two years the high school with help from the methachton education foundation is well on its way to strengthening its entrepreneurship programming that will lead to shark tank-like programming and potential scholarship opportunities for students the education foundation has committed to over two hundred thousand dollars of funding over the next year to help methachton high school bring

049in new stem innovation labs one of which is a hydroponic farm lab and the other a program that is heavily focused on chemistry and the science behind criminal investigations called methachton csi the district has partnered with junior achievement program of greater philadelphia miss kimberly kulp our k-12 career counselor will be working with school counselors teachers the ed foundation and junior achievement to take the next steps in adding more robust opportunities for our students across the k-12 offerings the gifted program review is another effort that was sidelined as a result of the pandemic dr angstadt will be revitalizing this review and we will be establishing new target dates for the review completion as well as recommendations in terms of data teams and systems and data use our principals will be reviewing the data team practices and

050systems that we use to help turn information into measurable action steps to best support the academic progress and growth of our students and finally our career counseling department will continue work with various employers higher education institutions and local and regional businesses to further develop opportunities for student college and career readiness as outlined under our act 339 school counseling plan thank you dr sodjini and and the purpose uh for for the board in the community for us sharing this with you is to really start to allow us all to refocus you know where we were back in uh in march of uh 2020 and uh and recognize that while we had a significant you know new challenge in front of us with the pandemic and all the things that are associated with that uh i think

051this team i know my team and i i'm certainly the the board is is uh certainly well versed in how to address uh matters associated with the pandemic and are looking forward to uh getting back on uh on a more streamlined trajectory with addressing some of the issues that had started almost a year ago and some that are fresh and new uh that will be before the board in in some short period of time but with that said our next steps are really to organize the communication efforts to increase the understanding and uh to make uh the use of the whole child tenants part of our our focus on a daily basis part of our work as a board part of our work as administration part of our work as an individual teacher or employee

052within the methectomy school district it's a belief that those five tenants form the basis for which we will be able to accomplish our goals which will be able to realize our vision we would like to then communicate the schedule for our community-wide strategic planning effort to uh uh unfold in october of 2021 uh many of you that may have participated in an active an activity like that in the past know that we get we get a great deal of participation from members of the public uh from our parents from our students from our staff and again it it gives us a great breath of fresh air to look at where we are what we've accomplished and where we want to go so we look forward to unveiling that uh schedule and getting participation uh on

053the wider from the wider community network uh we will continue with the strategies that were outlined uh by the directors uh just a few minutes ago and we will certainly uh encourage uh and continue forward with some of the development of the new strategies and lastly we will be developing the feedback mechanism that helps us measure goal one and we will organize the key stakeholders to help communicate the efforts uh forward for improving our rank so with that i want to thank our administrative team i want to thank our the support of our community and certainly want to thank the support of the the school board for uh allowing us to not only share some of these uh matters but uh to at least you know entertain them and consider them as we as we

054proceed forward uh not only this school school year but for years to come so with that we can certainly entertain any questions that that the board may have at this point 20 questions i know it was a lot of information uh so uh but but it it it points to the to the sole fact that we're not just focused on how to deal with uh the pandemic at this moment of time and i think i think that's my message if anything at all it gets us back on track to doing the things that you know we were moving forward on and and had a lot of excitement about and want to just re-energize not only ourselves but us as a community get behind those things and move forward so with that uh madam president i

055saw that you had your hand up uh you the floor for the first question or comment yeah i just wanted to say that it is so refreshing to be looking forward instead of dealing with the the fires right in front of us um and it's it's nice to be hearing the names of some of these initiatives and projects that we had been you know so excited about a year ago that unfortunately had to be sidelined by the pandemic um but particularly i know miss drummond is going to be excited to see rachel's challenges that's something that she's been championing championing for a couple of years now um and i know that um miss cancro and mr navrat had done some work with the boosters 501c3 program and saying that get going again um and the

056gifted program review i mean so many of these things that um we just haven't had the bandwidth to focus on for the past year um it's a good sign for things to come so thank you thank you for those comments uh ms cancro now i want to say thank you for this i think a lot of times when we go through a lot of this information comes through all our different committees that we have and so when you look at it the community doesn't really understand or all the piecemealing of information as it comes through and i think it's important for all of us to come together i love the fact that it's a comprehensive plan that does focus on all five tenants of the whole child which is really our focus as the forefront

057um but i love the collaboration of the community i love all stakeholders involved as you could see the fact that education foundation and through that foundation are so many people that from the community are involved in and then just even the teachers the administration the staff the the children so i love that and the biggest thing is that i love it it's targeted it's targeted for all of us to just go towards excellence and so um we're great but i think we can just always continue to move forward so i thank you for this plan and i look forward to really working and seeing all these these things come come forward so thank you for this thank you ms cantrell uh any other comments or questions from members of the board uh mr navrat yeah

058just real quick i guess i'll echo really what kim and jen said i know you know we touch on a lot of these things and and like kim said it's it's great to be talking about about these kinds of things again instead instead of pandemic response teams um i i i jen hit it on the head right seeing all of these individual efforts that come through committee um in one comprehensive plan presented out there for all of our stakeholders to see um i think paints uh it really paints a bright future uh firm effect and so thanks for putting this together um i think this was extremely worthwhile i look forward to the the effort that we will undertake particularly around the uh redevelopment strategic plan come to fall thank you mr navarrete any uh

059final other final comments questions oh miss hall yeah i agree with everything that has been said so far this is uh a wonderful start i do have some questions that i will hold off and and wait for it to roll out but i did want to say i'm very happy to see that we're putting together a comprehensive district communication plan i know that was part of our strategic plan in the past and it's really a to difficult than you know just writing it down on paper and moving forward i think um if we could also utilize the education foundation that has worked on creating the alumni network if we could also get feedback from from those members that would be a help moving forward excellent suggestion thank you any miss purdue i do think it's

060um nice to have this five-year plan as we start to look at it and i think like miss aubry larson is mentioned it's not just um doing the fire fighting but now having a clear plan in front of us as we work towards the five year goal the one thing that i have to ask and i know i want to refrain from asking questions says this is just a plan but how will we measure how we're doing along with this five year plan would that be something that um when you start to look at your goal one or go to provide how we will be able to assess it i know you have a survey in one part of it but i think when we look at each of the tenants there are several components

061of this some of the some of it that we we're doing now or we're starting some of these initiatives how we take a look to be able to maybe i guess take off or check off as we're going down the line well certainly uh the uh the the the two the two measurable goals are are outlined where one will we need to create a baseline survey from the baseline survey uh over the next several years look at the information that we receive from that to see how we are progressing and also we'll gain new information about things that we know we need to address so it serves a dual purpose for being able to survey our students staff community and our parents so that's part one part two we certainly see on an annual basis

062uh school rankings that come out from different uh ranking agencies and we will uh continue to utilize the components within those rankings not just the the individual you know the cumulative ranking in and of itself which is which is important but all the components associated with that to see uh where we are making the progress if we gain so for example we might be gaining in in athletics and activities over a couple years but not necessarily seeing the gain in academics and vice versa so those are the types of things that we're going to be able to document and certainly you know this isn't this isn't like the the end-all plan this is a high-level uh representation of all the work that we're doing my goal is really to take this into the next two

063years and to allow the unfolding of the strategic planning effort in october of 2021 with the likelihood of having a presentation to the board by december of 2021 uh or possibly january of 22 to talk about what that five-year plan would look like likely inclusive of many of these strategies that are here but likely with some others that the community has brought to our attention or that we as a as a collective group have decided are are more important than maybe some of these that are even listed here so you know there's only so much that that uh our team can take on and so so much that we can do uh we we certainly can't wait until we develop a plan to be doing things so you know we've done a lot uh within

064the existing plan we we laid out the framework almost a year ago and then covet hit and we were supposed to you know have that planning effort with the community this past october but that that wasn't possible we still weren't even uh you know going out of our homes at that moment in time so uh you know the the hope is that uh there's uh with with use of uh zoom and use of uh potentially uh in-person uh meetings come next school year you know we'll be able to revisit all these matters we'll be able to visit those that haven't been laid out here and hear from our students our parents our teachers and our community about the things that we ought to be prioritizing if they happen to not be in this list or

065if they are in this list um you know we'll we'll move them and move around to make sure that they they get the priority that is uh that our community wants so really this is a framework of things that we are working on outside of the greater planning process but once we hit the planning process and once we finalize a plan we'll be melding any of these matters with new matters to get a plan that we all can use to set the metrics for measuring our progress going forward so uh i wouldn't consider this you know an elaborate plan but i'll call it a a sketch for for where we're going to be over the next two years while we're putting that plan together but but but more importantly and is that is that we're

066doing all this work and we're and towards the effort of realizing uh a you know a better better feedback and experience uh for uh both students parents and uh the community uh with their with their interactions and work with the matthackton school district so with that said are there any uh you know final comments or questions uh from uh members of the board on on any of these matters and certainly uh i i i envision that as you as you uh that these matters will now start becoming before you like for example dr ang said on april we'll be coming before you with the inclusive practices uh uh programming uh that is probably by far one of the major matters uh it probably has almost the same some of the same significance as you you

067had you had reached out in the in the reach program and said about those things this evening so you know please know that there's a lot of significant stuff uh we will be presenting uh dr yooka will be with us in may uh to present uh the recommendation for full day kindergarten please know that we are in april we're going to be sharing with the finance committee and then separately with the property committee uh the the fit and the finances associated with full day kindergarten and then if those dozer can move forward dr yuka will be with us in may to present a summary of the of the full uh recommendation and uh and ask the board to consider that for the implementation uh of i believe september of 2022-23 school year so there's and

068there's a number of others but those are just some of the few that will be coming up before you as we progress on so with that said uh we can move on with the rest of the agenda that ends the guest and schedule speakers for this evening thank you dr zurby um moving on now to reports um we have the minutes from our committee meetings attached to the agenda for your review um then we have the first of many dei reports um we have ms drummond and ms perdue to present that okay and i can start this um so tonight we have a a few important um updates to provide for the diversity equity and inclusion office and i wanted to start briefly with what um diversity equity and inclusion means to us in the

069manhattan school district and these are the terms that were defined at our kickoff meeting diversity um refers to the broad set of visible and invisible dimensions encompassing all ways in which people processes and perspectives differ within the math acting community equity is is defined as the result of ensuring each individual has what they need to lead and succeed equity includes identifying and removing personal and system barriers that limit the full participation of all groups and individuals inclusion refers to the active process of welcoming respecting supporting and connecting and valuing while acknowledging the uniqueness or identity of all misacting families and i wanted to start with this just so we have a clear understanding of where we're looking at and how we're defining these terms in reference to dei the edi office will search will serve

070the student staff in the community of the mathan school district in providing advocacy oversight and focus on matters of diversity equity and inclusion and we'll all start to hear these terms a lot as we go through this process the office will work to enhance efforts related to diversity equity inclusion already taking place within the district but also provide opportunity for all stakeholders to play an important role in how we move forward accomplishments to date in january the dei leadership team was formed which is comprised of four staff members and two administrators they each represent one of the district schools the leadership team is scheduled to meet twice per month every month the dei section also was developed in the district's website and can be accessed at www.mshacklin.org dei and we'll house all things related to

071the dei work as we proceed in february we held the di kickoff meeting with dr campbell and also the dei leadership team and i have to say it was a well attended program which provided an overview of what the dei work would look like and also inform the community about the different subgroups and ask the community members interested in signing up to sign up in march we formed the dei school on the messaging school district dii committee the committee is responsible for developing process protocols and resources and program initiatives that directly rated relates to the strategic goals of the messaging school district as well as recommendations um from the equity order which will be conducted later the committee is comprised of five the four five following subcommittees which will be human resources professional development curriculum

072community outreach and student life application process for the um di committee opened on february 18th and closed on february 22nd individuals that were selected to sit on the committees were notified by email on march 12 the committee members represent members from various groups including residents parents alumni students staff administrators and board members all applicants um that of all applicants were thanked for their interest and notified that there will be other opportunities for the pro for participation as we proceed and continue with with our dei efforts the next steps will be provided by ms drummond thank you samara um yeah the next steps are um the dei leadership team and the matthackton dei committee will hold their first meeting tomorrow on march 24th the purpose of this meeting will be to introduce members of the committees

073and outline some of the work moving forward committees will then schedule and meet on their own in april the dei committee will create the mathakton equity audit and the audit audit is to capture voices from the math acting community around the five subgroups that ms perdue mentioned through a diversity equity and inclusion lens and this baseline data will be set will be used to help guide the committee's work in general and just to summarize mythactin is focusing on ensuring that everyone in our school community has an exceptional experience the dei office will serve all student staff community and is doing this work so we can engage in a larger conversation around diversity equity and inclusion and provide a welcoming and enriching educational environment for all thank you thank you both i'm excited to see what

074work we have coming ahead uh for the intermediate unit ms reese everyone's having trouble with the mute button tonight i didn't know if it was going to be me or liz we met on march 15th and i won't go into all the details because everybody that attends the tech center will be aware has been made aware but i just want the board as a whole to know that they have moved uh towards more full-time uh participation for their students so they started with the seniors of course then they're working on down to um 10th grade it's just the way that it that the tech center is set up and then 11th and 11th grade survey will be sent out um so they've been working really really hard on on that and just to reiterate why

075it's so difficult is because if you're working on a car you're working on a cake or you're working in you know health services or um protective services you're in a lot of contact so they've had to do this in a very um different way than a in a regular classroom setting and i give miss partovich a lot of credit in her entire staff their staff is fully vaccinated or those that wanted to um [Music] and um the other good news is um they have to take these tests called nocti they're very very important um there is how they become licensed and so far and they do it in different segments and so far those scores are looking good so although this has been a difficult year in education um our tech center students um are

076succeeding so that's awesome and then um my dog decided to bark just now um the only other thing that is uh that i wanted to mention is due to our financial changes and the um bonds that we are closing out i'm not using the right financial terms other districts the other districts that are part of that have to approve it and that was presented and i know liz shared that with all of you so that is in the works and um all is well in the tech center world after a lot of hard work um so thank you and it's i'll just go can i go the iu next does that make sense is that okay um we meet tomorrow but we did meet in between this meeting and last meeting and we basically it

077was all the the normal iu business but just like in education uh everything's changing so the legislation as you know is changing the iu was hit a little bit with funding due to some bills in um harrisburg but because montgomery county iu is so strong um they're they're they should be okay but just to make people aware of that um we all know the iu was a big part of vaccinating the teachers and we appreciate all their efforts in that regard um and business um the other big thing that happened is for those unaware they opened a hearing aid well just like we were saying some of our wonderful things were kind of put to a stall they were opening a hearing aid center in the iu to um because it's not easy for children

078to get those new hearing aids and that has opened now as well so that is just incredible so that's what's going on at the iu thank you thank you miss reese and now our student board representatives ms goodrich and miss france i'll go first so um good evening the first thing i want to talk about was spring sports for the high school yesterday officially on uh monday the 22nd i know some teams like softball we had some preseason workouts but yesterday we started officially with tryouts that was great it was great to just honestly be on a field playing with each other after that super exciting for spring sports obviously because we're the ones who lost the season last year but it's good to be back um the high school students are continuing or returning

079to in-person school starting with four days last week which i was in i don't know about claire but i was in and i thought it was great everyone was still super safe even though there was definitely more people in the building so it was super exciting to be back honestly just for four days um the helping paws club is doing a raffle fundraiser for the kitty cottage which is actually super cool so what you do is if you purchase something worth five dollars or more from the kitty cottages amazon wishlist you receive one raffle ticket so the more items that you purchase for five dollars the more rough tickets you get which i thought was a super creative way and that gets them exactly what they need and get you more raffle tickets and then

080mini thon is actually doing a trivia night at peppers in king of prussia on monday april 5th so that'll be super exciting too okay it's my turn good evening everyone so in march we reached the midpoint of the third marking period on the fourth and there was a virtual college fair on march 22nd and 23rd from 5 to 7 45 and more than 100 colleges attended which gave students a lot of opportunities to think about colleges during march 8th through 10th dr coconaur also held meetings with students to discuss the differences in ap testing and the exams will be held in may thank you both it's great to hear such exciting things happening at the high school um now for the methecton education foundation we have a new face tonight with miss mary jane barbone

081welcome thank you it's aubrey lost her niece um i appreciate being here tonight i thank you for having me um and i'm here and i know nikki has given reports that she kind of gave her she has kind of given a really good overview of all the things that are happening and nikki asked me if i would like to come tonight just to talk about a couple of things that i'm working on with several of our committee members and our board members on the foundation so um what i'd like to talk about first is um that we are planning our in-person event in the fall the apex awards um i know that many of you were in attendance in our um fall of 2019 event uh where we brought together over 300 members of our

082community to celebrate the thactin i think anybody who was there would say that the evening was just wonderful and just what we needed at that time but i say now i think we need it even more and we're gonna we're trying to do everything in our power to bring this event to light in the fall of this year so please um keep tuned in for um for any kind of details that will be coming forward hopefully really soon i don't envy any of you trying to do all the stuff for the schools i know just trying to plan an event is kind of crazy but just so you know we will be following all you know any covid regulations um i i told uh mr beam our board president that you know i would do

083everything in my power to um to parallel plan to do whatever we can plan for indoor plan for outdoor plan for this plan for that he thought i was crazy and now i quite think that i'm a little crazy but anyway we are doing our best um so um what we need from you now though is we would like some help with um many of you hopefully have seen on our page that we are uh calling for nominations for the award winners for this year um let the last time we did this it was pretty simple we used our normal means of social media and email but we also had in-person events where we could drop off cards to remind folks to go onto our site and nominate um honorees so this year i put

084a play out to everybody on the board to get out to your networks and share the information that we have on our site uh calling for nominations and get folks to um write in the write-in submissions for the uh categories that we have and if any of you visited our site you see our categories are going to be the same as we will honor an alumnus a community advocate a matthackton teamer club um a a business an educator but this year we also added at the request of last year's nomination committee that we add a category that i thought kind of sounded that really sounded good the climb hire award and the climb hire award is um going to be given to someone who um to recognize an individual who overcame personal challenges and helped

085or inspire others to succeed and i just think that's what matthachton is all about no matter where you come from what you do everybody deserves some recognition so uh we added this category but the criteria for all of the honorees is listed out on our web website which of course is mafactanfoundation.org and just click on the apex side um so uh what else do they want to tell you about um so what what the other thing i that i've been involved i'll do with the foundation is the alumni committee and it was good to hear i heard a lot about you know the education foundation which we're very happy to support and a little bit about the alumni committee so uh or the alumni association um the alumni committee of the of the foundation board

086is really trying to actively recruit members that's like our biggest goal when we uh started meeting uh routinely in november and um we have raised our number like about 150 it's kind of slow but steady and i'm told by everybody in this business that that sounds good it sounds like a really good uh way to be growing um but we are looking to um you know to to get um to get any any alumni to join the group and um the problem we see is you know that there are lots of alumni associations out out there some of them use our fact and name but we are the only official site so any of you who have kids that have graduated please encourage them to join um we have some a couple graduates i think

087looking at at us now or looking at me now on the on the zoom so please if you haven't joined already please uh please join um hopefully some of you have gotten to see some of the campaigns that we've run on the alumni committee trying to encourage um alumni engagement if you looked in february we had a sweetheart campaign which i thought was really really cool um getting to see some of the students who went i mean some some of the couples who when they were students they met in the fact and maybe didn't even start to date but they ended up getting married and are still together today so we had we had couples from the 80s the 90s and the 2000s so it was really exciting if you want to go back and

088look at some of that that would be great um some of the future campaigns we're talking about are our alumni spotlights we want to spotlight alumni who own businesses either right in our community or in our surrounding communities we are also looking to spotlight legacy families this is something that i think is really important too and i think it could really spark some engagement we have some great families who you know have had you know some i think our one family has actually four generations of kids you know that are either currently students or have graduated so we're gathering information we're going to be putting together some videos on those families um some of them you'll probably recognize because um you know we have we have families here that really develop roots that you know

089once they once they're here they just don't want to leave and they bring their families back to to be educated in the fact and school district which is just wonderful um so please stay tuned for all that we're doing with alumni and again we could really use help in the board the administration the community that's watching to um really help us out in with the apex awards and um you know again we're going to be we're going to be putting out a lot more information but the nominations is what we need now we need people to get the word out about nominations so thanks a lot and i appreciate the time that i was given to give the information any questions no but thank you so much and uh i have a nomination form i

090keep meaning to fill out so i just wrote it on my to-do last my to-do list thank you so much and i do believe there's an effect in alumni and teacher possibly getting married soon to an alumni so maybe uh maybe she'll let us feature her yeah that would be great that would be great i think we're definitely bringing back that sweetheart campaign it was so well received we got lots of comments and lots of leads to get folks to then join our network which is great thank you miss barbara and i appreciate that and we're looking forward to seeing the apex awards happen in some way shape or form this fall and i'll be there all right so for communications now ms kelly thank you and good evening everyone march is music in our

091schools month and as you all know here at methecton school district we have a passion for the arts so it's only fitting that our music teachers and our student musicians are celebrating music in our schools month and the only way we know how with awesome performances you can see some of their outstanding work on the district's website just click the headline for music in our schools month under featured news and announcements march is also youth art month and our k-12 students stepped up to answer a very important question why is art important they didn't just tell us they showed us with a stunning display of the visual arts you can also check that out on the district's website under featured news and announcements and a special shout out and thank you also goes to the

092methecton art department for curating the presentation it's wonderful so please get a chance to take a look at it and last but not least back by popular demand the methachton family sing-along returns for another evening of fun next friday march 26th at 6 00 pm myth acting's art teachers i'm sorry methectomy's music teachers are hosting this interactive live event on youtube you can find the link to stream it also on the district's website thank you thank you miss kelly and now for our superintendent's report dr zurby thank you madam president uh before i go miss kelly are you singing with the uh with the event next week oh you don't want to hear that only only in the car i'm the same i i have just two quick updates first uh i have completed my

093meetings with principals and representative teachers as part of the information gathering process to prepare for next school year while the plan is not complete it is important to know the following we are reviewing the health and safety plan taking into consideration new information on distancing and the need for many of the other safety protocols currently in our plan we are discussing scheduling specifically at the secondary level and how we will be able to provide access to as many opportunities with limited resources teachers will not be be providing dual mode instruction next school year uh so i you know i will tell you that uh in a couple of the meetings the teachers made me raise my right hand and swear that i would not be doing that and while uh they are are champions of

094dual mode instruction right now uh and while we might giggle about that a little bit uh the truth is it's it's a it's a huge endeavor that they've taken on and they've championed uh but is not a sustainable practice and it's and it's likely not sustainable in the best interest of of students so with that said uh we are uh we'll we'll be working on uh providing a plan that doesn't require that uh but more importantly we are highly considering a broader implementation of the methachtom virtual academy which prior to the pandemic was a successful virtual online instruction option for students so we'll be talking more about that and that there are several surveys going out by the end of this week for parents specifically at the high school to gather feedback on the parents

095student plans for next school year this will certainly help us gauge and help us determine our path forward and i think lastly i just want to be really clear on this is that we will be recommending a five-day in-person instruction very much uh like that we had prior to the pandemic and more to come in may so with that uh my second item for the board i'm going to turn over to mr regina he's going to talk about the mea agreement mr jim thank you dr zurby uh i'm proud to announce that we have completed the overall edits and the final draft of the mea agreement so we will have a signed document for the board president tomorrow morning and we will be able to finalize this process here hopefully within a day or two

096so congratulations i i certainly am very proud of the team that worked on this and very pleased with the board committee they did a great job negotiations is not a simple process but you did a fantastic job with it so thank you very much for your time and effort thank you mr regina i just added stop it farina to my to-do list for the week so you'll see me there for the signature all right is that it for the superintendent's report then dr zurby that does conclude my report thank you okay thank you um so with that we will now take public comment on board action items this is an opportunity for residents to comment on matters that are to be decided upon as outlined on the agenda the board asks you to keep your

097comments to four minutes or less directors may choose to respond to matters following conclusions of the comments we required members of the public wanting to make comments to pre-register by five o'clock today so if you have pre-registered and would like to speak please raise your hand and just as a reminder please introduce yourself with your full name and municipality okay first joe written house oh can you hear me yes i can whenever you're ready thank you joe written house lower providence uh so i just wanted to uh talk specifically about the school ranking um i know that we in the the plan that dr zerby laid out it was a good attempt at going 25 uh to get up in the ranking i think it was by 25 i'm sorry i just want to interrupt

098for one second could you just tell me what agenda item this is regarding i'm sorry uh this was regarding the plan i wasn't sure the the star plan okay um that's not something that we're voting on this evening so i'd be happy to hear that comment um at the courtesy of the floor part of the meeting that's that's totally fine then i will withhold my comment till then okay thank you so much next i have jim malik whenever you're ready hear me all right yes i can thank you jim malik warsester payment of the bills if you go to page 14 and take out your magnifying glass see if you can find the single entry for sweet steven's lego fees for december totaling 137 000 annualized that's 1.5 million dollars there's no breakdown of the

099expense so maybe you could give us a breakdown of what we got for 137 grand the solicitors agreement there are two solicitors agreement on the agenda where are the rfps for those positions where's the competitive bidding i share mr mcginnis's concern about the lack of competitive bidding in this district how did you go about picking a single law firm whistler perlstein who racked up 250 000 dollars in fees prior to being replaced in worcester township sounds like more of the same to me who's making the decisions regarding each firm's duties and responsibilities i heard nothing at boarding committee meetings i heard no executive session announcements are these decisions being made in some back room somewhere are you guys telling us that you know nothing about the decisions until tonight your entire right to know process

100is overseen and managed by your solicitor you lost five appeals in the pa office of open records trained expert attorneys who specialize in the right to know law said you guys were wrong i never heard any discussion of those losses at a public meeting i never heard what uh the losses cost the district i cannot find an executive session where you discuss these losses your lawyer's response to these losses was to file five new lawsuits in the court of common pleas when did you discuss filing five costly lawsuits at a public meeting when did you discuss filing the five lawsuits in executive session when did you inform the public about your five lawsuits and allow public comment when did you tell the public about these lawsuits and how much they were going to cost the

101district where was the discussion regarding those expenditures and approving those expenditures you already lost one of your lawsuits in the court of common please and now you want to take that to the commonwealth court so in summary i'm i got it wrong the expert lawyers at the pa office of open records got it wrong and even a sitting judge got it wrong is it possible that maybe you got it wrong a little food for thought thank you next i have brian earnshaw brian earnshaw lower providence um first comment relates to um item 8.1 on the agenda regarding war policy um i'm questioning when if ever the board is going to resume in person public meetings um i know that there's been commentary in the past that says we're not losing anything but the one thing

102we are losing is if you don't pre-register by 5 pm the day at the meeting you're unable to comment at a meeting um and there's been instances where i'm not registered in the in advance of the meeting but something has come up during the meeting and i would like to comment on these are encouraging the floor but i've been unable to since it's not pre-registered or not did not have time to register so i'm just wondering what are the conditions you're looking for before resuming in-person meetings um the district clearly has facilities accommodating any spacing requirements um the arcola orbitorium is quite sizable as is the high school it could accommodate board meetings as well as committee meetings so uh i don't know if you're waiting for the entire population or the world to be

103vaccinated um or or what but we should have the opportunity to have an in-person meeting um so we can face our elected officials and provide public comment on these matters in person as opposed to over a zoom meeting um we're in a list of bills um thank you for the answer last week about the teleton appraisal fee at fifty six thousand dollars that are related to shannon dale uh a follow-up question i have on that is anybody have an updated number on the cost of legal professional and other fees relating to the shenandoah manner um i have to believe it has to be approaching a million if not in excess of a million dollars over the life of that suit um two questions i also asked that were not answered there were two payments to

104lower providence township totaling just under 144 000 that were charged the general fund that appear to relate to the ira construction and i'm wondering why those what first what those expenditures were for and secondly um why were they charged with the general fund as opposed to a bond fund uh that that does impact the budget does impact the surplus it doesn't impact the amount of tax increases required so i'm wondering what the what appears to be an improper classification why why and if if that will be fixed uh regarding personnel items again quite a few retroactive items i'm just wondering why that continues these things clearly should be gotten out in front of instead of being retroactive and then finally regarding these the solicitor proposals and special counsel appointment it was a comment last week

105that the district now has four attorneys working for it um i i think that's highly inefficient and there should be a an rfp process and try to narrow that down because i i would assume you're very good i would think you're gonna get better rates if you use one firm as opposed to four and also you would then have consistent representation as opposed to possibly different reviews with amongst four different law firms thank you thank you uh next i have jessica bradbury whenever you're hi yes can you hear me yes i can thank you good evening jessica bradbury lower providence township first of all i want to give kudos to the school district for having a program like reach i've been advocating for mental health awareness for some time and i firmly believe that we

106must keep talking about it talking about it with our children talking about it with our friends our family and our community if we're going to defeat the stigma around it um will dr einstead's presentation along with dr zurby's myth action forward presentation be posted to the district website later today or maybe tomorrow i might also like the board to discuss the suspension of board policy i think it's 006.2 with regards to in-person participation we've talked about it a number of times and we've justified staying virtual by claiming there's been no negative impact nothing is lost but could you answer a few questions for us have members of the public been denied the opportunity to speak at any point during the past year virtual meetings i think we can answer that one already mr earnshaw said

107that he has um have members of the public been muted as they've spoken has the board set a requirement for pre-registration that applies only in this virtual meeting and is that part of board policy or no does the virtual meeting prevent the board members and members of the public from seeing one another since i know this is not a q a period i'll tell you the answer is through my observation the answer to all these questions is yes thus the virtual only format of board meetings has created a situation where you might call it unchecked control over public censorship with the cdc's recent revised guidelines reducing social distancing requirements from six feet to three feet along with all the other large rooms throughout the school district isn't there a way that we can resume in-person

108meetings while still providing remote participation much like our teachers are doing with their students today regarding the whistler-pearlstein solicitor proposal why aren't we getting an rfp before we make a decision to bring on yet another law firm to serve this district how many law firms do we have now is it up to four when i look at our list of bills i see four consistent law firms billing us and the facts and school district has spent over one million dollars this year in legal fees although for some reason you can't find that easily we don't provide the budget or our actual update and that level of detail so you have to sit there and go through bill after bill and tally up the legal fees in order to find out how much we're spending but

109before we take on another firm have you done any research on whistler and girlsteen i know we're going with them because our current solicitor is moving over there but if you read some of the local news articles they've got a questionable reputation they have a tendency to submit high monthly bills to the districts they serve so why would we enter into an agreement with a new law firm based on a vague one-page memo that doesn't even include payment terms thank you uh next i have channeling mom whenever you're ready tuning my worst sister township i just have some questions regarding the dei program um first uh i happen to um i don't know understand why we have the board members like ms perdue reporting during the di report i thought the program was in uh

110in charge by dr campbell so i don't know what kind of role like the board member versus dr campbell played in this program second miss i just wanted to stop you there for a second is that a specific agenda item because i'm not seeing it uh this is dei you guys just talked about in the report isn't that um yes but i'm just wondering if it's a voting item i'm not seeing it my agenda okay i'll okay in that case i'll just um talk about the currencies in the floor okay did you have anything else for board action items uh no i just want to talk about dei okay okay we'll get to that later then thank you okay thanks all right anyone else for um comment on board action items this evening all right

111seeing none then we will move on with our agenda can i have a motion to approve the suspension of board policy 006.2 with specific regards to the limitation on the number of directors participating electronically okay i heard drummond with the motion and i'll take winters with the second um any comments from the board all those in favor any opposed motion carries 9-0 may i have a motion to approve the board meeting minutes for the work session for february 16th and a regular board meeting of february 23rd and the special meeting of march 11th as attached my goodness thank you mr mcginnis is there a second never mind i heard never read in there any comments from the board seeing none all those in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries nine zero uh fiscal items

112mr berker thank you madam president tonight for your approval we have the list of bills treasurer's report budgetary transfers one change order for approval it's the approve the credit change order from queen construction change order number two in the amount of fourteen thousand six hundred seventy nine dollars for the eagleville 2020 facade project we also have the bucks montgomery healthcare consortium management appointment pointe appointed management trustee appoint mr timothy bricker to serve as management trustee for the bucks and montgomery county schools healthcare consortium effective july 1st 2021 through july or june 30th 2023 all right can i have a motion to approve all fiscal items as listed yes thank you mr mcginnis is there a second winners but the second uh comments from the board ms cancro i know that we are going to be

113reviewing in the next finance committee meeting the legal fees totals correct mr bricker that's correct and we also if we can if we could show legal fees totals from september to this point and then perhaps show like the areas of expertise of that i know they're special ed cases that requires certain lawyers but if we could even compile that as well so thank you also there was a question related to the last week and this week related to the lower providence charges can you explain that tim please they were for the purchase of edu's for arrowhead elementary and the fun that it comes from yeah we use the general fund to pay for those one last thing if we could dr zerby i know we'd have to consult but if there is a way that

114when we talk about the different lawsuits that were placed and the appeals and losses that we did if you could consult with the lawyer how we can share that with the public um that would be appreciated and we're playing ping-pong here jen but what i would also i'm not sure where we're gonna i i'll just make a comment related to the the charges with the the expenses related to attorneys obviously a greater understanding isn't what uh is needed here but i would clearly advocate that the the four uh attorneys that we have all have unique skill sets so when we talk about uh um contracts uh jeff satanic pretty much provides um negotiation services for probably 80 of the contracts in eastern pennsylvania see he is considered uh although he's not necessarily liked but he's

115considered the number one um attorney related to contract negotiations sweet stevens has known is known for their expertise in special education has provided fantastic support to dr angstadt and the entire special education uh issues um we obviously have uh um been using kyle and i think that kim had talked about that from uh previous uh last week as well so that leaves uh primarily a right to know aspect uh with sweet stevens uh as well um so i i believe um although i understand the principle of economies of scale uh i don't believe that is the case here because it's not it's because it's a service we have a choice to pick what is the best service to provide the fact and that's what we're doing thank you mr winters i think that's very well

116said any other comments or questions from the board all those in favor of these fiscal items aye any opposed motion carries nine zero personnel items dr sergini good evening madam president for your consideration this month we have the following personnel items three resignations professional two of which are for retirement we thank mrs kathleen o'connell for her 16 years of dedicated service to the students of mathacton and mr robert mcnally for his 15 years of dedicated service to the students of mathacton and we wish both kathy and bob all the very best in their retirement two resignations classified both of which are again for retirement we thank mrs patricia gavanas for her 26 years of dedicated service to mathacton and mrs linda phipps for her 32 years of dedicated service to mathacton and we wish pat

117and linda all the very best in their retirement one employment administrative we recommend the employment of mrs nicole barrical as principal at skyview upper elementary school as i had mentioned at the work session last week mrs barrical became the finalist for the principal position after a rigorous process that included the initial application screening plus four full rounds of interviews the various stages of the interviews included stakeholders from multiple groups including central administration building administration skyview staff skyview parents and members of the board of school directors a series of criteria were considered when interviewing candidates during the process including professional experience question and answer review as well as task oriented components mrs barrical has been an educator for 13 years serving most recently in the north bend school district as a teacher team leader school climate

118coordinator which is similar to an assistant principal and acting principal she has experience leading data teams the school-wide positive behavior support program the community emergency response team and professional development we have one employment classified we have one employment long-term substitute classified one change of status classified four uncompensated leaves professional three sabbatical leaves two of which are for the 2021-2022 school year and one of which is for the remainder of the current school year a series of supplemental contracts and one volunteer to add to our approved volunteer list thank you dr sergini um i guess i'll ask if any board members need to need or want to take any of these personnel items separately so with that then i will take a motion to approve all items listed under personnel reese thank you miss reece is

119there a second drummond thank you mr drummond comments from the board miss reece um dr sargini i have a couple couple things you answered a couple of my questions last um week but um new question and i'm sure we are but we usually do something for the retirees at the board meetings i know do we i still i guess we still have a plan we just we've had the retirees in all different months this you know this this time dude probably due to the you know the craziness of the year so i i assume we will do something as a group we have uh and we will miss reece thank you and uh we will be consulting with miss kelly and preparing that presentation for one of the upcoming months okay and i assume dr

120angst dad will get some wonderful new help it seems like uh all of her office is retiring not all of her office but uh um i just wish her luck with with that uh i'm sure those uh women are gonna be some hard uh shoes to fill and then was one of the and i have it up on another screen was one of the sabbaticals new from or yes was the third sabbatical leave new from last week or did i just miss that one i don't have it as new i apologize because we had the the two professional um and then uh the third as well that is for the remainder of this year okay and then with the uncompensated leaves which is different than the sabbaticals i know um we hold their spots for

121the next year obviously okay okay thank you one more thing sorry so um we have had um wonderful additions and changes to admin yourself uh uh msgorla now uh i'm gonna say her name wrong uh nicole barakal which i think i just said wrong um and i suppose we are still in the process for director of technology and um a high school principal yes ms reese we are in the process for both of those i am anticipating uh posting the high school principal position tomorrow and we are about a third of the way through the director of technology process thank you any other questions or comments miss drummond could you just speak to why um some of these uh items on for under hr might be retroactively approved absolutely thank you mrs drummond uh we

122do have situations where there are ongoing hiring processes that do take place and out of an abundance of desiring to get those items on the agenda uh we we do put them on even if they are retroactive so we have situations where we need to move on a particular circumstance sometimes it can be a hiring sometimes it can be a leave and then we do put them on as a retroactive so it is hr is a very fluid situation that transpires throughout the entire month and we we could probably hold a board meeting every day and still have items to vote on thank you and i don't think any of us are advocating for daily board meetings just let the records show certainly wasn't a recommendation i figured as much mr mcginnis did i see

123you with your hand up i was just voting in favor daily uh board meetings i figured you were any other comments from the board all right seeing none then i will take a vote um on these personnel items all those in favor aye aye any opposed seeing none the motion carries 9-0 thank you madam president thank you dr sergini curriculum and programs dr walsh thank you madam president uh for your review and consideration the attaches eight resources that will be made available for review um at the frina admin building uh beginning tomorrow march 24th and running through april 27th and we'll be seeking board approval on these resources at the april action meeting thank you dr walsh uh can i have a motion to approve the items under curriculum no there's no motion this evening

124oh i'm sorry per board policy they have to sit for two meetings before they can be uh approved so that's the first yeah so two months yep thank you my my agenda did have a motion on it but i see now that that's incorrect um so then dr walsh if um someone wants to review these resources do they need to make an appointment at farina um due to covid or are we allowing people to just come in yeah if they call the the main office by the main desk there is the resources out there at the front desk as well as the online digital resources they're available for public review between 9 00 a.m and 3 p.m great thank you dr walsh you're welcome okay moving on to policy we have 12 policies for first

125reading those will be up for approval next month and now we have nine up for a second reading and approval this month can have a motion to approve the policies under second reading paul miss hall thank you and a second thank you thanks miss purdue comments from the board seeing none all those in favor all right any opposed okay the motion carries 9-0 uh gifts and donations kind of a gift from stephanie robinson for a dress down day and a list of gifts to and donations for the backpack program um let's see we also have the school calendar there's a revision to the school calendar for the 2020-21 school year um we have our solicitor proposal uh let's say let's um take a motion to approve items a b and c here under other dramond

126thank you miss drummond is there a second reese thank you miss reece comments from the board mr yes i i just want to um thank the donors for the backpack program um that's been a great success this year even though we haven't been um consistently in the schools we're running it and um you know i think it's a great benefit to our community and i just want to thank those donate those donors for taking the the care to make those donations well and thank you and mrs winners for your work um in the backpack program that is one program that seems to have flourished in the past year um and i know that you guys work hard at it so thank you for what you do for the community thank you it's been our pleasure

127thank you okay any other comments on these items mr mcginnis uh yes in regards to the school calendar have we settled on a graduation date or is that a separate item say that again my audio cut out i'm sorry i'm sorry uh can you hear me yes i can hear you i think it was on my end i apologize uh graduation date is that i i looked at the calendar i didn't see it is that a kind of a separate item still a floating date or have we settled on that we have not settled on on a date it's my it's my goal to have that on the agenda for the april meeting dr zurby will it be possible to communicate that date in advance of the april meeting is it required that the board

128vote to approve that date if we if we want to take up under uh old business to authorize me to esta set that date uh and then to communicate it that i would be fine with that i think i'm sorry dr serbia i cut you off as would i me too that's why i brought it up last week catching a lot of heat from my senior yeah it could all unfold by by the end of this week it could unfold early next week that's that that's our challenge right now so um last thing i want to do is set the date and then have to retract it and that's understood so the one thing that we'll have to do because it's not on the agenda madam president is that we would have to take comments

129from the public on the authorization to allow me to set the graduation date and then to further uh communicate that uh as as per the permission of the board this evening so the motion emotion will be will be this and uh i just need someone to to write this down so uh dr hank said would you mind writing this down for us so the motion is to approve uh the superintendent uh to set and uh the graduation date uh for the 2000 or the class of is that right okay who's on first sorry yes i know it's just okay got it so when we get to new business um we will have that motion brought up um any other comments on our current motion then for the um items a b and c under other

130seeing none all those in favor aye aye aye aye any opposed okay the motion carries nine zero um so i'll take the two solicitor items oh that's all that's left here anyway um i may have a motion to approve the appointment of whistler pearlstein as the district solicitor and special counsel appointment of sweet steven's cats williams mcginnis thank you mr mcginnis is there a second race thank you miss reece comments from the board seeing none all those in favor all right hi any opposed okay the motion carries nine zero um dates for board members calendars we have all of our april meetings listed um anything for old business all right um since the i know it wasn't out of order but does anybody want to i could address it but does anyone want to address

131why mr campbell or i will i will just let uh miss ma know that uh mr campbell is a consultant so if he came to every meeting and gave reports i would imagine his fee would be a lot higher um if hopefully if if anyone else from dei wants to um address that feel free but he's a consultant and we have a group of administrators board members staff and community members as part of dei and he helps us thank you miss reese good enough anything else for old business okay so then for new business um i would like to make a motion to authorize dr zerby or authorize the superintendent to set the graduation date for the class of 2021. second uh release oh you are right sorry mcginnis sorry myself so um are there

132any comments from the board i will just say that the reason that this is proceeding a little bit out of our normal sequence is because of the um the extra efforts that the administration is taking to provide for the best possible in-person graduation experience for our seniors and i know that there's been a bunch of different plans being explored and some of that is not coinciding nicely with our board meeting timelines but um i'm confident that dr gravinis and dr zerby and the rest of our administration will have a fantastic graduation set for our class of 2021. mr mcginnis i would echo that uh dr zurban sounds like i'm pushing you pushing you but i i know the constraint surrender and i and i know your goal is to get it as great as you

133possibly can so i i want to say thank you for that preemptively the only thing i would add to is if you could put the i'm sorry kim in there as well because parents did reach out to me that's if they have to take off they would like to know the time also not just the day but the timing too thank you well there's a there's always a time established but it's always it's always also communicated that based on weather we may have to shift the time uh within that day so while we don't have an alternative uh date or location uh typically or actually when we have it on campus it's either inside or outside i guess probably the better way to phrase that uh the time the time does change and but but

134we do communicate the the intended time but it could it could be changed so people need to be at least uh aware of that so before again before the board votes on this matter we need to take public comment on it okay um so with that then i will take public comment on this one particular action item if there are any members in attendance who would like to speak to this um okay mr earnshaw you are in whenever you're ready um i don't have really comments on the matter there's comments on the process um this is another example of a voting item being added added to the meeting that was not on the agenda anybody who wanted to comment on it did not have the opportunity to anybody who wanted to comment did not pre-register

135which is my point about in-person meetings um who was on this call uh can't because they did not pre-register thanks okay for the record if there's anybody who wants to speak on this voting item because it was not on the posted agenda who did not pre-register this is not a circumstance where i'm going to be holding to that that procedure okay um next i have jim malik go ahead hear me all right yes i can thank you jim mollick warcester uh i echo everything that mr ernst earnshaw just said and more of a reason we should be back at in-person meetings i want to compliment dr zerby for picking it up he's the one that mentioned you needed public comment i didn't hear you mention it but i guess my my point is i'm looking

136at a screen right now i don't see a solicitor there is there a solicitor there because the solicitor would have told you that that's basically what you need to do i'm not sure why there's no solicitors sitting there i mean you got four law firms you know why don't you have a solicitor sitting there and get something for our million dollars a year thanks a lot thank you dr malik i'll be sure to interrupt dr zurby next time and make sure i'm the first one to say that um next we have joe rittenhouse hi jordan house lower providence uh yeah i just wanted to echo the two statements that came before me i i don't understand how we can you know expect the public to be informed on anything if we're going to take public

137comment you know in the middle of a meeting and no one would have any record of this conversation happening outside of uh after the vote is already had i don't think that's a responsible governance at all um and i politely i think the snark associated with it doesn't it isn't polite either thank you and next we have chandling ma feeling mom can you hear me yes i can oh okay we're sister township this is a courtesy of the floor no this is for a public comment on the action item to authorize the superintendent to set the graduation date okay all right uh no i also want to echo with the mr ernesto said about this in-person meeting i feel we should have the opportunity to have both virtue and in person okay thank you thanks

138okay anyone else for this particular action item before before we vote and i don't see any other hands so sorry to interrupt stop talking if someone else raises their hand but uh i i'm a little confused by the people upset by this um it is board board we have to vote on graduation and because of the circumstances there isn't a graduation date tonight so instead of making families wait a month to our next board meeting we are just requesting that mr dr zurby can make that decision without us and anybody who has a comment about that we just allowed them to speak so i'm i just am confused why anyone would be upset by that um we are trying to help our families and our seniors so i just would like to i guess defend

139ourselves in saying um we are doing the best that we can and helping our students and uh anyone who wanted to have a comment that they didn't want dr zerby to make that date could say it thank you miss reese i just want to say this goes back to another previous media and i want to be consistent in my practice where i didn't support emotion i was put on last minute just because of the fact that we are not giving the public thomas speak i understand we need to set a date and i understand for families they want to plan and instead of having us wait another couple of weeks before we provide them the date it's important to help them in planning i do want us to be a bit consistent in our practice

140so it is it puts me in a position where i feel like it wasn't advertised the public we don't have people on here that want to make public comments and i feel like it's one of those things that um it puts us in a place so i don't know i'm not going to support it i do support i said that day for the graduates but i do want us to be consistent in our practice understood um i think that one thing that needs to be clear here is that i mean the reason that we vote to approve graduation date in march is to give families enough time to to prepare if we don't give dr zurby the authorization to set that date we are looking at voting on this matter at the end of april

141um and i know that there are plenty of professions out there where um time off requests have to be put in you know 30 60 days in advance sometimes um and i i just think that it is in the best interest of our families and particularly this senior class that has been frankly has been through enough the least we can do is get them a graduation date in a timely matter so for that reason i would support this so if we don't have any other comments um i will take a vote then um all those in favor of authorizing the superintendent to set the graduation date for the class of 2021. hi any opposed nay i refrain are you voting no or are you abstaining okay so then the motion carries with a vote of

142eight zero and one and with that um we will move on to courtesy of the floor so this is the time for members of the public to comment on any items that could potentially come before the board at a future date um concerns that they may have etc we ask that you limit your comments to four minutes um anyone wishing to speak was asked to pre-register by five o'clock today and if you could introduce yourself with your name and municipality of residence dr malik you are up jim alex warcester hear me okay yes i can thank you let me try to help end miss miss reese's confusion nobody has a problem with what you guys voted on it's how you did it that's the point there's no reason why that motion and that vote could

143have not been put on the agenda it's called being transparent and it allows people to decide if they want to be on the meeting to do that to to comment we should hold school board elections every year seems that the fear of losing your job is a great motivator we get a reach grant two months before an election we get a signed mea contract we get full day k we even get a presentation on improving our our ranking uh dr zerby though didn't tell us how he cherry picked the numbers to come up with the most favorable impression of the board me personally i would have concentrated rather than on an average on a continuous downward trend from 11 to 75 since the care group took over that's how i would have presented it that

144being said still nothing on getting our kids back to school full time in light of the fact the cdc now recommends three feet social distancing again your priorities are misplaced miss purdue talked about the dei team and how it's composed of district staff i don't think she realizes that the district dei committee isn't really calling the shots from what i hear it's the private dei organization who is for example who who authored the changes to the student code of conduct i heard they came from the private group do you and mr navarrete attend those private meetings of that private group i hear you do i hear those meetings aren't open to the public what did you discuss at those meetings are there minutes we can review of those meetings why are people being excluded from

145the private group i know an individual who was asked to leave the group doesn't sound like inclusion to me why are we paying dr campbell thirty thousand dollars while other districts are paying only twelve thousand dollars the last time i asked a question about the dei committee the question was called ignorant i hope you don't feel my questions about dei or ignorant um in person meetings i think it's time to return to in-person meetings we could do a hybrid meeting no different than our act 34 hearing in the mid which we had in the middle of a pandemic you know if you guys can violate the governor's orders to hold black lives matter rallies on school property we can certainly do in-person meetings and not worry about any orders of the governor i've been told

146by several people that they've been not able to participate via the zoo meetings there apparently was a situation where there were more participants than zoom slots and that's a violation of the sunshine law people have raised their hands to participate and you have not responded to them another violation of the sunshine law i had i had my hand raised an entire meeting to raise an objection under the sunshine law i was ignored by you and you kept putting putting my hand down and still yet another violation of the sunshine law if these infractions continue to occur you and the board are going to be held accountable and as i said before we'll have a judge i'll have a judge tell you how to do it the right way thank you next i have john andrews

147can you hear me yes i can john andrews law of providence uh recently the agenda manager software has been upgraded and there are several problems with it that i want to bring to your attention on the agenda manager page it starts out saying that with acting use uses the online web service of gender manager and it goes on to say members of the community can simply ch click the agenda manager link to access meeting agendas online 24 hours prior to the meeting start time the last i knew it was 72 hours that needs correction then we go on to further instructions click on agenda manager click the meetings tab in the upper upper right hand corner the meetings tab is in the upper left hand corner so two corrections on that page and lastly relative

148to corrections at the last meeting i made a comment about the uh the stimulus program 1.9 trillion dollars in washington saying that matthackton's portion of that would be 175 000. i was incorrect it's 1.75 million among the smaller pass downs among the districts in the county thank you oh and one last thing there was an auction held with uh aldorfers in february and uh i'm curious as to the outcome of that thank you mr andrews uh next joe written house hi there can i be heard yes i can hear you perfect um so the two things i just wanted to touch on were the ranking and the dei committee i think that it's awesome that dr zerby is laying out a plan to increase the ranking from where it is right now um but i

149think that i think it was director cancro who said you know sometimes the public isn't aware of certain things and i i think that this is a prime example because it seemed that the timeline that was laid out by the plan indicated that we are you know oh we're getting better and we're going to keep going better but we've been in perpetual decline since 2014 when i graduated in in 2008 um we were recognized as a school of excellence at the high school and since then in the course of you know six years we've totally collapsed um and one of the issues i have with that is it was it was implied that uh everything was going just fine and then the pandemic hit and then all of a sudden everything was going down all

150of a sudden when truly that wasn't the case we were already on our way down uh from there and uh from a stock market perspective even the little rises we've had from when we were 11 then we went down to 126 and now we're you know somewhere in the 70 range that that would be considered flat um so i just want to point out that you know what improvement has been made uh has to make up for anything that's happened in the last six years uh also i wanted to speak to the dei committee um i'm i think it was brought up by another member there is some genuine confusion between the relationship between the private dei group that exists in the public as a non-profit and the one that exists within the school multiple

151people in the community have approached me i know that multiple people have asked these questions on social media as to the relationship between these two groups i know that multiple members of the board have been in those meetings as i have been in those meetings um so i i think that there's a real risk here of confusing the public in a way that i i don't think is is fair um to address uh reese's comment about why uh dr campbell uh said he as a advisor or the counselor he has not paid you know if we brought him on he would be paid significantly more we're paying him double what every other district has paid him so far so i i we went from 17 to essentially 30 000 so i just wanted to understand

152like what did we get if he's not uh if he's doing the same work for other school districts but we're paying him vastly more um and then as far as the uh the other dei thing i want to address i sent an email uh asking about the selection process for the dei community committee and uh dr cerbus really awesome to send me uh the three criteria for the rubric assessment for candidates of diversity equity inclusion and it's from cornell university and i don't know if this is public but it absolutely should be looking at this i don't know that anyone could qualify this as pro diversity i'm worried that it sacrifices uh diversity like for equity um as the rating rubric specifies that it's about awareness understanding experience and plans to advocate diversity equity inclusion

153where the criteria used in the selection process for the committee that has less to do with diversity and more to do with building a group that is already in collective agreement and understanding of the dogma of dei and that's you know uh as somebody who's genuinely interested in this this topic greatly it's hard to understand you know if uh someone applied for this position to get on the committee and didn't meet these criteria because they didn't understand or they didn't use the right verbiage in the understanding they would be excluded so there would be no genuine diversity on the dei committee of 30 people that is factual so thank you very much jessica bradberry good evening jessica bradbury lower providence township first of all i want to thank miss purdue for your consistency and also

154for speaking to us and to your fellow peers on the board with respect if everyone was actively listening you would have heard that no one was speaking against setting a date for our graduates in fact these members of the community that are on every single school board meeting have been advocating for our students and their experience or lack of experience for this entire school year i participated in a professional development session last week where they said something that really resonated with me and i wanted to share it with you diversity is a fact but inclusion is a choice and when you speak to the community with such disdain you're demonstrating that we have leaders that do not practice inclusiveness i'm happy to hear that we'll finally receive a regular update on the district's deni effort

155though i would have expected it to come from two of the members of administration that are on that district dei leadership team when i saw the agenda indicate the report was going to be given by miss purdue and mr drummond i immediately wondered if they were giving us an update on what was happening with the private community dei task force which has a very similar name by the way i received a newsletter from that group today where they indicated that there is an ad hoc school board committee that attends their bi-weekly working meetings and those meetings are not open to the public this private task force did revise the code of student conduct mid-year which is not typically done and they pushed to sign the statement of work with dr campbell an agreement that i

156said back then and still say today has no acceptance criteria to make sure that our deliverables will be received timely and we're seeing that the first deliverable an audit isn't being received timely it was due to be completed in winter not started in april and as mr rittenhouse said that came at a cost of thirty thousand dollars when another local district only paid seventeen thousand dollars so these private task force meetings they're not governed by the district nor are they held in public both of those items nearly everything else the board votes on is approved nine nothing by the school board and now we're finding that members of the board are participating in these non-public task force working sessions can someone please clarify how are these groups different and more importantly how are we ensuring

157that there are no conflicts of interest happening right now thank you thank you next i have chandling mom trailing around worcester township um i also want to add on to the dei program the questions that i had on that at first i said why was the report given by uh miss purdue i think someone explained because we couldn't use that much time dr campbell uh which leads to my second question is uh the cost uh like miss bradbury just mentioned other school district was paying dr campbell for um 17k for a similar program so what's the difference what's the justification for the difference our district is doing compared with other districts while paying the moms double paying him homes double um the third one is uh what is i thought there was a timeline published

158in november and by now on so winter um the first session uh by winter we should finish um equity um with an equity audit but now i think i just mentioned it won't be done until april so what's the um are we why are we falling behind and also what's the measurable standard for or some quantifiable measurement we can use to measure the this progress and or we'll just simply pay uh dr campbell we had some committee and then we did some things and they said okay good we're done i think this there should be some measurable uh standard uh for for us paying him that much money and also doing this program like how helping how many students and family conquer some problems things like that i don't see a measurable standard in here

159next one is and in terms of the equity audit um how do we perform that and uh um what's the timeline what's the outcome how to measure that um for for the i think it is a of the five subcommittee is doing all this um equity audit in the five areas i'm not sure if someone can clarify that for me um and the next one yeah i think there should be more transparency regarding the di programming and this i think applies to every everything we do in the district it lacks transparency um people are com are often confused about what's going on and uh how do we participate things like that the last one i just want to add a little note to this on high school mural while they painted something i think it's

160related to the dei program but they had the slogan says the power to the people i think just a very strong um statement for us advocating socialism what's the point what's the meaning of power to the people there are so many great quotes about doctor from dr martin luther king or many touching stories you could put on the mural and instead you guys chose power to the people it's really absurd to me thank you uh next i have brian earnshaw uh thank you brian earnshaw lower providence um first in response to mrs ms reese's comments about um sending a graduation date um i have no problem with setting a date um my comments that i mentioned at the beginning of my comments uh were purely about process uh if you recall going back to them

161before when any of you were on the board one of the issues of a prior board was that there was a lack of transparency and they added agenda items um during the meeting and voted on them without giving the public a chance to comment and that's why i raised that concern so i just don't want to see this board falling back into uh that pattern uh and thanks to miss purdue for for for staying consistent in her treatment of these matters uh it also relates to you know the retroactive hr items i certainly understand that hr is fluid um i understand that there's a need for confidentiality on employment decisions and hiring but things like supplemental contracts that go back up that pre-date the february board meeting and things like uncompensated leaves that predate the

162february board meeting um there shouldn't be any need for retroactivity those things should be put on the agenda timely and voted on because when you do that you really put a board member in a position where you know how can you vote no on a supplemental contract for somebody who's already doing the work um regarding the list of bills can somebody clarify what is an edu and why that's paid to lower providence and why that's a general fund expenditure um i'd appreciate that um and it sounds like given there was no comments about in-person meetings and something i guess we're not going to have them ever again so um well they'll note that um a follow-up item regarding the 21 21 22 budget i forgot they asked last week mr bricker's presentation showed an 800

163000 decrease in debt service um one year to the next and i'm wondering how much of that was related to the debt refinancing that was done to push out for maturities which ended up increasing the total cost of that service on those two issues and also what's the impact of the arrowhead debt and whether or not those numbers include the impact of any borrowing for eagleville vehicle project um also does the budget still include 175 000 of an increase in legal fees next year for right to know requests and if so why isn't the board or the administration uh looking to fix the right to no process we don't carry even more legal fees next year and then regarding right to no request if someone could clarify uh how we can get answers to questions

164and requests for information i know some questions get answered here and in committee meetings but not all of them do uh last meeting the solicitor suggested that we email the board or the administration i've done that um the responses in my view are not timely i had some follow-up questions from a property committee meeting in february i said to mr navarrete and the rest of the committee um didn't get a response sent three follow-ups and over the course of a month and a half still don't have any answers so there's the process is still broken if you could address how to deal with this um request some information from mr bricker regarding the budget that should be readily available if he's truly zero based in the budget the response i got back was file library

165it's no request again i don't want to do that because i don't want to incur more legal fees um at the last meeting i asked about audubon and the response was that discussions have restarted with lower providence township i'm wondering if the board of the administration are also talking to war assessors since the district uh represents both lower providence and more sester and then regarding full-day kindergarten with a may vote and presentations coming up i'm wondering if there's going to be multiple presentations or just wanted a work session followed by a vote i remember studying this matter and what many other districts have done is over the course of a year they did various studies presented both pros and cons and it was a rather extensive presentation that spanned several months if not close to

166a year um rather than just you know a two-week consideration i know there may be some some kind of considerations happening behind the scenes but i think all the facts should be laid out to the public given the expected one million dollar increase in costs to implement that program and that was it thank you thank you uh lauren nalgene good evening lauren nelgen worcester husker first thing i wanted to mention and this is not the first time i'm mentioning this i just i know there's a lot going you know everyone on everyone's plate and i just don't want it to fall through the cracks today we received the k through four uh report cards and so um you know there's progressing there's meets exceeding i can statements um i'll be honest when i looked at

167one of my children's you know report card there's some peas on there that i don't know how to help her with i have emailed school um and interestingly enough you know facebook is certainly not the source of all knowledge but i saw a thread today of a lot of myths acting parents that feel the same way they feel completely lost with the i can statements they don't know how to help their children there is no feedback on where these children stand um as i mentioned when we were in the virtual environment i was watching them you know at least watching them log in listening hearing their linkedin tests all of those things nothing is sent home we have power school there are no tests no quizzes i asked my daughter why do you have a

168p in math facts how are you being quizzed you know what is happening she said i've never i've never been quizzed all year this is not a knock at the teacher it's the the system of i can statements to roll it out in a year of a pandemic when teachers are trying to quite frankly bridge the gap from last year when we closed and had to go into a virtual environment in march unexpectedly um i don't know how we're measuring things and i don't understand how parents can help i want to help i help my kids with virtual i and i am not alone we need to you know we shouldn't have peas as we are approaching spring break going from fourth grade to fifth grade to walk into skyview we've done that that's a

169big jump and these kids i i'm advocating for all of them they are you know we need more help so i don't know who has to get involved to have give the teachers the tools to say your child is this is their deficit they're busy i understand we need more help in that area so please please don't let that fall through the cracks second i wanted to just say that we do them effect in food services and they are the most kind people the food is wonderful and it is just so nice when you pull up they are so friendly and truly just so you know they're happy to be there and they're happy people are coming um so just really appreciative of that service for everyone in the district and um in fact in

170you know the food services is really doing a good job and just to piggyback real quickly the dei committees um i will say it's confusing i joined one of the calls which i'm thinking was the private one but i don't even know um it's it's confusing when they the two of them are the same and you know i don't know where they overlap and all of that but just as a member of the public it is confusing which is private which is public why there's a private one versus the public etc so thank you very much thank you miss nelson uh next i have amy smith ms smith whenever you're writing yes thank you amy smith worcester township i just wanted to comment on a couple things um that were discussed this evening i want

171to thank uh miss purdue and miss drummond for outlining how the process for the dei committees were formed and and all of that information that was a lot of information i want to thank the district for being so thorough in providing that information over email and with the meeting that was led by the leadership team in the district by dr mangano and the staff that were selected to help with this initiative you know since the board voted back in july to create a dei office and to get this process rolling i feel as though it has been very transparent what the process is any questions i've had have been answered and i am extremely grateful for that and to see the progress that has been made as a member of the public dei task force

172which is a non-profit here in india in the area i am grateful that there was an opportunity for people to apply to be on the district committee i know that we have members who applied that were not selected and and i recognized that um there were over 80 applicants so i think it's great that there's so many members of the community that are interested and i would just encourage um anyone who's interested in the private non-profit to follow its facebook page and its social media channels so that you know what it's about and um i wanted to comment and thank uh dr angstadt for the specific comments that she made during the presentation about the reach program and the stress on the fact that the students are able to stay in their schools within their

173schools to receive that treatment because it definitely is important for inclusion and shows that you know we're having these conversations um in multiple areas of the district so i thank you for that and i also want to thank leadership from the top of the district down to community members who are interested in this initiative to make sure that we are being equitable across the board for students and also that we're trying to destigmatize um the mental mental health care that's that's hugely important to me as well and i also want to thank the board for being agile to bring up high school graduation this evening so that the hundreds of families who have graduating seniors who you know these kids have missed a lot this past year uh that we're moving that forward so that

174they can they can get an answer on on what things are going to look like i'm grateful for that as well and i just want to say a general thank you uh for everyone being open to communicating whether it's about um you know what's been going on in the pandemic i feel like these past few weeks there's been a lot of really good communication coming out from the district that has been incredibly helpful for me with deciding if my kids were going back to school or not and just what the rest of the year is going to look like so i want to thank you for that as well that's it thank you miss smith uh next i have dr janine darby okay you're in hello hi can you hear me okay yes i can

175okay perfect um hello i'm dr jeannine darby resident of lower providence i'm speaking today as a matthackton parent and as the president of the di task force which is a 501 3c non-profit organization which was formed over the summer due to the needs of our methactin community we are grateful that people from every area of the district from leaders to parents to students to staff have joined the efforts i thank you for meeting with the members of the community these past nine months to listen to our concerns and for participating in genuine dialogue with everyone that has wished to contribute to the conversation and i'll repeat that again thank you for participating in genuine dialogue with everyone that has wished to contribute to the conversation i'm excited that my facton school district has implemented a

176dii office a leadership team and currently undergoing an equity assessment this is crucial for our schools and community to make sure all students and families voices are heard and feel a sense of belonging here in the mcbackman school district thank you for the comprehensive update of the dei committee for the community during these public meetings i hope for continued transparency so that members of the public who want to be engaged who want to be engaged have the opportunity to participate we understand the district is at the beginning of the dei process it will take time for us us as the math acting community to educate ourselves i'm just going to repeat this again to educate ourselves remain open to learning and to create a truly equitable and inclusive experience for all students and their families

177lastly thank you for allowing the dei task force which is a non-profit organization and its members to be involved with the mcdocton school district by providing suggestions and guidance in regards to dei issues our mission is to promote diversity in the matthackton community through support and development of equity and inclusion practices that will eliminate discrimination and ignorance in our schools and community we look forward to continuing our relationship with the school district and administration to make sure our community is the safe uplifting and welcoming place for all for those that still do not understand what the dei task force is i'm open to discussion about the dea task force we are open for participation and for more active members and feel free to email me at dei task force 2020 at gmail.com or join our

178facebook page at dei task force and this weekend we're having a public community conversation um at 10 o'clock all right and that's it thank you thank you dr darby um and with that that is the conclusion of our um speakers for courtesy of the floor this evening um does anyone from the board have any comments before we adjourn mr navarette yeah just to address a couple of the questions that were out there um mr anders asked about the alder for auction it did conclude i believe it was a day or two after we had our last property committee meeting so we'll cover that um in uh what's the next month april uh in april's property committee meeting and then i assume we'll have a report back to the board on the outcome of that um

179there's a comment made about full day kindergarten um and the brevity of meetings i think it's worth noting that more than a year ago we got a fairly extensive um presentation from dr zerby and dr euchre this has been a point of discussion with this board for years um i guess similar to uh things like arrowhead um regarding the confusion or i guess the perceived confusion about the ei as dr darby said those are there are two very separate groups um i have had the pleasure of attending a handful of those uh saturday morning meetings and i'll have to say that uh they are they are inspiring um they are difficult um and they have been educational um [Music] this is not an easy topic um and i think what our district is undertaking here

180is uh is extremely valuable in the effort to um create the right type of environment that we want to create for all of our students and our community make no mistake this is a this is an extremely important effort that we are undertaking um and i'm happy to be a part of it it's critical that we listen to all stakeholders in that process just as we have board members that attend meetings of the uh of the sca of local athletic organizations um clubs this is part of the process this is part of being a leader is going out there in the community and listening um actively uh to what our community members have to say uh and and and bringing that back to our board and our district and our administration and leading change so

181thank you mr navarrette any other comments from the board miss cancro no i just wanted to just let you know that in reach when we established in 2018 we had this plan to really be able to reach all the children not we started with the grants that dr angstad had started with um and then the full day kindergarten i looked back and the dates that we've been working on this because it always comes back june 1st of 2018 january 15th of 2019 you know uh february 21st the 20th then october 20th and then march 19th these have been extensive so just know that we're reaching all that um all these things have been planned for multiple years trying to improve as doctors are being stated in our plan and the public has pushed and pushed

182and we we are addressing the rankings like you can see and there is the task force with the superintendent that will be much more specific as he rolls out with the action plans for that and then the other thing that i would say is dr walsh if we could go into an extension at education committee meeting about the k through four report cards uh maybe we could go through that and address those areas if possible have a discussion on that on the agenda thank you miss cancro anyone else miss purdue i do just have one small update um in reference to dei and i know we said we have a committee of about 30 something members with different stakeholders in our community and i know not every member that applied is on one of those

183committees but there will be plenty of opportunities for all of us in the community to participate whether it's in the equity order that will happen and then as we get through the equity audit based on where we live within the scope of dai there will be more to come and many more people parents students and teachers will be able to participate so we'll definitely have more work to come this is just the beginning part of it and i i can't imagine it being the end with dei is the continuous process continuous improvement and it is it really will serve to become a way of doing things and we will continue the effort and most people will get a chance to participate thank you miss purdue that's an excellent point dei is really the work of

184all of us so whether you're on a committee or not i think it's incumbent upon every one of us to be doing the work of the dei um in in every day um do we have any other comments i just wanted to um to also reiterate some of the clarifications i guess around the dei um committee in the the work of the district versus the dei task force that is a private nonprofit um and i think that there are similarities i think as mr navarrete you mentioned um much like we have a special education alliance and we have members of the board that participate in in committees on special education as part of their board work and there are board members who are part of the special education alliance and and i think that part

185of the confusion is that dei as a field of inquiry as a field of study as a field of of work is new and it's it can be unfamiliar to a lot of people especially those who have not been personally impacted by issues around diversity equity and inclusion so i think it's something that we'll all be hearing more and more about and learning more about and i appreciate that we have members of our community who are willing to do the work to guide us through it so with that i guess if we don't have anything else mr mcginnis motion to adjourn is there a second i see it i see so with that i will say meeting adjourned thank you everyone have a good night