09-03-2020 Methacton School District Special Meeting of the Board

001okay we can begin okay thank you dr zurby i'd like to call to order the september 3rd 2020 special meeting of the matthachton school district board of directors please rise for the pledge of allegiance bear with me one second bear with me i'm sorry some reason the presentation didn't get in there okay now i got it that should work i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay the public is hereby advised of the audio and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcasting an executive session of the board was held virtually before this meeting on september 3rd 2020 for matters of personnel involving contract negotiations with the matthackton education

002association the need to conduct this board meeting in a virtual environment the board of directors required members of the public wanting to make comments on agenda items i'm sorry not on agenda it was like during courtesy of the floor to pre-register by five o'clock today by way of attendance we'll do um a roll call miss cancro here miss drummond here miss hull here mr mcginnis sorry about that guys i have seven technical difficulties i'm here yes okay i was gonna say i could see you no i was joining the wrong meeting my apologies it's okay mr neverett here miss purdue here miss reese here mr winners here all right that's everyone um so uh madam president just bear with me one second i i the solicitor is having trouble getting in on the call so

003i need to work through this with her just bear with me one second okay apologize for the delay sorry about that no worries we're happy to have you here sharon okay so um i guess that the only order of business for this evening is um the presentation from dr zerby and subsequent discussion yes thank you madam president uh this evening i'm going to uh uh or actually dr lannis and i are going to present uh some information to the board and the public but before i get started my goal here this evening is to update everyone on where we stand with the start of school specifically with the distribution of technology devices but before i begin and i'll be sharing a summary of the matter uh the current status and the actions taken and our

004plan forward but in addition i will be sharing how we are impacted by things out of our control but also at the same time i will be telling you how we could have done things uh you know better i admit uh this is not the situation that i wanted for the start of the school year nor i'm sure this is not what the board wanted and it's certainly not what our parents want however let us not forget that we are in an unusual time we're certainly in a pandemic time and and these these times have required and given us unusual challenges i'm here to communicate our status to share a little bit about what you may already know in terms of some of my previous communications but also to elaborate on some specifics that you

005can best hear about the tremendous effort towards addressing this matter and i i hope they have some some good news as well or or at least better news than than what has been previously committed or communicated i think you know similar to each of our own uh personal situations our own work or just about everything around us right now uh there are challenges and as such i think most of us we we simply recognize them and we uh uh you know while we are frustrated by them we certainly decide to move forward we work together with others and we adapt so tonight i'm going to present on my screen and as you can see uh we're gonna talk we're gonna have a summary of uh you know what led us to this conversation here this

006evening uh we're gonna talk about the current delivery status uh some of the actions that took place uh i'm going to talk about the execution of some of the work that we were in control of and could have done better and certainly i want to you know elaborate on that uh to quite a bit of extent and then but most importantly i want to talk about our path forward and i think uh that's the the goal for the board here this evening is is really talking about the path forward and staying on target with uh moving forward in the school year so um i asked dr landis if she wouldn't mind taking over the summary of the issue dr landis thank you very much for having me tonight i so the summary of the issue

007uh in conjunction with our budget in the spring we ordered 1020 devices all the way back in april uh we again ordered another 435 devices when it was decided that we would be one-to-one grades two through twelve uh the board voted again then on july 28th for us to go virtual all the way down to kindergarten along the way we were continuously trying to take an inventory of the equipment that we had we were going out to schools and bringing as much home as home to the office here as we could to try to finalize our numbers on the 11th of august we were told that we could expect the orders to come in before september for august 17 and then we were notified on the 12th that the entire order was being delayed until

008sometime in september we started sending notifications out to the families then on august 14th we presented the issue at both of the meetings as you can see we ordered an additional 200 devices to try to offset the inventory that we had here to be able to go into a one-to-one k through 12. and then as an answer to uh some of the increased enrollments in some of the grades we ordered another 250 units at the end of august in a short-term lease and that was because we discovered that half of the tablets that we had ordered for first grade were going to be delayed until october november so this short-term lease is a three-month lease on chromebooks that we were able to get so that we can make sure that everybody is one-to-one until that

009last piece of the order comes in and then we can do a trade-out and get the lease back to the leaser it was a way to sort of put a bandage on what we knew was going to be a gap in the number of units that we needed um we have been in constant contact with our supplier and he has told us numerous times that there are several districts in the area um anyone who ordered this past spring uh has is in the same sorts of situations that we are if they weren't already one-to-one so schools that were one-to-one already obviously had that equipment in their buildings to be able to distribute we unfortunately were not in that situation we were working out of carts so we had uh fewer devices on hand and then

010uh part of the the rest of the summary of the issue is is really about some of the execution and the notice uh and i'll be talking about that in a little more specifics as we go into the next couple slides but the current delivery status um and and they're ordered based on the uh the current arrival of time so it's important it's important to recall that um while dr lannis has mentioned that we've been in contact with our our supplier for uh you know throughout this whole process it's critical that you you recognize that um you know at one point we were talking about the end of september uh where we'd be receiving uh these devices uh while this is not uh you know us you know you know they're not in our hands

011in totality before uh september 8th as we're starting school uh you know having them at the at the latest uh by 9 you know is is is bad but but certainly not as bad as is the end of the month and so i i just want to you know share that as a you know a potential positive where there are districts that you know are our supplier uh is working with that aren't seeing devices till january um and and and while it may appear uh by uh you know people's imagination and and emails that they receive that there's there's other suppliers out there that seemingly have you know thousands upon thousands of devices ready for schools uh a lot of those leads uh you know turn up to be uh empty in terms of uh

012you know being able to to provide equipment that's adequate enough to you know be in the hands of our students and be able to uh man be able to take the software that we have so i just want to talk about this delivery status as you can see uh part of our order has already been received uh on on 831. uh our second delivery of 250 units uh is is scheduled to be delivered on 910 uh which we believe that within within about a day a day and a half we should be able to have uh most of those units uh distributed to uh to families uh in terms of uh delivery three which is our largest uh delivery um it looks like those units will be on premise here in the factory by 9

01314. uh though they at at the very least a majority of those could be actually ship a day or two in advance of the 14th and be in our possession so that we can start issuing even the weekend before the 14th um and we're still working with the with the supplier in order to make those arrangements however uh we think that if everything was dropped onto 14 for us we could have most of that inventory turned around uh creating you know shifts you know 7 a.m through you know 9 10 8 10 p.m uh evening uh for the the following next two nights and distribute most of that uh uh inventory but certainly uh i i see no reason why by the end of the week of 9 14 we wouldn't have all of our

014uh our students devices in in families hands and then the delivery number four is 230 units that uh is is is subject to the larger unit from july 7th as dr landis mentioned on the previous slide and those units uh are still destined for possibly october november but we know that the 250 units that are in delivery ii which are on the short-term lease i will be able to uh you know keep the quantity high enough to be able to meet all of our family's needs dr lannis you want to you go into actions to date please absolutely so as you can see from the bloated list um we our first distribution was really aimed to try to get the chromebooks into the hands of the grade levels that have historically been one-to-one because of

015the curriculum and instruction that was already in place so that was trying to get them back into the hands of our 7th and 10th graders the 10th graders who had turned them in as 9th graders and then the 7th graders who were new to the one-to-one experience after that we then had enough ipads in our inventory to be able to cover the number of kindergartens that were projected to enroll so we began with the distribution of those because we knew we had all of those on hand uh and then we have we've actually had over 80 chromebooks returned by the community in order to make them available to other families when that appeal went out we have been in contact with vendors who have been in contact with us and we have reached out to

016them to try to look for other resources to temporarily fill the gap which is where that short-term lease came from we've been responding as quickly as we can to communications from parents concerning their needs and as a result we actually created a needs assessment survey in order to be able to get concrete data in terms of how many units we needed to get out and to whom who had the greatest needs we've been in touch with the iu to try to determine other options that they might be aware of for us to try we've received donations from local businesses and individuals again we've been in contact daily with our supplier trying to figure out um what we can do to speed this up uh in and in addition to trying to get a part of

017it you know 1200 landing here at once we can't possibly get that all in one day anyway so if they're working through 1200 if they can get them to us in batches it helps them and it helps us um and then again we continue to try to provide communications to the families for distributions i know there were many phone calls made today to different targeted groups based on the data that we had from the surveys that were in progress and we continued all the way up until those survey closings in order to try to schedule those people as quickly as we could to make sure that there was one device in each house at the start of the school year which is obviously tuesday thanks dr landis uh the next slide i want to talk

018about execution and and certainly um you know when when uh when challenging events occur um you know the most important thing to to do well the two most important things to do are to a uh you know adjust quickly and to take advantage of the available time and resources to best address the situation but i think it's also important to recognize that you know where some of the where some of the flaws or challenges may have begun and how we could have done things better and and i and i think the first one uh and maybe i don't have all of them on here but i can tell you that the communication that we sent out uh on 8 28 was probably the beginning of of the greater uh you know challenge and i'll talk

019about that because uh it was put together with the intent to communicate with our free and reduced families specifically so when we knew that a we had a limited number of machines uh to best address the the uh the need uh we started working from from that perspective uh which is a common perspective that that we we and the way we address certain things in the district but it's important to to know that that communication uh in and of itself uh could have been much clearer and then the distribution of it uh just cr became a challenge where it led to families who weren't on the free and reduced list uh signing up to take an appointment for the uh distribution of available chromebooks and then unfortunately being turned away by uh our department as

020a result of that and and that and that failure in communication you know led to the frustration of our parents and and certainly that's the last thing that i wanted to see happen i know that's the last thing that uh you know we we ever want to do um we consider our parents our customers and uh as well as our students but we gotta i gotta just say that i'm sorry that that that occurred because that that in in and of itself that communication uh spurred a lot of frustration by parents and and i've i've received emails related to that i'm certain that members of the board have received communications related to that as well and i can't say uh uh enough how sorry i am that that that that communication led to the frustration

021uh because you know these are challenging times and the last thing i wanted to do was uh you know create an additional challenge but if i if i take a look back at all our communications in general uh certainly uh you know i look back at you know where we we talked and had public meetings with the board and we had uh you know had a communication that that notified the public back on the 14th i i certainly could have had uh more frequent communications uh related to that and uh you know those those time frame from the 14th to to to today could have could uh you know if it was it was more clearly understood exactly what the challenge was by our families they could have taken actions on themselves and kind of

022could have addressed some of this as well so i i i want to apologize for that [Music] and uh i think uh lastly you know some of the actions if if you uh recall what dr landis went over uh you know those some of those could have been done you know sooner than than we than we had done them um but i can tell you that you know uh if if we would have just done things a little bit different uh we could have had a different result from the uh at least on the frustration level that from our parents but also we wouldn't be here at the nth hour you know rushing uh these last couple days before school so again i i think uh you know myself and dr landis recognize that and

023and we apologize uh for that um but but i can tell you that while while i could have done and dr landis and her team could have done you know things differently and better we could have communicated better i i really i really can't say that um you know having that to be perfect would have you know changed uh a challenging situation to be perfect and with that said uh you know we're still a number of units short from what we tried to do is make sure that uh you know we had a a device for every a child but you know one of the things that i guess is is probably critical to what the this board should understand and what our public should understand you know we we we made a special effort

024the board approved a special effort for us to go out and get a unit for every child that's not happening in every district and uh and while districts that are are going all online they aren't they are not providing devices for every every child um some districts are uh some districts are actually in the same boat that we are that they are are working to provide a device for for every child uh but have uh supply and demand uh issues so i think the the the the fair uh assessment of where we stand is we we've done a lot of hard work we could have been smarter with the things that that we did and we could have been more communicative but i don't know if it would have changed you know the overall status

025of being short than the amount that was short we're just not short you know a few devices but i think that i think the most important part is kind of where we are in terms of the updated action plan and i i really just want to talk about this in terms of the survey that dr landis had put together and put out but as you can see we we distributed communications to grades one through six and really it just to make sure the board and the public understand you know that's the group of of students that we're talking about so this conversation this evening uh doesn't have uh an impact uh on seven through twelve uh it doesn't have an impact on kay uh the devices are are there for those children and have been

026distributed uh those families have been communicated with uh and many of them as dr lance had shared have turned their devices in to help other families out so i just want to thank all of them but we've had we've had 186 families communicated with uh now that again that doesn't that doesn't mean the the the exact number of students i just want to be clear on that that's that's the families where the students in one through six lie we had we had 1044 respondents of that of those respondents 219 said that they have no device in the home and that they need a device and i'm i'm and i'm pleased to say that this has been our priority to make sure that there is a device in every home so that uh every child can

027access uh the curriculum at the start of the school year and by the end of the day friday we are hopeful that uh well we have the inventory to do it we are just hopeful that we can do all the exchanges by that time and if not uh we'll go into the weekend or we'll do whatever is necessary uh we've delivered some to the two homes that weren't able to uh be able to come on site so we're making every effort uh to ensure that we meet the needs of those of those 219 that provided that notice to us but we haven't forgotten the fact that there are our families also 299 that responded saying that while they have a device and a home uh they are going to need more devices because otherwise they

028may have to share a device or there's more children than there are devices and they would have to share we also believe that uh we'll be able to address uh many of those but not all of them in in our in our distribution process as you can see also there's 446 that have deferred until our order arrives we appreciate those families and children uh with their feedback on that and then there's also 80 that have deferred for the entire year um so that's and that's as of 3 30 today the survey was distributed twice to the families uh as dr landis mentioned we made numerous phone calls if there were any bounce backs of emails those people were called and we we made extra special efforts to make sure that everybody was communicated with uh

029and that's still that's actually still going on so uh you know it's not we're not complete on that uh we have uh we have the scheduling for the device distribution for families and the remaining needs categories and those are with the ones that need uh more devices the 299. uh we're looking to do that on on saturday uh possibly monday or uh or tuesday uh it depends on on the available inventory after everything's done but that's what we're looking to be able to do uh we're also making sure that uh we ramp up our communications and thank families that have handed in their devices for others to use who keep the board apprised and communicate with our instructors and office staff about about attendance because when we talk about attendance um a lot of uh

030a lot of the families for example in the uh needing more devices categories you know they're saying their need to share device so as you as you all know uh we created an online structure that that mimics our daily uh schedule and with that daily schedule there are our scheduled times for students to you know log on and and so forth but we also know that uh of those two of those 299 some may not be able to log on at the same time as as other as as originally uh prescribed but we've already instructed as part of our uh framework for teaching in the virtual environment our teachers know that if a child is absent they will be videotaping the the live instruction of of the teacher and being and will be posting uh

031that uh content on their in their google classroom as well as the assignments so this gives an opportunity for children who are sharing devices in a home uh to be able to access the instruction access the the content uh in in those particular classrooms and uh that is that is our update uh and i'll i'll be uh uh happy to entertain any questions from members of the board miss aubry larcenise oh um just a few clarifying questions to start can families still return devices i know we had originally said today at four was the cut-off but i'm assuming we are our doors are still open great yes um so for you know the five six hundred people that are watching this right now if you have a device issued by the district that you do

032not absolutely need right now we would love to have it back um to to help some of these families in need you mentioned something about donations what kind of donations have we gotten from um businesses and community so we've received a donation of i believe 30 uh computers from alan myers uh and and i believe there were a few uh individuals that have also donated uh computers here and there i i don't have i apologize i don't have the the names of those individuals that's fine i've had um some groups in the community approached me about donations but i believe their donations were monetary which i as i understand it is not the issue at hand this is not about a lack of funds this is about a lack of devices so um if if

033an organization out there has devices available that they'd like to donate are we still taking donations absolutely okay so they should reach out to um i guess um sorry dr land just to put you on the spot but we'll have them reach out to you then okay thank you um when these shipments do come in um i encourage you dr zurby to lean on the board to help um just as the board mobilized for distributing food to families in need over the summer and we have board members who are mobilizing to help with distribution of devices tomorrow as these shipments come in please please let us know um i know that there are nine of us and we um have varying degrees of flexibility in our schedules and um you know if if it's at

034all possible i know that that we can be there so um and i appreciate that so that's kind of the the end of the the positive that i have here um i want to call out a few things so in the course of your presentation um you're referring to a lot of this as challenges and and i have to say i take exception to that because what is a challenge is the pandemic that we are living through what is a challenge is the supply chain issue um but the problem that we're really facing right now is not a challenge it's a failure we the the district response to this situation was a failure was not a challenge um one of the things that i've always told my kids is that it's not about what happens

035to you in life but it's how you respond to it because we don't have a lot of control over the things that happen to us um how we responded to this challenge is the problem the the communication that went out on august 28th um that that was you know forwarded and appropriately shared where it wasn't supposed to that's not where the problem occurred our problem where where this started to unravel was the delay in the device recall process on august 12th when we found out that those devices that we thought we would have for the start of school when we knew they wouldn't be in hand we should have immediately shifted to problem solving mode it's to me it sounds like two weeks passed before we shifted into that mode and that that is a

036problem the device recall process should have started immediately um so just like you know we tell our kids that it's not about what happens to you in life it's about how you respond to it how we respond from here as a community will also be a big factor in how well we we can succeed um i know that this is not an ideal situation for many of our families parents we have a responsibility to create a positive environment for our children here i i know this is hard i i don't i don't want to minimize this at all um i know this is not ideal on so many levels and for so many reasons the more that we can keep a positive perspective on this this is a difficult time but we learn by going

037through difficult things we we can do hard things and we can do better i'm just going to leave it at that i'll i'll leave it to the rest of the board miss purdue so i just want to say and i think him you touched on this i i'm very very disappointed with the administration i'm just going to say that just honestly hearing this and knowing i think we put in the um in the presentation that we were notified by a supplier that we would not have these devices in the middle of august right and if we were looking into options or alternatives we had a board meeting on the 25th and i know i spoke briefly to it but i mentioned at that meeting that during one of those virtual education um presentations the device

038was a hot topic and it was something that we needed to think outside of the box and look into how we would resolve it i think what we did administration and whether people want to blame it on the board or whatever i think we're all in one and i like to say this all falls on us we feel when we think about the students and their families as our customers we feel them because now we run into the issue of families not having what they need to start the school year off properly and to me i think it's very serious and i take this to the same as thin as not having test books ready when we start this is one of the main reasons why we moved to the virtual environment in the first

039place or all virtual because we did not have what we needed to open our school and i don't think we can operate like this as an administration it's unacceptable we need to have things highlighted and we need to work in a timely manner we need to be able to pivot when things are not working right one of the things that i struggle with is do we constantly order devices from the same supplier and i know you mentioned that there's leads and other people may reach out and they may not get it and they may not have what we need specifically but what do we do specifically not following what we heard from other administrations or other um other districts but what the messaging did do we try to look for an alternative supplier to get

040these devices it's one of my first questions yes we listed in the actions that we uh have there we looked at alternative suppliers and they were not able to supply us did we actually look to actually acquire the um devices or do we just look best just based on look and i i'm asking because i don't feel like we actually pursued it to actually purchase these devices yes we you're correct we did not purchase devices what we did is we secured from an alternative vendor 250 units on a short-term lease knowing that one of the original uh orders that we put in would not be in on time and that that short-term lease now is uh targeted to be in on the 10th of september compared to october what was the decision with um i

041guess the reason for the administration not pursuing with the appeal or the appeal made out to request devices to come in or actually sending the survey out i think that's something that we did really well in march where we surveyed i mean the whole weekend we reached out to families to see what they needed why didn't we move that quickly with this did we not see there was a sense of urgency also no it wasn't a matter of sense of urgency i i can't call recall exactly but i i can't disagree with the fact that we should have put the survey out sooner by all means that's that's not a i i've no um i can i can't tell you why we didn't do that but we should have i just have two more questions

042so do all students in kindergarten and seven through 12 have the devices that they need as of now as of this evening uh dr landis they continue to come to our doors uh to pick up their devices and when they get here we're supplying them with what we what we have so um high school students uh seventh eighth grade you know we have new students coming to the door they're being provided with devices and any kindergartner we do have quite a few that have not been picked up um and i don't know if it's because they're going to be deferring you know that they've they have other options or whatever but um we continue to give them out to those individuals yes and i guess out of the 219 families that have indicated that they

043have no device at all what are the number of devices that we have available for those 219 do we have any available for that group because i know we said that we we have distributions scheduled for the next coming days do we have those devices in hand just to serve those families that have no devices at all we do and we do and so we'll be able to cover the 219 and cover some of the 299 that were asking for additional devices but but as as as we as we just so we can't give you a definite number on the 299 of how many will be able to address only because uh we are still receiving inventory we are still receiving updates on the uh on the survey and we still have families deferring and

044we still have families bringing um you know equipment in so we're able to potentially as as time goes on towards the eighth we may be able to even provide a greater amount to those 299 that need an extra device and just one last question do we know where these devices are coming from the the major the major shipment is that is that what you're asking for yeah it's in yes we do uh ask mr bricker you have probably the most accurate information on that so the units shipped from california they're on their way to julia indiana and then they'll be transferred over to new jersey where they'll then get their white glove and then be delivered to the school district currently they're on their way to indiana still so you have tracking information on those

045units the big one is that right correct okay thank you any other questions uh comments from the board ms drummond um yeah i have a couple um i just want to make sure um i'm wondering how these surveys and and these needs assessments have been communicated to families for whom english is not their first language dr landis uh i believe very great question um i know that we have gotten phone calls into different areas of our office space here at the administration building uh i know that a family today that we were working with uh was one of the 219 and we were able to communicate with a member of that family so that they were able to come in and get the device that they needed so we are taking them uh one at

046a time as we can and we are we're doing our best to get them into the hands of the people that need them okay i'd like to ask for a push from the administration to ensure that all these families are reached with the proper surveys and and you know make sure that all their needs are being met because they might not you know read or receive these surveys if they're written in english and english is not the first language of the parents so i want to see administration do that and then my second question is um is there a plan if a classroom is ending up in in a place where there's a mix of synchronous and acer synchronous learners in the classroom is have the teachers been asked or has there been time to

047develop a plan um for those students for the first couple days of school to make sure that all each of those students feels welcomed feels like they're a part of that class they're you know that's their first day of school um i i just want to make sure that no matter the modality of of the learning of the student that they all feel like they're a part of something on september 8th yeah absolutely that's been a discussion with our pupil services and curriculum office and we uh you know so so for example that is been been discussed among our elementary uh uh principles as well our teachers have been reaching out to families over the last few days to try to also do their own assessments of who has devices and other things that that

048families need so they've made those connections the most i guess one of the the more challenging uh aspects of of any start of the school whether it's a brick and mortar or an online uh environment is that the uh the the the start of the start of the school uh you know not every child that we expect to show up uh you know shows up you know some families move away uh you know uh some uh you know for whatever reason don't show up and we have to uh you know you know go and find some of those families and and uh reassert them to you know the school environment so i don't see that being much different than being in in this situation and if we find that those families uh uh need uh

049technology assistance uh we'll we'll tr we'll address them uh at that time as well so it's another avenue uh for kind of like a check and balance is right when school starts like who's having issues who's checking in and making sure that all of our children are uh are accounted for okay i'm i'm just not talking about accounted for though i'm talking about me being made to feel welcome being mean to feel a part of this i just wanted a special emphasis i think needs to happen with this i don't want you know i i just want to ensure that all the kids i mean this is a huge time for you know the children they're meeting new classmates they're meeting new teacher it's new curriculum and everything and so over and above accounting i

050want to make sure that it's welcoming that it's included that you know children feel you know a part of this school i'll make certain that we speak with our building principles to have that conversation with our teachers while they'll be able to provide uh you know video of some of those initial activities i believe it's only fair uh and reasonable to suggest that they may need to revisit some of those things once we get our full order in of computers and they're distributed because some of those activities will help uh reintroduce not only students within that class but others that may not have been able to be there consistently uh synchronously i mean at this meeting at the same time thank you other comments questions from the board i guess sorry um you covered briefly

051the attendance procedures you came here okay you um covered attendance procedures briefly could you go on how that would be i i think what you're saying is can i cover the attendance procedures and and uh certainly um so we we did issue a communication to all of our families about uh the attendance and how attendance online based on uh the rules established by the pennsylvania department of education are are needed it is it is important that uh students that uh will be that that may not be able to uh meet at the exact same time similar to back in the uh in the in the fall students that complete the work assigned uh by the teacher uh will be counted as being in attendance for the for those that period of time for which until

052all students have been distributed the devices as we have planned other questions from members of the board i just uh have a comment very well um i don't really have any questions i i think you've answered all of my questions and the board has asked some good questions i think i just wanted to comment um i think because i'm the teacher in the group um i don't like to hear the word failure um so i'm not trying to sugarcoat anything but i do look at this a little bit differently and first and foremost um we did speak about this at the august 19th education um meeting and that's probably the next day should have been when a communication went out so i do acknowledge that and i do acknowledge people's frustrations and their anger i'm

053not suggesting they don't have a right to that but i do sincerely want to thank uh miss landis and her technology team and everyone else who was at that farina center because when i went to pick up when i went to drop off it didn't matter if it was hot raining they were out there with smiles and being helpful and i you mentioned thanking the families i want to thank the families um who returned their uh devices very very much i want to thank the families who have shown patience and grace um with this difficult situation and the reason i'm making these comments is because on tuesday when i go to meet my students i have my first day planned out the first thing i plan to talk to them about is for them not

054to worry about the mistakes that they're going to make with their technology and if something happens with it or doesn't happen with it or they get logged off somehow i want to make i'm making that very clear to my students so although i understand people's anger i did ask my children not to be home this evening because i did not want them to hear some of the things that i have heard from some people um and i'm not taking away from their anger but i i did want to say that because i don't want children in our community to hear that because there are people working hard and people make mistakes and everybody is exhausted from this situation and i don't want it worse for the children having said technology that things don't always work

055i apologize that i had to leave briefly or turn off my camera briefly the lightning was freaking out my dogs um i'm sure somebody will spout how about she left she doesn't care she's not committed nobody at my facton is not committed to the education of children so i apologize as a board member that things are not perfect and i appreciate dr zerby apologizing for administration um and it sounds like we are working on a very good solution even though it's late so um i'll stop and um thank also the teachers for not only their countless hours getting ready for tuesday but also having i'm sure to modify things here and there due to the situation um i will add that i work in a different district and they did not offer computers to everybody

056that's not wrong they communicated that they are offering it to those who need it maybe we shouldn't have offered it to everybody and should have adjusted earlier but every district's handling this a little bit differently and every single district has its issues where i'm teaching we're using a brand new learning system and people don't know how to use it but we'll work it out and on tuesday we're going to welcome those children back to school with a smile and with everything that we can do so thank you to the teachers um and thank you to admin and uh to those who are angry we apologize thank you ms reese uh any other uh comments or questions from members of the board mr winners uh just real quick one uh specific question is there any issues

057dr landis around uh the different types of devices we're doing with cyber security i mean we have uh i imagine there's some protocols in the devices that we generally use with the with the chromebooks is there any since we're trying to find every type of solution is i assume there's no uh additional problem that we're creating by uh breadth of devices that we possibly could be using well that is always something that we need to be considering when we're taking donations um you know the equipment obviously needs to be able to uh interface as a chrome browser that's why we use chromebooks because they are not really a security risk because they don't have they're not connected to our network in the same way that a laptop would be i know that everyone would like

058us to exhaust every possibility down to desktops that are in our district but each one of those adds a layer of complexity that becomes very very challenging when we try to put those into the homes of our of our families so um because we're using chromebooks uh a district chromebook uh all of the security still comes back to our district so that they are filtered the same way they would be if those students were still in our schools um so there isn't an additional security risk at this time but again as we continue to try to exhaust everything that we have certainly it's one of the things that we need to continue to keep in mind okay no certainly with some of the activities that have happened in school districts around us something to keep

059uh keep in front of us um i think the question uh liz asked about the the grades one through six and the families the up to 299 sounds like much less than or a portion less of that um with children of more than once uh needing more than one device in the house so is there any discussion about what is the best way for families to handle that situation if they do not have um [Music] to they have two students and they only have one device and we're not able to provide on tuesday the second device so what what is the backup plan related to if they're not able to get online at 8 yeah that's that's part of our communication that would that would follow our our conversation here this evening um you know

060we have a number of things to make sure that we apprise our families of uh you know the attendance part being one and the second one being uh the the best approach um there's a there's a number of variables associated with all that so it's not like we know that all these families have uh you know a second grader and a seventh grader and we know how to tell them how to do that schedule um but we're we're looking to certainly suggest uh how to uh leverage the the best and most appropriate time uh to to have either child or children depending on what on how many multiples there are online okay um i just that from a comment perspective uh and the did so i can apologize i ran for the school board we

061have a problem i'm ultimately responsible for helping uh solve that problem so i will take that um but also i think as as somebody's in industrial sales when you take an order um and the cut and we decided that we were going to deliver something we over promised and uh so we over promised something and we have now have to pay the price a little bit uh with some fairly uh we've recovered in some ways in the last week or two and hopefully by the end of september more or less we're there already but i i think it's really important to understand that the reason that we over promised was to provide equal access to everybody with the same device so that our staff could deliver in a similar manner across the entire district so

062it was meant to be the reason that the board and the district and the administration had advocated for more devices beyond seventh to twelfth grade was for the right reasons so that we could deliver it in the right way where everything was more equitable and more consistent better for the staff easier and to deliver a better solution than than what we delivered in the spring i think the spirit of what we were trying to do and what dr zerby and his administration team have tried to do in the remarkable supply circumstances that we are in um i think people should not in sight of that and not necessarily that gets you a get out of jail for free crier card but i think the people need to level set on what the purpose was and

063why we're doing it and the really in some ways a remarkable approach to try to do something in a relatively short period of time um we'll we'll see how that comment goes over but i i truly believe it oh well said mr winters thank you uh ms cancro um so i just want to talk a little bit just about some of the solutions going forward just more explanation to everyone some of the things when you look at the focus of first grade through sixth grade what i do think is wonderful is that when we're doing the platform of zoom you have the ability to call in as well so what could be some great suggestions is that when they're doing morning meeting that they do a call-in on their phone through their cell phone of

064their parents to do the call and zoom morning meeting and then every synchronous although we call it asynchronous asynchronous is meaning that you can watch the live teaching that happens at the at a different time so that the child will actually hear the lesson so these kids the 299 children that may not have that live stream throughout the day we'll have the ability to create watching the live teaching of that teacher by recording that synchronous material i know the principles and i know the teachers they did wonderful with covet in march where they could do a phone call to introduce themselves i absolutely believe that our team is amazing you've got guidance counselors that are top-notch teachers that will do phone calls guidance councils do phone calls um even the secretary so i think we

065put all hands in greeting them with a phone call their zoom platform that could be into it so they will be able to have full access of the exact education for this week that we are missing their continuous live stream throughout the day so i think there's a clarity that we must say that they will all have access to the education at hand so the eld teachers will absolutely reach out to those students that are targeted that are language learners so remember that also and i even knew that like one of the t one of the teachers put out a call to pick up the packets some of these kids i mean they didn't even pick up the packets on their pickup day so they're still even the families are we're all reaching out to

066those that may have not been reachable so keep that also in mind when they are reachable we're going to make all full effort so i'm all for the solutions we are where we are we are going to make solutions we are delivering it i'm committed tomorrow taking my day off for work and delivering them and i'm also the one that delivered from march the food to these kids we are looking at a committed board and administration and teachers as well so please please refrain from using social media reach out to us and help us with solutions going forward so that's just something i just have to say so thank you thank you miss cancro any other comments uh questions members of the board uh mr navarrete thanks um i think a lot of what i

067wanted to say has already been said tonight um i think the disappointment is palpable i think the reason that people are angry is is understandable the reason people are frustrated is understandable um i don't know that our failure here was so much in in how we ordered materials and certainly there are things in the supply chain that were out of our hands but excuse me the way that the way that we communicated these issues um to our parents and set their expectations for what is already an incredibly uncertain start to school is the biggest failure in here and i think it's important that we as a board hold the administration accountable appropriately for that and that's probably another discussion for another time but um it needs to be said um getting to the actions and

068where we go right now from here of the 299 families that responded that need multiple devices do you have any children that represents roughly i i i i don't know that at this point in time and we certainly the you know the uh the respondent you know based on the on the responses we know who the families are but i can't tell you the number of children that represents all right that's fair um i guess my my next question then has to do with the expedience of how we move forward here um i know tim you talked about these devices coming from california to indiana um then to new jersey do whatever they need to do to get them imaged properly and do the old google white glove service um do we need to do

069we need to expedite the freight on this do we need um have we investigated hot shot in these deliveries right i mean these these are uh these are relatively small you know we should be talking about freight charges in the thousands to low tens of thousands to get these things moved at most i mean um can you talk about what our supplier is doing of david you touched on it to get these moved out more quickly so our supplier originally uh helped us out by escalating our order up ahead of some other orders i did a long-term relationship we've had with them uh they got them all packaged up and ready to send they were sent out for shipping unfortunately as you noted the supply chain is what it is they've had troubles with drivers

070for stocking the rail system's all backed up um so the truck is actually going to julia um illinois i misspoke with indiana sorry um it's right next to indiana though ah it's close you know it's a small map on this tv screen so um so right now that they're on a truck they're headed to in the illinois and then they're gonna turn around from there once they get in that to new jersey we've asked about i mean you know my first instinct is well if we can pay more to get it there to solve this problem would that do anything and how much would that be the answer was you can't throw any amount of money in it that's going to solve the problem it's on a truck it's on its way it's going to

071get there as fast as they can get the drivers and the staff because the freight companies are also short staffed what people do to covet also so it's a matter of what would usually take maybe three four days is taking three four weeks to get here yeah i know i know i know logistics isn't our thing but i mean they do team deliveries and i'm sure you can pay enough it just depends on what the price is um okay uh when i would just i'll just repeat what others said before that as we get these batches um however small these batches need to be if we need to have our um our maintenance guys our custodians um if drew and i need to rent a u-haul and drive over to new jersey and pick these

072things up we will do that um if we need to be there until midnight handing these devices out for the first day of school we will do that um but let's get them let's let's just expedite this as much as we possibly can good uh miss purdue you had a your hand up before i apologize no problem i just want to know have we looked into i guess when i think about the leftover the 299. have we explored the options of actually going out to buy the devices and i just want to put that question out there have we looked at that are you are you referring to uh by buying the devices like at staples or best buy and places like that yeah uh we we we didn't do that directly however uh as

073as dr lannis mentioned in the in the actions taken uh we were in communication with the iu uh who has been doing that work for three other districts in the uh in the county and uh they are not getting anywhere with that particular process um there's there's there's not enough inventory of different models available from from vendors dr zurby i actually did speak with wb mason staples and office depot to our contacts and i was told maybe by november any other questions uh comments uh mr mcginnis yeah i don't want to be that guy that says what everyone else says but i can't echo what miss cancro said more than she already articulated so um the only thing i'd ask uh moving forward is bad news first right uh i can mention it that we

074had some bad news in the middle august and it didn't seem to be relayed immediately so i think we have to have a bad news first mentality because until those uh laptops get into our possession into that u-haul truck that ralph and i are going to rent and drive to new jersey let's not count on them so if anything happens there just make sure that we lead with bad news if there's any bad news so um and i'll go back to what andrea said and uh andrea the emotion in your voice was palpable and uh it's because you're a teacher uh we're getting bad news right now right we've been getting bad news since march and my god it seems like we've been getting bad news for 10 years now so what i'm banking on

075are teachers um uh they're an amazing group of people um and they're gonna come through for us i just know they are but more importantly i'm gonna bank on our kids um what they've been through over the last like i said 10 years seemingly has been tough and it goes from the seniors that my wife and i have that aren't going to be able to play sports all the way down to these kids that have no idea what a pandemic is so i'm banking on them i'm banking on our teachers i'm banking on our principles we got to pull together you know a little bit of a you know bad news and we can kick a rock and we can and moan all we want but it ain't changing so anything that we need to

076do as a community support our kids support our teachers tell me when tell me where tell me how we're going to get it done so that's the attitude i'm going to take and hopefully we can get past this all together but i don't see us not being able to stick together i don't see it working without us all sticking together and i'm talking to everybody right and i may be preaching into a vacuum i may be not getting a lot of you know hoorays or anything that but that's okay i like the sound of my voice sometimes and we got to be able to get this team together pointing in the same direction and right now our teachers are captains our coaches our leaders and whatever they need let's get it to them and all

077come together so that's the speech well said mr mcguinness um other comments questions from members of the board uh ms perdue i'm sorry one last thing and i know i asked this is it possible to ensure that um going forward we have a point of contact available whether it's listed on the district website for these devices right because i know the survey closed out at 5 pm today and there may be some stragglers that maybe didn't get the email about this survey that need device so can we have something available for those that will come out later anyway yes we're going to we're going to put a service desk number in place that we can have managed over the weekend i appreciate that comment so i just want to just sum up clarify one last

078thing so to the best of our knowledge every family that we have been in contact with that said that they need a device in their home has at least one device available to their students so every student to the best of our knowledge will have the ability to log in on tuesday may not be all at the same time but every every family every household has access to a device correct is that correct dr landis that is correct okay um if there are any families that are watching or if anyone knows of any families where this is not the case it's because we aren't aware so those families need to reach out to us as soon as possible um that service desk number you can reach out to dr landis but we need if we

079don't know there's a need we cannot help um so please if you know that you have a neighbor who maybe hasn't been paying attention to these things maybe your your kids have a friend in class that they haven't you you're not sure that they are are following what's going on please let's um work together as a community to make sure that this is happening um dr zerby um i'd like to ask that we get regular updates on on our progress with this um i through tuesday i would want to see um possibly even daily updates as to where we are with devices as i know that this is a very quickly evolving situation um and then once we get school started on tuesday i think maybe then we could move to an as needed as

080information becomes available um but i i want to make sure that um to mr mcginnis's point um bad news first and and really all news at this point related to technology and device availability needs to be communicated out to the board immediately and then subsequently to the public as well consider it done thank you that that ends my presentation then uh for this evening okay thank you dr zurby um so that um the next thing that we have on our agenda then is courtesy of the floor um just as a reminder we did ask people to pre-register to speak during courtesy of the floor um this is an opportunity for members of the public to comment on any matter that could become before the board not necessarily items that were relative this evening however i

081would ask that given the nature of this meeting we try and keep our comments focused primarily on the issue at hand just in the interest of brevity the board also asks that you keep comments limited to four minutes or less and the board may choose to respond to matters that are raised during this portion of the meeting following conclusion of the courtesy of the floor um we have a pretty lengthy list of of speakers for this evening so i'm going to go through the list i'm going to call out the names um if the person that i call is not there when i call them i'm not going to be going back and and waiting for people to rejoin the meeting um we really need to try to wrap this up so i'm going to

082go through our list of registered speakers right now so first on my list i have josh anderson so if mr anderson you could raise your hand so that i can find you in the list of attendees okay i'm not seeing mr anderson in there diana giannis elizabeth gillespie jill nicholson emily espinson mrs in just a second okay you are now in the meeting room you can unmute and speak whenever you're ready hi thank you not having a significant amount of devices seems three days before school starts seems like blatant poor planning um for doctors urban to not even know the exact number of devices needed in households that maybe have one device the multiple learners doesn't seem like it was planned very well not being able to provide equal access to the curriculum in this

083virtual setting is just going to widen the gaps that already exist in our district if children cannot log in on day one they're already behind in numerous reasons especially forming relationships with their peers and with their teachers they're missing introduction activities and imperative relationship building skills that go on these first few days of school academically not having access to tech you are leaving students without timely feedback without access to their teachers throughout the day and without access to the ability to ask questions in a real time providing asynchronous work like packets is absolutely not acceptable it's not giving them access to their teachers it's not giving them the rigor that their classmates are receiving and they're not a viable alternative to live instruction and it's also not consistent with pa law public school students are

084required to have five hours of instructional time a day 900 hours a year pa public school code states that instruction time is defined as time in the school day devoted to instruction and instructional activities under the direction of a certified school employee that last part if it's asynchronous and they're doing it at five o'clock at night it's not what students is that is what students without devices will be missing joining in with tech later on in the year puts these students at a disadvantage they have to learn the lms platforms learn the class virtual meeting norms and learn all the technology that their classmates have been using since the beginning of the year i understand we're in a pandemic things happen the administration has failed to formulate a plan and more importantly failed to clearly

085communicate a plan to the students and the parents in this district an in-person return to school was voted against because we did not have the materials available to start why was a virtual plan approved if there were not enough materials available i have two learners in my class in my house i have a kindergartner and a second grader my kindergartner got his ipad so now i have to choose who gets to log on whose grade is more important these are fundamental years these kids have both learners need the opportunity to log on the access is not the same if it's asynchronous there's no peer interactions they're not learning tech it's just not the same they need to have this ability i am very thankful for all the teachers all that they're doing they are working

086above and beyond what they need to do administration really needs to step up and fix this and allow all of our students to learn at the same rigger and at the same rate thank you mrs next i have brian earnshaw sorry i seem to have lost my participant window okay mr and shaw you're in the meeting whenever you're ready uh thank you um first as a taxpayer i'd like to acknowledge um dr zurby's taking ownership of the issue as part of his presentation tonight and um and unfortunately i i feel bad the way you were uh dressed down by certain members of the board so um going forward hope those matters will be handled in private um i'd also want to comment on the arrowhead project but i'm going to defer those comments other except

087to say that given the number of people i hope on this call everyone can participate in a meeting next tuesday september 8th at 7 where they're going to be the board will be holding that 34 hearing um to discuss the commitment potential commitment of over 50 million dollars of taxpayer funds toward building a new elementary school thank you thank you mr earnshaw next i have kit markle okay mrs markway you're in the room whenever you're ready hi everyone i just wanted to make a few comments as mrs aubry larceny said this is hard and it's hard for everyone and i think we all recognize that and she also said we must learn from our mistakes the mistake of communication is a major issue in the thacton school district and it has been for a long

088time and maybe this is the this is the tipping point where we can change that um one of the things that i wanted to say was that teachers at the elementary level have put together bags of materials and if any of you have picked one of those up you can attest to how long it took us to make those copies to put them together and to organize all of that if the district could commit to getting those bags in students hands before tuesday that would really help us some of the students were unable to pick up their bags i'm asking that the administration commit to delivering them or having another pickup tomorrow because if we can get those bags in our students hands and our students can even log on to a phone i feel

089like we can teach them um i also want to clear up something or say something and that is that i agree that the board is committed and dedicated to the education of our children any facebook posts that may have been misunderstood that is for a discussion not for this meeting but yes board members are dedicated to the education of our children it is unfortunate that our youngest learners will miss out on the devices um someone asked about making sure all the children feel welcome and part of the classroom this will be very very difficult if they cannot attend school synchronously uh how can we move ahead in a positive way communication problem solving working together mr mcginnis i thank you for your confidence in your teachers i have never seen people work harder with less

090resources we will do our best but i want you to know that our administration is asking us to do the impossible thank you thank you mrs markle next i have victor salinas garama okay um amy kenworthy okay mrs kenworthy you are in the meeting whenever you're ready good evening my name is amy kemworthy i'm a third grade teacher at worcester elementary i am trying to stay positive but frankly this meeting was hard to listen to i feel confused about the information shared this evening there were 30 chromebooks at worcester elementary yesterday morning they were just picked up ipads that do not work and that are over six years old and could not be updated were distributed to families without necessary apps and now teachers are fielding dozens of tech questions and emails central administration does

091not talk to teachers or tech integrators our administrators won't even return our emails at this time i believe war sister has 20 students in need of a device our administrators make decisions without us and they won't listen when we speak up parents families are not the only ones without the necessary technology teachers are buying cords monitors document cameras as well as other tech technology items that we need to teach with our own money because the district is unable to supply them the teachers new laptops that were purchased that we were given do not connect to our smart boards and when a teacher figured this out and emailed the district said at this time they are unable to supply the adapters but we'll order them the lack of communication is not just with families teachers found

092out that we are supposed to be taping lessons and recording them and provide providing asynchronous instruction tonight or in the parent letter that dr zerby sent out to families earlier this week that was posted on the website but not given to teachers we are doing our best we spent over 20 plus hours of our own time preparing materials um the buildings were open from eight to four um and we begged for extra hours in the evening to come in um we were given a list of directives for the first two weeks today and some of these things are literally impossible i do not believe the board is aware of half of what is going on in our schools due to the lack of transparency i am trying to show patience and grace i have taught

093him with acting for 22 years i love this district i will do anything for my students teachers will welcome students no matter what and we will make it work mr mcginnis you can bank on us and teachers are also waiting and can't wait to see our students because that's why we do this job for our students and we know that they will come through and we just want what's fair for them thank you so much thank you miss kenworthy next i have marissa rocco okay miss rocco you're in the meeting whenever you're ready hi i just want to reiterate um well i won't reiterate but what emily said earlier is 100 what i'm on board with um i have major concerns around the fact that we promised a synchronous schedule of learning for our kids

094how can we determine if we have if we parents have multiple children in a home when is one of our children supposed to do this asynchronous learning when the other is finished with homework which could be six six or seven o'clock when we can give up a work computer at six pm and they have practice for two or three hours and then they're coming home at nine to do lessons that's not okay that is absolutely not okay in my mind i also think and a few people already mentioned if they're not part of the synchronous learning for introductory reasons and these fun type of icebreaker events that they'll have in the first few days of school how are they going to jump in in a week's time it's uncomfortable it's already it's hard enough for

095us adults to be on zoom calls and then we're going to throw kids they're not as res i know they're resilient to some extent but being on camera is very hard for kids i have two and i know that how do we make this right i don't know how we make it right but i don't think kids without a device should be asked to catch up with their lessons at a different time i don't think it's okay for multiple reasons i had a feeling that teachers might not be aware that they should be video and recording their lessons for a later the teacher who just spoke so emotionally confirmed that now we're putting work on those teachers because these students don't have the proper tools 299 families is a lot of families and like dr

096zurby said he doesn't know how many of the families have multiple children my other [Music] board members mentioned needing over the time why are we handing out devices to i know seventh grade has them i know kindergarten was getting devices why don't we survey first and see who needs devices and amazing him that said that i agreed with that approach and thought wow this way we're not being we're going to have devices to look what we did this week collecting them back from people who just went and got them why didn't we survey them first and see who truly needed them i also determining of who needs devices so i know we went with the free reduced lunch and i understand that was one approach to go but now we're left and how do we

097now determine the remaining families how do we then decide who gets them i feel like this education everyone is equal and everyone deserves this so that's where i'm really struggling one last comment is around parent involvement i know there were a lot of issues that came up i think in the spring with parents needing to help their kids get situated and whatnot and we were really hoping that parents would be able to be working at home not having to you know assisting our kids when needed but let's face it it's hard we all admit this is hard i had a very hard time getting to pick up materials today i had emailed skyview three times for an alternate time one to four p.m is not ideal for a working parent why not over lunch or

098why not at 7 am why not in the evening this is i guess upsetting to me in the fact that i'm thinking are we setting up expectations that parents will now be available during the day so i did in turn get alternate time to pick up but let's please be mindful that our schedules aren't readily available to run over to school to pick up materials and whatnot we need to be mindful of everyone's time our teachers and our parents thank you mrs rocco okay next i have jenny you ruth walker sandy sang jessica bradbury go ahead miss bradbury you're in the room whenever you're ready yes hi good evening first of all i want to say to dr zerby thank you very much for your honesty and your vulnerability i know it's not hard to

099come in a public forum and admit the issues that happened over the last few months for all the students in our school district to have equal access to a public education in a virtual environment i truly believe that all students must have a district issued device to serve as that temporary replacement of their desk and chair in the classroom to be quite honest communication was a day late and a dollar short and many of my fellow parents have already spoken about that this evening miss aubry larson ace you've recently commented on social media asking whether we wanted the board to fix the problems or to communicate how you were fixing them is it unrealistic for us to expect both maybe you don't want to respond to that that's fine but that brings me sorry i

100should have clarified this is not a question and answer part of the meeting so i i will i can respond later okay thank you um but that does bring me to my next point in a blog post that i came across from the community advocates for responsible education or care group back in 2015 the school board election campaign that i believe you won that year says unfortunately many of the board issues we've called attention to in the past continue today meeting agendas are not available until 24 hours before the meeting questions from the public are not answered limited discussion by the board on important voting matters followed by a unanimous vote enforcement of time limits on public comment plans to spend more tax dollars on consultants and general disrespect of the public seems like those

101sentiments hold true today speaking of disrespect mr navaretti i would love for you to explain why what you meant when you posted on social media in july about members of the community taking off their tin foil hats had there been communication and transparency all along about the projected shortages and devices parents could have planned differently and we would have we have a really great community and we want to collaborate with our teachers who by the way are amazing the administration and the board we've come together over the past few weeks to share information that we had to find out on our own because the faq page on the district site has not been updated since july 27th many of us have reached out to you the administration and board i myself personally on several occasions

102to build relationships and propose solutions we've turned in school issued devices and we're using our personal ones to come up with a way to make the virtual learning environment work when this was not the choice of the majority of families in this community but our efforts to connect with district administration and the school board have quite frankly been stonewalled parents and community members need to be allowed to be part of the discussion to help develop the solutions if we're going to make this a successful school year thank you for your time thank you next i have genevieve geiss okay go ahead mrs geiss whenever you're ready good evening jenny geiss woodland kindergarten um i'll start with a little positive bit of kindergarten uh hip hip hooray i learned something new today um like mrs kenworthy

103i was not at all aware that i was supposed to be videoing what i was doing every single day and posting it at night i really really really wish that would have been communicated during many of the multiple trainings these past three days as perhaps i would have made different choices on what trainings i attended this is not something i am at all familiar with how to do and the little bit of training on how to do it i am not prepared tuesday morning at 9 00 a.m to be able to do that successfully part of why i'm really concerned about doing that is the topic that was addressed also the lack of proper devices to teachers in order to make live streaming possible i have brought in my own second monitor uh the laptop

104i am provided does not have a virtual background availability the video card is not updated it's an older laptop my laptop in the past three days has been so hot from the zoom calls that i've been on and off i frankly am concerned it's going to burst on fire tuesday when i do two sets of simultaneous am and then pm live sessions uh i do not have a microphone i do not have a ring light i do not have a headset i have purchased my own laptop stand that tilts so that i am hopeful the students can see what is going on behind me in my room i have rearranged the furniture in my room three different times while attempting to get the best picture um a thank you can go out i know kindergarten

105teachers and the elementary school was very excited about the prospect of pushing out something called seesaw and we finally received confirmation at 3 30 today that this app was purchased for us in a full use app but that we don't yet have accounts set up for us and it's coming in the near future this platform works extremely well with an ipad for the littlest learners to be able to turn in work google classroom does not work well with an ipad i have fielded over 20 tech questions from parents in the past three days about how ipads can connect to google classroom i previously had asked dr landis if directions would be sent out along with the ipads because how ipads work are extremely different i also have asked repeatedly to many administrators that the teachers

106need an ipad if hip hip ray i learned something new today that there are extra ipads available i would be more than willing to drive to farina tomorrow to pick up an ipad for myself and my teaching partner because i don't have one in which i am supposed to use to teach my kindergarten students how to use an ipad in the apps that they are supposed to be learning on tuesday it's as has been said it is impossible for me to teach them that if i am not provided the correct device i implore you to reconsider the idea of live tech help in trying to help my parents figure out how to get tech support i stumbled upon a website on our mathactin site called the with actin parent center this was not communicated to

107teachers at all and it's a fabulous site so who ever worked on creating it it's wonderful but it's hidden parents need to know about this teachers need to know about this i should not be the one sending the link to my fellow kindergarten teachers in other schools saying hey could you send this out to your parents it's a phenomenal resource on that resource sadly it says the first person they're supposed to reach out to if they have a tech question is their teacher i'm tech savvy but i am not tech support i felt so bad in email after email after email to a parent saying please refer to the fact and parent center please send an email to infowathactin i can't help you and it broke my heart because these are my littlest learners that

108are struggling to log on to google classroom and a parent sent an email to me that i checked tonight that it worked when she logged on with a desktop but she could not log her student into google classroom using an ipad hip hip hooray i learned something new today i wasn't aware of that i am very very very confused about attendance it was a topic brought up a lot tonight i was told i'm supposed to take attendance at 10 and 2 while i'm teaching the students are supposed to turn something in well i don't know how yet to use the seesaw app to ask them to easily turn something in and their ipads do not really work well with google classroom i'm not sure how i am also supposed to simultaneously at 10 a.m be

109teaching them and then move over to a different screen to take attendance i am extremely confused on that i am one person and working so hard just like the school board is we are all trying to do our best during this um something that perhaps dr zerby could consider doing to help these things is open the school up in addition a little earlier in the morning we are not permitted to walk in the building until 8 a.m 8 10 is our official start time that means we are all trying to stay at least six feet or more apart while walking through the exact same door to get in the building if we're supposed to be spreading it out could we please enter through more than one door those of us that are hoping to teach

110from school have to physically sign a piece of paper why can't we just click digital logon like we did in the spring we really need a lot of extra help our building principles are being phenomenal they like the school board is going above and beyond to make it work our upper administration i implore you to send out better communications i should not learn these things at seven o'clock the night when i'm supposed to start teaching on a tuesday and i'm not permitted back in the building on friday or on monday so if at all possible if dr landis you could shoot me an email i will happily drive to farina to pick up a couple of ipads and drive it to my kindergarten teaching partner i i'm at a loss of what i'm supposed to

111do on tuesday with our littlest learners with a device that doesn't communicate with google classroom and i do not have an ipad in my hands to hold up and live zoom stream with them to show them what to do thank you mrs guys i'm sorry we've gone way over time here thank you next i have brian legging okay mr legend you're in the room whenever you're ready first i'd like to start by thanking dr zerby and administration for all of the hard work that they've put into everything that they're doing to make this work um i think it's it's uh it should be noted that and this i got from my wife denise that matthachton school district is a 100 million dollar business and the delivery model of attack mafactan school district was to deliver

112on-premise education and we are now trying to switch our delivery model with very little time so i do think that those things should need to be taken into consideration when uh considering uh the efforts of the administration and some successes and some challenges that continue which may or may not be out of their control um i'd like to remind everybody that just three months ago we couldn't get toilet paper so now we're you know now we've gone to our first world problem of not having laptops and and enough ipads but it just goes through the whole supply chain issue that we've been dealing with people are frustrated in the district uh the people that i know the main reason the students and families that i know in the district who are frustrated are frustrated because

113they want to be on they wanted the choice of being on premise for their learning uh and yet that was held that was seen in the survey that was distributed in july where a majority of respondents chose on-premise learning administration i thought it presented a reasonable plan for on-premise and to give the choice of on-premise versus online learning uh and those were that was the efforts that were being put forth uh you as a board i'm sure we're aware of that plan prior to your meeting on july 30th you chose not to to take away the choice of on-premise learning uh because springford and north penn decided to go online and because these uh supposed enhanced sprayers or not all of the enhanced sprayers uh or i'm sorry electrostatic sprayers were going to be in

114until the end of september or early october and those sprayers were for the purpose of enhanced cleaning not cleaning the buildings and and to provide a safe environment we all go to the grocery store and touch everything that's in the grocery store that we want and they do not use these electrostatic sprayers in the grocery store so you pulled the rug out from under the you as a board pulled the rug out from the administration's plan on july 30th and asked it to switch in five weeks to come up with a totally new plan to to educate 4 800 students and the countless teachers and expect everybody to make that switch without having adequate time so to me you i think it's disingenuous of all of you to blame the administration for the issues um

115i i liken this is this situation to lighting your house on fire and then blaming the fire department for it burning down so i i'm disappointed by the tone of the voice of some of the board members who i do know uh many of you but i do think that it shows your lack of respect uh for administration which if you're not giving respect you don't deserve respect so i would like to see better communication on a personal level possibly between the board and administration this administration has been in this in in the factoring school district for many years and prior to you all being on the board so i do think there there deserves to be some level of respect given to the administration and make a better effort to work together and not

116blame people either in public forums here on in a school board meeting or on social media and i mean blaming administration thank you mr leggett john riley okay mr riley you are in the room whenever you're ready i'm sorry i guess no he should be in he needs to unmute himself mr riley have to unmute in order to talk yeah it won't allow me to unmute you i'm sorry kristen sherman okay you're in the room whenever you're ready hi good evening i am extremely disappointed and fresh and frustrated at this point there were so many promises and guarantees that were not provided i have lost all trust and respect in this administration and because of your poor planning there is potential that children may be without the right to a free public education and as

117i've learned tonight possibly 299 families plus however many children they have in those families assessments or surveys should have been done or created and sent out well before july or august and if you think these computers that were supposed to be delivered by now will be on time you cannot count on it stop counting your chickens before they're hatched this was how we got into this mess tonight i heard an apology from from dr zurby and i appreciate it however it came followed by an excuse that is not okay accept ownership and stop reflecting i also am disappointed in the way phases of distribution of computers were rolled out reaching out to people to receive computers based on their income is discrimination you should have you should not have assumed that because people have a

118certain amount of money they can just run out and get a computer for their child distribution email should have been sent to everyone at the same time not based on a parent's income i am really concerned at this point as well the 299 families probably with multiple children in those families will not have access to computers i didn't hear anything tonight to ensure that every child had a computer having a child upble doing homework because they have to share with a sibling is inappropriate if the if the child is doing homework it's someone or excuse me schoolwork at seven o'clock at night or watching a video of their teacher teaching what occurred at 12 o'clock in the afternoon is not okay um i i just it's it's in my opinion it's a violation of the

119child's right to a free public education they're not going to have access to ask their teachers questions that need to be taken care of at the time it's inappropriate and unfair and it it's just in my opinion just a complete disaster that's all thank you so much for listening have a good night okay next i have um haren ardeshna okay um marie or anthony scariata skiarata i'm apologize if i'm mispronouncing your last name oh okay i see you haran okay you should be in the room you can unmute and talk whenever you're ready hi can you hear me yes hi um i am here to talk as a parent of two children in the midtacton school district um aryana radeshna who is in sixth grade has always chose to go virtual and his pickup and

120schedule has worked out really well so i really like to thank the administration for that but here i wanted to talk about ahmad who is going to be in the second grade at arrowhead elementary school for armand we are extremely disappointed with the lack of clarity and communication for a plan herman is non-verbal and has physical and academic development delays he has an iep which includes a one-on-one pca to aid him during the entire school day and we are working towards getting armand fully included in the school armand struggled with academics in the spring as expected because virtual doesn't work for him and we took time off during those time to get him involved as much as we could we worked with the school district to work with an outside chancellide agency during the extended

121school year so we can have a one-on-one pca that can work with him throughout the summer we anticipated this ball being dropped by the methachton administration and we have been in constant communication with director dr angstadt and supervisor tim merch to discuss armand's support and schedule for the upcoming school year virtual running virtual learning without a constant one-on-one support does not work for armand because of his behaviors and without someone to redirect him he will not be able to have access to the curriculum and any of his classes even after all this communication we were offered an option of related services to be in person at the clinic which is also not clear what the schedule there is and a virtual pca let me repeat virtual pca a virtual personal care assistant virtual and personal

122two things do not go together you have to take an english lesson to understand that so let's get back to armand a virtual pca in a class of 20 plus student is not appropriate for herman's needs the school is failing to provide armand with fair and appropriate public education mithakton school district has failed to plan for the needs of students like armand and clearly there are no acceptable plan for the opening day on september 8th you are discriminating against my son because he cannot talk for himself we are frustrated but hopeful that there may be maybe a chance that there is an acceptable plan for arman on the opening day i have heard a lot of comments on this on this meeting today praising the administration but let me tell you when you don't call

123a failure a failure you are just hiding this is not acceptable i thank kim laziness for pointing out a failure when you see one so thank you for that but i have one question for dr zerby and the mythical board here do you expect parents of students with special needs to take time off throughout the day to ensure appropriate academic participation during the synchronous learning and why this inequality between a typical student and a student with special need i would like this answered if not today in writing at a later time thank you thank you mr ardeshna i would also encourage you to um continue to work with dr angstadt and mr merch so that we can make sure that you have what you need okay next i have monica panetta okay whenever you're ready

124thanks kim um speaking as an alumni parent of a first and sixth grader i waited my entire life to buy a house in my thacton school district because of my experience as a student there i cannot express my disappointment in the lack of communication planning and transparency from everyone on this entire call i'd like to see improvement in the communication and i'd like to see everyone listening to their constituents when they're trying to give advice and help be a partner in solving these issues no one blames anyone for supply chain issues however communication transparency and partnership are free thanks thank you next i have jenna truss okay you're in the room whenever you're ready good evening um i've spent several hours over the past several months completing surveys sitting on focus groups sending emails and

125in general letting my voice be heard or at least i thought i'm also someone who when others were getting angry and upset was encouraging common impatience because after all we're in the middle of a pandemic these are unprecedented times however as we sit here on september 3rd in an emergency school board meeting because once again there's been a complete lack of communication and transparency by the administration and board i'm out of patience we're not we're we've been told not to compare our district to neighboring districts but why not is it because frankly we're so far behind the curve other districts have devices for their students they've had them for weeks if not months and they did provide devices to all of their students i won't go through the list because we do know them rather

126than asking if they need devices they're being reminded to pick up their devices they're doing assessments with their kids meanwhile we're scrambling and making pleas for families to turn in their devices and please note um that there was a you said in the presentation dr zerby that you say the communication on 8 28 only went to free and reduced lunch families but it didn't it did go to a much larger group which is what created much of the confusion while you were discussing your supply chain issues i actually went online and was checking walmart target amazon i can get a chromebook shipped to me from all of those most within two days and the latest is by next friday so maybe what we should be doing is um just providing grants to families to source

127their own laptops since at this point they could probably get them faster um in response to ms cancrow my seven and ten-year-olds do not have cell phones and will not be getting cell phones i use a cell phone for work purposes and i get reimbursed for it therefore i cannot have my kids call into a zoom call or call in for a check-in call and we don't have a loan landline so i'm not sure how we would be able to call in for a check-in in the morning um as an additional point um which probably goes to what mrs markle was saying earlier about supplies not being picked up today we were given less than 48 hours notice to pick up supplies today and we were given a 20-minute window to pick that up so

128it did not really provide much respect for working parents i personally am a single working parent um so that's probably why supplies were not able to be picked up i actually had to make two trips to two different schools on two different days um i want to be very clear that i have personally not heard one parent complain about the teachers and i appreciate everything that they have been doing um from the time that schools were shut down all the way until this evening and i greatly appreciate all of the worcester representation on this call i want to add that i hope that there is a plan to reimburse our teachers for all of the supplies that they are purchasing to make things work um i also want to mention that i've heard that there's

129a move at a certain level i think in arcola to ebooks so this and this wasn't communicated to parents so some parents were actually showing up to pick up supplies in person and then they were told that they were in ebooks so some families don't actually have chromebooks and then they're on ebooks and that's a whole other issue so then on top we have emails that we're sending and there's nothing but deafening silence so i know i've sent emails and there's been no response there's complaints on social media there's also nothing um the only exception that i personally really have seen is the board president who has taken the time to respond to posts often to a good deal of venom venom i appreciate the time that she takes to respond and i don't envy

130her position um i also have seen the tinfoil hat response which is probably not the best way to respond as a member of the school board you are representing yourself as a member of the school board um i just in closing mainly want to say that this is not the way to interact with concerned parents we want answers we want to know why there's not a plan we want to know why there are not solutions we want to know why there's an emergency board meeting on september 3rd the media has had to be called about this why the school district is becoming a laughingstock in the area it doesn't seem like too much to ask of our administration and board to ensure that our children will be fully educated without disparities due to their personal

131circumstances beginning next tuesday thanks thank you next i have john andrews okay mr andrews you're in the room whenever you're ready thank you miss larcenise the chromebook shortage is a major crisis is it unique to mythacton i don't know but i read on living in lower providence of no other local districts with shortages the shortage puts smith acting in a bad light one question needing an answer where we've been using chromebooks for a number of years starting in the high schools my understanding is they've all been leased for three year periods and i'd like to know did we have three-year-old ones that were returned to the leasing outfit at any time since march if so that was a mistake unless there were failed negotiations keeping them for an extra six months would have been good

132insurance again i'd like to get an answer to that question at some point the crisis isn't a money issue as intimated by the board president on living in lower providence the money issue includes spending nearly two million dollars so far on an unneeded arrowhead school's design i hope some of the people listening will try to comment at the act 34 hearing next tuesday evening there is a and often mentioned uh option c to switch back to the school system we had before sky view namely k-5 and six to eight that that does not need an arrowhead school we have adequate capacity and we're not using it for instance at the arcola school i i think overall that in my mind there's some concern that chromebooks are not the proper instructional solution in the early grades

133whether that's two to three or k to two or k to three or k to four i don't know but all things considered there ought to be a a uh an inquiry as to whether we could sw open up the k to force schools for in classroom instruction maybe not tomorrow maybe not the middle of september but maybe the first of october and and i i respect all the all the thought that that uh directors and and members of the public are putting into uh to improve communication uh particularly this evening that's all i have to say this evening thank you thank you mr andrews next i have kelly ludwig okay kelly you are in the room whenever you're ready hi i just want to start by thanking for the opportunity to speak um thank

134you for all your hard work um i also i just want to um share the board this evening that my family joins with many families within the district whose children struggle with virtual learning i wanted to take a moment to talk with you about the effect families like mine whose children need more support than the virtual learning provides my son aiden is a seventh grader at arcola in the autistic support classroom i had a meeting today to discuss my son has an aide a one-on-one with him at school all day with him all the time and i had a meeting today and asked if aidan's aide would be able to provide in-home services i was told in whom services was not being offered at this time but they were discussing a clinic to be offered

135at skyview i would have preferred the clinic to be talked about before the first week of s that school would be starting i could have considered my options i do however appreciate that there are scenarios in place an in-home aid would allow for minimal distractions during virtual lessons and keep aiden engaged and on task as he needs prompts to stay focused additionally an in-home aid would allow for him to increase independence and better attend to instruction leading to his academic success i i believe that aiden would not benefit from a virtual aid which is being offered a virtual aid would lead to increased confusion and negative behaviors i also feel that his progress will slow and lead to regression in skills and behavior thank you for your time thank you next i have jim malik

136okay michael ryan mr ryan you're in the room whenever you're ready good evening michael ryan lower providence uh first i just wanted to say that i think ms kenworthy and her comments directed towards another issue of communication in with acton this is frequently a situation that the board finds themselves in where teachers are voicing concerns and issues about how they are going to deliver what they're expected to deliver to the children for curriculum and these problems never make it to the board they get they get sent to the administration the administration you know apparently doesn't deal with it and then the teachers feel the need in order to get their voices heard and they get problem solved to call into a board meeting there's something wrong when your teachers are calling in to a board

137meeting to try to get the board to have the administration address their concerns so i just wanted to say that that's another communication issue in with acton i had hoped to speak to the methecton education association's post on facebook which ms markle had brought up and how inappropriate that was i was actually hoping she would speak to that this evening but i'll save those comments for another time i did want to speak to the one slide that pictured eighteen hundred students as being the ones who were contacted for the survey i'm assuming that these 1800 students were contacted by email only and there was only about a little over a thousand who responded so in all of your calculations has anyone considered the 800 or so students who have not responded have these families not

138responded because they don't have a device because they're not checking their emails because they don't have a device in the past around this time we have had transportation issues and we've set up call centers and we've been very proactive in making sure that changes were you know addressed and problems were um you know changed for the better is there any consideration to having phone calls made to all the families to see who needs what um out of the people who have actually responded to your survey about 20 percent have said that they need a device so if you have 800 people who haven't responded you know is there an assumption that there's 20 or 30 percent or maybe less but you know i think you need to include those in your numbers because otherwise you're

139going to have some phone calls you know the day before school starts the day that school starts and says i don't know what's going on i didn't get a device so i don't expect answers to those questions now but hopefully the board members can bring up uh that during their discussion when courtesy of the floor is over thank you very much thank you mr ryan next i have ashley wilkerson okay uh priya patel janine hanasek ashley patton maria greco danielle casagrande i'm going to assume this name is ashley patton since that's the last name that i see there uh you're in the room if you could just identify yourself please hi ms arsenies this is ashley patton can you hear me yes i can hear you thank you okay so i am going to just

140start out by saying um that i do think that the way that we're going to start the school year on 9 8 is not an equal opportunity for all i think the majority of us feel that way one device per household is not adequate and if we continue to talk about it as an adequate way to start the school year i think we're doing unjust for a lot of the students in in the district i am a parent who will go out and buy a device if i need to i wish i would have known sooner but i do think that the way we're setting this up for 9 8 is unrealistic i'm a parent who absolutely wants to start on 9 8 but i do realize that if teachers just found out tonight of

141what their expectations are i have no idea how we're going to do that so i think i rather than sticking to all the things people have said that are you know all the complaints that we have like i tell all the people that work for me i don't hear your complaints i want to hear your solutions so i suggest that we need to kind of bring this meeting to a different focus and think about what our solutions are going to be we have a couple options one is can we start on premises for a percentage of students instead can we go back to that discussion because i do believe we have the cleaning supplies now is that even an opportunity that we could use rather than swirling our heads around chromebooks that may or may

142not show up two do we push back to the start date personally that would be devastating for me i love my summers i don't want my kids going to school in june but if that would provide everyone the opportunity to get a fair education then i think that's something we should consider and figure out a way to get devices if not so unless we have devices for everyone by 98 i think that we've done a failure and i know that people on the board don't believe that failure is the right word but it is people do fail but we need to get up be better and do better so those are all my suggestions thank you thank you um maria greco actually i'm sorry we already did that one um danielle casagrande joe bickelman i

143know you're there mr bickelman i just saw your hand where'd you go okay mr bickleman whenever you're ready can you hear me i can joe bickelman audubon i ask everyone to please listen closely you can replay this portion of the meeting if you find it necessary i am a retired public school district business manager i was lucky to be employed for 35 years in the public school business office and my last 35 years at colonial school district i haven't i have attended the thacton school board meeting since 2014 may of 2014 maybe missed one or two and i have attended most committee meetings believe me i would be the first to support a new building if it was necessary but there is no need for a new arrowhead because arcola is greatly underutilized arcola is

144only at 58 percent of functional capacity my three daughters attended arcola when there were fifteen hundred students today there are seven hundred and seventy nine dr zerby says there is a functional capacity of one thousand two hundred and it can easily absorb the 385 students in sixth grade from skyview with smaller class sizes coming up the pipeline skyview currently has 744 students in a building that has a functional capacity of 820 the board should move to close arrowhead and use skyview as a k-5 and rename it arrowhead then the board needs to establish a k-5 grade structure at eagleville woodland and worcester k to five is a better grade configuration for improved education a k to five grade structure would only require these young students to move only once to get through grade eight and

145then on to the high school remember mcfacton high school ranking has gone down from 11th in pennsylvania in 2013 to 65th in 2019 this could be a result of changing grade configurations caused by an unneeded sky view not building a new arrowhead will save the district 50 million dollars 35 million from construction and 15 million in interest it will also save a million dollars in annual operational costs by closing that old arrowhead in order to afford the annual debt payments on this new arrowhead building the board has already refinanced current debt and will be that will be costing the taxpayers more than 500 000 in additional interest who would spend that kind of money if it isn't an extremely critical need for a new school building if built the plans for a new arrowhead shows

146a gym that will be two and a half times bigger than the current gym that arrowhead has now the new arrowhead plans show a separate cafeteria and remember it's a k-4 building the old arrowhead was built for a k-5 grade structure and has a cathode gematorium which is one space used as a gym a cafeteria an auditorium just like the other k-4 schools these are elementary schools why are you planning to over build a new arrowhead it's not fair to the other elementary schools a district paid consultant for enrollment projections in 2016 showed declining enrollment and the consultant advised the board that they could close audubon and close arrowhead audubon was the only school that was closed a year and a half later that same consultant projected enrollment to increase this allowed the administration and

147the board to justify a new arrowhead building district residents mr andrews and mr malik who attend practically every board meeting since 2005 illustrated to the board that these projections were flawed the actual birth rates used by this consultant were inaccurate and overstated by the consultant remember a district paid consultant in 2006 projected enrollment growth from 5400 to 6500 the current enrollment is 4722 students this erroneous projection was the foundation to build a 40 million dollar sky view only a four only a very small portion of the skyview debt has been paid off as of today and is on the backs of taxpayers enrollment is going down and is projected to go down due to lower birth rates there is a need for an updated enrollment projection and should not be done by any of the

148two prior consultants it should be done by the district administration i did enrollment projections some of the reasons to build i heard from the board was that the other buildings got a rebuild or remodeled interest rates are low it's time to build a new school now i would say 70 percent of school district residents are not aware of the new school being built they do not know the cost or the reasons for it and finally my heart goes out to the teachers to the parents and especially the students during the pandemic it also sincerely goes out to the 70 percent of district residents that are not aware of what is going on in this district and how their tax dollars are being spent there is a need for hard copy newsletters to the residents make

149transparency more than just a word that is fashionable to say oh and what is the vendor's name that has all those computers on back order or do i have to ask for the purchase order through right to know thank you very much thank you mr bickelmann uh gagandeep bhatia danielle thompson okay you're in the room whenever you're ready hi my name is danielle thompson and i'm the parent of three students within the district we're thankful for the hard work that's occurred over the summer we know that there are so many working hard behind the scenes and i don't want to discount that hard work right now i'm speaking tonight on behalf of my son porter who is in second grade at arrowhead porter has down syndrome while we understand and appreciate the technology challenges we're

150discussing tonight i also believe we need to be talking about another issue that being special education while all kids are impacted by the pandemic those students who learn differently have been severely impacted and serious regression has occurred for many special learners over these challenging times special learners who rely on routine and consistency are in crisis we've heard time and time again that the fall will be better for our children we appreciate all the work that's been done to make this become a reality however over the past two weeks it's become clear that our kids with special needs are being left behind in the planning process it's become clear to our family that there is not a clear plan in place to meet the needs of the neuro of the district's neurodiverse population during this virtual

151period yesterday i learned that i would need to take vacation days next week in order to help my special learner participate in the opening week activities as those activities are not considered to be academic nature and do not warrant support technology aside school starts in a few days and we don't have the necessary information to help us understand how our son's needs will be met or how his education will be delivered in a free and appropriate manner that will prevent further regression and hopefully allow him to make academic progress towards his iep goals we've talked with teachers and support staff and answers are just not available we've heard that therapies may be available at sky view but no one can tell us when or how these will occur if the therapies will coordinate with the

152synchronous classroom sessions or if we can even make them work amidst our own work schedules virtual pca support has been proposed but there's no answer as to how a virtual pca can redirect our special learner during a synchronous classroom session without interrupting the entire class or how the pca can help our child remain at a computer and on task from afar as working parents this is causing stress and anxiety neighboring school districts had clear special education plans in place at the start of their school years neighboring districts are providing the services and supports necessary for success either sending pcas into the homes or providing meaningful in-person solutions for the special ed pop we have neither of those today families in these neighboring districts receivations of their first days we stay and write i'm sorry i

153think we may have lost you necessary for vape are provided we hope that the district will not fail to provide services and accommodations to our special education students at this time thank you thank you finally i have amy smith okay miss smith you're in the room whenever you're ready hi thank you so i uh amy smith warcester i wasn't sure if i i had to say that uh i just wanted to say um a couple things about uh preparedness and moving forward during the pandemic i i just want to say that you know i recognize that the pandemic is unprecedented right like none of us were prepared for this um certainly we're all back on our heels uh professionally um you know as our in our inner roles as parents as members of the community

154um you know as family members to people outside of this community as well who may or may not have been impacted but just with with the restrictions on on travel and interactions and our students our children too have been impact but impacted by you know the pandemic from having to adjust to the abruptness of the end of the school in person school year in the spring to adapting to the changes in our schedules this summer not being able to participate at the same level of summer activities that that we typically can some of us not being able to go on vacation um you know and and now the newness of the school year and all the uncertainty that comes with next week and and i just want to say that i feel in this community

155my experience in this community personally professionally uh through volunteerism through the math acting community everyone wants to help and when people are feeling helpless because of the situations they're they're confronted with the the way to empower them is to allow them to help and my my disappointment in the administration has been in the sense that i'm watching the school board members go out of their way to be helpful to you know spend time on social media answering a barrage of questions and and make sure that the information that they have is is is being communicated um i'm watching school board directors hand out meals to families in need giving up their kitchens to prepare that food and package it and make sure that it's getting to our to our students in need i'm now hearing

156school board members say that they're going to change their work schedules to make sure that the equipment as it comes in is readily available and that it's distributed to to students to make sure that everyone has equal access and and i'm i'm just terribly disappointed that our administration hasn't been spearheading this i think that um you know that that none none of us knew what was going to happen but as information comes in it needs to be communicated clearly and our administration should be coming together as a team under under the leadership of dr zurby to make sure that um staff know what's going on that parents know what's going on and that we can start to prepare our kids for what next week looks like so i just want to say that i think

157if you contact the home and school association if you contact parents and community members there's a lot of people in this community that will be willing to help in every way that that's needed if it's you know forming committees to discuss specific aspects of reopening or um communication or you know how we're managing things as we're remote people will step up to do that i i am saying publicly right now that i am willing to organize that help with that in in any way shape or form i think we're all in need of of some control in our lives and and being able to participate and help within our own community is a way to empower all of our neighbors all of us as parents all of us as students um it gives us a

158more active role in in what's happening and i think just a lot of us feel helpless and um and and we want to be productive the other thing that i would like to point out is there's been talk this summer about an office of diversity equity and inclusion and i know that the board and i thank the board for approving that office in july uh and i know that we have work to do before that office and and that admit part of the administration um ends up becoming functional but i would i would like to point out that i that i think this type of situation really drives home the need for that office as we're talking about equity and inclusion because making sure that everyone has what they need that communication comes from uh

159multiple ways that we're touching touching everyone in need and that we're meeting all needs that role will be so critical moving forward in times of crisis as well as as in everyday curriculum and in everyday operations uh to make sure that we have what we need and that all of us from every um from every need have uh the things the tools and the support that we need to be successful so i want to thank the board for for all that you are doing uh i know that um the decisions that you're making um you know while there's 500 school districts in pennsylvania every community is different and it's it's hard to know what the right path forward is i just ask that communication be clear and concise and that the call for participation and

160for assistance be made when it's needed thank you thank you so that concludes the courtesy of the floor portion of the evening um i i want to respond to a few things i did my best to take notes and i want to be able to respond to some of the points that were raised um i'm bear with me as i work my way through this um first and foremost i know we heard from a few parents about special ed matters um special education matters should continue to be addressed by dr angstadt and her team for a variety of privacy and legal reasons it's not something that we as a board typically get involved with um but it is something that we do we appreciate the the need to address it and so um we encourage

161you to continue to work with dr angstadt and her department um the teacher communication issues and and some of the the concerns that have been raised there will be followed up on and addressed subsequent to this meeting in july the board passed an emergency resolution that allows us to to follow a virtual model for instruction it gives us that that flexibility and delivery of instruction it's something that i know districts across the commonwealth are doing um communicating well to the public takes time and there are times where i am prioritizing problem solving over communicating um and i want to reiterate that the function of the board is to oversee um not to be hands on and tactical um this is by design if we were if we had nine people getting into our buildings and

162into our administration and and hands-on with everything um i trust me we'd be in a way worse situation than we are right now nobody needs that kind of mess um so the board doesn't have access to communicate to the public in a broad scale um so if communication is slow at times it's there's ways that it has to be filtered it has to go up through administration and then back out to the public and i know it's not efficient but it is the way that that it works um and i will apologize for for prioritizing problem solving over communication over the last few weeks um it's not something that i like to do but when there are a finite number of hours in a day um and we all have jobs and families and and

163life responsibilities and we're all living through the same situations that the families in our community are living through so um a little bit of patience and grace is very much appreciated there um we have been planning for virtual instruction in some form or another pretty much since school ended in the spring um we had many conversations about whether or not the governor was going to allow schools to open or um you know what what the situation was going to be come september and and whether or not in-person instruction was going to be a possibility so to say that the the district had to adjust quickly in july is not exactly accurate um the the plan for virtual instruction has been in the works in some capacity for for several months now um there was a

164question that was raised about whether or not the chromebooks at the end of their lease were returned in the spring and i do believe that we did keep those chromebooks because i know that there are many 10th graders who got their same device back um so i'm glad that we were able to at least have some foresight there and address that concern um i believe that that is all that i have um do any other members of the board have anything that they'd like to add here um kim you hit on uh most of them i'm trying to look at my notes too to the gentleman that spoke about his son we did receive your email and i will just reiterate what um kim said to to please keep working with dr angstadt and and

165mr merch um there was something brought up about and transparency um i just wanted to address that i know it's five years later but since i was part of that i'll mention it um there's a difference between transparency and communication and i think we admitted tonight that the district um you know need it needs to improve the communication or make it more clear as well um in my trainings tonight uh today as a teacher we kept saying they kept telling us clear concise simple you know which isn't always easy when you're communicating um important things but anyway transparency um is something we have worked really hard on and um since 2015 we have um asked that agendas be posted um three days in advance versus 24 we have upped the amount of time people can

166speak we have added work sessions so we have spoken at length at all of our committee meetings our work sessions and our board meetings so we we are transparent um communication's another another um thing that needs to be worked on um and i will address um miss larceny spends a lot of time on social media responding to people um i tend to only respond on parent sites um having be that the community site is rather political and education is not political so we try i try to i purposely try to stay away from that i like to stick to the the parents and the education but i do want to thank everyone for sharing their concerns with us because it's helpful and it is why we added this meeting tonight thank you and mr yeah

167i know um a question was brought up about we surveyed i think eight eighteen hundred students um somewhat in that number and we received a total of um a thousand responses let's say birthdays about 800 that i guess we haven't accounted for and i thought phone calls were made to those or a second touch approach was made i don't know if dr zurby can or dr landis can maybe touch on that a little bit just to give an idea of where we really are with those numbers so we we had uh we had did follow-up phone calls with those and uh additional communication so we will confirm uh by the end of well before before the eighth uh the uh the outcome of those outstanding uh individuals but do we know from the 800 that's

168left over how many of those when we made against a second touch we were able to reach or is that 800 still are we still not able to reach those families i i the 800 that you're referring to um some of them have already been contacted but i i can't tell you they're they're on separate separate sheets right now i don't have i don't have that number of the how many of that 800 have already been contacted i i know that we're in the process of doing that i can't tell you this evening how many have been contacted again that was as of 3 30 that date is as of 3 30 this afternoon thank you sorry jen i didn't see that your hand was up go ahead i just i just put it up

169i just uh as a chair of the education committee i do want you to realize for special ed we do have a special ed ad hoc and we will make sure that we i'm 100 committed i'm someone that works and with provided relating services across the the pennsylvania area to all districts so i'm absolutely committed to that and i do want you all to realize that we did create a task force for um to really address the on premise and i stand behind that 100 percent i truly do believe and and concerns that we aren't on premise and so i just want you to be aware that as a board we have put together a task force and we will be hopefully moving forward quickly to make sure that we address all children um as

170we move forward so i thank you all for sharing your concerns and believe me we we definitely take them and we go back and we work together to make sure we improve and be better as a community and as a school district so thank you mrmen yeah i just i wanted to clarify um some some comments came up tonight about the decision to go virtual um as opposed to go in person and you know for for me and i think for many of us um the tipping point of that decision came when other districts around us started going all virtual and in combination with the family's first coronavirus response act that allows staff to take up to 10 weeks of leave so if neighboring districts are online and we have a staff member who lives

171in that district they can take 10 weeks of leave to stay home with their child who is at home learning online and we were going to potentially face a major staffing issue in our schools when those dominoes started to fall so for me that was my a huge factor in my decision around that boat and i just wanted to clarify that um for people who are watching um but i i do have concerns you know and i mean this has all been said concerns around communication and it sounds like you know my concerns around communication are from administration to the public but then i'm hearing that they're also from administration to teachers the the teachers don't feel communicated with um you know the children the families with special needs students aren't feeling communicated with i

172think this is you know to me unraveling a deeper problem of communication on many different levels that that we're seeing within this administration right now and um i just wanted to voice my concerns around that does anyone else have any parting thoughts okay with that then i will take a motion to adjourn i don't know that i would get any opposition at this point thank you everyone and have a great night and looking forward to a successful start next week you