08-25-2020 Methacton Board of School Directors Regular Meeting

001and madam president you may begin good evening everyone i'd like to call to order the august 25th 2020 regular board meeting of the methachton school district board of directors please rise for the pledge of allegiance 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 by way of announcements the public is hereby advised of the audio and video recording of this meeting for the purposes of rebroadcasting given the need to conduct the school board meeting in a virtual environment the board of directors required members of the public wanting to make comments on agenda items to pre-register by 5 pm this today um we'll do a roll call for attendance of the board members miss cancro

002here miss drummond here miss hull here mr mcginnis mr neverett here miss perdue here miss reece here mr winners here okay recognition of guests and scheduled speakers dr zurby thank you madam president this evening i have two updates under uh last year there's three uh presentations uh the first one is an update on the fact that online and the progress of reopening schools and this as you can see from august 18th is a follow-up to the discussions that we had uh just a week ago there are two items that i want to bring to the board's attention the first one involves action taken by the pennsylvania interscholastic athletic association the pia has determined that athletics can move forward and as such uh you will see reflected on this evening's agenda a number of coaches that

003are up for your consideration and approval um that then allows us to proceed forward with the beginning practice at the high school level starting september 7th and that will also allow us to begin progressing based on the timeline and updates that pia has provided uh to organize schedules uh as as reflected as elsewhere on this agenda where we typically have the board uh approve the schedule uh that schedule has been removed uh from consideration based on what we presented on the 18th and uh new schedules will be organized by the league and will be presented to me from the athletic director dr spiwak sometime before september 8th and we will then move those items forward for your consideration on the agenda no competitions are scheduled to occur before the 20 i think is the 25th

004of september with that said um the the second item on our on on the update is regarding enrollment and i have this evening uh mr chair regina here to talk about enrollment and and when i say enrollment i'm talking about specifically the conversations we have annually about uh class sizes and and the light specifically in k through 6 and but primarily in k through 4. so with that i'm going to stop sharing the agenda and asked mr regina if he can't share the document that we we have available and we sent in advance to the to the board for their consideration thank you dr zurby seem to have a issue sharing the document dr zurby i don't know if you have it up on your i can post it give me one second thank you

005yeah well i i can speak speak to it uh before it's posted i think everyone has a copy um so so as most you've seen we've had quite a bit of activity uh over the last two weeks we have seen as many as uh nine actually uh this weekend we've had nine interested parties uh contact us for kinder registration which will is starting to shift our numbers quite a bit as you see there on the screen right now you do not see those kinder numbers we actually with the sheet that we have we would have one open seat at this moment in time with where our policy is at 22 in a class um talk a little bit about the color code you see so the the red color code for the vacant seats are

006those seats that are in jeopardy getting very close to the zero number or potentially even the negative number and you'll notice that in the seats vacant and it's red with a red font the orange font or excuse me the orange cell indicates areas that we have reduced class sizes so excuse me teachers in those areas so those three spots if we look at arrowhead kinder it was four classes it's now down to three first grade at worcester was at five it's now down to four and fourth grade at worcester was at four and is down to three and those are adjustments that we had made based on enrollment numbers uh that we had had uh in about june time frame um we are seeing some fluctuations uh you know we have a number of withdrawals

007we've had some number of additions so we're just trying to balance that out here in the last couple weeks i'm not overly concerned right now having to hire additional staff i think at least what we can see right now if we have a major shift in kindergarten we may be able to make that work at most maybe have to hire a 0.5 at the end but i'm fairly optimistic that we're going to be okay with our current sizes the blue cells that you see there are areas where we had to add staff i'm going to speak specifically to second grade at woodland you may be wondering why we add added staff there and now we're only one away from the actual max that number was 95 in second grade just a week ago so we

008had received six uh withdrawals in that one area at woodland and over the last week so um again we're just continually monitoring these on a day-to-day basis and if we notice that we have a spike in any one area and a drop in another we may need to transition teachers at that point enrollment sizes for all the other grade levels are there as well so if there are any specific questions that anyone has on enrollment uh we can take those at this time any questions from members of the board on enrollment or on the pia matter that that we previously spoke about seeing seeing no other questions uh we'll move on to the next item on the uh on the guest and schedule speakers thank you mr regina for reviewing that with us the next

009one is the hour head update um this wasn't originally planned uh almost a week it was not originally planned almost a week ago but we meet weekly uh with updates and kcba had an update to uh that i felt was you know relevant to the board's consideration so i wanted to make sure that you know instead of just posting something up on the arrowhead forward website that we posted it here uh live allowed you to ask whatever questions you you feel were appropriate and from there um you know we can certainly post it for the for the public's consumption uh so mike kelly and jamie over here from kcba mike uh do you want to present the uh the document sure good evening everyone let me um share my screen here and we'll be uh

010we'll start um very simple very quick update for you tonight we did get the uh the second um budget uh estimate from becker frondorf so we wanted to quickly share that with you i also wanted to start with a brief update of schedule we're kind of rounding third and heading home we're getting close to going out to bids so in the past uh month we've had our planning commission approval we met we did meet with the township supervisors i had our presentation on august 20th everything sounded good they typically meet see everything and then they give their resolution for approval at the at a following meeting so we're expecting that in september our state and local reviews have all been um going well that are on track and on schedule we received a letter from

011montgomery county planning actually just yesterday we're updating some things from our site submittal and sending that back to them so that's on schedule as well our next big event is the act 34 hearing on september 8th um we're on track for uh for that as well that is the um one time that we're required to meet with everybody and in the public that's the one time that the state requires obviously we've met with the public many other times but that is the one formal hearing that we're required to have so we're going to hold that on september 8th we'll be back again on the 27th to uh talk a little bit about um how that went and just kind of get board approval um but between september 8th and and then october 27th meeting we'll

012be going out to bid which means the drawings of uh for bidders to to bid on the various packages of the building will be on the street we expect to get that back by late october and we'd be bringing those to you in november so that's when the big night is november 17th we'll review those bids with you um and then we're looking for a vote from the board on the 24th um to accept those bids or or not but that would certainly be the big night when um we're moving ahead officially with the construction of the new school so a couple of things we've done in the past everything's on schedule uh just letting you know what's uh what's coming up next um [Music] since we talked last the buildings basically stayed the same

013two floors uh 86 000 square feet common space in the front and the classroom wing around that kind of a shape in the rear of the school uh so the budget summary as we said we've uh partnered with becker frondorf who does uh quite a lot of third party estimates they take our drawings they're completely independent group and they come back with a larger report that we shared with you last time and we've shared that with the district this time of every piece of drywall every coat of paint in the building it's very very detailed breakdown and really helps us as we kind of went through last time see where we can find some cost savings and you know again make sure that we're we're on budget um so this was a list of all

014the budget times that we've updated the board from from last august all the way through the last time we met which was may uh which was the first becker frondorf uh report their current one is almost bang on what we had last time we're still just under 29 million for the construction of the project we're essentially holding the same numbers for um contingencies so again this is that 1.4 million is not money we want to spend it's money on the side for anything that may occur during construction our soft cost number we're still holding the same that we have kind of throughout there and a furniture budget as well which is keeping us right at the uh the 34 8 number so it's slightly higher by uh 40 000 square feet um but when we

015take into consideration alternates like we talked about last time that brings that that number back down actually a little less than what we talked about back in may from 34 8 to 34 6. so again we feel that the bottom line of this is that the project is still going on budget and staying basically exactly where we were in the spring and we're seeing that in some of the other bids and projects that we're involved with um some of the bidding alternates that that were included in their report we've talked about adding some case work uh in some of the classrooms that's something we'll certainly talk about in november whether we want to spend that extra money or not um and some things we may take away things like floor finishes and some other things

016that may be alternates to uh to consider so again another example of you know the base bid numbers that will come in and some alternates and some additional numbers that we can discuss in november when uh when the bids come in we are still bidding the project with the alternate to have the entire school or build two less classrooms again you take that one room away on two floors or the alternate which we think is is a substantial savings there's also the alternate to take two classrooms away on both floors which would take four classrooms away so we are bidding it that way as well so you're able to see kind of what that would look like it's easy enough to either take that off or build that back later and we'd obviously have to

017take a look at the budget numbers with that and and some act 34 uh limits and limitations uh when it comes to the ability to accept those alternates so um that's it um we're we're on budget we're on schedule we're getting all our approvals um like i said the next thing that we'll be meeting in the public with is the act 34 hearing and then we'll be out to bid in mid-september and continue to provide updates throughout that and hopefully it provides some really good bids for uh everybody to think about uh in november any uh any questions uh mike before we take questions from the members of the board i just want to make sure that uh we uh we discussed the act 34 hearing uh there's been some questions over the last a

018few board meetings and i just want to kind of set the record straight for folks about how that's going to proceed so i'll if i miss anything mike i know that we've talked about this so you can certainly uh chime in the the date of that is september 8 uh that's at seven o'clock we will be uh providing access uh to to to allow the public to provide testimony either in the virtual environment or from the physical environment at arcola intermediate school in the auditorium so there will be members of the administration likely kcba uh on on premise at the arcola intermediate school where by uh you know board members or other members of the public uh we'll make them available uh online or as they see and see fit but members of the public

019could uh not only uh provide testimony that evening but also over the next 30 days following that meeting be able to submit uh electronically information uh to be considered uh in in the uh testimony for the board uh mike is there anything else that that we need to go over with with respect to the activity for him and then yeah that was perfect you have um the materials are online the materials are also available for distribution or for people to look at at the the district building the hearing is a hearing there's there's dictation taken it's for public record and then as you mentioned people can provide comments at that meeting or for 30 days following that meeting written testimony can be received by the district so again it's a the public's ability to to

020talk about the project and for us to uh present a lot of the detail that we've been sharing with you over this past year thank you mike the questions now from members of the board on on either the act 34 hearing or on mike's update presented this evening hi mr williams sorry about that uh two quick questions one um the 3.7 million dollars of soft cost could you break that down between uh potential fees with the township uh your fees etc yeah we can i can provide that we have that in a separate document that we've provided to tim in the past so we can make sure that you guys take that as well most of the soft cost when it comes to design fees happen in the first half of the project that's us

021that's the engineers and people like that and a lot of the permit fees happen in the back end so most of that uh more than half of that three million dollars 3.6 is is paid for during construction between testing and fees and things like that um that is something that needs to be worked out with the township still on what those fees are typically we try to work that out with them where we're paying for the the cost that's associated to the inspections and not necessarily additional fees on top of that oftentimes those fees are associated to somebody putting a deck on the back of their house um so the when you run a an 86 000 square foot building um through a uh an equation that's meant for somebody's doing a small addition on

022their house you may end up be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in township fees which is certainly more than it would would cost for the inspections and things that would occur so those are all things that are being worked out with the the township on uh final number of inspection fees so again kind of like contingencies we're holding that 3.6 and we're hoping that we don't have to use um all of that we're hoping to get reductions in what we've allocated for fees uh based on some cooperation with the township and then also uh mike associated with that was obviously it's not derogatory a big portion of that money goes to kcpa so what portion of that has been paid already or is this all the 3.7 is uh un not previously accurate cost

023there's no sunk cost in that 3.7 already yes so um not having those numbers directly in front of me and i can i can give them we've given them to tim and i can uh make sure that the board has those most of our fee about 75 percent of our fee is what we're doing right now is the documentation of the building all the papers and and permits and things there's fees for the civil engineers acoustic designers kitchen designers structural engineers all of the documentation of those things some fee from fidavia as the construction manager all of those things are included in that soft cost piece so i'd say about 75 percent of our fee is used up in in getting us out to bid or actually through bidding and then over the about two

024years of construction that last 25 percent of our fee and other people on the design team's fee is kind of pulled out through those two years but then you know things like um the construction management fee steps up because there's a lot more time now that the construction manager is involved uh in the project so we're kind of the front end they're kind of the back end but we can get you those exact numbers tim has those and i'll i'll make sure we we send an updated copy tomorrow so you can get it would that be something that's reviewed on september 8th for the public to understand what has been spent already on the project yeah the act 34 numbers actually will show they're not specifically broken down um at the act 34 hearing but

025we can break those down for you and show you what's been spent since i don't know tim and i had exchanged that very recently so again there's something that's there between the percentage of our fee that we've used um the percentage of some of the uh um township fees that we have already spent review fees application fees um which is a lot smaller than your than your building permit fee but there have been some monies that that have been spent already so i know between us and tim we have all of that and we can certainly share that with you okay and then the the other question i have um typically there has been questions from the audience the public related to uh public comment length and that uh five minutes is the typical time

026for an act uh 34 hearing is that generally is there a proper protocol and generally accepted processes that we should be aware of i guess is the generic question yeah there is there is a time limit for um uh testimony at the hearing again that it's it's not meant to be um a back and forth uh it's meant to provide testimony their the public has the time to support the project or certainly you know voice concerns as well so as i said there's a stenographer there all of that becomes public record um so when we submit to pde to say yes we've we've done the act 34 hearing here's the booklet that we had here's the drawings that we have and here's you know the binder of every word that was spoken at the hearing

027and here's everything that emails correspondence and things like that that was uh submitted so all of that is public record for the board's review uh and certainly public records um for the public record to be uh to be on file at pde so i guess is there is there what is the expectation for those that have not necessarily been paying attention uh when they're asking questions uh at the time it's just a hearing where they are able to spoke publicly express their opinion and ask questions without a dialogue and how do you if that is the way that you'd engage with the community how do you make sure that that is understood beforehand yeah and that's that's up to you guys in the solicitor a little bit as well sometimes if it's simple questions um

028you know that we don't mind answering things like that oftentimes if it's if it's more of a drawn out inquiry that that can be a question that's answered after the hearing it's one of the things we have to remind people a lot of is this is a public hearing there's a stenographer taking minutes of everything that is said um so it's it can be a one-way conversation it can be a two-way conversation it's it's entirely up to us and kind of the will of the the solicitor as as the solicitor tends to be the um the director of what is a legal proceeding thank you mike any other questions on uh casey bee's presentation this evening sorry i was slow i just have a logistics question about the hearing um is are we keeping to

029the 25 and below inside or not or how's that work we we will be addressing uh the the capacity of the space that's correct so um we will we will have to uh make sure that we stay within the the proper uh limits it's also the it's also as you mentioned available on online as well so that way people can be there we'll be there in person and we can limit um entrance into the building but certainly have unlimited people through you know zoom meetings and things like that to make sure that that everyone that wants to participate or provide comment is able to do so okay and then just another logistics question um you had said november 17th we'll get to see the bids and i think you said vote i'm just checking my

030calendar because hopefully by then we're all back in school and i might be my life might be a little different but then do that's a work session so are we voting then the following tuesday i know that's two months or two and a half months away but i'll be here before we know it i believe that's how um we wanted to i mean again that's that's procedural how you do that that we would present everything on the 17th so we can have questions and answers and then um you would be voting on the 24th okay okay thank you we'll know who the low bidders are the and uh we can have a conversation about you know alternates we think we should take this or we shouldn't take that um and uh you know that's when

031the discussion happens on the 17th and vote on the 24th okay thank you david did you want to address one of the matters yeah well first of all um the hearing we do already have a stenographer set up and as mr kelly mentioned and in response to mr winter's concern the very start of that hearing will lay out what the expectations are in terms of ground rules and in my experience it is pretty similar to what uh mr kelly described you may get some simple questions that are really you know one sentence answers uh but generally speaking if it's going to be more complicated we do discourage a dialogue partly to keep the record clean but partly because as mr kelly pointed out the point of this hearing is for you as the board members

032to get input but not necessarily engage in a dialogue before actually making the final decision about whether to proceed with the project uh but we'll lay out for everybody there um the procedure that that we'll be following that evening and i i think i would make one last suggestion which is if we are going to allow some members of the public to be there in person that we should probably have some sort of sign in i guess on a first come first serve basis so we're not literally turning people away at the door uh we'll know when we get to the 25 and let everybody else know they have to be remote yes david that's exactly what we're going to do we're going to have a pre uh sign up in advance so that once

033we meet the capacity we'll let them know they have the alternate attendance process any other questions on the act 34 hearing or matters associated with the iowa head forward project and while we're waiting for hands i just want to make also known uh since this is a hearing and we're looking for feedback uh all the information that we've ever presented on the iowa head project over the last few years is on the arrowhead forward website so it's a historical running record of all the discussions uh the presentations uh the communications out to the public uh so there's there's uh there's no lack of information available for the members of our public to review and to uh you know make comment upon so with that said not seeing any other questions on this uh we'll move

034on to the next item on the agenda and that is update on furlough of support staff plan uh that'll be uh mr regina and myself and just to kind of put this in context before i turn it over to mr regina uh if you recall back on august 18 um we we presented a plan whereby we were recommending a number of uh mescal and teamster support uh personnel to be furloughed as a result of our decision to go to online schooling for the first marking period with that said i'll turn it over to mr regina thank you dr zurby uh as dr zurby said last week we discussed the potential furlough opportunities that would exist and in that we asked the board's permission to investigate other opportunities and we appreciate your vote to to move

035forward or your acknowledgement to move forward with that and the permission um a totally mutually exclusive event that was taking place was our administrators were preparing to plan for how we would staff a number of different things that are going on the first one we're going to focus on is the student service center and the related service clinic as many of you know many districts are providing alternate ideas some are outsourcing and sending students to different facilities some are going into the home um mcfacton has has attempted to bring that all in house and by doing that requires um some staffing and some logistics that we i don't typically have staffing for um so in doing so we are exploring a plan that i'd we'd like to share with you at this moment in time

036um presenting this evening on the plan will be uh dr gravines dr angstad and dr mangano and without further ado i'll roll over the microphone to dr eggstep okay good evening everyone i just wanted to talk a little bit about um the overview of the services we will be providing so as you're aware we're um offering a wide variety of opportunities and services in person for our students but when we reviewed as an administrative team some of those offerings three in particular stood out to need some additional staff to address not only the day-to-day operations of the services that we're providing but also following the district's health and safety plan the three in particular that we are looking for some additional staffing for are the related service clinic the student service center and the library

037book distribution just to refresh your memory the related service clinic is going to be an option it's not a requirement but it's a way to have kids that um students who have a related service in their iep to come to an in person by appointment only to get their related services that are outlined and we will also be conducting psychoed valves and re-evals by appointment we also are operating an in-person student service center and that will provide evening hours where students will be able to access help related to their classwork and assignments and that will run in the evenings from 3 i think it's 3 30 to 7 pm and then virtually there will be a student service center operating all day during the students day for grades k-12 and that provides access to some

038additional help um in addition to what their teachers would already be providing and then lastly the area that we needed some additional staffing for was the library book distribution this is for grades 7 through 12 and it's the distribution of books that will allow students to have access to the reading materials while we're in this virtual environment so at this time i want to turn this over to dr gravity's and dr mangano and they're going to share some more specific information about the positions we're looking at and highlight some of the key responsibilities of those roles hi everyone thanks so much for having me tonight um i wanted to just touch base uh the portion i'm going to be presenting to you is specifically the related services clinic and so just to give you a

039little bit of a frame to look at this through we have 460 students that receive related services as part of their ieps and now for some of them virtual has worked really well they're loving it for some of them they need a little bit more uh support and the virtual environment is not being conducive for them so what we tried to do was we tried to think outside the box about how we could help support these students and while keeping the health and safety plan in the forefront of our planning we put together this clinic model so that we could have an on-site offering for students and so what it what it looks like the structure of it is um you know we have a number of therapists speech therapists otp etc and each student's

040specific services they would be eligible to buy appointment um sign up to have the service delivered in person now this will work in conjunction with the virtual delivery which will obviously be our primary and it'll only be for students electing to participate to come in uh that want to but we will be having 30 minute um appointment times for them so every 30 minutes we'll have kind of waves of children coming in to their appointments to receive their services and then to go home so in order to coordinate all of that uh we need these positions that we've presented before you um you'll notice that it's either one position two positions etc the reason why there's multiple ones is because we're trying to span the entire day and some of the employees are part-time they

041might be a three-hour window some of the employees typically work a five-hour day we tried to fit that in there as well so that we're able to cover this completely um so that our span of 7 30 in the morning until seven at night is covered um and what i mean by that is the related service clinic will only go until 3 30 in the afternoon but we're sharing some staff with the student service center which goes into the evening so i just wanted to draw that to your attention in case you were wondering why that was like that but we have some some positions that would be you know a coordinator that's on site to be communicating with the special ed service supervisors about what's happening we have a scheduler that is working one-on-one

042with parents on the phone to make sure everything is in place for their child regarding their legal paperwork regarding their services that they're to be delivered communicating with transportation to be sure that everything is lined up and ready to go we have uh students um as they are arriving and their families are dropping them off we have receptionists that are receiving them over the phone and instructing them where to go because we're really the most important part of this and this is a very fragile population is making sure that we are safe we're keeping kids socially distanced and that we have proper procedures in place to be able to spread out so um that is that is kind of the related services clinic in a nutshell are there any specific questions that you wanted to

043ask me about that um dr graveny's this is really probably more student oriented than the staff staffing the um clinic but i would imagine out of those 460 that some students um require several services so are some of those children able to back up services if if they're able to back them up not only schedule wise but physically and mentally absolutely and that's why it's so important that with the scheduler we've created a master list of all of the related services each child receives so that they're able to cross check to be sure that if you receive otp and speech we're able to coordinate the time that works for you and to be able to um you know have those uh one right after the other to reduce any sort of lag time between that

044the schedule is going to be a really key component to being organized and being able to deliver these services with fidelity i also think i jumped the gun a little bit with asking for questions because i know that amy has to share her her piece so i apologize about that so if if possible if we could put a pause in this for a moment we'll let amy present because i'm sure she's going to have pieces that are going to be covered and then at the end if it's okay with you we'll circle back to the questions thank you good evening everybody thank you happy to be here um if you look at this slide um student services as we've as was previously mentioned by dr eng said there's oh sorry we're going back to a

045different slide um related service thank you just trying to keep up so student services has two components to it there's a during the day piece again that will be handled by building um to provide a level of service and support academically for kids above and beyond classroom teacher what we're looking at here is the virtual aspect of the student services center and again what as dr gravis mentioned we tried to merge the use of the people that we have assisting and coordinating services out of that one center just to try to capitalize uh on the you know using those several people in this slide though you're going to see in particular that for student services at the elementary level those coordinators are specific to the elementary level and have specific roles that allow them to

046do things that go above and beyond a little bit of what happens at the secondary level so in particular as you see on the slide they're doing things whether it's academic they're helping them with the help button they're assisting the principal and the organization and coordination of activities they have a little bit of a different role which is why one is needed per building at the secondary level for virtual we did not need positions in this area and that is mostly because in grade 7 through 12 age-appropriate wise we have we will have a schedule set up for our kids at those grade levels and we will it will be staffed and we will also have a help-ish button if you will that will allow kids to access again support at various times throughout the

047day through teachers that we will organize and schedule accordingly and this is me as well the library book distribution at grades 7 through 12. um what we'd like to be able to do again i think age-appropriate wise really again put books in kid's hand and the the delivery for this and the reason for this a little bit different than at the elementary level and these library assistants would um it's really cute called click and collect and be able to have some online selection go for our students and then be able to provide that curbside service pick up and drop off as well again at the secondary level thank you everyone thank you dr angstadt dr gravines and dr mangano i as dr gravity said it what we'd like to do we are going to have

048a presentation on facilities but before we do i i think there might be some specific questions related uh to the presentation that was just made i know that there is a an agenda item related to the presentation you saw uh when it comes to our mespas staff and support staff members these are truly alternate alternate positions it's not similar to what we may be looking at in custodial and maintenance which is repurposing people but with the same positions and just doing potentially different items these will be new positions for the individuals so you you will have an agenda item that that speaks to this specifically so um with that with that being said though does the board have any questions for the committee or myself so um the the people that were except for the

049virtual that dr mangano spoke about the other people are mainly in in in person working yes so really besides the scheduler i believe is that right dr graveny's i think that's that was the only one that that could be virtual the all others had to be on site that is correct and i know that we're talking now about the the the mespa uh staff members but will any of the other staff be on site for the related services and i obviously don't be an ot in a speech i realized that i guess i met any other personal care assistants or people like that at this time it is possible but but to start the related services clinic i don't believe that we're going to be utilizing our own personal pcas at this point they'll still

050be involved with the educational setting in the virtual environment any other questions liz yeah on the um slide about the student services center it mentioned um or showed something about transportation can you tell us more about that dr angstadt or dr mangano you probably know more about that than i do i can jump in on that one so one of the things we are trying to do is make sure students have an opportunity to come to the clinic so we will be providing and coordinating with karen massop in transportation to do like shuttle bus services and arrange transportation for students that need that in order to come to the clinic in person when we surveyed parents some said they would take advantage of that many said they would also provide their own transportation but we

051wanted to have it as an option so kids could come to the clinic okay so that's just sort of on a on an ad needed basis as needed with this so as the appointments are scheduled we would ask if they need transportation to be arranged and then that would follow the flow through to make sure they have a pickup and delivery time okay thank you mr mcginnis um so this has already been socialized advertised with all of our families with children with ieps a related service clinic yes parents were surveyed in advance to find out if there was an interest in participating in these services okay gotcha so we asked them that this is something they would want and they you got enough people with that which would be great okay um uh job well

052done here uh i'm really excited to see something like this and we pull it off that would be fantastic but all of your work is very appreciated thank you ms drummond go ahead i have another one um is this um also for students with on gieps so it's for any student that has a related service so if it's a 504 plan a gip an iep as long as there's a related service involved they can attend the clinic the only one that does not require an iep is if people are participating in the reach program and they need to make an appointment to come in person to see their counselor they would be able to do that but everything is based where there's no group sessions or group therapy it's all individual so we can maintain

053that social distancing okay and then this is where reach is also through as well yes so reach will do virtual and in person based on the needs of the student doctor angstadt is it also true that is it also true that all students have access to the student services center is that correct yes all students have access to the student service center for tutoring k-12 you don't need an iep or a gip right and not only not only the in person but the virtual so all students thank you dr zurby k-12 have access to student services at any time miss cancro get a question i just want to make sure as you know whenever we send out questionnaires i think we try to think we're touching points with all the the you know the related

054service students um i just think we should do due diligence and maximize the use of the clinic get the case managers to reach out address all the children that have the related service because we are adding this additional personnel that's going to help with scheduling i think we need to maximize the utilization of that time because it's direct service so just that i know some parents may not have responded immediately from the questionnaire so i think we need to make sure that we resend the questionnaire with a file with the case management um but i also want us all to realize this is a saw free entry so as we move forward we're going into a learning and growth zone of learning on how to do this and i think putting related services a huge

055huge like advocacy showing all our staff that we could do this safely when we're following the covet guidelines so i just want us to reiterate that we're putting in the mess and these personnel in in person into the building um and that we should see that it's it's going to be okay if we file the covet guidelines and the health and safety guidelines that we put into the district so i just want to put that out there again that showing that we can we could do this and we can be in person and in the building so and if i can just add to your comment about the questionnaire there is actually a registration form that will need to be filled out by parents so all of the parents will be receiving the registration form

056if they want to take advantage of that that registration form will be going out later this week there any other questions uh by the board paul oh ralph i'm sorry i saw ralph earlier so i don't want to miss you there no that's okay um just a question about the positions you said these are uh these are new positions for these people right so are we in essence then are we are we guaranteeing or saving their old jobs for them when all this is said and done they're not gonna have to reapply or anything no the uh the association uh we had a conversation with them and um they're allowing us to reassign individuals to fit these positions based on time based on skill set uh with the understanding that we would then be putting

057them back in their original positions the moment we would return to brick and mortar all right thank you got mr winners yeah so i i'm sorry if i'm a little slow on related to the five needs in the student service center on the virtual side and the skills of supporting the academics there is being provided by a by whom so i dr mangano you might might want to take that one yep you're talking about the um this just so i can clarify a problem the case that the k-6 spot the five individuals that will be supporting with um the help button um develop the skill set for asking help for not not from a teacher ask for assistance to support from staff members okay i'm sorry it depends on who you know um some of

058those people are going to be directing the support elsewhere some of that's going to be directed by the building principle um we're still kind of working some of that out in terms of the actual who but those people in place are are the actual facilitators of getting that information to the direct channel be it depending again depending on each elementary school who's going to be doing what depending on the need okay so if i'm a student that i'm struggling in second grade math some a somebody's going to inquire at the student service center um the virtual is going to provide that feedback to the to the teacher or they're going to be providing second grade help as well if it's during math right and just to clarify when you ask that question you talk about

059that during the day versus the evening the evening's gonna look different well this is uh okay um yes answer both okay okay answer both okay in the evening that could look different in terms of um it's after hours so positions of that nature would have to be fulfilled um differently in terms of supplemental contract or or however uh and could be a variety of people but during the day same thing um what we don't want to do is take away from what the teacher is doing so again i think it's going to depend on how each individual building is scheduling that and who's available at what time ultimately the goal is you said get the student the helping in the area that they needed okay so those five will be coordinating that type of aspect

060as opposed to providing that so i am i guess it doesn't affect arcola but i can ask you directly here so the seventh and eighth grade i have the team team prep times associated with that i imagine that team prep prime team prep time is uh something that they they continue to get even though there's really not necessarily shared teams are we still going through that aspect of the of evaluating and supporting the entire whole child aspect in the seventh and eighth grade it's a really good question um the students at that time as you know when when teachers have team are in special so they wouldn't expressive art so they necessarily wouldn't be available to be access accessing help teachers though during that time if you recall last year i had been very direct

061with them about continuing to work um and leveraging that time for working with the department on their specific curriculum so i do think that's going to need to continue to the level with which we did even in the spring there was the time shifted much more around departments and making sure that we were prepared to address our students as opposed to team and i absolutely feel we will probably be heading in the exact same way making best use okay thank you you're welcome any any other questions from the board specific to the support staff reassignments and i think it's it's important to share we we will be each month we will be evaluating both these positions and the positions that mr jones are going to present you know for for both reasons one to one

062see how it's going but two is our staffing set up appropriately as we move forward with this so we will constantly be assessing this and evaluating it and if we have to make alterations in the future we will be prepared to do so so if there are no other questions uh we will move on to the facilities uh presentation and just give me a second so with facility staffing considerations very similar to the conversation we just had about our support staff although this is a very normal process for us if you think about the way it works in the summer reassigning individuals to different activities is something that we do quite regularly so it doesn't require as much i would i would say background work as you might have heard from dr mangano dr engsted

063and dr graveny's but it still required quite a bit of uh of discussion between uh mr jones mr barbagallo and some of our union representatives um to create a defined list so uh without further ado i'd like to open the floor up to mr jones good evening everyone uh just a quick overview with the facility staffing consideration where you view this facility support needs of the elementary middle and high schools relatives to the service clinic and student center through the virtual learning there are currently 33 custodial positions in seven maintenance with the virtual learning schedule we determined that we needed 19 custodians and four maintenance for just basic coverage this leaves us with 14 custodial and three maintenance positions then under review and we are leaving then um we have two open positions in custodial

064at this point in time leaving us within 12 current custodial positions and three maintenance positions we determined that we would also need coverage for those out now on leave as well as vacation and backup time and then also looking at with now the athletic schedule we need coverage in arcola and the high school gyms so we would need approximately the eight plus three which positions i spent the last three months just going through the district looking at things through the district i reviewed the cycle maintenance which is a five-year plan for painting in the buildings and other cycle maintenance within the buildings and then also reviewed the matthackton facilities assessment and looking at the projects that had been scheduled and could that we could possibly complete having this time to utilize the custodians of maintenance

065crew to get into the areas to do minor project work beautification of the interior and exterior of the schools and utilizing the skill levels of the staff we felt that we could move forward with certain projects and then complete them during this time period next looking at the priorities we looked at worcester woodland arcola and skyview because these schools are not having any real work done over the next two years right now with arrowhead we have the high school as well as then uh eagleville will all have projects that will look at the projects that we're looking to do now and will be completed over the next two years so looking at the assignments for the mechanicals and custodians i feel that the 12 custodians and three mechanics can do the following work and then

066we'll reevaluate this again like shea had said over over the next 30 days and every the progress of this every 30 days thereafter so looking mechanics will work on minor projects such as renovation the inside of the press box install a bipolar ionization unit for the air purification into the unit ventilators in the priority schools so we're looking at upgrading the hvac systems for the chronovirus also the custodians will paint hallways and then catch up on the painting schedule in the classrooms and other common areas as well as then clean up the courtyards to beautify the school the courtyards need some work our grounds people haven't been able to get to these so we've done this in the past and this will help as well as then the audubon elementary is in need of cleaning

067up with all the access furniture and supplies that we have there um and uh we for get it prepared for an auction uh next slide so here i just laid out quickly the uh schools and and you can see a lot of the uh priority schools have the same type of work that need to be completed in these schools with the painting also some maintenance with unit ventilators looking at some floor work so we're looking at uh keeping these people busy and setting up the project work to get this completed in a timely manner any questions uh just just a couple um so uh i know some staff is going to be working in the buildings and i know we you can work around them but for example i was supposed to go into my

068classroom tomorrow and they told me oh by the way you're getting a new smart board when i'm going to be using it but apparently it's being installed tomorrow um so they said you might not want to come in so i would imagine if someone's a room is being worked on it'll be communicated with the staff uh of course right now skyview is going to be the main area that's going to be utilized by the service clinic and we're going to have the y in the uh cafeteria and common space in arcola so that leaves us other areas that i've scheduled especially in arcola on the first floor and then as well as the two elementary schools which uh will be limited use um other than that my my comment is you know this is kind

069of a silver lining to have a little bit of time to do some of these things that you never have a chance to do or do not not never but not as much as you'd like and i know it's a little bit of a roller coaster for the staff because we talked just seven days ago about is it okay to talk to them about furlough and i know many of the sta many of the board members were at skyview on thursday with food distribution and they were kind of having like a sort of goodbye lunch so this so this is kind of you know hopefully this everyone agrees that this is this is a good thing and i hope that the staff is aware that this is on the horizon yeah all right thank you

070mr winners yeah thank you mr jones i think just uh just to clarify uh there was a the the wording related to audubon the audubon auction you're talking about is all the leftover equipment and and things that are stored as in that building not the building itself being put up for auction which i think could be misconstrued uh based on the wording that we used but if you could just mention mr jones what there's there's about there is some value and there's also maybe not some value of some of the things we have stored in audubon um but could you just reference how some of the things that are in excess uh that are being stored there well at this point in time there's uh a lot of desks and chairs that are in that

071space we also do have some supplies that we do need to get into to that have been taken there in the past so we need to get into and clean those supplies out and and dispose of them properly as well as then there's kitchen equipment and library tables desks chairs cabinets bookcases so there's a lot of stuff that needs to be removed so that we can bring somebody in to organize that thank you any any other ques uh mr navarrete thank you mr regina hey bob are we um are we going to make an effort to try to get uh these same you know ventilator upgrades in these other buildings yes that would take place during the upgrade of the design so in eagleville the high school and our head we would look at making

072sure that those upgrades would be included in the design of the hvac systems yes yeah i guess i'm thinking more about the immediate issue here about you know how we can just make the buildings as safe as possible do we um do you know what the the costs are on these maybe even on a per unit basis per unit i would estimate uh at this point time it's about 360 dollars per unit and uh i've worked with siemens and discussed with them in reference to our employees being able to install the units and then they would come in to calibrate and confirm wiring and then um make sure that the units show up on the uh virtual network for the graphics yeah um yeah i guess i'll just i'll just make my proposition here that

073we at 360 dollars a unit i know that adds up over you know the number of classrooms in a building but it seems like a minor cause for us um in the scheme of things to just try to get these into all the buildings i understand what we're working on with eagle but we're two years away there the high school is probably even even more further away than that um i i would just i don't know to you to dr zurby i'd like to see us just making an effort if we're gonna if we can get our hands on them let's let's put these in all the classrooms i think it's i think it's a uh a good effort it's recommended by cdc and ashrae um you know we can't do the uh when you

074can't get the right level of uh filtration in the forced air system so i would suggest that we just go ahead and try to make a plan to do this across all the buildings any other questions mr mcginnis hey bob has the um hand rail in the senior lgi been put back yet yes okay completed two months over the summer yes that's been completed good job thank you any other questions from the board scene none i just again want to thank you all for the opportunity to look into this and uh and thank the administration they spent the last week working very hard to make sure that we're doing these things right um but then also able to utilize staff and repurpose them so thank you very much so these presentations are in reference to

075the action item number 11 p1 which states staff use approval it says authorize the administration to proceed with the alternative utilization of support staff as presented and it's my understanding just to be just to be clear mr regina all the individuals that we presented on the 18th are included or are captured in these in these uh two proposals as presented this evening correct that is correct dr thurman thank you mr rajeem i just have one question and i guess i know when we talked last week you said you were going to i guess alternatively also have a conversation with the staff that were are impacted by this have they have you had the discussion with them about um moving around yes so on thursday i had an opportunity to meet with actually 22 of the

07623 uh support members and um during that call we talked through the entire process of what's taking place also explain to them that this is something that the board has given us permission to look into and if if we are approved to move forward that they will be receiving their reassignments next week or excuse me on wednesday morning tomorrow morning i have to tell you there are many thankful employees at this moment in time so yes thank you samara seeing no other questions at this time thank you mr regina thank you dr gravinis dr angstadt and dr mangano and mr jones well done thank you so much for all your work uh that ends the recognition of guests and scheduled speakers this evening and i'll turn this back over to the president thank you dr

077zurby uh under reports we have our any of the committees that met in the past month those minutes will be posted to the agenda and available online um intermediate union unit ms reese are there any updates from them we actually have our first meeting in a while tomorrow but just uh so everyone's aware um mciu did open today for staff so it was virtual but they officially any of their summer staff was back but i will have a report next month all right um north monco technical career center i know they met last week miss drummond and ms reese um i did mention most of this at the um work session last week but in short we met on the 17th north monco released its hybrid plan um and all parents and students should be

078aware of of that plan um and i will say that miss pardovich worked really really really really hard on that plan um just so people are aware that that school houses over 12 uh 1 200 students and to try to get all of them back in person under safe guidelines wasn't possible but they're able to get half of them back the other big news was they had some new staff start and they had already been through some teacher training and um one of the new staff members um was a new teacher of mechatronics which is a very very popular program so that was good news and two um [Music] two nurses two part-time nurses which they had been wanting to hire i think that's pretty much the highlight but um exciting and they are starting

079to make so you're aware for as as those that are possible the 31st they they had to kind of stick to that plan um so if uh anybody sees a north monco student is curious why they're working so hard that early it's because they had to go back a little bit early um and i'm looking at my notes and that's really really uh the gist of it thank you miss reece um i'm looking forward to having some student board representatives back with us again next month um for the education foundation we do not have miss krelovic or mr beam here this evening um miss hull did you have anything i do um can you hear me okay i was just asked to share that similar to last year uh the fact in education foundation is

080again uh hosting the free print at home first day of school signs that are available on the website it is available at nefactanfoundation.org slash first day f-i-r-s-t-d-a-y so please feel free to print them out show your student on the first day of school and share i know the first day won't look like it usually does but i'm looking forward to seeing those popping up on social media um let's see communications miss kelly thank you madam president good evening everyone next week the fact is new and returning teachers and support staff will participate in four days of end service those sessions are running virtually and the first day of school as we all know is september 8th in other news we always invite our school community to stay apprised of methectomy school district happenings one of

081the best ways to stay connected is to visit our website mathactin.org earlier this month you may have noticed we made some design improvements to the district and building sites so i hope you have a chance to check those things out the website project is still a work in progress but i think it puts methecton on the right track as we work toward perfecting our presentation in order to showcase our district its wonderful students staff and the community thank you very much thank you miss kelly uh superintendents report to dr zurby thank you madam president uh this evening there's a number of advisements uh for your for your uh information needs uh but but most importantly i just want to say that as we approach uh the start of the of this new school year that

082i want to thank our our students and our families for being patient with us uh certainly there's been a lot of information and a lot of moving parts uh to finding out how and how best to provide the start of school for our students and secondly i want to thank the administration and our teachers for all of the work that they've done over the summer and all that they're doing to get prepared to deliver an excellent and outstanding opportunity for our students here this coming school year while i know a lot of this is new i know that there's a lot of stress as part of this whole process and i recognize that and i know that our teachers recognize that and certainly you as board members recognize that and i think our our family

083and our community recognize it but we will uh we will do well and we will do well and we will do uh the best by our students and our community and we will make sure that we provide an excellent opportunity and education for our students so with that said i i want to thank the board for their support i want to thank our community our parents our students our staff and our administration for all the hard work thank you thank you dr zurby okay at this time the board will now take comments on board action items this is an opportunity for residents to comment on matters to be decided upon as outlined on the agenda we ask that you keep your comments limited to four minutes or less and we may choose to respond to

084some of the matters following the conclusion of the comments we typically do this during the um portion of the meeting where we um when we get to that those agenda items so let's see starting with my list i have jenny geiss mrs geiss you can start whenever you're ready good evening jenny guys woodland kindergarten i would like to start with keeping on in addition with dr zerby the praise for the principals aides custodians and the teaching staff i have been in numerous times over the past several weeks attempting to get ready for the new start of this virtual world and it is amazing the dedication from each and every staff member i especially want to send a thank you to our principals who i know as staff members we are coming to with new ideas

085almost on a daily basis of wow i heard about this great thing is it possible to do this could you get this for us it would really improve the virtual learning especially for some of our littlest learners and they really seem to be responsive and attempting to do all that they can to help us make this a smooth transition to this brand new world we're about to all dip our toe in virtual teaching um i do have a few questions based on some of the items that were discussed unless i missed it it does sound like library books are not going to be available through k to 6. that does concern me especially as a kindergarten goal is book handling skills i have had students in the past who have not held an actual physical

086book before coming into my room and so we spend a lot of time about talking about this is where you start this is the title this is the cover this is how you open the book you know you start at the front and move towards the back um you know there's not many students who've never held a book but there are always a few and so i'm really disappointed that we're not offering the opportunity for our littlest learners to have actual physical books i do understand they're only 32 pages long but they need to have access to physical books also um so if you could revisit that and change it it would i'm sure be greatly appreciated for k-6 parents and students my other question has to do with the audubon auction of items i

087know in the past there was an auction of items and teachers were totally flabbergasted at the items that were up for sale as we had not been notified that these were even in storage or available what tends to happen if someone says oh you know what i don't need this table and ask one of our great custodial staff to move it into storage it's forgotten about and then if someone else says oh i need a table they write it up as a budget item and could we buy it and so i would ask that before sending out for public auction please those same photos you would use for public auction send out to the staff to see if there's something we could use in our room but didn't realize were available and could save the

088district some money in that we wouldn't be asking to purchase something new we would be repurposing something that we just didn't happen to know the district already owned if you could consider those two things it would be greatly appreciated thank you so much thank you mrs geiss okay next i have amy smith okay mrs smith you are in whenever you are ready hi thank you amy smith from worcester um mrs geiss actually took my comment i i wanted to bring up the fact that i think it's unfortunate if we are not providing library books from the schools for the students i know that with the logistics of of working from home and supervising students it's going to be even more challenging for parents to get their children to a local library and i know that

089um you know holding physical books and and just having that variety and that exposure um especially to the books that our librarians work hard to make sure are part of their collections and um you know having access to that not having access to that for for k through six i think is um disappointing so i hope that at some point we can we can somehow support that whether it be um you know taking some of those support staff and and moving them into roles where they can assist the librarians with book distribution that would be fantastic um but just making sure that that is part of the experience uh i think is is a way to bring some of what's missing with being home uh back into uh into the curriculum so i hope that

090uh that's something that we can look at and and i'm sure that uh you know if there's there's anything that um as school communities we can do to help the parents would be on board but that's the only comment i wanted to make thank you thank you mrs smith next i have brian earnshaw okay whenever you're ready um okay uh thank you two things um first mr winners asked the question i have regarding the list of bills and the amounts spent with kcba and other costs to date relating to the arrowhead project so if that information could be shared with the public i would appreciate that as well and just a point regarding the treasury report with the fund um 2020 a bond fund um where 18 million was deposited in that account i think

091it's important to note that by borrowing early looking at the spread between the yield on the bonds versus what the money's earning sitting in the bank um that carries an annual interest cost of 270 000 so that's an incremental cost of doing that borrowing early um when interest rates are going really nowhere for the foreseeable future thanks okay next i have liz santucci okay mrs santucci whenever you're ready sorry i couldn't find the unmute um thank you i've been a gifted kid of four specialists at mathafton since 1996 and the k-6 skipper coordinator since 2009 thank you for your time to both the school board members and administration for everything you have done and continue to do during this time i've asked to speak today regarding the restructuring of the k to four gifted position

092from one full-time position where the specialist works two full days and one half day in each of two elementary buildings to the pairing of two a.m kindergarten classes leaving pm time for duties required for the gifted position the first is referenced by dr zerby and the superintendent superintendent advisements and the second is noted in the professional employment i became aware of these changes made to the position when the agenda items were posted please know that my comments regarding my concerns in no way reflect the individual slated for these positions these comments are related only to structural changes of the position and the fact that as planned it will be a pm only position mathematically it appears that dividing the time between morning and afternoon would be equivalent but the varied responsibilities of the job make

093the structure difficult to achieve all that is needed as the position covers all grades k to four the specialist is required to coordinate and work around all grade level schedules and plan direct instruction in addition based on the needs of the students additional time to meet with individuals is scheduled as well to support classroom staff as these responsibilities cross grade levels you can imagine being restricted to pm only does not allow flexibility in addition to working with students and staff a large part of the role of gifted is to facilitate assessments we are tasked with conducting the universal second grade screening as well as building screening for students for whom teachers or parents request this be done again flexibility is key well i understand the second grade universal screening will be postponed until students return

094which makes sense i do believe that we cannot continue to defer and postpone assessments for those students in all grades for whom screening is requested by parents or staff this was put on hold when we left school last march and was not reinstituted understandably but i do think we have a fiduciary responsibility to restart the screening and testing this will require flexibility the gifted specialist is also responsible for gip meetings writing documents communicating working with staff and this also requires time in the am and pm on a side note we had about 24 to 26 students who were in second part of the gifted evaluation so these guys will need to be gipped as well if they qualify i was contacted by mr regina earlier today when i reached out to express my concerns to

095him and i do understand that restructuring of the position is one which is slated as a one-time change for this year only and i fully appreciated his time and was grateful for the conversation i was assured by him that this is not what was planned for the position long term and i also understand the processes by which these changes came about and working to figure out how to handle all of the moving parts thrown at us by this pandemic this decision was made in this regard i also want to express it as the veteran gifted specialist and elementary coordinator i pledge to support the staff placed in these roles this year and while it will be a pretty big challenge pun intended we'll do whatever i can to make it work for this year and

096i will help facilitate the best outcome for both students and staff in these jobs and that said i respectfully request that should enrollments change prior to the opening of school in the kindergarten sessions requiring an additional class that has switched to making the gifted position full-time am pm two and a half days in each building be strongly considered if this cannot occur i would like to request that this be deemed a one-year change and that this should be moved back to a full-time position next year thank you again for your time and your continued support of our gifted students and programming moving forward thank you mr santucci next i have jim malik go ahead dr malik whenever you're ready hear me okay [Music] can you hear me all right yes i can let me know

097if i cut out uh jim monic warcester listen to the bills uh you have the shell bartle and dooley it looks like there's look like the same numbers but there's actually negative numbers associated with their their bills so if you could explain why there's red negative numbers associated with their legal fees that would be appreciated the when you look at their bills and if you look at sweet stevens bills from last month sweet stevens last month charges 280 000 for legal work um the current bills i'm looking at have nothing from sweet stevens this month how in this situation where the districts closed how did the district process sweet stephen's invoices if the offices are closed you know were the invoices sent to the business manager is that how it went [Music] and if they

098were sent to the business manager were they mailed to him or did he get those electronically uh if you can answer those questions that would be appreciated because i'm having trouble understanding how invoices which the district says only come by paper can be processed when the offices are closed um the treasurer's report i'm looking for the shannon del account and i can't find it is it in here in the treasures report for the disputed funds [Music] or is it a separate escrow account that you guys don't oversee can you tell me that one [Music] because it's not labeled can you tell me what the fund is is it here do you know how much is in the shannon dell account if it does exist [Music] okay can you tell me which account is holding the

0993.4 million dollar surplus [Music] are you finished dr malik it's my time up no i'm just wondering if you have anything else to say i'll wait for you to answer me [Music] dr malik this isn't your first meeting you know we don't do questions back and forth um i hate to tell you but you do when you have so i don't know what you're thinking about but you're choosing yeah you're choosing not to now do you have anything else relative to the agenda yeah can you ask the business manager what uh what account in the treasures report deals with shannon dell we'll get to those fiscal items in a moment you you'll answer my question is that what you're saying do you have anything else yeah where's the 3.4 million dollar surplus in the treasurer's

100report [Music] okay thank you dr malik john andrews mr andrews whenever you're ready yes thank you johnny andrew is low of providence i have no questions this evening regarding the action items okay thank you and finally we have joe bickleman mr bickelman whenever you're ready hello can you hear me okay uh i have a i have a concern or a request from the board there's a very critical hire that is on the agenda for tonight for action it's matt walsh director of curriculum instruction and assessment i feel that this uh hire is very critical because the high school ranking by u.s news and world report has gone down from 11th 11th in the state in august of 2013 and has currently dropped to 65th and it is a downward trend i'd like to hear more

101about mr walsh before you hire him i'd like to hear his credentials i don't know if you got any plans from him during the interview of what he plans to implement to correct this downward trend at the high school ranking but it's something that shouldn't go on and it's something that the board should not be proud of under uh this is it was under superintendent's advisements uh what is a k-2 communications instructor what do they do i saw there's a there's also a communications instructor for a 3-4 level you know i don't know if this is well i'm sure it's not speech therapy because that's a separate teacher for special ed so i really don't understand what a k-2 communication instructor does and i also want to thank the board for directing the administration to

102find other alternative work for the support staff i'm really happy there are no furloughs for the support staff you know they would have had to scramble to come up with money to pay for their benefits and god if something serious would happen to these people so i'm really happy that they found alternative work and that mr regina did all the leg work to instruct the support staff and put them at ease so i'm really happy about that and i want to thank the board for directing the administration to do that thank you mr bickelmann and with that we conclude the public comment on board action items may i have a motion to approve the suspension of board policy 006.2 with specific regards to the limitation on the number of directors participating in a meeting electronically

103reece makes the motion thank you miss reese can i have a second drummond with a second thank you miss drummond any comments all those in favor aye aye aye any opposed motion carries 9-0 may i have a mission to approve the minutes from the work session meeting held july 21st and regular board meeting part one held on july 28th and part two on july 30th is attached reece makes the motion thank you miss reece is there a second rough second thank you mr navarette any comments from the board all those in favor aye aye any opposed okay the motion carries nine zero fiscal items mr bricker thank you madam president tonight for your approval we have the list of bills treasurer's report there are no budgetary transfers cash on call rate change recommendations which includes

104six recommendations plan con k approval for gob series 2020 plan concave approval go n series 2020 the creation of a student activity account for the class of 2024 and the closure of the student activity account for class of 2020 as well as a change order for chm this is change order one for a credit of 23 485.23 thank you mr bricker um does anyone want to take any of these fiscal items separately i do okay which ones uh item item d casual on call okay anything else all right so i'll have um is there a motion to approve fiscal items a through c and e through h do you guys make a motion thank you mr mcginnis is there a second drummond second thank you miss drummond any comments from the board on these items

105yeah can we i i am uh positive that the i don't know where the exact title is but i am positive the taxes paid in escrow has been on the treasury report and is uh i don't have it right in front of me but close to 5.8 million dollars if mr brecker can speak to that and also related to um the surplus that we had from last year that it's in i believe the general form and also the element related to um a credit related to bartles okay i can take them all uh the franklin credit union money market account is noted as taxes held in escrow on the treasurer's report it is on page two the balance is 5 million hundred fifty five thousand nine hundred fifty nine dollars and twenty three cents that

106is not the total of the taxes paid in protest as interest is occurring in that account as discussed at the finance committee due to the interest rate that we are getting on that account the surplus funds cash is fundable so it's mixed into the different accounts that we have throughout the school districts general fund i could say it's in any one of the accounts but the three million dollars is in the general fund at this point in time and invested most likely into one of our higher interest rates that we have and then regards to arnold's the negative amount that is was accrued back to the prior year can you explain that last one i didn't understand it was an expense that was accrued back to the prior fiscal year on the list of bills

107yes okay so you're just switching okay so it's showing more or less a journal entry on the list of bills yes and mr bricker just to clarify um we do have someone who actually physically goes into the building to retrieve mail and process any paper bills that we receive correct yes okay so while the offices are generally closed we do have someone who goes in to make sure that the district can continue to operate we go in only to print checks okay any other comments from the board on these items seeing none all those in favor aye aye aye any opposed seeing numb motion carries nine zero now may i have a motion to approve fiscal item uh d for the casual on-call rate recommendations you're my guinness thank you with a second thank you

108uh comments from the board i'm gonna abstain as my wife is a casual on-call i don't know um mr cohn if i have to do anything other than explain that but uh that's why i asked for it separate uh i would just ask that you send an email we'll attach to the minutes about the conflict of interest but it's a simple email that states your relationship okay thank you okay anyone else with comments on the casual on-call rate mr mcginnis uh tim i believe it was 2007 was the last time these were changed is that accurate that is correct okay so just to know that these haven't been touched in a long long time and are in line with all of our peer groups yes thank you for that clarification any other comments from the

109board seeing none all those in favor opposed abstained one okay the motion carries that the vote of eight zero one mr cohen is there a need to do a roll call vote or are we good no that's fine okay thank you okay moving on to personnel items mr regina good evening uh a number of items for the board's approval this evening first we have one professional resignation for retirement and one classified resignation for retirement both of those individuals we talked about last week have been with the district for quite a while and they will be sorely missed a lot of knowledge and great employees uh leaving the district here so um but i congratulate them on their retirement and um they will be missed here for item administrative appointment dr zurby thank you mr regina

110i'm pleased to recommend to the board that they appoint dr matthew walsh of lansdale as a director of curriculum instruction and assessment dr walsh has nine years of central office experience and nine years of elementary building principal experience he has an element he has been an elementary teacher and has worked in both the north penn and the wisa hicken school districts he's an adjunct faculty member for gwen mercy university in the graduate teaching and learning program the process to arrive here at this recommendation was extensive with a tremendous number of capable and talented applicants assuming that he is appointed this evening i expect him to start on or about october 1 of this school year i look forward if given the opportunity to welcome dr walsh to the factory administration to help support our teachers

111our administrators towards accomplishing our mission thank you doctors irving um we have uh three items for professional employment um and and just as a just to remind everyone each of these new employees will receive our welcome packet including an employee t-shirt so we we can't do that in person at the moment so we will be sending that to them right after the agenda items pass we have seven items for change of status one item for professional uncompensated leave one item for classified uncompensated leave one sabbatical leave item and and this is as indicated last week a medical sabbatical we have three items for supplemental contracts and as stated previous in our previous agenda for the work section the fall athletic coaches and the supplemental contract list have been added with the total amount for those

112coaches one item for volunteer lists and then one item for alternative utilization of our support staff employees thank you mr regina may i have a motion to approve the personnel actually i'm sorry before we go through with that um are there any uh personnel items that any board members would like to take separately uh mr mcginnis the uh supplemental contracts for the call coaches help me out what letter was that oh i apologize i three wait no l3 got it oh i apologize l3 yes okay anything else all right then i will take a motion to approve personnel items a through k reese motion wait sorry i wasn't sorry sorry i'm a little slow a true k m through p reese makes the motion thank you miss reese is there a second mr winners any

113comments from the board just yeah could we um just could we just talk about what the library structure is um going to be looking like um with k to 6 and 7 to 12 with this staff restructuring dr hank said would you mind answering that course please so there are going to be library services in k-6 the reason they were not on the presentation tonight is because we're using our librarians to provide that support so we didn't need additional support staff to provide that service and opportunities for our students so the librarians are finishing up their plans and more details about that will be shared in the next week or two from the elementary principles thank you doctors i just wanted to ask uh somebody i could but i'm not the the expert if someone

114could uh explain to mr bickleman what um a communications teacher does briefly i know that was in the advisement but it's still personnel i think another good question for dr hangstad no problem the communication classes were two special education classrooms that were hosted at arrowhead they were district-run classrooms and we have had the students return earlier this year we made the decision to return students to their home schools so the teachers were moved to itinerant learning support positions still special ed teachers um and the only other thing i'll say i'll add is i i think i talked about at the work session just thank mr regina for all his help and personnel thank everybody involved in mr walsh's interview process it was quite um extensive as dr zurby mentioned um and thank everybody who works

115in the curriculum office for all their work doing double triple and quadruple duty while there's been a pandemic and we have been down a person so if october 1st could get here really really really fast that would be awesome any other comments from the board mr winners yeah i appreciate the miss santucci's comments um related to the challenge program in the elementary side um che if you could speak towards some of those the comments that you had and then also just around the process my guess is that the process that the coordinator for elementary gifted generally does not find about should not be finding out about these things as a general rule via the agenda so i imagine that the the missing director of curriculum may have been uh part of the problem but if

116you could just speak to that real quick please sure it's um it actually had to do with some movement of staff so our current gifted teacher had um applied for and moved internally into a different role so it was an open position um and along with we had a kindergarten uh concern so some of the numbers in our kindergarten as we talked about there's been some fluctuations in enrollment um so our arrowhead kindergarten teacher did was a full kindergarten teacher um but then only needed and had needed only that person for half of the day um so i spoke with dr angstadt and to see if this was a possibility i will i will tell you that dr einstein was not a fan of this um what what it will do is it will put

117a gifted teacher in ever in both of these buildings every day what was currently happening was every other day they would be in arrowhead and woodland what we did was we just for this year will be utilizing both of the individuals as kindergarten teachers in the morning and assisting with gifted in the afternoons but staying in those respective buildings the entire week so the amount of time doesn't necessarily change it would just be different time and i i will tell you probably one of the biggest workarounds here was that we were going to have to shift one of our kindergartens to a pm kindergarten and alert 23 families that their students that they were planning on being coming in the am will now be pm we did not feel like the timing for that was

118appropriate so we wanted to make that change on our side just for one year um so we weren't putting 23 families out looking for potential day care and other concerns that could be related to shifting at the last second so there was a number of things that went into it ms santucci and dr engsted have been very gracious about talking with me about it neither one of them are very excited about it but i think we're all on board making this work for one year before moving into the next year so i think that uh thank you dr uh yeah mr richie so uh second question uh or more of a comment and just pointed out that miss gradnick and mr hamilton have been long-term subs and part of the uh change that was with

119the me mea contract probably eight or ten years ago i don't know exactly one was related to the in-house substitutions that we ended up outsourcing i just want to point out that the district does the i believe the right thing by honoring their long-term sub uh responsibilities and placing them on the salary schedule appropriately related to that um so i appreciate that the district does the right the right thing and it allows us to um test drive in some ways some good good young teachers and also it allows them to have some reasons for sticking with the fact and i think it's the right thing to do just pointing that out anyone else um i just wanted to add one of the one of the downsides of doing our board meetings virtually is not being

120able to um in person recognize our retirees and i would just like to say on a personal note that dr mcginnis was played a very significant role in one of my children's education and so i um i'm going to greatly miss having her as part of my factom but i'm sure that she's got incredible things ahead of her as well um i'm just sorry that we don't get to share in her gifts so good luck to you dr mcginnis and thank you so with that i will take a vote then on the personnel items this is basically all except for personnel item l all those in favor aye aye aye any opposed seeing none the motion carries nine zero um and now we'll take the supplemental contracts item so if i could have a motion

121to approve the supplemental contracts madam president if i could if i could just uh interrupt for one second i just want to introduce everyone to dr matthew walsh who you just approved as our director of curriculum technology curriculum instruction and assessment dr walsh you want to say a few things sure thank you can you hear me okay all right let's see can you uh i just want to thank dr zurby mr regina and the methoctman board of school directors for your approval tonight i'm really excited to get working with a district that has a great reputation and i'm eager to join the team that focuses on teaching and learning once again i'm really excited for october 1st to get my hands involved in everything rolling up my sleeves and getting busy with uh the fun

122things that happened with fact and the teaching and learning and it's it's an honor to be part of the team so thank you again um for including me in the process and once again i look forward to meeting everyone in person virtually maybe at the beginning but uh again i'm grateful for everything so here we go with actin welcome aboard dr walsh thank you dr zory thank you dr walsh welcome to a party thank you party it is a virtual one for now you know do what we can yep all right so now getting back to our agenda items if i could have a motion to approve the supplemental contracts reese makes the motion thank you miss reese is there a second winner second thank you mr winners comments from the board mr mcginnis yeah

123the only reason i wanted to separate these out is i need some clarity and i don't i don't know if we have clarity but dr zurby this really ties into uh you know the announcement by the piaa what the pac is doing uh from my understanding early in the meeting is that they're kind of reconfiguring the entire schedule right now and they're going to have that back to us that's accurate correct that is correct okay so i just want to make sure there's no confusion who's in charge like who's in charge of the decision to press forward uh we as we all know we've lost four pack teams already um what if a fifth or a six raises their hand are we committing by this vote that you know we're full steam ahead with athletics

124and i'm not opposed to that i just want to make sure that we know that's going to happen well i think we we as a board back in july approved the health and safety plan associated with going full forward with athletics the only thing that has changed since that moment in time was the debate between the governor and the pila and then recently the pa double a's uh uh decision this past friday and then and then likely there are you know different departments health of health and health uh health organizations and and others that will weigh in on uh you know recommendations um that that will likely come our way and that we'll have to consider but the the people that are in charge of this particular activity uh are are certainly the nine members

125of this school board and so uh if but if in fact the pia does cancel and if in fact um there is uh you know the governor says certain things and and canceled it then some of that decision making is taken away from you but in terms of the the pioneer athletic conference uh that is typically made up of athletic directors and principals they make certain decisions that affect uh you know the conference but it but not necessarily does it dictate whether or not nathan decides to play uh sports now the the the flip side of the decision making process is just that who are we going to play when it's when the dust settles and that is really the uh the ultimate question and and and so you know the things that will be

126in front of us uh will be things like you know are we are there enough teams of of similar size okay that you know we don't necessarily want to play it as an example we don't want to be playing north penn and springford in football on a regular basis and possibly play them twice and the only reason i say that is because you know the size of the schools are significantly uh different so we need to make sure that we we have competition that's uh you know appropriate for our our our size school i i guess that the couple other challenges will be you know you know how far are we willing to travel for competition and uh other challenges will be you know what what what about those same decisions at the seventh and

127eighth grade level so there's there's still a number of of uns of uncertain things out there um so what i'm what i'm about to tell you is that not every district has made their decision uh some of them have made decisions already like nathan but some i i think there's one school district that's their their voting meetings on the 31st of august so yeah we we're not going to know this until the dust settles on september 1. and you know okay who's all who's all in who's all out and even those schools that are saying will do you know varsity or high school sports they may not do middle level sports so while i have i have a list of schools on where their current positions are and where the recommendations are from the superintendents

128uh i certainly don't have a crystal ball to tell you that your approval this evening will guarantee that uh all these coaches will will have a full team and that full team will have a full schedule that's fair but uh and i hear you and i thank you for that but just to be clear the the the pac ads are not going to make a decision for all pac schools or can they they they they can make decisions as they see fit in terms of what they think as a group but uh there there there's nothing that says that we we have to uh abide by what their decision is um in terms of whether we're going to offer sports for our students it just may limit us from being able to do things within

129those packed schools and what will what will constitute as you know there's there's a number of other challenges here you know even on the state level how are things going to work out with district and local playoffs i mean there's there's yeah that's that's that's a significant part like all that i know so that's down the road but i i hear you it's it's it's clear as mud and there's there's really no great answer but if we approve these contracts tonight we're paying these contracts correct that is that is correct okay that's all i want to know i appreciate and i and i and i'm not being cute i know there is no clarity i was just making sure that you know that there's not some pending announcement from the pac-10 ads that are going

130to nukes nuke sports and again if they have the authority to do that that's that they have the authority if you look at the catholic league yesterday and you know just there's some dominoes falling currently and i just wanted to make sure that you know if there was any way to predict us it sounds like there's not but i'm okay i appreciate you separating out that's all i really want to know thanks well i'll just say this i'm not saying that this action isn't with risk without risk okay i mean i i i i can't predict what will happen i can't predict if um you know some other entity says that things will change and we could approve this um and and not look back or we could approve this and and regret the fact

131that uh you know decisions were made against uh our our current path forward no and i and i think i say to that work session i i'm coach's job does not start the first day this season starts we've had coaches doing a ton of stuff already our kids are going to need coaches in their lives i just wanted to make sure that i just want to really kind of ask the question are the ads who's in charge right who's going to make that call and that that was the only thing i i i'm not against and i will be voting for these supplemental contracts i hear you i'm not overly concerned about any of that risk i just wanted to make sure that i understood maybe the entire board understood what could possibly happen and

132where we are with those decision again it'll change tomorrow it'll change the next day but uh i'm i am just so my position is clear i am not against uh paying our our coaches they have earned it and they will earn them thank you i will just add uh dr zurby or kim did you want to go no go ahead well and i brought this up at education and i i was going to say exactly what uh mr mcginnis said i and i like his con his comment this is clear as mud i've tried to explain to lots of people that this is bigger than with actin and it's not as easy as the kid walks you know out of school and puts on their sneakers um but if we are approving these tonight which

133i am full-heartedly approving um will there be some effort put forth for arcola for example i don't have to ask about the high school because they're already putting forth great effort so i have tried to explain to people that we might not have enough people to play we you know we it's not going to be the same but i said something about an abridged version so i know all the details haven't been worked out and i i just want to am curious if there's at least been a discussion that hey maybe two three days a week the soccer team will meet at arcola or two three days a week the field hockey team will meet i i just am assuming that those discussions have at least taken place for us to to approve that tonight

134that's all that's all i wanted to know they they have but typically what happens is uh arcola sports really gets into high gear once school starts and and so and so while our athletic director has been in contact with the coaches uh and and some coaches have uh started to reach out to their former players there's really there's really no uh uh activity in terms of uh you know you know a pre-season workout like we're doing with the at the high school level no totally understood and that's what i had said it to education it doesn't usually get started till sec second week or whatever and as long as that's clear that that still holds true in the virtual world because i have um twins i have to fill out that 20-page paperwork for and

135i've been kind of putting that off all right that's it yeah there's there's all those again i i know there's it even reaches down to the home level in terms of getting the uh the physical exams and all that i mean we recognize that but there's there's no way we can predict every uh avenue and uh yeah and i'm not complaining one bit i understand completely so my question is obviously we're making this decision for these supplemental contracts um and and i know that there's a lot of talk about other districts voting on whether or not to have school sports which is obviously not a voting item that we have before us this evening but i want to clarify obviously you know we have our our current situation with covid and with testing and with

136positivity rates and all that in our county and in our district that is constantly in flux if something changes in the next week or two that we suddenly realize as a community it becomes apparent that maybe school sports is not a good idea what path forward do we need to take for that to happen is that something that the district can decide my concern is that if something changes two weeks from now and we suddenly are seeing positivity rates in montgomery county over five percent and there's contact tracing that shows that it's all coming back to school sports i purely hypothetical scenarios here i don't want us to be in a situation where we have to have a board meeting which we don't have scheduled until september and then we'd have to call an emergency

137meeting i guess i just want to make sure that i'm clear on what process needs to be followed if we end up in a situation where we need to stop school sports yeah likely likely that will be a discussion among the county superintendents uh specifically those that are involved in the uh that are holding athletics um we will then collectively decide whether or not to put a pause on those activities and like i would do in any other situation i would communicate obviously with the board president and then with the remaining remainder remainder of the board to make sure that they understand the the reasons behind the change and likely uh our county department of health would have been in that conversation like they are once a week now on a regular basis with the

138mciu that holds holds a meeting related to all items covid and and school starting related matters including sports which was part of our conversation uh today so with that with that said uh we we would put that halt on we would then communicate with our families obviously as well and um then we would set the benchmarks based on the department of health's recommendations as to how we could safely return based on the data that was before us at that time i would expect that issue to go on your regular september if it happens and we all hope it doesn't your regular september agenda there'd be no need for an emergency meeting the administrators are in a position to make that public health decision and then the board can address it however they want to address

139it at their next regularly scheduled meeting okay so we could potentially if we had to stop school sports without having a vote and then bring it for discussion at this next okay yes all right that's that's what i wanted to clarify um the other thing that i want to talk about um is when we mentioned you mentioned that there could be a question of how far they're going to be traveling for competition and i just would ask that we exercise a lot of caution there i mean obviously we've got the logistics around you know transporting students and all of that but um you know if you look at the cdc guidelines for youth sports one of the things that they talk about is you increase your risk the further you travel from your home area

140so i just want to make sure that you know if we are going to start looking outside of our usual pack teams for competition that um you know we do that very thoughtfully and maybe in consultation um with at least a couple of board members yeah typically what we would do for in this case based on our conversation today uh we would use uh data uh on the uh transmission rates uh associated with each county and as we travel from montgomery county saying to another county that might be might be about the same but if we we don't want to travel into counties that have you know an exorbitant amount of of transmission rate you know much higher than what we have here so we'll be taking some guidance from the department of health as

141as we look at how how do we uh how do we fulfill a schedule uh potentially outside of montgomery county if that does come to uh fruition yeah and that's i like the other board members have said i do think that you know we can have school sports and we can do it safely um i just want to make sure that we are um you know mindful of the fact that it's a fluid situation and there is the very real possibility that school sports is not going to look like what we would typically see in our fall sports season just like school isn't going to look the same right now sports will be no different so are there any other comments from the board before we vote miss hall i guess i just want to

142view this in the simplest terms that we can so by improving this we are simply paying the coaches there's no guarantee that you know there will be games played between schools with this approval that we need to still wait on the schedule that comes out to see that is that correct that that is correct but it also it also means by not doing this uh we we we we typically wouldn't start our season on september 7th when it's able to start so we're kind of in a catch-22 on on the situation otherwise um we would have to hold the special meeting uh you know on august or on september 6 or prior to september 6 in order to see whether we were able to start the season that the very next day but and even

143even at that it doesn't necessarily guarantee that the schedules will be produced and be made available so any any delay in this will will just be a delay and we will expect our coaches to continue we're doing their off-season workouts and we would then expect them to start the season without being approved the problem the other problem with that is we have a number of people i think there's a volleyball coach mr gina who else is nuwanda on the list uh we have a volleyball coach we have a few assistant coaches as well that are new on the list um with a few current vacancies so those individuals some of them have just been added within the last few weeks i mean we had some individuals also just recently resigned which is where you see

144the vacancies on that list so they would they would be able to help even in in the interim until we approve them is our schedule i think you you did state earlier in the meeting that you believe our first event is actually the end of september around the 25th so that's what we're looking at the according to the piaa uh the first allowable uh and this isn't for every sport but before the earliest sport is either september 24th or september 25th i can't remember the date but it's one of those two days and that's and that's a competition so that would mean that uh scrimmages could happen prior to that but not um not i will call it sanction play that would count for a record miss canker go ahead now my only comment is

145i think during the preseason i just want to thank the coaches and the students have done a phenomenal job doing their questionnaire before they enter in wearing their mask following safety and have shown no signs or transmission of covet and i just want us to put a positive that i think we've done a great job being safe with our pre-season return to sports so i just have to say that so thank you everybody i would second that and i would encourage our families to continue the excellent work that they've done with um you know keeping everybody safe it's it takes a community effort and that's what we're seeing okay so seeing no further comments i think we're good to vote here now all those in favor of the supplemental contracts as listed aye aye any

146opposed okay motion carries nine zero moving on to curriculum and programs um i'll i'll take that i was going to say we're not going to throw dr walsh into this one tonight so so quickly uh textbook adoptions uh you've seen this on the agenda for the last two months i won't go into much further explanation um and then this was updated as i mentioned earlier in the in the presentation this evening uh but but uh this is an action item that was on the agenda which had an actual schedule but because the schedules need to be updated per the pia action this past friday new athletic schedules will be developed as per our policy 123 and provided the board's consideration at the meeting in september for approval okay may i have a motion to approve

147the items under curriculum and programs i'm sorry miss purdue with the motion i can can i have a second three seconds thank you miss reece any comments from the board seeing none all those in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries nine zero um policy we have six policies presented for a second reading here this evening may i have a motion to approve these six policies i'll make the motion hope thank you miss hall is there a second mr mcginnis any comments from the board seeing none all those in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries nine zero under other um may i have a motion to approve the submission of the flexible instructional day application to the pennsylvania department of education as presented reese thank you miss reece is there a second uh cancro

148with the second uh any comments from the board seeing oh i'm sorry mr winners go ahead no i think it i think it's an if somebody can explain how that why we're doing this and how it can be used and how long it lasts for those that were not part of the education committee well we're fortunate to have ms brooker a supervisor of elementary education miss brecker with us tonight would you please explain it to the board absolutely thank you um as we presented to the education committee the flexible instructional day plan is an application from districts to pde to seek approval for five flexible days throughout the year this enables us to plan our calendars for cases of a pandemic electrical outages snow days where we can still have um instruction continue even though

149we're not able to be in our school building we're fortunate enough to have our virtual instructional plan um part of the plan has seven assurances that the school district will give as far as notifying parents providing materials providing health services complying with vape and idea so with that if the board approves this plan tonight we submit it to the state september 1st they will let us know by november 1st if we are approved to use five to five instructional days um for them for this coming year the 2021 school year and that will take us for three years up into the 2022-2023 school year the only other requirement pde has is that they will submit a survey to us by april 30th and then we will look at our effectiveness and planning gathering insights and

150our uses of the flexible instructional days and we report back to them june 30th so some of the confusion along the lines of of this recommendation uh doesn't necessarily match up with the fact that uh we have a new environment where all of our students are online uh so assuming that uh our ability to do all the online stuff as part of uh of what we're starting the school year off this would be if we were in a a a normal uh or a standard brick and mortar environment where as ms brucker mentioned uh is generally thought of as a way to prevent having to make up snow days and then that's that was it's its original intent but has a number of other uh alternative uses uh that that are spelled out in the

151application process so i just want to thank ms brucker for uh taking the lead in putting all this together and getting this ready for us because it is we are going to be back in school and we are likely it is likely gonna snow at some point and so we're likely gonna need to use this and what one thing that it really does do is allows us all to keep on schedule uh and not have to worry about you know changing the calendar and moving days and it really not only helps our students our families uh but but our staff as well so so thank you ms brucker any other comments from the board seeing none all those in favor aye aye aye aye any opposed okay the motion carries nine zero dates for board

152members calendars the next item that we have coming up is um the september 8th act 34 hearing we have our regular committee meetings and work session and board meeting in september all will be held virtually the zoom login information will be found on the district website as it has been um under old business um i do have one thing that i wanted to ask about while we're here um dr zerby and possibly mr jones if you could chime in as well um i wanted to know if we had any updates on our technology needs and the ppe equipment that we are looking for um just if we can make sure that we are following up with vendors and tracking on where those items are mr jones you want to talk about ppe yes uh right

153now we do currently have uh 10 of the electrostatic sprayers and i was notified today that the 17 of the 34 that we ordered should be in the local distribution warehouse this week and we will have those either friday or monday the contractor is going to personally go pick them up and deliver them to us so we will have uh the 27 as of next week so when it's all said and done uh we're gonna we're not only gonna have the the equipment that we need to go back on premise but we'll have a approximately six months worth of supplies is that is that is that right mr jones yes that is we're already uh inventorying that uh and and have pretty much all of it at this point yes great thank you so much

154in terms of technology uh we didn't start the uh technology distribution process uh i think it started late last week with the communication and then natural distribution started uh this week um we have i think one of the questions was uh from from the 18th was uh how many uh you know remaining units after we take care of seven through 12 and how many you know and take care of kindergarten how many remaining units would would be available for distribution among the the grades uh two through six and it's approximately uh uh 550 close to 600 units that would be available uh currently on on site and why it's not an exact number because uh as we're as we're processing those units we're also uh reviewing the units and some of them are units that

155were turned in at the end of last school year and now being re-issued back out so these are these are devices that we we have uh on premise and some of those devices are not returnable in fact even i think even today there were a number of people that actually received devices that also had some other uh errors at a closer look so we're addressing those matters um in terms of the additional 800 machines that uh we're expecting uh we were we were expecting uh uh earlier in the summer we did receive word that is likely by the we like to receive those by the second week of september uh and start distribution by the third week possibly end of the third week early in the fourth week of september and then the the the

156outstanding uh issuance there's about 400 and i think it's 435 units that that would would still be uh that we still don't have a definitive date for for shipment but i know uh not only uh has dr landis gavin atlantis been working on that but i know i put mr bricker on that as well to continuing uh to uh contact the vendors and this and through the supply chain to find out where that stuff is and mr burger's made a pretty good effort on that and that's the information that we have for you this evening so the devices that were returned at the end of last school year and then redistributed back to students this year were they devices that were at the end of their lease no the devices that we received that were

157the end of the lease they got shipped back so then which what are these devices that students turned in that they're now getting back again i'm not clear on why they were turned in then yeah the the uh the the idea here was to uh take devices that were so we have a three year warranty on the devices and so the idea was to bring i believe about like i said 500 to 600 units back into circulation uh that could be used at a one of our lower levels for for one year until we got through uh the the cycle of uh of leases i get i'm still not 100 clear on that so we had students that had these devices that had a need for the devices last year they turned them in in

158june and now we are giving them back to those same students so i'm just wondering what was the reason that they were turned in in june hey yeah i'm just i'm trying to understand why those devices were turned in and now they're being returned to students i i i don't have that answer for you okay um so then the other question that i have related to this is are we developing a mechanism then for families to be able to notify the district if they don't have a need for a device so that we can better allocate the available devices so instead of those you know 550 to 600 computers just going you know alphabetically through the list or whatever instead we give them to the families who have identified that they have a definitive and

159immediate need and families that don't have an immediate need that could you know possibly get by without a device for the in the interim um i just i want to make sure that we are moving forward quickly with that process so that we have as many students as possible ready to hit the ground running on september 8th we are uh our communication that goes out tomorrow as is communicating to our our free reduced lunch families first they will have an opportunity to opt out if they so choose to um but they can also be the first ones to get on the schedule and then after that we have another opportunity for families to opt out or to get on the schedule for pickup that that communication should be going out tomorrow so are we surveying

160all families to ask if they have a device that they are able to surrender we are not okay um i just i i want to encourage that we kind of utilize every possible um scenario every every means i think outside the box as much as possible to try and get um devices into as many hands as possible um i i hoped we'd be in a better place with this by now yeah we are in a good place with it right now but the challenge here is there's a number of dynamics associated with making these decisions if we start if we start uh handing out machines that aren't consistent across the classrooms and grade levels and and then we'll we're going to in a process of months of exchanges that will that will not be helpful

161for our teachers and keeping the continuity uh within the classes that they have so we we went round and round with the with the matter uh through the the administrative uh uh ranks and the best decision to move forward with is under recognizing that most of our families that requested units uh last year we were able to provide and we have this we have the same amount of units and actually a little bit more to provide for this about the same proportion of families that are likely going to need units this time around uh plus we're having an additional 200 uh i think it's 230 units that that are into the mix within within the total population that we didn't have last year that are going to be issued to uh the portion of first

162grade in terms of uh phone tablets so in order to in order to get this done properly um there's not one great solution um and the the challenge was making sure that we had a more definitive uh response on when our largest shipment was coming in giving that it would be coming in the middle of september we believe that uh based on the needs from last year and our ability to distribute what we have is the best plan forward at this time do we have any devices i know that we have basically phased out the computer labs in the buildings but do we have any any desktop devices that can be that are still serviceable that can be repurposed for people to come into the buildings to use i'm just like i said just trying

163to think outside the box a little bit here and and i don't know we've stripped everything out of the building okay uh we're at the process now where we're uh you know we're distributing what we what we have um the the likely will be you know uh you know the desktops were not we're not moving forward we were sending home with families no no no i was thinking more that we could set up a temporary computer lab um for students in need um i don't know like i said just trying to think outside the make box available uh certainly uh if if ever if we need families that that uh want to take advantage of uh the you know the y program uh we could certainly have the desktops available for those students that that's

164certainly um something we we have on premise that we can take care of there's like i know this isn't good okay i'm really i'm really uh today let me just if i could just jump in real quick i i don't know i had on the exact numbers but i just heard on the news across the country there's like three or four million dollars three or four million devices that are short among schools around the entire country in addition the supply chain issues uh the normal supply chain issues around covet and then on top of that just the trade relations with china right now so i think uh i think there's a lot of other things going on that are not necessarily reflective of a dropping of a ball or dropping of a chromebook on the

165fact and side so just trying to level set the the environment that we're sitting in yeah no i i recognize that this is not a methactin problem i just am i i'm trying to find a methachtene solution is what i'm getting at here and i know that um we are very fortunate with the resources that we have available to us in our community so i'm just wondering if there are ways that we can pull together um you know i i recognize that the best instruction method is for all students to have the same devices so that teachers can teach accordingly um but you know it we may have to look to plan b or plan c where we have you know students using devices that are available to them at home um and and turning

166in a chromebook if they have another device that they can use um similar to what we did in the spring um i know it's not ideal but um having students without a device at all for the start of school is even less ideal so i i think once we get through the initial distribution process and we see how the dust clears um we certainly can give up a plan b c indeed but and one of those will be would likely be something where we would uh issue the request out to our uh our other other uh students that have already that already have devices but we haven't we haven't done that just yet okay well i'm looking forward to hearing more updates on this as we get them thank you so what we'll let it

167go but one out of box thought is the mef if they have any contacts with our uh pfizer or anybody else that has um some chromebooks that are not being used right now that are not being distributed through their employees maybe there's a out of box solution that way miss purdue i just had it um i guess one comment for old business i wanted to say thank you to dr yuka and dr riki for um hosting their navigating virtual school program last week um i think it was a very good program well attended and they provided a lot of information strategies for arcadia for families so i just wanted to say thank you to them in that program one of the things that came up is what you brought up um miss larson is which

168is um have to do with the devices right and i think they monitored the comments within there and a lot of questions about the device availability and when those devices will be available so i think it echoes what was said without repeating everything but i think we need to really do think outside of the box just to ensure that we can get the devices to the students within a reasonable amount of time thank you miss purdue um does anyone else have any comments for old business ms hull i'm afraid to ask this at this point but um we talked earlier about a comcast offering for families that needed internet connectivity is there any update on that we do not have the information to share with you this evening we are you know we are we

169are providing the information on the typical comcast uh uh essentials products to our families um we are uh purchasing uh hot spots uh as needed based on uh a number a number of criteria that we've put in place um but but those are those are first uh select families and we can certainly use the cares or proven money to uh to pay for those thank you i don't know i never know if something is old business or new business but since we talked about it at education i think it's old um dr zurby i don't know if you and i don't want you to have to talk too long and i don't know if it's the right time to just mention what you mentioned in education because not a lot of people were listening to

170education and you know you had said you were putting dr angstadt in charge of one thing and you were going to be in charge of another i think it's worth repeating if you feel comfortable oh absolutely um so so i had mentioned at the education committee and uh and basically what i wanted to do was at last last week we had what was typically called our retreat even though it wasn't related to a typical retreat where we work on the development of us as a team uh we use that time to deal with all the uh specific and minute uh matters that comprise all the decisions that need to be made prior to the start of the school year so we spent two days not a continuous amount of time but over two days we

171did a lot of planning and made a number of decisions as a result of that while they haven't all been finalized as a result of that i feel comfortable uh allowing uh and asking dr angstadt uh to kind of take the reins of the start of the news of start of this coming school year and deal with the particulars working with the curriculum office and the building principles to get all that work done where i wanted to uh start focusing on what happens after the end of this very splunking period this isn't something that uh you know planning for what comes next isn't something this can happen you know in a couple days so what i've asked the board president uh to do is is help me assemble an ad hoc committee of the board

172and to talk about at a the high level matters of things that we need to address uh in order to uh provide an opportunity for a safe return and b um you know how how might that look in terms of the examples that are out there in in in other schools across the country or even even here in montgomery county when we create that high level of uh outlook we'll i'll then take those uh that information to the pandemic team that pandemic team is is made up of a number of different uh uh folks within the that comprise a number of different uh employee groups within the within the district um and from there start developing the details associated with that my goal uh while we talked earlier about coming to the board in mid

173october with a plan i would like to be able to provide a plan uh working with the through the education committee through the work session and through the voting meeting here in september uh to try to put in in place uh the the action plan uh for a return to school so with so with that said i think that summarizes what generally what i what i uh stated at the education committee and we we started that process just um uh this week uh dr engstad and and i and that you know was communicated just recently out to the building principles to look for doctor and staff following up on those matters and that i'll be working on the uh the the next phase of our return to school okay is there anything else for old

174business moving on to new business um mr neverett yeah um just an update i know we talked last week um we had our first meeting of the ad hoc committee of the board for diversity equity inclusion on thursday um samira liz um dr zerby and i all met um thursday morning uh our goal really was to determine uh the first actionable steps uh for the dei office um that ultimately moved us towards determining what the overall scope and eventually staffing of that office would be so three primary takeaways from that meeting um one as the first steps towards getting a more accurate assessment of the climate in the district uh we're initiating a conversation with dr bruce campbell of arcadia university about his work conducting equity audits for local school districts um such as north

175penn abington and colonial who he's been working with for the past year second thing is along similar lines we talked about how we can better capture data from our students and staff about issues of race equity and conclusion excuse me inclusion the safe to say program is a built-in reporting tool that we have in the district already our students and staff are comfortable with they're familiar with it so the beginning of the year communication about the tool from the administration will include some emphasis on reporting issues related to diversity equity and inclusion and finally the third thing we also discussed the use of native american imagery within the district um and earlier this summer uh after dr zerby's meeting with the students uh he administration moved to retire the warrior costume that's used at athletic

176events uh and also eliminated the use of the native american head iconography from all logos uh communication has gone out about the change in logos to all of our coaches um and will be further communicated to staff before the start of school and as other matters along those lines come up they will be addressed so hopefully we have a new update for you after our discussions with dr campbell next month thank you mr neveret i'm glad that you guys were able to to get this started and i'm looking forward to hearing more from the committee as you guys move forward um is there anything else for new business kim quick question for you um at this springford school board meeting last night the president of their school board said that she was trying to talk

177to neighboring school districts and that she was somewhat successful and that they hoped to talk again i did not know if you were part of any of those discussions um yes and no um she did reach out and she did um try to set something up and unfortunately the zoom invite went out too so late that i didn't get it prior to the start of the meeting so there will be another meeting next week i'm looking forward to to you know collaborating with them so that we can hopefully have a little bit more cohesion among our districts um maybe not necessarily an agreement but at least an understanding of what each other is doing thank you yep anything else for new business okay with that then i will move on to courtesy of the floor

178i'm gonna look at our list of pre-registered commenters um first i have sorry um patrick mary uh mr neri i see you in the meeting twice if you could raise your hand it looks like you just did looks like that account it won't let me promote to or won't let me add you into the meeting to talk if you could try from the other okay i'm gonna have to promote you to panelists so bear with me here okay mr neri you are in whenever you are ready you can unmute and speak there you go thank you can you hear me all right yes thank you well good evening my comments tonight are threefold uh some well-deserved thank yous a tactical request and then maybe a lofty request um i do want to start by thanking

179the board for what i'm certain you never contemplated when you raised your hand and accepted this responsibility the weight you're bearing on your collective shoulders is immense as is a pressure and spotlight you're under you're working very hard very hard in your role thank you not sure the words hard work even begin to define the yaman's work put in this summer by the administration and i know i've only seen a very small part of it the time you spent arriving unprecedented plans in this dynamic environment wow providing forums where you listen to feedback and communicated details on the plans for in school education and virtual learning it's been amazing the steady hand mixed with empathy for very passionate feelings has been quite noticeable as well so thank you my tactical request while the strength and

180resourcefulness of the administration is obvious this is also a special time where leveraging every bit of competence connections etc of our entire community is appropriate this is a true crisis and people want to help i'm ecstatic to hear about the receipt or i guess soon to be receipt of the electrostatic sprayers that's wonderful as i'm sure you heard ad nauseam finding out about that at the last minute before the vote was less than ideal so my request is that a log is created summarizing each and every obstacle that needs to be tackled in order to achieve the goal of providing the in-school option day one of the second marking period having an ongoing agenda item each board meeting where that log is reviewed and updated would provide both an excellent summary an awareness for all

181interested as well as and maybe more importantly an opportunity for those in our community to answer the call where they can help all right my lofty request so i'm proud to say i've been involved in audubon recreation association for many years i watched fantastic leadership this year rally everyone involved in starting managing and finishing a safe and successful baseball and softball season some of you know very well i love baseball but that's not more important in school i have many friends whose children are enjoying a new season of soccer at fc monco it's wonderful very happy those children and families are able to enjoy and grow in that part of their life but that's not more important in school certain as each of you go about your days you'll find the vast majority of things

182you're able to do without issue probably pale in comparison to the importance a school plays in a child's life with ara there were two key behaviors that stood out above all else politics was absent nothing was shaded by it there was no edge everything done was clearly aligned with the primary goal and everyone many republicans and many democrats work together as a team i saw courageous optimism challenges came up they were phased head-on and tackled every time we need this from you check your politics at the door and if your colleague is having a tough time doing so pull them out of it tough decisions and moves will need to be made make them when you do so with a true heart they'll work out right in the end please get our children back to

183school thank you again thank you mr neri okay next um we have dr malik whenever you're ready yep hear me all right yes uh that's uh that's pretty tough to follow um i agree with checking the politics at the door and the kids must go back to school um the arrowhead project when we saw the budget presented tonight by kcba architects i didn't see the architectural fee i saw the total at 29 million i saw a soft cost 3.5 million and something called a 5 contingency at 1.45 million dollars is the 1.45 million dollars the architect fee if you could tell me because by my calculations that's what we're paying the architect to do this job and he was giddy about getting this project done so you know they're making 1.5 million that's not too

184bad um the act 34 hearing can you tell me why you would want to limit members of the public to just 25. see the reason i asked that question is because you guys have allowed several hundred people to gather at the high school for a protest in violation of the governor's order so you know just think of the act 34 hearing as a protest and then we don't have to worry about the 25. because you've already violated the governor's order why why follow it now you know it doesn't make sense to me but what what monco does is they cycle people in and out of the room for their comments so i went there during the height of the crisis and they would just cycle people in somebody made a comment left the room somebody

185else came in so maybe you might want to think about doing that make it easier for you as far as the pandemic team goes finally found out who's on it you got 15 members and you don't have one doctor or a health care professional other than a school nurse that's advising you i mean is there any reason why you wouldn't want some qualified intelligent health care professionals on your pandemic team because when i look at the list i see chay regina human resources i see robert jones facilities i see board member larcenies uh none of you guys i don't mean to be smart but what qualifies you guys to be making medical decisions regarding what's going on at the school [Music] and the reason i say that is the rationale that's being used to make

186these decisions especially not opening the schools is flawed i can't understand what you guys are thinking about uh in a in a age group of zero to 17 where the mortality is zero it doesn't matter what you do the kids are going to get the virus so masks whatever they're they're still going to get it if they play sports i don't care what you do there they're going to get it so my your rationale was different during flu season i don't remember doing any of this stuff during flu season and the flu is five times more deadly than covet virus so why wouldn't you do this for the flu and not do it for covet because covet is five times less deadly to kids asymptomatic and if they do get it it's very mild i

187mean i said before what you need to worry about are the older people in the district like the teachers those are the people you protect there's no reason why the kids can't go back to class and when they do even if you send them next semester they're going to get the virus regardless of all the plexiglass and ppe and spraying they're going to get the virus so whatever your rationale for all this is doesn't make any sense it's not based on science and it's really going to hurt the kids keeping the school closed thank you dr malik okay uh next i have amy smith hi thank you amy smith are you ready hi thank you can you hear me yes i can great amy smith from warcester just a couple things i wanted to say

188thank you for the clarification about library services for the elementary levels um i the only thing i i ask is i hope that the librarians will have time to be able to to meet those needs plus teach their classes so um if there's any way to provide additional support to make sure that happens i i hope that that can be looked at so thank you for that and i also wanted to say thank you too i meant to comment on this earlier about the reach program and how that's being implemented um during virtual learning i i appreciate that and i'm grateful that the the district sees the need uh to to keep that program going and to strengthen it as needed as well with stresses that our our students are going to be facing during

189this time um i also wanted to say thank you to the teachers who are retiring and also say thank you for hayden hamilton's position at skyview we've had contact with him through through his substitutions uh in the district and i am super excited that i have two more children that that may have him as an instructor um and the other thing i wanted to bring up um was to say thank you to the ad hoc committee of the board for your work around the office of diversity equity and inclusion i'm very grateful to the board for establishing that office last month and i'm looking forward to supporting and working with other members of the community who are excited and and supportive of the collection of data and the development of the office i can't wait

190to see what the roles and responsibilities are going to be and i hope that it results in a full-time director's position uh in that role and the other thing i wanted to say too is is thank you to the administration and the school board and to all of the staff for everything that you're doing to ensure that our kids will be safe um the previous speaker stated that you know there's not a significant risk to children um during the pandemic but we also can't send the children to school without the teachers who would be at risk so thank you for not sending my children to school without teachers um i think that the situation works better for the community as as a whole and it does for the time being you know ensure safety i

191do look forward to the kids returning to school and i and i thank you to all of you to all nine of you and the administration for everything that you're doing to advocate for our community and our district i know it's been a difficult time and i just wanted to publicly state that i appreciate that thank you mrs smith and next i have jenny geiss okay mrs geiss whenever you're ready great hi jenny geiss woodland kindergarten and i'm afraid i have to start from following amy smith to swear we don't know each other and just coincidentally happen to be talking about the same things because i'm about to now say the same things she just said um great minds think alike i suppose i'll start with um the thank you that amy smith started with

192for clarifying some of the library confusion um and also implore you just like she did to make sure they have adequate assistance i am a little confused about how they're going to teach their special area schedule and simultaneously cover book pick up at the elementary level i think it's fabulous that we will be sending books home just a little concerned about how it's going to occur a book pickup in the upper grade sounds like a full-time job i was very very relieved to hear that it sounds like the majority of our mess button teamsters employees will be reassigned to other positions i wasn't sure when mr regina mentioned he only was in contact with 21 people if that just meant there was a few he still needed to contact or if there was some people

193in need of physician in which case uh perhaps helping with elementary library would be a wonderful place to put them um i'll end with a welcome to dr matthew walsh uh he sounds like he's going to be a great candidate for a curriculum position and as you can tell from this meeting dr walsh i'd be happy to give a few ideas if you ever need any ideas on curriculum again thank you so much for the clarification and for keeping so many jobs thank you mrs geiss okay next i have brian earnshaw go ahead whenever you're ready you brought brian schaefer and instead of ernst tricky mouse finger there sorry go ahead mr earnshaw whenever you're ready okay a couple things regarding the act 34 hearing um this tonight was the first i heard of the

194attendance limitations so if you could clarify if it's 25 total people in the auditorium because if it is if you've got the 10 members of the board the solicitor kcba representatives mr bricker facilities um that's probably close to 20 people right there um which would limited just five members of public in the room and also the postcard that went out didn't mention anything about the attendance limitation um and the need to sign up so i'm wondering if we have further communications sent to um all taxpayers within the district um informing them of this limitation restriction and what action they need to take if they wanted to attend um and then secondly regarding the hearing if somebody could clarify the purpose of the hearing um i heard tonight that i think was from the solicitor that

195the purpose was to gather input both good and bad about regarding the construction of a new elementary school but then it seems like the next action item is a vote to approve to accept bids in november um so there seems to be a disconnect there as far as the purpose of the hearing so i don't know if it's just to check the box to say we did it or to truly gather input but it seems like the next item like i said is the vote um so it'd be good to get a clarification on that and then just other things going against that are some of the actions that have occurred today there's already been 18 million dollars borrowed for the project um and i'm interested to see how much in kcba fees is probably

196well north of a million at this point so i'm just confused of the chain of events and what's transpired to date so some clarification attendance and hearing purpose would be helpful at some point thank you okay next i have john andrews okay go ahead mr andrews whenever you're ready i'm ready right now capacity and the math directors you all know policy 126 it gives the maximum students in a classroom grade by grade numbers from 22 to 25 to thirty a little problem though your dr zurby can't figure it out and neither do you for instance per is january 15 2019 options presentation skyview has a capacity of 876 students i assume that's for the present use as a grade 5 to 6 school the option a setup so what's the skyview capacity as an option

197d grade 4 to 5 school he uses 876 students i disagree as grade 5 can have 30 students per classroom while grade 4 can only have 25 students assuming those two option d grades have in total the same number of classrooms as at present there are rooms for half of them or 438 in grade five but for grade four the other half of this rooms can only hold 25 30 of 438 or 365 students so in total the option d capacity of skyview is reduced to 803 students 876 and 803 are not the same so who do you trust or is it trust and verify i have repeatedly spoken to you on the need to correct capacity and enrollment numbers in that early pitch for option a versus other options you have been silent through

19819 months that is wrong as for option c i presented skyview capacity of 978 students versus dr zurby's 876 students in my option c revised document of last october more recently i revised the enrollment projections to reflect corrections of the high eras and birth projections in malone and macbroom's 2018 enrollment study a simple switch to option c uses existing space with comfortable utilization percentages and other significant advantages why are you stuck on a new arrowhead is it the slickness of the zurby kelly sales team or is it your own failings if either that is wrong also thank you and i do want to compliment the the the staff the administration and the board for uh many extra efforts over these last months relative to the covet 19 crisis that is still ongoing and unfortunately you

199took a vote last month not to table the act 34 hearing i just don't see where your your heart is in anything else than the virus situation that's good but those other things that you're voting on you're not giving adequate attention to thank you i think my time is about up thank you mr andrews uh finally i have joe bickleman okay mr bickleman you're in whenever you're ready okay regarding the uh the flex days where there will be no more snow days so no loss of instruction no changing the calendar well no more snow days means no more makeup snow day earnings for the bus drivers okay my bus driver wife will lose about a thousand dollars if the non-pubs have school on those snow days are you going to transport to the non-pubs when

200our students are at home getting instruction i want to talk about mr kelly's presentation nobody ever corrects any misspeaks i noticed mr kelly said that the last cost estimate for the building went up by forty thousand square feet now i know what he meant he meant dollars but he doesn't like saying the word dollars anywhere but he said it the cost went up by forty thousand square feet and there were a number of misspeaks in his presentation over time that i've noticed nobody corrects anybody i'm sure we're going to be paying the coaches for services rendered the fact that we approve their contract if the season gets cancelled tomorrow there'd be no payment so it's for services rendered to coach there's 325 000 budgeted in this year's budget for covet supplies the district is receiving

201817 000 of grants from the state for similar expenditures enrollment is down and projected to go down due to lower birth rates inaccurate numbers were used in district purchased enrollment projections for the new arrowhead building there's a need for an updated and accurate enrollment projections we had enrollment projections showing that enrollment is going down to close audubon a year and a half later enrollment's going up to build a new arrowhead there's no teacher negotiation status report the board received a report about underenrolled classes i believe at the high school i was wondering if they were going to comment on that i don't think you should build a new hour head school because your arcola school is 58 of functional capacity use skyview as a k-5 and rename it arrowhead close arrowhead save 35 million dollars

202in construction cost and 15 million dollars in interest save a million dollars in operational costs by closing arrowhead you are building a new arrowhead gym the gymnasium is two and a half times bigger than the current gym that was built for k-5 and now you're building a gym that's two and a half times bigger for k to four and you have a separate cafeteria you don't have to flip the gym to the cafeteria and vice versa it's two and a half times bigger for one less grade most residents are not aware of the new school or the reasons for the new school or the cost you restructured current debt which means you stretched it out at a cost of in excess of five hundred thousand dollars more in interest in order to afford the new

203debt payments on a new arrowhead that you can't afford the monthly payment on or the annual debt payment on so you refinance and stretched out current debt at a cost of so those are some items that i have my wife losing a thousand dollars for this flex time for five days uh pales in comparison to the 200 000 of her pension annuity that she lost over 20 years when she retires for being outsourced but nobody gets hurt right nobody gets hurt and you're sitting on a pile of money now big surpluses squirreling it away for expenditures that aren't going to happen and pushing it over to the capital reserve fund thank you mr bickleman okay that concludes our courtesy of the floor um i wanted to respond to a couple of things that were raised

204there um the attendance limitation for the act 34 hearing so it is my understanding and dr zurby please correct me if i'm wrong um we are not limiting the attendance to 25 people um we are going to enforce social distancing in the space that is available is that correct we have i i am going to make it clear about exactly what that means after speaking with the solicitor because um there are some indoor limitations on gatherings uh that i have to take into consideration so it will be clearly communicated on the and be posted on the district website and i will i will make certain that um we have uh notice provided uh you know to the community on on that on the specifics but it but in all in all fairness we are going

205to be able to provide access not only on premise but online so that every member of our community one way or another will be able to provide testimony as they see fit and the board will not be present at arcola is that correct well my recommendation is that the board could you know uh if they so choose to attend attend virtually like most most other people likely will we're going to have a small handful of folks from the district kcba myself and likely the stenographer and the solicitor and that would that's that's currently the plan and oh i'm sorry one other person uh we will have a technology person there who will manage the video because we're going to be videoing we're going to display the video on the screen and we're going to be

206able to video into the zoom session so that everybody can see everyone no matter where you're at okay and so the postcard that was sent out to um all of our residents i believe that that postcard i don't have it in front of me to confirm but it did say that further information about the hearing could be found on the website so um the fact that there are any potential limitations to physical attendance would be communicated on the website as well um yeah the legal the legal notice was provided and included the option for on-premise and on and virtual that was posted in the newspaper as per the requirements under the advertisement for the f-34 hearing we as a district took it upon ourselves uh to also inform all of our residents of the act

20734 hearing and we did so by basically sending a postcard that says you know this is what you can find out about this process and you have an opportunity on this date as as anyone else to uh contribute so we we that we did above and beyond what's really required okay so just to clarify then anyone who wishes to have testimony entered as part of the act 34 hearing has the option of attending in person to give spoken testimony attending via zoom to give spoken testimony or presenting written testimony up to 30 days after the conclusion of the act 34 hearing okay so we do have plenty of options available to people um okay um and then yeah i'm just going to leave it at that um does anyone else have anything before we adjourn

208mr navarrette yeah just a quick comment um there was a comment made about the arrowhead cost estimate just note that the contingency cost in a budget estimate has to do with a an allotment of funds that is set aside to cover unexpected costs these could be cost overruns and budgets these could be change orders those kinds of things that is not the fee for kcba that fee for kcba is uh held within the soft cost number on that sheet i believe paul spoke to that at length earlier uh the other thing too around the 18 million dollars that was borrowed that was borrowed um not specifically for our head but knowing that if we ultimately decide not to go forward with the hour ahead project that that money could be spent and would be spent

209within the required three years for uh the remainder of projects on our master plan that's all thank you mr navrat i appreciate that clarification anyone else i will take a motion to adjourn miss drummond in a second mr navarette thank you everyone have a good night thank you