001thank you good evening everyone welcome to tonight's work session agenda I'm going to call the meeting to order and we're going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance please okay first up we will have our audience of citizens if there's anyone who'd like to make a public comment now is your time to do so just read off the statement tonight's reg meeting is our regularly scheduled board work session in order to meet the requirements of Pennsylvania Sunshine Law it is necessary to record the names of all citizens who speak to the board during the meeting to ensure compliance with this requirement it is essential for those planning to address the board State their name and municipality members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to three minutes Mr linear you're up
002first Jason Lanier Lansdale um wanted to Quick get into this uh presentation that I guess uh Dr is putting out regarding hi we're I kind of went thumb through to real real quickly but it's a couple of things struck me about again Choice words in there and I was just talking to Dr Bauer about what it is that Equity means in this school versus Equity means in in numerous other school districts and what it means by the people who push the equity message the most out in society and what's insulating North Penn from what their message is which is basically some racism is okay as long as it's in the name of equity and I'm paraphrasing there and that's from Abram X Kendy I don't believe you guys believe that is that in fact do
003you believe that because you have his his DOT his books in your in your library you have him referenced in a lot of the professional development books that I've seen uh in your library so what insulates students from the equity in which Abram scandi is pushing versus what the equity that you guys are pushing does equity mean fairness is that is that what it means and if it means fairness who decides what's fair is it you guys who decide what's fair in in what's your judgment for doing so are you going to be deciding unfairness based upon immutable characteristics of a child based upon what the kid knows or his need for help you're going to more look at his color of his skin or her skin why is it that all of the behavior
004and statistics that are are mapped up for uh the statistics in school are based upon deviations of color why why is that significant why is it a good thing to say what we're going to do what we're going to try to do is is get fewer kids of this race to get in trouble this much not so much we don't care so much about the other kids I this is a really a concern because you all of all of the board members here seem to have an agenda in mind and it's not articulated necessarily directly so if you're really wanted to do this why don't you just come out and say what you're going to do because the people who who most crow about this type of education are saying things that seem to be
005desperate from what you're saying and why is that I would like some clarification and I'll save the remainder of my comments for after the presentation thank you thank you Mr Lanier told more than one occasion that Equity means that every child gets what they need to be successful so next up we'll go to the comprehensive plan Dr Bauer please yeah absolutely thank you Mrs stolen good evening everyone well we've been in the room now for three meetings uh very excited to have this presentation so I'm pleased to present to you this evening Dr Waters and a team of our most talented individuals representing a much larger group Who provided feedback and the essentially the grunt work in designing our comprehensive plan for the next few years we were pushed a bit a year due to
006the pandemic as was every school district across the state and in the revision cycle but this is an overview of the actual document what do we say the actual document is somewhere 77 pages so tonight we'll have some administrators presenting a summary of that document which is posted to our website so Dr Waters in her towards the end of her first full year as our assistant superintendent took on the arduous task of reviewing our comprehensive plan and she didn't need to start from scratch because I like to think at the previous assistant superintendent was pretty good and uh we had we had a pretty strong plan and and uh she had to review the success of that plan and re-prioritize our goals and bring a group together to provide feedback on our our previous plan
007so they did a great job I'm very proud of their work and Dr Waters will take it from here thank you all right good evening and uh go Phillies all right so tonight as Dr Bauer stated we are going to be talking about the process used to develop the comprehensive plan as well as the goals that we intend to focus on for the next three school years so the purpose of the Pennsylvania Department of education's a requirement to undergo a comprehensive planning process is to really make sure that there's a consistent framework and collection tool for all Pennsylvania state agencies and schools so like Dr Bauer already shared the draft that's been posted on the website is 77 pages so if you have nothing to do one day this week and you want some fun
008reading please take a look at all of the details in the plan but know that it is an overwhelming document because when you are in the portal for pde there are a lot of things that you have to complete and it kind of pulls out strengths and challenges and it kind of prints out a document that probably isn't super friendly however we're hoping that tonight when we give this overview to you we can really pull out the most important components of the plan we also will be sharing this slideshow tomorrow with our families and communities so they also have the summary as well as the draft so if you could go to the next slide please all right so when we started this process it was really important of course that we identified some goals
009the first goal was that we wanted to really take a look at our data to understand not just the students we serve so that of course is looking at our demographic data but also our academic data and making sure that we took a look at students how they're performing in different content areas how they are performing with things like suspensions the disproportionality things that were just recently questioned and also just making sure that we're looking globally at our students to make sure that they are moving in the right direction and when we talk about that we're talking about all of our students so sometimes we do have data that maybe highlights certain subgroups over another and we do look more closely at that to kind of find out why is there a Gap there why
010do we see something different for one group that we don't see for another but we are always focused on every single student in North Penn School District one of the other goals that we have is to really make sure that we take a look look at how we're performing on the Pennsylvania essential practices for district framework and basically what that is is A needs assessment in the Pennsylvania Department of education's portal so basically they actually have some questions in there that are about five different topics and they ask different questions and they want to know do you think you're doing exemplary are you operational are you emerging are you not really doing any of this yet and we had to really have some hard conversations because you know what we are always doing as Educators
011is being reflective and you know we know that we do many many things really really well but we always know that there's always room for improvement and so we never think we are you know all the way there we're always moving in that direction and so we really took a deep dive into those questions we had opportunities to partner up talk as a group really discuss it thoroughly before we went into the portal and actually checked off those boxes another goal that we had was to take a look at the Hanover strategic plan report so you may recall in the summer we did send out a Hanover strategic survey and that survey went out to all of our families that went out to students in grades five and up and it also went out to
012our staff so we really took a close look at that data and what came back with that report another thing that we did was we took a look at our feedback we had goals in place that we're really proud of we think we're doing some amazing things here but as we said we're always taking a look at how can we refine how can we continue to revise modify adjust and make it better monitor our progress and so what we did was we took a look at some of our existing goals and action steps and we made sure that we were using not just a post-pandemic lens coming off of covet because that certainly changed the nature of how we were doing business in our school district but also having an equity lens and just to
013clarify again Equity is as president stole shared it is really making sure that our students get what they need it is not it is different than equality because equality means everybody gets the same thing but sometimes every student doesn't need the exact same thing so we really took a look at that and finally our final goal and all of you know that uh Dr Bauer has done a really nice job of communicating his goals and plan and that is to elevate North Penn so again we've all already kind of you know over and list all of the administrators here simply because there were so many it would have taken up probably two more slides but you can absolutely see all of the names in the draft which has been posted to our website but one
014of the things I think it is really important to note is that the administrators were representative of every Department it was really important that we had every perspective on this plan as we presented and come up you know to come up with goals for the operations side of the house as well of the instructional side of the house and it is required that you have a board member so thank you president Stowell for serving on our committee next slide please so our core team and uh Dr Bauer kind of stole my thunder because I am so pleased tonight um to have some of them here to present alongside me this evening but you can see that our core committee was also a well-represented group of very talented people and the difference between the committee and
015the core committee was simply that the core committee had a lot more meetings so we'll talk about that on the next slide so just wanted to tell you quickly about the about Dr Bauer and our cabinet my cabinet colleagues we were able to take the feedback from the 2000 participants who did fill out and complete that survey over the summer again that included administrators teachers staff students parents we also had a two-day Leadership Academy and that's something we do every year with our administrative team and we came together and we really took a look at our current goals we really sat down and took a look at that post-pandemic lens made sure we were looking at things with an equity lens and we really looked deeply at the action steps in our current plan and
016talked and had some good discussion about what should that look like moving forward in addition to that the committee that I mentioned that slide two slides ago where you saw a group of many different stakeholders that committee came together they met twice in September and we really took a deep dive like I mentioned earlier into the Hanover survey data we took a look at the needs assessment we actually completed it you know individually and we we kind of did like a pair share talk to each other and kind of grew that into a nice discussion and then finally the core committee we really took all of the feedback all of our data and we sat down probably eight times when the slide was developed but I think we met probably three more times since then
017and so we've met several times and spent many many hours together luckily we like each other but we spent a lot of hours together to really Analyze That feedback and take the input from everyone on the committee as well as all of the people who completed the survey again about 2 000 people take all of that and really turn it into you know just rolling up our sleeves and answering all the questions in the portal because there's certain things you have to complete in the portal and then it develops into the draft that you will see or have seen on the website next slide all right so before um I turn it over I do want to introduce to you those who are alongside me I think you know them all um but I will
018have Mrs Megan mcgeeheim our director of special education uh Dr Mike Mckenna our director of Elementary education Dr Pam Hart our director of curriculum and equity and Mr Pete Nicholson our administrator of secondary education and renovation so they're going to be joining me to do the rest of the slides and at the end of the presentation of course we're happy to answer any questions Megan all right thank you Dr Waters so Dr Woodard shared a little bit earlier about kind of the pde framework in which we have to work through so that is the PA essential practice for district framework so there are five areas that we need to discuss within the conversations as we develop the comprehensive plan so they are those five first bullets there empowering leadership focusing on continuous Improvement of instruction
019providing student-centered supports implementing data-driven human capital strategies and organizing and allocating resources and services strategically and equitably she also discussed a little bit about the needs assessment so through that needs assessment we were able to see what areas were emerging or not yet evident and they will be in our goals that you'll see in a few minutes and then the areas that we had that were operational or exemplary are those glows and those bullets that are right underneath so the glows are the fostering of vision and culture of high expectations for students for educators and families ensuring effective standard Alliance curriculum and assessment supporting schools and implementing evidence-based instructional strategies and programs building the capacity of central office and school administrators to effectively supervise high quality teaching and learning and then coordinating fiscal resources from
020local state and federal programs to achieve the district's goals and priorities so next slide so in addition to that framework that we worked through in the needs assessment we also as Dr Waters shared looked at the Hanover surveys as well so that the Strategic plan survey was really a nice guiding principle for us to see what the feedback was from all of our stakeholders so there was three priorities that were shared one being students physical emotional and social well-being the hiring and retaining of high quality staff and school culture and climate all areas I'm sure you're not surprised that came as the Forefront of priorities um school and classroom safety was a top priority doing that the fact that safety includes the school buildings within the classrooms and was mentioned by 19 respondents so security
021was mentioned as as a priority for multiple respondents which is really important because we want our students to be safe and secure within our environments and then overall quality of the District 80 so this data if you look at it is really actually pretty significant so students have a significant significantly lower level of satisfaction to the overall quality of the district than parents or staff so I think that's very telling it's a nice bullet for us to take away as we start to develop this plan as well as with the quality of teaching so students were 61 versus parents 81 and then staff at 89 and then the partnership with the community and local organizations and businesses 47 for students versus 64 for parents verse 68 for staff so I want you to just think
022about that as we look at our goals and what we because we put very much thought process into how do we integrate that into our goals moving forward so I think I'm passing good evening just to piggyback on what Dr water shared we had a lot of data a lot of information that we spend a lot of time really examining taking a really deep dive to look into as we began to think about what are the strengths that we have currently and what our areas of needed growth or areas that we really want to focus on moving forward and so you will see some of the points of Pride here on this particular slide you'll see that we looked at perform student performance data in a number of areas so like our fourth graders science
023pssa data has really improved we've looked at I'm the student I'm in our elementary school some of the star Benchmark data shows that they're really making really nice progress as well and so this idea of the performance piece that that academic piece is an area of focus we also recognize that some of the areas of strength are also around our operations uh the idea that we have established a wellness committee recognizing that safety and wellness has really been an area of focus we already were kind of on The Cutting Edge before we knew that we had to kind of take a lead and say we want to develop a committee to really take a deeper dive and a more thoughtful intentional steps into really meeting the needs of our staff and for our students as
024well and I think also this idea of thinking about who we are today who we want to be and really having steps in place for our continuous Improvement as well and they're just a highlight of a couple of the points of Pride if you go to the next slide there are some areas that we want to make sure that we're really really intentional and focused on as well and so you'll see the those points there when we think about our overarching goal is really making sure as Dr Waters I think students are constantly making progress and we want to be able to think about some of those key points at both elementary school and then their transition to Middle School looking at their performances on pssas or level of proficiency to monitor the areas where
025the areas that we're doing really well kids are making really great progress where there's some areas where they're not as strong as we want for them to be and what are some things that we're able to do within our organization to ensure that that happens and one of the ways in which to do this to really leverage our resources so you'll see the idea of leveraging our learning coaches thinking about professional development I'm in really intentional ways and it's not to suggest for one second that we don't have parts of that already in place but how do we even strengthen what we're currently doing we talked I think earlier in the finance I'm harsh of this meeting tonight thinking about our resources and how do we really allocate them in ways that we can ensure
026that all of our students regardless of their need are kind of getting exactly what they need as well and then kind of also this notion of kind of partnering much more intentionally with families we have systems in place but one of the things that we definitely recognize is that we can be um we can have stronger relationships spend some time developing relationships in just different ways and we have in the past to make sure that families are as engaged as we want for students to be as well next slide so using student learning as the overarching theme of all the work that we want to engage in we've identified four priorities which you'll see a little bit of a deeper dive in just a couple of minutes through special education safety both physical and emotional
027strengthening Our Community Partnerships and really looking at our learning spaces as well next slide so even though those are our established priorities I would be remiss if I did not highlight the fact that we have some really important areas of focus from our previous I guess our current strategic plan and comprehensive plan and we want to hold on to them we know that we've done some really great work to kind of keep the ball rolling and so you'll see that six of them are things that we've been focusing on the seventh communication and engagement has been an element that's been woven in to the other six over the past couple of years but we recognize that we want to make sure that we strengthen those particular areas much more and so while we've had it
028woven in in the past we know that we can be more intentional and transparent if in fact we identify that as another particular effort and you'll be able to talk about that in just a little bit before we talk specifically about the goals that we've set I do want to take just a moment to give everyone one I'm here and anyone who's watching an opportunity just to view our vision statement I'm not going to read it but it does serve as the framework and foundation for all the work that we're engaged in and I think it's always very helpful to have that in a grounding way as we move forward also our mission statement once again a framework really grounds our work as well and really this idea of what our ultimate goals when students
029walk out of North Penn High School who do we want for them to be what are our hopes and our goals for them and this really does highlight that really beautifully so I think we're going to turn to our actual goals now right I'm excited to share with the community goal one increased opportunities for special education students in the least restrictive environment so we we continue to preserve our commitment to general education as the least restrictive environment for as many students as possible so in that we bring our action steps we want to continue with our ongoing professional development we've partnered with the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit and I'm proud to say that we are a Forefront and a leader in a Universal Design for Learning so we're going to continue that work through an
030equity lens with providing staff with District allocated resources and time to support that Universal Design so we have equity for all of our Learners we're going to continue to collaborate with our inclusion facilitator team to increase capacity for inclusive opportunities for all students and we're going to look very specifically as we transition back from the pandemic and what we have seen within our Learners to really provide professional development on trauma-informed practices for all students good evening everyone I had the pleasure of working on this goal with Dr Hart um and we are one of the focus areas at which we discussed earlier which came up in the Hanover survey along with many of our observations and within the past uh post-pandemic years has been to improve the physical emotional and mental well-being and safety for
031our students and staff some of these areas or bullet points have already been implemented some are partially implemented and some areas we're going to continue to focus on through the course of the comprehensive plan into 2025. the first bullet there references a responsive classroom and the use of utilization of morning meeting in all of our k-6 Elementary classrooms responsive classroom is a student-centered social emotional learning approach and one of those pillars or main areas of responsive classroom is morning meeting and that's what we believe is an important component of responsive classroom that we feel is essential in all of our Elementary classrooms we all know how important relationships are in building those positive relation relationships ships and the notion of utilizing morning meeting is something we feel is very important and something we've already started
032in the 2022-23 school year some of the other areas the second bullets relate to each other providing some opportunities for professional development through the book study of belonging through a culture of dignity the keys to successful Equity implementation and within that is a dignity framework for educational equity which is referenced in that text to continue to develop our school cultures that honor a culture of dignity while also continuing efforts to recognize and address the disproportionality data of specific subgroups next slide uh the moving forward we also we've already had and established uh District Wellness committee it's kind of been reframed and part of that reframing is now creating four subcommittees um and those are health and physical education and activity social and emotional climate nutrition environment and services and employee Wellness so again that committee
033did exist in the district however it's been reframed uh now with a new a little more intention and one of those again subcommittees is something we're really stressing is that employee Wellness component as well the last bullet there something we've been doing over the years we have our final Elementary School York Avenue which is participating in a Consortium this year with the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit they're the final School final last one of 13 elementaries that are going through that training our other 12 schools have already participated in the Consortium training with the Intermediate Unit and are now fully implementing or partially Implement implement planning our Positive Behavior Support Systems across the district all right good evening everyone I had the pleasure of working closely on this goal and the fourth goal as well so
034this third goal further develop Community Partnerships for students so what you'll see here and what you all know as members of the board is that last year around this time we began the process of implementing the community hosted internship program this goal is all about expanding both that program for students and for the local Community Partners but also for strengthening the Partnerships with outside organizations so I'm proud to say that right now at North Penn High School we have about 95 students that are participating in chip with just as many Community Partners but we obviously want to expand that 95 out of 3 000 students quite isn't there with where we want to be and where we want to get to so really targeting students and targeting those that are in the program right now
035and here hearing their stories and how that shaped their experience is going to be important moving forward and then also Gathering more Community Partnerships there to host these internships I spoke with Mr Fry our chip coordinator just the other day and he said his phone has been ringing off the hook now that students are out doing this now that the community word of mouth is happening folks are contacting him and saying how can I get in on this how can I be part of this you know how can I host some folks and how can I bring some students out to be a part of this so that's really encouraging but something that we know will serve our students and serve our community to to Really further those Partnerships secondly and Leadership Academy was mentioned
036data retreat was not mentioned but those were examples already this calendar year this school year where we have sought to create strength and and maintain relationships with the community I'm going out into the community participating as administrators participating as teachers in community service of some sort and really looking to leverage what we have here in the district along with what we have in the community you know partnering with Mana I just had all of our secondary administrators in Mana about two weeks ago to talk about both how we can help Mana serve our community but how Mana can also help serve our students so that that give and take between us and the community so it's not us in the community but all of us together so that's really what this goal three is about
037and then if you move on Mr scrabby scrucky to the fourth goal this is the one that's personally exciting for me as the former principal at the high school when we talk about some of the projects that are coming up and those of you that participated in finance just an hour or so ago heard some good conversation at the end of that meeting but actively engaging stakeholders and Dr Bauer at the end of the previous meeting mentioned that the RFP for financial advisors was kind of the first shoe to drop before we start looking at how and when and where these next projects come from we see this beautiful picture of nap a week from tonight the ribbon cutting is happening at Knapp and I think those of you that come out to see that
038will be quite surprised and pleased with how that project has transformed what nap used to be into what it is now for the future and we really want to engage the community now that that shoe is dropped as Dr Bauer said with the RFP and the financial advisor you know getting that communication out there so folks aren't confused as far as what's next and where we're going in conjunction with the capital plan that's already in place and the projects that have to happen anyway for HVAC and and Paving but then how do we also make sure our students have 21st to learning 21st Century Learning spaces and how do we make sure that the public and the the stakeholders in North Penn know what those plans are and are part of that process moving forward
039so those are our four goals unfortunately the plan only allows us for four formal goals but if you have looked at the presentation there's a fifth goal that Dr Hart will talk about now shared earlier uh the notion of communication engagement was something that was really woven into all the other goals from our previous comprehensive plan and we recognized that while we did some really great work over the past couple of years we know that there's some areas of growth and we are able to name and claim this as a goal we can be really clear and intentional as we're moving forward so you can see that our goal was to engage two-way communication with all stakeholders and create an environment of trust cooperation collaboration and a sense of community and my hope is that
040as you've listened to the presentation this evening that's an overarching goal and all the other goals that we've set in some preliminary action steps as if a third party Communications audit for us to really see what are we doing pretty well what are some areas of needed growth so we can be really thoughtful as we're moving forward the idea of ongoing two-way communication consistent throughout the school district I think we do a really wonderful job kind of sharing information but the idea of kind of getting information from community members and parents and students are some of the things that we want to be better at doing and how do we do that in a really thoughtful way and enhancing the strategies and protocols is really support on safe schools as we're moving forward one of
041the presentations we gave not so long ago I think at the ECI uh meeting I guess a week ago it feels like a month ago about a week ago I really did highlight the fact that we have a growing population of students and families for whom English is not their first language we 50 of the students who are beginning English Learners and so we think about communication if we think about engagement we're going to really think about who those students and families are and what are ways in which we're doing some things pretty well but what are ways that we can ensure that those families can be fully engaged in participating in all that North Penn has to offer and I think that's part of one of our goals as well and it would be
042like remiss if I didn't take an opportunity at the work session to say we want to increase the participation in school board meetings and so we'll think about about ways in which to do that as we're moving forward as well we have a really large community and the idea of making sure that people have a really good sense of all the hard work that you all are engaged in we think is really important because it guides all the things that we're doing for children and for their families next slide please so next steps a couple of them we've already taken so we want to communicate very nice transition from the last slide we posted our plan on the website a week ago e-matters was sent to families on Friday and as Dr water said tomorrow
043after this presentation we'll be sending a school messenger out to all families in our community to be able to give them the message and see the slides that all of you are privy to this evening we're going to update all of our administrators at our District administration meeting next Wednesday and then we plan to submit our plan on October 31st we're going to design a brochure and be able to distribute that to family so they've got a really nice plan easy to kind of access what our goals are for the year and then we're going to I think as Dr Waters said earlier like we're going to implement the action steps based on the information we have at this time as we get new information and see how things are going we will monitor we
044will modify and adjust because we hope that in three years from now we'll be able to look back on the plan and say we had some really great intention we were flexible during the past couple of years and we've done some really amazing things for children and for their families so I think that's the last slide and will be um we're delighted to have an opportunity to share some of the highlights of the work that we've engaged in and we'll be very happy to entertain any comments or questions that you have yeah so I want to begin by just saying thank you to all of you just watching you present this and Megan I think you said early on I don't think the goals will surprise anyone because I really believe it's a representation of
045who we are and the core values of the organization and what we strive to be this is I'm very proud to say I was consulted on aspects of this document but this was not me saying okay this is what this will say it was not Deanna dictating what it would say it was we got feedback and Tina was just a voice in the room she was one voice among 60. so it was really representative aside from the 2000 people that responded to the survey that was open to everyone it really represents what I heard in all of these meetings and the hours and hours of hard work so thank you all you did a beautiful job of summarizing what is 77 pages in 20 minutes or fewer and at this time the administrative team here
046would be happy to answer your questions thank you Dr Waters Mrs McGee Mr McKenna or Dr McKenna Dr Hart Mr Nicholson could I get everybody I think so it was a lot of data um so thank you for distilling it down into a 21 slide so a lot of information there so does anyone have any questions that they want to start off with Mr Rush can you turn on your mic please sorry although it's a little off topic I don't really know a lot about the chip program I know we started it a year ago we want to get uh kids uh okay training out in the community do we uh the votech also has their own program that these two programs work in conjunction with each other are you Consulting each other to make
047sure that the kids at the votech uh get these opportunities also yeah great question Mr Ash so um Mr Nicholson I'm sure we'll add to my answer here but right now our chip program is an opportunity for kids to get job embedded experience outside of the Academic Year so over the summer they they get job exposure and they're able to attain High School Credit as a result in terms of the collaboration with our North Monaco technical career center with Mr Fry I don't know if you can comment on that Pete yeah sure no absolutely I just a little bit more background on chip so we do have three different offerings one of which is 70 hours of internship experience for our students which carries 0.5 credits the other two are both 40 hours they're a
048little bit different and they carry 0.3 credits so as I said we have about 95 students if my memory serves me about half are taking the 0.5 credit option and the other half are within the 0.3 credit options right now there's not a whole lot of synergy between the tech school and Chip certainly students that are part of the tech school and go to Tech School part-time it's not mutually exclusive so they could still enroll in chip and they could still earn credits through chip towards their diploma but that is a point for growth moving forward where we could collaborate better with North Manco and make sure that we're serving students a little bit better in that way with this being the first year I think we're you know evaluating who's in it we're looking
049at the data right now of the students that are in it and how successful they are through the program before we kind of change things up too much but we certainly want to expand that program and give those students the opportunity to to be out there in the field and and learning if that's truly a career path they want to take or maybe more importantly of a career path they don't want to take before they devote you know four five six seven years of education to a career path that they end up hating Mr Nicholson oh go ahead can you give us some other types of jobs sure absolutely yeah um students are participating in everything from um I see and talking with Mr Frye we've spoken about um students that are participating with lawyers
050they're participating with doctors dentists they're participating with attorneys I settlers CPAs accountants um we had I know there's one with a plumber right now one in graphic arts someone with one of our local Representatives so there really there's a smattering of experiences out there and really I don't know of anyone that's been rejected as long as they go through our process and their clearances and it's an opportunity that interests a student and Mr Fry is out in the community trying to drum up even more opportunities for kids and that's what I wanted to know how are students selected how are we ensuring that Equity everyone gets what they need are included in the chip program sure so it is open to every student and students can either selected a course selection time or Mr Fry
051is going into classes so he tries to hit every student at the high school through through going into classes talking about the program talking about what it entails if a student has someone that they are already tied to they know someone that is an accountant or a plumber they can bring that to him and he can help vet that person to get them that student enrolled and placed with that person and if not that's really what Mr Fry's job is is to go seek out those folks in the the um you know in the community to find folks that are willing and as I said during the formal presentation he said right now his phone is just ringing off the hook between some of his contacts with the Chamber of Commerce some of his contacts
052that now have students working with them he's getting phone calls left and right I know I've asked him a couple of uh business cards throughout the summer of folks that I met in the community either through Leadership Academy or through you know other opportunities with our folks so it's really expanding quickly to the point where we certainly need more students to be able to fulfill all the folks that are interested in hosting students can you show that we have now 95 correct in this can you speak to the flexibility of the program students taking it during the school day students taking it hours beyond the school day what does that look like yeah sure absolutely so as I said there are three opportunities two of which are basically outside of the school day so it's
053on the student the others are and can be embedded within the school day so it could be taken in conjunction with some of the courses and some of the coursework that they're taking at the high school whereas you know they're taking a business course and it somehow ties in there and we can work that in so students don't necessarily need transportation and to give of their time outside of the school day so trying to be flexible and really Mr Fry has done a wonderful job of working with each individual student last year I had the pleasure of having him in the the office directly across from my office and there were students in there all day every day coming to see him he was pounding the pavement going out letting me know him going to
054see this this person going to see that person and he's really been working into another new course at the high school our leadership development course where he's having speakers from the community come in and talk there as well so there are definitely options for our students within the school day but then it's also part of it is and the 0.5 credit is outside of the school day so working that in Mr Nichols does a does anybody else have a question before it okay so I was wondering um is there any um Crossover with the post um with the special ed okay okay so one of the things that Mr Nicholson and I talk about was that partnership and those collaborations was can we involve our post 12 students with those situations so that absolutely is
055happening as there's Partnerships occur we are engaging those conversations and opportunities for our students as well so when when he said all all means all great that's good to hear thank you Mr Rush good thank you for the great presentation I I don't know if I said it at the beginning before I asked my question uh I'd like to go on to another topic if I could uh we talked we talked last year about bringing uh the kids back who went to chore to school we know from the facts and figures that the education isn't as good in shorter schools I personally have a friend whose daughter has gone to Charter Schools and I've read an article about it recently how some of these kids are afraid to come back to school because of covid
056have we made an effort to bring these kids back into our school system everyone turns and looks at Dr McKenna [Music] Dr McKenna as you know last year we ran just to speak on the the other side that we did run our own virtual program last year which I think was really important during the pandemic before vaccinations were available and we had a very successful uh virtual program here at North Penn um we multiple Communications we sent out interest regarding running our own program and just due to the numbers it wasn't cost effective to run that program um So within that also I also reached out to all of our Cyber Charter families last summer to try to engage in conversations with them because if we were offering our virtual program I'd actually like to
057bring them back if you know to our own and tell them what we were doing as well sometimes there wasn't responses back we tried making phone calls and emails to tell them we did have we I don't know the exact number we have had children come back from Cyber Charter we've also had a significant number of our virtual students a significant number come back in person which is actually very good right the best education we can provide is in-person instruction too so one of my other main jobs is going to continue to reach out to our Cyber Charter families you're exactly right some are just still not comfortable coming back into the buildings we do have an option here through North Penn we've partnered with the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit what's called MVP or Montgomery
058virtual program so we we have that option where we can work with them through a virtual option although we're not running it we're kind of Outsourcing it to the Intermediate Unit but and we have many elementary students in that program this year too but I I agree it's still will be continued effort to reach out to those families let them know what we're providing here whether we have to offer them to come see our schools or our visits or anything that we can do to get them re-engaged in in the community it's important on help help with any manual type issues that they might have well when they go to Cyber Charter we really you know they're they're not enrolled in North Penn at that point you know if they go to Agora or some
059of these other cyber Charters we don't have connections we have their contact information we know their their their residents in North Penn that's about the only connection we have with those families at that point so these kids some of them have mental issues about coming back to school because they're afraid of for their health or other things that happen during the pandemic sure and I was wondering if we're even looking at that yeah absolutely I mean if we can provide any supports if they reach out I did engage in some conversation with some Cyber Charter parents and whatever we can do to help them reacclimate to the school setting we'll definitely do that if if they're willing to engage with us to come back so thank you so changing the subject but kind of linking
060that in um as well I want to talk a little bit more or about trauma-informed practices and I know that that was mentioned um so I know that we've been working on trauma-informed practices at many levels but and I'm happy to see it represented in the in the in the plan itself and that can you talk a little bit more about the depth and breadth of it I know that there's been a lot of work around professional development are we working towards trauma-informed certification or training or looking at how you know having trauma-informed schools are we looking to go that far where are we within kind of exploring this sure so I'll Mrs mcgeeim is going to supplement as well so we started down the path of professional development in trauma-informed instruction for students well
061before the pandemic and every school had an allotment of hours and we subcontracted some of those services and honestly what it ended up being was best practice and instruction and quite frankly the last few years have been traumatic for everyone you know so many of the strategies that we learned years ago for trauma-informed instruction have just turned into what we do so yes we still do professional development and Trauma informed but we also have some other umbrellas that essentially have attendance of trauma-informed instruction for example our Universal Design for Learning mtss processes PBIS as well there's a lot of things that we do in our schools that you know just really our best practices that we learned with Lakeside and Trauma and four go ahead Megan everything Dr Bauer said and um the only other
062thing I would say is that as Dr Bauer said it's best practice I think you could see in our commitment in our plan and the work that Dr Hart and her team is doing and kind of instituting all the pieces is really just connecting with children connecting with young adults and making those connections through whether it's a responsive classroom lens at that Elementary level or restorative practice lens at that secondary level it really is about making meaningful connections and Partnerships and the work had you're absolutely right Dr bar the work had already started so it's really just kind of bringing that back we have had new teachers who came on I know that we partnered with Lakeside in the past we could engage with them again to do some turnaround training we do have Lakeside
063counselors in our schools that are providing some of that services and our America counselors so we have we have those that framework within our schools and it is best practice so yes we will continue those conversations oh wait don't go anywhere I got a question for you um I actually was hoping that you could shed a little light we've talked a lot at ECI about Universal Design for Learning I'm not sure that everybody understands what that means could you talk a little bit about what it is and how it can increase opportunities for inclusion in special education sure so historically this special education lens has been that you have students within your classroom who you have to differentiate for or to design instruction to meet where they are so if you have four students with
064disabilities in your classroom that have four different specially designed instructions you would create your lesson for all and then you would different differentiate for student one student two student three and student four if you look at the things through a universal design for a learning lens you develop your lesson with accessibility and equity for every student so that if a student for instance in one of their IEP sdis would say that they need access to graphic organizers and that student would always have a graphic organizer we would make sure that a graphic organizers were available to all or when you do like a vocabulary lesson and you have a vocabulary board so that people can go back to those particular terms so that they can refresh their memories for the topics that's accessible to all
065it's not just for some students so it really sets up the learning environment in terms of academic social emotional and behavioral so that when a student walks in it is Equitable and has access points for every student and that is the way the lesson is developed not and that means for all students not just for the student with an IEP the student who is gifted the student who might need accommodations through a 504 it's that accessibility piece so the really powerful piece is because of all the work that we have done in the organization as I shared earlier we are really in the Forefront and you know the mciu uses us a lot as really a point of Pride for the work that we've done for inclusion So currently we are continuing our work with
066mciu through Universal Design for Learning where we are doing taking our inclusion facilitation team at the elementary level and turning it around within the classrooms because they're on the ground running with our teachers we also have a team that's working very specifically at Englewood through book studies and shares that our team at the mciu are going into Inglewood and working on the ground with teachers doing modeling and working through needs assessments and kind of making strategic plans moving forward we also have another team at Penfield with Dr Robbins has worked through being able to do a similar approach with facilitation PLC bookshares with a team of teachers there so that's the work and kind of how we're systematically instituting it but the part that we have done really well here is that as Dr Bower
067said about trauma-informed care it really is our best practice here so we really have had that so in some cases it's a little bit of reframing but but in most times because of the work that's already been done it's just a you know re-sharing kind of those approaches and making sure that we have those accessibility points for all students is there much turnaround instruction in professional development with it like teachers sharing best practices is it mainly through the mciu yeah I would say yes I think one of the pieces our faculty or we are presenting to our staff that we're using all of those principles within our presentation so it becomes embedded and in the way that the three frames are so multiple means of representation multiple means of Engagement all of those components we
068look at it and we actually can make a framework and say these are all the things that we're doing in North Penn and this is how it falls in all those areas so it's more like an aha moment like I'm already doing these things I just didn't know I was doing it if that makes sense thank you Mrs mcgeeheim thank you are there any other questions presidents oh could I make a comment or a question sure go ahead okay for first I'd like to say thank you to everyone that participated and I heard Dr Waters say it's 77 pages and I did read most of it um because I found it very interesting and comprehensive and in a district this large 77 pages of challenges um strengths and goals made sense um I also think
069that the vision and the mission statements help um help us move forward all together in the same direction and it allows for us to be efficient a couple of questions I have would be a lot of work went into this so what is the frequency of it being updated or revised as things things change for example you know if I stay in my Lane when I look at the infrastructure facilities the capital plan you know how would that get implemented how do we we how does the board get updated in terms of what the goals are and how we're doing after whatever period of time I'm going to guess here that it's not something that you've all worked on and we don't look at it for another three years so just a little understanding about
070that please yeah terrific question and I do believe you when you say you read all 77 Pages yeah Tina just whispered in my ear she did so with I don't have a look uh kidding aside Ms Wesley um you'll notice that the goals are kind of structured in a way that they speak to our committee structure there are facilities and operations goals in there there's fiscal responsibility there's curriculum and instruction in there so I would expect this to be moving forward a a driving document with our agendas for our committees and also maybe quarterly reports within those committees on updates of the goals so you spoke in the last meeting about having you know our 10-year Capital plan as a standing agenda item I would expect that to be the same for our comprehensive plan
071okay so you know I I I joked when I said you know when I just kind of made a comment like I don't have a life I really enjoyed reading it because um with everything that's happened over the last few years I felt your energy your commitment the whole organization's commitment to parents the students commitment to moving us forward so it's 77 pages I know it'll get rolled up but it really gave me a lot of optimism and confidence um in everyone that put this together they're all committed and again with the district this large it really provides focus it provides a real clear road map and I feel real comfortable confident in the staff and how they'll move forward with it it'll be a very efficient way to move forward and I think the
072students regardless of where they are in our our district will benefit from it so all joking aside I think it really is a tremendously well well performed executed documents so thank you for all your work and I sincerely mean that thank you Mrs Wesley are there any other comments or questions no okay seeing none thank you everyone for your efforts again we really appreciate it and thank you for coming out tonight and presenting your plan to us foreign [Applause] we'll move on then to other business does anyone have any other business this evening all right uh seeing none we'll move on to the second audience of citizens is there anyone who would like to make public comment tonight go ahead Mr Lanier Mrs Stowe as our public commenter is coming to the podium I just
073want to say that I am going to ask the board to consider and I haven't had the opportunity to touch base with Mr rash yet but Mr Gilmer did mention um that having the policy committee meeting a virtual meeting on the night where we have two in-person meetings is very challenging for he and his staff and the kids that need to get here and set up because he essentially has to have this room all set with all these wires and all these mics and and cameras and the van the bus outside ready to go at 4 45. it's the virtual meetings so we'll take a look at that and I just wanted to we were thinking another night where there are other exclusively virtual meetings okay so I just wanted on record with the community
074that we're going to certainly communicate that um but we'll explore that option just to help the kids and Mr Gomer Out Mr Gilmer we want to take care of yourself thank you Dr Bauer sure all right Mr Lanier Jason Lanier Lansdale um wanted to touch back on what I was saying before you said something about making sure kids get what they need put in education mostly before you say equity and board member Campbell Shake no it doesn't happen but does that not happen it never happened here at North Penn we we didn't give kids what they needed prior to having an equity policy is that is that what I'm to understand so when you look at the equity policy what what exactly you're gonna you're gonna Define what resources are spent and then then there's
075also a confusion of what I'm talking about is I'm not talking about kids that have IEPs or special needs I'm not talking about kids that that have uh outstanding issues or or whatever what I'm talking about is why is there a measurement of Equity based upon race how how is that how is that beneficial to either party I or any party how is it beneficial to say to a kid hey you know what we're going to cut you a slack because of the color of your skin immutable characteristic or you know what since there's been too many kids of this uh race We're Not Gonna We're not gonna allow anybody else get in trouble is that what's happening because that's what's happening when you when you when you show your reports this is from a
076few meetings ago the the district discipline and it Compares past years versus 20 uh 20 21 2022. and it's broken up by Asian black Hispanic Multicultural and white so why how is the discipline policy was it 205 which includes an equity lens which means a more I guess Fair distribution of resources how is that how is that discipline beneficial and does this key into the PBIS where kids aren't getting in trouble for for what they're doing regardless of their race because from the teachers I've spoken to they said that there was a lot of problems and in fact this document goes to show that the fights amongst kids is is skyrocketed 325 in 2021 2022 versus the previous two years measured I didn't make up this information this information was provided by you guys but
077then you break it up by race and what what he should conclude here that that hey you know up the the Asian populations dropped up to five percent from 8.2 percent before and they represent yada yada percent of the the population of the school district so they need to have a higher representation of of fights in the school or suspensions this is specifically uh out of school suspensions is that where we're to conclude how is this beneficial to anybody how does this benefit a kid that is struggling how Mr linear um as somebody as somebody with dyslexia who went to school 30 years ago I wasn't talking about that didn't I specifically say that I'm not talking about kids that have such ideas how are you responding to him excuse me I'm not talking to
078you either Mr fosco I'm not allowed to talk anymore do what you want hold on one second Mr Lanier please have a seat Mr Rush he can respond once Mr Lanier has a seat have a seat go ahead has somebody who went to school 40 years ago with dyslexia I can tell you that the equity is not a constant thing Equity is always changing you always have to look at the individual to determine what they need if you don't look at each individual and focus on what no you wait a second and that's what we're talking about Mr Lanier it's not a debate he's responding because don't look at you or what they need and that changes over time with education as we learn more about what people are capable of and incapable of uh
079based on everything there is nothing new about looking at data disseminated from schools to segregated by race this is not something North Penn invented this is something that predates um the cause of equity as a popular motivation amongst boards and administrations across the country this is something that we've been looking at since the Inception of pssa all right what we are doing is taking that same data that we've been looking at and trying to figure out root causes trying to figure out ways to address what we see our inequities recognition that there's institutional inequity that that if you want to pretend that students are educated in a vacuum and everything has always been equal and institutions have always been fair and there's never been a need and everybody's always got things equally then you're kind
080of denying the reality of what public education has looked like in America across the board so what we're doing is not separating kids what we're doing is taking a look at data diving in and trying to figure out what we can do to better serve the students that are disproportionately represented in some of that data that's the motivation that's the work your your particular focus on race is is pretty singular right because we're not just talking about race we talk about when we talk about diversity equity and inclusion right we talk about it amongst a number of student groups a number of deaf and graphic groups ethnicity race ability gender identification all of those things all of those things matter and all of those need different approaches and different understandings of the students that we're
081serving and to better and different professional development to better serve them that is the purpose that is the work Mr Lanier it's not your time to talk Mr Dr I would like to speak please not you real quick Mr Lanier and and everyone we do happen to have someone employed in the school district whose title is director of curriculum and equity and unlike the rest of us in this room she did her doctoral study in equity and worked with some of the country's greatest uh Scholars and academics in equity work at the University of Washington so I will gladly offer Dr Hart's time and I'll sit with Mr Lanier and we can really really dive down into this um Mr Lanier if you're willing to put the work in with Dr Hart and I and
082really truly want to understand and I hope you do we will give you all the time you need you know that so we will schedule time with Dr Hart myself and you and we will unpack this and unpack it and hopefully we can come to some understanding okay thank you Dr Bauer uh I I and I appreciate the Outreach and the responsiveness for uh with the community on these issues I'd like to point out for the community and to you Mr Lanier the district's been meeting with you for years and we've been hearing from you for years about this topic what you don't say is what speaks loudest about what you think about diversity equity and inclusion I don't need to when all you do is talk about race what I hear from you Mr
083Lanier what I hear from you you want to have your cake and eat it too and and just say oh I'm not talking about equity for special education let me deal with that you have to deal with the entire universe you talk about what insulates our students from thoughts and bad ideas which might be in books you talked in your first public comment about a citation you know what protects students about bad ideas that might come through through books and what informs curriculum or what we might have from professional development it's not you cherry picking it's the fact that we have students who are getting an excellent education who are learning critical thinking skills and that means across the knowledge Continuum every type of idea perspective active that's age appropriate and needs to be discussed
084not something that you decide to be thrown out like race oh but we'll just but let special education just let them do what they need to do from an equitable lens you expose yourself after two years of never reflecting thinking or speaking about what this district has met with you over diversity equity and inclusion your inability to get Beyond race says more about how much you're hung up on Race than the rest of this board because I think there's so much work that the district has done to put together this plan where Dr Bauer said that the data resulted in some of the same goals right just shows that data you know rooting in what we know what we have access to helps us to create that plan create those goals and I think that's
085the same approach that we've had to um our Dei work we take data and we help to create a plan we help to set goals and and Equity is a is a is a process right it is a lot of work it is a lot of conversations and I appreciate the district for all of the work that they're doing all of the how they're hoping to guide us how they're hoping to support us and I think in having the broader conversation as a community and as a Nation about Equity the best team to lead it are our Educators their process applying the teaching and the education approach to conversations of equity there is no better approach to do that and I've been struggling myself with issues and how to you know how to talk as
086a parent and how to talk in public or how do you know about these issues and how to really dig deep and it's really been when I've seen members of this team and members of our district talk about the issues that it just clicks and so thank you Dr Bauer for your willingness to put forward the idea of really sitting down again with Mr Lanier and with other members of our community there is no better approach there's no than what we're than what you've offered and what you guys are putting forward so thank you all so much for the work and the plan for your work tonight and your work really just every day so thank you thank you Mrs ramage for ending on a on a pleasant Moon yes thank you all right does
087anyone else have any other comments nope do I have a motion to adjourn thank you