001real quick dr lewis campbell you can hear again in a minute um our board director broke her foot so she's hobbling in here right now as soon as she gets here we'll get started good evening i'm going to call this work session to order first up we are going to start off with the pledge of allegiance please okay first up we're going to have our audience of citizens before that i'm going to read off our statement here this meeting is being videotaped for community cable channels and streamed live individuals attending this meeting and intending to speak to the board should be aware that they are being videotaped in order to meet the requirements of pennsylvania's sunshine law it is necessary to record the names of all citizens who speak to the board during the meeting
002to ensure compliance with this requirement it is essential that those planning to address the board state their name and municipality members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to allow time for all those who wish to speak to the board the board president may ask an individual to yield the microphone to the next speaker as a reminder the audience of citizens portion of the meeting is designed for residents and taxpayers of the district to provide comment and feedback on matters which are or may come before the board it is not designed for debate or discussion with the board when appropriate individual school directors may choose to respond to public comments that have been made once the audience of citizens period has concluded or requests that a member of the administration follow
003up with the speakers after the meeting and this is in reference to board policy so if there's anyone who would like to make public comment tonight now is your time good evening mr lanier good evening uh jason lanier lansdale um i first wanted to just ask a quick question of al i guess if christian is here to ask him the same question is why you guys don't say god when you do the pledge allegiance when you do your committee member meetings you don't say that i don't care i'm just wondering i i imagine it's because you have a firm belief or something or something mr lanier i think you can go back to the tapes and i always say god okay i will but i reviewed them and you don't um i guess my point
004is what would be the drive for doing that it's just the firm helm belief that some board members have okay fine i guess the question comes is why do you guys implement the policies that you've implemented regarding the poli things like equity and and transgenderism is it because someone in the department of education has suggested it you guys started doing this before uh the current department of education so why do you do it and i asked you about this a lot while ago and what its relationship to crt is critical race theory for anybody who's listening out there and you said it wasn't critical race theory uh wanda said it number of times has nothing to do with critical race theory but your key um your key person and parts of professional development tyrone what's
005his name tyrone howard he's a big proponent of crt he has some five six articles and books written on the subject matter so you telling me he comes here and he doesn't promote it with your with the teachers trying to implement the idea of race-based ideology and everything are you trying to tell me that it hasn't shown in even your equity and development uh eci meetings where you say you're going to level up kids of that are black and hispanic what does that mean level up kids isn't that sort of applying education standards disequitably shouldn't everybody be pushed up not just people of specific uh colors or nationalities and when it comes to transgender and why are you pushing this this the science says this is a dangerous thing to do if if 10 of
006the kids are transgender and they are over represented in in suicidal ideation why would you want more kids to become transgender and why push in in books and questioning that would push kids to maybe look at that as an option when they're not feeling well there's no one's else here to take comments so you don't have to limit my time you don't have to limit my time but i am going to limit it yeah of course you are because you don't want to hear what i have to say thank you mr lanier we're moving we're moving on to the next bit of our business all right next up new business we have a presentation tonight and i'm not sure dr bauer are you giving it or is doctor yes uh happy to introduce tonight's presenters
007but before i do that i think it's important to note for those watching at home and the few that are in the audience that we have two board members this evening who are attending virtually dr wanda lewis campbell is attending virtually as well as dr g so with that said our first item is informational dr waters our assistant superintendent will provide a presentation with dr mckenna director of elementary and dr mia kim our director of human resources regarding the pennsylvania department of education's educator effectiveness plan also formerly known as act 13. so dr waters if you could give them a moment to get down to the podium and us pull up the presentation foreign okay good afternoon or good evening um so tonight as dr bauer said we're going to be talking to you a
008little bit about some changes that have come from pde that are required and giving you a glimpse into what we'll be sharing with teachers in august so that they have a really good understanding of the educator effectiveness and the options that we're going to be offering this year which is a little new for them so just to give you a little bit of background before we start uh pre-pandemic we had a committee in our school district led by a couple of administrators including one of our former assistant superintendents and that committee was comprised of administrators and teachers from all levels elementary middle and high school we met several times and really talked through what a differentiated supervision model would look like and we got to a really good place and then the pandemic happened so
009this year dr kim and i had the pleasure of kind of bringing the committee back together not the exact committee group that was involved a couple of years ago but some of the same people in addition to a few others so we have some couple of teachers as well as some administrators and really reviewed everything that was already done so that we could make sure it was aligned to pde's requirements which have changed since then so i do want to before we start just give a quick thank you to annie laurie robbins bridget bucker jackie giamarco dr tomorrow jenkins dr mike mckenna stefan muller nick taylor janelle lampatock juliet matchy and of course dr kim so on the first slide you can kind of see here what is the same versus what's new um we
010used to call it act 82 and now it's called act 13. and basically the same things um in both are that we still are using an observation framework and we use daniel the danielson model we still look at student performance data teachers still will have a rating scale and they'll be based on some levels of performance as far as what that rating will look like some new things are that they've increased the weighting option so in the past you know maybe it was fifty percent and though maybe now it's it'll be increased so that's one of the changes there's um new roles so sometimes um you'll have different levels as far as what that evaluation can look like and which administrator groups for example fit under each as well as teachers we also have more
011flexible measures and we have a multiplier now which kind of helps because in the past it didn't look at all of the things that come into play with a school so for example if a school has you know maybe some of our title schools for example look a little different from some of our other buildings the multiplier kind of takes into play more data points go to the next slide thank you so here you'll see that what we discussed a few years ago was like i said a differentiated model where teachers actually had more choice as to how they want those evaluations to look so i do want to point out that this is one data point when teachers are getting observed or get their final evaluation it's not just based on this one time
012in place it's based on all year principals are always encouraged to be visible you know to get in classrooms on a regular basis so that they're seeing their teachers all year and that also is really important because what they're seeing in instruction then informs our professional development as well so sometimes you know if you see a trend in classrooms or you see that you know maybe there's something that certain a group of teachers might need or maybe there's something that's going really really well and you want to celebrate that those are opportunities for professional development so i'm going to turn it over to dr mckenna he's going to talk more specifically about the options that teachers will now have to get that evaluation that is required by the state and i do want to mention
013that all of this work we were fortunate to have the president of npea as part of the committee a few years ago mr sean devlin and we have been in communication with him as to where we are today so i'm going to turn it over to you dr mckenna to talk about the three pathways thanks dr waters i think one the important information on the top of this slide is just these diff differentiated options are for tenured staff for what pde calls professional employees all the i'll go into a little more detail about pathway one and pathway two but again those are only options for our staff who are tenured or as pde calls them professional employees so the first pathway is a focus observation a teacher could select this option to have a pick
014a focus of an observation administrator would come in for a short amount of time focus on within the domains two and three either classroom environment or instruction and there would be a reflective conference after that observation again this is uh this focused observation would be an option for a tenured staff or a professional employee as option one or pathway one as it's called one thing to note is some of these pathways i'm going to discuss need to be selected by the end of september so the end of september all teachers will be able to indicate and actually dr kim will go through that how that's teachers will be able to go into front line and indicate which pathway they'd like to select for the school year pathway 2 has three separate differentiated options one thing
015that we've discussed as a committee is that we will work what pde recommends is a cyclical process or a cycle every fourth year a teacher will need to participate in a formal observation so even if they have these options of taking these differentiated pathways every fourth year they will have to get a formal observation which would include a pre-observation conference a observation by administrator and then that reflective conference as well so that's something that's really important and when we our ad administrators share this out in august again with staff they'll have to make sure they're very specific in regards to that year cycle so pathway two has two a two b and two c um two a deals with action planning could be done individually or with a group of teachers based on uh professional
016growth through inquiry research or best practice talks about the development of a plan that promotes effective instructional practices so again the teacher could work by themselves and develop an action plan typically it's based on an area identified area of concern or could be a professional development topic that as a as a grade level or a building that they're working towards 2b is a collaborative professional growth model this as it's noted collaborative working with colleagues towards a goal it's typically again focusing growth in teaching strategies it could be looking at again another professional development area of focus for a building or even a grade level for example at the elementary level we are implementing foundations in certain grade levels and responsive classrooms so those could be topic areas where colleagues might want to work together they
017might observe each other going into each other's classrooms providing feedback and again this would be a what's called a 2b collaborative professional growth model and 2c is an evidence-based portfolio where teachers could collect evidence in the four domains planning preparation classroom environment instruction or professional responsibilities where they could you know include student assignments lesson plans feedback from parents or supervisors videos of themselves teaching any kind of evidence through the different domains and again that's 2c which would be an evidence-based portfolio so it gets a little complex in the in the chart i'll show in a moment as far as percentages and how they weigh in evaluation but i think this some questions we ask staff to think about again are they tenured or not is it very important any non-tenured staff again cannot participate in
018the differentiated options and 100 of their evaluations based on those four danielson domains and also there's different percentages based on the roles of the employee one of the the options as a non-teaching professional and our employees like our counselors school psychs school climate coordinators would fall under that non-teaching professional again they wouldn't have student data connected to their evaluation because they're not teaching students and there's also a special education component that connects to the evaluation for teachers that work with a group of students again 11 or more students with ieps and also contribute to their iep goals and also only teachers who teach a pssa con grade level or a keystone a trigger course would have some of the teacher specific data as well and there is your complicated matrix or percentages some things to
019think about as dr waters mentioned the the minimum of that observation and practice or the four domains is 70 percent which again as dr vargas mentioned is higher than the years past with act 13 and all as i mentioned all non-tenured employees would have 100 of their evaluation based on the four domains of observation and practice one of the other components is the administrative evaluation and you can see here that 70 is on their domains and just to review their domains for our all of our admin our strategic and cultural leadership systems leadership leadership for learning and professional and community leadership and also a new component is a 20 performance goal where they can select an area where they want to grow professionally in one of those domains and work towards an action plan for
020that performance goal and 10 percent of most of our employees including our administrators is a building level score based on achievement growth uh attendance and also graduation rate if that's applicable um and the other component is that multiplica there's a multiplier for uh the number of economically disadvantaged students in the building as well as part of that building level score and that just connects the standards line system is a is a website that that affiliates with pde and includes all of the information related to act 13. and let's turn it over to dr kim thank you dr mckenna so how do we make all of the changes in x13 possible for our teachers and administrators well we use an electronic evaluation platform called frontline in the past it was called oasis but they changed the
021name to professional growth section so one of the things that we did was for differentiated supervision that has different pathways but also for teachers that need to do formal um you know evaluation piece we needed a proposal section where they can pick you know for different pathways so what you see on the screen is the page that we created within the front line that has not been made live just yet but it's a proposal section as you can see on top there are different pathway selections and some guiding questions that goes with that as well and then for folks who are selecting differentiated supervision there is a midpoint reflection where they come together and they assess their selected pathways and there are some guiding questions that is part of the supervision plan and then at
022the end we have the final reflection piece where they upload any documentation that support what they have done and also reflect piece you know what they what have they learned from their chosen pathways you know if they had a goal did they meet those goals and how will what the learnings be applied to the you know next year and then moving forward and what are some of the things that they can share with their colleagues again this is just glimpse of it we will make it live and as dr mckenna has mentioned there are some things that we will also add to the administrators platform as well such as you know the goals that they're going to select for the coming school year so it sounds like it's a lot of new changes but our
023teachers have seen have previewed this maybe not specifically the changes on the front line necessarily but just the pathway conversation back in may doctor and i think dr watters is going to close it out yeah so that's it we just this is an informational item but we just wanted to make you aware of the changes and we're pretty excited about this differentiated supervision model it's something we've been wanting to do and like i said many people were involved in these conversations pre-pandemic and we got to a point where we were about to go live and then we couldn't so we're looking forward to starting this in september but like dr kim said the teachers had an in-service on this in may so we don't want to give them too much because in may you know
024teachers are they don't want to hear a whole lot about the next school year they want to get ready to start enjoying summer but hopefully some of them have been reflecting over the summer about the pathway that they might select and we're looking forward like i said to uh in a couple weeks when they return talking a little bit more with them about this and that's all we have for you any questions thanks for the presentation mr rush i'm sorry i didn't see you sorry go ahead mrs wesley so a couple questions um do you have a feeling for what percentage of tenured employees would choose pathway one the focused observation versus the differentiated one at this point that's a good question i don't have a percentage i think you know i know years ago
025like going way back when i taught at oak park we did a little bit of this we had these opportunities to have some differentiated supervision and i know like my grade level back then we were really excited to kind of work together and do a collaborative type of goal um so i do think there will be a lot of people that will be interested in choosing something other than the focused observation that they're used to getting that's like a 20-minute you know visit where someone comes in whether it's a central office or administrator or a principal system principal um this gives them an opportunity to do some different things so i don't know what you think percentage-wise but i don't know we'll kind of have to see what they want to do and one other
026question once this is implemented if a tenured professional chooses to start with pathway 2 but then realizes this is not working do they have the option during the school year to go back to pathway one or what what are your what are your requirements regarding switching back and forth and do they understand the measurements you know to say all right you know it's like dropping a class you know i'm getting a c that's not going to work so i want to drop it and come back yeah that's a good question so one of the things that we're really trying to do up front we're fortunate that we have a few teachers a couple from montgomery elementary we also have a teacher from pembroke who have been an integral part of kind of helping talk this
027through with us because their lens is really important and some of them have been working on some samples that we can share with teachers when we return so our hope is that on the front end if we can really give them a lot of information about what each pathway looks like they can make an informed decision that hopefully they'll be you know they'll want to stick with um you know i would say if i were still in the principal seat if someone came to me early on in the school year and thought you know what deanna i kind of want to make a change i would probably be able to work with them but of course if we get too far down the road it would be a little bit tricky to kind of go
028back and i know dr kim her department has to put all of this in front line which is a huge task monumental test so i know she's not going to want a lot of switches throughout the year so i think early on we can just really up front make sure everyone is clear on what each pathway looks like and what feels good for them talking with your staff as a principal about what might be a good fit if they're not sure and really kind of helping them make that decision then hopefully it'll be something they can live with for the year they can always change it at the end of the year you're welcome thank you mrs wesley mr rush i was going to ask about the evaluators but it sounds like you're already doing
029a lot of evaluation in the classroom today so the skill set is already there you may have to refocus it a little so my question was answered by you just a minute ago thank you dr walters you're welcome and actually portfolios which is one of the choices that's something that we also did a few years back i've been here so long i think we've you know education a lot of things come back around so portfolios was something that was done in the past so i think you know there might be some people who'll be happy to see it back um but if they're not then they have the other choices so are there any other questions real quick yeah i just wanted to mention as a person has gone through this process a few times
030uh this is one of the the nicer ways it's been laid out for educators and and staff to understand so i appreciate that to mrs wesley's point earlier about you know what percentage of educators choose which path you know that ds section whether it's pathway 2a 2b or 2c those are pathways that really validate what so many educators already do right we're already very self-evaluative we're already trying to collaborate with our with our teammates and in other buildings even as often as we can and so certainly this validates what what educators here in north penn do and i have a feeling that north penn educators are going to look at this and say wow you know this is great i can get credit so to speak for for what i'm already doing that's a great
031thing so thank you for facilitating that you're welcome that's a good way of looking at it thank you mr mcbain dr bauer yeah first i just wanted to thank the three of you for presenting in such a concise and clear manner and just point out the fact that we often talk about and celebrate the fact that our learners don't all learn the same way and shouldn't be evaluated all in the same way it's the same thing for our teachers right so it's you walk into a classroom and dr waters said 20 minutes sometimes it's upwards of an hour but that one hour or 40 minutes or 20 minutes does not represent 180 days seven and a half hours a day so these options allow for opportunities for teachers to be evaluated throughout the year to
032pursue a passion there's some action research language in here and action plans so i think it's it's representative of just good teaching and learning pun intended right because us educators are learning as well and striving for improvement so i think it's a great thing i think it's something that teachers have wanted for a long long time when all of us were in school and i think our teachers will appreciate it it is important to note that ultimately the administrator does have the final say meaning if someone wants to do say a differentiated model but the principal of the building believes you know what no we really need to have a focused observation this year ultimately they can make that decision if it's needed but thank you very much to the three of you and no
033action needed it was just informational you're welcome thank you dr howard thank you dr waters thank you dr kim thank you dr mckenna just one more thing i think that i love this concept and i'm not an educator so i appreciate it what mr mcbain said but i also feel like it gives them that empowers them to actually you know do what they want to do and need to do to move forward so i think it's awesome and i hope so let me ask is it reasonable to ask you know at the beginning how many how many teachers choose you know pathway two and then just keep track of it you know for next year to see it growing and then developing further and is that reasonable absolutely as dr waters said we will have
034to put all of that into front line so it'll be very easy to pull statistics out share the data and how many chose 2abc yeah okay and before we move on mrs stoll mr summers asked that i share that the board of school directors met virtually in an executive session on august 8th 2022 yesterday for the purpose of discussing matters of school safety and security thank you dr bauer sure thing so next step i recommend the approval of the personnel items as per the attached so moved second motioned by mrs ramich and seconded by mr mcbain are there any comments or questions all in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries and with that motion and ultimate approval i have two uh points of interest one is sad news uh to share that mr
035chris durr who is our coordinator of safe schools and emergency management will be leaving the district in mid-september but we're excited for his future opportunity and chris will be sorely missed but for great news i am pleased to share with you that with that vote you just approved the hire of mr ken boy as a new assistant principal here at north penn high school and ken is with us this evening if he would stand up congratulations ken ken at the conclusion of the meeting if you would just come forward so the board members could shake your hand and congratulate you in person thank you welcome to north penn okay and lastly here i recommend the approval of jaden d waters for the position of school nutrition services assistant floater at north penn school district district-wide
036at an hourly rate of 14.31 per hour that was effective july 6. it's important to note here that jaden d waters is the daughter of dr deanna waters and this was for summer employment she was helping us out in the school nutrition services department for a couple weeks jayden is off to college next week and will no longer be a part of the department but it's important to separate it out just to with our nepotism policy to let everyone know jayden is dr waters daughter and as we have said publicly many many times we needed summer help and jayden helped the district so uh do i have a motion so moved have a second motion by mrs romich seconded by mr rash any comments or questions i would just like to say thank you to
037jaden for helping us out we really appreciate it and we wish her well in college you're welcome i i she was a little bit violent told when we knew they needed help and food services but she delivered the lunches to the camp and she did it well so thank you for the well wishes thank you all right so there's a motion on the floor all in favor say aye aye anybody hi motion carries thank you and that's it for me mrs stohl thank you thank you dr bauer is there any other business this evening seeing none we will move on to the second audience of citizens if there's anyone who would like to make a comment now would be your time jason lanier standstill um i wanted to leave off where or start up where
038we left off who who who came to you guys on the school board and decided that you know we need to do is we need to introduce a lot of transgender literature to small children and we need an equity policy who who came to you to say that because when i look at your professional development which i haven't been able to see and some of that's been scheduling issue and some of it i'm not sure why it's under uh it's privileged information but like i said tyrone howard has written a number of books about implementing critical race theory and education what's to make us think that he hasn't done that here we're just going to leave that one what what what's to think that that lowering standards is a positive thing because that's what happened
039at all the the middle schools no yeah it did national junior society lowered their standards what is leveling up kids of of certain race mean what does that mean because to me it sounds like in this equal a application of of curriculum or school i mean that is a violation of the school code you've you realize it's not not appropriate to give kids of of different skin colors different educations i would suggest maybe every kid that needs help get help not kids of certain skin color get help and other kids don't and if the idea is well you can do both okay then you need more education staff i would imagine right because getting a kid up to uh stuff on on a lot of subject matters is a tough road i thought also i
040had to ask is is is this sort of application being pushed by the teachers union not the teachers but the teachers union is it being pushed by your democrat committee holders how many democrat committee holders are do we have on the board there's like three or four at least and you have a whole bunch of people that come up here and speak in your favor who are been since hired at different positions at different boroughs and townships you guys held a a rally for madeleine dean on school property violating school property rules i realize you had a permit but do you read your policy you weren't to have access to the school it's administrative regulation 1330 4-14 or 13 30-15 yeah you guys did that so is it different rules because you are in favor
041of pushing democrat strategies your three minutes is up mr lanier there's no one else here to comment your three minutes is up but we will respond to a few of your comments okay go ahead dr power could you address mr lanier's accusation of leveling up certain kids by race sure uh good evening mr lanier so in response to mr lanier's question about leveling up students i believe he is referencing a conversation in which i assume it was probably at an eci meeting where we talked about looking at students data to identify students who have been recommended for courses whose data projects that they could be in a higher level and it is not looking at this color of their skin to determine what course they should be placed in but rather the value-added system that
042pennsylvania department of education provides where students who test similarly across their academic careers so let's say pssas in third through sixth grade and how they project in terms of student achievement so occasionally a student could get recommended for a course but we'll say a 5-0 course and if you look at their data we can see you know what that student might be able to be successful when they take an ap course in high school um so as a result this student is then told hey look you were recommended for 5.0 and you requested 5.0 but your student testing profile indicates that you may be successful at a higher level so it's about asking students to challenge themselves and putting the proper supports in place to help them be successful certainly in doing so it is
043not that we are not utilizing the color of a student's skin to identify whether or not they could be successful so as a result of that process more students ended up moving up into higher levels which of course is the objective to identify students who have the potential to be successful and i think there's always an opportunity to build a bigger table right or to add more seats in a classroom to offer that opportunity so thank you for that sure my pleasure thank you doctor byron mr melina your time is up it's our time to respond it's our time mr lanier i'll be happy to discuss this with you you know that this this is not an open exchange okay you've asked questions we have the opportunity to respond to them please take a seat
044mr lanier your time is up and we can answer some more quote your questions or we can adjourn the meeting your choice why did you have a seat all right fine do i have motion to return thank you very good meeting us a turn have a good night everyone you