001mr casa we are now live thank you ms fakish uh welcome everyone to the monthly safe schools meeting for october we will begin this meeting as we always do with reciting of the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty justice and justice for all thank you i was getting out of sync there uh with you ms wesley so we need i need a click track okay we'll now move on to approval of the minutes from the september 27th 2021 safe schools committee meeting do we have a motion so i can turn on video yeah that helps right get back to my zoom here having some uh technical issues on my site too
002miss fakish [Music] all right there we go thanks for looking out so i'm sorry do we have a motion for approval the minutes yes okay uh do we have any comments or questions no all right uh all in favor say aye hi and the minutes are approved okay with that and move into the rest of the business why we're here mr dar we can start off with our informational items absolute viewers thank you mr casa um and this month first up it's my pleasure to introduce our coordinator of transportation mr nick cranach who's going to review some new developments in the transportation department with regard to here comes the bus nick thank you for having me tonight i appreciate the time i wanted to give you some updates about what's going on with our new
003uh here comes the bus gps parent app for all the buses for transportation in north penn school district it's pretty exciting time we have some new developments if you recall maybe 18 months ago we started talking about this where we um we're at a point where our gps systems that are currently on our bus all of our buses are nearing their um the end of their life it's they're about six or seven years old we have a lot of units that are failing and just they're obsolete and we can't replace them so a few months ago we went out to bid for a new gps system but along with that we also added on a parent app for all the parents in the school district so basically how that works is that they will have
004access parents will have access through their smartphones to know exactly where the bus is so i'm going to play a quick video right now that kind of briefly explains what is going on every morning josie's parents sent her traveling down to the bus stop and every morning susie was either a little too late or a little too early which meant standing in the freezing cold pouring rain hot sun and roaring winds luckily susie's parents started using here comes the bus a new app that lets them see the exact location of susie's school bus now susie arrives at the bus stop at just the right time every time here comes the bus from synovia solutions don't ask no we have one more quick video the safest way to get to and from school is getting a
005little bit safer and a lot more convenient we're proud to be introducing the country's leading school bus tracking app here comes the bus to your district more than 2 million users rely on the app thanks to our simple interface and intuitive experience but before you unleash the convenience you need to enroll first download the app from the app store or google play store to keep the app running smooth we only work with newer versions of android and ios second create an account you'll need your school's five-digit code to make that happen don't forget your password you'll need to confirm your account with your email for security of course once your account is created and verified you'll need to add your students or students if they ride different buses that said you're ready to enjoy a
006safe reliable and free solution to track your school bus if you have any performance issues please visit here comes the bus.com and submit a ticket on our support page enjoy your ride my job is to make college easier because students have a luck sorry about that auto play so um that was just a very very brief two videos right there that give you a general overview of how the the program will work basically parents will download an app in their smartphone um and then they will be able to um put in the school code and then put in uh the school the bus number that their kids actually ride so you can do this for as many children as you have in the district and basically the idea is that we always had gps tracking
007our buses so we knew where they were at at all times uh but now parents will have that ability to do that as well um and it's very safe they only have access to the students registered to them so we don't have any um issues with anybody trying to do anything that would try to find a student that they wouldn't have access to so it's a really interesting program it will i'm hoping alleviate a lot of uh phone calls from our parents throughout the day uh whether it's in the morning or in the afternoon uh parents will be able to set up a geo fence so once the bus hits a certain location within the district um what they can set it up for like two or five minutes and they will get a notification
008on their phone letting them know that the bus is two minutes away so that way the kids if it's raining they can walk to the bus stop or if it's snowing or whatever they will know exactly where the bus is it will be on all of our buses all of our vans including first student and our district fleet right now i did speak with senobia today we received a delivery last week for all of our full-size buses because the full-size buses have a different component than the micro buses and the vans so we do have a delivery of all the buses the gps units for all the buses so we are going to uh start the installation on those uh on the week of november 11th and we're going to do it um as close
009to our our uh on the nights weekends in between shifts so it doesn't affect any of our uh different um the it doesn't affect any of our uh normal operations so we're not gonna have to worry about um [Music] for kids to or uh we don't worry about spare buses or anything like that and i should mention that uh this app is free for parents to use uh there's no cost to the to the parents to use this app they basically download it and they will have access as long as they have the correct login credentials and information they can get that information and that's pretty much it we are hoping to roll this out fully by the beginning of the year uh beginning of 2022 when we get back from winter break we are
010going to do a mini roll out um at one of our schools we're going to start at oak park do all their buses give their parents kind of like a pilot just to work out any kinks and then once we have all the the rest of the gps units installed on the vans and the micro buses we'll roll it out to the entire district and we should be good to go thank you mr cranach uh ms wesley thank you mr casa so thanks for the presentation and we've been looking forward to hearing about it i have one question regarding does the technology support track for parents to track buses for let's say field trips or sports events or band trips it does not well if they were if we were to assign the students to
011a bus i guess we could but we would have to do that every single time so i i would have to check with the vendor i'm not really positive i i would imagine in theory you could do that um but it we would know who would be on the bus so we could track the bus um when they were at a athletic event or something like that um so um i will have to get back to you on that i'm not positive yeah i i mean i understand you're just rolling this out and you plan to have the pilot at oak park but i guess down the road to even provide more transparency and granularity with that that would maybe be something to to consider down the road if it is possible i will uh
012i will let you know and we can uh start working on that thank you mr cranach yeah yeah for this late night you know championship returns home for for the band right um dr uh lewis campbell uh yeah i just wanted to thank mr cranach for that um that report i'm excited that parents can at least now track their children and it's tied to their student code and um it just will alleviate a lot of students being outside when they don't need to be in inclement weather so i think that's a good thing as well so once you find out those um questions um that miss wesley asks i think that will even give us more reason to want this uh i guess you've benchmarked this against other school districts that are already using it
013to see what the feedback is and how they feel about it yes there are several school districts in montgomery county that are already using this system upper moreland springfield i believe upper dublin i'm not well i i forget there are a few that and i did talk to all their um transportation directors so uh got nothing but great feedback from the other districts that are already using this so i think it'll be a welcome addition to north penn great thank you that's it mr casa thank you dr lewis campbell and perhaps mr cranach it could be a very brief update um you know at the next meeting as you can give us to tell us about the pilots and maybe answer some of those questions uh i see our student representative karina your turn thank
014you mr casa i just wanted to uh thank you for the presentation because i know this app will only help uh older or sorry parents but also older siblings as well i do have to get my sister off the bus on most days and some days when the weather isn't the best i will be waiting out there for longer than i would prefer and i think it's definitely going to benefit a lot of people so thank you you're and welcome that's a really good point uh thank you and that's and we've seen this i i know that the administration's been working the last two years on you know there's this pandemic as well but i appreciate uh the effort that went into this competitive bid um weighing all the options uh being diligent i know
015at times uh i kept asking because we really wanted to have uh you know this is 21st century learning it's good to have a technology that's aligned with it for our families and you know those are the type of results that this school district to put this information in the hands of parents family siblings uh is only going to help um and that's why this is through safe schools because a lot of safety issues that are related to this timing but i can recall whether it's been snow storms unfortunately now there's been some tornadoes and bad storms and families i want to know where those buses are and this really helps increase that transparency so thank you very much uh one clarifying question the pilot is the pilot going to be in early 2022 or
016is that something you're rolling out of the park before we're hoping to roll that out as soon as the everything is installed into the buses um they're telling me it takes about a week to install everything so i think probably around the week of the 15th of november we would start rolling it out to oak park and then once we do once we get everything up and running and we get the deliveries uh from the rest of the gps units we um we're shooting for january 3rd which is our first day back from winter break that's fantastic and i'm sure you you'll be working with uh ms lebroski on on this promotional plan as well for families so i'm looking forward to seeing that uh any other questions from the committee yes mr costa and
017actually it was dr louis campbell mr kroenick that made me think of this so in terms of the other districts um their response or feedback to to you all regarding the availability of the system what's the downtime associated with it does it is it is it is it is it available and up 99.9 of the time or are you anticipating on unavailable time frames i have not heard any feedback that would lead me to believe that there's any down time that there has been any issues with parents being not being able to access anything and especially now with all the districts dealing with the driver shortage and everything there's a lot of subs driving runs on different days you may not have the same driver each day of the week which we try to prevent
018that but again we have some people covering shifts or runs um so if a driver is driving every day the timing is pretty much down every day and they get there at almost the same time whereas if you have a sub driving the bus you might be running behind two or three minutes or five minutes whatever it is so um a lot of the calls that we get are parents who are still working from home that don't have time to go stand at the bus stop for 20 minutes to wait for a bus that may have left the school a little late or there may have been an accident or something like that this way they know where the bus is and they can get there and it doesn't disrupt their workday well i think
019that's wonderful and i think it's it's something important to include that the reliability of this new software should be there for them when they need it and want it and then karina will be spot on running out to get her younger siblings thanks dr lewis campbell oh i'm sorry i just lowered my hand i didn't have anything gotcha uh well thank you very much uh mr cranach we're excited for this to be rolled out can't wait to hear the updates um especially with oak park uh being able to try this out within the next month hopefully the next few weeks and appreciate all that you do for uh transportation and as you mentioned with getting the drivers and it's been it's tough during a normal year so we appreciate all the effort send our best
020to the drivers and uh mechanics and a thank you mr durr next item all right thank you mr cranach our next item this evening is an update on safe to say something which is our anonymous tip line that serves all of our schools here in pennsylvania and i'll share a quick presentation with you here that is also attached to this evening's agenda should you like to view it everybody see safe to say something program update there all right so as i mentioned safe to say something we're now two years plus into our safe to say something experience here in pennsylvania and just to offer a little bit of background for um to refresh your memory this is something that was established in the wake of the parkland school tragedy um in what we saw as
021a really a flurry of legislation that came forward after that time this was act 44 of 2018 um that mandated the establishment of this anonymous reporting system which then went live in january of 2019 and it allows anybody statewide to submit anonymous information to the tip line that has to do with the safety of the school environment the program is run by the office of the attorney general in pennsylvania and it actually includes a staff of crisis analysts who are trained and on duty 24 7 365 to receive tips process and triage them and then send them to the appropriate school agencies on the other end so the importance of the anonymity really is it's rooted in research from across the nation and certainly i'm not an expert in speaking to the research but what
022i have seen are some of these things when it comes to students or adults for that matter sharing information with school officials that they have about maybe another student maybe a situation that has to do with the safety of the school or the safety of a particular child many folks don't want to attach their own identity to those pieces of information for a variety of reasons they feel like somebody else might have already reported it so i don't want to make a big deal out of it i don't want to be a snitch i don't want to even get involved i don't think it needs to be a 9-1-1 thing it's not really that important but if we overcome that that hurdle of attaching your identity to that information many times folks are much more
023apt to share that information and that's really the bottom line here when it comes to the anonymous reporting um tip line or the anonymous reporting platform it's important to point out really that that safe to say something is a two-pronged approach there's two components here one is the platform the technology itself that collects and tracks the tips and the other is an educational piece an informational piece for students on what are the things that need to be reported what are the warning signs what are the things that if you see them on social media or in your day-to-day class activities that need to be brought to an adult's attention and what are the ways to do that safe to say is just one method obviously we would love if that information was shared directly with
024an adult with a trusted teacher or a school administrator but again many times um you know students or adults they don't want to attach their names to those things so the tip line the anonymous tip line is a way to share that information directly with school officials without having to associate your identity so as far as the training goes here at north penn we complete that training annually as required in the months of september and october initially when we rolled this out in we trained students in grades 7 through 12 middle and high school last year we actually added on students in grades five and six at the elementary level because what we realized was these students in many cases are also in the social media worlds that a lot of these older students are
025as well and they have information whether it be serious school safety information or things like bullying harassment or things that are more routine in the school environment that we want them to share with us so we thought it was important to share the training with them as well in grades five and six that training is done in person um it's completed by our school climate coordinators in conjunction many times with our school guidance counselors i was just at oak park actually um last week and our school climate coordinator there was completing a fifth grade lesson on that day so students actively being trained at oak park and then in grades seven through twelve the training is completed through a video presentation that we put together and then followed up with a classroom discussion in many
026cases and time is allocated at those levels to complete this training when it comes to actually submitting tips um if you're not familiar there are three ways to submit a tip into the safe to say something platform there's a smartphone application that can be downloaded there is a website you can go to safe to say pa.org and submit a tip directly from a web browser there or you can actually call on the phone and speak to a crisis analyst in harrisburg who will collect the information and then send it on its way to the appropriate school level i put this slide in here um mainly for one reason is there's a myth or some misinformation i should say out there that the anonymous tip line is only for reporting someone who's planning a plot of
027school violence and i think part of that has to do with the fact that the establishment of the tip line followed so closely in the wake of the shooting tragedy in parkland but really safe to say can take any types of information and that's what we want um i'm actually presenting at our all things equity session tomorrow evening our community ed session with dr waters and dr hart on this very topic because it's important to note that some things like harassment like bullying like hate speech and discrimination are categories you can select if you're submitting a tip through safe to say and that's important for folks who want to bring those things to our attention but maybe don't feel comfortable doing so it's important to note again not just for school violence or serious school
028violence but really anything that could impact the safety of the school or the safety of students outside of the school can be submitted into this safe to say something system anonymously to review quickly our process what does it look like here at north penn when we receive a tip again there are two buckets of tips there are non-life safety tips which are those things that are i'll call them more routine behavioral type things in the school environment and there are life safety tips which are serious in nature serious bodily harm and potentially imminent in nature and they're handled slightly differently non-life safety tips come through frequently they're delivered to our initial contact team here at the school district between 6am and 6pm during the day so essentially if a tip came in in the middle
029of the night that was non-life safety we would receive it at six o'clock the following morning our our initial team consists of myself dr bauer um dr waters dr dietrich and then we added in midway through the the development of our process here we also added in by email the appropriate school principal so if there's a tip submitted for north penn high school mr nicholson also receives an email copy of that tip so that he can get advanced notice in working on anything he needs to do our team conferences with the appropriate school officials to make sure they've received the tip we then collect back the information as to what was done how it was handled and we populate that back into the tip system and close it out with a specific disposition on how
030it was handled for tracking purposes you can contrast that non-life safety tip process with a life safety tip process which is a little more fluid in nature when something comes in that's very serious and potentially imminent a life safety tip those are given to our initial contact team immediately regardless of when they come in so whether it's a weekend the middle of the night or during the school day those come through via email text and they're followed by a phone call from the crisis center to our initial contact team making sure that we receive that many times these come through outside of the normal school day and some immediate action needs to take place in order to ensure that the subject of the tip is either safe or remains safe and that's done chiefly by
031law enforcement that that's our our vehicle to access a home reach out to a family make sure there's safety in place outside of the school day so when we receive a life safety tip what we need to do most of the time is provide the information for law enforcement to go out and do that well-being check do that welfare check so we share that information and the the safe to say crisis center is the coordination piece so we provide them a home address for example a phone number of a parent they provide that to the 911 center so that law enforcement can reach out then on the back end we as the school entity follow up as soon as we can to make sure that we put any additional measures in place on the school
032side to ensure there's a safety plan and that we can resolve the that issue and see continued safety for the subject of the tip depending on what the situation specifically is similarly as to the non-life safety tip these also need to be closed out with a specific disposition provided within the system so that's the summary on how we handle those two types of tips i frequently get asked if the anonymity can be broken um the answer is yes in very rare cases if there is something either abuse of the system criminal activity conducted through the tip system certainly the attorney general's office can get the proper uh court orders to break anonymity and prosecute those crimes also if there's a case in which somebody provides a first-person threat or a first-person tip where it's essential
033to ensure their own safety that that anomaly that anonymity be compromised that can happen as well with consultation with law enforcement so it can be broken i'm not aware of a situation here at north penn where that has had to happen so to give you some some broad data here our most the most recent safe to say something annual report is also attached to this evening's agenda should you like to review it but in summary during this 2021 school year this is what we saw throughout the state as far as total number of tips goes in addition to the top 10 categories and and the number of tips associated with them and you'll also see our north penn school district total number of tips and those top 10 categories which mirror largely what was seen
034statewide interestingly i found that the mciu the montgomery county iu received the second highest number of tips in the state from iu's across the state the pittsburgh iu which is a combination of mount oliver and allegheny saw 930 some tips and then montgomery county iu is the second highest in the state of pennsylvania if we look at the differences here by school year um the story really here is the pandemic encoded and this is is a reflection of really similar tip lines across the nation uh a 56 decrease in the number of tips from the prior year um we saw last year and we're right in that same uh area there 52 percent less tips in the 2021 school year as compared to the 1920 school year that state ls that's the number of the
035percentage of that total which were life safety tips so while you see an overall decrease in the number of tips last year we see an overall increase in number of serious tips if we look at the distribution across our levels here at north penn in that last school year you can see the numbers there for elementary middle and high school was as um fairly evenly spread across the board um also to note uh one of the things that concerned us initially as we were discussing this we thought man you know people are just going to abuse this system we're going to get all we're going to inundate it with fake or false tips and really that's not the case at all um statewide less than five percent of tips are false or fake and similarly
036in north penn we only saw two fake tips in that 2021 school year so it's very low um the abuse i'll say of the system or the inappropriate use of the safe to say something system and if you're curious this year from july 1st to date today and we've got a couple tips today we've received 33 tips year-to-date so that puts us on pace to exceed certainly the last school year 2021. so i'm happy to answer any questions the committee might have about safe to say something or ms wesley thank you mr costa thank you mr door for the presentation two questions um i'll just ask you answer them in the order that you prefer um the the statistics uh from 19 to 20 school year to 2021 was impa was coveted impact at all
037and then my second question is specific to how students are taught made familiar with the system is it in a classroom environment videos and who does it if you would thanks sure so to your question about covet i think certainly um covid is the reason we saw far less tips and and why specifically during kovid we sold less tips i don't know that i'm prepared to say but i think dr bauer would echo the fact that in that period of closure that we had immediately following um you know the pandemic there in march it was radio silence as far as tips go which was concerning because we knew that these kids were at home we knew that that all of the issues we had seen come through safe to say up until that point didn't
038disappear but we weren't hearing about them um so it's very concerning as a matter of fact and i would say directly related to covet and our lack of contact and being able to push as well as we do during the school year the safe to say something system um your second question with regard to training uh yes it's in a classroom environment at the elementary level it's instructor-led so it's a presentation given by our school climate coordinators and school counselors to those fifth and sixth graders and then at the middle and high school levels it's a video presentation which is actually available publicly on youtube for for anyone to review but that video is a collaboration of all of our secondary principles myself dr bauer reviewing the safe to say something information what we need
039to see the tip line how it works and then that's followed up that's shown in class or in time carved out of class time and then followed up with the classroom discussion if necessary to clear up any questions thank you very much and mr der uh yeah thank you for this update i i appreciate uh how you give us these regular updates on the safe to say something program and there's you've been responsive as well you know we've had families when this was first rolled out ask you know how we could promote it further i think one suggestion is having it on student laptops there's different opportunities and initiatives are there any other initiatives that may be in the pipeline or something that you've found is has worked over the last um you know six
040or eight months particular to uh promotion yeah promotion of the program itself um you know to families as well as to students yeah so you raise a good point we did place it on the the desktop of student devices uh in the district to give them quick access to it um and in addition to our annual training that we do we do have materials posted throughout the school in areas frequented by students restrooms for example those materials are refreshed every year we get additional from the state which we roll out to the principals to promote in their buildings and then certainly outreach to parents prior to the pandemic i held a number of outreach sessions and this was part of it for parents and that's something i think we need to get back to here
041as we start to approach a normal again is some in-person sessions perhaps virtually or in the evening where i can provide a you know a variety of safe schools information and this is an important piece of that thank you very much are there any other questions or comments from the committee i would just love to throw out that it really is an amazing tool i mean i i can think of at this point over the last two years dozens of times where we've received something on a saturday night and the police intervene i mean from the moment a student hits send to the point that chris and i are speaking with dr dietrich and police are at the home you know we've had tips that a party was going to happen at someone's house and
042the police have shown up and busted the party we've had uh students having suicidal ideation and they the student ends up getting serious services because they really were to that point um so it's a wonderful tool it has been very helpful for kids and i do want it on record here that i am currently winning uh the battle between mr dare and i and putting the address on the life safety tips into the chat for the police we kind of have a friendly competition when there's a serious tip to get in there and put the address in as fast as we can but i believe you know because it's very important to do it in an expeditious manner and chris and i are keeping a tally i think i'm winning whatever gets whatever gets our
043families and students to to be safer that's good to hear that friendly competition and one question i do have is how this dovetails with uh our behavioral threat assessment model because there's this assess and intervene piece in the safe to say something program i'm assuming that that is temporary in that moment um and then it bridges to the the methodical behavioral threat assessment process is that assumption correct or are there more details that we need to know about as a committee you're absolutely correct so safe to say something certainly in the case of the serious nature tips is an immediate intervention in almost all cases um and then the follow-up and part of that that coordination between our initial contact team and the school team that's doing the actual intervention that's where we we start
044to move into the threat assessment piece and frankly many of the members are the same so it's it's a natural progression if we need to to move to that threat assessment level um from a tip which has already been dealt with so to speak thank you and for those in the community who are attending this meeting or watching it later the the threat assessment process is a multi-disciplinary team that's that has a methodical process for assessing prioritizing and most the time just getting resources to the person who needs it but sometimes um it's also an opportunity it's an evidence-based program one of the only ones the secret service in the us department of education says can help to mitigate or avert tragedies at schools and violent events so that that's why we're talking about how
045these pieces fit together so mr dar i i appreciate the fact that they do dovetail and it is a part of this process any other questions from the committee um i wanted to ask mr durr or at least say thank you um and it's good to know that students have a way to find their voice to speak out to protect their peers even uh when a situation arises so being that it's done student training is done in the classroom setting and you said it's also on video and on the website we can even watch it is there any way we can guarantee that each student or all of our students have been trained i mean we have so many students do they sign a statement to say that they've completed this course or what so
046that we ensure that every student has gone through the training yeah you raise a great point because we do have a lot of students and inevitably somebody was absent that day or and we didn't circle back with them to make the video available so you raise a really good point about how we can confirm um that they receive the training that's something we can certainly work on with dr power and the principals yeah we do have a verification process for example with student handbooks you know at the beginning of the year you send mailings home or links home and newsletters and then there's a verification process where families go into infinite campus and check off yes i have read you know everybody's been through that um in a variety of ways even when you're you're
047purchasing something or signing up for an account right i accept the terms or i have read this um we absolutely can add that to the verification process mr der i think it's a great idea thank you dr louis campbell it is a really good point and say having a culture of safety and security you know we could also think a little more outside the box i've seen programs where the training you want to at least see a mastery of the skill and it might be just a two or three question quiz but the incentive to that because right who wants another quiz to take but are they able to get maybe a certain monetary amount in their student credit to get a dessert at lunch or is there something that a local business is willing
048to donate as an incentive but that way we can try to increase the adoption rate but also start to prove that they're not just checking the box um not that any of us have ever done that before or with our um itunes apps but uh i think that's something this committee would like to hear about um you know no later than january would be great if we can get an update you're not gonna have a solution then but i'd love to continue this conversation there is that a fair amount of time okay absolutely thank you and uh any uh comments from our student representative okay thank you well it's gonna be your your uh microphone next anyway so all right mr keep them seeing this yes our final informational item if any is just an
049opportunity for our student representative if you have anything to share this evening karina unfortunately i haven't thought of anything to share this meeting sorry that's okay absolutely fine we appreciate your time with us and what you do bring to this conversation so um it's uh we're very lucky to have uh student representatives who are as involved as the ones on our committees all right with that mr durr we do not have any other items to go through correct uh we will move to public comments miss fakish do we have any raised hands so i will learn whether i read the disclaimer or not uh yes we do okay i'll uh read this for the public content aspect of our public comment individuals attending this meeting virtually and intending to speak to the committee should be
050aware that they are being recorded 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 committee during the meeting to ensure compliance this requirement is essential that those planning to address the committee raise their hand electronically and state their name and township members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to matters being discussed at tonight's meeting or matters that may come before the safe schools committee in the future to allow time for all those who wish to speak to the committee the chairperson may ask an individual to yield the microphone to the next speaker this is reference and board policy number nine zero three go ahead ms feigish our first community member is jason lanier mr lanier
051when i am allow you to talk please unmute your mic state your name and address for the board go ahead mr lanier jason lanier lansdale borough uh i find it interesting that we have safe to say it seems like you know a great tool i i and i'm not at all being snarky here it revealing to uh bullying in school and bullying by teachers against students specifically on the the uh the privilege walk now for months and months and months you guys said that didn't happen did it happen or not did it happen or not this is not a safe schools issue so why not use this opportunity mr lanier to talk about something that is on topic thank you please proceed i'm wondering why it's not is it okay then to bully kids with
052teachers i think we all know that answer mr lanier for safe schools now you have an opportunity to speak about safe schools in these topics not to be bringing items up that quite honestly sound like it might be for the education curriculum instruction uh committee but this does not fit this topic anything else mr lanier yeah uh okay there are some other things that i would be wondering uh thank you so does this is also being safe schools is where like we we have our chromebooks that are that are uh locked down very well so kids cannot uh can't access the wild internet all on its own and and that is a safe school prerogative i would imagine so if that's being that being the case then why would we have pornographic material in the
053libraries and available online through the school you want you want to say this it has nothing to do with safe schools this is not no you're bringing in an issue that's been addressed by the administration does not fit within this committee so please you have just over a minute to go on to your next topic thank you very much for respecting the community and this committee's time just to understand just understand then not those topics bullying and and pornography provided by the school is not safe school matter that's that's only for a curriculum matter then i i have to under understand that correctly uh i sleep mr winner i think trying to understand the line of reasoning that you're bringing into this meeting i'm not seeing what the logic is there these are issues that
054have been addressed the administration has addressed it and has nothing to do with what's on topic tonight so please fit the agenda in this committee that's that's amazing okay just just as we as long as we have that on record that that it has nothing to do with safe schools and it only has to do with what the administration and the board has said about it previously then i guess everything is scope aesthetic everything works out just fine no problem everything's good you're going to continue as uh has been in the past with these things still being an issue and you want to ignore them i guess that's on you but maybe maybe it should be reconsidered as a function of the safe schools is to keep it safe from students against uh from students
055against teachers and or salacious material in the library thank you for your time mr lanier those issues have not been ignored and i trust that anyone who can look at a newspaper or ask the administration we'll get those answers that they're looking for i will remind the public that this is not a debate in committees we tend to have a bit more back and forth since it's not as formal as the public action meeting hearings or in finance but this is not an opportunity to to cross-reference and debate any of the members on the committee thank you for your time mr lanier always do appreciate the fact that you are always at these meetings as much as uh any board member so we thank you for your participation in this process next mistake next is
056aaron blanc ms blanc when you you are asked to unmute please state your name and address for the board hi this is erin blanco of hatfield and um i wanted to let you know about a security issue that i have discovered and found out about so a member of the community has been speaking of knowing who from the community does or does not participate in school board meetings via zoom this information has been used to attempt to discredit um school uh school board candidates and members of the public uh this woman would only have this information if she um breached security um or was told by someone within the organization this information is really none of her business and she actually posts about it on social media and speaks about it in public this is
057the same person who is a very close supporter of the current school boards campaign and also holds a local position in montgomery township um she has disrupted um events in the past that were conducted by compet the competition of the candidates and she seems to lose judgment and mental capacity during these activities she actually approached a young child and made him cry with her words and blew through a stop sign in the high school parking lot in a crowd ms blanc i'll give you some time and please continue but thank you board policy is we can't have personal attacks especially with people who are not here um to be a part of the conversation but i please continue to talk about the topic i just want to make sure we pull back on those those
058last couple yeah i will not say any names at all no names mentioned here okay right but but even in the alluding to so but go ahead um well there's video i mean there's video sorry no no that's i i won't take ignore your time please okay thank you it's okay i'm almost done my point was for these reasons i am concerned um i'm concerned about my my safety when i'm in public um and at these different events including school board meetings and i'm also concerned about the information that the public seems to have access to and i would like this to be looked into further and i would appreciate a statement denouncing these behaviors and i feel like silence is support thank you so much thank you um and you still got that within
059three minutes um so thank you ms ms blanc uh i would suggest that that information uh be forwarded to the administration please next person please our next audience of citizens is jesse bradica ms bradica you are allowed to unmute your mic please state your name and address for the board hi jessie bradica upper gwyneth um i wanted to compliment you guys on the bus app i think it's a great addition uh to the district so thank you for that and i agree with mr lanier regarding the safe to school line i wanted to congratulate your campaign on your democrats state representative endorsements and your electronic billboard on 309 and i have a few questions mr castle your facebook post on friday october 22nd was is um regarding or i'm sorry it was pretty much i
060lost it forget it i'm sorry about that um my second question is i'm curious what and how you are addressing the sexually explicit books that were found in the north penn libraries as chair of the school committee because i couldn't find that on any of your facebook or twitter posts second i'm also curious how you are planning or how you have addressed the alarming rise in north penn's incidents reported to the safe schools pa government portal um incidents in 2017 for north penn was 205 and in 200 er in 2020 it rose to 745 more than tripled the number of incidents in school suspensions in 2017 or 43 and in 2020 in school since sessions uh rose to 399 almost nine times and out of school suspensions were 142 in 2017 and doubled to 281
061just about doubled to 281 in 2020. in comparison central bucks has 18 000 students where we have just over well we have over 12 000 um they had 275 incidences in 2020 66 in school suspensions and 143 out of school suspensions so i was just wondering how you were addressing that increase thank you all right next speaker please thank you mrs bradica one moment sorry no problem our next speaker is katie hirsch katie you may unmute your mic state your name and address for the board katie hirsch north wales um on kyw this morning there is a board member advisor who said that they expect the first doses of vaccine to be in the arms of kids ages 5 to 11 either november 4th or 5th given both the federal and state administration's push to
062roll out vaccines through schools i would like to hear some conversation about what north penn plan is in terms of vaccination clinics how we are going to be making them accessible to the public what our messaging is going to be how it's going to impact school our safety policy um i listened live to the commonwealth court hearing last wednesday about the lawsuits regarding the masking order and based on the judge's comments and questioning it it seems like there's a good chance that it may be struck down um and so i know one that it overrides our masculine policy in the health and safety plan and then also our health and safety plan stipulates that it needs to be reassessed based on vaccination availability both of these are coming up very quickly and kind of concerned
063that we haven't begun talking about them yet um my apologies if i've missed it i do try to pay attention to as many things as possible but right now i am driving home from salati with my puppy and so it's kind of difficult for the general public to make every single committee meeting um so it would be helpful to have some of these conversations especially things that of this magnitude and the broader action meetings and work session meetings um that's all i have for tonight thank you ms hirsch some very good questions i try to write some of those down and we'll uh touch upon some of that another business thank you very much next speaker at this time mr casa that is all for audience of citizens thank you very much uh for managing
064this for us making it so smooth uh dr bauer or dr waters whomever has some oversight and all the things that you do with the administration ms hirsch did ask some questions about vaccines and i know we have discussed it some means she's brought up some good points i know there are there are talks uh scheduled it's not ongoing about the vaccine clinics any other information you would like to update ms hirsch and this committee and the rest of the community on tonight sure i'd be happy to mr casa and thank you for your questions mrs hirsch i can appreciate i did hear the puppy in the background and uh i was going to have a conflict this evening my daughter is at basketball my son had football but the weather cooperated and canceled football
065so here we are and i'm happy to answer your questions um so in terms of vaccination clinics for students age 5 through 11 those families interested in receiving the vaccine we did have a meeting this morning um we've been working closely with skip back pharmacy as everyone knows i believe at this point um it would look very similar to if it is approved by the governing bodies it would look very similar to the adult clinics and the other clinics that we had once it was approved for adolescents as well 12 to 18. um so as of right now uh we are waiting for the green light and then we would communicate um that on i believe the clinics would take place on sundays they would not be during school uh they would be voluntary the
066information would be sent to families very similar to the way that we did it for students age 12 to 18 and they would sign up for a time slot uh we did hear from skip back pharmacy that they are planning when they did the adult clinics clinics they were i forget what the windows were maybe 15 15 minutes or so they would sign up 60 individuals for 15-minute slots they've reduced that by down to 25 percent of that capacity because they understand with students coming in there could be families parents some students might need some support be more apprehensive when you're talking about that age bracket and by the way both of my children are in that age bracket so we're working on it we do have some dates set up with our facilities department
067and again they would be voluntary we would just facilitate the information from the pharmacy to our families and families get to make that decision for their children i would also um ask dr bauer with the health and safety plan and ms hirsch community they do have questions about the evolving nature of that plan uh you know now we all know that we're we're tied to the county board of health and the transmission rates so ms hirsch had asked a question about once vaccines were available does that mean there wouldn't be masks it's my interpretation that we're still watching the transmission rates need those to drop which clearly extend expanded vaccines would we can assume be a part of lowering those rates across the community is this something that the administration is prepared for work session
068as you get more information that the community can expect this type of public deliberation yeah so the challenge right now mr casa uh regard if you recall back in august when we presented the health and safety plan i guess it was july and then subsequently in august again um and we did utilize the transmission rates uh to determine whether or not mass were recommended or required and then we did have a mask mandate from the secretary of health so that that mass mandate is still in place so regardless of what we might approve in a health and safety plan the mass mandate is still in place that said we did meet last week because we are starting to hear that mrs hurst shared that the vaccination opportunity would is imminent and if that were the
069case what would our if you want to say our differentiation model for mass look like right now a decision does not need to be made because the mask order takes precedence and priority however we're working on those logistics and the timing of when the vaccines would be eligible there would still be two doses even though it's a lesser dose and then so if you had your first dose then you had three weeks until your second dose and then they say two more weeks until you are fully vaccinated again this is for the families who want their children vaccinated so we are still quite a few weeks away but we are working on plans and when we have that it would certainly come to a work session for discussion and deliberation among the board thank you
070for that clarification dr bauer and that's should the uh legality of that order the statewide order change we assume we would be um having that discussion um as soon as possible with the public but that this administration i'm very confident is planning ahead uh already uh yes sir mr casa so we will we'll make sure it's well publicized that that's going to be discussed um at the work session at this point given those timelines and the weeks that i've shared i can't imagine it would be um at a an imminent work session probably about a month away okay but it's certainly being discussed yep it's good for the community to know that uh so on the the issue of incidents that ms uh bradica uh raised um i i think you know this is where
071i could talk for the next hour and but there'd be a lot of bored people but i'll distill this my 15 years of experience in campus and school safety and security it's paradoxical or you might say it's counterintuitive when you look at incidents and how they're reported there's much research focusing on something called the cleary act in higher education which is a federal mandate for all institutions of higher education virtually all to report their crime statistics also to talk about their policies and practices i ran i was executive director of the nonprofit clery center i worked directly for that family they lost their daughter jean in 1986 on a horrific on-campus sexual assault and murder i learned a lot from the clearies and one of the first things mr and mrs cleary taught me in
072their that mentorship is that you should be most concerned about the schools with the low numbers it doesn't mean that they are unsafe but the risk is much higher that number one victims don't feel confident in reporting number two victims don't report and don't feel confident because the administration in that school or on that campus is non-responsive number three when you see the numbers that are higher once again it could be an unsafe school but the likelihood and their phds their people who've done this research is that the higher the number is actually more of a culture safety that you have because people feel comfortable that when they report it will be acted upon and only when you have good data can you make the appropriate decisions about where your resources should be allocated or
073not in your campus or school community so it is troubling when we see numbers go up the question is are we being curious to peel that onion and find out the reasons why those numbers have gone up um i'll take a brief break on that one point and mr bauer there was a change which led to the numbers that are being stayed in 2017. if you could please uh help educate ms bradica and this committee uh about those numbers certainly uh and mr dura if you want to chime in feel free you're just as well versed in this area as i am but the reporting mechanism did change um and what types of events need to be reported to the state did change so if you look at data and i believe some of the
074dashboards on pde site allow you to see the fact that there's a spike across the state that year because what was reported to the state changed the criteria changed so things that weren't previously reported because we categorized disciplines right so if there's a bullying incident it's categorized as bullying if it's sexual harassment it's categorized as such and there are um categorizations that did not need to be reported in previous years and then the criteria changed so as a result you saw a significant increase in all school districts across the state i do believe when we shared the data dashboard i'm going to guess it might even be a year ago at this point the first iteration of the dashboard we went through that because you could see on the graph a dramatic spike so it
075of course i agree with everything you said mr casa that there is a more concerted effort to report i believe i also believe that the aforementioned presentation from mr dura was safe to say has increased the number of reports as well um but there was a change in the criteria which resulted in the spike mr darwin is there anything to add to dr bauer's points no that absolutely sums it up um specifically if we were to look at examples that what was added in in that time frame was um a big bucket that's labeled code of conduct incident and that's a collector for anything that doesn't fit in another category that resulted in a suspension so something like plagiarism should that result in an exclusion from class would be reported where previously it was not
076so that that's the reason for the spike as we as dr bauer explain and thank you very much at the both of you and you've had to put up with a lot of my cross-examination about the data as we drill down and that's why i welcome the community and ms bradica to watch the june safe schools committee meeting with mr max schachter uh who lost his son in the first classroom at parkland and he's dedicated his life in his son's memory and for his positive legacy to ensure that incidents are reported accurately and communicated with the school community and families so that disasters like parkland doesn't happen that is why north penn school district is the first school district in all of pennsylvania to adopt and work with the safe schools for alex model this
077is we unveiled our dashboard in january dr bauer actually that's in the works january february when it was unveiled we're now merging that information working together with mr schachter and his organization because we should not be afraid of the data we should not be afraid of people saying that our schools are unsafe to make cheap political points we should instead be sharing with the community what exactly is going on in our community so we can have a civil conversation about it that's what the data is about and i hope that this description you know helps educate many in the community this is not something we want to think about or focus on all of our days but those are the type of this is the type of topic that the safe schools committee is here
078to place that focus upon it's been my focus for the last four years we're not only bringing mr max schachter to this but when i hear let's be honest you're here because there's a political race and there was a debate last week and you bring up how our ranking dropped from an a to a b in some internet survey i'll be quite honest we're not perfect our safe schools can always improve it's why i described all the things that we're doing we've invested millions of dollars in our school district and to have safe schools that are vibrant and secure we have positive behavioral intervention and interventions and supports in all of our elementary schools that's going to make a difference we're invested in restorative practices in our schools that's another piece that's going to make
079a difference we made sure that every single emergency operations for communication at every single system is 100 functioning across this district which it wasn't when i took over this committee that took hundreds of thousands of dollars we made sure to invest in behavioral threat assessment we invested in evidence-based practices so not only are students and staff secure but the taxpayer is protected as well from us throwing money at reactive security theater when it comes down to climate surveys we took the first ever climate survey in our school district because no one was asking where our blind spots were and we need to hear from our community we invested in that that's evidence-based we have climate coordinators in all of our schools that we also invested in i can go on for quite some time anyone
080who's sat through these meetings before and what we've done but it's not the brag it's about to show our homework and what our investment is i've been in campus school safety and security for well over 25 years i started in juvenile justice ms bradica not once have i ever heard a niche rating be used as a professional citation for what makes a school safe or not and i'm not sure that they're looking at the things that i just mentioned either so for the sake of the entire community we put our politics aside this is about the safety of our students and let's keep it focused there i really appreciate the question about the numbers because ms bradica it does stand out but i hope that we've cleared up that information for you and for those
081in the community please continue to come to the safe schools committee we will all work together on making sure that all of our students are safe are there any last questions yes dr lewis yeah mr casa i can't help but state that this school board and our school district with your leadership managing this school safety committee can't help but go up you have been remarkable your experience in that realm like you explained about the clearing reports and having come from higher ed you're so right just because the numbers have gone up it indicates that better reporting is being done and thank you for breaking down all of that as you just did to our community so i thank you for your leadership and am glad to have you on this school board well thank you
082i'm sorry everyone for the the lecture i'm very passionate about this issue so i wanted to make sure that i shared as much as possible we have any other other business or closing comments thank you for those who stayed with us i know we ran late but really appreciate the opportunity to respond to community questions up next will be the facilities and operations committee thank you everyone oh wait wait i'm sorry next meeting i got i have to say that i usually miss that so our next scheduled safe schools meeting is for november 29th 2021 at 5 45 in a virtual format do we have a motion to adjourn all right this means adjourned thank you