001okay youtube is currently live madam president the meeting is yours thank you mr gilmer good evening i'm going to call this action meeting to order first up we're going to have uh the pledge of allegiance please i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay next up will be the suspension of policy zero zero six point one the attendance at meetings via electronic communications i recommend the suspension of board policy zero zero six one with specific regard to the limitation on the number of school board directors participating in a meeting electronically and the requirement of having a majority of the board physically present at a meeting location do i have a motion
002please so moved motioned by mr fusco and seconded by mr rush all in favor say aye or raise your hand any opposed motion carries thank you so before we get started with this evening um with the public comment i have a statement that i'm going to read on behalf of the school board of directors okay so north penn is a more accurate reflection of america than many school districts across the country north penn is roughly 60 white and 40 non-white this diversity is a source of pride for our school district and a reason people choose to come and live in our community our diverse community including black hispanic mixed race asian american pacific islander and white students speak a variety of languages observe different belief systems and worship in a multitude of ways the diversity
003and hurt in this community is a blessing but it is a blessing that requires a shared commitment to make it work for everyone we find ourselves at an inflection point in this community a recent event at the high school has reignited debate about how to support all of our students regardless of race religious belief ethnicity and gender people are questioning our commitment to making all students feel safe respected and included in the north penn experience it is a call to action as a school board we have provide prioritized cultural proficiency work with an acknowledgement that there are problems inherent in society and they are reflected in our schools we have committed to this work and we have instituted policies and practices designed to combat racism and bias head on for example through our 2020-2021 school
004year north penn has required all staff to take part in cultural proficiency and or implicit bias training every month the importance of this work cannot be overstated we heard this week from community members who are outraged that a muslim student's hijab removed from her head during a fight was not returned to her or that any other cover was provided to her once the fight had ended this was a reminder that our work is ongoing process as people become aware of what and how things need to change taking the time to ensure that not just teachers and administrators but security personnel secretaries cafeteria workers classroom assistants and maintenance personnel have an understanding of the beliefs values and traditions of all our students of faith be they muslim hindu buddhist jewish sikh or christian is imperative to
005ensuring a situation like this does not happen again this work goes far beyond training over the past three years we have begun the task of diversifying our staff at all levels we have committed to a multi-year plan focused on actionable goals and action steps to support all students through more equitable practices we've audited our libraries and purchase textbooks that introduce our students to diverse characters settings and experiences we believe representation matters we passed an equity policy that beginning this fall will require our administration to share with the board and the community at large data related to disproportionality with a mandate to demonstrate improvement year over year we believe transfer transparency changes practices we continue to erase awareness of religious holidays by making eid al theater and diwali observed holidays on next year's calendar we have
006worked to empower parents with opportunities to be partners with us in our cultural proficiency work we believe we cannot do this without our families and community partners but what's been done is not enough it did not prevent those who feel marginalized in this community from speaking out to express their anger frustration and sadness about the events that transpired last week we will continue this work with an eye to the future we'll all where all of our students feel loved safe and respected and where we have earned the trust of all the members of north penn community we are working so that every north penn student has an experience where they feel accepted embraced valued and safe and we ask you to join with our school community in this work thank you um that statement we
007will try to have posted on our website um tomorrow as well if anybody wants to see it later so now we will be moving on to the audience of citizens uh so i just want to make an announcement on that that uh we will have about 45 minutes to an hour depending on how many people want to comment and after that we will proceed with topics on the agenda at the end of that there is a second period for public comment which will take about 30 minutes worth of comments if after that there is someone that still wishes to make a comment but has not had the opportunity to do so we respectfully ask that you email the board at underscore np school board at npn.org and we will get back to you so um
008i also just want to remind people that making public comment that you must be a resident and a taxpayer of the north penn school district and then one final paragraph that i need to read this meeting is being videotaped for community cable channels individuals attending this meeting virtually 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 to ensure compliance with this requirement it is essential that those planning to address the board raises their hand electronically and state their name and address members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to allow time for all those who wish to
009speak to the board the board president may ask an individual to yield the microphone to the next speaker so with that mr gilmore we'll start our first public comment session and again it'll be about 45 minutes depending on how many people wish to speak all right very good well first up we have ann martin montgomery and i have enabled your microphone so when you're ready to begin your comments please state your name and address and begin your comments please thank you so much can you hear me okay ken hi anne how are you i am very well i hope everyone is well today um i am really pleased to have an opportunity to address you very quickly um because the um one of the individuals involved is a close friend of mine and my daughter
010and we're very close with her parents um an attack on an average could you just state your municipality absolutely thank you upper gwyneth thank you do you need an address stated too no your municipality is fine okay great i'm upper gwen and president um an attack on an african-american muslim student by two of her peers opened a pre-existing wound in our community as a parent of an asian-american child who also served as an executive board member of the aaac i know that we need more diversity in our curriculum and a more open process that validates the experience of our children of color and what they experience every day not less yesterday i learned that a flyer calling on the north penn school district to reject critical race theory claiming that it represented a communist framework
011and called black lives matter a marxist group was distributed in landsdale a few days ago after a quick review of the anti-defamation league heat map and the southern poverty law center annual report on hate and extremism for 2020 i'm reminded that the statistics continue to demonstrate that pennsylvania is fertile ground for white nationalist extremist anti-government organizations and actions in 2020 most of the 376 incidents in pennsylvania took place in the philly metro area most consisted of flyer distribution perpetrated by two groups who are known hate groups the patriot front and the new jersey european heritage association in light of the last week in the raw and painful accounts of discrimination north penn students shared during the walkout yesterday what plans are under consideration by the school board to expand an open and affirming curriculum that
012includes the experiences of communities of color in order to create a safe place for children of all races ethnicities and faiths and secondly on behalf of my daughter who could not attend today i would like to share that the initial response of the school administration to the incident last week i felt was disproportionate my daughter had reported not entirely similar but related experiences where another student used the n-word inappropriately but not directed toward a student and that student received an in-school suspension while my daughter's reaction to that person's use of that offensive word she uh uttered curse words leave the room without permission and slammed a door um resulted in a lighter penalty for her so to me looking at um the way the muslim student was treated receiving um the suspension which i know
013i understand has been reversed felt very disproportionate and i really like to have an examination policies are important but how they're implemented is also very important and relates to the lived experience of children of color in our schools so i thank you very much for allowing public comment today okay thank you the next person up let's clear the hands here is lauren wilson lauren i've enabled your microphone so you're ready to begin uh you can state your name and address and begin your comments please hi lauren wilson 114 james drives north wales um i i really appreciate the previous callers comments and personal personal perspectives um i wanted to to say that i did think that the district's um response was was a bit slow but i'm i'm glad that we're starting to be a
014bit more explicit about the work that needs to be done in our school communities and that the the people that actually impact our kids recognize that there's still opportunity we're trying to do a lot as a school community but i'm glad that dr dietrich and the administrators are all well aware and explicitly calling out as well as the board the continued need to focus on cultural proficiency and the continued efforts across our communities to engage students and parents so that we don't continue to go backwards as a community and we continue to move forward so i'm glad that the people that matter are well aware of the work that's ahead of us and committed to doing so and i i really am glad to to have some more explicit um discussion and commentary about where
015we go from here um i do think that there's a lot of work to be done about this immediate incident and how we as a a community can have our voices heard um but being more explicit and open i think is is very important as well so thank you thank you mrs wilson okay up next is owen wilcox owen i have uh enabled your microphone so when you're ready to begin state your name and address and begin your comments please you're still muted there owen okay i'll go one more time your mic is still muted if you'd like to make comment you would need to unmute and begin your comments all right not sure what's going on there i'll go ahead and disable that so if there any other comment you would raise your your
016hand in the interface and we do have mr patchell mr patchell i've enabled your microphone so when you're ready to begin you can state your name and address and begin your comments please okay uh i'll do that uh municipality thing my name is william patchell i live in montgomery township they got it down as landsdale they forced me to use that but i live in one of the best townships the best run township and you know why i moved here the police they don't play around here it's it's nice and safe here why do people move to a place number one the overriding issue it's nice and safe i can go to bed at night police responses right away five minutes if it looks really bad i have two more cars and a vicious dog
017it doesn't end well for criminals this is why people the next reason i moved here was north penn school district i'm with them walking distance bridal path when that was built i moved here it was a good it was an excellent choice you know what over the years what i've seen what i've seen is the socialists engineering a public opinion and here's what you need to do at a school district you need to provide academics stop with a social engineering when you get out of the school district nobody cares who you are where you are you're probably going to go to college online nobody knows anybody who's online when you get a job you know what you'll be online again nobody knows nobody cares they just want to get the job done you are being
018sidetracked with all these issues which detract and all you're going to do is when parents decide you know what i'm not going to go there it starts by the time you get to high school you got 50 of the kids say i wouldn't go back to that place for any reason whatsoever they're going to be on they're going to be virtual and you know what who's going to be left i just wonder who's going to go here you know what you're going to wind up like ashley bennett what happened to ashley she made a legitimate statement on facebook oh i had people cruising through they put her under a hot light also there was a a teacher or a a uh employee up at penn ridge they both put under hot lights you're going to
019resign what am i going to resign for because i had an opinion oh well i wasn't even working at the time it was my prep if you're going to have a society that just cruises around and makes accusations because i have an opinion what are you learning at school i was hired to be a teacher not a social engineer this is all wrong and all you're going to do is drive people away next year you'll have 500 people on sauber scheider's cyber charter schools and you know what you wonder why because of all this experimentation you're doing you're going to fail at this i'm telling you you're going to fail up next is jason lanier jason i've enabled your microphone soon you're ready to begin your comments please state your name and address and begin
020your comments please excellent air 100 oak drive lansdale uh i'm gonna backstep here a little bit going back all the way to july 25th of last year when the board put out this uh ability to suggest what type of school we wanted to go virtual in person or hybrid uh five days later that's taken away from us what happened in those five days as far as i can find out two things happened one had to do with the implementation of critical race theory i'll get back to that second is the uh the aft right is a america no atf uh american teachers federation new york uh starts imposing upon the cdc how the guidelines on which to open school so the teachers union imposes upon the cdc on how slowly to open school our school
021board not wanting to question anything not looking at any of the data does nothing and proceeds to open at a very slow rate hyper safe i've presented data to you guys there's lots of data that the administration had the school board had from from studies of in academia from from harvard from uh mit from uh stanford yale and oxford all saying that what we're doing is wrong kids don't need to have all this masking all this slow roll reopening we spend money on things we don't do uh we shouldn't be spending on like critical race theory implementation uh going forward you realize that this is all going to become full circle you're going to completely keep believing the cdc and what montgomery county board of health says and yet what they're telling you happens to
022not be accurate with what the science is telling you quickly on this critical race theory do you does anybody know what's happening in loudoun county virginia where they implemented this they have magnet schools primarily primarily minority students go to these magnet schools these are magnet schools where everybody's on the stem program going into science technology uh generally uh four-year uh ivy league schools or high-tech schools and yet they're pulling away the ability because they've implemented critical race they're they're pulling away their their um their college credit courses they're pulling away the the um the harder math classes the harder uh uh science classes simply because they need to find equity in the end now realize again i said this is primarily a minority school but we're pulling this all away to create equity equity is
023is silliness what we're trying to say is we don't want to judge people by their ability of who they are we're going to judge people by what they look like and we are going to get we're going to engineer the outputs so that we are are looking at the outputs so that they all become quote unquote equal not going to happen it's a bad implementation you're you're changing racism for anti-racism those are synonyms they are synonyms just double checking we did have a couple hands fly up here and when i looked away they disappeared so i'm just going to double check here um for uh i think i see one okay there it is uh yeah they kind of flipped up and down there so i do apologize so up next is rebecca singleton i've
024enabled your microphone so when you're ready to begin please state your name and address and then you can be in your comments please hi my name is rebecca i am in on landfill borough um i didn't plan on speaking so i didn't have much prepared i i just want to share i guess briefly from the heart i've been here for about maybe five years now going on six and i really do enjoy the community i worship here i have friends here um i love the diversity and i will say this i don't know what critical race theory is about i will say i grew up in shelton hymn that was also very diverse and what they did was they had children grow up together play together learn together interact with each other and they corrected
025behaviors as they occurred so for example if students got into a situation where they thought one person was better than the other or one religion was better than another um that was corrected because that's not true um i don't know i wish i had studied more about the nuances of what's going on with the curriculum but i what i can say from my own personal experience is there's nothing wrong with teaching culture and science and math and music and art and everything else as long as we're all respecting each other and respecting our differences and acknowledging the fact that we all bring something amazing to the table i don't see why one would negate the other and i think north penn is doing a good enough job so far by addressing these issues and giving
026in public forum that people can learn from each other and learn how to implement the necessary changes without taking away the quality we're here for the school district we're here for the safety just like everyone else we're people of color we have multicultural backgrounds and heritages and i teach my children to celebrate all of that don't hate anyone go to school do your best learn what you're supposed to learn do your homework do your assignments talk with your teachers um it's just that simple and i i think sometimes we make this a little too complicated and again i'm sorry i don't know all of the issues on the table but what i do know is that something grievous happened it was inappropriate it was hateful and people do hateful things by the time they're teenagers
027they would have already learned that behavior outside of the school so i feel like what the school should do is um enforce the best behaviors and teach people that you know our society will not tolerate hate um so that's why the school doesn't tolerate it as well um and then you know really maybe have more opportunities for parents to learn because they're the ones teaching their children to either cooperate or to hate each other all right i was rambling i didn't have anything prepared but much love for everybody thank you mrs singleton i think you did very well okay up next is jazzy ann tolbert uh jazzy ann i've enabled your microphones and you're ready to begin you can state your name and address and begin your comments yeah jazzy and tobert i'll tell you
028i'm in montgomery township um and i just want to say thank you to mrs singleton for her comments um just about what the focus should be i do uh want to piggyback off what you said like maybe we the focus should be on the parents because there are some parents that are um on these calls who bring to us every school board meeting the same thoughts the same rants um the same misunderstandings and um you know just just to me disagreement for disagreement's sake i i do think there's some opportunity here maybe for the board to set aside some forms for parents to understand what it is we are trying to do when we talk about implementing equity in in everything that we do at the board level um and perhaps that would give some
029of the parents a better understanding of why that means that everyone gets to express their culture their beliefs and succeed we're just trying to provide students the tools they need to be successful and in doing so making them feel accepted when they're at the school and i i do think there are a lot of parents that come on to these calls that may not grasp that and maybe there's some room just for the board to set up some sort of forums or learning sessions for for parents so that we're not listening to the same arguments every meeting and we can actually move forward in these processes with ideas and ways to improve things for the students thank you thank you mrs tolbert okay i'm double checking the interface here and at this time i do
030not see any additional hands up just a reminder there is a second public comment at the end of this agenda so madam president that will conclude public comment for right now thank you mr gilmer okay so moving then on to the superintendent's report dr dietrich please just stand by here we do have the matter of the budget on tonight's agenda i will read the motion as soon as i'm able to get it called up here recommend adoption of the 2021-22 proposed final budget resolution in the amount of 290 million 219 thousand 295 dollars per pde form 2028 and authorization to publish notice to adopt the final budget in accordance with the pennsylvania school code and act as per the attached do i have a motion so moved motioned by mr fusco and seconded by mr
031rush are there any comments or questions seeing none all in favor say i or raise your hand any opposed motion carries thank you dr dietrich all right moving on then to new business does anyone have any new business to discuss i just have a question sure so we have been um inundated in the last few weeks about questions about plans for next year and obviously nobody's going on the record for anything yet but i'm wondering about a timeline to make a decision regarding specifically the hybrid program because that does seem to be um an issue that is of particular interest as to what the plan would be for next year do we know when we'll have a response to that specific issue yes thank you mr fusco uh the intention of administration and cooperation with
032the board and the discussions with the board president is to do a presentation at the june work session so at the june work session we would anticipate a presentation by that point i will have our hanover survey results back i do anticipate that we might need to do another a survey of our community and of our parents if you will sometime in that month of june there just to get a better idea but as we see that the vaccination availability is now opening up for basically our middle schoolers and high schoolers and we do have different committees that are meeting uh it on at least at this juncture i can say it appears quite likely that the hybrid program would not be necessary uh so you'll hear more in june i can't say that with
033certainty young i want to preempt the work of the committee but as i see this all coming together it appears that the hybrid program wouldn't be necessary uh it's quite likely we would offer for those that do want to have a fully online experience uh you know to have that experience but then those that would be in person would be there all five days but again this is uh may 11th we're watching as uh you know this pandemic is moving to its next stages and we expect to do a presentation of the june work session thank you dr dietrich we you have obviously been very deliberate about this process for each step and um while i i do kind of share your anticipation for that with the hybrid program i definitely appreciate um you know
034the thorough study of the issue and then the looking forward to the presentation in june thank you yeah the most significant factor yet uh mr fusco members of the board and community who are watching this evening we're still watching to see at that elementary level to see when a vaccination might be available to children that are of school age that are not you know yet 12 years old so as we watch that and we you know seek to gather the intentions of our community members for that age group um you know that could have some impact the other part of this whole discussion is the physical distancing or social distancing is as it has become known um the hybrid has helped us to maintain a greater distance because you can have an h1 day a
035student and then an h2 day the same desk available um you know between sessions like that um but you know again we need to continue to monitor this as we see the vaccination availability for that age group of 5 through 12 but clearly those above 12. in fact we have another session coming up here real soon for people to get their vaccinations i do encourage those who are inclined to please do so the goal is to get as many people vaccinated as possible and we do have a you know quite a good relationship with various local pharmacies another opportunity coming up here to get vaccinated so please strongly consider that al i think did you have a question from y'all yes i did dr dietrich um although i don't like the idea of offering online
036this year i understand that it's a big district that there's people with health problems in this district and people may choose to go online this year for health reasons that being said could we initiate a study or look at the different online programs that are being offered and see what kind of improvements we might make to our online program this coming year yes that is a part of the work that we've charged these committees with that are looking at september uh i call it september i guess technically it's the very end of august uh for the start of the next school year uh so yes that is a part of the lessons learned also very importantly the hangover survey results in terms of the feedback we gather there thank you dr dietrich uh dr lewis
037campbell has a question uh yes um dr dietrich you said at the next meeting is that the action meeting june 17th or will it be prior to that that we hear prior to that uh we were looking at the work session i don't have my calendar the 8th the 8th of june is when we were looking at dr lewis campbell okay thank you i like that earlier time frame yes thank you are there any other questions dr dietrich i'd just like to thank you again oh go ahead dr g i i just wanted to um ask dr dietrich if if that could be um uh publicized so that people would really i mean we typically publicize our meanings but i think that that's something important that people will want to know as they go into
038the the summer season as they're making decisions for their children um i think it's important that we really publicize that um through schools principles um so that you know families really know to kind of tune into that presentation yes thank you point well taken any other comments or questions dr dietrich i just wanted to thank you again for all your work that you did with the skip back pharmacy and with the north wells pharmacy and getting the clinics at our um school district i think uh they did a remarkable job vaccinating so many people in our community and it's um it's a tribute to you all the work that you did to make that happen so thank you very much thank you president stone it's a team effort and we have a great team here
039so thank you okay if there are no further questions we will go on to our sorry i'm sorry tina tonight i'm dr dietrich the um i believe it was dr waters um came to the north penn ed foundation board with a a possible idea of a request for funding for an equity summit this summer i believe this was two months ago just given some of the public comment tonight and the interest in wanting to have deeper conversations about this and keep the dialogue going um i know that you all have so much on your plate right now but is that summit still in discussions and is that being do we have more information on that that we could just share just since we've had some interest in that um this evening yes thank you so
040that is uh still in a discussion and something that you know we're working towards i don't have a whole lot more to report on it right now but uh you are correct and that is that uh something that uh you know is being uh thoroughly discussed and plans are being ready there will be more information about the equity summit at the next dci meeting thank you thank you any other comments i don't think i see any okay all right so we will move on then to our second public comment of the evening and again we will take up to half an hour depending on how many people want to comment and if there's anyone who wants to make a comment and doesn't have the opportunity to do so please send us an email at underscore
041np school board at npn.org and we will get back to you promptly so mr gilmore is there anyone that would like to make public comment at this time i know there's some few uh folks that um this is new interface for them with the raising the so i just want to check i did see a net um your hand has been going up and down so i wanted to see if you did indeed want to make a comment if you do just click once your hand and that will come to the top for me if you don't that's fine you don't need to make a comment tonight but i've seen you popping in and out there i wanted to double check madame president scrolling through a list they do not see any hands up at
042this time one-handed pop-up so up next here is margaret burke i've enabled your microphone meg so once you are ready to begin please state your name and address and begin your comments please yes hi my name is margaret burke and i live in upper gwenet um i wanted to oh hi everybody i wanted to say to the board i appreciate your your efforts in uh equity and i support that i will continue to support that and i appreciate that there is not much you can say about a particular specific incident but i did want to say that we can talk the talk and that's so important to have discussions but also this week it was our opportunity to walk the walk and what i observed is a student who who felt that people talk the
043talk in school a good student who felt used to i hope still feels close to her teachers and loved by her teachers and i know she is loved by her teachers but um i feel like we could do a better job as a school community of walking the walk and being supportive of course not everyone there are people who are supportive but specifically i i felt there was hurt in seeing teachers um walk away um instead of sometimes you don't know what to say and i often don't know what to say but um sometimes it's just important to be there walk up when something bad happens to somebody like that and be able to just you know walk the walk and and just say i'm here for you if that's all you can say and
044if any teachers are listening or people in the community um let's walk the walk let's let's continue to talk the talk so important and i'm so proud of our school district and our board thank you very much thank you mrs burke okay our next hand up is jason lanier jason i have enabled your microphone so again state your name and address jason lanier 100 oak drive lansd lpa uh just pump a comment again regarding this critical race theory there's a lot of intimation that i don't understand what i'm reading when i click on the exhilar ancillary materials that dr dietrich put forward uh i guess this is after the george floyd email came out there's a bunch of references there i read through that it's it's appalling what you're reading i'm not sure what the
045upside to being uh to to segregating people based upon race segregating people based upon race is prejudicial right you're you're anticipating a change in a a mindset of somebody or somebody's experience based upon their race that's that's ridiculous that could be positive but that could also be really really negative there is a lot of comment uh other public comment that seemed to refer as if i am somehow i'm unfamiliar with something there's some assumption of of where i am on things and and in in the in the the sort of the intimation that i don't understand what the critical race theory is about what i don't understand is why anybody would want to implement this sort of thing why do you want to go and pre-judge kids based upon the color of their skin and
046assume one kid is guilty and one kid is not guilty based upon their race where i grew up my school was heavily integrated you know who got in trouble the kids that did the wrong things you know who didn't get in trouble the kids who didn't do the wrong things and i couldn't tell you if it was more white or more black or more chinese or more more hispanic i couldn't tell you that but what i can tell you is the kids that did the wrong things got in trouble and that's how you should be judging everything kids accelerate because they want to accelerate kids that don't want to accelerate they need more help but to say that the kids that accelerate like they're doing in loudoun county virginia hey you are too successful we're
047holding you back in in the in the name of equity that's ridiculous that is the worst thing we can do what's the worst you're going to rob kids of their agency the the kids that can can perform at a high rate the meritocracy the ability to do really well based upon who they are not the color of their skin if you want to look at measures of of looking at people and saying how much how far along this person has come based upon whatever ever rationale i can understand that but simply assigning people a wrong or a right based upon their color skin is absolutely a step backwards in time of uh jim crow era nonsense uh uh well racial segregation we should not be doing this and i welcome this equity forum assuming that
048there's going to be give and take on both sides thank you okay just gonna scroll through make sure i didn't miss anybody i do see mr patchell's hand so he will be up next mr patchell your mic is enabled so again please state your name and address and begin your comments please hi my name is william patchell i like this montgomery township i get to put a plug in all the time you know i moved here because i made a conscious decision that it was well-run it had an upward progression of being responsible sustainable we haven't had a tax increase here in nine years i wonder how they do that is it is that some kind of lucky thing i tell you what what's the most important thing that people are interested in they're interested
049in the police response when i call on a phone they're here in five minutes maybe some people don't even care about that down in philadelphia wait five days do you see what just a short distance a driving distance away can you see the utter chaos that's what's going on you know what the police do now i'm not answering that call may not work out right it's very bad this is a this is what oh well you know what i may not be making the right decisions i have to make it in a split second this is what's wrong i bet there's lots and lots of vacancies in the philadelphia police force i bet there's lots and lots of vacancies in the philadelphia teachers i know there's lots and lots of vacancies i wouldn't go to
050philadelphia at all i won't buy anything to drink down there i want to eat down there you know why it's a terrible place mayor kenny you can spend all the money once on advertising you know what people are they're tickled to death they stay at home now mr shiraki brought that point about the uh earned income tax yeah they're all working at home go buy this up to shut the parking lot nobody's in there you know why because they're tickled to death they don't have to go back down to philadelphia you know why they're in philadelphia because when they built that building they had tax abatement for 10 years it's all when you look into these things and i tell you what i can't wait to see these teachers retirements i'm telling you i might
051be wrong i'm not coming back here i got 28 years in i'm getting 92 000 a year on pension isn't that fantastic go back why would i go back i still got to wear a mask you know what why are people getting the vaccine now because you know what they don't care because you know what in six months i gotta get it again probably have three more different variants they're working on new variants coming from india i can't wait to see what they're like they're probably more vicious than the one that came from brazil so no one you're getting a little respite now this is like a a cessation in the artillery mirage but it's going to happen again and you know what all the social engineering you better concentrate you know how many kids
052are going to bail out to go to private cyber school north penn schools has nothing to offer for a lot of people they're really smart ones i don't need this place i'm going to be able to go to cornell and i'm going to demonstrate how good i am online that's the bottom line you're trying to defend this position which is indefensible thank you mr patchell that is a nice pension union pension i think right okay up next is ann martin montgomery and i have enabled your microphone so when you're ready to begin please state your name and address and begin your comments hi this is ann martin montgomery i'm an upper gwyned township resident and the proud daughter to a north penn high school graduate and friend to many of the students who are still
053there particularly the students in the triple a c so i want to give a shout out to them for their amazing bravery and standing in support and solidarity with the student who was subjected to a really horrific incident last week which is why i'd like to give a few quotes from the southern poverty law center's annual report on hate and extremism it really plays to why something like critical race theory is absolutely essential and unquestioningly so according to the polarization and extremism research and integration laboratory at american university in conjunction with the southern poverty law center um we have seen a worldwide increase in right-wing terrorism globally of 320 percent in the last five years and pennsylvania is no exception so what are we going to do when we know that we have students in
054our own school being subjected to unacceptable racially motivated hate speech we have to deal with it because the radicalization of our students is a very distinct possibility especially when known hate groups are dropping flyers for the purpose of recruitment in lansdale within the last week so as a responsible public school what are we to do with this well one of them is that we have to prevent people from entering the radicalization pathways to begin with and that starts with a victim-centered lens that is in the words of the splc critical to ensuring that an approach is focused on understanding the purpose histories of trauma through a lens of empathy that also stays equally focused on those who have suffered or could suffer from their behavior and actions this requires an anti-racist practice to be a
055foundational part of the work to combat white supremacist extremism and extremism of other forms too and central to this is recognizing that it's not about just telling kids to behave the right way and to use a color-blind approach to that because a colorblind approach ignores the lived experience of children of color who happen to walk and live lives very different than their white counterparts and i know this is parenting a child of color that there are things i will not understand or live through that my child does but i have to support her as she walks through life so i think it's important to have this entered in the record thank you thank you mrs montgomery up next is harsh to psy harsh i've enabled your microphone so when you're ready to begin please state
056your name and address and begin your comments um hi uh i am in fact uh oh sorry uh harshasai um my actress says 207 harley court north wales pa um so i am in fact a student at north penn and i wanted to attend and listen to what everyone else had to say um so i know like um the district cannot bring up like the details of the incident but i mean as far as i know i can talk about it well i won't go into specifics but um yesterday or maybe two days ago um there was a walkout and um so i i agree that some students are upset about it and are really mad and are throwing hate at the district which i have mixed feelings about because it's not the right way
057to spread hate but i understand where they're coming from and i'm also mad um but i'd rather handle it in a way that's um you know um and so i just want to say that of course mr nicholson was out there to listen but it's the thing there where there's you listen and you take action so i know he was there to listen and i'm sure he heard what people had to say but it's with what you hear um that you take action with if that makes sense um but um yeah that's pretty much it thank you harsh okay i do not see any other hands up at this time so that will conclude public comment for tonight's meeting okay thank you very much um do i have a motion to return them so moved
058okay thank you very much everybody have a good evening