NPSD School Board ECI Committee Meeting 5-4-21

001stream there we go youtube is live the meeting is yours dr g thank you we are calling tonight's may 4th eci committee meeting to order if we could start with 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 and justice for all thank you everyone can i have the promotion for the approval of the minutes so moved second second okay all in favor aye all right i would like to start the meeting prior to public comment with just um reminding everyone that this is teacher appreciation week and staff appreciation week and i feel very fortunate to be on the eci committee and get to interact and engage with colleagues and teachers and administrators

002and educators all across the district we just want to thank on behalf of the committee every single educator who works in the district assistance in the classroom teachers facilitators coaches everyone who works um in a school in the front office and and thank you principals um because this has been a challenging year for most and yet you have all persevered and we are in the month of may um and uh we're just we're just very happy to be in this community um we started this with we're north penn strong and we certainly are um and uh just all feeling very fortunate we want to thank everyone in our community our school community um for their support during this time as well okay so with that um we will move on to public comment do we

003have anyone for public comment before i read the statement mr gilmer i'll just remind everybody um i say a couple new names tonight that if you would like to make public comment you would raise your hand at the bottom of the interface it's a little hand and there is a hand that was raised so you can go ahead and read our statement dr g tonight's meeting is our regularly scheduled committee meeting 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 assure compliance with this requirement it is essential that those planning to address the committee state their name and address members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to no more than

004three minutes this limit will permit time for all those who wish to speak to the committee whenever members of the audience exceed this time limit the committee chair may ask the individual to your yield to the next speaker mr gilmore before you recognize anyone can you be sure to have the timer ready uh will do uh yeah maureen is in the background there she's got the timer i'll be ready to share okay great thank you all righty first up uh the first hand that came up there was mr patchell so mr patrol i have enabled your microphone when you're ready to begin please unmute your mic state your name and address and begin your comments please i am ready i'm on the flight line here we go my name is william patrol i live at

005404 bonnie lane in landshell but it's really montgomery township and i've said all along that if this district was one run as as seamlessly and beautifully as montgomery township you wouldn't be asking for for a tax increase every single year you know we handle it pretty well over here you know we're not haven't had a tax increase in eight or nine years i always tell patty gallagher you're doing a fantastic job i'm so glad i moved here 30 years ago i knew it was a good move i want to make this uh census eci i wanted to make you aware that all these students when they get out of here the chancellor up there at penn state six colleges in a penn state system you know what they're going broke like everybody else they're going

006broke oh what are we gonna do well senator brewster put the guy on the grill and said oh yeah you're gonna close clarion oh yeah you're gonna merge it i understand what you're gonna do how many how many people depend on this school district how many people depend on the state system to supply a a standard of living clarion he said that's that city that place where it is would become a ghost town and you know what's happening the almighty dollar is going to rule this thing and it's going to it's going to uh upend what you think is important but what's really important is having a sound sustainable budget okay now we graduated the class of 2019. i can't help but thinking i wonder how they made out nobody seems to talk about these

007people they sent them in i haven't heard anything the pssa's are coming up i guess you're a little worried about that aren't you uh i want to thank the the teachers and everybody that has done a fantastic job under the circumstances but you know what i said all along if i had 28 years in this thing and you know what you're going to get about 95 000 a year wow 95 000 a year for pension yeah you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna bail out i have no interest in coming back to anything like this for the last two years what sense would it make it wouldn't make any sense you know who's going to make these decisions the spouses and the wives and the husband you know hon don't go back there it's

008it's it's too ridiculous police officers nurses teachers are really at the at the bottom end of a of a career selection look what they're doing to the police what these people i bet i bet i love to see how this neighborhood we be without police i moved here montgomery township has the finest professional police and i sleep very well at night you know why because it's safe and i know what's gonna happen and i'm glad to pay for it that's what i want and your eci i gotta see these pssa scores i gotta see them thank you alrighty up next is jesse bradica uh jace jesse i've enabled your microphone so when you're ready please unmute state your name and address and begin your comments please jessie radica 1821 mifflin drive i'm addressing the board

009tonight as a parent with three children in our schools who is concerned about next year's plan several area school boards have announced their 2021-2022 opening plans this board has not it hasn't been mentioned in facilities finance or safe schools committee meetings and it's not on the agenda tonight the district will receive at least 14.9 million dollars in coveted relief and i can't find one document that tags that money for your use for any coveted remediation in our schools if you have a document i would love it for you to post it on boarddocs so all of our parents can see it speaking of seeing i along with many parents are concerned about the lack of transparency this board has shown which has led to a 500 percent increase in this district's request for right to

010knows in which our president mrs stoll has stated on the april 15th board meeting as a complete waste of money quote end quote we still have yet to know the data that you use that led to the decision to keep our schools closed in the fall of 2020 despite the recommendations of our administration and the cdc and with the feedback from parents to meet the needs of over 75 percent of our students the only answer we have gotten in months of requests was from mr fusco and it was quote our comfort level i ask as a parent and a voter how can we be comfortable reelecting the board members casa stoll fusco and roche on may 18th thank you okay up next is jason lanier jason i have enabled your microphone so when you're ready

011to begin you can state your name and address and begin your comments please uh yes jason lanier 100 oak drive lansdale pennsylvania uh yeah i would echo many of the concerns uh just brought up regarding the the closure and and lack of using data to make decisions uh i think you know that that argument is going to be won by uh the people here over here who believe the school should be open as i think a lot of this stuff is going to get repealed so let's table that and let's look at what has the school board been doing in the interim while instead of opening the school they were adopting critical race theory with this anti-racism and the equity uh as opposed to equality did i i don't know if any of the people

012who are involved with that decision have read through what that means what does equity mean versus equality aren't we to judge kids on the basis of you know the content of the character not the color of the skin and all of this anti-racist uh equity build is specifically designed to divide the kids into groups and and and and to to substitute certain kids based upon their merit because they don't they don't make the correct racial diversity gap or whatever that is that you need to to be met when did the school board decide to do this it looks to me you guys decided to do this in august july and august of last year but you didn't bother involving any of the parents you didn't bother involving the community we're not interested in this we're

013not interested in in being racist anti-racist really what is anti-racism what is anti-racist it's irregardless you know what irregardless means it remains regardless anti-racist means racist it means you look at people's race and you divide them every one of you should be ashamed for adopting this nonsense do you know what they did in bond county uh virginia you know what the the critical race theory the anti-racist mentality did they're gonna eliminate ap courses that's right you can't if you excel and you don't meet a certain quota based upon whatever equity gap you're looking at we're just going to eliminate that what kind of sense does this make the school board isn't there to be treating our children as if they they or or or teachings moral indoctrination you judge people on the content of the

014character not the color of their skin you all should be ashamed if you're really planning on adopting this seriously maybe you should all resign if this is what you're planning to do thank you up next is lauren wilson lauren i have enabled your microphone so when you're ready to begin you can unmute state your name and address and begin your comments please hi lauren wilson 114 thames drive north wells pennsylvania 19454 i just wanted to say that again i'll continue to say i thank the board for all of their work around social injustice equity and equality and i was included in a lot of the conversations i'd know a lot of parents of all races that were included and for mr lanier i think there's tons of resources online that i think you should take

015the time to look into because you're aligning yourself to something that you know nothing about you continually state that and i appreciate along with plenty of parents across the district all of the work that's being done i sit on a number of parent committees and i know firsthand how important this work is and how meaningful it is and that it's making a difference for people and so i continue to stand up to thank the board for putting that as a priority because unlike mr li niero i don't have the privilege to not know what racism is or what my kids will in potentially in it be exposed to so unlike mr lanier not all of us have the privilege to sit here and be unaware of what social injustice is and be unaware of equality

016versus equity so i appreciate the board's openness willingness and awareness that this is a need for our diverse school district and that many of our parents regardless of race or religion find this to be a topic that's important thank you have a good one all right up next is jazzy and tolbert uh get my get it up here in order here jazzy ann you your mic is enabled yep sorry i was it jumped around there your mic is enabled so when you're ready to be in you can state your name and address and begin your comments please jazzy and tolbert 105 canis road in north wells pennsylvania um you know i would just echo with miss wilson just said it it just really blows my mind that it almost seems like we live in two

017different americas because the one i wake up to needs anti-racist policies across the board whether it's in industry in academics in the school at the elementary level high school and i do commend the board for the work they are doing if someone doesn't understand what anti-racism is which it seems like that was the case in that rant that just occurred then perhaps we do more research or meet with some minority parents or your neighbors and ask them what that means to them and why they may or may not feel that the policies and the initiatives that the board is putting forward is important for me and my brown-skinned children we need this this is not it like lauren said lauren wilson i don't have the privilege to wake up and say hey guys have a

018great day and not have to worry about them i also don't have the privilege to wake up and not worry about my husband or somebody not valuing the person that he is because of his skin color and not valuing him for who he is the way i do i don't live in that world of privilege but i i reckon i recognize that you know there are people who understand that this privilege exists and the board does and we're trying to make things equitable for all students and we're not just looking at their skin color but we want to make sure that everybody can go to a school in the north penn school district and focus on learning and that is the end of it and when we make broad stereotypes like oh we have to

019take back ap because some minorities may may not make ap they're a smart minority i would say i'm one of them and people on this and there's plenty of them on this call so it that's it just speaks more to the reasons as to why we need these policies in these initiatives because there are some people who believe that these broad stereotypes exist and that the initiatives the board is putting forward need not be here but i'm definitely not one of those so again commending the board on making sure that all students can learn in a fair and equitable way thank you up next we have veronica burke veronica i have enabled your microphone so when you're ready you can unmute your mic state your name and address and begin your comments please veronica if

020you're with us you need to unmute your mic first so we'll come back to veronica uh mr resh has his hand up mr resh i've enabled your microphone so when you're ready to begin you can state your name and address and begin your comment hi my name is al rash i'm a school board director i live at 136 wentworth drive in lansdale what equity and inclusion means to me is just it is a little different i come at it from a little different perspective and my perspective is i i grew up with dyslexia and so the resources to teach dyslexia to just teach people with dyslexia how to read didn't really exist back in those days we now know that people with dyslexia read and learn differently than other students so to to beat dyslexia

021and make these people part of the community an inclusive part of the community we have to dedicate the resources to those students so that they can be included and have equity i've i had my best friend growing up came out of high school he went through the public school system in allentown and he didn't know how to read a job application and so he had to bring his job application home to his wife and fill out his job application at home so his wife could help him throw it out he went on he was white he went on and had a successful career as a welder and made a very good living but he never was really he never really had equity in the system he really never had inclusiveness in the system because he

022wasn't educated the right way so this isn't just this isn't just an issue of color that this is an issue of ability also and if we dedicate the resources to equity and inclusion these type of people will also be more productive and better citizens in america thank you okay we're gonna go uh back to veronica burke veronica i'm gonna give this one more shot i've enabled your microphone so if you're ready to begin you can state your name and address and begin your comments all right i'm not sure uh veronica if you can hear us it's probably you have an older version of zoom so you would need to download and update the more current version um there is a second public comment i believe right dr g i look at the agenda so if

023you'd like to make comments on the second end of this you can begin at that point with that being said there are no more hands up at this time so dr g that will end public comment for this first part of the meeting okay we will move on to a presentation on homework yes good evening dr g and other members of the committee can you hear me okay okay i'm having some technical difficulties tonight so i apologize if that becomes an issue um so dr g and i were discussing the agenda for this evening and one of the things that we hope to eventually get to is a homework policy psba as everyone knows we've been doing a comprehensive review of our policies as a whole and they do recommend a homework policy but we

024thought in order to best prepare to have a homework policy that represents what we want in the north penn school district it'd just be good to share with the committee and the community what currently exists um in a pre-covered world and in a coveted world so i am pleased to share with you this evening and my friend and colleague dr deanna waters who is currently our director of curriculum and equity um but will be assistant superintendent beginning july 1st so dr waters has a team with her this evening as well and she will introduce them dr waters thank you dr bower good evening everybody and i also want to wish everybody our teachers staff just everybody in north penn a happy teacher and staff appreciation week thanks for all you do it's been a challenging

025year but you rise to it every time and um you know just really appreciate all of you so tonight as dr bauer said we're going to talk to you a little bit about what homework looked like before the pandemic and what it looks like in the state of the pandemic so what it's been looking like this year so i do have two very talented teachers here with me this evening i have mr john brem who is a fifth grade teacher at nash elementary and i also have miss patty fleetwood who is a 9th grade ela teacher at penndale middle school and so they have given some time tonight to kind of help talk through what homework looks like you can go to the next slide please so just a real quick overview of why we

026do homework so homework is really important for reinforcing skills what students learn during the day and just giving them an opportunity to practice those skills because if they practice the skills the hope is that that will lead to mastery so prior to the pandemic homework was assigned and it was always assigned in a developmentally appropriate way so meaning if you're in first grade the amount of homework that you get is going to look very different than for example if you're in fourth grade and a lot of times it's you know a certain amount of minutes the teachers try really hard to make sure that again they're just practicing skills so that they can secure them and they really try not to give too much you know when they're younger and they try even when they're

027older even in high school to give an amount that should not take hours and hours so i just wanted to point that out and then also teachers always really encourage their students to complete the homework because again it's just another opportunity for them to practice and refine their skills and it also helps the teacher determine whether or not the students understood the material so during the pandemic homework has been very different at the elementary level it really has not um been given we knew that this year was really challenging and you know with the virtual and in person and all of the different things it really could not look the same and at the secondary level teachers have been reducing the amount of homework that they maybe gave prior to the pandemic so mr brown

028is going to talk to you a little bit about elementary and then miss woodward talk is going to talk about secondary and what we did was we asked some teachers just to get a quick snapshot so i just want to say this is not representative of maybe every single teacher you might hear something tonight and say wait a minute i don't have that in my school or my class we did not ask every single teacher in the district but what we did do was um do a quick uh cross check across buildings to get a feel for you know what homework looks like so that being said i'm going to turn it over to mr broom good evening thank you very much thank you for the invite my name is john brem i teach fifth

029grade at nash elementary school focus on math i'm also uh the treasurer for the north bend education association i'd like to uh wish everybody all my colleagues a happy teacher appreciation week as well um so yeah this year has been a little bit different we'll get to that in a second but before the pandemic homework so we kind of broke this for elementary down to primary so that means more like kindergarten through third grade and then intermediate so fourth through sixth grade so for our younger students usually one math activity an evening um with the go math program i will say that's probably going to change well will change next year because we're changing to a new program called uh ready math so the the look of it should probably be pretty similar to what

030we're going to see on the next slide um along with math possibly um some ela activities which could kind of revolve around like free choice so if you look down here where it says tic-tac-toe that would be like a something that could be handed out so on monday and you want to get three activities possibly completed by the end of the week so uh maybe a phonics review some grammar activities something to enrich reading skills maybe word study and working on vocabulary and then also incorporating some independent reading you know trying to do 15 to 20 minutes a night now during the pandemic because of the way we started the year off with um not really sure what this was going to look like it was kind of recommended that if there were going to

031be a lot of people you know learning virtually throughout the day and maybe needing help parental help in the evening that trying to assign homework on top of all that it just really wasn't going to you know work out too well i think seeing the product we've created and you know all the steps we've taken and the success we have getting to where we are and i truly mean that um i think we're at a point where i could say that you know i think we could incorporate homework back into what we do um but if you want to look at the next slide bob that's just an example of you know some uh math sheets that kids would have in their practice book that they would bring home and this will be similar to

032what we'll see next year with ready math as well but it's all um you know the first page is usually based on the lesson you've completed that day over the last couple days depending on the lesson takes and then the second page has a usually two problems that go with what we've done the day maybe pushes a little bit more and then a spiral review of other topics that we discussed earlier in the year or even possibly in prior grade levels so continue on there thank you so the intermediate level again this is four through six usually that's how it's classified um i tried to as a math teacher um always assigned something or did at least prior to the pandemic monday through thursday i'm a big fan of trying to give kids you know

033time on the weekend i think that's valuable too let them be kids right so um i would give them you know either two journal pages or let's say we didn't get completely through a lesson there was also pages called reteach pages or enrichment pages that you could add onto a lesson that you could utilize you could also find other supplemental activities to go with it but for me it's i've always tried to you know let it be practiced right like it's not something that you want children struggling through overnight with their parents at the table you want them to have a pretty good idea of what they're doing hopefully so it's a review of what we've either done that day or in days prior leading up to it so if i don't get all the

034way through a lesson i've always tried to have something you know in reserve or whatever that could also send home to do just so there's still some sort of practice at home and that they could follow through with it but not be struggling with their parents as well um if you go to language arts um most people try to still incorporate you know maybe it's a reading log something like that but 20 to 30 minutes of reading each evening if there's writing assignments that need to be completed that would be assigned as well there's also activities with word work as well vocabulary sometimes some spelling activities depending you know what is expected with that that story uh science and social studies is we're trying to prepare students from middle school there may be tests and

035quizzes that we would ask kids to study and prepare for again that's more you know learning vocabulary terms putting the concepts in practice making sense of all that um now i've heard ideas that and again this is trying to you know create a policy but the idea of maybe like 10 minutes for grade level so you're in fifth grade you know 10 times five so maybe 50 minutes of homework at night not saying it's like every night but that's sort of like you don't want to go above that um and we try to stick you know to a level that's achievable in the evening so it doesn't cause frustration but also allows people to practice what we've been doing and if i might add just before we go bob you want to go to the

036next slide you could look at there's just something to do in fifth grade so that was a volume activity that we'll actually be getting to as the year continues here but uh you know some of the feedback i've gotten from parents is you know despite you know all the ways we communicate now from going back to when we would maybe type a newsletter and send it home which still does happen as well um but emailing home or putting on a website or now even sharing messages through canvas we still get the questions like oh you have a test coming up and even though you're still sharing that you know one of the best ways for parents to know what's going on you know daily and weekly is when they see that practice to put come

037home and they can kind of share them with their kids what's going on in math specifically so they can see that you know nightly and they know what's happening and they can help them and it's not really a surprise so that was kind of interesting feedback that i got from parents you know the people that were looking for more looking for homework to return that they didn't miss that that they had that ability to see on a daily basis what was going on versus you know waiting for weekly or bi-weekly updates so if you have any questions i'd be happy to do the best i can to answer but uh thank you thank you john we appreciate your time absolutely any of the committee members have any questions in particular i think you did a

038great job of just describing what elementary um you know homework looks like and kind of the decisions that elementary teachers have to make about homework and how to differentiate and so thank you for that description and outline and the examples you're quite welcome okay there's no question i'm reserving mine for secondary i mean i'm going to be perfectly frank that when it comes to elementary homework i don't feel that there's a lot of concern i do think there's a lot of skill building and practice that's needed plus i think when we're talking about you know determining an appropriate amount an elementary school student has one maybe two teachers that they're working with to make that determination as opposed to a secondary student that may have five six or seven so um um my questions i

039think are gonna be a little more targeted for secondary thank you mr brown you did a nice job with your presentation and happy teacher appreciation week sir what i would say um as i was looking at your presentation is you know there's there's examples of equity to be seen in homework because anyone who's a parent knows that if you have you know more than one child each of those children needs different things they need different a different amount of time to complete homework maybe their pacing is different they may need a different amount of support one of your children might have learned early on how to read and they grasp all the letter sounds really quickly and then another might have went into you know kindergarten first grade and it took them a little longer

040and that in fact is equity right giving students what they need which our elementary teachers have been working and training and thinking about for really years now at this point um and so i would commend many of our teachers who have been focused on that um i think mr um al also called in and talked about what that meant from a different perspective from our students with special needs and their perspective and i think you can see that in the way that homework can be differentiated so um i think i was seeing that and thinking about that as you were presenting john so thank you i just wanted to make that note because i think that's really key in elementary um how different the skills can be within a classroom and all of those children

041don't need an equal um the same right because equal is the same they don't need the same thing they need something some of them need something different to support their needs so thank you to our elementary teachers who do a great job at doing that and we will move on to middle school all right good evening everyone my name is patti fleetwood and i teach 9th grade english at penndale and i want to thank you for having me so in the middle school and the high school i would say that homework varies partly based on the level of the student and you know obviously there are many many teachers over many subjects and that will vary as well so before the pandemic especially in english there was independent reading that was done at home to

042prepare for discussions in class vocabulary exercises that kids could work on independently so the vocabulary was introduced in class and then they worked on things independently to help them remember and understand the nuance between you know some of the different words long-term projects are also things that kids are expected to work on sometimes at home often they're given time in class and at home to complete that some classes especially in say the level five uh they do a lot of their reading in class where uh kids can get a little more help for their comprehension and they might do then more vocabulary at home for reinforcement in math a lot of times the homework is checked just for completion and they have to show their work for multi-step problems so the teacher can check and

043make sure that they're completing all of the steps and can also see if you know their understanding or where their you know understanding is breaking down if that's the case there are uh programs that are used in math like ixl and delta math and sometimes they're assigned for work at home and sometimes they're checked for accuracy overall as i had mentioned at the beginning the homework it does vary by teacher and by level now during the pandemic i would say that um in general homework has been reduced probably by about half um you're talking more like 15 20 minutes a night um and in the middle school part of that is due to block scheduling so um you know we are able to cover more content in class so you don't need necessarily to you

044know read as much maybe um on your own at home although that is still an expectation to read at home um but there are more opportunities for reinforcement within the hour and a half block say than there were in 45 minutes and then kids can have time also to work on their ixl or delta math in class rather than doing it at home independently um and do we want to go to the high school slide at the same time and keep all secondary together okay so um i would say this is also true for the high school that before the pandemic homework was checked for the attempt and not accuracy i know that that's you know emphasized in a lot of teachers classes that i know we want to see that they're trying we want

045to see that effort we want to see that attempt at practice or reinforcement rather than you know perfection um homework it was provided in the high school most days to um reinforce concepts that were taught or to complete assignments that were begun in class but not completed so based on teacher observation you know of the homework as you know they could kind of walk around their class and see who had done what they could use that as formative assessments to guide their instruction for the day so you know in a in a math class for example as i mentioned before they could see where kids are breaking down or if there were problems that all the kids didn't understand that's something then that they could jump into that day and explain homework is weighted differently

046depending on the course so for an ap course for example it might have been weighted you know higher or lower than for others during the pandemic just as in the middle school the amount of homework has been reduced in some cases eliminated and um some of that is al also because it takes a lot longer to check homework if uh the kids are online um you know in class you can just quickly walk up and down aisles or go around to the tables to see you know if it was completed if the attempt was made or if someone was struggling they can just tell you quickly privately while you're going around and all that's a lot harder online to do it um just it takes a lot more time instead of a few minutes like

047you know two or three to walk around and quickly view it it's going to take more like 10 or 15 to check what was going on so um also they say it's a little bit hard to gauge the students understanding of concepts due to photo math and math ways websites so some students are just you know using other things and then putting them on as their own work when it wasn't their own work so there's also a lack of completion of the homework that is assigned especially to the kids that are all virtual um so you know i think that's a decent overview again with the caveat that there are differences between teachers for sure so i heard that there are questions being saved for secondary first of all thank you mrs fleetwood um it

048was a good presentation and um happy teacher appreciation week uh before i start i should say my two cents on teacher appreciation week as a school board director um for all the emails that we've gotten in this this year from things ranging from athletics to hybrid to vaccines to what before anybody stated their case in opposition to something we supported they always made sure to say i want to be clear the teachers are doing a great job across the board every group you know that's really commendable what we were able to do this year um the teachers um to tackle this and to take it in stride and to rise to the challenge so i think more than most this teacher appreciation week is really um is really needed and and hopefully people do take

049the time to say thank you because it really has been a quite a year uh for you all okay now to my questions so it really more just to start a conversation i guess when it comes to secondary homework and i want to put a couple caveats out here most of my experience with this is all anecdotal right i'm a parent of a ninth grader um and i do want to be clear too that that my understand my understanding but my belief is that when you're taking higher level courses the expectation is you should have more homework you should have more work in general it should be more challenging so to sort of put that aside i would like to see some better guidance in the secondary level about the amount that certain teachers are

050not searchers that teachers are expected to assign and part of my concerns are that you know you have certain teachers in certain uh studies where there's a scope and sequence of things they need to cover and that scope and sequence is sometimes very ambitious and classes aren't always you know class time isn't always able to be spent following that to the letter and sometimes the homework i think makes up some of that right i think that's a natural inclination because there's this pressure for us to like keep moving forward keep moving forward and the kids to keep moving forward whether they're ready to move forward or not you know there's also um some notes here like i said earlier that you know in an elementary school the teacher knows exactly how much homework a student

051is getting every day at the secondary level there's no idea you know biology believes that they're their teacher of biology and they of course are going to think that their work takes priority as well the algebra teacher as will you know the literacy i think english language arts teacher so the prior you know and we know there's already difficulty communicating within departments let alone across departments about how much is being assigned and it would be impossible with everybody's schedule in the building to to know that without some sort of stated guidelines about you know what is an appropriate amount because if we say well an hour for a high school student is appropriate but if that's five times five classes that's a lot of homework right and there is inconsistency there i do think a

052lot of it also kind of is the teacher that you're working with some of them you know get through the material faster some of them you know um just have a higher expectation for what's to be done at home and i think that inconsistency is is can be somewhat problematic because you know we have a lot of focus on student mental health in terms of creating programs and you know do we need more counselors and do we need outside agencies but in-house i don't know that students spending three four hours a night working through homework in a lot of cases is good for their mental health either you know we all need a chance to sort of decompress and what you'll see certainly not intentionally but what you do see is you know there will

053be weeks at certain you know certain times where three assessments might come up and there's a lot of study that goes into it and it really burns a lot of young people out that may not be ready to organize their lives in such a way to approach that amount of homework so i am of the belief that it would be in the interest of the students in particular but even to the teachers too to a certain level to have some idea about stating what we feel is again taking certain sections out i don't think this necessarily needs to apply to like an ap but what might be a reasonable expectation of a section of homework to be assigned to a student whether it's 30 minutes a night or or whatever because even with skill practice

054you know if a student isn't like i've seen it where a student has 20 practice problems and they don't know how to do it that's not helpful to that student to practice 20 times doing a problem they don't know how to approach right i think three or four student knows how to do it three four five problems is probably appropriate but when you have the kind of um when you don't have guidance you have some teachers that think well that 25 is really going to drill at home whereas others who think it's more like three or four and i i would be more in favor of consistency in that regard i think and i think that having some better guidance for teachers in terms of what that actually not just for homework two but also

055maybe assessments i've seen where districts have said you know these are the days you should be assessing you know social studies and english content these are the days you should be assessing math and science content so that you don't have students that have three tests on the same day that they're spending you know two or three nights a night before trying to take in that much information it's also not really good for the way to learn either because a lot of it then just kind of becomes rote memory of information regurgitated on a test and then out the door you know on to the next thing so that was a lot but that's kind of my thoughts not a lot of questions there per se just kind of expressing my my opinion about it in

056terms of you know the conversations we've had at policy the conversations have with dr bauer about the potential to get a study group together to work with teachers about what guidelines might look like because clearly your voice is the most important in this um you know nobody wants to take away your agency and understanding you know what the work level should be for your class per se but just how to make it so that those students have a balance a better balance in their life so dr bauer um i think i'm pretty aligned with mr fusco and that i was thinking this is a great opportunity for a summer curriculum project um or where you might have some teachers be able to pull together um a stakeholder group um and dr waters i know that

057you and dr bower are going to be doing some shifts in terms of roles but there could be a good opportunity here to help inform that work because who better to kind of think through this but maybe people from a cross section of departments to consider some of the ideas maybe look at some of the things that are happening in other high schools that could be helpful we certainly want this to come from the teachers and also the evidence that we have from other places i think we can utilize hanover research um sometimes i think we even underutilize them sometimes there are some great data that they could provide us about what are the best practices around um homework and um and this connects to what many districts are doing around even like the sleep

058studies right where you know what is the amount of rest that teenagers are able to get um at night um other districts are moving towards you know start times and end times but it's all connected and interrelated to mental health so um dr bauer maybe you and dr waters could kind of get together and consider what that might look like and then report back to the committee as to a plan for the summer to um pull together a committee that could look at this and make some recommendations is that reasonable and would other committee members think that that might be a good way to move forward yes thank you and uh first of all thank you to mr brim and mrs fleetwood um pleasure having both of you here but they absolutely accomplished the goal

059dr dietrich always uses the phrase what does success look like and i think we accomplish that tonight to start the conversation to hear what's currently happening and then ultimately um just to speak with the board a little bit about how to move forward we realize that wow homework sounds so simple and everyone has their experience with homework it's a big deal and stakeholders need to be involved in the process so getting teachers some parents and even some students while adichia and efrod might be leaving us this summer have some student involvement as well so thank you to our presenters and we will report back as we kind of traverse this together and i apologize for not chiming in earlier i think we could we can't move on i'm the secondary guy so i have uh

060we can't move on really without also asking you know what is the mechanism by which students are able to understand the rigor of a course including homework prior to signing up for it if they're signing up for courses their senior year how many aps i want to take how many of these do i want to take what's the level of rigor that i'm looking at and giving students that opportunity to to manage their time uh with all the activities or or work and uh other things that like pullman time so i think that conversation should also be a part of it just making sure that students know what they're signing up for when they sign up thanks i would invite our um our student rep if you have anything that you want to say certainly

061you are living it right so um we certainly would appreciate any feedback or questions that you have um i think like the inconsistency comes when um obviously like different teachers have you know different expectations and different you know homework uh policies but also when you start to combine your assessments and then you're also getting homework at the same time so just finding that balance i think is the hardest part okay well thank you again to our teacher um presenters and again kind of just starting that conversation and you know we're going to do what we typically do with north penn and we're going to be lean back on our educators to help us figure out the solutions to all of what we just kind of talked about um and you know our stakeholders our students

062and and so we appreciate that um we will move on to the next part of the agenda which is concurrent and dual enrollment yes and i want to thank again mr brem and mrs fleetwood for joining us this evening um happy teacher appreciation week and please go enjoy yourselves you're welcome to stay around for this captivating um but please feel free go spend time with your families thank you okay so our next presentation mr gilmer if you wouldn't mind um bringing up our concurrent and dual enrollment there we go um so this evening dr g and i have spent a substantial time and you've heard this this board and this committee talk uh over and over again about dual enrollment and about providing our secondary students and high school students in particular access potentially to

063college courses while in high school um certainly along the lines of equity and giving students access uh to opportunities that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise um so dr d asked if we could just provide kind of an overview of where we currently are and where we're headed with concurrent and dual enrollment and i really do think we are making substantive progress especially when it comes to dual enrollment mr gilmer if you would take us to the next slide please this is just a brief presentation just to kind of outline uh where we are so first here we have reciprocity with the following schools right now in terms of concurrent enrollment uh montgomery county community college penn state abington arcadia and gwyndon mercy the difference between concurrent enrollment and dual enrollment concurrent enrollment means that you

064are concurrently enrolled in two places right so concurrent enrollment is you could be enrolled at quinn and mercy and taking classes there but you're also enrolled at northen high school and you're taking classes there and they're essentially separate entities so some high school students only need a couple classes during their senior year and then they go to a university to get credits and get started on their college transcript for lack of better phrasing um so it's they're not taking courses at the university level to meet requirements at the high school level rather they are separate entities not to be confused with dual enrollment dual enrollment is when you are taking classes and essentially you're getting dual credit you're getting credit at the university itself and then you're getting credit at the high school for those

065classes that you're taking at the university and we have several kinds of dual enrollment so we have to enroll in the building and dual enrollment off campus as well mr gilmer if you would take us to the next slide so here's an outline of dual enrollment courses that we currently have and then i have some special guests with us this evening who will talk to you about some of the progress that they've been making but currently um on campus opportunities so these are courses taught in north penn by north penn teachers for which we've essentially gone through an accreditation process where our syllabus aligns with the syllabus at the university and our students can get the credit at north penn high school for their high school transcript and also meet the requirements um at college

066at well as well and hopefully those courses are transferable so while they might take it at montgomery county community college or glen mercy if they choose to transfer somewhere else beyond high school those credits can go with them so you'll certainly notice here with some of the information on the slides that the amount is far far reduced so for example 191 dollars for three credits for preschool lab which is an education course that we teach at the high school where our students learn about education they they learn about teaching young students and then we actually have students in a non-coveted year preschool students come to the high school and our students design lesson plans for them and work with preschool age students another example we have is the introduction to education course this was part

067of our build your own program where we're trying to increase the number of teachers so we offer education uh 100 at north end high school which is highly transferable i don't know if someone who's a teacher that didn't have to take ed 100 at some point so that is relatively new um and then you'll you'll see that we have a business course which is business administration we have another a couple business courses accounting accounting 105 marketing and sports marketing and entrepreneurship and then for next year we're really excited to offer uh english 101 which you want to talk about transferability so these are courses that we offer at north penn high school taught by north penn school district teachers that students can get the high school credit on their transcript and also if they want

068to they can pay the fee and have it credited towards their college transcript as well they don't need to it's just an opportunity for them so these are the on-campus dual enrollment courses we also have and it's not on the next slide yet mr gilmer off campus so in the event that a student wants to take a course off campus and for example go to gwynedd mercy they can do that with approval there's a process with their guidance counselor and then ultimately the high school principal would sign off on uh providing the credit for the course that takes place at the college or university um so sometimes for example i've had situations with high school seniors and in my previous life when i was high school principal where i'll use aditya for example i'm sure

069he won't mind going into his senior year it looks like he's going to be one credit uh short in english which is not the case for adichie of course but if it was adichie and i would meet with his his guidance counselor his assistant principal and his parents and decide you know what you are going to be one credit short you're not going to graduate on time um but if you wanted to pursue an opportunity at munco in the evening or going to mercy or somewhere else to meet that graduation requirement and get that english credit i'll be happy to work with you there so successfully complete the course bring your transcript show me that you did successfully complete the course and we can apply that credit to your high school transcript sometimes it's for

070course advancement where students want to go beyond our curriculum and other times it's uh just to meet our own graduation requirements so enrichment yes ma'am i just want to ask you a question that's one of those topics about enrollment if what you described is courses that are taken taught by a north penn teacher and students get credit for them and college credit then you described well if there were they were short credits they could go and take a college course and get credit to what extent do we have students who are able to take advantage of for example going to montco let's just say they get to their senior year and they don't have um and they've gotten most of their credits to what extent can they take 12 credits at montco and kind of

071get a head start on paying for their college education and maybe even save themselves a whole semester of courses by taking you know the basics english psychology biology math um to what extent do we allow them to have the credit at north penn and the credit at college for what whatever like the class is electives or whatever to what extent do we do that yes um so in terms of raw numbers dr g i couldn't give you that how many students um i would say it's in the dozens not hundreds each year of students who choose to go elsewhere and just get started because they want them but in terms of feasibility and availability um that opportunity is there now one thing that you and i have discussed in phone conversations and meetings is perhaps

072our students don't know that well enough it is certainly in the program of studies it is but we we all know that not everyone can attend uh those types of events and not everyone reads the riveting program of studies each year um so i i i think we need to in the future and the the special guests coming up on the next slide can talk a little bit more about the opportunities that we're hoping to provide and then with those exciting opportunities also presenting an opportunity that our students can go out and start to apply those credits to their high school transcript so again dozens and i can report back to the exact number this year for example um definitely not hundreds and i do think we could do a better job of promoting it

073to our students um mr gilmer if you could give me slide number four and dr waters i'm not sure which member of your team would like to go first but i know we have two wonderful educators and mrs donna dome who is our stem curriculum supervisor at the secondary level and ms rachel earley who is a curriculum supervisor for the humanities i'm happy to start and then uh mrs earley if i if i miss anything please uh join in but this is a potential dual enrollment opportunity um that we have learned about and have explored and are going to explore further and it would be for the 22-23 school year because it's going to take next year to get teachers on board and to get them approved so we're looking at the partnership with the

074university of pittsburgh they have a college and high school program that they have been running for a while in the research a lot of high schools that take advantage of it are on the western side of pennsylvania there's just very few that take advantage of it out here and we would like to be one of those um so teachers also become the college and high school instructors and there is an application process and it is based on they don't necessarily have to have a masters in that area they also look at their educator training or experiences that they've had so we are having a teacher interest meeting on our in-service day on may 18th um they are extremely affordable at 225 for a three-credit course they also give us the opportunity for students that are

075on free and reduced lunch to cut that in half they also even told us you know if a teacher reaches out to them about a student they have that is struggling they'll even help us with covering that as well so just really making it very affordable with the courses they currently add it helps us to add more opportunities in all of our curricular areas particularly the ones uh seen there and the application process for teachers for those that are interested are going to have a chance to start in october like goes october through march so we're hoping that people any teacher that would be interested would apply early to get it in the course of studies for the for the following year so i i'm truly hoping that mrs earley and i come back next

076year and uh share with you the new courses that we'll be offering that's that's really our hope mrs really did i forget anything from our conversations with them so far i just wanted to chime in and just talk a little bit about um it may seem a little odd that we have you know some at montgomery county community college and now we're looking at university of pittsburgh um the montgomery county community college option with english was very exciting but they did require that teachers at north penn had to have a masters in a specific area of english and we were fortunate enough um again so thankful you know just echoing what everyone said about teacher appreciation week we were so fortunate that we had teachers um with those credentials at north penn high school who

077wanted to go forward with the application process and we that's how we were able to get that course and i'm also happy to report that we have over 100 students who signed up for it and so we'll have about four sections running at the high school next year which is really exciting because it illustrates that this is totally something that our students are interested in and um we didn't have that theme in the other areas like mrs joe mentioned or language social studies science math and health not all the teachers in those areas had those specific credentials they have other credentials in terms of their graduate work and the university of pittsburgh believe it or not is a little bit more flexible with that application process so we're really excited to be able to bring

078on more classes in other disciplines so students can have more dual enrollment experiences at the high school which may be a little bit more convenient for our student population since it it's there you know rather than them having to go out of the building to seek it just be able to provide that wide variety of options so our goal is to try and get one for at least each and then continue to build on that um from here on out and we've also gotten some feedback that um you know teachers and students are just excited with the partnership for the university of pittsburgh so just wanted to elaborate on that i was just and i would recognize um dr wanda louis campbell in a moment um one i i mentioned this to dr bauer in

079a meeting that i've heard about this program through a teacher at downingtown and i just i'm shocked at how fast you guys got on top of this and researched it and found out the information um so i'm excited and thank you for looking into this i mean already now you have a hundred students that would not have had that english 101 going into college that will now have it and now think of the impact that this could make over time i am wondering what the incentive will be for a teacher who's exhausted at the end of this year to um kind of take on needing to take the training because as i recall that they do have to go through a training with pitt in order to um become accredited or whatever to teach the

080class that is true we um did really um mrs dome and i both had conversations and mrs demarco as well for the special areas for health um have had conversations with our department chairs and um department members who are interested um in coming to the info session and kind of learning all about it so we were just really excited that so many you know a good group of teachers really were interested even despite how exhausted and this entire year has been um we're excited that summer on board and really think that this is a value add to the high school thank you i'm dr lewis campbell's camel uh yes thank you uh it sounds very exciting and i'm excited about the dual and current enrollment my question is how do you vet the universities that

081participate i see you have monko and that makes sense and then there's gwen at mercy and arcadia and penn state abington and now the potential for partnership with the university of pittsburgh so what is the process that our school district goes through to vet these universities to see how they can form this partnership with north penn school district and secondly and what grade are students when they're informed about the ability to take these courses to be added to their transcripts i think i can tackle both of those questions uh i think that in terms of the vetting process dr lewis campbell it's a two-way street uh in some cases they reach out to us um we monco has i've sat in several meetings with them uh also with penn state and then and certainly with

082gwen and mercy we work with them quite a bit and then others uh we seek out the opportunities um there were absolutely some limitations with as mrs earley described where they were requiring a master's degree in the content area not in necessarily education so that was a limiting factor dr g brought up the university of pittsburgh and i did some research and a lot of neighboring school districts utilized their program so if you i know that you have some connections in higher education as a professor yourself we'll listen to anyone that will provide opportunities for our students in terms of the when the students hear about it it's in ninth grade when they uh attend their first high school course election night but i think it they really start to um hit on that because

083they break off into by grade means in their 10th grade meeting in their 11th grade meeting um so it's it's a kind of thrown out there when you're in ninth grade but when you're going into to ninth grade concurrent in dual enrollment um isn't even a blip on the radar um so they really hit on that when they're going into their junior and senior years exactly and so i guess i guess i want to know when when are parents informed because i would think my ninth grader if i had one well when my kids were in the ninth grade they're not mature enough to make that decision i would think that needs to also be shared with parents so they can especially they're the ones that are going to be paying those fees but they

084need to know too so that they are aware that my child can take these courses and have college credits in their senior year absolutely yeah so that back of course information night and the course election night that i'm speaking to that is a a parent event as well so students and parents are encouraged to come together um and mr gilmer and his team produce it and put it up on youtube as well for those who can't make it um but yeah i like i said uh a little bit ago before i kicked it to our experts here i do think we can do a better job of this i think we can do a better job of telling families that they have this opportunity because you're right i think if more people know about it

085they will seize the opportunity it is there are no drawbacks um in most cases it is our teachers teaching courses to our students and just giving kids an opportunity at a far far reduced rate should they choose to take it so to that extent you know i think what dr wanda louis campbell points out and you know i i quote mr costa's not almost called but he's usually the one that tells us that we need to like tout what we're doing and promote it more and um myself and mr fusco both have have high school students right now and i will tell you i went to course information night i already had a high schooler go through and i um read the course manual several times with a highlighter and still was asking mr bright

086questions um so i really would like to see and other committee members can chime in on this a actual presentation in the fall that focuses on how can my child get college credit at north penn it it should be outside of course information night and it should happen in the fall like how can i plan out my students so that they can get 12 credits before they leave north penn that should be a goal for us we have in our comprehensive goal college and career readiness and we are set in a place where we can do it but we have to do a better job i think of promoting and helping parents understand which i think dr juan lewis campbell spoke so eloquently to that this is how you get there because i'm still fumbling

087a little bit with planning out how my twins get there i know a little bit more than i did before from many conversations and questions but i'd really like to see a presentation put together for the fall which shows that shows parents here are the ways here are the courses that you can take at north penn which give your child your student college credit and here's the process by which you can get credit at a college for an and at north penn because i'm not even completely clear on that like if my child wants to take a summer course is there a form that i fill out and it can count as an elective um that's what i think i hear you saying that there's a process that there's a form that if a parent

088wants their child to take summer courses or something like that there's some type of process they can go through and get credit at north penn and credit in college is that what i kind of heard is that concurrent yes you did very well on your formative assessment there um yeah great job um what we will do is and i think the fall is good timing because like mrs dome outlined hopefully we come before this committee in october um right before we start to do the course election process which is in january um so once we know what all those courses are in the fall then having a separate night kind of outlining and highlighting these opportunities you got it yeah i would wonder what a dj would have to say like did you know that

089you could do all of these things maybe you did um no not really i mean i knew i know about the uh monco the opportunities there but um all the other schools i didn't have any any idea about it but um no i think this i think a lot more if we increase the transparency and um outreach for these programs a lot more students would definitely sign up for it it creates more diversity than what uh ap programs and it adds you know a new different layer to what north penn's about i think it's a really nice opportunity hey anything from the high school there mr mcbain this is all good stuff for you right i'm trying to i'm trying to refrain from calling up shippensburg university and saying hey north penn needs some help

090with some more college level maybe down the line we have to remember you know go back to the equity conversation because there were questions about that in the beginning of this and when you talk about the level of student debt in this country this is an impact that we can have because we could have students leaving north penn where we have the resources we have the size to be able to offer college courses at a reduced rate even um and be able to leave with 12 credits that's a semester a semester out of state is 20 000 so and when a student enters college with less than half a semester under their belt that means it's more of a capability to get a second major a minor sets them up for degrees in the future

091it's a wonderful opportunity right so i'm hoping that we set our goals towards those sites um it sounds like donna dome is on it and so is miss early um so thank you thank you for the presentation and the time and we're going to look forward to an update um about that as we move forward and we increase those opportunities dr g if you just humor me for 10 seconds here i know we keep saying uh teacher appreciation week it really like you said is it is staff appreciation and i do think we all play a part in educating the children so mrs dome and mrs earley i believe it's actually school nutrition services appreciation on friday nurses tomorrow um so just thank you to everyone it has been a challenging challenging year and i'm

092just proud of everybody for their efforts and i know not everyone has agreed with everything along the way that i can i can say wholeheartedly that everyone's trying their best so i appreciate everyone special thanks to mrs earley who always gets pulled into eci projects and congratulations as well thank you all right i believe we are at the end of our agenda dr g i lost your audio i believe you're immunization yeah i think you just muted we're at the end of the agenda um no additional comment or additional topic so we have um public comment here at the end i don't need to reread correct is she just maybe i missed this did we the student representatives have a chance to give their oh no we didn't i was talking to a dj throughout

093so i was like sorry the most important part of the meeting yes the floor is yours thank you thank you student representative thank you mr pocket um i just wanted to give some updates on some of the events that are happening at the high school ap exams started yesterday and they're going pretty smoothly usually people are spaced out to prevent cheating but now with also being spaced out um you know for disease control you know people are having get to have like an additional one or two desks and not just the their own desks to do their work so it's nice it's much more space which is nice when you're working in the auditorium there's you know smaller desks than what you're accustomed to in a classroom uh we keep on like talking about teacher

094appreciation week and the sga is doing a talk outside of the high school which will be nice having the students come together and show their appreciation for the teachers and then also with prom and graduation coming up tickets are being distributed for prom and for graduation same thing the time slots on sign up genius there's a lot of excitement for these events especially from this senior student body i know for for graduation there was a lot of glitches initially because of the amount of students that were signing up for their time slots right when it opened up and lastly uh ifrag couldn't be here tonight but we just wanted to once again just say thank you to the district for implementing diwali and ideal fitter we our respective you know religious communities also want to

095thank the district and we know that neighboring school districts are struggling with you know um you know where do we draw the line and um you know what uh should be part of the holidays uh in the in the calendar and what shouldn't and we're just thankful that our district was able to figure that out and you know creating more you know equitable environment that we were talking about yep that's it thank you all right um so now we have a final public comment okay just a reminder for everybody you raised a hand in the interface uh the first hand up is mr resh um mresh i've enabled your microphones you're ready to begin state your name and address and begin hi my name is al resh i live at 136 wentworth drive in lansdale

096i'm a school board director i think it's great that we're going to have a homework policy going forward but but what i'd like to see in the homework policy is when i ran for school board we talked about the emotional the behavioral and the educational needs of the students and we said that we would address that we know that there's a lot of trauma that takes place in the school and not everybody has the same ability as everybody else in the school and we also know that if we find these issues early that we can make a big change in these people's lives so i'm hoping that the homework policy deals with people who have these issues and helps us identify those issues and get these people the help they need as soon as possible

097i know north penn does a pretty good job of it now but this is an another opportunity to formalize that process so everybody knows exactly what it is and what what exact steps will be taken when uh an issue is identified thank you okay thank you uh don't see another hand so this will be last call for any hands oh there we go um up next is jason lanier jason i've enabled your microphone so you're ready to begin you can state your name and address and begin your comments jason you're still muted uh jace lanier 100 oak drive lansdale pa i'm calling in again regarding this critical race theory uh a couple of the the speakers after me miss wilson mrs talbot i believe with their names if i remember correctly mentioned me having some

098kind of privilege because because why what i'm saying is i was unprivileged i did not know that this was going to be implemented what is the presumed privilege that i have i do not know and i went quickly and looked through the critical race theory information that was sent uh uh out to the district and i found some pretty interesting things and it basically seems to be judging people based upon their race and including people based upon their race disincluding people based upon their race my talk conversation about uh the ap courses going away wasn't my presumption it wasn't presumption of any of the kids in in ap isn't it in a conversation about anybody in the national honor society none of that what it is is looking at other school districts that have implemented

099critical race theory what has gone on they're a little ahead of us in terms of this what is going on currently currently they're removing ap courses so i listen to this whole conversation about getting college credits from these universities while in in school i applaud that that's fantastic that is opportunity that is allowing kids to excel beyond their station they can they can they can work harder they can they can they can advance at a discounted rate it's that's a that's a that's a great thing to to implement what is not a great thing to implement is start subdividing people based upon their race which is exactly what this critical race theory stuff does i don't know if anybody knows where critical race theory initiated but it's from critical theory from the the frankfurt school

100out of germany pre-world war ii afterward it was it was actually going to be called the the marxist school of education i i don't think this is something that we need to we need to uh we need to implement in our school system i don't even think we need to socialize grades we need to segregate people based upon what they look like or what they think i don't think that's that that's appropriate the job of education or public education is to get school kids of uh prepared for life beyond childhood it isn't to make them feel badly about themselves it isn't to to presume some person is is is has no agency based upon their color in that that other races are going to be able to give them agency this is all really bad

101stuff this needs to be a judgment of a person's character dr martin luther king when i grew up this is what was taught you based uh you base your perception on personal is is on the the content of the character not the color of their skin and this looks to do exactly the opposite thank you very much up next we have lauren wilson lauren i've opened up your mic so you're ready to begin state your name and address and begin your comments hi i'm lauren wilson i'm at 114 thames drive north wells pa19454 i just wanted to call and say how much i enjoyed this meeting i mean i loved all of the conversation around setting consistent standards around homework i love the discussion about being more open and transparent around what we're doing and

102how in terms of getting kids additional access to college courses in high school this is what we need in north penn this is what we want our school board to be doing i just continue to be so proud of the work that we're continuing to keep our eyes focused on for all of the kids and i thoroughly enjoyed today's discussion and the continued commitment to do what's right for all of our kids i think this is probably one of the first times i've ever agreed with mr lanier but um i i enjoyed this discussion today and and i continue to think not just the school board but the district as well dr bauer dr um waters entire central administration on continuing to push the needle on how we can be best and show up best

103for all of our children and we continue to push the needle and do what's best and as our student representative said you know all of our other districts around us were struggling with how to incorporate additional holidays we did it right and and that's where we continue to go is in the right direction i'm so proud of our district our administration and our board thank you guys okay up next is uh veronica burke we're gonna give you a whirl here i've enabled your microphones you're ready to begin you can unmute your mic state your name and address and begin your comments hi uh am i unmuted this time we got you okay great thank you so i'm veronica and i'm in lansdale um 532 winding road uh new to the lansdale area i'm from philly

104and i just wanted to um just take a moment to learn a little bit about the north penn school district when figuring out where we're going to send our kids eventually i'm just checking out all options and just wanted to say that i really enjoyed the meeting tonight and i feel you know there's a lot of different opinions a lot of different feelings that are going out into all of this and at the end of the day i just hope that we can all come together and really focus on teaching all kids just to be kind to each other focusing on academics to further what their dreams are in life and what they want to achieve and i think you know i want to really open the opportunity for parents just to come together and

105see what is best to teach all of the children and what's in their best interest because they are the future of this country and i want the best for all of them i want the best for my kids and i just want the best for everyone so i just wanted to share that with everybody and it has been a crazy year it's definitely i lost my job um just so much going on and i just hope that you know we can all just kind of try to move forward together and be a force for the greater good and that's all that i really wanted to say thank you okay thank you thank you up next is uh mr patchell so mr patchell i've enabled your mic so you're ready to begin state your name and

106address and begin your comments please thank y'all i'll speak nice and slowly so that everybody can understand what i'm saying i live at 404 bonnie lane in langsdale it's really montgomery township i always put a plug in for our township you know it's the very best of the group of this cobble that they put they put together 50 years ago i didn't even know what this big thing is all about you created a monster here you'd probably be able to take it all apart but i said it's growing it's becoming unmanageable you can't afford the legacy costs you can't afford the taxes i'm telling you what the bottom line here is uh i'm 74. i got my own little group here all lives matter over people over 65 you know what they gave us if

107you could even qualify it was a political bone mine candy oh yeah we're helping the senior citizens out a hundred and sixty-five thousand on 283 million come on that is even pocket lin it's an insult it's an insult to the people about dragging and building the community you know what i love montgomery township they don't have a swimming pool they don't have a library and if they do build something it's with thought and my taxes haven't gone up for nine years now i understand that the schools are very important and they do create but now you got people in the federal government hey we're going to give free community college how would that work did they even check out to see if there was enough instructors to be able to handle this maybe they'll say

108well every school district you'll have to add two more years you know they'll just get community college credit and they'll just stay with you until they're 21. this is what these crazy socialists think of you know what the best thing for anybody listening tonight and i saw the safe schools meeting got 141 views on youtube i'm pretty optimistic about that you know what the safe schools is well mr casa if he does get elected he'll be on a school board until he decides to resign and try to get todd stevens job don't forget this is what it's all about they want to flip out the 151 district because they want to run everything in harrisburg i don't know how they're going to run it jobs in the future will be in health care we got

109400 students college come on i talked to a girl she going to drexel she had really fantastic grades in in north penn how is it it's terrible like i'm not passing anything yeah you thought you you thought your ability was way better it's hard isn't it might take you six years to get through college online and you know who's going to go in in person only the very best students you know what they're doing around the rest of the world you'd be sick they're going to take america out and they're going to do it in an academic way and and i don't know how it's going to work out they'll be eating your lunch thank you okay there are no other hands up at this time so i believe that would conclude public comment for

110tonight uh unfortunately um there was a power outage i guess in montgomery township because mrs g is not with us anymore so um without any other further business uh i'm going to ask for a motion to adjourn someone all right thank you everyone it was a good conversation tonight hopefully we're moving forward have a good one