February 22, 2022 RTSD School Board Business Meeting

001good evening everyone welcome i'm going to call this meeting to order and we're going to begin with the pledge of allegiance please join us 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 okay thank you very much and welcome everyone at this point in time i am going to report on executive sessions the board met in executive session on the following dates february 3rd 2022 for personnel matters february 15 2022 for personnel and legal matters and february 22nd 2022 for personnel and legal matters and we will turn now to our report from students and i want to welcome sophie and sammy good evening everyone i hope you have all enjoyed your long weekend since the last time

002sophie and i were here rhs entered the second semester of the school year for some this meant starting new classes for the seniors it meant easing up a bit and for everyone it brings excitement and energy as we push to the end of the year one special sp one special part of the second semester is all of the school dances unfortunately senior semi was postponed from january 29th to march 19th after a snowstorm occurred on the original date however many seniors still have freshman semi to look forward to which sophie will talk more about later as crazy as this may seem at their last meeting the junior student council began planning for their classes senior prom they recently confirmed the constitution center as the location of prom and have already chosen the menu for the

003big night to celebrate black history month the rhs library book club is reading the graphic novel march by late congressman john lewis and author andrew adam the library provided copies for everyone who wanted to participate in the book club which had its first meeting february 17th at this meeting which took place on zoom rhs students were given the amazing opportunity to talk to andrea dean asking him questions like what's a funny story about john lewis no one else would know aiden also shared inspiring advice with the students about how the younger generations must lead the movement to unify our country and remind the students that any one of them could accomplish great things like john lewis the book club will meet this thursday to debrief about the meeting and the book another special event that

004took place on february 17th was the black student union talent show while the bsu organized the show any student from the school could perform the night provided the opportunity for students to show off their special talents including some incredible dancing and singing the show took place in the rhs auditorium at 7 p.m where students teachers and parents gathered to watch and support the performers one highlight was the moving performance by senora perez a 10th grade spanish teacher who's saying a beautiful song in spanish in more club news one of the most popular fundraisers at rhs is candy grams so the leukemia lymphoma society lls had the right idea to raise money with the valentine's themed candy grams for this february fundraiser students could pay one dollar to send a note along with a rose to

005any other student in the school students received their roses on monday morning the 14th a sweet gift for valentine's day this year the club hopes to raise an impressive 20 thousand dollars all of which will go to important research for the ethics bowl club this was a big month given that they attended the regional ethics bowl competition held virtually by villanova university in preparation for the competition the club held multiple scrimmages where members practice choosing a position on a certain case and arguing that point of view against opposing teams never pausing their mission to protect the environment the action earth club plans on holding a meeting soon for members to make posters and write letters to local elected officials encouraging them to take action against climate change the club also plans on holding a clothing

006drive soon of which i will likely have more details of next month finally for club news it's a very important time of year for brand new robotics dedicated member skylar lee reports that every year random robotics creates a new robot to participate in the latest vex robotic competition the team brainstorms and prototypes under the guidance of mr delaney who only advises the students and is not allowed to do any building himself this year even though only two of the current team members had prior competition experience the team managed to design build program and drive a robot well enough in order to qualify for the playoffs at both of two local competitions the team's qualification for states competition is currently pending sophie will discuss more sports news later but i'll cover some now since there's been

007so much happening recently on friday february 11th and saturday the 12th the rounder boys swim team competed at the central league meet at ridley high school rauner did great with rex cosgrove coming in first for the 500 free and setting a new pool record on saturday february 12th the rauner girls swim team also competed at central's also at ridley high school the girls had an impressive performance especially with audrey collins setting a pool record for the 100 fly and coming in first of course radner's 200 medley relay came in second along with setting a new school record speaking of successful relays the radnor girls winter track team will be sending a 4x8 relay to states which will take place february 27th at penn state sophomore zoe margulis and kourtney courtney kearns along with junior emilia

008dole and senior lucy hinkle made up the team who qualified this past weekend the boys undertrack team ran the last chance meet at lehigh university in an impressive victory rounder's 4x2 relay came in first and both their heat and overall out of 20 teams competing in the 400 meter race senior gavin williams came in fifth place and senior jimmy kurtz came in third place for the 303 000 meter race the boys will also compete this upcoming weekend at states i hope you all have a great night and i will now pass it on to sophie thank you sammy good evening everyone i hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend while the month of february is short there's still so much going on at rhs like sammy said before winter sports are starting to come to an

009end with this month of february but nonetheless there have been some great events to start the boys wrestling team had their senior night a few weeks ago the team also dedicated the night in memory to their beloved classmate pete henkel and sold custom shirts where a portion of the proceeds went to cure sma a few weeks ago the girls basketball team also dedicated their game against springfield to raise money for cure sma throughout the week the girls sold wristbands to maze running for the cause and the boys wrestling team distributed t-shirts the girls basketball game against springfield helped them clinch the sixth and final spot in the central league playoffs with mary serene scoring the winning basket and a score of 31-30 unfortunately they did not make it to the finals but are focusing on

010the district's playoffs the girls beat pencrest an impressive 44-30 win and face upper moreland tonight as well the boys basketball team faced lower marion last week in the central league championship against at ridley high school rounder brought the spirit but unfortunately lost in a close game 49-59 however the boys are the number one seed in the district 1 5a tournament and their first game is tomorrow against sun valley both the girls and the boys ice hockey teams created history last week by winning the first ever mainline cup the girls beat lower marion 8-2 and the boys beat lower marion 6-5 in outstanding games the girls and the boys continue to compete throughout the rest of the month as the season ends soon this past weekend ratner's model un took a trip to georgetown to participate

011in the north american invitational model united nations so excuse me if i sound a little hoarse due to the trip the team boarded a coach bus mid thursday and took a three-hour drive the conference consisted of delegates from various locations across the globe spanning from california to puerto rico throughout the weekend the team represented countries such as zimbabwe and the syrian arab republic and committees like the world health organization or special political and decolonization committee while they weren't in committee sessions the team was able to spend time looking around georgetown's beautiful campus and exploring dc ratner delegates had an amazing time and even took home some awards including julianna bryant winning best delegate rhys hillman winning the book award naya anad receiving a verbal recognition and so many more i wish i could mention the

012team now looks forward to their last conference at the end of march in new york in student government news the entire student council today had their annual meeting with the rauner township police department the meeting allowed students to ask questions to their local officers and aim to promote dialogue with high school students while they also got to enjoy some delicious pizza as february also comes to a close the annual freshman assembly is finally here the theme is masquerade so there are bound to be lots of fun eye masks hats and other decorations both the freshmen and the upperclassmen are very excited for the event as it is the first dance of the year we can't wait to see how it all turns out speaking of upcoming events next week is the radnor high school musical

013mamma mia the show is set to take place live march 3rd through march 5th tickets went on sale last week and have been selling like crazy the show consists of two casts which are performing on various nights everyone is so excited to see the show and listen to their favorite songs like voulez-vous or dancing queen thank you all so much for your time again and we all hope you have a good night thank you sammy and sophie and and that's just what's happening at the high school let alone the middle school in the elementary school you are one busy student body that's for sure thank you very much at this moment in time i'm going to turn it over to our superintendent dr batchelor for his report good evening good to see everyone uh and

014thank you students thank you sammy sophie for your report uh and for our students who are here for recognition sometimes you have to sit through like the really boring superintendent's remarks i'm going to try to keep these quick and we'll get to your uh your recognitions uh right after this presentation so in my chance remarks tonight i just want to first talk about what we've been doing for the last two years we share just where we are with our positive covet cases reported uh thankfully as you can see as a district our cases mirroring what we've been seeing in our region in our air in our area have been dropping quickly and we're very thankful for what we see and very appreciative of all the communication with our community and support from our our staff

015parents and students on the next slide you can just see by the numbers uh you know and again to see what we were dealing with in january as opposed to what we're dealing with now we suspected in january we would see a quick drop luckily that has come true that we've seen that drop but what we experienced in january and february did strain the system we were many weeks especially those first two weeks after break struggling to keep our buildings open just because we had so many staff who needed to be out because they were sick or family members had it the number of students who were out as well i can't thank our staff enough for all they did to help cover classes to help support to keep our buildings open for our students

016the commitment of our parents to work in you know collaboration with each of our buildings when their students weren't feeling well to keep them home and we're able to weather uh the month of january and we're in a different place now in the next slide you can see the delaware county transmission levels and that's has really good news as well we have been high transmission in delaware county since august and we have now moved from high transmission to just the other day to substantial move down to substantial so even in our county the spread rates are decreasing as well so that's some good news for us tonight as well which leads into our next slide which is something we've been talking about since december we started having conversations in december about what is our pathway

017for when we could look to remove and adjust some of our mitigation how do we balance our mitigation with our educational program we started to have those discussions in december continue to have the discussions uh in january and now here we are in february and we're ready to make a recommendation as i've shared with the community the recommendation tonight that is on the agenda for our school board is the recommendation that we look to move away from requiring masking and it is specifically that 2b there's some details in the powerpoint here on what the recommendation is all about we will get into the nuts and bolts of this during the agenda item later in the meeting so i won't go through it all with you now but that's the applause because the superintendent is supposedly

018making a brief comments here i think that's what that applause was but so we will get into the nuts and bolts of this later in the meeting but that's the the recommendation that's on our agenda for tonight uh moving to our next item on the on the presentations i want to shift gears for just a moment and i think you're either all here to recognize our students or you're all here because you want to hear about our comprehensive facilities plan so i'm going to take advantage of this room full for a moment we have done a mailer to our entire community the school board set a goal two years ago to develop a long-term capital plan for our school district we need to understand and look at our buildings the conditions of our buildings and

019set up a long-term facilities plan for what we need to invest fix and adjust within our buildings some of our buildings are much newer are in great condition some of our buildings are from 1963. as a kid growing up i was very lucky my uncle gave me a 1960 thunderbird this is the 1980s and 1965 thunderbird it was a great car but i had to fix it every three weeks it required a lot of money it required a lot of repair wouldn't be a great car as a family car for me right now and my parents eventually guided me into having to to sell the car we want to have conversations with our community now that we've done a feasibility study on the conditions of our building and share those conditions share with you what

020buildings are in excellent good condition and what buildings are unfair and poor we also want to talk about our educational program and talk about what are the things that we should be doing in order to set up a 5 10 15 even a 20-year plan to make sure that our buildings represent the priority this community gives to the education of our students we also want to make sure we're looking at enrollment so all of you are here tonight i hope to see you at one of our meetings we sent a mailer to our entire community not just our parents that are you know have children in the school but the entire radar community have received this mailer and you can see on the the dates i have trouble seeing with all the two by fours

021and the walls here um but on march 3rd march 7 and march 16th are the three meetings those three meetings will be identical you're welcome to attend any one of those meetings and we want to share the results of our facility study and we want to gather community feedback on what we what should be our next steps what are the things that we should be thinking about about our program when it comes to our buildings what things are working well what things that are you seeing as challenges and how should we respond to this feasibility study so i hope people can join us for that i want to also just announce tonight that we have a new summer math program so new summer math program please look for that parents as we start advertising in

022our radio reader this was thanks to feedback we've received from community members and parents as they see their kids go through our math program we want to make sure our math program has as many on-ramps and off-ramps so that our kids that all of a sudden a light bulb is going off and they feel like math is a subject area where they want to stretch themselves what's that opportunity for them to move a level what is that opportunity for us i call it the on-ramps and off-ramps within our math program so we have a new summer math program that we'll be sharing more at the middle school with our community for this summer and then next on the slide we have a lot of reasons we always like to share each month our reasons to

023be rad or proud there's so many pictures in here some of them are our student are that are going to be recognized tonight in just a moment some of our gateway students from some of our athletic teams that you heard from sammy and sophie about tonight from our theater right down to students seventh grade gracie gill and fourth grade ella gill who performed at carnegie carnegie hall for the elite international music competition winners recital and then even on the bottom right corner we have students there who were involved in tuesday because today was 2 2 2 2 2 on tuesday so many of our second graders uh celebrated tuesday today that some of the pictures there and then the final slide i have two others it's just upcoming events there's so much happening within our

024district i just want to make sure we continue to share i want to point out two specific items on the upcoming events one is our read across america which is coming up on march 2nd and also our community unplug which i believe is what day is the unplug march 4th march 4th um and so march 4th something we've started a couple years ago a day of unplugging it's a day i especially look forward to we unplugged from our phones our technology we encourage that with our kids and our staff uh that we get a day of unplugging i would like to have you know a month or many evenings of unplugging with my children at home i try it's a constant battle and we want to celebrate the opportunity for our kids to have a

025day of unplugging and that's coming up on march 4th and then i want to mention on the agenda tonight we have a couple of personnel items i want to first off i'm going to start on the four far right with george regal george riegel's been our assistant director of uh special of student services and specifically working in special education uh george riegel has an opportunity to go to cheshire county iu and i just want to congratulate george on this position we will miss him and we can't thank him enough for all that he's done for our district and while george is moving on to the chester county iu cara miller who's been our supervisor in student services will fill in uh as the acting assistant director for student services uh with with george leaving and

026we will be backfilling cara's position temporarily and i also want to welcome joe danielle joe danielle has been our acting director of transportation and joe is now going to be our permanent director of transportation i got a wonderful received a wonderful email today from a parent who said how excited they were to see mr danielle to see joe is going to be our transportation director they said they came to the district several years ago their first point of contact in the district was joe how helpful he was with setting up transportation for their child we're thrilled with joe a little secret joe and bill dolan really are the ones people said boy ken you've made some good snow calls this year and you know you stayed open the one day when the rest of the

027county closed well it's because of joe and bill dolan is why we stayed open because the two of them were so confident that our buses could get through and our operations team could open our buildings so we're really excited for joe and congratulations to cara and congratulations to george regal as well that's all for the superintendent's remarks i tried to keep it quick thank you dr batchelor and just uh the slide that showed the trifold of the upcoming facilities planning meetings if it hasn't landed in your mailbox don't worry it hasn't landed in some of ours either you know that with the mail today it's been mailed out uh but if it hasn't gotten there don't worry it should be arriving soon and hopefully you will all join us to hear that work ahead that

028we have as a district going on with that said i'd like to move to the next item on our agenda which is going to be recognitions and we have mr jubileer who is going to lead us through the first one [Applause] danny radner high school junior danny rosenbloom named to the united states under 18 men's basketball roster for 21st for the 21st maccabiah games in israel radnor high school junior basketball guard danny rosenblum was recently selected for the 12-man roster of the u-18 men's basketball team for the 21st maccabiah games taking place in july 2022 in israel he joins players from across the country on the team and is the only athlete from pennsylvania to be selected maccabee usa is a federally recognized not-for-profit organization with an extensive history of enriching jewish lives through athletic

029cultural and educational programs maccabiah usa is the official sponsor of the united states team to the world maccabee games in the pan american and european maccabee games as well as a sponsor of the jcc maccabee games for teens in north america the first maccabee was held in ramat ghan in 1932 with 390 athletes from 18 countries taking part traditionally held every four years interrupted only by world war ii by 2017 the games had grown to include nearly 10 000 jewish athletes from more than 75 countries competing in 40 sports making it the third largest international multi-sport event in the world following only the olympics and the fifa world cup danny is coached at radnor high school by my friend as well jamie chadwin with assistant coaches mike boland and josh leopold the superintendent and the

030school board congratulate danny his parents and family and his coaches for this outstanding accomplishment [Applause] thank you and danny if you want your parents to join you they're more than welcome if you don't that's okay too i'll let you work that out among you so all right thank you very much mr jubilee and congratulations to the rose and blooms uh the next item on our agenda will be a recognition and ms sarah dunn will lead us through that one why don't you guys come up so i'm very honored to honor the rms gateways program which has earned two awards in 2022 at the philadelphia future city competition radnor middle school students in the eighth grade integrated program gateways earned two awards innovation in sustainable engineering and inspiring heroes in the virtual philadelphia future city competition

031on january 22nd the team researched and developed a solution to the challenge design a waste-free city that uses the principles of a circular economy i don't think everyone here can even describe a circular economy so i was impressed and they did this by imagining and creating the future city maracora on the coast of greece according to the students submission their proposed future city would operate under a free capital r free philosophy futuristic revitalization equitable and a boolean to be waste free to the highest degree using cardboard and other materials the team designed and built homes and other structures for their city including a hospital middle school and police station a moving sidewalk was proposed and constructed as was a solar farm recycling plant and islands off the coast dedicated to gardening and shopping future city

032is a project-based learning program where middle school students imagine research design and build cities of the future each year participating teams are given a specific problem and must create a futuristic city that addresses this issue the gateway students who presented the class project at the competition were jacqueline dunn laila gainen maya imperato samantha stamps and jed van duzen and they are all here i'm going to ask you to four of you are here the complete roster of students enrolled in the gateways program this school year are adriana anderson lennon boyd isabella bucci sabrina chen hun cho joseph dara ella diebold annika dillon jacqueline dunn jackson farhy arav gadamiti nicologalia ezekiel gobensyong finn gorman laila guynan connor haynes natalie has rooney cal honesty maya imperato banu isa takolu is a toglu sorry fiorella johnson gozallo samuel

033kane alexia kim max korenberg ava kostik tobin longsworth lucas mitchell andrew quigley mackenzie rose kenjin shao cooper smith graham sonia samantha stamps ashley sue sarvesh sundar jed van duzen luke vanderveer margaret wetzel um maisie uh nyaya yao and luke zhang and now you know why we didn't invite all of them it would have filled the room the class was led by eighth grade teachers darcy digiacomo and steven smolen the superintendent and the school board congratulate the members of the gateway's class their parents and families and their teachers for this outstanding accomplishment thank you guys so much for coming and i think i think mr petit would like in the hallway if your parents are here too they can come out with you all right thank you and congratulations to our gateway students at this time

034it is time for public comment the board will provide an opportunity at each regular board meeting for eligible participants to comment on matters of concern official action or deliberation which are or may be before the board the board requires the public participants be residents of the district be taxpayers of the district be persons with a legal or contractual right to address the board be persons recognized by the presiding officer as having a special interest such that addressing the board would be appropriate and sign in with their name and address the sign in sheet is over there please make sure you do that eligible participants must be recognized by the presiding officer and must preface their comments by an announcement of their name during virtual meetings public comment sent by email must include the commenter's name

035street address town and topic to be addressed individual comment shall be limited to not more than four minutes as per policy zero zero six meetings and public participation administration will respond to general questions raised during public comments sometime after the meeting parents with questions specific to their child's educational experience are encouraged to contact their child's teacher and or building principal directly should you be unable to attend this board meeting comments can be submitted by email to board comments at rtsd.org or in writing to mr michael pettitti radner township school district 135 south wayne avenue wayne pennsylvania and we have our first public commenter question are are the students required to give their addresses we've got two news camera or news microphones here and i think that's the rule is that you sign in over there

036okay but all you need to do is announce your town so for that's for adults and for students excellent okay all right so with that would we do is anybody here who would like to make a public comment this evening welcome thank you good evening um hallie ambler wayne pennsylvania i have an eighth grader at the middle school and a fifth grader at wayne elementary first i'd like to thank the principals teachers and staff at west rms and throughout our school district for all of their work in these most challenging of times thank you board members dr batchelor and everyone in the administration for your service to our community i fully support the administration's proposal to revise the health and safety plan to make mass optional in radner schools i watched last week's curriculum committee

037meeting i was impressed by the thoughtfulness research and preparation the administration put into this proposal it was reminiscent of the thorough work the administration did prior to your vote to bring our students back into the school buildings which was a resounding success i think we've all come to realize that this virus is not going to go away and the time has come to learn to live with it cases are down the hospitals have capacity to for those who need care vaccinations and boosters are readily available the chop policy lab supports schools moving to mask optional policies we have all experienced the omicron variant rolling through our community there has been little rhyme or reason as to who it infected and who it spared math squaring or vaccination status didn't seem to relate to who got

038sick and who did not the upside was that the illness was generally mild and fast moving i took this as a good sign that we're moving towards endemic status i don't mean to make light of the fact that people have become seriously ill or have died from this virus but it's just my observation of how things have changed since mass were initially mandated i can understand the hesitancy you may be facing in making a decision like this but the most convincing data i have seen that gives me confidence that it's the right thing to do is the series of graphs that dr dekeevich presented last week the final graph compares the radnor school's infection rates under the mask mandate to four to four other school districts that are mask optional the curves are practically identical

039i don't see a correlation between mass squaring and transmission rate the scientific evidence that masking is doing any significant amount of good is disappearing our eighth grader has down syndrome he participated in the mask optional esy program last summer and it was a wonderful success for him thank you mrs lesage there were no barriers to inhibit his articulation no cloth for him to shout through no mask to fidget with and he could see other spaces to help him understand and be understood the cdc has been slow to update their guidance on this issue it seems content to lead the decision making to the local level and i agree that the locality should make those decisions based on community statistics and needs radnor is a small dynamic community ratner should make our decisions not some agency

040in atlanta or d.c before i conclude i'd like to share something that my fifth grader wrote i believe that math should be optional in school first masks are hard to hear people in so when you're in the classroom sometimes you can't hear direction second mask call distractions like kids pull on them and play with them third some kids forget their masks so they give them disposable masks now we have more trash problems and our land is not as clean as it should be finally masks keep us from seeing each other's smiling faces and i think that's very important i think that match should be optional you were leaders last year when you brought our students back into the school buildings please continue your leadership in returning radnor to normalcy and make math optional thank you

041thank you ms ambler just would you mind moving the mic a little bit more there you go do i have to do it again if you want to no just kidding thank you though all right is anybody else yes welcome thank you a few notes here i too am grateful to all of you you've done a spectacular job would you plea kindly just announce your name thank you seth um bryn mawr i forgot where i live for a second my son is at ratner elementary school fifth grade i'm very grateful to the administration for bringing this vote here tonight it's been a long time and coming you know a few comments i'd like to make that i hope will inform the vote tonight but also inform decisions about reinstituting mass in the future should cases

042rise mass are not at all settled science in the setting of schools and children high quality mass like surgical mask or even better n95s worn by adults absolutely are effective and that's what studies show but keep in mind that probably the majority of our children over the past year and a half wore cloth masks and fiddled with them all day and removed them for lunch for a half an hour or so while cloth mask can help reduce droplet transmission this virus is spread by aerosol okay and it goes through a cloth mask on exhalation and it comes back through the mask on inhalation further the virus can last in the air for three hours so these are the facts but despite having little impact for an aerosol aerosol aerosolized virus thankfully a year plus of

043ineffective cloth masks did not result in massive hospitalizations or deaths or any significant impact on the radnor community and that's great but to me that means they probably didn't you know we probably didn't need any kind of mask if that's the case so i also want to point out that the world health organization and the european counterpart to our cdc does not mandate mass has not from the beginning of the pandemic does not mandate mass in children under 12 it is a very lowest lowest group and the harms likely outweigh the benefits masking kids is a policy decision it's a policy decision i wanted to make a comment um about the the child policy lab i i'm in full agreement with their recommendation i'm in full agreement with what's on the table for tonight um

044but they they make the comment that mass are effective and they give a link well that link goes to the cdc website some of the uh articles on that website in supportive mass are frankly incredibly flawed articles particularly the arizona study looking at school districts it has been skewered by many academic physicians i am shocked that it's still on their website but it was that article that really pushed the cdc to keep keep ringing this bell of keeping mass on kids in schools so i just wanted to comment on that lastly i think decisions about masking kids has to balance the question of how much it's really helping which i would argue they essentially had no mass for a year and a half wearing cloth masks this past year and how much it's hurting i

045often find it difficult to understand someone speaking with a mask on when i consider a room full of unruly children prep and a teacher many feet away at the front of the room i can't even imagine how much the kids are absorbing in a post-vaccination world the vast majority of people getting hospitalized are unvaccinated over 65 and or have comorbidities i think we have to ask ourselves what is our goal it is our goal to the hospitalization rate that's a that's a reasonable goal four minutes has expired i think it's time to get rid of mass permanently thank you thank you good evening good evening heather gill st davids pennsylvania enough we have had enough teachers parents most importantly our kids have had enough we've stayed home we've flattened the curve we've got vaccinated we've

046had mass on for almost two years we've had enough chop policy is all we heard for the last two years and now child policy has updated their guidelines you no longer want to follow child policy as it no longer aligns with what you want i was alerted to this at last week's meeting i was alarmed by the discussion and opinions of the board about masking this board must separate their personal opinions and let parents decide what's best for their kids you do not know our individual kids parents do you do not know how they feel how they're doing are they struggling yet you sit on the throne and make decisions for our kids it ends tonight i have seen various board members out in public without a mask photos at restaurants destinations and yet our

047kids eat alone every day you can make the decisions to eat elbow to elbow with your friends at a restaurant yet our kids have to be masked playing sports musical instruments and yet you live your lives you leave and go to various meetings and leave school board members for sixers games it just doesn't work how do you explain to your child when you see people unmasked at adjacent school districts at the super bowl or see school board members out in public unmasked i'm not judging you you're living your lives that's great but i am angry and i'm angry that you can give live your lives and make decisions for your lives but our kids can't isn't that we're supposed to learn in school for our children to be self-sufficient and make decisions in december 2021

048the surgeon general issued public health advisory indicating a 90 increase in depression symptoms seventy five percent increase in anxiety symptoms a hundred and twenty five percent increase in eating disorder admissions and fifty percent suicide suicide attempts in girls how can you ignore this data with the one hundred percent point zero one of deaths in children under eighteen and this was put forth by the american academy of pediatrics children's hospital association for every student that's become depressed anxious or developed eating disorders because of the current masking situation we the parents will blame you and god forbid any student attempt suicide we the parents will blame you i am not asking to ban masks i'm demanding it as it's my parental right to decide if my children should wear masks i'm not giving up my parental rights

049to decide what's best for our children if mass work then why does it matter if my child wears a mask and another child doesn't you wear a mask if you feel safe that's wonderful you will be an adult the rest of your lives these kids have a small window in elementary middle and high school do not rob them anymore of their childhood thank you thanks heather good evening thanks heather that was excellent um colleen fisher 601 brookside avenue and wayne thanks for having me tonight i have one daughter at wayne elementary school in kindergarten i'm here tonight to request the school board to vote to end the masking requirement for our children my daughter in kindergarten is on the autism spectrum and receives special education at west her diagnosis came about two and a half

050years ago and until then the plan was always for her to attend school with her older sisters at st catharines and wing however with their special needs and the outstanding reputation of radnor's special ed department the choice was clear and our expectations exceeded so far this year in all areas but one the prolonged use of face coverings and the board's disregard of parental input on this matter some of her services include but are not limited to speech social skills ot and pt it cannot be argued that face coverings hinder meaningful progress towards our individualized goals seeing facial expressions mouths forming words are essential for any child let alone a special needs child i'm sure you've heard of the cdc quietly lowering their standards for words met by 24 months of age we know that speech

051therapy referrals are through the roof currently it's time to raise the bar for our children not lower it i don't know if teacher input is a part of your hesitancy on this issue but if a child's nose and mouth being exposed frightens a teacher when they have the opportunity to be triple vaxxed and wear their own face covering then that teacher entered the wrong profession i'd like to conclude with touching on the super bowl we all saw it and noted the hypocrisy of california having a universal mass mandate and 80 000 people on tv including governor newsom mayors celebrities etc all unmasked it was painful but honestly i appreciated it to me it showed complete disregard for nonsense policies at a national level it gave me hope the audience wasn't kicked out the game did

052not end at halftime because people weren't following the rules if mask requirements at radnor don't end i can assure you you will soon be faced with your own super bowl moment and it won't be us there it'll be our children at school face is free regardless of policy the question is how will they be treated will they be turned away and it won't be you there we know this it'll be faculty and administration and if that's a burden you're willing to place on them then perhaps you're in the wrong profession too thank you for your time and our thoughtful consideration of our children thank you very much good evening hi everyone dave falcone from new town square i appreciate all of you and your time tonight and the consideration you're giving to this uh i

053am here to get to it to advocate that we move away from masks for our students i'm here as a dad right i've been a board member i've been a lot of different things but i'm advocating here for my kids that are in my house and for the kids that i see and that i coach and you'll hear lots of facts tonight from people that are a lot smarter than me i'm not a doctor i know virtually nothing about the medicine here or the science but what i see i see and what i believe i believe and i think the time is now i think radnor has endured enough i think we have all endured enough but i think our children have endured the most because these moments these moments are real for them what's

054becoming a normal life for them is not what any of us know as normal i've been here 43 years so i can pivot from a mask my five-year-old can't pivot from his mask my eight-year-old can't pivot from her mask because they're used to it it hangs from their face they think this is what i need to do this is what i'm supposed to do and they don't know any better so we have to kind of beg of you as the decision makers here for our kids we can do it at home i'm doing it in my home you all control what happens in our classrooms where they learn where they see their friends what i want from them is to come to school like i went to school and see their friends and feel normal

055and it will take time because what's happened now is we're conditioning them but we can fix that you can fix that i believe in it now i know there is so much uncertainty here i know that the decisions you'll make tonight that you've made in the past you weren't sure of when this started i was afraid i'm sure all of you were afraid that fear passed to my kids we have to move away from that we have to create a new path for them and the only way we can do that is following your lead letting that happen in class and i'll speak specifically to mr babson you're so powerful and you speak to so many people in this community gather data this is an opportunity to speak to those people to say get behind

056me we can do this together it's not going to be perfect we're not going to be sure but we can be better we can start together trust me let's trust this together i'm asking is a dad i don't know any better i don't know if any of you do either it's what i hope it's what i think we need and i think now is the right time thanks thank you mr falcon anybody else come on good evening sir good evening i'm chris vale from wayne i have a sophomore at the high school i appreciate the opportunity to speak here and i'll keep my comments under the four-minute time limit as this is a school board meeting and schools are institutions of academic learning i hope to make an academic argument and appeal uh especially as

057uh we've spent the last two or three years talking about following the science i'd like to cite some science for you there's about a dozen different studies which have attempted to establish the effectiveness the effectiveness of masks in preventing virus transmission there was a may 2020 meta study on pandemic influenza published by the uscdc it found that face masks had no effect neither as a personal protective equipment nor as a source control a who review of 10 randomized controlled trials of face masks against influenza-like illnesses published in september of 2019 found no statistically significant benefit a danish randomized controlled trial of six thousand participants published in the annals of internal medicine in november 2020 found no statistically significant effect of high quality medical face masks against sars covid2 infection in a community setting a large

058randomized controlled trial with close to eight thousand participants published in october 2020 in plplos found face masks quote did not seem to be effective against laboratory confirmed viral respiratory infections nor against clinical respiratory infection a february 20 20 20 um pardon me a february 2021 review by the european cdc found no high quality evidence in favor of face masks and recommended their use only based on the precautionary principle a july 2020 review by the oxford center for evidence-based medicine found there is no evidence for the effectiveness of face masks against virus infection or transmission a november 2020 cochrane review found that face mask face mask did not reduce influenza like illnesses neither in the general population nor in health care workers there's about a dozen of these i could go on but i think you

059get the idea before i rattle off a bunch of more data points i'd like to get into some of the studies which have shown the downsides of mask mandates and there are several the who warns of serious side effects such as difficulty breathing and skin rashes that difficulty breathing can lead to hyper hypercapnia and hypoxia an israeli canadian study published in cognitive research in february 2022 found that face masks disrupt holistic processing and face perception in school-aged children tests concluded by the university hospital of leipzig in germany have shown that face masks significantly reduce the resilience and performance of healthy adults a german psychological study with about 1 000 participants found severe psychological consequences due to the introduction of mandatory fast face masks in germany again there's about a dozen different citations i could read

060you the fact is we spent two years arguing about whether or not we're following the science and the science for face masks has never been there it's time we stop the madness we admit that we were wrong we admit our mistakes and we let the kids breathe freely finally as they deserve thank you mr vale good evening good evening christina heinzer bloomingdale avenue before i give my comment i'm going to state my background as it is relevant to the current issues i previously worked five years in pediatric clinical research at chop i also hold a master's in mathematics and i've taught at both private and public schools in the states of maryland and pennsylvania i do hold a pennsylvania public teaching certification in math i'm here tonight to speak on the important issue of masks

061i came to the december 21st meeting and i spoke of 65 different research studies examining bodily harm caused by masks i went into depth regarding those risks but here are just a few highlights research has proven that mass cause increase in breathing resistance increase in blood carbon dioxide increasing increase in heart and respiratory rate decrease in cardiopulmonary capacity heart issues exhaustion breathing issues headache dental issues yes that is happening and emotional and social issues in addition to these negative health consequences i brought up the fact that on december 10th the pennsylvania supreme court backed the pennsylvania commonwealth decision that the mass mandate is completely unlawful and unenforceable the pa supreme court affirms the commonwealth decision that the health department cannot force mask on healthy children for at least two months now this board has been

062via in violation of the following pa public school codes 27.71 27.72 and 27.60 you surveyed radnor teachers on their thoughts and the majority of teachers support moving to mask optional you didn't however survey students and parents so we took that upon ourselves we started a petition two weeks ago and as of now over 550 rasner residents have agrees that agreed they want to move to mask optional and that number is growing by the day i have that list right here for anybody that wants to see it in addition to this petition please remember the december student email comment that contained a petition where several hundred radner students i can't remember if it was several hundred it was a lot um several hundred several students many students commented that signed this petition saying that they wanted

063a choice in mass i watched the special committee meeting last week and the points you made further supported this you showed grass demonstrating the spread of covet over districts in our area some of which are masked optional and ours which is mass mandatory the grass grafts looked nearly identical let me also remind everyone here that during the delta variant last summer all five radnor schools were open for summer school without a mass mandate i would drop my daughter off at west and witness a packed sidewalk full of teachers and students pushing through unmasked crowd to find their group it seemed as if koba didn't exist last summer we had five radnor schools open for summer school the delta variant no mass mandate and yet only one case of covid within these schools mass don't seem

064to be doing anything but hindering the emotional social and physical health of our children i can't tell you how many times my husband and i and our friends have seen board members out in pub crowded public restaurants not eating or drinking but completely unmasked yet i have to mask my young children one of which is immune compromised for 38 hours a week how hypocritical of you i love our school i love our teachers and this is why we've complied for this long but this is now criminal and the pennsylvania supreme court thinks so too we want to move to mask optional now not some arbitrary date two weeks from now we want the option to send our children to breathe freely and unobstructed tomorrow and we never want to lose this autonomy again seriously never

065again i will not tell another human woman man or child or anyone what to do with their pot with their body and i will wholeheartedly respect their decision i expect the same for myself and my children let me further remind this board and anyone listening that vaccinated individuals are contracting and spreading coveted if you try to discriminate against the unvaccinated populations and any decisions made tonight or in the future i assure you we parents will be taking action against this board citing it's not i know i'm under 350 330. i know i am citing discrimination and the science surely backs that i want to end my comment with this please start listening to our concerns we simply want autonomy we will of course respect anyone's decision over their child mast or not and teach our

066children to do the same as they have been doing since the beginning we they're par we as parents and guardians of these incredible children want a choice and we aren't going away we know our rights we have the resources and we will protect our children thank you thank you i would ask that everybody please try to honor the four-minute limit because so many people want to speak so just to be fair to everybody else please try to honor the four-minute limit thank you i'm kaki martin and i live in wayne good evening please vote tonight for mask choice for radnor students at 17 i know that you're playing political games but what are five-year-olds supposed to think when they attend sporting events and concerts the grocery store and the mall and they see the adults

067around them unmasked you the radnor township school board are breeding mental illness into the children in radnor you are forcing us to cover our faces and restricting our oxygen in exchange for an education how is that just i sit in school for six hours every day with a muzzle on my face i sit in the cafeteria six feet away from my friends if i get too close i get reprimanded i sit in a desk and listen to my teachers talk from behind a mask in a cage of plexiglass barely even able to hear them the kindergartner i babysit told me how he wishes he could run around with his friends during gym but he can't because he cannot breathe when i was five years old my biggest concern was if i would get a swing

068on the playground or trying to be first in line to go outside to play and these kids are worried about not being able to breathe oxygen i've heard people on this board say the kids are fine or the kids are used to it by now do you know how much less frequently students participate when their oxygen is rationed to them or when they have to raise their voices to the level of a yell just to be heard by their teachers in their plexigas cage do you even understand that when all the voices you hear all day are muffled you just stop saying what did you say and nod and move along with your day it's just not healthy the last time the last time that i came to a school board meeting was to ask

069you all for the raider to be among the student choices when we voted and you all refused my and the entire student body's voices tonight i stand here begging you for oxygen for my classmates and i and i'm just begging to see a friendly smile in the hallways of my high school i am in my junior year of high school and i have yet to have a normal year in high school because the adults in this room refuse to free the children please let us breathe and please vote tonight for mask choice thank you as somebody else good evening good evening jodi pergolis vivid radner i have a senior at ratner high school and as a result of the choices of this board he is so eager to leave not only radnor but the entire

070state of pennsylvania i have a younger son who we withdrew from radnor schools and put him in a separate school where they have been masked optional with absolutely no infection please make the choice to let the parents have the choice i appreciate very much that this topic is on the agenda tonight while radnor parents and students have been eagerly awaiting tonight's agenda item we have watched other school districts enjoy school board members who voted to be mask optional dozens and dozens of school districts are masked optional and we are not the important thing we've heard a lot of scientific information it's important to point out that in non-school hours our children the students that you were elected to serve they congregate and for the majority of the time those students who choose to get together

071are not wearing a mask they have essentially created family members outside of their own home you don't wear a mask when you're with your immediate family members so why are we asking the students who've created a family in the classroom to wear masks it's unnecessary at this point please i implore you follow the lead of the credible experts that you turn to that you trusted that you allowed to guide you to make the masks man mandatory those same experts have now said that masks are no longer required i beg you to trust them once again to guide you in your choice to allow parents to choose for their family when to wear a mask and when not to wear a mask we all want to keep the rider community safe no one wants to be

072reckless but we do want our children to enjoy going to school and i really wish that my senior wasn't running away from radnor because of his experience in high school please trust the parents the adults in the community to make the right choice [Applause] thank you mrs herglis good evening good evening cassandra newton wayne i'm here today representing my family in full support amassed optional for 712 days this board has entrusted dr batchelor and the administration with the health and safety plan they've counted on their guidance now when the administration is ready to move to mask optional there is hesitation what is the reasoning for this how can families have confidence in this board if when it matters the most it disregards the administration's recommendations many sitting on up there have been caught without their

073mass and i don't blame you i like fresh air too but i'm not the one mandating the muzzles andrew sarah lydia susan all of which were seen campaigning without mass after the campaign lydia was caught axe throwing and eating indoors massless susan was caught on a trip to new york city indoors massless there are others who were seen in town recently maskless but out of respect for them i'm not going to mention their names all of this while the board keeps our children mass for almost seven hours a day five days a week you are all hypocrites and barry weiss is correct when she said and i quote this is a pandemic a barack bureaucracy and it will be looked at as a catastrophic moral crime you have all failed our children all of you

074and for what to protect adults never in the history of america has it been the job of children to protect their elders this is unscientific child abuse and you should all be ashamed and i know i've said that before when our children look back they will never forgive those who kept the schools closed nor them nor those who kept them asked it has been 712 days since this board governor wolf the pennsylvania department of education the pennsylvania department of health and all of those involved that have have stolen our children's smiles their laughter their personalities their socialization and so on you have stolen two years of our children's lives our children's freedom should not depend on what state region school district or town they live in history will not judge you kindly it will look

075at the handling of your youngest constituents as a catastrophic moral failure i already said that parents if this board does not approve mask optional tonight i would not send your older children to school with masks i would make the district supply them i would make the district supply you directly for your younger children with mask and i would stand by your child if they choose to exercise their first amendment right to protest this mandate and since rtsd has stated before they support students first amendment rights i would expect no repercussions if our children choose to protest this mandate this district is cultivating an environment that these children believe they need this for protection master not security blankets remove them now let it be a choice thank you thank you miss newton good evening hello my

076name is alison leff i'm from brymer i am a physician and medical director in nursing homes during the past two years of kovid i watched patients struggle with the isolation and disease alone in their rooms unable to have family visit their only contact with the outside world on scheduled zoom meetings for those who survived their lives have been filled with continuing restrictions meals delivered to their rooms where they sat alone they strained to hear and understand what doctors and nurses were saying through their masks they were unable to participate in human activity whether it was out with family or with other friends at the centers after two years however we are beginning to see relief and help them recover they are allowed to have visitors get together in the dining hall to eat and play

077bingo go out with families to restaurants and participate in activities like zumba and happy hour these highest of the high risk patients whose complications from covid frequently resulted in significant morbidity and mortality are beginning to return to some semblance of normal lives why then can't our students schools put in many layered approaches when covid began as we didn't know how to battle this devastating disease the pace of research and medical advancement since the start of the pandemic has been miraculously frenetic we have antivirals and monoclonal antibodies and vaccines why then are we still treating our schools like nothing has changed since the beginning of the pandemic more than two years ago our students are resilient yes absolutely but they are not unbreakable stories of children dealing with isolation and coveted restrictions are heartbreaking and yet

078rarely shared in a public forum because they are so personal the following are just a few of the stories that have been shared with me and these are in their words my daughter tells me that when she goes to sleep at night her dreams always involve her wearing a mask kids in the elementary school don't recognize their friends outside of school because they've never seen them without a mask on my child's speech impediment has stalled because he can't watch his teacher form words and show him how to pronounce things my son is afraid to take his mask off because then people will be able to see what he looks like now he doesn't believe me when i tell him he is beautiful my daughter has stopped hanging out with her friends in groups because when

079she gets up the courage to say something she cannot see how people react to her because their faces are covered instead she prefers to be by herself so she doesn't have to worry about not knowing if what she said was funny or if it upset someone my child was so afraid of going into school when he forgot his mask that he took one he found off of the ground and wore that instead my child is afraid of getting yelled at by her teachers when her mask isn't up all the way and it gives her headaches we've tried many different kinds and she still comes home stressed and sad from school every day these are real children this is real suffering our students are not okay if medical professionals as a physician and parent i'm asking

080you to vote in support of mask optional this evening thank you very much good evening good evening my name is laura leboday and i live in woodland court and wayne and i am also here tonight to urge the board to remove the mask mandate and implement a mask optional policy effective immediately back in march in 2020 there was a lot that we didn't know and we all wore our masks because we thought it was necessary we did so because we wanted to do our part but we're not living in march of 2020 anymore and the policies at radnor don't reflect that at all last week on february 15th mr bechtold and mr dukeevich presented a comparison of case numbers between five schools including central bucks penn ridge marple springfield and radnor from about mid-december to

081present day or last week of all the schools radnor was the only one that still mandated masks the entire time and i thought that the data that was presented was remarkable really and and gave me hope because what i saw was that there was virtually no difference in the trajectory of case counts among all five schools so what does that mean simply put it means masks on or masks off it doesn't matter the results were virtually identical and what we're seeing from that is that our neighboring schools springfield marple have implemented mass optional policies and have shown us that it works tonight our superintendent is recommending it a majority of radnor staff surveyed support transitioning to mask optional chop policy lab is urging schools to go to a mass optional policy so why then are

082we trying to impose a mandate that is so detrimental to the health and well-being of our students knowing what we know and seeing what we're seeing is it because we're okay with more learning loss are we okay with speech delay are we okay with increased depression and anxiety increased drug and alcohol use because that's going to happen if we continue with forced masking it's already happening please remember that the health and well-being of our entire children is more about just the absence of a virus as our kids are forced to wear masks seven hours a day for over 700 days do you know what they see they see the very people who are forcing them to wear this mask publicly dine in restaurants no masks they see these same adults go to the gym work

083out no masks they see board members skip out on critical meetings to go watch a basketball game where they are surrounded by thousands and thousands of fans screaming fans who are not wearing masks despite a mandate by the city requiring them to do so if it's okay for you to do all those things and that's great for you to do all those things but if it's okay for you to do it is absolutely okay for our kids to go to school without a mask if they choose a vote against a mass optional policy this evening from adults who enjoy freedom of choice themselves is hypocritical everyone here understands this particularly our children they see it they're watching you they get it and they don't like it our children have tolerated the loss of normalcy with

084grit grace and strength and yes they're resilient they're great but enough is enough they're not okay anymore leaders put facts over fear and it's time for you to do the same and the math mandates today thank you good evening good evening i am jackson carey and i'm a sophomore at radger high school who lives in villanova i have come to voice my support for the administration's recommendation to move to a mass optional coronavirus policy i support this policy because vaccination in combination with less lethal versions of the virus significantly lower the risk of infection and death cover 19 metrics in delaware county are decreasing and masks have demonstrated their negative effects on the mental health ability to learn in social development of students to begin the vaccines from pfizer and moderna have proved tremendously effective

085in preventing severe illness and are effective in preventing infection if a booster is given five months after second vaccination series with this knowledge how can one maintain support for a universal masking policy the whole purpose of the mask was to reduce hospitalizations and deaths a virus that does not cause either these outcomes to a significant degree in vaccinated and healthy individuals is not a threat to us because the infections are mild and flu-like for most people with risk factors should take whatever precautions they feel are necessary for themselves and the rounder community supports them in their personal health decision but we should maintain that same right to make our own health decisions secondly every metric of coronavirus severity in our community that i can think of is decreasing the most obvious one seven-day moving average

086of cases is down 34.55 percent according to the cdc's data on our county at the time of readiness the seven-day moving average of deaths is down the seven-day moving average of percent positivity is down the seven-day moving average for all trends related to hospital bed and icu bad usage are down therefore it makes sense to remove the requirement to wear a mask because the virus the mask mandate was meant to protect us from is no longer a threat to our existence furthermore the cdc recommends that everyone washes their hands after taking a mask off i have yet to see anyone follow this recommendation further diminishing the effectiveness of the masks in our schools thirdly every decision in life that we make has benefits and consequences pros and cons while the mass mandate was an effective

087necessary and powerful measure to prevent the spread of cove 19 in 2020 and 2021 the time has come for it to end while the benefits have diminished with vaccination and milder variants of the virus its costs have been slowly building and lurking in the background rates of depression anxiety and substance abuse have risen during this pandemic to stop this rise the pandemic must end pandemics can end in two ways eradication or acceptance the first option is impossible this virus is too contagious but the latter is achievable and necessary we simply cannot take the losses anymore as they degrade the quality of our education we cannot support a world where children fail develop the skills to effectively and appropriately communicate because they cannot understand facial expressions correctly we cannot support a world where the power of

088the human smile to bring joy to others is suppressed muffled and eliminated but most importantly we cannot support a world where the fear of the few overshadows the facts and logic of reality and data in conclusion we must liberate rather we must free the smiles because happiness is meant to be spread and the measures we use to combat this evil virus are no longer necessary it is time to pull down our mass and once again breathe the fresh air of freedom and admire the smiles of our friends our teachers and our classmates the great franklin delano roosevelt said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself it is time to let go of our fear and return to normalcy thank you i yield the remainder of my time thank you jackson do we

089have any other speakers this evening good evening hi clark engel wayne pennsylvania i had a prepared statement that i spent a lot of time on with a lot of facts and figures about how the vaccines don't work and how masks don't work and i would just be repetitive if i read that off tonight so i'm just gonna kind of wing it here and get a little philosophical on you first i would just like to mention my i removed my one of my four children a second grader this year to a private school that's been masked optional since day one we haven't had to quarantine we haven't had to we haven't had to go virtual there has been no issue and virtually no one in that school wears a mask one other stat i would just

090like to point out that um as of today on the cdc's website there have been 912 deaths from children ages through 17 from from covid and that compares to 8.8 million cases that's a 0.01 of children who have died and that includes children with comorbidities only the uk tracks a difference between uh deaths from comorbidities versus those who don't have comorbidities and uh they only found 2.7 of all coveted deaths among all age groups stem from people with who don't have comorbidities so if you extrapolate that out that would be 25 of our children out of 8.8 million who've contracted covet would have died in the last two years our founding fathers took took a lot from the ancient greek civilizations they they in our democracy and in our constitution one of those things was

091they understood to have a free and democratic society free from totalitarian rule you had to have a liberal arts education that stressed critical thinking and i i challenge us all to ask ourselves are we demonstrating critical thinking to our children you know as socrates said education is the kindling of a flame not the filling of a vessel and i'm just going to leave you with one more quote tonight i think to think intensively and to think for oneself is very difficult we are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths prejudices and propaganda at this point i often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose a great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically even the press the classroom the platform and the

092pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths to save man from the morass of propaganda in my opinion is one of the chief aims of education education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence to discern the truth from the false the real from the unreal and the facts from the fiction the function of education therefore is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically dr martin luther king jr thank you mr angel [Applause] good evening good evening kelly martin uh wayne um i'm here speaking for my children and 3576 of their classmates your vote on administration's recommendation for max mask option in radnor is long overdue i know it you know it our children know it when you vote tonight your vote will reveal a great deal about

093each of you individually we've seen you traveling throwing parties dining out at the gym not living in fear of the virus but you're force masking our children as though they are the virus you want to talk about privilege with our kids in their classrooms why don't we talk about people going to the sixers games the eagles games the phillies games trips to aspen going to martha's vineyard arizona new york city all without masks the students the 3578 students in radnor that you keep locked up in their masks would just like to attend school for many of them attending school without a mask is the highlight of their year they don't get to go to the hamptons they don't get to go to the sixers game their big adventure is seeing a smile from a friend

094or from a teacher that's the highlight of their day for 712 days you've been living your life carefree you've stolen all of that from them and it's time to give them back what you took i've listened to some of your silly justification for masking and frankly your excuses are getting embarrassing at this point our administration has done the research and attempted to educate all of you on their findings through last week's presentation and the slideshow that they did when you heard administration's recommendation for mask optional in radnor were you overcome with joy did you celebrate that we could finally unmask our children did you send texts and messages to one another and to your family celebrating the move to endemic in radnor based on the questions asked last tuesday it sounds like a group of

095people desperately clinging to a dying narrative instead of listening and taking the data in your pushback in your questions on february 15th revealed your inability to let go of political narratives and pivot based on actual data and information presented to you by experts that you previously supported why were you so glum in all the land there's not a single study to support a benefit of full-time masking for our children all the while there are mounds of evidence proving that masking 5 to 18 year olds in the u.s has been a catastrophic failure even if you don't keep up with the news you've by now received the urgency to unmask the kids research countless times even just from me it's calling for the immediate unmasking in fact experts have specified that all students should be unmasked

096by february 15th at the very latest yet none of you saw fit to call a special meeting why what are you waiting for as i've said to you in the past when you know better you do better and i gave you all the benefit of the doubt up until about june of 2021 unmasking now you know better yet despite knowing the harms of force masking our children you continue to suffocate radnor's littlest citizens for seven hours per day no one is asking for a masking ban parents and children are asking to choose we want families to do what's best for them and their children some may wish to unmask some remain mask some may change on a daily basis if a family traveled they may wish to remain masked for a few days if a

097family member is going into surgery their children might be extra cautious and mask going forward masking will look different for everyone but we must have the ability to choose for our families what works best for us as you can see by the full room tonight your emergency powers to mask our children has come to an end it's over you no longer yield the power to limit our children's oxygen you don't have the right to choose an unproven emergency medical intervention for my children you don't have the right to make medical decisions for my children you don't have the authority to limit the amount of oxygen my children breathe and no matter your vote tonight we and radner are done with forced masking four minutes has expired today on the 712th day of the two weeks

098to slow the spread we're taking a leap into the direction of healing this generation of children in bradner we will no longer force them to hide their smiles we won't force them to muzzle their faces or muffle their voices we won't treat our children as dangerous vectors of disease we will respect our children we'll respect our children's voices and allow them to breathe freely we'll support our children and promise never again to sacrifice their well-being for a few adults peace of mind we demand that you respect our children and their right to an unobstructed airway we will remind our children that they are our first priority here in radnor in the united states of america we will fight for our children's right to be educated in our schools with the freedom to show their faces

099to free their smiles and the right to breathe in fresh air thank you very much thank you good evening hello my name is laura dethelsen i live on overlook lane in wayne and i decided against bringing my son but i wanted to show you his face because this is who i'm speaking for tonight and i know he's watching right there so george remember mommy always stands up for you i've heard a lot of talk about who mask harm i have heard some of the people in front of me say that kids don't mind them they don't even notice they they are wearing them so i asked tonight who do mask harm i'm standing here speaking on behalf of george and all small children who have to bear the heaviness of this terrible situation the children

100have been voiceless through this process i am here tonight to tell you in no uncertain words the one person that mask harm is my son george among many others george has asked me to tell you that mass give him headaches every day he also asked me to tell you that mask hurt him behind his ears can you imagine trying to learn the basics of reading and writing while you have a headache and your ears hurt i'm seriously asking you this can you imagine that as a seven-year-old in fact george has never known elementary school without the headaches in the ear pain he started his kindergarten year last year virtual then hybrid then finally seven and a half hours yes this includes the bus and a mask it is an understatement that my child who used

101to love school now hates it i have an uphill battle at this point you might ask why he has headaches i've taken him to an ent to try to resolve his speech issues that comes up next and the ent found that he has very very narrow nasal passages so breathing through his nose is hard enough without a mask so imagine with the mask as i mentioned he also has a speech issue that has not been improving in the past two years as i discover from his ent it has nothing to do with his hearing and as i've discovered from the speech therapist is that he's learned to say these words wrong and he needs to be able to see the mouth move he needs to see where the lips need to be he needs to

102see where his tongue needs to be this is an impossible task through a mask i have no doubt that as he's learning new words through a mask at school the sound is muffled and he's struggling with both how to say and spell these words in fact this is not just an issue for george but an issue for every single child in radner elementary schools as i stand in front of you i'd like to thank our superintendent who has recommended that our district go mask optional he has put forth a balanced and well thought out plan where all parties can thrive i have faith that he's spoken to all the other districts that have gone mask optional and will manage this process seamlessly i support you and thank you i was also happy to see last

103tuesday that 65 of teachers want to go mask optional one comment from the presentation last week read that teachers are burnt out and allowing mask optional would be one way to alleviate some of the things they're having to deal with my own mother is a teacher in texas she has been teaching in person since august 2020. she's been teaching without a mask since august 2021 my 65 year old mother i hear how hard it is and i support you speaking of teacher burnout the kids are burned out too one last time please look at george please think of george please remember who masks are harming thank you is there anybody else good evening hi hi there um mr petit i originally sent this in to be read but i just came in person so i

104could do it myself can you announce your name okay i can sorry you might not know who i am but that's okay it's for the record so my name is kate hart and i live at meadowbrook circle across the street and tonight i was celebrating my son charlie's 11th birthday so that's why i wasn't going to be here but charlie just turned to me and said mom can you please go across the street and ask them to unmask us so this is what i sent in but i want to read it to you all in person for charlie i'll try to keep this short since there's not really anything else i can add to the discussion this evening other than please look at the science look at our children and do what's best for their

105mental and physical health masks only protect the person that's wearing them if i wear a mask i'm protecting myself if you wear a mask you're protecting yourself you have a choice of what you want to do with your own body similarly parents have the right to choose what's best for their own child's body they can choose to mask their child or not mask their child it's that simple why do we need to come here tonight and beg you for our god-given right to choose what's best for our own children i listened to a meeting a few weeks ago where dr babson said that it's hard to prove that mass can cause mental health issues because there's no data i don't need to wait years for the data to prove that a mask can harm a

106child's mental health because our family as you know ken has personally experienced this and i've been given permission to share this tonight our son started experiencing heart arrhythmia last spring his heart began racing his legs became weak and he had trouble walking the first episode happened after he wore a mask at recess and became overheated we immediately took him to the pediatrician and he got an ekg to see if it was tachycardia they said his heart was normal they didn't know what was causing it he had two other episodes one in may and one in april and each time we were told that his heart was normal all summer he was maskless for the most part he didn't wear a mask at all especially not eight hours a day like he did at school and

107he didn't have a single episode all summer then in the fall when he had to wear a mask all day long he had another one in september and one in october resulting in a trip to the emergency room to be re-evaluated we took him to chop and he had to wear a heart monitor for 24 hours so they could track him they said his heart was fine they weren't sure what was causing these sudden spikes in his heart rate the only thing they could come up with that it was anxiety for wearing the mask it was the common element so i know for a fact that masking has harmed our son and i think the effects of masking our youngest people dr babson will take years to fully understand so tonight you can end this

108and give back the right for parents to choose what is best for their children and give back our children's right to breathe freely thank you is there any other public comment this evening good evening sir good evening i'm actually not going to talk about mass right now so um these probably won't clap but i thought you guys might want to clap here i'm going to give you a little bit of a break my name is nick warrensoft i've got three children in writer by the way i believe you need to unmask the kids so please vote for that tonight um so this covenant is a response to correct some inaccuracies to a recent article on the ride and write titled to ban or not to ban what belongs at rando's classrooms upon reading the article

109published earlier this month it was clear to the parents who participated in a noted meeting from the article with both teachers and administrators that the parents of meeting were misrepresented by the author as it relates to our meeting this article presented inaccurate and incomplete information comments from only one of the teachers involved in the discussion and interpretations from others who were not part of the meeting we parents like to set the record straight so the topic of the meeting was to discuss our discovery of questionable reading teaching materials used in several classes including the music videos this is america and all right and a civil rights powerpoint presentation depicting current events with little no source recognition or context so the following issues were addressed using the aforementioned videos as teaching material violates board policies specifically

110put in place to ensure the appropriateness of any music videos movies and etc etc presented to our children specifically board policy 119 current events and controversial issues 8 15 acceptable use of technology and 105 curriculum development so parents report concerns about the video content of the attention of the rather high school administration did so independent of any part of group concerned about the summer reading list or books used as part of the curriculum the group of parents who approached the teachers and administration were not part of a group called radnor engaged we don't know what that is the parents filed the district's recommended protocol of first requesting a meeting with the teachers where administration teachers and parents are present to discuss where administration teachers are to discuss the concerns allow for conversation between all parties

111involved the september 2021 meeting with mr dunbar and mr payne did not involve any specific conversation about the summer reading list or wild the books were briefly discussed and tabled as a meeting was specific to the content of the videos which were being used as part of a curriculum for the ninth grade integrated class during the meeting both teachers acknowledged that they were wrong to use the videos that the teachers announced that they were violated board policies admitted that they were aware of the school board policies that were violated and apologize for using those videos and teach as teaching materials both teachers also acknowledge upon suggestion for mike radner high school administration and parents that would be beneficial to provide alternate viewpoints in their class to provide balance for example using the video all right

112by kendrick lamar which portrays an anti-police sentiment they agreed that would be useful to provide a counterpoint such as opportunity for law enforcement to come into the classroom and have a conversation with teachers and students concerns about the event the videos were brought to the administration's attention in september 2020 however there was no subsequent meeting scheduled between parents teachers and administration until a second complaint was filed later in the year in the article the author quotes rachel rachel skrilak low who says everyone went to school so everyone thinks they can be a teacher i think that's undervaluing the great and very careful craft of teaching in fact we're not attempting to tell the teachers how to teach their class the concerns related to violence videos violence in the videos shown guns used to murder people

113in the videos the use of the n word 19 times and the f word four times concerns were actually that these videos while they may be floating around society in the words of mr payne they are not appropriate for 13 and 15 years four minutes is expired so sir you know if your time expires and you want us to hear the rest you're welcome to email it to the board and we can create it my name is cameron ezereno 243 willow avenue thank you i'm almost done madam president i'd like to raise a point of order i believe this occurred at our june 2021 meeting as well um we don't have a mechanism for yielding time in our board policies yeah perfect so i'll finish as i was one of the parents and you know

114hold on one just quick second dr batchelor wanted to make a comment so would you hold up for one that's all just that is accurate we're not the the congress where you can yield time so but if you would like to come up and finish and share your comments you can share your comments because you can't yield time so cameron azarano wayne pa in the meeting where the author was not present the teachers further acknowledged that going forward they would be following school board policies to the letter of the law our question is this why are we here again the teachers apologized understood the videos were inappropriate and school policies were broken the author did not reach out to any of the parents involved in the meeting and it was evident to us that the

115information that she presented in her article was based on a one-sided interview with a teacher we are not here to dictate curriculum that's what the school board administration and teachers do but parents do have opinions and require policies to be followed we are here to ensure an accurate depiction as to why we requested the meeting and what actually transpired academic freedom does not equal carte blanche in the classroom the united states supreme court has recognized academic freedom at the higher education level but not k through 12. good judgment choosing what is right versus wrong is essential and your policies are put in place to help ensure that thank you for your time thank you is there any additional public comment good evening hi um my name is lizzy martin and i live in wayne i'm

116an 8th grader at radnor middle school and i would like you all to vote for masks to be optional at in schools i think that it's very important to see to hear your teachers when they're teaching you and i think if you see someone smile in school it's just like it makes school better because um it's like easier to learn when you hear when you hear your teachers talking and you don't have to always say what or what did you say so thank you thank you lizzy is there any other public comment [Applause] good evening good evening uh i'm emma newton and i'm sorry i just couldn't hear your name huh i'm emma newton and i go to rms and i would like it if you guys voted in favor for mask optional i'm tired

117of wearing a mask makes it hard to breathe and it would be nice to see my classmates faces so please listen to me and others and make masks optional thank you emma is there anybody else in the room who would like to make public comment this evening sir oh two people okay good evening sir my name's ed martin bryn [Music] and it's pretty heartbreaking to hear some of the things that kids are going through today and it's only right now nobody knows the long-term effects at all for these children i have a i don't have any presently kids in school they've graduated but i do have a four and a half year old grandson it's going to enter the radar school district his mother moved from florida where that area didn't have a good school

118district so she came up back home because ratner school district is one of the best i'm retired but i do work part time at a major university it's less than a quarter mile from radnor high school is let me ask you a question is the air any different at radnor high school than it is at this major university the president listen to the science listen to the community statistics his cases dropped from his students dramatically just like the ones i saw on the screen he decided to go mass option and that's a big step because last time i checked radnor had under 1500 students i might be off a little bit the villanova has 10 000 to 12 000 students and their statistics mirror maybe not to the number but if you looked at the

119number of students versus the students of radnor they mirror pretty much the same so i'm in support of mass optional for kids and just hope it might grandson go to school without a mask it's all thanks thank you mr martin there was someone else who wanted to make a public comment good evening hi erin hill brookside avenue and wayne i'm coming here tonight asking the same thing that everybody else has gotten up here to ask is that you follow science when this pandemic started we relied on the experts to develop guard rails and to come up with statistics so that we knew how to handle this and we did that and science is not always exact and sometimes it's scary and my family knows this deeply and personally after suffering a terrifying and life-altering post-vaccine

120incident my husband and i made the extremely difficult decision to follow science even after our medical crisis and we had our children vaccinated because science was it scary absolutely was it the right thing to do yes we wanted to show our children that the adults in their lives would follow science even if it was difficult even if it scared us and even if we were uncertain of the outcome and we thought it was the right thing to do to protect our community to protect our family we're asking that you the adults in their lives that are making huge decisions for them follow science even if it's scary and even if it's uncertain our family has followed what was asked of us it is your turn to follow what is asked of you and we expect

121this from our leadership somebody else said tonight that leaders follow facts not fear and we are asking that you do the same thing tonight thank you is there let's see public comment good evening good evening melissa sykes new town square hello i have three kids that are in radner school district before having children i was a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit one of the things i learned early in my career as a nicu nurse was the importance of family centered care and infant driven care the family was very involved and they should be as they should be in the care of their baby the nicu staff might not have always agreed with decisions that individual parents made for their babies but respected that it was their baby and their decision this applies to

122my views on masking now i think the decision to mask or not mask my children should be made by my husband and me when i was a nurse there was many times the medical team recommended something that the parents did not agree with in these situations the parents would sit down with a neonatologist and discuss the risks and the benefits of the recommendation and then make a decision this has been the problem with masking kids since day one there wasn't an honest dialogue about the risks of masking children seven hours a day another thing i learned working with babies in the nicu was the importance of early intervention my own twins were born premature and benefited from receiving early intervention services fast forward to 2022 and the cdc just quietly lowered the standards for speech

123in early childhood development now children should know about 50 words at 30 months rather than 24 months instead of highlighting the harmful effects masks and lockdowns have had on children the cdc just lowered the bar for milestones with these updates there will be a decrease in early identification when we all know that early intervention is key children may academically fall further behind i mentioned this because at the curriculum meeting last week ms solomon you said that the cdc is still recommending that people wear masks when they are indoors i don't think we should be following the advice of a political agency that is lowering the bar for children they should be acknowledging how having educators and child care workers wear mass around young children is affecting their learning and their speech please follow family and

124student-centered education and let parents decide if they want their child to wear a mask or not if parents want their child to wear a mask they can still wear a mask ratner said that they would provide high quality masks to students including kn95s when available a doctor from johns hopkins said if someone is wearing a mess that's well fitting that's an adequate mask one way masking works please vote tonight to make mass optional and i'll close with a quote from nelson mandela there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way at which it treats its children please vote mascot thank you miss sykes is there good evening good evening michael lake bryn mawr i'm not going to go into the piles of studies and research of how harmful maths have been

125to children mentally physically and developmentally compounded by mounts of forced remote learning as my neighbors already have i'm not going to bring up the complete lack of data showing clap cloth and paper masks have no effect whatsoever on case counts or transmissions because the board seems not to care i will however bring up just two facts marple newtown school district right next door with the same size student population and a mass optional policy currently has half as many active cases as ratner half don't you find that interesting also delaware county population 570 000 not a single new case of covid was reported yesterday at first i thought you might just be misinformed of the science the hard data or just plain paranoid about contacting contracting and spreading the virus after hearing the solomon's heartfelt monologue

126last december regarding our duty to wear masks how after seeing and hearing about your masculus axe throwing dinner outings trips to new york and attending a sixers game downtown during the curriculum board meeting i know you weren't afraid of the virus despite statistically being at a higher risk than our students i was also appalled to see the board publicly post a video of the third graders who were allowed to be masculist indoors just long enough to sing your praises during school board appreciation week is that what it takes to breathe fresh air in radnor school building kiss the ring or perhaps just two more weeks as you virtue signal up there flaunting your paper and cloth masks behind plexiglass you may think of yourselves as our shepherds will listen to me now our kids are

127not your sheep the emperor has no clothes and it is not a good look a mask option policy is long overdue i'm done we're done thank you thank you mr lake is there anybody else in the room and again just i'd like to remind everybody please help us by signing in if you haven't if you've spoken and you haven't it helps in the taking of minutes um so the signup sheet was over there if you wouldn't mind doing that we'd appreciate it thank you and welcome that's okay pardon me i'll do that on my way out whenever yes just help us for the sake of the wreck thank you yesterday if you come a little forward i can hear you better trish nunes from wayne pennsylvania thank you welcome thank you i don't have anything

128prepared i just i'm sitting here with my husband um listening to the parents and i as a parent i'm in full support of mask optional as well i'm also a licensed speech-language pathologist and for the past two years i've worked on my porch with some of the neediest and youngest children who parents have called me in tears asking is there any way that you can work with my child they can't get services they're not getting services this is a disservice to them that they can't have their basic services and needs met by any speech-language pathologist in a school i haven't been allowed in a school and if i am allowed in a school how can i possibly deliver services through a mask where i can't see what they're doing and they can't see what i'm

129doing we sat there with my husband and i've been so inspired and moved by the words of these parents we all feel the same way and i texted my children and our group texts and i said you know what you're not wearing masks tomorrow we're done and and our youngest all three are in ranner schools our youngest seventh grader texted back yay nice what if i get in trouble that's what he's worried about we're done thank you good evening good evening my name is colin whalen uh in wayne poplar avenue ken i want to personally thank you for your open dialogue over the last 18 months it's been very helpful but you know we're not getting anywhere so i've been a radnor resident for three decades i'm a business owner based out of wayne i'm

130a volunteer township board member my family is invested in radnor township but the school board has failed our children because of fear tonight is your opportunity to right your wrongs i started at radnor middle school in fifth grade in 1995 which was my first year in the radnor school system i immediately fell in love with the school the town and its people so much so i've decided to raise my children here now my daughter has started in the middle school this year with a mask on and you know what she hates school she truly hates school not because of the school work because she has to wear a mask because the teachers bully her for how she wears the mask she wears a mask because nobody talks to anyone anymore because she has to eat

131lunch six feet apart from her friends like she's some sort of leper do you realize the damage you were doing to these kids do you fully comprehend what you're doing because i don't think you do you're damaging these children physically and mentally our kids cannot communicate anymore because of these facial devices you insist they wear facial devices that do nothing absolutely nothing except control the user this is a hundred percent about control every other age group has removed the mask why are we still forcing the least vulnerable population to wear these devices on their faces what is the reasoning what is the logic is there any evidence that mass on children prevent covet deaths in children or teachers is there any there is not and we know this because other states around the country have

132never instituted masking policies and their numbers mimic ours that is the most crucial fact that you are ignoring the graphs are identical when compared side by side identical so why do we ignore that fact can you answer that question i know you won't because i've asked many questions on masking that go unanswered or i get pre-scripted replies with positivity numbers and covet thresholds and how there's joy and happiness in all the schools but we all know that's not true you know how you stop covet stop testing and cases go away then kovic goes away my daughter hates school but she's a straight a student is that fair it's not fair a straight a student is excelling in all her classes and she hates school that's not fair and my wife and i have had enough

133we've done we're done with mask we've been done with mass from the beginning we've told our daughters not to be fearful of this virus because i can report without hesitation your fear is greater than a 12 year old's and that's sad did you know 75 percent of all covet deaths had four or more comorbidities what does that mean it means these people were really sick before they got coveted i mean really sick and the pre-existing conditions killed them not covet 30 or 75 of all covet deaths and you're treating our kids like they have the plague like they are spreading the plague to the teachers who mind you are fully vaccinated are you suggesting the vaccines don't work by forcing our kids to continue to wear these devices on their face four minutes is expired

134when are you going to start using common sense and the logic which should be added to curriculum mind you because it doesn't exist anymore you don't use common sense and logic you use sound bites and opinion as fact and we're sick of it it's time to grow up people die it's a big bad world out there once you get past the fear you can start realizing there's nothing to be afraid of live your life turn the tv off start to live again start to breathe again stop living in fear stop instilling fear in the teachers stop instilling fear in the students stop instilling fear in the public and please remove the mask thank you thank you good evening everyone i'm dalila shamsadin 213 spoiled villanova i'm a dentist that i've been practicing for the last

13525 years i didn't have the intention to talk today but i listened to what others had to have to say and i thought i should give them a perspective from a dentist so on a daily basis i am seeing from wearing masks my i'm seeing patients uh presenting with more oral health problems patients that have been seen for years are presenting to me today with periodontal disease that they didn't have more cavities due to dry math from wearing a mask and changing the oral flora that thrives in the oral cavity i have three kids in their radnor school district one in elementary one in middle school one in high school my elementary school student is a special education student so he has his own barriers in his brain he's in his own world the school

136district has imposed yet another barrier and that's the mask um he needs to see smiley faces uh he needs to know that other people are seeing his him smiling my high schooler gained weight and he had to go through intermittent fasting to lose the weight i'm lucky that he had the courage and the strength to do that um i have a friend who's a psychologist and she has never she tells me that she's never been as busy with teenagers as she is now during the covet era i want to give a different perspective today from an immigrant i came to this country for one thing the freedom of choice i want to be afraid the choice to decide for my own kids uh the choice that i'm seeing being taken away from me and from

137my kids i choose for my kids to be unmasked please vote for mask optional tonight thank you is there another any other public comment in the room my name is doug mcconaughey i live in poplar avenue i've also been in town for a really long time since the eisenhower administration i do want to say one thing whatever you decide this evening don't stop testing just not knowing the answer does not help thank you mr mccone is there any other comment in the room this evening okay [Applause] good evening i'm margaret margaret martin i live in bryn mawr i just wanted to say please please let it be mask optional i agree and there has been many like psychologists psychiatrists that are overwhelmed with the number of young children that are having difficulty because of the

138masks you all wanted to follow the science for the last couple years why are you dragging your feet now i don't understand i just simply don't understand i work and when i'm wearing my mask at work and running around and i get a lack of oxygen my oxygen level will drop and then i'm looking like i had a few drinks you know it's true it's true please do the right thing for our children they can't see smiles that's very important and i'm starting to think i mean that the people that want to keep the mask option going are basically not happy people and don't want people to see that they're frowning all the time so can we just reimagine radnor back to ragnar thank you thank you ms martin is there any other comment in

139the room this evening anyone who hasn't yet spoken not at this uh comment period we are you coming up to me comment my name is ann koski and i live in wayne and my twins go to wayne elementary school and they're in first grade and my daughter wrote you guys a note tonight um her name's cece caskey dear school board from cece koski i want to go mask optional because i can't hear my teacher i can't hear my friends it is foggy with my glasses on and when i give my friend a card i can't see if they like it or not please go mask optional that's it i just told her i would cycle thank you for sharing that is there anybody else in the room who would like to make a comment okay

140we do i believe have emailed public comments so we will pivot to that mr petit are you ready to read us public comment uh thank you miss coleman we do have a good amount of public comment tonight um around 50 so hope everyone's comfortable okay i'm going to i think we may need a brief bathroom break um we let me just confer with our superintendent for a moment if i may all right given that we have 50 public comments coming and they could be potentially four minutes each if you if mr petit or anybody else needs to leave the room to take a quick bathroom break i hope you'll forgive them and we will move through this as efficiently as we can i want to thank everybody in the room for coming forward to make

141their public comments tonight and i would just appreciate so that we can hear the comment excuse me excuse me for the sake of being able to hear of the people yet to come i would just really appreciate it everybody could uh keep the noise to a minimum and let mr pettitti read us through the next 50 comments thank you very much okay thank you hillary lehman 19 haymarket lane hello i'm submitting the following public comment for the 222 board meeting i'm running to express my support for the administration's recommendation to move to a mass optional phase there was a time in this pandemic where it seemed as though masks made enough difference in preventing the spread of the virus such that the downsides of the masks were worth it things are different now we have

142a variant that doesn't seem to care about masks we have data showing that cloth masks aren't as effective with this variant we have vaccines available to everyone five and older we have a milder dominant strain we have treatment available the benefits of the masks are more questionable and the downside seem more worthy of our consideration and do not think that nine board members should be making these decisions however if that is the case i believe the decision makers need to ask important questions you need to ask them today you need to keep asking them as more information is available please consider the following one are cloth mats effective in reducing the spread of the coronavirus in schools one way to answer this is to consider do schools that require cloth masks have lower transmission rates

143than those that don't i hope someone knows the current answer to this question two if yes is reducing the spread of the coronavirus and schools still still our collective goal should it be over the last two years i would have said the answer was yes but we need to keep asking ourselves this question does the availability of vaccinations for everyone over five who wants it combined with the very very low rates of severe disease for young children change the way we should look at this three what is the downside of wearing a mask or the downside still worth it over the last two years i would have said of course there are downsides but they are worth it it actually doesn't take a scientist to realize that wearing a mask reduces your ability to fully

144communicate the way you naturally would expressing yourself with facial expressions and seeing the same from others there's also direct evidence that masks make it difficult to hear a speaker these downsides were generally tolerated in order to keep kids in school where they learn best and ultimately save lives our lives still being saved by requiring kids and teachers to wear masks in school given the shifting balance of the benefits and downsides of masking in schools i believe it's time in fact past time for the masks to be optional on a separate but related note i have a first grade son and i've never been inside his school or really like to meet his teacher in person see his classroom etc there are benefits to this human to human contact the families are missing out on is

145it still worth it if we are considering lightening up some of the covet related protective measures please consider this one as well thank you gabrielle bailey 204 woodstock road villanova i'm running today in support of superintendent bachelor's proposal to remove the mass requirement when positive case counts in rtsd are below 2.5 percent of the school or building's total student and staff population this is a reasonable approach to balance of student well-being and public health for the past 2.5 years we've been told to follow the science as of 213 the delaware county vaccination rate for persons 12 and over was 76.9 percent vaccination rates are rising and positive cases are falling studies suggest that the benefits of mandated school masking are modest while the costs are meaningful for some children especially those who have learning disabilities

146hearing issues and social and emotional issues further if families and staff want to continue masking they can choose to do so different circumstances call for different covert policies we're in such a moment please act now to help our students move to a more normal normal school experience and vote in favor of this recommendation jim higgins iii 603 south devon avenue wayne i'm running to voice my support for the proposed change to the rtsd health and safety plan to allow for making masks optional for children attending schools with a case count greater than 2.5 percent of the student and staff population i applaud the boys to the board's terrific work throughout the pandemic and admire you for the fortitude you've shown in your outstanding decision making the last 24 months this proposed change is a very

147reasonable one and weighing all factors i feel strongly that at this time the scale tilts decisively toward acting in the interest of the mental social and emotional well-being of our children as a parent of two children at west including my kindergartner who sadly does not even remember life before masks i urge you to adopt this change immediately the data strongly suggests that the strict protections that you rightfully put into place when schools reopened last year are geared towards the deadlines of 2020 and have long since expired for the fully vaccinated it is clear to me that the risk to our children's social development and mental health is far more grave at this time than the risk of cobalt possesses to the fully vaccinated poses to the fully vaccinated you have protected our children all along

148this change will continue the same priority of protecting our children above all else please continue to decide with science not baseless fear and adopt this change the health and safety plan thank you again for all you do keep up the great work kathy sonier 14 cornwell circle st davids i wanted to share three hopefully quick comments regarding the vote only asking at random schools before sharing a big thank you to the board members and administration for your service these past two years we know none of you signed up for the mayhem of living with and making decisions during a pandemic most of us know you are doing the best you can and we're appreciative of your time first point we asked our own kids 6th and 8th grade their opinions when the when debate first

149started about changing the mask policy unaided they both were a bit surprised and said that it seemed a little soon for removing masks maybe the spring will be best one commented they are best described as indifferent towards masks and don't see them as a big deal after all this time our sixth grader also added a concern that teachers may not want to come to school if kids aren't masked that comment surprised me and i felt badly that a 12 year old was concerned about that i think the student opinions matter more than the parents frankly and wanted to start with theirs before sharing my own second my personal opinion is also a bit of a difference i see both arguments i can't strongly advocate for one position or another i have been thankful for the

150mass mandate this winter because we had covered exposures in school and on the bus and were able to keep attending school thanks to masks and testing so the board administration have made the right decisions thus far and i'm confident you will continue to do so i appreciate that there is a threshold to determine if when it's time to remove the mass mandate there's clearly a need for an objective metric of when to go with or without mass that can be pointed to given the sensitivity of the topic which brings me to point number three and if this board hears only one thing from these comments please let it be this point regardless of the outcome of this vote i am most concerned about the division in the community in the extreme positions on both sides

151what happened at conestoga high school on 214 is sad and pathetic and i pray can be avoided in this community i rather see the majority of the debates sit with ways to mitigate vitriol intolerance and bullying by those who are too closed minded to respect others others whose perspective and opinions differ from their own this is hurting our kids more than wearing or not wearing masks thank you again for your time and dedication to our students and schools kelly mccoll mcclella 27 oakford road wayne our community entrusts you with the incredibly challenging responsibility of making decisions based on the constantly evolving science we thank you for your service and for listening to the concerns of your community the recent scientific data flooding our world speaks to the importance of shifting to optional masking for our

152children many parents like us supported masks in the very beginning when it seemed like a temporary solution to prevent the spread but two weeks to flatten the curve has turned into two years of our children's lives and masks vaccines are widely available the learning loss and health patches of long-term masking of youth are now known and it's reckless to continue to acquire masks when many parents are not comfortable doing so based on recent studies and recommendations from leaders at chop against mandatory masking of children numerous numerous local schools are leading the way with pivoting to operational masking and it's disheartening to see that ratner who is a leader in academic excellence is lagging behind with policies in the best interest of our community option masking allows those who have any reason they want to mask

153that choice while giving those who choose to not mask the same choice please help us make please help make us rtsd proud and hear our community through allowing parents the option the division we see in our community is heartbreaking and i believe we all want what is best for our kids and community but perhaps some folks just see a different way of getting there optional masking allows parents to take back the choice of what feels right for their family thank you for your consideration partnership rob and kate myers 301 orchard way wayne thank you mr bachelor for your resolution to remove masks from our children during the school day around our school board members please put your personal politics and or irrational fears aside and improve this resolution for much of 2020 and 21 you

154exhorted us to follow the science now it's time to heed your own advice because the science is clear massing our children during the school day is harmful to their development well-being early studies that were the basis of the recommendation to mask our children have become discredited furthermore subsequent studies provide compelling evidence of the harmful effects of making our children wear masks all day what we also now know from a plethora of statistical evidence is that the virus itself poses a negligible risk to our children as such making them wear masks all day despite the harmful effects on their development and well-being is the societal equivalent of killing an ant with a sledgehammer under mr bachelor's resolution parents who feel differently and want to keep their children masked may do so we respect the right of

155parents to make health choices for their children and we want that same right lastly many school districts in the u.s around the world and mpa have rescinded school mask mandates without suffering any ill effects from doing so is there a different strain of the virus percolating and random pa that requires us to harm our children by keeping them masked our children have suffered enough improve the resolution to remove masks immediately steve kerr 120 hickory lane brymar as requested i'm sending my concerns about updates to the mass policy to my school's principal dr stevenson i hope you can share this feedback with the administration so it can be incorporated in the february 22nd presentation i'm also copying the school board's public comments mechanism so this feedback can be considered by the board during its meeting on

156tuesday i want to start by knowing that i'm in favor of developing guard rails for masks that can be made optional as well as guardrails from what masks will be required again and i believe we may be it's be at a point either now or in the near future where we can safely make masks optional in school but i strongly believe establishing sound scientifically based guardrails is critical to the ultimate goal of keeping in-person schooling open and on february 15th the administration did not demonstrate to me that its guardrails fit these criteria i believe the administration needs to present a stronger case to the board and the members of the community before changes are made to the health and safety plan among my concerns with the administration's february 15 presentation to the curriculum committee there

157was no basis given from making 2.5 percent of a building's population the threshold to require masks please explain why this percentage is being proposed and what scientific medical guidance it is based on based on my inexact math the only time during the pandemic a building reached the 2.5 percent positive rate was during the first two weeks of 2022. is this correct are there any other weeks during the pandemic where a building reached 2.5 percent infection if not i am concerned about using a 2.5 threshold the administration applied during the february 15 meeting that rtsd came very close to being unable to safely staff buildings during the same two-week period noting that they were only able to safely staff all buildings because faculty generously gave up their planning period to cover other classrooms it seems obviously

158problematic to have masking guard rails that kick in at the same time the building is approaching a critical staffing shortage the masking gorrell should be designed to kick in earlier and mitigate the risk of reaching that critical staffing shortage the administration plot implied during the february 15 presentation that making masking optional is supported by the child policy lab this is flatly incorrect as of february 21st point number one on the chop policy lab guidance on k-12 education is that schools should quote continue indoor masking requirements within buildings and at school activities regardless of vaccination status unquote the administration's presentation should more plainly state child policy labs official position especially given the weight they are putting on that guidance thank you for your time and consideration of these points bess yates 309 west wayne avenue wayne

159first thank you all for you thank you all for what you have done to help keep our children safe and for trusting public health experts and following their guidance throughout this pandemic i'm not going to try to tell you how to vote on the masking policy and amendments to health and safety plan you have access to information data and recommendations that are not available to me instead i would like to email talk with you about the decision-making process the board has based its decisions on two basic priorities one student and community safety and two academic excellence students must feel safe and protected in their school and community environment or they cannot learn effectively and the community of teachers and staff must feel safe and respected in the school environment in order to give their best

160to students and families great learning requires great teachers academic excellence requires consistent instruction strong relationships between students teachers and families in ample instructional time these are the things that have been significantly affected during the pandemic and unfortunately our children have suffered for it autonomics i do not expect this board to act and make decisions on the basis of loud voices party politics the opinions of friends and family feelings beliefs or unsubstantiated quote research i do expect this board to continue to make rational decisions based on solid information local and state data and the recommendations of experts and i expect those rational decisions to prioritize student and community safety and academic excellence thank you for your time and for listening and again for consistently handling this tough time so well and thoughtfully george and melissa haynes

161108 pat and lane hello ratner school board we have four kids within the rauner school district third to eighth grades and we strongly support the elimination of the existing mass mandate thank you robin koontz 152 eaton drive wayne if not now when my kindergarten daughter has been in a mass since she was three years old my third grade son's only normal school year was when he was in kindergarten this temporary 2020 measure is going into its third year please support the young children who would immensely benefit from this mass optional policy if not now when and attached to that email was in a letter from the mainline parents supporting mask optional in our schools and this letter reads dear school board members we are a large group of parents from our four districts who have

162come together in support of the transition to mask optional for our students those four districts are randor lower marion te and haverford we appreciate your time regarding reading this letter and for the information you have shared on the mask optional opportunity in our district so far as you know numerous public private protocol and nursery schools in our region have already successfully made masking optional or they have approved immediate dates to go optional thankfully those that have already made the change have not seen adverse impacts on their case counts thanks to the endorsements of dr david rubin in the child policy lab as well as well as various frameworks provided by other pediatric experts we also know that going mask optional has the assurance of top children's health professionals based on all this and more we

163believe there is overwhelming evidence in favor of moving to mask optional as the coming week show further improvement in cova cases the government provides free n95s for families and children who prefer to mask mandates end state by state we ask you to consider why not now it has not been made clear through data or otherwise why school children remain the last constituents needing to be masked furthermore as garnet valley superintendent dr mark patrando said quote time is running out to restore some semblance of enormously for our kids unquote it has been an exhausting two years we know this is true for us and that this is true for you and while division may feel at an all-time high we have come together from all sides to show that we can unite peacefully and resolutely for

164our children while each of us may have gotten here in our own way the community of parents who support mask optional is overwhelming and growing in addition all of us are confident in our district's immediate abilities to provide safe school environments that would meet all students needs thank you for your time and support we look forward to moving forward together miranda zaragoza 258 willow avenue wayne my family and i appreciate all the time and efforts you put as part of the rtsd as you're evaluating to keep the students mask while indoors or allow them to be unmasked i hope you will keep in mind those students with high risk conditions or students that have family members at home that do not qualify to get the vaccine i.e young siblings while the kovic cases are low

165you know that removing the mask increases the chances of spreading kerbin we also need to keep the mask to protect our teachers and our staff members as a mom of three students in wayne elementary i firmly believe we should not take any chances and jeopardize anyone's safety colleen and colin whelan 211 poplar avenue we support and insist on mask optional for our daughter at rms starting 2 24. these children have gone through the warner miss goldman yes my child my choice comment was already written but read by this person it's done no that was the end of the comment so okay thank you steven morris 703 clyde circle brymar to board members it's time to relinquish control over our children for two years the nine members of the board have gone out of their way

166to expand their authority in name of science please clarify for me at what point in time copa 19 has presented a statistically meaningful risk to our children you continue to implement your draconian measures that have done nothing but harm our children you and your so-called experts could have been wrong about the science 100 percent of the time in fact your regulations and mass wearing nonsense have done the opposite of protecting our kids our children are falling behind in school they are depressed and at a time in their lives when social development is critical you put them in shroud what is even more disturbing in this forum this letter i am writing is meaningless as in it is my understanding your minds have been made up to continue mass wearing prior to walking in the room

167unfortunately this is not a surprise i've watched the other board meetings and witnessed smug responses on video art to arguments made by members of the community yes mr babson i'm referring to you how was the sixer game the other night by the way your science is anything but objective how is it how is it that we have absolutely no nationwide consensus on how to deal with quote the science that is because it is not science its politics you are guilty of fraud and stealing from our children the lasting legacy of this crisis will be a more powerful national and now local government and children that have been left behind i dare each of you to look into my kid's eyes especially my daughter with special needs and tell them why you did what you did

168they're not even in high school yet but they know something more nefarious is going on here explain to them why you spend any time and money during a global pandemic to rename a mascot your world is upside down right now you either too ignorant to see it or you're a part of it i beg of you leave these kids alone and koski 273 devon avenue wayne i'm running to add my support for round undergoing mask optional i feel strongly that the masks on my twin seven-year-olds who are in first grade at west are doing more harm than good they're both struggling in school when it comes to reading and writing they don't understand what the teachers are saying and they personally are exhausted from breathing in their own air all day long the other day

169as i was dropping them off at school my daughter asked me quote why don't my friends who go to other schools have to wear masks unquote she is referring to friends in private schools and neighbors with children in preschools what should my answer be i cannot think of one logical or scientific reason that has been presented for why any young children would need to wear a mask anymore they are largely unaffected by covert in any serious way in addition we go to the grocery store the mall the gym we have play dates with school friends play indoor sports attend events like sixers games and enjoy restaurants all without masks as most adults do so why is our school the only place left where my children are being tortured in masks for six hours a day

170this time at the board stop treating covet the same way we did in 2020 it was evident in the presentation at the curriculum meeting last week that rtsd versus optional schools show no difference in stopping the spread or exposure of covet the uptick after the holidays and declines since then are all the same in the graphs that were provided so what are the mass doing other than hurting our children the copa threat has changed and it is time to change how we're responding to it in our schools runner is supposed to be one of the top schools in our state raising leaders it is time for our board to be leaders and not become followers take us out of 2020 coveted and into 2020 to where covert is not as scary please save our children

171and vote mask optional sarah cawell 221 midland avenue there are minimal cases at radnor jan kelly 841 mayland road new town square i'm a parent of school-aged children who live in this township and ask the board to move to mask optional immediately gary cutler one rodner rodney road brynmore please vote to remove the mass mandate for ratner schools leah de ignazio 170 meredith avenue bryn mawr i'm a mom of four boys in rhino school district i'm strongly for unmasking the children completely even on the school bus my children never wear their masks out at the stores mall playground etc i test them every so often just to make sure and we have not had any issues children learn better and communicate so much easier with no masks valerie lingo 200 lansdale avenue wayne please vote

172yes for mask optional for our students it's time now luke tobin 425 yorkshire road i hate having to wear masks numbers are down and i personally feel like it's affecting my learning it's itchy annoying and it's overall not even working tons of people don't wear masks properly so the purpose isn't served also to add on we don't know the long-term effects of these and i have not seen my classmates faces in over two years i can't breathe say it louder i can't breathe ian hartman 201 walnut avenue wayne i'm wearing this running to support the administration's plan to modify the mass mandate students and staff are eligible to be vaccinated and anyone who is in their high-risk group or is particularly risk-averse can choose to wear an n95 mask which provides strong protection regardless of

173whether others wear a mask masking kids and other cuban measures impose costs on our students that exceed any benefits it's time for schools to get back to normal ali king 322 valley road bryn mawr when voting about giving students families a choice to wear masks or not while attending school i urge the school board to look at the opinions and facts of all sides not just those of their personal affiliations i ask you to think of our students who rely on facial cues tones and expressions on a daily basis in order to communicate accurately all of our elementary students are in this population all of them whether they have a processing disorder learning disability or in the gifted and talented program or on the spectrum or functioning at a mainstream cognitive level we're doing a

174disservice to our young students when we do not factor this population and their age-appropriate reliance on facial expression and word formation into the debate and whether to mandate masks in our schools or not the rtsc summer reading program did not mandate masks in 2021 and there were no cases of covet spreading in our schools during this time wearing a mask to school or not should be a family choice and probably one that is ever changing on a daily basis as parents yourselves wouldn't you agree that you know what is best for your child better than anyone else please allow all all rtsbt parents this right as well thank you for your time and efforts in making rtsd a truly amazing educational institution samantha casavage 275 south burma avenue please do the right thing and go

175mask optional if mass work then there should be no reason to worry those who wish to stay mass can those who wish not to should not be forced take off my coat talk excuse me take take a minute or two there mr petite thank you land over road first of all thank you to the board for all the good you do and for your cautious handling of the pandemics so far i like to urge you to continue to keep mass mandatory for all students and staff in round or school at the moment paplo's plan of dropping mass mandates when positive cases are below 2.5 percent if it had been in place when beginning of the pandemic would result in only three weeks that masks would have been required in random schools universal mask wearing helped

176keep numbers low and allow kids to stay in school even when only three or four feet between desks was possible what is the updated plan for determining closed contact should mass become optional if a six-year-old test positive or all the children seated around them in class within six feet this could presumably be eight children considered to be close contact it was responsible for remembering how many of these nine children were wearing a mask correctly on the last day of contact often several days prior to test results does this all fall on the teacher when are when they are in mtss groups and specials with different seating arrangements who will be responsible for keeping track of who may have been unmasked and within six feet of an ill child mass have done a great job protecting

177our children's health and their teachers we still need them i would urge the threshold of lifting mass requirements to be a much more cautious number thank you allison engel rhs sophomore my my name is allison engel i'm a sophomore at minor high school and i would like to talk about our mass mandate currently in action at my school in the other four schools in my township i'm very aware of the new rule that has been passed by our state stating that it is up to schools to decide whether or not students should continue wearing masks and it is time to change our district rule i have been extremely diligent wearing my master in school but in all honesty i am very exhausted by the constant rules and requirements that have been made i feel that

178wearing mass in school at this point of low cover numbers is unnecessary and after having my face covered for the past two years i do not believe i as a healthy 15 year old girl need to continue wearing my mask i'm not seeing my friends faces the smiles from teachers in the hallways being able to sit with my friends during lunch and not be reprimanded and yelled at for being too close i'm tired of it i understand that masks are meant for protection but i go to work i hang out with my friends i play sports all without a mask and look at me i have yet to contract cover my team i could list tons of similar cases of kids in my school doing the same in addition i've gotten sick three times not

179with cover but with the cold a sinus infection and a cold again i have never had these same viruses countless of times throughout my childhood i have had these same viruses countless times throughout my childhood but never have i had to stay home for countless days to fight a sickness i was able to battle within hours just two years ago i connect my weak immune system to masks throughout the day i breathe in air that is filtered through a mask that with just one breath is already soiled in germs i'm breathing back in my germs this is why i am continuously getting sick by wearing a mask for more than six hours a day i do nothing i do nothing give my body a chance to take a breath of fresh air i will just

180continue getting sick because all i am doing is breathing in this poisoned air you act like the air is contaminated with germs which it is but believe it or not our body needs those germs to fight infections and viruses and preventing us from doing so is making us more ill you were doing the opposite of what you desired you say you care but about what it's clearly an honor education i want you to sit in any classroom in any school and sit in the back tell me how well you can hear the teacher not very well try learning lesson after lesson from a teacher that is forced to wear a mask it's nearly impossible to learn if you weren't so concerned about keeping masks on us maybe you would take a look at grades to

181see how most of them have dropped since the pandemic we're going to school to learn and i feel my education has been destroyed simply because i cannot hear think about the importance of facial expressions how are students to feel excited about a lesson when they cannot see smiles think about the younger generations poor little kids who are just learning to read and write but cannot see their teacher moving their lips the importance of facial expressions are something we can no longer live without walking into school in the morning and not being able to see emotions makes me barely want to continue my day in that building no one is happy and if they are i cannot see it i understand you think you care about our health but all you are really determined to do

182is create rule after rule so that you can have all the power well let me tell you i'm not the only one who is tired of your actions i dare you to send out another poll to students and give them a say on what our new mad school should be and fair warning you're not going to receive support to keep our masks on think about your decision long and hard let us breathe rafael fagundes rhs jr please make masks optional at this point everyone has had the chance to get a vaccine to be protected let people make up their own minds do not impose it hailey connard 269 cough creek road ratner first like to congratulate mr joseph daniele on his appointment to director of transportation mr danielle was our first point of contact with

183rtsd in 2014 when my three-year-old daughter was placed in a dciu preschool program in media i was i was told don't worry your local school district will send her on a bus unquote i thought of putting a three-year-old on a school bus to media was daunting to say the least however mr danielle was helpful at every step in arranging a safe ride as we all know delays happened but mr danielle would always call my call to let me know the status of her bus congratulations joe our family wishes you well in your new role secondly i support the administration's plan to move to mask optional in following recent meetings i heard board members say they need to understand the toll on masking because the kids seem fine with it i think enough people have shared

184or will share data and charts and studies so i will focus here on my child my three-year-old bus rider is now a fourth grader at rest with social emotional challenges and language delays she needs specific instruction to read her peers facial expressions and determine how to adjust her own behavior based on those social cues she also needs instruction basic conversation skills from the time she was small our team of professionals has advised us that her social development should be a prominent focus children with communication challenges may have difficulty later in life despite their intelligence if they do not learn the interpersonal skills necessary to gain and keep a job manage independent living or access post-secondary education these are the concerns at the forefront of my mind when it seems there is no end in sight

185to masking even though she's only in fourth grade she has not seen her friends or teachers faces at school since the spring of second grade i cannot show you quantifiable proof in a chart but how could this not take a toll on social development this is not criticism of any staff at rest she does not have much opportunity other than recess to practice reading social cues on pure faces when i am with her i notice that she is very quiet when we are in a mass situation as opposed to unmasked it's easier not to talk not to initiate social conversation and she needs to practice this often this is the toll for her she doesn't acquire these skills naturally or easily we've had almost two years of masks as a visual barrier yes my daughter

186may be quote fine with wearing masks because i have tried to put a positive spin on things as have our teachers at rest it's what we have to do to attend school being quote fine with it doesn't mean that there are no negative effects on her i encourage you to continue to trust the administrators that have navigated reopening our schools and kept them open through several surges surges that happened in spite of full masking or if not this plan then what is your plan for moving forward please don't delay another month but use this meeting to work with the administrative team and figure it out a parent last year asked this question regarding full reopening but what's it going to take i ask you the same question i'm asking if you want a different guardrail

187tell us what it is give families give families some clarity so they can plan for the future james ernst 813 gaylord drive to the esteemed rtsc school board my name is james erson i live at 1813 gaylord drive simply put the scientific argument for keeping our kids in masks and schools has collapsed dr david ruber in the chop policy lab as well as many other pediatric officials have endorsed mask optional yet despite the fact that not one of you is a medical doctor you seem to think you know something they don't is preposterous mask optional means anyone who still feels a need to wear masks may do so period stop the nonsense and make masks optional rachel's sri lank low 517 asking road wayne tonight i would like to express my appreciation for your ongoing

188commitment to the students and families of the school district this is no easy feat as we enter calendar year three of covid which is increasingly complicated by wide-ranging challenges from a small percentage of the population my family and i have struggled with the challenges of isolation and quarantine we worry about the cultural wars and we strive to build community that espouses care for others in civic engagement we are grateful that ratner school district prioritizes both care and civic engagement in their curriculum this letter is to thank the many teachers who show up to teach our children despite their own worries there are many exceptional teachers but tonight i'd like to express our gratitude to several stars who have nurtured inspired and motivated our children to become better people first sue dollstrom at west has an

189excellent curriculum and a dedication to our students that exceeds all others for example my children understand their right to privacy on social media and other digital apps another teacher extraordinaire is miss kindred who teaches math at the middle school last year when we were going through a very difficult time to decode that she was a beacon of light she checked in on us regularly and made extra time to help my child stay up to date on the school work she had faith in his abilities and provided the support he needed when he needed it most at the high school frau silverman is phenomenal not just in her ability to teach german but her in her ability to really get the students interested in all things german she takes time to get to know her students

190and she celebrates the wins with them finally i would like to acknowledge dan and maria drew and their never-ending support for the band program at the high school if you want to know where the heart of the school is go to the band room except in january when you'll find everyone at the band ball email an extra a million extra thanks to them and all the staff and parents who took the kids to universal studios earlier this month this is my son's first band trip but it won't be his last to close i want to reiterate my appreciation for the work that all the teachers do which they couldn't do without the leadership of district administrators like dr bachelor and his team as well as you the school board thank you for your time and

191commitment to our community jennifer carter 205 st david's court i heard the grapevine and some of you will not vote for mask optional on 222 i'm shocked that you are not following the science not voting for mass optional proves that you do not care about the well-being of the rtsd kids our kids are struggling they are not okay your motivation to not go mask optional is purely political i was hopeful that you would do the right thing and put the kids first instead of prioritizing our kids many of you have been gallivanting in philly at sixers games axe throwing with friends hosting political political campaign events attending broadway shows in nyc working out at tri main line fitness and wayne and hosting large family holiday events all without masks rules for thee but not for

192me time to do the right thing and allow families to choose what is best for the child it's time to go mask optional in all rtsd buildings you're all more than welcome to wear your mask but our kids deserve the freedom to choose your mass protects you and my mass protects me follow the science i realize you have all received multiple emails from me on the subject of mask optional i want to thank those of you that replied to me even though we disagreed to those of you that did not feel the need to reply to my emails thank you for proving the politics matter that politics matter more to you than discourse and civility with the people you represent please put the kids first tonight and vote mask optional for rtsd neil hermansen 800

193lawrence lane board members please consider some points for man's choice in rtsd system we understand the lack of empirical evidence especially with covid to inform proper guidance and safety can drive decisions to overcorrect miscalculate risk and possibly distort logic how many sporting events eagles flyers penn state etc galas fundraisers and other social events have been attended without masks and yet no reporting of disease spike or spread it can obviously happen but it hasn't the risk is on the individual to assume there have been no reported negative effects or expanded transmission in any of our kids sports playing unmasked were the long-term psychological anthropological human interaction and social learning effects on children being masked for so long simple things validated with dr paul ekman's and numerous others research on communication emotions and human learning human understanding

194are not being developed in places of learning with students wearing masks what additional detrimental effects does that have on children with english as a second language on a possible spectrum or just developing emotional intelligence please allow for mass choice and let our children around our children to develop and flourish john licardello van leer's run villanova reimagine randor supports a mass optional policy for all our students effective immediately we strongly support the plan presented by our superintendent dr kenneth batchelor we are excited that this six districts in delaware county are masked optional springfield pendleco ridley law enforce swarthmore marble newtown interbarrow and haverford the recent howard for vote was seven to one in favor of mask optional if you look at the marple newtown dashboard you can see their success last week there were only five

195cases of covet in their mask optional district the majority of private local schools have also successfully moved to mass optional have approved mass optional this includes saint aloysius st catharines baldwin the haverford school shipley episcopal villa maria sacred heart and notre dame the time is now for rather to move forward and give students a choice to mask or unmask our district has relied on our own experience along with consultation from dr rubin of the child policy lab this past sunday in the philadelphia inquirer dr rubin declared the quote given declines in case rates and then hospitalizations from cover 19 and the availability of vaccines in booster people can make their own choices around masking depending on their personal risk and risk tolerance unquote he would he went to discuss the acrimony in schools in regards

196to mask his expert opinion is that quote i do not think that the current value virulence of this violent virus demands continuing that level of division unquote you can look at ratner's summer school program and see that mask optional works for us schools throughout the country state and even in our backyard have been able to move to mask optional heartbreaking personal stories have been shared in board meetings unfortunately we all know someone who has a child suffering from mental health issues and or learning loss we are fortunate that outside of the classroom the majority of random residents have moved on this includes our school board members and their families outside of school our students participate in travel sports attend parties and socialize with friends unmasked the band just had an amazing trip to universal studios

197restaurants are full large events are happening and people are vacationing even celtics fans are attending sixers games in a stadium that holds twenty thousand people unlike twenty twenty we now know that cover nineteen is not sprinting in our schools the great thing about mask optional is that everyone is able to make the best choice for themselves let's vote tonight from ask optional and celebrate that as a district we respect that our community may not always agree but know that we all want what's best for our students in this case the best is allowing for both sides to have the option to decide what is best for their student lorna atkinson 10 high view drive ratner i'm submitting a public comment tonight to let school board members know that i i and my family appreciate the

198work they have done over the past couple of years to try to keep our schools and communities safe i know what a heavy responsibility it has been and i'm sorry that you have had to put up with name calling personal attacks insults and horrible accusations while carrying out your duties as school board members i'm saddened that some parents are happy to behave in this way towards the school board who are after all our fellow parents friends and neighbors we should be able to disagree and argue our positions without stoopings allow us to use terms like quote child abuse when talking about masking we all understand what real child abuse means the use of this phrase in this context is sickening it is a shame that we were not able to model better communication and behavior

199for the children of ratner who have been watching the adults during this pandemic i thank the school board for their time and dedication aaron zaheed 103 ekis avenue my name is aaron zahi 103 egas avenue bryn mawr i would like to show my support for the recent proposal brought to the ratner school district's board's attention regarding the request to recognize the muslim holiday of eid on the district calendar my daughters attend ryder elementary school and are in kindergarten and second grade the eid holiday being scheduled into the district calendar will allow our family to participate in our holiday celebrations without worry of missing critical educational activities i respectfully request you consider adding eid to the iran or school district calendar thank you for your understanding and consideration in this matter kimberly kent 712 cornerstone lane

200uh actually this is the same um this is the same letter from the mainline parents and support so i'm going to skip that one elif isman 1030 east lancaster avenue gerard casey school board members is going to be great practice of rtsd's inclusive approach by including major holidays of various faiths so this edition of the ramadan eid that is the most important observed holiday in islamic faith will be a huge live display of implementing this diversity inclusion by showing this is a living example to our students it will impact our but our budding growing minds for their future lives to help them to have a more realistic and more comprehensive vision of our world which include all of us in it thank you for all your efforts and time wyatt newton west 5th grader good

201evening board members one reason i don't like masks is because the masks i receive from school are too tight they poke me on my cheeks and are hard to breathe in and make me feel hot the masks i have at home are very uncomfortable like all masks therefore when i wear the masks i get hot and i get headaches like i did today today because of my headache i had motrin at school at 2 pm i'm asking you to vote for mask optional have a few more here on the cayman since the meeting began i can get to them did you finish the ones that you had originally mr petiti uh there's several came in um before seven o'clock okay they weren't on this list as they were coming in as i was compiling it

202okay so i can read those and there are a couple others as well that came in after the meeting began okay um but right now i'm having some difficulty connecting to access my one drive here so should i hold off until the end of the meeting on those or how or do i just keep refreshing coming up the internet isn't connecting so it's hard to pull them up is that it yeah here we go all right let me just let me gotta scroll all the way down here it's about 16 take your time um okay where was i okay and thank you i know you've been reading for almost an hour straight so thank you um did you say it's sammy carter um i hope you are doing well i'm running to you for the

203change of masks the mass optional it's been two years and the stats don't lie stats don't care about your feelings ryan webb rhs student i'm running you because of the recent discussion on removing these mandates as you can see several schools around us have removed them already and i think it is about time you put politics aside and put the children first i have no i have not seen my fellow classmates faces since february of my sophomore year please consider this comment when you guys are deciding to remove these masks because speaking from my classmates we want them gone no one said you couldn't wear them but i just want the choice thank you ben hart rhs senior this is ben hart senior at mentor high school please vote to make the masks optional people

204have the choice to wear a mask or not throughout the year i feel my peers and i feel my peers and i have felt very safe we're not wearing masks and paint places like the cafeteria for lunch please let us have a choice to make our own health decisions thank you samira buruji gallagher road wayne i have three children who have been enrolled in the randor school district since 2012 after moving from moving from tesd today i wanted to briefly talk about my experience as a muslim and ratner specifically the lack of representation of islam and our school islam and our schools students have countless days off for christian jewish and other religious and culturally significant days we're asking you to show the muslim community the same respect that you have shown other cultures and

205religions not only does closing schools on eid allow muslim students to spend time embracing their individuality without the stress of school work it also creates an opportunity to educate other young minds for example i have i have a seven-year-old son at wayne elementary recently he came home and asked me mom why have you mom everyone was talking about their holidays today why don't we have any holidays it was heartbreaking to see that despite all the effort i put into educating my child on his religion he could still not grasp the concept school is where children spend the majority of their time is a place of learning and islam is something they should learn about just as students do with other religions muslim families and students and rather want to feel included please consider representing the

206islamic community in the 2020-2023 school year thank you maddie plyler rhs senior i previously wrote a letter to the school board the last time masks were voted on i would like to briefly restate the points i made on my last letter as well as new ones i want to mention the fact that many students do not and will not wear their masks correctly no matter how many times you tell us to put it over our nose we will not do so they affect our breathing as well as our hearing being a person with a heart issue walking up flight after flight of stairs and the mask absolutely kills me i can barely hear my teachers and i have even asked to move in front of the class so i can hear them more clearly i

207cannot see anyone's facial expressions and it is so hard to recognize my friends in the halls we are absolutely miserable we want to see smiles again please hear us and make masks optional at radnor christopher tufaro 304 durnam drive it has been two years since scope it started i'm ready to get back to seeing the faces of my teachers and peers in person the majority of students and teachers agree with this sentiment please remove the mass mandate of radner nordazorn pilpat phd md 28 more circle wayne i'm a pediatric infectious disease physician and public health physician working in covid response daily it is wonderful to see the sharp decline of new case counts that dr ken batchelor shared in the recent letter from 208 cases in the last week of december 21 to 18 cases

208in the week of february 4 22 as well as a positivity rate positivity rate of less than 2.5 percent while we know that there is under reporting for a variety of reasons this is reassuring nonetheless thanks to you all for keeping our schools safe for our children and school staff we acknowledge the tremendous effort put in place to avoid mitigation measures why are we all eager to transition to a new phase i would like to share some thoughts as of today february 22nd the cdc data tracker still shows delaware county with a substantial community transmission according to cdc quote to maximize protection and prevent possible spreading covenant and others wear a mask indoors in public if you are in an area of substantial or high transmission even if you are up to date with your

209copenhagen vaccination unquote while we should all be excited to see the falling epicurve we cannot dismiss these high even if declining numbers of new cases and hospitalizations in our community we can all agree the code of transmission in school is closely associated with transmission in the community school does not exist in a bubble when we hear about our communities children who became coveted positive and had no or mild symptoms we are relieved that said we cannot ignore the fact that severe illnesses do occur in this population school plays a critical role in promoting equity not only for learning but also health particularly for groups disproportionately affected by covenant 19. a morbidity morality weekly report from cdc on february 15 stated that coinciding with increased circulation of the omicron variant cover 19 associated hospitalization rates among

210children and adolescents ages 0 to 17 years increased rapidly in late december 21 and especially among children ages zero to four years who are not yet eligible for vaccination unquote it's important that we keep a perspective of where we are in this pandemic last month alone i.e january 22 was the month with the most reported cases of the entire pandemic in delaware county this reflects what is going on in the world as well as per the center for infectious disease and research policy quote at this point there have been over 400 million cova cases around the world it took one year to get to 100 million it took seven months to get to 200 million and it only took six months to get to 300 million but more specifically it took one month which is

211last month alone from 300 million to 400 million unquote after seemingly endless travel children often ask are we there yet how about we take this opportunity to empower our school community tell them how well they have done how resilient they have been and let them know that we are just about there let's hang on and make this a unity moment for what we hope will be the last mile of this long journey together let's keep encouraging our students and colleagues and those who may be at higher risk to get their booster doses if they have not done so already we are still at substantial community transmission and hospitalization levels so let's wait a little longer before we take off our masks when we're physically close to each other indoors while it seems that we have

212been doing this forever someday we'll look back at this time in this community that we love and know that the people of ratner were worth the wait george the leftist 108 over brook overlook lane wayne i support i voice my support for going mass optional ratner the reasons i support this are as follows the cdc director rochelle belinsky has deferred its mass guidance to local jurisdictions one cannot in good faith say that the vote to go mask optional is going against the cdc guidelines guidance it simply is not the case the cdc has authorized local jurisdictions to make the decision on masks transferring responsibility on this decision to the cdc is improper we have learned from freedom of information act information that the cdc has been coordinating policy decisions on masks with the american federation

213of teachers the second largest teachers union this coordination severely undermines the independence of the cdc and undermines the scientific basis of their work at this point to treat the cdc as an independent scientific body on this topic is simply naive ken batcher's recommendation to go mass optional is well researched and should be honored he deserves our support no one in the room today has invested more time and effort into this analysis his judgment is sound and support ken's recommendation and for the school board to override him is wrong approximately half of america is no longer mandating mass to be worn in school we have a huge data set as to the effectiveness of masks in school and there is no statistically significant data that shows that mass-reduced cobra transmission in schools none the burden of

214proof to force mass to be worn on our children should we should be on the school board and that burden of proof has clearly not been met this is a high there's a high cost to being over cautious children wearing masks do not have the same learning experience and social experience as those without masks to say that we should mandate that our kids wear masks because it's being safe completely ignores the high cost of wearing masks in schools my son attends a speech therapy class where both he and the teacher wear masks for what should be obvious reasons one cannot teach speech therapy effectively in a mask as a result he is beyond behind in his progress again there is a high cost to being over cautious history in this community will judge those who

215force our children to wear masks very poorly trust the science trusted data unmask our children today ismail ben issa 1030 east lancaster avenue i'm a resident of the writers school district and have been living in this district for a few years i have four children enrolled in rest and rms and we are so happy with the quality education that they receive we are grateful to have chosen such a vibrant diverse and inclusive community as home for our family everyone in the district to include administrators principals teachers and community members are very warm and welcoming we want to specifically thank the school board members for their efforts to provide a quality education to our children in a safe and secure environment we applaud school district officials for embracing diversity equity and inclusion in our schools through

216the recognition and celebration of religious holidays from various faiths such as christianity and judaism for example this promotes cultural awareness and communal harmony among the students of the district we are extremely happy about this and would like to extend this to our religious holidays of eid al-aha and eid afiter they are the most important and joyful days for a muslim during the calendar year recognizing eid as a holiday on the school calendar is the best way to recognize and celebrate the most important religious holiday for a muslim and a great way to promote diversity equity and inclusion in our schools it will also serve the purpose of spreading awareness and highlighting the uniqueness of other cultures and traditions we respectfully request that you and the board adopt the eat holiday for the school calendar james

217donahue 225 parkway drive stand here today against masks them against the masks and your mandates my friend suffers from respiratory disease from the masks remove this now sydney sinead bortner 11 rocklin circle good evening thank you to our superintendent school board whose tireless work to keep our kids safe has helped our district over the past two years i have a daughter in the fourth grade in wayne elementary and i like to express my wish that for now the mass mandates stay in place as i sit at home listening to the comments i can understand the emotions and desires to make this optional my daughter was vaccinated and while she finds the mask uncomfortable at the end of a long day when i spoke to her about what she would like she shared that she feels

218safer and more comfortable wearing one right now and also wants to protect her friends while i recognize the number of cases is in decline i believe that our mass policies have helped with this trend we may have staff of students who are immuno-compromised who or who may want not be able to receive the vaccine for medical reasons and i hope that the board will place emphasis on protecting those most most vulnerable in our community if there is one person on school grounds who needs that added layer of protection then my family and my daughter are happy to continue wearing a mask i see the signs around our town that say my child my choice i will put forth that not everyone is in the same fortunate position and i would like us to think about

219the greater good as the board considers our options thank you for our time your time two three seven beachwood beachwood drive this is caitlyn kinkade please vote to remove the mass mandate and begin serving the residents you were elected to serve that is all okay thank you very much mr petiti really appreciate your tireless reading of other people's sentiments on this important subject dr batchelor do you have any follow-up to any of the public comment that you've heard tonight you'd like to share none at this time i think many of the public comments we will be addressing as we present the item on the agenda okay i'd like to make a motion for a five-minute recess is there a second second all in favor okay five minutes and we'll be back thank you so nice

220good evening everyone we'd like to resume the meeting if everybody could please take their seats we'd really appreciate it okay thank you everyone we will resume the meeting now and we're going to make a little change in the agenda at this point in the agenda we are scheduled to have our reports from board committees we're going to move that to the end of the agenda and we are going to go to our priority discussion and action item so i would like to introduce the recommended action for that priority discussion action item and that is that the board approves the updated health and safety plan and i would like at this point to turn it over to dr batchelor do you have a presentation dr batchelor that you and your teammate pardon me i thought we

221were going to start with the motion correct thank you thank you so i'd like to move that the board approves the updated health and place safety plan second thank you my apologies now we will turn it over to dr batchelor for a presentation if you have one dr bachelor thank you yes so we have the presentation uh that was shared during our curriculum committee meeting this past uh tuesday evening a week ago it has been adjusted some of the slides have been adjusted uh this presentation we can move to the next slide and i apologize it still says board curriculum committee meeting on the front cover it's it's you know been adjusted for tonight uh this presentation was developed first really in december uh in in december we had a board meeting when we discussed

222options there was questions from board members uh both in december and january and based on those questions uh and what are the aspects that we wanted to study we developed this presentation to address some of those questions as the board asked for this to move forward so i wanted to thank the board members for the questions and the help in developing this presentation very quickly since we did this presentation before mr bechtold are dan bechdel our director of secondary teaching of learning and dr shawn duke shawn our director of elementary teaching and learning are going to join me in this presentation we're going to try to move through it rather quickly since we've done it already there will be a competition uh mr bechdel and dr dukeevich for the belt of brevity um don't worry

223i will probably lose but we will try to move very quickly through it so the first part of the presentation um and i'm assuming also since board members have had time to see this presentation from last week is one of the reasons we can move quickly but that during the q a question period from board members we'll have time to address anything that maybe we move too quickly through but the agenda for our presentation is we just want to share the current data guidance the regional experience and masking mandate timeline we want to talk about the factors that we've considered in making this recommendation and we want to talk about the recommendation details exactly what's in this recommendation what aspects of the health and safety plan changing what aspects would the administration still have the

224authority to make decisions on as we move forward if we move to the next slide excuse me the next slide is what you've all seen before it's our current positive cases and where we are as a district so i'll move quickly past that and i'll turn it over to dr dukeevich all right thank you dr bachelor the next four slides in moving through represent current masking guidance from the cdc the american academy of pediatrics and child policy lab although we are told that updated masking guidelines are expected this week from the cdc the existing guidelines for each health agency currently recommend indoor masking in schools for all individuals that being said moving ahead to slide six chop policy lab has continued to expand on their guidance by opening a conversation into what are the next

225steps toward normalcy in a q a with dr rubin and a following blog post slide seven dr rubin expands on the conversations with what are the steps moving toward normalcy pre-covered times in our schools uh for the sake of time these are linked in here and sourced for those who want to learn more again dr rootman has opened the door to the conversation around moving toward normalcy although the guidelines themselves have remained the same moving on to slide eight as part of that aforementioned blog post in child policy lab additional guidance which spans the nation as well as county level trends are represented in that blog in those cases national and county level trends are summarized and in all cases in the blog case counts transmission rates hospitalization rates are all declining and in most

226areas of the country are said to be actively improving in a significant way moving ahead and transitioning to the experience that we've seen from other school districts in our region that have already gone to a mass optional platform beginning with bucks county so central buck school district in bucks county a much larger school district than us of course with 18 000 students and 23 schools they started mass optional in december right after the mass mandate was lifted for pennsylvania they saw just like a lot of us did the spike after the winter break and since that time a steady decline in case counts even with being mask optional their dashboard is no longer available on their website moving ahead to the next school district we looked at in bucks county that's penridge school district just

227like bucks county they started their mask optional the week of the 13th of december saw a very similar trend line after the winter break and a decline in cases thereafter their dashboard is also no longer available on their website moving ahead to delaware county two districts represented here first marble newtown school district a little different trend very similar of course but they went mask optional the same week as the other two bucks county school districts saw the winter break rise they did return to a mandatory masking thereafter they had some they did shut down the district for a few days because of the staffing shortage but then they returned to mask option of the week of the 22nd of january have remained then there since and have continued to see a decline in uh cases

228overall they did have an uptick by two but that last week they were down to six cases overall in marble newtown a very similar size school district as radner and finally springfield school desert the other delaware county district that we we captured here in the slideshow they had a mask optional for grade 712 the same week as the other three districts but it was required at that time for k-6 again right after break saw the increase in cases they returned to mandatory masking for that period but then went full mask optional k-12 the week of the 15th of january and like the other districts have seen a consistent decline in cases 24 the week before last and 18 just this past week which brings us to slide 14 which is radner township school district data

229just like the other districts you see a very snowboard trend line in cases even though we are the one district in this representation that has not yet gone mask optional in the last two weeks our case counts are 18 and 9 respectively moving along again this graph just shows the the four mentioned aforementioned school districts represented in the same graph again you can see uh although the difference in sizes are represented the a very similar trend line exists um amongst all of us moving along to slide 16 and then i'm just bringing this back around you've seen this a couple times today you've also seen it in december and january as these were some original considerations yet at this time when we did represent these in december and january dr batcher's recommendation was to continue

230masking at that time and then quickly moving along i will share just a review of the mass mandate that did exist and why we're why we're here tonight talking about this the the mask mandate timeline is is now represented on the slide show throughout the process here several months different litigation different mitigation and considerations were made landing us in the most recent situation where the decision to require mask now is represented at the school district level for the decision to be made at the school district level and now i'll turn it over to our solicitor mike krustofko to give an overview of some pending cases related to masking in our region uh thanks there are currently four cases that have been filed by parents of immuno-compromised children against school districts that since the mask mandate

231was lifted by the pennsylvania supreme court voted to go mask optional two of the cases are out in the western part of the state north allegheny and upper sinclair and two of the cases are in this part of the state perkielman valley and springfield school district here in delaware county the four cases involved all involved what's either called a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction in the legal world a temporary restraining order is is something that gets presented to the court and decided before there's actually a hearing or any testimony of witnesses or presentation in court it simply decided on the papers by the judge and uh argument by the attorneys and typically temporary restraining orders are designed to maintain the status quo while the uh issue at hand can be litigated so three of

232the cases north allegheny upper saint claire and springfield were all presented and decided based on the temporary restraining order in two of those cases upper st claire and springfield the federal district court that heard them denied the temporary restraining order and allowed the mass optional policy to go into place in north allegheny the federal district court upheld the tro and and prevented the mass optional policy from going into place both north allegheny and upper sinclair cases have been appealed to the third circuit court of appeals the third circuit court of appeals did two things one it it instituted a temporary restraining order for the upper st claire district and said that while the case was being decided there it didn't want the district going masked optional secondly limited the issues on appeal to two one

233whether the plaintiffs had standing the the right to bring the claim and secondly whether the plaintiffs were required to exhaust administrative remedies before they went to court typically students that claim that they're entitled to some type of an accommodation due to a medical condition are required to go through administrative processes if they're unhappy with the school district's decision on that and in this case the north allegheny court said they don't have to do it the upper saint clair court said they did and the third circuit's going to re resolve that dispute in springfield the uh the tro was denied no opinion was issued but there's a hearing set up for february 28th an evidentiary hearing before the court in the perceivement valley case the court initially granted the tro then held a preliminary injunction hearing

234and ultimately entered a preliminary injunction the facts of that case involved a situation where the administration went to the board in mid-december and recommended that the board continue with the mass required part of its health and safety plan the board voted against the administrative recommendation and voted to go mask optional in mid-december the court in uh writing the opinion on the preliminary injunction was really stressing the fact that there weren't any real reasons or rationale behind the decision there was no justification offered as to why the the board went that way there was no on-ramps or off-ramps to the masking it was just a flat out decision that to do that and it was right after the board uh basically turned over in the election four new board members were seated at the beginning of

235december and on at the december 13 business meeting they voted to go mask optional so the the court weighed all those factors and felt that the uh that the harm potential harm to the plaintiffs was more important or more significant than the district's interest in maintaining its mass optional policy and therefore enjoined it the court did say however that if circumstances change or if the district were to adopt some type of criteria that they could reapply to have their preliminary injunction lifted that's the status of the cases the two cases depending in front of the third circuit what will be argued at the end of march uh the uh i believe it's march 25th and the argument will be via zoom so i think anybody who wants to will be able to watch them to

236see how the argument goes and as of right now there are other districts that have gone up mass optional but i'm not aware of any other litigation that's actually been commenced against them thank you mr krasafko and next uh mr bechtel will take over factors to consider all right thank you so i'm going to run through some of the factors that we considered when we put forth the recommendation uh as you see in front of you throughout the 2021-2022 school year rtsd has monitored the cdc indicators of community transmission if you go to the next slide the delaware county as of today is in substantial transmission for cases per hundred thousand and moderate transmission four percent positivity these are decreases from last week we presented at the curriculum committee meeting um next slide please one

237of the things we also look at is the total hospitalizations and the total morbidity so both of these we saw a spike when we're coming through omicron after the the winter break but these both have been declining as we've been moving through the month of february additionally we're considering the recommendation of the things that inform us our past experience informs us and we've talked about this slide a number of times we had a very positive experience during the summer with our summer school programs in 2021 cdc transmission for delaware county ranged from low through substantial during the six weeks of camp and we had one confirmed or one unconfirmed covet 19 positive case during our summer school experience some of our mask related current procedures um you know we use test to stay and mass

238to stay to allow students to stay in school that are asymptomatic close contacts and also to shorten the isolation period so right now students if they are or employees would be up for 10 days they could shorten that and return after day six if they participate in the mass to stay program and so this is something that we have offered this worked really well that we would continue when we look at the vaccination rates we presented this at curriculum we are actually up from 72.4 percent last week to 72.7 percent this week and this is for delaware county the total percent of the population that has been vaccinated in the sources from the cdc coveted tracker database as we said previously and as the next slide please mr predicted thank you as you said previously

239uh the writer intentional school district was a leader in offering vaccines we put on a number of different clinics to go and provide the community opportunities for those interested to get vaccinated this slide includes updated elementary numbers since last week's curriculum committee meeting and you'll see a significant increase both in the number of respondents and the number that are fully vaccinated we we solicited feedback from our from our employees from all bargaining groups prior to making the recommendation out of the 438 respondents which was a 93 response rate 65 percent supported mass optional and 35 percent supported continuing mandatory masking on the next two slides we have comments in supportive masking so out of the 154 people that were in support of continued masking 69 provided comments and we included some of these to provide

240feedback and if we go to the next slide out of the 284 employees who were in support of best optional 72 of them left comments and so we included those as well when we're thinking about the instructional impact of masking we solicited feedback from some of our employees and this is based on board questions and we really looked at feedback from employees who work with students who have instructional needs if you can go to the next slide mr petiti to summarize the information provided on these two slides as dr batchelor had said previously we believe that there is an impact on instruction when students and staff are wearing masks while teachers have done their best to work around limitations posed by masking areas such as processing facial expressions identifying emotions providing articulation services and teaching

241phonics all pose challenges for instruction and lastly we're talking about the instructional impact on masking we consider the potential work of dr albert moravian he's a professor emeritus at ucla and this helped to guide our understanding of nonverbal communication so one of the things that we did as administrators after the community curriculum community meeting was look into what was this toll or impact on masking this is one of the things that was illuminating for us dr moravian's work shows that 55 percent of all communication is facial expressions gestures posture and other forms of nonverbal communication we thought this was also something that was informative to us at this point i'm going to turn the presentation over to dr batchelor thank you so our next step is to look at our recommendations again and the recommendations

242are the recommendations that we started discussing in december and january uh the administrative we we are recommending to be and that recommendation uh sets a guard rail uh and there were some questions earlier about where does this guardrail come from where does the two how do we come up with 2.5 percent well over a year ago the state health department gave us a guard rail that said if we have five percent uh cases within a building we should consider closing the building and that was a guardrail that was created that we all recognize now that no one is encouraging us that if you had five percent of cases to close we hit that uh the week after uh we were not necessarily in our buildings but just our overall population after january but a year

243later a lot of the experts who helped create that five percent rule even questioned and started to say that you know schools should try to stay open but that was a rule that we were forced to follow we were forced to follow as a school district to share with the state any positive cases we had we were we were told that if we hit five percent positivity within one of our buildings that would be the point where we should then consider potentially closing a building so we selected two and a half percent because simply it's half of the five percent if the state created a rule that you should think about closing at five percent we didn't want to get anywhere near that five percent once we remove masks so at two and a half

244percent cases within a building is when we would then consider and look at which one we would then require masking back in our buildings i can tell you in january we felt the need to have mass to limit the spread we needed to limit the spread as it was so it was happening so rapidly and so quickly and try to limit the amount of absenteeism among our staff and among our students if we're in a situation like that again we would be looking at this and then reinstituting masking masking would be reinstituted for a two-week period we also have guidelines in here that the masking we reinstitute if we go over this percentage could be just by a classroom or grade level at the elementary level because it could vary at the elementary level where

245our kids are more isolated and and you know they are they are separated from other students at the middle school in high school it's more challenging so our recommendation is that we remove the mass mandate uh while we are as long as we are under that 2.5 percent yes the public comments that were made are accurate that we have been as a district under that two and a half percent for several weeks we were under that two and a half percent all of september october uh november and even into december when we look at the cases that were taking place within our building we move to the next slide our health and safety plan it is on our website it has specific changes that are being made to the health and safety plan so we

246want to make everyone aware there is this presentation and then there's the actual changes that are being made to the health and safety plan we move to the next slide it shares the exact details of what are some of the changes that are happening both within the health and safety plan and administratively what we are recommending so i already explained the recommendation for the guard rail the recommendation would be that we would begin on thursday if this is passed that mass would no longer be required in radnor as long as we stay below that two and a half percent we believe that's the appropriate guard rail obviously the other option is we could look at spread rates and our spread rates are now coming down many school districts have selected that once you get into

247low or moderate is when you remove masks we have been in high spread since august we just now this in the last couple of days went from high to substantial we didn't recommend we use those guard rails because we've been in high for so long as a district we also didn't recommend using that guardrail of the community spread because radnor doesn't necessarily represent what's happening with the county spread as mr bechtold mentioned as a school district we were on the forefront of vaccinations we've been you've seen the data from our community our community has taken uh this very seriously they have received many of them has received vaccinations have taken advantage of the clinics we've hosted so for a lot of reasons we don't think we necessarily represent when we look at county spread numbers

248we unfortunately don't have numbers for just radnor if we did have numbers for just radnor for spread we think we would be doing a little bit better than the county we also didn't want to pick those numbers or those thresholds because there is a lot of arbitrariness in those numbers just like there's an arbitrariness i'll be honest with you at the two and a half percent we came up with it because the state identified a five percent over a year ago all of those guard rails that were created if you remember back in time a year ago we had guardrails for when to open school and when to have school be virtual it turned out in the summer of 2020 the guardrails we saw for when we should open school or not turned out not

249to be accurate we were able to open school we didn't know that but we were we found out in the fall of 2020 that we were able to open school and we were able to limit spread based on our mitigation and some of those guard rails weren't um weren't accurate for when we could open school or not and i'm not sure the guardrail is accurate for when to mask or not based on the low substantial and high it's not a bad way to do it though either so we're trying to look for an appropriate guard rail and we think the most appropriate guardrail right now is to look at our personal experience in each one of our buildings and that way if we see a spike in a building we can address the issues in

250that classroom or that building without impacting the whole district so specifically what's in the recommendation i explained the details of the two and a half percent the other pieces uh that i want to just highlight for the community and the school board we have to remember that due to a federal requirement masks are still required on district transportation that is a requirement just like it is a requirement if you travel right now you have to wear a mask at an airport if you hop on a public transportation of a bus you have to wear a mask all of our students and adults who ride any of our transportation based on a federal requirement must wear masks so that will that will continue no matter what we do the board also would authorize the superintendent to

251implement mandatory masking at the superintendent's discretion so moving forward if we need to mask we would not require a board meeting to have that happen the superintendent would have the discretion uh based on an emergency based on something we discover that's happening in the building that we would could require masking again the plan also provides single-use surgical mass for students and employees and we will provide kn 95 mass for anyone who wants a k and 95 master the challenge is the younger kids we are trying to get um kn 95 mass that will fit the younger kids for those who want to have one but we will provide for staff and and students mass who still want to continue to mask our recommendation is that this change would go into effect on thursday february 24th

252i don't know that if i should make a joke now that by the time we approve it tonight it might be tomorrow but you know too early on jokes all right um the elementary homeroom classes will continue to be informed of covet positive cases so we will we're going to still share k-5 what we've always done if there is a positive case in a classroom k to five we will still share with families that there's a positive case we're continuing to do that because we do that for other things we do that for pertussis we do that with lice we do that with other things so if there's a positive case in a classroom we're going to still share that k to five we haven't been doing that at the middle school high school because

253the kids move around so much we will continue to keep a dashboard so we will have a dashboard and be sharing with our community our dashboard is based on what our community shares with us and our community has been great our parents let us know and let the nurse know when their kids are out uh and and if they test positive so we will still share that information on our dashboard visitors will be permitted in our schools as determined by building administration and for planned events those visitors will not be required if you're meeting with your guidance counselor you will not be required to wear a mask if a parent's coming in to meet with a teacher they would not be required to wear a mask however though for the month of march if this

254proposal passes we are going to require masking for any large indoor events as we feel out how this happens so what would be a large indoor event a large indoor event with spectators a large event with spectators could be an athletic event that's indoor that's crowded or could be a for the musical for the month of march we'd be looking at requiring mass for spectators just for those events our students participating in the musical would not have to be masked our athletes would not have to be masked there was a comment earlier about you know we're requiring athletes to mask we have not been requiring athletes to mask at all this school year that has not been a requirement teachers will be provided talking points about the social emotional language and utilize support of all

255students regardless of their choice to wear a mask and what that all means is we want to make sure we have a community and and we believe we do have a community where our kids respect one another's decisions we saw it and it's almost like a broken record but we saw it this past summer with our summer program when we had our summer program with about 500 kids roughly 30 percent chose to wear masks i took the time to personally go over and interview some of those middle schoolers they didn't know i was interviewing them but talk to them about their decision to wear masks the other kids who weren't wearing masks and the kids were very open and respectful to each individual choice none of us know what the future holds you know the

256future may hold for some people that they don't immediately we say you can take off bass they're no longer going to wear masks but then they have a family wedding coming up in two weeks and they want to stay healthy for the wedding and they might choose to wear a mask we want to create the climate for the rest of the school year that our staff and our students feel comfortable making their own choice based on a family as a student as long as we're below that threshold they make their own personal choice on whether or not they wear a mask and that everyone should feel comfortable whether choosing to wear it or not wear it and i could see having staff and students who may be wearing it some weeks and choosing not to

257wear it some weeks or some days or some circumstances where they might choose to wear it so our teachers will work with all of our kids to make sure they're they're comfortable our teachers do that every day to make sure that our kids feel comfortable and accepted and belong in our buildings and classrooms when it comes to social distancing we recognize that social distancing is another mitigation strategy but we also recognize that social distancing is something that's getting in the way of the educational program so for the first two weeks of the time when we remove when we when we remove the requirement for universal masking we're going to keep the desks at roughly three feet of the greatest distance where they are currently right now after two weeks the administration will reassess our numbers

258our data where things are going and then start to give some more freedom and flexibility to our teachers to rearrange some of those desks our teachers right now this year have more flexibility when it comes to science labs when it comes to the elementary classroom to have some more flexibility with small group instruction yes they're missing some of their things that they had in their classroom before we want to slowly try to get some of those tables and things back to them in their classrooms but they do have some flexibility already right now to make sure that they are making sound educational decisions to make sure that our instructional program is as strong as it can be so that is the the that is how we will move forward with the spacing that would not

259need a board meeting in order to adjust the three feet afterwards we are keeping the lunches at six feet for the time being i will tell you right now there is a practical issue for us at almost all the building levels with what we have with the spacing at lunch probably the earliest we would look at administratively reducing the six feet at lunch maybe spring break because there's a practical piece that if everything's going well and our numbers continue to go down and you know no longer requiring masking we're not seeing any uh challenges to that we would look to to bring back lunches to be more normal for our kids the practical logistics of that is all of our tables right now are in in storage off-site because we want a purchasing desk in

260order to make our lunches work in the last two years so we're going to bring you yeah so that's the plan moving forward that's in the in the recommendations you move to the next slide so we're going to continue comprehensive mitigation we're going to continue to monitor our guidance and data our nurses have been absolutely critical we will continue you know asking parents when the parent screening you know if your child doesn't feel well please have your child stay home staff if you're not feeling well that was common sense and normal prior to covid that would continue now when kids are sick and not feeling well and for kids not to feel pressure that if they're sick it's okay to be sick and miss a day of school move forward to the next slide and

261it's really we're took questions now for the board so i think the attorney won the belt to brevity which is shocking so uh mr kustov go well done um and i think i lost it so i'll turn it over to the board for questions okay i just want to remind everyone again the action on the floor is that the motion on the floor is that the board approves the updated health and safety plan and we as dr batchelor said we are now in the questions and comments periods so i see some board members have their hands raised i'll start at that end mr moore uh thank you president goldman i already had many of my questions answered in the curriculum meeting so thank you and board members if there were questions you didn't like that

262um mrs dunn was asking she may be asking some of my questions not her questions so um but most of those were answered just a few uh loose ends uh number one have we been hearing anything about 2022-2023 whether we will be back here in this role not as public health experts being asked under law to make public health like decisions we don't have any information on 2022 you know 2023 school district uh i can tell you that you know for the last two years i think we've all been surprised and have not been able to see around the corner and have been surprised that we are where we are right now even we are hoping that we will have a delaware county health department uh that will be in place that could possibly be

263providing us some guidance for the start of the 2022-2012 school year um i believe that also you know moving forward that you know there is a lot of momentum uh right now that we're stay focused on what has been the learning loss and what has been you know what has been the concerns we have with the kids and how do we continue to address those concerns has been a focus great thank you next question is why aren't we doing something like the the walt disney rule um walt disney announced that if you're fully vaccinated you can be mass optional in the parks i heard i watched the curriculum committee meeting and i heard mr bechdel say that that's not something the district is recommending could you say a little bit more about why the district

264is not recommending uh you know for example is slide 28 the answer to that we got updated information about our vaccination rates i saw the k to fives up to 69 or so for students uh anything to add to that or is that on the right track yeah so a couple of things one there are certain vaccinations that the state health department requires students to have in order to attend school in the state of pennsylvania we don't create that as a school board and as a superintendent i don't recommend those those vaccinations that people are required to have by public school code and by law are developed by our state health department our state health department would be the appropriate authority to decide whether or not students need to be vaccinated to attend school i

265don't think it's the role of a superintendent to give that recommendation okay i also heard you talk a little bit about your your vision for how you can reevaluate distancing over the last couple weeks it has been a long time a bit at least since i was a high school teacher but what i remember was and you alluded to this a little bit how important it is to have the group work the collaboration i was a science teacher we did science labs what led you to suggest relaxing masking before relaxing distancing rather than bringing the idea of relaxing distancing first but um taking more time to relax masking i think they're both critical and i think they're both play a different role at each level at the high school level when you look at labs

266we actually have relaxed many things and kids are working together and doing their labs in our elementary classrooms especially in the younger years our teachers are really starving for the kids to be able to sit in groups to get closer to move those desks closer i think both the distancing and the masking are both critical items that we need to look at and that's why we're recommending the masking at this point and then in two weeks we reevaluate the desks but we also were saying that because we know that our teachers do have more freedom and flexibility this year to as needed to bring some kids together in smaller groups some of our teachers have been more comfortable with that than others but they have had that flexibility a little more so this year this

267will give this change will give our teachers again the reinforce that over the next couple of weeks when it's structurally necessary you want to bring students together in small groups and it's for educational reasons you can do that if things go well over the next two weeks we would then look at the distancing with the deaths as a something we could adjust so i think there you know i think if you ask some teachers they would tell you the distancing is more important than the mass i think if you ask other teachers they would tell you the masking is more important than the distancing so i think both are really critically important thank you um it is not lost on me and perhaps ironic that i have a four-year-old who if we make a change

268tonight will continue because her day cares in montgomery county to be following those rules and will be continuing basking perhaps for many weeks longer just thinking about our own programming and our own students do we have to do anything differently in our pre-k pilot or is this plan an appropriate plan plan for those as well this recommendation would would also include our our pre-k pilot okay um i'm not asking for any other legal analysis other than what mr kastrovko already applied but i do uh thank him for sharing in this meeting that um you know there are some differences between this plan which has um rails and some of the plans that receive court challenges but putting aside the legal issues thinking about the kind of person who was a plaintiff at those cases a

269parent whose family circumstances were one where they had immunocompromised children i'm not asking you to share any private family information but um do you have a plan and in place to deal with parents who approach you with those issues and what can you share about how to make sure that those families will be able to continue to receive their education like with so many situations for our students uh and and all of our kids are individuals uh and we need to look at each kids and their circumstances uh on an individual case-by-case basis we would encourage and one of the things we wanted to do with my letter that i originally sent out about this recommendation moving forward was to encourage those families to reach out to their principal obviously students who we know of

270whether it is it is a medical fragility whether it's something in in a 504 or a special ed plan we know those students and we're already aware and and looking very carefully at what some of those concerns could be we've asked our parents that if other families have concerns please reach out to your principal talk to us and maybe there are accommodations or things that we can do and we want to look very carefully at that so we're trying to be proactive to make sure that we're continuing to address the needs of our kids just like we did prior to covet private prior to covet we had kids with with with you know with individual needs and we do our best to meet those needs so that those kids can access our curriculum and our

271program okay and uh i noticed on slide 34 the administration cited some research about non-verbal communication and you've also talked more generally shared teacher comments about the benefits of taking baths off for the educational environment and what we've been missing with masks on but i note that you are not asking that masks be banned in our schools and everyone here has spoken in favor of mass optional but if it's mass optional your teacher might still have a mask on if it's mass optional other students in your class might still have their mask on so could you comment more on the impact of this plan as a mask optional plan in light of the benefits of seeing other people's faces without masks which you articulated you know i a couple of public speak speakers tonight really

272struck me and one of them that did did strike me tonight is the fact that we are coming out of what has been two years and it has been two years of a pandemic there's been challenges there's been a lot of mixed guidance and we need to look at things as a progression and i think that we need to understand that when we're with our kids when we're dealing with kindergartens and first graders who have only seen school while wearing a mask you know they don't know the cafeteria to be anything different but six feet apart and and we need to now give those students an opportunity to ease into seeing school in another way we need to work with our families and our kids who are anxious and scared and they're scared for all

273the you know reasons because of whatever has gone out with their family circumstances but we need to help our kids understand that we believe school is safe and we believe this is a time that we can move away from our mitigation protocols but we're doing it in a way that i think we're stepping it down you know and i don't want to say slowly but we're doing it in a way that's stepping it down that gives our kids an opportunity to adjust to it i will be very honest with you with your questions before you know do i picture you know next school year you know do we picture teachers a kindergarten teacher who's fully matched for a whole school year i think that's a struggle that we're going to talk about next year because

274you know while we're comfortable with that decision right now because of what's happening right now i think we're going to have to have some hard decisions about what is the future of people's choice to mask next year maybe it's something that we as a district are going to say that yeah we're going to allow it from time to time for teachers but i would struggle personally with what we're learning and what we're concerned about with masking and the challenging with masking that i think that is a bridge that we're going to be talking about in the fall so when you ask me what is the next year i think that's a question that we're going to have to have a discussion about in the fall right now i think we need to encourage a climate

275that people can make their own choice as we move forward this school year and then cross that bridge in the summer and into the fall what the future means for masking that transitions well to my last question we heard some public comment tonight and we've gotten some emails and we've been able to observe um and i am thankful for what you reported about the summer how um that spirit of recognizing everyone's choice is something we saw in our summer program and i'm not saying anything about what our students are doing and in fact i was speaking with someone earlier today about how you know in the school building they were talking about they weren't seeing any of these any of the negativity about other people's choices within the school building among the students um this

276is something we'll have to answer whether we make this choice tonight or not but if we do make this choice tonight this change moving forward you touched on it briefly in the presentation but could you say more about how i think there was a student commentary said something like hat we want happiness to be spread moving forward if we make this change tonight how to make sure that happiness is being spread people aren't being bullied because of their choice i think that's what our teachers do really well every day our teachers work very hard to make sure that our kids not only feel included but they feel like they belong i go back to my days as a high school assistant principal and the one thing i used to ask students at the end is

277is you know when i was giving out when they had discipline i said what part of the school do you really feel part of something and it always concerned me when when i would receive an answer where there was no part there wasn't a classroom was an activity our teachers do a really good job of at age each grade level and grade level appropriate uh helping to create that sense of belonging and that we're going to look to our teachers to help teachers and principals to continue to do that to share with our kids that you may see me as a teacher wearing a mask one day and maybe i won't be the next day and that's okay you may see a student next to you wearing a mask and the other student isn't wearing

278a mask and to talk to the kids about the individual choice that each can make about wearing this mask and that just because your teacher is wearing it or isn't wearing it doesn't have to impact whether you choose to wear it or your family chooses to wear it and i think our teachers can do that well all right thank you i don't have any more questions i have a few comments but i will hold those so that other board members can get their questions in and to the board president and my fellow board members i would appreciate that we all have the chance to circle back and make comments before we call the vote um so that we make sure that we complete our deliberation in public thank you okay thank you mr moore ms

279stern you have questions i oh yes i do just yeah i really started you know first dr babson i'll get to you next um dr bacharach can you so you you reference that the kn 95 masks for the younger students you're trying to get them really what's the status of that what is there something that we can be done oh maybe mr bechtold has the answer so uh we had those delivered last week on friday so we actually placed the order and we received our first shipment and they were distributed to all three elementary schools so we we now have pediatric can 95. we do that's thank you i appreciate that information um i i wanted to [Music] thank you for pointing out you know i think this is by the way the presentation i'm

280not on curriculum but it's tremendously informative so thank you um you know i did want i did appreciate that you pointed out that in some comparisons to some of these other districts some of the other districts for whatever reasons have stopped reporting their dashboards i don't know if you have insight into why that is but so you you are you will continue to publicly report our dashboard yes that is our plan as of now yes okay all right thank you um uh this next question mr uh dr dukeevich probably is going to be able to answer best but i will ask it to you um so i really want to thank mr petit and dr dukeevich for updating the vaccination status of our elementary school students i know that that was a question that was

281asked last week and i know that that took extra work this weekend and i i'm grateful to the administration and i'm grateful to the parents who took the time to answer that this weekend this is all information that's really informing us so so thank you if you were a parent who was contacted and you you responded you know there's been talk about being fully vaccinated and then there's also been discussion of kind of conferred immunity because you actually got coveted so in looking at the dashboard dr dekeevich could you you could just run the number for me so how many elementary school students do we have roughly uh just under 1600. okay and you know about how many of those were elementary case in the last december and january or january february time frame about

282how many of the overall cases we had were were elementary school cases we had just uh i think was 61 total it's like an average of 20 per building in the in the time period you just mentioned okay so i when you and i talked it tallied a little bit closer to 80 for me but maybe it was a longer time frame so i think we can kind of infer from that we've got about you know you do the math of this this was a conversation at curriculum so we've got about a 69 vaccinated status of k5 but about another 5 or so conferred immunity is is what the math is looking like to me okay so i mean it's approximating the older children which is which is good news um and then um the

283the the way you have the plan written if you were to get to the 2.5 percent of cases whether it's a school or a classroom or a grade you know we you will return to mandatory masking for 14 days what what happens at the end of 14 days if the rate is still above 2.5 percent we would then have to make a decision whether we'd continue for another week um or not so we would look at the idea is that those two weeks we would see it come down and then at the end of the two weeks we could then remove the requirement if the rate continues to increase we may have to go another you know additional two weeks okay so that part of the plan might fall under the authority that we're giving

284you as the superintendent to require mandatory masking yes okay all righty and um you know uh what what are you what can you share what you're hearing from other districts about how they're doing in this transition to know to to not having a mask mandate where how how are those other districts doing in terms of the relationships with the students the children not everyone in the classroom is is necessarily masked you know what what what can you share with us that the other superintendents are saying about how that's going practically speaking so i reached out to two superintendents today uh and i've spoken to others last week as well and they really share very similar experiences that we experienced with our summer program i think a lot of it has to do with the world

285our kids have been living in and that our kids are very accepting and respectful of one another and that they've found that many of their kids you know have chosen to mask they've also seen that you know as rates have continued to go down and the longer that they are no longer than the longer that they have been optional they have seen more kids feeling more comfortable not wearing the mask also but they have not i asked them specifically about the bullying on either side uh and they have not experienced or seen that okay so then this and this is my last question um how how will you confirm that a student coming into the building in as much as they may not be wearing a mask that that is with the knowledge of their

286parents there's been no talk of i believe one of the districts talked about parental permission slips and i'm just going to say that sounds like an administrative nightmare don't get me wrong but you know what if what if we were to have a student in the building who their parents did want them to mask and yet they're showing up not masking how how's that gonna get handled how are we even gonna kind of monitor that so it'll be it'll vary based on age uh based on you know the age of the kids and and the age-appropriateness from kindergarten to 12th grade um you know having kids across that spectrum you've got the range right right now still um but uh that you know you you talk to your kids uh this is a family decision

287and at you know i'm sure at the high school level uh you know we may you know we're not going to be the first high school to have kids in a high school level telling their parents one thing and then um maybe doing something differently at the same time at the elementary level i think it could be a very different dynamic if there are real concerns at the elementary level uh parents just like any situation we'd want parents reaching out to their teacher and to say um you know we we are we are we have this stance we really want our son or daughter to be wearing a mask if you see my child having struggles wearing the mask in class please let me know that dialogue needs to be open at the elementary level

288at the same time we're not looking to you know police this for our kids we're looking to allow our families and our kids and our teachers to make these individual decisions but at the same time we want to have the communication um with our family so that if there is concerns the family should be reaching out to the administration or to their teacher to talk to them about this is what we really want to see for our our child and we would do everything we can just like for any concern you know to support that kid that student with that family's wishes okay so um this is you know the time of the night when i say the things that no matter what i say somebody's upset with me so here we go um i'm

289prepared to support this recommendation that that is it is my belief looking at our local data and i can think of several instances in the last two years where it was scary to have this responsibility there as a parent spoke tonight about making a choice to vaccinate their children in the face of being scared and i really appreciated that that was the comment that stuck out for me tonight making a choice in the face of being scared and that is what this has been for people who think we take this lightly we don't take this lightly this has been the most daunting thing i will ever do in my life and i raised three children um that being said there were times when we have already veered away from the strict cdc guidelines because there

290were times that according to the cdc we should have been virtual and we looked at radner data and we opened our doors and we brought the kids in and uh that was scary but we did it and i i'm glad that we did it and we were very fortunate and right now the the local data that we have are vaccination rates the conferred immunity the number of cases uh the declining positivity all of that says to me that we need to do exactly what you're saying dr bachel which is um you know begin to return to normal and there are families who are nervous and have trepidation so i support that i don't believe that that's an inherent my child my choice uh vote this is not for me there are times when you know

291other people make these decisions and i know that there are times when people have strongly disagreed with me and with us so so my vote to support you tonight on this recommendation without any amendments i'm fine with the way it is you have answered every question and i do want to thank miss dunn you took a hit this week because i also put gave you questions tough questions and they weren't all yours and because i don't serve on curriculum so thank you for asking them um but that but things could change you know and it's not this is this is not uh in in i and you know in totality just about parental choice um i get why people feel that way i just don't agree with that but that's all i have to say

292tonight i will be voting to support your recommendation dr batchelor and i'm grateful to everything you all have done thank you mr and dr babson point of order would you prefer that we present our questions first and then our comments or yes i think that makes sense that's the way it's been i i actually thought we agreed totally differently so that's why i made my comments now and now i'm done this is the question and comment period and why don't you start with the questions and then go into your comments if you have them and we'll move along to others after that okay great so first of all uh this question the first question relates to page 28 of the presentation this is to mr bechtold and dr dukeevich and both mr moore and ms

293stern have talked about the really quite surprising in a good way numbers from the first draft of this presentation fully vaccinated number for k-5 students was in the 40 40s something and here we have a doubling and now as has been pointed out i mean you have to do 91 of the 76 response which is like 68.4 or something like that so um but that's minimum i think i heard some people maybe commenting earlier overheard that that's actually minimum i mean it's possible that the ratio of fully vaccinated responses could exceed that and it could be so 68.4 is actually a floor for that so that changes things quite a bit um i mentioned before i took my son to the basketball game just caught some attention even though the event was required vaccination and

294and masking but it's okay anyway i did say that i had talked to mr bechtold and dr duke earlier in the day we had a great conversation to cover my concerns and questions that was my main concern and this is something that dr duke and mr bertold and i talked about was that you had this difference in vaccination rates of the secondary kids and the primary school kids so that does change quite a bit i would say my lingering concern then is the 2.5 percent number and this is a this is a really thorough presentation this is something that i think we can all be proud of the work that you guys put into this so but that 2.5 metric is a little squishy for me precisely because it relies on self-report and also i

295think a commenter brought it up earlier that the number of days that we have met that threshold is is not not very numerous so um i guess my question would be could we do pool testing that would increase increase the validity of that number excuse me so i'm directing my question to doctor baptists let the board members speak and have that this is this is the business of the board here and it would really be appreciated if you would let the board members speak and ask their questions thank you so we did we did it's a good question we did look at the free state pool testing the state provided us free pool testing to all school districts in the state of pennsylvania this year we did take the state up on that and we

296piloted it we had very few um families we piloted it in fifth grade and i think it was fifth grade where we piloted it um and we did not we didn't have a lot of families take us up on it was very few so we were we were questioning really the effectiveness of that it was not required and not something we we felt we could require um and it was also logistically very difficult it wasn't as smooth as uh it was presented and it created a lot of work and effort for uh very few uh student involvement into the other point of your question i mean we have struggled and really gone back and forth what is the appropriate guard rail and and i don't know you know you know we we i don't we've

297tried to create the most appropriate guard rail based on our experience is what we've focused on uh and it does rely on our parents sharing cases with us uh and that has been an issue for two years we've talked about that two years would we really know um but you know we had 200 cases in a week um you know because our parents let us know about them so every time we've turned around that we thought we wouldn't know about cases we continue to find out about them um and and because our families have shared with our nurses you know their child is out for covet so while we're probably not catching every case i think the the concept of using our experience is what i feel comfortable with um i can understand the questioning

298of the percentages i mean i question the five percent number you know the creation of that number okay thank you i just have one more question and then a couple comments and then i'm done so one question would be then given that is it possible that we could this is this is meant as a rhetorical question or you can answer directly if you like but looking on page 16 of the presentation you have options 2a and 2b and i know that that cdc rubric is imperfect but it's interesting to note a couple things number one and the rubric is on um i'm sorry i forget what page it's on but there's one indicator that is very promising it looks good the case rate um is in the five percentage or something like that and then

299um the test positivity rate sorry and then the the case rate um seven day average is in the 90s and on that rubric it says you need to look at the higher number in other words there's a there's a bias there in favor of safety and security the more the safer metric or indicator so right now one of those is in moderate so one thing that i've been thinking of is couldn't we just tweak 2a to say require mass mandates when the cdc county transmission level is in substantial remove the mass mandate in moderate and it's simple it's very clear and furthermore here this is part of my comment one more thing to comment is that we are we are in a great place right now with transmission i mean as has been said those

300graphs all showing the same trend that's fantastic news let me tell you i love wearing a coffee filter on my face for hours on end it's it's a thrill really i absolutely love it i love nothing i love nothing more but you know with every freedom there's a responsibility so um what i was saying then is that a simple tweak like that we're going that other part of the metric we're gonna that is gonna be in moderate in other words that 90 uh that 90 metric on our on the 91 thank you that's that's probably gonna be in moderate in like a week or two so why can't we just wait and that way we have all right i would sorry but that's a rhetorical question dr babson audience please you may disagree with some

301of the things you're hearing but when you were speaking we did not say a word i'm asking you to please show the same respect to the board members this is the deliberative process and they have a right to be asking their questions and it is distracting if not for the respect for each and individual board member it is distracting for us to try to listen and follow along with the sounds from the audience so i'm asking you to please hold your comments if you want to make more at the end there's a public comment session at the end but for now please let us do this deliberative process the way it's supposed to be thank you thank you miss goldman i'm almost finished so in in my opinion that is a clear and very reasonable

302way to handle this and i think that then we don't get into this back and forth about 2.5 which is kind of squishy it's fairly clear you go on the cdc website and again i mean there's a little bit of wiggle room here but we are going in that direction and we should all be happy that that's it's kind of a bummer tonight there's been so much acrimony but we should all be in a good mood about this um that soon we will be in in the situation where we have high vaccination rates we have a trend going downward as dr pilpat said in her comment let's just wait a little bit and go by these metrics that we can all sort of get on board with um i have other things that i could

303say but for the for the sake of keeping the meeting going that's it thank you okay is there anybody else thank you dr babson mr jubileer thank you i just have one question and then i'll make brief comments um we heard a little bit of the the public sort of retort on um the seating at lunches just do you have a sense of if we were to approve this plan of about how much time it would take to get the tables if it if it were deemed that it would be workable so right now would be the most workable for us is to make that change over spring break okay and it would be the most workable just from the the pure logistics of you know we went all out to try to get school

304open and trying to go all out two years ago a year and a half ago to get school open we knew we needed to space kids out we had to get move the cafeteria tables into storage off site of our building and we had to purchase extra desks so there is a logistical hurdle we have of retrieving all those those cafeteria tables out of storage and then putting all these desks into storage and then also selling and get getting rid of some of the desks we will no longer need hopefully moving forward so there is the logistics behind it uh could we be done sooner you know i'm going to tell my operations team to put earmuffs on right now could it be done sooner we could look to pay overtime and have a weekend

305and we could try to do it sooner we wouldn't be able to do all five buildings at once you know over a weekend so there is a logistical challenge to it and it also is again you know i want nothing more to have our kids be to experience as normal of an experience as they can and to be trending and moving in that direction i do think for our families that are struggling with this decision i think things like lunch is going to help us as an intermediate step to continue with the lunches spaced uh knowing that there is a plan uh that if things continue to move well to reduce that six feet so it's a long-winded answer sorry mr do i apologize and i think there's a lot of you know there's questions

306about that but thank you um i want to thank you thank the administration our principals staff and teachers for the yeoman's job my goodness you've been doing to protect our students and community over the last two years i'm fully in support of this plan it's time for a new chapter we passed the last chapter's test which was safely reopening our buildings to in-person learning we were among the first in the county if not the first public school district to do so we were a leader and we'll be a leader again i trust your recommendation on transitioning from a mass mandate to mass optional i appreciate the due diligence all of you have taken since our last board meeting in january particularly particularly looking at how other area districts who've gone mask optional have fared and

307we saw the results tonight and that gives me great comfort i know everyone on the board regardless of positions on mass cares deeply about the health and safety of our students teachers staff and community but for me my answer is we're at a time where we have the opportunity to make a transition while the numbers are coming down precipitously and the vaccination rates in ratner are high the mental health tool of this pandemic in addition to the learning challenges many of our children with special needs incur and others when trying to communicate day in and day out wearing a mask has inflicted upon our students cannot be measured as easily as case rates incidences and positivity it is learned through the many stories we've heard tonight and heard elsewhere from families friends and children often

308quite heartbreaking we have the opportunity to help our students emotional and social well-being and allow them to connect at school again the way they're supposed to facial expressions and all i know and greatly appreciate and respect that many of the true professionals the doctors nurses and nurses and medical folks are not all aligned on this but i'm comforted knowing that the gem in our backyard shop does see a path for districts like radnor who has been doing the right thing and fighting this pandemic to begin to move away from mandatory masking as covet mitigation as a covent mitigation measure our community i believe fairly well we've seen fairly well overwhelmingly supports it as well as nearly two-thirds of our teachers staff and staff i guess the last thing i'll say is if not now when

309i mean when and so in in in full respect to to dr babson who i greatly respect um i do i argue that the data we should be using is the very data that you recommend which has radnor data not delaware county data radnor data and that is the experience that has been shown is we are beating that 2.5 we're under it and hopefully we'll continue to be so with everybody doing the right thing you know there's never a perfect time we showed we could open school safely when others weren't ready we'll do the same here i trust you i trust our community and let's vote and make this happen thank you mr juvilier oh miss monahan over there i see you your turn thank you thank you um i i have a couple of

310questions and then um some comments as well um so one question i know the 2.5 has been asked about as far as like the rationale behind it and so forth but how i interpret from slides 21 on which were the factors to consider is that we never just consider one aspect it's always multiple aspects and even though like the cdc if we were solely to rely on the cdc metrics as they've outlined i think that's a mistake to solely rely it on that metric primarily because the cdc is concerned about um the total u.s and we're radnor is so specific to you know our community and who makes up our community so i i started with a comment as opposed to a question but i'm assuming that even though it's a 2.5 percent that you

311and the administration are considering every single aspect of these metrics yeah we have always taken into account all the different guidance metrics data and tried to balance it all and i think that's what's given us the confidence over the last two years to make our own decisions because we've weighed all the different data all the different advice uh from the medical community and i think that that's where you know we we trust the information that we are we've been given and you know trying to move this forward um i do have some questions on slide 39 and i know that the date set is thursday the 24th and i'm i'm primarily asking this question just for the benefit of everyone's understanding as to why it's that date can you explain why it's that date and

312not tomorrow yes and it's not just because tomorrow is you know going to happen shortly it was because um we wanted once we made the decision we need time to just communicate it and we felt it was reasonable to take a day to communicate it to our community we wanted to take a day to make sure we've communicated it to our teachers if we want to if if it is critically important for us to make sure we create an environment a climate and a community that our all of our students and staff feel comfortable making an individual decision we wanted to have at least a day to share that have a day for teachers to be able to you know talk to their kids talk to the students the following day as well and just

313be prepared so that's why we placed thursday so we could just have one day to make sure we communicate this while we have a lot of families still here tonight you know there's a lot of people who i'm sure have gone to bed already and i understand with a number of special needs families that i had spoken to there are a majority of or a lot of students who are very anxious about it so i think giving at least a day's time uh is a you know i'm okay with that even though for me personally i would want it sooner rather than later um and then last question i have is on slide 40 the large audiences i know you clarified that um what have other districts done in terms of sporting events and spectators

314and i asked this kind of somewhat loaded in that i know basketball events that i've even attended at other schools that are mask optional no one's wearing masks so i those same schools you shared information or data that is the same as what we're seeing in ratner so i'm just trying to understand the rationale behind that i know it's conservative it's cautious but um so i know that's an administrative decision as well so i can tell you one of the schools that's close by to us that went mask optional earlier still required um the distancing i'm looking at mr bechdel because he might remember that one one of their health and safety plans still required you know distancing in the plan itself and uh and that if they couldn't distance i believe the plan said

315if when they can't distance they're supposed to mask is that isn't that accurate of my read of yes i believe that that is accurate so um in order to go you know to mask optional they still have in their health and safety plans that when there's you're not afforded three feet of distancing you're still supposed to mask now whether they are doing it or not is a whole other question we have not put that exact specific in our plan because we know from an instructional standpoint that we want to give our teachers as soon as we can some opportunities and recognizing that we actually took away the three-foot distancing back in august in august we changed our health and safety plan to talk about to the maximum extent possible because we wanted our educational program

316to be more normal than it was the previous year we wanted our educational program and our teachers to be doing labs to be doing things working with kids yes we were still distancing as best we could but we wanted to start to give some freedoms in how you make a choice and how you instruct the kids we've never as a school district dictated you know classroom arrangements and where teachers puts desks in those pieces so to answer your question is um they those districts most of them who moved quickly to mask optional i believe still put in their requirements that once you go over three feet you have to mass so it's actually their requirements are more strict than what we're looking to do right now moving forward okay [Music] those were really my only

317questions i do have some comments that i'd like to just kind of generally share i mean um you know i think from the from the beginning we've all kind of done the best we can under the circumstances and i can honestly say that this is not what i expected i was going to get into in 2019 i don't think any of us did but covid is not the risk that it was a year ago between vaccinations boosters also knowing that covet's not going to go away [Music] where we have historically focused on the physical health and safety of our students at the beginning of the pandemic i think it's now time for us to focus on the health and wellness and you know social emotional on our students and dr rubin in addition to all

318the quotes that you had shared with us there are some additional things that he did in a q a recently at the end of january that i thought really hit home for me he said you know we need to start learning to live with this virus now akin to other viruses this is about individuals now having ability to navigate their own sense of risk and trying to help transition communities back to normal and it's time to get back to work and back to school and try to take that push to normal the risk now of not addressing children's learning loss or pandemic anxiety are now much greater than the virus itself for most individuals so i fully support this and i think um i was going to get into the specifics of exactly why but

319i it would be repeating everything i think there are a number of inconsistencies in our community um for example you know just knowing 65 percent of our high school students do at you know athletics and i use that as an example just because my kids are in athletics and i'm very familiar to it but 65 percent of these kids practice and compete with other schools completely unmasked so you have 65 percent of the high school population i don't know what the stat is for middle school but they're fully on mass they're playing an active sport and it's okay and you know we have not seen any direct impact to that outside of school friends are socializing without masks our community we are eating out in restaurants myself included socializing in bars shopping working out in

320gyms were you know unmasked i truly believe that dr batchelor and the administration is attuned to what's going on from a local health standpoint as well as what other districts and then chop poly policy lab you how often you probably speak with superintendents whatever every day you probably speak with one or more superintendents um so i do understand those who are concerned and i think that principals will work with them to provide a solution that best meets their needs but again i i fully support this kovit's not going away and it's time for us to kind of get back to normalcy thank you miss monahan anybody else duffy [Applause] um i have a few i mean most of the questions have been asked um i i do have one that i asked in the curriculum

321that i thought i'd like to ask again um in your letter on february 11th um stating your plans to go with this recommendation you encouraged families that would have specific concerns to reach out and as of last week in the curriculum meeting it was to my knowledge there was one family that had had actually done that and i was to the building principles he encouraged people that might be concerned um is that still the case i mean have we heard from many more families i i think we're at total of two is it now or no five is it what are we at but my estimation is five or less you know okay total k to 12. i don't know mr bechtolde heard the others but it's under five we had we got flooded with

322people that were in support of the recommendation and uh i would agree that we're about five or six that would that had concerns that reached out that's that's encouraging and i um you know i think we're all concerned about people that you know might have difficulty transitioning and have specific concerns and so i appreciate that you said you really wanted to work with the administration the building principles will work with those people to try to accommodate and make them feel as comfortable as possible i'm also encouraged by the fact that you know especially given the new studies highlighting the benefits of one-way masking with high-quality masks that we are providing those who are going to choose to continue masking with the option of a quality mask when they go in i know my kids have

323been taking these when they walk in the door but it'll be nice that we offer that and it's good news that the the younger kids will have properly fitting masks because i think we heard a lot about masks that fall off and really aren't doing their job so for those that will choose to contin to have the protection that is good to know um i i think all my other questions were really asked i i know there's been some i'm just going to say to the public right now there's been some discussion about some of the questions that were asked in the curriculum meeting i actually really appreciated that we had that extra interim step that was the first time we got to see the plan and that's part of our process that's the deliberation

324process we ask questions to get better informed because this is an immense responsibility you know i think mrs stern said it right you know we we have to you know this weighs heavily on us and as mrs monahan said we didn't really sign up to be public health experts so we were all we've been trying to do the best we can so i think there was a lot of people jumping to conclusions on where everyone was but that was really us doing due diligence asking questions to be better informed so that we could be thoughtful this next this last week so that we can come here with you know with better information and be able to make our decisions so um i i will say i a big thank you to all of you i

325know how much i can appreciate how much work went into putting this recommendation together and what i see is just an immense amount of consideration i see you know you've consulted with different constituencies different circumstances we have health experts we have dialogue with other districts and then the deliberation which i know went on within you know among the administrators like what what can we do what can we feel comfortable and they're taking everyone into consideration you know the people who are going to have a little more um need a little more help getting comfortable with this new reality and i appreciate this whole idea of you know really creating a culture where we respect everyone's individual choices so um i i'm glad that's on your radar i'm glad that's the message and i'm glad that

326you talked a little bit about you know why a day if we approve it right now because i do think um getting that message out preparing people is is considerate i i'm very comfortable that we've reached a point where we can responsibly move to this mask optional as i think it's already been stated you know we're at a different place than when we initially put these mitigation efforts in place and um i think almost everything was said you know i i think i i also think that i'd like to it is a shift in my mind but you know we were concerned about the physical and the unknowns that we knew about the virus now it really is about the social emotional health of our kids our students and so um i fully support it

327i trust um i think you've i think you've really played this right all along in terms of the recommendations knowing when is the right timing that's another thing this is the first time that we've had the administration recommend that we go mask optional this has not been before us until tonight so you know this this is not like in and honestly i can look back to january and say that was the right move because you know in in marvel newtown they went they went virtual for a week because they you know and then they went back to mass mandates you know so i you know i i really feel that i'm that you have managed and you have kind of navigated the timing right and put this together so i am comfortable and i will

328support moving this thank you miss duffy anybody else on the board have any further questions or comments i'm sorry ms solomon did you have your handwriting no miss done i'm actually gonna take my mask off to give this comment um oh yeah i know it's shocking you've all wasted an evening coming because it's going to pass you all you know gave so much faith to social media you didn't trust that when we said we were going to follow the science we were going to do that this has actually been one of the hardest votes i've made on this board it has kept me up at night it wakes me up at night i have people in the community who have reached out to me and said i have faith in you and the board that

329you are taking care of us that i as a teacher who have students in the district and children who cannot be vaccinated i know you will vote to get not to take away the mass mandate they've said that to me they said i know i've seen you talk i know you wouldn't do that i have i know of teachers who are fearful of coming back to the classroom and i'm afraid of the kids who are fearful that their teachers won't be back that their teachers will be leaving because they have immunocompromised family at home they have young children i don't want to close schools i also got lots of nasty emails and frankly they're nasty calling me stupid calling me old telling me to get my head out of my butt and that was not

330the nice term that was used and saying that we don't pay attention to the science this as ms duffy said is the first time it's been before the board dr batchelor has been careful to keep this board updated he's given us guidance and information about the types of things he was thinking about this came in december i didn't say anything in december because it was irrelevant omicron had just hit the numbers were going to spike they did thanks to the administration and the teachers who really really stepped up and gave of their free time in a school day to cover for their peers who were out sick we didn't have to close but we were pretty close and i appreciate you admitting that because i think that if we get another wave that's bad and

331we close people should not be surprised i i just this is not this is not going away but when i think about it and when i you know the real challenge i have is that i really respect people who are now on both sides of this right people who say but sarah look at the science and they're talking about two different sets of information or they're interpreting it differently so the reality is do i wish vaccination rates were higher at our schools yes but i was really excited to see the numbers at the elementary school that that was really really compelling to me i haven't forgotten those that those pre-k kids though who can't be vaccinated so so we know there are people and addition students in our district who have health issues where they

332can't be vaccinated and teachers the same thing so we we recognize i recognize that there are people for whom this is a burden that we're placing on them and that we have tried to make decisions that were for the best of the community and the problem is sometimes the balance shifts and we have to make decisions we've talked about it we're aware that there's concerns especially the young kids especially the kindergartners and first graders who have been in school with masks who cannot who struggle with development because of the masks it's been a good decision it's time to move on for them but i echo what what mr moore said teachers don't have to take off their masks students don't have to take off their masks i don't know that my kids will and i

333know for a fact their kids i've talked to kids i've talked to parents who've said my kid won't unmask because i'm the sole breadwinner and if i get sick my you know we don't have an income and that's a burden for kids but that that's how they feel you know there was there's been you know allegations this evening that it's fear you know that we all live in fear maybe but maybe we all just live a different reality than the other people i'm reminded mrs goldman you may not even remember this when covid first hit and we had these meetings you asked the community to be patient and to show each other grace and it was such a model of a thing to say and i thought it wasn't really necessary i thought maybe it

334was flowery at the time boy was it prescient you know this community what we need to do is give each other grace so if you're a really ardent mask supporter and you see neighbors who aren't masking you know what don't judge them maybe they just got over coveted right they they may not need to mask and maybe they're willing to take those risks and by the same token if the kid next to you in school or the person at the grocery store is masking don't judge them either you don't know they may be headed to a family wedding they may be headed to hold new babies in the family they may live with somebody who for whom getting coveted really is a life or death issue and so what i would hope that this community

335could take from this meeting is that we're all learning we're all talking we're all having civil discourse and in doing so we're reaching hopefully the best decision for this community so to the people whom i have disappointed i apologize to the teachers who felt that i would vote differently i'm not sure it would have made a difference but i apologize for not meeting their expectations and i hope that this goes well i i i wish i had the same faith and confidence that mrs duffy does that this is going to be great we're all going to be fine i think we all thought that last summer when we were all unmasked and enjoying life and i i hope that this is truly the endemic stage and that and that we all also learn from this

336a lesson in civil discourse thank you ms dunn mr moore uh i promised i would wait until everyone else had a chance to go before i returned to the comments i mentioned earlier yeah would you like to go ahead first or would you like me to you're more than welcome to go all right thank you um actually addressing something that uh mrs dunn said and a question dr bab said that you asked which i think is a really great question um when you were asking about 2a why not something more like 2a and why now why not wait until march and it is not lost on me that where we are right now is the case counts we're coming into substantial we're about where we were in august where after july we had had great

337success in our summer program but but we were in the level level that's under 10 um of sunday average uh four cases per hundred thousand so you know why why wouldn't we be more like we were then where as cases started rising up to where they were in august now we're kind of going on the other end of the roller coaster why wouldn't that mean wait till march and you know i took i took a look at the chop policy lab modeling which has not been perfect or always correct but it's also one of the best in the business and um cases are projected on their model it hasn't been updated in about a week the cases are projected to be in the teens in a couple weeks if not below that um by mid-march

338but again does that mean we should do this now or should we wait two weeks um and so i think there are a couple differences though about that circumstance and where we find ourselves now so i'd like you all to take this into account well before you make your final decision number one we have the vaccination and we didn't have it at that time particularly for the younger age group and i really thought my expectation was sitting here in december i had marked the date on my calendar which was exactly five weeks after our that first vaccination clinic for that age group my expectation was that was going to be the date the rep superintendent would say we recommend mask optional and then omicron happened and it changed everything but that was what i was

339expecting but we should take the vaccinations into account that's a difference between where we were in august and where we are now even if those case numbers are about the same they're declining now even if they were about the same end of august and right where they are now um also addressing the point dr babson i think you raised this you know in your in your inquiry about um why not do 2a that reflects the cdc categories and and mrs monaghan i appreciate your emphasizing what the administration has been saying to us all along about looking at um multiple sources of information one thing about the chop policy lab that has been helpful to us all along is they are national experts who happen to be here in our local area which gives us an

340incredible amount of access to them that other districts don't have other districts can read the same blog posts and guidance that we can read but we our superintendent is able to consult on a regular basis um with experts from both chop and university of pennsylvania we should not forget dr brennan and his contributions to our analysis so thank you for reminding us of that so that's another difference between that situation and a possible answer to the question well why do this now why not why not wait a couple weeks when it's a little bit better it's fair question it's a good question but i would suggest that we look at that before making a decision one way or another about will we wait or not and and looking at just the blog post guidance not

341necessarily what dr bachelor has access to into superintendent meetings um this this quote about you know communities experience the declining case incidents by the way that it wasn't actually authored by dr rubin that's over dr gerber's byline so that's you know not just one person's idiosyncratic point of view but i will i will say that he has in subsequent interviews identified what is happening in south eastern pennsylvania now in february not earlier now in february as that level of declining cases incidents that makes him comfortable with making a shift to a policy where masks are not necessarily mandated at all the time so we have a local expert who's giving us local information and advice and i think that's very helpful to have so you know what about if things are going to go badly

342um i you know what if there's another variant uh what if the cdc updates their guidance and then you know makes some of this discussion look moot what if the delco health department finally um catches up to what we maybe were expecting would happen earlier and offer some guidance well one great thing about this plan i think it's a great thing it's a big part of what i'm taking into account is you know what it appears at the bottom of page six the board authorizes the superintendent implementatory masking at the superintendent's discretion i don't think something horrible is going to happen i don't think there's going to be a more a variant that is suddenly more severe but it could happen but if that does happen we have a tool in this health and safety

343plan that allows the superintendent to act quickly and decisively in consultation with the experts that he continues to consult with we take a broad-based national guidance approach and we turn it into a focused and local based approach it's not masks are gone forever some want that i respect that i respect the advocacy for that i do not agree with it i think we have a nuanced plan here this option uh 2b is part of that nuance and this authorization for the superintendent to act if he feels it's necessary in the interests of all of our students he can do that um you know i mentioned you know my four-year-old earlier uh i of course have two kids who are enrolled in the elementary in one of our elementary school buildings um i thank you um

344i've i've had conversations with them about the fact that you know things could be changing and um you know their views on this are are private between between me me and them but i really appreciate also your answer dr bachelor the question about i'm setting expectations in our buildings because as a parent i really wanted to set their expectations so what their views are as i said they'll be private but i'm comfortable saying what my views are i am ready for my kids to take their mask off i'm comfortable with that they are fully vaccinated i think they will be okay um if something happens that where things get worse you are empowered to put the mask mandate back on i was listening to supreme court arguments in the pennsylvania supreme court about redistricting in

345our system of government if the governor and the legislature cannot agree on a new congressional map it goes to the pennsylvania supreme court over and over and over again in these oral arguments the pennsylvania supreme court said we do not find this to be an appropriate judicial role drawing political boundaries but by law we must that is the system and that's the kind of decision we are facing here but one other thing i like about the nuance and flexibility of this plan is it puts operational decisions in the role of the person who should be making operational decisions the superintendent now if that if things go wrong if we as a board think that there's a mistake or we could always call a special meeting we could wait for the next meeting um there's even

346something called an emergency meeting although if you read the board policy carefully it is a very high bar for what qualifies as an emergency meeting and i'm so thankful that we have not yet as a district been able to had to cross that bar but if board members i know you know our policies but you if you want to refresh you can read that definition of an emergency meeting again but we if there truly was an emergency we could come back and change this but i would suggest that we um try to take on that attitude that the pennsylvania supreme court had and say let's do what we must this under the legal mechanism in place now we must vote on this plan but the extent to which we can have the people who are

347um the operational experts making operational decisions i think that's something we should consider seriously okay thank you mr moore and miss solomon indicated she has comments she wants to make or questions yeah i'm going to be really brief because um i was able to state my questions really in the curriculum committee meeting um i do want to just make some comments to the public um and to my fellow board members i really firmly believe to my colleagues up here that you all have the best interests of the children in the community at heart and i think you guys can hear how much we have wrestled with this over the past two years i've heard a lot of you say you're done with it well you know we're also exhausted with this none of us in

348this room asked for this we didn't create this to torture children or your families we've been called horrible things you know we didn't ask for covid and you know now it's at the community level to decide and um i feel like you know covet has been it's knocked a lot of people you know i think it's created so much anger in the community people not the community the whole country the world people are mad um and people have different opinions about it and i just want people to know that i heard tonight i came in and i really didn't prepare anything i wanted to listen and i and i hear you and i heard so much um pain people expressing pain about you know their experience and and the experience of their children with masking

349and i get that it's not ideal to mask kids it's none of us think that's a good thing to do educationally in any regard well kovit's not a good thing i mean this has just been really a struggle so i just want to say that we wrestle with this um so i don't feel we have really optimum options because we're faced with an unprecedented public health crisis and and so i just want to share that everybody has a little bit different spin on this um so from my experience with it i work in a place where vaccines are mandated where masks are mandatory we have very medically fragile children so i'm very partial i have to be because i live that in my reality i'm very partial to being cautious about this because that's the

350group i deal with um and i understand that's not everybody's you know the majority of people you're fine and your kids are healthy and you're done with it and i get it um but i just have to say what i have seen i know people that are fully vaccinated fully boosted and they're on their third round of covet and they are support staff and teachers who have gotten sick at school they have young children at home it's gone ripping through their families i know one teacher of ours came back from a maternity leave with a three-month-old baby at home she got covered the baby got covered a three-month-old baby like we don't know what that does to the neurology of a small child so i'm just saying these are people in our community as well

351um and so i think it is time to move towards whatever the new normal is um i just want to explain why i'm cautious about it because of my reality um and i would wonder if this may not be popular but if we should also if we decide to go mask optional if we should also make a statement that and this is a fact that the cdc does still recommend that you wear masks when you're indoors so it's your option you know um but that we should say i mean people have all different opinions and there's lots of different people out there but we're still under a government that you know has a the cdc and they're still recommending that we do this so should we not also offer that guidance to families and students

352as they make their choice that okay we're gonna you know let everybody make what they think is best but just also give them some guidance that they may not know that that is still there there's lots of people saying all kinds of things but and people trying to describe you know at some point you've got to say well um you know i do trust dr fauci you know i i think that he earned his position you know and you may not agree with that but he's still you know esteemed expert in our country and so you may have somebody else that you quote but they're not at the same you know to me level of um status in the country so um i don't know i would prefer to be more cautious i could support

353this um i don't know if anyone's interested in also just adding you know that we that it is still the recommendation that you wear a mask indoors but it's your choice but that you know there and that's you know that is the fact that that's still the case the and thank you mr solomon the the only tricky piece with the cdc guidance is that the cdc guidance is guidance that has been created to govern our whole country uh and when you look at the cdc guidance it shares uh and it's and it could be changing so and then as mr moore said we have no idea what it's going to exactly change to well that would make it a lot easier maybe we're one week too soon yes so we don't know if you know

354last week it was supposedly coming out tomorrow i'm not sure the status um oh today yes we hit we hit the today point yes so um and the uh the other piece with the cdc guys because it's geared and written towards for the whole country um when you really read through the whole page on masking and it's not just one sentence you know mask it's it is you know you should look to mask indoors it then talks about other factors for making that decision and some of those other factors are vaccination status in a community hospitalizations in the community are all factors that should be included so my only challenge would be is that we i think we do want to inform our community and want to inform them that you know and that's why

355we've included the cdc guidance the american academy of pediatrics guidance and the chop policy guidance in all of our presentations because we do want to inform our community i just would be cautious about just focusing on one because we've looked at so many but i think i think that message though to our community as we move to um you know no longer require masking that it is important for each individual to educate themselves on what they want to do in their decision did you have more ms solomon no all right so i think everybody's had an opportunity to comment except for me so i'm going to take this opportunity to first of all thank the community this is we have heard what 80 comments tonight i don't know what my inbox looks like if i

356have not gotten back to you i'm still happy to respond tomorrow if you'd like me to but i just want to let you know we value feedback we may not always agree but you should know that every member of this board does value welcome and value feedback it does inform what we do it's not necessarily always the sole determinant there are lots of other things that are going on but i want you to know we're glad you're here we appreciate what you had to say and i hope that you have had the opportunity to see what the deliberative process is for us we take this really seriously we are spending an inordinate amount of time and have been for the past number of years trying to make decisions that are going to be in the

357best interest of a community that doesn't always agree within the community so i just want to say thank you i want to thank my board member fellow board members i think your questions and comments were thoughtful informed interesting i appreciate all the thought and energy you put into them i know you've spent a lot of time thinking about this and i also want to thank the administration because you've put a lot of time and energy into thinking about this crafting it taking in all kinds of perspectives from every which way possible and all i can end up saying is that none of this is simple just like every other issue we have had to navigate since the pandemic began we've done it with virtually no road map and multiple valid considerations and concerns that our

358stakeholders bring forward that sometimes conflict with one another in case no one's noticed sometimes we don't all agree on everything in ragnar and that's okay but from these differing views we have had to come up with one decision that's not easy as far as tonight's decision goes i believe we are in an at an inflection point just as we have been at many other times over the past three school years as far as i'm concerned there has never been any absolute certainty that a particular decision is right but we've made them and i think given the givens we've done okay i have great faith in our superintendent and our administrative team dr batchelor has been the ongoing nexus for us of the myriad of factors in the pandemic that could and have impacted our educational

359program not the least of which is keeping one another healthy and safe but also keeping our buildings open through the ability to have enough employees to operate our buses and food service let alone staff our classrooms managing the day-to-day of the district is his charge and he brings us the governing body lots of data concerns and experiences from in and around radnor that shape his team's recommendations that i believe have served us well well it may be that the pandemic isn't over and it has been and very well may remain unpredictable there are other serious student issues that need even deeper intervention and attention these include student academic behavioral and social emotional struggles that have been attended to for the students who have them through the heroic work of our staff and yet many of

360those staff members tell us this work will be even better served if we make this change so there is a window of opportunity to lean in even further on these challenges now when both the presence of this disease is at its lowest here in a long time and protections like vaccines are available to almost all of those who are in our school system the future doesn't offer us any guarantees relative to what we have now so i will be strongly voting in support of the changes to this health and safety plan as proposed by the administration yet i fully recognize that this is not welcome news to some in our community and therein lies one of my biggest concerns that's been stated here a bit tonight the administration has spoken of a plan it's crafted

361to provide support to everyone regardless of what happens with this vote and i believe that the success of that plan relies on all of us acknowledging that different points of view and needs are legitimate and must be respected we as adults have an ongoing and significant role to play in helping our students respond to disappointment and stress these are teachable moments for fostering respect and resilience in the face of adversity and i hope that is for sure one of the things we all agree as adults here in radder is something we are going to lean in to do as dr bachelor has said over and over about the pandemic the only constant is change i think that's true about life in general and we've all certainly been put to that test over the past few

362years it's time to move to this next phase and i fully support it with that i'm going to ask my fellow board members if there's any further deliberation that they would like to make before i call the vote so i would like to take up ms solomon's suggestion that we had some kind of language that the leading infectious disease authority in this country who has often been cited in our conversations by the way and in our decision making the cdc and the american academy of pediatrics and these organizations don't often agree with each other by the way they are unanimous right now that there should be masking in substantial or high transmission some kind of some kind of language to that effect i think the only caveat here though is that if the cdc's is

363coming out with some kind of possible change today then perhaps that's not something that we would do but i wanted to sort of throw that out there something forgive me dr babson are you asking about the communication that's coming out from the district no what i'm talking about is uh the cdc um updating their guidance that at some point the cdc could be updating their guidance on on you know what they're what they're recommending for masking in schools so i'm not sure are you proposing an amendment i mean well i'm not sure exactly how you're channeling that deliberation means conversation so i'm just putting it out there that perhaps following ms solomon's idea that we put some kind of language in there that the cdc and or the american academy of pediatrics recommends for the

364reasons that ms solomon outlined point of order ms goldman so just and i'm trying to sure move your conversation forward dr babson ms solomon maybe you could clarify because when i heard you speaking i heard you kind of making sharing a thought that perhaps in communicating this plan to the community perhaps dr batchelor could mention that these those are the recommendations of the cdc and and to your point also the aap so i heard your comment less about making it a change to the health and safety plan but rather a request that dr batchelor could incorporate that information that piece of information into his communication that's what i heard as well that's why i was asking so and on a continuous basis i would say yeah i would be comfortable um with you know again

365i'm glad i gave myself 24 hours i would be comfortable in sharing with the community that this is an individual decision for each family and staff member to make comfortable sharing that please you know make sure you're aware of the guidance that is there from the cdc and listing some of the guidance that is out there i would be comfortable with that okay and dr babson just to be clear in the spirit of deliberation i know you haven't made a motion yet you're not suggesting we changed the health and safety plan itself you're asking administratively the administration to emphasize that guidance by way of feedback if you were to change the health and safety plan i think the place to do it would be the first bullet point in the column on page six where

366it says rtsd supports anyone who wants to wear a mask and we encourage unvaccinated individuals to wear a mask is that sentence already capturing what you're looking for in the plan itself or what is that something um if you were making an amendment let me put it this way if you were going to make an amendment that'd be the place to do it but i would suggest you look at that sentence and perhaps consider um the extent to which it may already capture some of the sentiment that you're looking for thanks for that suggestion i mean if it would go anywhere i would say would go on page five where it says radner attention school just will permit visitors students and staff in grades k-12 determine their masking status some kind of parenthetical there it

367around that part of the health and safety plan this is page five that the current recommendation of the cdc is in substantial or high transmission that you know mass should be worn dr bachelor if i mean dr babson if i may just offer sure i hear what you're saying and i think uh you know i appreciate dr moore with i mean mr moore was kind of pointing out you do not no i'm not i know i i mr was pointing out where one could propose a motion i would say that as a communication to the community um my my thought on that would be that dr bachel will probably convey the the and impart the essence of what's in that statement that you're mentioning and that ms solomon mentioned far more effectively in his communication

368to the community i agree that will ever be picked up in the nuances of this health and safety plan yeah i think that's well said i think that sort of dovetails with my initial you mean people read my communications more than they read our health and safety plan tough call all right so i am looking to call this vote mr jubilee yes you're and make a motion left in the deliberation phase oh we already made the motion in seconds oh we did so i am going to call it i'm ready to do it again sorry mr jubilee i can't i can't yes i'm sorry i just had one more comment and that's it that's it so i'm hearing a lot of frustration we i i want to re repeat what i said earlier we all

369actually want the same thing i want my children especially my first grader to be able to learn language and have her language development improve without the use of math and classroom we all want the same thing so we should really see that we should really see that commonality i think for me the game changer really is the vaccination rate among the kindergartners in the initial in the initial report there was a response rate i think of of 60 something percent oh 63 63 and the result was 45 so that's 63 percent of 45 i mean that's not that's very low and now you have a response rate of 76 that's huge that is a game changer so that shows to me that we could save originally i thought maybe we could do this safely and

370put in secondary and not primary but i do think that that is a game changer so despite my reservations about 2.5 percent in that metric i'm also ready to support this sure okay so we are going to now we are going to call the vote the excuse me the the motion on the floor is that the board approves the admin administration's updated health and safety plan all those in favor please indicate by saying aye aye it is uh with your hand okay it is nine to nothing a unanimous vote wait nobody wants to see the rest of the meeting we've got more work to do people all right thank you all for coming we will resume the rest of our agenda and that begins with our maybe we'll do our committee reports now how about

371that yeah that's fine all right so um excuse me okay i'm gonna ask just people to please be quiet because we've gotta we'd like to get out of here too and finish our business so let's start with the curriculum committee meeting ms dunn so most of the curriculum committee report has been handled because we have the health and safety plan and dr batchelor gave you all a summary of the summer math program at radnor middle school when we met on tuesday february 15th we also got an update on the student technology so if you have questions about the devices i urge you to go back and look at that or review the presentation that was provided and also to the members of the public who sent in requests that we add eid to the instructional

372calendar for 2022-2023 that is actually in consent agenda item number 14. we also asked the board to approve some costs for student trips thank you miss dunn ms monahan facilities committee i'll keep this very brief um the facilities committee met on tuesday february 8th meeting minutes were approved and administration presented the district-wide long-term feasibility study which i think dr batchelor accurately uh captured or updated in his superintendent remarks next meeting is on march 8th okay thank you ms monahan mr moore the finance committee report please yes um thank you the finance committee met two weeks ago last week when did we mean last week it feels like longer than that doesn't it february 15th february 15th i was there i was chairing the meeting i'm going to highlight just a couple things from the meeting

373rather than everything you see under financial action items number one there's an item that is not so much a financial action item it is a consequence of the fact that our business administrator is also our board secretary that type of role requires him to handle certain kinds of resolutions and there is a resolution to appoint me as a member of the dciu board mrs goldman has a term that was expected to run into june but she has determined that she would like to focus on other things and so i have been nominated by the committee to move on to this board for consideration for the dciu board to appoint me to complete that term and um should that go well uh in june there will be another decision to make as well about how we

374will have a representative serving on that board for financial action items i won't go through all of them the one i'll highlight that i thought was interesting was uh crown castle fiber llc as was explained in the finance committee meeting that contract is one that will change how our fiber optic lines work instead of a hub and spoke model is dr han still here to shake his head if i get this wrong it will be essentially the buildings connected to each other that gives us some performance possible changes and also some redundancies if there are technical problems in the system so you can hear a little bit more from uh both mr pauling and and dr hand describing how that system works if uh if you watched the committee video and then finally we had

375a very substantial budget presentation please watch it there were a lot of great questions from committee members about the budget this is step one for our preliminary budget please send your questions and feedback to mr pauling about how you like your budget presented and then questions you have about specific items that the administration is proposing about how we manage the taxpayers money and invest in our children's future thank you thank you mr moore miss duffy policy please as the policy committee met on tuesday february 8th at 5 pm the committee moved policy 204 on attendance and policy 610 procurement forward to tonight's agenda for a second read for approval policies 611 and 612 are also on tonight's agenda for a second read to repeal as their contents were incorporated into the procurement policy 610. the

376committee also revert reviewed policy 919 civility the committee moved this policy forward to tonight's agenda for a first read legal counsel recommended that this policy be brought under review to clarify that the district's policy and accompanying ar on civility do not apply to public comment at school board meetings or committee meetings since these public comments are regulated by policy 006 on meetings and public participation while a first read of policy 006 was on the committee's agenda to discuss on the 8th we ran out of time it's a lengthy policy so we only discussed about half and the administration and policy committee members decided that we would continue the discussion at our next committee meeting on tuesday march 8th at 5 pm i do want to say that we it was our last meeting with mr

377george regal we are sad to see him go but excited for the opportunity before him um we are lucky to have a very deep bench and so now we will be welcoming dr scott hand as our policy liaison and um looking forward to working with him next month thank you miss duffy uh dr babson the the grcc report please so first of all i mean if a tree falls into forest does anyone hear it if a school board has a meeting with no audience anyway i tried that one oh there we go okay youtube we do it okay all right [Laughter] and then there was one [Laughter] okay so the grcc met on tuesday february 8th at 7 pm mr petit provided further updates to the district's redesigned website and fielded questions from the committee

378he then provided a legislative update and highlighted issues of fair school funding charter school accountability and modernization and managing substitute teacher shortages our next meeting is scheduled for tuesday march 8th 2022 at 7 pm thank you dr babson and with that we'll move into the consent agenda portion of consent agenda although board action is not required is required it is generally unnecessary to hold discussion on these items with the consent of all board members they are therefore grouped and approval is given in one motion in the event a board member wants to discuss any item the board president will move it to an appropriate place on the agenda does anybody have anything on the consent agenda they want to pull yes i need to pull um 10.01 okay is there anything else dr babson what

379do you want to pull i'd like to pull 14.02 14.02 okay anything else i'm looking around don't see anything okay so i would like to see if there is a motion to approve consent agenda items 10.02 through 16.04 without 14.02 does that make sense guys there's no 10.02 so it's just 11.00 i apologize okay so 11.4 through 16.04 not including 14.02 so moved second okay a second from miss dunn all in favor that's nine to nothing thank you very much ms solomon 10.01 i have to abstain from this vote um being an employee of the dciu okay are you making the motion mister yes i said i'd move to a pink 10.1 thank you second miss don is seconding all in favor okay it's eight to nothing with one abstention item 14.02 dr babson sure

380i just thought it might be helpful to clarify um that the teacher in service for friday april 21st 2023 was done to accommodate the observance of of eid i'm not sure how we would communicate that but i know that there are people in the community that when they looked at the instructional calendar they weren't quite sure what was going on there so i'm not sure how we would tweak that to make that clear can i just we actually talked about this a little bit curriculum and i think the plan i think the community that asked for it is aware of that change and that in august dr beck told is that is going to actually um convene another calendar committee and at that time we may talk about making other changes and explanations on the

381calendar if i weren't such a subscribe you know i wouldn't i would know that so all right mr moore also on this item i i very much support that change and and for that reason since the calendar committee was mentioned i am not voting against this um even though it still has an after labor day start it was conveyed very strongly by the administration that we need the after to labor day start because of the construction project at the high school but it is i am hopeful that the calendar committee will revisit that issue before coveting something that we were seriously looking into thank you mr moore i admire your consistency if there aren't any more comment uh dr babson would you like to make a motion move this item for us then 14.02 yes

382i'd like to make them do i have a second second that was miss duffy has the second all those in favor okay it passes nine to nothing thank you very much and now we move into our reports from board liaisons ms solomon the delaware county community college no report all right that brings us to the delaware county intermediate unit board and i was on the agenda for the february 2nd meeting because i put in my resignation i have really enjoyed serving on the delaware county intermediate unit board i have learned so much about the operation of that organization and the delaware county technical school but now in this role of the presidency i really wanted to have my extra evenings freed up so that i can immerse myself more in radnor activities which i've done

383having gone to a number of sporting events and even the black student union talent show which was phenomenal the other night i think there's another event coming up in basketball world the girls basketball team won their game tonight so they have moving on in districts which is super exciting so that so i'm sorry oh i thought i heard tomorrow night um so i just i my resignation went into effect on february 3rd which means that i'd missed the committee meeting the following week but thank goodness for mr moore who has so graciously stepped up to take this take over this role and we have now approved that move as a board and so he will be on the agenda for the march delaware county intermediate unit agenda to be approved to be take my place

384on that board for the duration of my term which ends this june as he mentioned so i just want to congratulate you mr moore thank you for stepping up to take that role important role over the only thing i can really report um from the february 2nd meeting is that there was an the appointment of a new director of human resources for a four-year term that's a that's an important position obviously at the iu given the depth of their employee roles and i know at the committee meeting there were even though i wasn't there i do know and have conferred with mr moore who was that some of the things that they're working on is at the dciu is refreshing their website there is they have come forth with their budgets which we will all

385be seeing as a board very soon and mr moore informed me that there will not be an increase to the radder township school district which was good news in that budget and then in terms of facilities work their full croft campus which mr moore will become familiar with at some point is getting a major overhaul and that is where a lot of student programming takes place so that's that's exciting news and we'll be listening to updates from you mr moore on how that project is going so thank you again for indulging me with the dciu report and i'm now going to move back to mr moore for the delaware county school board's legislative council as a reminder to the board the meetings and schedule documentation for the legislative council meetings are all on the dci

386website so i will refer you to them in the interest of time i will make one highlight one thing from our most recent meeting which occurred on february 9th and and this highlight will also serve as the psba liaison update some of you may know jennifer hoff who is a school director who has now also been appointed to be an advocacy ambassador she's a school director in william penn and so she may have emailed you if she has not you should email her she would like to engage with everyone in southeastern pennsylvania about how we can be even more focused and successful in our advocacy efforts and that's a role that she is taking on with great enthusiasm and i would encourage you to have conversations with her about that thank you mr moore radner

387township parks and rec ms dunn dr babson i got this one so on thursday february 10th the parks and recreation board attempted to meet but we did not have a quorum so we were unable to conduct any actual business however we had a lengthy meeting where we discussed a number of things i just want to highlight a couple of them for all of you i doubt anyone's going to actually watch this meeting to this point but for the board members information the parks and recreation department has put up some signs around the community that say let's be friends they're really trying to encourage people to engage with them through social media to make sure that they're promoting all of their different recreational offerings in addition they are looking at the fenimore woods project which has

388been a hot topic they're also looking at um making some improvements to odorisio so if you know anybody who lives in that community i know they're really looking to get input from the community and i'm hoping that there'll be another meeting in that area to focus on that last thing of particular interest to the school board is that they are they have a list which i can share with people if you need it of all the various parks owned by the township and and recreational facilities which includes the silpizio gym which they call the radnor athletic center which is over next to our middle school and they've got all of them on a list currently because they're trying to create their capital plan for the future and so the question is kind of where to

389allocate township funds in terms of improvements so if any of you have feedback specifically personally or as school board members about which projects might need the most input or are most deserving of community funding please feel free to let me know and i'll tell dr babson because he's going to the next meeting march 10th thursday thank you miss dunn the radnor educational foundation ms duffy we did not meet this month but we do have exciting news we have a new executive director mrs judy trumbetta she just joined this week so she has an extensive career in public service focusing on improving communities and promoting public education so we're very excited to have her on board i'm actually going to meet her tomorrow so looking forward to that i have saved the date the ref gala

390looks like it will be friday april 22nd i'm sure miss trumbetta will be working on that and our fall grants are underway i'm just going to mention one because it's championed by our very own mrs klusman and she's a very enthusiastic champion along with maureen mcconnell on a new revamp of the radnor middle school garden and on february 12th they were out there they lucked out with a beautiful day in between the cold and they many members of our community were working hard raising raising all the beds and so if you have a chance if you're walking down you know i guess if you know where watershed is you're walking around that corner down to where the bus loop is if you look over you can you know take a peek and see it in

391progress um but there are other grants underway as well i think i'll leave it to mrs monaghan i'm sure she'll give a report of another one in uh for the radnor committee of special education i sold her thunder last time so i'm not going to do it again this time um but our next board meeting is thursday march 24th thank you miss duffy mr jubilee or the radnor high school scholarship fund yes um not no real report just a public service announcement because we haven't met since the last we last met as a board so i gave a report last month we're next meeting next monday february 28th just a reminder to our community and to our high school families with seniors that scholarships are application periods still ongoing for uh this year's pool they

392are due march 23rd so it's important that they will be due before we are next together as a full board in terms of our business meeting applications again are available at the website radnorscholarshipfund.com or the high school's guidance office and we encourage eligible seniors to check it out and take advantage of this wonderful opportunity thank you mr jubilee radnor page miss dunn oh report okay and ms monaghan the radnor committee for special education yeah i just want to highlight the exciting outcome we've had so far with the shelly moore universal design for learning series that has been put on by the pennsylvania inclusion collective of which ratner committee for special ed is a part of in partnership with the mciu there have been two sessions held to date out of the total of four sessions

393they are the next one or the third one will be tomorrow night from six to eight pm and the last one will be next wednesday they've had a total registry registrants of 260 educators and 650 parents and they've had great live outcome in the first and second series ranging from 345 to 438 live viewers it's not too late to register for the one scheduled for tomorrow or for march 2nd and this goes out to parents as well as educators who can earn act 48 credits if you are interested just con you can either contact me and i can direct you to the appropriate person or um at the mciu basically to uh register for that that's it i think registration is closed no there's a special i asked that question okay so if they email

394this one individual her name is is that a recent thing though yeah i just got confirmed because at one point that woman had said that she couldn't take any more but if it's open again i just want to make sure i got confirmation from the committee last yesterday okay so i'm hoping that that is still factual okay so all right her name is sarah misner and she's at the mciu great terrific thank you so much it's been a very interesting series all right that concludes the board liaison reports and that brings us to new business does anybody have new business seeing none i'm going to move into the board announcements let's see next march tuesday march 8th we will resume our committee meetings five o'clock will be policy six o'clock will be facilities and seven

395o'clock will be government relations and communications all of those take place in the ground floor conference room at the district administration building then on tuesday march 15th we will have curriculum at five finance at 6 30 again at the administration building in the ground floor conference room and then on tuesday march 22nd we'll be back here in this room at seven o'clock for our regular business meeting it is time for a second round of public comment the board will provide an opportunity at each regular board meeting for eligible participants to comment on matters of concern official action or deliberation which are or may be before the board the board requires the public participants be residents of the district be pat taxpayers of the district be persons with a legal or contractual right to address the

396board be persons recognized by the presiding officers having a special interest such that addressing the board would be appropriate and then sign in with their name and address eligible participants must be recognized by the presiding officer and must preface their comments by an announcement of their name during virtual meetings public comments sent by email must include the commenter's name street address town and topic to be addressed individual comments shall be limited to not more than four minutes as per policy six meetings and public participation administration will respond to general questions raised during public comment sometime after the meeting parents with questions specific to their child's educational experience are encouraged to contact their child's teacher and or building principal directly should you be unable to attend this board meeting comments can be submitted by email to

397board comments at rtsd.org or in writing to mr michael pettitti radner township school district 135 south wayne avenue wayne pennsylvania 19087 i would like to just check is is an occupant of the room interested in making any public comment you sure okay is there any emailed public comment mr pettitti i guess we have two okay thank you eric navak 2 315 bayley road bryn mawr another vote to end the masks amid declining numbers thanks and kelly martin and chill road wayne thank you to the administration for researching and putting together such a thorough presentation for our school board this is a question for the school board members trying to insist we tie unmasking to vaccination data when you learn that the cova 19 vaccines available do not prevent infection and that the vaccines available do

398not prevent spread what did you think can you comprehend it do you understand that this information means vaccination status and data on our students is meaningless to a k-12 school board i know it's hard to break through your political narratives but think of it this way a polio vaccine prevents a person from getting and spreading polio equivalent i.t vaccine cannot prevent infection or can it prevent spread it might help to view the coveted vaccines as a way to help the recipient to have a less severe infection like a therapeutic this is no bearing on mass status of our radnor students this information is entirely meaningless to a school board thank you all right with that i will entertain a motion to adjourn is there a motion so moved is there a second second it's done

399okay with all those in favor of adjourning for the evening say aye okay that's a wrap thank you you