January 25, 2022 RTSD School Board Business Meeting

001evening everyone and welcome to the radnor township school district school board's regular business meeting of tuesday january 25th i'd like to call this meeting to order and begin with the pledge of allegiance foreign next i'd like to report on executive session the board met in executive session on the following dates and discussed the following january 5th 2022 for legal purposes january 25th 2022 for personnel and with that i'd like to turn to our report from our students welcome sami and sophie good evening everyone i hope you have all had a great start to the new year and haven't given up on any resolutions quite yet i know 2022 got off to a very busy start for rhs students with winter activities in full swing also i have not gone one day in 2022 without multiple

002people bringing up the dreaded midterms which i realized when i was writing my report begin tomorrow so if you see sophie and me rushing out of here really early you'll know why to backtrack to the beginning of the month the week we came back from break full attendance in every class became an anomaly and students became pretty used to walking into class to be greeted by a substitute as covid made its way around the school however students and teachers persevered with a strong sense of community and the camaraderie of we'll all get through this together and the month seemed to fly by also earlier in the month as you all know radnor had their first virtual snow day of the year well i'm very grateful to go to school in person every day this year

003i have to admit it felt pretty nice to roll out of bed at 8 30 and go to homeroom in my pajamas teachers and students both had a little bit of a shock that day as it was the first time we saw each other's faces for longer than the brief moment it takes for someone to have a sip of water however there was not a lot of time to sit and stare as teachers used the day to assign classwork and the zoom screen quickly filled up with names instead of faces as people worked individually to complete assignments for the seniors their last high school midterm week will hopefully be made a bit better by the excitement of having their senior semi this saturday the 29th after a few cancelled and outdoor dances the seniors are

004definitely looking forward to having their dance in the classic lobby location on saturday the lobby will be transformed into an oasis of purple glitter as that is the theme for this year's semi decorations for this theme will include streamers of shiny silver stars purple led light up balloons and more as the big prom puzzles will come later in the year no one did anything too crazy for senior semi and it seems to be a good mix of people taking dates and going with friends sophie will talk about sophomore student government later tonight but as a for an update on the junior student council they are currently putting most of their focus towards forming a plan for their grades raf grant as of right now the juniors hope to use the grant to renovate certain aspects

005of the rhs library or implement some new sustainable features in the rhs cafeteria with the approach of midterms some clubs should slow down towards the end of this month as most students spent a lot of their time studying over these past few weeks however the leukemia and lymphoma society student club also known as lls for them january marks the beginning of their large fundraising campaign each year the club chooses different student ambassadors to lead the fundraising with the year's previous leaders guiding the newly chosen also this month the ran right released their first very own radnor themed mini crossword the crossword contained questions about infamous brand new teachers and tested rhs students knowledge on activities and events around the school the student who solves the crossword first gets a special feature on runner-up instagram the

006club plans to release the crosswords bi-weekly giving students many opportunities to be the first to solve it finally next week thursday february 3rd rhs speak up will be holding a large virtual event on zoom the topics of this speak up include mental health race and racism relationships and intersectionality and identity parents and students who registered could pick which topic each of which corresponds with smaller breakout rooms they would like to be a part of registration for the event is entirely free i hope you all have a great night and i will now pass it on to sophie thank you sami so if you might want to just pull the mic a little bit more towards you there you go thanks thanks sammy good evening everyone i hope everyone has been enjoying the new year i

007know at radnor high school we have been jam-packed everyone is busy with clubs sports and classes as this month comes to a close in sports news winter sports are at their peak in basketball the boys varsity team has been crushing it with their big win over haverford high school in a close game winning 43-40 last friday the team played lower marion unfortunately they lost but they still have an amazing record of 13 wins and one loss as well it was amazing to see so many students at the game supporting radnor in girls basketball the girls also had a close game against haverford with a score of 35-32 sophomore kate gallagher's layup in the final seconds during overtime sealed radnor's victory last thursday the girls also had their senior night against upper darby and juan the

008boys ice hockey team is now preparing for their first annual main line cup which is in early february there they will face lower marion the girls ice hockey team just resumed playing last friday in their game against conestoga after they took some time off for winter break in track news both the boys and the girls took a trip to penn state a few weeks ago for the kevin dare invitational on january 8th the boys and the girls both had impressive performances that they have been training hard for the upcoming spring season as swimming and diving have begun again the girls had an impressive record over pen crest winning 102 to 81. the boys also defeated pencrest 90-75 and another impressive match in other sports the squash team a few weeks ago had their try match

009where they competed against two schools unfortunately they lost both games and close matches 5-4 but are now gearing up for the 2022 u.s high school team squash championships which is at the end of february lastly the boys wrestling team took home another win against haveford high school it was an overall impressive match and next week they'll face our rivals lower marriott in arts news the musical mamma mia began rehearsing for their play this spring the play is set to be in person this year and everyone is so excited with rehearsals just beginning the actors have been learning the music like dancing queen and money money money the cast has also begun to learn some of the choreography and i for sure can't wait to see how it turns out just last week ratner students volunteered

010their time for mlk day radner partnered with cradles for crayons to collect new and like new clothing to donate to children some of the other non-profits randor partnered with included city team community volunteers in medicine wayne church food pantry nationality service center and so many more bins were placed at the high school that entire week so donations could be accepted some items that were donated included winter coats school supplies socks toiletries and more unfortunately the event was postponed from the original january 17th date due to weather but nonetheless radnor persisted and changed the date to volunteer this past weekend their students and community members organized the items and also created care packages and notes overall this day was great and everyone was so happy to come and to come together and volunteer for a great

011cause in student government news the freshman class is now prepping for their annual freshman semi which is at the end of february additionally the sophomores just announced their sophomore semi theme which is beyond the stars everyone is so excited for that event as well which is in early april since the last meeting the sophomore student council just wrapped up their holiday letter writing to the homeless and those experiencing food insecurity during lunches students came together in the cafeteria to write special holiday notes with encouraging messages and more than 50 messages were received as well last friday they implemented a pajama day which was very fun and relaxing especially before the upcoming midterms i can't wait to see what they have planned next thank you all so much for your time and we are so excited

012to be back for the new year have a good night thank you sophie and welcome to your new role here all right and that was we will move at this point into the report from our superintendent dr batchelor good evening good to see everyone sammy sophie thank you for your reports and yes uh you know if if i were you and i had midterms i would sneak out before the superintendent went on his long report but it's your caller when you want to sneak out sammy i was excited to hear that the uh first virtual snow day of the year went well and for our community you know as we have shared we shared i think probably in november december you know our plan for snow days is a little bit different than we've ever

013had because we have this opportunity now to do virtual days but it doesn't mean an actual snow day still won't exist here in radnor the days we do virtual days i call them save summer days because we're saving the day in june essentially when we do that we have three built-in days to our calendar if we don't use all three of them we give them back and we get to end the school year a little bit earlier so when we get to june everyone is always happy uh when we don't and if we have put additional days we're tacking days onto june so if the right storm comes and the right timing we could be looking at a snow day i know many students were hoping for an official snow day but uh we haven't

014had that storm yet so we'll we'll be monitoring the weather as we move forward so i wanted to share tonight with the board in our community and my superintendent remarks a bit of an update on where we are with kovid you know we do that each month we share an update on where we are with covid but i also want to share for our board and a community a preview of a more extended discussion we're going to have in february at the february board meeting we need to have a more extensive discussion about our health and safety plan and when the timing is right to make some adjustments to that plan the timing may be right in february it may not be the one thing we have learned over the last two years is that

015you know things constantly change we adapt and respond to those changes we evaluate what the changes mean for us as a school district and how do we most effectively keep our schools open and keep providing education for our kids so my report tonight is a preview for what's to come for us to think about over the next month as we look for our february board meeting so we'll begin by sharing our dashboard that we share each month with our community you can see we had to create a new graph uh and and that is unfortunate and to where the situation we've been in uh but you can see the cases and where we we spiked uh during the week right after break uh we talked about the spike last year after spring break being a

016challenge clearly this was a much greater challenge for us and as i think it was um sammy noted in her report the challenges we had that first week with some of the absenteeism among our staff and students due to covet if we go to the next slide just to keep you know to look at the numbers and to ground ourselves in what we've been dealing with as a school district you know when we look at our numbers and we look at the last three weeks 457 positive cases and again those cases are based on our families informing us of positive cases our families are letting us know or we happen to find out because the students in school the majority of the time our positive cases are never walking the halls of our building and

017i say that from the standpoint that if a student you know all of a sudden doesn't feel well on a sunday the parent doesn't send them to school on monday they keep them home and they say they're not feeling well they stay home but they call and let us know that number becomes on our dashboard that student though was never with a fever in our building there are some cases where they are but in many of the cases when the students have a fever and aren't feeling well and thank you community the kids are staying home and the parents are calling us and letting us know it is a lot more rare does happen where student goes to the nurse's office and maybe we then rapid test them and we find out they're positive that's

018that's much more rare but that happens as well but the majority of their cases haven't even set foot uh in our building at least while they were having those symptoms so we look at the 457 total cases we look at what the week of december 31st you know to january 6 then we look at the other week of january 7th and then the total cases and then you see it's so troubling with the we're just talking about these two by four seeing so i'm going to have to put my glasses on revert to my printout from the start of school keep in mind from the start of school to december 16th we had 93 cases so just to put in perspective what we experienced from august to december versus what we have experienced in the

019last few weeks thankfully it's the trend is moving down the trend is moving down but at this point we're not at a place where i'm willing to recommend any changes right now to our mitigation and masking and that's why again we're going to talk about this in february as well we're hoping this trend continues and it's been a dramatic drop i mean we're averaging almost 50 cases each week and we're seeing the county average we're going to share that a moment dropping as well so we hope this continues moving to the next slide so this is the delaware county transmission level and we're a little bit our hands are a little bit tied when it comes to knowing what's happening in our community we had last year data that was specific to radnor which unfortunately

020we don't have access to through the state anymore it would be really helpful to know what the transmission level was in radnor township as opposed to just delaware county but right now all we have is delaware county through looking at the cdc dashboard and we could see again the same thing and i highlighted the cases per hundred thousand and that cases per hundred thousand again is trending downward now at this point as well so we'll continue to track that move to the next slide this is a slide i shared in december so it was a i believe a december 21st meeting if i recall 21st was our meeting and in december everything in black on this slide is what i shared in december from december to now our january meeting everything in red are where

021things are changing and this is again what we've become used to with covid things continue to change and we have to continue to evaluate so our goal throughout the pandemic has been to safely provide in-person education for all our students what are we required to do as a district we are still required to notify the state of pennsylvania of any positive cases i shared in december we were required to isolate covet positive students and staff for 10 days if you remember over break that changed the cdc came out and changed and that can now be reduced there's more parameters to it and there's some more details to it but that can be reduced to five days i shared in december that we had to identify closed contacts and determine if they need to quarantine chester

022county health department who has guided our school district through much of the you know through through the pandemic and we've been working now more directly with the state for the beginning of this school year but last year who we relied on solely for our guidance chester county health department has shared with every school district that they work with that no longer contact tracing and many districts in the area are no longer contact tracing they have ended the school district's responsibility for contact tracing as they're moving forward i listed on december considered not could consider but not required to close the school if more than five percent of school is coveted positive in a 14 14 day window there was something that the create the state created well over a year ago no new guidance suggests

023we should be closing school there's no guidance out there now or any of the new guidance matter of fact the guidance now coming from chop and other places are putting a priority on keeping schools open so what has been our biggest challenge and continues my goodness uh we said responding to student staff isolation quarantines with limited substitute coverage we thought that was a bit of a challenge for us in november and and december we were never so challenged as we were in in january thanks to the cooperative efforts of our entire community the flexibility of our students our staff our staff chipping in to help cover classes our administrative team juggling and covering the classes our support staff helping with the logistics we managed to stay open through this surge and i'm really proud and

024we managed to stay open safely we still feel strongly that we have limited to no spread within our buildings based on our mitigation protocols and i've shared that with some of our communications to our community however the toll the pandemic which i shared the pandemic is taking it's taking a toll on our students and staff and i shared this in december and it still holds true now whether it's masking whether it's all our different mitigation protocols it is taking a toll and i think that our community is looking for and trying to understand what is the path forward and i think some of this guidance is also sharing with us and and presenting to us that things are changing and i think things are changing in the right direction let me move to the next

025slide so just a quick summary of those things that have changed and i'll go a little bit more in detail in the slide after this with some of the guidance but you know obviously things have changed as we had a huge spike in cases the chop guidance the children's hospital of philadelphia guidance the chechen county health health department guidance based on that guidance i shared with our community several weeks ago that we as a school district are adopted adopted have adopted the chop guidance that is now pushing us into limiting and no longer contact tracing we will as a school district though which we have continued to do we will still notify families when there's a positive case in a classroom k to five and that we will still continue to keep our dashboard which

026we've always done k to 12 for our middle school and high school we have never notified of individual cases in the middle school in high school only because kids move around classes too much so that's why we've never notified of cases there but we do at the elementary and we're going to continue that there's so much more guidance out there and studies about the benefits of a booster shot and the booster and in combination with your vaccine and the benefits we're seeing um in that in our communities and across the country we have a booster clinic happening tonight actually it's still going on i believe uh until about eight o'clock at radner elementary school and we'll be hosting another opportunity later this week with a booster clinic for our students and the legal implications of

027masking continues to change and evolve um to our board and our community please you know understand we continue to watch this we had a state mandate to mask that mandate based on court action ended in december 10th we've also had a new case that we've just re you know come to our attention uh which is on the opposite opposite kind of end of this masking discussion a new case in north allegheny where north allegheny school district removed mass from their health and safety plan in december and parents in that community specifically for specific parents came forward and took the school district to court based on the fact that their children you know were immunocompromised and said whoa while we're in this spread you shouldn't be removing mass and the court said until we have a

028chance to hear this case fully north allegheny everyone has to mask while you're in substantial or high spread so we're going to be watching very closely what happens with this case as well moving forward and other districts so what does it all mean for us so the one piece i want to share is what chop both children's hospital of philadelphia and the the chop policy lab came together to put out to share with new guidance for the everyone and in that new guidance i'm just going to read two quotes from i usually don't like to read from powerpoints but i will for these two pieces with evidence that covet 19 is becoming a milder infection in most children and at a time when all adults and youth in k-12 settings have been offered vaccination our

029policy lab experts and chop clinical leadership have reached a consensus that preserving as much in-person schooling as possible outweighs the risk of infection to children and school staff at this stage of the pandemic the second quote is talking about uh the import the importance of how vaccinations have helped us and have helped bring us to this point and to avert severe disease and then the third one furthermore well it is soon to while it is too soon to conclude that covet 19 has become endemic seasonal virus like influenza rsv or other viruses we typically encounter a chop the declining virulence makes us hopeful that we are rapidly shifting in that direction particularly for vaccinated individuals so the guidance from chop and others is moving us in a direction it is moving us in a direction

030that is emphasizing that we keep schools open it is also moving us in a direction and hopefully the numbers in the next couple weeks continue to decline rapidly as many suspect they will but it is moving us in a direction that as a school board and a community we have to be prepared that we are going to be eventually making some changes to our health and safety plan and we're possibly making those changes in february or in february we're going to discuss the idea of maybe here's a change but these are the guard rails that we need to have in place for us to make that change we'll go to the next slide so these are the considerations i shared with the board in december and we had an opportunity to discuss them and i'm

031sharing them with the board tonight and our community because we will discuss them again in february we can certainly continue to mask as outlined in our health and safety plan that is always an option for us as a school district another option is for us to develop potential guard rails for when we would move whether it's gradually all or all at once when we would remove masking as a requirement it would still allow people to mask and we may as a district even decide to still recommend masking even though we're not requiring it one option in 2a is for us to look at setting a transmission level guard rail and the one the administration put forward in december was that as long as we are in high spread in delaware county we would continue to

032mask and once we went to substantial or hopefully we'd love to be in moderate or low but any of those three we would possibly recommend masking but no longer require it clearly that core case that i mentioned before plays into this in this discussion i shared with you in december i'm not very comfortable setting a threshold base me personally setting a threshold based on community spread rates based on the county because we've been in high community spread since august and i think there is a good argument to make that if you look back at our spread rates that there was times in the school year we look back especially into september october november where we may have might not have been able to maybe we didn't have to require masking then and we would have

033been all right as a district i believe i am at the same time we if we had done that in october november we would have been recommending i would have been recommending we mask again in january because of the spike we're seeing we needed to mask through this surge because we needed to make sure that we're limiting the opportunities for spread in our building so that we can keep all of our teachers and as many of our kids in the buildings and in classrooms the other option we have you know so the first two way is to set it based on a threshold to be option is that we look for a gradual release of the mass mandate and we base it on our own experience we base it on our experience so look at

034the percentage of positive cases in the building and we don't want that to exceed 2.5 where did we come up with 2.5 well because the state well over a year ago created this 5 percent rule for when you might want to consider closing a school so this option would create a guard rail that once we hit 2.5 half and it's just picked because it's half of five percent once we hit 2.5 we would mask require masking but as long as we stay under that we could be not require masking so that is another option for us so these are the two items these are the third option is to just remove the mass mandate obviously as well we could just remove it these are the options and any other option many people in the community

035write to me if there's other options that are out there staff as well board members as we look at this next month but we need to talk about these options and we also need to talk about what date would they go into effect now if we set a date and base it on transmission level we don't know the date obviously we would then continue to monitor it would be really great if we could get rad or transmission level data we won't we have tried to get radio transmission level data and until we have a fully operational delaware county health department we have no ability to obtain just the radnor specific data so those will be the options that we need to talk about so our recommendation tonight moving forward i just want to share my

036report is that we continue to require masking through the month of february honestly as i i like to prepare my superintendent's reports uh you know a week before uh i wasn't even able to prep we're so day to day last week we were still trying to make sure that we had enough substitutes that had everybody covering our buildings we're feeling much better each week about where we are and i'm hoping that this trend that we i shared with you before continues in the next couple of weeks and then at our february board meeting we put on our agenda our health and safety plan and we have a discussion about where we want to move with our health and safety plan and again that may depending what we learn in the next couple of weeks we

037may be making a decision in march we may be making a decision to adopt guard rails and wait and see before i move to well the one last slide i did wanted to share does have the after-school rapid testing and then the booster clinics and we put a hold on our rapid testing clinic this past this current week because we're doing the booster clinics this week so there's a short hiatus on that but i want to thank our community and thank our staff especially for all those who have made an opportunity for these two events to happen before i move to what i want to say more celebratory and more happy news within my report are there any questions from board members on anything i just shared in my report on the booster clinics i'm

038really glad that we were able to accommodate that i know that boosters have been hard for a number of people to find um you said you have 230 registered and there's some time slots open for january 27th at what point if there's availability would we open it beyond our students to students who attend other schools in our area or family members you know i'll turn to uh you know i think he's working over there todd stitzel is barking over there so let me uh i don't know if anybody else could jump in we have every clinic we have run um what we have done at the end of each clinic is we've opened it up to anyone to walk in because we just want people to be able to get so we will do that

039as well i'm sure again i just don't know when okay thanks i just want to make sure people were aware if there was an opportunity and i also want to just to the high school students we are sorry we did not want to do a booster clinic at the time of midterms uh we have been you know scrambling for weeks to try to book these booster clinics and we were really just at the mercy of the organizations we've been trying to work with and our nurses have been absolutely phenomenal you know dedicating their time to actually deliver these shots and help with all of the clinics so we do apologize if any student who should receive their booster isn't feeling well mrs kevicus in the high school administration just let them know if you're out

040sick and there was an opportunity for makeups for midterms no no fine thank you dr batchelor so thank you for that update and you know to the entire administration and staff and the students and parents you know i'm really grateful i know it's been a group effort to keep things going um you mentioned a lot of information that's come out from the cdc which i appreciate the the one piece of information i didn't see up there that's come out from the cdc is uh they've been encouraging the use of higher quality masks and so i just i didn't know if and in this information sharing with the with the community with students um you know to encourage families uh staff students to wear the highest quality mask that they can you know bring themselves to

041get the surgical you know kn 95 is of course the best one the surgical masks you know i do know there's been a lot of data and information from the cdc about not only the masking itself but the kind of mask and that that really is making a difference with regard to transmission and i say this is just in service of of trying to keep you know as many kids and as many staff members in school every day because that's where we want them and you know knowing the challenge that you faced and just you know if a student or if a staff member were to go to a building principal or to the nurse in the building wanting a higher quality mask do we have them available what do we have any plans in

042place or programs in place for that again all in service of keeping kids in school and keeping keeping students in school and keeping staff in school and and keeping everyone healthy so we do have um you know the surgical mass available to our students and that we have talked about the idea of trying to publish more of that information encouraging i had many requests saying would we change and that's something we could talk about obviously in february i have not recommended that we change or require a certain type of mass uh the medical professionals i have spoken to you know have felt that the surgical mask uh you know is a quality mask obviously you're going to get better protection with an n95 mask as we move forward i'm fine with i mean even a

043surgical mask i think you know the data that came out is that they are preferred over a cloth mask so i just i just didn't see that information up there so i was wondering if you're sharing that kind of with the staff and the students and the community about you know the quality of mask may make a difference right now yes we will bradley mr moore just one question dr batchelor and the masking considerations and uh one other idea which i know a lot of our local businesses have embraced is uh allowing for masks optional if you were fully vaccinated and so you may have to give more details about this idea in february but to what extent has the administration looked at tying the ability to opt out of wearing a mask to vaccination

044status that's something i mean that has been a topic we have looked at and discussed and that's something we can talk about more in february go ahead andrew sure dr babson sure just two questions there's one specific question and one kind of a more general question so what do we have an idea of the timeline of the court case in um north allegheny school district that's mentioned on page six i don't i'm going to look to our solicitor to see if he does i don't know that he does as well i don't know if we know in a time table i'm not sure when the next hearing date has been scheduled they haven't announced it yet not as far as i know they haven't announced it yet yeah okay thanks and then just another kind

045of just a more broad question so um on page five at the bottom there is a discussion of the toll that the pandemic and masking are having on our students and staff and i just kind of want to split that apart for a second and you know i'm just wondering what is the specific toll of masking and how does that compare with the toll of the pandemic i think those those should be kept as two separate things does the toll of masking ultimately i think what we want to ask ourselves or deliberate on is is that toll enough to risk mitigation efforts that have kept school open you know that's that's the question that weighs on my mind so i have a first grader and a fourth grader and i know that perhaps wearing a

046mask for them in school it might have some effect on how they go about their day how they might learn interact uh with others so i'm not dismissing the idea of a toll of masking whatsoever i just want to know what that is and how do we i just want to look really with a cold eye on this what is the specific toll of masking here if we're going to talk about this and really really consider that seriously against the effectiveness of wearing a high quality mask as ms stearns said that's again this this could stay as a rhetorical question dr bachelor or could where you could respond thanks i think that uh that is something again in february i think we can get into as we look into in more detail and as i

047shared in you know december my own personal experience um you know teaching in a classroom in november you know and teaching in the classroom last spring you know last spring i was teaching in a third grade classroom and i don't mean to be repeat myself but i shared in december you know the mask did was it it did not seem like it was a problem at all as i was in that third grade classroom because i was so focused on having school fully open wanting all the kids to be in that classroom i was excited for my opportunity to be with the entire class teaching and and i was feeling elated that wow you can teach with the mask on the kids can do it we can do this that was well over you know

048was it was a year ago fast forward i'm in an 8th grade classroom in november when our accounts were lower so again my my i'm feeling in a different place many things have opened up we're in a different place with the spread and the virus we're at a different place how people are living their lives and in november with those eighth graders and part of it's probably my style of teaching and as my kids say you're not as funny as you think dad but i like to try to joke with the kids and not being able to smile not being able to see their reaction as i was talking to them that takes a toll on the educational program and i think it takes a toll on the educational program that it's been going on

049for so long as well so when i listed that that was really particular to an experience that i had but also talking to our teachers talking to our students i went around the high school in early december went into classes and asked students and teachers you know i interrupted a few classes but i said what should we do with masking what are the thoughts where do you think what's the direction we should be going uh and it was really helpful to hear where the students were our perspective though in early december was much different than when we're dealing with the spike and the surge we're dealing with right now so i do think you're right like we have to separate out you know we look at what's happening with this virus and where the surge

050is and then also what's happening educationally in the toll it's taking and that some of that is going to vary from person to person i think we can have more of a discussion so that's that's something that we can focus in more on uh in february thank you i i do not want an answer to this tonight i don't want to ask you for any rebuttal at all but i just was requesting that you include in this what is the district's thoughts or policies on requiring vaccinations for staff and students and don't open that can of worms right now thank you okay and i see miss monahan and and board members i just want to um indulge you to please bear with me as i try to navigate these wooden barriers i'm doing my best

051to see you all and don't hesitate to do a little extra of this for some reason i miss you behind the wooden barriers okay miss monahan yeah i just want to thank dr batchelor and the administration for putting all of this together and kind of keeping us posted i just wanted to share a couple of thoughts for consideration to include in february um you know one question i have i know the numbers are presented here as far as percent vaccinated within the county and i know i believe we've done a survey with the school just kind of update us on where we are with that and then um secondly um are we still required to quarantine in scenarios where someone is unmasked and in what situation would that be like again sharing us the information

052in terms of what we're required to do and situations where there may be two people who are unmasked with close contact just referencing what andrew was sharing and that it's a valid point i would i wouldn't lose sight of the fact that kind of piggybacking on what was reiterated the masking effect i think is not as quantifiable as covid cases so it's hard to have more of a concrete understanding of the impact that masks may have i think in addition to the physicality that you can track with someone getting covered there's also this whole mental wellness of those who are wearing masks in school and you know it affects more people than others and maybe you know that's something that we can talk further about in february as well personally um i think the problem

053has been that there hasn't we've been um having to deal with these mitigation strategies and we've been doing it so well um thankfully because the kids have been able to stay in school but there's no exit strategy and i i'm hoping that february we really start laying the groundwork for getting out of masks or like event you know like in some kind of exit strategy because we can't covet's here to stay it's not going away and we can't be in masks forever um and there's just a lot of inconsistencies that are existing right now in our community and we just hopefully on in february we can kind of start paving the way for figuring out timing and how we're going to get out of some of these restrictions that our kids are experiencing so thank

054you and up thank you for that mr jubilee here sorry just two quick data points most likely not accessible now maybe in february number one uh some districts in the region they don't necessarily replicate radnor have been masked optional for like since the court case and even before um it would be great to get some data again it's not apples to apples per se as to their experiences with covid transmission in schools that are mask optional i know that some of the districts that are mask optional they're still having high high percentages of students choosing to wear masks so that's helpful information to know as well i think that will lend a lot of good information to our discussion in february if we can if we can uh if some of that data is available

055and number two i know dr bachelor you mentioned the frustration frankly that we can't get local radnor data i imagine other school districts are feeling that same frustration across the state so if there's anything we can do as a board to support you and your colleagues to rally whether it's the state and obviously the delco health department's just getting up and running that we can do to just advocate for that really important local data radner is not ridley radner is not upper darby radler's not lower marion radner is not any other district we are ratner so anything we can do to support that please let us know thank you and there and there has been a great deal of effort from our county um you know you know beyond ratner to try to get that

056data i think everybody wants us to have that data there is no one particular stumbling block as much as it is a procedural piece that exists within the state that has been a challenge you know for us as a county and i think many are really there have been a lot of efforts and everybody's trying to work together to get us that data but thank you for that offer and yes i think we can bring some more information and look at some other districts to see um you know where they where they stand with their data look at some other districts and also look at our own we i think we shared in december we could bring that back as well when we were didn't require masking in our summer program we did see roughly

057i think that we shared about 30 percent of the kids still chose the math this last summer again different time of year different things going on but we can share that information as well sorry i thought of one more thing that i like touched on in february i would just like to know what how our teachers and our staff feel about the mask mandate or not because they're on the front line so they're definitely impacted hugely anybody else okay um thank you i think you've given dr batchelor a lot of additional information to consider as you come up with recommendations for february i'll just piggyback myself on something that this monahan said about more localized vaccination data and to take that one step further we've held these booster clinics do we have any data on

058what percentage of our population staff and students are boosted at some point the vaccination status from what i understand begins to be less effective depending on how long ago you were vaccinated so if that's something that's going to be a consideration can we have booster data just to have more relevant efficacy when in consideration a vaccination status yes we can and i think we shared in december that vaccine you know the vaccination status of staff and students that we knew and i'm looking at the admin team i'll look around and everybody's going to avert their eyes but we can put that together too by uh by next february as i mean by in a month as well next february not next february this this this february's board meeting they're looking at me and signaling a

059year ken no all right great so uh i think we can continue on then with the admin remarks all right so i want to just mention our we had our sixth annual as our students mentioned martin luther king day of service and i want to thank our community and our students and our staff for coming together and our ptos who really helped spearhead and organize all that we're able to donate as a community and it's really wonderful to see so many of our students uh and parents and community members coming together and and making it a day on and a day on for service uh it was really wonderful to see this continue uh and then lastly and not lastly but i just want to mention our upcoming events we always have many things going

060on as our students already mentioned at the high school but throughout the district k to 12. uh it has been really nice to see even in the midst of so many different challenges all that our administration and staff have done to give our kids as normal a sense of activities and programming as we can this year and that continues so i want to thank everybody for that and also make everyone aware of those events and we also want to give a big thank you uh to our school board we have a recognition and i'm going to read the recognition later in the agenda when we come to recognitions but i wanted to right now just share with our school board it is this month is school board recognition month and our school board as i'll

061share in the recognition later and school boards across the country but i can speak specifically for this school board dedicates an enormous amount of time to this district to the welfare of the students in this community you all always put the interests of our students first and foremost i don't think people realize i had a student who was a superintendent for the day this past week and that student who's a superintendent for the day you know and i share with them that the school board are volunteers people are surprised our kids are surprised to learn that these are volunteers that sit up here and give so much of their time so we want to take a little moment tonight in a couple of different ways to thank all of you so i'll first start off

062and turn to mr petit and our communications department reached out to some of our families and some of our families and and students wanted to put something together for you tonight we like to recognize in this month of january nine special people who are far from ordinary they always put us first and care about our education meeting the needs of our children from preschool to graduation from emotional support to all things academic they faced unprecedented challenges all through this pandemic notable contributions and important decisions they make trustworthy and committed in every project they take from voting on budgets to adopting policies conducting comprehensive planning there's so much to oversee for all their hard work and tireless dedication we hope they will accept our heartfelt appreciation so thank you babson and solomon for all that you

063do jubilee and stern such an impressive crew monahan and duffy we simply adore but wait we're not done there is one more thank you mrs goldman our new president your leadership is top-notch a hundred percent if everyone here tonight could take a moment and pause think about this board's commitment to us and join us in a round of applause [Music] [Applause] so i want to conclude our superintendent's remarks with a huge thank you and uh there's another recognition opportunity i want to thank the board so but that concludes our uh the super chance remark all right well thank you that was wonderful and thank you to mr moore's class and everybody else who had a part in making that video that was really really sweet and touching thank you i just wanted to before we

064move into the recognition i also just wanted to mention i want to make a tiny little plug for the upcoming activities there's something that i understand is new that's been added to the website for anybody who's interested and that is we get a list every month from dr batchelor of all these activities that are occurring on not on here or the sporting events and i understand that now on the calendar the master district calendar correct me if i'm wrong mr pettitti but they're every single sporting event in case anybody's interested is is listed on there as well so in case you're looking for that information and with the way our sports teams are performing too i just wanted to let everybody know that's another place to go and look for that information all right with

065that let's move into our first recognition and that is going to be ms monaghan's charge this evening hi audrey juan chica it's good to have you here thanks so much for coming i have the honor to recognize you um radnor high school senior audrey neadlin was recently named first chair in the flute section of the national association for music education all-natural all national symphony orchestra she is one of only 10 student musicians from pennsylvania and four flutists selected to the 122 member ensemble audrey participated in the virtual all national honor ensembles program from january 22nd to the 24th the the a n h e ensembles consisted of a concert band symphony orchestra mixed choir jazz ensemble guitar ensemble and modern band the virtual event included several rehearsals with the 2021 all national honor ensembles conductors

066workshops with renown i'm sorry renowned clinicians and each ensemble created a final recorded performance which will be premiered online during the 37th annual music in our schools month participants were selected through a rigorous process that included a series of recorded video auditions during the 2020-2021 school year the superintendent along with the board and the ratner community congratulates audrey her parents and her teachers on this outstanding accomplishment and i remember you at wayne elementary in the band watching you play and it's just my honor to recognize you for this outstanding achievement tonight thank you and congratulations thank you and here's the and you can keep the right up too thank you so congratulations thank you so happy for you okay just wave a hand to everyone up there we usually go and shake hands but under

067the circumstances we're all very happy for you audrey congratulations i'm sorry you had to sit through the superintendent's remarks before we could get to your recognition um and next time and we should have tried to uh we'd love to have you perform you know we wish we had we had thought it would have been great so if we do bring you back to perform i promise it'll be before my remarks not after i'm going to jump in for the next recognition as i mentioned so the next recognition is recognition of service of the radnor township school district school board in honor of school director recognition month so take a moment to just read the recognition january is school director recognition month in pennsylvania a time to recognize the most valuable contributions of our school directors

068who ensure decisions about our schools are made as close as possible to the needs of our community and our children these individuals serve as volunteers without pay we thank our current school directors for their achievements and dedicated service in alphabetical order andrew babson liz duffy sarah dunn amy goldman jeffrey jubileer nancy monahan bradley moore lydia solomon and susan stern public education is the only unit of local government spelled out in the pennsylvania constitution which empowers school directors to set policy within the framework of the statutes enacted by the general assembly our school directors clearly demonstrate a desire to serve our community in this unique public service role through their dedication to service and local public education school directors demonstrate a unique commitment to the community's future our children the following resolution was adopted on july

06918 1985 and affirmed on november 10 2012 by the board of directors of the pennsylvania school boards association and it's not a very long resolution but i'll just read it quickly whereas the role of locally elected school officials has served the commonwealth of pennsylvania and local communities in meeting the needs of public education since the passage of the free school act in 1834 and whereas these local boards have discharged their responsibilities to public education in a manner which has placed public education in the forefront of our educational systems and whereas locally elected officials have distinguished themselves and their communities in this non-paid volunteer public service commitment and whereas the contribution of these men and women should be recognized and appreciated by those who benefit from the workings of our public school system now therefore be

070resolved that the board of directors of pennsylvania school boards association hereby proclaims the month of january as school director recognition month in this commonwealth and further resolve that this proclamation be communicated to all school districts school officials and local communities in a planned program which brings visibility and awareness of the role of locally elected school officials to the citizenry of this commonwealth i'd like to say again thank you to our school board for all that you do if anyone watches our meetings i think you can see that there are nine individuals on this board there are nine individuals who share their honest feelings on a variety of issues and are willing to debate and discuss items for the benefit of our community and benefit of our kids and i think it makes all of us

071better when we have all nine voices being shared it is truly an example of democracy in action uh you know at our meetings and what you do and i can't thank you enough for the dedication your commitment uh if people saw the you know the notebooks and the information we said to you all uh as we go through the consent agenda later in this meeting there's many documents that go along and i've been always impressed with uh how all of you take the time to go through all the documents to ask questions in committee meetings to give support to this district to make sure it can be the best it can be so i want to thank you and in honor of school board recognition month the administration with the help of our school librarians

072have selected books and we will be donating books and i'll share with you copies of each book but we'll be donating a book in all of your names all nine board members to each one of the libraries across the district in honor of school board recognition so you can take a look at these books and i'll share them all with you and thank you thank you very much dr batchelor i think i can speak probably pretty accurately for the board and saying that we take this role very seriously and i think we all feel the privilege that we've been given to serve and we feel very fortunate to be serving in this school district with the wonderful community and staff and students that we have so thank you for recognizing our efforts and we'll keep

073trying to get it right you know we should also probably have had like a uh you know a family or spouse recognition because i think they're who have to really put up with uh everything there was one loud applause from the audience um uh i thank them for all that they put up with and and that your children and families put up with with the many hours you spend so thank you okay thank you and we will move at this point of the meeting into 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 that public participants be residents of the district be taxpayers of the district be

074persons 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 we also ask our public participants to please sign in with their name and address at the table in the back of the room 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 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

075experience 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 petitti radner township school district 135 south wayne avenue wayne pennsylvania 19087 and with that i would like to invite anyone who's here to make public comment up to the podium do we not have anybody in the room for public comment we do have somebody welcome good evening and welcome good evening you might want to just pull the microphone a little bit closer to you if you need to okay this is better sure okay good evening my name is rimsha mariam um villanova sprawl road i'm an alumni of the class of 2020 and a current sophomore at

076ursinus college i've graduated with honors from radnor and delaware county technical society as a medical career student through the guidance of outstanding rtsc teachers and staff i've gotten many scholarships and even full rides to some schools i was a radnor student dedicated to her education just like every other student and on behalf of the many muslim families i kindly ask you to consider making aid an annual holiday i can recall to you every eid that took place after fasting in ramadan for middle school freshman year i was fasting during my finals and couldn't wait to finally celebrate eve without any worries which happened to be at the end of the school year sophomore year i had to contemplate whether i could attend the morning services on eid which classes i could afford leaving without missing

077too much and how could i make it back in time for my ap bio exam that day was a wild rush to get everywhere on time and i missed out on family celebrations junior year the days before eid while i was fasting i was rushing and pulling all-nighters to make sure all my final projects were done before eid so that i could take an excused absence for the day even with the day off i had to worry about what i was missing whether my partner managed to present our video project and what else i had left to do to wrap up the year my senior year it happened to be during the pandemic and even though i was quarantined at home it was the first opportunity in many years that i was able to celebrate

078the end of ramadan with family without worrying about school this is not an isolated experience this is the experience of my siblings and friends and many other muslim families in ratner it's a choice of either spending time with our parents and siblings while dreading all the work that we've missed or we attend school and miss services and celebrating so there is no one situation here moreover this is also a concern of honoring equity for a fair number of students that attend rtsd students shouldn't feel conflicted in choosing to make up a test later or miss morning eid services it's not equitable that students should experience the hassle of explaining their situation to every teacher every year and hope that some will be lenient enough so that they can maybe take an excuse absence for the

079day they should not be pondering over whether they must compromise their faith or their education every year thank you thank you and you did sign in over there as well okay great thank you so much good evening you want to pull the microphone a little closer to your face so we can hear you thank you okay um so my name is nisham prajani and i'm a 7th grade student at random middle school i came to talk to you about like same thing as her and um i like well like connected to her one like um experience of that like in first grade i missed a class of multiplication and like i became sad and like yeah thank you thank you very much if you would like to sign in as well too so we can

080make sure we have your name recorded for your comment thank you for making them good evening sir good evening my name is fawzi belgat i live in eaton drive actually and uh i'm gonna just add just a little bit you know basically you know it's all about but one of the first thing when i came here in the united states i came here in boston i went to school then i got a job then i got the opportunity to come here and one of the first thing i never been in pennsylvania before i consider boston as my hometown by the way in the united states so i'm a pets fan sorry eagles but one of the things that we looked at my wife and i is the school district and the ranking of school district

081because that's give us really a good perspective on the quality of people and the quality of education that we want for our children and kids and right there we had lower marine and radnor see we were between lower and radner so just lucky you we choose radnor but you made the right choice i'm sure that i have three boys actually from the middle school to you know high school and they went through the same story we have to kind of every event like that we have kind of to brief them talk to your teacher we you know we email counselors this that this is why and you know and just pick begging on what you know dr butcher said democracy i think one of the strengths of democracy is to be inclusive not exclusive and

082all these people are future doctors their fathers are doctors i am engineer just a mechanical engineer my wife is a civil engineer and we hope to raise the people the future of this radnor school district and they would be contributing to this community and most importantly we want them to be proud of being part of this community that's why we want to we hope and we like to share with you you know this event by accepting eid it will be actually sharing also this event with you with everybody else and i thank you for that your time thank you very much thank you very much sir yes the sign in sheet is over there in the corner thank you very much is there anybody else in the room that has a comment to make this

083evening and and you do have some pats and red sox fans up here on the board we're sorry uh okay so here comes mr king yes good evening good evening madam president my name is rob king president of rta and i would just like to follow up the comments that dr bachelor gave in in recognizing the service that you nine board members nancy over here don't want to turn my shoulder to you uh we really are grateful for your your uh your passion your hard work your talent in making the radner schools some of the finest schools in not only the state but in the country what you do the hours you work the commitment is really impressive and you make this not only a great place to receive an education but also a very

084fine place to work and uh thank you for your efforts and and you know for for all of us for all the groups that work in the radar township school district i also want to say that we had to cancel our board recognition dinner uh some of you i hope you all got an email and we're going to invite you to dine with us before the march board meeting so thank you again very much for all that you do thank you mr king as i said we feel very lucky to be a part of a wonderful community and that includes all the employees who work here in this district as well is there any other public comment in the room uh i'll turn them to mr petit do you have any emailed public comment mr

085petiti the asmr school we have about 10 tonight first is from melissa sykes 720 mainland road new town square rochelle wolensky said in an interview on msnbc that covet is quote likely to become an endemic disease here in the united states and really around the world we have many diseases that are endemic influenza being one of them that causes minor challenges year after year and that we can handle and tackle and that may very well be what happens unquote never in history did schools make children wear masks all day during a bad flu season schools need to start treating covet like they did the flu in the past does rtsd only receive sur3 money if it mandates masks in an article i read about this issue the author states quote there's a catch that explains

086why school boards in every state have been so coldly unresponsive to parental pleas to unmastered children and abandon their other covenant restrictions the catch is that federal generosity for state educational agencies is contingent on states proving to the doe they are meeting requirements synced with the cdc's quote safety recommendations one of these recommendations is enforcing universal and correct wearing of masks if this is true give the money back and unmask our children in an article written by high school teachers he stated quote when we look at the coven 19 pandemic the lens of history i believe it will be clear that we betrayed our children the risks of this pandemic were never to them but they were forced to carry the burden of it it's enough it's time for return to normal life and put

087an end to the bureaucratic policies that are making society safer but are sacrificing our children's mental emotional and physical health our children need life on the highest volume and they need it now unquote dr prasad said in an article quote less forgivable is the decision we've made as a society to shift the anxieties of adults onto the youngest members of society who count on us to defend their interests before our own unquote vote tonight to make masks optional starting immediately for all students k-12 and staff mary beth doyle meadowbrook circle good evening as leaders in our school community it is your responsibility to make educated decisions in the best interest of our children to that end i believe it is your obligation to watch senator ron johnson's round table coven 19 a second opinion the

088speakers are not bureaucrat bureaucrats but physicians who have been treating cova patients and saving lives scientists who have vast experience researching respiratory diseases and public health officials who are dedicated to ensuring the health and safety of our children sadly their voices have been suppressed so you may not have heard the vital information they have to share please listen to them all of them and as trade as the following phrase may be may now be follow the science for the sake of our children do not blindly follow the cdc and adhere to government policies that are tied to the funding they provide to our schools better to go without the federal money and deal with those consequences than they continue to cause both short term and long term harm to our children even the cdc just

089released data announcing a 51 increase in suicide attempts among teenage girls in 2020 does that surprise you many of our children have not seen their classmates smiles and teachers expressions in two years after listening to the doctors at the round table i hope that you will adjust your policies accordingly and enable children in random schools to live a happy healthy life again please listen to senator ron johnson's round table cover 19 a second opinion the link below can be found on rumble thank you there's a couple links here terry kibbles kibble stitz uh 540 brandy mead road in bryn mawr jrtsu school board and the rhs course offerings proposed for 20 20 23 rtsd is not planning to offer college prep level courses for ninth grade as part of rhs's goal of consolidating such courses

090into its advanced courses as you know college prep level classes in each department are generally structured using an appropriately paced curriculum to prepare students to meet the pennsylvania graduation requirements next year however ninth grade rtsd students can only take advantage or honors for these courses classes that are by definition more academically rigorous than college prep classes for students with learning differences especially students who take alternative assessments this choice is problematic in removing college prep classes from the course to offerings rhs creates a gap for these students the course leveling expectations summary states that as a benefit the cons the consolidation of college prep and advanced courses will close the opportunity and achievement gap unquote and that academic support will be available for students needing it this proposed consolidation into advanced courses however we enforce many

091students with learning differences to choose different development courses rather than enroll in appropriate college prep level development courses with the accommodations modifications or supplemental skills support courses they may need rtsd should review and make public the data showing how many students with ieps enrolled in the consolidated advanced humanities courses following this past year's consolidation and compared to the previous year's college prep level courses it should also require rhs to do so with its math and science courses rtsd should track this information over this five-year process to see what if any impact this consolidation of levels has on inclusion of students with learning differences in these general education classes inclusion requires schools to look at the opportunities it offers to all students to participate in the general education classroom if students with learning differences are not

092given a realistic opportunity to take subject matter courses taught by teachers in each subject matter department these students are being denied their opportunity for inclusion in high school mike lake would leah road members of the school board as we approach two years of only two weeks to flatten the curve we have to ask ourselves at what cost to my knowledge there hasn't been a single case anywhere of kobe transmission from contaminated surfaces yet we continue to sanitize every surface every day great expense while exposing the most vulnerable population our children to harsh chemicals we also know that ninety percent of all communication is non-verbal and we know our students are victims of significant learning laws inflicted by this board you continue to do what we've been doing with regards to masks democratic leadership in the

093commonwealth seems most concerned with case counts trying to get them as high as possible first by moving covet positive patients into nursing homes containing the most vulnerable population of elderly then by testing everyone including the healthy in the hopes of using these numbers to justify their misguided policies it is no coincidence that the metrics have been muddied on purpose and by design with the upcoming midterm primaries and election around the corner the cdc director has come forward and admitted that 75 percent of reported covet deaths had at least four core mobilities stating quote these were very unhealthy people to begin with unquote even dr anthony fauci has recently admitted that the vast majority of childhood hospitalizations were kids with coveted and were not hospitalized for coping as every patient is tested upon admittance even those

094with a broken arm dr lena wen a regular cnn medical contributor has done a 180 degree about face first shaming those who don't believe in cloth masks with this tweet quote we are asked to wear cloth over our mouth and nose wash our hands and avoid crowds so little has been asked for so much benefit but recently stating on air quote cloth masks are not appropriate for this pandemic it's not appropriate for omicron delta alpha because we are dealing with something that's airborne on globe i never thought i would look to the governments of singapore in the united kingdom with envy as they have strict anti-freedom of speech policies these countries have come to the conclusion that with available treatment and less harm for variants covert should be treated like the seasonal flu and agree

095what happened to my body my choice if masks and vaccines work parents should have nothing to worry about but are still free to continue to send their children to school double masked if they so wish to delight to the delight of our director babson second and third graders cannot remember school before masks and should be much easier to control moving forward our children are being raised in fear fear of touch fear of fresh air and fear of each other fear becomes tower and terror becomes trauma if school board members can freely socialize indoors in close proximity to others without masks why can't our children your hypocrisy is astounding just who is the oppressor here time to follow real science and not political science it is long overdue to end this oppressive mass mandate and rtsd

096i'm sorry if the facts don't support your narrative delay dalilah cham setting 213 sprawl road villanova good evening respected board members i am unable to attend the meeting but i kindly ask that you consider making eid a district holiday as our beloved rather school district is an example and leading in a leading district in inclusion and equity thanks a bunch allison leff 432 holly bush road brimar to the school board i'm writing to express my concern about reiner high school removing college prep level classes according to the broader high school plan of studies for the 22 20 22 23 school year quote the goal of consolidating the college prep and advanced level began in 2122 for the class of 25 and is expected to be a five-year process this process started with the consolidation of

097our humanities courses english and social studies for our 9th grade students the consolidation for math and science courses will begin in the 22-23 school year as well as the progression of collapsing levels for our sophomore humanities courses there are many benefits to the academic consolidation of levels which include quote excuse me calling a smaller average class size for advanced courses opportunities for rigorous coursework closing the opportunity and achievement gap and offering more flexibility for scheduling of students academic support for students is available through academic success success courses essentials classes foundation classes the extended learning program the math and writing centers teacher office hours peer mentorship program and our multi-tiered systems of supports mtss unquote collapsing classes into fewer skill levels offers less diverse learning opportunities to our students one is only to look at the

098course description for the college prep class of english which focuses on students quote whose writing shows the need for intensive practice and organization and expression unquote this focus is absent from those in the advanced english classes combining students from college prep with those in advance will either raise the demands on college prep students or lower demands on current advanced students it seems very probable that this policy will cause advanced students to seek out additional and costly educational opportunities outside the public school system meanwhile advanced students without such means will fall behind similarly college prep students from more privileged backgrounds who find themselves struggling in a more demanding course will find outside support while less privileged students fall behind as such this partially hot this policy harms inclusiveness and opportunity under the guise of promoting the

099same we are requesting that you pause further investigation of college prep and advanced level classes and instead spend time assessing the data on how current students have been affected by covet related learning laws students have been affected by learning laws perhaps stand to benefit the most from the from the diverse learning opportunities which have been the hallmark of the random public school system thank you for your time and consideration allison left reimagine ratner um aaron zaheed ekis avenue bryn mawr i'd like to show my support for the recent proposal brought to the randor school district board's attention regarding the request to recognize the muslim holiday of idahfirt and eid al-adha atta on the district calendar my daughters currently attend rest and are in kindergarten in second grade the best teachers we have had the pledge

100to work with thus far have all been supportive in recognizing our daughter's special holidays the eid holidays being scheduled into the district calendar will afford them the opportunity to participate to participate in our holiday traditions without worry of missing critical educational activities i respectfully request that you consider adding eid alpha tier and eid al adha to the render school district calendar thank you for your understanding and consideration in this matter from suzanne fleming 221 pine tree road good evening i just wanted to thank the administration and board for doing an excellent job of managing this next wave of covid i know you've had to make tough decisions balancing a number of factors i believe in keeping our kids and staff messed at this time has definitely definitively helped keep our kids in school and keeping

101our classrooms staffed i believe our kids have lost so much in the past couple of years in more ways than one so keeping them in school should be our number one priority having them educated in the classroom versus virtually is of utmost importance so if it takes wearing a mask then i encourage you to keep using common sense and the advice of those who are truly experts and keep this going until it feels safe enough to change our policies in the bigger picture we are doing our part to help our community as a whole i feel confident and optimistic that there is a light at the end of this tunnel which we will be celebrating as a community in early spring again thank you for all you do to make our school district great cassandra

102newton eagle road wayne i like to address two issues the first being the rms dress code while online the dress code is vague it does say that the principal or designee shall be responsible to monitor student address and grooming it goes on to say that staff members shall be instructed to demonstrate by example positive attitudes toward neatness cleanliness propriety modesty and good sense of attire and appearance so with teachers and staff from different generations what is considered modest what may be modest to one may not be modest to another the dress code is specifically made to take aim at female students they are sexist sexualizing young girls by policing their bodies is unacceptable girls bodies should not be a quote distraction instead rtsd should be teaching their staff and students to be responsible for their

103own actions and not place blame on female students in their clothing furthermore removing females from class is not the answer one should not be distracted by a young female's body especially teachers but these dress codes are more than a distraction they are sexist do the male students need to be modest the dress code is reinforcing gender stereotypes and i believe under title ix schools are not legally allowed to have different dress codes from males and females while and while rtsc does not have separate dress codes in writing parents should know that students were given a quote talk at the beginning of the year on separate dress codes indicating what was appropriate for males and what was appropriate for females therefore i ask you to adopt the oregon national organization for women's model dress code it

104avoids stereotypes on the basis of race sex gender identity or expression sexual orientation ethnicity religion cultural observance household income and body type the rules are simple cover your breasts buttocks nipples and genitals wear shoes shorts shirt pants or equivalent no hate speech drug use or violence we should be promoting body positivity school was stressful enough young adults do not need teachers policing their bodies clothing or shaming them secondly i would like to request for masks to be optional i understand it may be hard for some on the diaz to accept they've been caught masculine doors but honestly why does this board continue to enforce rules that those who sit upon it cannot even follow miss goldman i would like you to know what members of your board are part of they do as i say

105not as i do crowd surely shortly after the december meeting where she told students they would infect others if they didn't wear a mask lydia was caught axe throwing and eating indoors you guessed it maskless then susan's maskless nyc pictures came out and caused a stir as barry weiss said quote this is a pandemic of bureaucracy and will be looked at as a catastrophic moral crime unquote when our children look back they will never forgive those who kept schools closed nor those who kept them asked when we choose to turn our heads to a historic increase in teen suicide rates we have failed our children and for what to protect adults it has never in the history of america been the job of children to protect their elders this is unscientific child abuse you should

106and you should all be ashamed kelly martin 313 edge hill road in december 21 21 months after closing down our schools the superintendent discussed altering the masking mandate in ratner and establishing guidelines to removing mitigation strategies allowing for optional masking is something parents have been asking for since school reopened in march of 21. we know the district struggles to identify data suggesting it's time to unmask only because there has was never data to support masking our five to 18 year olds children seven plus hours a day was ever healthy or helpful in preventing a viral spent in schools masking seven plus hours a day is not without risk and our board and administration continue to force masking involuntarily on our children long after area schools have gone mask optional would it be so difficult to

107establish guidelines vaccines have been available for over a year now those who wish to continue to mask are free to do so social distancing is a mitigation layer that's still in place teachers have plexiglass to teach behind and administrators have offices in a locked building our board members are living carefree lives as they travel the country with their families ski dine out throw parties and attend events mask lists all the while forcing our children to be smothered by a mask and depriving them of their friends and teachers smiles the ability to read lips and oxygen they need to survive no one elected you to limit a child's ability to breathe the hypocrisy is disgusting and each of you will be remembers for this outrageous policy i understand in 2020 you tried to make the best

108decisions you could with the information you had 23 months later there are no excuses when you know better you do better and each of you are failing our children i have questions that remain unanswered one why are our children required to be masked two what data is informing your decision to mask our children three will you begin pool testing for hiv hep a and b herpes chickenpox and chlamydia and strep does the district get money for depriving our children on oxygen what is the penalty for not masking and do you have an update on removing the sexually explicit grooming books from our school libraries and that is all okay thank you mr petit we will now move into our report from board committees and we i'm sorry dr batchelor i interrupt you just before we

109do just i wanted to just comment to make a couple comments to some of the public comments if i could thank you um just first off it's always good to see our alumni and and a student here come you know to speak at the publicly and thank you for coming um as to there are several requests about looking at our calendar and our holidays we have received those requests we will consider to look into that we did approve recently we just approved the calendar for next school year it doesn't mean we can't consider that but at the same time i think one of the questions we'll have as we look into this is whether or not uh this is something we consider as we we developed the calendar for the following year we will start

110doing this fall so i know mr bechtold our director of teaching and learning is going to be reaching out to some of the families that have reached out to us and we'll look at how we move forward so i just want to thank you for coming here and sharing that with us both from the student and family and parent perspective thank you for sharing that and we will look at look into that i want to just comment on some of the other public comments one of them there's a theme about this esser dollar so esther dollars is the uh elementary secondary school uh uh no it's the mr pauling what does esther stand for make sure i share it right sure you were gonna put me on the side i know i'm sorry you take

111a minute while uh but the esser dollars are the stimulus dollars that school districts have been receiving through covet so there was sr1 there was sr2 and there has been so3 so it's the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund specific to sr3 it's under the american recovery plan thank you i was pretty close i started there with that with what it stood for we in education we tend to create these acronyms for everything and then no one really knows what it what they stand for um so with all those dollars there's been many comments tonight that uh masking is tied to that it is not um you know we have not had any there has been no connection for us as a school district there's no tie to those dollars and our requirements to

112mask uh is that's accurate um i'm asking mr paul our director of business administration yes that's correct and we recently just completed our sr3 application and nowhere in that application was there any information for us to provide or any stipulations on the funds required to masking thank you there were several comments also about um our consolidation and what we've been uh looking at and i don't know if i would call it a consult consolidation yes but i would look at it as several years ago we looked at you know the course levels that we have at our middle school and then looking at what then the appropriate course levels then and how should we be um what are the options looking at two levels that are middle school and then going to often in many

113subject areas four levels or more uh what made the most sense and that is where that plan as many families a couple families commented tonight about that consolidation and the impact of that and we were doing it over several years so we will respond and we've got we've got your names and we will look at it and we do want to follow up with you a little bit more about some of the concerns as we look forward because we continually want to evaluate that program as we move forward there was also a couple of comments about the comment about dress code i'm going to ask the middle school we will look into that if there really is if there is a difference between how we you know treat our male and female students i certainly

114want to look in that and then i believe those were some of the pieces that i was able to just answer on the spot here tonight uh the other public comments where there is any specific questions administratively we'll look into those and reach out to those public commenters as we move forward okay thank you dr batchelor and appreciate your being able to answer some of those on the spot and as we said in our preamble to public comment that the rest the administration will follow up on sometime after the meeting and and that for lack of a better word consolidation when you're doing something over the course of five years sometimes it's hard to keep track of the what the original intention of that initiative was and but it has been i've sat on the

115curriculum committee and been in the community meetings long enough to know that that has had a number of public airing so perhaps there's some catching up that we can direct some of the community to to look at to help better understand why those decisions were made at that time all right terrific thank you so much everybody for your comments and we will move into our next item which is report from board committees and we'll start off with the curriculum committee report ms dunn yes good evening the curriculum committee met on tuesday january 18th in the administrative building we had three main topics on our agenda the first in approving our contracts one of the items we approved was a contract with a consultant to help us with our post-secondary counseling audit that's college and career

116counseling and we had a good conversation about um the help that we're going to get and and we hope to get updates on that in the next few months so i encourage board members to to follow those materials and for the community certainly to follow those materials and there will be updates as we get into the pro project online we also reviewed the proposed changes to the radnor middle school program of studies the key changes we're going to be renaming the advisory period and we're adding another eighth grade elective digital painting and we're going to be adding some drop-in centers to provide extra opportunities for our students to seek assistance from their teachers we also reviewed the radnor high school program of studies which was referenced in some of the public comments we had a

117number of new pe courses in part because we had removed a number last year from the program as you recall because we removed a number of phys ed requirements from credits the pe department took this as an opportunity to review their course offerings there are a lot of really exciting opportunities going forward we also added another level of essential life strategies and adaptive health and we added a number of math program supports as part of that college placement consolidation that was discussed if the board is interested the items that we discussed are on the consent agenda this evening items 10.02 and all the items under section 11. the next meeting of the curriculum committee is scheduled currently for february 15th at 5 pm again in the basement of the administrative building thank you miss dunn

118we prefer ground floor garden level it's a basement okay we'll move next into the facilities committee report ms monaghan yes i was unable to attend the january 18th meeting miss stern graciously took on the chair role so i'm going to defer the report to her okay sounds good ms stern thank you the facilities committee meeting met tuesday january 18th in the administration ground floor conference room and on tonight's agenda there are two items they are change project orders ratifications and approvals related to the accessibility and wellness project both are related to structural underpinning and support that were needed as they opened up the walls and opened up the ground and saw that we needed additional uh support of some footings one of them is a level three approval a ratification that was only needed approval

119by the superintendent the board president and the facilities committee chairperson and so both of those are on the consent agenda and our next meeting is tuesday february 8th at 6 pm thank you miss stern the finance committee report mr moore thank you mrs goldman the finance committee has not met since our last regular business meeting so this is the first opportunity i have to note that there have been some changes to the composition of the finance committee uh we would like to thank mrs monaghan and mrs goldman who have cycled off the committee we have some new committee members dr babson and mrs solomon who's joining as vice chair and susan stern is continuing on that committee so welcome to dr babson and mrs solomon you are in for quite a ride there is one

120financial action item on the agenda the usual financial reports are there and the finance committee as newly composed will meet at 6 30 pm on february 15th at the garden level of the administration building the garden level that's a new one definitely not a garden all right thank you mr moore uh policy committee report ms duffy thank you well the policy committee met on the garden level um of the administration building on tuesday january 11th at 5 pm per the administration's recommendation we moved policy 103 which is equal opportunity and non-discrimination affecting students to tonight's agenda for a first read policy 103 was recommended for review to ensure its contents regarding gender expansive and transgender students is aligned with the current and evolving legal requirements and guidance from the us and the pa departments of

121education we also moved forward also move forward was it for a first read tonight was policy 204 which is on attendance and policy 610 procurement policy 204 was revised to include the commonwealth's most current age requirements for compulsory school attendance and other minor revisions were suggested during the review policy 610 and its and its accompanying administrate administrative regulation were reviewed for the purpose of consolidating policies 6 10 6 11 and 6 12 policy 610 which is on tonight's agenda for a first read will now be the centralized policy and ar for procurement given that we are consolidating these policies they're also on the agenda our policy 611 and 612 for repeal as the necessary content is now incorporated into policy 610. our next policy committee meeting will be held on tuesday february 8th at 5

122pm thank you ms duffy and we will turn to government relations and communications committee report dr babson so now begins probably my lightest evening of reports in my school board career because grcc did not meet this month on the 11th we accommodated a session for board professional development and our next meeting will be at our regularly scheduled time tuesday february 8th at 7 pm and go socks go bruins go pats consultant thank you dr babson all right we have now come to the point of our agenda the consent agenda although board action 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

123president will move it to an appropriate place on the agenda does anybody want to pull anything from our consent agenda tonight mr i'm going to go starting all the way over there and working my way around ms monaghan i'd like to pull um 9.03 due to edits okay i can convey okay um mr moore yes i'd like to pull 9.4 uh the minutes of the last business meeting for the same reason 9.04 do i see anything else to be pulled no okay well then i would like to see if someone wants to move items 9.01 through nine at 9.01 and 9.02 and then again 10.01 all the way through 14.02 is there a motion to approve those items so moved miss solomon thank you second okay who gave the second i couldn't see i'm sorry

124mister mizu okay i'm sorry again forgive me the barriers are getting a little bit in my way okay so we have a motion and a second any discussion on anything those in favor please raise your hand and say aye okay and those items pass unanimously let's revisit then 9.03 miss monahan do we want to go through the edits of the minutes now or no can i make a suggestion just pull the minutes and we'll bring them back next month and approve them next month that's the best way to handle whatever minutes need to be adjusted so i'd like to pull them and look at them revise them and okay just pull them off okay and do you want to do the same mr moore with 9.04 that's fine if you would entertain the amendment i

125have it but i'm happy to uh discuss it okay offline and then we can put it on for february okay terrific so why don't we take those two sets of minutes we won't approve them this month and we'll bring them back again in february all right so with that we have completed our consent agenda part of the agenda and we are now moving into the i'm pretty sure i know where we are but the uh board reports from board liaisons well could i just miss goldman real quick i just in approving the retirements i just want to acknowledge mr dilks you know retirement he's a person at the high school who has touched literally thousands of children in his years in the district and will look forward to recognizing him you know when he when

126his actual retirement comes but he's been a really special person at the high school who's made a real impact on on every high school student and i wanted to just take a moment and thank him and we'll miss him when he retires thank you and for anyone not following the agenda the person to whom ms stern was referring mr dilks is the district food service coordinator who has been here for many years and is retiring at the end of this school year all right so we will move now like i said into the reports from board liaisons and we will be starting off with delaware county community college ms solomon no report okay then we move to the delaware county intermediate unit no such luck with no report here uh sorry the old the person

127who will be succeeding me there will find this out for themselves there is a lot that is covered every month actually twice a month at the delaware county intermediate unit and for january 5th there was our board of directors meeting included an agenda that had the usual things on it we were asked to approve professional development opportunities for school districts in delaware county and the iu staff other opportunities to support educational municipal and community partners and families grants contract leases appointments and services we also approved a number of policies for a first read we also approved some new appointments to the iu board we had an exiting director ms susan mingy who did not renew her who retired at the conclusion of her school board term in november so she was replaced by ms kristen

128larson representing the haverford school board and then christopher bryan who had who was ridley's iu board representative had to exit his term early and he was replaced at this in our january meeting by christine mcmenamin representing ridley school district and then we appointed we approved the appointment of ms sarah christensen who was the assistant director for teaching and learning the next iu board meeting will be on february 2nd at 6 45. and then on january 12th the iu had its board committee meetings and there are some interesting things that the iu is working on from a committee perspective one of which includes a technology repair shop proposal where they're trying to use what they have they have an innovation fund where they put some of their surplus dollars to suppl to afford initiatives that benefit

129the iu and the 15 school districts in delaware county and one of the things they're working on is building a department that would provide repair services for student devices for students who attend school at the iu and for any of the 15 school districts and other schools within the county in case they don't have access ready access or affordable access to technology repair given how many student devices are out there in circulation throughout the county they also gave an update on an initiative funded through the innovation fund on comprehensive applied behavior analysis which our student services department is well aware of as well as probably ms solomon as a professional at the iu working with students and they also gave an update on their coordinator of equity and diversity which is a new hire for

130them and the initiatives and activities of that that uh department there was a conversation from a facility's perspective on updates needed to their marple campus from a security standpoint and what i'd like to just mention this evening for those who are listening is an update we got from the education committee on the career and technical education program information i provided this program guide for the 2022-2023 school year at delaware county's career and technical high school for each of the board members i encourage you to take a look at it it's really i think very well done and it goes into detail about all of the different programs that are offered to students throughout delaware county who choose to enroll and when you do choose to enroll in the delaware county career and technical school it's

131a half day program you spend half of your day within your home district and the other half a day at the iu learning about all kinds of interesting disciplines that are for students who are really want to take deep a deep dive into a a particular field that's their passion it could be biomedics it could be computer technology it could be media sciences and advertising and design culinary studies it's it's really very fascinating i've attended actually sat in on some of these classes and so i just wanted to make sure that our board and the community i put some extra brochures there at the sign in table um that our community knows that these programs exist and i believe that the enrollment period is opening for the upcoming school year so any families who are

132interested in learning more about what a technical high school education is about can consult with their school counselor whether you're at middle school or high school if it's something you want to anticipate at some point in your child's school progression there are people within your buildings who would be happy to have a conversation with you about that and i think that there were also some virtual open houses i watched a couple of them last week about some of these programs and i believe they've been recorded and are available on the delaware county intermediate unit website so that's my report thank you for indulging me but we covered a lot in january all right moving on uh delaware county school board's legislative council mr moore yes the legislative council last met on january 12th we had

133a legislative update and a charter school reform advocacy update and three special presentations the first presentation was with senator tim carney who represents a number of delaware county districts within his senate district and that concerned the special education funding commission report which is a report i believe that has been shared with everyone on the board so that may be worth some further review and discussion congresswoman mary g scanlon also attended the meeting and presented on the idea full funding act which is house resolution 5984 in the u.s house as i think many board members know and certainly those on the grcc the idea when it was first conceived and enacted the concept was that the federal government would fund uh 40 of costs that districts must incur through special education the federal government has not

134lived up to that obligation has not come close to it and so the full funding act is designed to correct that mistake and provide school districts with what they need to handle our mandated special education expenses through the through that act and it's the right thing to do and it would be the right thing to do for the federal government to support us in those efforts and then the third presentation was from ms jennifer hoff who is a school director in the william penn school district which is one one of the petitioners in the fair funding trial which is ongoing we heard an update about some of the testimony that that particular school district provided and where we are in the trial now i don't know exactly where uh things ended at the conclusion of

135proceedings today but the petitioners are just about wrapping up if they did not wrap up their for their case today and it will then move to the legislative respondents and their witnesses and for those of you who want to follow that trial it is itself an education and i would encourage you to do so it is live streamed but not recorded so you can only listen to it or view it in the moment and there is the i believe i've mentioned this before but some of the advocacy groups that are assisting as counsel for the petitioners have created a website you may do that at fund our schools pa dot org slash trial and that concludes the legislative council report the next meeting will be february 9. thank you mr moore and board members i

136apologize left on the agenda you'll see federal relations network but as dr babson pointed out last month because the pennsylvania school boards association is no longer affiliated with the national school boards association unfortunately the federal relations network activities were a casualty of that so you'll indulge us dr babson if i pass over you for that and we will move on to back to mr moore for the pennsylvania is this about the sports affiliation thing no i know i lost the room on that one yeah i think you lost me actually i have to catch me up on that um mr moore pennsylvania school boards association report uh yes and that's that's a nice segue the psba is is our association for all the school boards in the state um and they do things on our

137behalf and in our name and uh one of the things that the psba did was in fact withdraw from the nsba after some issues that emerged another thing that the psba has done recently is some advocacy around a particular house bill um psba as you know i think does advocacy on a number of issues i just wanted to highlight this one as one example house bill 2093 in the pennsylvania state house would eliminate cross-filing in school director elections i think as most board members know the majority of states elect school directors on a purely non-partisan basis i think the next tranche or so which is a minority elects school directors in partisan elections and then pennsylvania does something a little bit unusual where you can fill out petitions for the primary for both major political

138parties and seek to contest the party in both of those parties so there was a representative who introduced a bill to eliminate cross-filing and just make school border elections truly partisan without any opportunity to cross file and based on the legislative platform of the psba which i discussed in a previous report i think as as a reminder there's a platform committee where school boards can suggest changes to the legislative platform and then that platform is discussed and adopted and those particular proposals are voted up or down it remains as part of the legislative platform that um school the psba is in favor of cross-filing and so as a result of that they collected some quotes from school directors and uh submitted a letter in opposition to this bill so i just thought it was a

139nice illustration of how psba acts on our behalf to the extent there are issues that this or any other school board care about something that perhaps our grcc committee could do would be to consider submissions to the platform committee so that's an idea out there any school district can prepare proposals for the platform to be committee and if if adopted those are you know potentially then set on to become part of the legislative platform or not i will also point out a few development opportunities for school directors there is this week on january 27th there is um children first a group we've we've spoken about a lot before who has advocated on behalf of children in our state is presenting an event which is about cyber charter effectiveness and so you should find a link

140registration link in your psba emails about this i believe that event will be at noon on january 27th and there will be some special legislative guests at that presentation as well so there's a new report about cyber charter effectiveness and you may wish to view that and there is also something called the charter school performance framework and there will be a presentation about that on february 11th and that again you will find a registration link for that in your psba emails so those are two opportunities uh between now and the next board meeting that you may wish to take a look at and then finally although this is uh several months down the road you may wish to save the date april 25th 2022 for the spring advocacy day in harrisburg and that advocacy day

141has been virtual for reasons we all know too well but it is hoped and expected that this will return to be an in-person experience in in harrisburg for school directors so keep that in mind as you are planning your spring and that concludes the psba report thank you very much mr moore we'll turn now to radnor township parks and rec that's dr babson and miss dunn sorry sorry yeah um so this month the parks and recreation board met on thursday january 13th and dr babson and i both unfortunately had conflicts but i wanted to give the board just a couple of updates there is new leadership as a standard for parks and rec in january the new president will be mary coe and the vice president is claire guertin there were a lot of issues

142discussed i you know i highly encourage members of the community to check out the parks and rep website they have a lot of activities going on they're very very busy they're already starting to plan um you know through the spring and and into the summer so they have a lot of opportunities i will also mention that um thank them they were originally scheduled to try and use this room for a round table this evening they're actively conversing with members of the community about changing the plans for fenimore woods um and they graciously moved to another location so that we could use the room um and um one another item that's been on the agenda for a while and doesn't seem to be getting a lot of community insight is um potential for uh limitations of

143dogs at the willows so if that's something you have insight or thoughts about feel free to reach out to parks and rec thank you miss don i'm sorry to interrupt but i actually read and there and i say this only because there's high school students they're starting to accept the applications for like summer day camp counselors and things like that is that accurate they didn't mention that at the meeting i'm sure it's on the parks recreation website and they're still setting up so locations for the summer camp they're still trying to get that settled um and the next meeting i should mention uh will be thursday february 10th okay thank you miss dunn and that brings us to the radnor educational foundation ms duffy yes the radnor educational foundation met on thursday january 20th the

144raf is currently looking for a new executive director that search has been ongoing for a few months now so anyone in the public interested in applying please see the raf website for info about the position and how to apply the applications for winter the winter grants cycle are due on friday february 11th in the fall raf awarded a grant to the radnor committee for special education it's a series to help fund a series that they were proposing and i'm happy to report that that you saw it in the radnor reader that they are having it it's called universal design for learning with shelly moore it's about inclusive education and that will take place on february 9th 16th 23rd and march 2nd from 6 to 8 p.m again you can find that information and a link

145to sign up in the radnor reader and then lastly the raf annual gala has tentatively been scheduled for the weekend of april 29th so you can pencil that in at the willows i think when they get an executive director on board the planning will be full force and they'll have more details to come the next meeting will be i believe thursday march 22nd thank you thank you miss duffy and the ragner high school scholarship fund mr jubileer yes the radnor high school scholarship fund met last evening january 24th and the big news is attention high school seniors the 2022 scholarship application period is now open which which if granted students will receive four years a stipend for four years of post-secondary study and applications are available on the radner high school scholarship fund website radner

146scholarship fund dot com or via last week's radner reader link where you can have a link to the application and information as well the applications are due on march 23rd interviews will be held in early may the criteria is based on financial need extracurricular activities community service and yes academics as well we're very excited about that and we hope lots of eligible students apply the next meeting of our of the board will be her on february 28th thank you mr jubilee and radnor page miss dunn i believe radnor page is also still looking for leadership so we have not had a meeting recently okay thank you and the radnor committee for special education ms monaghan okay thank miss duffy for covering my report pretty much um but i did want to share a little bit

147more details for the radnor committee for special ed met on january 10th also met with administration ms lesage and mr regal on january 12th and what ms duffy was referring to previously with this inclusion seminar it is [Music] put on by the pennsylvania inclusion collective which is a consortium of groups of which radnor committee for special ed is one and they partnered up with the mciu to present this four-part virtual series on universal design for learning with shelly moore universal design for learning or udl is a teaching and learning framework that seeks to make true authentic inclusion possible for all students so as ms duffy referred to this has been highlighted in the radnor reader we're strongly encouraging all parents and all staff members teachers to register for this there is act 48 credits available

148that's going to be provided by and coordinated by mciu and um the first one as she as miss stuffy mentioned is going to be february 9th the focus of that is going to be the evolution of inclusion and the second will be february 16th which is um focusing on the title the title is support one support all and i'll probably report again a month from now on the last two of the series which take place on february 23rd and march 2nd the second thing i wanted to just highlight is that the radner committee for special ed is looking for some volunteers um our high school students are very talented crew of people and they are interested in volunteers that may help them with print social media and web design so anyone who is interested the

149contact at this committee is kathy mayer or you can reach out to me directly and i can put you in touch with the right person but strongly encourage some student volunteers they've had a lot of success with their champions program so uh this is just another venue to leverage the talents of our our students that's it thank you ms monahan and now we move to new business does anybody on the board have any new business this evening okay i'm just going to go around and start down there mr i have a question i want to make sure it's appropriate i had a comment that i neglected to say i wanted to say it as a comment uh to something on the consent agenda would this be an appropriate time or or not to revisit it's

150not to revisit it's just to i have something i'd like to share is that okay at this time sure yeah i just wanted to mention something i was very pleased to see i served on the goodness pre-covert times with mr bechtold the physical education pe curriculum review committee and one of the things that came out of the consent agenda i think is important to highlight it was in the change in the the course offerings coming to the high school this fall and i'm really pleased to see that we diversified and listened to our constituents students staff administration student athletes and seeing course offerings like mindfulness and athletic training really listening to the community and providing what they want i think it's just a wonderful thing i was proud to serve on that committee and it

151was difficult we got cut off when covet hit and i'm really pleased to see that that uh that passed this evening and thank you for shepherding that through thank you mr jubilee i appreciate that ms stern you wanted to say something in new business too i did uh so because i'm not on the curriculum committee i just wanted to to put it out there how much i appreciate the commenters who brought forth the holiday that their muslim holiday that you're asking us to consider and how much i hope that we actually take action on that um really for next year's calendar i was trying to take a look at even this year's calendar i certainly hope that our our high school principals i i i'm so grateful to have had you bring an awareness that

152i didn't have and i really appreciate it and i hope that we take action really quickly on that because it's you know we we each have our holidays that are very important to us and um it really stuck a chord with me tonight and i don't serve on curriculum so i i just wanted to share that thank you thank you mr anybody else mr moore uh just just one question for dr batchelor dr batzler did we cross the threshold of uh five years of service for you for rather township you know i'm coveted my my everything is such a blur but i think we are right at the threshold or within days when the threshold started it started january 29th 2017. 29. what did you say you took 29. yes 2017. yep yes well then

153i hope i didn't jinx you what [Laughter] but thank you there's no jinx there dr batchelor is under contract for another five years for us we we worked on that last summer so and publicly voted on that yes thank you and and uh i have joked with board members that you know serving under covet it's it's you know a year of covet is like three or four years so um i did get my hair cut shorter so you're not seeing all the grays but it's hard to say whether it's the the job or the family at times and that that's it mr moore that's it okay great thank you everyone just taking one last look for anybody else i might have missed okay then we'll move into board announcements and let's see in february on

154the eighth at five o'clock we have policy at six o'clock on the eighth we have facilities and at seven o'clock we have government relations and communications and these are in the what is it the garden view conference room and that's just lipstick on a pig it is the ground floor conference room for a series of policemen rtsd administration building 135 south wayne avenue in wayne and then tuesday the 15th of february at five o'clock there's curriculum and it's 6 30 finance those two committees will meet at again in the administration building and then on tuesday february 22nd at seven o'clock we'll be back here in this building the township building for our regular business meeting and with that we'll move into our second round of public comment and i invite anyone here who would like

155to make a comment to come to the podium and if they're oh sir come on up and just please make sure also that you sign in with your name and address over there you can do that after you make your public comment but please do that for the record when you're finished thank you very much and welcome this evening thank you i'm hassan farzani uh uh idris 1030 east lancaster avenue bremer i just want to thank kim bachelor for taking a consideration our aid holiday for our community thanking dr dan for taking his time calling me today to just uh asking about the proposal everybody helping our school district um just taking my time excuse me sir just move a little bit closer it's hard to hear you thank you so much taking my time

156to talk about uh justin bieber my family and and part of our community that as a family we came all the way from cleveland to ohio looking for just the best place to raise a family as a graduate student we came and after that happened just 10 years ago we came we decided to after a year decided to just move to radnor here we bought our home and we raised four four boys in radner school district so after a while that happened uh our kids was just young starting kindergarten all the way to the seventh grade fire by the time running now they start uh as you know uh this holiday comes with the lunar calendar in our calendar it goes back to the same point after 30 35 years so the reason why we're

157asking about right now because it used to be in the summertime that's what we we don't uh ask for the holiday but now it comes in the beginning it comes back after that going back to the 1998 1998 so that the demographic of the school district here in radner and the community changed if you go after the 30 years and during these ten years in the summer falling now again in april and uh may so it is it became very important for our kids especially after growing is just a little different than being in the kindergarten and elementary age with the exams and this project it's very hard for them to ask about going to uh the religious holiday thinking about exam a project like kids going to the easter during the school time so

158that's very important we think maybe just consider it and uh that's that's our uh hopefully we if there's any uh uh uh any uh proposal we we can add any information thank you thank you very much sir and again please do sign in over there so we have a record of your name and address for having made the comment thank you so much is there anybody else in the room that has a comment to make this evening no mr petiti have we received any emails yes okay because andrew newton eagle road wayne i just wonder if any of you have read the nuremberg code do you think the masks that are under eua can meet all the marks of the nuremberg code and then the talk of requiring vaccination to go to public school you

159have lost your mind when all of this comes to an end and is found that discriminating against vaccination status and forcing children into medical devices is illegal what reputations will be given to families who have been trying to get you to do what is right because a hair fast apology isn't going to pass also thank you nancy and jeff for your sound mind kelly martin 313 edgehill road thank you dr baxter for making an effort to answer some of the quick questions from board comment tonight it helps the public to feel heard when our voices are acknowledged i like to discuss the quote toll of masking unquote discussed by one of our board members tonight have you ever watched dirty jobs i can assure you that some of these people do jobs that are so

160unfathomably difficult you might not make it through an eight-hour day but those aren't workers but those workers do the hard jobs with bells on by the same token you might sit through a two-hour board meeting with a diaper on your face and say it doesn't take a toll on you but that worker or five-year-old might struggle in that same meeting just as an an at-risk board member can travel to a high-risk location mask-free but whereas a face diaper for a socially distant board meeting sounds like a bit of virtual virtual signaling don't you think please don't use the voice of one board member who suggests the toll of masking is negligible for three thousand plus five to eighteen-year-olds he insists on stealing oxygen from thank you okay thank you mr petiti and with that i

161will enter i'm sorry just yeah i just wanted to jump in just with the second public comment uh just a couple things one um it was a board's decision uh uh that you know board leadership asked me to uh moving forward to try to respond to public comments i can so i want to thank the board i know the public commenter which is thank you and i just want to uh you know give credit where credit's due for the school board uh for establishing uh that structure moving forward and i'll do my best to be able to respond to those that we can and on the spot and there was one another comment that was made earlier that i didn't comment on as i looked at my notes we have had one public comment one

162excuse me one public request for us to review a material in our one of our libraries in our high school library we have a board policy that reflects that and that process is underway we have not had the committee meet yet it's been a little struggle between kovid scheduling a committee meeting but that committee meeting is is happening soon um and then i think that and then again the other public honor thank you for coming and just sharing and we will um you know consider and look at that and and you know respond so thank you thank you dr batchelor and thank you again to all those who made comments this evening with that i will entertain a motion to adjourn would somebody like to initiate that motion mustafi would someone like to second it

163miss done all those in favor okay this meeting is adjourned thank you everyone you