October 26, 2021 RTSD School Board Business Meeting

001i'd like to call this meeting to order we will begin with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all good evening everyone i'd like to welcome you to the radner township school district regular business meeting tuesday october 26 2021 i'd like to report that the board met in executive session on the following dates october 5th to discuss legal issues october 12th to discuss legal issues october 19th to discuss personnel and legal issues and earlier this evening october 26th to discuss personnel issues and with that we will move right into our report from students welcome thank you and good evening it's exciting to be back in the municipal building

002after the few meetings at the middle school at the beginning of the month the radnor boys varsity soccer team made history on october 5th other than their triumph against marvel newtown high school with a score of 4-0 our team beat their opponents on the turf of philadelphia's soccer team the union at subaru station as for the bradner girls varsity soccer team sophomore celeb scored the winning goal against strathaven during the radnor girls soccer senior night with that they've advanced to playoffs this friday and they'll find out who their opponent is later this week unfortunately the radnor girls field hockey teams goalie faced an injury earlier last week so the right-back defensive player maddie bayer maddie bader had to step in as as she had been playing goalie her whole life maddie stopped every shot and

003the team won 8-0 against ridley high school a week ago senior chase stefano and sophomore sean masalupi made it to the piaa gulf state championships as you as some of you might know golf is a difficult sport and their impressive accomplishments are congratulated at radnor and finally the football team the varsity team hasn't had the best winning streak this year but this friday we might be in luck as they face strathaven at conestoga friday will also be the team's senior night along with the cheerleaders not only is it two of radnor's sports senior nights it's also our homecoming game this year's homecoming court consists consists of justin norian parker drew aaron zoo noah choi sebastian keeper pete henkel lucy henkel talian schwartz olivia barker caroline constable avery barber and sophia fletty with all that's to

004come during the game a large crowd full of school spirit is expected to attend in halloween costumes as we approach the spooky holiday this weekend as tradition students are preparing for the annual lm week as you know this time of year fosters the most school spirit year round with elaborate hallway decorations and hilarious outfits for each theme day with this year's theme as the roaring 20s next week will consist of usa monday off on tuesday for elections tiki wednesday throwback thursday and rally or school spirit friday unfortunately the infamous virus deprived last year's freshman this year's sophomores of their first ellen week and pep rally and this year's juniors only experienced one of these spectacular events so it's been up to the seniors to raise school spirit across the school because they know what lm

005week truly is and what it can be seniors have been encouraging underclassmen to buy pep rally shirts to come to hallway painting days so we can make the best of the circumstances what are the circumstances well this year the pep rally is outside on the famous junior lot which hosted last year's senior prom in carnival based on the outcome of those events i know the pep rally pep rally is going to be more than awesome for example the seniors just completed their first boys dance rehearsal in partner dance rehearsal not only have those practices served as catalysts for school spirit they've also been amazing grade bonding experiences on weekdays the school has moved its traditional painting locations in the hallways to the cafeteria to avoid painting the school's floors this has further connected our school

006across grades because everyone's together in club news last last wednesday during community period radnor's student ambassadors hosted this year's new student meet and greet the event was open to all who wanted to meet the newest members of radnor and to those members who wanted to meet more people including mr dr batchelor this year we have students joining us from a few neighborhoods away to all the way from japan it was a great opportunity to make some new friends over chips and lemonade and even though the classic philly pretzels order was a little bit late it arrived just in time as everyone who attended was heading to their next class since its breast cancer awareness month a few clubs have been raising breast cancer awareness throughout the school recently ratner's black student union has been collecting

007donations for gift baskets to donate to women of color who have been diagnosed with breast cancer the baskets will be filled with items such as hats scarves and travel size hand sanitizer to name a few the bat the black student union hopes to deliver the gift baskets to a nearby chemotherapy center with that they are still collecting donations for the rest of the month in our school's english and history departments and our local abc house the club has also collaborated with the cure for cancer club which sammy will talk about thank you austin and good evening everyone i hope you've all had some time to relax and enjoy the beautiful fall foliage and weather although not so much tonight one of the wonderful benefits of the cove vaccine is that we get to do the

008things we love in person again the spanish service club feels incredibly grateful because this year rhs volunteers get to return in person to the oklahoma family center in norristown every thursday volunteers take a van to tutor students in grades three through five helping them with homework while also building meaningful relationships if time permits the club also stops to get delicious authentic tacos in norristown on the way home following the activities fair last month many clubs including malayuan welcome new members however because only a select number of students can join maori yen october brought some stressful times for all the sophomores and new juniors who decided to try out the process included writing several essays as well as giving a presentation on select global issues and participating in a mock simulation upperclassmen in the club enjoy

009asking the sophomore presenters the hardest questions they can think of which i heard can be quite intimidating one club that is making a big difference around the community is the league of women voters at the end of september student members of the league of women voters spent time in the rhs cafeteria during lunch periods encouraging students teachers and staff members to register to vote volunteers came prepared with flyers infographics and an educational poster board on october 9th the club gathered to paint signs to remind people to get out and vote and most recently on october 17th members of the club traveled to the willows where they helped register voters at the annual fall festival also on october 17th as austin mentioned the run for cure 5k took place at ratner elementary school the funds collected

010for registration fees have been donated to breastcancer.org and to support breast cancer awareness a lot of runners were their best pink costumes and it was a great effort on a beautiful fall day for an important cause and more academic news as you may know all 9th through 11th graders took the psat on october 13th in a new experience for most students classes after the test were only 12 minutes long time in which some teachers packed in lessons and activities and others allowed for a nice 12-minute track break with friends while the rest of us were taking the psat the seniors spent their four hours at a class breakfast a presentation on important senior events such as the lm week shirts and then a lot of them left to grab coffee or food with friends in

011student government news the freshman election results came in at the beginning of the month so far the chosen president ryan donahue and the vice president emilia hilbert along with the other new members of their student council have been getting ready for lm week with their class by coming whenever they can to paint posters for the 1920 chicago themed hallways typically the freshman hallway during lm week lacks in decorations but the class of 2025 is pulling through with some amazing posters the sophomore's main focus at the moment is lm week like the other grades but afterwards they plan to host a potential movie night and a pie themed fundraiser their classes council is meeting tomorrow to finalize fall plans finally broadway is not the only live theater to return to the stage this fall early this

012month rhs announced that they will be putting on a production of clue the play features classic characters from the board game such as colonel mustard who will be played by michael mcnicholas miss scarlett played by laini walsh professor plum played by jason tay and many additional characters played by talented rhs actors the performances will take place november 18th 19th and 20th and they will definitely be a lot of fun to see as always thank you for having austin meet we look forward to seeing you all next month thank you both very much and now we have our superintendent report dr batchelor good evening thank you um before we had austin throwback day so what is give me the decade what's throwback day all right can i see i have a feeling it's the 80s isn't

013it yeah so okay i just i just want to know that i can go back to my closet and pull out clothes that i have so it can be any day so like sometimes students might wear something from like elementary school or they'll wear like super fancy outfits from like the 70s or 80s mine is from the 70s this year so thank you thank you both for your reports and good evening it's good to see everyone um this evening i want to share some information and i'll share really a lot of information a great deal of information as an update on our some of our covered protocols to some of our testing protocols that are coming up each month we take an opportunity to look at our dashboard we look at our positive cases by

014week and we also look at the transmission level that we continue to post on our district website there's more detailed information that we post on our website as well each week we post information by building as well as we track our covet data each week moving to the next slide tonight on our consent agenda we talked about at our recent committee meeting is a test to stay program and the test to stay program right now as a school district when we have a close contact we are required to notify the state of a positive case we are required then to quarantine those close contacts in working in conjunction with other superintendents in delaware county looking at what 30 other states in our country have developed over the last few months we are planning to move

015forward with a test to stay program to keep more of our kids in class when they are a close contact to a student we have found by tracking our own data from not only last year but this year looking at the states that have a test to stay program that the vast majority of the time when we've had a positive case in school and we've notified those close contacts that those students who were asymptomatic often the vast majority of time didn't result to becoming positive but yet they were quarantined and kept out of school for a set amount of time with our test to stay program when we have a student who is positive in the school during the day and then we contact those close contacts those students who may have been a close

016contact to that student if those students are asymptomatic meaning they have no symptoms and that student and family the parents would have to agree agree to take a rapid test which our nurses have rapid tests they're not invasive at all they're nothing like the original tests that were more invasive it is a simple nasal swab rapid test that our nurses have if those students and staff are willing to put you know on days one to two days three to four day five to seven three different times continue to wear their mask which we are all still required to based on the state order those students could stay in school and we could monitor them and it will also give us more data on you know what is happening within the spread within our community as

017well so this is an option we're excited to bring forward it'll help keep more of our students in school i think it'll protect our community as well and this is something that we're moving forward tonight on our agenda like everything we've done this year with covet we continue to adjust as we learn more we tweak if we try something and we feel it's not working uh the way it's in we anticipated uh we're willing to make adjustments but we're excited to you know institute a test to stay program again learning from the states that have already done this you know throughout our country and we believe it'll keep more of our kids in the classrooms and keep them safely in the classrooms next item i wanted to share when it comes to covet is after

018school rapid testing uh one of the things i unfortunately recently experienced about a month and a half or i guess it's almost two months ago a month and a half ago was when the only unvaccinated person in my household became positive and it was my fifth grader and many of you know i have a house full and and even a great aunt who lives with us and when my youngest woke up not feeling well we didn't have her go to school that day and my wife called me at work and said she's got a little bit of a fever i'm concerned i said uh-oh we better get her tested it was hard to find a test it was actually we realized as as we contacted the pharmacies it was easier to get the vaccine she's

019not eligible but it was easier to schedule a vaccine appointment at the pharmacies than it was to schedule a test and in many times it was you know the next day or the morning of the day after and then you wouldn't get the results to the to the day after i went looking for over-the-counter rapid tests and it was the third pharmacy i went to where i could buy an over-the-counter rapid test so thanks to our nursing team who have just been simply unbelievable throughout this this process what we are planning to do is offer after school rapid testing for those who are interested two days a week so if your child is at school there is a close contact or you're concerned or if your child isn't feeling well um that afternoon or you

020just want that that security of knowing where we will be publishing so you don't have to write this down now and those of you watching we will advertise this and share this but we're going to offer two days a week after school thanks to our nursing department uh walk-in rapid tests for our students two days a week up until 5 30 if any parents or students um you know would like that security and that knowing depending on what their circumstances are those rapid tests that we have are free of charge so there would be no charge for those students that may need you know to be rapid tested so more information about that as we move forward with the after school rapid testing two days a week and i also want to share with our

021board i haven't had a chance to share this with the school board and our community we are investigating pool testing and we're investing in this for two reasons one it has proven to be effective in helping prevent the spread and pool testing is where you have a classroom of students maybe 25 students all do a nasal swab and then all 25 students our specimens are tested at once and if it's negative if there's no positives in there it's negative if one student is positive we would find out and then we would go back and have to retest that class to then determine which student or students may have been positive we are looking at exploring whether or not we want to go into pool testing again as a way to just try to prevent the

022spread to try to help us understand what type of spread is happening in our community one of the reasons we're looking at this too i will tell you be frank is because it's free also the state has come forward with free pool testing for school districts uh who are interested one of the challenges we've had with the testing protocols is the expense uh and and the staff and the the the how cumbersome it can be to try to get it done and distracting from the school day we want to do everything possible uh to keep distractions from our our school day and from our students and at the same time keep our students safe and protected so we're looking into whether or not we want to pilot any type of pool testing in our district

023again this would be optional not required for those families and students who would be interested in participating pool testing more information to come more information to the board and community as we we look into this uh opportunity for our community and on the next slide i want to talk for a moment just about vaccines and i want to talk about several levels five to 11 year olds and also for our staff recently we've been informed that you know all of our staff now that everyone received johnson and johnson but many of our staff received the johnson johnson vaccine that they are now eligible for a booster we want to share information with our staff about that this coming week that they are all eligible for a booster moving forward we are discussing whether or not

024for that booster we want to hold any type of booster clinic for our staff here on our premise right now as i talk to many members of the health profession and speak to some of our local hospitals there is a vaccines are readily available and the boosters are readily available at our pharmacies the organizations that we use to do the clinics that you see here that we did last year in the spring are not being mobilized in the same way even though they were very staff intensive from our part there was also other groups we partnered with to provide all of these vaccination clinics last year because the vaccine is so readily available right now at the pharmacies a lot of these groups and organizations aren't gearing up in the same way so we are

025looking with private companies that could potentially come to give some boosters to our staff but at the same time we're also finding from speaking to the hospitals and other areas that this is something that's readily available at the pharmacies as well so we'll continue to talk with our staff about what are the opportunities that we can provide also what are the opportunities um you know for them to schedule with the vaccines there's also it's open to preference now people could choose which you know they don't have to get the va johnson johnson booster so there could be up to preference as well depending who we work with which which uh vaccine they'll be provided on the student front we're anticipating very shortly that the five to 11 year olds are going to be approved for

026vaccine that is also providing a little bit of a different nuance than we experienced in the spring when we scheduled so many different vaccine sessions it's younger kids when we contacted the children's hospital of pennsylvania the children's hospital philadelphia children's hospital right now is planning on providing vaccine to any of their pediatricians that are affiliated with children's hospital so if parents are involved with a pediatrician that's that is affiliated with children's hospital they're going to be getting the vaccine through their pediatrician so we're trying to gauge whether or not how much need there is for us to offer vaccine clinics at the same time we when we set up these clinics last spring we partnered with two other school districts we have had discussions with those districts as well marple and haverford to partner with

027them and we'd like to try to offer that but there's some challenges with the five to 11 year olds the five to 11 year olds we were doing in our vaccination clinics 100 to 200 shots an hour over the weekends we did that for the 5 to 11 year olds it's a much slower process you're not going to go through as many vaccines you need to have a more private setting with the younger kids partitions so there are some challenges and we also believe from speaking to medical professionals the pharmacies have gone very good at giving out the vaccines and have a lot of the vaccines so we're trying to gauge right now what's going to be the best way to help our community for those who want are interested in the vaccine at the

028same time knowing that pediatricians are planning to have the vaccine as well we are looking to try to see what other outside providers could possibly come in after school and provide the vaccine for us as well so we really are looking at all up really all avenues for how we can move forward with this but it's different because of the availability of the vaccine in so many areas right now and the availability right now that we're finding it with the pharmacies the great unknown uh for up for me right now as i'm trying to understand always how many of the pediatricians offices will actually have it i know the ones affiliated with children's hospital will i don't know um how many of the others will as well so more information to come as we look

029to to you know provide this opportunity for our community moving forward and then our upcoming events you see we have many upcoming events uh it is a it is always a busy time in the district and it's exciting to hear from the students as we uh hear so many of the the events and activities that you know we were unable to do last year bringing back this year even though some are still modified moving forward with the year and then i also wanted to just mention i wanted to take a moment this is michelle dico who is our business manager this is her last meeting michelle is retiring early november from the school district and i wanted to take a moment on behalf of the school board behalf on our community to thank michelle for

030her dedicated service to the school district as business manager there is so much that michelle does behind the scenes that no one sees no one recognized so many of our staff you know we take for granted so many of the functions in the business office and including i know you know often i've had staff ask questions and i say did you get your paycheck did things happen uh they take care of so many things and do it so well and michelle you've always had a keen focus on the education of our students while you were in charge with the budget and the audit and taking care of our financials you have always had an outlook and a desire to make sure that our program and dollars are making a difference for our kids and i

031can't thank you enough for all your dedication to the school district so on behalf of the administration and the school board we want to present you with a little gift [Applause] so thank you very much i really appreciate it i have been blessed to work with so many loyal hard-working dedicated professionals at radnor and i definitely will miss the camaraderie and my colleagues and of course all of you [Applause] i think ms solomon would like to say something i just want to chime in and say a few words of thanks to miss dico she has been a steadfast senior member of our administrative team for a long time and a lot of people don't know all the things she's been asked to do during her time at radnor so you know she's the business manager

032she puts together the budgets does the financials for us puts together the reports each week on all the expenditures that's the obvious stuff but at various points she's also been asked to be in charge of facilities at one point um she and um uh todd mr stitzel sorry mr stitzel were a shared responsibility for all of the facilities we didn't have anyone else in charge of that and so that was a heavy lift when you're also doing all the financials she was also in charge of bussing as part of that portfolio so i i just want to first of all commend you and thank you for just being flexible at radnor for always stepping up and doing a superb job at what she's been asked to do she is calm smart kind and honest and

033this whole community owes her a huge thank you and a debt of gratitude thank you miss dico [Applause] and while we have just a few days left with michelle we welcome brian brian is sitting uh with michelle as they transition so i want to welcome again uh brian pauling who is our our new business manager and and uh thank michelle for you know the way that she has planned this retirement to give us an opportunity to have the transition that we have in front of us as well so welcome brian [Applause] and that concludes uh superintendent's remarks for tonight thank you dr bachelor and and i echo your comments for miss dico and welcome to mr pauling we actually recognized miss dico at our finance committee meeting so i don't i don't want to cause

034her to break into tears but i will say it's really lovely that as you're retiring people are understanding that you're deco not decal um all right we're going to move into our recognitions and first up is a recognition of sophomore lena cheraki mr jubilee if you want to take this item thank you elena shiraki a sophomore at radnor high school captured the central league singles tennis championship on september 25th capping an undefeated single season in central league play elena rebounded from a 6-0 loss in the first set to take the second set 6-4 had the lead in the third set 3-0 before her opponent retired the superintendent along with the board and the radnor community congratulates laina her parents who are with us and her coaches coaches with us as well on this outstanding accomplishment

035[Applause] [Music] thank you mr jubilee and now we have another recognition for junior sophia kaiserman and ms dunn if you would take care of that thank you i'm excited to see you how are you doing rhs junior sophia kaiserman's original play date month year selected for philadelphia young playwright's annual playwriting festival sophia kaiserman a junior at radnor high school will have her original play date month year featured as part of philadelphia young playwright's new voices virtual event on friday october 29th and saturday october 30th sophia's play was selected for more than 550 submissions as part of a philadelphia young playwright's annual playwriting festival new voices seeks to showcase fresh new plays from the next generation of writers each year philadelphia young playwrights invites area students to submit their plays to the annual playwriting festival plays

036are considered by the literary committee a collection of nearly 70 program alumni artists staff teachers and others who read and write individualized responses to every play literary committee members recommend a number of outstanding plays to be considered for further consideration by two additional groups of readers pre-final committee and final committee sophia's original monologue my next 30 months was also named a first place winner in the philadelphia young playwright's annual monologue festival the public can learn more about how to stream sofia's play and the six other student works selected for the event at philadelphia youngplaywrights.org the superintendent along with the board and the radnor community congratulates sophia her parents and her teachers on this outstanding accomplishment congratulations and i think if the board would permit us i think sophia is going to give us a reading

037this evening from her monologue i'm excited about that [Applause] hello thank you this is my monologue day month year the other day i was doing my homework you know as one does and then i realized something and dropped my pen i decided to do the math and the results hit me right in the guts 30. i have 30 more months before graduating and going to college now 30 sounds like a big number but it's really just two years and a half which may also sound like plenty i'll break them down around 22 of them i'll spend going to school that means that in the next 30 months 22 of them will spend stressing over test scores keeping the gpa up and getting homework done on time here's the thing that's really jarring to me i'm

038going to leave my home where i have a roof over my head home-cooked meals on the table and unlimited emotional support mom hugs in 30 months and for much more than the majority i'll be stressed and annoyed trying to be as close to perfection as possible so that i can be accepted into a school where i will live for the four years or 48 months after my 30 months but what happens after the 78 months huh i'll be alone to find my way through the world and i know what you're thinking why claire you are but a sophomore in high school you mustn't worry about what will happen in 78 months nor in 30 for that matter and i say you're right you're absolutely right i shouldn't but we live in a world that's competitive

039and constantly moving time never stops no matter how much you want it to in those wee hours of the night when the week ahead just seems so impossible but so inevitable and you just want time to freeze and hope that you can finish all the work piling up on the desk but time doesn't stop but what can stop is me i can stop my mom says that i like to dream so much that i live in the future but here's the thing you can't live in the future because by the time you're there it becomes your present so if i don't live in the present and you can't live in the future nor past then i'm not living at all it's funny how things we do daily change our perspectives what's the first thing we

040do when we get any paper at school we write our day our name and date month day year we put the emphasis on the months but i think the rest of the world does it the right way they write day month year marking the days making the day the most important part marking how these little 24 hour spans matter so you know i think i've been talking too much about those months so i'm going to talk about the number that i think is the most important i have 929 days at home before college days that i can combine together to disguise as months or make an even bigger bundle in two years but those days are there and i refuse to let them just go by we've all heard the saying today's a gift that's

041why they call it the present or whatever it is but it's really a popular saying because there's truth to it i've been taking the present for granted but that's gonna stop now i still care a lot about school and will continue to care but i also care about my friends and my family and these 929 days are never coming back and i want to truly live every single one life will go on and i will grow up and so my friends and family my life will change indifferent and unexpected and wonderful things will happen i'll try to cherish and live every one of those moments and then when i'm 67 in 19 142 days i want to look back at those 929 as some of my best thank you that was amazing thank you that's

042right sophia thank you when we saw you had this award and we asked you to come do the reading i know it was the last minute so thank you for joining us tonight all righty uh we're going to move into public comment the board shall provide an opportunity at each regular business meeting for eligible participants to comment on matters of concern official action or deliberation which are or may be before the board prior to official action by the board requires that public participants be residents or taxpayers of the district persons with a legal or contractual right to address the board or persons recognized by the presiding officer as having a special interest such that addressing the board would be appropriate eligible participants must be recognized by the presiding officer and must preface their comments by

043an announcement of their name and address individual comments shall be limited to not more than four minutes as per board policy zero zero six meetings and public participation should you be unable to attend this board meeting you may submit your comment by email to boardcomments rtsd.org or in writing to mr michael pettitti bradley township school district 135 south wayne avenue wayne pennsylvania okay do we have any public comment at this time i i don't have a comment i just heard that people were having trouble hearing at home that's all i just wanted to let you know oh thank you you know that was a problem on the township meeting too last week i apologize that's okay just want to give you a heads up thank you so much uh do we have any public comment

044this evening welcome hi my name is clark engel i live at 346 conestoga road in wayne this is my first time getting up and speaking and making any public comment at a school board meeting it's only the second time i've ever attended so i want you to know that because i need to be pretty motivated to have to come up here i don't often speak in public i've lived in radner since 2006. i have four children my oldest just graduated from radnor high school last june he went through all three levels of public education in ratner i also have an 11th grader and 8th grader and 2nd grader all of whom have attended ratner public schools until this fall i mentioned this so you understand that i have a current perspective of all three levels

045of education in ratner and i also have a historical perspective on how things have changed over the last 12 years by the end of last school year my wife and i had serious concerns about whether we could continue to send our kids to public school in ratner this was not a result of anything specific to the pandemic although virtual virtual learning did open our eyes to some things and confirm some of our concerns this was a growing feeling we have had for several years over the summer we decided to pull our two youngest children out of public school and send them to private school with our oldest entering college and our taxes increasing by 64 percent this was a significant financial burden for our family we did not plan our budget for this so i

046hope you're asking yourself what would make this family leave the number one rated school district in the state of pa well for starters let me say that lists and rankings mean nothing what matters is what is really happening on the ground floor we've tolerated a lot of things here in ratner such as constant last minute community changes constant last minute communications about changes with little or no time to react like receiving a revised parent handbook and being asked to sign it without ample notice or any any explanation as to what changed from the prior version multiple changes in the way math and reading are being taught over the last 12 years the constant increase in dependence on the use of technology and screen time in school while parents get reminded and lectured to limit our

047children's daily screen time for their health a wasteful 29 million dollar project to our high school athletic fields which robs our current upperclassmen from their high school experience on top of having to endure the issues surrounding covid my son's high school diploma and right to participate in the graduation ceremony being held hostage until we paid the chromebook fee if we can afford a 25 million dollar project why can't we give our kids free chromebooks teachers overstepping their bounds and espousing their viewpoints and pushing their political and social agendas like crt and believe me that is here in radnor regardless of what your campaign ad says and there is plenty of evidence to support that but that's not why i'm here tonight what i am here to talk about and what was the straw straw that

048broke the camel's back for us in deciding to send our two youngest to private school was the increasing rate in which i'm seeing young children being robbed of their innocence by being introduced or exposed to gratuitous sex and violence in both videos and literature in school the first time i noticed the problem was when my now 19 year old brought home a book called point blank in fourth grade from the west library i read the back cover and thought this description doesn't seem age appropriate so i started to read the book myself i couldn't put it down it was an action-packed thriller as racy and violent as one of the more recent james bond films but it wasn't age appropriate for a nine-year-old when i was nine i was still reading the hardy voice when

049i contacted a librarian mrs dalstrom her response was that the book made several critically acclaimed lists and other literary sources said it was age-appropriate therein lies the problem i expect more from raj ed radner educators i expect them to do some due diligence rather than rely on unreliable outside sources that's only the beginning as our children progressed to middle school and high school it became a constant short battle to filter the moral depravity they were being exposed to here's another example last winter my seventh grade daughter who was 12 at the time was assigned to do a book report and given a suggested list of books from which to pick here's the list long hard road out of hell about marilyn manson devil in the white city house of gucci stiff rbg becoming michelle obama

050so you want to talk about race stamped conspiracy in the streets born a crime just mercy boys in the boat life in emotion the total awesome book of useful useless information knots in my yo-yo into thin air into the wild the diary of young girl the first four books on this list have inappropriate material for this age group i was floored when i saw devil in the white city on this list i read this book there's graphic depictions of violence the time has expired uh with the speaker please conclude his remarks that's four minutes already that's four minutes is a card all right mr engel if you could just finish things sure i i have found multiple books with gratuitous sex and violence in our school system and in the libraries i'm going to email

051you all a list if i if they're not removed my only assumption is that you condone our children being exposed to these books thank you mr engel [Applause] oh yes mr engel you are welcome to um you can email your entire comment so we can read it in its entirety sure so something that i'm going to hand out afterward but um i'll i'll speak first um but i think you can see here on my overhead um this is public comment yeah this is public comment is the overhead projectors on yeah the overhead projector's on right here um and so my name is kelly martin great excuse me okay so i'll start my four minutes now um my name is kelly martin and i want you to know that if there are any children in the

052audience or with an ear shot you should have them leave the room ms martin could you please give your address yeah then we'll start my time over so it's conestoga road um i signed in in the book also so i thought but when you did that that you didn't also have to do that here so we'll start my four minutes over i think that sounds fair so as i said i'd like to ask children to leave the room um as a board this is miss martin if i could just yeah i'm just excuse me just interrupt for a minute if you're going to be reading something that you feel i assume your your point is to try to demonstrate there's some type of material or something that we're having in the school district that's not

053appropriate for children at certain ages or at all absolutely and not just one or ten or a hundred um so these are the books excuse me yeah miss dr bacharach i'm unaware that the camera is on for display director comment i understand that is that typical miss mr kristofco do we typically have presentation or camera is that i don't know what the procedure is for that i i don't know uh on the broadcast whether that's actually showing up on the broadcast or whether the broadcast is only showing the board oh okay thank you website we can share with everyone later so that they can see all of the content so these are library books that were just brought in just within the last four years so the four people that are running now you are

054all a part of this and i have handouts for the audience as well um so i'll start my time over four of you are running for re-election and one of the bullet points is that parents want to ban books in our library imagine that we're not banning great expectations what we should know is that there are certain things that aren't fit for the library at our schools penthouse we don't have that so you might say that these parents want to ban penthouse also along with the list of these other books we don't have playboy we don't have hustler and there's also a lot of books that you all have put into our library recently that don't belong there as board members you are not permitted to groom our children you're not permitted to invade their

055minds with books containing pornography pedophilia rape and incest and that doesn't scratch the surface of the political propaganda you've stacked our library shelves with as clark just discussed the sad thing about stacking the library with these new books is that you've done it under the cover of equity and inclusion the books are presented as immigrant bipoc and lgbtqia stories do you know how completely ridiculous that is presenting perverse narratives of our marginalized communities is harmful there are plenty of books written by or featuring characters from the lgbtqia community that art pornography as you see here they don't teach people how to strap on a dildo and perform oral sex we have plenty of books about mexican immigrants that don't describe in great detail a fourth grade boy talking about performing oral sex on a man

056and enjoying it there are books about hispanics that don't feature a father raping his daughter tying her to a tree and killing her black boyfriend there are books featuring hispanic girls that don't include graphic details guiding through masturbation and performing ham jobs on their fathers here's the thing for parents who can afford private school this isn't a problem they don't have to be here fighting this battle and if we had school choice most of the parents here they wouldn't need to fight it either we would leave end mass because of what's been going on lately in the district but when valley forge applied four minutes has expired please conclude your remarks no no nice thank you um you finish your sentence please no i'm gonna no because you guys started me over a few times

057so i'm gonna keep going i timed this before i came so i know i'm not even close when valley forge applied for a charter you turned them down you had the audacity to say that they had a church on the property imagine your concern over a church when you might as well be worshipping at the altar of the local pedophiles two of whom are local radnor democratic commissioners you've purged 16 000 books over the last four years and i'm presenting you here with a packet featuring excerpts from just a handful of the books one of the books in our library is called all boys aren't blue it's disgusting i'll warn you it shouldn't be in a high school it shouldn't be in a middle school he reached his hand down and he pulled out my

058dad and your foremost he quickly went to giving me head he they then came up and he asked me if i wanted to try on him he said watch four minutes are up the clock started at 7 50. i wrote it down every time that you said um that you wanted to start over and it's now i'm at three minutes and 30 seconds from the last interruption so but that was just 20 minutes 20 seconds of you interrupting take 30 seconds so i'm going to finish this page great thank you 30 seconds he reached his hand down could i just hit her for a minute yeah you can you're and this doesn't take away from your 30 seconds if your point is to make a point that these aren't appropriate to be in our libraries

059um and and that is something as a community member that is a point that you certainly can be making and we have a policy about that right there's a paper to fill out there there is and and and i would have right now uh mr bechtel the dr dukeevich be willing to meet you in the back of the lobby to begin that process right here let me just finish i understand your point and i understand for a point for reading it i just want to make you aware and as you said in the beginning because of covid many of our families have these videos and have our board meetings on you know in their living room for the families k-12 and even though you did made a reference about you know please don't have your

060young kids in the room the very reason you're the very point you're trying to make about the inappropriate i agree you're about to i had this conversation with many people having to share this and dr batchelor these books have been with our children locked up in the schools where parents aren't able to see them do you think they're a little disturbed probably from seeing things like this and so i'm not if parents don't know that this is what's going on how are they to to know what's going on so how are they supposed to say wait a second you are failing us so we have a political campaign going on saying these parents want to ban books in our school don't you finish your 30 seconds of comment please okay thank you he reached his

061hand down and he pulled out my dick he quickly went to giving me head he then came up and asked me if i wanted to try on him he said watch her teeth he didn't know i was a virgin and i did my best to act dominant dominant like my favorite porn star this was much more than losing my virginity for the first few minutes we dry humped and we grinded i was behind him with my stomach on his back and we kissed he pulled out a condom and some lube and they lay down on his stomach and i'm too sick that i actually can't read this this is so deprived and you have done this thank you ms martin you should all be registered sex offenders if this is okay with you this is

062disgusting thank you ms martin welcome cassandra newton eagle road i quickly wanted to address some misinformation on your website ratner democrats for school board as parents we aren't pushing national gop disinformation the district is teaching the principles of crt so you just happen to call it dei so crt is dei is sel right and for those who don't know the terms crt is critical race theory dei is diversity equity inclusion and so on and so forth if you acknowledge one you acknowledge them all correct i think we can all agree on this so i want to also remind you all that on that same website you guys say parents want to ban books and i want to remind you that tonight you're voting to get rid of charles dickens for mr rosen's kindred right charles

063dickens did you know that i bet you didn't oh okay you did and you want to get rid of charles dickens so we want to ban books you're also voting to get rid of 400 plus books at one of the schools 200 more books than another school but parents want to ban books we're only asking for you to get rid of the pedophilia pornography anti-cop the one where children who are white are told that they're worshiping the devil and signing away a contract that was the other one that we're asking i think only maybe elementary schools would be appropriate to get rid of those and then maybe in my opinion do a full audit to see where all these books are and then if you want to keep them in rms personal opinion in rhs

064ask the parents give them a permission slip let their parents know what the children want to read but get them out of the elementary schools they shouldn't be in elementary schools at all i think that's pretty fair right like that shouldn't be in an elementary school at all not at all so quickly with that but i think it also falls on the curriculum committee which lydia solomon andrew babson sarah dunn and miss amy goldman are on and three of you are running for re-election next week so it's pretty heavy stuff right but i also want to address the health and safety addendum that's my biggest concern because in august you guys had said that if you're masked you're not quarantining there's also a slide on that what you just showed didn't say that so i'm

065a little confused as to why you're saying you're quarantining when you're not but you're also wanting to push this fda like emergency authorized whatever see i got off topic but at least i'm not yelling at you guys right so that's some start you know so anyways dr bechdel said it only applies asymptomatic unvaccinated children and my questions went unanswered last week you deflected to the administration which dr batchelor tried to answer those questions it didn't really answer any of my questions i sent him that slide didn't answer any of them i just feel like from my understanding if a parent does not give informed consent for this test that their child is not going to have equitable access to publicly funded education and i just don't understand where you guys get off saying they have

066to quarantine if they don't have it and then there's no virtual option right now right so what happens with the child and then you guys are overstepping asking kids to test when they're not testing right now no one's testing right now right so to suggest get vaccinated because one of you is big on pushing vaccinations on this board or submit to a test that's not fully authorized by the fda is absurd and you shall be ashamed but i'm going to email all of you my questions i know you won't answer only susan will because she answers for the board for her last email so have a great night and i'm sure this won't be the last year for me thanks thank you miss newton is there any other public comment welcome hello i'm amanda castilleja

067at west wayne avenue i'm not going to tell you anything new tonight i'm only hoping that our community is listening doing their research and opening their eyes to what has been going on under the current scoreboard and your leadership susan stern one would say our school district is amazing since we are ranked number one in pennsylvania according to nedge let us not be fooled by what is happening behind closed doors it's like a married couple that shocks everyone around them when they announce that they're getting divorced you continue to give yourself credit for reopening the radner schools in march of 2020 for in-person learning while other other private schools opened in september of 2020 i mentioned this because to me ratner was always seen as a free private school we deserve better we should have

068reopened in september 2020. sorry i just get emotional because it's a bunch of crap and i'm still upset with all the books i'm sorry i was not expecting that he divided our community by removing the name raider to satisfy your own personal gain and a few activists several of you said and still saw say things like you look for common ground this is actually from you ms dunn and what students won neither of these things were done from any of you with regards to issues on this board and the raider name you allowed and encouraged hate in our community students have been bullied called racist white supremacist and physically harassed of which all be a behavior has been condoned by you students have been made have made fun of mental health issues in the radnorite

069pornographic language in our library books starting in elementary school up through the high school and actually let's not forget this is you would think it's minor but we don't even have enough food during our high school lunch periods and we're ranked number one you've also shown fiscal irresponsibility one will question that why there was a local tax reassessment you still approved a 1.9 tax school increase you may pat yourself on the back because you say it's the lowest in six years but you're forgetting the fact that we were in a pandemic people lost their jobs people lost their businesses and on top of it we have almost a 30 million dollar infrastructure project that we're doing you say that you have responded to hundreds of comments i am actually still waiting for responses to mine

070we as a community deserve responses there should be a dialogue in our with our school board not a one-sided conversation you don't teach crt i do agree with that in fact you teach the principles of crt these principles are taught through dei and also mtss you talk about data science and facts your actions speak otherwise if you base your decisions off the data science and facts we should have started in person back in september of 2020 we should still be called radnor raiders and our children should not be masked and we should not have porn in our schools and we should not have principles of crt taught in our schools we are radnor and we deserve better if we are number one with these issues we shouldn't be number one with these issues because if

071we don't know what's going on behind closed doors but now we are opening on our eyes and we know what's going on you may smirk and you may laugh i know some of you do i've seen it on the videotapes but you know what that's okay because you know what may god bless you thank you is there more public comment welcome thank you christina heinzer bloomingdale avenue before i give my public comment i would like to state my background as it's relevant to what i'm about to say i previously worked five years in pediatric clinical research at shop while there i completed my master's in mathematics education and taught at both private and public schools in the states of pennsylvania and maryland i do hold a pennsylvania public teaching certification in mathematics i am here

072tonight because it has come to my attention that dr babson spoke of a hope for approval of a copen 19 vaccine for children i would like to briefly share the story of what happened to my daughter in hopes of saving families from a similar fate because of my background in pediatrics i fully and blindly trusted doctors i did not think about vaccinations and followed the full cdc 72 dose childhood schedule this was the biggest mistake of my life and could have cost my daughter her life vaccines caused our daughter seizures after her one-year vaccinations full loss of words following her 18-month vaccinations and could have ended her life at her after her 48th dose at 4 years old yes our children get 48 doses of vaccinations by the time they turned 4. our daughter passed

073out the day of her four-year vaccines and slept for three days straight doctors tested her for every disease and illness they could think of but everything came back normal what did not come back normal were her titers for what she was vaccinated against for instance for mumps you need a titer of a 1.1 for immunity however our daughter's lab showed greater than 300 we don't know if she was 3 000 or 300 000 but the test stops at 300. she was left with brain inflammation or in other words autoimmune encephalitis our story is not rare parents of vaccine injured children are continually silenced we have been working hard to heal our daughter but it's expensive completely out of pocket and we have a fa as a family have walked through the depths of hell after

074her injury the coven 19 vaccine that you speak of with such hope is the worst vaccination we have seen in the last century i am shocked that no one here speaks of the veyer stats for those unaware theirs is the vaccine adverse event reporting system since its december 2020 rollout the cova 19 vaccine has caused over 17 000 deaths and over 800 000 adverse reactions let me explain to you that theirs usually says it's about one percent of what's truly happening i'll say that again in the last 10 months the coven 19 vaccine has caused over 17 000 deaths and over 800 000 adverse reactions a hundred and over 122 000 of the adverse reactions were listed as serious or life-threatening i am horrified thinking of what might happen if we try and approve this

075or god forbid mandate this for our smallest school-aged children who have had way more vaccinations than most adults yes our children have had more vaccinations than most adults in this room due to due to a 1986 supreme court decision in 1986 the supreme court decided that vaccine companies are completely free from any vaccine injuries or death the supreme court later decided that i quote vaccines are unavoidably and unequivocally unsafe but the 1986 supreme court decision stayed and is what made pharmaceutical companies so powerful so wealthy and what brought our cdc schedule from 12 vaccinations in 1986 to a whopping 72 doses today you're talking about vaccinating our most inoculated and smallest size school children with the deadliest vaccine we have seen in our lives when vaccine injuries occur in radnor township in our school children

076and they most certainly will from the cobin 19 vaccine families are going to look for someone to hold accountable as they have zero recourse with pharmaceutical companies who do you think they are going to hold accountable they could very well hold anyone on this board voting yes to a mandate accountable our first job is educators and for anyone sitting on this board is to do no harm i want to end my comment with this reminder there have been over 17 000 deaths and over 122 serious life-threatening injuries at least from the coven 19 vaccine all for a virus that has over a 99.97 survival rate and children at some point common sense needs to come up into play here the media isn't doing the right thing we obviously need to come together as a town

077to do the right thing and just for the fact checkers if you guys could look into this theirs the 1986 vaccine injury act fritz wyeth physician for informed consent has links with awesome research that you can look up yourself and children's health defense is a wonderful resource too please look into this it's the most important decision you're going to make for our town thank you thank you do we have more public comment welcome good evening my name is doug mcconnell i live with 216 poplar avenue um first i would like to thank each and every one of you for the service that you would do to the people of radar township and especially the students of rather township schools we really really we really do appreciate it i want to commend you on your overriding

078focus on radar students especially their health safety and their motivation you reopen the schools in september of 2020 in a hybrid format and then in all in-person classes in the spring ratner was the first school district to do that in delaware county and chester county and that demonstrated your leadership you know how important in-person instruction in the socialization that goes with that in the schools is and you made that happen as soon as it was safe that leadership was also demonstrated when you moved the opening time for high school to later in the morning to accommodate the natural sleep patterns of adolescence and a number of other districts around the state have followed as a result of that radner is blessed with very good faculty and it shows in our educational excellence according to nish

079as has been mentioned before radner is the number one school district in the commonwealth of pennsylvania it's also the number 12 school district in the united states or at least public school district in the united states that's a fabulous thing to have happen okay our facilities are by and large very good and although some of them have been below standard for many years um i was surprised when my kids were in school to see that the uh the football stadium were exactly the same ones as when i was there a half a century ago so but they made the educationally and fiscally prudent decision to proceed with upgrading the high school not just to make them fully accessible to people with disabilities which is really important because of the accessibility requirements but you prepare them

080for the next 50 years of under schools the board all of you deserve accolades for that i know there's been some criticism of that about carrying over overall many many dollars of unfunded liabilities that they say the audit shows that there are 144 million dollars of that is actually the actuarially determined future retirement program costs for faculty staff and employees every organization has to carry stuff like that it's nothing that that's irresponsible that's entirely appropriate to show it on your books most of the rest is in capital assets that are used to do your mission which is to teach the students and all the rest of it the sole focus of the board um you were able to refinance the debt making presence so that you've been very very fiscally responsible financially responsible good prudent

081use of taxpayer dollars you should be applauded for that not criticized although there are a number of people out there do criticize property taxes primarily the rise in property taxes as a result of the county-wide real estate assessment my own taxes you know they went up but stuff happens your your the amount that you increase your taxes you know for the school district is fair unreasonable um so ratner is that you know rather continues to monitor the covid situation and take appropriate steps in accordance with the science science of science okay you start out with things you learn as you go along um all right you're almost out of time four minutes if you could just finish up thank you okay my final comment um school board is doing an excellent job we should applaud

082the applaud them and we should continue that excellence for the next three four five years whatever thank you very much [Applause] do we have more public comment um welcome okay thank you uh jeff pachucas 228 south wayne avenue i'd just like to speak for a moment about the construction project at the high school so i've heard that this project is excessive ill-timed a pet project of the board physically irresponsible and unnecessary and i know that a lot of times people don't want to listen and they don't want to learn about projects like that but i feel the need to kind of personally address this having invested so much of my own time in the project and knowing um getting the opportunity to meet a lot of people in the administration including michelle and know how

083hard that they worked on this this project is the result of parents teachers administrators coaches and members of this community finally saying enough and insisting that the facilities at the high school be brought up to code to code not grandfathered in because they were built in 1955 but to actual code and that they simply be made safe and appropriate for the thousands yes thousands of people that you all invite onto that property every week from the community the students non-students private school students visiting students st catherine students the students from other high schools that come onto that property the community that uses the the tennis courts the community that walks on the track the soccer club the lacrosse club the swim club the little league baseball teams all those people come on this property and

084for the better part of decades the facilities that are being fixed were ignored why now why did you have to do this now why not put it off till later well because the bleachers were about to collapse they were built in 1955 because the stands on enki field resulted in parents and grandparents falling being injured being taken away in ambulances because people who are disabled cannot get down to these fields you have an alumnus who is a radnor hall of famer who sat in the library in the in the high school and told me that she would have coached the lacrosse team but she couldn't get onto inky field it's inexcusable it's absolutely inexcusable i'm sorry for getting a little fired up but i'm really tired of it so it's not a pet project of

085all yours you can't take credit for it it's families like the heckles who finally after 15 20 30 40 different facilities meetings finally got people's attentions and it wasn't all of you it was a special committee that none of you were on that one board member was on that came with a proposal to you that's substantially the same as what is being done now and this was known to the board these conditions in 2016 if not before that and the hegel family came repeatedly and warned about their own son and about the safety issues so to say this is some inopportune pet project that some bling that you all are putting together just it is disrespectful to every person every parent who has written to you you know how many people four minutes has expired

086mr baducus if you could finish up things so i just you know i i had a lot more this is really necessary it was well done it was well thought out it could have been done in stages over the last 25 years and it wasn't so it had to be done now it had to be done now thank you thank you [Applause] welcome thank you um tim henkel 462 barclay road i'm here today again in support of the accessibility and wellness infrastructure project at the high school i'm here with my wife allison my daughter lucy a senior at radnor high school and in honor of our son and brother peter who would have also been a senior this year as a family we've attended more than 50 community outreach meetings steering committee meetings finance committee

087meetings facilities committee meetings and full board meetings of this school district we've provided testimony on nearly 20 different occasions and are always enthusiastic about about supporting this project but we're disappointed to have to defend it here today to our dismay this community-supported project has become useful in the arena of election politics as a divisive tool the narrative of the project being unnecessary optional oversized or poorly considered has been irresponsibly encouraged and perpetuated despite our direct objections we've challenged members of radnor imagine with the facts relating to this narrative there's been limited willingness to make any changes and the misinformation has been amplified so here we are it's simply impossible to recount the hundreds of steps from conception to a current state of construction progress but it's not even hard to watch the march 9 2021

088vote approving the award of bids all the information you need is there it's a simple viewing the final comments of the board and casting their votes makes it clear of the rigor applied to the project along the way notably commissioner solomon said i'm keenly aware that not a single member of the public has come forward to talk about the cost of the project not a single person has come forward to say that that's a lot of money we've got to balance all our needs i see no way to do the ada things and the critical safety things without doing all of this i say yes a hard fought vote paraphrasing commissioner moore i'm asking myself why now can we do this can we do this during covet his answer simply seizing the opportunity to bring

089equity to the rhs campus cannot be delayed opposition to this project appeared three weeks ago and never before then not all not the bid award not when it broke ground not when it was on the cover the mainline times it just can't be said that any part of the project's scope cost or timing was unchallenged or not publicly discussed it was all too broadly communicated too widely broadcast too carefully progressed i described it in testimony over a year ago as noble visible doable all the boxes were checked we appreciate the hindsight as the fodder of healthy debate it's a good tactic to take a long overdue and well publicized rigorously planned and large scale project and say you're opposed to it it's an available target a useful headline but please be honest about what is

090being communicated a reimagined radnor board member told me i don't think it's a bad project and i don't think it's inappropriate spending i just wouldn't have been in favor of it if i've been paying attention at the time another said well tim it's not all about accessibility why do you need a spirit wall for an accessibility project and that's fine be against spirit walls extra classrooms field level bathrooms concessions with running water be against safe drop off areas areas of refuge and enhance storm water systems try and squeeze another year out of a field already scheduled for replacement and a track already passed its useful life criticize those choices be against those improvements but don't say you would have been for it if you've been paying attention not an accusation of a poorly run product

091process and not if you expect to be taken seriously and don't feel comfortable saying it should have been paused and could have waited you heard commissioner solomon's words not a single person has come forward she was listening for you and you heard commissioner moore equity can't wait to be perfectly clear if my son were living today this project still would not have been beaten him to his graduation if you think the rest of the disabled kids and parents and elderly visitors can wait we can assure you we're playing with time you don't really have four minutes has expired finished if you could finish up mr michael thank you we're asking that people be simply more responsible with the words and the work of a lot of dedicated students employees parents and supporters be more responsible

092the stories of denied access from katie sampson be more responsible the memory of her father peter sampson who supported the project from his first opportunity and finally i'd like to take this opportunity to thank the radnor high school senior class of 2022. we'll be forever grateful for your sacrifice this year you're the ones without a field this year and your commitment to that project it will be your legacy and we're grateful for you for carrying it and we're thankful to this administration for his skill and dedication to its students michelle you were the first person to respond to my emails asking about this issue four and a half years ago and we're grateful to the board for his courage and conviction we can't imagine without any you we can't imagine ratner without any of you

093thank you [Applause] do we have any other public comment welcome hello carl rosen uh 335 over hill road um and a 23-year teacher rider high school i'm fortunate to uh know a lot of the people here and and um haven't prepared anything but i did hear some things that i wanted to speak about so um first of all i i do want to support what um mr rajukos and mr henkel said you know and i've been fortunate enough to know both their families and teach some children from both of them and taught lucy twice and i have a classroom at ratner high school where i look out the window and there's construction equipment and it's a distraction but it's a valuable thing that has to be done at some time and so i i'm not

094there's nothing that i can add to what mr henkel said when mr maduko said other than to say that yeah this is the kind of thing that we have to go through in order to make things right and so i i'm very much in support of the project and i want to thank them for getting up to say that um i i do want to speak specifically because you know point of personal privilege my name was mentioned um i think that one of the problems that we're having is um things being being phrased in such a way that without context without proper context they're they're being brought into uh crosshairs that are that are not appropriate um and we i think we all should be open to potential criticism i think that's just that's just

095part of what we should do as public servants and as part of the community and i think that you sitting up here it's really important for you to do but and i think that i as a teacher i think that's important for me to be able to handle also and i and i invite criticism from my students and and from families i think that's really valuable i can't speak to the books i haven't read but i did hear a couple of things that i that i think are inappropriate um i read through the radnorite talk to all the democratic and republican um candidates for school board and uh got a whole bunch of comments about issues and there are some pretty tough questions there about divisive issues and about about divisive issues and controversy and

096i think comments that i saw from both democrats and republicans which i thought were quite salient and quite intelligent um one of the one of the republican commentators said you know how important um sel social emotional learning is it has nothing to do with crt and crt has nothing to do with what we're teaching in the school now critical race theory is something that is very challenging it is taught on a university level usually on a law school level but that's not what we're doing if someone were to take a book like the one that was mentioned that that we're approving for the school the book kindred which is an outstanding novel that is something that talks about race in america but it's not crt there's never been a crt novel as far as i

097know and so i think it's unfair to take things like that and and throwing out this language that is that's kind of it seems designed to to polarize people but you have to be precise with your language and i think that's really important that's what we as teachers of english you know my colleague trevor payne and i that's that's something that we think is really important we want to be careful about that and and i think that information like this deserves context and unfortunately or maybe fortunately the level of context necessary to talk about some of these issues it's really quite extensive we're doing some things at the high school that are challenging students and students can take quite a bit they can understand and handle quite a bit and we as professionals we make

098it really clear we set up the context we make sure that this stuff is accessible and understandable and and we spend weeks and months and preparing students and making sure that we have a level of trust in the classroom that you know we work very hard to try to make sure that kids feel appropriate in fact we even require certainly my class we require kids to take contrasting views to address counter claims that's that's essential so i do want to you know contrast and just to to close it it was it was suggested that you know kindred is coming in and get and we're getting rid of um great expectations well the course has changed and we haven't taught great expectations for many years for the ninth advanced level um it's not really an appropriate

099text as much as i love it it's a wonderful text for honor this is expired thank you it's a wonderful text for for honors um but we're trying to make sure that we are teaching what the what the children um can handle and we're relating it to the world that is today and we work very very closely with all of our colleagues to do that and i appreciate your support thank you mr if you could just if there's a concern around the time if you have your timer thank you so much is there more public comment welcome hi um alexanopolis 421 morris road for the observant that is a change in address since the last meeting i was at and i did choose to stay in radnor township one of the reasons being that we

100have some really wonderful police officers who do an excellent job keeping our community safe this has been kind of a nasty campaign season that i've seen i saw police officers accused of being corrupt because some people didn't get the numbers they were hoping for at their rally i am still and was just on facebook on my phone seeing comments from some pretty large facebook groups saying that new people are ruining radnor and saying people should leave and they don't get you know taken down they don't get pushback on that they get a lot of likes actually and i don't like seeing that i've lived here for 26 years and i would hope that people who just moved here would feel welcome in our community and i was also at the july 29th meeting and i

101saw a high school student get yelled at while she was speaking because there was a grown man in the audience i don't know exactly how old but older than i am who i guess had a different opinion about than her about the issue she was speaking about and i think that children should be able to come to school board meetings without getting yelled at and i didn't hear anybody say that that night and this is the first meeting that i was able to come to so i just thought somebody should say that thank you mr annapolis do we have more public comment hi everybody hi welcome hi there hi i'm kate hart i live at 520 meadowbrook circle and please forgive me i wasn't planning on making a public comment tonight so i just put

102these words together quite honestly i'm emotionally exhausted after the past 14 months our township has endured it'd be easy to stand here and call people names and point fingers of what went wrong but i'm not going to do that because i personally know how me and my children have been called these names we've been called racists white colonizers told we are insurrectionists rioters or toilet dwellers simply for expressing our first amendment rights but i am here tonight to ask for a return to civility in radnor i'm here tonight to ask that no matter who gets elected next week and who takes these seats helps us return to civility instead of poking holes into what has gone wrong i'd like to offer a few recommendations for whoever is elected number one i'd like to bring back

103the policy of publicly replying to public comment all public comments should be replied to on the website so the public can see the response a repo a reply should not be limited to the board president emailing an individual if a comment is made publicly the reply should also be posted publicly number two i'd like to allow any board member to reply to public comment allow a board member to reply to a public comment during a board meeting don't just say to us next comment or your time is up actually reflect on what we're saying to you and reply to us we can start a conversation i feel that there there was more of a discourse between our elected officials and the constituents that some of these frustrations could have been avoided and some of these

104matters could have been resolved without the ability to reply to us you're just checking the box on public comment number three please do not allow board members to use their cell phones or messaging devices during public meetings after i filed a right to know i discovered that board members are texting each other about the members of the public during the meeting including things like i already talked to her for two hours the other night what is her problem and are we really going to sit here and listen to these comments all night and people replying yes sorry you have to listen to the comments this is not acceptable conduct of an elected official i ask that all electronic devices be put aside during public meetings and if a member does use a device that all

105conversations made during public comment are made public number four i'd like to insist the school board members only use their rtsd email when communicating with the public members have been replied by comments by people calling them on the phone there's no public record for other members of the public to know the response people have also replied to their constituents through their personal emails and the emails cannot be tracked during a right to know all communication from the board deserves to be transparent number five i'd like to ask that members of the curriculum committee and the administration actually read the materials they are approving the materials that are shown in our classrooms i'd like you to create a system of checks and balances to make sure teachers are following the curriculum in the classroom and not

106starting their own course or bringing in their own materials that haven't been approved maybe we can create a survey that could be sent home to parents listing the materials the class will be shown and they can decide whether or not their children can partake i've been a resident of radnor for almost 17 years and i love this community has expired okay i have like two more sentences please i have three children that have attended or are attending radner schools and personally i'm an independent independent voter i voted for three of you that are sitting here those of you that know me would say that i'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative the school board is not a place for party politics it's a place for people who are volunteers to serve and do what's best for

107our children because they are the future of our community i ask that the voters next week reflect on which candidates will truly set aside their personal political beliefs and i urge radner voters to vote for change in november 2nd and vote for the person not the party thank you all [Applause] do we have any more public comment okay this turn i have let's turn over here oh i'm sorry i have three thank you so much if you you have emailed comments yeah we have three tonight thank you first is from jennifer carter st david's court and wayne my name is jennifer carter i live on st david's court in wayne pa i've lived in radnor township for 20 years my three boys attend render schools and my youngest will graduate this year i'm here tonight

108to discuss the botched handling of securing a home field for the renner high school football team during the radnor high school ada facilities project my sponsor my son spent the majority of last year learning remotely as a member of the football team he was forced to choose between the sport he loved and and in-person learning this is a decision which still makes me scratch my head since they were the only athletic team that had to make this choice last fall i'm sure the football team being forced to make this decision had nothing to do with the fact that the random football families and alumni were passionate advocates of keeping the raider name seems there could be a connection but i will not digress so here we are at the end of the rhs football season

109and the team has not had one real home game attendance at our games is way down and the home field advantage for our players is non-existent members of our booster club and coaches had to scramble and work tyrus tirelessly behind the scenes to try to secure a home field location for a couple of our games considering the large scope of the facilities project it would have made sense to plan properly to ensure all of our fall teams had a home field for their competitors prior to the start of the season a project that is costing nexus of 29 million dollars should include funds to cover field renters for all impacted teams instead our football team was abandoned by the administration next week is the 125th anniversary of the banner lm rivalry and our boys were

110just notified that they will now be playing their final home game of the season at lower marion extremely disappointing but unfortunately predictable in light of the poor planning and lack of support for the football program from our school board i'm sure not one of you has taken the time to attend any rhs football game this season correct me if i'm wrong at the rate we are going runner high school football will be unable to field a team in a few years and the residents will be left paying for a multi-million dollar football stadium that doesn't have a team or fans to fill the stands kind of ironic my son and his fellow teammates have been completely disenfranchised and neglected by this administration thankfully our coaches and booster parents have gone above and beyond to try

111to salvage the season for our boys maybe just maybe if you as a school board had focused less on rebranding our mascot during a pandemic and more on the needs of our student athletes our football players would have possibly had a field to call home for the 2021 season in my nine years of being involved with the random raider high school football program i can confidently say that the raptor school board has single-handedly destroyed the 2021 season for the team [Applause] joshua newton eagle road wayne dear members of the school board to say that i was surprised to see in the random reader that you are now mandating all parent volunteers to show their vaccination cards to volunteer their time to help our schools is an understatement you are enforcing a rule to everyday citizens

112that you are not even enforcing to your own staff these parent volunteers are trying to support the teachers that are working to educate our students but you have created yet another barrier have each of the school board members school district administrators and auditors had to show their proof of vaccination to sit up on the diaz would you make them test every time they had a meeting dealing with school board items by imposing this new rule you are not only segregating a section of our community that either cannot receive this vaccine for medical or personal reasons you are prohibiting them from taking part in their children's school life having you already taken enough from these children and their families i know that finding volunteers has notoriously been an issue for our ptos now you have made

113the volunteer pool even smaller with no new data to support this change you are overstepping your boundaries as a board and as administrators to mandate medical information from volunteers you should all be ashamed of yourselves for this and many other reasons and lastly alyssa masiata 119 aberdeen terrace st davis my son with a 504 was not given his surface go for a week because he didn't have his chromebook to hand in not a teacher or anyone contacting me he has a 504 in executive functioning issues he asked a teacher for a loner and was told no how is this acceptable when he has a 504 executive executive functioning issues so he was not accessing the education nor typical kids were that don't struggle with tests like this for the first week of high school i

114paid for the surface go the check was cashed as my 15k of taxes i pulled out my youngest child i pulled out my youngest child out and my husband was angry because we moved to what is supposed to be a number one school district after the last two months my husband told me that i was completely right that is not something that gives him any joy telling me that i'm right over a 35k annual expense so now we shorter the private school tuition and tax increase it's like i am beating a dead horse with this topic with the school board but i once again this weekend spoke with two other moms having the same experience with kids with adhd does anyone on the board know the percentage of population that has this disability because it

115is not the percentage of children in the district struggling the parents of these children and the children struggle constantly and the start of my son's high school is just one example of many that describes how a child already behind starts off where is the equity for these disabled children does the district actually have enough help for the children with this type of disability to help them with education i hear a lot about accessibility but what about the kids struggling to access education thank you okay now we're going to hear from committee reports first up ms solomon with curriculum thank you the curriculum committee met on october 19th there are several board action items on the consent agenda tonight which came through the curriculum committee they include the approval of four overnight trips for rhs model

116un the approval of special ed idea pass-through monies the approval of special ed ida section 619 monies for 2 20 21 and the approval of special education arp monies they're also the approval of two student surveys a book adoption approval approval of five new rhs student clubs and the approval of nine elementary clubs at iphone elementary there was also an update on the radnor township health and safety plan following these action items we received two very informative presentations mr dekovich facilitated a presentation that focused on the comprehensive plan which the district is required to do according to state law and we received a detailed report on how the district used their esser grant funds and in particular monies were used the first the first round of monies were used to get technology one-on-one technology into

117the hands of every student when we were forced to go virtual due to basically schools across the country closing down so we wanted to make sure our students had adequate technology this technology was budgeted for over a period of three years i believe but we moved that expenditure up it was covered by the federal funding to make sure that we could educate each child under the new format we also used funds for tutoring programs to try to remediate any learning loss that was identified due to disruption to schooling we used it to fund several mental health programs this board takes mental health of our students very seriously we use that money to remediate in a couple of different areas for um making sure that students who did suffer and for some people it was traumatic

118and to make sure that we're addressing that need we used it for um pre-k um program which sounds from reports from um missless age that it's a phenomenal success we've identified students to get them ready for their kindergarten year next year and they are progressing superbly according to reports and then the money was used for a program called mtss which is a holistic way of addressing the needs of students both academically social and emotionally to really address every student in a in a way that meets identifies what they need and meets those needs and allows us to do that really for all radner students and um our next meeting i think is the second tuesday in november thank you and miss solomon if i could just jump in with the curriculum committee report one of

119the items also is our health and safety plan and one of the things i wanted to just mention to the board as part of our health and safety plan that we continue to revise and update and it's a very much a living document as we learn more each week and what takes place within our school district when we began the school year with our health and safety plan we had no volunteers you know were allowed in the school as we had a high community spread we were challenged with what to do with student teachers and juniors in college who come often and visit classrooms with everything with the shortages we wanted to support that so we did require student we did allow student teachers but we required them to show proof of vaccination and or

120you know submit the testing and the same thing with the juniors who were observing in classrooms as well when we moved through this year and we began we wanted to open up for more volunteers to help out because the one thing we do want is we appreciate and we need the support of our parents and want to continue to partner with them and so as we opened up to try to allow more volunteering we've we set up a structure administratively administratively we made the decision to follow the similar structure that we're following with the student teaching with volunteers would need to show that they're vaccinated or if they're you know not vaccinated have a rapid test and we would offer a free rapid test at our school district on site if they would like to

121have a rapid test at school i have received a couple of parent inquiries and just challenges to that and we are administratively looking at that so that is something that was part of the committee report you know committee discussion last week not this topic but the health and safety plan i want to make the board aware that our decision is something we are looking at um you know it is a constant work in progress here as we look at how do we continue to open up the school district more for our students for our community and the last thing we want to do is send a message to our parents uh that we don't want them here volunteering actually it's quite the opposite we're we're working very hard to try to continue to open up

122things as much as possible yeah thank you i really appreciate you chiming in on that because i think there's a misperception out there that the sport is sitting here mandating these policies this is very much a work in progress we listen to our administrators who listen to experts we have healthy discussion um and so those are things that i'm just learning tonight on some of those as well and so as dr batchelor said this is a work in progress we will continue um you know to to follow the science and thank you for um bringing that up uh okay thank you ms solomon so now we have the facilities committee report ms dunn yes the facilities committee met right after the curriculum committee last week and we covered one item which is traditionally covered in

123the curriculum meeting which was district enrollment it got shifted in part for time and in part because as part of the feasibility study that we're doing we need to address we need to understand what the population is in our district to understand the use of our buildings and use going forward so we covered enrollment we covered the feasibility study we got a brief update on the tap trail it's mostly built but there are some plantings that they'll be doing this fall and some replacements they need to do and things that didn't survive the summer and then we got some great updates on the accessibility and wellness project at the high school and i encourage people to watch because there were some you know detailed explanations of things that i won't go into this evening thank

124you ms dunn uh the finance committee report mr moore thank you the finance committee met on october 12th in the administration building on the agenda tonight you'll see financial action items under section 11. in addition to the usual financial reports we do have an acceptance of a gift from the previous senior class to the freshman class which is an annual tradition so hopefully the freshman class enjoys that seed money for their activities coming up this year the usual disposals are on the list in addition we have action items all related to mr pauling serving as a successor to mrs dico so again thank you mrs dico and welcome mr pauling we have agreements related to special education funding under idea and the american rescue plan approval of tax assessment settlements and in addition to these

125financial action items the finance committee discussed an audit update audits season is beginning so board members as you begin to formulate your questions about the audit and our financials you may wish to review the previous audit report if you do so please remember to read the footnotes as an attorney i was always taught that you never want to have important information in the footnotes but in my career working with accountants and auditors i've often learned that the some of the most important information is in the footnotes so as you review those reports please make sure you take a look the next meeting will be uh part of a special meeting of the entire board anticipated to be november 9th to deal with committee work uh collectively thank you thank you mr morton thank you for

126uh sitting down off the dais just so that all of us can be spread out here appreciate your i'm i'm very happy down here it's very comfortable well i was very kind and accommodating thank you uh already our policy committee report ms goldman yes good evening everyone the policy committee met on october 12th and based on what we covered in that meeting you will see the following items on tonight's agenda we have one policy for first read under agenda item 14.02 and that is policy 252 suicide prevention and self-harming behavior this policy was recommended for review by the administration in order to more closely align its content with current practices and with the new policy 236 called threat assessment that the committee reviewed last month this past month and is up for a second reading

127tonight additionally this policy was reviewed to ensure compliance with pennsylvania act 71 requirements agenda item 14.03 on tonight's agenda has policies up for a second reading and adoption the first policy is 236.1 threat assessment this has been a proposed new policy with an accompanying administrative regulation the policy and administrative regulation were developed to comply with pennsylvania act 18 of 2019 and more specifically the requirement on school districts to establish threat assessment teams and procedures to assess and intervene when students are demonstrating threatening behavior policy 006.1 remote attendance and participation at board meetings this policy is a proposed new policy that codifies the criteria and procedures for individual board members or the entire board to attend and participate remotely in board meetings which includes for purposes of this policy committee meetings executive sessions and information sessions

128during the recent periods of extended school closure due to cloven 19 the need for this policy became apparent and then there's policy 234 parenting students this policy was identified by administration as one that was outdated the current version of the policy was adopted in 2008 as part of the adoption of a number of template psba policies the policy was expanded to include provisions regarding parenting students it is proposed that the title of this policy be changed to pregnant parenting students to reflect the full scope of the revised policy the policy committee will next meet as mr moore just mentioned on tuesday november 9th at 7 pm as part of a special meeting of the board to conduct committee work thank you ms goldman and we have government relations and communications committee report dr babson okay

129grcc met on tuesday october 12th at seven and we welcome to new student representative jake van horn uh mr petit then announced that the ada audit on the current rtsd website had been completed and that the district's website was now fully compliant he then provided a detailed presentation updating us on the progress with website redesign and the launch is still still on schedule for january of 2022 committee also reviewed information about information regarding epidemiological data and we will discuss that at a later time we wrapped up the meeting with mr petit summarizing key highlights from the recent dciu legislative reports that's it thank you very much dr babson okay so now we are moving into the consent agenda portion of our meeting uh and although board action is required pardon me it is generally unnecessary

130to hold discussions on these items with the consent of all board members they are therefore grouped and approval is given in one motion in the event a board member wants to discuss any item the board president will move it to an appropriate place on the agenda do we have any items that anyone would like to pull tonight okay i would like to pull item 150.01 and so with that i would accept a motion and a second for items 10.01 through 14.02 and then items 15.02 to 15.03 do i have a motion so moved second thank you all righty all those in favor and the consent agenda passes nine to zero thank you so uh i'm pulling item 15.01 because a an hourly rate was transposed and so on item 15.01 for alexis anderson the consent

131agenda says her hourly rate will be 19.39 and that should say 19.93 and so with that change i will make i would entertain a motion some moved and a second uh to enter for this item is there any discussion alrighty great all those in favor and that item passes nine to zero thank you okay we will now move into leave liaison reports let me just scroll down yes reports from board liaison first up is delaware county community college ms solomon yes thank you i do have a rather lengthy report because this was their big meeting of the year really it occurred last wednesday october 20th this was their usual their annual school board recognition they have the invite all the school board members administrators to come down for dinner at the college and hear about

132what they're doing um we did not have a dinner we uh held our meeting virtually uh we were presented though with the plans for the college and an update on where they are with many things so first off they're going to be asking for a one percent increase in the budget for 22 23 which is well below as you know the act one index um that will be coming up for a vote in the spring but i think that's what their current planning is they did repeat that they are requiring proof of vaccination for all of faculty students staff well proof of vaccination or of an exemption and this will be the due date for that is january 1st of 2022 they are requiring masks in all classrooms indoor facilities and they will continue to

133require that they spoke about something called moonshot which is a program in conjunction with westchester university to help to help address the inequalities or the gap in access to higher education for certain underrepresented groups we received enrollment updates radnor currently has 111 students at the college and we have only four students taking part in dual enrollment which allows you to earn college credits while you're still in high school so i think that might be a program some might want to look into we also received information about new programs at the college they're going to have certifications in graphic design and spanish among other new programs and they discussed their emphasis in student counseling and what tutoring options are available to support the students at the college so i forwarded this handout to all the board

134members this is available i could um you know present anyone in the public who has questions about this with more information about any of that and our next liaison meeting will probably be virtual and typically takes place at the end of january thank you thank you ms holman delaware county intermediate unit ms goldman yes the delaware county intermediate unit had its board meeting on october 6 2021 and is is practice for the delaware county intermediate unit board there are a variety of different services and contracts and initiatives that are on the board's agenda for approval many of them cover support for professional development opportunities for districts around delaware county and their and internet immediate unit staff there were approvals for opportunities to support educational and community partners and families approval to enhance student learning and

135work experiences supporting future educators including an articulation agreement with the restaurant school at walnut hill college for culinary students at the delaware county technical school to receive up to 10 college credits effective september 1st 2021 to june 30 and there are other approval of other grants contracts leases appointments and services such as the iu's memorandum of agreement template for the test to stay program that dr batchelor uh mentioned earlier tonight on october 13th the delaware county intermediate unit board had its committee meetings and there was a personnel committee meeting that was covered different staffing concerns that in terms of supply of staff that the delaware county intermediate unit is facing as are many educational entities these days um there was an education agenda that did an overview of teaching and learning an overview of the

136head start program and student services within head start and then there was a finance committee meeting on the 13th that covered an information technology server upgrade so we will resume those items that we cover in committee on october 13th we end up voting on in our business meeting and that next business meeting for the dciu board will be november 3rd thank you i just wanted to say one more thing actually to my fellow board members if you haven't seen this this is the dciu's annual report to its to the community if anybody with anybody in the community would like some copies i i don't want to necessarily guarantee how many we could get from the iu but it really is a nice report because i the dciu is an incredibly comprehensive organization and i think

137they do a nice job in this annual report with outlining all of the different work that they do across the unit so i just wanted to let everybody know that this is available in case anybody wants to have some spare reading about the dciu thank you miss goldman federal relations network dr babson sure so federal relations network just a quick update there are two important events coming up in january on january 22nd there is the equity symposium and uh january 23rd through the 25th there will be the annual advocacy institute and uh this will be a nice return to in-person meeting for superintendent or sorry school board members from around the country thank you thank you delaware county school board's legislative council mr moore thank you the legislative council met on wednesday october 13th one

138topic that triggered a lot of discussion was the status of delaware county to be able to see receive local pandemic data as people may remember in the heat of the pandemic we were getting local data from the chester county health department people liked seeing that local data it was interesting to see what was happening in radar township as opposed to allowing for swathward school district in other areas at the time delaware county did not have its own health department that was an initiative of delaware county council that began before the pandemic but was unable to be fully implemented before the pandemic began what was happening is we were able to get those local data through a contract that delaware county had made with the chester county health department the construction and implementation of the health

139department is now well underway so avenues for advocacy to potentially start receiving those local data were discussed at that meeting one such avenue was to see if it was possible to advocate with the state health department to begin sharing those data with the delaware county health department even if even in its most nascent stages because it has not been fully established yet other avenues were discussed as well and we will keep you posted if we have more information about those efforts because i know a lot of people are looking for those local data thank you we also had some discussion of pending legislation and the legislative report that we received at the delaware county council meeting is very similar to what mr petit presented at the grcc meeting so if you'd like an update on

140some of the things that are going on in harrisburg that may be a good public meeting that you could view in order to get some of that information one piece of pending legislation that was put out there as an example of the kind of thing that the legislature may propose at some point there is a bill under consideration that would require school districts to post their curriculum online and there was a lot of discussion about that pending bill in our legislative council meeting including the point that in fact state law already requires school districts to provide access to their curriculum and in fact here in redder we have a policy that implements those regulations so a big part of what we have to do as people who know what happens in our school system is

141advocate and educate with our legislatures and let them know that in fact this is something that already exists and you know may not be the best use of the limited let time they have in the legislature to help move our state forward and prep for advocacy day for psba was the final topic of discussion at the legislative council meeting thank you pennsylvania school boards association mr moore advocacy day for psba occurred on thursday october 14th school board members from bander township had the opportunity to meet with representative genomera from the 165th representative greg vitale from the 166th and a meeting with all of the state senators who have any portion of their district that has any contact with delaware county other psb activities that have been going on include the annual equity summit the annual

142equity summit i was able to view some of the meetings i believe i saw mrs goldman in some of the meetings as well other board members may have been participating and in fact one of our own administrators was a panelist at one of those meetings dr anthony stevenson uh to paraphrase myself from a meeting i was quoted on uh from another time last year equity cannot wait but i really appreciated hearing dr stevenson's remarks about how he viewed our dei efforts going in radnor those are moving forward with urgency they are moving forward with energy but they are also moving forward with deliberate and conscious and inclusive activity he talked about how the first phase for our equity initiative was listening setting up pto listening meetings staff listening meetings and some members of the public

143and some board members other members of the administration may have participated in those meetings so hearing how equity is a priority for this administration but also how it is moving forward with care and thought uh was something that was unique opportunity and i appreciate dr stevenson for participating in that panel so that other districts could hear about what we're doing and that is uh there are other psp conferences going on there was a start strong summit today which is about onboarding new school board members and the pasa psba conference is ongoing as well i did not participate in those directly but you can certainly check your psp psba materials for updates on how those conferences are going thank you uh parks and recreation will that be dr babson or ms don over to you that's

144me can i just sorry to interrupt mr moore did you want to report it all on the delegate assembly from the psba this weekend mrs dunn i appreciate the reminder about the delegate assembly there is so much going on with psda and i did forget to mention that so psba is our association of school boards we are a member of that association the association has a platform for advocacy and democratically the school boards collectively agree on what that platform will be so there's a two-step process for that there's something for called the platform committee and that met last month the platform committee takes proposals from school districts so any school district can get together and say we would like to suggest that our association that all school board members or many school board members in

145pennsylvania are members of uh come up with a new something new to advocate about some kind of change in our legislative platform so the platform committee met let's last month and considered some changes to what the advocacy platform would be for all the school districts in the state the platform committee is able to consider those proposals from school districts some get voted up on the platform committee some get voted down uh sometimes language is amended the platform committee is really where substantive changes occur for legislative proposals or at least principles for legislative proposals then the delegate assembly happens bradder sent three delegates myself mrs dunn and mrs duffy in the delegate assembly substantive changes aren't supposed to be made to the platform rather the substantive work that has already been done in the platform committee

146is voted up or down by the delegate assembly there were some very interesting discussions and proposals that emerged out of the delegate assembly there was a lot of discussion about a proposal that the previous year's delegate assembly had rejected about reparations and what happened was a number of after that was voted down at the delegate assembly a year ago a number of members of school boards got together and worked on different language that the platform committee was able to consider what that led to was a new statement a revised statement that was about equity rather than about reparations some of the reasoning that was offered to the delegate assembly is that we want to talk about inclusiveness for all not reparations for any particular group some thought that that was a good change to broaden

147the language and make it more inclusive there was debate about whether that was sufficient there was debate about whether that went too far and considering the representatives of all of the school districts in the state with all of its diversity here in our commonwealth that new equity initiative passed with an overwhelming super majority and that was very interesting to see okay thank you so much parks and rec parks parks and rec so the parks and recreation committee of the township met earlier this month unfortunately we were not able to get together a quorum however we held the meeting anyway in order to hear ostensibly to hear public comment about the project of fenimore woods it was a very interesting meeting a number of the commenters came really well prepared with an interesting history about the

148woods the property and some great suggestions about how to rework the project the just the township had approved a project the community became aware that it was going to involve removing a lot of trees and the commissioners reversed their decision sent it back to parks and rec and the parks and recreation department is actually working with an outside group but the committee will hear all kinds of community suggestions from the public there were also a lot of events but a lot of them have happened already the two biggest upcoming events for anyone who's not going to go to the evening trick-or-treating at the elementary schools in radnor there's actually a trick-or-treat in this building on friday from nine to four assuming most of our kids will be in school and we'll miss that but for

149younger kids and then on halloween there's actually the 44th annual ratner run there's more information about all these events on the radnor township parks and recreation website thanks thank you radnor educational foundation ms duffy yes the radnor educational foundation met on october 6th the big news there is that mrs tedji brennan has left and she is now working for the administration for radnor township school district so while we were really sad to see her go we're glad to see that she's staying in the family and continuing to work on behalf of radnor students um they are currently looking for a new director so anyone interested in the public can check out information on the website they are currently raf is currently in its fall grant cycle and the next application the fall application deadline is

150next week november 5th as always they're looking for community volunteers so anyone interested please check out the website and you can contact them directly thank you uh radnor high school scholarship fund mr jubilee yes the radnor high school scholarship fund met on october 18th the two major items of discussion were our upcoming end-of-year community campaign where we invite the community to support our grad our seniors it's where you get something in the mail so be on the lookout for that we appreciate your support radnor township and two exploring alternatives to breakfast with santa which has been challenged and we didn't have it last year due to covid but we've come up with an alternative that well i can't announce today because i'm not sure it's fully approved because we need to work with mr dolan

151and the ratner township school district to get approval it does look promising to have an alternative event for our families and our children that yet to be named it'll be something that will be for all families around the holiday season our next meeting is scheduled for november 15th thank you uh brandon page ms dunn there is no report from the radnor page but i will give a brief service announcement i believe i gave it last time as well they are looking for new leadership from parents so if you have a gifted student or interested in being involved in ratner page i'm sure they would appreciate you stepping up as with the administration thank you uh bradner committee for special education ms monaghan okay um the radner committee for special ed has had a quite a

152busy month and it's been kind of exciting to see on october 8th they had a parent social at the rada memorial library and it was very well attended and they wanted me to convey a big thank you to all the board members as well as administrators who attended that it the parents who were there found it very informative and a lot of them got to meet us for the first time which i think is good to have that opportunity on october 18th the committee had its monthly meeting where largely we focused on plans for an inclusion seminar in february as well as updates related to meetings with pto presidents which led to the committee being invited to various pto meetings that have been held at the radnor high school the first rauner high school meeting

153was on october 22nd where the committee was given an opportunity to share what the committee was about as well as promote inclusion opportunities that the committee can work with the ptos on and then they will be doing a similar kind of orientation at the pto meeting on november 8th at the middle school [Music] on october 25th the committee executives and and i met with administration and that is a quarterly meeting that we have and again some of the same topics in terms of inclusion seminar were discussed and work is still underway with that and hopefully we'll have more information as we get closer to finalizing the details the next committee meeting is scheduled for november 15th thank you already do we have any new business tonight okay seeing none board announcements i'd like to announce

154that our next round of committee meetings will be tuesday november 9th beginning at 5 pm we'll have a curriculum committee meeting and then at 7 pm as was mentioned earlier there's a special meeting of the board to conduct committee work and both of those meetings will be held in the ground floor conference room of the rtsd administration building 135 south wayne avenue in wayne and then on tuesday november 16th at 7 pm we will have our next regular business meeting and that will be here in the radnershire room bradner township uh municipal building on ivan avenue the other thing i wanted to announce i just read this tonight uh miss dr batcher the middle school is giving a concert an outdoor concert thursday night or or there's an orchestra thing to i just i just

155saw a blur but now i can't find where i saw that does anybody know about that mr petiti yeah i believe it's the fifth and sixth grade um and they're outside the middle school on the 28th so is that thursday it is thursday yes so we've been advertising that on the site the reader elsewhere so we hope people come out yeah come and sit and listen to some music at the middle school field nice night yeah yeah it'll be a great night alrighty uh we will now have another round of public comment on new issues raised or subjects developed following the priority action uh the priority discussion and action items and as before we do ask that the board require public participants to be residents or taxpayers of the district or persons of the legal

156or contractual right to address the board we ask that you follow the guidelines as before where individual comment is limited to not more than four minutes per board policy zero zero six and if you're unable to attend our our meeting tonight you may submit your comments by email to board comments at rtsd.org or in writing to mr michael petit brand new township school district 135 south wayne avenue wayne pa19087 do we have any additional public comment this evening cassandra newton eagle broad so i'm just going to ask my questions instead of sending them unless you want them so maybe mr bachelor can answer if you guys aren't allowed to for your policy or i'm not sure so just to clarify unvaccinated children no matter if they're masked or not if you identify them as a

157close contact will now be quarantined if they do not submit to this emergency use authorization authorization testing just wondering and then how are you identifying who's vaccinated or not at the schools since this is not mandated by the state still another question why is this only affecting unvaccinated children when the seat or when the virus can spread amongst vaccinated people i think we've seen this happen already and then why are you going to quarantine asymptomatic children because technically they are still healthy children so that makes absolutely no sense and then again since you don't recognize at home tests like the radner reader said how is this any different if a nurse is reading the test because she is not a doctor nor is she a lab so what is any different with this test so

158and then i'll wait because you did not answer those questions in my email no one seems to answer these questions i even did a right to know hoping i would get the answer to my last questions last month and i got nothing because of some i don't know law with the right to knows from your guys's legal team so just wondering okay thank you oh no i have four minutes oh okay so i'll just i'll just stand here i guess i can bring up something else if you'd like so just let me know when my time's up point of order mrs stern is is public comment time allowed for standing at the podium or is it allowed for making comments you know that's a great question mr christopher could you click okay i guess pause

159my time then um the the period is allotted for four minutes for somebody to make public comment i'll make public comment you can start it over then or start a backup so i do have a problem with one book one of my biggest problems is not my idea a book about whiteness contract finding you to whiteness you get stolen land stolen land special favors whiteness gets you to mess endlessly with lives of friends neighbors loved ones and all fellows humans of color so i'm low this is for white children like signing a contract with the devil and this is in your libraries i really just think you guys should audit everything see what's appropriate what's not i don't think that's really appropriate what's i don't know does that fall in your dei thing doesn't sound

160like it so thank you bye-bye thank you is there more public oh hi kelly martin conestoga road i had a couple of questions and um well first you guys could go back and watch the wallingford meeting from last night while uh wallingford swarthmore um there were some parents that read a few books and and the board actually commented it was they were floored actually they were disgusted and um and i'm really shocked that that nobody was jarred by what they saw that's in our library um and you could go and see the the superintendent the new superintendent in wallingford um his comments last night and he was visibly shaken as anyone who saw what we've seen and i appreciate dr bachelor you offering me the paper it's just it's not a one-off um it's not

161i mean that's not my full-time job i also you know i'm raising my kids and i work full-time and it's not hard sometimes to respond to people to be human i know that here madam stern runs a ship that you're not allowed we're not even allowed to look at you we're only allowed to look at her but it's really like dehumanizing um so that that's pretty awful and i think about um you know my time with um i'm actually not going to bring that up so i've a couple of questions but um i'm wondering you talked about i think tonight you guys approved the um testing the free testing that you're going to be offering and i was wondering because it was approved tonight if that's going to be offered on thursday i'm assuming at

162some point ms stern might email me from a personal email and give me a response but i'm curious about this thursday if that's going to be offered this thursday because i think that that's great for people that want to use it within the community and i'm also hoping that there's a swift response to the books that are in the library because it really is the the responsibility of the nine of you you guys did this you put these books in our children's hands um and you know my kids are a little bit older now but we've got families um kindergarteners first graders who this is this is what they're reading and um and we have a great lgbtqia community right here in radnor and you're really diminishing them by doing porn and that's your representation

163of them within our library that's so harmful to them i mean people want to be people you can talk to you know they could be a nasa they could go to space it could be a teacher it can be just normal people like you and i it doesn't have to be about somebody putting on a strap-on dildo and talking about their sexual fantasies this is not acceptable within the school you guys are failing and then i'll just go back to the reader because i do have a little bit more time and so i just want to remind the board because hopefully this is the last time the nine of you will all be here together and so in 2020 when the school was all locked down and it was august of 2020 and we had

164just been through you know getting through the pandemic um there was a group and we know this through like the right to knows and that sort of thing that there was this whole plan behind the scenes with a couple of students a couple of adults board members may have been included um to take down the raider and it was this august 4th or august 2nd meeting um where there were lined up comments so it was a board meeting that was announced that said we're going to discuss the raider so that's what that's what we thought you know we're on vacation we're enjoying you know the little like air we're allowed to breathe um and being out of town and we get a note that says there's going to be a meeting on the radar so

165what are we to think the raider okay and you have this meeting and you have like 99 comments lined up anti-raider they came from alaska europe they came from all over the place most of the people had no grounds to even be speaking on the raider but it was very it was very devised the way that it was run there had been a question prior to that and even during the meeting on if we call a recess do we have to have public comment on the next occasion so that's what what happened that was real trickery on the part of you ms stern so you did the trickery and you scheduled the meeting four weeks later four minutes has expired no it's not so there was never a time where you floated the motions to

166remove those you could have floated them on any of the time meetings before then and you waited until that night and presented them it was trickery and you are a raptor uh is there any other public comment welcome alexanopolis 421 morris road again um i did just want to address one thing that was uh said about vaccines tonight which is just about theirs and what theirs is i'm not a medical professional i'm not diagnosing anybody's individual child but what the varice system does is it does not record vaccine reactions it does capture vaccine reactions but what it actually records is any adverse event that follows a vaccination so it could be caused by the vaccine it could not be caused by the vaccine the reason that they do that is because they don't want to

167accidentally exclude anything that might be caused by a vaccine so they just take every adverse event and that's what gets reported there is research that is done based on those reports that then determines if they're finding clusters of you know common things or you know if something weird is happening like reactions are only being reported in one geographic area it gives medical professionals information about if vaccines are maybe not being administered correctly either at large or by individual providers it gives them the ability to research if they are seeing some adverse events that were not identified as side effects during pre-license or pre-licensure clinical trials that might just be a rarer thing than was captured in the trial pool but it is not that anything that is on that website was caused by the vaccine

168it just means that it was an event following the vaccine and causes are then determined after research is done based on reports that are reported there thank you thank you is there any more public comment clark angle 346 conestoga road thank you as i was stating before i've pulled two of my youngest children out of public school because of the sexual and violent content in many of the books that our children are required to read and are also available in the library i read off a list of books of 18 books that my seventh grade daughter who was 12 at the time was given a choice to read or these were suggested books for her to do a book report for them contained graphic violence or sexual content seven of them were racially or politically

169motivated books that had adult content i'm not opposed to such genre but it needs to be age appropriate there were only seven of the 18 books that didn't have any filth in them it get where it gets worse from there the 2020 summer reading list for ninth graders which is includes children as young as 13 entering high school included the book wild which had a lot of graphic sex and drug use in it it's my understanding it took an outcry from parents to get it removed it shouldn't have never have come to that also in 2020 when the 11th grade english courses required students to watch the film the godfather i don't understand what literary value this has for an 11th grade english class i could perhaps see requiring this course this film for a

170film course but not english and that's still not all over the summer i became aware of videos that were shown to students of an extremely violent nature which also negatively depicted our law enforcement professionals several other parents and i met with the teachers school principal and mr beck told to discuss the matter i submitted public comment via email at the last meeting about the issue and i'm not going to go into that further here except to reiterate how disturbing those videos could be to young minds and i sincerely hope nothing similar occurs again last but not least it's come to my attention that our school libraries at every level contain books with sexual content that is over the top offensive and has no business being in a public school in my opinion matters of gender

171identity sexual orientation and sex beyond basic reproductive biology are matters to be to be discussed in the home god entrusted these children to their parents to raise no one else in the limited amount of time i've been able to research which of these books are in our libraries i have found 19 books in the elementary schools dealing with sex transgender or sexual orientation issues 15 of them are at west six are at ratner and four of them are at hyphen one of these books george is particularly inappropriate for young children it deals with a boy who wants to cut off his genitals and become a girl however there's also inappropriate language and it talks about how to look at porn online and not get caught by your parents it's come to my attention that some

172students at random middle school were assigned to read this book last year which i find outrageous that is still not the worst there are books in our high school library that contain literary pornography in a limited time i've had to research our library system i have found several out of darkness me earl and the dying girl lawn boy genderqueer and all boys aren't blue which is available as an ebook as i stated earlier lists mean nothing two of these books long boy and genderqueer were prior winners of the american library association association's alex awards which recognizes books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults ages 12 to 18. other organizations like the school library general journal and young adult library services association promote porn in school books here's a few details of

173a few of these books out of darkness this is advertised as a book about race to say this book is about race is like saying you read the new york times to get your your sports information it's historical fiction evolving revolving around a school explosion in 1930s east texas the book is supposed to be about racism but is filled with vulgarity sex and violence naomi the main character is sexually abused by her stepfather henry as a child and it continues after her mother's death the church pastor encourages her stepfather to marry naomi before she has even finished school a gash a gas explosion happens at the local school and her little sister is killed graphic descriptions of her body parts all over the dead sister's twin brother lies with her body until they convert four

174minutes has expired all right this book goes on to have lots of pornography in it and so do the other books that i just mentioned i'll be emailing you the details on all of them thank you mr engel is there any other public comment i have one comment miss turn oh thank you mr petiti um matthew marshall 228 walnut avenue wayne runner alumni and parents taxpayers please vote for the reimagined miranda candidates next week thank you very much okay seeing no further public comment i would entertain a motion and a second to adjourn some move and a second from ms solomon all righty all those in favor and oh mr jubilee oh there i can see your hand all right great thank you so much we are adjourned you