001no should it be coming up now it should be live I don't see anything on YouTube one second let me go back in and see okay now it says I hit live and it said this video is unavailable with restricted mode enabled to view this video you will need is that my settings most likely I'm looking hang on one second boom okay now it says I hit live and it said this video was unavailable with restricted mode enabled to view this video you will need is that my setting yeah most likely I'm looking hang on one second I'm looking at it right now on on Zoom or on YouTube okay wait it says it now says I hit live and it said this video is unavailable with restricted mode and able to view this video
002you will need is that my settings yeah most likely looking penguins okay question thank you whose um screen is this foreign that's on the screen that's on the YouTube we're just showing everybody okay that's fine until we go live okay fine you'll give us a heads up when we go live yep I'm just waiting for everybody to come on I'm just checking to make sure we have everybody all right do you apply if you passport let's see very I saw Sarah Catherine 80. 80 I uh Sean I think I see you yeah I think we're just waiting for Tara right yeah I think that's it okay Jenny when you're ready okay do we have Tara we have Tom I see you okay okay have we gone Live Genie I believe we are right now we
003are live yes thank you okay thank you um I'd like to call to order this um meeting of the policy Committee of the Scranton school board on June 20th at 6 p.m um we are returning to um the committee structure in a more traditional fashion the way that it was done previously as per past practice and I will shortly turn the meeting over to the chair of the conference committee director Yani however um what we will do is the discussion mainly will be between the committee members which in this case is director Yani director Cleary director Gill Martin uh and the administration we will discuss it we will um I'm not sure if directoriani intends to ask for comment or question at the End discussion of each policy but that would be the previous past
004practice from other participants on the board and um hopefully we will be able to bring forward from this policy committee meetings recommendations to the full board about forward movement on the policies under discussion uh which is I think great not we have been treating policy committee meetings recently more as work session meetings but now we're going to try and go back to the way the committee structure was designed to work most effectively and efficiently so with that said I will hand this meeting over to directoriani um yeah I think we'll have Jenny did you want to put the flag up and we can stand for the Pledge of Allegiance oh boy the flag I'm sorry Mr Del pre usually has that up um we have one in our hearts we have one in our house
005we can stand and pledge to the flag in our house okay okay I pledge allegiance 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 sure Mrs chezik [Music] foreign care present Mr President Mr Martin president Mr Holmes president Mr mcandrew President Mrs Johnny cousin Ms Hume present nine present okay I think um what I'd like to do as long as it's okay with everybody here is I will read over the policy that we're going to discuss I will then turn it over to superintendent mctiernan to advise us as to why we're discussing the policy at this time and then I will open it up to see if any board members um want any discussion with
006that okay so our first policy is 121 and we are reviewing that regarding field trips uh superintendent mcterno yes good evening uh thank you director Yani with regards to field trips uh policy 121 this is a minor revision that we are asking the board to consider um basically the change is the delegation of responsibility is the director of leadership and accountability why are we asking this because the process uh that we are using right now in the form that we are using has the director of leadership and accountability signing off on it so in order for the policy to match the form that is the change that we're asking thanks I I don't have any questions on that do any of the directors Gilmartin Clary no no I don't have any if that's all we're
007changing I it seems fine with me how about anybody else okay so we're good to move that so that will move to the work session correct that's correct okay and how does the policy committee's recommendation on that um work it to the move it to the work session with the recommendation from the policy committee that the policy be adopted yes okay thank you okay um the next one we're going to discuss is policy 160 recognition of religious holidays beliefs and Customs again I'm going to ask you superintendent mcternan to address that sure this is a new draft policy that was created uh overall it is the hope that this policy serves as a framework to create an inclusive and supportive environment that respects religious diversity and promotes understanding among students staff and a wider Community
008uh we have worked with legal on this policy I'm going to ask attorney foreign quickly to expand if he could on the difference between acknowledge but not celebrated so basically attorney freund what is considered celebratory okay things would be celebratory would be for example having um you know a party uh that uh was in celebration of a particular um religion um you know uh having a specific event to be promoted or endorsed a specific religion those kinds of things I mean there is no there is no um you know bright line um the distinction between what's an acknowledgment and what is what is celebratory and simply acknowledging however that you know it's um uh it's a season in which um you know several different um you know religions celebrate holidays is not a violation it
009would be it actually you know um you know uh singing religious songs that kind of thing uh that would be celebratory so uh attorney freund for example we have had Halloween parades in our elementary buildings for years and years and years is that something under this policy my understanding is under this policy they would still be allowed I don't think that the courts would recognize Halloween as a religious issue okay putting it putting a tree or a menorah in the building is allowed putting a Christmas tree or a menorah is that allowed during during that specified time that we said approximately a month putting that up would those be things that are allowed and I think that's important that we understand that you know again um I I think um it's a matter of what
010the community tolerates but in my opinion uh merely merely recognizing a particular season as uh being a season in which a number of different religions um celebrate or recognize certain holidays uh would not be a violation okay but carrying on a you know a service uh you know right um I you know um identifying um you know specific uh religious based uh hymns and that kind of kind of thing uh you know that that went across the line right okay uh does any board members have any questions for us well I'm concerned that the way the policy is written that there's a lot of um personal interpretation because I read it several times today and I didn't think it was as liberal as we're saying I feel like there's going to be a lot of
011confusion amongst all of the different buildings if we're not more specific um some are not going to do Christmas trees some are going to do Christmas trees some are not going to do I just think that there's going to be a lot of personal I think we should have one I just think that there's a lot of personal interpretation and I don't know if we get more specific and whether that's done in a policy or whether that's done in another format I I I don't know administrative regulation I I don't understand where certain things go but I just think that there's going to be a lot of interpretation and I think I have an issue with Halloween I think it should be a fall festival I don't think we should be calling it Halloween because
012there's a lot of religions that are a lot of you know people who don't recognize it and I think we should be in our our inclusive community we should be um be careful as to what we call things to to make it more acceptable to everybody a fall festival where you know everybody can participate versus Halloween and wearing costumes I think we're we're alienating a good portion of our you know population I think we need to be really careful my first question would be then as a board is that something that for the policy do we need to specify every single holiday and every single event celebrated like we need to figure out a way to move forward that's best for all of our all of our schools so what's your recommendation with that superintendent
013well I I'm again as as the board is well aware uh we have never dictated uh individual schools on what it is that we want them to have and what we don't want them to have so my recommendation is that I I I'm I'm not interested in micromanaging building principles buildings for sure if the board is looking for more specific language you know we would need to work with attorney freund on that um and I guess my question is back to you know I I as the language is right now I believe the policy gives the flexibility that we would be able to have these uh events and gives the principals an opportunity to feel comfortable that they can do those events I'm not sure if I'm making sense or not but um and that
014was the that was to make sure that was when working with attorney freund that's what we wanted to figure out you know what can we do what can't we do and um but dictating what each individual principle does and a build in a building was not the direction that I wanted to go in and that's kind of what I'm thinking is that if this is the framework I'm kind of thinking this policy is the framework for the building principles to then use at their discretion um that that's your recommendation to this board that we we move ahead with this policy as the framework for the principals to use at their discretion unless there's a majority of the board that would like to see a a very strict dictated policy so I guess that's where I'll
015open it up um did you want to say anything yes I thank you I I think Missy you you cut to what I was hearing here I agree with director Cleary I was a little confused and director Yani and I spoke about it looking at the policy reading it but hearing attorney freund's interpretation your understanding of this I think this is more giving the principles guidelines of what they cannot do what does go too far what is inappropriate in a public school setting I think that this then puts the the onus back on them to determine what is most appropriate within their building within their school community and that may change from year to year depending on who's in those buildings so I I think this is an appropriate first step to give them the
016the strength of what you cannot do what lines you cannot cross but still allows them to have their own personal personalities for lack of a better word in in these buildings and I think that's I think that's the big question that the board has to answer I'm hearing your recommendation that that is appropriate that is a way you want your administrators to be able to operate I'm certainly happy to support that so I think that's you know what the this committee has to recommend to the board for their consideration do we feel that allowing these buildings to have their some jurisdiction over how they celebrate holidays within the parameters of the the legal policy I'm in favor of that I found the additional document that attorney freund sent today later in the afternoon we got
017it um that that was uh explain things a little bit better and perhaps that should be shared with the principles I just thought that that was a little clearer as far as like you know we'll use for example Christmas trees being more um secular these days versus in the past when that was you know more of a Christian thing I believe so I mean I'm not against starting with the policy I just have some concerns that there's some that should have gone out earlier I thought it did go out but when I realized that it hadn't cut out I wanted to get Metropolitan committing so I I found it very very useful um but I think one of the things possibly in the administrative regulation could be that distinction between being used as part of
018the educational and promotion of a specific religion rather it rather than the celebration is interesting as a grandparent of children who are Jewish and have been for three weeks prior to in late March and early April been given when they were in kindergarten Easter Bunny used to color in and Easter eggs to color in and how exciting it is and that entire focus on the one particular religious Festival I'm wondering whether somewhere in the administrative regulation we need to kind of say there needs to be sensitivity to the quantity and the balance um there are a lot of stuff that goes on around there with SATA um things but you know it's all very well to say well you're not promoting it through the educational thing you were just telling people about it but it
019it I had one child in tears because they tried to you know they just got nothing but Rabbits and Eggs but I agree I think we have to have that flexibility in it but I think the sensitivity to exclusion needs to be something that the principles in the administrative regulation have to be aware of and respond to if it's raised with them by parents okay I think um I think director fox has her hand up did you want to speak okay uh yes can you hear me yes yep sorry you're breaking up on my end a bit um my question was just after hearing that does this at all affect um like what songs could be saying in school and such so I know there might be some um holiday music that might be seen
020as religious and such um done by maybe the show choir or Elementary School classes and such so would this have an impact on that John do you want to take that attorney friend well um I I don't know that this particular um policy necessarily has an impact I mean certainly um it is not going to uh impact seasonal songs uh you know Frosty the Snowman Jingle Bells those kinds of things um uh in terms of a choir I don't know uh I know that um my school did a lot of um uh classical uh music which had a religious uh Bass to it but it was not considered to be um uh done in the way to suggest worship it was just a matter of you know these These are classical works that um you
021know need to be respected for the musical quality um the answer is I don't think that this I don't think that this impacts what could or should have been um used as uh you know in part of the music curriculum or in the classroom uh any more than you know what it does I don't think it changes anything basically thank you is there anybody else that would like to say oh Danielle sorry and you director Cheswick you're muted you're muted now she's good we can't hear you I can't know you know what director Cheswick um director mckander has his hands up I'll come back to you you want to see if you can get that working okay go ahead director mcandrew okay um you know I get all the points that are being made now
022and you know I understand most of it but I just think if we leave it to the building decision it's going to be consistency at all of our schools all of our elementaries and stuff like that or I think that's where we kind of do a pro a problem um this past year you know you know one school could be doing one thing another school doing another thing and just because I don't live in that school I can't do it so um I just think we gotta be really cautious with that I kind of think we should set the set the direction and have all the principles follow it and I understand the micromanaging but I just really think that we're entering a time where we I understand the micromanage piece but I also feel
023that we really have to embrace the diversity within our schools and I'm not sure at this point that that is really happening slowly it's happening but when we have 60 or so students that follow other religions or 50 whatever I mean it's a large number we really have to be very Broad in celebrating more than just you know perhaps the Jewish holiday and the Christian we have so many other religions and I think we really need to um tune into that and be hyper Vigilant that we're addressing all of our students and like Rose said you know not doing Easter bunnies and alienating students that don't follow an Easter holiday and don't do Easter bunnies and kids that don't do Santa and the kids that don't do Halloween I mean we really have a lot
024of you know diversity and I think we have to we've embraced it but I think when it comes to this work we can really be causing a problem for students and I don't think that's what we want are you are you able to did you get it working I still can't hear you you want to email somebody or send a text with your question [Music] I'm calling it right now I'll come back to you one more time um director Fox did you want to speak again yes I did thank you um just to um like director mcandrew's point I think that um and to what director Cleary and everybody have stated so far I think that there maybe needs to be an overarching conversation because like right now we're talking about holidays specifically but I
025think it's an overall conversation of what We Believe should be taking place building a building or what we should or should not have oversight on um because for example like my one of my main concerns is back to school nights one kid at one School gets a free haircut and at the other school they don't because that's not what the principal does it that's well because it is to their discretion of how they want to hold that event as well as other events so although right now we're talking about specifically holidays I think this affects a lot larger of an area um so maybe it needs to be a deeper dive conversation of in general speaking like director mcandrew what you stated was maybe there needs to be like a template provided to the to
026the buildings and maybe not holding them strictly to that but but at least giving the template and then figuring out how we can move forward and not just for holidays but maybe for back to school nice because we saw at like McNichols Plaza or another school that the haircuts worked really well or the clothes worked really well things like that but just just trying to find more Equity across our buildings but that's all I just want to keep us looking at the bigger picture of it also I think that's a very good point thanks uh director Holmes you have to unmute Yourself Ty there you go all right I'm director Cheswick on speaker to see if it works okay can everyone hear me yes yes it's working um my concern is that we are becoming
027so inclusive that we're actually excluding students I'm getting some feedback here right here so yeah Christina on certain things like some of these students are available forward to school celebrations for one school um you know just a couple committees from another school um to not celebrate the same thing it's a little inequitable um I'm also concerned with like what holidays we are considering um some schools they might not celebrate Christmas but then they're going to celebrate St Patrick's Day Valentine's Day which also has religious um you know um you know I guess facing religion so my concern is you know this is very big uh it's up to interpretation like what you said but I also think we are limiting what the students are going to experience at school and you know it is a
028sense we're almost taken away um so that that's my concern and so like I said some of these students that all they have they go to school they have a celebration they might not have that so they I I want to make sure that we're not going backwards here that we are Equitable and not because that we're so focused on being inclusive that we're excluding so many students in in that process thank you um director Holmes did you want to speak further yes part of honoring a diversity that's in our classrooms is teaching about all the holidays that people don't celebrate that's how I learned a great deal about many different cultures going up um to not do that I believe will perpetuate problems later on I believe and I mean not to get too
029philosophical and too deep but a lot of the problems the world face right now is people's misinterpretation of other people's religion backgrounds ethnicities part of that is learning at an early age and fostering that through the school through the public school education system um again like director Cheswick said we can't celebrate certain days but then pick certain days too that's where you start losing people so if we're not going to celebrate holidays which I think would be a travesty then obviously that would be a disaster but you're not to celebrate not all holidays you can't pick and choose because then you're confusing your teachers the parents and the students especially so I mean that's something to be taking into consideration with this policy and I do believe and agree with director mcandrew there should be
030a blanket policy across the district so that there is no room for misinterpretation I understand that you don't consider micromanagement but in a district with 9 000 students in all the different religions and everything this might be one of the times that it has to be my tremendous to ensure that we are teaching well-balanced education and understanding of everyone else's culture and respecting that let me just throw something out for you I did provide to um uh to bird um where are they there yeah um a um a number of a number of resource materials that um are very highly specific you know from the school boards Association the ACLU all kinds of things things that were so specific that you wouldn't necessarily want to put them in a policy but there's an awful lot
031of material out there that that do really talk about the nuts and bolts of you know what is what's acceptable and what uh or I should say what's recommended what's not recommended so there so there is some guidance to fit these you know within these General parameters that the policy um tries to explain so I guess if I'm understanding the comments that I'm hearing correctly information that I haven't had a chance to really take a deep dive in review attorney freund so maybe if we were to get that all of that information I know you sent additional information this option and I didn't have a chance to review that um maybe we need to to take that have the board members take a look at it and then decide you know where we go with
032this policy I mean this is it my understanding that this would be a first read policy so if we were to so just so I understand this correctly if we're to move this forward to the work session it would be in first read format it wouldn't even be approving the first read it would just be moving the first read to the work session for further discussion and maybe if we were to do that out of this committee meeting recommend moving the first read to the work session we could then take that time Administration could also take all of the comments that were made and figure out perhaps how we could come up with a policy at that point that would hopefully satisfy what everybody's looking for out of it would an AR be appropriate are
033we kind of through that out there I guess I'm asking Missy or John is that appropriate to do an AR from like in other words the policy is okay but maybe for our district interpreting it and having some clear guidelines for the principles because I don't want them to be as confused either you know what I mean I don't want them to to also be like oh my gosh I don't want to get in trouble if I do this I want them to understand what is acceptable within our district and what is not you know and if we say a Christmas tree is fine then a Christmas tree is fine because we don't call it a Christmas tree we call it a holiday tree and you could put all types of different religious things on
034the tree and John had said in the additional material we got today I know everyone's a lot of you were working and didn't see it you know that that it's become more secular so it's not necessarily considered a religious um demonstration you know setting a tree up but you know maybe just giving them some guidelines so there is equity so you know across the district because we did pass the equity policy last year and and I think having an AR that would give them better guidelines like work on the policies like okay but maybe just be more specific within our district how we interpret that I don't know if that helps or makes it worse but that's where what I'm thinking certainly an AR would be appropriate if that's what the board wanted to do
035an Administration wanted to do and as I said some of these materials from boards associations and civil rights organizations and other organizations uh again they're very nuts and bolts see um things that maybe didn't necessarily want to get into that detail on the policy um right yeah I mean it I'm just listening I have no idea how many want this I'm listening to the majority of you speak and it sounds like uh attorney that members of the board are almost asking the administration to dictate um in the fall you're going to do this you're going to do this you're going to do this in the in the spring you're going to do this you're going to do this you're going to do this to make sure that the same things are happening in all of
036the buildings uh you know that given what give it given what the well again like that's why we have to clarify because that's what's that's my understanding of what I'm getting um which is you know we can do that if if um if that is what the board chooses to do but you it's either it's either have a policy like we are and then we move forward and I understand you're exactly right the board members that said you're not going to have the same things happening in all the buildings you're exactly right with this policy you're not so if the board if the board wants every child in the district to get the same exact thing or event at every building then there's no other way to do it except to write in the AR
037this is what they're going to do and um if if they're not then then we would be right back where we are uh with a little bit more understanding because I think there was some misunderstanding of what principals could do and what they couldn't do so this is now saying you know you can put up again I keep going to the tree or I keep going to so you can do this um and it's okay to do this and the policy is saying you can but there's a limited amount of time that you would do it so again that's a direct direction that the board's going to have to choose that is not the direction I'm recommending but I'm happy to implement that if that's what the board wants but if we're going to start
038dictating what everybody has in every school uh then you know it'll be uniformed across the district what that seems to be about as joyfully holiday celebratory as well maybe that's a little extreme um I don't think that there's a happening medium with this though I think I'm hearing people say that they want what superintendent mctiernan said they want it completely documented that this is what the board is saying can be celebrated this is what cannot be celebrated or we want to go to the guidelines which would be this policy and then we want to allow um our principals to have that discretion based on the maybe the culture in their building maybe um the events of their building um so I think I think we have to choose one or the other I think that's
039what I'm hearing from you superintendent we either need to go that Hard Road and dictate it all or we need to go with a policy that gives very strong guidelines so I think we also need to remember our role as board members right which is not to deal with the day-to-day operations of the school district and I really think parades and parties are part of the day-to-day operation of that that should be at the discretion of a principal I you know we we hear so often about our Niche neighborhoods in this city about the strength of our communities about the Vitality of our buildings and I feel like by saying as superintendent mctiernan just described you must have this parade on that day and this party on that day and sing this song in March
040I I I think where I I think we're out out of our lane as board members and I I think we're really missing the point of uh our principles as community and neighborhood leaders and advocates for their students and and their families and I I think some of the points that were raised are things that need to be discussed through the superintendent and her administrative team to the building leadership I I know that there's no I I cannot come up with the legislation off the tip of my tongue but I know that there's a new requirement for cultural sensitivity training or or some background you know I think that these conversations might be part of those sorts of sessions and I I I I I understand the overarching idea of making sure that students you
041know especially when you think about things happening in back to school fairs and you know some child gets a coat some child gets a haircut some child gets a pencil I you know I think we always have to be encouraging our buildings to communicate with one another and to get inspired by what each is doing to to always provide as many resources as we possibly can but I first and foremost I think dictating this is outside of the purview of the board of directors but I also think it really just misses the mark um director Cruz did you want to speak yes um what other school districts what other District policies were looked at when revising this this policy like what other districts that have a policies similar to this um that have that are
042districts that are as diverse as ours were looked at so when we when we do the Deep dive we can look at this policy but then also look at actual active policies that are being um that are being implemented at other school districts yeah I did the research with psba and attorney freund there is not many districts Statewide that have this policy in place there's just not we found like two and what were they oh off the top of my head I forget the districts but there was like two districts that we kind of combined the policies from each district I think I forget the districts I really do but I I worked with psba and I comboed and I worked with attorney Frank and we put together this policy this draft okay thank you
043so this wasn't a psba this was something that you put together yourself yes along with psba's help I'm locating other policies okay so psba does not have a policy on this am I getting that clear is that clear they don't have a lot of times they give us policies they didn't give us this one you took some from other districts and kind of made our own is that what I'm getting okay president Hume um I just want to say that um sensitivity is like pornography if you've got 130 kids in your school who you know don't celebrate Halloween it is insensitive to have them sitting in the library on their own when they make up 20 of the student body if you've got five kids who don't sell you know who you know don't celebrate
044sensitivity don't celebrate Halloween you can find something for them to do it's the it's the exclusion which you can't legislate against it's like you you don't know how to define pornography but you know it when you see it and I think that's sensitivity as well I'm very much in favor of what Katie said that the principles be instructed to employ policies in this area with the greatest possible sensitivity and inclusivity and if it goes pear-shaped then we deal with it getting pear-shaped and hopefully the same situation doesn't arise a second time and by the way Christmas trees are actually druidic religious symbols as well as Christian always like that was there anybody else that wanted to comment can you hear me now yeah okay it worked I did something with my microphone okay um I
045just wanted to say like I you know I've been in this District a long time like with my son I've gone through the district myself my siblings um I just don't remember this being an issue um up until this past year so I think you know we're fixing a lot of things that perhaps may not that they're not broken um at other schools um because of you know one incident that happened so I think this is sort of extreme um it might negatively impact other schools based on one issue that happened so I mean like I said I I think you know in the bigger picture I I think you know being Equitable we have a very diverse student community and I think we're almost taken away and I think it would be a learning
046opportunity to teach you know teach everything to them you know let them explore other religions other customs and stuff like that um stuff that they may not be exposed to at home I think you know in in the long run you know kind of limiting what they're going to celebrate what they're exposed to in school it's going to set them up to not you know not to understand that as they get older and I think that could that could almost be really um you know that could be a really big problem as far as being accepting of of other people so that that's just my concern I think what um superintendent mctiernan stated as far as the options I think one is just very extreme and the other one is at the other side of
047that spectrum and I don't think you know anyone wants to dictate what the the principal should be doing and what they should not be doing but I do think there should be some consistency just because right now I feel it is very inequitable that you know for the most part you know I think this is a big thing with elementary schools and I don't think it is an issue with the majority of them so I think this is we're kind of taking Extreme Measures for something that that perhaps is not as big as an issue um you know in all the schools as we think it maybe so I just wanted to put that out there so you're saying you don't think we should have a policy at all or you're saying we shouldn't have
048an AR and get too restrictive I'm not sure I'm following you Danielle I just I I I'm somewhere like in between because I don't I don't believe it should be you know you know to the point where we're saying like Okay this school you're still bringing this on this day I think it's I don't think we should do that it's you know something as far as like guidance saying you know this is you know maybe see what religions are celebrated and use it as a teaching opportunity so it could incorporate everything with the diverse community that we have so no one is left out that we are making it making it more inclusive that we're not excluding anybody you know like we can't celebrate Christmas or we can't say that we're not celebrating Christmas but
049then we're celebrating um St Patrick's Day like that that's what I'm saying like it's just it's very it's it's Hit or Miss it's not consistent and then we have the schools that kind of you know do their own thing which isn't fair to other schools that you know that are um you know just students right down the road so that I'm just looking for consistency and and being Equitable that's all okay so I'm still kind of torn here because I'm I'm superintendent said and I'm hearing what everybody else is saying so I think and maybe I'm interpreting this wrong but I'm interpreting the policy that we have in front of us as being a good guideline again it is ultimately going to be the principal's discretion with this policy that we have but I think
050from this discussion I'd like to move this forward to the work session and then if we decide as director Clary said we need to do an AR we could build upon that but I think this is a good guideline uh again speaking from where director go Martin came from as a board member this would be the framework we're providing our principles with our Administration with um is that your recommendation superintendent mctiernan yes and I think listening to everybody and understanding where everybody's coming from I think a good way to to possibly solve this is if we move the policy forward to the work session and then in an AR um it would be up to the principal because we don't want to dictate what they do it would it would be up to the principal
051to gather which most of them do gather feedback from their school community on what it is that the the Traditions that they do celebrate in the in their household or in their Community then find a way to represent that in their school community that way everyone is represented um uh just from listening I understand and that way we're not dictating you have to do this you have to do this you have to do this because each individual although we are all Scranton every one of our buildings is very unique every single one of them and they all have and we want to celebrate their uniqueness in their own way in their community and if we listen we're actually we don't want to not do that because then we're contradicting everything we've been hearing all along
052with the building utilization you know we have this in our building and you take that away so we don't want to take that way by saying you have to celebrate this if that's not something that's representative in their school Community does that make sense maybe that's something moving forward we can do yes I think we should move the policy forward and like any policy you know we make changes as we see fit so if a year from now the board feels that there should be an addition or a deletion we can I mean future boards can update accordingly um but I mean I think Tara I think we should move it forward I think it's a policy we need to have in place and then I kind of like what you know what uh superintendent
053mctiernan said I just I just think we're all concerned about equity and what's fair and making and I do like the idea of making sure we're touching upon all um ways people celebrate their holidays whether it's religious based or whatever so it looks like um did you want to make another comment before we move move forward yeah just uh can you hear me yes yes oh I appreciate everything that everybody said um I think director of good Martin took words right out of my mouth um he said it perfectly as you always do um but and I do and I agree with everything that was said my only thoughts are if we move this forward and like instead of requiring things if templates could be provided um I know I said that word before but
054I think instead of making requirements but templates of options for the different I'm sure they obviously I don't want to underestimate our principles and I'm sure they all know what could be celebrated for each holiday but how superintendent mctiernan you said about sending out a survey I think I would feel personally more comfortable if it was if that was a consistent survey um because I do know there were questions or concerns this past year that it was said there were surveys done but nobody in the the area got the families didn't say they got a survey so if maybe the survey asking that what you stated if that could be consistent at least among the building and then or among the buildings and that whatever the principal does with that is to them but at
055least we'll know the survey that goes out to the families is consistent and maybe just a template of potential um things looking at um even as director Martin you said about the trainings that will have to be done and such um if it could relate to that and new things that are up and coming as they always are I'm sure but just templates I think would be um a good way to start to get some consistency which you know we I think we pretty much have had as uh director chesek you said it seems like only recently have we really seen issues so don't fix what's broken except for recently so I think that with conversations we could um Forge a path forward without making it too big of a deal here are we able
056to ask that legally like put those surveys out there like um coming from a public school are we able to legally ask families what they celebrate um attorney freind well it actually is a good point attorney um director you could be the attorney there is actually [Music] um uh what was called the Buckley Amendment a list of things that you weren't supposed to ask one of the things was about you know your religion and that kind of thing but you can do a survey as long as it's not identifiable to a particular family that's permissible well a survey is optional if a parent doesn't want to fill it out they don't have to I think that's a great thing they don't all do it they don't ask them now it's really helpful under the Buckley
057Amendment there's a there's a series of things that you're not supposed to ask people about their religion and uh their health and that kind of thing but as I said if it's not identified as to who it is there's no problem with that great okay director Cruz did you want to anything else oh yes so my my last comment is I think the the the thought of this was never a problem growing up this is never this is not a problem why are we making it a problem is false I think it was a problem but I I believe that for the people who were who weren't in the majority religion or culture they never felt they had the right to speak up and say like I don't agree with this I don't I can't
058participate in this etc etc but I think now that we're living in a more inclusive society which we should and and we are trying to be more um cognizant of the diversity in our district and not just okay they're here whatever but like actually making them feel a truly feel a part of our district it's really good that we are creating a policy like this and wanting to make it as robust and as Fair as possible okay so um directors Clarion Joe Martin I'm hearing that we're going to move this forward again first read just to the work session we're not approving anything and I think we've given Administration some great feedback and what to provide us with at the work session yes thank you okay good I'm fine okay okay so that's going to
059take us on to policy 210 which is regarding our medications and it's just come to my attention that the policy that is on board docs for the public to review uh does not have the changes that we were looking to discuss and incorporate so attorney Frank would you be able to just update all of us in the public on what those changes are before I turn this over yes um I I at least another changes that I had suggested uh this came about uh when I became aware that there was an instance of a young girl who was received some discipline because she had some medication that she was using for menstrual cramps and uh that that did seem uh to be um you know kind of unfair and sort of draconian um reaction to
060that uh so I had suggested I'd made some changes um and some additions saying that it would not be a violation of the policy uh for a student to be in possession of an over-the-counter drug for purposes of oh you know um like uh menstrual problems uh stomachache that kind of thing as long as it was not in such quantity as uh would be necessary for our single day that's what I had that's what I put in so in other words if somebody had you know two or three aspirin or something like that that would not be a violation of the policy now uh we also I'd also um I had the strasbord policy that talked about um a much more involved process of um uh parental input or parental um parental uh uh I'd
061call it a role opt-in opt-in opt-in yeah opt-in for you know providing or allowing for students to have um uh you know over-the-counter medication there frankly my suggestion is that that really needs to be worked out with the the nurses I think that needs to be more discussion if you need to get their buy-in on that um but um that's that's where I always say my suggestion was to address the problem that was presented to me which is you know kids that um you know may have uh got even even a um you know a throat lozenger or something like that and to make sure that that was uh that was not punished by an overly uh zealous restricted administrator would you just for me read that wording the way it is in the policy
062I just don't have it up in front of me with the my zoom on or does anybody have that handy read what you know what I've suggested the the just to propose change to the to the policy I I I don't have it in front of me I thought it would be I was looking for it I can't find it we're looking for the the um language as that yeah so it shall not be a violation of this policy for a student to have in their possession over-the-counter relievers or antihistamines but only in such quantities as our recommended for daily use it shall be a violation of this policy for any student to sell give or negligently provide any medication whether or not over-the-counter and regardless of the quantity of medication possessed and what no
063in other words it would definitely be a violation for them to give that medication even it was only like one aspirin that would be a violation you're buying for their personal daily use okay would we need when I hear that would we need to have language in there that dictates an age yes one of the things I I didn't think about was you know that would then apply to a kindergartner as opposed to the same as a junior senior in high school that's that would be up to you up to up to the board um I I know that for example I mean just my own personal experience I had two daughters type 1 diabetes and they um you know they they even an elementary age where they're capable of dealing with their situation and
064lots of kids have lots of problems these days that they can deal with but it's up to you what the board feels uh can I just chime in here I say um with regards to this one I think I think needs to do a better job of of you know making sure that this policy gets out to the community uh I I'm not I'm not it's not my recommendation to change this policy it's my recommendation that we need to do a better job of educating the public on what it is we're not saying that they can't have aspirin we're saying that you need to follow the proper channels and go to the nurse and take the medication to the nurse so again I'm not really sure this is one of those instances we've never had
065a problem with this this has been our policy for a long time we haven't had any issues with regards to this policy so again we had an incident now where we now have metal detectors the metal detector went off and that's how we found this so now now how can we I'm not again I'm just asking the board to consider why why aren't we making a point to make sure that our families know what the policy is and then stating if you need these if you need the pain relievers or you need the antihistamines just follow the process I I don't know why we're going through this when when in essence it's never been an issue before it's just a matter of informing and educating the the community I think I recognition that's my recommendation
066I think that's a really excellent point and director Yani and I actually talked about this earlier today in regard to the student handbook I it's she relayed to me that they are provided via a link that families are to attest that they they have read this I think we are all aware that it may be unrealistic for people to get through that amount of information and retain it it may be more a reference tool where you go and say Here's a situation how does the student handbook dictate this and I think to your point one of the things she and I talked about earlier today is maybe we need a frequently asked questions version you know here are some highlights some things you may have missed that may have may pertain to the you know
067you're functioning in the schools day to day here here are some things that we want to particularly draw your attention to that's certainly something that you could consider with your administrative team superintendent but I I'm a little bit concerned here especially after reading some of the comments I think that nurse daily submitted about you know how to how are we monitoring this how are we verifying that it's just a daily dose you know I I think this this could be a slippery slope and and open a can of worms that as you say is not is not a recurring problem my concern here is the discipline piece of it because I I think we all agree that a three-day suspension and maybe I don't have the facts correct but you know a three-day suspension because
068you forgot there was Advil in your purse is is perhaps aggressive if this is not a a repeat offender you know certainly if this is someone who's coming with the same story once a week that's a different situation but I I think that maybe instead of changing this policy in terms of possession of the medication you can take a look at do we need to Define uh you know some sort of first chance you know three strikes you're out sort of language with this as it pertains to over-the-counter medication I mean typically in my former employment if a student brought over the counter and it was found for whatever reason I mean a phone call home was usually the first line of defense to say I'm not sure that you're aware of what you know
069the policy is because let's face if your daughter is in eighth or ninth grade she's going to carry Advil if she you know gets a headache or she didn't feel good that morning Mom says here I'll give you Tylenol now at lunch take the other two Tylenol not realizing that they're violating any kind of policy so I mean just a phone call home to tell a parent um you know your child was found with over-the-counter medication it's their first offense you know you need to get an order I mean we came up with a standing order for parent consent I know some of you have seen it some of you have not um and it was uh it was kind of an easy way to a parent could opt in some minor things um it
070was very restrictive I could forward it to everybody um but you know like they could get an ant acid tablet the parent could say like minor stuff so they don't have to go home or they're not sick all day feeling terrible minor minor and it's like Tylenol twice a month and if it gets to be more than that well then you would need a a doctor standing order so you know maybe looking at an opt-out or looking at the discipline policy to address parent contact First with uh you know uh explaining the policy I mean I think it went a little extreme well I think uh to answer your question without going into specifics because that would be a Personnel matter I I believe that we've had a conversation with regards to this um and
071and you know moving forward uh some of the things that were discussed have already been discussed internally thank you I agree with director Gilmartin I think the discipline part of it just needs to be you know more flexible and then going right to three-day suspensions kind of crazy to me so one you know if you do it once here's what happens do it twice then if you do it three times something like that yeah I think educating everybody is the bigger piece too as well so I think we could tie them together that'll be the the solution the discipline um that that goes along with that I think that is even extreme like I agree with what director Cleary said that you know perhaps you know calling the parent or getting some kind of doctor's
072note because I'm sure there are students that will need certain over-the-counter medications on a more frequent basis and I just don't want to single out somebody that that has a medical issue or you know maybe they just get headaches from school or something like that that they rely on those medications um you know I just don't want to turn something that's a health condition into punishment even after three strikes like I said I agree um president Hume um well a couple of things first of all um the reason I think this came about is as you say the um superintendent McKinnon the metal detector found it and again we come back to my thing about we're now living in a far more rigid and restricted thing I would say that 12 months ago a large
073number of students would have had over-the-counter medication in the schools that you would never have found and as I understand that this was found on a couple of occasions because the metal detectors pinned for a different object and a small packet of things so what what it's what when you say it hasn't been a problem before it hasn't been a problem before because we've taken those more mature approach to it basically a girl walked into high school with a couple of Advil because she had a period you I have um problems on several levels with the um uh first of all with I I think this could be solved if we had an opt-in policy as director Hillary circulated and I think we'll circulate to everyone later um I found I read um Ms Daly's
074response she has never wanted um this kind of policy and has said so previously but I think many of the questions she raised are in fact a little bit uh red flag you know well false flag operations there are many responses to the point she made and I'm very happy to respond in detail to those things but I believe we are both discriminating on a gender basis because um if I'm a 13 year old girl and I'm at Scranton high school and I've got my period suddenly and I've got cramps I want to be in charge of that myself I'm going to be shy I'm going to be embarrassed I want to have some empowerment secondly I think that some of our students are adults by the time they get to seniors if they can't
075decide for themselves when an aspirin is appropriate or not um I agree it's got to be limited I agree all of that the the other thing about it is though um I totally agree that whoever conflated controlled substances and over-the-counter medication in any document in our district um made a fundamental era which led to Great miscarriages of Justice I totally agree that the discipline area has to be fixed but I think that's a separate issue to empowering our students the identification of the pills is simply a matter of picking up your mobile phone and snapping a photo of the pill and clicking the appropriate button and the website will tell you exactly what pill it is there's no problem with identifying that I mean I I've done that myself and I've muddled up some of
076my prescriptions so I believe very strongly that we should Empower our kids to be able to carry small amounts of pain relief and antihistamine medications I don't know what we do about the students with diabetes do we not allow the students with diabetes to have diabetes pumps unless they go to the nurse every morning we must have that in our schools now I'm sure they probably have that standing order just as um is in our current policy that would be my thought um director Fox yes thank you um sorry if I missed something that was was already said I have very Breaky internet at this time um but a couple things that come to my mind is um I've heard a few directors say about medical issues but um if a child has a medical
077issue that requires any type of medication that can be provided to the nurse's office and the nurse's office can provide it to the student without um any disruption um so I don't want to forget that that's what the nurses are there for um it is not accurate that any pill you could just put into Google and it will tell you what it is um there's a huge crisis right now with these type of things and um keeping as much of it out of our schools as we can would only be to the benefit benefit of our students potentially saving lives um because we we are not experts in these and we can't determine what every single pill is that walks in and once they know they're allowed to at any capacity um they will start
078doing it even more so the last thing I want to see is one of our children overdose or something of the sorts and it be that it was because we became lenient on our policy because of one issue which we can address in a better manner than changing the policy so at this point I'm just caring about the well-being and safety of our students as safe and Alive as we can keep it so um I think that keeping the these out of their hands as much as we can is and keeping them educated and are staff educated and everything is uh what our goal should be at this time anything else how many directors well the only thing I would like to ask um I hear what people are saying and as long as the
079discipline issue is is taken care of and um you just you know you don't get a more severe punishment for having two Tylenol than you do for having a vape um rape unit in the school I'm happy with that I graduated discipline I would however like a a um and I'm not sure what this would fall under where where the health comes under operations or health comes under I suppose it does have health and safety I'd like to investigate the opt-in form answer the questions and objections that nurse daily has raised and work out and have a look at other schools in which other school districts in which this opt-in form can help parents manage childhood illnesses that are not too severe and also reduce the amount of time kids lose out of school if
080you at the beginning of the year sign a form that says to a nurse you may give my child um Pepto-Bismol or or stomaches or up to Tylenol up to whatever once a month twice a month infrequently and the nurse calls the parent and says I've got little Johnny here and Johnny says he's got a headache you've bind the opt-in form for him to have Tylenol um I think he needs a Tylenol it may well obviate the parent having to leave work come in and do it it would reduce the stocks of um rapidly aging boxes of tile and all that would be left in the nurses offices with the kid's name on it I would like to very strongly investigate introducing at the start of the next school year and opt-in form which would
081be optional for parents if they signed it the nurses would be empowered to administer small quantities of over-the-counter medication with the permission of the parents um so if we could have a if we look at that I would be very happy about that I forwarded that form to the board members thank you okay so I understand I understand that our current nurses have not really examined this so I think we need to look at some other districts where it is working so that we can reassure them that it may be a system that could work okay so here's here's what I'm hearing and tell me if I'm taking this away in the right way so I'm hearing first of all I think regardless of whatever policy we have or whether we make changes or not
082we need to provide our families and our students with strong education about how we're going to proceed regarding over-the-counter medications um I I really like director gilmartin's idea of with of when something goes home that the parent has to sign off on the handbook maybe we can do some sort of a an FAQ or a summary regarding you know highlighted issues this this would be one of them I'm sure there's a lot more um just by sitting down and going through that handbook maybe that's something we can as a board take a look at to see what what do we think we really need to make our families aware of that's in that handbook or at least direct them to make sure that they read this section I think that could go a long way
083so that would be one thing um I think the second thing to take away from this is we need to figure out the Disney disciplinary process maybe that's for you superintendent mctiernan and your Administration to come up with I don't know how you relay that to your principles through an AR or whatever but what would be the disciplinary process that they would follow for a first-time offense of having over-the-counter medication on their person um I think I'm hearing from a couple directors that they want to look at some sort of an opt-in form I think we do have something like that in our in our policy and that's where students can can fill that form out and have that medication in the nurse's office already but maybe we need to kind of understand that process
084more um and then thirdly I I would just like to for the parents who have reached out and said I'm I have concerns about my students record they were suspended for three days for having over-the-counter medications who can they reach out to an Administration um who can make contact if they have questions about what's on their students record yes they should be reaching out to the building principal okay with regards to that okay okay so at this time we're not going to move the medication thing forward is that what we're Gathering Tara Tara I think if that's what um the policy committee members are in agreement with that we're going to look into all of those things um we could move forward with those things yes director Holmes okay I didn't see that sorry hello
085uh when we do move this forward into things that I think we need to also look at is making sure that we are providing protection for our nurses I understand the opt-in form was ideal brought up but again when we are doing this policy we need to make sure that we are protecting our nurses because anything that they do that might jeopardize your license we need to always make sure is um in the front of our minds I don't ever want to have any policy but potentially affect them professionally not just losing getting fired from District but losing their license so whatever we do however we do it we need to always be mindful of protecting them because they could lose twice they can get fired and lose their license because of a district policy
086if it's not followed um also again sorry to jump in again lead with the medication just um I I did have a question earlier I apologize I lost a connection when we say when people can take medication based off of their recommend their recommendation prescribed um dosage you're always going to have the argument and again some people may take six Tylenol because their body can sustain that um again we put ourselves in position where we're managing something we should I think that's the parents that's that's the parents thing and I just think legally from the law from that perspective again I'd love to hear it Sean you know where are you at on that as far as how would that put the district in position to possibly be sued at some point or doing this
087I mean again it's just when you're talking about medicine and people and then picking up the phone and having a nurse call what if the person that picks up the phone is an older brother or sibling and grants permission and everything games apparent and something happens there are so many variables that you have to look at that you're you're walking a very tight rope that you could potentially um put the district in in a position that could would be very serious in cause um lasting effects so just when we were looking at this policy I think there's a lot of things to consider and most importantly is I believe that the district nurses should be involved in this from start to finish their input should be all over this we should be going back to
088them saying what did you think they are a subject medic experts on medicines underneath the medical we should be leaning on the 22 we have collectively and say what is your recommendation moving forward how do you do they have the license they have the knowledge so we should be leading heavily on them and looking at their recommendation for this whole policy maybe having them tear it apart and go through it and provide their full um endorsement of it and then move forward well as I said before I I do believe that you should have the buy-in of the school nurses uh before so I think I think that's that's an excellent point I think a lot of excellent points have come to light here because I can be very honest with you at first I
089was like this is a no-brainer why wouldn't we change our policy so I think that's why we have these discussions um because I'm I'm thinking about it more from what everybody has said and I think what I'm hearing is as a board we really we really want to consider all the things we discussed and and really the discipline moving forward here direct president Hume did you say want to say anything further yeah I I have just one one thing that I very strongly feel um I don't know if we as a board need to move a motion at a meeting formally to do this or whether we can do it by asking the e-superintendent to ask the building uh principles to do this but I feel extraordinarily strongly that anyone who is disciplined for over
090the counter medication whose School record says in any way controlled substances that that has to be expunged and if we need to make a board motion on that at a public meeting to do that if that's the only way it can be done that's it but otherwise if it would be possible for a direction to be given that that conflation of over-the-counter medication with quote controlled substances which has a very very specific definition under law I would like to make sure that that is proactively implemented by anybody associated with the school records and the discipline of anything who's been who that happens president Hume I don't I think what you're asking is as uh in the student information system what it states and number one uh I do not believe that that is how it's
091reported uh all the reportable offenses are D's um and again for you're not used to the system so I'm just going to try to explain it to you the way that the principles explained it to me it was put in under other which is not a reportable offense number one and number two in the brief description it was identified as this individual had three Advil okay I believe it's already taken that what you're asking I believe uh from the conversations I had today prior to this meeting I believe that's already taken care of that's fabulous I I just feel very strongly about this that um good point yeah the ignorance of a policy which in actually in the handbook does not specify any any punishment at all and that needs also to be rectified um
092that because of that um as long as those records have been amended then I will be a happy president and I will stop worry beating on about this subject I will I think I think it's a good a good subject that we discussed and I think our families needed to hear this that that we're really considering all the options for the safety of their kids and and also for their Student Records to be accurately reflected because I I don't know if colleges look at those but they very well may and I wouldn't want something that they you know carrying Advil in high school to affect a future career choice or career opportunity so I think it's good that we're looking at it and we're being proactive so thank you to everybody for a really good
093discussion on that we're not moving that policy forward at this time but we will follow up um all of the items that we've asked Administration to provide us additional feedback on I just want to say one thing before we go on to the next Topic in relationship to the opt out Forum I will say this that it was the parents loved it and the nurses loved it and it was the best thing they ever started so that's all I'm going to say but I will say that thank you and we can move on to Student Wellness okay next policy is 246. um student wellness this is a policy that I am working on with with Mr laffey members of Aramark our food service vendor and different faculty administrators community members and parents um I think
094it's a policy that is committed to the optimal development and personal academic Developmental and social achievements of our students so I'm very happy to be participating on this committee and I'm going to turn this over to you now Mr laffy yes thank you thank you directoriani and again just to read it out with director Ronnie said you know the the wellness policy does it's it's it's a it's a well-diverse policy of District uh State stakeholders I mean there's a board member District administration as director United States is some food service Representatives we have school health professionals as in our school nurses and some of our mental health program coordinators we actually have three physical education teachers that were um uh you know nice enough to volunteer to take part in this committee we have a
095member of the public and we also have a parent or a parent slash guardian and as well as a student representative as well a student athlete um just a little background on the on the policy we are required to adopt and update a wellness policy every three years um the purpose of it the policy it's required by the U.S department of Agriculture uh is to promote the health and students the health of our students and address problems with childhood obesity um some may think think that this is a food service department policy but the policy goes into much more than that it's not just what served to students in the cafeteria on a daily basis for breakfast and lunch although this policy is required to be part of the national school lunch program it also
096goes in to discuss what the district is doing to promote proper Nutri nutrition and a healthy lifestyle through education both in the classroom of related to physical education and also your and also your health classes so the committee has met a few times we met two times so far to kind of review the current policy and to make sure that it aligns to what the USDA requires in the policy as you most likely saw in a memo that I sent this weekend the the format that we're working under right now doesn't exactly align to what the psba style format is okay and I think partly because when this a policy was originally adopted by the school School District that was in 2014 and that may be prior to this uh the Scranton School District adopting
097the psba policy handbooks I believe so we're in the process of hopefully aligning that to it um currently right now if you were to look at policy 246 the document that we are working on is essentially an attachment to policy 246 it almost acts as like an AR um so we're looking at you know potentially an amendment to policy 246 and the psba Scranton School District format that we're used to but also a more comprehensive uh 20-some page document that goes into much more detail as to um you know how we are going to comply with um you know the regulations that are necessary to have a wellness policy um we've you know we've reviewed a few items so far with the with the committee there's been a lot of um you know I think
098good back and forth related to uh what our policies says as versus what our practices are you know I'll give you a perfect example um it's related to some of the physical education uh you know it states that secondary students um the current policy states that the secondary students will be required to take an equivalent of one academic year of physical education where our current practices is that they actually take two calendar years ninth and 10th grade so that was something that one of our phys Ed members uh pointed out for us which was you know which is exactly the purpose of what we're doing here we're trying to align this policy to match our practice and obviously be in compliance with the USDA so um I look forward to continuing to work on this
099we are not I don't think we're all we're not through all the recommended changes yet but as we continue to work with the committee we will uh Continue to update the board and this is something uh director Yani I think both of us would love to have to start off the start of the 2324 school year for so that is our goal the parents community members also participating and our faculty and staff so yeah I think we'd all like to see us if we can get it going there does anybody have any questions on that the committee and the policy so we're not ready to move that policy forward I would think or we will be by the August meeting uh directory do you mind if I jump in I no please do ideally um
100you know to have this in place with our current structure being a first read and a second read um if if we can get this into a format um that we are uh happy with send it to the board um you receive any feedback potentially do a first read at our special meeting schedule for August with a second read uh for the first meeting in September that way we're ready to go for the 23-24 school year okay I was wondering how that was gonna take a deeper dive into reading what we've got so far and provide feedback I think we'd appreciate that okay okay great just ask a question which is policy related but not specific to policy 246 John is it possible to have the first read of a policy and move to have
101the second read of a policy on the same at the same meeting here's my thing there John we can hear you yes it absolutely is I mean um all of it requires a motion is to waive the um um the two readings okay so for anything we want to start in September we could do it on August 2nd and get them done yes yeah but but if we did but but what I'm saying Carol is that if we were not ready by August 2nd for that meeting oh September yeah already by the meeting on September 6th there is a procedure by which got it solicitor we would be able to move it um we would be able to move it forward yeah at the same as at a single meeting that's all it's just it's
102something I've been I thought I knew but I would just wanted to double check yeah it should be conditioned by a Weber you know a book till we've thank you okay moving on to policy 610 then and that's regarding our fund balance and I think we all know on here we've heard a lot about the fund balance we know it needs to be maintained according to the school code provision and it also needs to be maintained according to our uh recovery plan and the monitoring phase that we're in so I'm gonna again Ask Mr laffy to just speak to that uh absolutely yes we talked a lot about this so um again we've we've proposed some changes to the current policy 620. um I want you guys to know that this has been um based
103off of a lot of research that we've done um we've looked at approximately 12 other school district policies um that fell in the classifications of their located in the northeastern Pennsylvania region with us and maybe not specifically iu19 but again maybe some districts in IU 18 as well larger suburban and larger Urban school districts were also we're also um were also looked at also for to get some ideas um as director Yanni stated section 688 of the PA school code does set limitations um or set guidelines related to the unassigned fund balance that a district can carry um you know for district uh that has a budget over 19 million dollars which obviously we fall into um it's limited to eight eight percent of your expenditures and as we've discussed in the past that's only
104approx only one month of of operating expenses uh the Amendments that we are proposing are are in line with those school code Provisions um but also provides additional amendments to follow the amended recovery plan so um the amend the recovery plan initially said that we would maintain an unassigned fund balance of three percent um we've gone ahead and made that recommended change to increase that to five percent um obviously the um the goal of any fund balance policy or fund balance is to you know mitigate any Financial risks um the gfoa or the government Finance associations you know officer associations you know goes on to state that it's an essential um that a government maintains adequate levels of fund balance you know to mitigate any revenue shortfalls or honest unanticipated expenditure increases we've talked earlier
105this year um you know related to the delay in some of our collections with real estate and how you know in Prior years prior to us having a healthier fund balance um the district may not have been able to sustain that so easily or as easily as as we did this the this past year I do also want to make a comment too that you know the fund balance why while an unassigned fund balance while it is technically your spendable fund balance it's your it's your ones that are not committed or assigned for a specific purpose like maybe capital projects or for future um increases in health care it should be noted that you know the these percentages are looked at us at a certain snapshot in time so for us it's December 31st and
106as of that time that unassigned fund balance also um contains accounts receivable that may be owed from local state or federal governments that are not technically you know spendable until they are received upon you know which is usually in the first or second month of of the year so yeah I just wanted to make that you know we we do go in to say in the policy that you're honest that you're unassigned is your spendable fund balance but it should be known just that you know there could be millions of dollars of of accounts receivable on the balance sheet at the end of the year that would technically fall into that unbalance category again overall the the goal was to make amendments uh that would provide a sound fund balance policy to protect the general
107fund from any you know the high potential availability of revenues and expenses I think we felt it was important to have you know that strong policy to support like our strategic long-term goals um and our long-term planning you know all things that go into you know providing the instructional programs that we provide for our students on a daily basis I'd be happy to answer any questions vacation What would how much would three percent be five percent and eight percent be from based on our budget what would be the the amount of rough math three percent about seven million eight uh five percent would be in the 12 million range and eight percent is right where we are approximately at 17 million okay just I know this is a very exciting stuff to talk about for
108a lot of people but just so that I understand this you're saying that with our unassigned fund balance yes it's unassigned but at the end of the year we have to pay off what could potentially be millions of dollars worth of accounts receivables before we could use that unassigned fund balance or before we could yeah directory I think a good example may be um related to let's use our Esser funding right so the Esser funding operates it's basically um a reimbursement basis I mean there there is an opportunity where the district receives more money than what it has ex has spent but the state has a mechanism to to freeze that let's just say you know like if we have to file quarterly reports and if we're not spending the dollars um they are going
109to you know halt them from sending US Dollars until we spend them okay so there's always the opportunity that you may have have a deferred revenue instance you know but most likely with your federal grants it's more of an accounts receivable at the end of the year where you're expending the dollars um you're laying out the expenses uh and then at the end of the year you're recognizing a receivable to recognize that that Revenue to balance that out so that all goes into your fund balance it's going to offset that but at that time you know we may not see that reimbursement of that receivable for another 30 to 60 days so you know but the eight percent or the five to eight percent application doesn't exclude accounts receivable from that um from that calculation
110so I think that's important to know like as as we sit there with a 17 million dollar fund balance as of 1231 not all of it is you know essentially cash you know I mean so you know there are some receivables on the books that will come in after the period ends you're welcome is there any questions anybody have anything they want to comment on that nope okay thank you all right then I think we'll move on we are moving on to policy 702 gifts grants and donations but we're going to move that to the policy we didn't know I'm sorry yes um we already approved first read correct so um uh well I guess yeah and I I believe we thought as well I mean director Annie I'm sorry I don't want to jump
111in but uh um I thought we maybe thought doing that the same night as the preliminary budget would make sense also has approving a budget at the same time I would agree to that director still Martin and Clary I agree okay thank you okay so now we'll move on to policy 702 and I think superintendent mctiernan you were going to address that yes so again this is a minor change uh revision with the delegation of responsibility to the director of leadership and accountability so that the form matches the policy um and then the other um just to clarify how this process works works the donation request should first be approved by the building principal so that form should not come over to the director of leadership and accountability without the building principal signature once the
112director of leadership then signs the form and it's and then submits submits it to the board once the board approves the donation then the director of leadership and accountability will inform the building principle and the building principle is responsible for informing the donor of the approval so that's kind of uh not a lot of changes but just to make sure that we are clear on the process and then the minor change of director of leadership and accountability updating that name any questions there's no time sorry there's no timeline in this policy for that you know that they have to get in a certain I know we've kind of discussed that but it seems like it takes a while for all that to happen um I know that's not in the policy but on the form
113do we have anything that indicates to allow a certain amount of time I know we had talked about that at one point oh I'm looking at the form right now and basically it because it has to go for board approval there is no uh specific timeline that is on the form that I can see but it does need to be in prior to the work session board packet which is the Friday before on the form no should it should there be should um somebody understand the steps that have to be taken like if they looked if they got the donation form and they saw like step one do this so they knew the prop like just a quick step by step so they knew what the steps were without them superintendent material if I can
114answer that question I mean or if I can just provide some comment on that um director uh clear one thing I've been working on and it's a initiative on my summer uh summer work is to have like you know we've run we've already mentioned the frequently asked questions I believe related to like a student handbook um you know we already have frequenced questions related to our payroll prep tax um we we get a lot of these questions often you know I mean and you know not just from external parties but also internal parties as well like what's my next what do I do next right we're in the process of uh Gathering some some process documents step-by-step flow charts that kind of show you know all the layers that are in some of the most
115commonly asked uh procedures that that we have so I hope to have that up and running by the end of the summer yeah I know at one point too I had suggested that we do an editable PDF I don't know if that had happened or if it's going to we're we're working on all of our documents being um electronic we're not there yet but we're hoping in that direction step in the right direction the only timeline that's identified on this form is basically if there's a specific Grant deadline that has to be identified but as far as the process of how to fill out I believe what Pat's working on will help with that okay and just because somebody who wants to make a donation would have no idea of what the process was and
116then it hits all these steps go to the principal go here go there you know there's quite a few steps involved in Georgia clearly many times those um those requests don't come to maybe the central level it may be something that is a donation to a specific school so you know when I say we don't only just have these questions from our you know external stakeholders as our internal as well and I think you know if we you know I think you know provide these documents you know with those most frequently asked questions and train our staff internally on them they'll be able to consult and advise with any external parties uh you know the next steps that they need to take okay okay Missy or or maybe Pat you can address this as well
117this is specific to items donated to the school district correct not to students like if donated t-shirts for field day that goes to the student and does not have to go through this process I don't know that that needs to be called out in this policy anywhere but I you know or if that's just something that needs we need to be aware of internally well I mean yeah yeah sure but but placing this in the policy we could uh if I'm looking at right now what the actual form says and it basically says anyone seeking donations on behalf of the classroom school or District must obtain prior approval from the building principle and school level supervisor to apply for or solicit outside funds and then it goes on to uh basically state it says nothing
118about the student okay I think the policy does reference that it it applies to donations that will become District property yes it does state that yes if it doesn't become District property the question becomes is does this uh form need to be um completed I'll be completely honest with you I've been asked that a few times and I've you know taken the opinion that maybe it maybe it doesn't you know I mean because if it's a t-shirt to a student you know it doesn't become yeah we've talked about specific cases like that director Gail Martin specifically that like a t-shirt is going to a student it's not going to the school district but this specifically says any gift accepted by the board or its designee shall become District property may not be returned through board
119approval and is subject to the same controls and regulations as are other District properties so I'm not sure that this that a specific t-shirt or to a student applies to this specific uh policy I think that would be something that we would need to look at separately it's more just having the awareness that you know if somebody says where's the form I want to donate t-shirts you don't need the form thank you that's a good that's yeah that's a good point that's a very good point I think we're going to have to talk about that maybe that could be added to Mr laffey's summer work yes yeah yeah it will definitely yeah I'm kind of I guess I'm more confused now because um I asked I was asked before if this if this related to
120sports like practices or anything because things are often I guess donated to sport practices whether it be food or something um so I I'm not understanding now where the line is of what we do or do not need to approve so if someone's donating food we don't need to approve it well because a piece of pizza isn't going to become part of the property of the school district the kid you know that that so basically you're exactly right and I'm not so sure to answer your question director Fox I think you're correct I think there's been times when this policy and the Forum has been filled out and did not need to be filled out which is discussions that we've had internally when this these have come up but you're exactly right so uh a
121p a tray of pizza um and a T-shirt and those types of things that are going directly to the student that are not going to become District property are not relevant to this policy as it stands today I was just going to say like if it's related to like food for a sporting event you know we just talked about the wellness policy the wellness policy does dictate what can happen right it's the students during certain hours of the day the school day being it starts at midnight the night before and ends 30 minutes after the bell rings so um yeah I think it would we'd have to take each situation as a case-by-case basis if one policy would apply to a certain situation so so but to that then like if if it's been I
122suppose past practice that football practices or doubles or whatever have had food given to them and such is that something that needs to be they've never done to my knowledge I've never seen a forum come for uh doubles and and for them outside the same right right so if it's outside the school year it's it doesn't so I think that's where I think even as a board member would like that clarification of what does or does not fall under this policy yeah it's very specific time pat if you remember it was a specific time when we looked at as far as there was a pizza party or something at Scranton High School it basically says the you know the rules of the wellness policy apply from Midnight of the the time that the school the
123school day starts in half an hour after after the end of the school day or or the or the last bell um so anytime outside that scope uh the wellness policy is uh does does not apply hence you know why at a football game on a Friday night you know there's no um you know there's you can sell pizza or hot dogs or any other vending machine related items so I guess we need a chart if it's this it goes to the wellness policy if it's this it goes to donation form but it's this you don't need anything expect your homes did you want to say anything yeah so if we decided you know certain things don't need to be approved or she does not need to be completed who's going to be the single
124person that's going to decide yes or no because that's where you run into it it's going to be principles of each School building um someone in central Administration I think it needs to be noted in there if you're going to have this in a policy where certain things because they don't become District policy and who is going to be the person that determines that yes or no there's something needs to be submitted should be very Crystal Clear spelled out so that there is no room for misinterpretation or anyone and everyone just turning it into the wild wild west yeah I I hear what Ty is saying you know we don't know that's why we need to be careful of yeah I mean I can just give you an example now since we're talking about it
125so when the football players have double sessions and the food uh and they get food served that's between the building principle the athletic director and the coach who are dealing with that um so uh that really does not come to our level at all I don't know if I answered your question director I think it needs to be annotated in the in the policy that it is ultimately the building principles responsibility because again here's why if it's not annotated again you run the risk of someone just it becoming a wild wild west but obviously if there ever is an issue you have a you at least have a policy in place so you know how to follow and if need be correct but that way it's spelled out so that not everyone is scrambling trying
126to figure it out sending emails to this board member this Central administrator it's spelled out in the policy everyone should have access to it we shouldn't have any issues you're you're absolutely correct um I guess my question would be then for either Mr gentileza attorney freinder you superintendent mctiernan if we're going to move this policy ahead for a first read how difficult would it be to add some kind of that language to the policy will be any difficult yeah I don't that could be a one line yeah John we you can you can referred on that right that's that seems pretty simple no problem yeah we can we can add that in okay is that something that the the majority of the board would be in favor of doing yes okay good so we'll we'll
127move if if everybody's in agreement we'll move this policy forward um with that language added to it for the first read again it's first read to the work session so we're not approving anything we're just moving it forward and right yep okay sounds good thank you okay and to policy 800 records management so I'm going to have superintendent mctiernan give um a quick update as to why we're reviewing this policy at this time and then I would like to just have uh if appropriate and everybody agrees a quick board discussion with our board secretary here regarding board minutes and I think it kind of Falls nicely under this policy um so I'll let you go first superintendent mctiernan yeah sure I'll be very brief this is a routine psba update that Bert had received that
128the changes have come in it there's basically it identifies the number of years as you know our records certain records need to be kept for so many years depending on what the record is student attendance I believe is 99 years special education files are I think seven years so I can go on and on and on so basically it it identifies um it's a psba update on the regs regarding this policy that's that's pretty much as simple as it gets okay does anybody have any questions on the policy the way that it stands now no okay okay so I'm going to just take this quick opportunity then um ask the board how everybody feels about um the way that our board minutes are done I think they're a lot of work right now for Mrs
129Orr they're given she she transcribes them verbatim and spends a lot of time typing them up that way uh we were thinking about perhaps changing it to psbas maybe recommended standards and that per our bog for board minutes it's if everybody wants to just take a look at that you can pull it up or I can have it sent out to you but it kind of outlines in that bog what should be in the minutes and that's in line with what psba recommends but it's not a Verbatim you know director Yani said to do this and then director mcandrew said this it's just a summary uh I think uh with with all the pertinent information there so I wanted to just take it take an opportunity now to open that up for discussion I'm glad
130you brought this up it's been on my mind for a long time I think it is a it is a tremendous amount of work given the availability of recordings the live stream you know we can all hear in real time what each of us has said if we ever need to verify information I I don't think this the verbatim approach is necessary I think the the minutes should be a record of the business transacted you know any amendments made to motions of course if there are significant points that that influence just discussion or decision that's one thing to note but I I completely agree with you Tara I I think this is something we can take off Jenny's place I think it's a great idea because if you really want verbatim you can go back
131and watch the video and that's usually what I do if I want to recapture something um you know I'll just go back and look at the video to get the verbatim because sometimes I want it sooner than you know the minutes take a little you know a while for Jenny to get done so usually I want to look at it sooner than that so I think that's a great idea okay Mrs or any feedback you want to provide no I don't I don't have anything I think you you covered it all I know we we ask a lot of you um so making this change may allow you to have a little bit more time to focus on some of the other tasks that we are constantly asking of you um uh president did you
132want to make a comment yeah I I just wanted to endorse what um Katie and you both said and Carol said um the past practice was to have simplified minutes there are guidelines from psba we got one sent to us today um I think this was a change that was made at one point at the request of a director who no longer serves with us some years ago um while we've got a video recording of the meetings I just think that it's a strictly according to the guidelines summary of the business that's done is is either very much a way forward and it's very much what I'd like to see Mrs or do um and if there's no objection from any of our colleagues I think we can continue with that going forward does anyone
133have a uh that disagree with the suggestion Catherine's hand is not oh I don't disagree by any means I was just curious when we were talking about this how how do we store the meetings I'm assuming they're saved other than just YouTube or is it just YouTube um just in case the site went down where is our access to them they're Bound in books they need to be kept forever in a day forever and ever um done virtual meetings the recorded meetings the recorded meetings are on on YouTube I don't I don't know that there's I guess that would be my concern is that there's a backup for that if we're going to rely on those that it's not only on YouTube um in case that we lose access to them since it will be
134we need to make sure that boards from we we see ourselves going back to um information I I've read meetings from 10 years ago so I just want to make sure future boards are able to go back and uh find the information they need so if it's in a virtual format I'm more than okay with that I just want to ensure that they're accessible if anything ever happens to YouTube I I think that should that would be covered under policy 830.1 which is that's the data storage I don't know if that is but it looks to me like that's where that would fall under right so I think if if there's no objection here what we could do is try to set our August special meeting for the first meeting where you could go ahead
135and do that um you know in the summarized meeting format as long as we've done our research prior to that meeting to make sure that that is covered under the policy that we're going to be discussing 8 30.1 director Cheswick has a comment okay sure I just wanted to say um I don't want to be the devil's advocate here but as much as I want to support this I'm just a little concerned that we are limiting the amount of information that we're given to the public I know is some people you know strictly watch the meetings it's nice to have the documentation too that's going to be there that that supplements that because I know some people only rely on the meeting minutes so uh for me I'm a little torn um you know I
136I do want to take something off of Jenny's plate but I'm also an advocate for um you know really making sure the public understands what we're doing and that they're engaged so for me um you know and unfortunately I I don't think I support this let me just say that the minutes they they have to contain the subject you know when the from public comment um everything I sent you something it's um it just requires the substance of the board's business to be recorded plus the date and time of the meeting the names of the school director's present uh the substance of all official actions taken and the each individual School directors vote the names of all citizens who appeared and the and the subject of their comments and their testimony it doesn't have to
137be word for word it could just say if whoever spoke on behalf of you know um that's really about it I understand exactly and I do try if there's something of importance that um I try to include that and put as much information as I could but the question and answer and going back and forth isn't necessary but I I do put in a lot of information that I don't need to do I think yeah I think reading that over that psba information and then also if prior to the work session um everybody would want to pull up or maybe Mr generaliza you could send this out um006 bog1 and that's specifically regarding um our official board minutes and that's the Scranton School District's bog for board minutes there's a lot that um Mrs Orr
138will still need to put in our minutes so I I would definitely I mean again I just kind of threw this out at everybody so I know nobody had time to research it so um there's not actually a policy or anything maybe we could just put this for discussion on our work session now that we've brought this up um so if we could add this for a discussion I think in that um time everybody could read over what Jenny sent out from psba and we could also read over our bog and then we could follow up from there if everybody would be comfortable with that I think we might need a little bit of research with the other policies surrounding minutes because I don't believe that any I don't recall any official action being taken
139to implement this process so I don't know that we need to take any official action to undo it so I I mean I I agree with you I don't want to you know Force anybody to make a snap decision but I think we have to look more at the policies that are in place we may simply just need to be following what's already there and there's really no decision to be made and I mean I would think this would be something somewhat in the purview of the board president to say this is this is the policy this is how I've asked the board secretary to to work within its confines so I I think before we say we're going to push this again to a work session and another discussion maybe we just need a
140little bit of research clarification around exactly what policies exist now and do we actually need to make any changes we just maybe need to follow our policies that are already there a little better can I just say one thing that it's a little off off Target but it has to do with the board meetings I don't know who uploads the board meetings but every time they upload them into YouTube they have a different format and it would be helpful if we had a similar format for posting like Scranton School Board sometimes it's SSB sometimes the date is written out sometimes it's 12 16 22 and what happens is they sort kind of not sequential and when you're looking for something specifically I've had trouble finding certain board meetings because of the way they get posted
141because they seem to get posted in a variety of formats so that would just be another suggestion it's a little off track but it has to do with the board meetings and the um and how they're put up on YouTube If We Had A a specific format so it was always done the same way so they would sort the way they should that is a good point because I have found that that problem as well so right I think that's an easy fix I think that's an easy fix if we just have the time to get in there and we don't have to fix the ones that are already in there but maybe just I'm thinking unless the board members feel different I'm just thinking moving forward we put Scranton School Board you know working
142session and the date but we always do the date numerically or we always do it typed out so whatever would so we always do it the same way so it's easier to find them because sometimes I've struggled looking for them yes we will address this okay great thanks a couple more comments I think um present him um yes I I would very much like to um have Jenny go ahead with the legally uh format of the of the minutes as they were previously done um reverting to the practice of of what we were however I do believe that the URL address for where the board meeting can be found must be included at the beginning of the um of the of the minute saying a full a full recording of this meeting can be found
143at and then the URL yeah we'll be able to find it easily and if we go with Carol's idea that we have a consistent format um even better I I already have this confirmed rondelle we'll take care of it so we we he hears everything you're saying and we'll take care of it okay thank you something simple but makes our life a little easier okay okay was there anything else on that policy or that discussion okay okay then we're gonna move forward to policy 815 acceptable use of Internet computers and network resources um superintendent mctiernan I know you're going to speak to this I also I think that there were some changes that might have came through today with this so maybe you could again I don't I don't have that in front of me
144I only have the one computer here so maybe you could kind of speak to what those changes are sure so uh the there was a few changes and I might need to call on Kevin for for them because they came in late because we had a big discussion at our staff meeting today and actually you director Yani brought up a great point that there was inconsistencies in the actual policy so this is something that we're currently working on right now so um we're happy to take any input that the board um has in fact we we want we want that basically uh because of the one-to-one and because of the just all of our Chromebooks we needed to tighten this up um some of the inconsistencies today that were brought up were are we allowing
145students on basically to to make it simple are they allowed to go on anything other than educational sites and if they are you know how are we going to Define that are we allowing our employees to go on anything other than educational sites so it's unrealistic to think that if a student finishes up early and they are have free time that they're that as long as it's appropriate moral ethical and appropriate that they're not going to at any time why they're in our schools be on any other sites besides an educational site so if you notice and I believe Mrs Orr uploaded this to um Mrs Orr could you correct me if I'm wrong you uploaded the changes that were made this afternoon uh onto yes you did right on board docs yep okay so
146I know um on page for anybody that has their document open I know on page seven if you look in yellow there's a um that was something that was updated today obviously anything in green we are changing and there's a lot of changes um and and I'm happy to rather than go through all of them it would be easier for me if everybody reviewed it if you can bring up your question questions but what was changed today was basically exactly what I just said regarding allowing students so I'm happy to read it the use of the district's Network and the internet is primarily intended for educational purposes while personal and or recreational use of the Internet by students is generally not permitted on the district's Network incidental personal use may be allowed on a limited
147basis provided it complies with the terms of the policy and any accompany administrative regulations incidental personal use should not interfere with educational activities to the proper functioning of the network so basically what we're saying there is exactly what I explained prior to reading that to you is we're not saying that they're never going to be on any other site as long as it is appropriate site for um for school and I've explained that that's on page seven and the other major um the other thing that was added today is on page 11. and I just have to get there on page 11 again it talks about incidental personal use by students um again I could read this if if you want me to director Yani or I can I think everybody gets the point of
148what I'm trying to say here so I'm happy to answer any questions this is a very large and I'm and this is I I believe Mr Carney would agree to me uh with me we're not finished with this we're really reviewing it um but we this is when it's time right now during this committee policy committee meeting for the board to give us input on things that you would like taking out would like to see in um so I'm happy to open the floor to any board member um I see a hand up by director Fox so we'll start there thank you um my my initial question would just be um just thinking back to conversations that my daughter has had with me and then thinking about the new Middle School schedule that we're implementing
149in the study hall period um that makes me kind of concerned um if a teacher is not fully over watching the students at all times of okay because if I'm I'm not sure if I'm no right now it's is it currently only educational um sites they could go on because um my daughter said that and even during regular school the kids are always trying to find ways to get on Roblox and such um I remember even when I was I was in high school you know the smart kids always found ways to get behind the firewalls or whatever it is um so my I just initially get very concerned about those the 45-minute study hall period we just implemented and if these students are going to have more freedom to not stay to educational sites
150yes understood um I I think that's one of the things as uh as we say um are we are we going to be able to totally eliminate that or are we going to try to control it and I think I've learned in this business that trying to eliminate it it's not you're going to fail so you've got to find a way to identify what it is that they can go on and then uh you know obviously the things that they're not supposed to be on are supposed to be filtered out and as you all know we're working uh to make sure that we strengthen our network uh Safety and Security so to answer your questions no we know that the kids are on other sites besides educational sites we are looking at and again this
151is not my background I only know because of the staff meetings we are looking at things such as bloxy which the teachers who have piloted uh they love um from the feedback that I'm getting from the individuals that are reporting back to me that helps filter out uh appropriate sites versus not appropriate sites so to answer your question no the kids yes the kids are on other things besides educational sites and it's we need to find a way to basically eliminate if that's possible the sites that they can't get on but I don't think us saying you can't go on is realistic yeah you're going to spend a lot of time disciplining things that you would rather try to control than spend a ton of time pulling kids in for looking at things sometimes it's
152easier to give wait till they give them a little bit I I did read through the the policy today fairly thoroughly and there were a few things that jumped out and maybe they're being looked at I don't know or maybe I missed them I did try to read it you know fairly thoroughly um one of the things was or what I got out of his employees cannot use their phones during the school day um for for personal reasons but they get a lunch and they should be able to do what they want on their lunch time did I read that correctly because uh basically page nine I'm trying to get a use of districts never married nobody nobody's selling a teacher that they can't be on the phone during uh their lunch time or their
153own private time so that should not be that should not be in a in the policy no they shouldn't be on their phone during when they're teaching obviously access the internet so they can't access the internet using their phone as an adult employees that wish to access the internet via 3G 4G LTE 5G devices or any other non-district connections outside of the regular school day but while acting in the scope of their employment must obtain specific written permission from the building principle are you talking about joining uh getting on the Wi-Fi of getting on Wi-Fi right and then I also did something about the now I can't find it I tried to and then there was a couple so there was so there was that about the employees nothing then there was a thing where
154the employees couldn't use the um on aren't staff provided if needed a password yes we use their phones or what their internet service am I correct on that or no yeah uh I I would I don't know the answer to that I mean I don't I'm on my own cell data when I'm I'm not on Wi-Fi so I I I'm gonna need I I don't know I do not know if we are providing Wi-Fi's to cell phones so if I can jump in here first thing I want to say is um we are we do in this discussion it sounds like we are not currently filtering anything we we do have content keeper which is a filter which would you know block out some keywords and and uh can filter currently going into that you
155know with the with an updated stance on cyber security in the district we're restricting non-district owned devices to certain ssids which is what the uh Wireless broadcasts out for you to connect to um we are talking with it and establishing a uniform set of ssids across the network that can be used for student staff and uh potentially guests which would be isolated and segregated from the Active network um as it stands right now um I don't know I'm not 100 sure what maybe has happened in the past but moving forward we would not be allowing um non-district owned devices on our main Network we would be isolating into something else if allowed so what did so all right we're talking about teachers personal cell phones they are not to get on the wireless and they
156are already used cellular or they're to get on the internet the wireless and not use cellular so I I think this is a little bit of a confusing Port uh portion here of this policy um because I know one of the things that we were we're pushing out and implementing was a raptor which would require the use of yeah prior used to your cell phone um we're not mandating that a teacher put it on there on their device they have the option to it's recommended we would recommend them have it on there but um some buildings uh Cellular Connection can be iffy which is why we implemented uh phones in the first place so having them and saying hey you know we have this system that allows you to get emergency notifications but not allowing
157them to have some form of access to the network because of the spotty Cellular Connection is is kind of defeating the purpose of the emergency communication platform so we were looking at implementing a specific SSID which segregates it's called a VLAN a separate land that would allow them to be on a network on our network but isolated and segregated from the main Network I hope I hope I uh explain yes you did I mean I I told I understood what you said I got it yeah yeah because it was another one too about the internet filters maybe temporarily disabled to enable a particular user unrestricted access to a website in such instances a building administrator must be present during the entire period of unrestricted research that's not even attainable I mean that would be very
158difficult so I don't know how we have to look at that filters but um the filter issue because if somebody why they would want to get on something unrestricted and they could get it was something they needed for a school they could contact it to to fix that so but to have a principal stand an administrator stand there the entire time someone's using had to unfilter something would that's not even attainable you can't I mean we can't do that if yes no that part so just to go back the non-network accessibility by employees through their cell phone that's accessing our Network on their personal device which uh Mr Rucker explained the filtering is in the event we have a filter system in place that's a catch-all in case our filter or whatever something happens it's
159we don't really technically have to worry about that because we have the Ruckus software in place so that looks like a plan B in the event that Ruckus goes down okay so it's it's uh your recommendation superintendent mctiernan that we move ahead at this point or that we further consider these changes well I'd like to at least bring this to the work session for for uh continued discussion and if we get to the work session first read and people are not comfortable with it then we can pull it but having being in one to one and not having a solid policy that we can rely on I'm not comfortable with that so I I'm asking the committee to move forward and we'll continue to work and fine-tune this um and be open to suggestions and
160if the board is not comfortable with that then we'll pull it okay yeah I mean I I would like to take some time so if we do move it I'm I'm comfortable with that as long as directors Clary and Gilmartin are then we could take the time any board member can go through now that these changes have been made that were made today and then if anybody has any suggestions they could send them to me and then I can send them on through to you and Kevin and we can work through it that way is everybody yeah that would be good that would be great we're good with that okay sounds good all right so we're gonna go on to policy 816 District social media um so um either superintendent mctiernan or attorney freund was
161going to speak to this yeah I think I'll I'll speak and then I'll throw it to attorney Brian I think the big thing here is uh we have asked the board to consider a non-public Forum versus a public forum and I think the board has to decide whether they agree with that recommendation or not John if you want to chime in with uh the benefits of a non-public versus public forum no I'd appreciate it yeah absolutely and uh yeah it's interesting it's coincidental that um as we sit here uh the the this very question is being considered uh by the federal courts uh right here uh in the Eastern well you're in the Middle District in the eastern district of Pennsylvania uh and also by the United States Supreme Court um I did send over
162today and uh I just got this this question today so I went to the Senate earlier uh but there's not a Pennsylvania uh case that's currently pending involving the OCTA Aurora School District in which they had a policy in non-non public forum uh policy uh in which basically um you know they could put things out but no one was allowed to comment in and Court said that was okay as long as you know all the comments were prohibited there was no Viewpoint discrimination in other words there was no discrimination based on First Amendment protected expression and just interestingly I mean just just uh very recently the United States Supreme Court accepted two cases for uh consideration on appeal except for a few cases uh and both of those cases involve questions of uh governmental um
163uh governmental of social media public versus non-public forums one involves um a situation in which there was a certain uh certain uh groups that were um excluded from ascending comments and and the other one involves a question of somebody's personal Facebook uh a public official and whether that could whether that could constitute a public forum and whether in that context uh I don't know he could limit um public input so the advantage of a non-public forum is as said in the uh in the Octorara case you have to worry about um people complaining about uh being discriminated against on a Viewpoint basis um so legally it's a stronger situation and I will say this too I've been involved in a couple of situations in which people have uh posted um you know kind of um
164random issues uh that then led to the needs for investigations um got on um you know the public press and so forth and so on I mean if you allow a non-public Forum you really can't control what people put uh put in there unless it's you know obscene or pornographic so um there's a lot of advantages to a non-public forum and there are many other ways to get public input uh rather than to open up your social media to anyone who wants to comment okay so what I'm hearing here is that it is Administration and legal's recommendation that we move forward with a non-public forum for all of our social media um sites yes okay so I'm not familiar with a lot of them so I I understand Facebook which like most of us do
165so you're saying then we would have a Facebook account and just to use that as an example um we would put out everything going on in our schools just like we normally do um but the public wouldn't be permitted to make any comments underneath is that correct that's that's my understanding I I don't have Facebook so I don't really know how it works but yes my understanding is there's a place to come and they and you wouldn't be able to comment okay what do we have any sources if um say I saw something about I don't know a basketball game or something and I wanted to find out more information so is there a way if we were to post something we could how could we make the public know if they had questions regarding
166an event or something going on at a school um I don't know what our percentages are of of poor comments or comments that are inappropriate or is it more people saying hey can you tell me how I find out about this or how I get this form or how I do this my again just from the feedback that I received if what I'm told is when there is a post the majority of the comments you can't seen because they're already really being filtered out because I guess there's a way when this was originally set up I guess there's a way that if there's a curse word or if there's something that's inappropriate it's already filtered out and they can't come they they can't comment on that so from my understanding is if if a post
167goes up it may say 20 comments but out of those 20 comments you may only see three and the other 17 you can't see and I'm told that's because there's words in there that you can put that if they say those words it won't show I I'm sorry I don't know much other than that but that's what's happening now I'm also understanding that the back and forth is not really happening I mean realistically if a parent has a question about their child's school they should call the principal I I'm not so sure that they should be going back and forth in public regarding I mean if it's a basketball game of course but you know my recommendation is call the principal and have a conversation or send send an email um but again that's my
168own that's my own that's my opinion and uh as far as Twitter I mean I know Twitter uh you know again I do think there's comments that you can make on Twitter too and I mean maybe to Tara's point just creating language that perhaps is uniform on all of the pages to say if you're looking for additional information on any item posted here here's the number here's the email address because that was actually a kind of leads me to a question I was going to ask in regard to something later in the policy about our own um social media accounts and especially those that we hold as directors or as candidates and making it clear that it is not representative of the school district if it were possible to create language that if we so
169chose we could use I I would love that I would I would love to have a script to add to my social media accounts and you know I'd I think if that were consistent language it would be great I think that's something Sydney can work on easily I mean that's part of her role so I believe she'd be happy to do that thank you at least I I say she would be happy to do that I don't know when is appropriate for me to jump in I apologize um yeah no I would be happy to help out in that area if you wanted something like that but just to make sure I'm understanding where you're coming from what you're looking for exactly is just like a standard script that you or any other director who
170is interested to put on their account and then it just stays up there is that am I am I understand yeah I can help you too I understand what they want so yeah okay okay great thank you yeah absolutely for sure thanks Cindy okay um I would just like to say that I understood that we are in legal Jeopardy if we block anyone I I correct me if I'm wrong John but didn't Trump get into terrible trouble for blocking people off his official Twitter account and got told that that wasn't possible he couldn't block some people but not everyone and I'm very much in favor of this policy of of having the the mom comments in but I believe it's essential if we do that that we have to set up something similar to the
171Google form that we had during the building task force committee meetings where members of the public were able to submit a Google form with the understanding that um with with the understanding that it would not be responded to but they could leave comments if they were in a very similar fashion to the way people leave comments on social media that they could submit this form and it would transmit their opinion to the district without the just in the same way as the district does not need to reply to a Facebook post they would not need to reply to this and I think if we could put something like a Google form or something similar I leave it to the brain of the organization to work out what then I think we would get around the
172fear that some people have that we would be shutting the public out I don't think I don't think that the social media is the appropriate Forum to get feedback from the public again the rule is that you can you can prohibit responses from everyone but you can't do it selectively that's it's Victor Cruz yes so if under this this this tentative policy would individual posts still be able to shared because what the superintendent said earlier that that there already is uh uh director Cruz you're going in and out or a type of filter that um um that hides certain comments and then only show certain ones the comments that I see whenever something's posted if it's something like informational or something oh sorry oh yeah director Crews were struggling um I don't know if you're
173in a certain party so what I notice is that a lot of times people will tag other people in post so they're able to see it like they'll tag like a friend or a family member or whoever so they're able to see the post for the themselves so a lot of what I see I don't said right director Cruz we're losing half of director Cruz I don't this is this is director if you can hear me we're losing half of we're getting maybe every other word I I think maybe what I'm picking up from from you here and you can say yes or no here um is that you're concerned that you know say I go in and I tag you Sarah Cruz to make sure that you see that post that that would be
174lost um so I think I think you're saying that's how the sometimes the community communicates with each other and what what made this like so I guess my concern is also what is uh certain posts yeah yeah uh director Cruz I I think I'm getting bits and pieces but we're getting every 10th word that you're saying uh first thing is you're asking about what is being uh I think you said I said something which I did um basically the way it was set up when the Facebook uh was set up from the information I'm getting uh the only way you can restrict any comments was to use an established word list um to re restrict certain posts so the issue is that it's impossible to put every word in there so that is that and
175then your second question I believe you're asking is will you still be able to tag people um if on a post and Sydney can you answer yes or no on that yeah yeah I can jump in here thank you yes yes yes you can still tag people okay you can share the post with the tagged person you would still be able to share any posts you just would not comment perfect so you could share the post you can't comment to the person that you want to tag got it so I hope that answers your question you couldn't tag them Cindy in or Sydney in the comment is that correct currently you can tag them now yes if this policy were to come into place then obviously because comments are disabled you would not be able
176to comment and tag them now um yes so I hope does that answer your question yeah yeah director Cruz is messaging me that is what she was asking me I think I think that was her concern that um that that we may lose contact with with some families because that's how some families share information is by tagging in the comments the opportunity to share the article yes you cannot restrict that right but that wouldn't um put it like say that uh you know director Cruz tagged me that's going to bring it right up in my feed so I think I'm immediately notified I think I I have no idea you could tag them in your own post if you share it you can then tag them in it if anything that's not on our site
177okay could share it and then tag your friend and they see it there just not on our page okay you know more than me okay all right um so I see director Fox and director chaswick so director Fox do you want to continue speaking I'm okay that's all I was saying thank you okay so director Cheswick so I know I've mentioned this before my only concern with this is that that we are a public school district and we are going to restrict our public forum so um you know I just wanted to put that out there that you know I am concerned that's the way a lot of people get their information it's how they comment done stuff they they ask about information um you know I know there is a situation a couple weeks
178ago where a parent or somebody from the community posted something and it was investigated so it's also a way um you know uh Safety and Security we're finding out about stuff that way too so I'm just concerned about about limiting um you know uh how we are engaging with the public on that level but we will still maintain email addresses throughout the district phone numbers for buildings and and different administrators we will still accept public comment at monthly meetings we are just shutting down the ability to comment on the internet correctly and I do believe I would imagine that I'm I'm sorry I would imagine that you could also still send a message to any of these Facebook pages and that may reach someone who's monitoring a messenger mailbox there and that would be the
179more appropriate place for um an issue that need to be investigated rather than on a public comment and we we know that you know that you know we would encourage parents to to go that way but it's you know it's not always going to happen I think some people they're on social media it's where they feel comfortable and sometimes they're if they're not being heard that's what they do so I'm just you know like I said I think we know the proper channels that should be taken but it doesn't always happen that way and I think you know anything that could help with the Safety and Security and increase um you know an engagement with the public and getting information out there and you know I'm support in support of that so I think it's
180a little unfair though to characterize this as jeopardizing Safety and Security and shutting down communication with the community I I hear that we are not opening ourselves up to potential litigation by potentially monitoring something that shouldn't be monitored I wouldn't be surprised if at some point these word lists are called into question I mean I'm I'm hearing our solicitor give us advice that this is a a simpler path to go down when there is there are Myriad other ways for people to communicate I I really really think it's unfair to say that we are trying to stifle that I think we are trying to streamline it we don't want things on social media that should go to an administrator and and potentially get missed and I think more importantly we don't want misinformation out there
181I think we want to be sharing truths and facts and and the the accurate circumstances well I think part of if I if I can just chairman I think part of the problem is if people are going to social media to get answers we're not answering social media so that's the issue I mean that's why we have emails and we have phones while I understand um you know some people feel more comfortable going to social media unfortunately that's where a lot of rumors and miscommunication happen because unfortunately uh somebody posts something and then that's when things spiral out of control rather than going to the source and getting the true answer I mean that's my personal opinion but that's part of our problem and what we deal with the rumors and the miscommunication all the
182um is it comes straight from social media and causes a lot of headaches so I I from my standpoint if somebody wants an answer or somebody wants to you know Express their concerns then I I try to get back to every single email that I receive every single day um but I'm not going to social media to answer somebody and I never will so um I'm I'm hoping that this would help maybe rather than looking at it as a negative I'm hoping that this would increase uh Communication in a positive way and people would feel more comfortable to go that way it's just my my opinion I think what's going to happen is I think people are going to go to their own personal pages and share stuff and it's going to go viral and
183it's just going to create another problem that that we can't control so understand all right I see director Fox and then director Cleary oh yes I just wanted to say um to um director cheswick's point I do appreciate looking at all sides of it I think we should always do that with all topics um and I think to your point is exactly why we hired Sydney was to increase communication with our community and our parents and everything and I believe if I remember correctly this is her recommendation is to go this way so um going with the person that we brought in to do this job if she believes this is the best path word for us and I'm sure she has many many ideas of how she wants to continue to increase communication with
184our families and our communities and she'll thankfully bring that forward to us and we can do it in a safe format that really um brings all of our families together and streamlines Communications and uh relationships with our community so um thank you foreign [Music] yes I you know I was just going to say that I agreed with with what Katie had to say and what Missy had to say um and but I want to go back to or what I think what is the purpose of um you know Facebook and the social media and it's to get the word out there's going to be a basketball game there's going to be uh this event or that event it's not a place for dialogue and I believe if I remember something I think Sydney may have
185sent us at some point I read you know every District in this County no one has um a public forum they all have non-public um our legal is telling us to do non-public So based on that um you know based on what Sydney has shared with us I think that makes the the most sense and and I just think that we we want to get the information out there but it's not a place for for dialogue and like you said we have emails we have phone numbers we are you know principles you can email your your kids teachers if you if you need some clarification so I think there's ways for parents to get information that is a healthier Avenue then um Facebook okay um is there any other comments any other directors wanted to
186make okay so I'm hearing from the majority of the comments that have been made that we're going to move this forward now would this be it'll go into second read correct it's already been approved for first read I believe yes we discussed this yes that is correct okay so this will move forward to the work session where it can be discussed again um and Sydney I just want to clarify with you did you say that you had done research I can't recall with other school districts in the area yes I looked at um all the school districts that I could think of in northeastern Pennsylvania and I I have my list here actually um out of all of the schools that I researched most of the schools actually do not have a policy eight to
187eight sixteen um and the schools that do I was five five schools that have that policy are listed as a non-public Forum I think there might have been one that was a designated public forum outside of Scranton okay so that was that was just based on the the research that I had done okay thanks no I appreciate that okay so we're gonna move this forward then um that's what I'm hearing uh to to a second read for discussion at the work session if if there's any further discussion on it and then to then I guess are these going to the August then meeting is that what we're looking at or we'd wait until our September all of these would go to the not the special meeting for the proposed preliminary budget other than the fund
188balance everything else will go to the work the work session at the end of August uh whatever that date is for the September meeting for board approval August 28th I think okay so so just to keep in mind for everybody if there's additional questions or they want more information we can get that we've got the time so that's good okay so then I'm going to go on to policy 830 security of computerized personal information and breach notification again superintendent mcternan yes again this is a routine psba update that Mr gentileza receives uh basically uh ways to it identifies um protecting personal information that includes health records and so on and so forth so nothing Earth shattering just pretty much uh updates that we need to make basically to protect our employees personal information any questions
189on that one okay then we're gonna as long as everybody's in agreement we'll move that one forward to um the work session in a first read correct that's correct that's correct okay so that brings us to our last one for review tonight uh policy 8 30.1 data governance storage and security and so superintendent were there any changes to that since the board received that yeah so we just updated uh if you know we're unique because we have a director of operations who's also our director of Technology Network networking such as this falls under the director of technology that in our case is the same person um so as for what we did is basically um in an ideal world uh where those that would be typically two different positions um uh and and we continue
190to move forward with our organizational chart we updated it rather to say uh director of operations that will say director of Technology but in this case that's the same individual well what do we see as the volume of work that might be entailed with managing this this policy and ensuring that it's accurately in well I think the uh Mr Rucker is doing this currently along with you know he has Network individuals uh Mr casullis Mr Pica that um uh that he supervises that work with the network on a day-to-day basis but I believe he's currently doing this uh as we speak um right now so um and you know technically yeah he's he would be the only one that would be able to supervise it at this at this point okay I wasn't sure if
191this was something that maybe should be looked at to be followed or to be managed by our director of security um I just know I I think that yeah I I hear what you're saying because of the security piece but I I think in order to do that you would need a individual in the director in Safety and Security that has a background or um some knowledge of the network and at this point um I do not believe that that is the case okay all right I just I have concerns with how important it is that we manage this um well I mean I we we read every day in the paper about security breaches with internet issues um I know that as a board member I get SSD emails that are potential phishing emails
192that say click on this link to increase your data storage um I think it's really important that we maybe look at how do we provide education to our staff to our board members to our faculty on that because um I I did such a concern of mine it's it's happened to you know my employer to offices that I've that I've been to my information has been taken and so I'm really really concerned that we stay on top of this um so whatever we need to do when looking at this policy to get that education out there to everybody who has access to SSD emails um and our system and our Network I think is really important yes I agree and I I'm I'm hopeful that also as we know we just hired a new it
193consultant um so I'm hoping they can assist and you know keep in mind when we talk about um physical security versus cyber security totally two different entities so our direct director of Safety and Security is in charge of the physical safety and well-being of our of our community and cyber security as a whole is a whole different ballgame so uh you know there's two separate entities we definitely as we proceed further we definitely need more support in the area of director of uh of technology for sure I know we're we're all well aware of that and we will continue to move forward on that path in the meantime Mr Rucker and his um his team are are doing a good job and looking into a lot of cyber security options as we move forward any
194any other thoughts or comments on that from any directors no just thank you for the clarification on the title yep and then this would move forward in a first read this would move to the work session as a first read yes that's correct yes I don't think there was anything I had else except I just wanted to follow up maybe Mr generaliza you could um just clue me in on this one I know we were looking at a lot of the bogs that needed to be ratified and um I know we've had a lot going on here so did did we I can't remember how we left that did we finalize those did we get those through yes everything is sent through psba after the board does any second read off of format it instead
195of well I actually send it what you see in red and green to uh psba they format it they check everything they check the language and they send it back to me and then I make it active okay okay all right anything else that anybody would like to share for the go to the order or if I think you've done a fantastic job um Tara I think this is how Okay committee meetings can work I love I love getting the committee people involved and the committee moving the recommendations forward it's been a long one it's a good one to start off on but thank you very much I think um I think if we can get back to utilizing our committee format more in this way um as you say for the good of the
196order it's going to make us a much more efficient organization um so if you are you done do you want to hand it back to me I'm handing it back to you present you yeah um I just have one little thing to say um I have uh heard from John freund that he is available at 6 00 p.m on Wednesday which is the 22nd Monday which is the 26th or Tuesday sorry carol which is the 27th of June if we can get this wrapped up before Missy goes away I think that's a great thing to do um if people could let me know by text whether there's any conflicts on those dates and which date they prefer yeah president Hume we're still alive right yeah okay so if people could not let me know in
197this meeting but just text me which of those three dates they prefer for our private executive session I would be grateful could you send that in an email so just be good to see it better or you just said Thank you or whoever in an email okay I will I'm just giving you all a heads up and I think if that's if that's it does anyone have anything else for the good of the order then thank you all very much I think we're adjourned have a great